When it comes to the human tendency to behave badly on impulse or habitual impulse, Iâm interested in how economics, environment, biology, and so on, figure into it (less so social, religious or political, though: everyone else tracks those pretty well, besides that politics is a result of everything else) and I bring the links to threads when they fit the discussion. Now, from TheConversation: air pollution harms the brain and mental health too â a large-scale analysis documents effects on brain regions associated with emotions. In a systematic review of existing studies, researchers found that air pollution such as fine particulate matter can interfere with regions of the brain responsible for emotional regulation.
And a quote from right here in DK:
[How human society is,] âthatâs what you get when you take a very old design that runs well on the limbic system, and duct-tape a fancy processor to the top of it.â â belinda ridgewood, 9 July 2020.
<tt> Readers too beat or too holiday-weekended out to meander with me along todayâs exploration, please feel free to scroll straight down to the end of the pewter fork handle image vertically in the right margin, and then look a bit below there for the Audre Lorde image and quote â the usual news items start there .</tt>
Psychologically and philosophically, really regardless of politics and everything else, we humans tend to rationalize/justify our own bad behavior, especially when it pays off well enough (even just with attaboys) that repeating it might be worth our while ⌠whether we consciously consider it or not.
Example: the massive rape&violence-against-women brawl we had for weeks in DK in 2014. One post from that battle that Iâve linked before is, âDear Men, STFU â by Empty Vessel â1167 comments, 573 recsâ replying point by point to the rationalizations of countless male kosaks on how difficult they thought it is to know when rape is rape. And that was liberal, progressive men, not even a social cross-section, behaving kind of badly and finding rationalizations for it.
Weâve had similar battles since and before.
Some factors in bad behavior are hard to face, especially if they seem innate to the point of self-incriminating, e.g., some of the responses to my May2021 WarOnWomen post on how testosterone/androgens are contributive drivers in emotion &impulse-directed aggressive personal and group behavior. I think we have to face whatâs real, though. E.g., most people with a Y chromosome are gonna be challenged that way, and most of the war against women is by people with that chromosome.
Most of us may agree that when behavior pays off in some form of psychological or material reward, the odds of repetition are increased, whether itâs impulse-driven or intentional behavior. But many of us might not agree that self-restraint/self-control skills as an entire set thatâs learned/instilled from earliest childhood give people muscular skills for thinking first and acting/shooting second in most situations.
We might not agree because liberals and progressives can be averse to acknowledging ways traditional cultural principles have played valuable roles in civilizing the fancy processor duct-taped on top of the animal+sapient limbic system. Not even when we define civilization by how well we treat the most vulnerable members of society, and trace the historical progress of that among cultures and across time. For some reason, weâd rather believe progress has less to do with taught&learned practices of impulse-control across the board, than with âloveâ or logic on whatever random basis.
Maybe our generations canât easily face giving up the right of reward embodied by the â60s/70âs credo, âif it feels good, do itâ? As Iâve often said, the underlying premise is âif it feels good, it must BE good,â but what about <small>GREED</small> is good because it feels good? What about insurrection is good because it feels good? What about âsexual gratification IS good because it feels goodâ even when it involves forcing another person against their will?
Innumerable other questionable feelgoods come to mind, from war and genocide all on down to small daily life insistences.
Thereâs a massive conflict here with essentially all our avowed principles about environment, peace, minority rights, conflict resolution, fair negotiation, good governance, and yeah, womenâs rights, even if no conflict exists in the minds of people who think differently than we do on those issues. Still, what we share is a not-very-rational we-can-have-it-all cultural belief going on thatâs self-righteously mobilized to justify chasing after satisfaction of whatever we choose to âoften only desires we categorize as needs to justify them â that we have become comfortable with prioritizing.
E.g., commonly lambasting one another in DK threads when disagreements arise, rather than have an exploratory conversation or just let is slide. Emotions and impulses are too exciting! Another feeling thatâs itâs own reward. So, we rationalizes that across-the-board routine practice in self-restraint is an unnatural warping of human expression (e.g., sexually, ârespect-yourselfâ vs ânah-express-yourselfâ ), even though, whenever we follow-the-money (so to speak, but also literally), we find that IIFGDI boils down to THE ultimate capitalistic declaration of ego as god, even when claimed as rebellion against âVictorianâ or religious âhypocrisy.â
Even thoâ we see, simply from The Us consuming 25% of the worldâs productivity, pumping out 75% of the worldâs trash, and creating multimillionaires at record-breaking rate right alongside constant growth of the underclass, that American culture in action is founded upon the freedom to IIFGDI, be it for bodily or psychological pleasure or profit or power.
The commercialist interests in this culture knew this long before the word âhippieâ was coined, and THEY conditioned us and constantly lure us into never restraining ourselves except when we clearly, promptly would have to pay too high a price for it (e.g., mouth off to the boss, lose your job ⌠and your reputation as employable too, maybe.)
<big>And now, on top of the ârightâ to gratification weâve absorbed, thereâs the pollution weâve absorbed too, that further impels us to act upon our impulses.</big> Few Americans âand few of the worldâs peopleâ have escaped toxification.
E.g., lead , a culprit for at least a thousand years, not only from now-illegal paints and fuels circulating through our lived-in environment forever.
<big>a PEWTER two-prong fork handle with finely detailed engravings of Norwegian scenes of <big>men at war.</big></big>
Notice this MEANS pollution-fueled impulses are not ânaturalâ either. Even if acting upon them feels natural and feels good. Do we just go on pretending therefore that it IS completely natural and good to fire up that way? Even when the consequences keep showing us our mistaken judgement about that?
Except for an individual here and a small group there, weâre not a society that knows how to get feelgood from buckling down and doing whatâs needed no matter how slow the pace or how tedious the process. We want all the time to be ENTERTAINED with simpler feelgoods.
There have been some eras in our history, though, when we as a people did derive tremendous self-respect and pride from staying the course for our own good and the common good, and we got our joy from doing it alongside folks equally determined to choose genuine achievement that matters above momentary gratification.
In those eras, we usually learned how from people long skilled at it. Quite often from grandparents âor older!â raised childhood&onward with self-restraint skill-sets constantly in play in order to NOT be derailed by impulse, not be distracted by momentary unaffordable gratifications, and not be controlled by economic and societal interests that profit whenever they can fire us up into sensation-fueled over indulgences or emotion-fueled self-righteously rationalized bad behavior.
Not least, misogyny, racism, classismâŚ
We are in the environment and the environment is in us. Itâs polluted âfor centuries, even milleniaâ and every moment we have more science to know that so are we. That pollution factors powerfully into how our brains make us behave badly and suffer badly if we donât take it into account on routine, practiced basis and accept that there are some habitual âfreedomsâ and impulses we personally and collectively need to learn to relinquish for the sake of repairing our environment, our societies, and, kind of, the world.
Evolution gave us the chance to adapt to a lot of toxins and still have a fair shot at collective, positive survival. Gotta give ourselves extra help with that going forward. Or we wonât go that way at all.
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ABORTION BAN FALLOUT <big>Ways everyoneâs healthcare, and all medical practitioners, are affected. </big>
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khn.org <big>Audits â Hidden Until Now â Reveal Millions in Medicare Advantage Overcharges... </big> (kff.org data: Over 55% of all Medicare recipients are female, so this is an assault on us most of all.)
...some plans [overbill] the government more than $1,000 per patient a year on average...
...Medicare Advantage, a fast-growing alternative to original Medicare, is run primarily by major insurance companiesâŚ.
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<big>Artemis is NASAâs deep space human exploration program which aims to land <big>the first woman and the first person of color</big> on the moon and establish sustainable exploration in preparation for missions to Mars. Artemis I, an uncrewed flight test of NASAâs Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft as an integrated system, is the first phase for humanity's return to the lunar surface, setting off a series of increasingly more complex crewed missions to the moon with Artemis II and Artemis III.</big>https://www.jacobs.com/projects/artemis
TheConversation <big>NASAâs Artemis 1 mission to the Moon sets the stage for routine space exploration beyond Earthâs orbit</big>
NASAâs Space Launch System rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of Nov. 16, 2022. The rocket carried the Orion Crew Capsule as the centerpiece of the Artemis 1 mission. The journey to the Moon and back is a shakedown cruise with no people aboard â it will test how the Orion Crew Capsule holds up in space. The mission is a key step toward returning humans to the Moon after a half-century hiatus . The launch was initially scheduled for the morning of Aug. 29, 2022, but was postponed three times, twice for technical reasons and once for Hurricane Ian .
The spacecraft is scheduled to travel to the Moon, deploy some small satellites and then settle into orbit. NASA aims to practice operating the spacecraft, test the conditions crews will experience on and around the Moon, and assure everyone that the spacecraft and any occupants can safely return to Earth.
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h/t twingrace
Indiana - <big>The doctor who provided abortion to 10-year-old seeks to bar Attorney General access to patient records </big>
They are asking the court to halt "sham investigations" being conducted based on "bogus" consumer complaints and to keep the attorney general's office from being able serve subpoenas seeking the entire medical charts of patients who have received abortion care, according to Kathleen DeLaney, a lawyer for Bernard and Caldwell.
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h/t nopermissionneeded1
The Crap Cops Get Away With: <big> How Jessica Loganâs Call for Help Became Evidence Against Her </big>. This is 911 call analysis:
...She gave information in an inappropriate order. Some answers were too short. She equivocated. She repeated herself several times with âattempts to convinceâ the dispatcher of Jaydenâs breathing problems. She was more focused on herself than her son: I need my baby instead of I need help for my baby . And when asked if Jayden was beyond any help, Logan said, âI think heâs gone.â She had âalready accepted that Jayden was deceased,â Matthews noted in his report.
According to the detective, almost everything Logan said â and didnât say â was evidence of her guilt.
-snip-
Twenty researchers from seven federal government agencies, universities and advocacy groups have tested Harpsterâs model against other samples of 911 calls to see if the guilty indicators he had identified did, in fact, correlate with guilt. Theyâve consistently found no such relationship for most of the indicators. In two separate studies, experts at the FBIâs Behavioral Analysis Unit warned law enforcement officials to exercise caution when using 911 call analysis because their results contradicted so many of Harpsterâs claims...
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h/t Wagatwe Wanjuki, DK staff
The Daily Beast : <big>"Men's Rights" sites held up Nick Alahverdian as the poster boy for "false allegations." </big> But the real story traces a convoluted history across 2 continents and decades of allegations and evidence that he raped and battered many women, using at least 16 false identities to defraud some of them and other individuals in the hundreds of thousand, finally faking his own death in a last-ditch effort to escape the consequences of his actions.
...[But the] same year he targeted [and then raped and extorted Michelle Minnear, a food blogger living in Essex, United Kingdom],<big> the state of Utah received a grant to test back-logged rape kits, some of which had sat in storage for over a decade. </big> One of these was taken after a 2008 rape in Orem, Utah. The test matched a name in the database: Nicholas Rossi (a.k.a. Alahverdian). Utah prosecutors began building a case against him...
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Female professionals between rock and hardplace on respect: <big>Call her âDrâ or call her by her first name? </big> A backfiring issue in the movement to de-paternalize the medical field:
...results reported in JAMA Network Open , Mayo Clinic researchers analyzed more than 90,000 emails from patients to doctors over the course of 3 years, beginning in 2018. ... more than 32% included the physician's first name in greeting or salutation. For women physicians, the odds were twice as high that their titles would be omitted ⌠[likewise] doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs) compared with MDs, and primary care physicians had similar odds for a title drop compared with specialists.
Indeed, research on 321 speaker introductions at a medical rounds found that when female physicians introduced other physicians, they usually applied the doctor title. [But male physicians introducing colleagues used the title only 72.4% for their] male peers and only 49.2% when introducing female peersâŚ
[In last year's FAST COMPANY article on this ] âWe need to stop âuntitlingâ and âuncredentialingâ professional women â, [authors] Amy Diehl, PhD, and Leanne Dzubinski, PhD, propose new terms for an old practice of omitting titles for women while using them for men that diminishes womenâs authority and credibility....
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WasteDive.com on inclusive recycling: <big>âSustainability organizations must build thoughtful, long-term relationships with diverse communities to make recycling and waste access more resilient,â </big>
said Sophia Huda, chair of the National Recycling Congressâ Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Council...
...Here are some takeaways from the discussion:
...âYou need to be able to have people from diverse communities in your organization who are strategizing on policies and programs,â Huda saidâŚ
...Wherever possible, collect data and make informed decisions based on community feedback instead of implementing pre-built programs, said Keysha Burton, director of The Recycling Partnershipâs community infrastructure programâŚ.
...When building new sustainability programs, consider changing your program requirements or being flexible based on peopleâs backgrounds, said Berenice Garcia-Tellez, equity administrator for the City and County of Denver and chair of the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Boulder County. For example, some immigrants donât have W2 tax forms to prove employment or income, she said, which is a common document needed for some types of programs.
Partnering with a local community-based organization can help determine how to craft outreach programs that fit with target communities through culturally appropriate communications, [she added]...
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h/t drkathie
khn.org <big>âAn Arm and a Legâ: When Insurance Wonât Pay, Abortion Assistance Funds Step In â Podcast. </big>
...for a lot of people, insurance has rarely helped pay for abortions. Most pay cash, and many canât afford it. Thatâs where abortion funds come in. These organizations have been providing financial and logistical assistance to people seeking abortion care for decades.
[We] spoke with Oriaku Njoku, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds , and Tyler Barbarin, a board member with the New Orleans Abortion Fund , to understand the history behind [the services of this grassroots network] and how theyâre operating in a post-Roe v. Wade environment.
âAn Arm and a Legâ is a co-production of KHN and Public Road Productions. To keep in touch with âAn Arm and a Leg,â subscribe to the newsletter . You can also follow the show on Facebook and Twitter . And if youâve got stories to tell about the health care system, the producers would love to hear from you .
To hear all KHN podcasts, click here . And subscribe to âAn Arm and a Legâ on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , Stitcher , Pocket Casts , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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h/t Dan Bacher
CalMatters.org With the final votes being counted, we do know that <big>Californiaâs next Legislature will include a record number of women and LGBTQ members ever.</big> Advocacy groups are already celebrating. But how much difference will the diversity make in policy?
Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at CSU Long Beach [told CalMatters] âWhatâs actually going to get a committee hearing is really determined by party leadership. And so, you would like to think that having more diversity is going to change how we look at problems and all that â but the gatekeeper is still the Democratic Party leadership within either house.â...
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h/t martin514
ALASKA <big>Incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola holds her seat against Sarah Palin </big> 54.9 to 45.1 with est. 94% of votes counted.
Mary Sattler Peltola [1] (... Yup'ik : Akalleq ;[2] formerly Kapsner ; born August 31, 1973) is an American politician and former tribal judge serving as the U.S. representative from Alaska's at-large congressional district since September 2022. She previously served as a judge on the Orutsararmiut Native Council 's tribal court, executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and member of the Alaska state legislature.
...Peltola defeated former Governor Sarah Palin and Alaska Policy Forum board member Nick Begich in an upset in the August 2022 special election to succeed Don Young , who died in March that year.[3] In doing so, she became the first Alaska Native member of Congress and the only Russian Orthodox ,[4] as well as the first woman ever to represent Alaska in the House, and first Democrat since Nick Begich Sr . in 1972. She was reelected to a full term in the regularly scheduled election in November 2022 .[5]
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CalMatters <big>Sheng Thao, daughter of refugees, overcomes poverty and homelessness to become Oaklandâs first Hmong mayor </big>
UPDATE : New Oakland Mayor Thao promises âunityâ in first appearance since election .
Sheng Thaoâs path to Oaklandâs seat of power was anything but traditional, and she says her unique background will guide her as the cityâs next mayor.
Thao, a progressive who won after nearly two weeks of ballot-counting[, came] from behind to beat fellow Oakland City Council Member Loren Taylor...
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TheConversation <big>Wilma Mankiller, first female principal chief of Cherokee Nation, led with compassion and continues to inspire today </big>
... the Cherokee Nationâs first female principal chief ... inspired generations of Cherokees and young Native people like me. ... Mankiller was one of the first women honored [by the American Women Quarters coin series ] issued in the summer of 2022 ... the first [image of a Native American woman] on a U.S. coin since Sacagawea ⌠on the golden dollar in 2000.
As a historian of Native American history , I credit my professional career to Mankiller, whom I heard speak at Salem Womenâs College when I was an undergraduate student there. I had never seen a non-Native audience listen so intently to a woman who looked like my fatherâs ancestors and grew up in rural Oklahoma, as he did. Like many young Cherokee people, I was raised outside the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation.
Following her lecture, I tore through her autobiography, âMankiller: A Chief and Her People .â In her book and through her lifeâs work, <big>Mankiller introduced a generation of people not just to Cherokee history but also to a model of Native womenâs leadership , leading by listening to the voices from her community and supporting the programs they sought</big>...
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