roseapprentice

[roseapprentice]

I'm digging this new genre of images that look like AI at first glance, but then on closer examination turn out to be real

Brooke DiDonato (born in 1990),

Am I Doing This Right (2022)

[roseapprentice]

Sam Handwich.

[roseapprentice]

This website sometimes seems to think that leftism is when you can buy cheap things, and the cheaper they are, the more leftist it is. I really don't know how to explain the world to people like that.

[roseapprentice]

why have people started using the term “TERF” to refer to garden variety transphobes…have you guys noticed this? no one in the US federal government is meaningfully a radical feminist! concern trolling about women’s safety is not the same as the belief that women have been systematically oppressed and marginalized since time immemorial and that society needs to be fundamentally reordered to to address this injustice. the belief that gender is (solely) an externally imposed class or caste position and that one cannot move within it is similar to patriarchal gender ideology, yes, but meaningfully different, and I don’t like losing the vocabulary to differentiate between them.

[roseapprentice]

I see this headline:

As a former cakewrecks lover, I figured sure, I’ll bite. Let’s see this cake. Literally nothing could have prepared me for this cake. 

They paid $49 for this “frog-themed” cake and honestly no amount of money in the world could be put on this masterpiece:

Keep reading

[roseapprentice]

Fact ≠ Truth

Expertise ≠ Correctness

Fact is a strong indicator of truth, but it's not a guarantee. Same with expertise.

Please stop talking as if fact is a single, immutable category!

I find this so frustrating. People on both sides of an argument will say, "You'd agree with me if you cared about the facts!" and not see that they're being vague to the point of meaningless.

Fact means so many different things! Depending on context.

A fact mostly means a claim that someone checked in a special way to make sure it's true.

For example: A historical fact might have multiple independent written accounts from the relevant time that agree with each other.

For human-centered events from most of recorded history, that's an especially concrete form of evidence. But it's flimsy enough that even among rigorous historians, some widely accepted historical facts are probably false.

A scientific fact usually demands enough testing that we can rely on it to be generally true. But we judge a hypothysis as factual based on how directly and consistently it predicts the universe's behavior. Those predictions can always get more precise, so there's always room to expand or refine scientific fact.

(Sometimes scientists do a bad job of sizing up how well tested something is. Especially with messy stuff like psychology and the narrowest margins in medicine, where the subject of study acts super inconsistent.)

A fun fact is typically a false or oversimplified claim based loosely on a piece of scientific or historical research. (E.g. goldfish memory.)

A legal fact sometimes means a claim that has undergone a special legal process, like a ruling or a verdict. This is a notoriously unreliable way of determining truth, but it can still be pivotal to know whether or not a statement is legally factual.

Other times in the legal jargon, fact means, "Whatever the heck actually happened." (E.g. "After the fact," to mean "After the victim became dead by disputed means.")

I don't think we ever know what's true with airtight certainty. But some claims have passed tests of truth that are so thorough, and so effective, that we have a duty to act like they're true unless we learn different. (E.g., germ theory or the mechanisms of climate change.)

Some facts we have a responsibility to take seriously. Some, we have a responsibility to doubt.

If you don't understand the gravity of the difference then I don't think you understand facts very well, and I don't trust you to use facts to make the world better.

(BTW if this post gets traction, a bunch of experts will probably jump in to point out how it's wrong or oversimplified, and that is a beautiful thing.)

[roseapprentice]

x

i actually get a bit annoyed with people who get a bit annoyed when people say “sorry” in response to their bad news. “why are you apologizing you didn’t do anything :/” like okay well a) you don’t know that and actually yes i am the secret architect of all your woes and have been this whole time, way to refuse to acknowledge a woman (gender neutral)’s accomplishments. and b) we’re both fluent english speakers so you know perfectly well that “sorry” isn’t always an apology and is very commonly used as an expression of general regret or sympathy. not in this case, because i have been your secret nemesis for years, meticulously plotting your every misery, but, like, in general

[roseapprentice]

I feel the same way about my brain. Like, top-o'-the-line logical processing capacity right at your fingertips! Over here is a sturdy and elegant core belief structure, organized and polished to a high shine.

The verbal processor is finiky and slow and sometimes it stabs you, but if you handle it right it can verbalize the cosmos all the way sideways!

Oh that black bog near the middle? No don't worry, that's just the mental illness that will suck you down into a pit and systemically torture you to death over the course of years if you accidentally step inside. Stop looking over there, you'll make it grow.

Here, come check out my library of fiction tropes!

anyone else wish they would get roped into a freaky friday body swap situation just for the hope that the other person will go "oh jesus fuck how do you live like this" and instantly validate your feelings of being Strange and Built Wrong.

[roseapprentice]

[roseapprentice]

When I was young I recieved the strong impression that complex interiority was one of those First World luxuries I was supposed to be ashamed of grateful for. The suffering outgroup were too busy with valid external problems. Manslov's hierarchy and all that.

This framing chipped away in bits and pieces as I encountered better ideas, but for me it didn't fully fall apart until I read the Diary of Anne Frank in my twenties

anyway you should always remember that all those foreigners you see dying on the news are just as real people as you are who have just as much interiority as you do. there is nothing about you that makes you more important and it is by pure chance that you are not in their position. in fact, this holds for all of history. every person, no matter the horror of the fate that befell them, had just as much interiority as you do. i feel like some people haven't fully internalized this.

[roseapprentice]

Please stop talking as if fact is a single, immutable category!

I find this so frustrating. People on both sides of an argument will say, "You'd agree with me if you cared about the facts!" and not see that they're being vague to the point of meaningless.

Fact means so many different things! Depending on context.

A fact mostly means a claim that someone checked in a special way to make sure it's true.

For example: A historical fact might have multiple independent written accounts from the relevant time that agree with each other.

For human-centered events from most of recorded history, that's an especially concrete form of evidence. But it's flimsy enough that even among rigorous historians, some widely accepted historical facts are probably false.

A scientific fact usually demands enough testing that we can rely on it to be generally true. But we judge a hypothysis as factual based on how directly and consistently it predicts the universe's behavior. Those predictions can always get more precise, so there's always room to expand or refine scientific fact.

(Sometimes scientists do a bad job of sizing up how well tested something is. Especially with messy stuff like psychology and the narrowest margins in medicine, where the subject of study acts super inconsistent.)

A fun fact is typically a false or oversimplified claim based loosely on a piece of scientific or historical research. (E.g. goldfish memory.)

A legal fact sometimes means a claim that has undergone a special legal process, like a ruling or a verdict. This is a notoriously unreliable way of determining truth, but it can still be pivotal to know whether or not a statement is legally factual.

Other times in the legal jargon, fact means, "Whatever the heck actually happened." (E.g. "After the fact," to mean "After the victim became dead by disputed means.")

I don't think we ever know what's true with airtight certainty. But some claims have passed tests of truth that are so thorough, and so effective, that we have a duty to act like they're true unless we learn different. (E.g., germ theory or the mechanisms of climate change.)

Some facts we have a responsibility to take seriously. Some, we have a responsibility to doubt.

If you don't understand the gravity of the difference then I don't think you understand facts very well, and I don't trust you to use facts to make the world better.

(BTW if this post gets traction, a bunch of experts will probably jump in to point out how it's wrong or oversimplified, and that is a beautiful thing.)

[roseapprentice]

no sorry i dont really use instagram, i can contact you via ouija board, spirit box, fluctuations in temperature, flickering lights, and certain rituals. i am also on tumblr.

[roseapprentice]

This is such an individual thing. Even one person can have different relationships with different addictions. I have one addiction that I have to go total abstinence on. No moderation strategy ever worked. I couldn't get clean until I heard that sobriety gets dramatically easier after the first 90 days, giving me the possibility of something good to hold out for

Now I've been clean for years, and I'm rarely even tempted to relapse because that first 90 days of sobriety was such a horror show. Just the prospect of reliving those 3 months gives me an almost visceral aversion to my addiction. (I am still very tempted sometimes. But under ordinary circumstances I can easily trust myself to wait out the cravings)

But like... I have addictive relationships with other things, things I'm unwilling or unable to let go of because of the role they fill in my life

Social media is one! I've learned not to scroll or engage with posts on Facebook or Twitter, because it makes me miserable and it makes me keep coming back for more misery. But the types of connection and perspective I get online are too important to miss out on

Tumblr is a great alternative for me! It has a high ratio of meaningful connection to cheap dopamine. I do have elements of an addictive relationship with Tumblr, like checking it for notes when there's something fun IRL I'd rather be focusing on. But it's mild enough to be worth what I get from it in exchange

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

[roseapprentice]

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

[roseapprentice]

Jokes about communism are not funny unless everyone gets it

[roseapprentice]

I really like this website because somebody will be like “there’s nothing wrong with darting out from behind a parked car into traffic, bootlicker” and you can be like okay this clearly evolved from a valid point about how the US is too car-centric. But something happened to it.

[roseapprentice]

there’s a technique I learnt about a few years ago while doing a therapy course on mindful self compassion. It definitely has a name but I’ve forgotten what it is so it basically amounts to moving how feels right for your body in a given moment.

Not overthinking, just, if you feel the need to lie down, lie down. If you feel you want to massage the soles of your feet, do that. Rock side to side, clap your hands, stretch out your neck. Just try to relax and lean into how you instinctually and impulsively want to move without interrogating it or trying to do things the ‘right’ way. This helped me learn how to stim again after a lifetime of high masking.

But it is also good outside of that. Listening to which muscles are sore or tight. Letting your body know that you trust it and will keep it safe. Having fun. Reconnecting with your body and your self as just a large silly animal.

Happy to talk about it more, it has been very helpful and healing for me. Look after yourselves.