MonDie

It's been a few months since I read this thread, but I had an interesting epiphany. I think the most offensive and off-putting features of this Israeli assault echoes some of the problems with our current system of government in the US, which are the problems of un-accountability. The disgust is not at Netanyahu's choice to strike back at Hamas, but the overkill of the response. Moreover, the issue is not that the US is aligned with Israeli, but that there seems to be no conditions upon which the alliance is predicated. In our own democratic process, we are constantly trained by the media to view politics through a two-party lens, but the fundamental problem with the current situation is a lack of accountability, a problem which this two-party lens offers no solutions for. Approaching accountability as a politically partisan problem assumes that conflicts of interest stem from party allegiances and not from the perpetrator's personal interests or his personal relationships to whomever are the direct beneficiaries of his corruption. The current system of deregulation championed by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Billl Clinton, and Newt Gingrich (and Jimmy Carter too if he hadn't been outflanked) is not a system of unilateral, top-down accountability, but a system of diffuse, decentralized conflicts of interest. It was championed by the same greedy people who bend the rules with the cost-benefit analysis of what if I get caught. Moreover, the conflicts of interest it has unleashed are not solvable thought a party-based system of accountability. Nonetheless, our minds always go back to the "tactical framing" encouraged by media. "But the Republicans are even more ultra-wealthy and corrupted than the Democrats," they moan. Moreover, when Netanyahu's IDF bombs another hospital or schoolbus, they just cry Hamas. Part of the reason Hamas gets so much flak is because their actions are shrouded in the moral ambiguity of being the underdog, because Israel has the upperhand. You can't blame the Israelis for wanting to have the upperhand. We are inherently self-interested (egoistic), which means we want to do what we want and not what somebody else wants, and self-centered (egocentric), which means we think our perspective and ourselves are right and that contrary perspectives and people are therefore wrong. Moreover, Israel inherently wants to have the upperhand. Why wouldn't they? And that is why we've chased the Gazans into the corner where they're currently trapped. However, the overkill of the response from Netanyahu's IDF is not just a predictable response to the trials of conflict, it is an underhanded way of dealing with the situation. When it's in secret, it's called cheating. Out in the open, it is called political violence. Netanyahu rose to power with the help of political violence, and he uses Hamas's violent tactics to justify violence against non-violent Palestinians. He can operate in this way because he has dismantled the mechanisms of accountability from within and his US alliance has no clear conditions he's violating. Netanyahu was on trial for corruption prior to the October seventh attacks. Moreover, the US is also guilty of war crimes, so that probably wouldn't be a condition upon which the Israel alliance rests. The solution to these problems doesn't come from switching to the other side, it comes from holding people accountable. If I knew what the words "Apartheid," "Colonialism" or "Genocide" meant, then I could explain whhat they mean in this context. For now, all I see is brutality caused by brutal tactics from amoral people who've calculated that they likely won't be held accountable. Biden is looking to alleviate the burden of Netanyahu's assault on Gaza, but the hope for accountability, accountability for anyone other than Hamas, was killed when Netanyahu dismantled the courts. Make no mistake though, Netanyahu is just another agent of unaccountable corruption looking to implement more deregulation, to personally benefit from it, and especially to dismantle anything that would hold him accountable. He was on trial for corruption, until he intervened.

Of course diplomacy will involve reconciling differences of perspective and distrust of a purported perspective. It seems like the perspective, for these purposes, would have three main components: the perspective on what is, the ideals about where to, and the power dynamics of how, or with what means/by what means. Of course, a person who privileges his own ideals or own purposes might utilize deceptive means that misrepresent any of these, so we try to embed aspects of our ideals into the power dynamic itself, such as ideals against misrepresentation or deceit. It is like agreeing to the rules of a game. In diplomatic frameworks, players agree to certain rules. Perhaps, like how two checkers players agree to the rules of checkers. Of course, the checkers teams legitimately might prefer checkers to mahjong, or agree to the rules for the sake of fairness and honest cooperation. That would be diplomacy. Moreover, if some guys are playing mahjong, you might then point a weapon at the people who don't play checkers or don't play according to the rules of checkers, viewing them as unpredictable, incomprehensible, or mischievous for playing by their own rules which weren't yours. In that case, genuine idealism, or perhaps correct trust in what really is genuine idealism, where the idealism regards the rules of how the game is played, seems to be the way out of this unstable dynamic. We can of course look at history through other lenses with other values. If you value human life, then you're against genocide, and you probably don't want a leader like Maoist Polpot, capitalist Pinoche, or fascist Hitler or Mussolini.

Nothing, if it can rotate. Oh, just delete this. I had two proofs.Everything after the first *spoiler* bracket disappeared. I'm running NoScript on Ubuntu Firefox.

I have no skill here, but it's an idea. It seems like it would be possible to create a robo-mod, separate of the forum software, that would take whitelist or blacklist requests from a pinned thread. It probably will need to un-delete accidentally deleted threads. For security, run from any system or VirtualSystem or any network or 5Gbs/month hotspot. It only needs the scripts and the account password. It would navigate with the keyboard: Tab + Enter to navigate; arrows and Ctrl+C/V to copy/paste thread titles; Ctrl+Alt+T to open Ubuntu Terminal and then to paste posts or titles into Bash scripts, scripts which then decide whether to repeat the same macro or execute a new macro that will execute a new script, for example a script that deletes the second or third thread in All Activity after the top ones have been whitelisted. Possible hurdles: it will need the power to un-delete threads that are not whitelisted in time, or else it cannot run constantly and run on a whitelisting principle --it shouldn't accidentally delete a whitelisted thread if it doesn't have to reload the page, unless it isn't whitelisted in time--; it may need to ignore troll posts by simultaneously copying the username or user status and the user's posted content, which are in separate boxes; the robo-moderator would preferably have forum privileges limited to deleting or undeleting threads; OR ELSE, it needs a very clever algorithm for combining the lists via commands like Bash diff command; Ubuntu Terminal, which would take script prompts, only takes paste commands via mouse and not keyboard. *KEYBOARD NAVIGATION: mouse navigation would have to respond to differences in box size, but the keyboard can hit Tab 27 times or 27 + 5*Z number of times.

I agree, the cows need to stop reproducing. Feel-free to Popper or Whewell me on this. Define "crazy." That's your hypothesis (Step 2), which solves an emergent system, and regarding the system: Are the inputs clearly observable or at least definable, or the outputs? Are some inputs potentially wrong or still unknown? Is the whole system and its outputs complex and noisy, or homogeneous and null? Can you tell? Can you observe the whole system well, or the relevant outputs? 1. Observe precedes 2. Hypothesize. You can "work backward" (i.e. backward chaining) or work forward. To falsify, reduce to definable inputs that constrain emergent outputs. Assuming this isn't just philosophy, some inputs are ill-defined, wrong, or obscuring/obscured. Try working backward. Working backward ramble, because WTH: The biosphere isn't a big ball of gas, and we aren't rocks, we're endotherms. If the biosphere receives unexpected complicating inputs, they are likely biological and metabolic, and the single most likely complicating input is us, a lot of us. Except, it's in an indirect way, because our brains have invented extended homeostasis with artificial metabolism. A brain will tell you that brains and their conversations are notoriously hard to reduce, but their metabolism is simpler, and inventions simpler still. We need to simplify their metabolism by removing the livestock animals and the extensive enclosures, or by integrating them with the natural ecosystems. The sun's nuclear fusion and the chloroplast (/cyanobacteria) are nature's ultimate power source, and man-made systems clearly subvert this, unintentionally destabilizing species, ecosystems and the biosphere. Blam! There it is! We subvert the natural metabolic order because we're hungry, cold, and artificially smart. Applied to livestock farming, we are growing cows instead of growing photosynthetic food for wild bovines, which would be more sustainable??? Sorry, it has been more than a decade.

Future generations to sort out how? By disrupting more ecosystems? Co-occurring anthropogenic stressors reduce the timeframe ofenvironmental viability of the world's coral reefs Ala dimreeper, it's looking like Doherty's "F*cked Forever."

Further commenting on this careless decontextualizing of categories. The personality disorders framework can type the pathology where pathology has presented, but not normal individuals like the five-factor model does. To type normal personalities, lowering the thresholds could impair the fitness of the model from which these categories arise. For example, maybe a normal-range person meets multiple criteria sets simultaneously, but maybe those "exclusion criteria" were meant to cancel eachother out in cases of extreme imbalance. Psychopathic, narcissistic, and antisocial personalities shared antagonism (reverse-Agreeableness) and grandiosity (reverse-honesty-humility). Antagonism: unsympathetic, unsharing, and opaque, and usually grandiose. Grandiosity: attention-seeking, entitled greed, and instrumental exploitation. The low consientiousness that distinguishes psychopathy and antisocial personality particularly is impulsive, improper, reactive, and over-stimulating. 'Grandiosity' is mania, but I lack a better term. Obviously tendencies can be amplified or suppressed, like through feedback, like a game that (is supposed to) keeps you alive. blah... groggy

Paranoid conspiracist cap on: Does the biohazard mail service run from China to USA? Could we maybe eventually prove what happened, based on what was shared? Presumably, the zoological samples were already in stomach acid, and that's the thing noone is talking about.

Psychology is categorically obscure, but reducing psychology to brain imaging is like reducing physics or biology to telescopy or microscopy. Quantifying the content of communication should matter. Neuroscientists, like all scientists, rely on the reliability of a basic willingness to communicate. Psychologists and anthropologists quantify not only communication, but communication patterns and ability, and the emerging social behavior and cultural activities. You can ignore good communication when it works and superfluous communication when it's insubstantial, but don't forget that bad communication will waste resources, time, cognition, public trust, and everybody's credibility. Of course, that might seem insubstantial to a narrow-minded person awaiting a paycheck. How about any logical framework of mental representation, adaptive behavior, or verbal communication that mutually reinforces the data analysese?

Psychologists use experimental and mathematical techniques to more precisely quantify the relationships among the observable variables that are only passively observed by the layman, like personality traits for instance. If the development of a reliable and precise measurement tool isn't scientific, then what is? But the layman might not understand the math, and what is psychology separate of these mathematical techniques if there isn't any unifying psychological theory that unites the discipline of psychology? This can make it seem more like a massive data collection operation than a scientific endeavor. Or Behavioral Ecology bolstered by the occasional MRI data. Most measurement tools are trained on ordinary people whom the rater already can intuitively understand. Yet, the most extreme aberrations are the source of the most intrigue and the most worry, and they may have nothing to teach, especially if they're lying. Nature doesn't lie, nature isn't machiavellian. Many would probably fancy themselves to be the real psychologist in the room.

This addendum is probably not premature. I'll also add that kombucha usually seems to work even though it is low sugar. The last thing I tested was a mouthwash, and it didn't work. I awoke after 4-5 hours. Sleeplessness is one of two major effects I might experience when the rinsing liquid isn't effective. Then I was awoken again, still tired, when we began moving the furniture. That night I tried a sugar free energy drink, swishing some around and drinking the rest in the morning. I awoke after 4-5 hours, and I drank the rest of the energy drink and showered on the next morning. My tiredness combined with the circus-sized showerhead and lack of water pressure adjustment caused me to splash some droplets onto my lips. This would normally be expected to interfere with the outcome, but this was shower water from the new house, not the old house. On the next night, I tried a different sugar free energy drink, and I awoke after 4-5 hours but sleep returned surprisingly easily. Since then, the old set of effects have changed and the sleeplessness hasn't returned. It would appear that sugar free energy drinks and mouthwash do not work, and that was the last test I could do. Nonetheless, a morning stuffy nose, the other main symptom and a symptom I've experienced for the last decade, is what persists. I swapped my toothpaste out, and I still awoke with a stuffy nose. I will have to figure out what is different with the water here before I continue onward. I've also had a sugar-free, carbonated drink called Xevia. It is about as ineffective as water for this purpose, but it appears to allow the stuffy nose to persist whereas diet soda at least eliminates the stuffy nose. It is the sleeplessness that has disappeared completely. The mushroom juice did allow me to sleep, but the mushroom juice was the only thing that kept me from falling asleep with a clogged, leaky nose symptoms that I usually experience when I accidentally touch my food. I guess the ineffectiveness is two-dimensional, but the mushroom juice was the only thing apparently exhibiting this second dimension of ineffectiveness. Addendum to that last part: I have had states where I would consistently sleep for 6-1/2 to 7 hours and then sleep would not return even though I didn't reach seven hours of sleep. It was like something else counteracted the sleeplessness, but only for 6-1/2 hours. The mushroom juice kept me up for so long that it might have overridden that.

I never hallucinate; I've always only had pseudo-hallucinations. I was diagnosed over seven years ago. Why would I pay outrageous american healthcare bills if it will not help me? Someone who owed money still owed me another $200 which they aggressively disputed. I cracked a steam method, but I'm trying an easier method. I will have in in under a week, and we will be moving in over a week. The toothpaste is reacting with something on my pillow, creating a cocktail that is alternately focus impairing, scatter braining or conversely energizing, angering. Although room temperature water is ineffective, what appears to be more effective is drinks and maybe especially sugary drinks and canned vegetable juices and soup liquids, but maybe not oily mushroom juice and some olive juices. If anyone has a liquid to recommend, recommend it now. I will have the final results in a week, and then we will be moved. I won't have time for the complex task of pouring hot water over my pillow case as it is elevated above the ground or placed over non-porous surface covers like tin foil, so I'll probably be putting it on a clothes line. Thank you. Preview Preview: the steam method involves steaming your face and then wiping your lips with a wet tissue. The wet tissue doesn't need to be hot if the steam was hot. However, you also have to dunk your toothbrush in hot water and remove it before the water cools. Something on the tooth unsticks in the hot water. It begins to restick as the water cools, making the method incomplete and rendering the container un-reuseable. The new method involves rinsing your mouth as you brush your teeth, but water as it turns out does not work, or not room-temperature water. Don't gurgle it or tip your head back or leave the toothpaste in your mouth too long, but spit it out and rinse it out ASAP as or after you have brushed your upper teeth front and back and the toothbrush has contacted your lips at the corners and the base. on the tooth*brush*

Sticky stuff on my toothbrush. Thinking about it, I think it may be most important to distinguish between the formalistic communications of science and the informal dialogues that have occurred since before humans could write. We speak informally all the time, but a scientist would be wrong to express his atheism in his capacity as a scientist. Ideas about the divine are informal, and they might not be scientifically meaningful let alone scientifically testable. Thus they should be responded to in an informal way. In science and the peer review process, the aim is an objectivity that is independent of the observer, and it would be important to disclose subjectivity if statements were subjective. In informal communication, it is already assumed that ideas are subjective, contextual, or approximate. Thus it would be redundant to preface a statement with terminology like "My feeling is that..."/"I think that..."/"What I'm saying is..."/"I imagined that..."/"My tentative conclusion is..." Informally speaking. Also, can the scientific method be tested scientifically?