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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

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  • I am not a better human being, but I’m combating my irritability one cause at a time. Firstly, treating physical conditions that cause irritability (as much as money has let me): hormonal issues, sleeping issues, etc. Secondly, addressing psychological and psychiatric problems (I had to learn a lot of these topics because I wasn’t able to afford specialists all the time and it was an interest of mine anyway). Finally, fixing external or environmental causes, e.g. working on changing toxic relationships.

    It is still a work in progress, but my life is getting calmer and calmer as I am ticking the boxes in that list. At some point, you get to a place where you can search for your own answers, existentially speaking, and that also helps. Here I mean exploring philosophy and your own ideas; your feelings, your passions, etc.

    Be patient. Be compassionate with yourself (and others).



  • Instagram reels.

    Exactly, these users want a relatively efficient app with an algorithm that shows interesting content without the effort of looking for it.

    I personally love the things TikTok puts on my feed (philosophy, science, arts, political opinions, medical advice…). I don’t think I would have been able to find a lot of those things on my own. For instance, it’s been amazing to understand some of my health conditions: a video about a random symptom (and how to address it) sometimes shows on my feed and it’s like: “Wow! I didn’t know that! Thank you”.

    So… it’s not just laziness, not in my case. I hate that algorithms have been radicalizing my parents politically. I love that my algorithm helps me with advice (for me, my cat, my home…) and it connects me with similar people. It’s a bittersweet technology, I guess. Anyway, without it, Loops might not be a solid alternative.


  • Honestly? I don’t think it’s ready for the migration that’s going to take place in January (supposedly, January). The USA will ban TikTok and people still debate in the comments what should be the new short videos platform. I really want to spread the message about Loops, but I was unable to create an account just a few days ago. It won’t work for thousands and thousands of people that want something efficient and do not appreciate the Fediverse effort as we do.

    Mastodon itself couldn’t compete against BlueSky. I think Loops has a month to be a real TikTok alternative or it faces the same destiny as Mastodon (or Lemmy).












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

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

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

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

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





  • I don’t want to fall into a slippery slope argument, but I really see this as the tip of a horrible iceberg. Seeing women as sexual objects starts with this kind of non consensual media, but also includes non consensual approaches (like a man that thinks he can subtly touch women in full public transport and excuse himself with the lack of space), sexual harassment, sexual abuse, forced prostitution (it’s hard to know for sure, but possibly the majority of prostitution), human trafficking (in which 75%-79% go into forced prostitution, which causes that human trafficking is mostly done to women), and even other forms of violence, torture, murder, etc.

    Thus, women live their lives in fear (in varying degrees depending on their country and circumstances). They are restricted in many ways. All of this even in first world countries. For example, homeless women fearing going to shelters because of the situation with SA and trafficking that exists there; women retiring from or not entering jobs (military, scientific exploration, etc.) because of their hostile sexual environment; being alert and often scared when alone because they can be targets, etc. I hopefully don’t need to explain the situation in third world countries, just look at what’s legal and imagine from there…

    This is a reality, one that is:

    Putting hundreds of millions of people into a state of hopeless depression

    Again, I want to be very clear, I’m not equating these tools to the horrible things I mentioned. I’m saying that it is part of the same problem in a lighter presentation. It is the tip of the iceberg. It is a symptom of a systemic and cultural problem. The AI by itself may be less catastrophic in consequences, rarely leading to permanent damage (I can only see it being the case if the victim develops chronic or pervasive health problems by the stress of the situation, like social anxiety, or commits suicide). It is still important to acknowledge the whole machinery so we can dimension what we are facing, and to really face it because something must change. The first steps might be against this “on the surface” “not very harmful” forms of sexual violence.