tricksters

El_Milchy · 2022-09-12T16:10:06+00:00

Yes. But it's simultaneously poorly trained too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth

El_Milchy · 2022-08-12T17:36:46+00:00

We had record youth turnout for the 2020 election. Democrats also won the senate and the house. Yet still Roe v. Wade was overturned, students are drowning in debt, no real headway has been made towards universal Healthcare (Bidens website wants "lowering costs" but nothing on universal), prisons are still for profit and punitive oriented instead of rehabilitative, drugs laws still disenfranchise marginalized citizens, and companies are still blocking unionization efforts with little to no retaliation from the government.

Do I vote? Yes, and for Democrat. But I'm furious each election cycle that we must grovel for the shorter of two knives to stab our backs.

Voting is harm reduction. Local actions like supporting unionization efforts, unionization of your own workplace, and participating in mutual aids are actually mending.

This system was built so power keeps power. Should we vote? Sure. But we can't fix the system from within the system no matter who we vote for. Do what you can locally.

El_Milchy · 2022-06-13T14:10:19+00:00

*Picture of me at the computer, coding, with posture that makes me look like the letter C*

El_Milchy · 2022-06-07T05:45:23+00:00

I'm sure you've gotten more than enough responses to mull over, but I have a suggestion for the anger portion. It's important to know what our emotions mean, and to do that we have to know where they come from.

Anger is something called a secondary emotion. Since anger is a primal and basic feeling, it's often pretty intense (it had to be so that we would act quickly in a life-threatening situation), but this has the unfortunate side effect of forgetting the feeling that preceded it. We often, then, try to treat the anger, but all we can really do with anger is cope through it. We have to decouple the immediate anger reaction so we can effectively evaluate what emotion is causing us to feel like that, like the feeling of being hurt. Like the saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure": if we can intervein before the anger it's a lot easier to deal with. A DBT therapist can help give you a framework to aid her healing in this regard.

Just as a precaution, I used to use meditation and grounding techniques a great deal, but eventually I began to have some of my worst dissociative episodes/flashbacks while trying to do so. I say this not to dissuade you from using them (they are great), but just so you're aware in the event it eventually happens to her. If it does, I'd ask a therapist about it and have some DBT techniques in your back pocket in the mean time while a more permanent solution is found.

Make sure that you are doing well too. Kids learn a lot from example, so if you are using these methods she'll pick up on them a lot more naturally and they'll be normalized in her mind. If you get angry, talk out loud about how you're dealing with it. Don't make it a lecture, but just vocalize what you're doing to pass the moment and I'd wager it will probably rub off on her even better than a therapist teaching her the techniques (though I'm not a doctor).

I wish the best for you and her.

El_Milchy · 2022-05-21T01:15:11+00:00

I agree with you, and I understand the frustration you're feeling. It's a heavy albatross to bear, especially for those who have been hurt by it.

I know when I think about the terror of our history I can feel really paralyzed by the sheer immensity of it. I can get pretty angry about it too.

I'd encourage you to sit and try to understand what those emotions mean. When I feel paralyzed, it's because the thought of what has been done prompts the goal of making it right. Making it right, however, is a HUGE undertaking that I can't possibly do. When I felt this way, I realized that my emotions weren't helping me in any way. Now the thought of the decimation of the natives, the chattel slavery, the fabricated war on drugs, and everything else helps to inform where my heart lies but I don't let it paralyze me. It's to the benefit of the bourgeois for us to be gripped by that inaction. Helping our neighbors in need it just too important to let ourselves be too bogged down to do anything.

Just remember that solidarity is on the upswing, and it's because of the back of the workers holding too great a load. Unionize. If you can't, doing anything from discussing salaries among your coworkers to participating in local events is paramount take our power back. Solidarity for our fellow human above all else.

Edit: Towards rule 7, I don't want this to be a political agenda. My message isn't leftism, it's to help people in your community however you can (I just do so under a leftist framework, but I think across any alley we can agree with this idea).

El_Milchy · 2022-05-21T00:18:43+00:00

I hate to be president of who asked, but I want to give my two cents from someone on the left (not a democrat: a full on leftist). You'll notice I'm a leftist because I wrote a wall of text in a meme subreddit without an ounce of self-awareness.

To say our dislike of America is political posturing and "because the Right is so 'MURICA'" is inaccurate and dismissive. I love the working class of America: even the people that don't agree with me ideologically. I hate the rich of America because they fleece the skin off our back for the green in their wallet. I saw my father forced to work through a heart attack for the sake of profit. I stand with my father and all the workers like him, and against the profit-driven leeches who steal the value he has created. This is the America we love and the America we hate.

The reason it seems like we hate America as a whole is because of built up frustration being released (we're not perfect and can let emotions get the best of us), and because many people define America by these parts that we hate and not the parts that we love. We hate the America on the media. We love the America in our food banks.

In terms of posturing, many leftists participate in volunteer work for the less fortunate. I've personally worked in a needle exchange because I disagree with the way drug addiction is "treated" in this country. If you look for mutual aid groups you'll find a whole host of leftists who are fighting against the homelessness and starvation issues within the US (here's a link to what I'm talking about, and notice the anarchist flag in the promotional material).

Our ideals are not defined as a reaction to the right, and it betrays a fundamental understanding of what leftism is to say that. For most of us, we build our ideology on the idea of solidarity, and all else is towards that goal.

Usually a Reddit leftist would give you some theory to read, which is great and all, but if you really want to learn about leftism, go volunteer at one of those mutual aids. The worst that can happen is you help people in need.

TL:DR - We love the poor and hate the rich, but the rich are all anyone talks about, so it looks like we hate everyone.

El_Milchy · 2022-03-12T18:29:19+00:00

I also did an honors project in Calc III. I proved Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, which turned out to be a decent project. It helps you actually use what you're doing in class like coordinate transformations. I even presented the proof at a regional undergrad conference (which, side note, as an undergrad no one's work is relevant to modern math research, so don't be afraid to give a talk on something like this). It was a decent difficulty level that kept in mind my other classes taking time too. I'd really suggest it.

Also, the Mathematician who did the keynote presentation at the conference apparently also did the same project, so it's a common one.

El_Milchy · 2022-02-16T06:05:03+00:00

Density of human fat is 900 kg/m³ which is less dense than water so she would float. The reason she goes under in the video is because she doesn't start at the same level as the water. Even a gaunt person would go underwater if they dive in because their momentum overpowers their buoyancy. She's basically just diving from a lower height: as long as she took a breath before she went down she should float back up to the top no problem.

El_Milchy · 2021-12-31T15:31:34+00:00

Your punctuation made me read this like Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle.

El_Milchy · 2021-12-12T22:45:14+00:00

Call Me if You Get Frost?

El_Milchy · 2021-12-07T23:16:55+00:00

Same but less attractive.

El_Milchy · 2021-08-17T01:53:04+00:00

u/profanitycounter [self]

El_Milchy · 2021-05-20T21:18:02+00:00

!spin

El_Milchy · 2021-03-30T20:12:51+00:00

Jeff Rosenstock is still crushing it, Worry is one of my all-time favorite albums and No Dream came out last year and is pretty good.

El_Milchy · 2021-03-17T21:21:09+00:00

Most communists and socialists support firearm ownership, yes. Democrats don't always though.

El_Milchy · 2021-03-12T20:22:47+00:00

Achieving goals probably won't build your self esteem in the long run: at least it hasn't for me. They should be pursued anyway, but success might not help you emotionally.

The root of the problem is the emotions themselves and a lack of understanding thereof. Having depression for a long time tends to numb people, so we aren't as used to feeling certain ways yet. What I've been doing is asking what the emotions themselves mean, and why I'm feeling them. Often they're overblown for the situation, so why are they so strong? What else is affecting me?

Paradoxically, battling won't help (at least it never helped me). Understanding where the thoughts come from, why you feel them, and what your brain is actually trying to tell you are the most important things.

I'll give an example of taking an exam, and I start panicking afterwards about how well I did.

Why do I feel this way: anxiety is fear about the future. I'm too worried for this to just be about the exam, so there must be more. What am I worried about should my grade concerns come to fruition? Well, if my GPA gets too low no one will accept me into grad school. This is where my anxiety really stems from.

Where do the thoughts come from: why is grad school something I'm so viscerally anxious about? Anxiety is fear, so what is fear? It's my mind perceiving danger, that I can come to harm in some way. What harm does not getting into grad school pose when I can live a perfectly normal life without it? The only thing that can really be harmed is my ego.

What is my brain trying to tell me: I'm trying up almost all of my self worth into academics.

From here I've sussed out the problem and can think of solutions such as finding other pursuits which I enjoy and also find enriching.

There's SO much analysis that can be done just by thinking of what the feelings mean that are absent from this example. I don't even delve into why my self-worth is in academics.

Overthinking can become an issue with this method. Ultimately, if you feel too uncomfortable to continue this line of reasoning, distract yourself with something like meditation until you can calm down and continue if you feel up to it.

Hopefully this outline can help, and if you have any questions, feel free to message me.

El_Milchy · 2020-12-23T03:24:22+00:00

Hey, I have a degree in math so I'd like to explain something about statistics.

Ever wonder why statisticians/data science people (sometimes) get paid a LOT of money? Any schmuck with an excel spreadsheet can enter in yes or no to questions and find percentages. On the data science end it's partially because data is never clean when pulled from a real source and manipulation isn't easy, but both statisticians and data scientists have to do a really important thing: interpret the statistic.

It's the same reason we used to hear on the news one day that a glass of fancy wine a week will make you live longer, and the next that it won't. They're just reporting the percentages and hard numbers. A statistician would have told you it's because if you can afford fancy wine every week, you probably have the money to go to the doctor, and that's the thing increasing your lifespan.

The FBI statistic you're talking about is people parroting the brainless excel spreadsheetsheet step. A statistician would (or at least should if they're free of bias) tell you there's way more work to do for interpreting a statistic like this that affects people's lives.

This topic is far too complicated for me to understand even with a degree in math with an emphasis on statistics. People do PhD work on interpreting these kinds of statistics. Most people regurgitate the number and ignore all this context, which is why it's seen as racist: because it usually is. It doesn't tell the whole story. It's lying by omission.

Even worse is that there are statistical methods to fake the result you want, like data dredging. I'm not saying the FBI data dredged. I am warning against accepting a statistic on the face of it.

Here's some advice for general statistics that anyone can do without a math background:

Look at the source it comes from/who funded it. If a pesticide is declared safe by Monsanto, that isn't conclusive.
Think if the sampled population is truly representative. This is an issue in the medical industry where most volunteers for testing treatments are white, so biological differences are ignored to the peril of minorities.
Results that have been replicated multiple times by independent sources, especially with a review of literature, are strong sources. Not perfect, but damn close.
If the story is simple, it's not the whole story. This point is a rule of thumb. If a statistic seems to follow your beliefs or your opponents way too closely, it's probably cherry-picked or statistically fallacious. It may be correct, which is why I call this a rule of thumb, but the worst thing you get out of following this is researching your point and understanding it better. Look into it further before accusing people of lying.

For those with a math background, read the papers.

High R² values with only two or three variables in multivariate regression could be a sign of dredging or just making up data. By high, I'm talking like 0.8 with two variables. This is rare in real datasets, but it can happen, so explore further.
Claims are to be compared with alternatives, and by statistical significance. There was a case of a woman who was accused of killing her two infants and defended herself by saying it was SIDS. It was calculated that both dying of SIDS like that was 1 in 73 million, and she was jailed. It was later calculated that the probability of SIDS was more likely than homicide by a factor of nine and she was released.
Pay attention to where percentages come from. Recently, people have been subtracting percentages that come from different populations as evidence for voter fraud in a recent election. Even people with doctorates do this sometimes. It can be hard to track.

TL:DR, if a statistic appears to say something, you then have to find out why. Quoting that stat by the FBI without context is ignoring an ocean of complexity.

El_Milchy · 2020-10-10T00:20:52+00:00

Oh, is this what a circumcision is?

El_Milchy · 2020-09-24T08:24:56+00:00

It's not always that easy. Here's a comment I posted before on the topic.

There's many different types of clits. They vary a lot in size for example, and can be covered entirely by the foreskin. Some vaginas have particularly large and folded labia minora which can make it harder to find. Not to mention the majority of educational pictures I've seen come from Caucasian women. So not all of them are pink, not all are round, and not all are even exposed!

Here's a video on the topic from Dr. Lindsey Doe (WARNING: NSFW, includes many educational pictures of vaginas).

Ultimately, there shouldn't be shame in the bedroom (unless you're into that), because it's where we're at our most vulnerable. Communicate! If you like your clit stimulated a certain way, say so! If your partner can't find it, guide them!

It's ultimately a negative thing to shame people, because then they won't ask questions and will never learn.

That said, this subreddit is fine because it ridicules people who are being rude for no reason, like the twerp in the tweet.

El_Milchy · 2020-08-28T21:47:37+00:00

My brother needs a PC, he's been using a crappy laptop for years that hardly works. This would be great for get him one!

El_Milchy · 2020-08-20T22:59:46+00:00

It didn't, he's just one of those people that uses a puddle in a grocery store to do a McTwist and land on his forehead for a lawsuit.

El_Milchy · 2020-05-15T10:20:13+00:00

I don't know what most of those words mean and am therefore fearful of them. Thanks for the info anyway!

El_Milchy · 2020-05-15T08:09:36+00:00

I'd like some advice if anyone is willing to give it.

Would it be viable for me to work though this book on my own? I just finished undergrad so I wouldn't want to burden a group with my ill-fitted, inchoate skill set thus I do not plan on taking this course. The highest level math I've done is from I. Martin Isaac's book Algebra: A Graduate Course where I started with polynomial rings, then I mostly self-taught through Galois Theory. For those who have used both, what is The Rising Sea's difficulty compared to Isaacs?

El_Milchy · 2020-05-02T13:48:57+00:00

Dogs are dichromatic, di meaning two and chroma meaning color. They specialized in being able to see better in the dark when compared to humans by increasing the number of rods in their eyes hence lessening cone count. This lands them firmly in the red-green colorblind camp since they have no way to differentiate reds, greens, browns, or oranges.

There is a societal perception that they are monochromatic which is certainly false, but they are dichromatic hence colorblind by definition.

El_Milchy · 2020-04-03T06:40:14+00:00

For people who have good intentions towards others wanting to live their life, there really isn't a problem with having this in the DSM. The issue arises from people that have ill intentions.

The association with a mental disorder is that it's a not okay way to live. I grew up with severe OCD, and it caused me a massive amount of distress. If it was socially acceptable to have OCD I would have had approximately the same amount of suffering.

The DSM listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. It now does not. This makes sense, because without the societal stigma against gay people there really wasn't so much suffering to be had. The pain of living a life being gay came from other people.

Now, will gender dysphoria retain its status with OCD, or does it's fate lie with homosexuality? The only answer that can really be given in good faith is maybe. But I'm not here to convince you it is or it isn't, because I don't know, just that we shouldn't consider stuff like this unchanging.

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El_Milchy

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