Another Thing I've Realized Is That Debate "topics" Are Not And Should Not Be Viewed As Existing In A

Whenever Haymitch insulted Effie's outfits during the main triology, it wasn't his fault, he was being possesed by Maysilee's ghost

The one that gets me the most riled up is tRaNs WoMeN iN wOmEnS sPoRtS, period, but ESPECIALLY when combined with the MeN cAn DrEsS uP aS wOmEn AnD iNvAdE tHe pUbLiC bAtHrOoMs bullshit. Because I don't think there is any clearer sign that you don't actually give a single shit about women's safety than bringing up those two talking points in the same argument. Even IF either one of these things was a real concern for ANY cis woman, the idea that being beaten in a sport is on the same level as being assaulted is sickening. There is no faster way to show me you have zero understanding of the dangers that non-cis-men face or fear.

Rewatching YOU in anticipation of the final season, and season 1 is so damn good. The acting, the writing, the editing, the ACTING. Lail and Badgely are fucking phenomenal.

I'm definitely biased because I love the book so much but damn. There are so many bangers in this season.

"One day you won't need love anymore."

"It is EXHAUSTING being your friend."

"Get the batter off the ladle while it's wet."

"From every boy masquerading as a man that you let into your body, your heart, you learned you didn't have whatever magic turns a beast into a prince."

Anyway this show got real silly but the first season is amazing.

Another one of those things I feel like I should have already known and maybe did but didn't articulate before now:

The way people treat each other has way more to do with their subjective feelings and personal hangups/desires than anything else. To the point where most people don't even realize themselves that this is the case.

We say things like "this flower is pretty." But the flower is just a flower. Someone else could see it and say it's ugly. Neither one of those observations is "true" in an objective sense. And it may be true that humanity as a whole agrees more with one person or the other, but that also doesn't make the observation true.

And further, the goodness of importance or morality of the descriptor (pretty, ugly, stupid, wise, thin, short, useful, natural, cheap, tacky, fancy, special) is not objective or true in any real sense. A flower is not better because it is pretty.

I do think one could make observations about a person's thought process/perspective based on how they call out what they see. Are you someone who only calls out things you think of as negative? Or do you notice/call out things you think of as positive?

It has been helpful to me to mentally add a strong "YOU THINK" before anyone gives their opinion on anything. This is partly because I raised in a house where one person got to define objective truth and any opposing ideas were dismissed. I've spent decades dismantling the idea that there is always a correct or right or true solution and that I should try to align with that, that not doing so is __insert disparaging adjective here__ (stupid, naive, immoral).

I've also long noticed that how I feel about someone/something will change how I value what I observe. If I love someone, I usually think they are beautiful. I'm still puzzling out why beauty is so important to me, but right now it encompasses a host of ideas that I think of as positive. Maybe the association is more than I "like" them. I like sunsets and oceans and cats and flowers and therefore I use "beautiful" when what I mean is "beloved."

The flower is a flower. If you look at it and feel something positive, or even just something at all, then your life was made better by it.

Some food for thought:

Voter turnout in US pres elections has been generally increasing since 1980. It has gone from a low of ~51% of the voting eligible population (VEP) in 1996 to the high of 65% in 2020. To reiterate, the election with the highest turnout since 1980 still had around 1 in 3 voting eligible people NOT voting.

It is true that 2024 was the first time the GOP candidate won the popular vote since 2004 (Bush-Kerry). The good news is that 2024 had the second-tightest margins of the popular vote between the candidates. The tightest was Bush-Gore in 2000.

In 2024, Harris actually won more popular votes than Trump did in 2020. Trump did better in 2024 than he did in 2020 or 2016, but he still didn't get close to Biden's 2020 numbers.

While the turnout has increased, the gap between winning and losing candidates has decreased since 2000. Before then, candidates in both parties won by anywhere from 5% of the turnout (Clinton-Bush in 1992) to 18% (Reagan-Mondale in 1984). Since 2000, the gap has generally been less than 4% of turnout, with the exceptions of Obama's first election (2008, against McCain--7%) and Biden in 2020 (4.5%).

Perhaps most interesting, the way all these numbers shake out is that our president is regularly elected by a mere 30% of the VEP. Sometimes (1992, 2000) they're elected by just 25% of the VEP. Rarely does a candidate on either side win more than 30% of the VEP vote, and Biden holds the record of largest amount of the VEP in 2020 (33.77%).

So, assuming we get to have another election, we need people to vote.

This internal contradiction of conservative politics is even more stark when you look at what they say versus what they do.

Going back to the tRaNs WoMeN iN tHe BaThRoOmS bullshit, the fact that you even talk about this shows not only how little you understand about the trans community, but also how delusional you are when it comes to actual crime against non-cis-men.

You wanna protect women? How about stop putting abusive men in positions of power. Stop trying to force women to stay with the person who is statistically most likely to murder them by cutting off abortion rights and no-fault divorce. Stop cutting programs that help the biggest portion of poor people in our society, which is children and single mothers. Start actually prosecuting rapists AND sentencing them like you believe rape is actually a crime. Stop raising boys to believe that their feelings are the most important thing on earth and that any woman who doesn't cater to them should be demeaned, abused, or killed. Stop passing legislation that ensures more women will die because they can't abort a fetus they don't want. Stop ignoring and perpetuating the systems that make Black women and WOC more likely to die in childbirth and more likely to receive inadequate medical care. Start funding more research on female bodies and ending male-centered medicine. Start passing and enforcing regulations to decrease the gender wage gap which at this point is mostly a motherhood penalty. Stop trying to pass legislation that will make it harder for married women to VOTE.

That's how you protect women. Not by scapegoating marginalized groups and pretending like you ever gave a fuck.

Murmur, Cameron Barnett

I haven't started s5 yet but I wanted to do a mini review for each season of YOU from someone who loved the first book and enjoyed the others:

S1: obvi most closely follows the books, but also is a great season of TV in general. Performances, music, visuals, story. It grasped some of the series' main themes, about terrible people and delusion and dedication vs dependence. Just excellent.

S2: big departure from the book but mostly pretty good. I actually loved Forty and Ellie and Delilah and Willie B. But this is where the series starts to lose something in the sense that because those characters are sympathetic, balancing them with the humanity of Joe gets tricky. I'm not crazy about the Love twist but at least the season is entertaining.

S3: woof. Possibly my least favorite season of the first four. It's just so sad, Love clinging to her marriage while Joe is Joe. I mean she is also coocoo banana pants but at least she admits it? And although a major departure from her book counterpart, Marianne is amazing. Same problem with S2 though in that many of the supporting characters, at least IMO (Theo, Shary and Cary, Dante) are really compelling and so the portrayal of Joe is flattened.

S4: Honestly kind of a return to form while also being a giant "what the fuck." The supporting characters other than Phoebe, Nadia, and Kate are awful people (cartoonishly so) and while the twist is both a huge cliche and a middle finger to actual psychology, it is fun. Ed Speelers is fucking fantastic. And by this point, at least for me, the show has lost all pretence that Joe is anything but an unredeemable serial killer and they're leaning in. Which is like not really the point of the original story but it was inevitable given the nature of TV, especially in the streaming age.

Tldr; excited for S5 and ready for some justice.

it’s crazy how grrm wrote the first woke beauty and the beast where a hot guy falls in love with an ugly woman and people will bend over backwards still to say brienne is actually attractive. like no she’s not and it’s not more feminist to say she is 👍

"I wonder if they ever ask themselves how they got here, and I wonder if any of them will ever feel shame."