Hi everyone, I’m French, I’m 46, I’m a She and I’ve been on tumblr since August 2012 As much as I'd like to, I cannot live solely in my head (so I'm taking worlds with me)
Happy pride month to my dad. When I came out as bi to him, this man googled what it ment, look at me and said "ohh. Yeah. You get that from me. You'd have far more siblings of I only shaged women." And went right back to his work emails.
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
#hell yeah #let's get Tumblr those reading comprehension skills #media literacy skills and critical thinking skills even if they pout about it #they're in the game so they have to use it #me included of course I have a lot of learning to do but I wont stop being a judgy bitch tags by @gayfirebird
Guide for people like me who discovered the idea of thimble rings with this post (eventually after spending some time at the sewing store wondering what use silicone thimbles can even have)
pick whatever option the person you're following who reblogged this post didn't pick. if they didn't say in the tags what they picked or if you're seeing the original post and not a reblog, pick at random instead.
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
this feels like making one of those posts people get sent death threat anons about but...
do you think the Despicable Me minions are people?
Me and my friend are in two camps. She thinks they are not, simply because they are not human. Her requirement to be a person is simply to be a human. ME on the otherhand, i extend my definition of personhood to any sapient non-human who can communicate on par with a human. Humans are people by default, but i think a 40 foot flesh creature with teeth for skin would also be a person if they gave me their name and told me they were DTF.
Thats why i would not consider a dog a person, because while they yes are very intelligent and have an internal state and way of communicating with us, they are not able to do so on the same level, whereas a minion would be, despite not speaking the same language.
This all was brought on btw bc of an argument with her fiancee about putting minions in the people section of his Tomodachi Life Island
Oh my definition is even broader than that: An Orca Whale is a person, but one that needs additional civil protections because of its inability to communicate with the kind of nuance necessary to function in modern human society.
And by the same logic, the Minions have the same right to inhabit the "people" section of Tomatachi Life as any other fictional character, "human" or otherwise.
(more under the cut)
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One thing to consider here is how we're using the word "person". I'm using it to describe an individual organism with enough intelligence to possess a sense of self, communicate with others of its kind or even other species, and engage in social practices like teaching skills to a younger generation or making art. You're using it to describe an organism that could perform all the necessary tasks to be a citizen of modern society, and neither of us are wrong, at least colloquially. Someone who is better at linguistics than me can come in here with the specific technical language surrounding sapience and personhood.
The reason I cut my definition so broadly is that like you, I agree that all humans are people by default, but there are many humans who have even greater communication barriers with humanity at large than the minions do. For instance:
-People with cognitive and physical disabilities that greatly impair communication
- Children, who will be able to participate soon but not right now
- People who are so socially isolated they can't function outside of their very narrow social circle (so they need some help adapting to society at large)
- People that don't have any problems communicating, but whom some assholes will argue are not people for the sake of maintaining the social status quo (we're all familiar with the -isms here)
These are also all people who are THE MOST VULNERABLE in society and I try to center my personal policies on "what could we be doing that would be good/safe/just/helpful for EVERYONE?"
By putting the "oh for sure a person" line out at "Orca" (and being willing to entertain arguments that extend that line even further) I'm keeping my mind open about how radically different a person could be from me and still be a person, and thinking about what can be done to ensure justice for this person. That's more self-maintainence than anything else, but you see where I'm coming from.
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I think your concept of "a person is someone who could participate in civil society" is a very good one too, and goes hand in hand with mine, because it raises the questions of "Is it really feasible for this person to participate in civil society? If not, what can we do to include them? And if meaningfully including them is not possible at this time (Orcas) how do we do right by them?"
I think that in the future, it's entirely possible that advances in physical and social technology will enable us to communicate effectively with Orcas, and that the Orcas of today and the future are more than intelligent enough to understand the concepts of Encroachment, Liability and Lawyers, and will sue the shit out of everyone for what we've done to the oceans.
Personally, I'm looking forward to that day.
Since we don't have that technology yet, but can recognize Orcas as people, it's on us to sue the shit out of data centers and the state of Washington (among others) on their behalf and put the money towards giving them the chance to reach that future.
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Referring to small text on the original post though: are Minions "people" in the sense that they can and should be included in the "people" section of someone's Tomadachi life game?
Admittedly, I am more familiar with whale biology than the Tomadachi and Minions franchises, but from what snippets I recall: in-universe, Minions meet both my standard of basic sentience AND yours of being able to participate in civil society and thus putting them in the "people" section of Miitopia would be appropriate.
However, in our universe, Minions are entirely fictional, so they're philosophical constructs and not alive, so they're not people at all.
...but everyone in Tomadachi life is fictional, so the Minions are as much people as any other character and thus the Minions have the same rights as "people" and to participate in Tomadachi Life Island as "human" characters do.
#this is an extremely silly argument that makes for good philosophical exercise #also don't take this too seriously #I'm not in a position to enforce this belief or the oceans would be a whole lot cleaner #also OP just turn off anon after a certain amount of Tumblr noteriety it just becomes a hazard tags on above post
I was curious about the math on this because... they're made from rocks and their atmosphere is way higher pressure than ours. But I think the math works out!!
Assumptions:
Air at 29 atm and 230C has a density of only 0.02 g/cm2, which is essentially 0
Water is 1 g/cm2
Eridians are 5 g/cm2 (rocks are 2-3 and metals are 5-12 so I'm going with a funky average with nice numbers)
xenonite is the same density as Eridians
xenonite barrier is 2% of the radius of the ball (1cm for a 1m ball)
I can do all my calculations assuming Earth gravity because bouyancy/weight would both be affected equally by the double gravity, thus cancelling out
We can estimate the radius of a pebble by picturing them loafing cutely into their carapace
In order to float, the ball has to be less dense than water; however, water displacement is directly related to density, so
to be comic-accurate, we're looking for the balls (with pebbles inside them) to be roughly 20-50% as dense as water.
Let's start with the xenonite shell:
% of ball that is xenonite = (volume of outer shell - volume of inner shell)/(volume of outer shell)
oh my god thank you so much for doing the actual math about it 🥹🥹🥹🥹 it is so important for me to know the pebbles can actually float!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️
like seriously I thought it was a silly little comic that won't get much attention so I decided to feel a little guilty and force myself to handwave the science for that cartoon cuteness sake. now that it got A LOT of attention I was seriously starting getting worried 😅
but now I can bask in the vision of Pebbles just being accidentally gifted the biggest bouncy castle on the planet xD (I know they won't be able to bounce like that either. best they would get is like reverse cannon ball? with the help of Grace but screw it lol) that poor Grace as the only bouyant guy in 16 light years radius has to fish them out of ;P
2 hours of bad sleep will have you thinking things like 'i am a stranded whale and i need to be covered in dynamite in an ill-advised attempt to clear the beach'
0 hours of sleep will have you thinking things like "I am a stranded horse covered in beautiful, ill-advised whales that can never die" and "I bet I can fix this with dynamite".
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