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I’m taking a break. So here’s a fantastic Bollywood dance number.

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Hey, everyone. So I sat down to write something about this horrific discussion of domestic violence on The Spearhead – which some of the Man Boobz commentariat have already started discussing here – and, well, I just couldn’t do it.

I need to step back a bit from this blog for a little while to clear my head and maintain my sanity. So I’m going to take a bit of a break – maybe just a few days, maybe a week – and post nothing but interesting videos and other things having nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny or the manosphere. You all, of course, can treat this any any other thread as a totally open thread to discuss whatever you want, including the regular Man Boobz topics of misogyny and general MRA shitlordery.

I’m going to start off with the dance number that first got me hooked on Bollywood music some years ago. This is from the 1998 film Dil Se, a drama about love and terrorism. But in Bollywood, even serious dramas have dance numbers, and Dil Se’s dance numbers are gorgeous and a little surreal.

The music from the film is by A.R. Rahman, a prolific and popular Bollywood music director best known in the US for doing the music for Slumdog Millionaire.

And  yes, that is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan dancing on top of a moving train without any safety harness or stunt double or CGI trickery. (Well, there are a couple of brief bits where a double might have been used.) Enjoy!

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Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

“‘I admit to being a real life troll when it comes to people knocking on my door in order to proselytize. I like to grab the nearest cat and introduce him as my deity of choice.’

FYI, tea is really gross when you snort it out through your nose.”

Seconded! Basement cat is trying to choke me!

thenatfantastic — fuck, that’s horrible. I haven’t words besides that I’m sorry. And an offer of hugs and/or more tea.

Ithiliana —
“Gay cis white men as far as I recall…..*sigh* **offers internet hugs if they’re welcome**”
Always! Thank you (I had a particularly stupid day with the psych, so they’re extra appreciated)

b/s/t/ew … b stew … sounds delicious

ellex24 — teensy note, but it’s six impossible things before breakfast (and with the Cheshire Cat avatar, I ought to know!)

As to the whole cybermen / downloads thing, dude insists that it wouldn’t be traumatic because people would be prepared for it. Which is when I bash myself upside the head with one of my $100 psych textbooks (fuck are textbooks expensive! and I couldn’t even sell back half of mine!). And yes, dude just needs to get out more, particularly to places/forums where he isn’t the smartest one in the room and actually gets challenged.

The refusal to acknowledge how much of transhumanism is influenced by sci-fi is really annoying though (then again, annoying is dude’s natural state lately)

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

“Ironically enough, that’s a faith-based…”

Want to watch a transhumanist turn neon red? Say that. Dude still has no ply besides the schoolyard “no it isn’t” and since I don’t give enough shits I don’t bother arguing why it is.

Faith supposedly requires something that will always be unprovable, while this topic would be provable once we could it…which is so entirely begging the question that we always get derailed into a discussion of logical fallacies.

And yes, the Mormon baptisms are gross. Also, going back a page — Kalora, the other neopagans you reference? *waves*

I’ll take reincarnation as a clown loach 🙂 (big surprise!)

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Argenti

Hugs for the psych appointment then!

dude insists that it wouldn’t be traumatic because people would be prepared for it.

Oh! That’s why my fibromyalgia was traumatic because it was a surprise! Oh, that’s right, it wasn’t because we knew that chronic fatigue and/or fibro often follows terrible cases of mono like I had. But there is knowing in theory and knowing in fact. Almost makes me wish he could feel what my fibro is like, but y’know, I’d warn him first. 🙂

ellex24
ellex24
11 years ago

Surprisingly enough, it’s entirely possible to be traumatized by something you’re prepared for but have never done…because it’s not possible to be entirely prepared for something if you’ve never done it before.

Oh, Argenti, I’m frankly impressed with your patience in talking to this guy. And I really hope that the experiences he hasn’t had yet (but will eventually) aren’t as traumatic as a lot of people’s experiences are.

I’m always reminded of Sweeney Todd telling Anthony: “You are young/life has been kind to you/You will learn.”

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

dude insists that it wouldn’t be traumatic because people would be prepared for it.

I’m going to go ahead and make an educated guess that this dude has never experienced anything traumatic.

When my mother had cancer we all knew, after a certain point, that she was going to die. Her death was still traumatic for everyone around her.

ellex24
ellex24
11 years ago

I knew it wasn’t five impossible things, but I couldn’t recall how many it actually was! LOL, I am no Cheshire cat.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

“I’m going to go ahead and make an educated guess that this dude has never experienced anything traumatic.”

Afaik, no. Well, unless you count either amicable divorce or intentionally staying at your mothers place to save on rent…so um, not really, no.

ellex24 — my patience here is that I knew dude a decade ago, and he wasn’t this fucking bullheaded then. Just clueless, but then, 18~? Who has their shit sorted then?

“I’m always reminded of Sweeney Todd telling Anthony: “You are young/life has been kind to you/You will learn.””

So very true!

Some Gal — thanks. And yeah, knowing in theory and practice are two totally different things. My abnormal psych class? I had a case of “smartest person in the room”, the tests where basically case studies with obvious symptoms (all but “this is symptom X”) or straight match the symptom to the DSM Dx. I set the curve. Want to know how much that helped when fucking Remeron made me spend nearly two weeks in mixed state hell? Not one iota.

No amount of understanding the science behind it, or what other people say it’s like, prepares you. Hell, take the flip side, anyone here really understand what sex (of any variety) was like before they did it? It just doesn’t work that way.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

“And my 60 million figure includes all deaths every year, yes. A death is a death; why rate a death from violence as worse than a death from heart disease or cancer? I would wager that deaths from disease are not only more debilitating but also more painful and more expensive and more preventable than deaths from violence, so it’s quite possible that they matter more, if anything.

60 million dying per year means six Holocausts, or an entire World War II, every single year.”

My patience, it is gone. I actually just pointed out, to a grown up, with a college degree, that everybody dies. Falconer, you bought Everybody Poops yet? Can I beat myself upside the head with it? I’ll change some diapers in exchange.

katz
11 years ago

Ironically enough, that’s a faith-based rather than science or logic-based belief, given that we don’t have any way to prove that such a transfer would be possible, and we can’t check in with people who’ve been transferred to see if they’re happy about it.

And, indeed, it would be impossible to ever prove that the transferred person was, in fact, the same, since the newly-created person would think zie was the same person whether zie was or not. (Eg, there’s no way to distinguish between an identical copy that is absolutely positive that it’s the original and the original.)

Transhumanists are silly.

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help

“Basement cat is trying to choke me!”

I knew it! I knew it! Ellex is worshipping Basement Cat!

In no particular order – I’d rather enjoy seeing a transhumanist turn neon red. Be really useful at slow pedestrian crossings.

Errrm how on earth does knowing something’s going to happen make it less traumatic? Dude needs to read some history. Or accounts from prisoners of war, f’rex.

Some Gal, don’t worry, I didn’t think you thought the Mormon beliefs were cool – sorry if my response read that way! I just got onto the baptism stuff because I read a fair bit about it on HP back in the day. There are Jewish communities in the US who’ve had to extract promises from them not to “baptise” Holocaust victims (such as Anne Frank, yes). That stinks on so many levels – the insult to Jews that those who were murdered for being Jewish should have this quasi-Christian rite imposed on them; the idea that it’s treated as an opt-out rather than an opt-in; and that those bastards (yes I’m looking at you Romney) go on doing it even after promising not to.

Argenti, I take it you haven’t had a chance to throw Mr K into the hot mix of Science, Ur Doin It Rong with this bloke yet? 😉

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@katz

Silly and about to give Argenti a large lump on zir head.

@Argenti

🙁 More hugs? (And no more books to the head.)

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help

“And my 60 million figure includes all deaths every year, yes. A death is a death; why rate a death from violence as worse than a death from heart disease or cancer?”

What the fuckity fucking fuck? Does Mr Intelligent have sheep-dip for brains? How is dying of natural causes compare with being murdered? Spectrum or no spectrum, how can he not grasp it even at an intellectual level?

And yeah, hey fuckwit kid, EVERYTHING DIES, even if it takes thousands of years (hello beautiful redwoods). Get used to the idea.

No wonder you’re out of patience with him, Argenti, kudos to you for lasting this long.

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help

All this transhumanist stuff and who’s-the-copy makes me think of the Flesh.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

“Dude needs to read some history. Or accounts from prisoners of war, f’rex.”

He’s got a history degree…and apparently an empty shell where his brain once resided.

“How is dying of natural causes compare with being murdered? Spectrum or no spectrum, how can he not grasp it even at an intellectual level?”

Because he’s arguing that there’s no reason not to treat them the same because fucking life extension motherfuckers.

And I just got a reply to my attempts at level headed math, this should be good (good thing my anti-PTSD-nightmare drug is technically a blood pressure drug huh?)

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Is his next argument going to be that deaths from starvation are no biggie because everyone gets hungry sometimes?

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Flesh mets cybers met angels met daleks. The final show down!

Thank you, I needed that mental image.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Is this particular transhumanist one of the “well, my life here isn’t going how I want BITCHES WON’T FUCK ME IT’S TERRIBLE so we may as well all just leave our bodies behind” ones, like that one troll we had for a while?

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

*bangs head off wall* you can’t compare all deaths to deaths of any specific cause because everybody dies of something

You have to compare specific causes, eg is heart disease more deadly than cancer. I mean fuck, obviously there are more deaths from everything, annually, than from any individual cause. You can compare years, which year had more deaths from everything combined (holocaust is deadly on that measure, probably by a lot considering that would include soviet starvation)

Also, this is a perfect example of why you have to use ratios not raw numbers. Else every year is deadlier than the last because *gasp* there are more people. Pick a general, older, hobby, anything. Musical instrument, bird watching, anything. There are, nearly for sure, more people doing it now than in the 50s, or the 1850s, does that mean it’s more popular now? Raw numbers say yep! ‘Cept there are more people, so you have to use the rate of bird watching among the population.

Your consequalialism fails btw, you’re not minimizing negative outcomes by saying that living in fear of murder is less negative than not fearing something because fearing it could be preventable. It’s not just fearing for yourself, but things like whether your kid is going to get shot walking home.

I could compare deaths from violence to deaths from aging. Since aging causes two out of every three deaths (worldwide), aging is at least twice as bad as violence even if violence causes the other third, which it doesn’t (since there are also infectious diseases and accidents to take into account).

It’s also irrelevant that populations are higher today than they were in the past. Higher populations means more people dying, but more people dying doesn’t make death less bad. More deaths equals more of a bad thing, not less.

The counter to your fear argument is that fearing more for others (friends and family, at least) who are at risk of developing, say, heart disease and cancer would also be beneficial (in persuading them to take preventative steps against them, in increasing political support for medical research, etc.).

I give up, this is an endeavor in stupidity that makes MRA math look fun.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Anyone want some whiskey? I just poured myself a (Dixie) cup full. Did you know that bathroom cups are two shots?

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Yep, being afraid that someone you love might due sure is a beneficial thing.

(This person used to be a friend of yours? I’m so sorry.)

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Die, not due. I can type good, honest.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Argenti

The little Dixie cups or the big awesome Dixie cups that I used to make Jello shots in in college? I think the big ones are bigger than that, but maybe my memory was impeded by the contents.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Cassandra — I nearly banged this person at one point. I was young and stupid sure, but this is amazing levels of ignorance even in light of his transhumanism life extension bullshit. And I really wish Pecunium were around, he’s far better versed in dealing with Yudkowsky’s talking points.

Also, just over one shot, literally while eating (bite potato, sip whiskey, bit potato), yes on meds that increase the effect, but I should be able to blow a non-DUI breathalyzer, and I’d be terrified to drive like this. I’m quite sober enough to consent, and clearly sober enough to grasp the consequences of actions, but tunnel vision ala focused on one thing? Oh fuck yes.

Yeah, I can, hypothetically, wrap my head around the idea that warning your loved ones about heart disease is a good thing. What I can’t get my head around is that this makes the reasonable fear of being shot just for being there less horrible. And Mr. Privileged Life doesn’t get what people living with inner city crime experience (honestly, neither do I, other than as a “don’t put bedrooms near front windows” home design level thing…I grasp that the fear is real, I don’t have to feel it though) — this is the same dude who was arguing that the murders of poor people are more important than of trans* people because raw numbers.

Because fuck, the stories of not letting your kids // not being allowed to sleep near the front of the house because you might get shot in a drive-by? That sounds terrifying, more so than my fears about genderqueer presentation. The not-an-ex passes exceedingly well, which makes me worry more…maybe I just lack a sense of fear for myself…but I worry what would happen if zir anatomy were discovered to be counter to zir presentation (I can’t pass for shit, which sucks, I used to honestly confuse people, I enjoy people going “sir? Ma’am? Um, sir?” …cruel of me maybe?)

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Some Gal — the little ones are 3 oz, the big one’s 5. 1.5 oz shots makes the big ones 3.33 shots, if solely booze, adjust for ratio of booze to jello.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Question – what’s his point with all of this? Is he just arguing for the sake of arguing or trying to convince you of something specific?

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