Gaywallet's recent activity

  1. Comment on Luigi Mangione prosecutors have a jury problem: 'So much sympathy' in ~society

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    It is certainly important to think about that! But this isn't a widespread problem with all crime that is happening - it's specific to this case, meaning that the context of this case is...

    It is certainly important to think about that! But this isn't a widespread problem with all crime that is happening - it's specific to this case, meaning that the context of this case is important. On a broader scale we should be paying attention to justice vs. vengeance as it plays out in the entire system and we should and do have some protections to try and minimize vengeance seeking behavior. But the way this is being painted as an issue in the article seems to ignore broader issues with the justice system in general (you could just as easily talk about failures of justice when it comes to rich folks gaming the system, another way the justice/vengeance paradigm can be exploited) and the author seems to be picking a biased side and calling it "neutral". It feels dishonest to me to fail to discuss or address issues with the justice system as a whole when picking a side like this (siding with justice over vengeance, for example) without simultaneously highlighting how pulling to one side too hard also leads to different problems.

    7 votes

  2. Comment on Luigi Mangione prosecutors have a jury problem: 'So much sympathy' in ~society

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Neutrality is supposed to exist in the context of peers, which is why it's called a jury of peers. If the average peer believes this man should not be punished in the way the judge or the...

    Their struggle to get a proper neutral jury

    Neutrality is supposed to exist in the context of peers, which is why it's called a jury of peers. If the average peer believes this man should not be punished in the way the judge or the prosecutor believes he should be punished, then the prosecutor and the judge are biased (frankly the reach for terrorism is out of pocket). The reality is that the "neutral" position on this matter is a sympathetic one to this individual and our justice system should reflect this.

    15 votes

  9. Comment on Crabs, crustaceans, and pain in ~science

    Gaywallet
    Link
    Direct link to scientific paper

    Direct link to scientific paper

    5 votes

  11. Comment on Inside the war against excessive headlight brightness in ~transport

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    You know I'm not certain since it was bought used, but in my state it can be at most 35 in the rear, so its probably somewhere between 35-50.

    You know I'm not certain since it was bought used, but in my state it can be at most 35 in the rear, so its probably somewhere between 35-50.

    6 votes

  13. Comment on Fragile promise of psychedelics in psychiatry in ~science

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Nearly all major studies on therapy+hallucinogenic drug in this realm (MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, etc.) have a rather standard protocol. The prospective patients are screened for pre-existing mental...

    Nearly all major studies on therapy+hallucinogenic drug in this realm (MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, etc.) have a rather standard protocol. The prospective patients are screened for pre-existing mental health conditions (anything besides the target is often a reason to be excluded, at least during the research phase as a means to best understand outcomes). If they pass the screening they are then set up with a series of appointments (and in some cases they might even have a number of sessions with the therapist to get to know each other before getting to typical drug+therapy structure). The first appointment is essentially an educational- the patient is told what they are to expect, the format of what is going to happen, how the hallucinogen works, etc. and are allowed to ask questions. This usually lasts several hours. The second appointment is where they receive a dose and undergo a session of therapy. There is time to settle in, ask questions, etc. Then they are dosed and the therapist is in the room. The structure of the timing from receiving a dose to the actual therapy, the cool down period, and the decompression are all standardized to the time the drug is active one's system. There is then 1-2 more appointments where a retrospective/unpacking session happens and possibly another normal therapy session.

    These things are incredibly curated and structured. I've seen documents put together that even specify how many pillows, blankets, and seating should be present, what kind of lighting to use, and even what kind of exercises to go through to prepare and create a safe/warm/cozy place for the person to be in the best possible headspace for therapy.

    But these more structured, well thought out studies are not the only studies happening and humans come in many variations. There will likely be plenty of noise to sift through and it won't be effective for everyone, but that's entirely okay (and in fact, arguably desirable). This is simply meant to be another tool in a toolbox - the appropriate tool for a patient should be a discussion between a patient and their doctor. In many cases this particular tool is able to fix people who've gone through every other possible tool in the toolbox and found no solutions. It's really not that important to know whether it works better than placebo so much as it is important to figure out how to structure these in an effective manner and ensure it's 'safe' enough to do to become a medical mainstay for patients for which it seems a useful tool to explore.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Inside the war against excessive headlight brightness in ~transport

    Gaywallet
    Link
    Interesting article, enjoyed reading it. I've wondered about this, but it's nice to see the numbers and hear from some people really involved in this process. As a minor anecdote, I recently...

    Interesting article, enjoyed reading it. I've wondered about this, but it's nice to see the numbers and hear from some people really involved in this process. As a minor anecdote, I recently purchased a used car which had it's rear windshield tinted and I hardly notice or get annoyed by way too bright headlights anymore while driving. It makes me wonder if smart glass which can locally tint a bright light source might be an "eventual" solution.

    13 votes

  16. Comment on Why are people on social media fixated on sharing insane takes for "criticism" or mocking? in ~talk

    Gaywallet
    Link
    A lot of folks are talking about anger, and while I think it is an important driving factor, I think it's important to look a step deeper. Why do people feel angry and need more outlets for their...

    A lot of folks are talking about anger, and while I think it is an important driving factor, I think it's important to look a step deeper. Why do people feel angry and need more outlets for their anger? I believe this is just an outlet for a symptom - the symptom being deep distrust in the system, a lack of support, an increasing wealth divide, and a desire to see change but no mechanism by which to actualize it. If you've spent a reasonable amount of time in spaces where folks are really marginalized, you'll find a lot more folks who need a space to vent their anger. I think we're seeing this in society at large as more folks are feeling left behind and without support, and the internet has created spaces for this particular behavior to be vented.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on The affordable housing shortage is reshaping parts of rural America in ~finance

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    A small note about SF is that it does have a lot of hills in certain areas, so how walkable it is really depends on where in the city you are and how able bodied and fit you are. Of note,...

    A small note about SF is that it does have a lot of hills in certain areas, so how walkable it is really depends on where in the city you are and how able bodied and fit you are.

    Of note, walkscore.com gives SF a 1 point higher score than NYC which I feel is correct having spent time in both cities. I think NYC has better connectivity/transit when you think about the city as a whole, but if you're not in outer sunset or richmond and instead along the BART or major MUNI lines then the transportation is pretty similar. I really wish BART ran all night though 😩

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Looking to hear experiences about Laser Facial Hair Removal in ~lgbt

    Gaywallet
    Link
    I've had about a dozen sessions on my face and entire body. I also have dark hair and light skin. It's not permanent in that you won't kill every hair, but you will kill a lot of them. I used to...

    I've had about a dozen sessions on my face and entire body. I also have dark hair and light skin. It's not permanent in that you won't kill every hair, but you will kill a lot of them. I used to be very hairy, thick beard, etc. I still shave but way less. I'm doing electro to clear up the white hairs and the hairs that still exist.

    The nicest part has been doing it all over my entire body. I shave much more rarely now and don't even bother shaving many areas because the hairs still around are all white or much thinner.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on How do you build strong online communities? in ~talk

    Gaywallet
    Link
    I could talk about what makes healthy communities for ages! My search for a better community has brought me through quite a few spaces, including Tildes, and eventually to helping form a community...

    I could talk about what makes healthy communities for ages! My search for a better community has brought me through quite a few spaces, including Tildes, and eventually to helping form a community to continue to experiment in the space and test some communal hypotheses on ways things can be made better.

    While your question is about 'strong' communities, I'm going to interpret that through a lens which prioritizes the following: cohesion, good/nice behavior, diversity, being a relatively safe space. You may not hold all the same ideals when you think strong, but I'll do my best to point out throughout this post what interventions and designs are primarily effecting so you can choose what makes sense for you.

    On a high level I think there's a few thoughts which hold pretty universally:

    First and foremost a community needs to center the idea that there's a human behind a computer behind every post. This is primarily targeted at keeping a space nice but it's also quite important for cohesion and a sense of community. I believe the most effective policy in this space is to encourage folks to treat others in good faith until proven overwhelmingly otherwise. When people treat others with bad faith or assume trolling or other negative behavior you need to step in and publicly remind them to ask questions and confirm suspicion. Moderators and power users should strive to open comments early by predicting the kinda of questions which will likely arise when questionable content is posted in a community. By far this is one of the trickiest needles to thread because it requires fairly high touch moderation or an engaged community and it can break down easily if you're not keeping a finger on the pulse of the community. It may require proactively sequestering certain conversations in specific communities or threads and for major issues may require regular stickied or high visibility posts from administration or moderation reminding users to be on good behavior or reminding the users of the values of the community.

    Secondly I personally believe that a good community always has treasured people. These treasured people are often extraordinarily nice and this helps to reinforce nice behavior within the community and ultimately leads to stronger cohesion because folks are more engaged. Your community needs to center the needs of nice folks over rude ones and you need to pay close attention to this. Losing nice people is much easier than losing people who aren't nice and losing nice people is much more damaging to a community than losing anyone else. This is touched on quite a bit in an excellent blog post which touches on a concept called 'evaporative cooling'. The first point about treating others with good faith goes a long way in helping ensure you keep your nice folks, but it's not the whole story.

    Which brings me to the third point, I strongly believe that hyper specific rules are damaging/bad for a community and that less specific, more interpretable rules are better. The reason for this comes down to an explicit recognition that communities are there to support the community, and not the individual. Most in person communities do not have rules- think about your friend group or an activity club you belong to. These almost never have explicit rules, but if you're a dick to someone in these groups it certainly won't go unpunished. I think that healthy communities have lots of discussions about behavior when folks have conflict and I think that's part of what makes them work. People feel engaged with a community when they feel heard and respected and it's extremely alienating and dehumanizing when someone's being a dick but following all the rules and you get ignored because of it. This is perhaps the most important driver behind long term community engagement- without it folks will interact more cyclically and leave after they get too fed up bad actors.

    Fourth, I think that diversity is extremely important in a community and the only way to ensure adequate diversity is to explicitly be a safe space. This can be tricky to deal with because being a safe space means being flexible on some level around rules. A transgender or black person, for example, may not be in a space to do the emotional burden required to take a potentially offensive content in good faith and you need to be able to adjust moderation tactics to give them space to vent about the harms and injustice they have experienced while gently reminding them and the community of the ideal behavior. You'll also need to manage the emotions of fragile folks in majority groups who may take offense at what these minority folks are saying. This is definitely one of the stronger personal beliefs I have about websites and one that is extremely infrequently centered on the internet which caters predominately to white men in tech. This is one of the largest mismatches of community ideals I personally experience on this website and it's why I've significantly disengaged from it as compared to the early days. I believe that this mismatch is primarily behind the decline in diversity I've seen here and the biggest issue I have with the community ideals here.

    Fifth, I believe that communities cannot grow beyond a certain size and feel strong or cohesive. I do not know what this size is and I suspect the size is actually on some level actually a function of how many intermediaries exist- the number of moderators and highly engaged individuals which engage in community discussions and help to keep a community healthy. This is talked about a bit in a blog post which highlights the difference between a village and a train station.

    Sixth, moderation needs to be more high touch and involve more conversations and less moderator actions. Folks need to directly see next to and after questionable behavior, moderators and admins stepping in and asking clarifying questions or reminding folks of the appropriate behavior. Sometimes it can be helpful for problematic material to be left up because the visibility of pushback can help to signal community values. A highly responded to comment where everyone is pushing back against what the person shared can be important to a space feeling safe to minorities. Sometimes the material might be too inflammatory and need to be removed. Often this requires discussion amongst moderators and admins on how others would step in and sometimes it's informed directly by how many reports the community makes or reports coming from specific well known individuals such as the nice/treasured ones mentioned above. Sometimes this also means having meta discussions with individuals when they step out of line or just reminding them of how they are expected to behave.

    Seventh, moderation should not only be done by moderators. The above point talks about situations in which the community steps up to protect how safe and welcoming a space seems by pushing back against a problematic opinion. This can be done entirely without the intervention of moderators and admins and in fact this models how in person communities work. Multiple people might chime in if someone says something fucked up in person and none of them need to be the organizer for it to be effective. Similarly if someone says something possibly problematic, their friends or close companions in the community might pull them aside and talk to them in depth about how that might come off to others. This kind of behavior should happen regularly as well as be celebrated when it does happen and increases engagement and cohesion as well as helps to keep a space diverse because it becomes clear to minorities that their safety is prioritized. You need to keep in mind that it's still a community and a safe space does not excuse repeated negative behavior by heavily marginalized folks- the community always needs to come first but there needs to be some flexibility and understanding for human emotions and a lens on equity (which necessitates examining need in depth).

    Eighth, you should have a space for admins and moderators to discuss problematic behavior and to double check with peers whenever they are unsure how to act. This space should exist away from the eyes of non moderators to allow for discussion to happen privately and should be a safe space for moderators to share opinions on appropriate action because opinions on this will not always be aligned. I find that it helps for this space to be open to all moderators regardless of the community and its purpose is to help gut check borderline behavior and to brainstorm with peers on what the appropriate action is. This space often will drive folks to take less action and start more discussions. Often you'll find other moderators have exactly the words you're struggling to find or the perfect response to specific behavior and can help to reduce the cognitive burden of deciding the right reaction to problematic behavior. It also increases cohesion and engagement of your moderators by allowing them to chime in on community and specifically moderator ideals and set precedent for how specific behavior should be treated more globally on the website.

    I could probably keep going on about online community health, but instead of positing every hypothesis I have, I'll point you at the philosophical musings available on the documents section of the community I helped to form and run.

    6 votes