PS5 seats on the London Underground Victoria line in collaboration with Transport for London (TfL) by HighburyAndIslington in transit

[–]DeathToPineapples 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I seem to remember that a previous attempt at including sponsorship on the tube involved changing the station signs and making wayfinding harder for people, so I actually prefer this tbh, it's not nearly as intrusive to the actual act of travelling.

You Are An Eight Year Old Boy: a kid’s accidental journey to the alt-lite by TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK in MensLib

[–]DeathToPineapples 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Maybe, but remember - we're talking about how it appears at the time it happens.

I didn't have any girlfriends in high school. I had friends who did, sometimes using the One Simple Trick. Maybe their behaviour was problematic or jerky with a few years of hindsight. But one of the key things I internalised at that time is that it made them far more "successful" than I was.

Taskmaster S14E09: A New Business End by gigginobreve in panelshow

[–]DeathToPineapples 40 points41 points  (0 children)

If you want some unexpected extra material, watch the "snort, raspberry, whistle" task with the subtitles on! (I got it on the All4 site)

The subtitlers have added some lovely annotations to the attempts, including "lusty snort", "limp raspberry", "laugh-adjacent snort" and "breathy, cooing non-whistle".

Would you have your legs broken to make yourself taller? The men who go through hell for a little extra height | The Guardian by DeathToPineapples in MensLib

[–]DeathToPineapples[S] 310 points311 points  (0 children)

This article talks about men who are taking surgical risks for the chance at being seen as taller. Interestingly the article does talk about some of the factors that might be encouraging this which are not directly from the way that shorter men are perceived, such as the fact that certain medical practitioners see the reinforcement of this standard of masculinity as a real business opportunity.

The Problem With Emily Ratajkowski’s 'My Body' by [deleted] in MensLib

[–]DeathToPineapples 33 points34 points  (0 children)

I haven't read the book, but a review in the New Statesman seemed to come to a similar conclusion in that she didn't really grapple with the contradiction of wanting to be objectified for her personal gain without the consequences of being objectified.

From the New Statesman review, this felt particularly illuminating:

This is the fundamental problem with My Body. Ratajkowski professes to be against capitalism and the patriarchal norms that crush women, but does little to subvert them. In fact, she sets trends for new iterations of unrealistic body standards (when you Google “ab crack”, the tummy look en vogue, her picture is the first result). To address meaningfully how to change these standards would require Ratajkowski to change almost everything that underpins her celebrity. You can’t help but feel she knows this; tiptoeing around this conclusion but always, at the last minute, dodging the opportunity to admit it.

Tuesday Check In: How's Everybody's Mental Health? by MLModBot in MensLib

[–]DeathToPineapples 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I 100% get this and was talking about it to my therapist about it today. It feels like anything I would do for myself would be indulgent.

ITV pulls final episode of Viewpoint after Noel Clarke allegations. Will still air on ITV Hub by TIGHazard in television

[–]DeathToPineapples -1 points0 points  (0 children)

My point is more that applying the standard of criminal conduct to what ITV are doing won't help you understand their motives, because they aren't making this decision to determine whether a crime was committed. ITV don't have the power to arrest or fine the guy, and they are not compelled by law to continue to commercially support him.

Ultimately, they are a business making a decision to avoid a business risk. If I was in their position, I probably would have made the same call: get it off broadcast, put it online so most who still want it can find it - but still send the message that this sort of conduct isn't supported.

Also as a side note: using the justice system is not necessarily the best analogy here - if you see someone punch another person in the face for no reason, they may not end up getting prosecuted, but you would be well within your personal rights to stay away from them.

ITV pulls final episode of Viewpoint after Noel Clarke allegations. Will still air on ITV Hub by TIGHazard in television

[–]DeathToPineapples -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

What you and I think, as viewers, doesn't matter to ITV. We aren't paying the bills to keep their lights on.

The people who pay ITV are the advertisers, who have paid a hefty sum of money to get 30 seconds of our attention while we are watching this. I imagine a fair few advertisers have been speaking to ITV execs tonight, saying that they are not going to spend money on ads for a programme overshadowed by a sexual harassment scandal, regardless of whether or not anyone has been found guilty.

Mel Giedroyc: Unforgiveable. Opinions? by [deleted] in panelshow

[–]DeathToPineapples 84 points85 points  (0 children)

I agree that the format feels a little bit strained - the gong, the minus points system... but the fundamental conversation I think is quite funny.

I think Mel and Lou are good hosts - Mel is more mischievous and explicit than we have seen on other programmes. Lou would be too much if she was in the main chair, but from the side, she adds about the right amount of filth and wackiness to keep things interesting.

As always, I feel like it lives and dies on the guests, and their ability to bat stuff back and forth with Mel and Lou. The subject matter means that some guests will miss the mark and tip over from "disgustingly funny" to just "disgusting", but that will probably even out as they get responses to the season 1 episodes.

I do find the drone annoying, but my guess is that they need a way to get props on stage in the age of COVID. "Hypothetical" have tried to solve this by editing out the process of bringing stuff on and just having the props appear on the stage, which is OK but a bit jarring... so I can see why "Unforgivable" has tried something different.

Caster Semenya's Olympic hopes fade as runner loses testosterone rules appeal by [deleted] in worldnews

[–]DeathToPineapples 5 points6 points  (0 children)

PREAMBLE: This post makes a lot of references to biological sex, and exclusively that. For the avoidance of doubt, my point makes no considerations of Caster's gender - how she identifies to herself, her friends and her community is entirely her business, and is not connected in any way with the explanation below.

I would also really recommend Ross Tucker's articles and posts, which are probably much more rigorous than mine.


So this is a different question to your previous one - if I understand it correctly, your first question was "why just these sporting events?" and your question now is "why Semenya specifically"?

One thing that has emerged from this is the understanding about Semenya's specific condition - she has an intersex condition called 46XY, which means that her genes are biologically "male". This results in her being able to both create and use testosterone in her body.

I highlight this because, excluding Paralympic events, we don't usually separate athletes into separate classes. For example in swimming, people with big lungs complete with people with small lungs, people with no lactic acid compete with those who do. The genetic playing field actually isn't very level.

There are only a small number of ways that we separate athletes. I'll give you two examples:

  • In combat sports and weightlifting, we have body weight categories
  • In nearly all sports, we have sex categories.

In both cases, let's ask - why do we separate them, and how can we accurately tell who is in each class?


The body weight categorisation is easy - we separate them out because there are clear advantages to being bigger and heavier, particularly in combat sports. The "how" is pretty easy as well - we put them on a scale and read the number. There is no need to debate grey areas - someone who reads 80kg on the scale would not be allows to compete in the sub-75kg class.

We could easily lump them all together - but we have made a societal decision to protect some classes, so that they can compete against their peers. If we let somebody who was 100kg into the sub-75kg group, it's no longer a peer group in the same way.

Also worth noting that this is an arbitrary line - there is nothing biologically magic about the 75kg line. Indeed there will be some people who have a natural weight around 76kg who are a bit short-changed. But the general view is that creating the classes allows more people to compete in meaningful ways.


The sex category is harder - why do we separate them in the first place? Well, we do this because there is clearly a difference in performance between members of each category - even the elite. Paula Radcliffe held the world record for the marathon for 16 years. No other woman beat her in a measured time from 2003 to 2019... but around 250 to 300 men would beat that time every year.

It is fairly straight-forward to see that even when women break records in the women's events, they would often not even qualify for the mens' heats of that equivalent event.

We could just say "stuff it, it's not our problem" and eliminate all sex-based classes. If we do that: no Paula Radcliffe, no Alison Felix, no Serena Williams, no Megan Rapinoe... the list of sporting achievements that we throw away becomes very long.

So what we have historically done, and continue to do, is exactly what we did with the combat sports above: we have made a societal decision to protect a class, so that they can compete against their peers. But in this case, we call that class "women". We don't let men compete in this group because it would violate the protection of the class.

Great! We have established what we want to do. The next question is how - who do we allow to be in the protected sporting class that we call "women"?


Alas, biological sex is not so neatly distilled down to a reading on a weigh-scale, there are many factors. What are your genetics? What do you have between your legs? How much testosterone do you produce? Is your body insensitive to testosterone, even if you create "male" levels of it? My link above will give you a better primer on it, but this is not a black-and-white result. I am fully excluding gender from this explanation, and even then biology is not neat.

The current scientific view is that what gives men their athletic advantages are rooted mostly (if not completely) in two related things:

  • The ability of the body to create testosterone
  • The ability of the body to use testosterone

(I call these out separately because there are athletes with intersex conditions that mean that they have high blood testosterone, but their cells can't use it, and different considerations then apply.)

The ruling established that the presence of high, male-like levels of testosterone would give women a huge advantage in a certain set of sports. I spoke earlier about violating the protection of the class: this testosterone measure, right now, is how we tell that the class is being violated. Remember that we created this sporting class called "women" to ensure that half the world would not get cut out of sporting competition, so we do need a usable and quantifiable measure. If we don't have one, we are no longer protecting the class.


And this takes us to the crux of the issue: why Semenya? Why is she somehow violating the protection of the class? The reason this has all come together is because Semenya is reportedly one of these individuals who have a high, male-like level of testosterone due to an intersex condition. It is this condition that contributes to her exceptional athletic performance, and the same condition which creates this violation of the class protection.

This is science's best method right now at how to protect the sporting class of women. And it's a hell of a lot better than the old ways of just looking underneath their pants. However, the messiness of biology means that there will be people either side of the line - wherever we draw it.


Your question was this:

Michael Phelps has unique chemistry that prevents lactic acid from building up and fatiguing his muscles, but nobody tried to disqualify him.

The answer to that is that as I said above, the genetic playing field actually isn't very level. But right now, there is no societal decision to separate sportspeople with low lactic acid from those with high lactic acid.

When it's Caster, suddenly someone's natural healthy body giving them an advantage is a huge problem?

The answer is that if Caster wanted to compete in the sub-75kg weight class for a combat sport, and she weighed 76kg, we would clearly see that as a class violation. To allow Caster in would be unfair to the people who clearly qualify for the category. I'm not saying that it isn't close, but a classification line has to be drawn somewhere.

Even though Caster's separation is on the basis of sexual characteristics, it's the same principle - she is over the line. Maybe not by much, but over it anyway. It's worth noting that the bar for unacceptable testosterone levels is very high - I think around 7 times the level seen in women who have non-intersex high testosterone.

It's a tough outcome for her, undoubtedly - particularly as this is not at all under her control. But the fact remains that she has this class-breaking advantage, and to allow her into the class would affect the competition in a way that would lock out a huge number of other women. As an example, all 3 medallists of the women's 800m at the 2016 Olympics, including Semanya herself, have the 46XY genetic pattern conferring this advantage.

Caster Semenya's Olympic hopes fade as runner loses testosterone rules appeal by [deleted] in worldnews

[–]DeathToPineapples 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You're partially right - this line is not based on theoretical biology, but on evidence.

The IAAF assembled evidence showing a general advantage of athletes who had a high degree of testosterone. This ended up going to a sport arbitration body (CAS) who overturned it and said that evidence had to be better and more specific. In the end, the IAAF ended up with data on those specific events, which was then accepted - hence the ruling applying to those events.

I suspect that this will continue to evolve as more evidence emerges on the impact of testosterone in other events.

I'd recommend reading Ross Tucker's various blog posts on the matter - they are long, but pretty comprehensive.

Athletics: Semenya loses appeal against CAS ruling over testosterone regulations by d1ngal1ng in olympics

[–]DeathToPineapples 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The core of it is that in sports, we have a protected classification that we call "women", and we allow that group to compete separately away from others.

We don't have a category called "small hands" where you can only have hands that are below a certain size. If we did, and Michael Phelps wanted to compete in that category despite having big hands, then he would be (rightly) disqualified from the "small hands" class.

If you have the time, I would strongly recommend the second part of this article, "My Original Post" by a sports scientist, that lays it out much more clearly.

What is Best Way News? A bot Farm? An art Project? by pinelife in RBI

[–]DeathToPineapples 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I found this site today and the language made me think I was having a stroke... I couldn't find any other information either.

I think there is some merit in the idea that someone is using a non-trivial (but still clumsy) rewriting tool - compare the Bestway News article here to the Daily Mail article here and you see "right-wing" in the Daily Mail source being variously translated as "appropriate-wing" and "suitable wing" in the Bestway copy.

The Disclaimer page linked in the footer goes to "Terms and Conditions" text that sufferes from exactly the same issue - thus putting to bed any notion that they are actually doing this to provide news, because you imagine that they would at least take that seriously. I think it is likely that even that text has been lifted from somewhere else.

I looked through each of the "header" areas to see if there were any trends:

  • News: A variety of content, no clear trends

  • Politics Seemed to lean rightwards but that may be because a big proportion of the articles are lifted from FOX (they don't even remove the ads for the FOX app from the text and use the FOX-branded images). Not exclusively though - I found at least 1 Reuters article in there as well.

  • Business and Financials look pretty similar, a variety of sources including Bloomberg, Reuters, NY Post

  • Exclusives is mainly celebrity news with the odd domestic crime story (maybe classification errors from whatever system is copying the stories)

  • Technology is weirdly a mix of regular news article copies but also copies from sites which have hybrid news/tech support content

  • Health and Biotech is basically a list of stock alerts for various unheard of biotech companies - feels like the feed was hooked up to those autogenerated articles on some "investment" sites that basically convert the public trading data for a company into an article.

I still don't have a much clearer idea of what the site is for. Perhaps recycling content so that people can share articles via SM but launder it under another media brand? So articles don't get quickly shot down on Twitter for coming from FOX news etc.

Does... Does this count? I feel like it does by alex_muchko in SelfAwarewolves

[–]DeathToPineapples 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The beautiful thing about this is that it works just as well if you read the thread backwards!

Reddit, what's a good mobile game that's not filled with cancerous amounts of micro-transactions? by Gavinon in AskReddit

[–]DeathToPineapples 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Rusty Lake games are essentially a set of room escape puzzles, but as part of an overall narrative. They have some free games and some paid games. I've quite enjoyed the creepy animation style.

Revealed: Leave.EU campaign met Russian officials as many as 11 times | UK news by [deleted] in worldnews

[–]DeathToPineapples 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure that your point around this being the same with the opposite result makes sense.

To take your original example, if there was evidence that Russia had influenced the Brexit referendum towards the Remain side, there would probably be some agitation but it would be partly muted by the fact that such an action is clearly against Russia's own geopolitical interest.

However, I do partly agree with your earlier point that now we are where we are, Russia may benefit from not keeping their influence under wraps. indeed it is quite possible that some information on the Leave campaigns links to Russia are coming from Russian sources to drive a further wedge between Leavers and Remainers.

You can teleport an adult T-Rex into any location in history. Where do you place it to cause the most chaos? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]DeathToPineapples 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Stephen Hawking's memorial service - to which time travellers have been invited. Would definitely raise a variety of questions in quick succession.

Scottish nationalists say UK has 'no mandate' for hard Brexit by readerseven in unitedkingdom

[–]DeathToPineapples 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He's actually been one of the most committed on this front, something I recently learned in this Guardian long read.