Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff: Feb 2016 You Can Do It Edition

My God, what has this world come to? These past few years have been so surreal. People are being immolated by religious fanatics, France has been attacked twice, Donald Trump is making headway in politics, mass shootings are occuring at an alarming frequency, Gamergate happened, etc. etc. etc. I can’t help but feel that humanity has entered the twilight zone.

If anyone needs too feel better, I’ve got clumsy penguins:

https://youtu.be/Tcx6YyXvvRI

(Penguins have sturdy bones and plenty of padding blubber, so they fall down but don’t get hurt. Much like drunk guys on America’s Funniest Home Videos.)

I’d just like to advise people to not discuss the implications of the mass shooting for about 48 hours, because that seems to be about how long it takes for the media to get the facts straight. Information about target, casualties, and the shooter released in that period can be unreliable. Once we know the basic facts we can properly discuss what they mean; information available now may be not merely incomplete but actually false. For instance, when I first heard about San Benardio it was that white gunmen targeted a center for disabled children.

Has anyone been following Kesha’s case? It’s awful :/

It scares how many mass shootings occur :/

Also procrastinating, although I’m trying to avoid calling my doctor rather than do a project!

@Sarity: I can definitely see your quandary here.

However (and forgive my bluntness), I would argue that the animal’s already dead. There’s nothing that will bring it back. The fur’s already been cut and sewn. The animal it came from has long since been lost.

So, I would like to at least see the fur be put to good use (especially since so many people are abandoning fur as a fashion choice because of ethical concerns, thus leaving them to just kind of sadly rot from neglect), even as an omnivore myself.

I don’t want any part of an animal to go to waste (even though that’s not entirely possible unless I butcher it myself). I really, truly like the idea of returning the fur to an animal form though. It feels like a form of justice for me. It just feels more respectful to the animal’s sacrifice that way.

Like the animal was murdered, but the very least you could do is respect their death and utilize all the parts of them to make sure their death has meaning.

Just saw this in the news:

First-of-its-kind domestic violence shelter for all-male victims opens in Arkansas

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/first-of-its-kind-domestic-violence-shelter-for-all-male-victims-opens-in-arkansas/

That bunny! 😀

Speaking of homemade cat accoutrements, I am so doing this:

@Mish

Here’s the video:

https://youtu.be/IGs_wXkeWC8

@ Paradoxical Intention

Thanks for your two cents. :3 All that in principle is precisely why I started using second-hand fur. The guilt comes in most when I profit from the pieces. People do find the idea cool, as evident in their willingness at auction to bid higher for fur pieces than faux (not that it makes a difference to the animal’s death 😛 ). My conscience works funny that way.

Of course it can be argued that my time and effort deserves compensation. I think it’ll always be difficult as an animal lover to desensitize to the fact that my medium was a murdered animal, however not-my-fault it was.

I may need to just keep reminding myself of the positives: less corpse garments to wear, remains get a new life with less indignity, awareness is brought to another use for antiquated relics of cruelty fashion (the best of those being bedding for rescue animals. Goddamn, my cats LOVE when I forget to leave a sable or mink cape where they can’t drag it to the floor and claim it as their new bed).

@ guy

Oh I’m as careful as can be to ensure my fur acquisitions don’t feed industry demand by sticking to donated second-hand. And I have to say, using portions of sales to fund anti-fur causes/coalitions is a wonderfully appropriate idea.

@reymohammed

Thanks. o_o Did not know that ugliness about cotton though. My dear mother loves the stuff (will have to advise her about it).

David Futrelle- Not another mass shooting! And of course people are blaming it on mental illness because he is white. I am so glad he quickly caught.

Fred The Dog-

“And yet, there are people who love bunnies and take them on outings to jump tiny little fences. Bad stuff gets so much press, but this good stuff rarely does. Bad people are so loud, but good people just go on doing their good things and don’t trumpet their successes.

Sometimes, when the news is depressing, I google “dog saves” and read about all the dogs saving people and other dogs from bad things.

And then I go back to fostering rescue dogs and researching treatments for children who are born with a life-threatening genetic mutation.”

I agree. The bad stuff gets so much more coverage than the good stuff. This ties in with something that has been bothering me for a long time. A lot of the good that people do (and a LOT of people do a LOT of good, like the vast majority of people) gets totally ignored, but as soon as someone, somewhere does something bad to something, the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS EVIL AND WE MUST ALL BE EXTERMINATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For example this article in which people wanted to take photos of a dying baby dolphin https://www.thedodo.com/baby-dolphin-dies-for-photos-1607782616.html , dozen of commenters were complaining about evil, selfish, destructive, stupid humans are. Meaning the ENTIRE race (while seemingly completely forgetting that the are human to). Of course , the few people who dared illustrate how ridiculous that is, are the ones who get ridiculed for it. Of course, when someone or even multiple people does something good like a daring animal rescue, for example the rescue of an entire pod of beached dolphins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BiMEeirC_M

Noone says how great, caring and selfless people can be. Even though for every video of animal cruelty, there are many more videos of daring animal rescues. For ever instance of mass shootings, there are many more instances of every day heroes doing something to help others. Hell, even in the event of a mass shooting, there are dozens of paramedics, ER personnel , surgeons, nurses, police officers trying their hardest to save the lives of the wounded and to prevent more deaths, yet you don’t hear much about them. It is seriously like someone/some people do something bad=THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS EVIL, someone/ some people do something good=that person/ those people are good, but the human race is still evil and must be exterminated. Drives me up the fucking wall when pessimists who see only the worst in humanity are so quick to throw the entire human race under the bus. I know the human race is not perfect, but we are also pretty awesome. The human race is so complicated, vibrant, diverse and the world is such an amazing place. People and the human race as a whole, are colourful, not good OR bad and I hate it when we all get painted with the same brush just because someone, somewhere does something bad.

To quote the Osgoods from a recent episode of Doctor Who:

Any race is capable of the best and the worst.
Every race is peaceful and warlike.
Good and evil.
My race is no exception.
And neither is mine.

PS

I am sorry for the TL:DR, but this has been bothering me for ages.

(Moved from personal stuff open thread, sorry for the length and the second longish post after this)

Hello!

This is my first time in one of the open threads. I was asked about a project that I have been thinking about off and on for years now in this thread (pages 9-10, comments dissecting a troll, goes up to #16, and talking about this proposal), a website devoted to the details and dynamics of social conflict. No one seemed to have an objection to my bringing up the topic when I asked about it so I wrote this up for this post in order to get some opinions, information and suggestions. I guess a little background might help first.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/02/11/dude-is-mad-homophobic-slur-and-ethnic-slur-think-his-trump-shirt-promotes-hate/comment-page-9/
I’m a 38-year old cellular and molecular biologist who has spent at least two decades arguing with lots of anti-science people like creationists as a hobby, because fighting with words is enjoyable to me the way that fighting professionally might be to other people. Similarly to someone who is a professional martial artist I don’t just go fighting because I want to though. I don’t like hurting people for fun. I’ve had a lot of experience thinking about how to fight, when to fight, why to fight, who to fight for, what fighting does and more. Who I am is intimately bound up in that.

I’m a white male with a family tree that includes mostly military and fundamentalist/conservative/authoritarian religious types. If there is anything that can be inherited with respect to physical and social conflict, I have it. My personality is what would be called “masculine”. I ended going down a very different path from most of my family however, not only is there the attempted science career but I am very strongly on the left side of the political spectrum. I’m a semi-active commenter at the FreethoughtBlogs network where I have been a reader and trying to help with a legitimate schism in the atheist/skeptic community. It’s our section of a general conflict that society is having with respect to social justice issues largely centering on race, sex, gender and related politics. I was simultaneously involved in a schism in the Brony community which is a very long story but two schisms let me collect a lot of data through experience.

Another thing worth mentioning about myself that is relevant is that I have Tourette’s Syndrome (TS), ADHD and I likely have comorbid OCDs. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, thought I got over it, and was re-diagnosed with it and got TS as a bonus about six years ago. This is relevant not only because of the issue of ablism, but six years of making brain science and my psychology my hobby has taught me a lot about people in general, things we call “mental conditions”, and how the combination of TS/ADHD/OCD actually shapes my personality. I’ve been learning about how there are context specific advantages and enhancements associated with things like TS, ADHD, OCD, autism, depression and even schizophrenia. There are a collection of papers discussing enhanced cognition in TS that I can tie to how I see social conflict in text because of a sensory hypersensitivity (like the one in autism, it is in part connected to language phenomena). In fact, while it’s not a heavily studied hypothesis, I see these conditions as perfectly normal ways that human minds can be shaped. We are in the middle of defining “normal” and in that I believe that I am an example of the human race’s “social conflict monkey” loaded with social OCDs to keep me moral and ethical. Just like you can google articles talking about autism and cognitive benefits you can do the same with TS.

I mention all of that to bring up the fact that I want to create an internet resource on the nature and dynamics of social conflict and others seem interested in such a resource. I have a problem though, I have privilege blinders and NEED the perspectives and input of others in order to do this correctly. My privilege as a cis white male american keyboard warrior scientist from a conservative military authoritarian background does give me benefits, but my best skills only exist because I have made an effort to understand how I can help others from different backgrounds. Because I have the psychology and experience of the “oppressor control group” as I learned the specifics of how this oppression functionally occurred in different marginalized groups I gained conscious awareness of how this social conflict software was shaped. For example many of you have heard of Lewis’s Law, “the comments on any article having to do with feminism justify the need for feminism”. There is a racial correlate in “the comments on any article having to do with racism justify the need for anti-racism”. Those two together yield the observations like “any article challenging group social dominance is likely to attract dominance displays from the dominant group”. I see the world in a strange way.

Some general questions (answer as many as you want, or add your own):
*What do you personally need the most when it comes to social conflicts you experience?
*If you could wave your fingers and give someone a part of your perspective and experience what would it be?
*What would you like to learn about social conflict?
*What would you see as the riskiest parts of this proposal? Do you have any potential fixes? (not necessary, but it would be nice)
*What would you like to be able to expect out of someone who wants to be an ally?
*How do allies screw up the most in your experience?
*Have I screwed up in here anywhere?
I’ll write more down as I think about them. Thanks for reading!

Tentative list of topics to cover (these may need re-ordered and renamed).
1) Object and context.
2) Signal and noise.
3) Social conflict ideals and details:
-On the true nature of emotion and associated social bullshit .
-Idealized communication.
-The individual and the group.
-In-groups and out-groups, the “social emotions”.
-Motivation and reasoning.
-Psychological triggers from trauma to “dog-whistles”.

4)Behavior and psychology.
-Operant conditioning.
-Defense mechanisms.
-The psychology of meatspace, text, video and memes.

5)Social conflict tactics:
-Individual and community level phenomena.
-Analogy via the martial art “grappling”.
-Approach/Hold/Withdraw-Fight/Freeze/Flight
-Attack
-Defense
-Deception
-Obfuscation
-Humor and social conflict.
-Political language: Streamlining and simplification.
-Insulting characterizations, insults and pejoratives.
-Morals and ethics for group criticism.
-Role-modeling.
-Introjection: society can influence and change your mind.

6) Social hierarchies and social justice.
-Historically dominant and subordinate groups.
-Groups within groups, white/male/masculine as a “control group”.
-Overt and covert phenomena.
-How to be a valuable and effective ally.
-Majority and minority.
-Privilege.
-Power.
-Elevating the marginalized and voiceless.

7) Trolls and troll dynamics.
-Defining a “troll”.
-The different “flavors” of troll.
-Fast dismissal.
-Sustained engagement for training.
-Community level strategies.