chocobean's recent activity
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentWell, I guess my humble crackpot to this crackpot is that there are more good ones than bad, certainly the impoverished and suffering ones who care for their communities at personal cost. I'm not...Well, I guess my humble crackpot to this crackpot is that there are more good ones than bad, certainly the impoverished and suffering ones who care for their communities at personal cost.
I'm not part of the Catholic church but I've met a lot of clergy and pastors who do care, work very long hours, are exposed to first responders levels of personal trauma dumping from everyone, and aren't financially well rewarded.
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentI somehow thought that was the clip before clicking on it, despite not having remembered the name of the person depicted I do thing that there's a certain level of cooperation involved before a...I somehow thought that was the clip before clicking on it, despite not having remembered the name of the person depicted
I do thing that there's a certain level of cooperation involved before a thorough corruption is possible, too. As in, they don't have absolute power over human beings, cooperative ones, plus a lot of incentives for cooperation
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentI've wondered if they filtered out suspects like "111666" or "4206969" and suchI've wondered if they filtered out suspects like "111666" or "4206969" and such
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentWith the courts being completely ineffective, I'm starting to believe he can just cancel November midterms with no pretense and there's nothing that will happenWith the courts being completely ineffective, I'm starting to believe he can just cancel November midterms with no pretense and there's nothing that will happen
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentThat's where I'm placing my hope, not in that they won't try shinannigans, but in hopes that they're so incompetent and their ranks filled only with corrupt conmen all the way down that it'll be a...That's where I'm placing my hope, not in that they won't try shinannigans, but in hopes that they're so incompetent and their ranks filled only with corrupt conmen all the way down that it'll be a hilarious debacle more obvious than the Four Seasons Landscaping mess up
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentDifferent kind of "class" they're talking about for sureDifferent kind of "class" they're talking about for sure
-
Comment on What are your personal crackpot conspiracy theories about the world right now? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentIt would be of greater comfort to me if many of them are secretly atheists only aiming to earn a buck or billion, cynically dressing up as shepherds to devour the sheep. It's much scarier to...It would be of greater comfort to me if many of them are secretly atheists only aiming to earn a buck or billion, cynically dressing up as shepherds to devour the sheep. It's much scarier to imagine that they do believe in the divine, the final judgement, to consume the flesh and blood of the flock, while they give themselves the seal of approval that yes God is made in my image and approves of what I am doing.
My addendum crackpot is that some of them are indeed and truthfully visited by immaterial beings, maybe shining with apparent beauty inspiring awe, that do tell them they are doing great as their servants and will be rewarded and give them instructions on how to further influence the world. Gist: I believe at least some of them are contacted and work for demons.
-
Comment on The cost of safetyism - what we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard in ~life
chocobean (edited )LinkResponding ONLY only the text. I hate it. No, safety is to install softer flooring instead of triangular gravel under those bars, and schedule safety inspections to replace metal sheets with rusty...Responding ONLY only the text. I hate it.
Safety is preventative. It’s the impulse to prevent every possible discomfort, fall, or bruise. It's making sure that there aren't monkey bars at a playground so that no one can fall.
No, safety is to install softer flooring instead of triangular gravel under those bars, and schedule safety inspections to replace metal sheets with rusty jagged edges at the bottom of a slide. OP hasn't been to the playgrounds I've been to. Safety is definitely not there for boo-boos that the author is dismissing, but for prevention of forseeable and critical injuries. Has author been to any recently installed playground and did they not see monkey bars and balancing beams and climb nets and rock walls still exist? Nice strawman.
It's providing trigger warnings, so that people can walk out instead of face being uncomfortable in the classroom. [...]
response a bit long .
From the linked meta research
Most clinical discussion of trigger warnings has focused on response affect. Advocates assume that trigger warnings help people control or cope with their negative emotional reactions to material, whereas critics claim that warnings will only exacerbate negative reactions. Contrary to both views, we found that warnings had no effect on emotional reactions to material. That is, existing published research almost unanimously suggests that trigger warnings do not mitigate distress.
Why do trigger warnings fail to change emotional reactions? One explanation might be that individuals simply ignore the warnings altogether. However, this explanation is contradicted by the strong consensus, discussed later, that trigger warnings generate negative emotions during the anticipatory period. Thus, trigger warnings do initially affect emotional experience, but once presented with the actual material in question, emotional experiences equalize between those who were warned and those who were not.
One possibility is that most people are not skilled at emotional preparation (e.g., reappraising emotional content or using coping strategies). Thus, the uncomfortable anticipatory period is unlikely to reflect any form of helpful action. This conclusion is supported by Bridgland et al. (2022), who asked participants to explain what they would do when they came across a trigger warning; only a minority of participants mentioned some form of approach coping strategy (e.g., reappraisal strategies, such as reminding themselves to focus on nonemotional aspects of the situation; Shiota & Levenson, 2009). Indeed, trigger warnings (including those used in the current studies) typically warn people about the distressing reactions they may have but do not explain how to reduce these reactions.
So they sorta kinda don't really work. Great science! But we know that some people with trauma really do need more help. What is the right thing to do?
If we tell people they're going to get slapped across the face before they get slapped, does it help? If not, maybe we can look into why there are so many slaps in the face? Maybe we look at giving resources for people who want to avoid the pain but have to endure the slap: give them a book to block.
If warnings don't work, the correct solution isn't to shrug and say oh well, or laugh at folks who need help for being babies and tell them to suck it up buttercup. It's to move onto actually effective measures.
Watch what happens at recess when adults always step in to mediate. Children stop learning how to resolve their own arguments.
The bullying child learns the prey are watched carefully, and plan attacks on less carefully tended children fending for themselves to resolve "a mere argument"?
There's a vast gulf between adults always step in and adults never step in, and that gulf is where bullying leave lifelong scars. In general, articles like these that sneer at safety and attention are reminiscing on a past where many physically survived but carry wounds with them, with rose tinted glasses. Most of us made it, see? It's like that meme with the bullet holes on planes that made it back: it ignores that along with "healthy parenting plus freedom", there was also a culture of widespread neglect where kids are not just allowed to work out conflicts or fall off their bikes, they were also left with no reliable adult to turn to when they are tormented or abused or groomed. It does not ask the opinion of kids who were killed or took their own lives. It's the difference between breaking a bone on the playground (fine) and not having a broken bone be discovered by an adult for days afterwards.
It's okay to criticize the hovering and the useless fretting and the irrational limiting of freedoms. It's not okay to attack reasonable safety measures for the most vulnerable among us and to pretend hands off attitude makes things completely okay either. Parenting is a hard job that has a myriad of considerations: I would have preferred a more fair discussion on how to safely grant our kids more freedom rather than strawman attacks.
Every parent I know has similar instincts. We aren’t bad parents.
Last note edit. The ending of the text starting from "Lengthening the Leash" isn't bad. But note how the examples provided are ones where parents are actively involved and watching. The story of silently watching from the sideline coaching is good advice: show up for them, but stay quiet unless they're calling on you. That will work for the majority of parents who are good parents. But I need to point out that not every parent has this "instinct": there exist monsters who use children for betterment of their own lives, or lesser monsters who birthed children they let free range. Those are definitely bad parents and when their abuse and or neglect bear fruit into horrific news, they are the reason why even good parents are judged by society so harshly.
-
Comment on The cost of safetyism - what we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard in ~life
chocobean LinkIn Canada, Quebec is the only province where there is a set age for leaving a child at home briefly (7). Everywhere else in Canada, should something happen to the child, even to 16 years old, the...Again, much of it is in response to a environment that punishes parents for giving kids autonomy. [...] Maryland law effectively says no child should be alone before the age of 8. While Minnesota allows 6 year olds to be unsupervised. There is no consistent national standard, and most laws have no developmental rationale.
In Canada, Quebec is the only province where there is a set age for leaving a child at home briefly (7). Everywhere else in Canada, should something happen to the child, even to 16 years old, the parents could be criminally responsible for neglect and exposure (it's cold out sometimes), or certainly warrant a visit from child services. By the time something horrible happens, everyone is reacting emotionally and want to have clear bad villains to blame. Sometimes this is internalized and enforced as social stigma as well: can I live with myself if I allow my child to have fun and autonomy, and then the unthinkable happens. No. Better safe than sorry. And we are a society where no amount of sorry is adequate for the loss of a child: there will never be any social forgiveness for the loss of an unsupervised child.
In bygone days, we accept child mortality as a fact of life. These days we expect every child to grow into adulthood barring horrific illnesses, or sudden violent crime or accidents where the child is supervised. Everything else, we'd want to assign blame to assuage our own anxieties.
-
Comment on The cost of safetyism - what we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard in ~life
chocobean Link ParentNow's a decent time to find fellow parents who feel the same and will invest equal time and energy into also letting their kids mingle with yours while they run free. Running free alone is boring...Now's a decent time to find fellow parents who feel the same and will invest equal time and energy into also letting their kids mingle with yours while they run free. Running free alone is boring and dangerous. I can't see society's pendulum swinging that wildly within 20 years, but there will always be pockets of holdouts who feel the same as you now.
In my experience, I found the homeschooling communities fantastic for this kind of .... forest school, free-range, censorship free reading, here's a map and transit card, let them do their thing after equipping them, that type of people.
-
Comment on The cost of safetyism - what we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard in ~life
chocobean Link ParentThe extracurricular grind came from the immigrant generations, I think, for which the children were told they would, in fact, not turn out fine unless they grind from the earliest age. A lot of...and everything worked out fine
The extracurricular grind came from the immigrant generations, I think, for which the children were told they would, in fact, not turn out fine unless they grind from the earliest age. A lot of these parents have no education, maybe can't read/write, no savings, no pension, no network, no safety nets, no ability to speak the official languages (or heavy rural accent even if same language), no experience with legal rights or access to employment mentorship -- if their kids don't make it to university there is no other social mobility route possible. They'll be stuck with being precariously employed at the lowest tier of jobs for life. The grind is miserable because without it, that life looks even more miserable.
CPA sounds mundane and boring, and you're probably thinking not all that hard or prestigious, but in some communities, being hired for a white collar professional job that sits in an air conditioned office, instead of being married off young, factory work, working in hotel / hospitality, or sex work, is a massive win proportional to the work she put in. I can only speculate, but I know people who didn't end up as, say, a neurosurgeon or NASA scientist or CEO because they had to shoot for shortest degrees in university because their families can't afford programs that are any longer: they've got a string of other siblings to financially support and aging grandparents that demand fastest least ambitious stable professional job.
-
Comment on When did you realize you were different? in ~talk
chocobean (edited )Link ParentFrom the Story Of The Stone (Dream of Red Chambers), there's a scene in chapter 3 where Bao-Yu, born male, who grew up in a mansion full of women, meets his cousin Dai-Yu. David Hawkes...From the Story Of The Stone (Dream of Red Chambers), there's a scene in chapter 3 where Bao-Yu, born male, who grew up in a mansion full of women, meets his cousin Dai-Yu. David Hawkes translation:
He returned to his interrogation of Dai-yu.
‘Have you got a jade?’
The rest of the company were puzzled, but Dai-yu at once divined that he was asking her if she too had a jade like the one he was born with.‘No,’ said Dai-yu. ‘That jade of yours is a very rare object. You can’t expect everybody to have one.’
This sent Bao-yu off instantly into one of his mad fits. Snatching the jade from his neck he hurled it violently on the floor as if to smash it and began abusing it passionately.
‘Rare object! Rare object! What’s so lucky about a stone that can’t even tell which people are better than others? Beastly thing! I don’t want it!’
The maids all seemed terrified and rushed forward to pick it up, while Grandmother Jia clung to Bao-yu in alarm.
‘Naughty, naughty boy! Shout at someone or strike them if you like when you are in a nasty temper, but why go smashing that precious thing that your very life depends on?’
‘None of the girls has got one,’ said Bao-yu, his face streaming with tears and sobbing hysterically. ‘Only I have got one. It always upsets me. And now this new
cousin comes here who is as beautiful as an angel and she hasn’t got one either; so I know it can’t be any good.’It's been decades since I've read it, but I still remember the commentary pointed out that there's a bit more going on here with the stone/jade/yu than just something he was born. (Bonus Confucius nonsense from Granny here also a treat.)
-
Comment on When did you realize you were different? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentI'm so glad you found an environment where you weren't just tolerated, but celebrated. That kind of sucks to hear about relationships being a challenge for you, though. I hope it eventually...I'm so glad you found an environment where you weren't just tolerated, but celebrated.
That kind of sucks to hear about relationships being a challenge for you, though. I hope it eventually happens that you run into another fun, kind, awesome, quirky person who also goes all in 100% immediately. Then it'll feel like your whole lives both of you were just waiting for that one day to cross paths.
-
Comment on When did you realize you were different? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentA teacher in highschool told us that on average, teen boys think about sex every 7 seconds. The teacher was very wrong (snopes) but none of the boys seemed to be outraged or disagee, so it was at...A teacher in highschool told us that on average, teen boys think about sex every 7 seconds. The teacher was very wrong (snopes) but none of the boys seemed to be outraged or disagee, so it was at least within an order of magnitude of being correct, I guess. It wasn't until I was a very much older adult that I realised what people mean when they think about sex is usually accompanied by desire: that it isn't like, I thought of Rome today, or I remembered an old trivia. That when people leer/oogle/stare they are actively imagining specific acts with the desire to make it reality only inhibited by opportunity/circumstances. And that when people view pornography it's not like viewing animals through a zoo window or reading a magazine, they use the pornographic material.
-
Comment on When did you realize you were different? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentYou guys were given scalpels in grade 2?! The problem with being "busy" and "extra" that our well meaning parents didn't think about, was that we become too busy and too extra to be productive, in...You guys were given scalpels in grade 2?!
The problem with being "busy" and "extra" that our well meaning parents didn't think about, was that we become too busy and too extra to be productive, in a society that provides us with necessities in exchange for productivity.
My parents also knew, but they weren't seeing grades suffer and did nothing. By the time the grades did suffer, they suffered catastrophically: I was years behind in discipline of being able to concentrate on work and get assignments done.
-
Comment on If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you in ~tech
chocobean Link ParentI see your point that we've always had these same pain points, but there's a difference between an annoying persistent drip vs an aimed firehose. The difference is how we came to have Wikipedia...I see your point that we've always had these same pain points, but there's a difference between an annoying persistent drip vs an aimed firehose.
The difference is how we came to have Wikipedia and why we now stand to lose it: trolls have always been able to ruin a wiki article, but internal gatekeeping and easily reversible pages kept the minimal labour on the quality side: it took more effort to ruin something than to revert.
-
Comment on If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you in ~tech
chocobean Link ParentNor a fabricated accountant, lawyer, doctor, inventory clicker, therapist, HR, payroll, priest, deity... I can't wait for the hype to die and we land back in actually good use cases again. I find...I want a natural language interface to an encyclopedia. Not a fabricated friend.
Nor a fabricated accountant, lawyer, doctor, inventory clicker, therapist, HR, payroll, priest, deity...
I can't wait for the hype to die and we land back in actually good use cases again.
I find news like this encouraging, where users use it too much and exceeds the company budget.
[He said his startup], which he started with "the goal of replacing/rewriting all the legacy software in the world," is trending toward spending $10 million a year on AI costs.
Instead of helping the businesses of these illegitimate use cases save money + hurt humanity, I'll be doing my part to push them to financial ruin faster.
-
Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 25 in ~society
chocobean Link ParentFeel free to post new comments on this recurring thread for each of these and I'm sure many more to come. I do want to know, and to read them as comments here not because the magnitude of severity...Feel free to post new comments on this recurring thread for each of these and I'm sure many more to come. I do want to know, and to read them as comments here not because the magnitude of severity isn't deserving of their own threads, but because of the frequency, and we collectively have nothing new to say in response to the vast amount of horror that is America and how it has impacted the world right now. The only discussion we can have that has a high signal to noise ratio is to enumerate new evil events without responses, not because they're not worthy of response both literal and emotional, but because these would not be new responses.
-
Comment on There's a hundred illegal erections in the hills behind my parents' house in ~hobbies
chocobean LinkThis is as close to real life MMORPG as we can get, huh. The photos seem endearingly familiar, and honestly without reading your post I would not have thought them special, probably just a regular...This is as close to real life MMORPG as we can get, huh. The photos seem endearingly familiar, and honestly without reading your post I would not have thought them special, probably just a regular camp area or even some guy's back yard. (For some definitions of yards; folks own back woods here)
As a Canadian I'm especially intrigued by the overseas admiration of our culture. And even though I'm not a big hiker, here in rural Atlantic Canada near Crown forests, I can already confirm some of these sensibility does exist: a live and let live attitude; appreciation for solitude and another guy's privacy in the woods; a sort of "don't tell me how to be caretaker of the land when you turn around and sell commercial fishing permits or authorize clear cuts" antagonism to the official oceans and fisheries or forestry or provincial bodies; an unofficial source of information that's transmitted via trust based network only; the generosity and trust that's granted once you are part of the network.... There's a lot of freedom here. With satellite images readily available how do these clearings stay hidden?
As an outsider, I don't want to idealised too much, though, because this sort of system is extremely hostile to outsiders and as a result offer no protection, no equity, no recourse towards folks that have pissed off just one local or only been here one generation or any number of reason, and there's no way to get an appeal.
A shame that it sometimes only needs one person to ruin a hundred year old good thing. My hope is that your governing bodies also feel the same way you do and bureaucratically drag their heels long enough for the one guy to go away. The one guy is just doing it for clicks isn't here, just to create outrage and controversy and get famous and make money?
:) mods could change your clickbait title, you know, but hey you got me so fair is fair.
May we be protected from pondering too deeply about the true horrors, and letting our imagination do ourselves moral harm. That's one I gotta watch out for, for myself. Something something staring into the abyss etc, probably not good for us.