cthulhuscoconuts

[cthulhuscoconuts]

Whenever I think about students using AI, I think about an essay I did in high school. Now see, we were reading The Grapes of Wrath, and I just couldn't do it. I got 25 pages in and my brain refused to read any more. I hated it. And its not like I hate the classics, I loved English class and I loved reading. I had even enjoyed Of Mice and Men, which I had read for fun. For some reason though, I absolutely could NOT read The Grapes of Wrath.

And it turned out I also couldn't watch the movie. I fell asleep in class both days we were watching it.

This, of course, meant I had to cheat on my essay.

And I got an A.

The essay was to compare the book and the movie and discuss the changes and how that affected the story.

Well it turned out Sparknotes had an entire section devoted to comparing and contrasting the book and the movie. Using that, and flipping to pages mentioned in Sparknotes to read sections of the book, I was able to bullshit an A paper.

But see the thing is, that this kind of 'cheating' still takes skills, you still learn things.

I had to know how to find the information I needed, I needed to be able to comprehend what sparknotes was saying and the analysis they did, I needed to know how to USE the information I read there to write an essay, I needed to know how to make sure none of it was marked as plagerized. I had to form an opinion on the sparknotes analysis so I could express my own opinions in the essay.

Was it cheating? Yeah, I didn't read the book or watch the movie. I used Sparknotes. It was a lot less work than if I had read the book and watched the movie and done it all myself.

The thing is though, I still had to use my fucking brain. Being able to bullshit an essay like that is a skill in and of itself that is useful. I exercised important skills, and even if it wasnt the intended way I still learned.

ChatGTP and other AI do not give that experience to people, people have to do nothing and gain nothing from it.

Using AI is absolutely different from other ways students have cheated in the past, and I stand by my opinion that its making students dumber, more helpless, and less capable.

However you feel about higher education, I think its undeniable that students using chatgtp is to their detriment. And by extension a detriment to anyone they work with or anyone who has to rely on them for something.

[cthulhuscoconuts]

[clears throat] Hmmmm. Well ain't that sumthin?

This investigation was the first to be funded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the subject and marks the first analysis on athletes who have undergone gender-affirming hormone therapy.

The study, which was published earlier this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, a leading peer-reviewed journal in sports medicine, examined the athletic capabilities of 35 transgender athletes compared to 40 cisgender athletes. The study assessed cardiovascular performance, strength, and lower-body power among 23 transgender women, 12 transgender men, 21 cisgender women, and 19 cisgender men. All transgender participants had undergone hormone therapy for over a year, and both cisgender and transgender participants were actively engaged in competitive sports or underwent physical training at least three times weekly.

Significant Findings:

Transgender women performed worse than cisgender women in tests measuring lower-body strength.

Transgender women performed worse than cisgender women in tests measuring lung function.

Transgender women had a higher percentage of fat mass, lower fat-free mass, and weaker handgrip strength compared to cisgender men.

Transgender women’s bone density was found to be equivalent to that of cisgender women, which is linked to muscle strength.

There were no meaningful differences found between the two groups’ hemoglobin profiles. Hemoglobin (Hb) plays a crucial role in athletic performance by facilitating improved oxygen delivery to muscles. Elite endurance athletes may exhibit up to a 40% higher level of Hb compared to untrained individuals. Moreover, heightened levels of Hb typically correlate with enhanced aerobic performance.

Similar findings have been echoed in previous reporting. According to a recent report that generated an in-depth review of all English-language scientific literature (published between 2011-2021) about transgender (trans) women athlete participation in elite sport, several key conclusions coincide with findings from the IOC funded study, including:

Biomedical factors such as lung size, bone density, and hip-to-knee joint angle (q-angle) are not indicative of athletic prowess.

Testosterone levels do not predict athletic performance or overall athleticism.

Conversely, social elements such as nutrition, training regimen, and equipment accessibility significantly influence an athlete's performance, but are frequently disregarded in policy formulation.

It's imperative to integrate both biomedical and social scientific insights into policy-making processes. However, there's a tendency to prioritize biomedical research excessively, which can compromise the overall well-being of athletes.

Real fuckin interesting.

[cthulhuscoconuts]

So here's what happened on Reddit:

A transmasc posted about how transmascs and trans men are often invisible, how our issues are dismissed, and how resources, especially medical ones, are almost always written with non transmascs in mind. They posted this both to r/Trans and r/lgbt.

A moderator of r/Trans responded by telling them to “stop bitching.” That’s the word they used. That’s the level of respect trans men get. Transandrophobic by the way, don't call trans men bitches.

The comment was deleted, quietly, after backlash. Then the entire post was removed. When asked why, a mod responded that the post was “playing oppression olympics,” and took the time to go through and dismiss each of the original poster’s points, including saying that trans men being sexually assaulted isn’t “unique to transmascs” and therefore not an issue, and claiming that access to testosterone isn’t any more restricted than access to estrogen, which is a straight-up lie, because T is a tightly controlled substance in most places and E is not.

The original poster was banned for three days.

Then a separate mod made a post saying, “nobody asked us our side of the story,” which is wild because people absolutely did, publicly and repeatedly. Users also started reporting that they’d had supportive comments removed or had been banned after disagreeing with the mods, some of those claims are still unconfirmed, but given the general behavior, it wouldn’t be surprising.

Then r/Trans locked down entirely. No new posts. The conversation was forcibly ended.

Some people posted about it on r/FTM, many of those posts were mass-reported, automatically removed by Reddit’s automod, or quietly buried. Meanwhile, r/lgbt also removed the original post, with no explanation.

One of the r/Trans mods eventually posted an “apology,” which was really just a soft-scrubbed PR post full of noncommittal language and distancing. They said they didn’t mean to call a trans man “a bitch,” they just used it synonymously with “complaining,” and they didn’t think about the implications until later even though the first post was about microaggressions just like the mod committed. They did not apologize for anything else, not for wrongfully banning people, not for accusing a transmasc venting like any other user of playing oppression olympics, nothing at all. They said they’re on break and can’t do anything about it. They said, and I quote, “please don’t be mad at the rest of the team.” even though the rest of the team are just as culpable for not stopping their behavior.

They also added that trans men are “a welcome part of the community” and tried to point at moderation history as proof. Because apparently we should be grateful that people occasionally get banned, every so often, for implying trans men aren't oppressed at all, wow, thanks, that is like below the bare minimum, cool.

The current state of things is: r/Trans has over 600,000 members, and trans men and transmascs were silenced, banned, and told to shut up for bringing up their own oppression. And the subreddit is locked down. There’s a mass exodus happening to the new sub, r/trans4every1, but let’s be real, the damage has already been done.

Now let’s talk about what this actually means.

This is not “just more Tumblr discourse.” This isn’t some random blog saying they don’t like transmascs. This isn’t a Twitter reply guy. This isn’t a niche zine or a spicy personal take. This is a massive trans-focused subreddit with over half a million users. It's easily one of the largest public facing trans community online, maybe even the largest, I've certainly never found a bigger one myself. And the moderation team made it crystal clear: they do not want transmascs to feel safe or welcome there.

This is what transandrophobia looks like on a slightly larger internet scale. When it’s in the hands of people who get to decide who gets heard and who gets deleted.

And for anyone who’s still stuck on “well they apologized” listen: trans men are told all the time that we’re being too loud, too angry, too entitled, too manly, too feminine, too confusing, too “binary,” too "Nonbinary", too much. We’re told that we’re “oppression olympics-ing” just for talking about our lives. And now we're getting banned and locked out of the spaces that claim to represent a huge portion of online trans people.

This isn't just online drama. This is a bellwether. And if it isn’t setting off alarms in your head, it should be.

The way transandrophobia manifests in online spaces absolutely bleeds into real life, into medical gatekeeping, into poor data collection, into the erasure of sexual violence against transmascs, into advocacy groups that write us out of the picture, into educational materials that treat us like footnotes, if they include us at all.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, “well it’s not that deep,” you’re part of the problem.

We need to start being more honest about this: Transandrophobia is real, it is widespread, and it is growing. We need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt when they’ve shown us they don’t want us in the room.

And frankly?

We need to start making TRFs [Trans Radfems & transmasc-exclusionary feminists alike] deeply uncomfortable being open about their beliefs. We need to make them afraid to be TRFs, the way they’re trying to make us afraid to exist.

The same way we don’t coddle fascists. The same way we don’t tolerate TERFs. We need to stop tiptoeing around transandrophobia.

Because this growing wave of transandrophobia is going to kill people. Full stop.

Protect trans men. Protect transmascs. Protect your siblings; all of them!

[cthulhuscoconuts]

Last month I decided to start learning how to draw. Purely out of spite for genAI.

I am disabled, my hands literally ache from handwriting, and I struggle with spatial processing & fine motor skills. Drawing was something I always felt was out of reach for me.

But hearing the genAI proponents use a strawman of disability to justify their shitty theft machine made me so angry I decided to just start drawing badly to spite them.

And you know what? The artists were right. Make Bad Art. Detach yourself from the goal of "Being an Artist" and just immerse yourself in the extremely human phenomenon of drawing.

My goal is not to make a "pretty" picture. My goal is to make a recognizable picture. To sloppily sketch down lines that another person could look at and immediately understand.

To have someone say "Wow, that's an awful picture of a deer" is such a badge of honor, because that means they knew it was a deer!!

Being able to convey pictographic information is a superpower and despite what the genAI advocates insist, it's an extremely accessible one

I make little doodles like twice a week. I stop when my hands are starting to hurt. I erase a lot and made peace with not having straight lines, and I'm having a tremendous amount of fun.

So I guess I owe a big thanks to the disingenuous arguments from the pro genAI crowd, if not for how easily disprovable they were, I probably never would've started drawing.

[cthulhuscoconuts]

Respond positively to this pro-trans schools policy for Wales

From my local WhatsApp group:

The Welsh Government are doing a consultation on its pro-trans schools policy. UK Gender Critical activists are upset and are trying to brigade it to push it in an anti-trans direction. Please fill out the consultation to try to reinforce the pro-trans stance. https://www.gov.wales/rights-respect-equality-anti-bullying-guidance

The deadline is 31 July 2025.

NB: Please only respond if you live in Wales! If you don't but want to help, please boost this and share it on other social networks. Thank you. ✨

[cthulhuscoconuts]

Two stunning winners ✨️

[cthulhuscoconuts]

today for #StudyBuddies we tried a wild idea and painted our *own* Ghibli art instead of asking the embarrassing consumer satiation bot for it 😱

Here's a 2hr background study from Princess Mononoke

[cthulhuscoconuts]

So, the other day, when I was discussing AO3's policy on solicitation, a tumblr user came at me saying that AO3's "no monetization/solicitation" rules were "bullshit" because nexus mods allows fan created mods to get paid.

Look at me.

Look at me right now.

AO3 protects you.

AO3 protects you and your works. 

It protects your works from copyright strikes and DCMA takedowns.

It protects your work from advertisers.

It protects your work from overzealous legal challenges.

It protects your right to post adult content.

AO3 is non-profit and AO3 will never try to use you or your work to make a profit for themselves and AO3 will go to bat for you if someone tries to legally challenge you or your works.

Please respect AO3 and its mission.

[cthulhuscoconuts]

art by the.gauntlets

gofundme for the family

[cthulhuscoconuts]

[cthulhuscoconuts]

me, a normal person: I'm going to make a design based on my cat

Her name is Girlfriend <3 <3 <3

[cthulhuscoconuts]

RIP to Jewel Thais-Williams (1939-2025), founder of LA’s first Black-owned LGBT+ nightclub. She opened the Catch One before it was legal for women to tend bar in California. Her contribution to Angeleno nightlife cannot be understated. [source]

[cthulhuscoconuts]

Q: What's your Gender?

A: Whore.

Q: But what's in your pants?

A: Promiscuity.

Q: But are you a boy or a girl?

A: WRONG FUCKING ENERGY

[cthulhuscoconuts]

Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF

[cthulhuscoconuts]

In the UK if you protest genocide or wave a Palestinian flag you get arrested on terrorism charges

[cthulhuscoconuts]

Trump is gonna revoke citizenships Jesus fucking christ