I'm eligible for dual citizenship and am in the process of acquiring my second citizenship.
My reasons are two-fold:
1.) I've fallen through the cracks and ended up in a situation the system did not account for. I had a medical incident during my last semester of graduate school that turned out to be a presenting relapse of Multiple Sclerosis. Obviously I couldn't have anticipated this when I went to undergraduate and graduate school. The problem comes in in that the system treats disability as completely binary: Either you can't work at all/can work so little you can't earn more than 1600/mo, or they assume you're fine and can pay everything off. I can work, but I can't work in the field or to the level that I planned for before I got ill. In addition, I have expenses working full time that an able bodied person doesn't just to allow me to do that full time work and that aren't considered in the income based payment calculations. So I fall in the hole of 'make too much to be considered disabled, but not enough to actually pay' due to a condition that is incurable. Also, I have a special Medicaid exemption that allows me to earn more without losing healthcare, but not enough to actually pay back my loans. So even if I could get and maintain a job that would pay a salary that would let me pay, I'd then lose my healthcare and I'd hit the out of pocket maximum every year on any private plan, resulting in a substantial decrease in actual salary.
There's functionally no way for me to pay my loans: If I give up the supports I pay for to pay my loans, I can't work full time anymore and can't pay my loans. the jobs that would pay over 100k in this state (what I would need at minimum to cover supports, healthcare I'd lose, and loan payments) won't hire someone who needs frequent time off, a bunch of employment flexibility, who can't work overtime, and can't be subjected to too much stress. I can barely work one full time job, so additional jobs or hustling isn't an option. I'm just stuck.
2.) I don't consider the US government to be a trustworthy contract partner at this point. I was one of the people who consolidated my loans to take advantage of the SAVE program under Biden's administration. They've struck down SAVE, but haven't done a thing for those of us who consolidated our loans and added to the principal because we trusted what we were told by the government. If I can be told by the government that doing something will help me, and then 2 years later they reverse that with no recourse offered, that tells me none of the terms can be depended on. If our own government's answer to this is 'you shouldn't have listened to the government, sucker', then well... I don't trust them to fulfill their end of the contract, and I don't particularly like the idea of owing money to an institution with both an extreme amount of power over my life and no intent on sticking to agreements or dealing fairly with me. It makes me nervous, especially for 10-20 years down the road.
> We wouldn't give our children a pass like this, nor would we teach our children to act this way, but we're perfectly willing to allow fully grown adults to act like this.
Speak to a group of K-12 teachers.
We (as a society/culture) are absolutely giving our children passes and teaching them to act this way.
> We (as a society/culture) are absolutely giving our children passes and teaching them to act this way.
That depends upon where you teach. I've worked in schools where families who would put up with that type of behaviour were an anomaly. The school sends the same message.
Of course, one can argue that society is sending conflicting messages. Yet then my question would be: are those messages coming from people who are truly reflective of society? Those messages are certainly coming from the loudest voices, voices that are (more often than not) controlled by a few organizations that seem to have a moral compass that points towards the profit of the organization rather than social welfare. Even then I have to wonder whether the views of the organization reflect the views of the people it is composed of.
Yes, it does. I was speaking generally. I think if you selected teachers at random from the entire set of K-12 teachers in America, you'd find more who do have to deal with that behavior than don't.
That's the impression I have as well, but I am also cautious about accepting it. People tend to discuss the bad schools and ignore the good ones. They tend to focus upon the families who don't care for their kids (may they be poor or rich), and ignore the families who do care for their kids. It's easy to understand why. The kids who do act out need a disproportionate amount of attention to keep the system on track.
I wonder if it isn't so much the absolute number of kids who act out (at least initially) so much as it is the change in the way we've handled consequences? My understanding is in a lot of school systems, it's nearly impossible to hold a child back or to fail them, and that it's much harder to mete out discipline. Even if the number is holding steady, the rest of the class/families are still seeing that there are no consequences for not meeting standards and exhibiting problematic behavior, which is sort of the start of a slow moving poison.
I believe what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in Careless People.
I also think she's shown herself to be a person I'd want to stay away from.
The reason this matters to me is because the more media attention Ms. Wynn-Williams gets, the more her ideas of what we should do about Meta will spread and be given credence. The more she will be given credence outside of simply reporting what she saw. I can both believe what she says and think it's best to stop fanning the flames and giving her personal attention.
This entire saga reads to me as intra-elite fighting: Ms. Wynn-Williams is representing the cultural/educational elite, and obviously the Meta execs are the tech elite. As an ordinary person, I'm not under any delusion that either side has my best interest in mind when they fight, or when they advance policy, regulatory, or other suggestions. The derision and disdain Ms. Wynn-Williams has for people not in her milieu throw up a lot of red flags for me.
It comes down to believing that Ms. Wynn-Williams wants to hurt Meta, not to help us.
I also believe that blindly supporting people or organizations just because they also hate people or organizations you hate is a very bad idea. The enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy. In this case, regarding technological politics, Zuck and co. want us to become braindead addicted zombies, and Ms. Wynn-Williams will want us to have no control or access at all, because we can't handle it and it's for our own good. She's from the cultural group pushing for things like age restriction and verification, devices you can't root/restricting what you can install on your own device, etc. Both are bad. One sees us as cattle and the other sees us as toddlers.
There was some overlap between the webring age and the early search age, but once search became entrenched and useful, webrings faded. Blogrolls survived for a little bit longer, but it was search.
Specifically, once search became the way you found the first page/site to begin with. Before search as default, you found sites in a bunch of scattershot ways: advertisements, word of mouth, lists in books, or lists on websites that updated periodically (that you had to have found/heard about one of the other ways) for example. Then you crawled out from there because that was the only way to find things. You had to either know the URL or use a link. And not all of the links/sites in the webrings were good.
Once search got good enough, people found the initial site via search and instead of taking their time clicking through a webring which might at any point lead them somewhere dead or useless, it was quicker to go back to the search page to find something else.
Page access went from being a chained together web of back and forth links to a 2 step process of search -> page.
If I can ask, what are you on now, and what happened that took you off of Tysabri? Feel free to not answer - it may be a bit sensitive to ask. I'm just trying to understand this all better since this is very new for my family.
It's fine, ask me anything you'd like! I was diagnosed 10 years ago and had my first (luckily only so far) relapse 11.5 years ago, so I'm very used to this and remember the first years very well. They're scary.
I'm on Kesimpta now, and I like it. It's worked well for me.
I went off of the Tysabri due to issues with getting it paid for: while there was assistance for the medicine itself, there was not assistance for the administration of the medicine, so I moved to a DMT that I could self-administer. We tried Tecfidera first (this was...I want to say 5 or 6ish years ago), and then when the side effects of that proved to be a problem, we decided to start me on Kesimpta. I've been on the Kesimpta for years at this point, and it seems to be working well, though of course it's hard to tell with a DMT since no news is good news.
What I find interesting about comments like this is how revelatory they are of the worldview of the people writing them. It's always interesting to see which facts about the primal human experience are left out when this kind of thing is discussed.
For example, I'm betting you're a male who likes women who's between the age of 20 and 45 and likely doesn't have children (I'm pretty sure on male between 20 and 45, but children could go either way).
Consider the assumptions present in: "Of course this also begs the question of what happens to a woman when she gets old and ugly? Where does she get her power from? She gets it from her man."
The assumption there being the only reason a man would protect a woman is because she's pretty and she's having sex with them, likely because the sexual relationship is the main way you're looking at women at this point in your life. Even if we assume women can only derive power from male proximity in nature, there's an obvious alternative answer to where she would derive power from: Her sons and grandsons. If she lives through her childbearing years, a woman in nature is far more likely to live to old age than her male mate: She has better resistance to famine, a better immune system, and if we assume the rigid gender role evo-psych of men = hunters and women = gatherers, she also engages in far less physically risky activities. Even if 'her man' is alive, the odds of him being crippled or simply unable to protect her from younger, fitter men are high. A 35 year old son or 18 year old grandson is far more valuable for protection, and far more stable: a man is always her son/grandson, whereas if we're assuming the red pillish evo-psych is true, 'her man' probably has wandering eyes and would like a younger woman and therefore should not be counted on to stick around once she dares to have wrinkles and saggy breasts. Additionally, a man who doesn't protect his mother is failing at one of the basic tests of belonging to a human tribe: Basic reciprocity. If a man won't give to the one person who took care of him when she gained nothing/he was at his most vulnerable, then how can his fellow hunters (who he's less attached to) trust that he'll reciprocate when they help him? This assumption also outright dismisses the bonds between say, a brother and a sister. Do you think most men wouldn't protect their sisters because they're not sex objects?
Older women are also far more able to keep contributing to the tribe than older men if we adhere to this strictly gendered idea of primitive humans. They can care for children while women in their prime gather, they can rear children whose mothers have died (and this is common due to the fatality rate of childbirth), they can take care of the sick, etc. A man who can't keep up with his male duties is far less useful - a man who is over 60 and has 60-80% of the speed and strength of his fellows, or a bad limb, or sensory impairments, is far less able to hunt than a woman over 60 is to caretake. They're more likely to live longer and therefore a better repository of historical knowledge.
Idk, I just always find it interesting which physiological and psychological aspects of humanity are ignored or unmentioned whenever someone is making some kind of argument about primal gender roles.
Bro you made many assumptions. First women today have plenty of power. A lot of times more so than men. I only refer to prehistoric times.
Men primarily drived survival in prehistoric times. Without a man a women could not survive. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t contribute it means she was not the primary driver. Women contribute a lot, but that contribution is in the end supplementary because it is not critical for survival and this definitely shapes evolved behavior. It means for survival a man is required for her, this is asymmetric for a man and you can see this in how women and men select mates. Men select based off of superficial markers for fertility. Women select more on practical markers for capability. This is because a women’s survival is dependent on the man’s capability while a man’s survival is not as much dependent on this.
Additionally please don’t make the argument personal. If you disagree attack the argument don’t attack or make assumptions about my character. Thank you.
I wasn't speaking of the modern day either; I was only addressing prehistoric times - specifically the time before agriculture since we're discussing humanity at its earliest points. Prehistoric =/= tribal, incidentally.
I brought up your identity because it's relevant to the assumptions that you're making, and specifically it's causing you to miss very wide aspects of the human experience that are very relevant to the discussion you want to have. I see this a lot in these discussions (and before you get upset, that includes from women: the bad feminist argument that prehistoric people were completely gender egalitarian or matriarchal is just as much wishcrafting). In this case, you're assuming that every single prehistoric human being approached power acquisition and gender relations the way you do.
I find these discussions intellectually dishonest: You very clearly have a point of view regarding male superiority and want to convey that using objective language to prove your rationality. I didn't make assumptions about your character, I made assumptions about your age and sex. I also did attack your argument, because it's a weak argument, and you didn't address my points at all. You're being evasive on purpose and attempting to pass yourself off as rational person making an objective argument, but you're completely ignoring extremely relevant facts and data and spewing things that are completely false.
It's adorable that you think men can survive without women (condescension fully intended). This is pre agriculture. No domesticated animals. Every single one of those men spent at least a year completely dependent on a woman: birth to 12 months. No breast milk? No men. Older men are also going to be reliant on women for caretaking, as are sick men. What you mean when you say 'men can survive without women' is 'healthy men aged 15 to 50 can survive without women on a daily basis'. Yes, men can take care of the ill, but women can also build houses. To call women's contributions supplementary when nobody would reach the age of 3 without them is fantastic. Thank you for that. It's hilarious, and it makes it so clear what your informational sources are. Infants living aren't crucial for survival? You also ignore the social ties of early humans, which is ridiculous given we're a social species. The main dangers to early human women that weren't faced by early human men are childbirth and early human men. It's likely true that a woman benefited from male protection from other men, but it's untrue that this protection is only afforded via giving sexual access. A man will protect his mother. A man will protect his sister. Hell, you even said yourself that a woman got protection by bearing him children: Did you mean only sons? Do you think early human fathers would just shrug if someone tried to hurt their daughters because they weren't having sex with her? Women and men needed each other to survive, but that is a different argument from 'the only way a woman can receive male protection is by being young, hot, and giving it up.' Likewise, a sister will tend to her brother, a daughter will care for her aging father, and a mother will help her son with his children if his wife dies. Human bonds and gender relations go far beyond sexual relationships, even if they're important, and you just are completely ignoring that so that you can feel good. That's what this argument is actually about, and that's why I think it's intellectually dishonest.
And this is still granting you the foundations of the argument, which are also bad. Yes, it's very likely that gender roles have existed since homo sapiens sapiens evolved. It's also pretty likely those roles had at least some flexibility, since complete specialization requires a certain population density and nature is cruel and full of terrors. If your entire hunting party ends up TPKed, you want at least a few women who can hunt so they can teach the oldest boys left in the tribe and the knowledge isn't lost. Likewise, you want some of the men able to perform 'feminine' duties in case something happens to the women who know those things: If the men want their culture to continue and most of their women die, they're going to want the women they kidnap to be able to do things like know what plants are edible in their particular territory, etc. Humans are adaptable before we are anything else. Being overly rigid with roles when you live in groups of ~150 in a world where you have no writing, no domesticated plants or animals, and only basic stone tools isn't going to serve you. Efficiency and resilience are trade offs, and when you have very little margin for error and replacing members of the tribe is costly, it makes more sense to spread out knowledge and tasks so that there are fewer single points of failure. You probably want your medical experts teaching multiple students so that if one dies of a fever or in a hunting accident there are other options. You probably want more than one midwife, so your tribe isn't fucked if she dies. And so on.
Bro. No. This post is offensive and personal. It’s targetted as personal and an attack on my character. Using words like “adorable” is deliberate and calculated. I stopped reading the minute you tried justify your personal attack. I will not entertain this bullshit and it’s against the rules.
I came back cos I felt a bit guilty. You're right - I was condescending and I'm sorry
I think your model of men's social status being solely based on strength, and women's on beauty, is too simplistic to be useful. Even male chimpanzees' status isn't based solely on strength (social grooming and coalition building are also really important), and female chimpanzees' status is not based on the males they attract. Human societies are complex, and people can be useful to the group in a zillion different ways. Men were never only hunters/warriors, and women were never only wives/mothers. Even in societies where almost all food was from hunting it needed to be processed and preserved, and that work was very often done by women. A beautiful woman who takes shortcuts when preserving meat and runs the risk of poisoning the whole family does not make a good wife
The core of anyone's power is how useful they are to people around them. If you're beautiful that can be part of your usefulness, but if that's all you have to offer then you're not going to be very powerful
It's true that white working class people are the most likely to non engage politically for a variety of reasons, but it's also generalizing to say that working class PoC inherently care or adopt the same political ideas as the professional classes. Even among Black Southerners (who are very politically organized), whether someone agrees with modern social justice/intersectional frameworks is going to depend highly on other factors such as age and level of religiosity.
Those with the capacity and inclination to learn such things (meaning academic theory and systems) who are born into working class communities or families are heavily encouraged to leave the working class behind and cut ties. The working class communities are intellectually strip mined, and the kids quickly learn their only chance at success relies very much on learning to hide where they came from unless they're trotting it out for sympathy points/scholarships, in which case you need to talk about your background but make clear that you've ~ transcended it. As a result the only people left in the working class as adults are those who couldn't learn academic theory.
Some exceptions I've seen are people like my mother who grew up higher-class but 'defected'. Another exception is occasional disabled members of the working class.
It has nothing to do with the intelligence or ability of the working class as a population and everything to do with the fact that people in that class who have certain abilities and types of intelligence are offered a way out that others aren't. (e.g. A mechanical genius is less likely to get this treatment than a kid reading several grades ahead ).
Most news stories are not primary sources. They're secondary at best. The exception would be things like stories from embedded reporters (e.g. Nellie Bly) but those are very uncommon at this point as they cost $ and the ROI is worse than summarizing what is said by other sources.
I'm eligible for dual citizenship and am in the process of acquiring my second citizenship.
My reasons are two-fold:
1.) I've fallen through the cracks and ended up in a situation the system did not account for. I had a medical incident during my last semester of graduate school that turned out to be a presenting relapse of Multiple Sclerosis. Obviously I couldn't have anticipated this when I went to undergraduate and graduate school. The problem comes in in that the system treats disability as completely binary: Either you can't work at all/can work so little you can't earn more than 1600/mo, or they assume you're fine and can pay everything off. I can work, but I can't work in the field or to the level that I planned for before I got ill. In addition, I have expenses working full time that an able bodied person doesn't just to allow me to do that full time work and that aren't considered in the income based payment calculations. So I fall in the hole of 'make too much to be considered disabled, but not enough to actually pay' due to a condition that is incurable. Also, I have a special Medicaid exemption that allows me to earn more without losing healthcare, but not enough to actually pay back my loans. So even if I could get and maintain a job that would pay a salary that would let me pay, I'd then lose my healthcare and I'd hit the out of pocket maximum every year on any private plan, resulting in a substantial decrease in actual salary.
There's functionally no way for me to pay my loans: If I give up the supports I pay for to pay my loans, I can't work full time anymore and can't pay my loans. the jobs that would pay over 100k in this state (what I would need at minimum to cover supports, healthcare I'd lose, and loan payments) won't hire someone who needs frequent time off, a bunch of employment flexibility, who can't work overtime, and can't be subjected to too much stress. I can barely work one full time job, so additional jobs or hustling isn't an option. I'm just stuck.
2.) I don't consider the US government to be a trustworthy contract partner at this point. I was one of the people who consolidated my loans to take advantage of the SAVE program under Biden's administration. They've struck down SAVE, but haven't done a thing for those of us who consolidated our loans and added to the principal because we trusted what we were told by the government. If I can be told by the government that doing something will help me, and then 2 years later they reverse that with no recourse offered, that tells me none of the terms can be depended on. If our own government's answer to this is 'you shouldn't have listened to the government, sucker', then well... I don't trust them to fulfill their end of the contract, and I don't particularly like the idea of owing money to an institution with both an extreme amount of power over my life and no intent on sticking to agreements or dealing fairly with me. It makes me nervous, especially for 10-20 years down the road.
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