Because that individual doesn’t have the power to enforce their personal freedom. The Principal does have the power to enforce their idea of what the “correct” look is. The principal isn’t concerned about raising conditions for the group in actuality, they just want reality to conform to their idea of what they desire it to be. For them, it’s within their rights to their own freedom to bring everything that makes them uncomfortable to heel. Anything that they don’t like is an affront to their personal freedom to make everyone do what they want.

Poor working memory is a huge ADHD trait. What the world needs is to drop the expectation of remembering names. ADHD, either as just a natural thing that the human brain does sometimes or as a result of other factors, is becoming an increasingly prevalent thing among a growing portion of the population. Yet the world is not built to accommodate people with it. Medication and therapy help, but the issues never really go away, and the solution in most cases shouldn’t be to “fix” those with ADHD to make them more “normal,” but to make the world into a place where they too can function. And this goes for anything neuro-divergent, obviously. We should get rid if the idea of making different people into “normal” people and instead make society a place where everyone can be accepted and function along side everyone else.

Sorry, I ranted a bit there…

Ooh! I’ve got a thing about this!

In an Episode of the Youtube series Under the Blacklight, David Blight, a Yale professor brought something up that I think brings the American idea of “freedom” into a different context. He says “This whole new idea of what’s liberty and liberty for whom, can also kill. Especially when it replaces the idea of Liberty as that which has to be shared in some kind of common good.”

The idea isn’t really new and is actually deeply rooted in America’s past through to it’s creation. Freedom should be a group concept in which we maximize freedom for the populace. Instead it’s seen as individual freedom only. When you combine this with the idea that freedom is the most important thing, it results in people coming to the conclusion that they are justified in anything in the process of attaining what they want. And they’ll use whatever tools they have available to attain this in as straight a path as they can.

America has always been a champion of personal freedom, whatever they say. It’s founding was about a bunch of business men who didn’t want to pay taxes so they staged a rebellion. There’s still a heavy bent against taxes with the main argument being people don’t want the government to have any power, but really it’s because individuals just want to keep their money while disregarding the ways in which that money would improve the good for all people. At it’s core America is a Selfish nation built of selfishness and getting yours before someone else takes it.

It gets more a little complicated when talking about motives of those in power, but boils down to the same, and they retain that power primarily by banging the “personal freedoms” drum.

To quote famed Discworld philosopher Granny Weatherwax,

“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” “It’s a lot more complicated than that–” “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–” “But they starts with thinking about people as things…”

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

It’d be so much weirder if it wasn’t.

Oh, I see now. I missed some pretty basic math there with that distribution. That makes sense now, thank you!

So I’m bad at math. Can you explain why we’ve decided to multiply pi by 2? Is there an articulable reason or is it just a rule?

c+x= pi * (d+2) in this case, right? So where did that multiply pi by 2 come from?

Okay, but what if there is no compression or expansion? What if it’s a rigid string already stretched out just enough to be expanded completely but not enough to move the bell? Or maybe a thin wire of the same weight?

Do you have a degree of social anxiety? Over the years I’ve noticed that multiple sources of sensory input get overwhelming when I’m stressed. If I feel in control and “calm” I can just mentally filter it all as a single background noise but if my anxiety is real bad or I’m upset about something else I feel like I’m being assaulted from all sides.

If I’m at a bar with friends I’m comfortable with and we’re relaxed and chatting then I’m fine. The music and myriad of conversations all just become a single background noise. Drinking probably helps.

If I’m struggling to accomplish some task and it’s really getting to me, any noise from multiple sources puts me on edge and I’ll do pretty much anything to stop it.

And if it’s not an anxiety thing for you, it might just be that it’s from multiple sources. Sensory overload isn’t usually a physical thing, it’s how our brain interprets it, which means our state of mind or even our perception matters. The music you listen to you know is coming from one place: your headphones/speakers. You know it’s meant to work together so your brain can file that away as a single thing to comprehend. A noisy party with 20 different conversation that you know are all separate? Your brain is trying to view them all separately and ADHD can make you want to interpret all of them.

I think that last bit is most likely and could just be the basic of what your brain is doing. But for me personally, stress triggers my brains inability to filter all background noise as a single “noise” because it’s on high alert fight-or-flight mode and on the lookout for dangers so it’s taking everything in that it can to locate the danger.

I think something like that coffitivity thing could help you acclimatize you to it if you’re looking to change your reaction. Train your brain to view that kind of noise as a singular source and not 100 different sources. And with the internet being what it is, there’s almost definitely something out there that will imitate whatever environment you’re wanting to adjust to.

in Kate Manne’s “Down Girl,” about misogyny she wrote: “They put women in their place when they seem to have ‘ideas beyond their station.’”

“Misogynist hostility encompasses myriad ‘down girl’ moves . . . to generalize: adults are insultingly likened to children, people to animals or even to objects. As well as infantilizing and belittling, there’s ridiculing, humiliating, mocking, slurring, vilifying, demonizing sexualizing or, alternatively desexualizing… and other forms that are dismissive and disparaging in specific social contexts.”

Emphasis mine to point out the most relevant portions in this case. It’s a solid read on misogyny that I definitely recommend to anyone.

And it’s so lazy. You could get .pngs of all of that stuff and just stack them up in PS and throw on a sepia filter and it would look better after 5 minutes of work. AIs like this have just made people lazy. I’ve seen people talk about using Chat GPT to do Algebra 1 math. Literally any basic search engine will be just as effective and you might actually learn something but people are so determined to make AI something they can rely on. /rant

It’s definitely older than that. I remember French jokes going back decades before. They’ve always been a punching bag in America’s eyes. “The French are smelly.” “The French are snobby.” “The French are cowards.” If I had to guess, it probably goes back to WWII and their occupation by the Nazis.

I heard this guy talking about the right’s reaction to the pandemic say “This whole new idea of what’s liberty, and liberty for whom can kill. Especially when it replaces the idea of liberty as that which has to be shared in some kind of common good.”

It’s obvious though that it’s not actually a new idea, but I think this cuts to the heart of it. It’s an inherently selfish mindset that is so prevalent on the right. They use the idea of “liberty” as a bludgeon to get what they want by redefining it. Freedom has stopped meaning a group concept and become purely a personal one. Their own wants are the most important thing in all cases. And I want to emphasize want. These aren’t beliefs. They are projecting their desires of the way they would prefer the world and calling them beliefs.

It’s fairly universal, I think, but exemplified in American culture. I could go one about some of the “founding” ideas of the country that have had effects that last to today but I’m talking about freedom today. It was always a selfish idea here (bunch of business men didn’t want to pay taxes) and the end result is before us.

People see a book that makes them uncomfortable - for whatever reason - and just want it removed, regardless of any wider ramifications. They get scared about their own impending doom when a pandemic hits so they seek to remove the fear by the most direct path. Actually solving it is hard, but removing the fear is quick, so they demand that everyone just stop being afraid and stop reminding them of the things they fear. It seems to be a pretty standard through-line for their ethos.

When I was 15 and learning to drive my dad lived in Atlanta. I went there for a visit once and he had me drive there, and everywhere for the whole week. My first experience driving on an interstate included going 90 around the perimeter full of other cars going faster than me and requiring getting from one onramp and moving over 4 lanes to get tot he next exit in half a mile. It was terrifying and I definitely cut waaayyy too many people off driving into town and I’m shocked I didn’t cause a wreck. That was always his teaching style, just throwing me into the deep end. It’s still burned into my brain as one of the most dangerous things I’ve done (And that’s a long list). But, when I had to go into my drivers ed class the following school year I was the only one who was at all comfortable on the interstate and one of the best drivers in the class.

I don’t recommend teaching things that way and I’d never do that with my children, but damn was it effective since I didn’t die. Not dying was probably a close call though.

“anti” also doesn’t mean opposite, it means against. The roots of the word, tracing back to the Greek, means against. As it does in French and it’s Sanskrit version. All forms of it mean opposed to. This is why language is important and some checks should be there to counter the “language is malleable” argument that people use as an excuse to not learn how to use words correctly. The idea that anti means opposite has been around as long as I can remember, and definitely longer than that, but it drastically changes the meaning of words.

As a wage slave, even spelled out like that it doesn’t sound great to me. I don’t care about how impressive the company is beyond it’s ability to pay me. “Hey, you did a good job of making my company look good enough to hire people better than you.” I’m not sure exactly how to put my discomfort with it into words, but being told I did a good job of improving the company’s image just feels like a pat on the head and a “good boy.” My goal here isn’t to help you, it’s to get you to give me money. Compliment me with a raise, not telling me how much more money you’re making because of me. Bragging to employees about quarterly profits only actually cheers up the ones who drink the company koolaid at every job they ever work at. For the rest of us it means that we won’t be out of a job because the company went under. I got an extra 2 hundred dollars from my salary this year from that and the guy announcing it got a hundred thousand dollar bonus. Great.

I’ve worked in loss leader departments before and have always liked it, but my salary wasn’t dependent on tips so… But getting a job in a part of a business where your department itself doesn’t bring in money, but it’s existence brings in more money for the company just by existing can be great short term. You don’t have to worry about KPIs or much more than just doing a good job. Then, inevitably, the company gets bought, or someone new comes in high up who only wants to see numbers go higher and can’t see the forest for the trees. They see an department losing money and they don’t believe the statistics around loss leaders, so they scrap it or make efficiency more important, which means the department can’t focus on doing a good job anymore and it becomes just like every other job, except it’s functionally impossible for that department to make money.

Back when I cooked I worked in a string of grocery stores who would have fresh prepared food available. They’re meant to run at a loss. Hot fresh meals in a grocery store just isn’t going to break even. People aren’t going to wait like at a restaurant so food always has be be prepared and ready to go pretty quickly. It’s a pretty good gig. You get to cook a variety of things as the menu changes all the time, and customers tend to be pretty appreciative there. It felt a lot like catering, but with less stress and more appreciation. But an exec always ruined it at every place I worked. I’d hop around a lot since, for some reason, there were multiple grocery brands in the area that did it. Eventually I just left the whole industry.

I know this was a joke, but it’s actually them showing you that they trust you enough to show you their most vulnerable spot. Cats can snuggle against you or sleep in your lap if they like you, but they get something out of that exchange. Showing their belly is purely letting you know you’re trusted. It’s like a hug.

One could argue that domestic cats proliferation throughout the world is from human action as well. Their natural habitat certainly wasn’t the south of Wales before we stepped in and took them all over the world for them to evolve into different types. My understanding is that most house cats evolved from desert dwelling cats.

And lets be honest, those coalitions almost always end up being mostly a 2 party system with more steps. The elect a bunch of different parties, then those parties all group together in 2 sides mostly. Possibly leaving a few that aren’t included and then their votes mean nothing. It’s like gerrymandering in a different way. You don’t need to change voting districts, you just have to get another party that agrees with you on the important things to also win some elections. You could even argue that, while technically under the same name, the Tea party was kinda of that. A whole different kind of politician was voted in, with the understanding that they would just be agreeing with the Republicans on legislation. It’s obviously not quite the same, but it’s not far off.

I’m not familiar with how it works in France, but I’m just brainstorming plans to avoid it in the future. Are they able to send it directly to a pharmacy and not give the scrip directly to you? If so, is it also possible to try to get in a few days early for an appointment for your check-in and they can just send it off on time? In the States I only have to do a mandatory check-in once a year with a doc and visit a nurse practitioner every 2 months and she just has it scheduled to send the new prescription every 30 days. It is more convenient, but I have to trust that they don’t forget and I have to panic call their office.