Folamh3
User ID: 1175
Folamh3
15d ago
the stronger one gets the backlash because they are the ones committing the attrocities.
I find the use of the definite article here fascinating.
Folamh3
15d ago
Trembling Mad calls this gerrymandering power. When comparing Germany and Poland, Germany is stronger, ergo Germany's the bad guy - boooo! When comparing Germany and the USA, the USA is stronger, ergo Germany's the good guy - yaaaaay! It entirely depends on how close you zoom in.
I think this illustrates that "sympathising with the underdog" is a fundamentally wrongheaded approach to take in assessing which of two more parties has the moral high ground - once we've established that the weaker party is morally superior, that incentivises bad actors to contrive a narrative in which they're the weak victimised party, Goodhart's law-style. But even in cases where everyone pretty much agrees on which of two parties is strongest and weakest - well, it's still possible to be both strong and morally upstanding, or weak and morally degenerate. Common, even.
The Axis powers were not the weaker party in WW2. They invaded and defeated various countries that were weaker than them.
It can simultaneously be true that Germany is stronger than Poland and that the USA is stronger than Germany.
I replied to you prior to your edit - I'm just about as aggressively anti-communist and anti-Soviet as they come.
Folamh3
15d ago
Heck, if you look at ratios of civilian casualties -- as I've seen some argue makes Israel's actions unjustified -- America had almost none (generally counted as a few thousand if you include territories and civilian ship crews). The British claim 70,000. More civilians than that died in the Battle of Berlin alone, and Allied bombing campaigns killed hundreds of thousands. Not to mention the nuclear weapons.
I have trouble embracing the progressive worldview on Gaza because those same principles, applied to WWII, would have me side with the Axis powers.
To quote myself:
Freddie deBoer confuses me on this point, because he was once writing about the Israel-Palestine conflict and stated “Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg.”
But he has also argued repeatedly that "punching up" and "punching down" is a meaningless framework through which to look at humour, interpersonal relationships or anything else.
If I'm reading this correctly, he means that in a conflict between a weaker party ("egg") and a stronger party ("high, solid wall"), he will always take the side of the weaker party, even if they're wrong and the stronger party is right. Which logically implies that, were Hamas ever to gain the upper hand, Freddie would immediately start supporting Israel. It likewise implies that he ought to have supported the Axis powers in the second world war.
"Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand". Didn't realise that @roystgnr linked to this article in their comment, making my link redundant.
which Zack's spent a lot of time disagreeing with
As someone who expended a lot of words taking a public figure to task over his perceived hypocrisy/cognitive dissonance on the trans issue, it will not surprise you that I found this post very absorbing. It's so weird how this specific issue seems to break so many people's brains, even (especially?) people who built their reputations on being no-nonsense straight-shooters who don't care whose toes they step on in pursuit of Truth. As soon as the word "gender" is mentioned, they look at their feet and start mumbling about "why do you care anyway it doesn't affect you".
Zack hypothesises that the overrepresentation of trans women in the rat-adjacent sphere is Rationalism's shield against accusations of being insufficiently progressive - if they were to start saying things that run the risk of driving trans women away, the accusations would be substantially harder to defend against. I must admit this sounds grimly plausible to me, but it doesn't explain why Freddie deBoer has the same reaction to this issue.
Folamh3
17d ago
I mean, the leg amputated in the 1990s I quoted above.
Sorry, I missed that.
I'm not claiming it has no relationship to trans activism, just that "The Anglophone medical establishment appears to be fully ideologically captured" isn't a justified conclusion from this particular amputation and a single paper connecting BID to transgender people.
Fair point.
Amputating a few fingers is somewhat more invasive than putting a hairdryer in your car. But it's the same principle, right?
I don't see how placing a hairdryer in your car violates Primum non nocere.
It amazes me to think that I once found Scott's argument in "the categories were made for man" persuasive. Rationalists are all about defining words in ways which "cleave reality at the joints", and yet Scott apparently thinks that "anyone who claims membership in this category" is a better definition of "woman" than "adult human female".
do indeed appear to improve after taking them
Well, some and some. From my understanding, having read Jesse Singal's deep dives into this issue, the evidence base is a lot more mixed than trans activists would have us believe.
If A is evidence for B, B should be evidence for A, yes? "One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens?" If we took this case being a novel case of unnecessary amputation as evidence that trans ideology has thoroughly captured the medical system, or something like that, and then we observe that this isn't novel - I think we should doubt the reasoning that led to the claim of ideological capture.
If you have examples of cases of bodily integrity disorder being treated with amputation prior to the modern trans activist movement, I would love to see them. Or perhaps I should say - what gives me pause is not that amputations for sufferers of bodily integrity disorder are being carried out, but that they're being carried out using precisely the same reasoning that "gender-affirming care" providers use to justify removing breasts and penises.
Folamh3
18d ago
I will caution you that if you buy a hard copy of Lost Girls, do not read it on the bus. People will assume that you're reading child pornography, and with good reason.
When discussing pharmaceutical and surgical interventions in the treatment of gender dysphoria, the gender-critical among us often draw parallels with bodily integrity identity disorder. This is a rare psychiatric disorder in which a person experiences profound distress because of the presence of one or more of their limbs, and requests to have these limbs amputated to alleviate said distress (or tries to amputate them themselves). Colloquially, one might say that people with this condition are able-bodied but identify as disabled.
Given that no one thinks that surgical amputation is the correct treatment for this psychiatric disorder, we gender-criticals argued, it follows that surgical intervention is the wrong approach for people with gender dysphoria. If it's wrong to amputate a mentally ill's person's arm just because they say it's causing them distress, how can it be right to do the same for a penis or breast?
Sadly, one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens, the medical establishment has noted the parallels, and it is coming to a rather different conclusion:
Sensational news from late last week, that doctors amputated two fingers for a 20-year-old patient to alleviate the young man’s mental distress over being able-bodied, contained a buried clue: “He related his condition to gender dysphoria.”
... A 2018 ethics analysis in a Cambridge University Press publication concludes that there is “no logical difference between the conceptual status of BIID and transsexualism”. It goes on to say that, “given that individuals with transsexualism are offered gender reassignment surgery it seems to us that individuals with BIID ought at least to be considered for treatment, including elective amputation in some cases.”
... But what would it mean to accept the amputee identity at scale, the way we have accepted trans rights as a universal humanitarian movement? Drawing exact parallels, we would likely see a total saturation of amputee culture, from amputee story hour to centring amputee voices in DEI training, and doctors warning parents of the very real suicide risks for amputee-identifying children whose parents refuse to accept them as surgically modified cripples or invalids. Advocates would talk of being “assigned able-bodied at birth” to persuade activist teachers and medical associations to adopt the absolutist position that any attempt to talk kids out of amputee surgery amounts to “conversion therapy”.
The journalist Mia Hughes recently asked readers to imagine a society in which amputee advocates enjoyed the same cultural and political victories as trans advocates.
“Imagine there were a sudden 4000% increase in teens identifying as amputees, but we were all forbidden from being concerned. Instead we were supposed to celebrate it,” she posted on X. “Imagine schools teaching children as young as kindergarten that some people have amputee identities, that they get to choose how many limbs they have. Posters promoting body mutilation adorned the walls of many classrooms.”
Nothing specific to add to this* beyond despair. The Anglophone medical establishment appears to be fully ideologically captured. It doesn't matter if the Tavistock is shuttered and there's a rash of lawsuits directed at youth gender clinics in the US: if you're a medic who's internalised (or been made to internalise) the gender ideology worldview, the implications of that worldview and the role of the medical establishment it affirms have far-reaching implications in medical domains unrelated to gender medicine itself. At this point I honestly can't rule out psychiatrists prescribing anorexics appetite suppressants to aid them in achieving their "bodily attainment goals".
*Other than why the fuck are Canadian doctors so keen to help their fellow citizens maim or destroy their bodies??!!
Folamh3
18d ago
Finished When We Cease to Understand the World the other day. Fascinating, absorbing and concise. Well worth checking out if you have any interest in the luminaries of quantum mechanics (Schrodinger and Heisenberg in particular).
I've read and enjoyed Watchmen and V for Vendetta in the past
I recently re-read Moore's From Hell (a fictionalised account of the Jack the Ripper murders) and think it's superior to both (if admittedly a lot slower), so check that out next. As noted by @fishtwanger below, try to find the edition with all the notes in the back. The notes offer interesting insights into Moore's creative process and demonstrates just what an exhaustively researched work From Hell is.
- Cannot recommend anything by Adrian Tomine highly enough, marvellously funny and sad slice-of-life stories about modern America which often provide a penetrating insight into the Asian-American experience. Particularly recommend Shortcomings.
- Charles Burns's Black Hole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_(comics)) is so absorbing that I read it in one sitting. A wholly unique blend of 70s nostalgia, teen angst and Cronenbergian body horror.
- Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)) is a fascinating memoir about growing up in Iran after the Ayatollah came to power (later adapted into an animated film by Satrapi herself, also well worth checking out).
- Blankets by Craig Thompson. Read it years ago and can't remember it in detail, but remember thoroughly enjoying it. A memoir about the author's first love as an adolescent, while wrestling with his repressive Christian faith.
- The Sculptor by Scott McCloud. An engaging story about the sacrifices artists make in pursuit of their muse (kind of like a comic book Whiplash). Moving and powerful.
- Hyperbole and a Half. Not strictly a graphic novel: these originated as blog posts by Allie Brosh posted on the eponymous blog, in which Brosh recounts amusing anecdotes about her life interspersed with impossibly crude, Rage Comic-esque illustrations rendered in an MS Paint knockoff (one such illustration was actually memed to death in the early 2010s). The best of these posts were compiled into a paperback collection in 2013; I'm not exaggerating when I say this book made me laugh so hard that I was often struggling to breathe. In spite of the presentation, the book contains a two-parter about Brosh's struggles with clinical depression which is moving and profound. Brosh later followed it up with Solutions and Other Problems in 2020, which is worth checking out even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of the previous volume.
Folamh3
19d ago
Whenever I hear about the latest "scandal" about the use of generative AI in artwork, I'm reminded of how, in 1989, The Abyss was disqualified from the Best Visual Effects category in the Oscars because the effects were CG. We're going to look back in ten years and wonder what all the fuss was about.
But that's Freddie's entire point: Tyson's career wasn't destroyed. To quote from the original article:
Mike Tyson, Kid Dynamite, 1980s heavyweight boxing champion, has settled into a role as a beloved cultural figure. Once uniquely feared for his ferocious style (which has led to him being constantly overrated as a boxer in the all-time ranks), he’s come to be seen as a lovable, even cuddly presence. His fearsome reputation has strangely helped his new career as a wacky, “random” celebrity. At 57 years old, he’s fighting YouTube sensation Jake Paul later this year, in another sign that we’re living through the fall of Rome. He enjoyed a major career resurgence with his famous cameo in the raunchy 2009 comedy The Hangover. Since then, Tyson has appeared on talk shows, started a podcast, made comedic television commercials, and as you can see in the image at the top, starred in an animated television show for Adult Swim. Broadcast from 2014 to 2019, Mike Tyson Mysteries had that mid-period Adult Swim quality of attempting to substitute a wacky premise (ferocious-turned-adorable Mike Tyson solves crimes) for actually being funny. The show does serve, though, as a good symbol of how Tyson’s public image has become kitsch, his resurgence based on nostalgia for his boxing career and the fact that the entertainment industry loves both established names and unpredictable personalities.
To quote from his Wikipedia article:
After his release [from prison] in 1995, he engaged in a series of comeback fights, regaining the WBA and WBC titles in 1996 to join Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Evander Holyfield and George Foreman as the only men in boxing history to have regained a heavyweight championship after losing it.
Folamh3
21d ago
Folamh3
21d ago
The year before last, I cut caffeine out completely for a month. While the first week was a challenge, it must be said that I slept like a baby for the entire period, better than I'd slept for years prior.
The only problem was readjusting. The day after I completed my detox I was over at my parents' house for dinner and had two cups of tea. I felt like I'd done a whole gram of coke, my heart was racing.
Folamh3
21d ago
I just don't think your claim (that people have generally forgiven Allen and excuse his behaviour as the product of a different era) is true.
Folamh3
21d ago
I'm thinking of one specific guy I know, who describes himself as "demisexual" and yet admits to watching porn. Not an OnlyFans girl with whom he has the plausible deniability of claiming that he knows her intimately (or the character she's playing) - just regular ol' XVideos.
If you need to get to know someone before you feel sexually attracted to them - how can you jerk off to porn? I don't get it.
Folamh3
22d ago
Years ago I saw the trailer for an indie comedy film wherein two straight men pretend to be gay in order to get women into bed. Their reasoning is that if they present themselves as gay, women will let their guard down around them. Then they can announce "oh my God, I'm so attracted to you, I've never been attracted to a woman before", and the woman in question will be so flattered that she'll go to bed with the guy.
Is it reasonable of me to assume that any straight man who describes himself as "demisexual" is pulling exactly the same kind of long con, but more subtle?
Why might he not like it? Because I think the original purpose of describing it as anti-LGBT was to try to indicate that we're just some weirdos who have beef with LGBT people, or something, and this policy is an outworking of that, but when it's a fairly broadly conceded view, it becomes far harder to present one's opponents as crazy when even some of one's allies might agree with them.
And I figured he'd prefer to say that people are against a sports policy (in a way that doesn't say that most, even some of the left, are sometimes anti-LGBT) than affirm that they are sometimes anti-LGBT more flatly. That is, arguing that anti-LGBT things are democratically preferred. Since both sides like to think themselves as part of the majority in a democracy, and to have the mandate of the masses (should such a thing exist), I figured he wouldn't like that too much.
Funnily enough, I described this argument and (what I imagine to be) the motivations behind it in my last effortpost before this one. Like you, I acknowledged that the fact that an opinion is popular doesn't imply that it's right. But it's still annoying to have your opinions mischaracterised as crazy fringe extremist views when they enjoy a high level of popular support.
I worked as a cyclist for Deliveroo for three months. By the end of it I knew practically every back alley in the city centre, and would just glance at the address on the app, not needing to consult Google Maps to find my way. I don't know what the equivalent food delivery service is in your city, but a lot of these services are pretty chill about letting you pick your own hours. Even if you worked one shift a week you'd probably see a big improvement in your navigation skills.
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