For me, the repetition is a feature, not a bug. It's similar to Buddhist meditation practices, which also involve a lot of repetition. It really helps my brain to fully absorb the message and walk away feeling more calm and in control. But as with any philosophical text, your mileage may vary.
I applaud these researchers, but I have to admit this quote made my blood boil:
>> "I can only do this because I'm a cancer researcher and clinician and so inherently understand the risks," he said.
As a cancer survivor, and someone who lost a loved one to glioblastoma, I despise this mindset. The idea that us "common folk" aren't intelligent or educated enough to make the decision to join risky trials is maddening.
I fully understand and support this mindset when it's regarding minor diseases. But if someone has 6-9 months to live, and zero chance of survival, I think they have every right to choose to be used as guinea pigs.
I know my relative would have LEAPED at this sort of opportunity. She was given 6-10 months, and was dead by 4.
At the time, there was an on-going trial she was rejected for, because she had a minor preexisting condition, and thus is it was "too risky." I remember her saying that she would rather die in 2 weeks and help push science forward, then helplessly linger for a couple more months.
I am hopeful that the rapid development of the COVID vaccine may have flipped a switch in biotech, and may lead to more risky and experimental trials for truly deadly diseases, such as glioblastoma.
If not, I will continue to look to China for hopeful developments. They seem to have more relaxed barriers for trials, and I firmly believe this is one of the reasons their biotech industry is exploding at such a rapid pace.
Absolutely tragic. My thoughts go out to his family and friends. I cannot begin to imagine the pain of losing someone to such a needless cruelty.
I live in SF, and the violent crime situation has definitely been getting worse. Unfortunately, it's far more nuanced and difficult to solve than the media will lead you to believe.
SF has one of the lowest violent crime rates of any major city, but the violent crime we do have seems to be far more erratic and less organized than in other cities. So we don't have easy "targets" for law enforcement to crack down on, like serious gang and cartel activity. Instead, we have a hodge-podge of issues--mentally unstable homeless, fentanyl and carfentenil, sex trafficking, and some smaller gangs.
There's the added issue that calling the police is largely useless. Just a couple weeks ago, I had a group of men harassing me on public transit, and threatening to rape me when I ignored their advances. While this was occurring, one of them was rolling a joint (and spilling pot onto the floor), while another one was repeatedly spitting onto the floor.
So you have a group of men threatening a woman, doing drugs, and spitting on public transit. And everyone around me basically just ignores the situation. Because we all know the police won't do anything if they're called, because their hands are tied until a serious crime is actually committed.
I was left to scramble off at the nearest stop and run into the nearest occupied building, praying they didn't follow me. It was such a frustrating, helpless feeling.
Reading about victims like Bob Lee makes me realize how incredibly lucky I was that I wasn't followed. Law enforcement in this city is there to clean up messes, not to prevent crime, and all the criminals know it.
As someone who lives in the neighborhood the man in this article has been prowling, this quote absolutely hits home: "So far, the city’s criminal justice system seems to be sending Ann and the other women a clear message: You’re on your own. Buy pepper spray, hustle along and hope for the best."
The social contract in this city has been shattered. I can only hope people are willing to take steps to mend it.
I'm not convinced these things are mutually exclusive. When you break down the statistics, 61 kids between the ages of 0-11 were killed so far in 2023 by gun violence (just typing that makes my stomach hurt...). In comparison, 355 teenagers (ages 12-17) were killed. (1) That's 6x the amount of death in an age bracket half the size.
The huge spike in death rate is largely linked to gang violence. Gangs often start recruiting around the age kids hit puberty. Take a look at the Gun Violence Archive's incident reports on mass shootings, and you find a huge percentage are tagged as "gang violence" and resulted in dead or injured teenagers. (2)
When you hear about "school shootings" happening in America, very few are Columbine style events. Most are gang related, and impact the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken student populations who have the least resources to deal with the resulting trauma. There is a reason poor, inner-city schools are usually the ones with metal detectors at their doors.
Gangs are still fueled by drug sales. Drugs and gun violence go hand in hand. I don't think we can solve one without solving the other.
We desperately need resources and reforms poured into both issues. But I think if we treat them as unrelated problems, we're doomed to fail.
I saw a post from the mom mentioning CPS had been called on her, which was the only reason I didn't call myself. I am skeptical of CPS in general, but an 8-year-old with multiple, sophisticated suicide attempts, and a mother making money off these attempts, just seemed way too sketchy to ignore.
Unfortunately, it seemed CPS had cleared her. At the time (this was back in ~2017), I shared the page with a friend who works alongside CPS, and she grudgingly agreed there wasn't really anything CPS could do. The kid seemed to have legitimate medical diagnoses, and the mom could easily argue in court that she was just "documenting her daughter's medical journey."
I can't seem to find the page now, which I'm hoping means it got shut down. Fingers crossed that little girl has found health, happiness, and the privacy she deserves.
> The very last thing someone who's trans needs is to have a spotlight shoved in their face involuntarily.
Exactly! This seems so incredibly obvious, and I was stunned by the thousands of followers on the page who seemed to nonchalantly view this kid's privacy and wellbeing as a worthy sacrifice for supposed "trans activism." Especially since there were quite a few negative comments from trans individuals pointing out why this was wrong and a major violation of the girl's rights.
Stories about trans kids are very important to tell, and they can be wonderful tools to encourage empathy and understanding. But they deserve the utmost caution and respect when handling them, especially when there is the complication of people being able to profit off the children.
The other startling thing about the page was the mom's complete lack of interest in shielding details such as what school or hospital the girl went to. It seemed wildly dangerous to publicly proclaim your child to be a member of an endangered minority who often faces hate crimes, and then tell the world exactly which elementary school they attend. Talk about a great way to bait nut-jobs.
I realize I sound very twisted talking about those sorts of possibilities, but as someone who works in cybersecurity, I have just seen too many creeps commit too many crimes.
I would absolutely love to see a policy that forbids the sharing of photos of children, and any identifying details of children, to a public audience. If people want to share those things with their direct network, then sure. But it seems a wild violation of personal rights to be able to share those personal details about another human being to the entire internet, when the child is far too young to consent.
One of the most horrifying social media pages I've seen was an influencer who billed herself as a "trans activist" and documented every moment of her trans daughter's life.
This poor kid was 8-years-old and attempted suicide on a regular basis. Every time she tried to kill herself, the mom would document the gritty details, post pictures and details about it online (and of course get massive likes/shares by well-intentioned folks wanting to "raise awareness"), and request donations for her "activism."
That girl will never be able to "pass" as female due to her face/identity being plastered on social media as a trans kid. She also will have to live with the horror of millions of strangers knowing the gory details of her trying to shove a knife into her wrist, chugging Tylenol, and having complete mental breakdowns at school that required emergency medical intervention.
My gut instinct also suspects the girl's poor mental health has a strong element of Munchausen by Proxy. It is bizarre for an 8-year-old to know that Tylenol and wrist-slitting are both preferred methods for suicide, and to act on this knowledge.
Despite all this, the mom was clearly raking in donations, and collecting thousands of comments about what a "hero" she was for "bringing light" to trans issues. The horrified comments by trans individuals were always buried at the bottom of posts.
The entire page felt like thinly-veiled child abuse, but there isn't anything in Facebook's code of conduct that could be used to stop it. And Facebook of course had no incentive to address the content--the page had millions of likes and was surely a great source of traffic/profit.
I would love to see policies in place to restrict this sort of child exploitation. I am all for freedom of speech on social medical platforms, but blatant exploitation of children in exchange for money is a special sort of cruelty that should be reined in.
It depends a lot on the publishing house and editor you're working with. I have heard of editors who allow for sensitivity reader suggestions to be ignored, and some who are quite militant about enforcing all suggestions from sensitivity readers.
There seems to be little rhyme or reason behind how strictly the edits are enforced. (e.g.: One friend got to keep a very crude weight-related joke that a sensitivity reader wanted to remove, because she convincingly argued that it was needed to show-case the character's dark side. Another friend was aggressively forced to remove her teen protagonist's insecurity over having freckles, because it "encouraged low self-esteem and depression" and would be "damaging" to the audience.)
The difficulty with disagreeing with edits of any sort is that publishing is a reputation based industry. So if you put up a huge fuss and escalate issues up the chain of command, and possibly even involve the public, there is a chance you can resist even the most aggressive attempts to edit your work. But you will absolutely ruin your chances of another book deal.
For this reason, it's frustrating to hear the typical retort of, "Well no one's actually forcing authors to change anything, and they have the ability to protest, so it can't be censorship." This is like telling a junior engineer at a large company, "Well no one forced you to write that code. You had the chance to disagree with the design and write the program differently." Sure, no one physically forced them to write the code, but did they really have the option to balk at the design handed down from senior engineers and management? Of course not. It would be career suicide.
In the 80s and 90s, right-wing Christian activists demanded the censorship of tons of "inappropriate" material from mainstream books. A good amount of censorship occurred at the height of the Satanic Panic, but ultimately the publishing industry grew tired of it and balked. The result was an explosion of the "Christian fiction" genre--it's a genre of books that is completely sanitized of things like premarital sex, illegal drugs, homosexual relationships, alcohol abuse, violent assault, rape, crime, cursing, spousal abuse, etc, thus leaving it "clean" and appropriate for Christian consumption.
The result was less pressure on the publishing industry to censor books. When Christian activists came knocking, the publishing industry could say, "Look, you guys have an entire section of the bookstore filled with books that cater to your morals. So leave Twilight alone."
I think it's probably time to create a similar genre for leftist activists. A "safe fiction" genre would allow for books that have been stripped of all things leftist activists find offensive. No body shaming, homophobia, mental health related slurs, etc. Having designated "safe fiction" books might have a similar effect of relieving the pressure to make all books "safe" in the eyes of left activists.
Of course, there remains the barrier that most individuals in the publishing industry are hard-core leftists that fervently follow the whims of leftist activists. It's standard these days for books to be edited by "sensitivity readers", who point out all potentially offensive things from a left-wing activist viewpoint, before publishing is permitted. (Source: am deeply involved in the writing and publishing community, and have had many friends go through the sensitivity reading process.)
Shifting away from this mentality is going to take a major push by the reading public, who will need to make it clear that they are not okay with a small minority enforcing their worldview through censorship, regardless of whether the censorship is coming from the right or left wing.
As someone who works in the energy field, I have been stoked to see these types of advancements in the past few years. When I first got into this field and would research green energy products, there was a limited field of players. Now there are so many start ups coming up with brilliant products that I can't even keep track! What a wonderful problem to have.
One of my favorite books is "The Wizard and the Prophet", and it's great to see more and more companies following in Norman Borlaug's footsteps and finding new ways the science/tech fields can serve humanity.
If anyone out there is feeling a bit down about the general state of the tech industry, I highly encourage you to look into jobs in the green energy field. It's an exciting space filled with lots of passionate, mission-driven folks. (And, in case you're wondering, most of us aren't the neurotic, perpetually angry types that dominate the activist space. We're pretty chill people who just want a healthy and affordable planet.)
OP hit on a really interesting point, and if he's referring to the same thing I've seen, the issue isn't "difference." I think the issue is the degree of difference.
The place I volunteer at has quite a few teen volunteers, and I've noticed I can immediately spot the chronically-online teens (and there's a lot of them), because it's like they're from a different planet. They use language I don't understand, their humor revolves around memes I don't understand, they constantly reference people/events from their favored internet niche, and then completely lose interest in talking with people who don't understand their niche.
I think this ends up decreasing the amount of difference and diversity teens are exposed to, because when there are a million [insert niche here] fans online who "totally get you", there is far less incentive to make friends in the real world. And if you do make real-world friends, they likely are going to be part of that same niche, and have the exact same language/interests/etc that has been crafted by the online community. (It's honestly a bit eerie how good these niches are at creating cookie-cutter teens. I've had bizarrely similar conversations with kids who have never met each other, but are into the same niche. And it's not just their interests that are similar, it's their attitudes/outlooks/political views/etc.)
I find this really concerning, because it's important for teens to be exposed to a wide variety of people/experiences and be encouraged to respect them all. And that's hard to do when you're in a bubble of people who are identical to you, and have very little incentive to branch outside of that bubble.
I think back to my teen friend group, and it was a hodge-podge of computer geeks, theatre kids, journalism nerds, etc. I got so much benefit from having such a diverse friend group, and it's concerning to see those types of friend groups becoming rarer.
Kelseyfrog, I'm sorry, but I'm deeply struggling to understand how you can interpret thegrimmest as sealioning, and I think you need to re-evaluate your tone and the way you're framing his responses.
The parent reply that started this discussion says they believe it is wrong to suppress speech that is not a call to violence. You responded saying that this logic doesn't work if speech that is non-violent can still lead to violence, with the insinuation being that you are okay banning speech that falls into this category of "not violent, but leads to violence." Which is a perfectly valid point, and I believe a strong argument!
thegrimmest has then attempted to point out that it can be extremely difficult to pinpoint what speech falls into this category, and stated that these sorts of bans can be inappropriately used as tools of oppression by authoritarian governments. He asks how you feel this sort of ban could be properly implemented, given these potential problems. This is a very on-topic response; you appear to be proposing that the government expand its abilities to censor speech, and thegrimmest is asking how we could ensure the government doesn't abuse this power if it is implemented. Given the current state of the world, and the authoritarian trends rearing their head in dozens of countries, this criticism is valid, on-topic, and very far from sealioning.
Rather than try to address his concerns by proposing ways this sort of ban could be thoughtfully and morally implemented, you immediately chose to accuse him of sealioning, which is a form of trolling and a pretty serious accusation. He gamely attempted to appease you by rephrasing his wording, only for you to become snarky, smug, and accuse him of repeatedly pestering you with questions--when you had directly asked him multiple times to please rephrase his questions!
As someone who has experienced sealioning, and finds it quite infuriating, I am genuinely baffled how you can see this interaction as thegrimmest sealioning. I think you may need to take a moment to re-read the HackerNews code of conduct and remember that engaging in good faith is a must.
If you don't wish to engage with thegrimmest's criticisms, that is 100% okay. You can always say, "I support banning speech in this category, and I'm not interested in discussing the possible ways a government could abuse this power." But you cannot pretend that thegrimmest is somehow morally at fault for wishing to discuss government abuse, because presenting these sorts of on-topic and civil criticisms is exactly what these forums are for.
You're a very intelligent person, and I think you raise some great points. I almost always enjoy reading your comments and listening to your insights. But they get lost when you engage like this. I see from your previous comments that this isn't the first time this has happened; other commenters have complained of you being rigid and accusatory. It's probably worth taking a step back and examining why this is a recurring theme in your interactions on here.
Masks are a bit trickier, since some people are severely immunocompromised or have loved ones who are immunocompromised. If you are undergoing chemo, or your parent is on hospice care, it actually makes sense to keep wearing a mask everywhere, and doctors are encouraging this (not just to defend against COVID germs, but all germs).
But as for outside masks, I agree, it's just straight up unscientific. Especially when people are wearing flimsy cloth masks that do little to ward off COVID germs in the first place! Although I know some people keep them on outside if they're walking between buildings, just because it's easier than taking it on/off constantly.
So anyway, masks kind of fall into that category of "I ain't gonna judge if I don't know your exact situation."
But I agree, it would be nice to be able to tell my friends who are perfectly healthy with no at-risk loved ones, hey, you really don't need to keep wearing a mask outside for the rest of your life. Both because it's silly, and because it seems genuinely damaging to their mental health... I have a couple friends who still get anxious/upset when someone gets within 6 feet of them without a mask on, and it's just a needlessly stressful way to live that is taking a very, very serious toll on their mental health.
Kudos to you for bucking the trend and encouraging your kids to do things like spending afternoons romping around outside!
Complete anecdata, but the parents in my close friend group are split between "parents with a more free-range kid mindset" and "typical upper-middle-class parental paranoia."
The free-range kids are mostly happy-go-lucky, emotionally stable, and thriving. Almost every single kid over the age of 10 with paranoid parents is diagnosed with a mental health condition of some sort. I mean I literally can only think of one who is not in therapy or taking medication. I think the isolation and lack of unsupervised group activities that you describe is a big part of it.
One of my more paranoid friends made a judgmental comment recently regarding my other friend's daughter not being in therapy. I was extremely confused and asked if the kiddo was having emotional issues. Her response was, "Well not yet, but 12 is a very stressful age, and I think that when you have the money to do so, it's just good parenting to ensure your kid is talking to a therapist on a regular basis."
The level of paranoia needed to believe that every single perfectly stable 12-year-old needs weekly visits with a mental health professional to ensure their health and safety, and that not supplying this is neglectful, is just... bizarre.
I cannot help but believe this sort of behavior is severely damaging the psyche of these kids. And I also don't see how it can't be hurting the parents as well. Imagine how incredibly stressful it must be to be a parent who believes every stranger, every walk around the block, and every pre-teen mood swing is a serious danger to their child.
Another requirement that seems to get ignored is that you need to have the overwhelming majority of the public not feel sick when you use it. I recently had a friend bring a VR headset to a party for people to try out. About 15% of the people who tried it felt dizzy or nauseous after using it. (I did not try it because I know from experience I'll have a headache and be dizzy for hours afterward.)
Interestingly, similar to seasickness, the women who tried it seemed waaaaay more likely to be negatively impacted. Which opens up an entire other can of worms, such as: could an office get away with mandating the use of VR tech for meetings, when it has disproportionately negative impacts on women? (As a woman, I certainly hope they would not even try this!)
And as far as voluntary public adoption, having ~15% of your friend group unable to use a product is a fantastic way to kill network efforts. I doubt TikTok would be popular if 15% of the population got horrible headaches and nausea after watching a video on the platform.
Shockingly, no one seems to be talking about this aspect of VR. Which seems to be a really big red flag.
I think it's important to note that cops, prosecutors, judges, etc. are trained and encouraged to "listen to the science" and "don't rely on your gut." Of course, many disregard this, due to corruption or other moral failings. But many do follow this advice, and sometimes it results in presenting faulty evidence simply because they have been taught faulty science.
In addition to rooting out corruption and dismantling immoral incentives, we need to seriously re-examine the forensic science that is the backbone of many cases. People--including judges, juries, cops, and lawyers--are far too willing to blindly trust "science," and it can have extremely scary outcomes. We need more replication of studies and better science education for our criminal justice professionals.
> I also worry that this nonsense will erode support for the kind of diversity I do defend, or worse, prompt some kind of revanchist backlash against visible minorities in general.
As a women in tech, I am feeling the backlash. I have seen a huge increase in the amount of skepticism of my abilities that I face from people who haven't worked with me before. And the worst part of it is that there's actually logic behind the bigotry, because it is extremely true that my company continues to hire incompetent people just because they are women.
Bigotry itself is very difficult to combat, but when you add in a solid logical grounding for the bigotry, it becomes dang near impossible to eradicate. I worry that companies are causing more harm than good with the change in hiring practices these past couple years. I continue to hear sexist comments from people who never would have said those sorts of things just five years ago.
As a straight woman, dating in Silicon Valley has been a very eye-opening and bleak experience. I have a natural "therapist" personality, so people tend to spill their guts about their deepest feelings shortly after meeting.
I do not exaggerate when I say that at least 70% of the time, I can't past the second date without men admitting to having feelings of depression, or hopelessness, or anxiety, or lack of self-worth, or just a general bitterness toward their lives and world. Or they will spend an alarming amount of the date seething about politics and how doomed they feel the world is.
Now, of course, all those emotions are a normal part of the human existence, and everyone feels them from time to time. But these men are not feeling these things "time to time." Their existence is defined by mental turmoil and acute pessimism. And, of course, women are feeling these things too. But it seems so much more acute in men in Silicon Valley.
It's extremely alarming. I've been trying to figure out what is causing this trend, and there are a few core things that I think makes Silicon Valley worse than other areas in the country for men.
1) Workaholism. So many of these men are only ever told they're worth anything at work, which leads to them investing all their time into work, which leads to severely neglected social and romantic lives, which only amplifies the problem of work being the only place they ever hear anything positive about themselves, which leads to more work. It's a really vicious cycle.
2) Hyper-competitiveness. Everyone is always comparing themselves to each other, and in a land filled with unicorns and freshly-made millionaires, it's easy to have a 300k+ salary and still feel like you're "behind" or "not living up to your full potential."
3) Start-up culture. As this article points out, it's a roller coaster of highs and lows. For those working in start ups, it leads to emotional whiplash. For those outside of start ups, it leads to enviously watching the highs and feeling intense FOMO.
4) Skewed ratio of men to women. I am stunned by how difficult it is for my male friends to get a date in this area, but there just aren't as many eligible young women as there are men. I think this leads to a feeling of despair, especially for the shy, geeky types who already struggle with dating as it is.
5) The casual hatred of men within leftist circles. At dinner the other night, when someone was complaining about a boss, one of my friend's wives just casually made the comment, "Well yeah, what do you expect, men are terrible." This was said in front of her husband and the four other men at the table. Seemingly unthinkingly. And when I corrected her and said, no, terrible people are terrible, not men, she got visibly angry, and her husband jumped in to soothe her by saying, yes, she's right, men are terrible. No one else at the table objected.
I could list off dozens more anecdotes about this sort of casual bigotry dressed up as progressive values. And I have no doubt it's part of what's wearing down men's mental health. When you're told you're terrible, and your mind is miserable, it's easy to think, "Well of course I'm miserable, I'm a terrible creature." This only amplifies the feelings of low self worth and guilt, and makes people less likely to seek help.
I have no idea how to solve any of these issues, other than being there for my male friends to talk to. But I think a good first step is to be able to talk about the issues men face openly, without being accused of misogyny or "not caring about women."
I agree, it's creating a very unhealthy environment that is breeding resentment and worsening the issues it's trying to solve.
Frankly, I feel like it has become its own flavor of religion. Often, suggesting that a religion change a practice to a "better" one is considered just as blasphemous as rejecting religion outright. I see a very similar parallel with these trainings, including the false invitation to "share your thoughts and feelings", which is used more as a tool to identify and hush "non-believers" than to critically examine any criticisms that may be brought forward.
I am not sure why you're being downvoted, because I not only have witnessed this happening within my own family/friends (it is sad and scary), but we are now having studies show that some common forms of anti-racism training has a "backfire" effect that produces more racism. https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
This is alarming not only because of the obvious reason--racism sucks and we should be trying to eliminate it as much as possible--but because the current political climate means that people are too scared to speak up and say, "Hey, can we please maybe re-think how we approach this so we don't accidentally cause harm?"
I know this from experience. I spoke up about this at my company, pointing out that the form of training we use has been shown to have a backfire effect that hurts minorities. The backlash was swift and damaging--I was accused of being a privileged white person with hurt feelings who "wasn't willing to do the work." Meanwhile I got over a dozen private messages from minorities thanking me for speaking up and stating they had identical concerns.
I will definitely not be bringing up my concerns again, and neither will anyone else in my company with half a brain. Which means my company will continue to use a form of training that is known to increase racism, which freaking sucks.