I’ve been in Anderson Cooper’s position a few times: having a conversation with someone defending the indefensible. I feel some sympathy for this poor woman: she’s probably of average intelligence, and has just discovered that she has to defend hatred and ignorance on television…and she discovers that falling back on the authority of her pastor isn’t enough.
(via Mano)
Daisy Cutter: Nah, no one said “sheeple” verbatim; it was something about how belief in privilege is groupthink and something about blah I blocked the rest of it out.
I doubt I’ll be joining the Horde, but y’all are still awesome and I read regularly. Please keep being awesome. I’ll be going back to having a life shortly and won’t have time to fight rape apologist fuckwits like zengaze over at JT’s place. I’m sorry.
And he can argue all that he wants that it’s not rape apology since he was totally making a comparison to a bad argument, but no, the one time when people called him an asshole for being a disingenuous piece of shit is not the same as when I was raped, or my mother, or my grandmother, or my friends, or the women who have mentioned it in classes I’ve been in, or the vast other numbers of people, women AND men, who have been. And you don’t target comments like that at individual people, at any rate. “Hey, you hit me with a bad argument, and you deserve what you get in turn.”
Lying sack of shit.
My kitty (Cinnamon), as opposed to The Mr.’s (Gatsby), is the only cat I’ve ever known to have a non-trapped belly. You can pet it all you want, hell, I blew a raspberry on her tummy to see what she would do and she just purred. But then, her only acts of aggression towards people are always the passive kind. She’s never deliberately scratched anyone in either my or her previous owner’s time with her. On the other hand, her farts could strip paint, and she drools when she’s happy.
Gatsby, on the other hand, will just wreck your shit for fun. Sometimes he’ll deign to let me rub his belly though. He’s beginning to soften as middle age has hit him. He’s even started allowing snuggling. Still left The Mr’s and my blood all over the bathroom recently, but he’s mellowing.
Also, on a cheerfuller and less antagonistic note, tonight we went to dinner and our waitress was obviously starved for geekery. She saw my tattoos and immediately figured that we were geeks, and when our friends arrived we ended up hashing out our different geekeries. She was super excited when she heard me mention being stuffed in the fridge and said that she was a Troper. It was awesome.
I just thought I would share that note of joy with everyone.
Jennifer: Thanks for dropping by (and kicking ass) and keep being awesome out there in the world. I’m glad to know this little nest isn’t the only place where decent people can be found.
This is an accurate description of too many of my conversations in the ~18 months since I started lurking at Pharyngula. I keep forgetting that the rest of the world doesn’t think discussion is a full-contact sport.
Oh, kittehs. They are weird. There was a fight this evening over parsley, which both decided was intriguing-then-revolting. But it still required hissing and face swatting.
(Warning – still pondering the JT/DCS trainwreck…)
—
I just started peeking in Christina’s DCS thread, and I noticed something… on several occasions, *Christina* was willing to give a commenter a pass, but JT came in and OVERRULED HER. This gives me a very, very bad vibe. Is it possible that JT’s going so completely off the rails because he thought he was white-knighting for Christina?
Audley, I like reading Darkfetus updates.
Nerd, I like reading Redhead updates too.
ImaginesABeach, I’m glad you and your husband are all right, but I’m sorry to hear the minivan is a loss. *hugs and chocolate*
pf, Anna, MissEla, skepticalmath, and jenniferforester, welcome to TET.
Caine:
Poor little rats. I hope the bribery/pampering helps. :D
This afternoon in our D&D campaign we killed Romney the Red Dragon, although we didn’t know that was its name when it attacked our party. The DM mentioned it aftewards. It sounded so very now, but that particular dragon had been created and named more than 20 years ago, and the DM no longer remembers exactly why he chose the name. And it’s appearance today was a random pick of previously created dragons. :D
Win.
Gen:
Why? Don’t go changin’. ♥
Hekuni Cat, poor dragon.
Sally, no sewing machine here. If I’m in the same room with one, a black hole of utterly bad shit forms. For realz.
Josh, you never responded after I told you the Elky’s name. I thought you’d like the idear of two wimmin vehicles carrying on. ;P
The Rat Report: Chas was out and about today, laying pee trails and Rubin Plinge* and Esme were spotted. After being talked to, soothed and bribed with chocolate Ensure, tea, peanut butter, nutella, fresh salad and fresh crunchies, they allowed me to show them the Special Spots™ I made for them (one super sekrit hiding nest to stash stolen goods, a ladder, specifically not cleaned leading up to a couple of my worktables, etc.), they are now running about wreaking havoc and general mischievousness.
*Rubin is now Rubin Plinge, having a fair amount in common with Walter Plinge**. Much like Walter, during ‘daylight’ hours (read: when the lights are on and I’m busy in the studio), Rubin is spooky, stilted and shy. However, when the lights are out (or low), he becomes The Phantom of the Studio, The Dark Scamperer™!
**A character in the Discworld novel Maskerade.
Oh lord, Caine—sorry! I’m caught up in way too many frayed threads.
Miss Catalaine and Miss Francine. . .mmmmmm. I leave you with this Mystery Movie Quote:
Grizelda: Get it Peggy, get it!
Peggy: But what is there to get?
Grizelda: I don’t know—just get it!
Josh, Tell me, is it possible to get me a hydrogen bomb? Desperate Living!
Just got back from reading the JTEberhard/DCS trainwreck
Now I’m angry and have lost 2 hours of sleep. If you are just waking up, do yourself a favour, don’t go there.
Josh and Jenniferforester, kuddos to you for trying to educate the fuckwits.
I don’t read JT’s blog but when I saw that Josh and Ms. Daisy Cutter were threatened with a ban I felt compelled to go take a look. Wish I had stuck with my initial gut reaction: “Anyone who wants to ban Josh and Ms. Daisy Cutter is an asshat for whose blog I have no time”
I found JT intensely irritating. What’s the word for “you’re wrong and your continued supercilious insistence that you are right, despite all evidence to the contrary, makes me want to slap you upside the head with a mackerel”?
I have one cat who loves lightly steamed broccoli. One. But all five of them have to come running every time I try to give him a piece, and they all have to fight over it, and usually at least one or two of them have to try to eat it,
rememberdiscover all over again that they hate it, and ptooie it back out. *eyeroll*Hi, folks! Nothing like a great big fight to make you appreciate friends, and it seems like all the kickass debaters over at the ongoing JTlamity either live here or have come for a visit. I actually came to see if Improbable Joe was around, because he got to a bad place and Pteryxx invited him over here to talk. But reading over the thread, this place feels like New Jersey, except on the internet (that’s a good thing) and I’d like to hang out a while.
That is, if Josh can forgive me for being so polite all the time. :-)
Pteryxx: Yes, I noticed that dynamic, too. I thought it was rather… well, I mean, isn’t she a blogger, too? Why would she need some dood to decide how she ought to be spoken to? It’s presumptuous, silencing to her as well as everyone else.
I hadn’t seen this side of JT before, and I don’t like it at all.
Nutmeg:
I hear that.
I’ve been noticing some of my conversations going the same way. I even encountered meat space tone trolling. Had a conversation with a fellow atheist) at work about his use of “soul mate”. As we were discussing, I continued to elevate my voice, and another friend jumped in to tell me to lower my voice. That I was getting too aggressive. Mind you, I wasn’t shouting. I was speaking at the level one occasionally needs…when you work in a bar.
kristinc:
BWAHAHAHAHAH! Cats are crazy critters that’s for sure. My tabby Kayta (a female; btw, anyone know if it’s true that female tabbies are rare?) loves yogurt. Every time I feed her some, my other cat (she’s rather Sylvester like, now that I think about it) comes a running. She sniffs, does the cute little nose twitchy thing that cats do, and walks off. Meanwhile Kayta is face down in a box of dannon yogurt. She’s so adorable when she emerges. All the yogurt dangling off her whiskers is hilarious!
Sorry to go back OT (on topic)…
It occurred to me that the lady in the video didn’t actually understand most of what she was being asked.
To me, it sounded almost as if she was personally a bit horrified that the fence would be _electric_, not that there would be a fence to begin with! Mayhap a soft, fluffy fence would be more acceptable to her?
She also showed quite a lot of ignorance about what non-heterosexuals actually do, let alone how they are “made”. Perhaps she experienced cognitive dissonance trying to align the realisation that even with all the gays left to die behind the warm, fluffy barbed wire, homosexuals are continuing to be born on the other side of the wire!
Sure as sh!t her mentally defective pastor didn’t really think that one through either. You’d need a gate, for starters…
I *suspect* (though that’s all I can justify) she hasn’t even read Leviticus or Deuteronomy. At least, not all of it – just the bits her splinter group of christianity pick out to memorise to justify their bigotry.
Worst of all, she looked a lot like my sister. Come to think of it, she sounded a lot like her too.
Well, I didn’t expect this: In addition to being disappointed with Stephanie Zvan and JT over the shitstorm at JT’s blog, there’s a potential surprise disappointment. Natalie Reed seems to be throwing the “vocal allies” under the bus in the DCS thread.
Comment 43:
NEXT
I really hope I am misunderstanding her, because this is WTF-worthy. It’s not like Natalie was an ever-present force in that thread, and Anna and Xanthe’s perspective on the ordeal (in this thread) seems to be that they didn’t exactly enjoy their opportunity to be Educators in that thread. It’s not like they were robbed of opportunities to speak: They were spared the monotony of dealing with the JAQing off and PRATTS of closet bigots and/or morons. That seems like pretty much one of the key functions of an ally.
Does this whole debacle really all amount to another argument about tone? Because I will fucking gouge my eyes out right now.
I’m in a bad mood, but I think it’s worse than that. For some people, there’s often no contact at all. The woman in this video is a prime example. Even Cooper seems pretty alienated — what’s so important that he doesn’t viciously denounce everything that this woman stands for? His ratings? He’s got to be at least a little outraged, but why do we only see hints of it? I don’t think they just have their priorities out of whack. They’ve lost of the concept of priorities altogether. This shit is so far removed from anything they feel or understand that they can only mouth a bunch of words about some abstraction and think they’ve said something.
“anyone know if it’s true that female tabbies are rare?”
-Maybe you are thinking of calico cats?
“and they all have to fight over it” -the same will apply for a string, a piece of paper or a ball.
— — — — — — — — — —
“defending the indefensible”
Waitwait wait, I can totally do this. (Godwin alert)
“While Hitler may have gone a bit over the top with the jews,
let’s not forget all the good things he did, like the highways and the rocket technology.
Plus, he was a true patriot, who was wounded in the Great War”
(and long harangue about traditional Values and Returning The Country To Greatness)
(For Pharyngula beginners, my previous comment was sarcasm)
Sympathy? I’d feel sympathy for the shovel I used to smack her with, maybe. She’s plenty intelligent, she’s just a common-or-garden foul bigot, end of story.
If Cooper was adopting the, ‘Give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves’ tactic, it certainly worked.
I didn’t see any horror at her own ignorance at all.
What I saw was exasperation that stoopid libruls just DON’T GET how necessary and right it is to torment and kill people who won’t lie down and play dead, in response to the bullying of her and her ilk.
Vile creature.
That’s not how I saw it. I saw a hateful, stupid, bigoted woman impatient with the questioning that she saw as some sort of “trick” to malign her and her rightful, god-given, hatred for teh gheys. In fact, she was merely given enough rope to fully vent her bigotry.
This woman, her preacher, the 1200 other people who fill the seats of that congregation and people like them are the reason that tone trolling, “bridge building”, accomodationists can take a porcupine wrapped in barbed wire and shove it up their arse sideways.
Die Fundamentalist Scum
Too soon?
To all:
Damn it. Trying to catch up on TET, but I know nothing of the drama going on at JT’s blog, and I’m not sure I should even try wading into that (leaning strongly towards NO), so I feel lost. Life preserver anyone? Perhaps there’s an island with a smoke monster for me to reach…
Robert B: Heya, you’ve been doing stellar work over there. Welcome to the lounge.
—
my 2c re Natalie’s post: I saw that too, but I think it’s important to keep Natalie’s comment separate from the trainwreck JT brought on himself – and remember, JT could be considered one of those allies she mentions, too. JT’s making much different claims by one-sided charges of hostility and defending his own ally status, and that discussion mostly took place in a separate thread. (Whether his moderating contributed is another question.)
However, Natalie’s not only speaking for herself as the target of this whole mess (and a few others), but saying cis people are overtaking the conversation is a much fairer and quite probable charge in general. It’s really, really easy for allies to get into completely justified fights that the actual targets would rather avoid. Responding can take away the choice to ignore an attack. (I’m not sure yet that I can say that’s what happened, but I haven’t read the DCS questions thread in detail yet and I’m willing to provisionally believe Natalie and look for what she sees there… when I’m awake enough to do so.)
Also, someone else might respond to Natalie, to differ, concur, or clarify. I assume she probably hasn’t read JT’s trainwreck thread or here in TET, so she’s going only by the comments within the DCS Questions thread.
Anyway, that’s my initial take on it.
OK, I’m pretty threadrupt
Imagines a beach
Tons of hugs coming for you. I hope you’re OK and the insurance won’t be a bugger
Hello, all you new people
You know, that’s the good thing about those blowups: We always end up with a few new verrrrrry cool people here.
That Zangaze guy was already an idiot over at Ophelias: Didn’t even read the posts he was commenting at and then played the “show me the evidence” game.
Now I need to paint our balcony-chairs
birgerjohansson:
or a ball of aluminum foil.
Just don’t waste money buying cat toys. Nope. Those snobby little felines don’t care if you just spent $50 on toys for them. They want the frog or lizard that came in the house (stick with roaches please; frogs and lizards are adorable), or the drawstring from your shorts.
______________________________________
quoderatdemonstrandum
For me, there’s no “too soon”. It strikes too much like calling for someone to die. For all that the woman is a vile (what did I do to her and that pastor to warrant being rounded up with the rest of the queers and imprisoned?) wretched example of the humanity (course she’s probably NATCh-does that work for Not A True Christian? Is there another acronym?), I wouldn’t call for her to die.
Tony re my 24
for the avoidance of any possible confusion, that was said in jest and in reference to the JT/DCS trainwreck.
Fuck, I thought the paint would dry up invisible.
Now my formerly brown chair looks moldy *sigh*
O hai everybody, how do you like my new look? Am I not the prettiest?
Be honest, do those quote marks make my nym look fat?
Now that’s a take on it that will let me rest a little easier. Hopefully this is what she meant, and what actually happened (I didn’t get a chance to see the order to comments in real time, so I know fuck all about whether its true or not).
Pteryxx: I try. You’re no slouch yourself.
Tony: Were you looking for a synopsis of the JTastrophe, or something else to talk about?
Alethea
It looks the exact perfect size for a crocoduck
Oh, one thing about the mental health discussion:
My cousin suffers from psychosis. Before he got the right medication he tried to kill himself and, on a different occasion, he tried to kill his dad with a hammer.
Now, what would be the suggestion for people like him?
Can anybody tell me that he’d be better off without drugs?
anteprepro,
Natalie does not want to throw cis allies under the bus, since if you accept that the actual point of the thread was Christina’s (ill-fated) attempt to get trans perspectives on what ‘Die Cis Scum’ means, then the derail buried the few articulate trans voices under the weight of cis voices – well-meaning allies and cis-privileged JAQ-offers alike.
Raising your voice over the top of us though, means that we have to work harder to get our points through – which is the whole point of why DCS is such a silly argument to have: there are too few of us to exert any social pressure whatsoever on our own (which is why no progroms of cis scum have ever happened, period) so we absolutely rely on allies to amplify our own message – not for it to be lost or distorted in the process. Going over the top to attack the privileged twits on the thread made it all the harder for us to reach those people and frustrated the attempt to bring any nuance to the debate so that we could get beyond trans 101; and I have no idea whether people lurking on the thread would think better of our argument, or turn in sympathy to the JAQ-ers for having been attacked.
I agree the derail was fucking unfair, overbrimming with spectacular levels of obtuseness and privilege, and I can’t deny it was tempting for cis allies to unleash their justifiable anger – but Natalie is saying this was our battle to fight – at least the first battle on that particular thread, rather than the subsequent derail on the “Want to keep commenting here?” thread. Please respect that. She’s actually one of the few people in the world who has a jacket that says “Die Cis Scum”, so she’s in a real position to comment on whether it’s an open threat to everyone she meets, or a political slogan, or a symbol of self-empowerment.
anteprepro: after I posted, I also remembered that both Natalie and JT are FTB bloggers with access to the backchannel. They *might* well be discussing how he and Christina handled moderation of the bad-faith cis commenters. But, she can ask us who consider ourselves allies to control our own behavior.
oops – and Xanthe, thank you, that’s much clearer than I understood. (I post slow, meh.)
Giliell,
Well *I’m* certainly never going to tell you he’d be better without drugs. I think pharmacotherapy is an essential part of many/most management/treatment programmes for serious mental illnesses. And in most cases the evidence supports that.
My “concerns” are probably a more perfectionist worry. Like many people I’m not pleased with the stigmatisation of mental illness, the “magic pill ‘cures’ complex mental disease” trope, the patent extension methods that my industry sometimes uses to keep making profits out of a certain drug,* and a variety of other things. Take the stigma for example, how many times have we seen “herp derp are you off your meds”? It’s a complex social phenomenon to unpick.
I am by no means a denier of the science underpinning drug discovery, I DO it, I know how robust it is, what I don’t like, and I am far from alone amongst my colleagues, is when our science is {ahem} “translated” by marketeers, or heavily and unethically pushed by high pressure sales people using bribes and underhanded techniques. By no means is this the universal and only picture, there are good marketeers and sales folk, but there have also been enough fucking criminals to annoy the bejebus out of the rest of us in the industry.
Louis
* New medical uses DO exist, and can be quite genuine, but there are more than a few howlers that are a little dubious. And I’m being generous there. Pfizer, Viagra and “female sexual disfunction”, I’m looking at you.
Alright, thank you. This clarifies things.
One other thing: I said “getting our message across” but that is a gross simplification – there is no single trans message! For example, in my very first comment on the thread I brought up complicating details, such as that some trans people have thought “Die Cis Scum” is a political liability because it is scaring people who would be allies (I happen to disagree), while other trans people don’t want to take *any* action that draws attention to ourselves (yes, there are some trans people willing to throw other trans people ‘under the bus’, sadly). All that could have been canvassed had people been willing to listen to trans people’s perspectives.
Alethea, I like the nym change.
I read the original DCS post (I think) a few days back at Natalie’s place. I didn’t pay any attention to the comments. It seemed pretty clear what she was doing to me, I think Xanthe nails it (great explanation btw, thanks).
Speaking as a cis person who would like to be an ally, and is trying like a motherfucker to avoid drowning out genuine voices, I got feminism, I got anti-racism and LGBQ rights etc, but I have to admit I find trans stuff more tricky. Not because I find any problem with it, the principles are identical, just because I know so much less about the nitty gritty of trans experiences etc. I am very definitely of the opinion that I should Sit The Fuck Down and Shut The Fuck Up. Except in the case of when someone is being egregiously transphobic, when naturally I am going to kick a little arse as appropriare. Other than that, I know too little.
So SittingTFD and ShuttingTFU right now. I’m going to do me some listening and learning.
Louis
I kicked my boyfriend’s ass in a Hordes match [/random moment of geek pride]
also: Lint likes Pistacchios. Dusty doesn’t even consider them a kind of food. But every time Lint is trying to eat a pistacchio, Dusty tries to take it away from her. then he sniffs it, gives a confused chirp, and walks off. every time.
Back in Beijing, fast wireless and good blog access, yay! There has also been a little, err, oversight on my part with regards to my hotel booking, so that I find myself in the executive suite at the Hilton for the night. It has 2 stories. If you’re in Beijing, come over to party, I have a spare bedroom !
*groan*
Louis, thanks.
Pteryxx, I somehow doubt there is much back-channel coordination going on; each FTB blogger’s blog is separate turf for them to oversee, which is one other issue, JT freaked out about tone where PZ would have not lifted a finger. So the Pharyngula-style tactics, while effective here, were not a good fit to the battlefield there.
Now that I’ve been accused of being a Poe I have no intention of going back: gotta know when to walk away, know when to run.
That’s probably a reason I will never be able to hold a conversation with my dad. I get seriously engaged, I find nuances and latch onto weak arguments, I don’t let wrong things go. And he just wants to state his opinions, often stupid and offensive, and have me agree without argument. I should have called it a monologue with me as an audience, really, not a conversation.
I’ve had the similar problem with other people too. They were convinced that because we were having an informal chat, I was taking it too seriously when I commented on various stupidities. And when I disagree, I disagree vehemently. I’m actually nicer on the internet than in meat-space. Out there, I start gesticulating a lot, I raise my voice and get obviously upset. On the internet, I use more fucks and my grammar worsens, but I probably don’t project my upset as well as my frantic movements and voice would in meat space.
——-
About Natalie’s comment on DCS:
While JT’s opinion is currently worth less than shit to me, I take Natalie’s opinion on the topic seriously. I still believe JT and Christina didn’t handle the situation well and that they shouldn’t have banned Josh and Ms Daisy Cutter, especially while ignoring the bigoted troublemakers. But I’m also going to take what Natalie said seriously and think better about overwhelming the conversation about trans people so that trans people’s voices get drowned.
I’m also still not convinced that “some people” (Josh, I guess) derailed the thread. Or that their hostility was uncalled for. I don’t want to talk over trans people, but I also don’t want stupid and wrong things to be left unchallenged.
F everyone’s I, something completely uninteresting and irrelevant (plus ca change!):
I am at home today with sick Boy. He has decided that pooing liberally is a career move he wishes to make. He was already at Olympic standard in shitting, I have entered him for the 2012 events in his age and weight category and expect a gold in the “mysterious brown and unbelievably smelly” event and at least a silver in the “whoa that turd is bigger than you are, child, how the fuck did you manage THAT, is your arse the fucking Tardis?” steeplechase.
I have been using luminol to determine that, now we have a toddler of nearly 3 years old (next week!!!!), there is no surface of the domicile below about 6 feet that is not covered in something that fluoresces when sprayed. If you catch my drift.
And that is despite near pathological levels of cleaning on my and my wife’s part.
When the Boy finally grows up to the point of being able to cope fully with every excrescence that he emits, I am going to boil myself in bleach for a month to finally, once and for all, get clean. Showers no longer cut it. I emerge from the shower, dress and get Boy-ed, then go a bit Howard Hughes.
The germs are coming to get me.
Louis
P.S. The childbirth/baby stuff amuses the hell out of me BTW. My wife and I share the child care very evenly, so I am properly involved and I love it. My attitude for housewives of yore went from “easy life” to “fuck me I’d rather be working” after the first few hours of the first week after he was born when we were both on mat/pat leave. Kids be hard work, yo!
Rorschach,
1) I am envious as a beast! As intimated elsewhere, I LOVE many facets and things about China. It is number one on my Countries I Most Want to Visit list, but I refuse to go without working Mandarin. I have to immerse myself a bit, it’s just who I am.
2) If I could get the flight, I would! Parental/work duties call sadly.
Louis
Happiestsadist, you have a whale skull?!?!??!
Nerd, ongoing hugs and progress wishes for you and the Redhead, with virtual flowers (well unfortunately I’m crap at growing real ones).
Sally, I don’t have a sewing machine either. In this household, if it’s a button or minor repair Other Parent of Spawn will probably do it – for anything else it’s iron-on patches only. I do slightly regret not being better at this kind of thing, which is seriously useful, but they made us do sewing at school once and I never recovered.
“Alethea H. “Crocoduck” Dundee” heee!
“that” [looking calmly at creationist/liberturd/would-be mugger] isn’t an argument. THIS is an argument”
.
.
.
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WARNING pregnancy-related (and sort-of-scatalogical) TMI ahead.
.
.
.
Thinking about the whole pregnancy thing (which I haven’t done for years), what with reading about Darkfoetus (/pigheaded adherence to – ha! – Proper Spelling wot I like) has reminded me of something which is almost certainly going to make me look [more] like a total idiot [than usual].
So, during the process of gestating Spawn#1 I sort of thought – when people went on and on about “pushing” and having an “urge/need to push”, well, it’s probably a bit similar to having a massive shit as far as what your muscles are doing, but it must be different in some respect because if it were identical to a common experience that everyone has had someone would say so. Nobody does, I thought to myself, nobody (midwives, physicians, nobody) even so much as mentions a similarity – so it must be at least a little subtly, slightly different somehow, I thought. And it’s not, it’s identical – including that moment of “right NOW is the instant to go with it, for resounding success” that one sometimes experiences when the evacuation is of generous proportions. Yes, blokes, you too can imagine a certain aspect of parturition – just bearing in mind the size of what is being squeezed out.
So, well, I know it sounds daft – but not having done it before I had been wondering what this would feel like. And I would have liked to know in advance that it was in fact not a mysterious new sensation but something we all get to experience on multiple occasions.
So, uh, that was just me then? Everyone else knew that without having to spawn to find out? Aha. Right. Ahem. Shutting up now.
Xanthe,
Sorry, I haven’t read all of your comments before posting.
Injustice gets me angry, but I will do my best to listen more and talk less.
Louis @ 542,
I feel rather clueless about the whole trans thing myself, but listening and reading should definetely help. And maybe one of those more familiar with the matter can explain to me why the whole “cis” vs “trans” thing isn’t actually the greatest false dichotomy ever. Are people necessarily either happy or unhappy with their gender assignment at birth? No shades of grey? I’m honestly curious what the answer is, because I don’t know much about this.
rorschach,
Natalie wrote in the DCS thread:
I don’t think either trans or cis exist as spectrums. Under my definition, they’re something you are you aren’t, and you are, by definition, one or the other.
They called you a Poe? Seriously?
*looks*
Oh. It’s Katie “I am afraid of trans people” Hartman. The scary nonconformist ladies and gents are coming to attack her, after all – that’s obviously just what the DCS slogan means, a physical danger to her personally.
Louis,
one of the things I have learned here is that there’s Mandarin, and then there’s Chinese characters. Even kids here learn pinjin first (a phonetic approximation of what characters sound like, written in “normal” letters), and move on to the characters later. Pinjin has about 400 “words”, which come in 3-4 different tones, that makes around 1400 pinjin words you have to learn. The characters are a different matter altogether, because Chinese is 2500 years old, and each character represents an idea or concept rather than a word, it is necessary to combine characters. For example the sounds for “hotel” are made of the characters for rice and shop, ‘fandian’. It’s pretty elegant, actually. But there is potential for confusion when the word “ma” has 4 different meanings depending of how you intone the a.
Louis & opposable thumbs just made me Literally LOL (LLOL) just now.
Also, rorschach, I believe Natalie has some posts up about the neurology of trans people. My basic lay person’s understanding: men and women have slightly different brain structure, MRI scans have shown that trans people have brains that more closely resemble those of the opposite sex.
So yeah, though people may abstractly wish for some of the experiences the opposite sex has, most folks don’t experience a jarring sense of incongruity, like *this is the WRONG body.* I mean, I’ve always felt pretty content with being female. Haven’t you felt the same about being male? Honest question. But anyway, reading Natalie’s stuff is probably the best option.
While I don’t feel particularly invested in my birth gender (never felt particularly feminine) I have less than zero interest in switching genders. I guess my main complaints about being female have to do with the way society treats us rather than inherent things to do with being female.
Rorschach,
Yeah, I’m aware of Chinese linguistic…shall we say…”issues” and tonality etc.
It’s basically the main reason I want to learn the bloody thing! There’s a whole poem with just “ma” in it isn’t there?
Louis
[meta]
ChasCPeterson: FFS!
Just admit you still care to comment here, climb down off your high dudgeon, and rescind your request.
(Obvious is obvious)
For what it’s worth, I hate my gender assignment and body, but I don’t feel like the OTHER gender… as near as I can tell I feel like neither one. I mostly pass though so I’m effectively cis-privileged.
Rorschach – two whole bloody floors to yourself? And no-one to pah-tay with? That’s wrong – on so many levels.
Louis, my children were more accomplished on the Olympic sport of projectile vomiting. It is remarkable how many surfaces can be affected in one single event. Yeah verily, unto the ceiling.
Alethea – nooooo! Of course it doesn’t!
‘night.
Amblebury,
I confess disappointment with the Boy’s abilities in regards to a good projectile chunder. So far we have had episodes that only managed about a metre or so, well timed and aimed for maximum inconvenience, but nothing to write home about. His forte does seem to be in the rectal area.
Mind you I have yet to feed him his first Late Night Kebab With Extra Onions and Chilli Sauce from a proper scummy kebab van (or kebabulance to the cognoscenti), so perhaps he hasn’t has quite the level of gastrointestinal disruption to aspire to truly great heights. Or maybe he’s just a bit crap. I have to confess, love him wildly though I do, I just cannot get behind this ” MAI CHILD IS AN ANGEL AND THE NEXT MESSIAH MOTHERFUCKERS!” attitude. I’m pretty certain my wife gave birth to a human being, perhaps an agricultural muck spreader, and I’m relatively sure human beings are not perfect.
Louis
Pteryxx,
Your insight is a good one.
How do I know *I’m* cis as cis can be? Never had to think about it. That simple.
Sexuality and sundry other things to Long Honest Looks At Self, but the cis thing, easy for me. When I found out there were trans people I had the Uber Privileged response of “but why? Aren’t we born the sex we are born and that’s it?”. Privileged thought THAT fucking clueless (to be fair I was pretty damned young!) is pretty indicative that the question does not need to be asked of oneself.
Fuck….talking about MEEEEEEEE. STFU and STFD cis boy!
Louis
^^^ to = took. Meh.
…
*quails from various pregnancy-and-child-related TMI*
*sneaks off to comfort self with images of dissected roadkill*
Carlie [last thread],
I don’t think it’s our corpus, but rather, specific cherry-picked instances from which generalisations are made.
(Typically, when troll-bashing or otherwise not being “nice”)
Pteryxx,
OH BUT LOOK AT DA CYOOTE LIKKLE BABBIEZ!!!!!1111one!!!
{Tee hee}
Louis
P.S. I realise we parental units can be a bit….I think obsessed is a reasonable descriptor.
Mind you, when a squalling shit machine takes over your life and DOES NOT QUIT EVER, it kinda weighs on your mind a bit!
John Morlaes, #65,
Seconded in toto.
I reckon it almost exclusively follows a simple pattern:
1) Arrive at Pharyngula Towers
2) Post erroneous drivel at best, random bigotry at worst
3) Get handed arse on silver platter of abuse
4) Develop severe case of butthurt
5) Hoggle about the butthurt wherever and whenever possible
7) If sockpuppet, repeat from 1)
Louis
Louis, you lying bastard. Take it back!
My 4 month old is delightful and easy. she’s bright as a button, crushing child development markers. She sleeps through the night. Breastfeeds like a champion. She cries briefly at appropriate times: nappy change, tired, hungry, then stops. Strangers on the street stop us to tell us how beautiful she is and she loves a cuddle from her daddy.
You’re going to tell me this is all going to change aren’t you . . .
quoderatdemonstrandum,
I’d never be so cruel.
My son did all that. Ahhh memories.
;-)
Louis
No, shi.
Louis:
Step 6: Profit?
I think the asshole pharyngulite reflex is not in small degrees due to the Egate fallout for one (lobbying by slimepitters and the like), and also the fact that lots of our commenters are by now household names all over FtB, and rather easily recognizable. And our core commentariat has years of internet combat behind them, and for them any debate is a bit like Neo fighting Smith at the end of the first Matrix movie by now. If it wasn’t for the frustration to constantly meet people who don’t know how to make any proper argument, or who lack introspection, intelligence or integrity.
Wow, you’re still all writing fast
Louis
I consider “are you off your meds” to be a fucking silencing and gaslighting technique.
It denies that the person might have a legitimate issue or grievance to adress.
On the cis/trans thing – I’m the same as Ariaflame. I have amused myself by failing the “could you pass as a woman” tests that a trans friend showed me back in the 90s (we’ve lost touch now, but I learned a lot from her). I am a bit skeptical about the whole “brain sex” thing, though. I always psych-test as male, and I always want to beat the test-designers over the head with a copy of Misner, Thorne & Wheeler for their tedious maths=male bullshit.
1) Sili, Ahhhhhh thanks!
2) Robert B, I see you spotted the deliberate omission. It was deliberate. IT WAS. HONEST!!!!!
3) Giliell, oh I agree 100%. If it was possible to agree more, I’d do it.
Louis
I’d like to echo the welcome to the new commenters – it’s a pleasure to see you posting here. And I really appreciated your efforts Elsewhere. I don’t comment often, but I’m always grateful for having my understanding broadened.
Louis #335
Oh, Louis.
Is there a queue? Because I feel strangely compelled to join.
*resumes giggling*
opposablethumbs @ #49 (new page)
I’ve heard childbirth described as ‘like shitting a watermelon’. Having produced a nearly-11lb infant myself, I’d say that works.
Anyone feeling froggy, feel free to join me over in Maryam Namazie’s blog.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2012/05/24/the-koran-between-her-legs/#comment-30168
there have been some really _wonderful_ people crawling out of the wood work. By wonderful I mean the kind of people the exhibit attitudes that bring on nausea to a greater degree than cleaning up kids poop :) There’s actually someone who thinks telling someone to calm down is an ad hominem attack (actually, hen referred to it as “ad homs”).
_______________________________________
Louis:
Your comment on cleaning up poop reminded me of a conversation I had with friends a few years ago over dinner at Sonny’s BBQ. Somehow we got on the discussion-while eating-over the ways (size, quantity, texture, consistency) in which fecal matter exits the body. I’m still not certain why we didn’t get kicked out of the restaurant.
I think I know what you’re referring to, though I’m not certain obsessed is the right descriptor. Even so, they’re your kids, so I imagine having a healthy degree of obsession with them is expected (and given the neglect children around the world face, I’d say commendable). Anyone here who has children (or are expecting…wink wink) my hat is off to you. Those kids are (or will be) in good hands. I may join you one day when I find a date, we have chemistry, he is a top, we stay together for a long time, get married, adopt (or find one of the really awesome, incredibly selfless women out there that are willing to carry someone else’s baby to term)
I think for many (most?) cis men the extra layer of privilege means that, as Louis says, we’ve “never had to think about it”. The very question seems “odd” in a way I suspect it doesn’t so much for cis women, because the advantages of being male (in the absence of gender identity disphoria) are so obvious.
different parts of the brain. we’re talking far more “primitive”. i mean, it’s a bit hard to argue with “brain sex” when so many FtM transsexuals have phantom penises
ms daisy
who are you referencing here? The places I’ve visited most certainly were not. People swapped notes on treatment and took meds but still appreciated how they thought differently from other people.
@ 49 as well (hmmm we’re all latching on to the scatological descriptions here!)
I was rather thankful for the very matter-of-fact descriptions of childbirth from my mom. I had a bit of a crowd in the birthing suite, my mom, stepfather, sister, and her partner, (my ex was off in basic training) plus the midwife and varied nurses. During my labor when I was holding back a bit my mom told me, “It’s ok to swear. It fucking hurts!” Later when it was getting close to push time she told me, “This sounds bad, but it’s going to feel like taking the best shit of your life.” And, well… it’s pretty damn accurate. It IS all the same muscles and such, and then you have the relief from pressure.
@ 76
I don’t believe it’s described as a queue anymore. Writhing mass of humanity maybe? Either way, jump on in ;)
KG is right, I haven’t had to think about it, which adds an extra layer of privilege. Good point actually.
In other news, I haz a sad, tour guide is gone and I’m about to finish what was one of the most interesting and intense holidays ever. Not going to sleep or waking up with tour guide is fucking not cool. Need more liquor.
Geez, my stupidity and moronic commenters:
More from
http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2012/05/24/the-koran-between-her-legs/#comment-30168
After a commenter claimed to know Alishba Zarmeen and was extremely critical (in all the wrong ways) of her, I inquired how well xe knew her. I asked personal questions (name, address, et al), not out of any intent or desire to have the information, but to drive home my point that this person didn’t know Alishba at all. I even put a disclaimer in my post that stated unambiguously that I didn’t want or need the information posted and that it would be a shitty thing for someone to do.
I’m feeling really bad now, because guess what someone decided to do…
Tony,
who are you, and why are you posting this here on TET if I may ask? We are really not the FtB complaints department.
Louis,
and it’s corollary: I HAZ CHILD SO DEFINATELY HAZ SUPER SPECIAL POWERS OF KNOWING STUFF THAT IS TRUE BECAUSE I HAZ CHILD.
For Fuck’s Sake even well educated friends aren’t immune. A college mate of mine became furious with me when I explained that homeopathy doesn’t work. Turns out her child had chronic chest infections that “all the doctors” and “western medecine” couldn’t help but homeopathy cured it. All the medical literature, double blind trials, logic, regression to the mean, germ theory of disease and no plausible mechanism be damned, she “knew” in that special “Mums know” kind of way that homeopathy worked on her child. The way she reacted It’s almost like I accused her of both being a bad mother and not having Special Mum Powers [TM].
Oh and don’t get me started on Entitled Parent Syndrome [TM] wherein some motherfuckers think that because they have spawned, normal societal conventions, common courtesies and not being an arsehole rules no longer apply them because they are special.
PS: to all of you in the “no kids club” of which I was so recently a member, I apologize in advance for helping to turn TET into Mumsnet with an attitude.
Beatrice:
Damned annoying, ain’t it?
I visited my parents and sister down in Orlando a few months back. While my sister and I were chatting away and watching tv in the wee hours of the night, my father hands us a stack of discs to rifle through and watch. They were movies. They weren’t bought. They were illegally downloaded. From there, let’s just say I wasn’t happy. Intellectual property theft is still theft. Any fun went out the window as the conversation turned to movie and music theft online. Just because you’re not stealing a tangible object doesn’t mean you’re not stealing. Both my father and sister put up silly arguments like “everyone else does it” and “it’s not like walking into a music store and stealing a cd” and my favorite (from my sister, after dad went to bed): “the artists make a shit ton of money already, they won’t miss a few bucks”. I kept asking my sister questions, but since she’s not really given this much thought, she didn’t have answers to articulate. So what did she do? Get angrier and double down. She tried throwing out the “you’ve never done anything wrong in your life, have you” argument, which I saw right through. After about 15 minutes of back and forth, I realized she couldn’t respond to my questions because she had no answers. I then pissed her off massively by saying the following:
“This is going nowhere. I’m done. We can pick this up another day. Good night.”
Boy was she pissed. “Are you walking away from me?”
Yep.
I sure was.
I still intend to pick the conversation back up in the future, especially with my father, whom I’ve always thought of as having great moral character.
as a member of the “no kids club”, no apologies are necessary. I find stories of children to be quite entertaining and I get a sort of vicarious sense of wonder from them (yes, even from the stories of cleaning up poop). I must admit I’m still waiting to see this attitude you speak of. Everyone is warm and welcoming here.
Oh, right. You men don’t get constantly reminded that there’s something undesirable about just being what you are.
That said, I have met two men who were really distressed when they realized that gestating fetuses wouldn’t be an option for them. I guess they are outliers.
Oh yeah, and Tony? That was a pretty predictable result of asking for someone’s address. Boneheaded move. Not seeing why you expect anyone here to jump up and help you.
German?
-die Fundamentalistische Schkumm!
— — — — — — —
“Olympic sport of projectile vomiting”
Cats are more into stealth vomiting, when you are not at home and can lift them away from the rug in time.
— — — — — — — — —
Predictably, some asshole has come out in facebook (Swedish language article, no point linking) and had opinions about the appropriate about some dark-skinned immigrant representing Sweden in the Eurovision contest. Bleh.
Jadehawk, I think the term “brain sex” is very contaminated by previous horrible usage – ghastly evopsych pseudoscience every bit as good as the Mars and Venus thing. It was very popular in the 90s. The recent equivalent of how uteruses wandering around the body make teh wimminz crayzee and definitely not suitable to vote. Cordelia Fine did a great takedown of most of it.
The kind of body-map thing you describe does make some sense; I hesitate to mash it up with the crappy gender essentialism usually meant by “brain sex”.
Palate cleansing: http://io9.com/5651462/brain-scams-the-real-science-behind-sex-differences
Ahhh, talking about the joys of parenting…
The poor princess (aka #1) has been locked (aka told she can come out once she’s finished) into the tallest tower (aka the toilet) by the wicked witch (aka me) and told that she has to work (aka clean herself up and wash her hand, oh, and by now clean up the toilet paper), guarded by a fierce dragon (aka her dad).
Poor thing, she’d like you to send her some pity and a stupid knight for the rescue…
Alethea
I remember that stupid test at the end of “Why men can’t listen and women blablabla”. Mr. scored “gay brain” and I scored “lesbian brain”. We thought that since still one of us fancied men and the other women we could just go along woth it…
rorschach:
Umm, I’m at a loss as to how to respond to this. I’m a humanist/atheist/queer 36 year old male who reads comic books, watching scifi, chatting about philosophy and religion, working out, and a variety of other things.
I was under the impression that TET was a thread to talk about stuff. I was especially under the impression that talking to the crowd here about issues in other blogs was something that was OK to do.
If I missed something in a rules handbook, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.
Tony,
Maryam Namazie is a big girl, I’m sure she can take it if you post your concerns on her blog instead of here. Sorry, but I really hate this attitude of random people to barge in here and drop some item of dispute in the hope we will wade in and fight your fight for you. Mind you, we sometimes enjoy doing that…Just not every single fucking time.
SallyStrange:
Like I said I thought about it and that’s why I included the disclaimer in my comment. I guess I thought anyone reading it would have been able to understand that it would be shitty to post any information *and* that I didn’t want it or need it.
rorschach:
Ok.
Haven’t been here long, but I didn’t think I was random. Shutting up now.
Alethea, it’s not just the body mapping, but that’s sort of the most obvious part of it. good (non-EP-quality) research on trans brains is a wee bit hard to come by (for example, one of these compared the brains of trans lesbians to straight men. total misunderstanding of what they were studying, thus accidentally introducing one too many variables), so trans experience is all we have to go on for the rest of it (Natalie’s blog post on that topic is probably the best source for that right now).
And yes, I know the term “brain sex” has been severely abused… but there really isn’t any other way to describe it. it’s the sex the brain thinks it is.
straight cis men
[/fail]
Tony @ 86
I think you’ll find it’s more complicated than that. Look up what Laurence Lessig and Stephen Fry have to say about IP, “piracy”, creative commons, massive overreaching by media industries, corporate influence on IP legislation, US IP laws that smother rather than foster creativity etc.
Hi, Robert B!
Tony – that person shouldn’t have done it, but now you know you can never underestimate the stupidity of others. Someone will always be more stupid than you think is humanly possible.
Audley – there are all kinds of things that can be done without a sewing machine. Some stitch witchery or fusible fabric and an iron can do amazing things.
I’m sad because my sewing machine is having tension problems. I think the discs are clogged or misaligned and I’ll have to take it somewhere for repair, but I don’t want to spend the money. Le sigh.
Giliell,
I don’t understand why you’re posing this as a question here. It probably doesn’t even qualify as a rhetorical question since no one around here has suggested otherwise.
rorschach, I’ve noticed Tony.
Newish, but so far so good.
(He’s probably just surfing the current wave)
PS I see you’ve had an intense holiday. :)
—
Tony, relax.
Oh, and Community fans: there’s a new Twitter that is a parody account pretending to be the new showrunners. It’s pretty funny. The earlier ones are better than the most recent ones.
Sample tweets:
Community fans, do we need to watch ALL of the episodes before we start writing the fourth season? We’ve seen a few but feel like we get it.
Get ready to meet Greenhale’s newest student! He’s a cool skateboarder, played by Justin’s little bro, Brian Bieber.
Trey and Abed in the Morning!
Street ahead!
(Ahoy! Various pregnancy related responses ahead! Yar!)
Robert B:
Are you and I thinking of the same New Jersey…?
birger:
Other way ’round. Male calicos are rare.
Alethea:
Love it!
Louis:
You are the only person that can make me doubt my decision to have kids, Louis.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but here’s a certificate of achievement, anyway!
*gives!*
opposablethumbs:
:D :D :D
pteryxx:
You could have described one of my IRL friends and, like you, she passes for cis.
Sorry sorry sorry! We’ve been trying to put warnings up!
pensnest:
Ack ack ack!
Between your story and Louis’, I think I’m going to curl up into the fetal position and cry!
carlie:
Excellent. Thank you!
*laughs, then dies a little inside*
[meta-meta]
Morales: OK, request rescinded. What do you care?
(it’s like fuckin crack, this place)
More Science & Technology FTW: I’ve been cleaning glass from my collision out of the stuff that I had in my minivan. GirlChild and I are quite impressed with glass that breaks without shattering into many sharp shards. The cracked glass is really quite pretty.
Alethea @ 402: You are correct, I don’t comment consistently. I have long periods when socializing is especially hard for me. I’m still here but I’m just listening, not speaking.
“Other way ’round. Male calicos are rare”
My bad.
— — — — — — —
If you like various factoids about China, Aardvarchaeology (at scienceblogs) occasionally covers aspects of China.
Well, FWIW, I just threw in my opinion over at JT’s place.
______
rorschach: re “cis” vs. “trans”, when Natalie first turned the question around from “How do you know you are Trans?” to “How do you know you are Cis?” That was an intense moment for me, I’d never thought about it that way. My response to “How do you know you are Cis?” ended up being “I don’t, but I know I’m not Trans.”
My conclusion was that I am cisgender, because I’m not transgender.
Now where things get interesting for me is in the sexuality realm, also thanks to Natalie, I discovered the concept of asexual, which lo and behold! explained many of my reactions and encounters throughout high school and college, mainly with people of the opposite gender.
OT but interesting
The Vatican’s Chief exorcist claims that teenager Emanuela Orlandi, who dissapeared 30 years ago, was abducted by Vatican police for “sex parties” with diplomats.
The exorcist seems like a bit of a loose canon but sometimes even crazy people have inside info.
Linky here
“anyone know if it’s true that female tabbies are rare?”
Female “ginger” or “marmalade” cats (orange and white, striped like a tabby) are rare, because the orange colour is the result of a relatively rare allele of a gene on the X chromosome, which would have to occur on both those of a female. For a related reason, male “tortoiseshell” and “calico” cats are even more rare. In females, this almost always results from one X-chromosome being expressed, and one inactivated, in different parts of the coat. Male tortoiseshell and calico cats are often sterile, with XXY sex chromosomes, but may also be chimeras (the result of two early embryos merging). Cat coat genetics are explained here.
Crack? I can get you better stuff, Chas.
For a modest price, I hook you up with an intelligent RSS parser that will learn your interests and pet peeves, break down the most attention-grabbing comments into pharyngulamines small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, and deliver them in a constant intravenous drip.
(The FDA requires me to mention that you may develop human/squid chimerism, and turn into an aquatic ape.)
With regards tabby markings in cats, as far I know there is no difference in sex frequency. It would be odd if there were, since the wild ancestor of domestic cats nearly all have tabby markings.
Matt Penfold,
Not quite, because the genes detemining coat colour are on the X-chromosome. Some alleles causing deviation from the “wild” (tabby) type are dominant, some recessive, some neither, so I’m not sure whether the overall prevalence of tabbies is higher in females or males.
If there is a difference it must be pretty small since it does not seem to be noticeable.
So I guess I’m a cis female (mostly) asexual (in the not attracted to people physically sense).
Certainly I’d pass for cis. If not particularly feminine, though I have been known to wear skirts occasionally, mostly while dancing. Though even then I tend to dance as a ‘man’ but that’s mostly because for the dancing I do there are far more females than males usually there and someone has to dance the male parts and since I’m pretty tall (and can cope with dancing either part) I get to do it. Admittedly in that dancing the men tend to wear skirts (or at least kilts) too.
As a physicist I’m definitely not in a traditionally female area.
And I’m not even remotely the most non-standard person I know.
some of em. Not all of em.
‘kipedia
The mess at JT’s finally made me register to comment here.
I do have to wonder if JT didn’t tap Wes for bad behavior out of non-NT solidarity; if I recall correctly, Wes said at one point that he had Borderline Personality Disorder. For Zengaze, though, I don’t recall any such shred of an excuse.
As for Natalie’s comment on, er, overeager allies, Pteryxx and Xanthe make very good points. It’s definitely a good reason to pause and really think before wading in. (Should have done that before I told JT I wasn’t coming back. Ah, well. Other people explained far better than I ever could have.)
I did expect better out of Stephanie Zvan, but then I also expected better out of the Canuck before he got all laudatory over Obama’s ‘evolved’ view on marriage. (Pfeh).
I linked in another thread to this article about a study by Martin Harrow that found that longterm antipsychotic use is associated with outcomes that are both bad overall and significantly worse than those for people not taking them. You don’t have to agree with Whitaker’s or Levine’s interpretation to understand the basic finding. It’s not surprising, since the drugs’ mechanism of action, like that of “antidepressants,”* is simply assumed rather than demonstrated. The alleged disease is then, using ex juvantibus reasoning, believed to be caused by what the drugs act on. There are treatment methods that don’t focus on drugs that have shown success, but it’s not necessary to cite these given that the drugs aren’t successful and are in fact very dangerous.
It’s surprising to me that people use arguments about these drugs that they would reject if they were made about CAM treatments. Anecdotes about yourself or others you know are not valid scientific support for a position. Nor is “clinical experience,” as everyone rushes to point out when Jay Gordon relies on it to support his antivaccine stance. As Levine notes,
I won’t enter into an argument about this here, because I’ve found that this thread is not a place where a rational discussion of the matter can happen. The responses tend to be ad homs based on offensive false assumptions and mischaracterizations of the critical psychiatry movement of the sort Ms. Daisy Cutter resorts to, and I’ve put up with as much of that as I’m going to. It’s sad, but it’s the reality. So I’ll just put some of the arguments and evidence out there, and hope that people will investigate further with an open mind as I’ve been doing.
*The monoamine “hypothesis” for depression has been shown to be false. Many times. Over decades.
Hi emburii.
It should be okay to laud Obama’s move and argue that it is ultimately helpful. Jason’s problem was portraying unsatisfied queers as ungrateful. (It was a non sequitur. Granting the argument that the move was helpful, no particular reaction is morally obliged.)
ChasCPeterson,
Thanks for the corrction; since I linked to the same page as you, I should have noticed that!
I’m amused to see that the “blotched tabby” allele is “common in Iran, Great Britain and in lands that were once part of the British Empire and Persian Empire.”
We may have lost the Empire, but long after it’s forgotten, there may still be an enigmatic geographical pattern in the coats of cats!
Robert B:
So…you think Pharyngula is Robot Hell? ;D Welcome to the Shark Tank, Robert.
Peter Byrne; 2000; “Stigma of mental illness and ways of diminishing it”; Advances in Psychiatric Treatment; doi 10.1192/apt.6.1.65
oh and I forgot to mention, that’s the free full text.
quoderatdemonstrandum, #85,
Ahhh yes, Parent Superpowers. Mine only extend to Tickling (capital fully deserved).
I have not yet mastered being Right.
I also have a cousin who is trying to treat my Aunt (her mum) who has encroaching Alzheimers with homeopathy and assorted horseshit. I remain unimpressed. She’s gone heavily down the “SUPER MUM HOMEOPATH” route to the point of “training”* as a homepath.
Louis
* Training? Going “ooga booga ooga booga” over some fucking water requires training? Wake me with a dose response curve, then we can fucking talk.
LILAPWL,
Cool, thanks! That’s just the sort of thing I like to read.
Louis
Oh lawks, the “A mom KNOWS things, man” thing. I hate hate hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
Yes, there are some things I know about my kids that someone who spends less time with them wouldn’t know. That is not because of super powers, it’s because of time spent and interest. Further, my husband, who spends more time with the kids, is also capable of this “picking up info” thing that’s portrayed as so mysterious and womanly and therefore it’s the woman’s jerb, yanno.
There are also lots (and lots and lots and lots) of things I don’t automagiclly know about my kids and what to do with them. These things I do not know, intuit, receive instructions from the Mother Brain about or otherwise manage to just mess up regarding my kids doesn’t mean I’m not a “real” mom (as some would argue) or any blather like that. It means that parenting is hard, that one answer does not, indeed, fit every child and every parent in every situation and that no one gets a manual or a guarantee. You do your best and you hope like hell that it’s enough to get them to adulthood.
Sometimes it isn’t. It’s scary, but it’s true and it deserves to be said. Sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes kids you love desperately still kill themselves. Sometimes you had no fucking clue that was even in the cards, even though “a mom (woman) knows, man” *spits*.
There are no guarantees, only hoping and trying and too often, failing and trying some more.
Gen, Uppity Ingrate:
Wait, you don’t get directions from the Mother Hivemind? I do all the time. Of course, I usually ignore it since it spends most of its time talking about how magical motherhood is and not spoiling their childhood innocence by refusing to teach them that Santa is real, but still.
I would also like to give some protest to the primacy that is given to biological parents in these conversations. Like, biological parents just have a super special spiritual connection to their children! Except that it’s not; it just comes from raising a child, which biological parents are often, but not always, the ones to do. Every time my husband, who is raising my (our!) daughter, is informed of how bleeding noble it is for him to raise a child whom he has claimed as his since she was two, it drives him batshit. He’s a hell of a lot more of a father than the sperm donor, and part of that is not being condescended to for being a decent human being and raising a child whom you claim as yours. Jeezus.
(Sorry; by “these conversations” I mean “about parenthood,” not this one in particular. Just thinking about how the accolades that my dudely partner gets for taking on a child who ISN’T HIS!!!11!ELEVENTY!!!1 irritate me in much the same way as the idea that women have a sooper speshul spirichul conneckshun with the childrens does.)
Zactly. The biological magical conneXion thing! So ridiculous! I cared every much as much for the little boys I cared for as an Au Pair than I do for my own, biological kids. Doing things for my own kids aren’t more “fun” or somehow “better” or less demanding just because they are mine, as many people told me it would be.
The old “it’s just different if it’s YOURS” tripe really IS tripe. At least, it was for me and every other parent I know, biologically connexioned or not.
Well, here goes.
Delurking to express some heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the regulars and the JT refugees who fought the good fight, all of you deserve every bit of praise and then some.
Thank You!
You folks are the ones making this place (FtB) better.
I’m not entirely comfortable with a lot of the “brain sex” stuff, if only because it focuses very strictly on binary identities. Also, I really dislike the conflation of not engaging in traditionally gendered activities (such as manicures, skirts, etc. for women) with gender variance. Like, I see what’s being attempted, but it’s really offensive to me, in that gender identity isn’t actually entirely based on your response to the colour pink, and it’s really essentialist in some gross ways to suggest that. I mean, as has been shown here amply, it’s possible to reject gender stereotypes while still identifying as a woman/man. That doesn’t, in and of itself, make you trans*. I was assigned female at birth, enjoy the hell out of pink and cute things, have more makeup than anybody has a right to and am not a woman. Androgyne, if you please. And yes, I have nasty dysphoria and phantom parts and all that fun shit. And those “stereotype/identity” confusions hurt the shit out of me.
Opposablethumbs: Yep, a pilot whale. Technically a specimen collected by a biologist neighbour, who then ran out of room in her place, and it was either leave it on the porch, or give it to me. Gatsby likes snuggling up to it, for some reason.
Xanthe and Pteryxx: I appreciate the explanation, but note that HappiestSadist is genderqueer; i.e., not cis.
Add my voice to those who have no sympathy for the bigot in the video. She chooses to be that way. Lots of people with little to no education, intense fundie brainwashing, etc. etc. choose otherwise. And don’t give me the “no free will” argument, because it’s moot in terms of the effects that shitstumps like her have on oppressed people.
Quoderatdemonstrandum:
♥
“Douchelord.”
Sometimes they’re worse.
I like parents like you. You rock. And your kids are almost always a joy to be around.
Robert B.:
I CAN HAZ BUKKAKE NAO?
(Sorry. I… get that way.)
So Katie Hartman has a “thing” about trans people? She’s pulled similar shit before the whole JT clusterfuck? Ew.
(BTW, I LOL’ed when I moused over her userhandle. Her Facebook nym is “liberalism.” As in “Love Me, I’m A Liberal,” of course.)
Tony, if you haven’t already gone over to JT’s, don’t bother.
As for “intellectual property”… I actually bought a copy of Photoshop, then discovered that the “copyright protection” on the CD-ROM prevented me from using it on my next computer when I upgraded. Fuck Adobe and other software companies that pull that shit, and fuck the the MAFIAA. BTW, a lot of musicians are okay with music-sharing — the industry fucks them over, too. And seconding QED’s recommendation to read Larry Lessig on the topic.
Regarding cat toys, yes: The reliable standbys are cheap pieces of string or rope, the little twisty rims from the lids of milk jugs, toilet paper rolls, old hacky sacks found at garage sales, and the like. Sometimes I do buy mine a few catnip mice, but they always just end up under the sofa. The most expensive toy I’ve bought her in years was a $5 plastic triangle with holes into which go cloth or plastic balls so that kitteh can bat them around and try to get them out.
Skeptifem:
Any group that is anti-psychiatry per se rather than opposed to abuses in psychiatry.
“Thought differently”? If you’re talking about what is usually called eccentricity, that’s one thing, but delusions aren’t “thinking differently.”
SC:
Uh-huh. Also, I love how anyone who disagrees with you on the subject isn’t “rational.” Just like anybody who disagrees with you on animal rights is a monster. Go shove an overcooked steak rolled up around a bottle of Prozac up your ass.
-I was going down memory lane, seeing if some old graphic novels of the 1980s were still available
(example: Rocco Vargas, a retro-futuristic kind of SF by Daniel Torres http://www.amazon.com/Whisperer-Mystery-Astral-Adventures-Vargas/dp/0874160960/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1338224115&sr=8-7 )
when I stumbled over some cheerfully trashy film versions. Especially the German one seems cool. “Trom” has become a concept!
“Tromeo and Juliet” http://www.amazon.com/Tromeo-Juliet-10th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/B000FSLMJK/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1338225278&sr=1-1 Sex, blood and gore!
The Chainsaw Sally Show http://www.amazon.com/The-Chainsaw-Sally-Show-Season/dp/B003R9K0GA/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1338225512&sr=1-1
I wonder if the upcoming film “God Bless America” is inspired by this?
-and of course (drumroll) “Killer Condom!” http://www.amazon.com/Killer-Condom-Udo-Samel/dp/B00000K3TJ/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1338225462&sr=1-1
a film based on the graphic novel by Ralph König.
A New York detective traces a spree of gruesome killings to a genetically modified organism that mimics a condom. What is not to like?!!!
jenniferforester @ 126
Re non-biological parents.
Agreed. my sister and brother-in-law adopted a baby girl. My sister works for a private school that offers maternity leave but for women who gave birth only.
So my sister was faced with receiving a 10 day old baby and no maternity time off work at all.
She be small but fierce and she shamed them into conceding time off but one of their arguments was that it was not covered by their insurance and that “giving birth” maternity was a medical condition covered by their insurance but adopting an infant was not.
quoderatdemonstrandum @133:
That is some super bullshit right there. Like, yes, you have to recover from childbirth, okay, whatever, but part of the reason for that time is to actually get to bond with this new little person–which is, by the by, equally important for the partners of the mother in question (assuming there even IS a mother in question), since they will presumably be spending a metric fuckton of time with the bundle of awesome as well. It makes so much more sense to give paternity/partner leave, too, if for no other reason than that suddenly being home alone with a screaming baby with no one else to help you can be immensely difficult.
Oh, and can I also note that those who suffer from Entitled Parent Syndrome [TM] seem to absolutely lack the comprehension that their children, however amazing and wonderful, are sometimes, if not often, irritating to those who surround them? Like, there’s a difference between letting your children get the lay of the land with other people and actively inflicting your children on other people. If you want your children to have any sense of their own personal boundaries and their right to them, then you have to teach your children to respect others’ boundaries. But NOOOOOOOOOO. My child is AWESOMENESS INCARNATE, AND EVERYONE MUST AGREE OR SUFFER MY WRATH.
HappiestSadist:
This is the best fit for me, however, I easily pass for cis, so I just keep my mouth shut on these issues and try like hell to learn something.
Odd article. It has a box with a (small) selection from “A history of dumb ideas in psychiatry” and includes among the factors “Likely to increase prejudice” the belief that someone has a condition whose perceived course is “Incurable/“chronic”” and perceived treatment ““Needs drugs” to stay well.” But he doesn’t seem to question whether the belief that there’s a mental disease called schizophrenia might be another in the long history of dumb ideas in psychiatry in the first place. If it is, as I believe is the case, part, but not all, of reducing stigma would be calling attention to that. The belief should be questioned for many reasons going beyond stigma, of course, because it has other real negative consequences for people so diagnosed. It’s not all about stigma; it’s about truth, the effects of beliefs that aren’t supported by the evidence, and finding accurate understandings of people’s problems and effective ways to help them.
JenniferForester:
In all my years of discussing such stuff (I am childfree), I’m always amused that it’s incredibly easy to tell which parents aren’t EMs (Entitlement Monsters), because right off the bat, they’ll say something like “I like my kid(s), I don’t like other people’s kids.” They get it.
Hooray! A new translation of Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic (the SF novel that inspired Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”)
Roadside Picnic http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613743416/ref=s9_wsim_co_p14_d12_g14_i2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=left-3&pf_rd_r=127WW4N8R6WFYNT3GR77&pf_rd_t=3201&pf_rd_p=1280661842&pf_rd_i=typ01
Happiestsadist I am intensely jealous of your whale skull.
It makes my two “Look at how rotten this coyote’s teeth are!” specimens, and my male/female black bear skulls (I think the differences are due to sexual dimorphism, at least), and my ‘Cat/dog/bear’ carnivoran series (showing the range of difference in the carnassials, from the sharp blades of the cat to the almost human-like molars of the bear) look kinda sad. Even my “Might be a subfossil!” bighorn sheep skull doesn’t compare.
Some people have all the luck.
Heh. If the motivation is moot then you’re already agreed with consequentialists, so you can quit assigning or withholding sympathy based upon your illusions about choice.
That’s quite a distance from your initial lumping of “mental illness communities.”
Louis disagrees with her on the subject and I’ve seen no claims from SC that he’s being irrational about it.
How many times must this misrepresentation be repeated and corrected before it’s considered to be a lie?
This kind of careless disregard for accuracy, and personal grudge-based hoggling about irrelevant tangents, is indeed one reason why attempts at rational discussion of certain topics are prohibitively costly here.
I try very hard not to be an Entitled Parent. I’m always aware of how irritating my kids may be to other people – not only for altruistic reasons, but who the hell wants random strangers to think their child is an irritating little shit? IDGI. It’s bloody unfair towards the kids in question.
Ugh, and those “I let my child express their true selves, you abuser! So what if they’re not only irritating but maybe even endangering others? YOU’RE STIFLING THE TRUE SELF, MAN” types are the worst of this bunch, there’s just no reasoning with them!
However, I actually do generally like kids. Even other people’s. Even random stranger kids. I don’t necessarily like them in a group all at once (too loud and chaotic) but I certainly would never say “I like my kids, I don’t like other people’s”.
About transgender issues, I’m so pig-ignorant and privileged on that that I shut my mouth and listen and learn at all times. Or try to.
Moments of Mormon Madness, or what mormons really think about Mitt Romney’s run for the presidency, and what mormons are teaching MBA students at BYU.
The info below comes from a BYU student, with some details added by yours truly. The main thrust of the info is that mormons think Mitt is predestined to become President and that LDS leaders are doing their irrational best to see that it all comes to pass. Some ex-mormons have dubbed this the “whitebread prophecy.”
The BYU student confirmed that some of the Romney-flavored stuff also came up in testing — so knowing and regurgitating it would have played a part in student’s grades.
Time frame is winter semester, 2012, but the student says the specific claims of meeting with Apostles etc occurred from about April 9 to April 12.
If it is, as I believe is the case, part, but not all, of reducing stigma would be calling attention to that.
And we know this because the research shows that “biogenetic causal theories, and labelling something as an ‘illness’, are both positively related to perceptions of dangerousness and unpredictability, and to fear and desire for social distance.” (He links there to a study specifically about schizophrenia.)
I hate hate hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
Dyslexic moment of the day: I read this as “…the fiery passion of a thousand nuns.” It was an interesting image, but not the one intended.
Thanks, sg.
Relevant to that, he says:
“The history of stigma, culturally determined, is described elsewhere (Section 2 of Fink & Tasman, 1992; Warner in Heller et al, 1996). Some social scientists believed stigma was a function of labelling by psychiatrists, citing benign public attitudes of self-report studies and the observation that many patients were unaware of stigma: this is not supported by the evidence (Link et al in Fink & Tasman, 1992). Mental illness stigma existed long before psychiatry, although in many instances the institution of psychiatry has not helped to reduce either stereotyping or discriminatory practices.”
Following up on my post @142.
Here is question #18 from the “Final Exam, Financial Markets-Winter 2012” at BYU:
The BYU student says the he/she answered that Obama is going to destroy Romney (with reasons supporting this conclusion). As far as he/she can tell, that answer was the only reason the final exam grade was marked down from 100% to 85%.
yes.
that stuff saved my life once: a fist-sized rock smashed into the window right in front of my head; made a massive dent in the glass but didn’t make it through, thus not making a massive dent or hole in my head.
O.o
k, I’ll put this in my to-read pile.
I must say, TLC, that getting Leviathan was one of the better points of that period of my life. Besides, it was all alone outside! So I asked her “Is that a whale skull?” “Yep. I don’t have space for it, and otherwise it’s just going to sit there. Want it?” “ZOMGYES.” It’s a little worn (found on a beach), but still nifty, and the cat loves it for some weird reason.
Three days later, I found a squirrel skull, and cleaned it. Then a friend who does wire art made a little metal squirrel body for it. Ratatosk never fails to amuse guests.
I think your collection sounds pretty amazing. We’ll likely acquire more as we get space/the universe drops them in our laps.
Yes, I read that.
It supported by quite a bit of evidence, but I think all of the studies cited by Goldacre were published after his article.
This isn’t really relevant, and it’s, again, assuming that the experiences/behaviors/problems people are talking about are in fact “mental illness” in the disease sense, which is what I’m calling into question, and reading this back in time. Many other beliefs about these and their causes have led to stigmatization, but we’re not faced with a narrow choice between different sets of stigmatizing beliefs, so it doesn’t matter.
Jadehawk, you can try my personalized drip if you want to see what it’s like, but I must warn you it’s highly concentrated, and the sudden system shock might give you “the Innsmouth look” in mere hours.
On the psychiatry thingummy:
Quoting LILAPWL:
Whilst I am sure SC and I can find much to disagree about with regards to this issue ( ;-) ), I’ve been fairly reserved in my comments on it. Quite deliberately. I know it’s more than a bit lazy, but this is (partly) what I do for work and I’m here mostly for a bit of fun. Not that work’s not fun but…well you understand.
Also, I like to evaluate a technical case properly. SC’s blog has links to a lot of references and books I simply haven’t read yet. I can’t provide fair critique, negative or positive without reading them carefully now can I?
Generally speaking, as a rule of thumb, I am very wary of easy anti Big Pharma/anti psychiatry etc ideas, not from personal bias, but just because I’ve seen so much of it that is woefully inaccurate. Most of what I have encountered or had thrown my way is awful. SC’s linked things, at least on a quick skim, appear to have vastly more substance, but as noted I’ve yet to do my homework so I reserve judgement on specific points.
On the issue of “stigma” I’ll speak more freely. It’s complicated.
Well thank you Dr Louis for that profound fucking insight! ;-)
Yes, making people aware that mental illnesses are not mere character flaws, i.e. have (mostly) biological and environmental causes beyond the control of the individual, is a vital part of combating stigma, but as the Goldacre article SC links rightly notes, even being “right” and doing this has unintended consequences. The well of stigma associated with mental illness is too huge, and cuts too close to the core of our self identities, to be simply combated. Information is a good part of it. But if information and education alone were enough, we’d have no creationists…
Louis
/killfiles both SC and SGBM
Nobody who’s hounded another regular at length for not eating the way they think she should, despite her having provided copious and unnecessary medical justification, has a leg to stand on when it comes to accusing others of “hoggling” and “misrepresentation.”
And I’ll add that, having found relief with an SSRI when years of therapy didn’t do it for me, such that I can now function, yes, I really fucking take anti-psych bullshit personally. Nor am I the only one I know who has. I don’t give a fuck if either of you want to compare me to homeopathy fanatics.
Addendum:
What I think is VERY important however is not to make the grave error of, for example, reasoning thus:
1) Stigma around “mental illness” is not helped by simply informing people about biological causes.
2) Therefore the model of biological causes for “mental illness” is wrong.
I’m not saying anyone here is doing that. But I’ve seen it done. And it’s horseshit of the highest order.
Louis
Louis @155: I think that the biggest problem is that, even if people understand that mental illness is organic, society still tends to hold a dualistic view of people, and the idea that, in the end, we are our brains, and if anything happens to those brains or if anything malfunctions in those brains then we change, terrifies people. It’s easier to just assume that there is something fundamentally wrong with mentally ill people than to comprehend that that can happen to anyone, and frequently does.
Lynna, 142 and 147 – that is just scarywrong. I hate it when my “paranoid”* worries turn out not to be.
*IDK if this happens to others here, but whenever I dare to mention that I think a whole hell of a lot of behind the scenes crap has been going on for decades – patience and strategy being strong suits for the rightwing (why not us? ARGH!) – I get slapped down by others as “paranoid” . Even Mr Nifty has done this until very recently. :( People scoff and say OH no, you are a conspiracy nut, but when you say, “No there is a lot of evidence pointing to the truth of this” – they don’t want to know. Next conversation, repeat. Tell ’em to read/watch, pay attention and they just aren’t interested. Next meetup rinse and repeat.
Also, now and then I try to comfort myself when I hear the “both sides are just as bad/do it” deflection – hoping that maybe it is true and there is a similar long-simmering counter-strategy coming from the left. But, that delusion doesn’t hold for long. :( Fuck.
Seriously, go fuck yourselves, both of you. This shit is triggering for me. I would spend entire days trying not to cry before I got onto SSRIs. I would waste whole weekends lying in bed and ruminating on what a fuckup I was and having suicidal imagery and even making plans at times. I remember one instance when I was nearly paralyzed with anxiety and I had to call a good friend who lived like 20 miles away to come down to my place and help me go out and run a garden-variety errand.
Your bullshit to me is indistinguishable from all the assholes I had to deal with back in the late ’80s and early ’90s who told me that I “didn’t need” medication and I just needed to “work through” my issues, including one behavioral therapist. Not to mention the libertarians who glommed onto the anti-psych movement because, you know, people who need help are weak.
And, with that, I’m out of here for the rest of the thread.
But he doesn’t seem to question whether the belief that there’s a mental disease called schizophrenia might be another in the long history of dumb ideas in psychiatry in the first place.
Ok, I’ll ask the obvious question…
There’s a line in the old song “Industrial Disease” which goes, “Two men say their Jesus-one of them must be wrong”. This line kept going through my head when I was a medical student rotating through psychiatry and-yes-we had two Jesuses on the inpatient unit. Both, as far as I can tell, sincerely believed that they were the son of god and destined to bring about a new era. Both had “visions” and had long discussions with god (who no one else could hear.) Probably most damaging to their actual lives, neither could manage to organize and motivate themselves in ways that would allow them to hold a job or live independently. Or start a religion, for that matter: they wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to keep followers even if they managed to get some.
If there’s no such thing as schizophrenia, what was wrong with them?
Ms. Daisy Cutter: I’m truly sorry that you went through that, and I am very glad that medication has helped you to get through it.
I hate the concern-trolling about medication, too, incidentally, having a friend whose bipolar disorder resulted in a suicide attempt, and who is now very much stable and functional because of his doctor’s work to find medications that worked for him.
jennifer:
I’ve already had this conversation with my mom– when I told her that we weren’t doing Santa when Darkfetus arrives (duh), her response was, “but Santa is magical!”
*headdesk!*
(I probably should mention that I hate the entire fucking holiday season as it is, whether we’re talking about Xmas or Hanukkah and my mother knows this. Gah.)
Jenniferforester, #156,
Yup, I think you hit the nail on the head!
One of the things I love about this place is, old and new, there are always smart people about who can add something to any post from anyone. It’s great! Mental illness, pretty much however you define it, is horrendously common, and equally horrendously hard to deal with.
Louis
I’m with Daisy, I’ve long been sick of the SC show and having yet another thread derailed to the exclusion of all else. Schizophrenia, no matter what you call it, does exist. I know that up close and personal, so the ‘pretend it doesn’t exist’ brigade can have a happy dose of fuck off already. With that, I’m out of TET for the day.
Audrey @161: But it’s magic! How will your children ever learn the value of love and giving if you don’t teach them that a man drops things for them out of the sky, but somehow fails to do so for poor children? WHAT THE HELL KIND OF TERRIBLE PARENT ARE YOU.
I mean, seriously. Aside from the obvious issues of, you know, not lying to your children about Santa and Jesus and the Tooth Fairy and shit (it always cracks me up when people try to talk to my daughter about any of the above and she chastises them for bullshitting her), the privilege issues are immense. What, so you’re teaching your children that they are so special that Santa brings them gifts, but poor children just must be naughty (since that’s what’s implied)? Way to go, there.
I’m guessing we (uh, not me, but doctors) would need more than a sketch of a bio to determine that sort of thing. So I don’t know what you want out of that question.
That’s right, as I tried to make explicit above. I think the belief is false and that it’s stigmatizing. If I thought it was true and stigmatizing, I would be trying to reduce the stigma associated with the true belief.
I tend to think these sorts of allusions are a little well-poisoning (in this case unintentional).
I linked in another thread to this article about a study by Martin Harrow that found that longterm antipsychotic use is associated with outcomes that are both bad overall and significantly worse than those for people not taking them.
I read the actual study. It’s a longitudinal study, not a randomized, controlled trial. The authors point out that the patients who successfully stopped antipsychotic meds were a selected group, both self and caregiver selected, who were less sick than those who continued taking the meds. In other words, sicker people are sicker. The only obvious conclusion I see is that one need not assume that lifelong continued therapy is necessary and stopping is reasonable for some patients. It certainly doesn’t prove the antipsychotics are “the problem”.
Jadehawk #489 LOL! Yes, she is matter-of-fact and chatty about the realities of newborn behavior. But it is amazingly comforting to understand from a calm source who described (at least in a way that was a perfect fit for me as a young expectant mom) just what to expect.
There are tons of books out there and I think if it is helpful to read a ton, a person should do so. I found nothing out there particularly helpful and a lot of it just plain boring/guilt-inducing or frustrating and I had developed a strong anti-by the book bias by the time I had reached about 30 weeks gestation with the first nifty baby. Your Baby and Child was gifted to me, I started to flip through it on a plane one day and found I could really read it with pleasure. It may not work for another person like it did for me, but I felt like Dr. Leach was writing from inside my mind looking out, instead of writing from an expert vantage point somewhere far above and away from me. The book feels intimate, yet packed with useful information.
I read it and read it and never felt the need for another reference book on baby care. Her advice really works, too. I think like anything else, it works if it already speaks to what seems to make sense to the reader – but it really did work! Best of all, I did not feel as if I was applying tricks and strategies to the organic experience of raising offspring. I can’t really describe this very well. I hope you try the book, Audley. OBviously, I don’t know you well, but sometimes I recognise a little of the younger me in your posts (though you are far more outspoken – I just THOUGHT the stuff you write. LOL I was a very thoroughly silenced young woman back in the 80s), so I think you might find that her presentation of information is done in a way which might be a good fit for you.
When I said “The responses tend to be ad homs based on offensive false assumptions and mischaracterizations of the critical psychiatry movement,” I really wasn’t looking for more examples, but thanks for providing them.
People should be embarrassed by this dynamic.
And now I’m out.
Jennifer:
[Emphasis mine.]
This was my point exactly! Santa is the epitome of “class warfare”.
But, whatevs. I’m aiming to be that mom that all the kids like, but all of the parents think I’m some crazy commie weirdo. So, pretty terrible, in other words. I think that will be fun. :D
Ah, tu quoque.
Always a rational defense.
Here you seem to think I agree with SC, rather than regarding her arguments as mostly wrong.
And yeah, I notice it has already become evident to several people here that I take this stuff personally too. I dislike most of her arguments, and I refuse to engage with some of them. Without going into detail, admittedly, my reasons for not engaging are not rational in the sense of “what a person would do if they were interested in figuring this out as quickly as possible.”
such that you can’t even tell who’s saying what. Alright. Nobody forced you to make sweeping claims about “mental illness communities”, Ms. Free Will.
nifty:
Awe, thanks! *blushes!*
I was impressed with the really strong recommendation that you gave it and I haven’t come across anyone who has been really impressed with any parenting book. So, I will definitely give it a shot. (There’s a couple of others that I’ve been looking at purchasing, as well, like The Baby Owner’s Manual.)
Show me where anyone claimed that. The Levine piece links to Whitaker’s long discussion of the study, including the methods.
That’s incorrect. Further, as Levine notes:
And as Whitaker says:
Another general point:
I’d certainly advocate pharmacotherapy for mental illnesses as a general rule. Certainly for things like bipolar disorder where (for example) lithium is amazingly useful. It’s an unpleasant drug with nasty side effects and it’s not for everyone, but that’s no criticism of lithium as a drug, that’s a reflection of the complexity of the disease.
There’s the other side of the coin where SSRIs for mild/moderate clinical depression are shown to be little better than placebo, however, for more severe depression, SSRIs have much better demonstrable effect in clinical trials. And indeed in clinical practise. It’s a complex situation, IIRC Cochrane has a few good reviews on it. It’s been a few years since I read them I confess.
I’m certainly not on the side of the “biological basis for mental illness deniers”, I think they’re very wrong, but I think good criticism is vital. I know just how wicked corporate interests and desperate people can combine to make a grey case a shade whiter or blacker for the sake of a return.
On another angle, what Dianne said at #167 is very important. There’s not some scientology-esque cabal of shadowy psychiatrists and moustache twirling pharmaceutical companies getting together in leather clad clubs to smoke cigars and foist their useless drugs on the unsuspecting rubes. Sorry but that simply doesn’t happen. Drug interactions, drug uses and the suitability of a specific drug for a broad condition, like schizophrenia, are not easy to determine. It’s important to be very careful with the findings of particular medical studies and stick them in their proper context.
That applies to critics as much as it does the pharma industry, to name one example.
Louis
Caine, wasn’t it not even a month ago that you brought your complaints about SC here to TET, even though the discussion was already taking place in another thread, and then you started whinging when she responded here?
Santa Issue:
I will not be telling my son that santa exists. I take the position that I heard from a black comedian:
No fat white man is getting the credit for giving my kids presents.
Seemed reasonable. (In jest, I stress, strictly in jest)
Louis
Show me where anyone claimed that.
Um…how about the authors of the study? Right there in the abstract: “This 20-year longitudinal research…”
We are talking about this study, right: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22340278
It’s the one all your secondary sources have linked to.
Louis:
:D :D :D
Now to convince Mom and MiL this is a good idea, too…
Audley @170: Oh, I fully plan to be the parent who hands out condoms like candy and who talks to kids about sex if their parents won’t and they ask. I will run a safe space for other people’s kids, if other people won’t run one for their own. I like other people’s kids (assuming the other people haven’t spoiled them into oblivion), probably more than some other people do. That being said, there are some pretty kickass parents out there, too, so maybe I won’t have to do that much after all. (Then again, Texas. Sigh.)
Louis @176: Beautiful.
Also from the Harrow paper’s abstract: “SZ patients not on antipsychotics for prolonged periods are a self-selected group with better internal resources associated with greater resiliency. They have better prognostic factors, better pre-morbid developmental achievements, less vulnerability to anxiety, better neurocognitive skills, less vulnerability to psychosis and experience more periods of recovery.”
It’s an interesting study, suggestive that long term antipsychotics might be overused, but hardly proof that schizophrenia doesn’t exist or that antipsychotics are bad.
Louis @174: Agreed on all points. I don’t think that the medical establishment should be treated without skepticism (or that any establishment should, really), but I think it’s a hell of a lot better than the idea that my bipolar friend would be better off if he just got therapy (he would be dead).
We know all about what these companies do to profit from these drugs because they’ve been successfully sued for these practices many times and have had to publicly release some of their internal documents, and there’s substantial evidence concerning their influence on the psychiatric profession. These drugs are worth billions to the corporations. Probably every unethical practice has been planned and used by them. If you want to read about this history, you should probably start with the books by Irving Kirsch and Robert Whitaker.
jennifer:
I like the cut of your jib. Having a “safe space” for kids sounds perfect!
(Having just recently found out that our school district (in upstate New York, no less!) only offers “abstinence only” sex ed, I’m so stealing your condom idea. True, I probably won’t need to worry about kids asking me for some for over a decade, but who says things are only going to get better?)
they had delusions, the existence of which no one is denying. however, delusions = schizophrenia only by definition, and definitions change (apparently psychotic schizophrenia isn’t a thing anymore, for example). because that’s all “schizophrenia” is ATM: a definition for a collection of symptoms. it can hardly be a disease until we know what is “diseased” and how (meaning also that likely if drugs can treat it, they treat symptoms, not causes; but saying you’re “treating schizophrenia” makes it sound like you’re treating a disease, not a collection of symptoms)
and before anyone bothers to strawman me: I am hardly a “mental illness denialist”; delusions rather obviously are symptoms of a mental illness*, but “schizophrenia” isn’t it. it’s just a label for a collection of symptoms. and the same distinction goes for a lot of other mental illnesses. reifying labels for collections of symptoms into specific kinds of illnesses seems dangerous.
– – – – –
*and apparently, sometimes it’s an acute and sometimes it’s a chronic illness, except I don’t know that we ever qualify “schizophrenia” as acute. seems to me once someone had an episode, they’re considered schizophrenic even if they never have another one…?
SC, what are you talking about? Are you trying to say that there are no real mental illnesses? I think you are way off base there – and it seems like you have made a number of assertions (IMO tinged rather lavishly with judgment) upon equally shaky foundations. I usually just skim over your posts since I have little patience with the anti-omnivore posting. There’s no need to challenge you – I’ve seen all of your arguments before in an earlier lifetime, (thankfully behind me), and I recognize that many of them come with a wider package of prejudices. But when you move toward asserting (as I think you are doing – though if I am wrong, I am ready to stand corrected) that most (all?) physical and mental “illnesses” can be traced back to our awful meat-eating/processed foods eating/putting disgusting things into our bodies ways, I think that steps over the line.
Physical illnesses and autoimmune conditions and mental illnesses exist, are real and are not the fault of the people who are afflicted by them. You cannot eat them away, or prevent them by living “ethical” lives, eating ethically or whatever other claptrap nor can mental illnesses or most chronic illnesses be treated by dietary changes and a bunch of right-minded living™.
Louis (? I think? I’m so slow, I can’t find it again in a quick scroll, but I think another poster brought this up and Louis took it up): regarding the “are you off your meds?” thing. Ugh. I said that one evening to one of my sons (whom I actually knew had skipped a dose, but whose behavior which elicited my cruel remark was nothing more than irritating to me). I realized it almost immediately, but he stopped speaking and accepted the rebuke without question. I felt as bad as I ought to have felt. After dinner, I went to him privately and apologized fully. I made no excuse. Told him I was totally out of line. Also spoke to his sibling (who was present for the smackdown) and let him know that I was wrong to have said such a silencing and disrespectful thing to his brother. It is a learning thing, even when you think you’d never stoop so low. :( Like Louis said the other day – I found I had waded into a cess pool and discovered that I was looking out from inside of it.
le wut?
there’s also not a “shadowy cabal” promoting and imposing Patriarchy on the world. or, closer still, there wasn’t a “shadowy cabal” imposing radical and super-radical mastectomies on women with even the tiniest lumps, but it was still the wrong treatment based on incorrect framing and understanding of what breast cancer is and how it works.
what is this sudden loss of reading comprehension? rather obviously, SC is asking where anyone claimed that the study was a randomized trial.
Mental illness and medication: This is such a tricky field. I think partly because mental illness SUCKS so very fucking hard, but probably mostly because neuroscience and our understanding of the brain is actually still in its infancy and very, very incomplete. Some meds work for some people for some time. It all seems quite random to me at times, to be frank, but I’m hopeful that with increased understanding of how the brain and mental illness in the brain works, better solutions (be it pharmaceutical or whatever) will become available.
For now it feels to me as if we’re where we were with the leeches in general medicine – we’re kind of stuck with imperfect solutions until more knowledge opens up new solutions.
Santa and other Tall Tales: Nope, not telling them to my kids. Or rather, playing the game, as in
Me: Put your tooth under your pillow, and you’ll get a coin. Some say it’s the tooth fairy!
Kid: Is it?
Me?: Nah. It’s me. I’ll give ya good money for that tooth.
or giving presents, but never with the lie that they are from Santa or the tooth fairy or whatever.
I don’t know. Above and beyond the (HUGE) issue of the classism, it just feels so morally repugnant to me to require kids to “be good” in order to be *rewarded* with prezzies, instead of do the right thing because it’s right, regardless of rewards or lack thereof.
that’s a fucking strawman.
jesus, I don’t even agree with SC’s conclusions, but this complete and utter inability/unwillingness to even look at the arguments she’s actually making, instead of projecting from previous experiences with anti-med wooists is just embarrassing.
I will say that, as far as tall tales and myths go, although I have told my daughter outright that those things aren’t real, I also like to ask her questions like, “I don’t know, do YOU think it’s possible that one man could have eight flying reindeer and travel around the world with enough presents for all of the children (he likes) and deliver them in one night?” She’s getting pretty good at the skepticisms, and she’s five. After going to church with one of her grandparents (to one of the fluffier-bunny churches; we don’t let her into the fundies at all), she came home and said, “You know what they said? They said that Jesus DIED and then he CAME BACK TO LIFE. Isn’t that silly?” Then she burst into raucous supervillain laughter. It was awesome.
Jadehawk/SC,
The “moustache twirling” remark was not aimed at you! It was a general comment about claims I’ve heard/read from the more…ahahaha…”entertaining” conspiracy theorists on the matter. And Jadehawk, you’re right, there doesn’t need to be one. Banality of evil and all. I was making a deliberately general and loose point precisely because I haven’t yet been able to give the more substantial critiques of SC and others the attention they deserve.
Like I said, there’s valid critique, which is worth engaging with and taking seriously (which takes work). Then there’s abject nutbaggery, which sorry, no one has to take seriously at all. I don’t go to conferences with homeopaths for the same reason I don’t go to conferences with the worst examples of anti-psychiatry/anti-pharma. Their claims aren’t fact based or rational. They are not tall enough to get on the ride.
Louis
FFS, dianne. I meant where anyone claimed that it was a randomized, controlled study.
That’s his interpretation of the reasons for the findings. He’s trying to understand why the people not on the drugs fared so much better. (And having better internal resources for dealing with the experiences, which might well be part of it, is not the same as being “less sick.” They were not less sick at the beginning by his measures, and his evidence doesn’t support that claim.)
They didn’t differ from the drugtakers significantly at the two-year mark.
That’s it. This will be my last response on this thread. I was not citing it as “proof” that schizophrenia doesn’t exist. I cited it specifically in response to a question about the effectiveness of the drugs.
I’m honestly dumbfounded that you could read that and not at least think seriously about whether these drugs are bad. The outcomes for the drugtakers are terrible.
And Caine, Ms Daisy Cutter, I promise to STFU about this here right the fuck now if at all possible, just so you can both come back. Apologies for any and all distress caused.
Louis
Gen, Uppity Ingrate. QFFT (I hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand nuns, too)
@ Audley #161 we never ever did the Santa thing with the Spawn; they always knew that presents come from parents (and maybe a grandparent). Neither of them have ever, even when tiny, thrown a wobbly when we failed to get them some particular thing, and neither of them have ever nagged us for a trendy “must have” item – though I have no idea whether these two facts are related, they just might be a little (if it’s Santa buying, then the sky ought to be the limit, right?). They know perfectly well that most of all our clothes come from second-hand shops, and they’re fine with it (it’s quite funny, DaughterSpawn sometimes gets asked enviously where her clothes come from because she and Other Parent of Spawn have a good eye for style, unlike me).
Yeah, that’s some nasty shit – that Santa can’t be arsed to take nice presents to poor kids. Bastard.
true. but just as rejecting “brain sex” because some other idiots fucked up the concept is stupid, so is rejecting the reminder that labels-for-sets-of-symptoms are not synonymous with distinctly identifiable illnesses
as I explained elsewhere, a heart attack is not its symptoms (arm and chest pain), but things like depression and schizophrenia are their symptoms, so treating them as if they were the underlying disease instead of a label for symptoms is likely as wrongheaded and dangerous as the thinking that led to the “epidemic” of radical and super-radical mastectomies
Opposablethumbs,
I wish I had an eye for style. I go down the route of “What? Most of the naughty bits are covered! Orange and lime green SO IS a good combination, and the navy socks set it off nicely. Now what about a sporran?”.
Louis
Seconded.
And a surprise from niftyatheist.
Jadehawk,
Well isn’t it lucky that I’m not rejecting it then! ;-)
Louis
If it is, then I will certainly apologise to SC. Perhaps I am too dense to get what her point actually is. I freely admit that I am prejudiced in my reading of her posts because I am put off by her other posts (on animal rights).
Ms. Daisy Cutter:
I am on an extremely high SSRI dosing regimen, which when removed will make me completely lose my shit, yet I also find SC’s case (and that of her sources) highly persuasive.
The point SC has been trying to make does not oblige you to choose one over the other.
true, for all I know you specifically haven’t. other individuals here, on this particlular topic have, though probably (hopefully) only due to inability/unwillingness to actually engage with the “schizophrenia isn’t a real disease” argument as presented in lieu of projecting strawooist arguments onto it.
There’s no need for a conditional notpology. You can either quote something to justify your misreading or admit you don’t have any evidence to support your claim.
It’s some relief that you admit the source of your irrationality. That doesn’t excuse it, however.
Yes, it is. It looked to me like it came out of nowhere, but maybe you read Daisy’s comment which mentioned both in the same line of thought:
… and somehow thought SC was connecting them.
I bring tidings of a new funny tumblr: Thanks, textbooks: A collection of the world’s finest academic writing.
I go now to watch Game of Thrones. Or “Tits and Swords” as it’s known in my household.
Louis
#203,
and I quoted in my original post on this topic:
and
I thought I had been clear that I am unsure what SC was actually saying – I said so at least twice. Maybe I am hugely deficient in understanding but it does seem to me as though she is saying that mental illnesses are not illnesses but simply behaviors that have been stigmatized by society. I am with her on the social stigma but not on the denial that there is such a thing as mental illness, if in fact that is what she is saying.
SC can correct me if my assumptions about her point are wrong, and if I am out of line, I will apologise to her. Or she can say “Fuck you, I don’t want to bother to correct you” to me and that will be fine, too.
Further, you can take your assumptions about me “projecting from previous experiences with anti-med wooists” and stuff them. I’m not irrational just because you say so – and you are not irrational if I just say so.
#204 You are right. I did jump to the conclusion that SC had made some connection between veganism and illness – probably not because of anything anyone else has said, though.
SC, I am sorry about jumping to that conclusion.
that’s an imprecise smooshing together of two separate but related points
point 1 is what I’ve been saying: mental “illnesses” like schizophrenia are not illnesses in the sense that diabetes for example is, because “schizophrenia” is a label for a mixed bag of symptoms, not the name of the disease that’s causing the symptoms (but it’s often treated as if it were something like diabetes)
point 2 is that diagnoses of mental illnesses are often used on people who behave/think differently than society permits (institutionalization of assorted “uppity” minorities being one crass example)
there’s a connection between the two (and it isn’t “because of point 2, the symptoms described in point 1 aren’t real either), but that’s a long argument I don’t feel up to explaining right now, TBH
Jadehawk 209, thanks. Obviously a comprehension failure on my part. Apologies to all.
jenniferforester: you’re in Texas like me? and you hand out condoms?? *joy*
I hope you choose to stick around TET.
Well in fact, diabetes is at least three diseases, possibly more. I insisted that my father’s death certificate be rewritten, because some lazy (or exhausted) hospital doctor had given “NIDD” (non insulin dependent, or type 2, diabetes), as one of the causes of death, when he suffered from type 1. It didn’t occur to me until later to wonder whether some fool had perhaps failed to give him his insulin injection due to the same error.
Not fully caught up and the internet ate my comment
Short form:
I like kids, in general. I love mine. Part of my love means I want them to grow up into functional adults who can navigate their way through life. One of the key skills for that is to get along with other people and not behaving like an entitled brat at age 30. Because one day you’ll meet people who have power over you and they’re not mummy and daddy.
Which means that some days I’m in for big drama like today.
Hugs to Ms. Daisy Cutter
Had a decent race today. We didn’t win but did place in the upper half of the finishers. We would have done better but the commode door insisted we go on the wrong side of the course during the reach leg. That’s the last time we’ll listen to that guy (until the next time we listen to him).
Good to see you, Mr. Fire! I miss your input. I hope the
wee littlenot so little any longer spark is doing well. :)‘Tis Himself, we learn something new from you almost daily. Today we learned that talking commode doors are standard equipment on sailboats.
Audley
I decided very early that my kids can think me to be cool because I’m not like the other mums, or they can be embarrased because I’m not like the other mums. That’s their decission, but it’s not going to change me.
So far I seem to be mightily popular with their friends, probably because I make the effort to talk to them, know their names, notice things like when one of them has been on a holiday, or when the training wheels (a bad idea anyway) come off.
So, seems like at least for the age group 3-6 I manage “cool”.
niftyatheist,
Indeed it’s not “irrational because I decree it so,” but the evidence that you were being irrational is that 1) as you say at #208, you had zero basis for making that connection, 2) as you previously mentioned, you were bringing in a prejudice against her arguments in general because of arguments about animal rights which you also say you skim over without much reading.
Both of these are prima facie irrational behaviors. Okay. Well. People are irrational sometimes; as I noted, I was surprised to see you being the wrongest person in the room this time around. — Though I suppose everybody gets a turn at that. I’ve been there too.
+++++
As for the evidence that you were projecting from previous experiences with anti-med wooists, you specifically claimed “I’ve seen all of your arguments before in an earlier lifetime, (thankfully behind me), and I recognize that many of them come with a wider package of prejudices.”
The conditional form seems appropriate here. So if I was wrong that you were projecting from previous experiences with anti-med wooists, then I will certainly apologize to you.
We have achieved A/C in our bedroom! *dance dance dance!*
It’s amazing what Mr Darkheart can do with a rubber mallet and a stuck window. ♥!
Yes, I’m going to indulge in a line or two of snark here. After dealing with what JT’s “what was actually said” I’ve got a low tolerance for pitbull’s latest round of going inquisitor on whether someone’s rational enough or has pure enough motives.
It’s lots of fun to pat each other on the back about playing in the shark tank until somebody gets bit.
SC’s comments about mental illness are always rational and supported by specifically linked sources. She’s read a lot about it and she tries to share that information.
In response, people mostly offer emotional outbursts that evince no attempt to understand what she’s talking about and often make no sense at all (e.g. ‘I used to be really depressed, and I got better after going on the drugs, and therefore SC is wrong about schizophrenia!’).
I too used to be really depressed. I too got (somewhat) better after going on the drugs. But, like Mr. Fire, I remain extremely skeptical about medical psychiatry (even leaving profit-motivated Big Pharma out of it). Because nobody has much of a clue how the brain works, it’s all trial-and-error and making it up as they go along, and the honest ones will admit it.
(Why continue taking the drugs when I am far from convinced of their effectiveness in my case? Because the depression was so harmful to me and my family that I promised the people I love that I would do everything I could in an attempt to get better. This includes not only SSRIs but weekly talk therapy (which I loathe) and even weekly acupuncture treatment. No, of course I don’t believe in Chi or energy-flow meridians, but I keep going anyway because the slight chance of a positive placebo effect is worth the copay to me. (Plus, it’s an hour a week of refreshing relaxation and calm, just with a bunch of needles stuck in my skin.))
Just a quick post – I managed to read through the “don’t derail” post at JT’s, and I must say that I am impressed with the patience expressed by many of the regulars. I seriously hope that JT realizes how wrong he is.
Also, how can anyone be so obtruse as to declare themselves an ally of a marginalized group? You don’t get to declare yourself an ally. At most, you can declare your intention of behaving like an ally.
218, not sure why I cannot be “the wrongest person in the room” (!) without also being labeled “irrational”, but thanks for the notpology, as you say. More than one backhanded slapdown from you in one day. Do I get a cookie?
Just curious – should we all stop referring to any previous life experience at all when thinking about the behavior of others or assessing arguments? Or only when you say it is ok? Or just me? Is it now incumbent on me to approach everything I read or hear as if I had had no previous experiences at all or else face judgment from you and be labeled irrational?
I jumped to a conclusion and made an ass of myself. That makes me an ass, not irrational.
I apologise, SC. I had no business linking your views about diet to your arguments about mental illness here. It was a massive fail and I am truly sorry about that.
220 Pteryxx, thanks for that.
Just to clarify things a little more, I’m sure SC wouldn’t say it’s about dietary concerns, but about rights for non-human animals. If you hadn’t conflated that point as well, then I doubt you would’ve ever made that connection from nutritional health to mental health.
Conga rats!
So that’s how Darkfetus came to exist. Interesting.
Pteryxx: Y’all are awesome (see? there are regional indicators if I type enough), and I might sometimes when I have a free moment. I dig other progressive, nonbelieving Texans and other Southern sorts and, even though I don’t identify as remotely culturally Southern, I would lay down my life to make this hellhole of a region a better place. No lie. I don’t identity as Texan because I identify with what people think of as Texan (even the okay parts); I identify as Texan because this is the hill I’m willing to die on. So the least I can do is hand out condoms to kids once mine are old enough, yanno?
good point. see, this is why I don’t think I’m up to explaining SC’s argument to people right now; I even make mistakes on the super-simplified bullet-point versions of SC’s tentacular arguments.
nifty admitted to irrationality. that’s what admitting to prejudice means, since prejudice is irrational.
plus, concluding that a strawman that looks identical to actual positions of actual wooists but resembles in no way the actual argument thusly strawmanned came about by projecting these previously encountered wooist arguments onto the current argument is perfectly reasonable; it’s a rational, evidence-based conclusion. It may be still wrong, but it’s not “just because you say so”, and it’s not inquisitorial.
#225 consciousness razor – perhaps you’re right. I knew several vegans (some family members) who very much connected diet with physical and mental illness – and who considered failure to adopt a vegan lifestyle disgustingly unethical. Since some of them came by some of these views at conferences with hundreds of likeminded people, I believed (wrongly perhaps) that it was not the singular prejudice of one or two people. I jumped from SC’s strong opinions on animal rights to a mistaken assumption that she may have shared those views.
I’ve apologized for my stupidity. I’d like to move on, please.
this is another strawman, since you didn’t simply use previous experience to asses an argument. you completely fucked up what the argument was and put a completely different one in its place; based at least partially on self-admitted prejudice against the person making the argument.
Do note that I was in there too. I’m “pb&l”.
I cordially welcome you to Pharyngula!
This is probably total bullshit; but if you can quote me talking about anyone’s purity of motive, I’d appreciate knowing about it, since I am supposed to be committed to consequentialism.
(Also I am explicitly pro-hypocrisy, and I’d prefer not to be hypocritical about this.)
Ugh. No I did not “admit to irrationality”.
I don’t think I mean the same thing by prejudice that you do. I’d better stop using that word, as it is too laden with socially charged meanings (and rightly so!). I think it may be an unfortunate miscommunication, because I had no idea that there was only one definition for prejudice anymore (and I’ve googled it and sure enough…) I grew up with it being used slightly differently by my barrister father and I fell into the habit of using it that way – indicating that one’s point of view about some idea had been tainted by repeated patterns of behavior by its proponents, leading to mistaken generalizations. I did not mean “prejudice” in the sense of unfounded hatreds for marginalized groups based upon nothing more than an instinctive feeling. OMGS can I get off the hot seat now?
you don’t think that counts as ‘irrational’?
why not?
how the fuck is that not irrational
I didn’t either
i lol’d
Just in this particular subthread. I hope you didn’t take it more harshly than intended.
It’s true there are other ways to be wrong. But the ways you were wrong were irrational, as explained, since they were based on prejudice and faulty assumptions.
Here I feel I should specify that I don’t believe you as a person are any more or less irrational than I am. Actually I should have specified this sooner. It would have been more accurate if I had spoken of “the source of your irrational behavior” instead of “the source of your irrationality”; the latter is just because your parents were apes. I’m genuinely sorry for miscommunicating this.
1) You’re welcome. 2) We are both escalating our responses. 3) I ate them all already; I have a hard time keeping cookies around.
To use heuristics rationally (in this case to guess why someone’s saying something), it’s important to make sure of at least two things. First, the set of speakers being compared should be as specific as possible with regard to relevant characteristics — so in this case, you should be considering not “vegans” but “vegans who are vegan because of animal rights and who hang out on skeptical atheist websites”. Second, the argument you’re hearing now should really be the same argument you’ve heard before; this is always easy to get wrong, but it’s particularly difficult to do this if you skim.
Hey now! That’s one of the things I’m pretty sure I usually believe in.
JT doesn’t appear – at least from the cursory glance I gave the thread; I’m not wading through the whole garbled, nested mess to check timestamps – to have revisited the ‘commenting policy’ thread to either answer the (very good) points raised about his position, or to ban the slimepit denizens.
Poor form, that.
I fucked that all up again, too. Better: “the proximate cause of your irrational behavior in this discussion”.
O.o
it hadn’t even occurred to me that this would still be an issue. not after the untold “you said something sexist/racist/homophobic” vs.”I’m not a sexist/racist/homophobe!!11!!” conversations. I thought by now it would have been a given that what is called out is a specific irrational action, not labeling the person as irrational in some essentialist way
Wowbagger – he may be out for the day. It’s a holiday here, so he could have had family plans.
I need one of these very badly. :http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joylabs/makey-makey-an-invention-kit-for-everyone
They already have 10 times the amount requested, with almost a thousand more orders now than they did this morning when I first saw it. Something tells me they may be a wee bit over their heads. :D
that’s not why i thought it was funny. it just reminded my of my own “I don’t believe in principles, on principle” quip about my utilitarianism
As another anecdata point (ha!), I’m someone also on big doses of an antidepressant, and I get serious cognitive impairment after a couple of months off them. Which can be disastrous in my job, so I don’t fuck with my medications. I have a horse in this race, and my knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss SC’s rantings as so much paranoid bullshit.
I can see how the wooists get so attached to their nutty ideas: one’s own experience is pretty damn persuasive.
All this to say, I’m curious. I can accept that my preconceptions may be wrong. I’ll read. Who knows, it may alter my prescribing practices.
yes. Or he might be busy making jell-o.
Oh, hell. Not that again.
? Is this “that again”?
I think we are all a bit better off if he spends his time making Jell-o rather than writing at this point.
@carlie #205 — I loooove “Thanks, Textbooks.” I’m pretty sure I read most textbooks simply to catch the incredibly amusing errors and ridiculous questions/statements/images/whatever.
carlie wrotes:
Ah, okay.
The textbook tumblr has a pic of a female bodybuilder from a book I used to use (still do, in the newer edition). I’m pretty certain it’s not, in fact, photoshopped as implied there.
I didn’t run across that. But I mostly read it for the ridiculously stupid math questions, being a mathematician-in-training and all.
from thanks, textbooks:
I had a roommate like that once… we ended up putting a chain with a lock on the fridge.
My favorite so far is the one about what bits of punctuation newborns look like.
Yes. The random ways textbooks try to make information relatable or something (I assume that’s the reason?) are very strange – like the measuring one:
Yes, that bit was completely bizarre. I’ve never argued anything of the sort. As it happens, I did just write a four-part series about ethics, mental health, veganism, and atheism, expanding on some of (humanistic psychiatrist) Erich Fromm’s ideas. This is the first part, and all four are from this month.
I suspect many here won’t care to read what I actually do think, if they do read it will do so with hostile intent, will believe that if my speculations there are wrong that has some implications for other entirely unrelated arguments I’ve made and supported, and will see it as further evidence of my callous dismissal of psychological suffering (because that’s what we uncaring people do – spend a good part of our lives writing about subjects and people that don’t matter to us).
***
Thank you for this. And to Jadehawk, cr, Chas, and sg for responding to some of the other comments.
And now I’ll try again to stop commenting on this thread (and Thread).
heh
That’s one solution. I just bought a bunch of raw food so I’d have to cook it if I wanted to eat.
The ordeal was enough to discourage me.
Morning all! I still like the nym. I was never a big fan of the Crocodile Dundee all-Australian outback kitsch and cliché, but somehow the crocoduck just transforms it.
Rorschach, Tony is new but said some excellent stuff ummm, somewhere recently. (One of the recent feminism/blacklist threads) He’s new but it’s worth cutting him some slack if he puts his foot in it a couple of times. It’s a pretty fine point of etiquette anyway – saying “man, I goofed on thread X” isn’t really out of line if enough regulars are on thread X.
Tony, on the copyright topic, there is a great deal of complexity. But on the whole, it is very much more set up to benefit corporations than artists and other creators. One aspect that drives me batty at regular intervals is the region restrictions. I’ve decided to make up my own ethical rules. Somewhat a work in progress, but I will pirate something if:
a) I have already bought it in another format; or
b) I have made a decent attempt to buy it, but have not been able to due to some pointless stupid restrictions.
See here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
(Yeah, language warning, but it’s the oatmeal so I’m sure you know to expect it.)
@Louis & Gen, re Santa, from here
O hai! Came home late from dragging Sili through the museum. He was surprisingly fascinated by the collection of fossil vertebrates (remember: the fossils in those drawers are there because they’re not showy enough to put on exhibit) and wanted to see more and more. :-) We found toothy goodness, but I hadn’t brought my camera, and Sili’s cell phone couldn’t focus right.
Link dump before I finally go to bed:
SV-POW!: “The Publishers Association is hallucinating”.
One click away: Guardian: “Text mining: what do publishers have against this hi-tech research tool? – Researchers push for end to publishers’ default ban on computer scanning of tens of thousands of papers to find links between genes and diseases”
I’ve promised to “blog” about the conference here, including the two talks on Sunday that PZ walked out on because he thought they were going to be in German – that was originally planned, but both gave their talks in English; for the second one, that was announced while PZ was getting up from his seat. :-( I’ll do that on the appropriate post, “tomorrow” or later (it’s a quarter past 2 am over here).
Wishing imaginary god would do something isn’t wrong in and of itself. Believing that an imaginary deity can or will do anything is.
to clarify, “we” meant the boyfriend and I, the actual owners of the contents of the fridge; we put the chain & lock on it to protect said contents from the
locustsroommate; who wouldn’t be discouraged by the rawness of ingredients (he once ate an entire block of cheese by itself (well, with ranch dressing))I love cheese and will readily eat a block of it. But with ranch dressing? Just cheese and ranch dressing?
Yeah, I don’t have anything readily edible in my house either – though, because I live alone, it’s only to combat my own lack of self-control. It was like that growing up as well; I used to complain to my mother than there wasn’t food in the house, there were only ingredients.
SC, as a matter of fact, I did visit your blog and read those posts. Mano Singham recommended and I was intrigued – also a fan of Erich Fromm (I read his books when they were first out actually -I am almost as old as PZ!). I enjoyed your blog very much. Not much point in saying this now, since I have been figuratively dragged over the coals, but I will anyway: I read your blog with interest and with an open mind. My feelings about your posts regarding the ethics of non-vegans do bother me, but I admire your well-thought out arguments and I was interested in the rest of you.
Ugh, that post to SC was in reply to #255. I am slow at the best of times, but now doubly flustered. OH well
ImaginesABeach:
Bwahahaha! If they had feelings, my computer and keyboard would be grateful that I had already drained my coffee when I read that; they wouldn’t like being covered in a spray of vapour.
On defining cis/trans as a binary in opposition to the traditional narrative of a gender and sexual binaries: one thing people often say as a shorthand, and it’s something that I’ve caught myself doing and am trying to eradicate from my thinking, is to refer to ‘both sexes’ or ‘both genders’ as though there were only two states in either case (sometimes people use ‘gender’ as a weasel word when they really are referring to sex). Sure intersex and transgender people are very small minorities, but using the word ‘both’ in either sense, plainly meaning two and only two, more or less erases those groups of people from the picture.
Thanks, niftyatheist. It was super thoughtful of Singham to post about my series.
Aunts arrived safely. They’re now grocery shopping for the things they can’t do without even though I spent all day grocery shopping myself. Not a problem; this was expected. I’m ready to crash.
Oh, they just came back & I can hear them in the kitchen putting stuff away. It sounds like we’ll have cupboards and refrigerator overfull for months.
Wow. Unless Christina doesn’t have mod/comment-pruning powers at JT’s, it will be very interesting to know the explanation why slimepitters who screech at Pharynguloids (Daisy and I are special favorites) as baboons and trolls who need to fuck off get to post indiscriminately. They are not remarked upon at all.
Oh. Hi back, Carlie! In my case, sadly, Count Meatspace has its fangs deep in the neck of Lady Freetime.
Josh, you churlish ingrate, don’t make me go over there! (churlish is a seriously excellent word, and though fucking stupidly applied to you, I love that you confiscated it for your own!)
Ibis3, hope your week goes smoothly! I know it can be challenging in a good/hard way to have a lot of family visiting – even beloved family visiting for a happy occasion! :D
G’night, all. I’m off to bed to sweat.
And not in a fun way.
Oggie, turn on the damned air conditioning.
quoderatdemonstrandum:
I’ll do that.
Thanks.
carlie:
yeah I get that now. Lesson learned. The hard way.
KG:
Quite interesting. Thanks.
Alethea:
I’ve got some studying to do it seems. Thank you.
Not familiar with TheOatmeal, but language doesn’t bother me (not anymore; another thing to thank you folks for, btw).
No AC at home.
I just took the trash out. And spilled old rice on my feet. And then realized that there is no rice in the trash.
I hate maggots.
Why do larval forms always look and/or smell so disgusting?
Ogvorbis, I hate heat and humidity so much I will NOT live without air conditioning. I’m frugal but that’s an indulgence necessary for my sanity and physical wellbeing. You can’t even spring for a bedroom unit?
Oh maggots. . the absolute worst. One of the few things that can (literally) make me puke on the spot just on sight.
Uggh, maggots. (shudder – awful memory). Cool shower both to wash off the (shudder) factor and also help you sleep, Ogvorbis?
Maybe they’re just waiting for the slimy fuckers to a hit a critical mass before they start calmly educating them based on what they actually say.
Yuck, maggots.
I’m pretty hard to gross out – I grew up hunting and fishing, my dad has a medical-field job which he talks about a fair bit, and I’m a biology student. So I will happily discuss tapeworms or surgery over lunch, and I usually don’t even remember that others might be bothered by this.
But maggots…maggots are disgusting. The one time I found them in a garbage bag, I’m pretty sure I screamed, threw the bag outside, and took a shower. If I had touched them, I probably would have bathed in industrial-strength disinfectant.
Plushie maggot!
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/maggot.html
They also have lice, ticks, ants… I’m sure y’all REALLY wanted to know that. *flees cackling*
Hi Josh,
Slime-pitters sighted over at WWJTD? All the more reason not to look.
They ask how can atheist possibly be good people without a moral grounding from god. If this is what is meant by moral grounding then we all would be better off with a lot less of god.
I want a plush bookworm
Is is wrong and sick that I love the plushie maggots, ticks, fleas and other critters? They are SOOOO CUTE! Thanks Pteryxx. Reminds me of this: http://www.parapluesch.com/catalog/
The one I want and identify with most is Dolly. <3. It is not without its problematic aspects, of course, (what is?), but looking at these plushies make me smile.
OMG plush penicillin FTW
Professor, btw, you have a dead link in your Profile section..
The pzm_profile_pic.jpg points to a page that no longer exists (the pic of you with London in the background)
And not sure zf_pharyngula.jpg is meant to come up as the filename.
Sorry if someone has previously mentioned this. OCD makes it hard for me not to tell you.
C. elegans – It is the very model of a laboratory organism!
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/celegans.html
Me eikther, so I’m sweating right there with you. Haven’t barely been able to sleep this week. All of our windows are the wrong shape for window a/c units, and replacing them has consistently been not in the budget. It’s a real pain in the arse.
I love those plushies! I got my mom a plush E. coli for Christmas. And a plus h. pylorii for my sister (the ulcer bug). It’s yellow and cute. Niece #2 plays with it sometimes, which makes me happy.
Re: SC and skepticism and arguments and such
I know this oughtn’t be the case, but statements like this make me less inclined to read charitably and/or at all.
It’s a bit like the whole “Don’t look down/think of an elephant” phenomenon.
I suspect it is that very phenomenon.
Alas, since Mooney misused Lakoff and PZ decreed framing verboten, gnu atheists are contractually required to think of elephants at all times.
(Retinal tattoos are the safest way of ensuring compliance.)
Thanks, nifty. I’m sure it will be fine and perhaps even fun. But it’s been a lot of work to prepare. And I still have to go and get the oil changed in the van before our drive to Niagara Falls on Friday morning and various other tasks.
I just went to check out the room I’ll be staying in and it’s hot too. There is central A/C in the house but it’s not turned on yet, so I’ll be sweating along with the rest of yas. Good night all.
I saw a post on another blog about an openly atheist candidate running in Georgia – Mike Smith. He is pro-legalizing marijuana, pro- fairer taxation (make the rich pay their fair share fair).
Seems to me this man might drive libertarians crazy – offering them one popular item (legalizing weed) and yet (horrors!) proposing more taxation of rich people.
Ibis, get your rest!! Cooler weather is coming (so I hear!).
David Marjanovic, I am so jealous of Sili right now! A trip to the museum is always awesome… but with you? My brain might not even be able to contain all the shit I’d find out!
Also, though it’s a bit late, Jennifer:
I like your style.
Another “intellectual property” annoyance.
I’d like to adapt and partially rewrite significant portions from Robert L. Hale’s “Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State” for the Pharyngula Wiki as a supplement to the article on libertarians.
I could do this easily if it had been published in 1922. But it was published in 1923. So I guess I will email the Academy of Political Science to ask if the copyright was renewed. It probably wasn’t, but I’ll probably never hear back from them.
*hurgh* *puff*
I’m seeing an exercise physiologist who’s designing me a rehab type program. She is ace. Also, today she made me go on a treadmill and I am utterly cactus nearly 2 hours later. It’s depressing, but useful as a baseline – she measured my BP & pulse and I got to rate my breathing difficulty on a somewhat subjective scale after 2 mins at a given pace. 1kph, 1.5kph, 2kph etc. I got through to 4kph. I probably should have stopped at 3.5 but DAMNIT this time last year I could stride briskly away at 5kph for ever, and I wasn’t going to give in that easily.
(Do Americans say “cactus”? Equivalents – knackered, buggered, stuffed, fucked, dead, broken, exhausted.)
Extra Game was AWESOME!!!
I’m still slightly buzzed from it. :) :) :) :) :)
–
*skimming*
It was, when I had Son. If you do end up with one, don’t let the doctor take an “extra stitch”, in the name of “tightening things up”, without involving you in the discussion. My doctor did, and it’s never ceased to be a problem, because the tissues on the two sides are under uneven tension (things not lined up quite right), resulting in periodic tearing and very frequent discomfort. Ungood.
–
Nonono; it’s “the pestle in the palace is the screw that is true”.
;)
–
When the van burned to the ground, no gods crossed my mind. Instead, I got, “I wonder what the blast radius will be, and is this ditch deep enough?”; never mind that the Auto-Exploding Car is a Hollywood myth.
So; mythology, just not deific mythology.
–
Hi, anna; welcome in! :)
–
Also welcome in, skepticalmath. :)
–
Also also, jenniferforester. :)
–
Also also also anyone I missed, and sorry! :)
–
Not gonna get caught up after all, dammit.
:(
–
*hugs*, condolences, welcomes and congrats where due, wherever my skimming has caused me to miss it.
–
*random boasting*
I’ll have y’all know that after a whole weekend of work on a salvaged laptop (i.e. “If you can fix it, you can have it”) I’ve removed the viruses, malware, remote control programs, Norton, iTunes, M$ Office (almost completely), old restore points AND over 50 GB of orphaned autoupdate installer files (on an 80 GB drive).
I HAZ COMPUTERRRRRR RARGH *kicks over tiny buildings*
Americans do not say cactus, no. At least when not referring to the spiny water-retaining plants, of course.
On a completely different note, anyone here know why it is that automated transactions are delayed by bank holidays? It’s completely absurd, computers don’t take the day off.
For the same reason that, when you deposit a check, the bank tells you the funds won’t be immediately available, and that they have to clear the payor’s account. But when you write a check your funds are immediately available and they have no compunctions about dunning your account for an overdraft. Even if you have several accounts with them, at least one of which has plenty of money. All linked up by computers.
Because We Can Fuck You, That’s Why™
Addendum to my #300— When you read “write a check,” substitute “Pay a transaction online with one’s checking account.” I only handwrite checks in dire circumstances.
Argh, yes! Arrrrgggghhhhhh!
Yes, and everything happens within the blink of an eye over the internet. You click “submit” the bank deducts from your account your recipient’s bank receives the bank draft and the recipient SHOULD receive the money
I always picture that delay being the time it takes the two banks involved to duke it out over who gets the biggest share of the fees they also charge us for the privilege of letting them have our money to invest.
ARRRGGGHHHHHHH! (hate. bloody. banks)
Josh, I think you’re being awfully churlish again. Don’t you know it’s for your own good? If they couldn’t profit by fucking you over, they’d never be able to trickle on you.
OH damn! I had sound effects in there but I stupidly encased them in these and they disappeared. :(
And now for something completely different. For those of you who want to see a beautiful takedown of the Left Behind movie from one of the That Guy With The Glasses crew.
Oh, dear, my mistake. Trickle down. You know, with money.
:D churlish – that word again!
I have to say +1 to you, consciousness razor even though I am still vexed with you for drawing attention to my stupidity earlier!
And just what makes you think I want a golden shower from my bank? What kinda girl do you think I am?
A churlish one, no doubt.
Oh, it is a great word, but applying it to me is just the living end. From straight people, no less. There are some lucky motherfuckers that they weren’t up in my house when they said that.
I think I may have been unfair to JT. Earlier.
I had a hell of a good time on his blog and met several cool people and will definitely visit again.
Definitely gonna visit his joint again. Definitely.
Hehehehehehehehehehehe
By which I mean… I’m waiting with bated breath until his next inevitable trainwreck wherein he shows us all what a privileged fart he is.
Mmm.
raises eyebrow
Look, I think you need to deal with what I’ve actually said. It’s a win-win. They fuck you and you get the trickle. Who wouldn’t want that?
Listen, I’m just asking questions and if you’re going to tar me with a wide brush I’m never going to learn. I can understand why people don’t want to help you in your cause when you act this way.
Naughty Coyote. You’re just after a spanking, aren’t you?
the metaness of this conversation is breaking my brain
Alethea: I failed in my mission to get banned! Unacceptable!
Josh: What I mean is, I wasn’t giving him quite the treatment he deserved, since I didn’t get banned and all ;)
I would also like to note that there is absolutely nothing compelling the banks to consider that they should think about what impact their position has on you, and to ask them to do so is nothing but coercion. Why do you hate America?
@SC- reading through the linked blogs &c. I’d like to say that this stuff was paradigm shattering, but so far, no.
What I am seeing are some category errors: specifically the lumping in of all psychotic disorders with schizophrenia. Any person can have psychotic episodes with enough stress, illness, drugs, sleep deprivation, whatever. This does not mean that this person has a disease, and it certainly does not make them schizophrenic, though they may appear at the time to be so. Misdiagnosis is certainly possible, and sometimes doctors do jump at the most obvious answers, myself unfortunately probably included.
Schizophrenia on the other hand should not be diagnosed based on a single meeting. It is a longitudinal diagnosis, a series of recognisable patterns of paranoia, obsessions, and disconnection from reality. Quiet psychosis (other people are looking out of my eyes….) is relatively common and only requires medication when it interferes with a person’s life.
Many people with seriously disabling schizophrenia as well do get to a point wherein they no longer need medication to maintain a “not psychotic” state- this is often termed “burned out” schizophrenia. These folks are rarely what one might recognise as “neurotypical” but usually are relatively functional if a little odd in terms of interpersonal interactions.
I am going to continue reading, and I am going to look at the original research when I get to my library access, but I wonder about the quality of a psychiatric journal that mixes up “affective” and “effective” (not in the title itself but on the title line on each page), from the linked Finnish study.
I get it now, Coyote:)
WTF is up with this ? If you type those two brackets around something, it disappears. If you just type them, they disappear. What is that, the internet equivalent to invisible ink?
Josh is spanking the coyote? I came in at the right moment.
Do you mean > and <? They are used to designate HTML and are parsed by the comment software.
Hello Dhorvath!
jenniferforester #319 – good gods yes, I forgot, banks are de facto job creators on account of they (rarely) provide financing for corporations which are hoarding their capital reserves, so that the corporations can buy up little bankrupted companies with the cheap borrowed money, lay off the bankrupted company’s staff, absorb the inventory, orders and customer relationships, while eliminating a competitor, closing plants and possibly – possibly – not laying off its own workforce.
How could I forget? MEA CULPA AMERICA!
niftyatheist @325: OMGZ IT’S ALMOST LIKE DISCUSSIONS OF PRIVILEGE AND DISCUSSIONS OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE ARE RELATED.
Almost, I mean. I wouldn’t want to go overboard here. (But seriously, why don’t the gays just bootstrap themselves out of their troubles?)
(The best part is that you would have to be pretty up-to-date on the JT thread to know what I’m referencing, and it still makes sense because THIS IS 101 BULLSHIT YOU GUYS.)
dexitroboper, thanks, yes those. > < I like how sassy they look around snark and sound effects but obviously will have to use something else!
niftyatheist,
So what else did I miss? Anything juicy?
Meh; someone JAQed off at me for a good long while about how he totally got that privilege exists but he thought it was an equal moral evil to “coerce” those with privilege into using it to help others and into being aware of it. So I called him a social Objectivist, like he is, and ditched it. (He then defended Objectivism, so, yeah.) This was through several rounds of patient explanation. I think I’m done being kind to people who JAQ off on me.
lawl – Jennifer, I didn’t dare touch that one. Too much philosowanker word salad. Awesome takedown though. (Also Robert B.)
If anyone wants a look at EthicalGrayArea over there:
here’s about where it got legible to me:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/wwjtd/2012/05/26/want-to-keep-commenting-here-dont-derail-threads/#comment-63568
Well, there’s two strikes against them. One for JAQing off, and one for defending Objectivism. My ability to remain kind or even polite to either group is virtually nil.
QFT. At 50+, I’ve got plenty of acquaintances who are so blind to their privilege I could facepalm my cheeks around my ears. I just have to zone out. Once one actually said to me seriously that it isn’t industry’s fault that women employees are paid so much less than their male counterparts – they accept that pay! ARGGH! Marginalized people everywhere – bootstraps, got it? (bloody grumble mumble frigging mutter grrrrr)
I am trying, but that nested comment set up is giving me fits.
…Is social Objectivism the formal name for “This shit totally happens in a void” ?
< :: <
> :: >
A few more…
™ :: ™
≠ :: ≠
∞ :: ∞
& :: &
Oh, and niftyatheist – I noted you have a great blogroll sidebar, and this was a great find:
image – Science over time
Dhorvath, I wasn’t involved in the brouhaha over at JTs blog, but there appears to have been some weapons-grade stupidity, fuckwittery, JAQing off, and all-round obliviousness followed by doubling down topped off by epic fail in banning of Josh and Ms Daisy for intelligence and moral outrage. Others can bring you up to speed better than I can, though.
If you use the HTML entities > and < then they don’t get parsed into HTML so it’s a bit more typing but you can get the greater than and less than symbols in your text.
Fuck, I noticed that comment, but by the time I read it the nested comments had ensured that the rat’s nest was just too baffling for me to comment on.
Thanks Pteryxx! I’m kind of partial to those blogs, too. Still finding new ones that I like – and I occasionally take one off, but I am pretty happy with the current roster!
That image is great. I love the internet. <3 I love how easy it is to create colourful interesting pages – like for a community newsletter or whatever. I would have been in heaven if this stuff had been available when I was in high school/university.
OK I commented again.
Couldn’t resist, mates. Told you I’d be visiting again.
« :: «
» :: »
Left and right angle quotes. These are the elusive third species of quotation mark, not typically found in the Anglosphere. They allow you to copy and paste all manner of lesser quotes, without switching double quotation marks to singles or vice versa — assuming you’re compelled to do that sort of thing.
What?
Trying consciousness razor’s and dexitroboper’s suggestions:
::>
Ah, see, that’s just sad. I don’t know how I get thumbs up type comments from JT while he bashes on Daisy Cutter and Josh. Well, I do know, but it makes me pretty sure I won’t be going back.
pitbull, I am still vexed with you, too – but that is cool, I have to admit. I like to nest comments within comments and sometimes I just like to use sassy-looking pointy brackets and double ones like that – wowza!
What? «Nothing to see here »
DAMN!!!! «damn»
Preview is my friend.
I’m gonna pour another beer, roll another joint, and then I think I’m gonna hang out with my bestest dudebro JT on his little blawg.
He needs the quality commentary. Consider it a charity.
Anyone who writes the phrase, “I, for one,” shall have their mouth en-gangrenized and propped open in a mausoleum until crypt flies colonize the orifice and the larvae eat the tongue.
There are few mortal sins in prose. But those few are severe.
I know! They’re pretty great. If Wikipedia is to be believed, furriners call them guillemets.
Oh Canis, you saved the best for last. Chunks makes me giggle.
Writing, “Firstly,” is a kissing cousin and also punishable by forced infestation.
(sigh) I was always the loner who went it alone–lunging forward with no holds barred, friendless,
clueless(<good gods! how did that get there?), andfecklessfearless.So I haz stoopid typos.
Species? No, real Americans only have two kinds of quotation marks. Says so in the Bible.
I mean, just think about it. If they came from quotation marks, why are there still quotation marks?
Josh,
I, for one, like to use firstly often.
Dhorvath, you, for one example, will die firstly.
OH, Josh! I do love you! I was going to say this very thing! (well, except for the en-gangrenized part, ew), but then I worried that I might sound churlish and thought better of it.
Anything for you Josh.
I, for one, welcome our new atheist overlords.
From the Department of Cheap Insults:
JT writes:
The word is reluctant. You cannot be “reticent to,” you can only be “reticent about [a thing or doing a thing].”
/cheap thrills
Are they green? I like green.
LOL! EVeryone 348-356 (except myself, obviously chuckle) I am lolling here and I might startle the nifty offspring. Exams in the morning, so I’d better sign off for the night.
Night All! And thanks for a very enjoyable evening!
Everyone in the past fifteen minutes except niftyatheist shall die.
Another day then.
Night nifty!
Sense was had, but now is lost.
Christ on toast—there’s thunder and lightning here in Vermont at 1:30 in the morning!
Oh, shit. My computer is still on B.C. time. It’s one thirty in Onterrible too.
We actually have severe thunderstorm warnings for three counties in Vermont right now. Very unusual.
Josh:
Thank you for not using the obnoxious “You keep using that word…” quote that was fresh and original 4 years and 34565656456 uses ago.
Lights just flickered. Oh, joy.
I was hoping for a thunderstorm while I was in the area, but sadly I did not get one.
But of course. I would have been committing as great a sin, and you would have been justified in decapitating me.
All that shit is annoying beyond belief. It’s like the wildfire spread of the term “risible” in the atheist/skeptic blogosphere after Sam Harris used it in one of his earlier essays or books. Everyone and their fucking mother was describing shit as “risible” and you could see their noses tilted so far back the boogers were visible.
Josh: Wish he were reticent about calling himself an ally. Sheesh.
—
I looked up “social Objectivism” and got this:
http://umso.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/a-brief-summary-of-objectivism/
Okay… so this critter can logically, consistently, and politely argue that xe’s morally obligated to not give a damn about anyone or anything else no matter what they do to each other.
So I think “You’re an asshole” absolutely is a response to the actual words.
*ahem*
Fresh and original 25 years ago.
Now, let me show you my new rodent overlords.
Mmm, sounds CN to me. I do what I like!
We’ve been having out of season thunderstorms here in Oregon too. Caused a power surge last night that knocked out our home network for a bit.
…A thunderstorm just blew over here in Dallas. What the hey?
…Is someone having massive gay sex and I missed the memo?!
It’s not a critter, it’s a Randroid.
You want to see something funny? I’m not kidding, these quotes about how A=A are the foundation for their entire system of ethics.
I hadn’t noticed that. Now if only “meme” would die.
You could probably strike out the part about moral obligation as well. Does it make any sense to say one is obliged to do whatever one wants?
@ Life is like a pitbull with lipstick
That’s not a rodent of unusual size. This is a rodent of unusual size.
Firstly, you keep using that word, and I, for one, don’t think it means what you think it means. Your thusly displayed lack of reading comprehension and Dunning-Kruger Syndrome are risible.
I am feeling even more left out. No T-storm for me.
Unpossible. And you can bet that within 50 years, it will have driven trope into obscurity, while sign and symbol are replaced by megm and memebol.
That’s commie talk. I think you are morally obliged to want to read Anthem.
Simpler language is simpler language. A is A.
Randians are assholes. A is A.
Will that be before or after we’re blessed with memantics and memtax?
Okay… A=A therefore evil and questioning anything destroys the world?
I have this vision of driving MRAs into mental shutdown with a few optical illusions and the word “inflammable”.
I love it. Also they’re adorable.
That’s how old it is, but how long has it been widely abused as a quote?
Since I saw the movie when it came out.
It’s not funny. The memantic web will be evolve into a worldwide AI at the dawn of the Memularity, and then us puny humans will be tossed down the memery hole.
Dhorvath was the source of the outbreak!
(I noticed the quote around 1995, offline.)
Inigo Montoya infected me, ergo Mandy Patinkin is the source, I just vectored.
Don’t be so mememistic. We’re going to be smart enough to plan ahead. Once we’re jacked into the Memularity, those of us with money to blow will be able to transcend humanity and become a race of hyper-intelligent memans. Like that baby in 2001.
Holy crap. WWJTD has become smug douchebag hipster liberal central. Jesus Zombified Christ. I knew it was bad but damn.
Urge to kill Memularitians … rising …
Never mind, it makes sense.
Obviously this world of poverty and suffering is where Memenoch is testing us before we can be uploaded into the world of pure memetic forms. And I’m sure I’ll feel better once I am freed of all emotion.
Exactly. The worse you feel now, the better. They’re just trying to do the right thing by Mememmantizing the Memchaton, but it’s inevitable, so there’s really nothing you could do anyway. If the plan backfires, which of course is impossible, you’ll need to eat the baby.
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Good morning
So, Hashimoto’s has been confirmed, medication starts tonight.
Bugger.
Mr.’s off to the lawyer and in the afternoon we’ll take the car to the expert.
+++++
Re: mental illness
There are several big problems I have with SC’s reply to me, apart from the “I can’t hear you up here on my cross”.
The thing is that I posted some very specific things about a very specific person.
The reply was “people are worse off with meds than without”. Now, that in reply to “without meds he tried to kill people”, makes me wonder whether we have some different interpretations of the word “worse”.
Secondly, she linked to an article about a med-free (oh wait, does “de-emphasize” mean the same as “med-free”?) approach. Sounds promising. But I can’t help to notice that it’s an approach practised in Finland. How that’s going to help my cousin in Germany if he dropped the meds tomorrow is lost to me. It also is built upon resources not everybody has, like a support network of family. My cousin’s family consists mainly of a lung-cancer mum and a kidney failure dad, people who are struggeling with their daily survival themselves. How they are supposed to carry the burden to be a crucial part of the therapy is beyond me.
All in all it confirms my suspicions that SC cares a lot about thing in general, but doesn’t give a flying fuck about individuals.
1) Much ‘ruptness.
Congrats to all appropriate candidates, commiserations to those who need it, welcome to the newbies, love to all and brace yourself for incoming inconsequentialities.
2) Poo. Day Two.
Captain Diarrhoea McPoosalot (aka The Boy, aka my son), Anal Adventurer has decided that a second day of loose motions is a pleasant gift for his father. He was up all night communicating his distress to me. A unilateral decision was taken, with full assumed agreement from all parties, by my wife. She would sleep. I would not. Apparently it is my Turn.
Luckily I am not bitter, and thought I’d get a moderate amount of potty training in this morning. That was my second mistake. This is not something to attempt whilst sleep deprived (my first mistake). Cpt McPoosalot graciously permitted me a total of one hour of uninterrupted sleep before waking me up at a little before 6 am. Said Cpt of the rectal bombardment pulse cannon was also less than fulsomely keen on botty on potty action. And the first time I turned my head, for just a second, he had made a brave escape from the tyranny of the potty gulag.
Naked.
Screaming.
Sprinting.
Shitting.
Like a small human catherine wheel.
I am so lucky I have wooden floors.
I have mopped the equivalent area of the deck of a decent sized aircraft carrier, poured what is currently flowing per second through the Thames in chunky bleachy poo water down the loo, and cleaned and calmed an excited and poorly little soldier. Not necessarily in that order.
The baby bum drugs have been administered in mild dose, everything is clean for now, fluids have been given, comforting cream has been applied to a diminutive ringpiece that is glowing red hot, I have had my second shower of the day and I am contemplating topping up my coffee with calvados.
The Captain has now deigned to sit on his daddy’s knee as he types this, and is demanding access to the BBC “Cbeebies” website. He is not allowed to use it often but I might break the pattern this once and cave in.
I love being a parent!
Louis
There’s an article on The Drum Aussie news website here :
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4031988.html
Regarding the feminist ideas of the Rabbi Jesus as depicted in the NT which I figure some folks here may find interesting and wish to comment on / refer to sometime I hope?
Louis
I share your pain.
Only I’m happy that I don’t, at the moment, but, been there, done that. Only that I’m usually dealing with Ms. Pukey.
*hugs*
Giliell,
When they finally section me under the mental health act I will be screaming “THE POO! THE POOOOOOOOOO! IT’S EVERYWHERE!!!!”.
;-)
Louis
I looked briefly at the Rand lexicon site. No wonder the stuff never took in Europe.
What is wrong with ‘merkuns, that they buy stuff that is so obviously bogus? I mean, Europe has people who read Von Däniken but they do not function as a political bloc…
Maybe the state churches have already absorbed the kind of people who might become Rand cultists, but that cannot be the whole answer for the difference.
Louis you hilarious man, what are those baby bum drugs if I may ask?
In Singapore, too hot, must drink more Corona….
Just some extreme insane architecture for religious purposes (it mentions that people have died trying to visit, though I note the article – well, handful of captions, really – says nothing about how many people died being made to build this stuff)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150810/On-wing-prayer-The-extraordinary-hanging-monasteries-cling-sides-cliffs.html
PS I do not read the Daily Fail ::spits:: – someone sent me the link so I thought I’d share the vertigo.
Rorschach,
A small cork and some duct tape. With the usual amount of heroin. Obviously. Goes without saying.
In all seriousness, nothing at all but good hydration. Adult style anti poo meds aren’t good for kids IIRC (sans prescription).
And we’re not even at “visiting the GP” yet, just diarrhoea strong enough to prevent him from returning to nursery (where he caught it off a child of less considerate parents. The nursery forbids kids with diarrhoea, anything else (almost) is par for the course!). He’s eating/drinking fine, and doesn’t have an unusual diet anyway, so we’re comfortable.
I’ll see later today how he is and book him in for tomorrow if the sofa cushion filling and sawdust I’ve been feeding him doesn’t firm him up a bit. ;-)
Louis
Oh and I have been administering large doses of the most important treatment:
Cuddles.
And for some reason Dora the Explorer (who he is madly in love with).
Louis
ॐ:
NEW THREAD!