Dee called AO3 a “candy store,” and said the fan art she has seen, in particular, has been overwhelming. “I cannot get over the art,” she said. “We would have jumped at this. I would’ve given my right tit for all this art when I was in my twenties. Because you couldn’t reproduce it, you couldn’t send it out, but [now] there’s this fabulous art coming out every single day.”
Thanks to the author for permission to share this here, and for being just a really nice human being, and big thanks to the artist who did my mom’s portrait, above. -Zachary
helen “trans people are perpetuating gender steriotypes” joyce is now upset that the scientific american is writing about how women were hunters too back in the day, not just mothers and caretakers. feminist win!
Reading the article I see why TERFs are mad about it; it explicitly makes the distinction between gender as a social entity and sex as a biological category, and defines biological sex having multiple factors, both of which are anathema to TERF philosophy.
It also includes these fascinating paragraphs about the role of estrogen in different types of physical activity, directly debunking the widespread notion that estrogen is the weak human's hormone and only does weak human things:
Given the fitness world's persistent touting of the hormone testosterone for athletic success, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that estrogen, which females typically produce more of than males, plays an incredibly important role in athletic performance… The estrogen receptor—the protein that estrogen binds to in order to do its work—is deeply ancient. Joseph Thornton of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have estimated that it is around 1.2 billion to 600 million years old—roughly twice as old as the testosterone receptor. In addition to helping regulate the reproductive system, estrogen influences fine-motor control and memory, enhances the growth and development of neurons, and helps to prevent hardening of the arteries.
Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles… which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males.
Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues… Linda Lamont of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues, as well as Michael Riddell of York University in Canada and his colleagues, found that females experienced less muscle breakdown than males after the same bouts of exercise. Tellingly, in a separate study, Mazen J. Hamadeh of York University and his colleagues found that males supplemented with estrogen suffered less muscle breakdown during cycling than those who didn't receive estrogen supplements.
The article also talks about sexual dimorphism in different species, concluding that "Modern humans have low sexual dimorphism compared with the other great apes," and that overemphasis on averages obscures the wide dispersal of individual traits, which is what I keep saying.
Anthropologists also look at damage on our ancestors' skeletons for clues to their behavior. Neandertals are the best-studied extinct members of the human family because we have a rich fossil record of their remains. Neandertal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather. Yes, Neandertal women were spearing woolly rhinoceroses, and Neandertal men were making clothing.
At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields
technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.
Free Harvard courses.
Free Courses from Stanford.
Free Courses from MIT.
Free courses from Yale.
Free courses from Princeton.
Free courses on Coursera.
Free Courses on EDx
Free Courses on Alison
For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.
When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses."
Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.
It's the venting.
In the USA, dryers have massive exhaust vents to the outside of the room/building that take the hot wet away and leave hot dry behind.
In many other countries, dryers do not generally have external exhaust vents, and simply fill the room they are in with the hot wet, which may or may not be enough to actually remove the hot wet from the clothing depending on how well ventilated the room itself is.
for this reason 1) you generally can't leave the dryer open in winter without causing a draft and 2) sometimes when you're walking around outside in the US the world will suddenly smell of clean laundry because you're near someone's house and their dryer is running
And 3) Eventually your drier stops drying things so well and you have to hire somebody to bring a ladder up to the vent (either high up an exterior wall or on the literal roof) and clear out the accumulated lint and cruft blocking it
The thing about people using delusional as an insult or "delulu" as the trendy new term is that sometimes I really want to sit someone down and tell them that I think they're genuinely delusional and that they can get support and help if they're living with psychosis and that they absolutely aren't alone but even the most neurodivergent-positive person will respond as if I'm calling them the most horrible words in existence.
Delusional is a neutral term. Being delusional is a neutral state. When you contribute to the stigma around delusions and being delusional, you are stealing valuable language from people dealing with psychosis and people who are seeking help and support for the things they're going through. And as a delusional person, it really fucking sucks.
I’m currently trying to convince my roommate to seek some help about exactly this kind of thing and the biggest battle I’m having is over the idea that they’re delusional and how they can’t be because they’re not a bad person and why would I say that and it’s genuinely very frustrating because I’m not criticizing them I’m saying “I see you struggling and I want to help”
Yes, yes, this exactly! Like the stigma around delusions and psychosis in general is so fucking bad that even SUGGESTING someone could be experiencing psychosis is seen as an attack on their character, their morals, and their ability to exist around other people. It's such a painful thing to deal with and it means that a lot of people who could be getting help, taking medication, going to therapy, building support systems, finding coping skills, etc are instead just suffering as their mental state gets worse and worse.
So many people are unable or unwilling to get help and live with the stigma and mistreatment and so many of those people end up reaching a breaking point where they hurt themselves or others. So much pain could be avoided if we as a society talked about psychosis openly and honestly and stopped tolerating ableist language that demonizes people just for existing.
it's meee I'm your guardian angel hiiiiii 😇 okay🙏 so. in about six months, you're gonna die of starvation. 🥺 and if I don't protect you, I will get: #fired! 🫢 and that is No Good 🙅♀️ hahaaa So. 🙏 I looked into causes of starvation, and it turns out: Your death is totally preventable! 😯 Uh oh! 😆 There's more than enough food to sustain you without interfering with anyone else's survival, but you're not allowed to have it! 🤨 Whaaat? 🤷♀️ Apparently, your death is premeditated by thousands of things called "shareholders." So. 🙏 I've been killing people,
soy yooo tu ángel de la guarda holiiiiii 😇 okay🙏 bueno. en como seis meses, vas a morir de hambre. 🥺 y si no te protejo, me van a: #¡despedir! 🫢 y eso No esta Chido 🙅♀️jajaaa Entonces. 🙏investigue acerca del tema y resulta que: ¡puedo prevenir tu muerte al 100%! 😯 ¡Uh oh! 😆 Hay más que suficiente comida para que sobrevivas sin que interfieras con la supervivencia de los demás, ¡pero no puedes teneral! 🤨 ¿Queeeé? 🤷♀️ Al parecer, tu muerte fue premeditada por miles de cosas llamadas "accionistas." Y bueno. 🙏 empeze a matar personas,
c'est moooi ton ange gardien coucooou 😇 bon 🙏 alors. dans genre six mois, tu vas mourir de faim. 🥺 et si je te protège pas, je vais me faire: #virer ! 🫢 et ça c'est pas Pas Super 🙅♀️ hahaaa Donc. 🙏 j'ai fait mes recherches sur les causes de famine et devine quoi: Ta mort est 100% évitable ! 😯 Oh-oh ! 😆 Il y a largement assez de ressources pour te nourrir sans interférer avec la survie d'autrui, mais tu n'y as pas accès ! 🤨 Quoooi ? 🤷♀️ Apparemment ta mort a été préméditée par des milliers de trucs appelées des "actionnaires". Du coup.🙏 j'ai tué pas mal de monde,
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.
You can get and use windows 11 without logging in with a microsoft account, as of five days ago. I am a local user on my computer. Don't ask me how to do it, because my computer repair guy did it when he reinstalled windows, but there are tutorials out there. Refuse to connect to internet until you're set up and can use the computer freely.
Refusing to connect to the internet doesn't help. You have to open a Command Prompt (Shift+F10) and typing start ms-cxh:localonly (and pressing enter) during installation when you get to the sign in/create stupid ms account screen
For comprehensive deets, tomshardware explains
Maintain only a local account on your Windows 11 PC.
Unless there's really really specific reasons to subject yourself to windows, please consider installing linux mint instead.
