killers and thieves suck each other off

via GG:

MILITARY OFFICERS TOUR JPMORGAN -- JPMorgan Chase yesterday hosted about 30 active duty military officers (across all branches and agencies) from the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va. The officers met with senior executives, toured the trading floor and participated in a trading simulation. They discussed recruitment, operations management, strategic communications and the economy. Aside from employees thanking them for their service as they passed by, they also received a standing ovation on the trading floor. Said one officer after a senior JPM exec thanked him for his service: "We promise to keep you safe if you keep this country strong."

communication styles

When I talk to people, I often almost entirely attend to the literal semantic meaning of the words being exchanged. Perhaps I make some adjustment for the literal semantic meaning that was intended, in cases where there was some imprecision of speech. This strikes me as a purely intellectual, conversation as mutualistic truth-seeking kind of approach.

I'm realizing that I ought to pay much more attention to the other kinds of information being conveyed by being more attentive to context, tone, and subtle meanings behind the literal meaning of words. This would be more of a real world, communication as negotiation amidst some shared and some conflicting interests kind of approach.

I suspect that most people do a lot of the latter without even realizing it, guided by emotions rather than conscious deliberation. In fact I'd suspect that the level of emotion in the conversation is a reflection of the extent to which the latter kind of process is happening. I often find myself in a conversation where I'm much less emotional than the other party (and what emotion I do feel or express is often related to the intellectual content!) which is often a source of extreme frustration for that other party. They feel like I don't realize what's really going on, yet are unable to counter when I dutifully and accurately recite the actual words as evidence that I do understand, because their understanding that something more than the words is going on isn't fully conscious.

I'll have to consciously force myself to pay more attention to the other stuff until it comes more naturally; in doing so, I fear I'm being cynical and that I'm risking being regarded as such. Of course I already am regarded as cynical so maybe that's not much of a risk.

asshole toronto cop can't stand being called an asshole, so he files a lawsuit... like an asshole

answering anarchy's toughest challenge

An obvious problem that society has to cope with is that some people just want to hurt other people, to control them, to dominate them, to humiliate them. How does the anarchist propose to deal with that?!!!.

Anarchists propose that we all take note that the state's solution for dealing with these people is to (1) hire all of them, (2) train them to kill people, (3) give them guns, (4) set them loose among the population, and then (5) use its power to shield them from accountability for their unjust use of violence. Anarchists then suggest that maybe the state's solution isn't the best idea!

prison

yeah, i'll just keep going with my wildly unpopular criticism of institutionalized education and say i agree with that perspective.

if i'm correct in assuming that the use of physical or authoritarian coercion is truly avoided except in self-defense or the immediate defense of others, the only thing i can see wrong with this alternative system after a quick perusal is that it isn't the system for every part of everyone's lives. it almost seems unfair to provide people with such an ideal environment, knowing that it will be extremely different to replicate that experience later in their lives.

thanks to dan for the tip.

Dive! Trailer from Compeller on Vimeo.

via

leave those kids alone

I just sat through this talk about how you can maybe treat ADHD by treating associated working memory deficits that pissed me off.

Working memory is supposed to be useful for "goal-directed activity." The behavioural patterns associated with ADHD include things like poor academic performance, not sitting still in class, talking out of turn, and poor performance in memory tasks in the lab. It strikes me that all these behaviours involve goals imposed on them by authorities, authorities who then cite a child's reluctance to subordinate his own goals to the goals of the authority as evidence of a "disorder" that requires pharmacological intervention or behavioural modification therapy. Seems to me like ADHD is an independent-minded social strategy that doesn't fit well with our social system, so we're trying to modify the individuals to fit the system, rather than the other way around. Procrustes smiles.

When I brought this up to the speaker, she cited ADHD kids' poor perform at video games ("their favorite thing to do!") as evidence for inability to perform well at their own goals. I've played video games; sometimes you just don't want to do what you have to do to "win." Sometime you just want to go jump on that thing and see what happens. When I questioned the ecological validity of video games, she said something about how when they play baseball ("what could be more ecologically valid!?") they have trouble remembering how many outs there are or some shit. Uh, maybe they just want to catch and throw a ball without keeping score? God forbid we try to have fun without a way to keep track of winners and losers.

It just strongly felt to me that I was in the presence of the worst evil of academia, where some "expert" is highly paid to make it sound like fucking people up to serve the interests of power is somehow "science" that we should all take seriously and respect. Fuck them.

My friend at Think Love, who studies psychological phenomena related to so-called ADHD, has some further commentary, touching on some important points like how this kind of "science" is funded, and what might constitute natural child behaviour (hint: it doesn't involve sitting still in a classroom all day and filling in the right circles with a #2 pencil).

kids these days

saw 2 fashion statements i thought worthy of mention:

1) thumbs up to the dude wearing a cape. crimson on the inside, purple on the outside, tied around his neck.

2) thumbs down to the girl with a neck piercing. it was like a hook through the skin of her neck, with small balls on either end. there was a hideous scar associated with it, and the piercing had gradually pulled downward, accentuating the wound. wtf?