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[lemon10]

Just going to throw my couple of cents in about gender reaffirming surgery/hormone blockers and all that jazz.

From my understanding (based mostly on relavent stuff I've read in B12 in the past) its wildly successful in increasing quality of life and reducing suicide risk. In addition the vast vast majority don't regret it and think it doing it was the right decision.

So sure, a small percentage might regret it, but its much lower then the percentage that regret not doing it earlier.
So purely based on the statistics it should be significantly easier to do hormone blockers/GRS then it currently is.

I demand my atomless remedies!

Good news! With homeopathy you can indeed get your atomless remedies, as in, there will be literally no atoms of the "active" substance or any cure in what you get.

Zero of what you just said has anything to do with the point. The only point is that, from any biological or historical or cross-cultural perspective, chewing on roots or tree bark is the normal way to deal with problems, and popping pills, much less getting stabbed with a needle, is profoundly weird and unique.

To be pedantic I suspect the "natural" way of medicine is that you asked your local witch doctor/medicine man to help and he grabs some stuff to make some kind of poultice to stick on your wound or paste to eat from multiple ingredients.

Even though this would be "natural" medicine its still artificial and processed, and thus unnatural anyways.

[Starver]

Good news! With homeopathy you can indeed get your atomless remedies, as in, there will be literally no atoms of the "active" substance or any cure in what you get.

...that's no good. It's still got the huge dose of dihydrogen monoxide in it. So much that it'll probably homeopathically dehydrate me horribly!

(At the very least, it's a placebo-blocker. And they haven't even worked out how to do a randomised double-blind trial to check if a placebo-blocker is effective.)

[lemon10]

Good news! With homeopathy you can indeed get your atomless remedies, as in, there will be literally no atoms of the "active" substance or any cure in what you get.

...that's no good. It's still got the huge dose of dihydrogen monoxide in it. So much that it'll probably homeopathically dehydrate me horribly!

(At the very least, it's a placebo-blocker. And they haven't even worked out how to do a randomised double-blind trial to check if a placebo-blocker is effective.)

You have not truly internalized the truth of homeopathy if you don't know that the more of something there is the less powerful it is.
So all that water is certainly going to be homeopathically inert.

[Starver]

Good news! With homeopathy you can indeed get your atomless remedies, as in, there will be literally no atoms of the "active" substance or any cure in what you get.

...that's no good. It's still got the huge dose of dihydrogen monoxide in it. So much that it'll probably homeopathically dehydrate me horribly!

(At the very least, it's a placebo-blocker. And they haven't even worked out how to do a randomised double-blind trial to check if a placebo-blocker is effective.)

You have not truly internalized the truth of homeopathy if you don't know that the more of something there is the less powerful it is.
So all that water is certainly going to be homeopathically inert.

Exactly. It'll not even slake my thirst, to a fatal degree.

(But if I heavily dilute the DHMO with some Hydric Acid, I think I might be able to restore just enough of its good properties, without necessarily overdosing with a homeopathic underdose.)

[anewaname]

Spoiler: pills (click to show/hide)

The profit-triangle between the healthcare system, the pharmaceutical industry, and the insurance industry, with mutual profit as their prime motivator... causing weak studies, addictive prescriptions, and over-medication, by doctors who legally can only prescribe pills for many "conditions" that no test exists for.

Pills might be safer due to their consistency, but they should be the exception and not the norm.

Back to the trans hormone treatment topic please...

[Max™]

So I'm the only one who had their eye start twitching at the "no processed foods" nonsense?

Like, when you start drawing venn diagrams, the big ones that overlap with that circle aren't ones I'd be caught in. Like we're talking a lot of overlap with the "don't spill your seed or it reduces your masculine energy" and "women exist to make men happy which includes carrying babies to term" and "this is a christian nation for white people" and "maybe we should start putting certain people in camps" type of bullshit.

Go sinkwash a steak or whatever stupid shit [GENERIC_WHITE_PODCASTER_BRO] said is "like totally Spartan" and leave discussion of our duties to each other to the folks who grew beyond the "NO IT'S MINE" phase all these embarrassing ass right wing toddlers are stuck in. Don't worry though, we'll still treat you with basic fucking dignity, not that you would do the same for everyone else.

[Rolan7]

It reminds me a lot of my mom, to be honest, though even she mocks the paleo diet (thank hermes).

You're also not getting what I'm saying.

Zero of what you just said has anything to do with the point. The only point is that, from any biological or historical or cross-cultural perspective, chewing on roots or tree bark is the normal way to deal with problems, and popping pills, much less getting stabbed with a needle, is profoundly weird and unique.

Any statement about effect has nothing to do with anything, because "normal" is a totally separate axis from "good" and equivocating between the two is insane and fallacious.

That's easy to misinterpret but pretty cool!  You mean "profoundly weird and unique" in a neutral way, morally, neither good nor bad.  To read any morality into it would be insane and fallacious.  oops v_v

I mean, I don't really eat processed foods, but yeah, most things most people eat aren't. Not sure what your point is.

Eating stuff external to your body to make yourself feel better is so standard a behavior it's exhibited pervasively by non-humans, to the point a lot of our pharmacology got its start out of observing exactly that. It's part of normal biology for just about everything that has a biology.

Pills refine materials to (hopefully) maximize the benefits and minimize the detriments, but the basic behavior is incredibly standard among living things. If it ain't something you'd consider normal, your concept of normal is wildly out of whack.

You're just equivocating between "abnormal" and "there's something wrong with it". Pills that have to be manufactured in a factory halfway around the world and shipped to you at enormous energy expense are obviously abnormal, and qualitatively different from the prehistoric "eat some roots and grass and probably die anyway" correlate.

Morally neutral!
Including the part where they're shipped at enormous energy expense.  That *sounds* like a moral criticism, but fortunately you clarified that it's a morally neutral statement.  You bring up that you avoid it, but I suppose that's ethics not morality.
Obviously.

Joking aside: You're on that paleo diet and it helps you feel superior to other people.  That's fine, we all adopt arbitrary rituals to assert our identity in a world that's both unthinkably large and compressed into a little black mirror.
It's not a practical moral code for a modern society, but as personal ethics it's... probably fine.  Mostly harmless, if you know what you're doing.  Simply a waste of money...  As long as you don't start projecting that fetish for ""natural"" behavior on to other people.
I find it healthier to admit that my personal ticks are arbitrary, or at least that they're personal, but I might have an "abnormal" mind.

Oh and also yes, it's kinda fucked that we ship food around the world unnecessarily.
But refining pharmaceuticals into a pill or injection?  That's just good.  It's only as unnatural as grinding a root in a pestle and mortar instead of your teeth.

They sell industrial buckets of estrogen, you know?  I don't know what would happen if I snorted it like cocaine tried to absorb it sublingually.  There's a whole chemical process, apparently, which refines it into a safe form we know as the little teal pill emblazoned with a ρ
ha, hey, it's my name!  ρ!
But yeah, medicine is good actually.  Shipping is largely bad, a lot of imperialism is bad, but medicine?  good

Edit:  Oh oh, and the open document outlining that refinement process, by some based anarcho-socialists?  Even though it relies on the pharmaceutical industry for the raw materials, it's pretty rad.
(There are even-more-off-the-grid methods involving urine, but there's no need to be so natural just yet)

[Egan_BW]

Weren't you paying attention? Medicine isn't good, it's morally neutral. Living or dying aren't good or bad. There's literally no difference between good and bad things.

[Maximum Spin]

Morally neutral!
Including the part where they're shipped at enormous energy expense.  That *sounds* like a moral criticism, but fortunately you clarified that it's a morally neutral statement.  You bring up that you avoid it, but I suppose that's ethics not morality.
Obviously.

... did you just not get that I phrased both sides in a super negative way?

Joking aside: You're on that paleo diet

Uhhh... no I'm not. I just like vegetables and beans and things, man. Did eating a healthy diet become a political flashpoint somewhere along the line?

PASSIM

Oh. I guess it did. I mean, the actual hell? Did you get this from the voices in your head? Wasn't the prototypical arch-liberal supposed to be shopping at Whole Foods and shoveling down quinoa? I like quinoa, you know. The wholesale returns of speculation you can spin out of someone's dietary habits into "circles" I mercifully wot not of, but for which you seem to have an uncanny fascination, are awfully staggering.
I don't even eat meat, you absolute fucking weirdo. Or is that fascist to you too?

To be pedantic I suspect the "natural" way of medicine is that you asked your local witch doctor/medicine man to help and he grabs some stuff to make some kind of poultice to stick on your wound or paste to eat from multiple ingredients.

Even though this would be "natural" medicine its still artificial and processed, and thus unnatural anyways.

That's clearly not natural either. I don't know of any animals other than humans that have witch doctors.
(Also, witch doctors don't do medicine, that's a misunderstanding because of some poorly-thought-out 19th century terminology, they do magic, they cure or cause curses and not diseases, but that's beside the point.)

Spoiler: pills (click to show/hide)

The profit-triangle between the healthcare system, the pharmaceutical industry, and the insurance industry, with mutual profit as their prime motivator... causing weak studies, addictive prescriptions, and over-medication, by doctors who legally can only prescribe pills for many "conditions" that no test exists for.

Pills might be safer due to their consistency, but they should be the exception and not the norm.

Back to the trans hormone treatment topic please...

THIS is absolutely true and important though. It's not the point I was making about "normal", but it's a good point and I'll sign on to 100% of it.

[delphonso]

Aye Max, I think that's a not a surefire sign. I used to be one of those 'organic all natural' crunchy hippy types, not even that long ago, and I mostly encountered that culture as 'hyperinclusive', and generally progressive (in the way moderate Dems are, read: misguided). Worst I could say is that they were 1., obviously falling for the appeal to nature fallacy and 2., culturally appropriative, often relying on characatures of eastern cultures. That community is very spiritual and welcoming to others. Gender roles weren't particularly strong, but nor were they abandoned.

That said, there is a lot of overlap with the 'all-meat diet' that Jordan Peterson almost killed himself with and the whole 'estrogen in my food' thing that was around when Alex Jones was bigger (I don't recall if he really spread that or if it was earlier). I'd say the overlap is probably bigger now, since the antivax movement really dug its claws into both groups, and the algorithims on Youtube probably aren't helping.

[Maximum Spin]

Aye Max, I think that's a not a surefire sign. I used to be one of those 'organic all natural' crunchy hippy types, not even that long ago, and I mostly encountered that culture as 'hyperinclusive', and generally progressive (in the way moderate Dems are, read: misguided). Worst I could say is that they were 1., obviously falling for the appeal to nature fallacy and 2., culturally appropriative, often relying on characatures of eastern cultures. That community is very spiritual and welcoming to others. Gender roles weren't particularly strong, but nor were they abandoned.

That said, there is a lot of overlap with the 'all-meat diet' that Jordan Peterson almost killed himself with and the whole 'estrogen in my food' thing that was around when Alex Jones was bigger (I don't recall if he really spread that or if it was earlier). I'd say the overlap is probably bigger now, since the antivax movement really dug its claws into both groups, and the algorithims on Youtube probably aren't helping.

Sure, that sounds more or less plausible. I'm neither of those things, though, I just... like nice food. I live and grew up in farm country, so, you know.

I am still just sort of gobsmacked to be accused — accused! By two different people! — of being "Paleo". Is processed food mandatory now?! Sooooo weird. Man. Whatever.

All I really wanted to establish here is that whether something is "normal", meaning, the modal state over some distribution, is a neutral statement that cannot rationally be interpreted as an endorsement or condemnation. I cannot believe that this was so contentious.

[None]

normal distributions, being an abstract concept that involves mathematics, which itself is not found in tree bark or roots, is profoundly weird and unique and very abnormal

the abnormal normal, being normally abnormal, may abnormally be normal and that is super negative

Speaking of maths, Fox might be losing viewship after pushing defamatory statements about voting security in the wake of the Dominion lawsuit and there may be a second lawsuit coming for them from Smartmatic for about the same reasons.

How hard d'you reckon this is going to hit Fox? Did we talk about this already?

[MorleyDev]

Normal in Maths and Normal in Society are two different things (not that either are consistent, a Normalized Vector has nothing to do with a statistical normal). Socially, describing something as normal in the English Language comes with an implicit value judgement. That normal is good, abnormal is bad. You can be both rare and normal, because language is a cursed thing invented purely to hurt those who use it. Return to ook ook people!

As for Fox News, well Murdoch has openly that said they paid zero attention to truth or reality and entirely to what they thought would bring in more money. It'd be an appropriately fitting indictment of late-stage capitalism if the short term pursuit of profits destroyed their long term viability but cockroaches are depressingly good at surviving.

[Telgin]

Yeah, even if Fox News goes bankrupt something else will quickly take its place.  I'm all for making them accountable, but I don't see it really helping anything in the long term.

[MrRoboto75]

The viewership already seeks more radical news sources like Newsmax.