Snail's Snippets

Pennsylvania is currently working on its budget, and one of if not THE main sticking point is funding for public transit—all transit in the state, but mainly for SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which serves Philadelphia and its surrounding counties and is facing a $213 million budget deficit. The PRT, which serves Pittsburgh, is also in danger.

As of this morning, SEPTA has to start the process of cutting services by 45%—canceling some train and bus lines entirely, implementing a 9pm curfew on subway lines, reducing frequency, and canceling sporting event services (all of our professional league stadiums are accessible by one subway line and a significant number of fans take it)—all because politicians in rural counties have been demonizing SEPTA as a “chauffeur service for city residents” that doesn’t benefit the rest of the commonwealth. I am not joking. A state rep literally sent a letter to constituents describing buses that way.

But what is so fucking infuriating to me is that at one of the rallies, I learned ONE SIMPLE FACT that, in my mind, should have ended the entire debate: Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties are the only revenue-positive counties in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The money to fix roads and bridges in every other county comes from Philadelphia’s economy, which is supported by the fact that people take the train in from collar counties to work here, and people go to sporting events here and spend money, and residents who are paying significantly higher rents than anywhere else in the state but still living in poverty can get to their jobs without having a car. (Not to mention the fact that our cash-strapped education department saves money by having kids take SEPTA instead of school buses.)

If no agreement is reached and these cuts fully go into effect—some of them are starting by the end of the month and a second round in January—it very well may cost thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue, which will have reverberating effects on every county in the commonwealth, including the poorest who are most reliant on state funding.

This isn't unidirectional.

A lot of people need to face the truth that rural and suburban areas are legitimately privileged in American society, and the bigotry agaisnt cities is inherently tied to anti immigration sentiment, racism, queerphobia, and Christian supremacy.

How convenient that every opinion you dislike is held by people with every other opinion or trait you dislike, so you can just ignore everything they actually say.

Tell some poor rando living in a shack on a mountain and surviving on roadkill and food stamps that they're privileged, and they're going to laugh at you.

Even living in a suburb doesn't make you privileged. Take a gander at Detroit.

Fandom Problem #15,541:

And, I'm gonna be honest, I believe them. Specially since they were only saying they got paid $2-5 each.

Did this change the outcome of the election? Who knows. But it's still a massive problem. And I can't help but feel that if the Republican candidate were being accused of this, the media would be more willing to talk about it.

OP only wants Republican fraud prevented and prosecuted.

Q. You want to raise every boy as a girl? Yes.

Q. Why? A boy will learn to hate girls as long as he is raised in such a way where he is treated as better, and superior to, his girl peers, whenever he is cruel to girls. So, instead, we raise boys as girls.

Q. What if they say they are not a girl, and want to be acknowledged as boy? Then you know they are a boy, so you must make sure to understand them as boy, and not a girl.

Q. What does it mean to be 'raised as a girl'? That's up for you to decide. The only difference is that you should not raise boys any differently than you raise girls, since you raise every boy as a girl.

Q. Girls and boys are raised in specific ways for specific purposes, so it does not make sense to raise boys as girls. If you raise every boy as a girl, then there is no being which is not raised as a girl, so anyone raised as a girl necessarily must learn to do anything and everything to grow up, without restrictions on tasks, labours, or interests.

Q. But boys and girls are different. All two girls are different, and raising girls in one specific way destroys this individuality in favour of moulding girls to serve the same master. Still, the girls resist to live life on their own terms. If girls can be raised such that they know they can do anything they want, including not being girls, so too will boys raised as girls.

Q. Why not raise every girl as a boy? Because if a girl does not exist among boys, then the girl is made.

Q. Why not raise girls and boys as themselves? The self must be made in a world where girls and boys can first and foremost be themselves. One step towards this goal is to raise every boy as a girl.

Q. The way people raise girls is cruel, so why would you raise boys with that cruelty? If you raise girls with cruelty, then you should stop being cruel to girls.

as i understand it the core point being made here is challenging the concept of "raising a child as a gender" entirely by going straight to the misogyny that is fundamental to patriarchal gender. to me this suggests "raise boys as girls" is about raising boys to identify with girls, rather than to develop an identity as a boy around opposition to girls. this is not being depicted as simply "genderless parenting" because it is making a specific point about misogyny & its role in gender socialization and identity formation. to deviate from patriarchal demands of masculinity is to become associated with femininity / girls regardless of intention or actual intentional performance of femininity (what i assume is meant by "a girl is made"). rather than trying to pursue an almost apolitical gender neutrality that fails because it doesn't engage with the role misogyny plays in preserving patriarchal gender as a whole, gender neutrality is presented as synonymous with identifying with girls, as under patriarchy the entire construction of gender is built (not exclusively but fundamentally) through sexism that is both oppositional (exorsexist) and traditional (misogynistic).

the point is that raising a girl should not involve cruelty, or stereotype, or stigmatization, and boys should be encourage to feel no shame or identity conflict in identifying as the same kind of being as girls. so its a purposeful act of provocation to say "boys should be raised as girls" which to me sends the message that challenging misogyny and challenging the construction of gender itself are the same project. and that being (raised as) a girl should not mean anything other than being raised as a whole person, as part of a community of whole people.

I had trouble understanding this part, so I reframed it in my head as:

"Because if [the other] does not exist... then [the other] is made."

Which might not be exactly what this is going for, but it helped me understand it a little more, at least from one angle.

"he's literally just doing what an adventurer is supposed to do"

"do you think they think of us as Giant Adventurers?"

"do you know how many other creatures would be infesting our cave if there were no adventurers?"

"how would you like it if you were bumbling along on your little adventurer day, and some giant dragon thing squished you for the crime of being yourself?"

Don't let ads hinder or outweigh the actual purpose people have for coming to your page/site (be that through extreme obtrusiveness or through slowing their browser to a crawl)

Vet your ads and don't bombard people with nsfw content

Vet your ads and don't give people fucking malware

Hey @adamtheredbeard did you notice the image suspiciously cut off before the end of the tweet? I wonder if that softlib had anything else to say...

I see a lot of tags from Communists gloating in the reblogs, very confident that they know better than this guy...

But I'd wager that basically none of them do. It isn't just a matter of historical knowledge, either. For instance, "#mediocre white men" is part of a push for a form of scientific racism (based on "correct" race ratios that are just made up), and you didn't notice.

Just say "elemental construct" or something.

Magic caster created golem? That's a magical construct.

Naturally occurring golem? That's an elemental.

-

A setting without Jews by definition cannot have golems.

In the present the reader is introduced to Alice Cohen as she receives her inheritance from her recently deceased grandmother. This inheritance consists of a lone house in an area of Brooklyn where all the other buildings have been torn down. One of the first things that Alice discovers is a walled off section in the basement from which a voice calls to her to read stories. Alice's first choice for this is her grandmother's diary.

^ small excerpt

It just fucking fits. It’s so easy. I’m not remotely Jewish by any definition of the word, so I cannot speak for anybody, but instead I offer you this very practical taken on “golem.”

Let’s say you hear conflicting takes by Jewish folk on whether or not you can use “golem.” Some say you can, some say you can’t.

Rather than making it a moral matter — consider, some folks asked you not to and said it sucks, and you know they’ve got a fair argument even if you don’t agree with it. Since it’s so easy to not do, why not just, not be a dick?

If you want to look at it not as a moral matter, but look in purely practical terms, by refusing the request to call it anything else, it’s bein’ a bit of a dick.

Not because I have anything against Judaism in particular.

Not because I'm particularly attached to "golem" as a term.

No, it's because this is a stupid hill to die on.

Fantasy steals. It appropriates. It uses familiar terms so that people don't have to check a glossary to keep track of a bunch of terms that they won't remember because every piece of media out there is suddenly making up their own words for shit. And you know what? Fantasy steals from everyone, without prejudice. The only qualifier is that the word be well enough known that people will know what you're talking about.

So, if anything, having your word used as a general fantasy term means that your myth was considered recognizable enough to be used for clarity.

I am lending flightyquinn my hereditary Jew card to block your extremely irresponsible accusation of anti-semitism.

Golems are cool, especially because of their heritage which comes with thematically powerful stories. They aren't just a robot, or just another Frankenstein, but the idea of unleashing a force that does exactly what you ask of it but too much. Jewish mythology has wrestled with "do these things have a soul" in a way much more interesting and complex than "of course not" and "of course it does." They're a unique idea and calling them equivalent to "elemental construct" (what an awkward phrase) is the actual simplification of a real minority culture.

So don't reference them stupidly, but if you're knowledgable about them and using their real themes, you don't need to be able to trace your maternal ancestral line.

You ever see someone pissing and moaning about how people aren't accurately reproducing the story of the manticore? You ever see someone offended at how insensitive it is to depict Medusae as a species when actually Medusa was a specifuc person of great significance? Or how Undead in WC3 being able to build Banshees disrespects the myth of the bean sidhe?

It can't be anything else, because this logic, taken to anything even resembling a natural extension, means that all media must die at the border between nations and nothing can ever be shared, regardless of how long it has been a common thing.

And that's before we get to the whole factor of 'I can, as an individual, unilaterally withdraw access to everyone in the world to the culture I am a part of, regardless of what others in my culture might say'.