Gaelpol Yammerings

today's gog newsletter was. certainly interesting to have pop up in my inbox

god remember when there were no ads AND you could post dick on here. take me back i'll be grateful this time

There's a recurring online tendency to aestheticize consensus itself. The imagined future village is full of emotionally compatible people who enjoy communal gardening, conflict resolution circles, acoustic folk music, mutual aid potlucks, and repairing bicycles together at sunset. Which is nice for the people who genuinely enjoy that lifestyle. But plenty of humans are solitary, prickly, obsessive, urban, nocturnal, sensory-seeking, technologically attached, contrarian, novelty-seeking, private, or just plain difficult. Those people do not evaporate after the revolution. They do not get Left Behind while you are Raptured into the Utopia. They become your neighbors.

The part about it being envisioned specifically as a "village" is relevant, I think, in that these kinds of people romanticize small rural villages as this ideal form of close-knit community to which we must retvrn, in contrast to the hard, alienating city life. But I'd argue that sure, dense urban environments can be alienating in certain ways, but they're also in many ways more utopian simply in that they force people to learn to peacefully co-exist as a community with others very different from themselves. The rural village appears to live in idyllic consensus because everyone who did not fit in has either been ostracized away, worn down into conformity, or has voluntarily fled to the nearest big city as soon as they were old enough.

the utopian character of the city is not only in that it teaches coexistence but also in that it fosters the development of communities within its community. a city is a thousand villages you can visit and join and leave without abandoning the comforts of your home and the stability of your lifestyle and the fundamental sense that you still ultimately belong. you can have even more tightly knit communities of maximally compatible people when more people have the opportunity to self-select and be accepted into them, and to self-select out of them without the coercive force of exclusion from your entire societal context. you can also have looser communities that benefit their members without them having to holistically get along with each other! people can be in multiple of both of these at the same time!! social butterflies can flourish to the greatest extent their own bodies and brains can handle, and the most closed-off self-sufficient loner in the world can still benefit from cooperation without it being predicated on connection. the community of the city itself is simply that of sharing space, but sharing space means sharing the myriad resources and opportunities that occupy it

forced caretaking as a trope i think is like cocaine to people who know they need to be taken care of but have mental blocks in the way like yeah please do gently force me into a state of vulnerability so my body learns it is a safe thing to feel around you

This has gotta be a hit with the girlies who have always wanted something terrible to happen to them just so people realize they're in more misery than their outward appearance lets on

theres like a yuri cambrian explosion happening

was going to further explain how in the cons ive been to over the last few years theres been a dramatic increase in yuri (both ship art and art of actual yuri manga characters and even original w/w comics from artists) and it is excellent to see us progress towards more of a balance between yuri and yaoi but tbh the phrase yuri cambrian explosion just made me think like what if an anomalocaris and an opabinia were girlfriend

the worst thing about those fancy pears is that you think “there’s no way a pear could be worth that much” but if you actually make the mistake of tasting one you will be forced to confront the fact that what you thought was pleasure is but a shadow of a shadow and there is a world out there more real than real that your senses have been waiting for, where the colors are richer and the water is wetter and sleep is refreshing. and you’re not invited.

you want to be mommy’s adjective noun, don’t you, pet name? you want to verb and verb for mommy like a good gender

“be gay do crime! but sex is yucky and crime is wrong!” ass website

hey can everyone do me a favor and put in the tags why they chose their name? even if you don't go by a chosen name irl, you can put why you chose your online name.

i love that it’s a carefully worded, well-written, non-inflammatory answer too. which asker wouldn’t know because they won’t read it. i love website

"A wall of text" baby that's a curb at best

the other day I read a compelling point that many instances described as illiteracy would actually be more aptly described as aliteracy, meaning an individual has the ability to read but simply chooses not to. great example here, awesome work.