james choice

quiet quitting isn’t actually quitting. it’s when you stop treating your job like a personal sacrifice and start doing exactly what you’re paid to do. no late night emails, no unpaid extra work, no pretending the company is your family.

basically, doing your job without letting your job become your entire personality.

“i realized that the entire journey had been from myself to myself.”

let's start with the anatomy of it.

where are the feet? at the very bottom of the body, right? because they touch the ground, they have often been culturally associated with dirt, inferiority, and low status. that symbolism has always made its way into language, literature, proverbs, and everyday expressions.

now think about what a foot fetishist typically does. they show affection toward the feet using their lips, tongue, and hands.

the lips and tongue belong to the face, one of the highest and most symbolically honored parts of the body. the hands, meanwhile, are associated with cleanliness, eating, creating, working, and almost everything we actively do in the world.

so what does it mean when someone uses what we consider their most elevated and capable body parts to show intense attention and affection toward another person's lowest body part?

the answer seems fairly simple. it can represent an unusually strong sense of admiration, devotion, and belonging.

history gives us an interesting parallel. in the past, someone granted an audience with a king, sultan, queen, or other ruler might bow down and kiss their feet or the hem of their clothing as a gesture of respect and loyalty.

in that sense, foot fetishism can be understood as a particular form of attraction in which one person symbolically places the other above themselves and takes pleasure in openly expressing that admiration. it can also allow affection and desire to be expressed in a way that is less centered on the body's more obvious sexual areas and more focused on reverence, intimacy, and attention.

so why does it seem to be more common among men?

one possible reason is that women's feet are much more heavily aestheticized in fashion and popular culture. they are often smaller and more delicate in appearance, and there is an entire visual culture built around pedicures, nail polish, anklets, toe rings, decorative socks, stilettos, heels, sandals, and countless other ways of drawing attention to them.

deleted all of his photos on instagram. right now, only the real madrid reels seem to be gone too, and he even removed his profile picture.

something serious must have happened during today’s negotiations. it honestly looks like real madrid might be preparing to move him on.

a really good film. i enjoyed it quite a bit. there are a few scenes that are genuinely unsettling, but they fit the story and never felt out of place.

i'm not sure if this was the filmmakers' intention, but it left me thinking about something i haven't really seen other people mention. it wasn't the romance, the obsession, or any of the obvious themes that stuck with me. instead, it sparked a completely different set of thoughts that lingered long after the credits rolled.

puzzles and sudoku. sudoku especially draws you in like crazy, from beginner all the way to expert level. once you learn the techniques, you feel even more enlightened.

there's a serious tonal difference between the first film in the series and the sequels that came after. the first film is almost a character study, while the sequels move forward in a much more spectacle-driven way.

but that innocence, that honesty at rocky's core never gets lost. in my opinion this consistency is exactly what's kept the series standing for so long. no matter how famous the character gets, at his core he stays the same neighborhood guy, and the audience feels that. so rocky is proof of what a well-written character is capable of.

good books don't give a person answers, they just clean the mirror a little more. this book is such a mirror that at first you see yourself all cool and impressive. as the pages go on, it unscrews the bolts of your ego and tosses them out one by one. then, in the mirror, you see that strange being standing behind you, the one that's made the decisions in your place your whole life, held all the strings, and played you like a puppet on its finger. amazon link

as those in the know know, pokemon is another game that came out of japan and ended up influencing the whole world. the mechanic at the heart of pokemon is actually the same as rock, paper, scissors.

rock crushes scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper wraps rock. the beauty of the system is that no option is absolutely superior. pokemon took exactly this idea and spread it across dozens of types. fire burns grass, water puts out fire, electricity zaps water, and ground completely nullifies electricity. then, once types like ghost, dark, fairy, and dragon enter the mix, you end up with a balance system that takes years to memorize.

that's why pok3mon was never just a "let me grind the strongest pokemon" game. the right matchup is often more decisive than level or stats. anyone who saw for the first time that an electric attack has no effect on a ground-type pokemon learned it the hard way.

maybe this is one of the reasons the series has lasted so long. it doesn't keep making the player ask "which is the strongest?" instead, it gets them thinking "which is the right choice against the one in front of me?"

and when you take the balance that rock, paper, scissors builds with three options and adapt it to hundreds of pokemon and dozens of types, you end up with gameplay that stays fresh even after thirty years.

the meeting held in brussels in 1927, where the einstein-bohr debates also took place. it's one of the 10 place-time pairings i'd want to be present at in all of human history.

some of the attendees: albert einstein, max planck, niels bohr, werner heisenberg, hendrik lorentz, max born, paul dirac, arthur compton, louis de broglie, erwin schrodinger, ralph fowler, marie curie. image

anyone who says that either side is going to "walk right through" the other in this match clearly doesn't understand football. i've watched every single match since the start of the world cup, and in this one the two teams' strengths are pretty evenly matched. it's hard for one team to walk right through the other or anything like that.

a match with no favorite. france is a favorite only by a hair, and even that's because of the individual talent of players like dembele, mbappe, and olise. spain has conceded only 1 goal throughout the tournament. spain's biggest weapon is the very successful zonal defense they play.

by the way, spain won 3 of the last 4 matches and 4 of the last 6 matches played between the two teams. on top of that, in the last 10 matches between them, spain came away with 7 wins, 1 draw, and 2 losses. spain is a team that matches up very badly for france.

s9e7 may look at first glance like it's tackling evolution, but it's actually a badass critique of god that takes evolution as its theme. rick's primary goal throughout the episode was simply to escape from this prison. that is, until he sees that even in morty's most innocent, most harmless form, the one who by his own will refuses to join the cycle of violence and chooses a different path for himself, only ever choosing to be of use to other living things, he still incurs the wrath of god. the moment he sees this, he changes his own cycle, shifting his goal from escaping to killing. and he pulls it off, too. in this episode rick actually killed god. as for no one in the prison being innocent, that's a critique aimed at human existence itself.

the leader i find most successful at calling a spade a spade. by telling donald trump, "me and italy will never beg, being your friend has absolutely done me no good." she gave a fantastic answer to the golden-boy bootlickers too. she also deliberately showed up late to the protocol and avoided shaking hands with erdoğan. a real queen.

lupita nyong'o, one of the actors in the film, is asked in an interview what she'd want to say to homer. and she says: i'd ask, homer, you gave women almost no place at all in your book, but look, now in this film a bunch of women have screen time, what do you think?

this one sentence drove the final nail into the film's coffin, so long and farewell. the woman is out here crying that "there aren't enough female characters heeere" about a book written 3000 years ago... is she an idiot or what.

an even bigger version of the disgrace we lived through when rachel zegler shoved the snow white she played up the dog's ass is on the way. come on, nolan, you weren't the guy to sink into these kinds of embarrassments, damn it.

i love messi and argentina in general for various reasons. but the sleaziness, dishonesty, and dirtiness that's in most south american teams is very much present in this argentina team too. constant complaining, physical play, malicious moves toward the opponent, tricks to fool the referee... basically every kind of dirty trick you can think of, they've got it. come on, at least don't play like this against a team weaker than you, you pricks. the penalty situation was won thanks to a total con job too, and thankfully it didn't result in a goal, which made me glad.