The Metropolis blog

If you exclude Chinese firms, the world's biggest tech companies are all based in Silicon Valley (San Francisco Bay Area) or Seattle. The trillion-dollar club are Apple , Bay Area Amazon , Seattle Microsoft , Seattle Alphabet (Google et al), Bay Area Meta (Facebook et al), Bay Area And there are plenty of other Bay Area firms in the next tier, such as Twitter, Uber, and Netflix. Now let's look at the world's biggest adult-related tech firms. Match Group  (Tinder, Hinge, et al), Dallas, Texas Bumble , Austin, Texas MindGeek  (Pornhub, YouPorn, et al), Montreal, Canada OnlyFans , London, UK Tumblr  (pre-2018 family-friendly reboot), New York These are all multi-billion-dollar businesses, but notice that none of them are located on the US west coast. OK, technically Bay Area firms like Twitter and Reddit tolerate adult content, but it's a small part of their traffic, and they're rather coy about it. It's not like a Silicon Valley venture capitalist to pass up a ...

The old saying Beauty is in the eye of the beholder  implies that we are all attracted to different things. But is it true? We probably do  differ when it comes to things like music and art, but what about sexual attraction to a fellow human? When it comes to female beauty at least, one argument against subjective preferences is the fact that modelling can be a profitable career for some women. That's only possible because everyone likes looking at them. If beauty were truly in the eye of the beholder, no individual model would appeal to enough people be successful, and the word  supermodel  would not exist. Does it vary by culture? Some supporters of subjective beauty preferences argue that they are shaped by culture, and will thus vary from place to place. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that preferences have been shaped by evolution and reproductive success, and will thus be consistent across homo sapiens . The opponents are more likely to be right. In multipl...