Runaway Lunatic

obviously how effective this is varies wildly based on the relationship, or lack thereof, that you have with the other person. but I find it effective with people who are In Your Life but don't meaningfully have any control over you. quite often it DOES result in increased directness in the future, especially if it's something I end up doing fairly often. and it's not rude; I'm just politely seeking clarification about what is being communicated. it makes the person have to think about what effect they were expecting their behavior to have on my behavior, and then just... tell me straightforwardly. but without escalating the situation or making the person feel 'called out' most of the time.

She frequently makes requests by telling me what I want, eg "oh wouldn't you like to.." "don't you think it's be nice if..."

It used to drive me up the wall, but now as an adult with better understanding of what's happening I say "Actually I'm fine with x, but I'd be happy to do y if that's what you want?"

One day she actually asked me, "Why is it so important to you that I say that y is what I want?"

and i got to say "Well I don't like being told what I want. I have enough life experience to know my own desires and limitations, and I can advocate for them when I need to. However your opinions do matter to me and I want to take them into account. It's much less stressful for me to do so when I'm not guessing what's in your mind."

And folks, she Actually Listened.

Later that day she wanted something that ended up not being possible, but because she said so directly I was able to help her find a different way to achieve the same goal!

Happy black cat day!!

Lost my mind a little and added (if my math is correct) 5,615 beads to Nim Teasdale's Odenwald pattern. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!

The goal was “soothingly weighted but not uncomfortable to wear, even as someone with chronic pain.” It could have been a little heavier, so maybe I’ll make a shawl with larger beads another time, but I’m very pleased with this one. I used size 6/0 seed beads, applied as I go with a .6mm crochet hook.

Yarn-wise, used 2 cakes of YarnArt Flowers. I knitted the fully purple sections from both, then knitted all the way through the yellow-oranges with a single ball. When I hit the beginning of red-oranges, I used yarn from both cakes, alternating between them. (Not the entirety of both, I played it by ear to make sure I made it through the full rainbow.)

I do have edited charts with bead placements. I will only share them with Nim's permission.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

For all the reasons above AND ALSO because this particular lawsuit is a defamation case

Privacy lawsuits are hard because most privacy laws are super super weak, and there's very rarely a lot of money or enforcement backing privacy laws for...twenty million reasons, really...

But defamation suits? Those have teeth.

(In large part because, at least in some countries and including in the US, defamation laws protect public figures the least - and "public figures" legally includes most if not all politicians, and a hell of a lot of other rich ppl too)

A German court has ruled that Google can be held directly liable for false claims made by its AI Overviews, a decision that could put a serious legal dent in the whole “the AI made me do it” defense. According to The Next Web, the Regional Court of Munich issued a temporary injunction after Google’s AI Overviews wrongly tied two Munich publishers to scams, subscription traps, and dubious business practices. The court treated those AI-generated summaries as Google’s own statements, not just ordinary search results pointing to third-party pages. That distinction matters. Search engines have traditionally had more protection because they index and link to other people’s content. AI Overviews changes the machinery. Google is not just showing the web anymore. It is summarizing it, rewriting it, and sometimes apparently hallucinating a tiny legal grenade into the results page.

However. Criminalizing sex work would likely solve none of these problems, only exacerbate them, and add a whole list of new problems on top. First of all.

And second of all, none of these problems are unique to sex work. Agriculture, delivery, home care, so many more: all these industries rely heavily on criminally underpaid migrant workers. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the cheap plastic shit we buy, all was brought to us by exploitation. I'm speaking from a western European perspective when I say, all of this is happening right here. At home. On our farms, in our streets.

And yet! Delivering amazon parcels or working 3 shifts in a slaughterhouse is not constantly on the verge of being criminalized. Is it. No one is publicly shamed and called a pervert for hiring a 24hr care assistant to come live with their grandma.

It is only sex work that has supposed "feminists" rallying against it and why is that? Not because of exploitation, and not because of the danger (plenty of exploitative and dangerous jobs with a largely female workforce to go around). Because they see sex as inherently degrading. Sex work is The Worst because sex is uniquely damaging. It is the madonna/whore complex but call it feminism.

There are going to be menopausal cis mums who are on the same brand of estrogen patch as you who are gonna join you in griping about getting them to stick and swapping tips for when you get dispensed the big patches but your dose is half that.

There are going to be infertile cis women who share your pain and anger at the concept that 'able to bear children' is seen as the only 'real' way to be a woman.

There are gonna be intersex cis women who understand what it's like to have your body's default state not line up with societal expectations.

I was having a lot of dysphoria about my upper lip hair suddenly having color to it (medicine side effect it seems). So I was internally wondering if they'd ostracize me since they'd clocked me.

One of the women goes "oh it's okay, I have PCOS too. Don't let it bother you." And suddenly I've got 3 women chatting with me and lamenting how they have to "shave almost every day at this point" and just cackling. The store worker joined in, saying she plucks constantly, and her "transgender friend has to shave 2 or more times a day!". They all had these genuine reactions and "oh no, poor girl" and other comments.

I felt included. I never mentioned that I was transgender.. I just carried on, they helped me pick out wines, gave me some tips on undertones for makeup to cover facial hair stubble, and I got the shop worker to pull out some elderflower liqueur to add to a small sample of a Pinot Grigio (and got more people to try it and add it to their rotation. Seriously, try it sometime. It's incredible).

I had had this job for a couple of months, and while I was working I was told we had a stage coming in later to see how they fit in. I say great and go on my break. When I come back, the potential hire is there... And she's a coworker from a couple jobs ago (like two or three years previous). We both slowly point at each other and go "Aren't you... ?" Before laughing and reintroducing ourselves. I go "Sooo I'm a girl now," and she laughs and tells me "Yeah I can tell." We spend some time catching up, and we work great together, and she gets hired.

she also gave her a list of things that would help with the bodily transition while on estrogen, from good bras, general breast health tips (not even just lump checks - how to deal with friction or rashes underneath the breasts, how to get properly fitted for a bra, etc.) and just - general stuff a mother would do for a daughter going through puberty.