There was definitely a realistic scenario where he medaled, seeing as he finished just barely out of 4th place. There wasn’t a terribly likely scenario where he medaled, but “Jin does only very slightly worse than he actually did and either Uno or Hernandez makes a couple of big mistakes” certainly wasn’t out of the…

He would at least have made it pretty close. While you obviously can’t do a 1:1 comparison between different competitions with different judges, Chen got a 104.45 on his short program at US nationals. A score like that plus his 215 tonight would have narrowly beaten Hanyu.

I think a pair like Marchei and Hotarek could maybe pull it off, because they are clearly into kinda goofy, high-energy, playing-to-the-crowd routines. If that’s your thing, then sure, lean into it and go for crazy music choices. But boy, was it not Tarasova and Morozov’s thing.

I’m really uncomfortable with the idea that visibly partaking in a religious ritual indicates “form and no substance faith,” or that simply existing in public while visibly having partaken in a religious ritual is “parading.” And I’m not sure how that logic wouldn’t apply to any faith that involves the wearing of a…

I get so angry at people who think poor people shouldn’t be allowed to feel pleasure, whether that’s “if you can’t afford to pay for birth control because you don’t have insurance or your insurance doesn’t cover it, you should just never have sex again” or “if you can’t afford to buy food without government…

It doesn’t sound silly at all - you’re entirely right. Terry Pratchett is often quoted on this issue, because a character in one of his books explains it very simply and very well:

Fair! Catholicism is indeed weird - sometimes in unfunny ways but sometimes in delightfully silly ways. (I’m an ex-Catholic with a stereotypically huge extended Catholic family whom I love, so I’m totally down for poking fun at the Catholic Church, but nitpicky enough to make sure they’re accurate pokes.) ;)

Please show me the knife or bludgeon that a single person can easily use more than 1100 times to stab and/or bludgeon more than 900 people in ten minutes or less. Said knife or bludgeon should also be easily used from 490 yards away from the victims so that it is entirely impossible for victims or bystanders to disarm…

Sadly, she’s NOT talking about a war-torn region of the world. If she saw any “rebels” at all during her time in Zambia, they were refugees. She’s a racist liar who apparently thinks all of Africa is made up of either (a) scary savages who want to assault her because she’s so beautiful or (b) adorably inspirational…

Uh...they do put the feast at the end. Mardi Gras isn’t actually a Catholic holiday - it’s just a popular cultural tradition, since people who know they’re supposed to be somber and reflective and give things up for the next 40 days understandably tend to like the idea of having one last wild party while it’s still…

As I told the person you’re replying to, I have PTSD, and I’m not cool with that being used as an insult. Which is why it’s also not cool for you to call PTSD “brain damage” (which is an entirely different and unrelated condition), to suggest that the issue isn’t “PTSD isn’t an insult and shouldn’t be used as one” but…

Um. As someone with PTSD, I’m not super into that being used as an insult or a punchline. Can you maybe not?

Sadly, I don’t think that variety of stupidity is all that rare. There are a depressingly large number of people out there who just really hate women and would keep on really hating them no matter what other ideologies they held. I’ve met more than a few atheists/agnostics/other non-religious folks (mostly dudes,…

Yup. My immediate reaction while watching the broadcast was to tell my family, “...wow, that comment is definitely going to piss off a lot of Koreans,” and the entirety of my expertise in Korean culture is pretty much “I like bibimbap and know the ‘Gangnam Style’ dance.” I really, really shouldn’t be more aware of…

I don’t know what he has planned for the individual competition, but honestly, I think skating an easier routine that he could do flawlessly was probably the way to go tonight, since the goal was less “come in first place” than “do better than Italy,” which he did. (I do think he got robbed on artistic points, though.)

I spent the whole ceremony wishing they’d shut the fuck up, but my “favorite” moment was when they told the audience to “just listen to” the traditional Korean folk song...and then proceeded to talk over the entirety of the traditional Korean folk song. (Second “favorite” is a roughly 97-way tie between all of the…

...and now my brain is singing “Joseph’s Coat” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, except instead of “it was red and yellow and green and brown” (etc.) the lyrics have become “it was asshole and racist and scumbag and dick and dipshit and moron and bigot and pig and sexist and ableist and liar and creep…

No one except jackasses constructing stupid slippery-slope scenarios has ever suggested “signed consent forms” - not least because people who actually give a shit about consent understand that it can be revoked at any time, so it’s not even a scenario that makes any goddamn sense to propose as the endpoint of the…

Jesus Christ, that whole conversation is just horrifying. WTF.

Listen, honeybunch (since apparently we’re doing condescending terms of endearment now, for some inane reason), if you’re too stupid to understand the difference between a curse word and a bigoted slur, you should maybe consider taking some sort of remedial English class . “Asshole” is an insult, but unlike…