go find yourself, or whatever

i don't play about corpse rights it's extremely important and serious to me

while i don't believe in an afterlife or souls and do accept that a corpse is an empty space where something once was, i also think that if we give a body which cannot advocate for itself that meaning and personhood, then we cannot simply disregard it as it suits the living to do so without any consideration for the consequences of that, especially when we will all one day be in the same position regardless of our consent in the matter. unlike abortion, where you're advocating for a hypothetical person that doesn't exist yet, a corpse is what remains of someone who did and had a material impact on the world. the dead aren't due any more dignity or respect than the living, but they also aren't due any less for the same reasons, and how much someone values the lives of others among them inevitably reflects how they treat their dead.

perhaps it'd clarify my position to say that, yes, a corpse is an object and an empty space which cannot feel or react, but a body is how we connect and interact with each other and the world, and a corpse is also, unavoidably, a body, however vacant, and you cannot treat a body as you would an object if you want to claim to uphold human rights, because that's a dangerous road with a steep drop

lestats the kind of guy that believes hes incapable of sexism because he read a bunch of simone de beauvoir and harriet taylor mill when first wave feminist philosophy was building in europe and because he believes, of course, in the equal rights of sexes, that he would never do anything sexist - he knows so many terrifying, strong, incredible women, loves the art produced by women, etc - but he doesn't examine how he perpetuates misogyny, and specifically in the context of season 1, how he perpetuates misogynoir in the post-slavery american south, and then how his wounded ego and trauma-frazzled brain continues to lean back on misogyny - judging regina for her hustle, demanding to be coddled by gabrielle, specifically hounding tough cookie about her musical ability, using the memory of claudia as a muse after conspiring to kill her, how he touched akasha in her sleeping state - because he will not self-examine further. he would join the revolution but he wont do the dishes.

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

let's all have a fun time looking up new words when we encounter them to see what they mean before incorporating them into our vocabularies

Generative AI and the artist discussion is such a distraction from AI’s military and police applications or its role in automating hiring discrimination.

Actually Armand wasn’t aiming to kill anyone in Lestat’s band. He just hangs out in the subway because he likes trains and periodically sends random people to their deaths. It’s purely for his own enrichment. That’s on Larry for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.