Dork At Arms, Et Cetera

Dance to Your Dirge

[distinguishedbaloney]

[eilooxara]

Non cooking spray stick

[eilooxara]

Non spray stick cooking

[that-house]

Non cooking stick spray

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that

[saints-who-never-existed]

“In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy—as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh—as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege—as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover—as long as he is riddled with bullets. 

Violence makes the homo-eroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.”

–Tarantino’s Incarnational Theology: Reservoir Dogs, Crucifixions, and Spectacular Violence. Kent L. Brintnall.

[comicaurora]

With how difficult it's become for some people to use Google to find information for research, papers, and just general learning over the past year or so due to AI generated content and fluff posts being pushed to the top of searches what are some ways you're able to avoid this while researching online? (I.E. browser extensions, keywords, alternative search engines)

set the google search terms to "before 2020" and you'll filter out basically 100% of the AI-generated misinformation fluff. you'll still have to sift through the organic home-grown misinformation though

[dollyswonerworld]

across the multiverse!!

[ckret2]

nobody asked me my headcanons on Bill's weird alien shape gender but that's only because you didn't know you wanted to know

of course he has gold bricks and pronouns

[cryptotheism]

Plenty of highly intelligent people end up getting sucked in to cults because they just wanted people to hang out with. There are antivaxxer nurses. Your ability to act on empirical reason breaks down fast if your social and emotional needs aren't being met.

[cryptotheism]

Like, I reject this idea that people end up becoming tradwives or antivaxxers or cult members because they were dumb. These groups prey on people by filling the social and emotional needs of vulnerable people. They look for people who need help, and give it to them on predatory conditions.

[queeranarchism]

It is important to understand that there is a conspiracy theory that could push your particular buttons and get you, there is a cult that could offer you the right support at the right moment and get you.

Thinking 'this can't happen to me' plays a big role in not noticing when it is in fact happening to you.

[talisidekick]

In the case you missed it. In United States Politics, the Biden Administration (current government) has updated Title IX to reword the law to include the line "sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics." in the "Protections against sex-based harassment and discrimination." section.

Meaning, the same protections afforded to cisgender children in schools against discrimination to transgender children.

Full document here:

These protections were previously added by the Obama administration, then revoked by the Trump Administration.

So why is this different?

How it was done. The previous protections afforded to transgender students a part of the federally funded public school programs were done by a guidance document release by the federal government. These guidance documents can be revoked, or edited by subsequent administrations. The Biden Administration has updated the law itself meaning it will be much harder to repeal those restrictions by subsequent administrations. Not impossible, just much harder. This is to take effect August 1st, 2024. Right at the start of the new school year.

So way to go USA. After years of attacking trans kids on every possible angle, this is a step in the right direction.

[detectivehole]

to pretend that horrible people cannot make good art is another way to conflate beauty and talent with integrity and morality. the works of monsters are best examined with knowledge of the author in mind but art is not inherently reflective. human beings are creative, and habitual liars- it'd be stupid to pretend art must always be a portrait of its creator

[curlicuecal]

it's also a convenient oversimplification of humans to believe that a person who is horrible in one way will be horrible in every way. people can hold terrible views in one area and have something thoughtful to say in another. people can do terrible things to one person and tremendous acts of kindness and empathy to another.

humans are fucking complicated

[phantomrapier]

"Capitalism has me in its claws, yet I submit willingly to the soft, furry claws of a boba tea shop."

[phantomrapier]

[penrosesun]

PSA: Don't use Open Office

I keep seeing people recommending Open Office as an alternative to Word, and uh... look, it is, technically, an open source alternative to Word. And it can do a lot of what Word can, genuinely! But it is also an abandoned project that hasn't been updated in nine years, and there's an active fork of it which is still receiving updates, and that fork is called LibreOffice, and it's fantastic.

Seriously, if you think that your choices are either "grit your teeth and pay Microsoft for a subscription" or "support free software but have a kind of subpar office suite experience", I guarantee that it's because you're working with outdated information, or outdated software. Most people I know who have used the latest version of LibreOffice prefer it to Word. I even know a handful of people who prefer it to Scrivener.

Open Office was the original project, and so it has the most name recognition, and as far as I can tell, that's really the only reason people are still recommending it. It's kind of like if people were saying "hey, the iPhone 14 isn't your only smart phone option!" but then were only ever recommending the Samsung Galaxy S5 as an alternative. LibreOffice is literally a version of the same exact program as Open Office that's just newer and better – please don't get locked into using a worse tool just because the updated version of the program has a different name!

[neil-gaiman]

I use LibreOffice. It's wonderful.

[phantomrapier]

Partner's roomie is Persian. Happy new year to all the Iranians/Persians and Farsi speakers here.

[oneheadtoanother]

Ok now do NYT columnists

[dorkichiban]

already this has tags in the notes like “#anti ai” but... this is just real life with almost everything. this is like grifter 101 please don’t exceptionalize needing to be critical of chatgpt.

[clockworkdragonffxiv]

This is literally how job interviews work, by the way, and then everyone is surprised the super-duper confident guy is also an incompetent moron.

[digitaldiscipline]

This worked on Trump voters, with the added selling point that he's a piece of shit that gave them permission to be pieces of shit.

[neil-gaiman]

Talking to experts when I was young used to drive me nuts because I would say something self-evidently straightforward, and they would say, "Well, it's not actually as simple as that..."

And then I got older and learned things on the way, and found people asking me questions that were straightforward, but the equivalent of "Why isn't it obvious to everyone that there is only one right way of doing the thing...?" and I would reply, "Well, it's not as simple as that..." and watch them decide that I probably didn't know what I was talking about.

[phantomrapier]

For those into movie reviews, especially if those are movies adapted from classic literature:

"Wrinkle in Time" seems too hard to adapt? -- Endymion Reviews #YouTubeShorts #movies #review

[katjohnadams]

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.

then they started fighting Covid precautions.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.

now my parents think climate change is a myth.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.

then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.

now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.

you can guess who they voted for.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.

when did they forget?

[katjohnadams]

Time to bring this back. Again.

[katjohnadams]

Apparently this is evergreen. Dammit.

[citadelofmythoughts]

I remember adults telling me, as a kid that girls can be equal to boys in all fields including athletics. Now, they consider girls to be delicate flowers who could never hope to compete against boys.

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

It frightens and discourages me how pervasive "tribal" stereotypes and imagery are in the fantasy and adventure genres.

It's all over the place in classic literature. Crack open a Jules Verne novel and you're likely to find caricatures of brown people and cultures, even when the characters are sympathetic to the plight of the colonized peoples - incidentally, this is the biggest reason I can't recommend 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to everyone, despite Captain Nemo being one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

You can't escape it in modern cinema, either. You'll see white heroes venturing bravely into jungles and tombs to steal from natives who don't know how to use their resources "properly." You'll see them strung up in traps, riddled with sleeping darts, forced to flee and fight their way out. Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, a remarkably inclusive franchise in many other ways, had an extended sequence of the white heroes escaping from a cannibal civilization in the second film.

And when fantasy RPGs want a humanoid enemy, the "bloodthirsty natives" are the first stock trope they jump to. World of Warcraft is one of the most egregious examples, with the trolls - blatant racist caricatures with faux-voodoo beliefs, cannibalistic diets, Jamaican accents, and a history of being killed in droves by (white) elves and humans - being raided and slaughtered in nearly every expansion.

It doesn't matter how vibrant and distinctive the real-world indigenous, Polynesian, Caribbean, and African cultures are. It doesn't matter how much potential these real civilizations offer for complex and sympathetic characterization. Anything that doesn't make sense to the white western mind is shoved under the same "savage" umbrella. They're different. They're strange. They're scary. They have to be escaped, subjugated, eliminated, ogled at from the safety of a museum.

Modern writers, directors, and developers don't even seem to realize how horrifying it is to present the indigenous inhabitants of a place as "obstacles" for non-native protagonists to overcome. "It's not racist," they say, "because these people aren't really people, you see." And if you dare to point out anything that hurts or offends you as a descendant of the bastardized culture, you're accused of being the real racist: "These aren't humans! They're monsters! Are you saying that these real societies are just like those disgusting monsters?"

No, they're not monsters. But you chose to design them as monsters, just as invaders have done for hundreds of years. Why would you do that? Why can you recognize any other caricature as evil and cruel, but not this?

This is how deep colonialism runs.

[mending-magpie]

So, I'm trans. And several years ago, I was at my great grandfather's funeral. 17, newly on T, barely out to anyone other than my close friends and family. And I'm standing there at the refreshment's table, surrounded by strangers and members of my family's church, when George walks up to me.

This man is ancient, bent like a finger and frail. Tufts of white hair surround his wrinkled face. Like always, he's wearing thick glasses, massive hearing aids, and his veteran's hat. George was my first introduction to the concept of war, when he told me as a child why he was missing two fingers on his hand. He's been a fixture at church since I can remember. I've only ever seen him at there or in uniform at parades, the rest of his time spent in a nursing home somewhere. He picks up a deviled egg and says, in his quiet voice,

"You know, before your grandfather died, he told me that now he had 3 grandsons."

I'm frozen in place. I don't know what to say to that, if I should say anything at all. This is not a conversation I expected to have, especially not with this man. But he continues.

"I didn't know what he meant! So he explained it to me."

And I can imagine it. My great grandfather, uninformed and opinionated but supportive, explaining to his friend the news he barely understood himself over after-service coffee and cookies. His eldest grandchild was now a boy.

"And, you know, I didn't know what to think."

Here, George looks me up and down. This 90-something year old war veteran, who knew me mostly as the little girl playing in the church kitchen with his wife, processing what my great grandfather had really meant. It feels like a long pause, even thought it probably passed in a second.

"But you look good. So, eh!"

And then he smiled, shrugged, and walked away without another word. If I was fine, if I was happier, then that's all that mattered.

George passed away this week, at the age of 99. This memory has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but I wasn't sure if or how I should share it. It was a conversation that meant very little, but also meant the world. It was scary, and funny, and the moment when I realized that sometimes the people you least expect will accept you. Sometimes, even if they don't fully understand, even if they barely know you, someone will choose to support you. And that will always matter.