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Do you want TERFs? Because this is how you get TERFs.

Posted by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 13 2018, @06:52PM (#3790)
68 Comments
Code

Uuuuugh. Just a small mini-rant today. I got bounced from a social circle online elsewhere earlier today because, *apparently,* having a genital preference is transmisogyny. It's not enough that I support transwomen through their struggles and transition and suffering; no, the fact that I am a strict vagitarian and flatly refuse to date or have sex with a transwoman who still has male equipment makes me A Bad Person (TM).

This is how you get TERFs. I wish these people understood how much it reeks of male privilege--yes, MALE privilege, even though they were always women mentally and are on their way physically--to demand that a gay but cisgender women open herself, in the most literal, intimate, and deep sense, to the body parts she is not attracted to because the mind matches.

Look, I'm not going to date Buck Angel or another FtM who still has a vagina either: I'm a lesbian. I like women. I don't demand they be "womyn-born-womyn," but boy bits are verboten. What is unreasonable about this?! Isn't the entire point of someone going MtF to get a woman's exterior to match her interior?

I'm never going to become a TERF, but stuff like this is almost guaranteed to create more of them. I am having less and less sympathy for transwomen the older I get, and that worries me, because we're still all humans at the end of the day. I just wish some of them would pull their heads out of their asses about this.

Miss USA: Ambassador of Bullying

Posted by takyon on Thursday December 13 2018, @05:49PM (#3789)
7 Comments
Career & Education

America's perfect blonde überwaifu for the Trump Age:

Miss USA accused of mocking Asian contestants' English: 'Miss Universe should not be an ambassador of bullying'

In a now-expired Instagram Live video, Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers can be heard joking to Miss Australia and Miss Colombia about how Miss Vietnam speaks.

“What do you think about Miss Vietnam?” she asks her friends, before laughing, “… and she pretends to know so much English, and you ask her a question after having a whole conversation with her and she … [smiles and nods].”

Popular Instagram page Diet Prada posted the footage with another two videos of Miss USA, this time speaking about Miss Cambodia.

In the first she showers her fellow contestant with praise while thanking her own Cambodian fans for their support.

But in the second, she’s seen pitying Miss Cambodia to the same two friends.

“Miss Cambodia is here and doesn’t speak any English, and not a single other person speaks her language,” she says, adding, “Poor Cambodia.”

Y u no speak American tho?

Also at People.com.

I May Have Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Rather Than B12 Deficiency

Posted by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday December 13 2018, @01:14PM (#3788)
10 Comments
Techonomics

_Speculate_ now.

Surely my many Soylentil friends will agree I am _exceedingly_ Hypergraphic.

My own interpretation of my Methylmalonic Acid blood test is that it was inconclusive: I was right in the middle of the normal range, but its Wikipedia article points out that it can have false negatives as well as false positives.

There are six or eight other B12 Deficiency tests, the most definitive one generally performed last as Bone Marrow Biopsies are both painful and costly.

TLE Hypergraphia along with a few other traits are collectively regarded as Geschwind Syndrome. In my case I also experience Hyperreligiosity, as I will discuss in another post in a day or two, as well as Circumstantiality, a tendency to talk incessantly, wandering from topic to topic with no apparent connection between them.

I'm heavily into talking just that same way.

While Broca's Aphasia originates in the similarly-named Brain Area, the Broca's Area is immediately forward of the Temporal Lobe of one's dominant brain hemisphere, either the right for most artists and musicians or - in my case, as a Scientist, Engineer and Writer - the left one.

However, TLE would _not_ explain my numb feet and lips. I don't know whether or not either B12 or TLE would explain the sudden onset as well as severity of Tinnitus at the start of that same episode, or the severe dizziness that first occurred that afternoon. That dizziness persists, two or three episodes each day, one to three hours each time.

My reading of Wikipedia's Methylmalonic Acid article leads me to figure that my test result of 216 nmol/L is inconclusive. While that level is normal, in the nine weeks before you ordered my blood draw, I'd been eating antacid just like it was M&M candy. This at first due to nausea after my Radical Nephrectomy on 10/31, then later due to the nausea that comes if I move my head even just a little when I get dizzy.

So far today while I was dizzy for three hours. I can avoid nausea without antacids by lying quietly on my bed in the dark listening to music, as that discourages head music. When the dizziness struck this afternoon I was in my therapist's waiting room, so I put my computer back in its bag then sat quietly, staring at a spot on the opposite wall. During my session with her I explained why she'd found me sitting quietly, then for the entire session took care always to look directly at her, never looking away.

On Rights, Entitlements, and Obligations

Posted by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 13 2018, @12:36PM (#3787)
122 Comments
/dev/random

So, I'm sitting on my reading chair this morning, getting my daily dose of Uncle John and I come across a story about Tommy Douglas. He's a Canadian feller who arguably was the primary mover behind universal healthcare up there. It's an interesting story but that's not what I feel like talking about today. Today I want to get into one sentence out of the article:

Douglas came to believe that medical care was a basic human right and should be available to everyone.

That sentence annoys me. I dislike inaccurate or imprecise speech on important topics and that most certainly qualifies as such, so let's clarify first.

A right is something you refuse to surrender the ability to do (generally to be able to live around other people without too much strife). They have no need of justification. They need only your refusal to surrender them for whatever reason. Drawing a line in the sand on an unpopular one may get you disinvited from the Christmas party or thrown in prison but that is another matter entirely. Rights aren't very special.

A constitutional right is a right of yours that your nation has decided as a whole that the government shall not interfere with. Constitutional rights are a just an explicitly protected subset of rights in general. We in the US find that the ability to speak your mind is a good one to protect while the ability to shoot someone in the face without a good reason is not, for example. Protected rights are special.

An entitlement is something that you do not innately possess the ability to do, it must be given to you. Entitlements do require justification because they by definition are not something you have a right to. Generally they infringe upon the rights of others, though there are a small minority of situations where this is not the case. For this reason, societies must (hopefully carefully) debate among themselves what entitlements they want to create.

A Human Right is a bullshit term as it includes examples of all of the above and gets redefined all the fucking time.

There, important terms clearly defined.

Now that that's out of the way, it's extremely clear that free as-in-speech access to already existing medical care is most certainly a right but free as-in-beer access to medical care is an entitlement.

So, lets have a real discussion as to why my paying for someone I've never met's healthcare should be an entitlement. Without muddying the waters with imprecise, outright wrong, or just plain bullshit terminology.

Free as-in-beer healthcare infringes upon the rights of medical practitioners to charge what they feel is fair for their services. It also infringes upon the rights of everyone who is forced (which literally means threatened with the use of force in this context) to pay for services they neither requested nor received the benefits of. What justifications do you offer for the infringement of your fellow citizens' rights in such a manner?

I'm open to rational arguments here but bullshit rhetoric and tugs at my heartstrings are getting routed straight to /dev/null.

Just Now I Put a Saucepan in the Microwave

Posted by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday December 13 2018, @06:30AM (#3786)
2 Comments
Code

Tomorrow morning I'm going to apply for a state-funded In-Home Caregiver.

This because I just now put a pot in the microwave rather than on the stove. I've been doing stuff like that quite a lot lately. Happily I clued in before I actually nuked it.

If my only problem would be burning down my home and those of my two neighbors I wouldn't need actually home care, just meal delivery. But that's part of that same program.

Cohen gets 3 years for conspiracy with Trump

Posted by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 12 2018, @06:31PM (#3784)
27 Comments
News

A federal judge sentenced Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen to three years in prison on Wednesday following Cohen's guilty pleas to a number of political and finance crimes.

Those three years would be followed by three years of supervised release, and Cohen also is subject to forfeiture of $500,000, restitution of $1.4 million and a $50,000 fine.

...Cohen told authorities that Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women ahead of Election Day in 2016 to keep them quiet about sexual relationships they said they had had with Trump — allegations Trump denies.

Federal authorities call that a violation of campaign finance law — one for which Trump also may be culpable.

Later, Cohen admitted that he and other Trump aides continued negotiations with powerful Russians about a potential real estate project in Moscow well into the 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen had told Congress in 2017 that the talks ended in January, but his subsequent admission meant that Trump's aides had a channel open with Russia even as Trump was becoming the GOP front-runner and was denying he had any ties to Russia.

Michael Cohen Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison Following Plea That Implicated Trump

I Sang Scales Before Leaving For Work This Morning

Posted by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday December 12 2018, @03:37PM (#3782)
6 Comments
Digital Liberty

I'm not yet doing this every day but tomorrow I'll do sing scales before work.

The first time I sang scales I measured my range. I don't recall what it was but I will say I was quite dismayed at how narrow it was.

Today I only sang from C below middle C up to middle C and back. Once I'm confident that I can do so really well, and to project effectively I'll add just one note above and below.

It's not raining so I'll sing around eleven but only one or two sets. I have a shrink appointment in Vancouver at three and just want enough to buy a coffee t drink in her waiting room.

Neo-Nazi gets life in prison for Charlottesville car attack

Posted by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:39PM (#3750)
41 Comments
News

James A. Fields Jr., an avowed neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white-supremacist rally, was sentenced to life in prison by a jury Tuesday after a trial that offered an unsparing view of the physical and emotional ruin he caused in this city with a burst of vehicular rage 16 month ago.

As he had throughout his two-week trial, Fields, 21, sat impassively at the defendant’s table, clad in a powder blue sweater, as the jury delivered its verdict at 12:20 p.m. after about four hours of deliberations that began Monday: life for first-degree murder; 70 years for each of five counts of aggravated malicious wounding; 20 years for each of three counts of malicious wounding; and nine years for leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

His overall sentence: life plus 419 years and $480,000 in fines.

Fields also faces a separate federal trial for alleged hate crimes related to the incident, including one offense that carries a possible death sentence. No trial date has been set, and the Justice Department has not said whether it will seek capital punishment.

Turns out that backing up first to give yourself more room to accelerate doesn't look so great when you are claiming self defense.

James A. Fields Jr. sentenced to life in prison in Charlottesville car attack

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Seriously Problematic?

Posted by takyon on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:10PM (#3749)
22 Comments
Career & Education

Holiday Classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Accused of Being 'Seriously Problematic'

Twitter video

How braindead do you have to be to make that video? Braindead enough to work at Huffington Post's clickbait division. Wait, is there a division?

What we really need is Christianity to be completely crushed and to only allow the two truuuu pagan Xmas specials to be played on TV: The Year Without a Santa Claus and The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. 🎄💪🎅👍

Spiritual successor to Gaaark's journal.

rOFFLE cOPTERS

Posted by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @10:01AM (#3748)
17 Comments
Security

My essay "An NSFW Review of Portland's Oregon Theater" is #6 at Google for:

          oregon theater

... immediately below oregon dot theater... and #8 for:

          "oregon theater"

In other news, I'm working at home tonight, but didn't get started until just a half hour ago, at which point I decided so as to point out that Portland's Oregon Theater is a great place to get blown. Ten clams most night, twenty or twenty five on "Party" nights, when the management springs for vast quantities of pizza and free snacks, and more women turn up.

Be sure to get your Hepatitis vaccination and bring an economy-sized box of those little rubber raincoats:

            "Suit up before you play." -- Ann Landers, "Dear Abby"

I actually woke up at four in the afternoon - as I write this it's just before 2:00 AM - but took quite a long time to come round. I was reluctant to drink coffee as it's been upsetting my stomach lately, but eventually concluded I'd waste the whole night if I didn't.

The coffee of course made me nauseous. Again I was reluctant to take an antacid - ranitidine, generic RanTab - as I suspect - _suspect_ now - that antacids make my suspected - _suspected_ - Pernicious Anemia far worse.

But I just couldn't deal with the nausea anymore so I took a ranitidine. It was not long before my stomach felt just dandy, followed by dizziness, followed by even worse nausea.

Just the one acid would _not_ have caused the dizziness or the nausea, its effect would be far slower than that.

I lay in bed in the dark for a while, eventually to feel just fine and so got back up to prepare for going to work. The nausea and dizziness set back in, so again I lay in bed, intending to work at home so as to not risk getting nauseous on the bus to and fro. Fell asleep but just for an hour or so.

I wanted some coffee when I got back up but would not at first risk getting sick. A couple days ago I was advised to eat something before drinking coffee, and in fact I usually drink it on an empty stomach so I made a Jesus Big pancake. Just one, the size of my whole frying pan you can do that if you add eggs to your Krusteaz.

("Jesus Big" is Newfoundland English for "Ginormous".)

And in fact just to experiment in much the same way as the medical hero who trapped a mosquito against his arm under a cup, then died of Yellow Fever so as to overcome the skepticism of the medical community, I had a whole cup of by now cold coffee. It's been about an hour and I'm still not sick.

I figure I would be nauseous by now, so I screwed around with my logfile analysis, only discover that some completely empty directories at warp life are getting lots of hits, so I redirected them to soggy wizards' homepage.

Tell Me About Your Day.

I'm having a good day. Not every day is good for me but today is.

Radio Paradise is playing some live Grateful Dead.