I Don't Want My Cellphone To Have AI I Want It To Have 3 Days Of Battery Time. I Don't Want My Computer

Edit: I am fully aware it is spelt “sewing” and that “sowing” is related to crops and the grim reaper. I’m bad at homophones and you can’t edit polls.

Can you believe I'm having to make this meme even after successfully finishing up taxes and applying to job

Currently rereading Eric Flint's 1632 and reflecting on just how influential Flint was to me and my approach to both praxis and politics as a teenager. I found Flint when I was about thirteen or fourteen, around the time I found Pratchett I think, and he's left an equally wide thumbprint on my soul. Isn't that the most wonderful thing about stories, that people you've never met can help shape our adult selves? Mother of Demons I often recommend for its SFF worldbuilding--Flint built a species with at least four genders, only some of which are reproductive, and associated "normal" sexual orientations, and then proceeded to write in a textually intersex character and queer the hell out of it.

1632, though, is the one where a little West Virginia town in 2000 gets picked up and dropped in the middle of Thuringia, Germany in the eponymous year--right in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The local United Mine Workers of America chapter plays a major role, particularly its head.

As I write this I'm listening to the scene where the little town of Grantville, having admitted after a few days that they are probably not ever going home, is crowded into the high school gymnasium listening to the mayor lay that reality out and suggesting an interim council to help the town set out a sort of constitutional convention so they can work out what on earth they're going to do moving forward--especially since there's a bunch of displaced refugees collecting in the forests nearby. Sensible of them, really; the Americans murdered the shit out of the local soldiers that displaced them, on account of how the shaken mine workers that went out to figure out WTF happened not being super down with suddenly running into a bunch of fuckheads raping the locals and torturing people to find out where their valuables might be. After that, said Americans proceeded to retreat into the town boundaries and gibber quietly to themselves. I would go lurk in their woods, too.

Anyway, the mayor sets up this proposal, everyone agrees, and a CEO who was visiting for his son's wedding at the time steps forward and says: look. I know how to lead, and I'm probably the most qualified person here. I lead a major industry corporation effectively and I did that after my time as a Navy officer. I put myself forward because I'm qualified. Now, we're going to need to circle the wagons to get through the winter, tighten our belts, but we can get through this. We can't support all these refugees, though; we'll have to seal the border so they can't bring disease--they're a drain on our resources we can't afford--

and the UMWA guy, he gets really mad listening to this. There's this Sephardic refugee woman he's real taken with who got swept up in the town first thing, and she's sitting in and listening; he's thinking about throwing her out, thinking about how much she knows about the place they're found in, and he's furious. But he gets a good grip on his anger and he marches up and he says, look. This dude has been here two days and he's already talking about downsizing?! You're going to listen to this CEO talking about cuts, cuts, cuts? Nah. Trying to circle the wagons is probably impossible, it's stupid, and if you think my men and I are going to enforce that, you can fuck off. That proposal is inside out and bass ackwards. We've got about a six mile diameter of Grantville here; how much food do YOU think we're going to grow? How about the soldiers wandering around, do you think we're going to be able to fight armies off on our lonesome? Look at the few refugees we already have in the room, they'll tell you how those armies will treat you! We could do it for a while, the amount of gun nuts here, but so what? We don't have enough people to shoot them! Not if we're going to do anything else to keep us going! We have about six months of stockpiled coal to keep going, and without another source or getting the coal mines working, we're screwed. We have technical strength but we don't have the supplies or resources we would need to maintain it. Those refugees? They're resources. We need people to do the work we will need to keep ourselves. The hell with downsizing; let's grow outwards! Bring people in, give them safety, see what they can bring to the table once they've had a moment! He invokes: send us your tired, your poor!, and the CEO yells in frustration: this isn't America! so he yells back "it will be!"

And of course everyone cheers. I love Flint for many reasons but he is unapologetic about affection for the America of ideals--ideals, he freely admits, that are often honored in the breach rather than the observance, ideals that are messy and flawed, but nevertheless ideals that can work to inspire us to become the best version of ourselves. For Flint, history is as valuable as a source of stories to inspire ourselves as it is a repository of knowledge, and on this I tend to agree with him. We must learn from our moments of shame but equally we must learn from moments that show us how to be our best selves.

It's been twenty three years and the text is now an interesting historical document in its own right, hitting points and rhythms in beats that are sometimes out of place today. It's not perfect. But the novel contains a commitment to joy and to emphasizing the leaps of faith and understanding that regular, everyday people make every day to try and support each other that I routinely try to match in my writing.

Anyway, one of the strengths of the novel, I think, is its gender politics: it's a very ensemble kind of novel, lots of characters, and it's preoccupied with positive masculinity in a lot of ways. There's a lot of these hyper masculine characters--Mike Stearns perhaps more than anyone else--and--and...

... And Flint's characterization of Stearns, as he sketches out who the man is--his pivotal American leader, ex boxer, working class organizer, big man.... well, it lands equally on "he is delighted and astonished to find a local woman who quickly assesses how the cushion of air in tires works," and "he considers who to set up a Jewish refugee in the middle of Germany up with and he thinks to ask the Jewish family he grew up with to host her and her ill father because he thinks she'll be most comfortable there", and "he views people as potential assets rather than potential drains." A younger man asks him for advice on whether to pursue a professional sports career because of the boxing and he says no, you're in the worst place of not being quite good enough and you'll blow out your knees without accomplishing safety. He frames that interaction such that he allows his own experiences to make him vulnerable and invite the younger man to understand when a struggle have worth it.

It's actually a really deft portrayal of intense masculinity that also makes a virtue of a bunch of traits more usually associated with women: empathy, relational sensitivity, the ability to listen. As a blueprint for what a positive masculinity can look like, vs the toxic kind, it's very well done. I think sometimes when we look at gender roles in terms of virtues, and when masculinity is defined in terms of opposition to femininity, people get lost by arguing that virtues assigned to one gender are somehow antithetical to another gender. In fact that's never been the case: virtues are wholly neutral and can appear in any gender. What the gender does is inflect the ways we expect that virtue to appear in terms of individuals' actions within their society.

Gender isn't purely an individual trait, basically; it's a product of our collective associations. Two characters with different genders can display the same virtues and strengths, but we imagine them expressed in different ways according to our cultural expectations around gender. And I just think that's neat.

Marian Ellis Rowan (1848-1922, Australian) ~ One hundred and fifty-eight medium- and small-sized moths, in seven columns. A wide range of families is represented, including the NOCTUIDAE, ARCTIIDAE, LASIOCAMPIDAE, LYMANTRIIDAE, GEOMETRIDAE, PYRALIDAE, SESIIDAE, etc. 

Watercolour with bodycolour on green paper

[Source: Christie’s]

Basically, our reaction to a walrus knocking:

Vs

A fairy knocking:

I'm so fucking productive. I got so much shit done today.

ⓘ Fact check: This user did the bare minimum for the first time in 3 months.

people always talk about evil clones like oooh a dark mirror oohh what if you saw what a cruel person you were/are capable of becoming. and well yes but what if you were the evil clone. what if you looked in the mirror and what you saw was so bright it blinded you. what if you had to know exactly how good you could have been.

24,07,2024

allan self care cards allan self care cards

bonus:

edit because people won’t shut up about it: yes floss your teeth at least once a day if you can, and wash off the toothbrush when you’re done brushing. ok? ok.

'mental health matters!'

until you dont feel anything for anyone and have no sympathy

until you have never loved your family and hate them

until you have ruined peoples lives and ruined your own relationships

until you dont get better even with support, medication, and therapy

until you refuse therapy

until you always worsen yourself to get 'sicker' than others

until youre homicidal

until youre 'bitchy' , 'irritable' , and 'pissy'

until you have crying meltdowns over chewing sounds

until you have gender dysphoria

until you're extremely impulsive

until you cant remember anything about you and your childhood

until your room piles up with clothes, piles of unwashed laundry, bedsheets and blankets that have not been washed for months

until you have P-OCD

until you have cluster A personality disorders

until you have cluster B personality disorders

until you have cluster C personality disorders

until youre on the schizospec

until youre bipolar

until you are a system

until youre hypersexual

''mental health matters'' until you struggle with real mental illness and not 'oh i was feeling pretty stressed today'

if you struggle with any of these i love you, you are safe here

Sorry if I'm mixing you up with someone else, but you've worked security before, right?

If you're willing, I'd be really interested on your thoughts on the murderbot diaries or murderbot as a character with that in mind?

Like did you recognise aspects of your job in murderbots descriptions of security work? Or did they like throw you out of immersion in the story?

Anyway thanks and hope you're having a good day/evening wherever you are!

As a security guard who has read the first two Murderbot books, Murderbot has been the number one most realistic security specialist character I have ever seen in media so far 😭

The third most annoying thing in security in my experience is handling threats. The second most annoying thing is having no threats to handle and being bored. The number one most annoying thing is the client being an idiot

Ihave social anxiety which I am medicated for. When I am in uniform with clear instructions, that anxiety is zero. I have a script and a set of rules and that makes life easy. I’m super good at performing tasks with clear expectations and that’s kinda how I keep getting good offers, it’s super straightforward

Bad clients are clients who give stupid, inefficient, counterproductive, cruel, or flat-out illegal orders. There are ways of shutting that shit down without them losing heir shit, but it’s still a pain in the ass every time

I’m a security specialist. I specialize in security. This is what I am trained for- handling crisis situations and minimizing harm. If you, an off-shift cashier at pet smart, see me deescalating a situation and decide you’re gonna drop your untrained uninformed ass in there with zero context or skills and “help” because I look small and helpless, then all you’re doing is increasing my likelihood of getting hurt while increasing my paperwork load by like two hours, and I’m gonna hate you the entire time. What you have essentially done is promoted me to meat shield while giving the aggressor I’m calming down an obnoxious and aggravating hostage. Good god please do not

Yes, I am sometimes asked to stand perfectly still in a corner for several hours like a mannequin. What do I do to avoid going insane? Think about Star Trek and the very good fanfiction I’ll be reading on my break, mostly

Yes I can assist in evacuating tw location in the event of an environmental disaster. No I cannot tell my waiter that they put cilantro on the wrong order. Yes this makes perfect sense

I love Murderbot. I love how realistic it is. Like obviously I can’t speak for everyone in the industry but yeah I’ve worked for absolute dogshit security companies in the past and yeah a lot of the books so far are super accurate to that experience so A+ so far, honestly