For sure, I just get antsy when peer review doesn’t come from from external sources

Hm, 5 year old journal, with the editor board, funding and half of the authors all from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but significant hospital contribution. I remain skeptical of the headline but hopeful of the science.

As has medicine and most other technologies. And yet… the question is never asked about the long term threats posed by people who aren’t personally hunting and tracking and foraging.

And miss out on the reminder that my existence is precarious and dependent on the good-will of the able-bodied? Nah, that’s head-in-sand stuff. I prefer to remind everyone of what this line of questioning has led to in the past and the human consequences of discussing the rights of a group of people in the abstract.

Exactly, and yet the question is never “is agriculture a long-term threat to humanity?”. It’s always the people with medical issues who are acceptable first choices as society’s sacrificial MacGuffin, long before we question any technology that benefits the person who is “just asking questions”.

It’s like we didn’t already do Social Darwinism the first time. Super frustrating.

Even if we ignored the entire history of the word cripple, it still would be remarkable to not consider hunchback or dwarf as physical descriptions. Given that your next question references video games and then we fall down Godwin’s slippery slope, I’m not convinced you’re honestly engaging with the concept of connotation.

the words only have deragatory meaning to those who have decided they are such.

Yes, and when the people who have to live with the consequences of discrimination tell you that you’re speaking in the same way as those who have discriminated against them, it’s worth considering. Even momentarily.

Have a great day, I’m going to go be a cripple elsewhere now. Nah, just kidding, it will still be my couch. Just not this thread.

If you wanted to emphasise the challenges he dealt with, adjectives for his physical appearance were not a good choice. The challenges he would have dealt with may have included chronic pain, limited mobility and discrimination. You could even have said he suffered from kyphosis. But words which have been frequently intended to be derogatory don’t do much to create a sense of empathy.

could be applied to anyone.

And it’s nice to see disability being normalised, even if that wasn’t your intent.

steinmetz was a hunchback cripple dwarf

I never want to hear anyone say again that “nobody calls someone a ‘cripple’ anymore”. Perhaps consider this somewhat less grotesque alternate phrasing: “Steinmetz was a person who experienced significant and debilitating disability”.

natural selection does not choose whats best overall, just those that can reproduce.

That’s not only an incorrect understanding of natural selection, i’d add that Steinmetz chose not to reproduce. If he hadn’t been the topic of your next sentence, I wouldn’t have felt the need to emphasise his personal agency. Or his existence as a person

Oh cool, it’s time to find out how much of a burden on humanity I am and whether I should have been left to die. Just hypothetically of course, I wouldn’t want anyone to misunderstand. I always enjoy this question with my morning coffee.

Now there’s something I haven’t heard in a million years. Thanks for helping me rediscover it!

A song evaded me for maybe 5 or 6 years once. I ended up having this same conversation about evasive songs with someone and did my best at an impression, because it’s instrumental.

“Doo-d’ Doo Doo, Doodoo Doo, Doo-d’ Doo Doo, Doodoo Doo…”

The person I was talking to instantly said it was Eple - Röyksopp, and was entirely correct.

If you want your funeral to properly represent you, write your own eulogy.

Die antwoord also adopted, abused and abandoned an albino (Edit: my mistake, he has hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia) child, Tokkie, who spoke out a few years ago. They’re truly awful and Tokkie’s documentary is worth watching.

Also Marilyn Manson has been evicted from my music library for sexual abuse. I have no interest in supporting known exploiters, and I can’t listen to their music without thinking about how awful they are as people. No regrets, there’s plenty more musicians out there worth my time.

Go with the standard politician non-answer: “to spend more time with family”. I have no idea if German politicians give the same stock response though!

Oh it’s less a fixation and more an interest in scale of impact. There’s a lot of people out there who talk a big game but when you look at the results, they’re clearly underwhelming. Edit: or worse, they’re self-serving publicity not designed at all to do good. The blood donor in this thread is a great example of oversized impact, but that’s difficult to replicate. It does give good food for thought in terms of things to look for that could use more support.

The multidimensionality is why I didn’t provide any opening suggestions; I didn’t want to guide the answers. This was so that I might find some dimensions I had not previously considered, and I was curious about what metrics others use to measure “good” in the first place. Unfortunately Elon Musk as always proved to be a topic that generates more opinions.

Thanks for the support though. Honestly, there are a huge number of good choices already, more than I could ever dedicate enough to. I’m hopeful there are some gems out there that have potential to really offset some the vast quantity of suffering the world has to offer, this was just a small experiment in looking outside my own bubble of experience for them.

The world’s population is getting significantly sicker and we’re blaming the victims for “lifestyle diseases” as a way of dismissing the problem. But research needs money and time, so there will always be better and stronger evidence for money-making remedies instead of the slow and complex research into why people are increasingly experiencing disease.

We’re hurting ourselves, and each other, and because disabled people are excluded from huge parts of society, we’re also covering up the evidence. It’s only when we’re wounded that the reality is clear, but by then it’s too late - you’re just written off as someone who made bad choices.

It wasn’t actually to help me feel better, I was hoping to offset some of the doom that is very widely covered by providing some much-needed attention for the people who are putting in real effort. I also hoped to learn about new people who I could support, because they don’t receive coverage from their public relations spokespeople putting out media releases that are pasted into articles by journalists.

Criticism of your suggestion is not an attack on you. I’m sorry that you felt it necessary to try to insult me for expressing a difference of opinion, and I hope your day improves.

Ehhhh, I’m going to have to disagree on this. She’s obviously better than her ex-husband, but when you have that much money, the amount of interest/dividends it generates would likely offset her tax-deductible donations.

Also, if she has US$36.2 billion and has donated US$3.8 billion in 9 months, that would be like someone who has $100,000 donating $10500. Except you can’t generate much money from interest on $100,000. The average person donating 10.5% of their assets is praise-worthy, but there are millions of people who do that without CNN articles praising their philanthropy.

I’m looking for the people who are really helping, not dodging taxes and generating publicity for themselves.

Definitely a huge impact for one person. It’s amazing what the right genetic quirks and science can do!

Thanks for helping out a person in need! I hope you’re able to keep doing so, and that should the situation ever arise, someone will be able to do the same for you.