ultraviolet-techno-ecology

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

It cannot be expressed enough that pumpkins (themselves stolen from native peoples via genocide) have become another anticommunist weapon. The “fruit” (another post-modern attack on proletarian linguistics) has been used to support numerous military and CIA operations (via nutritional logistics), as well as spreading cultural influence in the form of holiday festivities. (These capitalistic “festivities” going as far as wasteful mutilation of the fruit, which is then left to rot in plain sight of the hungry – what can only be described as the celebration of capitalist excess itself.) The orange colouration which is deemed desirable contrasts with the more proper red hues of autumn, and should be understood as  yet another psyop to override the more aesthetically and politically meaningful concept of the red october. Not content with simple erasure the orange and black of halloween (which also brainwashes the populace into believing late October to early November as a time of trickery and deception) has overt symbolic associations with the capitalist-deviation known as mutualism which itself is yet another anti-soviet leftism and thus the unwitting puppets of the CIA.  Can someone please explain to me why all Marxist-Leninist authors seem to write like this? (To be clear I wrote the above as a parody.)

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

Given that most digital textbooks are distributed in a PDF format, does anyone know of an archive that includes textual ebook formats? It would be a very valuable resource for people (like myself) with vision impairments. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

TW: Transphobia, in a frank language that may be disturbing to some.

As someone who is old enough to have seen many shifts in cultural attitudes towards minorities, I really do feel that transphobia has mutated in a way that I’ve never seen in other groups. 

If you would have told me twenty years ago that - one day in the future - the mere presence of someone with brightly coloured hair would send people into a conniption, well to put it bluntly my eyebrows would be thoroughly raised. 

It is very difficult to verbalize the nuance, just as it can be difficult at times to distinguish transphobia from homophobia. There are no hard lines that separate these things perfectly. 

When I was growing up people knew that transgender people existed, but very few people actually knew one. I remember being told that only 1:40,000 people were transgender, and that it was far less common in AFAB individuals. (Mind that gender nonconforming people were not typically considered to be trans when I was growing up.)

You were just as likely to spot someone with albinism. There was almost a ‘freakshow’ factor - fascination and disgust interwoven. (While still present, the fact so many trans people are now out in the open has reduced the novelty considerably.) There was also a lot of pressure for trans people to simply vanish. Transition often involved moving somewhere very far away and cutting all ties to your former life. Some people would live split lives presenting as one gender in public, and another in private. 

Transphobia in the last few years still has much of the same visceral underpinnings shared with homophobia (etc) but it has also developed a new quality that reminds me more of the Satanic Panic. Having states like Utah write laws due to the existence of a single trans girl attempting to play sports is a bizarre level of delirious obsession.

Violence, dehumanization (etc) targeting trans people is much older than I am, but the idea of performing genital inspections on school children would have probably gotten you locked up right quick. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

It’s weird how telemarketing used to be an actual thing. Random legitimate stores would call you and be like “Oh hey, we’re selling this new thing! Are you interested in this?” 

As opposed to the constant scam calls that seem to be the vast majority of actual phone calls these days. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

One sign of the times changing is when terms referring to a specific technological thing are used incorrectly as referencing a larger category. 

This is easier to explain with an example. The term “8-Bit” is often incorrectly used to refer to any form of pixel art graphics despite the fact most popular forms of media using pixel art aesthetics are more reminiscent of the 16 bit era. (Consider the difference between the original Game Boy versus the Super Nintendo for those who might want a point of cultural reference.) 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

"And they were revisionists” Said in the same was as: “And they were roommates”

to categorize under: things very few people in the entire world would find amusing

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

Accepting this kind of analogy is exactly why TERF rhetoric is able to be spread around unknowingly by supposed allies. Approaching anything from the perspective of “Dehumanizing rhetoric is okay so long as minorities are the one’s doing the dehumanizing.” just opens you up to all kinds of reactionary nonsense under the auspices of pseudo-social justice. 

"actual fascist mindsets" i know that you have had an incredibly easy life

Here's a hint, when someone says "if 1 in 10 M&Ms in a bowl is poisoned, you wouldn't eat even a single one", they're usually talking about doing genocide or ethnic cleansing.

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

Critical (emotional) support for the tankies having to listen to historically illiterate western liberals fawn over Gorbachev. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

The other thread on this was started by chuds so I'm gonna reboot it myself: it's really sad that people don't understand the Midwest is where food gets grown and we're supposed to grow a lot more of it.

Suggesting people just move to the cities is astonishingly clueless and would only make the situation worse. Some Americans have truly no idea what it's like out there, tiny communities separated by hour long drives if you even have transport, millions of people really are just abandoned and left behind by what we consider progress and have no way out.

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

It is so easy to get through to rural conservative individuals as soon as pollution affects them personally. “Disgusting that the fishing lake is full of chemical fertilizer, maybe we should do something to stop that from happening.” tends to be a pretty straighforward discussion. 

It would be much easier to enact climate regulations if consumer-level gas output was more visible. If the fumes stained the air itself as an inky cloud… People care about visible smog and haze, yet it is so easy to peacefully ignore the invisible cloud of poison looming over our heads. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

It would be much easier to enact climate regulations if consumer-level gas output was more visible. If the fumes stained the air itself as an inky cloud... People care about visible smog and haze, yet it is so easy to peacefully ignore the invisible cloud of poison looming over our heads. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

It’s amazing how much pull familiarity has on individuals. I have a friend who was talking about their ideal roleplaying game - extremely character focused, with very little combat, where they can really explore the relationships between their character in a slice-of-life way. 

Rather than play a game designed for that playstyle, they want to play D&D. A game which is mechanically built around the idea of bopping goblins and getting gold coins. Sure you can add emphasis on roleplaying, but the fact of the matter is character classes revolve around combat and dungeon exploration. 

It’s kind of like playing Stardew Valley for the combat experience. (On the off chance someone reading this doesn’t know - SV is a wholesome video game about farming.)

I tried to sell them on the idea of Burning Wheel, but they want the kitchen sink style fantasy of D&D with rainbow tieflings and critical role references. (Burning wheel is very Tolkien and more serious in tone.) There isn’t anything wrong with that - but it does frustrate me given the disconnect between their desired playstyle versus their system preference. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

There will come a day you are too old and tired to lift a hammer.

If you want to build a better world: start today.

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

“Open borders & free migration” 

and

“People from X group shouldn’t live in Y location”

are mutually exclusive positions. With the exception of overt displacement by bourgeois or authoritarian powers the migration of individuals is morally neutral. Claiming that migration destroys communities is a fundamentally reactionary position - or at the very least a phenomenally non-anarchist one. 

In other words you cannot abolish borders while simultaneously saying “You cannot live here, go back to where you belong.” and it would be nice for more people to consider the broader consistency of their beliefs instead of absorbing any and all statements phrased in the language of social justice. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

Seems to me a lot of (old) toys could be interpreted in some way as a stimming device. Kind of odd to point at “rocking back and forth” as a bizarre behavior when the rocking horse is literally an archetypal image of childhood.

If you showed me a kid who regularly wanted to play jackstraws, I’d have a distinct suspicion they have a particular interest in arranging/organizing things from an otherwise chaotic situation. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

I agree with you, but I also have some rather dry thoughts on the subject I’d like to share. Mostly from my anecdotal observations.

I think that your average “Autism Mom*” is more likely to push the (currently popular) framing of “My autistic child can’t think for themselves and is being manipulated by Big Trans**” since it also follows the (historically popular) mindset of “I didn’t raise my child to be gay so SOMEONE must have done SOMETHING to make them that way!” 

Which will keep the sights focused on medical providers, activists, educators, accepting parents, adult trans people, and anyone else they can accuse of “grooming” children who cannot possibly have any intrinsic or autonomous factors in that identity/phenomena. 

Eugenicist rhetoric tends to come from people external to affected families. This is in no small part because of that “I didn’t raise my child to be like this!” mentality that keeps things focused on other possible causes. (Big Trans, etc) 

The big shift will happen when there is enough outward cultural vitriol that a rhetoric targeting the actual families of autistic people can hold it’s ground. In other words when even the “Autism Moms” are fully seen as agents of Big Trans despite their overwhelming tendency towards ableism. 

In other words, having an autistic child must be framed as a moral failure of the parents. A sort of crime which is corrected/prevented by eugenic elimination of the offensive difference. Where parents of cisgender autistic children will be targeted as sexually deviant groomers raising a soon-to-be victim of Big Trans. (This will consequently lead to honour killings of transgender and autistic people by families that are afraid of being seen as deviant.)

Given how broad of a label Autism actually is, and how common it is for people to show at least moderate signs of it (broad autism phenotype, etc) getting to that point will require significant political stamina to build that level of hatred to the point families can be successfully framed as the Real Perpetrators Of The Autistic-Transgender Menace.  

Granted the above is specifically focused on Autism-Eugenics BECAUSE of Transgender-Association. Parents will be more than happy to sleepwalk into a eugenicist mindset the moment a prenatal test became available. The key difference is that letting an autistic child exist will be seen as “tragic” rather than “deviant” - both of which are hatred but with nuanced differences. 

*Referring to a particular stereotype of ableist, not all mothers who have autistic children. Similar to how “Karen” does not refer to people actually named Karen.  **Obviously a sardonic catch-all for various conspiracies around who or what is “causing” people to “become” transgender. 

I think that most people underestimate how catastrophic “curing” autism would be for our scientific and technological progress as a species. 

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

I feel that in the future medicine will begin to recognize a variety of (relatively) mild cerebellar conditions currently misdiagnosed/misunderstood as developmental, etc. In particular a subset of those with autism, motor coordination difficulties, and muscle hypotonia (causing secondary joint hypermobility) seem like obvious candidates but actually looking at this sort of thing through the lens of a distinct cerebellar syndrome is still very esoteric.