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[sparklyeevee]

I just realized the fundamental disconnect for people who think they can "boycott" voting:

People who threaten to withhold their vote are thinking of the government like a business. If you don't like what a business is doing, you can refuse to shop there, and that hurts them.

But your government is not a business, no matter how much the GOP tries to pretend it is, and refusing to participate doesn't hurt it. If you refuse to vote, you still have to live under that government. I know we're all fundamentally broken by late-stage capitalism, but you get that you can't "Well, you just lost a customer" this one, right? YOU AREN'T A CUSTOMER.

Refusing to vote isn't like refusing to buy McDonald's. It's like walking into a McDonald's, handing the cashier $20 (because you still gotta pay taxes whether you vote or not), and saying "Surprise me."

(Oh and during this particular trip, one of the two McDonald's options is maybe not your favorite food, and the other is deadly poison.)

[sparklyeevee]

flipping the tables at the temple is a crucial part of the run, but obviously every npc in the area will aggro on you as soon as you do it, which is a problem because the crucifixion exploit only works on a pacifist run. that's why we picked up those cords from the leatherworker earlier in the chapter. we can craft those into a whip and drive out the merchants, as long as we don't accidentally kill one of them. this is the only weapon in the game that doesn't proc the "violence" effect due to an oversight in the code, so this will essentially allow us to complete the tableflip glitch without breaking our pacifist run. once every table is flipped, the physics engine won't know how to handle it and some key values will be altered that will later allow us to clip through golgotha directly into hell-

[sparklyeevee]

This website needs to eat more warm, moist foods.

test

edit: DO NOT VOTE BASED ON THE VIBES OF THE FLUIDS 😭

[sparklyeevee]

they should do an MMO where everyone is a shapeshifter and you can go live with animal herds in the wild if you want for a time but you are never entirely one of them, noting that the wild animal npcs partake in behaviors with or make calls to one another that you may not understand the logic of but can try to learn to repeat the musical cadence of. this is true of even the human npcs, whose musical language is the most intricate and complex to learn of all and who will ostracize you readily if you do not use it properly. other players are not marked as players and there is no chat feature. as an elk you may not know if the wolf chasing you is an npc or another player who does not know the same of you, and there is no chat. maybe the players would develop a sort of musical cadence to identify other shifters. no one would like this game and it would not be fun. but i would like it

[sparklyeevee]

Also, like, and I'm mostly summarizing other people's thoughts here, which I'll link to if my headache gets better before I finish writing this.

Say you're a museum curator, a high school biology teacher, an author of popular nonfiction (for children or adults), an art or film critic. You're not usually gonna be deeply involved in knowledge production, because research is usually expensive and your position likely doesn't come with funding for it, and in any case there are only so many hours in a working day and you're using yours for other things. If everything is working how it's supposed to, you likely have a BA or BS, maybe even an MA or MS, in the field. If everything is working how it's supposed to, this means you understand the big words. If everything is working how it's supposed to, you make an effort to stay up to date on your subject matter. Like I said, you don't have time to do your own research. You also don't have time to slog through a layman-friendly explanation of the entire current state of a topic in order to learn about every new thing that comes out, and even if you did, the researchers, the users of the big words, don't have time to write it, nor do most of them have the aptitude for it. That's someone else's job. In point of fact, in this scenario, its your job. You read the short articles with the long words, and figure out how to explain what's in them to people who lack the ability or inclination to do so, because that's literally your job. You figure out how to provide the necessary background, the appropriate plain language (or explanation of specialized terms), to present the information in a book that the regular bookstore will carry, or a lecture in your classroom, or a little sign at the museum, or hell, in this day and age, a podcast or a YouTube video.

Now, maybe I don't trust you to interpret all those long words for me. That's my right, yeah? But in that case my choices are to either learn to make sense of the big words my own self (hard) or live in ignorance (risky).

And like, yeah, some researchers are also absolutely shit writers whose work is difficult even for other experts to make sense of, and some people in the knowledge transmission roles described above either have an agenda or are just terrible at their jobs, but that's kind of a separate issue. We need to push the humanities, and basic writing skills, harder for the STEM guys, and we need to push Touching Grass Occasionally harder on the humanities guys, and we've all got to use our critical thinking skills, but beyond that I don't know a workaround for this one. But like, I don't know if this is still a thing, but back when podcasts were something you downloaded on the computer and put on your iPod, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and in fact a number of the big journals, had podcasts, which explained the important findings in the latest issue in terms a 9th grader (me) could follow with an occasional Google search.

Anyway, if you're feeling sorta walled out by the actual research in an area of interest, go find other nonfiction about it by people whose actual job includes explaining things to non-experts. If you're not sure how to identify what's useful and reliable, here's some off the top of my head tips

More recent is typically better. If there's something older that's still highly relevant, your newer sources will likely reference it.

They cite their damn sources. You should be able to work backwards to the actual research and/or primary sources from which the author is working.

They acknowledge controversies and points of uncertainty within the field, and acknowledge the case for all legitimate sides, even if they're firm in their own position on a contentious issue.

They do not frequently use block capitals or, in the case of audio or audiovisual materials, raise their voice.

Their reasoning is easy to follow. Relatively easy, anyway - I know this is the ADHD website, but if you find it more than usually difficult to follow what you're reading or hearing, either they're not communicating well or they're trying to convince you of something for which they can't make a well-supported, well-reasoned argument.

You can figure out what their qualifications are.

The text does not open with excessive self-promotion. It may take a minute to get a sense of what's usual for any given medium and field, but if it feels like they're trying weirdly hard to sell you something, including their other work, go careful.

The whole “scientists use big words on purpose to be exclusive” is such a bunch of anti-intellectual bullshit. Specific and concise language exists for a reason; you need the right words to convey the right meaning, and explaining stuff right is a hugely important part of science. Cultures that live around loads of snow have loads of words to describe different types of snow; cultures that live in deserts have loads of words to describe different types of sand. Complex language is needed for complex meaning.

[sparklyeevee]

YOOOOOO

[sparklyeevee]

genuinely I love babies so much and my natural sleep cycle is something like 6 am to 1 pm, so I sometimes do consider becoming a night nanny for rich people. like if I genuinely make an entire career change to nighttime infant care when I’m 35 it will not have been an impulse decision. Very well could happen.

[sparklyeevee]

Zillow house listings

[sparklyeevee]

I'm fully nocturnal at this point, so depending on how you look at it I either pull all-nighters literally every night, or never pull all-nighters but, perhaps once every other month, circumstances compel me to pull an all-dayer.

just saw a poll asking whether you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter in college and people were like “yeah at least once a semester” and telling stories in the tags I’m genuinely bewildered by all the people in the tags talking about staying up until sunrise like it’s uncommon enough as to be notable & even memorable.

i have delayed sleep phase syndrome so I’m up all night at least once a week & I know that’s literally a diagnosed disorder that borderlines on a genuine disability but I guess I assumed most “normal” people still stay up all night at least once or twice a month??????

and I’m realizing no y’all are Not doing that.

[sparklyeevee]

SPORTS NIGHT -> 2x07 “KYLE WHITAKER’S GOT TWO SACKS” (1999)

scenes that made my brain melt watching as a closeted 19 year old lesbian

[sparklyeevee]

Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

Members of the press generally aren’t allowed to freely circulate at nicer galas/events without a very good reason. When they do, they need to identify themselves before talking with someone.

[sparklyeevee]

One notes also that the series with even like, 1 (one) really good female character have substantially more balanced shipping.

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?

[sparklyeevee]

i cant get over the king charles portrait. they made that thing to age in his place. that painting hangs in the house of a too-friendly family you find in the post apocalyptic wasteland who inexplicably has a ready supply of fresh meat. if mario jumped into that painting he wouldn't find a charming platformer he would be flayed and hanged like a medieval criminal by an unseeable force in a droning red void. that painting is a color blindness test for people who work in IT but believe in the divine right of kings. that painting is going to weep the sequel to blood. after he dies charles is gonna crawl outta that thing like sadako.

[sparklyeevee]

if anyone wants to help popularize the tag #addict positivity, be my guest. let's go addicts and allies ♡

[sparklyeevee]

have i ever shown you guys my professor’s DNI list

[sparklyeevee]

one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.

which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but their unhealthy parasocial relationships with one or more of the people who created it

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but some elaborate shared-universe subset of fanfic about it that's only barely related to the original at this point, and/or an esoteric reading-against-the-text reinterpretation of the source material (often if the canon is active and ongoing this leads to becoming actively hostile toward it for its inevitably increasing failure to conform to their preferred fanon)

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but the fandom itself and gathering clout within it, so that the source material basically only exists to them as a tool for scoring points in increasingly arcane fandom disputes

and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts