Gaywallet (they/it) @ Gaywallet @beehaw.org

I'm gay

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Housing laws are complex and weird and in many cases laws are based on case precedent or specific things happening in an area. They vary greatly from state to state and often include archaic provisions. They also don't garner a ton of attention from the media, so things sometimes get passed in large bills that are weird one-offs because someone who's involved in voting on the bill who was important asks for or inserts something due to a particular bias or belief.

Entirely unsurprising. I also think with how anti-regulation we are in the US, that nothing is likely to change anytime soon. At the very least, you'd think it would be pretty widely accepted that investigating and spending resources to stop price collusion would be an easy win. Realistically, they aren't investigating now and I see little to no reason they'd start investigating anytime soon.

I think there's something to be said about timeframe even for individuals who held deplorable views. Purchasing art from a dead artist doesn't go to supporting their life or spreading their shitty viewpoint - instead it will go to a company which holds the rights or an estate which benefits the family. Unless we happen to know the company/estate is deplorable in some way or another, we shouldn't judge them based on the connection with the original artist - after all we don't get to choose our parents and may not hold the same views they do.

Yikes, thanks so much for these links. I've avoided kagi for awhile now for lack of need but it had been top of list of 'things I should try'. Guess I can strike that one out now.

As an FYI, opposed does not necessarily mean opposite, it can and often means in contrast to or in conflict with. Shades of gray, but either word works fine here.

This is incredibly dismissive of the concerns raised and adds nothing to the discussion

You're absolutely correct, yet ask someone who's very pro AI and they might dismiss such claims as "needing better prompts". Also many people may not be as tech informed as you are, and bringing light to algorithmic bias can help them understand and navigate the world we now live in. Dismissing the article just because you already know the answer doesn't really encourage people to participate in a discussion.

Direct link to journal article

As much as that writing style is rather unique and interesting, it is dreadfully difficult to follow. There's a verbosity to it that would make me think the person who wrote it sat in front of a thesaurus looking for the exact word to replace what they originally wrote about fifteen times per sentence if I didn't already know eccentric people like this who exist in real life and pride themselves in their ability to use the absolute 'best' word to represent their thoughts at any one moment, ignoring the fact that many people will not be able to follow for lack of ever hearing, let alone understanding what the word means. With that being said, I did very much enjoy the imagery the writer was able to conjure on the subject of enshittification and the general state of affairs of the average tech bro.

The cost of recidivism is so high that we could easily be supporting these individuals a lot more, but with that being said this is a step in the right direction.

While you may not agree with the tone that Alyaza used in their reply, their response is logically and factually correct and I think it's natural for someone to be upset about someone who's being deceitful with their point (whether it's done consciously or not). Furthermore, jumping into a conversation someone else is having online to call one side pedantic or toxic isn't exactly treating them with good grace or being nice. If you wanted to diffuse, you could have asked questions or treated their response as charitably as possible before jumping to conclusions about intent.

Being nice and being civil are two different things and we do not strive to be perfectly civil around here. After all, weaponizing civility is often used by the intolerant to try and tone police others. While tolerance/intolerance isn't at play here, the same mechanisms of speech are, and its fair to attribute charitability and faith based on the conversation as it unfolds. If someone is deceitful in their response, someone responding to that bad faith with less respect is to be expected.

A compulsive liar will lie about anything, stop listening entirely

I get what he's saying, and in many ways I agree, but the choice of words is too strong for the hypotheses he's presenting. For example, he uses the following to bolster his claim

Abundant evidence indicates that people who grew up in homes marked by chaos and deprivation will perceive the world differently and make different choices than people raised in safe, stable, resource-rich environments.

Yet he mentions himself that we are subject to our external environment. Some of these individuals do not make markedly different choices based on these external differences, not to mention their own internal ones (genetics, etc.).

To make the claim that we have no free will because we are the sum of our environment + upbringing ignores that we have a modicum of control over our environment, and it also ignores how our interactions provide that external environment. We pass laws to further human rights and create a better environment so that people in the future would hold them in higher esteem and be influenced by these choices we make. In short, there is a field of possibility that lies within the maybes - our genetics and upbringing set us up for how malleable we are on any decision. Some decisions simply won't happen and some outcomes are likely inevitable, but most fall in the space where there is a likely but not predetermined outcome which is influenced by the environment. This is why perfect predetermination is impossible.

In fact, this very viewpoint is even reinforced in the most physical of sciences - physics. In quantum physics we can at best determine probable outcomes. While there are theorists who believe in superdeterminism, or the idea that we simply don't have all the variables to determine everything perfectly yet, superdeterminism has gotten no closer to explaining bell tests, the slit experiment, or other quantum phenomenon in well over 50 years. Increasingly complicated mathematics repeatedly show that there is a fundamental randomness to the universe that we seem unable to capture.

And I think it makes sense, in the context of what we know of biology and evolution. Brains are constructed in a way where signals are created almost randomly, and then organized to make sense of the world. Evolution has played a part to refine this processing so that it ignores what's not important to survival and proliferation. If this process weren't generative and random in some sense, we would not evolve and there would be little to no purpose for diversity. The world is constantly changing and thus our biology must account for this, meaning that it must be malleable and open to changes by the environment. If it is open to changes by the environment, then we must be able to influence each other and thus a concept of free will must exist that at the very least is a representation of the sum of all that activity.

I'd say pick it up and give it a whirl, just set your expectations very low

I've been using a bunch for years. Honestly the vanities don't bother me the slightest. What bothers me is the way people treat them. First and foremost, the majority of people on these apps aren't even looking to date! They're looking to quell their anxiety about whether they are date-able, whether they can find a match in case their current partner dumps them, are curious and want a way to people watch, or just interested in the dopamine they get from swiping profiles. They can't find a healthy way to use them, so they use it for a little then delete the app because they find themselves addicted then reinstall months later when they find the urge. Or they mute all notifications and rarely open it, then feel bad when someone messaged them a week or two ago and decide it's better to just not respond. Or they just make a snap judgement over just a few words and refuse to give the other person any time of their day to respond and just ghost. Or they chat for awhile then forget they were chatting because they have no notifications, disappear for a month, then feel anxious about that and rather than apologize just pretend it didn't happen and delete the chat or match.

It's just exhausting. I just want to meet people and see who I vibe with and I don't understand why so many people don't treat dating apps the same way.

This is week 2 of being back at work and it's nice to have some things I'm working on but also nice to not really have a lot on my plate and not expect a lot to be dropped on my plate anytime soon as everyone's just starting to emerge from their winter vacations.

I had a nice date the other night with another very non-binary person and there's something really special and nice about dating people who have so thoroughly rejected the gender binary. It's a special kind of trans in my heart, and I always find people like this so darn fascinating in terms of how they want the world to perceive them. Seems to have gone well, but they also seem to be very anti dating?? so I guess I'm lucky I made the cut? I have no idea where this is going, but they live nearby which is a plus

As an aside I'm so tired of dating apps and dating in general. People either have impossibly high standards or something about me just doesn't vibe with most people and like, I get it, but why does it have to be so exhausting? I just want to curl up in someone's lap and have them run their fingers thru my hair 😩

Ibogaine has been used in alternative medicine to help people break addiction for quite some time. It just happens to be a psychedelic treated with extreme respect, perhaps due to the nonzero chance that it could kill you. Interestingly enough, this study seems to suggest that co-administration with magnesium may completely or at least significantly offset that chance.

To be clear, MAPS was actually not involved in this study, although it is fair to say their advocacy is absolutely pinnacle to the field of psychedelic sciences. But I do agree, MAPS rules

I spoke with the researchers on this particular study a few months ago at a local conference. This study is interesting to me due to a few factors:

• Ibogaine is almost never studied in the medical context because a small number of individuals experience an adverse reaction involving the heart which can result in death
• The researchers theorized you could counter this rare but life threatening side effect by co-administering magnesium, suggesting that afib is behind the heart-related problems and that ibogaine may cause some kind of imbalance with Ca, K, and Na.
• Ibogaine is a schedule 1 controlled drug in the US meaning that it cannot be studied for medical purposes. Unlike MDMA and psilocybin which have had the power of MAPS arguing for decades for the use in research and allowing medical research despite the scheduling status of the drugs, ibogaine has not received this special status, meaning that the researchers had to have a rather unique study design in which patients were recruited in one country and sent to another country for treatment. I've quite literally never seen a study do this, let alone one which is working with a population that is federal in nature (veterans) and is a fantastically creative way of ensuring medical research can continue amongst draconian law.

Also, here's a direct link to the article in nature