Blindly promoting everything that isn’t coal, oil or natural gas – and over-focusing on CO2 – is a form of greenwashing that just shifts the problems. We need to learn to start thinking things through. We didn’t do that in the past. We need to make this obligatory in a way that goes far beyond environmental surveys (often mere windowdressing). It probably means that we need more visionary scientists in politics and fewer career politicians.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67135047

An update: https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/publications/assisted-dying-project

Do your best to withhold your snap judgements in daily life.

Look at this woman’s eyes.

Then look at this woman’s eyes.

Both women are genuinely afraid and desperate.

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Next-day follow-up:

Otherwise you will fall for this.

If you do fall for it, I won’t remind you that I already told you about this kind of shit now being possible years ago.

Why do these scammers target seniors? Because almost all seniors ar dumb and dense? No. Because they have money. It’s often the generation with the most money. (I saw some work about this by a Dutch university about five or six years ago.) Because they have children, friends and grandchildren.

You also need to keep in mind that systems like Alexa as well as the various video doorbells keep your recordings. So there is staff that has access to them. There’ve been news items in relation to that as well. But as you can see in the video below, that “courier” was caught thanks to the video doorbell.

There are pluses and minuses to everything. Most people still think as if we write with feathers and fountain pens and send paper letters. The obligatory paranoia that should come with using the digital realm – including the IoT – is very hard to adopt, for everyone. We distrust people, not things.

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RNW = Recovery North West Ltd

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/robots-towing-away-badly-parked-27501630

Why is being stalked by a stranger so traumatic?

Because it erodes your sense of safety and your general sense of control over your life. (More so than if you, say, were to be diagnosed with cancer. That’s between you and the cancer.)

Because it is repetitive. (A rape is over once it’s over. Stalking can go on for years, sometimes even decades.)

Why is getting stalking by a stranger so stressful?

Because being stalked by a stranger causes a profound cognitive dissonance within you. Because you cannot believe what is happening. Because what is happening cannot possibly be happening. Except, it is. You are trying to reconcile something that shouldn’t be happening with something that is happening and you can’t. You can’t make them overlap. You can’t make this make sense, no matter how hard you try. And try you do and you will. Oh, you will try very hard. You have to. You have no choice. You have to figure this out because unless you do, you cannot tackle it, manage it, deal with it, handle it.

This becomes greatly exacerbated when police officers and others choose to disbelieve you when you tell them what is happening.

Because then you cannot believe that they refuse to believe you. It clashes with your belief about how these others are supposed to respond to a situation like this. So then you will need to ditch that belief, which will likely make you feel abandoned and alone, or you will cling to it only to experience time and time again that it is not a realistic belief.

When police officers largely dismiss you, this also often aggravates the situation. It can put you in danger. First, the stalker may get very angry if he finds out that you went to the police and as he is stalking you, it is likely that he will find out. Many stalkers become furious when someone calls them a stalker. Second, the relative lack of action on the side of the police can greatly boost the feelings of power and control the stalker may be after.

Because it may cause you to lose your job or your business and maybe your home as well.

Because it can cause you to lose friends and because it can cause your relationship to fall apart and your marriage to fail.

Because it can involve threats and may result in injuries to your pets or your children or other relatives.

Because it can come with theft or destruction of property, which can be highly personal items such as underwear or cherished mementoes.

“Criminalising defenders encourages collective stigma and sends off an intimidating message,” the IACHR said last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/2023/oct/12/human-rights-experts-warn-against-european-crackdown-on-climate-protesters

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/how-criminalisation-is-being-used-to-silence-climate-activists-across-the-world

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/threats-to-germanys-climate-campaigners-fuelled-by-politicians-rhetoric-says-activist

https://www.geoethics.org/post/happy-international-geoethics-day-2023

Later today, amnesty international sent this. Ouch.

It shows in your DNA. The effect is half that of smoking and twice that of obesity.

This is an example of how class thinking works out in practice. Tenants aren’t proper people but a lesser subspecies? That is a falsehood.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/10/living-in-privately-rented-homes-linked-to-faster-biological-ageing-study-finds

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Here’s another one.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/06/belgian-transgender-deputy-pm-petra-de-sutter-rishi-sunak-not-join-real-bullies

Also, yesterday:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/05/record-rise-hate-crimes-transgender-people-reported-england-and-wales

The Home Office assessment agrees with what neuroscientist Kathleen Taylor wrote in her book “Cruelty”, namely that even the mildest verbal otherization primes people for aggression.

I made a related video a few years ago. (A few hours later: Except, it appears that there is hackers messing with URLs again so maybe you’re not getting to see that particular video, below. It’s happened before. I’m currently getting some weird messages that I am choosing to ignore and my screen split up all of a sudden.)

This is a case I looked into a few years ago. I read the report and exchanged one or two tweets with her mother. I don’t know why but her case got to me more than others.

Now there is a documentary. The police response at the time was even more lackadaisical than was already known. (I’m still in the middle of watching the documentary at the moment.)

What I remember is that the police didn’t have the IT expertise at hand that would have determined that the other messages were coming from him too.

Her case particularly also is why I feel strongly that cases of stalking and harassment should be dealt with very differently.

(That reminds me. Does anyone know how that big legal action against the police in England is going? It made the news when it was filed but I haven’t seen any more news about it since. I know that a lawsuit can easily take one or more years.)

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Lauren’s calls to the police, to me, sound like she was very concerned (afraid), but doing her best to stay above it.

Please note that the date on this post is incorrect. I don’t know why there is an incorrect date on this post.

Watch the damn videos. Both of them.

This is classic sadistic stalking, also known as resentful stalking. It’s intended to make someone’s life a living hell. To control someone else.

It can manifest in various forms.

Be warned. This is not a funny video to watch. Someone died.

The victim in this video relocated several times to try to escape the stalking. In the end, she went to the police. Thankfully, they believed her and set up a trap. When they caught the stalker, the police discovered several other victims, including a colleague of the victim who reported the stalking to the police.

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I am sure that I am not the only one who sometimes gets really disheartened when efforts and accomplishments clash with the callousness and destructiveness of cold old-fashioned capitalism. If you are feeling at a loss as to how to proceed and feel ready to pack it in, then you may find this Plum Village presentation really helpful.

She’s a former BBC journalist who worked on the politics newsdesk.

Also had convictions for animal abuse. Also possibly had Asperger’s? Problems with alcohol. Depression.

Someone who needed to receive medical care rather than to provide it.

Source: NOS

https://nos.nl/artikel/2492220-om-waarschuwde-erasmus-mc-voor-psychotisch-gedrag-en-veroordelingen-l

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UPDATE:

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😍🥰👍

(The future of bioethics: Challenges, Visions and Opportunities)

Also, new president of the Hastings Center.

I love her vision! I so agree!!! Very challenging, sure. “Aspirational and inspirational” as she put it.

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I e-mailed her and wrote the following:

Thank you. I am going to mull this over and let it inspire me.

I am a member of the public, have a background in earth and life sciences. I ran into the very first edition of Glenn Cohen’s EDX course and that’s what got me into bioethics.

I love the way – aspirational and inspirational, indeed – you are tackling – or should I say “approaching” – the field. It’s very challenging to take all views and angles into account – but we should, no matter how difficult this is – and I really love the way you fully embrace that. I also think that bioethics cannot keep being mainly restricted to the US and that it needs to go global, even though that is going to be so so challenging.

Having lived in England with its persistent class ideas, maybe I can contribute that housing and homelessness are part of the poverty topic, which is an inequity topic and the result of government policies and decisions. I agree with Philip Alston on that (NYU). 40% of Brits are currently in poverty.

Also, if you haven’t heard of them yet, then the IAPG – international association for the promotion of geoethics – might be useful to know about – connections to mining industry – and, with regard to the havoc that biased algorithms can cause, that’s not restricted to health, but also to tax-related decision-making, which also can have health impacts. In a pretty shocking Dutch childcare tax credit scandal, children were sometimes removed from parents, but I am sure you’ve heard of it.

Enjoy your weekend.

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Also, when I wrote my book about “the new eugenics”, I looked for people to send it to and did my best to find scholars in Arabic and African countries too. I really was interested in how Islamic scholars and cultures see these issues.

Speaking of which: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/islam-and-bioethics-what-we-all-need-to-know-registration-713788158597

See also https://sps.columbia.edu/academics/masters/bioethics/events

Shouting match outside, Portsmouth-style. (Well, somewhat.)

I go onto my balcony, wish the guy a good evening, assuming that he just was the target of racism. There’s a little bit of that here locally, I’ve noticed. It’s horrible. Awful, just awful. People whose skin isn’t white and/or who speak a different language.

He shouts back, too angry to listen in detail to what I am saying. Oh, I know what that is like. After years of being showered with blind hate and contempt, you can end up very angry indeed. I know how it goes.

(He wanted to be heard. He was NOT in a mood to listen to me.)

He was merely angry. Controlled. But hurt.

Been there so many times myself in the English enclave of Hatesville. The hate knows no bounds and nobody wants to listen to you, about what is being done to you. I know what that is like. Boy, do I know what that is like.

Next, young women tell me to keep my mouth shut because there are people living here. What am I? A tomato?

Shortly after that, three low-flying helicopters pass, some kind of VIP. (They flew NW-SE. Heading 130, maybe.) I’ve seen something similar when Trump arrived in Portsmouth.

Some young woman under my window starts shouting that these are our liberators, that they’ve been preparing for 80 years. Or was it 60?

I’m so through with the human species.

I hope that the guy got rid of his anger by shouting at me. You can’t keep bottling it up but nobody wants to know about it, so you have no choice but to bottle it up. Every once in a while, it comes out, whether it’s convenient or not. Usually it’s not at all.

Fuck you, Portsmouth with all your hate, your relentless hate. Fuck. You.

That guy’s anger resonated with me.