I also find it hard to do evil play throughs. I tried to do one on Baldur’s Gate 3, but I couldn’t bring myself to because of how it affects your companions. It doesn’t help that I had already seen most of them work through their trauma on a more good aligned play through

He also doesn’t get pissed off if you fail, so you can keep trying again and again

You’re right, and thanks for checking me on that. On reflection, I said it was trite because I think I felt uncomfortable with the level of vulnerability I was feeling when writing that comment, so I tacked that onto the end. The vulnerability came from a place of “who am I to give advice when the advice I’m giving myself hardly feels sufficient, because my inner monologue is basically a screaming possum most of the time”. Lots of people are feeling similar, which is why I made my original comment in the first place.

I think a lot of us are struggling under the pressure about not knowing how to cope with this dreadful situation, and for me, that meant feeling like I needed to come up with the perfect words that would be useful for everyone who is struggling. It is sufficient for me to go “for me, this is a useful way to think (and other people may do also)”. It’s silly for me to dismiss myself as trite just because I feel like I am only valid if I have a Solution. As you highlight, this is a collaborative process, so muddling along together is how this goes.

“You can be the juiciest, ripest peach in the world, but some people just funny like peaches.”

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”

That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about things in those terms before. I am wondering whether part of why the right seem to be so good at recuperation is that the right (in particular, fascists) benefit from capitalist support. Money and media have a lot of power; I weep for the people who were indoctrinated to hatred to the extent that they voted against their own interests. The scales are tipped in the right’s favour in that regard. What do you think?

(I haven’t read Society of the Spectacle yet, in case that addresses some of what I’m saying)

Tangentially related, but I’m reminded of this quote from Disco Elysium:

“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.”

Thanks for sharing that article. I actually haven’t heard of Mike Davis before, but following this article, I am now reading one of his essays.

Not so much advice as a selfish request: please try to stay with us. I mean that both figuratively (i.e. mentally checking out and becoming hollow) and literally (i.e. existing in this world). It’s a selfish request because though I’m not even American, I am one of the countless people who are scared shitless today. I don’t know how we will make it through this, but I know I can’t do this on my own.

If you’re here, scared with me, then I am not alone, and neither are you. It’s a bit trite, but it helps me somewhat.

The modern world runs on plausible deniability, especially the tech world

I have to believe in a future where people look back on this from a world with less hatred in it than it currently has. I want to give the perpetrators of hate as little plausible deniability as possible.

I have to believe that even though looking back on history didn’t seem to help us avoid this situation, that there will be people in the future who are wiser and empowered to make better choices for them and their communities.

It’s a fantasy, and I honestly don’t care if it’s unrealistic. It’s what I need to believe to keep going. I need to believe there can be something better after this, regardless of whether I’ll get to experience it.

I know I’m just one person, but your experiences are important and imo, necessary for women’s liberation (and human liberation more generally). I’m not going to say “you should share your experiences” because I get how exhausting it is to be challenged on basic shit all the time and that means commenting can be akin to self harm if overdone. I guess I’m just trying to expand that 1% of non-assholes into a larger percentage.

I say this as a cis woman whose feminism has gotten a hell of a lot more intersectional in recent years, in part due to trans friends. Knowing trans women in particular has helped me to feel more at home and happy in my own gender (femininity and its relationship with womanhood is complicated). Having lived as a guy for a chunk of your life no doubt means that your lived experience (especially with respect to gender) is messy and complex, but that’s great, because the world is messy and complex. At least, it would be great, if more people were open to listening to you when you share. I’m sorry that you have to do the cost:benefit analysis before commenting — that part is something I can relate to.

It does help, thank you.

Is outrage all that new? It strikes me as evergreen

I liked this comment. You wrote with the nuance and balance that I strive for. Thanks for sharing

I agree that it’s not quite the same, and I’m finding it real interesting to ponder how that happens.

This comic and this comment section have been pretty thought provoking. (Heads up, this is overly abstract speculation from here): For example, here’s a mathsy diagram This is a commutative diagram, and I’m not at the level of being able to explain it properly, but part of it is the idea of equivalence, the fact that there’s two routes from A to D that are equivalent.

I’m thinking about this sort of analogous to what we’re seeing in the comic and these comments. Like, the base experiences we’re talking about (being spoken over when you’re trying to share your experiences, for example) are fundamentally shared experiences, but the manner of experiencing them is different, because it’s coloured by our own positionality (of which gender is a big part of). I think sometimes though, it’s like discussions don’t work because we get separated — some of us at B, and some at C. Like, it does matter that our experiences are different, but also, there’s a sense in which it doesn’t, because we need to head to the same place anyway.

I don’t know what converging on D would be in this analogy. Solidarity perhaps? Which would, I suppose, involve recognising that the route you’re on is different to the route other people are on, and that it’s possible to be heading to the same place. I’m not sure, this is quite abstract, but you said the word “meta” and that seemed to catalyse this thought, so here’s this comment. You’re welcome/my apologies

I’m sorry, but this comic doesn’t help.

I don’t think it necessarily has to? Like, I agree with pretty much everything in your comment, aside from this part and what it implies. I read this comment as an expression of frustration from the artist, and it’s certainly one that I can relate to. I also realise that there’s a heckton of men who’ll relate too, because of how men who want to carve out space to talk about men’s issues can be cut off, even if they’re not the same men as the assholes who only want to talk about men’s issues when they’re speaking over a woman. However, I think that saying “both sides” to this misses the point of the comic

It can be useful to ground statements in our own personal perspectives because of how it limits the scope of what we’re saying. A smaller, messier example is that I am autistic and have done both disability activism and autism activism in the past. I am autistic and because of that, I am also disabled, and so many of my experiences as an autistic person can also apply more generally to disabled people. However, generalising a statement can be difficult, especially if on a difficult topic, such as institutional ableism. I was able to speak confidently on how that affected me personally, and to a more limited degree, how it affects other autistic people, because of who I am in community with. However, I don’t directly know any deaf people, for example, and thus I am cautious when talking about my experiences as a disabled person, lest I over-generalise. I get a similar sense from the comic’s use of “as a woman”. Grounding stuff in that way is often an attempt to limit the scope of the discussion to something more manageable when grappling with something hard to articulate.

I also do think it’s useful to recognise the difference in experience. As a silly example, I might say “as a woman, I need to breathe air in order to survive”. I could also say “as a human, I need to breathe air in order to survive”. I could also say “as an animal, I need to breathe air in order to survive”, but actually, I’d need to go and double check the facts on that last one. That’s sort of my point — sometimes statements are overly specific and should be simplified, like in the “as a [woman/human]” statements. However, limiting the scope (like in the “as a human” statement compared to the “as an animal” one) actually gives space for the possibility that some weird animals don’t need to breathe.

Apologies if I have explained this poorly. I don’t mean to come off as lecturing or argumentative; I am replying to your comment because I appreciate your points and I am open to discussion.

I always find it tricky to understand how tools all relate to each other in an ecosystem and this is a great example of why: the fact that Ansible can do this task, but Teraform would be better suggests that they are tools that have different purposes, but some overlap. What would you say is Ansible’s strong suit?

Thanks for the recommendation, I’m always glad to discover new resources. I’m also forever cursing the fact that science degrees don’t put more emphasis on writing and speaking well.

My dude, I’m agreeing with you

Edit: effectively I was saying that I agree with you that there seems to be a particular kind of person who is overly contrarian, very loud and impossible to have productive discussions with.

I felt like the wheelchair example you picked was a great example of how this happens “in the wild”. I wanted to build on your comment by using that example to elaborate on how these contrarian types cause harm, even if they might seem to be concerned and well-intentioned. I found the wheelchair example to be a good one because it is actually something that I’ve seen happen multiple times.

I feel that your reply is an unfair characterisation of my comment. Given how the internet’s communication norms can prime us to read and respond to things in an overly adversarial manner (especially as it’s clear from your original comment that you’ve got way too much experience with silly argumentative types, so I sympathise), I am hoping that your response was based on a misinterpretation of my comment and/or me being insufficiently clear in what I originally wrote (apologies if so).

I’ll keep an eye out for one, but in the meantime, I’ll be more specific about what I mean about ignoring how science actually is.

One of the things I find most beautiful about science is how it thrives in uncertainty — great science is more likely to arise from a “huh, that’s strange…” than a big “Eureka” moment, not least of all because most breakthroughs involve large collaborations of researchers.

“Scientism” is the term usually used for the kind of thing that irks me. I’m realising now that I feel unequipped to properly explain that, so I’m going to point to a video I like on this matter by a cardiologist and science communicator I like: https://youtu.be/CVPy25wQ07k

I find “cis” useful, personally. I’m bisexual, so certainly “straight” isn’t applicable. In a lot of contexts I’d use “cis” to refer to myself, I suppose “not trans” would also work, but it’d be clunkier.

Plus, there are times when the thing I want to centre in my communication is the cisgender perspective that I have. For example, I was recently discussing with a friend that seeing trans friend’s gender euphoria improved my own relationship to my gender because it made me ask myself whether cis people could experience gender euphoria and if so, why couldn’t I recall any instances of experiencing it?

I feel like the term “cisgender” implicitly acknowledges that voices and experiences like mine are important in building a shared understanding of gender — i.e. trans people aren’t the only ones who have a gender. Like, obviously I can’t speak directly about trans experiences, but that doesn’t mean that I’m expected to shut up and contribute nothing to the wider conversation.