#rating: science!

[is-the-zedaph-video-cute]

rating: science?

the sheep are being harvested for research not watched. important distinction.

@is-the-tangotek-video-cute

honestly not sure how to caption this one. the zedaph sheep voyeurism allegations. I guess. I wish I was exaggerating

[jessicalprice]

christian universalism strikes again

(Reposted from Twitter)

So a rabbi I know came back from LA pretty jazzed about a Jewish addiction treatment facility there called Beit T'shuvah and so we talked about their approach and that got me curious about non-AA approaches to dealing with addiction which, my friends, was fascinating.

I’ll admit that almost everything I know about AA is more or less from The West Wing. I'm fortunate in that no one in my immediate family has dealt with substance abuse issues, and as far as I know, none of my close friends are alcoholics. My knowledge is pop culture knowledge.

But hearing about Beit T’shuvah was very interesting to me because:

I'd heard that a lot of people who aren't Christian have a hard time with AA because it's so Christian.

The difference in philosophy was subtle at first glance but actually paralleled a lot of the differences between Judaism and Christianity if you dug into it.

Anyway, I got curious about whether success rates were different for Christians vs. non-Christians and started googling. I didn't find much in the way of the data I was looking for, but I did find something a lot more disturbing, which is that the whole 12-step thing is not science-based. At all. For example:

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse compared the current current state of addiction treatment to medicine in the early 1900s, when there weren't a lot of standards for who could practice medicine. In order to be a substance abuse counselor in many states, you don't need much more than a GED or high school diploma.

A 2006 survey found "no experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or TSF approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems."

And I want to make clear here that I'm not saying AA is bad--clearly it's helped people. The problem is that it's touted as a universal approach, which is a problem when it's not based on any sort of actual science. 

AA claims that its success rates for people who "really try" are 75%. (And boy does that mirror gaslighting diet language.) But the most precise study out there that's NOT coming from AA (https://amazon.com/dp/B00FIMWI1O) put actual success rates at 5-8%. One of the major textbooks on treating addiction ranks it at 38th out of 48 on its list of effective treatments.

So just like most fad diets, it fails for almost everyone who tries it, and then blames the individual for its failure.

A glaring issue is that the 12 steps don't really acknowledge--or provide any guidance or structure for dealing with--other mental/emotional health issues. That’s a giant problem when people with substance abuse issues have higher than average rates of those issues. (Take a moment to consider how the victim-blaming approach of “if you didn’t succeed, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough” is going to intersect with someone’s major depression.)

Now, if 12-step programs were just one available treatment approach out of many, this wouldn’t be that big of an issue.

But 12% of AA members are there because of court orders. Our legal system is requiring people to undergo treatment that is: 

Christian-based

Not scientifically supported

A failure for the vast majority of people

I mean, here's a pretty comprehensive breakdown that talks about the lack of scientific support for it, alternative treatments (like those in Finland, and naltrexone), and the fundamentalist origins of AA. 

The founder was a member of the Oxford Group, an evangelical organization that taught that all human problems stemmed from fear and selfishness, and could be solved by turning your life over to divine providence, basically. Sound familiar? He based AA on those principles, and given that the only alternative was "drying out" in a sanatorium, and that AA members would show up at bedsides there and invite inpatients to meetings, it must have looked really enlightened to people. In 2022, it bears a queasy resemblance to evangelizing to people in prison, literally a captive audience. 

To be fair--to their credit--they were some of the first people out there saying alcoholism was a disease, and not a moral failing. But they didn’t treat it like a disease when it came to testing treatment options:

Mann also collaborated with a physiologist named E. M. Jellinek. Mann was eager to bolster the scientific claims behind AA, and Jellinek wanted to make a name for himself in the growing field of alcohol research. In 1946, Jellinek published the results of a survey mailed to 1,600 AA members. Only 158 were returned. Jellinek and Mann jettisoned 45 that had been improperly completed and another 15 filled out by women, whose responses were so unlike the men’s that they risked complicating the results. From this small sample—98 men��Jellinek drew sweeping conclusions about the “phases of alcoholism,” which included an unavoidable succession of binges that led to blackouts, “indefinable fears,” and hitting bottom. Though the paper was filled with caveats about its lack of scientific rigor, it became AA gospel.

And then Senator Harold Hughes, who was an AA member, got Congress to establish the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which promoted AA's beliefs, and sometimes suppressed research that conflicted with them:

In 1976, for instance, the Rand Corporation released a study of more than 2,000 men who had been patients at 44 different NIAAA-funded treatment centers. The report noted that 18 months after treatment, 22 percent of the men were drinking moderately. The authors concluded that it was possible for some alcohol-dependent men to return to controlled drinking. Researchers at the National Council on Alcoholism charged that the news would lead alcoholics to falsely believe they could drink safely. The NIAAA, which had funded the research, repudiated it. Rand repeated the study, this time looking over a four-year period. The results were similar.

The standard 28-day rehab stay, prescribed and insured:

Marvin D. Seppala, the chief medical officer at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation in Minnesota, one of the oldest inpatient rehab facilities in the country, described for me how 28 days became the norm: “In 1949, the founders found that it took about a week to get detoxed, another week to come around so [the patients] knew what they were up to, and after a couple of weeks they were doing well, and stable. That’s how it turned out to be 28 days. There’s no magic in it.”

The last sentence here (bolded for emphasis) is especially chilling. 

That may be heartening, but it’s not science. As the rehab industry began expanding in the 1970s, its profit motives dovetailed nicely with AA’s view that counseling could be delivered by people who had themselves struggled with addiction, rather than by highly trained (and highly paid) doctors and mental-health professionals. No other area of medicine or counseling makes such allowances.

There is no mandatory national certification exam for addiction counselors. The 2012 Columbia University report on addiction medicine found that only six states required alcohol- and substance-abuse counselors to have at least a bachelor’s degree and that only one state, Vermont, required a master’s degree. Fourteen states had no license requirements whatsoever—not even a GED or an introductory training course was necessary—and yet counselors are often called on by the judicial system and medical boards to give expert opinions on their clients’ prospects for recovery.

And, again, the idea that this is the One True And Only Way to deal with alcohol abuse leads to medical professionals ignoring research and treatment options that could be helping people. They are, in essence, taking all this completely on faith. 

There has been some progress: the Hazelden center began prescribing naltrexone and acamprosate to patients in 2003. But this makes Hazelden a pioneer among rehab centers. “Everyone has a bias,” Marvin Seppala, the chief medical officer, told me. “I honestly thought AA was the only way anyone could ever get sober, but I learned that I was wrong.”

Stephanie O’Malley, a clinical researcher in psychiatry at Yale who has studied the use of naltrexone and other drugs for alcohol-use disorder for more than two decades, says naltrexone’s limited use is “baffling.”

“There was never any campaign for this medication that said, ‘Ask your doctor,’ ” she says. “There was never any attempt to reach consumers.” Few doctors accepted that it was possible to treat alcohol-use disorder with a pill. And now that naltrexone is available in an inexpensive generic form, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to promote it.

I'm not saying that AA is bad. I'm saying its hegemony is bad. It clearly is effective for some people--a minority of people. But it's not for the majority of people, and that's a problem when it's being prescribed by courts (and doctors) as if it's a one-size-fits-all approach.

It’s not an accident that a Christian approach to treating addiction presents itself as the One True Way For All Humankind, insists that courts and doctors privilege it, demands that people take its effectiveness on faith, and blames anyone for whom it doesn’t work for not believing/trying hard enough.

Hegemony is a problem. 

(Photo credit: Pixabay)

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

Is it bad that I want to see more of that Were-Doc Au?

the people love mad scientist turned big wet dog

[marlynnofmany]

Honking Trouble

This job was a pain from the start. The customer was pushy, giving Captain Sunlight a run for her money on the diplomacy front — not bad enough for us to refuse to make the delivery, but pushing the boundaries — and the cargo was awkward. 

And since it was animals, that was my problem. 

“Keep your distance,” I told Zhee. “I think it can get its beak between the bars.” The cage was large and rickety, with bars a few inches apart. As if to prove me right, a long furry neck with a beak at the end stabbed outward and hissed at us. 

Zhee flared his pincher arms and hissed back, but the creature wasn't impressed. It just spread its batlike wings as far as the cage would allow and made a surprisingly deep honk that echoed through the cargo bay. 

I hadn’t read the documents yet about what kind of animal this was, from which planet, but if those documents turned out to say this was a genetic experiment in unwise combinations, I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. It was vaguely goose-shaped, just with four feet instead of two, equipped with talons instead of webs, white fur instead of feathers, and a beak that ended in a wickedly sharp hook. After all the hawks and parrots I’d encountered back on Earth, that beak looked ready for either mischief or violence. Probably both.

At any rate, the goose-thing’s honk set off the tiny creatures in the other cage, which thankfully were better contained. That cage was a mesh sphere not about to let any of the little drifting dust motes out. As enchanting as it might be to have the spaceship filled with colorful bits of fluff that moved gracefully and made a chorus of tiny peeps, they just looked like allergies waiting to happen. And I didn't want to think about finding them behind the wall panels later. 

Zhee hissed at the furry demon goose again, clearly hoping to frighten it into submission. No luck. 

“Knock it off,” I told him. “That'll just make it louder. Here, help me get the lifter under the cage.” The customer had brought the cage onboard for us, but this wasn't a good spot for it. So it was up to me, the resident animal expert, to get it moved safely to a room more suited to animal cargo. Nobody wanted to sneak past this biter to get to the rest of the crates. 

Luckily we had a freshly refurbished hoversled with a lifting scoop that could slide under anything as long as the thing in question held still. I convinced Zhee to hold the cage stationary, since his exoskeleton was tougher than my fingers. The goose-thing pecked at him from an awkward angle. I worked the controls, and soon our misbehaving cargo was lifted up onto the sled. 

I looked over at the round cage full of chirping alien pixies. “Let's come back for that one.”  

“Agreed.”

The goose was quiet while we moved it down the hall, taking in the sights with all the attention of someone casing the joint. I told myself not to be too judgmental. Maybe it had never been on a spaceship before, and was curious.

Then Blip walked out of a side corridor, wearing her favorite flowy silk outfit that made her look like a muscley flower, and no: the goose was just looking for opportunities. It snapped at the nearest hem and almost got a beakful, but Blip moved just in time. Then she scolded it for almost ripping quality Frillian clothes.

“Do you know how hard this is to replace? Of course you don’t; you’re a rude animal.” She shook a blue finger at the unrepentant goose. Behind her, Blop appeared and aimed his own frown into the cage.

“Sorry,” I said. “Don’t get too close to this one. At least it was only aiming for your clothes, not something that would bleed.”

Blip folded muscular arms, flared her frills, and scowled. “It would have regretted that.”

I sighed, pushing the hoversled forward. “Don’t punch the cargo.”

Blip muttered as we left. There were no further incidents on the way into Storage Hold B, and the goose didn’t even try to bite us as we got the cage off the sled. It was busy inspecting the view: boxes, cabinets, and the large clear containment pen that had held troublemaking cargo before. It would have been nice to shove this guy in there, but the cage wouldn’t fit through the door, and there was no way I was going to voluntarily let it out.

“I’m watching you,” I told it as I followed Zhee back into the hall. Technically Kavlae was watching, or maybe Wio — whoever was in the cockpit behind the security cameras. They’d be making sure the onboarding process went smoothly before the ship took off.

I knew that, but I was still surprised to hear Kavlae’s voice on the hallway intercom a few minutes later.

“Walk faster,” she said from a single speaker. “It’s trying to open a box.”

“It can reach that??” I asked, pushing the hoversled more quickly. The aura puffs squeaked and twirled. (Their cage had a label, with a species description and the number of creatures inside. They were behaving.)

Zhee scurried ahead on his many bug legs to open the door. Before I could get there, he charged inside, hissing again. I heard answering hisses and the sound of a crate being scraped across the floor.

Once I got the aura puffs into the room, I found Zhee inspecting a gnawed-on box corner with splinters on the floor. The goose looked pleased with itself.

I asked, “What’s the damage?”

“Nothing significant,” Zhee said. “Luckily this is our own ship’s supplies, not something for a client.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t look good.” I parked the sled. “‘Here’s your delivery! You don’t mind a little artistic nibbling about the edges, do you?’ I’m sure that would go over well.”

Zhee shoved a couple other boxes further back and helped me set the aura puffs a safe distance away. Then, under Kavlae’s watchful eye, we went back to the cargo bay for some non-animal cargo.

The intercom chimed before we got there. “It’s trying to pick the lock on its cage,” Kavlae said, still on single-speaker mode. “I don’t know if it c— Oh no, it’s out.”

I left the sled in the middle of the hallway and ran, with Zhee right behind me.

Speakers all along the hall chorused, “It opened the other cage.”

I said a very unprofessional word and charged forward to slam my hand on the door-opening panel. Expecting the one cargo to be actively eating the other, I dashed inside, only to be knocked off my feet by the goose making a break for it. I fell amid clouds of happily chirping aura puffs.

Zhee lunged for the goose, but it dodged what would have been a very painful hug from his pincher arms, and I heard it honking triumphantly down the hall. Zhee ran after it while the whole-ship intercom chimed.

“Escaped cargo. It is large and likes to bite. Currently heading towards the crew lounge. Captain, permission to use stun guns on the cargo?”

After a moment, Captain Sunlight answered from somewhere else on the ship. “Permission granted. All available crew, arm yourselves and proceed with caution. Kavlae, keep us posted on its whereabouts.”

Trying not to feel like a failure, I scrambled to my feet and checked a cabinet for stun guns. Found one. Waving the aura puffs away from the door, I regretfully left them floating about the storage hold while I chased after the bigger problem. Zhee had already disappeared.

I met Trrili in the hall.

“How dangerousss is thisss animal?” she asked, looming over me and flexing her pincher arms in delight.

“I don’t think it wants to seriously hurt anyone, but I can’t say for sure,” I said. “It might go for the eyes if it’s cornered. Try not to damage it.”

“Frrrrightening causesss no damage,” Trrili said, and flashed away down the hall.

I ran after.

Kavlae reported, “It’s in the crew lounge, searching the furniture, probably looking for food. This could be a good place to corner it.”

Trrili waited in position outside the lounge when I arrived, crouched like a spider ready to spring. Zhee was moving toward the kitchen entrance to flank it. A flash of yellow scales at the other end of the hall was Captain Sunlight hurrying forward with a stun gun aimed at the floor. The goose made a muffled honk from inside the lounge, crunching something that sounded like snack food scavenged from under the couch.

I stopped behind Trrili and waited for everyone to get into position. Two threatening predators and two stun guns ought to be a recipe for success against one alien goose.

Then the goose dashed into the kitchen before Zhee could get there, and the whole plan went out the window.

Trrili raced after it. Zhee got in the captain’s way. I reached the kitchen in time to see the creature hiss in defiance before prying open a cabinet door.

It might have thought that was an exit. In reality, it was Paint’s hiding spot, and she shrieked fit to shatter eardrums, curling into a ball of scales and panic.

That was enough of a distraction for Mimi to drop from the high shelf he’d been waiting on, and wrap the demon goose in all of his tentacles. It was surprisingly effective.

That’s not the plan, but I’ll take it.

Everyone was shouting and in the way. I followed Mimi’s example and climbed onto a counter, where I could get a clear shot with the stun gun and not hit him.

I stunned the goose in the butt, and it finally stopped flapping.

It took a while for all the yelling to subside, but the captain wriggled past Zhee and Trrili to declare no harm done. Kavlae told the rest of the ship. Mimi untangled himself from the goose, who had frozen in an inconvenient position. Paint stayed in the cabinet. Zhee clicked away to get the hoversled, then stopped when Trrili simply dragged the goose towards the hold.

Captain Sunlight looked up at me. “Good shot.”

“Thanks,” I said, getting down from the counter. I’d have to wash the footprints off that later. “Paint, it’s safe to come out.”

Mimi was already coaxing her out of the cabinet, offering some of the snacks that she’d apparently been eating when she heard the alert about the dangerous animal.

Speaking of which, I thought. With Paint in good hands (or the equivalent), I hurried after the others. I heard Captain Sunlight say a few words to Paint and Mimi before following.

So we got to put the goose in the Clear Pen For Naughty Animals after all. This pen didn’t have anywhere it could stick its beak out of once the stun wore off, only mesh-covered air vents way at the top and a door that locked (very reliably) from the outside.

Take that, you troublemaker.

We caught the aura puffs carefully by hand (or the equivalent), and put them back in their own cage. Thankfully the goose hadn’t damaged the latch, just opened it with bird-brained cleverness.

“It’s just those last two left,” Captain Sunlight said after counting. “Up there.”

The two in question were floating higher than her little lizardy arms could reach, so I moved to do the honors. As I did, Blip and Blop arrived with the bug-catching net that no one had been able to find earlier.

They also brought with them a feline blur that I caught mid-leap, just before Telly snatched an aura puff out of the air.

“Not for you,” I said, heart beating wildly. “Let’s get you some proper cat treats that don’t belong to a paying customer.”

Blip and Blop exclaimed loudly at Telly’s speed, my reaction time, and the fact that they’d had no idea she was there; they were sorry they almost got the cargo eaten.

Captain Sunlight repeated, “No harm done.” She waved me off to my quarters with the disgruntled cat, and spoke to the others about plans to notify the customer of just what kind of danger fee he’d brought upon himself by not properly securing his chaos-causing animal.

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[fuchsiamae]

one of the most brain-breaking but also most fun parts of writing portal fic is aperture worldbuilding. the stupid inventions. the unhinged office culture. the wildly corrupt business practices. the comically absurd disregard for human safety. at aperture, we believe nothing is too batshit for the bit. aperture science I love you so much

[perfectthewayyouare]

buddie will never go canon this, they'll never make eddie gay that, we've been let down before, yes yes i agree but

[is-the-zedaph-video-cute]

rating: science!

it’s always important to have a traffic light system when you get real deep into breeding

A traffic light system you say? 🤔

——

[Alt text: Video clip is taken from a hermitcraft season nine episode of Zedaph's. He's showing off six horses. The first two are wearing red leather armour, the second pair have yellow, and the third have green.

Zed: "And as you can see here I have been breeding like an absolute CRAZY person! I have got this system going now – a traffic light system if you will."

End alt text.]

[that-nerd-who-writes-fanfiction]

Who needs to meet writing goals when there’s stupid side quests and procrastination

[eldritchamy]

He is hidden in the howling void. He is hidden within the tempest. He has braved the storm And the darkness And the pain. And He whispered to the vessel. All this time He whispered And delighted And seduced, And the vessel did obey, For none shall be more mighty And none shall be more wise Than the King Himself.

And the Lord of Time Was blind And vain And knew nothing.

There is the Toymaker, the God of Games. There is Trickster, the God of Traps. There is Maestro, the God of Music. There is Reprobate, the God of Spite. There is the Mara, the God of Beasts. And the Threefold Deity Of Malice, and Mischief, and Misery. There are Gods of Skin and Shame and Secrets. There is Incensor, the God of Disaster, And Her children called Doubt and Dread.

And standing on high Is the Mother And Father And Other of them all: For the God of all Gods Has returned. And His names are many.

His name has been Set And Seth And Sithifer. And His One True Name Forevermore Is Sutekh.

Sutekh is the God of Death And by His hand All creation shall fall Into dust And ashes And ruin.

[collectiveclams]

The best part about having an older sister who is a competitive powerlifter is sending her scenes of ppl in media lifting then having her judge them.

[silo1013]

gillian anderson and david duchovny shouldn’t have birthdays. i feel like they were grown in test tubes next to each other in a laboratory in 1992 and promptly set loose upon an unsuspecting vancouver

[ophilosoraptoro]

Why American Sperm Count Dropped 41% in 50 years

[avpdpossum]

reading studies of avpd and social anxiety make me want to punch through some drywall, i feel like i'm losing my mind.

"social phobia researchers have proposed that SP and APD should be amalgamated into social anxiety disorder with what is currently labeled APD treated as a severe variant of this condition...one justification for this proposition is that clinicians in practice will then be more likely to use the pharmaceutical and CBT empirically validated regimens developed for social phobia to treat severe social avoidance (i.e., APD)."

translation: "we want to eliminate your specific diagnosis and just call it this less scary-sounding thing because then more professionals will agree to stuff you full of drugs and use our favorite method of professional gaslighting on you until you act normal."

and don't get me wrong, i'm not against medication by any means (i've spent the last 6 years fighting to get some for my adhd, i'd be a massive hypocrite if i said i was against it) and i know there are people who genuinely benefit from cbt, but you can't deny this statement is just dripping with ulterior motives.

really makes you question the reliability of how the data itself is being presented, doesn't it?

[deramin2]

My boyfriend made an observation about the Timberborn icon so I modified this meme to show it.

ID:

Text: Nobody. Gay bears™ on Instagram.

Image: the faces of 20 white gay men, mostly heavy set, all with beards, a couple with baseball caps, and most with a particular smile. Second row first column has two men. Third column, third row is the Timberborn icon, a cartoon beaver face in a floppy brimmed hat and a leather harness. He has the exact same profile and smile as the gay men.

End ID.

[tj-crochets]

Hey all my fellow POTS people and dysautonomia denizens, I have some questions for you! - Do you ever have narrow pulse pressure? (when the top number minus the bottom number of your blood pressure is less than 1/4th of the top number) - If yes, does it usually happen when you are standing or when you are sitting? - If you have any advice on how to feel better when you have narrow pulse pressure I am absolutely looking for advice. Like. Hydrate and salt and sit down, but any more specific advice? - Follow up: if you have a day with very narrow pulse pressure, do you ever feel headachey and bad afterward even when your blood pressure evens out?

[frameacloud]

"You've designed spaceships before. Or if not spaceships, then wide-open planets with space and clear air and firm ground beneath your wheels. You've redesigned your house so you don't fall climbing out of the shower, you've redesigned the train network that takes you to work. You've been imagining them all your life, asking over and over: how could this be better?

"You've realised before now that the social model of disability carries a promise within it: there could be other worlds than this one. A promise that how things are is not how things will always be. It invites us to imagine not merely the removal of specific barriers, but whole other worlds. What would a world look like that did not disable you? What would a world look like that did not disable anyone?"

- Excerpt from "Design a Spaceship," an essay by Andi C. Buchanan, in the anthology Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. D. Parisien, ed., Uncanny Magazine issue 24, September/October 2018.