![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptLet's begin with how The Untamed, the television adaptation of a specific novel, follows the dictates of both the market and the culture of its home broadcast audience when it stays well away from anything that might be explicit content, with all of the head-scratching that sometimes accompanies what gets determined to be "explicit". Also, a well-deserved admonishment to fans in countries that have glass houses that stone-throwing is a bad look for them.
An Adventure in Time and Gender talking about the Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft, an important part of the history of medicalizing transition and in blurring the lines between a person and an object of scientific study. And the Lesbian Avengers and their role in trying to make being gay more visible through direct action, although there's some speculation about why the group disbanded that draws the eyebrows up.
A 1970 essay about problems that will still sound familiar to audiences of our day, about how being serious about the revolution and changing things will require white men to give up power and to let others lead. And that white men will have to hold themselves accountable for the sexism and the objectification and tokenism that they do (of women and of everyone who isn't white). (And that white women will have to stop trying to assist white men in hopes that they will be able to access the power that white men have.)
When we talk about how children and teens need supportive adults in their lives, we also mean that it's best for children and teens to have adults in their life that those children and teens can see are (relatively) functional adults and that have identities and experiences similar to their own. When you hear about having lost a generation to things like HIV/AIDS. the ramifications are more than just the physical loss of life (and the intense anger that should be directed at those who allowed them to die and slow-walked any treatments and research), they're about how an entire generation of kids lost potential mentors, supportive adults, and people who could have shown them that they can be themselves and it really does turn out fine, even if the thing that was obvious couldn't yet be spoken aloud. And people who would push back against the narrative that the children have to be protected against learning about the existence of queer people, lest learning about their existence somehow result in an otherwise straight-and-cis person becoming queer or trans nonconsensually. As is noted, the narrative that all adults who aren't your parents are untrustworthy predators is perfect if what you want is to isolate someone from any other worldview from the parents', no matter how abusive that worldview is. (Not to mention the statistics about how abusers of children tend to be people who have positions of trust over them, or are at least known to them.)
For the grownups, and those growing up, the loss of a generation also means losing people who could lead the way on showing what a fulfilling queer life might look like, even if that life has none of the hallmarks of what the Boomers or other generations before assumed were obvious indicators of adulthood, like steady jobs, financial independence, and raising children in a (presumably heterosexual) marriage contract. The kinds of things that I still struggle with about adulthood in general, even if I have achieved many of those markers that were unmarked defaults.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping, fresh off their career as a powerful political broker, hosted a punk concert. And we continue to hope they can parlay their continued successes into even weirder ventures.
Some analysis of serious attacks involving the throwing of acid on others in the Victorian era, which makes some denunciations seem tame in comparison.
An interview with a researcher who wrote a book about handmade pornography in the United States, which seems to focus specifically on artifacts and non-professional creations, in media that aren't what one might expect or in contexts that are not what immediately comes to mind when thinking about pornography. An interesting facet of the interview is how the author notes how copyright is often used as a means to prevent reproduction of some of the interesting things that exist in the world, and that there's not exactly a whole lot of grant money going about for someone to do a lot of research on the topic and pay for copyright clearance (or, for that matter, to pay the photographer). Which is very much an indicative facet of how US culture treats sexuality as a mostly-taboo topic.
The tropes and settings of the Gothic novel, and especially the Gothic horror, are fertile ground when reimagined through the lens of a people who have already been historically "othered". Both for the possibility of seeing what qualifies as the Other (Get Out, as a movie, for example), but also for seeing what the Othered might do and what other Others they can bring in and portray positively. (Even if the Gothic novel is already about people who are being othered and what kinds of pressure are being brought to bear on them by systems, and the perception of it being more straight and white has to do with who got to be preserved and who didn't.)
If you write good sex and good exposition of Hollywood's less than great tendencies, you can expect to be vilified and criticized for being so frank, if you're a woman. If a dude, you're probably going to be lauded as a visionary and gritty and a whole bunch of other words that still show how misogynistic the publishing industry is. (Not that a lot of the underground press wasn't doing much better.)
A study comparing women who received abortions to those who were denied them has evidence suggesting that most of the rationale used to restrict and make abortion more difficult doesn't hold up when presented with lived experience. It's not a uniquely dangerous procedure, and the people who are seeking the thing know what the potential consequences are of having to give birth versus not, and there's really no reason other than the desire to control the bodies of people who can give birth as to why these procedures are still as difficult and restricted as they are.
Good sleep health is also a function of how affluent you are. No surprise that poorer and Blacker neighborhoods also have more noise pollution and work that stresses them out more, gives them less control, and otherwise doesn't help at all with getting enough sleep and enough restful sleep.
The Johnson government is considering changing wildlife protection standards so that only the most critically endangered species would be protected from displacement or development destroying their habitats. I suppose this is the Brexiteer equivalent of "drill, baby, drill" to claim that "newt-counting" is a drag on the economy. Even though, across the way, the New York City subway system and transport infrastructure found itself under water, with stations flooding and roadways covered.
A picture of waves caught at just the right time looks a bit like a human face and hair. Because humans are pattern-matching champions, even when there's nothing actually there.
An unknown disease is killing songbirds, and until it can be determined and counteracted, officials in the United States are asking people not to feed birds or leave out water for them in the affected areas. A sloth rehabilitation space in Venezuela, wildlife restoration projects for England,
Wally the walrus is no longer welcome, and new methods, such as playing the sounds of walrus predators, are underway to try and move Wally back home. Also, Wally has a custom and specific pontoon to lounge upon, in hopes that having a space to call home will discourage the boat-climbing and make it easier for the eventual trip home. In addition to these measures, boat owners are being advised to take measures against Wally clambering on board their vessels. That is, when Wally isn't holding still long enough to have a portrait painted.
Either way, there's an entire thread of everything that Wally has done and been sighted doing if you're just coming to this story.
On virus matters, Recruitment is still ongoing for persons who menstruate and who have not yet had the full course of immunization to track and report and changes to their menstruation as a possible side effect of an immunization dose.
Money is deemed more important than health or life, as places continue to open up and decisions about masking and congregating are returned to businesses rather than kept in the hands of scientists. While there are potentially ways to do opening up that would be better for mitigation and health, it seems like a lot of governments are going for the "pretend it's not happening" approach. Which will put pressue back on hospitals and burn through their capacity as a slow-burning fuse rather than as the quick and visible spike that happened before. Which, in turn, both draws away resources from other urgent hospital issues and depresses the morale and resilience of the staff, as they are being asked to continue dealing with this nightmare for yet longer.
There is no graphene in the vaccine, because if there were, it would be impossible to hide, says the person who did their Ph.D in how graphene behaves in liquids.
A preprint suggesting ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 was swiftly retracted after it turned out the data used to support the case was almost surely fabricated, and not particularly well-fabricated, at that.
In technology, A flaw in the Windows Print Spool service produced some immediate needs to patch an update into the system to prevent a privilege escalation attack that could start in the spooling system.
Additionally, while there's some potential good news to anyone who was hit with the My Book Live exploit, including data recovery services, it's also possible that some MyCloud devices that can only run version 3 of the operating system could have an exploit run against them that will let someone gain privileged access, if those devices are exposed to the Internet. Western Digital's response to this has basically been "update to a device that runs OS 5," which is another of those responses that makes you snarl, because perfectly good and running hardware running into a planned obsolescence is always a problem. And if you don't have the technical stuff to be able to repurpose the old hardware into something else (or to follow someone else's scripts to do it with), or the device is so old that even the community doesn't support it any more, not really, then, well, hope you have electronics recycling available somewhere that you can use those things with. With the problem, of course, that it's not always feasible or easy for someone to replace their long-running devices, especially if the new device does things differently or doesn't have an essential feature that was present in the old version.
Ukranian police seized a cryptocurrency mining operation that was stealing several hundred thousand dollars' worth of electricity from the power grid, with several game consoles and personal computers seized in the raid. To replace them, a legal and above-board mining operation went online in Texas, a state that has a notoriously deregulated and unstable energy grid, and that refuses to tie in to other supporting grids that could help provide stability.
Start with a $120ish Chinese-made phone being sold as a $500 Freedom Phone that's undergone a skin change and preinstalled certain apps. Add in some kickbacks for people who are helping shill this overpriced phone. Then add into that the complete reluctance to release specifications and the likelihood that it uses a chipset that's notorious for being insecure and easily modifiable by anyone. (And, really, the Gizmodo article does a great job of showcasing that if what you want is freedom from corporations making decisions, or systems that are less likely to be spied upon, there are options available.) What do you get? Something that looks a lot like a grift intended to fleece those whose loyalty to a particular person increases their susceptibility to having their money parted from them. Especially when doing the freedom and security that someone wants correctly is more difficult that simply choosing a particular phone.
Last for today, unsurprisingly, if a society lacks a fundamental respect for a particular gender in a gender binary, it's not likely that the gender that thinks themselves superior is likely to read anything published by the gender it considers inferior. Or pay them appropriately and equally for doing the same work, or accord respect to the people that work in a perceived-inferior field, or, or, or. This is not a new realization in any way, but the solutions, or even the recognition of there being a problem by the gender that considers itself superior, are still not happening in any great amount, nor are they challenging each other on the matter (because they don't see the problem). And so people who should be remembered for their artistic skill are instead relegated to being of no interest at all to the winners who want to write their history books.
Additionally, a four-day work week is not the radical change people assume it is, and places that have implemented it have generally had excellent results. Not to mention that the still-ongoing pandemic proved to us that having people who were working from home didn't cause everything to collapse, and so it seems pretty logical that we could implement some of that, or a four day work week, and things wouldn't collapse, either. Even in places like the library, that's open all seven days in pre-pandemic times, having a four day week, and even then, one of those four days being working from home so that projects, meetings, virtual programming, and things that require sustained concentration can get done.
An Adventure in Time and Gender talking about the Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft, an important part of the history of medicalizing transition and in blurring the lines between a person and an object of scientific study. And the Lesbian Avengers and their role in trying to make being gay more visible through direct action, although there's some speculation about why the group disbanded that draws the eyebrows up.
A 1970 essay about problems that will still sound familiar to audiences of our day, about how being serious about the revolution and changing things will require white men to give up power and to let others lead. And that white men will have to hold themselves accountable for the sexism and the objectification and tokenism that they do (of women and of everyone who isn't white). (And that white women will have to stop trying to assist white men in hopes that they will be able to access the power that white men have.)
When we talk about how children and teens need supportive adults in their lives, we also mean that it's best for children and teens to have adults in their life that those children and teens can see are (relatively) functional adults and that have identities and experiences similar to their own. When you hear about having lost a generation to things like HIV/AIDS. the ramifications are more than just the physical loss of life (and the intense anger that should be directed at those who allowed them to die and slow-walked any treatments and research), they're about how an entire generation of kids lost potential mentors, supportive adults, and people who could have shown them that they can be themselves and it really does turn out fine, even if the thing that was obvious couldn't yet be spoken aloud. And people who would push back against the narrative that the children have to be protected against learning about the existence of queer people, lest learning about their existence somehow result in an otherwise straight-and-cis person becoming queer or trans nonconsensually. As is noted, the narrative that all adults who aren't your parents are untrustworthy predators is perfect if what you want is to isolate someone from any other worldview from the parents', no matter how abusive that worldview is. (Not to mention the statistics about how abusers of children tend to be people who have positions of trust over them, or are at least known to them.)
For the grownups, and those growing up, the loss of a generation also means losing people who could lead the way on showing what a fulfilling queer life might look like, even if that life has none of the hallmarks of what the Boomers or other generations before assumed were obvious indicators of adulthood, like steady jobs, financial independence, and raising children in a (presumably heterosexual) marriage contract. The kinds of things that I still struggle with about adulthood in general, even if I have achieved many of those markers that were unmarked defaults.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping, fresh off their career as a powerful political broker, hosted a punk concert. And we continue to hope they can parlay their continued successes into even weirder ventures.
Some analysis of serious attacks involving the throwing of acid on others in the Victorian era, which makes some denunciations seem tame in comparison.
An interview with a researcher who wrote a book about handmade pornography in the United States, which seems to focus specifically on artifacts and non-professional creations, in media that aren't what one might expect or in contexts that are not what immediately comes to mind when thinking about pornography. An interesting facet of the interview is how the author notes how copyright is often used as a means to prevent reproduction of some of the interesting things that exist in the world, and that there's not exactly a whole lot of grant money going about for someone to do a lot of research on the topic and pay for copyright clearance (or, for that matter, to pay the photographer). Which is very much an indicative facet of how US culture treats sexuality as a mostly-taboo topic.
The tropes and settings of the Gothic novel, and especially the Gothic horror, are fertile ground when reimagined through the lens of a people who have already been historically "othered". Both for the possibility of seeing what qualifies as the Other (Get Out, as a movie, for example), but also for seeing what the Othered might do and what other Others they can bring in and portray positively. (Even if the Gothic novel is already about people who are being othered and what kinds of pressure are being brought to bear on them by systems, and the perception of it being more straight and white has to do with who got to be preserved and who didn't.)
If you write good sex and good exposition of Hollywood's less than great tendencies, you can expect to be vilified and criticized for being so frank, if you're a woman. If a dude, you're probably going to be lauded as a visionary and gritty and a whole bunch of other words that still show how misogynistic the publishing industry is. (Not that a lot of the underground press wasn't doing much better.)
A study comparing women who received abortions to those who were denied them has evidence suggesting that most of the rationale used to restrict and make abortion more difficult doesn't hold up when presented with lived experience. It's not a uniquely dangerous procedure, and the people who are seeking the thing know what the potential consequences are of having to give birth versus not, and there's really no reason other than the desire to control the bodies of people who can give birth as to why these procedures are still as difficult and restricted as they are.
Good sleep health is also a function of how affluent you are. No surprise that poorer and Blacker neighborhoods also have more noise pollution and work that stresses them out more, gives them less control, and otherwise doesn't help at all with getting enough sleep and enough restful sleep.
The Johnson government is considering changing wildlife protection standards so that only the most critically endangered species would be protected from displacement or development destroying their habitats. I suppose this is the Brexiteer equivalent of "drill, baby, drill" to claim that "newt-counting" is a drag on the economy. Even though, across the way, the New York City subway system and transport infrastructure found itself under water, with stations flooding and roadways covered.
A picture of waves caught at just the right time looks a bit like a human face and hair. Because humans are pattern-matching champions, even when there's nothing actually there.
An unknown disease is killing songbirds, and until it can be determined and counteracted, officials in the United States are asking people not to feed birds or leave out water for them in the affected areas. A sloth rehabilitation space in Venezuela, wildlife restoration projects for England,
Wally the walrus is no longer welcome, and new methods, such as playing the sounds of walrus predators, are underway to try and move Wally back home. Also, Wally has a custom and specific pontoon to lounge upon, in hopes that having a space to call home will discourage the boat-climbing and make it easier for the eventual trip home. In addition to these measures, boat owners are being advised to take measures against Wally clambering on board their vessels. That is, when Wally isn't holding still long enough to have a portrait painted.
Either way, there's an entire thread of everything that Wally has done and been sighted doing if you're just coming to this story.
On virus matters, Recruitment is still ongoing for persons who menstruate and who have not yet had the full course of immunization to track and report and changes to their menstruation as a possible side effect of an immunization dose.
Money is deemed more important than health or life, as places continue to open up and decisions about masking and congregating are returned to businesses rather than kept in the hands of scientists. While there are potentially ways to do opening up that would be better for mitigation and health, it seems like a lot of governments are going for the "pretend it's not happening" approach. Which will put pressue back on hospitals and burn through their capacity as a slow-burning fuse rather than as the quick and visible spike that happened before. Which, in turn, both draws away resources from other urgent hospital issues and depresses the morale and resilience of the staff, as they are being asked to continue dealing with this nightmare for yet longer.
There is no graphene in the vaccine, because if there were, it would be impossible to hide, says the person who did their Ph.D in how graphene behaves in liquids.
A preprint suggesting ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 was swiftly retracted after it turned out the data used to support the case was almost surely fabricated, and not particularly well-fabricated, at that.
In technology, A flaw in the Windows Print Spool service produced some immediate needs to patch an update into the system to prevent a privilege escalation attack that could start in the spooling system.
Additionally, while there's some potential good news to anyone who was hit with the My Book Live exploit, including data recovery services, it's also possible that some MyCloud devices that can only run version 3 of the operating system could have an exploit run against them that will let someone gain privileged access, if those devices are exposed to the Internet. Western Digital's response to this has basically been "update to a device that runs OS 5," which is another of those responses that makes you snarl, because perfectly good and running hardware running into a planned obsolescence is always a problem. And if you don't have the technical stuff to be able to repurpose the old hardware into something else (or to follow someone else's scripts to do it with), or the device is so old that even the community doesn't support it any more, not really, then, well, hope you have electronics recycling available somewhere that you can use those things with. With the problem, of course, that it's not always feasible or easy for someone to replace their long-running devices, especially if the new device does things differently or doesn't have an essential feature that was present in the old version.
Ukranian police seized a cryptocurrency mining operation that was stealing several hundred thousand dollars' worth of electricity from the power grid, with several game consoles and personal computers seized in the raid. To replace them, a legal and above-board mining operation went online in Texas, a state that has a notoriously deregulated and unstable energy grid, and that refuses to tie in to other supporting grids that could help provide stability.
Start with a $120ish Chinese-made phone being sold as a $500 Freedom Phone that's undergone a skin change and preinstalled certain apps. Add in some kickbacks for people who are helping shill this overpriced phone. Then add into that the complete reluctance to release specifications and the likelihood that it uses a chipset that's notorious for being insecure and easily modifiable by anyone. (And, really, the Gizmodo article does a great job of showcasing that if what you want is freedom from corporations making decisions, or systems that are less likely to be spied upon, there are options available.) What do you get? Something that looks a lot like a grift intended to fleece those whose loyalty to a particular person increases their susceptibility to having their money parted from them. Especially when doing the freedom and security that someone wants correctly is more difficult that simply choosing a particular phone.
Last for today, unsurprisingly, if a society lacks a fundamental respect for a particular gender in a gender binary, it's not likely that the gender that thinks themselves superior is likely to read anything published by the gender it considers inferior. Or pay them appropriately and equally for doing the same work, or accord respect to the people that work in a perceived-inferior field, or, or, or. This is not a new realization in any way, but the solutions, or even the recognition of there being a problem by the gender that considers itself superior, are still not happening in any great amount, nor are they challenging each other on the matter (because they don't see the problem). And so people who should be remembered for their artistic skill are instead relegated to being of no interest at all to the winners who want to write their history books.
Additionally, a four-day work week is not the radical change people assume it is, and places that have implemented it have generally had excellent results. Not to mention that the still-ongoing pandemic proved to us that having people who were working from home didn't cause everything to collapse, and so it seems pretty logical that we could implement some of that, or a four day work week, and things wouldn't collapse, either. Even in places like the library, that's open all seven days in pre-pandemic times, having a four day week, and even then, one of those four days being working from home so that projects, meetings, virtual programming, and things that require sustained concentration can get done.
