5434a
1hr ago
Why is it important that it not?
I addressed that.
those aspects are not biological in nature
See, you want to selectively rule out one set of non-biological factors while ruling in others. One set of biological factors and not the other. One set that are mutable and another set that are immutable. And you want to combine them to what end? I'm repeating myself.
5434a
23hr ago
My point is less about the answers and more about why this is a question. Why is it important that the definition makes an allowance for the aspects that can be changed? And why those particular changeable aspects (eg hormone ratio) and not other far more easily changeable aspects (eg is holding a baby-shaped object, or has painted nails, or etc)?
I think it's because it selectively favours subjective interpretations over more rigorous objective interpretations, and that it does so for the reasons I've already stated. And I'm trying to point out that those subjective interpretations could be almost totally arbitrary if they weren't required to align with those stated reasons. It's a biased and flawed epistemology, which raises the question whether the bias and flaws are necessary and if they are what's stopping us accepting similar amounts of bias to other questions. These kinds of recurring difficulties are symptomatic of an agenda that pointedly neglects to extend its own logic past the point it set out to reach.
If you've carefully chosen the point where the binary is alterable to accommodate the people who both want to alter it, and to allow their alteration to qualify for the definition that you've chosen, while also upholding the binary, then I return to my original point: That particular point was chosen solely to alleviate their dissatisfaction with being unable to be accommodated through any superior means.
5434a
2d ago
Why have you stopped at that point in particular? Why not say that anyone who can hold a baby is a woman, and anyone who can throw a punch is a man?
For most purposes
For ONE purpose: To alleviate the dissatisfaction a small number of people feel because they remain unable to change their sex.
5434a
3d ago
~300 pages into the unabridged Les Miserables. So far it seems oddly like a parellel inverse of Count of Monte Cristo; assumed identities, long prison stretches, changes of fortune, redemption vs revenge, guilt vs innocence, rising in society vs falling, self interest vs pro sociality, life at the top vs life at the bottom.
5434a
6d ago
Formula 1 teamed up with Netflix to repackage the sport as a reality TV show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_1:_Drive_to_Survive
The show has received recognition for the additional insight it offers fans, and is credited with attracting new audiences (particularly American) to the sport. The condensing of season-long themes into single-episode narratives has drawn praise for adapting "the natural drama of a racing season into a narrative that can encourage a fan to tune into the real thing."
However, Drive to Survive has been criticized for including fake or misplaced commentary and team radios, staging certain scenes, placing undue importance on test and practice sessions, and over-dramatizing or misrepresenting certain events and relationships within the Formula One paddock. The continued criticism from both audiences and drivers led to discussions between Netflix and team managers, as well as between Formula One and the drivers.
Max Verstappen refused to participate in interviews for seasons 3 and 4 as he believed that the show dramatized some drivers by portraying them as villains and manufactured fake rivalries.
5434a
8d ago
Yeah it depends where you live. There's no issue here in the UK but I saw a comment online yesterday saying how difficult it is to buy (non-THC) vape stuff in California.
5434a
8d ago
I've done it a couple of times before (cue quitting is easy dozens of times joke). Currently doing it again in a very drawn out manner.
Since you're a doctor I assume you're aware of nicotine's effect on blood pressure and peripheral circulation. Everyone knows that smoking = lung cancer and heart attacks, and a lot of that is because smoke of any kind is bad for you, but it's worth pointing out for the general Wellness readership that, while vaping is a lot safer than smoking, nicotine has inherent effects on health regardless of whether it's burnt in a giant sweaty cigar or administered by a sterile prescription nicotine replacement widget made in a lab by big pharma. I don't have the faintly whistling wheeze that can't be trivially coughed away when lying in bed quietly any more since stopping smoking, and my sense of taste and smell is much better, but I still get cold hands and feet from the vasoconstriction and need to start thinking more about my blood pressure.
5434a
8d ago
Tapering off with weaker juice is the way to go. Once you go from 3mg to 0mg it's a case of a few days of habitual puffing until you think "wait, why am I doing this?" and will stop very easily because there's no longer a deficit demanding to be replenished. After that there's no more addiction and no more expense. Problem solved.
5434a
13d ago
he'd never have to listen to a young busker butchering "Hallelujah"
Bonus I'd never have to listen to Cohen rhyming hallelujah with do ya, knew ya, or fool ya. Allure? Endure? Impure? Are these rhymes too obscure? Utter manure.
I suppose furnishing him with a rhyming dictionary would curtail the need to actually kill him, so I guess I'll choose that as my pettiest timeline tweak.
5434a
16d ago
I'd question the writers' intentions and whether it's always better. Often writers' intentions were to keep people buying additional installments of a serial. I've read unabridged Dickens and Flaubert and what it taught me is there's a lot of filler that could be cut without much loss beyond the awareness of how much filler was inserted for a reason that serves the writer at the expense of the reader. The literary effects of commercial serialisation might be an interesting textual insight the first time but that insight doesn't stack while the time lost when I could be reading another book does.
5434a
17d ago
Opinions on abridged versions?
Approaching the end of The Count of Monte Cristo. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time, which at 1300 pages has worked out nicely.
I'm now eyeing up Les Miserables (no spoilers please). While I'm not averse to reading another 1300 page monster the reviews suggest that a good portion of this is spent on the author's digressions into history and dissertations on society. I'm leaning towards the abridged version (still a healthy ~900 pages) as I'm reading for pleasure rather than intellectual edification. I've always read unabridged versions before now but I've sometimes felt like many authors take the piss (looking at you in particular Dostoesky). On the other hand part of reading the unabridged versions is that it grants the privilege of talking shit about authors who take the piss, which counts as one of the pleasures of reading.
5434a
17d ago
Approaching the end of The Count of Monte Cristo. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time, which at ~1300 pages has worked out nicely.
5434a
26d ago
5434a
27d ago
31/29. I already knew I'm not German but it's reassuring that I'm not autistic either, even if do open and skim through instruction manuals.
5434a
1mo ago
How does one teach them the gospel of success through hard work and mastery through practice?
I think a good start on both aspects is through personal metrics. Being better than you were last week, or last year, or even last night is a better model of success than comparing yourself to others, and it's simple enough for a child to understand. Alongside comes instilling the wisdom - or at least the habit - of choosing good metrics.
The same mindset might also guide and inform broader aspects of their life, like whether it's better to have 5/15/50 crazy lovers who make your life difficult or one loyal partner that you can trust and rely on, or whether it's better to have 50/150/5000 fake internet friends than five real life close friends who will be there for you in hard times, or good neighbours, and so on. It also provides a functional heuristic for gauging other people's trajectories. Is that "inner city youth" working to improve their life and someone who represents a positive contribution, or are they presenting an appearance of success by exploiting others? What about that business district executive?
5434a
1mo ago
It's normal to the point of triteness to think "if only things were different". It's the malleable aspect that rings false. It would make sense if they rejected gender as one more in the list of unintuitive things that society says you should conform to "just, like, because, okay?!". It seems highly uncharacteristic to whole heartedly accept an idea that a simple biological binary can be overruled if what to them is normally unintuitive society says that same binary is, you know, like, contingent on subjectivity.
5434a
1mo ago
Sure, but autistic people being sympathetic to transgenderism is like if autistic people were the ones supporting fake smiles, or for replacing fake smiles with faker snarls. In comparison a non-binary or gender eliminationist stance would make sense.
5434a
1mo ago
the days before easily accessible information was everywhere
"Girls become women" isn't hidden knowledge that autistic people are expected to infer from inexplicable social cues. It's not something arbitrary like code-switching how one should greet their betters vs their equals and how to discern which is which. Every child can see a world of little girls and little boys, and adult men and adult women, and the distinguishing factor between those groups is their age. QED.
Maybe it happens sooner than you were expecting, or would have preferred, and maybe it's attended by seemingly arbitrary and unfamiliar social expectations being placed on you, but a notion that you could escape the discomfort by becoming the opposite sex ought to be less plausible and less preferable than an alternative notion that you could somehow remain a child indefinitely.
5434a
1mo ago
The thing I don't understand about the autism/trans link is that in my mind autism is partly characterised by the kind of rigid psychological orthodoxy that gets agitated by things like having different kinds food on their plate touching, or a familiar TV show getting a new theme tune. But, somehow, they can overlook the incredibly simple, intuitive and natural definition of man vs woman. If anything I'd expect autists to be stubbornly sceptical of transgenderism's manipulation of the categories.
Check out a couple of clips of The Shield on Youtube for the most relentless and egregious use of camera movement. It's almost unwatchable.
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