This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Has anyone read all 170-odd responses to the ‘Edge’ question this year?
Instead of Thunderdome, couldn’t we have a nice gazebo with some lacy mosquito netting and a tray full of Pina Coladas and a bong?
It would be ever so much nicer a place.
Your friend,
Janice in Toronto
Does anyone else find it amusing that the Super Bowl will involve teams from the only two states with legalized marijuana? Is that going to be a super bowl, or what?
I’m sure the Minnesota Vikings will now be lobbying for legalizing weed, on the theory that nothing else has worked for ’em. Besides, slapping a new stadium tax on the sale of reefers will generate more revenue than those electronic pull-tabs have.
Gregory in Seattle (#3) –
With marijuana legal in both states, as well as a scientific study on its use, the NFL may be forced to change its policies on drug testing.
Remember Ross Rebagliati, the snowboarder who won the gold medal in Nagano, back in 1998? His medal was first stripped because he tested positive for marijuana, but reinstated because he (or so he claimed) breathed is passively.
Not at the levels he tested for, he didn’t. The unspoken reason he got his medal back was, I suspect, that marijuana is a depressant and not a performance enhancing substance. It didn’t give him an advantage, it put him at a disadvantage, so winning was more difficult, not easier.
The same argument could be made by NFL players, that it doesn’t help their play, unlike steroids and other substances. It would also be easy to argue, “It was legal in the state I smoked in,” thus not punishable outside of the state. And with a study showing improvement in healing of brain tissue among mice given marijuana, the NFLPA and former players may force the NFL’s hand on the concussion issue.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/01/18/nfl-could-indeed-change-its-mind-about-marijuana-in-time/
Seattle and Denver ownership (and other teams in their divisions) might see this as a chance to sign cheap free agents, players willing to relocate to where they can smoke regularly.
X-posted from the “Sticking it to this Pope” thread.
@ DW
I agree that FAS is a great and terrible, if very rare, evil; but I’m curious. Other than ensuring the cheap-to-free and ready availability of counselling, addiction services and abortion services, and ensuring free and global availability of practical sex-ed and information regarding the effects of various drugs, legal and illegal, on your body and on any foetus you may or may not be carrying; what measures would you propose to combat said great and terrible evil?
@left0ver1under
Isn’t it still illegal under Federal law? That may present problems with this line of defence.
Second Thumper’s questions. But I’d like to add a couple of points:
1. FAS appears to occur most often, if not exclusively, when the exposure is in the first trimester. That is, the alcohol exposure may occur before the woman knows she is pregnant. Please keep this in mind when answering Tumper’s questions about how to decrease its incidence.
2. FAS occurs more frequently in certain ethnic groups, specifically, Amerinds. How does this affect your plans for eliminating FAS?
3. Punitive measures have been demonstrated to decrease the probability that women will admit to drug or alcohol problems during pregnancy. How does that factor into your plans?
David Wilford:
Why do you not respond to Giliell ?
Thumper @ 6:
Raise taxes across the board on alcohol, just as we did with tobacco. For one, it would help pay for the increase in available services that deal with alcohol abuse and two, it would discourage very heavy consumption of alcohol. A problem, of course, is that people can brew their own but that group doesn’t tend to be alcoholics, who are focused on just drinking the stuff.
Tony
Because I have icky girl cooties. Also, women should not be taken serious in matters of female reproductive health and rights because we’re, uhm, biased. That’s why it’s best to let het white cis guys make all the decisions, because they’re not tainted by being personally affected.
dianne @ 8:
Besides increasing the price of booze, warning labels, better health counseling, etc., it’s also necessary to get real with binge drinking, just as we have with drunk driving. That includes all populations, not just college students. That doesn’t mean punishment, but it does mean confrontation. We don’t let friends drive drunk, period. Why should we let them get blasted when we know the health effects?
Who the fuck are you to tell other people how they must behave? Think about that before you pretend be pope and give orders you expect to be obeyed. We can do the same for your motormouth behavior.
David Wilford, either lay out a TOTAL plan to be criticized, or go away. Your cryptic little assertions are dismissed.
Tony, I know a baited hook when I see it. Again, it’s like y’all have a problem when someone doesn’t fall for a stupid rhetorical trick. I don’t respond to those one weird trick ads either.
Nerd @ 13:
Tell it to the bartender the next time they cut you off.
David Wilford @ 16:
While an establishment that serves alcohol has a right not to sell it to you (whether because they are concerned about you driving while impaired or because they are concerned about your behavior or whatever), they don’t have an absolute right to stop you getting drunk if you’re not in their establishment.
Does somebody have good evidence as to the effects of alcohol taxes on the drinking habits of people who are actually alcoholics?
Quite apart from the issue of rights, it is hard to conceive of any punitive measures to discourage binge-drinking in the newly pregnant that will not inevitably lead to the application of similar measures in cases where neither the substance ingested nor the stage of pregnancy make an adverse outcome likely.
Wow, now I’m a bait trick.
Anything but admitting taht women might have a legitimate opinion.
Yep, just another thing pregnant women need to be policed about. It’s not like everybody and their dog already polices every move we make, from eating a salad (don’t you think you should eat something more nutririous?) to eating a cookie (you really shouldn’t gain too much weight), to every aspect of our personal lives (do you really think you should have a child now, our clothing (you really shouldn’t wear this underwear) to our fucking moods (you should stop being so sad, or your baby will suffer!).
Oh, and I’ve forgotten the people who will kindly tell you that you mustn’t buy this cheese because it’s raw milk and that you can’t have your steak medium.
ledasmom @ 17:
Here’s one item for you:
it’s also necessary to get real with binge drinking
What do you mean? Your comparison to drunk driving suggests that you’re thinking of some kind of public awareness campaign and/or increased legal penalties, but I’m not sure what exactly you’re suggesting.
Oh, Janine.
no
?
*shrug*
David Wilford:
All her comments directed to you were just bait? None of her questions could *possibly* have been reasonable?
That’s where I’d imagine the biggest effect is. Not in stopping people who are actually alcoholics, but in preventing people from slipping into that pattern to begin with.
dianne @ 20:
Yes, that’s what I’m suggesting with the comparison to drunk driving. Think MADD in that regard.
Jesus Christ… Religion is essentially free.
Think of the harm.
Who is going to cut them off?
Tony, it’s not the question, er, worm that’s the problem, it’s the hook attached to it. I’m not biting.
Sorry champion of non-squiturs, you fail again with a rational argument. Just like your whole temperance bullshit going on. You don’t tell other people when they can drink, how they drink, or how much they drink. But you appear to think your OPINION matters to them.
Is this conversation about alcohol being had mostly by Americans? I (think I) know that Giliell is not American, but I think she’s also the only one who isn’t.
Anyhow, I’m wading in, because reasons.
ledasmom @ #17
It’s illegal (in Canada, for instance) to sell alcohol to, or to allow alcohol to be drunk, by an already intoxicated person in your establishment or at your home.
While this is difficult to enforce, the punitive measures taken against drunk drivers in reducing drunk driving reach back to the person or people who allowed the person to get unsafely drunk, or indeed to let them drive, in the first place. I can’t recall exactly when that law came into effect, but I do recall that the already rather low incidence of drunk driving involving injuries and fatalities went even lower after that. When people are responsible to each other on pain of fine or jail they tend to take better care not to let people do dangerously stupid things.
Of course, that doesn’t always work and it’s difficult to control and enforce, but the cases that have been before the courts show that the shame, at least, isn’t worth being found at fault.
No numbers off the top of my head, but higher taxes don’t stop alcoholics. There’s a 20/80 rule in the sale of alcohol. It’s pretty true across the board. 20% of people purchase 80% of the alcohol sold. While that doesn’t mean that those 20% are necessarily alcoholics, you can bet that the alcoholics are in that 20%.
Ontario, the province where I live, has among the highest tax on alcohol in the world. We also consume the most alcohol per capita in Canada and are among the highest per capita consumers in the world.
For reference on the relative cost, 750ml of vodka in Florida can cost as little as 10$. In Ontario, that bottle will cost 35$. The cost helps to support the profits of the LCBO (a crown corporation that is the sole retailer of liquor in the province), but also is a significant contributor to OHIP (the provincial social health insurance). The LCBO, a part from selling liquor, also has to post responsible drinking adverts and the rest of that sort of thing. Even if the high cost does not deter the most vulnerable alcoholics, it does subsidize the social safety net, however problematic and even insufficient, into which they inevitably fall.
I don’t believe that there is anything remotely comparable in the US.
I would agree. Education is the key, no punitive measures. It helps to know that alcohol can be safely consumed during pregnancy, but that’s a part of education. Free access to basic health care is a key part to that education. It’s also necessary not to have a puritanical culture of fear of alcohol. Well, education, again, can help. A lower drinking age goes in tandem with that …I’d just go with education all the way.
@DW #10
The measures you describe seem aimed more at decreasing drinking in general rather than specifically decreasing FAS. Do you not feel that such measures would make it difficult to responsibly enjoy a legal and harmeless (in moderation) habit? Punishing the many for the sins of the few, so to speak?
Citation needed, I think.
Presumably this would involve some sort of advertisement campaign? What do you have in mind? And how are you defining binge drinking?
Again, this measure seems to be aimed at decreasing drinking in general, rather than specifically FAS.
Some states have Alcohol beverage Control boards that operate the only legal liquor stores in that state. North Carolina for example.
Some of that money goes towards education and health programs though I’m not sure how much.
Anybody seen a goalpost? David Wilford is missing one, trying to justify the extra special treatment he wants to undergo pregnant women with larger points about alcohol.
Tomathy
You’re right, I’m German. You know, the country whose latest contribution to the World’s Cultural Heritage are the rules about brewing beer (no joke)
It is illegal for bartenders in Germany. Because we know that intoxicated people are not good at making sound decisions. Yet the next morning they are totally free to go out and get drunk again. They are not handed over to their family (if they’re adults), a shelter or put into a psychiatric hospital
Thumper @ 29:
For moderate drinkers of alcohol, the additional cost added by increasing taxes isn’t an undue burden. A shot of whiskey on occasion isn’t a huge expense. A bottle a day on the other hand…
The paper quoted by David Wilford in #19 contains a reference to a section of a paper by Adrian et al. (2001), titled, Can alcohol price policies be used to reduce drunk driving? Evidence from
Canada.
The paper is behind a pay wall, but the summary includes a pertinent piece of information:
Considering the timeline for the data, which is analyzed only to 1990, I have to wonder if the authors of the study note a diminishing trend over time once the price has stabilized for a period of time and considering inflation. It’s true, and trivial to find out, that the incidence of drinking and driving has reduced over all into 2013 in Ontario, but that the price of alcohol has been stable for a long time. Also, it’s important to note that drunk drivers are not necessarily alcoholics nor are they necessarily binge drinkers. It doesn’t take that much alcohol for a person to be a considered a drunk driver.
In any case, raising the price of alcohol isn’t punitive, but it definitely has a societal benefit. It helps, I’d think, if there’s a structure around that increase in price so that the money has somewhere useful and beneficial to go.
Giliell, thought so, but memory and all.
Could you rephrase your last paragraph for me, please? I’m finding it very difficult to parse.
That is, in post #31.
So, Giliell.
Did you say something to hurt David Wilford’s feelings?
Is that why he’s snubbing you?
Yes, Chas, you can be as fucking dismissive as you want.
You do not understand and you do not care too.
But you are happy to tell people that they are being self serving, especially when it concerns how one is try to get through in a difficult situation.
Just keep fucking shrugging, you asshole. Must be nice to be an impartial yet critical bystander.
Don’t feel sad Gilliel, for David Wilford this is tragically normal. DW, in his previous appearance before being sent to the cornfield by PZ, decided to double up on smugness by saying that he wasn’t fooled by our “dumb Rhetorical Tricks” and that we obviously had no experience dealing with people who were too smart for them. David Wilford, he of the tragic non-sequitors, random access humor, obnoxious patronizing attitude, fawning religious apologia, and 100% fact-free arguing style thinks that WE’RE the ones who are using “dumb rhetorical tricks”.
David Wilford surely doesn’t intend to come across as sexist, he merely wants to mansplain to the girls and ignore female posters and defend massively sexist organizations. I have no idea how you’d get the idea DW was at all sexist.
Say David Wilford: Can you go back to contradicting yourself from post to post? I had a hoot juxtaposing your posts in the previous pope thread.
EG is leave tweets on the JusticeForDrV hashtag calling the Grantland notpology touching and sincere.
Just keep in mind that EG has been stalking trans people on twitter for months.
@Giliell, Dianne, and other women ignored by David W:
I just got a message from Max Dick McMacho wondering if anything interesting was happening on Pharyngula. Should I invite him over?
@Crip Dyke: Never heard of him, but why not?
And now for something completely different–or rather, all too typically the same: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-cardinal-cody-letter-20140121,0,2192692.htmlpage
19-fucking-70, and they still hadn’t figured out that fucking children was wrong.
@dianne:
MDMcM steps in when ignoring of women happens, but as the ignoring wasn’t of me specifically, and as I’m not fertile, I thought I’d ask before bringing him into the mix.
@omnicrom:
On the grantland fail thread (or maybe the Caleb thread) you referred to Dr V as Dr K. I’m not commenting on either of those threads. I just can’t get involved, but since you’re here, I thought you should know. I’m assuming it’s an accident since your position has been sympathetic to Essay Vanderbilt, but the point of postmortem articles like Caleb’s is the erasure of trans identities. Referring to Vanderbilt by her birth initial consummates rather than challenges that.
@CripDyke, I’d be glad to have him involved if he’s interested.
On the same topic, I’ve been flirting with the idea of changing my commenting name to something gender neutral (or at least less obviously gendered). I’ve used gender neutral names on other blogs in the past (I’ve never commented here under any other name) and found that 1. I am almost always assumed to be male, even when I’ve made passing comments about giving birth and 2. my arguments get called “logical” (if someone agrees) and “cold” or “ignoring people’s needs” (if they don’t) when people think I’m male (whereas when I appear female I get called overly emotional). So changing to a gender neutral nym would be avoiding challenging prejudice, but OTOH, I’m getting tired of having men ignore my questions because they think I’m a woman.
@dianne:
If DW comes back to talk about abortion/FAS more, I’ll bring out MDMcM.
On your further reflections,
1) Flirting is always fun, and has benefits not available after commitment.
2) Gender neutral or gender flexible names don’t necessarily avoid challenging prejudice. They do fail to challenge a person’s idea that a commentariat is mostly men, but they actually challenge the idea that you can tell gender from ‘nym if you call out mistakes in gendering you. This has the **long term** effect that persons cannot trust they know the gender composition of a new commentariat or commenter. Moreover, although there is a value to visibility, if your arguments are good, and if your arguments serve the purpose of challenging prejudice (while potentially serving other purposes as well or focusing on prejudice-elimination alone) you don’t fail to challenge prejudice b/c ‘nym. And your anti-prejudice arguments may even be taken more seriously (as you say) which might more effectively challenge prejudice.
3) Your ‘nym is yours. While you, ultimately, have to be accountable if your ‘nym is culturally appropriative, etc., you get to choose a name of whatever gender expression you feel best serves you, just like you can buy men’s carhartt’s off the rack and wear them unaltered if that’s what works for you. There is no moral issue with expressing masculinity while living in a female body, expressing femininity while living in a male body, vice versa, or otherwise. Go nuts.
Nor do you owe anyone notice if you do change your ‘nym. It’s your name, you get to change it when you want for the reasons you want.
I would appreciate, though, if it’s okay, knowing that you’ve changed your ‘nym and what to so that I can continue to associate the positive connection I’ve built up with dianne with the then-current ‘nym you use. I’m sure others here would appreciate the same.
As long as you use the same log-in, changing how your name appears in word-press won’t get charges of sock-puppeting from PZ, so you’re good there, too.
I realize I’m mostly bouncing this back to your court, but that’s where it should be. I hope, at least, to have made you feel more certain that it really *is* your choice and that the ethical issues of complicated and changing gender expression are very different from what people traditionally assume.
In particular and in closing, I want to call out one thing: it is not deceptive to choose a masculine or gender flexible or gender neutral name while living in a female, intersex, or sex-modified body. The idea that it is deception is just straight up disgusting as F.
tomathy
Yeah, sorry, I was kind of on the run.
So, again: Serving alcohol to intoxicated people is illegal in Germany, too. Because at a certain level of blood alcohol you are no longer considered to possess an adequate capacity to make a decision. So far, so good. Still, there are no consequences for the drunk person beyond that. The bartender tells them “no, mate” and that’s it.
Over in the pope-thread DW proposed that pregnant women should be treated differently, because, after all they’re harming the fetus, so police should intervene and they should be taken to family or a shelter.
chigau
No, you know how it is. All those women always acting as if they knew anything…
David Wilford
No, the reason you don’t answer any point I make is because you don’t have an answer.
The point is that I show you for what you are: an authoritarian lover of an evil institution and a misogynist who hides behind a thin veil of . You have vile power dreams about the police handing over women who don’t behave according to your ideas to family or shelters as if they were unruely children. You want them to be put under “supervision” and you are since trying to desperately move the goalposts and act as if you didn’t demand that pregnant women be stripped of their human rights.
An interesting report on the one country that does forcibly restrict pregnant women deemed at risk because of drug & alcohol addiction:
You’d think with a name like “The Thunderdome,” something fun might happen in here occasionally. Certainly, that is not true of this one. Yuck city.
Giliell @ #47
I thought that’s what I read.
Yes, and that is good and also usually too true.
Well, there shouldn’t be consequences to anyone unless they do something, you know, illegal.
(Goes to read pope-thread)
DW is an ass. Like there isn’t enough punishment for being pregnant already? I’m pretty sure there are already sickening feticide laws in place, anyhow (I checked, there are. Lots). A search of the literature would likely turn up cases where, indeed, a woman has been charged (and even convicted) with drunkenness as being at least a factor.
I have a light stomach right now, so I’m not going to check on that, no thank you.
Given the present existence of feticide laws, it seems entirely unnecessary to add legal penalties to the most vulnerable women who, necessarily having been failed by society, are the most likely to carry to term to a baby suffering from FAS (or other drug-related syndrome).
Not applicable here. Bodily integrity, end of story. Just because you are behaving and thinking like an authoritarian religious fuckwit, it has no bearing on what intelligent people who understand bodily integrity think. Your inane opinion is dismissed, as it should be.
David Wilford, that short report virtually glosses over the real ethical dilemma of forced incarceration. Also, the study itself, being a case study, fails to incorporate any analysis of confounding factors into the attitudes and responses of the subjects.
In a patriarchy, it would hardly be surprising to find a woman, like Anna in the study, who isn’t ultimately happy to have gotten out of forced incarceration when all dignity and self-determination has been since been removed. Despite the apparent immediate good health outcomes for a child born to a mother tormented in that way, even the very best recovery rates for drug abuse is less than 20%. And even in a country as socialized as Norway, there are still women like Anna.
Locking up women and taking away their dignity and self-determination and forcing them to choose between abortion and forced incarceration is treating a symptom of a much larger and more insidious problem in an ethically bereft way.
What Norway is doing is as close to sterilizing drug addicts as I think they could get without actually doing it, and really, given the choices faced by the women, they might as well. The options given to these women, seen from another perspective, are to be a baby factory in order to maintain some sense of self-determination or to have an abortion in order to re-obtain self-determination. The ‘choice’ made may not be the one wanted at all, as illustrated by Anna’s fickleness over whether to maintain her pregnancy or not for want to be free.
I just don’t see how ‘concern for the fetus’ could possibly trump the will of a woman.
_____
In a way, this perverse concern for the fetus thinking is exemplified in current the story of a woman who is legally brain-dead (dead, a dead woman), but whose body is being kept alive in order to carry a pregnancy to term despite the wishes her family (and their belief about her wishes) and despite the unknown effects to the baby.
If you need the problem there spelled out to you, I don’t believe that there can be meaningful dialogue with you.
Actually, I don’t think meaningful dialog is likely. DW sounds more and more like a religious person, posting here as type one concern troll and preaching, trying to make Pharyngula and the atheist community less effective. Look at his posts in that light. They make perfect sense when examined that way.
Did I? Crap. That was supremely unintentional and I shan’t do it again.
@omnicrom:
I thought it unintentional.
Best,
CD
From Oh, Henry.
@Stacy & but primarily @Rahulkedia:
I agree with Stacy: fuck that shit. But I also believe that this is not true of Pharyngula in the sense of “rules”.
in the sense of courtesies, yes, regulars extend another regular more courtesy in some situations. I see this as a recognition of the trust created by consistent use of a nym over time. If I have established a transfeminist history, then when I say something apparently anti-trans* or sexist, others who recognize my ‘nym may re-read my words to double check that it says what they thought it said at first glance, and then may ask me for clarification rather than ripping me a new one.
Why?
Anti-trans* behavior is widespread, and the people who engage in it here don’t last long – they avoid the subject, they grow and change, they avoid the subject while growing and changing, or they leave. The combination of widespread in society with not lasting long means that a new ‘nym signed to a comment that is **apparently** anti-trans* makes it much more likely that the comment actually intended to communicate an anti-trans* idea or statement. The combination of my ‘nym with an apparently anti-trans* idea or statement is much more likely to indicate a misunderstanding, a typo, or some other form of failed communication. This is based on actual evidence. Evidence of my behavior over time and others’ behavior over time.
Courtesies may or may not be included in what you consider “rules”, but I don’t believe that the rules here at Pharyngula are mis-applied by PZ, the only one who can apply them. He can and does selectively apply them, but that is made explicit in the rules. It’s his blog and he can ban the people who irritate him. The very first condition for banning is:
So if he comes on and orders you to drop a subject because, in his opinion, you’re being annoying, it’s his right and it’s the rule that you will be banned even if behavior that **you** think is the same is tolerated by PZ in someone else. He gave the order, you disobeyed. If he decides to permit me the use of tranny because of the contexts in which I (very selectively) use it but orders someone else not to use it, this isn’t that the rules are different. The rules are the same: don’t piss off PZ Myers. It’s just that I’ve spent long enough here to know a lot more about what pisses him off than someone new to the blog is likely to know.
This is about a clear knowledge of what the relevant lines are, and how to stay on their good side. You may not be aware of a distinction being made by PZ (and, as a result, by the Horde) that matters to PZ. It may feel unfair. But this blog is someone’s private space – PZ’s. And PZ is free to kick me off any time I start pissing him off.
i don’t think it’s that likely. Despite my contempt for some biologists’ careless communication around sex and gender (though my claims around this would be slightly more circumscribed since a tangle with Chas that made me realize that specific examples in the peer-reviewed literature are harder to find than I thought and that comments in the popular literature are much more the problem), and my surpassing ignorance of biochemistry, he respects or ignores my critique of the use of sex & gender, transsexual & transgender among biologists. He educates the fuck out of me where I’m ignorant of biochem, and I’m smart enough to realize my limits and don’t try to tell him what’s what in anything biological. So I remain on the blog.
But it’s always conditional – for me as much as for anyone else.
I think you’re being unfair to PZ and the Horde and ignorant of the difference between courtesies dependent on established trust and rules not to be crossed.
CD
Particularly given that what appears to have set Rahulkedia off is when Caine snapped at ludicrous over what appeared to a cursory glance to be a privacy breach. Snapping at someone’s not against the rules and never has been. sonofrojblake was then the one to claim that this represented Caine getting some kind of exemption from the rules, rather than Caine being a bit snappish, which snappishness was more than justified on my view by the thread topic, and isn’t exactly unique to Caine around here either.
@Jafafa Hots:
I thank you from the bottom of my universe for this.
=========================
Oh, also, I think my previous was for sonofrojblake and not rahulkedia.
CD
Your link goes to your post #56
Crip Dyke:
as always, I admire your ability to not just make substantial points and present relevant info (where needed), but also break down those points in a manner that is easy to comprehend.
Does that make me a CD fanboy? If it does, I embrace the label.
@Jafafa Hots:
My thanks was actually for this.
h/t dalillama.
=============
@Dalillama: in addition to thanks for the link notice, I wanted to say that the sonofrojblake comment was broader than what originally pissed off rahulkedia. Plus I was trying not to talk about Caine in the 3rd person as if sitting in judgement of her or her comment individually without including her in the conversation. I think that’s a bad dynamic that is rightfully discouraged.
Plus, it is technically possible for the general assertion to be correct even if Caine’s comment was a bad example. I didn’t want it to rise & fall on that.
@Tony!
Fanboys are good. I need fanboys.
Do you do dishes?
Notice soomething?
While the side describing the horrors of this is substantiated by actual womenwho went through this, the “positive effects” are only what the people keeping these women as cattle report. Apparently no woman wanted to tell them how grateful she was in person.
BTW, Stockholm Syndrome is a thing.
Also, given that those women were just locked up and mistreated by the authorities, how likely does anybody think that they will seek help ever again? Yeah, right. Typical pro-life fuckery: care about the fetus, who cares what happens to a child.
“Ally” Fogg has got to fucking GO. He’s posting bullshit about how domestic abuse is “almost always mutual” and “half of all abusers are women” and “Teh Poor MENZ!!!!!”
Remind me again why we have this male-supremacist jackass here on FTB? He certainly doesn’t add anything…
WMDKitty, you seem to be confused about the functional meaning of quotation marks. You also seem to not read so good. And which FTB blog is yours?
Fuck you, Chas. I know what quotation marks are for and how to use them, and I don’t need to have a blog here to have opinions or feelings, and I FUCKING WELL KNOW BULLSHIT WHEN I SMELL IT.
Ally’s little corner of this site is poisonous, damaging, and anti-woman.
So, Chas, until you can be less of a raging doucheweasel, you should shut your gaping ass before more air escapes.
I know bullshit when I see it, too.
chigau
Then how about hopping over to so-called “Ally’s” blog and calling out that bullshit?
WMDKitty
Do not tell me what to do.
Ever.
WMDKitty,
I’m nearly out the door, so can’t respond much.
He says some DV is “clear-cut” because there is no retaliation. But what is retaliation? If someone hits me and I slap them back, but we’re not tussling and we just keep going with our day only for the situation to be repeated some other time, was that slap self-defense or retaliation? If I don’t cry and go to the police… I guess we’re just mutually abusing and there’s no victim?
Then he’s skipping some arbitrary percentage between ‘some’ and a ‘large part, probably more than 50%’ and putting on the opposition situations where there is mutual violence and no clear case to be made on who the aggressor is.
That’s…. unfortunate. The second groups is really vague. Rhetorically, he’s not just putting them on opposing sides, but making the “middle” virtually disappear.
Sorry for a disjointed comment. Short story: post reads like bullshit. Good points about acknowledging male victims of violence got drowned in it.
chigau
I apologize, it was meant as a (snarky) suggestion, rather than a command. I’m tired, frustrated, triggered (insinuating that women are “just as bad” or are lying is a major trigger, because of the way I was treated by the police every time I tried to get help) and unhappy that a blogger who is supporting the MRM is allowed here because that last kind of goes against everything this community has tried to build.
beatrice
Thank you for the support. By Not-an-ally’s “logic”, fighting back when my abuser tried to kill me makes it “mutual violence”.
WMDKitty,
I am so, so sorry. I went to find what you were talking about since I’d never heard of Ally Frogg before.
Ugh. Ew. Ugh.
I started reading it. I started on the studies. I’ll post what I have here to show support but I can’t go there right now. I wanted to. I tried, but I really can’t go into the wolves den atm. I’m literally posting this and fleeing.
TRIGGER WARNING:
I call shit on the study. I mean what’s their definition of reciprocial? Did they even define it? Here’s what I found there:
So, they admit in the begining self-denfes gets lumped in with “reciprocal” violence but does nothing to actually deal with that issue? Oh FFS, this is going to be bad.
Given our victim blaming society and how there is no context or definitions, how do we really know what the fuck this means? Does it count as initiating violence when they have your cornered screaming in your face and the only way to get out is to push, to fight? Afterall, the perpetator was just arguing and the victim is the one to make it “violent”. This was a survey done, how to we know women and men blame the woman for causing things? Hell, I remember the period of just getting out and recovery from an abusive relationship. I would’ve said I caused it and started it too, but it was really only in self-defense. There’s also those times where they play the victim (“Oh, why do you do this to me? Why do you make me so angry?”) so you feel bad and reach out to comfort like a good woman is suppose to do, only to have that used as an excuse to beat you.
Oh, great. I’m excluded. So many women survivors are excluded. All the women murdered are excluded. Wonderful way to get the data to show it’s woman’s fault, huh? Make them out to be more violent and the one to cause the excalation.
I mean look at what they have under “Implications for Prevention and Intervention”:
That’s literally victim blaming. Fighting back is self-fucking-defense. They want to teach women to not fight back, to not dare aggrevate or escalate because hey, all he did was put his hands on you.. It’s not like he hit you anything…
And just look at their huge “Limitations” sections. It’s too big to quote fully but here’s some bits:
= More victim blaming bullshit. So goddamn convenient.
JAL
It’s not “fleeing”, it’s a strategic retreat. At least, that’s how I like to think of it.
That’s the study?! Ay.
Looks worthless
Crip Dyke:
Do I do dishes?
Ummm…
I skip this question!
Next one?
So, I stop by, catch up and see that dravid, rahulkedia, and sonofrojblake have joined Marjanovic in flinging shit in my face. I am held to higher standard than anyone else on this blog. I have, for years, put up with stupid myths about having this great power, about me being exempt from any rule. It’s all bullshit, but I get to listen to it from one idiot after another. It wasn’t very long ago, that FossilFishy pointed out to me that I had skirted the edges of a rule, and I agreed and apologized. It’s a source of amazement that the idiots never manage to see all the times things like that happen.
I have opened my heart, my house, my wallet and given freely of my time to all manner of people here, but I still get to be the one who shouldn’t be here, because I’m the one keeping the good people away, the right people away. It’s perfectly okay to say awful things to me, it’s just that uppity b!tch Caine. The last time it was “blame Caine!”, I resigned from being a monitor. It didn’t help. I can’t do that again, so get happy, Marjanovic and the rest – you win. If I can’t manage to stay away from here, I’ll ask PZ to ban me.
Oh fuck, Caine
I am NOT happy.
I understand you, but I’m totally NOT happy about this, because you rock, and your wit and insight and humanity have changed things for many of us.
Oh Caine, you do have supporters here too. I for one would be sad to not see your sharp wit and commentary anymore.
Stay safe whatever you do.
@Caine
I can’t tell you what to do, but I hope you don’t stay away permanently. By all means, take a break if you need it, but I really hope you come back.
I don’t know who these “right people” are, but if they’re staying away because of you, I’m not sure we really need them.
Caine: Por favor, no te vayas.
Caine, please don’t go! Your voice is a very, very valuable one here – part of what it is that makes this place the valuable, informative, thought-provoking, compassionate, passionate place it is. I get it (or rather, I try to; I know I don’t have any comparable experience) that this is hard and exhausting for you, but I would still hope that you might feel able to come back, maybe after a break to restore spoons?
Caine, don’t let the shit throwers win. Take a break if necessary, but please come back.
Caine,
Of course you must do what you need to, but there are many, many of us who love and respect you, and would greatly miss your presence here. I can’t think of another Pharyngulite whose comments I value more, or learn more from.
@Cripdyke, 56:
It is further about knowing and accepting without comment that the lines are drawn differently for some than others. There’s an in-group, and an out-group. You acknowledge this fact, explain how it happens, offer perfectly reasonable justification for why it happens… so we agree it happens. Great.
And there’s a perfect example. You can acknowledge and justify it happening at length and that’s not a problem at all… but if I say that it happens, in the context of telling someone that it’s regarded as rude to mention it, I’m “flinging shit” in someone’s face.
I wish I’d known. If only someone could have warned me, in reasonable and non-personal, non-specific terms, that acknowledging the inconsistency is rude wherever you do it.
Caine
*hugs* I nth the above sentiments expressed by Giliell through Nick. You are an extremely important person to me, and to this place.
sonofrojblake
The inconsistency is in your mind. The things you believe are ‘gotchas’ are not. Bluntly, you are wrong, and also an asshole. It would be greatly appreciated if you’d knock it the fuck off.
Thumper: Token Breeder (#7) –
Wouldn’t that require the feds having to prove possession and use within the US? Testing positive isn’t enough, players could claim they cross the border and the feds have to prove it happened in the US.
Oh, I forgot – since 2000, the burden of proof in US courts lies with the defence, not the prosecution….
That’s only partial sarcasm.
Caine
Don’t go.
Where is your evidence. You are flinging unevidence accusations, which is shit. You need to get over yourself.
Misogyny in sports reporting: totally not dead.
Misogyny in IT/hardware also very much alive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvNnv7nh2Es (warning: may not be safe for work)
Seriously, is this how they have to advertise these days? Bastards.
Just found out from a Red Piller (MRA) that their is a “tranny mafia”. How come no one let me in on this before. I want to be a henchwoman.
What an idiotic question.
Oh, didn’t you know? Some cis people live in fear that
they might meet a trans person in real lifethe “tranny mafia” will kill them and their family.Caine
Please don’t go!
I think a tranny yakuza would be cooler, what with the tattoos.
Chigau, I am not sure I could stand the many hours it would take to get those full body tattoos.
Hi Caine! I’m sorry you have to deal with such shit. When I read those comments complaining about you, it is like there is some mythical Caine (not you) who is running around being a tyrant. The Caine I see fights injustice tirelessly, is helpful, kind, a fantabulous artist, a lover of rats and an all around super cool person. So again, I’m so sorry you have to deal with that shit. I hope you don’t go forever.
Caine, please don’t go. As others have said, I learn so much from your comments. *hugs and chocolate*
Caine:
I too would hate to see you leave.
@left0ver1under
That would work for “It was legal in the country I smoked it in”, but wouldn’t work for “It was legal in the state I smoked it in”.
@sonofrojblake #84
I really don’t see an inconsistency. And if you feel there is, is that not something you should be taking up with PZ?
Hmmm. I was familiar with Transsexual Menace. Even done that and got the Tshirt.
But mafia?
Out of morbid curiosity, I clicked on some stripper focused link-bait. Turns out my standards are way to high for stripper focused link bait. 2 points of especially astounding idiocy:
1) Describing a world where women wear one piece swim suits rather than 2 piece swim suits as “terrifying.” Even in jest, this is idiotic. If you feel the need to describe a world where women are conforming slightly less to your own sexualized expectations of them, you have fucked up. Fix that.
2) Apparently there’s a thing called “the looney toss” in western Canada. Strippers stick a looney to their body; patrons throw looney’s at them to try and knock it off. The link-bait backs this up with a link to an article by a stripper visiting Calgary from Los Vagas. She describes it as degrading; the women working at those strip clubs describe it as degrading and sometimes painful. The link-bait describes it as “good fun.” The opinions of the women at whom one might throw looney’s is, apparently, irrelevant.
Take care, Caine. I like and respect you, for what that is worth.
I would be happier if you decided to stay, but you know – no pressure :).d
yeah, it’s a fucking stupid and inarguably sexist question, but “misogyny”?
Well. That was unexpected.
Caine,
Take care of yourself. Maybe that means never being here again and if so, please know that I too will miss seeing your nym.
@ChasCPetersen
… what exactly is the distinction between misogyny and sexism aimed at women?
I hate the dishonesty of the anti-choice crowd.
I tweeted a story about how the shiny happy bestest pope ever tweeted his support of the anti-choice rally in Washington DC. Person tries to shame me about abortion and proceeds to explain to me that even progressives are becoming pro-life. He links to a Gallup poll about that.
I reply that rights are not a popularity contest.
Gives me the bullshit about how the fetus is viable at 23 weeks.
I link to the Two Nice Girls song, “Spent My Last Ten Dollars(On Birth Control And Beers)
He says no wonder young people are becoming pro-life, that children have better moral clarity than me and that I am ignoring science.
I apologized for lacking the morality to shoot people who work at clinics and burning down clinic.
He goes off about stupid liberals.
I ask about how come anti-choice people tend to be against contraception.
He links to a poll about catholics being pro contraception.
He claims to be arguing rationally and logically.
I bring up the pope again, the RCC and conservative christians being against contraception. Tell himhe is cherry picking and block his silly ass.
In other words. The same old shit.
Wondering why he thought going after me like this would even begin to change my mind.
Apropos of the allegation of double standards and linguistic use, Amanda Marcotte has something up that is useful.
While it’s about why feminists using creep/y are not hypocrites for objecting to misogynist slurs (I’m not sure why she stopped at misogynist slurs, but there you are). I find her brief discussion of “dick” unhelpful (should have been longer and productive or just omitted – as is, it’s 2 sentences that can’t add anything at all). But the main point is about how “creep” is different than “bitch” and how shaming someone out of abusing the sexism which coerces women into dropping objections to activities to which they don’t actually consent is not the same as shaming someone out of using leadership skills which would be praised in a man. And that main point is done well.
sonofrojblake, if you’re listening, this is the problem with what you’re saying. We don’t police the ability of people to learn the rules and distinctions made here. We actively tell people what their fuck-ups are. I’ve been told about my fuckups from my very first comment (oh boy did i get a lot of feedback on that comment). Then people get to choose to learn what the rules are *on their own*. They don’t need a ticket. They don’t have to beg for insider info. They just need to make mistakes and learn from them. Of course, learning from others’ mistakes is useful and encouraged, but we each have our own voices and it may be that no one would phrase a sentiment quite like person X, so the virtues of that phrasing can’t be known until person X phrases the sentiment.
You have to risk something to learn here. You have to risk being wrong. But you don’t have to risk an in-group barring your access to necessary knowledge.
What you’re implying, that there are different rules **simply isn’t true** unless you decide that courtesies based on established trust are rules and that acting on trust established by evidence is unethical if it means that persons that have acted in ways contrary to trust or have not built up a history of evidence on trustworthiness get treated differently.
That’s not in-group/out-group dynamics in action. That’s not unethical. You **should** treat me differently if I have a habit of slandering all children of rojblake. You **should** treat me differently if I have a habit of supporting all children of rojblake. My history of slander or support has practical consequences in communication.
Ignoring that is willful idiocy. Acting on it is not unethical tribalism.
Amanda Marcotte has something up relevant to our discussions here about ingroup/outgroup dynamics.
In short, however, sonofrojblake, you are wrong that different rules are being employed. Regulars don’t prevent people from learning what is unacceptable here. Regulars may provide that info harshly or generously, but they don’t hide it.
When you conflate courtesy based on evidence of historical patterns in action and communication with hypocritical changes of the rules, you are committing an error as large as that examined by Marcotte.
I think this is a good sign. When people have to lie or obfuscate about what their positions actually are, it tells me that the majority opinion is against them. That people need to pretend that catholics support contraception is good news.
Cerberus!
…I see no reason to think this has even occurred to him. When he says “you are not being objective”, what makes you think what he really wants to say is “I am being objective”, let alone “only I am even capable of being objective”?
As evidenced by his very ability to blunder into conversations at inopportune moments, he’s not the kind of neurotypical person who puts a social message into every little thing he says. He has no fear of being blunt – why would he suddenly try to subtly insinuate stuff instead?
Admittedly, I’m projecting. Projecting myself into other people and then modifying the projection according to what evidence I notice is the only means I have of understanding people.
cm!
At the end of the very same paragraph where the occurs that Vanderbilt was trans? It’s not isolated at all.
Janine!
*blink*
Thankful? Why would anyone be thankful for a mere statement of (perceived) fact?
I’m not being sarcastic, in case you’re wondering. I take for granted that people will correct me whenever they feel I’ve said something that was wrong, and I find it rather disturbing whenever I learn that they don’t.
I do agree that Chas doesn’t seem to care much about finding out what makes people so angry at him.
Quotation marks not intended, I can’t have without them.
Please explain the hook, then – I can’t see it.
WMDKitty!
I think the question “which FTB blog is yours?” was directed at your question “why we have this male-supremacist jackass here on FTB”, specifically the meaning of “we”.
Caine!
…Wow.
I ask you to be careful in not inadvertently chasing people away, and you call that flinging shit in your face?
I didn’t see it happen because I spend less time on Pharyngula than I used to – meatspace has intervened. That’s part of the reason why I hadn’t noticed you weren’t a monitor anymore, too; I only learned just now that you resigned (instead of PZ just rotating you out).
sonofrojblake doesn’t comment much, so there’s no reason to think he reads much, and dravid and rahulkedia are completely new here.
I’m actually taking offense at what you read into what I wrote. What makes you draw conclusions out of thin air!?! I’ve never wanted you to leave Pharyngula, and I’ve never said so or made the slightest hint in that direction!
I mean what I say, and I don’t mean what I don’t say!
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░
Assuming, of course, that both participants understand what’s going on, as opposed to, say, taking it literally and believing the other person really is falling in love with them.
Agreed.
*facepalm*
Even without the misogyny, that question is outright bullying. Bullying live on national TV.
Christ, what assholes.
What, behind our backs – why? Shouldn’t it be simpler to make us aware of it without involving teh ECO?
(I do agree he’s exaggerating the inconsistency.)
In the First World, including the US this time, the vast majority of Catholics has long supported contraception, and the vast majority of women uses it, even the ones who go to church every Sunday. Just the hierarchy, the Church as an organization, is against it – but never mentions it, because if they excommunicated everyone who disagrees with them, there’d be next to nobody left.
Uh, I never claimed I wanted you to leave, that is.
@David M:
Seconded. hard.
David @110:
Then how should one read this (my bolding)?;
David @ 110:
Consider your own use of comic sans as a clue to said hook. It’s not that hard to see, really.
…
*lightbulb moment*
That she should stay off? No, that never even occurred to me. There are other people that should stay off. Most or all of them are already doing that, BTW, and they have no overlap with the people who told me they’re staying away because of (their interpretation of) Caine.
Again: I mean what I say, and I don’t mean what I don’t say. There’s nothing to read between my lines, because I don’t write there.
Oops, clicked “send” too soon.
Then consider me clueless, because I’m still not seeing it. My use of Comic Sans means that I think you’ve said plenty of stupid things, that’s all.
There’s between the lines and then there’s the lines.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice the most obvious reading wouldn’t kill you.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice what apparently to some people is the most obvious reading. It really isn’t to me. Honestly. :-|
It would also be completely uncharacteristic for me to want Caine to leave. Just yesterday I wrote the following here, admittedly on a thread that neither Caine nor Beatrice have commented on since then:
The “too” refers to the “misunderstood” in the quote, not specifically to misinterpreting Caine.
David @ 116:
Oh, I got that loud and clear. Now consider what sort of underlying message is being communicated with the following:
It’s not that they want them to actually grab it, they just want to get them angry. That’s what I mean by baiting someone. It’s the sort of thing an insincere person does out of malicious delight, and I don’t waste my time responding to it.
here, let me g**gle that for you
[note in particular links to Ophelia Benson]
David Wilford
No, asshole.
I’m not insincere, I’m honestly pissed at your pope-loving misogynist ass.
The only malicious person here is you, Mr. “let’s throw pregnant women into prison and treat them like cattle”
If only we had some easy way of figuring out who the current monitors are. Maybe a list could be included in a page of general commenting rules and moderation policies. That way, anytime somebody has a question on that subject, they go to the same page and get all the relevant information. To make it extra easy, we could put a link to that page at the top of every post. That would be handy.
PZ should really get on that. Lazy bastard.
Gee Mr. Atheists use hammers. That isn’t baiting? What a hypocritical fool you are.
Well Nerd, when all you have is a hammer (atheism), everything looks like a nail (theism, deism, the KKK, Unitarians, etc.). It’s not a very discriminating tool, really.
If I had a hammer
El Martillo
@ 126:
Well, they also had a bell and a song! to! sing! all over this land…
And thinking of Victor Jara:
When all you have is concern/tone trolling, you are a troll….Troll.
@David Wilford:
There is nothing that should restrain you from responding to the substance of criticism. You believe that the tone indicates that someone will not believe your argument? That it’s an invitation to futility? Well an un-rebutted criticism is also an invitation to futility. You know enough to know that around here we look at the substance and not the tone for who wins an argument. We look at tone to notice whether we’ve pissed someone off or hurt feelings, which can be useful to know, but we’re not making decisions about who has the better argument from tone.
sometimes people will engage in reductio ad absurdam…or close to. You’ve advocated intervention in women’s autonomy **without advocating any specific limits on the power to intervene**. Nor have you offered a convenient rationale for intervening with regards to alcohol, but not climbing stairs (or, for that matter, mountains) without confirmation that a person isn’t pregnant.
Advocacy of unlimited power to override women’s autonomy is deeply offensive.
Unless and until you advocate some limits and a coherent, rational way for people to understand and apply those limits in practice, then the only logical conclusion is that guarantees of women’s autonomy are unimportant to you.
To say it another way, in your view, potentially pregnant women do not have a right to bodily autonomy. They merely have bodily autonomy by default in absence of state action, which could come any time, for an unbounded set of reasons that centers around risks to any fetus or potential fetus.
You think it’s a trap that you’ve been invited to spell out how your view is NOT the view logically entailed by your previous statements?
The only way it could be a trap is if you actually do believe women don’t have a right to bodily autonomy and you were hoping people wouldn’t notice.
Here is an essay by a trans man whom ESPN did a story on against his stated wishes.
(Just a reminder why I went stealth here for so many years. It is a luxury not dealing with this shit.)
Crip Dyke @ 129:
My experience here is that some here hide behind the tone argument to better enable their verbal abuse of other posters, not simply to express their anger or hurt feelings. If anything, the repeated use of profanity starts to indicate someone who isn’t arguing in good faith and merely wants to intimidate others into shutting up.
As for the FAS discussion, I raised the question about it but that doesn’t mean I have all the answers. The article about the Norwegian experience was not an endorsement of their policies, nor has anything I’ve said shown I’m against a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. But that doesn’t mean there’s no consideration that needs to be given to the possibility of a pregnant woman’s addiction to alcohol or other substances causing birth defects to their child. Hence my recommendation of higher taxes on alcohol, education, better and more available prenatal care, counseling for drug and alcohol addiction, taking binge drinking as seriously as drunk driving.
(For example, consider the poor woman in Duluth, Minnesota recently who went out and got blasted one night with her friends and passed out on a porch outdoors in subzero weather and as a result lost all her fingers to frostbite – maybe a little social pressure NOT to drink to stupidity would be a good idea.)
A right to autonomy doesn’t confer a right to harm others, and while a foetus isn’t a person if there’s an intention to have the child there is a corresponding responsibility on the part of the pregnant woman to not cause future harm to her child. If because of alcoholism they cannot exercise that responsibility, there is a serious moral question there that needs answering.
Honestly, everybody, why can’t you just accept that David Wilford knows your intentions better than you do?
And people, including Giliell, have asked you what you mean by this. Taking “binge drinking as seriously as drunk driving” means arrest, does it not?
Why be vague about it?
If not, by what principle do you distinguish?
moreover, what about persons not known to be pregnant who could be/get pregnant? What if engaging in behavior that is risky after birth? We all know that breast milk benefits babies enormously. Should we take postpartum sky diving as seriously as drunk driving?
Why or why not?
You are advocating intervention that implies arrest and lack of bodily autonomy, but not owning up to it. By not owning up to it, you avoid the opportunity to clarify any limiting principles you believe should operate.
Thus there’s really no reason for anyone here to believe you don’t think arrest is the right response for pregnant or potentially pregnant drinking or to believe that other things that might harm a child, like engaging in skydiving that could leave a child parentless, are not covered by your “corresponding responsibility”.
You don’t have to have all the answers, but when you propose that a problem should be treated the same as some other problem that is currently addressed by jail time, and refuse to clarify any limits, people with the capacity to get pregnant have no reason to believe that you attribute bodily autonomy to female persons.
Accept it or come up with a new frame for you “corresponding responsibility” or point out a flaw in the logic, but calling it a “worm” and ignoring it does nothing to convince us that you hold, in good faith, a conviction that female bodily autonomy must be protected as a right.
Really? Your experience here is that you can read other people’s minds?
If not, then you’re talking about how you perceive things, not necessarily how they really are. If you perceive profanity as an indicator of a lack of good faith, okay. However, that’s completely at odds with the culture of this place; the reality of the environment you’re in.
A focus on style over substance is routinely used by people who don’t actually have an argument. That’s why the culture here is the way it is, in the first place.
Crip Dyke @ 133:
I previously mentioned MADD, which as an organization hasn’t just pushed for stricter OWI laws, but has also put much emphasis on the message “Don’t let friends drive drunk”. The same sort of message is needed for binge drinking. But yes, if someone was supplying alcohol freely and wasn’t paying attention to another’s inebriation to the point where they wander off and freeze to death, drown in the river, drive into a tree, all of which has happened in Minnesota this past month, by all means, let’s consider criminal penalties for such irresponsibility.
As for arresting a pregnant alcoholic mother for endangering their future child’s welfare in order to prevent them from drinking further, again, it’s the expected harm to the future child that needs to be judged. As for skydiving, considering the potential for the landing being hard enough to cause internal injuries, I’d not advise it. I’d also suggest not getting out of bed, riding in a car or watching the news on television, because it might be a problem. In other words, you’re trying to avoid dealing with the actual issue of FAS by conflating it with anything and everything. Let’s be serious enough to deal with an actual problem that causes birth defects to children, o.k.?
As for rights, the right to free speech doesn’t confer the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater, nor does your right to swing your fist give you license to punch someone else in the face. It’s a tough question to assess what rights a future child has, and obviously it hits close to home with respect to abortion, but as I said before, it’s the intention to have the child that matters. If a mother after giving birth drank booze to the point where her own milk was a health risk to her baby, we’d do something about it pronto.
You’ve constructed an argument for restricting the freedom and rights afforded to alcoholics, but seem hell bent on singling out pregnant women. Why?
Loss of custody is not a violation of the mother’s rights. The same is not true for what you’re suggesting. Your analogies need to be analogous to carry any weight.
LykeX @ 134:
No, I’m reading their words and noting the obvious and pointed hostility, generally expressed with the stated purpose of shutting other people up. Don’t pretend the culture of this place endorses that.
Well, if you have nothing cogent to offer, for example making pregnant women less than fully human, by jailing them for not obeying YOUR rules, then, yes, you should shut the fuck up as an asshat.
This makes the woman less than fully human. Which means we can do the same to you for being illogical and failing to answer women, and the hard questions they ask of you? Now, do you wish to continue with said inane argument? Otherwise, show with real evidence, the fetus is more of a person than the woman. Or, shut the fuck up. That is hard question you cannot avoid.
This is an attempt to describe a thought process (i.e. “why some here hide behind the tone argument”).
This is an attempt to describe the contents of their writing.
You’ll note that these are two different things. You’re dodging the question.
Jacob @ 141:
Oh, many posters here have directly said the tone argument is being used unfairly against them and then proceed to double down on the profanity and telling others to shut up. It’s verbal intimidation, pure and simple. It’s one thing to be angry, but when you’re angry all the time and continually make personal attacks? That’s a problem.
Sorry fuckwit, you are told to have honesty and integrity, and either provide evidence to back up your inane claims (none to date that women aren’t fully human with rights), or shut the fuck up. Both are positions of honesty and integrity. But if you can’t/won’t put up, and can’t shut up, the only conclusion we make is that you are a prima facie confirmed liar and bullshitter. Your own ego won’t let you do the honorable thing, and just drop an argument.
Again, these are two different things. Do you have any basis on which to declare that those “hiding behind the tone argument” are doing so to specifically enable verbal abuse, as opposed to protecting their wish to express anger or hurt?
David Wilford
“It’s a tough question to assess what rights a future child has,”
No, it’s not that difficult at all — the parasite has no rights whatsoever until it is born and actually becomes a child.
David Wilford,
It is clear that FAS is an important issue for you, and you would wish to reduce occurrences of FAS. So far so good. The issue that you are not responding to is that drinking alcohol is a legal activity, and incarcerating women for a legal activity is treating them as less than human.
To make headway in this argument, you need to think about how to address the problem of FAS without restricting the rights of women because they are pregnant. There has been too much historical precedent of controlling women in all sorts of ways.
DW, in case you are illiterate and confused, there is a difference between expressing an evidenced opinion, which we must argue with, or an unevidenced opinion, like your “a woman is less than a full human with bodily integrity rights during pregnancy”. With the former, we argue the facts. With the latter, we dismiss the opinion. Your opinions are regularly dismissed by the commentariate. That explains your problems here. What you think is evidence we don’t think is evidence. Listen to me, I’m trying to get you to separate real evidence from your opinion of the evidence.
@david w
No. I’m not trying to avoid dealing with the actual issue of FAS. I’m trying to deal with the actual issue of loss of autonomy for female bodied people. Sure, FAS – usually nowadays FAE, for your information – is an actual constellation of birth defects that are, presumably, preventable.
The question on the tables is this: Are you engaging in special pleading around FAE, or are you in favor of limiting women’s autonomy any time there’s a risk to the fetus by, to use your example, going outside. Serious birth defects can be avoided by having each potential parent’s genetic profile available for comparison.
Is screwing without an on-file genetic profile something that should result in arrest? If FAE can result in arrest, why not screwing without making your profile searchable? They both create risk of birth defects. In fact, it’s clear that genetics plays a role in FAE, though the exact mechanisms are unclear in the research I read. Do we let drunk pregnant women go if they don’t have the heightened genetic factor risks as well?
And here’s the thing: why or why not?
Everything you’re saying is special pleading for a case you believe you can paint sympathetically. As women, we worry that there is no natural limiting principle to preserve a zone of autonomy for ourselves.
Spell out how your ideas don’t constitute special pleading. Spell out how the reasoning for this is totes different from the reason for arresting people for fucking without a searchable genetic profile.
Stop your special pleading and give us an idea of the rights for women you actually support and how those are different than situations in which we can be arrested for drinking.
Also:
Bullshit it doesn’t. It most certainly protects yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. If you don’t know the law well enough to bullshit a foreign law student, you probably shouldn’t be going off on your US constitutional law.
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist Fucktoy of Death & Her Handmaiden —
Thanks for your comment at #56. I appreciate the clarification. I haven’t seen evidence of a double standard here, except in the sense you point out: giving the benefit of the doubt to people who’ve earned it. Which is entirely reasonable. My “fuck that shit” was in response to what I thought was a defense of having one.
Caine, I hope you don’t go. For what it’s worth, I respect the hell out of you. I KNOW I’m far from alone in that.
Fuck it.
You’re bringing your goddamn hammer shit here too David Wilford?
Get it through your fucking skull!!
That hammer you think we use so much???
It isn’t used as often as you think. Why, it’s almost as if you’ve looked around for instances where various commenters have come down hard, and extrapolated that to mean that we *always* do that. Or that we never use other tools.
Fuck that and fuck you.
Some people swear sometimes and not others.
Sometimes swearing is used in an argument. Sometimes not.
Sometimes criticism comes hard and heavy. Sometimes not.
Why the fuck is it so fucking difficult for you to understand that we don’t *only* have a hammer in the toolbox? Did your bias confirm that for you? Do you know anyone at Pharyngula in real life–well enough to know how they consistently argue?
I doubt it.
In which case, shut the fuck up about how we only seem able to employ one form of argument. That is false.
I also note that you complain about our tone as if it’s the only one we use right here. Your presence likely wouldn’t be welcome there, but have you ever read the Lounge? Have you ever read any of the rape threads? Have you taken a look at any other threads? You’re so completely sold that we’re a bunch of meanie atheists with our hammers and unwilling/incapable/unable to make arguments in any other way based on what? The threads you’ve read that some of us are blunt or rude? The threads where we’ve criticized the pope using HARSH LANGUAGE?
Get some fucking perspective, and learn to avoid confirmation bias assclam.
Just in case anybody wonders why I call David Wilford a misogynist: Watch how the woman magically disappears from the tale. It’s only the that counts. Never ever does he spend a single moment wondering what the consequences of involuntary commitment, arrest or any other forced meassure might have on the woman.
He also trumpets about FAS without acknowledging the reality, in spite of having been given the relevant information:
-FAS is usally caused before the woman herself even knows she’s pregnant
-It is most certainly caused before anybody can see she’s pregnant
-It is not a problem that is caused by highly pregnant women going binge drinking. You don’t need to go binge drinking to cause it.
Therefore this whole blathering about intervention and binge drinking and WTF is just a smoke screen for the deep, deep desire to control women, and since it’s no longer fashionable to control ALL women misogynists usually pick a sup-group who then become the legitimate target of their “well meaning” proposals
All women are potentially pregnant.
chigau
Properly, all cis women are potentially pregnant.
Dalillama
All XX women…
All XX women with certain … parts …
All XX women with …parts … between the ages of um and eerr …
.
.
.
I’ll come in again.
I think almost all would suffice, although perhaps a majority might be more correct; I have no actual idea what proportion of women are nonfertile for whatever reason.
Dalillama
[snark] No reason to give them a pass. You know, there are infertile women who still get pregnant with that one in a million chance, there are tubal ligations that reverse themselves and my friend’s aunt was born after doctors claimed that her mother’s uterus had been removed. And let’s not forget those who thought they were already through menopause and then there was that last egg that bloomed. Surely their potential future children aren’t worth less than those of 20something cis women? [/snark]
Giliell:
Should we start taking bets on whether or not David W will respond to your #151?
Tony
The problem are the odds.
I mean, if we all bet a chocolate cookie I doubt that we would get so much as an additional crumble in case we won the bet.
I know. Toilets in bars and clubs should have devices installed in them that do pregnancy tests on every woman who uses them. And if a woman is pregnant, the stall locks itself down. If the woman hasn’t been drinking, she can unlock the stall by blowing into a breathalyzer. Otherwise, the stall automatically sends a call to the police to arrest her and throw her in prison till she gives birth.
Of course, they’ll have to do this to the men’s bathroom too, or women will just sneak in there. And they’ll have to hire goons to patrol the alley for illicit pissers who sneak out the back. But, you know, anything for the good of the future kiddies.
Wouldn’t it be simpler to just install such devices directly in the bladder? You could couple the pregnancy test with blood alcohol testing, add a GPS and hook it all up to a system that automatically alerts the police to the location of any woman who is simultaneously pregnant and inebriated.
I think I just managed to scare myself.
Brilliant!
There’s a spectrum of alcohol-related birth defects and they are preventable, which is why there are warning labels on bottles of booze warning pregnant women about consuming alcohol. I earlier linked to some research on the effect of alcohol on the development of zebrafish, if you’re interested in doing some followup on the subject.
Again, you’re throwing other matters out there and not dealing with the subject at hand. We know there’s a definite relationship between heavy consumption of alcohol and FAS, and at least in Norway they didn’t pass laws dealing with on-line genetic profiling to address that. FWIW, we don’t let siblings legally marry in part because of genetic issues, so you can consider that I suppose as you ponder the questions you asked.
If you’re thinking along the lines of natural law here, I’m not sure you want to go there. I am not a lawyer, of course.
I’m pro-choice and do not favor the prohibition of alcohol.
Now on the right of free speech, of course there are limits, in particular when it comes to child pornography. You ought to know that yourself, I trust.
Tony @ 150:
Hey, all I know is that when more than a few people get angry around here they go right for the f-word. I hope they don’t use it with their mother.
Giliell @ 151:
I’ve previously listed other measures with respect to alcohol consumption, including raising taxes on booze and discouraging binge drinking ala MADDs approach to drunk driving. I don’t favor restricting anyone’s freedom for the sake of controlling them. The example I gave earlier about how Norway was trying to prevent pregnant alcoholic women from obtaining booze is a very limited measure and is not part of a general campaign to subjucate women. Norway is a very progressive country with respect to the rights of women, including abortion rights, obviously. So all the claims about me wanting to control women are missing the mark.
The subject at hand is your degradation of women as humans with total bodily integrity. Health falls under that. YOUR OPINION is dismissed, until you provide evidence you are allowing women full bodily integrity, which you aren’t.
Then there is no need for you to continue your inane and stupid arguments. Either you control people, or you can’t. If you want to control people, present your plan to be criticized. I you don’t, there is no need to discuss the issue any further. YOUR concerns is dismissed.
Oh noes! Not “The f-word”!
Civilisation will fall, the seas will cover the lands, and American Idol will become legally-required viewing.
I suppose it’s okay for me to use it with my father, then. Thanks for the permission!
Actually I came here to express my support for Caine, which is unconditional. Take care of yourself! And I hope to see you posting eventually / at some point.
Why the fuck not? It’s not like she doesn’t know I fucking say it; I live and drive in fucking Massachusetts, for fuck’s sake.
Also: Caine, I will miss you if you go; do what you must for your own well-being, but know I will be happy to see you back if that is possible.
Typical inane outlier, not the standard, and not real evidence as you claim, You are attempting to control women if they don’t have full freedom and can ignore you. If you can’t stand to be ignored, your words by you continuing arguments are prima facie evidence of that you do want to control and demean women. Your choice cupcake.
David,
While I appreciate your concern with the use of the “f-word” around my mother, I can assure you she has dealt with far more aggravating and offensive things in her life.
Married to an abusive self center ass-child of a man for 12 years who when she finally left him in 1979 tried to destroy her life and left her with no money, no house and no car, did not pay child support one time and actively tried to destroy her in their social circle. She started a “business” by herself, if you want to call a Juvenile Justice advocacy non-profit a business. She managed to get her two sons into private school paying for it from the money she scraped together and gave us anything we needed and wanted (in reason). She’d dealt with rabid racists, misogynists, scumbags, politicians (i repeat myself) and the various detritus of the old south while fighting for children’s leagal rights and against the ingrained abuse in the system in the state of North Carolina. She stood toe to toe against Jessie Helms on many issues during Jessie’ heyday of trying to bring NC and the US back to the 1940s. She helped run campaigns for Harvey Gantt in her voting district when he, a black man in North Carolina, ran against Jessie in the 80’s. You can probably imagine the types of shit she had to deal with from the racists, misogynists and right-wing assholes (again I repeat myself).
That’s but a small smidgen of the shit she’s dealt with in her life as a Woman.
So when I sit down for a glass of wine with her to discuss the events of the times and other interesting topics you most likely would have almost zero knowledge about, if we say fuck or mother fucking assholes together a few times it’s not an offense to her it’s a compliment.
But I guess you aren’t as tough as her
A woman
My mother
Go fuck your self. (that by the way was not a compliment).
See this? This is blatant special pleading. It was pointed out to you that your reasoning so far applies to many other cases besides FAE. If you insist on using such a broad standard, then those other cases must be dealt with. Ignoring them and acting as though FAE is somehow special and worthy of special attention and a separate standard is special pleading.
Three claims:
1) Norway is not subjugating women in general;
2) Norway is very progressive and respects the rights of women;
3) Based on 1 and 2, David Wilford obviously doesn’t want to control women.
Except 1 is irrelevent; what Nnorway does in general has little bearing on what Norway is doing in this particular instance, which is subjugating women (i.e. involuntary incarceration of pregnant women). Given such subjugation, Norway has failed to respect the rights of women, at least in this particular instance, so 2 is out as well. No, David, it is only obvious if we use your pretend logic.
Tony @ 150 again:
Well, I’ve been acquainted with PZ for over ten years, starting with Talk.Origins on Usenet and his first Phrayngula.org blog, and have gone to a few events including a showing the film Flock of Dodos and the U of M in Minnepolis, a talk with Chris Mooney, an SF con or two, etc. So yeah, I do. It’s changed over the years though. PZ in person is very mild-mannered which for a few creationist types came as a surprise and probably threw them off their stride when debating him. But in recent years PZ’s more confrontational online persona has pretty much predominated, and personally I think that’s unfortunate. It certainly has rubbed off here.
Oh come on. Sure, there’s the “nice” lounge and some sensitivity on certain topics. But on almost every thread put up here it’s the same old same old with respect to more than a few people tossing out teh f-bomb like they were candies at Mardi Gras.
Back in the day when the Star Tribune newspaper used to host an online forum, there was one section for Faith & Values discussions that I participated in, along with atheists like George Kane and Tom Riddering (both Minnesota Atheists members as I recall) and Robert Alberti. There were many religious believers there as well, and I remember one in particular, Margaret Tucker, a Catholic who I came to really respect for her honesty and decency. We had to register under our real names and our posts were moderated with respect to language and personal attacks, and it helped to facilitate an exchange of ideas and POVs on many topics, for years. Contrast that with the almost total lack of any religious believers here, and get back to me about confirmation bias, dude. You’re all stuck here in your little safe zone for f-bomb tossing and think it smells like roses. It doesn’t.
David
I’m puzzled. Why do you find the word “fuck” such a stumbling block? How, exactly, does it harm you or detrimentally effect discourse?
“Affect,” damnit.
I must say I am sick unto nausea of the term “f-bomb”. How many people have been killed by the f-bomb? Is there, do tell me, a rash of suicide f-bombers to be alarmed about? And is it impossible to use any other euphemism, any at all: THE word. The big one. The queen mother of all swear words. The F dash dash dash word. The four-letter-word-sex. The F word. There are options: pray, do use them.
In other words, an argument based upon the use of a word that, unlike many others, insults no one’s background nor anyone’s race nor anything else of a personal nature, is unlikely to be well-received here.
Oh, and about the not using the f-word with your mother? It’s from the song A Chat With Your Mother by Lou and Peter Berryman, which is actually very funny. But obviously, I should know better than to assume others get the reference.
Daz @ 175:
Well, consider the fact that abusive language tends to drive people off more than attract them. I may not personally give a shit, but there are many people who are put off and don’t bother sticking around or even dropping in in the first place. So it does detrimentally affect the discourse, IMO.
#163, David Wilford:
I do research on FAE in zebrafish. It’s actually a little painful to see those papers on the subject: I did some of the earliest work on it, cheerfully posted my protocols and preliminary results on the web, and then saw a paper from a big lab come out with my identical protocols (and it was odd; they used exactly the same arbitrary concentration ranges I used) with no acknowledgment of where they came from, and now all of these papers contain little echoes of my old and subsequently unpublishable work on the subject. I don’t talk about the specifics of my work on the web anymore, ever.
Also, health effects are far more complicated than you know. Low concentrations of alcohol actually seem to be beneficial to the fish (“low” meaning blood concentrations that would get a human arrested; I’ve had embryos survive at concentrations up to 7%). They are larger and have better survival rates; I suspect that it’s because the low concentrations are more deleterious to parasites than to the fish.
Confining ourselves to humans, it’s actually a pretty messy phenomenon. The US has moderate alcohol consumption rates, while France has the highest consumption rates in the world. But the US has the highest frequency of FAE births, significantly more than France. Better correlations of FAE frequency are found with per capita consumption of beer, rather than alcohol in general: form of delivery, frequency of binge drinking, social tolerance of drunkenness, all of these seem to be more important factors than just drinking. Your “definite relationship between heavy consumption of alcohol and FAS” is a bit murkier than you think.
By the way, saying in a thread specifically stating “Say what you want, how you want” is rather obnoxious. You are far less likely to be banned for saying “fuck” here than you are for being a pretentious fetus-worshipping snot, you know, and I exercise a great deal of forbearance in these thunderdome threads. But if you’re going to take advantage of a lightly moderated thread to criticize tolerance, I’d be quite happy to tighten up my standards. On your ass.
#179, David Wilford:
Tone trolling? Really? You find the particular arrangement of four letters in a word more detrimental to discourse than sneering assholes showing up to argue with women about their right to autonomy?
I’d rather have a thousand angry profane women here than one superficially polite defender of his privilege. That’s the ‘tone’ I want.
Oh please.
Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
Do you speak to your mother like that?
Do you use language like that around your mother?
Are all very common expressions of tight-asses such as yourself who tend to think that women are a fragile people who can’t handle the manly man-ness of cursewords.
You’re no different as has been aptly demonstrated here.
David Wilford
Yes, and?
How does that in any way relate to the fact that you also advocate putting women under other people’s control?
No, no, you’re in favour of restricting women’s freedom for the sake of the fetus. Which is clearly totally different from all we’ve seen before. It’s not like Republicans claim that they’re shutting down abortion clinics for the sake of women.
Jacob Schmidt has already shown you where you went wrong with that. Also, you’re blatantly misrepresenting what Norway does. They are not somehow “preventing pregnant women from obtaining booze”. They are locking them up.
This is so non-sequitur, if you look up the term in a dictionary you’ll find that argument. I judge you as somebody who wants to control women by your own words, not by the actions of Norway (is that some strange appeal to authority? Oh, wait, you love authority).
You have not responded to any of the arguments about FAS that I gave you, you keep ignoring the facts, and you keep ignoring the clear implications of your “keep pregnant women from obtaining booze” stick.
Also, I am a godsdamnmotherfucking mother and I use “fuck” as often as I want to. You’re free to contact CPS.
David #179
The word “fuck” is not abusive. The phrase “fuck off” is. Spot the difference?
Please try again. What about the word “fuck” is inherently bad for discourse, or upsetting to your sensibilities? ‘Cause, you know, if it’s merely a matter of personal taste you really need to go on to explain why we should pander to that taste. (Or alternatively, shut the fuck up about it.)
Gee, prissy fuckwit has an opinion that says tone troll at work. Hence people respond to you and others like you in the proper fashion, by using what you complain about until you stop being pretentious prissy tone troll. Work on it. You might improve your discourse if you argue substance, with real evidence, instead of style. Because, without substance, your opinions can and are ignored except for SIWOTI.
Daz @ 184:
Oh, when Neil Gaiman used the word “fuck”, it’s definitely not abusive. But you don’t have to add “off” for it to be used abusively. Verbal aggression and profanity go hand in hand, because profane words do have an effect on us. Have you ever read Suzette Haden Elgin’s The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense? If you have, does what I’m saying make sense to you? (Anyone else is encouraged to reply if they’re so inclined.)
DW, you aren’t the first one to try to use FAS as a backdoor entry into trying to debase the humanity of a pregnant woman and make her subservient to the lesser fetus. It didn’t work before, and isn’t working now, if you are actually reading the responses people make.
When bodily integrity is intact, there are some unfortunate things that happen you can’t do anything about and there is court precedent that says so. Intelligent people recognize that. What is your excuse?
FWIW, I’m not going to respond further to FAS/FAE related matters. I’ve said all that I’m inclined to say about it, given I’m hardly an expert on the subject and don’t have the time to become one.
PZ @ 180:
Thanks for the summary about the research on zebrafish and alcohol, and my sympathies about your own research being poached upon.
Where does “pompous git” fit in here?
Here’s some verbal aggression: David Wilford, fuck the fuck off.
David #186
On you maybe. “Fuck” and other “profane” words have been part of my vocabulary since my very early teens. I can be as friendly as fuck whilst sprinkling “naughty” words throughout my speech, and I can be as nasty as a cyanide sandwich without using any word that you’d find abusive, by your definition.
Your implied lack of ability to express yourself clearly is noted. And it’s your problem, not ours.
Daz @ 192:
As I said, Neil Gaiman can say “fuck” on the air and not violate obscenity laws, because he’s just that cool. Obviously, not everyone is as cool as Neil. But for expressing hostility, profane words can have a significant impact that other words don’t have:
Damn, say the fucking word “fuck” is more verbally aggressive than polite talk that denies the existence of various minorities.
Because people who uses polite talk cannot actually be part of abusive actions.
Fuck you, David Wilford, and fuck the fucking high horse you rode in on.
(Am I cool enough to say this?)
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Yes, I have. I hold positions at my job that require an enormous amount of diplomacy and restraint. I grew up religious and spent something around the first 30 years of my life not even thinking in swear words. I know full well that there are times when one might want to refrain from using profanity.
But guess what? This isn’t the fucking UN. This is a blog, run not by a corporation, but by a person. It’s a blog where ideas get tossed around and things get discussed and the primary consideration is CONTENT, not form. You’re missing the point: catering to the feelings of propriety of various readers is not a concern. I, for one, relish it, because it’s one of the few places I can actually call bullshit bullshit. And it turns out that when you can’t hide behind politeness, when you can’t force people to waste all of their effort phrasing their thoughts nicely rather than concentrating on forming their arguments, when you can’t count on people being nice and overlooking blatant lies and concepts that are poorly thought out, the content of the discourse gets better. Sure, it’s a gravely road with lots of bumps, but it actually goes somewhere, unlike nicely paved pretty roads that lead nowhere but a pasture full of, well, bull shit.
(also I don’t usually read thunderdome and I’m catching up and I love you Caine)
David, I asked how the word “fuck” affects you. So far you’ve avoided that question, and have talked about how it affects other people.
The implication seems to be that you’re adult enough to read the word without your blood pressure going through the ceiling, but that other people are more fragile and need protection. In other words, you’re pearl-clutching.
Oh and Neil Gaiman—I don’t even like his writing, and he certainly doesn’t stand out as the coolest person on the planet.
PZ
I’m wondering how the correlations would look like if you compared the rates for sex education, reproductive health and choice, poverty and prenatal care.
That is your fucking opinion fuckwit, and it is dismissed since you don’t evidence yourself in the right way. Show us with evidence that YOUR shitheaded OPINION matters to anybody but you. When you can’t make solid, logical, and properly evidenced arguments, you hide behind politeness. Like all concern troll losers.
Rev. BDC @ #172,
That was a beautiful post.
This is a first. David Wilford, since you are too sensitively souled to cope with the swears, you are now banned from Thunderdome. You can post elsewhere, at least until I get even more fed up with your mealy-mouthed pretense, but you cannot post on Thunderdome under pain of banning.
I should warn you that people cuss elsewhere, too. You’re probably not going to last very long here.
Nerd, I’m also going to warn you: stop yelling at people for expressing an opinion. Everyone here is expressing opinions all the time, including you. It is not a sin.
Jeebus
Banned from the Thunderdome.
I’m book-marking that one.
@David W, #162:
yes. Of course there are limits. And yes, I know a good deal about those limits in the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the UK.
But I notice that you still haven’t simply admitted you were wrong about free speech rights in the US protecting one’s right to yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater.
why is it that when you’re caught dead wrong on something you sidestep the subject instead of apologizing for your error. Even your statement above sounds more condescending than deferential. And yet, you have no clue what you’re saying on the topic of free speech, who crafted the statement that you misquoted in a way that dramatically, substantively, and legally changes its meaning, or what principle the original statement attempted to amplify.
But far be it from you to admit you are wrong just because you say shit without having any idea what you’re talking about.
This kind of behavior makes it very hard to take you seriously at all.
In fact, when you combine your tendency to say things when you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about with your tendency to tell people that they shouldn’t express themselves in an angry way as a response to you saying shit on topics about which your are profoundly ignorant, the net message is this: I can make shit up that purports to justify limiting your freedom and you, who have your lives constrained by my careless bullshitting are the ones showing disrespect to me.
I’ve got news for you: carelessly, callously assuming your ill-thought maunderings justify ill impact upon others that just-so-not-coincidentally will never affect you is, itself, an act of grotesque offensiveness.
I made the point elsewhere, but perhaps it needs be made again:
Here are a few examples of someone angry or expressing disagreement without being all rude about it:
See? Even when terribly upset, pushed to the brink by the uppity folks who prefer to resort to extreme rhetoric – like calling this composed, civil person a “master of evil”! – this is a man who never swears.
You see! We can aspire to the high character of one who can control his own emotions. What? You still disagree?
========================
You advocate Darth Vader – avoiding impolitic words while justifying or doing harm to others.
We advocate Shaft – impolitic words are used to punctuate an objection to harmful words and actions.
I doubt you’re going to get many of us converting to the dark side. Sweet Sweetback’s got a badass song, and black is beautiful. Giving that up for merely “dark” is no temptation whatsoever.
Crip Dyke,
Sometimes I don’t even. Awe. Yeah.
I know right, CripDyke? He’s a complicated man and no one understands him but his woman.
DW #153
God, what a patronising arsehole.
Darn, I came in too late to get another swipe at the great Wilford One, absolute master of tone and psychic superhuman who knows all things (and won’t fucking stop trying to prove it).
I will say, however, that Rev. BigDumbChimp’s mother sounds like an absolutely amazing woman and I wish her success into the future.
DW @ 153
I don’t remember the first time I said the word “fuck” in front of my mother, but she does as it left quite an impression on her.
As she described it, her internal reaction was a delighted, “Ooh. Now xe’s pissed.”
Being a mother doesn’t mean fainting at the sight/sound of strong words used for strong reactions.
**
And on a tangential note, fuck fuck fuckity fuck. Caine, this place is the poorer for your absence, but I don’t blame you for your reaction one iota. Do what you have to do for you. If taking care of yourself means not being on Pharyngula, then I will miss your presence here greatly. Be good to yourself.
@stacy, 149:
I understood. I assumed we were in agreement, I just thought you would be interested in my comment as you were participating in that discussion. My addressing it to you was in no way meant to imply the comment was a criticism of you.
Fuck that shit? Yeah, I’m right with you.
One comment gone to moderation. I’m assuming it’s a fluke. If it recurs, I might be gone a while, folks.
If it did, I’d still be on the floor. For about, oooh, seven years, now.
Never mind all the other mothers I know, some of ages far more venerable than mine – still standing, still going strong, still not blinking at all the powerful language in the air.
Daz (#192)
According to my mother, I had “shit” down perfect by the time I was four.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Crip Dyke (#204)
But, but, can’t you respect the fact that he’s apparently been behaving this way for a long, long time? Since the Usenet days, at least! That’s gotta count for something. Right!?
David Wilford:
1. You don’t actually know from the use of ‘fuck’ whether or not someone is angry.
2. The use of ‘fuck’ when people are angry does not mean they don’t have an argument.
3. You’re as hung up on avoiding harsh words as many theists I know (who at least have the excuse that such words are affronts to god. You don’t have that.)
4. So what if a grown person uses ‘fuck’ around their mother. You have no idea whether or not any of us does, and your attempts to shame people are noted.
FUCK you.
For DW, if he’s still reading: An Ode To The Much-Maligned F-Bomb
Banned from the Thunderdome.
Wow.
I think I scared my cats with the howls of laughter.
@Daz, 215:
Very nicely done.
I notice that fuck can also be used in many other useful ways:
Directionally, “No, the trail on the fucking left!”
Temporally, “Ten fucking thirty!”
Quantitatively, “Dig fucking faster!”
Plaintively, “You forgot to bring the fucking beer?’
Qualitatively, “Your expedition might be fucked.”
Imperially, “Get fucking over here & see this!”
Disbelievingly, “I don’t fucking believe this.”
Paleontologically, “I’m afraid the fossil has fucking deteriorated.”
To Scale, “Yep, the skull is in fucking bitty pieces.”
Methodologically, “It will require a fuckload of reconstruction.”
Analytically, “It will fuck up the current taxonomy.”
Editorially, “This will be too much of a fucking bomb not to publish anyway.”
Summarily, “Fuck.”
Crip Dyke
You forgot the one where you put it in the middle of the word: “Absofuckinglutely!” (Excuse the poor reference, I’m sure there are others out there!)
You could probably and appropriately also describe the fossil as ‘fucking’, which would be a very lucky and incredible fucking find all on its own.
CD #217
Abjectly: “Fuck it, I can’t be bothered.”
http://m.xkcd.com/90/
Then there’s the realization: “Well, fuck.”
I’ve seen a flying jacket, and a motorcycle jacket; I’ve even seen a water-jacket. But I ain’t never seen a fucking jacket…
Did someone say Jacket?
Raging Bee:
Talking about appropriate places for the f-word…
Gah, I can’t even express how fucked up this is. Not everyone can just get up and quit a job that’s making them miserable or negatively impacting their health – physical or mental.
A job can at the same time be very stressful and occasionally bad for one’s depression, but in general something that is making the person tick. We’re complicated like that. Something that’s keeping you alive can on occasions drive you nearly over the edge.
I don’t know what this guy’s problem was. I don’t know whether he has another problem besides being an assholes. But you fling shit way too widely in a hope some will hit him.
@janine, 223:
I could not look away. The nunchuk-microphones, the banded canyon peak, and to top it off, “Members Only”.
Oh, goodness. It’s a classic.
===================
@Beatrice:
I agree with you. Disability doesn’t make you unaccountable for your behavior, but neither does it require you to take only a job that will never risk a disability-related mistake/problem. Oy.
Goodbye Enemy Janine #223
What the, ahem, fuck did I just listen to?
Lemmy does a Little Richard impersonation.
Crip Dyke, I loved the homage to “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, a song almost as profound as “Jacket”.
Daz, this is a Little Richard cover
Little Lemmy?
Janine
Nah, Lemmy Little—Stuart’s speedfreak brother.
(Off to listen to more Trio now. Damn, that’s good.)
Darn. We’re just going to have to make do with the other 17,000 (est.)
You almost certainly just tripped a sekrit filter.
Some are pretty predictable; did you use the word ‘cunt’ perhaps?*
Others less so; e.g. for local historical reasons ‘Caledonian’ and (I think) ‘Nostradamus’ used to get caught; maybe still do.
please. no. anything but that.
*only appears here because of one weird html trick (h/t DMFM)
@Caine
Most of the time, I just lurk here, but I would like to add my support. Your comments are one reason I read here and I often have admired your clarity of writing and the compassion for those who need it.
Take as much time away from here as you need, but you will be missed.
I’m not entirely sure what just happened, but I’m amused by it.
Except for the shit being tossed Caine’s way. You’ve got my support, for what that’s worth. I like reading you.
PZM@202,
Hey! Fucking great! A fucking place on Pharyngula where we can be absofuckinglutely fucking sure of not fucking encountering the pompous whining of fucking archbore David fucking Wilford!
Fucking crosspost:
Attention friends and fans of Chris Clarke and/or North American desert ecosystems:
https://www.beaconreader.com/projects/defending-the-desert
fuck you, “chief”
Hmmm, I think that, including the name, comment 235 is juuuuuust about racist enough to qualify for a swift banhammering. Fingers crossed.
plus it’s parrotting a ‘pit meme, so yeah.
I suggest you fuck right on off, there. Just a suggestion, mind.
Hey racistnymeagle
I note you left out the part about being melanin impaired non-white.
Why are you being a harassing asshole to Caine?
the meme to which I referred, asshole, was making fun of Caine for giving a shit about how Indians are portrayed and treated. That and perpetually delighting in the skewering of FtB-identified people for perceived contradiction and hypocrisy. Well, that and generally thinking it’s fun to be intentionally obnoxious.
Not your quote (which does indeed omit mention of Indian heritage; why? I don’t much care).
I repeat: fuck you.
Racist slymepitter fuckwad banned.
*sigh* Look, you fucking doucheweasels, I left. I can’t stop the idiocy on the ‘net, but would you mind not alerting me to it via email?
For the record, yep, I wrote that, quite some years ago. At the time, I was being harassed for Indian activism I was involved in, and not looking to attract any more attention on that point, so yes, I kept quiet about being a haffer, especially as I easily pass for white, which I’ve never made any sort of secret about. Like most people of mixed race, I have lots of a ‘little this, little that’, like most people. No magic, no mystery, no transformation. I also don’t see why I find myself having to explain any of this. Now that’s it’s all cleared up, stay the fuck out of my inbox, please.
To [most] everyone else, thanks for the kind words, they are deeply appreciated. Goodbye.
Caine
*hugs*
Caine, I know this place is probably more stress than it is worth, but I will miss you, and so will many, many others.
Mixed race people have complex identities and sometimes we don’t want to get into every last fucking detail of them. News at eleven.
I’m sorry you’re still getting shit even after leaving, Caine. Take care.
Caine
I’m so sorry it’s gotten too much.
Please know this: you have helped me be a better person. You personally, over and above everything else I’ve gained by being a part of this community.
The two small syllables in “Thank you.” cannot carry in the weight of gratitude I feel for that, but they’ll have to do.
Thank you.
Be well.
I will miss you.
Thank you all, very much. I’m seriously going to miss you all.
Oh, one more point, although I’m sure it will be disregarded by those with an interest in making me look bad – prior to my writing what I did about my heritage, I had been out as mixed race, under a different nym (oh, look, proof of my being a deceitful b!tch), which led to the harassment, which in turn led me to be very quiet about it for a number of years.
[WARNING: Bike talk]
So, FossilFishy or Dhorvath (or any other lurking bike mechanics who might want to offer an opinion), the frame I was planning on won’t work for me since it requires a BMX crankset and my heart is already set on SRAM Omniums. I talked to my mechanic today and we agreed that if nothing else a Kona Paddy Wagon would do the job, but the paint job doesn’t wow me and I want to consider all my options. As a tall (6’3″ 190cm) man my options are a bit limited, and I’d like something in red if at all possible. So any recommendations on a single speed steel road frame that comes in large sizes? Black is my fallback color if I can’t get red (clearcoat is pretty hot too). I like the looks of the Pinarello Catena, but I can’t seem to find sizing info, or even if it’s available as a frame/fork set rather than a complete. I’m trying to do as much of my own research as I can, and my LBS proprietor is also on it but any help would be appreciated.
Oh, and Caine: I won’t pretend I’ve always been your biggest fan and I think there’s more to the “in-group” accusations than most regulars would like to admit, but I’ve never thought for a moment that you leaving would be anything but a loss to this community. Take it for what it’s worth, and do what you gotta do.
Caine
I’ll miss you as well.
Bye Caine, thank you from me too. Still hope to see your art and photography around the place – take care.
Echoing the YT comments on that, here. Mr K plays rock piano?! *mindblown*
—
Caine, I hope you stick around. You are a valued member of the commentariat and I admire what you do here.
That said [tiptoeing a bit] you do sometimes maybe snark without due care and attention? The swipe at ludicrous was one. Also. That kinda takes the shine off it a bit. FWIW. :-|
—
And finally (as they say on the 10 o’clock news) I have stuff that I really need to deal with in meatspace, so I’m going to absent myself from Pharyngula for a bit, since it tends to consume more of my day than I can afford.
—
(Oh, except! Li Hongbo’s paper sculptures. Loving those.)
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why do I never refresh before posting?
*gah*
Dysomniak,
How much does it require a bmx crank? There are adapters which will allow a normal threaded BB to go into a traditional BMX BB shell. Or if it’s a mid or Spanish pressfit shell you could likely make things up a bit, (although this could get tricky!) using bearings with the correct inner and outer diameters, some spacers, etc. Anyways, so long as the stays aren’t too widely set to clear the crank arms, I suspect I could make something work. This doesn’t mean that I ought to, just that I would be mighty tempted.
As for frames, I really like IRD/Pake stuff. (Same company, different brands.) Maybe take a look at the Rum Runner?
dysomniak
Off the top of my head: On-One, Soma, and Bianchi all make steel track/singlespeed frames. Because of the boom in fixed cycling there are also lots and lots of boutique builders making such things, at boutique prices of course.
For inspiration and/or makers you might dig through here, though they don’t separate out dedicated fixed/singlespeed frames from conversions.
FWIW my second attempt at building the perfect fixed gear commuter is on that site.
I’m pretty sure it’s (the Durcus1) a Spanish BB. I wasn’t that set on it anyways, and it’s also not available in red at larger sizes, so that’s another reason to look at others. That Rum Runner certainly seems like it could fit my needs, I’ll add it to the list. Thanks!
Oh, no.
Caine, I’m so sorry. :(
I completely understand needing to get away and I hope you are okay. You don’t deserve that shit thrown at you at all. I’m one of the many people who love you, your comments and who you have helped. Thank you for everything.
FF: I already looked at Soma, and while I was sorely tempted (my LBS guy gave me quite the pitch about the quality of their steel, or rather their welding process), I had to rule them out because they’re only available in white and green. While that could make a gorgeous bike for someone I don’t really fancy paying another couple hundred dollars to have my brand new frame repainted a color I’ll like (I’m already going to be paying a hundred bucks extra for red hubs).
Soma and Pake are owned by the same company, IRD. The quality of construction is similar, but as I recall, the tubing is of a higher grade, ie butted, at Soma whereas Pake tends to be more pedestrian straight gauge tubing.
Specifically it was the “Prestige” heat treating he said gave a sturdier frame than butted tubes, which he’s seen break in interesting ways.
Hey folks.
Azkyroth had a shit fit on the Nature/Henry Gee thread, on account of he thought I was saying bullying is something that only happens downwards across a power gradient. Something something “retcon” something.
I have a general impression Azkyroth is usually not an ass, so I’m confused. Also I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth here before, so I’d rather clarify:
My experience and observation is that you can bully upwards across a power gradient; it takes special circumstances and the right personality on both sides; it’s effectively so rare that I find “only happens downwards” to be a useful-if-not-exclusive working guide when deciding “is this bullying, or just somebody being an asshole?’ This leaves me with two questions.
Azkyroth – or anybody else with a grounded opinion – am I missing something that’s been beaten to death here recently? Anybody care to point me at what I missed, or just generally chew on me over here, where it isn’t a distraction from another conversation?
Is Azkyroth having a bad day, am I being clueless and obnoxious, or have I gotten ‘nyms confused?
Thanks.
I suppose I could probably live with the white Soma Rush frame. I was thinking all red with silver highlights, but red wheels would really pop on a white frame… and I’m sure after a few years it will be scuffed enough that I could justify repainting whatever color I wanted…
Thank you both for your consultaion – sincerely, I don’t have any any real life bikey friends to bounce this stuff off, so if it weren’t for you two it would just be me, google, and the dude selling me the thing.
I dug through all my suppliers and couldn’t find a red frame, sorry.
Uhm, I’m not sure whether or not ‘Prestige’ heat treating, whatever that means, is better than any other. All metal frame tubes are heat treated and I’m pretty sure the physics of it means that it’s unlikely that one method is going to be superior to any other. Sounds to me like a bit of confirmation bias but I’m not a metallurgist, so take it for what it’s worth.
Ah, hell Caine. Really sorry to see you feeling burnt out. You get a lot of crap thrown at you by people who aren’t fit to crap, let alone throw it at you.
I hope you find peace. I hope you heal. I hope to see you around again. You’re valuable to a lot of us.
In my experience white frames start to look shabby really fast. Bug or feature, you be the judge. :)
@ caine, a break is a good idea, ive done that here and on fb (my biggest timewaster outside of work) take ur time come back ready to battle fresh
Pete Newell: Azkyroth was riffing off of another recent conversation about racism. Xe felt strongly that an experience xe had had as a ‘white’ person ought to be considered an example of ‘racism’ and was unhappy with the general consensus of other commenters that it could not be, by their preferred definition.
It has something to do with submerging the frame in hot oil, or something like that. I didn’t retain a lot of the spiel, maybe because my “this sounds like marketing bafflegab” filter was kicking in. My instinct is certainly that (geometry aside) all higher end steel frames should be made basically equal. But I’m certainly no expert. I was initially thinking about a Surly frame, but my LBS guy said they’re made of shitty steel, so I ruled them out. Maybe that was mistake? Everyone seems to agree that this is the guy to go to for custom work around here, and he’s given me a lot more free advice over the last couple years than my spending thus far has really warranted so I kind of feel like I owe him. But I’d hate to come out of this feeling like I’ve been “taken for a ride,” if you’ll pardon the expression. I know I’m going to end up paying more than if I bought online, but I’m willing to pay for expertise and eager to support my LBS.
Well a “shabby” looking bike is a less tempting target for thieves. Of course any bike thief worth their hacksaw would spot my wheels from a mile away.
A red saddle would certainly tie a red and white scheme together nicely ( I want to avoid black componentry as much as possible). Any ideas there? So far I seem to do best on wider saddles, but I’m not really concerned about padding since I’m already phasing out my “normal” underwear for bike shorts.
Oh, and I won’t buy anything made out of skin.
Warrenties exspire fastest when you like the product most
Chas: thanks. I think we straightened it out in the other thread just now. Clueless R Me seems to be the answer.
Caine,
*hugs*. Take care.
I ride a Surly Long Haul Trucker as my daily commuter. I’d say that it’s heavier than competing frames (never weighed it cause I don’t care) and that’s pretty likely to be because of the steel. What happens is that the better the steel, the less they use. Functionally this means that most frames are equally strong, bar really cheap stuff, regardless of the steel used. The simply use thicker and thinner walled tubes to make up the difference in steel quality.
As for heat treating, I dug around to find where I’d read about it and failed. The cursory reading I did do shows that I might be wrong. The point of heat treating is to harden the metal and there can be differences in that hardness. I suspect that I’m misremembering something about how the different processes come to the same place, so long as the manufacturer is aiming for the same level of hardness. It could be the prestige tubes have hit a sweet spot as far as hardness and flexibility, a spot that could be reached by other means.
Never, never, never compromise on saddle width for the sake of style, or for anything else for that matter. If it isn’t wide enough to support your sit bones it will be a problem no matter what it’s made out of. I have unusually wide hips for an XY person and I don’t even look at ‘men’s’ saddles anymore.
I’ve never bought into the notion that making your bike look shabby will deter thieves. It seems to me that there are two types of bike thieves: professionals and opportunists.
The opportunists wouldn’t know a good bike if it bit them, they’re simply looking for something that they are capable of stealing. On the local uni campus K-mart bikes got stolen all the time because it was easy to steal them.
The pros know the gear as well as you do, possibly better. They’re not going to be looking at the paint, they’re going to be looking at the components. No amount of disguising is going to make your Dura-ace or XTR derailleur look a Tourney or 2300. And I’m afraid that that’s true of Phil Woods hubs too.
Don’t worry, I won’t be getting a skinny saddle to look cool. If I can’t find anything that fits my ass as well or better I’ll probably just buy another WTB “Pure V” like the one I’ve been riding for the last year.
And I’m with you on the theft thing. Anyone “pro” enough to have the tools to get through my U-lock and cable (I’m planning to buy a new set to get the insurance policy) isn’t gonna be fooled by a funky looking frame when I’ve got a thousand bucks worth of components hanging off it. On a slightly related note, I’ve always considered quick release hubs and seatposts to be basically just theft enabling devices. It takes me less time to remove and replace nutted wheel with the right wrench than it does to wrangle a QR skewer, so who is it actually there for?
Caine
Take care, I will miss you. :(
Interesting. The assholes are figuring out that I’m imperturbable, so they’re targeting regular commenters here.
Don’t let ’em get you down. I’ll be supporting you, not them.
I… I’m having trouble processing this.
*Severe trigger warning for rape, gang rape, misogyny and ethnic prejudice*
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/india-gang-rape-west-bengal_n_4650743.html
Some small kernels of hope in there… the perpetrators were punished and there is apparently “growing scrutiny” on these rural “kangaroo courts”. It’s still horrific, and the stats towards the bottom are depressing.
PZ! New species of River Dolphin! In South America!
Less teeth than your standard Amazonian river dolphin, and possibly smarter.
Fossil Fishy,
I know you have addressed this a bit, but if I can riff a bit? Most conventional industry tubing is cold drawn, that is the initial ingot is pressed through a mandrel at normal temperatures rather than trying to do so while in a heated liquid state. (Some is cold rolled and seam welded, but this is generaly not a preferred option.) There is some heat generated during this process due to friction, but it’s not ‘heat treating’ rather a side effect of the drawing. Likewise, some tubing is straight gauge and some is cold worked into butting profiles which can also result in some heat, but not heat treatment.
The difference with heat treatment is encouraging specific crystalization and attendant material properties. This requires fairly precise temperatures for given lengths of time and a specific decrease in that temperature back to the sorts of temperatures where the material will be used. So, a specific protocol might require something like this: T6 Process. This is not bafflegab, it produces measureable differences in material properties despite using the same alloy. For instance see this list regarding Reynolds tubing, especially take a peak at 520/725 and 531/753, where the alloy is the same, but the seven series tubing uses a heat treatment.
Now, when welding, tubes also get quite hot, this can be an issue for any material, but it is more detrimental to some heat treated tubing. Specifically I am thinking of 6061 aluminum, which must be post weld heat treated to regain it’s strength, but some steels also benefit greatly from a post weld heat treatment. (There are some steels, such as True Temper OX Platinum or Reynolds 853, which grow in strength as a result of welding, but this is not the norm in bicycle options.)
This is not to say that a frame of adequate strength requires heat treating, just that a lighter frame is generally possible with heat treating than without. One of the things about a lighter frame with similar strength is that there is more latitude to produce spring characteristics in the ride. So, my 853 tubed Implant frame, despite being a stronger structure than a 4130 dirt jump frame that weighs a pound or two more, has more give. Much of that is down to tube shape and orientation, but the higher UTS, elongation, and yield strength also play a role.
Thumper @#284: thanks for the links!
May as well add the paper itself, being open-access and including nifty maps, cladograms, and skull photos and all.
Dysomniak,
Those quick releases are there for me. I change a lot of flats, some days I could pay my wages with flat repairs. So. A quick release means that work is done faster than a nutted axle will allow. Seconds maybe, but it is faster, no extra tool to put away, I only tighten one thing rather than two, etc. This is more noticeable on rear wheels than on front due to lawyer tabs.
Also, for people who have a concern for weight, a qr skewer is lighter than a longer threaded axle, nuts, washers, and a 15mm box wrench.
And this
makes me smile. One of my coworkers is in this boat, they call my saddle ‘floss’. I have purchased, I think, fourteen of my favourite saddle over the years. It’s a narrow Bontrager model which works for me and my needs. (I don’t get WTB saddles at all, they always make me hurt.)
ChasCPetersen #286
Hey thanks Chas :) I assumed it would be behind a paywall so didn’t check.
I’ve swam with Inia boliviensis in the Rio Beni back in 2006 :) They’re amazing animals. All the caimen and alligators get out of the water when they’re around, because they’re liable to gang up on anything they feel threatened by, which meant it was safe for us to get in.
It was a bit of a shock when they left without warning, and I looked up just in time to see a 12ft black caimen disappearing back into the same water I was swimming in… we got back on the boats pretty sharpish.
My feet hurt.
reflogging:
Attention friends and fans of Chris Clarke and/or North American desert ecosystems:
https://www.beaconreader.com/projects/defending-the-desert
ThunderDome is dead!
Long live ThunderDome!
ThunderDome Lives!
Death to ThunderDome!
It’s not dead it just smells that way.
The ark is a giant coracle. Paging Ken Ham! Call your ark maker immediately!
(Sniffs ratty smells) Hi Inaji! So the ark wasn’t a wooden QE2? Who’d a thunk it?
Hi Lofty. :) Well, a coracle would work better…
Hi Ináji.
(I figured out how to make a “á” directly from my virtual keyboard!)
Chigau:
Hmmm. Taps virtual keyboard on. Ináji – hey, I can do that, too! Cool.
@Dhorvath
Well I suppose you have me on the weight issue, and I’ll take your word that their faster to remove with a practiced hand, but for me (and most of my bikes have been QR) a solid axle much easier to manage. I can tell by feel exactly when I’ve loosened/tightened it enough, rather than having to guess, flip the lever, flip it back and adjust, etc….
Of course I also can’t can’t imagine leaving the house without a 15mm wrench. Why, that would be going out without underpants, or allen wrenches, or tire levers and a spare tube!
Come on people, pick one. Which is it?
Or is it, dare I ask, undead?
oh good night
Personally I think the ‘ark’ story was concocted by ancestors of the Marsh Arabs who made reed houses on floating reed platforms. Perfectly capable of carrying a few humans and their critters through a flood.
Just resting.
Thanks for that link, Lofty!
Please don’t wake me.
No, don’t shake me.
I’m only sleeping.
My mind skipped “wake me” and went straight to Savage Garden
Caine,
You are an amazing person. I appreciate so much all you have taught me. Thank you for taking care of yourself. You deserve respect and rest. Knowing you are in the world will always make me just a little happier and more hopeful.
As to the “Would you say that in front of your mother?” stupidity: Some of us are mothers and we say “Fuck”. Deal with it.
I also will not be returning to Ally Frogg’s blog. The creeps who frequent the place and the way they are given a space to lie and be misogynist asswipes were enough to turn me off of it. Now, there is no way I’d even consider going back.
Using they in place of a gendered pronoun is misusing the word?
Science=reality?
Tony! #309
Worse yet, their definition of science is claimed to be from common usage, yet we’re not allowed to cite common usage for the singular they. Hypocrisy much?
I really do have that thread bookmarked under “Fucking weird.”
Walnuts is bicycle singing over rain bubble.
I tried reading Philosophism and There’s a metaphor somewhere in here, but those two are just too weird.
Hm, susanvan and sentient in the same thread. That would be interesting.
I saw bicycle and got excited. Singletrack mind.
Beatrice
Yep, that’s better. :-)
Does one take sunglasses off during the pause?
Only as a fall-back, if one doesn’t have a small, white, furry animal to stroke.
Ah, my lack of pop culture is showing then?
Umm. Twasn’t meant as a reference, really. I just sort of figured a pause would allow the Dreadful Consequences of the combination to sink in. It sounded more hammy-dramatic, in my head.
@Dhorvath I just got back the bike shop (again) and now we’re leaning toward a De Rosa frame. I don’t even know how far over budget it would put me (waiting to hear back from the company for a quote and estimated lead time), but daaaamn look at that old school lugged sexiness: http://www.trialtir-usa.com/derosa/scattofisso/scatto-mp.htm
De Rosa? Very classic. And PURPLE!
Oh I see what Beatrice meant about sentient. Eesh.
Unfortunately the purple doesn’t work for me (Although I admit it’s gorgeous, and the 30 hours of Saints Row I’ve played in the last week or so make me wish I could. Fortunately each one is apparently still handbuilt to order by Ugo De Rosa’s son, so I can pick my paint for no extra charge. I’m pretty sure that’s gonna be red, still with the white logo blocks and chrome lugs of course. This is all assuming the quote doesn’t end up being several times higher than I was planning to spend. But then again, the Soma Rush that’s now my second choice only has a 585mm toptube in the largest size, and I think we’re pretty sure that in a perfect world I should be on a 590. It’s possible I may end up compromising on the hubs (or at least going silver instead of red) if my budget is really close.
Also, according to my dealer (and I choose that word very deliberately), there are only 2 other De Rosas in the entire region – one is his, and neither is fixed.
The fuck is this shit?
Seriously, a bra that tests for love? All women only want love? What the fuck?
@Jacob Schmidt (#323)
Supposedly it’s a comedy video. Not a very funny one, though.
Interesting comparison. Which one is older…?
Seconded. ♥
Awesome!!!
I particularly love that they test different species concepts.
I see what you did there, but nevertheless I am going to issue a soft cry of exasperation: “yeesh! bike weenies!”
hmm, I had not clicked until now. It is interesting.
However, borrowing, stealing and repurposing are integral to the whole idea of ‘folk music’. It would not surprise me to learn that both songs are adaptations of earlier source material, possibly never recorded.
Interesting use for cheese:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/wisconsins-idea-spray-icy-streets-cheese-brine-might-sound-cheesy-its-working
DM
If I had a Hammer/The Hammer song was written in 1949 by Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes, who recorded it with their band the Weavers in 1950. In 1969 Victor Jarra translated it into Spanish and recorded it as El Martillo.
Images of bioluminescent phytoplankton on a Maldives beach.
Chas,
And I thought I had lost my touch.
test
One two, one two.
threethreethree
four.
Four.
FOUR Cookies!
Nom Nom.
Our Benevolent Tardigrade looks down upon the class struggle from its penthouse mosspatch, stirring a glass of champagne with a swizzle stick.
“Here fokkin’ Jissus! Dis al daardie blerry tyd vannie jaar al! Stuur hulle maar die gewone fokkin’ berig…”
With that, dozens of little claws get busy, scratching the messarge onto a copper plate, then inking it up, before imprinting it with great force upon teh interwebz:
除夕之际，恶缓步动物祝愿您和您的家人马年大吉，身体健康和平安幸福，财源滚滚！
明けましておめでとうございます！
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck, but Nathair is making me want to pull out my nonexistent hair!
Michelle Goldberg wrote a terrible article in the Nation. @PrisonCulture and Andrea Smith have written a response.
HELL WITH YOU PEOPLE! GOD DOES EXIST, AND FECES PROVES IT!
(Parody of creationism).
The myrmidons cheer wildly, fireworks and laser displays going off over their heads as they wave and applaud the latest diktat from their tardigrade overlord.
But what is this? Someone has mysteriously hacked the pyrotechnics system! A new message appears over their heads, causing shock and confusion!
IN THE YEAR OF THE HORSE, BUCK THE TARDIGRADE!!!
/Public Enemy Action
“buck the tardigrade”
heh
How polite. :-)
缓步动物萬歲萬歲萬萬歲 !!
Ah, so it was militarized rather than defanged. That’s what I wanted to know. :-)
Teh awsum.
“Defanged”? I know I must be misinterpreting this, because surely no one in this august forum would be calling Pete Fucking Seeger soft while his corpse is still warm. Right?
I think they have all been podizeified.
@ Chigau
Baie dankie! (pronounced: “buy a donkey”)
@ Owlmirror
Fie! Evil public enemy!
({[§€©®€™€§§@®G€: [[well done secret agent 00M, your cheque is in the mail.]]]})
@ David M.
You have captured the spirit of the season quite excellently.
Notre Histoire
in 2 minutes.
(For a certain value of ‘us’, perhaps, but still…very well done imo. Allegedly by a highschool student.)
Chas:
Arresting and very well done.
Agreed.
I’m wandering around ThinkGeek.
It seems that I can’t stop.
Here’s my question:
Can, or can’t, or, I guess, should, or should not art be judged in terms of art, and not in terms of the quality or skeeviness or evil of the person who made the art?
Chas:
There’s a question which will garner a zillion different answers. As an artist, I’d say the artist is always going to be factor, whether or not you think they are. There’s a reason that artists are put on display at shows – people want to inspect them, chat with them, ask questions, and basically pry into their lives. It’s difficult to pry the artist apart from their work, too, as the work will reflect the person who created it.
For some people, an artist being skeevy or evil makes their work all the better. There’s always been a competitive market for art done by serial killers, frinst.
So…I don’t know what should be. I just don’t think most people can honestly say they have no interest in the artist while being interested in the art.
Chris Clarke could use a few more subscribers: http://www.beaconreader.com/projects/defending-the-desert
I’m in for 6 months, wish I could have gone for the T-shirt.
Also, on the art thing. There’s a difference in judging an art piece and funding the person who created it. Yes, there are skeevy and evil people who have produced very good art. Doesn’t mean I’d want my money going toward them.
TW for sexual abuse of a child: An Open Letter from Dylan Farrow
This really had a dramatic impact on me, though not quite the one I expected. The little intro from Nicholas Kristof and Dylan’s references to the gaslighting and people disregarding her story made me just so unbelievably angry. There’s been this burbling pit of rage growing inside of me for a while now, thanks to loved ones who talk about how false rape accusations ruin lives and shit like that.
So I’m debating with myself whether or not to send them an open letter of my own. This is what I wrote:
I’m going to let my rage cool a bit and think it over before posting it to them. If I still feel okay saying it when I’m not ready to punch holes in walls, I guess that’ll be that.
MM, it’s a good open letter. I share your feelings. Ophelia posted about Farrow’s open letter, and I could barely bring myself to comment. This is shaping up to be a bad day.
My sympathy for the bad day, Inaji. I can certainly relate. I keep waiting for my rage to subside so I can decide whether or not I want to post the above to them. Instead, the rage continues and I just keep adding to the letter.
*Appropriate gestures of support* to MM, Inaji and the others in the LMR thread. Also, it’s a good letter, MM. I’ve not been contributing because I simply can’t cudgel my brain into a coherent posts of late for some reason.
Fuck. A little hair dye and you totally had the lead role cast for Pharyngula the Movie.
The worst part of having a broken elbow is that you realize how must stuff requires the use of your elbow. >:(
I think I’m going to go quite awhile without brushing my teeth.
*feels grimy*
MM, keep adding. It’s a good thing to do, I think.
Dalillama, you’ve been ill. Be good to yourself, and let your brain melt.
Nich:
Well fuck. Goodbye Phil, I enjoyed your work.
Esteleth, ouch! Stop breaking yourself.
Nich #360 about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman
I see the resemblance to PZ. Personally, the Nerd should be played by Ed Asner, and the Redhead by Amy Adams. If AA isn’t available, Vickie Howell the Knitster.
Interesting question, who should play you in Pharyngula the Movie?
Me?
Halle Berry.
or
Totoro.
Nerd:
I wouldn’t know who should, but I’d want Helen Mirren. Yep.
Tom Hiddleston.
With boobs.
Interesting question. How should this be judged?
MM:
Oh lord. Nice. Very nice.
rq:
Same as the ’68 original piece?
To each his or her own, of course.
My original question was with regard to Woody Allen. I like a lot of his films a lot, and I find I’m not really inclined to change my opinion of the work now that it seems clear he is the sleaziest of pedophiles, or was.
I feel similarly about Polanski: evil asshole (at least once), but I still love Chinatown.
Bummer about Hoffman. He was great even slumming in Twister.
Play me in a movie? Can I play myself? Err… Mark Ruffalo might work. I dunno.
Ah, you see the problem. One has to have picture of themselves, and who best might represent that on the big screen, for a good answer to appear. Evidently I see myself as a crotchety bald old man, which Asner has played to perfection for years. And I see the Redhead more in her “prime”, hence the younger actors (actresses for certain pedants), although Ms Howell is only a hostess of knitting/craft shows. But the red hair and perky attitude makes up for the lack of acting credits.
Chas:
Oh. I didn’t even think about movies. I’ve never cared for Woody Allen’s films. I tried, watched many of them, but just never cared for them. Chinatown, however, is one of my favourite flicks, it has tremendous impact.
half-time
22-0
So, tomorrow everything is back to normal?
Just in case this video hasn’t already been linked:
A Bunch of Former Child Stars Agree that Kirk Cameron is an Idiot
Nerd,
Heh. It’s not like I look anything like Ruffalo, I just think his demeanor matches mine in the roles I have seen him perform.
Has anyone here had bunion surgery?
Video on autoplay.
Grrr.
I like Jon Stewart as much as the next guy, but if I hear him say “Before all that can happen…” once more, I will have to break something.
but anyway
Worst reading comprehension ever:
1. click the link (it goes to Ophelia Benson’s blog
2. look at the picture for two (2) seconds only
3. check the first comment
4. shake head in utter disbelief
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/02/nice-nice-nice/
On Hoffman, I’m left honestly speechless at the jackass party over it and the general topic of addiction at Stephen Andrew’s. Can’t really even wrap my head around how someone could have that little perspective, let alone their own head that far up their ass.
Hatchetfish @383
The post and reactions so far have me so angry I can barely think of a coherent response. Just…fuck…
Yeah, that’s where I’m at.
I may have said something. Will see what comes of that.
Wow. So, Phil Hoffman was just a thoughtless junkie. Goodness, the compassion is overflowing. It’s certainly a good reminder that one doesn’t need to be religious in order to be a judgmental ass.
My thoughts going through the post were ‘huh, an obit’, then that yes, there was a point in how different I would (sadly) expect the coverage and response to this to have been for anyone but a middle aged white successful actor, and then finally sheer speechlessness and shock when it took a turn to victim blaming and criminalizing poor mental health.
The comments just cemented it, especially when colnago80 was the only one not saying something outright vile. If he’s looking good in comparison, you ought to know you’re chewing your own toes.
Oh, and it’s Steven Andrew, and the post is here, for those who want to take a look.
Oh, money and resources are all it takes to deal with addiction and mental health problems? Golly. I had no idea it was so easy.
Hot damn. I just need to make some more money and goodbye PTSD!
http://t.nbcnews.com/science/evolution-debate-plays-out-creationisms-home-turf-2D12044727
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6mAyBwhiAJ8 is the AIG feed. It gives a start time, but not a time zone.
If you click play on the video, there’s a count-down clock. Kick-off would seem to be four hours from now.
MM:
And he had the right colour skin! Why there’s just no excuse for him not fixing his problems right up!
The absolute coldness shown, it was, well, chilling. The problems that can lead to addiction are complex, and none of us knew the man, so we don’t have the slightest idea of what was going on in his head.
That Steven Andrew post – just so unnecessarily nasty. I did not see the point of it at all. And now there is a rather bland comment by Steven Andrew saying, among other things, “Blame is a bit of a loaded word”. Well, yes. Yes, it is. And in the original post he managed to blame Hoffman for not detoxing and for dying of an overdose despite being (I use Steven Andrew’s words here) an “experienced user”. So not only was he an addict; he wasn’t good enough at being an addict. Certainly that is the most important thing one could possibly say after a person dies: he was bad at being an addict.
Note: Last sentence of this comment is writ ironic.
Sweet Zombie Jesus, rape apologists make me want to vomit.
I cannot even stomach that thread.
Maybe because today we got the “so here’s what it means to be a mandatory reporter and here’s what to look for” lecture.
There are some things I felt quite happy not knowing. Jebus.
I’m finding all the talk about how utterly untrustworthy memory is (but only ever worrying about the memories of victims as untrustworthy, of course) extremely triggering. I might need to take a break for a day or so.
Fucking hell that thread is full of assholes; *safehugs* or other gestures of support as appropriate.
MM:
Yes. Yes. Me too.
Basically, the allegations are that the whole religion is a fraud. [Link]
Thanks for the link Inaji. I was just to furious at that thread to do it.
I was about to say ‘thanks for the correction on his name, could have sworn I checked that’, and for some reason checked again, and saw that it actually does seem to be Stephen, unless his own byline has a typo. Yeah. I’m not one given to paralysing raging disgust, but for some reason that thread managed to bring it out. I’m glad people are calling him on what’s wrong with it.
It also brings up something that’s been bugging me on a low level for a while about Ste(v|ph)en Andrew. I enjoy a lot of what he writes or posts, but he has a streak of narcissism or egotism that pops up every so often that I find outright creepy in its intensity. Has anyone else noticed that, or am I imagining it? I am not intending those terms clinically by the way. I’m not trying to do the armchair diagnosis thing. I mean them as descriptive of behaviors; that he has behaviors that to me appear narcissistic or egocentric, not that he is a clinical narcissist or egomaniac (if that last is even a distinct term. I’m an engineer, not a psychologist).
Ináji #389
Thank you.
Now I can read-up before commenting.
There are 9 comments over there…
—
Hatchetfish
What I have read in Stephen “DarkSyde” Andrew’s recent posts is that he is in really rough shape physically and financially.
Also egocentric.
Prolific blogging can itself be considered such a behavior.
And prolific commenting.
….
uh oh
chigau @ 404:
Yes, I guess that’s the thing, I’m more or less aware of his general state, and couldn’t decide if it what I was seeing was a pretty beat down guy focusing on good points, or a formerly successful narcissist having a crisis of ego, whether those were actually different things, or whether it was something else entirely. I just know it creeps me out a little.
And to mark myself as a egomaniac via prolific commenting: I see now that my tongue in cheek “Ste(v|ph)en” above was closer still. Inaji, you and I both saw it. He has Steven in the sidebar bio, and Stephen in the bylines.
I haz a sadness. A friend’s entire collection of 1950s pulp magazines is now, well… pulp, thanks to the floods. Thankfully, only minor damage to the rest of her house, but, well, shit.
Daz:
That sucks. Thankfully her house only had minor damage.
****
Oh, George Zimmerman must want to legally beat on a black man. If this happens, I imagine many people are going to live vicariously through DMX.
*sigh* FML.
I got booted from a FB group for pointing out that taking your child’s possessions and burning them just might have some legal consequences. Officially, for “derailing” and “insisting on calling [person] a bad mother” — well, if she feels like I’m calling her a bad mother for doing something that is classified as intimidation…
Yuck, some people just don’t get responsible do they?
This is the shit, right here. Tellin’ you.
Chas:
We had a bottle of that at the last bar I worked at. Though no one ever asked for it (I was only there for the first four months we were open and as far as I know, few people even knew about itp plus, Mexican restaurant), the liquor rep I spoke with when I ordered it gave a glowing recommendation (of course that’s their job too).
I used to drink Jameson, but Bulleit Rye is just as smooth but way more interesting, without being all syrupy like bourbon. I love it.
Chas:
How do you drink Bulleit? Straight? Or on the rocks? I’ve met many whiskey drinkers (be it scotch or bourbon) that prefer their spirits with little or no ice.
Yeah, that’s me too. I drink it neat or just 1 cube of ice. It’s not as good dilute.
[thunderDROME]
Settled most of my build today. Alas my “accountant” objected to the handbuilt italian lugged frame (it would have cost as much on it’s own as the entire bike I’m actually buying), and my extreme gangliness rules out the Soma.
And so it was that Surly was revisited, but Surly was found wanting due to their use of seamed tubes. And thus did our hero find himself looking once again to that old ally “Kona.”
And lo! The Paddy Wagon rises to the occasion! While not sporting the pearly white paint or fancy-sounding tubing, our champion comes to the field equipped with Reynolds 520 tubing and dressed in black with gold flecks.
I’m running out of enthusiasm for this writing style, but it’s gonna have custom wheels and shit :D
Everything is (hopefully) paid for and now I just have to “ride it out” and find my perfect bars, pedals, shoes…
[/DROME]
I can’t/won’t comment on either Dylan Farrow or Phillip Seymour Hoffman, because both of those stories hit too close to home. My sympathies to other people who are dealing with this shit.
I have owned three Surly bikes, none had seamed tubes. What model features such?
So
“the shit” is good
but
“the shits” is bad
?
chigau:
Yes. That’s about the it. (<—Buffyspeak)
Uh-oh, that’s according to my dealer. I can’t seem to find corroboration for it anywhere. Maybe he was mistaken, or or bullshiting me? I’d lean towards the former, but I can’t rule out the latter since he is an official Kona dealer.
I will say that (all else being equal) aside from the paint job I would have picked the Kona anyways, since I already love my Jake and I’m inclined to trust a “name brand” like 520 over a generic in-house 4130. And it’s not like it’s a huge price difference.
Oh, the specific model under consideration was the Steamroller.
He really wanted to go with the Soma Rush 59cm (with 585 TT) though, until I unslouched to my full 6′ 3″.
Hey, Kona is fine too, I just found the seamed comment odd. You will enjoy it I am sure.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult your Surlys. Even my cheapest bike (sorry baby, no offense) is like a child to me, and while I am fully aware of her shortcoming I don’t take kindly to anyone speaking ill of her. And it is again quite possible that I’m mistaken about the nature of surly tubes.
A petition to urge that schools in the UK teach about the dangers of FGM.
(Does anyone else keep getting script-errors on change.org?)
I see StevoR is still up to his old tricks elsewhere on FTB. In response to a question regarding whether Christians and Muslims worship the same god, StevoR sez:
I thought that the Pfft! had a very enlightening article on the “Allah, moon god” meme:
Nope, don’t see anything wrong with this picture.
anteprepro #428
StevoR cannot comment here.
If you think people should react to him, provide a link.
.
from the Commenting Rules
V. Recommended attitudes:
5. Do not bring arguments from elsewhere into the comment threads. Do not talk about another commenter in the third person; do not call out commenters from other threads.
Severe TW for physical violence, armed violence, and homophobia
Ed Brayton just posted this. It’s an article about being gay in today’s Russia. It’s bad. Things are a lot worse over there than I, and I think a lot of people, realise. It’s important people know about this, but I give fair warning: it’s a long article (6 pages), and a lot of it is difficult to read. Some of it is downright heartbreaking.
I was shaking by the end of it. If you do not have the spoons, do not click that link.
‘is the shit’ – good
‘in the shit’ – bad
‘the pits’ – bad
‘the shits’ – diarrhea
hth
chigau:
Given the light moderation in the Thunderdome, do those specific commenting rules apply here?
Tony!
Whatever.
Just seems petty to me.
Huh. Meant to originally. Poor memory, time constraints, etc. It was Brayton’s Place .
I thought that that rule was in regards to carrying over dramaz from one thread to another on this blog? Not commenting on what is happening on another blog?
Petty is my middle name. Sadly, my first name is not Tom.
I think I shall make a business of
Interpreting The Rules.
Send money.
Do you accept bitcoins?
Do bitcoins buy real rum?
I am in a crying rage. “That must be horrible for you.” I held back and did not give chapter and verse and every detail of just how horrible it was. And how horrible the memories are. And why I know that an upstanding member of the community can still be a rapist. Maybe I am a monster. I know things that no human should know. I have experienced things no human should ever experience. I have done things no human should ever do. And yes, that knowledge is horrible you insufferable asswipe!
*hugs* for Oggie. :( :( :(
I took two weeks off. I thought I was safe to come back. Apparently not. Sorry.
Not your fault, Ogvorbis. We’ve had quite the shitstorm here.
Hugs, Oggie.
In another matter
testing
#91
#88
Ogvorbis, I’m so sorry. I’d really like to send you a safehug if acceptable – just, shit, I’m sorry. You’re missed when you’re not here. But I’m really sorry that it turned out harmful when you came by. I hope you’re OK.
What do people get out of those rewriting history threads?
see the Nagasaki thread:
The real reason the Russians did this …
If the Allies had done that …
If the Japanese had done the other …
I don’t get it.
What if the Tralfamadorians had interferred?
Dropping off some more *hugs* for Oggie
Ah shit, Ogvorbis, I just don’t know. I do care, as do others here. Take care and know we will listen if you need.
chigau,
well, as long as every if ends with “… and that’s why murdering tens of thousands was a-okay.”
Pratchett, because I’m reading Thief of Time:
—-
Take care, Ogvorbis.
I can’t stay out of it. Does this mean that I am strong and willing to fight the rhetorical fight for what I believe to be right? Or am I weak and unable to keep away from shit that I know will trigger me? Or am I just a fuck up in a fucked up world fucking things up even more?
Esteleth, chigau, opposablethumbs, Dalillama, Dhorvath and Beatrice: Thanks for the support. Right now I’m in one of those moods that any expression of support from anyone is met, in my head, with resistance, that I don’t deserve support, that I have fooled you. Sorry.
Ogvorbis
I ain’t that easy to fool.
Have some more hugs.
Ogvorbis:
I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, that if you’re a monster, then so am I. We’re monsters together. Except we aren’t monsters, you know. Yes, we know things. We know one of the most important things – just how far some people will go in order to satisfy their desires and needs. We know it’s not possible to tell by looking, what a person may do. We know some of the most upright looking people are anything but. And both of us hope, with everything in us, that other people never find that out up close and personal.
I’m sorry I bailed out early on that thread, Ogvorbis. I don’t have what it takes to deal at the moment.
Wow. The Academic mansplaining thread is…wow. Good day to be elsewhere.
Inaji:
Were you known under a different ‘nym in the past? Your writing style is familiar. Very familiar. But your ‘nym is new? Or did miss something?
Oggie:
You’re no monster. You’re a human being who was manipulated. You bear no blame.
re: Inaji
(yes, you know them; I’m uncertain how much they want revealed though, so I’m hesitant to say more)
Ogvorbis, I used to be Caine.
Inaji:
Thank you. I was away for a few weeks (well, staying away from here, anyway (didn’t feel safe (still don’t (but that’s me being me))) and missed that. Sorry. I should have recognized your wonderful and distinct style.
Ogvorbis, many, many hugs to you. And for what it’s worth, I’d say you’re feeling strong on that thread, and not willing to lie down in the face of dangerous idiocy.
Thanks, Inaji.
[WARNING: SELF-PITYING SOLILOQUY]
I’m kinda tired. Exhausted. Not ‘I want to sleep’ exhausted, but exhausted in spirit. I love this place. I love the people here. I love the give and take, the arguments, the discussions, the SIWOTI. But I get so tired of the same discussions, the same arguments — gendered insults aren’t gendered because I say so, asking how much she drank isn’t victim blaming, Schrӧdinger’s rapist means that all men are rapists — again and again and again hurts. Not physically, but psychically. Some of these are just tiring. Others are too close to how I see myself.
I know that I did not ask to be raped, but I joined scouts and stayed in scouts.
I know that it was wrong, but some of it gave me pleasure.
I know that I had no choice, but I still chose to hurt her rather than be hurt.
I know that when I told I wasn’t believed, but I only tried to tell once.
I know that I told, but how could I be so mean as to accuse an upstanding member of the community, a man who gives so much of himself, a good family man, a good church man, of something so bad? And that’s where I start to break down. When the discussion comes into one of those huge dark areas of my brain where I already have a problem convincing myself that I had no choice, that I didn’t want this, that I did the right thing, it gets harder and harder to come back to me. To where I want to be.
I’m making not making any sense.
I think I used the metaphor of a teeter-totter before. I remember back in elementary school, we would stand with each foot about a foot from the fulcrum and try to balance. I feel like my sanity, my grip on me, my bearable level of guilt, my self-loathing and self-blame are right on that fulcrum. And when I read about how all people are capable of being monsters, I tilt, just a little, the wrong way. When I read that I am sick and horrible for knowing that even good public citizens can be rapists, I tilt the wrong way. Just a little. But that teeter-totter is so long and heavy, 48 years long and a lifetime of experience heavy, that slowing, and stopping and reversing that tilt is exhausting.
Don’t get me wrong. My life is going pretty damn well. I keep up a good facade in public. The nightmares are still there, but fewer of them and further apart. But keeping on an even keel is tiring me out. Or maybe the shitty weather is getting me down. Or maybe I really am as weak as I think I am.
Rage is not being strong. Rage is letting out a little of the darkness that is the real me. When I let myself get angry, let that rage out, even if it is a pimple on the arse of humanity trying to find a way to acceptably assume innocence when a man is accused of rape, I feel like I have failed, again, at keeping that dark core where it belongs.
I guess that may be why Commander Vimes is my favourite Disc World character. He stays in control out of fear of what he can be, what he could be, what he really is deep down. Dangerous idiocy (I like that phrase, by the way) is dangerous in more than one way. It is dangerous because it continues the benefit of the doubt automatically given to any man accused of rape or molestation. It is dangerous for me, personally, because I let myself get mad, let that rage, that cold, calculating, hateful, hurtful rage out of its cage. And that scares me.
Sorry for the maudlin ramble. Just me trying to understand why I do what I do.
Ogvorbis:
It scares me too. It will keep scaring me until the day I die. The best you can do, is very much like Commander Vimes, is to keep watch on it, and use it when needed, to do right.
Very few people know this, but I experienced my first orgasm at nine years old, during a rape. Body betrayal has a way of messing with you like nothing else. I still haven’t dealt all that well with this particular aspect of being abused. To say it’s a tough one is one hell of an understatement.
Inaji and Ogvorbis, I am humbled by your continuing to be the good people you are despite the harm that was done to you. Just like courage isn’t not feeling fear but being afraid and doing the right thing anyway … my respects to you for being good and decent human beings in spite of all the things that tend to make it much, much harder to be good. Easy to be nice when life is easy (not that the most privileged tend to be nice, let alone nicer, but I think it’s easier – which is another kind of privilege in itself). I don’t think I’m articulating this well at all, but sometimes when I see people here helping each other, when they’ve been harmed themselves, it takes my breath away. My usual response is to shut up and stay shut up, but I just wanted to write out loud that I take my hat off to you both and wish you all the strength and spoons.
Me neither. I’ve actually typed but not posted several times now a comment to the effect that confidence in any given scenario of alternate history is just stupid. Fuck, it’s hubristic to even think we can have a good idea about what actually did happen. Every ‘oh, I read this book that made a good case for X’ can be met with somebody else’s favorite book, and your preferred scenario is colored inevitably by your political and ideological inclinations, so it’s confirmation-bias city. Waste of time.
Oggie
I’m a pretty clever fellow, and not easily fooled. While I have no personal experience to use as a yardstick, without going into exhausting and possibly triggering detail, I will merely note that yours (and the others shared here) are far from the only ones I’ve heard. Getting a reputation as someone who’s a good listener and non-judgemental leads to hearing some of the most astonishing (not to say deeply, deeply depressing) things, and can also lead to some pretty decent insights about folks, so I’m personally inclined to go on trusting my judgment on you.
Oggie, Inaji, et al
*safehugs*
*HUGS* for Oggie.
atheistblog
From the Woody Allen thread:
No, no it doesn’t.
Dalillama #464
I am doubtful that they will understand the link.
On another topic
it is -23°C (-11°F)
do I need a smoko that bad?
I would like to make something explicit in case it didn’t exactly come to light on the “Someone was bored tonight” thread:
This attempt at a DDoS is much less effective than the attempts with which I am familar, and I am happy about this fact.
Went out shopping, playing and eating with the kid today. Eating chippies with tomato sauce, this 6yo veteran of Skyrim and Skylanders all of a sudden assumes a praying stance in the middle of the shopping center and tells me that “thinking of god and jesus” helps him concentrate.
Yes there will be some questions to ask of his mother and some teachers to scrutinise, and yes of course I played the Harry Potter/Dumbledore gambit, but this is nevertheless unsettling. I need to find out who the sleazy christian worm is who is abusing my kid. Gah.
As to the DDoS attack, I suggest FtB urgently befriend @miss_sudo on twitter and let’s kick some bigot ass.
rorschach #468
That’s horrible.
Hopefully you’ve caught it early enough.
Ex has promised to look into it, so we will see. there are court cases pending here with regards to religious instructions for primary school children being delivered by untrained christian missionaries. Its a monumental disgrace.
See, Im not sure about that one, and thats probably where Im seeking advice here. I myself had some kind of RI when I was in primary school, I still remember reading bible verses and studying for communion(it got me a TV on which I would watch Vegas and Starsky&Hutch secretly at night). Is one supposed to just let the infection run its course and hope for future immunity to occur?
You know your own kid best, obviously – I think I remember some people leaning towards “just make sure they know everything is open to scrutiny, not to take things on authority” as being the key to immunisation. Personally, we went the route of “never take anything purely on authority, not from your teachers and not from us either; teachers can be wrong, so can we” but also, and at the same time, we most certainly were clear that we ourselves had no truck with any of it; and we talked a bit about some of the basics – you know, the old “humans have invented so many different gods at different times in history, all contradicting each other, and they’re all fairy-tales …”, that kind of thing. And we poked fun at some of the ridiculous stuff, and generally expressed a bit of derision for the nonsense while at the same time mentioning that some kids in school probably really believe all this stuff and we can disagree without setting out to pour scorn on littlies. 6 years old … I’m probably not remembering that far back clearly enough (my younger one is mid-teens).
Humour and an invitation to question authority generally, I guess. Hope you find the combination that feels right to you.
Ogvorbis @458
I know what you mean. It’s a lot of the reason I get burned out and sort of fade back into lurking from time to time. It never gets enough attention just how much risk people who bring out personal pain to disprove bigoted privileged bullshit take on just to speak truth to power.
You are an amazing man. One whose strength I am honestly humbled by quite a bit. You deserve love. You deserve a day when the memories and the what ifs and all the cultural myths aren’t tearing you apart. Stay safe and know that you are seen as the good sort you are by a lot of people.
*Safe physical gesture of support*
chigau @445
Well, if you’re talking alternate history narratives, well, it can be interesting from a fiction perspective and give us interesting stories (including a what if aliens invaded during X historical event opening to a sci-fi universe). Beyond that, the value is often similar to that given by science fiction to explore a fictional world to try and pinpoint essential human truths or make an argument about specific behavior.
In more general speculation terms (what would have happened if X happened), speculating about history in this way can sometimes untangle parts of the historical narrative, noting the impact that relatively minor personal actions can have on large-scale events. Many of the times this speculation will be useful, but sometimes can divine some important point about the importance of trustworthy leaders, the impact a minor official can have that informs personal life morality, and whether it’s a great idea to repeat historical mistakes.
In re-examining history and questioning official narrative, that can serve a lot of purpose in uncovering aspects of history deliberately ignored by bigoted power structures. This one above all can serve the greatest good. Noting the existence of prominent queer and trans* people throughout history has direct effects on those rights today. Re-examining white or dominant racial groups narratives about the oppression of minority groups has allowed us to put historical events such as slavery or genocide in their proper perspective and avoid bullshit like “oh the Middle East only hates Westerners because they are so backwards and envy our technology” or “Africa is backwards because black people are inferior genetically”. Additionally, going back and actually looking at women in history and so on reveals a whole lot more and makes us more prepared to resist repeating historical mistakes. This tool is invaluable for creating a historical narrative that is more accurate to what actually happened instead of being a white-washed narrative of rich white male kings. And yes, it can help to shed our patriotic biases and look at our nation’s crimes objectively and from the perspective of an outsider or our victims to avoid bullshit like thinking our poorly armed “enemies” just “hate us for our freedom” and a couple trillion dollars worth of bombs will sort them out. It can also help to look at the sheer level of horror that has been done in our name with what has turned out to be flimsy excuses.
But if you are referring to historical revisionism, i.e. rewriting history to erase crimes or belatedly justify them as moral to serve the political machinations of modern groups who want to benefit from having their historical crimes wiped clean, then well, the motivation for that is sadly evident. They want their historical crimes made a fictional unimportant thing in order to justify continuing similar policies or bigotry in the now. See right-wingers trying to erase any mention of genocide against Natives or the crimes of slavery in order to sell a rah rah America narrative that will lead to more support of more brutal war crimes against current enemies.
Opposablethumbs @ 460, thank you so very much. Such kind words make it easier, at least for me.
Dalillama, hugs right back to you, always.
opposablethumbs @4600:
Thanks for the spoons.
Please don’t shut up when it comes to rape, or child abuse, or racism, or any of the other festering sores of modern culture (and historical culture, for that matter). The more people speak up, the less acceptable such behaviour becomes.
I can’t speak for others (though from the outpouring of pain on some of the rape threads from far too many of us, I suspect this is true for others here), but for me, it is a form of therapy. Lancing the boil, again and again and again (this is Inaji’s phrase and it is just so right for where I am).
Dalillama @462:
Thanks. I’m glad others can trust me. Sometimes, when I get really depressed, I have a real hard time trusting myself.
rorshach:
Shit. Hopefully the inherent contradictions, absurdities and sheer bullshit or religion will allow for some good conversations with your kid. And may reality win.
Cerberus @473:
Over on the latest Woody Allen thread, Inaji wrote:
And I agree.
For me, that boil keeps filling up, but each time if feels like it is a little less swollen, a little less of a festering sore, a little less control of my life.
Ogg, you are not a monster…..take it from someone who is one. Your constant pain over what you were forced to do marks you forever as a moral human being. Does not matter that you enjoyed it at the time, you don’t enjoy it now.
The way one knows that one is a monster is to be thinking about something that one has done, and catch sight of oneself in a mirror, only to notice that the thing that looks back is smiling.
K.
Live chat on ending FGM starts in five minutes:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/feb/07/how-do-we-end-female-genital-mutilation-fgm
So Baby Yoga is apparently a thing. If someone could please explain to me what the ever-loving fuck this idiot thinks she’s doing, then I’d be most grateful. I couldn’t watch the whole video, you see; I simply don’t have the necessary amount of cutlery to endure someone continuing to swing a baby around their head when the baby is fucking crying.
For Ogvorbis and Inaji and others: What opposablethumbs said @460. Word-for-word.
Quite right. I mean – were you there?
Ogvorbis
You’re not a monster, and I love you. This lil community is ripe with some of the most fantastic people on planet earth, and you stand out amongst them. With everything.
hahaha! Yes, that’s right, I’m just like a creationist! zing!
This is nice. A preacher (and evidently an evolution-denying preacher, to boot) becomes an atheist after studying theology. [Link]
Holy shit sonofrojblake is a lying, cherrypicking, dishonest shit.
teat
*ahem*
test
The inner ten-year-old is giggling.
tent
chigau
and you probably suck at it…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-26129199 Atheists in Egypt say they struggle to have their views heard
*offering a heap of fluffy hugs each to Ogvorbis, Ináji and Cerberus*
First, abandon your illusions about this august forum. My only contact with Seeger was when we had to sing “where have all the flowers gone” in 5th grade (and just barely understood English well enough, on average). Second, compare the lyrics!
Can you really not use the other hand? I can, it just takes longer.
Good choice! :-)
SIWOTI syndrome.
Not the same as “the lesser evil”.
I really doubt anyone in that thread has that intention. Has anyone brought up “the atrocity committed against us last time”?
I don’t think such categories even apply. They’re orthogonal to the question of what you should do. After all, you aren’t being judged by… that wouldn’t even be Klingons, but Daleks. (Or fascists.)
Eh, it’s not so black-or-white. We can have a reasonably good idea, to some degree, about some things; some are clearer than others. Falsification may be just about impossible, but arguments from parsimony can still sometimes be made.
In this particular case, it’s likely that everyone’s favorite books – even where they’re not influenced by the authors’ inclinations, which can of course be very hard to tell – look at different, only partially overlapping samples of the evidence. Comparing them can be quite interesting, and I’m sure this motivates some people in that thread.
Wow, and it was just a few days ago!
X-D
That’s news?
David:
After all, you aren’t being judged by…
But I am judging me. And find myself wanting.
They’re making a Lego movie??
I have fond memories of Mr. Peabody and Sherman. I may go see this movie.
I bow before Borkquotia, daughter of Tpyos.
Shirley Temple passed away.
That sounds annoyingly familiar. Have a hug (or your choice of appropriate gesture of sympathy).
LykeX:
Sorry. Not trying to bring others down.
Don’t worry, the annoying part is all my own work.
Tony@494.
makingmade a Lego Movie. Actually they’ve been making mini-sketches for quite some time. I think originally for the Lego video games cut scenes, but then as separate mini-episodes. We, the family, went on Sunday. I wouldn’t say it was the best movie evar, but it was kind of fun.