Scapegoated for reporting

[jfz9580m]

36. I understand finally

I get why my behaviors have been so erratic.

I had 33 years of a fairly pleasant and uneventful life (22 years in India, then 11 in the US). Yeah there was a scammy EECS dept that took 25-35 k from one, but didn’t bother with any guidance or involvement. A stark difference from my first postdoc mentor who invested a lot of time and effort in mentoring all of us.

Yeah there are creeps out there, but they never had any power over me nor control. I had a happy childhood and home. My first two labs were cool. My ex and I split up, but we remain close friends to this day. I cannot remember a time he was anything but completely supportive. My best friend, like my ex, is family.

And then I went to this hell in Si Valley. It really was a hell and so I came back to India. And even at the hell, my direct mentor was nice. He was a new parent and not tenured. And I was ..not a good fit for that place. He was a decent man though his school’s psychiatry dept is just vile.

But that place was built by and full of too many of the types of people who should just be avoided. And his being decent was inadequate given that both the city and the school violated common sense norms re IRB protocols and informed consent.

And a decent enough network, that is still not very politically savvy about what they are in, was not for me.

After that things just kept getting worse and my mental state started to deteriorate.

I used to watch Ex-Machina and feel sympathetic towards Domnhall Gleeson’s character while also thinking “Two weeks? Wait till you are stuck in shitty experiments conducted by completely brainless morons for over a decade.”

That was the part that embittered me the most. That these were not people who are anything like say Prof Steve Chu. As an example of the more typical strict academic everyone fears the way normal students and postdocs fear normal scientists, who are scary but not depressing like some sort of creep of that V.S. Ramachandran, Alex Pentland type..

This awful sleazy, dull, “charismatic” huckster who writes awful airport bestsellers that horrible people read.

It was incomprehensible. I honestly couldn’t tell what happened to science and medicine as I knew it and where this brainless creep type rather than the routine dull - I mean bright, strict etc, but not spectacular and kind of embarrassing.

Like I can’t see anyone normal wanting to be associated with any of these people or those guys. Science isn’t a monolith and by my estimate except as a freakshow no one would want to be near Milgram, Zimbardo.

Those guys are douchebags who are written about in tabloids and near the movie industry.

I get now why people at those schools are so uptight, tense etc. They work adjacent to the kinds of people most normal scientists - well okay anyone I would know - kinda tacky. Who knows the kinds of people who want to be on tv and write rubbishy bestsellers? Douchebags that is who. It was terrifyingly tacky and they don’t even see themselves as on the continuum which Trump and Epstein lie on.

A lot of the better people whose professions by necessity involve a public facing role don’t really enjoy that.

That other type - They are not people any sane scientist would want to have a mental breakdown near.

I had no mental illness. But I had this cognitive dissonance that comes from 33 years of learning that was positive in conflict with these new creepy experiences and for the first time the worst kinds of humans having power over one’s life.

Now I am returning to normal and reminded of how alien trauma, depression etc are for me. I have never been solipsistic and ever had the view that the world centres around me and so being aware of the state of the world, I was impersonally glum about the state of earth, factory farming etc. But this is different from some morons annoying one specifically.

And the thing about the effect the creeps have on one - it actually works to help those jerks/these creeps. It is why they aggressively noise pollute and do all these retaliatory and harassing things.

The more emotional or stressed you get, the less likely it is that you can be as coherent a complainant and get neutral parties to start to believe you.

And I am only now starting to get it. The “services” inside this corrupt, parasitic fraud are worthless.

But I am recovering because clearly it was not me and I was not mentally ill.

I think I have a much better shot of taking on these complaints as my old self.

Simply put I think a lot of these men, tech people etc are unfit to work with or around women without strict supervision of the sane type.

I don’t consider these guys even marginally competent based on all this. And the whole thing - I will be filing misconduct, malpractice, exploitation and harassment allegations.
But it has to be done professionally.

As a start, along with this paper I am wrapping up, I will slowly post a cohesive narrative on DU which I have found an invaluable tool since I trust EarlG/elad and am grateful that MIRT keeps trolls out.

This has really helped me.

There was never even a sane way to file complaints and I am not going to go and post on Twitter or Facebook or any of those creep owned places.

When I was looking at stories of the Epstein survivors I noticed how..well I certainly was moved. Most of those young women lead such hard lives.

Predatory men need strict oversight especially at a time like this.

In addition to the work people like Yasha Levine or Chris Ketcham do to take on the challenges of these times, it also is uphill bringing back women’s rights over allowing corrupt and creepy tech people just make all these changes and grab space and bring their tacky, creepy worlds into one’s home or street.

Strict harassment laws (which include the types of women I have seen driving down my street - the types of women who would associate with those men) are essential to end this. No free lunch for tech or the types of “scientists” and “doctors” who work with them.

It cannot separate out along lines of the spaces the creepy, corrupt and regressive and the civilized. So no more of this making and building without any permits, any oversight and what has happened must result in charges wherever necessary.