SSCReader
2mo ago
It's almost certainly true that solving it by aiming at Academia alone won't be sufficient, but that doesn't mean that it isn't necessary.
This is a lot more in depth than I was planning, and I am not sure how much time I will have to reply in the next couple of days, but I didn't want to just give you a "You're wrong" answer. Changing academia itself is not only not necessary but probably counter-productive. Academia does not create the Blue Tribe, it is in its current form created by the Blue Tribe. It doesn't matter what you do to academia, it will return to doing Blue Tribe things. Academia also thinks it is more important than it is. Buying into that framing will not get you a solution. Blue academia prepares you for Blue office life. This is how it should be. No point in preparing Blue Tribers to be farmers with Red Tribe values(generalization of course). Academia is a Blue Tribe pursuit that prepares you for Blue Tribe roles. This is not because the Blue Tribe is smarter or whatever. It is because Red Tribe and Blue Tribe are different.
There is a reason the Blue half of my family all became professors and teachers and the like and the Red half of my family all went into trades, and this is 50 years ago. Blue Tribe and Red Tribe are different, they have different values and different preferences. Definitionally the Blue Tribe cares more about academia for its own sake than the Red Tribe (but see below!). Ergo academia will always be governed by Blue ethos and rules. You can't change them to operate by Red Tribe preferences, because the actual Red Tribe doesn't want them (again we're operating in generalizations here) and if they did they would no longer be recognizable as the Red tribe. Do not confuse Blue Tribe conservatives with Red Tribers. They are not the same. Which is why when the Red Tribe relies on Blue Tribe conservatives (such as all the Catholics on the Supreme Court) it ends up not getting what it wants re gun control et al. There is some overlap in goals, but they are not the same. This is a crucial point.
The issue is that Red Tribe roles are always (but see below!) going to be harder and more physically demanding and therefore less prestigious than Blue Tribe roles. Miners want their kids to go to college so they can get an office job. They want their kids to sit in an air conditioned office and only have to worry about office politics and not a mine collapse, or fire, or black lung or losing fingers. This is where the American Dream collides with Tribal identities.
This is the fundamental issue the American Red Tribe has. The economic compounding effects of cities means high paid "easy" jobs are in cities and because cities make Blue Tribe people, that means Red kids need Blue Tribe education to fit in. Which means their kids have to go to university so they can qualify for Blue Tribe roles in Blue Tribe places.
So it's no good complaining Blue Tribe places teach Blue Tribe values. If they didn't they would be no good for getting Red and Blue Tribe kids into Blue Tribe jobs! Blue Tribe places do Blue Tribe things.
Or to put it another way, you can't make cities Red Tribe, because the Red Tribe largely does not want to live in big cities. That's part of what makes them definitionally Red Tribe in the first place. So it is with academia. In trying you would have to destroy what makes the Red Tribe the Red Tribe in the first place.
If there is a solution it is the economic re-distribution of value from cities to more rural areas, so that Red Tribe kids don't have to be taught how to be Blue Tribe to get a "good" job in the American Dream framing. This will rebalance the importance of academia fundamentally. It also hopefully stops the hemorrhaging of young people away from rural towns and therefore reduces "conversion" rates. Notably it can be accomplished with political power alone. Spending that political capital on changing academia is again a distraction (though you could fine/tax/defund them as part of a way to pay for it, this is going to be redistributing wealth from Blue to Red after all).
The other possible solution is time and AI. The Blue Tribe model is a better fit economically for current modernity. An AI revolution that substantially devalues white collar work may also tip the scales such that more manual tasks once again become economically dominant perhaps even over and above the compounding effects of cities. At least temporarily until we are all replaced by robots or nanites or something.
Fiddling inside academia is a smokescreen for the Red Tribe. It's not going to help. It can't. It's buying into a Blue Tribe framing of the Red Tribe problem.
And just to be really clear. The Red Tribe is not worse than the Blue Tribe, it's not overall any dumber or more backwards or ignorant or any of the other insults that are often flung by some Blue Tribers. Individual Red Tribers can and do excel in academia. Some of the very smartest people I know are Red Tribe through and through. Academia is not its forte not because of a lack of intelligence or curiosity but because of different values. Different desires. You can't change those without fundamentally destroying the Red Tribe as it exists. And it goes way beyond just academia.
The Red Tribe has to find its national political representation from Blue Tribe conservatives for the same reason. Hence the RINO tag et al. It's not about interlocking systems of control, it's about tribal identity, and what that means when those tribes actually have different values and preferences. Or perhaps to rephrase the problem with academia is not that it is Blue Tribe heavy, it is that it has become so dominating above the Red Tribe equivalents due to the way the modern economy works. You can't fix academia to be more Red any more than you could make a farming trade college more Blue without fundamentally destroying what it means to be Red or Blue. But you can put a finger on the scale if one is becoming too powerful.
Which is the irony of Trump of course, he is arguably a Blue Triber who shares the values of Red Tribers, even if he isn't actually all that conservative. Which means hopefully he will meaningfully work to shift economic value to rural Red areas. That will do far more to solve the academia problem than anything else I think.
And now I have written Red and Blue Tribe so much that I will probably be seeing it in my dreams tonight.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Thanks for responding! I wouldn't support cutting doctors salaries I don't think. Not that I am in charge of that sort of thing anyway! I also don't think it is the doctors job to be able to know all the costs. But I think it should probably be someone's job (probably at the insurance companies end) so that patients have transparency up front. It's hard to know what treatment to choose without knowledge of the costs as well as the benefits.
Enjoy your vacation!
SSCReader
2mo ago
Right this is exactly my experience (though nowadays it's Tik-Tok not Tumblr). These kids come in already complaining about Israel and with pro-Palestine flags and what not. I or my colleagues didn't teach them that. Which is not to say that some of my colleagues don't share those sympathies somewhat (though obviously varies on Jewishness level) but it's more acts of omission than commission in my experience.
SSCReader
2mo ago
And your students being more left of you in general doesn't say much, since having the proclivity to comment on a forum like this already makes you a highly atypical academic, but also, if you teach high schoolers or above, this is entirely consistent with the notion that academia is responsible for the flow of ideas to these students, via their exposure to academia in grade school and middle school.
We wouldn't normally call that academia though. And my experience right now is that these kids are getting their ideas from their parents and from Tik-Tok. So they come in already having opinions about Palestine for example. They weren't taught that in elementary school. And as I said before they are also left of most of my colleagues as well (who are yes a bit to the left of me on average).
But again you have it reversed. Critical theory is a creation of the Blue Tribe, it didn't create the Blue Tribe. You're again just saying Blue Tribe places do Blue Tribe things. Well yes, of course they do. If they didn't they wouldn't be Blue Tribe! All the concept of critical theory does is putting an academic skin on things Blue Tribe people already believed. They believed it, then they taught it in an academic way, but the Blue Tribe already HAD those beliefs. So the students are at best being taught how to express the things they already believe in an academic fashion. Because it's the very water they and their parents swim in.
Academia is downstream not upstream in other words. Academics frequently overestimate their own importance. Don't fall for it.
SSCReader
2mo ago
A brief look at the recent history of the awakening clearly shows the ideas flow from the institutions to the children,
Does it? I can assure you in very Blue Tribe places that is not so. Maybe you can argue it flowed from Blue Tribe places to Blue Tribe academia to academia in general.
That protests happen on college campuses does not mean the colleges are responsible for the ideas those protests are expressing. As I pointed out the kids I get in my classes are already well to the left of me in general.
SSCReader
2mo ago
I'm not at an age where I have to worry about significant medical expenses, but later down the line, one must confront the choice between cheap/quick/quality. The NHS errs on the side of the former.
It does. Which is why in the US I had like 5 people call me (pharmacist, nurse, Drug company rep, pharmacy tech, doctors office) before my infusion, all that cost disease money over here is at least employing people!
SSCReader
2mo ago
You must be anticipating I'd say... their parents? To be a little less glib, parents and family.
Blue Tribe people make Blue Tribe institutions. Which is the chicken and which the egg?
SSCReader
2mo ago
I'm sorry, I went through this with my first wife a few times. Including a placental abruption at 37 weeks that was devastating and 3 miscarriages at sub 10 weeks. We ended up with 3 healthy kids before she passed, so I suppose the try again advice is still the go to. At times it really is just a crap shoot.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Okay, once you've stopped laughing- not running the risk of Trump (and possibly Vance) continuing to gut their funding and harass them with lawsuits for as long as they can?
Indeed. But that will have to be sustained for a while. If the next President just reverts all of that, then a few years is easy enough to get through for most institutions. That's my point. It has to be a sea change from parents on up. Academia is a symptom not a cause.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Ok, are you in the UK or the US? If the UK, you might be able to enlist the help of the local adult social care department as a halfway house between psychiatric treatment and therapy. We used to offer just chat sessions to people suffering stress et al. But disconnecting even from a trusted pastor sounds worrying, so social services may not be an option either as that will need voluntary engagement.
Is there a trusted family member of hers who might be able to get through to her? If it were my wife, I'd be going to her brother and her cousin she is very close with for example. Not quite an intervention perhaps, but a display that multiple people she trusts are worried.
Having said that, you know the situation better than me, but I have seen spouses sectioning their sick wives/husbands result in the end of the marriage multiple times, so just make sure to think through your options. This is a legitimately tough thing to go through so make sure you are also looking after your own health. If you're engaged with your pastor at least you have some kind of outlet.
Good luck seems inadequate, but I will wish it anyway.
SSCReader
2mo ago
If you expect actual advice, my ability to help is rather limited
Oh not so much advice, just tagging you in on a kind of NHS related post. Colonoscopy is both as you said to stage the disease and because she worried about colon cancer, as UC increases the risk and I'm in my 50's and a meat eater.
Luckily while I am partially retired, I am reasonably well off so a few thousand dollars will not break my bank. Mainly I just dislike how up in the air everything is, as to what something will cost at least ballpark.
I'd say some of the burden the NHS takes off patients compared to the US it puts onto medical staff. And my brethren in Scotland are not exactly renowned for their physical or mental health so I am sure you have your hands full as it is.
SSCReader
2mo ago
I'm an academic (well part time) and my current experience is this: the kids are already "woker" and leftier than most of my colleagues even before we get our hands on them. They are mostly kids of Blue Tribe progressives, so they have already inherited a great deal of their world view.
They don't want viewpoint diversity and neither do their parents (generalizing of course).
What incentive does a university currently have to go against that in any concrete way?
SSCReader
2mo ago
I'm sorry this is happening for a start. I'm sure this must be very stressful for you. I suppose the main question is whether if you explain it to her does she recognize she is being scammed? Or is this a delusion and she really believes that she is talking to Elon even when you point out it is a scam?
If she's depressed then she might fall for a scam easier, but it's still different than if it is a full blown delusion. Is there perhaps a trusted pastor or faith leader (as you mention bible school) that you might be able to call upon? If she doesn't want to engage with conventional medical/therapy perhaps that is an alternative? Either through faith-based marriage counselling or even just them coming round for a cup of tea for a chat in a more informal way?
SSCReader
2mo ago
Time for an Ulcerative Colitis and medical billing update! Paging @Throwaway05 and @self_made_human.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I have been diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, a couple of years back, but that finding out in advance how much treatment was going to cost was nearly impossible. My colonoscopy to diagnose the disease cost me about 1500 dollars out of pocket. My doctor then put me on Velsipity, which was not covered by my insurance, but did have 2 years supply covered free by the drug company. My drug company did in fact approve the drug and add it to their formulary list, a couple of months ago. Just in time for my doctor to decide it wasn’t actually really stopping the progression of my disease, so we had to look for another drug to try. So it goes.
But before that I needed another colonoscopy! Again, no one could tell me how much it was going to cost me. It ended up costing me about 2,900 dollars out of pocket this time. Why the difference? Well because the first one was coded to my insurance company as routine, while this one is diagnostic. Nothing was different about the procedure at all. Diagnosis? My Ulcerative Colitis has progressed from mild to moderate to moderate to severe. So, my doctor decided we were going to try Tremfya, a biologic medication.
If you anticipated my next question was “How much is this going to cost me?” Then have a cookie or three! And if you correctly anticipated the answer was “I don’t know” then take the whole box. I can’t eat them now anyway. Tremfya is on my insurance companies list, but it has a whole bunch of caveats attached to it. They only cover so many doses; they only cover it from certain pharmacies they only cover it after you’ve tried other medications.
The drug manufacturer has a payment program, which may help people cover the out-of-pocket costs. Up to 20,000 dollars a year. Which sounds pretty helpful! But there is a twist. For Tremfya, your first 3 loading doses need to be delivered by slow infusion, which means you either need to go to a medical facility, or have a nurse come out and hook you up to a drip. Once again this will have a cost attached to it separate from the cost of the drug itself. I’m told having a nurse come out is by far the cheaper option. So, I pick that and see the Tremfya program may also cover up to 2,000 dollars for infusion costs per annum as well.
Note the important words there, however. May. It is not guaranteed, and the drug company can stop it at any point for any reason. So, I talked to the specialist pharmacy that is contracted to come out and do my infusion. How much will I have to pay? If you guessed the answer was “I don’t know” then you are to my shock, wrong for once. They said 40 dollars per infusion. Which sounds downright reasonable!
So, I go ahead and book the first treatment. The nurse comes, she is very nice, gets a vein on the first try and we spend 2 hours filling out multitudes of forms. I don’t immediately die or go into anaphylactic shock as some of the dire warnings on the medication indicate so I’ll count that as a victory. But now the time has come to pay the piper. I log into my insurance portal a couple of days later and I see the charges for the drug and infusion costs are pending. I wait a few more days with bated breath and then I am both unhappy and happy. For my cost for the drug itself was 0 dollars!
Let’s go back and look at the breakdown. A single dose of the drug was billed to my insurance company for 17,000 dollars. Normally I’d have to pay 20%. But my insurance company very kindly registered me for the Tremfya manufacturer program and that reduced my OOP to zero. Great. But that is 3400 dollars from that 20,000 dollar pot, for one dose. So let's put a pin in that.
Now let’s revisit the infusion cost. This is not for the drug, this is for the cost of having a nurse come out and administer it (and I was told it is much cheaper than having to go to a medical facility). Just close your eyes for a moment and guess how much the initial bill is. Got it?
Well, it is 35,000 dollars. My insurance company negotiated a discount to only 15,000 dollars. So I am billed around 3000 dollars out of pocket. Except the pharmacy had said after checking with my insurance I would only have to pay 40 dollars per infusion. So what gives? Well we have to go back to the OOP maximum! Because the insurance company administered the Tremfya program and got the money from them directly, the 3,400 odd dollars for that didn’t go towards my OOP maximum, because I didn't pay anything. So I am on the hook for the co-insurance here, not just the 40 dollar co-pay.
So, I looked up this on some UC forums and discovered this is indeed a thing. Many people have to force their insurance company to let them apply for the program on their own, because if you do that, it counts towards your OOP maximum. As you are billed, pay the balance and then get re-imbursed. So, while it looks like the insurance company is trying to help you, it actually screws you over. I call my insurance company and after two escalations and some back and forth they agree to apply the amount to my OOP maximum. This plus the previous colonoscopy costs means I now don't have to pay co-insurance costs for the rest of the year. Just co-pays.
I guess I'll worry about next year when I get there though at least I'll just be on 17,000 dollars a dose pen injectors by then. I'll hit my OOP max 3 doses in, which should be covered by the Tremfya fund.
Also don’t get me started on what the difference is between Annual Maximum Out-of-Pocket and Total Yearly Out-of-Pocket Maximum which are two entirely different figures and are very unclear as to the difference.
The Tremfya does appear to be working, for anyone in a similar situation. Although improvement in UC is measured in months and half-steps so we will see where I am in a while. Velsiptity did nothing but I also had no major side effects.
I'm not sure the NHS is better than the US system, but it's certainly less stressful and complicated from the point of view of the end user. Slower and less efficient though most likely.
SSCReader
2mo ago
So overall, great work, but just a couple of comments.
A) I am not sure how well sourced that quote by Staub "Staub described how the BBC's wartime audience — one-third embracing Christianity, one-third neutral, and one-third hostile toward religion" actually is. After all at that time about 90% of the population were some variety of Christian and would seem very odd that they would both be Christian and be either neutral or hostile to religion. Indeed the BBC wouldn't even allow discussion of atheism on air until 1948 or so.
He gets this from Justin Phillips book, which attributes the belief to James Welch. If we seek out where Welch was sourced about this it was in reference to writing a foreword about the Man Born to be King a BBC Radio drama about the life of Christ in 1941. Which indeed did get plenty of pushback... because it was seen as blasphemous and irreverent.
If we read Welch's actual words it turns out he is a) Talking about embracing religious broadcasting not embracing religion in general (and some of the opposition to religious broadcasting was from conservative Christians who though it was blasphemous because it was being translated into common language and idioms, not because they didn't agree with Christianity). b) It's just Welch's feeling. He says "we thought of these three groups (embracing Christian broadcasting, neutral to Christian broadcasting, hostile to Christian broadcasting) as being roughly equal. But there isn't any evidence that they were actually equal in size. All of the other data we have suggests that that he was probably wrong about that. And certainly if we expand it as Staub did to say embracing religion (not just religious broadcasting) it is entirely wrong. The vast majority of listeners would have been Christian believers at the time.
B) Lewis was a Protestant Ulsterman and while born before partition his attitudes towards the non-denominational aspects of Christianity may well have been influenced by the ongoing issues between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland (as well as the role the Catholic Tolkien played in his re-conversion). Indeed we can contrast Lewis and Louis MacNeice (another Belfast born poet and writer for the BBC) both raised Protestant in the Church of Ireland but both falling away from it (also funnily enough my own experience, not sure what that says about the Church of Ireland specifically) but who drew inspiration about that division into his critiques of fascism in 1930's Spain about how different lessons can be learned from similar environments. Though MacNeice supported another poet C. Day-Lewis (father of Daniel Day-Lewis) against C.S. Lewis in an election for Professor of Poetry at Oxford (too many Louis's and Lewis's here clearly!) and was not regarded super well by Lewis for his poetry, they had very similar backgrounds and trajectories. One ending up returning to Christianity, the other as an agnostic.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Ahem. Bureaucrats are unlikely to have made this decision. Politicians probably did (or at least decided the guidelines) so that the impact of housing asylum seekers was disseminated across differing communities. (Which might also involve getting one over on financiers, or charitably ensuring that the wealthy have some skin in the game (or even more cynically "See we're not JUST putting them in poor communities")). The bureaucrats just implement largely. This is Home Office funded so the decisions will have been made at a pretty high level.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Swearing yes, losing temper and screaming at a junior aide for an hour yes. Snappy profanity laced back and forth repartee, not so much. In my experience at least.
SSCReader
2mo ago
But this poor family made a terrible decision because they've been lied to about reality their entire lives. They thought they could take the fruit of generations of convicted felons, and rescue him from his genetic destiny, because they didn't believe it was real.
Again though this isn't the point because 1) You can't tell as an infant what his genetic destiny was or is or how impacted it was by malnutrition, or fetal alcohol syndrome, or a drug addicted mother, or lead or what have you. And how much of that can be overcome. No-one can. Because there are plenty of adopted kids from "bad" parents who do in fact go on to live good if not great lives. No-one can tell in advance. Again someone has to raise them because we are not going to kill them. and 2) Were they lied too? Are you sure the social workers and so on involved with the adoption did not say "hey you know this is going to be difficult? You know adopting someone from this background, they may well have unknown issues? They're likely underweight malnourished that is going to have potentially long term consequences, to health and behavior? and so on and so forth.? Because in my experience the main issue is that prospective adoptive parents don't take warnings seriously, not that they are not given them. 3) You are robbing these adoptive parents of their agency. You claim that they were lied to, that they didn't understand, but they're adults. They made a choice, a good moral choice, that sounds like it hurt them long term, I am sympathetic to that. I spent enough time working in social care to really understand that. The moral imperative of blank slatism did not rob them of anything. They chose of their own free will to take on a moral burden. They sound like good people. But moral burdens have costs. If doing the moral thing was easy, everyone would do it. If they think it is too much for them, and have to hand the child back, then I won't judge them for that, because at least they tried. But the child did not choose to be brought into their home. They chose it. It is their responsibility until that point. He is not in any way invasive. He's damaged by the sound of it. That isn't the same thing. And he may well be so damaged that he needs 24 hour care in a professional setting. That happens. Again believe me, I've seen horrible things, done by parents and by children. I'm not advocating that they must keep the child regardless of the harm he is doing to them.
Blank slatism is nothing to do with this, because you have no way of knowing whether the nurture or nature part was the issue. And you don't know in advance how he will turn out, regardless of his lineage. That's the issue with your position. You build off your assumption that this was predictable. But most adopted kids, even black ones, even damaged ones, do in fact go on to lead reasonable lives. Yes with more difficulties and more criminality statistically. But unless you are literally going to kill them as children, they MUST be raised somehow. And adoptive families seem to give the best possible outcomes of the options we have.
This isn't a situation where we either nurture the invasive species or burn it, like if we were dealing with plants. We either nurture it and hope it grows up to have some quality of life for itself and others around it, or we don't nurture it and it will be even more likely to have lesser quality of life and to contribute negatively.
Or to put it another way, even if blank slatism is 100% false. What else can be done? The child must be raised. It's either going to be (in your scenario), be by the original mother (presumably neglectful or abusive, hence the adoption), the state in a facility, or an adopted family. Which of these is MOST likely to lead to some kind of positive outcome for child and society do you think? How can we tell for sure which is best for any given child as an infant? Our current system is to try and get as many adopted or fostered as possible, as this seems to give the kids the best possible chance, and then if we can't, or if they turn out to be too much for the foster/adoptive family we raise them in a group home or similar. And if they are too much for that, then..well there just aren't great options. Institutionalized and drugged or put in juvie or the equivalent really.
What should have been done with the infant in your scenario do you think? What percentage chance of turning out reasonably does he need to have before an adoptive family should be given the option to try?
I do have sympathy for your mother in law as well. Most of my time was in adult social care, so I am intimately familiar with violent adult children and the various broken cycles of attachment and how reluctant/fearful parents can be sometimes to admit that the behavior of their offspring goes beyond just acting out and is actually dangerous criminality. Getting them into care and treatment can be difficult. And of course many parents don't want to call the cops because they (often rightly) think mental illness is not coped well with by the justice system. It's a horrible situation I am sure, and I am sorry your family is experiencing it. If you were in the UK, I would probably have professional contacts who might be able to help. As it is, I'll simply hope that your mother and father in law do realize the extent of the issues before something worse happens.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Even if you don’t accept any hereditarian claims, you still have to worry about things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, childhood malnutrition, and even neglect/abuse leading to stunted cognitive/physical development, etc. Again, these things are not guaranteed to make the child a ticking time bomb, but the likelihood is far from zero.
This is true, but exactly why the claim that nature had stomped nurture was untrue in the original post. It's not an invasive species. It's a damaged plant. It's a small tomato plant that you got from your neighbor who alternately overwatered and underwatered it, the pot was too small and the dirt was mostly bark, and they gave it crazy amounts of plant food and also somehow meth.
You can't draw a conclusion that it's a virulent invasive species when it overgrows its pot and grows tomatoes with blossom end rot. It may not be able to give you tomatoes you can eat. It may simply grow and take up space your other plants might need, but it doesn't necessarily tell you a lot about nurture vs nature. And it's reasonable to expect people to know that. So if they do in fact treat it like it is an invasive species not a damaged one, it does still tell you something about them. Especially when:
Or to put it another way, I've worked in social care, many of the babies taken for adoption or fostering(and this was in the UK so they were mostly white), have huge problems, as you point out, fetal alcohol syndrome being a huge one. And my colleagues would spend extensive time warning prospective adoptive parents and foster parents and trying their best to prepare them for the idea this was going to be a long painful slog in many cases. We're not nurturing an invasive species, we're trying to rescue a damaged baby we have decided we ought not let die or be neglected. Even when we know that it is likely that baby will have many problems and may in fact cause problems and pain for their new parents.
It's horrible for the parents involved and many of them hand kids back when they can't cope with them, but that was the job they signed up for. To give a kid a shot. You are deliberately choosing to trade your time and effort and yes pain in exchange for possibly healing and raising a wounded child. It's not invasive, you deliberately brought it into your home. Yes absolutely do so with open eyes, about the issues they may well be facing, but it's not an invasive species, or even a cuckoo left in your nest against your will (as the most recent clarification by Coil) it's a burden that was chosen. Recognize that it is a burden yes, but you don't then get to pretend it was an invasive species.
The ghetto infant didn't just hop the wall one day and end up in your garden. He or she didn't have a choice where they ended up, you made that choice for them. If you as the adults didn't think carefully enough about what looking after them was going to entail, then that is on you, not the infant.
SSCReader
2mo ago
The Khmer Rogue can get back to disarming traps, we're paying him to get us into the Zhentarim vault, not for his opinions on child rearing.
SSCReader
2mo ago
The difference is with kids is that someone has to raise them. We don't eradicate them like we do knotweed or whatever. For the good of the kid and society efforts must be made to get them to adulthood. A group home is unlikely to do as good a job as a family with resources. It may well be horrible and difficult for that family, but it must be done by someone. Which is why we don't force people to adopt or foster generally. It's going to be tough in a lot of ways.
It's supererogatory work, so it's not very helpful to talk about these kids as invasive species. In addition the whole rant about nature vs nurture is flawed. by the time a kid is an infant in need of adoption from a poor area like a ghetto, almost always nature has been confounded by maternal alcohol or drug use, maternal or infant malnutrition, you have lead exposure in pipes, a high stress environment for the mother, quite probable early birth and low birth weight. Likely lack of doctor's care and feeding post-birth. Possible neglect and abuse post-birth. Because if they had those things or were looked after properly, they are unlikely to be put up for adoption in the first place. May not make their behavior as they age any better for the parents of course. But it isn't possible to declare it nature and therefore the behavior of an invasive species.
SSCReader
3mo ago
Guns aren't banned in Scotland though either. You just need a license which is fairly easy to get for someone with a clean record. Handguns are banned though (with some exceptions). May not materially impact your point, but just clarifying as lots of people seem to think guns are banned in the UK entirely.
You could of course also look at murder rates among my Ulster-Scots brethren in Northern Ireland as handguns are legal there. Also getting hold of illegal guns is pretty easy. There are other confounding factors of course.
The old joke about Northern Ireland being the best preparation for any Brit moving to the US: guns, flags, religion and armed police on the streets.
SSCReader
3mo ago
British ex-pats (of which I am one) and some wealthy Malaysian British educated people STILL call it Maxwell Hill to this day. I've been there, which is how I know. I wasn't stationed in Malaysia but it was close enough I've visited (and hung out with said British ex pat community myself). That's not impossible to find out of course, so doesn't prove anything.
But you know him being a retired or semi retired ex-pat of an age close to my own is also not impossible. People born before 1979 do exist here. Indeed to blow your mind. I was born before the moon landing in 1969! I've been on the internet since it was Usenet and Muds.
Its not impossible Maxwell picked maxwell hill as part of her name and the house she grew up in, found out that it was also a place in Malaysia and was still called that by some people based her character on that, dropping hints over time she was Malaysian connected (remember though the Malaysian connection is based in part on posts by maxwellhill), not just a post hoc discovery, so it would probably have to be a deliberate choice by her.
It's not proof. But reading the maxwellhill posts it's either a British educated person with good knowledge of Malaysian ex pat/Brit educated communities or a very good imitation. For me its enough to suggest the Ghislaine connection is less likely. YMMV.
As per hydro who is I believe right wing, that is not my experience.
I think people heavily overestimate what people get from teachers and the like compared to family and nowadays social media.
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