Kayla's Page

(it still needs prettifying but it's late and i have more actual work to do)

*ahem*

slide deck, please:

three different people looked at "his dad is a dick" and strenuously disagreed that this was irrelevant, so, you know. i stand corrected.

we are all very sad that boromir lost his horse. even though the horse, canonically, was fine.

i always forget that people who are primarily film fans just Do Not Know that bilbo ground the whole council of elrond to a halt to give a poetry reading and complain about the catering.

why is this allowed? because bilbo is elrond's emotional support hobbit. frodo is bilbo's emotional support hobbit which is why he adopted him. sam is, of course, frodo's emotional support hobbit. merry and pippin are everyone's emotional support hobbits. fatty bolger is nobody's emotional support hobbit because he stayed in the shire, where fortunately Nothing Bad Happened At All, Definitely Not

i have been vehemently vindicated in my belief that "curse you and all your kin to darkness and death!" is an entirely valid response to being called before 11am

Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic

the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal

this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately

somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large

following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor

today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea

It's really weird how we call it "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome"

But like

No one calls it "Doritos Syndrome"

Or "Pringles Syndrome"

Or "Pop Tarts" or "CoffeeMate" syndrome

Really weird how MSG never seems to give anyone a headache in any of those foods, for some reason

It seems to be only specifically in Chinese Restaurants that MSG becomes a problem 🤷‍♀️

What an interesting coincidence.

You know what gives me a headache?

this shows up when transfems make posts for and about other transfems, and invariably transmascs will come along to try and make it about them as well. they dont see it as a womens post, they see it as a Trans post that hasnt mentioned transmascs yet

this also shows up in discussions of transmisogyny. transfems discuss the intersectional bigotry we face and transmascs will get defensive that the conversation centres us and not the Trans Demographic as a whole. this is where "transandrophobia" theory comes in, from transmascs misconstruing transmisogyny as just "transphobia for girls" and insisting there must be a transphobia for boys in return, and to deny "transandrophobia" legitimacy is to deny that transmascs face any transphobia. its morphed into its own transmisogynist violence at this point but its inception was very clearly fueled by the transmasc insecurity over there not being one Trans Experience. transmascs think there has to be a blue version, because they dont conceive of transfems belonging to a different demographic than them

i think no small part of this is that transmasculine transition doesnt force them to reckon with transmisogyny the same way transfeminine transition does. of course, it would be wrong to claim no transfem falls victim to this, but far more transfems do have that reckoning because we are forcibly subjected to transmisogyny. and because transmascs flatten the demographic to just Trans, they believe themselves to have a postion of authority to speak on trans issues without ever being forced to interrogate their inherent transmisogynist biases from living in a transmisogynist society and understand the misogyny within the demographic, and any pushback against them is pushback against the Trans Demographic as a whole

And GLaDOS interjects like, "You didn't do this. She did all the work!"

I find that interjection fascinating because. Like.

GLaDOS doesn't actually know anything about what happened behind the scenes. She lost track of Chell and Wheatley after Wheatley opened up a wall panel and they bolted off together into the facility's inner workings. She doesn't see them again until Chell falls for her fake door trap, at which point GLaDOS is unpleasantly surprised to discover that Chell's disabled the turrets and neurotoxin in the meantime.

She has no evidentiary foundation to base that accusation on.

This is also before GLaDOS recognizes Wheatley as the Dumbass Core, so it's not based on an assessment of him.

The only explanation it leaves is that it's based on her assessment of Chell. Despite GLaDOS's enmity towards Chell, the one thing she rarely goes after Chell for is her intelligence.

When she does, it's an admission of her high standards for Chell; Like when the fake door trap works and GLaDOS concedes, "I didn't actually think that would work. I already built a much better, smarter trap up ahead for when this one fails." That's a backhanded insult. It's calling her dumb, but in a disappointed way rather than an affirming way.

Chell tests very well. Between the two games, GLaDOS has developed a strong understanding of Chell's aptitude for critical thinking and problem-solving in stressful situations.

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.