In 2017 Idiocracy is a Documentary

[screwtape]

The serotonin chemical balance fairy tale about SSRIs, that was popularized for marketing purposes, was a deliberate fraud from the very start, witu tragic consequences for multitudes of people, including teen suicides. I see no reason to think that any of the succeeding chemical theories that have been or are being used in promoting antidepressants, or any other psych and tune-up meds, are any less deceptive, and tragic in their consequences. If there are any chemical theories that can do more good than harm, they will not be any of the theories being promoted in drug marketing campaigns.

Citation fucking needed. SSRIs work. Saying they don't is denying statistics. I'd be more sympathetic if you hadn't proffered woo like NLP as an alternative.

The issue is that when antidepressants begin to work you get your energy back a little before your mood lifts. You might have been sitting around in a state where you felt bad enough to kill yourself, but couldn't get yourself together enough to make a plan, gather the necessary bits, and make the decision to go ahead. Then you get prescribed pills, start to improve your energy, but the mood is still down, and you find the wherewithal to go out and buy a rope. That's the tragedy of the not uncommon phenomenon of suicide seeming to be triggered by an anti-depressant; it shows it was beginning to work and waiting perhaps just a few days more would have lifted the mood sufficiently for the sufferer to begin to see his way through it. Tricyclics and MAOIs work much more slowly (~2 weeks to see anything at all, and three months for full effect), and there isn't the abrupt change you see with SSRIs often beginning as soon as five days in.

[screwtape]

Not when the choice of symptoms to lump together is dictated by what the treatment can allegedly do. For example, it might be found from experience that some drug makes people sleepy, and deadens pain at the same time, so it's prescribed for people with insomnia and chronic pain, rather than prescribing two separate drugs. The fact that a drug happens to alleviate two or more symptoms at the same time, is no evidence at all that those symptoms have a common cause.

You're proving my point without meaning to. If a drug makes people sleepy and also alleviates pain, it suggest the physical mechanisms behind insomnia an chronic pain have something in common. You don't need to the details to draw that conclusion.

The likelihood is that in stage IV sleep (the deepest dreamless sleep in which your muscles become practically flaccid) you make the repairs of the myriad tiny injuries occurring in muscle fibres during use. Not enough sleep, or just shallow, interrupted sleep as in OSA, results in gradual accumulation of muscle injuries that result in chronic pain. That's probably why tricyclics work for fibromyalgia, at least at one level - they also tend to reduce the emotional component of pain, so that you can say 'Yeah, it hurts but it's OK' rather than having a pain really get to you.

[screwtape]

....
And in all that time she has NEVER seen such an ugly, stinky, smelly, autistic, small dicked loser as Steersman. That's why she charges him so much more than anyone else.

BB, I rather wish you wouldn't use 'autistic' as a general purpose insult. There's a lot of folk here who might take it personally. This is nothing to do with the manufactured sin of ableism, it's just impolite to the people you are talking to, or their loved ones.

[Bhurzum]

I hear that while British women are some the most hideous creatures in the Multiverse...

http://media.agonybooth.com/wp-content/ ... a-june.jpg

End of debate.

But thanks for playing.

[Easy J]

One thing I remember about Prozac is that missing my dose would result in my being pretty uninhibited maybe a day later. It's main effect for me was a flattening out of my emotions & missing a dose would give me a swing in the opposite direction.

I'd sometimes skip my dose on a Friday with the intention of raising hell & showing out in front of my friends on Saturday. I wouldn't be depressed. Just uninhibited & feeling everything a little more deeply than normal..

[Shatterface]

Oh, for Christ's sake.

Steers, pay Barbie's mum what you owe her and both of you take a break.

Me mum would never lower her standards that much.

Seriously, mother jokes ???

You started with the autism insults so go fuck yourself (if your mother won't give you a freebie.)

I've no idea what your actual obsession with Steers' private life is but you are coming across like the religious nut bob outside my office who bangs on about whore-mongers all day through a loud-speaker.

[Sunder]

I can't help but dislike any form of the little people argument.

If modernity isn't meeting people's basic emotional needs (and it isn't) then religion stepping in to fill the gap should not be viewed as a mercy, but as a form of predation.

I simply think that not all people are equal and need the same things in order to feel good, and that if freely chosen some forms of wishy-washy cafeteria beliefs are tamer and more harmless than precisely defined and authoritarian religions.

I agree with your argument that it's better to fight for secularism and enlightenment principles first and foremost.

And as others have said before, if you promote skepticism, and people actually practice it, you get atheism as a free bonus. And it works better than promoting atheism and hoping that will make people skeptics as well (it doesn't).

I guess my point is that if someone thinks some people "need" religion for comfort, there's still the question of "can't we give them something better?" We know that in many countries godlessness and individual satisfaction are both higher than in the US. It might be a difficult task to improve peoples' lives to the point that they don't need the crutch, but it's not impossible.

[Lsuoma]

Unbelievably, it appears that Orwell bit from Hillary's book is real, lots of people are laughing at it.

Yes. Yes, it is real: here is a screencap from a copy I "found" on the internet just now.

Image1.jpg

(40.98 KiB) Downloaded 100 times

[Lsuoma]

LoL. You mad, bro? Never saw "When Harry Met Sally"? ;-)

Of course I saw it.

I went with a woman.

Its this thing called a date.

Totally alien to you, I suppose

This what what Steerzo means by date:

date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

[fuzzy]

Harvard misgenders Chelsea Manning; calls her a fellow.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/14/ha ... ellow.html

[RebeccaB]

I simply don't believe that ALL people can become atheists, only SOME, and in the long run fighting for secularism and for Enlightenment principles is better than trying to "deconvert" people. Writing books about how atheism works is good, but it will convince only the people with the potential of becoming atheists, and the others will maybe agree with some criticism but retain their "fuzzy" rituals etc.

The ideal situation would be one where all people who are still believers are all wishy-washy "cafeteria believers", free to pick and choose which messages they want without authoritarian religious traditions or hierarchies.

My feeling is that some people have a hardwired immunity to ideology--are mutants, in fact, as Ray Hyman once said of nonbelievers. I can explain best with an excerpt from an essay I wrote on "The God-Shaped Hole" a few years back, which ended with what I hoped were some entertaining speculations. Here is the excerpt:

"[For some years], I have been amassing material about the "god-shaped hole," which has led me...to a nifty collection of charismatic cult messiahs, dictators, politicians, and gurus, many of them apparently psychopathic, plus their legacies of routinized ideologies. The common thread is that people follow them eagerly, often at great personal cost, and often in great numbers, while others are immune to their charisma. The followers frequently explain the attraction...in terms of filling a void and providing meaning to a life that otherwise seems empty and directionless. But it looks to me as if the void has been misnamed: it is an X-shaped hole, where X can stand for any ideology. Here are my modest proposals about this strange compulsion to believe, presented as rank speculation for the reader's amusement:

1. Most humans have a hardwired tendency to "follow the leader," reflecting the hardwired power hierarchies of our hominine ancestors and relatives. Think silverback gorillas, alpha chimps, and glorious leaders. The human variant of a chimp troop would look an awful lot like a cult. The hardwired imperative to imprint would look an awful lot like a "god-shaped hole." As a pattern shared with our fellow great apes, this would be a primitive rather than a derived trait, predating the development of big brains. However, our big brains would allow bells and whistles like charisma and spirituality to be co-opted into what is essentially a matter of simple dominance.

2. The tendency is heritable, but variable. A minority of humans may be born without the imperative to imprint - that is, without the "X-shaped hole." The trait has nothing to do with intelligence or empathy, but I suspect the lack of a capability for self-transcendence is involved.

3. Studies of the heritability of religiosity are looking in slightly the wrong place. Spirituality is a red herring. The "X-shaped hole" is fundamentally about power and hierarchy, not spirituality. It can be as easily filled by political as spiritual ideologies, or by sports affiliation, or brand loyalty, or even a particular flavor of atheism. Social identity theory and the concept of collective narcissism could go a long way in sorting out some knotty questions in evolutionary psychology.

My own journey was a simpler one than most. I never felt an impulse to believe, or to call on supernatural help, even at the worst of times. I had no great struggle to lose God or to find an overarching meaning to my existence, no terrible guilt regarding my unbelief. In fact, the most pernicious lines I remember from all those altar calls were the ones that urged us to turn off our brains, ignore the contradictions and barbarities and talking snakes, forget about asking questions or even applying commonsense, and simply believe, with the faith of a little child. Well, not this little child. But I wonder how much of my immunity was simply the luck of the draw.

If, as I suspect, the X-shaped hole is bred into the greater part of humanity, then we are stuck with its ramifications. However, this would not necessarily be a reason to despair - it would depend on what our fellow humans chose to fill that void with. Not all the monsters are on the side of religion. I have seen some atheists with as gaping a void as any bible-thumping fundamentalist, filled to the brim with malignant ideologies. I have seen some people of faith whose hopes for the world are essentially secular, and identical to my own. Personally speaking, in a world as perilously poised as this one, I would not reject potential allies solely on the grounds that they answered an altar call that I am unequipped to hear."

[MacGruberKnows]

This what what Steerzo means by date:

date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

Steerbots definition of a date? I think maybe this:

Date
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the use of date on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers.
Look up Date, Dates, date, dated, or dates in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Date or dates may refer to:

Contents [hide]
1 Common meanings
2 Places
3 People and kinship groups
4 Art, entertainment, and media
4.1 Films
4.2 Games
4.3 Music
4.3.1 Groups and labels
4.3.2 Songs
4.4 Television
4.4.1 Series
4.4.2 Episodes
5 Organizations and programs
6 See also
Common meanings[edit]
Date, a social activity which may be associated with:
Dating, a form of courtship, which may include any social activity undertaken by, typically, two persons with the aim of assessing each other's suitability as a partner
Double date, a social date in which two couples participate
Group date, a modern pattern for dating wherein a group of single men and a group of single women organise a night out, with the hope of forming romantic partnerships
Meeting over a meal (e.g., "breakfast date", "brunch date", "coffee date", "dinner date", "drinks date", "lunch date") or for a planned activity (e.g, "bowling date", "golf date", "ski date", "tennis date"), for social and/or business reasons
Play date, an arranged appointment for children to get together for a few hours
Date (fruit), the fruit of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera)
Calendar date, a day on a calendar, which may also be used in:
Date (metadata), a representation term or class associated with a data element
DATE command, a system time command on DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows operating systems for displaying the current date
Dating methodologies in archaeology, for an archaeological artifact
Old Style and New Style dates, to indicate the adoption of the Gregorian calendar and change of start of year in Great Britain and its colonies.
Radiometric dating, a family of techniques used to determine of the approximate period of origin of an object, e.g. "to carbon-date an artifact"
Places[edit]
Date, Fukushima, a city located in northern Fukushima, Japan
Date, Hokkaido, a city located in Iburi, Hokkaidō, Japan
Date, South Dakota, an unincorporated community in the United States
Date City, California, a city in the United States
Date District, Fukushima, a district located in Fukushima, Japan
Dateland, Arizona, an unincorporated community in the United States
People and kinship groups[edit]
Date (surname), family name in Japan and elsewhere
Date clan, a Japanese feudal clan from the Sengoku period
Art, entertainment, and media[edit]
Films[edit]
Mystery Date (1991), an American teen comedy film
Games[edit]
Mystery Date (game), a board game from the Milton Bradley Company first released in 1965
Music[edit]
Groups and labels[edit]
Date (band), a Swedish dansband
Date Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records
Songs[edit]
"Date" (song), a 2009 song from Mr. Houston
Television[edit]
Series[edit]
Dates (TV series), a UK Channel 4 series
Episodes[edit]
"Date", an episode of the British sitcom Miranda
"Dates" (Only Fools and Horses), a 1988 episode of the BBC sit-com Only Fools and Horses
"Misery Date", an episode of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
"Mistery Date" (November 14, 2012), season 4, episode 8 of the American sitcom Modern Family, and the series' 80th episode overall
"Mystery Date" (Mad Men), an episode of the American AMC series Mad Men
Organizations and programs[edit]
Design Automation and Test in Europe (or DATE), a yearly conference on the topic of electronic design automation
Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Education (or DATE), a substance abuse program in some U.S. schools
See also[edit]
Blind date (disambiguation)
Dating (disambiguation)

[Steersman]

<snip>
Its this thing called a date.

Totally alien to you, I suppose

This what what Steerzo means by date:

date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

Ooh, ooh, be still my beating heart hydraulic pump, Mk IV ... ;-)

[feathers]

I don't know why it surprises me that far-left types can get into religion like this, but it does somehow. Explains a lot though.

I suspect that many of the American SJWs at least come from (fundamentalist) christian upbringings. Give me the child, I'll give you the SJW.

[gurugeorge]

Chant heard at the UC Berkeley anti-Shapiro protests:-

"Speech is violent, we will not be silent."

I don't think even Picard has enough facepalms.

[Steersman]

I simply don't believe that ALL people can become atheists, only SOME, and in the long run fighting for secularism and for Enlightenment principles is better than trying to "deconvert" people. Writing books about how atheism works is good, but it will convince only the people with the potential of becoming atheists, and the others will maybe agree with some criticism but retain their "fuzzy" rituals etc.

The ideal situation would be one where all people who are still believers are all wishy-washy "cafeteria believers", free to pick and choose which messages they want without authoritarian religious traditions or hierarchies.

My feeling is that some people have a hardwired immunity to ideology--are mutants, in fact, as Ray Hyman once said of nonbelievers. I can explain best with an excerpt from an essay I wrote on "The God-Shaped Hole" a few years back, which ended with what I hoped were some entertaining speculations. Here is the excerpt: <snip>

Interesting observations, little too convoluted for me, at least at the moment. :-) But the following sections are something I can be my teeth into a bit more:

My own journey was a simpler one than most. I never felt an impulse to believe, or to call on supernatural help, even at the worst of times. I had no great struggle to lose God or to find an overarching meaning to my existence, no terrible guilt regarding my unbelief. In fact, the most pernicious lines I remember from all those altar calls were the ones that urged us to turn off our brains, ignore the contradictions and barbarities and talking snakes, forget about asking questions or even applying commonsense, and simply believe, with the faith of a little child. Well, not this little child. But I wonder how much of my immunity was simply the luck of the draw.

Was it really that overt? A more or less explicit urging to turn off your brains? Really kind of criminal then if that's the case. Nicholas Humphrey - quoted at some length in Dawkins' The God Delusion if I recollect correctly - argued, with no little justification:

Children, I'll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children's knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.

In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense. And we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out or lock them in a dungeon. ...

Not for nothing that the Jesuits said, reportedly although the provenance seems rather murky, "Give Us A Kid Till She's 7 and We'll Have Her For Life" [ninja'd ;-) ]. Criminal that "cults" can more or less cripple children to the point where their lives are seriously circumscribed. Reminds me of a passage in Slum Dog Millionaire where some "Fagins" blinded a child to make it more effective as a beggar.

Reminds me too of a passage from 1984 - about halfway through at the moment:

“Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” [pg 56]

And Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, said:

"That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity[...], if [the Church] shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black.

So while it might well be true that, as you later said, "the X-shaped hole is bred into the greater part of humanity", it seems clear too that some toxic environments also contribute to the problematic consequences of that more or less genetic tendency by amplifying it, by making it a larger part of a personality than it maybe should be. About which we should be able to do something without having to wait for genetic engineering to resolve the problem.

If, as I suspect, the X-shaped hole is bred into the greater part of humanity, then we are stuck with its ramifications. However, this would not necessarily be a reason to despair - it would depend on what our fellow humans chose to fill that void with. Not all the monsters are on the side of religion. I have seen some atheists with as gaping a void as any bible-thumping fundamentalist, filled to the brim with malignant ideologies. I have seen some people of faith whose hopes for the world are essentially secular, and identical to my own. Personally speaking, in a world as perilously poised as this one, I would not reject potential allies solely on the grounds that they answered an altar call that I am unequipped to hear."

Indeed. Reminds me of something that Pigliucci said:

I’d rather have a productive conversation with an intelligent Christian than a frustrating one with an obtuse atheist, and believe me, there is plenty of both out there.

Kind of an interesting question though, what exactly breeds those "monsters". Kind of think that it's a tendency to self-righeousness, to dogmatic literalism. Something from a Canadian "atheist priestess", Greta Vosper:

"Those who recognize the Bible's claim to be the word of God as the monster in the tub with the baby," are the ones who must throw that monster out with the bathwater. And that means, besides other painful changes, a real, radical look at the words and deeds of the faith's central figure.

Indeed.

[katamari Damassi]

re: SSRIs and teen suicide:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/tee ... 1406207226

A national team of researchers led by Christine Y. Lu, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, tracked antidepressant use among 2.5 million young people between 2000 and 2010. After the FDA’s warnings in 2003 and 2004, use of commonly prescribed antidepressants like fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft) and others fell by 30% in teenagers and 25% in young adults. During that same period, suicide attempts rose by 22% in teens and 34% in young adults. The researchers concluded that the decrease in antidepressant use, sparked by worries over suicidal thoughts, may have left many depressed young people without appropriate treatment and that may have boosted the increase in suicide attempts. The results were published online this week in BMJ.

While the researchers suggested that the FDA’s warnings are responsible in part for the decline in antidepressant use, the media reaction—and sometimes overreaction—to them made things worse.

In other words, the media and self appointed experts like woo peddlers and religious dingbats took a precautionary warning as evidence that the use of SSRIs actually increased rate of suicides.
Tragically, the propagation of that myth may have cost some people their lives
Wouldn't want to give advice to someone that could cost them their lives would you?

They should just put SSRIs in the water supply, like fluoride.

I mentioned that I take Adderall for ADD. The problem is that Adderall is a controlled substance so it requires doctors' visits every 3-4 months or so to get refills. That doesn't work for me because I spend half the year in Alaska and 12 weeks on the road. My doctor tried to switch me to Stratera(sp?), an SSRI that was recently approved for the treatment of ADD, and it's not a controlled substance. It is super expensive, though my insurance covered it. The main problem was I thought I was going insane. It was like drinking 20 cups of coffee and having a joy buzzer inside my skull. I had to go back to intermittent Adderall. So please, no SSRIs in the water supply.

[feathers]

Me mum would never lower her standards that much.

Fair enough, she only had to lower her panties.

Seriously, mother jokes ???

Your mother is a hamster!

[SM1957]

Why are women so easy to condition? Are they little better than sheep?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hddz-jS6bSA

[MarcusAu]

...
So please, no SSRIs in the water supply.

Too late!

http://www.gdprice.com/j/15159.JPG

[RebeccaB]

Was it really that overt? A more or less explicit urging to turn off your brains? Really kind of criminal then if that's the case.

Yep, it was really that overt. Frequently quoted was First Corinthians 3:18-19 - Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.

Hmm. Perhaps best to contextualize by putting in the whole essay. But I won't clutter up this thread, I'll start a new topic elsewhere, in case anyone is interested.

[katamari Damassi]

Jerry at WEIT comments on an anti-free speech post by Peezus.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/

[MarcusAu]

Yep, it was really that overt. Frequently quoted was First Corinthians 3:18-19 - Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.

Hmm. Perhaps best to contextualize by putting in the whole essay. But I won't clutter up this thread, I'll start a new topic elsewhere, in case anyone is interested.

If it's not too long post it here (you can always dupe it to somewhere else later) - otherwise it's likely to get sidelined and not read.

Jings! It feels like a long time since anyone has actually quoted the bible.

For all the modern gloss and 'relative harmlessness' modern christianity has in the west - you can still track the origins of it. On a related note I see that Steven Crowder had Dennis Prager on recently to discuss why the liberal interpretation of the bible is not correct. So that 'old time religion' has not breathed it's last quite yet.

As it does not seem to be going away - I think as others have said that the best to do is support the free speech of all groups and shore up the separation between religion and government.

[Guest_936d3dec]

Why are women so easy to condition? Are they little better than sheep?

youtube com/watch?v=Hddz-jS6bSA

Hedy Lamarr did not invent Bluetooth. To the extent that Bluetooth relies on spread spectrum concepts first discussed by Lamarr, it also contains 98% additional science and engineering work made by women and men that feminists like this one erase by saying "Hedy Lamarr invented bluetooth".

[Steersman]

Was it really that overt? A more or less explicit urging to turn off your brains? Really kind of criminal then if that's the case.

Yep, it was really that overt. Frequently quoted was First Corinthians 3:18-19 - Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.

Hmm. Perhaps best to contextualize by putting in the whole essay. But I won't clutter up this thread, I'll start a new topic elsewhere, in case anyone is interested.

Not sure you need to worry about "cluttering up this thread" as it seems designed as a "clutter-catcher". :-)

But I might pop around if you decide to do so, put my oar in the water. :-) Definitely an interesting question though, at least the general related one - religion in "modern" society" - is, if recent discussions are any indication.

Although one might suggest or rather quote something from anthropologist John Hartung: "Ways and means are not the issue. The question remains, ways and means to what?" The views of the religious on the question seem badly flawed in many ways. But the atheist-skeptic-secular answer, in effect, of "whatever" seems unlikely to be terribly effective in resolving any social problems.

[shoutinghorse]

Shatterface, aren't you from England.

I hear that while British women are some the most hideous creatures in the Multiverse, the sex is really good.

Especially the oral.

Seems there aren't any teeth to get in the way:

How very dare you, thats a dreadful racist and stereotypical slur on us Brits. FYI we British have been at the innovative forefront of world dentistry for over 200 years. :snooty:

http://i.imgur.com/QV0eLrX.jpg

[RebeccaB]

Yep, it was really that overt. Frequently quoted was First Corinthians 3:18-19 - Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.

Hmm. Perhaps best to contextualize by putting in the whole essay. But I won't clutter up this thread, I'll start a new topic elsewhere, in case anyone is interested.

If it's not too long post it here (you can always dupe it to somewhere else later) - otherwise it's likely to get sidelined and not read.

Already posted at viewtopic.php?f=29&t=521&p=438910#p438907 Didn't want to annoy the FT. ;)

[Steersman]

Some more rather odious news from the transactivist front:

GenderTrender

Timeline of Trans Activists Beating a Woman in Hyde Park

September 15, 2017

A public debate was scheduled in London between feminists and transgender activists over the conflict of interest between women’s rights and the transgender movement, specifically the impact of proposed changes to the UK Gender Recognition Act. The event was titled ‘What is Gender? The Gender Recognition Act and Beyond’.

At debate is the proposal to eliminate the legal classification of women as ‘adult female human beings’ to be replaced with ‘Gender Identity’, an undefined and subjective feeling with no stated characteristics that is unrelated to biological sex. This would allow males who declare this personal feeling to opt into female areas of public life set aside to promote equality for women and protection from male violence (female prisons, female change rooms, female scholarships, etc.). Transgender activists seek the elimination of women as a legal class on the premise that doing so would improve the mental health of a small minority of males who believe biological sex does not exist. ....

Bunch of effen thugs in the transactivist movement, most if not all whom are or were male. The Facebook page that had been included in the above at the beginning of it:
https://www.facebook.com/Jen.Izaakson/p ... 1693006962

Time to read the riot act to transactivists: transwomen are most definitely neither women nor female. Couple of related comments in a Friendly Atheist post that several here, including yours truly, have been commenting on:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... 3514772959

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... 3514797826

[MarcusAu]

...
Bunch of effen thugs in the transactivist movement, most if not all whom are or were male.
...

What do you mean? How do you know that they are capable of producing sperm?

[jimhabegger]

I'll review what I've said, then go one more step.

- I think that drugs can sometimes help improve the lives of people who are facing recurring or continual mental/emotional adversities.
- My objections to most perpetual daily use of drugs for that purpose are not against the use of drugs, in itself. It's because of the dishonesty, treachery, self-deception, and self-betrayal that I see in it.
- I think a better understanding of the associated chemistry could help improve the benefits of the drugs. I don't expect that kind of knowledge to be found in any of the theories that are promoted in drug marketing campaigns.
- Even if there's no truth at all in any theories about how the drugs work, that would not be a reason not to use them.

[Steersman]

...
Bunch of effen thugs in the transactivist movement, most if not all whom are or were male.
...

What do you mean? How do you know that they are capable of producing sperm?

:-) I did say "most if not all", and "are or were male". It was maybe a bit of a leap, but looking at some of the high-profile transactivists, at least in the US, like Zinnia Jones, Riley Dennis, Bruce Jenner, Zoey Tur, et al, it seemed a not unreasonable leap. Re Tur, a blast from the past:
Ben Shapiro Files Police Report Against Transgender Reporter Zoey Tur

And you might look at another GenderTrender post, particularly the commentary on one "Shakina Nayfack", which gives some further justification for the "thesis":

Transgenders: The ‘True Enemy of Women’ is… Amy Siskind?
August 31, 2017

[Suet Cardigan]

London Underground passengers have been injured following an explosion on a District Line train in south-west London.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41278545

[shoutinghorse]

London Underground passengers have been injured following an explosion on a District Line train in south-west London.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41278545

Confirmed its now being treated as a possible cultural enrichment attack.

[InfraRedBucket]

Brass Eye has come true.......

Fake social media accounts pretending to be chicken nuggets and ice-cream are being set up by sick paedos to lure school kids

One sex offender even pretended to be a ROAD outside a girls' secondary school to entice teen students to accept his friend request

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fa ... 175055.amp

[SM1957]

After Parsons Green, the Muslim Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, was quick to say that we will not be intimidated by terrorism.

As professional victims, Muslims at once claimed to be terrified after Finsbury Park

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-4033684 ... ror-attack

[jimhabegger]

Now I'm ready to go back to the life improvement techniques that I was trying to explain. I brought them up as a way to help improve the lives of people who are facing recurring or continual mental/emotional adversities, but actually they aren't only for that. They're techniques for helping to improve any part of anyone's life, by changing their habits, reflexes and other involuntary behavior, including mental and emotional behavior.

[deLurch]

I'm surprised Steers isn't on about the ethnic cleansing in Myanamar.

Well that Johnson isn't going to hoover itself.

[CommanderTuvok]

Hmmmmm

Not a mystery when you consider who his wife his.

He, literally, henpecked.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

I don't know why it surprises me that far-left types can get into religion like this, but it does somehow. Explains a lot though.

I suspect that many of the American SJWs at least come from (fundamentalist) christian upbringings. Give me the child, I'll give you the SJW.

SJWism is much like a religion, with unquestionable dogma, virtue-signaling, enforced conformity, and swift & harsh punishment of heresy,

[Brive1987]

Joy.

Off with the family to Europe on the long flight tomorrow.

Rhine, Zermatt, Lucerne, Prague, Rome.

Good one. I'm backrupt but. Damn dog is in for 20 days of VIP Room at the canine jail. Between the dog, the teenage daughter and the 20 year old son I should have just bent over right from the start.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... IpHVbslN6g

[screwtape]

Joy.

Off with the family to Europe on the long flight tomorrow.

Rhine, Zermatt, Lucerne, Prague, Rome.

Good one. I'm backrupt but. Damn dog is in for 20 days of VIP Room at the canine jail. Between the dog, the teenage daughter and the 20 year old son I should have just bent over right from the start.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... IpHVbslN6g

No chance you could put on your furry suit and take the dog's place, sending him on the Grand Tour instead? No? Oh, well. The saddest words of all—what might have been.

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

[Kirbmarc]

Joy.

Off with the family to Europe on the long flight tomorrow.

Rhine, Zermatt, Lucerne, Prague, Rome.

Good one. I'm backrupt but. Damn dog is in for 20 days of VIP Room at the canine jail. Between the dog, the teenage daughter and the 20 year old son I should have just bent over right from the start.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... IpHVbslN6g

Enjoy your trip! Prague and Rome should be visited at least once in your lifetime by anyone who can afford the trip, the Rhine has plenty of magnificent views, Lucerne is a very nice city and Zermatt is a great challenge to visit without bankrupting yourself (it also looks very nice).

[DrokkIt]

I don't know why it surprises me that far-left types can get into religion like this, but it does somehow. Explains a lot though.

I suspect that many of the American SJWs at least come from (fundamentalist) christian upbringings. Give me the child, I'll give you the SJW.

SJWism is much like a religion, with unquestionable dogma, virtue-signaling, enforced conformity, and swift & harsh punishment of heresy,

This is exactly what I was thinking.

Interesting development: the original poster has today made another post complaining that 40 people de-friended them following the "religious coming out". Cue a ton of commentary about how people are intolerant and can't abide a different point of view.

Beyond irony.

[Brive1987]

Joy.

Off with the family to Europe on the long flight tomorrow.

Rhine, Zermatt, Lucerne, Prague, Rome.

Good one. I'm backrupt but. Damn dog is in for 20 days of VIP Room at the canine jail. Between the dog, the teenage daughter and the 20 year old son I should have just bent over right from the start.

[i.mg]https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... IpHVbslN6g[/img]

Enjoy your trip! Prague and Rome should be visited at least once in your lifetime by anyone who can afford the trip, the Rhine has plenty of magnificent views, Lucerne is a very nice city and Zermatt is a great challenge to visit without bankrupting yourself (it also looks very nice).

Ta. I've eaten too much toblerone not to see the mountain god made in its honour.

I will be subtly nudging the Prague experience into one anchored on Heydrich. I see teenage tears.

Good.

[MarcusAu]

Just try to think of all the money spent as an investment.

And when it pays off in the future - tomorrow belongs to you.

[Really?]

A year ago, SJW movie critic was having a good life, shitting on other men, all of whom are sexual predators who hate women. Then one day, a woman tweeted back at him with a vague accusation. He apologized. The SJW zombies descended upon him. He resigned from his critic site.

He was quietly rehired. Now he and the Alamo Drafthouse, famous for their all-woman screenings of Wonder Woman, are, as a wise man once said, in the shit.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/how-a-sexu ... film-world

[shoutinghorse]

Known terrorist sympathiser goes missing after Parsons Green attack.

http://i.imgur.com/LFqkCvs.jpg

[Shatterface]

Harvard rescinds Chelsea Manning's visiting fellowship after CIA chief protests

University withdraws honorary title, but still invites whistleblower to ‘spend a day’ speaking on campus, after CIA director cancels event over ‘traitor’

Harvard University has rescinded an offer to make Chelsea Manning a visiting fellow after the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, cancelled an appearance at the university.

Pompeo had been scheduled to appear at Harvard’s John F Kennedy school of government to give a speech on global security concerns, but withdrew on Thursday, calling the university’s invitation to Manning a “shameful stamp of approval”.

On Wednesday, the military whistleblower had been among a group of 10 – including former White House press secretary Sean Spicer and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski – invited to speak at the institute of politics at Harvard’s Kennedy school as visiting fellows.

But hours after Pompeo’s withdrawal, the university stripped Manning of her title.

“I now think that designating Chelsea Manning as a visiting fellow was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility,” said the dean of the Kennedy School, Douglas Elmendorf.

“In general across the School, we do not view the title of ‘fellow’ as conveying a special honour; rather, it is a way to describe some people who spend more than a few hours at the School.

“[However] we are withdrawing the invitation to her to serve as a visiting fellow – and the perceived honour that it implies to some people – while maintaining the invitation for her to spend a day at the Kennedy School and speak in the school’s forum.”

He said their invitation to Manning was not a political endorsement, but was aimed at letting students “engage with people with fundamentally different worldviews”.

In response, Manning tweeted that she was “honoured” to be disinvited.

In a letter to Harvard on Thursday, Pompeo called Manning an “American traitor” and said he “could not appear to support Harvard’s decision” by attending the event.

Earlier in the day, the former deputy director of the CIA Mike Morell also resigned from his fellowship at Harvard’s Belfer school over Manning’s invitation.

Pompeo said the whistleblower, who was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of disclosing classified documents, had endangered lives.

“Many intelligence and military officials believe those leaks put the lives of the patriotic men and women at the CIA in danger,” he said. “I believe it is shameful for Harvard to place its stamp of approval upon her treasonous actions.”

Morrell also wrote to the university to announce his resignation on the same day. “I cannot be part of an organisation – the Kennedy school – that honours a convicted felon and leaker of classified information,” he said.

“I fully support Ms Manning’s right to publicly discuss the circumstances that surrounded her crimes as well as the institute of politics’ right to invite whomever they believe will further the education of Harvard’s student body. But it is my right, indeed my duty, to argue that the school’s decision is wholly inappropriate.”

In a recent interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Manning said she had been prompted to give 700,000 military and state department documents to WikiLeaks because of the human toll of the “death, destruction and mayhem” she had seen as an army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

In May this year, she was released from a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence – the harshest sentence in US history for an official leak – which was commuted by Barack Obama in his final days in office.

On Thursday, Douglas Elmendorf, the dean of the Kennedy school of government, was forced to call off Pompeo’s event at the 11th hour.

“I fully support Ms Manning’s right to publicly discuss the circumstances that surrounded her crimes as well as the institute of politics’ right to invite whomever they believe will further the education of Harvard’s student body. But it is my right, indeed my duty, to argue that the school’s decision is wholly inappropriate.”

In a recent interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Manning said she had been prompted to give 700,000 military and state department documents to WikiLeaks because of the human toll of the “death, destruction and mayhem” she had seen as an army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

In May this year, she was released from a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence – the harshest sentence in US history for an official leak – which was commuted by Barack Obama in his final days in office.

On Thursday, Douglas Elmendorf, the dean of the Kennedy school of government, was forced to call off Pompeo’s event at the 11th hour.Minutes after the event was to begin, he took to the stage and told the audience Pompeo was not there and would not speak. “We will try to reschedule it as soon as we can, but the CIA director, is obviously, in charge of his schedule,” Elmendorf said. “We are not in charge of his schedule and he gets to decide when and where he speaks, of course.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... to-traitor

[Shatterface]

Sorry about the duplication in the text.

[MarcusAu]

Sorry about the duplication in the text.

Apology not accepted - you are textually inadequate.

[Shatterface]

Sorry about the duplication in the text.

Apology not accepted - you are textually inadequate.

I am intertextual. Don't misgender me.

[MarcusAu]

Well, you'd know your own self best.

But the evidence would suggest that you are definitely over-texted.

[John D]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... to-traitor

Manning is a traitor and Obama should not have pardoned her IMHO. I finding it a bit disgusting that Harvard even thinks her opinion is worthy of giving her a platform. She will still speak at the Kennedy school ... and then hopefully she will drift into obscurity. Let her speak.... whatever.

I don't know what Manning really has to say. She leaked tons of documents because she figured out war was full of death and destruction. Wow! Haha... what a shocker. Who could think that war is fucking awful. (sarcasm).

It is an interesting story however. One of the biggest traitors in recent history was trans. (and people wonder why trans people are not trusted in the military). Way to go Manning who may have singularly set back trans rights by 20 years!

[John D]

And fuck the Guardian for calling Manning a "whistleblower". She's not a fucking whistleblower. She's a fucking traitor.

[Shatterface]

SJWs will denounce her loss of 'fellowship' even though it doesn't limit her right to speak.

Words are violence. Call Manning a man and you put trans lives at risk. But hand out official secrets and that's okay. That's just free speech.

[John D]

SJWs will denounce her loss of 'fellowship' even though it doesn't limit her right to speak.

Words are violence. Call Manning a man and you put trans lives at risk. But hand out official secrets and that's okay. That's just free speech.

The media and the left are fucking nuts. Ben Shapiro spoke in Berkeley last night... He is a conservative yarmulke wearing Jew. The city had to spend $600k in security to control the crowds of people calling him a Nazi. Yes! Ben fucking Shapiro is a Nazi! WTF!

[Lsuoma]

Joy.

Off with the family to Europe on the long flight tomorrow.

Rhine, Zermatt, Lucerne, Prague, Rome.

Good one. I'm backrupt but. Damn dog is in for 20 days of VIP Room at the canine jail. Between the dog, the teenage daughter and the 20 year old son I should have just bent over right from the start.

[i.mg]https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... IpHVbslN6g[/img]

Enjoy your trip! Prague and Rome should be visited at least once in your lifetime by anyone who can afford the trip, the Rhine has plenty of magnificent views, Lucerne is a very nice city and Zermatt is a great challenge to visit without bankrupting yourself (it also looks very nice).

Ta. I've eaten too much toblerone not to see the mountain god made in its honour.

I will be subtly nudging the Prague experience into one anchored on Heydrich. I see teenage tears.

Good.

Make sure you visit the Jooish Cemetery in Prague. Also, a side trip to Karlštejn should be on the agenda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl%C5%A1tejn

[Kirbmarc]

SJWs will denounce her loss of 'fellowship' even though it doesn't limit her right to speak.

Words are violence. Call Manning a man and you put trans lives at risk. But hand out official secrets and that's okay. That's just free speech.

The media and the left are fucking nuts. Ben Shapiro spoke in Berkeley last night... He is a conservative yarmulke wearing Jew. The city had to spend $600k in security to control the crowds of people calling him a Nazi. Yes! Ben fucking Shapiro is a Nazi! WTF!

Even Bernie Sanders (Bernie Sanders :lol: !) has been called a white supremacist by Quentin James, a staff member of a Hillary PAC, for criticizing SocJus identity politics.

For a lot of people in the SocJus everyone who's not one of them is a white supremacist or Nazi.

[free thoughtpolice]

SJWs will denounce her loss of 'fellowship' even though it doesn't limit her right to speak.

Words are violence. Call Manning a man and you put trans lives at risk. But hand out official secrets and that's okay. That's just free speech.

The media and the left are fucking nuts. Ben Shapiro spoke in Berkeley last night... He is a conservative yarmulke wearing Jew. The city had to spend $600k in security to control the crowds of people calling him a Nazi. Yes! Ben fucking Shapiro is a Nazi! WTF!

You can be a joo and a nazi, but you can't be a joo and a "literal nazi". The word nazi doesn't mean what it used to mean a few years ago, that's why they've created the more specific literal nazi.
Get with the times you white supremacist rape enabler.

[Shatterface]

...
So please, no SSRIs in the water supply.

Too late!

http://www.gdprice.com/j/15159.JPG

This is one of my favourite Aldiss books and that's cover in which I first read it but this cover is even trippier:

https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1330 ... 201190.jpg