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ThomasdelVasto Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου 7m ago

I'll pray for you my friend, I'm sorry this has happened.

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quiet_NaN 8m ago

Reddit is a big corporate-owned platform. The motte is freedom of speech maximalist. These two things do not generally mix.

When the exodus from reddit happened, the SJP were the most influential tribe with reddit, so they lead the charge. But if it had not been them, it would have been some other tribe instead. I wish I could say that SJ is the only ideology which ever engaged in anti-competitive behavior in the marketplace of ideas, but instead it seems almost universal. Free speech is a great idea while you are the underdog and get oppressed for speaking the truth, but once you are in charge it suddenly seems much more important to prevent your enemies from spreading their vile poison.

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ThomasdelVasto Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου 8m ago

Check out Fractal tech.

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self_made_human amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi 10m ago

Although 'hand axe' and 'hatchet' are often used interchangeably in contemporary usage

I presume this axe was wielded by hand, unless the young lady had unprecedented access to heavy industrial equipment.

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self_made_human amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi 12m ago

Respectfully, I don't find "Scotland is not England." persuasive in and of itself. Can you elaborate on what factors are present in England that aren't in Scotland that should change our priors in this case?

There are far fewer migrants about. That's the big one. In the small town I used to live in, we had about five brown people, including yours truly. Think the couple running a hotel, a few working part time at an Indian restaurant or convenience store. Dundee is larger, sure, but it is far from cosmopolitan. Most Asians present are either students in the local unis, professionals like me, or working in small businesses. There is no massive, self-perpetuating nucleus of questionably employed refugees, asylum seekers or layabouts on the dole. I presume such folk are less constrained by the vagary that is the availability of psych training posts, or, like them, I'd have moved to somewhere with better weather. They prefer to go to the nearest mini-Mirpur once they've stashed the boat and made a run for the hills, and that would be somewhere in England.

This, in turn, breeds a more congenial attitude towards those of us who do live up there. While there are many Scots who dislike immigrants, they're not constantly confronted by massive ghettos or the government handing away hotels to asylum seekers. Even the working class aren't as anxious about losing jobs or facing competition.

This analysis is restricted to places north of Glasgow and Edinburgh. I have not spent enough time there to comment. I have, in fact, spent enough time in places like Dundee to know how things work there.

All I know about Scotland's justice system is the Dankula debacle, which is more than enough for me to default to assuming dishonesty from it. But if there are some moderately high-profile cases of immigrants running into the same kind of tyranny, that would be evidence against the expected racial discrimination and two-tier justice system from the non-US Anglophone world.

I had no idea what's up with "Dankula", and looking it up suggests I'm not as terminally online as I thought. I do not see how a (stupid, overreaching) action against a small-time YouTuber over his "Nazi" dog is enough to entirely discredit the veracity of statements made by the local police. That looks to me like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or squeezing one against the grate so hard it turns into juice.

I also think that you are poisoning the well big-time with your witchcraft analogy. Witches are not real.

Eh? Witches were real, at least in the sense that there were women in medieval Europe who believed that they possessed supernatural powers acquired by heretical means. There were not nearly enough of them to meet local demand, and the epistemics behind identification of such ladies had a rather intolerable rate of Type 1 error.

There are "alien rapists" in the UK. There are probably several in good old Scotland, and I'm not talking about Viking raids. I do not deny this. I say that there are far fewer, in total and per capita. If you hear about a sexual assault case in Greenland, you probably shouldn't assume the perpetrator was brown.

With that being said, I am at least open to the possibility that this was naked unprovoked aggression from our dual-wielder. But to me, the BBC weighing in is not evidence, and neither is the justice system, until I can be shown how this is different than the position we were in with Rotherham ten years ago.

Then I must invite you to explain what form of evidence might, in theory, sway you.

I am of the opinion that most people who haven't entered this discussion having already made up their minds will at least consider alternative explanations given the new evidence. My ire is reserved for those who are beyond convincing by any means known to man or deity. When this whole story kicked off, I refrained from running my mouth (despite severe temptation) because I retain sufficient skepticism, preferring to wait for further evidence one way or another. We are unlikely to get anything better than this.

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Throwaway05 18m ago

First things first: "Secure the scene first," "at a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse," "self-care bro."

However you frame it - this is going to be tough make sure you are getting support. Likely you did not do anything wrong. Try not to blame yourself. Try not to blame yourself for blaming yourself.

Caveats: I deliberately only skimmed so everything is general and pretend it's general if I didn't do a good job making it general (I am not your or her doctor and am not asking the questions required to provide specific or informed advice.

Second: These things are more common than you think and go in all kinds of directions. Be aware that catastrophic decline is on the table, but so is total remission and so is things like backbreaking medical causes. Try not to get locked into a particular hope or despair without more understanding, information, and crucially - time.

Third: You are going to get a lot of shitty medical and psychiatric advice. Your therapist may accidentally be right but already this doesn't seem like a true delusion (insufficiently fixed?) is inconsistent with borderline personality persistence and doesn't really exhibit evidence for bipolar. Could be prodrome however. Don't worry what any of that means that isn't your job. Could be you don't have the language to relay the behavior you are seeing (that's not your fault! You aren't a trained healthcare professional). Most of the geographic area of the country has poor access to psychiatric care (NPs/PAs have some uses in medicine but never in psychiatric care, I've never met a psychiatrist who was willing to privately say something good about an NP except those who were getting a significant financial benefit. With unusual patients they are significantly worse than useless), and while it's out there it is hard to find a FM/IM/ED doc who is sharp on psychiatry which is important because-

Four: In order to meet the criteria for a DSM diagnosis the symptoms have to not be better explained by a medical condition or substance use. Usually the work up for this is inadequate in most settings. The ED will usually get a head scan if the patient has a first episode of psychosis in atypical age range, but they don't always.... Other basic lab work like an RPR usually needs to be done, but they might not have done it. Someone who knows what autoimmune encephalitis is needs to think about it for three seconds. Realistically it isn't any of the rare stuff, but those things do happen. For drugs a UDS is grossly inadequate if she's doing anything weird, which she may be. Patient's get access to a benzo with the wrong metabolite, use some local herb, or buy some weird designer drug. Shit happens and in the case of something like caffeine nobody may ask the right question when it totally explains the psychosis.

With someone who is uncooperative it will be hard, but taking her to a competent PCP under the basis of "hey I'm worried about you its not your fault lets see if anything medical is happening" can sometimes gain traction.

This is difficult however because people who aren't truly mentally ill don't think they have anything wrong with them and are correct and people who are truly mentally ill often have refusal to acknowledge that they are as a symptom.

Medical/substance/environmental/lifestyle causes of psychosis and/or mood disturbance are not as common as simple causes but they aren't rare. If you wish get access to the medical records and google things and make sure the right crap has been done.

Five: Some facts about potentially relevant DSM conditions. -Women get schizophrenia later than men, especially a bump is seen around menopause. -The DSM has a diagnosis of "Brief Psychotic Disorder." Some people have true psychotic symptoms that remit spontaneously (and never come back). -Adequate care can get someone back to normal. It can also get someone normal enough. -The DSM has a diagnosis of "Delusional Disorder" which means someone is otherwise normal but has delusions about a specific thing. -If someone has schizophrenia you will see some combination of other things in addition to delusions. People act weird. Usually the family can pick up on this (but not always). Same is true for other conditions. Take stock of what you noted. Point it out to medical professionals. -Depression can manifest with psychotic features or other significantly concerning behaviors.

Six: Not every behavioral problem is a DSM disorder (they have a cheat option for "unspecified" or whatever but that's not really the same).

This moves out of medicine to the reality of people doing weird shit and having weird beliefs. I think social justice people are crazy! But they aren't DSM relevant. Some problematic behaviors respond well to therapy some don't but you will find people in the population who have something like midlife satisfaction issues, political freak outs and so on.

You can peck around the edges but if this is the case the medical and legal systems (including medication) will be of limited assistance.

This leaves some room for "maybe two years from now she'll be like....that was dumb" but the lack of options isn't really comforting right now.

You should be prepared for the possibility of this being a true medical/psychiatric issue and also for the possibility of it being a "she's changed." Both will be tough to deal with but in different ways.

I'm sorry.

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RoyGBivensAction Zensunni Scientologist 23m ago

I can only reiterate that an axe is not normal to carry, even if one feels threatened.

That's a hatchet, not an axe.

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07mk 25m ago

I had a heated 3 month fling with FTL back when it came out before I went somewhere for vacation and quit cold turkey. It was first roguelike (and one of my last - definitely not a good genre for me), and adjusting to the expectations of extreme punishment plus cruel RNG took a while. I remember it took me dozens of tries to win the game for the first time, and then I beat it immediately on the next run. And from then on, it was like a 50/50, which really surprised me, because of how utterly wrecked I used to get, and it's not as if the challenge had changed by leveling up or something.

In the middle of it, it felt to me like roleplaying in a very pure way, creating a narrative of a desperate ship captain in this scifi setting who needs to pull on all resources and luck to barely edge out survival for one more node. I don't think I've gotten quite the same experience from other games. And, unfortunately, I think I'd prefer to keep it that way, given how much time I'm likely to waste if I found something similar.

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Quantumfreakonomics 27m ago

They were BULGARIANS? I can't stop laughing. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Everyone's all like, "Migrants huh? We know what these Pakis are all about," and then it turns out it was a Bulgarian couple. Bring back @BurdensomeCount, we deserve the effortpost about white-on-white crime.

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4nji2 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 35m ago

From the beginning, both /r/Scotland and /r/Dundee expressed skepticism toward the popular Twitter narrative. Y

Local reddits skew crazy to left, compared to actual inhabitants of those territories. If one read, to use an example I know the most about, /r/europe, one would think that the centre right party (EPP) got every single vote by cheating, as not a single person supports them. Meanwhile, one would think that Volt party, whose main policy is much closer integration, only fails because the elections are stolen from them, given how popular it is among the people.

Reddits suffer from selection bias: /r/europe is not populated by Europeans who happened to find reddit, but by redditors who happen to be European. Ceteris paribus for other reddits. Thus imagine the average /r/politics poster, who happens to be European/Scottish/fan of anime. That is the population of the reddit dedicated to that topic.

The police have issued a statement, and the BBC, in a notably careful choice of words, clarifies: “BBC News understands that officers have found no evidence to substantiate claims being made online the youths were at risk of sexual assault.”

Grooming gangs were covered up, BBC covered up Jimmy Saville.

None of this should be taken to mean I think the truth is that some Indian attempted to rape two whote girls. No, I think if a teen girl is wielding bladed armaments, she is more likely to be similar to violent members of the American underclass in terms of disposition towards other members of society.

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HereAndGone 36m ago

The UK is much nearer to my country than to yours, and the context is not the same. There's more immigration, or at least over a longer period, in Scotland but it's not as much as in England and the environment of underclass whites is enough that they were already stabbing and attacking each other before ever a brown guy showed up.

You tell me what this kid was protecting himself from: threat of rape by a Mongolian immigrant woman, or he went out tooled up to rob at age 14? Already with drug addiction and broken home behind him at that age? And had attempted to rob another woman and produced a knife before this?

This is not Rotherham Part Deux, and you don't understand the social cues and clues that are leading us over here to doubt what is going on. If I said "white trailer trash" it might make it clearer, but even then that's not an exact equivalent.

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RobertLiguori 36m ago

Respectfully, I don't find "Scotland is not England." persuasive in and of itself. Can you elaborate on what factors are present in England that aren't in Scotland that should change our priors in this case?

All I know about Scotland's justice system is the Dankula debacle, which is more than enough for me to default to assuming dishonesty from it. But if there are some moderately high-profile cases of immigrants running into the same kind of tyranny, that would be evidence against the expected racial discrimination and two-tier justice system from the non-US Anglophone world.

I also think that you are poisoning the well big-time with your witchcraft analogy. Witches are not real. Alien rapists given cover by their co-ethnics in positions of power and whites with outgroup bias are extremely real, and until very recently, the common consensus was that they weren't and that only a paranoid racist lunatic would believe they were.

With that being said, I am at least open to the possibility that this was naked unprovoked aggression from our dual-wielder. But to me, the BBC weighing in is not evidence, and neither is the justice system, until I can be shown how this is different than the position we were in with Rotherham ten years ago.

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HereAndGone 42m ago

If someone is carrying around multiple hard to conceal weapons it is indeed very odd, and begs the question of WHY.

Because she's a rancid little slapper who is gearing up to get herself into real trouble and do hard prison time as soon as she's old enough. Believe you me, there's a lot of kids running around with dumb shit like this and it's not to protect themselves from potential rape by brown people. The girl I know who stabbed another young woman in the stomach at a house party was not protecting herself from an immigrant rapist, she was in an environment of drink and drugs and already down the path of petty crime and drug addiction by this time.

Yeah, normal twelve year olds don't run around with knives and hatchets. This is not a normal twelve year old, or at least not normal except for coming from a sink estate.

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ABigGuy4U 46m ago

I suppose nothing I write will convince you otherwise.

No sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

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Corvos 46m ago

You’re welcome. I hope it’s of some use. Keep buggering on, as Churchill used to say.

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jkf 47m ago

Now that I think about it, I think Scott is also screwing with the rules of the PD scenario -- lots of things about it break down when the prisoners are allowed to communicate with each other.

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DelendaEst 48m ago

I think that given that at every turn the british response to real problems has been to lie about them until forced to come clean it is understandable that many will not give credence to the official narrative.

Also, that thread of /r/scotland is not all speaking with one voice, there are plenty of people who DO think this was rapey brown guy, they are just downvoted and at the bottom. This could be evidence that those people are crazy and the majority knows it, or it could be exactly what happens on every reddit thread related to the culture war where the left perspective is upvoted and the right perspective is downvoted and the truth of the matter is secondary to this pattern at best. So calling this conclusive opinion of the locals is not convincing to say the least. Frankly, trying to use a reddit thread to establish general consensus around the left wing view makes me less likely to believe that is the case, as if it were it seems like you could find a better source.

And while I totally agree that little girls carrying blades about is not normal, to me this makes the rapey migrant explaination MORE likely. If someone is carrying around multiple hard to conceal weapons it is indeed very odd, and begs the question of WHY. And given the context of the video the most simple explanation is "because she and/or her sister had been harassed before so she chose to arm herself this time."

You may well be correct, but given the full context I don't think it is fair to call the unconvinced "paranoid".

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AvocadoPanic 54m ago

Thanks for the recommendation.

My library says I should have the ebook in ~2 weeks.

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self_made_human amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi 59m ago · Edited 55m ago

Update on the Scottish Dual-Wielding Incident:

The BBC has now published a brief but informative report on the Scottish “dual-wielding” incident, mostly relaying statements from the local police. If you missed the story: a Bulgarian couple, male and female, were approached by local youths in St Ann Lane, Lochee, at about 7:40 pm on Saturday. At some point, an axe made an appearance. The police have issued a statement, and the BBC, in a notably careful choice of words, clarifies: “BBC News understands that officers have found no evidence to substantiate claims being made online the youths were at risk of sexual assault.”

Of course, I have every confidence that some corners of the internet, including select denizens of The Motte, will find this hopelessly unconvincing. If your current epistemic stance is “If she floats, she’s a witch; if she sinks, she’s a witch,” then no combination of facts, logic, or official statements will ever suffice. If your model of the world is that everyone is lying except you and your Telegram group, my ability to shift your priors is probably limited.

Still, let me offer my own semi-informed perspective as someone who is, if not a local, at least more familiar with the Scottish context than your average Redditor. From the beginning, both /r/Scotland and /r/Dundee expressed skepticism toward the popular Twitter narrative. You know the one: a pair of wide-eyed local waifs accosted by a “brown pervert,” who then had no choice but to brandish medieval weaponry in righteous self-defense. You can practically hear the John Williams score.

Now, Scotland is not short on delinquent youth. The British white underclass is, in fact, legendary for its supply of teenage hooligans. Here in Scotland, the local taxonomic label is “ned.” While “non-educated delinquent” is probably a post hoc invention, the behavioral phenotype is easily identified. There is a rich ecosystem of teenagers hanging around bus stops, acting tough, and performing questionable antics. One of their favorite tactics, if challenged, is to shout “pedophile” at the nearest authority figure, thus flipping the script from “annoying brat” to “potential victim.” This tends to work, at least until they age out of the game and (statistically) either get jobs or fall prey to Dundee’s prodigious drug scene.

On the question of weaponry, it bears repeating that it is illegal in Scotland to carry anything that even vaguely resembles a weapon for self-defense. For the Americans in the audience, this is not Texas. Not only is it illegal, it is also, in local context, not normal to walk around with an axe. While I actually find this arrangement not to my libertarian sensibilities, that's neither here nor there. My own priors, which seem to match those of most actual Scots I’ve spoken to, lean toward a more mundane explanation. The girl went out carrying because she wanted to impress her boyfriend, or at least to raise her standing among her peers. She might have been looking for trouble, or simply wanted to show off, and twelve is not too young to have social status games on your mind. Puberty isn’t the only thing that comes early in these parts.

I can only reiterate that an axe is not normal to carry, even if one feels threatened. A pocket knife? I can understand, sure. But this is about as 'extra' as taking a hand-grenade to a seedy pub.

As for the “migrant crime” angle, I want to point out that Scotland is not England, and certainly not Rotherham. The “migrant problem” is much less pronounced here. Outside Edinburgh or Glasgow, brown skin is still a curiosity, more likely to prompt a friendly question than suspicion. Most of the time, it’s just an excuse for conversation. Scotland has its own problems, but racialized sexual predation is not at the top of the list.

I would like to believe that this clarification settles things, but I am also not naïve. If your epistemic filter is tuned to maximum paranoia, then the absence of evidence is merely further evidence of a cover-up. For everyone else, the police statement, local skepticism, and sociological context should nudge your priors at least a little.

Of course, if you prefer your axes in the hands of twelve-year-olds fighting imaginary Bulgarian sex pests, I suppose nothing I write will convince you otherwise.

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Corvos 1hr ago

I am terribly sorry for what has happened to you and your family, and I wish you all the best as the situation develops.

I wonder if you would find it helpful to read VALIS by Philip K Dick, the famous science fiction author, who began experiencing mystical/schizophrenic delusions in his later life.

The book is a very thinly veiled exploration of Dick’s own mental state, and his constant struggle to reconcile his rational understanding that he is deluded with his schizophrenic certainty that all of it is true.

I haven’t read it for a long time but you might find it illuminating or humanising.

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Tenaz 1hr ago

It sounds like what you're saying is that there needs to be a difference of type, not just "amount", between us and God?

I disagree that omnipotence is just "more powerful" than me. It's definitionally different. It's not that God can accomplish a million times what I can with one one-millionth the effort; he can accomplish infinitely more than me with zero effort. There's no amount of strength or power that will get you there.

To me the difference between morally perfect, and very good, is the same. There's still an infinite gap between "sins every few decades" and "never sins," let alone God's positive virtues.

Anyways you're interpreting what I said as a definition. I didn't give you a definition of God, I gave you who he is--how I identify him. I don't have a definition for you any more than I have a definition of my dad. I can tell you what traits I believe God has, but my internal definition is subordinate to reality. Perhaps if I were infallible it would not be, but I'm not God.

If your God is not Truth, then I do not worship him.

Right, and if my god turns out to be the correct one--someone who means "I am the truth" in any but the most painstakingly, autistically literal way--then you won't worship him?

I still want a straight answer here. Or at least a "I can't possibly be wrong" so that we can end this conversation.