1. How and why Western reporters dropped the ball on Turkey.
2. Black swan or Canadian white raven?
3. Is “stealthing” (removing one’s condom during sex) a new trend?
4. The behavioral errors of medical patients.
5. Virginia Postrel on why food is taking over your life. And fast food consumption doesn’t vary much with SES.
#3, like so many of the sexual panics of the past, im going to go ahead and guess no.
I would tend to agree but a lot of guys have done it to me.
A lot?
Don’t “do it” with the lights off? I mean… how could you not know?
It might not be a ‘new trend’, but it’s non-consensual and deserves to be treated like the sexual assault (if not rape) that it is.
because it “leave[s] a victim vulnerable to pregnancy or STIs”?
Right I forgot sex with a condom was totally risk free.
Surely we can all agree that agreeing to take a lesser risk is not the same as taking a greater risk?
When a woman tells a man she is on the pill when she is not, is that “sexual assault (if not rape)”?
It’s more like fraud. The pill doesn’t prevent STDs.
That’s not the point. The claim is that ‘stealthing’ is a form of rape because the woman would not have agreed to sex without it, so there was really no real consent. The same argument works for lying about the pill — the man wouldn’t have had sex if he’d known there was no contraception being used, so there was no real consent.
Yes, if msgkings applied his logic consistently, it would be considered rape, but of course he won’t.
I’ll grant that it might fit a technical definition of “rape,” but no reasonable person would actually support criminal prosecution against someone for doing that. Condemns are going to slip off during sex. How could a court prove it was intentional? Answer: it can’t, so it’ll be the woman’s word against the man, with him having no recourse unless he videotaped the whole thing, with the lights on, from ten different angles. Getting her to sign the dotted line ain’t enough anymore, college boys!
But that’s the nation we are becoming, where no goal is more important than making the world risk-free for women to slut around in,* including men’s right to not be thrown in prison without cause. Only thing I can do is try to warn my own sons to avoid sex with a certain demographic.(Not that they’re likely to listen.)
*Not like that goal is actually accomplished. In fact, by telling women to do so, feminists undoutebly cause a lot more rape than they prevent.
What if you tell her your an analyst, bit you’re really only a junior analyst? Rape?
Depends on the size of the pay gap between the two.
I asked a woman friend that exact question when discussing the charges against Julian Assange. She was adamant that lying about wearing a condom should be considered rape, but had no answer when I asked her about lying about being on the pill. In the days of traditional morality and before abortion was legal, pregnancy was a much bigger risk for women. Now the reverse is true — there’s no way to abort 20+ years of future-altering child support obligations. No way for a man, that is — for a woman, it’s pretty straightforward.
Generally, I agree it’s not really “rape”, but it’s not complete equivalent either. The risk to the male is entirely financial, while the risk to the woman is not just financial but also physical. The female has to go through pregnancy or an abortion. Also a condom protects against STDs and the pill doesn’t.
20+ years of child support with no choice in the matter is clearly worse than an early-term abortion (which, we’re assured, is a simple medical procedure). Men who are under child-support orders even lose control of their life choices (under threat of jail time, they can’t choose a career that pays less than their potential earnings — decide you hate the high-paid, high-pressure life? Tough — you can just keep sucking it up until the kid is out of college and you’re middle aged and it’s too late to start a new career). When my kids were teens, my son getting a girlfriend pregnant was much more of a nightmare scenario than my daughter getting pregnant (though, thankfully, neither happened).
Lastly the claim is that the sex should be legally actionable because consent would not have been given had the deceitful partner told the truth. From that perspective it doesn’t matter whether the risk is pregnancy or pregnancy+STD.
Why should it be classified as assault or rape, though? The exact same physical motions and actions are being performed, just without the presence of a latex glove.
It’s messed up, no doubt, but calling something like this “sexual assault” or “rape” waters the term down, and makes people question victims who come forward. “Was it a legitimate rape?”
+1
This sort of matter is best dealt with in the civil court system. Intentional deception should be automatic qualification for a tort, and damages should be calculated extremely generously, including for emotional distress. The criminal justice system should be mostly restrained to acts of violence and coercion. Plus as others have mentioned, proving this action beyond a reasonable doubt is going to be extremely difficult. The civil standard, preponderance of evidence, is a better fit.
Try getting that on camera. The couple in question would need to be in the midst of creating a porno in order to have sufficient prosecutorial evidence.
Personally, I think we need some intermediate words (and legal categories) to describe non-consentual sex acts besides “rape”. “rape” comes with a lot of psychological baggage, and should not be used to include everything from being drunkenly groped over the clothing at a frat party to being kidnapped and violently beaten, stripped naked and assaulted by multiple strangers carrying deadly weapons.
Aside from the obvious problems that creates for defining appropriate punishments, you end up with the absurd situation where every woman who has experienced some sort of “sexual assault” is expected to feel equally traumautized by it. Because culturally, “rape” is supposed to be the worst thing that can happen to a a woman. A fate worse than death. An act which renders her “dishonored” and socially worthless as a girlfriend or wife.
The law already has such terms (‘sexual abuse’, ‘aggravated sexual abuse’, ‘sexual misconduct’). Popular usage has terms such as ‘molestation’ and ‘statutory rape’. The people babbling about ‘rape’ when a lesser offense has taken place are attempting to steal bases with rhetorical games.
bounded rationality of patients interesting discussion.
more important and more relevant topic—the bounded rationality of physicians.
the public generally believes that the rationality of doctors has no bounds- this is responsible for so much over diagnosis, over-treatment, medical error etc. Increased health spending with poorer outcomes…and so it goes..
“Assigning patients the task of completing patient-reported outcomes measures immediately prior to the visit had a small numerical, but not statistically significant, shift towards a reflective frame of mind.” Does that mean “we found no empirical results of any value”?
I’m guessing there’s a strong overlap between men who “stealth” and those who brag about their sexual exploits. In the modern era of electronic communication, it’s simply a matter of subpoenaing their texts
Right, if they are dumb enough to stealth, they are probably dumb enough to brag about it.
#5b: No surprise, most people no matter their SES are pretty catholic in where they eat out. Sometimes somewhere nice, sometimes somewhere exotic, sometimes in a rush they go to a drive thru (or when they are drunk at 2AM)
Only difference being that high SES people primarily eat at “prestige” fast food. Chipotle and Shake Shack, instead of Taco Bell and McDonalds. Not that this makes the food any healthier, and in many cases it’s worse. But the natural human tendency is to conflate food healthfulness with food status.
Frozen vegetables are cheap, tasty and nutritious. But you won’t find them at upscale health stores, whereas “artisanal” single-origin chocolate candy abounds.
2. Is the “white” gene/chromosome recessive? Not that I remember what that means – high school bio was more than 50+ years ago.
There are multiple genes related to skin pigment production in skin cells, to the extent that it works pretty close to averaging it between the parents.
Dominant/recessive is a particular subclass of genes. 1) Not that common among many characteristics; 2) Generally speaking, it also reflects some simplification. Teaching Mendel’s yellow/green short/long peas serves multiple pedagogical objectives, so I think it’s included in high school science classes basically everywhere.
I am reminded why I became an accountant.
4. Some people learn best by listening, but others learn little by listening. I’m in the latter category. I learn best by seeing (e.g., reading), very little by listening. Yet, health care providers treat all patients alike and are confounded that many patients make poor health-related decisions when visiting the doctor. Here’s an example of the difference: if someone gives me oral instructions how to get to my destination, I’ll drive around forever without finding the place, but if I take a quick look at a map, I will drive right to it. I process the visual information but not the oral information. Doctors might consider giving patients a map.
Seeing words and seeing pictural visualization of concepts is very different for learning style differences.
Like, the difference between a) semantically recognizing the word “chair” as something that can be sat on, and b) visualizing the form of a chair as a means of conceiving it.
Or, for a learning style thing, in teaching/learning grammar you might “see” the words and thus remember them better than when speaking/listening. But a timeline used to explain differences between grammatical tenses would serve to supplement the “visual” style of learning, as opposed to the fact of having better recollection of things that were perceived by visual as opposed to auditory means or mimicry/practice, per se..
Uh, that’s been a standard for decades. For the COMMON conditions and medications, a simplified bullet point sheet should be provided. My doctor’s office gives them out. Of course, not all conditions can be pigeon-holed. But seems to me with electronic records, eventually there should be few conditions which don’t have FAQ available for what, why, where, how, when, etc.
Process should be: Doctor (team) makes a diagnosis. Doctor discusses it with patient (and possibly family). Follow up and treatment is determined as well as the time frame for the next visit. Nurse gives patient the fact/FAQ sheet as well as any prescription scripts and asks whether there are any questions and also makes sure patient understand what next step is and who is responsible for it. Nurse demonstrates any unfamiliar maneuvers required (changing dressing, doing home blood test, etc.). Receptionist schedules next visit and gives patient a card with contact information. Robo-call system checks in 2-3 days for confirmation “1 for yes, 2 for no” that patient has gotten the prescription. Also used to advise that test results are available and check to see if patient has contacted any recommended specialists or follow up health care options. … In a more perfect world.
@Li Zhi “Uh, that’s been a standard for decades. For the COMMON conditions and medications, a simplified bullet point sheet should be provided. My doctor’s office gives them out. Of course, not all conditions can be pigeon-holed. But seems to me with electronic records, eventually there should be few conditions which don’t have FAQ available for what, why, where, how, when, etc.
Process should be: Doctor (team) makes a diagnosis. Doctor discusses it with patient (and possibly family). Follow up and treatment is determined as well as the time frame for the next visit. Nurse gives patient the fact/FAQ sheet as well as any prescription scripts and asks whether there are any questions and also makes sure patient understand what next step is and who is responsible for it. Nurse demonstrates any unfamiliar maneuvers required (changing dressing, doing home blood test, etc.). Receptionist schedules next visit and gives patient a card with contact information. Robo-call system checks in 2-3 days for confirmation “1 for yes, 2 for no” that patient has gotten the prescription. Also used to advise that test results are available and check to see if patient has contacted any recommended specialists or follow up health care options. … In a more perfect world.”
No. In a more perfect world:
AI makes the diagnosis…..
Wrong.
Most people learn about as well listening or reading (even those like yourself who think otherwise); if they can back up and re-listen, as is easy to do with reading.
Good health care providers provide written material so patients can review what they need to know. Pictures (maps) are valuable. Many Americans, (we aren’t all lawyers), do not read well so we should always tell in addition to providing written material.
I think your subjective experience is wrong too.
1 – To paraphrase Steve Sailer, when the NYT describes something as culturally “vibrant,” it is best to avoid it.
And to directly quote me, when OJ types something here it’s best to laugh at it.
I’m not going to be visiting Turkey anytime soon.
I’ll alert the media
$5a. Because real standards of living have gone down and we’re too poor to use houses, cars, golf, … as forms of conspicuous consumption and personal branding.
“But psmith, we’re not poor, we just live in expensive cities in order to have jobs that have become positional goods! Also, energy is more expensive! So we substitute away from land- and energy-intensive goods and towards goods that are intensive in fuckin uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ” yeah ok.
Close the thread; we have our winner.
“we just live in expensive cities in order to have jobs that have become positional goods”
No idea how to unpack the whole communication, but that’s a keeper for sure.
I agree that we have a winner. Still, if you save the $100 a night that you spend in restaurants, you’ll have enough money to buy a pretty big pile of furniture and appliances in a few months. You’ll even be able to make the mortgage payment in a normal city. But you won’t have a positional-good job. Choices, choices.
6. Sort of like this, years ago I saw a plan to turn the the lottery system into a either a pension plan or a banking system. It seems that a lot of working class people would rather buy lottery tickets than save money, so why not put the two together?
People who buy lottery tickets would do so with an ID card that created and credited an account in their name. Revenue over prize payouts would be credited back to the account holder based on how much they played, rather than going into the state’s coffers. That difference would be available to the account holder as a either a standard banking account or saved until retirement, depending on the plan. The management of the savings account variations are a lot more straight forward than the retirement plan ones.
With trillions of dollars flowing into the system, individual prize payouts could be enormous, and therefore maximally enticing, but still leave a relatively high percent of the intake available to account holders. Big data could figure out how frequently smaller prizes would be awarded in order to encourage people to keep playing. Yes few players would ever win prizes, but that’s the case now and losers have nothing to show for it. Under the lottery savings/retirement plan, they’d get back at least 50% of what they spent.
State lotteries don’t need to be nationalized for this plan to work, and competition among them to attract players by offering higher payouts would work to the player’s advantage.
Some players would plow their account money back into tickets, but they’d be no worse off than those who blow their money on lotteries now. In any case, the plan offers banking services that would otherwise be difficult to obtain for people with low incomes, and a chance to better their financial condition dollar at at time, if they want.
The only losers would the people who currently benefit from the proceeds of state lotteries …
Free accounts for low-income people with a $5 monthly lottery and a $50k payout?
Somehow … you just know something about that would end up in tears though ..
Yeah, when J-Drank or Clyde Bob overdosed on their $50,000 heroin party and sued the goverment cueing media tears?
1. I’m no fan of the AKP but …. all this talk about “democracy dying in Turkey” just strikes me as another case of one standard for me, another for my enemies. Kemalist Turkey featured coup after coup. Was that democracy?
Right. I’m Greek and could care less about Turkey, as long as they don’t start a war while I’m over there. Both sides do encroachments and provocations on a weekly basis, reported on TV, but nothing comes of it. Strongmen exist for the same reason that Putin is popular in Russia, that Duterte is popular in the Philippines, and Erdoğan is popular in Turkey. Poor people think the government is a source of strength (same in the West in many ways). China will be an interesting example of what will happen when and if dumb growth of the kind China has thrived on starts slowing down.
Ray,
The impression I get is that the Greeks hate the Turks but the Turks don’t hate Greeks, do you agree?
Depends on the person. I would say that view is “old school” but I’m sure it’s pretty popular still.
Its become increasingly apparent since the “Fall of Communism” (perhaps we should call it the “Autumn of Communism”) that few populations are ready and able to self-rule democratically. It isn’t obvious to me that the USA or the members of the EU are as or more able today than they were 30 years ago, the evidence suggest they are less able.
” few populations are ready and able to self-rule democratically.”
Yeah, that’s because the concept itself is the vestige of a local philosophical fad from the eighteenth century, although what remains bears little resemblance to anything from that era.
Re “democracy dying”, this sounds to me like one more case of a proxy meadure becoming useless once there’s an incentive.
Democray used to correlate with decent governance (and the absence of communism) so well that it became a shorthand for these actually desirable things.
But Atatürk knew damn well that his people would vote for a Sultan. So he built a system to prevent this. Now dismantled in the name of democracy… and guess who the people voted for?
5. As junk food got better, food food needed to get better to compete.
1. Ms. Berlinski resided in Turkey so she has much credibility. On the other hand, is it any wonder that a country, Turkey, that shares a border with Iran, Iraq, and Syria would want an authoritarian leader of its government. Ms. Berlinski mentions that Turks don’t like Americans, but doesn’t mention an obvious reason: America opened the Gates of Hell in the region and can’t shut them.
Turkey is a NATO member.
It does not need a dictator to protect it from nearby dictators.
(Not sure how the failed coup fits into all that though…)
Total non sequitur. What does NATO membership have to do with the Kurdish problem in Turkey? How does NATO membership protect it from terrorists? Turkey’s main problem is that it’s majority Islamic population is unwilling to structure their government to protect the rights of the other sects living there. Islam is fundamentally opposed to democracy.
I was talking about nearby dictators, not Kurds or other malcontents.
And, for that matter … uhhhh … what on earth is the connection between Turkey, NATO and Kurds? Turkey’s NATO membership is what makes it essentially impossible for Western countries to support Kurdish independence.
So yes, I shifted the topic somewhat, but it seems kind of relevant …
3. “Even more troubling is the online community Brodsky uncovered, where men encourage other men to “stealth” their partners. These perpetrators — both gay and straight — believe it’s a man’s right to “spread one’s seed.””
Here is the community described by the article, which is actually simply the comments section of one post on the “experience project:”
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Remove-The-Condom-Without-Them-Knowing-During-Stealth-Sex/2441931
Looks to me like all the pro-“steal thing” comments were written by the same person. Fake News!
I thought the same thing – phake knews!!
I didn’t bother to check sources, so nice work there, but I had the same thought. So many of these “trends” are based on a single story of one or two cases that gets picked up and spread around by sensationalist media.
Remember the donut forehead trend?
#4 People make statements like this:
his pattern is partially attributed to differences in nutritional intake, with the poor eating the least healthy diets. This paper examines whether there is an SES gradient in one specific aspect of nutrition: fast-food consumption. Fast food is generally high in calories and low in nutrients.
But very,very few people in the developed world are nutrient deficient (that is not getting sufficient vitamins, minerals and amino acids) and is there even any proof that fast food is low in nutrients? (maybe French fries are)
I haven’t looked at the paper. Did they define what they mean by fast food?
1. I wish people would stop declaring this country or that is done, the world is going to hell, blah blah blah. Turkey was once a great empire, became an independent country, overcame several military coups, was never colonized…they’ll be fine.
5. Virginia Postrel on why food is taking over your life
Because we have gotten too fat to be sexy.
Sorry, I could not resist. It is a big and growing problem though.
I guess my first sergeant was wrong when he said, “A good carpenter always builds a shed over his tools.”
Also, seen on Facebook with the caption, “Returned To Italy After Three Years In The US.” A photo-shopped picture which depicted the sculpture “David” to be obese
Yeah, I notice some of the impossibly beautiful models get low ratings in porn, but the ‘amateurs’, who tend to be obese looking or unfit, get high ratings, it’s what the audience can relate to. Then again, video distorts bodies: a lot of hot porn stars are in fact rather petite in real life.
Man you are the skeeviest troll here.
The cross-sectional evidence refutes this position. Foodies are significantly less obese than the median American. Visit Momofuku, Alinea or Saison. I guarantee you the BMI of the sample population will be far below Cracker Barrel.
Just looking at the obiesity map, it seems the high-SES states like Massachusetts and California are the least obese, while the low-SES Deep South and West Virginia are the most.
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/images/data/brfss_2015_obesity-600px.jpg
5a makes some sense. Food experiences are hard to communicate, especially for non-professional writers. What do we ever say, other than “it was fantastic!”
I tried Korean Topokki today, for the first time. Here was my actual meal!
http://imgur.com/a/Hk9fW
Tasty rice dumplings with fish cake. I got the medium. My friend got hot. He ignored the “never ‘hot’ at Korean rule.” He ignored the “warn you three times rule” (“are you sure?”). He even said he was sure after the girl explained that “hot” included four drops of straight capsaicin.
My medium was fine. I have a little left to scramble into my eggs in the morning.
One of my pet theories: Michelin and the like find heavily spiced cuisines (Indian, North African, Szechuan, southeast Asian, etc.) difficult to analyze and as a result tend not to rate them very highly. Contrast this with French and Japanese (and more recently Scandinavian) places. To me the operating difference is that the latter prized cuisines are quite discrete and easy to think and write about: you know when a bit of poached halibut is a paragon of poached halibut, or when a tomato is a paragon of a tomato, or a cut of beef is a paragon of steak. Moreover, when all the pieces are discrete (think modern menus where dishes are shorthanded not by names but by just ingredients, like “a, b, c, d, e”) it’s easy to justify why something is good.
Try doing this with, say, curry, or a mole. You won’t be able to, or it least it will be quite a bit harder, even if it tastes fantastic. What are you supposed to say, it’s “complex”? “Haunting”? Inability to verify the superiority of the constituent ingredients also matters.
“Complex” is about the best I can do, or “lots of different spices” to try to communicate that something is not just chili peppers.
6. More government snooping.
Re previous: French Election Model https://i.redd.it/moj0bkpzp1uy.png
#5. I”m kind of over it. It’s becoming way too obvious that there’s a formula to novelty food production.
You go to Trader Joe’s and they’ll have some elaborate new concoction like nut-brittle made with pistacios, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seed and almonds. Or you go to the upscale supermaket and they have homemade crackers or “gourmet” chocolate covered pretzels (these are split!). All ridiculously over priced.
Basically, they take a familiar food, and do a twist on it with a new flavor, and jack up the price. Trader Joe’s is really bad this way given that they don’t really have high quality products. They have value products and then they make money by selling overpriced novelty items.
I’ve gotten kind of bored of it. I tried literally every variety of jam or fruit preserve, as well as all the honeys, including Italian Acacia and Chestnut honey at $10 for a 4 oz jar. Trader Joes is selling “Himalayan” honey, flavored with pink himalayan salt, and it’s just kind of meh.
Eventually you figure out that novelty does not equate to good taste. You can make novelty items out of low-quality ingredients and get people to buy it, once, and then make a different novelty item, and this works only so many times.
The Italian Acacia honey is worth it. The Trader Joe’s Himalayan honey is not. I still like raspberry jam the best.
Bread shouldn’t have quinoa in it.
Trader Joe’s has a variety of gimmicky products like those you describe, but I think they excel at selling good-enough products for an excellent price. For example the 86% dark chocolate they’ve been pushing recently is quite good, at just over half the price of slightly better stuff. Their frozen fruit is pretty good too.
And, at least where I live, Trader Joe’s consistently has cheaper milk, nuts, mushrooms, hummus, and eggs than the local supermarkets. (Except for some reason the last couple of months an egg price war seems to have broken out; TJ’s tends to keep its prices stable and has not participated in the egg war.) Plus a few other items that are either lower in price or higher in quality or just easier to find than at the supermarket (balsamic vinegar, generic Cheerios, frozen potstickers, pre-chopped mirepoix, etc.)
IOW, don’t go there for the novelty, go there for the goods that they sell at a better price. Maybe once or twice a month I’ll try something new and different there; usually I’ll decide never to buy it again but at least I’m not in a (complacent) rut.
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