JJ Can't Spell

JJ. He/him, they/them, or she/her. Unapologetically Asexual and Genderqueer. 23. Writer.

[vulpixtrans]

making asexuals and aromantics hate themselves for their orientations is the farthest thing from lgbtq+ activism and is nothing to be proud of

[jurassicjragon]

the silent protector

An image tagged the silent protector

[irtenyev]

when w. h. auden said “evil is unspectacular and always human” and ursula k. leguin said “this is the great treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”

[treethymes]

when toni morrison said “i just think goodness is more interesting. evil is constant. you can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. but you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that’s complicated.”

[azbukivedii]

when simone weil said “imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

[solarpunk-aesthetic]

Steampunk without commentary on the exploitative machinations of imperialism is not steampunk.

Cyberpunk without commentary on capitalism’s efforts to buy the world out from under us is not cyberpunk.

Solarpunk without commentary on how to grow a brighter future for everyone instead of submitting to gloom is not solarpunk.

These three make a trifecta of how capitalism took over, what can happen if it continues, and how to prevent it from doing so. What was, is, and still could be.

[bloodyl1ps]

this post hasn't left my mind since i've first saw it

[sonicrainbooms]

people jest but this is literally how i worked out i was gaslit for like 15 years of my life

[aphony-cree]

People who “want trauma” are recognizing, on some level, that they were traumatized but in a way that’s not “socially recognized” as trauma. What they really want is for people to see that they’ve been traumatized and be on their side

[respected-demon]

Hold up

[wetwareproblem]

#everyone learns that trauma can cause memory problems or even cause you to black out events and then you're just like#how could people who said they had a stable life be traumatized??

I wanna expand on that for a moment. I’ve talked to a lot of trauma survivors about their backgrounds. And two things that are damn near universally true?

1. We almost all say “It wasn’t that bad” at first. 2. That statement is pretty much always a lie, be it to others or to yourself.

[hazeldomain]

By the way, it’s also common for people with mental illnesses (including ptsd) to “wish” they were suffering from a physical illness such as cancer— because then they’d get some kind of acknowledgement that their body was hurting them in a way they could not control.

This can also be part of the motivation behind self harm. It’s an attempt to “prove” the seriousness of the mental or emotional damage by causing it to manifest into something with equally serious physical symptoms.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

-fae

[fangirleaconmigo]

Bingo Card for Rarepair Fic Writers

[askagamedev]

So... Gamestop’s Stock Price and all that

This isn’t a game dev thing, but it is interesting and I thought it would make for some interesting reading (and also probably serve as a warning - you really probably shouldn’t buy gamestop stock right now). If you read and enjoyed my [Gamer’s Primer for Financial Literacy], this might be amusing for you as well.

First, I’ll explain the game mechanics. There’s a mechanic in investing called Short Selling, where an investor hopes to make money off of a stock (e.g. Gamestop) that they believe will go down in value. That investor borrows shares of the stock from another investor and is legally bound to return those shares at some future date. The investor can then sell the shares today, wait for the stock price to drop, buy the shares back at a lower price, and return the shares to the lender while pocketing the difference. In our example, Desmal borrows five of my shares of AAGDCo and sells them today for $100 apiece, promising to return them (Desmal gains $500). In a week, AAGDCo has a scandal and the price drops to $80 a share. Desmal buys the five shares of AAGDCo back for $80 apiece (total cost: $400), returns them to me, and gets to keep the difference ($100 profit).

Under certain circumstances, the lender can enforce a margin call - a way for the lender (me) to (legally) force the borrower (Desmal) to pay back the shares she borrowed. This stops borrowers from borrowing forever if they’re in the hole (e.g. if AAGDCo actually went up in value after Desmal borrowed the shares and sold them). If there’s a margin call, Desmal must buy the stock shares and return them to me. If the AAGDCo price has gone up, Desmal must eat the difference in cost and possibly take a loss. Risk to reward here.

So what does this have to with Gamestop? Gamestop, as you may know, has been having a really rough time over the past several years. Their business is failing and doing quite badly. Physical retail stores are taking a beating thanks to Covid, and digital game distribution and sales have been exploding, leaving them behind. This meant a lot of investors thought that short selling Gamestop stock was a good idea - they think the stock price will continue to fall, so they borrow shares, sell them immediately, and then will pay those shares back at a later date when the stock price has fallen even more.

But… here’s the trick. So many investors shorted Gamestop stock that more than 100% of their stock had been short sold. These short sold investors are legally bound to buy back shares of Gamestop at whatever price once the margin call comes. This means that, if the stock price jumped up dramatically, margin calls would be made and these investors couldn’t avoid buying back the shares at the high price. So the trolls at /r/wallstreetbets decided to see if they could do it. They started buying up Gamestop stock. 

At some point, when enough people buy something, the supply is gone and you can’t find it at the original price anymore (e.g. the PS5 and XSX consoles), so your only option is to raise the price you’re willing to pay in order to buy the thing you want. When enough people buy something, it naturally drives the price up. So… when /r/wallstreetbets collectively bought up all of the floating Gamestop stock, it drove the price up further and further. When this happened, the margin calls started coming in for the short sold investors, and they were forced to buy Gamestop stock at the much higher price in order to pay back the people they originally borrowed the shares from. This wave of forced buying triggered another wave of margin calls, which triggered another wave of forced buying, each round of forced buying driving the price up further. Gamestop stock being worth over $250 a share is the result of this.

Basically, too many investors had waaaay overextended themselves by short selling Gamestop stock and got burned for it. The same thing is starting to happen with other over-shorted stocks as well - Blackberry, AMC, and Express are all seeing similar things happen as well. A bunch of redditors with some money creatively used the game mechanics to grief a bunch of institutional investors who were way overextended. 

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[dingdongyouarewrong]

we should definitely all be more critical of things in general but sometimes when certain people say ‘be critical of the media you consume’ they seem to be specifically referring to wanting people to make a public performance of self flagellating and loudly denouncing every minorly bad aspect of their interests, which seems to be less about thinking critically and more just about this weird sense of wanting people to Confess Their Sins

[mlder]

I can’t stop laughing at Carrie being told “NO” by Mark. Also, Harrison Always Knows Best.

This is from a documentary called “From Star Wars to Jedi” released in 1983. Thanks @wookieekisses because I found that bit thanks to your post!

[patethenovice]

They’re figuring out the beats of the scene –while Harrison is tied up–.

[who-talks-first]

So what Mark said about them basically having to make everything up themselves (with Harrison as impromptu leader) is true.

[zecurlyone]

The original films were only good by accident and thats why none of the prequels or sequels worked

[jackironsides]

The original films were good because a lot of non-George-Lucas people worked hard to make them so. Carrie, Mark and Harrison fixing the dialogue wasn’t an ‘accident’. Marcia Lucas didn’t fix three films in edit by ‘accident’.

The prequels and sequels didn’t work because they thought that George Lucas was the genius behind the films, when they were a success despite him, not because of him.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

I don’t think a lot of people understand that no matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that’s so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you’ll say “Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you’re right,” and that doesn’t mean you were “morally toxic” before, it means you’re a non-omniscient human capable of growth.

Also, some preferred terms for things will change and evolve, and terms we prefer now might eventually be considered gauche or even offensive, and that doesn’t mean you were a bigot at the time for using them. It means we evolved as a society and chose new terminology to reflect that change.

Nobody is a fully formed realisation of progressivism that can predict all shifts and modes of thought. The world will always change, and hopefully you will, too

[deactivationgocrazy-deactivated]

"the education system traumatizes students it deems stupid" and "the education system traumatizes students it deems gifted" are two concepts that can and should coexist.

[itspileofgoodthings]

you know what gets me about lord of the rings? evil is defeated by people who choose to fight against it without possessing absolute, or even very much, conviction that they can actually win. all the converging story threads that lead to the happy ending are carried out by people who are far, far more convinced that they will fail than that they will succeed, who had only the frailest, most foolish hope, who had blind faith and frequently wavering hearts not peace or ease or certainty.

middle earth isn’t saved because no one faltered or came close to despairing or who sank to their knees in weary defeat. it’s not saved by pride or conviction or even strength. it’s saved because enough people do what they have to do even if they have to do it in the darkness. in the dust. with the ashes of hopelessness and bitterness in their mouths. because enough people took another step. Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, Theoden, Boromir, Faramir, Merry, Pippin. And many don’t. For every hero there is someone who gives into the “reasonableness” of despair—Saruman, Denethor, Grima, even Gollum—but enough. Enough people said “it doesn’t matter if we lose, I will keep fighting” and then they do.

And that GETS me. It is the most hopeful thing about the lord of the rings to me. There is so much that sums up its spirit, so many beautiful quotes and moments, but to me it’s never been the most famous of the quotes about hope and love that hit me hardest but a line from the films. Before the battle for minas tirith, one of the soldiers says “we cannot defeat the armies of Mordor” and Theoden answers “no. but we will meet them in battle nonetheless.”

And I—That is the spirit that leads to the conquering of evil when it comes down to it, when we’re talking about the part played by humanity alone in the fight against evil. Not the conviction you’re going to win, not farsightedness into a perfect future, not perfect inner peace or certainty. But acceptance of the real possibility of defeat, of that defeat being more the reality, the future, of your life than the victory, and then doing the damn thing anyway because goodness is worth fighting for even if you lose.

[ariaste]

that's hopepunk, baybee

[eruthiawenluin]

This is poetic because Dean was killed by Sam’s phobia (clowns), just like Cas was killed by Dean’s phobia (homo)

[purplepenntapus]

Even LGBT people are afraid to create LGBT rep half the time because you fucking goblins critique things with LGBT rep so harshly that the second it does something that you personally don’t like it gets treated even worse than the shows that have absolutely no rep in them.

Demonizing every show that is earnestly trying to provide the rep we’ve been lacking is NOT THE WAY TO GET BETTER REP

[frostbytemyrik]

Remember when Dream Daddy was called homophobic because a horror-themed (and non-canon, might I add) ending was found in the game’s code? Like y'all go after everything that isn’t the most saccharine, unproblematic, nothing-bad-happens-ever shit and I’m so, so sick of it. This keeps us from getting LGBT+ rep that’s actually interesting and in interesting situations! I want actual stories, but I guess you guys don’t. You just want a perfect little picture to hang on your wall.

[discourse-dot-com]

Treating all gay people as uwu soft beans is a form of homophobia in itself, and that’s the tea. Make problematic gay characters!! Give lgbt characters flaws!! Give them interesting, non stereotypical personalities!! We’re human, and humans are flawed by nature, so treat us as such and don’t get pissed because of it.

[mcdevinpants]

“Just as Republicans used the racist “birther” lie to tell themselves that Barack Obama was not a legitimate president, they will use the lie of a stolen election to say the same about Biden. Conspiracy theories, the belief that liberals cannot legitimately win or govern, and an utter lack of commitment to any democratic principle are not merely features of contemporary conservatism, they are becoming its very essence. It is not enough for the GOP’s base to be disappointed in the results of the election and determined to do better next time. They must be enraged. For the conservative media, creating and feeding anger is a business model that goes back decades. For Republicans in Congress, one of the key functions the stolen election lie will serve is to rationalize their own misdeeds. Because if Biden is an illegitimate usurper, then any methods are justified to oppose and hinder him, no matter how morally abhorrent or damaging to the country.”

— Republicans have declared war on democracy itself (via wilwheaton)