idiot at wizard school just said "i have devised the perfect mana nullification field rendering me impervious to all forms of magic!" i figure he should've taken a few more interdisciplinary courses because i tweaked the timing on a gravitation spell to throw a giant boulder at him. the moment I released the spell it stopped being a sorcery equation and started being a physics one
i need 1,000,000 tattoos and a sword and to built shit outta metal and to become very stable and generous and reliable and breathe out in the far deep forests and the sea and feel the waves and the wind and the tall grasses and the brambles and the cool stone and the cool dirt and the hot metal and breathe fire and wield the flames and ride a motorcycle and get fucked in the ass ten thousand times per week and spend time with my friends watching stupid movies and talking and hanging out in abandoned buildings and old tunnels and the caves of the drains and grow plants and pet cats and take naps and get punched and tell jokes and do things with a heart of whimsy and never tell a lie and be myself and be a sexy lady with a secret and a cool outfit of cheap clothes
everyone who is not currently in the process of moving please pause and take a moment to be grateful that you're not currently in the process of moving
I think it’s important to be able to recognize the different between our emotional response, our moral response, and what we believe should be our legal response.
For example, emotionally, I genuinely think less of someone who buys into stupid conspiracies about organ donation. I think that morally, if you are unwilling (unwilling, not medically unable) to donate organs, you should not be an organ candidate. I don’t think you should be able to say ‘If I’m dead I want all of my organs to rot, even if they could save lives. But I also want to benefit from other people’s sacrifice.’ Fuck you.
But I do not believe it would be ethical (or practical) to legislate that. I think it would be a horrible ethical violation and medical coercion. I recognize that, even as I’m disgusted by people who would let someone die when saving lives would cost them nothing.
Legal codes and ethical guidelines shouldn’t be based around our feelings.
Not long ago, there was an attempt to pass a law where if a baby was born sick and addicted to drugs, the mother could face child abuse charges and have parental rights terminated. Stepping back from any emotional response—either to the criminalization of addiction or to the suffering of newborns—is extremely difficult. I don’t know if it’s a subject that I could have that level of clarity on because it’s such an emotional topic.
But what I want to highlight is the political bloc who were most effective against the law, and led to its defeat: community healthcare workers who were on the frontlines, whose careers very often were at that intersection of drug abuse and child suffering.
Their argument wasn’t primarily about the parental rights of the mothers, or about the criminalization of substance use disorders. Instead, it was about what public health policies work in the real world, and what policies cause more harm. They argued these women would be afraid to access resources for harm reduction during pregnancy. This would result in heavier drug usage during pregnancy than if they were able to access harm reduction strategies and resources. There would also be an increase in abandoned infants, babies who are very sick and need immediate medical help. Fear of punishment wouldn’t help anyone.
In a practical manner, this legislation would likely do more harm while not addressing the actual problems. Several different policies were instituted instead, ones that had been proven effective in practice. I think that there are some situations that we can only find solutions if we can step away from our immediate emotional response to think, or understand that we aren't the right person to try to fix this problem, and focus on where we can make a positive impact instead.
Some wacky illustrations for a short dissertation I wrote for my Masters, exploring the relationship between medieval illuminations, marginalia, and online ads.
I had this freshman tell me she “couldn’t” audition because she was too scared of the stage, and might have a panic attack. I asked how she felt about walking around onstage in costume and not saying any lines. That was fine. I was like okay awesome let’s lay some groundwork now and maybe senior year you can have like three lines!
I remember this kid who came into an audition and froze up, just couldn’t speak. Competent reader and speaker but when people were watching she couldn’t do a thing.
We cast her anyway, in a chorus role. Offered her lots of support and encouragement and kindness and grace.
At the next audition she whispered. Anyone who had never seen her before would have thought she was the most nervous kid there. But the directing team was abuzz afterward. Did you see? She did it! Once or twice I could actually almost hear her! Amazing.
Got cast again, in a chorus role. She’d been making friends with the other kids, and they offered her encouragement too.
And the next audition we said wow I can hear her! She’s speaking! Let’s give her a handful of lines! She can do it!
Anyway as a mentor in the performing arts these things are huge wins for me. Some kids are competent and confident performers at 7 or 8 almost by nature. Others, even much older kids and adults, have to make progress by inches. But progress is exciting! The only place to go is up!
If a student is encouraged properly, theatre is one of the best sources of self-esteem, self-reflection, and both spontaneous and rehearsed eloquence/comprehensibility that there is. It truly could be considered a cornerstone for communication disciplines of all kinds if it just attracted the right people to teach it. (Unfortunately a lot of people are attracted to directing for a sense of power over others, and not an interest in mentoring and coaching.)
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.
When Tess Morgan's son came home with a tattoo, she was griefstricken. She knew her reaction was OTT (he's 21) but it signalled a change in their relationship
This is gold this, absolute gold, the most over the top melodramatic hysterical ridiculous thing I’ve ever read
This is actually so interesting to read- it’s from 2012 but its full of the same anxieties, even some of the same phrasing that many of the guardian’s later pieces on transness use. really hammers home how much of the terfism that emerged in the late 10s was middle class mothers angry at a loss of control over their adult children- whether that be their bodies or their friends or their opinions- and making that everyone’s problem because they have the power to do so
I look at him, sitting there, my 21-year-old son. I feel I’m being interviewed for a job I don’t even want. I say, “But you’re not. You’re different. I will never look at you in the same way again. It’s a visceral feeling. Maybe because I’m your mother. All those years of looking after your body – taking you to the dentist and making you drink milk and worrying about green leafy vegetables and sunscreen and cancer from mobile phones. And then you let some stranger inject ink under your skin. To me, it seems like self-mutilation. If you’d lost your arm in a car accident, I would have understood. I would have done everything to make you feel better. But this – this is desecration. And I hate it.”
"warm, shallow seas" is one of the most beautiful phrases in paleontology and it's everywhere... these mollusks lived in warm, shallow seas... scientists think that photosynthetic life evolved in warm, shallow seas... in that era the Earth was covered by warm, shallow seas...
I wish I was resting by an antediluvian warm, shallow sea
theartofmadeline
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