meowow :3

several fey trapped in fate's web

[darklit-planet]

sylph // 30s // they|fae

not interested in interacting with liberals; is an anarchist

often posts about sexual trauma & its effects, both in media and my personal experiences

one of those weird discord transsexuals (agender nb, tme)

likes narratives about omelas children

media mainstays:

these have all been interests for years & years & years. will probably post about these in some way until i perish

the locked tomb

madoka magica

CLAMP works, particularly tsubasa and cardcaptor sakura

star trek, mostly 90s era, mostly ds9

when they cry (higurashi + umineko COMPLETE)

the world ends with you

gundam (UC, gwitch, gquuuux)

currently reading/watching/playing/keeping up with

make the exorcist fall in love

chainsaw man

when they cry fanworks from the last two decades

anyway! i post a lot of introspection/working through my life, trauma, and politics. if you're ever like "sylph this is incorrect and leads to bad conclusions" (etc) feel free to let me know, esp if it has to do with a hegemonic force i am not harmed by like racism or transmisogyny.

i try my best but no one's perfect!

im also an anarchist who organizes with communists; i call myself an anarchist because that is theory that informs most of my political actions, but i find marxism's approach to history compelling. basically im not discounting theory/analysis that comes out of commie/marxist/ML spaces ever but i am strongly critical of structures that create more power hierarchies between people, to give some sort of loose description of my politics.

i don't rb dono posts -- this blog is not really a Platform (i have like. maybe 20 active followers and i intend on staying small) + generally i am a programmer and have access to a salary that makes rbing dono posts feel like asking people with less money than me for money. but i do donate, and if we're mutuals feel free to send me dono posts directly (even if the dono isn't for you).

^ tweet that my short bio references

[dohu]

[deadelated]

I can't enjoy sex i just know too many people who have made the whole idea kind of reddit to me

[deadelated]

no, i am not "traumatized". I just think it's kind of reddit when you touch me

[darklit-planet]

these miffy pens bring me so much joy

[communistkenobi]

I had a lot of/still have some vestigial arrogance about quantitative methods over qualitative ones, probably in a combination of scientific misogyny + STEMlord superiority. But doing regression analysis and quant-heavy data analysis makes me realise more and more that you can justify basically any claim with numbers, and that you can construct your research in such a way as to output the numbers you want. which does not mean that all data are made up or that quantitative knowledge is all false. I think stories about scientists straight up inventing numbers or fudging experiments on purpose prove that there is a real difference between fraudulent and non-fraudulent research. but those data must always be narrativised & are always already narrativised. The act of presenting numbers itself is doing some of that narration because you’re already arguing that these numbers are worth presenting

[communistkenobi]

People in the notes are rightfully pointing out common issues with data manipulation and pre-loaded conclusions in scientific research (i.e., the academic version of asking "so, how often do you beat your wife?" and so on), but I should have clarified that I'm not really talking about that. I'm talking about completely legitimate, above-board scientific research.

For example, I've had students ask me (in good faith) how it was possible for international medical bodies to report different counts of COVID-19 cases during the early years of the pandemic. And one of the answers is that you need to first define what you mean by a "COVID-19 case." Do you include self-reported incidences? Waste water data? Geo-fenced social media posts about people complaining about their coronavirus symptoms? Federal estimates? Hospital data? How do you compare countries/territories/substate entities with mandatory reporting mechanisms vs countries/territories/substate entities that rely only on voluntary self-reported cases? And what combination of these do you use? How you construct what you mean by "case" is going to impact the outcomes you report. These different counts of COVID-19 cases can all be true simultaneously, not because numbers are made up, but because they all come out of different methodologies that can be equally valid.

And this is true across all science, not just social science. Bill Clinton said it best lol: "it depends on what your definition of the word 'is' is." This feels obvious when you look at scientific research that uses "skull measurements" as their object of analysis - the concept itself is white supremacist, regardless of how "sound" the research is. But even something as apparently self-evident as a COVID-19 case still requires a definition, and how you define your variables is necessarily going to impact how the research goes and what conclusions are drawn.

These definitions are always embedded in political & social assumptions. And again, this does not mean that science is all made up or nonsense or whatever. There is a widespread fetishism of "objective knowledge" that is itself ideological - the idea that knowledge can be divorced from all historical and political contexts, that you can scrub bias from research and simply report the facts. Valuable, well-supported, well-constructed scientific research is always embedded in these contexts. Not just as a result of researcher assumptions, but of the material context it exists in - what research resources are available, how & what research gets funded, the academy's relationship to the state & non-government bodies that both provide data and use that research to inform policy, the historical relationships universities often have with settler-colonialism and imperialism that give them access to "foreign" research subjects, etc etc etc.

So my overall point (which I didn't communicate well) is that data can always say what you want to some extent, for good and for ill. And research results (at least in my experience) tend to surprise you in ways that require explanations, which themselves can be fully justified, but again, exist within many different contexts that influence how you interpret them - and not just the results themselves, but your own surprise at your results

[darklit-planet]

i have many gripes & pet peeves & serious criticism of fan analysis; one of the quickest ways for me to just stop engaging is unexplained use of "manipulative"

like. if you define what you mean by manipulative, maybe we can keep going, but most of the time it is just a shorthand for "character who is not 100% open and honest but has goals and will utilize selective sharing of information to further those goals. also this means that character is malicious and irredeemably evil"

and this leads to "traumatized character is an Evil Abuser" at light speed.

it bugs me so much because you see this exact pattern play out with real people and relationships!! if a group labels you as manipulative, you can't be trusted and also you can't be abused -- if anything bad happens to you socially it's your fault for being manipulative in the first place. and it's the exact same logic i see in fan analysis posts that talk about "manipulation" in this way so it is impossible not to connect

[darklit-planet]

so right now i'd say > 90% of the challenges in my life come from my trauma, either very directly or resulting from my malformed living mechanisms

it will feel so good when this drops even below 75%

[memewhore]

[darklit-planet]

moved a bunch of furniture around yesterday

sore today but ONLY GOOD MUSCLES 🎉🎉🎉

[heyfruitcake]

Now that everyone is discussing Nolan's Odyssey movie, I feel like it's a good time to let non-Italians know that the production dumped plastic props into the Italian sea. Weirdly enough I could not find any article in English about it but it's a fucking problem nonetheless.

I might translate this article later today. This one was the most complete one, even in Italian news it's not talked about that much.

L'Odissea di Nolan tra "scheletri spazzatura" e relitti: Arpa al lavoro in Sicilia, che succede

Non è la prima volta che la produzione solleva un vespaio in Sicilia. A Lipari una squadra di sub sarebbe però già impegnata a bonificare i

[ignitelimelight]

They dumped plastic skeletons in environmentally protected areas, against the literal contracts they had to sign to get the permits to film in environmentally protected areas. Like they not only did a bad ecological thing that freaked out some divers, they literally broke environmental protection laws and their contract with the Italian government

[fuckyeahdavidandyonatan]

They also filmed in illegally occupied territories in western sahara

'Cultural parasites': Calls for boycott of The Odyssey over filming in occupied Western Sahara

Sahrawi filmmakers criticise Christopher Nolan for complicity in Moroccan exploitation of Sahrawi land

[darklit-planet]

wildfire smog advice from someone who got rlly sick their first fire season in CA:

n95 mask or better while outdoors. if it smells like a campfire you're breathing in things you do not want to be breathing in. masks with valves are fine for this but they will NOT protect others from your germs

seal windows if they're drafty. im not handy enough to give good tips but i can say that packing tape helped me a bit in the past

get an air purifier, keep it on in the room you're in; you can also make a DIY one with HEPA filters and a box fan, there are many tutorials online and they will work!!

drink more water

[darklit-planet]

oh the other thing: if you have to keep your space Sealed like this for more than a few days, at some point you do need to get some fresh air in even if it is smoggy. gotta let more oxygen in and carbon dioxide out

[preyanimal]

love love love this

[darklit-planet]

very well then i will not be seated for the gollum movie!!

[darklit-planet]

wildfire smog advice from someone who got rlly sick their first fire season in CA:

n95 mask or better while outdoors. if it smells like a campfire you're breathing in things you do not want to be breathing in. masks with valves are fine for this but they will NOT protect others from your germs

seal windows if they're drafty. im not handy enough to give good tips but i can say that packing tape helped me a bit in the past

get an air purifier, keep it on in the room you're in; you can also make a DIY one with HEPA filters and a box fan, there are many tutorials online and they will work!!

drink more water

[darklit-planet]

past few years have been the era of getting more antipsych, feeling like that is going to lead into getting more anticiv in the future

(in the "civilization implies those who exist outside of it and what does that say about those people?" way not the primmie way. i may be off on my definitions here also)

[classycookiexo]

[darklit-planet]

i feel a resurgence of like.....neon trees / two door cinema club 2009-2012 indie pop coming / happening now, I've heard both of those bands on the radio in the last month despite not having thought about them since high school