where the northwind meets the sea

THE OLD MEN HELPED US! THOU SHALT NOT KILL! CLAY OF MY CLAY. SHAME. SORROW.

[aquarian-sunchild]

Every time I see that "Don't give 100% at your job. Only give like 70% at most." I think about human service jobs.

I'm an early childhood educator. I work to keep ten two-year olds safe, healthy and psycho-emotionally enriched. I don't think only giving 70% of my effort to do that would be good for anyone.

My mom is recovering from a stroke at a rehabilitation center. I would really like the staff there to give their 100% caring for residents.

If you're in a cubicle, yeah sure. But if you're primary job responsibility is to keep vulnerable people alive and comfortable, then I don't think discount effort is a good idea.

Discuss?

[sigmaleph]

i would definitely prefer if the people taking care of someone vulnerable were giving less than their all most of the time. if they were already giving their all, there's nothing extra left to give if an emergency happens, someone has to call in sick and their tasks redistributed among everyone else, etc.

of course, this only works if the situation is such that people giving less than their all is enough in non-emergency situations to provide adequate care. which is not always true, but let's be clear that that is also a problem, because, like, emergencies do happen.

[krakenartificer]

Also like. If people are giving 100% then people will hire/train/build based on that assumption? And then if anything goes wrong then the system breaks and the ones getting care are the ones who pay the price?

Like there’s a post somewhere about how like a parachute factory is not allowed to operate in a way that requires their employees to always do it right? Because humans make mistakes and pretending that they don’t will get people killed?

IDK I’m up past my bedtime and maybe I’ll be able to say something coherent about this in the morning. But there’s a critical difference between the doctor giving 100% and the patient receiving 100%. Better for my grandma to have two nurses each giving 60% than one nurse giving 110%.

[scorchroots]

I've never loved anyone as much as I love Ursula Le Guin

[invinciblerodent]

[invinciblerodent]

you guys are so right, I should have added the best part

[askrobouteguilliman40k]

This meme ages like a fine wine every year that passes.

[clarkgriffon]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 2x10 | “What's My Line Pt. 2” 

[redstonedust]

idk how to explain it but im never truly comfortable with the way people insinuate that all older folks are inherently bigoted. it always feels like it kind of hand-waves away personal responsibility like ohhhh grandpa cant help homophobic, hes old. well ive met plenty of older folks who are normal about gay people. i think grandpa could be better. i think we should hold grandpa to higher standards.

[sunshine-tattoo]

My grandmother was such an old school southern racist that she wouldn't let my mom play with black children when she was growing up in the 1960s.

But by the 1980s she had worked on her bigotry so much that she was actively voting for black political leaders and going to rallies for equality.

People can change for the better.

[lastoneout]

We gotta do something about ecoableism, guys, I can't keep seeing people confidently assure everyone that their ideal world is one where disabled people with specific needs don't get to be alive.

[lastoneout]

The most insidious thing about eugenics is that society is so ableist the majority of people do actually think eugenics would work and disabled people are better off dead, they just tack on an assumption that while yes eugenics works it's still bad because disabled people dying for being disabled is morally wrong. But they never actually think it's scientifically or medically wrong. We're just civilized enough we've decided to politely pretend the science isn't right because social justice.

It's like how a bunch of celebs were big on body positivity and fat liberation...until Ozempic dropped and it turns out no, none of them ever believed any of that! They just pretended to bcs up until now healthy, long term weight loss was impossible so they had no choice but to cope by learning to love themselves no matter how they looked...but now that it's here we can go back to the truth! Being fat is ugly and gross and unhealthy and you should starve yourself and take experimental meds right now so you can be skinny which is what ALL humans are clearly supposed to be!! Yeah that body positivity stuff was fun, but come on. We know you actually just wanna be skinny and think being fat is a fate worse than death.

That's what it feels like to me. Every single time. Honestly in a lot of other areas too, one of the big issues with the left is that they really do seem to think that Republicans are right about how things work and should work but we just pretend otherwise because it's the right thing to do and it reduces suffering. Which seems fine, but you cannot be an effective leftist like this. You do actually have to deconstruct your beliefs and biases and world systems, you can't go around like "well yeah we aren't gonna kill disabled people that's eugenics and it's wrong" when you clearly don't actually think it's wrong. You think eugenics would work but implementing it would be uncivilized, and it shows. You have to actually understand that racism and ableism and all other forms of bigotry are not just cruel, but entirely incorrect.

Idk if this makes sense but yeah. We gotta do something about this.

[lastoneout]

This is what Into the Woods meant when it said nice is different than good.

[lastoneout]

This is also how you get people being like "I'm not an ableist! I love disabled people!" after making a joke about Trump wearing diapers or not being able to walk down a ramp. They don't think ableism is wrong, they just think it's right but impolite, so only okay aimed at those who deserve to be insulted.

Absolutely part of why shit sucks so much rn.

[lastoneout]

Ngl I'm glad I figured out how to word this, bcs trying to articulate it as "you don't actually think bigotry is wrong you just think the target should be someone else" always felt incomplete! I now know what I meant was "you don't think bigotry is wrong you just think it's impolite and that's different" that's what I needed. You just think bigotry is being mean to a marginalized person who, crucially, has done nothing to deserve it. The second they do tho? Anything is fair game.

Yeesh. What a rancid ass way to view the world.

[rainbowgod666]

I think it has to do with how powerless everyone is and feels these days

[lastoneout]

Yeah there's a reason this stuff kicks up whenever the world is going to shit, these people are angry and know their anger cannot fully reach the people who are making things suck, so to make the anger feel good they shit talk Trump and his goons with inflammatory language. Calling him a "morbidly obsese malignant and manic narcissistic adderall addict who wears adult diapers bcs he shits himself all the time and only likes to eat mcdonalds" feels better than saying he's a fascist, even if the first option is wildly insensitive and harms disabled people without doing anything to Trump and the latter is the truth and the thing we should actually be fucking talking about.

They've spent so long avoiding being ableist or bigoted because they know it's rude, but with Trump, well he's evil so it's fine! They can say all of those horrible things and feel great about it. It doesn't make them an ableist because ableism is being mean or rude to disabled people who haven't done anything wrong, but Trump's done everything wrong so it's not ableism anymore. (Or, in the worst cases, they know it's ableist and don't care.) For a lot of them there really is this like...glee? with which they say this shit, really gives off 10 y/o who's mom said they can say fuck once. Like they've always wanted to say this and are SO jazzed they can now. Betrays a very immature understanding of sociao justice and politics.

And ofc all that is also how they reconcile Trump's ableism being wrong while their's is right, even if they're basically saying the exact same things. Trump is evil and talking about innocent disabled people, so what he says is bad. But if you're talking about Trump, well he's evil, so it's fine.

[sunflower-chai]

was arguing about this with some friends earlier this week so i need to know:

what day is the first day of the week?

monday

sunday

a different day?? somehow??

Voting ended onMay 27

[sun-reads]

Ah, yes, the stealth location based survey.

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[rebel-hunk-enjoyer]

The worst-sounding piece of advice I've ever been given that does actually work is to frame your health concerns as coming from someone close to you, whom you do not believe. Tell your doctor that you've been having pain and your mom/friend/partner thinks it might be an ovarian cyst, but you don't think so because the pain is much more intense and it has to be something else. This gives your doctor an unseen third party to fight instead of you. They can't just tell this third party, who isn't present, that you pulled a muscle, they now need to prove to this third party that it is not an ovarian cyst.

At which point they will find an ovarian cyst, but they now get whatever fucked up satisfaction they derive out of proving you wrong, because you didn't believe it could a cyst at all, but guess what? They did find a cyst! It's such a good thing you didn't listen to your intuition and came to them to verify your lay diagnosis from that third party! Bonus? Doctor doesn't have to feel like they look stupid in front of a patient, which is really what all this is about. Not your health, why would you think your medical diagnosis is about your health? It's obviously about a doctor's potential ego.

And apparently this works. Apparently you just need to be able to always play 4D chess with your medical professionals in order to find an avenue of advocating for yourself and getting you medical needs met. Isn't that great?

I hate it here, actually.

[ymutate]

Fujiyama Nobu, contemporary Nihonga artist

Cranes flight to the moon

[kaity--did]

it is wild to me that you're letting your 4 year old have pizza that late at night. my instinct is to be like what is wrong with you but you've been absolutely rocking my world view on food rules for the past couple of years honestly

If you are hungry you should eat, always. We're having pizza cause we're on vacation and that's what's available honestly a lot of the time when she gets the night time hungers she wants scrambled eggs lol.

We let her eat and then she goes to bed and everyone is happy!

[fozmeadows]

One of the most eye-opening aspects of parenthood for me has been how socially ingrained it is for parents to be coercive and controlling about food access in the name of manners. Like, scientifically, we know that kids have much smaller stomachs than adults, and also much faster metabolisms. That makes sense! They're growing! And we also know, scientifically, that kids have different palates than adults - that bitter flavours are much more unpleasant for most toddlers, for instance, and that certain kids have strong sensory aversions to certain textures or tastes. This latter point is also true of adults, too - and it's completely fair! But you would never demand that an adult clear their plate once they said they were full, or shame them for their inability to finish because they had a sandwich earlier. You wouldn't force them to eat every part of an unfamiliar meal they ordered at a restaurant that they turned out not to like, or tell them that they didn't get to have a mid-morning snack as punishment for not having eaten breakfast. And yet it's considered completely normal to do this to children - especially very small children - whose bodies constantly want fuel. Which isn't to say it's pointless to teach kids manners around food and mealtimes - it's not! How to sit at a table, how to use a knife and fork, how to behave at a restaurant, how to politely ask for seconds or express that you're full (I've had an elegant sufficiency, was my grandmother's delightful go-to phrase), how to join in the conversation once you're done with your food, how to make a good faith attempt at trying unfamiliar dishes, how to broaden your palate as you get older, how to behave as a guest at someone else's table - all of this is important to learn! But instead of this, what a lot of parents actually do - and most often because they themselves were raised with it - is treat food access as a test of obedience. A child who asks for a snack is whiny, because you just had breakfast!, even though it's developmentally better for a child to eat multiple small meals throughout the day than three big ones. A child who refuses a given food is picky, because you should just eat what you're given!, even though most adults would never extend this same attitude to themselves. A child who eats three square meals a day and still wants more is greedy, because you've already had enough!, even though we'd consider it wholly normal for an adult - and especially a physically active adult - to want extra. And at the same time, once kids are old enough to feed themselves, they're often discouraged from doing so, their hunger treated as a shameful inconvenience. Sure, if a particular food is expensive, difficult to acquire, needed for a particular dish that someone is planning to cook or belongs to a specific household member, then it makes sense to say, "hey, you can only have X if you ask, for Y reason," because that's about teaching responsibility and courtesy, not punishing hunger. It's also fair to say that certain foods, like ice cream, are only for dessert, or require permission, because kids need help learning restraint. And once they can write, you should teach them that, if they take the last of something, they should put it on the shopping list so you know to get more. But a lot of people still just... act annoyed that their kids are hungry, and particularly when that hunger - as is developmentally normal! - falls outside of allotted mealtimes. Because they grew up being punished for being hungry, and so it's built into their bones that food-seeking behaviour is somehow inherently rude, when eating when you're hungry is actually one of the healthiest things we can do.

[quasi-normalcy]

The other great thing about episodic TV is that, if it's cancelled after a season or two, it might be a shame, but you're generally not left with the feeling that you only got to see a story fragment. Like it feels like it has been worth watching.

[transhuman-priestess]

So the great draw of television vs. film for the longest time was that it was a way (with some notable exceptions) to make character-driven stories. You get a fixed cast, and you throw situations at them week after week. If you wanted a plot-driven story, you went to film.

But the rise of Prestige Television changed this equation with the "10-hour-movie" format. Note that this was not an artistic decision, but a financial one. It let the networks lower writers' wages by denying staff writer positions.

Now everything has to be...well...a 10-hour movie. Writers know their positions are insecure, so they try and goose the execs with a long-form story arc, hoping that it'll encourage viewership and ratings and let them keep going. This is also why so few shows go longer than 5 seasons now, because beyond 50 episodes you end up having to start paying for staff writers.

[invisible-goats]

insufferable person amnestly post, what's a spelling/grammar mistake people make that is honestly not worth mentioning ever but bugs you?

mine is spelling laser with a z

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Actually the one driving me absolutely fera at the minute is "uncomfy", especially in serious conversations about actual social issues

I really don't like the recent jump to using "comfy" as a 1:1 replacement for "comfortable" anyway - it always used to mean "physically cosy" hence the sweet and silly abbreviation. And my brain simply will not update to the modern usage. "Comfy" is for getting into pyjamas in bed, or an adjective for a sofa, not a description of your feelings around social tolerance.

But "uncomfy"???! I viscerally fucking hate it. Disgusting word, completely undercuts the seriousness of the discussion.

All of which is entirely a me problem and at least partly the synaesthesia but fuck me blue, I'd be so happy if it fell back out of usage

[puppygirllaika]

i think we as a society lost when we collectively accepted that the things we make won't outlast us.

[puppygirllaika]

like, well-built wooden furniture can last well over a century, if properly cared for, but trends come and go, so everything's made of particle board and veneer, and breaks down in under a decade. knives and hand tools and kitchen gadgets are stamped out of cheap sheet metal and are built to be disposed of instead of cared for, and only last a few years before wearing or buckling or chipping. houses are built as increasingly short-term investments, made of OSB and squeezed onto tiny lots, with the intention that they be redeveloped in a few decades.

i remember hearing an economics professor comment on roman bridges still being used by cars today, saying that if you over-engineer and over-build a bridge to the point it can still be used 2000 years later, then you've just waisted public funds and labor. and i remember how i grated against that. against the idea that something could be designed to last not only past the builders lifetime, but past the life of a civilization.

l'm not about to stand up and say that industrialization is an inherently bad thing. i think it's great that clothing doesn't cost thousands of dollars and people can basically furnish a home in their 20's for under ten grand, but like. i feel like there has to be some kind of social-psychological shift in knowing that the things we make now won't be around after we die. they won't be passed on and looked after. they won't be loved.

I write code. I send emails. I write documentation. the things i create will be garbage in a couple years, if I'm lucky. I'm drawn to bookbinding as a hobby, because i wish my words would last. i wish they would sit on someones shelf, be pulled down again and again, and live a life of their own. I enjoy woodworking because i can have some hope that maybe, if i make something good enough, it'll be passed from person to person, and maybe, one day, outlive me.

i think a hundred years ago people could expect to leave a tiny, physical legacy in the lives of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people. I think today most of us can't imagine that. and i think that's kinda sad. idk what to do about it. but i think it's fairly new, and wish i could make a chair that someone will sit in a hundred years from now, and feel comfortable. that i could still touch their life, and make them happy, even if they'll never know who i was.

[puppygirllaika]

and to be super clear, that's not to say shitty stuff wasn't made a hundred years ago. it absolutely was. cheaply made things that fell apart have been a thing as long as humanity has been trading. some crappy copper comes to mind. my point is more, if you worked manufacturing, building, creating stuff, and you cared, and you put that care into your work, you could expect a legacy of it. not all of it, things will break, things will be lost, but like. some of it. at the very least.

[beatrice-otter]

My parents have a hundred-year-old couch.

It's a great couch. It's a Davenport--which both a brand of furniture and a type of sofa. (Like a futon, the back folds down to turn into a bed, but it looks like a regular sofa and has more structure to it. My parents' version also has storage; if you pull up the seat, there is a compartment that runs the full length of it. Unlike modern couches, it has springs in the seat and back instead of foam cushions. (There's batting over the springs, and it's actually very comfortable.)

In the late 30s-early 40s, my great-grandfather bought it used at an auction. He put it in his house. In the 1950s, when his health was failing, my grandparents moved in to take care of him, and raised their kids in that house. They had the sofa recovered. Sometime in the 1980s they had it recovered again. By the early 2000s they were both dead and my parents inherited the couch. They then got rid of their couch which was 20 years old and falling apart. But the old sofa was just fine!

In the last few years it started showing its age. The fabric was wearing out, the batting was shot, some of the springs were bad.

But the frame of it was still solid, as were most of the springs. They had it recovered (replacing the bad springs and the batting as well as the fabric) and it's still comfortable and functional today.

[scorebug]

height check. how tall are you people in my phone

[inconveniently-discorporated]

Me: *agonizing over whether a semicolon goes here, what the proper dialogue should be there, other assorted rules and semantics*

Terry Pratchett: "!" said the stranger.

THAT'S ALLOWED?

[serricoj]

Writing is for communication. Sir Terry knew very well that anything's allowed if it helps you communicate something effectively.

[rpepperpotshipssciencebros]

[unconventiononthelawofthesea]

like, okay, consent does literally just mean agree. which is what enables this little rhetorical trick. because there's all this cultural emphasis on sexual consent, which is just expressed as consent, a lot of phrases whose intended meanings are "rape is bad" can be taken literally to mean "i should get to agree to everything that happens in my vicinity."

[unconventiononthelawofthesea]

for an example, "i didn't agree to seeing you wear that shirt" is straightforwardly a fucking insane thing for someone to say, but people regularly make use of this trick to make the (functionally identical) statement "i didn't consent to seeing that"

[unconventiononthelawofthesea]

the reverse also happens, where when you say "you don't have a right to agree to other people's outfits," someone will say "So you think consent doesn't matter?" Of course, in this context, the literal answer is yes! I don't care if you're cool with what I'm wearing. but obviously, what's meant to be implied is "you think rape is okay?"

[prismatic-bell]

People have forgotten the word "inappropriate" exists and substituted "consent" instead.

[jabberding0]

Wei Weaving is a Chinese artist

[nepharim-tree]

[frediyerushalmi]

Okay, but the runs in her stockings! She starts out with beautiful, clearly new stockings, and then over the course of the video they get shredded, then there's a close up on a scrape on her leg that looks like it's from a wire - oh there's themes there!