campfireSmoresEaten
No bio...
User ID: 2560
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I wonder if that was actually good economic policy, or if it was one of those things that sounded good but actually made things worse for everyone, like price controls.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
This is something like the third time someone has said something on this site that has made me want to link a sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Sound only to find it's not on youtube...
They did a sketch called Switzerland During the War Years or something and it's a faux-documentary about the hardships experienced by Switzerland during the war. Someone complaining about the horror of running out of space in the attic for looted treasure received from trading with Germany. You get the idea.
Not sure how fair an assessment that is, but that's comedy for you.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
"the propensity to delude naive and mentally ill people into joining unironically"
In retrospect, the Matrix movies did a lot of damage to society. Or maybe all the mentally ill people would have just believed something else instead.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I'd want it to be twice a year. If one has sympathy for detrans people, one should want to make it easy for them to detransition (as an upside to be weighed against whatever downsides the policy might have).
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Oh right. Kind of a stupid question on my part, in retrospect.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
What do you mean that ChatGPT doesn't possess understanding? How would you even determine that?
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
The human brain is a "chinese room". Also AI has done many agentic things. Any definition of agentic that would exclude everything an AI has done would be so strict as to be obviously fragile and not that meaningful.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I feel like a movie where flat earth is real and there really is a conspiracy dedicated to protecting it would be great. That's what the Wachowski's should have done instead of Matrix 2.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Are Pakistani girls noticeably genetically distinct with regards to looks? Or is it just like saying white Canadian women are hotter than white British women?
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
If existing scientific methods aren't enough to analyze this issue, imagine how awesome it would be if the transgender community and their vanguard managed to push for prediction markets to study this subject.
(I like prediction markets)
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Well if it's a question worth asking then it might be worth the weirdness.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I do think that there are perhaps missing outlets for anger in our society. But I don't really know.
The fact that dissent is suppressed is a piece of evidence, but not a conclusive one.
Edit to elaborate:
The question "why is saying this unpopular thing illegal when saying all those other unpopular things isn't illegal?" has more than one possible answer.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Quick list of bullet points. You don't have to read them. I realize you didn't ask me to give you a summary. I understand this is perhaps a strange or unpleasant subject, but silence has historically been how a variety of horrible things have gone on for as long as they did.
- Sensitivity and sexual function:
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The foreskin has densely packed nerve endings.
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The foreskin prevents the penis from being desensitized (keratinized) by continuous contact with fabric.
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The foreskin's gliding motion functions as a physical lubricant which is beneficial to both partners.
In most circumcised men, the most sensitive part of the penis is the circumcision scar. Most circumcised men do not realize they have a circumcision scar or what it is.
I could go on about sensitivity but you get the idea.
- Anesthetic:
A lot of doctors and religious functionaries don't use adequate anesthetic, or any anesthetic at all. In my case, no anesthetic was used. If Wikipedia is to be believed on this subject, "It is now accepted that the neonate responds more extensively to pain than the adult does, and that exposure to severe pain, without adequate treatment, can have long-term consequences."
- Risk of a botched circumcision: (somewhat speculative compared to the other two)
Here's a man talking about his botched circumcision: https://youtube.com/watch?v=n-N5XlH3DyU
(He is on the autism spectrum.)
Although circumcision proponents claim the odds of a botched circumcision are very low, there is some evidence to suggest that the risks may not be as low as suggested. A United States anti-AIDs program in Africa called PEPFAR ceased circumcising children below the age of 15 because the rate of botched circumcisions was higher than they could tolerate, and higher the younger the child was.
In the documentary American Circumcision, the suggestion is made that an infant's penis which the doctors claim was always malformed was actually disfigured by circumcision. It's been a while since I've seen it and I forget the evidence presented, but it's conceivable to me that lies of that nature exist and contribute to the supposed rate of botched circumcisions being less than actuality.
A lot of doctors in the US are sort of clueless about intact penises and give erroneous suggestions. Please be skeptical about what they tell you, and about what they don't tell you.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
The story of the boy who cried wolf has two sides. It's not just a lesson for the boy not to lie, it's a lesson for the villagers too. Just because people who lie about wolves exist doesn't mean wolves don't exist.
Also most historians think the German atrocities in Belgium during the first world war did happen, even if they were exaggerated at the time.
What about Japanese war crimes? Did those never happen either? What about Unit 731? Why would the United States make up fake war crimes only to become complicit in them later by trading the data produced by the research in exchange for immunity?
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Too many eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to be fake. Too many of them don't seem like the type to exaggerate, even if some of them were unreliable. Not plausible that they could all be lying. Also too high a proportion of people died whose names we know and whose life history we can track with certainty to be an accident.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I see. Thank you for this.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
You could think about the things you have going for you, or people who have it worse than you.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Tolkien said that his LOTR wasn't an allegory for anything, including either of the world wars, but that some of his personal experience in the first World War probably slipped in. I don't know if he'd agree or disagree with the statement that LOTR wouldn't have happened without WWII, but I suspect he would want to deemphasize the connection, as he did many times when he was alive.
Source: wikipedia
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
You're a good writer. It's not just that the content is compelling, you're a good storyteller. I'm rooting for you.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
You should be proud of how forward thinking you are.
Also:
Do not circumcise. It is a horrific abuse of the rights of a person who is, at the end of the day, not your property, and whose body belongs to himself. Think critically about the arguments proponents give in favor of the practice. Remember that most of the world considers it to be a bizarre and gruesome thing to do. Obviously I could share my full set of arguments for why I believe what I believe, if for some reason you wanted to discuss it.
There is a documentary called American Circumcision which I think is good, and which is available on Kanopy, a free streaming service that comes with any US library card.
My parents say that they mutilated me because no one ever suggested that they might not do that. It supposedly never occurred to them not to do it. You won't have that excuse.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Without going into too much detail, I think I have, to some degree, similar problems to yours*. And I write. Sometimes I get good reviews from people online, sometimes not. Whether the reviews are good or bad, I enjoy doing it, and I enjoy having done it once I've finished. I would even go so far as to say that it's "therapeutic".
I don't think I'm good with character either. I'd like to be someday. But Lovecraft seemingly couldn't write dialogue, and most people would say dialogue is important. And yet Lovecraft did rather well for himself (posthumously). He wrote stories where the lack of dialogue wasn't important. If you have glaring weaknesses as a writer that you're struggling to overcome, or just don't feel like overcoming, just play to your strengths. I think a lot of successful writers have weaknesses, to some extent.
Also: if you want people to read what you write, try short stories. You would be maximizing for number of readers and not number of times a page of what you wrote has been read by someone.
*Except I don't research too much. Or if I do I'm not burdened by it.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
There's a Garth Ennis graphical novel set in WWII called Out of the Blue that touches upon this. There's a Hindu Indian Brahmin serving in the Royal Air Force (not the main character but one of the main cast) and he's resentful of bigotry but he also believes in the caste system to some extent.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Is there a reason you're spelling Canada as Kaneda or is it just for fun? Is spelling it that way "a thing" in India or somewhere, so to speak?
Wasn't TF2 super buggy on its initial release, or do I have that wrong?
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