I believe the problem is never showing evidence, but that the evidence is overwhelming. I could explain the general idea and, maybe, one or two specifics. People that use the XX/XY binary argument wouldn’t be able to explain either, but it’s usually only used because it conforms to a bias. And we are only talking about humans here. Language would implode if we tried to maintain convenient binaries and still back it up with science.

I've never been on twitter, but I'm not that surprised so many of us here were driving engagement.

OR Another perspective on separating the art from the artist.

Story time. I needed a haircut and shop from the neighborhood is good enough for me. The guy that runs it always had a extreme way of thinking, bordering dangerous territory, but a nice person that argues using what they know and listens. Until today, when I realized he just needed to talk to someone much worse to bring out all the bigotry inside of him. So he’s transphobic, homophobic and doesn’t support neurodivergent diagnosis. He’s a feminist, which the other client wasn’t, so it was horribly funny watching him trying to convince someone that women weren’t better off dealing with reusable diapers. It was bad. I considered leaving, but staying was a last kindness to someone that never treated me poorly, but that I can’t support anymore. He even apologized for the conversation, certainly unaware that his other client wasn’t the most awful for me.

Lately, I have been torturing myself by following the allegations against Neil Gaiman. I honestly don’t know the reason I’m doing that, but I am. I was quick to drop him as a choice in entertainment, specially because the parts he corroborate are already bad enough. Then, as usual, there’s the argument of separating the art from the artist. I have my issues with that, but today I found a new point of view with my experience. (not really, but a new way to demonstrate it)

I needed a haircut. I just shave my head, so it’s quite simple. Doing it at home during the pandemic was bad. Finding someone else to do it at a reasonable price and be completely satisfied will take some tries, again. It doesn’t have to be him. There are options. The next one might be secretly worse, might be the same or, with all the luck, someone better. At the end of the day, I don’t want to ever have to sit and listen to that kind of conversation because it’s simply convenient and because my leaving will not change anything.

This is mostly me venting. It drained me more than I thought it would. I'll probably not answer any comment so soon. I don't have the strength to spellcheck what I just wrote to tell the truth.

I really tried to ignore it and let it go as just another passing trend. It’s not my language, not my culture and not my battleground, but it’s hard. It hurt me seeing it slowly spreading and getting bigger. What made me decide to vent was reading someone talk about their struggles and seeing a familiar sentence that might be familiar to all: “I was a weird child”.

Being weird is not usually a problem, the issue usually is people being incapable to accept what they consider weird. Different is not wrong, queer is not wrong, expressing yourself and living the only way you know when it’s not hurting anyone around you is definitely not wrong, even if it doesn’t conform with society.

All these horrible people hate being called weird because it’s what they having been calling us the whole time, but in more specific ways. I feel using it as a slur now just reinforces the negative connotations and validate their view.

Update: semantic satiation to the rescue. Weird became a meme and a trend everyone wanted to take part and use regardless of it making sense.

My friend wants to punch their aggressor, so they tell me. They think about running into him on the street and punching him on the face. Between the two of us, I’m definitely the pacifist and I would always want a world without violent solutions, but, in this case, I wholeheartedly support their desire to simply punch him in the face.

You see, they ended up hurting themselves days after their incident, weeks later they got the courage to finally look for legal counsel, then their family withdrew support for the supposed well-being of not my friend. To make matters worse, the same night the little bit of power my friend could’ve had was denied, they had an encounter with their aggressor. They didn’t punch his face, they left for home shaking.

Should I tell my friend to not think about punching their aggressor’s face? Should I deny them their small coping mechanism? I’m the pacifist, but my fantasies would not be of simply punching him in the face. I would go low, very low, lower than him, in creative and cruel ways that make me actually sick by just considering them in passage, but that wouldn’t be more terrible than the actual reality so many people have to endure because of people like him.

Stop judging the words of those suffering under the boot when that’s the only power they really have, their only solace. We are mostly not David, we are Don Quixote.

Once again I go back to the Exiled Lands (Savage Wilds this time, actually), and once again I can't help editing ".../Conan Exiles/ConanSandbox/Config/DefaultGame.ini" to strip away the opening credits that I can't really skip otherwise or automatically. Not everyone is bothered by it and the wait time is the same, but I'm happier this way.

Do you have some quirk like that in your gaming life? Something that takes at least a bit of effort or research to make your setup just nice? Give me all your most silly and trivial examples. All praise mods that automate doors.

"Plan to follow, look to overtake". That's quite a simple rule that should be taught to everyone. It's a nice instructional video they won't put drivers in the defensive.

It’s really a question. I was going to comment how the term sounds one-sided to me, decided to do a quick search and realized there’s some controversy to the idea. I’m from Brazil and we don’t have a term for that as far as I know, so there might be a linguistic component to the sentiment I have as well.

If I say someone is my ally, I’m automatically their ally. Right? We have a common cause, even if the specifics may differ. Or we have a single goal, mission, vision, desire, and so on. We are allies, we are together. Then we have this concept of ally that seems to exist to denote a separation. I’m an ally because I’m other. Or, I’m an ally because I don’t have the same experiences, therefore I can’t speak from the same place you stand.

The idea we have to understand we speak from different places is important, but drawing a line in the cause and putting allies to one side is weird. Let me put it this way. Instead of sounding like “understand your situation is different than my own”, it sounds more like “know your place”.

How do you feel about that? Am I missing something?

I was watching a video by Georgia Dow in which she talked about a study showing how fear drives people to be more conservative. What that reminded me of was the rationalization I keep stumbling upon almost every day lately: "the alternative is worse".

We are mostly not revolutionaries willing to die for a cause. We just want to live our quiet lives, so we pay the thugs that offer us protection from themselves. The alternative is worse.

I can't criticise people for trying to survive, but I think it's important to be honest with ourselves. It's all bad and the good option is really hard and a scary risk with too many sacrifices.

And let me get personal to drive the point home. Anxiety and depression are just my reality. I'm very isolated and avoid interactions as much as I can. I'm in a bad place and would totally tell you with great conviction that out there somewhere is worse. I also believe it could be amazing, but the chances of me suffering, actually, the certainty, makes me think it's not worth it even trying.

Anyway. Be kind kind to yourselves, be kind to all the others, but be honest.

I was watching a video from two years ago about different social norms and this showed up. Found someone questioning the same eight years ago on reddit (when it seemed less normalized). It feels so weird not being aware of this shift, even as a foreigner.

It's an article in Portuguese, so I thought it'd better not to link directly: https://www.uol.com.br/tilt/noticias/redacao/2023/11/15/erro-camera-reconhecimento-facial.htm

It's talks about how a woman was misidentified at a festival in Brazil by the use of cameras and AI. Twice. First time she was approached by plainclothes officers that informed what was happening, said they were following protocol and asked for an ID (that she wasn't carrying). She was let go after they were satisfied. Hours later she was approached again, in a violent manner this time, treated in the manner they would typically treat criminals here (or most of the civilized world). She wetted her pants in fear. After being let go again, she decided to go home.

The way I understand it, she didn't do anything wrong. She had nothing to hide showing her face and being judged my the state surveillance. She got lucky by being mistreated in a nice way once. She also got lucky the second time for her brutal mistreatment not ending with her imprisoned and unable to leave because that happens to innocent people much more frequently than people imagine.

Everything you say can be used against you. Every information they have can be used against you. Don't give them ammunition.

As far back as 2010, in a piece titled “Little Brother is Watching,” author Walter Kirn wrote for the New York Times: “As the internet proves every day, it isn’t some stern and monolithic Big Brother that we have to reckon with as we go about our daily lives, it’s a vast cohort of prankish Little Brothers equipped with devices that Orwell, writing 60 years ago, never dreamed of and who are loyal to no organized authority. The invasion of privacy — of others’ privacy but also our own, as we turn our lenses on ourselves in the quest for attention by any means — has been democratized.”

The article is paywalled: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17FOB-WWLN-t.html

Another one from 2004: https://www.wired.com/2004/07/little-brother-is-watching/

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I had never heard the concept before, but it certainly serves to stop me from considering the state we are now as non horrifying. Bookmarked the podcast for later, but I’m sharing it right now anyway.