embarrassment squick

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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northcentralpositronics:

shadesofmauve:

justice-turtle:

nuclearspaceheater:

tharook:

northcentralpositronics:

tattoo artist who can encode magic into tattoos but doesn’t want people to know she can so she just puts low-level luck spells on her clients’ bodies without telling them

jeweller who makes body jewellery and pendants which have amulet properties and draw love and luck and happiness to their wearers without them realising it

piercing artist who keeps the remnants from her piercings and puts them all in little jars in the back of her shop to work sympathetic luck spells on all her clients

and then all three of them slowly realise what the others are doing and end up in a poly relationship living in a little shop in the shitty end of town, which gets curiously less shitty the longer they stay, and people think it’s just the development of the area but the three artists know

and they’re never rich and they’re never famous but they’re always happy because they have everything they need

they have the shop and they have their customers and they have each other

and when their customers are happy and content, they pack up and move on, all together now, to find another space with skin to be coloured and jewellery to be made and magic to be done.

this is beautiful

DETROIT – The three body modification artists were arrested today on charges of voluntary manslaughter after a past client suffered a fatal stroke, allegedly due to thaumo-alchemical interactions between her prescribed potions and a luck charm that had been placed on one of her tattoos without her knowledge.

…

“Some potions and drugs are known to react with common charms, which is why it is absolutely essential that your doctor and pharmacist have a complete and accurate list of your active enchantments,” says pharmacist Patricia Patil. “Putting an enchantment of any kind, no matter how minor, on someone without their knowledge or permission is playing Russian Roulette with someone else’s life.”

…

The victim, Carmen Jackson, was 36 at the time of her death and is survived by a husband and 4 children.

“#death tw #yes this #I did not think this *exact* thing #but I did wonder why we were assumed to sympathise with people tricking others into taking spells”

Because consent isn’t part of our cultural narrative. Patriarchalism is – people assumed to be “wiser” doing what’s Best for other people without needing input from those stupid lower-class people who would reject the help out of fear and superstition and who never know what’s Actually Good for them.

Us, the lower classes and poors in this country, we know we’re shat on, but it’s still a long row to hoe challenging this internalized narrative, that if somebody who Knows Better than you (upperclass, educated, ~the Wise~) is doing what’s Good for you, they don’t need your consent or even to tell you what’s going on.

In skiffy, there’s a trope of the person who has to Decide The Fate Of Others angsting about it, feeling unworthy, actually addressing the fact that they’re making big honkin’ decisions about people’s lives without their consent… but the angst isn’t about whether the decisions should be made (and in skiffy there generally isn’t time or any achievable way to get everybody’s input), but over whether THE PERSON ANGSTING is “worthy”, is Wise enough, because they weren’t brought up to feel that deciding the fate of others is their job, they feel it’s the job of those higher up the totem pole who’ve done the deciding on the person’s own fate. If they had more time, the ability to consult, it’s not suggested that they should take the opinions of the people whose lives will be affected, but of their superiors who have more of a “right” to fuck with people’s situations.

It took me five minutes to figure out ‘Skiffy” was sci-fi, but other than that I love every bit about this commentary.

It’s true. The angsting is always that the decision is “above my pay grade” – i.e, something that should be decided by higher ups. Not angsting that this is something that should be decided by those it affects, or should not be decided at all.

Okay, so I mostly try to avoid commentary on that post (OH MY GOD STOP HAUNTING ME, POST), but this one I feel the need to talk about, because it was both really encouraging and really hard for me to read. Aaaand it got long, like everything I write, so it’s going under a cut i guess

Keep reading

Hi! I’m the person who wrote those tags justice-turtle is responding to. I noticed this in the recent notes while pressing the “like” button on our conversation about it.

I admit I flinched when I realised you’d seen us talking negatively about your post (conflict-avoidance ftw), but it went surprisingly well. I’m glad you agree with the main point, and I’m sorry you keep having to see people taking the OP the wrong way.

Have you considered a note-blocker extension? You sound like you could really use one. People will still be taking your post at face value, unfortunately, but at least you won’t have reminders of that constantly thrown in your face. I’ve never used one myself (never had a post go viral), so I can’t recommend any particular one from personal experience, but XKit has a NotificationBlock extension and I’m pretty sure there are independent note-blocker add-ons too. (They generally work on individual posts, so you’d still get notes from your other posts.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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ilzolende:

brin-bellway:

ilzolende:

michaelblume:

just-shower-thoughts:

Kids entering high school this fall weren’t alive during the 9/11 attacks.

Good. I’m looking forward to when they start voting.

I don’t remember the 9/11 attacks…

I do remember the endless flow of news about “what on earth is our government up to now” afterwards (on the one hand, hyperlexia means I can read my parents’ copies of the Funny Times, on the other hand, I should really have read some more apolitical material when I was younger, and maybe if you think I’m not mature enough to read about my own autism).

On the other hand, I cannot remember not having the “War on Terror”, and I hear enough complaining about it that it doesn’t seem like a good standard to me but it basically feels normal. This, uh, may not be a positive feature that will lead to my cohort making good voting decisions.

But you’re right that I’m not panicking about “terrorists”, I’m more concerned that one of my friends will end up being accused of being one, or that sometime I will have a meltdown at an airport and I won’t catch myself and hitting my head against a wall will look suspicious, or that information derived from mass surveillance will be used for more malicious purposes than it’s currently being used for (ah, yes, this “have an autism-specific tracking device program” will never go wrong when we keep getting accused of every mass shooting committed by a white person ever and people running mass surveillance tend to have worse data security than I would like and people have committed anti-autistic hate crimes in the past, nothing is likely to lead to harm here).

Coincidentally enough, I was just wondering yesterday how much you knew about 9/11. (As an extension of wondering how much my brother knows, since he’s roughly the same age as you.)

I, for one, spent a significant portion of my childhood and adolescence wishing someone would teach me about late-20th-century history. I mostly had to gather vague impressions from media and conversations designed, not to teach, but to evoke memories that I didn’t share.

Despite the clear evocation focus of the title, I found Where Were You When? to be helpful. Unfortunately, it stops at the new millennium. This was fine for me, because my first-hand experience with historical events starts at the new millennium, but not so good for anyone even slightly younger than me.

(I keep meaning to find a webpage that gives the lyrics of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and links each lyric to its Wikipedia article. I’m sure there must be some, and it would be a reasonable place to look for further details. Of course, that ends even earlier.)

My understanding of recent historical events is, while still probably not ideal, usually good enough. I still run into some trouble hanging out with groups of people 5 – 10 years older than me who implicitly expect everyone involved to be familiar with 90′s pop culture. (I spent the 90′s variously non-existent, pre-sapient, and not paying much attention to the world outside my family.)

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, “The King and I” and “The Catcher in the Rye”

Eisenhower, vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Khan, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, “Rock Around the Clock”

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, “Peyton Place”, trouble in the Suez

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, “Bridge on the River Kwai”

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, “Ben Hur”, space monkey, Mafia
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, “Psycho”, Belgians in the Congo

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Hemingway, Eichmann, “Stranger in a Strange Land”
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion

“Lawrence of Arabia”, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

“Wheel of Fortune”, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China’s under martial law
Rock and roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

(Done with the Wikipedia page, multiple links or no links may appear per term.)

…”Ask Wikipedia itself for a list of relevant Wikipedia links” is a solution so utterly obvious that it had not occurred to me. Thanks.

Tags:

#history #music #reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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welcome–to–awkwardville:

brin-bellway:

welcome–to–awkwardville:

the troubles of a person with prosopagnosia and anxiety:

*sees post with pictures of very popular actor they look at pictures of all day*

*tags it with name of very popular actor*

*almost clicks the reblog button*

*checks pictures five times to make sure the pictures actually portray very famous actor and not someone who looks a bit like him*

*feels ashamed because they literally look at pictures of very famous actor all day so it’s very embarrassing not to be sure if it’s really him*

Would you like advice or do you just want to vent? I don’t want to go barging in here with tips if that wouldn’t be appropriate.

it’s okay! i wouldn’t mind advice :)

I’ve found the TagViewer extension for XKit to be very helpful for this situation. To give a relatively recent example (that I’m not sure whether I ever actually reblogged, but it’s still a good example of the process):

1. See gifset of person who may or may not be Taylor Swift playing with small fluffy animals.

2. Press TagViewer button on post.

3. Scroll through the list of reblogs with tags and what tags they used. See that the majority of reblogs with any tags at all contain the tag “taylor swift”, “tswift”, “tay-tay”, or other variations thereupon. See that nobody has tagged it with a name other than Taylor Swift.

4. Feel much more confident that the picture is of Taylor Swift now that you’ve gotten dozens of concurring opinions.

Tags:

#prosopagnosia #reply via reblog #tales from the prosopagnosia tag

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

welcome–to–awkwardville:

the troubles of a person with prosopagnosia and anxiety:

*sees post with pictures of very popular actor they look at pictures of all day*

*tags it with name of very popular actor*

*almost clicks the reblog button*

*checks pictures five times to make sure the pictures actually portray very famous actor and not someone who looks a bit like him*

*feels ashamed because they literally look at pictures of very famous actor all day so it’s very embarrassing not to be sure if it’s really him*

Would you like advice or do you just want to vent? I don’t want to go barging in here with tips if that wouldn’t be appropriate.

Tags:

#prosopagnosia #reply via reblog #tales from the prosopagnosia tag

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

comparativelysuperlative:

ozymandias271:

comparativelysuperlative I attended a gaming night last night and there were two Nates attending and I was like “yay! I will meet comparativelysuperlative!” and they turned out to be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AND UNRELATED RATIONALIST NATES

plz obtain a less common name thank you

#1 most exciting Nate! And Nates are a disproportionately awesome segment of the population, too. I’m flattered!

(How does finding out they’re not me even come up? I feel like in that situation I’d think it’s too awkward to bring up directly so after failing to collect enough information to announce “I KNOW YOU FROM THE INTERNET” I’d just assume it’s probably someone else.)

Your surname is right there on the “About” page of your WordPress. Assuming neither of them shares it, that’s how to find out they’re not you. If one of them does share a reasonably common surname with you, that’s not enough evidence to assume, but it is enough to ask.

Tags:

#reply via reblog

agirlcalledfrost asked: OH OH OH PLEASE TELL US A BOARDING SCHOOL STORY PRETTY PLEASE

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ofgeography:

so my school had this thing called “senior skip day,” except that senior skip day didn’t exist and every year the administration sent out emails in the spring that were like DON’T FUCKIN SKIP CLASS OR YOU WILL RECEIVE RESTRICTION (restriction was like, my boarding school’s equivalent of detention where instead of staying after school you had to go to bed early and help stuff envelopes advertising the summer program until your hands were BLOODIED AND CRIPPLED BY CARPAL TUNNEL) and every year the seniors were like YOLO THEY CAN’T PUNISH ALL OF US!!!!!

  • spoiler alert: yes they can? THEY ALWAYS CAN.
  • 200 years of american high school and teenagers still think that there is a cap limit on kids in detention and that you can leave after 15 minutes if the teacher doesn’t show up.

anyway, my senior year, we all got together and nattered at each other until some brave soldier (i feel like it was my friend paula but WHO KNOWS) was like “OK SENIOR SKIP DAY IS THIS THURSDAY!!!! NOBODY GO TO CLASS OR UR A SCAB.”

  • she didn’t say scab because she’s not from the 1920s and we aren’t newsies, though this story would be way more interesting if we were
  • what she said was “YOLO THEY CAN’T PUNISH ALL OF US!!!!!”
  • except not yolo because it was 2009 and drake hadn’t been invented yet except as a dear sweet boy in a wheelchair.

we also used this email system to communicate with one another that has very deeply informed the way i understand email and which probably makes it very frustrating to be my friend and receive emails that have subject lines like “URGENT” and then just 42 links to the same florida georgia line youtube video.

  • I’M NOT ASHAMED, but in that way where like i kind of AM ashamed so i’m really aggressively NOT ashamed? 

so the day of reckoning rolls around and my alarm goes off at 8 (class started at 8:05 but i liked to PLAY WITH FIRE when it came to being late; my mom actually asked the school to stop emailing her when i was a sophomore because i was late so often that their rote “Mrs. Ofgeography we are emailing you to say—” was CLOGGING UP HER INBOX and she was like “i GET IT MY CHILD IS THE MOST BORING MISCREANT OF ALL TIME.”) and i looked at my roommate elle and she looked at me and went, “you going?”

“hell no,” i said. “YOLO. they can’t punish all of us.”

elle, who was far prettier and far cooler than i was with the notable exception of her obsession with tswift’s “love story” and her tendency to look at the endangered species list and cry sometimes during study hall, quickly bizounced across the street to this shopping center thing where all the cool kids smoked in secret where huge trucks dropped off clothes for the Dress Barn. i think there were also tennis courts nearby. more importantly there was this chinese food delivery place and a lil restaurant that made HELLA BAGELS.

  • WHAT KIND OF BAGELS?
  • FUCKIN
  • HELLA.

off goes elle! meanwhile i’m like, “yessssss i’m gonna use senior skip day to watch 14 hours of tv shows and eat frozen peanut butter bars that i stole from the dining hall! I’M GONNA LIVE LIKE I’M 23 ALONE IN CHICAGO ON A WEEKEND WHEN MY ONLY PLAN IS TAKEOUT AND CUDDLING WITH THE FAUX-SNOW-LEOPARD BLANKET I WILL ONE DAY SURELY OWN.” 

of course, during this time the administration was continuing to send out emails that reminded us with increasing urgency that senior skip day was NOT A THING and that we were ALL GETTING RESTRICTION if we didn’t get our STUPID ASSES TO CLASS, GODDAMNIT, WE ARE NOT RUNNING A CIRCUS HERE. 

but i was like! yolo, motherfuckers!!! i already got into college, YOU CAN’T TOUCH ME.

at some point during the day elle and our friend ginna came back to the room with takeout from the chinese delivery place and we sat on our floor eating it and probably watching veronica mars or looking at the endangered species list and crying.

all of a sudden, elle said, “guys shut up, guys shut up, GUYS SHUT UP,” and ginna and i were like, “WHAT we have a LOT to SAY about FRIED FUCKING DUMPLINGS, ELLE,“ and elle said, “did you hear that?”

“hear what?”

“that!”

‘that’ was the sound of one of our dorm moms, mrs. f, knocking on doors and saying things like, “IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR BUTTS TO CLASS IN 5 MINUTES YOU’RE ON CATEGORY 4 RESTRICTION FOREVER.” elle quickly scampered up our raised beds to hide in the corner, where a tiny human like elle could actually hide from view; i leapt immediately into what we called a closet but was basically a cubby with a flap that was DEFINITELY not meant for a 5’8” individual with knobby as hell knees.

our door, which was never locked because we both hated the effort of typing in the lock code, opened. mrs. f said, “mollyhall?”

i held my breath. 

  • i should add here that i seemed to be operating on like a scooby-doo level of logic where basically i thought that she was somehow NOT ALLOWED to investigate?
  • like, if she can’t see me, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that she could prove i’m in here, right?
  • she’ll just poke her head in and be like oH GOSH NO KIDS HERE and leave!!

you can see the flaw in my logic.

mrs. f sighed. “mollyhall, i know you’re in here, i literally heard your voice ten seconds ago.”

  • there’s no WAY she guesses i’m in the closet!!!

“mollyhall, i know you’re in the closet.”

  • NO YOU DON’T
  • I AM SCHRÖDINGER’S SENIOR

“mollyhall—”

there was a creak. mrs. f stopped. it wasn’t actually a “creak,” so much as this like, prolonged groan? like it’s the sound an elephant would make if it sat on a really large accordion.

i poked my head out of the closet. mrs. f looked at me. elle sat up.

i said, “where’s ginna?”

  • YOU KNOW WHERE GINNA WAS.

“um,” said elle, “she’s in the—”

  • GINNA NO

ginna yes.

i really wish i could describe the sound the ceiling made when it collapsed. it sounded a lot like the way losing your breath feels. i sort of remember ginna falling in like, really slow motion, like i could see the expression on her face. i didn’t really think about how i would describe this in words. ginna’s face said:

  • oh no.
  • what have i done?
  • this was a mistake. 
  • i regret a series of decisions that i have made.
  • is there a way out of this?
  • are those oreos under mollyhall’s pillow?
  • why are there oreos under mollyhall’s pillow?
  • mollyhall, you HAVE a food cupboard, what good is a food cupboard if you don’t—
  • oh, crap.

she belly flopped onto the floor. i mean, the girl bounced. and then she just laid there. mrs. f looked at her. elle looked at her. i looked at her, still mostly in the closet. we were all going to get category 4 restriction forever.

ginna said, “hi, mrs. f. i feel like i should explain.”

Tags:

#long post #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #I generally hate stories about people getting in trouble #like it’s bad enough that *I* get in trouble #I don’t need other people’s trouble as well #but I like this one

Prosopagnosia Dream

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

dhalim:

The dream itself was kinda ridiculous. I was among a group of magicians who was having to battle an invading magician army from taking over this labyrinth-like town, and battle was supposed to happen outside the city gates which were at least 30 feet tall. However, the gates were set up on an incomplete grid just outside the town, and in my dream, it made complete sense that if someone was having trouble defending one side, we just moved it further back and defended it there (??? I don’t get it either). Anyway, we took our positions on top of the gate, balancing on what was ultimately this fence only a couple inches across, and somehow expecting to throw magic down at the invaders? Except the invaders wound up coming up to us, and I was forced down to ground-level where the invading force was closing in.

I ran off to the side, to this little shack and on my way, I nearly ran into a woman who had bleach blond dread locks, who I didn’t recognise. Looking at her, I couldn’t decide if she was friend or foe, but when I didn’t attack, she kept running. The battle was hardly fierce, mostly just people running around, and I can’t be sure if I actually saw a face, or just dread locks and told myself a face was somewhere in there because it was supposed to be. Either way, in the dream itself, I suddenly felt overwhelmed because I literally couldn’t tell if anyone running around me as I went into the shack to hide was on my side or the invading side, and I didn’t want to attack anyone in case I guessed wrong. What if someone attacked me and they just couldn’t tell if we were on the same side or not, and I defended myself and killed them?

Worst of all, when I entered the shack, the man inside told me to get back out there and defend the town, but I couldn’t because I no longer knew who I was defending, and had to try to explain my perceived cowardice. I wound up waking up half way through my crap explanation, but I tried for several minutes to go back to sleep so I could finish telling him why. Sometimes dreams really suck.

And that is why we invented military uniforms.

Tags:

#after a while of population growth battles get to be large enough that even non-prosos can’t keep track of who’s on their side #prosopagnosia #tales from the prosopagnosia tag #reply via reblog #embarrassment squick

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Okay, folks. It’s Lying Liars Who Lie Day.

Beware of new features on websites (cough-TumblrPro-cough)* and things with links that can neither confirm nor deny they go to Youtube (or in some cases that confirm they go to Youtube). If possible, avoid contact with parts of the offline world containing known or potential pranksters. If your life circumstances forbid this, my sympathies.

Good luck, everyone. Stay safe. It’s dangerous out there today.

*I watched that whole video (having been told in advance it was a video, but not what was in it) bracing for a RickRoll. Never happened. Must admit, I was too scared to click the upgrade button. Let’s see…oh dear.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #embarrassment is such a painful emotion #best avoided #Gmail’s ‘new feature’ was a failure in every respect #shelfies provoked no emotion in me whatsoever #not even doubt #doubting it would require caring about it #I read it #shrugged #clicked ignore #didn’t think about it again until I saw someone saying it was their prank #and another thing #this happened at about 9 – 10 PM March 31st #Google damn well *knows* my timezone #I’m pretty sure I’ve explicitly told them #and they’ve previously shown themselves capable of geolocating me to within a couple dozen kilometres #they could have the fucking decency to wait until local midnight #rather than trying to catch me while my guard is down #tag rambles #April Fools

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

aflightygrim:

a romcom where the main character has prosopagnosia and has no idea they’ve been wooing the same person for months b/c the other character keeps changing their clothes and hairstyle

#i promise it would be great #but uh probably only … to people who don’t …….. yeah #i don’t know how this would play out to people who can recognize faces lmao #actually the likelihood it would confuse and piss of people without stupid visual agnosias like #makes it better tbh 

Have you heard of Faces in the Crowd? (Note: I haven’t actually seen it, just read about it.) I read some of the IMDB reviews a while back: many of the non-prosos thought it was neat how they portrayed it by having several similar-looking-but-different actors play each part, and the prosos were like “wait, they what now?”.

Similarly, I expect a movie like that would play out better to people with normal facial recognition, both because they are more likely to notice that anything strange is going on at all and because cringe comedy is worse if there’s a layer of “it could happen to you”. (Or would that actually make it better for someone already inclined to like cringe comedy? I wouldn’t know.)

Tags:

#prosopagnosia #reply via reblog

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