Politcal Takes (not on my main)

[takesoffmymain]

Uhhhhh yeah it's a blog.

I decided to make a sideblog for my ranting about serious and or political issues since I don't like using my main tumblr for anything super opinionated like that (I like to keep it a safe space for my own sanity) but also I do occasionally feel the need to scream my thoughts out there anyway. Sup.

Also yes, the blog name is a joke about taking off my pants, I'm an adult, but that does not guarantee you even a smidgen of maturity, so let's get that clear from the start.

[aesungaia]

[homunculus-argument]

This counts as vent art.

[theiasystem]

unmasking

[theiasystem]

disclaimer: this is a joke and does not reflect our actual stance on steely dan

[takesoffmymain]

I think it's an interesting shift in at least my own perception of what a minimum wage job means now that I'm a young adult and trying to pay bills on "starter jobs". When I was in highschool (especially seeing as I was and still am privileged in comparison to a lot of my peers and friends) my first thought when picturing "a comedic but accurate archetype of who works at a Mcdonalds" used to be the sort of image of a greasy teenage boy with acne and a high pitched voice.

I made a joke about this typical "I hate my job but I do it anyway" sort of archetype today, and I realized after I had said it, that my idea of "who hates working at mcdonalds but does it anyway" has changed. In the spot of a pimple covered high-schooler trying to buy a car, I made a reference to the employee in question being a depressed middle-aged man who will never buy a house. This raises a few things here that it's the specific default for me.

1- Gender norms. Fuck. Still haven't beat those.

2- What initially stood out to me: The average age and situation of "someone working a dead end job" for me has changed drastically.

For point 1, I'm just gonna... Leave that to a different post or someone else. Gender binary. Good god. Point 2 though, something I'm way more confident in making broad and largely unbacked claims about, sort of makes me wonder a few things. Clearly, if it's something automatically ingrained in even my own social radar as someone with dramatic levels of autism (and therefore very dull social situation receptors), then at least a few other people have to have noticed this. That the age of "sir this is a wendy's" material is rising right along with the retirement age. That the general image of a customer service worker being berated is becoming less about sweaty teenagers who are screaming inside and more about the lower class as a slightly older demographic (even though realistically the lower class is every age) crying inside.

I remember in the brief time I was able to go to college on grants, I had an economics professor who was really shit and therefore also an economics tutor... Who was highly conservative but admittedly better at explaining things. I brought it up to him at one point that having minimum wage be less than what people need to realistically survive is a really good way to collapse your entire economy. The moral implications of having a chain at all aside, a food chain with no grass just doesn't work long term whatsoever. His argument was that minimum wage jobs were for highschool kids who still lived at home, and so they didn't actually need to pay enough to have a full adult life. I told him that if he truly believed that, then he also believed that fast food places should only be open outside of school hours and never late at night. He said he'd have to think abut it, that he didn't have a good answer.

This also brings me to a point where I'm wondering if maybe some of the pushback from the over-financed and under-educated of the world, and especially in the USA -- (because I'm US American, this is obviously going to be from my perspective, I don't have the ability to brainjack and see through the eyes of someone else. Research and curiosity is the closest I can get without travel the world money.) -- is because their image on "who works a shitty minimum wage job" hasn't changed yet. I really do wonder at a certain point if the moderately privileged of the USA aren't just being assholes for the sake of it, but if they're so insulated that they do not even comprehend what the standards are like when you're starting on the ground. Maybe a big part of the issue here isn't just class war, but that the middle and upper class are also subject to propaganda. That it's pretty likely that all the people who might actually be able to do something but still aren't mega rich assholes, that maybe they literally just haven't come to terms with the reality of what's happening. Because they don't have to. I think the problem then becomes less about how we fight anyone and everyone who's perceived as a higher status, and more about how we figure out how to communicate what's actually happening. How many people do you think would say that the starving children in Africa should just go plant some seeds and get the hell over it? This doesn't seem like a matter of humans being monsters to me, it seems like a situation in which people are isolated enough between their classes that they don't even understand what's going on below them because they're not forced to see it.

It's a banana, what could it cost, ten dollars?

[hollowboobtheory]

ok but like. there are two different types of privilege. there's type a "everybody should have this, but some people don't" and type b "nobody should have this, but some people do"

there's having parents who can pay for your application to any college, and then there's having parents who can bribe your way into any college. there's owning your own home, and then there's owning 50 houses and getting rich off hoarding a vital resource. there's not fearing for your life whenever cops are around, and then there's being the cop and being allowed to murder anyone at any time.

idk i just feel like that's an important distinction to make.

[scramratz]

I think people would be less suicidal if they were allowed to talk about being suicidal without risk of being sent to the Torture Dungeon

[takesoffmymain]

I really do love a specific form of sort of eldritch terror commentary on any given issue that Tumblr users do really well. I saw a post about someone starting with saying that you shouldn't trace reference images and ending with the note that you should never open your eyes and should abandon all memory, shhh it's okay, just forget.

From the whimsical nonsensical perspective of a Tumblr user making a shitpost at face value, it's absurd comedy. Parody for the means of entertaining. At the same time, it's an incredibly profound and unsettling way of forcing you to examine the extent to which an idea can be taken, and to point out the absurdity of an originating idea to begin with.

This sort of escalation from mocking the idea that people should never trace art... An opinion grounded in the solid logic-based conclusions that humans reach, even if it is an opinion and therefore not the only correct conclusion that could be made. To take this basic declaration of opinion and then prove it's emotional value not by arguing the subjective as if it's something you can prove with numerical data and hard sciences alone, but by arguing with our soft sciences. To paint a visceral and usually disturbing even when comedic picture. To force you to look at this opinion and ask yourself where exactly it goes too far, and in most cases, draw the conclusion that the originating statement was correct to present an opposed viewpoint as irrational and absurd. That the absurdity started with the first sentence.

[ultraviolentangel-deactivated20]

Just because you did something wrong in the past doesn’t mean you can’t advocate against it now. It doesn’t make you a hypocrite. You just grew. Don’t let people use your past to invalidate your current mindset.

[ravenobviously]

Bruh. This needs to be a mandatory post on everybody’s blog. Y'all really be pullin out decade old receipts like woah.

[emmaubler]

Either you want people to grow and change or you want people to stay evil villains soyou can feel superior as you shame them.

[takesoffmymain]

It's discouraging to see people in the comments immediately add on "i agree, except (list of people who commit highly heinous acts) of course". No! No, you're missing the point!! This post isn't about forgiving people for heinous acts, and it definitely isn't about excusing them. It's telling you that if at any given point you fully decide you were doing some bullshit, no matter what some bullshit constituted, you can and should stop doing some bullshit and try to help other people see that said acts are some bullshit. Maybe try to advocate for other people to not do some bullshit while you're at it.

This isn't saying "doing some bullshit is good" or "we should let people who did some bullshit not face consequences if they feel bad". It's saying "hey, people probably aren't gonna forgive you for that bullshit you did, but that doesn't give you a license to keep doing it either." It's saying "once you come to terms with the fact that what you did was terrible, don't let the fact that people will probably never forgive you for it just make you decide you're incapable of using your free will to not do some bullshit again".

This is the opposite of "letting those evil (x/y/z) get away with it". This is saying "i don't care WHAT you did, if you have suddenly grown enough as a person to see it was fucked up, don't let the people who are probably very justifiably upset and hate you for it convince you that there's no point in bothering to try to be less of a some bullshit causer". This is a pro accountability statement! When we convince everyone "evil people are bad forever and can never make better choices", why do we suddenly get surprised that the usual response from "evil person 5000" isn't to try to stop being a terrible person? If they're just "evil and terrible and irredeemable" as a state of being and not as a descriptor of the choices they make, then you are essentially absolving them of any responsibility to try to be better. "Good people" and "bad people" categories mean that nobody actually has to sit down and think about the consequences to themselves and others of any further actions. They are their category, and why bother trying anything else if it's just not what they inherently are? "People who have historically done some fucked up shit who still have free will going forward" can potentially grow and choose to stop doing fucked up shit. "Bad people" as a state of being with a final irreversible label is a license to just keep doing the same shit because it's not like it would change anything about them to stop doing it, right? So they might as well keep doing it.

People should face the consequences of their actions. Sometimes that consequence is that you never give them the chance to do that again, even if they could maybe in theory choose not to. Some things are absolutely fucked up and a terrible twisted and cruel action. None of this directly conflicts with "hey, don't let the consequences of your previous terrible choices, whether they be deserved or not, convince you that you don't have a chance at choosing not to do that again".

The moment you condemn yourself as incapable of change forever is the moment you forfeit the accountability to do better.

[thelawfulchaotic]

hi!! sorry if you've been asked this question before, but as someone who wants to be a lawyer, how do you deal with defending people that morally you really don't agree with? thanks!

I get a lot of versions of this question, and I answer it seriously every time, because it’s both important and not important at all. Anyone who asks respectfully gets my whole ass answer.

It’s just not really about that. My job isn’t about defending the idea of hurting someone else. It’s about stopping the state from inflicting further hurt, torture, pain. It’s about pushing back for some fairness against a monumentally stacked system. And it’s about stuff that’s normal human stuff that counts as crime for some reason.

Yeah, it’s hard to do a sex abuse case. Sometimes the images stick around and it bothers me. But honestly? Mostly those cases have real plausible theories of innocence or they’re cases that I will lose because the evidence is there, and the question is not whether the perpetrator will go to jail but how long.

Those cases are so rare, though. I get so much pointless bullshit. Felony of a teen taking mom’s car without permission. Two kids that try to break into a car and get so scared by the alarm that they run away. Trespassing on dad’s house because his new girlfriend wants you to stop coming around. It’s just human stuff, and the violence of the state is not necessary or helpful.

I also reject the idea of punishment completely. The state has a responsibility to stop people from hurting other people again. But inflicting pain doesn’t do it, we know this by now. So I argue for mercy and for real solutions to real problems. I’m here to build a future, not get caught up with doing violence to someone because of the past.

So yeah, sometimes it’s hard, but mostly my conscience is dead clear: I’m not responsible for the crime. The damage has been done. I want to start the healing process, and I want it for everyone involved. When that’s not possible, I just want to tell the authorities they don’t get to just Do What They Want.

The more I do this job, the more I am a genuine pacifist who is against violence in all forms, and actually I don’t see a contradiction between that and what I do for a living. State violence is a pervasive evil that tears apart families, communities, and countries, and it’s far more damaging and awful than any individual crime. The average prosecutor has more blood on their hands than a serial killer, but it’s invisible: people who died in jail, who froze to death on the street, who were shot in a drug deal. Their violence begets violence.

When I get blood on my hands, it’s because I put my hands over the wounds and try to stop the flow. I’m okay with it.

Also: people don’t ask doctors how they can stand to treat bad people. Why ask me?

[bemusedlybespectacled]

#i find people have such an inherent misunderstanding of the roles of defense attorneys (understandably but still)#in that most people i talk to seem to be envisioning me personally defending the right of people to commit crimes or that like. Crime Is#Good Actually#‘yeah this person did X but they should never face any consequences ever please and thank you judge’#(and people think this would WORK??? a different tangent on a lack of legal education and cop shows being awful etc)#meanwhile i am simply protecting people’s rights. yes even those people’s#idk i could write my own post but op Gets It and also a prosecutor just filed the DUMBEST motion ive ever seen and i need to respond to that#instead lmao (via @anixit26)

The number of people who respond to my post about how even the guiltiest person in the world deserves rights with "but not [crime I think makes you undeserving of rights]!" is truly insane. People really truly think that being accused of a crime makes you irredeemably evil and protecting the rights of those accused means you are also evil.

[trippedintoa-volcano]

Imagine that everywhere in the mechanical engineering world suddenly got infatuated with lasers.

Lasers have a lot of uses! Measuring things, heating things, cutting things, entertaining cats, particle physics. Lasers are pretty cool. Very versatile, very useful, potential to be very powerful.

Someone shows up one day and says "I have developed a never before seen technology! I call it a Death Star."

And it's a 3.4mW laser. Well no, we haven't seen this exact size of laser much since that's not really standard, but that's a bit of a misnomer, and I wouldn't call it new -

"HOLY SHIT GUYS! This Death Star is so entertaining! My cat loves it and it has such a nice color!" The Death Star becomes a viral novelty, and is mildly entertaining, as laser pointers often are.

Somehow, seemingly overnight, this leads to mania. "Lets stick lasers in EVERYTHING! The public loves them!"

More companies make 3.4mW lasers to jump on the bandwagon. Everyone that makes anything vaguely mechanical starts sticking lasers into their designs.

Everyone is calling them Death Stars. Any time there is a "Death Star innovation", it is just that they made a bigger laser.

Ford's next truck comes out and it has "Death Star integrated headlights", where they have just stuck giant lasers in place of their previously functional headlights.

An electric toothbrush is now "Powered by Death Stars" and shoots a laser at the tooth its cleaning. You think that maybe this could have actual applications as a sanitizing device if you're being generous, but when you actually look at the product, its laser has no purpose but to point at the tooth and drain the battery.

Mechanical products across the board get noticeably worse as everyone starts stuffing lasers in places where lasers have no right to be.

The lamp business gets in on it. "Here's a Death Star powered lamp!" These guys haven't even tried to stick a laser in their damn lamps. They've just started calling their light bulbs Death Stars and hoped you bought it before you could tell the difference. You at least appreciate that they haven't ruined their lamp about it.

Death Stars are lauded as the solution to all the world's problems. If it's not working, you should stick a laser in it! That'll fix it, everyone says. Once in a blue moon, it's even true! Weather prediction is really good now. But most things are garbage. Like "Death Star powered washing machines". What the fuck does that even mean?

Meanwhile, since all functioning mechanisms are being replaced with lasers, problems start showing up. All mirrors now cost $1000+ dollars, because the whole supply is being used up to make more lasers. The earth heats up, because everyone's blasting lasers at everything. People keep going blind, on account of all the lasers.

You, in fact, study optical mechanics. You know what a laser is, and how it works, and that it was invented many years before any of this nonsense actually started. People keep asking you about Death Stars, since surely you must know so much about them.

You explain that this is not really what lasers are for, except you have to call them Death Stars now, and that they're causing a lot of harm, so you don't like them much.

"Oh, but they're still such new tech!" they reply. "They'll figure out how to make Death Stars that don't burn your eyes out soon, and then it won't be an issue anymore!"

Somewhere, deep and buried, you remember lasers being used in particle accelerators, or in telescopes, or in laser cutters, or funny cat videos. They are, in fact, still interesting. Still cool.

But by this point they have replaced roads with "Death Star Powered Pathways", which are just laser pointers propped up on tooth picks pointing vaguely through the forests.

And you think you are going mad.

And they are still just FUCKING LASERS.

This post is about AI.

[doberbutts]

“trans men don’t experience misogyny because they’re men thus cannot experience women’s oppression”

I hate to tell you this but even cis men experience misogyny if they step a toe over the line of what our incredibly sexist society sees as “proper” for a man. You really don’t think that a man with interests or expression the world sees as “female” aren’t treated with violence?

[doberbutts]

“would you say that of other privileged groups? do you think white people experience racism?”

I mean sometimes they do yeah. I know a white guy with monolid eyes and zero known Asian ancestors and he absolutely experiences anti-Asian racism on a fairly regular basis because people think he’s mixed Asian/white. I know a woman who was told throughout her life that she was Native as an adoptee with no known history or background who experienced incredibly violent amounts of anti-Native racism until she discovered as an adult through DNA test that she is 100% white. I know white people who tan incredibly dark in the summer comparatively that are constantly accused of being mixed race and experiencing racism due to that, usually anti-Mexican racism perpetrated against white people with Greek or Italian ancestors.

Their ability to make it stop by saying “hey, I’m white actually” only goes as far as the person enacting violence on them is willing to believe them. They still have to live with the trauma and physical scars from the altercations. We live in a racist world and thus there will be violent people who force all others to pass a whiteness test and eliminating or harming the rest.

[doberbutts]

Got an ask that I just block/deleted but it was basically “so you think cis people experience transphobia!?!?!?!?” and uh

If you think cis butches don’t experience both transphobia and misogyny and homophobia for daring to be women who break gender roles while still holding onto their womanhood you’ve sorely misunderstood just how bad butches have it in this world sorry. If you don’t think cis queens experience transphobia and homophobia and misogyny for daring to be men who break gender roles while being loud and proud about it and still holding onto their manhood then you’ve sorely mistaken just how bad they have it in this world as well.

Not to mention all of the cis men who wear dresses and skirts and makeup and nail polish and heels simply because they like them who experience all of these things. All of the cis straight women who simply just exist but something about them doesn’t pass society’s “woman enough” test, leading to them being caught in bathroom bills and sporting rules and being attacked by people who mistake them for being transgender or gay.

Just like how straight people experience homophobia to such a degree that they literally beat their children out of any potential deviance from rigidly upheld gender roles and let politicians make jokes on national TV about how they’d drown their pre-teen kids if they came out as LGBT. Do you really think a straight kid still figuring themselves out hears that and doesn’t internalize that homophobia? Doesn’t rigidly hold themselves to some impossible standard so that no one could ever possibly think they’re gay? You don’t think straight teenage boys who maybe don’t pass some bully’s straightness test are getting the shit kicked out of them for “being gay” when, surprise, they aren’t? You don’t think all those kids being attacked by their priests and coaches and teachers are being told “this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t gay” when they’re literally not gay? Do you know how many straight kids had close calls at my school that famously expels all gay kids, because someone made up a believable enough rumor? Do you know how many of them still got their shit kicked in even though administration ultimately decided to let them stay?

All bigotry is violent and all bigotry catches people it doesn’t “intend” to and hurts them as well. It doesn’t matter what someone’s label is, or if they even have one. It matters if the person enacting the violence is doing it because their victim didn’t pass whatever “acceptable enough” test they didn’t know they were being subjected to.

Everyone is at risk. Oppression doesn’t care what your label is. Some people are more visible targets than others, and as a result those people are the more common targets. That doesn’t mean no one else experiences it.

[doberbutts]

My first post to reach 2k without people clowning in the notes I feel so proud

[doctorprofessorsong]

As an older queer, allow me to say: the walls of the closet are load-bearing. It is our job as a community to stand in front of that door and tell everyone who wants to peek inside to fuck off.

There are so many reasons a person may choose not to come out and there is no reason a person would owe the public or a stranger that information. Certainly it's not owed simply because someone is famous.

We have fought for decades to make it safer for people to be open and authentic about themselves, but we are not yet there. And even if we were, the closet would still be something we need to maintain for those who are not ready to reveal that part of themselves.

[takesoffmymain]

I think we as (specifically those of us who are in the US population, I know this isn't an everyone problem) people have strayed so far from the path of reason in fear and in search of anything opposite to our personhood being threatened... that we're eating ourselves alive. I'm the most liberal snowflake republican and the most democrat right-wing shitstain you'll ever meet. I think that we need trans rights, religious freedom, gun protections, and reproductive rights. Here's why.

You don't stop fear mongering and violence with words alone, and if learning to be good at playing both sides is what it takes to understand that everyone generally wants the same thing but in a different flavor, then hand me the rifle, I can learn it. I've had a lot of experiences in life that someone in their early 20's really shouldn't have had to survive. And yet here I am. And you know how I did that? I moved from a liberal big city of ideals into a domestic violence shelter that saved my life by saying "actually, you know you can demand better treatment... right? You don't have to wait for us to protect you, but we will as long as you learn to fight back while you're here." I then went to live with the most freedom loving "libertarian" with basically what sounds to me like republican ideas that I have ever known. My dad. I've seen the error of the small-town style upbringing I had, and that the tragedy of the Commons doesn't stop just because you've decided the only Commons that matters is your own house. I've also seen how very quickly grassroots movements crumble when met with opposition from people who also want peace and charity and have no idea how to come to an agreement on how to run things. We don't need kings (our current "democracy" is absolutely more of a monarchy situation by now IMO, and corporate entities are the king's advisors) and we don't need to kill the rich to get there either. We need to create a society where billionaires and kings aren't needed. We need to feed the hungry, and provide better options to stay alive than "sleep on a bench until we take that too, and steal food from the store because we refuse to help you get a job". We also need to keep power out of the hands of any singular entity who claims they're going to do that for us.

The future that I envision isn't a surveillance state with hyper communism slavery, nor is it a perfect nuclear family where the gay son committing suicide is a pop culture laugh track.

The future I envision is my fellow queers and weirdos packing guns under their short skirts, and hyper religious conservative groups that I've never felt welcome in deciding that they actually do want to love their neighbor even if they don't agree with their neighbor's haircut. We aren't getting through this by infighting, and that includes "eat the rich". Eat the rich only works in a system that starves the poor. Let's take our hunting rifles to the community garden and fucking do something about this. Not by killing each other, and not by always agreeing either. By learning how to put our differences aside just long enough communicate, and by raising the tide for everyone. And I mean EVERYONE. Not just "everyone but the people I don't like this week." Human rights aren't convenient, but they're necessary, because we are all human while we're alive to argue about it, and they don't start with the government.

[takesoffmymain]

A bigass analysis of a social blunder I made at the grocery store today, a ramble about how AI would be a cool thing if people used it as a tool and not a way of life, and a suggestion on how AI could be used to help me learn how to make less social blunders with my crazy autism powers. All of this is also peppered with many swear words, I sure do love cussing on the internet.

So I said some stupid shit at the store today, as one does when autistic as fuck and failing the D20 roll on empathy. I typically don't like AI, but I absolutely see valid use-cases for it. It dawned on me today as I was thinking about what it would logistically take to make a tool that can translate my less than pretty attempts at socializing into something useable as a functional human being, and that answer obviously couldn't be just getting fed phrases, because no matter how many phrases I know, there will be a situation in which I don't actually know why I tripped a social landmine, and I say some bullshit before I realize that that's not something I'm allowed to say. Much like a computer, it doesn't matter how many responses I learn, if I don't understand what I need to remove or improve for the next iteration, it's gonna be clunky every fucking time. I don't want to use AI like a way of life, I want to use it like duct tape.

AI isn't supposed to think for you, it's supposed to be a tool to turn thinking into learning and improving and finding out some other shit to look into. If you build a boat out of duct tape, sure yeah you can do that, but you'll never learn how to make a proper boat. If you use duct tape to tinker with components and hold things together and quickly attach shit while you work, you can build a proper boat using duct tape as a tool, and you can learn how to build a boat. AI isn't supposed to replace using your brain, it's supposed to be a tool to organize things and hold shit together, to categorize things a little faster than making a massive ass list.

Anyway- here's the idea. Today I met someone with OCD and what I wanted to communicate to them as they happened to bring it up (self deprecating) while packing some little tinkering things I bought (clay, tape, paper, etc. It's a whole thing.) was that I thought that their OCD was actually a strength, and they hated themselves for it because they weren't in the right environment. Yeah, packing groceries at speed while everyone is shouting and causing bigger messes is killing that woman, but she'd be a fucking excellent accountant. She fit everything neatly into one container when I bought two because I was sure I'd need two (and thought to ask if I'd rather use the container than grocery bags, to which I was enthused. Why would I waste plastic if I don't have to?). This woman found an answer, tetrised the FUCK out of my odds and ends, and then felt bad about it?? So you can clearly see my thinking at the moment here.

Here's how it actually went. I told her she had impressive packing skills and that I have a deep respect for people who can get the tent back into the bag after camping (good), she told me she had OCD and I saw that she probably struggled with a lot of things that I have just in a slightly different way (good to internally recognize) stumbled and clunkily tried to empathize and talked about people with autism in STEM (getting into mid range, maybe shut the hell up territory here), proclaimed that I was autistic when she looked confused and irate saying she didn't have autism and restated that she had OCD (this is where I should have diverted, and REALLY should have shut the hell up), and then I sort of short circuited the conversation realizing that I'd walked onto a landmine because you're not supposed to acknowledge struggle out loud.

Now, let's distill what happened there. Thinking backwards, I can see that I've breached several taboos without realizing it in the moment.

You do not tell people that their disabilities can be strengths. This is undeniably true, and it is important, but you're not allowed to tell people that. People hearing that they would be a great OCD accountant don't hear "I think you can do something with your unique strengths even though I know you'll still struggle in daily life at the same time, and I want to encourage you" they hear "you're not being disabled right, it wouldn't be hard if you just used this one simple trick". You do not acknowledge the positives of something considered negative, it is impolite and seen as dismissive. I massively fucked that up and didn't realize until after I left the store.

Assuming that my experiences are universal, and that someone actually knows what the hell I'm talking about. I didn't even consider that this woman wouldn't see my silly ass in the eccentric clothes I wear and the odd facial expressions I make to stretch my face when I don't think people are watching me and go "AUTISM WOMAN!". To me, I see people with autism and it's very easy to tell that someone will probably see things a little more closely to how I do. I have a similar type of pattern recognition with other neurodivergencies, but it's not nearly as accurate. This may also be based in traumatic hypervigilance, I haven't really ironed out where the autism stops and the cptsd starts with that one, but it's less than relevant right now to knowing that retrospectively, that woman probably wasn't immediately seeing that I approach things in an odd and clunky sort of way. From the perspective of someone who knows nothing about the strange woman buying binder clips and modeling clay and a tackle box among other things, I could be a teacher who is setting up for a craft week and can't be fucked to remember exactly what the woman said she had, or maybe I could be a politician who wants social points despite not caring, or maybe I'm a little hard of hearing and I just misheard. Never assume someone has any idea what the hell you're talking about, but also don't point out that you don't know what they don't know. Do not EVER suggest that someone might not know something. If they don't actually know something, it's more common to get defensive than be thankful that you want to show them, and if they do know something, they'll assume you're trying to talk to them like they're not intelligent.

I sort of just stopped talking after I realized I'd stepped on a landmine. You are only allowed to do that if you are good at looking guilty. Did I feel guilty? Absolutely. Am I good at showing that subtle emotion on my face in a way that isn't a cartoonish caricature? Hell no. I sort of just quietly stared. If you aren't good at expressing that you feel like an asshole, then you aren't allowed to stop talking. Change the subject to something unrelated and try to play it off, maybe a light amount of self deprecating apology, but do not just quietly process. If someone sees you staring at them after you say some stupid shit, they can't see the gears turning in your head telling you you're a moron and trying to calculate what to say next, they see someone who said something bad and is now staring expectantly, or perhaps trying to take back something that they don't want to be in trouble for even though they meant. For me, I don't usually say shit I don't mean, I say things I mean and if someone has a problem with my core beliefs driving it, I'll hear them out. If I still disagree, I'll tell them that and agree to respectfully not think they're right while they also respectfully think I'm not right either. Most people aren't good at that, and would rather avoid conflict than get curious about why the conflict exists. If you say some stupid shit, you have to be really careful explaining what's going on, because most people see that as a form of lying to cover up actually believing the stupid shit you said instead of seeing it as a translation error of what you actually believe. Once someone thinks you believe things that they strongly disagree with or that makes them uncomfortable (such as that they are an idiot, or that you see yourself as better, or that you don't care about their pain) it is damn near impossible to do anything to convince them otherwise. You can go a different route and show them your beliefs in other unrelated areas to paint a more complete picture of yourself and hope that they're willing to see the nuance and not softlock into misunderstanding based on that natural sort of vilification people do, or you can quietly apologize and utilize smalltalk techniques to find less treacherous taboo territory to at least get to the end of the interaction, but it is very unlikely that explaining yourself will ever do you as much good as just changing the subject.

This was a retail worker, and so the margin of taboo topics gets much stricter. In a bar, or at a park, if you start talking to someone they absolutely have the option to opt out. You can say some dumb shit by accident and they can raise an eyebrow and disengage. Retail workers are paid to pretend that they like you and to not object to anything, even if it causes them great discomfort. Their livelihood depends on them taking the brunt force of people with varying intentions, some of which is clumsy autism socializing, and some of which is direct hostility. Again from that point of people not being able to see your intentions, and the fact that someone has less to lose from being wrong about someone being autistic than being wrong about someone being hostile, these workers experience a daily sort of trauma response that reinforces that anyone who is odd or weird will be the least amount of threat if treated as hostile and needing customer service fawning rather than someone who wants to connect and understand. If in doubt about whether a retail worker really wants to talk to you about something they seem amiable to discuss, assume they do not. Assume that anyone who does not have the immediate easy and free option of leaving, someone who is held there by some amount of force, does not in fact want to discuss anything that is not surface level pleasantry if they don't ask something specific. If they ask for specifics and seem to hold niche knowledge, proceed with caution, but do not assume that someone asking detached sort of "yes and" questions actually wants to talk to you when they are not easily able to leave or tell you to fuck off.

People do not like thinking. Don't make people think, they hate it. I see someone having a problem, and I hurt for them, and I go "what do I do when I have a problem?" and then try to help them. When I have a problem, I try to fix it, and I look for other perspectives and research and odd solutions. Other people do not want opinions and perspectives, they want comfort and acknowledgement. If someone got their wallet stolen and is crying, they do not want to be told that you can lock credit cards. People would prefer you circle around and give them a hug and tell them that you would be upset too in that situation (with NO details on why, don't go too far into your own story, it's seen as sidetracking and not empathizing if you actually describe why you feel empathy) and then have to struggle for a week to find out how to lock their card. People do not like being asked to consider things and they do not like being given solutions unless you're offering to do it for them (and even then, sometimes this is also bad if it's something they haven't specifically voiced wanting some version of). People want you to watch them fall face first on the concrete and say "man, that looked like it hurt" not "I have a good dentist if you need a referral". Sharing these things is seen as "bossy" and makes people think you see them as incompetent, or that you don't value their autonomy. They do not see you wishing someone had offered you a dentist a few years back when you cracked your teeth, they see you telling them that they're incapable of finding their own dentist, and they see it as you saying that they aren't valid to be crying about their cracked teeth.

NOW- All of these things are descriptors and observations I've made over a lifetime, and logical translations of something that has always escaped me, the fine art of being more comfortable feeling validated and supported than with fixing problems, and the very difficult path of trying to translate my reverse approach in a way that makes people feel valued and respected without just resigning to never speak again. What if these sort of observations could be processed with the same sort of language processing that makes an LLM able to determine what you're most likely asking it to reference, pulling the references, synthesizing the most likely string of words that other people have used in a formula that incorporates your specific string of words and associated references to synonyms and context and such, and then form an answer out of it that sounds like people in the same way that you can clip together soundbites into a digital voice if you have enough audio samples.

I don't think having phrases fed back to me would really help anything at all. I'm not interested in being given a canned response that a neurotypical would come up with. I'm surrounded by those all the time and I still can't figure out how the hell to make them myself. What if I could make a database of taboos and social conventions and all those little things that come so naturally to other people, and I could make a tool that will highlight sentences of my responses to things and match it with the parts of the database that it flags as "why was what I said some dumb shit". Hell, link me to it directly, maybe have some varied examples of each so I can look at them.

Would other people maybe also be able to use this? Hell if I know.

[takesoffmymain]

There's not enough apple trees left

A ranting rambling sort of thing about why I think our (United States) economy is caving in. Not numbers, but more of a metaphorical approach to human behavior.

Our economy is collapsing. There's no question about it if you actually look at the patterns, not even if you pause for the uncertainty of the numbers they're purposely not releasing. Isn't that a flag in itself? That for years and years we've ran at a loss and everyone has been happy with the fudged numbers to enough of a degree that you could still give stats and people would smile about it. Isn't it a flag that even the fudged and sparkled up pretty numbers are so shit that the government and the businessmen aren't even willing to show them to us? The goal posts keep changing, and even with consistently more fudging and stat stretching, not even the most creative number skews can make this look good. I wish I could say I was surprised?

As a kid who grew up in a household that would have had enough money if not for the alcoholic who had access to the bank account, and as an adult who sees people around me who are feeling poor for the very first time, I know very well that societies don't collapse on lack of resources on their own. People have been poor and fighting for scraps for as long as there have been people. What collapses a society is a lack of meeting expectation. When you promise your people that if they do X Y and Z that they will get a loaf of bread, and they work so very hard to do X Y and Z believing you whole heartedly, of course there's going to be unrest when they're handed a single slice and told to be happy about it. It doesn't matter if their neighbor is getting half a slice, and it certainly doesn't matter that people in another country get no slice at all, it matters that they were promised a loaf and did not get anywhere near a loaf. It doesn't matter whether the bread factory burned down halfway through making the bread, it doesn't matter if the slices were desperately needed for other things, and it doesn't matter if getting a whole loaf of bread was never possible to begin with. It matters that the people who worked their asses off for the promised loaf of bread are feeling very cheated, and in that righteous anger of wondering where the remaining slices of their loaf of bread went, they will turn to their fellow single slice neighbors and make a plan about what to do about it. These people can't simply stop believing in a whole loaf, it's all they've ever known, and so they become angry and they do something about it.

On top of this unmet expectation causing anger, it forwards the jaded withdrawal of anyone who can make bread, which does in fact cause people to bake less bread. If nobody will ever get a loaf, why bake at all? These are the arguments that largely pervade any system that suggests redistribution of bread, and yet as we still sit around in a circle wondering where all the bread went despite being in one of the countries that values individualism as a mantra, I have to stop and ask if that's the real reason that societies run out of bread. I don't think people bake bread because they have some greater understanding that bread not baked is bread not eaten, I think that in a world where it is the expectation that baking bread means getting a loaf of bread, that the majority of the people in that world will learn to bake bread if they are at all able to. I think some people will find ways of baking bread that they love, other people will always hate baking bread but they'll find a way to do it anyway because if you don't bake bread you don't get a loaf of bread. I think that it largely doesn't matter whether or not the average person can bake five loaves, or ten, or even if there are a few people who never figure out how to knead the bread with the kitchens they have, what matters is that if you promise everyone that if they learn how to bake that they'll have a loaf of bread, and the way your society is set up doesn't get at least 90% of people who learn to bake a loaf of bread in their hands, you'll have a lot of angry bakers.

Let's instead move to apple trees as a metaphor. I hate the US government for a lot of reasons, and none of those reasons are the ones that I should. I hate the government because greed and selfishness I can understand, but blatant idiocy on such a wide and damaging scale is unforgivable. Our society is set up to make sure that only people who work hard and get ahead will truly ever succeed, and I think a lot of that is largely based on people who follow social Darwinism and other mockeries of actual evolutionary theory. We are a meritocracy in the idealist sort of way that we aren't, and a country where anyone who "works hard" and wants it badly enough can have a big enough bushel of apples at the end of every season to at the very least make it to the next one without starving. This is a wonderful plan on paper when you don't actually have even half of a brain cell to put towards how a society actually gathers the apples and feeds its people. I'm sure people who are better with times and dates of history (and not just broad strokes of events and wars and who did what and why in a sort of disconnected passing interest way) could tell you exactly when the USA had its first apple trees cut at a large and devastating scale, and I'd just about guarantee you it'd be somewhere around the time that credit cards and loans became a thing. Back to our nice little self contained metaphor, we are a world suspended on the branches of a tree, and the products of our labor and joy and bread baking and dancing and anything else is an apple on this tree. To grow apples, we need a trunk. The trunk of this tree draws water from the ground, and it is also dependent on the leaves to soak up the sunlight, and it's a complicated system that ebbs and flows, but without the trunk to hold the tree down in the winter and wake up with leaves in the spring, you will have no apples. The tree trunk of our society is the people who grow things, the people who make things, the children who will one day grow up to be leaves and bark and twigs. It seems like the most stupid and short sighted decision ever made to cut social programs.

Even the cartels in Mexico know better than to let tourists get killed. How is our own government more idiotic than a ring of organized criminals? How is it that in the capital of the world for business folks who will sell you for a dime, that our CEOs and senators are so goddamn short sighted that they'd rather cut down the tree to get all of the apples than get less apples all at once yes, but still have a tree trunk for next season when the leaves start to wake up and the apple blossoms need somewhere to unfold. I see people who are against SNAP benefits and free lunch for children, and as the adult who was a kid that is only alive due to many social programs, I am furious. I'm not furious because of child welfare. I probably should be, but god knows I have too many walls to see this as the humanitarian crisis it is and not just a really god awful business decision.

How is it that the people who bake bread are also the people who get the smallest slice? Why are the people who are good at organizing bread baking taking so much bread from the bakers that the bakers don't feel like it's worth it to bake bread anymore? Why the hell are you cutting down apple trees when next season there will be no more apples? You don't feed children and pay living wages because you're a good person, and if you do props for that, but that's not what fixes a corrupt system. You have to feed your children and keep your bakers motivated to bake because children grow up into the people who bake, and if you don't have any bakers left, then nobody is getting any bread at all. How the hell did we get so far into the grips of people chopping down apple trees, forging a society where either you chip away at your own company tree or else you get left in the grove of trees that have already been chopped, and get to a point where either you chop down apple trees or you starve because there aren't any trees left that someone won't chop up from under you if you don't cut it down yourself.

I'm furious not because people are hurting, because I've been hurting my whole life, and being mad about that doesn't change a damn thing. I'm pissed off because for whatever reason, we've reached a point where the only way to survive is to kill the baker for their bread and then sit in the wreckage of all the bakeries and the fields of apple tree stumps and hope desperately that maybe the next field over won't be fully barren yet, and that if you can find a tiny little bakery not too wrecked to salvage and bake in, that you'll be able to bake enough bread that you can keep your bakery that you've poured your blood and sweat into the walls of, and that you'll be able to bake enough bread that you can keep people from killing you because there is no bread left and you've found a way to bake. Building walls and fences and protecting your bread, and looking around at the people killing each other outside of your bakery walls, and not being willing to share your bread, because good god you don't want to be the person clinging to blood soaked crumbs just as much as they don't.

There is no moral point to this, and I sure as hell wish I had a solution, because we've also historically seen that destroying the bakeries surrounded by fences and bread guards also doesn't really fix the problem of there not being enough bakeries or apple trees or anything else either, it just leaves you trying to figure out where else you might be able to get bread and apples, but what the fuck. Self centered ego, barricading into your barbed wire bakery, I can understand, but why the hell are we making decisions that brings us to that to start?