hot ice cream for cold days @russiandahl - Tumblr Blog

"Pushing Your Luck"

painted with acrylic gouache and every shade of green paint marker i got lying around :^) painted on the mat frame too and it came out better than i thought!

m--bloop

Dinner in America dir. Adam Rehmeier (2020)

homunculus-argument

There's a fascinating phenomenon that isn't unique to tumblr, but which I have certainly seen here a lot, which I'm going to call the Default Assumption of Incompetence. It's when somebody has the baffling habit of always starting from the assumption that other people do not know anything about anything, or at least that having more knowledge than the assumer is extremely rare and statistically unlikely. To do this, they will frequently go out of their way to ignore context clues that indicate otherwise, or in some cases the assumer simply doesn't know enough about the subject at hand to be able to estimate whether or not this person knows what they are doing.

The assumer will see a social media post about someone's mushroom harvest, which clearly only contains exactly two distinct kinds of mushrooms, which the poster has identified and correctly named in the post itself, and the assumer will feel compelled to warn the forager to be careful out there! Some mushrooms are poisonous and they should be very careful to only pick ones they can identify! The assumer, who has ignored the fact that the poster did identify both of the mushroom species they had picked, and can most likely be trusted to do so in the future as well, has naturally assumed that the person showing off the results of their latest mushroom haul must have been obliviously picking them at random like an unsupervised toddler who is lucky to be alive.

If someone makes a post talking about how they just got a new job as a bus driver, the assumer might swoop in to warn them that driving a bus is extremely dangerous! It's so dangerous that it's literally illegal to do that unless you have a specific special training for doing that! Even a normal driver's license isn't good enough, you need a special license for it! And when the person who just got hired as a bus driver verifies that yes, they know that, they do have the license to drive a bus, and that they wouldn't have even hired someone who doesn't. The first question of the job interview was about making sure that they have a valid license for driving this type of vehicle.

"Well how was I supposed to know that?" is the assumer's standard answer to being corrected. Not embarrassed or apologetic, only defensive and insulted, as if the other person here is the one being unreasonably rude for implying that it was stupid of the assumer to assume that someone who just got a job driving a bus might not know how to drive a bus.

mrwolfe1920

This kind of thing isn't necessarily about being arrogant and assuming that everyone else is stupid. It's about not assuming that everyone is smart and knowledgeable.

You see this a lot in tech support. Everybody hates those basic questions like "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" It feels ridiculous and condescending both to the person being asked and the person asking, and you honestly just want to skip it because surely nobody would bother calling tech support waiting without checking something so basic?

...and then you get that call. The one where you spend twenty minutes troubleshooting only to figure out that not only haven't they tried turning it on and off again, the device isn't even plugged in. After that, you always ask.

Somebody posts about picking mushrooms. Did they correctly identify the species? Or did they just get very, very lucky? Emergency rooms (and funeral homes) have seen a lot of people come through who were very confident in their mushroom identification skills.

I'm sure your bus driver example was intended to be an exaggerated strawman, because obviously nobody would hire someone to drive a bus without making sure they're qualified, right? You can totally just assume that from context clues.

Encounter this kind of thing enough times, and you stop assuming that people know what they're doing. Instead of getting offended that some stranger didn't automatically know how skilled you are, maybe take a moment to appreciate that they were looking out for you -- even if it wasn't necessary.

homunculus-argument

That's a valid point, but even coming from that perspective, I think it's still not a reasonable response. Someone stupid enough to go randomly picking mushrooms they don't know, has no idea that driving a bus requires a special training you can't just intuitively guess, or thinks they can just DIY electric installment stuff without at least checking beforehand whether they can do that, should simply die as the consequence of their actions.

hroethvitnir

So, tech support is very explicitly different in a very key way: they have asked for help.

The fact that someone, somewhere, has found a way to do things that make literally no sense, is not an argument for treating everybody like they're about to make the stupidest possible decision at all times.

The examples given were also very specifically about the explainers very clearly knowing less than the person they're talking to/at.

Not being able to discuss literally anything without being talked down to, leading to feeling the need to include giant paragraphs of asides that will get get ignored and/or picked apart, is *not fun*.

Sharing an experience in a social space is not a request for basic guidance on a topic you have in no way demonstrated any need for.

I think most people understand that if they responded that way irl chatting with someone they are vaguely friendly with, it would not go down well.

Context matters online as well.

elodieunderglass

I feel like this post, in which I made a joke that demonstrated an extraordinarily high level of knowledge of a hobby and received people “correcting” me, is a great demonstrator of the low-stakes version of this behaviour.

If you’re excited to share knowledge, then you can politely reach out your hand to share, rather than instantly assuming the other person is in need of correction or lecturing.

This will also spare you from the tremendous embarrassment of correcting your superior.

characterlimit

i hope all the strangers i've ever been temporarily allied with over us being collectively fucked over by public transport are doing well

landmineblogging

did you know you still have a long life to finish living??? get to it

landmineblogging

its hoagiefest for fucks sake

captain-price-unofficially

"Is macready or childs The Thing at the end?" theorists are idiots. The answer is John Carpenter. It's in the poster. John Carpenter's The Thing. Dumbass

adobe-outdesign

amiya-shirou

(Guy who has only read the manga of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and hasn't really watched Miyazaki's other movies) yeah I love the #ghibli aesthetic

samusblewupmyplanet

#aesthetic #comfy vibes

arcolan

11 year old border collie: gets a special shot for his chronic back pain this morning

2pm: "where's the dog he can't possibly have jumped over the fence"

3pm: "hi i live in [another village]! I got your dog here, if you can come fetch him?"

"well at least that new medication is working 💀"

emcapi

brian-kinney-apologist

I'm gonna post this now for no reason at all :)

creekfiend

a funny thing about having conversations with people within institutions (academic in this case but also others) about gatekeeping, is that you end up having a conversation over and over in which you're like, "hey this alligator spike pit moat you have erected around your institution is keeping a lot of people out," and they're like, "well *I* navigated the alligator spike pit moat just fine," and you're like, "right. by dint of us having this conversation, you within the institution and me without, it is understood that you navigated the alligator spike pit moat. due to that being an inherent requirement of entering the institution," and they're like, "I don't think you understand the prestigious history of our alligator spike pit moat," and you're like, "is there a reason why there needs to be an alligator spike pit moat encircling the concept of higher education?" and they're like, "look, the alligator spike pit moat isn't for everyone. some people just aren't cut out for the alligator spike pit moat :)" and you're like, "right, yeah, like disabled people and people coming from poverty or unstable home environments or underserved communities or people dealing with difficult to navigate life events like pregnancy or abuse or prison or addiction or the death of a loved one, for example" and they're like, "how dare you imply that we are keeping those people out on purpose. it's their own problem if they can't wrestle the alligators and avoid the spikes while also disabled and/or poor and/or pregnant etc" and you're like, "well that seems evil," and they're like, "it sounds like maybe you're just bitter about the alligator spike pit moat because of your totally random individual experience with ONE bad alligator spike pit moat. have you considered therapy?" and you're like, "did you know that there's some patterns here in terms of how y'all are handling this stuff?" and they're like, "actually yes. we even have a department of alligator spike pit studies :)" and you're like, "that's great, how do I get access to and participate in those conversations?" and they're like, "well firstly you must cross the alligator spike pit moat"

creekfiend

if you can document that you have a medical condition that might make it challenging for you to navigate the alligator spike pit moat, they'll give you an extra 20 minutes to complete your navigation of the alligator spike pit moat

rabbitindisguise

and if you're like "I think the alligator spike pit moat is unnecessary" they're like "so you believe we should destroy the scientific method!" and you're like "well, no."

creekfiend

GOD THAT'S SO TRUE

burins

watching my promised afternoon thunderstorm slip from a 90% chance to a 20% chance.... baby come back i can change

jetix

2016-06-09

templetv-deactivated20260211

hey can you come over and surgically remove this heavy, aching rot from my heart? we can watch a movie afterwards

inthedarktrees

Natalie said later her favorite scene from Rebel was one between herself and Dean that was cut from the film: “It was in the car. I was waiting for him and he comes up and we talk to each other. There was a section of the scene where I imply that I’ve sort of been around, that I’m not really pure. I say to him, ‘Do you think that’s bad?’ And he says, ‘No, I just think it’s lonely. It’s the loneliest time.’ I thought it was a wonderful line—right on the cutting room floor.”

Natalie Wood and James Dean during the making of Rebel Without a Cause, 1955 | Sid Avery