ostrasyn

Isn't there someone you forget to ask?

(To be clear, because I know someone will misread it, that's a joke.)

Sadly, it still occurs, despite professional bodies speaking out against it. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

It's amazing to see that there are people still trying to do the "But what did she say that was transphobic?" thing.

Generative AI, in both form and content, and whether looked on favourably or critically, seems to embody a collective hopelessness about the prospect of human learning and creativity, if not human knowledge altogether. It’s as if climate change had fans.

This thread reminded me of this: bsky.app/profile/evan...

A cocker spaniel wearing a dinosaur-themed hoodie.

That same cocker spaniel, touching grass.

Same cocker spaniel, laying down, front paws raised.

That same cocker spaniel, sitting in a laneway.

We nearly lost this silly little guy earlier this year—he was so unwell. And he's getting old (13 this year). I know it'll be heartbreaking when my partner and I don't get to have him in our lives anymore. Pets aren't some accessory for a streaming setup.

There's a third thing that happens sometimes: An idea with some credence and usefulness in a particular domain gets hyped up and morphs into something else in wider public discourse. And in that process, whatever it was that made the original idea useful in its domain, often gets lost or distorted.

The invocation of queerphobia to justify indiscriminately dropping bombs on people - including, inevitably, *queer people* themselves - is so obviously morally bereft that I can't believe it even needs pointing out, especially to supposedly intelligent people.

I am so sorry. That is awful.

I wouldn't say they use it as a shield so much as they enable others, including homophobes, to use it as a shield—to say, "Look, I can't be homophobic; here's an organisation that agrees with me and says that, in fact, you're homophobic."

It's such a bizarre thing to say. One is supposed to be a therapeutic space, the other one educational. That's not to say there aren't qualities that might feature in both, but the way it's framed here makes it sound like there's no difference in how the spaces are set up or what they're used for.

It's interesting how they've tried to get at it in multiple ways, including empirically. For instance, the institute he co-founded gave money to the New Family Structures Study, which was often invoked to argue against marriage equality on "scientific grounds."

Fuck my OCD brain.

It's also that they can't come to grips with a world where the revulsion they feel is no longer simply taken as a given or even regarded as a virtue. They need the "sane world" to return, the one where their revulsion isn't subject to critical appraisal, where it's just the order of things.

For some, you have to wonder whether it's that they want the awful things to stop happening or it's just that they think their party could do those same things "responsibly," "humanely."

What's fun is finding out you're on two blocklists that seem based on opposing inferences! Really makes you wonder what you said to get a place on both.

In any case, it's good to hear people drawing attention to how the rhetoric of evidence-based medicine can be misused. But it also seems like this is something that many had been warning about for a long time? A similar conversation happening with reproducibility and open science.

I vaguely remember that she did an interview after the report where she suggests CBT or some other form of psychotherapy or even psychiatric pharmacotherapy. (I hope I'm not misremembering this.) It was pointed out that that isn't an evidence-based recommendation for the issues she's talking about.

The same paper (bsky.app/profile/ostr...). Although maybe "in collaboration" needs some qualifiers; we don't know all that much about the "research agreement" they had.

you ask people what the dems core beliefs are, they'll tell you plenty, but two of the few things they have not altered on, that they have stuck to regardless of where the winds blow and what the moment is, year in and year out, are "we need a strong republican party" and "the fever will break"

And, at the same time, that it replaces them in that future, obviating the need for practice altogether.

If the site's management decides that it will repeat Twitter's mistakes, then it seems that those who "hate the culture on Twitter" are also likely to come to hate it here?

I got into filter coffee about 10 years ago and haven't looked back. But before that, for the home, it was a moka pot, and I feel like it might be time to revisit that beautiful thing.

Labour + Streeting launching review into "over diagnosis" of mental health/neurodiverse conditions.

Simon Wessely been given vice chair position for it.

Excited for Cass 3.0 🫠🫠🫠

It's wrong in such a fundamental way. But it's as though they don't see why it matters. Because they don't care to listen to those affected by it or those who had to endure similar immiserating conditions before.

Reminds me of something you said not long ago (bsky.app/profile/2dam...). The isolation is horrible. It makes it so much harder to find the right words, to find community. It cuts people off from sources of support and the things they need to flourish.

YouTube video by ABC Science Introducing The Amazing Compact Disc | 1982 | Retro vintage 80s technology

I love looking at old predictions and how they held up (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tx6...).

"... compact discs may well rule the roost, at least until someone perfects a method of putting Beethoven's Ninth on a silicon chip. Don't laugh; I'm assured that that day, in fact, is not too far off."

I think you're right though; greater attention to history would probably lend itself to a more critical view of the present as well, potentially disrupting the status quo in our institutions.

Sometimes, when you bring it up, some dedicated students get defensive about it, thinking that you're attacking the discipline's status as a science. But that's neither here nor there, imo, because what's being pointed out is that it's embedded in the social world, and that matters.

I studied psych and then taught psych for many years. It really sucks how little of the curriculum looks at history, and in particular at how the discipline's tools were used to pathologise queer people and legitimate a whole bunch of awful stuff in wider society, often targeting queer people.