tothewhirlwind

[tothewhirlwind]

I see these practically everywhere I go

so get this, it's a statue that doesn't move when you're looking at it

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Train Bathroom, On a Train

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This is actually more or less representative. It's just that my Bisexualization Button is still not fully operational.

OMG I forgot how insane my follower demographics were last survey

[tothewhirlwind]

I asked the dentist if the time of my judgment had come and she said "there is nothing I can do to you that you haven't already done to yourself"

I'm going to the dentist soon hopefully they're the kind that cleans your teeth instead of the kind that puts you in hell

[tothewhirlwind]

I'm going to the dentist soon hopefully they're the kind that cleans your teeth instead of the kind that puts you in hell

[tothewhirlwind]

I think the concept as used causes the problems I'm talking about whether or not the communications are objectively dogwhistles. Observation shows that these things (the slogan, the gesture) are interpreted differently by different audience even when a meaning is apparently clear, and some people apply the dogwhistle label to them when they think that there's a hidden message (whether they should or not). The problems arise when the concept is applied aptly and when it's applied inaptly. Perhaps a deeper issue is the temptation to use the term in the first place.

The conceptual innovation of "dogwhistle" was supposed to be a device for defeating radical (in the colloquial sense) minorities (e.g. racists) by shining a light on their distasteful views. You give a name to a phenomenon where a speaker tries to communicate ambivalently to multiple audiences, a mainstream one and a more radical (in the colloquial sense) one, in order to tie the unwitting majority audience into a cooperative bloc with the minority. And the dogwhistle accuser is supposed to be able to say to the mainstream, "this speaker is trying to manipulate you into giving your cooperation through unclarity, let me clarify so that you understand." It's supposed to make explicit the connection between the speaker and the radical audience to whom they're trying to appeal, in the hopes that you can reassociate the speaker with that group, break them off the majority bloc together, and defeat them.

But I think unfortunately dogwhistle accusations basically just play to the preexisting feelings of the hearer of the accusation, just as much as the dogwhistle itself played to those preexisting feelings. So you have people saying that "from the river to the sea" is a dogwhistle or that Elon Musk's hand gesture was a dogwhistle and this sounds obvious to one audience and fucking stupid to another audience. And unfortunately I think the interpretations that benefit most from the blow up are just the ones that are most tempting to believe, to the winners in any such discourse are just whoever is saying something that seems obvious because it plays to a dominant ideology, plays to some bias or fear, or is just easily digestible. The dogwhistle accuser thinks that they're going to solidify a position against a radical minority and cast their opponent into that camp, but the technique used en masse just fragments social reality more and to the benefit of blocs organized around certain tempting worldviews.

[tothewhirlwind]

Yesterday I encountered what I thought was a brown recluse. It touched me even. And I was pretty scared but also kind of excited, because I was having a rare encounter with a brutal nature, the looming blank wall of death behind every moment given form in a particular encounter between one machine of flesh and blood and another of carapace and hemolymph and venom. All day I imagined: what if I'd received a painless bite and the venom was in my body now, breaking my capillaries apart, any moment now I might start a fever... but I showed my friend a picture I took and she said it was a yellow sac spider and she's totally right. It WAS a stupid yellow sac spider. So whatever.

[tothewhirlwind]

The conceptual innovation of "dogwhistle" was supposed to be a device for defeating radical (in the colloquial sense) minorities (e.g. racists) by shining a light on their distasteful views. You give a name to a phenomenon where a speaker tries to communicate ambivalently to multiple audiences, a mainstream one and a more radical (in the colloquial sense) one, in order to tie the unwitting majority audience into a cooperative bloc with the minority. And the dogwhistle accuser is supposed to be able to say to the mainstream, "this speaker is trying to manipulate you into giving your cooperation through unclarity, let me clarify so that you understand." It's supposed to make explicit the connection between the speaker and the radical audience to whom they're trying to appeal, in the hopes that you can reassociate the speaker with that group, break them off the majority bloc together, and defeat them.

But I think unfortunately dogwhistle accusations basically just play to the preexisting feelings of the hearer of the accusation, just as much as the dogwhistle itself played to those preexisting feelings. So you have people saying that "from the river to the sea" is a dogwhistle or that Elon Musk's hand gesture was a dogwhistle and this sounds obvious to one audience and fucking stupid to another audience. And unfortunately I think the interpretations that benefit most from the blow up are just the ones that are most tempting to believe, so the winners in any such discourse are just whoever is saying something that seems obvious because it coheres with a dominant ideology, plays on some bias or fear, or is just easily digestible. The dogwhistle accuser thinks that they're going to solidify a position against a radical minority and cast their opponent into that camp, but the technique used en masse just fragments social reality more and to the benefit of blocs organized around certain tempting worldviews.

[tothewhirlwind]

I won't confidently deny that the American Eagle ads are implicitly carrying water for some eugenics adjacent view. Unfortunately the people criticizing them for it sound completely insane

[tothewhirlwind]

Unfortunately people are going to say it was a centrist movie because they think any attempt to look at the discourse environment at any remove from one of its fragments is centrism

Eddington was extremely unpleasant to watch from top to bottom but after some reflection I've decided it was good

[tothewhirlwind]

Eddington was extremely unpleasant to watch from top to bottom but after some reflection I've decided it was good

[tothewhirlwind]

The Kellogg-Briand pact ‘went into effect’ on this day 96 years ago

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Accidentally destroyed my safety razor by soaking it in undiluted vinegar overnight. The threads on the head that screw it onto the handle corroded straight off. So don't do that I guess.

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Called my sister to actually talk to her about our grandparents dying one day. Then she starts talking about her health care directive. Says she worries that if she makes mom her agent, mom's problems making decisions erratically might be an issue, but if she makes me her agent and anything happens, I'll probably "fall into a psychological abyss thinking [I] made the wrong choice." Lovely, happy family.

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My sister called my mom really upset thinking about how our grandparents are going to die sooner rather than later. And mom was like "Welp. Here's where they're going to be buried..." Insane

[tothewhirlwind]

one day it's going to come out that there's some small office in the Norwegian foreign affairs ministry where they scour dictionaries and interview people looking for cute new words for those blog posts about "the Norwegian secret to happiness." like gastrodiplomacy