English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

M.A.R.

00:00

Maybe due to my indoctrination

@Cerberus well let's talk about religion. I don't think it's so easy to just picture a society without one life wiping a stain off a boot.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. I didn't understand this metaphor.

What life? What boot?

M.A.R.

IOW, you're talking about sex as a natural thing. Sure, but what about, uh, puritanism? The, you know, force that would antagonize this sexual freedom. If it doesn't manifest itself as religion, will it not manifest at all?

Cerberus

It is not unique to religion.

M.A.R.

Religion or no, will there not always be 'slut-shamers'?

Cerberus

But religion plays a bit part in it.

Nobody said there would be no prudeness without religion.

M.A.R.

00:07

Of course it could swing this way and that, depending on the times.

Cerberus

"There will always be murder, even if we make firearms illegal."

M.A.R.

@Cerberus so I'm saying maybe there's an inherent force that would shape sexual relations. @alphabet seems sure of it, and you seem sure that it doesn't exist.

Cerberus

That sounds very abstract.

M.A.R.

I don't see how either of you can be so sure

Cerberus

I don't know what you mean by that, exactly.

"I'm saying there is an inherent force that makes people kill others. You seem sure that it doesn't exist because you think there would be far fewer murders if we made firearms illegal."

M.A.R.

00:11

Aha.

But how prevalent is Christianity's influence in modern day Europe? Over here we're obviously prudes.

Cerberus

It is our cultural norms. They were by a large part influenced by Christianity.

M.A.R.

Unless you're saying people have stopped going to church but would uh, like to keep the options open when it comes to a god with peeping eyes

Cerberus

Cultural norms don't disappear the moment their inspiration dies.

They live on.

The merely fade very slowly, in many cases.

And they are fading, see the study I mentioned.

M.A.R.

@alphabet I watched all of it for some reason. I was getting insecure about myself halfway through, their views are contagious. Um, the self-loathing parts, not the hating.

Mitch

@M.A.R. data show that more people come out of combat situations less believers than they were before (at least US soldiers, WWII and Vietnam.

I haven't heard anything about people who were support for the combatants, or for recent American 'operations'

M.A.R.

00:18

@Mitch they're no longer in foxholes and experience rebound atheism

Robusto

@M.A.R. Desperate people do strange things.

Mitch

@M.A.R. that's one of the few Simpsons quotes I remember, when Homer is s about to go over a cliff in a car (it was it a bus full of children?) He yells "Jesus Buddha Allah anyone!"

Or something like that

@M.A.R. I'm all wondering why the religious people kicked all the atheists out of the foxholes

Uncool man uncool

M.A.R.

@Mitch I mean, it's kinda understandable. For a believer, the biggest daily assurance of divine power is (trumped up perceived) divine justice. When you see people die, think at least some of them don't deserve it, it's harder to think there's some giant balance with scales somewhere.

Mitch

I'm sincerely.angry at a rock I stubbed my toe on

M.A.R.

@Mitch foxholes are associated with 20% increased divine XP and religious people really love that XP bonus

Mitch

00:24

Actually some people -are- jerks

M.A.R.

Think of all the good deeds you no longer have to do thanks to the foxhole interest

Mitch

@M.A.R. yeah I don't know where my data is from

M.A.R.

@Mitch imagine spending billions of years as interstellar dust, several great mountains, and deep warm lakes, housing carcasses, fossils, and oil, for your only purpose in life to abruptly stop a human's toe

Mitch

People in East Asia have guilt and shame and rules (badly followed) about violence and sex without a Bronze Age anthropomorphic Sun god

@M.A.R. the hardest part was the waiting

Cerberus

Imagine how bad it would be in East Asia if they also had Abrahamic religions...

Mitch

00:30

Also the afterwards. "You mean that's it?"

M.A.R.

An anime about jihad?

Mitch

starts drawing

M.A.R.

They can't look much worse than they already do

Mitch

Are you questioning my drawing abilities?

If so, very perspicacious of you.

I can't draw a straight line even with a ruler

M.A.R.

Now I do want to see you redraw Spirited Away in your own style

Mitch

00:33

@M.A.R. I find all those hirajuku (sp?) movies somewhat disturbing

Like is it a kids movie or a nightmare?

Never comes clear

M.A.R.

It's a carefully designed experiment on photosensitive epilepsy

Anyway imagine an anime Abu Sufyan seeing the Muslim army approach Mecca say, as accentuated as possible, "NANI"

Dannyu NDos

00:48

Fun fact: A disk is burned in English. But it is baked in Korean.

alphabet

00:58

@M.A.R. I don't think slut-shaming is impossible to eradicate. But I think there will always be people who do not want to be promiscuous, and that for this reason we should not call "uptight" people who just aren't interested in having sex with more people than they currently do.

@Cerberus There's a big difference between being influenced by shame and being influenced by cultural norms more generally. If you're influenced by cultural norms to want to have less sex, that isn't necessarily harmful to you at all, nor is it something we necessarily ought to change. If you're being influenced by shame, though, that is harmful, and a problem.

Cerberus

Why "harmful to me"?

It is bad for the women themselves, mainly, and also for their men.

alphabet

I mean the generic "you," not you specifically.

i.e. "If someone is influenced by cultural norms to want to have less sex, it isn't necessarily harmful to that person at all, nor is it something that society should necessarily seek to change."

Mitch

@M.A.R. "nani"?

What does that mean?

Robusto

@Mitch In Japanese it means "Huh?"

With an object it means "What?"

Cerberus

@alphabet Why "necessarily"? Did I say it was necessarily that way for each and every person?

Robusto

01:14

何も期待です？ Nanimo kitai desu? "The fuck do you want?" (OK, less direct than that: "What do you expect?")

alphabet

@Cerberus Did I ever accuse you of saying that? My point is that you shouldn't call anyone "too uptight" because, for many of them, that accusation is both wrong and harmful.

Cerberus

"Anyone"? Where did I do that?

It isn't even an accusation.

I said it about women in general.

Robusto

@Mitch You do carry on.

Cerberus

@alphabet How else am I supposed to interpret that, when you seem to be responding in refutation to what I said?

alphabet

I mean, "uptight" is universally recognized as an insult; I was trying to explain why you shouldn't apply it to women in general, since it obviously can only be taken as an insult against many of them personally, and it isn't an accurate description.

I mean, if you were right that women were just "uptight," then I wouldn't be objecting. But you're applying that label to a whole group of people when it clearly varies in degree and generally does not merit rebuke.

Cerberus

01:35

This seems to be about marginal stuff.

Not about the central issue.

Women could benefit from feeling freer to have sex with whomever they desired, whenever they desired it.

And society as a whole, too, because it would lessen the crazy dynamic between straights.

alphabet

@Cerberus I think my basic disagreement is with your claim that (say) shaming is a primary cause of "the crazy dynamic between the straights." I think it has more to do with a genuine difference in preferences between men and women; this likely has sociocultural causes but it isn't purely a matter of shame that we can or should eradicate.

Robusto

@alphabet I'm not sure it's entirely sociocultural, but I agree with your point: a genuine difference in preferences between men and women. Broadly speaking, they want different things from each other.

Mitch

01:50

@Robusto oh. I get it. I need to watch more anime.

Robusto

@Mitch There lies the cure.

Mitch

@Robusto just passing the time until the oblivion of eternal rest consumes us all.

alphabet

@Robusto Of course, if the causes are biological, my argument is actually stronger. But I'm trying to avoid relying on that premise, since I think my argument stands perfectly well without it.

Mitch

@Robusto any suggestions?

Robusto

@Mitch Passing the time, or dragging the line?

@Mitch Try Legend of Korra.

Mitch

01:53

I've seen 'Spirited Away' which was canonical kids show/nightmare/where the hell is all this going.

@Robusto oh the whole avatar series could just keep going, it's awesome

Robusto

Watch Avatar: The Last Airbender

Mitch

But very American

Robusto

Then watch Korra:

The Legend of Korra

The Legend of Korra (abbreviated as TLOK), also known as Avatar: The Legend of Korra, or more rarely simply as Korra, is an American animated fantasy action television series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko for Nickelodeon. A sequel to their previous series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which aired from 2005 to 2008, the series ran for 52 episodes ("chapters"), separated into four seasons ("books"), from April 14, 2012, to December 19, 2014. It has been continued as a comic book series. Like its predecessor, the series is set in a fictional universe in which certain people...

Mitch

@Robusto oh...until Jeopardy! comes on

Robusto

@Mitch Well, Japanese anime is just too weird, ne?

Mitch

01:55

@Robusto haha yeah

Is there a third story line coming from the Avatar makers?

Robusto

@alphabet I don't think you can just jettison facts just because you don't need them for your argument. Face it, there is a biological urge for procreation. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. Your "sociocultural" influence is merely the icing on that cake.

@Mitch I don't know.

@Mitch Have you gone through Cowboy Bebop?

Mitch

@Robusto just the more recent one with John Cho (live action)

Robusto

@Mitch Go back and get the original.

Cowboy Bebop - Opening | Tank!

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Mitch

> As first announced on Avatar News, there will be a new Avatar series coming in 2025. The new show is said to take place approximately 100 years after Korra, which would be set in the Avatar universe equivalent of modern-day and will focus on an Earth Avatar's journey in accordance with the Avatar cycle

Says Google

alphabet

@Robusto That I don't doubt. The question is: is the fact that men want more sexual partners than women the result of biological or cultural factors? I'm not really taking a position on that. But I think that either way getting rid of (say) slut-shaming or religious repression won't change the situation much for most people.

Mitch

02:02

@Robusto the important question is: do they say 'nani'?

Robusto

@Mitch Of course.

Cowboy Bebop – Ending Theme – The Real Folk Blues

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Mitch

@Robusto nice

alphabet

(Since, if this difference between men and women has purely cultural causes, that sort of shame is likely only a very small part of them, and the remaining cultural norms don't seem to do any harm to the women they affect.)

Mitch

@alphabet supposedly that's what 'Coming of Age in Samoa's was about, showing that, for humans at least, sex behavior was more cultural than biological

alphabet

@Mitch Did you hear about how that got debunked? Apparently they interviewed the Samoans years later and they basically said "Yeah, we were just telling Mead BS to fuck with her."

Robusto

02:06

@alphabet OK, but the slut-shaming and religious repression are all manifestations of the fact that sex with women is something (straight) men desire to the point of abstraction (that word again) and in some cultures (most?) men deep down find that an affront to their power.

Mitch

@alphabet yes and that got debunked too

Robusto

@Mitch Who will debunk the debunkers?

alphabet

@Robusto That's quite possibly true. I don't think that they're inevitable in modern times, though. Essentially, I'd agree with Cerberus that we can change those specific cultural conditions, but I don't agree that changing them would solve the problem Cerberus is describing.

Mitch

On the other hand, most marriages within the Yanomami are by abductions of women from nearby groups.

Which is to say they have internecine wars specifically to get mates

And the more violent the man the more wives he gets

@Robusto you first need someone to start things off by bunking

It's not like we live in some sci-fi only one sex future, women still have to worry about getting pregnant

tchrist

hears Woodhousian echoes wryly contrasting the Drones Club with the Junior Ganymede Club

alphabet

02:16

@Mitch They could make the Lesbian Nation

Robusto

@alphabet The problems may not be inevitable, but the underlying forces are. Norman Mailer wrote a book called The Prisoner of Sex, in which he struggled with (literally) the irrational propulsion of his sex drive which, he felt, unfairly owned him.

Now, Mailer was a great big blowhard, but he was trying to express something that all men feel. Even gay men, who may be more securely imprisoned by sex than most.

alphabet

@Robusto What I mean is: we can, I think, avoid slut-shaming women and stop teaching religious doctrines that specifically condemn insufficiently chaste women. But I don't think that, by doing so, we can change the fact that men want more sexual partners than women. That is driven either by purely biological forces or by cultural influences that we have no real reason to eliminate.

Robusto

Which is good, because short of surgery or chemical castration we can't eliminate them.

Mitch

@Robusto to be honest I was trying to channel one of David Mitchell's rants

alphabet

@Robusto Soy phytoestrogens. That's the answer.

Mitch

02:26

@alphabet is that some Japanese stew?

Robusto

@Mitch Tofu stew.

Last Week in the Republican Party - January 30, 2024

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Mitch

@Robusto sticks fingers In ears

Cerberus

@alphabet You say "purely" and "primarily": straw man.

alphabet

@Robusto That view--that one is somehow held prisoner by one's sex drive--strikes me primarily as an attempt to make excuses for one's behavior.

Mitch

I think we should get back on topic and discuss how disgusting the taste of marzipan is

alphabet

02:33

@Cerberus So are you in agreement with me then?

Cerberus

I don't want to comment on what I see as a misinterpretation of my position.

Robusto

@alphabet Well, it's an effort to abdicate responsibility for that, definitely.

alphabet

@Cerberus In what way am I misrepresenting you? I'm arguing against your claim that "it would lessen the crazy dynamic between straights." (I grant that it might lessen it, but I deny that it would effect any major change.)

@Robusto I really can't say I've ever felt that way, to be honest.

Cerberus

But that was not what you were saying.

alphabet

@Cerberus I said: "I think my basic disagreement is with your claim that (say) shaming is a primary cause of 'the crazy dynamic between the straights.'" I'm sorry if you only meant that it was a minor or secondary cause.

Robusto

02:42

@alphabet My impression, from having known many, many gay men, is that sex was paramount in their lives. They talked about it, thought about it, and acted upon it in a way straight men could not dream of doing in a heterosexual context. Gay sex takes the governor off of that throttle. Want six sexual partners in one night? Done! Jesus, are you too young to have ever heard of a "glory hole"?

Mitch

I mean I really don't care for marzipan. All the kids loved it. Not me

Robusto

@Mitch I like marzipan. And I'm not a kid.

Mitch

@Robusto I think those facts speak for themselves

Robusto

What, my liking marzipan and not being a kid? I'll grant you the latter, but I was kinda keeping the whole marzipan thing in the closet.

Mitch

Do you like it straight up or as a cake garnish?

Robusto

02:49

I take it straight. I can handle it.

Mitch

Good on ya

I think it tastes somewhat of alcohol which I don't like at all the taste of.

Robusto

I think you're confusing marzipan with something else. Rum baba, perhaps?

alphabet

@Robusto I dunno. I don't really feel that way, but I can't say I speak for the majority of gay men.

Robusto

@alphabet Perhaps you speak for the cloistered monks?

Mitch

I just remembered that this past Christmas someone made a Bûche de Noël a realized it was because it didn't have a hundred woodland creatures made of marzipan all over it nd it was awesome and I

Robusto

02:53

@Mitch I like the little bananas and peaches and other fruits made of marzipan.

Mitch

@Robusto I don't like baba au rum either

Robusto

Now you're spoiling for a fight.

Mitch

I'm saying marzipan, as you squeeze it out of the tube, has a vaguely acidic fermented aftertaste to it which reminds me of alcohol. I don't think it is processed with alcohol. Baba au rum is drenched in some brandy or something.

@Robusto they -look- great, but I prefer not to eat them

Robusto

You need to find some better marzipan.

Cerberus

@alphabet I said neither minor nor primary.

Mitch

02:55

@Robusto that's what I'm here for

@Robusto possibly

alphabet

@Cerberus My view is: it isn't big enough that removing said shame would substantially alter the social dynamic you're describing. If you agree with that claim, well, problem solved.

Mitch

Possibly everytime marzipan has been used for decoration it's been from a multiple year old tube

I'm glad though that we've settled the marzipan problem

I can go to bed resting easily now

Except

alphabet

@Robusto Anyway, I don't think women are really the sole factor there. I mean, would most men, regardless of orientation, actually want to have six sexual partners in a night? Think this through. I think those gay guys are the exception.

I mean, they absolutely exist, but I'm pretty sure it's a small minority.

Cerberus

03:11

@alphabet I don't agree with it, but I think neither of us can prove his position.

But the main thing is what I mentioned first, that it would liberate women.

It would mainly be good for them.

alphabet

@Cerberus That I don't dispute, and that, ultimately, is the right reason to stop shaming people.

Cerberus

But even a 10% increase in women willing to have casual sex on a given night would perhaps increase the casual sex straight men could get by 100 or 1000%.

alphabet

@Cerberus Why 100 or 1000%?

I mean, say you have a group of 20 straight men and 20 straight women. Suppose all 20 of the men want casual sex, and 10 of the women do. Under ideal conditions, 10 men will get what they want. Now increase the number of women from 10 to 11 by, I dunno, not slut-shaming them. Then 11 men will have casual sex, so their odds would go up by...10%.

Cerberus

@alphabet Can you think of a statistical reason why?

alphabet

@Cerberus I'm not quite sure what math you're doing.

Cerberus

03:18

Let's make it not 10 women to start with, but 1.

CowperKettle

I had a dream in which I was hiding from mafia because they wanted to know how I hacked into something. But I had wiped the info from my brain, so however they tried to read it by special scanners.. no luck. So they stuck me in a kind of prisoner camp. Increasing the dose of lamotrigine → weird and amazing dreams.

Cerberus

Very specific!

alphabet

@Cerberus By "10% increase," do you mean an increase of 10 percentage points (so you'd go from 1 woman to 11 women) or an increase of 10 percent (so you'd go from 1 woman to 1.1 women)?

Cerberus

@Cerberus And let the men think of that one woman as a slut, and the other women too.

It's just so awful.

@alphabet I said 100 and I said per cent, not points.

CowperKettle

@Cerberus The mafia operative who was working on me in the camp, trying to crack my into my mind, had a sexual fetish. He loved to be sodomized by a human-sized Maine Coon (probably genetically modified?)

Cerberus

03:20

And there aren't 100 people at your party, so women are not mere percentage points.

@CowperKettle Even more specific!

alphabet

@Cerberus So...if we took my example, but made it so that it was 1 woman to start with, then the end result would be...1.1 women wanting to have casual sex. I suppose that extra tenth of a person might get paired up?

Cerberus

Did you also dream the name of the Maine Coon and its complete genealogy?

CowperKettle

There was a human-sized feline in my concentration camp cell, and when I told this to him (the feline was male), he said "ewwww"

Cerberus

@alphabet Oh, sorry, you mean that 10%.

Yes, I worded that poorly.

CowperKettle

@Cerberus No.

alphabet

03:22

@Cerberus Sorry, what scenario were you envisioning?

CowperKettle

But while I was hiding from the mafia, I hooked up with some woman, we went to make love and I realized she was probably a drug addict, since she brought me into a horrible flat full of apparent drug addicts, so I made an excuse and fled

Cerberus

I meant if 10% of all women would now be willing to have, and not socially prohibited from having, casual sex.

CowperKettle

There was a lot of weird outlandish details, but they've slipped from my mind.

Cerberus

So wise and virtuous even in your dream...

CowperKettle

LOL

And there was some caffee specially designed for people on stilts

Cerberus

03:25

Naturally.

CowperKettle

Because there was a show nearby, and a lot of show workers on stilts, clad in beautiful clothes, went to dine during the recess

So in order to save time, there was some caffee with highly-positioned everyting.

alphabet

I don't need dreams. I get Real Sleep.

Mitch

@CowperKettle were the cafe workers also in stilts?

CowperKettle

03:56

Лукашенко поздравляет с Новым годом на французском (heygen)

►

Lukashenko is speaking in French again

Лукашенко на английском языке (heygen)/ Lukashenko in English (heygen)

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Обращение Брежнева к современникам на английском языке (HeyGen)

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Leonid Brezhnev's New Year address to children in English

Cerberus

@CowperKettle AI?

CowperKettle

04:16

@Cerberus Yes, AI-generated voice, but the speech is real

Cerberus

A translation of the Russian speech?

CowperKettle

Yes

CowperKettle

04:41

> I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

(Roethke)

CowperKettle

05:52

Laurel

@alphabet I watched the movie Bros and was honestly horrified at the type of sex it depicted (basically orgies, gay men by the way, but too many at once). I wonder how close to reality that is

This was also the movie that taught my straight friend (F) that gay men could be hot, so I guess gay men at least earned that victory from all this lol

CowperKettle

06:16

alphabet

07:04

@Laurel Such things do exist, but I think only a small fraction of gay guys have actually attended them. I certainly don't.

I think I'd get murdered, catch a hereto-undiscovered STD, and/or (much more likely) be pressured to use drugs.

@Laurel I'm never sure how to feel about that reaction by straight women.

Xanne

07:39

Daily Sequence Octordle #736
4️⃣5️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 66

Daily Octordle #736
🕐6️⃣
🔟5️⃣
7️⃣4️⃣
🕚8️⃣
Score: 64

Not great, not awful.

M.A.R.

08:02

@Mitch one huge meme about anime is male characters with a deep and scratchy voice going "NANI" in surprise. You'd find plenty of examples for it if you google it

Xanne

08:19

:In early life, usually before puberty, males are quite flexible regarding their preferred sexual incentive,[clarification needed][17] but they later become inflexible. Females, on the other hand, remain flexible throughout their life cycle. This change in sexuality due to variations in situational, cultural, and social factors is called erotic plasticity. Beyond this, very little is known about sexual desire and sexual arousal in prepubescent children, or whether any feelings they may have are comparable to what they will experience as an adult.[9]

From wikipedia: Sexual Desitr

CowperKettle

English-French idiom of the noon: avant la lettre

toodeloo!

Xanne