LillyPip

I’m a user experience designer. My favourite story is from aviation engineering. I don’t remember the year or all the details, but the US Navy had put stupid amounts of money and time into engineering a new fighter jet. It was worked out on paper and built to exact specifications. Then, during the first human test of it, the pilot ejected on the tarmac before it took off. The plane crashed, obviously, but the pilot couldn’t explain what happened (apparently he had a concussion from his unscheduled landing).

The plane was built again, and shortly after takeoff, the pilot again ejected without explanation.

What the fuck was going on?

In the retelling I heard, someone finally noticed the design of the cockpit was to blame. In trying to cram all the standard controls plus new ones into the smallest amount of space, the designers had moved the eject lever right next to the lever to adjust the seat position – they’d coloured the eject lever red, but the pilot couldn’t see that since it was below and slightly to the right of his ass, and both levers were the same size and shape. Nobody noticed this was a problem until at least two pilots accidentally ejected on takeoff.

This might be apocryphal, I don’t know, but I learnt it as an example of how things might look good on paper, but you can’t really know until a user fucks everything up.

Once you’re old enough, there’s no difference. My doctor’s admin keeps calling me to schedule a colonoscopy, and we’ve been playing phone tag. That’s the closest I’ve come to foreplay in years.

Less than two steps between that and eugenics, and one step between eugenics and genocide. We’ve seen and documented that. It’s a logical but sociopathic mentality.

Conversely, when we realise that we’re stronger together and act empathetically as a society, every one of us and all of society benefits. When we care for the least of us, crime goes down and we find geniuses who improve life for us all, who would otherwise die in anonymous poverty.

Living like barbarous animals – not rising above the ‘brutality of nature’, as you said – helps sociopaths who take advantage of our better nature to enrich themselves. Indeed, if we structure our society around that, as we have done lately, our society will devolve around the lowest common denominator (people like Musk or Trump).

We can and must do better than that.

These lunatics have a disturbing amount of control in the US government.

Laughing at them might be fun, and I was doing it until recently, but they’re not joking. The worse our climate disasters become – and they will very soon – the more scared people will become, and the more these groups will take advantage of that fear. We’ll see more climate refugees, more desperation, and more fear. These groups prey on fear, and they’ll amplify it on purpose.

True fascism thrives on fear, which is why these people amplify it like they do. When climate disasters accelerate, these groups will harness the social upheaval to take control. I don’t know what we can do to stop it, but we should all be thinking about and sharing ways to head it off, because they’ve got plans in place already.

I know I sound paranoid, but I’ve been watching them and these aren’t my ideas, but theirs. They talk about this a lot, and if we aren’t prepared, their plans could actually work. I don’t want to live in the fascist future they’re planning. If we don’t combat it, we’ll be living in the Handmaid’s Tale before most of us realise.

The advice to wash your dick is a sure sign that you weren't heavily involved in raising a child.

That’s quite an arrogant statement.

My son is 25, and happy with my decision not to have him circumcised. I know because I asked him based on this discussion.

He never once got any sort of infection, because I taught him basic hygiene.

Our bodies having parts doesn't make them inherently useful or purposeful or superior to life without. We still have tail bones

The foreskin is not a vestigial trait. It’s a 100% relevant and useful organ today. (eta: I know about vestigial traits because I have one: Darwin’s tubercle. I’d also not have appreciated having my ears docked at birth.)

Ask anyone who has a foreskin. That’s a profoundly ignorant comparison.

we grow teeth that don't fit it our mouths

That’s an adaptive trait that serves us quite well, because our hominid ancestors fed their young the most high-energy fruits, which also increased the risk of cavities in our young. Being able to shed and replace juvenile teeth meant we were able to commence adulthood without the risk of starving. Our wisdom teeth weren’t a problem until very, very recently, because the evolution of our bodies haven’t had time to catch up with our modern diet. That’s nothing like the foreskin, where our sexual activity has not changed in millions of years. You should learn some paleo-anthropology before making comparisons like that.

and we get auto-immune diseases.

I have very severe autoimmune disease. Many recent studies point to environmental causes, which are recent and our evolution cannot account for.

None of that has anything whatever to do with the continued and relevant importance of the foreskin to sexual pleasure.

I am a mother who decided not to circumcise my child (who is now 25 and is happy to have his foreskin), a decision I made after talking to my father who had to have his removed in his teens after developing a rare condition. I know more about this topic than many people, and certainly more than you.

The reasons this procedure is commonly done in the US are questionable at best. We have learned better, and this archaic practice should not be advocated any longer.

If you had it done to you and/or had it done to your child, I’m not here to shame you. Until recently, it’s just what we did, but going forward, we should do better for our children and our species based on what we’ve learned. And we shouldn’t be a dick when presented with information that goes against our cultural norms (pun intended).

e: link to my 4 month old comment about my vestigial trait. I had to scroll through nearly a thousand comments to find it, whew.

It’s objectively not, though?

If it were, well, that’s been explored in Idiocracy.

The point isn’t that we should give the reins to the “smartest”, but the actual smartest, for a change.

The best non-Star Trek movie. Brilliant.

Literally the best zombie movie ever. I hate zombie movies in general, but loved this one.

She would nail this role, as she always does.

I’ll also never forget that Musk looks like Kathy Bates. She wore it first.

Uh, the Clintons weren’t the smartest amongst us. Smarter than some sure, and that’s a pretty low bar these days, but I lived through that era. We were not governed by our smartest, by any stretch.

Begin teaching media literacy and critical thinking skills in schools.

John Dies at the End.

It’s sci fi/comedy. Best watched whilst high, but good regardless.