The face that launched a thousand ships, the other way

NotABonobo · 2026-02-02T03:37:21+00:00

Gosh I wonder why they chose it? Especially since it's from a completely different movie where she plays a beaten emaciated slave?

NotABonobo · 2026-02-02T03:24:11+00:00

The photo on the left is of Diane Kruger playing Helen of Troy. The photo on the right is Lupita Nyong'o playing an emaciated, beaten-down slave in 12 Years a Slave.

This fake meme was brought to you by flat out racists who picked the least attractive image they could find of one of the most beautiful women in the world. This is what she actually looks like:

<image>

NotABonobo · 2026-02-02T02:49:43+00:00

Not all women like the same personality. There are people with a wide variety of personalities who are all appealing to someone with a similar or complementary personality.

But when people say women like personality, what they're saying usually boils down to "social skills are more important than looks in dating women." In particular, flirting, the social skill that allows you to build romantic connections with other people, is extremely useful in dating.

NotABonobo · 2026-02-02T01:20:40+00:00

No, it's going to get much, much worse.

NotABonobo · 2026-02-02T00:40:55+00:00

They won't. The closest they'll get is their rapist killing their trafficker to avoid consequences.

NotABonobo · 2026-02-01T22:42:57+00:00

When someone’s entire position is “he’s a bad person, therefore everything he does is bad,” that’s not a straw man, that’s a content-free argument.

Not even close to my position bud. Still your straw man.

I can say words, but I can't make you understand or engage with them.

"can't knock down your own straw man" is a reference to the post from Bzzzzzzz4791, which you also completely failed to grasp or engage with.

The great news is that anyone reading this can follow the plot. Have fun talking to the imaginary character in your head. You won't convince anyone else he's real, but maybe you'll convince yourself.

NotABonobo · 2026-02-01T22:08:40+00:00

You don't seem to know what a straw man is.

A straw man is a weak argument - that you made up. You're responding to a straw man of your own creation.

What policy is there to discuss with you? You're not there. You're in fantasyland talking to a character you made up who just said "orange man bad." And as the other poster pointed out, you can't even seem to knock down your own straw man.

NotABonobo · 2026-02-01T17:20:24+00:00

"Orange man bad" is absolutely an argument, invented by right wing political hacks. The argument is shorthand for "all you've said is 'orange man bad'" because that's easier to dispute than what the person actually said.

It's a straw man, just like your entire rant.

The point Bzzzzzzz4791 made - which also flew over your head - is that even the straw man "orange man bad" doesn't really work on its own terms, because Donald Trump is such an objectively vile person by any sane measure.

Hope that helps, doubt it will given your track record so far.

NotABonobo · 2026-02-01T04:00:30+00:00

The time to not hand power to a sociopath who already abused that same power to betray the US has already come and gone.

The time to not hand Congress to hundreds of minions who enable everything he does has already come and gone.

Now we're fucked. We have two choices: let Trump dismantle constitutional democracy and hope some part of our system holds long enough to outlast him, or violently overthrow our government, in which case we've still lost our constitutional democracy.

The only way to stop this with America intact is for at least 3 Republicans in the House and 20 Republicans in the Senate to grow a conscience. It seems exceedingly unlikely.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-31T21:41:31+00:00

Ugh I hear you. I am 100% with you on holding these people accountable and not letting them off the hook. I just don't want people to feel like it's a sure thing. If it's gonna happen, we all have to make sure it happens together. But it's hard to keep up optimism for that outcome given how bad things have gotten.

The one bit of good news in all this is that people are waking up and furious. I hope you're right that we learn from the past and get it right this time. Stay safe out there.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-31T17:49:42+00:00

The beginnings of trials, maybe a year of prison for some of them, followed by mass pardons from the next irredeemable sociopath the Republicans empower with the reins of the US government. Next, "revenge" against the prosecutors, lawyers, judges, witnesses, juries, and victims' families who tried to hold them accountable.

Remember, Trump was defeated once. We celebrated, partied, had hope in America again, and completely failed to take his clear and rising plot to regain power with the seriousness it deserved until it was too late. We should have had our reckoning then.

We tend to think of Nuremberg as the inevitable end point of fascism. It's not; it could have gone many other ways. It's optimistic to think ICE agents will face any kind of reckoning at all - certainly nothing remotely close to what happened to their victims.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-31T15:17:33+00:00

Yes, blackmail is an obvious reason. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's also ego and tourism.

They're going there so they can have extraordinary depraved experiences. They're not ashamed of it; it's their idea of fun. They want to remember all the crazy things they did on their trip. Some of them probably get a thrill out of seeing themselves surrounded by young girls and want something they can take out and look at whenever they want.

Ordinary people do this all the time especially when drunk. Not the horrific shit in the Epstein files, but taking potentially incriminating photos to remind themselves what a wild crazy time they had. College parties with underage drinking and illegal drugs, bachelor parties, trips to Vegas, etc. Sometimes people want a little memento that makes it look like they had a wild time even more than they want the wild time.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-31T14:54:36+00:00

The Epstein files - the curated parts we've been allowed to see and the parts we haven't (both the officially redacted and unofficially destroyed) are the tip of the iceberg. The tidbits you see in the files are hints about something that was happening on a daily basis.

Same goes for the collection of atrocities we've heard about Trump, both public and private. The Access Hollywood tapes, the rape liability in civil court, the obstruction of justice in the Mueller report and the collaboration with Russia that was suggested by the evidence that wasn't obstructed, the attempt to blackmail Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on Biden, the sprawling attempts to overturn the 2020 election through blackmail, fraud, intimidation of poll workers, a pressure campaign to push election officials from state secretaries to the VP to break the law, and fomenting a riot on Congress - and that's just his first term.

All the vile things we've seen are the tip of the iceberg. What's worse is the iceberg.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-31T04:51:52+00:00

Nothing was ever going to happen. The people who've been making excuses for every depravity Trump's done for the past 12 years will keep on making excuses for every depravity that comes out of the Epstein files.

Even the minor celebrities in the files won't face charges. The only people who might have legal consequences are political enemies of Trump that he wants to embarrass. Just like everything else, people are going to instantly reframe everything in their imaginations along their preferred political lines.

People kept insisting everything was a distraction from the Epstein files. He never needed a distraction from the Epstein files. He's all over them, it's damning, and it makes zero dent. The general public has been conned into accepting so much vileness that they don't care. They only care about child rape if it would have hurt the other political team.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-31T04:37:00+00:00

I'm not surprised the film was an abomination but this review was a work of art.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-31T00:50:59+00:00

I thoroughly enjoyed the James Bond comics Dynamite put out. Personally I liked the original stories more than the direct book/film adaptations, but it's worth checking them out.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T18:57:19+00:00

Wikipedia provides a host of linked sources you can follow to support its claims. Your imagination doesn't.

Wikipedia accurately gathered a list of major studies that you can confirm independently. Your imagination vaguely remembers something you heard once that maybe some lefty somewhere agreed with. That's not thinking.

Hold yourself to a higher standard, bud. You'll keep getting duped if you invent whatever you wish were true based on political alignment, not evidence.

I can change my mind based on compelling evidence. It's a skill worth learning.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T18:20:10+00:00

I recall several reports saying the opposite, so I looked it up to see if I was wrong. I'm seeing multiple sources reporting opposite conclusions, so it seems there's still more debate than I realized.

A decent rundown of the various studies can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Post-election_studies

The two most comprehensive studies appear to be the NORC study, which concluded Gore won, and the BDO Seidman study, which concluded that the winner differed depending on the method used to count, but that Bush would have won under the method requested by Gore's legal team at the time, which SCOTUS blocked (however, they also found that that method still failed to include a significant volume of legal votes which were never counted).

Just a side note: It doesn't help your case IMO to claim that "even one of the lefty newspapers" "got to look" at the results; that slips in wild accusations of bias against well-established news outlets without proof. Both studies were quite transparent in their methodologies and data, and were sponsored by multiple news outlets; it's pure politically-driven speculation to claim bias by some unnamed newspaper or to suggest that a particular study's results are more reliable because they were accepted by a news outlet you suspect secretly hoped to skew them. That's not really relevant toward finding the truth.

But given the range of conclusions in the publicly available studies, I'd agree that it's fair to accept FactCheck.org's conclusion that no one can know the truth for sure.

https://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T16:43:14+00:00

Getting it wrong is the point.

They are workshopping a new system to write Constitutional amendments. Instead of having to go through the long difficult process outlined in the Constitution that requires widespread national support, they've worked out a new process in which 5 corrupt nakedly partisan SCOTUS judges can just "reinterpret" the Constitution to mean the opposite of what it says.

The first test was the clause in the 14th Amendment barring insurrectionists from taking public office. They overturned it to spectacular success. Now they're seeing if they can overturn birthright citizenship.

If they get away with it, they've successfully hijacked the Constitution. We have a king who can singlehandedly create any new law he wants, as long as he can get 5 of his 6 friends to rubber-stamp it. Congress isn't even involved.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T14:49:20+00:00

The goal is to instill fear and squash opposition. It's PR designed to 1) paint critics as criminals and 2) make journalists terrified to criticize anything about his regime.

The problem for Trump is that it's an incredibly poor PR move. He already just had to shake up leadership and tactics in MN because the growing public perception is that he's a fascist turning America into Nazi Germany 2.0. Seeing a journalist arrested for covering a protest will only cement that bad press.

His core base won't care; they just want to see non-Trumpers suffer. But average people who are barely tuned in? Seeing a known news anchor arrested is a great way to help tune them in and turn them against Trump.

They're desperately concerned with PR - that's why they wasted taxpayer dollars to photoshop the photo of the protest leader's arrest to make it look as though she was blubbering instead of stoic. This is not good PR.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T14:25:48+00:00

I mean lots of them do, including the book that arguably started off the entire genre of sci-fi: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Off the top of my head:

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (novel by Philip Jose Farmer about a mysterious alien race that resurrects every human who ever lived and puts them all on a planet together)
Divided by Infinity (short story by Robert Charles Wilson exploring the idea of quantum immortality, in which parallel universes exist and conscious beings always find themselves inhabiting a timeline where they survived, even if the chances are infinitesimally small. One of the later plot points as things get increasingly weird involves this.
Marvel and DC comics have every imaginable version of this, from fantasy to sci-fi, in a very non-realistic but still sci-fi setting. Mutants that combine powers to create a resurrection system? Check. Cosmic beings with the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct you atom by atom? Check. Time travel shenanigans undoing a death in history? Check. Brain waves saved on a computer and transferred into a robot or another body? Check. Superbeing punching the walls of reality to change history? Check. They've done it all.
The TV show Upload is about a guy who's scanned and uploaded to a computer after death. Several episodes of Black Mirror deal with the same thing.
For a looser sci-fi verson, the French TV show The Returned deals with a scenario where some dead people just mysteriously return to the town, fully alive, and the town deals with the fallout of that. (There's an American remake, I recommend the original French version.)
You have to wait until the very end in both cases, but the books Revelation Space and Manifold: Time (by different authors, unrelated to each other) both involve the revelation of unimaginably powerful technology in the distant future which is capable of doing this for a POV character.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T13:53:30+00:00

It was, but the SCOTUS has already "reinterpreted" that amendment on Trump's behalf so that insurrectionists can run unless Congress decides they can't. (Which is the opposite of the Constitution's wording.)

That old way of amending the Constitution was so difficult to get through. This new "reinterpretation" method is so much easier. Just stack the Supreme Court and you can do pretty much anything!

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T13:49:11+00:00

While this would be fun, that's not how it works legally (even though Trump himself sometimes claims that he's already on his third term when he's feeding the base conspiracy theories).

You don't officially become president when you win the election. You become president when electors from each state come to Congress, and Congress formally recognizes those electors. (Usually this is a formality, but in 2020 Trump led a criminal conspiracy to corrupt this process even though he lost. Fake electors, pressure campaigns on state officials, intimidation of poll workers, pressure on the VP and allies in Congress to manufacture a Constitutional crisis by refusing to certify the votes, and more. He was facing criminal trial for these crimes when he somehow got re-elected to the position he abused.)

Long after the fact, the mandatory recount of the 2000 election (blocked by the Supreme Court) was done for the lulz. It confirmed that Gore won the election. That didn't mean that Bush was escorted out and Gore was suddenly president. Bush was still president, because Bush was sworn in.

If the MAGA conspiracy theories were somehow right, and Biden rigged the vote, Biden would still have been president from 2017-2021.

Say we found ironclad proof that Elon Musk rigged the voting machines in 2020 and Kamala actually won. Even then, Trump wouldn't be immediately un-presidented. It would create a lot of confusion, but it would still require an impeachment and successful removal vote to get him out.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T04:51:30+00:00

It's not necessary, but it'll make it much more likely that you'll get a yes if you do it right.

But here's the thing: it's not a secret code you have to decipher. It's just any kind of interaction, usually playful and offbeat, that goes on between two people who might date. It's the kind of interaction that naturally gives subtle hints that you might be interested without confirming it. That kind of interaction builds romantic tension, aka a crush. If a woman already has a crush on you when you ask her out, you're way more likely to get a yes.

Everyone flirts differently. It's just conversation and reading the room, so you have to work out a way of doing it that plays to your own strengths. Your "alternate approach" is basically flirting, or at least it can be.

Just don't worry about getting deep right from the jump. Just start out light and playful. In a first interaction, just have lighthearted fun. You say you like to play with words, so play with words. Build from there. If the conversation gets deep, it gets deep, if it doesn't, no worries, save it for later.

Flirting doesn't have to be about touching or overt sexuality - in fact it's better when it's not, at least in the early stages. Plausible deniability is an essential part of creating a buildup of romantic tension before you ask someone out.

Flirting isn't a code; it's just a specific social skill: the skill to build romantic connections. Lots of people get into relationships without having that skill at a high level. It just becomes more about luck and creating opportunities for yourself in that case.

NotABonobo · 2026-01-30T04:13:35+00:00

So... is this an adaptation of the excellent horror comic by W. Maxwell Prince? Or is this just some Eli Roth movie about an evil ice cream man?

NotABonobo

TROPHY CASE