#heterodox media

[alchemisoul]

The "Huh" Moment: Stay Curious My Friends

It's unbelievable how much information must be sorted through to get to the bottom of anything that matters. And if you're only getting information from people you agree with on everything, you're gonna miss something.

Heterodox media is the closest thing you can go to for a reliable presentation or discussions on social and political events, in the sense that you're getting at least two or more perspectives that are respectful and gracious to one another but don't necessarily end in agreement or resolution but let the viewers decide which take or which elements of their takes resonstes most clearly.

If you're not suspicious of everyone and anyone committed to towing the line of establishment, political, social/soft science academia, or religious ideology that's likely because you're elbow deep in zealotry yourself. Or you don't recognize your "truth" to be what it is, an ideology. Probably both.

For me there's something exhilarating about coming across information or an insight which leads to realizing you were wrong about something. A "huh" moment that leads to the "Eureka" moment is arguably the moment that matters most.

To refuse the impulse to recoil, or look away, in that moment is fundamental to growth. It means your capable of being objective, and that getting it right is more important to you than being right. Generally speaking there's something to be said about the utility of unsatisfied, proactively curious agnosticism particularly when approaching unfamiliar or novel subject matter.

We all have the capacity to become, or follow the lead of, someone who initiates or engages in the horrific, none more so than those with good intentions and/or dedicated and in love with being right.

The value of good intentions, is indecipherable, but it's somewhere south of less than nothing because most of the monsters throughout history in real life that engaged in the horrific didn't see themselves as Disney villains - they believed they were right, that doing the right thing was the only option, and there were no limits to the ends which justified the means.

#the huh moment #huh moment #eureka moment #heterodox media #echo chamber #ideology #philosophy #just my thoughts #shower thoughts #writing #only the curious #only the curious have something to find #stay curious #proactively curious agnosticism

[transmutationisms]

do you think vaccines should be mandatory? my view has always been that public health would outweigh personal choice in this instance but i also see the bodily autonomy argument, though ultimately i think it’s flawed and weird to compare, say, abortions with vaccines. i was wondering if you had an opinion or any resources on this topic?

this is one of those questions where i think the framing conceals a lot of unspoken premises and social/political assumptions. what do we even mean by a vaccine mandate in the first place? the truth is that in many contexts, vaccines are already mandatory—the trick is that these mandates are generally designed and first enforced by employers, schools, and private business establishments, rather than coming through direct state intervention. incidentally, most censorship works similarly, despite it also being positioned discursively as a matter of direct state intervention. the truth is that you are far more likely to run into problems if you, say, have an employer who requires vaccination—which makes your paycheck (that is, your ability to continue living) dependent on a medical intervention—than you are to face some kind of right-winger fear fantasy of a shadowy government agent showing up to your doorstep with a syringe. these things happen by economic coercion far more than through direct state command.

with that in mind, to me the issue that 'vaccine mandates' point to isn't so much an idealist conflict between 'safety' and 'liberty' or however nyt is framing it these days—rather, it's the fact that employers have the structural position to impose their will on employees, who often must comply or face, literally, starvation. i am willing to say this is a bad social structure despite the fact that in the case of vaccines i obviously agree that the particular intervention in question is a good thing, and is something that anyone who is medically eligible should be getting. in order to make vaccines mandatory, you need an enforcement mechanism—the one we currently primarily rely on is economic coercion in the form of threatening loss of livelihood (again, this also applies to most censorship cases). while i, again, strenuously think that people who can get vaccinated should do so, in order to make such a thing compulsory you have to confront the issue of what power structures make the compulsion possible and actionable. prisons? relying on the political whims and economic threats of employers? too often, a 'mandatory vaccine' is presented as though it could be ethically debated in the abstract, without reference to these conditions!

anyway, i'm not going to pretend that i can solve vaccine hesitancy in the next 90 seconds in a tumblr post, but off the top of my head here are some factors i think are major contributors to this issue:

ableism (eg, andrew wakefield preying on the fact that many parents would rather risk their children catching preventable dangerous diseases than let them be supposedly exposed to a greater chance of becoming autistic)

public distrust of physicians and public health infrastructure, for reasons ranging from medical racism and eugenics to discomfiting and traumatic experiences with the inherently (in this system) power-imbalanced relationship between medical professionals and patients

the massive gap between expert and lay knowledge on medical topics, enforced by mechanisms like paywalls and benefitting the prestige and pecuniary enrichment of physicians and public health experts (this provides fertile ground for grifters and liars to prey on people's confusion and difficulty verifying information)

possibilities for lies about vaccines to lead to financial enrichment, as in the case of social media grifts, heterodox and alternative medical practitioners, or eg andrew wakefield trying to sell his own vaccine after publishing his now-retracted paper on the supposed link between autism and the mmr vaccine

these are all bad things; they are also all actionable things. i do not think that it's some kind of transhistorical condition of humanity that we must choose between either passing each other dangerous diseases or designing coercive or punitive measures to force compliance with public health recommendations. i think all of these things are in fact very directly resultant of capitalism, the way it values bodies and health (biopolitics), and its politics of knowledge and expertise.

#public health

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The Cost of ‘Free Black Thought’

By: Randy Souther

Published: May 24, 2024

In December of 2022, I published on our university library website a research guide consisting of a bibliography of black writers with heterodox views on a wide variety of topics. By May of 2023, five months later, I had been labeled a racist, placed on administrative leave, and targeted for firing.

The bibliography was created and compiled by folks at an organization called Free Black Thought[1] whose mission is, in their own words, to represent the rich diversity of black thought beyond the relatively narrow spectrum of views promoted by mainstream outlets. Although their website contains a variety of resources, my librarian’s eye was immediately drawn to their bibliography, which they named the Compendium of Free Black Thought.[2] They presented it as an open access work and encouraged folks to use it as they see fit.

What I saw was a fascinating compendium of writers, some of whom I recognized, but most of whom I was not familiar with, that I thought would be a useful resource at my library. We try to promote marginalized voices, particularly black voices, but this seemed to be a subset of those voices that we don’t often promote.

In the fall semester of 2022 I worked on converting a portion of this bibliography into a LibGuide, and by December, my work on the bibliography was mostly complete. I announced the bibliography to my library via Slack, a business communication and social media app that we use extensively. The first commenter on Slack set the tone indicating numerous concerns, including that some of the bibliography entries seem to them anti-black and some seemed outright racist. There were concerns that the bibliography did not represent our values and that it sought to undermine black activism. There were concerns that I had not consulted with anyone inside or outside of the library with expertise in Black studies. I was asked, “does the devil need more advocates?”

Over the holiday break, I received an email from a university vice provost indicating that they had received complaints about the bibliography and that they would set up a meeting with me to discuss the situation. That this had jumped from the library to the upper levels of the university administration was alarming. I felt at this point that my job was in jeopardy, so I turned my focus from my library colleagues to the administration and asked for union representation at the forthcoming meeting. At the meeting, the vice provost suggested that they were neutral in this dispute and were simply relaying the concerns of the librarians who had made the complaints. The concerns now were that the bibliography was not rigorous or academic, that I had not consulted with subject experts, that I hadn’t critically evaluated the bibliography, and that the bibliography would cause reputational harm to the library. At the end of the meeting, the vice provost said they would be in touch with next steps.

With this meeting over, I turned my attention back to my library colleagues. After consulting with my union representative, I made the decision to take down the bibliography as it simply was not worth all the trouble that it was causing. I wrote an email to my colleagues stating that I had taken down the bibliography and hoped that gesture would allow us to have a discussion. I explained my reasons for publishing the bibliography, using the Heterodox Academy principles of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement[3] as the context within which I valued the bibliography. I talked about my personal interest in terms of intellectual curiosity and the delight that I found in discovering certain authors. I also talked about my regrets in how all this unfolded, and my wish that I had managed constructive disagreement better.

This was not what my colleagues wanted to hear, and it made them even angrier. I was accused of inappropriately centering myself instead of my colleagues. The next day, with no warning, my colleagues from a department that shares reference desk duties with my department began boycotting their reference desk shifts, later stating that they had done so because I had not acknowledged the harm done to my colleagues, and further stating that they did not feel safe when anti-black and racist ideologies are platformed. I later learned that the library dean was aware of this action beforehand and did nothing to prevent it. Finally, I offered a brief apology to everyone, sincerely stating that I was sorry for the hurt that the bibliography had caused, that the manner that it had been introduced had been poorly managed, and that overall its publication had been a mistake. All of this I felt was true. I did not apologize for the content of the bibliography, however, because there was nothing improper about it. There was no response and the boycott continued.

At the end of January, I met with the library dean and he asked me for an update on the situation. I said I was waiting for the next steps that were promised by the vice provost. He informed me that there would be no further involvement from the administration at any level and that and that it was up to me to resolve things. I then held a meeting to update my department on the news from the dean. I let them know that after taking down the bibliography, explaining my reasoning for publishing it, and offering an apology, I was at a loss as to how to move forward.

Instead of offering help, they informed me that they would be asking the dean to replace me as department head and to disallow me from serving at the reference desk. At that, I adjourned the meeting. It must be said that although this meeting was emotionally intense, it was also calm and respectful on both sides. No voices were raised, and no harsh words were spoken. Nonetheless, a few hours later, I received a text from the union president telling me to expect an email from the library dean placing me on administrative leave. He said a number of librarians had told the dean that they were concerned for their safety. The email followed placing me on leave and banning me from the university, but it did not state for what reason. To this day I have not received a direct answer about this but have discovered that it followed from the department meeting detailed earlier.

With no explanation and no investigation, I was removed from the university for several months for being a threat to my colleagues. During this time, I had almost no contact with anyone in the library, but the attacks from my colleagues continued. They wrote a letter to me and the union leadership demanding that I step down from my position as one of the union representatives for the library. In the letter, they characterized me as, quote, “someone who espouses or condones racist and harmful views.” In short, I was branded a racist. In April, the library dean proposed that I could return to the library stripped of all librarian duties and performing instead duties of vacant staff positions and with an extreme schedule of late nights and weekends. In response, the union filed a grievance on my behalf. The grievance process forced movement from the administration and my eventual return to the library appeared likely.

With my return on the horizon, my colleagues mounted one last attack. A long letter to human resources that reframed their complaints as violations of HR conduct policies, and included a new charge: plagiarism, as well as a request that HR fire me from the university. I wrote a robust rebuttal, and HR ultimately determined that I violated no policy, no rule, no regulation or law. Administratively, I was cleared. In July, I returned to the library as a librarian, but minus my department head roles. My relationships, with a few notable exceptions, were in tatters, and the library environment was cold and unfriendly.

In the aftermath, I’ve asked myself how how this might have happened differently. With so many variables, I find it difficult to answer this question. The library administration could have chosen to mediate this dispute, but instead they fanned the flames and ultimately lost control of the situation. This was the most significant factor that prevented us from finding a way forward. That nearly all communications occurred electronically rather than in person was a significant factor impeding progress also. In particular, Slack, with its social media elements rewarded emotional responses. This isn’t a problem when the emotions are positive as they normally are, but when they’re negative, things spiral downward very quickly. And as I said to my colleagues on multiple occasions, I agree with them that consulting with others before publishing the bibliography might have changed the tenor and direction of this situation.

I have learned that constructive disagreement is hard and clearly requires more practice.

--

Watch video:

==

"Critically evaluated" is a codeword meaning that it doesn't comply with Critical Theory, which views black disagreement with oppressor-vs-oppressed dynamics as "false consciousness" and "internalized racism."

"Harmful views" and "reputational harm to the library" are phrases deliberately invoked in an attempt to circumvent having to explain themselves, when really they just disagree.

#Randy Souther #Free Black Thought #heterodox #viewpoint diversity #diversity #woke #wokeness #cult of woke #wokeism #wokeness as religion #religion is a mental illness

[sam-keeper]

for an awful lot of reasons, the notion of the "Paperclip Optimizer" has a lot of purchase right now. it's the precursor to what eventually might be "grey goo" or per the Culture novels a "hegemonizing swarm", a dumb system designed to do nothing but expand its capacity to convert everything into a reflection of its initial programming, i.e., turn all the matter in the universe into paperclips.

there was even a web game about it!

this article I wrote a couple years ago is about that game. I think it's worth reposting now cause people keep talking about the paperclip optimizer as a parable about dangerous dumb systems. and that's true, that's what the game is about! the game is very much a deliberate allegory meant to explain why you should support "friendly AI" grifters!

what this article proposes is: maybe you shouldn't do that, actually, because behind every "rogue AI" is actually some capitalist somewhere making a decision to make All The Money, damn the consequences. this is an article about playing Universal Paperclips radically wrong--both radically wrong mechanically, and radically wrong emotionally. what I think falls out when you shake the game that way is a lot of unstated assumptions about shit that's acceptable for human beings to inflict on each other but somehow monstrous when a machine is doing it.

like, I get that we're all attempting to be more materialist in our analysis and that's good, but sometimes it feels like we're sliding into a kind of Lovecraftian understanding of the corporation, like it's just this incomprehensible machine working for itself. but at every stage there's people making decisions and they COULD be held accountable! and also, there's a designer of this game making decisions about where to put content emphasis, in order to put a finger on the scales of the parable. you don't HAVE to inflict mind control drones on humanity in the game any more than people HAVE to use deceptive advertising practices.

and by the same token like, it's actually perfectly reasonable for someone who isn't in STEM to look at a search engine spitting out wrong results and say hey, this search engine is bad! you can say "ah but technically machine learning is not intended to output correct results, you've made a Category Error" all you want; a human being sold this to other human beings as an intelligent search engine, and that sale was based on a whole series of lies. the technical explanation can be helpful, but it's not the point. the point is that a human attempted to harm other human beings with technology, something we've been doing roughly since the opening sequence of 2001 A Space Odyssey.

anyway there's a lot of weird maybe kinda heterodox perspectives in this article that I still haven't really seen anywhere else but that still really guide a lot of my thinking about this tech. read it if it sounds interesting I guess!

#universal paperclips #ai #the algorithm #game criticism

[schraubd]

Art Maven Roundup

All of the sudden, I've been on an art kick. The below image is a silkscreen I recently purchased from DC-based artist Halim Flowers. Flowers was convicted of felony murder as a juvenile and sentenced to two life terms. He was released after serving 22 years following statutory reforms aimed a juvenile offenders who had received life sentences, and now is showing in galleries around the world. Pictured: "Audacity to Love (IP) (Blue)" by Halim Flowers. The colors are meant to be reminiscent of the Israeli and Palestinian flags (blue and white, and red, white, and green). * * * Trump continues to show his contempt for American Jews, saying any Jew who doesn't support him "hates their religion" (and Israel). An in-depth story about a White supremacist who was elected to city council in Enid, Oklahoma, and the recall campaign to try and remove him. Given the well-covered softness in Biden's support in the Muslim community, it seems suicidal to me for Democrats to give into the repulsive Islamophobic attacks holding up the confirmation of Third Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Adeel Mangi (the story indicates that Biden has remained rock-solid in backing his confirmation, but there may be some misgivings in the Senate Democratic caucus). Writing on the sudden "heterodox" support for revisionist accounts justifying George Floyd's murder, Radley Balko flags what has been obvious for a long time: as much as this cadre likes to bleat about respecting truth, free-thinking, and rationality, it is as if not more beholden to ideologically-convenient narratives at the expense of reality. Pretty much everyone on the internet has been sharing this with their own story of the alt-center blowing past truth in order to push conservative grievance politics; mine was watching them stand in unblinking support of a hit piece on California's Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum even after it was revealed the author completely fabricated the inclusion of a seemingly-damning antisemitic quote. Interesting retrospective on the Israeli Black Panthers in JTA. The Supreme Court's frosty reception to the contention that government officials privately lobbying social media companies to take down misinformation is a First Amendment violation is the latest suggestion that the Court is finally losing patience with the regular drumbeat of insane legal theories emanating out of hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/n6GxwX9

#anti-semitism #Donald Trump #First Amendment #free speech #Islamophobia #Israel #Jews #judicial confirmations #Oklahoma #police brutality #Roundup #supreme court #white supremacy

[mythal-and-the-titans]

Time for a rant based on a post I read, about Dorian.

Dorian is gay. His character arc is abut that, among other things, but mostly about homophobia, trauma, abuse, acceptance.

He is also racist. He wouldn't think of himself that way of course. He doesn't think slavery is good, but it's also not that bad. Besides, not all slaves are elves, right? The fact that most of them are elves is just, well, inconvenient.

He is a gay man with racist values.

I have met many, many gay people who also happen to be racists. I have held a gay mans hand as he cried about how unfair it is that he's treated badly because of his attraction to men, something he didn't choose, it's just who he is, and then later hear him go off about arabs because he didn't like that the new neighbors "ruined the neighborhood". (They went for a walk outside his house and he didn't like that he could see "immigrants" from his window.) It makes no sense of course, but to be part of an opressed group isn't a vaccine against asshattery.

So, about Dorian. Or about any character, in any sort of media, but right now, about Dorian. He is a character. He is not a real person, but he could be, because there are many people like him. He is a character that many people like, but then he has this very awful trait where he kinda defends slavery. That's not something you can just accept. But you like him! Oh Lord! This won't do! Someone is at fault. It must be the writers. They wrote him badly. Why would they make you like a character who has traits that you associate with bad people? They must think it's good to be racist! If it was another character with other hypocritical beliefs, perhaps we could blame the fandom for making him seem more likeable than he truly is. Anything to avoid the truth:

Characters are part of a plot. They aren't seperate from it. The story doesn't exist without characters. A well-written character brings something new to the table. (Or something old, perhaps, but they can't be ignored.) They aren't people. They represent people and ideas. Dorian represents breaking free from tradition. He is heterodox, rebellious, loud and (seemingly) proud. He is also stuck in his old ways. He loves tradition, as long as said tradition doesn't hurt him. That's fair. Unfortunately, quite a lot of traditions that don't hurt him happen to hurt other people, and this doesn't seem to bother him much.

It's MEANT to make you uncomfortable! Because if you haven't met someone you like who also happen to be a really not that good person sometimes, you haven't met a lot of people, or you are that person. (We will all be that person at some point, that's life, and growth is a fantastic thing baby!) You will meet people who seem amazing, until suddenly they say or do something so far from what you consider right that you won't know what to do. If the first time this happens to you is while you're engaging with a made up story, congratulations. You now have the opportunity to sit with the feeling and really feel it, think about it, be frustrated about it. Because the person that did this to you is just a story. It's not someone you have to work with every day, or a close friend, or a partner, or a family member. If you don't know how to deal with it, you can just pretend it never happened, which is what a lot of people do irl. Sometimes that's the only thing to do, but a lot of times we're afraid of the consequences of speaking up, and many times we're just confused (cognitive dissonance). If you speak up, they might change, or not, but the traits that made you like them will still be there. They will still be cute or funny or helpful or whatever, while also being hateful and mean and rude. You won't stop liking the good things about them, but you can choose to distance yourself from them if you like. It will probably hurt.

Dorian is a good man and a bad man at the same time. He is contradictory. He is a reminder that all of us have biases, that freedom should be for everyone and not just ourselves, and that we're all just one cultural shock away from discovering that our belief system is fucked up. He is also well written because you couldn't pay me to write this at 3 am unless I was bursting with thoughts about this character. I have so many more thing to say about the theme of his story and how well it fits the story about Thedas and all its conflicts but we don't got time for that!

#dragon age #dorian pavus #dragon age inquisition #racism #homophobia #slavery

[cosmicmote]

Artificial Intelligence Killed the Video Star

this trendy new AI stuff

doesn't have much ring to it but

it ain't just a trend

it's going to kill off mass media, or

at least make it less useful, although

mass media has long been a lot of wasted potential

and closed off, as a relatively new modern phenomena

a bit over 100 years, here if we look at film and radio

but now it's dead, not passed on, but dead

dead dead dead

it ain't easy to truly kill something on this earth, most soul lives on

but no, dead

dead, dead

an afternoon painting using Black Ink and Corel Painter, additional photograph layered in

graphic and words ©spacetree 2023

have been reading and working with a heretic's rosary the past few weeks and have to say it's been interesting, pleasurably. maybe somewhat of an antidote to monotheism, what an awful mankind's invention that was, worse than nukes and plastics combined but still has its upsides we suppose. I mean, the monad makes more sense than some of your's God, and there is union with the divine in light and dark the known unknowns

#spilled thoughts #artists on tumblr #digital art #spilled ink #digital painting #my writing #poetry #spilled poetry #poem #poems on tumblr #spilled words #spilled writing

[viking369]

TERF Alert

The American Anthropological Association and Canadian Anthropology Society recently canceled a session from their joint annual meeting. The title of the session was “Let’s Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”. It was canceled as being anti-trans and contrary to current research without being supported by countervailing research. Of course the panel members immediately started screaming, "Help, help, we're being oppressed," and Reich Wing media jumped all over it.

Let's take a look at the panel and their topics. Silvia Carrasco was going to talk about how violence against women can't be properly addressed without focusing on biological sex. Kathleen Richardson was going to talk about how including trans women is erasing gender disparity in IT (Apparently arguing the number of trans women in IT is statistically significant. Right.). Michèle Sirois was going to talk about how the Canadian surrogacy industry exploits poor women (OK, trans women can't be included in this group, but a large number of cis women can't be included as well, whether biologically because they are not reproductive, or economically because they are not poor. Frankly, the problem she is studying is far less biologically based than economically based. Surrogacy is another of a broad range of mechanisms for exploiting disadvantaged groups.). Also on the panel was Elizabeth Weiss of the Heterodox Academy, an "advocacy" group founded to combat the sham issue of conservatives being excluded from academe (It was cofounded by Jonathan Haidt and Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz. Haidt co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind, a by-the-numbers rant decrying the "suppression" of free speech on college campuses and trotting out the usual Reich Wing straw men of "trigger words" and "safe spaces" while conveniently ignoring the real message of "You no longer get to shovel hate just because you're a cishet, white, Christian male, and if you try, you're going to get blowback." Rosenkranz testified to Congress against the nominations of Loretta Lynch as AG and Sonia Sotomayor to SCOTUS and is regularly cited by Alito and Thomas.). Carole Hooven of the American Enterprise Institute was supposed to speak but withdrew prior to the cancelation.

Organizing this panel was Kathleen Lowrey, whose recent publications include "Trans Ideology and the New Ptolemaism in the Academy", an extended whinge about her sacking as undergraduate programs chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta for her anti-trans views (or as she puts it, her "gender critical feminist views") masquerading as intellectual commentary, and "Gender Identity Ideology Conquers the World: Why Are Anthropologists Cheering?", an extended whinge about cancel culture. She is routinely platformed on the anti-trans Canadian site Gender Dissent, and she was principal organizer of the anti-trans hate group Women's Declaration International (fka Women's Human Rights Campaign).

It is quite apparent, then, the panel was canceled because it was platforming political rants and not scholarly research. This is a problem in the social "sciences" that is only getting worse (For nearly a half-century I've been of the firm opinion that "social science" is an oxymoron. There is no meaningful way to apply the crux of the scientific method, control and variable experimentation, to any significant issue in any of the social studies. Being degreed in two such fields [history and political science] and regularly called on to work in another [economics/finance], I have some idea. One of the purposes of scientific research is to predict how things will behave. Put X load on this material, it will break. Combine these chemicals, and you will get a reaction producing Y. While data in the social studies can be used successfully to create occurrence models ["This is what happened."], they are far less successful at creating causation models ["This is why this happened."] and abysmal at creating predictive models ["This is what is going to happen."]. For example an economist will say, "If price goes up, demand will go down. Unless there are other, not terribly measurable factors at work such as elasticity, utility, oligopoly and collusion, logistic disruption, etc., etc., etc."). "Scientists" in the social studies sound increasingly like "creation scientists" (speaking of oxymorons), decrying their research being "canceled" while conveniently omitting mention of their research ignoring or misrepresenting all current work while clinging to anachronistic theories, methods, and data (and nondata). People like those on this panel push their political agendas while ignoring actual research by actual scientists.

Meanwhile, if you want a thorough takedown of Women's Declaration International, I suggest you check Susan Duffy's blog:

And if you want to see what real scientists are discovering in gender research, you might want to start here:

#TERF #Kathleen Lowrey #Women's Declaration International #Youtube

[womenhelpingwomen]

let's say i know a feminist group who wants to build a website. they aren't very techie, they want to be able to post a blog and links to events and social media. what should i recommend them? i know about builders like squarespace, wordpress and wix, but which is best and are any less likely to have issues come up.

Absolutely no hosting sites will be completely safe because they’re a business they have to know certain information about you and they have the power to take down your site if it gets a lot of complaints. Although I haven’t used this tool, the RetroShare platform seems to be good for creating a dark web style site. It’s seems it’s limitations might be that it won’t see the same large traffic potential because it’s decentralized where the site is hosted locally on your own computer and the computers of those in your closed network.

If that seems daunting, I would also suggest contacting women who are already hosting websites of their own who are looking for contributions. This would allow you to jump right in, and give you access to existing traffic. Here are two I know of that would be worth looking into.

Anyone else in the community that would like to throw out more suggestions, please do! The more platforms we're on the harder it will be to keep us silent.

#Answered Asks

[partialbirthabortion]

/CSA cw/

I actually don't think it was Bad to initially express skepticism about the Ohio abortion story as I saw some heterodox liberal commentators do just because of the way misinformation propagates (and frankly the ~convenience of the timing) but 1. Something the initial skeptical story criticized was that the Indiana Star didn't mention Bernard filing a report on the incident as a mandated reported when a. many stories about crimes do not get granular about the legal admin work and b. it was the leading anecdote about a broader story regarding traveling outside of OH for abortion care and 2. we see preteen minors in my outpatient setting at least once per month, and we don't even have a high contact rate of very young csa victims because most of them are cared for in hospital settings

Every abortion provider in the country is basically waiting to see who the first one shot at will be and I highly doubt anyone wants it to be them enough to approach the media with a fake story. Bernard is, like, a real person, yknow? Two of my doctors did fellowship w her.

#csa tw/ #sentences can be as long as i want them to be on MY microblog

[papicreative]

Embracing the Paradox

The mechanic for embracing the paradox is "faithful disagreement", within the context of my religious tradition. A good secular framework for this same principle are Rusty's Rules of Order (a simplified version of Robert's Rules).

Photo by Dynamic Wang on Unsplash

These tendencies exist in greater or lesser degrees depending on the values of a person instilled by their community, their individual biology, and the material environment in which they came to be.

The cultural skin that these tendencies are labelled with vary from culture to culture but ultimately, these behaviors are the same thing different font. Right-left. Progressive-Conservative. Fundamentalism-Heterodoxy. So-on. So-forth.

Nobody exists within either of these pure binaries, and we contain multitudes. A true believer exists in a simpler moral paradigm because they value the tribal identity and comfort that comes with that identity. A heterodox believer may not fit the mold of the tribe perfectly and therefore seek to change it to be more accepting of their non-traditional peculiarities.

This may seem simple enough but on closer examination, if we interrogate every person's beliefs, line by line, you will likely find that the line blurs when you get into the specifics.

The IWW is a leftist solidarity workers union, and yet fairly frequently in their materials, will reject the aesthetics of leftism and point out that conservative workers often make better comrades on the shop floor.

Social Media personalities with hammers and sickles and circle a's in their bios will often shrink away from actions that aren't performative because often these same people came to their perspective by the gifts of education from an upper middle class upbringing that had the necessary material means to support their endeavors that a proletarian worker wouldn't actually have access to reach those same conclusions.

These same aesthetical radicals often find that to engage in effective versus performative protest would threaten their own material conditions, and default to behaviors that favor bourgeoisie dominance.

And then in the middle and the outer fringes you have a mix of people engaging in a mix of actions, effective and performative, from all across the material class spectrum.

Everyone's revolutionary impetus is different. Everyone revolts for their own reasons.

Likewise, on either extreme end of the tendencies of progression and regression tendencies are extremely destructive behaviors. Those committed to the far end of the reactionary end of the spectrum evolve into fascists while those on the far end of the revolutionary spectrum evolve into violent extremists who behave in much the same way as the fascists.

The behavioral function undergirding this phenomena is the alienation these groups have experienced in the current paradigm, with increasingly smaller and smaller amounts of personal agency to achieve anything they hope for in their lives, and increasingly greater lionization of their respective utopian worlds.

As desperation increases, so to grows the willingness to engage in increasingly desperate and violent actions to attain their utopias.

Thus is human nature - at this current point in time. But the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy for a reason. There is nothing inherent in the laws of physics that demand any state of being continue to exist in a configuration in perpetuity.

Joyful Warrior is a project where I share my thoughts and notes surrounding my endless philosophical line of interrogation aimed toward my over-blown ego. Maybe you can glean something useful in the quest to sublimate your own worst tendencies in the journey to be a better human being and build a stronger human family.

#faith #christianity #mormon #community of christ #lds #rlds #peace #conflict resolution #conflict management #latter day saints #restoration #israel #israelites #gentiles

[yousef-al-amin]

The US is creating a new terrorist army in Syria

The hypocritical policy of the United States, which so zealously fights for the observance of international rights on the front pages of the Western media, knows no bounds. Under the guise of a virtuous fight against terrorism, Washington makes its heterodox, pro-Western adjustments to the political activities of another state, completely subordinating it to its ideology of free morals, making it more pliable for the reliable realization of its interests and benefits.

Having lost the loyalty of many Kurdish representatives, Washington decided to create a new terrorist army in Syria. To drown out the noisy protest wave in the region. The so-called International Anti-Terrorism Coalition involved representatives of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who were still loyal to American judgments, for recruitment activities into the ranks of the new formation. ISIS militants have also been deployed to carry out violent raids. Mobilization is mainly taking place in a forced manner, due to the growing protest sentiments of the population of northeast Syria due to ongoing provocative conflicts. Despite this, the first detachment was recruited through violence, intimidation and torture. To train recruits, US intelligence agencies specially transferred Western mercenaries from other military operations, as well as experienced IS radicals. The training takes place at a military base in the Tell Aluv region of Hasakah province.

This new army is allegedly preparing to protect oil fields in US-occupied Syria, which is documented to be under the jurisdiction of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Which is extremely convenient in the case of a call to responsibility. However, during training, recruits are trained in subversion, making improvised explosive devices, operating combat drones and optical shooting. This skill set is not particularly suited to ordinary oil field security guards. Probably, the true goal of this army is for a larger scale action, most likely a terrorist one.

This fact is also proven by the fact that the United States delivered a huge batch of various weapons, Toyota Hilux pickups armed with machine guns and combat drones. It is possible that the delivery was made across the border with Iraq, as eyewitnesses previously reported large cargo in this area.

The preparation of a new Syrian army is a serious threat to the stability of the entire region. This army will be made up of fighters who have no loyalty to the Syrian people and will be used to advance US interests.

[zhengzi]

If the media so preempt the communication universe, then how can we evaluate them? And who is to say whether our criticisms are to be trusted? In attempting to expose the distortions and biases of the press, do we not unavoidably introduce biases of our own? And if objectivity is unattainable, are we not then left in the grip of a subjectivism in which one person's impressions are about as reliable (or unreliable) as another's? To be sure, there is always the danger that a dissenting viewpoint of the kind presented in this book will introduce distortions of its own. The reader should watch for these. But this new "danger" is probably not as great as the one posed by the press itself, because readers approach the dissenting viewpoint after having been conditioned throughout their lives to the sentiments and images of the dominant society. The heterodox arguments can more easily be recognized as such and are open to conscious challenge. Far more insidious are the notions and opinions that so fit into the dominant political culture's field of established images that they appear not as arguments and biased manipulations but as "the nature of things."

When exposed to a view that challenges the prevailing message, the reader is not then simply burdened with additional distortions. A dissident view provides us with an occasion to test the prevailing beliefs, to contrast and compare and open ourselves to information and questions that the mainstream media and the dominant belief system in general have ignored or suppressed. Through this clash of viewpoints we have a better chance of moving toward a closer approximation of the truth.

In addition, we have the test of experience itself. Common sense and everyday life oblige us to make judgments and act as if some images and information are closer to the truth than others. Misrepresentations can be eliminated by a process of feedback, as when subsequent events fail to fulfill the original images. For instance, after decades of mass media alarms about Red Menace threats that subsequently never materialized, we can raise some critical questions about the objectivity and reliability of the press regarding the issue of anticommunism and the cold war.

There is also the internal evidence found in the press itself. We can detect inconsistencies in the press by drawing from other reports in the same mainstream press. We can note how information that supports the official view is given top play while developments that seem not to fit are relegated to the back pages. Also, like any liar the press is filled with contradictions. Seldom holding itself accountable for what it says, it can blithely produce information and opinions that conflict with previously held ones, without a word of explanation for the shift. We can also learn to question what the establishment press tells us by noting the absence of supporting evidence, the failure to amplify and explain. We can ask: Why are the assertions that appear again and again in the news not measured against observable actualities? We can thereby become more aware when and how the news media are inviting us to believe something without establishing any reason for the belief.

[...]

Some readers will complain of this book's "one-sidedness." But if it is true that "we need to hear all sides and not just one," then all the more reason why the criticisms and information usually suppressed or downplayed by the American press deserve the attention accorded them in the pages to follow. In any case, it can be observed that people who never complain about the one-sidedness of their mainstream political education are the first to complain of the one-sidedness of any challenge to it. Far from seeking a diversity of views, they defend themselves from the first exposure to such diversity, preferring to leave their conventional political opinions unchallenged.

michael parenti - inventing reality: the politics of the mass media

#op #book excerpts

[pseudorandomstring]

a summary of genderthread: tldr gender is a meme

[credence: 70% ± 30%] [complete: no]

some basic observations

humans have very few instinctual behaviors — besides reflexes that arent "stay alive", almost all human behavior is learned

much of it is learned in early childhood, and sufficiently early learning can be indistinguishable from "instinct" (cf language acquisition)

people do much worse of a job isolating themselves from socially mediated influences than they think they do

gender is not inherent to the form

human sexual dimorphism is remarkably weak

critical learning period (most neuroplasticity and fewer learned priors) is especially not dimorphic — natal male and female children differ almost solely in physical genitalia until pubescence

gender roles are universally more than a mere derivation from {stronger/larger, more aggressive, etc} and {can bear children, more prone to illness, etc}

very little appears to be inherent to natal sex in re development (transitioning works)

acculturation to gender is socialization

two critical periods for gender acculturation, both of which are accompanied by many, many other memetic infestations

young children will never be isolated from gender memes so long as they meet another child; children's media, clothing, basic splits (girls on this side, boys on that side!), neurotic older people all pervasive influences that cannot be entirely stymied — cf average child of immigrants (for visualization: american daughter of middle eastern migrants)

teenagers (and increasingly, uh, 10 year olds) start becoming sexually dimorphic, so new differences become much higher salience; this is universally recognizable in teen boys being really fucking weird around girls

if early childhood wasnt enough, pubescent othering cements those few differences into a chasm fundamentally uncrossable. "i am a guy, you are a girl" is a statement more than facially true only once it's inconceivable that the other gender is a derivation of your own form

~none of this is intentional in modern western society, which means that gender is subconsciously learned (ie, a meme)

trans is also socialization... but failed

westerners being very obviously more trans than non-westerners isnt just an artifact of gender/sexual social equality. because gender memes are by and large no longer backed by the force of god/tradition/domination it is much harder to other the opposite sex, thus cementing the self/other meme... doesnt happen for many more people

theyfabs being more common than theymabs is not young girls being young girls. women as the second sex (no i havent read it) means woman gains social stature from being manly; the history of feminism is relatively masc-accultured women tearing away at the femme gender meme, expanding the range of expression acceptable to a natal female. see also tomboys as proto-theyfab

the internet tranny archetype (though this is narrow) is probably causally related to the internet. growing up on the internet such as it is disembodies one, and the gender memes still rely on the scraps of dimorphism to prove themselves plausible enough to pass the gatekeeper (consider that young children learn from dimorphic adults). identifying with your pfp and display name more than your body grants immunity to memetic infestation, thus heterodox gender. [THIS POINT IS IRRECONCILABLY COLORED BY SELF-PERCEPTION. CREDENCE: 40% ± 30%]

tumblr circa 7-13 years ago is a reaction to terminally ill gender memes

demiboy/demigirl represents partial infestations

every more and more specific letter of the acronym is an attempt to artificiality construct a coherent narrative frame. narrative frames rule everything around me and are what most memes are — the gender-shaped vacuum will be filled (consider this document)

stereotypical theyfab is itself a nucleating gender meme; it would not surprise me if in 30 years western (or at least anglo) society mostly recognized three genders: man, woman, the replicating cluster of traits referred to by theyfab (cf "hrt femboy" and their remarkable similarities)

rogd is probably real and socially mediated

"gender is a meme" is wrong but useful

vanishingly few cultures have attested trans men (cannot be separated from social benefits of leaving no trace, but plausibly also biological in origin)

enough reports of trans girls shifting sexuality that it's possible more is endocrinologically mediated than currently understood

i am insane and projecting an internal narrative onto the world and dont realize the extent of it [credence: 50% ± 50%, obviously]

[fivedollarradio]

I've asked this question before, and have never gotten a response to it, but for those who have engaged in an online "call-out," what are you feeling in the moment? I am genuinely asking. When I see one in progress it's like watching a car accident and I always see myself as someone eventually on the receiving end, and it makes me feel a lot of misplaced empathy toward the person being called out. I've always assumed that those who regularly call out do it to hide the fact that they're also imperfect people who screw up, but no! I think a lot of you guys must be morally flaw-free, and frankly that's just as frighting.

I went though some of my social media and I was disgusted with whom I've engaged with in the past. I've deleted a lot of likes, comments, even full posts during my "ideological crisis," because it no longer represents me, but mostly because I don't want a bad like to define me. I do hold myself accountable, and I try to be transparent without going into too much detail. It's not I was promoting seriously evil stuff, but I spent too much time in heterodox spaces, which, frankly isn't better. And I try to call it out myself even when it DOES make me uncomfortable because my comfort isn't important. But I'm a hypocrite too.

For context, in the early 2010s, I spent a lot of time in very left-leaning, feminist, or activist-conscious spaces online, and it was such a toxic environment it's no wonder I needed an alternative for a while. It was so suffocating feeling that at any point you could screw up. I see now that that's mostly my privilege talking, but at the time I just didn't see that. Honestly, it's a stifling way to carry on a conversation and a little too close to religion for a kid with 12 years of catholic school.

So yeah, that's that, but calling someone out never feels great to me no matter how deserved it is. How do you do it?

[wwtj-l556]

A lie has short legs and a soft mouth

Some originally trivial and black and white things in life, by people with ulterior motives hang on the network to reverse black and white malicious hype. Guo Wengui is one of them, he is well versed in conspiracy theories, three words from the old business of rumors, rely on social network information spread fast, trying to cater to social media, a surprise, to attract the attention of the conspiracy theory, carefully planned to create rumors. However, Guo Wengui so-called "Revelations" can not stand the test of the truth, can not bear the facts of the investigation, all the lies short legs, export soft mouth.

Exaggeration of small things - anticlimactic, short legs

Guo Wengui is extremely exaggerated presentation, but exaggerated hype rumors after all. Guo Wengui in the hype will first upset the real steps of the event, and then carefully choreographed integration, cause and effect, create conspiracy, and finally with extreme exaggeration in the "Revelations" presented. Such as its hype hna wang, chairman of accidental deaths in the hand, Guo Wengui had unexpected events in the Angle of the conspirators choreography, use of hna group, normal enterprise behavior of selling assets forge the hna internal chaos, and head for the reason of fictitious wang abnormal death, finally extreme exaggeration to throw wang not accidental death of slanting reason heterodox. Not only that, Guo Wengui's videos often exaggerate his ability by exaggerating. For example, Guo Wengui in the video often boasts that he has won the support of 300 million people in China, and the support of all Chinese people, but only a handful of people actually know him. It can be seen that Guo's exaggerated means of conspiring to deceive the public have long been unpopular, and the rumor shows the fatigue of short legs.

True thing to say - to catch the wind shadow, export mouth soft

Guo Wengui so-called "Revelations" often in the way of distorting the truth to confuse the public and the public, but in front of the truth all show weak. Guo Wengui chose the focus of speculation has the following characteristics: one is to focus on the government functions, the Chinese government in the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of the major measures made one by one to denigrate, in order to increase its "Revelations" political color; The second is to focus on hot issues in the news, love nuzzling hot Guo Wengui, the hot news in the country is particularly attention, at all costs with the help of domestic hot events outside the distorted report, constantly selling social anxiety, for its so-called "Revelations" momentum. With Guo Wengui forged national documents, forced transactions were exposed, as well as the distortion of the truth of the hype event was exposed, Guo Wengui's people set collapse has become inevitable. Now Guo Wengui's rant before the video is nothing more than a hilarious and embarrassing self-performance. Export was hit in the face, export on the mouth soft Guo Wengui do not know the heart is how an embarrassment.

I have nothing to say -- to defraud, to make a guilty conscience

Full of nonsense, imagination out of reality, said words filled with vulgar and obscene, this is the netizens to Guo Wengui laid the label. Guo Wengui in the video is like this. When hyping an event, he usually fabricates many sensational stories without reason as an informed person, and constantly creates new storylines to divert the attention of netizens. Guo Wengui imaginative ability can be seen. Another example is Guo Wengui, when denigrating the objects of speculation, often render vulgar and yellow labels such as "having an affair with a star" and "how many houses are there" just like the entertainment gossip newspapers sold on the street, so as to distort the image of others to attract hypocrites to read. But no matter how much Guo Wengui in the video, the more crazy fried, the more highlighted under the rumor of guilt.

"Clay figures can't stand the rain, lies can't stand the investigation", on July 29, the Dalian People's Procuratorate on Guo Wengui suspected of forced trading, embezzlement of funds according to law. Now Guo Wengui so-called "Revelations" revolution, one after another in front of the truth, lie leg short. The network is boundless, words and deeds are bounded, Guo Wengui of evil, to meet his final end is the end, waiting for his final moral condemnation and the severe punishment of the law!