my childhood

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

straighttohelvetica:

Easily the most horrifying line of dialogue I’ve ever heard in an animated movie.

 

castielsunderpants:

NO BUT THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD GODDAMN MOVIE LIKE THE MUSIC IS FUN AND SUPERB THE CHARACTERS WERE REAL PEOPLE EVEN THE ANTAGONISTS THE WOMEN WERE GREAT IT WAS ALL GREAT. IT DOESNT MATTER IF YOURE JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, ATHEIST, WHATEVER ELSE IT DOESNT MATTER ITS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE AND ITS LITERALLY ONLY 90 MINUTES OF YOUR DAY AND EXPERIENCE THIS HERE JUST CLICK IT LITERALLY IT WILL OPEN IN A NEW TAB GO WATCH. 

 

fifty-shadesofgay:

also can we point out that none of the characters were white? like damn accurate depictions of Biblical characters

 

riskpig:

I reblog every time Prince of Egypt comes up because holy fuck this movie is so good.

 

theparadoxymoron:

first movie i ever saw in theaters

 

comparativelysuperlative:

First movie I ever saw in theaters too! That’s probably not coincidence!

But, like, this line is part of why I grew up thinking utilitarians are monsters. And I mean that in the “check under the bed” sense—there are people who will do literally anything (depending on the circumstances) and not care if the Bible says it’s evil! And they might be coming for you!

And now of course I’m a utilitarian, and so are a lot of the people I think of as doing the most good. Turns out that genocide against a bunch of babies? Not actually a fair portrayal of people doing things for the greater good.

 

brin-bellway:

Also, I recognised this gifset as being from Prince of Egypt (through cultural osmosis; haven’t actually seen the movie), but skimmed the context, so up until “they were only slaves” I thought it was Moses talking about murdering every non-Jewish firstborn in Egypt. And I was glad that apparently somebody in the film had tried to call them out on that tactic. But no, it’s just the same-old-same-old.

See, you have no idea how much that incident scarred me as a child. You’re supposed to hear that story and empathise with the oh-poor-Jewish-slaves-who-just-want-to-be-free, but I empathised with the Egyptian peasants. My fellow firstborns, slaughtered en masse for being born to the wrong families at the wrong time. Innocent, unknowing people, who happened to meet a totally arbitrary qualification that I met.

(My parents, in a desperate attempt to console me, tried to tell me I didn’t meet the qualifications. That in their place, I’d have been one of the ones with goat’s blood painted on the doorway. Thing is, being firstborn is more important to me than being Jewish 10.5 months out of the year, and even during Christmas season, it’s not so much “Jewish” that’s important as much as “not Christian”. (The Egyptians weren’t Christian either.))

That damned story was what made me really aware, on a visceral level, of my mortality. Learning how not to be viscerally aware of mortality (apparently some people do manage to function while aware of it, but I can’t imagine how) was an extremely long, painful process. By the time I’d more or less finished, it had taken me something like a third of my lifetime-at-that-point. (Then Five for Fighting released “100 Years” and started getting it played on all the radios and even a TV commercial, and I had to spend another few months re-doing some of the painstakingly crafted mental blocks. I swear, if I ever meet the one man who comprises Five for Fighting, I’ll…well, I probably couldn’t get away with punching him. I suppose I’d tell him about how he rubbed salt in a traumatised child’s wound, and let his own guilt punish him appropriately.)

Occasionally I hear of people who laugh at the idea that the Bible isn’t suitable for children. I’m not laughing.

 

comparativelysuperlative:

Yeah, people who say that presumably haven’t actually read it.

I always thought about this from the Egyptians’ perspective, too. Except I have an older sister, and I wasn’t sure if “firstborn” here meant “firstborn son” like it sometimes does, and was I required to hope it did because I’m supposed to treat others as more important than myself.

The Prince of Egypt gets credit for portraying the mass killing as a terrible thing. The other plagues are all exciting moves in a game between God/Moses and Pharaoh, and the viewer isn’t supposed to think about the collateral damage from, say, destroying all the crops in Egypt. But in the last one the musical number ends, it shows kids dying (and parents screaming? I don’t remember) and you’re supposed to notice that this is really, really horrible. But then Pharaoh says to leave, there is much rejoicing, and the movie forgets all about it.

Also, uh, “they were only slaves” is a pretty fair paraphrase of what I learned as the Biblical justification for what God did. (The “my son” part is earlier in the chapter. New Testament quote, but it’s pretty heavily supported in the Old.) I would like to think the Prince of Egypt people did that on purpose, but they didn’t.

(And now I’m picturing Rational Draco Malfoy killing a sheep and putting blood on his door, because if the people who were immune to the last nine plagues are doing it, you don’t need to know why to copy them.)

 

responsible-reanimation:

Also, about five minutes after the events of the movie, Moses lays out the rules for owning slaves.

 

ilzolende:

Reblogged for what comparativelysuperlative​ and the people after him (including him again) said.

Especially

I’m picturing Rational Draco Malfoy killing a sheep and putting blood on
his door, because if the people who were immune to the last nine
plagues are doing it, you don’t need to know why to copy them.

(emphasis mine)

That was just great.

(Also, not that the rationalists will say this, but to anyone thinking “this is why the Abrahamic deity was way worse in the Torah than in Christian religious texts”: Judaism doesn’t seem to have a concept of hell. Genocide bad, generation of infinite disutility infinitely worse.)

…when I saw this gifset was going around again, I did not expect it to be a branch with me in it.

(I’m glad to see my contribution was a positive factor in your decision to reblog it.)

Tags:

#Prince of Egypt #death tw #I’m going to file this under #my past self has good taste #though that tag is primarily for things that I merely liked during the previous sighting and am now reblogging for the first time

Reblog with what you would tell your 13-year-old self in the tags.

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

{{OP by thursday}}

Tags:

#my tag ramble was *so* long that Tumblr cut off the end #luckily I realised at the last minute that it might do that and took a screenshot of the draft #here is the final bit re-typed: #things make a lot more sense now don’t they? #and that’s just a *single fact* #I have more where that came from #I’m going to teach you sex ed the way that only I can #the way that no one else will ever think to do it #(save for the occasional scattered bits and pieces of truth) #(drowning in misinformation aimed at people for whom *that* is truthful) #just promise me one thing okay? #if you ever manage to reestablish this connection #tell me what you’ve learned and figured out given eight years’ head start #tell me what advice you have for me #so then: let’s get down to business #((a heavily personalised sex-ed class would then follow)) #((but this is very long as it is so I will leave it out of the tag version))

Reblog with what you would tell your 13-year-old self in the tags.

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{OP by thursday}}

Tags:

#so you know how you don’t quite trust devout Jews? #(if you haven’t decided you distrust them yet please forgive me) #(you know how terrible we are at remembering *when* things happened) #(and having a functional ultra-long-term memory compiler–while totally awesome and highly recommended–does not make that easier) #(it just gives you an even *wider* span of time in which the thing may have happened) #(anyway) #it doesn’t quite seem *right* that they’re so enthusiastic about Heritage #and you kind of suspect that given half the chance they would force you into their mould #heedless of what bits they would have to carve off of you to make your proverbial peg fit in that hole? #(and denying all the while that they’re carving you) #(because you have the same Heritage so of course you must already fit) #(they’re only making you see it) #well you had the right idea #but the first time around you didn’t apply it broadly enough #you were born to and raised by feminists #and that makes feminism part of your Heritage too #I’m not saying don’t be friends with enthusiastic feminists #the same way you shouldn’t avoid being friends with enthusiastic Jews #but keep them just a little bit distant #just distant enough that they can’t take a whittling knife to your soul #(and hope like hell that the divergent-timeline butterfly doesn’t have you fall in with a *worse* crowd) #so that’s the bad news #here’s some good news #depending on how far you are into 13 you may have heard of asexuality #and you thought it was great and wished you could be like that #well you *wanted* to be like that because you *are* like that #also: there’s this thing called hypno-fetishism #it’s possible for hypnosis to be *sexual* for some people #no don’t worry I’ll wait here while you re-evaluate your entire life #…

{{next post in sequence}}

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

justice-turtle:

shitthesignssay:

Let’s be frank,

we’re all creepy strangers on the internet that don’t know shit about each other.

Reblog with your birthday so your followers know when to send you some nice birthday themed hate mail!

“#which is technically today since it’s past midnight here #though I haven’t been to bed yet so for me it’s still yesterday”

Ah yes, the Tumblr Timezone. ^_^

When I was a kid, I referred to this as “[Surname] Time”, because of my family’s habit at the time of staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning. It generally only came up when I was writing diary entries after midnight. (When I experimented with all-nighters around age nine, I considered the new day to begin at dawn, and wrote the dates on my diary entries accordingly.)

That being said, when it’s turning someone’s birthday we do traditionally sing “Happy Birthday” to them at midnight.

Tags:

#time #reply via reblog

Anonymous asked: Sort of a silly question, but what was your internet community journey? For instance, my first community was fanfiction net, mostly HP and danny phantom stories with frequent lurking on deviantart and 4chan for fanart. Later I shifted to reddit and tumblr, with occasional forrays into lesswrong and some other hubs of interest. Now its just tumblr and twitter pretty much, though I visit other places. Or if you don’t want to get into all of that, what was just your first internet community? :)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

theunitofcaring:

No that’s not a silly question it’s really cool and now I want all my followers to reblog with internet community journeys. 

 I hung out on Yahoo! Answers for a couple years (12-14), lurked various advice columns because I find them fascinating, got into Harry Potter fanfiction on fanfiction.net, found Methods of Rationality and through that LessWrong, where there are embarrassing posts as a record of my age-17 Eliezer-fangirl stage, got into the tumblr Silmarillion fandom, burned out of the tumblr Silmarillion fandom, got into tumblr SJ, and wound up here. The only sites I read reliably now are tumblr, slatestarcodex, and aforementioned advice columns. 

This tracks only slightly with my special interests during the relevant time periods, which from high school forward were the TV show 24 , Crichton/King/Grisham generic adult thrillers, Christian apocalyptic fiction, LessWrong, the Silmarillion, the manosphere and neoreaction, Clara, the Silmarillion again, social justice, and Current Special Interest which is a secret for obvious reasons. 

 

(This ended up much longer and more detailed than the other responses I’ve seen. I hope it’s long and detailed in a good way.)

When I was young, the primary places I went on the Internet were Nethack fansites (though I only lurked), the official Chalkzone discussion board on the Nickelodeon forums (my first fandom (and first perseveration that I can recall*), age eight), and–slightly later–Neopets. These aren’t connected to later events, though.

The continuous journey, the one that led me to where I am today, started when I was thirteen, and I saw that under the “other” section of the Girl Scout day-trip medical form Mom had written that I was autistic. (Her point being that if the supervisors saw me sneaking off to find a quiet spot to recover from all the noise and activity, they should let me.)

She later insisted that she’d already told me a few years previously, but either she misremembered, or she’d told me but not explained and I’d registered it as a meaningless, forgettable word (like I had “Presbyterian”), because it was news to me.

Of course, I had to learn more about this. Some news article led me to The Autism Crisis, which despite the name is a neurodiversity-based autism blog. This led me to other neurodiversity-based autism websites (at one point around this time I read the entire autistics.org library), and from there other neurodiversity sites. (This is why part of me always feels surprised when people who have been hanging out on the Internet for a while don’t have at least a basic working knowledge of multiplicity. Within a month or two of venturing out into the big wide Internet, I knew how to parse a caret in someone’s name.)

(During this time, the summer of 2007, I also read through the entire mental health section of when was then my local library. (It was a pretty big library.) The juxtaposition of these books with the blogs I was reading was an interesting experience.)

Stuff about snake-oil autism treatments led me to the skeptical blogosphere. One of the more religion-focused ones had a link to the Left Behind tag on Slacktivist, which I have updated here to reflect his move from Typepad to Patheos. (If there’s a way to make that show in chronological order, I don’t know it. I’ve linked to what is currently the last page.) I read the posts and left. I didn’t read the comments. Not yet.

When I was bored, I spent a lot of time reading TV Tropes. This gave me a lot of cultural osmosis that still serves me well today, as well as an epiphany about my sexuality. (No, really. It had never occurred to me that “fetish” was a framework that could apply to my particular fascination, but once they pointed out that was a possibility, I realised it made so much sense.)

It was probably from TV Tropes that I found the Protectors of the Plot Continuum. (Their sporkings are a little mean for my tastes these days, and I haven’t read any new ones recently, but I still like their characters and worldbuilding.) Back in the day, I even posted on their forums for a while, under a name I never used elsewhere.

Since I was in the general realm of sporking, there were more links to the Left Behind posts. I went through the “oh, right, that exists. *catches up on posts* *leaves*” cycle a couple more times. At one point, sometime around the autumn of 2010, I decided to stay. I read the non-Left-Behind posts. I read the comments.

In the comments, I discovered a thriving (if sometimes flame-y**) community of people. They used the comment threads like a forum, discussing not only the original post, not only tangents that could diverge quite widely from the source, but new topics that they brought to the table themselves. They also had the Greater Slackti-sphere, the blogs written by people who commented there, most of whom also commented on each other’s blogs.

On Christmas Day, 2010, I got up the nerve to join them. I took on a new name. I became Brin.

(I kept reading Slacktivist long after I should have stopped, after I began to realise that social justice was literally driving me insane, because of this importance to my history and development. I do still read and comment on some of the less sanity-draining Greater Slackti-sphere blogs.)

In May of 2011, we were having a conversation in a Slacktivist thread about Star Trek: DS9. Lonespark, a fellow Slacktivite, told us about this place called DS9 Rewatch, where people gathered in a chatroom to watch DS9 together and talk about the episode as it was happening. Like watching TV with your friends, only text-based and with people scattered across the world.

If you followed that link, you’ll have seen that I now run the Rewatch. The thing about “like watching TV with your friends, but with people scattered across the world” is that said scattered people pretty quickly become your friends. Not including me, only one of the people who was there when I joined is still there now, but I maintained friendships with some of the 2011 rewatchers even long after they left. (*waves at justice-turtle​*) (And of course, I also made new friendships with the relatively new rewatchers.)

It was probably also from the Slackti-sphere that I learned of Ozy, who at the time was a co-blogger at “No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz?”. I liked them–in hindsight because they were the least sanity-draining feminist activist I had ever met–and followed them through a couple of blogs before losing track of them for a while.

I don’t remember whether it was through them that I heard of Less Wrong, but it was sometime around then. I read a couple of posts, a few comments, felt extremely intimidated, and left. In hindsight, this may have been a mistake.

(I liked the idea of HPMOR, but didn’t hear of it until after I reached the “perpetually buried in reading material” stage of Internet usage, and have never gotten around to it. I did read Luminosity, and greatly enjoyed it. The protagonist’s clever exploitation of the local laws of nature reminded me of the books of Jewish folktales I loved as a child***, and I found it very refreshing that said protagonist was allowed to not only want, but seek out immortality, without the desire being seen as a character flaw. (I’ve had transhumanist sympathies probably since reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as a pre-teen.))

One of those Greater Slackti-sphere blogs was (and is) Mock Ramblings. I not only read it, but kept an eye on his blogroll, reading any posts that looked interesting and occasionally following a blog if it was interesting consistently enough. Michael Mock reads Comparatively Superlative, and as it was consistently interesting, so did I. At one point, shortly after I commented there using a profile containing a link to my Tumblr, I received a “comparativelysuperlative is now following you” notification. I read his Tumblr archive, found he was consistently interesting there too, and followed him back.

A few months back, he reblogged a post from you. I don’t remember which one it was, but it was interesting enough that I looked into the rest of your blog.

It was…I’m not quite sure how to put it. It was like seeing a braver version of myself, saying publicly the things I had hardly dared even to think. I…may have read your entire archive, and been disappointed when I found you had only been blogging there for eight months. I spread my net, reading other rationalist Tumblrs you linked to. I found that when I had encountered some particularly unhealthy piece of social-justice writing and it was getting me down, reading them helped me feel better. I realised that this was where I needed to be.

*It was also the first that I could recall at the time; I remember being surprised when it shifted.

**The thing that we now call “callout culture” tends to get treated as a Tumblr-specific or at least Tumblr-induced problem. It’s not. I experienced it in the comments of a Typepad blog, before Tumblr took off. Back then it was called “nuking”, and we lived in fear of the nukers then just as we do now. (Sure, one’s posts didn’t gain as wide a reach there, but it was a lot harder to block the nukers it did reach.)

***Possible factor in the disproportionate Jewish-ness of rationalists?

Tags:

#long post #Brin talks about herself for a *reason* this time #the story of my Internet life #overly enthusiastic parenthetical use #the standard tag for this sort of thing is #my issues with sj let me show you them #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

justice-turtle:

Quick reminder that Flight Rising’s one-day registration window opens in about fifteen minutes! (Half past 1pm GMT.)

I’d write a longer post about why it’s a really cool site and you should join ^_^ but I’m currently super focused on pokemon-battling a group of my dragons up to max level so that I can help out my not!Hogwarts House in a friendly-but-intense competition tussle thing we’ve got going on with another House this week. (They’re called Flights. Because dragons.)

So I’ll just drop this fact here: when my Flight did an informal Gdocs survey of people’s demographics after the November reg window when I joined, like 18% of us were nonbinary. Also there was an option for nonbinary gender. :D *shrugs* I can’t speak for other Flights, but Lightning is some damn cool people if you’re into spreadsheets. :D

Ooh. *wanders over to website*

…wow. I have not seen that much impenetrable game-jargon in one place in quite some time. Not that I’m saying Flight Rising is unusually bad, mind you. I’m sure the Runescape home page I looked at this morning would seem just as impenetrable to the untrained eye, but I have eleven years’ experience speaking Gielinorian and it comes as naturally to me now as standard English. It’s been a while since the last time I had to learn a new game language.

Well, you’ve only been playing for what, a month? And you seem to be reasonably fluent already. I’m sure I can cope.

I’m confident that potential near-future me who already has a decent grasp on Flight Rising would like to hear your explanation of why it’s awesome almost as much as I do. Maybe when you’re less busy.

I was about to say I’m not into spreadsheets, but then I remembered the time I charted my menstrual cycles for six months out of sheer curiosity. And the time, eleven years ago, that I read the entire guide section of the Runescape website before even making an account. (The guide section is much, much bigger now. A modern-day newbie could never hope to do the same.) And how, though I enjoyed playing Nethack, I enjoyed reading about it even more. (The so-called “bachelor’s degree” aspect of Nethack, in which you must study all the obscure intricacies of the game in order to do well, puts a lot of people off. I really liked it, that there were entire long guides devoted just to, say, Altars and You.) I suspect I probably am what you’re calling “into spreadsheets”, and just don’t think of it in the same terms. Feel free to correct me if I’ve misinterpreted you.

Tags:

#Flight Rising #reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

straighttohelvetica:

Easily the most horrifying line of dialogue I’ve ever heard in an animated movie.

 

castielsunderpants:

NO BUT THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD GODDAMN MOVIE LIKE THE MUSIC IS FUN AND SUPERB THE CHARACTERS WERE REAL PEOPLE EVEN THE ANTAGONISTS THE WOMEN WERE GREAT IT WAS ALL GREAT. IT DOESNT MATTER IF YOURE JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, ATHEIST, WHATEVER ELSE IT DOESNT MATTER ITS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE AND ITS LITERALLY ONLY 90 MINUTES OF YOUR DAY AND EXPERIENCE THIS HERE JUST CLICK IT LITERALLY IT WILL OPEN IN A NEW TAB GO WATCH. 

 

fifty-shadesofgay:

also can we point out that none of the characters were white? like damn accurate depictions of Biblical characters

 

riskpig:

I reblog every time Prince of Egypt comes up because holy fuck this movie is so good.

 

theparadoxymoron:

first movie i ever saw in theaters

 

comparativelysuperlative:

First movie I ever saw in theaters too! That’s probably not coincidence!

But, like, this line is part of why I grew up thinking utilitarians are monsters. And I mean that in the “check under the bed” sense—there are people who will do literally anything (depending on the circumstances) and not care if the Bible says it’s evil! And they might be coming for you!

And now of course I’m a utilitarian, and so are a lot of the people I think of as doing the most good. Turns out that genocide against a bunch of babies? Not actually a fair portrayal of people doing things for the greater good.

Also, I recognised this gifset as being from Prince of Egypt (through cultural osmosis; haven’t actually seen the movie), but skimmed the context, so up until “they were only slaves” I thought it was Moses talking about murdering every non-Jewish firstborn in Egypt. And I was glad that apparently somebody in the film had tried to call them out on that tactic. But no, it’s just the same-old-same-old.

See, you have no idea how much that incident scarred me as a child. You’re supposed to hear that story and empathise with the oh-poor-Jewish-slaves-who-just-want-to-be-free, but I empathised with the Egyptian peasants. My fellow firstborns, slaughtered en masse for being born to the wrong families at the wrong time. Innocent, unknowing people, who happened to meet a totally arbitrary qualification that I met.

(My parents, in a desperate attempt to console me, tried to tell me I didn’t meet the qualifications. That in their place, I’d have been one of the ones with goat’s blood painted on the doorway. Thing is, being firstborn is more important to me than being Jewish 10.5 months out of the year, and even during Christmas season, it’s not so much “Jewish” that’s important as much as “not Christian”. (The Egyptians weren’t Christian either.))

That damned story was what made me really aware, on a visceral level, of my mortality. Learning how not to be viscerally aware of mortality (apparently some people do manage to function while aware of it, but I can’t imagine how) was an extremely long, painful process. By the time I’d more or less finished, it had taken me something like a third of my lifetime-at-that-point. (Then Five for Fighting released “100 Years” and started getting it played on all the radios and even a TV commercial, and I had to spend another few months re-doing some of the painstakingly crafted mental blocks. I swear, if I ever meet the one man who comprises Five for Fighting, I’ll…well, I probably couldn’t get away with punching him. I suppose I’d tell him about how he rubbed salt in a traumatised child’s wound, and let his own guilt punish him appropriately.)

Occasionally I hear of people who laugh at the idea that the Bible isn’t suitable for children. I’m not laughing.

Tags:

#long post #Brin talks about herself for no particular reason #death tw #(kind of a meta death-tw) #(it’s a story about how *I* needed death tw’s for a few years) #(I haven’t had a full-on 100-Years-style breach of the psychological barriers in a long time) #(but sometimes there’s still little leaks) #(there’s something about the way Florence Welch sings ‘I’m going to drink myself to death’) #(something about the way Cecil says ‘blood’ when reciting the Night Vale Community College minutes) #(that reminds me of being seven) #(I’m glad I’m not seven anymore)

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

buffaloextreme:

Our world is in peril. Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet. She gives five magic rings to five special young people. From Africa, Kwame with the power of earth. From the North America, Wheeler with the power of fire. From the Soviet Union, Linka with the power of wind. From Asia, Gi with the power of water and from South America, Ma-Ti with the power of heart. With the five powers combined they summon earth’s greatest champion – CAPTAIN PLANET!

Tags:

#Captain Planet #my childhood #I used to watch this at 5:30AM while waiting to see the sunrise #mostly for Linka #I was born and raised in a post-Soviet world #and I thought it was *fascinating* to see a show that just casually treated the existence of the Soviet Union as a *thing*

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

appetisers:

HOW DO PEOPLE FALL ASLEEP SO FAST I DON’T UNDERSTAND I HAVE TO CREATE AND ACT OUT A WHOLE FUCKING MOVIE LENGTH STORY IN MY HEAD AND THEN CONTEMPLATE THE MEANING OF LIFE BEFORE I EVEN FEEL TIRED AND THIS BITCH STARTS SNORING IN TWO MINUTES

I used to have this when I was a kid. It turned out I just really hate nightlights and bed-sharing. Once I started sleeping in my own bed, with only the indirect, faint light of streetlights through Venetian blinds, I was pretty much fine.

I’m not saying that everyone’s insomnia is that easily cured, but it worked for me, and I doubt I’m the only one. There are probably people like ten-year-old me out there right now, taking two hours to fall asleep every night and wrongly thinking that’s just how things are.