Is anyone else starting to feel kind of wary about the increasingly common narrative that "women's bodies are so different to men's that modern scientific recommendations do not apply to them"?
Like. There is a significant gap between 'a lot of studies do not take into account variations caused by things like female hormone cycles, which can limit how generalisable they are' and 'medical science does not apply to women', and the latter just seems to create a situation rife for bad faith actors and snake oil salesmen to reassure you that actually, THEY have the answers, because THEY listen to women, and if you simply pay them for their online subscription service-
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"etymologynerd" is at it again and this time i do feel i have to say something. the disability advocates have it covered on addressing the impact, but there's also a serious problem with the linguistics.
in a video shared on may 16, adam aleksic begins by saying: "i think we have to accept the fact that the 'r-word' [retard/retarded] is permanently coming back and it's functionally changed meanings to no longer directly refer to disabled people."
this first sentence alone betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of language change in several points.
this word never went away. what we're seeing now is an attempt at re-normalization by people who sense that they will not be socially punished by openly using this term.
we actually don't have to "accept" its return to mainstream use. for decades, disability advocates have worked to inform the public of the harm caused by casual use of this term. the harm has not disappeared, and neither will this advocacy and its impacts.
now i'm just mad. how tf does it NOT refer to disabled people? the entire point of a pejorative term is that it negatively invokes comparison to a person, group, etc. the assertion that the r-word has changed meanings is categorically false. at most, its primary context has changed from clinical to casually pejorative, but the insult fundamentally rests upon the original reference.
he goes on to refer to the "euphemism treadmill," another concept he misrepresents by extending the metaphor to say that terms which have been sufficiently distanced from their original reference are no longer pejorative. to quote: "...once we sufficiently distance a word from its historical usage, it stops taking on the same offensive power and just becomes colloquial instead."
which... what? what the fuck is he talking about? the words he uses as examples â idiot, imbecile, and moron â are definitely still offensive, if perhaps less impactful. "just becomes colloquial instead" is a nonsense phrase. are offensive words not colloquial? the only english word that comes to mind as having changed so much in definition as to no longer be offensive is "nice," which has been shifting in meaning for more than 700 years and was never a weaponized clinical term.
he ends by saying, "it is undeniably true that the people who are afraid to say the r-word right now are going to get old and die out, while younger generations keep saying it with no knowledge of where it came from." again, fundamentally misunderstanding language change in society over time. it rests on the assumption that we're all going to start or re-start using this slur and never have a conversation about its harms, which just completely ignores both the abovementioned disability advocacy and the fact that people tell each other not to use offensive words. you think i'm just not gonna teach my kids that using slurs is bad??
the whole video is devoid of both empathy and an understanding of long-term semantic change.
tl;dr etymologynerd is wrong, we do NOT "have to accept that the 'r-word' is coming back," and we all need to read more crip linguistics.
In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.
Hereâs what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.
What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didnât want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.
The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasnât allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasnât even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didnât help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.
So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmesâs blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the ârightâ answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. Itâs not about truth when itâs about paying rent. Thereâs no scientific integrity if you canât control for human desperation.
This is the problem writ large in our current scientific communities, not just industry but academic - only correctness is rewarded, and this stunts us both in the types of questions we ask and in what we're willing to do to answer them. The guardrails of science work when you are free to disprove your hypothesis, to find out "oh. that did NOT, in fact, work." That is not a failure! That is still information about what you were trying to learn about! however, nobody wants to publish that. nobody wants to make stuff from that. So if you conduct your study accurately with an ambitious premise but fail? Welp. No more money for you, then.
So people ask questions in ways they know they can get right. And especially if the data is CLOSE, but not quite over the line of significance? Well. That could have been circumstance or error too, couldn't it? Couldn't we tweak it JUST a little, because I know in my heart what's really happening, and keeping my lab open and my techs and students paid, my mortgage and student loans up to date...oh, we set these things in front of people and then expect them to be moral when all our current metrics are poised to punish them for it, and then we blame people for falsifying data. And that before taking into account the grifters who think they're owed personal fame and glory and have NO compunctions about lying as long as they think they can get away with it.
Don't get me wrong. I think falsifying data is bad and we pay for it in coin up to and including peoples' lives, and a lot of people who do it are not poor little meow meows but privileged and powerful people who feel entitled to whatever they want, including success. But i also think when this is the system they operate in, it's going to keep selecting for liars rather than keeping the honest people, not because they're bad scientists but because they weren't profitable for their company or their university.
and EVEN WHEN things were more muted/neutral, the neutrality was OFFSET by ACCENT COLORS and HIGH CONTRAST between the wood tones and everything ELSE
ALSO AMERICAN COLONIAL INTERIORS POPPED OFF, Y'ALL (IN TERMS OF COLOR/COZINESS)
PEOPLE USED WHITEWASH AND COLORFUL TRIM OR EVEN JUST COLORFUL FURNITURE IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO DO SO
AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON FRENCH AND BRITISH AND AMERICAN WALLPAPERS
"ELIZABETH" YOU CRY, "WHY ARE YOU BEING SO EXTRA THIS MORNING?! IT'S MONDAY"
Because, my friend, my war on GREIGE will NEVER end.
Historic interiors were filled with LIFE and LIGHT and COLOR. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN.
Part of the reason we don't see a lot of textile art is because, frankly, textiles tend to degrade over time - especially ones that had utility! And yes, pigments and weaving and dying all boosted the expense of things, when we were finally reliably block-printing fabrics and broad reams of paper, it was no longer just the wealthy who could afford pretty patterns!
In the Americas, a far wider variety of pigments also became available because of the abundance of... well, a shitton of flora and minerals, some of which weren't as common in Europe.
WHY THE HIGHLIGHTER COLORS? you ask.
CANDLES.
Those colors reflect candlelight and natural sunlight REALLY WELL.
Humans LOVE bright colors, it's NOT just a thing for kids. We live in a brilliant, vibrant, multifaceted world. We ALWAYS have.
(STOP MAKING YOUR HISTORIC SIMS 4 BUILDS BE BLAND. STOP IT.)
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i know things are hella grim in the nsfw/kink art circles especially in the last year --
but I'm hearing there's a NSFW-friendly ko-fi alternative built on atproto that's actively in the works, and being vetted by lawyers right now. as torrent-princess (OP) says, you should be able to swap out payment processors while keeping your account intact. this matters since even if stripe removes support, you'll still have a shop and all of your links intact. (ATproto is an infrastructure that bsky is built on, but is far bigger than bsky with far more opportunities.)
additionally, the Free Speech Coalition is working on a credit union specifically for adult work (including kink art) - here's the link so you can add your interest & support. Since this will be built by sex workers, there'll be far less risk of being debanked for spurious and puritanical reasons.
on a domain TLD level, there's an initiative here for a .furry domain built from the ground up by seasoned furries; it's unclear whether they'll support NSFW, but it's yet another promising turn of events for a group that's been similarly affected by censorship.
there are friends and allies out there helping to build a working parallel infrastructure. keep being vocal, keep supporting these initiatives when it's possible, and keep supporting your nsfw/kink artists. âĽ
Third shawl of the year! (I've posted about finishing this shawl before, this is just the finished object post so I can search for just photos of my finished objects.)
This is Hayley Tsang Heather's Peony â Pfingstrose Shawl. I made this shawl out of Fyberspates Gleem Lace in the colorway 733 Everglade, and used 896 6/0 Miyuki Rocailles in the color: transparent silver-lined dark gold (RR-4).
Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.
Anyway I miss him and hope he's doing better with his mental health đđž
Like say what you want about "bad queer representation", but this was the song that made me openly and happily accept that I was bisexual. To see him up there Black and beautiful, making music that I love, absolutely killing it? Yeah. You couldn't tell me shit. This man made me proud to be out. "This will make them think we're evil for being gay" hey newsflash dawg-
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the linked tree apparently has some issues but it is from this instagram which is a major lgbt organisation in Ghana. another equal rights organisation is rightify
if you do donate and you have euro, usd, or other western currencies they'll be quite powerful in ghana to the cedi, which is now almost 12 to the us dollar.
petition to show support | donate to petition
Ghana's Parliament just passed its anti-LGBT+ bill â rushing it through before a foreign-funded anti-rights conference. But the President ca
A federal IT staffer filed a complaint about DOGE, then went public. Shortly after Elon Musk boosted a post calling his claims false, his br
On April 14, 2025, Dan Berulis, an IT staffer at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), filed a Congressional whistleblower complaint with an extraordinary and urgent claim: The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had seemingly compromised the agencyâs data and appeared to be exfiltrating it out of the NLRB entirely. Additionally, Berulis claimed that mere minutes after DOGE members had accessed the agencyâs data, there appeared to be login attempts from an IP address in Russia.
At the time, DOGE teams, orchestrated by billionaire Elon Musk, were sweeping across government, firing federal workers and accessing sensitive data and technical systems with no oversight and little transparency.
The following day, Berulis went public in an NPR article with his name and claims. In it, he claimed that in the lead-up to his Congressional disclosure, a threatening note had been taped to his door, including photos of him walking his dog that appeared to have been taken by a drone. Berulis was already scared that speaking out had made him a target.
In a new defamation lawsuit, filed by Berulis in a DC court on April 17 and made public this week, Berulis alleges that Musk himself made him a target of further violence by falsely stating that Berulisâ whistleblower claim against DOGE was fake. The complaint was initially filed under seal because Berulis maintains a security clearance that requires prepublication review of anything related to his work with the government.
Five days after the NPR story went live, on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, Berulis got in his car to drive to Maryland to make a last-minute visit to his uncle, opting to take local roads instead of the major highway nearby. Within about five minutes of leaving his house, Berulis realized something was wrong. As he approached a stop sign at an intersection, his car wouldnât slow down. He ran off the road and into the sign. When he examined his car, he found something that terrified him: His brake lines had been cut.
Unbeknownst to Berulis at the time, the night before, on April 19, at 8:06 pm, Musk had reshared an X post from right-wing influencer Mario Nawfal, claiming that DOGE had been âclearedâ and that people were asking the Department of Justice to investigate Berulis. Musk shared Nawfalâs post, writing, âFiling a deliberately false whistleblower claim is a serious crime.â The story had originally been circulated by @amuse, an account that has regularly shared misleading claims and misinformation and is followed by influential people like Musk and Department of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The @amuse post included Berulisâ name and photograph.
According to a police report viewed by WIRED, when a police officer from Prince William County arrived at the scene, Berulisâ lawyer from Whistleblower Aid, Andrew Bakaj, who had helped Berulis file his Congressional complaint about DOGE, was also on the scene.
Berulis, who found out about Muskâs tweet after the accident, thought back to the threatening note that had been posted on his door earlier that month.
According to the suit, Muskâs âreaders drew the implicationâ that Berulis had committed a serious crime, âas reflected in replies demanding prosecution, jail, harm, or arrest,â and this put him at âincreased risk of physical harm.â In the replies to the post, which remains online, several users called for Berulis to be prosecuted. One user wrote, âSnitches get stitches.â
âThe correlation was obvious to me, with the timing,â he says. Berulis also began to worry about how exactly whoever had been threatening him knew where he lived.
pick whatever option the person you're following who reblogged this post didn't pick. if they didn't say in the tags what they picked or if you're seeing the original post and not a reblog, pick at random instead.
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Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as âproblematicâ in class and our professor was like, âThatâs cool, but âproblematicâ doesnât really mean anything. It means that the thing youâre describing has a problem, and in and of itself thatâs not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else itâs not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like youâre trying to say that this is bad, but you donât want to say âbad.â Is that right?â
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the âbadâ thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, âIâm uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.â
Once we stopped calling things âproblematicâ and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, âthatâs racistâ or âthatâs misogynisticâ or âew capitalism grossâ out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, âUhhh... Iâm not sure whatâs so bad?â and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I canât help but think of this professor being like, âGood starting point, now letâs get specific.â I think when we have to commit to saying âthatâs ___â it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever weâre claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes itâs art, and it should be full of problems, because thatâs what art is.
#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)