known radikweer

mod erin of @just-antithings. bi femme aroace lesbian demigirl, she/they, 29. inclusionist, pro-mogai, intersectional feminist, pro-shipping, pro-kink, pro-choice, pro-fat acceptance, pro-self diagnosis, sex positive. I will not reblog your donation post unless you ask me to. don’t involve me in map discourse or irl incest discourse.

[youareagoodperson]

FDA upgrades nationwide cheese recall to highest danger level after listeria-causing bacteria found

The reclassification is tied to the detection of Listeria monocytogenes, a bacteria that can cause severe illness.

stay safe everyone!

[cerastes]

Hey, I’m a random internet person you’ve never talked to before. Just making sure your fetish is morally aligned with my principles and what I consider virtuous.

[k1ntsug1-r0b0t-g1rl]

a surprising number of people see the term "social construct" and think that it means something is not real when it actually means something is so very real because it was created by us and is constantly enforced, often violently

[rejectingrepublicans]

[myfootyrthroat]

Sometimes it's not "your fault" but it's still "your problem" because nobody else can fix it.

[myfootyrthroat]

If your history of trauma causes you to respond to totally normal interactions as if you're under threat of violence, you are likely to be a source of trauma for other people, and you should work on that.

It's not your fault that you were traumatized, but you're literally the only person who can fix you.

[stephenroot]

I hate cigarettes so much I hate that smoking is becoming cool again I hate that we're becoming contrarian hipsters about this disgusting habit that has literally killed so many people and destroyed so many lives I'm so serious we need to become absolute killjoys about this again it's time to go 90s scolds on cigarettes until the scourge is wiped out entirely.

[stephenroot]

Genuinely I just don't think people younger than 35 know how good they have it. I distinctly remember the year in my childhood that it became illegal to smoke in restaurants, I remember what it was like when people used to smoke indoors everywhere, you all think it's cool because it's this illicit fun thing people are doing drunk outside bars now, you don't remember what it was like when fucking everything reeked all the time and you couldn't get away from it and how life changing it was when you could suddenly go out to eat and everything didn't taste like ash and all your clothes and hair didn't stink for days when you got home.

[donnerpartyofone]

It's hard to say this without sounding like a right wing dickhead, but the thing about progressive spaces is that they may naturally attract people who are always on the lookout for excuses to start a fight. Like you can find yourself faced with someone whose political outrage is totally justified, and whose humanitarian ideals are right on the money, but simultaneously they are carrying a ton of psychological baggage about being wronged and getting revenge, and they will exploit literally any opportunity to live out this psychodrama with anyone in their line of vision. I have thought of several related anecdotes since I started typing this post, but I'll limit myself to the thing that inspired it, which is that I just visited this ultra-lefty cafe/bike shop/community gathering space where I've heard that the proprietor is constantly in a fight with everyone around her. When I paid for my stuff I noticed that there was no tip option, but I thought I had heard something about this, so I snuck away to look at the website and it made me really glad I didn't ask! I think there should have been a really enticing and exciting way for her to say "I've decided to be the change I want to see in the world, so I'm paying my baristas a full living wage, I'm making sure EVERYONE feels welcome and comfortable here, and I'm selling products I believe in!" -- but instead all the web copy sounded more like "You're either with me or against me, you're a fucking piece of shit asshole if you can't handle the inclusive atmosphere here, and by the way tipping is for fascist cavemen and if you ever try to tip someone you are refusing to relate to them authentically and you are enforcing a dangerous and evil power dynamic that should be purged from human society (so therefore I pay my staff well)." Like everything she stood for was totally agreeable, but why did she have to put it like it was directed at her worst enemy, rather than at the kinds of people she wants to attract? If the word on the street is to be believed, the reason for this posturing is that she spends quite a lot of energy making as many enemies as possible, and she probably likes it that way. I guess I'm just reminding myself, and perhaps others, that while one might think of "politics" as being broadly social and theoretical, no individual can fully separate the political from the intimately personal. Even somebody who seems to want to uplift and protect their fellow humans may be getting some perverse inner satisfaction out of that valiant crusade, and you may never realize it until you find yourself in a confusing fight with them.

[author-by-night]

I ran a LARP for a few years explicitly aimed at being queer friendly and accessible, and eventually cut it short mainly for this exact reason. You wouldn’t believe the amount of abuse my staff and I took for reasons that felt genuinely insane. I got called ableist for telling someone they couldn’t be invincible in my game of make believe, more than once. Defended myself, multiple Jewish players, and a conversion student from accusations of antisemitism based on alleged lore we’d never written / suggested / that simply and plainly did not exist in game. Had a staffer try to talk to someone about how a joke she made was uncomfortable only for this person to retaliate in epic proportions full white woman crocodile tears style, trying to get this staffer removed and eventually escalating into a full public hate campaign when she didn’t get her way. All that’s still just the tip of the iceberg.

Progressive spaces are naturally populated by traumatized people, and unfortunately trauma makes people more difficult. (I’m not excluded in that. No one is.) Running a progressive space is doubly difficult because a lot of left-facing trauma was inflicted by authority, so you’re setting yourself up to be the windmill that someone tilts their displaced rage at. I don’t really know what the solution is, but I do know that this is one of the huge reasons it’s so hard to find community: the people with a bone to pick can’t reach the ones who actually hurt them, but they’ll sure find you along the way, and the safer they feel around you the safer they’ll feel coming after you.

[ariaste]

Once again I am begging everyone to read Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss.

Voss spent 25 years as a hostage negotiator, meaning that his job was to talk to guys on the phone who had literal guns to innocent people's heads. He KNOWS how to compassionately de-escalate a conflict and have productive, constructive conversations with people who are highly activated and reactive.

Especially if you are neurodivergent, read this book. The communication tools are specific, concrete, easy to implement, and will dramatically reduce the psychic damage you're taking just from trying to navigate the conversation.

[elodieunderglass]

My mother was like this! Traumatised by childhood, and convinced that everyone was withholding justice from her, she spent her whole leftist life tilting at windmills, and fell into conspiracy thinking (“it’s not paranoia if they’re all out to get you.”) she will beef with anyone, rapidly making and losing friendships based on their perceived inability to appreciate quite how much Justice she needs. They’re either with her or against her, and even the faintest detectable eye-glazing during a trauma-dump, or an attempt to talk about themselves, is evidence that they’re not sufficiently dedicated to condemning her abusers. She’s really quite tiresome! She was genuinely abused! She has antibodies against the kind of support that would help!

she eventually became quite right-wing through conspiracy theory indoctrination, and while she doesn’t recognise this at all and still identifies as progressive, parrots the most toxic conservative talking points. I believe she’s super TERF-y at the moment for some reason. We don’t talk. A lonely way to live, but at some point the pattern has repeated to much that it must truly be the preferred way to live.

[caspercryptid]

I would actually go as far as to say that MOST abuse is unintentional. I think most people will go through their lives without ever experiencing intentional abuse. People are abusive because they're selfish, because they're stressed, because they care more about what society thinks they should do than the impacts of their actions on their children and partners, because they think what they're doing is correct, because they've made it make sense in their own heads, because they think they can fix their victims, they think they can fix their relationships, they think they can stop you from leaving, they think they can make you a better partner to them, they think that means you need to do what they want. We've sort of constructed mental illness in a way that doing this shit to other people counts as a form of mental illness because it is anti social behavior in the literal sense— it is behavior that causes social harm.

I don't say any of this to excuse it. I think everyone needs to be more aware of this because if you think abuse has to be intentional you will never realize you are capable of abusive behavior. You will never realize you are being shitty to the people you love, because YOU know what you mean, YOU know you don't mean any harm. But you're doing harm. You need to pay attention to the impact you have on other people, and you need to do it all the time, Especially when you feel least capable of doing so. Sorry! You live in a society. Get your head out of your ass.

[wolfsteax]

I humbly offer this contribution.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

the idea that a sex scene in fiction is fundamentally useless/simply for audience titillation UNLESS they’re fucking infodumping exposition while they bone or something is so funny and myopic to me. like, you really genuinely believe for real that there is NOTHING to be gained about your understanding of a story or characters simply from how they approach and engage in sex? really for real?

[glamrockmike]

realizing that the online sphere and especially tumblr is NOT a good sample for ‘what everyone thinks’ is so, so, so good for your mental health and moral OCD. i swear to god. realizing that you don’t have to live your actual life like you’re being hunted for sport because the average tumblr user will hunt you for sport for wording something slightly weird or engaging in the wrong stuff or whatever is so incredible. like no you’re actually not fucked up and evil for not donating or for watching that one indie cartoon or questioning a post that everybody is agreeing with. that’s just tumblrs georg making you feel that way

[draconym]

i would rather see the information for an event handwritten in sharpie on a paper towel than see another AI generated flyer

[homunculus-argument]

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

[therainstheyaredropping]

Yep.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]

I think my revised belief is that if you are stuck at how to get better at something, spend a little while assuming there’s just some trick to it you’ve missed. You can try to generate the trick yourself, but it’s probably easier to learn it by observing someone else being good at the thing, asking them some questions, and seeing if you have any lightbulb moment.

[hergan416]

My fiance played the clarinet when he was in school. When he was first learning to play, he rented an instrument from the school to learn on. He was the last chair clarinet, had been for years, because he could not make notes that required the register key. For years, they kept making him do embrature exercises and he started to get a few notes, with lots of effort. Eventually he had to get private lessons to stay in band.

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

Sometimes you don't need to brute force a problem. Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.

[nowordsandnotune]

Not quite sure why the clarinet addition got me crying, but here you go people: just in case, let's get you some new pads.

[busket]

both trans men and trans women are punished for our proximity to both feminity and masculinity. people decide when we are men or women based on what is the WORST option at the moment. we both get treated like women only when someone needs to infantalize us or call us bossy, bitchy, stupid, vapid. we both get treated like men when someone wants to demonize and paint us as violent, predatory, abusive, perverted. NONE of us are benefiting from any gendered privilege, because we are always treated like the worst of either gender depending on the scenario. this is something all trans people experience, regardless of agab, both trans men and trans women. so why do we assume that the other side has the opposite experience as us?? why do you think that because your life as a trans man or a trans woman is painful, that a trans person of a different gender must have the opposite experience?? like i just dont get the preschool level understanding of gender like "well boys and girls are opposites so of course our experiences are opposites too" we are living the same transphobia and if you cant see it you need to listen to other people more

[thebookewyrme]

I want to staple this post to the foreheads of a huge swath of the trans people on this site. Specifically here and at this time. My IRL trans community, my other online trans communities, all get this. Granted those are both significantly more curated but still. WE HAVE TO HAVE EACH OTHER’S BACKS BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL. I don’t get what is so hard about that concept. We are all having the same sorts of experiences. I have more in common with my trans-femme girlfriend than my cis ex. And this is NOT because I was badly matched with my ex. Maybe my girlfriend injects her hormones with a different size needle than I do, but we’re both still holding a fucking needle you know???

Anyway, trans solidarity is a matter of basic survival right now. Stop doing the fascists’ work for them by turning on your trans siblings. It’s actively dangerous.

[writingdose]

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

the only thing AI checker does is harm genuine artists and people in general too.

[vaspider]

Online Age Verification Law Could Kill Whistleblowing

The KIDS Act, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.

Contact your representatives, US folx. Yes, even if you're scared. Yes, even if you think it doesn't matter, even if you think they won't listen. Write an email if you can't make a call. Call after hours and leave a message. Call during office hours if you feel up to it, but do something. Call every day. Email every day. Fucking bother your rep. They work for you, not the other way around.

Your single call is not the point. The point is the aggregate of calls and emails. The point is that even "safe" Republicans don't feel really safe right now. The point is that "safe" Democrats are feeling pressure from the left due to the success of DSA candidates. You think they won't listen, and they'll probably try to make you think they're not, but they do, in the aggregate. The midterms have them running scared right now, and now is the time to shut this shit down.

Yes, again. Sorry it's not over. The people who really, really want to criminalize dissent are going to make us keep fighting this one. Sorry about that, but keep fighting.

[lakemojave]

You know that whatever character did those problematic things isn't like. Real, right?

[lakemojave]

You are aware that a fictional character is just a rhetorical construct designed to fulfill a narrative/thematic purpose right? That their actions are written by an author who wants to use them to explore complex ideas and moral gray areas within the safe confines of fiction right? That they aren't a real person who has killed real people right?

[twofingerswhiskey]

"oh food now has so much added to it, past food was so pure and untainted" victorians used to cut bread with chalk and aluminum powder. romans put lead in the wine, which was made from dirty feet mushing unwashed grapes covered in horse shit and road dust. i think our species will survive a few additives in food. our food systems have never been cleaner and safer. it has room for improvement, but we're not putting fucking plaster of paris in the milk