99% of “mysterious disappearances” esp of people in their 20s who start acting weird for 48 hours and then vanish are not mysterious, thats just when a lot of reality-obliterating mental illness tends to kick in and it’s pretty easy to get a short circuit in your brain that makes you go family guy death pose in joshua tree national park. it’s not any less tragic, it’s just a documented phenomenon and not particularly predictable. its a big reason the medical advice is for people with a family history of schizophrenia to completely avoid weed and psychedelics. “people just go crazy sometimes” is a principle of human health that used to be a lot more accepted prior to the american midcentury and to a certain extent thats a healthier way to conceptualize and prepare for the risk, as opposed to the modern assertion that anyone acting weird is dangerous and broken forever.
you should have a rough outline of a plan for if any of your loved ones experiences psychosis, it really does happen a lot. UTIs can cause psychosis. taking drugs, even safe drugs, or prescription drugs, can cause psychosis. i was once prescribed a heavy regimen of vitamin D because i was deficient, but the doctor never told me to stop taking it, so i moved to california, stopped being deficient, and developed vitamin d toxicity with downstream hyperparathyroidism which triggered significant hypomania that was undetected and uncontrolled for yeeeeeeears. i just slowly got Weird and started making impulsive decisions based on slightly out-of-gamut beliefs. i drove cross country by myself to have a love affair. the love affair was real, the series of decisions leading to burning down my life in pursuit of it were based on not great brain function however. etc. you see what i mean. churchill mentioned depression being the “black dog who stalks us” (one reason for Churchgrim’s multi-referential name) but theres another, stealthier dog called Insanity and it’s closer to some people than others but man it sneaks up on you. every time i see one of those “guy gets weird and drives into the wilderness forever” missing persons stories i think “yeah i could totally pull that off”
“van gogh cut off his ear what a lunatic” you are 3 nights of bad sleep, getting unexpected upsetting news and taking a substance as benign as coffee at the wrong time away from doing the same hope this helps
when people say “crypto and AI” in 99% of cases whatever they’re about to say next can be safely ignored
the only thing those things have in common is that they had an inane insufferable tech industry hype train and a big online backlash. and anyone talking from within either of those positions is fundamentally not concerned with any of the details or realities of either
okay i will carve out an exception: there is a coherent category of “crypto and AI” in which those words do not refer to anything real or any actual technology, but to a vague technology-shaped concept which breathless tech CEOs and journalists tell you is going to be the future of everything and replace the internet and cars and your penis and that you need to invest your company in right now. but the response to those objects is to point out that they don’t exist, that they are scams based on vaguely futuristic floating signifiers–not to buy into the idea that they do but respond ‘well they’re bad though’.
enough people have said this on this post that i’m gonna make an addition specifically about this: it’s not true. AI’s power use is not that significant–something which i talk about in this post and which ars technica did a really good breakdown of. tldr, the big scary electricty numbers attributed to AI are 1. dwarfed by most household appliances, let alone industrial production and 2. really difficult to attribute to AI alone because datacenters are used for all kinds of other things including, like, the internet.
there’s also a fundamental difference between AI and crypto in this regard: AI developers and companies trying to hawk it are incentivized to make it as energy efficient as possible because they’re the ones stuck holding the energy bill and AI is already losing money hand over fist. crypto, on the other hand, needs to continually become more and more expensive in energy costs to enforce the artifical scarcity that makes it a valuable speculation asset. so in effect, mass industry or consumer adoption of AI would incentivize AI companies to make AI use less energy and run for cheaper–while mass adoption of NFTs or any other crypto gimmick would, in fact, require ballooning power use.
I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.
The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.
So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”
1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.
Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.
Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! Hewrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.
It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.
RATING: RELIABLE
you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here
We laugh at environmental media from the 80s like the villains in captain planet, but we forget that the people making that shit literally would have lived through such terrible air quality
@overcaffienated-aro well said!
Lake Erie CAUGHT FIRE in 1969. Yes some things are improved! We have wins to celebrate! The hole in the ozone that was created by human use of CFCs is shrinking and even though those chemicals are extremely long lived it’s expected to return to pre-1980 baseline sometime in the middle of this century, so like in around 20-30 years.
We CAN change what’s happening even if it takes time to see the results. Do not give up in despair!
Yeah, it’s the romance stuff. I’m already disinclined to give him the benefit of the doubt given his track record, but this absolutely reads as him being a bitter bitch
David Tennant interview at the British LGBT Awards, June 2024 (x)
Int: You being an ally to the community isn’t something new. You’ve been doing it, but recently you’ve obviously really stepped up for trans and non-binary people in a time that’s so, so needed. What made you do that?
David: I don’t know that I feel like I’ve done anything that I wouldn’t just sort of be normally doing. I mean, it’s for me it’s just common sense that there’s there should be any suggestion that people aren’t allowed to live the life they want to live and and to be who they want to be with and to express themselves wholeheartedly. I mean, as long as you aren’t hurting anybody else, everybody else just needs to fucking butt out. I don’t really understand why…
Int: …it’s controversial.
David: Yeah, there is and the thing… the thing, if there’s something that’s particularly sobering and depressing, it’s that certain debates are being weaponized by certain elements of the political class, often for no… it seems it’s not ideological so much as opportunistic. And I just think that’s pretty disgusting, really.
Int: I couldn’t agree more. What message would you like to send out to trans youth?
David: Please don’t feel like you’re not loved and that you’re not accepted and that you’re not… you know, most people in the world are good and kind and just want you to be able to be who you are. Most people in the world don’t really care. I mean… you know what I mean?
Int: We’re all narcissistic.
David: Exactly. Everyone’s so self obsessed that really, the sort of noise that comes from a certain area of the press and of the political class is… it’s a minority. It really is. And please don’t let that make you feel diminished or dissuaded or discouraged, because, you know, you just… you have to be allowed to be yourself, and you are, and you are yourself and you must thrive and flourish, and we’re all here for it.
Int: Amazing. I think, yeah, it’s so important .I think sometimes it feels like there’s so many people, but it is a minority. It’s such a minority.
David: It’s a tiny bunch of little whinging fuckers that are on the wrong side of history and they’ll all go away soon.
Int: Like what happened with gay people 20 years ago.
David: When I was a kid, when I was a kid, exactly. You know, I was at school when Clause 28 came in and it all felt like being gay was something to be terrified of. And gay men in particular were demonised as paedophiles and now that just feels historic and ludicrous and, I mean, I don’t see all those… all those battles aren’t won, but we’re in a very, very different place. And I feel like.I feel like history is on a progressive trajectory and it might get knocked sideways now and again by people for all sorts of reasons, which are often quite selfish and quite, as I say, not coming from a place of any sort of genuine belief system, but other than a place of opportunism. And that’s something that we… I hope that in 20 years time, we’re talking about, you know, these culture wars as something of the past.
Int: I believe we will. I’m a huge Doctor Who fan, so.
David: Oh, good, me too!
Int: You are my Doctor.
David: Oh, thank you very much.
Int: But recently, obviously, you came back for the 60th anniversary and you got to work with Yasmin Finney.
David: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Int: What was it like working with her?
David: Oh, she’s brilliant. She’s fantastic. Yeah. And she’s in the show again now, she’s back in it, so that’s fantastic to see. She’s lovely, talented, cool as a cucumber, articulate, brilliant. I learned a lot from her as an actor and also as someone who, you know, who’s become a sort of de facto activist just because of who she is and where she is, and she becomes a sort of symbol of hope, and she’s wonderful.
