Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Is Family Planning Responsible for the Election of Donald Trump?

Is Family  Planning Responsible for the Election of Donald Trump?

I’ve always been an advocate of family planning. I used contraceptives for years during sexual encounters until I got married and had 2 kids. 

Those kids turned out to have Asperger’s Syndrome.  I later learned that older fathers (my ex was 36 and 39 at their conception) and older grandfathers (my father was 40 when I was conceived) are more likely to have kids with these disorders, along with ADHD — which my younger one also has —and bipolar disorder.

When I learned about this connection between older fathers and mental health, I started questioning the thinking I had about when to have children.

However, I’m now seeing something else.

I’ve been taking acting and improv comedy lessons in New York City.  I’ve been meeting a large number of really wonderful young adults.  These people have completed college.  They are intelligent, idealistic, creative, and likable.  They are making a choice to pursue a dream in acting.  This might not be a lucrative pursuit, but it’s an admirable pursuit. Yes, most of them will give up and go into something else, but not without first having learned a great deal about themselves and others — and also having likely met the person of their dreams in an acting or improv class.

But many of these people are not so very, very young.  They are often in their thirties. 

When these wonderful young people start talking about why they haven’t had children, they will often say that they don’t think they could be good parents.

I try to explain that the brain goes through neurological changes in once you’re a parent and you become a good parent, because of those changes, but, seeing as they haven’t experienced that, they can’t have confidence in it.

It recently struck me that the people who are having children are all the wrong people. These are people who aren’t responsible enough to use birth control. These are people who aren’t responsible enough to question whether they can be good parents.  These are people who see someone attractive, and then rush into unprotected sex.

When I talk, particularly to women, about what they like about Donald Trump — something I don’t understand, given the many stories of his being sexually abusive to women — I sense between the lines that they find him cute.  He is cute.  That isn’t often discussed. 

Alpha males, and he is an alpha male. have a certain braggadocio, a certain swagger, a certain way of smiling that just make them irresistible for straight women.  It’s hard to understand.  These men are often total jerks.  BUT they’re cute. 

In Trump’s case, the aura of wealth and power makes him even more attractive. Those things do attract women. Women instinctively want to be near someone who has that.

Those same characteristics tend to make beta males and lesbians hate alpha males, but then they’re really jealous.

This is iMHO, all biology.

It appears, from what I can tell about the men who voted for Trump, that other alpha males respect other alpha males.  They get a kind of catharsis from hearing him express their rage.

So he can’t speak coherently; he doesn’t understand foreign policy; he is operating businesses in conflict of interest with his position as President; the whole Russia and obstruction of justice thing; contractors complain that he doesn’t pay debts; women and girls complain that he has sexually assaulted them; he reveals classified information; he doesn’t understand or respect the constitution; etc — so what? If all you care about is that he’s cute and alpha, then you vote for him.

These are just the sort of people who don’t use family planning.  These are just the sort of people who are likely the children of people who don’t use family planning. 

Very unsettling to me, as an advocate of family planning: my attitude may be anti-Darwinian.  Family planning may be dumbing down the human race.

So, please, if you think you aren’t good enough to be a parent, re-think.  You are precisely the person who should be a parent, because you care.  No parent is perfect.  No parent fails to make mistakes. No parent fails to induce neuroses in their children.  Please stop leaving the business of having children to people who don’t care.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Ransomeware attacks

So there was a massive worldwide ransomeware attack, holding computers hostage, demanding money.

The malware is alleged to have originated in North Korea, exploiting vulnerabilities uncovered using hacking software developed by the US government, and leaked. 

Microsoft was aware of these vulnerabilities and issued patches, but many users, especially non-USA users did not install the patches.

Why don't people install patches?

My experience is that every software update introduces new bugs.  Moreover, the operating system becomes more and more bulky and runs slower and slower until the one has to upgrade one's computer in order to get a reasonable response time.

I feel this gradual creep of the operating systems to be bulkier and bulkier is a form of planned obsolescence to force users to buy new hardware -- a type of conspiracy against the consumer.

I would like to see the FTC and various state consumer protection offices investigating this phenomenon.

Similarly, online adhesion contracts become unreasonably long, so that it is unreasonable to expect that users have read them prior to installing software updates.

Software updates necessary for security should not cause the performance of the computer to deteriorate.  Adhesion contracts should have page limits.