A Trained Parrot, Passed From Plato to Platonist

NSAID of the masses | old enough to drink young enough to not remember 9/11 | Rated High by MBFC

[tsarina-anadyomene]

I feel a bit impatient with the way leftists criticize USAID when you point out that defunding it will have and has already had devastating consequences. "Yes, literally millions of people have died, but have you considered that USAID also was the funding vehicle for stupid and ineffectual schemes to overthrow the Cuban government." Like okay. Which of these things do you think I'm sad about losing? It's just like this absurd tendency to pick at some "ummm actually" in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe.

[mariacallous]

#I read an article that wholeheartedly argued that USAID literacy programs for women in a highly patriarchal country was imperialist#because that country traditionally had a strong oral tradition of which women were the primary keepers.#And teaching them literacy led to the decline and erasure of that culture.#I shit you not I read this on JSTOR with mine own two eyeballs.#God forbid non-Western women.... read?? And work?? And escape patriarchal abuse??

[mousidy]

the state does not need to assign you a sex, nor does it need to keep inalterable record of it btw

[mousidy]

you gonna pee yourself if a trans woman has vaginoplasty and no easy way to find out what genitalia she was born with? you gonna cry if you can't locate an Essence of Maleness within her that would allow you to group her into the Scary Predatory Trannies class?

[mousidy]

I think a lot of you who believe rape is an organ also think said organ bestows some eternal Essence of Maleness that we NEED to be able to locate in order to maintain wariness of the Tranny, regardless of whether she even still has said organ. what if she uses the Male Essence bestowed by the ghost of the Rape Organ to Get you?

[dragon-in-a-fez]

one of the funniest conversations I ever had with my ex was when they were still getting used to Celsius and asked me "what's 20 degrees?" and instead of converting it, I said "it's the highest your dad will ever let you set the thermostat and when you say you're cold he tells you to put on another sweater, we're not made of money" and they went "oh, 68"

the fact that this reference was that fucking precise was something they went on to tell people about for years.

[peach-pot]

being anti-amatonormativity in a romance centered world is like watching half the people you know put all their eggs in one basket and then drop the basket and all their eggs break and they’re crying and swearing they’re never gonna do that again and then a month later they have all new eggs in a new basket and they tell you the problem was they didn’t have a strong enough basket or fresh enough eggs and then they drop the fucking basket again.

[peach-pot]

I think some people on this post don’t know what the phrase “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” means… or why it means that.

[edenfenixblogs]

Wonder how long it'll be before the public looks back on this era and claims they always spoke out about antisemitism.

I'm so sick of this era. Can we get to the part where everybody retcons their own behavior? It'll still suck but at least they'll make public statements about how antisemitism is bad again and I'll have some sense of faith restored.

[nitpickspot]

If I ever start crowing about being on "The right side" after this blows over.

You have permission to smack me over the head with a kayak paddle

[edenfenixblogs]

hahahahhahahahah

[sufficient-tenacity]

I hope people never get the chance to retcon their behavior.

The only way things get better is if people realize that they were wrong, they engaged in harmful practices, and they have the rest of their lives to do better.

I also know that this isn't going to happen.

[apolladay]

Do you have any association with an astronaut by less than 3 degrees?

Yes, I personally know or have met one irl.

Yes, I know someone who knows an astronaut.

Yes, I know someone who knows someone who knows one.

No, but I've interacted with one on social media or similar platform.

No.

Remaining time: 6 days 14 hours

[wholegirl-deactivated20150326]

haha girls are only good for three things cooking sex and complaining am i right fellas? so, anyways, what do you think boobs feel like? oh wait i see my moms car. gotta go.

[official-boob-posts]

I never at comments like that I see online because I just imagine with pretty good accuracy, actual children making these misogynistic remarks

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Random white tumblr users would maybe benefit from ceasing to view racism as an immutable thing that you are and rather a thing that you do. So many people get confronted with their implicit biases and instead of stopping and saying 'oh yeah, they're right, I should do something to change that', they say 'but I'm not racist, because racist people are evil and I'm not evil.' Unfortunately racist people are your uncle, and your mother, and your sister, and your friend, and you. It's not an immutable characteristic, it's a thing that you do, and you're so caught up in your perception of yourself as a 'good person' that you choose to be blind to the racism you perpetuate, thus staying racist. It's a vicious ironic cycle.

mmmmhmmm

[ashi-sewehitsanethe]

All of this, but if you'll all indulge me, I just want to spell it out again a bit differently, because I think it's important: once you start thinking of "good" and "bad" as teams you belong to, not only do you become blind to the evil you perpetuate, but you start thinking of evil as good. Using the example above, is racism bad? Most people, I hope, would say yes. But when you think of good and bad as teams you're assigned to, rather than things anyone can do, it doesn't matter whether racism is good or bad, it only matters which team is doing it. If you're on the "good" team, then you can be as racist as you like, as long as you're being racist to the people on the "bad" team. Rather than racism being something that's always wrong, no matter what, now you've created a class of acceptable targets that you can get away with being racist to, because you're on the "good" team and they're not. This can happen with anything, not just racism. Fatphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, ableism...anything.

[fictionadventurer]

One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!

[starfieldcanvas]

the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.

[penrosesun]

I ran into a truly wild cultural misunderstanding with my father some years ago, when I had to explain to him what “hookup culture” actually was, and that the thing he assumed it was was actually what we call “cruising culture”. His response was “how is that different from dating?” and when I explained how it was different, he said, and please note that this a direct quote: “That’s ridiculous! You can’t expect a woman to stop fooling around with other guys for anything less than a marriage proposal. I mean, she’s not a prostitute, you can’t buy her.” Now obviously there’s like… a lot to unpack there, but I think it’s pretty darn illustrative of a substantive cultural shift around the assumption of monogamy!

Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she “wouldn’t put it in those terms” she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasn’t at least on the very immanent horizon was “nuts, honestly.” I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was “Of course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.”

And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how “Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week” didn’t just mean “Aunt Terri had a full dance card” but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, “well, fooling around with, I don’t know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doors”), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.

America has gotten a lot more conservative about dating, actually.

[stitchlingbelle]

My parents are from the fifties and when I explained in high school that dating anyone meant automatically going steady they were shocked and baffled.

[cannibalings]

big fan of a character seeking comfort in the arms of the thing that’s going to kill them. and i am psycologicalily normal too.

[poetrylesbian]

good news everyone

[the-lamplighter]

Persepolis

[rosszulorzott]

A precocious and outspoken Iranian girl grows up during the Islamic Revolution.. Watch Persepolis and other popular movies online free now.

[the-lamplighter]

Persepolis

[rosszulorzott]

A precocious and outspoken Iranian girl grows up during the Islamic Revolution.. Watch Persepolis and other popular movies online free now.

[vinnigami]

when we used to study at the akademy

[sodomit]

Been thinking about making this post for a while, so here it goes.

The trans community has a specific type of transphobia towards nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth, and that is forcing womanhood onto them posed as purification or salvation.

The reverse, forcing nonbinary people assigned female into the man role, also exists, but it's frequently done with open hatred (e.g. "those they/thems are actually men trying to sneak into women's spaces") and therefore it has been called out by several people I interact with.

The former, not so much.

Many tend to see misgendering of someone amab towards womanhood as fundamentally benevolent or unserious. Real people develop new kinds of dysphoria and quit trans spaces because of that, including some of my acquaintances, but it's all seen as accidental collateral damage for the noble goal of making more women discover themselves.

"But what if you're denying a closeted self hating trans woman a chance to be called a woman" is seen as a more valid argument than the distress being actively done to people of other genders, and it's fucking bonkers.

I refuse to keep centering non-abinary* perspectives in this conversation.

* abinary spectrum includes agender, xenogender, and other things adjacent.

[ellipsus-writes]

Pope Leo XIV wrote 42.3K words on human dignity in the age of AI. (But Ellipsus has written over 65K words on the topic since 2023. 💪)

Solidarity is a weird thing… all of a sudden you’re seeing the Pope on your dash and the tea is… piping hot? (To offset the Vatican.va link, here's a tl;dr from The Onion.) ... Look at him go!

(Disagreements with his Holiness aside, it’s great to see a powerful figure power taking the side of the people.) ... EDIT: Wake up babe, a new Inquisition just dropped:

[ruffboi-mags]

Okay yeah so there are some potential sections that are being flagged by AI detectors when some folks put it through, apparently. Thaaaat being said, doesn't mean the Pope did for sure use AI. Could mean he has some writing quirks that are similar to AI due to the fact AI was trained on y'know. Human writing. (em dashes, man. or apparently overuse of the word "genuinely"? idk) Could mean it's a false positive. Depending on how this thing was written and who else may have been in charge, maybe someone used AI tools to do edits for him, or loose rough drafts of sections based on his outline that he rewrote but that retain whatever is triggering the AI detection software. We just do not know.

But it's kind of hilarious, gotta admit. XD

[maimonideznuts]

AI detection software routinely (incorrectly) flags perfection in grammar and style as AI, especially if that style is out of sync by a number of decades... it's the Pope, who used to head the Augustinian Order, writing from the fucking Vatican, with an army of veteran proof readers, writing one of the most important Papal documents of the century.

Of course it's so perfect that the AI detection software used to assess lazy Uni students thinks it can't have been written by a human.

I feel insane, I'm a Sephardic Jew defending the character of a Pope and the Vatican. I feel like I'm going insane. Can I please have reparations for the Inquisition now?

[sufficient-tenacity]

Also important to note that the final released forms of ecclesiastical documents are prepared by a team and the pope basically only gives them a draft.

These documents literally are written by a committee hence the written-by-committee style that AI also often gives off.

[bedupolker]

Outside

[adventures-in-poor-planning]

op this is good commentary but I’m mostly just captivated by how you drew the kid as a teeny little grub with a propeller hat