Sam Trenholme’s blog
A new chess variant; etc.
May 3, 2026
I discuss a new chess variant, then discuss some lies manosphere men believe.d20Capa
d20Capa is a chess variant based on some of the research I have been doing with chess variants. In this variant, I have taken 20 of the most balanced Capablanca chess setups, and have the opening setup randomly chosen before the game starts with a 20-sided die.
Its full rules are in the linked file.
Manosphere lies
Let’s look at some scientifically backed data, based on peer reviewed research.
Polygyny (i.e. one man sleeping with many women) rates do not change
across societies in any meaningful way. No, we were not more polygynous
before. No, dating apps do not make society more polygynous. 80/ Here is the reality:
About 20-25% of both men and women are promiscuous.
Most people have sex in long term monogamous commitments.
About 20% of both men and women are virgins.
Of course, men in the manosphere don’t want to believe this. They
want to believe in the fiction of high polygyny, facts be damned.
I’ve seen how they react online.
When they react, they do not bring out, as “Bored
observer” did, extensive graphs from peer reviewed literature. They do
not, as “Nuanced Pill” does, show graph after graph
of dating data showing that we have a society of
a relative minority of promiscuous people, not a polygynous
society.
One example: They bring out a long piece which makes false claims about the 2009 OkCupid study.
This article claims that “According to research from dating platform
OkCupid, men in the top 20% in terms of looks, career success, or
charisma, receive an overwhelming portion of female attention”, but a
look at the actual OkCupid study
tells a different story: While women only rated a minority of
men as being attractive, when messaging men, it was the women
who messages homely men, and it was the men who by and large
messaged only really attractive women.
Nuanced Pill looked at a lot of data, and, long story short, while
women are seen as more attractive as men, the results from the 2009 OkCupid blog are an outlier.
The point is this: The entire Manosphere narrative that 80% of the
women only want to sleep with 20% of the men is a fiction. It is no
more true than the notion that the earth is flat. To believe the lie of
a few men sleeping with most women is to demean and dehumanize women.
To have empathy and compassion for others, lies like this need to
stop. I, for one, am getting off of Twitter/