solarbabies

I see you got your food science degree from Trump University.

Obligatory reminder that he didn't win the popular vote.

But yes you're spot on.

I might be wrong but I don't think the commenter was joking. It's not a joke to say a lot of politicians have been assassinated and to question how someone in such a situation managed to get safely elected. I wonder the same thing.

This mostly. There's also some speculation that worse results may cause users to execute more search queries (at least in the short term) and get served more ads.

on International Day Against Transphobia no less! I feel the struggle too

The "people are selfish" take is an outdated one at best, ignorant at worst.

Desperate people with major problems are often highly motivated to solve those problems, which often leads them, paradoxically, to seek out distractions that make their problems disappear, albeit temporarily. Psychologically this satisfies the brain the same as if the problems were actually solved; in other words, it's a shortcut to the emotional end goal of satisfaction.

Is it selfish? Partly yes, but it's not any more selfish than actually working to solve one's problems in more permanent ways. Therefore it's awfully reductive to ascribe this behavior to mere selfishness.

Thanks to centuries of research on human behavior & mental health that was done after Juvenal in Ancient Rome, it's obvious that desperate & stressed people seek out distractions to self-soothe, so they can avoid burnout and continue being functioning members of society. Therefore to some extent this behavior can also be seen as selfless.

The idea of "Bread and circuses" as lavish distractions from reality is valuable insofar as it reveals the primary mechanisms deployed by governments and corporations to control the attention of the population.

By providing highly palatable mass-produced foods and entertainment, they take advantage of workers' need to rest, recover and feel some amount of satisfaction in their daily lives. This sustains the working population just enough to put up with going to work day after day. And I haven't even touched on how food and media are used to keep us going to the doctor and to influence our thoughts.

yeah this video was helpful to understand the complexity in manufacturing AAVs, namely the raw size of the proteins manufacturers need to create & interweave.

👆 that little dot in the lower left corner is Aspirin (timestamp 12:00)

wow aren't you just a ray of sunshine.

what does that have to do with deadnaming people?

I guess you're the expert here since you Googled a condition & now you know everything there is to know about it, right?

let me break it down. over 12 years ago when I was diagnosed, among the better-known symptoms like mixing up numbers, "misremembering names" (especially those that start with the same letter/sound) was a frequently published symptom of dyscalculia (and dyslexia, FWIW):

fast forward to 2013, in the DSM-5 they changed the definition of dyslexia and dyscalculia, removed them as diagnoses and instead replaced them with a more general diagnosis: "Specific Learning Disorder", which among other things now requires that a person is "unable to perform academically at a level appropriate to their intelligence and age."

in my opinion, and this is just my non-professional opinion:

1. if I tell someone I have a "Specific Learning Disorder" they'll generally have no idea what I'm talking about. it's easier and feels more self-consistent to tell them the name of the condition I was diagnosed with, even if it's outdated.

2. the new DSM-5 diagnosis doesn't account for people like me who were able to excel academically despite difficulty with numbers and names. did I have to read numbers 10+ times to make sure I knew I had the right one? yes. do I still struggle immensely to do basic arithmetic in my head? absolutely. am I also a software engineer who sometimes has to work with numbers? yes. did I get straight A's in all my math classes? yes. people with dyslexia and dyscalculia excel all the time by discovering and using their own coping mechanisms, so this diagnosis seems overly reductive to me.

again, I'm not a professional. is it possible that my symptoms which were previously attributed to dyscalculia are just a part of my ASD? sure. but I'm pretty sure if I said I have trouble remembering Elliot Page's name because I'm autistic, people still wouldn't know what I was talking about, and I'd have an even harder time explaining it. so there you go.

for real, I'm pro trans rights and I still sometimes accidentally deadname Elliot Page because I have dyscalculia. if you ban me for that aren't you being ableist?

also yes context is very important.

if I say "when Caitlyn went by the name [X], and she used [Y] pronoun, [Z] thing happened to [Y]", I assume I will still get banned for deadnaming even though I'm innocently adding clarity to a conversation.

to make things worse, if someone is trans and gender fluid, and I call them by a name or pronoun they used last time I knew about them, now I've committed a crime of which I had no knowledge.

this blanket condemnation of deadnaming is just dumb. it requires nuance.

yes I know Apple isn't a Telecoms company but you need a SIM from a Telecoms company to use iMessage. RCS runs over the Internet too, yet you also need a SIM card for that. Also Telecoms companies aren't designing message protocols anymore. I don't think you know what you're talking about.

what do you mean Telecoms companies aren't allowed to add E2EE? there is no such regulation I'm aware of.

besides, how would Apple have been supporting E2EE in iMessage for so long if Telecoms companies weren't allowed?

could be a motivation issue, but not a regulation issue.

this! don't get me wrong, I like a nice man butt as much as the next pansexual guy, but if I'm gonna look at someone's backside for a 40 hour campaign, I'd rather it be a woman's.