I believe yes. I think it’s hard but I think you can. Weight loss drugs, liposuction, stomach stapling, etc none of those methods helps someone learn to control their cravings or redirect their cravings. We live in a world of excess. There’s food everywhere you turn. It’s like a recovering alcoholic. He or she needs to learn to live in a world where alcohol is omnipresent but they have chosen to not indulge their inner cravings. Someone can be craving horrible food and choose to eat salads without creamy dressing. You can choose to not drink sugary drinks. You can crave ice cream but choose to eat raw carrots instead. Is it as fun? No. But alcoholics walk by bars and liquor stores every single day and they choose to not indulge their cravings. It isn’t as fun but they do it regardless.
To use your alcoholic analogy. Imagine you were a terrible alcoholic and you decide to get better. Great! But you can’t STOP drinking. Not completely. You have to stop drinking too much while also NEEDING to have 2-3 single drinks a day to survive. So every day. Every. Single. Day. Multiple times a day you have to face that temptation. Your brain and body are craving you down a fifth of vodka when you wake up, but you’re only supposed to drink a watered down Bloody Mary instead. You have to taste that vodka and get a tiny bit of that dopamine hit from it, but you just have to stop. Your kitchen is full of liquor bottles, but you have to just wait until lunch to have your next drink with that craving eating away at you.
And then you hit the breakroom at lunch to sip on your small shot of whiskey you brought from home, but the breakroom is a cocktail bar and everyone around you is downing a couple pints of lager or a Long Island Ice Tea. There’s an open bar right there! Plenty of drinks easily available and your mind is begging you to just go get some. But you’re not abstaining completely. You just have to sit there and sip on your tiny bit of alcohol and that’ll just be enough.
For your nightly drink, you always take it at home. You can’t go to a restaurant with anyone, or even by yourself. You can’t order in. The smallest drinks they serve is a full pint. And still, while you down that Manhattan as quickly as you can every night so as not to think about it too much, you have to go to your kitchen to prepare it with the shelves full of liquor. And just have that one drink. Everyone else gets to have a few drinks a day and move on with their life, but for you every meal is a fight to not go off the deep end while dipping your toes just a little into the pool.
And then tomorrow you have to wake up and do it again.
And every day for the rest of your life.
And that’s just me trying to appeal to your empathy, assuming you have any. There’s science that shows that the dopamine (or maybe serotonin, I always get them confused) that food addicts get is just as addictive as a hard drug habit. It’s literally the same thing. That’s why drugs feel good. It’s not just the altered state that’s addictive. The chemicals your brain release when it gets these things make you crave more. Some people’s brains light up from eating some foods. It’s the same thing as a drug habit, but you can’t quit. Ever. There’s science to back up how wrong you are. You just don’t have to deal with it and you can’t imagine how anyone could have different experiences than you.
My favorite part of this is your assumption that I have no personal experience in any of this. I know that it’s hard. I also know it’s possible to stop drinking and stop eating to excess. These are not analogies for me.
People can have self control. It’s possible through nothing more than willpower to choose to eat less and just do it. Just like how there are people who choose to stop drinking alcohol. They chose to be sober and then they worked at being sober. Some people get help with support groups but there are a lot of sober people who just choose to stop drinking. People can infact choose to eat less. I’m not saying it’s hard but it is possible. No one can choose to have a house through willpower alone.
You can downvote me all you want. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Because I think it’s so incredibly weird how every little imperfection now needs the pharmaceutical industry to sell you a pill to fix it. Medicine is one thing. Antipsychotics, schizophrenia, ADHD medications, etc. there are plenty of things that require medication. But weight loss? Come on. Unless you have some diagnosed underlying condition, which I imagine is rather rare, then you don’t need a pill to lose weight. You are capable of doing on your own.
Yeah, just like homeless people can just get a house, overweight people can just eat less. Simple shit with no more nuance whatsoever. No need for any deeper investigation of these complex topics. Let’s keep minimizing both of these groups without any form of empathy like the piles of shit we make ourselves out to be.
Not all of them. Some of these drugs can affect nutrient uptake, others are amphetamines to make your resting energy use rise, as a stimulant. I’m sure there are other mechanisms to mess with as well.
The results for this and Wegovy are pretty promising. That said, the long term effects are unknown since they are so new. But the long term effects of having a BMI over 30 are pretty terrible and well known. These are nothing like amphetamines.
The results are that they were only tested on perfectly healthy people which is not indicative of their success in the general population, and the results were also that most people gained the weight back immediately upon stopping the drug.
The side effects were not too bad for people getting the drug for free, but at 1k a month, those side effects cause much higher drop out rates as well.
Still way more promising than anything else available, but not that promising overall.
In a for-profit medical industry, what’s the difference? All those hospitals and medical conglomerates in your country are Amazon with a different name.
A tiny evil company vs a multinational, data hungry, oligopoly chasing, soul stealing incarnation of human avarice. There’s a difference, Amazon employee. I’ve seen several people calling Amazon the lesser of two evils for the last few days and it literally never is. Never. That concept is fiction.
In a for-profit medical industry, what’s the difference?
The implication is that Amazon is equal or perhaps even better. There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism but there are certainly tiers of depravity and degrees of separation, and absolving yourself of thinking about them doesn’t help. If Karen’s only crime is hating Amazon, that solidifies the woman hating origin of the meme.
You are a Karen because you came here accusing me of being an Amazon shill in a post that has zero evidence pointing to that. I pointed it out and you still double down on your idiotic response.
As someone who works in medical I can say hospitals and other medical facilities absolutely can not sell your data without violating tons of hipaa regulations. I can say we can allow a company to come in and obfuscate data before selling it off. The big difference here would be there can not be any identifier that can link anyone (which happens with most companies that sell data), it’s mostly data on trends. If you can prove otherwise that would be a hell of an amazing lawsuit.
That’s alright. Technical glitches happen. Your the real MVP for doing such a great job providing a great play by play in the first place. It is appreciated.
Definitely bizarre and horrible. I wonder why they decided to do this - strapped for cash? Just scammers? How did they expect to get away with just storing bodies in a room? So It would be Colorado Springs.
I was wondering what these psychos looked like and found this article:
It’s fulfilling for the Hallfords and Mosley to help people better understand their options and to honor the last wishes of the deceased and their loved ones.
Oh, sure, I bet. A shame as it’s a decent concept to avoid embalming - pumping people full of formaldehyde that eventually leeches into groundwater is a pretty bad idea.
I initially gave them the benefit of the doubt before all the details came out, thinking maybe they just got behind and then things spiralled, but the full list of charges makes me think scammers or a ton of debt. Either way, it seems like this will be the push CO needs to finally start regulating the funeral industry like everyone else does.
I have an MSc from a top UK university, my dissertation topic was labour abuse and work-related harm for which I received a distinction. I’m no puritan, but genuine “sex work” (outside the internet) is overwhelmingly negative for the actual workers and very few enter the industry from a position of personal or economic empowerment. This is the case to a shocking degree, even where it’s decriminalised. I’m not against it, per se, but it confuses me when people are strongly for it. So yeah, stay woke.
I think most people who’ve actually thought about it would say either “sensitivity to and awareness of the plight of marginalized people” or the same but with “oversensitivity”, depending on which side of it you’re on.
For years I’ve contemplated the idea if I came into a bunch of money if starting a porn studio where the customer is an actor/actress in the porn.
We have a building and several “sets” with cameras recording, customer picks their “partner” and “set” and “shoot the porn”, after they are done the video is burned on to a dvd(or blue ray or potentially put on a private file server).
The customer isn’t paying for sex, they are paying for the video.
Pretty sure it would have a ton of legal push back and I would need a lot of money for the lawyers to fight the cases.
But 1. Safer for everyone imvolved(it’s video taped so you won’t beat/hurt/kill the other party) 2.technically legal just like shooting porn
This is actually a great idea for couples! The issue of course would be to make sure that the couples are actual couples.
You could have them sign a release indicating that it’s a “photo studio”, and you can have different prices: one for commercial use ($5,000 per hour) and one for private use ($100 an hour, and you’re not allowed to commercially distribute the DVD.)
You could burn it to a dvd or whatever, delete the file, and give the customer the only copy. Whether they choose to keep it or destroy it is their own choice.
Not to mention the possible tie ins…imagine if the studio partnered with onlyfans… Or offered special spaces with live streaming(with permission) to people’s Webcam sites.
“remember to join the stream this Saturday where we will be on location in the pleasure dome’s sunset beach set for a special sex on the beach adventure”
Which is bollocks anyways because illegalization actually makes things less safe for all sex workers, but especially for trafficking victims who are now legally marginalized into dark number status
Old white men elected themselves under the guise of voting (gerrymandering who?) and are too embarrassed and confused to allow women the rights they have as humans. Isn’t democracy silly.
You’re correct, it is not federally illegal in the US. Most things aren’t. Murder isn’t, either. However, traveling across state lines with a prostitute has gotten people in trouble with the federal government before.
Because one of the biggest issues with sex work, human trafficking, gets worse with legalization. Studies across Europe have shown that countries that outlaw prostitution see a decrease in human trafficking victims while countries that legalized or decriminalized it see an increase.
Unlike with drugs, you don't just create a way to increase the supply. A very small minority of women actually want to engage in sex work. And the few who do, usually envision the high class escort lifestyle. But working in a brothel charging $100 per client isn't something many want to do.
But legalizing prostitution increases demand. Which makes it more profitable for criminals to utilize human trafficking to fill that demand.
It also doesn't help at all with protecting victims of human trafficking. Victims of human trafficking are already protected. But they don't step forward because of threats against their own well being and that of their families. Something that doesn't change just because their work technically is legal now.
Which leaves a small percentage of people who fall into financial hardship and consider prostitution as a method of overcoming said hardship. For them that might slightly improve their situation. But that still means exploiting vulnerable people and isn't people engaging in sex work because they want to. And it's even questionable if people in these scenarios would follow the legal way.
So while initially it might seem like legalizing it solves a lot of issues, it is more difficult than that.
Thanks for the data. I think the issue here is not that legal prostitution creates problems, but rather the government bodies being incompetent at protecting the victims, then.
There are other industries in which people “sell their bodies” for profit (the military and construction come to mind), and if those can be quite regulated, why can’t prostitution?
We all sell our bodies for profit. To be fair though, wage theft is the most common form of theft. We’re all prostitutes and we’re almost all being taken advantage of, and we’re in a system where we can’t really get out.
government bodies being incompetent at protecting the victims, then.
My guess is that it’s just more difficult to control prostitution than it is to control construction work. Construction happens in the open, you need to get tons of permits, multiple companies are involved, inspectors check everything regularly. It would be difficult to force some people to work on a construction site without anyone realizing. But how are you going to make sure that each sexual intercourse in some strip bar is ‘legal’? Are you going to put inspectors in bathroom stalls? How can you check every cash transaction? It’s pretty much impossible. You can monitor the sex work that’s advertised and happening ‘in the open’ but there will always be some grey and black market for it. And the ugly stuff will happen there.
Because one of the biggest issues with sex work, human trafficking, gets worse with legalization.
Yes, because legalizing sex work is just criminalizing sex work with extra steps. It’s very easy to see an (alleged) “rise in sex trafficking” when the legalization shuffle allows politicians to all of a sudden decide what is “allowed” sex work and what is “sex trafficking.”
This is why shitty studies like the one you linked is so thoroughly non-credible - it was performed without the input of the people who actually know what they are talking about - ie, sex workers themselves.
legalizing sex work is just criminalizing sex work with extra steps
So what’s the solution?? You just made random assertions without any sources and didn’t suggest any alternatives. All while skimming over the very real trafficking/coersion problems unique to sex work.
ROFLMAO! No, genius… trafficking is not unique to sex work in any way, shape, or form. If you weren’t filled to the brim with anti-sex work hysteria you’d have known that already.
Do tell… is this the first time you’ve actually considered what sex workers themselves have to say about (so-called) “legalization?”
The sex workers with those opinions usually are the already more well off workers who perform escort or cam services, and isn’t reflective of the bottom strata of sex worker experiences. It also doesn’t address how more common sex work leads to higher trafficking rates.
trafficking is not unique to sex work in any way, shape, or form.
Lol I’d love any source on this whatsoever. I’m not sure how you defend this line of thought, or why you feel this way. You don’t think human trafficking shares any of the same risk factors or conditions as sex work?
I reckon that even though sex work is legalised, and still caused issues, the problem is that there is no government regulation. It’s one thing to say by the government that they won’t prosecute sex workers, but if it’s not regulated and abuse still happens then nothing changed for all intents and purposes. Best analogy I could think of is like allowing food factories to manufacture food, of course. But if there is no regulatory watchdog to monitor and test to make sure food factories are not putting random and dangerous stuff into food, then legalising an activity is pointless.
Basically, the sex industry having been legalised by many countries is unofficially a libertarian set up. Yeah, the government exists and allow sexual transactions between agreeing parties, but they’re hands off on how the practitioners in the industry would conduct business. There is no government agency for sex workers to complain to if they’re abused. I know people would ask, how exactly would the government regulate sex? That, I will leave to policy experts.
I see this single study trotted out every time the subject comes up and the key factor to take into account is that this is reported trafficking. If legalized sex work means more light is shed on human trafficking that means more can be done about it.
key factor to take into account is that this is reported trafficking. If legalized sex work means more light is shed on human trafficking that means more can be done about it.
Just because more is reported doesn’t mean more isn’t also happening. In fact, one could reasonably expect reporting to go down as a percentage of incidents due to ordinary citizens not expecting sex workers to be involved in trafficking since sex work is now legal. That the number goes up after the stigma is removed seems to strongly indicate a correlation with a rise in actual trafficking.
Sure, but all you have is assumptions and you’re assuming the increased reporting of trafficking means that trafficking is increasing rather than it just getting caught more. It’s like when some governments fought over covid reporting. Keeping it hidden doesn’t mean less of it is happening and making it more visible doesn’t mean more of it is happening.
Second, it does prove that more human trafficking is reported.
You only have the assumption that bringing it into the light of day results in a higher rate of reporting against actual incidents. It’s an interesting hypothesis, but without any evidence to support your assumption Occam’s Razor dictates that the simplest answer is that the rates do not change drastically and there actually is more human trafficking to be reported.
You didn’t present anything but you certainly act like you did. We’re agreed in that it proves more human trafficking is reported but again, that doesn’t mean more human trafficking is happening. Refer back to my example about covid case reporting. Incorrectly citing Occam’s Razor doesn’t strengthen your argument.
You didn’t present anything but you certainly act like you did.
I did no such thing.
We’re agreed in that it proves more human trafficking is reported but again, that doesn’t mean more human trafficking is happening.
Unless the reporting rates go down, then it must certainly does.
Refer back to my example about covid case reporting.
Your example of a concerted effort of large governmental agencies to hide the actual reported numbers is not actually relevant here. It wouldn’t even be relevant if it were just random underreporting outside of governments as it doesn’t have any similarity to decriminalizing sex work.
Incorrectly citing Occam’s Razor doesn’t strengthen your argument.
You have made more assumptions than I have. Tell me how you think Occam doesn’t apply. You can’t just declare an argument to be invalid and expect anyone to take your seriously.
What evidence do you have to support your theory that decriminalizing an activity increases the rate of reporting? If you don’t have any, then you don’t even have an argument. You only have your suppositions and theories.
It’s entirely possible that you’re correct, and decriminalization increases reporting without increasing activity. I have yet to see what mechanism you propose causes this quite curious paradox, so without some explanation you’ll have to concede that you at least can offer no actual reason to believe it’s true.
Sex work differs from most other type of work in one very significant way - it’s an industry in which capitalists cannot really control the means of production unless slavery (ie, a person can become the private property of another) is legalized and institutionalized. In other words, a sex worker - for the most part - is not as easily coerced into selling their labor to capitalists like most workers can be, and capitalists hate when people have a way to opt out of being hosts for their parasitism.
Sex work also has a way of subverting patriarchal norms upon which the status quo rests.
This is not to say that sex work is automatically a revolutionary, anti-capitalist or even “empowering” thing by itself - there are plenty of ways in which our socio-economic systems allows and enables de facto slavery without calling it slavery - but it certainly doesn’t fit into the neat class hierarchy that capitalists wants society to be trapped within.
The vast majority of “self-employed” people are utterly impoverished people doing survival work, Clyde - please tell me you don’t buy into the “entrepreneurship” fairy tales Reagan and Thatcher spooned into your parents’ brains through the telly back in the 80s. If you believed that, you might just as well believe in magic glass slippers that grants royalty.
You are confusing being self employed with gig economy bullshit. There are a lot of fields of occupation where being self employed makes sense und gives you more freedom. By the way - I’m talking from own experience being self employed fore quite some time now.
There are people living in shacks within a kilometer from where I’m typing this, Clyde… every second person living there has more (so-called) “entrepreneurship” in their big toe than you have in your entire body because they literally have to do it for survival.
I’m not confusing squat… the only thing you’ve managed to demonstrate here is that you talk from privilege and nothing else.
I like how even you write “entrepreneurship” in quotation marks and ad “so called”, but than dismiss my point completely, that we might not be talking about the same thing. And than you get personal for no reason. Is everything OK, buddy? You need to went some anger and frustration? I would recommend some physical activity - much better than arguing with strangers on the internet.
I like how even you write “entrepreneurship” in quotation marks and ad “so called”
That’s because I view the neoliberal fetishization of “entrepreneurism” no differently than I view the garbage anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers buy into.
but than dismiss my point completely
Your “point” was treated in the appropriate manner - your “point” merely revolved around the choice the privileged has when it comes to employment. This makes your “point” utterly irrelevant to this discussion.
You read correctly the first time. It’s a lot more difficult to entrap sex workers in patriarchal hierarchies than a housewife (for instance)… this should not be too difficult to understand.
This isn’t a capitalist thing.
All sex work in the world today exists under a capitalist mode of production - as far as I can tell, there is (officially, at least) no such thing as “publicly-funded” sex work… and that is unfortunate.
Due to both criminalization and demonization, sex workers are prevented from performing very necessary work in our society - such as being the only people that are qualified to perform sex education, for instance - so yes… it is quite unfortunate that sex work cannot be performed as a service to the public.
Sex education is more about the changes your body goes through during puberty as well as how reproduction works. None of that is related to sex work. Sex work is about making people feel good.
You’re reading too much into it. The primary reason is puritan values. To be fair, the taboo on promiscuity is likely due to the lack of contraceptives and risks of getting sexually transmitted diseases. But access to contraceptives and education would lessen the risks these days. Though people are still creatures of habits so sex and sex work are still taboo for many without questioning why it has been in the first place.
I disagree with this entire claim. Sex workers are notorious for “having a price” to do nearly anything. I would say they are more susceptible to doing disgusting shit for money. There’s a reason why there’s an ongoing joke about sex workers getting shit on during their trips to dubai.
Sex workers are notorious for “having a price” to do nearly anything.
And what do you think the rest of us do, eh Clyde? How many sex workers have to piss in bottles to make Jeff Bezos richer?
There’s a reason we don’t use the term “prostitute” any more - it’s got something to do with the fact that understanding how capitalism works very quickly makes it real clear who the real “prostitutes” are…
I think sex workers are pressured to get into progressively more disgusting shit because that’s what pays. The market is flooded at this point and the only thing you can do to stick out is either be famous or be willing to degrade yourself.
I’m expressing my opinion on a public forum. I hate how internet comments have become an eternal game of gotchas. I can be aware of a topic without participating in it.
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