Ms Carter was recently released from prison a few days ago for involuntarily killing her 'boyfriend' Conrad Roy.

She told a female friend two months after his death that she ordered him back into the truck where he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Why would people think he'd obey her 'orders'?

I know people have told other people to commit suicide, perhaps not all the time, but it has happened. In some states of the US people have been prosecuted for urging others to suicide. In many cases there is documented evidence.

But according to HBO's series 'I love you now die' there is no actual evidence other than her boasting about it to a friend; when her friends were very selective about what they believed about what she said.

The whole thing to me sounds like blaming the female rape victim for her supposedly having so much power of males that the female is responsible and to blame for the male raping her in the first place. Did Michelle Carter have so much power over Mr Roy that her telling him to get back into the truck was an order he must obey?

I find this all rather insulting to males that they have no self control. The rapist is a complete victim to females that he had no control over the situation, you could almost say she raped him - and no doubt some men would say this is true. Similarly Mr Roy could have hung up the phone, turned off his phone or even blocked her calls completely if he hadn't decided to commit suicide.

In my opinion it is nothing more than blaming the victim for the situation they had no control over.

I remember telling a woman on twitter once that she hated women and she scoffed saying that that was nonsense because she was a woman; but indeed, such beings exist.

I have written about this before but I wanted to emphasize the making of a female misogynist. In this article, the author talks about the image of female misogynists. I would say that most female misogynists come in the form of 'I am equal to men but other women are not', or 'no woman is equal to a man, including myself and my daughters'. An example of the first kind is Phyllis Schlafly - someone who uses women's hard fought for rights to take those rights away from women. The second kind is pretty much any evangelical religious woman who believes women should be submissive to their husbands.

Anyway, I wanted to discuss creating a female misogynist. I only have anecdotal evidence but it seems women who have been brutalized by a man somehow and she seeks a woman, IE her mother/sisters..., and they have given her no sympathy. I have heard of a number of examples of such women.

I don't know what turns men into misogynists. However it may be men who cannot get sex - the classic incel; they were bred that way by misogynistic mothers (I have known some of these) or something else.

I have known a number of gay men who hate women.

I don't see why all women must be stridently feminist although I do think all women should be treated as well as men are and want equal rights. Feminism isn't trying to make men inferior to women, what I believe most feminists want is to get rid of social hierarchy.

Sometimes some men leave me scratching my head. And being supposedly smart doesn't necessarily exclude all men from being incredibly stupid. For instance this article, it sounds like they have thought their deep thoughts and decided that humans invented language for profound reasons, this juxtaposition between humans being able to create symbols in different manners somehow makes us exceptional and thus language evolved.

Clearly these men never raised a baby, or they may well be fathers but never really had anything to do with their kids because pretty much any mother will tell you why language was invented - so we can communicate basic human needs. Most mothers have experienced the frustration of trying to figure out what is the difference between a cry of pain, hunger or discomfort. That discomfort may come in a multiple of varieties, meaning diapers need changing, extreme tiredness, perhaps even boredom, or the need for exercise... and yet the baby has only one mode to communicate all of that - crying.

Anyone trying to communicate with a child learning language knows the frustration of trying to figure out what the kid is saying when their sentences are ill formed and they still can't pronounce certain sounds.

Yet men think language evolved so we could express profound thoughts? I do not think so.

Men's genius at understanding simple things is often staggering and isn't limited to language, let's have a look at how men think learning happens. In this article the awful technique of training artificial neural networks is discussed.

The skinny on training artificial neural networks is you expose the neural network to the same examples over and over again until the artificial neural network kinda repeats what you showed it back at you - and by 'kinda' i really mean 'kinda'. This is nothing like how humans learn - yeh okay you may not remember the letter 'g' the first time you see it and are told it's a 'g' when you're a child, but you don't have to be told upwards of 2000x unless you have some kind of learning disability, and when I said 'kinda', you wouldn't be happy if you told your child it's a 'g' and the child came back and said it's probably a 'g' but it's only 78% certain. You might find that pretty exciting because we know in our heart that nothing is certain, but the reality of human learning is a 'g' is a 'g' - that 78% is definitely meant to be 100%. But artificial neural networks, despite all the hype really aren't that good at simulating human learning. Meanwhile that 78% that the neural network has learned comes at the expense of learning the letter 'z' and 'q' - which are quickly forgotten by the neural network because they don't appear very often - and the 78% certainty of it being a 'g' doesn't even mean something as sophisticated as the neural network getting it confused with an '8' either.

Yet AI is being hyped as the next best thing since sliced bread. Probably because those of silicon valley believe that the first to market - which is probably true unfortunately because customers can play follow the leader because they know they aren't experts. The reality is, the experts aren't experts either.

I guess the name says it all. Aliens have become a problem - they are illegally entering the country and ruining everything forever, according to the political right, especially the illegal kind.

It is probable that the right specifically use the word 'alien' to refer to people without an appropriate visa or citizenship to invoke feelings of fear in the population, but why is the concept of alien so frightening?

I would put it down to the idea that the word alien is most commonly applied to extraterrestrial beings who supposedly abduct people in the middle of the night to perform awful experiments on them.

But our vision of aliens have changed over the years, where aliens have mostly been aggressive seeking to invade and take our planet, and sometimes their aggressive nature has manifest in our technologies, like with the X-files, a common thread was that aliens presented as black oil.

Aliens have pretty much presented themselves as aggressive or something to be feared with two notable exceptions, Star Trek, especially the original series, which was very much emblematic of the 60s; the other except was Kubrik's 2001 where aliens are a kind of beneficial force, and the movie Contact - where aliens serve as a kind of mirror for humanity.

And I think this is the purpose that aliens really serve for us, they are a metaphor for our hopes and dreams, our fears and technology.

Regarding our technology, earlier this year there was a rash of articles saying aliens might attempt to communicate with us via DNA, which has advanced our understanding in a number of ways. I still think we have much to learn about DNA, things like that it is a kind of hologram that must be read across a number of chromosomes at once, not just down the lengths of chromosomes, one at a time like when it is being reproduced.

I think our fear of aliens is based on our fear that aliens will be just like us - or attitudes when we colonized landmasses like Australia, the Americas, the islands in the pacific and else where. Western arrogance had no respect for the natives of these lands and introduced western diseases, claimed and destroyed their lands, ruined the native people's culture, traditions and harmony with the land.

We are afraid aliens will be just like us, coming with their superior technology and then wipe our culture out.

I suspect when we meet aliens they will be nothing like us and would rather be more afraid of us.

When Hitler set up fascist Germany along with those working with him, in my opinion, despite how misguided they were in their marginalization of various ethnic groups, they, the fascists, thought they were acting to benefit Germany. They were no doubt wrong and hurt Germany quite a lot when they were doing so.

On the other hand we have Trump, very much working from Hitler's playbook, marginalizing various ethnic groups for the amusement of his base, being cruel because he can - I think he probably enjoys being cruel, and doing other things to please to his base, and including upsetting 'liberals' because for some of his base that is all they want - is the so called 'liberal tears'.

I don't want anything so mean-spirited and trivial as 'conservative tears'. I find this astonishing because as a 'liberal' I want what's best for everyone, or the long term benefit for the majority of people and for our home, this planet. Curiously enough on Twitter I have seen a number of people gleefully rejoice in 'liberal tears' and I have found the retort of 'is that all you want - something so trivial? Because I want a better world for all of us, not just liberals.' This shuts them down completely.

But I am not the first person to make a comparison between Hitler and Trump, and some even borrow directly from Hitler. Republicans have made the comparison, along with others. If you want to find others, do a google search.

No doubt even Republicans, in general, think that benefiting the rich benefits America (somehow - and I guess it might if you believe in so called trickle down economics - which genuinely does not benefit people of average or low income) and so although they too are misguided they still think they are benefiting America in a convoluted way. My take on republicans is they have bought the notion of short term profit margins like quarterly reports - and they are only focused on the next profit/loss statement. So making huge amounts of money for the rich now benefits the rich now. They aren't interested in long term - they can't see beyond the next quarterly report of their profit/loss statement. This is  very bad long term for us and the planet.

Anyway I digress.

Trump is only benefiting himself and those of his base who are satisfied with merely 'liberal tears' - along with the awful treatment of Kurds, Latin Americans, other immigrants and refugees. Imo Trump only really enjoys the cruelty and he'd sell his base out in a heartbeat if it was to his benefit. All his base really wants is the show and just don't care about whatever long term consequences there may be.

This is really a statement about his base and how privileged they are to think they are unaffected by Trump's actions. It is also a statement about politics - it has become nothing but entertainment, and all we are doing is electing a celebrity, not someone who is trying to serve the country, not someone who realizes the complexities of trying to plan for the future and do the best for everyone. Politics isn't for the amusement of the privileged or for short term profit alone.

It's true that the science isn't settled about what will happen as more and more carbon dioxide CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere because our climate has changed in the past and will change and change again in the future. But given that we can only run this experiment once, we better get the answer right.

Now since there are many things acting upon our environment some people think this is a call to do nothing - like it's out of our control - but we know that's not true. We are one of the actors and we have a lot of control over what we do and what we will permit. For instance they've found plastic bags in the depths of the ocean and in Antarctica. We have a large impact on our planet and each time we cut down a tree we are impacting our environment. So we are being disingenuous to think our environment is completely out of our control.

So while the science isn't settled on climate change, this is not a call to do nothing. In fact it is the opposite, it is time we take responsibility for the well being of our environment and if the sun is causing climate change (which I doubt) we should be doubling down on our efforts to ensure the climate stays stable - for purely the sake of self-preservation.

Why? For a start a) there is no where else for us to move to. While we are looking to building habitats on the moon and Mars, we are still a long way off from being able to live there and b) we will still be dependent on the earth for our technology and food for a long while to come.

Yes, our technology is dependent on our civilization on this planet earth. Apparently there is no single person on earth who knows how to make a computer mouse - everything from the tiny circuit board in there, the laser, the plastics that make up your mouse, and all the code - plus then the people who know how to make the plastics and mine the materials for the circuit board, they very probably don't know how to grow all the food those people need to eat or the coffee they drink while they are creating those circuits and plastics and then assembling your mouse - and that's just your mouse. Then there are clothes, the technology to move about and the entertainment you might want when you are living on Mars, plus then there are all the other people you need to make up your world, whether they are medical personal, people you work with, people you love or the people who brew your coffee at your favorite coffee shop.

So let's do a cost-benefit analysis on climate change. This is definitely the kind of thing you might find mixed in with your quarterly stock report so here goes:
We have 2 options, do nothing about climate change, or do all we can.
And the climate scientists might be right or they may be wrong. Either way they have been studying this - kind of like if you get cancer, you don't go to your barista for advice. Why is it we don't trust climate scientists? I have a PhD in data science, I know I am no expert on climate science, but I am a scientist. When scientific consensus is that we have a problem, I am not going to disagree with them.

So the experts say we have a problem, if they are right and we fix our environmental problems, then great. We get a bunch of new technology, we get to continue living and can continue to use our technology. Plus we get a clean environment. This is the responsible and adult thing to do. The downside is some old rich guys are out some money but they are old and will be dead soon because they are old.

If the scientists are right and we don't fix the environment - old rich guys will remain rich which won't benefit them much because they're old and will soon be dead anyway. The downside is we and our technology are fucked. We are already experiencing extreme weather events.

If the scientists are wrong and we don't fix the environment - old rich guys will of course remain rich. We get to continue to live in the filthy mess that rich old guys want us to live in.

If the scientists are wrong and we do fix the environment then we get a whole bunch of new technology and we get a clean planet to live in. Sure old rich guys may be out of some money but they'll be dead soon anyway.

In my opinion there is no downside to fixing the environment and it is the responsible thing to do. We have the knowledge and skill to manage our environment and we will be dependent upon this planet, whether we set up colonies on the moon and Mars, for probably centuries to come.

We can't afford to live in denial despite all the money there is in denying the problem. We need oil for much transportation that our technology doesn't cover yet. Plug-in hybrids work well for the average family who can afford one. But our plug-in hybrid tech may not cut it for ships, trains, planes and semi-trailers. However we have CO2 recapture technology which we could use for fuel rather than drilling for oil.  The environment will thank us and this recaptured CO2 fuel could be used for transportation plug-in hybrid doesn't work for, otherwise we can store the CO2 underground while we work on solving our emissions problems.

In many ways our understanding of ourselves and our environment is just beginning - our technology is cool but it also is quite primitive in that we don't have recycling built into our manufacturing - we bring products to market that are designed to be thrown into landfill too soon. When our manufacturing and development recycles itself in accordance with the principles of the universe, IE the universe and our environment recycles everything in time, will our society be sustainable, then we will be able to live on new worlds.

I have recently been reading 'Smoke gets in your eyes' by Caitlin Doughty. While in her book she focuses on how death is hidden from us in our western society, what I really think is being hidden is that we are animals - or - as people prefer to put it - mammals.

For some reason people consider being called an animal insulting. Calling someone an animal is a kind of moral judgment, that animals are beneath us civilized human beings. Religion has tried to distance us from animals by creating words like 'soul' and deeming that animals don't go to heaven/limbo/hell when they die - that animals can't think, communicate... whatever... as we are somehow not like them - that we are different. (If there is a real difference between us and animals it is we use money and will destroy our environment to get it - money is useless outside of human society.) Yet increasing evidence shows that we share much with our closest primate relatives, consciousness (imo dreaming probably appears when animals have enough brain matter to support consciousness) appears to be a kind of continuum between us and other animals; and other animals communicate, use tools, have rituals and innovate just as we do and ultimately live in hives or pacts just like we do. Nevertheless the reality is we are a kind of animal. And not being able to admit it speaks to it's denial.

Google defines mammal as "a warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and (typically) the birth of live young."

In classical deductive reasoning - if you happen to be offended by the notion of being an animal:
all mammals are animals
human beings are mammals
therefore human beings are animals

There are some truths that come with our mammal/animal nature, we are born, we eat & drink, we have sex to procreate, we sleep, we come with a body that we have to care for, we get sick, we use the bathroom (another thing we seldom discuss) and we will die.

In the course of my years I have only ever seen one dead body. It's not like I haven't been to funerals, I have been to many and I have known lots of people who have died but all but one of those bodies society protected me from.

I gave my husband Doughty's book to read and he said as a man he could go for years without seeing blood. Being alive is different for women, every month we are reminded we are alive by our menstrual blood - something that we must not discuss and pretend doesn't happen because I think it reminds society that we are animals.

Being protected from our animal nature also hides babies and children from society, older people, the sick and disabled are also hidden from us. All those things that remind us we are getting older and our bodies are fallible.
Our animal/mammalian nature is bound to our fear of death, our fear of the unknown and what will happen next - once we die.

I have often thought that our fear of death springs from our fear of being left out - that there will be an on going party and once we are dead we're no longer invited. And part of that is that we will be forgotten. That those who are at the party will go on to forget about us because we won't be there to remind them that we existed. But there are other reasons too - like not being here to be able to help those we leave behind. If you are afraid to die then you might have other reasons.

I am not sure if we are afraid of death because it reminds us we are animals or whether we are afraid of acknowledging we're animals because it reminds us we will die. Either way, the universe recycles everything (just like our environment recycles everything) especially our bodies - if being alive is distinct in some way from our functioning body - it would seem that our life too would be recycled. Besides there are plenty of anecdotal stories of reincarnation and ghosts, I can't believe that all these people decided to lie about their experiences.

Doughty wrote an important book - I recommend reading it just to know what to expect - so you can be prepared when someone you love dies.

Women have to be perfect.

I'll give you an example. I knew a woman who developed a computer system that was completely bug free. All bugs associated with the system occurred in other products that her system used. If she'd been a male she'd have been the equivalent of a god walking on water. It wouldn't matter what he looked like, it wouldn't matter how heavy he was or his relationship status, he'd be a god in his field.

But she wasn't promoted, she wasn't even even respected much. She was too good looking, a little overweight and her relationship status was a bit of a joke.

As an aside according to this woman, if you are too good looking and a woman you will always be considered an airhead, vain and frivolous, not great in a technical environment like computer programming. Whereas the men who were good looking were quickly and efficiently promoted.

When it comes to perfection, a woman's body must be perfect. The internet has helpful images to show what her face and body must be like. Here is a helpful list of what would make a woman perfect. Note, a woman being intelligent comes in fourth place (out of 8). If she is to be perfect, the most important is appearance which comes in first. The intelligence bar isn't very high, just being able to string a sentence together beyond social media will suffice. Having personality isn't a requirement at all, but being partially independent is. Not fully independent though.

Men would be perfect if they had even two of the qualities on that list.

Reading more google results only depresses me. Because it just reinforces the idea that women are merely ornaments there to be commented upon like they are nothing more than cattle to be bought or sold. The only important thing about them is whether you (a man) would want to fuck her.

Another take on female perfection is: serial murderers think it's a good idea to kill women who they deem not perfect. I was watching a show on Anthony Sowell where they said he killed women he didn't deem good mothers. He is not the only serial killer to pass judgment on his choice of victims, many serial killers have chosen female prostitutes.

The media, the legal system, the police, society... pass judgment on women constantly. If a woman was raped, it is somehow always her fault, if her child does something like disappear, kills someone... first question asked is always: where was the mother? Never: where was the father?

The idea that nobody's perfect only applies to men. The idea of woman not having the perfect body/face is reason enough to crucify her. If she is a mother and deemed too pretty then she is vain and frivolous. And if she doesn't live up to expectations you might as well kill her, not even the police will care.

There are many articles in conservative mainstream media on the death of masculinity. That, basically, any progress for women only comes at the expense of men, that women are destroying men... and on and on it goes. Consider the assumptions in this... that women prefer girl students, that women aren't wearing burqas so they deserve to be raped on college campuses... (because men can't control themselves - when we know men can control themselves, why aren't men bitterly offended by this assumption? - and if men can't control themselves then perhaps they should go live somewhere else?) But people who think feminism is bad for men, ignore how bad the status quo is for men, for instance the high suicide rate for men, men raping men, men killing men, men being much more likely to experience violence at the hands of men than women do. Basically, in this system, men have a serious man problem.

We, men and women, go together into the future. But as things stand if things aren't working for women and we know things aren't working for men, then perhaps we need to figure out what is going on for both genders.

My take on disappearing masculinity is that of the bully, the man who feels entitled to sex and doesn't think that's rape. As many people have pointed out that this kind of masculinity is really toxic. And that it's as bad for the man as it is for those around them.

However there are things that will never die, like bravery. The bravery of protecting those who have less power than them, those who stand up for others, who risk their lives for others. I would like to think this kind of bravery isn't restricted to men alone. But they do get most of the credit for it. And many of us wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this bravery.

It should go without saying every time a woman gets pregnant she is risking her life for another. That history is full of women who have died in childbirth and so we should remember that many of us wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this bravery and after all, the woman often didn't get a choice in getting pregnant, yet she risks her life anyway. While often men's bravery is always a choice.

Society no longer works for women because women don't (as often) die in childbirth. Women have to have things to do because there is no longer a need for women to reproduce like the human race is about to go extinct. Pandemics which wiped out huge portions of the population are a thing of the past, and husbands leave, die, and sometimes can no longer support the family because of health or accident or whatever reason and the women have to support the family instead. Besides the woman may have had kids because her husband wanted children and he wants to stay at home and look after them. Why shouldn't women get the recognition they deserve both in terms of money and promotions?

But it's my experience that the toxic masculinity of Trump and other conservative men is coming to an end. It seems like their bullying and their entitlement will no longer be tolerated by either gender. That their entitlement is toxic for everyone, the environment and our future.

We go together into the future.

I was asked to write about the psychology of sex workers. Having never being a sex worker, a user of such services or a psychologist I thought I'd improvise a little and talk about the psychology of those who use their services.

For a start we seldom talk about men, and men probably use sex workers of either gender more often than women do. Indeed when articles on the internet talk about the users of sex workers services, they exclusively refer to men.

If men are hiring prostitutes, and using them for sex rather than merely talking to them, I think it's primarily for human contact.

We are primates after all, animals that spend hours grooming all members of their group.

In our society touching is nearly forbidden. We spent the first 9 months of our lives completely encased in human contact. While women can hug and touch their friends, men cannot ask for affection in our society. However it is completely okay for men to ask for and have sex. And the only other socially acceptable way for men to have human contact is via handshake and physical violence. All of limited social acceptability.

If men hug each other it is usually done while hitting the other male on the back and then it's usually only between close male relatives, like father and son, who have a good relationship.

In my opinion, men generally use sex as a substitute for affection. Sex is macho, affection is wussy.

And as such, sex therapists, marriage counselors use the frequency of sex in a marriage as a barometer for how healthy that marriage is. That's great if the sex isn't excruciatingly painful for the woman; or, the man or his partner (male or female) doesn't place undue pressure on him to perform. Nevertheless, I suspect affection would provide many of the benefits that sex supposedly delivers without the need for often invasive contraception or the risk of unwanted pregnancy. But I think the therapists who recommend sex are thinking about his ego when they advocate sex improving self image because it would definitely not be macho to say they engage in frequent cuddling, for instance.

The usual way for men to get regular sex (affection) is having a partner. But maintaining a relationship can be difficult for some men. Either they aren't emotionally/financially ready, or equipped for a partner's needs. So prostitutes may fill that need as well. The other need that prostitutes might help satisfy is loneliness. The need for intimate/personal conversations to have conversations with someone who isn't a man.  When I used to talk to clients (all men) I used to have a stockpile of topics I could discuss with them and it would involve sports and cars, these topics were extremely abstract.

Loneliness and our need to touch and be touched are what, I think, drives prostitution. But what about hormones? Yes, sex is really for procreation and our bodies are driven to procreate because of hormones. But do we really want to risk unwanted pregnancy and STDs just so one gender can relieve their hormones that could be easily relieved with masturbation?

I assumed when I was asked to write on prostitution why women took on a profession that would make them reviled. Everyone needs money in our society. Not all women have someone who can support them and men always seem to want sex - goddess knows how many times I've been asked if I was working while wearing sweats, exercising, just walking down a street or waiting for my husband...

But the problem here is the macho. Men pretending or completely unaware they are pretending to be impervious to needing anything. Needing makes men vulnerable, but that lack of vulnerability makes men commit suicide at high rates 3.5x that of women in the USA, because men cannot ask for help, affection, intimacy... things they need but pretend they don't because it just wouldn't be macho.