SERRCissä kriittistä pohdintaa itsesurmaamisen tutkimisesta ja ehkäisystä, https://social-epistemology.com/2025/03/12/a-critical-inventory-of-suicidology-and-suicide-prevention-part-i-michaela-hintermayr/

Osa 2 löytyy tuon perästä ja tästä: https://social-epistemology.com/2025/03/14/a-critical-inventory-of-suicidology-and-suicide-prevention-part-ii-michaela-hintermayr/

Lähteissä en huomannut SEP-entryä, joka on hyvä johdatus käsitteeseen, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suicide/. Viime päivinä näkyy maailmalla kohistun monimutkaisia päätöstilanteita ja nopeaa ja hidasta ajattelua tutkineen Daniel Kahnemanin avustetusta itsesurmasta, vaikka se tapahtui liki vuosi sitten.

The family group/tribe is built on mutual support, but the modern conservative version is transactional, based on membership and loyalty. Actions that look like kindness are in reality actions to reinforce tribal loyalty. I think this is why so many people in conservative communties, who are trapped in entirely conservative information spaces, have a hard time breaking free. They see examples of community support as affirmations of their community goodness, and this narrative is drummed into them constantly. Conservative leaders have the advantage of labeling any disruptive people or ideas as 'foreign' and a threat, even if from within the community, so that they never even have to engage with new ideas on merit.

Kindness isnt a relevant trait to their tribal functioning, because the ability to be unkind and cruel to people who arent toeing the tribal line is necessary to upholding 'family law'. Kindness in others undermines their attempts to police peoples behavior (this is why its so important that men are in charge). Therefore, not only is kindness devalued, it is actively persecuted as a threat to conservative values. And that is only treatment of your in-group. If you reject kindness internally, imagine how easy it is to subject an out-group to cruel inhumanity. You can literally justify anything. What is horrifying is the degree to which everyday members of conservative communities have become willfully blind to the terrible treatment of others in order to hang on to an image of community goodness. I have witnessed far too much of this in my life.

Its worth stating that the left has its own, different kind of tribalism. They embrace kindness but there is a lot of pressure to prove the right kind of worth. It has a distinctly multicultural, anti-authoritarian tribalism, where the rules of the tribe are under constant negotiation. This makes communicating a platform challenging. Its a lot simpler for conservative platforms whose rules come from demagogues and an old book.

The flaw of designing a system without compassion is that the cruelty eventually becomes impossible to hide from the tribe, and the cruelty comes for everyone. #uspol #politics #disability #sociology #anthropology #kindness #geopol

A really good (academic) book about the complexity and human coordination involved in #NWS weather prediction. This expertise cannot be replaced by AI, private equity, or DOGElings

Masters of Uncertainty by Phaedra Daipha
https://press.uchicago.edu/books/excerpt/2015/Daipha_Masters_of_Uncertainty.html

@UChicagoPress

You can tell a lot about British society in 1962 by looking at the television Reaction Index. For example:

The Black and White Minstrels Show 88
Ken Russell’s Elgar 88
Dr Finlay’s Casebook 78
Dr Kildare 70
BBC Plays 64 (average)
That Was The Week That Was 64
Compact 61 (“too much romance”)

Had my social informatics students read work @pluralistic did with Consumer Reports about social media federation and user rights. Also considering what we can learn about society, technology, and ethics from science fiction.

If anybody is interested in reusing, here's the text of the module. Comments welcome if you plan to use or have used.

/* ACTIVITY BEGINS

SETUP: Students work with this material in collaborative file space

As a group, read these two connected pieces:

1. “Inside the Clock Tower: An Interoperability Story,” a short story by Cory Doctorow, commissioned by Consumer Reports regarding user experiences on social media and how regulatory legislation might affect those experiences - https://innovation.consumerreports.org/inside-the-clock-tower

2. “An Interview with Tech Activist and Author Cory Doctorow,” about the ACCESS Act by Consumer Reports - https://www.consumerreports.org/digital-rights/an-interview-with-tech-activist-and-author-cory-doctorow-a1943952645

Answer these questions as a group in the space below:

1. How can you use our class science fiction readings to connect Doctorow’s assessment of the real social media landscape with his portrayal of a social media landscape in science fiction?

2. How can you use lessons from Kling, Hanson, and Coleman to explain how Doctorow’s actions here are a kind of folksy social informatics?

3. How can you connect Doctorow’s work in both pieces to your understanding of the Mastodon social network?

ACTIVITY ENDS */

Which 1960s cultural group do you most identify with…

Add your comments, if you wish.

Actionable items: pick one or two and work on offices and events within walking and commuting distance.

When we grow food at home and in neighborhoods, we peel the Profiteers' fingers off our necks.

If we remove prison slavery and replace it with gentle custody, we save ourselves and spite slavers.

If we make hospitable policy for newcomers, we spite racists.

If we fix zoning we spite landlords and fix the invented housing crisis.

If we write or call or visit to our elected reps every day, they won't have time to cheat with lobbiests.

#solutions #communityaction #foculpoints #effectiveaction

(advised by a #sociology student)

Friday 8 February 1963

Troops, helicopters and army “Ducks” stood by on a flood alert in the West Country last night as rivers, swollen by the thaw, rose bank high. Many rivers in Devon are expected to burst their banks today. In Carmarthen, Wales, fields are under water.