So Much To Like

The religion of Jesus’s people has no concept of a permanent hell and instructed its priests on how to induce miscarriages.  Jesus explicitly rejected the concept of disability as a divine punishment.  He spoke out against religious hypocrites.  He had enough respect for women to let his mother choose the time of his first miracle.  He blessed a same sex couple.  He told a rich man that he must give up his wealth to get to heaven, and also told a parable about a rich man suffering in agony in presumably Gehinnom (basically Purgatory) just to hammer the point home.  He told people to pay their taxes.  He declared “love your neighbor” to be one of the two commandments on which all laws hang.  He commanded his followers to help the poor.  He commanded them to help the sick and the needy.  He spent time with social outcasts.  He healed the servant of a high priest during his arrest rather than fighting back.  He was put to death by the occupying government because he was a political radical.

“Canon Jesus is better than Fandom Jesus.”

But if you apply some worldbuilding you put two things together:

1. Replicators

2. “No money.”

Futurists call this the “replicator economy” and we’re already seeing the start of it.

If I was a little bit richer, I would have bought a 3D printer last year.

When you have a 3D printer, you can download things from the internet and make them yourself for the cost of the raw materials. I have a 3D-printed cosplay prop that I printed on a library printer. They charged me the cost of the raw filament for it…it cost me less than $2 for the actual object. Probably $3-4 by the time I add in the paint. It’s made of a biologically created plastic.

In the works: Creating 3D printer filament out of old plastic shopping bags. (Which cannot be multi-stream recycled, it costs a fortune). This means that it won’t be long before a normal household can make toys and the like out of plastic shopping bags.

A true replicator uses cheap raw materials and waste to make useful things.

Let’s imagine, as an interim step, that somebody creates a clothing replicator. You feed it rags and it creates new clothes, from patterns you download from the internet.

So, you have an old T-shirt. It’s fine, but for a small hole and the pattern having rubbed off. You feed it into your clothing replicator and out comes a new T-shirt with a new design. No, we don’t have this yet, but we can and probably will.

What, at that point, happens to clothing shops? Oh, yes, you might still buy some clothes - and handmade clothing, put together by an actual human, is still going to have a cachet.

But the clothes from your replicator fit you perfectly. You don’t have a size any more. Every X months you stand in a 3D scanner, it takes every measurement, and then sends it to your replicator. If you’re pregnant (assuming we don’t have ectogenesis) you can actually have it adjust your favorite dress to make baby bump room. Just like that. The most comfortable item of clothing I own is my pleather bodysuit. Not coincidentally, it’s the only item of clothing I own that was made to my measurements.

None of what we wear fits.

So…right. What happens to clothing shops? What happens to spending large amounts of money on new clothes while we throw old clothes away or give them to Goodwill?

The economy slowly develops to the point where the means of production really is in the hands of people: As individuals.

Star Trek technology means that if Picard wants a new suit, he just programs a clothing replicator to take his measurements and make him a new suit. Some people like tailors, so Garak gets to stay in business.

And eventually, if all you actually need is raw material and information, you don’t need to buy very much…

…and you end up with a society without money. It’s not “communist” in any way that has ever been tried before because, well, it requires the underpinnings of that technology. (Just don’t think too hard about where the Enterprise’s food replicators get some of their raw material).

You end up with the only valuable thing being information and the only valuable skill being art - but it doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to work for a living any more. TNG reflects the only valuable skill being art in many ways, in fact. Data’s painting. The chamber orchestra. Geordi’s hobby of designing holodeck programs. Everyone makes art, not because it’s the one thing machines can’t do, but because it’s the one thing humans (and others) won’t let the machines take over.

The owner of the drone was so impressed by the brilliant attack that he suggested organizing a competition for bringing down “dragons” with short spears next year.

Below description from The Mary Sue’s “You Can Now Read Metafilter’s Thread On Emotional Labor as an Annotated PDF”:

Perhaps you’ve already had someone recommend that you read the lengthy Metafilter thread about emotional labor, and how often we gender it a “natural” gift that women allegedly enjoy and excel at performing, but which men claim to lack and/or need to learn how to do. On the contrary, it’s a learned skill for everyone — and this form of work should be respected and acknowledged. The thread does a great job of unpacking how deep our collective assumptions about emotional labor can extend, and how we all might go about undoing them and rethinking the value and cost of emotional labor.

Anyway, it’s a very long thread. You might not have time to read all of it! Good news: the most relevant posts from the thread — which was inspired by this piece by Jess Zimmerman on the Toast — can now be read in PDF form via this annotated Google doc, complete with a Table of Contents and relevant links, citations, etc.

for a Humans are Weird story.

So human babies REALLY need to be touched. Its totally critical for development. Small babies can literally die if you don’t cuddle them enough.

But imagine that the aliens are more like reptiles, in that they just sort of hatch and their parents feed them or stay around (and presumably, like, educate them, since they’re intelligent aliens), but don’t carry them around or cuddle in the same way.

So one of them gets stuck with a human baby that they’re responsible for and of course, they go ask a xenobiologist or someone ‘what do you do for a human baby, they’re all weird and squishy’.

And the scientist says: well, you have to stroke them. Like actually pick them up and stroke their skin.

Why, says the alien, what could that possibly accomplish. Does it make their skin tougher. Will they grow proper scales.

“Why do they ask to pet our fur? Why do they touch every animal we find? Humans are so strange!”

“No, no, Pod Leader, we have discovered the reason for this. Humans require tactile contact for health. Their young will actually die without frequent touchings of skin, Even as adults, their health deteriorates if they are isolated from touch. Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is trying to nurture us and preserve our healthfulness with this touching they offer.”

“… they actually believe that touching our fur with their grubby paws is healthful?”

“For humans, Pod Leader, it is.A little unsanitary, we are understanding the reservations, but it is kindly meant. We think it is actually very nice of Human Technical Adjunct Rupert to be so concerned with our healthfulness.”

“We are still not sure we believe this. That sounds like a weak attempt at deceit to us.”

“Let us show you this vid of humans nurturing their young, it is very instructive.”

When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I kept getting involved with people who would say, “Oh, I’m a bad person” any time I brought up ANYTHING that was the least bit of a disagreement. 

Like, “Please don’t leave my X on the floor” would get, “Oh, I’m a horrible person!”

HERE’S WHY THIS IS A HUGELY PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR, and if you think I”m calling you out and you think you’re about to shut down, take a breath, remember that this is about learning, and keep reading.

What is important is what happened after. My boyfriend might say, “Oh, I’m just an awful boyfriend” and instead of him acknowledging the BEHAVIOR and working on fixing it, he’d get me trying to buck him up for the next half hour, telling him he was a good person. The behavior that started it all would not change.

Well, things led to things and I went back home to live for a while, and found that the same exact thing was happening… with my mother.

And then I learned about pattern arguments. Pattern arguments are the ones where you keep having the same nonproductive argument over and over again. They don’t all follow this pattern, but this is a really common one.

The trick?

BREAK THE PATTERN

First you have to know what the pattern is. In this case: 1. Grievance 2. Self deprecation 3. Ego stroking So, with my mother, we started in on one of these, and she said, “I guess I’m just a terrible mother.” And instead of reassuring her, instead of derailing the issue and letting it go… I said, “When you say that, it makes me wonder how terrible a daughter I could be that you would think you were a bad mother. We have this conversation this way over and over, and the problem that I have always gets pushed aside in favor of trying to make you feel better. When you’re willing to have a real conversation about this, I’m happy to talk to you, but I’m bored with this argument, so I’ll see you later if you want to really talk.” And I left the room. Now, my mom is a reasonably self-aware person, and does a lot of hard emotional work, and so she got it, very quickly. 10 minutes later she came out and found me, and we had a real conversation about whatever the hell the issue really was, and we have literally NEVER had that particular pattern argument again in 23 years.  Boyfriend came to visit. I was upset about something, he started in on the “I’m just a shitty boyfriend” thing… and my response? “Yep. You are.” His jaw dropped. He blinked. And I said, “Look, that’s what you do. You say shit like that and it means you don’t have to change your behavior, and I’m tired of the pattern we have where I tell you something isn’t working for me, you tell me you’re terrible, and I spend half an hour making you feel better. I’m tired of it and I”m not doing it anymore. If you’re willing to have an actual conversation about this, and not just the same old argument, I’m game. But this thing we do where you talk yourself down and I butter you up? Is boring. And I’m over it.” We also did not have that argument again. (The relationship finally ended for real a while after, but it ended in a grown-up way, and not with a ridiculous meaningless fight.) When you knock yourself down, the gut instinct for the people around you is to pick you up. But that means you’re not pulling your weight in the relationship. You’re making them do the work and you’re not actually hearing them. So that brings us to another point:

How to deal with criticism

Okay, so if you’re not going to knock yourself down when someone says something negative about you, what DO you do? We don’t actually train people to take criticism well. But it is an art and a skill and NECESSARY to finding emotional stability in the face of a critical world.

I see it as a flow chart, but since the flow chart I made for it ended up in a book that I don’t own the copyright to (not a big deal) I’ll write out the decision tree here instead: 1. Someone offers criticism (constructive or not!)

2. Listen and think about it without immediately trying to defend yourself. You can say, “Okay, I need a moment to take that in and think about it because I want to understand it.” Or something else appropriate to the situation. It is okay to ask for time to think in most circumstances. Most people will appreciate that you are thinking about their words instead of immediately getting defensive or counterattacking. Think about whether what they are saying is valid, might be valid or is not valid. 

3A. If it is valid, then you have a choice. You can try to fix the behavior or you can acknowledge that it is a valid criticism but decide you aren’t likely to fix it. Start by acknowledging the validity of the criticism, and then say what you’re going to do to fix it, or say that it’s valid but it isn’t something you’re willing (or possibly able) to change, or say that it’s a valid criticism and you’ll need to think about possible solutions. They may have a suggestion. Taking it or not is also a choice. 

3B. If you’re not sure it’s valid, but it might be, tell them, “I really need to give this some more thought.” or “Can you tell me more about this? I’m not sure I understand the issue well.”  Or “If you can point me at some reading material or search terms, I’d like to study this before I decide what I’m going to do.” 

3C. If you know it is not a valid criticism, STOP a moment, and look at WHY they are making it. This is where Active Listening can be very helpful. “I hear you saying that X is a problem. I don’t see it that way right now but I’d like to understand better why you do.” Or if you think they don’t have enough information, “I hear you saying X, but my understanding of the issue is Y. Here’s what I know about it if you’re ready to listen.” If they’re just looking for a fight, tell them you’re not interested in fighting, and disentangle yourself. 

4. If the criticism is something you are going to listen to and take action on, tell them what kind of action you’re going to take. If it’s something you’re hearing and thinking about, tell them that. If it’s not something you’re going to do anything about or it’s just wrong, thank them for their input and move on.

Literally never is it going to be helpful to say, “Oh, I’m just a terrible person.” That’s very much like a nonapology-apology in terms of how unhelpful it is to any conversation. It’s kind of worse because it actually expects emotional labor from someone who is already having to bring up something unpleasant with you. Think about what they say Decide whether you’re going to do something about it Do the thing, or tell them you’re not going to do the thing.  Don’t demand emotional labor from other people when you were the one who messed up. 

For a growing number of American kids, porn is their sex ed.  Now Pornhub is hoping to offer their audience some more formal lessons in how to be a healthy and happy sexual being.

On Wednesday, the massive adult entertainment destination took the somewhat surprising step of launching the “Pornhub Sexual Health Center.”  They’re hoping the free sub-site will become a go-to resource for some of their 70 million daily users on all manner of topics, including STIs, sexual safety and how to manage relationships.

They’ve chosen Dr. Laurie Betito, a renowned sex therapist, to direct the site and they’ll also be working with a number of doctors, therapists and other experts to offer advice and answer questions.  Corey Price, Pornhub’s Vice President, told Mashable, “Our goal is to provide our visitors with a site that has credible and insightful information, rather than have them scouring the internet.”

While it’s a database they’ll build up over time, a first look reveals they’ve started with the fundamentals — with answers to things like “Babies. Where do they come from?” and “Are there really three holes?”  These might seems almost laughably basic to adult consumers of hardcore porn, but there are a lot of young people for whom these are very real questions.

Price told Mashable they weren’t aiming the content specifically at beginners.  He said they simply want to appeal to “those who are looking for trustworthy sex tips and health advice provided by experts.”  But it seems like they realize this could prove to be an especially valuable resource for their younger audience, who most likely isn’t getting comprehensive (much less sex-positive) sex ed in schools.

There are, of course, plenty of online sexual health and education resources, but for many kids, landing on sites like Pornhub is already their way into learning about sex.  Porn can obviously teach you plenty about the basics and mechanics of intercourse, but there’s a whole range of other things — biology, health, consent, relating to intimate partners, just to name a few — that you won’t pick up from watching videos like “Big tits round asses” or “Sloppy throat games.”

So if they can slide their curious audience over to the PSHC while they’re already on the site, it could function as pretty useful one-stop shop for filling in the blanks left by spotty sex ed classes and the birds and bees talks given by often bewildered parents.

Supposedly invented by the Chinese, there is an ancient form of torture that is nothing more than cold, tiny drops falling upon a person’s forehead. 

On its own, a single drop is nothing. It falls upon the brow making a tiny splash. It doesn’t hurt. No real harm comes from it. 

In multitudes, the drops are still fairly harmless. Other than a damp forehead, there really is no cause for concern. 

The key to the torture is being restrained. You cannot move. You must feel each drop. You have lost all control over stopping these drops of water from splashing on your forehead. 

It still doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. But person after person, time and time again—would completely unravel psychologically. They all had a breaking point where each drop turned into a horror. Building and building until all sense of sanity was completely lost. 

“It was just a joke, quit being so sensitive.”

“They used the wrong pronoun, big deal.”

“So your parents don’t understand, it could be worse.”

Day after day. Drop after drop. It builds up. A single instance on its own is no big deal. A few drops, not a problem. But when you are restrained, when you cannot escape the drops, when it is unending—these drops can be agony. 

People aren’t sensitive because they can’t take a joke. Because they can’t take being misgendered one time. Because they lack a thick skin. 

People are sensitive because the drops are unending and they have no escape from them. 

Travis McElroy, already an excellent father (Til Death Do Us Blart: 2016)

Ollie Bucky's first movie was Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He wore a Yoda hat and was swaddled in a Storm Trooper crochet blanket with a R2D2 onesie.

Tbh there’s no wrong answer!! But they do a lot of things, so it’s probably best to start with whatever you feel would engage you most. If you like here’s the order I’ve gotten into their stuff so far:

Monster Factory: YouTube gaming series on Polygon where Justin and Griffin take games with character customisation, completely fuck with its limits, then attempt gameplay with their precious new child. Best known on Tumblr for “Just Like Bart”

MBMBaM (the McElroys’ main gig): Advice podcast that includes other brother Travis, where they give dubious advice to both listeners’ questions and random Yahoo Answers. They usually go off on completely nonsense tangents that has little to do with the original question

The Adventure Zone: D&D podcast the McElroys play with their dad Clint. Griffin currently DMs, while the other three play goofy Chaotic Good boys, including a canonically gay elf that uses an umbrella as a wand and a dwarf that fucks plants worships Pan

Car Boys: Another Polygon series Griffin does with Nick Robinson in BeamNG.drive; where again, they just fuck around crashing vehicles and toying with a temperamental crash test dummy they named Busto

CoolGames Inc.: Griffin and Nick’s podcast where they take listener submissions for video game ideas and attempt to flesh it out into something completely absurd

Interrobang with Travis and Tybee: A cool tangential podcast Travis does with his friend Tybee Diskin, where they rant about stuff in the world; but it’s always got like a basis in compassion and acknowledging privilege.