They have cameras my dude

it isn’t for me, but maybe that’s my ad blocker?

EDIT: tried it in another browser, my blocker happened to block the first 3 paragraphs lol, no wonder it was so confusing…

What the hell is this article? It has no source, it sounds like a half-baked thought and is all of 3 short paragraphs in length. This is low effort engagement bait at best.

I tried googling what the hell this might be based off of, and found this article. It appears to be a review conducted by the office of the auditor general (full report can be found here). The audit was of the process for the request for bids for the scribe system - that is to say, the ‘pre-approved’ vendors. There is nothing about whether any of this software is used, let alone how it is used.

Like yes, it’s important to be looking at this, and it’s good that the auditor is telling the government to improve its RFB process to better screen these tools, but this article is making it out like actual doctors are using this software and blatantly using it in ways that would harm the patient. That’s just not true.

Frankly speaking I should probably just remove this article entirely as its half baked at best, AI slop at worst, but I’m going to leave it up because hopefully folks will see something like this and stop reacting to a headline immediately and instead take a closer look at articles that are shared as engagement bait.

An interesting read. It never struck me as something that needed researching - the obvious bias baked into any and all tests which utilize language and probe at abstract ideas like feelings. It seems obvious to me that the idea of “sadness” is both inherently as well as culturally determined. For anyone who’s dealt with individuals with varying amounts of alexithymia its glaringly obvious that some of the standard questions such as “feeling down, depressed, or hopeless” (PHQ9) would be interpreted differently, let alone questions in which context is crucially important such as “poor appetite or overeating” (PHQ9) or “being so restless that it is hard to sit still” (GAD7 - a test about anxiety) that are common on these kinds of questionnaires. Perhaps its because my interaction and discussions with clinicians tends to be folks who are focused more on the total mental wellness of someone than they are about the specific answers to a question and are using the context of the patient’s other conditions and affect to assess, but this hardly seems groundbreaking… except that perhaps the literature on this itself is minimal. Perhaps this kind of clinical awareness has been handed down, rather than studied, and the corpus of literature needs to be enhanced so that more can learn and absorb it.

It’s not just neuroplasticity, it’s one of very, very few things in the world that actually promotes neurogenesis. Your brain may be changing structure and connections constantly, but it’s entirely disingenuous to suggest that psychedelics aren’t causing changes that just aren’t observed from normal day-to-day life. It’s a massive dose of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity (which comes with both it’s pros an cons) and we shouldn’t minimize that just because the brain is normally a changing environment.

Of note, many psychedelics upregulate BDNF too which has neuroprotective effects (I haven’t seen anything linking lifetime psychedelic use to things like alzheimers and general neural decline) but we know that exercise, which also upregulates BDNF, is shown to have neuroprotective effects and slow cognitive decline.

100% of the time “think of the kids” is used, it’s because they cannot come up with a coherent reason without pulling that escape cord.

We live in a capitalistic hellscape where some of the best DMs are trapped in dead-end retail jobs. Why must you judge them for trying to make a living doing something they are passionate about? Yes, some will be grifters, but that is always true of any profession. With that being said, I think you’re going to run into less grifters in the arts than you are in other spaces, and likely the folks trying to make an honest buck doing a thing they enjoy are not there to grift you.

having entire generation never start smoking

Yes because making drugs illegal stops them from ever being used😂

these bans are actively targeting only children

Quite literally true of many of the examples I brought up? I’m confused about where you are going with this. I was merely pointing out that something being done “for the children” is disingenuous framing. There is no merit in discrimination. If it was truly to protect them when they are children because children can’t make the decisions with the same brain that adults make decisions with, then the ban would expire when they reach adult age. But it’s not actually about that; it’s about the fact that they can’t ban it for adults and by claiming it’s there to protect children they can gain political capital and will to ban it. It’s effective legislative incrementalism against a difficult foe (big tobacco). I think limiting big tobacco is good, and I think cigarettes are bad, but I don’t agree with this particular application because of the flawed framing - it opens up the ability for others to legislate in areas they shouldn’t be legislating, or to use the same framework and claim its for the same reasons without it meeting the same criteria.

conflating it with other issues is a classic conservative trope

Are you saying that pointing out the framing is flawed is a conservative trope?

A full ban would cause serious political problems

Yes they’re selling it under the guise that one group is being “protected” because they ought to be protected and another group does not need this protection, which is a form of discrimination. They do this because they know they don’t have the political capital to ban it for everyone, because many adults value the ability to make choices about their own health, well-being, and what vices they wish to partake in.

New Zealand has already enacted such a law, without seemingly much blowback.

It’s pretty easy to enact laws on a small group when they have limited participation or voice in governmental affairs.

For what it’s worth I’m not against this legislation, but I am critical of it. Big tobacco is bad. Cigarettes are bad. But this kind of “save the children” mentality often leads to a lot of corrupt and incorrect decisions and legislation. Alcohol is objectively even worse, and yet we’re not banning that. Why? Will similar legislation try to capitalize on this and ban things like nicotine in general (almost certainly, despite nicotine being a relatively harmless substance in comparison). Worse yet, will they try to ban things like gender affirming care, or other objectively good things because there is a moral purity angle? I suspect so.

My favorite part about this is that it’s targeted at a specific age demographic, rather than a full-on ban. Love the cowardice. Ban it for all ages or don’t ban it at all you absolute morons.

Direct link to the article:

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/3/pgag022/8503065

It’s really annoying how they discount how boys can be a vector as well. Yes, HPV generally doesn’t cause cancer in men, but being able to transfer it to girls means its a good idea to vaccinate them as well! Not to mention the other ways in which HPV can effect men. Public health is so frustrating sometimes.

I love how this is smug and offers no advice. Peak substack vibes

You either didn’t understand my comment or whatever the case is here.

Please, feel free to explain what you meant.

I am saying that your or others gender should not be a factor deciding how games are developed.

Yes and you’ll see my removal comment states “‘games where it doesn’t belong’ you don’t get to decide what an artist does with their art”. This was true. This is true. Your statement above is clearly dictating that gender should not be a factor (or sexual identity, or frankly any other identity such as race or ability). If an artist decides it should be a factor, then that is up to them. You don’t get to dictate what the art should be.

Hey there,

No one said you had to enter this thread. Ignore it if you don’t want to participate in the discussion. Don’t force your opinion on others. Queer folks aren’t going to feel safe in this space if you kick down their door and tell them to shut up.

This solves nothing, the exact same people will just move to another company.

The only way to effectively stop this kind of behavior is with regulation. The following types of regulation can help curb this behavior:

1. Steep financial penalties for violations that are actually enforced. These need to be anchored directly to total value or profitability over a certain time frame. A specific number value will easily be outpaced by consolidation and gigantic companies can basically ignore them. Even a 100 million dollar fine can be ignored by companies the size of Amazon, Nvidia, and so forth. The EU has been good at architecting this kind of legislation.
2. Strong rewards for whistle blowing on criminal behavior. Note that this is not prosecution of individuals responsible for said behavior because it will be very difficult to prove this in court and utilizing simple information warfare tactics, folks can be glass cliffed, made into patsies, or otherwise obscured from any record of their involvement or require extreme in-depth investigations to figure out.
3. Strong criminal prosecution for repeat offenders and funding for real investigations of any company who has been found liable of any penalties or suspected of bad behavior. Some people hop from company to company doing the same thing over and over again. When we are focused on the companies rather than the people behind such bad behavior, they get a slap on the wrist at most and continue to do damage to society. We need to more aggressively profile and prosecute individuals with a track record of malicious behavior. As already mentioned, this is unfortunately the most difficult of the above to both legislate and enforce as what is considered “malicious” behavior is up for debate and difficult to quantify.

This in no way surprises me. Things aren’t bad enough for me to leave yet, but if I could snap my fingers and have my partners in another country and my property sold I probably would with little hesitation. But the social ties are hard to leave and owning property makes it complicated.

A bit strongly negative on phone use in general, but I’d say it’s a good overview of why most major social media websites (with algorithmic recommendations being a heavy handed component of one’s feed) are bad and why the traditional method (time-based sorting with subscriptions or feed curation) are better although not perfect.