Environment & Energy

Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2026, 01:26 AM - Edit history (1)

One final note. This was for me an endless hostage situation where I went for what I thought was a normal academic science job and what turned out to basically be a hostage situation in that I was in a place filled with a type of stealthy religious conservatism and free market nonsense.
And some fairly blah routine scientists. And one or two whom I respected and consider torture victims themselves, but the strong silent type. I am not. I am shrill. Atrios would support it! He was an original curmudgeon.

But these ffrf guys are cool. With rare exceptions like Adam Becker, in general the scientists or doctors I trust and respect most don’t typically have an online presence.

It is probably based on an intuition about how humans think and how hard changing people’s minds online is making it a futile exercise a lot.
Not always. I have found DU very helpful. But most of the web is..

Most scientists I respect and trust incorporate their decency into other facets of their existence.

My main mentor’s mentor was another scientist who is very popular (he may not know it) with students and postdocs. Decency usually makes you popular. Most of my main mentor’s nw, hell a lot of academic science outside Harvard, MIT, Stanford etc is like that.

Scientists like those don’t really talk much. But one still knows how they think.

In self defense I have had to be online because of this nightmarish state that doesn’t seem to get it.

I really was not expecting this in academic science, where my experiences have generally been very positive (the difficulty of the work aside). I used to think they were decent, but after this hell they seem exceptional. But that isn’t quite true.

This was Si Valley and a specific type of science world that is awful and creepy. They are not necessarily more elite than my pis. But they are crazier and it explains why Epstein had so many creepy scientists on board.

The people and scientists I personally met even there were mostly just annoying. But I try to bail before one ever gets near the creep type. It is why I post on DU and not an unmoderated hell.
But that didn’t happen and now I am finally doing okay re recovery, but have to file complaints.

My sardonic take today is that the idea is that if you don’t have tendencies towards misconduct, racism, sexism or sexual harassment and are up to spec skills/talent and knowledge wise in your field (this last I was not. I was and remain mediocre..which I have made peace with after seeing all this) you should go and be “open” or oddly cryptic.
These are terrible, terrible options. And stink of religious conservative takes on clean open science (🤭..crazies I tell you) versus free market privacy. Of the two the latter is better. But that should really be a function of an actually democratic state.
There is nothing democratic or enlightened about any of this. It is so lame.

I have to finish this paper and I am not thinking beyond. I don’t really have any fixed views about the future beyond “not adjusting to a bloody torture filled hellscape”.

At some point I will have to have a little chat with my last mentor and it is just craven to shove a bunch of buggy tech between yourself and an irate former postdoc. He did have some free market and religious biases I guess. He was not a bad guy and he is elite. And he is not a creep himself, unlike the stalkerish harasser who just drove his bike down my street (6:40 am). If he is a part of the whole that is what he and the entire crew, however disparate, are. The people in the state or private sector here who continue to fail to get this and bystanders too corrupt or spineless to do anything do not deserve any concessions.

Here in India I am filing misconduct, malpractice, stalking and harassment charges against all the humans who used my street/home and any data scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists and tech cos that were involved. These guys are misogynists and creeps and very complacent at the moment. But they are wrong and there will be hell to pay for all this because though this entire crew takes women’s rights as a joke, I don’t.

This is not where to peg being “cool/tolerant” or “exploratory” at and I even try to be laidback. This is not how and I won’t be changing my mind as this is malicious harassment and I am going to the police and reporting all the people involved between Dec 2012 and the present and going forward in India.

It is not that hard to treat this space as one to close off as so much malicious misconduct has already occurred. But they won’t and nor will their accessories in other countries and these guys can face the penalties they all deserve. They can entrap themselves further. But it keeps getting worse. For them.

I am never rude or demeaning to anyone since this theatrical form of online life is not mine. But that also means that I am not confused about what is truly unacceptable in any democracy when you are not this backward and regressive. And normalizing a slide into this truly shameful barbaric trash with confused politics and general brainlessness is conscienceless.

Accessories who can see but don’t meet the basic responsibilities of access should also be charged.

These guys are stalkers and misogynists and fuck anyone who justified this as they are the types who enable Epstein.

This is not that hard.

A girl who works for my aunt’s caregiver quit physiotherapy and moved back in with her parents due to male harassment. That is the real effect these parasitic creeps have on women’s livelihoods.
To allow and encourage this shit is corrupt and misogynistic and I am not confused.

Permissiveness towards creeps, stalkers, snoops, hyperlibertarians tech parasites and the sleazy policing of women like me is why I reject as worthless any tech or anything starting from at least Sept 5, 2011 onwards.

These guys don’t get it and without a police case sending a few of these local guys to prison they never will. They will blame machines and exploit plausible deniability or risibly try to attack me again. That won’t work. I have seen enough to know that I have more than enough now to press charges and file complaints and get them to stick.

And I will.

On a more positive note, I saw this the other day and these guys are cool and they are even handed. They address the shittiness of anti-Muslim bigotry while still making a case for separation of church and state. I am going offline but I wanted to add that this crucial piece helped at this time as I had really had to scramble inside my head. I have always had a very stable identity but offhand I could not remember where it was stored. Don’t ask..it was brain scrambling. I have been an atheist since I was a child. I don’t even think about it much as growing up non religious I never had to fight it so much as choose what made obvious sense. I had not realized how deep this religious stuff goes in American society. It was a real shock to see it so stealthily prevalent in elite academic institutions with a free market thing as the sole “balance”:

https://m.

I try to be even-handed and that is useful in conflict when people seem to have no real worldview beyond transactionalism (and convenience if you are pennywise and pound foolish).

This is a better fit for criminal liability than civil and will spare me annoyance of explaining to morons that making money through lawsuits is not my style.

Teach a man to fish vs give a man fish.

It is more important that I actually be able to work and safeguard my health without maliciously parasitic and corrupt trash getting a free pass than to enrich myself due to corrupt entities.

I am very grateful to all the people I thanked for helping me think in this dark time (Sam Miller Macdonald, Alex Skopic, various Salon Mag writers..I knew I had forgotten someone.. and now Chris Line and Patrick Elliot).
Machines are mostly trash and these creeps were a nightmare but I really owe decent people.

Really all I want from other humans is sanity and that is why I like the various people I listed.

I detest Google overall, but I don’t dislike Prof Hennessy. If these Darwin Award candidates are a lot of the people you typically see you may end up having a warped worldview.

These guys here are a lost cause. And it is not my delivery boys etc. They should not be stressed by the malfeasance of the corporations who tried to build this and corrupt misogynistic state officials and ceos and hospital/school admins here.
Sidewalks Lab was smart (!) to try to get permission in Toronto. Doing this without permission and ignoring what human women understand easily about negligence, corruption and harassment ends up with police cases being filed as I will be doing. Yes even as an mj user who DIYs her mental health 🙀.

But that doesn’t have to be everyone and hopefully a police case with teeth against this entire crew of creeps will send a message to future generations. I tried to be nice.
Alas, it was not to be.

-jfz9580m
Last Edit: 10:56 am IST, April 9, 2026.