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baiyunli · 1 year ago

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how to watch baseball now: a primer

This is a long, hopefully-comprehensive guide on how to watch baseball for hockey fans feeling adrift during the offseason — I have constructed this from the perspective of not only how to understand what you’re watching, but how to make it interesting to yourself.

If the numbers aren't interesting to you, forget about the numbers! They don’t have to exist in your version of baseball. Make up your own rules and use them to watch the game. Watch games only for the one kind-of okay player you like. Pick your favourite team because of a video you saw of one of them bouncing a baseball off his ass (Sean Murphy, then of Oakland A's and now of Atlanta Braves). Baseball Olds will try to pretend like the game is this big thing that only people who already watch it can appreciate, but you just have to find what you love most about it.

I’m using the NHL as my best point of reference: in terms of growing the game, I’d say MLB suffers from a very different problem than NHL (other than like, the current uproar around letting queer people exist, which is a throughline in both), in that while the NHL has a very exciting product but can’t reach people where they’re at, baseball is by and large perceived as a boring, slow game and the league will bend over backwards to make polarizing changes to the Boringest and Slowest parts rather than capitalizing on what excites fans about the game. However, both leagues are plagued by Shitty Commissioner disease. Such is the way of life.

Feel free to read all of this, or none of it, but I’ve tried to split it up in a way that makes sense and is easy to navigate. Last note: many people will tell you baseball is the only major sport going on in North America at this time of year. This is false. The WNBA and NWSL are both in full swing—not to mention the World Cup next month. Supplement your baseball watching with a wide variety of sports where you can!

How to Love Baseball

Pick a Team, Any Team

The first step in becoming a baseball fan is obviously picking a team! I could probably give you NHL comparatives and let you figure it out from there, but I don’t personally think your favourite NHL teams have much bearing on your favourite MLB ones, so I’ll give you a quick and dirty rundown of my teams instead and how you might want to pick a team.

The easiest team for me to love is the Seattle Mariners because I live just across the border, and they aren’t good enough to be annoying but also not bad enough to be embarrassed about. They’re just kind of there, which I enjoy greatly. I also love the Philadelphia Phillies because they’re my friend’s favourite team. They went on a Cinderella run to the World Series last year (before losing to the Astros in the final) and are now solidly middling. My other favourites are the Washington Nationals because of their fantastic social media presence and their hilarious stadium traditions. The current-day Nats are very much the epitome of "how can we lose when we're so sincere?"

Some teams you might want to look into are the LA Angels (actually of Anaheim) for Shohei Ohtani, the Milwaukee Brewers for — at least from what I understand — their boyband energy similar to the New Jersey Devils, the Baltimore Orioles or Tampa Bay Rays for an exciting and winningest team, and the Oakland A's for a miserable fan experience including horribly dysfunctional team management and a coming relocation to Las Vegas.

The easiest team for me to hate is the Toronto Blue Jays, which is a result of their god complex re: being the only Canadian team. A funny thing from this season is that the Rays opened their season with a historic 13-game win streak, only to be killed 6-3 by the Blue Jays to end it. Something about Toronto teams and ending another team’s 13-game heater, or whatever.

Also look into any local teams if you can. In Vancouver, our local minor league team is the Vancouver Canadians, and setting up a little picnic on the grass with friends while watching a Canadians game is a summer staple. Here’s a very cute article about them. There are a variety of lower-level and exhibition teams across the world, especially in countries where baseball is incredibly popular. One exhibition team is the Internet-famous Savannah Bananas who are dearly loved on TikTok. If there isn’t a huge baseball foothold in your area, it’s worth looking into which MLB teams are most popular where you live and/or have the most coverage. Some analytics sites like FiveThirtyEight will occasionally create maps showing each team’s popularity in different states, countries, etc. and that can be a great guide.

Petty Rivalries 101

You can always just Google these, but I decided to just list off a few major ones for your perusal: the Yankees and Red Sox, the Rangers and Astros, the Dodgers and Giants, and the Orioles and Nationals. As Toronto Maple Leafs scholar Acting the Fulemin once put it, the point of sports is to be sad in a group, and the counterpart to this is that it absolutely rules getting to see a team you hate lose.

A quick note on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is that it's brought us one of my favourite ever quotes from ex-Mariner and current Yankee Nestor Cortes:

Once you’ve chosen a favourite team, they’re bound to have some kind of geographic or historic rivalry, and you can search those up to find out the background behind them. Also, I highly suggest deciding on a random team you hate for no reason. It makes the season experience much more interesting and gives you the chance to pray on their downfall whenever possible.

Where to Watch

As with most things about baseball, this will vary by your team. Depending on your cable package, you might be able to watch your favourite team already! That’s great news. Even if you can’t, feel free to turn on the TV, find a random baseball game, and imprint on either of those teams like a baby bird. The MLB website offers games broadcast with an MLB.tv subscription, but if you have an account you can also watch the Free Game of the Day and collected highlights from previous games! This is a great way to expand your team repertoire and figure out which team broadcasts you hate with a burning passion. Local radio stations do commentary on games if you like listening to that.

If you just want to get your feet wet rather than diving in straight away, pretty much every major game of the postseason will be uploaded by some “FirstName BunchOfNumbers” user on YouTube: for example, you can watch Game 1 of the World Series last year by just searching 2022 World Series Game 1 Full Game. However, watching the full game might be a slog if you don’t know what’s going on, and you can learn the intricacies of the sport without having to watch all four hours and twelve minutes of like, the 1962 World Series Game 7 (although that is a very exciting game). In that case, skip to the ‘How the Game is Governed’ section and read on.

All of this pertains to MLB teams, but there’s plenty to watch elsewhere. If you have a local baseball team, you might be able to catch a game or two in-person! Minor League Baseball also has their own broadcasting services and highlights are available on YouTube or their website.

League Structure

The MLB season is 162 games long. Spring training, aka the preseason, begins in February. During the regular season, teams play a three or four-game series with the same team before playing another with a different team. For example, this month the Philadelphia Phillies played 3 games in a row against the Washington Nationals on consecutive days. The day after the conclusion of their last game against Washington, they started a series against the Tigers, which was three games with one rescheduled due to weather, and then another three games against the Dodgers. This leads to a schedule that looks like this:

Occasionally, due to weather issues or other postponement reasons, a game will be rescheduled for the same day as another game against the same team — so they’ll play two full games in one day. This is called a double-header. They used to be routinely scheduled in MLB, but now they’re only played as a result of scheduling problems.

Team-wise, it’s a little more complicated than the NHL. Like the Eastern and Western conferences, MLB is separated into two ‘leagues’: the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). Both leagues have fifteen teams, and until the 1990s teams in different leagues didn’t play each other during the regular season at all, leading to different styles of play, tactics, and rules implemented between them. This is no longer the case! However, it’s important to recognize that unlike the NHL, NBA, NWSL, etc., Major League Baseball comprises two leagues, rather than two conferences of the same league. This matters because individual awards like the Cy Young or Gold Glove are given to the best players at their position in both the AL and NL, and the MLB MVP includes both an AL MVP and NL MVP.

MLB is made up of six divisions, with three in each league: AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central, and NL West. A division has five teams. If you know much about US geography, you might notice that the teams in each division don’t actually correspond very well to their geographic location: this is for a variety of reasons, not least of which is expansion teams requiring change in division partitioning, but nobody’s going to fix it at this point. And that’s okay!

Fandom and Things As Such

Baseball fandom, regrettably, is not much of a Tumblr phenomenon these days, but Baseball Twitter does have some incredible gems. The Baseball RPF tag on AO3 is also fairly fleshed out (albeit not to the extent of HRPF) and you’ll find that many authors who write HRPF have dabbled in baseball as well. If you’re lost on where to start choosing a team, going through the AO3 grab bag and choosing a random player who you really like in a fic is also a very respectable avenue.

I cannot stress this enough: the easiest way to learn the game without having to learn the characters is reading baseball AUs. That’s it. They’re ten times more approachable than trying to memorize everyone on your favourite team’s roster, and they abound in HRPF if you’re looking for a landing port. I have witness testimony from Lil (@wymgreenteam) that she learned what pitching signs and shortstops were from the wonderful Jack/Nico baseball AU. It works! Obviously fanfiction won’t teach you everything, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed they can be a fantastic first step and really illustrate the game from a fan perspective.

Other Media

I will caution against taking the ‘consume baseball-related media’ advice too seriously, because I find that unlike baseball AUs, other media involving baseball does not always come from someone who watches and loves the game. Think of it like hockey romance books—just like the main characters of those novels are probably not scoring hat tricks in 5 consecutive games, they probably aren’t reaching such baseball heights either.

With that said, I have not watched Daiya No Ace but I’ve heard that people do enjoy it! For genuine baseball culture-oriented media, Roger Angell wrote fantastic articles and books on the game. I love his book ‘Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion.’ Then there are movies like Moneyball and shows like A League of Our Own which tackle specific aspects of the game and how it’s played. Depending on your eventual favourite team(s), hometown coverage will also play a huge part: for the Phillies, that’s outlets like the Philadelphia Inquirer or Penn Live.

Narratives

Once upon a time there was a young man named Shohei Ohtani who was breaking records set in the 1920s while playing on a horrible, failing team that refused to build around him. I assume you have some familiarity with Ohtani, but he is very difficult to describe because he is literally making history. He is the only two-way player in MLB right now: a two-way player is someone who is both a pitcher and a batter; there are a ton of rules about what constitutes a two-way player, but currently Ohtani is the only true two-way player at the Major level. This is not a perfect analogy, but he’s sort of like if Jason Robertson went out there and had a 50-goal season, then immediately jumped into net and played like Juuse Saros. He’s the best all-around player in MLB, and even though he isn’t the best pitcher or the best batter, the fact that he’s incredible at both of them makes him stand out. He also plays with Mike Trout, who’s breaking records of his own, while trying to drag the LA Angels to any sort of notoriety. Here is a prescient article about the Ohtani-Trout era in Anaheim.

Each team has their own current narratives and pairings, but Ohtani and Trout are the biggest one right now. People compare them to McDavid and Draisaitl, but it’s more like if the Oilers had McDavid and Draisaitl but were also one of the worst teams in the league right now. However, Trout is currently in the worst slump of his career while the Angels have won the last 11 of 14 games, so really all this means is that baseball is fake.

Baseball is rife with redemption and villain arcs—you just have to dig a little to find them. I have presented the Ohtani and Trout trainwreck because it’s the closest comparable to the Oilers tragedy, but there are plenty others that really depend on team and current events.

Bush Leagues

MLB teams have a very different relationship to their minor-league affiliates than NHL teams do. There are about five hundred various regional minor leagues, but the MiLB levels are Rookie, Single A, High A, Double A, and Triple A, each of which has two or three individual leagues similar to the AL-NL system in MLB.

The fun thing about MiLB is that it’s a lot closer to home than MLB! Most places don’t have an MLB team, but there’s a good chance anywhere in the USA has a nearby MiLB or regional/collegiate league team. They also have way more interesting names, like the Portland Pickles, Rocket City Trash Pandas, and Sugar Land Space Cowboys. The prospect pipeline in MLB runs a whole lot slower than it does for the NHL, and generally through those Double or Triple-A affiliates, so it’s definitely worth paying attention to minor-league teams and their standout players to see who might be the next rookie on your favourite team.

MiLB player compensation has been an issue for a long time, and the players recently unionized! A few great write-ups on it: 1, 2, and 3.

Regional Popularity

I’ve said this plenty, but I truly do think that finding your baseball niche hinges upon imprinting on a hometown team or a player you just really like. This sport isn’t just an American pastime: it’s hugely popular in Central America and parts of East Asia, and some of the best and brightest up-and-coming (and current) players hail from countries that haven’t traditionally been viewed as bastions of baseball. The game is growing every day, and it’s wonderful to see.

Baseball is very popular in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Japan, and Korea. Out of those, I’d probably say the Dominican Republic has the largest MLB presence, with only American players outnumbering Dominican ones in the league, but the sport is also fast-growing in Japan, Korea, and Australia. Japan won the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which is the baseball equivalent of the World Cup of Hockey, where the best players in the world compete against each other and Shohei Ohtani (captain of the Japanese team) pitched to Mike Trout (captain of the American team) in possibly the most electric moment of baseball in the 21st century.

How to Understand Baseball

How the Game is Governed

Rather than doing a big writeup on this, I figured I would just find some articles and videos that go through the rules well and hold your hand through it! Think of these like helpful assets, similar to the first time you search up ‘what is goaltender interference’ or 'what is offsides' after hearing it mentioned on the play-by-play and a goal got turned over and all the fans were mad and you wanted to be in on the reason why. This is that search.

Baseball Explained in 5 Minutes

How to identify baseball pitches

Everything there is to know about the The Strike Zone in Baseball.

Intro to Baseball: Positions

What’s going on with the DH in MLB? (MLB Originals)

Rules Glossary | MLB - PDF Version

Lastly, once you’ve got a good grasp on the rules and positions, I probably wouldn’t go straight to watching a full game—you want to make sure you’re using your three hours well rather than staring at a game you don’t really get or don’t care about, or both. Instead, watch YouTube highlights of various players and best (or worst) plays of the week! This gives you an idea of what creates excitement in a game and why, and different positional strengths. From there, you can start watching longer clips, like full innings or the highlights uploaded after each game, which give you a better idea of the game’s pace.

Pressing Play

While I was writing this I remembered that a fun and unique baseball tradition is players having walk-up songs when they’re up in the batting lineup.

Most teams will post their players' walk-up songs on Spotify, YouTube, etc. and while there are a few songs that are synonymous with legendary players - like Mariano Rivera's "Enter Sandman" - players usually like to switch up their songs. Often, a song will become emblematic of an era in that team's history (Anthony Rizzo's "Intoxicated" and the Cubs' 2016 playoff run). After a while, you'll notice patterns in what players pick.

Learning about each player’s song rotation can be extremely revealing, like Mark Canha switching his walk-up songs to Born This Way, Vogue, and I Wanna Dance with Somebody in honour of the Mets Pride Night last week!

Diamond Sports Bankruptcy

I’m not going to pretend to know anything about broadcasting or RSNs, but Diamond Sports, the group that runs Bally Sports, recently filed for bankruptcy, which has really affected some franchises’ profit margins and where their games can be streamed. Not sure if this interests you, but you can read about it here!

The Oakland A’s Relocation

Again: I’m not an Oakland fan, but there’s a lot of debate right now about the owners of the Oakland Athletics moving the team to Vegas despite the wishes of the town and city. Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, also made rude comments about Oakland fans as a result of their Reverse Boycott Night, where almost 28,000 fans came out to support the team. A professional sports league commissioner acting like an asshole to fans of a small-market team is nothing new, but it’s the culmination of a lot of drama between terrible owners and a market that loves their team.

The Long, Storied History of Cheating

The long, storied history of cheating in MLB encompasses not only stealing signs and tipping pitches, but also foreign substance usage on hands (which pitchers sometimes try in order to change how they pitch the ball), illegal equipment, and more. It’s kind of a lot. The most notable, recent case is the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Win.

Houston’s Fucking Astros

Nobody likes the Astros except Astros fans. They won the World Series last year and are universally hated, not least of all because of the 2017 cheating controversy.

In baseball, ‘signs’ are what catchers use to communicate to pitchers what kind of pitch they should throw. These rely on knowledge of the hitter currently on the plate and catching them by surprise. Each pitcher-catcher battery will usually have their own signs. In 2017, a year in which Houston won the World Series, the team set up a video camera in the center field seats with a full frontal view of the catcher, and they would use that to figure out what pitches the pitcher would throw. Then from the dugout, whoever was watching the video feed at the time would use a signal (audio cues, like banging garbage can lids) to tell the hitter who was up what pitch they had to expect. This was mostly possible because of the time delay between a catcher signalling and a pitcher throwing, which has been changed by this season’s pitch clock implementation.

In 2020, The Athletic published the first exposé article about the Astros cheating scandal, and it rocked the baseball world. Several immediate consequences followed: the Astros GM and field manager (head coach) were suspended for the full 2020 season, and although players received no punishment, the team gave up four draft picks (their 1st and 2nd round picks in 2020 and 2021).

Pitching and Sticky Stuff

Pitchers applying foreign substances on their hands is always a controversy in MLB games. Recently, star pitcher Max Scherzer was ejected and suspended 10 games after an umpire decided his hand was unusually sticky. TLDR: cheating is common, and consequences vary. Nobody has gotten over the Astros cheating scandal.

Expected By Whom

A quick rundown on the analytics side of the game and how baseball stats look very different both in their progress and insights than hockey. This is how you can sound like you know ball.

The Moneyball book does a great job explaining the rise of sabermetrics (baseball analytics) in the early 2000s, starting with Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. Because MLB doesn’t have a salary cap and their luxury tax isn’t difficult for big-market teams to pay, small-market teams like Oakland have to constantly innovate in their game tactics in order to stay competitive, and that’s why the game today is so numbers-oriented. Watching a baseball game, you’ll see far more stats than you would in an NHL broadcast: OBP (On-Base Percentage), ERA (Earned Run Average), pitching speed, slugging percentage, pythagorean win percentage, and more. Do not fear the big numbers. You don’t have to know what every stat means in order to love the game, but if you watch enough and you hear commentators discussing what, say, Kodai Senga's ERA is, you’ll come to learn what they mean! In a pinch, you can also easily just search up ‘league average [stat]’ to figure out what the standard is.

Some websites that are really instrumental in baseball analytics are Baseball-Reference, FiveThirtyEight, and FanGraphs, plus YouTube channels like Foolish Baseball and statisticians like Bill James and Tom Tango. Baseball is a lot further along in its analytics revolution than hockey, and as a result, such analysis is not just a thing for Stats Nerds but also a huge part of the way the game is played and watched today. Personally, I love stats that assess umpire accuracy in calling strikes, and so Umpire Scorecards on Twitter is one of my favourites.

It's Too Long and Too Much Money

If Connor McDavid played in Major League Baseball and was close to the kind of player he is in the NHL right now, he would be getting paid north of 400 million dollars, not to mention endorsement money. Instead, he sold his soul to a sport where reporters ask about his biological clock and his only consolation for living in Edmonton is his heated driveway.

Because MLB payrolls are so much larger than the NHL’s and they have a luxury tax rather than a salary cap, contracts are worth much more. The sport itself is less volatile as well: both a product of the longer season (larger sample size) and the luck factor inherent in chance-based games like hockey that isn’t present as much in baseball, a player's year-to-year performance is easier to predict and therefore teams feel more comfortable betting on their production. In contrast to the NHL’s 8-year limit & penalty for long contracts (like the Kovalchuk deal), and bridge deals made when a player hasn't demonstrated that their performance is sustainable, MLB GMs often give their stars contracts over 10 years, and for hundreds of millions of dollars total. Mike Trout is on a 12-year contract for almost $430 million, and by several estimates, his endorsements and the money he receives for being named All-Star, AL MVP, etc. brings that up significantly.

MLB front office terminology is very similar to the NHL, but their contracts differ in another important way: baseball players can opt out of a contract and enter free agency. For example, last season Carlos Correa agreed to a 12-year, $310m deal with the New York Mets, but the Mets were worried about the results from his physical and his injury history, so they pulled out of the deal before the season began and instead, Correa signed with the Minnesota Twins on a six-year, $200m contract.

The Used Boy Auction

Drafting in MLB works very differently than the NHL. The amateur draft (the Main one, which is also called the Rule 4 Draft) takes place mid-season and lasts 20 rounds (used to be 40), plus picks that teams are given as compensation for other events. Teams can draft players either out of high school or college baseball—while the majority of players in the early days were picked right out of high school, nowadays the largest percentage are collegiate players. High school players are only eligible after graduation, and they don’t have junior leagues like the OHL or USHL. Players at universities can only be drafted after their 3rd season there in order to avoid going to a university only for drafting purposes.

Teams retain the rights to sign the players they draft until July 15 of the following year, and a player who does not sign with their team is eligible to be signed once again as long as they meet the age and educational requirements (attending an academic institution, three years of college, etc.) Unless the player has consented to be re-selected by their old team, they cannot be chosen again in another draft year. This leads to players like Brandon Belt having been drafted three times, by the Red Sox, Braves, and Giants, and ultimately playing for the Giants after his college career.

The Rule 5 Draft is another major part of the MLB drafting system. It's sort of similar to what happens in the NHL with an expansion draft, but it takes place in the winter every year. As the MLB prospect pipeline moves slower and it's easy for teams to Stockpile high-quality prospects and bury them in the minors due to the team's current success, this draft aims to ensure that young players have a chance to play in the bigs on a team that needs more manpower. Not every team has to select a player in the Rule 5 draft; last season, 15 players were taken, including the Nats selecting Thad Ward and the Phillies selecting Noah Song.

Here's the official MLB description of the drafting process:

Podcasters or Whatever

My most toxic trait is that I unfortunately love listening to sports podcasts, so here are some good baseball ones:

The Athletic Baseball Show

Ballpark Dimensions

Effectively Wild

The Strike Zone

I hope this serves as a useful first step! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want to yell about baseball - I wrote this for two people, so if either of those two people find it helpful, the three hours I spent on it will have been worth it.

#baseball #waiting for spring #yun talks #mlb #baseball primer #i guess???#pinned for the offseason

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 5 months ago

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By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Jun 18, 2024

With the inexorable spread of DEI – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – across the western world, it’s refreshing to see at least one major company resist the decrees of this new religion. This is precisely what happened this week when Scale, an Artificial Intelligence company based in San Francisco, launched a new policy to ensure that its employees were hired on the basis of – wait for it – being the most talented and best qualified for the job.

This innovation, which sees race, gender and sexuality as irrelevant when it comes to hiring practices, should hardly be considered revolutionary. And yet in a world in which the content of one’s character is less important than the colour of one’s skin, to treat everyone equally irrespective of these immutable characteristics is suddenly deemed radical.

Scale’s CEO, Alexandr Wang, explained that rather than adopt DEI policies, the company would henceforth favour MEI, which stands for Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. He explained the thinking behind the new scheme in a post on X.

“There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal. Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do.”

One can already hear the likes of Robin DiAngelo and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez screaming in fury at this blatant implementation of good old-fashioned liberal values. Surely the only way to defeat racism and homophobia is to treat ethnic and sexual minorities as incapable of high achievement and in need of a leg up from their betters?

It is instructive to compare reactions from the Twittersphere (now X) and Instagram, as one X user has done. If nothing else, the comparison reveals how the divide in the culture war is playing out on social media since Elon Musk’s takeover. On X, major figures in the corporate world such as Tobias Lütke (CEO of Shopify), Palmer Luckey (founder of Oculus VR) and Musk himself have congratulated Wang on his new initiative.

By contrast, here are some of the responses on Instagram:

“You’re ‘disrupting’ current hard-fought standards you don’t like, by reverting to a system rooted in bias and inequality that asks less of you as a hiring manager and as a leader” – Dan Couch (He/Him)

“Curious to see how hiring processes can effectively (and objectively) measure one’s ‘merit’, ‘excellence’, and ‘intelligence’, all of which are very subjective terms” – Cole Gawin (He/Him)

“What is merit and how do we measure it?” – Rio Cruz Morales (They/Them)

“This sounds a lot like excuse making for casting off DEI principles” – R.C. Rondero De Mosier (He/Him)

The pronouns, of course, signify membership of the cult, and so we should not be surprised to see the sentiments of its minions mirroring each other so closely. What Wang is proposing of course builds equality into the hiring system and, contrary to these complaints, it is entirely possible to measure merit objectively. This, after all, is the entire point of academic assessment. The arguments against merit can only be sustained if one presupposes that systemic inequalities are ingrained within society, that all of these relate to the concept of group identity, and that adjustments have to be made accordingly to guarantee equality of outcome.

This gets to the heart of “equity”, a principle which has become so entrenched in the corporate world partly it sounds so much like “equality” and has duped many into supposing it to be synonymous. In truth, “equity” is the precise opposite of “equality”, just as “diversity” actually means “political homogeneity” and “inclusion” means “exclusion of non-conformists”. As I have argued many times before, the culture war is really about language and who gets to control the meaning of words. The prevalence of DEI did not come about because it is the best system, but rather because its practitioners use slippery terminology that operates as a Trojan Horse, sneaking in regressive ideas under the cover of progressivism.

With the corporate orgy that is Pride Month, now seems a good time to appeal to businesses and corporations to revisit their policies, and to consider adopting Wang’s suggestion of MEI rather than DEI. The advantages are obvious. Hiring the best people means that profit and productivity will inevitably rise. As an additional bonus, it also means that minorities will not end up being patronised and treated as second-class citizens. For genuine progressives, this is surely the way to go.

That the workplace has become so politicised is also, of course, why cancel culture has been able to wreak such havoc. With that in mind, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer some of my own thoughts on how companies might tackle the problem. In September 2020, I posted on Twitter a proposed six-part pledge for business owners. My Twitter account was relatively small at that point, and so the fact that it was retweeted hundreds of times showed that there was at least some appetite out there to put such measures in place.

This was the wording of the pledge for business owners:

We will never discipline or fire members of staff on the basis of pressure from online activists.

We have no interest in our employees’ political opinions, and how they choose to express themselves outside the workplace is no business of ours.

We will not probe into our employees’ thoughts with “unconscious bias training”, or force them to undertake workshops that presuppose the existence of “systemic injustice”.

We will never make statements of fealty to any given cause, political or ideological, or claim to promote certain “values”. Our aim is to make a profit, not preach to our customers.

We will not tolerate the public shaming of employees if they cause offence, either through a joke or poor phrasing, and will instead seek to resolve internally any disputes that naturally occur when human beings work together.

We reject the current predominance of identity politics and will simply treat everyone equally (staff and customers alike) irrespective of their race, gender, sexuality, or any other immutable characteristic.

Fanciful stuff, obviously. I was later informed that at least one manager had adopted my suggestions, and it would be interesting to hear, all these years later, how this worked out.

In any case, if you happen to own a business why not give it a try? At the very least, I would strongly recommend hiring on the basis of ability and experience rather than skin colour, sexual orientation or the contents of applicants’ underwear.

#Andrew Doyle #diversity equity and inclusion #diversity #equity #inclusion #DEI must die #DEI bureaucracy #cancel culture #MEI #merit #excellence #intelligence #merit excellence and intelligence #pronouns in bio #pronoun culture #meritocracy #make merit matter #identity politics #religion is a mental illness

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not-goldy · 7 months ago

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You're saying, Taekook are so popular and their ship is spreading like wild fire. And you also say Tkkrs are Tae leaning.

So that means, it's Tae that is popular. He's catching more fans. Tae keeps name dropping Jungkook, so it makes sense why Tae leaning stans move towards tkk ship naturally. And it benefits JK too. I remember JK gained millions of followers on IG so fast after Tae posted a tkk pic.

And majority of the fandom are tkkrs, so it makes sense that JK is liked by them. Eventually when they figure out tkk aren't real, they'll dump JK and turn into a Tae solo cause they are Tae leaning after all.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when shippers turn solos. Tkkrs, jikookers and jinkookers form majority of JK's supporters. And his own solos are useless anyway, some kids based in India or some 50 yr olds based in Korea. Both don't know sh.t.

You stating the obvious really he is the most followed member of the group. People like to think it means nothing but clearly don't know how social media marketing and algorithms works.

The more followers he has, the more likely his account is likely to be recommended to new users and persons who search for BTS on the page. Which in turn guarantees he gets more traction and exposure than the other accounts thus more more followers 💀

I mean think about it, he has more followers because he has a higher conversion rate. He easily turns clicks and views to followers. That's a good metric to have.

On the flip side, the more followers an account has the lower their engagement rate gets as compared to smaller accounts. 10% engagement rate can easily translate to 50% to 90% engagement for a relatively smaller account because 10% of a lot of followers is still a lot of followers for a bigger account.

Do the math. If a person has 5 million followers with 50% engagement rate and another has 30 million followers with 10% engagement rate thats still 500000 more engaged followers than the person with 5 million followers.

I don't know an actual shipper to turn into a solo unless they forced themselves to ship a pair or were faking to be shippers in the first place.

Shippers are shippers because they ship two people they stan and enjoy seeing together 💀

Tae is also the most shipped idol in kpop with Jungkook trailing right behind him. So the exposure is not just coming from Tae's solo activities such as his acting, modeling, variety shows, his Wooga squard its also coming from his over ship Fandoms.

Jungkook equally has his own famous friendship group and several other ships outside BTS and that intersection can put him at an advantage.

I don't know Jimin to be part of a relevant external friendship group that can organically pull crowd towards him which is not necessarily a bad thing. He did in the past but....

His association with Kai, Taemin, Sungwoon.... well, that only goes as far as those idols remain relevant and lately, honey☹

Also numbers don't necessarily translate to much if a person has a lower conversion rate but it does help in terms of how much one gets paid by brands or platforms on those platforms.

So while Tae may be followed by too many kids on the app who may be too young too low income to support his own product release, it doesn't mean it doesn't make him a higher earner amongst brands or by IG if their goal is just to nurture his young audience, expose their products to them and ensure long term commitment to their brand, or future conversion of those young audience into customers.

They may be willing to pay him more just to gain exposure to his younger audience while persons like Jimin with a mature audience may be good to have where one aims to make a quick or immediate sale.

Marketing is a complex industry and I hate the over simplicity with which we approach conversations about BTS and their commercial value.

But..... very well.

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sizzlingpatrolfox · 1 year ago

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oh just found it! https://twitter.com/gingerol95/status/1123723264591790081?s=20

the other members know how jimin becomes the main attraction in america and on other continents. no one can deny it and they also know how powerful he is, which is why i don't really get why they and their label underestimate him. jimin has been proving himself time and time again

Of course they know. When Jimmy Fallon said to their faces that Jimin was his favorite, Namjoon just shrugged and said "it's okay, we understand" and laughed. And that's just one of the examples I can think of right now. Everytime they've been to the US, the attention was on Jimin and I can't even say he asked for it, the hosts interviewers etc were the ones to put the attention on him. Like the GMA lady asking Jungkook if Jimin was there, or that guy in the variety (?) magazine as well.

I actually think the Harry comparisons in terms of who's more "popular" or who's the "breakout" member are funny because I was there for all of the years one direction were together, and the most similar case to Harry in BTS is... Jimin.

I never talked about this or brought it up because those comparisons don't mean anything to me. I mean, I get where people are coming from and their intentions when comparing, but it doesn't really elicit any emotional response from me, if that makes sense. Same goes for the Michael Jackson comparisons, I think I understand the parallels but the honest to God truth is that I was a toddler when MJ was famous, and I don't really know what he inspired in people because I just didn't live through that and nobody in my family was a fan either.

But I'll say it now only once, as someone who was there for one direction, the closest to what Harry was, it's always been Jimin. The reactions they get from people when they were in red carpets, the online "virality", reactions to them on stage, being known by people who weren't fans, being loved and singled out by TV show hosts everywhere, women in the industry choosing them. Even their ways of navigating their private lives are similar, because Harry is not really on social media either and nobody sees him that much.

More than anything, it's the dedication they put into what they do. The exciting performances, even though Harry doesn't dance people are never bored with his shows. He's engaging and has high energy. Communication skills, the ability to reach people, the overflowing, effortless charisma just pouring out.

I've specially been noticing the similarities in their work ethic; you can love him or hate him, but Harry is so serious about his music. And I mean it, he's so so serious. He lives for what he does. He has a hand on everything, all the music is his and all the ideas are his. He works a lot. Jimin is no different in that sense.

I just noticed this now because people have been bringing up Harry so much lately that I ended up thinking about it, but never before I've had any reason to think about all that.

I don't believe for one second that the company is underestimating him. They're simply and plainly purposefully trying to bring him down. For what reason exactly, I don't know. But it's not that they aren't aware of the reactions and the support that Jimin inspires from people; they just don't care. They care more about the members that are using their "infrastructure" and "tools", rather than the one who's simply being himself.

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tadpolesonalgae · 10 months ago

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Who do you think is the most intelligent?

Out of the girls I think it’s Nesta and Gwyn(Gwyn in the library and in the second book Nestas Calculations) but out of the boys I am kinda torn between Eris and Rhys.

Like all of them are smart people but you know the ones who have broader knowledge, who are more knowledgeable hungry and have a thirst.

Lucien and Emerie would be runners 🏃

-🩰

Oh my gosh, please anyone else chime in on this because I’d be really interested to hear some other answers!!

Warnings: a lot of blabbering on my part 🫢, the majority of this is me assuming things that might not be canon, so 🤷

First of all I think it’s nice to just preface that I believe all of them are smart in their own way: Elain probably has a lot of knowledge about gardening and baking, Cass is probably excellent with emotional intelligence and good at gauging people’s limits for training and such, so they all have their own strengths.

However, if we’re going at it in terms of overall knowledge, encompassing a wide variety of topics as opposed to how well familiarised they are with specifics, I think I agree with you about Rhys and Eris.

Rhys is the one who explicitly mentions he had a thorough education as a child, and it’s also mentioned he has what sounded like a mechanical reconstruction of their solar system in his study—which he built himself??—so immediately that’s something that stands out to me. Not to mention he likely had to learn a heck-ton of politics and history, probably some kind of magic theory, different spells, fighting techniques, maybe languages?, economics, on top of general etiquette, and how to handle social interactions—and master them.

Since Eris likely grew up in a similar situation to Rhys, he probably has a similar arsenal of knowledge over various topics? I think Eris probably wasn’t given as much freedom as Rhys was growing up, so I’m torn between whether that would have helped or hindered his discoveries? Whether it would have quashed his curiosity or only encouraged it as he grew up? He seems more than capable of thinking for himself, so I’m tempted to say that means he went in search of his own answers?

Probably overall I’d be swayed to saying Rhys has more overall knowledge, but that’s influenced mainly by Rhys having been able to see the world through so many different lenses, and that’s beyond just heir to the court and High Lord. He’d grown up in Illyria so would have that slightly rougher experience of growing up, and getting to compare that to the wealth that would wait for him on his father’s side, then he’s played the role of benevolent ruler to Velaris; cruel dictator to the Hewn City; warrior to the Illyrians, and slave to Amarantha.

Obviously we know a lot more about Rhys than we do about Eris which probably heavily impacts this, since we don’t have a full picture, but from the things we have seen I’m inclined to say they have an equal amount of knowledge over academic subjects but Rhys has a wider variety of personal experiences.

For the ladies 💁‍♀️—Amren’s been alive for the longest, but then she also doesn’t remember a chunk of her life before the prison? She seems to be more familiar with old spells and history, as well as having personally lived through that history so she probably has a lot of general knowledge?

Nesta I think has the potential to know a lot since she reads frequently, probably noses at Cass’ war books too, has access to the library and Gwyn, so can get some different recommendations? She also grew up probably with a good education—again with her calculations for how many ships would be needed—so she seems to have a grasp on mathematics and maybe also some wider topics like agriculture to understand how, if the queens were going to ship the humans off the landmass, how much food and clothing would be needed not only to sustain everyone but to set them up to stand on their own?

With Gwyn, while she’s been in the library for a while (I think it’s about two years?), I don’t think she has the knowledge that Nesta does? Of course with her working for Meryll (idk how to spell it) she has specific knowledge on what’s probably a very complex topic that requires understanding in other fields too to properly grasp what’s going on, but I don’t think her general knowledge encompasses as much as Nesta’s does.

Mor is also probably a good contender but we know so little about her character I don’t feel like I can make a conclusion about how much information she has ☹️

#🩰 anon <3 #🩰#acotar characters #acotar thoughts #speculations

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mollybrown423-blog · 2 years ago

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Week 1 Thought Blog

This week's readings focused on defining social media and shedding light on the many changes happening within the internet. Aichner (2021) finding that social media is shifting from “people” to “users” ties in with John’s (2022) suggestion that sharing is declining on social media. “Users” are far more impersonal, which seems to correlate with the decline of sharing. John’s (2022) article resonated with me because I think that social media is becoming a different place in that it is no longer new and exciting enough that people want to share their lives. It has become a public forum where people can say whatever they want. Using the term “expressing yourself” is far more accurate to describe what social media consists of. A study to build on this would examine whether social media is a positive or negative force in people’s lives. I hypothesize that it is a negative force when people are predisposed to negative thinking or mental illness because they will compare themselves to the image of “perfection” shown on social media.

Shifting to AI, Pavlik’s (2023) article fascinated me. The article was a great demonstration of what AI can do. This article is important not only in mass communication because it proves that AI can be helpful in a variety of fields. Personally, it is hard to wrap my head around all of this because what have we been working so hard for? If AI makes everything so easy, what will we challenge ourselves with next? I think that in the year 2035, AI will not be widely accepted in everyday life. I think it will be used as a personal assistant, a lot like Amazon Alexa. It will probably be commonly used in professions that perform extensive research, but I don’t see a massive need for everyday people to use AI consistently. I do see a lot of potential in using AI to find predators on the internet. Human trafficking is done widely online, so creating a “bot” to intercept predators’ messages can make the internet safer. The fear with this is that traffickers or other malicious people will find another way to conduct their businesses.

It was interesting to see how AI is seen as a big part of people’s visions of the internet in the future. I think it is important to recognize that the internet and technological advances will make a difference in our jobs. With remote work becoming more common, AI could even replace some workers whose primary job is writing. This is concerning and alarming because it could mean people lose their jobs. This process will be interesting to watch unfold and its impact on society.

Overall, analyzing how technology has changed throughout its existence shows that it will continue to evolve. The internet has the potential for a lot of positive changes in the year 2035 as long as the people behind it are trying to create positivity in our society. In the future, I hope that there will be less pressure on the internet to depict “perfection” and more of an emphasis on authenticity.

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borderlinebatshit · 1 month ago

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Reblogging here though I saw you add some insightful additions and conversations re: prisons and prison guards just to say that you are absolutely right and in addition to this I might add that the rhetorical effect of uncritical press reproduction and circulation of police overdose narratives is that it implicitly if not often explicitly reinforces a narrative about drug users being super and subhuman - if police, who are always spoken of as the brave strong defenders of society, can succumb to overdose from mere proximity, let alone skin contact with fentanyl, what does this say of the people who are handling or ingesting it as a daily practice without overdosing other than that they are some kind of mutant who exists beyond the realm of normal society?

The stakes of this are twofold, at least: First, this media circus and moral panic serves to disguise the role of drug prohibition and supply interdiction -that is the role of police and border patrol themselves- on producing fentanyl as a dangerous adulterant. Overdose epidemiologists refer to this as the Iron Law of Prohibition where a tight climate of prohibition creates market pressures for ever more concentrated forms of the drug - think the popularization of liquor over beer during alcohol prohibition. It simply makes more business sense to move towards highly potent synthetics because you can move more volume and get a higher return on that volume. This is particularly the case because synthetics like fentanyl reduce dependency on traditional heroin processing and poppy fields which have become more unfeasable in mexico because of supply side interdiction and the burning and defoliation of poppy fields (drug epidemiologists refer to this as "the baloon effect")

The second part is that the implicit sub/superhumanity of drug users/dealers (there is no daylight between them at the low levels of the market) here in terms of their preternatural resistance to overdose compared to cops reintroduces a very old rhetorical function of drugs, which is that they are a rehearsal and sublimation for how we talk about race. The notion of drug users as superhuman is deeply ingrained in the explicit justifications for extrajudicial killings - examples include "excited delirium syndrome" in which putatively intoxicated victims of police killings gained through their alleged states of intoxication varieties of mania and superhuman strength which forced the killing hand of the officer. Id recommend the legal scholar OK Obasogie here but even outside of this specific term you can see notes of it in the figuration of marijuana to justify Trayvon Martin's murder, the allegations that George Floyd was a "hulking demon" by his murderer and its antecedents in the early 20th century that police forces needed higher caliber bullets to deal with the superhuman resilience of cocaine using Black people - if all of this maps onto the way racial discourse has configured Black people, most often Black men as hyper physical threats this is not a coincidence and this is the general historical picture how drugs become mobile social metaphors for racial others and their effects usually imbued with the features of relevant stereotypes.

One could say more about the exaggeration of fentanyls lethality - not that it isn't lethal as an adulterant just that it isnt magical - and this much is clear not only in police overdose narratives but the attempted defense that George Floyd had fentanyl in his system as if that was the cause of his death, or in Texas governor Greg Abbot saying when he launched the One Pill Kills program that "there is enough fentanyl crossing our border to kill every man woman and child in Texas" - a statement that means nothing, because there's enough water in Lake Superior to drown every man woman and child in America. The hyperlethality trope becomes a vehicle not only for a heightened paranoia and defensiveness but also a complete decontextualization of the harms done to drug users, the sociological operations of the drug market, and any meaningful consideration of how law enforcement activily worsens and produces the overdose crisis as we know it.

Sorry for the lengthy addition this just weighs on my conscious heavily as someone who studies drug markets and has lost loved ones to overdose and drug toxicity, i think what you said here is very important and just wanted to put my two cents in.

I'm so frustrated by the lack of response to the mass psychogenic illness of law enforcement officials claiming to suffer contact fentanyl poisoning. There were a few studies done that quietly concluded that it's not real, none of the cases were credible, and the symptoms most closely resemble a panic attack or somatic episode.

No one is connecting this to systemic issues in police training and culture and no one is treating this as the canary in the coal mine it is.

Modern police training is functionally cult indoctrination, and intentionally cultivates paranoia. Police learn that everyone is out to get them, danger lurks around every corner, and their only job is to make it home alive after their shift.

They then enter the body of police culture, where questioning the bad behavior of fellow officers is at best strictly socially punished and at worst can get them killed, where they are constantly vigilant to say the right things and portray the right beliefs.

Suddenly, after generations of mainstream culture being generally supportive of police, in the midst of an anxiety-riddled pandemic, there is a highly-publicized backlash against law enforcement. Regular people are saying ACAB, calling cops fascists and murderers and wife-beaters. They're posting officers' service records on social media. Police, unwilling to believe they are evil, experience a cognitive dissonance backlash effect and cling to beliefs that contradict reality.

No one should be shocked - and no one should be hesitant to say - that there is a mental health crisis in law enforcement. They are paranoid, hyper-vigilant, and mired in cognitive dissonance. They have guns and virtually unchecked power to enact violence in their communities. Making up delusional stories about fentanyl is a pretty mild outcome compared to what we should be expecting from these circumstances.

Police aren't just bastards. They're a danger to themselves and others.

#overdose #the war on drugs #fentanyl

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jentlemahae · 6 days ago

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mantra should have had more promotions, ads and etc i don’t get why jensetters don’t get that 😭😭😭 you criticize any aspect and suddenly it’s oh you hate jennie? you hate lisa? you hate rosé? jisoo, i haven’t seen as much recently bc sooyas seem relatively calm in comparison with her dramas/movie and promised music so she’s temporarily out of this conversation.

ads aren’t bad. promotions aren’t bad. having teams encourage streaming/hyping festivals, etc aren’t bad things. play listing can be a mixed bag, depending on someone’s perspective.

i am not even talking about charts. jenlisa’s strategies into the western market befuddle me! having ads/more promotions would have been so smart especially in mantra’s second week? having the hype die was the worst thing to HAPPEN. they haven’t even promoted her festivals 😭. then lisa headlining is great but her team sucks at promoting it. having more western activities would also help rather than relying on hype alone.

i am sorry i think the bare minimum is dumb when bp should be getting SEEN even with their singles/pre-releases and not us having to hope they’ll do better with their albums. (we know they are famous together and individually! it just needs to be boosted better) and while rosé’s rollout isn’t perfect, she’s keeping the hype. like her going on hot ones? planned interviews and variety? perfect! her pre-order link? perfect! all the planned releases (ktown4u, etc are in place too!) her team has been more active on social media in comparison to jenlisa’s teams. i do wish she had performed in brazil (this one puzzles me too as why she hadn’t..) but i think it’s going really well in comparison to jenlisa’s. and i don’t mean comparing them as one member is better than the other — but rather in terms of execution.

i have been really trying not to compare the girls but it’s hard when three of them are actively releasing music and only one has a team that seems to know what they’re doing 🙃🙃 and i mean they may actually be *the only team who knows what they’re doing* because atlantic and tbl are both established companies and this isn’t the first rodeo for either of them, so it makes sense that lloud and oa are taking a minute or two more. but yall had a whole year to prepare ??? and this is especially directed at oa because they dropped mantra after a week for no reason and now it’s crickets ???? at least lisa started teasing new woman very soon after rockstar, we literally have no idea what jennie is even planning ? and again, they has a whole year to get their ducks in a row at oa and make sure that this comeback would be flawless, but instead it’s annoying decision after annoying decision …… and honestly i think it’s okay to be a little annoyed at jennie too cause girlie knew what us fans wanted 🙃🙃 mantra was a great first single, but if she wasn’t planning on promoting it further she should have taken advantage of the hype by already moving onto the next project . i just hope they do better for the album (and at this point i am really wondering when it’s coming out because alter ego is dropping in late feb so could jnk1 be in march ?? girl 😬)

#sorry im annoyed #logged into twt and saw everybody fighting my gosh #anonymous #sophie ask

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gossipgirloff1 · 3 months ago

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https://www.tumblr.com/gossipgirloff1/760632211437420544/whats-the-issue-with-lissie-mackintosh-i-dont?source=share

nothing has been confirmed, but there's a lot of stuff about her becoming really unpleasant to work with. at one point she was huge, she was basically invited to work on the paddock and conduct interviews with just about as much free reign as regular journalists, she was invited to car launches by the teams, etc. but then randomly she just stopped showing up to all these events at the same time. so people were wondering if she lost the gig she had or not bc it was a pretty drastic drop in content.

we then started seeing her at indy, and she started dating marcus armstrong, after a bit the same rumors of her being really difficult to work with started popping up again. apparently she was making a lot of demands for her 'job', she wanted access to places that only the team were allowed to go, etc. that lasted for quite a bit and then the rumors of her being emotionally abusive towards marcus started popping up. her demanding free access to his cards, trying to isolate him from his friends on the grid, controlling his access to socials, etc. and whenever he did something she didn't like she'd spread rumors that he was cheating on her. after they broke up, a lot of people said that she would still show up at races to try to get him to talk to her.

and now she's back at the f1 paddock, but greatly reduced compared to where she was before. f1 academy is constantly inviting her, her mom has connections to aston martin, which was how she got her big gig in the first place, but now she's there quite a bit through that. she's back to posting regularly on her youtube channel, she had oscar on there as a guest recently, so it seems like she's been working towards building her channel to make up for the lack of opportunities on the paddock.

in terms of interactions with regular people, it's a mixed bag. some people have said she's nice, others have said that she was rude and was visibly talking about them and laughing at them with her friends.

i personally feel like the same types of accusations are coming from too big a variety of people for it to just be jealousy over her being pretty and successful. some of that is there for sure, but i don't think you lose opportunities the way she has just because some fangirls are jealous of you. she definitely did something to get taken off of the press lists the way she did

Thank you for the explanation anon ❤️

#lissiemackintoshgossip

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betterbemeta · 3 months ago

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Sometimes I think this principle about the honse can even be bad.

The fact that working with them at all provokes profound feelings of awareness of your limitations and the need for communication, I mean.

If you are even peripheral to equestrian interest discussion you are going to see a lot of people who believe they understand their horse more than they do. And that's not unique to any hobby or interest; there are people who believe they are better hobby mechanics than they are, better martial artists than they are, etc.

But consider the dog.

The dog comes in a variety of sizes. There's lots of cultural baggage about dogs, and many people buy a dog expecting they don't need to know anything about dogs. They have schema about 'what a dog is' that they were raised with. They aren't prepared to see things from the dog's point of view. You can watch It's Me or the Dog to go see this in action pretty much every time.

It's easier to project this way on small dogs than big dogs because you can more easily manhandle a small dog and force it to do what you need. (not that people don't project on big dogs, some people treat them like muscle cars, it's weird.)

But even big dogs are pretty easy to accommodate in our society. They usually don't need special buildings, for example. The barrier for entry to owning a large dog is comparatively low compared to owning a horse.

It's true that some people can get a horse somewhat cheaply. But a horse's basic needs are harder to meet. They need a lot more space, they need specialized housing, they aren't casual companion animals for your daily life, and more.

A lot of people wouldn't commit to that... only to 'suck' at it.

So with dogs we start at the small end and the bigger and bigger the dog gets the more likely it's able to maul you if you treat it bad... and then I think we actually have a chance to step backwards when we get to a horse-sized critter. Because it is really difficult to put up that level of investment for what feels like a low return.

Like I am not going to put forward some kind of singular Horse Person Projection Theory, ok? there's a vast variety of people out there. Some people are so enamored with the idea of horse that they are willing to do all that work, but are fragile to criticism of an experienced ring teacher etc. Other people can put a saddle on something and decide they know how to ride a horse simply because they can get on top of it. Still others will experience a lot of near misses or accidents while riding their horse and begin to romanticize the patterns. And then you have the people who think they're Dragonriders of Pern... It's not all one thing.

But a horse is still a large beast that cannot directly tell you what it's feeling in human terms, and a large high-investment critter like that is a really enormous human emotional bid. 'Horse people are Like That because you can't do anything with a horse without entering into The Mind of the Horse," yeah, and human beings are also often NOT prepared to respect the mentality of even other humans. Being forced to do this by necessity will make people super weird about if they are any good at it. It is not only a 'spiritual merging' but I think a form of... trauma? of actually NOT being able to dominate a creature, or expect that it will accommodate you through social scripts.

There are many people unprepared for this, as they would be unprepared for alien first contact... but still want to tell their alien adventure story, because aliens, bruh, how could you meet aliens and NOT connect with them?

Me: I'm going to look at horse forums, I bet the drama there is so funny

Me after 4 hours of horse forums: Damn....those people really love and care about their horses...

#i want to make it clear that i DONT want to negate anything you're saying #its true #and this isnt me trying to be like 'some people are just bad at thing and are in denial'.#its like... caring for horses themselves is such a big bid that it is harder to ACCEPT that large reality.#'failure' to understand honse is a nightmare of Sunk Cost plus Physically Enforced Rejection. but by whose authority did you fail? God's?#nothing's handing out honse report cards. especially not for free. many people can 'choose' not to fail honse.#Only the beast itself can say you're done and if a horse is more patient fucking around might not result in finding out right away.#there are even phony trainers out there who Get Away With It for years! They have a lot to insulate them from consequences.#It's x10 harder to admit that an animal might be Enduring you rather than working with you if you must move the sky for a chance to love it #Valid to Eat Fingers is a meme about the fear laypeople have about a Beast that could Do Anything It Wants #it would be hard to be a Horse Person with that fear. So its easy to conclude you and horse Have Understanding.#much easier than actually achieving some #btw im not some kind of special expert I haven't had the chance to ride in years but this was really profound to me when I was more active.#i know other people described the 'horse community drama' im not rly going there i just mean 'horse is big PROMOTES weird human behavior'

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personal---archive · 1 year ago

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Queer art

Queer art aantekeningen

Definitie volgens de Queer Dicitionary:

An umbrella term used proudly by some people to identify themselves as members of the lesbian, gay, bi and/or trans communities or cultures. Ocassionally used by someone who whises to defy gender or sexual restrictions.

Volgens Linus van der Maas;

Nowadays, the term Queer is more variously defined than ever before. It has not only to do with identity or sexuality, Being queer is not the same as being gay. Queer means lots of things to lots of different people.

-Queer became the preffered label for many people in the LGBTQIA+ spectrum because of its's lack of a fixed meaning and the spirit of social deviance it connotes

Ella Shohat

-Revisionism; the critical re-examination of presumed historical facts and existing historiography

-Area studies;the study of the history, politics, economics, and cultures of various areas of the world or of a particular area of the world

-Relational studies; A study that investigates the connection between two or more variables is considered relational research. The variables compared are generally already present in the group or population

Arca, overvloed! Ik vind het interessant om te zien hoe er vaak van digitale media gebruik wordt gemaakt voor Queer art (hedendaagse).

Aantekeningen Queer ambiguity borders of queer art van Linus van de Maas:

(De aantekeningen zijn Engels omdat de oorspronkelijke tekst dat ook is)

Chapter 1: The ambiguity of queer

Queer -> Can be experienced as ambigous -> used in a variety of ways throughout history (with contradictory or overlapping contexts)

Queer -> 16th century: "strange", "odd", 'peculiar" or "eccentric"

Term grew to be used highlight that homosexuality was abnormal and strange.

Reclaimed in the AIDS epidemic -> symbol of anarchy.

Queer -> state of being, way of thinking, and a way to act.

The word queer became a container concept; a concept that can mean so much that it means nothing.

Chapter two: Queer art recognized

queer stereotypes: -Two men slightly too close to each other

-Boy has feelings (Gay men have more abilty to show emotion compared to straight men)

-bright colors

-mullet

-piercings

-coloured hair

-tooth gem

What is there arent obvious stereotypical characteristics? How can it be recognized as Queer?

Salman toor -> makes works about the insights of the Queer community.

Newflesh -> artists encouraged to investigate what queerness looks like beyond the body. allowed to explore freely without restrictions. cutting, pasting, mixing -> Queer way of thinking and being.

"One of the main concerns of queer appropiation is that if your use of Queer imagery is divorced from the complex lived expierence of being a Queer person, then the work might end up trading in stereotypes or being reducitve." -Paul Clinton, Queer theory writer

"I don't know if you can tell someone not to use [Queer imagery], as long as it is handeld sensitively and sensibly. We need allies; artists need to take a stand and support the movement, whatever we are Queer or not." Zanelle Muhol, artist and activist

internet -> Queer artists can be open about their identity, but is their identity now always connected to their work?

Viewer needs context -> Neglecting this deletes identity and artists intention.

Queer art is isn't objectively different from other art; you sometimes can't immediatly see wether an artwork is Queer. Context important to represent Queerness in the art world.

Ambera Wellmann is een Queer kunstenaar die ik zelf interessant vind. Annabelle en ik hadden een presentatie over haar gegeven maar graag schrijf ik nog een stukje over Queerness in haar werk.

In haar werk vloeiend lichamen in elkaar over, het is onduidelijk wie wie is, of wat. Het is aan de toeschouwer om te ontcijferen wat er gebeurt en in welke context. De figuren in '‘Less Like Ourselves, More Like Each Other’' duwen tegen de randen van het canvas en lijken hier buiten te willen treden. Binnen het schilderij word een poging gedaan de figuren te omlijnen, maar toch laten deze zich niet vangen!

Logic of Ghosts tentoonstelling van Ambera Wellmann

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weevilcore · 1 year ago

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hello :3

my name is Ivory, and this is my tumblr blog, which I have had for 8 years! I've tried to tag all my posts and reblogs from 2020 forward; the others are in the past and should stay there lol

I am 21, and my main interests are autism (which I think about near 24/7) and animals (which I am studying in school). I am from the US

I am autistic (level 1) and ADHD (primarily inattentive)

that is the TDLR, now for the extended version...

Special interests:

Autism. Since being diagnosed in 2021, autism became my special interest, and I think about it nearly all the time. right now it is at, I would say, a fairly stable level of interest. Things I research right now include how higher support needs autistics experience the world, including AAC and discrimination.

xQc. I'm hesitant to include him here. I feel like this interest is almost 'in remission', which is almost certainly an inappropriate phrase here. xQc is a twitch streamer who streams a variety of games and reaction content. he streams for like 10+ hours per day, so he is an essentially never-ending source of content.

He is a very over the top personality, and exceptionally candid compared to other top streamers. Yet when he gives his opinions on things, even if I disagree with his conclusion or how he delivered it, I can always see where he's coming from.

I relate to his awkwardness, and he is very honest which I appreciate.

I also think it's fun to see how different his life is from mine, like he moves like 2x per year, and he buys all new furniture every time!

X was certainly a special interest last school year, but now as I go to in person school and work, I see a lot more people. Streaming is almost a stand-in for socialization, and now that I have in-person socialization, I'm not as interested in X's life.

Animals are another strong interest for me, although I don't know that it qualifies as a special interest, but maybe it does! I guess it's not a super technical term, so there aren't clear guidelines on that... anyway:

I love whales and all cetaceans! I know it is kinda controversial to like dolphins (they are sorta violent) but I like them. I also like beluga whales, these are the two I have stuffed animals of. But I love all whales!

I also like manatees and aardvarks, the reason I list them together is because they are 'closely' (not that close) related - they are both afrotherians, along with the elephant! I have actually seen a manatee in the wild :D

similar to the aardvark, is the anteater! I love the anteater and how the babies ride on the mother's back! it's so cute

speaking of babies on mothers' backs: the opossum! I love the opossum and I think they are so cute! The virginia opossum is the only marsupial in Canada and the US and so their pouches are so curious to me.

Snails!!! I can't believe I almost forgot! Snails are so cute and slow and my favorite invertebrate. I have a snail squishmallow who goes with me to school. I want to get snail pets in the near future.

humans - not really a favorite animal, but I love learning about our evolutionary history - Stefan Milo on YouTube is a great source of information on this topic

--tags--

#orange - funny tumblr posts I reblog, I didn't want to just tag them 'funny' or something, because I thought that would be rather presumptuous, like saying a joke and then telling you to laugh. but I do find them funny

#purple - more serious tumblr posts. they are on a variety of topics, but autism posts I tag with #autism instead

#animals - literally anything to do with animals, and I will also tag the post with the specific animal so I can find them later (not humans tho!)

#my addition - when I add something to a reblog

#mine - for posts I create

#introduction #intro post #pinned intro #mine

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commonharlotwatchesbl · 2 years ago

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Today we have gathered here to ponder on how good exactly Vegas is at sucking dick, how his psychosexual fascination with his cousin plays into his relationships, and whether he is - in fact - gay at all.

In this essay I will…

answer all of these questions 🙂 And if you want op’s thoughts on this and not some rando butting in, well, you’re in for a little joke. Anyway.

We have heard of the split attraction model: Romantic attraction does not necessarily correlate with sexual attraction. There is also aesthetic attraction and others, but those are not relevant for the burning questions of today. Perhaps for another day. Since you’re reading this on a BL Tumblr, you probably know what this means. However if, in an extremely unlikely case, you do not, here’s a little recap for you: Sexual attraction is when you have people you feel you want to have sex with bc they’re sexy. Romantic attraction is when you have people you desire to be in a romantic relationships with bc they’re … idk I’m literally aro. Both of these attractions are on many spectrums. You can be attracted sexually to people of many genders (bi), one (straight or gay usually), none (ace), or despite gender (pan). Another spectrum is the extent of attraction, like how much you’re attracted to a certain gender (Kinsey scale) or how much attraction or how often you feel it (gray). Of interest to us today is asexuality (ace), which means that you are not sexually attracted to people.

However, an important thing to know is that asexuality does not correlate with libido or desire to have sex. Ace people can and do want to have sex (with only themselves or with others) for a variety of reasons, such as that it feels good or social reasons. There are of course ace people who do not. However, the key is that these reasons are unrelated to attraction to actual, specific people. And now I get to my point: It would be insane to think Vegas could be sexually attracted to all of Kinn’s “sloppy seconds” as it has been said. Their taste in men would have to match and they would both need to probably hit the same spot on the Kinsey scale, right? Pretty unlikely. More likely would be that Vegas is not actually sexually attracted to the people he’s having sex with, but that it happens for other reasons. Thus, he could be hypothesized to be ace, since we have no evidence of sex partners outside of these existing.

But what about all the BDSM? What about Pete? Well, on BDSM and kink, there is the concept of kinky aces (if you actually want proper amounts on info on this look up e.g. Evie Lupine on Youtube). The desire for sadism and masochism, dominance and submission is a concept that exists outside of sexuality in many forms, such as attraction to authoritarianism. However, according to even Freud himself, sex is a healthy and mostly socially shared and accepted outlet for these inherent human drives of power plays. On the other hand we don’t know for sure how kinks form, but they’re not necessarily sexual. So, pursuing BDSM relationships can very much coincide with being ace.

Thus, it stands to reason he’s not sexually attracted to these guys and is - indeed - not gay in the first place. But that leaves us with the question: Why specifically Kinn’s bfs? Vegas has been and is being raised by his father in a mental space in which he is constantly in relation to Kinn, being compared to him and existing only in relation to Kinn. He will naturally want to emulate and find a place of comparison between himself and Kinn, but he does not understand sexual attraction. Where a normal gay guy would probably flex with how many and how much hotter guys he can pull, he can only flex with how much better he is than Kinn with the same people, because he is working off of very different ground. Perhaps in another world he would perceive himself as having beaten Kinn by being straight or having a stable long term relationship. However, he needs Kinn to see, as a proxy, that he’s being better than him on Kinn’s scale. So, he needs Kinn mentally in that bedroom, perceiving him as an Other, performing the same job better. “Bringing your friends into the bedroom over your shoulder to perceive you” is apparently a common thing and if you happen to be a Finnish speaker I recommend Antti Holma’s Auta Antti podcast episode on this and how it causes men erectile dysfunction in bed.

Now returning from that tangent, we know the frame of reference Vegas is making the comparisons is perceived performance of the same task. He is, however, also fulfilling his BDSM needs here, because that he understands. On the other hand, I don’t think he understands that he’s ace, because he doesn’t seem to understand having an identity as a gay man either. But in addition to that, he would definitely perfect his techniques. He would study blowjobs and probably suck random dick for research and ask for feedback so he can outperform Kinn. So definitely, he’s better at giving blowjobs than Kinn in a practiced manner, making sure everything is perfect. But it is his tragedy that he should still fail, because that is not the only criteria for being good in bed. Vegas cannot be present, he’s thinking about the mental Kinn on his shoulder, he’s thinking about how he’s doing. He’s thinking. He’s not feeling. You try having sex with someone doing mental grading for himself. You’d probably prefer someone who was actually into you. Or then you wouldn’t, but I argue that most of Kinn’s exes will appreciate a present partner, and thus Vegas’ mission is doomed. He’s such a tragic character. 🙁

But, you thought I forgot about Pete? Who do you think I am? Kinn? No. Vegas knew what he wanted, but we don’t know whether he wanted to have sex or whether he was sexually attracted to Pete. What we know, however, is that Vegas definitely feels some type of attraction to Pete. Perhaps romantic (I couldn’t tell), perhaps aesthetic and that fit well with his kinky desires and attractions? Thus, we cannot rule out the possibility and even likely case that Vegas is, indeed, ace.

However, no. Everything I just said is possible, but I do not believe in any of it. I mean everyone saw the lustful ass eating. That’s sexual hunger if I ever saw it. Indeed, rather than Vegas being asexual, I think he’s hypersexual and just attracted to most men. Also because the sex they had with Pete was actually rather vanilla (cancel me) and thus does not support the hypothesis that he’s only into kink. In conclusion, from the assumption “It would be insane to think Vegas could be sexually attracted to all of Kinn’s “sloppy seconds” as it has been said” we get that I am insane.

vegas is actually the perfect BL protagonist he has no class consciousness about being gay he just woke up one day like "ah. another thing I must beat kinn at." then drafted a ten step plan to sucking dick

#vegaspete school of thought #I'm so sorry this will probably be one of the first things you wake up to #kinnporche #vegas theerapanyakul

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