Hardkill

I don’t think that any of those boys and girls represent the full potential of an elite male athlete vs. an elite female athlete. look at the top men in the world vs. the top women in the world

Serena may be physically the most muscular female tennis player in history, but like Leo said, and even she herself said she’s still not a man. Men have many times the level of testosterone that women have, except compared to a very small percentage of women who take some kind of heavy doses of anabolic steroids like those extremely competitive female bodybuilders or female strength/power type athletes. Moreover, there are other reasons as to why not even an elite pro female bodybuilder, an elite pro female strength/power athlete, even an elite pro speed female elite, or even an elite pro endurance athlete can ever get nearly as muscular, nearly as strong/powerful, nearly as fast, or have nearly as much stamina as those of their respective elite pro male athlete counterparts, no matter what kind of PEDs she takes, no matter how much of those PEDs she takes, no matter how genetically gifted she is, no matter how great her diet regiment is, no matter how great her training regimen is, no matter how well she recovers from her training regimen, and no matter how hard she works. Men generally start from, and continue to maintain, a higher baseline and higher ceiling. Even when training adaptations are similar in relative terms, males generally have more total muscle mass and larger body dimensions to begin with, so equal percentage gains still leave them with higher absolute strength and size. And why is that? It's because adolescent boys go through puberty later and for a longer period of time than adolescent girls do, which means that boys/men have a longer/later growth spurt than girls/women do. Therefore, male puberty brings much higher testosterone exposure and growth hormone exposure, which produces lasting differences in size, muscle, strength, power, and oxygen-carrying capacity. Moreover, some experts say that androgen-receptor differences between males and females contribute, which is why boys/men respond more positively to androgens, including testosterone, better than girls/women do. This is why not even most genetically gifted female bodybuilders or most genetically gifted female athletes in the world will have nearly as many androgen receptors as men do, particularly compared to the most genetically gifted male bodybuilders and most genetically gifted male athletes in the world. Again, the reality is that late-teen boys and adult men generally have a large physical advantage over late-teen girls and adult women in many sports because male puberty occurs later and with a longer/later growth spurt, but above all because male puberty brings much higher testosterone exposure, which produces lasting differences in size, muscle, strength, power, and oxygen-carrying capacity.

Mark Cuban doesn't want to run for president. I'd like to see Jon Stewart run for president, but I don't see any real signs of him intending to. I guess no liberal celebrity out there really wants to be president because they may not really care about saving the country. They are probably too comfortable with the benefits they get as wealthy/high-status individuals themselves from the status quo of the economic system we live in.

That's why I've been sharing the same worry that progressives like Cenk have had about the 2030s. Even if say someone like Gavin Newsom wins the presidency in 2028 and the Dems also take back both the House and the Senate by then, Democrats could lose the entire government trifecta again by 2032 if Democrats don't enact enough new policies that will truly address enough of the working class and middle class to stave off another entertainment/business celebrity like maybe a Joe Rogan, Jake Paul, Tucker Carlson, or Dan Bilzerian from becoming another charismatic demagogue who could deceive enough desperate working class voters, middle class voters, and anti-establishment voters into electing them president to burn it all down and save America. In fact, this is why the more I think about it, more uncertain that Newsom is the best candidate for 2028 because he's already too much of an establishment Democrat instead of a charismatic outsider like Bill Clinton in 90s was or Barack Obama was in 2007-2008. Most people in the country hate and distrust the entire establishment more than ever before and are craving for someone who not only doesn't sound like another career politician, hasn't been corrupted by the political system, but also will truly be a fighter for the working class very much like FDR or a New Deal Democrat would.

With the Democratic aligned media environment having become so outgunned by both the right-wing media and the legacy media, the entire Democratic party should do a major war on misinformation. They should constantly call out the mainstream media for their bothsideism and excoriate Fox News and every right-wing media outlet out there for all their lies and devilry. Every Democratic candidate for every election should say that the right-wing media has always been out to get them and everyone who is not as far to the right as they are. They should say that Fox News, Breitbart, the Daily Wire, Turning Point USA, InfoWars, and what have you have been run by Neo-Nazis, secret members of the KKK, and all other kinds of White Supremacists who want to take over the country with their radical right-wing agenda. They should run on suing and cleansing all right-wing outlets non-stop when they gain enough power. The Democratic aligned activists should generate mass protests at every right-wing media company headquarter IRL and have pickets saying that "Truth Not Tyranny!" They all should talk about how the mainstream media and no longer really cares about democracy, no longer really cares about your freedoms, no longer really cares about the welfare of the people. Some of you may think that what I am saying is crazy and goes against freedom speech and democracy. Well, Trump and his party already have been threatening both the legacy media and every Democratic aligned media ecosystem. Democrats gotta stop worrying too much about offending anyone and protecting norms because it's not working and the system is already getting fucked! This is now war. So, Democrats need to fight fire with fire!

I hope this turns out to be a real political gift for the Democrats in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

That's quite a shock. Maybe the district has gotten so blue that it gave Mejia, the anti-israel progressive candidate, enough of an advantage over the more moderate Democratic candidates in the race. What I don't get is why AIPAC didn't go after her with a lot of attack ads on her when she was the main threat to them?

We don't have a recession yet and unfortunately it doesn't look like we will be having one this year. I hope that I am wrong.

It’s not just the donor class that’s contributing to this. It’s really that they are just too afraid to let go of catering to too many different groups of people unlike the Republican Party which has had no problem catering to a much less diverse coalition of interests.

We can’t save the voters who are already too far gone because of the right wing media. However, if we lost too many moderate and Independent voters because of this terrible media environment then we are doomed. A grass movement for this is crucial but I don’t see how that will be enough to save our country. Approval for the Democratic brand is at an all time low.

I haven’t yet, but I want to one day. Maybe I will. Both parties are already greatly disliked and the establishment Democrats are the most unpopular they’ve ever been. Plus, clearly nobody really cares enough about authoritarianism and democracy. Otherwise, Trump never would’ve been president again in 2024. People today care more about affordability and holding the rich, corporations, and the elites accountable. Moreover, Democrats are losing the messaging war and need to figure out a way to spread this cancerous spread of all of these falsehoods and false equivalencies. Otherwise, we could be facing the end of country before we know it.

Yeah, and a number of successful politicians are introverts too. Barack Obama is fundamentally an introvert even though he presents himself as being highly introverted in public settings, other big events, and interviews.

But it's not about just the complexity of making something that necessarily determines how brilliant something else. In true art, it's about how original or radical a concept or idea is in a forward-thinking manner. Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June 1889 while at Saint-Rémy, using a radically expressive, non-naturalistic handling of paint and color to convey a psychological and spiritual “night” rather than a literal one. The key point isn’t that “everyone back then called it insane” (most people never encountered this specific canvas), but that this kind of heightened, subjective visual language sat outside what mainstream academic taste rewarded—and even beyond what Impressionism aimed for. Impressionism itself had already been a rebellion against official channels since the 1870s; Van Gogh is part of the next wave that pushes further toward modernism. And while Van Gogh did gain recognition in small avant-garde circles late in life, his large-scale canonization was driven after his death through exhibitions and advocacy by those managing his estate and legacy. I agree that shipping a game/film is massively harder logistically. But that’s a different axis than aesthetic invention. “Hard to ship” measures coordination/engineering; “genius” in art often means creating a new visual language that changes what becomes possible afterward. Many games ship and are derivative; many paintings get finished and are mediocre. Execution difficulty doesn’t automatically convert into conceptual brilliance.

It has to be a good mix of capitalism and socialism. That’s why I still support either social democracy or democratic socialism—unless someone comes up with a genuinely new economic system that is proven to work even better than either of those two.

I really disagree with this. I have a bachelor’s degree in Visual Fine Art. My father has a master’s degree in Visual Fine Art, was an assistant professor of art at a top art university, is an architect, has read countless books on art and art history, and has visited many museums and attended many art exhibitions in different parts of the world throughout most of his life. He has always been a very tough critic. We both agree that nearly all commercial art ever made, as well as virtually every video game and computer-generated artwork, has been highly overrated. In fact, we believe that the vast majority of art ever produced—across photography, painting, ceramics, sculpture, drawing, and mixed media—especially in this day and age, has not been good. However, artists such as Van Gogh, Dalí, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and so on were true artistic geniuses. They did what was genuinely unthinkable and radical for their time. Each of them revolutionized art in their own way. They were the epitome of creativity. Most people were not even capable of understanding their work while they were alive because their works were way too ahead of their time. Their works only gained true widespread recognition and value after their respective deaths.

Yeah.....that's honestly one of my main worries. However, if say Newsom were to become president in 2028, he undoubtedly would be a much stronger communicator for the country than Biden was during his presidency. So, if he governs successfully like Biden did, but is also able to win the messaging war unlike Biden and Harris who failed at that, then he would have a much better shot than either Biden or Harris did in winning the presidency again in 2032. It would be like how Obama won re-election in 2012. Nevertheless, the fact that the Democratic party are still struggling to win the messaging war because of the dominance of the right-wing propaganda and how behind the development of the liberal/progressive media ecosystem, deeply worries me about the future of elections.

I thought you were feeling hopeful before about Republicans losing badly and were starting to like Newsom:

I've now largely agree with that after reading up on more facts and history of the US and the rest world. This is something I’ve been trying to understand. By most objective measures, the United States today is more socially fair and more materially developed than it was in the mid-1900s, and arguably even more so than in the late 1990s or early 2000s. We have far stronger civil rights protections, much less overt discrimination, dramatically better technology, medicine, and safety, and vastly more knowledge and opportunity than earlier generations had. And yet, despite all of this, most Americans seem far less satisfied with the system than they were during the post-war era or even during the late 1900s/early aughts. Many people feel the country is “going in the wrong direction,” that institutions are broken, and that the system no longer works for ordinary people. What’s puzzling is that earlier generations lived through far worse objective conditions: world wars, the Great Depression, much higher levels of violence, explicit legal discrimination, and existential Cold War threats. And yet, broad trust in institutions and belief in the system’s legitimacy were often higher than they are today. So what explains this gap? Is it: changes in expectations rather than conditions? the modern media and social media environment amplifying negativity? rising economic precarity despite overall wealth? loss of shared narratives and social cohesion? the decline of collective institutions (unions, churches, civic orgs)? or something deeper about meaning, identity, and modern life? I’m not arguing that things are “fine” or that real problems don’t exist — clearly they do. We still have Trumpism, SCOTUS controlled by corrupt conservatives on the bench, economic inequality and affordability issues, climate change, lost of abortion rights in various parts of the country, a lot of people losing their healthcare coverage, AI fears, etc. as major problems in our country. But I’m now genuinely curious why subjective dissatisfaction has grown even as objective conditions (and fairness) have improved on net. Would love to hear how others here think about this paradox.

Almost no one wants communism in America. Besides, communism has only worked in the short run, but has never worked in the long run. what we need is either Social Democracy like in the Nordic countries or Democratic Socialism.

Why the hell would you want to help the MAGA community? They have been contributing to the affordability issues we've been having by electing the wrong people to run the country.

You know, I'd like this guy's take on Gandhi, but now this guy is sounding like either a right-wing partisan hack like a Fox News anchor or a left-wing populist doomer like Cenk Uygur. Has this guy ever ran a successful campaign for any big name candidate in the country? Has he even had a successful track record of predicting presidential elections like Allan Litchman has? How does he explain why Bush won reelection in 2004 or why Obama won reelection in 2012, when the country was not nearly in as good shape during either of those years under their respective watches as it was under Biden/Harris in 2024? As a matter of fact, I just found out that this jerk actually is another right-libertarian (or libertarian-leaning conservative) partisan hack. No wonder he has never criticized the cancerous spread of the right-wing media misinformation. It's because he is part of it! People like him need to pay a serious price for what they are doing to this country.

I am rooting for him to win in the Democratic primary for US Senate election in Texas. He's my top favorite candidate for the race. Although if Jasmine Crockett wins the nomination instead of James Talarico then I hope she wins the seat in the general election.

We need a lot of people doing sit-ins in the ICE Field Offices and mass marches to storm those places in a peaceful manner.

I wonder how the Democrats in 2028 are ever going to win back enough of the Arab and pro-Palestinian voters they need to win in 2028 if too many Democrats are still too pro-Israel.