Wimmin's be thinkin' too much.

Rats choose sugar over cocaine -

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/

War on competence and beauty -

https://twitter.com/SBakerMD/status/1079801767007641602

Average IQ of College Undergrads and Graduate Degree Holders by Decade

http://www.unz.com/anepigone/average-iq-of-college-undergrads-and-graduate-degree-holders-by-decade/

According to new studies, excess body weight is an established cause of cancer, currently known to be linked to 13 cancers.

https://www.healtheuropa.eu/excess-body-weight/89576/

"Raising Kids Isn’t Easy. Parenting Advice Often Makes It Harder."

(book review)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/books/review-act-natural-cultural-history-parenting-jennifer-traig.html

Excerpts:

...As the parent of two children and the author of previous books about obsessive-compulsive disorder and hypochondria, Traig wanted to examine how “developed-world, middle-class Westerners” learned to follow a script that is so culturally specific. She ended her research feeling not just informed but relieved: “People have done crazy, crazy things to their children throughout history, and the species continued all the same.”

The species may have survived, though the fates of individual children were another matter. The history recounted in this book is studded with violence and death. Child abandonment was once routine; in Ancient Rome, 20 to 40 percent of babies were left to die of exposure. Even the advent of foundling hospitals in European cities didn’t help much; the mortality rates in some institutions (understaffed, suffused with disease) could reach 90 percent.

Parents have always found raising children to entail a great deal of work, enlisting relatives and servants — sometimes handing offspring over to religious orders. As Traig says, “the history of parenting is, in large part, a history of trying to get out of it.” This was true even when babies were considered little laborers-to-be, expected to contribute within a few years to the family livelihood.

Philosophers like Locke and Rousseau published treatises on childhood education, but it was only toward the end of the 19th century — when children became, in the sociologist Viviana Zelizer’s memorable phrase, “economically worthless but emotionally priceless” — that parents began to see themselves as wholly responsible for cultivating a child’s intellectual and emotional life. In the 1970s, the term “to parent” emerged as an active verb...

(snip)

"The Dangerous Rise of the IUD as Poverty Cure:
The notion that limiting women’s reproduction can cure societal ills has a long, shameful history."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/opinion/iud-implants-contraception-poverty.html

Excerpts:

...Between 1909 and 1979, about 20,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in California — one of 33 states where compulsory sterilization in the name of eugenics and social well-being was legal in the 20th century...

...Promoting IUDs and implants is certainly less egregious than state-sponsored eugenics. But promoting them from a poverty-reduction perspective still targets the reproduction of certain women based on a problematic and simplistic understanding of the causes of societal ills. Such tactics could also, ironically, harm the quality of family-planning care for the very women they are intended to help.

Of course contraception is critical to individuals’ human right to control their reproduction and shape the course of their own lives. But there is a clear danger in suggesting that ending poverty on a societal level is as simple as inserting a device into an arm or uterus. This idea distracts from the structural factors — like the availability of social services and racial discrimination — that determine economic opportunities. Providing contraception is critical because it is a core component of women’s health care, not because of an unfounded belief that it is a silver bullet for poverty.

We also have concerns about how this emphasis on birth control as a tool of poverty reduction actually plays out in clinics. Claims about the social benefits of increasing the use of IUDs and implants can contribute to a narrative that says these methods are the best methods for everyone and that a program’s success should be judged by the numbers of IUDs and implants its providers insert. This, in turn, can contribute to providers neglecting individual women’s preferences when it comes to birth control: applying subtle pressure to use long-acting contraception, for example, or resisting requests to remove IUDs and implants.

These concerns about the quality of family-planning care are particularly salient for women of color. Research has shown that black women are more likely to feel pressured to use contraceptives. When studying counseling about IUDs specifically, we found that providers are more likely to recommend IUDs to low-income black and Latina women than low-income white women.

Given these biases, and the long history of coercion, it is no wonder that research has found that more than 40 percent of black and Latina women think the government promotes birth control to limit births among communities of color. Such beliefs should not be dismissed as conspiracy theories but recognized as understandable reactions to lived experiences. Programs to promote long-acting methods among women of color can further erode trust in family-planning services. Indeed, women of color have led efforts to raise awareness about the dangers of these programs and define principles for respectful provision of these methods...

(snip)

The article is about US forces stationed in Syria. This passage stood out (emphasis mine):

War has become something very like a background process in our global world, something the public is dimly aware of and occasionally refers to as "hybrid war","collusion" or even "deals" but doesn't quite understand. Nor are the professionals all in accord. A recent article in West Point's Modern War Institute argues that conventional war (maneuver warfare) as we knew it is dead and has been replaced by a war-in-peace where the boundaries between diplomacy, economic competition, espionage, proxy conflicts and war itself are blurred.

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/ours-to-reason-why/

The problem with that thinking is that sooner or later someone comes along and practices that form of warfare that you declared dead and buried and you have no idea how to deal with it because you never prepared for it.

On why teaching kids to control their feelings is more important than expressing feelings:

https://www.herald-dispatch.com/features_entertainment/john-rosemond-to-express-or-not-to-express/article_f962976b-f377-55ba-8c3c-4edea7c12580.html

Most of it:

Feelings are a wild card. On the one hand, the ability to experience deep emotion is one of the things that defines us as human. On the other, feelings can be and often are destructive to relationships and even to self. Like thoughts and behavior, feelings begin in chaos (check out the toddler), and like thoughts and behavior, feelings require firm discipline lest they become ever more chaotic...

...The answer to "How do you feel about that?" is, apparently, more important than the answer to "What is the right and proper thing to do about that?"

This sort of approach verifies that the child's emotions are in some way valid. Now, hear me clearly: I am not saying that a child's emotions are never valid. I'm saying that children are, by nature, soap opera factories. As such, giving a child the impression that every emotion that wells up inside of him is worthy of serious discussion (and that people should adjust their behavior accordingly) is destructive to the child. Just as children must be told that certain behavior is inappropriate, so must they be told that the expression of certain emotions is inappropriate.

These days, it is psychologically incorrect to say to a child, "You're being silly. There are children in the world who have real problems, like not having enough food. If the worst problem in your life is that someone called you a name, well, sorry to tell you, but I'm not going to give that the time of day. I've got much better things to do. Get a grip, kiddo."

Those approximate were my mother's words to me, on occasions, when I was making emotional mountains out of molehills. Most people of my generation can testify to similar experiences, for which we are thankful.

Which is the happier, more well-adjusted child: one who expresses his feelings freely when he doesn't like the way things are or one who has learned to accept that things will not always be as he would wish? The latter, of course!

Parents routinely seek my counsel concerning the former, describing children who become apoplectic at, say, the word "no." Invariably, the parents in question are attempting to solve the problem by talking to their kids about — you guessed it — their feelings. And, predictably, the more they talk, the worse the problem becomes. When they stop talking and begin to demonstrate calm, purposeful intolerance — in the form of penalizing consequences — for inappropriate emotional outbursts, the outbursts gradually stop and, lo and behold, the happiness quotient of the children in question begins to rise.

Which is a good thing for all concerned, especially the child.

(end)

Personally, since he usually recommends saying not "you're being silly" but, rather, "we're not going to talk about that anymore; we've already talked enough," I think it's very rude to talk the way he suggested! What's wrong with the latter? If you can get the point across without risking having your kid withdraw and cut off communications, long-term (often a dangerous situation, after all), why not?

But he hints at a very important point - teaching kids laws and regulations isn't as simple as telling them "do as I, the teachers, and the police say, or else." E.g., kids learn not to steal only when they've been taught, early on, to accept the words "no, I won't buy you that" without exploding. They ALSO have to be taught that the pain of being unpopular, combined with peer pressure, is not an excuse to break any laws. Pain is just a part of life, period, and solving the problem will usually be your job and not someone else's.

Sarah Hoyt once mentioned that we live in a kind of stealth matriarchy, where women have all the power in the West, but still get to rail against an imaginary patriarchy as if they were living in some third world toilet where women are property. They get to feel like they are fighting against The Man, but they are, in fact, The Man. Just the mere fact that claiming oppression wins them notoriety and fame is tacit evidence everything they are saying is bullshit. At least the Ashleigh Shackelfords of the world saying “fuck you, pay me” are being a little bit honest. They’re just in it for free Patreon and PayPal money from idiot, guilt-tripped soyboys. At least they realize it’s all a con game and admit it openly.

http://thedeclination.com/hot-girl-privilege/

Given these biases, and the long history of coercion, it is no wonder that research has found that more than 40 percent of black and Latina women think the government promotes birth control to limit births among communities of color.

Planned Parenthood's reason for being.

On the other hand, if you're poor and you have children, the odds of you ever being not poor is...poor.

A toy for the kids at home, I suppose.

https://twitter.com/AwardsDarwin/status/1077159034258636800

1/2020th -

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1080858959404240896

Darth, as I've mentioned before, it would have been kind of unusual for any white woman of Sanger's generation (she was born in 1879) NOT to be in favor of eugenics, to a certain degree.

Even so, I have never heard anything to suggest that she (being a nurse) cared more about that than about simply rescuing ALL women from having children they Didn't Want - not to mention dying in childbirth. There was also the danger of losing a husband who disappeared when he couldn't handle having to feed so many kids anymore.

In the meantime, I trust you're not suggesting that PP's goal, TODAY, is eugenics.

For some of us it was golden, but for others 1975 was as sexless as the top forty on the radio-- https://mobile.twitter.com/jackshafer/status/1080860184195616769

In the meantime, I trust you're not suggesting that PP's goal, TODAY, is eugenics.

Fruit of the poison tree and all. But, let's assume they moved away from that, instead of just burying it. What is the demographic breakdown of their clients?

I doubt they'll tell us that. But it would be interesting.

And as I wrote on Ira Levin’s death, his wonderful libertarian novel This Perfect Day reflected similar assumptions about centralization and government planning. The novel is set 141 years after the Unification, the establishment of a world government guided by a central computer. The computer, Uni, provides all the members of the human race with everything they need - food, shelter, employment, psychotherapy, and monthly “treatments” that include vaccines, contraceptives, tranquilizers, a drug to prevent messy beard growth, and a medication that reduces aggressiveness and limits the sex drive. Everyone loves Uni, which gives them everything they could want, except for a few hardy rebels who just value freedom.

https://www.cato.org/blog/science-fiction-authors-lost-myths-1950s

Yipes.

https://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-sexual-abuse/index.html

How does looking at their clients tell you whether they really want to BE there and using birth control or not? Also, PP is not the government - and many's the time the government didn't WANT to make it easy for women to have easy access to family planning, even when it was just contraception.

Here's what I said last February:

While there's no shortage of black people who are opposed to abortion (and white people as well), that doesn't change the fact that when a healthy teenager or woman of any color chooses to have one, even if she's somewhat unhappy about it, she's likely someone who has a few OPTIONS in life other than being a minimum-wage worker and she doesn't want to ruin that chance, even if it's slim. As Katha Pollitt wrote in her column: "...you don't find many 15-year-olds dropping out of the Dalton School to have babies. Girls with bright futures--college, jobs, travel--have abortions. It's the ones who have nothing to postpone who become mothers."

And, haven't we all heard that that politicians often prefer voters who stay poor and are thus easy to control? Making abortion (and birth control) hard to get is obviously a way to do that.
_____________________________________

Here's something else Pollitt wrote, years ago:

"Here are some reasons why women I know became pregnant: because her IUD came out one morning; because her husband failed - once, in 13 years! - to put on his condom in time; because she and her live-in trusted to the calendar and had a diaphragmless tryst on the beach; because she thought breast-feeding prevented ovulation and, anyway, she'd given birth just six weeks before. Stupid, trivial reasons, the same sort of reasons you might give for missing a train. (I'm sorry, you apologize later, I misread the schedule, I couldn't find a taxi, the meeting ran late.) Most of the time, people catch their trains, and most of the time, adult, middle-class, sensible women take care of birth control, and birth control takes care of them. (I'm not talking about teen-agers or the poor or the helpless here.) But a woman has about 30 years of potentially fertile sex - that's a long time to go without a slip-up. That's one reason why more than half the pregnancies in this country are accidents, and why, if you follow 100 women over their reproductive lives, 46 of them will have had an abortion by menopause, and many will have had more than one."