More Usual Fare - February-March 02020
Mar. 18th, 2020 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGreetings! Let's begin with the Gender Census for 2020, asking for people to talk about their identification, pronouns, and such things in relation to not being on the gender binary. There's an FAQ for the Gender census, and we note full-on that it's not a scientific anything, but instead someone with a burning curiosity.
There is also the United States Census going on, which is also something to respond to, although there will be many populations that do not get easily counted in this, because of very real fears that the current administration would use that information to arrest, deport, or harass them. (It's not supposed to happen. It's prohibited by law. I'm not going to begrudge anyone thinking that this administration might decide that law doesn't apply to them, like they have for so many other laws.)
We must wonder about the end of the chess game he played with Death, for Max von Sydow has gone beyond the rim at 90 years of age.
Collections of objects personally significant to people who have transitioned, tagged with stories written by their donators about why the object is that important to them. Which I'll put next to stories of people who are genderfluid or nonbinary and the navigation they have to do because not everyone has to transition.
UK laws regarding criminalizing or decriminalizing gay behavior were always focused on men, because nobody believed that lesbians were doing anything sexual. These days, though, it manifests as LGBTQ+ youth who have been thrown out having to get letters from the people who have thrown them out before the public housing will take them in.
The library collection of cards advertising sex workers, which has immense value in both tracing the history of sex work, but also in reflecting changes in printing design, technique, and affordability, as things that were meant to be distributed on the sly and put in places where there would be regular police sweeps to clean them up.
The Archive Of Our Own appears to be restricted in the PRC, a casualty of increasingly stringent regulations about what the authorities there think is appropriate for young minds to view. So, not only does the AO3 have a Hugo, it's been officially restricted in the PRC. There's a certain amount of badges of honor being collected here.
Nevertheless, She Persisted, a free e-book collection in honor of all the women who have been told they couldn't and did it anyway.
Most people who write are not making enough from their writing to sustain themselves solely from their writing. There may be another job, another person, help from all sorts of sources, but rare are the writers that can pay everything solely by what they make doing writing. (And most of them, you will find, are writing a lot and selling a lot, because even though none of those pieces themselves will do what is needed, if you can sell six or seven of them in any given year, there's a possibility you might be able to break even.)
Macmillan publishing finally decided to get rid of the asinine e-book restrictions they put in place some time ago, partially because of the need for e-materials around at this point, but also because it was a stupid, asinine thing to do and the data they've gotten back from those affected has confirmed it.
More prison sentences handed out in the college admissions scandals, which aren't lengthy, but also carry fines and such, as at least a token of justice administered when it became clear that the thing wasn't going to get swept underneath the rug.
The suggestion that shorting your sleep intake even by a little has similarly profound effects as to shorting it by a lot.
They should also probably look at the ways in which employers continue to insist that all days are work days, even the ones that employees legally get to take off, and land somewhere in the idea that the government should be pushing back against the idea that workers only exist to make capital richer, so that everyone gets the opportunity to have a life outside of work again. If you have to, pitch it to them on the research that says taking time off of work actually makes someone's work better.
Also, while you're at it, insist that a salary that allows people to stop worrying about their money ends up doing better for the company and the people that work there, especially if it's the higher-ups that take the pay cut so that everyone else can flourish.
Thanos is not an economist to take after, even if he follows in Malthusian traditions. Mostly because the Snap doesn't fix what Thanos believes is the underlying problem of finite resources versus exponential growth. It only frees up significant amounts of capacity for more exponential growth, and soon enough, people will start counting themselves by how many Snaps they've survived and hope they don't draw the black spot on the next one.
Tamsyn Muir talks about writing your own experiences, writing things that are dark, about how much fic has become devalued because of its twin associations of "women" and "porn", and also about the book Gideon the Ninth, but the book talk is a little bit of an afterthought in relation to the very real talk about the other subjects.
Explining how hanzi came about through the supposition of yingzi, English words when transformed into phonetic-and-radical constructions.
The colors of nature in underground rock formations, the way that human brains process music with lyrics as different from music or speech alone, ways to make sure that when we talk about other people's expressions of art, we're not doing the things we're claiming to be against, and experiencing virtually a place you are intimately familiar with in the space of bodies.
Finding nesting penguins around your home, spotting penguins in places they might not normally be, the consequences of introducing non-native species of hippos, sighting a pink manta ray, trying to preserve dinosaur statues, that, while Science Marches On, are definitely part of the heritage of trying to make science more lifelike to the lay observer, shifting away from killing to vaccinating badgers to try and control tuberculosis, a request to illustrate butterflies that are alive, rather than those that have been killed and arranged for display, how prizing the color of turmeric has resulted in lead being added to it to keep the color, with predictable results, a crab that absconded with and destroyed a thermal camera trying to catch foxes, and relocating wildlife displaced by fires.
In tehcnology, Magritte understood the Internet, even though most of this article is about Baudelaire's flâneur and the ways that the Internet allows for us to experience infinite amounts of unreality all smashed together with each other in a ceaseless grind. Ceci n'est pas une réalité.
A second person who received a stem cell treatment to defeat a particularly malignant cancer has also potentially developed an immunity to the HIV infection they had as a result of the treatment, which continues to suggest promising research avenues for vaccination or other treatments, so that this particular killer can be silenced, as it did to so many.
An independent bookseller affiliation program that hopes to draw people away from the Amazon behemoth into supporting their local indies, with some pretty good referral and affiliate rewards to go along with it.
A cellular network-connected phone with a rotary dial mechanism. Which, for at least some generation of people who just want a phone, and mmight want to indulge in a little retro styling, might be exactly the thing they want.
The continued collision between cultural practices of open grieving, now aided with social media, and the desire to have the dead and dying be respectfully treated.
Manufacturing and providing models of vulvas and vaginas so that med students can practice important procedures on things that are much closer to real than what's currently in use. Because, apparently, it's cow tongue and sponges that the med students are training on, despite our technological bounties.
On the process of writing descriptive audio tracks for pornographic videos, and what it might be like for someone without sight to experience such things though the descriptive audio.
Using quantum mechanics to get around the limitations of algorithms and solve problems that computers would otherwise be unable to solve. Like whether or not a particular program will run successfully or loop forever.
Better public transit moves people more effectively over time, which is really helpful when you want to reduce emissions produces by all the vehicles on the roads.
A retrospective of Cascading Style Sheets, web browsers, and how we (mostly) got to the point where we could actually do some of the most important parts of layout in CSS. (It only took us to HTML 5 and CSS 3 to get there.)
Duolingo and other language-learning sites encourage the community to suggest languages and build courses for them to try and stave off their disappearance, but that sometimes means that language-speaking community has to make decisions on how they want to present it on Duolingo, if they want to present it at all.
Redesigning makeup application tools to help a person with Parkinson's continue to do what they love also means there's a line out that will help beginners and people who want to apply quickly and with less effort. It's almost like if you design things to be accommodating, it turns out that everyone has an easier time with them, whether they have a disability or not.
A Twitter account distributing the bathroom codes for downtown London is the beginning of a request that the planners in and around London include public toilets, rather than leaving it to the private spaces to have and control.
Through the use of data optimization, machines and algorithms are trying to make humans work at machine speed and efficiency, and putting their jobs and pay at risk if they don't manage it. At this point, one remembers that R.U.R. gave us a very useful term, and that we should recall what its original meaning is. Because with these systems in place, we are making robots out of humans, and unsurprisingly, like in all other time periods where slavery existed, the consequences are not good for the slaves.
Last for tonight, a performance of the Mistake Waltz, where there's always someone who isn't quite in sync with everyone else. (But the performers help each other out where they can.) And an accessible performance of the Hallelujiah Chorus.
And also what it might sound like when a woman can speak her mind and not be afraid of whatever comes from it. Which we could use a lot more of - especially the reminder that there are a lot of soul-less men out there who should be dismissed as "trivial". I'm going to slot this next to a review of Her Body Can, a body-positive children's book, because these are the kinds of opinions we want to see more of in the world.
A video about how taking care of something, even if it it's not human, can sometimes help us through the worst of our situations.
And finally, getting enough rest is something that we should do, even if the society around us tells us that we don't need rest, only sleep. (If they say anything about the sleep in the first place.)
And then read The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign, about a ship captain who tries to raise enough money to refuel his vehicle so he doesn't have to space a stowaway. (And all the people that comment on such a thing, one way or another.)
There is also the United States Census going on, which is also something to respond to, although there will be many populations that do not get easily counted in this, because of very real fears that the current administration would use that information to arrest, deport, or harass them. (It's not supposed to happen. It's prohibited by law. I'm not going to begrudge anyone thinking that this administration might decide that law doesn't apply to them, like they have for so many other laws.)
We must wonder about the end of the chess game he played with Death, for Max von Sydow has gone beyond the rim at 90 years of age.
Collections of objects personally significant to people who have transitioned, tagged with stories written by their donators about why the object is that important to them. Which I'll put next to stories of people who are genderfluid or nonbinary and the navigation they have to do because not everyone has to transition.
UK laws regarding criminalizing or decriminalizing gay behavior were always focused on men, because nobody believed that lesbians were doing anything sexual. These days, though, it manifests as LGBTQ+ youth who have been thrown out having to get letters from the people who have thrown them out before the public housing will take them in.
The library collection of cards advertising sex workers, which has immense value in both tracing the history of sex work, but also in reflecting changes in printing design, technique, and affordability, as things that were meant to be distributed on the sly and put in places where there would be regular police sweeps to clean them up.
The Archive Of Our Own appears to be restricted in the PRC, a casualty of increasingly stringent regulations about what the authorities there think is appropriate for young minds to view. So, not only does the AO3 have a Hugo, it's been officially restricted in the PRC. There's a certain amount of badges of honor being collected here.
Nevertheless, She Persisted, a free e-book collection in honor of all the women who have been told they couldn't and did it anyway.
Most people who write are not making enough from their writing to sustain themselves solely from their writing. There may be another job, another person, help from all sorts of sources, but rare are the writers that can pay everything solely by what they make doing writing. (And most of them, you will find, are writing a lot and selling a lot, because even though none of those pieces themselves will do what is needed, if you can sell six or seven of them in any given year, there's a possibility you might be able to break even.)
Macmillan publishing finally decided to get rid of the asinine e-book restrictions they put in place some time ago, partially because of the need for e-materials around at this point, but also because it was a stupid, asinine thing to do and the data they've gotten back from those affected has confirmed it.
More prison sentences handed out in the college admissions scandals, which aren't lengthy, but also carry fines and such, as at least a token of justice administered when it became clear that the thing wasn't going to get swept underneath the rug.
The suggestion that shorting your sleep intake even by a little has similarly profound effects as to shorting it by a lot.
They should also probably look at the ways in which employers continue to insist that all days are work days, even the ones that employees legally get to take off, and land somewhere in the idea that the government should be pushing back against the idea that workers only exist to make capital richer, so that everyone gets the opportunity to have a life outside of work again. If you have to, pitch it to them on the research that says taking time off of work actually makes someone's work better.
Also, while you're at it, insist that a salary that allows people to stop worrying about their money ends up doing better for the company and the people that work there, especially if it's the higher-ups that take the pay cut so that everyone else can flourish.
Thanos is not an economist to take after, even if he follows in Malthusian traditions. Mostly because the Snap doesn't fix what Thanos believes is the underlying problem of finite resources versus exponential growth. It only frees up significant amounts of capacity for more exponential growth, and soon enough, people will start counting themselves by how many Snaps they've survived and hope they don't draw the black spot on the next one.
Tamsyn Muir talks about writing your own experiences, writing things that are dark, about how much fic has become devalued because of its twin associations of "women" and "porn", and also about the book Gideon the Ninth, but the book talk is a little bit of an afterthought in relation to the very real talk about the other subjects.
Explining how hanzi came about through the supposition of yingzi, English words when transformed into phonetic-and-radical constructions.
The colors of nature in underground rock formations, the way that human brains process music with lyrics as different from music or speech alone, ways to make sure that when we talk about other people's expressions of art, we're not doing the things we're claiming to be against, and experiencing virtually a place you are intimately familiar with in the space of bodies.
Finding nesting penguins around your home, spotting penguins in places they might not normally be, the consequences of introducing non-native species of hippos, sighting a pink manta ray, trying to preserve dinosaur statues, that, while Science Marches On, are definitely part of the heritage of trying to make science more lifelike to the lay observer, shifting away from killing to vaccinating badgers to try and control tuberculosis, a request to illustrate butterflies that are alive, rather than those that have been killed and arranged for display, how prizing the color of turmeric has resulted in lead being added to it to keep the color, with predictable results, a crab that absconded with and destroyed a thermal camera trying to catch foxes, and relocating wildlife displaced by fires.
In tehcnology, Magritte understood the Internet, even though most of this article is about Baudelaire's flâneur and the ways that the Internet allows for us to experience infinite amounts of unreality all smashed together with each other in a ceaseless grind. Ceci n'est pas une réalité.
A second person who received a stem cell treatment to defeat a particularly malignant cancer has also potentially developed an immunity to the HIV infection they had as a result of the treatment, which continues to suggest promising research avenues for vaccination or other treatments, so that this particular killer can be silenced, as it did to so many.
An independent bookseller affiliation program that hopes to draw people away from the Amazon behemoth into supporting their local indies, with some pretty good referral and affiliate rewards to go along with it.
A cellular network-connected phone with a rotary dial mechanism. Which, for at least some generation of people who just want a phone, and mmight want to indulge in a little retro styling, might be exactly the thing they want.
The continued collision between cultural practices of open grieving, now aided with social media, and the desire to have the dead and dying be respectfully treated.
Manufacturing and providing models of vulvas and vaginas so that med students can practice important procedures on things that are much closer to real than what's currently in use. Because, apparently, it's cow tongue and sponges that the med students are training on, despite our technological bounties.
On the process of writing descriptive audio tracks for pornographic videos, and what it might be like for someone without sight to experience such things though the descriptive audio.
Using quantum mechanics to get around the limitations of algorithms and solve problems that computers would otherwise be unable to solve. Like whether or not a particular program will run successfully or loop forever.
Better public transit moves people more effectively over time, which is really helpful when you want to reduce emissions produces by all the vehicles on the roads.
A retrospective of Cascading Style Sheets, web browsers, and how we (mostly) got to the point where we could actually do some of the most important parts of layout in CSS. (It only took us to HTML 5 and CSS 3 to get there.)
Duolingo and other language-learning sites encourage the community to suggest languages and build courses for them to try and stave off their disappearance, but that sometimes means that language-speaking community has to make decisions on how they want to present it on Duolingo, if they want to present it at all.
Redesigning makeup application tools to help a person with Parkinson's continue to do what they love also means there's a line out that will help beginners and people who want to apply quickly and with less effort. It's almost like if you design things to be accommodating, it turns out that everyone has an easier time with them, whether they have a disability or not.
A Twitter account distributing the bathroom codes for downtown London is the beginning of a request that the planners in and around London include public toilets, rather than leaving it to the private spaces to have and control.
Through the use of data optimization, machines and algorithms are trying to make humans work at machine speed and efficiency, and putting their jobs and pay at risk if they don't manage it. At this point, one remembers that R.U.R. gave us a very useful term, and that we should recall what its original meaning is. Because with these systems in place, we are making robots out of humans, and unsurprisingly, like in all other time periods where slavery existed, the consequences are not good for the slaves.
Last for tonight, a performance of the Mistake Waltz, where there's always someone who isn't quite in sync with everyone else. (But the performers help each other out where they can.) And an accessible performance of the Hallelujiah Chorus.
And also what it might sound like when a woman can speak her mind and not be afraid of whatever comes from it. Which we could use a lot more of - especially the reminder that there are a lot of soul-less men out there who should be dismissed as "trivial". I'm going to slot this next to a review of Her Body Can, a body-positive children's book, because these are the kinds of opinions we want to see more of in the world.
A video about how taking care of something, even if it it's not human, can sometimes help us through the worst of our situations.
And finally, getting enough rest is something that we should do, even if the society around us tells us that we don't need rest, only sleep. (If they say anything about the sleep in the first place.)
And then read The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign, about a ship captain who tries to raise enough money to refuel his vehicle so he doesn't have to space a stowaway. (And all the people that comment on such a thing, one way or another.)
no subject
Date: 2020-03-18 04:34 pm (UTC)Sounds interesting though!