#pseudoscience cw

[snarp]

Does the Epic medical records system ask a "learning styles" question by default now, or is this just this particular bad hospital system?

Next time they will ask for my MBTI, birth chart, love language, and dominant chakra.

[sxnshxnxxnddxxsxxs]

i really feel like we don’t discuss enough just how deep jkr’s white supremacy goes

like it’s way more than just:

cho chang’s name

almost every black character being tall and sporty

kingley’s name

the goblins

the house elves

the only south asian thing about the patil twins being their names

there’s way more but those are the talking points that are usually discussed in the white supremacy context of jkr’s bigotry.

but there’s something else that i find to be particularly insidious which i don’t see that many conversations about.

so for context when i did my a level i had had to research late 19th century pseudoscience because i was studying gothic literature. and i came across things like phrenology and the criminal mind and honestly it feels like jkr discovered these theories and just ran with them.

as a quick explanation phrenology is the theory that by studying the shape of someone’s skull you can see if they’re predisposed to criminality and lombroso’s criminal mind is the theory that criminality is hereditary and you can tell by observing someone’s physical features. it’s also the general consensus in both these theories that someone with physical ‘defects’ or deformities’ will be predisposed to criminality which also makes them incredibly ableist.

both are incredibly eugenicist and white supremacist theories because they’re essentially saying that you can tell if someone is inherently good or bad and thereby whether they deserve to be alive/within society/treated as equals by looking at their physical features.

they are both complete bullshit pseudoscience with no real basis in fact.

now where this comes into hp and jkr is that the antagonists and the villains of the series are disproportionately described as having these very negative physical characteristics.

like the very obvious one is voldemort with no nose and being snakelike.

but also the way peter pettigrew is described.

“His thin, colourless hair was unkempt and there was a large bald patch on top. He had the shrunken appearance of a plump man who had lost a lot of weight in a short time. His skin looked grubby, almost like Scabbers’s fur, and something of the rat lingered around his pointed nose, his very small, watery eyes.” (poa ch 19)

like the man is literally being compared to an animal (yes i know it’s implied in the lore that the longer one stays in their animagus form the more traits they take on but the point still stands).

then there’s marcus flint who as far as i remember is literally just a minor antagonist.

“Marcus Flint was even larger than Wood. He had a look of trollish cunning on his face as he replied” (cos ch 7)

like she really has a thing for comparing people to animals which is a very common tool in white supremacy for dehumanising people.

and then there’s greyback

“a big, rangy man with matted grey hair and whiskers, whose black Death Eater’s robes looked uncomfortably tight. He had a voice like none that Harry had ever heard: a rasping bark of a voice. Harry could smell a powerful mixture of dirt, sweat and, unmistakeably, of blood coming from him. His filthy hands had long yellowish nails.” (hbp ch 27)

now admittedly it’s slightly different with greyback since jkr is very openly saying in the narrative that he’s less than human and too dangerous for society because jkr only believes in equality for muggleborns and no one else.

but as is stands there are so many examples some big some small of the physical descriptions of villains and antagonists having negative connotations. the reason that it’s so insidious is because this is a children’s book series. and children soak up information like sponges including the implication that the further you are from the beauty standards the worse of a person you are (something that is reinforced by society). then when you place that in the context of the west where hp is most popular then it becomes the further away you are from whiteness (the western beauty standard) the worse of a person you are.

it seems like a really small thing which is why i don’t think it gets discussed nearly as much as the more overt things but even the small pebbles can have large ripple effects. besides i think think it’s incredibly important to discuss every aspect of jkr’s bigotry.

[mercurialbadger]

Want to see something unspeakably horrifying?

[e1dritchqueer]

hello???? I just had someone come up to me at my work and tried to convince me to hand out "UN Sustainability Fliers" which were actually just weird pseudoscience cult fliers????

[weevil-mastermind]

The sun floats above the earth disk, moving in a circle above the equator. The lands beyond the ice wall must either have their own suns or they are locked in perpetual night.

(What force keeps the sun on its path is unclear.

So there's this Flat Earther who said he was traveling to the Ice Wall last September to prove the Earth was flat. He has not posted since.

Here are some theories on his current whereabouts:

He fell off

Too busy partying on the continent of Geminia to post anymore

He discovered a second, bigger ice wall

He died alone in the frigid wastes of Antarctica, aware at last of his folly as he slowly, painfully expired, his body never again to be seen by human eyes

Here be dragons (they ate him)

[localfaecryptid]

Chronic illness rant time

I’m not really the kind of person to get upset at random ads or “alternate health” nonsense. I’m in chronic pain, I’m surrounded by this nonsense alllllll the time, I would burn all of my spoons if I did. However, I just got served an ad on YT that was talking about “all the things doctors aren’t telling you”. Simple things like “take D3 during the winter” and “diet can effect your health”. Your typical nonsense, some of which is helpful but all of are things that your PCP would probably tell you anyways.

And then the wammy, the one that I heard and knew I had to say something:

“If you have high blood pressure, eating grapefruit can help normalize your BP levels”.

If you aren’t aware, eating grapefruit while on certain medications will cause your body not to break down and flush out your medication once it has been absorbed. Which means that you can overtime build up higher and higher levels of the medication in your system until you overdose. Blood pressure medication is particularly notorious for this issue. If you are going on a new medication and you really like grapefruit, or you have been on a medication and want to add grapefruit to your diet, please make sure you chat with your doctor or check the very easily accessible lists of medications that would be effected.

Chronic illness rant time over… for now. Stay safe out there y’all.

[carnivorousyandeere]

Alright more thoughts— specifically about Marcus with afab Darling and kegel balls. Please heed the warnings, this one’s fucked up

More Unethical Pelvic Floor Therapy with Marcus

( MDNI, No Age in Bio DNI )

CW: abuse of power, gaslighting, unethical medicine, intentional bad medical advice (leaving kegel balls in for extended periods can actually fatigue your muscles and damage them; any company suggesting you do this instead of actual exercises is working from pseudoscience. If it’s your kink to leave ‘em in a long time go ham or whatever… just know the risks), smut, dubcon, overstimulation, painful fingering, painful sex, mating press but no talk of actual breeding

Info: gn afab reader

Your physical therapists had recommended you start using kegel balls— “it’ll help with your mood and disgestion!” Said one. “It’s a great workout, helps keep you healthy,” nodded the second. The last insinuated it would improve your sex life— as if you’d had sex with anyone but the three of them since you started visiting their office.

None of them had really explained how you were supposed to use them, so you figured your best bet would be to ask Marcus. The other two would insist on “showing you how to use them,” and you’d just end up fucked out in one of their offices again. When you asked, he just laughed a little and pushed up his glasses, typing away at his computer and not sparing a glance, as if you should already know the answer.

“You lube it up, with as little lube as possible, and slide it into the vaginal canal. Then, it should rest rather comfortably near your cervix, much as a tampon might. After that, you just let it stay there for a few hours while you go about your day. Your pelvic floor muscles will contract as you go about your day.”

“Oh…” you feel your face burning. “Is that… it, then?”

“Mm?” Marcus finally glances up at you. “Yeah? You shouldn’t keep them in for longer than eight hours at a time. And if you think the ones we’ll be sending you home with are too big, or you experience any pain or unusual discharge, come back in right away.”

~~~

You made it a few days. The feeling was strange, though not unpleasant— at first. You could feel it inside you as you walked around, though if you ignored it the feeling began to fade. You did notice yourself squirming a bit more, finding it harder to get comfortable. You felt… full in a way you hadn’t before. Eating and drinking made the pressure in your gut all the more noticeable. You tried not to think about it too much, and took it out at the end of your day as instructed, even though the lack of a string to pull it by was a little difficult.

The second day, you had a little trouble inserting the ball, though not too much. You did notice a small ache as the day wore on, and that your underwear felt a little more… wet than usual. At the end of the day, though, you were able to take the ball out and relax.

You woke up hot and wet the third day. You felt a little tight, but the ball slipped in without much trouble. You couldn’t focus on anything, though. Your abdomen felt so tight and hot. You feared you might leak through your underwear, and had to come home early to try and compose yourself. But try as you might when you got home, you couldn’t get the kegel ball out. You’d gotten too tight, painfully so. Embarrassed and needier than you could remember being in a long while, you pulled your clothes back up and make your way to the clinic for Marcus’ help.

~~~

It doesn’t take him long to figure out what’s going on between your panicked expression and the sweat beading at your temples, even as you struggle to tell him what’s wrong. Marcus coaxes you to undress. You lay back on an exam table, and Marcus quickly dawns a sterile mask and a pair of gloves, spreading lube over his gloved fingers. You hiss and flinch away when his fingers ghost over your clit. You see Marcus’ glimmering eyes narrow over his mask.

“You kept that damn thing in for hours a day, didn’t you?”

“Y-yes, you… told me to…”

Marcus’ eyebrows shoot up. “There’s no way… that’s far too long… your poor muscles must be so fatigued.”

He slides a finger inside you, eyebrows raising even a bit further when the tip of his finger meets the kegel ball still lodged inside you. “You couldn’t even get it out again… poor baby.”

He ignores your pained whines as he slides his finger in and out, adding a bit more lube to ease you. He doesn’t want to permanently injure you, after all… You tense and tear up as a second finger begins to slide in. Marcus shushes you, holding your hip with his other hand and brushing his thumb over the skin.

“You’ll be alright, we’ve just gotta open you up enough to pull it out.” He scissors his fingers gently, working you open. His eyes rove hungrily over your form, following the tears that drip from your eyes and devouring your pained expression like it’s a fine dessert. His pants feel much too tight.

Eventually, Marcus is able to grab the small ball and gently wiggle it free. You let out a sigh of relief and slump against the table when his hands leave you, and the ball thumps onto the table then clatters away onto the floor, forgotten as Marcus’ hands come back to spread you open to get a good look. Your folds are wet and puffy, much more than from the lube. Marcus twitches in his pants, fighting back a groan.

You tense again, wet eyes darting to him in surprise when you feel his finger testing your entrance again. “M-Marcus, please, it’s too—“

“Sore?” He interrupts. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you don’t listen to me. And if I don’t massage out these muscles now, it’s only gonna feel worse on down the line.”

You whine, turning your face to the side as Marcus slides that finger deeper inside and slides his mask down with his other hand. He kisses your cheek, tasting the tear tracks there. You shut your eyes and nod. It’s all you can do.

Your muscles are just too tight, clenching painfully around around his thick fingers as he works them inside. He spreads you apart a little bit more, keeping up the pretense of helping to relieve the ache in your core, before his fingers find that sensitive spot inside you. You jolt at the feeling, a lightning bolt of strained pleasure that has you gritting your teeth through the stars in your vision.

Marcus shushes you as you pant and groan at the strange feeling building in your gut, his fingers working that spot ever more harshly. He reassures you that everything’s going to be okay. He kisses your cheek, your forehead, strokes your hip with his free hand. It’s the most painful orgasm you’ve ever felt, but the relief that follows as you gush around his fingers is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. You go boneless against the exam table, covering your face and willing your heart to calm down.

Marcus’ fingers still, but only for a moment. He curls them again right before you can catch your breath.

“M-Marcus, no, it hurts, I can’t-”

He curls his fingers harder, breathing in your pained whine as his lips ghost over yours.

“I’ll help you feel better, but you need to relax.”

“I can’t,” you sob.

“You can,” he insists. “Be good and let me help you.”

You sob harder, finding yourself nodding again, relinquishing control over yourself as you let him work you over on his fingers again and again. You feel so tired, so achy, the burning pleasure rubbing your nerves raw like sandpaper.

Marcus relishes in your cries, making you cum twice, then thrice, before losing patience and slipping his scrubs down to rub his cock against you. You jolt and cry out even louder as his tip brushes over your clit. Marcus bites his lip, fighting back a groan at the sight. You look so pretty, tear-stained and incoherent.

He can’t help running his hands up the backs of your thighs, slick with sweat, and pressing them firmly against your chest as he slides in. Marcus stays still for a moment, savoring how hot and wet you are. You’re so tight that every twitch of him inside you makes you gasp with the discomfort. He knows you’re only going to be more sore in the morning. The thought of taking care of you, so weak and helpless, only makes him twitch even harder, moaning against the shell of your ear.

[n1ghteeea]

hi feel free to ignore this but……..do you have any egon/egon-centric polybusters headcanons….perchance………..i absolutely adore your headcanons :)

Ohhh, you asked the right person, buddy 💪

Cw: cheesy at times. Also long. Sorry!!

Sometimes Egon goes days without rest and proper food / water intake due to hyperfocusing on his work and research. The guys obviously worry because he literally exhausts himself, and often isn’t able to tell that he physically needs to stop. So they have no choice but to take on the mission of dragging him out of the lab for his own sake. Words and logic never help because he easily fights them with his own, so they use something he isn’t so good at: affection 💪

They don’t even have to do much: one of them comes to him from the back, hugs him, rests their head on his shoulder and just says nice relaxing things in a soft tone - and it works every single time. He acts like he hates it, but he’s actually very thankful to them for not letting him crash out in the lab. This method might be a bit embarrassing, but hey - if it works, it works!!

Also sometimes Peter abuses it, but what did you expect, it’s Peter 🤷 Egon can never be mad anyway, not really.

Overall, I imagine that Egon isn’t very affectionate. Physical touch is definitely not his love language, but when he does feel like it, soft stuff works best on him. Teasing is fun and all, but gentle hugs, caresses and words melt him on spot (and the others know it all too well).

Another thing (super basic, sorry) is that Egon has low blood pressure and consequently constantly cold hands (projecting? maybe). During winter they get really, really bad, so whenever they have some relaxing group activities, for example, movie nights, Ray or Winston hold his hands in theirs to heat them up (they are human heaters, trust me on this one).

Another vision I have is that Egon is shortsighted and sometimes gets visually overwhelmed, especially after multiple days without proper rest. Basically, his eyes wander around uncontrollably, taking everything in, thinking, analysing and overwhelming his mind. In order to calm him down the guys take off his glasses, forcing him to only see their faces in close proximity, so his mind has no choice but to shut up (Ray came up with that in college when Egon would grade papers throughout the day and then stay in the lab till the dead of night).

Oh yes, college!! Based on an unconfirmed wiki trivia fact, I hc that when Ray, Peter and Egon met in university Egon was a physics instructor, even though they were the same age. Ray and him bonded over their love for supernatural and eventually became friends, starting with doing research together and growing closer with time. Peter, on the other hand, was a dickhead to Egon the entire semester he had to take physics bc he hated the class and was pissed off at the fact that Egon wanted him to study instead of barely passing (who was this guy, same age as him, telling him what to do??)

But with time all of them became friends and eventually roommates, working on their doctorates together 🫶

Some more random ideas:

I hc that Egon uses unscented soap and shampoo, but the others swear it smells like pistachio ice cream. Egon doesn’t believe them, but they genuinely love it.

Egon likes lukewarm showers, though switches to hot ones later in life when his body starts cramping with age. It gets especially bad during cold weather.

The guys almost never see him in the morning because he wakes up first, but sometimes they do get him to sleep in and morning Egon is their favourite sight in the world. They also share morning cuddles ☝️

Egon thinks ufology is a pseudoscience that focuses on something that clearly doesn’t have enough proof to be worth researching, but still watches UFO documentaries for fun with Ray.

He loves Frank Sinatra. Ppl always say he’s a classical music guy, but I think he’d love smooth jazz and even smooth 80’s music, too. Let him be fun!!

Egon is quite sensitive to food texture and whenever someone else cooks dinner they always take that into consideration, and either make something all of them can enjoy, or do a little portion of his safe food so he can be comfortable eating.

All the guys absolutely adore Egon’s science talk even if they have no idea what he’s talking about most of the time. Sometimes he randomly goes on rants and they just sit there and listen to him with lovestruck expressions.

Obligatory EGB hc: the guys ADORE his long hair. And if you’re unfamiliar, it’s LONG long. It reaches his shoulder blades. It’s longer than Janine’s. I imagine it would take him a while to start leaving it down around them just because after so many years of living alone and being a teacher and a mentor he’d mold himself into this ideal always-stoic version of himself , and it would definitely take a lot of time and effort for him to learn to be open and vulnerable again.

To sum up, Egon Spengler is a great guy who loves and is loved!!

[atmosphericradar]

Perhaps /lgbt/ is dispersing, if this jargon is being seen on Instagram too.

Heads up for those unaware: 4chan trans girls are obsessed with passing, to the point of reviving phrenology. They - and anyone who posts like this - is selfhatredmaxxing and very superficialpilled.

We're getting a strange influx of users unironically talking like this

[fuck-customers]

Cancer cw? Just in case

Had a regular customer come in, and it started as a pretty standard conversation. I was wearing a bucket hat because I'm ginger and it's sunny and my job has me mostly outside, so she started the conversation with "I didn't recognize you with the hat on!" I laugh and say yeah, can't be too careful--I explain that my grandfather died from a combo of copd and skin cancer complications.

Her: "Did he wear sunscreen?"

Me: "No."

Her: "Good for him!"

I was like...too stunned to even respond. My whole brain was just skipping like a scratched CD from that. Good for him?? For dying?? Partly from skin cancer??? Because he spent over 70 years outside all the time on the planet never once protecting his skin til it was too late and there were parts missing from him?

She goes on a rant about how rise in use of sunscreen is correlated with rise in skin cancer blahblahblah--because as we all know we have records dating back centuries that prove skin cancer didnt exist til those pesky companies started making sunscreen (heavy sarcasm)--vaccines cause autoimmune diseases blahblahblah..she went through a huuuge array of unfounded horseshit. I was so stunned at the pseudoscience/conspiracy theory word soup that started coming out of her crusty mouth, all I remember thinking was if I heard the words "vaccines cause autism" come out, I was going to jail.

Next time I see her (she's here every few days) I'm going to apply my SPF-fucking-100-noncancerous-goddamn-sunscreen while making direct eye contact with her the entire time.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[bat-luun]

(tags via @encryptidarchivist)

YESSSSS i love him very much hes my darling beloved!!! <33

(ramble below cut cuz this got so long oh my god lmao - cw: suicide mention)

The tma oc is actually an au version of 'Pai Rite' (he/she)! He's player character i made while co-DMing a Call of Cthulhu campaign. He's originally from 1982 Chicago and about 28 years old. Her og lore and backstory and what played out in the campaign is rather complicated so imma leave it out. (tho i'd happy to rant about it lol-)

For the tma version: She uses her full name more often than just her nickname/chosen name; Joshua 'Pyrite' Kerr (he/she). She was born in 1978 in LA, moved to England in 1997, and died 2010 at age 32.

She is marked by both The Vast and The Spiral! (in the same way Martin is a mix of The Eye and The Lonely)

Pyrite has a rocky relationship with his parents from the start, his father was killed/taken by The Vast when Pyrite was only 17. His mother was killed by The Spiral, which triggered Pyrites leave to England to study mathematics at the King's Collage in London.

(Idk if it would really work all that well in canon but I've taken The Vast in a less 'real' direction? Like making it less of a place of endless mist or whatever but making it more like a concept?) Pyrite's father was a mathematician and investigating/trying to figure out more of the pi number. The horror of the uncomprehendable powered my the Fear drove him to insanity and eventually suicide, leaving his family suddenly and without a word.

Her mother, turning even more hyper religious than before, turned to pseudoscience as a way to cope with the grief (buying crystals and crafted religious symbols/spells to protect her, and doing other low-key paranoid superstitious stuff).

She eventually got her hands on some colorful (sea)glass shards which she hung by the windows to catch the light and "ward off evil".

The glass is an artifact of The Spiral! It slowly multiplies in numbers in the given location, and starts changing colors/patterns of objects within it's line of sight (though the owner is the only one who can see it's effects).

The longer the artifact is a set location and affecting it's victim, the more intense the distortions get (pottery/dishes "melting" or changing shape, entire rooms becoming mirrored, objects switching places with each other, glass clinking sounds being heard from every room, ...). Eventually it moves from inanimate objects to people in the victims life.

Pyrite's hair got turned a purple/pink as a cause of the artifact. Panicked, Pyrite's mother took a hammer to the glass, breaking it untill there was nothing left but dust. Pyrite found her body later that day as it was being taken away by paramedics. He moved away after that, taking a single glass shard as a keepsake to remember her by, having no idea of it's effects.

He went on to study mathematics in London and found his fathers research notes, going down the same cursed rabbit hole he did.

She did become an avatar for The Spiral later on as the artifact went on to distort any research notes Pyrite made/found beyond recognition, essentially 'winning' and making her a Spiral avatar. Pyrite died in 2010 after Gertrude and Michael stopped the great twisting. Died mad and dazed and out of breath, trying to keep her grip on the only thing that was left of her mother, the destruction of the ritual making her take her own life.

me and my best friend(one of the other co-DMs) did art of Pai Rite and his gay boyfriend Revemine for valentines day!! :D

(also tagging @horrid-mothlegs for if you want more info for when our tma ocs can hang out >:])

[discworldwitches]

i know the theory of evolution has been used to justify eugenics but what do you mean it's tied to pseudoscience (besides pop science and racist understandings of it)? and like, what are the actual alternatives then?

evolution as in the actual phenomenon cannot & does not affirm the idea that certain ways of being, behaviours, bodies, etc. are “degenerate” or “primitive” but the theory can and was applied in this pseudoscientific way (ie social darwinism). so what i am referring to is pseudoscientific applications of evolution such as “race science” (which we referred to racial pseudoscience or race pseudoscience in some of my upper level classes in my degree).

i wrote a whole big reply but i went back to steven angelides and he explains it best.

note, bisexual was initially coined (krafft-ebing. 1886) to refer to intersex individuals and bisexuality was referred to as “psychic h*rmaphroditism” (cw for use of h slur)

The newly emerging registers of sex/gender and sexuality were inextricably entwined through the hegemonic discourse of evolutionary theory. Determined to reorder dominant social hierarchies, scientists explained deviations of normative being and behavior in terms of a hetero-teleological scale of evolutionary development. Blacks, homosexuals, children, and women were situated at lower points on this scale than white heterosexual men, not able (or not yet able) to reach the highest stage of (hu)man evolution. The category of bisexuality played a central role in this linear model, and thus in the epistemological configuration of the category of sexuality (Angelides, 2001). The human differences of race, age, gender and sexuality were thought to be the effect of a specific temporal and spatial relation to what evolutionists and sexologists referred to as primordial hermaphroditism or embryological bisexuality. Believed to be the earliest form of human ancestry, primordial hermaphroditism, or bisexuality, as Frank Sulloway (1979, p. 179) points out, became the evolutionists “missing bisexual link.” This was confirmed by recapitulation theory, which posited that the human embryo repeated “in its own life history the life history of the race, passing through the lower forms of its ancestors on its way to maturity” (Russett, 1989, p. 50). In other words, as Charles Darwin (1927 [1871], p. 525) posited, every individual “bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong[s] to the opposite sex.” This meant that blacks, women, children and homosexuals were thought to be the effect of an unsuccessful evolution, closer to, or retaining many more elements of, the originary (pre-historic) bisexuality of the human race and individual embryo. Put differently, an individual’s distance from this state of primordial bisexuality dictated the degree of one’s evolutionary advancement. Within this framework, therefore, the axes of race, age, gender and sexuality were defined and aligned by their very relation to bisexuality.

However, bisexuality posed a problem for sexological discourse. In the attempt to catalogue human sexual behavior, sexologists were con- fronted with the dilemma of containing its variant forms within the nascent and rigid oppositional categories of hetero- and homosexuality. After all, even in his 1897 publication, Sexual Inversion, Havelock Ellis (1897, p. 133) acknowledged the “person who is organically twisted into a shape that is more fitted for the exercise of the inverted than of the normal sexual impulse, or else equally fitted for both” (emphasis added). Similarly, Krafft-Ebing (1965, pp. 373-385) had identified what he called “psychical hermaphroditism.” Yet, sexology was unable to account for bisexuality as a form of sexuality. For instance, on the one hand, Ellis (1928 [1901], p. 88) claimed that “[t]here would seem to be a broad and simple grouping of all sexually functioning persons into three comprehensive divisions: the heterosexual, the bisexual, and the homosexual.” Yet, on the other hand, he affirmed like Krafft-Ebing, that “[m]ost of the bisexual prefer their own sex . . . [and that this] would seem to indicate that the bisexuals may really be inverts.” “In any case,” stated Ellis (1928 [1901], p. 278), “bisexuality merges imperceptibly into simple inversion.”

The difficulty for sexologists constrained by a linear logic of temporal succession was how to reconcile bisexuality as at one and the same time a biological cause (embryological bisexuality) and a psychological effect (bisexual identity). Ultimately, bisexuality as a form of sexuality or identity had to be refused in the present tense.5 That is to say that bisexuality always had to be somewhere else–in the embryo, the sphere of human prehistory–or something else–either really heterosexual or homosexual. It could never be a stable sexual identity in the here and now otherwise the epistemological integrity of the very categories of man, woman, heterosexual and homosexual would be thrown into doubt (Angelides, 2001).

steve angelides, historicizing bisexuality p. 130-132

[glitterfop]

I worked as a barista for a decade:

Wages were $10 + tips (highly competitive!).

No insurance or benefits of any kind.

Almost all of my coworkers worked 2–3 jobs; the only reason I didn't is because I was literally in high school for much of this time. *No one* was making a living wage.

I know of at least one person who got second degree burns and did not seek medical treatment for it.

I know of one person who injured themself in an incident with a coffee grinder and did not seek medical treatment.

I injured myself when a bowl of nearly boiling soup fell out of the microwave onto my head—and was praised for it because I didn't let any parts of the microwave itself fall or break, even though it would have saved me injury. My coworker was fired on the spot because he was so drunk he literally did not notice me screaming from ten feet away.

I almost got stabbed when someone (the owner/manager) didn't announce a knife coming around a corner.

A large knife fell point-down into a coworker's shoe, about a centimeter away from their toe.

A coworker felt faint and asked to sit down and was soundly mocked for it for months after she stopped working there.

We worked without A/C or proper ventilation and temperatures regularly reached dangerously high levels. I am absolutely certain I and all my coworkers worked through heat exhaustion almost every day of the summer months.

One time bees swarmed our kitchen and we didn't close. I am not kidding.

Normal customer service bullshit such as regular sexual harassment, etc.

This was a health food-focused business (catering to a specific highly controversial pseudoscientific fad diet that I will not name for anonymity reasons), and all employees were required to follow the fad diet in question and heavily restrict what they would eat for the first 30 days of employment as a condition of being hired.

My time as a barista was one of the worst times of my life. It was the decade that would not fucking end. I used to have screaming meltdowns about how trapped I felt, like I was never going to be able to escape that place. The day I got a job in retail—yes! Retail!—was a fucking relief. This is the first time in my working life I feel like I have even a fucking shred of dignity, a shred though it may be.

But yeah, sure, baristas are privileged. Let's go with that.

I don’t understand why people hate baristas so much or especially why we’re often trashed as some kind of “cultural elite” by fashy (including and especially post-left) types.

Anytime there’s a discussion about tipping in the US people crawl out of the woodwork and talk about us like we’re some privileged class of people trying to shake them down for their hard earned salaries and dilute the meaning of real labor (whatever the fuck that means).

Shit like this

Or

Like one of my coworkers is currently homeless and crashing with our manager until he finds a new apartment. Another brings free coffee to the dentists office next door (and comps the Dr.’s espresso drinks) in exchange for affordable dental work. What about this screams privilege?

Just like any physically demanding job we’re facing a high risk of disabling repetitive motion injuries and yet the industry standard is zero health benefits unless your shop is part of a corporate chain and it’s legally required at which point benefits are technically available but functionally near impossible to access.

Don’t get me wrong the coffee industry is fucked from farm to table. The perception of the “not just anyone” that gets to be a barista is accurate to an extent. But that has more to do with the type of person who owns coffee shops. The trope of the Owner/Manager who only hires baristas they would drink with or fuck is not without merit but in what world is the barista benefiting from that? Short shifts and the promise of flexible hours attracts grad students and artists but I assure you the Queer Studies PhD candidate waiting for their big break as an adjunct and the bassist spending their nights playing in a rotation of 5 local punk bands bc they love the scene have no systemic power over you.

People hem and haw about servers and bartenders too but it seems like baristas specifically are the scapegoat of the food service industry and i genuinely do not understand what kind of bath salts these people are smoking.

[mercurialbadger]

Want to see something unspeakably horrifying?

[aronarchy]

FYI this has been going on— (cw for screenshots from a racist rightwing blog)

[image IDs: several screenshots from a blog post by Noah Carl, a rightwing “researcher” of racial pseudoscience, regarding “Nick Bostrom’s pre-emptive apology”

2nd screenshot of Carl’s statement shown above:

Nick Bostrom is a philosopher at Oxford who works on topics like existential risk and human enhancement. I haven’t read much of his work, but people I respect rate it very highly. Anatoly Karlin (whom I had on the podcast recently) considers him “the greatest living philosopher”.

A few days ago, Bostrom posted a document titled ‘Apology for An Old Email’ on his website. The document was subsequently shared on Twitter by his colleague Anders Sandberg, apparently at Bostrom’s request. It begins:

> I have caught wind that somebody has been digging through the archives of the Extropians listserv with a view towards finding embarrassing materials to disseminate about people … I fear that selected pieces of the most offensive stuff will be extracted, maliciously framed and interpreted, and used in smear campaigns. To get ahead of this, I want to clean out my own closet, and get rid of the very worst of the worst in my contribution file.

The email in question, which was sent “in the mid 90s” as part of a discussion about “offensive communication styles”, is as follows:

> I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct. Take for example the following sentence:

> Blacks are more stupid than whites.

[I cut off the rest of Carl’s screenshot of Bostrom’s email, as it contained more unpleasant antiblack commentary]

3rd screenshot:

You don’t have to apologise for saying offensive things in a setting that people have selected into for the specific purposes of discussing offensive things. Stand-up comedians don’t need to apologise for telling jokes at their shows that it would inappropriate for them to tell in church. Moreover, Bostrom made the comments more than twenty years ago, and he “immediately apologised” at the time! End of story.

Yet as you well know, academia is crawling with offence archaeologists – low-lifes who spend their time combing through other people’s writing with the hope of finding something they can use to ruin their careers. They are not virtuous, and they do not care about the downtrodden. Their aim is simply to “take down” someone whose views they disapprove of – usually someone who contributes far more to society than they do.

In light of this, you can understand why Bostrom wanted to “get ahead” of the controversy by saying his piece pre-emptively. Unfortunately, what he said may have made things worse – not only for himself but for others who might find themselves in similar situations in the future.

4th:

Rather than making the points I made above (and perhaps apologising for needing to bring the admittedly provocative email to people’s attention), he issued an embarrassingly grovelling apology:

> I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago … The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time … and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly.

As for his “actual views”, Bostrom thinks “it is deeply unfair that unequal access to education, nutrients, and basic healthcare leads to inequality in social outcomes, including sometimes disparities in skills and cognitive capacity”. And he wants you to know that he has given to charities “fighting exactly this problem”, including “the Black Health Alliance”.

The one saving grace of his apology – from the perspective of grown-up intellectual discourse – was that he didn’t denounce the hypothesis that genes contribute to group differences in cognitive ability. “It is not my area of expertise”, he wrote, “and I don’t have any particular interest in the question.” Note: the latter claim is likely to be false; how could you not be interested in it?

/end image ID]

https://twitter.com/rechelon/status/1615072322058076166

[image ID:

tweet by xriskology:

The real victimhood culture is on the political right:

[a screenshot from the same Noah Carl blog post shown above]

thread QRTing their tweet:

“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”

My line is that your career can be destroyed by exposing the truth (that you’re still soft on vapid racial pseudoscience 25 years after endorsing it), then it deserves to be.

I find it deeply disgusting and infuriating the way that so many “rationalists” are framing everything in terms of “he said a bad word and immediately apologized 25 years ago” when that’s not even fucking remotely the issue and would amount to almost no blowback on its own.

I think almost no one gives a shit about Bostrom using the n-word 25 years ago, his apology for that isn’t the issue. The issue is that his recent apology is stunning in what it studiously doesn’t renounce and the way it leaves claims about genetic racial intelligence open.

I’m well aware that Bostrom makes the perfectly fine transhumanist move that “even if racial intelligence disparities were a thing, they’re irrelevant because everyone can individually tinker with themselves in whatever direction” but it’s not enough to merely bracket the claims.

Bostrom’s “apology” sounds perfectly fine to him and his circles because “I am not an expert on racial science” sounds like a renunciation of his claim “blacks are stupider than whites” to them. But it’s anything but! It doesn’t address at all what he still believes.

The fact is that the specific measures the rationalist community chooses to valorize, certain limited performances of rationality, do not exclude shitbags willing to make some contortions so those shitbags flock into their circles, expelling others, and shaping background norms.

I’d be willing to bet at sharp odds that >50% of the self-identified rationalist community believes “there are significant genetic racial disparities in intelligence between the races and unfairly we can’t talk about this.”

That is the problem Bostrom’s non-apology exemplifies

Now there are myriad good mechanisms and reasons to dismiss the object-level claim, but sure, ghosts could exist and it could be true, the biggest problem is the way this “likelihood” has been drastically inflated within the rationalist community by their social dynamics.

The rationalist community is running the proverbial bar where they let nazis in. And if you fail to draw the line with one nazi, you very rapidly just have a nazi bar. Because nazis are large in number, have few other options, and are willing to go through a lot of contortions.

Nazis will absolutely shit themselves silly writing endless papers throwing chaff everywhere like the “200 proofs the earth is not flat” and credulous “rationalist” bros whose whole self-image prioritizes feeling smarter than everyone and holders of esoteric truths love that.

And so we see vast asymmetries and distortions in the epistemic frames of most “rationalists” as a consequence of their sociological dynamics. They proactively read anti-woke folks on the right and then pretty much never delve deep into radical leftist arguments.

They’ll delve into the most esoteric neoreactionary screeds with giant bibliographies of catholic and postmodern writers to find the secret actual argument for an inane conservative position, but then assume every leftist argument is the first related tumblr post they found.

Scott Alexander Siskind BRAGGED that his readership was fair and balanced because he had some socialists and only like 22% identified openly as alt-right or neoreactionary. That is not balance. That is a nazi bar. And that social fabric warps one’s epistemology.

Bostrom honestly thought he was addressing the problem with his racist email in the 90s. And Sandberg (god damnit dude) read it and was like “this is a knockout response I want to be associated with” and hordes of fuckers saw the same.

reply to the thread by zorangecats:

One observation I’ve made is I’ve never seen the rationalist “steelman” for the feminist worldview. An interesting omission.

/end image ID]

https://twitter.com/rechelon/status/1614428504581607424

[image ID:

tweet by Aella_Girl:

Lost some respect for EA due to the response to the Bostrom thing. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised? CEA has always leaned a bit too far towards PR at the expense of integrity. I guess I’d hoped to see some more bravery. Feel like the correct response would have had more nuance.

thread QRTing her tweet:

The lost “integrity” she’s bemoaning is that the Centre for Effective Altruism released a very thin anodyne statement condemning Bostrom’s “words” (presumably just his original email and no detail on whether the racial pseudoscience in particular sucks)

Imagine being so fucking twisted that you see condemning racist shit to any minor degree as a lack of integrity.

These people’s entire morality is about fiercely condemning and ostracizing anyone who ever dabbles in condemning or ostracizing people over shit like racism, rape, and transphobia.

It’s pure Coalition Of The Bad shit.

/end image ID]

[no-wings-no-angel]

CW: Ventpost with mentions of self-destructive ideation such as self harm in a PMDD context, some bad experiences with alternative medicine and spiritual cures.

I have a suspect I might suffer from PMDD or something adjacent, so I told my doctor about symptoms such as hopelessness, feeling like harming myself, feeling like everyone hates me, the list goes on, only to then have my period and just going “ah. so that was it.” And how despite me knowing I feel like that because of my cycle doen’t make it less uncomfortable and painful to feel like this once a fucking month.

She just. Just fucking showed me a silly PMS meme said it was very normal to feel like that and prescribed that Rescue Remedy that is basically watered down brandy.

I have no idea what the profile of the rest of her patients is but I feel like someone going in and saying they feel like dying by their own hand is not like, you know, normal and average and absolutely brush-off-able.

Also she prescribed that seed on the outer part of the ear treatment but I’m not doing that. No shame on acunpucture but. No. Just no. It just looks a lot like pseudoscience stuff I’ve been through. Alternative medicine overall makes me a bit uncomfortable.

I have a history of having my mental health concerns treated like something that can be solved by alternative medicine or religious practices such as magnets, fitotherapy, teas, herbal baths, blessings and religious iniciations. I also have been called an indigo child several times. It feels just like a way to explain away my pain like “is not that you are suffering, you are just built different and that is actually really good for the Earth and Space and you should become a medium or something! Feeling suicidal is actually a symptoms that your soul is not from this planet and you want to go home! You are an empath and special!”

Needless to say I don’t believe any of that shit and actually got an autism diagnosis recently.

This experience just catapulted me way back to my 14 y.o. stage of neglected concerns. I’m just so tired of this shit.

Still I’ll take the brandy drops because why the fuck not. Also the internet said it is supposed to be taken as a crisis med but the bottle literally says to take 4 drops 3 times a day, I’m confused.