Drivebyhaiku

@Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The torque better not be too strong with this one⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Ohhh no… As a person who regularly builds random shit for film and television, the single slotted screw is the bane of my bloody existence. Some designers fucking love em for the aesthetic but the cam outs on them are terrible. Is it technically easier to produce? Yes, is it viable to use for construction purposes comparitively - fuck no. Every time you cam out ( lose traction on the screw) you risk accidentally damaging whatever medium you are screwing into.

  Locally there is an insane institutional preference for the Robertson screw (which is basically a square) because it doesn’t cam out much, drives in well and arguably resists stripping better than a Phillips… This is believed in so much that any screw not seen by the camera is a Robby (usually size 2) while anything that is perceived by the audience is a phillips or a single slot screw. Given a choice nobody wants to handle single slots and chances are good you only find them in period specific builds or when the designer is a psychopath.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bumper sticker⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, your name is pretty accurate huh?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bumper sticker⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, lucky you.

  While I won’t argue that the media is causing a number of problems thinking it’s a storm in a teacup is your privilege showing. Even though I live in one of the most trans accepting places on the planet I have had the unique experience of having to sneak past protesters who are trying to remove people like me from public life, using slurs over megaphones and openly marching hundreds strong in the streets… And again this is rated one of if not the most trans friendly place in the world. There is no safer place to go.

  It’s a lot harder to see it as a storm in a teacup when the world is dramatically becoming a smaller place for us personally because laws keep passing that people do not understand or do not care how they actually impact us. The media doesn’t report a lot of us who are murdered even when it’s a hate crime. This year in the US there was 41-ish such hate motivated crimes which is near double 2023’s total… But we can’t be sure of the actual number because a lot of the time the transness of the victim and the nature of the motive is obscured by the media reporting. Some of the media shenanigans only gets caught only by loved ones as media frequently uses vagueness and dead names that friends and community members don’t recognize because that person hasn’t gone by that name for decades.

  Your opinion comes from the fact you don’t personally have a horse in the race so whether you engage with it or not is a choice. The safe places are radically shrinking. The next government projected to win federally here is known to be openly hostile to trans people and I know that at least one of my friends will die directly as a result from them removing the supports currently in place. So enjoy the storm you aren’t living friend but realize saying it doesn’t exist is really crass to those who cannot find shelter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨True Story⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes I do. Because The situation in Gaza was not an election issue for Biden. There was a fantastic amount of campaigning, a lot of it bought and paid for, that turned that genocide into a single issue vote with tis holier than thou reaction of withdrawal from the entire system toted as the answer. It is political suicide to run a mainstream Pro-Palistine presidential campaign in the US. A candidate of one of the two main parties need unilateral support from their donation streams and encumbant systems and the Republicans knew that. They know that’s the devil’s bargain every DNC candidate has to sign to even get a shot.

  Republican money supported Jill Stein to serve as a spoiler candidate to engage those with a naive veiw of the system but still wanted to vote and then they helped pipe that message through all manner of socials that if enough people withold their vote then Kamala would have shift her position… Because they knew how enticing that is. The idea that you don’t have to compromise your integrity and that that will be rewarded. They turned this into a single issue campaign for so many people knowing that they didn’t need to shift their position even a little. They could let their Red capped demogogues talk about literally beheading people and those high on this intoxication of absolute righteousness would ONLY care about an issue that Republicans can flaunt their support in favor of.

  It was misplaced moral superiority in part that got us here because if you were lulled into not voting or voting third party because one candidate wasn’t “leftist enough” when the alternative is someone popular with an entrenched imobile base of support who wants to make sure leftistism dies dead then you failed to get the assignment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨True Story⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It wasn’t ‘voter apathy’ it was a misplaced sense of voter moral superiority. It’s the thing leftist rhetoric has been weak to for a very long time. That love of withholding support except for perfection. The idea that compromise or chosing a lesser evil from two bad options dirties you. It doesn’t matter what you lost if you personally took “the high ground”.

  This cutting of our noses to spite our face was exploited all to shit this election. They lulled people by appealing to the same zeal of righteousness that they know divides us fundamentally knowing that when push comes to shove people will turn up their noses on principle of not being personally catered to and forget that their ability to help at all is contingent on the freedoms that one party was explicitly putting on the chopping block.

  It will be a while before people can admit that they were duped and there’s a lot of fault to go around, particularly in those funded astroturf campaigns designed to bait the hook… The right have been watching us for the past decade they knew how to divide us and it is on US that so many of us fell for it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Divine Dick⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Neither Zeus nor Odin is canonically all seeing or all knowing. Zeus was tricked by Prometheus by accepting bones wrapped in fat as his sacrifice leaving what he really wanted, the nice juicy meat, as the human’s share. He had to get word of Persephone’s last known location from Apollo and has routinely been tricked by other clever Gods and mortals in his myth.

  Odin was not able to discover the plot behind the murder of Baldur until the confession of Loki nor did he know the location of Thor’s hammer when it was stolen (they had to ask Heimdal). He may have sacrificed his eye to trade one form of perception for another… But we aren’t really let on to what that perception actually is. In Norse myth only Mimir is functionally all seeing and Odin takes his council from his severed head, he has to ask for information he doesn’t implicitly know himself.

  There is a difference between simply very knowledgeable or powerful and actual omniscience or omnipotence it is not a matter of scale based on perspective, it’s a boolean function - one is either all powerful or they are not. If ever a god or other character needs to ask someone for information, is tricked by something obscured or fails to know something they are automatically proven to not be omniscient… In storytelling that tends to make them very boring characters because it means that most conflicts are automatically resolved and the cleverness or stupidity of a God is undercut when they simply know everything. Odin’s stories are ones where he goes and scouts, learns, adapts, formulates a plan and then gets away with murder because we are supposed to admire the process.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Divine Dick⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  We assume omnipotence from Gods but it’s not wholly true. Most gods out in the world of myth are limited in their reach and ability. If they are in a pantheon then often that implies that they have no direct power over each other and thus they are not all powerful.

  Interestingly omnicence or omnipresence is not something claimed even by the monotheistic religions. No God is actually all seeing. Plenty of times in script things have been hidden from God or something has to be told to God to bring it to his attention.

  This has nothing to do with his dick persay… Just the assumption of omnipotence. If the Christian God exists he coulda just be lying about what he’s capable of and what human is gunna be able to check the math? Guy seems like the kind of dick who would pull that shit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has "Self-Driving" devolved?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That the tech has evolved to be better actually is an assumption. The novel data problem hasn’t been meaningfully addressed really at all so mostly we assume that progress has been made… but it’s not meaningful progress. The promises being made for future capability is mostly pretty stale hype that hasn’t changed year to year with a lot of the targets remaining unchanged. We are getting more data on where specifically and how it’s failing, which is something, but overall it appears to be a plateau of non-linear progress with different updates being sometimes less safe than newer ones.

  That actually safe self driving cars might be decades away however is antithetical to the hype run marketing campaigns that are working overtime to put up smoke and mirrors around the issue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the term for someone that likes Jesus of Nazareth, but doesn't identify with church, religious dogma, or whatever?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My Grandmother always called this sort of thing being a “red letter Christian”. Basically like you take a highlighter to everything Jesus specifically did or said and discard the rest.

  My Mom’s family all followed this principle since like the 70’s thus saving my trans ass from any hint of intergenerationally inflicted religious trauma so I am a fan. My 92 year old great uncle went to bat to fight for non-binary gender accommodations in his seniors home because one of his nurses is an enby who was getting a raw deal from a number of their paitents. Honestly, though I don’t think the Christian God is what he says he is, his kid seems pretty chill.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon gets a good look at Steve-O⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Huh… I had no idea my partner of 15 years was quietly slinging above the pornstar mean. This is what you get when you are an ace trans masc guy who never dated around and doesn’t watch porn…

  Sitting on this embarrassment of riches all this time and never knew! (pun absolutely intended).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is a soyboy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I am just thankful for the giant feature length works of art that descend once a year crafted with the forethought and precision of one who refuses to compromise on the lengthy process of research.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I may have gotten the photo from this communuty.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Political correctness was fired in the early 2000’s. It was dissected as something called “cold politeness” that wasn’t really doing anything but making corporations and beaurcratic systems feel better about doing something to fix problems by slapping a new coat of paint over the mold. They subtly hired “Hey maybe just stop being a dick to people” into the role but nobody noticed it was a totally different guy.

  Now when people talk about what PC would say “Don’t be a Dick” struggles with feelings of never being acknowledged for the actual work they’re doing. Forget what that ass PC did and try getting to know “Don’t be a Dick” on their own terms will ya? They are not so bad and probably very supportive of your opinion on sexy rabbits. They attend some furry conventions I’m sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The worst pick-up line I've ever gotten⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are many examples of House Elves in the books who treat essentially the single one who was freed and happy about it as an abnormality. Look at how Dobby is reacted to by every other house elf. Hermione’s advocacy that they have autonomy is ultimately treated as being something only an extreme minority of their population would want and her continued efforts treated as comedy.

  Effectively house elves are narrativly speaking a subservient slave species who whom treating poorly is narrativly punished… but emancipation is not desired by the whole and they feel fulfilled as long as their masters treat them well. The profiting from their labor is framed as mutually beneficial.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The worst pick-up line I've ever gotten⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know if Hermione is strictly a self insert any more than her other characters are, we just sort of assume that because she’s the girl. Oftentimes we see Rowling pop up in the framing devices and not the characters themselves. We are always drawn to some conclusion the plot wants us to. Often what Hermione does is a lampshading technique. She brings up the issues around moral issues but we are lead to see her concerns and advocacy as invalid as the plot makes them inconvenient or proven to be incorrect. It’s the actions speak louder senario. What the characters individually say is not wholly important because from an authorial standpoint some of them are intended to be misguided and Hermione is framed as good-hearted but ultimately misguided.

  Hermione’s sense of moral objection is treated more often as a flaw, an annoyance to her peers and unneeded or even counter to the needs of by the people she is advocating for. She is more closely aligned to a caracature of how JKR veiws advocates of minority rights then a reflection of her own advocacy. That every other character tends to just ignore Hermione isn’t veiwed as a tragic instance. It’s played for comedy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mildred⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I throw no shade on Mildred… As long as she’s one of those girls who like dress in 1950’s fashions and is way too into electroswing.

  Then it’s only fitting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take a gander at this⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You miss my point. What mens advocacy groups are missing is that they aren’t doing the primary work required. They just kind of expect that stating the issues are enough.

  Like let’s take the mens shelter thing. Cool. I agree… So Where do I donate? Who is doing the admin? What’s the aim, the targets. What is the method? Who’s talking to the accountants and doing the paperwork and signing the papers. Are you seeking a grant? Who’s filing it? Who’s name is on the lease for the property? Who do I contact to volunteer my time?

  … Wait you want me to be that guy? Okay… Why me exactly? I am a transmasc non-binary person fighting for my union to cover trans healthcare and showing up to city halls to stop book bans and bathroom bills. I have like 5 hours free on a Tuesday you can have or $50 out of my pocket to an organized cause but that’s not exactly gunna help.

  Saying “we should have men’s shelters” is not giving someone a actionable task. People love actionable tasks! They are easy : show up here and protest, go here and donate, go here to run a fundraiser, volunteer here sign this petition etc etc etc… But jist plunking "We need mens shelters somewhere is basically low key implying “create the framework from scratch in a process that demands sweat blood and tears in an effort very few people do unless they are distinctly uncomfortable.” like I can totally agree all these things are worthy endeavors… But you aren’t giving me a framework here for my endorsement to translate into anything helpful.

  Doing the primary work is not fun or intuitive or easy. But what it CAN be is managed by a very small team. The initial investment is always in personal time money and extreme frustration and growing the thing takes patience.

  Look to the LGBTQIA model and you will find a myriad of different small independent groups who have a diehard core and damn near always the people who founded them were the people who experienced the problem directly or the surviving loved ones of people who died. The circle of secondary supporters are usually more varied but the Leaders basically need to be able to devote around 100 man hours apeice per year doing pretty intense work that involves a lot of key decision making. If you really are fired up about making this thing real that’s the bit that needs to be done so other people can push it.

  Allies are also more likely if you create solidarity. Try partnering with a women’s shelter group to learn their process, reach out to the Gay community to tap their activism networks by explaining how your interests intersect, cross promote. Be prepared to reciprocate. Nobody likes selfish people who take up all the oxygen in the room. People will find time to help people who make reasonable direct asks that respect the time and resources needed to attend to their own admin first.

  But in general I don’t see this engagement style from cis straight men’s activism groups. A lot of the time they seem to be fairly unhealthy because they just want to ruminate on how life sucks while practically nobody steps up to the plate to do the critical and nessisary front work.

  And if someone comes at me with “well I DO run or support a thing but nobody seems to care…” there’s usually some kind of reason why people aren’t latching. Chances are good if you aren’t crowing your most modest successes as wins and keeping hope and optimism as your center people are going to doubt either your ability to deliver or your intentions. You can’t afford to mope where people can see, you need to change your approach, experiment and figure out what your winning formula is.

  If you can’t find someone doing the admin for the thing that’s your ride or die issue then you have to create one and chances are good that person is gunna have to be you. Nobody is generally lining up to take that gig… You can keep trying to convince rando people to try and take on your heaviest burdens but chances are all its going to do is make you angry when they just shoulder their own pack leaving you with nothing but a few kind words of encouragement before moving on down the road. You get a lot more faith in humanity when you hand them an item or two from your pack to carry for you as most people will help you out under that circumstance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take a gander at this⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not quite what I mean. It’s not that they are enemies of each other it is just that reciprocity is a road to success. A lot of the LGBTQIA for instance is solidarity based. Everyone has their main concern that focuses their own needs. Like folks who push for asexual stuff is different than say trans stuff. You wouldn’t go to an allosexual trans person to get your marching orders for organizing for Ace things or vice versa. They have independent agendas and groups who do the main work. Successful adgendas put in the primary effort and give lower effort tasks to do to allies.

  Like okay, example. There’s the regular list of regular concerns from men’s advocacy groups. Education accommodations to close gaps for students and resources for domestic abuse shelters for men. Those are two very common issues. On their own however it doesn’t matter how often you say it, I could agree with you those would be good thing but that isn’t enough…

  You need someone dedicated to actually create the initiative. Maybe organize a group of psychology professionals to advocate to a school board for changes or set up a non-profit to get shelters going… Governments generally only adopt things once a model has been tested so just getting shit done to prove your model has to usually be grassroots : That’s the stuff that a primary organizer does. It’s tough work. It takes a lot of free time and dedication. There’s admin aspects where you need to talk to professionals, get a dedicated core of like minded people together and point them in a direction, deal with a lot of very impassioned ideas clashing against each other and hours of effort. It’s a frustrating blood, sweat and tears endeavor. Most people have the energy at most to do one of these maybe two during their lifetime. A lot of people can’t manage it even once. Chances are nobody is going to sign on to help you with this generally unless they got enough skin in your game.

  Look back at the history of the LGBTQIA and you will find hundreds of fairly small groups working this way for very specific initiatives. The main people of those group’s cores are usually either people of that specific queer minority who are directly effected or family or friends of a minority member who died.

  But what a primary group creates is secondary tasks. Maybe they create the charity that does the main work and other people who want to help but don’t have time to volunteer kick money into it. The primary group organizes the protest and post the posters and reach out to allies… and all the allies need to do is show up.

  With a lot of men’s advocacy groups there’s this toothless helplessness where they aren’t asking people to join in to do secondary tasks. They just state problems that exist. It kind of comes across to groups that are more used to organizing like they aren’t giving trying to give someone a job they are trying to convince you to start their small business for them from scratch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take a gander at this⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on the approach. In a lot of queer friendly spaces men’s issues are generally accepted as incredibly valid as gay and trans men tend to get pretty hardcore beat down by failing to pass the bar of the expectations of cultural masculinity and on average they require more outside help from services or others because they are less likely to be able to return to their families to escape abusive relationships.

  But the difference tends to be a general understanding that while women definitely get it and can absolutely sympathize they also aren’t in a particularly great position to change things in a general sense because women also have to regularly fight against social power of systems that depower their autonomy that are fronted by men and they generally have to see to their own needs before being able to do the administrative work on men’s behalf.

  It’s emergency airplane crash logic. Put your own supply of air on before you help the person next to you. If your job, legislature, judicial system and potential funding structure is only made up of a minority of women you are asking a lot of people who don’t have institutional power to flex even on their own behalf and a lot of women have deep seated anger regarding that disparity so when someone tries to pile more on their plates the gut reaction is to throw it back. Women might be willing to assist, but they aren’t going to accept doing the lions share of the required admin for another group when they have other priorities. The same goes for queer groups, racial minority groups, religious minorities, disability affected groups and so on. They might have room on their plate to show up to your protest… But usually that requires you to you show a willingness to reciprocate and show up to theirs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take a gander at this⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Kyriarchical oppression.

  Kyriarchy refers to the overlap of various inequalities caused by gender, race, sexuallity and disability describing overlaps of cross sectionality. It also refers to the practice of problems created by assumed superiority.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pillaging by the Super-Rich Will Continue Until the Working Class Revolts⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am not sure that’s entirely it. Like… Those “exclusive neighbourhoods” basically just means “has fence and security system”. If you didn’t care about getting caught - basically spree killer style martyrdom- there isn’t much to stop you. Most CEOs are notorious creatures of habit and they publicize where they will be fairly regularly. Just hang out by the right golf course and you’ll find em.

  I think it’s just a different mindset. Maybe picking a specific target is more of a cold blooded logic killer thing not a hot blooded spree killer thing and the two require entirely separate buy ins? Or the target type is the difference. Spree killers tend to pick big populations for shock value or because it represents a wider social movement. They also take a bunch of people with them which probably satisfies a feeling of making it “worth it”. It is kind of a “fuck that guy in particular” kind of premeditation you would need combined with a conviction to essentially light yourself on fire to burn someone else… And a one to one trade isn’t exactly a feel good catharsis.

  I don’t think it’s a matter that a couple of isolated incidents wouldn’t cause a panic or not be consequential on a wider scale. I feel like the allure of extreme wealth would lose it’s luster pretty fast if suddenly people felt the need to have extreme security details all the time. I don’t think it would stop people from dragon hording but it wouldn’t take too many incidents before they all would be too afraid to walk to the corner to grab a coffee in person at least for awhile. Generally being rich comes with the idea that it gives you more freedom, not less.

  I think it’s something on the horizon though. A lot of the language around the extreme wealthy is pretty dehumanizing. Like “He seems like a robot” or “souless narcissistic dirtbag” or “eat the rich” type rhetoric is pretty normalized. I think it’s just most people value themselves more highly then taking out a single CEO regardless of the differing scope of individual impacts. We are kind of wired to look at the extreme wealthy as both above and apart in ability to impact the world stage… While simultaneously being kind of non-special people who aren’t more or less worthwhile than we ourselves. It might just be that there’s still enough hope around that things will change through non-violent means.

  I personally just hope we can tax the everliving bajeezus out of them and start some sensible basic quality of life initiatives and electoral reform before it starts getting properly ugly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pillaging by the Super-Rich Will Continue Until the Working Class Revolts⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I realize this is gunna make me sound fairly radical and murdery, but it’s more legit curiousity…

  I sometimes wonder why out of all the people living in misery why someone hasn’t gone on to just pick a CEO and… assassinate them? Like they are generally not super well protected. They aren’t living like spies with people tasting their food for poison or anything.

  People have been losing their patience with Corporate wealth for a long time and talking pitchforks for decades but it’s not like these people are untouchable and unknowable. A lot of this stuff is fairly public information. I figure the prerequisites for stochastic terrorism would be pretty ripe but like… Why haven’t we heard about even one case? Is it just too personal you think? What is the threshold for domestic terrorist incidents? Why do we see all these lone wolf gunman going after schools and clubs because they have been made so VERY angry… but not tracking down singular people? Is it a different psychological requirement?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon reinvents something dark⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I usually go for processesing them into kibble route while the non-cannabal friendly colonists take a walk to the next colony over. If you cross me then my ducks will feast on your pulped and dried flesh. Thems the rules.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Non-binary⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  More like Man, Woman and 60 plus different other categories even good sports in the first two categories don’t tend to be bothered to learn about.

  It’s not that it’s secret it’s that if you don’t ask for specifics we assume you don’t care, don’t know there are specifics or you really just don’t want to know.

  It’s us being polite.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Non-binary⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I always think there is a we vs them vibe in the non-binary thing which is kind of toxic

  I dunno if there is much “we” inside the non-binary community. Like Non-binary is an umbrella term that encapsulates everything from a both/neither/almost but not quite binary/gender fluid betwixt multiple states/people who identify as trans non-binary, people who identify as non-trans non-binary/ cultural third genders/ political gender activists /DID people with alters that swap… There’s a lot of different concepts and sometimes contradictory needs there.

  Like people tend to just group non-binary people into a third category and don’t really ask questions of individuals what their actual deal is. I blew a friend’s mind recently when he introduced his enbyfriend to me and while we were out on a walk I asked “Apart from the umbrella non-binary term how do you conceptualize yourself?” because he had never thought to ask that question of either of us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Non-binary⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably because “hermaphrodite” is considered a slur to intersex people.

  Also intersex and non-binary are not remotely the same thing. Some Intersex people are non-binary but a lot of them have binary identities. It’s a different axis.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Big Science⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Autism and ADHD definitely fits that bill. A lot of my friends are on the spectrum. I am a Non-binary trans person so a lot of the people I know IRL who also identify as Non-binary trans are autistic but I ended up with just ADHD. Still it makes me angry to hear my friends talked about as though they are a problem that was caused by somebody’s lack of oversight. They are incredible, funny, loving, worthwhile people to know. They struggle and it’s not always okay but that doesn’t make them a “problem”.

  I get a dose of the same nonsense when I tell people that I am non-binary on here. People’s immediate assumption is I am very young. That I will “change my mind”. That all non-binary people are flighty star chidren who want to live in a land of make believe, feel special or be lavished with attention and it’s so frustrating. I am 38. I knew I was trans since I was 21…I think barring an extreme brain injury I’m pretty set in my ways. I am told that I am at times infuriatingly practical. I worked in crews with fairly conservative people for three and a half years straight being rehired for the gig when they had plenty of opportunities to ditch me. None of whom have any idea I’m enby. If they suspect anything with the name change they never said. I think being non-binary is functionally one of the least interesting things about me. It says very little about my personality and interests. When conservative people do talk to me on platforms a lot of them cannot reconcile me with their assumptions of trans people. They might label me “one of the good ones” … which believe me really doesn’t feel great to hear them say… but that’s how they rationalize the disconnect. Their pride demands not that that they review whether their skeptism is misplaced but instead I must be the exception that proves the rule. Ignoring that I know a fair number of other trans people my age and I am more similar to them than not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can pry these high voltage lines from my sizzling dead fingers⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh man fuck florine fires… It’s a devil in liquid form.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Big Science⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s something I wish more people would actually give some thought to. As someone from a group who gets discussed ad nauseum in the media it really is the case that a lot of the skeptical people that become our problem really don’t have a personal data point for us. So many assumptions are made with things we theorize about but do not personally know. For us it can become plain very quickly when someone has never really interacted directly with us and are just operating on assumptions. I think the world is generally a better place when one is willing to be humble about what they choose to be skeptical about. Admitting to yourself and others that something is at present and maybe forever beyond your ken isn’t a weakness. It’s a strength.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Funny, those guys don't usually agree on that much⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe what you are referring to is Communism. Let us divorce at least the name of a singular man from a body of work that by your own admission is made up of a number of different writers on the subject just as the elaborations on Newtonian Physics is considered also a part but not whole of Classical Mechanics.

  The reductions of bodies of political thought to singular authors is often used to exclude others. Very often on this platform I am told that I am not a Socialist because I am not a Marxist simply because he simply coined a term to a body of thought that predated him and extended far beyond him so why should I extend to Marx the authorial intent by the political realm of thought baring his name? If you said you were a Maoist or a Leninist or a Chavezist would I not conclude that you are in agreement with their very specific realms of their personal philosophy?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Funny, those guys don't usually agree on that much⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are saying gender equality is Marxist then I am guessing you haven’t read much Marx friend. Marx was very about women being relegated to traditional gender roles and was more about whole “seperate spheres of excellence” thing. You are thinking more of the likes of Saint Simone and Robert Owen’s Owenites.

  Feminist scholarship has tried to adapt Marx by stripping out the veiws about women and applying his rhetoric more unilaterally but that’s not his text and quite frankly there are other contemporary philosophers and movement leaders which did it better.

  There is this habit to slap the name Marxist on a the most idealized reads of the work and call it his because he’s the name people know and the few well known political labels on the far left or because people who have claimed the label of his movement after his death decided to non-canonically add to his work- but I personally wish that people could normalize other schools of leftist philosophy and not treat Marx particularly as the magnet that all of us will inevitably be drawn to or attribute stuff to him that he doesn’t particularly deserve. Marxism as a sort of brand name philosophy is misleading and disappointing to those who read his work and find that their ideals aren’t actually well represented there.