Politics & Truth by Foucault, a history of the Rwandan genocide, a supplement/"how-to" of Derrida & Deconstruction currently

over the past 6 mos:
was into German idealism for a while, read most of Kant & Hegel, kinda lost interest after and switched to Marxist analysis & structuralism. I read Logic of Scientific Discover and some of Fisher's texts a few months ago and wanna start getting into more epistemology/scientific philosophy

outside of that, I read a decent amount of stuff for work/school. most is kinda boring to non-ecologists/evo-reseaarchers, but "Life in Moving Fluids" was something I read a few weeks ago that was both really approachable and still a strong introduction to fluid mechanics

being homophobic in a thread about encouraging a safe and welcoming space for LGBT+ community members is a bad look

also, please stop posting

@vis

fraternal birth order isnt a new discovery. the problem with your post is the application of genetic determinism to explain homosexuality, while clearly having a (being charitable) high-school level understanding of immunology and physiology. The extent to which it is genetically determined (predisposed, to be more accurate) is a fairly intense field of study, but your proposed mechanism and presumed source offer incompetent and mechanistically inconclusive explanations, respectively. Further, any attempt to define homosexuality as a predominately genetic phenomena is spurious in the absence of more rigorous study. Your (presumed) source offered no variance assessments between homologs of hetero- and homosexual carriers, so arguing that the heritability* of homosexuality at all is a poor interpretation of the data I gave you. Considering you haven't posted a source yourself, I'd reccomend diving a bit deeper into the peer reviewed literature before making further claims. I'd also reccomend brushing up on comparable phenomena where maternal immunoresponse results in developmental "defects"**, e.g. rh-factor induced hemolytic disease in newborns. In doing so, you'd notice that the response is triggered not by immunoperception across the placenta, but rather by child-to-mother blood transfer occurring during delivery. In the absence of a similar exposure (e.g. one in which the fetal/neonatal nervous tissue is introduced into maternal circulation for immunorecgonition), I really look forward to hearing how you explain the maternal immune response arising to begin with. I'd like reiterate that the protein of consequence here is an embedded surface protein in fetal neuronal tissue, and not in free serum, and so there needs to be some mechanism by which fetal neuronal tissue is exposed to maternal immune cells.

thanks!

*I use heritability in the rigorous sense here, cf.
** I use the term defect here cautiously. Within the broader framework of evolution I do not like the term as it carries significant negative connotation, and within this subject it risks characterizing, in light of further study demonstrating genetic causation of homosexuality, homosexuality itself as a disorder or defect i.e. something to be "corrected"

to add: patrilineal-vs-matronal-immunological determinism for neuronal development would also mean women who are not analogous to their mother's NGLN4X allele would suffer similar (though reduced) effects, depending on barr bodies etc

FWIW: genetics, devbio, & immunology arent my interests, but I'm kinda familiar enough to be sus on that article

this is what he's referencing
http://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/302
not outright wrong, but the entire post is just... bad
My biggest critique of this study is there's not a particular reason that male neuronal surface proteins would be exposed to the mother's immune system to
a. trigger initial immunity
b. trigger B-cell activation during the second pregnancy

further:

"The X-linked homolog, NLGN4X, might also play a role in the formation of sexual/romantic attractions, and antibodies raised by NLGN4Y might alter sexual brain development by cross-reacting with fetal NLGN4X, given its similarity to NLGN4Y"

would indicate the mother should face a fair chance of clonal deletion or anergy for any immune cells actually capable of targeting the gene, considering the epitopes are probably similar between the two

so idk man, p sus article imo

discuss

playing video games and only making online friends for most of my formative years has trained me to never make eye contact with people :)

tbh i wrote a ~1000 word response explaining how the entirety of my post pretty clearly explains what I believe
but i kinda felt like you wouldn't understand that one either
reread the post im replying to
then read anything about communism
and think critically how communism can be characterized as a reaction to capitalism rather than an independently developed system

I've mostly just been shitposting so far, but here's an actual thoughtpost (though uncurated)

1. I believe capitalism is inherently exploitative. Not gonna explain why, as thousands of well-regarded pages on the subject already exist.
2. To suggest capitalism is the best economic system possible when the economy has only existed for 200~20000 years (depending on where you wanna start) is optimistic. If you view economics as the efficient sharing of resources, suggesting we developed an optimal solution after such a short time belies a lack of creativity. Communism might not be more efficient, but the current market is unlikely to be optimal either. Therefore, we should be moving away from capitalism.
3. Communism offers an idea of a society that I think is more egalitarian while rewarding work. Under capitalism, work is not tied to income, allowing the existence of classes of people propped up by the working class. The veil of ignorance covers most of my belief here, but in general I think the entire idea of heritable social-class is something we (global we) should be working to move past. Humans are probably smart enough (or will be) to figure out a way to make things fair in the future. The great trend in western society has been away from hierarchy over the past 200 years, and I'd like that to continue. Abolishing states and social class are unlikely in my life-time, but I'd like to start paving the way where possible.
3.5. The current distribution of wealth is dumb. Really the entire idea of money is an inexact abstraction to keep track of who's socially "worthy" of staying alive, and the faster we can move past that the better.

You should finish reading Marx because regardless of if you agree with his solution, his critiques are still relevant today. There's a reason plenty of liberal and right-wing sociologists continue to use his frameworks to understand class structures in capitalist societies. Reading in general is cool, and if nothing else understanding anti-capitalist thought will help you understand capitalism better.

ps tag yrself

https://i.imgur.com/l2JmsML.jpg

if ur so genuinely curious that u'd type that nerd essay but didn't even take the time to read a 150 year old paperback im not gonna be able to help u
but the fact u think communism has a government is l o l

u might wanna look up the etymology of the word Utopia, then
(Hint: it's communism. More is a deal in the history of leftwing thought)

u realize communism is a conceptual utopia, right?

but what if they think im clingy?

ty for the advice but ive been hitting all the bulletpoints here so i guess ive had shit luck :(

my applications so far have been based mostly off people my current PI knows or collabs w/
2 of them are US and one is EU
all got personal emails citing the parts of their research I liked and talked about models or w/e I'd been thinking about based on their work

none bothered to email me back :(