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Truly hate the way "did this person do something that actually harmed someone" and "do they deserve to be unpersoned for it" are considered the same question

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Fundamentally, my problem with AI has nothing to do with jobs, or power consumption, or stealing art, or replacing human interaction, or even killing all humans.

It has to do with the fact that some people like having other people to kick around, like having subordinates they can order around to do whatever they want, like having people desperate enough to eat out of their hands. And they're the ones developing and bankrolling AI right now.

This is what scares me: AI being taught early that power imbalance is an underpinning of society and being taught to keep it there.

The risk I see is of codifying a permanent servant underclass of oppressed, suffering humans forced to scrabble at the dirt to earn a living because the people in charge want real live humans to be superior to, accomplished with the use of a sufficiently powerful omnipresent surveillance/police AI/Great Firewall/social media algorithm combination to maintain stable totalitarianism indefinitely. The boot stamping on the human face, forever.

I think AI technology would be completely fine if built in a better society, and the only reason I am fighting it right now is in the desperate hope that as much social equality as possible can be implemented before it is too late.

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Dear people embroiled in the social media beef I'm reading,

​​​​​​​​​​​​If you treat people who take responsibility for their actions just as badly as people who don't, then you have created an environment where taking responsibility is just as bad as not taking responsibility. If you never accept apologies, then nobody will see any point in apologizing to you. If you say admitting fault and going to therapy is never going to be enough, then you are discouraging people from ever admitting fault or going to therapy.

Also, accepting an apology is not the same thing as forgiveness. Accepting an apology does not mean you have to completely excuse them or forget they did something or never take the offense into account ever again. An apology is just an initial extension of good faith that you can use as scaffolding to rebuild the social fabric. Accepting an apology means picking up the other end of one thread of trust.

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hey i was wondering something and i wanted to know your opinion on it

Why is it problematic to say i hate men but not white people or straight people

(i'm a trans south east asian man btw)

I'd say on, like, a casual exasperated level, its not problematic to say "I hate [x]." It gets problematic when your venting about a group becomes your sole lens of viewing + interacting with that group.

Like, its entirely alright to be frustrated with behaviors common to cishet white men and express that in a vent by saying you hate them. But... its like how people make the correct point that they shouldn't be expected or obligated to give all their energy to coddling people with power over them, but translate that into "i never have to care about a member of this group at all" which directly conflicts with just. being in a community? Like women should not be expected to be caretakers for men, but people in a community need to take care of each other. When the only way you engage with a group of people is by expressing hatred and asserting how much you aren't obligated to care about them, its easier than people think to find yourself dehumanizing them.

Which does not mean "you are just as bad as a racist/misogynist" or "you are oppressing them"; you are An Individual whose biases are not necessarily backed up by powerful systemic powers. But, for one, its very easy for those biases to be used by systemic forces: with men, misandry is very easily used to justify all kinds of violence towards marginalized men & people perceived as men. You also have situations where people will say the Holocaust "wasn't as bad" as, say, US slavery, because it was "white on white violence," or saying the Armenian genocide also wasn't that big of a deal because "it was done to Christians and Christians are always killing people" (two real things I have seen been said). And, again: if you are going to care about community and restorative/transformative justice and all that, you need to be able to give a shit about all kinds of people who you live with. You need to be able to see them as whole beings you are capable of connecting with on some level. You don't personally need to date or befriend men, but you do need to be able to give a shit about men in your community.

Its fine to feel annoyance and anger and use "hatred" to express that. But the problem occurs when people take "its okay to be angry with your oppressors and not spend all your energy coddling them" and make that the end-all be-all of their relationship with people of whatever group; revolutions can't accomplish compassionate goals when they are run on hatred. Very hooksian concept but "love" (as in "a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust", not in a strictly emotional sense but as an action) is a skill that is as vital as understanding class dynamics and protest tactics. Maybe you don't need to love everyone, but try to have the capacity to love anyone; the ability to physically care for someone you don't emotionally like is, I think, a vital step towards truly challenging and bringing down the kyriarchy.

Basically its about recognizing when your venting stops being an outlet and starts being a way for unproductive feelings to shape how you view other people.

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I wish Livejournal-style friendslocked posts were possible on Tumblr. Technological barriers are infinitely better than individual people trying to say and being completely unable to enforce "do not interact" or "don't follow".

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A couple of years ago we were all terribly concerned about the fact that a lot of American high schools are assigning such crushing homework loads that some kids literally don't have enough time to eat or sleep (and all this in spite of the fact that there's no good evidence that assigning homework actually improves academic outcomes at the pre-university level), but now we're hearing stories about those same schools struggling to stop kids from using ChatGPT to write their essays and suddenly It's The Children Who Are Wrong. Like, do you think maybe there's a certain level of cause and effect in play here?

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Not to be a technical writer on main, but I've been bumping into the idea lately that the only reason explaining yourself in more detail never seems to work is because neurotypical people are misunderstanding you on purpose, or because they have short attention spans, or because they just hate listening to you talk – and sure, occasionally that's even true, but most of the time the problem you're running into is more fundamental.

Every time you add more detail, you're running the risk of tripping over a bad assumption on your part about the listener's prior knowledge, or hitting the tipping point where they become overwhelmed with new information (and remember that you don't know which parts of what you're saying will be new information for them), or making a leap of logic that isn't as self-evident as you think it is, or any of a dozen other potential snags which, by definition, you will not see coming until it's too late to correct course.

Basically, every piece of information you add multiplies the odds of you getting blindsided by some vector of misunderstanding you didn't anticipate, even as it addresses the ones you did anticipate. The point of diminishing returns where continuing to elaborate increases the odds of unexpected miscommunication more than it decreases the odds of expected miscommunication is much nearer than you'd like.

The most effective act of communication is not the one which contains the most possible information, but the one which contains the smallest amount of information it possibly can while still getting its point across. It sucks, but it's the reality of the situation. People far more autistic than you have been trying for hundreds of years to invent a way of communicating which doesn't work this way, without success.

All of which is to say that "getting to the damn point" is legitimately a communication skill, not just an accommodation for people who aren't paying attention. If it's any consolation, it's something neurotypical people struggle with just as much as anyone else – if it was easy, technical writers wouldn't have jobs!

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If Marie Kondo's "sparks joy" method isn't working for you (trying to rely on joy doesn't work when one has depression, for example) but you need to declutter, here's an alternate method.

Throw away all the actual trash, get the stuff to donate out of the way, then put the stuff where you "should" be getting rid of it but are too attached to throw it away into an opaque box. Put the box out of sight for a month.

Then go through it again and only keep the things where your instinctive reaction is "oh, so that's where it went". Anything where your reaction is merely "this could be useful" is something you should get rid of. Yes, you might not be able to replace it with the same thing again at will, but you can get something else that will serve most of the same function.

(Bonus tip: Just because something cost you a lot of money isn't a good reason to keep it. If the sunk cost makes you feel unable to donate it, resell it on Craigslist or something to get at least some of your money back.)

(Double bonus tip: Some curbside pickup donation organizations will take non-furniture donations if you have a sufficiently large quantity of them. If you have at least two moving boxes' worth, write a local charity that does pickups and ask. If you are disabled, mention that too.)

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banging my head on the wall BEGGING people on the internet to learn what an Inside Thought is. like you do not need to express every nasty opinion you have, and if you do so publicly, you gotta accept that people are gonna get mad at you for saying shit like "i find gay men repulsive". social media is not your private diary, it is public. there are consequences for saying terrible things, such as thousands of people thinking you're an asshole.

PLEASE learn what an inside thought is. you do not need to share everything that goes through your head. you shouldn't.

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does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

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signal boost!

if you are on SSDI/Medicare, please contact the ACLU or an appropriate law firm to file a class action suit against the federal government for breach of privacy.

[image text: Attn: Treasury Secretary Scott Bressent granted representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system!

Response post: As a SSDI and Medicare client, I filed a request for a class-action breach of privacy lawsuit request with my state ACLU today. Please file in your state]

I will be contacting the Florida ACLU tomorrow but I also submitted a form to Morgan & Morgan, because the Morgans fuckin' hate Republicans, so it could work.

This is not just about your rights (though that's obviously the most important part), but about slowing down this fascist government. We need to be suing them into oblivion.

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As we see a barrage of evil executive orders come in, they are not immediately enforceable and will takes months or years to implement.

That’s still not great, but don’t let these pile up to the point of hopelessness. Take a breath, and look community leaders who will fight it every step of the way.

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Additions for highly unfavorable/inclement weather/winter conditions:

For the bit about having different color clothes in case of tear gas, I suggest an opaque disposable raincoat, one size larger than your usual, over top of the rest of your outdoor gear. You can wear the reusable shopping bag over your shoulder underneath the raincoat.

Wear multiple underlayers you can add and remove easily. Standing alone in the wind can easily feel 20F colder than if you're marching briskly and yelling in a press of people. (Make sure to keep the raincoat on the outside, though, since it is your "ditch" layer.)

If you are going to need a hat/scarf/gloves, bring two sets and make them the cheap kind that you won't miss.

If you write on your protest signs, use Sharpie so it doesn't run. Corrugated plastic is ideal if you can get it.

On sunny days, sufficient reflectivity from snow and glass buildings can still cause sunburns regardless of outdoor temperature. Cover up; consider sunglasses.

one-page tl;dr on gearing up for a protest:

I wish I didn’t have to recommend the procedures for People Who Risk Police Reprisal, but right now that’s literally everyone because the police have collectively gone insane.

make sure your phone is password or PIN locked, not fingerprint or face recognition. consider using a burner phone, if you can afford and acquire one

wear old clothes that don’t have any logos on them and comfortable shoes; wear your (as nondescript as possible) mask over your mouth and nose; cover birthmarks/tattoos/moles/etc.

write a phone number for a lawyer directly on your skin, ideally in sharpie (use the one for the National Lawyers’ Guild if you don’t already have a local organization you’re working with)

bring an extra set of clothes that are an entirely different color from your protest clothes (tear gas and stuff are actually particles that stick to clothes, so changing out of them will help), some water, and a snack, in a cheap tote bag or reusable shopping bag that you can ditch in a hurry if you need to

carry phone (if using) and cash enough to get home (no credit cards), more directly attached to your person (such as in a pouch worn underneath your clothes, or a zippered waistband)

bring and wear sunscreen; reapply it at least every hour and a half. if you have access to hand sanitizer, bring that too and use it

optional but highly recommended: a pot or pan and a utensil to bang it with, or a sign, so you don’t have to yell (yelling, aside from being tiring, spreads infectious droplets, and that’s the last thing we need right now)

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dan-was-on-fire-once said:

So now asking for pronouns is offensive too? You people are crazy

Hey, so, I think you’re not really understanding the purpose of conversations like this one, or why people want to have them. People go to bars and go to parties and run discussion groups and moderate book clubs and volunteer at youth shelters, and they care about how to address one another in a way that lets people make their needs known while not putting them on the spot or forcing them into conversations they aren’t ready for.

And this is hard. In some cases, it’s literally impossible - some people need the exact thing which will hurt other people, and any conceivable policy is going to feel like a punch in the gut for someone. In other cases, it’s possible only with a ton of hard work, and with other tradeoffs, like having more complicated verbal discussion prompts, which can be hard on people with language processing challenges. 

But it’s still worth knowing what the tradeoffs are, and brainstorming about ways to thread the needle and offer more to people. Because we can. Because even if we can’t find anything that works for everyone, we can find something that works for more people, and that’s worth it all by itself.

If you’re interpreting social justice as ‘a bunch of people deciding which things are offensive’, then of course ‘every possible set of norms is going to harm some people’ is ridiculous - what’s the point in declaring everything offensive? 

But if you’re doing social justice because you want to give people more options and learn more about what they need and learn, from them, more about what you yourself need -

- then, well, you’d better be able to work in a complicated world where there isn’t a single perfect course of action that hurts no one, and where often you try to do something and then realize that it’s created a new problem or made an existing one worse or run up against another limitation.

I recognize that there are people who harass others in the name of social justice, and that’s meant that for a lot of people it feels really urgent to figure out what the Approved opinion is, and what course of action definitely won’t get them harassed and called a horrible person. But - 

- well, firstly, there isn’t such a course of action. Some people will be dicks to you no matter what you’re doing. Even if there were one True Social Justice that harmed no one and required no further analysis and learning, people wouldn’t agree on it, and in the real world people have access to completely different experiences and needs and of course they don’t agree.

- and secondly, if your engagement with social justice is around trying to identify opinions people won’t hate you for so you can hold those and not be a terrible person, then I think you actually should stop engaging in social justice for the time being. It’s really important to come to activism from a place of ‘I want to build a better world’ rather than ‘I want to not be evil and hated’. It’s really important to feel able to independently evaluate ideas and go “yes, this seems true” or “no, I think this is missing something”. It’s really important to be filling in more pieces of your understanding of the world rather than replacing your own understanding with the one being yelled the loudest. It’s better to take a step back than to blunder through looking for the wrong thing and learning to ignore yourself whenever you disagree with it. 

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Thoughts (part 1)

All right. So I know everyone is screaming about the recent election. I would like to say a few things:

Your existence is a protest. Even if you cannot save lives (plural), you have the power to save life (singular). Even if all you can do is exist and you cannot do anything to "help", your mere existence in government records may be what forces a statistician to write a number as 1% rather than 0%. Prioritize keeping yourself alive and sane. We can work on everything else later.

Feeling guilty is not a form of activism. You will not do more good by keeping your head full of terrible things. You have permission to put everything out of mind and play a video game or eat something nice or read fluffy fanfic. Have something to live for.

We have time. There are two months before anyone is bring inaugurated. Messages like this will still be here for you to read when you can bear to think about it.

There were 3 million fewer votes for Trump in 2024 than there were in 2020. (Edit: This is what I initially saw, but vote counts have not yet stabilized.) He has not gathered a greater groundswell of support or picked up a unique amount of new supporters.

Build things rather than tearing them down. It can feel good in the moment to be vindictive and angry, but hate is what got us here in the first place. Support people. Build things. Dream about better social structures. Learn how to treat wounds. Claiming that there is a better way is more likely to be convincing when you can actually personally show others that it is better.

I will have more helpful and specific resources later. But this comes first.

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revolution is when everything is working OK but suddenly the revolutionaries just start destroying random stuff and killing random people and causing the collapse of civilization

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lit the fuse to it - 36,390 words

"This city is so close to being what I wanted. But everything is wrong."

Furnace Ancona burnt herself out in the final leadup to what she'd assumed was becoming a city. Then they found someone else.

(Also featuring: January learning to build something, April in the deaf community of the Neath, and the anarcho-communist government the Tracklayers' City should have had.)

So! Writing this consumed a month of my life. The seed crystal had once been a Fallen London fixfic, but then it became much, much more: the sort of utopian fiction one so rarely sees these days, thoughts on mental illness and institutions, and an examination of the line between self-sacrifice and self-destruction.

(This has specifically been written with the intent of being readable without initial canon knowledge. This is because I want people to be able to see the anarcho-communism.)