Inceltown posted:

I want a sex robot that loves me for me, not because some techbro programmed it to.

tokin opposition posted:

PM me as soon as we can make a robot trans

ekuNNN posted:

https://twitter.com/PinkNews/status/1404588714580353033

StashAugustine posted:

_____/

Platystemon posted:

Can I criticize a sex doll for having a face that could stop a clock because they’re sculpted by humans and sculpted badly, or is that a faux pas because a human might also have a funny face and feel bad by association?

christmas boots posted:

dicks interlinked within dicks interlinked within dicks interlinked within

Delta-Wye posted:

two words


detachable penis

christmas boots posted:

dicks interlinked within dicks interlinked within dicks interlinked within

Delta-Wye posted:

two words


detachable penis

Laterite posted:

duz posted:

all penises are detachable, it's the reattaching that is tricky

duz posted:

all penises are detachable, it's the reattaching that is tricky

christmas boots posted:

dicks interlinked within dicks interlinked within dicks interlinked within

StashAugustine posted:

_____/

quote:

However, the study didn’t reveal which brands use the toxic chemicals because the authors said they did not want to “pick on” the companies involved.

galenanorth posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/jun/15/pfas-makeup-forever-chemicals
https://archive.is/reY5H

PFAS is a class including PFOA from the movie Dark Waters that C-SPAM recommended

I'm guessing this is because the companies were arbitrarily selected and shaming them would put them at a disadvantage compared to companies that weren't arbitrarily selected that also use PFAS, because apparently the scientists made a decision that protecting the masquerade that companies win competitions between each other honestly and with integrity was more important than consumer health!

tokin opposition posted:

PM me as soon as we can make a robot trans

Business Insider posted:

Amazon burns through workers so quickly that executives are worried they'll run out of people to employ, according to a new report

God Hole posted:

the simulation is breaking down.

admittedly i was a little slow calling the fire marshall, and in between my op and now one of the apartments in my complex caught on fire. the responding fire department wasted precious minutes angle grinding through the locked gate so they could get their guys through from the main road.

the management company has since opened all the other gates that they welded shut, so i imagine they had an awkward convo with the fire marshall after that incident.

my neighbors put up in a hotel in the meantime, and while they were gone some guys broke into their burned out apartments and stole everything that wasn't crisped.

i don't imagine anyone will face any consequences for this.



the upstairs apartments are the ones that caught fire. the gate / my former prison walls are in the background

God Hole posted:

my rent is going up $400 lol

God Hole posted:

my rent is going up $400 lol

God Hole posted:

my rent is going up $400 lol

PawParole posted:

https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1405082857433878531

ready to use applecare?

God Hole posted:

my rent is going up $400 lol

quote:

It is raining ash while we play basketball. On the far side of the house, the boys have a half-court hemmed in by pine trees (plus an adjacent putt-putt course), and while some unseen speaker plays J. Cole and Lil Baby, the boys are trying unsuccessfully to arrange some three-on-three. As we shoot around and warm up, the boys finally summon the courage to ask about my age, and the resulting investigation goes something like this:

baron: How old are you?
me: Guess.
baron: What! Come on, Beanie Barrett. We told you everything about us! What is up, bro?
gio: Twenty-four? Twenty-five? [Gio is a prince.]
baron [Rubbing his chin appraisingly while looking me up and down]: Okay, I see you look younger because of your sense of style—like the glasses and the beanie. I see that. So I’m gonna picture you in like a tux or something. Like a worker’s outfit.

At first, I assume that by “worker’s outfit,” he means the raiment of the proletariat, some sort of rumpled denim jumpsuit in the style of, say, a custodian or a mechanic. But then I realize that his own source of income is so wildly far from your standard nine-to-five that by “worker’s outfit” he simply means a businessman’s suit and tie.

“You’re probably like thirty-six,” he says, the little bastard.

Even though we haven’t started playing yet, all the boys talk prodigious levels of poo poo. “Bud—who’s trying to get dunked on?” (DaeDae). “I’m a daddy on the court. Y’all know what the gently caress is going on with me!” (Baron). “Yo, gently caress that clip. Look how much height I have on you, fam.” (Christopher). I suppose I find it interesting that their Barnumesque hype-manning continues even when there are no cameras rolling. But a few minutes later, after we pick teams, something strange happens. For reasons I cannot identify, most of the boys scatter and disperse, wandering in the direction of the jacuzzi and pool, looking like left fielders distracted by butterflies. Only Baron and I remain on the court. “What happened?” I ask. Shirtless, dribbling at the top of the key, Baron sighs and says, “Honestly, man, this happens all the time. They all have ADHD. They haven’t been in school in like four years, and they haven’t had responsibilities, so their brains are loving mush, bro. . . . It’s just like we pick teams for fun all the time.”

However true that is, and whatever else you might say about the education these kids are receiving, it’s clear that their hedonistic coursework—yacht content, poolside content, White Claw content—doesn’t include the rudiments of critical thinking. Take for just one example the moment during dinner when, as one boy is telling me about his ambitions to become a rock star, Baron looks up from his smartphone and says, apropos of nothing, “Yo, Hitler invented sex dolls.”

The room is overtaken by a gust of silence, while all the boys nod and chew stoically, a mute encouragement to go on. “That’s why they all have blond hair and blue eyes,” he says.

“Wait,” I say. “That can’t be right. Who says?”

“TikTok, man.”

Some frantic googling later that day will reveal that this supposed Nazi initiative—apparently called the Borghild Project, whereby German troops were given collapsible plastic dolls in their infantry backpacks that could be inflated and used (so to speak) in lieu of visiting prostitutes—is a hoax, one that was summarily debunked back in the early 2000s. Obviously, this has regained traction, though, in the unregulated wilderness of TikTok.

Beyond using TikTok as a moneymaking platform, all the guys seemed to regard the app as a social and political godsend. Again and again throughout the weekend, they rhapsodize about TikTok as though it were a conduit for sustained grassroots movements. “When I was younger,” Brandon, who is nineteen, says, “I didn’t have this much perspective on the world. I didn’t get to see everyone’s opinions on things. What was it? Just the news? Facebook? As a kid, I didn’t have a TikTok. I wasn’t an eight-year-old kid with a TikTok seeing what everyone else is seeing. Now everyone feels like they have a voice, and I think that’s what people are afraid of.”

“Wait,” I say. “Who do you think is afraid?”

“The government,” Brandon says.

“You think the government is scared?” I ask.

“Yeah, because on TikTok we have voices,” Brandon says. “We’re a whole nation of voices. That poo poo’s scary.”

Chase, the media liaison and self-described “influencing professor,” agrees. Later that day, he will tell me that “we’ve been kind of lucky to have these outlets across the last few months because we’ve been more exposed to what’s really going on.” For instance, just a few weeks ago, he was at home scrolling through his phone as a ritual of pre-sleep entertainment, at which point he stumbled upon “some kind of documentary” about the apparently rampant levels of Satanism in the U.S. entertainment industry. The documentary offered a detailed exegesis of demonic iconography, which supposedly many directors embed in their TV shows and movies. “It freaked me out, one hundred percent,” Chase says, “because I’ve seen those types of things—those signs and symbols—in these entertainment people’s offices, and so then to see this documentary and to start putting the pieces together, I mean, it’s nuts, man.”

At this point, I nonchalantly inquire as to whether Chase could maybe brandish his smartphone and pull up the video in question, and I’m soon made to view something called “Out of Shadows,” which has been posted on YouTube by an account called—I poo poo you not—Thinqing QAnon. Later, when I ask Chase whether he’s ever heard about the QAnon conspiracy, he says no, but explains that the video must be legit because “it’s gotten deleted multiple times off the internet, which is insane.” Epistemologically, this is where we are as a country: when content gets expurgated because of blatant misinformation, it is taken as a sure sign of that source’s truthfulness.

quote:

Not to sound like an English professor or anything, but as a professor of English, I can’t help thinking of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin suggests that fascistic governments aim to maintain the status quo by providing citizens with the means to express themselves aesthetically without reforming their lives materially. Thus the aforementioned government that Brandon thinks TikTokers have scared shitless actually, as Benjamin writes, “sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses—but on no account granting them rights.”

More to the point, any countercultural voltage these influencers purport to possess gets nullified by the fact that they have clear incentives not to talk about controversial matters, lest they get dropped by their brands.

“I don’t talk about politics at all,” Brandon says. “It’s like there’s always another opinion. It’s always better to be neutral. I feel like everybody avoids politics on social media. Besides that, though, everyone feels like they have a voice.”

ekuNNN posted:

An incredibly depressingbut also very funny article about influencer culture: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/

quote:

“Yo, Hitler invented sex dolls.”

ekuNNN posted:

An incredibly depressingbut also very funny article about influencer culture: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/

ekuNNN posted:

An incredibly depressingbut also very funny article about influencer culture: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/

RavenousScoot posted:

I'm not going to look into what this is and just assume it's divorce made easy via app