Specter

Just mildly awkward compared to the...stories in here...but off the top of my head, from three months ago: -We decided to meet a café after lots of back and forth deciding what to do. -They get to the café and now it's like, "can we walk." Ok but like why'd we decide this. -We walk, I get takeaway coffee, and they're complaining about a bad stomache (this is what prompted the walk and I was like sure, I'm sympathetic lol been there) -They did not enjoy the walk or the area or something? and the conversation is a mess and a half. I'm trying to keep it alive as ****. I find us a nice spot in the park, and they look at the squirrels and pigeons near by and start talking about pigeon sex dawg throw me a damn bone here, I TRIED to respond with the avian biology I know -Then after an hour they're like hey I gotta go soon and I was like ok a) me too, b) I'll walk you to the metro. We get there, my metro card works but the turnstile freezes, and a freaking metro cop begins arguing with me after I have to jump the turnstile with permission from the ticket lady. She has to come out in my defense -This is done and I'm like ok bye, lovely meeting you, thank you for coming out etc. I mean at this point I'm assuming they were not into me and honestly...VERY MUCH same, so I just chalk it off to an awk date -A week and a half later they text me talking about some weirdo sexual fantasy of sucking me off in a club I'm like hello? I thought you didn't like me at all. They're like no no omg absolutely incorrect & we were insta mutuals until last week, I had enough fhvfg and unfollowed.

Sorry but some of these "Americans think it's all about race/them!!!" takes are hard to take earnestly, especially when they sometimes come from Europeans who are yet to reconcile their alleged "transcendance" past the concepts of race, racism, and slavery with...ddd, certain blackface festivals, shows that are too — conveniently! — touted as totally banal and unrelated to the horrors of slavery. Even if yes, there is a discussion to be had about how given America's position in the world — especially when it comes to "curating," if you will, popular culture — some Americans do center deeply insular takes and chauvinisticly expect the world to hold those takes in the same regard, this isn't one of those cases. Fact is: anti-blackness is, and always has been, a global issue. In many countries across the world — very much including South Korea — there are also deep intersections with colorism, and this is the case from my Asian background too. It feels deeply silly to see these "omg Americans and their obsession with imposing their history!!" takes time and time again when it somehow absolves those countries of their continued, pervasive anti-blackness and colorist ways. With K-Pop, the frustration is even more layered — and I say this as a casual, occasional listener — because hip-hop, quite literally an American genre pioneered by black artists which very much addresses the history of slavery and racial justice, is then diluted and incorporated into K-Pop groups as — what tends to read like — a superficial aesthetic. Given now that the goal for most K-Pop groups is to understandably breakthrough to Western music markets, a lot of the rappers in these groups tend to specifically draw on flows, lyrics, phrases that will likely be familiar to audiences in the West. Why is a rapper from Seoul, settled in the West, talking about gang violence in ways that are distinctly proximal to American hip-hop? If American history isn't required knowledge, why is it being performatively repackaged in music? This isn't a call to police who and who cannot make hip-hop music, quite literally every country has its own local hip-hop sound, sometimes a pastiche of American artists, sometimes not. The point is if a group like Blackpink can literally be out here quoting Biggie ("Kick in the door, waving the four-four" dd) then you and your faves are selectively engaging in what you're now distancing from as "American history" exclusively. Sure, no one is born knowing this stuff and this isn't to drag Lisa either, but some of y'all are being obtuse as to why this recurring backlash K-Pop artists get happens in the first place.

This is the most random — and baseless — assertion. I post threads that I hope will foster meaningful discourse all the time, and consistently have for years. The idea that I intentionally make these threads as what, some 5D chess set up to cause mess where people are posting death threats is...wild. Yeah, ATRL is messy but there is nothing inherently about it as a forum — except unwillingness by thread participants — that restricts being able to...discuss things?

Respectfully, this is a very poorly constructed thread — and this is coming from someone who is rather inclined to being uncharitable to Kim given her past problematic antics and choices to enable and signal boost some awful people. It is clear you have several issues with her — ranging from her being able to absorb sounds from younger, more obscure artists and repackaging them (more successfully presumably), the image that her music conveys, and so on — but for some indecipherable reason, you've chosen to couch all that in something about age/early-mid 30s expectation discourse that reads as hilariously arbitrary. The consistently moving goalposts when people earnestly engage with this flawed framework — with other examples that actually do counter what you've mentioned — also just indicates a position that you reverse-engineered to unfavorably read Kim's musical output. It is all well and good to dislike Kim's music, persona, and I could reasonably see that, let alone even agree with — but this whole framework of a 34-year old being the "sexiest 20-year old ***** at the warehouse party" () is just...odd, and you're inviting — and weirdly dismissing! — the lost years/youth discourse that happens to a lot of people, especially in the LGBTQ community, but particularly profoundly to trans women like Kim. Just a very strange thread.

Hey so why are people talking about ejaculating in toilets/on beds and telling each other to die

Some disclaimers: Self-explanatory title. What do you think about surrogacy as a practice, especially across the dimensions of legality, morality, and ethics? Legality: Worth noting that the legality varies heavily across the world depending on type of surrogacy. Certain countries allow commercial surrogacy (Ukraine, Georgia, parts of the USA (I believe this is decided by state laws?)), while others restrict it to altruistic only (Canada, Australia, UK, India) meaning any sort of payment beyond expenses for pregnancy and hospital/medical care makes it illegal. Some countries have — at least in theory, given that there is somewhat of an underground "market" — blanket surrogacy bans, such as France, Germany, Italy, China, and Nepal. For countries in the "Global South," some restrictions apply specifically to foreigners due to concerns over exploitation, and so some of the models will only be permitted for legal citizens of the country in question. Morality: Do you personally find that the practice should exist? Is it a boon for those that may have fertility issues, or one that commodifies, literally, reproductive labor? Presuming that we all share the belief that sex work is work, would you accept extending that framing towards pregnancy and birthing? Ethics: Are choices made by the surrogate independently truly independent, or does raising doubt on their decision undermine the agency of an individual expressing their reproductive autonomy (see disclaimer #2)? Regardless of arrangement, pregnancy carries medical risks and takes a huge toll on the body — is financial compensation (in cases where it is permitted) adequate enough to "cover" the toll — let alone the risks — or should it be viewed through the lens of an occupational hazard? Are the agencies and clinics that often take a huge cut legit middle-men/intermediaries, or is their presence and involvement (sometimes even via restrictive contracts for the surrogate around lifestyle, fyi) deeply problematic? What about the resulting child, who has no say in any of this — is there an obligation to disclose how they came to be, and when? Additionally, in cross-border arrangements, where laws between the surrogate's country and the intended parents'' country don't line up, children are effectively stateless — whose should take accountability: the agencies, the governments involved, or the intended parents themselves? Thoughts? (Also, a discussion about adoption as alternative is inevitable to some degree: and personally, I struggle to understand why people have the "biological mandate," so to say, that often drives surrogacy. I understand it is a preference and would not impose, and the adoption process is by no means a cakewalk, but my hang-up, aside from a few of the aforementioned concerns, is what meaningfully changes for people when they have their own "biological" child versus someone adopted from a foster home, where conditions are often...beyond the pale. A bit of a tangent (unless you, like that one user in the thread, mysteriously hate adoption ) that often feels underdiscussed).

Certainly! I think the 10% — along with several Nurtecs, financial management can be headache-inducing — gave Gaga the liberty to plan a family #ThankYouBrunei #HowBadDoYouWantMe

Fitting given the cartoonish state of her career atm

Excuse me miss ma'am please do not downplay the threat posed by the Islamic Republican of Japan. Thank you

Great point! Just checking, since you seem well informed — I'm sure gay marriages are legal in Israel?

All that time swinging and hula hooping or whatever she does has fried her synapses

I don't want to say something about Mr. New York on 9/11 but him competing with the entire pharmacy worth of roids is...

In no order, off the top of my head: -Gambling. Some of our biggest streamers, celebrities, athletes be promoting, in broad daylight, gambling partnerships with the likes of Kalshi, Polymarket etc, and no one bats an eye?? Why are gambling sites now a mainstay on news?? -For-profit healthcare. Though "largely" an American problem — at least most visibly — this idea that healthcare is, and should be, only for those that can pay insane amounts of money is...absurd. Even in nations with "free" healthcare, this idea has been manifesting through documented cuts to the public system. -Steroids and peptides for fitness/aesthetics. I'm very susceptible to this, and I have considered them every other day on my fitness journey ddd. But what stops me is the inanity of it all: I could hop on discord, place an order for vials of unregulated peptides, inject them into myself — without knowing the long-term effects — and begin losing weight. With a huge fraction of social media fitness influencers quite literally being on roids, it feels like one is "missing out." People (mostly men) would rather die young in their early-late 30s/40s with the body they want rather than get there later. And it sucks because I "get" it -Across politics, this idea that "good things" are not possible, only the "best of two evils." I will not even get into how many generations of potential political activitists and movements we've lost to this corrosive ass idea that all electoral politics is simply a case of choosing the lesser of two evils. -In terms of career, the idea of hardwork is mythologized to the point of absurdity fact is, most billionaires or millionaires do not "work hard," and the idea that you should subscribe to a version of that aspirationally is quite literally a psyop. This isn't to dissuade people from giving the best they can, but the ways in which hardwork is touted as this path to success in the alleged meritocracy () we live in is...ridiculous.

American men during the Mister USA pageant, as opposed to? Sorry jbcbdb but this combined with your username sent me

I'm hoping Stella Lefty was also there so the singularity event of three "Who?" can harmonize & fix our current timeline