Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Links - 15th October 2024 (1)

Geoff Russ: David Eby going to court over Conservative name just another desperate NDP tactic - "Can we expect embattled British Columbia Premier David Eby to post “STOP THE COUNT!” on X when the provincial election results come on Oct. 19? It would certainly be consistent. On Friday, the NDP took to the courts to accuse Elections BC of violating Charter rights. The alleged violation stems from the fact that the Conservative Party of BC is due to be listed simply as the “Conservative Party” on the provincial ballot. In a court filing, the NDP argued that without a name change, voters might mix up the provincial and federal Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) and write “Pierre Poilievre” on their ballots. Doing so would spoil their votes... This election will not be the first that the BC Conservatives have run candidates: the party has done so in nearly every election in the province’s history, including in 2020. There was no whining about brand confusion four years ago when Erin O’Toole led the CPC, and the BC Conservatives were an afterthought. Now, the NDP government is in a fight for its life that few predicted one year ago, back when the Conservatives had just two seats in the legislature. Premier David Eby’s story was not supposed to be like this... The biggest thing that Eby and the NDP have going for them is that the Conservative candidates have tweeted out some silly and unfortunate words in years past. On a radio debate in Vancouver, Eby spent his time trying to poke Rustad over his candidates’ tweets, coming across like a Twitch streamer arguing with people in the comments, while Rustad largely remained focused on the issues. In a truly embarrassing moment, when asked if the parents of addicted children should be able to place them in involuntary care, Eby responded that “it’s not straightforward.” For context, this is a scenario that has tragically played out under this government: in August, a 13-year-old died alone in a Greater Vancouver homeless camp of a suspected overdose. In February, during a hospital stay for her addiction, her parents were told they were not allowed to put her in involuntary care because it was “her choice.” The answer to the question asked of Eby is as straightforward as it comes. Everybody with a brain knows it, and it is only Eby who stubbornly gaslights people by saying otherwise. Sure, the NDP has released a platform promising the world to B.C. residents, like financing 40 per cent of the cost of a home purchase for first-time buyers, and taxing foreign speculators at three per cent. Few care about these NDP promises when they have been in government for seven years. Besides, Rustad and his Conservatives promised to axe the ban on plastic single-use items and end the toxic regime of paper straws and flimsy paper bags. The mandatory paper bags in grocery stores can be irritating, but they are manageable. It cannot be overstated how much the average B.C. resident utterly loathes the paper straws. These flimsy, soggy instruments bend and break to pieces, releasing their excessive synthetic “forever chemicals” (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS) into your ginger ale... In an election like this, in unfortunate times like these, people do not care about social media posts. They care about who will lead a government that makes their lives easier and more comfortable."

British Columbians want a plan, but all the NDP has is trash talk - "if we are to reduce any political party to its worst tweets and bad moments, the NDP have more than their share. Some evidence of bad behaviour can be found in the party’s shameful treatment of Jewish MLA Selina Robinson, who was ousted from the NDP cabinet for stating that Israel was founded on a “crappy piece of land with nothing on it” in the wake of October 7, and who has since left caucus. Also notable is the NDP’s disqualification of Eby’s leadership race opponent Anjali Appadurai on dubious grounds. So far, Eby has mostly insulted Rustad and treated him more like a misguided child than a serious former cabinet minister. It’s unbecoming and, worse for Eby, it isn’t working. Since day 1 of the campaign, the NDP playbook has been to go negative and try to scare B.C. into voting for them. British Columbians aren’t hearing that message. Sky-high housing prices, a stagnant economy and public safety concerns are overriding any wacky tweets of yore and NDP fearmongering. As the Conservatives pointed out following the radio debate, there have been more than 14,000 overdose deaths in the province since the NDP came to power. That, and unaffordable rent, is far more salient to citizens who see the carnage in downtown every day."

Meme - "I'm putting a candy vending machine in my yard this Halloween! Sorry kids, but I have bills to pay."

Boston neighbors raised $20K after officials shut down boy’s ice cream stand - "Bored and looking for something to do this summer, Danny Doherty hatched a plan to raise money for his brother’s hockey team by selling homemade ice cream.  But a few days after setting up a stand and serving up vanilla, shaved chocolate and fluffernutter to about 20 people, Danny’s family received a letter from the Norwood Board of Health ordering it shut down. Town officials had received a complaint and said that the 12-year-old’s scheme violated the Massachusetts Food Code, a state regulation. “I was surprised and upset,” he said of the letter that came Aug. 5. “I don’t understand because there are so many lemonade stands and they don’t get shut down.”  Danny’s mom, Nancy Doherty, who had encouraged her son to start the stand as long as he donated half of the proceeds to charity, also was taken aback.  “Somebody complained. That was the most disappointing part for us was that somebody thought it necessary to complain about a child’s stand,” she said. “It seemed a little, you know, crazy if you ask me.”... Massachusetts law allows for things like lemonade stands and bakes sales but not homemade ice cream. Mazzucco also said there was a “legitimate health concern” since homemade ice cream can be contaminated with listeria monocytogenes or other bacteria.  Danny’s situation is not altogether unusual. Youth elsewhere have also seen their lemonade stands or pop-up bake sales shuttered — often for failing to have a business or health permit. Several states have responded by moving to lessen restrictions on such ventures."

Germany's far right predicted to make biggest gains since Nazi era in key state elections : r/anime_titties - "I mean NATO is pretty obviously a right wing organization."
""left" and "right" only have widely agreed upon meanings in very specific contexts/along specific axes. That isn't one of them."
"Okay well I think hiring Nazis to defeat the spread of communism- pretty obviously makes you a right wing organization. Do you disagree with that?  Besides idk if you know this, but NATO is the US Govs international money-making baby. The US government is pretty obviously right-wing (I would know, I live here)"
These are the people who claim the US has no left wing party

Thread by @AGHamilton29 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " Funniest thing going on today is Nick Fuentes is mad at Candace Owens because her antisemitic conspiracies have included so many obvious factual errors that he says it’s making the other people who hate Jews look bad…  I’m not even joking. 😂😂😂 “You can’t really go hard like that and stake the reputation of you and everyone else, and then get it wrong.. really severely.. over and over” Jokes aside, part of what is going on here is fear of audience capture and who antisemites follow/believe:
There are different sub-groups of antisemites (Neo-Nazis, Islamists, Lefitsts). Most of them all end up agreeing on a conspiracy about a secret cabal of Jews that is responsible for every single bad thing that happens in the world, but they all cite different types of evidence and underlying conspiracies to justify the claim. That’s where they end up clashing.  So for example, some Neo-Nazi “intellectuals” came up with this theory that the elites are all part of this small 18th century religious cult called Frankists (which actually died out). That those cult members replaced real Jews. That’s what Candace Owens has been actively promoting. But the thing is that the Frankists openly rejected Jewish texts like The Talmud (most of them also eventually converted to Christianity). Meanwhile, a different group of antisemites (mix of Islamists and other Neo-Nazis) like to claim that there is a secret cabal of Jews that does bad things but it’s motivated by The Talmud (they don’t actually understand what The Talmud is and instead quote out of context arguments within it and distort them to show those as evidence).  These two conspiracies can’t co-exist. The Frankists explicitly rejected the Talmud. So if they are the secret cabal, they can’t be motivated by it. So someone like Fuentes understands that by popularizing conspiracy 1, Owens is undermining conspiracy 2. And thus also driving away the audience from those who promote conspiracy 1."

wanye on X - "At risk of hyperbole, all this stuff around pets and, “emotional support animals” makes me feel as disconnected from the direction of the culture as almost anything. “The role of the government is to force your landlord to let you have a puppy” is so spiritually and philosophically offputting to me that it genuinely causes me some level of despair."

Meme - "WHEN DORA EXPLORED TOO FAR *Isabela Merced as Dora the Explorer*
*Isabela Merced as Kay in Alien: Romulus with blood*

i/o on X - "I only knew one guy who drove an ice cream truck. Here's my story about him.  During the housing crash in 2011, I bought I foreclosed house for next to nothing, lived in it for two years, then sold it tax-free at a decent profit.  It was located in a nice tree-lined middle-class neighborhood, filled mostly with old white people and a few young white progressive couples. Two houses away from mine — the only rental on the street — was the only non-white family: A black guy who dressed like he was from the Punjab and two huge black women in black burqas. I assumed he was bigamous because I never saw another man go inside the house.  A beat-up ice cream truck was parked in the driveway. Driving this truck seemed to be his only job.   They had about eight kids, only one of whom was over the age of seven or eight , and the toddlers often wandered around alone in the neighborhood (sometimes in the middle of the street) naked. They seemed entirely unsupervised. Only the oldest, a teenager, appeared to attend school.  My reaction was: "WTF is this?" But my neighbors didn't want to talk about it. The smiling progressive wives tried to engage the burqa wives in conversation, but were met with silence and looks of contempt.  One day, after a particularly bad day at the office, I came home, pulled my car into the driveway, and saw the oldest of their kids, a boy of about 14 years of age, riding his bike all over my lawn, doing wheelies. I glanced at him, and he sneered back at me with one of those "well what are you going to do about it?" looks.   I got out of my car and started walking toward him. I didn't say a word, I just kept quietly walking toward him with an absolutely even emotionless expression on my face. He took off and I never saw him on my lawn again.   The family installed a large shed in their driveway. I called the city and they told me they'd have some people come by to tell them to remove it. But when the officials knocked on their door a few days later, the man refused to let them in and screamed at them.  A few weeks after that I saw him disassembling the shed. I took a chair, placed at the edge of my lawn facing his driveway, and sat in it looking directly at him while he took apart the shed, while I calmly sipped a drink. I wanted him to know that I was the one who called the city, and that I was enjoying his defeat.  A few months after I sold the house and bought another, I was looking at the local real estate listings on Zillow and saw that the house the ice cream truck guy had been living in was on the market "as-is." The photos showed that it had been utterly wrecked on the inside, and was being sold at about half the price you'd expect. It stayed on the market for over a year before an out-of-state company bought it.  I talked to one of my former neighbors later and he told me that the house had been made mostly uninhabitable, and that, for example, the smell of urine was so bad that not only did the carpets have to be torn up but the floors had to be treated and then entirely refinished.    In the summer, I still see the ice cream truck guy from time to time because he drives his truck through my neighborhood. Whenever I see him I imitate a Muslim call to prayer from my window and watch him glare back at me in response."

International students ‘cannot speak enough English to follow courses’ - "A significant number of international students do not speak good enough English to follow a course but are graduating with master’s degrees, academics claim. They say the “crisis” runs through all types of universities including those in the Russell Group of selective institutions... They wrote: “Master’s-level teaching used to be rich, challenging and enjoyable. But now, a master’s seminar in the disciplines that we both teach typically involves a cohort in which three quarters of the students (and often more) are from a single country, a few are international students from elsewhere and one or two are home students. “On the master’s programmes in our departments, only a very small number of students typically have the English language skills necessary for engaging in meaningful seminar discussions. Increasing numbers of students are not engaged at all in the learning process.” Classes no longer used high levels of interaction or challenge, they said. “Material must be delivered in a lecture style, and preferably as a written document so that it can be translated using one of the many translation apps (of variable quality) to provide real-time translation of any spoken content. “Open questions to the whole class are often met with silence, while group tasks are typically conducted using translation apps, before usually the same student from each group is tasked with reading out the answers. “This can be an extremely stressful and challenging environment for these students, and we try really hard to support them, often by rapidly changing the content and pace of classes.” The academics said that one-to-one supervision and feedback meetings were “particularly excruciating”, with some students unable to understand simple questions. Universities have taken much higher numbers of international students in the past decade. They have been heavily reliant on Chinese students and while these numbers are still high, they are being overtaken by those from India. More Nigerian students applied in the past few years but many have been put off this year by tighter visa restrictions on dependants and are also struggling to afford fees because of a currency crisis... The domestic tuition fee that UK universities can charge domestic students has been frozen at £9,250 since 2017 and was £9,000 for five years before that. The Office for Students, which regulates universities in England, predicted that about 40 per cent will run budget deficits this year... Another on social media said students who could barely speak in English in class were turning in sophisticated essays or AI-generated jargon, such as referring to the United Kingdom as the “Unified Realm”."

City of Surprise under scrutiny for arresting woman during council meeting - "A heated exchange during a Surprise City Council meeting ended with a West Valley mom in handcuffs.  Mayor Skip Hall said she violated a city rule that bans complaints about city workers during public comment.  Arizona’s Family spoke with some experts who argued the city violated her First Amendment rights.  “I think that she may have a case against the City of Surprise,” said constitutional law attorney Robert McWhirter.  Activist Rebekah Massie went to the podium during public comment on Tuesday and criticized how much money the city attorney makes.  The mayor cut her off and pointed to the city’s rule: “Oral communications during the City Council meeting may not be used to lodge charges or complaints against any employee of the City or members of the body...”  It led to a tense confrontation between the two. Massie was later removed by a police officer in front of her 10-year-old daughter and arrested for trespassing. She is facing an additional charge for resisting arrest."

Princess Märtha Louise of Norway Marries Self-Described “Shaman” Durek Verrett | Vanity Fair
Durek Verrett - Wikipedia - "Durek Verrett (born November 17, 1974, as Derek David Verrett) is an American conspiracy theorist, alternative therapist, self-professed shaman and author. He has been widely described by media and other observers as a conman and conspiracy theorist, and has served time in prison and been arrested and charged with various crimes... Their relationship has been heavily scrutinized, with many Norwegians voicing their disapproval and calling Verrett a "charlatan." He has been characterized by Norwegian media and other critics as a conman and a conspiracy theorist, and his statements on various topics have been widely criticized and ridiculed in Norway. The former Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg described Verrett's views as "very strange" and "not based on facts," and said that "the ideas that he promotes is something that we combat as conspiracy theories." Solberg further said the criticism of Verrett is reasonable. State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services, Ole Henrik Krat Bjørkholt, described Verrett as "an unscrupulous and dangerous charlatan" who engages in fraud. In 2023, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre strongly condemned Verrett, calling his statements on child rearing "dangerous." In 2019, on his podcast "Ancient Wisdom Today," Verrett openly discussed his and his girlfriend's sex life and his techniques for controlling his orgasm to maximize partner satisfaction. He also offered sex advice in a webinar titled "Soul Sexual Webinar." In 2019, Verrett and Märtha Louise co-organised seminars titled "The Princess and the Shaman," which were widely criticised for the claims made by Verrett about healing cancer and for exploiting Märtha Louise's constitutional role as princess for a private business venture. The newspaper iTromsø noted that Märtha Louise has faced extensive criticism for associating with a conspiracy theorist and over her "commercialization and abuse of the title 'princess'"...   Both Verrett and Märtha Louise have complained about the negative reception of Verrett in Norway, and Verrett claimed he was criticized because "people don't want a black man in the royal family." Verrett said, "I have never experienced so much racism as when I came to Norway.""
Clearly, the Norwegians are all toxic and racist and she needs to cut them off

glamorous reptile on X - "person: I’m sad
doctor: here are pills that make it impossible to cum or lose weight
person: perfect"

Meme - *Busty woman with man with T-shirt with 2 shocked black men on sofa bending to one side*

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I know just one person over 100 with an actual birth certificate.  Across U.S. states, the total and per capita numbers of supercentenarians dramatically decline right after the introduction of birth certificates (blue line).  The reason? Most such cases are fake. Also, have you ever noticed that supercentenarians are more common in areas with more crime, more poverty, and lower average life expectancies?  Here's data for England:
The same pattern of supercentenarian numbers being correlated with poverty holds in (A, D) England, (B, E) France, and (C, F) Japan. Across countries, you just see the same things over and over, from age heaping to weird correlations, so the conclusion is clear:  Supercentenarian numbers are driven less by regionally exceptional longevity and more by people defrauding pension systems and making up their ages. Oh, and if you wanted to learn how to live a long life from the "blue zones" in Sardinia, Okinawa, and Icaria, good luck. Those places have low life expectancies and literacy levels, high crime, and lots of poverty.  Their long-lived people are not able to validate their ages. This also applies to Loma Linda (not all that exceptional of a place).  In fact, across the whole U.S., at least 17% of centenarians were found to be non-centenarians in 2019 when someone just read through two plain-text files and found dates didn't match. And this also applies to Nicoya, which is riddled with fraudulent ages:
If someone says they know someone super old, ask them: Where were they born? If it's in some place that was poor in the not-too-distant past, then they probably have the wrong age."
Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud

The Blue Zone Distraction - "If you want to succeed at giving humans longer lives, we must obtain better data. Places like the blue zones don’t have an especial relevance to longevity, and focusing on them will tend to be a waste of time that distracts from other, more important work. The faultiness of the data from these and other places will also tend to make the search for longevity secrets all the more difficult because, for example, due to this sort of error, we don’t really know the shape of late-life mortality, and we certainly don’t have great ideas about the sorts of health behaviors that sustain the longest possible human lives.  If you are interested in discovering what really makes people live longer lives, cast aside the lessons of frauds and capitalization on correlations, and focus on doing the basic science that will finally, ultimately banish death. If we fail to do that, then death will surely come for you."

Meme - "BRO! I GOT LUCKY LAST NIGHT AND HOOKED UP WITH A PERFECT TEN! BUT SHE LOOKED EIGHTEEN"
"HELLO, POLICE?"

Meme - The Libertarian Trap @LibertarianTrap: "After countless hours of research, have come to the sad conclusion for men who like women. You're gay. Here is proof of fact. You can't unsee it now. *EPCM woman with head, neck and breasts forming penis and testicles/cock and balls*"

Meme - Tinder: "***. 45 miles away
Have you ever said "Fuck the police"? Well now's your chance."

Sticking up for the CRA is getting harder and harder as ‘bad’ experiences proliferate - "When I attend social events and introduce myself as a tax professional, the conversation often turns to the Canada Revenue Agency . When asked about it, I like to explain that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) simply administers the laws that politicians and the Department of Finance draft and ultimately bring to Parliament to enact. It performs a critically important function, since without it the laws would be meaningless and there would be no funds to ensure that various levels of government can carry out their duties... Over my 30-year career as a tax advisor, I have seen both the good and the bad. On the “good” side, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the most talented and dedicated public servants who truly care about Canada. They make a difference. Often the “good” involves getting to an answer quickly, courteously and efficiently with the CRA’s help. An audit that is done efficiently and effectively is also “good.” The “bad” involves stories of public servants who are poorly trained, use their “power” to purposely intimidate taxpayers, conduct very poor audits and form conclusions that are laughable, forcing the affected taxpayers to spend time and money challenging the decisions... Lately, however, the “bad” experiences are starting to become much more common than the “good.” In chats with my colleagues across Canada, many are in agreement. This shifting attitude comes despite the CRA’s headcount growing from 40,059 people in 2015 to 59,155 people this year — an  increase of 47.6 per cent. Every time I review those figures, I shake my head at such massive increases. Although it is a simplistic comparative, the U.S. equivalent to the CRA, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), had 82,990 employees as of 2023."
Clearly they need even more staff

Fen Osler Hampson and Tim Sargent: Canada’s government is way, way too big. Here are five ways to rightsize the federal public service - "There is no question that the federal public service has become too big, bloated, and unaffordable. Rightsizing government should be a critical priority for this and any future government. Given the significant reductions required to put the federal public service on the right path, and the disruption this can create, governments will need to carefully consider the best way to address this challenge. There is a right and wrong way to go about it.  First, the facts. Rapid public service growth under the Trudeau government has accompanied a massive increase in overall government spending. In Fiscal Year 2015-16, which covers the last year of the Harper government, federal government spending was 13 percent of GDP. In FY 2022-23, the most recent year for which data is available, government spending had risen to 15.6 percent of GDP.  This has resulted in a fundamental imbalance in the government’s books, with a structural deficit of 1.4 percent of GDP, because spending has outpaced revenues.   One of the main drivers of program spending is public service growth.  At the beginning of 2016, there were 259,000 federal public servants. By 2023, there were 357,000—a whopping 38 percent increase.  In comparison, employment in the overall economy grew by only 13 percent from 2016 to 2023. As a result, growth in federal public service has been three times faster than the general workforce over this period...   The federal government’s use of labour and capital removes resources from the private sector and stifles productivity. With the exception of recessionary periods, bigger government makes hiring workers and investing harder for the private sector. When unemployment is as low as it is now, the federal government should be leaving space for the private sector to do its thing. Now is the time that the federal government should be running a surplus to reduce the federal debt (now 69.7 percent of GDP).

How US Financial Literacy Rates Compare Internationally - "That survey finds that only 33% of adults around the world are financially literate, and that 57% of adults in the U.S. are financially literate. While the U.S. does outdo the worldwide average, it lags behind several other OECD countries, too... The countries that led the world per the S&P financial literacy survey were as follows: Denmark Norway Sweden Canada Israel The U.K. Germany The Netherlands Australia Finland
While the U.S. got a score of 57%, the scores of the countries above ranged from 63% (Finland) to 71% (a tie between Norway and Sweden)."
People are not as enlightened as elites like to think, which is why things like basic income don't work

Elias Muhanna on X - "Burglars in medieval Cairo would sometimes send a turtle with a lit candle on its shell into the house they were planning to rob. If someone was home, they'd cry out in amazement when they saw the turtle, scaring off the burglars. Otherwise, the robbery could go ahead.""

Meme - Blue poking rock: "Come on boy do your business...no need to be shy"
Yellow: "Ha Ha Check out this freak with his pet ROCK."
Blue: "BAD ROCK!!" *bashes yellow's brains out with rock*

San Gregorio della Divina Pietà - Wikipedia - "Until 1870, the pope required the Jews living in the nearby ghetto to attend compulsory sermons (Italian: prediche coatte) every sabbath in front of the church, which faced two gates of the Jewish quarter, but they avoided hearing them by putting wax in their ears. Because of this, during a restoration in 1858, a bilingual (Hebrew and Latin) inscription with a passage from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 65:2–3), in which the Lord complains about the obstinacy of the Jews, was put on the facade"

Does hunger influence judgments of female physical attractiveness? - "To account for male preferences for female body weight following a consistent socio-economic pattern, Nelson and Morrison (2005) proposed a social-cognitive model based on the individual experience of resource scarcity. We replicated their studies showing that calorific dissatisfaction can influence preference for female body weight using a different dependent variable, namely photographic stimuli of women with known body weight and shape. Using this revised methodology, we found that operationalized intra-individual resource scarcity affects preferences for body weight: 30 hungry male participants preferred figures with a higher body weight and rated as more attractive heavier figures than 31 satiated male participants. Hungrier men were also less likely to be influenced by cues for body shape, supporting extant cross-cultural studies on female physical attractiveness. These findings corroborate those of Nelson and Morrison (2005) and are discussed in terms of how cultural contexts shape individual psychological experience as predicted by the theory of mutual constitution."

Meme - "Disney. All he wants is human flesh. *Pinocchio*"

Cool Evolution Trick: Platinum Turns Baby Snails Into Slugs | WIRED - "Evidence suggests that transitions from snails to slugs — or rather, from having a concrete outer shell to a greatly reduced internal one — have happened numerous times in evolution. Such losses or gains occurred repeatedly within the Mollusca, an enormous group that includes clams, oysters, squid, octopuses and of course the gastropods —snails and slugs. The internal flat bone of cuttlefish and squid, for example, is thought to be a pared-down version of an ancestral outer molluscan shell. And the shell game continued within the gastropods. Within the marine gastropods known as sea butterflies and sea hares, for example, there are both shelled and shell-less species."

Research Shows That Anyone Could Forget a Kid in a Hot Car - "If parents believe they would never forget their child in a hot car, they should think again. It can happen to anyone.  Since 1998, about 969 children have died in hot cars and more than half of them were left behind unknowingly by their caregiver, according to NoHeatStroke.org.  A leading expert in cognitive neuroscience who has studied the role of memory in such tragedies has found that the stresses parents face in everyday life can make these memory lapses more likely.   Forgetting a child is not a negligence problem but a memory problem, says David Diamond, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida in Tampa.  “The most common response is that only bad or negligent parents forget kids in cars,” Diamond says. “It’s a matter of circumstances. It can happen to everyone.” During the summer, many families change their daily routines for vacations or other reasons, and that disruption is a common factor in these tragic incidents... caregivers involved in these incidents come from many walks of life. They include teachers, dentists, social workers, law enforcement officers, nurses, clergymen, military officers, and even a rocket scientist. These tragic cases can happen to anyone, regardless of their education or socioeconomic status...   Many times, when a child died, there had been a change in the day’s routine, Diamond says. For example, a parent who wouldn’t normally be responsible for day-care drop-off might have been given that task that day. Because our brains recognize a pattern for the day, this parent would drive to work as usual, even though the baby was along for the ride. And unless there was an external cue, such as seeing the diaper bag or hearing the baby, the parent’s brain would continue on autopilot and could even create a false memory that the child is safely at day care, Diamond found. Sleep deprivation and stress can also increase the potential for a working-memory failure."
Of course, it is easier to demonise parents who do this as bad people

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