Conceptual Incontinuity

The fuck is this. The fuck is that.

[lost-on-the-highway]

khn applying his dots on angine's instagram story today

[conceptualincontinuity]

I thought FOR SURE they were using like a round end sponge stick thing but NOPE just fingles

[conceptualincontinuity]

As it heats up I've been seeing people sharing infographics about how a lot of medications (especially psychiatric ones) can decrease your heat tolerance. I went to look up whether it's all stimulants or just certain ones, but I found a really interesting study instead.

It was like a real proper study, with data from over 150,000 people with ADHD in a bunch of countries. They tracked the number of heat related illnesses that occurred in these people through all of 2022 (the ones that were bad enough for someone to see a doctor about). It turned out that people with ADHD who were on a stimulant were actually slightly less likely to suffer from a heat related illness than ADHDers who weren't on a stimulant.

Most of the difference came from the rates of dehydration, and the rest from a painful muscle thing that - in this context - is mainly prevented by being hydrated. The rates of other heat related illnesses were the same.

The study posited a few reasons this could be the case, like the fact that being medicated for your ADHD makes it a lot easier to remember to fill up and bring your water bottle with you, and to notice when you need to hydrate.

This is a lot like the meta-analysis I found that covered over 3 million subjects taking stimulants for their ADHD, which found no higher instances of adverse cardiovascular events, even though people regularly claim that stimulants will make your heart explode.

That study pointed out that even if the medication did significantly increase your risk of a heart problem, that increase would likely be mitigated by the benefit of the medication. Being able to plan and organize, having better impulse control and emotional regulation, these are all things that lead to biology and behaviours that are better for your heart.

The heat illness study is just interesting, and it doesn't claim to know exactly why the results were the way they were, but it was a good reminder to look into the things you hear. Especially because I see a lot of fear mongering online about ADHD medication, which winds up being stigma and bullshit the vast majority of the time.

[niambi]

I’m????

[alarajrogers]

Oh my God this actually explains so much.

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.

[heartpdf]

[lexsreadingcorner]

[Transcript:

Tired

Langston Hughes

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren't you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two -

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

End.]

[purseowner4thequalityanimation]

[pixlfr00t]

alien/….

[bebs-art-gallery]

Art by Arcano XV

[conceptualincontinuity]

RIP David Lynch, I will always remember the time my dad had my sister and I watch Mulholland Drive when we were like 12/14 and we just sat there staring like 🤨

[conceptualincontinuity]

Father-Offspring Interviews Ep. 8

Next, Ellen from Missouri asks,

"What would you genetically change about humans to make them a better species? Or is this a dangerous question to ask?"

That's an incredibly dangerous question. Our history of science shows us, over and over and over again, that scientific advances wind up in the hands of demagogues, of pseudoscientists, and produces horrific outcomes and some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. And I'm ashamed for you even suggesting that. That said, I think it would be wonderful, wonderful, if all humans could be genetically engineered to have tails.

Prehensile tails.

That's my answer.

[conceptualincontinuity]

I love language. Delicious wet bread.

[molabuddy]

ohhhhhh what a sweet little man.... why are you dressed for jail... what is your crime..

[molabuddy]

oh yay ^_^ !!!! happy for him

ah.... there he goes to bed

[armengoldira]

[conceptualincontinuity]

I was talking to someone the other day about rich people being morally worse than the average Joe. He initially disagreed with me that this was true, but I sent him a few studies that back this up (that also taught me that there's a lot of context to these things).

But it got me wondering if there have been any poor people who became rich ethically, because that was part of my argument, that you can't become rich without screwing over other people.

I wound up on Andrew Carnegie's Wikipedia page (all I knew about him initially was that he was a rich philanthropist), who did grow up poor.

His rise to riches went: hard work, hard work, hard work, insider trading.

I fucking cracked up, it was so perfect.

All the hard work did was put him in favour with the guy who got him in on the insider trading, the hard work wasn't going to directly make him rich.

[conceptualincontinuity]

I just saw someone use the phrase "cognitive laziness"

"...part of it is cognitive laziness. It takes cognitive work to introspect, and a big part of it is because it takes courage to self reflect, because if you look inward you might find something you don't like about yourself."

So is it laziness or cowardice? Do we call people who don't face other psychological fears lazy or cowards? I'm sick of people using the word "lazy", it's pure moral judgement and never actually helps anyone understand why someone behaves the way they do. This comes up a lot with ADHD, and the best response I've seen to it is "if it were laziness, you'd be enjoying yourself", you know, instead of screaming at yourself that you're a useless piece of shit for not getting things done.

In this example he literally immediately refutes his own laziness claim, but still uses moral judgement to denigrate people who don't do something out of fear. Is it not the most basic human thing to avoid things you're afraid of?

Why can't these content creators talk about this stuff with the spirit of genuinely trying to understand the other side. There are always reasons they act the way they do. Frustratingly, with the right a lot of the time the reasons are things like lifelong brainwashing and a measurably more sensitive moral disgust brain network - and what the fuck do you do to combat that on the spot. But talking about that at least doesn't foster identity politics and deepen this dividing idea of "us morally superior smart people" vs "those dumb lazy cowards".

[charlies-candid-corner]

my official stance is a pregnancy is whatever the pregnant person wants it to be. if it’s a 4 week old clump of cells and they want to call it a baby it’s a baby. if they're 20 weeks and they want to call it a parasite it’s a parasite. if they're 39 weeks and call it a fetus it’s a fetus. “why are you so sad about miscarrying at 6 weeks it was literally just an embryo” because that was their baby. “how can you get an abortion at three months” because that wasn’t a baby. hope that helps.

[conceptualincontinuity]

This is absolutely valid, but I do wonder if there was more education in general about the how incredibly common miscarriages are, whether that could prevent some people from feeling so utterly devestated when one does happen, especially very early. I hear and read way too much about people blaming themselves, when in reality the vast majority of pregnancies spontaneously abort (miscarry) within the first trimester (most without the person ever knowing they're pregnant).

I know it wouldn't make a difference to everyone, but I'm convinced that there are a bunch of people who could feel less traumatized if they had access to more information.

[conceptualincontinuity]

Curly to Jimmy

[conceptualincontinuity]

I'm finally listening to Father-Offspring Interviews, where Robert Sapolsky's daughter Rachel asks him submitted questions. A few fav lines so far.

"Capgras delusion is the best."

"Oh god, Freud, it's obligatory to trash him, and I would happily do so."

"Things were just fine until humans made their all-time bad move, which was inventing agriculture."

[conceptualincontinuity]

I'm reading about the Diderot Effect, which is when you buy a new thing and then feel like you need to buy more new things or level up your current things to go with the new thing (named after a guy in the 1700s who was poor, came into some money, bought a nice robe, and then was like "now everything looks like shit next to my nice new robe").

But in this article, the author is relating his own story where he bought a new car, then:

"I ended up purchasing all sorts of additional things to go inside it. I bought a tire pressure gauge, a car charger for my cell phone, an extra umbrella, a first aid kit, a pocket knife, a flashlight, emergency blankets, and even a seatbelt cutting tool."

My dude, five of those things are safety gear. You could argue the charger is as well. And you should have a tire pressure gauge in your car.

"Allow me to point out that I owned my previous car for nearly 10 years and at no point did I feel that any of the previously mentioned items were worth purchasing. And yet, after getting my shiny new car, I found myself falling into the same consumption spiral as Diderot."

You should have had at least a first aid kit and a tire pressure gauge! You were just being neglectful before! I really don't think that being mindful of having safety gear is the same as Diderot replacing his furniture and buying a new mirror and statues because he felt the need to keep up with his new robe. Does this article author hem and haw over a new fire extinguisher too?

(I'm pleased to have just noticed that he had to add a footnote acknowledging that other readers pointed out the same thing.)