#oh i forgot that autocorrects into an actual arrow

[homosexual-fanfiction]

*looks up misspelled word* the definition is that you're an idiot and you spelled it wrong you fucking moron

[squishmallow36]

Quantum Gender: The Essay

Before we get started: I took an intro to quantum computing class two years ago so I’m a little rusty on those details, and I’m not going to pretend I know how gender works. I was just avoiding going to sleep and thought of this. It’s been rattling around inside my head for the past many months. I think it kind of started when I was trying to drive into my brain that gender is not a spectrum so let’s add a whole nother dimension and quantum weirdness.

    Any questions because I explained something the most complicated way I possibly could? Please come ask. I’m happy to ramble and then make no sense you tune me out and then just nod and say it answered your question when it absolutely did not. 

    Now, on to the actual essay!

    Today, we’re gonna learn about quantum computing, then we’re gonna realize that the Bloch sphere can be applied to gender. I’m gonna put the bulk of this under the cut. 

@winterfireice you encouraged me to do this, and here it is.

So. Quantum computing. Step one: get a theoretical understanding of how classical computers work. 

    Classical computers include things like phones, tablets, laptops, computers, even things like handheld calculators. I’m almost willing to bet if you don’t know what a classical computer is, that’s the only kind you’ve interacted with. They all work with a system of 1s and 0s called bits (8 of them is called a byte), and these bits are manipulated by logic gates. I could go into all of the gates (not, and, nand, or, xor, nor) and their truth tables, but that’s kind of a waste of both of our times. 

    An important one is the NOT gate which if 0 is input, 1 is output, and if 1 is input, 0 is output. This will be analogous to the pauli X gate we might encounter later. This is the only one of the classical logic gates that has that ability, because you can take the output and find the input with complete certainty. The others lose information which is uh not ideal. Or possible. Conservation of quantum information and all that. (A fancy word for a reversible operator is Hamiltonian operator) 

    Okay, that wraps up that unit. Instead of bits, quantum computers use qubits. Very creative naming system. And instead of 0s and 1s, qubits can be this whole mess, stolen from the one, the only, wikipedia: 

    No, don’t run away! It’s not that bad, I promise! It’s only a bloch sphere. 

    I did edit it a bit because it’s easier than trying to direct you to things while you have no clue what’s going on. The Bloch sphere is a sphere with radius 1. If you remember the unit circle from like trig, this is just the more annoying 3d cousin of that. 

    At the top and bottom, there are labels |0> and |1>. These are pronounced ket 0 and ket 1. The reason why is called bra-ket or Dirac notation, and kets means that it is a column vector. I’m not going to type that here because it would be difficult and it really doesn’t matter. A bra would look like <0| if you find the need to know that. In terms of quantum computing, it’s used to signal when you’re talking about a quantum state. 

    This is the z-axis if I refer to it sometime later, and |0> and |1> are orthogonal to one another. I know that normally means it’s 90 degrees apart and no amount of not-to-scale geometry problems can get it /that/ wrong, but it’s a Hilbert space which just basically means we can do whatever we want. It also means it has an inner product, which is a math thing with, like, vectors and stuff that I don’t want to deal with right now. 

    Then let’s go to the x-axis. This is where typing things out is gonna start to get messy, so I have added another picture of the |+> and |-> (read as plus and minus. I thunk tumblr autocorrected to an arrow but it should be a minus sign) states. 

    Oh wait, I forgot to explain superposition! Sorry, sorry. If you’ve heard of Schrödinger’s cat and feel confident, you can skip over this. If you haven’t, hold on, I’ll explain it. So this is a THOUGHT experiment (no cats were harmed in the making of this experiment) where a cat is put in a box. Also in this box is a radioactive element and some poisonous gas. There is a 50/50 chance at the radioactive element decaying, which will release a hammer, breaking the glass and killing the cat. 

    Then, when you remember to come back, you don’t know if the cat is alive or dead, so in quantumland, it’s both alive and dead until you open the box. (The qubit is the cat and |+> and |-> are alive and dead). Opening the box is measurement, which destroys the quantum state, collapsing it down to |0> or |1>. The 50/50 number is only true along the horizontal dashed equator-y line on the bloch sphere, elsewhere, it’ll have different numbers depending on the…latitude? Z-component? You get the idea? 

    There’s a whole thing with square roots and amplitudes and just, like, don’t ask. I don’t know anymore and I’m not sure I care. It has something to do with the math of everything and I don’t like math. I have a math test tomorrow I’m ignoring. 

    Then the y axis and its |i> and |-i> states are very similar except there’s an i in front of the |1> on my beautiful drawing. We didn’t really go into a lot of detail on this one. And you can kind of ignore the theta (θ) and psi (φ) in the middle. Don’t worry about those. 

    Brain hurt yet? Me too. 

Gender time. You can probably see where some of this is going already. 

    So |0> I’m gonna assign to female and |1> I’m gonna assign to male. One can initialize a qubit to either of these two values (theoretically, experimentally it goes to 0 and then a pauli x gets it to 1) but it isn’t a perfect system and it sometimes doesn’t do what you want it to do. That’s kind of a theme with anything quantum. (That is the part that’s analogous to agab) 

     Binary trans men and trans women would be taking the initialized qubit and applying a pauli X on it. Nonbinarity is where things begin to get a little messy with my analogy and I apologize if your personal identity doesn’t work with this. If you can see a way to improve it, you know how to rb things. The plus state could be thought of as bigender or another multigender or pangender identity. Then, the minus state could be thought of as agender. 

   I’m not sure what I can do for the |i> and |-i> states, partially because the i does stand for imaginary, and I’m sure you can see why that could be a little iffy. But I feel like one of these could be genderqueer in the way S describes it, as not quite nonbinary but also not quite binary? I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but it’s not a linear combination of gender or completely genderless nonbinary that the trinary is creating. 

    Then the other one I’m gonna say can be xenogenders? I know there’s a lot of them, but this metaphor can be adjusted as necessary for whichever one you’d like to implement. Like I said, we didn’t really work a whole lot with the y axis, so this isn’t quite as together as the rest of it. (That was a lie nothing is ever together) 

    If you remember the measurement bit from above (no you don’t, it went in one ear and out the other, i’m sure) you can kind of see that this is how people will perceive a cisn’t identity, minus the part where the quantum state is lost. That doesn’t seem to be how that works. 

    Then, I think finally but who knows, I’m gonna have to explain a little more quantum. I’m sorry for my existence, I thought this was done too. Basically quantum teleportation is a thing and I don’t wanna go find my old notes. Input will be α|0> + β|1> and a pair of entangled qubits with one at one place and one in another, and the important thing at the end is that there are four possible states which are α|0> + β|1>, α|0> - β|1>, α|1> + β|0>, and α|1> - β|0> and it requires two classical qubits to tell the receiver to mess with the qubit that’s sent over. 

    It’s a big long thing but it’s basically just embodying the fact that you can know details about your gender but not exactly know what it is. That’s me. 

    Okay, I lied. One more thing. Qubits can decohere, meaning the Bloch sphere might not be so much of a sphere anymore. So nothing makes any sort of sense. 

    Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I didn't reread this at all.

[supersoldierfreak]

Prompts

Send me a prompt xx

I did my patriotic duty

Remember that time when we turned a can of Axe into a flame thrower?

I woke up next to a veteran this morning

So I had a dream last night that involved you

And I didn’t hate it

If anyone could figure out how to pee on someone’s soul, it would be you

Thank you for extending my knowledge on the effects of vodka

You always know what to say to make me feel better

Speak of what happened and I will kill you

I’m not above blackmail

I found them in the bathroom trying to wrap an American flag around Steve

It’s really sad I had to specify this but…

I didn’t ask questions

Why can’t I come over and snuggle?

I am taking my rightful place as ruler of the undead appearance wise

You’re doing that ‘overestimating how much I care’ thing again

Good lord you suck at this wake up call

Son of a bitch took my liquid eyeliner

If I can, after drinking enough vodka to knock out a Russian soldier, muster up enough motivation to call you the next morning the least you can do is pick up and listen.

I’m like Cupid

The fact you thought licking it would fix it boggles my mind.

I don’t understand it.

You’re a whore with a bow and arrow

It worked

Not the point here, guys

Woke up with chlamydia and a bruised rib

Don’t call the police the police about the strange man passed out in his car.

I’ll collect him later

I love you

Sorry I punched you in the throat. You got in my way. You understand.

It’s like autocorrect knew you weren’t well endowed

Let’s play a game called ‘Chill the hell out’. You’re the first contestant

I am NOT getting arrested in a wig!

I think I’m at that stage in my life where I subconsciously purposefully mess everything up just to see if I can find a way out of it.

That doesn’t involve shooting people. Or stabbing them.

I don’t understand how I managed to fuck up so much in an hour and a half

I cried for thirty minutes at the bar before the bartender helped me and gave me free drinks for the rest of the night

I’m confused why you asked me to buy you a life alert at 3:28 this morning

Have a merry Christmas

I’ve been here twenty minutes and a sweaty half naked man has kissed me

What happened?

I thought I told you to wait.

And apparently I tried to pay for a drink with a tampon

I think I fucked up my elbow when I tried to fight off the paramedics

.Shut up

I wear heals bigger than your dick

Are you sighing and judging me through the phone right now?

SINCE WHEN IS USING A FROZEN WATER BOTTLE ATTACHED TO A ROPE AS A THROWING WEAPON A GOOD IDEA!?

I felt like I didn’t get that across well enough

Is it a bad thing that I’ve made out with everyone I work with?

… well anything sounds bad if you say it like that

Her voice kills me.

Are you just sitting in your room drinking popsicle vodka?

It’s the perfect pitch to fuck with my hangover

Fries before guys, foods before dudes, shakes before dates, chips before dicks, lemon bars before football stars, macaroni before screwing’ Tony.

What I’m trying to say I’d can we just have a girls night?

Wanna tell me why vodka seeped out of my mattress when I got into my bed?

How do we have all these hot friends we never do body shots off of?

Not really

Babe

Can we just?

makes grabby hands

What the fuck?

What happened?

I think it is a scientific achievement that I can make jelly that is 95% vodka so suck it up.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this but…

Wow. Damn. Okay.

We’re plotting your demise

We could have the the best hate sex… ever

I’m bonding with your girlfriend

But he’s like a baby bird with his wing broken that I want to FUCK

They pay me to be heterosexual or helpful. I’m going to need a hell of a raise to be both.

I think I pulled a muscle in my tongue

You’ve never felt ridiculous until you’ve walked through downtown in a Viking costume

So you threw a knife at me last night

I honestly wish I could say I was surprised

Well since you’re literally falling for me, it’s hard to say no.

Oh, wait, let me get some popcorn

When he pulled his dick out I told him he brought a knife to a sword fight

I am so sorry

Watching you make your own decisions should be quite the shitshow

I’m about two and a half drinks away from being gay

I’m coming over

Don’t let go

You’re everything I’ve wanted in a friend

You have questionable morals

Do I look like a person who has full control of their limbs on this plane of reality?

You drink too much

If you don’t want me in your apartment you should get better locks

I just felt emotion and I am not okay with it

My move of emasculating men with my superior intellect isn’t as charming when they can’t see my huge rack.

Why do I feel like I really don’t want to know the end of this?

Go big or go home, am I right?

You’ll never guess whose blood is on my shirt

It was just a casual affair

My apologies

I’ll try not to let my dick interfere with official work duties in the future

That’s what you get for having butt ass naked roof top sex at night in the middle of December

Worth it

Fuck you!

I’m the Pilot!

Please and thank you

Just come back with most of you limbs… and that mouth of yours

I hate it when she philosophises on my counter drunkenly

He has the ass of a Greek god, honey

He made me break fast

Not even sober to I understand Latin

Drunk is not a location

I waxed the left side of it and was in too much pain to do to right side so now my crotch looks like Cruella Devil

We kind of broke a table while making out

I hate cats

So yes, I’d say it was successful

Pants are for mortals

People like you and me aren’t meant to go for this long without sex

Well, personally I like to keep my blackmail in organised folders

You forgot the part where I played slip and slide in my own puke and messed up my knee

I was trying to save face

He just got home drunk

My apartment looks like the apocalypse of sobriety

It may be a clusterfuck, but I’ll be looking classy as shit as I watch the nightmare unfold

Why do I like him?

He literally has no redeeming qualities

Drunk me is basically the Oprah of nudes

I’m going to have a badass scar

Yo! Human Dorito, get your ass out here!

We all know that badassery is carried of the xx chromosome

90% threatening to punch him in the dick and 10% actually punching him in the dick.

This is like the walk of shame down memory lane

FYI, At my funeral it’s your job to dramatically throw yourself on my casket

Text me if you’re not dead and wanna have a drink later

I’m confused

I’m constantly crying

Do you know anyone else who comes home with as many unexplainable injuries as we do every night?

You keep asking me questions like I have a magic thing called a memory

I want to kill someone right now but at the same time I just really need cuddles

How do you get the 'hangs out with drunk assholes’ insurance?

I’m still trying to decide whether it’s a compliment or not

It’s the never ending clusterfuck that is my love life

I can say with absolute certainty the only time we’ve had a civil conversation was when we both liked pizza

I’d like to subscribe to your Daddy issues

I’m like, not good at living

I did tell you I spoke over 30 languages

I’m sorry I couldn’t bail you out, apparently they don’t take credit cards over the phone.

Listen, I will certainly take anything I can get my little gay fingers on

I don’t know where I am

I make bad decisions on probably a regular basis

I think this guy is dead

We make up for it in dry humour

What fucking idiot decided to make an entire stupid state where you can’t take a damn right turn. Fuck New Jersey

She is so graceful and swan like

Just calling to say thank you for not dying

I’m still not sure how to feel about the fact that we had a threesome with a guy older than my grandpa

It’s what god put me on earth for

Sorry I wasn’t really responsible earlier. I was really high on adrenaline and very into that car chase

EVERYBODY CALM YOUR SHIT!

I am pretty great at coffee and mistakes

How did I get here?

It’s my life mission

It took too long for people to come up with things for 'Never have I ever’ so we changed it to 'Don’t judge me but…’

You ever feel like an organ is just failing you?

If you with any of them tell them I apologise for (insert whatever I did wrong here)

All you did was repeatedly scream 'GET IT IN’

Hold on I’ll be right there; I can’t find my arm

Just because I’m a woman and I’m cranky and irritable right now does not mean I’m on my period.

Babe? It’s shark week.

People are talking politics and I have had 9 mimosas

Did you at least make friends in jail?

Help me?

You just can’t follow orders, can you?

What the hell is Code C?

Between the Marvin Gaye and the candlelit dinner, I’d say you’re trying to woo me baby

What made it obvious?

Hell no! I went out this morning to buy those so you better put them right back down

You’re interrupting date night!

you predictable little shit

You can pay me back in chocolate and cuddles

Will you marry me?

I love you and that scares me.

When I told you to tell the cops, I meant federal agents not the local PD, idiot

Why did you run out the room when I arrived?

I feel like I should know you and I’m really sorry that I don’t

I really really like you

I hate you too. The feeling is mutual.

Happened in Vegas, stays in Vegas

I told you not to get into trouble.

I would tell you it’s a pleasure to see you again but I’d be lying

All I ask is….

Boo! I scared you! I didn’t scare you did I?

I knew you

What did I tell you about touching stuff?

I trusted you

I asked you to stay safe for one mission. For one bloody mission and now look at you.

We should get awards just for turning up when disaster strikes

We haven’t been getting paid for years yet we have potentially the most dangerous job on the planet.

We are so bloody stupid

I need a doctor.

Avengers Assemble. Team bonding session is mandatory. Everybody meet in the common room

You’re such a dork

Do you have any idea how many people are dead because I wasn’t clever enough, wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t good enough?