Honest talk about the cost of being ugly

[Toni]

I didn’t get into dangerous household substances because I did not care to be beaten.

Wow. You really are/were way different from me. I was rarely threatened with beating, and warnings of beatings sans explanations (beyond “it will kill you”) only piqued my curiosity.
That’s why I practiced holding my breath in school; I was told you can only go 3 minutes without air. Proving that to be wrong made me suspicious of warnings AND a lot more cautious about things I was warned about, knowing that what I was told could be wrong either way.
That is, The Thing they said could kill me might actually be innocuous, or lethal under very rare circumstances or possibly far more dangerous than how was represented, as grownups sometimes try not to scare the kids.

I’m not sure I was ever explicitly threatened with a beating but that implicit threat hung over us. We definitely were spanked first being ‘bad’—for me, it was for ‘making my little sister cry’ so of course she cried often to see me get yelled at and hit. We were sff headed for doing anything they considered ‘babyish.’ Later I got yelled at for—you’ll never guess: talking back. Really, disagreeing with my father about anything. Adolescence was fun.

My older sister apparently toy trued the holding her breath thing if she didn’t get her way— once when she was little. My father swatted her in the butt, she cried out and for my parents: problem solved. I was either not born or to little to remember…

We were quiet, soft spoken, well behaved little girls who knew to bring home A’s. My older sister was considered perfect and I would never measure up so I was just me. I am the black sheep.


Your post confirms to me what I always suspected: if we had been boys, we likely would have been tempted by the guns.

 

[Elixir]

My father swatted her in the butt, she cried out and for my parents: problem solved.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The right needs bad things to protect society from. You can pretty much count on them taking the path of harm maximization.

And the left is different?
Both "sides" need, create, manufacture bad things to protect society from.

Otherwise politicians would have nothing to do.

The left doesn't go around making life more dangerous like the right does.

Historically that is incorrect.
Gulags, death camps, executions in many places.
History would teach us to be wise to avoid extremes of left and right.
But we do not learn from history.

The left has been guilty of some major stupidity, but none of this was about trying to make life more dangerous.

 

[Tigers!]

Z

Anybody with half a bran and an overview of history will see that religion has been a major source of human conflict, from early tibal cures to early civilizations to today.

Today

Hindus vs Sikhs, India
Hindu vs Muslims, Pakistan\India
Muslim vs Muslim, Iran/Arabs
Jews vs Muslims, Israel/Arabs/Persians
Catholics vs Protestants, North Ireland

The Troubles were not a religious war. I was a war about who would control Nth Ireland. Nobody cared whether you did Mass or Holy Communion. It happened to bifurcate nicely along religious lines but religion did not start it. Nor end it.

The last religious war in Europe was the Thirty Year's War in the 17th Century.
American Revolution, French Revolution, Napoleonic wars, Franco-Prussian war, the wars that tore apart the Balkans from 1880s to WW1 were not religious.
Russian Revolution, WW2, Korean, Vietnam, Iran-Iraq war, Ukrainian war etc. The war(s) in the Congo, wars in the Caucasus tore apart the fall of the USSR. None were religious. Some bifurcated nicely along religious lines and fought with religious like fervour. But they were secular and political. Who will be in charge?

Tribalism, extreme nationalism, Left vs Right are more of a problem than religion.

 

[Tigers!]

The right needs bad things to protect society from. You can pretty much count on them taking the path of harm maximization.

And the left is different?
Both "sides" need, create, manufacture bad things to protect society from.

Otherwise politicians would have nothing to do.

The left doesn't go around making life more dangerous like the right does.

Historically that is incorrect.
Gulags, death camps, executions in many places.
History would teach us to be wise to avoid extremes of left and right.
But we do not learn from history.

The left has been guilty of some major stupidity, but none of this was about trying to make life more dangerous.

The Kulaks, clergy, the gulags in Russia would disagree vehemently with you. The Holodomor disagrees with you. Cultural Revolution and Great Leap forward in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia etc., dissidents in North Korea, re-education camps in Vietnam and Cuba disagree with you. They would say the left cannot be trusted. The left could/has make it dangerous for those who disagree with them.

 

[ZiprHead]

without religion it might be worse

Or it might be better.

 

[bilby]

The Troubles were not a religious war. I was a war about who would control Nth Ireland. Nobody cared whether you did Mass or Holy Communion. It happened to bifurcate nicely along religious lines but religion did not start it. Nor end it.

I have no idea who told you this, but they were talking utter bollocks.

It is a conflict with deep historical roots, but at its beginning, middle and end it was almost entirely a religious conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The Troubles were not a religious war. I was a war about who would control Nth Ireland. Nobody cared whether you did Mass or Holy Communion. It happened to bifurcate nicely along religious lines but religion did not start it. Nor end it.

I have no idea who told you this, but they were talking utter bollocks.

It is a conflict with deep historical roots, but at its beginning, middle and end it was almost entirely a religious conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Tigers is right. Its a conflict about money and power. The protestants have the money and education. And back in the day Catholics were barred from govornment posts, or even being teachers.

The Titanic was built in Northern Ireland. The biggest prestige project at the world at the time. The crew was entirely protestant.

What healed the rift between Catholics and protestants in Northern Ireland was the Irish IT boom of the early 2000. Suddenly the protestants weren't disproportionally wealthy anymore. So IRA lay down their arms.

Anyway... blaming that conflict on religion is doing a pretty superficial analysis imho

 

[bilby]

The Troubles were not a religious war. I was a war about who would control Nth Ireland. Nobody cared whether you did Mass or Holy Communion. It happened to bifurcate nicely along religious lines but religion did not start it. Nor end it.

I have no idea who told you this, but they were talking utter bollocks.

It is a conflict with deep historical roots, but at its beginning, middle and end it was almost entirely a religious conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Tigers is right. Its a conflict about money and power.

Religion is about money and power, so to that extent, he is partly right.

But the conflict in Ireland is absolutely sectarian in both foundation and in modern execution.

The protestants have the money and education. And back in the day Catholics were barred from govornment posts, or even being teachers.

Yeah, because they were Catholics. And the Protestants didn't like them.

Not because they were poor, or powerless; Poor and powerless Protestants were NOT barred from government posts or from becoming teachers. Catholics were. Because the conflict was religious.

The Titanic was built in Northern Ireland. The biggest prestige project at the world at the time. The crew was entirely protestant.

Yes. How does this help your dumb effort to contradict me? Do you imagine I am somehow unaware of this well known fact?

What healed the rift between Catholics and protestants in Northern Ireland was the Irish IT boom of the early 2000. Suddenly the protestants weren't disproportionally wealthy anymore. So IRA lay down their arms.

Horseshit. The Irish economy had very limited impact on that of Northern Ireland, because they are two different countries.

Jobs in Dublin are of little use to Catholics in Belfast.

Anyway... blaming that conflict on religion is doing a pretty superficial analysis imho

And what is your (not sufficiently h)o worth? How much study have you made of the roots of sectarianism in the British Isles, or the history of Ireland from the genocides of the seventeenth century through to the establishment of the Home Rule movement, the revolution and the formation of a Republic?

This is a subject I have looked at in some depth, and it is absolutely clear that religion has driven every step of the process, other than the eventual disarming of the IRA - which was due to Mo Mowlam banging heads together, and had three-eighths of fuck all to do with the booming Irish economy (which happened despite the Troubles, and largely as a consequence of Dublin's wisdom in abandoning the campaign for conrol of the entire island, and of the collapse of support for the Roman Catholic Church by the nominal Catholics in the Republic).

 

[Tigers!]

Anyway... blaming that conflict on religion is doing a pretty superficial analysis imho

And what is your (not sufficiently h)o worth? How much study have you made of the roots of sectarianism in the British Isles, or the history of Ireland from the genocides of the seventeenth century through to the establisment of Home Rule, the revolution and the formation of a Republic?

This is a subject I have looked at in some depth, and it is absolutely clear that religion has driven every step of the process, other than the eventual disarming of the IRA - which was due to Mo Mowlam banging heads together,

Mo Mowlam did a very good job there.

and had three-eighths of fuck all to do with the booming Irish economy (which happened despite the Troubles, and largely as a consequence of Dublin's wisdom in abandoning the campaign for conrol of the entire island,

If Dublin decided to abandon the campaign for control of the entire island then that sounds like a political decision, not religious

and of the collapse of support for the Roman Catholic Church by the nominal Catholics in the Republic).

Certainly a factor. But how much would be hard to determine.

 

[steve_bank]

Religion has always been abut money and power but it more basic than that.

I posted this before.

When I was a kid in the 50s my grandmother’s nephew, Irish Catholic family, married a Protestant. It caused a stir in the family, but I did not understand it. I remember talk of whether kids would be raised Catholic or Protestant.

My famliy, the woman,and my relative lived on the same street.

In the 70s I knew a Jewish woman who married a Catholic. I knew her parents and they had no problem. Some in her extended family treated her like a non pern.

Whether identity issues and conflict are genre, learned, or both I do't;t know.

Regardless religious identity remains a mjor source of conflict.

Evangelicals tend to strongly reject Catholics and Mormons as authentic Christians.

In his campaign JFK faced anti Cathodic bias.

 

[bilby]

If Dublin decided to abandon the campaign for control of the entire island then that sounds like a political decision, not religious

Sure. But Dublin wasn't particularly important to the Troubles. The Irish Government was officially neutral, and it was primarily Sinn Fein, who had very little power in the Dáil, who supported the IRA itself after partition.

The two largest parties in the Republic, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (the two main, and by far largest, political parties), despite representing different sides in the Civil War of 1922-3, both decided to accept partition as the price of independence from the UK (and have almost indistinguishable centre-right policy platforms today), leaving the IRA (who are a completely different thing from the actual army of the Irish Republic, the Óglaigh na hÉireann, usually called in English the Irish Defence Forces, but literally translating as "Irish Volunteers", btw) out in the cold.

Irish politics is very complicated, and in my experience the Irish people have very strong, and usually very well informed, political opinions. Listening to RTE phone in radio is eye-opening, if you are used to the abject ignorance on display in the UK and US versions of that medium.

The Northern Irish unionists, particularly the DUP, are (by contrast) a bunch of ignorant hicks and bigots. They think of themselves as supremely English, and as staunch defenders of the King and the Church of England; But if they went to England, they would discover that the actual English people mostly disagree wholeheartedly with them about pretty much everything. They love the idea of England, and their idea is at least a century out of date.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The Troubles were not a religious war. I was a war about who would control Nth Ireland. Nobody cared whether you did Mass or Holy Communion. It happened to bifurcate nicely along religious lines but religion did not start it. Nor end it.

I have no idea who told you this, but they were talking utter bollocks.

It is a conflict with deep historical roots, but at its beginning, middle and end it was almost entirely a religious conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Tigers is right. Its a conflict about money and power. The protestants have the money and education. And back in the day Catholics were barred from govornment posts, or even being teachers.

The Titanic was built in Northern Ireland. The biggest prestige project at the world at the time. The crew was entirely protestant.

What healed the rift between Catholics and protestants in Northern Ireland was the Irish IT boom of the early 2000. Suddenly the protestants weren't disproportionally wealthy anymore. So IRA lay down their arms.

Anyway... blaming that conflict on religion is doing a pretty superficial analysis imho

Religion is almost always the means of conflict, not the cause of conflict.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The Troubles were not a religious war. I was a war about who would control Nth Ireland. Nobody cared whether you did Mass or Holy Communion. It happened to bifurcate nicely along religious lines but religion did not start it. Nor end it.

I have no idea who told you this, but they were talking utter bollocks.

It is a conflict with deep historical roots, but at its beginning, middle and end it was almost entirely a religious conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Tigers is right. Its a conflict about money and power. The protestants have the money and education. And back in the day Catholics were barred from govornment posts, or even being teachers.

The Titanic was built in Northern Ireland. The biggest prestige project at the world at the time. The crew was entirely protestant.

What healed the rift between Catholics and protestants in Northern Ireland was the Irish IT boom of the early 2000. Suddenly the protestants weren't disproportionally wealthy anymore. So IRA lay down their arms.

Anyway... blaming that conflict on religion is doing a pretty superficial analysis imho

Religion is almost always the means of conflict, not the cause of conflict.

Its a tribe. A tribe will pool its resources and see how it can use that to leverage thr stuff off other tribes.

I'd say all evidence suggests that the moral teachings of a tribe are at best a slight break on this social mechanic

 

[bilby]

The Troubles were not a religious war. I was a war about who would control Nth Ireland. Nobody cared whether you did Mass or Holy Communion. It happened to bifurcate nicely along religious lines but religion did not start it. Nor end it.

I have no idea who told you this, but they were talking utter bollocks.

It is a conflict with deep historical roots, but at its beginning, middle and end it was almost entirely a religious conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Tigers is right. Its a conflict about money and power. The protestants have the money and education. And back in the day Catholics were barred from govornment posts, or even being teachers.

The Titanic was built in Northern Ireland. The biggest prestige project at the world at the time. The crew was entirely protestant.

What healed the rift between Catholics and protestants in Northern Ireland was the Irish IT boom of the early 2000. Suddenly the protestants weren't disproportionally wealthy anymore. So IRA lay down their arms.

Anyway... blaming that conflict on religion is doing a pretty superficial analysis imho

Religion is almost always the means of conflict, not the cause of conflict.

Its a tribe. A tribe will pool its resources and see how it can use that to leverage thr stuff off other tribes.

I'd say all evidence suggests that the moral teachings of a tribe are at best a slight break on this social mechanic

Morals only need be observed when dealing with real people. Heathens aren't real people, just as foreigners, children, and that guy next door who lets his dog poo outside my house, aren't real people.

If God has abandoned them (or vice versa), any need to be nice to them vanishes.

Take a look at Loren describing Hamas - He declares them to be evil. Thereby abdicating any responsibility to consider them as being human, much less as humans who have legitimate grievences.

Of course, it's batshit insane to say "Hamas are evil". Hamas members don't get up in the morning and massacre their own families, which is what they would do if they were actually evil, ie they actively sought to do morally wrong things, and to avoid doing anything morally right.

An evil person would not attack his enemies; Or rather, he would have only enemies, and would attack his own daughters, rather than some distant person's sons, if only because they were more convenient.

Dehumanising anyone in a well connected world with trade as a means to success is stupid, and gets stupider by the day. But it isn't stupid in a poorly connected world, where stealing other people's stuff is the way to achieve success.

All the world's shitholes and warzones are full of people who see prosperity as a zero sum game, and who divide humans into them and us, with anything belonging to them automatically being fair game for confiscation, unless they can defend it. Putin and Trump fit neatly into this mold. Both are basically gangsters. So are the folks in charge in Tehran and Gaza. But to describe them as "evil" is to switch off your brain and join them.

Religion is one of the most effective ways yet found to get people to switch off their brains.

 

[southernhybrid]

I know you aren't taking about drugs right now, but I finally had time to find an article to share that imo, supports a big reason why it's better to decriminalize, regulate and make hard drugs safer to use for addicts or anyone who feels the need to use, regardless if it's simply an escape from reality etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/...entanyl-new-drugs.html?searchResultPosition=1

The following is the start of the article, but it's very long and it can be read since I'm sharing it. I've read that some of these same ultra dangerous drugs are now being used in the US. This is one result of making common recreational drugs illegal. More people end up using far more dangerous drugs, resulting in more deaths, need for help etc.

Estonia Won the War on Fentanyl. What Came Next Was Even Worse.​

By 2018, fentanyl overdoses in Estonia had plummeted. But powerful new drugs are appearing fast, with the authorities racing to respond.


Almost no one had heard of fentanyl when it began tearing through Estonia, snatching lives like a bewildering plague.

It was 2002, more than a decade before the drug started unraveling American life. Overdoses in Estonia quickly rose to the highest levels in all of Europe, turning the tiny Baltic nation into the early front of a war that would soon turn global.

For the next 15 years, Estonia fought against a rising tide of addiction and death, passing new laws, picking apart the criminal underworld and expanding help for addicts. It dismantled clandestine labs and, with them, the last vestiges of Russian organized crime.

And like that, the epidemic all but ended. By 2018, fentanyl overdose deaths had plummeted more than 70 percent, a reversal the United States can only dream of.

A year later, after even more headway, some Estonian officials dared to wonder whether they had rid their nation of synthetic opioids altogether.

Perhaps, they thought, their war on drugs was over. Maybe they had actually won.

Only, the war was just beginning.

New synthetic drugs soon began circulating on Estonian streets, many of them so much deadlier that officers and addicts alike said they missed the seemingly simpler days of fentanyl.

“We wish we still had a fentanyl problem,” said Raigo Aas, the chief prosecutor for organized crime in Estonia.

The first new drugs to arrive, known as nitazenes, sent mortality rates skyrocketing again, proving even more addictive and harder to treat or quit. New varieties keep popping up, too, some more than 40 times stronger than fentanyl.

And just as the authorities started grappling with this new nightmare, they were hit yet again: An even newer synthetic drug blindsided them.

In the first three months of this year, a synthetic opioid called cychlorphine has begun killing even more people than nitazenes. It’s so new that the authorities know even less about it, never mind how to stop it.

“It’s changing too quickly,” said Katri Abel-Ollo, a researcher at Estonia’s National Institute for Health Development. “Just as we are trying to investigate and collect data on one drug, suddenly there’s a new phenomenon.”

Only last September, Estonia published its first research paper on nitazenes, detailing the epidemic of addiction.

“Now, not even a year later, we are confronting a totally different substance,” she said, shaking her head.

This is what the new drug war looks like.

Exceedingly powerful substances are being churned out with such speed that the agencies created to stop them are baffled, racing to keep up.

 

[TomC]

"Only last September, Estonia published its first research paper on nitazenes, detailing the epidemic of addiction."

Has Estonia published any papers on the root causes of people turning to high powered drugs?
I ask because I believe that it's a major failure of the US war on drugs. Treat (or judge/condemn) the symptoms, while refusing to grapple with the root causes.
Tom

 

[steve_bank]

North Ireland conflicts was not based in religion? That is like saying American Jim Crow was not based in racial prejudice.

At best you can argue religious prejudice is one manifestation of a general human attribute. That is my view. While we focus on religion on the forum it is a more general issue. Polarization of the USA of which religion is a part.

AI Overview
Identity politics refers to political mobilization based on shared group characteristics—such as race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation—rather than strictly on traditional ideological platforms. Born from mid-20th-century civil rights and feminist movements, it seeks to secure political rights and address historical injustices for marginalized groups.

 

[southernhybrid]

"Only last September, Estonia published its first research paper on nitazenes, detailing the epidemic of addiction."

Has Estonia published any papers on the root causes of people turning to high powered drugs?
I ask because I believe that it's a major failure of the US war on drugs. Treat (or judge/condemn) the symptoms, while refusing to grapple with the root causes.
Tom

I got the impression from the article that after fentanyl was no longer available, people turned to what was available and sadly that turned out to be drugs that were far more dangerous leading to more deaths, and addiction.

People who use drugs do so for different reasons. Some just like to get a high. Some want to escape the reality in which they live. Some like to experiment with drugs. I doubt many of the drug users realized they were trying much more dangerous drugs, but addiction is a disease that is very hard to treat.

Anyway....it's sad and I really wish the drugs that are less dangerous than the newest one were never criminalized. Prohibition has never worked, another reason to allow drug users safe ways to administer and monitoring the strength of the drug used for recreational purposes, as well as offering rehab for those who want help.