#also i should add to clarify: i do not mean legitimate criticism i do mean things that are criticised that are either flat-out wrong

[galedekarios]

I’m not surprised honestly, but I don’t need an award to validate how much I love it. Veilguard is my personal goty, that being said if it can’t be that. Go Metaphor!

that is very true.

i'm just feeling some kind of ways about the positive aspects being completely dismissed in favour of endless criticisms, some deserved and some not.

the same thing happened with inquisition back when it released.

it's funny when i see large parts of the fandom - and even outside of that - now getting misty-eyed over it.

i do remember all the thinkpieces back then on how the inquisitor is actually the worst protagonist, the companions the weakest, the tone too goofy, the plot and chars too railroaded, the lore and stories retcon'd and/or ignored, and so on and so.

i talked about this before and i suppose it's the cycle of bioware games and the bioware fandom at this point. in additions to that, we sadly live in a time now where grifters picked up on it and i do genuinely think that influenced the decision process to some degree.

[fictionkinfessions]

THESE ARE ALL THE HETALIA RACIST SOURCE ASK RESPONSES. IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION REPLY OR REBLOG THIS POST. IM NOT POSTING ANY MORE ASK RESPONSE ABOUT THIS

I'M SHOVING THEM ALL INTO ONE POST BECAUSE YOU ALL HAVE A TERRIBLE HABIT OF READING PAST EACH OTHER AND PLAYING TELEPHONE GAME. NOT ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT BECAUSE THEY GET PARTITIONED ON ON THE QUEUE. ANYWAYS.

THANKS FOR UDNERSTANDING.

READ MORE'D DUE TO LENGTH. CAPSLOCK CRUISE CONTRol deactivate.

Anonymous asked:

Some of y'all need to remember that it is not, in fact, morally wrong for people to make fanworks of your kin that you don't like. I'm not talking about legitimately problematic stuff, I'm talking about totally normal ships and interpretations you don't like. You don't get to be the fandom police, suck it up and just block people and tags that make you uncomfortable like the rest of us

Anonymous asked:

guys you can just… choose to not talk about certain kintypes, esp if you know they are from something harmful 😭 like, sure, on here it’s fine, that’s what the blog is for! but it supremely sucks seeing people defend their sources from criticism when the criticism genuinely is ‘this has so much racism/antisemitism/ableism/etc.’ i have kintypes from harmful media, i get it! i just… don’t talk about them, or if i DO i recognize the harm the media has caused, and boost the voices of those it affects. also, on this point: no one ever needs to feel guilty for kinning from smth - esp spiritual kin or someone who does not control it! just be understanding of the harm the Media does, and be respectful - thats it. idk, critical thinking and respecting others is so important.

Anonymous asked:

@ post/703018736627679232 - Would you rather someone be upfront about it on my list so you can block them and move on or befriend them not knowing and then only learn it way into a friendship? I've had the latter happen before as someone who kins from a problematic source (not Hetalia), which is why I mention it upfront.

Anonymous asked:

cannot believe we are actively having hetalia discourse in 2022. don't you guys have jobs

Anonymous asked:

Respectfully, it is not the responsibility of everyone else to suppress themselves when it comes to catering to some random individual's personal discomforts. It's up to you to curate your own online experience.

Block users! Block more tags (such as # racism cw)! Don't interact with content that bothers you! Nobody is forcing you to read, reply to, or send in your own asks about sources that are triggering to you.

Also, being kin doesn't mean you support or enjoy your source's creative origins, writing, or canon at all, obviously. Identity on this level is not a moral issue, it's just a fact of being.

Anonymous asked:

Boy some of y'all are missing the point of that guy's ask about Hetalia kins. The "stop kinning" thing might've been poor wording because yeah, most people can't simply not kin anymore, but you can absolutely stop engaging with the source, stop supporting it, not list your kintypes publicly.. I kin from Hetalia too and I simply don't talk about it publicly. I actually started keeping a diary where I write about my problematic sources and kins when I get the urge to talk about it. It's helped a lot more than I thought it would, honestly. Maybe some of y'all should try that too?

Anonymous asked:

Hmmm MPC, if it’s okay, could you add on to my Hetalia ask (the one signed from a biracial POC) the addition that the anon I think was very out of line was the one who claimed only the English dub was racist, however, I was already seeing people say this before that ask, so don’t think those comments are only directed at them?

(I felt a little bad about singling someone out, but the more I think about it, I really do need to clarify that. Sorry for a SECOND discourse ask now!)

Anonymous asked:

Okay sorry to add to the discourse but I think some people are seriously conflating “kins a character from a show” to “enjoys the show.” To me, someone liking Hetalia is one of the biggest red flags, but idk why we’re acting like kintypes can be helped. They can SOMETIMES be suppressed healthily, but not always!

I totally get if you don’t want to interact with Hetaliakin. I’m not sure I could comfortably, tbh. But people keep saying stuff like “how dare you ignore the racism in that show and act like nothing is wrong with it,” when I don’t think a single person defending the ‘kin from it has said anything like that. -A mixed POC

Anonymous asked:

wrt 703034476015566848 - yes, there was someone in the replies of one of the (many) hetalia posts blaming you for their being triggered because the post was "untagged" … even though if you use blacklist properly it blocks any post with the blocked word (in this case "hetalia") even if its untagged, so its just kind of on them and i dont like seeing people put responsibility on strangers for their own caretaking lmao. sorry if commenting on it was out of place though.

Anonymous asked:

Hetalia discussion: idk why this is a discussion at all. It's between a kin identity and a history of oppression and genocide and real people's trauma and discomfort. Genuinely how is this discourse. What's more important.

[waywardrose]

On Babbushka

There is a group of well-known writers in the fandom who have been discouraged and put down by one of their own, Zannah - @babbushka​. It happens behind the scenes in DMs. It happens in posts and tags.

In DMs, she has started conversations with seemingly innocent questions. When she doesn't receive the response she was aiming for, she diverts the conversation to criticizing and humiliating the person. She has attacked writers for tagging—or not tagging—a post in a way she deems appropriate. She has gotten into arguments over how characters were portrayed and then tried to claim victimization when the other person wouldn't knuckle under.

She will appeal to her following to attack any fan or creator who has an opinion that differs from her own. She will encourage friends to send rude anons. Those same friends will also DM the target with rude remarks.

Several creators have stopped writing altogether because of their interactions with her.

We are tired of being discouraged. We are tired of being talked down to. We are tired of being bullied. Enough is enough. Under the cut we share our stories, let the chips fall where they may. It's up to you, the reader, to decide whether to support her.

We can only warn up-and-coming writers, artists, fans, and supporters of her behavior.

-

Hope - @callmehopeless

The Australian bushfires of the 2019-2020 season were nightmarish—for those living through it and those witnessing. As the season went on, cries for help increased. Joaquin Phoenix used the time during his Best-Actor acceptance speech at the Golden Globes to call for unity, action, and accountability. Regardless of what we may think of him, it was a thoughtful speech.

Hope, who is an Australian, found Mr. Phoenix's message encouraging and reblogged a gifset of his speech.

That morning, Zannah made a post about Mr. Phoenix's shady past and his association with a known sexual predator. The main reason wasn't because his speech was inappropriate or not timely, but because she didn't think he should be the one to get the attention over other actors who had spoken of the bushfires during the Golden Globes.

While Hope confessed she was scared of the bushfires, scared for her loved ones, Zannah was more concerned with purity. To Zannah it was about the face of the message, not the message itself. It didn't matter that Mr. Phoenix was amplifying support for Australia, what did matter was that he had done bad things.

It was virtue signaling on Zannah's part.

Still, this remains a complicated argument. Can a person who has done bad things actually have something positive to add to a cause? Should we listen to a problematic person if they share an insight? Does it reflect poorly on us to agree with their isolated statement? Will we be canceled, too? What about the bigger picture?

In this case, the bigger picture was hundreds of homes were destroyed in the bushfires and families were displaced. People died, thousands of animals died. And it was because of climate change. Mr. Phoenix called for his rich peers to examine their respective lifestyles and to give back.

Yes, Mr. Phoenix has done bad things. Yes, he has associated with people who have done bad things. His words resonated with people on Tumblr, and they reblogged part of his speech. He said something that gave Hope hope.

Hope was asked by a third party how they could help. She came back with a resource guide for those who wanted to send aid to Australians.

When it became obvious Zannah wouldn't silence Hope, Zannah decided to sub-post about the interaction. There, she accused Hope of being a rape apologist for reblogging a gifset and finding a little comfort in it. Zannah placed her ego before someone who was facing a very real danger.

Side-eying an actor is one thing, shaming a person you know for finding solace during a scary time is another. Hope isn't responsible for which voice got picked up. The only "colors" being shown here are Zannah's. She put her own concerns about being perceived as morally pure above actually supporting a friend.

I'll keep this brief - I knew Zannah for many years. And on one of the lowest weeks of my life, when my suburb was burning down and I feared for my family: she convinced me I was a rape apologist for sharing Joaquin Phoenix's speech asking for action on bushfires. In all my life, I never felt more alone. To add insult to injury, she then posted memes mocking me - something that has stuck with me to this day.

I've had dear friends quit the fandom because of her kinkshaming. I've had people I love message me distraught over what she's said.

Enough is enough.

— @callmehopeless

-

Rose - @the-wayward-rose​

This PM exchange started after I tagged my reblog of Zannah's fic Feast (Cameron Bistle x Reader) with cw: white reader. I had been on her taglist, and I wanted to show support because I liked the fic overall. For context, the reason for my tag is because of this sentence:

"But then you're blushing so pretty and squeezing his hand affectionately and reaching for the handle to the passenger side of his car, and then you're laughing when he swats your hand away to open it for you, and then you're beckoning him down as if to ask a question – only to place a chaste kiss to his lips instead."

This is from Cameron's point of view.

She asked the reason for the tag, and I explained it was because of the use of "blush" to describe Reader's appearance.

She misunderstood my premise. I did not mean only white people blush.

According to Merriam-Webster, blush means "a reddening of the face especially from shame, modesty, or confusion" or "a red or rosy tint."

It is an autonomic response, though. It happens in all humans for body cooling and nonverbal communication. The main problem with using it universally is that melanin obscures the appearance of said autonomic response.

Here's an example of three runners:

The two pale women, left and center, are pink in the face. They are blushing. The woman of color on the right is likely blushing, too. However, the melanin in her skin obscures the blood in her cheeks. She is not pink.

That's the pitfall of the word "blush." The observer can't always see it. We know what it feels like. We all do it. The face and/or neck gets hot. The use of "blush" is shorthand in narrative, and I understand that. Nevertheless, when writing to cater to a reader-insert audience of unknown heritage, writers need to consider describing with universal terms.

Again, she misunderstood my premise. I clarified by asking how Cameron sees the Reader blush under an abundance of melanin:

She sidestepped the physiological explanation to go straight for justification. She tried to legitimize "blush" as "perhaps [this]" or "perhaps [that]" when I stated earlier that blush by definition is pink or is to redden. That's the logic. A noncommittal, covering-all-the-bases, complicated defense diluted the conversation.

With her earlier "I have friends of color, hence I can't be exclusionary" statement, I wasn't sure she would get my point. I take full responsibility for not explaining, too. I should've asked for some time to gather my thoughts, but I didn't. Truthfully, I was unprepared, because I didn't think my insignificant tag would be an issue.

Also, I was confused why she was trying to police my blog.

Her replies came rapidly—before I could mention my confusion—and felt aggressive in the moment. Maybe that wasn't her intention, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That doesn't take away from the fact that words have meaning. It's why we use specific words. It's not understood in the narrative that her use of "blush" could mean a bunch of things. If I had known, I wouldn't have tagged as I did. How is a reader of color supposed to know that? How does Cameron see Reader's blush if she has darker skin?

As writers, we don't know who is reading. Someone could be very pale or very dark. A person with medium-toned skin can turn a shade of pink or red. A person with darker-toned skin will not. We can't assume all readers are medium to pale. We need to develop better writing skills. We have to include everyone.

Readers of color > White-writer feelings

When I stood my ground, she doubled down, stating I made no sense in my tagging and that I lacked the ability to learn from her. She then diverted the argument, attacking a ficlet I wrote a few days beforehand—which had nothing to do with this argument. The Christian imagery in that ficlet was upsetting to her and "in such poor taste" because she headcanons Flip Zimmerman (BlacKkKlansman) is 100% culturally and ethnically Jewish.

Flip stated in the movie:

"I'm Jewish, but I wasn't raised to be. It wasn't part of my life. I never thought much about being Jewish. Nobody around me was Jewish. I wasn't going to a bunch of Bar Mitzvahs. I didn't have a Bar Mitzvah. I was just another white kid. And now I'm in some basement denying it out loud[...] I never thought much about it. Now I'm thinking about it all the time. About rituals and heritage. Is that passing? Well then, I have been passing."

By his own admission, Flip is ethnically Jewish, but not culturally. These are two separate things, and that should be recognized. While Judaism is ethnically and culturally entwined in ways that other religions are not, one does not equate the other. You can be one and not the other.

At the time, I didn't want her to sic her 3000+ followers on me. I wasn't going to argue further. I asked myself if the ficlet was important and worth anon-hate and realized, no, it wasn't. It was a throw-away.

And since I'm not culturally Jewish, maybe I had misstepped. And since Zannah is both culturally and ethnically Jewish, I asked for her guidance.

She flatly refused my request. I don't know how I was supposed to learn from her if she wouldn't teach me.

It sounded as if she wanted me to delete the whole fic. Like none of it was worth saving because it hadn't been Zannah-approved. I had gone against her headcanon, and the fic was too offensive to fix.

The last sentence was supposed to cover her back from criticism, and it placed all the responsibility on me. Obviously, she was above such petty concerns as someone else's blog or writing. Never mind that she had just attempted to get me to change my tagging system and rewrite my ficlet. On my blog.

Later, I figured out she was only criticizing and not offering a constructive critique. Her argument was not in good faith. It was retaliation for not giving her the obedience she thought she was owed.

This is the passage that offended her:

"It’s because of the way he fucks you. Like it’s confession—though he’s never been much of a church-going man. Every touch, every thrust, is a truth between you. Even when it’s rough and greedy. It feels like flagellation when you claw his back. He wears the sin proudly."

This is what I edited it to:

"It’s because of the way he fucks you. Every touch, every thrust, is a truth between you. Even when it’s rough and greedy. It feels like flagellation when you claw his back. He wears your marks proudly."

Yeah, I'm not pleased with the revised passage. It's lost its teeth, but I keep it.

The anonymous message(s) she mentioned weren't very anonymous, either. Unfortunately, I've since deleted the two messages. I had apologized to Anon for disappointing them. I said that if the fic was too much, they should unfollow and block me. I meant that in a self-care way. At the same time, I did not—and do not—owe anyone discourse. I don't have to explain my art when it doesn't hurt anyone. And no one was hurt by some purportedly misplaced religious imagery.

I have been silent about this since late January/early February. I was embarrassed. I had been bullied into changing my blog and my fic by someone who proclaims to never do anything of the sort. I had been a fool. Since this conversation with her, I have been blocked/blacklisted by third-parties, most likely at her behest, when none of this exchange had been necessary.

-

Kassanovella - @kylorengarbagedump​​

Zannah's followers have asked her about Kassanovella’s Fix Your Attitude. For context, it's currently one of the most kudo-ed fics for Kylo Ren x Reader on AO3. It had a bit of a renaissance earlier in 2020 because a TikToker wrote a song for it.

There is nothing wrong with not wanting to read a fic. If the subject matter doesn't work for a reader, they don't have to partake. Easy as that. So, these tags aren't a problem.

However, it led to this...

She lashed out, calling Kassanovella's fic a joke. A joke.

She implied her fics should be as popular as Kassanovella's because she works really hard on them. She admitted she's tied to the metrics. She implied she wouldn't be writing fic if not for the external validation.

Here's the thing about fanfic: readers like what they like. They don't care about a writer's effort. They only know what works for them. They comment and give kudos, reblog and like what they connect with. That is not under the writer's control. All a writer can do is try their best and concentrate on what they're passionate about.

To bash another writer's fic because it's popular is disrespectful. This whole bitter rant drips of entitlement and is an affront to Kassanovella.

Some time later, an incident happened in a chatroom during a streaming event for veterans by Arts In the Armed Forces (Adam Driver's organization). At least one fan brought up Fix Your Attitude while waiting for Mr. Driver to make an appearance. They were also disrespectful towards the other presenters by demanding to see Mr. Driver. It caused a big stink within the fandom, and Zannah had some choice words.

While mentioning the fic during the livestream was inappropriate, it was also inappropriate to throw all fans of the fic under the bus as she did in her tag. Sweeping generalizations and incriminations of a subset of fans certainly reads as if she resents those fans for a perceived slight.

Next, Zannah made an earlier disparaging comment about Kassanovella's fic, Little Bird. Unfortunately, that comment is lost. However, the messages supporting the comment remain. (For context, Little Bird is a Kylo Ren x Reader The Handmaid's Tale AU. It has been well received in the fandom, earning thousands of kudos on AO3.)

What an author wants to write about and sexualize is their business. Fantasizing about being dominated by Kylo Ren isn't cringe. It's a sexual fantasy. Some sexual fantasies can be disturbing to those who do not share the same kink.

Sexual fantasies are like ice cream. There's a reason why there are different flavors.

Also, "I will never ever be a person that tells an author what to do or not do" is an absolute lie. As evident in this post, Zannah most definitely tells authors what to do or not do.

Again, she bashes Kassanovella, claiming her writing isn't good. Her motivation for bashing Kassanovella can only be speculation. With Zannah's previously stated opinion of Fix Your Attitude, though, it indicates a certain level of negative emotions.

-

Anonymous

An anonymous person came forward with a case of Zannah policing their blog. Anon has a sideblog for their personal AU with Flip Zimmerman. They reblog gifsets and post headcanons. They were an enthusiastic fan of Zannah's and reblogged a few of the gifset she made. Anon tagged their reactions, and Zannah blocked them for it.

Anon went to Zannah and asked why they were blocked, because all they wanted to do was have fun and support fellow Flip lovers.

Anon was under the impression that because they were shipping themselves, and not Zannah, with Flip, she blocked them. Their personal AU doesn't align with Zannah's headcanon that she alone is married to this character and has his children.

While Zannah's reply may sound innocent, and perhaps it is, it also speaks to someone who has set herself up as the owner of Flip Zimmerman. (Wait until Spike Lee or the real Ron Stallworth hears about that...) It appears that if a fan does not comply with the Zannah-approved headcanon, where only she is married to Flip, that fan shall be blocked. If a fan uses tags on their blog that she does not approve of, that fan will be blocked.

Zannah's policing is disturbing. Going into a blog to look for something as a reason to block is disturbing. Any fan is allowed to use any tag on their blog how they wish. If the OP has said their post can be reblogged, how a reblogger tags is beyond the OP's control. To punish that reblogger for not behaving in a way she finds acceptable is uncalled for and unjust.

-

Anonymous

Backstory: Zannah does not view Ben Solo's arc in the Star Wars sequel trilogy as acceptable canon. However, she does view the story she created for Flip Zimmerman in BlacKkKlansman as completely canon.

This is not the first time she has been asked to clarify her position. Nor is it the first time she has avoided giving an on-topic response. A question asked in good faith should be responded to in kind.

If a creator doesn't want to address the issue, they can state that they don't. Deflecting from the question only muddies the waters. Fans feel dismissed. The creator feels hounded, and comes across as irritated and unapproachable. No one has a positive fandom experience.

There is nothing wrong with having a headcanon. What is wrong is Zannah mandating her headcanon for Flip on the whole fandom. As evident in this post, if a fan does not comply with her headcanon, they will be summarily blocked.

Also, there is nothing wrong with rejecting canon. Writers of transformative works have always done this. The problem is shaming fans who have accepted canon while not offering justification for that shaming. A creator saying they "can't help them" is the creator washing their hands of responsibility from articulating their thoughts when they themselves began criticizing the canon in the first place.

Again, this is a bad-faith argument. Creators can't ask for discussion and attention and then get mad when their viewpoints are challenged. Just because a discussion isn't going a creator's way doesn't mean it's an attack, either. It means people want clarification, and if one criticizes, they should be able to back up their criticisms.

-

While sharing our stories has been freeing, it's not our aim as fellow fans to cancel Zannah. We would hope she would take the opportunity to reflect on the damage she has done to the fandom. We hope we all can move forward with a more approachable and supportive scene.

No one person speaks for our fandom. The actions of one fan do not represent the entire fandom. Whether creator or consumer, you are welcome here.

[posted July 25, 2020]

[crustacean-on-main]

Libertarianism and Territoriality

A while ago, I got involved in a kerfluffle with esteemed tumblr user @shieldfoss in which I unwisely threatened to longpoast at him about politics. Turns out, there is demand for this post (hello @samueldays), so now I actually have to write it. Ugh.

content warning: the following poast is ramblomatic

So, to get the preliminaries out of the way -- tumblr is an extremely unsearchable website, and this isn’t meant to be a character assassination, so it’s both entirely possible and disturbingly probable that the things I will be arguing against correspond poorly or, in the worst case, not at all to things shieldfoss actually believes. Therefore, I will be arguing against a cloud of beliefs that I feel to be common enough among self-described libertarians and hope thereby to make perhaps a more general point.

At the heart of this discussion is the question of whether believing territoriality is immoral is incompatible with other ideals of libertarianism. We’re already running into the problem of extremely ill-defined terms, so we’ll have to clarify here. Territoriality is the easier one; we’ll specify that we mean a belief in the right of a group of people to eject or exclude others from territory that they hold in common or over which they have power. “Libertarianism” is the thornier one, so it might take longer to get at the essence here. For the discussion of borders, the common beliefs that are more or less relevant are a belief in the primacy of property rights, a belief in contractualism, being favorable to freedom of association and being deeply suspicious of government in general, but especially where government regulation could interfere with any of the former three. Now, let us look at a small-scale hypothetical example to illustrate the issue under discussion. Imagine a village in rural Pennsylzhopiya, populated largely by very devout members of some sect -- call them the Ruritanians -- who believe very fervently in Jesus Christ and Not Smoking Tobacco. One day they are surprised to learn that the United States has been taken over by the Libertarian Revolution and will henceforth be governed as a minarchy. Mindful of their new powers, they immediately pool all their property in a new entity called the Ruritanian Corporation of Pennsylzhopiya, that has a charter which prevents it from selling any of its property outright, and gives the religious community of Ruritanians deciding power in what it can do with its land. Meanwhile, in Philomena, the capital city of Pennsylzhopiya, imagine a neighborhood of people whose politics can be summed up as “progressive, but skeptical of big government”. Delighted at the news of the revolution, they do nothing in particular, because they already own their houses. They expect their lives to improve as a consequence of decreased regulation. Inspired by the political upheaval, some outsiders move to the Ruritanian community. They cannot buy Ruritanian land, but they can lease it at a low price provided they swear not to blaspheme Jesus Christ or Smoke Tobacco. Some of them fail to uphold this code; the Ruritanian council votes to end their leases and eject them from Ruritanian property. Others convert, using funds they have saved up to buy further land and add it to the common possession of the Ruritanian community. Ruritanians benefit from the light of the Libertarian Revolution. Meanwhile, in the libertarian neighborhood, a more unpleasant sort of radical fundamentalist Ruritanians has bought a house after the previous owner moved away. They have taken up picketing in public squares around the neighborhood, condemning public tobacco smoking. Since they by and large aren’t doing anything illegal, and the owner of the public squares, the city council, remains bound to the U.S. constitution, which was reaffirmed after the Libertarian Revolution, their neighbors are in a bit of a pickle. They did not take advantage of the new legal regime to create an entity exercising power in their name, if only because they don’t trust each other enough to give up private ownership of their homes, so they can’t do anything about the picketers. As time passes, more Ruritanian fundamentalists move to Philomena, eventually creating a sufficiently large nuisance for their liberal neighbors that most of them move away, creating a newly fundamentalist Ruritanian neighborhood that can in turn use its power to create new corporations to make sure the neighborhood stays Ruritanian. I assume most of my readers know where this is going, so let’s consider the final case: what if the Ruritanians didn’t form such a corporation but left their lands privately owned? They’d be vulnerable to the exact same tactic, since once property is legitimately acquired, there is no way to dislodge its owner. The real, non-libertarian United States contains many examples of this kind of hostile takeover of neighborhoods between groups, largely accomplished by application of force that was either within the bounds of the law or not cracked down on by whatever higher authority should have. The upshot of all this is that if you truly care about freedom of association with all it entails -- essentially, the right to choose your neighbors -- then you are left with the uncomfortable reality that if you have no sovereignty over the territory you occupy, you can’t choose shit; this is, of course, not a problem with a hypothetical libertarian society only, as history attests. Libertarians for their part tend to answer this criticism in one of several ways. The first is basically “well if you have a problem you can leave”, or the exit-only approach. This is in my opinion not workable on a large scale outside of the US, and probably not even there, but is at least philosophically consistent. The second is giving up this freedom as a value, at which point you just collapse into progressivism with a procedural fetish. The most interesting answer is a variation on “would your neighbors sell to people whose values are so different from theirs?”. I think that the answer tends to be: yes, they would. Unless there is a powerful compulsion on every single one of those neighbors not to sell to certain people, they have no incentive to forgo their personal material gain or convenience for the benefit of their neighbors, especially if, say, they were moving away anyway. You also cannot really create such a compulsion in a libertarian society unless it already exists, since you’d have to surrender your very real privileges, your absolute property rights, to the community in order to benefit from collective organisation this way, and that is extremely unlikely to happen unless you are already a fundamentalist Ruritanian. Conceivably an intentional community of some kind could pull it off, but that’s basically answer one in material terms. The tl;dr here is that in my experience a lot of libertarians claim to care about the benefits of social cohesion, or at the very least presuppose that you already have it, but don’t give a lot of thought to how it might be obtained or preserved once you have it. It’s true that a libertarian state could actually help buttress it if your group already has fanatical levels of asabiyyah, by expanding the things you’re allowed to do with yourself contractually, but for most people that doesn’t apply. Indeed, we see that even in our non-libertarian versions of capitalism, the combination of market forces and upward concentration of force is extremely corrosive to this sort of group cohesion. The final consequence of this is that a libertarian society (again, defined as above) would be extremely vulnerable to collapsing into what we have now, if not worse -- there is neither incentive nor means for anyone to defend against concentration of power into the moneyed few who control the largest international corporations. I’ve limited myself in the examples to discussion of small-scale examples, but it’s trivial to see what happens if you extend the same principles to national borders. If nations all had open borders, no tariffs and homogenized legal systems recognizing the primacy of property rights, you would get the worst kind of cyberpunk dystopia, where the biggest capital interests could essentially do whatever the fuck they wanted. I think many libertarians were attracted to the ideology by the depredations of large organizations like this, and probably believe in the romanticized freedom of the smallholder more than the freedom of international capital, which is why I originally called this position incoherent. The ideal of individual freedom is a foil, something to distract from the fact that if you remove all intermediaries, you’re left with the leviathan on top and individuals immediately subject to it.

[onecornerface]

Learn to see when someone is wrong in a valuable way

Here's an under-appreciated skill for critical thinking and civil discourse which I think everyone needs: Learn to appreciate when someone else's view is wrong in an interesting and valuable way.

Many people think a person's view is either right and valuable, or wrong and simply bad.

By contrast, I think a wrong view can often add positive value to the world--e.g. when it's wrong in a novel and non-obvious way, and/or it's wrong on the grounds of interesting conflicts among legitimate values, and/or it's expressed in a thoughtful manner conducive to thoughtful critical analysis. There are many ways this can happen.

The history of philosophy, or almost any field, is replete with wrong views--some (though not all) of which have had good features which moved the conversation forward, often indirectly helping people to better understand how the world *really* works. Moreover, I think recognizing the value of many wrong views is part of respecting other people as our fellow fallible reasoners in the world.

Admittedly, this is not always easy. And often the person expressing the wrong view needs to pull their own weight to make it easier for critics to find the value in it, and good conversational environments of trust and respect are essential. When these environments are lacking, it is much harder to find wrong views non-threatening, let alone valuable.

Many views, perhaps most views, are wrong. I claim many wrong views are valuable. To deny the prevalence of valuable wrong views would be to either (A) seriously underestimate the prevalence of wrong views, or (B) seriously underestimate the prevalence of valuable views.

I do not mean that wrong views are valuable in *every way*. Maybe a view's wrongness is intrinsically disvaluable, i.e. bad. Yet this can be a bad feature which lives alongside some good features within the same wrong view.

I also do not mean that a valuable wrong view is always *overall* valuable. The bad can outweigh the good-- yet the good is nevertheless still there. A lot of wrong views may be good in some ways, but also bad in other ways to such a severe degree that they actually make the world worse overall.

Most troublingly, some wrong views are very harmful. Sometimes their harm may involve a severe degree of disvalue that outweighs the value. Neverthelessn even something that makes the world overall worse can have some good qualities which are worth recognizing as such.

To clarify, my advice here is not reducible to the advice to be more hesitant to think someone is wrong in the first place. I think we should indeed often be more hesitant to think someone is wrong in the first place. But here I am making a suggestion for how we should respond to many views which we remain convinced are wrong.

Finally, in recognition of the fact that *we* will sometimes be wrong (and that we won't know when we are indeed wrong, and that we will not always even suspect it, nor ever learn of it later), I think we should strive more to be wrong in interesting and valuable ways.

For one thing, we should try to make mistakes almost nobody has made before, rather than just the same mistakes as all our peers. And we should make mistakes thoughtfully, so that anyone who recognizes our mistakes can understand our perspective and be well-equipped to see and explain why we're wrong (whether or not we're prepared to agree).

[datingintampafails]

Chapter 33: Robert*

Robert* reminds me of Peter*, in which, there’s confusion about names, the vibes are never quite right, and the date is pretty short. Though in this case, although we did talk for a longer time than Peter* and I did, the date itself was even shorter, a whopping 45 minutes.

Initially, Robert* likes me first on Hinge. His profile is not necessarily a slam dunk for me. He looks decent looking, though not my usual type, and has a chain bakery listed as to where he works. I like to think I am not a snob when it comes to careers, I’m pretty open-minded, but I do want to be with someone who has ambition and can have intelligent conversations with me since I am pretty well educated. Basically, someone around my level of thinking.

I decided to give the guy a chance and respond to his like by mentioning that I really like cookies at the place he works. He mentions that we could have a first date there and I responded by asking if he has dates with girls at his work often. He tells me he has only been working there a few weeks, so no. We legitimately talk about the different kinds of cookies for a while, then he moves on to ask me about what else I like. I mention my dog, then share that I space out and have trouble thinking on the spot and ask him about himself to see if it will also remind me of other things I like. He talks about seeing friends and playing video games, adds he “Doesn’t get out much.” Without missing a beat, he asks me what I’m looking for on dating apps. The dreaded question. I ask him to tell me first. My reasoning being, I feel like many men will cater their answers to what you want, instead of telling the truth. He writes me a long answer then gives me a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) that is maybe ⅔ the length of the original message, so not that short, that says “going with the flow, down for a consistent [friends with benefits] or relationship, whatever happens, just not a one-night stand.” He announces it is then my turn to respond. I tell him I feel more or less the same, as his original longer message, but that I am not as much interested in the friends with benefits thing. Specifically, I say that with FWB, there needs to be an opportunity, or “nahhh.” I say that expectations only bring hardship and lightheartedly say I like to ask super important questions early in relationships, i.e. like my survey/application from way back when, and add “like cookie choices.” He asks me to clarify my opportunity or nahhh and says he is an open book and I can ask him anything. I explain my feelings more, saying that I don’t see the point of sticking around if someone is dead set on not wanting a relationship with me, as well as it is usually temporary and almost like a holding pattern. I ask my most important question, which is if someone wants children or not.

I get a slight argument back from him, regarding the FWB thing, saying that it can turn into more. I argue back, saying that it is still something that needs to be wanted, or at least both parties from the start can think “maybe someday.” He says this and that about the FWB, before answering my question. He says, more or less, he is open to it but it isn’t a necessity for him, however, he definitely doesn’t want kids right now. He asks me how I feel about it and I express I do not want them but would be open to adoption. He says that’s fine with him and quickly says, “Any other questions.” I am not meaning for this to be an interview. I say I do have a question, but that it is more of an open-ended/ statement that can be responded to. All I say for my “question” is the phrase “trump.” I also let him know I am going to sleep soon so we can continue our conversation in the morning. He does not like my question, that is that he says it is too vague and isn’t helpful for political discussions. I tell him that is my point, and that I am looking for him to express his feelings and that I can either oppose, agree, or somewhere in between. He says likely there would be all three. I go to sleep so I do not respond.

He greets me in the morning with a good morning. I greet him back, though I remind him I am still waiting on his opinions. It is a Saturday, so I also let him know I am about to present for a Zoom conference. He says he’s at a rowing camp and on a break from that, then asks me about my conference. He again requests that I be more specific than just “Saying one word.” I tell him about the conference, but regarding the political question, I send an eye-rolling emoji again saying that that is the point of the open forum, that I am looking for a blanket statement of his feelings regarding Trump.

He again asks about my presentation, and how it went, then goes on to give a pretty neutral debate, saying there’s good and bad, though it seems he veers more towards being a Trump fan, which is not my preference. Robert* offers to me that I can ask any questions about his stance. I am thinking, I do not need an invitation, I have a question and I will ask it.

Robert* inquires what I am doing the rest of the night. I say I’m staying in as I am going to Disney World the next day. I ask him what he is going to do the rest of the night, as that is the societally polite thing to do. I am asked AGAIN if I have any questions to ask him. He also says that he “wanted to do something with someone tonight. Chill night in maybe? Not necessarily sexual. Just relaxing, drinking some wine maybe.” My response is “haha sorry i don’t think i’ll be ‘someone’ today,” both calling him out on obviously being thirsty, as well and reiterating I am not planning on going out tonight. He admits defeat, saying that he didn’t think I would be either, but it was “worth a shot to ask.” However, he does say he does want to get together sometime.

Immediately before I can even respond to that, though, he asks me where in Disney I am going tomorrow. I tell him that Monday I could look at my schedule and put together a time and day we could meet up. I also express that I do not want to meet him at either of our places, mostly because of the stunt he had just pulled. I tell him my Disney World plans as well. He says that it is fine to talk about going out on Monday and says that “that would’ve been the plan” to not hang out at either of our places, despite what he had just said earlier about having a chill night in. I call him out on this, reminding him that he had just said something different, his response being, “yes, sorry if that made you uncomfortable. Im horny as all hell but my intentions are good and i can keep it in my pants. I promise.” How romantic. I send a laughing emoji and say that we’ve all been there before. He says he didn’t want to cross the “TMI threshold,” wherein I say that it is difficult to TMI me, but that doesn't mean I won’t be judgemental. His next comment is awkward, as he invites me to judge, but says that he’s “done [his] fair share of crazy/dumb/slutty shit. As [he is] sure [I] have too.” Weird to accuse someone you are trying to woo of being a crazy dumb slut, but okay. I bring up that I had an abusive relationship but that even in that, I wasn’t completely devoid of wrongdoing. He asks if I am comfortable talking about that and is sympathetic. I tell him more about that and he asks for some of the red flags my ex but off that I ignored. For the billionth time, Robert* offers that if I have any more important questions that I can go ahead and ask. I briefly acknowledge he asked again, by saying “lol if they come up organically I’ll ask” before continuing to talk about my abusive ex. One of the things I mentioned was that my ex was very critical about my body habitus, that is, that I was too skinny. Robert* takes it upon himself to say, “ as far as your body, it seems like you have a great fucking body…. As long as you’re not unhealthy idgaf im attracted to you sooooo” then sends two heart-eyed emojis and a shrugging guy emoji. The line he draws is that his “hands are rated E for everyone,” the context being, if someone hit him he would hit back. I explained my body issues some more and that I have stomach issues, and have always been a small person. He misunderstands and thinks I’m talking about having abs or having a fatty stomach. With the context I felt I had given, I sent a bunch of question marks before adding that my stomach issues were internal. He apologizes a lot for misunderstanding and says he is glad I’m in a better situation.

In his mind, it’s now a great time to bring up that we should text or snap. I tell him that Snapchat is “for hoes” if you only talk on Snapchat. Referencing to myself Darren* mostly. He sends me his number and then I text him. The next day, I am off having a day with my friend at an amusement park. He texts me often throughout the day and I respond when I have a chance. My best friend is asking me “who is this one?” and by the time she asks this, I’m honestly getting a little annoyed. She’s still asking about John* and where he is at. “I don’t know what’s going on with him. We’re mad at him right now. He is doing that shit again. I have to play the game, you know?” I describe Robert* as being kind of needy. At one point, Robert* is texting and asking desperately when I’m free and when we can go out. I tell him “I’m still out I’m not focused on that right now” The overeagerness is kind of a turn-off. And as mentioned earlier, we had already agreed to plan things out on Monday, and it was Sunday. He responds “Ok nvm. We don’t have to talk about that. Sorry.” Maybe I was harsh but had to put this guy in his place. I get a barrage of questions about Disney World. I mention I’m wearing my hat like a frat boy. He responds jokingly, “disgusting, how dare you.” I continue the charade by saying “yep I haze the shit out of people.” Next, however, his response is too cringey, “Mmmm haze me frat mandy” and adds “I can go more cringe.” I reply, “no thanks.” I ignore him for the rest of the day and then when I get home I finally tell him 1) I’m home and 2) what days I’m available. He gets irritated as the two nights I am available, are the only nights he is working. I have some friends coming into town the next weekend as well, so I tell him I’m not really available since I want to hang out with them. We go back and forth on what to do then with our conflicting schedules. Finally, we agree upon doing something after my work, but before his work on one of the days, giving us a tight segment of time but that should be enough for more or less a meet and greet. Because he is the one that will have somewhere to go, I tell him that he’s in charge of the planning and logistics because I wanted to make sure he had enough time to get to work.

We chat superficially in the meantime, mostly about video games and a little about past relationships. And of course… more inviting me to ask questions again. He puts me on the spot regarding the date and is trying to make me plan. I put the responsibility back on him. Finally, he suggests a place he had been wanting to try, that is more or less like a juice bar that also does protein shakes, kind of a health shop. Not really my kind of place, but I’m making him do all the planning so I won’t argue. We both independently go on a search for menus/information. He makes a comment regarding finding the menu but no prices. He randomly comments while we are chatting about the place “have i ever said that youre really fucking cute,” to which I just respond “not like in those exact words.” He adds “but yea you are. I humbly brag, “thanks! I know this about myself.” Typical male response is, presumably joking, “ok you’re too cocky” “youre ugly” “gotta bring you down a peg.” To this I just say, “it’s called confidence/not being insecure.” He switches things around saying “i know confidence is sexy.”

I don’t respond to this and get a good morning text the next day and he makes small talk about how we slept and such. It is the day that I have a date with Timmy*, but of course Robert* doesn’t know this. He at one point texts me saying that his morning got really shitty. I ask him what’s wrong and all he says is “I’ll tell you about it later.” I wonder why people do this, like why bring it up if you aren’t gonna talk about it now? It all seems like a sort of test. I do not play these games. All I say in response is “ok.” He adds “if I don’t text you about it remind me.” I don’t respond. He texts me again asking how my work is going an hour-ish later. I say it’s hectic and he asks if I’m on lunch. I send him a message about not getting full lunch breaks. I don’t hear from him for almost five hours, and given his text earlier about his bad day, I figured something could be wrong given how clingy via text he usually is. I finally text him and ask if he is ok. He says he took a nap and asked again about work, making a point that it was better than his day. Enough of the baiting, I finally say snarkily, “yeah you still have to tell me [what happened.” He is hyping it up now, saying “fair warning - its sad” I don’t respond because I figure he would still go on and tell me what happens and it didn’t warrant a response, but then he adds “if you still want to know” a few minutes later. I honestly don’t care too much, “if you want to tell me.” He finally does tell me what happened, and essentially he saw a dog be hit by a car and had tried to help it with someone else who saw the hit but the dog, unfortunately, didn’t make it. I commend him on trying to help and he says that he did the right thing and that’s why his day sucked. I don’t really know how to respond to that, plus at this point, I am getting ready for my date.

I lie to him when he asks me about my night, saying that I am chilling. More small talk to my disgust, and I verify our plans for the next day. He makes a comment about not being able to see the prices anywhere. This seems to be a worry of his for whatever reason, so I tell him that we can do something else and that I am flexible. He is of no help, as all he says about this is “idk what else we’d do.” My response is “ok” and I say I’m going to bed. In the morning it is finally the day of our date and I let him know that unfortunately I forgot to bring a change of clothes with me to work, so I’ll be wearing my work outfit tonight. He makes a comment about how he’s never seen a cute girl not look good in scrubs, and I let him know that today is the day that changes.

During the day, he states he is thinking of driving by to check the prices of the drinks and that he’s also got a back up. I tell him he should do whatever he wants. I look the places up and they are about 25 minutes away from my work. I head on that way once my work is done and I arrive first. I wait in my car until he texts me to ask which car is mine. I get out of my car and grab my things, now realizing I parked next to a puddle of water and got my shoes a little wet. I laugh it off and say oh well. I see who I presume to be him getting out of a car on the other side of the parking lot. He’s wearing a light pink hoodie, a little different but hey, real men wear pink, right?

I approach him and say hello and give him a hug. We get our masks on and walk into the store. Immediately we are greeted by who I can only assume is the owner of the shop. He is bright and happy and gives us his spiel about the type of beverages they have there. Robert* is being very quiet and is very short with the worker, saying he doesn’t know what he wants and I should go first. I try to describe what I’m going for, and the worker says the exact thing on the menu I want is unavailable due to a delayed shipment, but suggests something else to me and I accept with recommendation. I am done ordering apparently too quickly, as my date is still undecided. The owner ends up just asking him if he likes snickers, the candy bar, and he gives a not-very-believable “Yeah” so the owner suggests to him a shake that is based on those flavor patterns. Robert* is asked if we’re paying together and I look to him, he lets out an apathetic, “sure” and it takes all of my energy not to scoff. The owner tells us that they’re giving discounts out if you advertise the location by sharing a photo on social media and I agree to do so, because why not.

Then it gets a little uncomfortable. The owner is trying to be extra personable and make it a personalized experience, so upon receiving Robert*’s card, he starts referring to him using his name that is on his card. The only thing is, the name I know him by is not the name on the card, nor any fort of that name, like a typical nickname. Under my face mask, I smile and almost laugh to myself like, you dumb bitch who are you even out with rihgt now. Additional peer pressure from the owner also leads to us giving him our emails and signing up for their loyalty program, which also knocks off some cents off our drink. When I give him mine, obviously everything is the same, but when he gives his email, his email does have the name that I knew him by in the address, so I figure okay maybe Robert* is a middle name or something. Because we were under one order, there was also some sort of combo discount included as well since he got a shake and, I, a tea.

As we walk away from the counter and take a seat on a couch maybe 10 feet away, Robert* abruptly asks “what do you think the damage is?” Immediately pulling out his phone and checking the receipt of our drinks. “Uh I don’t know…. Sixteen dollars,” I guess. I am honestly put off by his obsession on price. I understand money issues, but it is not appropriate for first date behavior. I am pretty close, as it is somewhere in the mid $15 range. He scoffs at the prices.

Now that we are sitting together, I am noticing really how disheveled and not put together he looks. He has overgrown stubble, too short to be a beard, but definitely not stubble from just the day. His skin all over his face and body is dry and flaky, especially on his ears. Again, I expect a little more from a man who has had days to prepare for this date. I have been sipping my drink for a while, and it is honestly delicious, one of the best beverages I’ve ever had. He asks if I would like to try his drink. “No thank you, I don’t think it would go well with my fruity drink,” I half lie. The major reason why is that I am weird about sharing drinks/food and that so far I am almost repulsed by him and don’t want to share anything with him.

Despite my lack of optimism already, I try my best to be upbeat and give him a chance. I am trying to start a conversation and ask him questions and get to know him more, but he is a brick wall. He’s just staring at me and not saying anything, occasionally taking sips from his shake. Many of his responses are very sarcastic and rude. He actually brings up the ears; he had a very bad sunburn and that’s why they looked like that. Doesn’t explain the rest of his look though, but at least he was aware of that. It is pretty warm in the shop. I already opted to leave my jacket in the car, but at one point he decided to take off his sweatshirt. Underneath was a red shirt with almost like a confetti cake type pattern, of little microscopic dots of different colors throughout. I compliment the shirt, and mention I have one of a similar type of fabric pattern. I am nodded at. I again continue to try and force conversation, but I am still getting nothing.

Randomly he says, “come here” and puts his arm around me, pulling me close. I am extremely confused, as I was getting very negative vibes from him all over. I make my confusion known by commenting about how that was out of nowhere. His only response is, “oh you know.” “No, I do not know. I have no idea what is going on right now.” He only just chuckles and is like “you’re a cute girl.” I furrow my brow in confusion and figure we should get some air and suggest we take a walk. I ran to my car and put the drink in my car as well as my bag, being light, only having my phone and car keys for the walk. We take off and just walk through a nearby neighborhood. We have maybe 10-15 more minutes until he has to get going so he can get to work in time.

Conversation is still moderately forced, but a little better. At one point, we come up to a tree where the branches overhang drastically over the sidewalk. Whereas before I had been walking on the street side, Robert* has swung around and walked into the street, whereas I choose just to duck under the branches, which is easier with me being shorter, although I would not say he is very tall either. I made a comment about not caring and that he could have just “pushed me into the street/out of the way” and continued on, jokingly, about how you have to put a woman in their place. He says “okay noted I see what you like now,” trying to turn it into something sexual, it seems. I pause a moment, becoming much more serious when I say, “you know I’m kidding. I’ve told you about my abusive relationship so obviously I am not a fan of battering women.” In this moment, he pulls me into an embrace and tries to kiss me. I lean away and ask him, “why is talking about abusing women the time to try and kiss me?” He makes an excuse saying that he just really wanted to kiss me. I lie again, making another excuse about why I don’t want to kiss him, “I’m more old fashioned I guess, I’d like to get to know someone a little better and make sure that we are compatible and know each other well before I do anything.” Again, not entirely untrue. For the five hundredth or so time, Robert* says that I can ask him any questions.

I check my watch and declare, accurately, “We should probably head back towards our cars, you need to head out soon.” We walk back to the parking lot, having idle chitter chatter. When we get to my car, it’s perfect timing, as an alarm he had set to make sure he left on time goes off. I start to say our goodbyes and he tells me again that he wants to kiss me. I make a noise that makes my discomfort known, and he says, “well what about a kiss on the cheek?” I say verbatim, “I’ll allow it.” He makes a sarcastic comment, mocking me about “allowing it.” I retorted back saying, “well yeah.” He sticks to his word and only does a cheek kiss, and I’m cringing and can’t wait to wash my face when I get home. Being polite, I ask for him to let me know when he gets to work.

Using my Apple Carplay, I ask my car to text him when I notice he is driving behind me. Though, as all I’m getting is audio, I don’t know exactly what I am texting until I get home later.

(the first two texts of mine are my car texting and not manually)

Immediately, he asks me my feelings about him.

I then offered Venmo him money for my drink, as obviously money was a huge concern for him. He accepts and sends me his Venmo. I sent him the money and let him know so.

And that is that. He doesn’t text me after that.

[freckliedan]

I'm sorry, I really disagree with you. I don't think anyone HAS to accept critisicm unless that person is like, their teacher. Anons and others of tumblr are not that. She wrote something that was very deep and very personal, tagged it as such, and posted in on the internet. All things that are allowed. Logging off when you don't want to see hate is totally reasonable- if someone was screaming in your face, walking away is a good response. I don't understand the way people reacted to this.

I guess, she just doesn't have to aplogise because people are telling her to. It was all her choice-posting it, taking it down, etc. It might be sad or make people angry if she doesn't react the way they'd like, but thats part of being on the internet. It goes both ways here. I'm really not trying to come at people all up in arms- I understand there is upset. But that is part of being a bloody human, let alone on the internet. For something like a fic? We don't get to tell her what to do.

I'm like specifically not anon here cos I really don't want to argue or seem hostile. Discussion is good, I'm not here to hate on you or anyone. I hope it didn't come across that way.

hi b! thank you so much for your messages, especially the last one clarifying tone! you weren’t coming across as hostile, especially because of being off anon, but i always tend to doubt myself when reading tone so it meant a lot to have a clear confirmation that i was reading things right 💛 and also thank you because i’m really glad for the chance to have a discussion with someone who has a different point of view from me; i always worry a lot about what will happen if i only talk with/listen to people who think similarly to me and it means the world to me when people who disagree with my thoughts are comfy having conversations with me.

i’m worried that i haven’t been entirely clear expressing my point of view, and that that’s a part of what you don’t agree with? because i agree with a lot of what you’ve said, and that makes me think the disagreement might be because i’m not communicating clearly? (my apologies if this gets quite long, my instinct is always to over-explain things & it comes not from a place of condescension but from a desire to make as much sense as possible)

tl;dr for the contents below the cut:

overall the message that i’m trying to send is not that sarah should apologize/change her behavior or that her leaving tumblr due to the hateful messages she was receiving at the same time as legitimate criticism was wrong. the message i’m trying to send is that due to her pattern of behavior, i don't think she’s willing to hold herself accountable for her actions, and that because of that/because the only person anyone can control is themself it’s up to us as a community to decide whether we’re okay with sarah’s actions and are going to support her by not acting on anything, or if we’re not okay with her actions and if we’re not, what actions we’re going to take about this situation. (this was going to be my final paragraph but i put it here instead).

i’m going to number these just to try to add a little organization in my responses to everything?

1) you’re right that nobody has to accept criticism from anyone; the only person anyone can control is themself, and i would never push the idea that the best resolution to a conflict situation is changing someone else's behavior/the only way to resolve something is for someone else’s behavior to change. what i am saying is that in society, it is generally accepted that an appropriate response to being told that something you did/said was in the wrong is evaluating whether what you did or said was hurtful, and if it was going on to apologize and change your behavior as best you're able in the future.(the reason i included evaluating whether what you did or said was hurtful is because sometimes abusers tell their victims that they are bad or in the wrong for setting and enforcing healthy boundaries, which isn’t a bad or wrong thing at all, and even though that’s not the topic of this post i don’t want to put the message into the world that literally 100% of the time people must apologize and change their behavior when told they’ve hurt someone. evaluation of the situation is important).and there is no literal law or rule that says you have to apologize and modify your behavior when someone tells you you've done something hurtful and their criticism/call in is an accurate assessment of the situatoin, but in general? refusing to apologize and change when it’s true that you’ve hurt someone is the asshole thing to do.and even though there’s no rule saying someone has to apologize, it's very socially accepted that if you say "hey, this thing you did hurt me/someone i care about and i don't know if you realized, so i'm telling you with the assumption that you don't want to hurt other people again in the future" and the other person says "there's no rule saying i have to accept criticism or apologize to anyone"? that person is kind of an asshole and you can choose not to spend time around them or interact with them in the future.

so like, nobody has to accept criticism from others but refusing to accept any criticism whatsoever often means people probably won’t want to spend time around you because you clearly don’t care about others’ feelings?

i'm not saying sarah has to accept criticism or apologise, i'm saying that if sarah continually shows a disregard for other people's wellbeing by refusing to accept criticism, it's reasonable for people to choose not to interact with her anymore. 

i’ve been blocked by her and her friends since (i believe) january, when i was sending supportive asks to a minor who was recieving violent anon hate for making room on his blog for other minors who were uncomfortable with the teenagers fanfic; i have the people who blocked me blocked in return, because before now i was choosing to deal with this by following my own advice and refusing to interact with individuals who have behaved hurtfully and refused to change but at this point in time feel it necessary to speak out for the reasons i listed in my long reply on a post about the current discourse (link for context, though i think that post may be why i got these asks?)

2) also, i agree with you that disengaging when you’re receiving hateful messages is incredibly valid and honestly the smartest thing for anyone’s mental health when conflict gets out of control on tumblr. i don’t consider the hateful messages sarah was getting to have been constructive criticism of the kind i’ve previously been describing in this post; i’m fully against anyone sending anon hate for any reason. amber answered an ask about this (link) and i agree with everything amber said. for me, it is both true that the anon hate sarah received was horrible and inexcusable and that i cannot continue standing by while she refuses to be held accountable for the impact of her actions, regardless of her intent.

3) i think in response to you not understanding the way people reacted to this, that’s probably connected to the one place where we do have a major difference in the way we’re thinking? specifically the part where you said “She wrote something that was very deep and very personal, tagged it as such, and posted in on the internet. All things that are allowed.”

you’re right that there’s no laws or literal rules preventing what she did, and i think i’ve repeatedly said that i understand and support people writing fic to cope with their own experiences, but that sarah crossed a line when posting this fic specifically. amber covers that really well in her response to an ask, as well (link). please read what amber said; i am in total agreement with them. 

what you said about sarah’s fic-that it was very deep and very personal- is also true about what dan shared with us in basically i’m gay. publishing a fic that uses dan’s trauma in the way that sarah did is incredibly dehumanizing and it genuinely makes me sick to my stomach with horror. dan and phil are human people, and it’s never okay to take ownership over another person’s trauma like that.

does that make sense? i don’t mean to have an aggressive or hostile tone whatsoever either, and i can’t tell whether i’ve succeeded in avoiding that in this reply.

[the-desolated-quill]

Two Riders Were Approaching... - Watchmen blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t read this comic yet, you may want to before reading this review)

As we hurtle head long into the third act, Two Riders Were Approaching provides a story that comes the closest to a more quote/unquote ‘traditional’ comic book narrative. With nuclear tensions rising and World War Three imminent, Daniel and Rorschach must work together to deduce the identity of the ‘mask killer’ before it’s too late.

At the core of the issue is Dan and Rorschach’s relationship. Their partnership is something that has been talked about throughout the graphic novel, but this is the first time we actually get to see Nite Owl and Rorschach in action, and it’s legitimately fascinating to observe.

When I first read the graphic novel, one question kept bugging me throughout. Why the hell would Nite Owl want to work with someone like Rorschach? A violent, bigoted, right wing conspiracy nut. It can’t just be a marriage of convenience because Dan does express genuine affection toward Rorschach numerous times throughout Watchmen. Of course I was much younger at the time, so I didn’t understand all the nuances until now. See, what Alan Moore does such a good job with regarding the Nite Owl/Rorschach dynamic is using them to illustrate the flaws and dangers of centrist politics.

Now before I go any further, I just want to clarify one thing. I’m not necessarily saying there’s anything wrong with holding a centrist view. I myself identify as a centrist, albeit slightly left leaning. However there is always a risk when it comes to taking a centrist stance of becoming so neutral to the point of being complicit, maintaining the status quo even when it serves as a detriment to others because they don’t want to take sides. I can understand wanting to come across as fair and balanced, but fair and balanced doesn’t necessarily mean both sides of a debate have equal weight. There are some topics where there is no neutral stance you can possibly take. Do women deserve the vote? Should black people have rights as white people? Should gay people be allowed to get married? There’s only one correct answer to those questions. Trying to take a centrist view here wouldn’t be fair and balanced. It would be perpetuating a harmful system of discrimination and inequality. Both sides of an argument aren’t always equally valid. And yet, especially recently, we’re seeing a growing number of (usually white) centrists trying to take a neutral position from a moral or political standpoint. We’ve all seen those cringeworthy pictures of people posing with their Trump supporting friends wearing a MAGA cap, saying how politics shouldn’t affect a strong friendship. Donald Trump is a racist twat, and while not all Trump supporters are necessarily racist twats, they are complicit in his racist twattery, as are the people who claim to be liberal and yet still hang out with those guys, wringing their hands and asking why can’t everyone just get along.

In my opinion Nite Owl serves as the pinnacle of extreme centrism. He may not be as right wing as Rorschach, but he is complicit when it comes to his extreme methods and views because they’re superheroes and what they’re doing is for the supposed greater good. The scene in the bar hammers this point home very effectively. Rorschach of course used similar violent means of interrogation back in the first issue and you’d think now that Nite Owl is with him that he’d show a bit more restraint, but no. Rorschach is still just as violent as he was before and Nite Owl doesn’t stop him or resist in anyway, instead reassuring everyone around them that they’ll try and keep their interrogation brief. In fact it’s Rorschach that ends up restraining Nite Owl when he finds out about Hollis Mason’s murder and threatens to kill one of the Knot Tops.

Ah yes. Rorschach. Now he is the most interesting part of this issue for me. Presented as being sociopathic and intolerant throughout the entire novel, here we start to see another side to him. There’s obviously the moment I just mentioned where he stops Dan from committing murder, but there are other moments too. Near the beginning of the issue, we see the two of them going to Rorschach’s residence to pick up his spare uniform and journal (which is very bloody convenient, isn’t it? The spare uniform I could believe, but a spare journal too? He just happens to have a spare journal lying around in case he lost the other one. When does he have the time to copy his notes wholesale just in case he misplaces one copy? Doesn’t the guy sleep?) and they encounter Walter’s landlady who had been spreading misinformation accusing him of trying to sexually assault her. Rorschach, understandably, takes issue with this and starts to berate her, calling her a whore. She begs him not to say that in front of her kids because ‘they don’t know.’ The implication being they all have different fathers. At which point, in a rare moment of pity, Rorschach leaves her be. There’s clearly a strong parallel between his landlady and his mother and the reason he drops the argument is because he see’s one of her young boys crying in fear, which seems to remind him of his own unhappy childhood. He’s never going to be considered a good person any time soon, but considering the vile and atrocious things he’s done in past issues, this moment feels significant.

Another significant moment is in the Owlship with Dan. With the police hunting them, the two have to lay low for a while before continuing their investigations into the ‘mask killer,’ which leads to a lot of stress and arguing. Dan finally snaps and shouts at Rorschach, chastising him for his behaviour. You think you know what’s going to happen because we’ve become so familiar with the characters’ MO, but Rorschach surprises us yet again by instead apologising and shaking Dan’s hand, calling him a good friend. 

This is why Rorschach is such a great character and why Watchmen is such a great book. This small, but touching moment adds some real humanity to his character. As horrid and extreme as he is, you can’t help but feel slightly sorry for Rorschach as you realise that throughout the story, his attempts to reach out to Dan have been in an effort to win back the trust of his best and only friend. It’s a tiny detail, but it helps elevate the character to something more three dimensional as opposed to just being a conservative strawman.

But now of course, it’s time for the big reveal. Turns out the ‘mask killer’ was Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias the whole time. I’m going to talk more about his character in the next issue, which focuses very heavily on him. For now I’ll just say that it’s a good twist that was expertly built up throughout the course of the graphic novel, however I do feel that Alan Moore fumbled it a bit toward the end. While Nite Owl is trying to break into Adrian’s computer, Rorschach delivers this very clunky monologue about Egyptian beliefs and practices, which ends up giving the game away too early. The reason why the reveal works is because Adrian has been used sparingly throughout the story. We know that his superhero alter ego has an Egyptian theme, but this is a background detail that doesn’t really register until now. It sounds silly to say, but at no point did I ever suspect that the mastermind behind ‘Pyramid Transnational’ (the company behind many of the suspicious goings on in Watchmen, along with Dimensional Developments) was the Egyptian themed superhero. But that’s because we’ve only been exposed to Ozymandias every now and then, just enough to keep him in the back of our minds, but not so often that it gives the game away. It’s a masterstroke, if you think about it. However, thanks to Rorschach’s clunky monologue, the reveal becomes really forced rather than having everything falling into place naturally. There’s no moment where the reader goes ‘oh duh! of course it’s Adrian!’ because the reveal is being telegraphed way too heavily. It’s a serious misstep in my view and I wish Moore trusted the reader a bit more rather than having to explain everything in a giant infodump.

However what I especially love about all this is how intentionally ridiculous it all is. We see Nite Owl and Rorschach talking and acting in a very melodramatic fashion. Someone is killing off superheroes in order to try and start World War Three and only they can save the day! Tra la laaaa! It’s once again all about the fantasy of power, until they learn that Ozymandias, one of their own, is the true villain, at which point the fantasy is broken and things get a lot more complicated from here on out. Not that it wasn’t complicated before, but this is the first time the characters themselves acknowledge it’s complicated, which again says a lot about them and their fantasies. Anyone less than a superhero is easy to deal with, but a superhero betraying them? Now that’s more serious.

Before his falling out with DC, Alan Moore had expressed interest in doing a Watchmen prequel about the Minutemen, which I would love to see. But after reading Two Riders Were Approaching, I would also love to see a prequel series about Rorschach and Nite Owl’s partnership in the sixties. It’s clear that we’ve only really scratched the surface of these characters as here we are, ten issues in, and there’s still so much to unpack and learn about them. It would have been nice to have seen them in their element and how it fell apart. We’ll probably never get to see it sadly (yes I know Before Watchmen exists. I’m talking about Alan Moore coming back to Watchmen), but at least this issue gives us a tantalising glimpse.

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/Trump-administration-ending-in-person-14070403.php?utm_campaign=CMS%20Sharing%20Tools%20(Mobile)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&__twitter_impression=true

Trump administration ending in-person interpreters at immigrants’ first hearings.

They are going to play a video informing people of their rights and then that's it.

Nobody to translate questions or clarify anything.

https://t.co/mZH5dWjFSd via @sfchronicle

Fun fact, some of them don't speak Spanish either.

They speak indigenous languages that this won't help with.

Trump administration ending in-person interpreters at immigrants’ first hearings

Tal Kopan | Published July 3, 2019 | San Francisco Chronicle | Posted July 7, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to replace in-court interpreters at initial immigration court hearings with videos informing asylum seekers and other immigrants facing deportation of their rights, The Chronicle has learned.

The administration portrays the change as a cost-saving measure for an immigration court system bogged down under a growing backlog. But advocates for immigrants are concerned the new procedure could jeopardize their due-process rights, add confusion and potentially make the system less efficient by causing more of them to go underground or appeal cases.

The Justice Department informed the nation’s immigration judges of the change last month at a training session, multiple sources familiar with the situation told The Chronicle.

At issue are “master calendar” hearings where immigration judges meet with undocumented immigrants, usually dozens of them, in rapid succession to schedule their cases and to inform them of their rights. The quick sessions are intended mainly to be sure the immigrants understand what is happening and know when their next hearing will be and what steps they need to take in the interim.

Under the new plan, which the Justice Department told judges could be rolled out by mid-July, a video recorded in multiple languages would play, informing immigrants of their rights and the course of the proceedings. But after that, if immigrants have questions, want to say something to the judge or if the judge wants to confirm they understand, no interpreter would be provided.

Many of the immigrants come from Central America, but collectively they speak a diverse range of indigenous languages and sometimes don’t know Spanish. Immigrants from all over the world also come before the court system, which is run by the Justice Department.

The shift would especially affect immigrants who do not have attorneys to explain proceedings. Many immigrants lack representation at the initial hearing, and legal services around the country say they are being stretched thin. The government does not provide attorneys.

Instead of turning to an in-court interpreter, judges would have to rely on any who happen to be in the building for other purposes, or call a telephone service for on-demand translation that judges say can be woefully inadequate or substantially delayed.

“It’s a disaster in the making,” one judge said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person did not have Justice Department approval to talk publicly. “What if you have an individual that speaks an indigenous language and has no education and is completely illiterate? You think showing them a video is going to completely inform them of their rights? How are they supposed to ask questions of the judge?”

The Justice Department billed the move as a cost-saving measure. Sources familiar with the interpreter situation say there have been ongoing issues with the budget and the contract with the primary interpreter provider, leading the administration to encourage more use of the telephone service and look for other ways to keep costs down.

A Justice Department official who was not authorized to speak on the record said the shift away from in-person interpretation was “part of an effort to be good stewards of (the department’s) limited resources.” The official said the direction to judges was not a policy change, but declined to elaborate.

The immigration judges union, the National Association of Immigration Judges, said the change was another in a line of steps the administration has taken to force judges to do more with fewer resources at the risk of fairness.

Asked to comment, union President Ashley Tabaddor, a judge in Los Angeles, said the Justice Department had not given enough notice for the union to raise objections or provide input on the change.

She dismissed budget concerns as a justification.

“Interpreter cost is not a surprise cost — it’s an integral part of every case,” Tabaddor said. “If they actually look at the courts as a real court, they would never be dismissive of the role of an interpreter. But the fact that we are here and have these budget shortfalls means they have prioritized the budget in a way that is dismissive of the integral role of the interpreters, and reflects the flaw of having the courts run by a law enforcement agency.”

The immigration courts have been overwhelmed for years with a burgeoning load that is now approaching 1 million cases. The judges association has advocated for the courts to be removed from the Justice Department and made an independent system.

The Trump administration has made a series of efforts it says are intended to speed up the process and avoid having hundreds of thousands of immigrants build lives in the U.S. while waiting to learn if they will be deported. Critics, including immigration lawyers and advocates and some judges, say many of the changes have actually undermined the system, confusing immigrants and creating grounds for lengthy appeals.

Some judges said it’s common at master calendar hearings for immigrants to misunderstand the advice to find a lawyer. Some conclude that means they should not return for their next hearing if they don’t have a lawyer. Failing to appear is grounds for a deportation order.

The system is “not an assembly line,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and former senior legal adviser to the immigration appeals court who now volunteers for organizations that provide legal assistance to immigrants. He said the master calendar is most immigrants’ first impression ever of a court system, and that a lack of interpreters and interaction with a judge could foster a sense of distrust.

“You’re dealing with people’s lives,” Chase said. “All kinds of crazy issues arise. Sometimes there’s a health issue, and you need to be able to communicate to find this stuff out.

“And also, people come in so afraid,” Chase said. “If they’re able to talk with the judge and realize, ‘This person is a human being and they’re able to work with me’ — being played a tape reinforces this feeling that, ‘I’m dealing with this deportation machine.’”

Chase said concerns about the cost and length of the process are legitimate, but he questioned the administration’s way of addressing them.

“You always hear the word ‘efficiency’ from this administration now, and it’s very infrequent that you hear ‘due process’ or ‘justice,’” Chase said. “There’s no longer concern about the balance. It’s totally efficiency-heavy these days, and I think it’s being decided by people who haven’t been in the court much and don’t understand the consequences.”

[disabilitythinking]

The Disability Alphabet: A Is For ...

This is the first installment of a blog series that should run from now until the end of 2019. It’s called “The Disability Alphabet.” Twice a month, I will examine important words used in the disability community, in alphabetical order starting with A, and continuing through Z. But first, a few procedural notes:

I will be using a four-part structure to explore each term: Definitions, Common Uses, Problems & Misunderstandings, and Suggestions. The last will be my own thoughts on how we can best use the term, including any suggestions for changing how and when we use it.

This is an exploration of words, which is not quite the same thing as the things themselves. So for instance, I will explore the word “ableism,” but I won’t discuss at length what ableism means to me, what it does to people in society, or why it’s important.

I will try for the most part to take on terms that have special meaning and uses within the disability community. While words like “justice,” “health,” and “freedom” certainly have particular meanings for disabled people, they are a little too generic for this project. On the other hand, I may examine some general social justice terms, like “intersectionality” and “oppression,” becaus they are frequently misunderstood, and because they are used in specific ways in disability discourse.

These are going to be my personal explorations, based on my own limited research, but mainly my own experiences, ideas, and feelings. I will probably not cover every possible aspect of every word.

Feel free to add your own ideas, or disagreements, in the comments below.

And so we begin with …

Ableism

Definitions

Dictionary.com: “noun 1. discrimination against disabled people.”

Wikipedia: “ … discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities. Ableism characterizes persons as defined by their disabilities and as inferior to the non-disabled. On this basis, people are assigned or denied certain perceived abilities, skills, or character orientations.”

Common Uses

The most obvious use of the word “ableism” is to give a name to a broad range of discriminatory experiences people with all kinds of disabilities share to some degree. But the word has other, more specific functions too:

It distinguishes the disability experience from the more generic experience of “discrimination” or “prejudice” that can be applied to anyone, including non-disabled people.

It suggests some connection or similarity with other forms of discrimination that people may be more familiar with, such as racism.

By giving disability discrimination a distinct name, the word “ableism” takes the experience out of the category of mere misunderstanding and social rudeness, and places it more firmly in the category of damaging and urgent social ills.

Problems and Misunderstandings

At times, “ableism” is too general a word. There are too many different kinds of ableism. Each kind is serious, but often calls for different responses. Referring to such a wide range of experiences simply as “ableism” tends to over-simplify the way we think about it and deal with it.

I have tried a few times on this blog to map out the different kinds of ableism I have noticed. There’s a good summary of my thoughts here: Disputing “Ableism”. Roughly speaking, I tend to think in terms of three main kinds of ableism:

Well-meaning ableism

Systemic ableism

Asshole ableism

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

I think it’s also useful to separate “systemic” ableism … the ableism embedded and laws, policies, and practices … from interpersonal ableism … which is about the way people treat each other personally in regard to disability.

Another slight problem with “ableism” is that there are still people who hear the word and immediately think it’s “made up” for “political purposes.” I think what they mean is that they believe the term was coined with a specific rhetorical goal in mind. That’s probably true! But the same is true of a lot of words that are far more common and universally accepted than “ableism.”

In this run through the disability alphabet, I think we will find that people have fundamentally different beliefs about language that are distinct and separate from their political views. People seem to be hard wired one way or another. They either view language as an flexible and adaptable tool of communication and persuasion, or they cling to words as guardians of unchanging reality. And how people think about language affects how open they are to new words and new uses of language … something that has been essential in the evolution of disability culture and thought.

Finally, the way “ableism” borrows so directly on the meanings and rhetorical power of “racism” is, (to use another word we’ll need to explore at some point), problematic. Comparisons between ableism and racism do violence to the real-life experience of racism, and in any case the similarities are pretty limited. Both are systems of prejudice, but the similarities end there. On the other hand, “ableism” now has almost enough life and meaning of its own to stand alone, without needing to draw on that connection with racism or any other “ism.”

[Additional note: Squarespace underlines every time I type “ableism,” indicating that it doesn’t recognize it as a word. It may not be a new word to disabled people or the disability community, but it’s apparently new enough to be marked as a misspelling].

Suggestions

Despite all of the difficulties of “ableism,” there’s no better word available to describe and categorize the experience of disability discrimination and structural oppression. I use it. Still, whenever possible, I modify it, clarifying which kind of ableism I am talking talking about in any given situation.

Also, I try to use the word “ableism” describe, not to de-legitimize or shame. Calling someone or something “ableist” does not, to me, write them off. It’s not even a condemnation to me. At most it’s a criticism, more often an observation. I’m not suggesting shying away from the potential power of the word as a way to call out reprehensible behavior. I am suggesting that using the word with a bit of thought and nuance can make it more powerful and useful in the long run.

Advocacy

Definitions

Dictionary.com: “noun 1. the act of pleading for, supporting, or recommending; active espousal.”

Wikipedia: “Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group which aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions. Advocacy can include many activities that a person or organization undertakes including media campaigns, public speaking, commissioning and publishing research or conducting exit poll or the filing of an amicus brief. Lobbying (often by lobby groups) is a form of advocacy where a direct approach is made to legislators on an issue which plays a significant role in modern politics.[1] Research has started to address how advocacy groups in the United States[2] and Canada[3] are using social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action.”

Common Uses

In the world of disability, advocacy generally refers to any effort by an individual or a group to get something they want from some kind of institution … from a service agency, government office, employer, company, cultural institution, etc. When people with disabilities speak for themselves in order to get something they need or bring about some kind of change, we call it advocacy.

Problems and Misunderstandings

Like “ableism,” “advocacy” probably covers too many different activities. In current use the term encompasses both individual efforts aimed at personal gains, and group efforts to achieve broader systemic change. It covers asking your employer for extra time off or a raised desk. It also covers campaigning for health care reform and fighting attacks on the Americans with Disabilities Act. While all of these are related, they are also, obviously, quite different.

The term “advocacy” has also gradually become institutionalized. It is now sometimes used cynically to give the appearance of empowering disabled people, when in fact some activities labeled “advocacy” are really just dressed-up counseling or socializing. It’s a little too easy for an organization to say it does “advocacy” without really doing any.

Suggestions

I think we should start talking and writing about two related but separate things: advocacy and activism.

Activism

Definitions

Dictionary.com: “noun 1. the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc.”

Wikipedia: “Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, economic, or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society. Forms of activism range from writing letters to newspapers, petitioning elected officials, running or contributing to a political campaign, preferential patronage (or boycott) of businesses, and demonstrative forms of activism like rallies, street marches, strikes, sit-ins, or hunger strikes.”

Common Uses

“Activism” generally refers to organized, group activities aimed at making some kind of legal or social change. It includes everything from lobbying, letter-writing, and other “within the system” efforts to demonstrations, protests, and civil disobedience.

It seems like “activism” hasn’t been used as much in the past to describe these activities done by people with disabilities focusing on disability issues. “Advocacy” and sometimes “systems advocacy” has been the more common term. I don’t know why. Maybe because until fairly recently, most disability activism has been either run or heavily influenced by people and organizations that spoke the language of social work rather than politics. Maybe “advocacy” is a more comfortable linguistic fit for people who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with politics.

But lately it seems like “activism” is being used more often by people in the disability community. After years struggling to find a word for the thing we do when we cooperate as a group to bring about social change for disabled people, it seems like we’ve finally started to realize that “activism” describes it quite well and quite simply. We don’t need to make up a special word for it. The right word has been there all along.

Problems and Misunderstandings

I don’t really see any problem with using the word “activism” in the disability context. I haven’t heard anyone complain that it mislabels what they are doing. Nor have I heard anyone assert that “advocacy” is a better term.

The only possible drawback to “activism” is that it might turn people off if they have a strong aversion to any kind of social or political activity. There certainly are lots of people in the disability community who don’t enjoy or appreciate “activism.” Yet, I’ve never noticed any aversion to the word itself.

Suggestions

So how about it? Let’s use “advocacy” when we talk about individual efforts, and “activism” when we talk about working together on broader goals. Who’s with me?

Next in The Disability Alphabet: B is for … Barrers and Benefits.

[spunkycatninja]

My thoughts on editing

So I thought, after some prodding from a friend, that I would do a blog on editing since people might have questions who are interested in editing (for games, books, etc.). I've had experience editing a text based game and a full length novel as well as doing a lot of proofreading and creating reading/writing curriculum for the English department I work for. [Yes, I just ended my sentence with a preposition, and no, I don't care. ;) ] I also went to a university and earned a degree in English Language Learning, so I studied grammar, syntax, and all that other good stuff as well as world literature. Did I put you to sleep yet? No? Good. Now that you know my qualifications and that I'm not pulling things out of thin air, let's get on with it, yes?  

There are some things to keep in mind when you decide you want to edit a game or book for someone.  I won't (and can't, quite frankly) go over every single thing, but I feel the list below mentions the 5 most important “rules” to keep in mind.

#1: Know that you won't catch every single thing. I'm really good at what I do. Really, I am. I have people with PhD's asking me to go over their work to make sure everything is correct because I'm known to have an eagle eye for this sort of thing. Even with all the schooling I've had, and even though I am very meticulous, there are bound to be errors that get missed. It happens. It's ok. Nobody is perfect. Take a breath. Come to terms with that. (Something I need to keep reminding myself about as well.) If you notice that you missed a lot, try to do better next time. Maybe do some grammar review, and most importantly, read s-l-o-w-l-y.

#2: Keep in mind that the text you are working on is not yours. In other words, don't get bent out of shape if someone doesn't want to change what they have after you've offered your fixes and suggestions. As the author, they have the right to shape their creation however they please, so even if you have solid, legitimate reasons for offering a solution for a mistake/blunder/oversight/horrific abomination, they don't have to implement it even if they really should. Again, take a deep breath and know that this does not reflect poorly on you.

#3: Know your grammar. Yep, I said it. Learn grammar, dammit. It's important. It's essential to know the difference between:

A) Let's eat Grandma!

and

B) Let's eat, Grandma!

In one of those, you're a nasty cannibal that nobody wants anything to do with (especially Grams). In the other, you're grandma's favorite who will inherit everything for taking her out for a lovely meal. ;)

So many times I see people say, “Just put a comma where you'd breathe. You don't need to know grammar.” You know who says that? People who don't want to learn grammar or new teachers who've been told to tell students that statement as a way to get their point across. I can't tell you, as someone who teaches this stuff, how quickly that backfires—which is why only new/inexperienced teachers tell their students that (usually because they aren't prepared to explain). Grammar can shape the reader's experience, so knowing what to and how to punctuate can be a very powerful tool.

#4: Know when to correct and when to let it stand. But wait! Didn't I just say “know your grammar?” What is going on here? Am I pulling a fast one? No, not really. Creative writing is different than academic writing. There will be times when there is a change in beat/tone or a statement really needs to stand out, so an “extra” comma or a fragment may be perfectly legitimate. In other words, you have to take context into account when editing. This is super important! Don't just blindly correct every run-on, fragment, and comma splice. Read it. Then read it again. Look around it. Does it make sense as it is? What meaning is conveyed when it's punctuated like that? Is this getting the author's point/voice across? These are all very important questions to ask when looking at a text.

#5: Give positive feedback too, not just constructive criticism. Writers like to know what works and what doesn't for their reader. You are not just a living breathing auto-correct (unless that is what you and the author agreed on). So if you are enjoying something, don't just chuckle to yourself and move on. Make a note of it. Tell the writer. Let them know what really tickled your fancy. Moreover, they appreciate if you catch continuity errors, and while a few may disagree with this next part, I would also add that if a different perspective can be offered on what is happening, you might want to speak up. Let me clarify that last part with an example because that last statement was kind of vague.

So let's say you are editing a game where the player can be a man, woman, non-binary, etc., and the player can be whatever sexuality they desire. Said author has the player character always ogling a female companion even though the player created a gay male, straight female, or asexual character. If you are editing this game, and you see this, I would assert that you should definitely bring this to the author's attention. Because let's be real, many players would have a problem with this if this cropped up and this type of behavior did not fit their character. What the author does after that is up to them (see #2 for details).  

Are you still here? Wow! That's awesome! Thanks for reading my short novel. I hope this helps anyone who has questions about editing. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion on editing. I'm sure there are others out there who don't necessarily agree with everything I've said. But if you were thinking about getting into editing, I hope I've given you some place to start with. (Oh look! I ended with another preposition again! Oh, the horror!)

[professorfaber]

I'm interested to see what you have to say about my communism paragraph.

To point out the Healthcare Man, me personally? No, I have not been able to do that for years on end due to my age, however several people over the years have been pointing out the issues within Marvel media as well as general superhero media. Including Healthcare Man. I wasn't trying to seem like I was disagreeing. I think that part got deleted, apologies. (I had made note that the paragraph was no way intended to be directed at you, more as like an agreement and that the situation was kinda dumb.) As for the memes, yeah could definitely do without those, I'm tired of seeing them. (Also wow do I agree with the statement that Marvel are incompetent cowards. Oof Marvel, step up or clear out.)

The WandaVision thing, g o d s don't get me started on the bs they pulled. Consumer activism definitely doesn't work in this situation, I wish that situation was handled differently. For the centrist fearmongering, it could potentially have to due with the fact it's a common piece of media. I'm sure as you know, the more x is in the media, the more people seem to think x is ok. The memes would contribute by someone taking it lightly or not thinking it's a serious issue. Only mocking it to go with the crowd and not looking at the situation through a critical lens, barely even scratching the surface level on the issue.

As for the statement of "Marvel is problematic" I'd say in this day-in-age, it needs to be worded like that because it catches people's attention. Do I personally agree with it, no. But it's necessary to catch an audience so something can be done. As long as the person using that statement has an actual argument, I think it should be used. I see where you are coming from though. Also I hope I haven't come off aggressive or rude, if I didn't address your other points it's because I agree with them. I'd also like to apologize, my tone often comes off as argumentative when I just mean to have a conversation. I hope you are havin a good day.

Thank you for clarifying all of this! I think we agree on a lot more than I initially thought (and no, you haven't come off as rude, don't worry). And thank you for sending an ask instead of adding on to an already very long post. I hope you're having a good day too.

Okay, point by point (this might be pretty long, sorry, I'm like. allergic to brevity but I do try):

1. The communism paragraph. First of all, I'm allowed to make snide remarks about liberals on my own blog on tumblr dot com without it harming The Cause. My post was not directed at liberals, and very few people, if any, that I engage with on this website are liberals so I wasn't hugely concerned about watching my language. Normally I would agree with you that it's important to do outreach, but it's my personal blog and I make the rules. Also:

"liberal this, republican that", both side are are horrible in their own ways but we still need the people.

Okay so, this is tricky because sometimes when I say "liberal" I do mean it in the modern, especially American, sense of social liberalism that the Democratic Party (ostensibly) adheres to, and that was kind of what I meant in the original post, but Republicans are also liberals, just of a slightly different ideological strand. In America today both parties are primarily dominated by centrist and rightist factions, with the original American left (i.e. socialists, anarchists, trade unionists, social democrats) being essentially squeezed out of political discourse over the past century. It's less an instance of "both sides are horrible" than "one side is horrible, but it's being presented in two flavors".

Also, I never said I was a communist and I actually usually don't politically identify as such, but I can see why you'd make that assumption based on the kind of things I post.

2. I think I get where you're coming from on this better than I did at first and I'm sorry for being dismissive about the memes. It did not occur to me that casually shitting on a massive corporation's ridiculous propaganda could be an issue in that way. Like, to me it was less "people all of a sudden realizing that Marvel is bad" than it was just a continuation of people criticizing Marvel as before, but you've honestly made me reconsider and I'm sorry if those sorts of jokes are frustrating or annoying. They honestly seemed like completely innocuous leftist tumblr memes to me, in the vein of jokes about any other shitty company ("shitty company" is kind of redundant I think but you know what I mean). But yeah, you've convinced me. I'll stop reblogging them if that helps.

3. This was a bit confusing to me? I understand being personally upset by the memes, but the notion that they normalize and contribute to corporations using propaganda to nullify left-wing ideas is kind of odd. Companies like Marvel and its parent Disney make those sorts of characters and storylines because it is in their interests to do so, and it will continue to be for as long as capitalism exists. What I called "centrist fearmongering" is like, a function of their existence as capitalist entities with immense power to manipulate public opinion in their favor, and what you or I post on tumblr really does not have an effect on that.

Capital shapes public opinion, not the other way around. That's one of the big reasons consumer activism doesn't work.

4. I've gotta disagree with you here, honestly, though I should say upfront that I'm not like, super invested in whether people call Marvel problematic or not. My original post was just a rant, no one is obliged to listen to me, I don't care about this nearly that much.

However, if we are going to have that conversation, then I will say that while it is important to attract an audience, using patently misleading or reductive language is the wrong way to do it, even if you also have a solid argument. I might also note that the problem that needs addressing (the influence of the interests of capital on entertainment) isn't exclusive to Marvel, and pretending that it is just lets the problem fester. "Marvel is problematic" just... seems like a bad slogan honestly as far as critiquing capitalist media goes.

I think there are two separate problems here: Marvel media broadly containing harmful or clumsy messages, and Marvel media suppressing or distracting from left-wing ideas and resistance. The former will change when it becomes legitimately profitable for Marvel to become more sensitive to certain members of its audience (which will only result in more marginalized identities becoming emptily commodified, unfortunately). The latter is a more direct result of capitalism that is systemically unavoidable.

Lastly: as you said, if I didn't respond to one of your points or comments that probably means I agree with it or couldn't think of anything to add

[world365]

Real Marijuana Online

Is weed unexpected now in comparison to 50 years prior? What guardians and grandparents need to think about pot today.

THC mixed confections and treats are showcased to youth and are a risk to small kids who can discover them and accidentally glut. A colossal expansion in pediatric trauma center visits has happened in territories that have THC treats.

Accessible free of charge to instructors, this pack incorporates booklets, recordings, exercise plans, <Real Marijuana Online> and banners for use in schools or after school programs.

It's not the 'pot' of the 1960's. 'The Truth About Marijuana' free booklet gives important data for instructors, youth, guardians and grandparents.

There are numerous fantasies out there about weed thus much promotion that individuals don't understand, particularly about the maryjane of today. Individuals need to do research and discover reality with regards to maryjane. — Thalia Ghiglia, Foundation for a Drug-Free World DC Faith liaisonWASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES, April 28, 2021/EINPresswire.com/ - When finding out about sporting maryjane use and edibles like confections and treats bound with THC (the dynamic synthetic in weed), what isn't normally revealed is that the present cannabis is 20 to multiple times more grounded than that smoked at Woodstock in 1969. This can cause potentially negative side-effects for both knowing and accidental clients.

The free booklet 'The Truth About Marijuana' clarifies the impacts of the present maryjane, particularly its fundamental psychoactive fixing, THC or tetrahydrocannabinol, and what it means for individuals utilizing it in edibles and different structures.

The pot sold during the 1970s found the middle value of 1% THC, while the present weed midpoints 20-30% THC. Also, high-intensity arrangements of weed are particularly perilous as they can contain up to and more than 95% THC. These have even been related with power outages, visualizations, and psychosis. You could consider it the distinction in power between 95% grain liquor and 1% close to brew.

This expanded intensity and the way that they seem as though confections and treats can cause accidental excesses in youth. A new report showed that part of the way because of expanded accessibility and strength of THC in maryjane and THC-bound sweets, there was a 27% yearly expansion in kids going to medical clinic trauma centers from 2009 to 2017. Preceding 2009 there was no expansion in the trauma center visits for weed issues. This is a risk with the expanded strength of THC that guardians and even specialists are regularly ignorant of.

'Individuals need to teach themselves. There are numerous legends out there about pot thus much promotion that individuals don't understand, particularly about the maryjane of today. Individuals need to do research and discover reality with regards to cannabis for themselves,' said Thalia Ghiglia, Drug-Free World DC's confidence contact. 'Shockingly, the pandemic has squeezed individuals – and that has made them powerless against utilizing medications, and pot is directly at the first spot on that list. Instruction is so significant at this moment.'

A free booklet and a free online course are accessible from drugfreeworld.org to instruct individuals on realities about maryjane and THC-bound treats. The booklet addresses examines authentically regarding the expected hurtful impacts so perusers can make up their own personalities about maryjane. As per the booklet, 'Cannabis is quite possibly the most manhandled drugs on the planet. There is a consistently developing hole between the most recent science about cannabis and the legends encompassing it. A few group imagine that since it is legitimate in certain spots, it should be protected. Be that as it may, your body doesn't have a clue about a lawful medication from an illicit medication. It just knows the impact the medication makes whenever you have taken it. The motivation behind this distribution is to clear up a portion of the errors about pot.'

With more states legitimizing sporting utilization of pot, it is significant for residents to have the full story and to comprehend the critical expansion in THC and psychoactive synthetic substances in the present changed maryjane.

The Foundation for a Drug-Free World DC (DFW DC) has conveyed preparing courses dependent on the Truth About Drugs materials to youth bunches just as youth engaged with the criminal equity framework to teach them on the risks and impacts of weed and different medications.

DFW DC has likewise prepared gatherings of seniors who didn't know about the genuine threats that can emerge out of utilizing maryjane, especially by teenagers and youth. The medication can make harm youth, whose cerebrums are as yet creating, that can impair them in correlation with their friends. The seniors were grateful for the data and have been imparting this to their grandchildren.

A full instructor's bundle containing useful apparatuses to edify youngsters about substance misuse is accessible to educators. You can get your free materials at .

The Foundation for a Drug-Free World is a philanthropic public advantage company that enables youth and grown-ups with authentic data about drugs so they can settle on educated choices and live medication free.

Establishment for a Drug-Free World materials are being used by a huge number of schools and more than 800 law implementation offices all throughout the planet.

Legitimate Disclaimer:MENAFN gives the data "with no guarantees" without guarantee of any sort. We don't acknowledge any duty or responsibility for the exactness, content, pictures, recordings, licenses, fulfillment, legitimateness, or dependability of the data contained in this article. In the event that you have any grievances or copyright issues identified with this article, compassionately contact the supplier above.

Kafer: Stop with the glorification of maryjane — youthful Coloradans are tuning in

"Do you understand what today is?" a 13-year-old proclaimed during science class. "It's 4/20 and you understand what that implies." Several young men gestured and laughed. "Definitely, THC is cool," said another understudy. At the point when I proposed something else, an understudy commented, "It's superior to drinking."

Happy to hear kids today have disguised the maryjane business' showcasing material since that is actually what receptive and weak eighth graders need — the glorification of cannabis. So credit to the Colorado state government for enhancing the "THC is cool" message a week ago.

These young men could be headed to a strong propensity instantly. The normal age of the main toke in Colorado is 14 years of age. As per the 2019 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, 11% of 12-and 13-year-olds and 20% of children more than 14 had attempted weed. The review discovered use was higher among metropolitan, minority youth.

A few children will smoke a couple of times and proceed onward, however others will become ongoing clients. Ongoing use during the youngster years could be related with diminished IQ in adulthood, a deficiency of however much eight IQ focuses was noted in an investigation distributed in 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Juvenile utilization of cannabis has additionally been connected to mental issues including expanded sadness and tension. I suspect, given the still restricted examination on the impacts of long haul ongoing weed use among adolescents, that in the event that you drew a Venn graph of successful school or profession bound secondary school graduates and constant teenager pot clients and there wouldn't be a lot of a cover.

Next time you drive past a pot shop with a line out front, check who's in the line. Certainly, there are generally calm end of the week pot smokers yet they're not the ones trusting that the store will open on a freezing February morning. Information back this up: grown-up pot use is more normal among lower-pay men with poor instructive fulfillment, as indicated by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Weed doesn't simply affect the mind; the smoke hurts the respiratory arrangement of clients and observers through used smoke. Sadly, similar to the understudies in my group, dreadfully numerous children see regular cannabis use as no biggie. Just 61% of understudies 14 and more established in the Healthy Kids Survey accept individuals who use pot routinely face a moderate or extraordinary danger of damage.

Notwithstanding the effect on the psychological and actual wellbeing of youngsters and grown-ups, the cannabis business negatively affects the soundness of the climate. A Colorado State University study tracked down that indoor weed develops represent 1.3% of the state's all out ozone harming substance emanations, an offer like that of coal mining (1.8%).

Do the financial and duty income advantages of the maryjane exchange exceed the wellbeing and ecological expenses? Difficult to say. Is there worth to allowing grown-ups to figure out what they need to devour? Maybe. In any case, pot is legitimate in Colorado and there's no returning that genie to the container.

However, in light of the fact that something is legitimate doesn't mean it ought to be praised. That is exactly what the state government did for this present week. On April 20, the state sold 14 maryjane themed tags with words like BONG, GANJA, and STASH. The most elevated bid, no play on words planned, went to ISIT420. Cash raised will add to programs that help Coloradans with handicaps, a commendable objective and no uncertainty the motivation behind why the lead representative cheered the bartering.

Colorado Disability Funding Committee

A Colorado permit "ISIT420" is one of a few available to be purchased through the Colorado Disability Funding Committee. The public closeout goes through April 20. Starting at Tuesday morning, the most noteworthy bid for this plate is $6,440.

In any case, should the state government truly be praising medication use? In case we will advance weed utilization on tags we should put the state's imprimatur on different propensities like cigarette smoking, biting tobacco, and becoming inebriated.

[forgottendance]

Some scary aphobic rhetoric to debrief

So, I argued with some aphobes last night. Not particularly intensely, it was pretty tiny, but I do want to go over what happened/what I woke up to because I think the tactic these people used to silence me is particularly terrifying and I want to make sure other acespecs and arospecs know exactly how Wrong these people are. 

I also want to encourage everyone to consider who should be engaging with such people and how. Personally, I believe these people have been given too much fuel. As long as we keep talking at them, they keep finding ways to manipulate our words and spout their hate. This is particularly damagingto those of us who are acespec and arospec! Allo folks, how can you protect us while challenging this? Acespec and arospec folks, let’s protect ourselves and each other before engaging with such harmful people. 

So, what happened?

Someone made an incredibly valid post to point out that straight trans people existed and were lgbt. They then reblogged their own post to clarify that this didn’t include “people who don’t have sex”.  Either this person really means “people who don’t have sex”, which implies that sexual behavior is a condition for being lgbt, which not only negates acespecs that don’t have sex, but any sex-repulsed lgbt person, anybody lgbt person who may choose not to have sex, including those who do it for religious reasons and some survivors of sexual abuse, and even people who just happen to not be having sex at the moment for one reason or another... More likely, this person is using this to mean “asexuals”, which shows a huge lack of understanding of what asexuality is. Personally, I believe that if someone can’t even used the correct word, or define it properly, they’re not really knowledgeable enough on the subject to make an informed opinion and should probably do some more research before making such comments. Most importantly, this was absolutely unnecessary to add. They had made their point that this was about straight trans people in the beginning. The only reason they had to include a crude, misinformed reference to ace people was to attack. It was an active attempt to exclude acespecs from the conversation, despite the fact that we hadn’t been in the conversation to begin with. Basically, this person dragged us into a conversation just so they could say “no, not you”. 

We went back and forth twice, I didn’t want to escalate or fall into the path of justifying (which gives strength to aphobes’ arguments), so I simply made it clear where I stood on the matter, particularly for any a-spec person following me, and then went to bed. This morning, I woke up to responses from a new person and from one of the aphobes I was interacting with last night claiming that I had derailed a conversation about trans people.

This is FUCKING CREEPY.  First point, I want to make this very clear, the conversation was derailed the minute OP dragged acespecs into this. I was not the one derailing, I was challenging aphobic rhetoric as it appeared on my dash. This conversation was derailed and causing harm long before I touched it. 

Second point, it’s really easy to believe someone when they says something like this. We all want to be better people, we want to learn how to listen to all sorts of trans people, we want to not derail conversations. Except, when someone says something aphobic on a post specifically about trans people and then claims that any argument against their aphobia is derailing the conversation about trans people, they are not only ignoring the fact that they were the one to derail, they are abusing a true desire to support trans people. They have turned transness into a manipulative get-out-of-jail free card. My transness does not exist to help aphobes avoid arguments, and neither does anyone else’s. 

Third point, acespec and aropec trans people exist! And we are deeply harmed by posts like this, which basically tell us that only certain parts of our identity are legitimate. To challenge an aroace trans person for challenging a post that directly harms them increases this harm. All I can say is that these folks are lucky that I’m not a straight aro trans person or a straight ace trans person, because that would have caused even more harm. 

So, fellow acespecs and arospecs, I would like to encourage you to think critically when an aphobe acuses you of transphobia or of derailing a conversation and making it about you. Yes, sometimes we do that, we aren’t perfect people, but it appears that aphobes are trying to gaslight us into thinking we’re doing it when we aren’t. Always ask yourself - why do I feel the need to challenge this comment? Why are a-spec identities important in this conversation? Who am I showing my love for when I add my voice? What am I trying to say? Am I saying it? Is this an effective and appropriate way to say it? You may find that the aphobes have you doubting yourself more than you think.

And allos! Especially trans allos! Please consider context when you reblog something. It doesn’t matter how good a post is about trans people, if it’s made by an aphobe, it doesn’t support trans people because some trans people are ace and/or aro. And, if you see a positive trans post that is actively excluding a-specs, don’t be surprised when we respond to us. We were dragged into the conversation against our will. 

[mostaforyou1]

15 Savvy Ways to show Bad Business Ideas Into Good Ideas

1   Use Consensus to Correct Course

Instead of shutting down a nasty idea sort of a dictator, using the much more powerful method of consensus leadership to assist create a more collaborative decision on the thought. instead of giving the thought an up or down vote, help your team seek a group of solutions that everyone (or almost everybody) can drag.

"The group setting also takes the sting out of shooting down their idea, and communicates to them that it's not the well-liked strategy during a diplomatic manner," says Bobbi Rebell, author of the way to Be a Financial Grownup: Proven Advice from High Achievers on the way to Live Your Dreams and Have Financial Freedom. "Very often when the bulk of the group is occupation one direction on a project, the outlier will fall in line- albeit they perceive their idea as better."

This is neither trade-off nor unanimity, rather it's arising with an honest strategy by weaving together the entire group's key concerns and best opinions. meaning a bad idea will likely drop off, but may additionally be adapted into a bigger solution that benefits everyone.

2  Get Additional Opinions

On an identical note, it isn't impossible that what you deem a nasty idea could be a workable idea from someone else's perspective.

"Get second, third, and fourth opinions," suggests Ajay Prasad, founder, and president of digital marketing agency GMR Web Team. "Asking for feedback and advice of trusted colleagues or employees will provide you with different perspectives that you simply can take into consideration and make the simplest decision. It never hurts to succeed in out for help, especially once you are really unsure of what to try to to ."

Similar to consensus-building, this may help your workers move toward a far better solution as a team. And here's what America's fittest CEO has got to say about creating a healthy work environment.

3  Assign a Mentor

If a team member can't seem to understand what it's the group, or the organization as an entire is trying to accomplish, assigning a mentor could be the move.

"If it's not appropriate to form the project a team effort, assigning a mentor who can tactfully guide them is often helpful," says Rebell. "It's also an honest idea to need periodic check-ins to permit for course corrections before a project is complete."

The mentor ensures the guy arising with bad ideas understands the corporate culture and may offer advice and guidance to assist his protégé to rise up to hurry. Whether this is a short-term solution or a permanent program, it is a good way to urge those that are lagging to catch up. And here are some more great leadership strategies you ought to know.

4     Clarify the corporate Vision

Often a nasty idea is rooted during a basic misunderstanding of the company's or department's overall vision. This could be a failure on the employee's part, but it's going to even be thanks to company leadership failing to obviously outline that vision.

"Having a clear-cut vision and mission for the corporation will provide a framework upon which to check ideas out for effectiveness or ineffectiveness," says Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, owner of career consultancy CareerTrend. "If the thought doesn't strongly support the vision and mission, then it should be nixed." Now, if running a corporation possesses you stressed, here's the way to affect that at work.

5     Answer Their Questions

A bad idea can also be rooted during a lack of data on the part of the worker. If a member of your team suggests a stinker of a thought, it's going to work best to open up the ground to questions, and provides him the chance to ask more about what precisely the goals or details are for a specific project.

"Before sending them into retool mode, make certain to answer any questions the worker may have on why their idea wasn't a fit with the company's vision/mission and if needed, provide them with a transparent mission and vision in writing, from which to aim their idea," says Barrett-Poindexter. "Follow this with a goal time-frame to submit a refreshed idea with a strategic plan and outcome that's clearly focused on the mission, vision and resources budget." For more ways to run the simplest business possible, here's the way to find the right candidate for your next job opening.

6    Figure Out the Motive Behind the thought

On the opposite hand, it helps you because the boss asks questions and delves into where the bad idea is coming from. it's going to be a misunderstanding or it's going to be coming from an area of creative problem solving that you simply just had not been considering.

"Using a training approach together with your employees, colleagues or maybe your leader may be a good way to actually help people to think through their ideas and are available up with the simplest possible solution for the organization and its customers," says Carey-Ann Oestreicher, chief engagement officer for Potential Unlimited.

To understand the motive behind the thought, she suggests asking the worker the subsequent questions: "What is that the opportunity you've got identified within the idea?" "What are the pitfalls?" "What makes the danger well worth the reward?" "What other potential countermeasures did you think about if this concept fails?" "Why does one think this is often the proper idea to try?"

7     Come At It From a special Angle

"The best thanks to both determine the viability of thought and to correct course if it's a nasty idea is through questions," adds Michelle Tillis Lederman, author of Nail The Interview, Land the work. "Oftentimes once we tell someone why the thought is bad, they get discouraged and provide up. Instead, ask them how they might handle this aspect or issue that you simply realize may be a problem for his or her idea."

Instead, it'd be worthwhile to seek out how to return at the thought from a special direction. Maybe a suggestion doesn't work as a customer service strategy but might be effective as an indoor program. Or a thought that might likely fail as a long-term branding campaign, might actually work for a more short-term program. See if there's how to rethink a bad idea by coming at it from a special direction. And for more great leadership insights, here's some wisdom from some successful startup founders.

8      Simplify the answer

Sometimes, changing the thought isn't as important as changing its context. there's an honest chance that an employee suggesting a rotten idea is lost within the trees and can't see the forest. Reframe the matter you're trying to unravel and make it as simple as possible and that they should hopefully correct course within the process.

"Is the plan overly complicated? If so, it's probably a nasty plan," says Biren Bandara, CEO/founder of Leader School. "Overcomplicated plans with many moving parts have a better risk of failure, especially if the mechanic of the plan isn't clear."

9         Get Them to require the primary Few Steps Themselves

Often the simplest thanks to getting an individual to ascertain the error of his ways aren't to inform him it is a bad idea, but let him see it himself.

"Ask them to draft up plans, and enter deep detail of how the execution of their idea would work," says Valerie Streif, a senior advisor with career organization Mentat. "This allows them to understand on their own that it wasn't an honest idea without you wanting to be the person and shoot them down."

Ideally, they're going to see where they've made a logical mistake and readjust their thinking quickly. If not, Streif suggests: "Be upfront and honest about why it isn't an honest idea and explain your reasoning. this is often some time to teach!"

10  Turn it into a Teachable Moment

Speaking of teaching, a nasty idea is often a hugely valuable learning opportunity.

"Most people don't want to fail, and once they are putting forth a thought it's with the intention of being a productive a part of the team," says Irene Becker, founder, and chief success officer of Just Coach It-The 3Q Edge, who runs the 3Q Leadership Blog. "Fear shuts down cognitive ability, creates disengagement and a myriad of problems which will ultimately undermine results."

Instead of being annoyed at a bad idea, find how to embrace it as a flash to review the company's or projet's big-picture goals.

11    Find a Kernel of Goodness In It

We've already agreed that the phrase "there are not any bad ideas" is nonsense. But what's closer to the reality is that there are not any completely bad ideas. there is a good chance that even the dumbest-seeming idea has some merit if you probe it a touch.

"I recommend they assert, 'I'm unsure about the thought as an entire but there's an honest piece in there— I prefer X element of your suggestion. Let's work to expand thereon,'" says Frances Cole Jones, author of the way to Wow: Proven Strategies for Selling Your (Brilliant) Self in any Situation and president at Cole Media Management. "Or, 'I can't support your idea as an entire but you are doing have a legitimate criticism. does one have the other ideas regarding a possible solution?'"

12    Build On What Works

Once you've pulled out what actually works in a thought, find how to create thereon or take it in a completely different direction. That kernel of quality might help pave the thanks to something far more valuable for the organization.

"Unworkable and ineffective ideas might not add and of themselves, but, repeatedly are the precursor to making new and better ideas when brainstormed during a way that honors each and each person," says Jeannette Seibly, PXT Select Authorized, Partner with Wiley, Profiles International. "Always repose on ideas presented otherwise you will lose people and their 'good' ideas."

13      Make Dialog a part of the method

The strongest organizations are people who have incorporated a variety of ideas and where decisions are delayed for discussion and scrutiny.

"The best tactic to encourage staff to develop strong ideas is to form constructive dialogue and idea revision a building block of your organizational culture," says Rita Santelli, president of Savvy Inc., who also teaches Innovation Leadership at Georgetown University's School of continuous Studies. "Diversity of thought will help the team identify potential pitfalls and generate the needed fixes before the thought is implemented." Support and encourage your team to conceptualize together, and embrace a variety of various points of view.

14      Battle the "Idea Bubble"

Along an equivalent line, Santelli adds that "it can actually be very difficult to spot a nasty idea internally. once you are surrounded by your products, services, and coworkers all day, every day, you'll end up during a 'bubble of thought' where one perspective dominates. the simplest thanks to combating the "bubble" is to usher in the maximum amount diversity of thought as possible."

The bad idea may have grown out of 1 of those "idea bubbles."

15      Get More People Involved

On her blog, product discovery coach Teresa Torres offers her own suggestion for turning a nasty idea into an honest one: "The more you engage people within the idea generation and evaluation process, the more involved they're getting to be within the outcomes. They now have skin within the game. If you think that you've got a tough time wrangling feedback and requests now, this process will only increase that volume. Remember, it's worthwhile. More ideas, cause better ideas."

[bienready2122]

Using Your ClickBank Thank You Page To Boost Profits, Reduce Refunds, and Slash Charge-Backs

Presentation

On the off chance that you are even somewhat acquainted with ClickBank, you are most likely mindful of the idea of Thank You pages. Essentially, these are the web page(s) appeared to clients after they buy an item. Commonly a Thank You page subsequently contain directions about how to download the item being referred to backpage Melbourne

The vast majority will in general consider Thank You pages as basically being the essential conveyance framework for online items. Be that as it may, in this article, I want to give you how a shrewdly planned thank you page can assist you with expanding your benefits.

1. Cut Down on Piracy

It may sound self-evident, however perhaps the most ideal approaches to build deals is to ensure (or if nothing else decrease the odds) of individuals downloading it for nothing.

There are individuals who guarantee that privateers could never purchase in any case, and hence battling robbery is an exercise in futility and vitality. I can't help disagreeing. My own view, sponsored up by bunches of understanding of discharging items with various degrees of insurance, is hostile to theft endeavors can have a major effect to deals.

Here is the reason: while it is unquestionably obvious that there are some in-your-face privateers who might never purchase, there are likewise loads of individuals who will privateer whenever given the chance (or allurement), particularly in the event that they feel it is something that bunches of others are doing as well.

Presumably the most widely recognized way that ClickBank items are pilfered is through Thank You page robbery. Fundamentally what happens is one individual gets hold of your Thank You page's URL and afterward shares it with one, two, or a few thousand of his "companions" who would then be able to download your item for nothing!

Significantly more annoyingly, it's feasible for your Thank You page to get recorded into web search tools. On the off chance that this occurs, individuals will have the option to land at your Thank You page and access your downloadable items without seeing your direct mail advertisement or the remainder of your site. They may not understand that they should pay!

While ClickBank recommends utilizing metatags to stop web search tools, not all web crawlers obey them. Also, metatags won't shield you from someone presenting a connection on your Thank You page on a robbery discussion - and the pages of the theft gathering will most likely be filed into web indexes, and in this manner effectively discoverable by anybody on the planet.

Luckily, there are contents that you can use to ensure your Thank You pages. For the most part these are PHP or CGI contents that you introduce without anyone else site. Obviously, in the event that you are not a specialized wizard, you will need to pick a content that is anything but difficult to utilize and introduce. Furthermore, what you ought to be search for is a content that gives every client has their very own individual page which is available for a brief span and by a set number of IP addresses (IP addresses recognize PCs on the web).

You ought to likewise be wary of a portion of the contents out there that don't give legitimate security. A few contents will shield your Thank You page from unapproved get to, yet will at present leave your downloadable records uncovered. In such cases, privateers can essentially sidestep the Thank You page and offer the URL of the ZIP, PDF, or EXE record containing your item. So you need to search for a content that secures both your Thank You pages, and the documents connected from it.

At long last, while picking a security content, ensure you pick one that gives you a chance to modify your Thank You pages to contain whatever substance and structure you like (a few contents will compel you to utilize their plan). The best security contents can even show customized content, (for example, the client's name or receipt number) in the Thank You page, and you'll need that to - I'll clarify in a minute why this is significant.

2. Utilize Your Thank You Page To Reduce Refunds

Each time a client is discounted, it's cash removed from your pocket that you thought you had just earned. Each time a deal is charged back, you really end up in a more terrible situation than if you have never made the deal in any case.

Limiting the quantity of discounts and charge-backs can help increment your benefits, support your offshoots' certainty, and keep up a decent working association with ClickBank.

Did you know your Thank You page can have a critical effect?

My very own experience is that two normal however simple to address reasons for discounts are, initially clients overlooking what they obtained and from whom, and besides clients not realizing who to contact if there should be an occurrence of concerns or issues with their buy.

Here's the means by which I would address these issues:

(an) Add content to the Thank You page proposing clients print a duplicate of the page for their records.

(b) Add content to the Thank You page helping clients to remember what they bought customized with their ClickBank receipt number, and on the off chance that you like, the client's name and date of procurement.

(c) Tell the client that they can reach you in the event that they have any inquiries or issues, and ensure the Thank You page contains your contact subtleties - in any event including your email address.

3. Email Every Customer After Their Purchase

Likewise with the substance of your Thank You page, a one-time email to every client after they purchase your item can have a genuine effect to your discount and charge-back rates. What's more be that as it may, you can likewise utilize these sort of messages to get important input from your clients, to help get tributes from your clients, and to offer extra items to your clients.

This is what to remember for your messages:

(a) Thank the Customer: This is simply fundamental neighborliness, however it additionally fills a valuable need in helping assemble a positive establishment for the remainder of your email.

(b) Remind the Customer of What They Purchased: As we have just talked about, one of the primary driver of discounts and charge-backs is essentially clients overlooking what they obtained, so this can assist cut with support on them. For best outcomes you ought to try and incorporate the client's receipt number and different subtleties as a major aspect of your email.

(c) Remind the Customer That You Are a Real Person and Give Them Your Contact Details: This again assists cut with support on discounts and charge-backs. You will likewise find that clients are unmistakably all the more sympathetic of any hiccups or minor issues on the off chance that you let them know from the beginning that you are eager to work with them to guarantee that they are happy with their buy,

(d) Ask for Feedback, Comments, and Suggestions: This shows clients that you care about their sentiments. Also, you will find this is an extraordinary method to accumulate tributes (if a client sends you an integral email, inquire as to whether it is alright to distribute on your site). At last, you will get a great deal of thoughts for extra item includes that you can add to improve your offer, and for add-on items that you could sell.

(e) Recommend Related Products: If a client has recently purchased from you, the exact opposite thing you need to do is to quickly hit them over the head with something different they have to purchase, so a tad of effortlessness and artfulness is unquestionably required. In any case, do recall that a client who has recently purchased from you, not just believed you enough to give you cash, yet additionally likely has their charge card convenient and is in a purchasing state of mind. In this way, a cautious and authentic suggestion of an extra item that you sell, or a partner item can be compelling in this sort of email.

4. Include an Email Subscription Form

It's great to send new clients a one-time thank you email as portrayed above, yet it's awful karma to add them to an email list without their assent.

Rather, put your AWeber (or other) email join structure on your thank you page (make it open into another window utilizing TARGET="_blank"), and it's an incredible method to assemble a rundown of clients. Do make certain to give your clients an incredible motivation to join your email list - for instance to get a free reward item, or to keep educated regarding news and updates.

5. Leave Link Profits

ClickBank prescribes that you put a leave connect on your Thank You page that the client can tap on to leave the page in the wake of finishing the download procedure. Most ClickBank merchants basically connection to a web crawler, or the principle page of their site, yet there is nothing to stop you connecting to a firmly related yet reciprocal item for the client to purchase.

Regardless of whether you don't have your very own second result, you can even now profit with this strategy: just utilize an associate connect to one of the other 10,000+ merchants recorded with ClickBank. Keep in mind, ClickBank merchants (like you) can be members as well!