millie @ millie @beehaw.org

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1,010

Joined

2 yr. ago

Good! We benefit from exposure to different circumstances, and immigration is a great way to do that!

A massive portion of what people tend to typify as 'illegal' immigration is actually asylum-seeking, which is in fact legal. Entering a country to seek asylum is not illegal.

What we probably should consider illegal, however, is the genocide, displacement, enslavement, and exploitation that was used to steal and develop the land the United States claims.

Especially in the case of Mexican immigrants, who are often literally trying to move to territory that was once Mexico, that shit is kinda wild. Like, you're really going to sit there in the furthest reaches of encroachment on our southern neighbor and claim nobody has a right to come in? Not even asylum seekers? On stolen land? Are you kidding?

Straight iced espresso for me. It does make me think of those particular customers who'd always demand an impossible level of no foam, though.

I did also end up reading about quantum foam anyway. 😂

Okay well maybe I'll circle back to it, then. Maybe bad science writing has made me a little cynical.

The laws of quantum mechanics are confusing, predicting that particles are also waves and that cats are simultaneously alive and dead.

Okay, so, like, that's punchier writing than the actual truth, but how am I supposed to buy anything else about physics in the article after that? The level of oversimplification of relatively commonly known concepts does not give me confidence that the rest won't be pop sci drivel.

I want to do something to help these orcas. Like feed them. Or give them some kind of yacht-stabbing weapon for more efficient sinking.

If I remember correctly, I definitely voted with the majority on this one, for what it's worth.

I don't agree with every moderator decision that's been made, but there isn't a site on the planet where I'm going to agree with every moderator decision, even if I'm running the damn thing. I do strongly agree though that bigger isn't better, and that 'that other one is bigger' isn't a compelling argument for re-federating.

I chime in with criticism often enough, so I figured I'd just poke my head in and say I think y'all are right on target with this one.

Unfortunately, a lot of people blindly believe in systems and authorities. It doesn't matter how many times they're shown that companies give zero fucks and will light everything on fire at a whim, they think they're rational actors who will do what's responsible for their product, their customers, and their employees.

Clearly, that assumption isn't remotely true, but they'd rather roll their eyes at anyone who doesn't take it on faith than risk having their world view altered.

Honestly, Dreamweaver is still pretty good. It's not as WYSIWYG as like some of the old school front-ends, but it does a pretty good job. If you get some templates and have at least a cursory understanding of xml and css syntax, you'll do okay.

When an article starts by describing the weather, I check out immediately. This is a failed novelist getting me to read their prose, not journalism.

Honestly, I could very well be wrong, but the New York Times has left me so exhausted with articles that start this way that I'll never find out.

Literally most people do not have any idea who Jordan Peterson is. Everybody on Beehaw probably does, but that doesn't help an article that's going to be introducing this guy for the first time to likely a significant number of its readers.

Queer folks and leftists tend to be aware of this guy on the one hand, and transphobes and a certain brand of conservative on the other. Other than that? It's not like he's a household name.

There's no need to treat him like he's important and fail to address why he's a problem at all.

I drive a cab. Yesterday I was trying to take a credit card payment and the square app kept screwing up, so I literally had to drive somewhere else for a signal and reset my phone. While waiting for it to reset, my fare and I commiserated on how much easier it would be if I could just take an imprint with a carbon sheet.

It made me think about all the ways that it's not necessarily a great idea to digitize everything and make it all dependent on technology functioning properly. There's a lot of stuff that simply didn't need power 30 years ago that absolutely requires it to function at all now.

I keep notes in my phone for my taxi fares. I've convinced myself that it's easier because I don't need to keep track of a notepad, but I'm realizing that it's not. It's actually easier and preferable to have a single-purpose analogue device than it is to have to take the time to access another device that has all these other conflicting distractions and go get my notebook app. Then I have to wait for it to load and sync, then I have to wait for my keyboard to come up. Then, depending on how my phone is feeling, I have to wait for it to catch up with my typing.

It's good for the same reason it's nice to have knobs with dedicated functions, or extra buttons. Dedicated inputs are simpler for repeated tasks than elaborate articulation of existing multi-purpose inputs.

It's needless complexity and bottle-necking at a single device, and the more complicated it gets the worse it seems it gets at actually being a phone. If the physical component that is your phone were part of a program, jamming all this functionality into one place and running a bunch of dedicated chromium instances for some reason, I'm not really sure you could reliably predict that it was created on the same planet that came up with single responsibility principle.

You can't enshittify ink and paper.

Maybe we don't want everything to be hackable, traceable, power-dependent, and susceptible to data loss.

It shows a picture of him next to Karl Marx, refers to him primarily as a psychologist, and lists his claim to fame as telling people to clean their rooms. It comes out the gate trying to paint a legitimizing picture of him, then offers the kind of criticism you'd offer a legitimate academic.

Literally does not mention that he nearly lost his license to practice due to his behavior online. A search for 'trans' doesn't turn up a thing in the article written about a man who's become famous for his transphobia.

Jordan Peterson doesn't deserve to have his ideas taken seriously, to be mentioned in the same breath as Karl Marx, or to be propped up in any public space that doesn't call him out for his transphobia and inhumanity. This article does all three. Shameful.

Why are we posting articles that treat Jordan Peterson like a legitimate academic and not a discredited hate monger?

I've definitely noticed this too. People I meet in the wild may start with an initial feeling toward me based on their politics, but with people who knew me before I transitioned I think it has more to do with their pre-existing image of me. Some folks seem to have a harder time processing me as a woman than others, and while politics is sometimes involved in the manner of their response, I don't think it's usually the determining factor.

I can often win over someone who's a little conservative at least on a basic level just by being myself. But they don't start with an image of me specifically because of that, but of trans women as a stereotype.

It's a lot harder to get someone to think outside of their established understanding of another person, though. Especially if they're so unaware of what's going on with that person internally that transition is some big surprise.

Like I had friends who I literally used to regularly hang out with with other trans women who completely bailed the second I came out. Their other friends could be women, but not me.

People are weird.

A general way to remember this is that a trans woman is a woman, so she's going to call herself a woman. She wouldn't call herself a man and also be transitioning at the same time.

Like generally when we're referring to ourselves we don't do it in a self-invalidating way on purpose.

Okay, so this is a more topic-adjacent meta commentary, but this thread is a great example of something stupid.

Why is it that when people show up on the internet to ask how to do something, a bunch of people jump in to say that thing isn't worth doing?

I don't know how many times I've been googling for a solution to a problem and I keep finding people who tell OP not to bother rather than either providing a solution or just like, not commenting on a thread they're incapable of helping in.

Like, y'all get that these conversations turn into google results, right? You know how frustrating it is to google something and the first answer that comes up is 'google it'? Or better yet 'you can't' in response to a problem that's absolutely doable.

Just let people do their weird little niche projects that fit their needs! You don't need to understand why.

Drives me up a wall.

I'm going for very specific look of stylized visuals that'll play well into my animation experience with Flash. I've got the shader for it pretty much nailed, I'm just working on my actual like body concept stuff and I'm not fully sold on the actual perspective angle I've been playing with. I definitely have a lot of artist and animator friends who have seen it and I've gotten good feedback.

But yeah, on the music side of things, I honestly think I want to try to find some folks to play with some time soon. I'm still shoring up my performance end of things, but playing some bass and/or keyboard and/or guitar with a band would probably help my ear a lot and also give me some folks that I could have a musical understanding with who could help me with the soundtrack.

I'd honestly love to release a sort of grungy album. Most of what I've been composing seems to lean into experimental guitar stuff, but it's all still pretty raw.

I use Trello a bit, but not consistently. I'll use it at the beginning of a project to kind of map things out, then come back a few times to kind of check in with where I'm at and see if there's anything I'm not thinking of. I also have a ton of note files just laying all over my computer, my discord, and my notesnook account. I used to use Google Docs, but I don't really want them scraping my stuff for their AI before I even get to finish it.

Honestly I just kind of operate like a blob. I expand in a bunch of different directions on a project a little bit at a time until it starts to come together. Stuff percolates and another piece will fall into place and I'll get a burst of momentum. Eventually I'll notice I'm banging my head against something that doesn't work and I'll realize I'm looking in the wrong place or I don't have the right thing yet and I'll work on some other component.

A lot of stuff just kind of comes to me at random times and I try to get it out before I forget it. But it also involves a lot of like sort of flow state thinking keeping track of how different pieces of a thing connect with one another.

But also like, I feel like you kind of have to be comfortable just having a bunch of files full of concepts that don't necessarily go anywhere immediately? Like, you need to be ready to just throw some shit out there, see how it works, chop massive pieces off of it or throw it away entirely. The moment you let yourself be self-conscious about your work or worry if you're "really going in the right direction" you're fucked. I mean, you can have that moment I guess as long as you don't stay in it, but it's the drive and the confidence that gets the actual thing finished whether anybody sees it or not.

You have to do something. You can always do something else later.

Once it's done I feel like that's its own other game entirely. Like, I have some guerilla marketing ideas and some former contacts I can try to get on the radar of, but that's another phase of things. I can't worry too much about that while I'm over here in playtesting, tweaking, and adding play-informed mechanics land.

Like right now we're just basically playing a game and I'll stop suddenly in the middle of it and be like oh I need to add something, and I take some notes and then we keep going. A lot of the time at the end of the session I know pretty much what I need to do; whether a mechanic is too complicated or fiddly or not robust enough or needs something else to compensate for it or whatever, it becomes evident when you watch it play out.

I'm not really sure how I'd ever get anything done if I was too focused on the organization of it, to be honest. I give myself enough hats without trying to also be a hat rack.

I drive a cab and get paid very little to basically drive around and help people. Like, the job is to drive people from point A to point B, but I try to do more than that, and help people who need it along the way. I carry a lot of stuff around that I'm not really paid for and I try to go the extra mile for people.

If the projects I'm working on pan out and I manage to get to a place where I have more resources, I plan to use that as a way of making other small steps. Setting up a coop instead of chasing money, releasing a game license that allows independent producers to do their own thing. Things like that. Literally just leaving the door open for people instead of slamming it shut.

I don't really have any intent to code software outside of games, but I'd like to empower others to be able to make the things they want to make and not just feed some big parasitic company with it.

Grow a bunch of labor bushes and make it incredibly clear that it's not about them being owned, but about them being labor bushes.

To me the change from the current system doesn't come by diving into the current system and trying to ask it nicely. It doesn't come from asking permission at all. It comes from operating with zero concern or tolerance for capitalist bullshit.

Go help people who can't afford to pay you. Make something beautiful and give it to the world in a way that gives them an opportunity to prop you up, but that also lets them enjoy it without having to be rich or emptying their wallet.

Internalize the idea that wealth is not a virtue, and poverty is not an ill. People who need help are an opportunity to help, and people who have value are in a position to use it to help, but holding onto that value and using it are mutually exclusive.

It's not going to come from a politician or some big speaker or a revolution, it's going to come from individual people in their own lives lives making different choices. Your choices matter.