SirenAlpha

“Oh? [X thing] has a documented extremely negative impact on a large group of people?? And you’re critiquing it? Well I did [x thing] and that horrible thing never happened. I guess you’re just PERSONALLY ATTACKING me.”

“Have you considered the nuanced reality that if something is beneficial to me in any way then everyone who has been deeply harmed by it should simply eat shit? Also if they criticize it it’s because they hate me specifically?”

“What about those of us who actually ENJOY AND LIKE [x thing] and also feel entitled to never have access to something that I like restricted? Hmm? What about us?”

It’s not actually possible to have a functioning society where everyone does whatever they want all the time. You can’t just trust that your populace is going to do the best possible version of everything. I’m absolutely sure there’s a lot of responsible gun owners in the US — unfortunately, the negative societal impact of guns means that in a sane, effective society (which ofc the US isn’t) they’d still be banned. There are some things that are more important than you and what you like and what is beneficial to you. Some things are worse than other things, like objectively worse. Some things are more important than you.

The search engine calculates a score that aggressively favors text-heavy websites, and punishes those that have too many modern web design features.

If you are looking for fact, this is almost certainly the wrong tool. If you are looking for serendipity, you’re on the right track. When was the last time you just stumbled onto something interesting, by the way?

i remember hearing an economics professor comment on roman bridges still being used by cars today, saying that if you over-engineer and over-build a bridge to the point it can still be used 2000 years later, then you've just waisted public funds and labor. and i remember how i grated against that. against the idea that something could be designed to last not only past the builders lifetime, but past the life of a civilization.

l'm not about to stand up and say that industrialization is an inherently bad thing. i think it's great that clothing doesn't cost thousands of dollars and people can basically furnish a home in their 20's for under ten grand, but like. i feel like there has to be some kind of social-psychological shift in knowing that the things we make now won't be around after we die. they won't be passed on and looked after. they won't be loved.

I write code. I send emails. I write documentation. the things i create will be garbage in a couple years, if I'm lucky. I'm drawn to bookbinding as a hobby, because i wish my words would last. i wish they would sit on someones shelf, be pulled down again and again, and live a life of their own. I enjoy woodworking because i can have some hope that maybe, if i make something good enough, it'll be passed from person to person, and maybe, one day, outlive me.

It is, by any metric, a small country masquerading as a city.

It governs more lives and more wealth than most nations. If democratic socialism — housing reform, public banking, equitable taxation — functions here, it obliterates the myth that such governance can’t work at scale. The fear isn’t ideological. It’s empirical. Because if Mamdani can keep the lights on, reduce homelessness, and maintain economic growth without catering to Wall Street, then the capitalist gospel collapses under its own dead weight.

What terrifies the establishment isn’t failure. It’s feasibility.

If it works in New York, there’s no reason it can’t work in Nebraska. If it works in Queens, it can work in Kansas City. And once proof exists, belief becomes irrelevant. The ship of democracy, fully refitted, will keep sailing — and no one can claim it isn’t American."

for a while, my husband worked as a call handler for the ambulance service. during his training, they had a talk from someone wanting to introduce new policy and he wanted to use my husband's group as a tester group. fun, right?

well, the talk was about how saying suicide was triggering. if a caller says theyre suicidal, the handlers should say "unalive" instead, because saying the word might actually trigger the suicidal person.

if the caller says they were raped and need help, the handler should say "S A" instead, because rape is triggering.

I don't know about you, but if I phoned up the ambulance service to ask for help because I want to die, I wouldn't want them using tiktok speak and trivialising the issue. I think that would make me less likely to ever ask for help. SAY THE WORDS. how are we supposed to address the problem if we can't even name the fucking problem.

luckily, my husbands main instructor literally said "well, that's fucking stupid" to the man wanting to introduce this policy and it hasn't been implemented. but it might. we are watching language be erased. NAME. THE. PROBLEM.

“Do you want to kill yourself?”

A, it has the benefit of making sure everyone is on the same page. Self-harm and attempting suicide are two different things. You can want to harm yourself without wanting to kill yourself. It can also let you know if the person is passively suicidal or if they’re in the process of killing themselves.

B, stigmatizing suicide leads to more suicides.

When Co-workers do things like ask about weekend plans, chat about non-work topics, eat lunch in the same room, they are--subconsciously--reaffirming that they are part of a cooperative (or, minimally, non-antagonistic) social group.

The other primates cement social bonds by grooming each other; we do it by making small talk.

If they solicit your participation in these rituals, and you repeatedly refuse those bids, you are marking yourself out as, at best, an outsider to the group, and thus potentially antagonistic.

This is all happening on the monkey-brain level; they have no idea what they're doing or how they are interpreting your response, so there's no way to clear up the misunderstanding.

To the ape sleeping in your co-worker's DNA, either you are part of the grooming circle, or you are an outsider who, for all it knows, may be coming to steal all the bananas.

at some point, either in response to an invitation, or just in the natural course of conversation, you can add in that you are a "quiet type" who "needs their silence" or what have you. customize to your personal needs. i find it helpful to imagine a well dressed elderly woman describing the sort of peace she needs to manifest.

roughly once a week if you see a group of people chatting, engage with them. keep it pleasant. it can be superficial. word will travel that you are Nice and Quiet and Not The Chatty Type protecting you from group lunches etc. if you have an office with a door that you keep closed a lot, putting up any kind of decor will also send positive signals.

but I'm not totally sold that's born out by Robby's actions when comparing his behavior between Collins and Langdon

I'm not saying Robby had no mentorship moments with Langdon, he did coach Langdon with the frat boy's collarbone, and I'm not saying Robby was totally accommodating or a push over with Collins, he overrode her for Otis and with the teen pregnancy

but I do think Robby is more attentive and emotionally open/supportive with Collins than he is Langdon, like he obviously rejects Langdon as a friend while having had a past romantic relationship with Collins, but Collins is the one Robby gives what are basically longing gazes, checks in on her (though granted Langdon isn't suffering morning sickness or miscarriage) and Robby seems like he's willing to be physically closer with Collins and Collins is more supportive of Robby in turn like with iirc talking to the kids of the Alzheimer patient

but it's mostly about Robby getting angry and not handling finding out Langdon has been stealing pills well and I don't just mean emotionally which he definitely did poorly (and it's just the first thing that happened as things really start crashing down) and I don't know hospital policy on this and I do get that he found pills in Langdon's locker but do you not need to do paperwork or investigate properly before you throw someone out? It's a little crazy he was like yep let's just throw the suspected addict out on the street instead of plunking him in HR or something

and I get an abortion is not the same thing at all as stealing pills but if I was going to pick one to treat as a personal betrayal and get mad about it, it's probably the abortion I didn't even know about until just now, but Robby doesn't get mad at that, instead comforting Collins and sending her home even though this is after finding the pills in Langdon's locker so he's already taken an emotional hit

and I'm not sure what to take out of it

is it all down to Robby and Collins having a past romantic relationship and he's still soft on her? How is that not sexual favoritism then if it had any negative impact on Langdon's training and idk how far mentorship over residents are supposed to go in the medical field but Robby at minimum should have been keeping an eye out for Langdon after his back injury and that clearly turned out poorly

Or is Robby just paternalistic and subconsciously has higher expectations for Langdon as he's a man than Collins as she's a woman? He's angrier at Langdon because his transgression is against the career and patients whereas Collins's is just against a baby/family life and she can just have another one (he assumes)?

also the way Robby already knows the policy for addiction off by heart makes me wonder if he's projecting or there are leftover feelings from some other relationship with a different doctor onto Langdon and unable to see the situation clearly

I also wonder if Langdon being married with kids and clean cut made Robby think Langdon had it all together even though it's pretty clear just from what Langdon says that it's not a good marriage/family life and Langdon does ask Robby about the dog first

I just feel like Robby can't have taken that much care to mentor Langdon if he can't even see Langdon underneath assumption and/or projection and has no bandwidth for or interest in making any sort of emotional or personal connection with him

Robby does not have a sexual/romantic relationship with Santos, but they clearly have an emotional connection specifically over Langdon’s addiction and they feed into each other’s negative emotions especially over Langdon, they act very similarly on his return even though as an attending and mentor Robby had responsibilities over Langdon and Santos as they’re his students/employees and he should have been smoothing over that transition, but he’s just as much in his feelings and far more friendly/personable with Santos than anyone else (such as the glove to wake her scene and so on) like he was the season before with Collins

and then with Whitaker, he just gives him the all clear, he praises him and says he’s a great doctor, but he does not train him very much at all and gives him way too much latitude because Whitaker’s an intern and he’s not even asking him or making sure he’s reporting to anyone up the chain of command before treating and prescribing which Santos was criticized for the season before (by Langdon)

there’s no way Robby would have asked Whitaker to house sit to get him away from a former patient’s widow if Santos hadn’t specifically asked him to intervene and Collins would have never been in a position to ask Robby to intervene and help Langdon because she would have never known there was a problem

so we see a repeat of Robby being overly emotionally involved with a female mentee/resident while praising but not really connecting with or mentoring a male resident and both their training suffers for it, but Whitaker suffers less as Robby isn’t leaving him exposed to a trigger without support (which for Santos is a man with authority over her who has shown a willingness to berate her/abuse that authority) and Langdon likely would have also suffered less than Collins and had a perfectly fine career without addiction but that’s the risk Robby was taking if it was indeed sexual favoritism

I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.

Why is your right to choose smoking as a delivery method more important than other people's right to not develop migraines, allergic reactions, asthma attacks, or as we have learned, fucking schizophrenia. Rare? Sure. But secondhand weedsmoke can be the catalyst for someone developing schizophrenia, a life-altering condition that a person may never be rid of, which they otherwise might not have gotten.

"Some have chronic illnesses and that's why we smoke. You could be considerate." bitch you first

I'm fine with the CBD/THC gummies, drops, patches, creams, whatever. I've used CBD-infused muscle creams before because I also experience chronic pain!

BUT THOSE. DO NOT. CAUSE OTHER PEOPLE TO EXPERIENCE THEIR OWN CHRONIC PAIN

This podcast demonstrates that ability really well because sex scandals tend to be used as propaganda, so it's difficult to tell if they are true or not. The host will ask the historian guest, "Did he have sex with men?" and the guest will say something like, "Well four sources say so, but three were written after his death and the one from his lifetime was from a dude who REALLY hated him, so I'm going to conclude no."

That is what an expert can do, that we've perhaps forgotten about because we have so much information at our fingertips, an expert can tell which information is good & valid vs. bad & unreliable. An expert can sort much faster than a layman because they've been doing it for years.

It's the same for my field. Some things I am absolutely sure are wrong, like if someone says "We only use 10% of our brains." No, we use all of it and I can even tell you what every part does. But other claims, if I see a news article claiming something that sounds fishy, I can read the research article behind it and judge the validity of the source. I can sort. I know which parameters to sort on. That was the entire point of my education and it was pounded into my head.