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Young Chincoteague ponies wrestle on Chincoteague Island, part of Virginia's Eastern Shore, in the 1970s. 

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES L. STANFIELD, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

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SO many men think they’re hyper intellectual, hyper sexual, worldly connoisseurs of art and pleasure … nah man, you’re just another shlub jerking it to mass produced, brainrotting, rape on camera.

Your tastes are lazy, your skill is nonexistent, you have no actual charisma or charm or influence on people, you just are pushy and disregard consent. They think they are seductive and interesting when nothing could be further from the truth, they will never be as likable and desirable as us. Fun, beauty, pleasure, art… the average man is so ugly and boring like it pisses me off that women are made to be so much more insecure than men

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Men are horrible leaders in every context whether it’s at home, in companies or in politics because they never had to earn it. It was always given to them by gender roles, culture, and religion. Why would they bother to acquire skills for leadership, when they were always told they were good at it by virtue of simply being a man? Why would they bother to be good leaders when it will always be them who lead, no matter how many wars male leaders start, how many people die of war or poverty, and how many people suffer from injustice? The result of their leadership is irrelevant because men will always lead despite being horrifically bad at it. Hence, any woman in any leadership position is always guaranteed to be 10x better than any man in her same level and higher. A female leader has to be kind and compassionate while also being pragmatic and logical, but a male leader just have to be a man.

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The Dancing Palm Tree Barbara Walker. 1968

More Vintage Nigerian photos

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The Contessa's Coiffure – Plans in Detail (Contessa Consuelo Crespi). Photo by Federico for Vogue.

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the amerikkkan masses of adolph treatlers explain trump’s tariffs. if amerikkkans can’t consume products, they may possibly do one million 9/11’s on the white house, regardless of political affiliation. godspeed, my fellow workkkers.

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Hyperfocus on steel as 'cheap looking material' - OMA / Rem Koolhaas. The construction of the former Netherlands Dance Theatre (circa 1985?). The Hague, the Netherlands. Demolished in 2015.

Taken from the architect's website.

Bonus: our royal family likes to open new buildings, sometimes they forget when they already did that 3 times on the same spot.

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boys and young men are probably unhappy in part bc they don’t cultivate healthy hobbies as much as they used to. so many are scrolling and watching porn and playing mindless multiplayer video games instead. and they whine girls won’t date them? when i was a teenager, most boys wanted to impress girls and differentiate themselves, so they learned to play the guitar or skateboard or got into photography or old movies or started playing a sport or got involved with a club or whatever. and in the process of doing so they found other boys AND girls to be friends with. even if they didn’t find a girlfriend, they got a sense of belonging and personal satisfaction and pride and community out of what they pursued. like no you’re not going to get that if you get home from school and just frantically scroll hatecrime.com for eight hours? “uhhhh i feel bad” no shit idiot. where is your dad??? cuz he should be telling you this shit. fucking checked-out gen X

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My brother in law and I got together and developed a new theory of American presidential elections.

Going back to at least Reagan (and arguably to Kennedy), American elections are decided based on entertainment value. You can reliably predict the outcome of decades of elections through this lens.

Entertainment value has three main subcategories:

The candidate who is most physically attractive usually wins.

The candidate who has more "star power" - who plays better in or more effectively utilizes the media of the time to establish a sort of quasi-celebrity status - usually wins.

The Funny Factor - the election outcome that would be funnier/more entertaining if it didn't have deadly serious real-world implications is usually the outcome. If we imagine US elections as a television show, what makes for a more interesting plotline?

All three are equally important, and it's rare for a candidate to win on one alone. A candidate who has all three will always win.

1980, Reagan v. Carter. Reagan is better looking than Carter. Reagan is an actor and literal celebrity with a lifetime of playing to the cameras, Carter is a mild-mannered, borderline melancholy dude. Plus, it's funny for an actor who was famous for acting alongside a monkey to be president of the USA.

1984, Reagan v. Mondale. Mondale is arguably slightly better looking. Reagan doesn't quite have the star power he once had, but as a popular incumbent, he still has more than Mondale. Plus, now Reagan has dementia, and that has the funny factor.

1988, Bush Sr v. Dukakis. This is arguably the one that doesn't quite fit. Dukakis is definitely better looking than Bush. But I wasn't alive during 1988, so I don't know which one had better star power or the funny factor. However, Bush Sr.'s sheer, unadulterated spookery is a confounding variable. Notably, he's a one-term president. Because....

1992, Bush Sr. v. Clinton. Clinton wins soundly on all three counts. He's a handsome, funny hillbilly who plays saxophone on late-night talk shows, going up against a spook. Bush Sr. didn't have a chance.

1996, Clinton v. Bob Dole. Clinton continues to win on all three counts, with the additional "popular incumbent" perk. (Although I was two years old for this election and idk if Dole might have had more of a funny factor.)

2000, Bush Jr. v Gore. Both candidates put in a strong show here. Neither really has the edge in physical attractiveness. Both candidates would have been funny. But Bush took the slight edge in media play, because although he wasn't exactly well-spoken, he was very charismatic and entertaining in the media. There's also all the other messy stuff about this election that confound the variables a bit. But at the end of the day, I think we have to admit that Bush Jr. was more entertaining than Gore.

2004, Bush Jr v. Kerry. First of all, Bush is a wartime incumbent. Kerry would have had to blow him out of the water on all three counts to win this. And he did not. Kerry was arguably a little better looking. But by this point, Bush was the memeable president, with endless stupid malapropisms and dumb faces, and keeping him in charge is funnier than handing it over to Kerry, who was a bit of a robot.

2008, Obama v. McCain. Obama is significantly better looking than John McCain. Obama becomes the first president to leverage social media as part of his campaign, utterly dominating this new media form. Plus, electing the first black president is funnier/more entertaining. A win on all three counts.

2012, Obama v. Romney. Obama has the popular incumbent buff to star power. Obama's better looking than Romney. Romney can't beat him in media play. Romney actually had the funny factor, though. Electing the first Mormon president would have been hilarious. But not funny enough to overcome Obama's star power and physical attractiveness.

2016, Trump v. Clinton. Neither really wins on attractiveness. But Trump utterly dominates in media play. He combines the Reagan approach of a lifetime in front of cameras with the Obama approach of dominating social media, and that's a potent combination. Plus, he had the funny factor by a long shot. What's more entertaining - a lifelong establishment politician with appropriate qualifications, or a buffoonish reality star?

2020, Trump v. Biden. Yes, Trump is the incumbent. But he's not funny/entertaining anymore. His irreverant narcissism isn't funny when people are dying. Biden is better looking than Trump. And Biden takes a shot at the crown for memeability. He'd spent the entire Obama administration as the memeable VP, Diamond Joe Biden, the big fucking deal. He capitalizes on that hard. It's a close calculation, because Trump still has a lot of latent star power and he's still posting like a madman. But Biden wins out on attractiveness and the funny factor. Because while a reality TV star in the White House was funny once, now it's funnier to see him pay for his hubris, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.

And that brings us to 2024. What's the prediction for Trump vs. Harris based on this theory?

Trump has mostly lost his star power. Being kicked off Twitter and refusing to return killed his domination of social media. That said, he might still have enough latent star power to even the odds. Harris is a lot better looking. Harris also has her own rising star power, with clips of her speeches becoming popular Tiktok audios, multiple celebrity endorsements from some of the hottest stars, and a memeable "fun aunt" vibe. Harris doesn't quite have the funny factor, though. That has to go to Trump - the most controversial president in modern history pulling a Grover Cleveland while facing dozens of felony charges makes for an interesting plotline, probably more interesting than the first female president.

But people are also kinda tired of the Trump plotline, even more so than they were in 2020. Trump's bargain-bin tyrant shtick is really not funny when his followers start electing gallows on the National Mall. Americans want a show, not a civil war. It might be funnier to watch the Trump plotline resolve with a former US president in federal prison while America elects its first female president directly on the heels of overturning Roe. So the funny factor could go either way here.

I'd say this could easily go either way. Harris utterly dominates in attractiveness, but she probably can't win on that alone. That said, there are only a few cases of elections since Kennedy where a less attractive candidate won the election. And this isn't a case of a slightly better looking old white guy. This is a Kennedy v. Nixon level of attractiveness differential. It's impossible to tell if Trump has enough star power left over to overshadow Harris, or if Americans are more interested in a comeback or a comeuppance.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

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White men trying to get clout for saying they hate white women on Twitter is driving me insane sir we have seen the domestic violence statistics we know you feel that way

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Now that I’m remembering the truscum/transmed vs toocute trans wars of the 2010s, it’s so fucking crazy the transmeds lost lmao. Like unanimously, they got fully cancelled 😭 That peaked me so bad, they were legit the only rational part of the movement and got cancelled for not validating and coddling every delusional chronically online 14 year old

This is like if when Tess Holiday, someone who explicitly does not meet the anorexia diagnostic requirements, got a warm welcome when she said she was anorexic and everyone who said otherwise got cancelled lol. Luckily that didn’t happen, because even with the brain matter literally rotting away, the eating disorder community somehow manages to be continue to be more rational

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carlos miele ss06

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kaifeng开封, henan province in china by 逃离浪浪山

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Richard Teschner • Puppet, 1916

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MINHO | Waterbomb 🔥 [Cr x x x ]

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Schmerzensmann IV by Berlinde De Bruyckere 2006