CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
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User ID: 333
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
5mo ago
On the back of prior discussions about forced 'voluntary' reporting of sleep apnea diagnoses in the State of Maryland in order to qualify for a drivers license, I'd like to draw attention to something similar happening with autism diagnoses in Queensland, Australia. Last year there was an update to the Assessing Fitness to Drive standards to list autism as a medical condition deemed to have an impact on driving.
“As a result, psychologists say people are now cancelling their autism assessment appointments because they fear the legal and financial consequences of not disclosing their condition — while others argue the new standards are "discriminatory" and unfairly target people with autism on the basis of their diagnosis, not their driving ability. “
...
“While the 2022 Assessing Fitness to Drive (AFTD) standards apply across the country, a Queensland law called Jet's law, introduced in 2008, requires drivers to disclose any medical condition that is likely to affect their ability to drive safely — and in some cases obtain a medical certificate to prove they are fit to drive.”
...
“According to the state's Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR), autism was added to the list of reportable health conditions in 2012. Drivers who fail to obtain the medical clearance face a maximum A$9,288 fine and possible loss of licence.”
There's a fair bit more in the article that goes on about a few individual cases, but the gist of it seems to be that in the state of Queensland you need to provide medical clearance to drive from your doctor to the TMR (DMV) if you wish to apply/maintain your license once you are dignosed with autism. Most other Australian states seem to have a more reasonable 'you are legally required to report any ongoing condition that effects your ability to drive' standard.
In Queensland it seems like the above stated “Jet's Law” came about when someone with epilepsy had a fit resulting in a car crash that killed a baby and left his brother in a wheelchair for life. So this law was created To Do Something that then through bureaucratic ignorance has expanded to include other conditions such as autism as the Assessing Fitness to Drive standards were used as a list to determine what these conditions were. And then people have possibly decided to stop being diagnosed rather than deal with the hassle/stigma of reporting.
This is just so banal and unjust that someone diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum would then have to report that straight to the government or risk being fined thousands of dollars and stripped of their ability to drive. Luckily there is some pushback with a guy in the above link apparently filing a case with Queensland's Human Rights Commission, but still, it shouldn't have gotten this far.
Edit: fixed formatting
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
5mo ago
Update on the Paul Kessler death from last week (link to Gattsurus post from last week's thread):
Police have arrested the Palestinian supporting computer science professor that allegedly swung a megaphone at Kessler; a pro-Israel counter protestor, resulting in the latter falling down and hitting his head leading to death.
"Loay Alnaji, 50, was taken into custody Thursday morning and is charged with involuntary manslaughter and battery causing serious bodily injury, officials said."
...
"Alnaji, of Moorpark, was being held Thursday night on $1 million bail, according to online records."
...
"Both charges he faces are felonies, the Ventura County District Attorney's Office said. It said both counts have special allegations that Alnaji personally inflicted great bodily injury,which is a type of enhancement.
...
"California penal code defines involuntary manslaughter as when someone is killed by an unlawful act less severe than a felony or by a lawful act that might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution."
I know there was a fair bit of speculation around whether he would or would not be charged, but it seems like the cops think they might have enough evidence to make this stick (even though they are still asking people to come forward if they were a witness or have video). Either that or they've decided they'd better do everything they can to dodge the political consequences of not prosecuting with so much signal boosting from jewish advocacy groups.
@gattsuru linked an earlier post by @FCfromSSC that opines that Blue Tribers are less likely to face consequences of these sorts of scuffles. If that theory is correct than perhaps Jewish Zionists still rate higher than Palestinians on the progressive stack and in situations like this the lower ranking Blue Triber will face punishment more like the Red Tribe.
Also, if you're going to go to a protest and be a maskless speaker it seems like you should do whatever you can to avoid scuffling. Without a mask Alnaji didn't have the option of leaving the scene with his anonymity intact.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1yr ago
A well regarded amateur analyst of the war in Ukraine (Perun) posted a video talking about the Russian concept of 'Vranyo' (враньё). This is a pattern of lying where various parties are aware that the lying is taking place and for what purpose. He basically cites it as a major reason for the lack of effectiveness of the special operation. The video is worth a watch if you have time (1 hour).
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
2mo ago
It's just standard internal vs external Locus of Control.
It doesn't matter what your politics or background is. An external locus of control is poisonous and will result in worse outcomes over your lifetime.
This concept gets obfuscated with people trolling 'just pull yourself up by your bootstraps' when there are clearly external factors preventing success. Even in those cases when the deck is stacked against you, you are better off doing what you can with what you have rather than just giving up and succumbing to Learned Helplessness.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1yr ago
'The reason you're failing with women is because of your negative attitude' is a pretty common trope response to any discussion men have around about structural problems with dating in modern society. As is women taking critiques about female behaviour in the dating world as a personal affront.
Men having mask off discussions like in this thread do not (for the most part) bring negative attitudes to their interactions with women. Quite the opposite, their acceptance of the modern dating environment acts as a pressure release for any resentment they feel towards women.
if Canada really wants to pick a fight with an otherwise neutral/positively inclined major nation.
The framing of this that Canada is the one starting things is poor form. I'm surprised considering your desire to emigrate to greener pastures to not consider the consequences of events like this.
In Australia, we occasionally have these sorts of flare ups of major nations with a large emigre population violating our sovereignty because, basically fuck you that's why. The calculus of the meddler is ostensibly 'well they aren't a major security or economic partner so who cares. What are they going to do?'
Nothing gets people from multicultural countries who are neutral on large immigration to turn anti-immigrant faster than immigrants' mother countries exerting their will in our home. Recent local examples of this involve China sending police officers to police chinese immigrants in Australia, framing it as a benign outreach service used for issuing drivers licenses and the like. Except without having a fixed address. Or notifying the Australian Government..
I despise Trudeau, but he's speaking to the local population and absolutely if push comes to shove he will tell India to fuck off in diplomatic speak, because to do otherwise would be political suicide. Middle powers cannot sanction effectively as independents, but there are often diplomatic blocs to exert influence precisely to stop this sort of casual disregard for civil unrest in targeted nations.
Edit: A couple of words for clarity.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1mo ago
I often come across events in a shallow way (like Musk's Grok AI) that I don't have the time/knowledge to write up, but I'm kind of hoping someone else will comment on.
What do people think about a 'Culture War Request Thread' where people without the time (or wordsmithing skills) can suggest current hot topics that others may be interested in investigating/developing?
Has this been considered or tried before? Would it drain energy from the main thread? Is the main thread fine in the sense of 'if no one has made a top level post, its probably not that interesting' sense?
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1mo ago
I was on the internet this week
That was your first mistake.
It is clear that what educational and social institutions want are meek, inoffensive and productive men who do not question the rules of society. This is in direct contrast to what young men want, which is to be outspoken, to be popular with women, to be socially and economically successful. No role model ever produced or selected by the state could manage this, particularly not when operating under the notion that it must maintain women's liberation, which itself requires the stifling of men. I question for how much longer this approach will be kept in place.
Market forces will kill any initiative like this. There is no demand for role models that don't teach young men what they want to learn (at least from the young men themselves).
The same thing happened with injecting progressive politics hamfistedly into tv, movies and video games. The market will just flow around and find what it demands elsewhere.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
9mo ago
Yes, the failure of many men was in not screening the mothers of their children for acceptable behaviour before knocking them up.
After doing a bit of reading it seems that Jonah Hill actually just dated the surfer girl for a year, stated his boundaries after observing unwanted behaviour, and they broke up for that reason (good for him). He then moved onto his current partner with whom he now has a child.
I don't blame Jonah for saying what he said in the way he said it. He said 'if you need to do these things, happy to support you, but I'm not the partner for you'. He was probably mildly insecure, but if stating those insecurities as boundaries is classified as abuse in a relationship then I would say 80%+ of women are guilty too (and a large percentage of men). I doubt he was talking about staying away from 'any friend he hadn't pre-approved of' (additional link with more texts giving context). From the additional texts it seems likely he was talking about guys hitting on her while she was surfing and her not extricating herself from the situation. She was 25 when they were dating, so pretty fair if she didn't know how to handle overly flirtatious men yet.
In contrast Keke's partner kind of brought it on himself by criticising her behaviour on Twitter. I don't know what he was thinking I think posting private relationship discussions publicly pretty much destroys your own reputation as someone safe to date by a large percentage of the population.
You shouldn't need to tell your partner what is acceptable behaviour regarding other men. Trying to change people is a recipe for disaster. Even if wild players/playettes change their behaviour in the early phase of a relationship (perhaps due to limerance or pair bonding), they're likely to eventually revert back to their old ways. As the old PUA saw goes 'you can't turn a ho into a housewife'.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1yr ago
I think the incel movement is just a 'canary down the coal mine' for society in general with regards to how modern culture and technology is hampering people from getting their basic needs met.
While there is an argument that there were always socially inept young men who were unable to find romantic partners, I think that the modern western world has created unique challenges that didn't exist in prior generations (such as social media and downstream expectations on what a male partner should be).
It's pretty straightforward to me that the mainstream progressive view is that less empathy should be accorded to the outgroup (western incels) than fargroups (ethnic immigrants) with the same issue (finding female partners in the West).
I don't have any real solutions to this issue, but I hope society affords more empathy to incels moving forward and has the foresight to address the root societal, cultural and technological causes preventing those men (and women) from finding happiness. Touch, empathy, acceptance and love are basic human needs. Society would be much better off if incels had those needs met in terms of productivity via enfranchisement, less culture warring and societal friction and that's before you get to basic human kindness and decency in helping and accepting the unloved.
Instead we get people treating them like atomised terrorists and a threat that needs to be crushed. My time observing the culture war makes me think that their treatment will get worse before it gets better.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
7mo ago
At the very least, I don't bat an eye when the West enjoys a little 'ol extraterritorial killing, say Suleimani in Iran, or when Mossad gets up to their usual shenanigans. So I'm not sure why I'm supposed to decry this too much when a third world country returns the favor.
If you maintain this attitude when foreign governments kill Indian citizens on Indian soil because 'they were political agitators and had it coming', then I will accept your point. For what its worth I'm not for extrajudicial killing, even though I understand that through democracy Western citizens have some level of responsibility for past killings done in their supposed national interest.
I'd certainly be surprised if this had any effect on attitudes towards emigration, for the obvious reason that the "victim" is an immigrant himself. You'd expect that to make bleeding hearts clamor to bring more people to the relative safety of their shores.
I'm sure the political and media class will stress to separate Indian immigrants from the Indian government (in fact from the articles I've read I think this process has already started). However many locals will not buy that argument and will see it as foreign political agitation being imported in line with the increase in profile of Indian political activists operating in Canada.
In Australia, past examples of this occured with Anti-CCP activists protesting in Australian major cities. As a consequence China sends foreign agents to exert their influence such as organising pro-CCP students in Australian universities to counter protest. Australians end up watching foreign political battles over something that doesn't concern them playing out in our public sphere..
Of course the Cathedral will play up this kind of thing as the right to free protest, but much of the public here would just prefer that they shut their mouths and get on with life. Pro-Indian government activists can say 'well they started it', but regular citizens here can find that an incredibly weak argument. People don't care who started it, they just want it to stop. It has nothing to do with us and the easiest way to make sure this doesn't happen is to not allow people to immigrate from countries with significant political instability. With more acts like this there will be more pressure to limit immigration. Normally I would laud this and from my point of view many political dissidents (including the deceased) who refuse to live quietly should fail the citizenship character test, but the brazenness of this sort of foreign interference sticks in my craw.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
8mo ago
It's being used as a rhetorical attack to discredit Jefferson and Poison the Well. "Jefferson was racist, ergo a bad person and all of his works are now discredited." It's not a truth finding expedition being made in good faith, but rhetorical culture war.
"Why won't my opponent concede when he knows I'm using rhetoric?" isn't really a fair question.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
6mo ago
I'm 95% certain he's not natty as someone that has barely lifted 100kgs on a bench in my life. A 21yo would have the best chance of anyone, anywhere in gaining muscle mass, but I don't think you can do that without juicing. I'm not against performance enhancing drugs in the private sphere; just against influencers pushing an impossible ideal while pretending they did it without help.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
6mo ago
I’m paraphrasing, that there are mentally ill or damaged women who will make those kinds of accusations, and the only thing a young guy can do is not have sex with damaged or mentally ill women.
Strangely enough, this license isn't given to male rapists to portray them as 'damaged or mentally ill'. No, rapists are completely culpable. Actually the men around them are culpable for the act too.
If she’s an upset, needy person and you [expletive] her and then the rumor starts going around school, she might need to, for the defense of her reputation, say, “He raped me.”
This is literal apologia for a false rape accusation; "she might need to". Ok if she needs to commit a crime to protect her reputation, seems like she gets a pass.
I'm being a bit trite here and I know this conversation is framed towards actions that men can take to protect themselves. I'm actually a fan of internal loci of control and would give similar advice to young men. My issue here is just that this attitude is clearly unidirectional and feminists in the majority would never give practical advice like this towards women to keep themselves safe from rapists. Including avoiding spending time with 'damaged or mentally ill' attractive men.
Everything about the exchange in the article is to preserve hypoagency to be used as a shield by women if necessary. Someone else has already coined this term, but this sort of 'Schrodinger's Agency' where women can be agentic or not according to whether it suits them in the particular circumstances (even applied or withdrawn retroactively) is one of Feminism's great Motte and Baileys.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
7mo ago
"Im seeing a guy" felt like a small death.
Back when I was doing this sort of thing, I was genuinely happy to get this sort of response from a girl. Particularly when it was after a great conversation and connection that was pretty unfalsifiable in terms of being genuine. I felt that I had been acknowledged as a man and as being attractive. Her being unavailable was irrelevant. Really encouraging.
I had the same feeling when I was involved in a long term relationship and had a similar conversation with a single bridesmaid at a wedding. I was in a different country at the time. Same great conversation and acknowledgment of each other as attractive and I was upfront about being in a relationship. No hard feelings at all on either side.
Don't let this sort of response get you down at all. It's not the same sort of 'rejection'.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1yr ago
I agree with what you've said. Further to this, I think the 'satanic' labeling is playing itself out.
I get it, I'm right-wingish, but the 'literal satan' memes in the right social media sphere aren't bringing people to their side. They reek of 1980's dungeons and dragons moral panic.
It could be just rhetoric vs rhetoric on twitter, but it feels like a bridge too far.
Edited: making sure I wasn't directing at comment above who I agree with.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1mo ago
It would be interesting to have a yearly poll about our users' political beliefs.
I think you're right. It's clearly more right wing then it was on reddit. I don't think it's hard right, but there's something to Scott's post about witch tolerance.
Anecdotal, but I've had a theory for a long time that too much screentime leads to atrophy of the part of the brain used for social interaction. I'm quite serious about this, based on personal experience. The more interactive the screen is, the more detrimental it is; basically watching tv < doomscrolling social media < videogames.
I remember reading some insights from a child psychologist about this back in 2012 who called it 'Electronic Screen Syndrome', a sub-clinical issue that proposed a link between nervous system overstimulation and social anxiety (amongst other things). From the link:
- The child exhibits symptoms related to mood, anxiety, cognition, behavior, or social interactions that cause significant impairment in school, at home, or with peers. Typical signs/symptoms mimic chronic stress and include irritable, depressed or labile mood, excessive tantrums, low frustration tolerance, poor self-regulation, disorganized behavior, oppositional-defiant behaviors, poor sportsmanship, social immaturity, poor eye contact, insomnia/non-restorative sleep, learning difficulties, and poor short-term memory.[7]
- ESS may occur in the absence or presence of other psychiatric, neurological, behavior or learning disorders, and can mimic or exacerbate virtually any mental health-related disorder.
- Symptoms markedly improve or resolve with strict removal of electronic media (an “electronic fast”); three- to four-week electronic fasts are often sufficient but longer fasts may be required in severe cases.
- Symptoms may return with re-introduction of electronic media following a fast, depending on a variety of factors. Some children can tolerate moderation after a fast, while others seem to relapse immediately if re-exposed.
- Vulnerability factors exist and include: male gender, pre-existing psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, learning, or behavior disorders, co-existing stressors, and total lifetime electronic media exposure. At particular risk may be boys with ADHD and/or autism spectrum disorders.
I found limiting screen time to improve my own sociability, but unsurprisingly I'm ticking the boxes for some of those vulnerability factors.
edit: Anyway, I couldn't find some non-fluffy data around screentime use by age, but the fluff articles in a simple google search show that younger generations are using screens more (More than 6 hours per day). Also, here's a random paper showing a correlation between more than 6 hours of screentime a day and depression.
Put millions of mines behind your barrier wall. So only people who breached it are going to explode.
Yes, having a sterile (buffer) zone between two fence lines with clear signage is the way to go here. There would not be children wandering in. Intruders would have to deliberately defeat the outer fence before wandering into the mine field.
Edit: A big vulnerability is tunneling. A captive motivated population with a lot of time on their hands can dig more tunnels. There are vibration sensors for this, but deploying them along the entire border would be a very expensive prospect.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
7mo ago
The old Feminist trope of 'just teach men not to rape' has been around for years and is a clear non-starter. I used to get really wound up about this (along with lots of other feminist arguments), but now I see it as potentially anchoring a negotiation for additional resources to be spent on women's safety. Not that I find the argument fair or compelling in any way shape or form.
It's another example of feminism exploiting hyperagency/hypoagency when it suits their needs. In this case the argument is that women have no agency around whether they are victims of crime or not and men (as a group) are 100% responsible for the rapes that happen in the world. Men are presumed to have so much agency here that they are responsible for the crimes of other men. You can see this with statements like 'its up to men to stop rape' and dedicated organisations built around this concept.
I'm libertarian leaning and have a strong valuation of agency and an internal locus of control. I despise those that are emotionally manipulative and try to get others to shoulder their personal responsibilities (including the responsibility for personal security). It's probably a large part of why I despise Feminism as an ideology.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
2mo ago
Interesting. I think this would work. Doctor just needs to make brief dot points and print it out. He can also save a copy of the notes to the patient's file (to cover his ass in the event of patient's lying).
Doctors are often lazy and or overworked though, so even though this would be a small amount of work, it would still be a not insignificant thing in the context of cramming even more activities into a 15 minute consultation.
My issue isn't that the lead women had trash personalities. I'm actually really happy when #currentyear writes women and minorities as bad people. The issue is largely that the lead characters seemed to be badly written male characters that were gender swapped.
Also the 'murderer(s)' breaks suspension of disbelief. It's just a badly written detective show that some bright executive thought it would be a good idea to bolt the franchise's name onto.
Edit:
But what has happened is that many critics, podcasters, even Issa Lopez, the director, are blaming the backlash on sexism and misogyny.
This was a forgone conclusion. The finale thread on /r/TrueDetective has a few comments (cough) predicting this deflection.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
1yr ago
Based on the above findings, we suggest cultivating individuals’ media literacy in terms of distinguishing malicious social bots as a potential solution to deal with social bot skeptics disguised as humans, as well as making use of benign social bots for science popularization.
Clear proponents of using bots for information and cultural warfare.
As an aside, the psy-op groups within military and intelligence organisations must already be exploiting the advanced chatbots. How much of the Ukraine war propaganda is already using this praxis?
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
7mo ago
But the things that seem obvious to us aren't always obvious to people until they've been taught, especially in a culture where we obsessively shield young people from all sexual topics so they have no idea what they're doing. There really is a role for education there, as one among many avenues.
Why don't we teach young women 'please never send mixed signals to men about your sexual interest as ambiguous coquettishness muddies the water around consent'? Why is it 'No means no and if you don't have a yes, it's a no' in the face of all observed human mating practices? All the responsibility for miscommunication around consent is placed onto the shoulders of men by the groups advocating 'education'.
To be fair, I do think there should be some education about consent in the basic Sex Ed taught in schools, but it shouldn't be the ideologically captured garbage that is pushed now (eg 'enthusiastic consent' or its rape). There are consequences to not having any nuance around this delicate subject. As it stands there are a certain amount of sensitive empathic young boys who will take the narrative at face value, twisting their sexuality into a pretzel in order to never violate a girls consent, or even make her uncomfortable by making a pass. This is a recipe for involuntary celibacy and dissatisfaction on both sides.
Continuing on with The Motte's theme of the week, the Australian Federal Government has given the online dating industry a year to implement a 'voluntary' code of conduct in the face of 'online sexual violence' or presumably face regulation.
This ultimatum seems to be motivated by “An investigation by the Australian Institute of Criminology last year found three-quarters of online daters had been subject to some kind of online sexual violence in the past five years.”
Finding the referenced report 'Dating App Facilitated Sexual Violence' (their term, not mine) seems to include amongst other acts:
- Pressured the respondent to give them information about their location or their schedule
- Continued to contact the respondent even after they told them they were not interested in having a relationship with them
- Pressured the respondent verbally to perform unwanted sexual acts (eg making promises, lying, repeatedly asking or insisting etc)
- Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit message
- Sent the respondent an unwanted sexually explicit photo or video of themselves
- Pressured the respondent to meet them in person when they did not want to
This would include dick pics or non-consensual sexually explicit language sent through a dating app, along with other mundane dating activity. The march to broaden the definition of sexual violence to include 'making women uncomfortable' continues.Australia, is usually a follower of countries like Canada and the UK when it comes to these sorts of policies, but it does occasionally become the first mover when there is the chance of getting a cheap political win (and to seem like it is doing something in the face of more serious issues such as the housing crisis).
The linked news article is kind of buried down the state news media's front page and references the federal government's
karensocial services minister who has previously worked on 'cyber safety' committees. There is a fair chance this is a complete nothing burger that will blow over and is just the govt making noises rather than actually intending to follow through, but time will tell.More options
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