GreyShuck @ GreyShuck @feddit.uk

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163

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219

Joined

2 yr. ago

I would say that kindness is an expression (not the only one) of empathy. Some degree of empathy is present in the overwhelming majority of people - barring extreme sociopathic conditions and an absence of mirror neurones. So for most people I would say that it is innate to some extent.

Even in cases where empathy is not present, kindness can be simulated or faked and some people with strong sociopathic conditions have proven to be very good at this when it suits their purposes - so I certainly say something with the appearance of kindness can be learned in one form or another.

It can definitely be cultivated - and I would say that this is one of the major qualities in the whole "two wolves" metaphor or, in classical Greek terms, a virtue to be developed.

This is a noted issue with Ticks. When removing them, unless you do it properly, you may end up with the mouthparts left embedded in your skin.. However, even with those, the body will usually deal with it without too many problems.

Mosquito proboscii are much smaller and so I would not anticipate any issues for anyone with a functioning immune system to deal with without ever noticing.

I can recall being in the cot under the window in my parents room, but there is nothing else attached to that memory.

I can also very clearly recall being put onto the floor in the back of my dad's dark blue side opening van, which had an orange tinted skylight, and crawling across the corrugated floor panel to pull myself up against the wheel arch - since this was evidently before i could walk - whilst my parents were talking just outside, and the van itself was parked across the road from the entrance to our garden.

However, apparently my dad never owned a van of that type, nor anything like it, and nor did anyone that either of my parents or my - significantly older - siblings are aware of. So despite the clarity and detail of that memory, I have doubts that it is at all real.

Ostention, which I occasionally use in its folkloric sense, is one that I can hardly ever bring to mind at the critical moment.

I don't think that I ever did feel like a kid when I went back to my parents for Christmas. Instead, it felt cloying, cluttered and claustrophobic - and as far as I can tell, it is entirely coincidental that all three of those start with 'cl'. I felt out of place and constrained and it seemed irrelevant to anything else in my world. Mum and my siblings were all doing their usual things, but I felt in the same stiff, un-natural position that 'posh' visitors were always put in back when I was living there as a child. There was a sense that it was all a performance for my benefit - but one that never really convinced.

Risk assessments.

These days my job doesn't have much connection to my degree subject at all, so there is very little that it prepared me for. But my previous role - ranger - was very much tied into the subject that I took: Environmental Science.

Risk assessments are not unique to this area, of course and some of this is due to it being 20 odd years ago that I that I got my degree, but even so, looking back, I am surprised that risk assessments didn't feature anywhere. Not during that degree nor during the - much more practically based - arboriculture course that I took shortly before.

Awkward because encephalitis is caused by HIV.

From the NHS website:

Encephalitis is most often due to a virus, such as:

• herpes simplex viruses, which cause cold sores (this is the most common cause of encephalitis)
• the varicella zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and shingles
• measles, mumps and rubella viruses
• viruses spread by animals, such as tick-borne encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, rabies (and possibly Zika virus)

Encephalitis caused by a virus is known as "viral encephalitis". In rare cases, encephalitis is caused by bacteria, fungi or parasites.

Not sure about the whole idea of being proud of something. It seems to me that it is a concept that evaporates when you look closely at it.

However I am pleased with the role that I played in getting some meadows that were going to be sold off for housing included a nature reserve instead when I was the ranger for the site.

I'd created some good toad breeding habitat nearby and then I put in a lot of my own time in building a volunteer group and recording in detail where the toads went and how they used the land - including the area that was going to be sold - over the course of a few years. It turned out to be the largest recorded toad colony of its type in the UK one year. The data was a critical point in the final decision by the local authority.

The thing about being proud is that it seems odd to be proud of something over which you have no control. Well, OK, I did have control here: I chose to spend my time in doing this, certainly. But I can be quite determined about things like that - that is down to my temperament. Do I actually have control of my temperament - or was I just born that way? Even if I have developed my own temperament over the years - wouldn't that simply be because I was born with the capability of developing it? And so on and so on. Ultimately it always seems to boil down to something over which I really couldn't say that I have any control.

But I can be pleased at any of those, no matter what.

This article is from 2009, of course.

I have only heard of him through the podcast. I'd suggest listening to that. It's a great series. Or, of course, his actual books are listed on the wiki page.

However, I think that he is saying that we shouldn't be relying on something that can be and clearly IS being removed or ignored when inconvenient. Maybe, instead, we should be looking at respecting human life just for itself, without cluttering things up with legal language that doesn't actually add anything.

Personally, I can see where he is coming from, and seldom think or speak in terms of rights myself for much the same reasons. But, either way, however much ignored or misused it is, I don't think that we can realistically expect anyone who is likely to create exceptions to human rights to have any innate respect for people otherwise.

Until someone comes up with something better, human rights are about the best way of framing the ideas that we have.

In addition to the reasons suggested in several of the comments here so far, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben is extremely critical of the concept of human rights since they are a legal and political construct, and the same legal and political systems are used to create 'exceptional' circumstances in which the rights are deemed not to apply to certain groups. Relying on these rights is flawed, in his view, since they will be suspended when most needed. The Philosopize This Podcast did an episode on this just recently.

If nothing existed, it would not be possible to raise a question of this - or any other - type.

So that is that determined.

Whether anything beyond my instantaneous perception of thought relating to this question exists is another matter. I can't prove it. I wouldn't really say that I do 'explain' it either. I merely have an experience of it.

There are years when I have read upwards of 60 books and others when I have scarcely read 6. It depends heavily on what else is going on. I don't do numerical goals and never have.

For the last few years, however, no matter how many others I read, I have had a 'big read' of some kind spread across the year: War and Peace first - since it has 365 chapters in total, then In Search of Lost Time, and this year Finnegans Wake - which I was reading with a group which scheduled in some 'summing up time' at the end so I have finished it already. In 2024 I have decided that it will be The Romance of the Three Kingdoms: so completing that is my goal.

An isolated shingle spit nature reserve. We'd lost mains power in a storm some while back and were running on a generator. Fuel deliveries were hard to arrange. We'd finally got one. We were pretty much running on fumes and another storm was coming in. We really needed this delivery.

To collect the fuel, I had to take the Unimog along a dump track and across 5 miles of loose shingle - including one low causeway stretch through a lagoon that was prone to wash out during storms. We'd rebuilt it a LOT over the years. On the way up, there was plenty of water around there, but it was still solid.

I get up to the top ok and get the tank full - 2000L of red diesel - but the wind is pretty strong by the time I have. Half way back, I drop down off the seawall and reach the causeway section. The water is just about topping over. If I don't go immediately, I won't get through at all and we will be out of fuel for days - maybe weeks. So I put my foot down and get through that section only to find that 200 meters on, another section already has washed out. Oh shit.

I back up a little but sure enough the first section has also washed through now. I now have the vehicle and a full load of fuel marooned on a short section of causeway that is slowly washing out. Oh double shit. Probably more than double. Calling it in on the radio, everyone else agrees and starts preparing for a pollution incident.

In the end I find the firmest spot that I can in that short stretch and leave the Moggie there. Picking my route and my moment carefully I can get off that 'island' on foot - no hope with the truck - BUT due to the layout of the lagoons only to the seaward ridge, where the waves are now crashing over into the lagoon with alarming force. I then spend one of the longest half-hours I can remember freezing cold and drenched, scrambling yard by yard along the back side of that ridge and flattening myself and hoping each time a big wave hits.

The firm bit of causeway survived and there was no washed away Unimog or pollution in the end - and I didn't drown either - but much more by luck than judgement.

These days I am in a position where I am responsible for writing risk assessments and methods statements for procedures like this. It was another world back then.

What do you mean by "what happens"? You get nutrients from the food and you hydrate with the water. You carry on as normal otherwise. Nothing much else "happens".

Humans have spent most of their evolutionary history not drinking juice or soda or anything. It is absolutely fine - as long as you are eating healthily.

These days it is once in a blue moon that I drink anything except water myself. I don't believe that the very occasional elderflower presse is the only thing standing between me and a hideous malnourished death.

Perhaps Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), if that counts.

And if it is, are they fans of the Wurzels?

Yes, Krampus is American - with a few subtitles for a German speaking character in one early scene.

The character of Krampus seems to have captured a much wider, more international, imagination in recent years. I would like to see a German film version - or appearance in some media - that sticks to the root of the story from that perspective. However, the US version does a pretty good job.

TV

• Slow Horses - easily the best thing that we are watching at the moment. Oldman's Lamb is my role model.
• Doctor Who - Wild Blue Yonder was great. The Giggle was middling at best. RTD's sickly sentimentality dominated the conclusion.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters - the first three episodes have been surprisingly good. This - the fourth - was basically dull.
• Krapopolis - wasn't sure about this to start with, but it has grown on me. Waddingham's Deleria is the obvious inital draw, but the rest of the main characters have been fleshed out to the point where I will be looking forward to season 2.
• Enemy at the Door - from 1978, although I can recall nothing at all of it from back then. Set in the German occupied Channel Isles during WWII, each episode centres around a moral dilemma relating to loyalties, duty, consequences for the bigger picture etc etc from both sides. It holds up remarkably well.

Film

• Krampus (2015) - which has become something of a tradition for us on Krampusnacht, and continues to be enjoyable.
• I Know Where I'm Going (1945) - a Powell and Pressburger that doesn't hit the heights of A Matter of Live and Death or The Red Shoes etc but is still a stylishly told tale. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Webster's intended husband only through a staff card, a printed itinerary and a disembodied radio voice.