AnarchistArtificer

@AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A pattern of negative posts about the BBC⁩ ⁨⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that even though the BBC do report on things like killings by the IDF, food shortages and other war crimes, they don’t seem to be applying editorial standards equally. This means that the bias can be hard to notice unless you’re actively comparing how Palestinian deaths are reported to how Israeli deaths are reported.

  It’s stuff like emotive terms being used far more often for Israeli casualties than for Palestinian casualties. A group of Israelis are “massacred”, whereas the same number of Palestinians might be described as being “killed”. Similarly, an individual is far more likely to have been “murdered” if they’re Israeli. That’s just one example, but there’s many more (with plenty of data to back it up) in a report by the Centre for Media Monitoring (linked page has a good summary of the report’s key points, because the actual report is pretty big)

  Criticism of the BBC has come from within too, such as in this open letter published in late 2024, signed by over 100 BBC employees concerned about editorial double standards when it comes to reporting on Israel-Gaza. People’s concern isn’t just about the human rights of biased reporting, but the fact that such editorial double standards degrade people’s trust in the BBC’s reporting in general.

  We can find other examples for comparison beyond this conflict itself. Especially nearer the beginning of the genocide, there were even more instances of war crimes not being called war crimes than there is now. Defenders of the BBC would argue that this was consistent with the BBC’s stance of being an apolitical news source, and that they didn’t call things war crimes because there weren’t any rulings from international courts to support this term. However, this didn’t stop the BBC only 36 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, with the headline “Gruesome evidence points to war crimes on road outside Kyiv”.

  In an ideal world, I want my news reporting to be consistent with the actual world, but I get that perfect objectivity is impossible in a subjective world. However, it’s far beyond any reasonable leeway when each Israeli death gets 33 times the coverage of each Palestinian death, despite there being 34 times the number of Palestinian casualties. That gap in reporting is insane to me. When their own editorial standards mean so little to them, I just don’t feel comfortable trusting them.

  This level of systematic bias isn’t really something that’s viewable by any one person — though it’s good that you tried to look into the claims of bias that you’ve heard. Unfortunately, the scale of this conflict (and the subsequent reporting) is too large for that to be able to give an accurate view. I’d encourage you to check out the summary of the Centre for Media Monitoring report that I linked above if you want to get a more “from above” view

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to move a sofa⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  “He had a way to connect people that I just can’t, but I’ll try anyway.”

  Yeah, I feel you. I lost my best friend to COVID back in 2021. He was a charismatic whirlwind of a man, who seemed to exude an aura of safety and welcomingness. I’m a pretty loud person myself, so I would’ve never seen myself in the “sidekick” niche, but alongside a big personality such as him, it was a role I was happy to fill.

  When he died, I had a moment of going “well damn. I thought I was going to be the inevitably doomed sidekick to his hero story. Does this mean I need to try ‘be the hero’? How the hell do I do that?”. The world needs energy like his now more than ever, so it feels like it’s my duty to learn from him and help fill the niche that he left behind. It’s a tricky job though, because I’ll never be able to be like him. I have made some progress in learning how to emulate the impact he had on the world but in a “me” way. If nothing else, trying to do this helps me feel closer to him, and helps me to grieve his absence.

  It sounds like you’re facing a similar challenge. I wish you luck on that quest, and again, I’m sorry for your loss

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Drop your unpopular opinions here because c/unpopularopinions is filled with popular opinions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I enjoy cleaning the gross hair and gunk out from the shower drain, especially after I’ve moved into a new place. I am easily grossed out, so I find it stomach turning, but it feels so cathartic. The grossness is a part of that, I think. And then you have the immediate satisfaction of things draining much better.

  I recently spent a year crashing in a friend’s spare room, and I found myself weirdly satisfied that, being a household of 3, the shower drain would need cleaning much more often than when I lived alone. The fact that it’s a gross chore that’s rarely thought about until it starts getting quite bad means that I liked being able to handle this chore. Who else would be weird enough to enjoy the task, even as they’re trying not to puke?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to move a sofa⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “would be”, “was” — am I to take this to mean that your brother is no longer with us? If so, I am sorry for your loss.

  If I have intuited this correctly, then I hope that some day, you can be the “truck guy” for other people. The truck is optional honestly — just as long you carry with you the spirit of helpfulness and trust in reciprocal community support.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The perfect date⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I became an evangelist for YYYY-MM-DD format once I had to deal with a legal battle that had multiple years of documentary evidence. I sorely regretted my choice of naming files when I had to wade through a heckton of upsetting reminders. It got a lot easier when I renamed everything according to YYYY-MM-DD (and the lawyers probably appreciated it too)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Video] British granny in a wheelchair escorted by a gang of police officers for supporting Palestine Action, risking a 14 year prison sentence for supporting terrorism.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In addition to what others have said, the UK also has long had some pretty concerningly broad anti-terrorism laws, which have been wielded against Palestine Action. Now, anyone who supports Palestine Action are deemed to be supporting terrorism.

  Even before that, we had some pretty scary stuff restricting peaceful protest. Planning a protest that involves a slow march on a street can net you a prison sentence of several years. In addition to penalising people protesting against genocide, this has also been used against (and likely was motivated by) climate activists.

  What’s especially scary is that people don’t seem to be aware of how chilling these laws are for human rights. I think it’s a cultural thing, where the overton window for what people consider to be normal levels of the state suppressing people like this. We’ll be fucked if Reform ever get into power and show us just how easy laws like this make it for fascists

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can darknet fill in for NHS?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wedinos is a great service! I love that this is a thing that’s available. I’ve recommended it to a few friends who use recreational drugs occasionally. I’m a big advocate of harm reduction, and stuff like that gives people information on the risks they’re engaging with is a much better way of keeping people safe than preaching abstinence

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can darknet fill in for NHS?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wrote a long comment that ended up being lost due to my app crashing. I’m too burnt out to write it all out again right now, but I wanted to leave something, even if brief.

  My advice is to not do it. I looked into this myself due to chronic pain, and I concluded that even if I felt like I could manage the risk of dependence/tolerance if I were self medicating, that it would be impossible to do safely if buying stuff on the darknet.

  Aside from it being hella expensive, there’s also the constant risk of the particular market you use going down, either due to law enforcement, or “exit scamming” — when a market or vendor plans to leave, but they continue accepting new money for a while, without sending out parcels/paying out to vendors.

  If you find a market that you’re able to access, it isn’t a question of “if” it goes offline, but when. When it does go offline, you might be in a really tricky spot of struggling with withdrawal symptoms from not having access to your regular medication whilst you try to find a new alternative.

  Even setting aside that problem, there’s the issue of finding a reliable vendor. Dark net markets function sort of like eBay, and you may have some trial and error finding someone who sells reliable stuff for a reasonable price. But even then, you need to be prepared for parcels to not reach you, and the anxiety of not knowing if you’ve been exit scammed; or for your regular vendor to temporarily pause taking new orders; or for them to just close their shop, never to return. Even medications that look legit might not be. There are reagent tests you can do to keep yourself a bit safer, but what would you realistically be able to do if the tramadol you had purchased showed up as negative for opioids, and you suspected they were just Xanax. Depending on the market and the manner in which you purchased them, you might be able to get your money back, but in the meantime, you would be without your medication.

  If you go this route, it’s not a question of if your supply gets interrupted, but when. Honestly, you would be better served seeking proper medical care, privately. I’m guessing that if you have considered going private already, it’s not an option for you because it would be too expensive. Well trust me, it’s probably more reasonable than jumping down into this forsaken money pit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How often is normal to masturbate?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  29 year old woman. A few times a week, on average, I’d say. Potentially multiple times in a day.

  When I have a partner, I tend to do it way less though, because I find that the sex is way better if I refrain from masturbating. Orgasms from masturbation aren’t particularly satisfying for me unless I try to do a whole build up that I rarely have the time or energy for.

  Worth mentioning that autism makes my general sensory experience pretty weird — I’m hypersensitive to most stimuli, and that also affects touch. This feeds into my above preferences in complex ways.

  I also have a few physical disabilities that mean I’m less likely to be able to enjoy sexual pleasure as much unless I’m in the right mindset (i.e. chronic pain can distract from the physical pleasure).

  It’s possible that you’re ahead of the curve when it comes to knowing what you like. I had a friend who was capable of reaching orgasm through masturbation, but it took so much effort that she rarely did it. Then she had a partner who helped her to figure out her own idiosyncratic preferences in terms of what she needed to reach orgasm, and that sparked a period where she “felt like a teenage boy” with how often she was masturbating. She was 32 at this point.

  I have another friend who didn’t even orgasm until she was 31 due to only having dated guys who were stereotypical straight dudes, which had calibrated her bar of what to expect super low (not just in what she expected from partners, but in terms of what sexual pleasure could feel like in general).

  Another friend didn’t masturbate at all until she was 28 (with the exception of some occasional pillow humping that she would feel tremendous shame about) due to religious trauma.

  Unfortunately, the society we live in doesn’t really equip women well to be able to come to understand our bodies and communicate our sexual needs. A lot of my friends in their 30s (especially the women) have said that they’re loving their 30s way more than their 20s because of this kind of thing. 30 is still relatively young, so maybe (likely in addition to a naturally higher libido) you just have figured out what you like sooner than your friends have. Maybe some of them are yet to have an awakening of some sort, and the average rate of masturbation will be higher in a few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨500,000 households cancel TV licence putting BBC future in jeopardy⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if it would be possible to do direct government funding but via legislation that states that it needs a supermajority or something to be repealed

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One of the most interesting things that happens when you are old⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  History is always being revised. This isn’t a bad thing, but rather inherent to the process of history. History isn’t about assembling facts together; it’s about the continual process of interpretation and reinterpretation. That means there’s no such thing as settled history, because there’s always more insight we can gain by looking backwards, even if we haven’t unearthed new evidence from a particular period.

  Even if you had some undeniable facts about your life, those start to get wibbly wobbly the instant you try to communicate them to someone, because words are imprecise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon did philosophy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  A friend was taking the piss out of NFTs once and I, not knowing what an NFT was at the time, misheard them as saying “non-fungible titties”. We, all of us being very gay, found this hilarious because our experience of seeing breasts had shown us that breasts are indeed non-fungible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon did philosophy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  For me, (a bi woman,) it depends on the context. If I’m surreptitiously checking out someone, then yeah, I have preferences. In practice, none of those preferences matter when I’m at motorboating distance from a partner’s boobs. If I think of every set of boobs I have seen in that context, I can legitimately say I have no preference.

  I don’t know, I think that by the time it gets to that point, it’s impossible to see the boobs as an abstract, aesthetically pleasing thing. Instead, I see them in the context of the entire person, and that feels infinitely more erotic. At first I thought that maybe it’s a case of all the women I’ve slept with having boobs that fit their frame, but I don’t think that’s the case either. Big boobs on a small frame: Hot. Small boobs on a small frame: Hot. Big boobs on a large frame: Hot. Small boobs on a large frame: Hot. Wonky boobs on a medium frame: Hot.

  Reflecting further, I think my mentality might be because some years ago, when I was tripping on 2CB, something clicked in me and I suddenly understood “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”; I realised that there was beauty and ugliness in everything, and I could just choose to see the beauty. It worked wonders for my own body confidence at the time, and I’m realising now that the sentiment has stuck with me deeper than I thought. I reckon that by the time I’m sleeping with someone, I’ve made an active choice to opt into seeing their beauty. If I weren’t able to do that, I probably wouldn’t get to the point of seeing them naked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT dissidents, the students who refuse to use AI: ‘I couldn’t remember the last time I had written something by myself’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  When I was in high school, in the 2000s/2010s, our final maths exams included a calculator and a non calculator paper. As far as I’m aware, that’s still typical today. The advent of calculators required us to rethink our approach in teaching and setting tests in maths, but that doesn’t diminish the usefulness of learning long division.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cutting sucks⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the person you’re replying to is arguing that whilst exercise can have myriad health benefits, that when it comes to weight loss, it’s more practical to focus on one’s diet. I also hold that view, and it seems to be the consensus amongst weight loss specialists. You can’t outrun a bad diet when the difficulty of burning calories is so much higher than the ease of consuming calories. If someone who wanted to lose weight was going to focus on either changing their diet, or increasing their activity level, then diet is the sensible choice.

  Of course, framing it like that is a bit of a false dichotomy, because the health benefits associated with exercise are so significant that I’ve seen some research that suggests it may be healthier to be fat and fit than to be at a healthy weight and unfit/sedentary. Personally, I struggled with disordered eating for many years, but I was finally able to lose weight in a healthy way after I started powerlifting. The impact was mostly one of morale: whilst the increased muscle mass and activity level increased the number of maintenance calories I needed, it wasn’t too huge of an impact when compared to how much I was eating before. What actually changed was how I felt about my body, and how I thought about food, as well as my overall energy levels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Surprise!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve also seen that kind of homophobia amongst straight girls and women, though it manifests somewhat differently. The most uncomfortable thing about same-sex changing rooms as a person who experiences same-sex attraction isn’t actually the attraction (because checking out people in that context would be weird, regardless of gender or sexuality), but people who treat you like a predator because you’re queer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Surprise!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  For me, I would say that the magnitude of my attraction is roughly 50/50, but qualitatively, the attraction I feel towards a man is distinct from what I feel towards women.

  A significant aspect that plays a role is also how I present to the world. From my appearance, most people would conclude that I am LGBTQ, and that usually means assuming I’m gay. This is useful because any bisexual’s dating pool is biased towards opposite sex partners; if I want to find gay or bisexual (or pansexual or asexual) women to date, it’s strategically useful to wear my sexuality on my sleeve, so to speak. This has the helpful side effects of filtering out the kind of straight asshole who says “why would you shave your hair like that? You might get more male attention if you made yourself look pretty”

  Sexuality is messy. The attraction I feel is pretty equal. How the world perceives me is more gay than straight (because the world likes to pretend that bisexuality doesn’t exist, and then act like I’m changing my mind when I “switch from being gay to straight” or vice versa (/facepalm). In terms of who I actually date or hook up with, the balance is probably skewed towards men. These three components (attraction, outward identification/presentation and behaviour) make sexuality complex, especially for bisexual people; I would wager that there are many people who identify as straight and have had no same sex relationships, but who experience some level of same-sex attraction. It also gets more complex when one considers that many people experience sexual attraction and romantic attraction differently. For example, I have a friend who is asexual, but homoromantic.

  You might find it interesting to read about the Kinsey scale, which looks at sexuality as a spectrum, with exclusively [homosexual/heterosexual] on the extreme ends of the scale, and degrees of bisexuality between them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This says it well. I also like how the character’s fucked up backstory is inescapably linked to the fucked up backstory of the world he lives in. It it were just that he was a fuck-up, then it wouldn’t be as compelling. What I really love is that whilst he certainly is the victim of his own choices, it’s much more the case that he’s a victim of his material circumstances (rather like how I am currently still in bed due to a combination of poor choices, and material circumstances making consistent good choices very hard)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I enjoyed it because many RPGs are a power fantasy, where you’re an epic hero who saves the world. Some of them present you with a blank slate character you can shape however you wish, and whilst that can be fun, I find I have more fun when I’m playing a character with some history.

  In Disco Elysium, you’re playing as someone whose history is fucked up, so good choices often aren’t an option. He’s not a typical hero, and he’ll be lucky if he can save himself, let alone the world — the world is even more fucked up than he is, riddled with scars from a long dead, hopeful era. Even though at the start of the game, both the player and your character have no knowledge of history, you can’t escape it.

  A huge part of why I like it is because I can see what it’s going for, and I’m here for that. Even if I didn’t personally click with it, I think I would respect it for having things to say and committing to it. What’s an RPG that you have clicked with or loved what it was going for? If you’re not into Disco Elysium, then I suspect that your answer might be a game that would pull me out of my comfort zone in interesting ways.

  “dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.”

  I think this is a pretty harsh statement, but it did make me laugh, because part of why I vibed with Disco Elysium so much is because a couple years before, I actually bumped my head that I lost my memory and couldn’t even remember who I was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I will always back you up bratan! You and I are bratannoi – brothers. Brothers fight. But when they’re done fighting, you know what they do? They party. They fucking party!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bird⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The crow was probably just a witches’ familiar and thus was able to use magic to transmute the oily cheeto into actual food

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨flowers for the lost⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re not wrong here about how a dummy designed to “the average male” proportions" is going to exclude men whose proportions exist in the statistical extremes (and likewise for women), but a phrase that comes to mind is “All models are wrong, some are useful”. Whenever we are making a model for gathering and analysing data, it’s because the real phenomena we’re studying is too complex to be able to effectively analyse without a model. Even if we had a wide array of anatomically correct crash test dummies for many different body types, it would still be a huge simplification of reality. A huge part of research is about trying to always be mindful of this tension, and to be constantly evaluating whether our model is a good enough for reality.

  The stats for injury rates in women indicated that no, our model was failing pretty significantly in this area, so we designed different dummies, effectively updating our model. There will be more research that looks at other kinds of variation between people, and that will mean trying to account for extremes while not overcomplicating our model.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨flowers for the lost⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Previously what was used was a male crash test dummy but sized down. The word “dummy” makes it easy to overlook, but they’re pretty technologically impressive bits of kit. They take into account the density of different tissues and their relative distribution in the body, and there are strategically placed sensors to measure the force distribution at different levels. It doesn’t encompass all women’s body types, in much the same way that the male dummy doesn’t encompass all men’s body types.

  Lots of little differences between male and female bodies cumulatively result in the vehicle collision injury stats that others have quoted elsewhere in this thread. Things like the centre of mass being different, the outline of the pelvis/hips (which also affects the way one sits), women having a greater body fat percentage, that body fat being distributed differently to men’s, women have less muscle. Then there’s boobs, which aren’t just something that can hinder seatbelt placement, but they can also be heavy, and bouncy, which means that the forces involved in a collision can be multiple times more than their weight, which contributes to whiplash and other injuries. On top of this, there’s probably a bunch of other factors that we aren’t aware of yet, but a more comprehensive testing process could help us to understand what differences between male and female bodies actually matter when it comes to vehicle safety. For example, on average, women tend to have longer hair than men, but I don’t expect that would particularly impact injury rate in a vehicle collision. Women having larger breasts than men however, is most certainly a factor that contributed to the stats for women’s injury rates being so much higher than men’s.

  On top of all this, before a dedicated female crash test dummy was designed, the downsized male dummy they were using was laughably small — the male one was designed to be the size of the average man at the time, whereas the downsized male one was so small that it only represented the smallest 5% of women at the time. That just seems absurd to me, but it’s what you get when 50% of the population are treated as an afterthought, I suppose.

  On the question of does an anatomically correct dummy help, it’s a complex question because it takes time for the developments in car safety to actually make it out to the consumer, and even now we have a better crash test dummy for women, some manufacturers have been sluggish in implementing it into their testing — though now at least it’s possible to apply pressure and say “hey, why are you not using this in your testing when women are at much higher risk when in one of your cars”. Previously, manufacturers who were challenged on this could just shrug and blame the lack of an anatomically correct female crash test dummy, and development of one of those took a lot of time and research expertise, so wasn’t something that could be done trivially. Now the resource exists and the industry has less of an excuse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  ACAB applies even for the nice and genuine cops.

  It’s about criticisms of policing as an institution, not individuals

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨bird based storage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I love this dude’s work. He’s so chaotic, and it makes me happy to see someone thriving by leaning in their ADHD

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI Seeks Additional Capital From Investors as Part of Its $40 Billion Round⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The return comes from more future promises filled with ever increasing hot air. OpenAI is especially bad for this — In 2024, they spend $9 billion to make $5 billion. They’re losing money each year, but they drum up venture capital investment by saying “invest more money because some day we’ll be profitable”. Then they build larger, more complex GPT models to continue fuelling the hype machine, even though those models cost even more to run. But as long as OpenAI and the like can sustain the hype machine, venture capital will keep pumping money in. They have to, because they’ve got too much money in the system already, and when the bubble pops, the hot air will escape.

  If they invested into something cool or meaningful, their returns will be limited. Tech seems to be especially appealing for venture capital because it facilitates the illusion of infinite growth being possible. The super rich don’t really trade in money, because they borrow against their assets. Imagine if you owned a fairly modest house that was worth 500k, but you wanted to sell it for more. If you and a bunch of other people constructed an elaborate fiction that led to your house being valued at $10 million, then you could borrow multiple millions of dollars against the inflated value of your house. Even if early investors in a bullshit project wise up and realise their mistake, they haven’t necessarily lost money as long as other investors still think the bullshit is worth investing in. So the cycle of venture capital means that everyone has a vested interest in keeping the hype train going.

  It’s an absurd bubble, and it’s going to be absolute chaos when it bursts. Ed Zitron’s analysis explores it really well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  “women” is pretty widely accepted, and has been for many, many years. The reason why “females” makes people uncomfortable is because even before it was overused by online misogynists, it had an overly scientific air to it that gives bad vibes, especially if it’s being used as a noun. It’s not unreasonable for women to feel uncomfortable when being referred to using language that would be more appropriate to use for animals. The oddness of this is most stark when you see phrases like “men and females”, rather than “men and women”.

  I don’t blame people for not being aware of the connotations of using the word “female” in this way, but it seems fairly straightforward that if there’s a strong consensus that a group of people object to being called something, that it would be courteous to respect that. And even if in a year from now, “women” became as stigmatized as “female” and there was a different preferred term, then using that preferred term would also be courteous. If you don’t want to be courteous, then that’s your prerogative, but given that OP wants to talk to women, then it seems like warning him against the word “female” is useful advice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a sweet story. I hope she had a good answer to your question. If she didn’t answer it back then, you should spring it on her like “you never did tell me what it was like being the queen of analogies”. She best have a good answer, after all these years

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with men who take everything the wrong way, and then blow up at you for “leading them on”. That causes me, and many other women, to tend to default to being guarded when getting to know men. Even if only a small proportion of interactions end up making us feel scared for our safety, it still amounts to being frequent enough that this kind of guardedness ends up being a wise and necessary precaution for women in general.

  It sucks on many levels that this is needed. As well as being an uneasy way to exist as a woman, it also means that there’s a heckton of “false positives”, so to speak. I think that this can especially affect people who are generally socially anxious. I know that being aware of this doesn’t help you to actually figure out how to talk to women, but I’d advise you to try to not take it personally. A friend once told me that reminding himself of this fact actually helped him to feel more confident approaching women; when he was able to internalise the fact that the guardedness wasn’t necessarily aimed at him, but at assholish men who don’t respect women as people and won’t respect their boundaries (which wasn’t him), he found that it helped him to feel more at ease pushing himself out of his comfort zone.

  This problem is why it can be easier to meet women at hobbies and other organised social stuff. I used to really struggle with social anxiety in general, and I found that going to events made it much easier to get to know people, especially when the hobby in question made it easier to dip in and out of social stuff by focussing on the task at hand (board games was a big one for me)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨be gay, do computers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I do think that this makes you weird (affectionate), and I hope you never change, because your weirdness is wonderful.