I started doing Yoga 25 years ago after fracturing a couple of vertebrae and needing to learn to walk/move again. It literally saved me from a life lead in an opiate haze to control the pain.
That said, this article comes as no surprise as there has always been an undercurrent of of bat-shit crazy control freaks in the "alternative movement".
It’s complicated because some antifa are just a different bunch of mindless tribalists.
It really depends if you ended up antifa for social reasons (mainly being part of something) or for having thinked a lot about what are your principles and politics and figured out that haters have to be stopped early, before they get to the stage were they’re hurting lots of people - the latter kind will likely also spot hate replacing reason in themselves and thus stop it before they hurt somebody who might very well be innocent.
Sadly a fraction of self-proclaimed antifa are just another hater mob, just raging against different groups of people than the fascists, which is how you end up with things like cruxifiction-by-social-media against people for the sin of not treating slogans as Sacred Truth.
I like the antifa who go up and punch people saying horrible shit - I feel like getting punched is a fair reaction to calling for genocide. It’s visceral, it makes a point, and the guy on stage probably deserves to be hit.
I don’t like the ones that try to police the Internet and exclude anyone with extreme views. Engaging people like that is the only way to make them less extreme. Isolating them only shows them their only companionship will be through their little cults
I support strongly free speech, I just think sometimes getting punched is a fair response
As I see it, when one decides that the Rules Of Society shouldn’t limit their own words and actions towards others, its only fair that the Rules Of Society also don’t protect them from the words and actions of others towards them - “live by the sword, die by the sword” and all that.
I mean… That seems like an argument for equipping people with better literacy skills given that any competent reading of 1984 would turn you away from fascism.
I don’t know man, with how misused the term is these days, not trusting the government is fascism. And a proper reading of it certainly gives you a distrust of the machine.
You should check out the cottage-core tradwife trend going around. Some extremist Christians are doing the "going off grid" and "back to our heritage" thing on social media.
I think anything can be twisted into a pipeline to fascism if prominent people within a community are pushing it. Let's take My Little Pony for example. You would think that would be the last place for fascism to foment, but there are certain communities online that have pushed it in that direction.
Not really. People use the word in a pretty measured way. Usually people with fascist views just say that because they’re offended at being described accurately and want to try to rationalize it away.
Are you trying to tell me that easily manipulated mindless clowns flock to fringe conspiracies and bullshit pseudo-science filled snake-oil wellness programs?
I don't think she meant to mention you. OP is a mastodon user, and it automatically mentions the OP plus the person you are replying to when creating a response.
The article threw out a lot of potential reasons but the unsaid part about all of them was that they wouldn't be an issue if so many people weren't so goddamn stupid.
Isolation?
Mistrust of the government?
Poor treatment of women's health?
In all cases, it takes two parts to drive someone to conspiracy theories. A catalyst like one of the above, plus fuel of pure goddamn stupidity.
State House News Service, an independently owned news wire, reported that $1 billion of the state’s record $56.2 billion fiscal budget for 2024 came from the state’s new 4% tax on millionaires. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed the budget on Wednesday, making Massachusetts the eighth state to adopt a free school lunch plan since federal free school lunches which started during the COVID-19 pandemic ended.
COVID response is wild because for like 2 years we had a robust expansion of both direct government aid and healthcare coverage and accessibility, and the poof most of it disappeared. Like we literally had free healthcare at point of service for one disease which is crazy.
Great to see that at least some states responding to the demand for these heightened services. We should be pointing towards the example of COVID aid to show what the government can do if the public pressure is there. If we did it once we can do it again!
"Thanks to hundreds of years of treating the male body as the default in medicine, we simply do not know enough about how disease manifests in the female body."
This is big one. I'm a woman who's been misdiagnosed for the simplest of things. Twice I've blown my ACL, and both times it took 6-8 months to diagnose ... even tho the first time I pulled the ACL right off the bone. My rotator cuff took 20 yrs. All because women aren't supposed to hurt themselves at work.
That privilege had its price.
Our medical knowledge didn’t come from from doctors sitting down with pen and paper and figuring stuff out. It came from field research, trail and error on alive and dead subjects. Subjects that two world wars provided by the millions. It just so happened to be that those subjects were mostly white men between 14 and 50 years of age in dire need of medical treatment. Naturally our knowledge of male physiology skyrocketed during and after that period. On the contrary, when it comes to psychology, men are light years behind women. While trying to “”“cure female hysteria”“”, we got a far deeper look into the function of our brains on the female side than on the male side. Even though most of these women took part as voluntarily as someone would take shrapnel in the war. I’m trying to say that it’s not just as simple as men or women have it better, it all boils down to historical availability of patients for research.
It also developed from scientists trying to keep things simple. Women's bodies are a lot more complicated than men's in terms of varying ratios of hormones, pregnancy, etc that have to be accounted for in studies. Same reason HeLa cells and genetically-identical mice are used.
It's still not a justifiable reason to neglect 50% of the population under the incorrect assumption that human physiology is the same across the board.
It’s still not a justifiable reason to neglect 50% of the population under the incorrect assumption that human physiology is the same across the board.
I’m not sure who’s worse. The people planning research who still mistakenly believe that it’s correct to just study one group and presume it applies to a group that would have been more complicated to study or the ones who know it doesn’t work that way but just pretend it does because it’s more convenient.
Don’t get me wrong, there are contexts where doing an imperfect job now and trying to fill in the details later is the best strategy. But I don’t believe that’s actually what’s going on most of the time.
It’s true that wartime produces massive leaps forward in all sorts of technology. And the military does use and abuse soldiers (of all sexes) for research. But patients involved in medical research are almost always ordinary people, recruited by their doctors. And we’ve only been doing medical research properly since the 1970s, after the thalidomide scandal happened. The first randomised controlled trial was conducted in 1948.
Most trials avoid recruiting pregnant women, despite the fact that if the trials are successful the treatments will be used in pregnant women (unless known to be mutagenic from animal studies) without any testing at all.
And many trials exclude women because of the risk of pregnancy, or hormonal fluctuations making it more complicated to interpret results (despite hormonal fluctuations in men being just as wild but much less predictable).
I know you feel hard done by. But your perspective is warped. We still have medical professionals debating whether the female orgasm exists, FFS.
While trying to “”“cure female hysteria”“”, we got a far deeper look into the function of our brains on the female side than on the male side.
As far as I know, treatments for “hysteria” tended to range from quackery at best to sexual assault at worst. You’re going to have to do a lot better than a bare unsupported asstertion if you want me to believe science actually learned anything of value from it.
Yeah, people often talk about scammers and grifters and how "insert-ableist-slurs" and "gullible" people who believe them are, but none of those "I'd ever fall for that!!1" types ever look at why people were so easily convinced, what large chunks of care are missing in society that people have no choice but to be drawn to the "alternatives" no matter how bogus or even dangerous - at some point the system has let you down so dramatically that even if it did finally offer a solution, you'd have no reason to trust it.
The result of which is instead of trying to better the system so that fewer people get treated poorly or not at all, they just shift the blame to those who fell victim to the scan, and can pat themselves on the back for being "better" without actually doing fuck all but ridicule vulnerable people.
People like that are just as much a part of the problem - the grifters give them someone to ridicule and feel superior to, they pander to the ego of the "unconvinced" as much as, if not more, than to the ego of the people they're trying to scam, giving that (ego boost) up even if it is to do the right thing (but in favour of those these individuals see as lesser) just doesn't make sense to them.
It’s such an exhausting problem that so many people hold society back from meeting everyone’s needs, because society fails to meet everyone’s needs and thereby creates people who hold society back from meeting everyone’s needs, because…
It feels like being locked in a room full of people flinging shit at each other because they are mad that people won’t stop flinging shit at them and everytime you try to gently suggest they all just stop flinging shit they just start flinging it at you until you shut up.
Crab mentality is by design, and the only way out is to look at who's fucking bucket it is.
So
it’s such an exhausting problem that so many people hold society back from meeting everyone’s needs
while this is true on the surface, to find the core of the problem you have to look at who actually benefit from this state of affairs and never forget that it's those few who hold society back, not the many people they pit against each other to stop us from turning on them.
There is definitely a small set of powerful, rich, and influential people who “benefit”, but I don’t think it’s a pyramid of nefarious overlords so much as it is just a large web of people acting on their own interests.
The same could be said for people with crab mentality. They are acting on their impulses, values, and opinions, born from likely unfortunate circumstances, when they drag their immediate others down. They aren’t thinking about holding society back at large.
Plus, quite often things are the way they are because of historical inertia. It’s why historians place make such a big deal about continuity. For example, many laws we have can be traced back to some series of awful events that happened to a set of people. But those awful events were probably caused by yet another set of awful circumstances.
If you’re looking for some group of people to blame for all of your woes, you might just become a fascist.
You’re entirely reading what you want to read out of my words, and then promptly applying some vague label as if you’re somehow the most enlightened yourself. As if, probabilistically, we both aren’t in very similar circumstances being here this very moment in the system that you seem to so despite.
There is definitely a small set of powerful, rich, and influential people who “benefit”, but I don’t think it’s a pyramid of nefarious overlords so much as it is just a large web of people acting on their own interests.
The same could be said for people with crab mentality. They are acting on their impulses, values, and opinions, born from likely unfortunate circumstances, when they drag their immediate others down. They aren’t thinking about holding society back at large.
Those are all just crabs in the bucket. Some of the more aggressively single-minded ones are nearer to the top of the pile than others.
I don't actually think you're asking in good faith with the bot joke, but if you really care you don't need to look that hard, they are literally all around you (the person who pays your wages, the person who collects your rent, the government that allows them to continue to do so), you just need to open your eyes to how they exploit you and the rest of society.
It's called capitalism, look it up.
And no, abolishing capitalism isn't fascism, it's quite literally the opposite (since capitalism in decay leads directly to fascism as we can see being demonstrated around us in real time).
The other person saying that targeting an individual group of people turns you in to a fascist is full of shit in this instance - capitalism isn't a marginalised or oppressed group it is an active marginalisation and oppressing system, and standing up to oppressors does not equal oppression, it's literally liberation.
Unless you’re Waukesha, Wisconsin, where they specifically voted to stop giving kids handouts (i.e. free lunch). Because, you know, kids should work for their food or something instead of using their energy to learn.
I’ll raise you the most voted pre-candidate to president in my country, who said that people should be able to sell their own organs if they want to. (He plans to worsen things for workers in such a way that they would need to.)
Of course it is. But you know, kids lives only really matter up until they are born. At that point the kids, their parents and their livelihoods and happiness…all that can fuck right off.
kids just don’t want to work anymore these days. they’re too busy with their avocados and ipad games. meanwhile the child unemployment rates are at historical highs. won’t someone think of the economy?
Waukesha County is by far the most conservative in the state, and has been playing a massive role in destroying our state’s democratic process for a few decades now.
Another fun fact about it is that they’ve been trying for years to glom onto the Lake Michigan watershed, which, geographically, it is not a part of. They want to straight up take our water, which they do not need, in exchange for nothing whatsoever of any real value.
I live in the mke area and when looking for housing Waukesha was a tempting area because of how much more house you can get for the money, but I just don’t think I can handle living there. Not to mention I want my kids going to schools in a community that gives a shit about kids and their education.
China cannot win against Taiwan. (win = gaining control of the nation with its chip fabs still operational)
But that will not stop them from trying.
China is falling off a demographic cliff thanks to two generations of the one child policy. In a decade it will not have enough fighting age citizens to even attempt it.
But Xi wants to be remembered as the great re-unifier of China and he turned 70 this year, so time is running out to do so.
The 21st National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will be held in 2027.
I expect China and Xi to force the issue before then.
As a student who grew up attending Massachusetts public schools, this is fantastic news. Just wish that could have been me!
I used to bring a lot of boxed lunch in most days instead because school lunches were an unnecessary expense, but sometimes I’d buy school lunch if it was one I liked.
I don’t know if this applies everywhere, but my school district at least had a needs-based free lunch (and breakfast) program for those from low income families, but honestly all students deserve to eat a healthy and nutritious meal during school, which I am sure also takes quite a bit of stress off of parents.
The trouble with needs based programs is that students who receive the free lunch then get shamed by other students for being poor. Thus the movement to give the lunch to everyone. The cost per student is fairly low compared to the other expenses of running a school. Plus there are savings resulting from getting rid of the bureaucracy that figures out who is needy enough to get a free lunch, getting rid of the payment collection operation, etc, that partly offset the cost of the additional free lunches.
It depends on how you manage it. We had a system where parents could pay up front for your lunches, and students using that system got their lunches the same way the needs-based students did - the lunch lady just checked their name off the list for the day. You could guess at who had which, probably, but there was no way to confirm it.
That being said, you’re right about the bureaucracy and I’m all in favor of free lunches for all students regardless of their parents’ income.
I read an article about it recently. If a student asks to be called by a name other than the one they were registered with (for example, Benjamin asks to be called Ben or William asks to be called Sir Buttface) the school is supposed to inform the parents and get approval. A “side” effect of this is outing trans kids to their parents.
The other (minor but possibly cumulative) effect is that it annoys every parent whose child doesn’t go by their birth name. Enough little cuts like that and the GOP loses plenty of voters.
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