essayofthoughts

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It is especially annoying when, in doing so, they turn an otherwise wonderfully nuanced character into nothing more than a woobie.

Trauma is messy and nuanced. The people so affected are messy and nuanced. The simplification of survivor down to woobie is, frankly, insulting.

There is something exceptionally trying about reading work after work where the authors handle a delicate matter of trauma with all the subtlety of a mallet.

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There is something exceptionally trying about reading work after work where the authors handle a delicate matter of trauma with all the subtlety of a mallet.

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Another year has passed and still I live.

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i would cannibalize god's rotting corpse. if the opportunity arose

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So I was tagged by both @nimmieamee and @chamerionwrites to show 9 books I plan to read in 2025 and. Well, it's a good thing I reorganised my bookshelves the other day. I now have a stack of books on my desk which is the year's To Read pile, so I've pick out nine from that stack.

I also have read a book already - Heavenly Tyrant by @xiranjayzhao, the sequel to Iron Widow. It was rad and I'm looking forward to the next book very much.

As we know, I am where tag games go to die, so I tag no one, though if you wish to join in, you can blame me anyway.

List below.

Witchcraft: a History in 13 Trials by Marion Gibson - Bought on sight in a Waterstones, only a few pages in so far. Unsure if I like the tone, but we'll see.

Horus Rising by Dan Abnett - Recommended by someone in my book group after I made them read some Imperial Radch for similar "part of an imperial war machine and blinkered because of that" aspects.

Doom Sword by Peter Beere - I read this once as a child. It is, notably, of its era and not very good. I don't care. Sometimes, childhood trash must be returned to, to pick out good bits and critique the bad.

My Neighbour Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki and Tsugiko Kubo - The boyfriend gave me this as a Christmas present. Given Totoro is one of our anti-anxiety films, I am looking forward to it.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - Saw the film, thought it was good. My sister recommended the book. Giving it a go.

The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack - Given to me by a friend who loves his puns. Concerned it may make me pun to annoying levels. We shall see.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley - My brother @lengthy-artery has gone on about Natasha Pulley books to sibs and I, so when one sib was clearing out books, I dibsed this.

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo - Also got this in Waterstones (at the same time as #1, as it happens). Read some of Bardugo's stuff before, mixed feelings about it, but the premise has me curious.

Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heard the author mentioned before, when I saw the book next to #1 and #8 at a Waterstones went "what the hell, lets see".

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New Alt-Right Playbook! This one was co-written with, and narrated by, Abigail Thorn of PhilosophyTube. We talk about the feint wherein a person is somehow rhetorically stronger being wrong on two fronts instead of one.

If you think this is good work and would like to see good work compensated, you can back me and/or Abi on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, you’re having a discussion with a coworker about healthcare. (Actually, let’s go ahead and drop the pretence: you’re having a discussion about trans healthcare.) He says puberty blockers should be banned because some study said they're dangerous. And you’re a thoughtful person, so you look it up.

Only when you do, you find the study doesn’t say what he said it does. Maybe it says something close, maybe it says the total opposite! But more than that, you realize - even if it said what he said it did, that still wouldn’t support his argument. “Dangerous” could mean a lot of things - a little? a lot? low risk, high risk? Maybe one study isn’t enough to go on. Hell, maybe it’s bogus for a whole host of other reasons! Maybe it’s written by people with an obvious agenda, or contradicted by a better study he’s ignoring. So you go back and tell your coworker, “Hey, the study doesn’t say that, and even if it did, y’know…” But he simply repeats “The study said they’re dangerous.” He’s not just wrong… he’s 

DOUBLEWRONG

Institutions create policy documents all the time. Anti-bullying policies, climate policies, DEI policies - your job probably has a bunch of them. But a lot of the time these documents exist not to be read or followed, just pointed to. If someone is bullied, harassed, or discriminated against, managers might point to a policy that says, ‘We are committed to not doing that.’ And… that’s it. The more you insist, ‘Hey, these policies aren’t being followed, the problem still exists!’ the more you become the problem.

The document is a dummy argument, a substitute for the real one: ‘There’s a problem’ Vs ‘No there isn’t.’ This isn’t a conversation about what some document says or doesn’t say; it’s a conversation about power.

When your coworker cites a study that doesn’t support his argument, he’s using that document in a similar way. He’s not reading it; just pointing to it. ‘This piece of paper means you have to listen to me.’ The study could be about plankton, or Henry VIII, or squirrel poop for all the difference it makes. (Okay, maybe it matters a little: it has to at least look semi-legit at a glance.) He’s not using evidence to inform his position; he’s decided what his position is and he’s pantomiming evidence to support it.

It’s almost as if we’ve stumbled into The Sorcerer’s Apprentice! Little Mickey’s put on the hat and declared, “I know how this works! You stand up, all big and tall, and say ‘I have a study that says you have to do what I tell you!’ That’s how you always play it. Well, this time I’ve got a study, so you have to do as I say!”

And you can tell him, “That’s not how this works, Mickey: it’s a study, not an incantation. It has to actually say what you claim, and it has to be a good study.”

“Ohhh, look at you moving the goalposts! Look at you gatekeeping! Deciding which studies count and which ones don’t. Well I believe this one’s every bit as good as yours, and I believe it proves me right!”

And is that what he believes? Maybe. Maybe not. Remember: The Card Says Moops - you can’t prove he doesn’t believe that. And for the purposes of ‘You have to listen to me’ that’s all he needs. This is a battle of wills now, not information, each half of the doublewrong argument functioning as both motte and bailey. If you successfully expose that study as bogus he’ll move on to another, and you’ll only be undermining the scientific method in his view: if studies aren’t always to be trusted, if even quack science can get peer-reviewed, who’s to say your studies aren’t as bogus as his? And that’s if he doesn’t change evidence entirely - ‘Okay maybe I can’t prove puberty blockers are dangerous, but this study says trans kids have high regret rates; this one says they’re unhappy; this one says they’re brainwashed!’ 

He’s understood the rhetorical function of science, but not the substance. Or perhaps he’s understood the rhetorical function all too well, enough to know, for the purposes of argument, substance rarely matters.

From here, you can chart the course of the entire conversation stretching out before you: You might rush in, hold the document under his nose and say, ‘Look! It doesn’t say what you said it does! What’s the matter, can’t read?’ Which might be satisfying, but does make you look the pedantic asshole.

Or you can reject his so-called evidence as patently false, inadmissible, and leave yourself vulnerable to being obliterated the moment you make an honest mistake with a citation.

Or you can research every single shred of information he puts in front of you, so you can thoroughly debunk each and every one, which means he simply keeps putting bunk in front of you and drowns you with homework.

And he must see it, too, the conversation laid out in front of him. He hasn’t positioned himself to persuade you, but to ensure neither of you ever persuades the other. What is the purpose of this debate, then? This ritual? What is it you’re really arguing about?

Well, your coworker believes that the government (or a doctor doing what the government tells them) should force citizens from a minority to do something with their bodies they don’t want to do. But he won’t say that out loud because he knows that’s socially unacceptable. ‘I want the government to force people to do what I want with their bodies no matter how many of them die in the process,’ is an opinion that isn’t likely to make friends. So he substitutes the document for the thing he really believes. “It’s not me. It’s just science.” He is appealing to facts when, truthfully, this is a difference in values.

Doublewrong is a rhetorical technique to catch you out, to hide the real argument from you and leave you chasing the substitute. It also protects him.

People deploy these kinds of irrational, paradoxical moves to stop themselves thinking about topics that make them uncomfortable. If your coworker interrogated his values about the proper relationship between the government and minorities he might find he’s not the person he thought he was, or that his friends and colleagues expect him to be. (And you might too - let’s not pretend Leftists and Liberals have the moral high ground all the time - interrogating your fundamental values is an uncomfortable experience for most people.) He probably wants to think of himself as a good person, and yet he also believes (maybe not even consciously) that the government should own the bodies of at least some citizens. He knows he’d probably hate that if it happened to him, but he still wants it to happen to others. Doublewrong relieves him of the burden of forming a rational position. The document is his nice big safety blanket.

This plays on a human weakness that spans the entire political spectrum: we all wrap ourselves snug in faulty information from time to time. We share studies without reading because the abstract conforms to our assumptions; we treat a supposition that is likely as though it’s a proven fact. And this is, after a point, necessary: as informed as you are, you do have to stop researching somewhere. You do, at some point, have to go on assumptions, take someone’s word, trust that a pattern holds, because the video’s due before the end of the month if you want to charge your patrons and make rent!

…sorry.

But we do, sometimes, treat research as a ritual rather than a method. Because, often, we want to appeal to facts, papers, authorities, without having to do any of that pesky reasoning. But that is exactly what leaves us open to a doublewrong attack. The flaw with your coworker’s study is he’s using it to claim trans healthcare is dangerous, and he’s wrong. He has a comeback for every way you could try to convince him, but he’s still wrong. You can’t prove trans healthcare is safe by gesturing at studies, because the opposition won’t read them. And will write their own studies. You can’t prove it with peer review, because they’ll game peer review. You can’t call them liars because they’ll insist they’re sincere. There is no rule they can’t pervert, no system they can’t twist to their advantage. You can’t just appeal to things that signify “reason,” at some point one of you will have to do some actual reasoning to figure out who’s making sense, and, well, it’s not going to be them.

Remember: this is a conversation about values. Presuming you know what yours are, you may have to speak them aloud.

‘I think people should do what they like with their bodies without politicians interfering, and even if I thought puberty blockers were dangerous (which by the way they’re not because on the off-chance you actually care about evidence here’s all the good stuff) I think people have the right to make risky decisions about their healthcare too. If there was a drug with a 1% chance of healing your terminal cancer and a 99% chance of dangerous side effects I’d support your right to take it if you wanted.’ Now you’ve avoided the trap of arguing about what some document says. You’re focusing on the second, deeper part of the doublewrong instead of the first. You’ve also put him on the back foot: now he has to justify his values, which is exactly what he wanted to avoid!

Of course, he may just repeat himself: ‘The study says they’re dangerous!’ This is not a technique for winning arguments. It’s a technique for starting them.

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it's a very human instinct, that desire to yell about how vindicated you are, but nothing is ever as important as knowing when not to.

crow about it in private if you must, but remember that people will feel you're looking down on them, whether you're crowing vindication over a positive book rec, or over being "right" about the bad vibes you got from something.

ultimately that sense of vindication is yours. don't make it everyone else's problem.

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Odi | Chapter 8

Cass wonders now if he hadn’t realised very early on what she hasn’t been able to say. If the twins haven’t always known just how hard it is to return to the empty spaces where family should be.

Read @ AO3 | Read From Start

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nor all your piety nor wit | Chapter 9

“No,” Allura agrees. “He wouldn’t. Oh dear, oh dear.” Her fingertips tap along her lower lip, a nervous tic that’s terribly humanising. “And going after Gregory at that… he’s lived alone since Vaor- no one to check on him, no bond to someone outside the house-” Unspoken: an easy target.

Read @ AO3 | Read From Start

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✨ Please reblog to make it reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖

Artists and titles will be revealed after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update! ✨

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My Doctor Emailed Me Back

This is the story of how the NHS asked me to be the face of their "new system" for trans health, and why I told them to shove it.

Exclusively on TransWrites:

Here's a quote:

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What's that blog that goes over ridiculously expensive magazine christmas kitsch? Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

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The UK Government have launched a consultation on whether AI should be allowed to scrape content online with complete disregard for copyright.

The consultation is stuffed to the brim with technobabble buzzwords and jargon that frames AI as wonderful and that this is a foregone conclusion.

You can submit a response via the link above and tell them what you really think.

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Even aside from censorship, there's something Guillermo del Toro said and I can't recall if its in his Cabinet of Curiosities book or the Crimson Peak companion book, but he said that with with his films, amongst other things, he has a few things he puts on his list of things for the film that are intended as sacrifices. If he gets them that's nice, and if he doesn't, it's no loss - for Crimson Peak, that was to do (a version of? part of? I can't recall exactly) the film in black and white.

Of course studio execs weren't gonna allow one weird niche gothic horror/romance film to get EVEN MORE niche by being in black and white! Even Mad Max Fury Road only got that after wild success! But GDT went into his meeting knowing he'd be asked to lop off bits of his film, and he planned ahead what things could be made into sacrifices so he could still make the film he wanted to make.

That video of Alex Hirsch reading S&P notes for Gravity Falls conveys a few things to me:

1) the U.S. entertainment industry (especially animation) is run by older conservative types who make up offensive terms and get really mad about them.

2) the people who run Disney would be the first to fall in line with a fascist regime.

3) most of the media we consume is tailor-made and watered-down to appeal to the tastes of older, deeply religious conservative audiences.

4) conservatism, not the left, is and always has been the biggest voice of censorship in American culture.

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Hey! Could we get an updated link to the discord server? It seems the one in the post has gone inactive.

Yup! Link should be updated on the post now - https://www.tumblr.com/essayofthoughts/769621947485208576/just-a-general-place-for-if-you-want-to-write-and - thanks for letting me know!

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Genuinely, this is a very brisk Q&A, shouldn't take more than five minutes and only asks for your country for personal info!

Survey on socio- and geopolitical tensions in YOUR country 

I am modifying the European Commission Checklist on the Root Causes of Conflict for a class of English language learners and would like to get a wide sample of perspectives on political tensions in various countries to use as a reference when I teach the class. While the survey is open to everyone, I would especially like to focus on respondents in countries either on the brink of, or are currently experiencing some sort of conflict, whether it be from internal or external forces.

The only personal data I will be collecting is the country you are responding for. Please try to respond using your own perspective and experiences.

Thank you so much for your time!

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Don’t let Chrome’s big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome’s invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the “Privacy Sandbox,” is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven’t been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it’s built directly into the Chrome browser. It’s been in the news previously as “FLoC” and then the “Topics API,” and despite widespread opposition from just about every non-advertiser in the world, Google owns Chrome and is one of the world’s biggest advertising companies, so this is being railroaded into the production builds.

Use Firefox.