ceaseless-rambler

[ceaseless-rambler]

Would you trust this mad scientist to perform your gender surgery?

no, they're transphobic

no, they're incompetent

no, they'd make me into an abomination

yes, they'd make me into an abomination but I'm into that shit

yes

[ceaseless-rambler]

one of the best academic paper titles

[ceaseless-rambler]

Seeing a request for people to fill out a survey except it's so obviously worded in a way that will mostly draw in one subset of the demographic they claim to be surveying in its entirety and I'm going to fight the survey runners

[ceaseless-rambler]

Sorry for occasionally going on rants about shoddy evidence and sketchy statistics except I'm actually not sorry and everyone should remember to look carefully at a great many claims, especially ones that are any sort of political. And especially if they support things you already agree with, because it's a lot easier to miss poor evidence in those ones

[ceaseless-rambler]

I hate when something that makes several points I agree with then goes and makes a claim that's deeply questionable or uses shoddy evidence. Like, there was this news article about the TSA, and it started with "TSA is unnecessary at best and harmful at worst" (true and cited reasonable evidence) but then it said "and also more people die per year than would if we didn't have TSA" (sounds hard to prove but I'm willing to give it a chance) and then their evidence was "this many people say they'd rather drive than take a place because of TSA and there are this many car accidents per year so some of those are people driving when they would have flown" (okay now we're just saying things. Like yes some of those maybe are people who chose not to fly but that's not actually sound evidence and it means now I can't use the article as a source for anything at all)

[ceaseless-rambler]

i think they shouldve taken me on a polar expedition not because i would be useful or especially resilient but because my preexisting mental health conditions would have made me an interesting wildcard

[ceaseless-rambler]

(trying to get my friend to pay attention to the implications) bro... the implies. think of the fucking implies...

[ceaseless-rambler]

[ceaseless-rambler]

Name: Little Beepo

Skill: Fucking Miserable

Quote: Please let me have some grease from the stovetop. I’ll cry if you don’t let me have some grease. I need it.

[ceaseless-rambler]

Seriously though were people in the past just constantly giggling at the word “suck” being written with a long s like was that a thing do you think

[ceaseless-rambler]

astonishing how good it can feel to get some chores done sometimes. you’ll be sitting there like damn i am some type of horrid little smeagol like creature who should be crushed to death. but then you do some laundry and you’re like wrow. im actually gods most fuckable soldier.

[ceaseless-rambler]

[ceaseless-rambler]

my friends and I have created a game we call Quipposting, where you play quiplash but you roll a wheel full of character archetypes, and whatever it lands on, you all answer as if you are like, a wizard or cowboy. This legitimately makes quiplash go from a fun enough game to an S+ tier absolute unabashed banger

[ceaseless-rambler]

There's a lot of conversations to be had around the current influx of Americans to Xiaohongshu (RedNote/Little Red Book) ahead of the TikTok ban, many of which are better articulated by more knowledgeable people than me. And for all the fun various parties of both nationalities seem to having with memes and wholesome interactions, it's undoubtedly true that there's also some American entitlement and exoticization going on, which sucks. But a sentiment I've seen repeatedly online is that, if it's taken actually speaking to Chinese people and viewing Chinese content for Americans to understand that they've been propagandized to about China and its people, then that just proves how racist they are, and I want to push back on that, because it strikes me as being a singularly reductive and unhelpful framing of something far more complex.

Firstly: while there's frequently overlap between racism and xenophobia, the distinction between them matters in this instance, because the primary point of American propaganda about China is that Communism Is Fundamentally Evil And Unamerican And Never Ever Works, and thinking a country's government sucks is not the same as thinking the population is racially inferior. The way most Republicans in particular talk about China, you'd think it was functionally indistinguishable from North Korea, which it really isn't. Does this mean there's no critique to be made of either communism in general or the CCP? Absolutely not! But if you've been told your whole life that communist countries are impoverished, corrupt and dangerous because Communism Never Works, and you've only really encountered members of the Chinese diaspora - i.e., people whose families left China, often under traumatic circumstances, because they thought America would be better or safer - rather than Chinese nationals, then no: it's not automatically racist to be surprised that their daily lives and standard of living don't match up with what you'd assumed. Secondly: TikTok's userbase skews young. While there's certainly Americans in their 30s and older investigating Xiaohongshu, it seems very reasonable to assume that the vast majority are in their teens or twenties - young enough that, barring a gateway interest in something like C-dramas, danmei or other Chinese cultural products, and assuming they're not of Chinese descent themselves, there's no reason why they'd know anything about China beyond what they've heard in the news, or from politicians, or from their parents, which is likely not much, and very little firsthand. But even with an interest in China, there's a difference between reading about or watching movies from a place, and engaging firsthand, in real time, with people from that place, not just through text exchanges, but in a visual medium that lets you see what their houses, markets, shopping centers, public transport, schools, businesses, infrastructure and landmarks look like. Does this mean that what's being observed isn't a curated perspective on China as determined both by Xiaohongshu's TOU and the demographic skewing of its userbase? Of course not! But that doesn't mean it isn't still a representative glimpse of a part of China, which is certainly more than most young Americans have ever had before.

Thirdly: I really need people to stop framing propaganda as something that only stupid bigots fall for, as though it's possible to natively resist all the implicit cultural biases you're raised with and exist as a perfect moral being without ever having to actively challenge yourself. To cite the sacred texts:

Like. Would the world be a better place if everyone could just Tell when they're being lied to and act accordingly? Obviously! But that is extremely not how anything actually works, and as much as it clearly discomforts some to witness, the most common way of realizing you've been propagandized to about a particular group of people is to interact with them. Can this be cringe and awkward and embarrassing at times? Yes! Will some people inevitably say something shitty or rude during this process? Also yes! But the reality is that cultural exchange is pretty much always bumpy to some extent; the difficulties are a feature, not a bug, because the process is inherently one of learning and conversation, and as individual people both learn at different rates and have different opinions on that learning, there's really no way to iron all that out such that nobody ever feels weird or annoyed or offput. Even interactions between career diplomats aren't guaranteed smooth sailing, and you're mad that random teenagers interacting through a language barrier in their first flush of enthusiasm for something new aren't doing it perfectly? Come on now.

Fourthly: Back before AO3 was banned in China, there was a period where the site was hit with an influx of Chinese users who, IIRC, were hopping over when one of their own fansites got shut down, which sparked a similar conversation around differences in site etiquette and how to engage respectfully. Which is also one of the many things that makes the current moment so deeply ironic: the US has historically criticized China for exactly the sort of censorship and redaction of free speech that led to AO3 being banned, and yet is now doing the very same thing with TikTok. Which is why what's happening on Xiaohongshu is, IMO, such an incredible cultural moment: because while there are, as mentioned, absolutely relevant things to be said about (say) Chinese censorship, US-centrism, orientalism and so on, what's ultimately happening is that, despite - or in some sense because of - the recent surge in anti-Chinese rhetoric from US politicians, a significant number of Americans who might otherwise never have done so are interacting directly with Chinese citizens in a way that, whatever else can be said of it, is actively undermining government propaganda, and that matters.

What it all most puts me in mind of, in fact, is a quote from French-Iranian novelist and cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, namely:

“The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”

And at this particular moment in history, this strikes me as being a singularly powerful realization for Americans in particular to have.

[ceaseless-rambler]

A character concept that I'm actually surprised I haven't seen more, now that I think about it:

A character with a tragic past who's beautiful in an unthreatening, pitiful sort of way, who goes "wait hold on, people think I'm cute?" and immediately goes drunk with power. Having a whole villain arc getting corrupted by the power of being just so tragic and pathetic that people can't be mad at them. Someone who's been accustomed to always being the one who's blamed and punished no matter whose fault the problem was suddenly discovering that actually they could get away with murder by being so big-eyed and sad.

And once they figure out that they can just Poor Little Meow Meow their way out of anything, they do. Going from being genuinely skittish and timid into pretending to do so merely as an act, manipulating the shit out of everyone and avoiding all suspicion because Look How Sad And Wet And Pathetic I Am, of course they couldn't do any harm to anyone ever.

And if one person finally does see right through that act and puts puzzle pieces together of how there's been just too many suspicious coincidences and accidents that only one person would actually benefit from, they confront the Tragic Little Act directly, one-to-one, to say "I'm fucking onto you and your shit"

And suddenly they completely snap out of their timid, pathetic presentation to give a big, wide, sickening smile like "no-one's ever going to believe you."

[ceaseless-rambler]

generate a random power here

Don't forget to put the power you get in the tags!

(If you're reblogging from me, I got Mixed Martial Arts Mastery)

[ceaseless-rambler]

TIL an identity thief stole the identity of a surgeon and while aboard a Navy destroyer was tasked with performing several life saving surgeries. He proceeded to memorize a medical textbook just before hand and all the patients survived.

via reddit.com