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Me in 2016: I’m still salty about that

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

i love rocky having no natural desire or drive for touch, and i love the thought of him developing one during the trip to erid. humans need touch and rocky will move heaven and earth to give grace whatever he needs.

i can see rocky coming to resent the xenonite barrier because the lack of direct contact hurts grace. getting frustrated with himself because he knows it's not rational and that grace is being stupid stupid whenever he bumps the panels and sighs that he wishes they weren't there. want grace rocky to die painful, question?! but even after he waves grace off he sits and ponders how to make the panels thinner, more flexible, pushing the limits of eridian technology.

i can see him starting to yearn for closeness so he can cure grace's "touch starvation." the form-fitting suit was built so nothing like what happened on adrian will ever happen again and so when the hail mary starts to complain about her old age he can patch her up. but of course the moment the suit's passed rocky's stress tests grace is throwing his arms around him and rocky has a long long long long long to-do list but he'd rather rip his carapace in half than end the hug a second before grace is full.

he doesn't care about touch. it does nothing for him and means nothing to him. touch is also the single most important problem he has to solve. eridians can make food, eridians can replicate earth, but eridians can never press their carapace against human flesh.

listening to grace waste away, listening to him curl up against the xenonite, listening to him trying to hide his tears as he warbles about how he wishes things were different makes him want to break through the airlock again.

touch has no significance to eridians, but rocky still scoots closer.

And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to

And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.

But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.

This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"

But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.

I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"

Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.

I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".

Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here

TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.

TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.

This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.

Typically Officers, Managers, and Team Leads get *paid* a whole lot more to specifically take ownership of their space. The buck ($$$) stops there, at the top, with the people who get paid to command the ship.

I use to get paid to be the Captain. Sure I wanted things to be equitable in my office, under my command, and I treated my Soldiers as equals.

Which in hind sight I realized was a fucked up thing to do. Since it wasn't their job, they didn't get paid to do it, and it wasn't their responsibility. It was mine.

You can't just subvert a hierarchy by pretending its not there. That just makes you a shitty abusive boss. But you're still the boss.

Fortunately I eventually realized that no one was making me be the boss but myself. So I quit.

Now I make minimum wage and I have a manager that tells me what to do. I don't really need her to, I'm smart enough to figure it out without her direction. But I don't get paid to think.

I didn't think to mention this because I'm *not* anybody boss- when I train new people, it's to work WITH me. The wage will be the same. I've refused promotion because it's more trouble to manage people than the money would be worth to me.

But your theoretical wife ISN'T receiving extra benefits for managing the housework. Your theoretical roommate ISN'T getting a discount on the rent for reminding you there's laundry in the washer.

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Over 90% of parents of visibly intersex children opt for cosmetic surgery on their infants.

The ones that don't experience medical violence then, likely experience it as a teenager.

I didn't.

I am very rare in that I did not experience medical violence.

Why? Because I learned what intersexuality was as a young age, and I actively fought against what doctors wanted to do to me. All the way down to legal research on what medical care minors can be forced into. I remember walking into that doctor's appointment with the state law written down that proved that if I did not consent they could not do surgery.

if you are non-american then it can be dangerous to hold beliefs about your rights that are only applicable in the US.

i am australian and i have seen young australians have completely us-american perceptions on the rights they hold (or do not hold) in regards to protest, police officers, self-defense, medical care, higher education, debt, and legal proceedings. i am not talking about "boooo americans" i am talking about the genuine danger it might present to have us-centric assumptions in high-stakes situations

I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.

It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"

I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.

But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON