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The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Your Cherished Beliefs

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://psmag.com/social-justice/bugs-like-made-germ-theory-democracy-beliefs-73958 }}

(hat-tip to @slatestarscratchpad‘s link post, though I’d been hearing off-hand mentions of this for a while and had been meaning to look into it)

“The pathogen stress theory is also hard to swallow in a way that evolutionary psychology arguments often are—especially for those who fancy the idea that we are in control of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.”

I don’t know, I don’t really feel upset by “the reason you don’t grok liberal mindsets is because you’re a germophobe”. It sounds a little weird, sure, but not upsetting. I think I just file it under “interesting if true”.

(It’s not like it’s going to cause germophobia to become low-status: it’s already low-status, as I am reminded every time sick people act like [me wanting to arrange things so we don’t touch the same objects] is an unreasonable burden on them.)

Mind you, I mostly don’t feel subjectively in control of my political beliefs, so perhaps that makes it easier to swallow.

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#my brother and father had a cold recently so the unreasonable-burden thing is fresh in my mind #why no I do *not* want to play Go Fish with you #especially not during a dinner to be eaten with one’s hands #this post technically qualifies as #oh look an original post #but is closer to the spirit of #reply via reblog #illness tw #(and for link picture) #needle tw #bugs #oh and one more category tag seems relevant #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

~ Brin ~ 5 Comments

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Relatedly:

I’ve really been feeling my lack of networking lately.

  • I don’t know anyone in my neighbourhood, so I have nobody to team up with on Pokemon Go raids. (At my current strength (level 24, in an area where Geodudes and Machops pretty much never spawn outside events and I get a Dratini every couple of weeks), this effectively limits me to tier-1 raids unless I’m lucky enough to happen to show up at the same time as a stranger, and it’s impossible to *ever* do a tier-4 raid without a *minimum* of one other person, no matter how high-level you are.)
  • I don’t know any Canadians who both have TV service and would trust me with their TV-service login credentials. (We recently cancelled our TV service because we can’t afford it anymore, which means I can’t watch Daily Planet on TV. I can’t even pirate it, because it’s not popular enough for black-market providers to consider it worth stealing. Discovery Channel has an online streaming service, but you need TV-service login credentials for them to let you in.)
  • I don’t know anyone who I can both trust-trade my excess Amazon credits with and who wants to buy them. (Menial Internet labour for poor people, much like charity for poor people, usually fails to follow the “just give them money, rather than goods they’ll have to sell at a discount to buy the things they *actually* needed” guideline. They make excuses about how Amazon credit is basically the same thing as money because you can buy ~everything~ there, but in fact the list of things I want that Amazon has is fairly limited, and I end up getting credits (both USD credits and CAD credits) faster than I can spend them.)

This is clearly a problem (or a collection of related problems), but I don’t know what to do about it.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #rants #(sort of) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #tag rambles #traditionally when you don’t have money you’re supposed to trade favours amongst your network of personal contacts to pick up the slack #but I don’t *have* a network strong enough to trade favours with #so when I can’t solve logistical problems with money they don’t get solved at all #and as my finances continue the slow deterioration they’ve been doing for half my life #I increasingly can’t solve logistical problems with money #my normal approach to friendship is #to stumble into relationships with people I don’t know well enough yet to know what terrible people they are #and about two years later I know enough of their terribleness that I can’t take it anymore and leave #occasionally I stumble into relationships with people who *don’t* turn out to be terrible but this happens too rarely to compose a network #(and besides even then I sometimes lose contact with them anyway) #I don’t know how to deliberately make friends #and I don’t know how to filter in advance so that a good fraction of new friends remain likeable after >2 years #and I *especially* don’t know how to do any of this in the Hard Mode of being poor #and therefore a noticeable portion of my motivation for befriending them being necessarily mercenary #(even when it’s a mutually-beneficial kind of mercenary I’m told people tend to find that sort of thing offputting) #(or they use it to take advantage of you) #(which is probably why the first group finds it offputting) #at least I’ll probably be strong enough to solo tier-2 raids before too long #that’s something #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Today’s answer to “am I ovulating, or am I sleep-deprived?” is “both”.

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#*flop* #*muffled ”ugggghhh”* #I am so fucking tired #in my case I don’t think this is an Amenta-induced problem #(that would be the part of me that cringed when Mom said my hair gets a red tint to it in the summer) #I am fortunate enough to have an incredibly incompetent reproductive drive #like #from what I’ve been able to figure out #this feeling (or the ovulatory component of it rather) was ~supposed~ to be about wanting babies #but that was multiple rounds of intra-brain Telephone ago #and by the time it actually becomes a quale it’s mangled enough to have completely lost sight of its evolutionary purpose #(which suits me just fine thank you) #(at least compared to the alternatives) #(*knocks on wood*) #tag rambles #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw? #oh look an original post

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

(I finished writing up my tags page today, by the way. I expect I’ll think of more tags I forgot to include later, and there will probably be new tags to add at some point, but I think it’s reached a state where I can call it v1.)

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#Brin talks about herself for no particular reason #(haven’t decided yet if I’m going to include that one) #oh look an original post

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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If anyone’s wondering who Jesse Bering is and why he’s related to that quote from yesterday:

A few years ago I was listening to Science for the People (as I used to do), and they had an interview with Jesse Bering about his then-recent book Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us. He was going on about how men’s sexualities are narrow and stable while women’s sexualities are broad and fluid, a spectrum with exclusive paraphiles at one end and @sinesalvatorem at the other.

And this felt really familiar, and at first I wasn’t sure why. And then I realised:

This was not the first time that I had been accused of having an extreme male brain.

Tags:

#the ”paraphilia is quintessentially masculine” people and the ”autism is quintessentially masculine” people #should get together and study whether the two things are correlated #or they might have already I don’t know #now I’m curious #oh look an original post #sexuality and lack thereof #gender #autism

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Happy sesquicentennial!

Happy 10th Canada Day in the country!

Tags:

#our home and cherished land #(my 10th anniversary of moving to Canada is not until September) #(but this is the 10th *Canada Day*) #I’m either going to a museum or an open-air festival or both depending on the rain patterns #I’m going to go put my citizenship pin on now #oh look an original post #anniversaries #\o/

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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…they just completely dropped the whole thing.

The arc is over, without Extremis ever affecting anything.

Perfectly good mindfuck wasted.

Tags:

#I’m not saying I even necessarily *like* mindfucks #(it really depends) #but dammit I know a lead-up to a mindfuck plot when I see one #and you can’t just do that and then *not deliver* #you can’t just have the characters ignore the single largest threat to their plan #and have them be *right* to ignore it #*headdesk* #Doctor Who #dw spoilers #The Lie of the Land #oh look an original post #negativity tw #reactionblogging

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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Also, please tell me I’m not the only person whose reaction to the next-time-on trailer was “what these people need is some key lime pie”.

Tags:

#…I’m the only one aren’t I #goddammit #Hidden Almanac #Doctor Who #high context jokes #The Pyramid at the End of the World #The Lie of the Land #dw spoilers #(although tbh it’s only a spoiler if you’re familiar with the Fathers arc of the Hidden Almanac) #(which you’re probably not) #(but just in case) #oh look an original post #reactionblogging

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

New DW episode tonight.

Place your bets on whether the Resistance will realise the need for frequent shadow-testing.

Tags:

#after last week’s stupidity my hopes are not high #in their defence it’s currently not clear if the Resistance even has access to enough background knowledge to figure this out #the Doctor’s alpha-timeline self #–and therefore all of his forks from that point on– #know about shadow-testing #but it’s not clear if he’s told anyone else #(I’m thinking the answer re: the Resistance is either ”no” or ”they find out partway through the episode”) #(and that the regeneration scene that’s going around in gifsets takes place in a shadow-world) #(leaning toward ”find out partway through” on the grounds that) #(IIRC) #(none of the characters have made *any* use of the information from the Extremis recording yet) #(all of their dealings with the Monks would have gone the same way if they’d never heard of them before) #(so I’m hoping the writers will realise they haven’t actually fired that proverbial rifle yet) #((but they might not because on the surface it *looks* fired already)) #((just in ways that didn’t actually affect the plot)) #tag rambles #Doctor Who #negativity tw #oh look an original post #reactionblogging #(sort of) #The Pyramid at the End of the World #The Lie of the Land #dw spoilers #(…I just realised I forgot to spoiler-tag my reaction post last week) #(oops) #(too late now I suppose)

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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(probably qualifies as a sequel to this post)

(I might be missing something here, but I’m pretty sure this is at the very least mostly correct:)

Every problem Team TARDIS is currently facing can be traced back, directly or indirectly (sometimes both), to failure to bring their own spacesuits. To assuming that clean, breathable air would be available when they had zero reason to think that (in the case of Chasm Forge) or less than zero reason to think that (in the case of an apocalyptically-fatal-biohazard lab with a known internal breach).

I think they’re teaching a very valuable lesson here: remember, kids, protective gear is not a joke, wear your fucking hazard suits, just fucking do it already.

Tags:

#this post brought to you by #a person who wears surgical masks while on airplanes and when going outside during high-pollen times #(works too) #(only partially in the case of the airplane) #(but buying myself a few days’ delay by contracting the passenger’s cold indirectly through my family was very valuable) #(I needed those few days and was very glad to get them) #hazard gear: fuck yeah #oh look an original post #reactionblogging #Doctor Who #everyone in this episode was incredibly stupid but we can learn from their mistakes #(there were other things wrong with this episode too) #(including lessons they tried to teach that you absolutely *should not* learn) #((like ”consent is only consent if you’re doing it for stupid shortsighted reasons”)) #(but I’m focusing on this problem right now) #negativity tw #illness tw #tag rambles

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