We all fuck up our bodies for sports, don't act like dancing is special. Try being a catcher in baseball. Doing it as a kid gives you time to recover from it if that's not going to be your life, whereas doing it as an adult will actually cripple you.
That is the inverse of altering puberty, which fucks you up more the younger you do it. Nevermind this casual 'puberty doesn't matter' attitude, like a deviated hip joint or elongated leg muscle is even of a comparable scale.
Tennessee ... banned "Transgender medical care" for minors
Air-quotes added by me, because he tried to phrase it as "medical care" for "transgender" minors at first blush but of course the quotes make it clear he didn't mean you to take it that way (of course). However, as OP and the twitter poster points out, that's just the most generous framing he can offer to blame his political enemies when own his allies murder them.
It's also worth mentioning that "she was identifying herself as transgender" is an intentionally vague description that you must question if this was a "man pretending to be woman" due to the explicit media rule that all trans must be ascribed the identities they themselves demand, so you must always assume the pronoun given was the 'target' and not the 'origin'. But of course that wasn't what he meant you to take away since this was an evil person who doesn't get the blessing of such protections because we hate murderers EVEN when they kill people we like them to kill (of course).
Keep it up, ABC/Disney. You think your legally-vague-enough banter pretending to be news commentary is winning approval and cementing your control of culture, but what it really serves is to be hoistable, demonstrable, plain, and vulgar examples that drive the otherwise ambivalent away from you. People understand venom when you pour it in their ears, and they know instinctively not to trust you later.
"Having gone through male puberty" is not provable and is not a standard. They tried to sound reasonable by embedding the real reason for having segregated sports into the rule, but they actually just weakened their own position by creating a rule with too much leeway.
Ban men. Easy. You think it is hard because you are accepting a political premise and conceding ground. You've already lost all future battles as a result because you've betrayed weakness to an enemy whose "cupidity does not sleep."
Women's sports have always existed with fragility, walking perpetually with the specter of having many roads to self-demise open and easily started upon. Lesser product receives lesser attention and withers, parasites itself onto a more successful enterprise (men's league profit sharing), leans into leftism because it's already functionally welfare and wealth-redistribution so the fit is natural, and then leftism destroys it by prying open an anus through which all standards are equalized (which is to say abolished).
Choosing to die on the hill of equality when the basic premise of the endeavor was inequality to start, is acceptably poetic. Carry on.
I realize that I misunderstood what you were asking for after I wrote this, so I apologize.
Probably the most potent use of homosexuality I've encountered in media is in the book The Forever War. It's almost a spoiler to even mention it, so I'll say that anyone who wants to read this good and relatively short book, stop here.
The central theme of the story is the protagonist becoming more isolated the longer he is a soldier. Not just from the world and people around him, but from reality as a whole. This is manifested literally as time-dilation's effects forcing him ever further into the future after every relatively short tour. He is missing time compared to Earth, losing a number of years (despite it being only months for him) and coming back to a post-economic collapse country that is unrecognizable and alien to him.
Deciding that the society they re-entered is not theirs, he and his close friend from his first tour re-enlist for another tour and despite assurances to the contrary are separated within seconds of signing their names and sent to opposite ends of the war theater.
After a few more stops and long-distance highspeed travels, he emerges after multiple generations of a centralized human government's heavy-handed implementation of eugenics. To ensure no unauthorized breeding at any scale, everyone alive at this point have been heavily and relentlessly indoctrinated into homosexuality. He is now the only straight man in a deployment of men and women who see him as an incarnation of a dark and evil past due to their education and state encouraged belief structure. For various political reasons related to PR and war veteran placation over time, he has been promoted in transit to a base commander just because of how long (in real time) he has served.
Because they knew this would be a problem for him, the military assigned him a lieutenant who is much younger, but had his nuts shot off in a battle. So they can be eunuchs together, or something. Their reasoning is extremely wack and it just further serves to show how shockingly unempathetic and incapable of not being dicks to their enlistees the military brass are.
So now this relatively young man, who has lost all tether to home, reality, and even the ability to make new friends or relationships, is put in charge of a population who have been taught to disdain the era he was born in and he for being straight as the reason why.
The author manages this psychological isolation and oppression carefully and effectively, while having many other interesting ideas that play out fairly rapidly due to the framing of jumping ever forward in time.
I found the book excellent and do recommend it.
The ending quote of the article is equally damning:
Prof. Fukushima added, “Vaccines are four times more likely to be infected than non-vaccinated people. Mortality rates were also found to be higher among vaccinated people of all ages. The evidence to promote vaccination has been lost. The state has hidden and stopped disclosing inconvenient data. It is a serious national crisis.”
"Woke" is the self-chosen moniker of the progressive. It is a stand in for "enlightened" and was co-opted from Black Twitter where it was used commonly after pointing out some kind of societal ill that affected blacks and they'd end their usually racist and paranoid screed with "stay woke!" as a battle-cry to their equally racist and paranoid followers. The call was to "keep noticing these things and be angry."
This fit perfectly with the wider Leftist push to force Marxism through Critical Theory, and they started using "stay woke" in their own racist screeds (though they weren't paranoid, they were actively fomenting revolution with their own fist-raised call to arms).
Due to over-use, its usage bled out until its meaning became completely generic. "Woke" now just means "Democrat," though the connotation tends to be the most aggressively insane and unreasonable positions of Democrats which by any other label would be Sovietism.
"Woke" became more widely used as criticism shortly after self-described wokesters started gaining prominence in academia, politics, and popular culture. Just like the term Social Justice Warrior before it, they abandoned their self-chosen label as soon as it became widely known. This is because they subscribe to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and refuse accurate terminology that can allow their enemy to focus on them and their actions.
Modern "Woke" equivalent terms for its current common usage: Radical, Leftist, Marxist, Communist, Racist.
What the "Woke" originally would have chosen for themselves: Progressive, Revolutionary, Enlightened.
Really, its all the same, and hasn't moved much from its original use, except the Black Twitter guys were usually pointing out failed policies in places like NYC that were wrecking their future, meaning at its core, it was more often than not anti-Democrat ranting. Somewhat ironic.
"I had to consult a lawyer" repeated several times and yet Meg never told us what the conclusion was. Seems the show is still going on so... did he laugh at you for asking? Or did he just quietly collect his consultation fee and laugh after you were gone and he was depositing your check?
They've spent my entire life equating the French and American Revolutions as the same thing fundamentally, but of course that was just cover to deflect criticism of the one they think was actually the good and moral one that they'd like to repeat. It was always a coded threat, that they have since stopped pretending and just put guillotines on their gay communist pokemon wedding cakes.
I see you gay communists, I have always seen you.
I loved the part where Peter arrived at her window and tried to surprise her with flight. She shrugged and jumped out the window and jetted away at mach speed. When she came back after breaking the sound barrier she smirked to Peter “ a woman can do anything a man can do better” She had known how to fly since leaving the birth canal.
These are great
From what I've seen of the books, two of the main villains are women. The one who summoned the Trisolarians to Earth in the first place and spearheaded the central conspiracy of the first phase of the story was a woman. She ironically created the hero by grooming him for a high position where he'd be 'their' man, but he turned on them and saved humanity in so doing.
The next major problem humanity faces much later is when a female descendant of the hero fails to uphold her ancestor's principles and does the equivalent of a nuclear disarmament with the aliens which they instantly pounce on.
I did however completely lose interest in the story when it (or maybe always did, just buried under much better ideas and less navel gazing) became a racial treatise about the inherent superiority of Chinese ideas and how the only path out for humanity was to trust a regular Chinese dude. No important or useful ideas seemed to ever originate outside of that frame. I got tired of it.
It's standard for an adventure story, I know, but this sells itself as extremely carefully composed and philosophical hard-sci-fi. So I forgive it getting dumbly straightforward in its internal reasoning much less.
I actually believe it. She was a special guest on a game show once. Her feeble performance bordered on the inconceivable. Forget trivia, she lacked the ability to even play the game and needed the rules reexplained at one point. It was never more apparent that her persona on her news/talk show was entirely cue-card based.
It depends on when they were published. It was common until around 2004 to publish manga mirrored so it would read left to right. When Blade of the Immortal was translated they actually went to the effort of mirroring the layout, but preserving the orientation of the art in the cells due to the constant use of the menji symbol (flipped, it's a swastika).
Basically, the direction you flip the page determines whether it's mirrored or not. If page 1 is in the 'back' and you turn pages from the left, you read from the right (page turning and reading backwards of English). If page 1 is where it would be in a normal book and you flip pages as normal, it was printed mirrored and you read left to right.
Again, after mid 00's the latter is extremely uncommon.
We lack diversity in our workforce
Serious gamers are male. Females who compete at all (at non physical computer games) are so rare we have to highlight the 3 world-wide who accomplish anything of note and fluff those numbers with pretenders.
This is a problem for our 'industry' because I consider 'equality' divine, but only measure it strictly by outcome.
We discussed the inevitability of this outcome 8 months ago here: (https://archive.is/dAyDo). I have archived to prevent the editing of opinions.
Turns out you really can justify anything you like behind "elder care is hard." Some are even so craven as to brag.
I grew up in a perpetually small church, 50 attending was a huge service. We were near a college but rarely attracted any students. We were established, well positioned in the middle of town, etc. When I was about 20 a new church popped up out in the country, well beyond where anyone would accidentally find it. They had money. Huge building, sprawling parking lot.
I was invited by a girl I was dating to go there once, because her friend loved it. First surprise, the parking lot was full. Next, the music was from a CD, all contemporary stuff I'd never heard before. The speaker told a story about fishing... maybe, in my desire to figure out where he was going with the message I didn't absorb a single detail, because it turns out, there was no message. It was just an anecdote with no moral concern at all, much less related to Christianity in any way. The whole thing was strange and creepy to me, I was trying to understand what was appealing about this. I noticed finally there wasn't a single mention of God, Jesus, Sin, or even Heaven. But 'Love' yeah, he said 'love' a LOT. By the end I was looking in the corners and light-fixtures for cameras and microphones like it was a cult indoctrination front.
I described this later to someone older and he called it a "user friendly" church. I'd never heard that term, but it was one churches like it had been bandying in previous decades that signaled "there are no hard things here, only soft, positive, fun things. Come enjoy!"
It was a shocking moment for me, that such a thing would exist, that people would be attracted to it, that it would know wild success beyond what a small group of dedicated and serious people would ever know. And everywhere I've moved in my life since, I've always found that church. It's been easy to find. It's the big one with the sprawling parking lot that has to rent cops to direct traffic on Sundays.
A compromise would allow Disney to keep the arrangement largely in place with a few modifications.
This is just pissing and calling it rain. The dissolution of the Reedy Creek project was never going to result in Disney losing their land, or really anything special happening other than them losing the wacky and unique things they had above and beyond what every other special district has. The new Reedy Creek agreement was only ever a few forms and about a year away for Disney.
Special districts in Florida are common but what Disney had was insanely uncommon. Walt Disney himself negotiated that agreement with the state which understood and expected him to be building Tomorrowland there. It was supposed to be a completely functional and highly futuristic planned city. Instead after some years and near bankruptcy the company decided to make the sequel to the California theme park instead.
Other theme parks in Florida work and operate as special districts. Suburbs and subdivisions operate as special districts. They are common things. What Disney had was a blank check that had been considered for repeal and replacement many times over the decades. This was merely the moment when Disney pissed everyone off just enough to crystalize the political will to yank it.
What they will get back will be called Reedy Creek, but it will be a new special district that aligns with the current standards of what a special district is and can be, and not its own special law just for them. This was always going to be what was going to happen, unless Disney and their sycophants tried to go scorched earth over it.
This is a nonsensical declaration on the face, because it is being made by the CFO who ousted him. What this actually is is a massive mistake. Chapek was not terminated with cause, he was ousted and that triggered all of his hush-clauses and payouts in his contract. He is a very very rich man thanks to being cut in such a way barely a month into being renewed as CEO for three years.
Chapek will live a quiet life of plenty for as long as he remains quiet about what kind of terminal cancer Disney has got. But Disney can guarantee he won't by throwing around criminal assertions and character murder like this. They are testing the limits of a man's desire to be thought well of by contractually gagging him before heaping him with libel.
Here is what this 'rumor' actually does: it pre-declares that Disney's books were cooked before anyone goes looking at it too closely. Offering up a scapegoat they already sacrificed last week don't worry bro. Why predeclare something like that unless you're about to open the books to someone like a potential buyer? All of this reflects very badly on Disney.
To repeat myself, according to reports before this, Chapek was terminated 'without cause.' If you've seen Better Call Saul you will know what this means. If you haven't, what it means is he gets full insulation and compensation of his contract out to the end of its current value, and since he was JUST rehired, that is massive value. Contracts like that are designed to protect the individual from the company randomly deciding to be a dick to him. The payout is usually way WAY more than just keeping the guy on for his term would be. A company will NOT do that if they have a cause. Claiming they had a cause now, is just panic on top of whatever panic caused them to do this in the first place.
Chapek is a failed and disgraced former CEO today. But if Disney wants to push that, I think they have a lot more to fear from him firing back than he has to fear from them cutting off his retirement fund. Especially since when criminal assertions enter the picture, nullifying a contract gets much muddier. It's entirely in the realm of possibility that he could break all of his non-discloses to defend himself from a criminal assertion and retain all of the benefits of his contract. It's a question of risking it. Disney is encouraging that risk, and that is what I'm saying is a massive mistake on their part.
He once characterized his family's decision to immigrate to Canada as because China wasn't as good. XiXi the Pooh found that to be enough. So no, Simu wasn't the least bit spicy. He just happened to exist while cancel culture existed and Twitter Karens and the CCP (but I repeat myself) saw a scalp to get.
That he wants to advocate for "representation" while himself failing at even doing that properly is nearly as comedic as Marvel losing millions for the mistake of hiring him to be in their China hero movie just because of his race.
Kek.
Hilariously, Simu is the reason The Ten Bracelets wasn't released in China. The movie that along with Mulan was especially made for the market was banned because he was in it. Even as a "token chinese actor," he fails.
Movies universally regarded as 'the best' had white actors and so you don't like them. Your criticism is objectively racist, you are racist, and you are hustling for work in an environment where your talent is inferior. This makes you the worst kind of racist, the racist who believes his own race to be inferior and happily embraces that for charity.
When unearned charity doesn't fill your stomach, you'll directly resort to mafia intimidation, racketeering, and blackmail. And when that doesn't quite meet the need, you'll call up the media and cry to them. Public temper tantrums are embarrassing on toddlers, Simu. On a supposedly grown man, the shame should be lethal. Since it isn't for you, I suspect brain damage. Get help.
Given that's precisely what Sabastian is doing in that scene with that song...