so this post has blown up; turns out a lot of people feel the same way I do. If you're feeling conflicted or upset over 4th of July, I've compiled a list of educational resources and charities, both regarding US and international issues, which you can look into if you'd like. Issues here include humanitarian aid to Gaza, Ukraine, and the Caribbean, as well as reproductive, LGBT, BIPOC, and disability rights in the US.
woke up and saw people were reblogging this again. anyway, yeah. america is still being really mean and I do not want to go to its birthday party today
if you would like to spite the really mean people even more today, consider donating to raices con voz. they're a student-led organization in los angeles, who deliver food and essential supplies to immigrant families who can't leave their homes due to the ICE raids. More information about them here
EDIT: Had to fix the link! please reblog this version instead
another year of not wanting to go to america's birthday party in two days. because it's really mean. so we should help the people that america is being really mean to
in keeping with tradition, here is a link to unicef's fund for emergency health supplies and services for survivors of the venezuela earthquakes.
here is another link for manos in action, an organization that delivers supplies, such as food and childcare items, to latin american immigrants in central florida. I've participated in one of their local food drives; they're great. if you're not local to central florida, you can always donate money.
the other links are still available too, so feel free to check those out!
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)
No. I know this is probably just a casual commiseration but I think it's a real and important question to ask and answer. If doing the stuff you're expected to do everyday is super hard, then something is probably wrong.
Anyone who relates to this too hard, I'd recommend looking up spoon theory and starting to make a record of how you feel and your experiences that you can bring up with some kind of health professional. Chances are if doing laundry feels like climbing everest, it's because you're disabled in some way. Whether that disability is some invisible chronic illness or depression or ADHD or burnout, *something* is wrong.
Almost all disabilities have some form of treatment or accommodation that can make your life easier. If you can get a diagnosis, you might also be eligible for official accommodations and benefits. Social security sucks ass and is almost impossible to access but like, it's not the only thing out there set up to help disabled folks and usually local organizations are gonna be better anyway.
Plenty of people reblogging this probably already know they're disabled in some way but if even 1 person sees this and can learn something important about themselves then it's worth saying.
TLDR: people who aren't disabled don't find acts of daily living extremely hard. Maybe look into that and see if you can get help making your life less hard.
This is super important okay. Like, I used to try to ask my conservative family/church/etc. for help, and they’d just be all, “suck it up; life is hard for everyone; quit being such a baby”... and then I went to, like, actual experts, and they were basically like, “um, wow, you’re clearly super depressed and suicidal; you should actually be proud of yourself for still being alive!” And I’m still trying to unlearn the former and accept the latter, even after all this time. And I’m so mad that I’ve wasted so much time just trying to “push through it” instead of getting help I clearly need(ed), and that’s still a thing I struggle with.
Please, please seek real help if you need it. Like, I understand that there are shitty doctors and shitty therapists and whatnot, but it’s so worth expending what effort you can to find good ones who can help. If you have mentally ill friends -- which, if you’re reading this in the first place, you almost certainly do -- they might be able to point you in the right direction.
I have a friend with insane ADD and we have this same conversation sometimes
She can't actually even define laziness (which is weird) but she thought she was just lazy, life was that hard for everyone, and that everyone else was just being more responsible at managing it. I told her laziness feels good once and she blue screened.
Like if you can't define laziness, you've probably been convinced it's something that it's not. Probably something nebulous and hard to describe. Like, idk, an unknown disorder.
In case you're one such person, laziness feels great. It's not stressful. It's like the opposite of stressful. If you're being stressed and lazy at the same time you've managed to do it wrong somehow. The only struggle in being lazy is wanting the tv remote and being to darn comfortable to want to move. (But you get it anyways, because it's not an inability to get the remote. You were just cozy.)
Think of it like a cat sitting near a warm heater or a hamster so relaxed it "melts". If there were danger, or if the animal were hungry, it would get up. It probably doesn't want to get up because it's comfortable but it will. If the hamster is actually genuinely hungry but it can't get up and it's just laying there stressed and starving, you would take your animal to the vet because it has a problem.
That’s how it was for me growing up, too. I seriously thought everyone was constantly exhausted, confused, and in pain like I was and I was just really, really bad at dealing with it, didn’t want to try hard enough, and was just lazy.
Additional gentle reminder that the regular amount of unidentifiable/unexpected pain is none. The normal amount of unidentifiable/unexpected pain is none.
Sore the next day after a workout? Makes sense.
Sore for the next week after a workout? Not normal.
Barked your shin on a low coffee table and have an ache/bruise? Expected.
Gently brushed past the doorframe and your arm feels like it's on fire? Not normal.
Joint pain in your teens/20's is not normal. Heart problems in your teens/20's are not normal. Continual (AKA chronic!) fatigue despite diet/sleep schedule is not normal.
If you cannot point to an event or series of events that caused the discomfort/pain you are experiencing ("I fell off my bike", "I walked 3 miles", "I slept poorly", "I haven't been getting all the nutrients I need"), it's probably not normal! And it is okay to want that discomfort/pain to stop, even if it's mild! Most people are not going through their daily lives consistently uncomfortable or in pain.
Most people are not going through their daily lives uncomfortable or in pain.
You deserve to be comfortable and to have things be easy. Whether that looks like readjusting your life and expectations or getting professional help (medical/mental/other), you deserve it. I promise.
commentary from a latchkey depressed AuDHD alexithymic hyperlexic:
the moment of actual innovation is how i know the rumination isn't self abusing. also it's the moment that actually is soothing. more of my emotions than I should admit to get processed this way.
something to remember is that drills also go in circles. drills can be good! they open a path and they reach new resources. the thing to pay attention to is how you feel and why. that kind of reflection is a practicable skill.
understand the world well enough to grasp that you have not been singled out by the universe for torment. you have to understand this deeply, the way you understand gravity, oxygen, sunlight. it is good to not be that particular kind of special.
physics is egalitarian <3
once I knew this all the way down to my bone marrow, those ruminations took on more of the character of fact finding missions rather than self destruction with a potato peeler.
and I did actually start finding facts! good ones!
I know this is meant to be funny but it actually makes such a good point about how ADHD and executive dysfunction can impact people in really major ways, including financially
gonna post a controversial take alright are y’all ready??
…
actually typing out emoticons like XD and :D and :V never should have gone out of fashion and you can pry them out of my cold dead hands okay I know emojis are fun but THEY DON’T CAPTURE THE EMOTION IN THE SAME WAY
There is no emoji that captures what I mean by :P (I do NOT mean “hur hur goofy-ass face!”) and the one for :^/ is not great. And lest we forget, 🤷🏻♀️ is absolutely inadequate compared to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."
Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise t
pretty sure I did the chrome//flags thing a while ago, but also i switched to firefox, which is not without the occasional bullshit, but is vastly less bullshitty than chrome.
This is why I treat genai "features" like the invasive blackberry bushes they are: cut, root, burn, and vigilantly watch for new shoots to uproot. I'm 54 years old and the world got by fine without genai for most of my lifetime.
tags via@KKglinka #psa#having read the article#it's not clickbait#chrome is reaching#across all chromium browsers#to link a prepatory structure#this malware packet#will therefore occur#with all chromium browsers#it has nothing to do#with the actual ai interface#instead chrome is either#using your personal computer#as part of a cloud server#the way bitcoin malware works#or it's recording your own#actions on the computer#with a continuously active#background module#either way#that's malware#a 4gig trojan virus
The only ways to make the deletion stick are to disable Chrome's Al features through chrome://flags or enterprise policy tooling that home users do not generally have, or to uninstall Chrome entirely
...
Adding the file took zero clicks. Removing it requires (a) discovering the file exists, (b) understanding what it is, (c) navigating into a hidden user profile path, (d) deleting it (and on Windows, also clearing the read-only attribute first), and (e) accepting that Chrome will silently re-download it on next eligible window unless the user also navigates chrome://flags, enterprise policy, or platform-specific configuration tooling to disable the underlying Chrome Al feature. None of those steps is documented in the place a normal user looks - none of them is even hinted at in default Chrome.
A lot of people hate to hear this, but they in particular really need to understand it.
If you were raised in the US, and you weren't specifically raised as a specific religion other than Christianity, then you are culturally Christian. Yes, even if you were raised atheist. Yes, I know you hate that idea. People who were raised in specific other religions in the US are usually still influenced by it, just not as thoroughly.
But specific Protestant values and attitudes have worked their way so far into US culture that we do not ever think about. (They've gotten into US Catholicism, too, Catholics elsewhere are frequently WTF at US Catholics, or so I'm told.) The "Protestant work ethic" is one of them, that "manager in your head" you should kill. Purity as a principle. The nobility of suffering (very Calvinist specifically). The prosperity culture (again, very Calvinist). A whole list. I'm honestly not good enough at Christian history to list it all. After all, I wasn't raised Christian myself. But I can see and acknowledge that I was raised in a culture with a Christian hegemony. If I pay attention, I can see where it's affected how I think. And when I do pay attention and look at it, I can change it. I can root out those patterns in my head. It's a lot of work, but it's well worth doing.
Denying that you are culturally Christian on the basis of your absence of Christian upbringing, or absence of Christianity now, just shows that you don't understand what cultural Christianity is. It is the culture that you have marinated in all your life, if you grew up in the US. The same way you've marinated in racism, classism, sexism, right on down the line (and generally they are all one thing). All of that affects you, and the only way to fix it is to acknowledge it and work on it.
This isn't a "hot take". It's just a fucking fact.
I'm posting at 10:30pm US Pacific time on a Sunday night, and fucking nobody is going to see this. Or reblog it. But I feel better having said it.
Last month, in the comments section of a pagan blog, I got into an argument with someone about the ethics of using "AI". They kept insisting that "it's not your place to judge". And that kept bothering me, because I believe it is everyone's place to judge, in the sense of "to form an opinion about through careful weighing of evidence and testing of premises" (Merriam-Webster). But something about it kept nagging at me. And I finally figured it out last night.
"It's not your place to judge" is a Christian view. It's not a mortal's place to judge because it's God's place. Matthew 7:1, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," etc. If you judge others, the Christian god will judge you as harshly as you judge them.
But I am not a Christian, I am a pagan, and that's not how postmortem judgement works in my beliefs. It is my place to judge, as it is everyone's. To consider and examine a matter carefully, and make up my mind. Which I have done with "AI". The infrastructure of "AI" is damaging to the environment and to people, and the people pushing it intend to expand that infrastructure vastly. "AI" has a negative cognitive impact on those who use it. It generates falsehoods, and it cannot be made not to do so, so that it is polluting the information available on the internet. Skilled people are losing their jobs and being replaced with unskilled people who use "AI" and are payed much less. I could go on. "AI" is bad, and it is unethical to use it when you don't have to. I'm willing to give a little more space to people whose workplaces are requiring "AI" use, because it's hard to find another job out there right now, and people gotta eat. But if your job is not forcing you to use it, and you didn't do your research and form a careful judgement about it, and you're just doing it because somebody told you it was a good idea, then that is unethical. And also lazy. You don't have to do it with every single thing in the world. But not doing it with big things like "AI" is irresponsible.
"Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."
#public libraries are good because they let people access books they might never otherwise read#private book ownership is good because it's Yours#physical books are good because they last a long time and again it's Yours#ebooks are good because you can fit a whole library into the physical space of a single book and they're cheaper to produce#audiobooks are good because they're accessible to people with eyesight or visual reading issues and leave your hands free#in conclusion: all books are good and people should enjoy them however and whenever they can#(lest it be misunderstood I agree with you completely OP I just also really like books in general and it got away from me)
Someone once asked me if, assuming we got universal healthcare, I would be okay with the rise in “healthcare tourism” where people who are sick come to our country to get their medical bills taken care of and life-saving medical treatment cheaper than in their home countries.
I was just like, yeah thats fine, I’d actually prefer it if 0 people died from preventable causes kept behind a paywall for no reason.
Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? (Celeste Davis, Oct 6 2024)
"White flight is a term that describes how white people move out of neighborhoods when more people of color move in.
White flight is especially common when minority populations become the majority. That neighborhood then declines in value.
Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry—the men leave. That industry is then devalued.
Take veterinary school for example:
In 1969 almost all veterinary students were male at 89%.
By 1987, male enrollment was equal to female at 50%.
By 2009, male enrollment in veterinary schools had plummeted to 22.4%
A sociologist studying gender in veterinary schools, Dr. Anne Lincoln says that in an attempt to describe this drastic drop in male enrollment, many keep pointing to financial reasons like the debt-to-income ratio or the high cost of schooling.
But Lincoln’s research found that “men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries.”
Her research shows that the reason fewer men are enrolling in veterinary school boils down to one factor: the number of women in the classroom.
For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied.
One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition! (…)
Since males had dominated these professions for centuries, you would think they would leave slowly, hesitantly or maybe linger at 40%, 35%, 30%, but that’s not what happens.
Once the tipping point reaches majority female- the men flee. And boy do they flee!
It’s a slippery slope. When the number of women hits 60% the men who are there make a swift exit and other men stop joining.
Morty Schapiro, economist and former president of Northwestern University has noticed this trend when studying college enrollment numbers across universities:
“There’s a cliff you fall off once you become 60/40 female/male. It then becomes exponentially more difficult to recruit men.”
Now we’ve reached that 60% point of no return for colleges.
As we’ve seen with teachers, nurses and interior design, once an institution is majority female, the public perception of its value plummets.
Scanning through Reddit and Quora threads, many men seem to be in agreement - college is stupid and unnecessary.
A waste of time and money. You’re much better off going into the trades, a tech boot camp or becoming an entrepreneur. No need for college. (…)
When mostly men went to college? Prestigious. Aspirational. Important.
Now that mostly women go to college? Unnecessary. De-valued. A bad choice. (…)
School is now feminine. College is feminine. And rule #1 if you want to safely navigate this world as a man? Avoid the feminine.
