#twitter is bad and you know it

[goingrampant]

Atheist Political Divide

"Is there a God? We can't know for sure, so we should assume no until we encounter substantial evidence to the contrary."

This is the basic philosophical argument common to all atheists. However, the concept of God means different things to different people, and there are different implications that follow. Perhaps the tense divide between the libertarian atheists of the right and the socialist atheists of the left can be partially explained by the different views of God and implications of his absence.

As libertarian atheists largely originate from conservative Christian culture, they may embrace secular libertarianism in response to authoritarian pressures to toe the line with the threat of hell hanging over their heads. To them, God is an oppressive construct wielded to cause trauma by persons of authority, both on the societal level with governments citing the will of God and on a personal level with parents threatening their children with hellfire. Guilt and fear of God are psychological reflexes an individual suffers as a result of traumatic abuse, so removing God from their worldview instills relief and psychological wellness. Libertarian atheists seek to liberate people from their abuse by sending the message "There probably isn't a God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life." You only get one, after all, so live it well, unburdened by guilt and fear.

However, on the left, there isn't the same conservative culture that uses God to inflict trauma, so God is instead associated with a force of goodness and justice. God is looked to with hope that hatred, bigotry, and injustice will be overcome. "We Shall Overcome" is a gospel song that was turned into a civil rights anthem. When justice is achieved, it's considered a blessing. This is the context of God when leftists consider his absence, and it's a bleak affair. If there isn't a higher power, then it falls on individual human beings to look after each other and no one wants to be alone. Some leftists embrace community, as communism is famous for, while others consider it a hard, lonely road.

When these leftist atheists see "There probably isn't a God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life," from people who by and large support capitalism and the unjust status quo, they don't see a message about liberating abuse victims from guilt. They see "There probably isn't any consequence to doing bad things, so stop worrying and do whatever you want unburdened by conscience." Out come the thinkpieces about how vocal atheism is telling, how atheism as a movement is evil, etc. There was a popular post here on Tumblr about how good atheism is when a black person has a mental breakdown over the fear that God won't be here to ensure justice in the end and bad atheism is when a white man decides he can do whatever without hell to rein him in.

At one point, a black leftist atheist tried reaching out to the white libertarian atheists with a suggested edit: "There probably isn't a God, but together we can work together to build a better world." Again, it's a snappy phrase leaving out the essential context of the culture producing it, and it was misunderstood as "There probably isn't a monster going to hurt you if you don't get in line, but human beings can force you to give up the lives you want to lead and make you serve some goal you never signed up for because it supposedly would make a better world." The response was fearful, viewing the suggestion as a threat of leftism imposing authoritarianism like Stalin, and they responded to this perceived threat with appropriate coldness. The leftist came away with the impression that libertarian atheists just want to be evil and the libertarian atheists had the same impression about leftist atheism.

I believe most of this divide is a communication problem caused by the assumption that simply living in the same country or even the same planet counts as the same culture and that all cultural contexts need go unspoken. However, it's more complicated than that. If everyone kept a cool head and wrote long articles to explain where they're coming from, there would be far less confusion. But, of course, this is the Internet. No one has time for that, especially on Twitter, where even long threads can't contain the full reasoned context of a full article. And, inevitably, people come away angry and convinced that the other side just wants to be evil.

[cursedslimecicle]

Day 36.5: HAPpY NEWR YEAS

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[idolomantises]

Just a random question to my artist followers: does anyone enjoy posting their stuff on tiktok? I can't tell if its just a me thing or if that app and its userbase are the most obnoxious compared to other social media

[sparrowlucero]

this is the iconic dinosaur horror jurassic park wishes it was

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Welcome to the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger.

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[cspcrashing]

☠️: kurosaki. what the hell kinda shirt is this ?

🍓: i only said it would fit you, not that it would be your style. besides, it looks fine on you.

☠️: you— fuckin' whatever doc'.

🍓: you like it, don't you.

☠️: shut it.

[dykedvonte]

Its really interesting that Jimmy’s chair is the one tilted away from the screen in this shot:

It’s indicative of how his and Jimmy’s dynamic was. He’s not staring ahead at the screen, he’s not paying attention to what they are doing. Curly is the only one looking forward. Jimmy quite literally couldn’t see the responsibility Curly had or was doing. Jimmy likely slacked off and avoided most of his duties. I mean the one time we know he pilots the Tulpar he steers it wrong and loses the team 4000 credits. Even in the positions they held objectively, Curly was always taking responsibility for Jimmy. Not to mention the “We can fix this” and only one chair at attention. Jimmy never had intentions to fix anything, throughout the game, throughout his entire relationship with Curly. Curly always fixed it? Why would it be any different here?

If he even took the slightest bit of responsibility, he would’ve stayed in the cockpit to see his plan through. In the end Curly did what Jimmy always expected him to do for him and took responsibility. Did what he always did and took responsibility at the wrong time…

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[deoidesign]

"what do hands mean about a character?"

Their hands mean they love eachother

(webcomic)

[bigcatbulges]

Source - luodejun

(Artist's Pixiv)

[luv4jeno]

that’s that me espressooooooo

[nottodayjustin]

November 25th 2023 best hockey tweet of the day

[cozylittleartblog]

when valve has enough money to buy god, but they let bots ruin their game for 5 years and dox people 🤖🔫 #FIXTF2

everyone who signs this 100k+ petition will have their name printed and sent to valve HQ. this shit is unacceptable.

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

people who can speak via mouth shut up about your supposed difference between speaking & verbal between nonspeaking vs nonverbal (spoiler alert: there’s none except preference). ppl who lose speech shut up about how that make you unreliably speaking. you all regress the movement by million years. speaking people stop speaking 🩷