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[secretboyxs-blog-deactivated202]

[rlyehtaxidermist]

one of the best academic paper titles

[rlyehtaxidermist]

for those who don't speak academia: "according to our MRI machine, dead fish can recognise human emotions. this suggests we probably should look at the results of our MRI machine a bit more carefully"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I hope everyone realises how incredibly important this dead fish study is. This was SO fucking important.

[imightbeobsessedwithsocks]

I still don’t understand

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

So basically, in the psych and social science fields, researchers would (I don't know if they still do this, I've been out of science for awhile) sling around MRIs like microbiolosts sling around metagenomic analyses. MRIs can measure a lot but people would use them to measure 'activity' in the brain which is like... it's basically the machine doing a fuckload of statistics on brain images of your blood vessels while you do or think about stuff. So you throw a dude in the machine and take a scan, then give him a piece of chocolate cake and throw him back in and the pleasure centres light up. Bam! Eating chocolate makes you happy, proven with MRI! Simple!

These tests get used for all kinds of stuff, and they get used by a lot of people who don't actually know what they're doing, how to interpret the data, or whether there's any real link between what they're measuring and what they're claiming. It's why you see shit going around like "men think of women as objects because when they look at a woman, the same part of their brain is active as when they look at a tool!" and "if you play Mozart for your baby for twenty minutes then their imagination improves, we imaged the brain to prove it!" and "we found where God is in the brain! Christians have more brain activity in this region than atheists!"

There are numerous problems with this kind of science, but the most pressing issue is the validity of the scans themselves. As I said, there's a fair bit of stats to turn an MRI image into 'brain activity', and then you do even more stats on that to get your results. Bennett et. al.'s work ran one of these sorts of experiments, with one difference -- they used a dead salmon instead of living human subjects. And they got positive results. The same sort of experiment, the same methodology, the same results that people were bandying about as positive results. According to the methodology in common use, dead salmon can distinguish human facial expressions. Meaning one of two things:

Dead salmon can recognise human facial expressions. OR

Everyone else's results are garbage also, none of you have data for any of this junk.

I cannot overstate just how many papers were completely fucking destroyed by this experiment. Entire careers of particularly lazy scientists were built on these sorts of experiments. A decent chunk of modern experimental neuropsychology was resting on it. Which shows that science is like everything else -- the best advances are motivated by spite.

[quick-wide-perception]

[maximien-deactivated20230901]

[mercuryfountain-deactivated2024]

Gay men have an incel problem. There's no doubt that "attractiveness" is a loaded concept and that beauty standards correlate with power relations, but it is rare to find a discourse framework so dogmatic in its association of beauty with privilege. It's morally just, then, that "privilege" be knocked down a peg. That guy who won't let you, specifically, fuck him? He's your oppressor, and if you're feeling more bold he's an airhead. He's catty and shallow. He's a disease-riddled drug abusing slut. He's probably insecure and has no self worth outside of sex and parties. See how quickly the logic of "punching up" becomes the pickup artist technique of "negging." The object of your desire, who it's your birthright to have sex with, is unapproachable, but you can bring him to your level and assert control by making him insecure.

One of the most glaring exceptions I can think of to the notion of beauty as power includes those who maintain a certain physique for sex work. The stripper or "OnlyFans gay" could be outed and fired from his day job, the boy who pays his living expenses through sugaring lives at the mercy of these relationships, the full service sex worker could face the full brunt of state violence and incarceration. What power do they really have? Apparently just enough for gay sex workers to be a consistent target of incel-style harassment on The Website Formerly Known as Twitter.

Since all parties involved are men or in some way adjacent to manhood, it's hard to apply a predictable script of gender relations to these interactions. But it's hard not to see a resemblance between "jocks" and "Chads," "twinks" and "Stacys," "InstaGays" and "E-Girls." If this all sounds ridiculous, it is. But half a century of "Castro Clone" discourse has borne no fruit. Insightful conversations on intra-community power relations and people excluded from gay life on account of their bodies are too often overshadowed by a politics of sexual entitlement and resentment. It is then no longer about disparities of race, ability or class but 20 year olds with Lana Del Rey profile pics who have nothing to add to the conversation but their own unfunny memes and bitterness. Log off.

[blu-lifestyle]

[robsheridan]

Photographs recovered from the mysterious Zorovic Building in New York prior to its destruction in 1913, showing summonings, materializations, and other dark magic rituals which allegedly occurred in the building’s various rooms around the turn of the 20th century.

Legend goes that the Zorovic Building's foundation ran deep underground into a “soft place” - a “wound” in the fabric of spacetime where our dimension becomes unnaturally close to other realms; imperceptible to human senses but ripe, according to spiritualists, for channeling beings and magic from beyond.

Officially, however, so little is known about the building that historians classify its entire existence as urban folklore, as it does not appear in any historical records. But paranormal researchers and amateur sleuths believe records were altered and destroyed to protect the exact location where the building once stood, so its unique paranormal attributes could never again be exploited for the terrifying evils which once occurred there; or perhaps, more sinisterly, to conceal the secrets of whichever new building now stands on its plot… 

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NOTE: This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series. NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.

If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon for frequent exclusive hi-res wallpaper packs, behind-the-scenes features, downloads, events, contests, and an awesome fan community. Direct fan support is what keeps me going as an independent creator, and it means the world to me.

[jonathanpio]

[thispreciousthing]

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

AI art bros are big mad about it.

[fuks]

crying rn 🥹

[dadvans]

[durgapolashi]

“You know, stories change, just like the lives we’ve lived and selves we’ve inhabited. Nobody’s been the same person twice. I mean really. It’s the people walking around acting and sounding especially self-assured and whole who worry me the most.

I like hearing the world’s stories about itself. That’s partly why I teach world literature. It helps me feel less incarcerated by the world, or my past, or my mistakes and confusions. It helps me remember I’m not just American. I’m not just a woman. A mother. A teacher. A wife. I find value in thinking in stories. Aren’t we all woven through with stories? Isn’t that how we think of our lives, how we survive them? Now, when someone hurts me, I remember that they are only living the terms of their own fictions—sometimes desperately—so their selves don’t unravel.

I like that idea. A woven person.

Little misshapen stars made of straw.”

Woven By Lidia Yuknavitch

[wei--wuxian]

what are your twenties if not an endless string of the ghosts of who you thought you would become

[wei--wuxian]

it's okay to start over. (and over, and over, and over)

i'm halfway through now and dying for the second time. forgive yourself for it. as many times as it takes.

[thefelineofaveb]

I'm 29 now and people look at me funny whan I say this is my third life. I already got through two versions of myself and I guess I'll go through many more!

And that's more than okay - it's actually exciting.

(Even though I still hope there is not life after death... enough is enough, I guess lol)

[frederick-the-great]

I have heard the Youth’s concerns about problematic media and so I’ve decided to compile a list of non-problematic books you all should definitely read!! #tikok

Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. A classic of Young Adult Lit.

Forbidden Colours by Yukio Mishima. A beautiful story of friendship between a young man and his older mentor. Great for anyone who uses the word sempai unironically.

Dangerous Liaisons by Chloderlos de Laclos. A roguish French aristocrat unintentionally falls in love and decides to change his life. Lovers to Enemies.

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Basically, Call me by your Name for Adults.

Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac. A bunch of friends living their best life in a Parisian tenancy.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Love Boat but down the Congo River.

Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. A 19th century mock-documentary into the ups and downs of a Russian family.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Marie Remarque. If you liked Little Life, you will LOVE this.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Your twitter bffs band together and decide to live in a picturesque New England town.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A 14th century retelling of Heartstopper.

[archivedeathdrive]

Carl Jung’s Model of the Psyche and Psychological Development

[beaft]

it sounds ridiculously obvious now, but one of the best pieces of writing advice i've ever received is that most of the time, a character's flaws are also their strengths. a smart person might have trouble admitting they're wrong, or break down when they don't know how to solve something; a practical, capable person might lack emotional intelligence. a determined person might be so focused on their goals that they neglect their friends and ignore anything "superfluous" (i.e. they don't notice minor details that turn out to be important later on). kindness can become naivety; open-mindedness can become centrism; confidence can become arrogance. sometimes it's tempting to just reach into a grab bag of positive and negative traits and sprinkle them in at random, but it's much better to instead isolate the things you like about your character and take those traits to the logical extreme.

[menidpayfor-deactivated20250430]

[nathanielthecurious]

a lot of you hate historians and archaeologists, and i think that’s a problem

look, i fully recognize that there are reasons to be skeptical of history and archaeology. i am very on board with criticizing academia as an oppressive institution, and the way that researchers take their bigotry and bias with them to their work. i also recognize that academia does a pretty bad job of communicating what it does to the public, and that’s a part of why people’s hostility to it is able to flourish.

but i am disturbed by the pervasive narrative in online leftist spaces that people who research the human past are ignorant and bigoted, and i think we need to do more to combat that narrative.

historians being homophobic has become a whole meme, and it feels like people are just using historians as a homophobia scapegoat, when in reality the humanities are overwhelmingly left-leaning. people also keep blaming historians for erasing the homoeroticism of fictional literary characters, which is just… not what historians do. homophobic biases and erasures in the interpretation of history over the past few hundred years are a very real thing that’s important to learn about, but scholars have radically shifted away from that approach in recent generations, and these memes are not helping people outside the field to understand history and reception. instead, a lot of people are coming away with the impression that…

(source… really? nobody?)

this thread gets bonus points for the comments claiming that modern historians argue about whether achilles was a top or a bottom using homophobic stereotypes, which i can only guess is a misunderstanding of the erastes/eromenos model (a relationship schema in classical greece; i think people have debated whether achilles and patroclus represent an early version of it). also a commenter claims that the movie troy invented the idea of achilles and patroclus being cousins when no, they were also cousins in lots of ancient sources.

there’s this post about roman dodecahedra (link includes explanation of why the original post is misleading).

there’s this thread about how some thin gold spirals from ancient denmark look exactly like materials used in gold embroidery to this day but archaeologists are stupid and don’t know that because they dont talk to embroiderers enough. in fact, the article says they were most likely used for decorating clothing, whether as a fringe, braided into hair, or embroidered. so the archaeologists in the article basically agree with the post, theyre just less certain about it, because an artifact looking similar to a modern device doesn’t necessarily mean they have identical uses.

this thread has a lot of people interpreting academic nuance as erasure. the museum label literally says that this kind of statue typically depicts a married couple, giving you the factual evidence so you can interpret it. it would be false to say “these two women are married” because there was no gay marriage in ancient egypt. (interpreting nuance as erasure or ignorance is a running theme here, and it points to a disconnect, a public ignorance of how history is studied, that we can very much remedy)

lots of other conspiracy theory-ish stuff about ancient egypt is common in social justice communities, which egyptologists on this site have done a good job of debunking

oh, and this kind of thing has been going around. the problem with it is that there are loads of marginalized academics who research things related to their own lives, and lived experience and rigorous research are different forms of expertise that are both valuable.

so why does this matter?

none of these are isolated incidents. for everything i’ve linked here, there are examples i havent linked. anti-intellectualism, especially against the humanities, is rampant lately across the political spectrum, and it’s very dangerous. it’s not the same as wanting to see and understand evidence for yourself, it’s not the same as criticizing institutions of academic research. it’s the assumption that scholars are out to get you and the perception that there is no knowledge to be gained from thorough study. that mindset is closely connected to the denial of (political, scientific, and yes historical) facts that we’ve been seeing all around us in recent years.

on a personal note, so many marginalized scholars are trying to survive the dumpster fire of academia because we care that much about making sure the stories that are too often unheard don’t get left out of history… and when that’s the entire focus of my life right now, it’s disheartening to see how many of my political allies are just going to assume the worst about the entire field

[classicslesbianopinions]

[image description: a text post that reads, “nobody hates gay people more than historians.” it’s tagged with “gay,” “ancient history,” “achilles and patroclus,” “historians,” “ancient greece,” “history.” end image description]