Chaos Cat (loves this thing in particular)

1. Promise everything.

2. Piss off everyone.

3. Deliver nothing.

And if you have sex with someone other than your partner without telling them, well, then you’ve just exposed them to whatever diseases that other person might’ve been exposed to. That’s a risk they didn’t consent to.

I've seen ones today including photos, dates of birth, place of birth even!

So many women feel the need to mention their young children in their cover letters and CVs. Some young people slip in that they can't drive, a sort of pre-emptive "but it's okay I have a bus pass". So many people go and shove their mental health issues with anxiety and depression in there.

I remember one girl had clearly been told that she needed to explain any gaps in employment in the cover letter (terrible blanket advice), and so had described how she had developed depression after a traumatic miscarriage and spent a year in a terrible spiral getting worse and worse before getting on a new medication that, and I quote, "seemed to be finally starting to work." There are ways she could have written that information if she was desperately wanting to include it (I cannot stress enough that she should not have included a word of it), but the way it was written was almost literally a description of how she would be a horrendously unreliable employee who could dip out at a moment's notice and would never be seen again, while also demonstrating that she cannot determine appropriate professional communication.

(And for the record, the latter is the actual issue. I have no problems at all hiring employees with mental health issues, and did several times hire people in recovery to help them get back on their feet. Only once did that not work out; all others were amazing, and two became some of our best employees - one is now a manager there, in fact. But if an employee can't be trusted not to over share personal information with customers or colleagues, particularly triggering topics... That's a different issue. She did herself no favours at all there, and nor did whoever told her employers will always need employment gaps explaining in a cover letter).

Another guy once wrote in his cover letter "I want this job because after years of messing about I now have a little girl, so I need to sort my life out for her, and if I can't do it even for her then more fool me." Which, like, I admire the drive and passion. But again. Why are you telling an employer that you're a flight risk. Why are you telling us this.

One 18 year old volunteered, unforced, that he was gay. Just right in the cover letter. That he sent to a future employer.

And then, of course, the thousands that send in CVs and cover letters that are horrendously mis-spelled. Again, as an employer, I care dick-all if you're dyslexic or what have you; but I do care that you didn't think it was important to get someone to proofread a professional document for you before submission. That tells me quite a big thing about the level of professionalism I can expect from you in the role. It wasn't massively relevant for the job I was hiring for (escape room game master), but if we'd had slightly different job duties (e.g. writing official soc med posts), that would be the difference between getting an interview or not.

We were given very explicit instructions, particularly, to NOT SAY we were passionate about art. We were told that obviously we were all passionate about art, that's why we were art majors, and we were supposed to let our passion be communicated via whatever else we had to say about ourselves.

I dutifully avoided that sentence, which was not particularly difficult.

We then reviewed each other's artist statements.

Everyone whose artist statement I read included some variation of the phrase "I am passionate about art."

Every single damn one.

"I have always been very passionate about art." "I am passionate about my art." "I am really passionate about art."

Every goddamn time.

I lost some sort of faith in human intelligence that day.

and everyone is posting their 4th of july manis

except this year its very few american flags and red white and blue and stars.

and a LOT of pond scum inspiration

Stumbled across this:

@ZubyMusic: Politics can rot people's brains to the point that they'll oppose good ideas if they come from the 'wrong people' and support bad ideas if they come from the 'right people'

Tumblrino: I heard someone say the other day that most people's brains don't separate information into "true" and "false" but rather "us" and "them": will the people of my tribe approve of this? Then it's true. Will the people of my tribe disapprove and cast me out for expressing it? Then it's false.

This grabbed my attention because they're definitely referring to Dan M. Kahan's research on "Identity-Protective Cognition."

Most people think they update their beliefs based on evidence, but Kahan's research suggests otherwise and it's fascinating.

Identity-Protective Cognition is the tendency to selectively credit or dismiss evidence based on what your group believes, not what the evidence actually shows.

Among the ideas in this paper:

Being wrong is often the rational choice

If you change your mind on a "tribal" issue (climate change, gun control, vaccines, etc.) you risk social ostracism, family conflict, loss of status.

(Does that sound familiar?)

Being correct about a global scientific fact, meanwhile, has essentially zero effect on your personal life or the global outcome.

So your brain runs this calculation...and chooses the tribe.

Smart people are worse, not better

Kahan found that higher scientific literacy and reasoning ability actually increase polarization.

Smarter people, he says, are better at cherry-picking evidence and finding flaws in the other side's data. Their intelligence becomes a weapon for motivated reasoning, not a cure for it.

We don't just ignore inconvenient facts, we actively embrace misinformation that flatters us

Identity-affirming misinformation (stuff that makes your tribe look good) gets a free pass. Identity-threatening facts (stuff that makes your tribe look bad) get fought tooth and nail.

Kahan's proposed fix is information decoupling.

He says we need to separate the fact from the identity signal it carries.

Presenting correct information alone is useless and often counterproductive.

Kahan says you have to make the truth feel safe for someone's existing identity without implying they need to defect to the other side to believe it.

But...how?!

What Kahan is really describing is that humans are social animals before they are rational ones.

We evolved to survive in groups, not to optimize for abstract truth (to varying degrees.)

So our brains aren't broken, they're just running software thousands of years old in a world they didn't evolve to cope with.

None of this means minds can't change - they change constantly - but Kahan's research suggests the mechanism of change isn't argument or evidence. It's identity shift.

People change their minds when they find a new tribe, a new role model, or a way of seeing themselves that makes the truth feel like theirs.

And that insight might explain why identity politics tend to backfire

If you organize persuasion around group identity, you deepen the very grooves that make minds hard to change. You grow only rigid ideologues engaged in purity tests who are good at chanting on rhythm. They won't be created, nuanced, pragmatic, diplomatic, or effective communicators.

Yascha Mounk's The Identity Trap makes this case from a different angle.

When well-intentioned people make identity "the all-encompassing dividing line of American life," they aren't dissolving tribal thinking, they're institutionalizing it.

The result, Mounk argues, is an ideology that denies that members of different groups can truly understand each other. It squashes liberal pluralism.

That's precisely the condition that makes Kahan's trap inescapable.

The alternative Mounk points toward is very much like Kahan's: universalism.

Mounk says we need identities large enough to contain disagreement without triggering tribal self-defense.

His argument is that universal values, not group solidarity, offer the surest path to justice, fairness, and enduring social peace.

The model he holds up as effective is the civil rights movement. It wasn't an appeal to Black identity alone, but to a shared American identity, shared moral values, and a vision of humanity big enough that even those outside the group could feel called to it, not accused by it.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't tell white Americans they were the enemy. He told them (and showed them) that they were falling short of their own ideals.

"Stuff like this is made to brainwash young girls into thinking that they can 'fix' dangerous men. Such girls usually end up in abusive relationships and their parents are right to worry."

It is rather strange to come across such a gross generalization, operating on an assumption that girls are blank slates whom anyone can manipulate and who can't distinguish between real and make believe on top of it.

In my entire "career"(if you can call it that) of engaging with fiction , the girls and women that I have run into in fandoms happened to be some of the most intelligent, talented, cool, witty and insightful people I have ever met. I've devoured the fics they have written. I have delighted in the arts and edits they've made. Their perspectives and interpretations about the characters and their relationships are genuinely fascinating to read about regardless of whether I agree with it or not. They are the ones who are most often at the receiving end of the antis' ire for no valid reason but they just keep deriving joy and inspiration from their favourite characters and ships and keep sharing it with others through stories, art and thoughts. They are not just smart but incredibly resilient, sensitive and aware not just about the media they consume but about the world around them and its issues.

College, all of a sudden, went from "something I'd like to do if I can get in" to "a lifeline in an economy where blue collar jobs are going to shit."

not the entire educational and parental apparatus singing to the heavens that college is now the only way to get ahead in life, expanding enrollment of their own volition chasing tuition income, and marketing absurd levels of student loans on the grounds of "don't worry about it, you'll easily pay it back with the great job college will let you get" and not giving a shit, themselves, about the potential future problem of oversaturation because they'll get paid regardless, oh no, couldn't possibly be that

not that any more nuanced or intelligent take could be expected from someone who uses "natural hierarchy" unironically

He’s just not catching nuances like “the purpose of this is to find things, not just to make holes or exercise/play.”

calling the sex I have with my friends “hookup culture” is insulting and incorrect. these are guys who take care of me and take me on dates and watch fun movies with me. being a disabled faggot too, they help me clean my place and take my trash out for me. they care for me and are on my emergency contact lists. trying to slap the label of “todays hookup culture!!!” on it is diminishing and devaluing those relationships

the weather sucks so much I have been sleeping from like two am to nine am lately because it's hard to fall asleep in this heat and so getting up to go outside in the around-dawn hours while it's tolerable is sooo hard and there are so many places I want to go hiking and it's always satan's asscrack levels of heat and humidity whenever I have the wherewithal to go