domain:alexberenson.substack.com
wayfarer
3m ago
When people get on their high horse and claim that using drugs to solve your problems is a crutch
Well obviously.
But when I broke my leg I got a crutch.
What the fuck I was supposed to do? Crawl? Walk on leg with broken bone, injure it further and howl in agony?
Crutches exist for a reason! There are stupid way to use them, I guess, but typical use of crutches is extremely useful in an obvious way!
I do not have problems solved by Ozempic as far as I know, but if I could pop a safe pill to solve procrastination issues I would do it!
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
6m ago
the modern mainstream left seems to model ideas as akin to infectious diseases, which can spread from person to person merely through contact
Yes, but are they really all that wrong to model them — or at least some ideas — that way? I mean, isn't this a key part of why, traditionally, heresy was considered such a serious matter? Doesn't the "contagion" model somewhat follow from Dawkins's original "meme" concept; not to mention previous thinkers like Bernays and McLuhan on mass communications?
I mean, this is probably an area where I'd agree that "the Woke are more correct than the mainstream," and that your moderate centrist (classical liberal) sort are way too dismissive of the potential importance of memetic hygiene.
wayfarer
13m ago
Is it worth it to specifically criminalize such behavior?
Probably no: this type of bizarre stupidity seems rare and treating regulation as exciting adventure ends with EU or worse.
And you will get unintended consequences - for example if someone was send to prison for crime not disqualifying them from being parent or was innocent then "obvious" rule would make contact them with them a criminal offense. And it is only first and obvious problem I noticed, within first 10 seconds.
(note: how likely is that story is altogether faked?)
As a wise mullah once said: "What is the cure for such disorders? Beatings."
outlawing extremely rare stupidity and legalizing common stupidity seems backward
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
21m ago
Like are they seriously of the opinion that right wingers don't cop bans on this site?
I assume so? I used to think this, but have come around to agreeing this isn't true.
However, when many left-leaning people are saying this over and over again, what do you do? If you listen to them, I guess you end up banning more righties and making them mad.
If you don't, lefties will continue to drift away and you'll evaporatively cool the community into a right wing cesspit.
It's hard, it's very hard. At the bare minimum, I think we should triple the jannies salaries for all their hard work
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
28m ago
Are people really in such a mental state that they think an assault on trying to murder federal agents over deportations is an appropriate course of action?
If you truly believe that these are concentration camps and you're living the rise of a new fascism, it seems only appropriate.
Now it's insane to believe that evidently, but we're talking specifically about violent communists, so it's not surprising at all they believe this stuff.
Until the trigger actually has to be pulled, anyway.
ControlsFreak
39m ago
I am very happy that these drugs helped your mother. I do not disparage anything about these drugs or anyone who chooses to take them.
...however.
I have an urge to find solutions to problems that actually work
You, like many others, go too far. Changing your lifestyle does actually work; it's just that many people don't do it. There are a bunch of reasons why they don't do it, and that's okay. They may be perfectly fine using a drug. Nothing wrong with that. But don't tell people that changing their lifestyle doesn't work, because it does.
Let's take something like, I don't know, becoming a doctor. I've heard that this process sucks. I've heard that plenty of folks burn out or fail at some point. I'm sure someone's mother somewhere failed in trying to become a doctor, regardless of how much her family tried to make her do it. Nevertheless, I think there are still fine reasons to say, "Here are the objective things you need to accomplish to become a doctor, and here are a variety of subjective tips to help you pattern your life in a way that is conducive to achieving that goal, if you so choose." Some people won't do it, and that's okay (in fact, the vast majority of people right now don't become doctors). We don't have a pill yet that magically gives people all the required knowledge of a doctor. But even if we did, it wouldn't be a reason to say that the other (true, good) information "doesn't work".
Tree
1hr ago
I don't think those underfed, diseased romanian orphans can tell us much about the effect of letting your kids cry. I do agree that extreme malnutrition, physical trauma, lack of hygiene do matter to kids' outcome. I don't think modern daycares are anywhere near that level.
Tree
1hr ago
Raising a good, happy, productive human. People have been looking for this magical parenting style that explains why Joe is good and Jack Y is bad for centuries, and they haven't found it. It's genetics or it's random.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
, and those who did were either immigrants, bohemians, or men old enough to have been around the last time beards were in fashion.
I'll add another to this list, from what I know about my own state from that time period: backwoodsmen. The Alaskan "sourdough" is pretty much never clean-shaven.
In fact, AIUI, facial hair has pretty much always been more common on (non-Native) men here in AK as compared to the rest of the US. And maybe it's that we're a "red state" on top of that, but I don't recall facial hair ever being particularly "left-coded" here, at least within my lifetime — it was more that being clean-shaven was often the sign of a Cheechako (newcomer) and/or military.
stuckinbathroom
1hr ago
Hard cases make bad law. Bad law makes easy cases. Easy cases make good law. Good law makes hard cases.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
And from adoption studies we know that parenting does not matter much.
Prima facie, this sounds absurd. Does not matter much for what?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1hr ago
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A company owns a nine-acre (four-hectare) piece of land (comprising three lots) that straddles the boundary between two municipalities, Allentown and Bethlehem. (This Google Maps link shows the location. This screenshot of the county's GIS map shows the municipal boundary.) The company wants to build a complex of four apartment buildings on the land. On this piece of land, Bethlehem's zone allows apartment buildings, but Allentown's zone does not, so the company is getting all the zoning approvals through Bethlehem.
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More specifically, Bethlehem's zone allows an apartment building to be built only if there is a commercial use on its first floor, but this requirement is waived if the apartment building faces a "local street" rather than an "arterial street". The company asks the Bethlehem zoning board to rule that all four buildings in the complex count as facing North Wahneta Street in Allentown, which is a local street, even though building 4, when considered individually, actually faces West Broad Street in Bethlehem, which is an arterial street. Bolstering this argument, the complex's main entrance will be on North Wahneta Street, while there will be a fence blocking access from West Broad Street.
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The Bethlehem zoning officer recommends that the petition be rejected, but the Bethlehem zoning board approves it anyway. Since the piece of land counts as a "corner lot" (indeed, it adjoins five different streets), the zoning code allows the company to choose whichever street it wants as the street that the entire lot faces, without considering individual buildings. And judicial precedent states that a zoning board can acknowledge the existence of land in a different municipality without being guilty of exercising its jurisdiction outside its own borders.* The Bethlehem government appeals**, along with several disgruntled single-family-residential neighbors who don't want to live next to an apartment complex, but the trial court affirms.
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The appeals panel reverses. (1) Under the unique circumstances of this case, the Bethlehem zoning board actually is exercising its jurisdiction outside its own borders, because it is giving the nod to an apartment building that "faces" an Allentown street and sits partially on Allentown land but would be forbidden in Allentown's zone, enabling an end run around Allentown's zoning code. And (2) the designation of building 4 as facing a street that actually lies behind building 4 would run afoul of other parts of Bethlehem's zoning code (e. g., a prohibition on putting an apartment building's parking lot between the building and its front lot line), which the zoning board completely overlooked. Finally, even if those first two points were not valid, (3) there is not even any evidence in the record that North Wahneta Street counts as a local street under Bethlehem's zoning code in the first place! Therefore, building 4 must be considered to face West Broad Street in Bethlehem, not North Wahneta Street in Allentown.
*In that case: A company owned a 43-acre (17-hectare) piece of land straddling the boundary between two municipalities, Cheltenham and Springfield. Cheltenham's zoning code required a 100-foot (30-meter) setback from the property line. The Cheltenham govt. argued that this setback should also apply to the municipal boundary in the middle of the piece of land, but the Cheltenham zoning board rejected this argument**, and the trial court and the appeals panel affirmed. "Hamilton Hills is clearly distinguishable because it pertained to [whether a developer could count open space in one municipality toward another municipality's open-space requirement], not setback provisions. The zoning board simply found that the municipal boundary line was not a property line for measuring setbacks. In so concluding, the zoning board did not exert any control over land located in another municipality."
**Yes, in each of these two cases the government and the zoning board of the same municipality were opponents. Apparently, a zoning board is considered a quasi-judicial entity that is independent of the government that appointed all of its members.
georgioz
1hr ago
Is there any solid evidence of this psychological damage?
Yeah, take any study for results of children in orphanages vs children in intact families. Putting infants and toddlers into daycare is nothing short of part-time orphanage.
And from adoption studies we know that parenting does not matter much.
This is only partly true, limited to rationalists trying to raise some supergeniuses. Parenting obviously matters especially in negative way - malnutrition, abuse and other negative effects matter very, very much and can have huge consequences. I'd argue that daycare for infants and toddlers is such a case.
Tree
1hr ago
Is there any solid evidence of this psychological damage? A lot of parents, starting from month 6, try to ignore their kids crying, so that they cry less and become less of a burden (they are far more coddled now than they used to be). And from adoption studies we know that parenting does not matter much.
This is horrible. Putting any child younger than 3 years into such a facility is equivalent to putting them part-time into orphanage. Infants and toddlers do not have emotional regulation to handle that and they need regular skin-to-skin contact with mothers and to lesser degree with fathers. Otherwise they can develop similar symptoms to those of institutionalized children with all the baggage - learned helplessness, closing into their internal world as they know outside help is not coming even after hours of crying etc.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
WTF are you doing. This is crazy talk. GTFO ASAP.
Acronyms aside, there is a whole non-crazy world out there, and you do yourself a disservice by associating with this particular flavour of deluded crazy. Whatever it is you end up losing by categorically rejecting this business, it's not worth getting dragged into it. If a friendship breaks over this, then what kind of friendship was it? Rhetorical question.
Get out of there. Don't go along with it. Sticking one's dick in crazy is one mistake one can make, but sticking the whole of you into crazy for weeks on end is another.
Agreed, there is moderate social stigma around putting children younger than 3 years into any facility (as it should be in my opinion). During socialism, there was a program for daycare for children 1-3 years old called jasle - and they still exist, but are generally frown upon. There is also incentive structure put in place where the government provides assistance to stay-at-home mothers up until the child is three years old, which gets cut if the mother returns to work or the child is put into daycare. Preschool is generally accessible only for children three years old or older with some rare exceptions.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
2hr ago
DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for BPD:
A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) or the following:
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Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment (Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5) ✅
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A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealisation and devaluation ✅
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Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
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Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g. spending ✅, sex ✅, substance abuse ✅, reckless driving, binge eating) (Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviour covered in Criterion 5)
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Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour
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Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g. intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days) ✅
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Chronic feelings of emptiness Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g. frequent displays of temper ✅, constant anger ✅, recurrent physical fights)
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Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
cae_jones
2hr ago
At this point, it's down to my friend calling me frequently to try and convince me to attend "The Awakening" (the $7500 retreat that takes the better part of a month and which was described as kinda like the workshop I went to, but even more so), while I'm trying to figure out what I can do to get her out. She is at least still doing unrelated things with her family, including some traveling soon, which is more non-cult activity than I witnessed when I was there.
Also, after consulting Chat GPT and Wikipedia, I think I need to start referring to it as "Large Group Attitude Transformation" instead of a cult, just in case lawyers get involved. This guy claims inspiration from Werner Erhard, whose ideological successors have been known to sue people for calling them cults. So I am legally encouraged to describe it as not a cult, just an emotionally exploitative money sink of a style that has been condemned by the American Psychological Association for their practices worsening mental health. (This back before the APA became politically captured and started producing therapists who act as money sinks and worsen mental health.)
So ... I would rather not spend $7.5k and request another couple weeks off work for more of that. But everything I've found suggests that being openly negative about it would be counterproductive, and providing a supportive alternative that is outside the group is the best option. The trouble is I'm too much of a coward to just say "Yeah, I'm not going. Can we still be friends?"
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
2hr ago
I only really came to appreciate how many of the boxes on the diagnostic check list she ticked when I entered psych training.
Post check list? Uh, asking for a friend.
FWIW, the "nazi by association" rule has been strongly enforced by leftists and the leftist-dominated mainstream for a long time, has been weaponized, codified in rules and even law, has been a defining aspect of the German political landscape for generations (still being called the "Firewall" here). It's absolutely the water that most media swim in, classical as well as social, and the preferred weapon of SJWs and SJW-influenced useful idiots everywhere.
Anecdote: I used to discuss politics with my mother. Once, as she was mid-rant about the nazis ruining society, I told her that I had gotten to know an AfD voter and that they were an actual human being. Since then we never have spoken about politics again. Her way of eliding the issue that, by the rule of association and a failure to apply the rule correctly, I was now on the wrong side.
This isn't some new or poorly-observed phenomenon (just to be clear; I'm not implying that you see it that way), but a core doctrine of the left in the culture war.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
3hr ago
Is there a reason the counterproductive effect of leptin in the obese isn't more common knowledge?
Many things about basic biology aren't common knowledge! I don't see a specific reason for why this isn't better known.
Is there research being done on "fixing" leptin behavior? Or is semaglutide basically that fix?
There's a single drug called metraleptin, which was once considered immensely promising for treating leptin resistance. Didn't work, failed miserably in trials.
It does, however, work excellently in a rare genetic condition called congenital leptin deficiency, and is occasionally used for lipodystrophy. The difference is that CLD patients lack leptin in the first place, which is giving them the recombinant version helps, whereas obese people have bodies that ignore leptin levels, regardless of how much more we can throw in.
GLP-1 drugs sidestep the whole problem by using an entirely different pathway (I did say I was simplifying! Keeping my head straight about how exactly Ozempic works gives me a headache)
I know some people have been able to stop being obese via surgeries like stomach constriction, but that sometimes it doesn't work and they still feel compelled to overeat. Is there a separate mechanism in action for people where reducing stomach size also reduces inability to feel satiety versus those where it doesn't help?
We don't really know how bariatric surgery works.
I'm not kidding here, we genuinely are rather unsure about the mechanism of action. Most of the commonly advanced suggestions were found to be wrong or inadequate at best.
If they are hungry no matter how much they eat, does "fake" eating offer any help? Eating extreme low calorie high fiber foods? Chewing gum? I know another poster already said drinking water didn't help him
Yes, these do help a little bit, but nowhere near as much as Ozempic does.
Hunger is surprisingly complicated, and has multiple mechanisms behind it.
The act of chewing and tasting sends signals to the brain that prepare the body for food (this is the "cephalic phase response"). This can satisfy the "oral fixation" component of hunger, the simple desire to be chewing on something.
The stomach wall contains mechanoreceptors that sense stretch. When you eat a large volume of food (like a huge salad or a bowl of broth), these receptors are activated, regardless of the calorie content. Trying to fill yourself with low calorie food is an approach known as "volumetrics", and it works okay.
I don't think just drinking water would work as well, because you'd need an uncomfortable amount to fill your stomach, and the body would quickly realize that it's just water, without calories. The ancestral environment definitely had water, and didn't have diet coke (citation hopefully not needed). If starving people tried to keep themselves content by going to a pond, it was probably weeded out quick.
If it wasn't clear in my original post, I'm a willpower skeptic, I think it's profoundly stupid to assume obesity is a willpower problem, even if I don't know how to imagine the experience of what it feels like to fight the urge to eat without using willpower as a proxy for the challenge
My apologies for giving you the impression that was targeted at you. It was meant entirely for the people who think the usage of Ozempic is some kind of moral failing, and they're not an imaginary strawman, at least not on Twitter. I don't seem to recall much in the way of pushback against Ozempic here, barring people who still have reservations about its safety profile (it's remarkably safe, we have evidence for that claim, and loads of it).
Clementine
3hr ago
Thank you!
- Is there a reason the counterproductive effect of leptin in the obese isn't more common knowledge?
- Is there research being done on "fixing" leptin behavior? Or is semaglutide basically that fix?
- I know some people have been able to stop being obese via surgeries like stomach constriction, but that sometimes it doesn't work and they still feel compelled to overeat. Is there a separate mechanism in action for people where reducing stomach size also reduces inability to feel satiety versus those where it doesn't help?
- If they are hungry no matter how much they eat, does "fake" eating offer any help? Eating extreme low calorie high fiber foods? Chewing gum? I know another poster already said drinking water didn't help him.
(If it wasn't clear in my original post, I'm a willpower skeptic, I think it's profoundly stupid to assume obesity is a willpower problem, even if I don't know how to imagine the experience of what it feels like to fight the urge to eat without using willpower as a proxy for the challenge)
They're not wrong, but the actions they endorse, promote and undertake based on this run contrary to popular concepts like the "marketplace of ideas", "free speech" or "each citizen is an educated adult fully qualified to choose on his own what to think".
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