The blog of Erik A. G. '59 @erikag59 - Tumblr Blog

my friends just gave birth to twins, but they're very picky about names, and will not name a child until they fall in love with a name. for their first born it took weeks.

now, they found ONE name they liked. so currently we have to ask "how are Suzie and the other one?". which is hilarious.

thydungeongal

Every once in a while I will feel compelled to check up on the "people who think call-out posts are a form of justice" side of this site and sometimes I'll bear witness to something like. Oh, one of them is having their face eaten by leopards now, because these people are extremely trigger happy and constantly monitoring not only their targets but each other for any sign of moral failure.

One would think that maybe these experiences would teach these people that "hey we're perhaps fostering a really bad culture that is bound to destroy itself because everyone is constantly having to be hypervigilant about their own and each others' behavior" and that maybe they should stop doing this but in fact what happens is that the harassment fandom has now fractured into two different cliques of harassment fans. And of course under the perverse sense of justice these cliques cultivate, of course it's the other clique who are wrong and unable to see the truth (it's because there is absolutely no sensible standard of "justice" to these people, because their behavior is largely in line with "coming up with a crime to accuse someone of after the fact").

thydungeongal

My former compatriots have unfairly painted me as one of the freaks that should be harassed to death. They are, of course, wrong. Will this make me reconsider my policy of "some freaks deserve to be harassed to death?" On the contrary, my faith in the system of "harassing freaks to death" remains unflinching and this is simply an issue with individual bad actors.

#callout culture

anghraine

Any take on Luke as just a normal kid whining about freedom should probably account for the fact that he lives on a lawless desert planet controlled by gangsters who kept his father and grandmother as slaves

anghraine

#like … every time i see a post about how much easier he has it than leia i’m #he absolutely does in some ways #but also leia’s family are wealthy and powerful while luke’s are eking out water from the air

This post is nearly ten years old and I still think about this, honestly. Luke has no consciousness of the dangers and pressures in Leia’s life when he’s playing with his toy starship; she’s already had to become what he can only vaguely dream of. But she’s also never had to consider “where is tomorrow’s food and water coming from” to anything like the degree that Luke, Owen, and Beru do every day. Luke and Leia both make sure they’re armed when they leave home because their environments are so dangerous, in completely different ways.

It really is possible to talk about the ways Leia has been forced to grow up and Luke has been allowed to remain functionally a boy, without dismissing pretty much everything we ever find out about Tatooine and the Skywalkers, or the drastic differences in their opportunities and access to material luxuries. I promise, she’s a good enough character to stand on her own without misrepresenting Luke’s circumstances to prop her up.

#star wars

archipithecus

softshell and hardshell books

paperback and hardcover turtles

discoursedrome

A CBC News investigation found a number of Facebook accounts run by people overseas impersonating real Albertan separatists.

Really fun story on the CBC today.

Historically there's been a lot of hand-wringing about foreign state-affiliated troll-farms using social media to influence domestic election results, and of course there's a long history of online scams from poorer countries toward richer ones, leveraging the wealth multiplier, but this is much more interesting: it's about people from other countries posting hoaxy politicized ragebait because they're in Facebook's Creator Monetization program and get a small cut of the ad revenue when their posts drive engagement.

This is about Alberta separatism, which is a contentious issue in Canada right now, but it's not motivated by any desire to shape public opinion on that topic, it's just looking for anything that achieves high engagement. And unlike the scammers, they're not necessarily conning their marks out of money -- one of the people profiled here is plagiarizing posts, but that aside, the advertisers footing the bills are getting what they paid for.

I doubt this will last, but I really like the picture it paints of a globalized attention economy in which freelancers and firms scour the world for underexploited ragebait topics, directing their efforts in the same way that the global economy directs international investment and labour toward countries with opportunities for yield.

femmenietzsche

Maybe this is a dumb way of thinking about it, but the Andromeda Galaxy is about 2.5 million light years away, while the edge of the observable universe is about 46.5 billion light years away, which is only 18,600 times further. That's a lot obviously, and it makes a bigger difference when considering the volume of a sphere, but in cosmic terms one thing being only 20k times further away than another is way more graspable than a lot of the numbers you have to work with. (And while obviously Andromeda itself is ungraspably far away, relative to the size of the Milky Way it's not that far either.)

femmenietzsche

I guess the alternate way of looking at this is that in terms of like the factors of ten scale of the universe, most of the empty (macroscopic) space exists between stars rather than at the largest scales

argumate

does that suggest that if you can navigate the galaxy, getting to another galaxy isn't such a stretch? but navigating the galaxy is already crazy hard.

ralfmaximus

All those observable galaxies might not be there anymore. They could have disappeared a few billion years back and we'd never know.

Heck, Alpha Centauri could have exploded four years ago and we'd not know it yet.

argumate

dammit, the good real estate is slipping over the event horizon before we can get there!

argumate

wild that "milli vanilli news" is a perfectly valid query in 2026, even more wild that the surviving member of the duo and the session musicians who actually recorded the songs have each independently stated that they don't want to be associated with a Trump event, I mean damn.

noknowshame

people in fiction are always making plans like "how about tuesday?" and then leaving without elaborating. what time? where? do you even have each other's numbers? deeply stressful

#data centers

gwydionmisha

A judge appointed by Gov. Laura Kelly said Kansas likely violated parental rights by restricting gender-affirming care for trans minors.

vaspider

The judge found 349 individual facts supported the continued provision of gender-affirming care.

Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach brought forward a litany of anti-trans witnesses familiar from litigation defending these bans. Among them was James Cantor, a Toronto psychologist who has built a career testifying for states defending care bans despite no clinical experience treating transgender minors—and who was once quietly dropped from a Florida Board of Medicine hearing after it emerged he had served on the advisory council of the Prostasia Foundation, a group that has worked to destigmatize pedophilia. Folsom wrote that Cantor "has not conducted any original scientific research on the efficacy or safety of gender dysphoria treatments," and noted he is not licensed to treat anyone under 16 and has never diagnosed a minor with gender dysphoria. [...] "The Court gives Dr. Cantor's testimony little weight," Folsom concluded. The judge turned next to Farr Curlin, a Duke University doctor and theologian who was an author of the Trump administration's HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria ... By his own admission, Folsom noted, Curlin's views are "radically counter to current medical orthodoxy." The judge found his opinions "appear motivated by his personal views as opposed to a methodology applicable in the field of medical ethics," and gave his testimony "little-to-no weight." ...

And then there was Jamie Reed, the self-styled "whistleblower" who built a national profile on lurid, largely unsubstantiated accusations against a St. Louis gender clinic and who has gone on Fox News to describe being transgender as a delusion. Reed also did not testify and could not be cross-examined. Folsom gave her affidavit "little weight,” and had scathing remarks towards her lack of expertise: “The Court gives thus Jamie Reed’s affidavit little weight, given that she is not a medical provider or mental-health professional. In addition, her affidavit primarily addresses her experiences with a clinic operating outside of Kansas—thus, it does not rebut or refute the credible, uncontroverted testimony about clinical practice within the state of Kansas,” read the order.

This decision is 117 pages long, and if you want to actually feel good about something a judge has had to say recently about trans rights, this is legitimately a good read. (I understand that some people do not read legal decisions for fun. You should still try reading this one. It's really good.)

Given how thoroughly and completely he eviscerates the supposed qualifications and relevance of the same tired grievance actors that the right totes from case to case like a basket of moldy oranges, I hope that this decision will not only act as an example for future judges, but save them a bunch of work, because they don't have to then go do all of the writing themselves on how much these people suck, they can just cite this decision.

titleknown

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Historically Fucked Over Artists On An Institutional Level:

Sampling rights becoming prohibitively expensive to use by small artists

Musicians being forced to sign over sampling rights to their record company, making any benefits they would hypothetically gain moot.

The Digital Milennium Copyright Act leading to the vidmaker-stomping nightmare that is ContentID

The DMCA leading to making it harder than ever to preserve media due to the way it prohibits tinkering with any locks the megacorps put on it, meaning it's way easier for artists' hard work to end up vaulted and lost.

The way basic chord progressions and musical styles have become copyrightable thanks to various lawsuits by the Marvin Gaye estate

The fact that the artists of the past used to be able to remix; adapt and iterate on art made within 56 years of them, likely created in their lifetimes, and now artists can only do those things with art produced nearly a century ago by people long dead.

New and independent artists being crowded out of the market by megacorp-owned IPs that would be public domain (and thusly convey less of an overwhelming advantage-via-marquee-value to megacorps) if the US had its pre-1976 copyright laws.

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Actually Materially Helped Artists On An Institutional Level:

????????

carolxdanvers

Times that Copyright Expansion Resulted In Something Kinda Funny:

When Metallica did a twitch concert and got a copyright strike on their own music as a direct result of their lobbying for copyright expansion

somethingusefulfromflorida

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn, Mint-in-Box, Graded 9.5 (Certificate of Authenticity Included), I Know What I Have

erikag59

We can bring Hemingway into the 21st century in an entirely different direction too:

For sale: gender reveal banner, never used

victusinveritas

Found on Friendly Atheist on Facebook:

The Pentagon has AGAIN updated its list after complaints from Mormons.

But this list is still a problem.

It separates non-denominational Christians from evangelicals.

It lumps together atheists and “Nones” who believe in a higher power.

It combines a BUNCH of smaller religions into “Other.”

It lumps together progressive Baptists with conservative Southern Baptists.

It combines all Muslims in one group.

The government run by Christian Nationalists has, as usual, taken something that wasn’t broken and made everything worse.

The 2017 list was better. This is just ignorant.

https://x.com/DOWResponse/status/2064015222621221315

my-dailydreams

meirmakesstuff

A guy at the gym just looked around, realized he was lifting the same weight as a "girl" in a wheelchair, pushed his weight up two notches, screamed once, and left.

meirmakesstuff

Like,

meirmakesstuff

This could have been avoided by keeping your eyes on your own workout,

This could have been avoided by realizing not all disabilities make people weaker--in fact, the opposite,

This could have been avoided by just being normal about things, man, I don't know what to tell you

meirmakesstuff

My wife (they/them) is the wheelchair user in this scenario. I was on standby because sometimes they lift so much weight they start to tip over.

scunthotter

People who are making posts telling us what is happening over on threads, twitter, and Instagram are like war correspondents sending us reports from the front.