Really says something about American Gun Culture.

This is such an endless routine in US trade policy.

I remember when Trump tried to sanction Chinese imports, and they responded by ending the purchase of Iowa pork and soybeans. China insourced agricultural development of pork and consumption of domestic produce while Iowa farmers took enormous losses on their excess and watched their consumer goods products skyrocket.

Then we coerced Australia to stop selling China surplus coal, thinking it would deaden Chinese industry and facilitate a global shift to India and the Pacific Islands. Instead, China pivots to nuclear/renewables while Australians get stuck with enormous unsaleable coal surpluses.

Now we’re denying them access to high end silicon chips and printers, thinking it’ll cut back Chinese advances in cars, advanced computers, and weapons systems. Instead… well… Here we are.

So much of this isn’t simply because China is big and their industries are fluid. It is because western capital and infrastructure is utterly stagnant. We simply refuse to invest in technology more modern than the mid-'00s. Everything we’re building is just stacks-on-stacks of old hardware. Its like that Ayn Rand novel, Anthem. Capitalists reject the light bulb because it’ll cut into their system of manufacturing candles.

Doing another Slay and Say.

Fighter: Barbarian’s fratbro drinking buddy

Wizard: Fighter’s emotionally distant and verbally abusive father-figure

Monk: Wizard’s even more emotionally distant and verbally abusive father-figure

Sorcerer: Monk’s third ex-spouse, mostly along to look after the Fighter because he’s like a little brother to her

Ranger: Sorcerer’s daughter by a second marriage and also the Druid’s husband (which has led to some confusing moments with the cleric)

Bard: Rogue’s legal defense counsel

Honestly, as a lark, I think they should just swap presidencies for a few months and see how things go.

objective

Ayn Rand Fan Detected

Genuinely love to break up a combat/dungeon-crawl heavy game with some light-hearted day-in-the-life-of gameplay once in a while. Having the DM describe the lazy cat stretched across the alchemist’s countertop, while some mischievious pickpocket tries to nick the rogue’s enchanted dagger and the knight errant helps an elderly woman cross the street can add a lot of color to a very number-crunchy game. Picking through a flea market of random niche nebulously useful magic items, while a merchant drops hints about the next sidequest, gives you a real adventurer’s vibe.

Genuinely hate having long, drawn out arguments over whether the shopkeep would have the principle material component for my most import spells or basic equipment (there’s no bat guano, one swayback horse, and only sixteen arrows in a fantasy city of 50,000 people? god damn, dude). Or digging through spreadsheets to figure out how many javelins the local economy can absorb. Or bickering over whether the Charm Person spell gets us in fight with town guards. Genuinely do not want anyone consulting a series of random charts and tables to determine why we can’t get a full night’s rest in the town’s nicest inn.

Please just make this a fun story to enjoy and not a pedantic fight over the future prospective mathematical efficiency of my stat block in the next combat.

Come at me, liberal.

I’m sorry, but that’s just bullshit. The rule was implemented as a patch in to deal with the fact that Strength is the most efficient stat in 2e. Everyone wanted to max out their strength score and Gygax didn’t want everyone coming to the table with near-identical stat blocks. So, for one value - 18 - in one stat - strength - he created a secondary rule that stratified characters that much further.

RPGs are games, not art, and I don’t give myself airs.

This is also nth-levels of bullshit.

Rivaling the rogue’s boutique skill system for moments of “Why on earth did they shoehorn that in there?” game design.

Old 2e game back in middle school. My DM introduced a weapon common to goblins called a “Herculean Club”. It did d10 damage and could be used by a small creature, but it would break in two if you rolled less than a 3.

Our ranger loved them, because they were ideal for two-weapon fighting (big oopsey on the DM’s part). But his rolls were shit, so he was always breaking them. At one point, he went through six different clubs in an encounter, and the DM demanded to see his character sheet. Dude had, like, 30 of these on there. But also an 18/70 strength score, so… shrug

Going to the B-roll footage of Apocalypse Now to deny the existence of Vietnam

I’m mostly concerned about intentions given that I too doubt the readiness of the science.

Again, if its experiments on mice, I’m not holding my breath.

Everyone already pounced on you for comparing epilepsy to autism

Right, because they’re looking for something to pounce on. Even setting aside the ample medical evidence of comorbidity, literally just hang out with enough folks and you’ll see the trend.

I would have loved a reduction in some sensitivities, but I wouldn’t want to be neurotypical.

Reducing the sensitivity means approaching neurotypicality. These aren’t independent conditions.

colourblind people clearly have “less” vision in that they see less information. Autistic people usually have “different” cognitive functions in a way that’s hard to even describe in text to a neurotypical person.

I did not realize I was talking to a debate-bro. My apologies.

But even then it doesn’t matter whether the neurodivergence is genetic or not, it has obvious and direct impact in how people see reality and themselves.

There are plenty of conditions that change how people see reality that aren’t desirable.

I’d rather actual sane people were more careful when talking about the medicalisation of neurodivergence.

Are we going to medicalize the discussion of medicalization, then? You’re a champion of neurodivergence who casually dismisses an intervention by denouncing the researchers as “insane”? Dafuq?

It’s still not a symptom

It is diagnosed by its symptoms.

It’s not even clear from the article if their treatment is directed at “symptoms” or just behaviour.

The article specifically calls out sever conditions associated with autism that they were seeking to treat in mice.

a lot of who they are to how they perceive and engage with reality

But that isn’t just genetic. Two color-blind people can have very different aesthetic tastes despite both “seeing” the same spectrum of color.

“Curing” autism would mean somehow changing that functioning to a neurotypical one

In this case, the “cure” appears to involve treating secondary symptoms that are far more sever than simple perception. And, again, in mice. This is miles away from a holistic rewriting of consciousness to be neurotypical.

autism is not a symptom

It is diagnosed through its symptoms.

Epilepsy on the other hand is indeed a disease.

Its a disorder that’s diagnosed by a particular brain disorder. And conditions within the brain can produce both epilepsy and autistic symptoms.

pretending like it is all genetics is fucking insane

The treatment is explicitly stated as gene therapy.

low vitamin d is a sickness by itself, as it for example causes depression and malfunctions in the immune system. It is quite a difference to cure people who are just autistic then to treat something that might increase the rate of autism in children.

Vitamin D deficiency results in the gene-writing anomaly that the proposed treatment is also correcting for. The difference is, firstly, the stage of development when you intercede to make a correction and, secondly, the anticipated success rate of the intervention.

treating a malnutrition issue is different from removing a part of natural human variation

But that’s just it. Malnutrition in pregnant adults is well-established as a casual factor in reduced cognitive function in children. Human variation is a consequence of environmental factors in pre-natal and early development. You aren’t just a product of your parents, you’re a product of your material conditions during the period of gestation.

Should physicians refuse to intervene after a child is born, because of variations caused in their mother during the period of pregnancy?

autism as a symptom of a syndrome?

Rett syndrome is an example of a syndrome that results in the patient’s behavioral characteristics meeting the definition of autism.

this is barley a sentence

Apologies if I no make words good. Me try better harder next time.

being autistic is a really major part of my experience as a human you know? have you talked to an autistic person before?

Yes. But then I’ve also been told I’m mildly autistic myself. I don’t know if that’s true, but I also don’t know how to describe “being autistic” verses “not being autistic” when I only have my own frame of reference. What’s more, I wouldn’t assign my the majority of my behavior, attitude, and temperament to genetics. A big part of it is my upbringing and another big part is my immediate environment. I’d definitely be a different person without my OCD-ish tendency, but I don’t think I would be somehow deprived or removed if I’d ended up differently.

vitamin d supplements are thing you know?

A thing that achieves more innately what these scientists are attempting to engineer. But the end state is (intended to be) the same. Should pregnant women with low exposure to sunlight be prescribed/forbidden Vitamin D supplements in the name of neurodiversity? Or is this specifically proposed treatment a problem because of some objection to methodology?

comparing autism and epilepsy is insane

There are plenty of syndromes that exhibit both as symptoms. And, in this particular course of treatment, it appears the goal is to eliminate the symptoms by treating the underlying genetic conditions.

they knew exactly where to find us

Gotta wonder if the US-privately-owned-and-operated intelligence systems are fatally compromised or simply selling info, Catch-22 Milo Style, to highest bidders.

and than ethics and the little thing that many ASD people would rather not ‘cure’ autism.

Again, this goes back to the degree of symptoms. Vanishingly few people are on a crusade to defend epilepsy. But that’s also a minority of cases, so we get back into the ethics of “who do we treat and when”.

I would say I’m far less worried about a small pox style campaign of eradication than I am of an institutional gatekeeping, in which one section of the population has full normal access to preventative care while another is denigrated as “naturally autistic” and subjected to all sorts of hostile policing and social policies as a result. Factor in how Vitamin D deficiency in both pregnant mothers and young children is tied back to higher instances of autism, and you’re looking at a whole bunch of knock-on effects that amount to people living in closed off environments having higher treatment needs. As climate change renders outdoor activities more dangerous… well… you can see how folks sheltering underground in air conditioned environments are in a real tight spot.

nah, thanks i prefer to be me

I’m not sure I’d conflate autism with identity. That’s overly genetic-essentialist.