sideblog

[programmerhumour]

Funny how that works

[ferrousferrule]

I am so pleased at how many notes are some version of “I don’t fear the science, I fear the corporations who control it” because that is EXACTLY the attitude you should have. GMOs can save us. Monsanto will kill us.

[brunhiddensmusings]

what people fear about GMO- ‘theyre gonna make frankencarrots that crave human flesh and cause diarrhea ’ what GMO actually is- ‘we made rice crop that is both drought resistant and flood resistant which will prevent about 20% of major famine disasters, also it now makes vitamin A because vitamin A deficiency in poverty stricken areas is a major killer of kids as most vitamin A rich foods dont grow there’ what people SHOULD be upset about- ‘i made all crops sterile so all farmers have to buy the seed from me in perpetuity and i will sue anyone who tries to go back to crops that produce their own seed’

[aniseandspearmint]

^^^ THIS

[wahtdahel-blog]

Most of the medical research was done on white males and their response to medicine. This is why medical books should only serve as a framework but clinical expertise matters more.

And this is why we need more black doctors.

[populationpensive]

There is a great instagram called Brown Skin Matters that has certified photos of different rashes and skin conditions. I find this VERY helpful. I just recently stumbled on it and it’s a nice, quick, resource. 

[devilboyblues]

Is funny when doctors and other peeps act like my problem is that I’m obsessed w/ my disability. Um no. You have it backwards. The problem is I HAVE to be cuz it is a constant problem.

[andreashettle]

I’m deaf. About 25 years ago, I was working for a little while as a classroom aide at a program that worked with deaf children with multiple disabilities. All the teachers and other classroom aides were hearing, but they all could sign.  Not at native signing level, but enough to carry on a basic conversation.

So, one evening, all us adults bring all the kids to a special one-night camping trip. All the kids are put to sleep, which frees up the adults to get into a circle and have some fun to ourselves for a while. People start talking, except they were forgetting to sign.  So I reminded them to please sign so I could understand them.  One of them told me that, no, they weren’t going to sign because this was our night to have fun and not have to think about communication.

So no one signed all night. They talked, they laughed, they had fun. I sat, feeling lost and cut off and betrayed. I remember wishing I had had the nerve to say, “No, what you mean is, you want a night in which everyone EXCEPT ME gets to not think about communication.”

I think sometimes when non-disabled people insist that we are too obsessed with our disability, what they REALLY mean is, “I wish you would stop reminding me that I have a shared responsibility as a fellow member of society to proactively ensure that we all have an opportunity to be engaged in society.  I wish you would just pretend to not have a disability so I can pretend that I don’t have to do anything to enable you to do the same things the rest of us are doing.”

The luxury of not needing to think about disability in a society that is designed to lock us on the cold outside is a non-disabled privilege. 

[knifefightscene]

[theoldestchorusgirlintheworld]

I think it’s really weird that the average person needs a home and a car and an education to effectively function at all in a capitalist society but those things are all such an exorbitantly high price that the average person would never ever be able to pay for them one lump sum and thus we decided that upon entering adulthood every average person would likely have to sign their life away to various powerful banks to pay for these things and everyone was just like “Ok, that seems legit and not fucked up AT ALL.” and now it’s such an accepted and normalized part of society that everyone looks at you like you’re dumb for thinking it’s weird. I just think it’s really fucking weird.

[cenkrett]

Did you mean: explicitly malevolent?

[sjdjfjvifieifigigirje-deactivat]

me, age 14: i’m fucked up and evil and no one understands me 

me, age 16: i am just a normal teenager you can be friends with

me now: fucked up and evil again 

[regging]

“coming of age” books and movies are so stupid like being a teenager isn’t about having sex and going to parties it’s about staring out your car window after hanging out with your old best friends who you haven’t seen in months and realizing that you aren’t actually friends anymore and that your childhood has been well and truly dead since you were thirteen

[exhaled-spirals]

“Online, we easily find “company” but are exhausted by the pressures of performance. We enjoy continual connection but rarely have each other’s full attention. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. Digital connections may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. [They offer] just the right amount of access, just the right amount of control, [putting] people not too close, not too far, but at just the right distance. The world is now full of […] people who take comfort in being in touch with a lot of people whom they also keep at bay.”

— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

[the-last-girl-scout]

food, not lawns

[asillyandrandomname]

If you come across as mysterious or enigmatic and are somewhat attractive people will try very hard to get to know you and you’ll mistake this as genuine interest in your being but it’s really just selfish curiosity and when the mystery is gone so is the curiosity

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

tea

[veliseraptor]

when you can sense a Mood incoming and feel like a farmer standing in a field looking out at the horizon as the storm approaches like “looks like it’s gonna be a bad one, boys”

[pervocracy]

Fun statistical fact: Cows are about 300 times more likely to kill you than coyotes.

Minor sidenote to statistical fact: If it was common for people to keep several hundred coyotes on their property and routinely chase them into a corral and handle them, this statistic would be different.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

this is a great summary of ‘conditional probability’, a statistical property many people grapple with 

[friendlyfrankenstein]

…I feel like this post just made me realize that both coconut trees and vending machines, items often quoted in wacky death statistics, are both things that people shake vigorously often. 

[fandomsandfeminism]

So, I’m on episode 3 of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, and a trend in all three so far is that an underlying issue seems to be that the wives in the house are expected to take care of EVERYTHING and it’s too much for one person. (This was less true in episode 2, but 1 and 3 its a big thing.)

Like, husbands and kids just taking no care or responsibility for their possessions and leaving it up to mom. Episode 3 is so sad here at the beginning because she feels like she’s failing her kids because SHE cleans their room and then they dont keep it clean. Her husband cant/wont cook and isnt helping with any of the cleaning either.

Like, I’m sure Kondo is going to get them all to take ownership of their own stuff and get everyone to help, but this opening bit makes me sad for this woman.

[felixjoyful]

That’s the episode where I had to stop watching because that speech she gave just broke my heart. The husband is like “we’re a team” like you ain’t shit if you don’t notice how your wife is struggling and all you’re left with is the happy fun times with your kids.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Its just so sad that she feels like this clutter is entirely her fault. Like, no. It’s not. You dont need to REDEEM yourself to your family. Your family needs to start pulling their damn weight.

[whenthesecondsun]

I couldn’t even get through the first episode bc that husband was so passive-aggressive about everything, having hissy fits and being low-key mean all the time. While the wife is just calmly and kindly putting up with it, clearly well-versed in deflecting his anger, and then continuing to act all-around nice despite his shittyness

Like if I remember correctly the guy also indirectly blamed his wife for the mess bc he apparently “works around 60 hours a week” and she only works part-time (in order to have more time to take care of her entire house and TWO TODDLERS), and it annoyed him to come home to a messy house like… can you be more self-centered and useless??

so yeah that’s why i haven’t watched any more of the show

[fandomsandfeminism]

Ugh. The husband in that episode was awful. Like, listening to the wife talk about the laundry, it felt so obvious she was struggling with an anxiety disorder with the laundry as a trigger. And he was just an asshole about it.

[energyremainsconstant]

omg this is exactly what I’m talking about!! especially with the laundry thing in the first episode, broke my heart. I could only watch two episodes

[fandomsandfeminism]

Episode 4 is really heartfelt. Its this lady who’s husband passed away almost a year earlier, and her house is still filled with all his things, his clothes, all over the place. Like, all the downstairs rooms seem very clean amd nice, but the bedrooms that their (now grown) children had grown up in are packed with random stuff.

Its very emotional, but ultimately nice.

And I hear that there is an episode(episodes?) With a gay couple that are very good.

But yeah, like, its an interesting show because you get a really intense look at people and their relationships as they go through this process.

[geekandmisandry]

Ok, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the first husband was like…really rude. Like, she kept the house pretty clean but really struggled with the laundry and would rather pay someone than deal with it and all he had was indirect jabs.

[rohie-deactivated20191102]

“Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

— I Know What You Think of Me, Tim Kreider for the New York Times

[owlmylove]

after YEARS of seeing this quote online and finding it to be the most deeply and resoundingly profound writing i finally found the source article and absolutely nothing could prepare me for this opening paragraph

[boneyardchamp]

Your professor will not be happy with you if he says the Stanford Prison Experiment shows human nature and you say it shows the nature of white middle class college-aged boys.

Like he will not be happy at all.

[cannon-fannon]

For real though. That experiment. Scary shit.

[hollowedskin]

This reminds me of a discussion that I read once which said Lord of the Flies would have turned out a hell of a lot differently if it was a private school of young girls (who are expected to be responsible and selfless instead), or a public school where the children weren’t all from an inherently entitled, emotionally stunted social class (studies have shown that people in lower socioeconomic classes show more compassion for others). Or that the same premise with children raised in a different culture than the toxic and opressive British Empire and it’s emphasis on social hierarchy and personal wealth and status. And that what we perceive as the unchangable truth deep inside humanity because of things like Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment, is just the base truths about what happens when you remove any accountabilty controlling one social group with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and an inability to feel compassion.

[lady-feral]

I will always reblog this.

[shinykari]

I just wanna say that the Lord of the Flies was explicitly written about high-class private school boys to make this exact point. Golding wrote Lord of the Flies partially to refute an earlier novel about this same subject: The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne. Golding thought it was absolutely absurd that a bunch of privileged little shits would set up some sort of utopia, so his book shows them NOT doing that.

[roscoerackham]

This is also generally true about most psychological experiments.

There’s an experiment called “The Ultimatum Game”. It goes something like this.

Subject A is given an amount of money (Say, $100).

Subject A must offer Subject B some percentage of that money.

If Subject B accepts Subject A’s offer, both get the agreed upon amount of money. If Subject B refuses, no one gets any money.

The most common result was believed to be that people favored 50/50 splits. Anything too low was rejected; people wanted fairness. This was believed to be universal.

And then a researcher went to Peru to do the experiment with members of the indigenous Machiguenga population, and was baffled to find that the results were totally different.

Because, to the Machiguenga, refusing any amount of free money (even an unfair amount) was considered crazy.

So the researcher took his work on the road (to 14 other ‘small scale’ societies and tribes) , and to his shock found the results varied wildly depending on where the test was done. 

In fact, the “universal” result? Was an outlier. 

And that’s the problem. 96% percent of test subjects for psychological research come from 12% of the population. Stuff that we consider to be universal facts of human nature… even things like optical illusions, just… aren’t.

 You can read an article about it here.  But the crux of it is that psychology is plagued with confirmation bias, and people are shaped more by their environment than we realize. 

[cosmemery]

“American participants are exceptional even within the unusual population of Westerners—outliers among outliers.”

Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.

This is a long read but so worth it

[adayinthelesbianlife-deactivate]

“Pourquoi Je Suis Feministe” (Why I am a Feminist) - an interview with Simone de Beauvoir, 1975

[emeritusprofessorofnothing]

Women enforce modesty on their daughters in a futile attempt to protect them from men.

[randomslasher]

You know one of the shittiest parts of chronic pain? 

Sympathy has an expiration date. 

If you’re hurting because you broke your leg, people can sympathize with you, because there’s an end-date. Eventually your leg will heal and you’ll be okay again. People will coo and coddle and bring you chocolates and sign your cast because they know that’s emotional labor that they will only have to perform temporarily. 

But if you have a chronic condition that causes you daily pain, after awhile, people get annoyed with having to deal with you. They ask you what’s wrong, and when you reply with the same thing that was wrong last week, or the week before, or the month before, you eventually get an incredulous, “Still?” 

Or maybe they’re not that overt. Maybe instead they go, “Oh, just that. Okay.” As if today’s pain should somehow be fine for them to ignore because it’s nothing new. No need to worry: it’s just the same old same old. 

Let me tell you: Pain never gets easy to handle. It’s not like people with chronic pain develop an immunity to it, or that we stop feeling it. Sure, some of us get better at ignoring it, or better at living around it, but honestly? Most of us just get better at hiding it, because we get tired of feeling like an emotional burden to everyone around us.

But that doesn’t mean that we’re not hurting, and it sort of sucks that long-term pain, in addition to all the other fun things it entails, also eventually comes with a revoked right to be sympathized with, or even just treated like something other than a whiny attention-grabbing faker (or worse: a drug-seeker).

Chronic pain is real. And it sucks. And one of the worst parts about it is knowing it’s never going to end. 

It would just be cool if people could try understand that, I guess.

[rose-coloured-angel]

Same goes for mental illness. People will hear your story or ask about how it affects you and look at you with sympathy (maybe) or try to “make you feel better” by giving you a cookie-cutter talk about why you should just “get over it” or “be haply” or “act normal”. Then they’ll get pissed off when that “doesn’t work” and get annoyed at you for bothering them with your needs, triggers, or stims (or whatever else have you).