\m/

Legit though, little homies leave when it’s dry again, so at our house, only the bitey ones get trapped and released. Never seen a brown recluse here (which is good, what with that name; they’d be failures if I’d seen them), but we have a healthy widow population that rarely gets inside.

Spiders is family. They be our bouncers that handle the riffraff.

Exception: crawling on me. Anything on the body is likely to get thumped away, and damn the cost in invertebrate life. Unless it’s a jumper, because them’s homies even on the body. Little guys can set up shop and keep gnats out of my ears if they want. That’s the exception to the exception. Is that an inception at that point? I have no idea, I just like spiders.

The paper was published last month https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07848-5

But I suspect this was not a new discovery as much as a new expansion of the information.

It’s both

For anyone coming along and not trusting the title, it is misleading.

Infrared is one of the things mosquitoes use to find a target.

They still use CO 2 detection as part of their methods, this is in addition to, not instead of.

Edit: the relevant section of text

*Each cue on its own – CO2 , odor, or infrared – failed to pique the mosquitoes’ interest. But the insect’s apparent thirst for blood increased twofold when a setup with just CO2 and odor had the infrared factor added.

“Any single cue alone doesn’t stimulate host-seeking activity. It’s only in the context of other cues, such as elevated CO2 and human odor that IR makes a difference,” says UCSB neurobiologist Craig Montell.

The team also confirmed the mosquitoes’ infrared sensors lie in their antennae, where they have a temperature-sensitive protein, TRPA1. When the team removed the gene for this protein, mosquitos were unable to detect infrared.*

In other words, they still use the previously known ways to find a meal, and this is how they work up close. That’s over simplified, but it’s the important part because it gives info on how to reduce being “bitten”. Loose clothing that covers the extremities diffuses the heat, making us “look” like we aren’t the right kind of target wherever the IR is spread out wrong to their antennae.

The article is actually a really good one, but the title is crap

Edit 2: the paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07848-5

Man, it really sounds like you can’t read. I’ve explained it a couple different ways, and you simply aren’t getting it. This one is on you.

Quoting so it’s easier to see for me as I write.

i do way too much street fent, nearly die, and wake up in an alley somewhere, am i responsible for what happened to me in between those points? Or not? It’s not like i stopped existing as a person. Physically, i am fully responsible for what happened in that state, psychologically, i am to some degree at the very least tangentially responsible. (there is a reason why you cant drink and drive)

In terms of consent based events, no. If someone else takes advantage of your state, even the voluntary intake of substances doesn’t remove the obligation to obtain meaningful consent from the inebriated person by any other party.

It also depends on the substance. Some stuff, you have way less ability to function consciously. Others, you’re changed so little as to be kinda irrelevant outside of determining the exact consequences in a complicated situation. As an example, if someone slams too much caffeine and punches somebody, that’s 100% on them in any normal circumstances. Something like weed, you run into edge cases where it might be a mitigation, but not as much since there’s less inhibition of the conscious mind compared to something like fentanyl. A pothead robs a store with their buddy, I’m not going to believe they couldn’t have refused because of the weed (under normal circumstances). If they’re barely functional from opiates, I might buy that they didn’t really know what was going on, and got swept up in things.

That last one is a real thing I’ve run across a few times. Dudes thieving while high and claiming to only have been dragged along, and then having something shoved in their hands and be told to run. It’s believable with some drugs, less so with others.

Like anything about human behavior and social rules, the more specific things get, the easier it is to throw down a definite yes/no regarding culpability. The more general it stays, the more you have to deal in a degree of “usually, but”.

That is separate (in my opinion as well as in law in some places) from the inebriated person committing bad or illegal acts themselves.

There’s also a middle ground where a person that’s inebriated may have some degree of exculpatory claim if someone used their altered state to get them to commit a bad or illegal act. They’d still be responsible, but any judgements on their acts should take it into account (socially and legally).

Edit: also, I apologize for taking so long to respond, but I was having trouble reading for some reason, and I couldn’t use tts when I first got the notification. Dyslexia is fucking weird sometimes. I don’t usually have this much trouble lol.

If there are no consequences to saying no, it isn’t coercive. It’s the difference between begging and saying “if you don’t, I’ll threat”

The threat can be minor, something like “I’ll tell everyone you’re a lousy lay” all the way up to “I’ll tell everyone you raped me” or less direct like “I’ll stop paying the car payment”, or “I’ll evict you”.

But, as nasty as not taking no and backing off immediately is, it isn’t the same as coercion or force. Even being very pushy about it, even using physical contact isn’t coercion, though whether or not such behavior should be illegal is an interesting possibility. The difference is whether or not the target of the “seduction” can walk away freely.

If they can, if they can enforce their no and leave, even if they don’t exert that ability, or isn’t coercive, just douchey.

Now, there is another issue in there. Some people may not believe they can freely and safely exit. That’s part of why when someone says no, everything stops, period. Other people may freeze up and be unable to exit, despite having the freedom to, which is another reason we have to make sure that we not only exhibit good sexual behaviors, but teach those ethics whenever needed.

But as far as something being rape or not, that is the ultimate determinant, the freedom of the person to say no, and exit the situation. Legally, it may well not matter if the person nagging the other for sex is aware of the target wanting to exit, but having internal barriers preventing it. That’s something laws and juries have to deal with. But for the purpose of discussion like this, that’s the line.

I was a nurse’s assistant. A pretty damn good one, and one that managed to get partway through two degrees before running out of money both times (rn and psychology), but kept to with reading via the medical library I had access to at one employer.

In other words, I tended to stand out from my co-workers, but ain’t qualified to do shit other than personal care, blood draws, and sweating.

But it might disgust people how often someone asks me to do some kind of procedure I’m nowhere close to qualified to perform. Anything from the simple stuff that’s safe for anyone to do, like removing stitches; all the way up to pulling teeth, putting stitches in, cutting out cysts, removing ingrown toenails, setting broken bones, and pretty damn much anything they think I’m magically able to do because I worked in nursing.

And I always tell them they’re crazy if they think I’m qualified to do it. And they pretty much always say something along the lines of it being better than nothing, and they can’t afford a doctor.

And they’ll even offer me money to do the stuff. Not as much as doctor would cost, but way less than the legal fees would cost if I did it.

No bullshit, about five years ago, a guy that lives down the street comes knocking on my door one afternoon. We know each other, but aren’t friends. Dude has a rag wrapped around his hand, dripping blood. Says he’s got a bad cut. I start going for my phone to call 911, and dude says nah, just stitch me up, I can’t afford an ER bill.

Like, dude, what the absolute fuck?

That is the state of US healthcare. People are willing to let some rando stitch them up than go to the ER because it’s too damn expensive.

It’s also both sad and interesting that people just assume I can get the job done. I mean, I could do some of the stuff I get asked, not all of it is difficult. But I’m not the typical NA, most of us don’t bother stepping outside of personal care in our off time. But some of that stuff, an RN isn’t qualified for either. Folks don’t really have an understanding of what the various certifications and degrees mean.

It’s crazy

Fucking weebs.

Well, as others have covered, the us has engaged in imperialism directly, in the past, and indirectly even now.

But I don’t think that answers your question.

The “modern” US, and I use the word modern to represent the post ww2 era, has a very different place on the world stage than it did before ww2, though that place started shifting after the first world war.

You simply can’t ignore ww2 and the effects it had on global politics any time something like this comes up. Most of what we think of as the way things work go back to that time even more than the nations’ individual histories. There really wasn’t any nation that wasn’t deeply and radically changed by that.

After ww2, there was a global desire for peace and stability, with stability being the greater goal. The UN, NATO, all the major alliances and blocs stem from that.

Nukes played a huge role in major nations not being willing to just go out and conquer. It forced everyone to play a bit less overtly, so we ended up with proxy wars and coups and other fuckery when world powers wanted to extend their influence.

But, there’s also another big factor. You go out and conquer somewhere, you have to manage it. You take over Columbia, you now have to run Columbia, protect your ownership of it, and deal with the people there being your people. That’s a heavy burden for a world power. It’s one thing to maintain a small island as a territory (think Guam as an example); it’s a whole nuther thing to try and take over a nation that not only isn’t going to be done without worldwide resistance, but is harder to maintain control over because it isn’t contiguous.

The U.S. has a pretty major advantage by stretching across the entire continent. We’ve got entire oceans as borders, and entire nations that also stretch across the continent as neighbors. It’s a nation that’s damn near impossible to invade, blockade, or otherwise use direct methods against. Why would a nation give up those advantages by taking over somewhere else?

It’s way easier to use other methods to control other nations rather than own them. Fund groups inside the country that are friendly to your nation, let them take over the country, and profit (literally, since there’s a long history of the U.S. interfering with other countries’ governments for nothing other than capitalist gain).

If the other country doesn’t have an economic value, but have strategic positioning, or can serve as a puppet state or as a distraction, it’s still easier to just stage a coup, rebellion, or otherwise put the country in a condition that’s better aligned. It isn’t and wasn’t just the US engaging in this kind of activity, but the U.S. was pretty dominant on the western side of such activity. Our allied nations backed those plays, but the U.S. often called the shots.

In other words, the U.S. has never wanted or needed to conquer anywhere else after ww2. There were better ways to achieve goals.

Jfc, I did this, kinda.

I got stopped before I got my finger in, and it wouldn’t have fit anyway, but I tried this fucking joke.

I am very lucky my wife has as silly a sense of humor as I do, or I likely wouldn’t still have a wife lol.

I wouldn’t go that far. If you look at what they said, they were talking about cheating, or rather helping someone cheat.

Still a less than stellar ethical stance, but the comment they were responding to was about cheating, not consent, so I suspect that those of us that saw the ugliest possibilities in the post saw their comment with that in mind. I know I did the first time I saw the comment. It wasn’t until I came back after a response to a comment I made that I noticed the difference.

Mind you, they then went full jerk, so they aren’t exactly a pleasant individual. But I’d rather that be the issue than something they didn’t actually say.

If they do it that way, I’d watch it, and I’ve never played Minecraft.

I’m taking a turn here, off the original topic a little, but not a true subject change or tangent.

There’s a ton of history behind all the terminology around terms like this. And they’re all inherently racist. They aren’t, however slurs (currently, one could debate the past) in the few places they are used. They’re too archaic to be slurs in English, they just aren’t used.

Griffe, in specific was more of a French colonies thing, with other terms being used elsewhere.

Now, the point of all this is to get back to why the term is racist in the first place.

All the terms, mulatto, quateron (or quadroon), octoroon, metis, mamelouk, whatever; they are all about how much black is in the person, how much African heritage they have. Kinda obvious, but it’s never about how much white they have. The French colonies has specific terminology for someone that’s 1/64 black. Think about that. Out of all their ancestors, one is black, and that makes them black, with some white blood, separate from people that looked exactly the same.

That whole “one drop” mentality is why they’re all racist, horrible terminology, even though they aren’t used as insults in English. They weren’t really used as insults back in the slave era either, just as yet another way to keep the boot on necks. The terms were used among free people of color too, which shows just how effective that boot of language really was.

Now, the terminology varied a lot because it came from multiple languages. Spanish, French, Portuguese and English. Where you were determined what terms were in use, originally, but as colonies shifted hands, slavers intermingled,and borders moved, things got mixed around some. Here in the American southeast, you see even more mingling of the terms, with the dominant ones shifting over time in various locations.

But, and this is actually relevant, the U.S. isn’t the only place this kind of thinking existed, and some of the terms are slurs in other places and languages.

Griffe isn’t a slur anywhere I’m aware of, but “sambo” is, and it was another word for the same 3/4 African ancestry. Afaik, it isn’t a common slur, big there are places in South and Central America where it’s used as one.

However, there are also places in South and Central America where mulatto, or mulatta are used with pride.

Now, why am I writing this? It’s not just a historical curiosity, some vestigial words lingering in dictionaries. There was an entire set of jargon used as a tool of dominance and oppression. The thinking behind it still lingers everywhere that European imperialism existed (so, essentially everywhere across the world). Australia even had the same or similar terms for people with aboriginal ancestry.

The stain of slavery, specifically the African slave trade, is embedded across the world. We forget sometimes, because the terminology of oppression changed, that we still think that way. It takes effort for some of us to first realize that we default to thinking of anyone with mixed African heritage as black first, as the black being mixed into the other “race”. And eliminating that way of thinking is even more work.

But it’s work we need to do. As individuals, as nations, as a species, we need to understand that the systemic racism isn’t just about laws and official biases. It’s about the lingering, pernicious taint in how people think about race as a whole.

No, that is not what I argued. I said that if she used force or coercion, she would have raped him.

Coercion is the use of social, emotional, or other non physical means to cause a person to act against their will.

Rape is not always an act of physical force. You didn’t say that it was, I’m just repeating it for general purpose.

The night ending in sex would have meant that she sobered up, expressed her consent and intent, then he agreed to sex.

It is kinda possible for two people to rape each other, but there’s a shit-ton of stretching of the term, plus very unlikely situations to make it so. Even then, there would be a ton of argument about it from anyone not involved.

I think you either misunderstood, I phrased things badly, or my dyslexia + poor proofreading via tts screwed something up. I can’t find any errors, so I have to assume the first two.

There are a ton of ways to use non physical force on someone, and most of them can not only be done while drunk, but the inhibition being depressed via alcohol could make someone more likely to use them.

That is not the same thing as attempting to convince someone to have sex with you by using your physical appearance, the offer of sex (or specific sex acts), or even just by being an asshole and not leaving them alone. As shitty as nagging at someone for sex is, it hasn’t the same thing as rape, so long as the person being the target is capable of consent and has freedom to leave.

I’m going to give a longer explanation than was already given.

So, imagine yourself at a hospital. You’re about to have a minor surgery, and get knocked out. While you’re under, some nurse comes in and fucks you in the ass.

Is that rape?

Switch things up. You’re at a bar, having a good time, someone slips something in your drink. While you’re under the influence of that hit of whatever, they take you into the bathroom and fuck you in the ass, and you agreed to that, you may even like it.

Is that rape?

On a fundamental level, if someone is visibly drunk, or even olfactorily drunk (meaning your can smell the booze on them), they are in a state of mind that is the same as being drugged. It doesn’t matter if they are initiating contact, they are unable to give meaningful consent.

Now, if you want to argue we need another term instead of rape, I’m okay with that. We can call it whatever. But we have statutory rape already, which exists because we recognize that even when someone is the initiator, there are states of mind and being that simply can’t make a choice to have sex in a meaningful way. So using the term rape for violating meaningful consent is fine, even when it’s an adult, and even when they initiate.

I am also aware that there are edge cases where consenting before consuming a substance could/should count as meaningful consent. And I’m aware that there is a range of inebriation where meaningful consent is still possible. However it is nearly impossible to tell without testing what a person’s blood alcohol level is, so we’re limited. That in turn means that the standard for (at least colloquial usage) what is and isn’t inebriated rape has to be broader than it would be if we had reliable testing on the fly.

I also agree with your point that she was ignoring consent, and being an absolutely horrible person, and if she had persisted by force or coercion and he had given in, I wouldn’t accept her being drunk as a defense against any charges brought.

But there’s a fundamental inability to consent when drunk. How drunk? That’s something that would need to be addressed by medical science and then legislated. What’s the maximum BAC someone can give meaningful consent for other things? But that fact is there, that alcohol serves to break down the ability to consent, and sex without consent is considered rape, on at least a colloquial level, if not always on a legal level everywhere.

Thanks :)

You’ve gotten enough good answers that I think it okay to address a tangent.

Things are definitely at the point where christofascists, and other hate driven ideologies are getting louder.

But, and this is vitally important as to why the pushback is making it a matter of public discourse at the level you’re asking about, there’s more allies now than ever.

Be ready for old man talking here, and ignore if not interested. Disclaimer: I have arthritis, and it’s easier to type gay than LGBTQ, so I’ll be using the shorter word for that reason, not as an exclusion.

Back in the seventies and eighties, gay rights was a thing for mostly gay people. Before that it had been gaining minor support, and the eighties were when social restrictions started changing enough that gay people were allowed to have some degree of public awareness in both news and fiction.

I keep bringing it up in various places, but Billy Crystal played the first recurring openly gay character on television. That was in 1977, and ran until 1981. I don’t think it can be said enough how huge that was in bringing awareness of gay people as just people was. That role brought gay into our homes and lives in a way nothing had before.

When something makes a group real to the majority, makes things stop being a dirty secret and just another part of life, you get kids growing up that are more open and accepting. As acceptance grew, so did the amount of people coming out.

As people came out, the straights realized that not only had they always known gay people, but they liked them, and even loved them for years, sometimes a lifetime. When that starts spreading, you have more people that are willing to support gay people and their rights as fellow humans.

Instead of being pariahs, gay people became part of life, part of our hearts. Eventually, more and more people that didn’t have direct relationships with someone gay became allies, supporters.

However, the more gay people became a part of life, the more noise bigots made, in their own homes and in public. So, instead of it being a dirty little secret nobody talked about, that way of thinking got nastier and louder. Before, it wasn’t something everyone would even know about until much later in life, but as the gay rights movement in the seventies started building up steam, you had more hatred being spewed as well. There had been before, but it was more likely to be handled with dismissive or contemptuous remarks rather than outright venom and bile in the open.

Now, us folks that were kids during the late 70s and early 80s didn’t just accept gay folks. We would often defy elders that opposed gay rights or bad talked them. As time passed and we grew up, the segment of that generation that became allies tended to be more and more vocal in our support. By the nineties, my generation was moving into adulthood and willing to vote our conscience. We were willing to put our time and money into the cause. Sometimes, we’d put our bodies on the line when things got ugly.

Move forward to now, and you’ve got two or three generations actively and loudly opposing the bigots, and not just the gay people. The bigots are smaller in number, but have been pandered to by political groups around the world, so have more weight than their numbers should give them.

Mind you, the bigots also include people of every generation too. Don’t imagine that there aren’t kids even that spew the same kind of nastiness that’s been used since before the 70s. But there’s more in direct opposition to them, and plenty of passive dismissal of the bigotry. Bigotry is not a relic of the past, nor is it limited to older generations; some of the loudest and most obnoxious hatred gets spewed by younger adherents. But the seeming percentage of hate is lower in younger generations, and the seeming percentage of outright support is higher.

That puts us in the situation we’re in, where hate has a bigger voice than it should, and love/acceptance has to shout louder to oppose it.

It can be a difficult thing for an entirely new reddit user. But not every sub applies those restrictions. The key is to find them. With things the way they are now, it’s impossible for me to say much about which ones because things changed so much. But there used to be “free karma” subs.

And you’ll usually be able to find meme subs that don’t karma or age filter because they don’t care about reposts or bots. But you can’t spam posts, or you’ll end up running into trouble with reddit itself sometimes, if you trip their metrics that are supposed to detect bots (which aren’t clear as to the criteria).

It is a pain in the ass lol.

And yeah, it’s different rules for different subs. And, since the automod is very customizable, but the skill with it varies, the end results can be weird.

The account age limit is good though, and works in favor of new users because it gives them time to lurk and pick up the basics of what not to do, and get a feel for the culture of the sub and reddit in general, which (in theory) reduces the chances of getting banned for simple or stupid mistakes made from just jumping in blindly.

The karma limit should do the same thing, but with the kind of subs that are there to build karma, it tends to end up with noobs not actually learning much.