Interesting Links for 01-04-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Why the Dyson snot cannon is a bad idea

(tags:Technology pandemic OhForFucksSake )

2. In case you were wondering whether you should have children, this discussion of their demands should let you know

(tags:children funny )

3. The Russians lying to their own soldiers about Ukraine

(tags:military Russia Ukraine lies )

4. Conservatives: Conversion therapy is just fine

(tags:lgbt bigotry UK OhForFucksSake conservatives )

5. Robot made of magnetic slime could grab objects inside your body

(tags:robots headline )

6. What I Heard From Passengers on the Last Train Out of Russia

(tags:Russia Doom viaPatrickHadfield )

7. Laura Kuenssberg's Time as BBC Political Editor Has Been a Catastrophic, Systemic Failure

(tags:BBC politics news epicfail lies )

8. The emotional isolation of men (I spent a few years hanging out with a largely female group and it really changed me)

(tags:men society emotion )

9. ScotRail goes back into public ownership

(tags:Scotland trains transport )

10. Every major country in the world makes their notes usable by blind people. Except the USA

(tags:currency USA disability blindness OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[hirez]

Re. 8: Oh god, yes. One of the joys of transition (having transitioned? Who can say) has been the emotional connection.

[kerk_hiraeth]

Is our newly out Trans MP a Caitlyn Jenner?

That's what I want to know?

I'd rather this was opposed until it is a complete ban than support it.

This is a naked attemot to divide us.

kerk ~ Queer; Trans; Non-binary ~ hiraeth

[kerk_hiraeth]

Case in point.

https://www.elitedaily.com/news/caitlyn-jenner-fox-news-contributor

kerk

[dewline]

3. Horrible and cruel, and one more reason to end this as quickly and fully as possible. Putin has to go, and whoever's next up can't be allowed to be worse.

4. I don't have first-hand experience, but I trust the accounts and concerns of whoever has had them and is speaking up. It's torture, and torture is a crime.

5. ...Wow.

6. A truly sad and horrific time for such people. May we find the ways that will reverse these cruelties and quickly. These people also deserve to have safe homes to go to.

7. Hoping for still-better days for BBC's news division! I expect we won't be kept in suspense for long about this.

8. And now that I have a clearer picture of how I've been starved across my life, I wonder how much healthier I could have been. I'm angry about this.

9. I think this is grounds for true celebration of some sort.

10. That has to be remedied. Soon, please.

[bens_dad]

8. So much for male privilege.
I have long suspected that the male and female worlds were not as unequal as the dominant (feminist) view would have it; that women/feminism were much better at asking for things men have that women want than telling men what women have that men might want.

It isn't actually news to me that women are better emotionally connected to each other than men are,
but I've never felt that a better emotional connection to other men was really what I wanted to work towards.

[calimac]

8. Huh. I guess this is where being a cis man and being a trans man feel different, because of the difference in past experience. And also, in this case, probably the difference between the social environments this trans man and I live in.

For I've often experienced, particularly when I was younger, that kind of "unconditional companionship" with women who've let that "armor" down. Did they trust me to be such a nebbish as to not to be a creepy-ass assaulter? Possibly. Certainly the trust was justified.

As for platonically intimate male friendships? I guess that also depends both on who you are - some men have it, I guess, others don't - and on what you expect. I've had three close friendships in my life with other men, where we could converse for hours without any competitive sense arising.

The difference between this and the standard idea of women's friendships is that our conversations were always about some exterior topic: books or music (often rising into quite abstruse artistic theory), politics, our mutual friends. We rarely if ever talked about personal matters like our own relationship, or our romantic relationships with women. That would probably seem strange to most women.

But that was years ago and they've all faded away. Of the three men, one died. One got divorced (which I didn't learn was in the works until after it happened) and moved far away and isn't much for other forms of communication, though I did see him four years ago and we conversed just as we always had. And one, sad to say, faded away in part because of his wife. Not hostility, just that she operates from different mental premises and her presence would derail the assumptions he and I operated from in having our conversations.

[snippy]

8. Pretty sure this is true because men (who have power under patriarchy) don't need to form emotional bonds to exercise power, while women banded together to protect each other. Now that patriarchy is failing (in spots, not well distributed), individual men no longer have automatic power but are also denied the benefits of the culture that arose to protect the victims of that power.

[anna_wing]

8 I suspect this is another of those culturally-specific things. Or perhaps it's just age-specific. I have good women friends, many of several decades' standing by now, and even when we were young, we've never really talked about our relationships with other people or indeed with each other (I feel a mild frisson of horror at the very thought...), unless we needed practical help with something. We talk about external things of mutual interest, as friends do.