is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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sinesalvatorem:

brin-bellway:

@sinesalvatorem, about the r/k thing that I’m not going to reblog under my no-guilt-trips policy:

Keep reading

I am confused to say the least. My post doesn’t have anything to do with violence? Or exploiting other people? Or taking advantage of other people’s unwillingness to push back against assholes?

(Unless you consider applying to lots of jobs even if they aren’t your ideal to be assholish behaviour? But that would be odd and surprising? Like, I don’t think it’s actually valuable to be cautious with a company’s time – they set up their hiring channel for a reason.)

My post is about why people should be willing to take actions that are low cost even if they’re unlikely to succeed in full. But, like, I’m kind of a utilitarian – if I’m counting how costly something is, I’m definitely counting how costly it is to /everyone/.

Putting one’s sketches online isn’t hurting you /or/ bystanders, so it counts as taking a low-cost opportunity. Shoplifting may not hurt you (depending on the consequences of being caught), but it’s still taking money out of someone else’s pocket, so it’s still A Bad.

If cowardice is the only lever you have to avoid acting on impulses to hurt others, then OK, in your specific case I endorse cowardice. But almost no one I know works like this? Generally, a lot of factors go into decisions about whether to engage in violence, and they tend to be rather divorced from what makes someone decide whether to try a new food.

If you have only one inhibitory mechanism, it makes sense to keep it at the level that helps you interface with society, but most people are using several different kinds of inhibitory signals. I just want them to put less stock in the “People will ignore/reject/laugh at me and then I will DIE” one.

Basically, for the vast majority of people my post is directed at, the negative outcome you describe just isn’t related to the thing my post is about. The fear of embarrassment stops people from dancing in public, but I don’t think it’s a major factor in stopping people from punching each other. In fact, in most cultures, bullying and strong-arming others is the opposite of embarrassing.

But I still think people shouldn’t do that because 1) hurting others is bad, and 2) whether something is embarrassing is a crappy way to judge if it’s a good idea.

I think I draw the boundary lines in different places than you do.

—

>>In fact, in most cultures, bullying and strong-arming others is the opposite of embarrassing.<<

Bullying people and embarrassing yourself in front of them are both members of the category “things that increase the likelihood that people will treat you badly in the future”. They increase it by different *amounts*–and I’ll accept that for many cases of embarrassment the increase is negligible–but I don’t know that I’d say they’re different in *kind*.

(And I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say they’re both forms of hurting people, though again by very different amounts. I understand that it is not *useful* to react this way, and I try very hard to avoid doing so, but my *instinct* is to treat “inflicting secondhand embarrassment on me” as a hostile act deserving of a hostile response.)

—

>>they tend to be rather divorced from what makes someone decide whether to try a new food.<<

This, on the other hand, I *would* say is different in kind. Is it at all common for people to get annoyed with someone for trying a new food?

—

I’m not sure how to tell how many inhibitory mechanisms I have except by removing one and seeing if things still work, and I think it’s pretty clear that that’s *not* an area where failure is cheap. And while I’ve occasionally caught glimpses of a conscience around here somewhere, I’ve never caught one while angry (even when I wasn’t as good at cowardice as I am now), so I doubt that’s one of the mechanisms for this.

There is a distinct possibility that I don’t have insight into what’s actually going on here, but from the inside it feels like the thing that caused a shift to being consistently non-violent was spending a couple years on the Internet practising my flight response on bits of Discourse, until eventually I could run away from infuriating things offline too. Here, I learned how to grovel, how to phrase things carefully so as to minimise the chances of sparking a fight with anyone, how to keep my mouth shut entirely and quietly slip out. (not doing too well at that last bit tonight, but nobody’s perfect)

In an environment of *relative* safety and much more time to think than IRL, I could have the lesson hammered home that I’m almost always better off reacting to an argument or provocation by surrendering or (if available) pretending not to have noticed, rather than prolonging the pain by trying to fight.

—

>>Like, I don’t think it’s actually valuable to be cautious with a company’s time – they set up their hiring channel for a reason.<<

Eh, I’ve definitely encountered people with hiring responsibilities complaining about completely unsuitable people wasting their time. I guess bigger companies can probably arrange better filters that put less stress on the employees involved?

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#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #discourse cw #violence cw #scrupulosity cw

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

@sinesalvatorem, about the r/k thing that I’m not going to reblog under my no-guilt-trips policy:

I suspect we’re both projecting our own selves onto the rest of society and ending up skewed. (Intellectually I’m willing to believe you’re closer to the truth than I am, although I’m really not sure how we could *tell*.)

I deliberately cultivate cowardice as a way of coping with my violent urges. It’s true that fear holds me back, but there are some things I very much *should* be held back from, and I feel like the price of being also held back from some things I *shouldn’t* hold back from is worth it given the stakes.

(and no, it’s *not* just intrusive thoughts)

I try to avoid anything that might piss people off because that would make it harder for *them* to hold back, and I know how hard that can be sometimes. I try to make it as easy as possible for them to keep their violent urges reined in, and (I hope) they’ll do the same for me, and this fragile truce between a whole lot of murder-monkeys that we call “society” will keep functioning.

—

(Each approach has its disadvantages, and one of the disadvantages of cowardice is that people who *would* advocate cowardice are, of course, less willing to speak out against the people advocating bravery. As such, bravery advocates tend to stand unopposed. I’ve seen other posts like this in the past, some of them shading *much* further than yours does into “you should exploit situations where people’s fear makes them unwilling to fight back against assholes”.)

Tags:

#you want me to be brave? fine. I’ll post this. #(this is the third version of this post I’ve written) #(I tried to balance ”not being more hostile than necessary” with ”the hostility is kind of the point”) #(there’s only so much I can defang a post about how sharp teeth can be) #((I’m not *exactly* angry but writing this post still makes me very aware of how unfulfilling the lack of violence in my life is)) #((but I’d rather have a life whether I neither give nor receive violence to one where I do both)) #((and I’ve made my choices accordingly)) #this post technically qualifies as: #oh look an original post #but is closer to the spirit of: #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #discourse cw #violence cw #posts I am almost certainly going to regret

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tremorbond:

Shitpost-level take: the true divide in this debate is between autistic people and people with ADHD.

If you can’t deal with lots of noise, touch, and people in general, obviously you aren’t going to like public transit.

If you can’t deal with sitting still and putting continuous boring low-level effort into keeping control of something, you’re not going to enjoy driving.

(NB: obviously this is wrong, still a fun idea)

 

slatestarscratchpad:

I don’t think this is obviously wrong. Maybe I should make it an SSC survey question.

 

towardsagentlerworld:

The other obvious divide is “people with carsickness” vs. not. I can’t read or look at my phone as a passenger in a car without feeling nauseous, but I can do those things in a train just fine.

(And yes, I’m an ADHD person who strongly prefers public transit.)

 

evolution-is-just-a-theorem:

I have very bad carsickness as a passenger but none as a driver, and I believe this is relatively common. So I don’t think this can fully explain it

 

moral-autism:

I’m autistic and anxious and buses are better than driving because I’m not responsible for avoiding collisions? I can usually reliably get a seat, often one with an empty neighbor and basically always with a courteous one. Usually the loudest thing by far is the machinery and nothing smells bad. I notice my stops. I avoid the one bus that’s always late. I was more annoyed by buses when I had a 90 minute commute, but now part is on a campus shuttle and so it’s more like 60 minutes with a nice indoor break in the middle.

Then again I’m probably atypically social in public for an autistic, probably due to not hanging out with people enough or something. I reliably end up thanking bus drivers and talking to cashiers about groceries and talking to miscellaneous people about weather.

 

serinemolecule:

Basically exactly this. My problem with driving is the exact opposite of “continuous boring low-level effort”.

I’m driving. The guy behind me is tailgating. I move to the rightmost lane. The guy being me is tailgating. Fuck. Time to panic.

I’m driving. I’m waiting to turn left onto a main road. The main road doesn’t have stoplights or stop signs. There’s lots of traffic. The traffic never stops. The guy behind me honks. Did I do something wrong, or is he just an asshole? Fuck. Time to panic.

I’m driving. It’s a red light, and I’m in the right turn lane. I can’t see oncoming traffic from this angle. I could pull forward into the pedestrian lane, but that’s illegal. I wait. The guy behind me honks.  I pull forward into the pedestrian lane. A pedestrian yells at me. Fuck. Time to panic.

A lot of US traffic intersections are designed so that you can’t actually navigate them unless you break the law. Those are the ones self-driving cars have the most trouble with, unsurprisingly. And they’re also the ones I have the most trouble with.

It’s a many-sided optimization problem, and if I make a mistake, I die. There are so many situations in driving where zero options are perfectly safe, and I just have to choose one. It’s not even the risk of death. I’m perfectly fine risking my life in a taxi. I just hate being the one who’s responsible for not dying.

Agreed.

There are other reasons to want less car-centric societies, but my primary one is “it’s unreasonably cruel for a society to make ‘must be able to spend ~one hour a day, almost every day, making frequent fast-paced life-and-death decisions’ a requirement of full membership”.

(The actual controlling-the-car part, the continuous boring low-level aspects, I have no problem with (indeed, I have even been known to *enjoy* driving on a sufficiently deserted road). Operating the car is easy. Making *very, very* sure that you and another agent *never* attempt to occupy the same space at the same time is hard.)

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

gasmaskaesthetic:

Why does anger feel good? Most of my undesirable emotions are painful in addution to themselves, so I actively want them to stop. Anger is the one I hesitate to soothe. When I’m angry, it makes me angrier to try to talk myself down instead of letting the rage play out. I can still do it, but it takes a very different kind of effort compared to sadness, or anxiety, fear, or irritation.

Sadness is something I impulsively indulge in, sometimes, but my natural tendency is to do so by seeking comfort, so it’s self-regulating.

When I’m anxious or afraid, I want to get out of that state immediately. This doesn’t always generate *effective* behavior but I’m not resisting the attempt to feel better out of an active desire to stay that way.

Irritation isn’t the same thing as anger. It’s excessive sensitivity. It can turn into anger, but I never want to remain irritable.

Anger moves me to take action. It’s satisfying to direct anger at a target. It feels *good* to rail against some real or imagined wrong. Some of the clearest thinking I’ve ever experienced has been at the peak of justified anger. The risk of indulgence here is pretty obvious. Given how much satisfaction I get from anger, I think I do a pretty good job of staying away from rage-bait. I’m also lucky in that I’m not easily driven to anger in the first place. Most of my anger-management is preventative. I’m not sure what I’d do if that got, say, 40% harder.

I’m curious about other people. Answer all or just some of these, if you want:

Do you work yourself up over things, intentionally or otherwise?

Do you seek out material that triggers anger but does little else for you?

When you are angry, do you ever want to stay angry?

Does that ever change depending on why you’re angry?

Do you find it difficult to notice that being angry is making you less effective?

*Does* anger make you less effective, and how do you tell either way?

Do you ever want to stay angry even after acknowledging that it would be better (for whatever reason) to stop being angry?

>>It’s satisfying to direct anger at a target.<<

Personally, I find anger the *exact opposite* of satisfying.

Anger, for me, is very much about violence. Anger is a desire to hurt the entity that wronged me; if the entity that wronged me is not capable of experiencing pain (like if a rock fell on my foot) or I don’t expect I will be able to successfully hurt them (so, always; violence is far too risky for me to seriously attempt it), this will often spread out into a more generalised longing to cause pain. Getting angry tends to wind up as a period of feeling intensely unfulfilled regarding the utter lack of beating-people-up in my life.

When angry, I tend to feel conflicted about ceasing to be angry in much the same way that I feel conflicted about any other attempt to deal with unfulfilled desires by ceasing to want the thing.

—

>>Do you seek out material that triggers anger but does little else for you?<<

Only under orders. Eventually I learned to treat “pressures you to experience anger” as a major red flag.

—

I can also be conflicted about ceasing to be afraid: yes, I want to be unafraid, but I specifically want to be unafraid *because the scary thing is gone*. Deep-breathing exercises and other such techniques, things about trying to trick your brain into feeling safe independently of whether it actually *is* safe, are repulsive. The closest I get is fear also increasing my desire to defend against *other* bad things than the one I’m actively being menaced with: to use the most recent example, I tend to be more interested in making my smartphone resilient against loss of Internet if I’m experiencing a lot of financial anxiety, even though my level of Internet access is effectively unrelated to how much money I have (I don’t expect to ever be poor enough to lack home Internet (it’s profitable on net!), nor rich enough to be comfortable buying [a personal mobile data connection with plenty of buffer]).

However, I usually *do* endorse ceasing to be sad even if nothing about the thing that was making me sad improves.

Tags:

#in related news if you have smartphone self-sufficiency tips I’m interested in hearing them #(there’s a reason the prepping tag is:) #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #reply via reblog #violence cw #and more tangentially related: #adventures in human capitalism #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now

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Anonymous asked: i feel like this is a dumb question but is it possible that you just don’t have the clothing you’d need to be warm enough? my exposed skin is reasonably comfortable near 0C if i’m wearing ski gear, so you might just need a thick coat and warm leggings to enjoy being outside when it’s cold.

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

sinesalvatorem:

My objection is: But where does it END? I’m already wearing my ex’s DC winter coat basically at all times. I can’t just keep getting more clothes to put on top of other clothes; that’ll get way too expensive and too bulky to deal with.

There are already some clothes I just can’t get around to unpacking, because too much ugh, because too many clothes. Ideally, I would like to have a small number of clothing items that are really cool, and just wash my whole wardrobe each week. Owning clothes that I won’t wear until a whole ‘nother season is /insane/. How am I supposed to /transport/ that? (If the answer is “live in the same place for a whole year” I’m screwed.)

Plus all clothing necessarily impedes the things I want to be outside for in the first place, and more clothing makes it worse. It blocks sunlight from reaching my skin, impedes motion to make dancing more taxing, and – by making the heat-trapping potential of my body inconsistent – it makes me sweat.

Maximum physical comfort would be being completely naked while the ambient temperature is comfortable on my skin. Any alternative where I make up for below-ideal temperatures by putting on layers of clothing can never compare, due to the inherent drawbacks of clothing and the fact that they scale with moar clothe.

So while getting warmer clothes as the weather gets worse may somewhat slow down the quality of life decline, it wouldn’t prevent it from happening. Given that clothes are also expensive and bulky and often sensory evil, I’m not sure how much it’s worth to go getting extra clothes I only wear for part of the year. (Plus I have at least one heavy part-of-the-year coat if needed – which has by itself been a nightmare to transport for the past three years.)

Thank you for the suggestion, though. I just don’t think it’s quite enough to deal with my particular seasonal issues. But if clothing-ownership constraints relax (ie: I can ever expect to stay in one place long enough to make owning bulky items not be prohibitively expensive), I may try this as part of a broad harm-reduction approach.

*

I once saw a list of tips for homeless people that suggested buying a set of winter clothes from a thrift store when the cold sets in, then dumping it back on the thrift store when it warms up, so that you’ve effectively “rented” the clothes for the winter.

It was aimed at people living on the street, therefore limited to what they can carry but *not* routinely having to ship their belongings long distances, so it might not be useful to you. (And there are the cost issues, of course.) But there *do* exist situations in which thrift-store clothes “rentals” are the least-bad option, so I thought I’d mention it in case (now or in the future) you end up in such a situation.

(My favourite level of clothing (controlling for weather) is turtleneck + hoodie + sweatpants, and I’ve lived in the same house for over a decade and would not be surprised if I continue living here (or otherwise retain access to its long-term storage) for decades more, so I can’t offer any advice based on actually knowing these feels. But at least I can pass along advice I’ve heard from others.)

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#reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #weather

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

another-normal-anomaly:

I have previously experienced the phenomenon where a red-eye flight makes two days feel like they have been a single, very eventful, day. But apparently now it is happening in advance. I just thought “tomorrow I have [Wednesday plans] and Thursday I have [Thursday plans] and Friday I have a plane flight and [Saturday plans].

Huh, you mean hotels *don’t* do that to you?

I haven’t been on a red-eye, but I find *any* multi-day trip away from home feels like a single, very eventful day, with naps. Days don’t increment properly unless I sleep in my *own* bed; sleeping in a borrowed/rented bed does not count.

I have been known to catch myself doing things like thinking something was five days ago when it was actually fourteen, because I’d spent nine of the intervening days in America.

(”after one nap it’ll be time for [Wednesday plans], and after two naps it’ll be time for [Thursday plans]…”)

(Unfortunately, I hadn’t consciously realised this was a thing during the only move between houses I’ve ever done (not counting the pre-sapient move), so I don’t have any data on how long it takes for the days to start running again after you change the definition of “home”.)

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#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

Music Reviews: Ramping Shop (Vybz Kartel ft. Spice)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sinesalvatorem:

Lyrics and Review:

Ah di teacha
And ah spice
Every man grab a gyal
And every gyal grab a man

Compulsory sexuality right out the gate? Oh, well. I guess this is Dancehall, after all.

Man to man, gyal to gyal – dat’s wrong

A WILD HOMOPHOBIA APPEARS

Seriously, this has nothing to do with the focus of the song. This song isn’t about gays at all. Kartel just felt the need to throw that in there. Why? The world may never know…

To quote @loki-zen​: “I really like cake, here’s a song about cake, let me describe the cake, also by the way FUCK THE FRENCH AM I RIGHT so anyway, this cake…”

SCORN DEM

…And, with that line alone, this song becomes my Problematic Fave. It is a work of art.

All when ah night
Yuh pussy feel like sun hot

Spice’s Vagina: Approximately 5,500C at the surface.

When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Mek sure yuh know how fi wuk
And nah chat yah ah chat

Ah, right, because singing a song about your sexual prowess is totally showing instead of telling.

Hey, mi cocky longa dan mi knife

Kartel, wah di bloodclat mi jus ask you fi do? Didn’t the song just say not to make ridiculous boasts? YOU HAD ONE JOB

In case anyone is unsure of why this is so silly, by “knife” he means what most Caribbean people would call a “cutlass” and what most Americans would call a “machete”. SUCH HONESTY.

Tell mi wah yuh like
Yuh wah mi drive
or yuh wah fi ride it like a bike

tumblr_inline_o0ndgb0qbb1tn6v4y_540

Figure 1.1: Spice And Kartel Having Sex

Well, yuh haffi ram it hard
Di cocky nuh fi lie
Damage it fi spite

…Well this just got surprisingly kinky. Not sure if it’s SSC, but I’ll let it pass.

Not becah mi pussy tight
Suppose mi put it pon di left
Can yuh tek it pon di right
Mi nipple dem a ripe

tumblr_inline_o0ndohjumn1tn6v4y_540

Figure 1.2: Spice’s Breasts

Sen it up inna mi tribe
What? titty appetite
Every nipple get a bite
Mi man haffi go see it
Mi and him haffi go fight

Oh, great. Just when I thought this couldn’t get better: She has a boyfriend/husband who doesn’t know they’re fucking and is going to be pissed when he sees the hickies on her breasts. Spice & Kartel: Perfect Role-Models.

Cah me haffi wine pon di cocky like dis
Kartel spin mi like a satellite dish

…I don’t think you’re supposed to do that to your satellite dishes…

Deal wid yuh breast like mi crushin Irish

Wait, what? Kartel, I get it, we all know that you’re a wannabe Englishman – but what the fuck do you have against the Irish?

@inquisitivefeminist​ and @sinesalvatorem​: United by the fact that Kartel hates our guts for no apparent reason.

Spice I neva love a pussy like dis
You ah my mista
You ah my miss
Kill me wid di cocky
Kill me wid di tightness

You two clearly enjoy having a bit too much murder in your sex lives. Maybe you and @inquisitivefeminist​ would get along after all?

And when you ah come
Whispa someting like dis:
“I can’t stop fuckin you”

… … …

Is this really the most romantic pillow talk you could come up with? You aren’t even singing it in a vaguely romantic manner!

Hey, cocky nuh play
Me will bruk yuh back

Kartel Confirms: Cocks don’t break backs, people with cocks break backs, and people with granite cocks break their backs lifting Moloch to the sky.

When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Me will quint it up two time and pop yuh cock
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Me will mek yuh run out a mi house
Inna half ah frock

The Walk of Shame: A Perk of Fucking Kartel.

When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
A gyal eva ride pon it and gi yuh heart attack
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop

tumblr_inline_o0nef39k691tn6v4y_540

Figure 1.3: Spice’s Vagina

Spice ah you mi love
Yuh know how fi do yuh stuff
Yuh pussy buff
Plus it squeeze like handcuff

Let’s be real: I have seen a lot, but I’m not even sure what kink they’re going for here.

I’m only sure of one thing, really: Kartel could write a pretty interesting Fifty Shades of Grey fan fic.

Kartel ah you mi love
See it deh, mi cock it up
Fuh yuh ramp ruff
Til mi belly cramp up

Stomach Cramps: So Sexeh

Sshhh di climax begun
Bear sweat a run
Hold mi tight spice
Mi feel like mi ah cum

“So, I know that I’m climaxing right now. I also feel like I’m coming, but I’m not so sure. How can you tell?”

“If you’re coming, then you’re probably coming.”

Mi nah let yuh go
So don’t let me done
Me two phone a ring
and me nah ansa none

In case you’re not sure why she explicitly mentions two phones, it’s the third world equivalent of a rap brag. She is so filthy rich that she can afford not just one but two cellular phones. Two of them! Mobile phones! Bow before her fat stacks, pleb.

And, like, this is a legitimately impressive brag for the target audience. As someone who can see this from both the third world (”Wow, that’s amazing!”) and first world (”…Is that it?”) perspectives, lines like this give me a weird sense of vertigo.

Cah me haffi wine pon di cocky like dis
Kartel spin me like a satellite dish
Deal wid yuh breast like mi crushing Irish
Spice I neva love a pussy like dis
You ah my mista
You ah my miss
Kill me wid di cocky
Kill me wid di tightness
And when you a come
Whispa someting like dis
I can’t stop fuckin you

In all seriousness, all of these lines sound more ridiculous on the second run through.

Hey, cocky nuh play
Me will bruk yuh back
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Me will quint it up two time and pop yuh cock
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Me will mek yuh run out a mi house
Inna half ah frock
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
A gyal eva ride pon it and gi yuh heart attack
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop

There are so many ways that this is hella dysfunctional, but I’m just gonna leave that there.

Ah di teacha
And ah spice
Every man grab a gyal
And every gyal grab a man
Man to man, gyal to gyal – dats wrong
SCORN DEM

Fuck the French! SCORN THEM

All when a night
Yuh pussy feel like sun hot
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Mek sure yuh know how fi wuk
And nah chat yah ah chat

Ooh, maybe he’ll listen to this advice on the second run through?

Cocky nuh play
Mi will bruk yuh back

Ha. Ha. Ha.

When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Mi will quint it up two time and pop yuh cock
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
Mi will mek yuh run out a mi house
Inna half ah frock
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop
A gyal eva ride pon it and gi yuh heart attack
When yuh come inna mi ramping shop

Thank you, Kartel, for clearly and persuasively presenting all the reasons why I don’t want to visit your “ramping shop”.
>lesbianism increases

This is a fairly old post, but I still think about this bit a lot:

>>In case you’re not sure why she explicitly mentions two phones, it’s the third world equivalent of a rap brag. She is so filthy rich that she can afford not just one but *two* cellular phones. Two of them! *Mobile* phones! Bow before her fat stacks, pleb.

And, like, this is a legitimately impressive brag for the target audience. As someone who can see this from both the third world (”Wow, that’s amazing!”) and first world (”…Is that it?”) perspectives, lines like this give me a weird sense of vertigo.<<

I thought about this a lot last summer, when I was routinely running a mobile hotspot on one phone and playing Pokemon Go on a second, and I think about it a lot now that I’m routinely using two smartphones both of which *I personally* own (the hotspot one was borrowed from Mom).

Because the thing is, I use multiple phones *because I’m poor*. Richer people can afford a single device good enough to do everything they want it to do, rather than having to network multiple inadequate phones into one functioning system. (the first phone was too low-spec to run Pokemon Go itself, and the second had no cell plan of any kind, let alone data) Richer people don’t care that owning a second device, if used properly, grants an additional ~$0.50 – $1/day income stream, because $1/day is immaterial to them.

And yes, I understand that at the level of poverty the song assumes, the alternative to multiple inadequate phones is a *single* inadequate phone, and just not doing the things it can’t do. (or *zero* phones, though I gather that’s increasingly less common these days) But I still think it’s interesting that “has a single mobile device” can indicate either “poor” or “rich” depending on context. (And I suspect even richer people wrap around another time and start using multiple mobile devices again: at least, *somebody* has to be buying Kindles or they wouldn’t make them. God knows what the *very* rich people are up to.)

(possibly relevant?)

Tags:

#music #nsfw text #death mention #reply via reblog #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #(close enough) #adventures in human capitalism #this post brought to you by helping a semi-homeless friend research cheap high-data-limit plans to stick into their old hand-me-down iPhone #because they’re not putting down enough roots in any location to get home Internet set up #so mobile data and the occasional public Wi-Fi is all they have #(they too have been learning the joys of mobile hotspots) #the relationship between financial position and phone usage can be very complicated indeed #homophobia

restorative things

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

theunitofcaring:

There are a bunch of people for whom bubble baths, scented candles, and chocolate is self-care. 

There are a bunch of people for whom early-morning yoga, vegetable smoothies, and aggressively minimalist redecorating is self-care.

There are a bunch of people for whom playing with kids is self-care, and a bunch of people for whom dressing up and going to a fancy restaurant where no kids are allowed is self-care, and a bunch of people for whom sleeping in late is self-care and a bunch of people for whom getting up early is self-care. 

Lately I’ve been moving from ‘yeah, humans are vast and varied’ to a sense that there’s a similar underlying thing in all of these cases.

I think something tends to be more restorative – to be an activity that leaves you more energized than you started it, more okay than when you started it – the more of these criteria it meets:

– restorative things are often things you associate with being prioritized, valued and valuable. This is why some people find chores restorative – it hits ‘valued and valuable’f or them – while other people find them draining – their association with doing chores is being incapable or not-good-enough or ordered-around,

– restorative things are usually things that don’t draw on the resources you feel constrained on – if you’re tired from being on your feet all day, running sure won’t do it, and if you’re lonely and isolated then bubble baths probably won’t help. Dong stuff that causes you anxiety won’t often be restorative.

– restorative things tend to fit into your understanding of what a good life for you looks like. early-morning yoga works for people who find it empowering to think of themselves as someone who does early-morning yoga. prayer and attending religious services tends to work for people who are like ‘my best self attends religious services’ and not so well for people ho are like ‘ugh I’m supposed to do that’ or ‘doing that just reminds me how much I disagree with my community about what my best self looks like’

– restorative things are pleasant in their own right. It’s astonishing how often this one gets passed-over. If you do not enjoy something – if the experience of doing it isn’t a good experience – then it’s really unlikely to be restorative. Making yourself do yoga when you find every minute awful will not be restorative. It might sometimes be valuable but it won’t be restorative. (Things that are unpleasant to start, but pleasant and rewarding once you’re doing them, can be restorative).

I think there are a couple takeaways from this framework. One is hopefully to make it easier to identify things that’ll be restorative for you. The second is that people attach a lot of moral valence to which activities other people find restorative – accusing people of being consumerist or selfish or lazy or privileged – and I’m hoping that there might be less of it if people are aware that the things that work for them won’t work for everyone. (Related to that,of course privilege plays a role in which things you experience as making you valued and valuable, and which things you conceive of as being part of your good life. So it’s a terrible idea to try to impose one version of ‘self-care’, like employers signing employees up for exercise programs in the name of self-care; people of a different class background get particularly screwed by this.)

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#interesting

Anonymous asked: that meat thing was fucking wild, wonder if it was typical-minding or the opposite or what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

argumate:

there was a hilarious discussion about alcoholic drinks once we discovered that some people get a strong bitter taste from ethanol while most can’t taste it at all; it’s so easy to assume that the people who say it’s disgusting are just immature lightweight killjoys and the people who say it’s great just love getting drunk and don’t mind drinking disgusting things to do it.

 

cromulentenough:

yep this was a big revalation to me since i find it bitter. I think i also have the tannin thing which is why unsweetened coffee/ tea tastes horrible to me but people who say they like it AREN’T actually lying to seem tough after all.

 

crazyeddieme:

Wait a minute, does “can’t taste it at all” mean that most people can’t taste the difference between alcoholic drinks and non-alcoholic drinks?

 

cromulentenough:

apparently they get the burning sensation in the throat if theres enough alcohol but not the actuak taste.

 

maid-of-timey-wimey:

??? I figured it might be an autistic thing to be sensitive to the taste, the same way certain sounds or textures are intolerable for me, but they really can’t taste it at all?

 

cromulentenough:

it’s a genetic thing apparently. And that’s what i’m told, but i still find it hard to believe lol. (and apparently it’s us people who can taste it that are the odd ones out).

 

sigmaleph:

Not true, afaict? everyone thinks ethanol is bitter though some people also think it’s sweet https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10940547/

I manage to *both* think that alcohol has a strong flavour *and* not be able to reliably tell if a drink is alcoholic.

Like this incident:

Me: *takes a bit of the fruit punch bowl, drinks*

Sensory processors: This tastes stabby. Like our mouth’s getting poked with needles.

Me: What kind of stabby? Sour? Bitter? Carbonated? Alcoholic?

Sensory processors: I don’t know! Stabby!

(I doubt it was actually alcoholic, but only because I don’t think the culinary school would have served alcoholic punch without a warning sign.)

—

*Sometimes* I can distinguish between those four things, but sometimes they all just blur together into a generic “stabby”. I’m not really sure what determines whether this happens. Contextual clues might be involved: a fruit punch could easily be any or all of them except *maybe* bitter.

(And since everyone else in this thread is treating alcoholic-taste as a form of bitter, maybe that one’s *entirely* context, I don’t know.)

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#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #alcohol

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sinesalvatorem:

Recent Big Five Personality

The other day, I went to an event hosted by a psychological/philosophical research organisation I’d ideally like to work for. While I was there, I spoke to one of the staff about psychometrics, and he recommended I take a Big 5 quiz occasionally to track changes in personality as I go about self-improving.

So, the next day, I took a test on Open Psychometrics. Today, since I decided I should give Tumblr some updates about my life, I thought I should probably post the results. This is what my personality looks like these days, according to this measurement, at least:

tumblr_inline_pdrrwrdezu1tn6v4y_540

Or, in more familiar OCEAN terms: Openness at the 93rd percentile, Conscientiousness at 80th, Extroversion at 96th, Agreeableness at 83th, and Neuroticism (reverse of Emotional stability) at 9th.

If someone had told me two months ago, when I started down the path of self-improvement, that in that much time I could have an OCEAN of 93/80/96/83/09, I would have thought they were crazy. But, no, these results seem to fit with my lived experience. The only thing that makes it hard to be confident is how little time has passed, despite my subjective experience of it having been over a year.

The only thing that really surprised me is that my extroversion still scores so high, now that I spend far more time with myself. However, the test seemed to mostly base extroversion on how interested I am in other people, how much I care about their well being, and how socially competent I am – all of which are high enough to justify a 96th percentile result.

Definitely, far and away the thing I’m most pleased by is the conscientiousness result. Before I used to be consistently below average. Now I’m on the cusp of the top quintile. I’m absolutely thrilled, but I think I’d still like to improve it. In conscientiousness, I’m still significantly lagging behind my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, Elon Musk, and other similar people. That’s where my target lies, and less than 95th percentile definitely isn’t cutting it.

I anticipate my neuroticism continuing to drop as I continue to cultivate stoic mental habits. However, I doubt it will drop much farther, or at least not for long. That’s because I also want to cultivate conscientiousness, which requires some amount of intolerance for substandard states.

In this chart, my Openness is reported as slightly reduced, but that’s only due to the aforementioned appearance of standards. I’m being more careful about which experiences to have (in the short term), because I care about directing myself through a long term growth arc. However, I am in a sense maximally open to experience. That is, in the long run, I want to inhabit the broadest range of possible human experiences. I want to understand the extent of the human mind, to the degree that I can, and part of that is investigating the range of qualia it can instantiate.

The only thing popularly considered good that I’m trying to bring down is Agreeableness, which seems to be somewhat working, as my agreeableness is now in the ‘mere’ 80s. I think that my target level is about 70th percentile. High enough that I consistently lean toward cooperation and good faith and treating others well. But I don’t want to be hyper conflict averse and I don’t want to take shit. Being small and inoffensive and never taking up space is no longer my aspiration.

Also, shout out to a few weeks back, when I was posting on Tumblr about looking for a therapist who might help me to develop a healthier approach to life over the course of a several weeks. At the time, I thought that hoping to have my life on track after three months of therapy was overly optimistic, even though I needed to improve at that rate.

And now, one month later, I’m fist-pumping to my top-quintile consientiousness, while going about setting my life in order in all directions. Oh, and I kind of got distracted priority-wise during this time, so I still haven’t found a therapist. Whoops. I still think it would be a good idea for me to find one. It’s just – apparently once I was the kind of person who would systematically look for a therapist, I became quite capable of healing myself.

At first I was leaning against saying anything, but since this post you’ve made a second one in which you also treat conflict-aversion as a form of hyper-agreeableness, so:

I was so surprised by this that I wondered if maybe we’d taken different OCEAN tests, but your link looks like it may in fact be *exactly* the one I took.

The questions on that test that look like they might be involved in the Agreeable stat pretty much boil down to “How much do you want to fight people?” and “How much do you care about others’ well-being for its own sake?”

I said that I often want to fight people† and that I’m uncertain whether I care about other people’s well-being for its own sake††, and that’s how I ended up with a 12th percentile Agreeableness score despite being highly conflict-averse.

(I tried again using your link, and this time I got 14th percentile.)

—

†Too cowardly and low-pain-tolerance to actually *do* it, but they didn’t *ask* *that*.

††But I’ve never *needed* to be certain of that: I want to live in an environment where people are nice to each other because then they’ll be nice to me, and to have any chance of getting that I need to do my part. It’s hard to tell whether I care about them per se precisely *because* it never actually comes up. (My attempts to use thought experiments to control for this tend to result in my brain going “I refuse to ever be sufficiently confident that being mean to someone won’t bite me in the ass later. There’s always the risk of having *misjudged* the level of risk.”)

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#reply via reblog #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see