Amin khiluva lle a' gurtha ar' thar

"Needy, unable to cope" (<- you try coping with chronic pain)

"Comfort seeking" (<- you mean.. having a preference for not being in pain.. how criminal)

"Using or trying to obtain drugs on a long-term, chronic base" (<- do you understand what 'chronic pain' means.)

"Asking for pain med then returning to sleep."

"States he’s level 10 pain, but does not appear to be in pain (or ‘5= on appearance)." (<- it is well-known that chronic pain patients tend not to display pain in the same way as acute pain patients)

"Dramatic response to pain" (<- notice how this directly contradicts the comment above. you cannot win)

"Gets IV med, then leaves unit to smoke or walk around" (<- wow requiring medication and then going off to do something you needed pain meds to be able to do is so suspicious)

Sometimes when an action makes NO sense to us ("he's like a stupid alien"), it's bc we are not understanding its true motivation/purpouse. If his goal was control, financial pressure and limiting her options due to lack of funds, it makes perfect sensie to buy the truck.

Therefore, here is an alternative explanation based entirely on his impulsive feelings:

She's getting near the end of her degree, she's going to be making a lot more than him when she finishes. This makes him angry and jealous. The closer she gets to finishing, the stronger his anger and jealousy gets.

Well, if she's gonna be making so much more than me, the least she can do is pay for my truck. And maybe if she had to pay for this truck she wouldn't even be able to finish school. Then I'd still be man of the house. That would really show her whose boss. Now I feel more in control and less jealous.

"Honey, I bought a truck."

I think we often talk about abusers like we talk about evolution. We say polar bears evolved to have white coats for camouflage. We talk about evolution like it has a plan and is doing things on purpose. But evolution doesn't care about camouflage. Birth rates are all that matter, but evolution doesn't even "care" about them.

I think the majority of abusers don't actually plan things out. They just act impulsively on malicious feelings. It makes them feel good to have lots of power, so they take whatever power they can find. It makes them feel good to make their victims uncomfortable so they do that.

Most abuse tactics can be explained (and should be defended against) as if they are strategic. Just like evolution, it's just easier to talk about that way. But I think most abuser tactics are really just the consequence of impulsively acting on malicious feelings.

Strategy is big picture. It’s about asking “what do I even really want here?” You say you want to Win. What does Winning mean? What does Winning look like?

In an argumentative context, Strategy is about the frame around the picture, so to speak. Are you approaching the conversation as a confrontation or a confession or a Conversion?

Tactics are about individual goals. In wargaming, Tactics are things like pincer attacks and flanking maneuvers; things like armor penetrating ammo and anti-cavalry fortifications.

In an argumentative context, Tactics are things like making an attack ad hominem, or shifting the goalposts, or turning the tables.

Abusers tend to be excellent Tacticians but terrible Strategists. They often do not even recognize good/healthy relationships as such. Their Strategy is a mess. They would not recognize victory if they stood in the midst of it.

But. They are very good at not losing. They are very good at making sure that the other person doesn’t win.

A good relationship is win-win; both parties benefit mutualistically from the symbiosis.

The beauty of it is that you could place that exact same dialogue into any time and place in human history and it would make just as much sense, you could have it as a conversation between sailors in a 1600s ship, a group of bronze-age warriors cleaning their weapons, stone age hunters walking home from a hunt, or a bunch of 21st century redditors on the internet, and it would hit just as splendidly.

There was this conversation about if you could have sex with any specific person from any time through human history, which one would you choose? Famous legendary lovers were brought up, queens, emperors and such were popular, might as well fuck Rasputin just to see what the hype was all about, the kind of answers one would expect.

Then some guy said he would choose his own late wife. He went on to talk about how brutal it is, that you might find the love of your life, but there's no promise that this life couldn't be suddenly cut short. That his body aches for hers and how there isn't much he wouldn't do for one more opportunity to make love to her one last time.

Now, I'd like you to imagine a pause in the conversation. A solemn, contemplative moment of silence, with several of the people present nodding in agreement that this is indeed the finest answer - it wasn't a competition, but there's no doing better than that.

And then someone breaks this solemn silence and says:

There's no room in any field for LLM AI, none, and if you're using it at all you're not an artist, author, musician, programmer, or even a member of society.

You're a thief and a leech and directly impacting the downfall of our collective human communities and the destruction of our world.

You existed just fine a few years ago without this proven to bring down cognitive abilities tool of the fascist elite and you can fucking exist again.

and i need to show you all some of these because ?????

while i only have personal experience with the green heron, these two species are very closely related, and yeah they're just Like That. the actual evolutionary reason is probably related to the ability to shoot their head pretty far out to have more area available to fish, especially when they're perched on a branch or stump just outside of the water, which they do a lot.

image source

they have some interesting muscle and tendon structure in their necks that lets them dart their necks out and back in extremely fast so that they have the element of surprise. they also use their long necks to appear larger/more intimidating when scaring off predators or competitors, and to see over the tops of aquatic plants.

image source

fun fact, when their neck is tucked in it's not getting pulled into the body or anything, it's still just as long but bent into a tight S curve that looks like a continuation of the body because of the way the feathers sit! (you can see it well in the above picture - the reddish neck feathers look like part of the body in the first part.) also, their trachea (throat) can move around in funny ways so that they can bend their necks so sharply without cutting off breathing.

(tags by @sabrestupid)

yep!! this behavior is called baiting, and while it's been observed in multiple heron species, it's most commonly seen in green herons. here's an excerpt from birds of the world about it (emphasis mine):

Green Herons bait for fish (Figure 2) with variety of baits and lures, e.g., crusts of bread (Lovell 1958), mayflies (Keenan III 1981), and feathers (by an immature bird; Norris 1975). For B. striatus in Japan, Higuchi (Higuchi 1986, Higuchi 1988) reported that they bait fish more frequently in open water with few suitable perches. Three of these Japanese birds used lure bait (twigs, leaves, berries) 80% of time, live bait (flies and other insects) 20%. One bird spent 84% of foraging time baiting for fish; other birds used feathers and plastic foam for bait. Success rate highest when live bait used; juvenile birds did poorly baiting. One bird dug earthworms from mud and used them as bait, and twice birds broke pieces of stick to make bait, an example of tool-making. Baiting behavior rare among other herons.

this behavior has also been documented in striated herons, though less extensively. here's a video of one using some bits of foam(?) to successfully lure in and catch a fish!

and here's a few videos of baiting behavior in green herons

the duck at the beginning: Muscovy duck, Cairina moschata. could be escaped domestic or wild depending on the location.

other bird at the end: Ardea sp., likely great egret, Ardea alba

unfortunately i can't identify the bird that flies off the shore in the background at the start of the video or the one that called in the background audio :(