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From a different source in Spanish, updated yesterday: https://www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/sociedad/tenerife-no-descansa-espera-lluvia-milagrosa-despierto-hora-ver-avanza-fuego_1_10454461.html

It is a sixth generation wildfire never seen before in Canarias, a consequence of climate change: "The island has gone through a very important rainfall deficit and a heatwave without precedents."

https://www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/tenerifeahora/sociedad/incendio-forestal-tenerife-complica-norte-afecta-diez-municipios-obliga-nuevas-evacuaciones_1_10453798.html

The fire has ravaged over 8400 hectares. The fire has reached an extension of 70km long perimeter since last Thursday, and has forced over 12600 people out of their homes.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago

None of y'all are getting it. Trans women have an unfair advantage in chess because they can turn the king into another queen.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago

I really believe God will break you down until you have no choice but to trust in him.

And this is good! This is totally normal behavior for a loving being! He only wants me to follow the right path! Out of my own choice, through my own free will and everything!

Jokes aside, this person has gone through some shit, and rather than getting therapy, she is doubling down.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 180 points 1 year ago

If it's a crime, do not fire them, lock them up in pris-

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the actions "treason" and has initiated criminal proceedings.

Oh. Oh well.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago

Have you guys contacted law enforcement?

Given that the goal of this instance is to serve as a reference of the Fediverse, it is expected that it will continue to grow, and in turn, attract more attention, which due to a game of numbers also involves more trolls and enemies. Thus, the fact that the instance is being DDOS'ed right now shouldn't be seen as a conjunctural problem, but rather a challenge that is here to stay and sometimes be a problem.

While I think it's a good idea for lemmy.world to do it this time, relying on a police force to routinely come to our call and do something means periods during which the instance will be out while we wait for them for work. The instance, and Lemmy in general, should have more robust defenses so that calling for external help is only required at exceptional times.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 123 points 1 year ago

Holy shit your title was a punchline and it was a good one

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago

You guys skip the story? You don't want to know what kind of negotiation did they go through for the AC technician to accept a carnal payment from the hot MILF??? Or how is he going to explain the situation to his boss?????

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Crosspost from: https://lemmy.world/post/2776711

While the main focus of the article is actually human perceptions of AI, it also delves into the perception of the majority of people regarding those who cannot communicate in a socially accepted way.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To the ~33% people who have downvoted this: you're literally arguing against a person's right not to have their body receive unnecessary surgical manipulations until they're old enough to actually consent to it. Babies are not their parents' property. Let people decide when they're adults.

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This is a very basic fact of life that everyone should learn in school:

If you are forced to accept the bare minimum that is put on the table, your capacity to say no quickly crashes down, to the point that you may be vulnerable to accept a very unfavorable deal.

A scenario where the vast majority of us might find this reality at some point through our lives is the labor market. Whether you are applying for a job, or requesting a raise or a promotion, you are only going to have leverage to get the company to offer you a better deal if you have better opportunities on the table. In socioeconomic contexts where wages are depressed, this is usually not the case. This means that, for a lot of people, accepting a very bad offer means the difference between living a miserable life with a roof over your head and becoming homeless, so they do virtually have no choice but to accept, which only becomes more apparent if they have family members who depend on them.

It is interesting to note that this may be taught in detail to students of business, economics and law, although it is important information for everyone who participates in the economy: https://www.pon.harvard.edu/tag/batna/

In this context, a labor union that decides to initiate a strike isn't just provoking trouble for the sake of it - it is leveling the playing field by creating a situation where not only the livelihoods of the workers are dependent on the negotiation, but the profits of the company and even its capacity to survive are as well, whereas the latter usually wouldn't be.

Note that this applies to many other aspects of life as well. People often stay in abusive relationships because they do not have the means (or think they do not have the means) to leave them. It is difficult to leave the household you share with an abusive partner if you do not have the economic means to move out, and some people may stay in disfunctional friend groups because they think they aren't capable of making new friends, but need some social contact nonetheless.

Different configurations of society may protect people from these pitfalls or incentivize falling into them. The idea that people should find the means to leave their parents' household as soon as they turn 18 deprives them of an economic mattress that would otherwise allow them to be more aggressive when they negotiate for their salary, or even open up the possibility to dedicate time into trying to create their own business or projects. Different forms of social security, such as unemployment benefits, minimum guaranteed income or basic universal rent make working people far less dependent on the possibility of being laid off, which would motivate them to confront management about negative working conditions.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago

This screams manufactured outrage.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago

I'm an Ex-christian. Religion has provoked plenty of suffering against me and my family through my life. I want to have the right to burn a Bible. The same way, I want Ex-muslims to have the right to burn the Quran.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 67 points 1 year ago

Cis guy here. Based mod.

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This article picks apart a bunch of biases by the researchers of a given paper. The object of study was the differences in behavior between a group of autistic people and a group of non-autistic people when choosing between prioritizing value for oneself or value for the community.

I recommend reading the paper itself too. If that is, understandably, too much for you, I suggest you go for the introduction, the conclusion, and the segments mentioned in the article.

[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 93 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Introduction to Spanish politics in 2023 for lemmytors:

Simplifying everything, the Spanish speaking right-wing is led by the mainstream right party Partido Popular or PP, which needs the support of the far right party Vox. However, Vox is radically centralist and wants to take away functions from Comunidades Autónomas or regional governments (similar to the US' individual states), which makes it impossible for a PP-Vox coalition to reach any agreement with the Catalan or Basque parties, for which autonomy of the regional governments is a core issue.

This means that the only viable government is one formed by PSOE (socialdemocrats/liberals) and Sumar (democratic socialists/anticapitalists), supported by ERC (Catalan left wing), Junts (Catalan right wing), Bildu (Basque left wing) and PNV (Basque right wing), which is a very similar composition to the government we had before these elections. This means a parliament that isn't too shaky, but also not too stable, because these parties have a lot of divergent goals and are mostly united by not wanting PP-Vox to reach the central government.

What has the government done during the previous 4 years?

These years have been fundamentally marked by the pandemic first, and by the war in Ukraine later. The pandemic was met with a moderately strong lockdown, which likely contained a potentially far more difficult disaster but badly damaged the tourism-based Spanish economy, while the right-wing opposition was promoting denialism and COVID conspiracy theories. In order to protect companies and employment, the government issued processes of temporary suspension of employment, where companies were forbidden to fire workers during the lockdown but their salaries were subsidized.

The sanctions on Russia shouldn't have affected Spain too much, since we mostly get our gas from Algeria, and this is backed by the fact that Spain got one of the lowest inflation rates of the EU in 2022. However, this didn't stop energy distribution companies from getting embroiled in a speculation process that has fundamentally affected basic goods, so even though in macroeconomic terms we have had a low inflation in comparison with other European countries, that inflation has been unevenly distributed and damaged humble families the most. A criticism that should be made here is that the government didn't do enough to regulate and/or punish distribution companies that engaged in speculation that wasn't driven by real cost increases.

These two matters aside, the government did also:

  • Enact a relatively ineffective minimum income, which according to official statistics has supported almost 2 million people, but looking deeper into the data you find plenty of bureaucratic traps that provoked these grants to become far too difficult to get and somewhat easy to lose.

  • Several feminist reforms, such as allowing 16 year olds to get abortions without parental permission, allowing doctors to grant paid medical leave due to particularly painful periods, and a reform on the law regulating sex abuse crimes. This measure has been particularly controversial as it provoked roughly 100 sex offenders to be released early, which according to the responsible minister was provoked by judges wilfully misinterpreting the law.

  • The "Trans Law", which grants the right of gender self-determination, allowing people to change their legal gender without permission from a doctor or a judge, making Spain one of the first countries of the world to recognize this right. While this provoked a lot of controversy in mass media and social media, voters mostly supported the reform, with over 50% supporting it and barely 20% opposing it.

  • A not too successful reform on rent, allowing cities to enact zones where landlords are forbidden to raise rent if they notice sharp increases. However, this hasn't prevented rent prices to continue raising. Near the end of the period, the government has started drafting plans for increasing public housing, but it's undeniable too little and too late.

  • Continued increases of minimum salary, aiming to get closer to France's, gradually increasing from 900€/month in 2019 to 1080€/month in 2023. During the same period, unemployement has decreased despite the pandemic. Inflation was within control until the start of the war.

It should also be mentioned:

  • Stagnation of Catalonya's indepedence process. While PSOE promised to negotiate with Catalan parties, the idea of a referendum has further slipped away across the years. While it remains unclear how aggressive Catalan parties will be during the incoming rounds of negotiations, their loss of support during these elections leaves them at a weakened position. It could be argued, after yesterday's results, that many Catalans have decided independence isn't too important for them as long as the Spanish-speaking right wing isn't ruling from Madrid.

  • Looking forward, there will likely continue to be tensions between PSOE's extremely moderate economic views, and Sumar's ambitions for wide reforms. One of the core measures Sumar has campaigned for was a reduction on the workweek. The ever rising price of rents will likely make housing a hot issue, but PSOE will find itself in tension as many members in the higher echelons of their party tend to appeal to landlords' interests.

What has the right wing campaigned for?

PP, the mainstream right wing party, has ran a rather dull campaign based on common talking points for any opposition party, such as the ideas that the ruling party has mismanaged the economy, but haven't been too explicit regarding their actual plans.

Vox, on the other hand, has a very strange tendency to straight up copy the talking points of the US' republican party, regardless of how well accepted they are in Spanish society. Two particularly notorious examples would be their denialism of climate change and their attempt to capitalize on transphobia, despite Spain being one of the European countries most acceptive of trans people:

After the recent local elections a few months ago, many town councils now ruled by a PP-Vox coalition have engaged in a variety of measures such as the early removal of LGBT flags, and the censorship of media pieces that display LGBT realities in local services.

Edit: What the hell is this about me having a newsletter lmao. Thanks for the supportive comments though.

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I'm glad that y'all are here

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Rent does not rule (lemmy.world)
[-] SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world 131 points 1 year ago

Based Greta, the one actual girlboss.

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world to c/autism@lemmy.world

They are not the same thing, even if a lot of people try to use them both interchangeably.

The modern form of autism as a diagnosis is born in the 1930s, when behaviorism is a dominant force in psychology. Behaviorism seemed pretty useful back then: while you can break a steam engine down to its individual pieces and study them individually, the study of the human brain presents 'a few' more difficulties. In that context, studying a person's behavior and their reactions to different interactions and environments did beat all other alternatives. The problem is that it's still a pretty limited approach. Is this person breaking down because they're tired? Or because they're sick? Or do they want to draw attention, or did they have a tough day before coming here, or are trying to manipulate their way out of-? You cannot truly know from the lenses of behaviorism, because you cannot (or could not) study the mind's internal state. However, the people working in the field still needed to justify their own salaries, so if they managed to get any results, they could claim they were making progress. We've been carrying a lot baggage from this period, one of the most harmful of which would be ABA therapy.

While the contemporary criteria to diagnose autism has improved somewhat, we can still find the traces of behaviorism everywhere through the psychiatric profession. I was recently watching someone take an online test (which, naturally, should only be used as an exploratory tool, but still points out to criteria used by doctors contemporarily or a few years ago, if you want to be optimistic), and a lot of questions are fairly questionable:

  • Others have told me that I have trouble managing my anger.
  • I have a tendency to yell at people when I feel frustrated or stressed.
  • I am often beset by feelings of sadness.
  • I rarely experience happiness or joy.

All of these questions make perfect sense for a behaviorist: all of these traits form part of a list of observed signs of a disorder widely studied, so they should belong to the same category as all the others. There is a significant problem though: how can you discern between traits inherent to the person's natural tendencies, and natural responses to a hostile environment? It can get pretty difficult for someone who suffers systematic discrimination to live a fulfilling life, but that's no reason to claim that ethnic minorities who suffer from racism are naturally predisposed towards anger or depression.

It is a given in autistic communities that autism is inherent to a person's personality. The scientific community has some trouble to take the last jump to that conclusion, because even though research often finds strong evidence of genetic inheritability, it isn't possible to predict an autism diagnosis in its current form from genetics alone. I posit that that just isn't possible, because the criteria to diagnose autism is an unholy amalgam of traits inherent to the individual and social/environmental maladaptation, which is not the same thing that we here refer to when we speak of autism as a neurotype.

0

Sorry for the external link, but Lemmy wouldn’t allow me to post the whole text. As mentioned at the start, feel free to contribute or debate as you see fit, I might update this post later on.

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world to c/neurodivergence@beehaw.org

Sorry for the external link, but Lemmy wouldn't allow me to post the whole text. As mentioned at the start, feel free to contribute or debate as you see fit, I might update this post later on.

1
Paris Expo, 1937 (i.imgur.com)

On the eve of WWII, Paris hosted the 1937 Expo, and the USSR and Nazi Germany had their exhibitions placed on front of each other.

The German pavillon was crowned by an eagle holding a swastika, symbolizing the authocratic nature of the regime, while the Soviet one had a man and a woman standing together and holding a hammer and sickle, with both pavillons ultimately appearing to be opposing each other.

Neither of them could have asked for a better vehicle to represent the narratives they were constructing for their own governments.

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SuddenDownpour

joined 1 year ago