Things I Wish I Had Known Sooner

Life Advice From A Person Born In 1980, Still Learning As I Go Along

[danskjavlarna]

Source details and larger version.

[diserbillyti]

So because I used to work with a lot of young men, I've seen/read a lot of manosphere shit (genuinely I had to know what a sneako is for work) and read/watched a lot of opinion pieces on the manosphere.

Something I notice is, when men discuss the manosphere, they either centre the reason boys fall down that pipeline on some inner weakness or defectiveness of the boy, ie. "they're just autistic weirdos who want rules for women because they can't get their dick wet," or they centre the reason on women, "feminism had made women too woke, mean and impossible to socialise with."

What I noticed while working is that every single little Tate goblin I had to work with had conservative parents, and I have never once seen that aspect of all this discussed. Boys will reflect the social norms they are raised in within their household. The biggest preventative for manosphere bullshit I saw in the boys I worked with was a dad who isn't a fuckwit and a household that isn't LARPing the 1960s.

Blaming disabled people and women for shit men do instead of the men in the immediate vicinity with an active role in the situation seems to be a trend.

[podcastwizard]

you don’t realize how important lunch is until you’re wandering around thinking about how unloveable and untalented and uniquely cursed you are and then it’s 4pm and you finally eat lunch and you go Oh. oh right.

[wheelie-sick]

sometimes people experiencing psychosis and/or mania will come up to you on the street and talk in confusing or upsetting ways. your job is to either have a regular human-to-human conversation with that person or politely leave. your job is not to call 911. do not call 911. you might kill that person if you call 911.

[wheelie-sick]

I don't even have the energy to screenshot and respond to your tags- what the actual fuck is wrong with you? "the cops are scared and rightfully so" "mental health calls are the scariest for cops" OH so this isn't about the safety of psychotic & manic people this is about piggy feelings?

and no, actually, this is not USA specific and no, actually, people from other countries should not ignore this post. police violence and sanism weren't invented in the US and they are certainly not unique to here. if you (or anyone) thinks that this bullshit doesn't happen elsewhere then you are not listening.

[headspace-hotel]

cops r Some Guy with a Gun

do we want Some Guy with a Gun in this situation? answer is usually "NO"

[uncivilliberties]

This is legitimately useful reframing. A while ago I started replacing the word "cop" in my vocabulary with "a man with a gun." It really puts things into perspective.

This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?

My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?

There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?

It makes it very clear what you're saying. I can call a man with a gun to threaten or hurt someone mildly inconveniencing me. You're not calling the cops, you're calling A MAN WITH A GUN into a situation that does not warrant a firearm handled by a volatile lunatic who will not be held accountable for his actions.

[headspace-hotel]

^ ^ ^

[goldcrescent]

I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀

[goldcrescent]

if you say women are intentionally nerfed from birth in 2026 people look at you like you’re insane and start condescendingly telling you about how women are just better at different things (but not during their periods haha) but this was a completely basic feminist talking point I grew up with like “girls can do it too! [shot of little girls climbing and running with boys]” nickelodeon commercial tier base level I hate it how is everyone suddenly dumber than the average 7 year old

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[sequel2heaven]

It's perfectly natural for autists to like trains because trains are like our older brothers, to whom we can look up. Trains are big and strong creatures; unstoppable and proud, but they are elegant and logical. Not human but like humanity they are higher than beasts. The train is like a stoic sword hero who does what must be done and whose will must be respected, for his course cannot be altered. A train is an adult man with asperger's who has a job. And he's faster than everybody. I could be like him some day.

[muttsandmustelidae]

From the Nashville Zoo’s fb page! Here’s the petition, please please please take a moment to add your name (even if you’re not from Nashville!). If you are from Tennessee, contact your representatives and make it clear that the people do not want this data center. This is an AZA accredited zoo which is home to several species of critically endangered animals, we NEED to protect it. Make your voice heard!

[muttsandmustelidae]

Because people will pay attention to cute animals, here are some of the critically endangered/endangered species housed at the Nashville Zoo!

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

Look at them!!!! Look at them and fight like hell to save them!!!!

[goth-queen]

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[sucresanguine]

When you look up a historical trans man and get one early depiction, followed by a later historical depiction where they're basically force femmed

Like yeah I'm sure he consistently passed in the Russian army with the eyebrows and lipstick of greta fucking garbo. Any guesses to which picture is used more often?

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Voting ended onJun 11

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Voting ended onJun 11

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Voting ended onJun 11

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

Edit: AI here is referring to generative AI, rather than closed models or custom made LLMs trained on internal datasets

Edit" "tumblr is not the best place to do data collection" "most biased sample group" yup. cool. good.

🫶

[derrickwildsun-deactivated20250]

That video of Alex Hirsch reading S&P notes for Gravity Falls conveys a few things to me:

1) the U.S. entertainment industry (especially animation) is run by older conservative types who make up offensive terms and get really mad about them.

2) the people who run Disney would be the first to fall in line with a fascist regime.

3) most of the media we consume is tailor-made and watered-down to appeal to the tastes of older, deeply religious conservative audiences.

4) conservatism, not the left, is and always has been the biggest voice of censorship in American culture.

[sci-fantasy]

J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, was before that a producer and writer for a number of cartoons in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s (The Real Ghostbusters and the original She-Ra, most notably). After a few years of dealing with the censors and their obsession with finding Satanism (or at least looking for Satanism to further political agendas) he wrote an article about the whole corrupt and bullshit system.

And published it in Penthouse, to force those same censors to buy a skin mag. The editor there asked, why Penthouse?

That one is from his autobiography, Becoming Superman. See also:

(As he goes on to say, he’s never worked in animation again–he’s effectively been blacklisted by the cartoon industry.)

[transhuman-priestess]

Every time something like this comes up, I remember two stories about making media. The first is about movies, and comes from Quentin “Feet Man” Tarantino.

When he was making Pulp Fiction, he was worried that the MPAA would object to the high level of violence in the film, so he shot a bunch of extra-gory stuff that he didn’t actually want in the film, and added it in before submitting it to the MPAA. Predictibly, they asked him to cut most of it (without even commenting on some of the things that had him worried, like the bits of Marvin’s skull that lodge in Samuel L. Jackson’s hairpiece). The resultant cuts were actually more permissive than he’d expected, so he cut a little more and submitted it, and it got passed with an R.

The second story is about that artist on Morrowind whose name escapes me (I’m not a big ES fan tbh) who figured out that if he made two creature designs, one weird and what he wanted, and one even weirder, he could get Todd Howard to agree to just about anything by showing him the whopper first, then going back and “working” for another few hours on a second, “toned-down” version, and it worked every time.

The reason I bring these up is that the thing that drives censors isn’t some extant physical rubrick of what is and isn’t acceptable, it’s the idea that they can have absolute power over someone else’s creative work. It’s about the social dominance of the interaction.

There is nothing so innocent, so clean, that a censor will not find some fault with it. Because they must find something wrong with it to justify their existence, and because it makes them feel powerful.

This is true of all censorship.

[ahedderick]

I see

I had an eye appointment today, for the first time in three years. I had a bad experience at that office in 2023, and I haven't wanted to go back. I really liked Dr P, and have been a client of his for over thirty blind, blind years, but he's sidestepping slowly into retirement by reducing his hours. I didn't like the other Dr that was there at all. Fortunately, the not-good doc left, and they have two new ones taking over the practice. I met Dr. M today, and he seems fine. Did have one issue during the "Is it better here? or Here" portion when just everything he was showing me was blurry and foggy. TURNS OUT it was humid enough that the lens I was looking through had fogged up from the heat of my poor little eyeball. Once we figured that out, the rest of the exam went a little smoother.

I'm getting a pair of glasses specifically for close vision. Turns out that normal bifocals have a distance part and a "close-but-not-too close" part. Soooo . . you can read a book with them, but something truly tiny and detailed, like threading a needle or some artwork is not possible.

I don't know why no one told me that befooooore; I even took a needle and thread with me to my last appointment to show them what I was struggling with.

He is going to give me a pair where the top part of the lens is normal close vision, like using a computer screen or reading, and a bit at the bottom of the lens is for Very Close stuff like threading a needle. Hmm. I'm in the lucky 10,000 today, but slightly disgruntled that no one told me this was a thing before. I will keep my current pair, which are perfectly fine for distance, and use them for driving.

Picking out the new frames was a bit of an ordeal ($hee$h!), and driving home with dilated eyes was not much fun, either. I look forward to being able to see better, though, and not having to pull my glasses off all the time. I have also, a few days ago, ordered new sunglasses that I can put over my regular glasses. In the last two years I have broken or lost two pairs of clip-ons and two fit-overs. Again, $hee$h.

[armadillorollup]

submitted my final thesis + found out my 1st first author paper has gone out to review + ratio!

[astriiformes]

Other people have touched on this more eloquently, but I love that Ryland Grace is at his core a teacher. A middle school science teacher. Sure, his background as a former academic is also critical to the story, mostly because something about him needed to catch Stratt's eye and thus result in him getting dragged into the project, but more importantly than that, he hated being in academia. The book makes it fairly explicit that he wrote his controversial paper and insulted a leading scientist in his field because he was burnt out and hated the environment and got self-destructive as a result, which is a far less rosy view of academic science than I would have expected (and, frankly, completely believable).

And then he left and became a middle school science teacher. And that turned out to be his real calling. He was bright and creative and a little bit brilliant and a genuinely good scientist, and he gave that world up to teach kids and he loved it. Even after everything, after the Petrova Taskforce and Project Hail Mary and Tau Ceti and ultimately ending up on Erid, his calling is to teach kids.

As someone who has dipped in and out of the science communication/science education world myself, it's so important to me that Grace loves teaching, and especially that he loves teaching kids. People really devalue science communication work, and there's often this unspoken assumption that the people doing it just aren't "smart enough" to become real scientists, so they do scicomm instead. And everything about Grace flies in the face of that -- he's perfectly capable of doing the science, but it's not what he loves the most! What he loves and values and finds important is teaching, and I adore that. It's so refreshing to see, and such a genuine love letter to educators, and to everyone who chooses to prioritize communication and education regardless of how specialized they may or may not be in their field.

His happy ending is to be a teacher. And that's so important.

[markovchaingang]

hey you. teenage girl writing in her diary. quit talking about the boy you have a crush on and start writing about the current political situation, the valuation of currencies, and the level of technology your people hold. your diary might be the only piece of evidence our society existed after nuclear war fries all of our data backups. future historians don't need to know about damian, they need at least a secondhand accounts of the great water wars and whether or not your leaders truly did worship a deity called "the free hand of the market"

[mothnem]

Keep writing about your crush Teenaged Girl. About your clothes, and how that other girl wore the same dress as you. Paint me a picture of what you were like.

[enchantedlantern]

Historians are going to hear about Damian and they're gonna LIKE IT

[therealbeachfox]

Make those future Historians reverse engineer the socioeconomic hierarchies of the 21st century from dreamy descriptions of Damian's current fashions. It's giving them enrichment.

[vaspider]

Talk about the things you want to talk about. You never know what mysteries your diary might solve in future generations bc you are the only person who talks about something that other people thought was too obvious to talk about, like whatever that third condiment dish that used to be on the table with salt and pepper was for.