Kimber's Musings

Generally, different cultures might be viewed as strange and foreign by POV characters, but almost never as wrong. Characters certainly experience culture shock but the response is overwhelmingly nonjudgmental even when they are being VERY weirded out. Very often, they end up acclimating to and sometimes adopting the culture they were so shocked by. And there’s usually leeway given to people who aren’t of a certain culture, an understanding that of course you can’t expect a foreigner to know the proper way to do things (but notably, who’s the foreigner and who’s the proper civilized person changes from viewpoint to viewpoint).

I think this is especially apparent with the Aiel. When the Aiel enter the wetlands, they’re very careful to note that they can’t expect wetlanders to know or follow their customs, and most of them make a good effort to follow or at least learn wetlander customs where it would be appropriate. When the Shaido start breaking that by taking wetlanders gai’shain it’s a big deal, and the rest of the Aiel are disgusted that they would try to force non-Aiel to live by Aiel standards.

And on the other hand, their narrative foils in this are the Seanchan. Who are explicitly portrayed as invaders and colonizers, and who are as far as I can recall the only people who make absolutely no concessions to anyone else’s culture. They assign morality to other cultures, they’re disgusted by things that are foreign to them, and they expect everyone to immediately adopt and abide by Seanchan culture while quashing any native culture that the Seanchan don’t approve of.

1. Never trust images

2. Always look for primary sources and follow citations and cross-reference, never accept things from exerpts, secondhand sources or just because you hear the same thing over and over

3. Be desperately grateful that free collaborative databases like Wikipedia, Letterboxd and IMDB are staunchly defending their integrity no matter what. If we stop being able to trust any of them for any reason, no matter how small, a key if rudimentary verification tool gets compromised and a knowledge community destabilised. If we can't trust the small stuff, we can't trust the big stuff.

i’ve had a lot of fun with goncharov but casual misinformation is a real problem on the internet and we need to be able to separate a fun meme from spreading real misinformation. it’s funny that some people who aren’t on tumblr may hear mention of a movie trending and not be immediately in on the joke, but if they spend a few minutes looking into it they should be allowed to discern the joke from reality pretty quickly.

look. there’s no such thing as perfect altruism. you’ll always get something out of helping or being kind to others, whether it’s a stronger relationship or returned kindness or just the feeling of having done good. there’s nothing inherently bad about getting something from doing good either, especially since it’s completely unavoidable. people being rewarded for putting love into the world doesn’t make the world a worse place. so just do as much good as you can and don’t worry about being “selfless” while doing it, because being truly selfless is in fact impossible.

“We’ll fire you if you tell others how much you’re making” The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 specifically protects employees who discuss their own wages with each other (you can’t reveal someone else’s wages if you were given that information in the course of work, but you can always discuss your own or any that were revealed to you outside of work duties)

“If we can’t fire you for [discussing wages/seeking reasonable accommodation/filing a discrimination complaint/etc], we’ll just fire you for something else the next day.” This is called pretextual termination, and it offers your employer almost no protection; if you are terminated shortly after taking a protected action such as wage discussion, complaints to regulatory agencies, or seeking a reasonable accommodation, you can force the burden onto your employer to prove that the termination wasn’t retaliatory.

“Disparaging the company on social media is grounds for termination” Your right to discuss workplace conditions, compensation, and collective action carries over to online spaces, even public ones. If your employer says you aren’t allowed to disparage the company online or discuss it at all, their social media policy is illegal. However, they can forbid releasing information that they’re obligated to keep confidential such as personnel records, business plans, and customer information, so exercise care.

“If you unionize, we’ll just shut this branch down and lay everyone off” Threatening to take action against a group that unionizes is illegal, full stop. If a company were to actually shut down a branch for unionizing, they would be fined very heavily by the NLRB and be opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by the former employees.

“We can have any rule we want, it’s only illegal if we actually enforce it” Any workplace policy or rule that has a “chilling effect” on employees’ willingness to exercise their rights is illegal, even if the employer never follows through on any of their threats.

“If you [protected action], we’ll make sure you never work in this industry/city/etc again.” Blacklisting of any kind is illegal in half the states in the US, and deliberately sabotaging someone’s job search in retaliation for a protected action is illegal everywhere in the US.

“Step out of line and you can kiss your retirement fund/last paycheck goodbye.” Your employer can never refuse to give you your paycheck, even if you’ve been fired. Nor can they keep money that you invested in a retirement savings account, and they can only claw back the money they invested in the retirement account under very specific circumstances.