日本語ができないブラジル人

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Lasers have a lot of uses! Measuring things, heating things, cutting things, entertaining cats, particle physics. Lasers are pretty cool. Very versatile, very useful, potential to be very powerful.

Someone shows up one day and says "I have developed a never before seen technology! I call it a Death Star."

And it's a 3.4mW laser. Well no, we haven't seen this exact size of laser much since that's not really standard, but that's a bit of a misnomer, and I wouldn't call it new -

"HOLY SHIT GUYS! This Death Star is so entertaining! My cat loves it and it has such a nice color!" The Death Star becomes a viral novelty, and is mildly entertaining, as laser pointers often are.

Somehow, seemingly overnight, this leads to mania. "Lets stick lasers in EVERYTHING! The public loves them!"

More companies make 3.4mW lasers to jump on the bandwagon. Everyone that makes anything vaguely mechanical starts sticking lasers into their designs.

Everyone is calling them Death Stars. Any time there is a "Death Star innovation", it is just that they made a bigger laser.

Ford's next truck comes out and it has "Death Star integrated headlights", where they have just stuck giant lasers in place of their previously functional headlights.

An electric toothbrush is now "Powered by Death Stars" and shoots a laser at the tooth its cleaning. You think that maybe this could have actual applications as a sanitizing device if you're being generous, but when you actually look at the product, its laser has no purpose but to point at the tooth and drain the battery.

Mechanical products across the board get noticeably worse as everyone starts stuffing lasers in places where lasers have no right to be.

The lamp business gets in on it. "Here's a Death Star powered lamp!" These guys haven't even tried to stick a laser in their damn lamps. They've just started calling their light bulbs Death Stars and hoped you bought it before you could tell the difference. You at least appreciate that they haven't ruined their lamp about it.

Death Stars are lauded as the solution to all the world's problems. If it's not working, you should stick a laser in it! That'll fix it, everyone says. Once in a blue moon, it's even true! Weather prediction is really good now. But most things are garbage. Like "Death Star powered washing machines". What the fuck does that even mean?

Meanwhile, since all functioning mechanisms are being replaced with lasers, problems start showing up. All mirrors now cost $1000+ dollars, because the whole supply is being used up to make more lasers. The earth heats up, because everyone's blasting lasers at everything. People keep going blind, on account of all the lasers.

You, in fact, study optical mechanics. You know what a laser is, and how it works, and that it was invented many years before any of this nonsense actually started. People keep asking you about Death Stars, since surely you must know so much about them.

You explain that this is not really what lasers are for, except you have to call them Death Stars now, and that they're causing a lot of harm, so you don't like them much.

"Oh, but they're still such new tech!" they reply. "They'll figure out how to make Death Stars that don't burn your eyes out soon, and then it won't be an issue anymore!"

Somewhere, deep and buried, you remember lasers being used in particle accelerators, or in telescopes, or in laser cutters, or funny cat videos. They are, in fact, still interesting. Still cool.

But by this point they have replaced roads with "Death Star Powered Pathways", which are just laser pointers propped up on tooth picks pointing vaguely through the forests.

And you think you are going mad.

And they are still just FUCKING LASERS.

Another one is the verb "perceive" i.e. "don't perceive me" "I am perceiving" "I am being percieved." That's something that feels very specific to tumblr parlance.

There's the thing where people on tumblr have an emotional reaction to something and instead of, or in addition to telling you how they feel about it using emotion words, they will narrate a fictional action in the present progressive tense. "I am gnawing at the bars of my enclosure "I am kissing you on the mouth" "you are going into the soup" "you are getting all of the awards"

I once saw someone use that response format in ... I think it was a restaurant review, or a doordash review, or something like that. It was very unexpected seeing it outside of a tumblr post.

sadly my project is lost due to the website being wiped from the university database after graduation and my then laptop having a major hardware failure. backup your backups people! but the crux of the entire module was that the internet is full of communities using language not only as jargon for specific purpose but also to signal membership in said community. I even wrote a bit about non capitalisation and punctuation useage as a visual cue on tumblr and how including information in the reblog body or the tags indicated different levels of importance or intimacy of thought

Everyone knows it's the CEO's fault. Everyone knows how to fix it. But the CEO does nothing, digs his head in the sand, and pretends like shit is normal. And people are dying.

So you, young hotshot that you are, call an all hands meeting and get a specialist to explain what the problem is. It's easily solved, but it will cost money, and that money is going to have to come from the CEO.

The CEO throws a shitfit. He doesn't want to solve the problem. He doesn't want to admit under overwhelming evidence that it's his fault. But he agrees to do so under one condition--he's not paying to fix it--you are. He's taking your bonus and you can get fucked. As it turns out, the CEO thinks you fucking suck.

Not a single one of your colleagues protests on your behalf, probably because they know that if they speak up, he'll just take their bonuses, too.

So what do you do? Do you continue working for Mr. "idc if my employees die as long as I get mine?" Do you quit? Do you take the wealth you've accumulated working for this guy and go home? Do you stab the worst boss you've ever had in front of every other employee at the company?

our lives matter more than your fucking nostalgia.

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

is it because you're scared of the word vulva? of acknowledging out loud that some people have penises? of recognising that many many people, including but certainly not limited to trans people, have mixed sex characteristics that cannot be accurately summarised by "afab/amab" as shorthand for "female/male"?

"in [GENITAL RELATED] situation AFABs will need to do X and AMABs will need to do Y" there are "afabs" with penises and "amabs" with vulvas. Saying this shit makes you look so unserious & honestly transphobic (given the ongoing erasure of post-op trans people within broader community). Intersex people and GRS have both existed for long enough (fucking forever and, decades, respectively) that we should well past making this basic fucking mistake.

(Proper nouns and adopted words don’t count.)