#listen i love science but in this specific scenario science can go fuck itself

[v-1enna]

ja'far: science says you're dead and gone forever

me, wiping a single tear: FUCK science man

#starkid #team starkid #twisted #twisted: the untold story of a royal vizier #ja'far #dylan saunders #aladdin #FUCK SCIENCE #listen i love science but in this specific scenario science can go fuck itself

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Am I the only one who's horny for podcasts?

May is National Masturbation Month, and we're celebrating with Feeling Yourself, a series exploring the finer points of self-pleasure.

He murmurs into your ear, his voice as soft as it is authoritative. Dazed, you don't quite hear what he's saying, but it sounds imploring, urgent — making your heart beat quicker, breath heavy, lips part. 

This isn't a sexual encounter. It's a podcast. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History to be exact. And I'm horny for it.

It's about time we all acknowledged the unspoken eroticism of podcasts (at least, certain types of them).

For enthusiasts, podcasters whisper into our ears with honey-smooth voices on a weekly if not daily basis. (Oh, don't worry, we'll get to Michael Barbaro.) As we lay in our beds alone at night, they come with us, that soothing and familiar cadence washing over us, melting the day away until it's just us ... and that voice. Podcasters are also our constant companions, drowning out the noise and stress of daily routines, turning morning commutes into immersive journeys through sumptuous soundscapes of storytelling.

For the incurably perverted like myself, they can be a wake up call to the wondrous and under-explored world of audio porn. (Apologies to the hardworking creators who may never see their work the same way, but your content is definitely serving us in more ways than one 😉.)

Everyone trying to pretend like podcasts don't get them hot.

Image: vicky leta / mashable 

The rise of the aural fixation

Those who've felt even the slightest titillation from that "aural fixation" are probably relieved to hear they're not alone. A majority of you, however, most likely feel a bit disgusted to discover that rule #34 even infects the wholesome realm of podcasting.

But inarguably, there is a unique and unmatched intimacy embedded into the medium. For more people than you imagine, that makes podcasts the perfect avenue for a more humanized and personal type of masturbation. Both in terms of everyday podcasts and those purposefully trying to get you off.

"Being able to use your imagination to fill in the blanks can be incredibly sexy when many people are used to seeing porn that looks a certain way," said Girl On The Net, a pseudonym for the sex blogger whose dulcet British tones voice some of the most popular auditory erotica on the web.

@HardcoreHistory so glad to hear your sexy voice after 2 endless months of waiting💀💉

— echo (@Alanood504) January 14, 2013

In the same way that some of us are auditory rather than visual learners, some of us are hornier for aural rather than visual porn. It's a small, but growing niche. For Girl on the Net, that's evident in how traffic to her audio porn page nearly doubled over the last year.

SEE ALSO: Podcasts were my friends when I had none

"I think people are becoming much more aware that tube sites aren’t the only place to go to get your rocks off — and I hope many are realizing tube sites aren’t the most ethical place to get your rocks off either," she said, referring to porn sites that host user generated content.

Phoebe Judge's voice is super hot. Inviting but authoritarian, a little hoarse.

— madeleine (@parietines) December 16, 2017

On subreddits alone, there are roughly 276,000 subscribers to r/gonewildaudio (for naughty recordings of yourself), 20,000 on r/GonewildAudible (for more general erotic audio needs), 25,200 on r/pillowtalkaudio (for erotic amateur recordings with consenting partners), and 68,000 on r/nsfwasmr (for sexualized ASMR, which used to be a popular tumblr, too). Similarly, there's a whole subgenre of erotic podcasts recorded with the intent of getting you off, and literotica has an entire subsection for audio. 

People are even starting to monetize on the phenomenon, including a recent app called Dipsea that hosts erotic audio stories catered to millennial women. "It’s perfect for storytelling, it’s intimate, and it’s incredibly imaginative," said Dipsea cofounder and CEO, Gina Gutierrez. "Listening to Dipsea you can feel like the voyeur, or you can become the character."

Even harder core history

I don't know when I first realized certain podcasts (always a solo host or narrator, so panel podcasters are safe) did it for me. But I remember the exact moment I discovered a voice could bring me to near orgasm, despite not having the words or understanding to know what was actually happening. 

I was watching the first Harry Potter movie in the theater, and Professor Severus Snape (played by the late, great Alan Rickman) was delivering his now iconic first year speech on the, "subtle science and exact art of potion-making." A mounting quiver ran down my spine when his tongue clung to each curve of every "s" sound in the phrase "ensnare the senses."

Snape later became the fictional man who guided me through my early sexual awakening, a fantasy that I could control through my imagination while losing myself to these newfound uncontrollable urges. A reoccurring scenario involved being blind-folded, leaving me in total sensory deprivation but for the sound of his silky voice, low and measured, describing everything he wanted to do to me.

Again, with sincerest apologies to Mr. Carlin, I was instantly brought back to those fantasies when I first started listening to Hardcore History.

The perfect boyfriend is the kind that stops talking when you press a button.

Image: vicky leta / mashable

It's not about what he's saying because, no, I do not get off to visceral descriptions of the greatest human atrocities ever recorded by man. Actually, for the process to work, the volume must be low enough for me to hear his impassioned teacherly intonations, but not so loud that I can't replace whatever he's talking about with what I actually want to hear instead. (In my defense, I do also go back and listen for the purpose of learning, too.)

To my relief, I found that I was't alone in having the hots for pods, but also that others are specifically attracted to the idea of a scholarly, silky voice teaching you things. 

"I have a huge crush on a guy who does a politics podcast I listen to a lot," said Girl on the Net, not wishing to call out a specific name (though notably, Dan Carlin also has a political podcast). "There’s something intensely hot about listening to someone more knowledgeable than me discuss a subject I’m interested in. Why else would so many people crush on teachers? You’re definitely not alone in this!"

NPR's podcasting hosts running away from our thirst.

Image: vicky leta / mashable 

That also tracks with the trend of an increasing amount of people identifying as sapiosexual (someone physically aroused by intelligence). Maybe our hankering for podcasters comes down to the fact that nerds are in. And there's no bigger concentration of nerds than in podcasts.

To be fair, those who know me know that there is little in this world I can't find a way to sexualize. To be fairer to me, though, there does seem to be an underlying sensuality — or at the very least admission to intense emotional relationships — in even the most platonic explanations of podcasting's appeal.

A very unsexy (but fascinating) New Yorker article called it a "peculiarly intimate medium," further noting that, "for a digital medium, podcasts are unusual in their commitment to a slow build, and to a sensual atmosphere." NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcaster Glen Weldon even admitted to his own discomfort and revery for the one-way intimacy in our relationships to podcasters, equating binge-listening to nothing short of falling in love. 

Perhaps nobody embodies the intense emotional connection podcasting can inspire more than the New York Times' Michael Barbaro. In a way, he feels like everybody's dream boyfriend: reliable, smart, useful, engaging, able to fit in your pocket — and you can turn him off whenever you've had enough of him.

The indisputable soft-spoken King of Podcasting, a New Yorker profile positively dripping with erotic subtext wrote that, "It’s hard to resist the empathetic vocables with which Barbaro punctuates his interviewees’ words," later describing this as a, "quasi-therapeutic aural hovering."

[INT. BAR — NIGHT] HER: so do you have a name ME: from The New York Times I'm Michael Barbaro

— Liam Weir (@liamrweir) July 31, 2017

What they're talking about is his tendency to interject emphatic, often prolonged hmms during interviews, to vocalize his engagement with what his guest is saying. It's such an endearing and recognizable quirk that it now have its own Twitter fan page, which Barbaro actually follows. 

Generally, he seems to be a man who accepts that this vocal tick touches on a particular nerve that people either love or hate. As another Twitter user begged, "Please please please do not stop the hmmmm!"

Not only seen, but heard

Despite its seeming perversion, though, the sexual attraction to podcasts and auditory erotica comes from a pretty wholesome place. 

I'm listening to the do not disturb podcast with @itsarifitz and I'm realizing, women with SEXY ASS VOICES ARE MY FUCKING TYPE. Help. Me. -L

— LauRapsody (@LauRapsody) May 8, 2017

In large part, it's about feeling like you know the person whispering into your ear like a lover. If the eyes are a window into the soul, then maybe the voice is like a sonic radar for the soul. There are so many human imperfections in your speech pattern, your personality embedded into every lilt, unspoken emotions communicated through each prolonged pause or sudden exclamation.

The best way to describe the vastly different experience between masturbating to visual rather than auditory porn is the difference between anonymous sex versus sex with a significant other.

Audio porn is also a more non-threatening outlet for masturbation, since the visual porn on tube sites often feels intimidatingly aggressive and catered only to heteronormative male desires. 

The visual medium in itself limits you to a more external masturbatory experience, as you shut off your brain and consume other people as sex objects. But as a medium closer to literary erotica (or often an aural version of it), audio invites you to imagine rather than tell you what to like. 

"Of all the audio I’ve made so far, the stuff that seems to get the strongest reaction is when it's framed as 'you.' Instead of 'I did this, he did that' it’s 'you did this to me,'” said Girl on the Net, pointing to this specific example. "Again, it’s focusing on the intimacy — making people feel like they’re a part of something. As if it’s happening to them in the moment."

SEE ALSO: Why notification sounds send you emotionally reeling into the past

Also, she said, "most of my sex stories are true, which I think gives them an immediacy and intimacy off the bat."

In essence, audio porn relies on a more direct relationship between you and what's bringing you to climax.

"All sorts of complicated questions go through your mind when you’re watching visual porn," said Gutierrez, the Dipsea cofounder. "Is she actually feeling pleasure? Is this ethically created? What creepy Airbnb is this happening in? You’re also removed from the action, and are distracted by the things that you don’t relate to — like other people’s (often unrealistic) bodies."

Press play with me

The aural has an innately human power over us all. Before there was video, before there was picture, before there was written word, we knew each other by sound. As a collective, we told our first stories through the oral tradition. As individuals, we were first introduced to other human beings by hearing our mother's voice from inside her belly.

Whisk us off to sleep, Podcasting Daddies.

Image: bob al greenE / mashable 

The common adage that the brain is the largest sexual organ is unmistakably at play in aural erotica. Yet unlike purely text-based erotica, the humanizing addition of another person's voice is one of the only ways to make masturbation feel less solitary. 

Aural erotica is the best of all worlds when it comes to spank bank material: more personal, inclusive, approachable, ethical, and exploratory than visual porn — yet also more sensorily engaging than just textual porn. 

Maybe you still think we're just a minority of weirdos. But in my humble opinion, I think maybe I'm just one of a few willing to admit in plain speak that we're all a little horny for Michael Barbaro's voice.

WATCH: Consent-oriented condom packaging says four hands are needed to open it, but then again – maybe not

#_author:Jess Joho #_uuid:2a507e1e-438d-393e-a9a4-c91807e635cc #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

[originalcontent]

On the Topic of Logic

Uuuuuugh okay. I don’t want to write a whole fucking essay in Skype of all things so here we go. Plus, I’m sure everyone is fucking tired of hearing from me rant from my polarizing anti-fascist biases. I guess I’m writing this here instead because while I will defend my ideals to the grave, it can get pretty exhausting.

If there’s something that I find morally objectionable, I have to go out of my way to argue it. I mean, I don’t always, I don’t even as much as I should, but leaving things unanswered gives me a gross feeling for a number of reasons. It’s fine if you’re looking to discuss things with me, but please, please, please actually look at my responses if that’s what you want to do? I can’t let other people in my direct circle of influence spread harmful ideologies in good conscious, I’m sorry. Something that people like to do is take my arguments and assume I’m making absolute statements, so I just want to say I’m not saying to never use logic, I’m not saying don’t call bullshit when necessary, I’m not saying violence is good. I’m sure you were all abundantly taught the merits of the converses by society already. You don’t need me to explain those to you. This isn’t a condemnation of well-accepted ideas, it’s just saying that there are flaws to them as well.

Part 1: Ethics do not follow formal logic

Before I start, I would like to ask a general favor. Please for the love of god, stop trying to explain logic and fallacies to me. I fucking know what a fallacy is. I’m especially partial to the straw man, or I must be, because that’s the one that I find used against me the most often. Some other fallacies that deserve honorable mentions. The slippery slope fallacy, that I may often seem to fall into. Except that historically, things actually are slippery slopes to bigger things. Plus, if you’re not going to speculate on potential consequences, what’s even the point of analyzing current events? I personally think it’s best to prepare for the worst case scenario, especially if the things you do to prepare are good and revolutionary acts that our society probably needs anyway. I know that I cannot predict the future. Next honorable mention is proof by repeated assertion. I will say statements and then a couple days/hours/minutes/whatever later, I will see the exact same arguments, again, that I had already refuted in the first place. I’m glad you like the nonviolent movements of the past in India and 60’s America! I’m glad you’re happy with the results! I hope that you can acknowledge that these movements were only successful because they were partnered with more radical, violent movements! Like, I understand that you don’t always want to read through all of the links I post, but in that case take my word for what they say, don’t just ignore them! And then there’s ad homenim. You know what, I think that itself needs its own section so let’s shelve that one and come back to it later. Same with false equivalencies, I’ll get to those soon. Point being I know what fallacies are. I know what logic is. I’m betting on the fact that most other people can conceptualize basic logic as well. They may not show their work every step of the way, but assuming that they don’t and that they need you to explain logic to them is incredibly disrespectful. If you’re telling someone to “be logical” then you’re really, really an asshole. If logic is flawed, sure, you can point that out, but that doesn’t discredit a whole argument, nor does it replace a counterpoint.

The title pretty much says it all here, but I’m currently taking philosophy classes, so let’s talk about formal logic.

First off, logic should not be your gold standard for truth. The (albeit very, very simplified) way that logic works is you take a set of precedents and deprive other statements from them. (You know, Socrates was a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates was mortal. Not rocket science.) The way you measure logic is if it’s valid or invalid, not true and untrue. That’s right folks, just because logic is invalid, that doesn’t mean the conclusion is false! And the reverse is also true. Assuming that logic and reality match up is my actual, absolute, personal favorite fallacy, the fallacy fallacy, the assumption that imperfect logic leads to a wrong conclusion. For example: “others using formal logic as the end-all of discussions frustrates 312, 312 is frustrated, so others must be abusing their abilities to cite formal logic.” There are plenty of other things that could have frustrated me, the logic here is unsound, but the conclusion is still true. (Apologies for passive-aggression, although to be honest I’m not feeling all that kind right now.) Furthermore “312 enjoys debating ideas, 312 is currently debating ideas, so 312 must be enjoying this!” Here are some true premises with perfect logic and a false conclusion.

You might argue for the first case that the result was just come up with by chance, but it can’t be independently accepted as truth because the premises didn’t contain enough information to form a valid conclusion. For the second you might argue that my issue is in my premises here. My statements were true, but they weren’t universally true. And then I would congratulate you on having come up with such a great and original points that had in no way ever occurred to me before you so graciously enlightened me. Then, we can proceed to break them down. The first example was in fact a case where precedents didn’t fit together into a clear message, and the second indeed did not have precedents that always held. But I can’t possibly think of a real-world example that doesn’t have clear and objective premises. Oh wait, now that I’m typing it a few examples are coming to me.

Am I straw-manning your argument? I’m very sorry. You know what, to clear up the confusion, why don’t you send me all of your opinions on these issues and logically why you have them, fully explained and everything. If anyone needs that from me, message me because I’ve literally already done that on several occasions.

In the meantime, I’m going to do my own little logical proof, right here.

Premises:

There is no objective moral truth

Logic without inherently true premises will never lead to inherently true conclusions

Conclusion: You can’t use fucking logic to discuss moral issues and have it be correct.

I may have skipped a few steps there, but I don’t have the patience and I think you get the idea. When discussing ethics, you have to make up your own criteria, your own precedents, because nothing about ethics is logical. Sure, you could argue lots of things. For example, that if people are good to each other then that helps society which therefore benefits the people, but not all people benefit from society, and who’s to say what makes any society better than anything else? I have a set of premises that I deem to be correct. They basically boil down to “A fair and just society for all people is good.” And how about “all people deserve basic human rights.” I don’t know what yours all are! I do know that I don’t have any rational explanation for these ideas aside from that I believe them to be right. Because that’s how this whole thing works. There’s no formula for right and wrong, so stop trying to find one. Instead just do your best to make the world a better place however you feel that’s possible.

Part 2: Ad homenim does not necessarily apply in cases of politics.

Well, if that isn’t a provocative title. As I stated above, nothing in ethics is right by any objective measure. I really wish we could set down some objective truths, like say, genocide is a bad thing, but apparently that’s fucking controversial. So here we go.

I do need to put a huge disclaimer on this to say what I am not saying. I am not saying I think you can just take anything that anyone you don’t like says is false. 7+5=12 no matter who the person who says that is. As much as I hate it, you can’t always just listen to assholes and take the opposite of whatever they say (although honestly that’s not as bad a strategy as one would think.) I’m not saying that it never applies, I’m saying that it doesn’t necessarily apply.

For anyone who doesn’t know, ad homenim is the practice of targeting the person who made an argument rather than the argument itself. It is my belief that that should be reserved for purely logical debates, not as applied to society at large.

Some context for what specifically inspired me to make this post, earlier this week there’s been a theme of discussing violent resistance to nazism and fascism. On Wednesday someone posted, in response, “‘An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind’ -Mahatma Gandhi.” I made a comment that we should keep in mind all of the bad things Gandhi had done. The response was of course “ad homenim.” I had to go right then, but when I got back there were a shit ton of messages. One person said that I hadn’t argued with the quote, I had just made a statement, to which his response was “why bother putting that there in the first place.” Someone (bless her soul) cited the fallacy fallacy at him, and he responded with “well yeah but this was a very simple case of ad homenim. You shouldn’t use fallacies like that because they’re very easy to refute.” The two who had tried to defend me started trying to address him and the quote, and they kept getting the response of “well what 312 said wasn’t even relevant to the quote, you need to argue with the quote itself.” They were effectively shut down in terms of having an actual discussion, and I’m sorry for that because I had supplied him (and one other) with the means by which to do that. By the time I was online again I scrolled up to read the whole exchange, but everyone had moved on from this topic and it was abundantly clear that no one wanted to return to it, so I let it be. Then of course, I did as I do and grew bitter that I hadn’t been there to argue and started to stew in my bitterness until this post came into being. There we have it, the secret origin story of my unbridled rage.

Call that bullshit for unreliable narration, whatever. I’m not here to talk about that exchange any more than I’m going to express my pissed-off-ness at a couple people. I’m going to talk about why my original statement did not qualify as ad homenim!

I stress, earlier this week we had already been discussing violent resistance. We had already made all sorts of arguments on both sides. We had already pointed these people to a number of sources discussing why nonviolence is objectionable. Posting an image with this quote that all of us probably already knew added nothing new to this discussion. This quote did not stand alone in place of arguments. All it really managed to achieve was bringing famous people into the midst, in this case Gandhi. Whether or not you realized it, posting that quote was an entirely ethos-based argument. Ethos, for those who haven’t taken an english class, refers to an rhetorical tactic that appeals to authority. Thus it’s separate from pathos, emotional rhetoric, and logos, logical rhetoric, aka the literal only one of these three where logical fallacies apply in the first place. Like actually. The only response to appeals to authority is attack of character? How do you even expect me to argue with that quote? There’s nothing to argue! All the quote is is a baseless claim making a general statement meant to be inspirational. Which is great if there’s something new to take from it, but there’s not. Seriously, the fuck do you expect me to say? “No, actually the first person would lose an eye, then the second person would lose an eye, and then everyone else would be left alone”? Oh huh, I guess there is a logical response to that quote, my bad.

Actually, if you’ll indulge a tangent, remember when up there discussing fallacies I said I’d come back to false equivalencies later? Specifically the whole “eye for an eye” or “hate breeds hate” kind of thing. Other people on this website have stated that you can’t equate the hate of oppressors to the hate of the oppressed for their oppressors in far more eloquent terms than I can. Nazis hate jewish people, for instance, because they view them as inferior and inherently deserving of death. Jewish people might hate nazis because they literally want them dead. That hate is not just as bad! Violence coming from jewish people is self-defense! They can’t make a choice about their ethnicity, and nazis will want them dead regardless, whereas nazi ideologies are absolutely a choice, it’s people choosing to believe they’re superior and everyone else should be killed.

Back on the topic of ad hominem, in terms of politics and social change, everyone has an agenda. Many quotes seem very reasonable if you just take them at face value. You need to look at who’s saying them and why they’re saying them to understand what they mean. For example, the statement “Make America Great Again” might not sound too bad in of itself, but when you look at the platform associated with that line, you’ll realize that that’s a white supremacist statement. There’s nothing about that statement that’s white supremacist. It’s advocating for greatness, that’s all. I’m sure you know that to not be true. Political figures do this all the time, where they make a general, wide-reaching statement that you can critically analyze to see it doesn’t necessarily benefit who you think it would. (Such as conservatives calling for “safer neighborhoods,” when really what they want is stronger police forces.) Or where they call an initiative something seemingly unprovocative while including not-so-great policy in it if you bother to look past clever wording. Who says things matters. Who pushes things matters. Freedom and opportunity mean very different things to me then they do to libertarians, for instance. We could say the exact same sentence about wanting to protect freedom and opportunity, and it would still mean completely different things. So I’m just saying that if you decide to focus on statements themselves rather than who’s saying them, especially in the case of anything even remotely having to do with politics, you’re blind sighting yourself.

I had more to say, but to be honest I’m somewhat tired. Sorry, I’ll try to write more later.

One more thing:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/playing-devils-advocate/ Normally when I send this one to people I make sure to do it very nicely, but you know what? Right now I’m not feeling very nice. The role of a devil’s advocate is to represent perspectives not present in order to get somewhere constructive from a different angle. The role is not to argue against any points brought up. Read this, memorize this, love this, learn to live by this, I am actually 100% serious here.

That’s it for now.

Hope you got something out of it. I’ll probably write something about opinions, that’s another important issue. Well, 312 out.

#politics #logic #ethics #logical fallacies #objectivity #god i don't even have tags i'm not in the right headspace for this #if anyone can think of stuff this should be tagged as lmk #it's fine if you want to debate any of these points with me #i really don't mind #however i do INSIST that you listen to my points instead of focusing entirely on how to refute them #that's it #just listen #also some apologies to r and c wouldn't hurt #you guys really fucking upset them #i understand that these are purely theoretical academic concepts to you guys #but these are emotional topics for them and when they're upset like that they can't keep up with your bullshit 'logic' #yeah i'm bitter and angry right now #i don't hate anyone #but i'm also not apologizing for my tone #and they shouldn't have to either btw