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regular reminder that "Save" buttons are a UI flaw, there should never be the default assumption that work gets thrown away unless I go out of my way to preserve it.

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palestinians *voted* for hamas. don't let that go over your head. Gazans support this.

oh you wanna talk about “voting for hamas”? okay. let’s actually do the math, since basic humanity clearly isn’t enough for you.

first, half of gaza’s population is under 18. half. that’s because of a high birth rate and because palestinians have been pushed out of their homes across historic palestine and forced into gaza, which is basically an open-air prison. so these children? they didn’t vote for anyone. they were born under siege.

second, there was one election. in 2006. almost 20 years ago.

now take a second to understand how numbers work:

• half the population is under 18 → they couldn’t vote now.

• back in 2006, that percentage would’ve been even higher → around 75% couldn’t vote.

• that leaves about 25% who could vote.

• let’s say about 80% of that 25% showed up to vote → that’s 20% of the whole population.

• of those, 40% voted for hamas → that’s 8% of the entire population.

8%.

at most, 8% of gaza’s population voted for hamas.

and you’re here acting like every palestinian in gaza deserves to die because of the “choice” of 8% nearly 20 years ago?

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"Using AI because you don't have a budget is like if I said I couldn't afford a union worker to do a job so I hired my buddy with some tools"

. . . . . yes? That's literally fine and people do that constantly?

Listen I'm sorry artists are late to the party here but every other industry on earth has already had to reckon with automation and the internet taking our jobs. You're not special, I don't know what to tell you.

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As I’ve said before, the problem with “government efficiency” isn’t that it’s a bad idea per se, it’s that almost always, the cost of doing something is so much less important than the thing that’s getting done. And yet, I have never in my life seen anyone trying to “fully benefit” the things that they are always “fully costing”. Somebody should set up a Department of Government Effectiveness; there are all too many areas of public policy where the cost/benefit ratio is not a number, because the benefits never arrived. (I would also like to see more recognition that you can’t actually save costs by being “conservative” about benefit ratios. The Elizabeth Line in London is used by more than twice as many people as expected, for example. For some reason, this is not being treated as a massive embarrassment , nearly as bad as a 100% cost overrun. Even though it probably points to serious errors in the forecasting process which might have delayed or cancelled extraordinary amounts of necessary investment). Because the benefits are much more important than the costs, and because effectiveness is so much more important than efficiency, I’m sceptical about efficiency drives, even in the best possible case (which I think Mulgan pretty closely describes). You ought to be really, really sure that you’re cutting a useless function, or that centralising procurement is going to deliver the same goods and services at lower cost with no interruption to service. Most of the time, taking a 10% chance of failure in order to save 10% of the project costs is a bad tradeoff.

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I think that there's a very meaningful criticism to be made wrt body horror and how it often can handle disability or disfigurement in an extremely reactionary and prejudiced fashion but I feel like you've lost the plot if you can sincerely say shit like "cancer isn't body horror" like I dont know I think its pretty scary to have cancer. I dont feel like we need to defend the role of cancer as a natural process of the body. Like that's not comparable to people acting like a cleft lip or a guy in a wheelchair are spooky. Pregnancy is pretty scary too like even before the question of forced birth and other such social violence surrounding it are involved. I think you're sort of dancing around the fact that the human body does frightening things to us all the time and the question of what is "natural" should in of itself be actively questioned because sometimes "natural" things are... bad!

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My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.

What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.

Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.

But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?

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every time I mention how many days sober I am I appreciate people congratulating me and telling me to keep up the good work. it is nice. but I also wish that milestones in addiction recovery weren’t still so pinned to length of sobriety/abstinence

yeah yeah I’m 50 days sober who cares. how about the fact that, when I do drink, it tends to be nipped in the bud after two days nowadays instead of weeks or months? how about the fact that drinking has been condensed to a six pack because I’m at the end of my tether, instead of browning out every night? how about my friend who has decided to stop drinking alone, and is actually sticking to that? recovery doesn’t always look like sobriety and I wish it was more normal to talk about that. yknow. when addiction is normal to talk about at all

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So a few months ago there was the discourse about would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. I didn't want to touch it while the discourse was hot and everyone dug in hard because those are not good conditions for nuance, but I waited until today, June 1st, for a specific reason.

I'm not going to take a position in the bear vs man debate because I don't think it matters. What is really being asked here is how afraid are you of men? Specifically, unexpected men who are, perhaps, strange.

People have a lot of very real fear of men that comes from a lot of very real places. Back when I was first transitioning in 2015 and 2016, I decided to start presenting as a woman in public even though I did not pass in the slightest.

I live in a red state. I knew other trans women who had been attacked by men, raped by men. I knew I was taking a risk by putting myself out there. I was the only visibly trans person in the area of campus I frequented, and people made sure I never forgot that. Most were harmless enough and the worst I got from them was curious stares. Others were more aggressive, even the occasional threat. I had to avoid public bathrooms, of course, and always be aware of my surroundings.

I know how frightening it is to be alone at night while a pair of men are following behind you and not knowing if they are just going in the same direction or if they want to start something - made all the worse for the constant low level threat I had been living under for over a year by just being visibly trans in a place where many are openly hostile to queer people. You have to remember, this was at the height of the first wave of bathroom law discussions, a lot of people were very angry about trans women in particular. My daily life was terrifying at times. I was never the subject of direct violence, but I knew trans women who had been.

I want you to keep all that in mind.

So man or bear is really the question "how afraid of men are you?", and the question that logically follows is "What if there was a strange man at night in a deserted parking lot?" or "What if you were alone in an elevator with a man?" or "What if you met a strange man in the woman's bathroom?"

My state recently passed an anti trans bathroom bill. The rhetoric they used was about protecting women and children from "strange men", aka trans women.

Conservatives hijack fear for their bigoted agenda.

When I first started presenting as a woman the campus apartment complex was designed for young families. The buildings were in a large square with playgrounds in the center, and there were often children playing. I quickly noticed that when I took my daughter out to play, often several children would immediately stop what they were doing and run back inside. It didn't take me long to confirm that the parents were so afraid of "the strange man who wears skirts" that their children were under strict instructions to literally run away as soon as they saw me.

"How afraid are you of a strange man being near your children?"

I mentioned above that I had to avoid public bathrooms. This was not because of men. It was because of women who were so afraid of random men that they might get violent or call someone like the police to be violent for them if I ever accidentally presented myself in a way that could be interpreted as threatening, when my mere presence could be seen as a threat. If I was in the library studying and I realized that it was just me and one other woman I would get up and leave because she might decide that stranger danger was happening.

Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. Women's fear of men is one of the driving forces of transmisogyny because it is so easy to hijack. And it isn't just trans women. Other trans people experience this, and other queer people too. Racial minorities, homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people.

When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And that is why I waited until pride month. You cannot engage and contribute to the culture of reactive fear without contributing to queerphobia of all varieties. The sensationalist culture of reactive fear is a serious queer issue, and everyone just forgot that for a week as they argued over man or bear. I'm not saying that "man" is the right answer. I am saying that uncritically engaging with such obvious click bait trading on reactive fear is a problem. Everyone fucked up.

It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others.

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covid mentally broke so many yanks it's kinda crazy. the entire world isn't going to wear high quality medical grade masks 365 for the rest of time and it's not really a function of ableism.

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To reduce my screen time, I have weaponised my overactive and entirely impractical levels of empathy for inanimate objects. Wym you’re picking it up again? While it was sleeping? You complete and utter monster, let it rest!!

And it works. It works like a CHARM. Silly problems require silly solutions!

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You know what I'm gonna COMPLAIN!

Vanilla sex isn't "wholesome sex"! Sex is not more pure just because it's done within the framework of a monogamous relationship and free from elements of kink!

"Person is so pure they probably don't even know what sex is." Purity isn't defined by the distance from sex! As if the more a person encounters sex in any context the less pure their soul becomes!

You🫵are not immune to propagating the beliefs and ideas of purity culture!

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i think a really funny project that a statistics professor could have their class do is like. put a bunch of random, patently untrue demographic statements into a hat. "the most popular tv show among white men ages 24-27 is Bluey." "the majority of business majors are middle children." "bisexual women love hot chips." and each student picks one out of the hat and you gotta like. design a whole study and survey a group of people to specifically achieve that result. you have to prove it true. by whatever means necessary. you have to construct the most biased study possible and wrangle in your exact demographic to make that statement a statistical reality. i think people would learn a lot.

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i’m all sex positive and shit but i’m begging you. do not make your characters over 30 fuck on the floor. please. think of their lower backs. their knees. have some empathy 🙏

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is ai ontologically evil or did another dingus put their clown shoes on by neglecting to do their actual job. why do people keep blaming the damn tool for this man it drives me apeshit.