writingpseudonym

[writingpseudonym]

when the subject of "why do people believe things that are seriously wrong and harmful" comes up it feels like you kinda hear one of two perspectives:

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)

they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)

they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)

they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)

they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)

they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)

they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)

they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)

the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)

being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)

random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)

you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.

i know you're doing your best. we're all doing our best.

[writingpseudonym]

[writingpseudonym]

hm.

[writingpseudonym]

People talk abt the erasure of high support needs autistic people among autism communities on here and that's extremely important but also it honestly feels like people have straight up forgotten that autistic people have Needs. Like needs of literally any kind. I have literally watched people pooh-pooh the idea that autism is a disability (calling it a "metaphorical disability" as opposed to physical disabilities which are "real"), have seen countless memes where the punchline is "autistic person has a common symptom or trait of autism", and you just see a bunch of people talk about how they're super autistic but conveniently are never seen as weird or unlikable and never have meltdowns or lash out and have zero trouble understanding sarcasm or jokes or social cues and hit all their life milestones at appropriate times and aren't lame loser virgins like the rest of you shut-ins. Like it is just extremely common to mock and harass autistic people for displaying very typical autistic traits. There's a point where "dismantling stereotypes" becomes "not actually recognizing the things that make autism autism" and we've really reached it it feels like. As always just a stunning lack of compassion for people who are disabled in ways that disable them and not disabled in ways that are cool to you

[writingpseudonym]

grug hate two factor authentication. first grug have to remember password. then grug have to point out which cave painting has birds. now they want grug to hunt and gather new thing called numbers. grug won’t do it grug miss the bird paintings grug was getting pretty good at birds.

[writingpseudonym]

does anyone know how to stop the body from keeping score? i have shit to do

[writingpseudonym]

[writingpseudonym]

i hate driving. here are the laws! if you break them there will be consequences! except youre also expected to break the law just a little bit. people will get mad at you if you dont. you dont have right of way but the person who does is waving you forward for some reason. here's the speed limit! it's not the speed limit, the actual speed limit is that plus ~5-10. the light is green but you're in the turning lane. can you go? should you have gone just then? the person behind you is honking at you. there's a weird noise coming from your engine; if you try to do the right thing and get it checked out, will you get scammed? you are driving a 1-2 ton metal machine rocketing at speeds unknown to humankind for most of history. around a million people die in car accidents every year; that's about one person every thirty seconds. if you take that seriously and try to drive safely then people get mad at you.

[writingpseudonym]

Bad art is better than no art

[writingpseudonym]

There are some viral posts about how you should go see/support local theater even (especially?) if it's bad because something something sincere authenticity local culture soul.

And without actually digging into that it seems weirdly self-defeating as far as pitches go. Maybe there's just a weirdly good local scene here but the skill difference between the live performances I get going to the semi-monthly broadway brunch cabaret thing a local restaurant hosts and the couple times I've actually seen proper broadway or international touring productions is...really not that big? To the point of there being significant overlap, really.

[writingpseudonym]

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

[writingpseudonym]

[writingpseudonym]

A lot of rhetoric from right wing people these days is saying that “white children shouldn’t be made to feel guilty” or whatever.

It’s not really about avoiding guilt though. It’s about erasing history.

I don’t actually think we should feel guilty for the actions of our ancestors. Here’s the thing though. You inherit things from your ancestors. You inherit wealth, and you inherit debt. You can inherit obligations and mistakes.

I am a white person. I didn’t create the racist system in my country, but I did inherit it. There’s no reason for me to feel guilty for inheriting it, but I do have an obligation to deal with what I have inherited.

Black Americans, for example, have inherited generational poverty from the systems my ancestors participated in whether anybody involved realized it or not. I have a responsibility to be like hey what can I do here to deal with this problem I inherited? Reparations? Using some wealth I get from this racist system to help black organizations? Being active in anti-racist politics?

That’s just one small example. Not ever possible thing this could apply to.

I don’t participate in anti-racism out of guilt. I do it because I inherited a debt. I inherited a problem I need to deal with because if a father won’t pay off a debt then his son must do it.

When people talk about guilt in right wing circles they’re not talking about guilt. They’re talking about trying to get out of their inherited debt. To pull off the same social tax evasion strategy as their fathers. To make more suffering to pass on to even more generations of people. To make BIPOC sit in a mess that was made for them a few generations longer.

I don’t think we should stand for that. I also don’t think we should feel guilty for the sins of our fathers. So your ancestors sucked. Okay. What the hell are you gonna do about it?

[writingpseudonym]

Here’s how to tell if a language is easy to learn

None of them are easy

They’re all stupid and terrible and will kick you in the nuts

That being said

Languages similar to ones you already speak

Languages you have a lot of motivation to learn

Languages that have a lot of resources and media to watch and/or listen to and/or read

So, if you’re reading this with relative ease (aka you speak English fluently) probably French or Spanish

Do whatever you want though idk

Don’t just choose a language based on how easy it is

Unless that’s what it takes to keep you motivated idk

Go learn Frisian or something

[writingpseudonym]

The US having an entire city in the middle of the desert dedicated entirely to gambling sounds like a thing other countries would make up about the US as a joke but its real and no one bats an eye at it

[writingpseudonym]

[writingpseudonym]

I know you said not to ask you about the hyoid bone post because you’re not an anatomist but I have a question relating to it that I think you’d be equipped to answer: Are vowels actually necessary for speech? Could a language exist without them?

i mean... in the most technical sense, i guess it could, but... why. vowels are foundational sounds - literally, they're the first sounds we figure out how to make before all the rest of the articulatory system gets involved as motor skills improve. and you'd be absolutely nerfing the number of possible distinct words, especially if you consider that vowels often carry suprasegmental information like tone and length that most consonants can't express.