All posts tagged: Obsessively

Some Women Are Obsessively Testing Their Vaginas to Optimize Them

Some Women Are Obsessively Testing Their Vaginas to Optimize Them

Published by skeptic

Farrah was fed up with her vagina. For the past two years, the 29-year-old dancer from Ohio had been dealing with severe pelvic pain and vaginal odor. “It was like 8/10, horrible core pain,” she says. “I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t even work an office job. It was bad.” When she visited doctors, she told them what she thought the culprit was: an allergic reaction to soy oil in a vat of water she’d swam in during a pirate-themed dinner theater performance. But they didn’t believe her. “They attempted to fix it with antibiotics,” she says. “And they just did nothing.” So Farrah (who requested we withhold her full name to speak freely about health matters) started Googling her symptoms. That’s how she stumbled on Neueve, a vaginal health company that provides supplements, suppositories, and at-home vaginal microbiome testing kits. She ordered a test from the company for $150, and it came back with a diagnosis: aerobic vaginitis (AV), a bacterial infection caused by an overgrowth of E. coli or streptococcus. She ordered supplements …

5 Things Old-School Parents Let Kids Figure Out That Parents Today Obsessively Micromanage

5 Things Old-School Parents Let Kids Figure Out That Parents Today Obsessively Micromanage

Published by Jenni Sidey

Old-school parents know the importance of letting kids do things for themselves. Otherwise, the learning process is impeded, and kids tend to struggle more. Research even showed that there are already enough underlying day-to-day stressors around raising kids, so why add more?  You’d do anything for your kids, and sometimes that means not doing things for your kids. Unfortunately, a lot of these freedoms kids once had are now tracked, supervised, and managed within an inch of their lives — often by loving parents who are just trying to do everything right. Here are five things old-school parents let kids figure out that parents today obsessively micromanage: 1. Doing their homework  It’s a familiar scene: your little one at the kitchen table, frustrated and unfocused on their math assignment, and they just can’t figure it out. Or their reading project is so boring. It’s all too easy to want to jump in, give the answers, and finish things on your kid’s behalf. Because let’s be honest: it’s quick. It’s easy parenting for you. It’s a …

Woman Suffers AI Psychosis After Obsessively Generating AI Images of Herself

Woman Suffers AI Psychosis After Obsessively Generating AI Images of Herself

Published by José Betancourt

On top of the environmental, political, and social toll AI has taken on the world, it’s also been linked to a severe mental health crisis in which users are spiraling into delusions and ending up committed to psychiatric institutions, or even dead by suicide. Take Caitlin Ner. Writing in an essay for Newsweek, Ner discusses her experience as head of user experience at an AI image generator startup — a gig she says pulled her into the throes of an AI-induced mental health breakdown. In her tell-all, Ner says it all began on the job, where she spent upward of nine hours a day prompting early, 2023-era generative AI systems. Though the faux-human images it spat out were often mangled and twisted, it still “felt like magic” — at least at first. “Within a few months, that magic turned manic,” she wrote. Ner wrote that these early images “started to distort my body perception and overstimulate my brain in ways that were genuinely harmful to my mental health.” Yet even when the AI learned to …