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silveradeptLet's begin with something that I do not understand fully, and may not ever understand fully. With control comes accountability. You are not to blame for things you do not have control over. What constitutes control is a hard thing to determine, however. Do we have control in a situation where, in theory, we could stop something if enough of us were inclined to do so? A didactic and boring game supposedly about rounding up Jewish families and taking on the role of National Socialists exposes the way that we are all often caught in systems whose rules are harmful, and yet, we live in a society, and there are incentives to go along with those rules, and so sometimes we participate in things that hurt others because it's more convenient to do so. Do we have control there? Do we have control there if it's the only option we have that allows us to fight on some other front? Is a single vote in millions gaining control? In a system where five people can usurp the will of millions, either for ethical and moral purposes or their opposites? Where lies the boundary between control and a lack of control?
Wordle as a (likely eventually temporary) antidote to consuming more of the QAnon conspiracy. Sometimes playing games together means not having as much time to get more conspiratorial. Does that change the fundamental beliefs of the person? Probably not. But does offering Wordle as an alternative count as control that comes with accountability? Or was there never any control, and thus accountability, in the first place?
Control comes up again insiderea suggesting The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization may very well be the antecedent to a second United States Civil War, based on the things that were the inciting incidents for the first one, namely that a tyrannical minority attempted to impose their will, using the power of the government, on a population that was not having it, and then chose to fight back against that tyrannical minority when they attempted to use the monopoly on force reserved to the government to force other states to do things their way, often in clear violation of those states' consciences and already-standing laws and orders about what assistance they would provide to what they considered immoral and unconstitutional laws and orders. The politicians seek to control, the ones who agree with them seek to control, and they also seek to avoid the accountability that comes from that control by not acknowledging who they are affecting, and they will have a media and an entire keyboard army at their disposal waiting to absolve them of accountability, so that they, too, can grab control and in turn be absolved of the accountability that comes with it, pushing all of the accountability and the media scrutiny on those who do not have control, but will be constructed as if they did, as if they did have choice, as if they do have choice.
But, of course, the Venn diagram of those who believe in forced birth and those who believe some form of the white-supremacist idea of Replacement Theory, if it's not actually a circle, it is sufficiently close to one to be indistinguishable from it. So they will claim they have to exert control because the Wrong People are making decisions and only the Right People should be allowed to make decisions, because they're white and the entirety of prosperity and godliness hinges on whether or not there are enough white people who believe in the suppression and subjugation of everyone who isn't them.
One of the things that still is a legacy from slavery and the ways that those who desired slavery attempted to accrue political power to themselves is the ways that incarcerated people are counted in ways that make slavers more powerful and the ways that slavers work to ensure that a Black or Brown person convicted of a crime counts for the purposes of population representation, but is denied the franchise for spurious and racially targeted reasons.
Control is a fleeting thing, really. And is control really the thing to seek, or are we all better off doing things that make our lives just 10% more vibrant, more happy, more colorful, even though we're still in the situation where we haven't landed yet, where things aren't final-final, or even final. Because if there is control in the world, it is surely limited in scope, and not everyone who seeks control understands that.
A new scandal in the UK Parliament involving Government Ministers and sex scandals, which would normally not be the thing that sets all sorts of things in motion, buuuuut…ministers began to resign en masse, sufficiently so that even Boris Johnson could not stand against it. So here's the timeline of how Boris Johnson finally ended up having to admit he can't run a government any more. Which means time for the memes to start coming out dragging Boris Johnson again. (And even more memes coming out.) Apparently, it's also time for all the people who want to succeed him to start letting out all the dirt they've been keeping on their potential opponents. Just in case anyone wondered if anyone who was part of the Tories was worth putting in any position of power. (I personally think Larry has the right of it.)
A forecasted 40 degrees C in the United Kingdom, a place that is not normally equipped to deal with such temperatures, could mean significant casualties from the heat.rydra_wong has a roundup of tips on staying cool in such extreme temperatures, including decamping to a place with known cooling ability if you should need it and other tricks learned that often take advantage of the power of evaporation to draw heat out of places that are saturated with them.
A Florida man (not that one) wishes to challenge the Supreme Court's decision that Christians are allowed to engage in coercive prayers after football games by asking to lead a non-coercive prayer to Satan after a football game. He expects to be told no because there's a long-held tradition of hypocrisy where Christians get to do whatever they wish and non-Christians that try to do the same thing are told they can't, because that would be religious.
The nature of Tatooine as a wretched hive of scum and villainy that produces both Anakin Skywalker (cinnamon roll who gets corrupted when he goes off-world) and Luke Skywalker (who does much the same, honestly).
Humans are often fundamentally terrible at distinguishing between real people and fictional people, because human brains don't like to make that difference. At least, if I'm reading literature about "mirror neurons" correctly, and other such things, human brains read about the experiences of others and experience them, even if what they're reading is words on a page of something happening to a fictional character.
Statistically speaking, an M/M ship is usually more likely than any other type in a typical US TV show. And that's before you have to deal with how women are usually written by men who don't get them and don't care enough to get them right. (Or they're laboring under executives who don't understand why anyone would want the eye candy to get depth and characterization.)
Transformative Works and Cultures hosted a roundtable about the phenomenon of the anti and how antiship/proship have suffered the same problem as "critical race theory," where the term has come to mean several distinct things and very few people take the time to be distinct about the one they mean. The panelists grapple with many of the same issues that affect my professional life, including how to deal with the very carceral focus of the pro-censorship brigades. They also hint at, but mostly don't define, an understanding that says there are some parts of the criticism space that are meant to be answered with "Don't Like? Don't Read." or "The back button is your friend, friend." and there are some parts of the criticism space that need to be answered with self-reflection and discussion of the underlying and intersecting systems that produced the work being criticized (and the assumptions that system provided that the author may have replicated uncritically). Actually trying to sharply define the boundary of that space is a fool's errand, even though there are fools who want to do it. It's a good panel discussion. (They also light into Twitter as a platform where it's too easy to decontextualize someone and use that as the premise for brigading and harassment.)
An attempted marriage proposal styled as a kidnapping went about as well as you might think, but the kidnappers have been cleared of charges, since they had enough evidence to prove that it was a botched proposal.
Courtship and the necessary rituals that come from living in an era where regular access to contraception and abortion was not a guarantee.
A traveling exhibition of pre-Motion Picture Code films shows off the roles that women could play before the censors got to them.
New Day Dawning, a story about a cyanobacterium that spends most of its time on the characters meeting to combat it. It builds a world and then leaves us to imagine what happens next.asakiyume introduces the story in a way that also doesn't talk about what the story is about.
The use of books as fashion accessories rather than the use of books to be fashionable.
Trying to find out about the life of the creator of Go Ask Alice is much like the book itself, with a lot of narrative and contrivance and not necessarily a lot of truth. Which pairs well with other literary hoaxes and the construction of images for specific purposes.
In that same vein, but different, the change of construction of ghosts from loud and public to quieter and private in the United States, and how that has long shaped the perception of those descended from the settlers in relation to those who have always been there. Such that someone might not recognize a ghost of the first type when they are culturally used to all ghosts being the second.
A review of a book talking about the hippie movement in the Soviet Union, a documentary focusing on the interpersonal dramas of people claiming to be anarcho-capitalists (which has precious little to do with the philosophy and a lot to do with the people involved), trying to fight off the cypto-colonialists in Honduras, crypto-colonialists trying to succeed in Vanuatu, and someone making the case that Fourier has enough good elements to be relevant to 21st century Terra, while acknowledging that not everything Fourier wrote or declared was accurate or desirable.
How dolphins choose their names, finding an Iron Age gold ring in an auction lot, "Lesbian Goth Foxes" who have bonded with each other, the care and preservation (or lack thereof) of costumes of Hollywood's performers,how decisions made in the moment often have long-lasting consequences.
In technology, Facebook's algorithms are flagging as against the community norms any mention of the existence of medication abortion. To the point where it's very clear these are stupid computers flagging words when the post that offers to mail medication abortion is immediately removed and the one that offers to mail guns stays up without a peep.
In a less fraught part of our life, recommendation algorithms are still pretty stupid, because they can only reason from the data they've been given, and there's a really strong likelihood that the algorithms don't understand the data they've been given correctly, because they're computer programs that work in binary at their core, rather than in analogue. And, more often than not, the more data they collect, the worse they get at doing anything useful, because the data rapidly becomes decontextualized. Some of "the librarian finds the perfect thing for me" comes from long association and knowing a person's tastes over time, but some of it also comes from taking the information that a person gives us and being fuzzy humans about it. The kind of think where a computer might rate something as a low likelihood of liking, except the librarian (and the fic writer) knows full well that what a work is nominally about is not always the thing it gets recommended on, and that, sometimes, a work is recommended specifically against the thing that it's nominally about. You don't recommend a disaster like Fifty Shades of Grey for its sensitive and realistic portrayal of the kink community or for its plot and storytelling strengths, you recommend in on how much you think the reader is going to find the sex scenes and the general tenor of the "romance" sexy. And, of course, there are people who love one of an author's series and despise another one, and you have to be able to navigate that when doing recommendations.
More people complaining that the use of external memory is affecting our internal memory, even though that's been a complaint ever since Those Greek Guys.
A man with a big ego boasts that he can make another man with a big ego do what he wants. The problem is, they're both wrong and they're both more relevant than they should be about anything at all. That also includes the surveillance state promoter shilling for cryptocurrency as the alternative to system where he made all of his money.
Not everyone you see on a viral video wants to be viral. And this is one of those situations where filming someone in public may be legal, and doing kindness to others is encouraged, there's something wrong about the idea of doing kindness to others so that you can get lots of views and likes for it. I'm sure there's a verse in Matthew about that somewhere, for the Christians.
A portal into a police database on citizens of China was unsecured, resulting in the theft and ransom demands for all the data in the database.
Last for tonight, various concepts that take a single word in other languages that take significantly more words in English. And Setting your mobile AO3 experience to work better and be easier on the eyes through the magic of site skinning CSS.
Additionally, The Gender Survey, for all those folks who do not fit fully and comfortably into the boxes of "man" or "woman" (whether cis or trans) and a very happy International Non-Binary Individuals' Day, planted squarely at the halfway point between International Men's Day and International Women's Day.
(Materials viaadrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meta_warehouse community, and anyone else that's I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
Wordle as a (likely eventually temporary) antidote to consuming more of the QAnon conspiracy. Sometimes playing games together means not having as much time to get more conspiratorial. Does that change the fundamental beliefs of the person? Probably not. But does offering Wordle as an alternative count as control that comes with accountability? Or was there never any control, and thus accountability, in the first place?
Control comes up again in
siderea suggesting The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization may very well be the antecedent to a second United States Civil War, based on the things that were the inciting incidents for the first one, namely that a tyrannical minority attempted to impose their will, using the power of the government, on a population that was not having it, and then chose to fight back against that tyrannical minority when they attempted to use the monopoly on force reserved to the government to force other states to do things their way, often in clear violation of those states' consciences and already-standing laws and orders about what assistance they would provide to what they considered immoral and unconstitutional laws and orders. The politicians seek to control, the ones who agree with them seek to control, and they also seek to avoid the accountability that comes from that control by not acknowledging who they are affecting, and they will have a media and an entire keyboard army at their disposal waiting to absolve them of accountability, so that they, too, can grab control and in turn be absolved of the accountability that comes with it, pushing all of the accountability and the media scrutiny on those who do not have control, but will be constructed as if they did, as if they did have choice, as if they do have choice.But, of course, the Venn diagram of those who believe in forced birth and those who believe some form of the white-supremacist idea of Replacement Theory, if it's not actually a circle, it is sufficiently close to one to be indistinguishable from it. So they will claim they have to exert control because the Wrong People are making decisions and only the Right People should be allowed to make decisions, because they're white and the entirety of prosperity and godliness hinges on whether or not there are enough white people who believe in the suppression and subjugation of everyone who isn't them.
One of the things that still is a legacy from slavery and the ways that those who desired slavery attempted to accrue political power to themselves is the ways that incarcerated people are counted in ways that make slavers more powerful and the ways that slavers work to ensure that a Black or Brown person convicted of a crime counts for the purposes of population representation, but is denied the franchise for spurious and racially targeted reasons.
Control is a fleeting thing, really. And is control really the thing to seek, or are we all better off doing things that make our lives just 10% more vibrant, more happy, more colorful, even though we're still in the situation where we haven't landed yet, where things aren't final-final, or even final. Because if there is control in the world, it is surely limited in scope, and not everyone who seeks control understands that.
A new scandal in the UK Parliament involving Government Ministers and sex scandals, which would normally not be the thing that sets all sorts of things in motion, buuuuut…ministers began to resign en masse, sufficiently so that even Boris Johnson could not stand against it. So here's the timeline of how Boris Johnson finally ended up having to admit he can't run a government any more. Which means time for the memes to start coming out dragging Boris Johnson again. (And even more memes coming out.) Apparently, it's also time for all the people who want to succeed him to start letting out all the dirt they've been keeping on their potential opponents. Just in case anyone wondered if anyone who was part of the Tories was worth putting in any position of power. (I personally think Larry has the right of it.)
A forecasted 40 degrees C in the United Kingdom, a place that is not normally equipped to deal with such temperatures, could mean significant casualties from the heat.
rydra_wong has a roundup of tips on staying cool in such extreme temperatures, including decamping to a place with known cooling ability if you should need it and other tricks learned that often take advantage of the power of evaporation to draw heat out of places that are saturated with them.A Florida man (not that one) wishes to challenge the Supreme Court's decision that Christians are allowed to engage in coercive prayers after football games by asking to lead a non-coercive prayer to Satan after a football game. He expects to be told no because there's a long-held tradition of hypocrisy where Christians get to do whatever they wish and non-Christians that try to do the same thing are told they can't, because that would be religious.
The nature of Tatooine as a wretched hive of scum and villainy that produces both Anakin Skywalker (cinnamon roll who gets corrupted when he goes off-world) and Luke Skywalker (who does much the same, honestly).
Humans are often fundamentally terrible at distinguishing between real people and fictional people, because human brains don't like to make that difference. At least, if I'm reading literature about "mirror neurons" correctly, and other such things, human brains read about the experiences of others and experience them, even if what they're reading is words on a page of something happening to a fictional character.
Statistically speaking, an M/M ship is usually more likely than any other type in a typical US TV show. And that's before you have to deal with how women are usually written by men who don't get them and don't care enough to get them right. (Or they're laboring under executives who don't understand why anyone would want the eye candy to get depth and characterization.)
Transformative Works and Cultures hosted a roundtable about the phenomenon of the anti and how antiship/proship have suffered the same problem as "critical race theory," where the term has come to mean several distinct things and very few people take the time to be distinct about the one they mean. The panelists grapple with many of the same issues that affect my professional life, including how to deal with the very carceral focus of the pro-censorship brigades. They also hint at, but mostly don't define, an understanding that says there are some parts of the criticism space that are meant to be answered with "Don't Like? Don't Read." or "The back button is your friend, friend." and there are some parts of the criticism space that need to be answered with self-reflection and discussion of the underlying and intersecting systems that produced the work being criticized (and the assumptions that system provided that the author may have replicated uncritically). Actually trying to sharply define the boundary of that space is a fool's errand, even though there are fools who want to do it. It's a good panel discussion. (They also light into Twitter as a platform where it's too easy to decontextualize someone and use that as the premise for brigading and harassment.)
An attempted marriage proposal styled as a kidnapping went about as well as you might think, but the kidnappers have been cleared of charges, since they had enough evidence to prove that it was a botched proposal.
Courtship and the necessary rituals that come from living in an era where regular access to contraception and abortion was not a guarantee.
A traveling exhibition of pre-Motion Picture Code films shows off the roles that women could play before the censors got to them.
New Day Dawning, a story about a cyanobacterium that spends most of its time on the characters meeting to combat it. It builds a world and then leaves us to imagine what happens next.
asakiyume introduces the story in a way that also doesn't talk about what the story is about.The use of books as fashion accessories rather than the use of books to be fashionable.
Trying to find out about the life of the creator of Go Ask Alice is much like the book itself, with a lot of narrative and contrivance and not necessarily a lot of truth. Which pairs well with other literary hoaxes and the construction of images for specific purposes.
In that same vein, but different, the change of construction of ghosts from loud and public to quieter and private in the United States, and how that has long shaped the perception of those descended from the settlers in relation to those who have always been there. Such that someone might not recognize a ghost of the first type when they are culturally used to all ghosts being the second.
A review of a book talking about the hippie movement in the Soviet Union, a documentary focusing on the interpersonal dramas of people claiming to be anarcho-capitalists (which has precious little to do with the philosophy and a lot to do with the people involved), trying to fight off the cypto-colonialists in Honduras, crypto-colonialists trying to succeed in Vanuatu, and someone making the case that Fourier has enough good elements to be relevant to 21st century Terra, while acknowledging that not everything Fourier wrote or declared was accurate or desirable.
How dolphins choose their names, finding an Iron Age gold ring in an auction lot, "Lesbian Goth Foxes" who have bonded with each other, the care and preservation (or lack thereof) of costumes of Hollywood's performers,
In technology, Facebook's algorithms are flagging as against the community norms any mention of the existence of medication abortion. To the point where it's very clear these are stupid computers flagging words when the post that offers to mail medication abortion is immediately removed and the one that offers to mail guns stays up without a peep.
In a less fraught part of our life, recommendation algorithms are still pretty stupid, because they can only reason from the data they've been given, and there's a really strong likelihood that the algorithms don't understand the data they've been given correctly, because they're computer programs that work in binary at their core, rather than in analogue. And, more often than not, the more data they collect, the worse they get at doing anything useful, because the data rapidly becomes decontextualized. Some of "the librarian finds the perfect thing for me" comes from long association and knowing a person's tastes over time, but some of it also comes from taking the information that a person gives us and being fuzzy humans about it. The kind of think where a computer might rate something as a low likelihood of liking, except the librarian (and the fic writer) knows full well that what a work is nominally about is not always the thing it gets recommended on, and that, sometimes, a work is recommended specifically against the thing that it's nominally about. You don't recommend a disaster like Fifty Shades of Grey for its sensitive and realistic portrayal of the kink community or for its plot and storytelling strengths, you recommend in on how much you think the reader is going to find the sex scenes and the general tenor of the "romance" sexy. And, of course, there are people who love one of an author's series and despise another one, and you have to be able to navigate that when doing recommendations.
More people complaining that the use of external memory is affecting our internal memory, even though that's been a complaint ever since Those Greek Guys.
A man with a big ego boasts that he can make another man with a big ego do what he wants. The problem is, they're both wrong and they're both more relevant than they should be about anything at all. That also includes the surveillance state promoter shilling for cryptocurrency as the alternative to system where he made all of his money.
Not everyone you see on a viral video wants to be viral. And this is one of those situations where filming someone in public may be legal, and doing kindness to others is encouraged, there's something wrong about the idea of doing kindness to others so that you can get lots of views and likes for it. I'm sure there's a verse in Matthew about that somewhere, for the Christians.
A portal into a police database on citizens of China was unsecured, resulting in the theft and ransom demands for all the data in the database.
Last for tonight, various concepts that take a single word in other languages that take significantly more words in English. And Setting your mobile AO3 experience to work better and be easier on the eyes through the magic of site skinning CSS.
Additionally, The Gender Survey, for all those folks who do not fit fully and comfortably into the boxes of "man" or "woman" (whether cis or trans) and a very happy International Non-Binary Individuals' Day, planted squarely at the halfway point between International Men's Day and International Women's Day.
(Materials via
adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, and anyone else that's I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
no subject
Date: 2022-07-17 11:44 am (UTC)For anybody interested in Go Ask Alice and Rick Emerson's book too, I'd highly recommend the You're Wrong About episodes ( 1, 2 ) where Sarah Marshall and Carmen Maria Machado go through the book, and then the one where they interview Emerson about his book.
I'd somehow managed not to know anything about Go Ask Alice up until this point and I still hugely enjoyed those episodes, and Emerson seems really fascinating.
Thoughts
Date: 2022-07-17 11:08 pm (UTC)I am pleased to see someone else saying this about blame.
>> What constitutes control is a hard thing to determine, however. Do we have control in a situation where, in theory, we could stop something if enough of us were inclined to do so? <<
Just as control is proportional, so is blame proportional.
* If you have free choice and have complete control over a situation, which is not influenced by factors outside your control, then whatever happens is your responsibility whether good or bad.
-- Frex, if you decide to go skateboarding and break your back because you attempted a stunt beyond your ability, that's entirely on you.
-- But if you go skateboarding and the board malfunctions due to a hidden flaw in its construction, that is primarily the fault of the manufacturer.
* If your choice is unfree or other factors infringe on events, then you are responsible only to the extent of your informed moral actions within the limited range of options available to you, and in the context of your state of responsibility generally.
-- Children cannot be responsible for sex acts, because they are not sexually or ethically mature and cannot consent (that is, innocent by categorical nonresponsibility regardless of their actions).
-- If you are unable to afford a vehicle, and someone else forces you to use a vehicle which is unsuited to your skills, thus causing a collision despite your best efforts, then it is primarily the fault of the person who forced you to use unsuitable equipment. You will probably be blamed by the law, but that does not make it your ethical responsibility.
-- If your boss commits a felony at work, when you neither knew about it nor had the rank to stop it, then you are not responsible for the company's malfeasance, even though you may suffer the consequence of job loss or worse simply by proximity to the wrongdoer.
* Responsibility falls to the decider, the one who makes things happen. It does not matter if they use other persons as tools, the decider is still the moral agent.
-- Frex, if you choose to have unprotected sex, and a pregnancy results, that is 50% your fault and 50% your sex partner's fault.
-- If you are raped, and a pregnancy results, that is 100% your assailant's fault.
* Collective responsibility is only of significant use in small groups. This is because in small groups, the agency tends to be equal or at least have a small spread, such that most or all individuals have influence over what happens; whereas the larger the group, the larger the disparity in agency tends to become, such that some individuals have much ability to act while others have little or none. Anything below statistical measurability (about 3-4%) should be considered a nonsignificant amount of fault and dismissed.
-- It can be useful to say that forgotten camping supplies are 25% the fault of each camper in the group.
-- It is not very useful to say that America's problems are 1/326 million the responsibility of each individual American.
-- The Supreme Court has opportunity to advance America in the direction of boundaries and privacy, has chosen to do the opposite, and then whines when their boundaries and privacy are violated as is typical of a post-boundary, post-privacy society. This is substantially their fault, and they have nobody better to blame than themselves. Conversely, very few Americans have any leverage to make such changes to society beyond the minute personal scale of their own relationships or, perhaps, policies at their workplace. The bad results are not their fault to a degree which is of any statistical significance (that is, about 3-4%).
The nature of agency, ethical responsibility, and porportional influence are vitally important to solving problems. That is, if you incorrectly identify the source of a problem, and you heap blame on someone who was not the decider, then the problem will go unsolved. No amount of abuse can create change where the abused person is not in a position to alter the events you wish to manipulate. In order to solve problems by manipulating other people to do what you wish, you must correctly identify whose actions set those events in motion, and then apply leverage to the deciders.
The ethical aspect is different from the practical aspect. Here, fluent knowledge of ethical dynamics may not always prevent people from blaming or abusing you, but it will greatly reduce your tendency to agree with improperly placed blame. This may reduce your damage from it. Fluent knowledge also reduces your risk of moral injury by enabling you to identify morally dangerous situations and hopefully avoid them, knowing that they can cause severe injuries which this culture does not actually have effective ways to treat. It also makes you aware that a culture with broad tendencies to cause moral injuries is neither healthy nor stable, which may motivate you to promote ethically healthy practices in society at large.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 03:11 am (UTC)