Why are sexist influencers appealing to our boys?
Online discussion (webinar):
Boys Online: Parenting against internet misogyny
Human rights – diversity – neurodiversity – equality – inclusivity – discrimination – otherisation – speciesism – planet – consumerism – bioethics sensu lato
I agree with Gary Lineker
I’ve been detecting that exact same tone too for some years.
The UK is not a place in which foreigners can feel perfectly safe.
Personally, I was met with xenophobic hostility from the beginning, in 2004. I didn’t recognize it for what it was at first. I thought that people were just disorganized (unprofessional) or just plain weird. Thankfully, not everyone was hostile, but by contrast, my experiences in the US were very different. The times were different too, sure, and Donald Trump has not helped and I’ve seen changes in people I used to know in the US too, I’ve seen two of them become more xenophobic, but I doubt that the US is as hostile as the UK these days.
Collapsing homes
Four houses in Rotterdam are in danger of collapsing and have been evacuated; the facades somehow became separated. Traffic needs to take a detour to avoid causing vibrations.
Thankfully, the danger was discovered in time. There were one or two loud bangs, and smoke, the latter likely having been dust. There are no cracks in the walls, so the facades “simply” need to be re-anchored asap. The cause of their detachment is not clear yet.
A funny coincidence is that just a few streets from me, a house did collapse in December and the house next-door collapsed partially. Two people were taken to hospital. Cause? The mains cause was likely low-quality bricks, said Portsmouth City Council.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-64254661
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-64172151
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-63889834
These homes are not in the Copnor area, as the third article says, but in the Kingston/Buckland area (and in the electoral area called Fratton ward).
In May 2021, something similar happened concerning a much younger (2013) house in Christchurch (with video):
Stalking: Watch this…
Just listening to this initially made me very nervous (because I too want my life back, though my story is very different).
I am so pleased that her friends and family were there for her when she got out of the relationship.
There is so so much that I recognize, the not knowing what to do, the contradictions in one’s own behavior and attitude, and particularly also the identity crisis, because your entire life has basically revolved around this for sooooo long and you no longer know what it is like to be able to live without constantly having to brace yourself… You need to go through a healing process and that can only begin after the stalking stops. After a rape, the healing process can begin immediately. Not with stalking. Unless the person dies, indeed, you never know when it’s really over.
Most police officers have NO IDEA what being stalked does to a person. No fucking idea.
You will have to watch this on YouTube. The two creators of this podcast (which has a video version on YouTube) are very strict about a lot of stuff. I am sure that’s because they learned a lot of things the hard way.
And this stupid fucking moron should finally shut his fucking vile trap, too!
Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson. This worm should shut up and crawl back into the woodwork. I have had more than enough of his vile hate-mongering, too. Isn’t even capable of tying his shoes, for crying out loud. Too fucking complicated for him.
All he does is sow hate and division.
CNN’s recently written about how the country is still reeling from the results of his disasters and there he is, popping up again with his stupid inane bullshit. Enough!
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/25/uk/boris-johnson-british-politics-intl-cmd/index.html
That guy too, now that’s what I call fucking demented.
I have no more patience for bullshit. None.
As a result of Johnson’s demented bullshit, Britain is falling behind further and further and further. Poland and Slovenia are overtaking it.
Yep, dude, that IS called “taking back control” and revealing the bullshit and chaos and incompetence for all the world to see. That is exactly what it is. Turning the country into a sinkhole. The sinkhole has control of itself. Sure.
Everyone else avoids it.
(That’s what I call deluded and deranged, Mr Johnson. Or just plain greedy, if you look at it on a much smaller scale.)
The bigger picture: Covid from a lab or not?
The bigger picture is that the more we abuse and otherwise mess with other species and their habitats, the more it comes back to bite us humans.
That the US needs to find out whether China is into some secret biological warfare stuff, that I get, though.
(Why the US? It is the only other super power – Russia is mostly a big pain in the behind, not quite a superpower, albeit a worrisome pain in the behind – and it has a pretty big presence in that part of the world, as we saw on CNN the other day, when CNN crew was on board of that American plane that got intercepted by a Chinese fighter jet over the Taiwan Strait. The pilots said that they get this stuff all the time, that it was just another day at the office for them. That the US does that, has a presence there is to help protect Taiwan, but also the Philippines and other countries, as China tries to claim territories as well as waters that aren’t China’s, kinda like Russia is trying to claim Ukraine.)
This is so amazing it made me tear up
This is worrisome: Li-ion battery fires on the rise. Don’t charge e-bikes and scooters overnight.
Why? Because if they catch fire or explode, the resulting fire can develop so quickly that you may not have time to get out of the house.
If you charge it while you’re away and it blows up or catches fire, and you’re in a freestanding home, at least only the home would be damaged.
A plane that had just taken off from San Diego, for Newark, had to return a few weeks ago when a battery pack or a battery in a laptop caught fire. Four cabin crew were taken to the hospital as a precaution.
They had manage to stop the fire by putting the object into a thermal containment bag, but I could imagine that that sounds much easier than it is in reality.
Watching this video made me realize that it’s far worse than I thought. Hmm.
Roald Dahl’s work: My take
Leave the books unchanged. They represent the era in which he wrote the books and as such will show readers that times have changed.
Editing his works is an insult to the creativity of the author and in spirit almost, albeit not quite, akin to removing references to the Holocaust from books.
It’s not as if he wrote in incomprehensible medieval English after all.
I don’t think I’ve ever read any of his works but I can imagine that editing them may also take part of their charm away.
I believe that the publisher has now decided to publish both the original and the edited versions. That’s a good compromise, as long as their covers make very clear that the latter books have been edited.
This was also in the news in the Netherlands, along with the bit below, which I’ve seen mentioned on the CNN site as well.
How hackers think
This one in the video immediately below was based in Canada. Was working as an IT guy at Canada’s National Research Council (!) when he was already shipping and selling huge amounts of drugs. Got arrested, went to prison, then got himself a job as an IT guy at Public Services and Procurement Canada (!).
He targeted hospitals, medical research institutes and other organizations during the pandemic, at a point when a lot of people were tired and anxious.
Yes, it’s true that the NHS still had a lot of Windows XP computers at the time and that that was why it was so vulnerable.
I’ve read that more recently, it still had a considerable number of computers and laptops relying on Windows XP. (See for example this article in Computer Weekly, 2019.) So did the UK’s court system. So did police forces. (See for example this article, 2019.)
Back in 2020, many ATM machines still did too: https://www.techradar.com/news/atm-security-still-running-windows-xp
Did you know that the checkouts at the Asda in Portsmouth used to run on Windows XP too, until they did that big makeover a few years ago? (Yes, I’ve seen it, and should have taken a photo, but didn’t.) I wonder how many supermarket checkouts currently still rely on Windows XP.
Tesco did too. See below.
While I was looking on the web to see how many store self-checkouts still use Windows XP, this popped up for those who need an explanation of what for example Windows XP is: https://www.porthosp.nhs.uk/departments/it-training/jargon-buster_2.htm
The problem is not so much that they’re running XP. The problem is when those systems no longer receive updates. Microsoft used to have special maintenance contracts for organizations that continued to run XP after its “expiry date”, such as the British and Dutch government, but I doubt that it still does that.
Now, to end with, here is a ransomware story that will make you smile:
This attack used EternalBlue.
PS
Want more? Then watch this. About an attack of a very different nature.
24 February 2023: Ouch. Big Dutch data theft involved someone who people did not see this coming from… He worked at the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure, but he didn’t abuse data there as far as people are able to tell at this point. (It’s not that easy to get access to data there other than when you’re really working closely with specific data.) His access was blocked as soon as folks found out. He was seen as a pleasant colleague who gave off no signs whatsoever that he might be doing things that he shouldn’t be doing.
PFAS
Do you know who alerted us to the problems with these forever chemicals? The people who were living near the plants where they are manufactured and… pet bird owners. It was not instantly clear what caused it, but pet birds started dying horrible deaths because their owners used non-stick cookware. These pet birds served as the canaries in this coalmine. Eventually, avian vets and pet bird owners put two and two together.
Be inspired
Left-wing traditionally seen as more threatening than right-wing in England?
That might explain a few things…
Fawning as trauma response in older adults (and disabled people) – plus self-defense techniques
When you get older, you feel much less able to defend yourself against physical attacks or simply run away as fast as you can.
The fawning trauma response, which is often described as motivated by a “need to avoid conflict”, can have a lot to do with that. It’s what you do when you can’t fight or flee and when freezing is not part of your mental make-up.
The fawning response serves to keep you physically unharmed, helps you avoid physical trauma.
This is the phenomenon that I have noticed in older women here in the UK who live on their own. I didn’t know that there was a name for it. As soon as you turn 45, you’d better make sure that you have a black belt in judo that you keep up or quietly fade into the background and smile a lot, right?
Wrong. But this is what we are taught.
The way to overcome this fawning response is to very deliberately risk physical harm in conflict situations. What do I mean by that?
If you stand up for yourself in conflict situations that are often the result of older adults being widely ridiculed and demonized in the UK and you very deliberately risk getting injured, knowing very well that there won’t be a thing that you can do against it anyway, you radiate strength.
You radiate “I don’t give a fuck what you do to me, I’m gonna say what I want, I’m gonna say how I feel about how you are behaving and if I end up on a hospital ward with a broken arm, a concussion and a black eye as a result of that, so be it.”
You likely feel that you don’t want to spend even a second of your time on the abusive fools that you encounter and prefer to ignore them and contentedly live your life.
But until you do spend those few seconds on them and let them know what’s what, they may well continue to force you to see them if these are people who you encounter on a regular basis. Because people who are abusive desperately want to be seen and heard. They want a sense of power and if you ignore these people, you motivate them to keep bugging you.
The fawning response, on the other hand, may feed their addiction to a certain feeling. That too can keep them coming back for more.
Also, get as fit as you can. Do what you can to stay fit. Even if it’s just a daily Tai Chi session that someone teaches on Vimeo or YouTube. You’ll feel so much better. It’s not true that old age comes with muscle weakness and illnesses by definition. You do have to work harder at staying fit, or so we think, but the reality is that we simply were much more active when we were younger and may have gotten lazy.
I don’t think that older adults should need to get nose and eyebrow piercings or start wearing chainmail and biker jackets just to discourage aggression and feel safer.
How some hacking works and what a VPN does
This. About infantilising other adults or propelling them into super hero status. Relax. They’re merely as human as you.
Reading this story made me smile. It’s a feel-good story about every-day people living their lives, but other people insisting that they can’t possibly be every-day people like everyone else, and there is something quite hilarious to that.
The overall message this story gives off is a strong “hold on, don’t give up, just continue to live your life your way and they will eventually come to their senses”.
For some reason, a lot of people have a tendency to define people on the basis of one characteristic only and it’s immensely short-sighted.
Continue readingWhich UK govt department (ultimately) oversees the use of non-human animals in scientific research?
The Home Office, asserts a paper that I am reading. That cannot possibly be true, was my first thought. But which one it is, then? Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, maybe? Because DEFRA is part of it and often holds public consultations on the use of almost anything to do with genes in plants and non-human animals.
No.
The Animals in Science Regulation Unit (ASRU) is indeed part of the Home Office. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/animals-in-science-regulation-unit
We need more folks like him
Watch this eco-engineer use his hands
Trailblazer from the States making waves for women in England
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/03/emily-hunt-rape-survivor-helps-change-law-voyeurism
How otherization and contempt can work out in practice
“Do not minimize the extent of my having been changed from a vivacious, sensual, happy, loving, athletic, healthy, wealthy, bright, articulate, fairly socially adept human to being melded and moulded to accommodate an autistic adult into exactly the opposite of who I am for the sake of a one-sided relationship.” (works both ways, I bet)
This is from this web page:
https://www.theneurotypical.com/how-to-spot-aspergers.html
Just in case the above-listed web page disappears – such things happens; nothing to do with hacking – I have copied its contents below.
Continue reading“He does not get it.”
What do you mean? Breakfast? His birthday present? The ball in the garden?
The literal interpretation versus the interpretation of “understand”.
People with cognitive “deficits”
Seeing the good in people
What’s wrong with England (and Spectrum 10k)
I just heard about what I think may be a brilliant example of what’s wrong with English thinking and why I feel England is really backward. I purposefully haven’t looked into it yet, and will only in a moment, but it strikes me as perhaps pretty typically English (and class/power-driven if you get what I mean).
I may be wrong. We’ll see.
Spectrum 10K.
It caused so much upheaval that the Wellcome Trust paused the project.
If I summarize it correctly, and I’ll find out in a moment, scientists in England – the birth country of eugenics where Francis Galton (who I think was a cousin of Darwin, you know, the guy who talked about survival of the fittest) came up with it – decided to start collecting the genomes of 10,000 autistic people WITHOUT ANY PRIOR COMMUNICATION WITH THE AUTISTIC COMMUNITY.
These bumbling researchers first need to go talk with the community, said the Wellcome Trust.
(Let me also guess that none of the researchers are autistic themselves. There’s a bigger chance that I am wrong about that – by which I actually mean that there may be a lab tech or lower-level researcher who is autistic, likely not one of the PIs – than that I am wrong about this having something to do with the research project being English.)
Here we go.
There is a Wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_10K
Where was I wrong? There was involvement from UCLA, but it’s UK-wide and led by Simon Baron-Cohen. Apparently, the project was criticized from the start.
(It would be typically English to then decide to forego communication and consultation with the “lowly” folks it concerns, wouldn’t it? Yes, I hate England and its stupid hateful abusive culture. Sorry. I am way beyond being able to still be objective about it, most of the time. Academically, it’s often more about beating itself on the chest, and pissing as many people off as possible than about actually achieving anything, communicating with the public and doing something well. Doing something well is so utterly un-English. It’s often seen as foolish and naive – “daft” – to do something well. No, that’s not just me who says this. The English work ethic sucks, and has sucked for a long time, with exceptional individuals and organizations as always acknowledged and appreciated.) (But I am glad that a lot of groups are currently striking here, with teachers now joining too. How can you have a good work ethic when you’re treated like dirt? When incompetence is rife? When people only get well-paying jobs because of who their dad is or how much money they put in someone’s pockets, not because of whether they are capable. All of that has gotta be part of it.)
This is what the National Autistic Society has written about the project:
https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/spectrum-10k
This is what the NHS has written about it:
When I started searching, I initially had the impression that I had been wrong and that the study had first gotten approval, was then paused and later got approval again.
But no, IT IS INDEED CURRENTLY PAUSED FOR COMMUNITY CONSULTATION and this does come after a great deal of upheaval in the community.
In the country that invented eugenics…
That is a despicable, thoroughly unprofessional approach, is it not?
This is also a big failure on the part of the granting organization (the way its grant applications are formulated needs an update too), but as they’re directly involved, perhaps that is no surprise.
https://www.stemcells.cam.ac.uk/people/pi/rowitch
https://www.sanger.ac.uk/person/hurles-matthew/
https://geschwindlab.dgsom.ucla.edu/pages/
Yes, I am angry.
No, I am not autistic.
Yes, England is the pits.
Yes, this is a BACKWARD, almost 19th-century, scientific approach. Exploitative.
But, as an attempt to be a little more objective, let me add that, yes, you sometimes see contemptuous attitudes in other academic research too, not just in England.
Yes, I hate England’s horrible abusiveness.
(Oh, and yes, I turned down a paid PhD position at the University of Southampton, albeit years ago. So you see that I am not quite writing this out of spite. I really hate England’s abusiveness and sad work ethic. I prefer working with the victims of this abusive culture, it seems.)
Yes, I’m known for often being highly critical. But I LOVE it when things are done well and/or brilliantly. And that, sadly, is so utterly un-English. I hate what having been stuck here for so long has done to me, in terms of the inevitable deterioration of my own work standard, for example. I hate it. I hate it.
Oh, humans are so smart!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64387401
Tell you what. PIGEONS seem to get a lot of this too.
I’ve been utterly baffled by the fact that pigeons are able to understand human “come here” gestures. How do they know what it means?
Likely answer: The human species has only been around for a second, whereas many other species have been on the planet much longer and have done a lot of learning.
It’s not just London
Air pollution and pesticides not only affecting men’s fertility but their brain cells as well? Or is it syphilis?
Let’s face it, this NOT the result of men thinking that Emily Atack is “easy access” and “up for it”. This comes from men who are seriously unwell.
Yesterday, I read about a man who sent a female friend a photo of his bare behind, with whip tracks on it. She’s struggling financially and the friend thought that she would be up for getting paid in return for doing SM stuff to him. Instead of ASKING HER, he sent her a photo of his bare BUM? That’s nuts and exploitative.
Steekje los.
SM has been around for a long time, on the other hand, but sending a complete stranger – Emily Atack – naked photos of you, that’s seriously unhinged.
It’s a sign of a problem. This is not proper mature adult behaviour. It’s unhinged behaviour. It’s problematic behaviour. It’s got nothing to do with low IQ or learning disabilities. It’s as nuts at jumping off a church tower “just because”. It’s as nuts as teenage TikTok dares that cost some of these teenagers their lives.
Maybe these men all have syphilis and have mistaken Ms Atack for a doctor and want her professional opinion on how serious the situation is.
That’s actually the only explanation that would still make some sense.
This, sadly, is only half “tongue in cheek”. Sending nudes to a stranger IS unhinged behaviour, let’s face it.
The difference between sending Ms Attack nudes and beating her to death is a difference of degree, not in kind.
The month isn’t even over yet.
In addition, we’ve also already had far more shootings in the US this year than there have been days. How many of those shootings came from women?
“Research from 2020 found 76% of girls aged 12-18 had been sent unsolicited nude images of boys or men, commonly known as “dick pics”.”
That’s very worrisome.
I see such things as implicit rape threats, threats of violence. (Rape = violence) Because why else would anyone do something like this?
PS
Syphilis can affect the brain. So maybe all these men who pester Ms Atack do indeed have syphilis.
The rise in hate against women seems to be rampant in the western world. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/23/sexism-in-france-is-alarming-and-getting-worse-says-report
For men who’ve seriously lost the plot and thought they were being cute, here is a simple test to help you.
- Would you send the photo to your grandmother? No? Then don’t send them to any other woman or girl either. Simples.
CNN on why the NHS is falling apart
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/23/uk/uk-nhs-crisis-falling-apart-gbr-intl/index.html
A few points
- In December, 54,000 people in England had to wait more than 12 hours for an emergency admission. The figure was virtually zero before the pandemic, according to data from NHS England.
- The average wait time for an ambulance to attend a “category 2” condition – like a stroke or heart attack – exceeded 90 minutes. The target is 18 minutes.
- There were 1,474 (20%) more excess deaths in the week ending December 30 than the 5-year average.
- Data from November showed there were more than 7 million people on a hospital waiting list in England.
- According to an IFS report, even after adjusting for staff sickness absences, there are 9% more consultants, 15% more junior doctors and 8% more nurses than in 2019.
- Yet the NHS is treating fewer patients than before the pandemic.
- According to analysis by health charity the Health Foundation, average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 ($3,715) per person per year – 18% below the EU14 [countries that joined the EU before 2004] average of £3,655 ($4,518).
- During this period, capital expenditure – the amount spent on buildings and equipment – was especially low, according to the Health Foundation analysis. The UK has far fewer MRI and CT scanners per person than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, meaning staff often have to wait for equipment to become available.
- Hospital beds are particularly scarce. Over the past 30 years the number of beds in England has more than halved, from around 299,000 in 1987 to 141,000 in 2019, according to analysis by the King’s Fund, an independent think tank.
- Neville, a consultant in a hospital, judges 2008 the “best” he has seen the NHS in more than 30 years of working in it. By that time, the NHS had enjoyed nearly a decade of hugely increased investment. Waiting lists fell substantially.
