Bronycon and the bad life · 5:09am Aug 19th, 2017
Serious question: Do people still want to read rambling, self-indulgent Bronycon reports?
Too slow; I'm writing one anyway. Please don't feel obliged to read it.
I almost didn't make it to Bronycon. I spent a few days at Pennsic, which unfortunately overlapped Bronycon. I'm cheap, so each day I brought a large bag of peanuts with me and ate nothing but peanuts all day rather than eat at the food court. Peanuts are a nutritionally complete food; I knew a man who survived an entire year (during the Berlin airlift) eating nothing but peanut butter.
(When the world seems to be going crazy, I find it helps to remember that no matter how crazy it gets, the Berlin blockade was crazier.)
After one day of peanuts, I felt unusually tired and sore, but I chalked it up to walking all around Pennsic. After three days of peanuts, I was in intense pain. My muscles burned with pain from the pressure whenever I lay down, my joints burned if I stood up, and I had a migraine every day unless I took my magic migraine medicine which I am not under any circumstances supposed to use more than twice a week. After searching online, the only good match to the symptoms was Lyme disease, which I was diagnosed with 9 years ago but had gone into remission. And it had never been this bad before.
It happens I'd run out of my Lyme-suppressing medication a week before, and I'd been unable to get a refill because my doc wanted another $100 5-minute appointment before he'd refill it but wasn't able to schedule me in before it ran out, and then after he saw me my insurance wanted another form filled out by the doctor, who doesn't fill these forms out but hires a woman to do it, who only comes in once a week, and didn't do it the day she came in.
Anyway, I left a message for my Lyme doc asking if eating lots of peanuts could trigger a Lyme flare-up, and he (= his staff) called back and said "Yes." Thanks, Doc, for never mentioning that any of the dozens of times I've paid you $100 for a five minute office visit. Turns out peanuts, though not any other kind of nut, are a trigger for Lyme.
So I'm in constant terrible pain, and my Lyme doc says he can't see me until the end of October. So I get some horse penicillin and give myself an injection, and Thursday I feel a little better and drive myself to Bronycon. The hotel says they have wheelchairs. I gamble on getting one, and win! So I am wheelchair boy for the weekend. Not the first time.
The con was different this time, partly because I slept a lot and napped a lot due to the fatigue. But it seemed like everybody was just popping in and out of Quills and Sofas, under the supposition that everybody else was staying put in Q&S. A lot of people flowed by, but I didn't talk with many of them unless Archonix snared them into playing Secret Hitler. This is a more-complex version of Werewolf which teaches the importance of killing people who might be fascists--a relevant lesson for today!
Strangely, I seemed to meet more people for the first time that I have since my first Bronycon. Mitch H, Georg ("George"), Noble Cause (thanks!), FOME, Horse Voice, AugieDog, Super Trampoline, Dubs Rewatcher, Cloudhammer, Olden Bronie, Arcshod, and more I had just a few words with.
TheJediMasterEd did this. The man is a bulldog of a prankster. He sat in a chair for an hour waiting for me to wake up just to get the timing right.
The bathrooms in the area I frequented were all "all-gender" bathrooms. It seemed like they were pushing the gender-neutral option by putting everything else way out at one end or the other of the convention hall. I sat outside one for a while to see if women would use it. I counted nine men and three women who went in, though one of the women walked out again immediately. I neglected to count the gender ratio in the convention at large, but I think it was close to that. No children used the gender-neutral bathrooms that I noticed, but one old person did. I seem to recall that back in the 1970s people wrote science fiction stories in which there were gender-neutral bathrooms in the 22nd century, and it was supposed to seem radical and crazy.
I only attended a few panels. Wanderer D, Flutterpriest, & AugieDog gave one on coming-of-age stories that stood out. It's hard to find a topic like that, that's general enough to be appropriate for the convention, yet narrow enough to find some thing new to say about. I also liked the "Draw Ponies!" panel. I'd love to be able to draw ponies; I just don't want to put in the time. 
One artist answered every question by saying "It's all about volume!"
I'd been getting better all weekend, so I thought that with continued antibiotics and no more peanuts I'd keep on getting better after the con. But, no; I got worse again. So I'm still using a wheelchair, still in constant pain, still have a migraine every morning, etc. I was taking so much aspirin & ibuprofen for the inflammation and pain that I started bruising all over my body. It's quite serious; if it doesn't get better soon, odds are it never will. Saw my regular doc today and got a doxycycline prescription today; keeping my fingers crossed. Chronic Lyme is mysterious, which is not helped by the fact that the NIH denies that it exists.
I've just now been binging on the news I missed due to Bronycon. Two terrorist attacks in Europe and two violent clashes in Virginia. People are stupid. I would almost feel better if the terrorist attacks and Nazi marches made any kind of sense. But I think they're harmful to the terrorist and Nazi causes as well as to everybody else.
EDIT: After doing some more news cruising and video watching, I noticed a strange lack of journalists. Have they just given up? All the news media do is paste together clips from YouTube. I also notice the police made no attempt to deter any of the violence. In fact, they seemed to find it pretty amusing:
I don't think terrorists, Nazis, or Donald Trump are particularly well-noted for making good decisions.
I'm sorry you're sick; not sure if I have anything better than empty platitudes to help, but I do hope that knowing that people care helps regardless.
And hey, on the upside, apparently one of those Confederate statutes that got torn down must have been Bannon's last horcrux and he is now out of the White House, declaring war on... someone.
I'm so sorry, I had no idea you were that bad off! I don't suppose you can see about getting an appointment with a Lyme doc in another area?
Also, I have Opinions on the all gender bathrooms. I learned this weekend that I absolutely do not care about the gender, sex, pronouns, or documentation of the people in the bathroom with me, but 1) I do not want to go in a bathroom with urinals, and 2) I require an area with a mirror where the only people around are people it's appropriate to adjust my bra in front of. I'm now pretty passionate about my stance on the urinal/bra public restroom divide. (Of course, I solved this by using the private bathroom at the end most of the weekend. That's fine too.)
But you need to count the number of people who walk in as men and out as women and vice versa.
...yeah, the future's pretty fucking weird.
I'm not entirely sure that's true. What would be helpful to terrorists and Nazis? If you're a small group that nopony supports, instilling fear and chaos may well be a political a step up. It's not like 'doing nothing' is engendering support for racial separatism. I think what the White nationalists are doing has been remarkably successful, and their numbers are continuing to swell because the existence of groups who rise against them (like BLM and Antifa, who Whites tend to identify by their most extreme members) are encouraging more White nationalist members who otherwise would be on the fence or uninterested in racial politics.
4640041
I'm still waiting for the White House to declare "War on Violence".
Now for serious wolf.
Be very careful about how much aspirin and ibuprofen you take in. Ibuprofen can damage your kidneys, for one. I wouldn't take more than twelve ibuprofen a day ever, and then only for short periods. Tylenol (acetaminophen / paracetamol / APAP) is far more dangerous and should be limited further. If you ever get hydrocodone combined with acetaminophen (Vicodin etc.) or oxycodone with acetaminophen, insist on the smallest amount of acetaminophen possible and carefully limit intake. You shouldn't be taking more than a gram of Tylenol per day long term if you can help it, two grams per day at the most (assuming you want to keep a liver). One gram of Tylenol is three tablets of it, which isn't much. Watch medicines closely for overlap.
As loathe as I am to recommend this, maybe you should be on narcotics so that you can function at least in some way. Unfortunately, because people have been killing themselves with heroin and megadoses of narcotics, it's difficult to get the normal doses one needs if one suffers from chronic pain and actually is an appropriate candidate. You have to be willing to advocate for yourself heavily without seeming like an addict, which can be a challenge.
Another option is kratom, but it only helps for mild chronic pain. It's like a combination of a mild narcotic, stimulant, and relaxant. I used kratomcaps.com back when I took it. It isn't cheap but it works and is still technically legal in most states.
I know a crapton about pharmacokinetics. Contact me if you need advice or have questions. Or just contact me anyway. *hugs*
4640043
The urinals thing is admittedly weird. If there are urinals, I agree they should be properly sight-guarded or sectioned off.
(Although I must admit the idea of using a urinal for the first time in a decade or two is an admittedly amusing temptation to me, just for the humor value. I'd still be worried about being raped and murdered for doing it, sadly.)
I suppose they should probably avoid keeping communal trough-urinals in operation, too.
Yeah, those actually exist, but they're rare and mainly found in shower rooms or gyms where tallywhackers (as my paternal grandfather would have called them) are already exposed. They're like these weird, long metal troughs you can stand on either side of.
I don't know about the mirror, though. I've been using women's restrooms for many years now and I've never seen a woman do anything oddly embarrassing in front of a bathroom mirror.
As a random aside, the biggest social difference (I think I may have even mentioned this to you at con—this convo did come up with somepony) that I've noticed between being male and female in the Northern US, aside from requirements on public presentation, is the graffiti in the restrooms.
Men's restroom graffiti is usually much more disgusting and juvenile, but the biggest cultural shock is that women's restrooms frequently have uplifting graffiti. Like, drawings and well-wishes and shit.
They don't tell you about this on the transgender recruitment pamphlet. The toaster's nice, though.
4640091
Eh. The Nazis fucked up because they made a car attack and killed a white woman, simultaneously killing the worst possible target and making an attack in the same manner as Islamist extremist groups, which everyone also hates. On top of that, a lot of the dumbasses got photographed with Nazi flags next to Confederate flags and other similar symbols, damaging the plausible deniability of "well, it is about Southern heritage" and simultaneously tainting the various other white supremacist groups with Nazism (which is one of the very few downgrades from "Klansman").
And then some Islamists helpfully attacked some people in Barcelona with a car, thereby reminding everyone that, hey, this is a terrorist attack!
And Donald Trump mishandled the situation horribly, thereby drawing more attention to it.
And a lot of them are now losing their jobs and livelihoods and friends because, hey, everyone has cameras nowadays, so if you march in a neo-Nazi protest, people are going to find you and email your boss pictures of you standing next to a dude carrying a swastika. One of them was crying on YouTube about how scared they were, which makes them look like cowards (which, well, they are), and it discourages other people from doing shit because, hey, who wants to lose their job and all their friends and have their mom give an awkward interview on TV?
The whole thing makes them look like a bunch of moronic wanna-be terrorists.
Oh, and they used freaking tiki torches. Because, you know, they needed to add another layer of stupid on top of everything else.
ISIS is just being ISIS and frankly they don't have any plausible path to victory. Doing shit like this is just kicking the beehive until people get pissed enough to kill them all.
I was really quite glad you could make it, even in such a capacity. I hope you have mostly better weeks while waiting for the doctor fiasco to untangle. Careful with doxycycline and direct sunlight.
Ouch, what a terrible situation. I hope and pray this isn't permanent, as you imply it could be.
Laugh if you must, but, you're good people, BH. It makes me sad to see bad things happen to good people.
Lastly, reading your blog posts makes me feel smart and well-educated.
4640109
I'm not saying it wasn't stupid, but I think you greatly underestimate the ability of ponies to immerse themselves in an echo chamber. Millions of Americans who don't yet identify with White nationalism think that the Antifa are just as guilty of instigating the violence which ramped up to the car attack because they believe only those subjective accounts of the incident that accord with what they want to hear.
I still think this event is more likely to increase the prevalence of White nationalism than decrease it. Anything that brings attention to a fringe group that people on one side of the political spectrum are already firmly opposed to is likely to be good for that group. People who weren't horrified by them screaming 'Jews will not replace us' aren't likely to blame the group in general for the violence that followed. Hell, a lot of them even believe that the car attack was a false flag by the Antifa. And don't forget that the stated purpose of the initial rally, to prevent a Confederate statue from being taken down, is something that 60% of Americans agree with.
In the age of the internet, many people choose whatever 'facts' they like to suit their beliefs. The number of people who do that is larger than the number of people identifying as White nationalists, and that isn't good news for civil order.
4640109
And just to throw an actual statistic in there, even recent polls taken over the past two days reveal that more than 40% of Americans currently approve of Donald Trump's job performance. His approval rating has actually gone up over the past couple of days, not down. Most of the people who support Trump agree that the Nazis are not solely to blame for the violence, and they don't trust media reports about what actually happened.
It's very easy to underestimate the size of a group whose mentality you don't fully comprehend or agree with. Racism didn't magically disappear with the end of the larger civil rights movement. People's opinions shifted about how they should talk about things, but their underlying beliefs did not change significantly.
Oh my goodness, I had no idea it was that bad! I hope you can get something arranged before that lump can see you in October.
Still, great seeing you, and thank you again for And That's How Equestria Was Made and the game with the pyramids.
Damn, dude. Sorry to hear that. I'm in chronic renal failure, so I know what it's like to constantly struggle with illness. You have my sympathies, and I hope you feel better soon. Take care of yourself!
What is it with you and being injured at Bronycon? <.<
BH, I am really sorry about your situation -- that is profoundly unfortunate. I hope that it's not permanent and you recover to your usual Bad Self.
For future cons, on the subject of nutritionally-complete foods, have you looked into Soylent and its ilk?
4640126
I feel the same way!
About the ones I can understand.
Oh hey, you wrote a paragraph about politics I can actually agree with.
Ah, you missed thought-criminals being banned from the internet at the infrastructure level. It started with Nazis, of course. Nazis can't have domain names. Nazis can't have DDoS protection. Nazis can't have AirBnB bookings, OKCupid accounts, or just about any other kind of social media. They certainly can't have their YouTube videos monetized.
The problem being, "this is a special case for Nazis" lasted about 24 hours. All the above has been used against at least one non-Nazi thought criminal since then. (But not against literal ISIS. They can have DNS and Cloudflare service, because... why exactly?) Oh, and the ACLU has officially announced that they'll only support your 1st Amendment rights if you don't care to use your 2nd Amendment rights. Good times.
4640131
Well, for instance, I read this news article, which included this tweet:
Then a few minutes later I run across a video of the fight, which shows that it was a continuation of a fight that started outside the parking garage, and it looks like the kid being beat up in the picture beat up the guy lying on the floor in the background first. I can't tell who started it from the video.
From what I've seen of videos, yes, antifa is just as guilty of instigating the violence which ramped up to the car attack. Watch some youtube videos. The neo-nazis were greatly outnumbered. The police shut down the rally right at the start, so all the neo-Nazis did was go to the park and then leave.
4640178 What is it with you and bats?
4640269
There are lots of different eyewitness accounts and video accounts, all of which are missing context. Here are some left-leaning accounts, just to counterbalance:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/08/what_the_alt_left_was_actually_doing_in_charlottesville.html
Sure, there were lots of people on both 'sides'. Some people on both 'sides' were violent. But it seems reasonable to suggest that none of this would have happened had hundreds of torch-wielding outsiders not stormed the campus the previous evening holding Nazi banners and shouting racist intimidation slogans like 'Jews will not replace us'. Trying to compare the two groups as though they bear equal responsibility for this is absurd. This violence was not started by the citizens of Charlottesville.
So no, I don't think 'antifa is just as guilty of instigating the violence' is remotely accurate, even though some people who call themselves 'Antifa' are clearly anarchists just trying to start a fight with anypony they can. The problem with these labels is that they get used as a broad brush to paint the entire community on one side or another, and that isn't accurate here. The violence was started by neo-Nazis who stormed the campus and tried to intimidate the students, not the students. There were no 'very fine people' on that side of the conflict. They were not innocent statue enthusiasts. They were racists, and this was exactly the outcome they were hoping for. I'm not 'unreasonable' for thinking that.
Whaaaat...I thought you just had really bad joint pain! >:[ Now all the little things I noticed at the con make sense. Jeez man I hope you get better. Careful with those drug concoctions you're giving yourself, please.
I'm quite familiar with medical bureaucracy. It blows and always happens at the worst time, like when you need your anti-rejection meds for your kidney or life maintaining insulin.
Just, take it easy, okay? Don't worry about anything here on fimfiction till you're better. And no more conventions either!
4640295
Don't like 'em. :B Not one bit.
Somewhat askance of the topic, this is the first time I've heard of "chronic" Lyme Disease. The idea of long-term antibiotic regimens is a frightening one but also one I confess to not understand. My admittedly unschooled view on this is if you have an infection, you take antibiotics, and they either kill the bacteria and you're done, or they're resistant and they don't, so you switch to a new antibiotic (hopefully in these times there is even one available, which is a whole 'nother can of worms). I do not get the idea of taking them ongoing. Can you enlighten me as to the mechanism of what's going on? It honestly confuses me.
Of course--they want to see if they get mentioned.
I'm sorry to see you in this state. We didn't get as must time to chat as I would have liked, so here are some things I think may help.
You could see in person that I'm a picture of health, but this was not always the case. For the first quarter-century of my life, I was sick more often and for longer than everyone around me, and for a couple of years suffered constant agony from tendonitis in both arms and one leg. I tried one thing after another, with increasing desperation--modern medicine, herbalism, even acupuncture--and nothing worked. Finally I went to a physiotherapist, whose treatment seemed to help, but who warned me that if I didn't dispense with stress, the problem would come back. Over the years I've found more and better ways to keep morale up, and have been progressively getting healthier.
But don't take my word for it; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn beat cancer, and in his fictionalization of the experience, Cancer Ward, he gives partial credit to his high morale. This is probably also one reason why he made it through WWII and the Soviet Gulag as well.
So, you must keep your spirits up. I suggest first turning off the news. You can be informed again when you're better. Kick back and indulge in some straight-up escapism. Laughter is the cheapest medicine, and you can't overdose on it.
Second, the human body is just as suggestible as the human mind. Thus, you can help it fix itself by invoking the placebo effect. Do not dwell on the illness; instead, think about being better. I can't explain the science of it, but it's worked for me.
Get well soon!
Dear Princess Celestia,
Today I learned that we need to take care of ourselves, because if we don't then we hurt our friends.
My case study involved a middle-aged male subject (S) with multiple chronic health issues. S underwent moderate physical stress (outdoor activity; heat, rain, dust, lots of walking, hills, etc) in order to participate in an activity ("Pennsic") that was educational as well as socially and emotionally rewarding. At this point risk was known, manageable and proportionate to reward.
However, S also undertook the concurrent stressor of a three-day diet consisting of a single food item (one that, furthermore, has been known to provoke a profound immune reaction in certain individuals). Risk of this stressor was unknown and therefore not manageable, and reward ("saving a few bucks") was not proportionate.
S subsequently presented to Friends (Fn) looking like death warmed over,* causing Fn considerable emotional distress. Distress was particularly acute for one Friend (F1), who had recently experienced the sudden and unexpected death of several close acquaintances due to high-risk lifestyle choices. F1 reported feelings of sorrow, anger and fear: sorrow for S's illness, anger at the knowledge that his illness was, to a certain degree, self-inflicted, and fear that S would die suddenly and unexpectedly ("plotz") like F1's acquaintances mentioned previously.
In conclusion it is advised that in future S undertake as few simultaneous stressors as possible ('don't overdo it") and not make health choices with uncertain outcomes in order to save a few bucks ("use some common sense FFS").
Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle
* 5:00 at 50% power, at which point Death reported feeling ALL NICE AND TOASTY, THANK YOU.
4640299 I think you're making a judgment of moral culpability rather than the judgment you said you were making, which is who was "guilty of instigating the violence". If this were 1930s Germany, and a group of Jews went to the park to protest recent legislation imposing restriction on Jews, and they were met by Nazis, and violence broke out, I don't think you would make the equivalent judgment, which would be that the Jews were responsible for disturbing the peace and instigating the violence.
It's important to use words carefully, because, living in a democracy, we strive to maintain order without determining who is morally at fault-- only by determining who is technically at fault. Hence "who is responsible for escalating the violence" means literally just that, and not who was right or wrong in showing up. The neo-Nazis had a permit to peaceably assemble. Other than the car crash, I've only seen one piece of video evidence of the neo-Nazis starting violence--one who pepper-sprayed a woman who walked up to him--and several of the antifa doing so. The one news report of neo-Nazi violence which I accidentally found the source of turned out, as I wrote above, to be deliberately misleading.
I think this is because the neo-Nazis were intimidated by the large numbers against them. They looked scared in the videos I saw, while the antifa did not. Also, they seem more disciplined than the antifa; my guess is they attract only hardcore regulars who know each other and agree in advance how to act, whereas the antifa side includes loose cannons who just decided to show up on their own.
It's hard to guess what the neo-Nazis want, as they seem to be deeply delusional, but my impression is that they think there is broad support for them and that they can win hearts and minds thru reason. Their focus on Jews (seriously? in 2017?) and their use of Nazi slogans to try to appeal to Americans are so bizarre that I suspect they are in their own little imaginary America.
I blame the mayor and the police as well. If they had let the neo-Nazis hold their rally--and they had at the time no good legal basis for stopping them--and stood between the two groups, and also used the barricades they'd set up in the park to separate them, instead of standing outside and pushing the two groups together (as they did); and if they'd spread out and tried to prevent the fighting, instead of staying clustered together and out of harm's way, they could likely have avoided the violence.
I wonder if this resurgence of nationalism is partly a result of the left's relentless promotion of Hegel's philosophy. What happened in Charlottesville was a confrontation between the children of Hegel: the alt-right and the alt-left, who merely give different interpretations to Hegel's "world spirit", with the neo-Nazis being closer to Hegel's original meaning. It's been said that the argument over how to interpret Hegel was settled at the battle of Stalingrad. Perhaps it was not completely settled.
Because obviously this is the really important thing being discussed here...
4640105
First of all, let's acknowledge that this totally depends on your definition of "oddly embarrassing," which... you know I love ya', but you're maaaybe not the best judge here? I did read the job survey you wrote for PresentPerfect, you know.
But specifically, the most common ones are probably cleaning spills or crumbs out of cleavage and adjusting your boobs if your bra is pushing them flat. Both occasionally involve reaching down your shirt and moving boobs around, which is generally an activity for an exclusive audience.
4640131
Antifa likely is just as guilty of ramping up the violence leading up to the car attack. Given their history of violently attacking people and making terroristic threats (including against non-fascists, like the Multnomah County Republicans), and given the fact that, you know, they show up to "protests" with baseball bats and similar things...
It doesn't really in one sense: driving a car into a crowd went beyond the ken and crossed over from "idiots beating each other bloody in the streets" to "terrorism".
But they showed up with a large portion of their membership wanting to get in fights with Nazis. Just as a lot of the Nazis showed up wanting to get in fights with the counter-protesters, as is obvious from them bringing weaponry themselves, and their own rhetoric.
If both sides want to get into a fight, who threw the first punch doesn't actually matter. This is true under the law as well - if you decide to get into a fight, and get punched in the face, you aren't "punching back", you're also an aggressor. Not all fights have one side which is "defending itself" from the other - many fights are by mutual agreement.
That being said, the Nazis escalated the violence by having one of their number drive a car into the protesters. And it was that which ended up sparking the most attention, and for that, the Nazis are to blame (as they are the ones who did it, and whose rhetoric lead to one of their own doing so).
But the Nazis do have every right to show up and protest. I don't think most people would suggest that civil rights protesters "instigated" the violence against them by marching through the segregated South.
I think you're confusing "idiots on /pol/" with "a lot of people". There are some people who love to believe these things (well, not really - it is best not to think of them as people :V ) because they don't want to believe that anyone even remotely resembling "their side" is evil, but it isn't a super common belief.
Yeah, because most people A) don't know the original context of the memorials and B) don't really care.
That's statistical noise; according to 538's tracker, Trump's approval rating hasn't really changed appreciably in a week.
A lot of the people who "approve" of Donald Trump's performance do so out of pure tribalism, just like the people who support Obama, and frankly, most politicians.
The Nazis aren't solely to blame for the violence in general. They are solely to blame for the car attack. And that was a lot more severe.
Ignoring politics completely for this thread to send my best wishes for a complete recovery. Full stop.
4640325
It's got something to do with the bacteria migrating into parts of the body where antibiotics don't normally reach, if I remember correctly. Then you get a reservoir of disease your body can't effectively remove.
Chronic Lyme disease is scary stuff.
ETA: According to this, another issue is that symptoms come from toxins generated by the bacteria, not the bacteria themselves, and even if antibiotics kill the bacteria they won't remove the toxins.
4640658
4640325 The Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, evades drugs and the immune system in several ways:
- it rapidly mutates the genes coding the proteins of its outer surface, so that immune system anti-bodies have a hard time finding it. Much of the damage caused by Lyme disease is autoimmune.
- It is a vaguely corkscrew shaped bacteria that disperses through the bloodstream, but quickly drills into different tissues (mainly brain, heart, and cartilage) and lives inside cells there, where it is difficult for drugs to penetrate. Brain and heart cells are large enough for spirochetes to live inside them; cartilage cells are smaller, and the bacteria might have to bend in half to fit, but they're so ischemic (low oxygen use) that they have little blood supply, and a bacteria that can get in between them, as Bb can, can hide from any drugs administered via the bloodstream.
- This causes great problems for studies of Lyme disease, because tests for it rely on finding anti-bodies or proteins in the blood. If a person has Lyme inside their tissues but not in their bloodstream, as is the case for someone who has been treated with antibiotics for Lyme, blood tests will indicate that the Lyme has been cured. The only accurate test for Lyme is to extract a tissue sample and look at it under a microscope.
- It creates biofilms around itself which also prevent drugs and immune cells from reaching it.
- It has a cyst "L" form, and if it senses toxic drugs in the environment around it, it curls up into this form and goes into hibernation until the drugs go away. It can survive for years in this form. Ironically, this is much like its host, the tick, which can dry up and survive for up to 100 years before reviving and attacking a new host.
If you read the opinions of the NIH, CDC, or IDSA, they will all say there is no such thing as chronic Lyme, but all these opinions are merely parroting each other and citing the same fatally-flawed studies, while ignoring the majority of studies on Lyme, which show that aggressive treatment puts about 90% of cases into remittance, while about 10% remain symptomatic--and no treatment ever kills off all the spirochetes.
This is an actual case of a medical conspiracy to suppress the truth. It sounds incredible, but the evidence is obvious if you read the medical literature carefully. Instead of that, let me summarize the settlement of the IDSA with the Connecticut Attorney General regarding the IDSA committee which established our current national guidelines for dealing with Lyme:
The AG found that:
• key panel members had significant conflicts of interest based on financial interests in drug companies regarding vaccine development, Lyme disease diagnostic tests, patents, and consulting arrangements with insurers and that these individuals “exclude[d] divergent medical evidence and opinion.” [Chiefly, the people on the panel have patents on the immunological tests for Lyme, which work very poorly and indicate, for the reason given above, that Lyme has been cured when it has merely been cleared from the blood. Admitting chronic Lyme exists would make their patents worth less.]
• the IDSA failed to conduct a conflict of interest review for any of the panelists prior to their appointment to the guideline panels;
• the IDSA did not comply with its own policies for selecting a panel chair, “enabling the chairman, who held a bias regarding the existence of chronic Lyme, to handpick a likeminded panel without scrutiny by or formal approval of the IDSA’s oversight committee;”
• the IDSA’s 2000 and 2006 panels “refused to accept or meaningfully consider information regarding the existence of chronic Lyme disease;”
• the IDSA “remov[ed] a panelist from the 2000 panel who dissented from the group’s position on chronic Lyme disease to achieve ‘consensus’;”
• the IDSA “blocked appointment of scientists and physicians with divergent views on chronic Lyme;”
• the IDSA improperly sought to portray a second set of Lyme disease guidelines (issued by the American Academy of Neurology) as independently corroborating its findings, when the IDSA knew that the two panels shared key members in violation of the IDSA’s own conflict of interest policy
For patient testimony on the conspiracy from 1999, see this transcript of a separate court proceeding in an action against insurance companies.
The situation is made worse by the fact that the US variety of Lyme disease does not exist outside the US, so patients can't go anywhere else for treatment.
4640218
The reason why Cloudflare ended its services for The Daily Stormer was not because they were Nazis - they actually pushed back after Google and Go Daddy dropped the Daily Stormer - but because The Daily Stormer claimed that Cloudflare's support for them was because Cloudflare secretly supported them.
Cloudflare outright said as much, and are well aware of the problems associated with these various big companies controlling what content is on the Internet.
The issue that a lot of people don't understand is that companies generally have the right not to provide a platform for content they don't like as the law is presently written, and it makes sense, really - Knighty isn't obligated to keep neo-Nazis around, Reddit could ban everyone on r/the_donald, Moot could shut down /pol/, ect. But even hosting a website on your server from some neo-Nazi group potentially can A) expose your network to attacks from anti-Nazi groups, B) be perceived by customers as supporting them (which is bad for business), and C) is still, in some way, enabling them to get out their message.
Whether or not the law needs to be changed is, I think, a reasonable discussion to be had, but as of right now, these companies are exercising their rights.
Incidentally, WRT: ISIS, Cloudflare does take down sites as ordered by the courts. The Feds often ask them to leave up ISIS websites, very likely because the sites are being monitored by the FBI and other American intelligence agencies.
4640563
I don't think it's solely a moral judgment here. You can't remove the 'socially acceptable' element of 'instigate'.
A group of neo-Nazis from outside Charlottesville who had no personal stake in the local statuary essentially invaded the town and acted in what most rational people would consider to be a hostile and intimidating manner. It wasn't a candlelit vigil, it was a torch-wielding march with racially charged slogans and racist symbols and gestures.
The nationalists started it, period. There's no moral judgment on that front. If the Antifa came to town first and rallied in a hostile and threatening way and they were met by Nazis, I'd say that the Antifa instigated the violence. That is not what happened here.
And even if it did, there's still a false moral equivalency if you try to excuse what the racists were doing on campus before any violence even began to happen. It was never a 'peaceful assembly'. It was intentionally a threatening gesture to the campus community and to Jews and racial minorities in general.
For the POTUS to say 'there were good people on both sides' is a false moral equivalency, and it divides the nation further while excusing blatantly racist and violence-provoking behavior.
4640325
There's two things sometimes called "chronic lyme disease". One of them, Chronic Lyme Disease, a chronic infection of lyme disease, has never been proven to exist. Another thing which is sometimes incorrectly referred to as chronic lyme disease is Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, which is not, in fact, a chronic case of lyme disease (they don't have lyme disease anymore) but rather symptoms lingering after the treatment of lyme disease. The latter is known to exist, and as Bad Horse noted, about 10% of people who suffer from lyme disease develop PTLDS. Some people claim that PTLDS is caused by a chronic undetected infection of lyme disease.
There have been studies on dosing people suffering from PTLDS with long-term antibiotic regimens but they didn't appear to give better results than placebo. Here is an article about a recent one done in Europe. The cause of PTLDS is unknown, which is why it is so difficult to treat (and is why some people claim it is caused by a hidden lyme infection). It may be an auto-immune disorder triggered by lyme disease. Or it could be something else entirely - there are a number of people who present with the symptoms who may never have had lyme disease in the first place, so it could be some other, underlying health issue. Or it could be that there's some other health issue which can be triggered by lyme disease and other things.
Asimov's The Robots of Dawn featured that to highlight the strangeness of the colony world Aurora to the Earth-native protagonist. At the same time, his panic over the issue was portrayed as rather parochial, as I recall.
4640760
Dear TD,
Please shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about and are repeating lies that are a THREAT TO MY LIFE. I have read a lot of the literature. I can write up an analysis, given time, but it would take a LOT of time. The Wikipedia page on Lyme Disease is bullshit, and any attempt to edit it to reflect the truth will quickly be reverted, as I've found. The studies saying that chronic Lyme does not exist are all bullshit, and the studies showing it exists are ignored. You can find them if you search PubMed instead of trying to google for ifo
What PTLDS means is that someone still has symptoms of Lyme disease, but a blood test shows there are no longer Lyme bacteria in the blood. Given that every post-mortem study ever done of Borrelia infections has shown that antibiotic treatment never eliminates the bacteria, that the ELISA assay used to test for the presence of Lyme has around a 50% false negative rate, and that these patients respond to treatment exactly the same way that patients who test positive for Lyme in the blood do, it is a ridiculously complex hypothesis to instead suppose that (A) the Lyme test is for some mysterious reason 100% accurate on these patients, (B) they have for some reason been completely cured of Lyme when all the histological evidence is that Lyme cannot be cured, and (C) they have some residual damage which causes the same symptoms and responds to the same treatment in the same way.
4640721
The catch is, when all online spaces where discussion actually takes place (or the routes used to get to them) are privately owned, and all the owners decide that "Idea X is not to be discussed here", the entire concept of freedom of speech or freedom of expression (not just the narrowly defined American First Amendment) becomes impossible.
A couple of current examples:
Google and Apple own 98% of the smartphone market. Unless you're a tech wizard, if an app isn't in Apple/Google's store, it doesn't exist, and you couldn't install it if you knew about it. Apple/Google require social media apps to be moderated and to have "hate speech" censored. The entire purpose of Gab (a Twitter competitor) is to not have any moderators or rules aside from "no illegal shit". You can block people, but that's it. Gab has been banned from Apple and Google's stores. After accounting for people who know how to install it anyway, 97-point-something percent of smartphone users aren't allowed to use Gab.
The Daily Stormer [Let's get this out of the way: fuck Nazis] is a website. To get to the website, you either need to know the IP address (a string of numbers telling you which web server it lives on, which may change semi-frequently) or the domain name dailystormer dot com (link broken for obvious reasons). To use the domain name, Daily Stormer has to register it with a registrar, who keeps a list of domain names and their matching IP address.
Daily Stormer had been registered with GoDaddy. GoDaddy decided they didn't want to deal with that anymore, and gave them 24 hours to change registrars. Daily Stormer moved to Google, which booted Daily Stormer after 2 hours. Not only that, Google put dailystormer dot com under a "client hold", which means "Daily Stormer’s owner cannot activate, use or move the domain to another service". Essentially, Google stole their domain name.
So, if you can say anything you want, but private companies actively keep other people from hearing you, do you still have freedom of speech? The companies aren't doing anything that's (currently) illegal, but it's certainly contrary to the spirit of any declarations on the rights to freedom of speech or expression.
4640811
You can install stuff on Android phones if it isn't in the app store; it doesn't require you to be a tech wizard, either. You just download it to your phone as a file, then install it.
Obviously such things are harder to find than stuff on the app store (well, sort of; it isn't like Google doesn't show it) but I've installed a handful of apps directly to my Android phone via sideloading.
It popped up a warning screen, but it didn't require me to jailbreak my phone or whatever.
Given that gab.ai has a "Download our android app" thing on its home page, I would assume this isn't something which is stopping them.
Moreover, it isn't even necessarily just about suppressing people's points of view; if a group of people are causing problems on your website, you might remove them simply to avoid normal users being driven away.
This applies, I feel, much less strongly to things like domain registrars, because the websites are independent.
Is Google actually "stealing" their domain name, though, or is it a result of ICANN's policies?
I'm not quite sure what is going on there.
I do consider this whole thing to be a gigantic mess.
Yes, I agree that this is an issue, and it needs to be hashed out in actual law/court rulings. I think that the rules need to be changed to prevent stuff like this happening in the future.
TBH, I'd be very interested in seeing The Daily Stormer file a suit about all this.
4640698
, but:
In general I'm really only trying to see how long I can get Bad Horse to think I'm arguing with him
If you mean 'blame' like that, then one person is to blame for the car attack, not 'the Nazis'.
But if you mean 'blame' as in 'bears responsibility for the thing having happened', then Donald Trump is as much to blame for setting the tone in America in a way that has almost undoubtedly emboldened these people. And the woman is somewhat to blame for being in the path of the car. If she hadn't been protesting, she wouldn't be dead, obviously.
My point is that if you think you can assign X% blame to any one party, your magical powers are Glimmer-level. You don't know horse apples, just like all the rest of us. We are all relying on biased heuristics to estimate why we think things have happened the way they have. Those impossible-to-determine questions simply aren't the important ones. The important ones are 'what comes next', and my educated guess is 'White nationalism is not going to lessen in the aftermath of this incident'. (For a hint as to why, note the GOP responses here: this is the perfect time to turn on Trump, who is making life miserable for rank and file Republicans, but it isn't happening yet. Those people have a much more solid meter on the pulse of the public than you or I do.)
4640811
This is your daily reminder that freedom of speech means "you can't be imprisoned for saying something objectionable", and that's all it means.
None of the people who use Daily Stormer are prevented from speaking publicly about their opinions anywhere on the internet. Their speech is not restricted. What has been restricted is their ability to congregate and pass information anonymously and semi-anonymously, so that they can avoid the social consequences of their speech. That has nothing to do with the First.
Apart from that, I agree with your sentiment.
4640771
I have a suggestion that might help. I don't know if it will.
Let your doctor believe it isn't Lyme disease related, and diagnose it as something else until you figure out what fixes it and it works with your insurance. Sometimes advocating for yourself as a patient involves sticking to the non-medical side of the table: you have these symptoms that prevent you from being able to function and need assistance, and the rest is up to the doctors you see. If you're too aggressive with the Lyme theory, even if you're right it might make it harder for your doctor to engage in your treatment and insurance may be unlikely to cover something if they have an excuse to back out.
I recommend Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, for the record.
4640910
No, it doesn't. That's a suspiciously convenient definition being tossed around by people who would benefit from dishing out "consequences" for unpopular opinions, but it has meant much more than that for centuries.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Demonstrably incorrect. Many sites moderate/censor such opinions as "hate speech". Perhaps you meant "everywhere on the internet"?
Indeed. This has to do with the much broader concept of freedom of expression/speech, of which the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is just a very tiny subset.
4640956
No.
Freedom of expression does not mean freedom from the social ramifications of what you say, precisely because other people have the freedom to do as they choose in response to your words. If the CEO of Pepsico comes out in support of child sex trafficking, people are not forced by 'freedom of speech' to continue purchasing Pepsi. If somepony who works for a company writes inappropriate things about the company online, her boss is not forced by 'freedom of speech' to continue to employ her. If people are boycotting Google because they give Daily Stormer a home on the internet, Google is not forced by 'freedom of speech' to provide them with that home as their stock begins to tumble.
I appreciate the idea, but it's ridiculous.
4640910
This is something that's been bugging me in the past few years. I agree with you; in the US "free speech" as we think of it tends to refer to the first amendment, which limits government intrusion into free speech. And that's super important, because the government is literally the only entity that can legally force you to do or not do something or they'll kill you. So, obviously, they need to be careful with that power.
But what I see people doing today is using free speech as a sword and shield without understanding the reason it's so important. The free exchange of ideas is what allows philosophy to grow and mutate, it's what allows minds to change, and it's how we find solutions to problems. It's not cut and dry; throughout history hate has been mixed in with great ideas, people have changed their minds for better and worse and sometimes a combination, and people have done a lot of good things for batshit crazy or evil reasons.
The government is people with power. That's all it is, but that's dangerous, so the Bill of Rights is a series of rules for people with that power.
The internet is giving individuals an awful lot of power to organize, to enforce social consequences, to decide which voices are important. This is, and should be, totally legal and in fact a human right. And I think this is on the whole a good thing, but too few people have decided on their personal bills of rights, their own list of rules for themselves that seriously considers how it's morally, ethically, or philosophically permissible to use their power when it limits the freedoms of others.
I don't have a solution, except mentioning this and hoping that people consider it and mention it to other people. Because these days I think we're well on our way to destroying the free exchange of ideas without the government lifting a finger.
4640984
I reject your morality and substitute my own. This isn't about what individuals do, but what those in power (be they governments, corporations, or social movements) can force on others.
4640043
4640105 What we need are two bathrooms everywhere, one just marked "urinals" and one marked "stalls."
4640988
The fact that you think social movements and companies don't consist of individuals making decisions is... interesting.
All a social movement is is a group of individuals defined by a common decision they've been making individually. Like a bunch of people boycotting a company for the same reason. That's called free speech, as is the speech between individuals which causes them to collectively work toward a goal.
4640910
When Melissa Click was fired for trying to keep journalists away from a University of Missouri protest, 115 professors at the U of M signed a letter expressing their support for her. They wrote, "We call upon the University to defend her first amendment rights of protest and her freedom to act as a private citizen." So at least in that case, a large number of leftists believe that for people on the left, free speech means you can't be fired for saying something objectionable.
4641032
Not at all. They merely don't think she should be fired for saying that particular thing. If she had come out in defense of Black genocide, I'm pretty damn sure there would have been a notable lack of faculty support for her remaining at the college.
Now, my point with all this gadfly shit.
It ain't black and white, ponies. There is no "it's always okay to say something" irrespective of context. At the end of the day, communication is a form of action. It influences others and it has consequences. There isn't a fine line where it starts or stops being okay. What constitutes protected speech depends entirely upon social evaluation, which in turn depends upon societal norms. People who treat the FA or the concept of free speech like a simple rule that solves everything are idealizing something that cannot be chiseled into marble.
4640905
By that metric, the various lone-wolf terrorist attacks committed by people in service to ISIS cannot be blamed on ISIS.
That isn't really how it works, though; if your group approves of terror tactics, supports those who commit them, ect. then you can be said to be to blame for them.
You do bear some group responsibility for things if members of your group commit some act ostensibly on behalf of your group and you fail to condemn it. And even if you do, some responsibility may still be attached if it is a "logical" extension of what you're doing.
There is some level of group culpability for these things, doubly so when you see people on /pol/ supporting them. Just like when some idiot shoots some cops on behalf of "BLM", the fact that a number of people nod their heads and say stuff like "Those pigs deserved it" suggests there's some level of group culpability there as well.
It isn't unfair for people to attack group responsibility to those things.
If we want to talk about the greater milieu, people like Donald Trump bear responsibility for it, as do many members of the GOP, and certainly the far-right media. And if you go out into the really big picture, so do some Democrats and others on the left; people like Bernie Sanders and the EPI are partially responsible for spreading lies and misinformation for a long time as well, as are some union leaders, not to mention various socialist organizations. And of course the Russians bear a fair bit of responsibility as well. This whole festering hive is built on a foundation of lies, bigotry, propaganda, and scapegoating.
But they don't bear direct responsibility for some idiot driving his car into a crowd of people. From a legal standpoint, it is unlikely that even any of the other Nazis do.
From the standpoint of "Are these people making things worse?" and "Did these people contribute to the situation?" there's plenty of blame to go around.