unless its egregious, i'm not embarrassed to be fooled by ai. "oh i got lied to via something made by the Lying Machine the machine we made to Lie really well" like it's gonna happen it's no egg on your face. just be chill about it
its wild the degree to which people talk about reading and eating in similar terms - the concept of a "reading diet", of "media consumption", the idea of certain stories as "empty calories" or "fast food" and some as "eating your vegetables", the moralization of both as personal failings, the framing of health with the specter of degeneration if not complied with... the idea that there are things that are sensorily pleasant and that you find yourself craving, and there are things that sustain you, and those are not the same things. the framing of literacy as reading the correct way and taking away the correct meaning from a text. according to nutritional guidelines
“Donald Trump’s former top food safety official has accused the administration of a near “catastrophic” mismanagement of the cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people in the US. There should be an independent review of the federal government’s response to the rash of illnesses caused by the spread of a parasite found on raw produce, according to Frank Yiannas, who was deputy commissioner for food policy at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) across the presidencies of both Trump and Joe Biden from 2018 to 2023.”
— Former top US food safety official says US mismanagement of cyclospora is approaching ‘a catastrophic level’
i was reading several articles written by random upper-middle-class people about how Kids These Days are too anxious because their parents don't teach them to "deal with discomfort" and coddle them too much, and This Generation uses "trauma" to refer to any mild discomfort and have broadened the words "abuse" and "bullying" too much et cetera
There is a very abundant supply of such articles and a recent one especially annoyed the hell out of me because it (without actually mentioning the idea of disability) repeatedly alluded to accommodating a kid's sensory issues as example of parents being too permissive or failing to teach kids to tolerate discomfort.
That's bullshit because being in tune with your own needs and discomforts sensory wise is so fucking important for being able to adapt and function in the world.
Like, just an example, I got rid of almost every piece of clothing I own that was polyester or a polyester blend and just doing that dramatically improved my life and gave me more ability to cope with stressors, because I figured out that a lot of my sensory issues with clothes came from bad temperature regulation and the scratchy pills that polyester blends make.
"Discomfort tolerance" has never been super helpful as a concept for me. I have no problem tolerating discomfort in the sense of like, not doing anything about the thing that's hurting me. It's just that if I do it for too long, I can't think straight and process what's happening around me and I eventually become so fatigued it feels like I've got a fever, or else become uncontrollably angry.
I think "discomfort curiosity" is way better concept. You feel uncomfortable. What is the feeling like? Where in your body do you feel it? What does your body urge you to do about it? When does it start? What is it responding to? What about that thing makes you feel that way? Feel it...Experiment with it...Dabble in it...Play with it. I say curiosity because curiosity is so closely related to fear and to some extent, disgust. Curiosity is a frontier zone between repulsion and fascination.
Curiosity is an instinct that encourages us toward unfamiliar things, not away from them. It is part of a large landscape of feelings where away-instincts and toward-instincts are blended together.
I think of the difference between curiosity and fear to be like the difference between solitude and loneliness, or like excitement and apprehension. Or, think of exploring an eerie abandoned place, one of the "liminal spaces" the internet speaks of. The place is "eerie" which is closely related to fear, but the "eerieness" shades into becoming a positive stimulus that our instincts are drawn toward. Liminal spaces, for those of us that enjoy them, are "creepy," but they are also "nice" at the same time. And the "creepiness" is part of the "niceness."
And curiosity is sensitivity. It allows for openness and playfulness toward the unknown.
Many humans' relationships with their own urges and instincts are based on domination and punishment. Tyranny over the body by the mind. The goal is to absorb without shock and endure without indulging the urge to seek relief, to reduce your attunement to your body.
But the ability to be "less controlled by" your body's urges is not positive, because your body is providing information about what your needs are. I find that the ability to make reasoned decisions about how and when and why to persist through something painful requires a deeper attunement to the body's instincts, not a greater ability to ignore them.
Stop treating your bodies like they're animals in a cruel experiment to be shocked with electricity until they lay on the floor whimpering in helplessness. It doesn't help.
Also, any article that suggests people are taking bullying too seriously should be launched into the sun because we don't take it nearly seriously enough i think.
btw I’ve found these stretches from the WAK blog very helpful when knitting a lot:
Plus make sure to take breaks regularly - and stop if anything starts to hurt!
especially with gift knitting I know it can be tempting to push through it for a deadline, but it’s really not worth causing long term injury. (And anyone knit-worthy should be understanding of that, imho.) Stay well :)
"im lazy" i truly sympathize with executive dysfunction, but this is one of those quality-of-life things you need to prioritize. 3 minutes of research/installation will save you a thousandfold in time and energy. it can even help with brain fog (most people don't realize how much mental energy ads actually steal)
"i like ads" my jaw is on the fucking floor. you chose to live in a sewer, yet you will never be a ninja nor a turtle. you do not have a warrior's heart.
*inhaling deeply and reminding myself that Shaking The Baby only endangers the baby, and does not assist it to learn or grow* in spite of everything there are beautiful and important truths within this world that you must learn, and i must help you to learn
⬆️⬆️⬆️ Can confirm, I use this method (alongside others) on android. for iOS the steps are different (and it may be easier to install the AdGuard DNS app instead)
the above will decrease the amount of ads you see system-wide. however: hands down the BEST ANDROID ADBLOCKING feature is the ability to install Firefox with uBlock Origin enabled.
this only blocks browser ads, but HOLY SHIT does that matter if you try browsing websites over apps when possible. which you should bc it's awesome and gives you SO much more control. E.g. blocks youtube.com ads and you can play videos in the background. works with spotify.com too
Pro tip: toggle on 'Desktop site' to avoid mobile sites that are purposely designed to bully you into using the app. Desktop mode fixes a surprising number of problems
Note: for iOS users this isn't available bc Apple hates your guts, but there are other browser options with built-in adblocking, e.g. Firefox Focus, Brave
Expectations that prioritize privileged identities keep women and people of color from even running for office
Rachel Leingang and Lauren Gambino at The Guardian:
Since Kamala Harris’s defeat to Donald Trump in 2024, Democrats have chased candidates who exude an ever-elusive “authenticity”. For many on the left, the answer was Graham Platner, a military veteran turned oyster farmer with a gravelly voice and deep hostility toward the political establishment.
Even as controversy after controversy emerged – racist, sexist, homophobic online posts; a tattoo widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he later covered up; sexually explicit messages sent to other women while he was married; and allegations from former partners of toxic and threatening behavior, which he denied – Platner’s momentum didn’t slow. It was only after a woman accused Platner of rape – which he denies – that his political support collapsed.
In the wake of his withdrawal, Democrats are asking themselves many questions, chief among them, who will replace him as their party’s nominee in the marquee Senate race? But the saga has also revived a deeper debate over whose flaws are forgivable – and whose are disqualifying.
“White men get to fail,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young, progressive candidates to run for office. “Women do not get to make mistakes. People of color do not get to make mistakes.”
Litman said the argument was not that serious allegations should be treated differently because of a candidate’s identity, but that Platner had been granted an unusual degree of latitude to recover from earlier controversies that a female candidate or a candidate of color would probably not have been afforded.
Litman said Platner was the “political equivalent of the Fyre fest guy or Adam Neuman” – high-profile men who continued to receive support for new ventures after spectacular failure. “It’s like there is inherent trust and faith in capabilities that they don’t have to prove,” she added.
Run for Something vets political candidates before offering their endorsement. As part of its endorsement application, Litman’s organization asks candidates to disclose what a background check might turn up, and what the opposition will find, Litman said.
After going through the vetting process, women and people of color are more likely to “self-censor” or decide they would rather not run at all, Litman said, adding: “The thing that I keep coming back to is, who has permission to be authentic?”
The result, according to candidates, strategists and scholars, is a political environment that often penalizes women and people of color more harshly than their white, male counterparts.
“Folks who have been identified as hardscrabble, populist, left-of-center white guys get far more leeway than folks like me, Black progressives,” Chris Rabb, who won a closely watched Democratic primary in a deep-blue Pennsylvania House district, said last month on the Breaking Points podcast. “And that’s a double standard that is largely based on race.”
Despite a record of contemptible behavior, Platner continued to raise large sums of money from grassroots donors, pushed a sitting governor out of the primary and cruised to the Democratic nomination.
[...]
When running for office, women, and particularly women of color, often start from a deficit, needing to prove not only that they are qualified but that they fit voters’ expectations of what leadership looks like, said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women in Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. “Who can best run authentically on all of their many identities are those whose identities are privileged across the board,” she said.
Dittmar pointed to research on how women decide whether to run in the first place. A 2008 survey of state legislators found women described their decision as “relationally embedded” – weighing how a campaign would affect their families, communities and careers – while men were more likely to run simply because they wanted the job.
Research has found that when women do run for office, they are more likely to face scrutiny over their personal lives. Women are held to a higher moral and ethical standard – a phenomenon the Barbara Lee Family Foundation called the “character pedestal”, in which voters expect women to be more honest and trustworthy than men. When women are accused of wrongdoing, “the fall from the pedestal is longer and harder”, Dittmar said, referencing the work of the Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.
As more women run for office, some see signs that political gender norms are changing, particularly since the 2016 presidential election, when the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became a defining issue of her campaign – immortalized by the “but her emails” political meme – even as Trump faced a long record of controversies, including multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
On the left, voters are bucking convention and embracing a new crop of unabashedly progressive – and decidedly aggressive – candidates. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist and the daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, succeeded in toppling a senior Democratic incumbent in a New York congressional primary despite scrutiny over social media posts she had deleted, but had been archived. In the posts, she frequently and profanely disparaged the Democratic party and its leaders, including Kamala Harris, questioned the origins of Covid-19 and criticized interracial relationships.
As a first-time political candidate, Kat Abughazaleh spent months worrying that someone would unearth her “middle school livejournal fanfic account”.
Great article in The Guardian on why white men like Graham Platner are afforded many fuck-ups, while women and POC get far less latitude for mistakes.
Run For Something’s co-founder Amanda Litman said it best: “White men get to fail. Women do not get to make mistakes. People of color do not get to make mistakes.”
Apparently some people still need to hear this so: using an 'ai checker' is still using ai. If you are feeding someone's fic to one of these checkers, you will still not be sure their fic is ai because they are not 100% accurate, but you can be 100% sure that you are using ai. For fic. Furthermore you are doing the work of an ai scraper for them. You are, personally, feeding the machine. There is no actual excuse for using an ai checker on fanfic as a hobby. YOU are the problem.
If you think a fic is ai, mute it and move on. That's it. That's all you do.
There are layers to this. Earlier in the episode, Xena discovers her secret while they're sharing a locker room. A woman she has got naked with turned out to be trans. It's the exact scenario terfs are always fear-mongering about, but Xena just shrugs it off.
Also, the kiss was a big deal not just because it was gay but because the trans actress was HIV positive. They wanted to show the world that you can't contract HIV just from kissing someone. Bear in mind, the AIDS crisis was still fresh on people's minds in the 90s.
Was trying to make a joke about TV writing to my friend the other day and had to pause and go "...does the phrase 'surf dracula' mean anything to you?"
image description: tweet by @/topherflorence, reading: back in the day if u did a tv show called surf dracula you'd see that fool surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire 1st season gotta be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for 5 min in the finale /end description
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