sinesalvatorem:

I just watched Mean Girls! Damn, that movie is so Problematic I love it.

Mean Girls confuses me greatly.

It seemed to me like standard pro-homeschool propaganda, though with a bittersweet ending tacked on over the usual bad ending. It’s the cautionary tales homeschoolers tell each other, converted to movie format.

A movie like that is inherently niche: it can’t have mainstream appeal because the mainstream itself is the villain.

I watched it at a party with a group of public schoolers once, and I was boggled that they liked it. A movie that hated them, that called them animals (and not in the technical sense), and yet they were enjoying it.

Is this that “you aren’t stuck in traffic, you are traffic” thing? Nobody’s bothered by anti-public-schooler sentiment because everyone thinks of themselves as not counting, that the sentiment is directed at all those other people?

(Or maybe I was supposed to pattern-match it to Relatable Stories Reminding Me of My Own Life, and enjoy it on that level? But since I never went to public school, the thing in my life it best pattern-matched to was propaganda rather than personal experience, completely changing my perception of the film?)


Tags:

#everyone’s got some friend of a friend #who switched to public school and completely fucked up their life and their personality #reply via reblog #Mean Girls #apparently I’m in an italic-y mood today #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #homeschool


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adzolotl:

mark-gently:

shlevy:

oligopsonoia:

quick, random poll: can you imagine smells? (I cannot, or at least my attempts to right now are failing, and I also can’t recall ever specifically doing so)

No! This is disturbing why didn’t I know this?

i can!

(i have no memory/record regarding whether i could do that before i worked at Bath & Body Works)

I can, but not very well. Taste is much easier.

I guess? I don’t know how I’d go about creating new imaginary scents, but I can copy scents I remember. Not all that well, but my visual imagination is also towards the low-detail end.


Tags:

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

redbeardace:

redbeardace:

Oh, Tumblr, thanks for hiding a really important reblog with some really important commentary from me.  What else are you pretending hasn’t been said?

In just a minute or so, I’ve found two more cases where this happened.

That means it’s happening all the time.

WHAT THE HELL.

Were they all first-degree reblogs of asks? Reblogs of asks, if they are reblogged directly from the OP, show up as commentary-less in the notes regardless of whether they actually lack commentary. Reblogs of reblogs do show commentary. (I don’t remember if the intermediary reblog needs to have commentary or not, but I don’t think it does.)

This is a long-standing and widely known bug, but not always widely known enough.

(Probably we should adopt a social norm of avoiding commentary on first-degree ask reblogs. If one really wants to reblog an ask to respond to it, and there isn’t already a first-degree reblog available, one first reblogs it without commentary (perhaps a small note to one’s followers that one is about to add something) and then reblogs oneself to add the commentary.)

(Is there some sort of centralised wiki or something for unofficial Tumblr documentation? Spreading each individual fact through word of mouth does fit with the general usage style of Tumblr, but the coverage isn’t always that great.)


Tags:

#reply via reblog #Tumblr: a User’s Guide #the more you know #I know I’m supposed to complain here about the ”blue hellsite” #but honestly I can’t be bothered to give a shit #it is what it is


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somnilogical:

brin-bellway:

Right, that reminds me of what I was going to say when you liked the previous post. (That like was on the OP rather than my reblog, but I saw it anyway because I was looking at the notes.)

Every time you, a person named Somni, like one of my kink posts, I start wondering about nominative determinism. (Although with a chosen name, even if there is causality it might go the other direction.)

*looks up nominative determinism on Wikipedia*

… the entire article is delightful.

The term has its origin in the “Feedback” column of the British popular science magazine New Scientist in 1994. A series of events raised the suspicion of its editor, John Hoyland, who wrote in the November 5 issue:

“We recently came across a new book, Pole Positions—The Polar Regions and the Future of the Planet, by Daniel Snowman.[39] Then, a couple of weeks later, we received a copy of London Under London—A Subterranean Guide, one of the authors of which is Richard Trench.[40] So it was interesting to see Jen Hunt of the University of Manchester stating in the October issue of The Psychologist: “Authors gravitate to the area of research which fits their surname.”[41] Hunt’s example is an article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology by A. J. Splatt and D. Weedon.[42]

We feel it’s time to open up this whole issue to rigorous scrutiny. You are invited to send in examples of the phenomenon in the fields of science and technology (with references that check out, please) together with any hypotheses you may have on how it comes about.“[43]

Feedback editors John Hoyland and Mike Holderness subsequently adopted the term nominative determinism as suggested by reader C. R. Cavonius. The term first appeared in the December 17 issue.[44] Even though the magazine tried to ban the topic numerous times over the decades since,[45] readers kept sending in curious examples. These included the US navy spokesman put up to answer journalists’ questions about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, one Lieutenant Mike Kafka;[46] authors of the book The Imperial Animal Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox;[47] and the UK Association of Chief Police Officers’ spokesman on knife crime, Alfred Hitchcock.[48]

Sue Yoo, a lawyer, said that when she was younger people urged her to become a lawyer because of her name, which she thinks may have helped her decision.

Weather reporter Storm Field was not sure about the influence of his name; his father, also a weather reporter, was his driving force.

Psychology professor Lewis Lipsitt, a lifelong collector of aptronyms,[83] was lecturing about nominative determinism in class when a student pointed out that Lipsitt himself was subject to the effect since he studied babies’ sucking behaviour. Lipsitt said “that had never occurred to me.”

In 2015 researchers Limb, Limb, Limb and Limb published a paper on their study into the effect of surnames on medical specialisation.

New Scientist coined the term nominative contradeterminism for people who move away from their name, creating a contradiction between name and occupation. Examples include Andrew Waterhouse, a professor of wine,[63] would-be doctor Thomas Edward Kill, who subsequently changed his name to Jirgensohn,[64] and the Archbishop of Manila,Cardinal Sin.[65][E]


I googled “Somni kink” and got my own posts as the first results. [ And several other people with the username “somni” on other sites after that. I’m … not actually in the Supernatural fandom(yet?). In case anyone was wondering. ] So I suspect this is not the name of a specific kink but a general allusion to hypnosis.

In this case, it might be of note that my girlfriend ( Sofi ) (( @sigmaleph )) is rather fond of hypnosis things. And I am interested in her as well.

I’m kind of shy about these things, so I don’t like listing things that I like directly. If you or anyone else is interested, I created an editable document of my kinks and people (including those I’ve done things with) have been filling it in.

It is located here.

#I asked her consent before posting this

#the actual motivation behind my name is more cluster-y
#and has to do with a specific notion of dream logic as it manifests as a technique to reliably solve problems  #or at least get somewhere interesting

#This post feels weird #but everything is accurate  #so off it goes
#I hope I’m being kind  #I can’t see a specific rule of kindness that I broke  #but I worry that I broke a rule undiscovered by me or a rule that I’m not thinking about right now  #But I often worry about this #The heuristic for this is if people are not complaining they are being hurt afterwards  #and other people doing the thing you are worried about with modding out by the confounders are not hurting people  #then it is probably okay as far as you know   #and if you cannot think of a way in which what you are saying is unkind  #after thinking a lot  #there is nothing more to do  the vault of heaven will not crack open and deliver a infinitely trustworthy certificate of ultimate kindness  #to vet your planned actions  #Thinking about it  #looking at what other people have done  #reading  #and consulting others  #is enough  #it might not get the answer right  #but for these small social interactions  #it is enough

Re: nominative determinism, those are some delightful quotes.

There is a fetish called “somnophilia”, which is a term that sounds like it ought to apply to me but actually refers to having intercourse with unconscious people (occasionally to other people having intercourse with you while you’re unconscious, but mostly you hear from tops). Sometimes I look through somnophilia stuff in case somebody like me wandered in because they got confused by the name, or is deliberately trying to expand the definition. (I could see an alternate, more genitally-inclined version of me being into semi-conscious intercourse, which is why I got excited when I saw somebody in the Tumblr somnophilia tag talking about how they were into that…and then they turned out to be fictional.)

I went back and checked, and it looks like you haven’t actually pressed the “like” button on any of my posts regarding my adventures in the Tumblr somnophilia tag, although the also-very-aptly-named @spiralingintocontrol did once. (And you did like the pun about fucking the natural order.)

I don’t see anything unkind, given that you did ask Sofi’s permission.


Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #so apparently it’s one of those days when I spend a lot of time writing blog posts and don’t get as much video gaming in as I’d wanted #*shrug* #(expect a Flight Rising post in the near future though) #(hopefully before bedtime)

Asexual Activities:  First Week Review

redbeardace:

asexualactivities:

We’re at the end of the first theme week here, and I’d like to get a sense of what you thought of it.  What did you like, what would you change?  What you like to see in the future?

I thought the “So what is…” posts you made were really great resources – it’d be great if you had a separate links page that collected them for easy access when they get pushed down by other posts. Something I’d definitely like to see is a clear tagging system, because right now there’s not a lot organizing the blog’s content. “Personal stories” (although I’m sure there’s a better way to name that tag), “resources” or “guides”, and “blog meta” might be good ones to start with?

Yeah, I was thinking about the kind of structure that should be here.  The “So…  What is _____, Anyway” posts seem like they could turn into an ace-friendly sex ed library if there’s enough of them on enough topics. I might even haul them over to Asexuality Archive at some point.  I’m not sure yet.  It doesn’t feel like they belong there, though.

Tagging is also definitely useful, although Tumblr doesn’t make that easy.  (You have to post an ask, then you can tag it.  You can’t tag it before you post it.)

@biggestdisappointmentinwarfare said: I could do with a summary post after a theme week. Or a master post of resources on the topic (where to find guides, toys, information). I like reading all the different experiences and learning that there are others with exactly the same problems, but yet are somehow different. Or solved differently.

Do you mean something like a weekly table of contents?  Would better tagging help here?

@brin-bellway said: I really liked the informative posts, but it was also nice to see people connecting and sharing their experiences. I didn’t really participate myself, partly because of finals and illness (luckily in that order) and partly because I don’t do vanilla masturbation, and talking about solo kink before a kink overview seemed like putting the cart before the horse.

Yeah, that’s a problem with a topic that has many interconnections like this.  I can imagine someone this week thinking the opposite, where they don’t want to talk about kink, because to them, it’s more masturbation than kink.  How can I better encourage people to bring something up that might be relevant, even if a different theme might fit it more closely?

@brin-bellway said: Also, given that this posted at 3:40 AM Eastern, I suspect your queue is still having timezone issues.

Nah, that was just me posting after midnight.

“How can I better encourage people to bring something up that might be
relevant, even if a different theme might fit it more closely?”

Well, the problem wasn’t so much about it better fitting a different week as it was about better fitting a later week, or rather, the post would rely on a broader context that didn’t yet exist (at least not on asexualactivities). If something ends up working better for an earlier week, I might be able to use “last time on” links to post(s) from that week to give some context.

Another thing: I know I was a voice in favour of Disqus, but now that I’ve considered actually leaving a comment, I find myself worried that nobody will see it. The number of Disqus comments on a post can’t be seen from the dash, or even the front page. It’s not like a Blogspot or a WordPress, where anyone reading the post is going to automatically see whether there are comments on it. As far as I can tell, it looks like you can’t get a side-wide comment subscription for sites you don’t moderate, which means that even if you use comment subscriptions, you have to manually check every post at least once (to subscribe to it) on the off chance somebody might comment there.


Tags:

#reply via reblog #Tumblr: a User’s Guide


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cosmic-llin:

little-brisk:

Y’ALL. i need your help with ds9 fic recs that are not spoilery beyond the end of s5! tumblr user @replicarters beloved of this blog is like starving and we need to help her. she especially wants kira fic and kira/dax (or kira & dax) fic and fic about dax and sisko. probably also just dax fic in general. 

i have already recommended to her @singlecrow‘s ‘malice aforethought’ one of the best ds9 stories of all time, @starstarship‘s brilliant series ‘not for money and not for food’ among others, and recommend them to you also

help us out!

I can mostly only recommend shortish fic but here are a few ideas off the top of my head:

Old Habits by @mylittleredgirl, a cute first-season Dax and Sisko story

Confident Sutures by pipistrelle, missing scenes from Invasive Procedures

Trompe L’oeil by @brinnanza, Kira/Dax loveliness set during The Way of the Warrior

The Ache in Every Song by Thistlerose – more nice early Kira/Dax

What You Will Know by @little-brisk – delicious Kira/Dax set early in canon

Rebuilding by @eponymous-rose – sweet Kira/Dax earlyish in canon

I have nothing to say regarding the actual topic, only this: what is it with people named Brin (or spelling variations thereupon) and terrible name puns? Other Brins I have encountered include “brinconvenient” and “Brynncognito”. I don’t have a pun in my username, but my blog title is “Brinens and Things”.


Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #recs #names #tangents #reply via reblog #puns

Anonymous asked: Asexual Activities could probably benefit from having a comments section, since people are mostly interacting anonymously (hello!), and there do are some tumblr themes that allow Disqus, so

asexualactivities:

That might be a good idea.  Has anyone set this up before?  How well does it support anonymous comments, and are there some kind of controls to keep away the trolls?  Is it easy to see what’s getting commented on?

I don’t know that much about the details of Disqus–I’ve never administrated one, and it’s been a while since I commented on them frequently–but it’s definitely a lot easier to keep track of what’s being said. You can sign up for email notifications on a thread, even if you haven’t commented on the thread (which means you can also sign up if you only commented anonymously). I’ve seen Blogspots running Disqus who had a “Recent Comments” sidebar widget, but I don’t know if you can do that on Tumblr.


Tags:

#reply via reblog #Tumblr: a User’s Guide

adzolotl:

deusvulture:

diffractor:

Feeling I’d be interested in seeing if other people have:

It’s this sort of burned-out, kind of icky, fatigue/restlessness that shows up after excessive amounts of tv, video games, or internet. It is an “I have squandered the day” feeling, but physical instead of mental. I’m not talking about normal internet usage, I’m talking about things like “I spent the last five hours on Cracked”.

Does anyone else get this?

Yup. That is the worst.

Yeah, it’s a very distinctive feeling.

*nod* Like the psychological equivalent of eating too many potato chips.


Tags:

#uplifting stories are chicken soup for the soul #TV Tropes are potato chips for the soul #reply via reblog #food mention #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

funereal-disease:

Something I’ve been thinking about today: no amount of declaring a joke “not funny” for political reasons will make it actually cease to be funny. 

Humor is a really primal thing. You can have the best, most thoughtful politics in the world and still find your funny bone tickled by horribly offensive shit. That doesn’t make you problematic. It makes you a human being with human neurology, which means what trips your laugh wire is pretty damn arbitrary and often not within your control.

Have you ever tried telling someone who’s losing it at an inappropriate time to shut up and stop laughing? It doesn’t work. That’s the human brain for you. You don’t have to enlighten yourself out of basic physical responses. 

 

fierceawakening:

This is exactly why the whole SJ emphasis on “stop finding *ist jokes funny!” baffled me even when I was a feminist.

I get that SOMETIMES a person’s sense of humor can reveal that they are bigoted, but I’m baffled by the assumption we can tell that about most people by what they find funny.

 

funereal-disease:

Yeah. Personally, I don’t mind any joke as long as I’m sure it’s a joke. Offensive jokes with an undertone of “haha but actually” make me terribly uncomfortable, but jokes I’m positive are jokes are fine. Context really matters. 

 

wirehead-wannabe:

I never got the whole “people are never kidding when they joke about [thing],” either. Like, do people who make 9-11 jokes secretly support terrorism?

 

ilzolende:

People who make 9-11 jokes probably do think taking terrorism-increasing risks is more acceptable and terrorism is less of a major problem than people who don’t make said jokes.

…I find “stop being amused by that!” to be perfectly intuitive. It’s…basic conditioning, isn’t it? If a stimulus (a bigoted joke) is routinely followed by a punishment (exposure to Discourse), one soon ceases to feel positive emotions toward the stimulus. My visceral reaction to someone telling a bigoted joke is something like “you fool, you’ve doomed us all! shit, I’d better get out of here before the enforcers arrive”.

(This means that “don’t be around people who laugh at bigoted jokes if you can avoid it” also makes sense. If they haven’t even been trained out of laughing at forbidden jokes, what else haven’t they been trained out of? (And what training might they have received instead?) If you don’t know what culture someone is from, you’re going to have a much harder time predicting their actions, and it’s often best to avoid people when you don’t know what will set them off.)


Tags:

#reply via reblog #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #this is not the first time Skye has made a post #that seems to rely on an underlying assumption #that people’s emotional ranges are much richer and more complex and more resilient than mine actually are #mostly I find reading funereal-disease reassuring but occasionally it makes me wonder if I’m incomplete #*sigh* #*shrug*


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ds9vgrconfessions:

startrekgifs:

ds9vgrconfessions:

Follow | Confess | Archive

[Does anyone have a list (or better, a gif set?) of all the silliest lines from Voyager over the years? You know, like “get the cheese to sickbay” and “I feel like we’re being pecked to death by ducks” and “there’s coffee in that nebula!” so on and so forth? Cause I need such. Because of reasons.]

This would be a good idea for a GIF set…

Anyone ever make this?

There’s this one?


Tags:

#reply via reblog #Star Trek #Voyager


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