Katrisia

According to the American Lung Association, lung cancer diagnoses have risen a startling 84% among women over the past 42 years while dropping 36% among men over the same period. The overall number of cases remains fairly steady.

[...] Approximately 20% of women diagnosed with lung cancer today are lifelong non-smokers (by contrast, only 1 in 12 men with lung cancer have never smoked).

[...] These shocking statistics beg the question why?

"No one knows," says John C. Kucharczuk, MD, Director of the Thoracic Oncology Network of the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine. "It could be hormonal. It could be attributed to high degrees of exposure to secondhand smoke. Some data suggests that among non-smoking females who develop lung cancer, there are chances of a genetic mutation. At this point, there's no conclusive data."

From: Penn Medicine

So... is the mystery behind women's lung cancer solved? Lovely if so (/s).

That's insane. I hope not only that they win the lawsuit, but that companies understand stimulants can be harder (even dangerous) on some people.

The way caffeine affects me does not risk my life, but it can get ugly as I have a mental health condition that gets triggered by stimulants. It is so common to rely on caffeine nowadays, and it's present in many beverages and snacks. People forget it is still a drug.

There should be labels and there should be less of a presence of caffeine (and other legal drugs) in unrelated products. I mean, it's normal if coffee has caffeine, it shouldn't be normal that a lemonade has caffeine.

I was enjoying it, but two things are getting tiring: the lack of social sciences and humanities, and especially the misogynistic 'tone' of some users.

I haven't noticed, but some people say they are feeling political tensions, and...

The year 2024 is notable for the large number of elections, with 7 of world's 10 most populous nations (Bangladesh, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico) voting; countries that are home to nearly half of the world's people will hold elections in 2024.

From the Wikipedia complete list.

I guess everyone is just a little worried about national and international elections.

A recent comment of mine:

In an old interview, Mr. Narcissus [Elon Musk] said he may have bipolar disorder; he said he experiences "great highs, terrible lows, and unrelenting stress".

He has doubts because his highs and lows follow events in his life, whereas episodes from bipolar disorder often appear without triggers. [...]

We'd know if he went for an evaluation/possible diagnosis, but I cannot even imagine him doing it.

Kanye West is usually manic when he acts this way. I guess this supports Musk's suspicion.

1. Videogames. It has not been super expensive as I enjoy indie games the most, but still.

2. Pen and paper organization. This is recent. Due to a couple of mental disorders, I have problems remembering things and keeping organized. I was using a to-do list for my phone, but it was becoming less and less effective with time.

So I found a weekly planner online and I bought it telling myself that it was expensive, but it would be enough for a year and I wouldn't need anything else.

The planner has been great, by the way. Yet, when it arrived, I liked it so much that I had this classic feeling of not wanting to ruin it with my handwriting. I needed a good mechanical pencil! Erasable, yet stylized.

Then I thought the pages looked clean, but monotone. Stickers! What about my own creations? Thermal printer with sticker rolls! And so on and so on.

I am productive ...and addicted to stationery items.

The lack of individuals within a species is not a problem as long as the population is healthy. Horses are not in danger of going extinct. I do not know the numbers then and now, but horses are fine, and the ones alive in countries that would have put them to work in other eras are free of suffering, which is something every sentient being wants to avoid.

I'm glad horses are not being used as much as before; they are not objects, they are animals just like us.

I am inclined to think that easy entertainment and a devaluation of the intellectual life (it is no longer admirable nor sufficiently valuable being an intellectual) can be a partial explanation. The first one leads to distractions and our time being occupied by mindless activities. The second keeps us there as people are indifferent to studying and asking questions. It has become a personal choice, a kind of hobby or trait of certain individuals, and not something that we all should be doing. And I'm not saying that everyone should be a Leonardo da Vinci excelling in philosophy, sciences, arts, etc.; but I do believe we should be thinking critically and informing ourselves to the extent possible, otherwise, our reading comprehension and many other things get affected.

I'm sorry if my grammar betrays my words, I am not a native speaker.

That said, I think these are some of our obstacles, but other times had had their own obstacles. I'm sure the average citizen from, I don't know, Istanbul, London, Tokyo, some centuries ago was also very opinionated and ignorant of many things. It has been the constant, the rule, for millennia.

Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives.

Yes, in international subreddits. The national ones were often right leaning (e.g. r/Canada, r/Mexico).

It's hard to admit, but I'm not healthy in that regard. I postpone the break-up so that time gives an opportunity to fix things, and when that fails I jump into another relationship right away, and not in a "using people to distract me from my pain" way but in a "falling in love with people who show me empathy and care, and who I imagine are a good fit without giving enough time to consider it thoroughly" way. Currently in the first step, waiting, wishing.

I have no advice. I can only say I am sorry you are grieving.

Edit: Grammar.

and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.

Huh? Is this about obligatory alms/tithes or is it about any kind of help to others, or both?

Exactly. This is the only argument needed to support treatments and drugs. If a person wants to do it (a choice made with a sufficiently healthy mind), we should provide safety. Euthanasia, abortion, hormones, etc. We shouldn't care about further views.

Communities for underground music and the one for roller skating.

We are already here.

I'd like to prevent many tragedies, but I'm not sure a single book would change history. I can actually imagine it going very wrong...

— Mein Führer, this book here explains our theories about the origin of the German population and about the natural maliciousness of Jews are wrong.
— Let me see... Lies, all lies! This here is evidence of their pervasive propaganda against the aryan people.

— Witchfinder General, a book had arrived... from the unknown.
— What kind of sorcery is this? "Witches do not exist". "...These trials were the result of ignorance and greed". What in the name of God is this blasphemy? A powerful witch is near and these are her evil tricks!

So I need to think of a better plan, lol.

From Wikipedia:

Polysexuality has been defined as "encompassing or characterized by many different kinds of sexuality", and as sexual attraction to many, but not all, genders. [...] Polysexuality is also considered to be another word for bisexuality however unlike bisexuals, polysexuals are not necessarily attracted to people of the same gender.

I think 'polysexual' fits. You like some genders (cis women, trans women, feminine-presenting people, AFAB NBs, etc.), but not all.

In my mid twenties, I started having problems with my back, hands, elbows, etc. I stopped doing a lot of things (e.g. playing musical instruments), which helped, but the back pain persisted until I started sleeping on the floor. I was desperate, and I had heard about this solution from old anecdotes.

Since then, I've noticed that firm mattresses and very slim pillows (or soft enough pillows) are okay. Soft mattresses and big pillows bring back all the discomfort and pain in a matter of hours. I still sleep on the floor, but a mattress for me might be waiting somewhere.

Nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, methylphenidate.

Nicotine once. Friends at the time said I needed to try it to say for a fact I didn't like it, and I didn't like it. Then I learnt there are extremely rare cases of illnesses from just one smoke, so that advice was stupid, IMO.

Caffeine was a regular as I was self-medicating with it. Nowadays, I drink mostly decaffeinated. I wish there were more flavors and variety for it, though, at least a chocolate one...

Alcohol has always been an occasional thing for me, once or twice per year. I try to keep it that way because my family has a long history of substance abuse disorder.

Methylphenidate once. I borrowed it from someone's prescription. I thought it would help me get energetic, euphoric, etc. Well, it was calming, and for the first time in my life my mind was quiet. It was so strange to be sitting with no turmoil, no direction of what to jump to do or even say spontaneously. It was just me and the silent room. Tranquility, so much that it was uncomfortable as it was new and not what I expected at all. Turns out I have hyperactivity and the medication turned it down.

If I were to say, I prefer uppers and I'm curious about substances like cocaine, but I don't want to risk my health. I'm fine.

I believe many great human beings have existed throughout history, but the impact they cause is often limited by their circumstances. For example, there have been thinkers defending compassion towards human beings and animals in possibly every culture, but those sages live and die admired yet misunderstood. Their lives are seen as "extraordinary", and thus, not attainable for normal people like us. We give up on following them since the start, instead of trying to achieve their wisdom or understanding...

Anyway, by mere impact, I guess Socrates, Plato, and Immanuel Kant are on the top for me. The first ones were influential in the development of many branches of knowledge, and solidified a tradition of critical thinking since antiquity. Immanuel Kant is kind of recent, but I'd say his works were really important for discussions around philosophy, science, arts, religion, and more. I admire Immanuel Kant greatly. I was recently reading a little text he wrote about psychiatric disorders and he was predicting modern paradigms in the 18th century. He was such a brilliant and knowledgeable person.

There are also incredible inventions and discoveries that have helped us all, but often those are the results of collective efforts. Still, as I said before, amazing human beings the ones that gave and still give these things for free. Getting personal again, I wouldn't be alive without many of those advances (vaccines, medications, etc.). On the technological side, the founder of that website that unlocks academic papers has had an impact that is yet to be analyzed.

Sorry! So many people...!

Wow! Pranks from 2004 are ads in 2024.

Have you heard the "I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it" quote? They meant it, huh?

Those ideas get you banned, not downvoted.

Exactly. I often post walls of text, and it is probably because it takes me a lot of words to express ideas in English, but I also feel like I cannot discuss something deeply in whatever number of characters are admitted now on microblogging. Forums and such are great and I love reading long posts and comments. Also, I get lost in who is replying to what on those sites, but here it is literally linear!

Similarly, people interested in philosophy (and other theoretical stuff) might take a break and think of different things like "but how's the soap made, anyway?".

Get protective padded pants.

SMITE isn't a shooter, though. Overwatch 2 killed Overwatch and left an empty space. I don't see a problem if two games (or more) try to fill it. I hope they are fun.

That said, it shouldn't be Valve's only focus if fans are expecting different games from them.

I disagree. Generally speaking, psychologists aren't competent either. Psychiatrists at least know about the human body, its interactions, and psychopathology in depth. Psychologists study the things you mentioned, but many fail to study the biological parts and how deep psychopathologies can go.

Therefore, I've encountered many psychologists who think that all problems are caused by the environment, by inner (often cognitive) processes, etc. They fail to understand severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and regularly make one of two mistakes (if not both in different contexts): downplay the severity of psychosis and mania/hypomania or think the mildest symptom is psychosis or mania/hypomania.

Also, many psychologists I've known and seen lean into the antipsychiatry movement. This may not be a problem when treating, say, mild to moderate depressions of a certain reactive nature. They might advise not to take medication and, indeed, medication may not be necessary for these cases. But to do the same for endogenous recurrent depressions and, again, severe mental disorders is borderline clinical negligence.

Finally and in the same vein, many psychologists do not understand how dependent on the physiological are phenomena such as behavior and beliefs. They often picture our mental experience as mostly free, perhaps influenced by many factors (e.g., psychoanalysis), yet ultimately driven by ourselves. I disagree. I disagree not only because there are many scientific observations to the contrary, but because my own experience has been ever-changing by the silliest of things, like medication for physical illnesses, food, weather conditions, etc. Anecdote incoming: >!Traits that psychologists would try to explain away, treat in talk therapy, and solidify as part of my personality were mere consequences of the physiological and went away immediately after I stopped the causes. The average psychiatrist would find this obvious, while psychologists were often surprised.!<

If I may add, both psychiatrists and psychologists face a profound ignorance about the things they study. Psychology has tried to explain them, and in this effort it has created dozens of different and incompatible schools of thought (e.g., psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitivism, etc.). Psychiatrists are also at a loss in the definitive hows, and I should add there's also dense theory behind it (it did not stop with Emil Kraeplin or Karl Jaspers). If you ask me, I wouldn't consider one more scientific than the other just because one created more paradigms/theories; if anything, remaining observant and pragmatic sounds to me more scientific (in both disciplines), but that's a whole new conversation...

And there are trans people who believe gender is a social construct too, though. It is an open debate.

OCEAN is useful.

For fun but also interesting because it is a piece of history? The four temperaments (Hippocrates).

I was going to comment the same! When I heard it was "deep", I thought it meant "pretentious". But no, there is a character that has deep quotes mostly inspired by a real life author, and other characters that are diverse. I could criticize details here or there, but it is an incredible show (ed.: that season).

I get rather irritated with those arguments because they only return to the start. "Here, a world". "Is it how we experience it, though, and why and how; if not, what's behind?". "Bullshit, a world". That's hardly an answer. And, personally, it feels intellectually dishonest because the question was larger than just "is there a world?".

I prefer an answer like saying that doubting the world in any form might be a mistake on its own because [reasons]. I do not agree, but at least there's explanations and communication.

Also, I think they are fighting a straw man. For instance, I doubt many things about the Universe, our knowledge, our minds, etc. Yet, I accept there are phenomena which appear to me. This has been the case since the ancient school of skepticism, and I have yet to meet a person which declares themself a skeptic and does not do this to some degree. For example, I know I'm hungry right now. I don't know if the pain is real in any other deeper level, or if it is like the pain in a dream that goes away when one wakes up, or a delusion that is felt without external stimuli, or whatever. I don't know the nature of it, yet it is an experience I must attend. I can even add that the mechanisms behind, the anatomical knowledge and such is useful, but it might be entirely wrong or be as illusory as the pain itself. The straw man is that skeptics would say: "I don't know if I'm really feeling hungry", "I don't know if I want to eat" or something like that.

Why does it matter, then? Because it changes everything. In my case, it made me go from a realist teenager to an instrumentalist adult in science. From an atheist teenager to an agnostic adult.

The discussion derives in many interesting branches too. The mere "does it matter if the world is different from what we perceive if we cannot perceive it in any other way?" is an example. Many people answer yes or no without justifying it. And, at this point, some people might be wondering why we need to justify every single belief we hold and every single thing we say, like the ones throughout my comment, and that in itself is a new good question that emerges. The possibility of having any of these conversations is also a good question, and so on...

So philosophy is not going too far, in my opinion. Some philosophers might go too far, but I really think they are rare (or misunderstood).

You are the only ones I recognize. Oh! And that account with the name and photo of Margot Robbie.

The study of psychopathology in any form, particularly of severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder type I.

I like philosophy, mathematics, and arts more, but that would be my favorite field of science.

Some people believe in dividing sexual orientations (LGB) from the gender identity letters (T+). During my time on Twitter, I saw it was often from a place of hate, though. I would understand something like: "Although we face similar challenges, we also have different needs that justify an LGB sub-movement". But that was almost never their attitude.

The thing is there are negative aspects in NPD and ASPD, and those can be overcome, so support for these disorders does not mean celebrating but guiding toward remission.

I don't know, the world is depressing. Recently, details about Palestine have been disheartening...

I liked Revolt.

I think that if the age of consent is gradual, the age difference allowed should too.

First scenario, two 15 year olds decide to start their sexual life together. They're fully informed. Nobody is taking advantage. It's very different to a second scenario where a 17 year old is dating a 36 year old.

It's funny because the problem is usually described with terms these specific French philosophers used: power dynamics. It is too unbalanced. The adult has way more power than the teenager and that's not healthy, it can even be dangerous.

I would argue that we should be careful with age differences until our early-mid twenties, even if the law gives us a free pass from our 18th birthday. But, anyway, yeah, in the second scenario the teenager is older than the first ones, so we'd assume that if the first ones were okay the second too, but the age difference matters IMHO.

Those are fun, though. You get a single console that emulates a lot of systems for a good price. Some have cute retro styles!

I got the Miyoo Mini Plus that runs on Linux. It emulates many old consoles like GB and GBA, and can even run some DS, N64, and PS1 games, which are a great addition. Of course you need to tweak it a little with a good OS (not the Chinese one) and a good SD card with a library of games from the buccaneer communities. Edit: It's not hard at all.

The Steam Deck is amazing, so I don't think they can rival it, but if they make a better Odin 2 cheaper than the Steam Deck, I'd be tempted, lol.

If you really need to, I'd recommend social media within the Fediverse.

First, a Mastodon account with your real name, photo and a small bio. Post your thoughts or quotes or whatever; repost memes, art, etc. Leave an option for people to send you messages, with whatever privacy you see fitting. In case you worry about it, Mastodon is a known alternative to Twitter, and Twitter is very toxic nowadays, so people will find it reasonable that you have a Mastodon account instead.

There's also Pixelfed, if you like photos. It is an alternative to Instagram. If you have a hobby, post often about it. I don't know, cooking, skating, painting... Anyway, make it a beautiful gallery of your life and fewer people will question why Pixelfed and not Instagram. You can always excuse yourself saying you don't like so many business accounts on Instagram or whatever excuse, and that you like to give new things a try.

Finally, a WordPress or Plume or WriteFreely blog may be a great opportunity to write and share your ideas. It is kind of retro to have a blog, I guess, but it is a good way for people to get to know you better. You may even find something you're passionate about and create a community. Some people start with two or three pieces of advice about something (like gardening) and end up with a blog full of useful articles and a community that follows them. Blogs usually have an option for private e-mails and a redirection to other social media, so you can have your Mastodon and/or Pixelfed account attached.

Why the Fediverse? You don't sell your soul to corporations, you help it grow, you get a better community.

But give it a second thought, though. Having a social media profile can be exhausting. I personally obsess over it being a good reflection of who I am, respectful in the things I say, with beautiful images, with colors and themes that reflect my personality, with enough of my real self so that people know me but not enough that they cringe or judge me negatively. My objectives (and perfectionism) make it chaotic after a while, and the profile gets more and more inauthentic. That's why I don't have any at the moment. It can also bring some social drama, so, yeah, ponder the pros and cons.