Funny events in anti-woke world

tstorm823

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Like... all of it. Literally everything you have to say on the subject is bullshit. I mean, do you really think you're persuading anybody with these cartoonish arguments? I'm being serious here. You have decided to invent definitions for words in order to maintain that the expansion of civil rights for and the self-expression of sexual minorities is anathema to left-wing ideals you don't even believe in. To what end?
The ultimate problem with your perspective is that you don't actually care about the arguments. There is nothing I could possibly say to persuade you about anything you don't already believe, and if anything, you're likely to disregard all reason for the purposes of spiting whatever I believe.

But in a broader sense, you can set aside the idea that anyone here is going to fully change anyone's mind, there are lesser successful outcomes of persuasion than making people agree with you. I can convince people that there is reason beneath my positions or get them to identify the flaws in their own positions. To their credit, Silvanus and Terminal Blue are great, and I feel privileged to have found such fun people to argue with. They each, in their own way, make me work to counter their arguments, which a mark of a good argument, whether or not it persuades me to agree with them. And if you read through the arguments with an actual open mind, you can see where I land a blow back on them, and their arguments change shape. Silvanus lost the point on puberty blockers effecting the brain. Terminal at this point has to reassess their own definition of a social construct to continue the argument. There is no way either is going to come out agreeing with me, there never was that possibility, conversely both of them are likely getting better at arguing for their own positions. That is still a success in its own right.

Ultimately, my goal here is just to have fun. Arguing with people about broad philosophical concepts is a fun intellectual challenge to me, regardless of outcome. But my arguments have definitely been successful, you're just unwilling to see it. Or maybe you do see it, and that's why you don't participate, out of fear I'll land a blow on your arguments. I promise, if you do actually argue with me, I will absolutely tear apart all of your arguments. It will not hurt, it will probably never change any of your beliefs, and it will strengthen the foundations of your own stances.
 

Thaluikhain

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The ultimate problem with your perspective is that you don't actually care about the arguments. There is nothing I could possibly say to persuade you about anything you don't already believe, and if anything, you're likely to disregard all reason for the purposes of spiting whatever I believe.

But in a broader sense, you can set aside the idea that anyone here is going to fully change anyone's mind, there are lesser successful outcomes of persuasion than making people agree with you. I can convince people that there is reason beneath my positions or get them to identify the flaws in their own positions. To their credit, Silvanus and Terminal Blue are great, and I feel privileged to have found such fun people to argue with. They each, in their own way, make me work to counter their arguments, which a mark of a good argument, whether or not it persuades me to agree with them. And if you read through the arguments with an actual open mind, you can see where I land a blow back on them, and their arguments change shape. Silvanus lost the point on puberty blockers effecting the brain. Terminal at this point has to reassess their own definition of a social construct to continue the argument. There is no way either is going to come out agreeing with me, there never was that possibility, conversely both of them are likely getting better at arguing for their own positions. That is still a success in its own right.

Ultimately, my goal here is just to have fun. Arguing with people about broad philosophical concepts is a fun intellectual challenge to me, regardless of outcome. But my arguments have definitely been successful, you're just unwilling to see it. Or maybe you do see it, and that's why you don't participate, out of fear I'll land a blow on your arguments. I promise, if you do actually argue with me, I will absolutely tear apart all of your arguments. It will not hurt, it will probably never change any of your beliefs, and it will strengthen the foundations of your own stances.
:rolleyes:
 

Avnger

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The ultimate problem with your perspective is that you don't actually care about the arguments. There is nothing I could possibly say to persuade you about anything you don't already believe, and if anything, you're likely to disregard all reason for the purposes of spiting whatever I believe.

But in a broader sense, you can set aside the idea that anyone here is going to fully change anyone's mind, there are lesser successful outcomes of persuasion than making people agree with you. I can convince people that there is reason beneath my positions or get them to identify the flaws in their own positions. To their credit, Silvanus and Terminal Blue are great, and I feel privileged to have found such fun people to argue with. They each, in their own way, make me work to counter their arguments, which a mark of a good argument, whether or not it persuades me to agree with them. And if you read through the arguments with an actual open mind, you can see where I land a blow back on them, and their arguments change shape. Silvanus lost the point on puberty blockers effecting the brain. Terminal at this point has to reassess their own definition of a social construct to continue the argument. There is no way either is going to come out agreeing with me, there never was that possibility, conversely both of them are likely getting better at arguing for their own positions. That is still a success in its own right.

Ultimately, my goal here is just to have fun. Arguing with people about broad philosophical concepts is a fun intellectual challenge to me, regardless of outcome. But my arguments have definitely been successful, you're just unwilling to see it. Or maybe you do see it, and that's why you don't participate, out of fear I'll land a blow on your arguments. I promise, if you do actually argue with me, I will absolutely tear apart all of your arguments. It will not hurt, it will probably never change any of your beliefs, and it will strengthen the foundations of your own stances.
 

Chimpzy

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Yes, you stupid peasant. Eat bugs while we the elite fly to Egypt in private jets instead of doing a video conference.

"The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has urged that we all make more of this “underutilised” resource. And given the issues of food supply sustainability, it may not be a question of choice."
Do you object to having to eat eat insects while the rich continue their lavish lifestyle, or do you object to eating insects in general too.

I'm assuming the former, but just asking. Cuz I've had some insect based foods a couple years ago. Tended to a bit dry and flavourless on it own. Mealworm crackers tasted kind of like blander krupuk/shrimp crackers. Not great, but otherwise perfectly edible.
 

Baffle

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Do you object to having to eat eat insects while the rich continue their lavish lifestyle, or do you object to eating insects in general too.
This reminded me about something I was thinking the other day. In the bit in the film Snowpiercer where they put his arm out through the wall, is the wall realistically thick enough to contain the amount of insulation that would be required in such a cold world? Or would the amount of insulation required mean you couldn't fit your arm out that far? This might be addressed in the film, but it's a long time since I've watched it.
 
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Elijin

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"Ultimately, arguing against the existence of this marginalized and persecuted group is just a good laugh to me. It's all in good fun, because as a white, Catholic man, I don't have to worry about my identity being weaponized, or outlawed. It's fun to argue about traumatic, horrible experiences when they dont concern you."
- Tstorm, December 2022
 
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Terminal Blue

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The concept of gender that we are discussing has only reached people's vocabulary at all in the last few decades. Nobody had an opinion on the difference between sex and gender because this usage of "gender" didn't exist.
Literally my point.

For a little over a hundred years, the idea that any aspects of sex/gender were socially learned was completely scrubbed from existence in favor of sociobiological ideas about innate natural differences. As you say, nobody had an opinion on the difference between sex and gender because all behavioral differences could simply be attributed to sex. The problem, which you're conveniently ignoring, is that this isn't actually true.

One of the death-blows to this idea, for example, was the development of psychometrics in the early 20th century. As flawed as it was, psychometrics failed to uncover any real evidence of innate differences in intelligence or character between the sexes (or, for that matter, between people of different races) which created a huge problem for a society which was deeply invested in those things existing.

The term "gender role" was only coined in the 50s, and it wasn't coined by conservatives trying to defend the division of the sexes, but rather was coined by people like you to challenge that division, but also by specifically the guy who sex-changed a toddler, abused him and his twin, leading eventually to their tragic suicides later in life.
Sometimes, I'm shocked at how easily you forget that this was my work (and my life) for years.

Noone in the 50s used the term "gender role." What they would have said, instead, was "sex role". Gender role is a later evolution of the concept of sex roles to differentiate them from the origin of "sex roles" in the conservative psychoanalysis of the late 1950s.

The idea of social roles comes from functionalist sociology, in particular from Talcott Parsons, although Parsons himself never used the term sex role. Parsons, for his part, was deeply, deeply conservative. The idea of social roles was to illustrate the ways in which family and socialization adapted people to live productive lives in a capitalist economy. Parson's model of child development is essentially Freudian, so while he was a bit too smart to believe in male and female brains, he did very much believe that there was a natural pattern to human development that varied based on sex.

Role theory became very popular in the American psychological establishment precisely because it was so conservative. It allowed for the persistence of the idea of "natural" psychological differences in the absence of the psychometric research to support it, because now those differences could be construed as part of the natural "role" that person played in society.

The conception of gender we're discussing was invented by a psychotic pervert who debated in favor of "affectionate pedophilia".
John Money, the person you are referring to there, was very much a part of the aforementioned establishment. He believed that men and women had natural and complementary roles which were necessary for the health of society. His specialty wasn't trans or gender non-conforming people at all, it was "correcting" people who were intersexed so that they could live "normal" lives. He didn't sex-change a toddler, he fixed a toddler who had lost his male genitals in an accident and was thus (by one of the many incoherent sociobiological definitions of gender conservatives of the time bought into) no longer male. He then abused that child by forcing him to act out his bizarre, misogynistic and insulting fantasy of "natural" femininity. He would do the same to many other children, and his successors continue to do the same thing to intersexed children to this day with the full support of the same conservatives who cry about giving children puberty blockers.

Ask yourself a serious question, if you were presented with a child whose genitals had been completely mutilated in an accident, who had no discernable sex, who would never naturally produce most androgenic hormones and would never be able to pee standing up or top in normal heterosexual intercourse, what do you think would be the best course of action for that child to live a normal life? Because that's important, isn't it. We all should want our children to live a normal life..

The idea that Money was somehow instrumental in the development of a modern theory of gender is a bizarre myth started by the hyperbolic praise given to him by one of his students after his death. He was a pretty standard conservative psychologist of the 1950s, and his legacy is far more evident in the kind of "reparative" therapy you are defending than in anything else.

And so that you know I'm being honest. The actual originator of the idea of gender (although, again, never actually used the word) was, if anyone, Simone de Beauvoir, who was also a pervert and who also abused children, just in a different (and more French) way.

Me (in this post right now): we've established that already. Now we're talking about existing as a social construct. We've agreed that meters and genders have no physical existence, we are talking about the rhetorical existence of a social construct that has lost it's consensus.
Listen extremely closely, because I said this several times and I'm not sure why it didn't sink in.

Sex is a social construct.

It is not actually different from gender. It is not more real than gender. A child who says "I'm a boy" because they have a penis is no more correct than one who doesn't. It's all the product of social learning. There is no physical reality to the idea that the shape of your genitals determines the type of person you are, and it's no less silly to believe that than anything else.

Gender and sex have never been truly separate concepts. They were only ever separated as a critique of a totalizing idea of sex in which the shape of your genitals magically determined your behaviour and personality. If gender has "lost consensus" (which doesn't mean anything anyway, consensus in the sense you're describing doesn't exist) then so has sex. Nothing you do, not even torturing children, will ever make sex any more real than gender.
 
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Chimpzy

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This reminded me about something I was thinking the other day. In the bit in the film Snowpiercer where they put his arm out through the wall, is the wall realistically thick enough to contain the amount of insulation that would be required in such a cold world? Or would the amount of insulation required mean you couldn't fit your arm out that far? This might be addressed in the film, but it's a long time since I've watched it.
Turn

I assume you're not asking me in particular, but I did some google-fu and found that 250mm of XPS and another 60mm of PS in the walls is sufficient thermal insulation for arctic conditions of -45°C at wind speeds up to 30m/s. Which is far less than I expected. Double that for floors and ceilings tho. That seems like it could plausibly be applied to a train. Don't remember if that tracks with Snowpiercer tho, been a long time for me too.
 

XsjadoBlaydette

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Hmm. As if the thought of shoving data-harvesting hardware into your most sensitive and necessary organ for maintaining your interpretation of reality wasn't concerning enough.

Dec 5 (Reuters) - Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.

Neuralink Corp is developing a brain implant it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments. The federal probe, which has not been previously reported, was opened in recent months by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General at the request of a federal prosecutor, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. The probe, one of the sources said, focuses on violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which governs how researchers treat and test some animals.


The investigation has come at a time of growing employee dissent about Neuralink’s animal testing, including complaints that pressure from CEO Musk to accelerate development has resulted in botched experiments, according to a Reuters review of dozens of Neuralink documents and interviews with more than 20 current and former employees. Such failed tests have had to be repeated, increasing the number of animals being tested and killed, the employees say. The company documents include previously unreported messages, audio recordings, emails, presentations and reports.

Reuters could not determine the full scope of the federal investigation or whether it involved the same alleged problems with animal testing identified by employees in Reuters interviews. A spokesperson for the USDA inspector general declined to comment. U.S. regulations don’t specify how many animals companies can use for research, and they give significant leeway to scientists to determine when and how to use animals in experiments. Neuralink has passed all USDA inspections of its facilities, regulatory filings show.


In all, the company has killed about 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys, following experiments since 2018, according to records reviewed by Reuters and sources with direct knowledge of the company’s animal-testing operations. The sources characterized that figure as a rough estimate because the company does not keep precise records on the number of animals tested and killed. Neuralink has also conducted research using rats and mice.

The total number of animal deaths does not necessarily indicate that Neuralink is violating regulations or standard research practices. Many companies routinely use animals in experiments to advance human health care, and they face financial pressure to quickly bring products to market. The animals are typically killed when experiments are completed, often so they can be examined post-mortem for research purposes.

But current and former Neuralink employees say the number of animal deaths is higher than it needs to be for reasons related to Musk’s demands to speed research. Through company discussions and documents spanning several years, along with employee interviews, Reuters identified four experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys that were marred in recent years by human errors. The mistakes weakened the experiments’ research value and required the tests to be repeated, leading to more animals being killed, three of the current and former staffers said. The three people attributed the mistakes to a lack of preparation by a testing staff working in a pressure-cooker environment.

One employee, in a message seen by Reuters, wrote an angry missive earlier this year to colleagues about the need to overhaul how the company organizes animal surgeries to prevent “hack jobs.” The rushed schedule, the employee wrote, resulted in under-prepared and over-stressed staffers scrambling to meet deadlines and making last-minute changes before surgeries, raising risks to the animals.

Musk has pushed hard to accelerate Neuralink’s progress, which depends heavily on animal testing, current and former employees said. Earlier this year, the chief executive sent staffers a news article about Swiss researchers who developed an electrical implant that helped a paralyzed man to walk again. “We could enable people to use their hands and walk again in daily life!” he wrote to staff at 6:37 a.m. Pacific Time on Feb. 8. Ten minutes later, he followed up: “In general, we are simply not moving fast enough. It is driving me nuts!”

On several occasions over the years, Musk has told employees to imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads in an effort to get them to move faster, according to three sources who repeatedly heard the comment. On one occasion a few years ago, Musk told employees he would trigger a “market failure” at Neuralink unless they made more progress, a comment perceived by some employees as a threat to shut down operations, according to a former staffer who heard his comment.

Five people who’ve worked on Neuralink’s animal experiments told Reuters they had raised concerns internally. They said they had advocated for a more traditional testing approach, in which researchers would test one element at a time in an animal study and draw relevant conclusions before moving on to more animal tests. Instead, these people said, Neuralink launches tests in quick succession before fixing issues in earlier tests or drawing complete conclusions. The result: More animals overall are tested and killed, in part because the approach leads to repeated tests.

One former employee who asked management several years ago for more deliberate testing was told by a senior executive it wasn’t possible given Musk’s demands for speed, the employee said. Two people told Reuters they left the company over concerns about animal research.

The problems with Neuralink’s testing have raised questions internally about the quality of the resulting data, three current or former employees said. Such problems could potentially delay the company’s bid to start human trials, which Musk has said the company wants to do within the next six months. They also add to a growing list of headaches for Musk, who is facing criticism of his management of Twitter, which he recently acquired for $44 billion. Musk also continues to run electric carmaker Tesla Inc and rocket company SpaceX.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is in charge of reviewing the company’s applications for approval of its medical device and associated trials. The company’s treatment of animals during research, however, is regulated by the USDA under the Animal Welfare Act. The FDA didn’t immediately comment.

MISSED DEADLINES, BOTCHED EXPERIMENTS

Musk’s impatience with Neuralink has grown as the company, which launched in 2016, has missed his deadlines on several occasions to win regulatory approval to start clinical trials in humans, according to company documents and interviews with eight current and former employees.

Some Neuralink rivals are having more success. Synchron, which was launched in 2016 and is developing a different implant with less ambitious goals for medical advances, received FDA approval to start human trials in 2021. The company’s device has allowed paralyzed people to text and type by thinking alone. Synchron has also conducted tests on animals, but it has killed only about 80 sheep as part of its research, according to studies of the Synchron implant reviewed by Reuters. Musk approached Synchron about a potential investment, Reuters reported in August.

Synchron declined to comment.

In some ways, Neuralink treats animals quite well compared to other research facilities, employees said in interviews, echoing public statements by Musk and other executives. Company leaders have boasted internally of building a “Monkey Disneyland” in the company’s Austin, Texas facility where lab animals can roam, a former employee said. In the company’s early years, Musk told employees he wanted the monkeys at his San Francisco Bay Area operation to live in a “monkey Taj Mahal,” said a former employee who heard the comment. Another former employee recalled Musk saying he disliked using animals for research but wanted to make sure they were "the happiest animals” while alive.

The animals have fared less well, however, when used in the company’s research, current and former employees say.

The first complaints about the company’s testing involved its initial partnership with University of California, Davis, to conduct the experiments. In February, an animal rights group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, filed a complaint with the USDA accusing the Neuralink-UC Davis project of botching surgeries that killed monkeys and publicly released its findings. The group alleged that surgeons used the wrong surgical glue twice, which led to two monkeys suffering and ultimately dying, while other monkeys had different complications from the implants.

The company has acknowledged it killed six monkeys, on the advice of UC Davis veterinary staff, because of health problems caused by experiments. It called the issue with the glue a “complication” from the use of an “FDA-approved product.” In response to a Reuters inquiry, a UC Davis spokesperson shared a previous public statement defending its research with Neuralink and saying it followed all laws and regulations.

A federal prosecutor in the Northern District of California referred the animal rights group’s complaint to the USDA Inspector General, which has since launched a formal probe, according to a source with direct knowledge of the investigation. USDA investigators then inquired about the allegations involving the UC Davis monkey research, according to two sources familiar with the matter and emails and messages reviewed by Reuters.

The probe is concerned with the testing and treatment of animals in Neuralink’s own facilities, one of the sources said, without elaborating. In 2020, Neuralink brought the program in-house, and has since built its extensive facilities in California and Texas.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of California declined to comment.

Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said it is “very unusual” for the USDA inspector general to investigate animal research facilities. Winders, an animal-testing opponent who has criticized Neuralink, said the inspector general has primarily focused in recent years on dog fighting and cockfighting actions when applying the Animal Welfare Act.

‘IT’S HARD ON THE LITTLE PIGGIES’

The mistakes leading to unnecessary animal deaths included one instance in 2021, when 25 out of 60 pigs in a study had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads, an error that could have been avoided with more preparation, according to a person with knowledge of the situation and company documents and communications reviewed by Reuters.

The mistake raised alarms among Neuralink’s researchers. In May 2021, Viktor Kharazia, a scientist, wrote to colleagues that the mistake could be a “red flag” to FDA reviewers of the study, which the company planned to submit as part of its application to begin human trials. His colleagues agreed, and the experiment was repeated with 36 sheep, according to the person with knowledge of the situation. All the animals, both the pigs and the sheep, were killed after the procedures, the person said.

Kharazia did not comment in response to requests.

On another occasion, staff accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of two different pigs during two separate surgeries, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter and documents reviewed by Reuters. The incident frustrated several employees who said the mistakes – on two separate occasions – could have easily been avoided by carefully counting the vertebrae before inserting the device.

Company veterinarian Sam Baker advised his colleagues to immediately kill one of the pigs to end her suffering.

“Based on low chance of full recovery … and her current poor psychological well-being, it was decided that euthanasia was the only appropriate course of action,” Baker wrote colleagues about one of the pigs a day after the surgery, adding a broken heart emoji.

Baker did not comment on the incident.

Employees have sometimes pushed back on Musk’s demands to move fast. In a company discussion several months ago, some Neuralink employees protested after a manager said that Musk had encouraged them to do a complex surgery on pigs soon. The employees resisted on the grounds that the surgery’s complexity would lengthen the amount of time the pigs would be under anesthesia, risking their health and recovery. They argued they should first figure out how to cut down the time it would take to do the surgery.

“It’s hard on the little piggies,” one of the employees said, referring to the lengthy period under anesthesia.

In September, the company responded to employee concerns about its animal testing by holding a town hall to explain its processes. It soon after opened up the meetings to staff of its federally-mandated board that reviews the animal experiments.

Neuralink executives have said publicly that the company tests animals only when it has exhausted other research options, but documents and company messages suggest otherwise. During a Nov. 30 presentation the company broadcast on YouTube, for example, Musk said surgeries were used at a later stage of the process to confirm that the device works rather than to test early hypotheses. “We’re extremely careful,” he said, to make sure that testing is “confirmatory, not exploratory,” using animal testing as a last resort after trying other methods.

In October, a month before Musk’s comments, Autumn Sorrells, the head of animal care, ordered employees to scrub "exploration" from study titles retroactively and stop using it in the future.

Sorrells did not comment in response to requests.

Neuralink records reviewed by Reuters contained numerous references over several years to exploratory surgeries, and three people with knowledge of the company’s research strongly rejected the assertion that Neuralink avoids exploratory tests on animals. Company discussions reviewed by Reuters showed several employees expressing concerns about Sorrells’ request to change exploratory study descriptions, saying it would be inaccurate and misleading.

One noted that the request seemed designed to provide “better optics” for Neuralink.
 

Terminal Blue

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Some of those quotes are pretty priceless..

Musk told employees he would trigger a “market failure” at Neuralink unless they made more progress
Who would have guessed Elon Musk doesn't know what market failure is..

Musk told employees he wanted the monkeys at his San Francisco Bay Area operation to live in a “monkey Taj Mahal,” said a former employee who heard the comment.
The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum..

Unintentional honesty?
 

Buyetyen

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There is nothing I could possibly say to persuade you about anything you don't already believe,
Because what you're saying is some bullshit! I can't be any clearer about this.

Ultimately, my goal here is just to have fun. Arguing with people about broad philosophical concepts is a fun intellectual challenge to me, regardless of outcome. But my arguments have definitely been successful, you're just unwilling to see it. Or maybe you do see it, and that's why you don't participate, out of fear I'll land a blow on your arguments. I promise, if you do actually argue with me, I will absolutely tear apart all of your arguments. It will not hurt, it will probably never change any of your beliefs, and it will strengthen the foundations of your own stances.
And that's why you make shit up. This is a game to you even though real people's well-being and civil rights on the line. You could not have done a more perfect job of putting the lie to your own concern trolling.
 

XsjadoBlaydette

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Leticia McCormack was a leader at the Rock Church in San Diego, but all record of her has been scrubbed from the website since she was accused of murdering young Arabella McCormack.

A leader at a megachurch has been charged with torturing her three adopted daughters and killing one of the girls.
Leticia McCormack, 49, faces accusations of child abuse, torture and murder.

She was a leader at Rock Church, a megachurch based in California led by former NFL player Miles McPherson but her profile has been removed from the church's website.

Leticia McCormack and her husband, Brian McCormack fostered the three girls in 2017 before adopting them in 2019.


According to court documents, Ms McCormack, along with her parents Stanley and Adella Tom, severely abused the children, hitting them with sticks and paddles.

Victim Arabella McCormack, 11, was severely malnourished when she died

Victim Arabella McCormack, 11, was severely malnourished when she died
Arabella McCormack was adopted by the McCormacks in 2019

Arabella McCormack was adopted by the McCormacks in 2019

The documents also claim they would stop the children from using the bathroom and would refuse them food and water.

In August one of the girls, Arabella McCormack was rushed to hospital.

The court documents say she was extremely malnourished and weighed just 48 lbs (22kg) when she died.

She was also recovering from 15 fracturing sustained in the months before her death.


An investigation was launched and when police came to speak to Brian McCormack he fatally shot himself.

Leticia McCormack was a leader at The Rock Church which is run by former NFL star Miles McPherson

Leticia McCormack was a leader at The Rock Church which is run by former NFL star Miles McPherson

According to the District Attorney prosecuting the case, text messages between Leticia and Brian have been uncovered which showed Brian believed Arabella "was starving to death and he believed she was going to die."

It is being argued that Leticia was the "ringleader" of the abuse against the girls but they all - Brian, Leticia, Stanley and Adella Tom - "worked together to starve" the girls.

All three have been charged with child abuse and torture. Leticia and Stanley were also charged with murder.

Bail has been denied for all three.

Leticia's attorney argued she should be granted bail because "there is no evidence to support an argument that she poses a danger to the public." It was denied.

Adella's attorney told the judge that, because of her advanced age (70), she "does not represent a danger to the community."


Stanley forfeited his right to challenge his bail being denied.
The kind of abuse that no-one's able to stop, because these rich fucks in their gated communities can keep themselves isolated from any potential intervention until the corpses cannot be swept under the rugs no more. And even then...
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Do you object to having to eat eat insects while the rich continue their lavish lifestyle, or do you object to eating insects in general too.

I'm assuming the former, but just asking. Cuz I've had some insect based foods a couple years ago. Tended to a bit dry and flavourless on it own. Mealworm crackers tasted kind of like blander krupuk/shrimp crackers. Not great, but otherwise perfectly edible.
Yeah, I'm not predisposed to hate insect food for the same reason I don't mind eating bugs of the sea, but those rich fucks better be lining up for sautéed tarantula in butter sauce or whatever the fuck
 
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tstorm823

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Literally my point.

For a little over a hundred years, the idea that any aspects of sex/gender were socially learned was completely scrubbed from existence in favor of sociobiological ideas about innate natural differences. As you say, nobody had an opinion on the difference between sex and gender because all behavioral differences could simply be attributed to sex. The problem, which you're conveniently ignoring, is that this isn't actually true.

One of the death-blows to this idea, for example, was the development of psychometrics in the early 20th century. As flawed as it was, psychometrics failed to uncover any real evidence of innate differences in intelligence or character between the sexes (or, for that matter, between people of different races) which created a huge problem for a society which was deeply invested in those things existing.
The problem, which you are conveniently ignoring, is that I am the one arguing that the aspects of gender are socially learned, and everyone else is arguing in favor of innate differences.
Noone in the 50s used the term "gender role." What they would have said, instead, was "sex role". Gender role is a later evolution of the concept of sex roles to differentiate them from the origin of "sex roles" in the conservative psychoanalysis of the late 1950s.
John Money did.
Ask yourself a serious question, if you were presented with a child whose genitals had been completely mutilated in an accident, who had no discernable sex, who would never naturally produce most androgenic hormones and would never be able to pee standing up or top in normal heterosexual intercourse, what do you think would be the best course of action for that child to live a normal life? Because that's important, isn't it. We all should want our children to live a normal life.
Fun fact: Y chromosomes do more than let you pee standing up and sexually penetrate people. You're asking a question with a wildly faulty premise.
The idea that Money was somehow instrumental in the development of a modern theory of gender is a bizarre myth started by the hyperbolic praise given to him by one of his students after his death. He was a pretty standard conservative psychologist of the 1950s, and his legacy is far more evident in the kind of "reparative" therapy you are defending than in anything else.
I'm not defending any kind of "reparative therapy". My position is that the issue here is societal in nature. Society is moving from "there's no way you people can ever fit in" to "well, maybe you can fit in if you cut your penis off". No therapy is going to fix either situation, societal change is required.
Sex is a social construct.

It is not actually different from gender. It is not more real than gender. A child who says "I'm a boy" because they have a penis is no more correct than one who doesn't. It's all the product of social learning. There is no physical reality to the idea that the shape of your genitals determines the type of person you are....
With one major, major exception: being a mother or a father depends on it. Those are types of people that physically depend on your genitals to become. That cannot be deconstructed to an element of social learning, it is physical reality that the continuation of the species relies on. Sure, there is a lot of secondary baggage that goes along with the social conception of sex, but it is not purely that secondary baggage, there is a physical reality to it.
 

tstorm823

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And that's why you make shit up. This is a game to you even though real people's well-being and civil rights on the line.
This is a game. This is a gaming forum. We are all here for entertainment. Nobody is participating in the escapist forums to enhance people's well-being or gain civil rights. If I claimed to be here for any other primary reason, I would really be making things up.
 

Silvanus

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The problem, which you are conveniently ignoring, is that I am the one arguing that the aspects of gender are socially learned, and everyone else is arguing in favor of innate differences.
This here is, I think, the root of your misunderstanding of your opponents' position.

The acknowledgement of non-binary, trans, and other genderqueer identities does not require one to believe gendered traits are "innate". One can very easily believe that gender roles/characteristics are fluid and unfixed, and also believe that they want to identify in a way that doesn't match their physical/ birth sex.

The acknowledgement of non-binary, trans, and other genderqueer identities only requires one to believe that gender-- or 'social sex'-- is not inseparable from physical/birth sex. Within that are people who believe that gender is innate, but that it does not necessarily match with physical sex; but within that are also people who don't believe gender is innate, and still identify with one.

That's not the same as gender identity. "That is a male trait" does not lead to the conclusion "that woman is actually a man". "Some people fall between men and women" does not lead to the conclusion "that woman is actually a man." You may think the distinction is splitting hairs, but the distinction is both philosophically enormous and in practice does not lead to doctors prescribing genital mutilation.
The conclusion you're ascribing is not the one your opponents actually expressed. You're not going to make any progress in understanding unless you try to understand how they've reached their own conclusions, rather than the ones you're ascribing to them.

Cultures for centuries have seen people socially as male/female despite them physically being the other sex. That is undeniably true. And demonstrates that a concept of what we would call "gender" in modern English, distinct from physical sex, has existed for centuries. That is not seriously disputed by anthropologists and cultural historians at all.

Wanna see a fun trick?
This just shows a really poor grasp of medical chemistry.

Drugs are used for different things. That's really all there is to it. Reversible blockers are factually not castration.
 
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Buyetyen

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This is a game. This is a gaming forum. We are all here for entertainment. Nobody is participating in the escapist forums to enhance people's well-being or gain civil rights. If I claimed to be here for any other primary reason, I would really be making things up.
Unfortunately dude, we talk a lot of smack, but the issues are very real. It's less about what impact we're having and what's just in bad taste. And you have really bad taste to say some of the things you do. For example:

The problem, which you are conveniently ignoring, is that I am the one arguing that the aspects of gender are socially learned, and everyone else is arguing in favor of innate differences.

Fun fact: Y chromosomes do more than let you pee standing up and sexually penetrate people. You're asking a question with a wildly faulty premise.

I'm not defending any kind of "reparative therapy". My position is that the issue here is societal in nature. Society is moving from "there's no way you people can ever fit in" to "well, maybe you can fit in if you cut your penis off". No therapy is going to fix either situation, societal change is required.
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BrawlMan

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This is a game. This is a gaming forum. We are all here for entertainment. Nobody is participating in the escapist forums to enhance people's well-being or gain civil rights. If I claimed to be here for any other primary reason, I would really be making things up.
You sure as fuck don't speak for me, nor most users on this site. Don't pretend otherwise and project your attitude and toxic personality on others. You lack actual standards, self-reflection, and never hold yourself to your responsibility or those who abuse the less fortunate and of different status.