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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • The Y chromosome does a bit more than just carry the SRY gene.

    There is a condition where a father’s SRY gene gets transfered to the X chromosome of a sperm, resulting in a child who is XX and SRY positive. [0]

    In all known cases, such men are infertile. Fertility treatment is the main source of diagnoses for this, as that is typically the only symptom.

    [0] This is de la Chapelle syndrome, although that syndrome also covers an even rarer situation of an XX SRY-negative child developing as a male.


    There is also Swyer syndrome where an XY individual develops as a female (typically due to a defact in SRY). Such individuals general do not go through natural puberty and require hormone therapy.










  • Going well beyond my competencies to answer, but I think a lot of it comes down to monotheism changing the nature of god.

    Judaism thinks of itself as starting monotheism; and that is largely true. However, the old testament is still littered with vestiges of it’s polytheistic origins.

    If there are multiple God’s, then those God’s will come into conflict. That is simply the nature of human storytelling.

    Looking at the old Testament, probably the most violent God has been was during exodus. In addition to freeing the Jews, he smite the Egyptians with 10 plagues, among which was the death of all firstborn sons.

    For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. (Exodus 12:12)

    Note the polytheistic origins of this story. God is not merely intervening in the Earthly affairs of us lowly humans. The Jewish God is fighting with the Egyptian gods. He does not have the luxury of being nice and good. Even if he wins this fight without resorting to such drastic measures; he still needs to do so to act as a deterrent against other gods acting against him. That is not so much a specific tactical calculation in this case, but the way humans tend to imagine polytheistic gods working (reflective, of course, of the way human conflict tends to work).

    It probably doesn’t help that Yahweh was the god of War before becoming the only God.

    By the time we get to the new testament, the situation is different. Beyond merely declaring that their god is the only God, the early Christians believed it, and had believed it for generations of storytelling. Their view of God had shed the vestiges of polytheism and morphed into what is truly possible under monotheism. God can be good because he lacks a peer rival. There is no narrative reason for God to be mean, because he can simply win any direct confrontation he faces.

    We see similar dynamics play out in modern story telling. When we have vastly overpowered characters, the nature of the conflicts they get in us not fights. Perhaps they are trying to mediate between lesser parties. Perhaps they want to get something while respecting the rights and interests in weaker parties. A story where a vastly superior force wants something and just takes it is boring; so we don’t tell it.


  • There’s a couple of things going on.

    The big one is just a massive selection bias in what people take pictures of. I know how to do a functional tie to restrain someone’s hands and feet. I do it plenty. But if there’s going to be pictures, I’m going to go for something more visually impressive.

    There is also a constraint aspect in addition to the restraint. A common type of tie is a rope harness that goes around your torso without actually restraining any of your limbs. In addition to the aesthetic, it also squeezes you, which is kind of like wearing a hug.

    As far as restraints go, it is surprisingly difficult to fully restrain arms/hands. A simple binding of the wrists leaves a lot of room to maneuver; and unless you are actively trying to pull your hands apart, barely feels like you are restrained at all. Finding a tie that really restraining and holds up [0] against all the wiggling your subject will do is difficult and tends to follow one of a few forms.

    Other people don’t particularly care for the being tied part as much as the getting tied part. It can be a rather intimate experience with how close the top needs to be to your body, and the constant tension they maintain through the rope across your body.

    And, of course, there are the type of people who are interested in the aesthetics. They tend to be the ones most interested in pictures.

    [0] I almost include safe in this list. But given that the tie shown in this picture is probably the most popular, I cannot in good conscience say that.


  • Of course they collect content you upload. How else do you think they maintain a chat history so people can see what was said while they were offline?

    I see nothing in the privacy policy that says they can sell the data. There is, however, things that allow them to share the data with 3rd parties, including bot developers. Having developed Discord bots, I can tell you that you can get pretty unrestricted access (with the server owners cooperation) until you have been added to a bunch of servers (at which point you need Discord approval to get things like message content)