Do ALL the things!

I'm a writer, teacher, and all-round geek-type person. Check out my pages to see things I've written, social media, and all that fun stuff. I'm still figuring out what this blog is going to be, but it will have a lot of stuff about writing, books, and possibly ninja turtles. (Art by Skyecrystal)

[sj-elliott]

So if there are any ADHD/anxiety people out there, I could use some help. On the left, we have my current work setup. It’s at the very back corner of the department. There’s a high filing cabinet behind me, on the other side of which sits my friend and colleague with whom I’m very comfortable and whose computer faces that back wall with the books. I’m standing in what passes for a “door.”  It’s open, but I can see people approaching with my peripheral vision.

On the right is where my manager wants me to move (that desk at the far right you can see the end of peeking out from behind the partition). It’s just inside the main door to the department. Anyone coming in and out passes in front of that filing cabinet on the far right, with the managers’ offices on the other side of that walkway. There will be three other people at the other corners of that open workspace.

The thought of being in a space that open makes me physically ache, I’m so uncomfortable, but I’m having a lot of trouble expressing WHY the thought of moving there makes me so unhappy, because she doesn’t see the difference between the two spaces. I really don’t want to make a reputation for myself as being “difficult.”

Anyone have any thoughts on how to explain it?

[ksumnersmith]

My thought before going out: “I know. I’ll put on some eyeliner, and then when people see me they’ll think, ‘Aha! There’s a girl who does not wear men’s fleece pajama pants all day.’ And they will be wrong.”

[sj-elliott]

On people and pronouns

After leaving this comment on jimhines‘ Facebook post, it’s kind of taken on a life of its own, so I thought I’d share it here, too.

I am not a neuroscientist, but had to study the neuroscience behind gender identity quite a bit as part of my Behaviour degree. Rambly science flailing ahead!

The thing is, humans like to sort things into boxes. Way back in the day, the ability to quickly decide "this thing is poisonous and this is not" or "this is a thing that will eat me and this is not" contributed to our survival, so it makes sense that our first inclination is to sort things into box A or box B. But nature is not about boxes. Nature is about spectra.

In some ways, it's true that you're born male or female (or neither or both), but it's not locked in to sex the way some people believe it is, nor is it as white or black. Brain differentiation in the part of the brain that controls self-perception (including gender) happens in-utero in response to a hormone dump, months after the hormone dump that starts the differentiation of the bits between the legs (which is ALSO a spectrum with the results usually clustered around two loci, but in both brain and body structure, there are outliers and points in between). Often, the people with brain formation A (or close to it) have body part A, and people with brain formation B usually have body part B. It happens often enough that this is why we have the heteronormative ideas of "male" and "female" that we have used throughout history to whack anyone who doesn't fit squarely on the loci over the head with. Though this doesn't even touch on the extremely messed-up fact that society pretty much arbitrarily decides how AA and BB act and dress, or that AA likes blue and BB likes pink, until the mid-20th-century when they arbitrarily decide again that, no, it's the other way round. Society is kind of a dick about shifting the goalposts that way.

But not everyone is smack on either locus, either in their brain structure or in their body configuration, and sometimes people get different hormone dumps that result in brain formation on or around locus A but body parts on or around locus B. It's a less common combination than AA or BB, sure, but no more "abnormal" than someone who, for example, has an uncommon combination of pigments (like dark skin and blond hair). You can find it happening all the time across species. Just because it's not common doesn't mean it's not "normal." It just means that the person got a different dose of hormones in the womb.

That's not opinion. That's science. There are many peer-reviewed articles on the topic. Saying otherwise is like saying "it's my opinion that rocks are soft like feather pillows." That's nice for you, but it doesn't change the fact that if you jump off a roof onto a pile of rocks, you're gonna get messed up. The rocks don't care if you think they're soft. See, we can see inside of forming brains now. These findings are repeatable. Saying that you don't believe in it is like saying you don't believe in gravity. Again, that's nice, but I'm probably not going to trust you to fly a plane.

So if someone has brain formation A, and I see the "person" as being in the brain and not in the bits (because hey, we talk to faces, not crotches -- if you do the latter on a regular basis, you might want to talk to someone about that), and I am a thinking human-type-person, I have no problem with using pronoun A and not B (though it may take me a while to stop falling back into habit if I'm not thinking about it). Ditto if they weren't on either the A or B brain locus and wanted a pronoun to reflect that.

And the fact that I'm a human being capable of reason and compassion (and not an animal who needs to classify something as predator or prey in order to not be eaten) is why I'd still use a person's preferred pronouns even if there was no science to back it up. Because in the end, it hurts no one and helps many. Wheaton's Law.

(Have a Franklin D. Roosevelt in his adorable dress and pretty patent leather shoes, which was perfectly "normal" until that goalpost got shifted).

[turbofanatic]

InGen’s reverse engineering of ancient animals from fragments of preserved DNA is impressive, but not perfect. Mutations and deformities are common, with the most obvious being the absence of their natural feathers.

Without feathers for insulation, smaller dinosaurs at Jurassic Park had trouble with thermoregulation, especially at night. To counter this, all park raptors are fitted with custom sweaters.

[laurendestefano-deactivated2017]

Don’t let anyone shame you out of reading your books. Nobody on their deathbed says “I wish I listened to more pretentious web articles”

[theladysmith]

Yesterday we put on ALL the skirts and ventured out to dance in the rain, you know, as you do when wearing 50 yrds of material. But happily we got to dance in a glorious gothic church instead - I had a lovely time (and with some lovely ladies, too!) #shadesofaraby #ats #bellydance #alltheskirts

[wilwheaton]

Philip Zimbardo is a prominent psychologist from Stanford, most notable for leading the notorious Stanford prison experiment. He has published new research findings based on the lives of 20,000 young men, and his conclusion is stark: there is a developing "masculinity crisis" caused by addiction to video games and pornography. "Our focus is on young men who play video games to excess, and do it in social isolation — they are alone in their room," says Zimbardo. "It begins to change brain function. It begins to change the reward center of the brain, and produces a kind of excitement and addiction. What I'm saying is — boys' brains are becoming digitally rewired." As an example, Zimbardo uses this quote from one young man: "When I'm in class, I'll wish I was playing World of Warcraft. When I'm with a girl, I'll wish I was watching pornography, because I'll never get rejected." Zimbardo doesn't think there's a specific time threshold at which playing video games goes from being acceptable to excessive. He says it varies by individual, and is more based on a "psychological change in mindset." To fight the problem, he suggest families need to track how much time is being spent on video games compared to other activities. "He also called for better sex education in schools — which should focus not only on biology and safety, but also on emotions, physical contact and romantic relationships."

This study goes a long way toward explaining the psychology behind GamerGate, MRAs, the PUAs, and all the other pieces of shit who are like them.

[sj-elliott]

I am actually genuinely curious if the people arguing that the Hugo ballot should reflect popularity and commercial sales would also argue that Twilight deserves an award.

[iguanamouth]

Can you draw a tiny lizard dragon that secretly hoards pennies?

[fourthage]

faejilly, this seems like your jam.

[darkmanx23]

[fantasiawandering]

Giveaway!

So here’s the deal. It’s been a really weird year, and while my head is more or less on straight right now, it took a lot of work to get it that way, and sometimes I really needed a reminder that despite my brain’s best efforts at convincing me otherwise, I had people around me who liked me because of me. (I have awesome friends who are good at that, fortunately).

Fast forward to today. I needed to buy some clothes because mine are starting to fall apart, and I ended up getting a free accessory. I have enough jewellery, but I saw this one, and decided to pick it up.

Awww. Pretty, right? But flip it over, and there’s a little message:

Awww. <3

There are many kinds of beauty, and sometimes we need reminders about more than one of them. So I’m giving it away. You don’t have to be following me or anything – the only rule is that you, or someone you know, has needed a reminder like this in recent memory. 

All you need to do to enter is:

PM me a message telling me you’d like to be entered into the necklace giveaway

Let me know if you’d like to remain anonymous when I make the winner announcement – if yes, give me a pseudonym to use instead.

I’ll stick all entries I get by 8 am Eastern on May 1 into a hat (it may be a digital hat). Later that day, I’ll make a draw and announce the winner. Once I do, you’ll need to PM me an address to send it to, and I’ll send it on its way.

And even if you’re not the name I draw, the message applies to you too. (feel free to spread it around. <3)

[killiansdevotedheart]

Ever After (1998)

And, while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point, gentlemen, is that they lived.

[thebooksmugglers]

The best Cinderella movie 

[theherocomplex]

[shadesofaraby]

If you’d like to see “Far Ago and Long Away,” our Doctor Who choreography, it’s at 30:40! 

[jasjuliet-deactivated20240828]

My uncle had asthma. The police came looking for his grandson who wasn’t there, and he asked the police to leave. The police officers were aggravated and grabbed him and cuffed him behind his back for ‘resisting arrest’ when they hadn’t even been there for him in the first place. During the commotion, my uncle, who was a big man, began to have an asthma attack. His grandson arrived at the house and began to scream why they were arresting his grandfather, and they cuffed him too and threw both into the back of the police car. My cousin was screaming, smashing his head against the window since he couldn’t use his hands, and a neighbor came running from the house with the inhaler. The police officer opened the door, threw the inhaler onto the floor and left both uncle and my cousin cuffed, helpless to do anything. My cousin watched his grandfather/my uncle die suffocated in the back of a police car because the police officer couldn’t be bothered to give an old, Puerto Rican man his inhaler. No mercy. None. The police officers showed up at my cousin’s house with 5000 dollars weeks later and no justice was ever had. This is real. My uncle’s name was Sebastián.

Don’t forget Eric Garner. Don’t stop protesting. It’s been happening for too long and as a society we have to know better, demand better. Enough is enough.

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us— we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

[sj-elliott]

Some days, some things just come up and sucker punch you without warning and leave you gasping for air.

Those are the days I love my friends the hardest.