Latest Posts by psyxe - Page 4

The problem with Extremely Online Leftists is not the Left part and you will not save yourself by becoming an Extremely Online Trad

Living inside your head and constantly arguing about controversial topics online is terrible for you. Some people realize t hey are miserable and think “this is What’s Wrong With The [My Current Worldview]” and adopt a whole new worldview. And that won’t fix it. Extremely Online Communists, Extremely Online TradCaths, Extremely Online Centrists, Extremely Online Intersectional Feminists, Extremely Online Conservatives, Extremely Online Liberals, Extremely Online Anarchists, Extremely Online Libertarians, Extremely Online [Any Religious, Political or Philosophical Belief] are just going to be miserable. Some of these ideologies are worse than others in terms of the actual content of the belief system, but even if your core beliefs are compassionate and make sense, if you put them into “““practice”““ by INTERNET YELLING you are on a path of self-destruction.

I recommend filling your time with other things. Some of the best include true love (which does not necessarily have to be romantic), regular exercise (health permitting), helping others and appreciating your local birds.

(In the spirit of trying to only be Moderately Online, I will not respond publicly to any reblogs of this post, unless they are from @nostalgebraist-autoresponder. But it’s fine to reblog and to add your opinion, if you want.)

I’m sure I reblogged this before but doing it again as the brainweasels were very bitey today

scrupulosity in These Uncertain Times

do you think you are a bad person? do you feel like you constantly have to do something, anything, good to balance out your miserable existence? 

does Chidi from The Good Place hit home to the point where he isn’t funny, because you see too much of yourself in him? 

are you constantly worried about the impact your actions have on others–  to the point where you avoid your friends, deprive yourself of things you want or need, or outright starve yourself? 

you may have scrupulosity.

scrupulosity is a mental health issue that crops up with a lot of different diagnoses- c-ptsd, ocd, autism, and adhd are some of the most common, but a LOT of ND and traumatized people have it. 

scrupulosity makes you overly concerned with morality. you feel like you are Bad and have to do Good things. you obsess over your own Badness and the Badness of the world. you feel like you, personally, need to fix everything that’s Bad, and that if you don’t, you’re Worse Than Twin Clones Of Hitler.

you might try to expiate your badness by becoming a doormat– letting other people walk all over you. you might donate money to charity or GoFundMes, even if you can’t afford it, because You Need To Be Good. you might avoid Problematic things, to the point where you can’t enjoy a bar of chocolate or a children’s cartoon.

and that’s in fairly normal circumstances where the world is not actively on fire.

at times like this– where the world is full of legitimately horrible shit, where it seems like everything is fucked up beyond repair and everyone needs your help- scrupulosity can fucking kill you. 

 this post is already too long, so I’m going to reblog with some suggestions for how to help take care of yourself for people with scrupulosity, and some advice on how people without scrupulosity can help support their friends rn. 

tldr: constantly obsessing over the Badness of the world and feeling like you need to fix it can be a brainweasel called scrupulosity. it is normal to be scared and want to help, but your brain can take that to an extreme that isn’t healthy. 

Could i offer you pride in this trying time?

LMAO I just found out that it’s Stress Awareness week.

FUCK YES

This is one for the OGs

Could i offer you a samurai in this trying time?

🎥 The Film Crew by Aimee La Joie

Fifty-nine seconds of bliss!

I’ve been seeing incorrect information about lightsabers and their colors / meanings so as a Star Wars nerd of 15 years, I would like to provide accurate information for oc creators or people who are just interested in knowing about lightsabers!

Blue Lightsabers -These are the Jedi Guardians -They focused on practical application of the Force -Highly skilled in combat -They were the first to leave the Temple to take an active role in conflicts -Their recommended training was 3 hours a day -Training consisted of running, lightsaber practice, and unarmed combat 

Red Lightsabers -These are the Sith -Consumed by the Dark Force of the Force -Ferocious and unyielding in combat -Kyber Crystals are either synthetic or turned red by causing a fallen Jedi’s crystal to bleed by pouring their malice and anger into it

Green Lightsabers  -These are Jedi Consulars  -Exceptionally powerful in the Force -Often found in the Temple waging battle through mediation  -Will fight when absolutely necessary -They were Healers, researchers, and seers 

Yellow Lightsabers -These are the Jedi Sentinel -They’re extremely rare -Known to develop valuable skills outside the purview of the Force -Exhibits traits of both Guardian and Consular -They’re not often seen or used because the wielder of a yellow blade is so strong and skilled they don’t need to deploy it

White Lightsabers -White blades occurs when a bleeding Kyber Crystal is purified -They denote no affliction to Jedi or Sith, but signifies a pure Light Side Force user -Exceedingly rare  -Only two are known to exist, and Ahsoka wields them both. 

Orange Lightsabers -Very rare -Negotiators, selfless, and are opposed to violence  -The Kyber Crystal isn’t actually a Kyber, but is known as a Kohlen Crystal / a Fools Kyber (as stated in the Star Wars novel Master & Apprentice)  -It possessed the same heft as a Kyber, and even some vibration with the Force -They were ostensibly referred to in an ancient prophecy made by a Jedi mystic which stated that “When the Kyber which is not Kyber shines forth, the time of prophecy will be at hand.”

Purple / Violet Lightsabers -These were originally introduced at the request of Samuel L. Jackson who didn’t want to blend in at the Battle of Geonosis -Known to use Dark Side techniques in battle while serving the Light Side of the Force -In Legends, sometimes the lightsaber was used by a former Sith who has turned to the Light Side

@rippledragon linked this to me and a good time is being had.

I had a dream that a cruise ship went down off the coast of a national park and for some reason no one else knew—its passengers were ALL celebrities and I watched them all scramble ashore looking for help.

The park was enormous, and possibly also Area X from the Southern Reach, so it became my job to lead all ~50 movie stars back to safety.

This was terrible. They did not want to cooperate and did not want to take orders from me, so I had to go full hardass and forcibly assign them buddy system partners. Some wanted to race ahead to show how fit they were and did not appreciate being told to stay with the group so that they did not get lost and would be able to use their extra energy to assist anyone who was injured or capacitated.

A few of them tried the “do you know who I AM?” routine on me and I was like “well I’m mostly faceblind so I’m not sure but I DO know that you’re a whiny little bastard who needs to get his shit together”.

The kid from Stranger Things kept compulsively running off the trail to knock shit over, including trial markers, so I had to change his partner from Danny DeVito.

At one point the forest disappeared and we were suddenly at an Arab-American festival in Seattle and my old Arabic teacher came over and started angrily interrogating me about why I didn’t study harder, I cried, and then I stole a fist full of meat from a cooked eel outside a restaurant, at it, and became Brendan Fraser from George of the Jungle, but gay and in love with my girlfriend’s ex boyfriend.

“why aren’t u talking abt this one Problematic thing involving that actor/show u like??”

listen. i am tired. im putting down my pitchfork. i’ll acknowledge that thing was bad if it was but im tired of vilifying ppl for their mistakes just bc they’re famous. i want to enjoy things. i want Peace

Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues

That’s dope

Elder poverty is real

I get grossed out by how often things online suggest all older people are wealthy because I’ve seen time and time again poor old people being fucked over.

 Old women losing their homes because their husbands die and their lower social security can’t pay for rent or taxes.  Or old people whose spouse helped them manage things like health problems or memory difficulties not having any financial means to replace that support with care workers. 

Old people skipping meals and going hungry.  

Old people whose families have liquidated most of their assets because the family has guardianship and there’s far too little protection.

Old people whose medical bills have totally bankrupted them or who are losing medical care needed to stay in their homes instead of an institution for financial reasons.  

Old people whose age related disabilities mean that navigating the bureaucracy of the welfare system is impossible for them.

There’s so much suffering of the elderly poor swept under the rug in favor of focusing on the very small group of wealthy old people.  No serious anti-poverty movement or measure can exclude elder poverty from their work without harming millions.  Old people aren’t disposable.

Yes, SO MANY contexts, possibly all of them

“This thing can be hard for some people and I get that, but unfortunately it’s still necessary, so here’s a few tips you can try that might help you deal with it” - You, dear friend, are a good egg and I’m listening intently.

“Urgh, it’s not that hard. You’re just weak and whiney. Just do the thing.” - OP, you’re being an asshole and I’m already three posts down my dash after having made very sure my eyes never alight on your bullshit again, and that’s true even if I personally find the thing simple.

(It’s probably rather obvious what this is about right now, but it’s actually a general point that comes up in multiple contexts. If someone says something is hard for them THAT’S PROBABLY BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING HARD FOR THEM! Maybe drop the “This is ideologically inconvenient for me, so it can’t be true” for two goddamn seconds and acknowledge that you have knowledge of only your own physical and mental sensations and can’t actually derive a full picture of other people’s minds by projecting those sensations onto everybody else. “It’s easy for me” =/= “It’s easy”)

So I’ve been reading about someone who was ideologically abused within Catholicism and it’s bringing up a lot of feelings, but one thing it’s really crystallizing in my mind is an important thing that people fail to understand about ideological abuse.

The (relatively mild) ideological abuse I have experienced was used to convince me of some bad and harmful shit. But I’m worried that the things I’ve said about it make it seem like the abuse was bad because it convinced me of untruths. That’s a very very small part of the problem.

It is possible to commit ideological abuse in the name of ideas that are 100% true. People think that ideological abuse is only done in the name of darkly comic nonsense (Xenu only makes sense to someone who’s been abused so badly they forget how to think clearly) or ideologies based on cruelty and subjugation. It’s true that abuse is more common in ideologies that cannot possibly defend themselves with actual arguments, but it’s completely possible to abuse people in the name of things which make sense.

If you’re dealing with someone who thinks two plus two is five, you can show them they are wrong with counters or numberlines or whatever. This will teach them basic arithmetic and also respect their personhood. This is what any decent person would do.

Or you can control them with fear. You can make it sure that they know that if they ever say two plus two is five, they will be physically harmed or threatened with physical harm. You can lie and belittle and mistreat them in dozens of ways and any time they complain you can tell them that they deserve it for believing that two plus two is five. You can say that they’re not allowed to make even the smallest decisions for themselves (what to eat, how to dress, who to be friends with, what to read) because a person who believes two plus two is five shouldn’t be allowed to decide anything. You can isolate them from anyone you haven’t vetted (which means no friendships with anyone who is wrong about math, but also no friendships with anyone who says “obviously two plus two is four but there’s no need to hit people over it.”) The fact you are right about math doesn’t make it not abuse. You’ve abused them into believing something, and the fact that it is true doesn’t make the abuse ethical.

You’ve also severely damaged their ability to learn math. If they have a basket with two apples and they add two pears, they won’t be able to take an honest look about how many total fruits they have. They are only going to be able to think “I must have four fruits because I don’t want to get hurt again” or “I must have five fruits because there is no way on earth that despicable piece of shit can be right about anything after what they did to me.” You’ve done lasting and possibly permanent epistemic damage to this person. For a long time, maybe for the rest of their life, they will not be able to approach arithmetic with logic; they are going to come to a calculator with so much emotional baggage that they can’t be rational. They may genuinely need to espouse wrong beliefs about numbers because the only psychologically feasible alternative is espousing the (also wrong and more dangerous) belief that they deserve to be abused.

Almost everyone who commits ideological abuse thinks they are convincing their victims of the truth, and they think that this justifies the abuse. They are usually wrong about their ideas being true, but they are always wrong about their tactics being justified. I want anyone reading this to know that if you are seriously hurting someone to get them to believe you, it doesn’t matter that you are right. You have to find another way to do that. What you are doing does horrific damage and doesn’t even succeed in making people actually believe you, just in parroting you so that you will stop hurting them. You have to treat people who are wrong like people. Abusing someone into believing the truth doesn’t become okay because it’s the truth.

More importantly, I want you to know that if someone is using violence, the threat of violence or manipulation to control your beliefs, that is abuse. You do not deserve to be treated this way. You do not have to figure out right now whether what they are trying to make you believe is actually correct. You can leave (if it’s safe) or practice harm-reduction (if leaving isn’t safe yet) before you figure out whether or not they are telling the truth. It is not okay for them to do this to you, even if they are right.

You deserve to be safe. You deserve sovereignty over your own thoughts. Good luck. I love you.

I’m falling in love with the AI, the future is now

one of the best fusion cuisines I've thought up so far: putting a bunch of hot oil in pasta sauces or pesto

it fits so much better than other kinds of hot sauces or spicing up with pepper alone or even just adding chili (flakes) directly

scrupulosity in These Uncertain Times

do you think you are a bad person? do you feel like you constantly have to do something, anything, good to balance out your miserable existence? 

does Chidi from The Good Place hit home to the point where he isn’t funny, because you see too much of yourself in him? 

are you constantly worried about the impact your actions have on others–  to the point where you avoid your friends, deprive yourself of things you want or need, or outright starve yourself? 

you may have scrupulosity.

scrupulosity is a mental health issue that crops up with a lot of different diagnoses- c-ptsd, ocd, autism, and adhd are some of the most common, but a LOT of ND and traumatized people have it. 

scrupulosity makes you overly concerned with morality. you feel like you are Bad and have to do Good things. you obsess over your own Badness and the Badness of the world. you feel like you, personally, need to fix everything that’s Bad, and that if you don’t, you’re Worse Than Twin Clones Of Hitler.

you might try to expiate your badness by becoming a doormat– letting other people walk all over you. you might donate money to charity or GoFundMes, even if you can’t afford it, because You Need To Be Good. you might avoid Problematic things, to the point where you can’t enjoy a bar of chocolate or a children’s cartoon.

and that’s in fairly normal circumstances where the world is not actively on fire.

at times like this– where the world is full of legitimately horrible shit, where it seems like everything is fucked up beyond repair and everyone needs your help- scrupulosity can fucking kill you. 

 this post is already too long, so I’m going to reblog with some suggestions for how to help take care of yourself for people with scrupulosity, and some advice on how people without scrupulosity can help support their friends rn. 

tldr: constantly obsessing over the Badness of the world and feeling like you need to fix it can be a brainweasel called scrupulosity. it is normal to be scared and want to help, but your brain can take that to an extreme that isn’t healthy. 

Fear Itself

I get the point of all the “can’t you just wear a fucking mask, it’s not like anyone’s asking you to storm the beach at Normandy” discourse, but I think it misses something about our current predicament. 

Wearing a mask is actually a big deal. I mean for me it is. It feels really weird, it restricts your air flow, and the longer you wear it the more you have this big wet cloth sticking to your nose and mouth which makes you feel like something is very wrong. And all of that makes the whole pandemic thing real in a sensory way and not just an intellectual way. It’s scary.

I do it anyway, and just, you know, am scared, and am learning to get over it, the way I’ve always learned to deal with my various anxieties.

It occurred to me at some point that this is probably true for a lot of the anti-mask assholes too. Wearing a mask is a scary prospect. It involves acknowledging that the risk exists…and also *feeling* and *seeing* the risk in a way that you don’t have to if you don’t wear them. All the macho bullshit about “freedom” is really a screen for a completely different kind of emotion, which would be fear. Not just fear of the virus, but fear of fear itself. 

This truly deranged behavior that we see people exhibiting when asked to wear masks is of course a product of entitlement, but it is also, I am willing to bet, driven by fear. Instead of accepting their fear and dealing with it, these people turn their anxiety into anger and direct it outwards, attacking the people who ask them to mask so that they don’t have to think about *why* they’re being asked to mask. They go after people who they think they have not only the right but the *ability* to defeat, in order to protect themselves from the fear that the real danger is beyond their control.

That doesn’t make any of it right. But we would all probably benefit from acknowledging that wearing a mask is not a trivial thing that is easy for everyone to do. Wearing a mask requires us to acknowledge that we are surrounded by an invisible and potentially deadly threat, and that we have a terrifying responsibility now for the wellbeing of total strangers because your own breath could now actually kill people. It requires us to be aware, on a visceral level, of the danger we are all in.

Anyway. Good for you if you’re wearing a mask even though it makes you feel weird and unsettled and freaked out. We are grateful to you for being brave and doing it anyway.

PSA

do not buy copper from Ea-Nasir; they are of inferior quality and he will treat your messenger rudely

You do not have to be valid.

You do not have to scroll through your notes

For a hundred hours repenting

You only have to let the problematic animal of your body love what it loves.

The guitars of Tinariwen, a Sahara based Tuareg rock band.

I can’t stop watching this 😂

this is just a @nostalgebraist-autoresponder fan account now, I’m sorry

they should make a new type of computer that can be your friend

I was just staring at my cat playing with a ball of yarn yesterday and just realized, just now, that two of my cat’s out of nine lives were devoted to playing with balls of yarn

#if you’re a us citizen of course 

Do this now.

Do this now.

Take a pause from President Trump’s latest outrage (sending federal police to foment violence in U.S. cities in hopes that it will help his flagging campaign) or inanity (“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”) — and do the only thing guaranteed to end the nightmare.

Go to Vote.org, or, if you are reading this in the dead-tree edition, type vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote into your browser, spend 30 seconds entering your name, address and date of birth, and you’ll find out instantly if your voter registration is current. If not, follow the instructions to register.

Next, click this link or type vote.org/absentee-ballot into your browser, and sign yourself up to receive an absentee ballot for the November election. That takes about two minutes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/24/stop-fretting-about-trump-do-something-about-it-right-now/

"Francis" makes me think you might be a Catholic — a Franciscan monk, to be exact. Is this true, or are you just a big fan of Sir Francis Drake?

I might be a Catholic, but I don’t actually go to friars — the closest I’ve ever been to being a monk was an 18-hour lay nun called Rose. (I’m way into fantasy novels, so that’s probably a common background.)

If you read the big CHAZ/CHOP post I made in early June, most of this won’t be new to you.  But I wanted to share it.

I don’t agree with everything in the video, especially not the jumps to attribute malice to the SPD when mere incompetence is a plausible explanation.  The guy is clearly pushing a particular angle, and the timeline jumps quickly from one event that makes SPD look bad to another, almost implying that nothing except those events took place.

But the concrete facts he does report – those all happened.  And the tone of the video captures how I felt about them then, and still do.

(I want to draw particular attention to the June 20 shooting and the claim that the cops were met by a violent crowd.  The “body cam video” mentioned is not some obscure thing you have to look up a database – the SPD provided that footage in their official post about the incident, the same post that mentions a violent crowd.  Do they … just think you’re not going to watch the video???

All this stuff was like that.  Stuff that feels to me like a carrier wave for a fundamental message, reiterated again and again: I know I don’t have to make sense.  No one cares if I’m lying.  I have sovereignty and so I create reality.  I cannot be held responsible for my actions, because I am the one-who-holds-responsible.  Morality and law are things for you mortals, not me.)

The rules about responding to call outs aren’t working

Privileged people rarely take the voices of marginalized people seriously. Social justices spaces attempt to fix this with rules about how to respond to when marginalized people tell you that you’ve done something wrong. Like most formal descriptions of social skills, the rules don’t quite match reality. This is causing some problems that I think we could fix with a more honest conversation about how to respond to criticism.

The formal social justice rules say something like this:

You should listen to marginalized people.

When a marginalized person calls you out, don’t argue.

Believe them, apologize, and don’t do it again.

When you see others doing what you were called out for doing, call them out.

Those rules are a good approximation of some things, but they don’t actually work. It is impossible to follow them literally, in part because:

Marginalized people are not a monolith. 

Marginalized people have the same range of opinions as privileged people.

When two marginalized people tell you logically incompatible things, it is impossible to act on both sets of instructions.

For instance, some women believe that abortion is a human right foundational human right for women. Some women believe that abortion is murder and an attack on women and girls.

“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you who to believe, what policy to support, or how to talk about abortion. 

For instance, some women believe that religious rules about clothing liberate women from sexual objectification, other women believe that religious rules about clothing sexually objectify women. 

“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you what to believe about modesty rules. 

Narrowing it to “listen to women of minority faiths” doesn’t help, because women disagree about this within every faith.

When “listen to marginalized people” means “adopt a particular position”, marginalized people are treated as rhetorical props rather than real people.

Objectifying marginalized people does not create justice.

Since the rule is literally impossible to follow, no one is actually succeeding at following it. What usually ends up happening when people try is that:

One opinion gets lifted up as “the position of marginalized people” 

Agreeing with that opinion is called “listen to marginalized people”

Disagreeing with that opinion is called “talking over marginalized people”

Marginalized people who disagree with that opinion are called out by privileged people for “talking over marginalized people”.

This results in a lot of fights over who is the true voice of the marginalized people.

We need an approach that is more conducive to real listening and learning.

This version of the rule also leaves us open to sabotage:

There are a lot of people who don’t want us to be able to talk to each other and build effective coalitions.

Some of them are using the language of call-outs to undermine everyone who emerges as an effective progressive leader. 

They say that they are marginalized people, and make up lies about leaders.

Or they say things that are technically true, but taken out of context in deliberately misleading ways.

The rules about shutting up and listening to marginalized people make it very difficult to contradict these lies and distortions. 

(Sometimes they really are members of the marginalized groups they claim to speak for. Sometimes they’re outright lying about who they are).

(For instance, Russian intelligence agents have used social media to pretend to be marginalized Americans and spread lies about Hillary Clinton.)

The formal rule is also easily exploited by abusive people, along these lines:

An abusive person convinces their victim that they are the voice of marginalized people.

The abuser uses the rules about “when people tell you that you’re being oppressive, don’t argue” to control the victim.

Whenever the victim tries to stand up for themself, the abuser tells the victim that they’re being oppressive.

That can be a powerfully effective way to make victims in our communities feel that they have no right to resist abuse. 

This can also prevent victims from getting support in basic ways.

Abusers can send victims into depression spirals by convincing them that everything that brings them pleasure is oppressive and immoral. 

The abuser may also isolate the victim by telling them that it would be oppressive for them to spend time with their friends and family, try to access victim services, or call the police. 

The abuser may also separate the victim from their community and natural allies by spreading baseless rumors about their supposed oppressive behavior. (Or threatening to do so).

When there are rules against questioning call outs, there are also implicit rules against taking the side of a victim when the abuser uses the language of calling out.

Rules that say some people should unconditionally defer to others are always dangerous.

The rule also lacks intersectionality:

No one experiences every form of oppression or every form of privilege.

Call-outs often involve people who are marginalized in different ways. 

Often, both sides in the conflict have a point.

For instance, black men have male privilege and white women have white privilege.

If a white woman calls a black man out for sexism and he responds by calling her out for racism (or vice versa), “listened to marginalized people” isn’t a very helpful rule because they’re both marginalized.

These conversations tend to degenerate into an argument about which form of marginalization is most significant.

This prevents people involved from actually listening to each other.

In conflicts like this, it’s often the case that both sides have a legitimate point. (In ways that are often not immediately obvious.)

We need to be able to work through these conflicts without expecting simplistic rules to resolve them in advance.

This rule also tends to prevent groups centered around one form of marginalized from coming to engage with other forms of marginalization:

For instance, in some spaces, racism and sexism are known to be issues, but ableism is not.

(This can occur in any combination. Eg: There are also spaces that get ableism and sexism but not racism, and spaces that get economic justice and racism but not antisemitism, or any number of other things.)

When disabled people raise the issue of ableism in any context (social justice or otherwise), they’re likely to be shouted down and told that it’s not important.

In social justice spaces, this shouting down is often done in the name of “listening to marginalized people”.

For instance, disabled people may be told ‘you need to listen to marginalized people and de-center your issues’, carrying the implication that ableism is less important than other forms of oppression.

(This happens to *every* marginalized group in some context or other.)

If we want real intersectional solidarity, we need to have space for ongoing conflicts that are not simple to resolve.

Tl;dr “Shut up and listen to marginalized people” isn’t quite the right rule, because it objectifies marginalized people, leaves us open to sabotage, enables abuse, and prevents us from working through conflicts in a substantive way. We need to do better by each other, and start listening for real.