Figured I should probably make a little pinned post to introduce the place since I never got around to doing that before now.
What is this Place?
Mostly, itâs posts and memes about classical studies, riordanverse (Percy Jackson et al.) content, neurodivergency, and queerness. Itâs basically a melting pot of my interests. There is no theme. The only theme is me.
Introduction to Me
Iâm nonbinary, neurodivergent, and asexual. My pronouns are they/them. Iâm in my early twenties, and currently working on a double major in classical studies and studio art.
Tags I Use for Organization
(So that my blog doesnât end up looking like my bedroom floor.)
#local queer classicist posts, #reblogs with content, #homegrown locally sourced organic memes
So anyways, welcome. Stay a while if you want. Feel free to send me messages, but also please donât take it personally if I donât respond. I have social anxiety and other people-related neurodivergent issues, so if I donât respond itâs almost certainly a me thing, not a you thing.
Bonus: âWho is that handsome little man in your profile picture?â
That is the late, great Squeak Studmuffin âthe Spudmuffinâ. He lived to be almost 9 years old, and he continues to be an absolute icon. Truly the gentleman of all time.
this is what i am going to start referring people to
Before i begin, people unfamiliar with a) homer or b) ancient greek as a language should not be trying to criticise or defend this translation besides the whole 'wow what an achievement' thing. I'm sorry, it just proves you dont really know what you're talking about.
There seems to be misconceptions about this- i hear people saying Emily is the first woman to translate homer. This is incorrect. She is the first PUBLISHED female translator for the ODYSSEY into ENGLISH. Other female translators like Caroline Alexander do exist and deserve much more praise. Heck, Anne Dacier was translating the odyssey into french 300 years before wilson. Unfortunately this misconception has lead to ANY criticism of Wilson being flagged as purely misogyny, and while I do not deny there being some misogynistic criticism of wilson, this statement usually boils down to blind anti-intellectualism.
The one credit I will give wilson for her translation is the corrected translation for what Telemachus calls the slave girls, rather than sluts, whores or creatures as some did, she refers to them as 'female ones'.
The main paper I will take a look at in this post is that below, because I believe it accurately sums up a lot of the issues about wilson's Odyssey. I will then go on to link a variety of other useful resources.
Without further ado:
HOMERâS ODYSSEY THREE WAYS, Whitaker, R
Wilson regards odysseus as 'not heroic' and her translation thus mischaracterises him to make us feel that way as well. (many examples in the paper and links below)
Wilson attempts to play down the wrongdoings of the suitors and polyphemus (ditto)
Wilson's thoughts on slavery:
"[t]he need to acknowledge the fact and the horror of slavery, and to mark the fact that the idealized society depicted in the [Odyssey] is one where slavery is shockingly taken for granted, seems to me to outweigh the need to specify, in every instance, the type of slave"
This causes her to lose great deals of accuracy by translating many varied words as slave
Wilson's tone is far too colloquial, while also retaining archaic elements leading to inconsistency in her style.
Whitaker's examples of colloquialisms include:
âYou must be jokingâ (1.64); âbabysitâ (7.12); âShe looked astonishingâ (8.367); âwhooshedâ (10.55); âsnugglingâ (10.218); âcutestâ (10.278); âTeenagersâ (11.38); âpointless to talk of hypotheticalsâ (11.465); âshe glugs it downâ (12.106); âtote bagâ (13.438); âcushyâ (14.47); âmake niceâ (14.387); âstandoffishnessâ (15.72); âgames of dartsâ (17.168); âcottoned onâ (18.95); âpace themselvesâ (21.295, of drinking wine); and âfluffy pillowsâ (24.257).
And archaisms include: 'seven days and ten', 'fleet-foot deer', 'vernal dawn'
Her use of pentameter is natural for the english language and so stops her from using poetic style and imagery. Most of her translation is prose divided into lines.
Wilson removes homeric repetition and adds her own variatio (so to speak) to stock phrases and blatantly mistranslates epithets.
There are also a lot of translation errors as Whitaker sums up:
"Straightforward blunders include attributing a speech to the wrong speaker, producing a character formerly unknown to the Odyssey, and misidentifying another. 33 Among Wilsonâs other infelicities are numerous mistranslations,34 lines skipped by the translator,35 and mistakes of fact.36"
Other stuff
HERE is a WONDERFUL website you can use to compare classical translations, including Wilson's.
THIS is one specifically for the odyssey, and has Wilson's too.
Wilson mistranslates various ecological terms (which i am sure @ulises-aithon could speak about if asked), but one example would be mistranslating the word 'kedron' or 'juniper' (i believe) into Citron, which is native to south-east Asia and would not be on Calypso's island...
Addionally available are the posts of the absoloutely brilliant @katerinaaqu who has talked a lot about this. Here are a few:
On the mischaracterisation of Odysseus
On ecological inaccuracy, this is what I mentioned earlier.
On accuracy, with @paralleltranslation
Also there is this by @bubbles-burster
This by many different people
More mischaracterisation chat
This is as much as I will dig up right here and now. There is plenty more like it if you go looking.
TLDR in my opinion you should steer clear but you should be free to form your own.
any other resources, tell me and they will be added
For once...man being called "brilliant" or any other cosmetic epithet of that sort is totally undeserving! Honestly!
no I am not brilliant by any means. I am just another person who tries in this modern world to raise some awareness of her own culture that is unsurprisingly misunderstood which is obviously a thing for any culture at any given time. Trying to give some insight from my own perspective as a person who was lucky enough to have parents to wish to teach me things about our past and present since as long as I can speak and walk and also I was lucky enough that we had such great teachers and professors in university to receive a spherical education
This education even if I never got to use to my actual professional career I am hoping to use to raise awareness of certain things that are obviously getting lost in translation (pun intended) which is absolutely normal so I do try to use my knowledge in combination to my perspective to bring some awareness here. Whether I succeed or not is up for history to decide I suppose hehe
Enough with the dramatics let's get down to it (sorry it gets long and you can disagree with me if you want but honestly I do believe these wholeheartedly)
Now of course I am critical against many things Wilson did or said during her time as a translator. As I said I was informed by some old friends more familiar with her work than I and her past at translating more classical greek than homeric which can be shown later but that is a minor detail here.
The fact that her translations has several DELIBERATE inaccuracies is just a fact which I am surprised that we still need to talk about (you can like or love something without recognizing it as the epitome of truth. Like I love Disney Hercules because it was an entertaining film and a smart satire of Hollywood, but the day I admit that despite some interestingly hinting choices, that it is accurate, is the day that I wish to be burnt like the hero of that name was because it simply ain't true!)
Now the fact that she has several inaccuracies is self-proven by the ancient text. The fact that they are deliberate comes from the translator herself. In many of her interviews she shows that she is at least aware of how the words translate in homeric greek as well as in classical greek and she has several translations to access to from the past so obviously she knows what she introduces is not accuracy always but the seeking of metric system and all which on its own is a very interesting and borderline admirable attempt which of course is not without its issues at all (translating in pentamenter a greek text of dactylic hexameter is inevitably going to affect your story big time) but at least she tries to bring poetic sides to this
Also yes absolutely it is not like she is the first woman to touch Homer. Like in Greece alone we have at least two that I remember and in many other languages too., Besides it is the 21st century. People do what they wish to do in the west.
As for the usual mentions of misogyny and all like ok we also must start talking equal parts of misandry comments that male translators got especially ever since several people started to think that literally all other translations are biased exactly because they are men and how their translations are "rooted to miosogyny" and all. If we can say that to their translations then we can also address the elephant in the room which is also the misandry.
Of course there are stupid people who have problems with Wilson because of her gender just like there are stupid people who have problems with other translators because they are men!
Wilson herself in her interview when asked on Barry Powell's translation she said;
I critiqued his unexamined gender bias.
Somehow though saying the same about Wilson on many of her passages is somehow problematic. As if women cannot have gender biases that go "unexamined" as per Wilson's words. As if even two wrongs make a right.
My problem starts with her introductions and her commentary which shows to me a sight that was not even remotely close to the homeric poem studies before and that is not a compliment. It might sound like renovating or revolutionary but at cases is simply inaccurate or only partially true. From my commentary at my posts as you see some of them are
The denial of ethics playing little to any part at a hero's career or elevation
This is spoken from a perspective of someone of these days that simply cannot understand how a warrior that takes a city can possibly be elevated as hero or that uses piracy to feed his army and gain glory. This logic is like the same person claiming that the Mayans have no sense of ethics and that they are a bunch of murderers who commit human sacrifice and ethics play no part in the society
If that sounds bigoted is because it is. Denying any ethical compass to the characters of greek mythos just because they do not agree to yours is a borderline narrow perspective. Odysseus is not judged as a heroic figure because he is a pacifist who never hurt a fly.
He is a warrior in a society that values warriors. So of course his wins are going to be seen as heroic or positive for his people
(ironically try talking with some people that deny this about the wins or successes in war of their favored culture and see what happens because that is literally the same perspective. If you are at war and the side you sympathize with more wins or gains ground then you praise it, when the opposite side does, you condemn it The mentality hasn't changed)
The twist or potential misunderstanding of the text itself
No seriously many of the things that I see in her interviews or her intro make me wonder if we even read the same book. We hear stuff like;
"The Greek allows us to see the contradictions between Odysseusâ claim that the Cyclopes are âlawlessâ or âlacking norms,â and his acknowledgment that Polyphemus does everything in a regular order."
Like...Odysseus never claimed that the Cyclopes do not have a schedule! He said that their world does not live by the laws of the gods which is exactly what Polyphemus does! Odysseus tells us HIMSELF what things they do and that they DO have a society or a structure or habits that mirror their own (which was the reason why he gave the cyclopes the benefit of doubt at first) BUT at his later knowledge he knows now that despite his first impressions; that they build stuff, that they herd animals, that they live in rich lands, they STILL do not live by the wills of the gods such as hospitality or even building proper civilization
He also tells us that they lack basic emotional intelligence. Odysseus in contrast to the cyclopes goes to face Circe to save his men even if he speaks of them as fools for being tricked on multiple occasions, he tries to save them from themselves. The Cyclopes barely show any interest to the pain of Polyphemus and when he tells them that "nobody" hurt him they tell him to shut up and endure himself
Like imagine that being your neighbor. He comes because you wail in pain and they ask "what happened? Did someone attack you?" and they hear you scream "oh no I fell on a piece of furniture! I broke my arm!" and your neighbor replies with "well if that you did yourself then shut the fuck up and call an abulance! We are trying to sleep!"
Like...not exactly the neighbor of the year now would it be? So I am not sure why she tries to present us the Cyclopes as some innocent creatures that are exactly the same as humans and that Odysseus just calls them names and then trips on his own narrative by saying that they are actually the same as them...honestly I sometimes wonder what is the logic behind this reasoning!
"I felt that many translators had indulged the impulse to simplify the ethics of this poem, by presenting Odysseus as if he were not only a warrior and a protagonist, but a âheroâ in the modern senseâsomeone to admireâand reducing or removing the possibility of narrative sympathy for other charactersâ"
Er...sorry again I have no idea where that comes from. The other translators literally translated the text! Odysseus is depicted much more positively than negatively in the text but when he was depicted negatively literally every appropriate character was depicted as sympathetic instead and honestly I felt nothing like it from the translators I worked with
If anything I felt as if WILSON was the one that wanted us to believe that Odysseus is NOT a hero exactly because he doesn't fit to the marvel superhero category! Also I am sorry but Odysseus WAS to be admired in the text at least for his virtues while his flaws were depicted exactly as that; flaws. To say that the translators "present" Odysseus as positive figure when previous translators just did their job to translate the epithets of Odysseus, which as you see from my small list were more positive than negative;
đŹ 14  đ 36  â€ïž 101 · Can you list some epithets of Odysseus? ^_^
Oh my gosh! I love this questioooooooon! And I was thinking of making some
then I am sorry are we criticizing people for...translating accurately? Just because the epithets of the text do not convey on her personal belief as to what Odysseus is? And yes you see her opinion pretty clearly in her intro!
I mean I am sure many have made many mistakes and certainly in their attempt to make the poem accessible (what Wilson did too) they made the words not exactly corresponding to the text of the original all the time
But to accuse the other translators of saying Odysseus is heroic while he isn't when the text itself has these epithets...I am not sure what the issue is here...
"simplify the ethics of the poem" when she spends several paragraphs into speaking about how ethics of Odysseus do not seem to matter for his favor to Zeus or that morality is not really a requirement while she forgets to mention that ALL Greek heroes have their moments of losing glory and NO they are NOT praised for these actions but instead they are being punished. Like Odysseus was punished for hubris and arrogance against the gods which is literally the essence of his story! Heracles was punished for the murder of his children and many more murders after it by serving time or doing labors etc. So ethics obviously DO play a part in the conversation. I think her intro is the one that oversimplified that when she more or less said;
"the heroes are not ethical all the time in their stories and they are being praised for things that are shady today, so obviously ethics do not matter to heroes but must look for somethib else"
while missing the part that when heroes are not ethical they are being punished. That heroes serve as much as good examples as they serve as bad examples as to what happens to you when you do not follow the rules of the gods
The indoctrination of her beliefs on the hero to the public through her intro and then through her text
Like I think that is one of my most serious issues. In her intro she tells us very much what her opinion is on many things and then she makes it her mission to add that to the main body of her translation to make sure that her personal opinion will pass as a de-facto fact to people who have seen her translation as absolutely and unquestionably accurate.
When she spends several paragraphs in her intro to tell us how Odysseus is an unreliable narrator and more or less a scumbag that is no different than any pirate and then you go on and add the title "lord of lies" right before he begins his story not only does she give the impression to her readers that this is an actual homeric title (which it isn't in general and certainly not in that spot) she inevitably tells to her readers that whatever Odysseus says is definitely going to be doubted and that was not the spirit of the homeric poems imo
Odysseys lies when Homer tells us he lies and when he does he has a good reason for example his survival, his weakness and because he is unprotected and/or testing people on their loyalty or on their wellbeing (which seems to be approved both by the narrator as well as by Athena on occasion)
One small thing (not personal) I am not sure why people keep saying that Wilson "corrects" that passage with the slave women (we keep saying "girls" and I think even Wilson does unless I am mistaken but in reality we do not have a word in the text that mentions their ages as being "girls". Probably if they belonged to the palace for a long time they are grown women but the word "girls" seems to be more impactful for sympathy)
But I am not sure why we keep saying "she corrected" it as if the majority of sources speak of them in an inaccurate way. Murray says "women" (which is the most accurate at that passage). So does Butler in that passage. Huddleston even goes more "text accurate" and simply says "these" (because the text technically does not have the word "woman" in it but is written in female gender so the translators who add the word is simply to clarify that fact)
I am not sure why we act as if the translation of Wilson brought a correction of a multi-year abuse of the women in the text
She doesn't. She just adds more to these that we said above (and no both Murray and Butler is mentioning slaves in their texts many times for instance and so do many others. Just because sometimes people choose the word "maid" is NOT referring to them as free women as Wilson claims in her interview. It simply means "woman" or "woman of servitude". In translations Telemachus does refer to "slaves that his father won for him" so the thing that Wilson claims is not done by everyone nor in every part of the text
Good for her that she decided to focus more on the women of it (like again no one cries for Melanthius by the way) but is not like no other translator ever did something similar one way or another
So yes I am glad that she kept it simple 100%. I am actually happy for it but let's not pretend that she is the only one that kept it so. And yes I wish that people actually kept the words as accurate as possible I absolutely agree, including translating "slave" when the word calls for it. But on the other hand not force the mindset that no one ever did NOTHING to show the proper translation not even once.
Now of course I am also against the translators who did not allow the text to be as it is and added the extra words. The only excuse we find is that Telemachus uses derogatory language, is furious and doesn't wish to speak nice to these women that willingly betrayed them and threatened the peace of the house and consequently his life. But still I also think it is too harsh word to use even if thematically fits, it should be sticking to the actual words by the way.
Just because it fits thematically doesn't get a free pass and no it is not accurate text-wise.
(and when I say "derogatory words" I mean that Telemachus uses the verb ጰαÏÏ which means "pass the night with" which denies the existence of emotions so basically Telemachus implies the women had their time with the suitors and that was all. The portion WAS supposed to be derogatory. Yes though more accurately are the translations of "slept with", "passed their nights" etc. More derogatory terms could be "they had sex with" or "they copulated with" in one way if we wanna portray Telemachus's rage through the text but the absolutely accurate would simply be "pass the night" or "sleep with")
What I do not understand is how Wilson wants to blame other translators and I quote from a site that has her interview
"The Greek text is much better, as literature and as ethics, for not limiting its narrative focus to Odysseus, and for not presenting him as a model for unquestioning adulation, and I hated the fact that so many English versions seemed to want to dumb it down in these ways. I love the Odyssey for its multiplicity, and I wanted a translation that was truthful to that; I could see that that translation didnât exist, so I needed to create it."
She literally claims that SHE is the one to bring complicated essences to the translations. No it is not her to dumb it down! It is all these other writers that deliberately or unknowingly DIDN'T give the Odyssey the complication it deserves so SHE is the one to do it!
While being reportedly one of the most dumbed down texts for accessibility. Her intro is also something we did in middle school and I am not even kidding. I had to stop reading for one second because the opening reminded me a lot of the texts we learnt like when we were 12 years old minus the Greek cultural continuity
So her goal was obviously accessibility! She also accused writers of getting long and not offering poetic prose. Like her texts is one of the shortest which shows how little was given. She claims that she never saw a translation that gives off the complicated nature and all I see is a text that simply denied the complications of some heroes to give them to some other figures and not always the right way
Look not all her texts are bad in translation. Several of the passages are objectively correct. But again to claim that ZERO translator gave you the complication you want (while learning from them from crying out loud) and claim that only YOU have the key to it because you never saw it? Honestly if this is real part of her interview then I am sorry I see the core of the problem here.
Change for the sakes of change doesn't work always and if your translation looks nothing like any of your predecessors that existed for hundreds of years then maybe just maybe it wasn't supposed to be THAT different and something went wrong here.
To claim that only you give complication to the text is something that honestly I am not sure why we even agree with this!
Okay I will stop now. It is absolutely fine to like Wilson because of how simple language she uses which makes the text enjoyable to someone to read or enjoy her opinions because they align with yours but the fact remains that not only is she inaccurate on many parts (which is not just her by the way. The most accurate thing is the original! Not even modern greek translations are absolutely accurate and they are the same language!) but also that much is including her opinions.
To treat it as the epitome of truth or that she invented the wheel somehow is totally something that I will never accept as a mentality both as a Greek who is familiar with the original but also as someone that knows translations are tricky. You can find a favorite without denying its weaknesses
I am sure other translations have MANY mistakes. I mean I was also discussing some of the mistakes of Feagles translations of his early years too among others or what we preferred that it was said instead. We are also discussing the need of always having another translation closeby. Yes other translators ARE flawed
But so is Wilson
And this becoming taboo to be even discussed a times feels weird as well as the claim that the translation is accurate at every paragraph while it isn't. And yes as you brilliantly said, criticism is not because she is a woman. Is because of the text itself and what people see in it vs the original vs previous attempts of translation
Both for the better and the worse
test weaving of penelope's tapestry on the chiusi skyphos:
reference:
there are some adjustments I need to make for tension, but I'd like to make the next version into a header band for a warp-weighted loom so I can try weaving the whole pot, including telemachus and penelope.
the proportions on the header band have improved, but I think I maybe should have doubled the weft threads for the warp.
also if anyone wants to knit the heddles for me, please be my guest. the last time I tied on heddles, I put the bar in the wrong place and had to redo the whole thing.
in true penelope fashion, I may need to unweave and start over, but at least now I've got the loom weights and heddles in place.
I started weaving the spear, penelope, and the right border via double-weave with the intent to leave the remaining warp threads unwoven (as they would be on penelope's loom on the pot), but predictably this is giving me tension problems. I either need to increase the loom weights or just weave the black layer and leave the orange warp threads unwoven, and then switch colors once I get to the heddle bars in the drawing, with the black warp threads floating on top. (I guess weft-faced tapestry would be a third option, if I add a ton more tension.)
either way, this is going to take me the full three years of penelope's stratagem, or perhaps the entire twenty years of odysseus's absence, primarily because clearing the sheds takes a monumental effort each time with this double-weave setup (which I'm not even sure is how it's supposed to be done, I kind of set it up based on vibes and what I thought made sense from floor loom setups).
in a prestigious lecture hall with cherrywood walls a professor presents this tweet to their class. the students pass it around, each taking their chance to hold the tweet, to feel its weight in their hands. some students use their microscopes to study the tweet closely, others auscultate it with stethoscopes. once each student has had the opportunity to inspect it, the professor asks if there are any questions. the first several questions are the expected requests for clarification-- examples of chumpfuckery, inquiries as to the role of B*rnie in the production cycle of fuckcrustables, etc. the class falls silent again until a student in the back raises a hand and says "had the day not been a cromulent fuckcrustable, would tommy still needy drinky?" the professor's smile is wry yet impressed: this line of inquiry does not occur to every student. the professor says: "tell me what you think." the student ponders for a second, acutely aware that everyone in the room is watching them. "well," they finally say, "i've had days that were fuckcrustables before, some of them cromulent, and ive never needy drinky. wanty, sure, but not needy." the professor prompts them to keep going. "my theory is that... either tommy is lying or... maybe fuckcrustability doesnt actually correlate with drinky requisites?" so what does, another student asks. "i believe the key variables are the ex-wife and the tenant from hell. they generate the needy in question." the professor presses: "how can you be sure that tommy would not needy drinky otherwise?" the student replies, "because we are not talking about chumpfuckery or fuckcrustability in the abstract, we're talking about a confluence of variables producing an intersection of chumpfuckery, fuckcrustability, and cromulence that is greater than the sum of its parts. anyone would needy drinky in those circumstances, and im willing to wager that we could prove it mathematically using the drinky formula." a brief silence ensues before the classroom erupts into applause. that student goes on to graduate at the top of their class and become a leading figure in the field of tweet exegesis. the professor? that was tommy. and the student? that was You.
Ebola is still spreading in several countries in central Africa. How did the outbreak manage to spread so far and infect so many people without being detected? This guy!
This guy, in violation of Congressional funding allocation, withdrew tons of international aid. The end of USAID was orchestrated without warning, without a wind-down plan, leaving critical infrastructure to simply collapse.
Also what is it that people dont understand about money and assets being a finite resource. The more one person has the less there is for everybody else. Thats just. How it works. Like the money has to come from somewhere and if he has a trillion dollars of it then a lot of other people arent getting any.
I heavily recommend getting very good at spotting Meta glasses. Like I'm talking so good all you need is a glance. Otherwise, I would go about public life bearing in mind that more and more people are wearing expensive camera glasses that can record you without you realizing.
Learn how to identify smart glasses through visual cues, behavioral patterns, and recording indicators. Handle privacy concerns with this pr
Ready or not, the smart glasses future is upon us.
With smart glasses, there are concerns around being recorded. Fortunately, you can watch for indicator lights and certain movements as a way
Here are some basic primers. If someone is wearing what look like Meta glasses, they usually have a small circular camera in the outer corners of the lenses, like the one on your phone.
I would also regularly check their own product pages so you're on top of what the models look like. They tend to have larger frames, but come in a variety of shapes and colors.
Shop every style. Every color. Prices from $299 to $499. Browse Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta AI glasses and sunglasses to find your pair.
The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film p
A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Metaâs Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. The app scans for smart glassesâ distinctive Bluetooth signatures and sends a push alert if it detects a potential pair of glasses in the local area.
The app comes as companies such as Meta continue to add AI-powered features to their glasses. Earlier this month The New York Times reported Meta was working on adding facial recognition to its smart glasses. âName Tag,â as the feature is called, would let smart glasses wearers identify people and get information about them from Meta's AI assistant, the report said.
Not necessarily, because Meta has military contracts (source 1, source 2, source 3), is testing surveillance tech on their own employees and their customers (source 4, source 5), and there are at least two class action lawsuits against them for privacy violations (source 6, source 7, source 8). There is also some sketchy stuff about workers being forced to review material, which may or may not be used without the customer's permission, that is sensitive, graphic, and/or pornographic (source 9).
The American Foundation for the Blind has said that "The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are an accessibility tool only by coincidence. That makes them more affordable and, in many ways, unaware of the needs of users with reduced vision" although they do have seemingly positive views on Meta Glasses as a whole. (source 10). It also seems like their marketing push as accessibility devices began last year (source 11).
But to add even more into the nonsense, Meta is now toying around with adding a "limit" to the functionality of their glasses unless their users pay for more access (source 12). AND, as stated above, Meta has officially added facial recognition code in their glasses and only admitted it after being called out, which is basically the death of privacy as we know it (source 13, source 14, source 15). And oh look another lawsuit because of it (source 16) THAT THEY LOST (source 17)!
Long story short: I don't begrudge someone using them as a disability aid overall, but ultimately both their privacy and other people's privacy are being disregarded by Meta and that is not and should not be acceptable by any means.
I understand there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but there is a level of personal responsibility someone has to take when using them if they truly truly need them, such as opting out of sharing information, not filming strangers without permission, not posting footage of strangers online, opting out of facial recognition if possible, etc.
Disabled people deserve assistive technology AND privacy rights, and Meta is not the solution.
in 2026 letâs start actually noticing and taking seriously the true scale and impact of jkrs transmisogyny and how sheâs been funneling decades of royalties and ip owner cash directly into anti trans lobbying thats been making the uk hell while gradually worsening conditions elsewhere through impacting the zeitgeist
[ID: tumblr tags reading #she effectively venmo'd a known hate group 70000 usd equivalent on a whim #she personally bankrolled the political campaign to keep Scotland from gaining independence over their intention to legalize(?) trans people #she started HER OWN hate group last year which intends to "protect" women and girls from having their "autism exploited" by trans activists #she used to slip off Forbes' richest person list bc she gave so much money away #she hasn't slid position in YEARS because she has started entrenching herself in transphobic investment funds effectively #she's worth some shit like 1.2B now because of that #she has explicitly stated that engaging with - even on a fandom only level - her works makes her money that she then uses to do all of this #we cannot just let people remain ignorant to the damage she is intentionally doing #and we cannot let people forget that she got her bc she befriended an echo chamber of radfems who never criticized her in order to do this #do not let that shit slide. End ID.]
i want a Superman story about Superman realizing she's a trans woman. how would she tell people? who would she tell? how could she tell them? through what possible ways would she transition? Kryptonian biology may not necessarily be compatible with human hormone replacement therapy and needles are certainly out of the question. if she figures it out, at what point does her presentation change? superman can't take a break, people need her, even if her haircut is getting awkwardly long and her body is uncomfortable to be in. everyone on earth knows who Superman is, knows her face. is her secret identity threatened if Clark Kent mysteriously starts to transition at the same time as Superman? if she only lets one be publicly out, which one? and what would it feel like to put on that costume -- in either case -- if so? if someone tries to attack her on the street, as Ms. Kent, how does she hide her secret identity? how would the world itself react to someone with the strength to juggle planets being a tranny? with her super-hearing there's nothing she wouldn't know about what people are saying, nevermind what's being written in the press. how does SuperMAN, one of the most definitive icons of masculine indomitability and resilience, cope with changing? would her strength, her confidence, her ability to do anything suddenly be used against her? why can't she be more like wonder woman? why is voice training so hard even for someone with super-ventriloquism? does anyone know what it's like to be able to run faster than a speeding bullet and leap tall buildings in a single bound but to not be able to find a cute pair of shoes that fits? to be indestructible but afraid to use a public bathroom? would even the most powerful person on earth not feel just as helpless as i do?
Yeah. That. I spent my formative years in DC for Reagan's terms, and never thought I'd make it to *twenty* much less this far beyond. And when I realized I would be? I found myself suddenly without any real, actionable plan for the future.
The AIDS epidemic was monstrous. Not only for the lack of cure, but for the easy excuse it made for 'good people' to rid themselves of those disgusting gays.
The national willingness to discard an entire generation of (at first) gay men and then any queer persons has done immeasurable damage to every single one of us who survived it. The horror stories you might have seen in tabloids or online memorials only scratch the surface. We were unpersoned. We were named dangerous simply by our existence, and our presence was a herald for death and disease.
Our joy was not in spite of this. Our mad parties, the tendency to live in the moment, the stereotypical 'cattiness' and sex-crazed outlooks that media showers us with us even now, these were survival techniques. We dance because we lived another day. We craved physical contact from a world that feared us even in the same room, or touching the same door handle, or gods forbid us holding your hand.
And it's happening again.
If you notice your queer elders seem a little agitated beyond their usual baseline with what's happening with their trans peers this time around it's because we all recognize it from the 70s, 80s, 90s.
Name it a disease. Imply it's contagious, made-up for attention, or masking the 'real' problem (it's always pedophilia, always), often in the same breath. Consistency doesn't matter, only fear and hatred.
Say trans folks aren't worth the same considerations that good, upstanding people are. Deny them the medical care that, were they not trans, they would otherwise qualify for. Gender affirming care. Hormone treatments. Comprehensive therapy. Acceptance.
(Hell, even those lucky enough to escape obvious open discrimination find it on the back end, with medical care suddenly not being covered after being prescribed. Ask me how I know.)
And it's not just the right-wingers. Ask your Democratic or NP rep, if you have one, their thoughts on transgender rights. Listen close. See if they actually say anything of substance.
And then when trans people start dying off in droves, vanishing to forced detransitioning, assault, murder, or worse, well, that's just proof there's something wrong, isn't it? Not with the system. With us.
This is why we ask that the newer generations of queer folks learn the history. It's not *all* about Stonewall and Pride. It's about the lengths that those in charge will go to in order to ensure our deaths.
You can actually predict bubbles, especially ones this obvious. Everyone who wants to know how should read A Short History of Financial Euphoria by John Kenneth Galbraith.
Yes, itâs dry.
Yes, itâs 30 years old.
But it gives a tidy little checklist of âis this a bubble?â and AI has been checking every one off like a to do list. Just like NFTs and ponzicoin did before it.
You can also read This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. It's on bookshop.org and, of course, on the Evil Empire website. It's all in the title, which is an ironic quoting of people who say what bubble-istas always say - what AI people are saying right now.
One time when I was a kid a group of girls and I had to treat another student for hypothermia by ourselves because she had so many invisible health issues that the adults we asked for help didn't believe us. The student in question was actively hallucinating. When I finally ran for help the people I grabbed were slow as shit to respond, casually joking about how "dramatic" the person in question was.
The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.
Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.
I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.
Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.
"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."
"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."
"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"
Sincerely, truly, from the bottom of my heart- as someone who isn't physically disabled but hears this shit all the time- fuck off
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
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