It seems like a lot of people are just not reading the article or the context of the quote:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/07/27/the-witcher-casting-director-says-yennefer-casting-was-to-challenge-beauty-standards-which-is-completely-insane/

Now, this is not Holland saying that Chalotra is ugly, or that they cast someone ugly to play the role of the most beautiful woman in the world. … Rather, Holland is saying that she is challenging the “standard of beauty” by casting a woman with slightly darker skin.

I do understand that traditional Western fantasy is predominantly white, but I disagree fundamentally with the notion that the “standard of beauty” for most people is being white. I don’t think anyone in the entire world outside of a tiny, tiny sliver of absolute racist scumbags would look at Anya Chalotra and think anything other than “This woman is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.” Casting Chalotra may challenge our perceptions of fantasy as white (a complicated discussion on its own) but it does nothing to challenge any standard of beauty.

Emphasis is mine.

You didn’t fact-check how many trans people there are in the U.S.¹

It looks to be between 0.5% and 1.6% of the total U.S. population (2 - 6 in 400).

References:

• https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Pop-Update-Jun-2022.pdf
• https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/

Semi-related, the number of intersex people (in the literature they talk about people with “disorders of sexual development”) have also been estimated to be around 1% of the population (4 in 400), source:

https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a

¹ yes, the U.S. isn’t mentioned in the OP, but your sources are looking at U.S. demographics and so I will continue with the U.S.-centrism already present.

Some Thoughts (oh boy):

There is a weird logic to pointing out how few trans people there are actually are in the OP. Even if there were many more trans people, (like if there really were 1 in 5 trans people as is commonly mis-perceived), would that make the GOP’s campaign of fear-mongering and animus any more justified? I don’t think this is what Shon (@gayblackvet) was going for, but it almost seems like a consequence of how the message was written.

Maybe I’m wrong here, but does it seem like way it is written implies that the problem is not that the trans panic is unjustified in its fear of trans people, but that it is merely blown out of proportion? Maybe the angle was that even if we assume trans people are a problem, it’s still so few people it’s not worth all this panic and legislation (there are >500 anti-trans bills in the U.S. right now, over 40 of them have already passed).

Rhetorically this perspective-taking might be effective in appealing to mildly transphobic centrists or moderate conservatives who are not entirely comfortable with trans people but who might not want to be perceived as transphobic and don’t want to be associated with the rabid and vocal transphobia of the GOP.

That wedge between a more moderate closeted transphobe and a more openly transphobic right-wing one is politically useful, so I am not necessarily complaining, but there is a concern here about whether tackling transphobia is really the goal here, and if so how we should best go about that.

they debunked the myth that caffeine causes pancreatic cancer:

https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2015235

EDIT: Caffeine might make you more likely to have issues with your heart, and isn’t good for your blood pressure.

exactly; there will always be piracy as long as piracy is needed, a post-piracy world is a utopia, even in the worst dystopia people find ways to “pirate”

Those words can mean those things, but communism is also used to describe a political system. After all, part of the definition of communism is statelessness which is entirely about the politics and not the economics (source).

Also, just as democracy might be used to describe a political system, it commonly taken to mean liberal democracy, and thus in most contemporary contexts implies an economic system of capitalism.

So I just think it depends on the context what people mean by these terms. Of course you can try to define communism only in economic terms, but since the term is so abused and “inflated” it’s hard to claim it has any singular or absolute meaning.

Depending on who you are talking to, communism has practically opposite meanings, for example, in public schools in the U.S. they teach that communism is when all economic activity is controlled by a centralized state, which is ironically the exact opposite of how Marx defined communism.

The same can be said of democracy.

omg 🤦‍♀️

Thank you! Is there a reason Dale Earnhardt is in these memes? Is he a leftist Nascar driver? (Maybe your video will answer my questions, but I don’t have the time to watch an hour long video essay right now, though I’m quite interested and hope to in the future, thanks for the link!)

I see he died in 2001, so all the reasons I could think of as to why he’s in two memes representing the Left are falling short …

I’m out of the loop - who is the person with the “Plus” hat? Maybe the same person as in this meme?

yesss! and any broth really could work here in substitute for more flavor, but beer and onions is a bomb combo, especially with brats

haha, good to know - thanks!

oof, that’s not good

yeah, that makes sense in your context - canned squash isn’t so bad, definitely not worth making from scratch.

I’m in a suburb where I have grown squash in my compost bin and gotten a harvest that lasted me a whole year, and that squash was some of the tastiest and had the most colorful of any squash I’ve had. The squash was also essentially free, a waste product, and in that context it seemed worth it (at least in some sense). However, it does take time and planning and a lot more work, and as you’re saying depending on who you’re baking for they may not appreciate it.

thanks for this info, I was wondering why PIA isn’t recommended anymore

oo, I didn’t know this trick, thanks!

I only learned about Lemmy from word of mouth at work. I wonder if there’s a way to engage on Reddit in a way that will help migrate people to communities here? (Maybe that would violate Reddit rules, but certainly linking to Lemmy isn’t entirely disallowed, no?)

on duckduckgo I use site:reddit.com and the results will only include links to reddit, I find it better than Reddit’s search (duh)

FYI, the trick to making caramelized onions is boiling the onions. After you cut up your onions and add them to your pan, add a small amount of water, enough that the water will cook out after a few minutes. The water will steam the onions and cook them more quickly, which will them make them faster and easier to caramelize.

Here’s a video to demonstrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqhzil3wJw

This trick works well to make mushrooms more flavorful and all sorts of other foods!

I think it depends on the squash you use. Sure, buying a cheap pie pumpkin or butternut squash at the store might not taste that much better, but a home-grown squash or good local squash can far exceed the flavor of canned pumpkin. As usual, a lot of cooking is about using fresh, good quality ingredients.

cauliflower wings properly made are amazing, but you should definitely not follow a recipe that results in nasty mush 😆

I had to scroll too far to find KeePassXC + syncthing recommended; with syncthing, I see no reason to sacrifice security by using a cloud solution.