RoyalHenOil's recent activity
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Comment on I gave up meat and gained so much more | A tale of one person's life, culture, and growing up in ~life
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Comment on People without an inner voice have poorer verbal memory in ~humanities.languages
RoyalHenOil (edited )LinkI do not have an inner monologue (at least not without deliberate effort on my part, and it comes at the cost of slower thinking and drastically reduced thought complexity), and I am entirely not...I do not have an inner monologue (at least not without deliberate effort on my part, and it comes at the cost of slower thinking and drastically reduced thought complexity), and I am entirely not surprised by this finding. I very commonly forget words, even words I use pretty often, and I in general seem to misspeak and blank out frequently while trying to verbalize my thoughts.
I am also fairly slow to understand people when they are talking to me. I need extra time to translate speech into conceptual thought. The translation is also often incorrect because verbal language is so much less expressive than direct concepts, and so it leaves a lot of ambiguity that I have to take educated guesses at (although this, I suspect, actually affects everyone — seeing as how common miscommunication is — but I think I am more aware of it because I am directly confronted with it every time I have a conversation with someone).
However, I have no trouble recalling words I have memorized by rote, such as song lyrics, which makes me think that this is a very different mechanism from the kind of word recall that is used in dynamic speech. I will regularly forget the names of my coworkers I've worked with for years, but I never forget any of the 50 US states in alphabetical order.
Also, I have a strong grasp of grammar, and I can become fluent in new languages' grammatical structures very quickly. It's only vocabulary where I get bogged down.
...investigate whether the lack of an inner voice, or anendophasia as they have coined the condition, has any consequences for how these people solve problems...
Based on my experiences, I think this article has the direction of causality wrong. At least in my case, I am quite sure that my poor word recall causes me to avoid verbal thinking, whereas this article seems to imply that the lack of verbal thinking causes the poor word recall.
“The short answer is that we just don't know because we have only just begun to study it. But there is one field where we suspect that having an inner voice plays a role, and that is therapy; in the widely used cognitive behavioural therapy, for example, you need to identify and change adverse thought patterns, and having an inner voice may be very important in such a process. However, it is still uncertain whether differences in the experience of an inner voice are related to how people respond to different types of therapy”...
I strongly suspect that one-on-one therapy would work as well for me as it would for someone with an inner monologue who is otherwise my equivalent. Where I would get lost and fall behind is group therapy.
I am perfectly capable of deep self-reflection (in fact, I think I am unusually good at it), I am reasonably OK at converting my thought into words (I just tend to be overly wordy because my thoughts are so much richer than verbal language can elegantly convey), and I can generally keep up in one-on-one conversations where the other speaker allows for pauses while I gather my thoughts. What I can't do is follow along with conversations between multiple people because they almost inevitably fill in the silences and don't leave me enough time to process their words, so I quickly lose the thread and zone out.
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Comment on People without an inner voice have poorer verbal memory in ~humanities.languages
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI do not have an inner voice or an inner monologue. However, I don't think it's quite like aphantasia because that seems to refer to an inability to imagine visual thoughts at all. I can verbalize...I do not have an inner voice or an inner monologue. However, I don't think it's quite like aphantasia because that seems to refer to an inability to imagine visual thoughts at all.
I can verbalize my thoughts. I just don't do it natively. I can do it voluntarily with some effort, but it interferes with my ability to think quickly or clearly because it requires mental multitasking.
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Comment on For proponents of "vote for the lesser of two evils", what is your endgame? in ~talk
RoyalHenOil LinkThe Republican Party is on a rapid path of self-destruction. It is not sustainable in its current form. My guess is that within the next 10 years or so, the Republican Party will either remake...The Republican Party is on a rapid path of self-destruction. It is not sustainable in its current form. My guess is that within the next 10 years or so, the Republican Party will either remake itself into something more stable or it will disintegrate. If it disintegrates, we will see another party (maybe the Libertarian Party?) rise up to become the Democrats' main rival or we will see the Democrat Party split apart into two parties.
None of this in unprecedented. Parties are born, parties change, and parties die. It happens in other countries all the time, and it has happened several times in US history; we are honestly long overdue.
My hope is to see the US make it through this rocky transition period with as little collateral damage as possible. That means containing the Republican implosion as best we can until the party either finishes dying or transforming.
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Comment on I gave up meat and gained so much more | A tale of one person's life, culture, and growing up in ~life
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentHow far do you take this opinion? A parking lot contains less suffering than a pig farm, so bulldozing wilderness to build parking lots results in a net drop in suffering. Are you generally in...- Exemplary
Therefore, if some land is used for human, small scale meat farming instead of being allowed to support more wild animals, we're not actually increasing any sort of suffering present in the animal world.
How far do you take this opinion? A parking lot contains less suffering than a pig farm, so bulldozing wilderness to build parking lots results in a net drop in suffering. Are you generally in favor of destroying as much nature as we can in order to eliminate suffering in wild animals?
I think it is short-sighted to look at suffering alone. The life of a wild animal is brutal and short, and yet it appears that they enjoy living and make choices to prolong their lives. Captive wild animals try to escape, despite the certainty of food and shelter, and when they are kept in conditions that least resemble wild living, they tend to become listless or even commit self-harm (like birds plucking out their feathers). The zoos with the happiest, healthiest animals tend to be those that add wild-like stress (e.g., hiding food for the animals to forage rather than just giving it to them, challenging and potentially dangerous equipment for the animals to climb, etc.). On the whole, it seems that wild animals prefer the wild lifestyle, even though it comes at high cost; perhaps they even enjoy the high cost to a certain extent — the thrill of overcoming adversity.
This makes a lot of sense to me. They evolved for the niches they live in, and evolution selects strongly for individuals who find pleasure and satisfaction in activities that promote health, survival, and reproduction.
Imagine if some asexual alien species came to Earth, observed human reproductive behavior, and decided that it promotes too much suffering (all that vaginal tearing, penile bruising, side effects of pregnancy, STDs, yeast infections, jealousy, sexual incompatibility, etc., etc., etc.) and therefore prevented all humans from ever having sex again. I think most people would say that this is taking away a meaningful part of our humanity. Yes, sex is messy and dangerous, but it's also enjoyable and deeply important to us — so much so that most humans strongly prefer to have a rich sex life, with all the mess and danger, over clean, safe, lifelong celibacy. The aliens can see all the things that are bad about sex, but how can they understand what is good about it when they themselves did not evolve to desire it?
I think we should be very wary of doing this to animals. We see a rabbit's life and think that looks awful — but we are not rabbits. We did not evolve for either the dangers or the pleasures that rabbits did. A human is ill-suited to rabbit life and would find it miserable, but that does not make it so for the rabbit.
I think we tend to over-predict trauma and suffering in wild animals in part because humans experience so much of it ourselves. But, to be honest, I think that is because humans are not living in the conditions that we evolved for, and we have become so accustomed to human misery that we think it's normal. But trauma, depression, anxiety, existential crises, isolation, etc., do not confer evolutionary fitness. That they are so common strongly suggests to me that we are not well adapted to the mental stressors of our environment.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentIt sounds like this music is hitting close to your skull's unique resonant frequency. I have found that there is a specific low tone (present in some music with heavy bass, but most noticeable to...It sounds like this music is hitting close to your skull's unique resonant frequency.
I have found that there is a specific low tone (present in some music with heavy bass, but most noticeable to me when certain big trucks climb up the steep hill near my house in low gear) that causes my skull to vibrate at a particularly intense and slow wavelength, which in turns causes my ears to pick up a kind of beating sound or sensation. It can be quite painful and overwhelms all other sounds.
This is related to the concept of wolf tones in musical instruments and to glass shattering at specific vibrations. In some cases, hitting an object's resonant frequency can lead to major disasters. No wonder we don't enjoy it!
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Comment on What was it like choosing your own name? in ~lgbt
RoyalHenOil LinkI am not trans and have not changed my name (nor do I have any intention to), but I just wanted to share something nice my parents did: They opted against determining my sex before I was born and...I am not trans and have not changed my name (nor do I have any intention to), but I just wanted to share something nice my parents did:
They opted against determining my sex before I was born and left it as a surprise. When they were thinking about names, they chose a feminine name and a masculine name that pair nicely together and that have a lot of meaning to my parents and the circumstances of my birth. I was born AFAB, and so I got the feminine name as my first name and the masculine name as my middle name. If I were to change my name, I would just swap them (and that would be very easily to do socially because I already like to use my middle name as a nickname).
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Comment on The FAA investigates after Boeing says workers in South Carolina falsified 787 inspection records in ~transport
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI can believe this. My personal observation (not in engineering, but I imagine it still applies) is that companies can get themselves caught in an incompetence trap that is extremely difficult to...The problem with Boeing is, if I'm right, it's a systemic problem within the company, from top to bottom. Firing a handful of execs and fining the shit out of them won't fix a damn thing.
I can believe this. My personal observation (not in engineering, but I imagine it still applies) is that companies can get themselves caught in an incompetence trap that is extremely difficult to escape. You can't identify who is competent enough to hire and promote if you, yourself, lack competence in the area that you are hiring or promoting for. Meanwhile, competent people can easily identify that a company has a fundamental competence issue, and they take their institutional knowledge and go. After that, it becomes almost impossible to hire competent employees even by accident (they quit quickly).
Every beloved, well-run company is potentially just one bad hire away from an incompetence death spiral. I saw it happen in a company I worked for—and loved working for—when the old (very beloved) director retired and was replaced by a new (let's just say not beloved) director. When the workforce is unhappy, a few key employees are usually leave first because their skillsets are in demand, and then it's all downhill from there.
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Comment on Spring gardening thread in ~hobbies
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIs it possible they weren't hardened off? I have found that young tomatoes are particularly prone to shock if they are hit with weather they are not acclimated to. Another possibility is that they...A lot of the tomato seedlings didn't make it after transplanting. I don't know why.
Is it possible they weren't hardened off? I have found that young tomatoes are particularly prone to shock if they are hit with weather they are not acclimated to.
Another possibility is that they were killed by pests, such as cutworms. (If this is the case, it should be pretty obvious: it will look kind of like someone came along and snipped them with scissors.)
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Comment on Spring gardening thread in ~hobbies
RoyalHenOil (edited )LinkI'm in the southern hemisphere, but I'm going to butt in anyway. Try and stop me. Vegetable garden: I just planted my garlic bulbs for this year. I have traditionally grown a few different...I'm in the southern hemisphere, but I'm going to butt in anyway. Try and stop me.
Vegetable garden: I just planted my garlic bulbs for this year. I have traditionally grown a few different varieties, but this years I decided to go all in with Spanish Roja. It has a strong delicious flavor that holds up well to cooking, it has a 12+ month shelf life after harvest, it produces garlic scapes (my favorite!), and it has been through the ringer the last few years (from floods to droughts) and has stood up better against the elements than the others I've grown. Growing just one variety will make harvest and storage easier as well.
I am gearing up to move my vegetable garden to a different location. At its present location, there is an English oak growing to the east. It was very small when I started the vegetable garden, but it has grown by leaps and bounds (it's going to be majestic) and now it's casting too much shade. However, I think I have too much on my plate to do it before the next growing season begins. It will probably have to be the year after.
Ornamental garden: I have been gradually expanding these beds over the last couple years, and I just recently put in a bunch of spring bulbs, perennials, and shrubs. In this climate, I like to plant primarily in the autumn rather than the spring because we have mild winters here (equivalent to USDA hardiness zone 9a) and a Mediterranean climate (heavy rain in the winter and very little rain in the summer), so it gives them the maximum amount of time to settle in before the parching season begins. When I plant in the spring, they struggle a lot more.
Over the last few years, my primary incentive has been to attract native pollinators year-round by finding plants they like that have different bloom periods (such that there is always something they like in bloom). I have more or less achieved that goal, so now I'm moving on to birds.
I have a couple of low-but-steep slopes where I'd like to build terraced retaining walls. I think I might do that soon. It wouldn't be too much work because I don't plan to do it "correctly"; I am constantly changing my garden around (yes, I am one of those awful people who are always digging up plants, pathways, etc., to rearrange them), so a less permanent installation will suit me fine.
Orchard: It is about time to prune the apricot tree (it's susceptible to fungal infection, and our winters are very wet; otherwise, I would prune it in late winter when I prune the other fruit trees). Fruit tree pruning is turning into one of my passions, and I've been thinking about developing a visual guide that compares how to prune different types of fruit trees. The way to a Japanese plum for production is different from how you prune a European plum for production in a few specific ways, for example, but it's difficult to find that information in a single, consistently-presented source.
I think I will try to get my hands on a pomegranate tree this winter (for bare root planting). I have heard really good thinks about a variety called 'Parfianka'.
I would also like to try growing pecans, although I'm not sure if they will produce well here; even though our winter is mild, we have a preponderance of late frosts and a short summer. But at least they would make for pretty trees even if they don't produce consistently.
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Comment on In a first, Belgium approves labour law for sex workers in ~life
RoyalHenOil Link ParentOne of the interesting things I have read is that it does not seem to make a difference what form the legalized prostitution takes. For example, legalizing prostitution only in the form of...One of the interesting things I have read is that it does not seem to make a difference what form the legalized prostitution takes. For example, legalizing prostitution only in the form of registered, well-marked brothels makes it much harder for illegal prostitution to fly under the radar than does legalizing street walking (which is highly susceptible to prostitute-pimp dynamics). Yet the studies I've seen suggest that this has no effect on trafficking rates; only legalization itself does. This makes me suspect that the increase in trafficking is not due to increased demand.
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Comment on Does anyone else have succulents? in ~hobbies
RoyalHenOil Link ParentFrom what I have read, researchers the 70s found that a large number of plants could improve air quality in offices. Modern researchers were not able to replicate the same effect in modern offices...From what I have read, researchers the 70s found that a large number of plants could improve air quality in offices. Modern researchers were not able to replicate the same effect in modern offices due to HVAC improvements over the proceeding decades.
Basically, it sounds like plants can help if the air quality is very poor to start with, but it is dwarfed by the effects of just letting some fresh air in.
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Comment on Does anyone else have succulents? in ~hobbies
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIt can be very hard to identify a lot of them, especially because hybrids are so common. In some cases, they may not even necessarily be officially described by scientists yet (there is a huge...It can be very hard to identify a lot of them, especially because hybrids are so common. In some cases, they may not even necessarily be officially described by scientists yet (there is a huge backlog of undescribed species).
Fortunately, I live in a place where most succulents on the market are supplied by this nursery, which is run by some very nerdy people who are exacting about labeling all their plants correctly (and also info-dumping interesting facts about them on their tags), even for their super cheap under-$5 plants.
I didn't get all my plants through them (many are props from friends), but most of them ultimately originated from there, and so it's not too hard to ID them. You can even visit the nursery directly, and they have hundreds of different well-labeled succulents on displays that you can compare with directly.
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Comment on In a first, Belgium approves labour law for sex workers in ~life
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI wonder what the mechanism is? Is it perhaps easier to convince victims to cooperate and travel to a country where prostitution is legalized because they can be fooled into believing that the...I wonder what the mechanism is? Is it perhaps easier to convince victims to cooperate and travel to a country where prostitution is legalized because they can be fooled into believing that the work will be legitimate and they will have legal protections?
Other kinds of human trafficking often work this way — convincing victims that they are on an immigration path and will have full employee rights in the country where they are headed. (Unfortunately, this very thing happened to one of my in-laws just a few years ago. He thought he was getting a legitimate work visa to the US, but instead his passport was seized upon arrival and he was enslaved to do hard labor. He was supposed to come my sister's and my brother-in-law's wedding in the US, but he didn't turn up and no one knew where he was. I remember his family was quietly freaking out at the wedding because they hadn't heard from him in weeks. Thankfully he did manage to escape after a few months.)
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Comment on California junk fee ban could upend restaurant industry in ~food
RoyalHenOil Link ParentThis is the norm in Australia. The advertised price includes taxes, and the receipt breaks it down and shows you how much is going into sales tax (called Goods and Services Tax, or GST, here). It...This is the norm in Australia. The advertised price includes taxes, and the receipt breaks it down and shows you how much is going into sales tax (called Goods and Services Tax, or GST, here). It is displayed something like this:
Items: $39
Total before GST: $35.45
GST: $3.55Or like this:
Subtotal: $60.00
Shipping: $12.50
Total: $72.50 (includes $5.45 GST)I am from the US originally, and it's really hard going back to the way they do things there, even though I spent most of my life living that way. The low level of unnecessary friction applied to seemingly everything makes me want to stay home and do nothing when I'm there.
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Comment on GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database documenting 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in landscape restoration in ~enviro
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentYou're not going to like it, but... My education is in ecology, I have also worked side-by-side with several people with professional environmental restoration experience in Australia, and I have...You're not going to like it, but...
My education is in ecology, I have also worked side-by-side with several people with professional environmental restoration experience in Australia, and I have relatives with lifelong professional environmental restoration experience working for the US Forestry Service maintaining national parks. I have sought similar advice for addressing invasive weed control, and everyone's overwhelming advice is glyphosate if the weed pressure is extensive. Even though it gets a bad rap, it is the industry standard for environmental restoration because it is essentially the most effective way to kill invasive weeds without doing environmental damage or endangering workers, hikers passing through, etc. Mind you, that does not mean you should eat it (in my opinion, it should be a crime to spray it on crops that people are going to eat), but it is safe for home use if you follow the safety instructions on the container.
The advice I've heard from people who work in environmental restoration is to mix glyphosate with a quality penetrant (which makes it more effective against plants with waxy leaves, such as periwinkle and English ivy; note that a surfactant and a penetrant are not the same thing, although many additives will contain both) and maybe use an agricultural-grade red dye (which makes it easier to identify where you've already sprayed and can help warn people to stay out of the sprayed areas).
You want to apply it on a warm, dry day with minimal wind, during a time period when the plants are actively growing a flourishing (such as spring). And, of course, you should wear PPE (which you should always wear when spraying anything, even something like neem oil). And it goes without saying, but make a study of the plants in your yard and make sure that you can correctly identify weeds vs. natives. If in doubt about a given species, leave it alone until you can ID it.
If done correctly, the plants should exhibit good health for a week or two after spraying, maybe even longer, but then their health will gradually degrade. Just be patient and let them die on their own. You only need to do a follow-up (either another round of glyphosate or manual removal, whichever is easier) if some of the plants push out new, healthy growth after the glyphosate has had its effect.
I would recommend against using heat or fire to kill weeds because it does not kill their root systems, and I would likewise recommend against most other herbicides (and herbicide-like substances, such as salts) because they can do lasting damage to the soil and/or to waterways that your property drains into, and they are also often more risky to wildlife, pets, and people. If glyphosate is not an option, manual removal and sunlight deprivation are better options (albeit labor intensive and of limited effectiveness for certain types of weeds, such as those that spread by underground runners).
After weeds have been removed or killed, the weed seeds in your soil will still grow new weeds, so you will just have to keep coming through and weeding again; this is just a lifelong chore, I'm afraid, but it will be easier if you stay on top of it and remove weeds while they are small. A hoe can help if there are a lot of them; I recommend some type of push hoe that is adjustable to the user's height. Mulch is a huge help here and is something I consider pretty vital for just about any garden, but it will need to be refreshed every so often as it breaks down. Non-invasive groundcovers can also help suppress weeds, as can trees and shrubs that cast dense shade.
If the weed seeds are overwhelming, though, there is still something else you can do. I have never heard of this being used by conservationists, but agriculturalists commonly use solarization to kill seeds. This is done by running irrigation on bare soil (after the weeds have been removed) and then covering it with clear (not black) plastic to effectively create greenhouse conditions at the soil level. This is left in place all summer long. The warm, wet conditions induce seeds to sprout, and then they cook in the sunlight. (But, again, this is a lot of work. It's only worth doing if traditional weeding is even more work than solarization would be. It also only works in locations that receive full sun.)
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Comment on Does anyone else have succulents? in ~hobbies
RoyalHenOil LinkI have too many! Succulents are the only kind of plant that will survive in one of my windows (a west-facing window that gets intense direct sun exposure). But even most succulents scald and...I have too many! Succulents are the only kind of plant that will survive in one of my windows (a west-facing window that gets intense direct sun exposure). But even most succulents scald and shrivel in that window. In the summer, I have to water most of them a couple times a week (more than I water my ferns!) and they still dehydrate.
So if anyone has any suggestions for extra heat-tolerant succulents, I would be very grateful! My succulent collection has grown way bigger than I ever intended due my hunt for especially robust succulents.
So far, I have had the best success with Lithops and, to a somewhat lesser extent, with Haworthia cooperi var. truncata (the other H. cooperi I have, var. picturata really struggles, however). What I find really fascinating about var. truncata is that, in the summer, it recedes down into the soil so that only the little windows show and turns a pretty salmon color. When autumn rolls around, it sticks back up and turns green like this photo.
I have so far also had some success growing Faucaria tigrina in this window, but I haven't gone through a full summer with it yet, so I'm not quite ready to declare it a certain success.
Succulents that I grow in other (less heat-intensive) windows, where they do better: Curio rowleyanus (string of pearls), Sedum morganianum (donkey tail), Ceropegia woodii (chain of hearts), Aloe vera, Gonialoe variegata (tiger aloe), Beaucarnea recurvata (ponytail palm), Haworthiopsis attenuata (zebra haworthia), Tacitus bellus (Chihuahua flower), Huernia schneideriana (red dragon flower), Crassula rupestris var. 'contorta' (string of buttons), and Dracaena 'Boncel' (starfish snake plant)
Outside, I grow Crassula ovata (jade plant; however, I do bring this inside during winter because I have shaped mine into a big, chunky bonsai over the years and I would be heartbroken if frost nipped it back), assorted Echeverias, Portulaca oleracea (purslane), Lampranthus glaucus (pigface), Sedum rubrotinctum (jelly beans), and probably a few others I'm forgetting.
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Comment on NHS is broken - also, did my Pa have a stroke? in ~talk
RoyalHenOil LinkThat is such a terrible and scary situation. I really, really hope he recovers and gets whatever treatment he needs. I am so sorry. This is not nearly as extreme, but when I was still living in...That is such a terrible and scary situation. I really, really hope he recovers and gets whatever treatment he needs. I am so sorry.
This is not nearly as extreme, but when I was still living in the US, my boyfriend visited from Australia to see me and to look for a job that would offer him a work visa (which was necessary to enable us to live together for enough time that I could qualify for a more permanent visa to Australia). The morning of his last day, he developed stomach pains so bad that he vomited. We got the runaround from assorted medical establishments that refused to look at him because, as they put it, it could be a appendicitis and they don't do appendicitis.
It was close to midnight before we finally managed to get help for him. It turns out it was just a small kidney stone and all he needed was a strong painkiller until it passed. The bill was several thousand dollars, and it took over a year — and many stressful tears on our part — for his travel insurance to pay it. That is largely because the collection agency refused to send mail or make phone calls overseas, so instead they were fiercely harassing me and my family (we'd had to put down my address on the form at the ER because they would not accept an overseas address), and then I had to forward their communications to him so that he could then forward them to the travel insurance company.
In the meantime, he did not dare travel back to the US while the collection agency was on the warpath, and I couldn't travel to Australia because my job did not offer any vacation days. And so we did not see each other for over a year, all because of a minor kidney stone.
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Comment on Is TV advertising still relevant? Does anybody under 60 even watch traditional TV anymore? in ~tv
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI think your prediction is pretty likely. My peers and I actually did grow up with cable TV, but we certainly don't watch it now. My parents cut the cord when I was a teenager some time in the...I think your prediction is pretty likely. My peers and I actually did grow up with cable TV, but we certainly don't watch it now. My parents cut the cord when I was a teenager some time in the early 00s, and while I remember being a bit bummed at the time, I didn't actually miss it. We got Netflix DVDs by mail instead, and that was already way better.
I do have fond memories of watching TV that can't really be re-created with streaming — like excitedly watching some beloved show, and then going to school and everyone was talking about the episode — but by the time my parents cut cable, the quality of broadcast television had already fallen off a cliff and hardly any of my peers were watching anymore.
Since then, I have never lived in any place where there was a TV set up to receive any type of broadcast. When I visit my friends who are my age or younger, none of them have broadcast TV. Even amongst people around my parents' and grandparents', I only know a handful who still have broadcast TV — and when I sit with them and they have the TV on, I find it tedious. It kind of seems like they do as well because, apart from a couple of specific shows or sports, they mostly just watch DVDs or streaming.
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Comment on Case before Norway's Supreme Court claims that depriving sex offender of a Snapchat account is unlawful under the European Convention on Human Rights in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIt's honestly hard for me to imagine how any court could rule in his favor, given that the ban is only for two years as part of his sentence — a sentence that also included 13 months in prison,...It's honestly hard for me to imagine how any court could rule in his favor, given that the ban is only for two years as part of his sentence — a sentence that also included 13 months in prison, which is a much greater violation of human rights than being disallowed from Snapchat.
I just want to add something about stress and humans: Stress is not inevitably bad. I think there is a level of stress that we enjoy and that is healthy for us. This is probably stress that mimics common experiences that humans evolved with.
As an anecdote, I enjoy playing video games. I particularly like video games that have periods of low stress (like base building) interspersed with periods of high stress (like leaving my base to explore dangerous territory). I find games with constant levels of stress, whether that stress is low or high, to fall somewhere on the spectrum between boring and fatiguing, and I lose interest in them.
From an outside perspective, these moments of stress probably look like they cause suffering. Notably, whenever my partner or I play video games with boss fights, we have to put our dogs in a different room, because otherwise they come bother during boss fights: they lay their heads in our laps, paw at us, lick us, and whimper at us. It seems that they identify our stress and are trying to comfort us. They can't understand that the stress is desired and that we have actively sought it out, for no purpose at all except to have fun (even though it doesn't look like we're having fun).
We see this in other aspects of life as well: People like stories about conflict, not stories without tension. People like roller coasters, horror movies, competitions, fast driving, spicy food, challenging art projects, internet arguments, and hundreds of other stress-inducing activities. And it's not just our brains that need stress: We are healthier when we induce micro tears in our muscles and micro fractures in our bones (aka exercise), and we develop allergies and auto-immune disorders when our immune systems don't get enough legitimate pathogens to fight.
It seems clear to me that our brains and bodies are calibrated for a certain degree of certain kinds of stress. We suffer when our stress levels are abnormally high and when they are abnormally low, as well as when they are abnormally constant.