Error: title not found @dracoathenian - Tumblr Blog

you were born in phoenix after all

not to enforce gender roles but a computer should NOT fucking have apps okay. if I wanted an app I'd go on my phone my laptop is for Programs. I mean this.

mlembug

bringing the ancient meme back

cazort

really glad to see hate for this concept.

count me among the haters. i've been a hater since i first encountered this conflation of many different well-defined concepts into one ill-defined one

it's part of the general trend of hiding the inner workings of computers from the user, which is something i hate since it tends to promote computer illiteracy which tends to promote incompetence and dysfunction in society as a whole

spitblaze

its all 'be gay do crime' until a black person starts making allusions to drugs or sex or god forbid VIOLENCE and then it turns out nobody can handle anything more hardcore than downloading illegal torrents of hamilton

spitblaze

This post is about racism. This post is about racism and antiblackness. This post is not about how cool YOU are for doing crimes or about how much you hate 'antis' or how bad tesla suck. This post is about how ostensibly progressive white people will clutch pearls and moralize about not listening to rap or engaging with black art or culture because it seemingly condones drugs, or violence, or is overly sexual, while having no issue with those topics in other, non-black contexts. There are conversations to be had about the topics surrounding this but in the meantime the original post is One Sentence and I'm not convinced most of the commenters in the past few days even read it.

ratbastarddotfuck

really not sure when it happened or why but personally I'm pissed that the queer community at large seems to have given up ground on the "people with penises/vulvas/testes/ovaries" language to sex & gender essentialists in exchange for the much less precise, much more demeaning "AGAB" language.

is it because you're scared of the word vulva? of acknowledging out loud that some people have penises? of recognising that many many people, including but certainly not limited to trans people, have mixed sex characteristics that cannot be accurately summarised by "afab/amab" as shorthand for "female/male"?

"in [GENITAL RELATED] situation AFABs will need to do X and AMABs will need to do Y" there are "afabs" with penises and "amabs" with vulvas. Saying this shit makes you look so unserious & honestly transphobic (given the ongoing erasure of post-op trans people within broader community). Intersex people and GRS have both existed for long enough (fucking forever and, decades, respectively) that we should well past making this basic fucking mistake.

quit referring to people by a vague & often violent event that happened at their birth as though it defines ANYTHING about how they & their body currently operate, and start using precise language so you at least look like you know what you're fucking talking about.

libraford

Are YOU gonna let THE GOVERNMENT tell YOU what YOUR GENDER is? That doesn't sound like Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to me! PROTECT your individual FREEDOMS and call your senator: we want the GOVERNMENT to stay OUT OF OUR PANTS! GENDER FREEDOM NOW!

libraford

Two men in your neighborhood are married... to EACH OTHER? Congratulate them for exercising their AMERICAN RIGHT to follow the footsteps of our FOUNDING FATHERS! They've got a fully AMERICAN spirit of FREEDOM and REBELLION! GOD BLESS THE USA.

libraford

Your coworker has a different RELIGION from yours? Well, that's just INTERESTING and you should talk about it on your UNION-APPROVED LUNCH BREAK. The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA was FOUNDED on Freedom of Religion and ANYONE should be allowed to seek the AMERICAN DREAM!

libraford

You think someone might be in this GREAT country ILLEGALLY? NO YOU DON'T! No one is in this country illegally! The minute anyone steps on our SOVEREIGN SOIL they're your FELLOW AMERICAN and where they come from is NO ONES BUSINESS.

valtsv

being someone who's passionate about their interests when you're a horror fan really is a special layer of hell because every interaction you have with another person where the conversation turns to your hobbies and personal entertainments is a trial where if you show too much unrepentant glee at getting an opportunity to talk about your preferred subject you get to watch them mentally move you onto their list of untrustworthy individuals to avoid in the future in real time

valtsv

you'll be like i enjoy horror because it articulates things that i've experienced and understood for a long time but never been able to put into words, and tackles ideas and themes normally seen as too taboo to express, and people will hear "i'm a sick fuck who enjoys watching people suffer and die"

klapollo

I'm going to be honest. I really hate how the discussion has become "all AI is bad all the time always" and not "how can we regulate and improve AI in a way that will benefit people, not exploit them, and improve the world with a potentially useful technology that we can educate people on"

It just seems so defeatist to throw the baby out with the bathwater like this. Yes, as is typical under capitalism, AI has so far been used to some truly horrific ends. But, It also has the potential to do truly great things for people in a wide variety of ways. Why are we not fighting for an AI that is ethical, helpful, regulated, and understood by people so as not to be deceived by it? I don't want to stop the march of technological advancement, I want it to work for the benefit of people collectively and not just be exploited by corporations who want to hurt them. It's easy to see AI as completely bad when it's mostly been used for bad things, but there is a limitless amount of things we could do for people with this technology if we truly fought for it to be used ethically.

roadhogsbigbelly

i think my personal biggest issue with itoutside of it's environmental inpact or it's "art theft" (if you want to call it that) is that so many tech companies are pushing it way ahead of it's potential usefulness, like right now every tweet on twitter has a button where if you click on it, it gives you an "ai explanation" of the tweet" and like i can read the tweet this is more than useless actually.

klapollo

I agree, and I think the snake oil strategy is part of the reason why so many people dislike AI, justifiably so. There is so much obfuscation as to what it actually is, characterizing it as this magical jetsons-like tool that will make our lives easier in very vague nebulous ways. It is impractical, unrealistic, and not what everyone is claiming it to be, which is pretty in line with silicon valley promises and marketing. This does not mean it is inherently bad, but that obfuscation and pushing it as some kind of miracle pill of technological advancement not only makes it untrustworthy by deliberately making it vague, but tries to circumvent any attempts to potentially make it more ethical, as well as getting around people understanding it so it can be used for more nefarious means. Positioning AI as some uniquely mystical thing that only tech bros can understand to the point that they need to tell us how much we need and where and when we need it is definitely intentional, and definitely a huge problem.

bluebellhairpin

Crying bc the events of Pacific's Rim are literally happening right now. January 8 was the day Mako and Raleigh fought those kaijus in the Hong Kong double event. January 12 is the triple event where they close the breach. In two days we cancel the apocalypse.

bluebellhairpin

JANUARY 12. ITS HAPPENING TODAY. ITS HAPPENING NOW. TODAY WE CANCEL THE APOCALYPSE!!!!!

buddhistmusings-deactivated2025

There's a phenomenon in left-wing circles where initially reasonable statements and concepts get repeated ad nauseum until they not only lose their meaning but transform into deeply bigoted ideas.

The idea "there is no single white culture," is true because white is a concept created to describe the powerful position in Western societies. There are many different cultures, who's members are often white. But this idea became "white people have no culture" which is just not true, deeply dehumanizing, and harmful, especially to people who look white but experience marginalization because of their culture.

Another example might be cultural appropriation, which perhaps should be understood as a misrepresentation or exploitation of the cultural practices of another, especially where the person exploiting does so for personal gain, without acknowledgment. But now, people have basically transformed this into "when somebody does something from a culture they weren't raised in" or "when a particular race or ethnicity behaves in a way that's different from how they normally do" which promotes racial and cultural stereotypes and attempts to control the behaviors of people based on their race, ethnicity, and culture.

kindermaus87

Adding to this, the sentiment that white people "have no culture" is based in the idea that culture is a deviation from whiteness. "Cultural" food, "cultural" dress, etc., is all shorthand for "things done by people who aren't white". To say that white people have no culture is to further other non-white people, making them the deviation from the "norm".

White people do have culture. Rich white people, poor white people, white people from Canada and the U.S. and Great Britain all have cultures that are different from one another. Claiming that they don't is a tool in the furthering of white supremacy and we (leftists) gotta knock it the fuck off.

phantomrose96

Tumblr can never be my main means of engaging in politics and it comes down almost entirely to Tumblr's pathological need to distill The Right Opinion:tm: from any complicated issue.

It's always the most important thing. Not because it helps solve the issue or helps the people impacted, but because The Right Opinion:tm: is a proxy for you, morally, as a person. And every issue needs to be broken into the language that sets the stances of Make You Good or Make You Bad.

And I don't mean this in any generic statement about echo chambers or virtue signaling. Those are separate but related concepts. What I'm talking about is how people are nervous about a topic until one doctrine is crafted which defines the Sports Team Color of our Sports Team, so we can be identified as being on the Us Sports Team, and absolutely not on the Them Sports Team. Because this issue is actually about you and the proxy for you as a person and how people should perceive you so, really, the sooner we figure out the Home Sports Team Colors the sooner you can stop feeling worried.

The moment something new happens is usually the first and last time you'll actually see a range of opinions on it. And some of that is fueled by misinformation! Some in bad faith! When dust settles and clarity is achieved, this helps combat those things, but it's also the moment when the Loudest and most Articulate voices craft the Zeitgeist Opinion and everyone comes to roost around it.

You get people on this site pissed off at AI models that can diagnose cancer from a research paper in 2019 because The Right Opinion is that AI is bad. If you even see a post trying to articulate good uses of AI, well that's someone wearing Packers colors at a Vikings home game, and if you wanna make a point in the "wrong" direction you better be damn articulate about it.

A well-defined set of actions are transphobic. Another set are actually not transphobic, and you'd be transphobic for thinking so. Are you trans and actually your lived experiences differ? Get articulate real fast or shut up. You might be able to eek an exception for yourself, but it's going to require a 10-paragraph post justifying your claim. If you're REALLY good at it though, you might be able to rewrite the Zeitgeist and now anyone who disagrees with you is transphobic. Teams switch uniform styles every now and then, after all.

And it's such a farce because so often it's not actually about the topic at hand. It's about why you should be allowed to be perceived as a good person while toeing outside the fringes of The Right Opinion, why you aren't actually quitting the faith or committing blasphemy or deserving of exile for going off the written word. Or if someone really IS trying to make it about the topic at hand, the ensuing slapfight in the comments needs to be about whether OP has sinned against the covenant.

It's not helpful.

lifeafterpsychiatry

You and your partner need to sit down and figure out what's cheating, what's hurtful, what's disrespectful and also what's needed for a good and healthy relationship for you as a couple because these things are not universal and you can't just assume you share the same definition

certifiedsexed

Certified Sex Ed Post.

shmreduplication

you can also list romantic non-sexual things differently than non-romantic sexual things. For example, you could say going on a date with someone else is cheating but having sex with someone else is not cheating

you can also include communication as a factor. For example, you could say having sex with another person is not cheating if it's communicated and gets the go-ahead from the partner before it happens. So secret sex with another person would be cheating but pre-planned, pre-communicated, and pre-accepted sex with another person would not be cheating

you can also designate it on repetition. Like you could say one night stands with other people are not cheating but repeated encounters with another person are cheating

you can also designate it based on specific acts, like oral sex with another person is fine but bondage with another person is cheating

sex and romance and relationships are complicated and people's feelings about them are not universal or even logical or consistent so it's worth the time to get on the same page and go into the nitty gritty details

psychotic-gerard

i have understood so many things about online leftist culture by the fact that when i said "your local community has people you will morally and politically disagree with but you cannot lock them out of accessing any tangible service you’re organising" one of the tags responding said "this isn’t about proshippers in here you’re not welcome" like. folks. focus with me. some of us are homeless here.

jaffacake6

Pulling these excellent tags from @avelera into the reblog chain:

Exactly this.

Regardless of how you feel about Trump supporters - and I'm saying this as someone who both voted Democrat and is pretty concerned about what the hell Trump will do - if you yell "You're awful people!" at them, they will not listen to your points or join you politically.

And honestly? That's not unreasonable of them. The standard, reasonable person is not going to be receptive to debate from someone who just yells verbal abuse at them regardless of how well-justified that person believes it is.

So you can pick between "Yell at Trump supporters and call them all racist assholes" and "Maybe actually support left-wing politics gaining more traction and helping to deradicalise people".

The former is preaching to the converted (and further pushing away the unconverted), the latter is useful.

Similarly, if you tell a moderate "Vote Democrat or you're scum" (or anything similar - even if it's just subtext)? Well, they probably don't want to ally with people calling them scum.

I'm not saying "Forgive people for voting for Trump", I'm not even saying you have a responsibility to be civil to them - but if you're going to vocally hate them, you need to accept that it further pushes them into the arms of the only people who will apparently accept them - the far-right. And whether or not that's an acceptable cost is up to you.

screenshotsofdespair

retroactivebakeries

baggebythesea

Grieve AND organize.

Good article by David Hunter on how to survive the Trump presidency, both on the personal and on the political plane.

The key to taking effective action if Trump wins is to avoid perpetuating his goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.

the-moon-loves-the-sea

This is an excellent article. It talks about the psychology of tyranny, the history of resistance and the paths we have to take to rescue each other and recover.

bigbigtruck

Point #4 especially.

teaboot

I hate that thing some people do where it's like. "I left my wallet on the table to see if you'd say anything" or "I wanted to see if you'd wash the car if I stopped doing it"

Cause like

I dont know about anyone else

But I am perpetually hovering three inches above the strong subconscious belief that everyone knows what they're doing at all times except me, so if you change your normal patterns and I notice, then I will assume it is an intentional choice with a thought-out plan behind it and I will avoid interfering

And if I don't notice, because I won't, because why would I, because not much bothers me and if you don't say anything to indicate you are bothered then how would I KNOW

teaboot

Alternatives to experimenting on me like a lab rat when you suspect me of being inconsiderate:

"I feel like I'm the only one who does this chore. Can we start taking turns?"

"I'd like you to ask me how I'm doing more often."

"It bothers me when this area stays messy so long. Can you do X when Y happens?"

"I feel like the onus is on me to initiate X, and it's wearing me down. Could you try making the first move more? Like 3-4 times a week?"

"I'm feeling upset right now and I'd like to spend some time with you."

"When X happens, I feel like you're taking my work for granted."

"I'm feeling neglected. Could you do X?"

"I'm burnt out and need help."

"I feel like I'm the only one putting effort into X."

"Do you notice this?"

"Are you bothered by this?"

"I am bothered when this happens."

"X habit of yours bothers me."

"When X is like this, I feel bad. Can you [action] when you notice X?"

teaboot

Like I am a scatterbrained dirt person and I live in my dirt hole and go about my dirt life and as long as I can go about my day doing my little dirt activities without interruption or hazard then I do not feel at all bothered at all by my dirt

If you, a mud person, crawl into a log with me, then I will assume you are happy with my dirt until you TELL ME YOU NEED MUD

OTHERWISE

I WILL ASSUME YOU ARE ALSO A DIRT PERSON FROM A DIRT HOLE

BECAUSE HOW ELSE WOULD I KNOW THAT

I WAS BORN IN DIRT

ironychan

TIL anyone who's going to overwinter in Antarctica has to have had their appendix out. Because removing an appendix that's not causing any trouble just as a precaution is way better than having one that's about to burst when you're on the ass-end of the planet with no way to be rushed to a hospital if shit gets real.

ironychan

No, by the way, we absolutely did not think of this ahead of time. A dude named Leonid Rogozov got appendicitis in Antarctica. Fortunately, the expedition's doctor diagnosed him quickly and knew how to remove an appendix. Unfortunately, our man Leo was the expedition's doctor.

What did he do? Well, he set up a mirror, gave his belly a shot of novocaine, presumably told a colleague, "hold my vodka," and he removed his own fucking appendix. He survived.

sunlaire

this picture has such "i lived bitch" energy

lemonsharks

Tonight we channel our inner Leonoid Rogozov

zwoelffarben

One of the few exception that prove the rule that: No matter how good a surgeon you are, You can't perform surgery on yourself.

I think about him semi-regularly.

traegorn

while i completely agree with your assessment of realistically what a trump vs harris presidency will look like, i think the issue me and a lot of other leftists have is that there is no need to tell people (and effectively tell harris) that oh ofc we are gna vote for her despite these issues because trump is THAT bad and if you say you don't want to vote for her because her party is pro-war, pro-genocide, then you are condemning americans to a trump presidency. we know trump is worse! i don't want him to win AT ALL, but why would harris even consider even changing the language she is using (i'm looking at the absolutely stupid speech she was giving in michigan, given the large arab & muslim-american population there and given its a battleground state) if she thinks she is going to win on a not-trump basis? i know who i'm voting for on nov 5th if it comes down to it, but we need the democrats to THINK they are going to lose until the very last minute, we need them to feel like they can't just rely on being the lesser of two evils if we want any chance of a shift on palestine. because they very well might lose, for this exact reason (and i'm speaking again more to the votes of the arab & muslim-american population which is far more demographically meaningful than the votes of leftists) and if that happens, they have no one to blame but themselves.

So I'm going to tell you something important: You don't have the leverage you think you have.

Political campaigns are a machine that's been operating the same way for a long time on the Democratic side. The Republicans may have abandoned a lot of the old ways of doing things, but the Democratic party hasn't. And you've got people running these campaigns who are steeped in the "wisdom" of how you win.

And when a block of voters says they're not going to vote for their candidate, they tend to believe them. So they decide to go court the people who they think will vote for them. That's why you've seen the Harris campaign trying to court moderate Republicans who might be iffy on voting for Trump a third time.

Right now one of the reasons Netanyahu is refusing to commit to a cease fire is because he thinks Trump can win. If Trump wins, he has no reason to ever agree to one. One of the reasons he thinks Trump can win is because the polling is so close.

If you want to know why they've gone to the right recently, it's because they think they've lost the left. And since a lot of those leftists are claiming there's a line in the sand that they don't have the power to appease (because -- again -- they can't get Netanyahu to do shit right now), they're going to go for the centrist Republicans.

Also, there seems to be this weird notion that the only way to move the Democrats is during the election. That's not how you move people. You keep pressuring them during their term and it works. Like Biden is continuing to work on forgiving student debt even though he doesn't have an election ahead of him. Because they know that what he does reflects on the future of the party. Voting doesn't end this game, it's the start of it.

But none of it will matter if Trump wins.

bundibird

If the left doesn't vote democrat, but meanwhile, the right votes enmasse for republicans, then the democrats will move further right in an effort to court votes.

But if the left vote enmass, then it tells the democrats, "Hey, the left likes what you're doing. If you go even further left, you'll get more votes."

Aka the more that the left votes democrat, the more leftist the democrats will move.

If the left refrains from voting, then the democrats will move further right.

So for the love of God, fucking vote.

beatrice-otter

Also, the other thing is, you need to beware of echo chambers.

Just because you and all your friends think Harris is a centrist, that does not mean that that is a common view. How often do you listen to people who don't agree with you, politically? I have to do it fairly regularly, and the average American is far more likely to think that Biden and Harris are both far-leftist extremists than they are to think they're middle-of-the-road.

Yes. That's right. To a lot of Americans, Biden and Harris are so far left that they are terrifying.

I know life-long Democrats who believe that. Who think that, in retrospect, sure, Trump was bad but Biden and Harris are just as bad, in the opposite direction. They're faced with what they see as a choice between two dangerous extremists, in opposite directions.

They're wrong, but you will never convince them of that.

And there are two important things to remember about them:

There are a lot more people like that then there are people who think of Biden or Harris as centrists. (The people in America's political center sure as fuck don't think Biden and Harris are centrists.)

Centrists vote far more regularly than leftists. Therefore, they have more power per person, because politicians know they have to have them on board to win. Leftists are nice to have, but undependable, so a politician who wants to be elected has to favor the centrists over the leftists.

If we want US politics to move left, we need to do two things:

Vote in every election. Far left in primaries, Democrat in general elections, to prove we are a voting bloc worth listening to.

Build on-the-ground relationships with people who don't already agree with us, and do active community building, harm reduction, and other stuff like that in our own communities. People don't change their ideology based on logic and national debates. They change their ideology based on relationships, stories, and seeing how stuff works in their own communities.

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