• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I’ve always been attracted to folks with cute & youthful vibe. But when I was a teen that was pretty restricted to other teens, even the ‘young looking’ twenty year olds who were playing high-school students on TV obviously looked older and therefore less attractive to me.

    But now I’m in my 40s my range of who looks youthful and hot is much wider. Now I find 20s hotter than teens, 30s can look pretty youthful, and I’m not super attracted to older people, but I find them less gross because I’m used to what older bodies look like (I have one!). And since physical attractiveness is just one part of overall attraction, I’d probably find a cute & 39 person more overall attractive than cute & 19, just because my experience is that most 39 year olds are funnier and more socially skilled than teenagers.

    I can’t imagine every finding a 70 year old hotter on a physical level to 20 year old. But I can imagine being so content and in love with my elderly partner that I didn’t care that much.




  • Yup, flashcards and spaced repitition are pretty well evidenced for memorisation. I’m also a fan of mind maps, but that’s more for linking ideas and concepts together, not just learning acronyms, but mixing the two works well.

    There are other memorisation techniques that you might find helpful depending on how keen you are (visualisation, methods of loci, etc) but for most people they feel like to much trouble to learn. Creating mnemonics and associating stupid images and stuff with otherwise arbitary acronyms can help. I can still remember all my physics equations from high-school QIT PIV etc because of stupid nonsense phrases I associated with them.



  • I think “according to the law” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. That is the part that really makes it an oath to the ‘constitution’ of the UK. You are pledging alligence to the figurehead of the government, to obey them/the government, as long as they/the government are acting legally. If the government does something illegal, or asks you to do something illegal, you should not obey them.

    I’m British, and not a fan of the monarchy (especially Charles) but I think that we can see the advantages of having a head of state who has very little power to fuck things up, and that isn’t a position that outside forces billionaires can buy their way into, but has the power to remove a Prime Minister if they tried to do something unconstitutional.

    The idea of checks and balances in the US didn’t seem to plan for a bad president being elected with enough support in the house and Senate that he becomes pretty much untouchable (especially after a first term stacking the SC).


  • I’m defintely not a fan of cops, but in Scotland I never thought of them as evil/lazy/incompetent. They’re still the arm of state control, and have been used to break strikes and stuff, but there is at least a vibe of policing by consent. There are plenty of cases of individual cops who were psychos, and the institution defintely defaults to ‘protecting it’s own’ which is a fucking terrible attitude and in my mind makes all cops culpable for the crimes of the “bad apples”. So I’m still acab overall.

    But most of my interactions with the police have been pretty decent, and that includes being questioned as a suspect (for something that I may not have been innocent of…) They don’t ‘solve’ many petty crimes like burglary that actual effect normal people but they are generally university educated and properly trained.

    I now live in France, where the police are none of those things. I’ve only heard bad things about them ranging from patronising and incompetent to raping student protesters in the back of the police van. I would never ask a French cop for help, but unless I was high or carrying something illegal, i wouldn’t be worried about talking to a Scottish policeman.


  • I think any good relationship will make you friends, and it isn’t awkward, it’s great! But having been married a while, it is something you need to work at. With a long term partner they can end up in a bunch of different types of relationships with you - as well as friend, romantic parter and lover, they might be the equivalent of business parter, or boss/employee (for various household and family chores / projects) and learning how to do all those things well, and without ruining the other parts of the relationship can be challenge.

    But if the balance is just between ‘friend’ and ‘gf’, I’d say the trick is knowing when to prioritise one over the over. There are times I’m horny and want to take things in that direction, but I realise my partner would rather have a cup of tea and complain about work. Equally, we might be getting intimate, and I’m tempted to make some dumb joke, because it’s funny and that’s what I do with a friend, so I have to weigh up my priorities (mostly sex wins, but sometimes I say the dumb thing and we both have a big laugh and then make dinner.)


  • Echoing other lemmings, there’s basically no difference. There js a certain niche who seem to think that pansexual is more trans inclusive, but that attitude doesn’t align with almost all bisexuals opinions on the matter, or with the history of how the bisexual community has been accepting and collaborating with the trans community since pretty much the birth of both communities.

    The delightful verilybitchie, who is both bisexual and trans, has a bunch of good video on the history of bisexuality, trans stuff, and biphobia*. They are defintely worth watching!

    /* it’s pretty hard to hear ‘bisexuals exclude trans people’ and not feel like that’s an example of biphobia.



  • Calories in - calories out is true, but people often have the wrong idea about it. It’s very much not ‘what you eat’ - ‘exercise’. Like you say, being a tall young man probably indicates a decent base calorie expenditure.

    Most people are aware that maintaining muscle mass spends more calories than maintaining fat stores (whose purpose is to provide calories during a famine!) but for many people the main uses of the calories they consume is to maintain body temperature. There’s indications that who are obese maintain a lower core temperatures during the day, which uses up less energy.

    How many calories are spent on maintaining body temperature varies between individuals by up to 600kcal. So it possible that you and I eat the exact same diet, and you go for a two hour walk every evening while I scroll my phone on the couch, and I’ll lose weight and you’ll gain it.

    And even in a sedentary lifestyle there’s a large variety of energy expenditure. Studies on esports are not conclusive yet, there’s some pretty dumb stuff sponsored by gaming companies that say shit like “one hour gaming = 1000 situps”. But more reputable studies suggest a more modest 50-100% increase in calorie expenditure compared to just sitting (so, the same as standing up or perhaps a gentle walk). And just fidgeting, changing posture and shifting in your seat can use up 350kcal

    So it’s perfectly possible for OP’s brother to not do much obvious activity, and still use up the equivalent of a couple of big macs or 7 cans of cola, compared with a less fidgety friend with a more ‘efficient’ metabolism.




  • As people age their faces sag due to changes in skin elasticity (and also often gaining weight), this can lead to a “resting sad face” compared with perky youngsters. But, as a middle aged person, I’ve also started to notice that I often get absorbed in my thoughts and realise I’m sitting there with a thousand yard stare and a drawn facial expression I associate with being sad or very sick or very hungover.

    But inside I’m not sad, I’m just thinking about something I need to do or whatever, but I feel like I need to consciously “inhabit” my body again and “power up” my facial muscles so I look thoughtful, or determined or something rather than a blank “my family has just died in a car crash and I can’t decide whether to call the ambulance or kill myself with a shard of broken windscreen” expression.