YouGov poll shows what people assume vs reality. Most of what folks assume is the result of the relentless propaganda of the Left and media.
Ironically, this makes these groups look like less of a minority than they actually are, so they seem less “oppressed”.
Okay, if you have a brain that operates on any modicum of real world understanding, the above comments probably look like gibberish because you probably thought everyone knew “the left” as the side always famously emphasizing that minority groups are, you know, minorities, and that this is the very reason we are expected to care about the issues they face.
In fact, it’s pretty common even among “the right” to be angry at “the left” for implying a majority group has inherent privilege, so if ANYONE would want to trick people into over-estimating the population size of these groups, almost anyone would conclude it’s the hardcore conservatives, right? They would want you to think there are more black people, for instance, so they can argue that white people don’t have as much societal advantage anymore.
So what the HELL are you witnessing here? It’s probably important to explain because not everybody realizes the prevalence of this particular cognitive difference:
Many people, such as @shaughan up there, tend to at least subconsciously base their concern for other people more on an evaluation of their “usefulness” rather than sympathy alone, so in their world, the struggles of a given group matter *less* the smaller that group is. and importantly, they assume by default that this is your internal logic, too, even if you don’t admit to it.
As a consequence, guys like him believe that “the left” would be the ones who want to artificially inflate the size of a given “interest group” in order to trick people INTO caring about them. Remember, small = unimportant in his world view and he presumes this is the same logic everyone else runs on.
So he sees evidence that minority groups are smaller than everyone thinks, and his reaction isn’t the normal human one. It isn’t “wow, maybe they really are oppressed.” Instead his reaction is “aha! There’s fewer of them than I thought! They don’t matter after all, just as I suspected, and just as dirty liberals were trying to HIDE from me!!!”
If this sounds bizarro world clownshit deranged, that’s because it is, and it’s the same reason they scoff at the idea of protecting people from a deadly virus if it’s “”“only”“” deadly to one in a hundred.
It’s such an unexplainably backwards and twisted way of viewing things, you can see how even siryouremocked, who considers himself merely libertarian rather than far right, understands that a smaller population would be a more vulnerable one people might have more reason to sympathize with, but just didn’t finish turning those cogs far enough to realize he’s replying to someone who was trying to make exactly the opposite point.
I want to point out here that we’re also dealing with a failure in mathematical thinking. These are small percentages of huge populations. 1% of a big number can still be a big number.
“1% of the population” is still about 3,300,000 people. That’s not an inconsequential number of people. That’s equivalent to the entire population of Nevada. 3% of the population is the equivalent to Michigan. These ‘fringes’ are not so fringe.
I bought a gift for a friend’s friend, but apparently her party is today and I wasn’t invited. I don’t really mind since we’re just acquaintances because of our common friend, plus I got her a really cute necklace which I believe I can keep at this point lol
So the results of the Depp vs Heard case has unfortunately revealed to me that a few of the people I follow (a few of them for a very long time) are Heard supporters and the posts they reblog are along the lines of “it’s bad and will discourage victims from coming forward” while completely ignoring how it will be empowering for male victims who have largely been suffering in silence.
And it’s made me really think about an unfortunate fallacy in people’s thinking when it comes to various buzz phrases and buzz words used when talking about victims of abuse.
“Believe all women.”
Uh… no. A noble idea on the surface, but as has clearly been seen with Depp and Heard, that ideology is just opening the door for female perpetrators of abuse to take advantage of other people’s good will and desire to help victims.
A better phrase would be, “Listen to all victims.”
Emphasis on LISTEN. Not believe. You should never, EVER just believe someone blindly. Especially in something as serious as abuse allegations. But you should always be willing to LISTEN. Take the time to see what evidence comes forward. See what a judge and jury say if the allegations ever make it that far.
Blind belief is putting yourself at risk of being taken advantage of by people who have no qualms with lying through their teeth and telling you everything they think you want to hear.
Listen to all victims, but let the evidence speak for itself.
I’ve been offline (and out of queue) more often recently, and I kinda hate it. But the reason is because I’m MOVING!!
I got a job offer I couldn’t refuse …mostly because part-time jobs don’t pay the medical bills, and late-stage capitalism is a bitch ♀️
But now I’m moving from West Virginia and my beloved Appalachian mountains to the coast. It just feels so wrong! Tune in next week for my identity crisis as an Appalachian witch, minus the Appalachia
General news: doc is hitting me with everything that she can because if the covid triggers a mono flare, I will 100% have long covid. If covid gets into my lungs, the possibility of being hospitalized increases dramatically. I visit the Dr weekly currently. If all goes well I should be better in a few weeks. Maybe?
Let’s start with the positive: the laundry mod finally got released! Almost 1.5 years in the making and now it’s finally there. I’m so happy people seem to be enjoying it. A few bugs that didn’t get squashed during beta have popped up, but I’m on it. A new update addressing those bugs should be released today.
Unfortunately there’s also bad news: my parents tested positive for covid and I, well, stayed over at their place, not really keeping distance during NYE. I also have a headache and tiredness again which matches my bout with covid in November, so chances are I have covid. Again. For goodness’ sake it hasn’t even been two months! I’ll make a test appointment tomorrow. Fingers crossed it’s just my brains playing tricks on me , but I am rather pessimistic about the odds of that being the case. At least I stocked up on nasal spray and got enough groceries to last me through quarantine.
Roommate H has returned again and with her: the boyfriend. Gave me a panic attack yesterday. Guzzled down a can of kombucha, couldn’t sleep, woke up from the pitiful sleep I had with a headache.
She has shown herself to be incredibly how do you say, inconsiderate person. To summarize: “I don’t give a flying fuck about what excuse you have for not cleaning, if you don’t clean I’ll sicc the landlord on you ”
I would very much like to resolve this peacefully, but I’m unsure she can even be reasoned with.
Update: she complained to the landlord. I’m crying. I can’t deal with this. I don’t want to become homeless (again)
Covid symptoms and how they developed + recovery (pt 1)
Heya folks, so…. After I caught the resident plague, I really haven’t posted any updates about my health to tumblr yet, so let’s resolve that.
The thing I’d like to start with is just how my symptoms progressed, as this might be useful to people experiencing similar things.
For background: I’ve been vaccinated fully with Pfizer. First shot in July, second in August. I have no underlying health issues.
It started on Tuesday evening, the ninth of November. I had just spent the evening at my folks watching a show and my throat was feeling kinda rough. So, I thought to myself “I must have eaten too many salty snacks. I should take the day off to hydrate tomorrow”. So, I did just that. I alerted my boss that I wasn’t feeling well and would stay home that day, practicing self care. However, at the end of the day, the roughness hadn’t gone away yet.
Then Thursday came. It hadn’t gone away yet and my eyes felt like how they feel when I’m anywhere near daffodils. You see, I’m allergic to those flowers and my typical reaction to that is burning eyes. I felt like I was constantly being exposed to daffodils. Indoor, outdoor, didn’t matter. Just the constant feel of daffodils. By this time I had also started sneezing. That evening I went to the store for some groceries and bought some soothing thyme syrup while I was at it, since my throat was still acting up.
I don’t know 100% when, but around this time, I remember being in the town center, holding a yummy drink, mouth mask on and sneezing. I thought to myself “geez, I’m glad I’m wearing a mask or those germs would’ve gone much farther”
On Friday I made a test appointment for the next day as the symptoms weren’t going away.
I’m not 100% sure when I developed headaches, but I did. They were manageable with 500mg paracetamol.
Saturday I got swabbed. As my previous two experiences with the nose swab have been… Nasty in the past, I asked the guy at the test site to swab my left nostril instead of the right one which had been subjected to swab violence twice already. This turned out to be a great idea, as the discomfort went away much faster.
The next day, I saw I had received an email from the health services: my test results were in. I didn’t log in to see the results, so imagine my surprise when a few hours later I got a phone call from an unknown number. “Hello, this is GGD Gelderland Midden, are you [real name]?”. Immediate dread.
I had covid.
This got a lot longer than I thought, so I’ll continue in pt 2 which wil probably be a reblog of this post.
Covid symptoms and how they developed + recovery (pt 2)
Sooo, truth be told, I probably spent too much time modding Skyrim SE than, ya know, resting, when my covid was at its peak. But hey, let’s talk about symptoms and how I managed them.
So, one thing I forgot to mention, was that that Friday I had asked my mom to get me some nasal spray. Good thing I asked, because I’d make heavy use of it throughout the week. I got regular brine solution and xylometazoline. The latter can only be used for a week, but clears out the nostrils like crazy.
Okay, so my symptoms were as follows:
A rough, scratchy throat
Headaches
(occasional) fever
Sneezing
Burning eyes
Tiredness
Stuffy nose
Basically, a nasty cold. The thing that differentiated it from the flu for me, was the lack of dizziness or nausea. If I get the flu, I get dizzy and will probably throw up at least once. I never got those symptoms with covid. Honestly, I’ve had nastier flus*
*this does not mean that covid is the flu. I am vaccinated against the ‘rona which gave me an advantage and covid still majorly sucked. Get vaccinated, yo. Covid ain’t a flu. (Also, the flu I’m referring to hit me so hard I lost most of my strength thanks to being bedbound for a solid three days at least, so don’t underestimate the flu either.)
But, let’s talk symptom management. For my rough throat I drank TONS of hot tea. This helped keep my throat from getting rough. Also, staying hydrated is of the utmost importance, especially if you have covid. I also took the occasional spoon of medicinal thyme syrup to coat my throat. Whenever I’d get a headache, I would typically try to ignore it, but when it got too rough, I took a single 500mg paracetamol pill. For my nasal passages I would use xylometazoline for when it was feeling really stuffed and regular brine solution nasal spray when it wasn’t. I also made sure to get enough sleep.
What was nastier than symptom management however, was minimizing the chances of infecting my roommates. For that, I was instructed to clean the kitchen and toilet after using it and to wipe down anything (door knobs, switches, etc) that I had touched. I also had to keep my trash separateandwash my hands often. I also kept my room ventilated. Going to the toilet involved washing my hands before going, then washing my hands after I did my business, then wiping down the toilet, wiping down the doorknobs, then throwing away the trash and washing my hands again in my own room. Cooking meant wearing a face mask and of course: much cleaning.
After about a week or so after I had developed my initial symptoms, I was finally symptom free! However, unfortunately shortly after that, I lost my sense of smell. Fortunately my taste remained and still is intact. But it was not fun. However, it has been steadily getting better again.
The first week after covid, I was definitely still busy “uitzieken” as we’d say in Dutch; riding out the sickness, taking it easy to recover. I was definitely feeling physically weak(er). And the laundry… Damn, everything had to be washed for a long time at 40C…
At the moment of writing, I have been covid free for a while and quite happy about it!
However, as it is, I currently sleep quite a bit more than I used to. I’m not sure if it’s because of covid or the short days though. Physically, I can still function at about the same level as I was able to pre-covid, though it just tires me out a bit faster. And as I said; though I lost my sense of smell after covid had passed, I am now regaining it rapidly.
Gosh, you wouldn’t believe how happy I was to smell a cup of coffee. It was heavenly to smell that black gold.
I don’t believe I have long covid. If I still sleep and tire at this rate after the days start lengthening again, I’ll start to worry. But for now, I’m happy to be allowed out again and blessed to have survived this with my sense of taste intact. Not all have that privilege. Another blessing was that to my knowledge, I did not infect anyone I was in contact with.
So, that was my covid experience. Not fun to experience, but perhaps illuminating to others. And definitely a story to tell.
Covid symptoms and how they developed + recovery (pt 1)
Heya folks, so…. After I caught the resident plague, I really haven’t posted any updates about my health to tumblr yet, so let’s resolve that.
The thing I’d like to start with is just how my symptoms progressed, as this might be useful to people experiencing similar things.
For background: I’ve been vaccinated fully with Pfizer. First shot in July, second in August. I have no underlying health issues.
It started on Tuesday evening, the ninth of November. I had just spent the evening at my folks watching a show and my throat was feeling kinda rough. So, I thought to myself “I must have eaten too many salty snacks. I should take the day off to hydrate tomorrow”. So, I did just that. I alerted my boss that I wasn’t feeling well and would stay home that day, practicing self care. However, at the end of the day, the roughness hadn’t gone away yet.
Then Thursday came. It hadn’t gone away yet and my eyes felt like how they feel when I’m anywhere near daffodils. You see, I’m allergic to those flowers and my typical reaction to that is burning eyes. I felt like I was constantly being exposed to daffodils. Indoor, outdoor, didn’t matter. Just the constant feel of daffodils. By this time I had also started sneezing. That evening I went to the store for some groceries and bought some soothing thyme syrup while I was at it, since my throat was still acting up.
I don’t know 100% when, but around this time, I remember being in the town center, holding a yummy drink, mouth mask on and sneezing. I thought to myself “geez, I’m glad I’m wearing a mask or those germs would’ve gone much farther”
On Friday I made a test appointment for the next day as the symptoms weren’t going away.
I’m not 100% sure when I developed headaches, but I did. They were manageable with 500mg paracetamol.
Saturday I got swabbed. As my previous two experiences with the nose swab have been… Nasty in the past, I asked the guy at the test site to swab my left nostril instead of the right one which had been subjected to swab violence twice already. This turned out to be a great idea, as the discomfort went away much faster.
The next day, I saw I had received an email from the health services: my test results were in. I didn’t log in to see the results, so imagine my surprise when a few hours later I got a phone call from an unknown number. “Hello, this is GGD Gelderland Midden, are you [real name]?”. Immediate dread.
I had covid.
This got a lot longer than I thought, so I’ll continue in pt 2 which wil probably be a reblog of this post.
I have been vaxxed, but I still caught it. Still, I’m thankful, because so far I’ve only experienced the symptoms of a nasty cold/hayfever combo. It could have been much, much worse. I have no trouble breathing and I can still taste my food. I have many things to be thankful about.
I’m not very thankful for this headache that keeps bothering me though.
I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning and other rl stuff lately. I managed to get things a lot less messy, decorated a bit, bought a cactus.. I also hate bleach now. Screw bleach, I better not have to bleach my windowsills again.
Anyways, Storm Eunice is gonna be hitting the Netherlands in like an hour, so that’s gonna be fun. I’m not in the “danger zone” with the really nasty winds reaching 130> km/h (basically, hurricane winds in some select parts of the red provinces, probably around the islands), but chances are we’ll get winds of up to 114 km/h here in an orange part, so that’s still pretty heavy.
I brought my bicycle inside already just in case.
In terms of sims stuff, well, we’ve been working on some pretty sweet stuff over at the Sun&Moon Star Factory, but there’s still a lot of testing to do and improvements to make.
Well, it quieted down enough that I’m willing to turn my pc on. My roommates’ bicycles blew over as did the misc trash bin (once). I’m rather glad I put my bicycle inside. When the winds were like really bad, I could hear the glass on my shelves shaking from the wind (my window wasn’t even open). Pretty heavy stuff.
The most annoying though is that I just discovered that Roommate H (the clown, the one who tends to complain a lot about “messes”, attitude issues) has left her window open or something. There’s cold air coming into the kitchen from her door. I swear…
Anyways, I stuck some mops in the door gap, so that should keep the worst out.
I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning and other rl stuff lately. I managed to get things a lot less messy, decorated a bit, bought a cactus.. I also hate bleach now. Screw bleach, I better not have to bleach my windowsills again.
Anyways, Storm Eunice is gonna be hitting the Netherlands in like an hour, so that’s gonna be fun. I’m not in the “danger zone” with the really nasty winds reaching 130> km/h (basically, hurricane winds in some select parts of the red provinces, probably around the islands), but chances are we’ll get winds of up to 114 km/h here in an orange part, so that’s still pretty heavy.
I brought my bicycle inside already just in case.
In terms of sims stuff, well, we’ve been working on some pretty sweet stuff over at the Sun&Moon Star Factory, but there’s still a lot of testing to do and improvements to make.
Let’s start with the positive: the laundry mod finally got released! Almost 1.5 years in the making and now it’s finally there. I’m so happy people seem to be enjoying it. A few bugs that didn’t get squashed during beta have popped up, but I’m on it. A new update addressing those bugs should be released today.
Unfortunately there’s also bad news: my parents tested positive for covid and I, well, stayed over at their place, not really keeping distance during NYE. I also have a headache and tiredness again which matches my bout with covid in November, so chances are I have covid. Again. For goodness’ sake it hasn’t even been two months! I’ll make a test appointment tomorrow. Fingers crossed it’s just my brains playing tricks on me , but I am rather pessimistic about the odds of that being the case. At least I stocked up on nasal spray and got enough groceries to last me through quarantine.
Stay safe people
Yo, I don’t have covid!
Got swabbed twice. Once on the fourth, another time on the seventh and both were negative. Stupid brain was playing tricks on me, that bugger.
What did turn out positive were my dad’s and my aunt’s tests. My folks are already well on their way to recovery. They still have light symptoms, but are doing fairly well. My aunt however…. Well, she has a case of obesity and even besides that, she’s not the best health-wise. At least she’s double-vaxxed, even with omicron, that should (hopefully) provide some protection against the worst possible symptoms, but still. It’s worrying. I haven’t heard any news about her today, but she gets a nurse visit twice a day, so should her condition get really bad, they should be able to take action fairly swiftly. Fingers crossed she’ll be able to recover at home
