"I had to pretend to be a good person but now I don't have to anymore."
Assistant Professor of Social Psychology (They/Them)
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"I had to pretend to be a good person but now I don't have to anymore."
least surprising heel turn in history
As you say, the simple, obvious way to up birth rates would be mandatory parental leave and a universal single-payer healthcare system that DOESN'T charge you microtransactions to hold your fucking baby what you just birthed. But that's not violent coercive force, so it doesn't occur to them. Ever.
This is also why their "incentive" structure is messed up. They literally--I mean LITERALLY--only understand punishment. They don't have any other concept of how to encourage people to do a thing except coercion.
And man, they don't have the spine to engage with that, because doing so would require them to actually care about humans rather than demographics statistics showing that White people will be a majority-minority inside of 15 years. They don't care about kids, they care about demographic ratios.
And what they're seeing is that if you give someone the choice to just...not do that, a lot of people won't! Because funnily enough, they know full well what kind of responsibility that entails because they're not unwilling teenagers sold into marriage to a predatory 20something now.
Simply put, parenting is hard. REALLY hard. It's one of the scariest things someone can do, because funnily enough, even in the best case scenario, your kid is going to get hurt,usually by you, even if you AREN'T trying to hurt them. That's life! That's scary!
Come the fuck on, my parents couldn't even spell my first name consistently much less know what my thought processes were or what I needed growing up. And they were some of the better Gen X parents!
Well yeah, because they think birth rates are fucking magic and that having a kid magically turns you into a parent and magically gives you insights into how best to raise your child. Their propaganda says "parents know their children and their children's needs better than anyone." As if by magic!
That's why it's just "pronatalism." They think somehow if they force people to spawn, they'll be functional, happy, dutiful parents. To which I must respond: "If that's the case, why do you advocate for beating your children with belts just because your daddy beat y'all, Heritage?"
What else do you expect? Y'all killed teen mental health services what with this whole Project 2025 thing, and you killed the economy what with those suicidal tariffs. You can't bring people into the world for reasons other than WANTING them here and expect them to be healthy or happy.
These kids are gonna grow up unloved, abused, and resented by their parents because they literally only exist for loveless, mercenary reasons, and given the state of education and employment in our world, literally all that's gonna happen is they're gonna kill themselves before they're 20.
I'm gonna flat out say it: most of us probably wouldn't have been born if our parents and grandparents had any choice in the matter, and it probably would have been better if we hadn't because most of us hate being here and have no future. Now do that again, but with no post-WWII economy.
The fact that all your Gen X parents and Boomer grandparents are neurotic freaks whose parents never loved them to the point that literally every bit of millennial fiction makes the villain a metaphor for generational trauma should show you exactly how well that worked out the LAST time we tried it.
Not only is this eugenics, I also have to point out that it reveals just how much the Heritage Foundation doesn't understand parenting. The policy is about forcing people to spawn children, with zero regard for what happens to those children or whether people coerced into birth are good parents.
These are the same people who say "vote blue no matter who" when it's their candidate running.
đ NEW: The group behind Project 2025 wants a "Manhattan Project" for more babies. We have the Heritage Foundation's closely-held draft paper taking a hard turn into "pronatalism." It pitches ripping up economic policy to induce straight, married couples to have more children. Gift link ⤾ď¸
âbe made to feel like unwelcome outsiders in their own countryâ Passive voice holding all the weight. Made to feel by what? Not by factual reality. Maybe by an online post. But mostly by their media stoking it. And if everyone else doesnât fix their feelings? Theyâre entitled to break democracy.
Illinois Governor Pritzker appears to be engaging in a prebunking âinoculationâ strategy similar to that recommended by @profsanderlinden.bsky.social in his book Foolproof.
Itâs fairly obvious at this point that the mainstream news apparatus is just fully behind Trump. There isnât any way around it, they like him and his policies
40% of Republicans think the COVID vaccine killed more people than the COVID virus. One in four believe that QAnon is real. No matter how far they radicalize, we are told over and over again that the people being rude to them are the problem.
Last year, Idaho passed a strict law that forbids anyone from providing to a minor any service that could be construed as medical or psychological in nature without parental consent. Now, minors calling the state's suicide hotline are being forced to have a parent speak for them or hang up
Absolutely stoked to share Season 2 of the Stress Puzzle! We have a phenomenal lineup of guests this season to help us all think more deeply about stress ~in context~ including @jayvanbavel.bsky.social, @ajuaduker.bsky.social @mwkraus.bsky.social, Danielle King, Mary-Frances O'Connor, and more! đ§Š
People are just getting so inured to talk about violence against trans people that it feels normal to some, but he really did incite violence against trans women. No question about it. It wasn't a joke. The only question is whether that's still considered a crime. www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/202...
Two things can be â and are â true here: Bowser is not the champion DC needs in this moment, and The Washington Post has become a Trump rag. A newspaper that actually cared about the city in its name would not publish such an inflammatory, bullshit headline.
When the quant profs and grad students in my department ask me what Brunswick's lens model is
Whenever a politician asks to build "room for differences and adult discussions," ask them why they only have room for Conservatives that love bomb them.
đ quite a line to trot out before republicans possibly put a hyde amdt on trans care into a funding deal
âwhat do you mean hyde amdt for trans careâ read the thing i wrote about this
Gotta love our country, eh?
"The Republican Party wants to pull YOUR teenage daughter's pants down in the middle of gym class if they think she's too good at lacrosse, this is vile and depraved and only the start of their intrusive government overreach" should be the party line and I don't think it's a heavy lift
Despite this being an obvious lie, it's possible that she simply lied to Guyatt, and then is reporting to Singal that she lied, which he then failed to question because he's a hack. Either way: the interesting part is NOT the lie (whoever told it) but that she admitted the desired end product.
It's also worth noting that, while Zhenya calls Guyatt a liar, it's equally possible that she's just copping to lying *to* Guyatt. She does, after all, still claim (publicly) that SEGM takes no formal stance on the legality of gender-affirming care or its effectiveness.
So someone saying, "this evidence is low-quality but still better than nothing, and it's not actual torture like your conversion model there, don't ban it, goober" snaps their brain in half, especially if there was money involved. this is a customer service complaint, not a fight over evidence
I.E., when SEGM says "I'm not in favor of a ban," they're lying. We know they're lying because this is what their members say on a hot mic: slate.com/technology/2...
This is also why hacks like Singal and Ryan are upset by this sudden "reversal": because they're transphobes that speak in dogwhistles, they figured that anyone working with them must secretly be just like them, as opposed to merely pedantic, annoying, and medically conservative.
Guyatt's actual opinions, knowledge, or expertise were never the point, and by all accounts, McMaster's involvement in this whole issue was mercenary and transactional. SEGM (and the State of Florida) got legitimacy for their products, McMaster got an undisclosed amount of money.
Particularly because...well, put it like this: if gender-affirming care was the next opioid crisis, why ain't estrogen being advertised on evening news with dumb advertisements and moth mascots? Like, this is the question they never seem to field. Some of us remember the ad scene in '07.
Now that they've lost that, they have to spin their loss as evidence of McMaster bowing to political pressure and extorting their collaborators. This allows them to spin using their products (i.e., the reviews) for their original purpose while decrying their collaborator's opposition as coerced.
This, in reality, is why there's a fight over it: Guyatt's involvement was a "feather in the cap" for SEGM's in-development product, which is expected to release later this year. They wanted to have the work guiding their document endorsed by the Father of Evidence-Based Medicine.
As such: let's not overlook what's really happened here. The fight is because McMaster and co. got cold feet and backed out of a deal they made with known bad actors who were explicitly attempting to manufacture a care guideline and exploit Guyatt's reputation to legitimize it.
The EXPLICIT purpose of this collaboration was for SEGM to put out its guideline for conversion therapy as a competing document for WPATH's standards of care, which Guyatt and co. knew (according to SEGM), but which Guyatt and co. claim to have not known (despite being warned routinely externally).
We know this because SEGM's cofounder calls Guyatt a liar and says he knew full well what SEGM was and what she wanted from them in an email she sent Jesse Singal:
In this post, it's mentioned that there's no real scientific reason for the products of this collaboration to exist, as that work has already been done. And that's true. The reason for the research agreement between SEGM and McMaster was so SEGM could legitimize their WPATH alternative.
and this is what they do to known academics with a platform when it's GUARANTEED everyone would find out about it. What do you imagine they're doing to random travelers?
FYI www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
At this point, I'm expecting to see a headline that says, "Trump nukes Detroit. Is that constitutional? We asked our expert contact, 1488MoonFakeTruth."
not just that he has no constitutional authority, there isn't even any particular legal or institutional mechanism by which the president can make anyone treat this as anything other than a weird advisory opinion.
Seeing the same fake news headlines multiple times makes people view sharing them as more acceptable, suggesting that repeated exposure can weaken social norms against spreading misinformation on social media. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #MisinfoResearch
Are you interested in topics related to conflict and intergroup relations *broadly construed*? Come join us as a postdoc in the Dispute Research Research Center! This position is up to 3 years, comes with your own research funding, and a phenomenal network of past DRRC postdocs.
Out of the first five questions, four are about gender identity. There isn't even a pretense that they're looking for qualified educators. They're interviewing candidates for the bathroom police.
Right now, your ability to get access to a COVID vaccine this fall is in jeopardy, whether or not you fit the new, restricted eligiblity criteria. Please send a letter to your member of Congress here. And spread the word. @defendpublichealth.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/writ...
This bit here: they make these up in advance just so that on the off-chance it ever happens, they have a narrative ready to go.
Basically: (techno)fascism is the natural evolution point of capitalism, left to its own devices. The critical point is to not leave it to its own devices. Ever. For now, most of those countries have managed that. I'm not convinced they will for much longer, but I hope I'm wrong.
It's also worth noting that the U.K.'s increasing vulnerability to fascism and its reactionary transphobia are both linked with its butchering of its public health service and the fetish of privatization that Thatcher kicked off; as the U.K. became more capitalist, it became more fascist.
This is especially true because of, and not in spite of, the social net: racism in France and Sweden is extreme because they view immigrants as drains on their social safety net. The existence of the net fuels the racism further. Especially in Sweden.
England's fascist. Just not as much as the U.S. Their age verification law and criminalization of protest is textbook. But as a broader point: give it time. There are more safeguards there, true. But it's only a matter of time before all of those fall to fascism, too, if they don't change.
This bit. Right here. Trump is, ultimately, irrelevant, just as Hitler was. If either man had never existed, some other fascist would have filled their shoes. The world doesn't lack for damaged little boys who want to watch it burn.
It is natural to get caught in the catharsis of imagining Trump being gone, but we canât let it rock us into complacency. This fascistic moment was built on people wanting to believe an investigation or scandal or election would rid us of Trump, which cost us valuable time organizing resistance.
Weighing the ascendency of Vance, the puppet of tech fascists, is useless through old lenses. In a moment where elections are under attack and state violence is growing, discussing who can win free and fair contests is antiquated. Itâs self-soothing, but it ignores our very real reality.
I donât know if Trump is dying. But I do know that people telling themselves Vance would be better because heâs not as âpopularâ are ignoring the fact that these fascist systems are designed to crush democracy and popularity doesnât figure into it. jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/if-trump-d...
Of course, once you finish the exam (and have my results send to no@no.com), you are prompted to donate to PragerU for a matched gift (don't do this):
Data. It's data PragerU wants, for some reason. Same with all them trivia questions. They want the data on what "would-be teachers" say to these items, but I don't think they care what these items actually indicate about pedagogical aptitude. They want this data for some other purpose.
But in any case: the fact that this is DATA PragerU owns and can do whatever they want with that is compulsory for Oklahoma would-be teachers to provide them is at the root of all this.
Which...they can't even do because they don't even HAVE the answers that would let someone give the "Woke" option for those questions. But I digress: a lot of the "trivia" portions of this test seem like they're there mainly so PragerU can have the data on who doesn't get national trivia right.
Imagine if you will, a year out, there's a 5-minute PragerU video that goes "We tested all the would-be teachers in Oklahoma. What we found endangers the soul of this Country." "80% of would-be teachers thought MLK was best known for advocating DEI! 60% didn't know what identifies biological sex!"
Honestly, I think an unstated reason for this ideology test is to try and get scare statistics on how many would-be teachers answer these questions differently from how PragerU and Oklahoma want them to. IE, this is data they retain; and therefore fuel for future PragerU videos.
The Oklahoma Teacher Qualification Test from PragerU is finally up on their website (but you have to at least provide them fake contact info first): "Educators who pass the test will receive an official PragerU Teacher Certificate..." www.prageru.com/teacher-qual...
Laila Ghannam, governor of Ramallah: "The brutal Israeli occupation persistently continues to terrorise the Palestinian people" Lina Abu Akleh reports on Israels latest attacks on Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, including firing at journalists who were filming the attacks.
I was honored by the @psychscience.bsky.social DEI Committee's invitation to help curate this collection of outstanding articles addressing a range of issues related to anti-Black racism. I also couldn't have asked for a more thoughtful and thorough partner in @johnjost.bsky.social. Please share!
Panic is the appropriate response, but only if it is directed. The threat is not this blowhard, the threat is the orange man's DOJ and your chickenshit hospital systems' donors and lawyers. Gird up for that fight while you can; don't be distracted by this.
And by "panicking" I mean, "ignore grandstanding from washed up Republicans in protective states and instead get ready to fight your own coward-ass doctors and hospitals when the DOJ comes for your care like it has for kid's care on some trumped-up bull using the "causes violence" pretext"
What they will most likely do is make up "evidence" that HRT "causes" violence using this shooting as a pretext, and then use the DOJ to intimidate centers providing care to adults much the same as they do to centers providing care to kids, if they can manufacture this case.
What you SHOULD be panicking about is not this declaration, but the fact that the Trump admin can apparently ignore shield laws and refugee laws and simply apply pressure via the DOJ instead. This repeal is grandstanding. Watch the DOJ instead, especially if you're an adult getting care.
You get money from a book you published on a date you can't predict. it will be a sum you can't predict. you will never know if the ranch is saved or not. Everyone makes interest off your royalties before you do, and you're probably not making *any* interest at all And you don't have dental.
Alberta remains a uniquely embarrassing province to live in
I will remind folks those images of Nazi book burnings aren't burning just any books. They're burning the library of Magnus Hirschfeld; a gay, Jewish doctor who created an institute dedicated to LGBTQ sex education and healthcare. And a man who pioneered gender affirming care surgeries.
itâs simply not worth my mental health to accidentally kick off another wave of harassment because some weirdos online have decided that Iâm responsible for all of their lifeâs unhappiness so i shit post and generally just keep my head down.
I also think about that article in Vox (too lazy to google it) where a poor Republican in Kentucky told health reporter Sarah Kliff that, yes, Obamacare would save his life, but he still opposed it, because he'd rather die than see socialism. He'd rather die than see other people helped!
But read, eg, Heather McGhee's book "Sum of Us." You will learn that in post-segregation America, *thousands* of public pools were ripped out, because white people would rather not have pools at all than allow blacks to enjoy them. That's Deal 2! Examples abound.
If you have a zero-sum worldview, what matters above all is not absolute but *relative* welfare. Of a limited pie, who gets the biggest piece? If you lose $10 but your counterparty loses $20, in a zero-sum world, you "won." Your relative position improved. (And vice versa on Deal 1.)
I genuinely think one thing that trips up folks on the left is that they can't imagine not sharing certain core values. Lemme explain. Here's an intuition pump: Say you're in negotiations with counterparty X. And there are two possible deals on the table ...
politics is conflictual; a reality you cannot poll, focus group, or message your way out of.
29 Aug 25 - The Texas House, which hasn't been able to pass 20+ anti-trans bathroom bills introduced since 2015, finally approves one that applies to govt buildings & schools only. @rikiwilchins.bsky.social
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The "promises" were always lies, and anyone who sincerely believed them should never be allowed near political office or even a customer service job ever again. In fact, I don't think they should be employable, period. This was always the goal.
I wish Americans would get louder about their opposition to this man in particular; he is damaging global public health for an entire generation and millions of the most vulnerable around the world will suffer and die directly because of him. A mortality rate equivalent to plagues.
Excellent work by @willcarless.bsky.social for USA Today (@usatoday.com) debunking far-right claims that transgender people are likely to commit acts of violence or mass shootings. www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Man, I am old enough to remember when Republicans fear mongered about death panels in Obamacare
It's such a ludicrous notion, too. Nazi spaces these days function almost entirely as places that fetishize & offer explicit instruction in violent masculinity. They are structured around a desire to achieve a very specific vision of white manhood. That's so obviously not a draw for trans femmes.
What a cursed sentence (gift link) âThe A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.â
NEW: The NIH just started requiring NIH-funded research to be made freely, immediately available. In response, some journals are forcing scientists to pay thousands in open-access fees to publish. The result: chaos. The fees, one scholar says, are âout of control.â www.chronicle.com/article/maki...
Climate scientists trash paper by 5 hand-picked climate change-denying authors that Trumpers are using to justify scraping climate change regulations. @naomioreskes.bsky.social @michaelemann.bsky.social @bobkopp.net @hausfath.bsky.social & others are quoted. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Conflating TRUMP with American Fascism is an optimistic stance, one that is not supportable. When Trump dies, he will be replaced. There will be no sudden end to American fascism when he dies because it neither started with Trump, nor will it end with him.
Because need I remind everyone that ROE V WADE WAS OVERTURNED UNDER JOE BIDEN?! AND THAT EVEN HAD HARRIS WON, RED STATES WOULD STILL BECOME INCREASINGLY FASCIST AT A LOCAL SCALE?!
Post-Fascist America will not arrive until the system that allowed a minority of obsessed doomsday cultists who resent that their children aren't livestock can no longer use dark money to own a country. It will not arrive until every single Conservative SCOTUS judge is dead and replaced.
As such, Trump dying will NOT make a post-fascist America. Post-Fascist America until the ENTIRE Department of Homeland Security is eradicated down to the last cell. Until ICE is a thing of the past. And until the Heritage Foundation has been destroyed and its leaders prosecuted.
Prisons? How gauche. Let's call them what they are: Corporate-owned plantations.