fracture [he/him]

more than the content of the video, which i am already pretty much sold on, is a passing line mentioned in the video - “resilience is built on uniqueness”. that’s an idea i’ve never encountered before, would love to hear other people’s opinions on it

it’s an interesting article, but i think the authors are conflating friction for wanting genuine human interaction; its easier than ever for me to make friends because i can instantly connect with and message back and forth, quickly and in real time, over various platforms e.g. discord, the depth of which is only limited by our interactions and how we treat them. forcing us back to sms/email/paper mail doesn’t make our interactions deeper, even though it adds friction. it means we can easily choose what the depth of connection we want is

that isn’t to say that there aren’t examples where less friction leads to less interaction. dating apps are a great example. but i think the authors are conflating the friction for the interaction. yes, you could add friction that would encourage interaction, but you could also add friction that doesn’t. i think the more salient point would be, encouraging interaction often includes friction, but one shouldn’t shy away from that, as a UI/UX developer

which, granted, isn’t as catchy of a title. but they could have gone into greater detail for that in the article, too

regardless of this critique, i enjoyed reading it and the perspective it offered, even if i don’t strictly agree

oh okay, sorry, i took away a different impression from your OP talking about how the FDA process is flawed due to appeals being the starting point (which very well may be true) - but including that with this article made it seem like you felt that way about this particular incident (e.g. the link was supporting evidence), not that the commentary on the FDA process was it’s own, unrelated thing

glad to hear that we’re in agreement about the denial, though

i can’t really comment on the process, i’ve never taken mdma myself. that said, you say there’s no way you wouldn’t know you’re on it, but there’s a number of substances out there where you’d think that would be the case, but it isn’t (think like, the stereotype of people acting drunk with little / no alcohol, just thinking they had it). also, the dosages may be lower / less obvious, although i have no idea what the dosages used for recreational use vs for therapeutic use are here

idk dawg this seems pretty sound according to the article

The FDA and its advisors identified flaws in the design of the clinical trials, missing data, and a variety of biases in people involved with the trials, including an alleged cult-like support of psychedelics. Lykos is a commercial spinoff of the psychedelic advocacy nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

FDA advisors also noted the public allegations of a sexual assault of a trial participant during a Phase II trial by an unlicensed therapist providing the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.

…

On Saturday, using the existing data and scientific literature to support MDMA therapy got a little more difficult for Lykos. The journal Psychopharmacology posted retraction notices for three studies that involved Phase II clinical data of the therapy. The studies included a 2019 rationale for a Phase III trial design, a 2020 pooled analysis, and a 2020 study on how antidepressant use may affect the response to MDMA therapy.

The retraction notice cited two reasons for the retractions, including “protocol violations amounting to unethical conduct” at one of the clinical trial sites—a reference to the sexual assault allegations—and undisclosed conflicts of interest by the authors.

like. these are pretty good reasons for not going ahead. it’s on lykos and the scientists running the trials for not keeping their paperwork straight and, you know, not warning people about the risks of the study

from an article cited within (https://qz.com/1809184/psychedelic-therapy-has-a-sexual-abuse-problem-3):

A few years ago, a therapist working in a MAPS MDMA study publicly spoke about his challenges dealing with a patient’s sexuality. Early in his career, Richard Yensen was working with a “lovely young lady who became very sexualized in her relationship around the [MDMA] sessions,” he told an audience at California Institute of Integral Studies in 2016. “It got so intense,” said Yensen, that the chair of his department saw him mid-therapy session and told him to leave the room, warning him to always have another therapist alongside him during sessions. “And thank god, because she became more and more and more activated sexually,” said Yensen. “I don’t think I could have handled it.”

Not long after, Yensen was accused of sexually assaulting a PTSD patient, Meaghan Buisson, during a MAPS clinical trial on MDMA

like. even GENEROUSLY assuming that nothing truly unethical happened. this is a huge issue that will only get worse if it’s made publicly available

i’m not taking a position on whether or not it should be made available as a treatment. i don’t know and i’m not qualified to determine that. but given what’s been said, it feels reasonable to want more data and perhaps go “hey think you could run a trial without getting accused of assaulting people?”

can they just please make a lower budget game for the sake of branching out instead of pushing millions into a game expecting it to explode in sales? no? too much to ask? ok…

i would have appreciated hearing how the author, personally, found capitalized pronouns to be affirming, because, absent that reasoning, it really does seem like it’s to set up a deferential power dynamic. i don’t really mind respecting the pronouns anyways, but it does mean i don’t really want to be friends with Them until i understand what’s going on there better

it’s highly personal, so ideally you ask the individual and include their consent in your article. that said, generally speaking, trans people will use their current pronouns, even referring to their pre-transition selves. this is also what’s generally considered polite if you don’t know them, so it’s pretty suspect that the article is not doing that

still, something about malice and incompetence…

really appreciate the author’s dedication to explaining math in an approachable way

the way you’re trying to exclude trans men from a general trans space “because most of the memes are trans fem” is really othering and hurtful

i don’t feel like that reason makes it okay to be exclusive to trans men. if anything, that strikes me as a reason to be more considerate, not less

sort of like how a typical women’s space should be considerate in including trans women, since they’re a minority of a marginalized group, no?

incidentally, you should see that the rules of the subreddit which forbid bigotry and encourage tagging your post with the audience it’s aimed at

how is this a women’s space?

cw: targeted towards trans femmes :')

hate speech (of which nazi speech is a subset of) isn’t political either. it definitely should be banned because it demonstrably causes people to get hurt

insane stance to be advocating that nazis should have free speech in 2024

rather than talk about my experience, i tend to think it’s more helpful to have cisgender people imagine themselves in similar hypothetical situations:

1. imagine everyone in your life started using she/her pronouns for you. how would this make you feel? how does this affect how you react to them? how does this affect how they react to you?

2. imagine you woke up in a female body. how would you feel? imagine you had to adjust to it for a week. then a month. then a year. then ten years. what adjustments to your life would you have to make? how does this affect how people treat you? how does this affect your behavior? how would you feel about this situation? what would you miss about your previous body?

the second experience is essentially what it’s like to be a transgender man, except it’s from birth and you don’t (necessarily) get to start with the knowledge you’re a guy (some people more intuitively figure it out than others)

these questions hopefully help you develop a sense of what gender means to you, which should help you understand what gender means to us (obv it’s not the same for everyone, and it’s pretty binary, but it’s a decent starting point)

god bless the people giving stool samples so often for the studies. FOUR TIMES A YEAR FOR SIX YEARS?? i did it once and it was awful. and more frequently if they got vaxxed or sick? i would cry

thanks for sharing this information with us, i think it’s important to discuss this stuff on the fediverse

i notice that beehaw doesn’t have a similar clause in its TOS, as far as i can tell. without the expectation of you answering this question, i’m wondering what the difference is between the two such that cohost has such a clause and beehaw doesn’t. maybe it’s because one is run by an individual and one is run by a small company?

i did a search on cohost itself to see if anyone else talked about this and found this quite extensive thread: https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1588769277053739010

so based on what you’ve said and what’s in that thread, i’m gonna update my post with some qualifications about cohost. thanks for piqing my interest in the TOS

is there a way they could protect themselves (“still legally be able to function”) without that clause?

it’s not federated or open, but cohost is a tumblr-alternative run by a group of queer devs who promise not to sell the company or your data. i don’t blame you if you don’t buy into it, but i do like the platform

https://cohost.org/rc/welcome

edit: based on what /u/FaceDeer@kbin.social has mentioned about the TOS, as well as further elaboration i found in a thread about it (https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1588769277053739010), i don’t think i can responsibly advocate for cohost, even as a closed/private alternative to tumblr

i, uh, hm. well, in a marriage, you don’t know if someone is exploiting your goodwill, but ideally you marry someone who you don’t have to actively worry about it e.g. someone you can trust

relationships aren’t a hard science, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t science about them. for example, you could check out the book, “a general theory of love”. or you could check out the work of john gottman on relationships and love, he’s done a ton of work on them

for more general information on like, how humans work, you can check out paul ekman’s work on facial expressions and the facial action coding system (FACS). i’d also recommend marshall rosenberg’s non-violent communication - i don’t recall how strictly research-based the work is, but he (until he died, anyways) and his org do trainings across the world in this stuff, and he has a phd in clinical psychology, so i… think… it has a reasonable foundation? (it’s been a while since i read it)

and of course, because trauma invariably deeply affects relationships, you can read “the body keeps the score”, which is maybe the foremost research based text for the layperson about it

sorry, i’m not sure how open you are to actually receiving this kind of information… it’s totally understandable if you’re not. i used to feel a lot like you, i think, kind of unsure and untrusting of others. and all of these things are things i’ve read and learned from that have given me a lot more confidence about interacting with other people in general

obviously, the knowledge itself isn’t enough, but maybe you’ll find it helpful nonetheless

yeah no, my post is closer to “there’s more than 0% free will” than “there’s 100% free will”. i definitely know too much about trauma to think it’s 100%. but trauma get so deeply ingrained, and it’s so cyclical; that anyone can break free, seems nothing short of miraculous to me. to me, if we had no free will, that would never happen

it’s insane to me that someone could understand the ramifications of trauma on neurobiology and conclude that free will doesn’t exist

i feel like, without free will, no one would ever escape their trauma. without saying something shitty and uncompassionate like “you’re only held back by your trauma because you’re not strong willed enough”; that’s not true at all

but i think, at it’s core, healing from trauma requires two things: a person who you feel safe enough to trust, and the willingness to take the leap and trust again

if you don’t have one or the other, you’re going to really struggle

and that moment where you choose to trust, how can you see that as anything but free will? when everything about your past, your nerves, your biology is screaming at you to do otherwise?

i dunno. i don’t think any of us would have grown past our trauma at all without free will

that said, i think there’s also just too much going on in the brain to conclude there’s no free will for sure. i guess that’s not the same as saying it’s deterministic, which you can’t really say, because physics gets too fucking weird at low levels, right?

anyways, i guess we can never really definitively say whether free will exists or not. but i think you can still make very strong arguments for being compassionate to poor people / traumatized people / people with mental illness / etc without saying we all don’t have free will. it feels a lot like saying we’re all doomed to be what we were made to be and we can’t make a better life for ourselves

it just starts with convincing people, and believing, that we all deserve that