I Like Watching Sheep Dogs Work.

When I was a child, I knew that boys grew up and married girls, and vice versa. And this was simply the way the universe worked. 

By the time I was six I knew the basic mechanics of sex, the progression of pregnancy. The former sounded uncomfortable, messy and embarrassing, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would do it, except that it was apparently necessary for the second. And the second was fascinating and magical, so I supposed that made sense. 

(When I was ten, I was probably in love with my “best” friend, inasmuch as a ten year old can be in love with anyone. I worshipped the ground she walked on; her attention or lack thereof devastated me. In every cute little kid “so in love” story you’ve ever heard of, I was in the role given to the little boy, hearts-in-eyes, blindly devoted, absolutely in love.) 

When I was eleven, I encountered the idea that men could marry men, and women could marry women, and it seemed entirely pointless to me, and also I couldn’t figure out how two women could have sex. How did that even work? Men I could sort of figure out although it seemed even more uncomfortable and messy than men-and-women. It was weird. But I supposed if that was what people wanted, that’s what they wanted. 

(When I was thirteen I fell in love with one of the ladies in my father’s community choir. It was full on courtly love, and I languished silently. I wanted to sit near her and I wanted her to talk to me and I wanted to carry her bag and I wanted to help her do things and I wanted to beat up her good-for-nothing husband who made her sad and insisted they get the cat she loved declawed as the only way to not get rid of it at all, and I wanted to find some way to show her that the expectations that their Mormonism were heaping on her were so unfair and so messed up and so keeping her from realizing how amazing and smart and pretty and funny and clever she was. I would have gone on quests against dragons for that woman.) 

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Derin when I get over there in a few months I'm going to have to find you and sit you down with a big ass plate of biscuits and gravy. They are NOT scones. They look like scones but are not. They are flaky delicious things not a sad rock of disappointment.

Never insult scones to me again.

Have a delicious scone with me and maybe you'll calm down.

"male loneliness epidemic" is misleading because it implies that men are suffering because they can't get girls when I feel like the actual problem is that pretty much any online content that's aimed specifically at men conceptualizes the masculine ideal as what I call the Buff Scammer. there are only two things in this world that matter, says the Buff Scammer: being jacked and making money. how you get to either of those things doesn't matter, you just need to be as rich and as buff as possible or you have failed as a man. Get into drop shipping. Eat nothing but raw meat. Rugpull a memecoin. Remove seasonings from your diet. Sell an online course. Go to the gym daily. Starve yourself so your body will achieve ketosis and start burning fat. Attend a seminar on real estate investing. Work 80 hours a week. Take steroids but don't let anyone know about that part. Flip a YouTube channel after 10xing the subs. Sell AI art on Etsy and AI audiobooks on Amazon. What's that? You're trying to do this to get girls? Why would you care about women? Women are all stupid whores who don't help you get richer or buffer. The only people you should be paying attention to are other rich, buff men. If you do hang out with women you should be pimping them out on Chaturbate so you can at least get an ROI off your time spent not thinking about men. Male friends? You don't have time for friends. You should be hustling and grinding 24/7 365. And if you absolutely do need to spend time around other men you should only be spending time with other buff scammers so you can collaborate on entrepreneurial ventures. Like Jesus Christ even writing this is exhausting I feel like trying to be this dude would be fucking miserable like not only did you turn yourself into a friendless, materialist, misogynistic asshole who can only conceptualize the world in terms of value extracted but you're NOT EVEN HAVING FUN DOING IT!!!!!!

OH, here's something I forgot to mention in my bullet points! The movie is very intentional about when and how other characters touch Nessa's wheelchair.

You know the stage version of Dancing Through Life, where Boq says "Let's dance," and immediately pushes Nessa's wheelchair around as a part of the choreography? None of that here. The movie goes out of its way to have Elphaba and Nessa emphasize that Nessa should be in charge of her own movement. When Boq wants to dance, he gets in front of Nessa and takes her hands. When someone pushes Nessa's chair without asking, that is a bad thing.

I'm not qualified to do more than observe the effort I can see the film making, but I definitely noticed the effort. Especially with the casting of Nessarose being so phenomenal.

The Other Half of the Social Model of Disability

Lots of people in fandom are aware of the Social Model of Disability, which is a direct contrast to the Medical Model of Disability. Problem is, most of those people only understand half of the Social Model.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, the "in a nutshell" version is that the medical model views disability as something that is broken and which needs to be fixed, and little or no consideration is given beyond trying to cure it (and little or no consideration is given to the needs and wishes of the person who has it). The social model of disability, on the other hand, says that the thing that disables a person is the way society treats them. So, for example, if someone is paralyzed and can't walk, what disables them from going places is buildings that are not wheelchair accessible. (Or possibly not being able to afford the right type of wheelchair.) Inaccessible spaces and support equipment you can't afford are choices society makes, not a problem with the disabled person.

People then take this to mean that the only problem with disability is the society that surrounds it, and therefore in some utopian future where capitalism is no more and neither is ableism or any other form of bigotry, all problems disabled people have will be solved.

Except that what I've just described is not actually what the social model of disability says. Or, rather, it's only half of what the social model of disability says.

The actual social model of disability begins with a distinction between impairments and disabilities. Impairments are parts of the body/brain that are nonstandard: for example, ears that do not hear (deafness), organs that don't work right (e.g. diabetes), limbs that don't work (paralysis), brain chemistry that causes distress (e.g. anxiety, depression), the list goes on. The impairment may or may not cause distress to the person who has it, depending on the type of impairment (how much pain it causes, etc.) and whether it's a lifelong thing they accept as part of themselves or something newly acquired that radically changes their life and prevents them from doing things they want to do.

And then you have the things that disable us, which are the social factors like "is there an accessible entrance," as described above.

If we ever do get a utopian world where everyone with a disability gets the support they need and all of society is designed to include people with disabilities, that doesn't mean the impairments go away. Life would be so much better for people with impairments, and it's worth working towards, but some impairments simply suck and would continue to suck no matter what.

Take my autism. A world where autism was accepted and supported would make my life so much easier ... and yet even then, my trouble sleeping and my tendency to hyperfixate on things that trigger my anxiety would still make my life worse. I don't want to be cured of my autism! That would change who I am on a fundamental level, and I like myself. My dream is not of a world where I am not autistic, but a world in which I am not penalized for being autistic and have the help I need. And even in that world, my autism will still sometimes cause me distress.

There are some impairments--conditions that come with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, etc.--where pretty much everyone with that impairment agrees that the ultimate goal is a cure. But nobody knows how long a cure will take to find (years? decades? centuries?), whereas focusing on the social things disabling you can lead to improvement in your daily life right now.

In conclusion: the social model of disability is very valuable, and much superior to the medical model on a number of levels. But: please don't forget that the social model makes a distinction between disability and impairments, and even if we reach every goal and get rid of all the social factors that disable people, some impairments will be fine and cause no distress to the people who have them, some will be a mixed bag, and some will still be major problems for the people who have them.

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There is a distinct technique used by capitalists to bypass the legal and contractual rights of workers which to my knowledge has no name currently - so I’m giving it one - Lunch Grinding.

Lunch Grinding is a manipulative erosion of worker rights both in and out of the workplace. It bypasses legal and contractual standards through informal social pressures which the bosses cannot be held directly accountable for.

Lunch Grinding is named after one of the most common examples. It begins by asking a few employees to skip lunch in order to finish a project. Workers who are already insecure about their position due to economic anxiety will see this as an opportunity to prove they are a good employee. Those who refuse to do so may receive blame for failing to finish the project on time.

The issue becomes compounded when the bosses begin to purposefully schedule less time to complete the same projects. A distinct class begins to appear ignoring their contractual right to a lunch break - who become hostile to those who refuse to work during lunch for being “lazy” or “the reason we didn’t finish on time.”

At this point the management no longer needs to influence anyone directly to work through lunch break, simply by keeping up the sense of constantly being a little late for the project they have ensured the lunch-grinders will apply pressure to their peers who aren’t working through breaks.

As workplace hostility increases towards the “unproductive” members who are expressing their formal right to a break - they will be replaced with new individuals who may not even realize they have the right to a lunch break because working through the hour has become normalized by their peers.

Thus formal written standards from contracts and legal code become functionally non-existent. After which a new standard will be identified by management for erosion some examples include:

+Accepting uncertain hours. +Working off-the-clock. +Staying “On-Call” at all times. +Finishing projects / responding to emails at home. +Never using time off or sick leave.

All of which are socially conditioned in the same format - starting with “The Good Worker” who does a little favor for their boss - and ending as a peer enforced pressure and a perpetual hostility from management claiming productivity isn’t as high as expected. 

Connection is not a feeling.

With some of the responses I've been getting on my post about connecting with nature, I realized I needed to write about this.

Folks have got to understand that connection is not a feeling. "I feel such a deep connection with-" nope, that's not connection you're feeling; that's fascination.

Whether it's nature, or a culture, or anything at all, connection isn't transcendent. It's something you build with actual physical effort. It's a relationship.

Let's say there's a stray cat outside, and I want to have a connection with it. So I go inside my house and meditate on the cat, visualizing myself sending out rays of love to the cat. I look at pictures of cats on the Internet. I collect cat memorabilia and pray to cat goddesses. But when I go outside and try to pet the stray cat, it runs away.

This is because I never built a genuine connection, or relationship, with this cat. I'm a parasocial admirer, at best. To the cat, I'm a weird stranger.

But let's say I put cat food outside, and I stay out there while the cat eats, and slowly get closer to the cat as it becomes more comfortable with my presence. Finally, I give the cat light touches, and it gradually learns that I am safe. And we become friends.

Now I have a connection with the cat, because we have a relationship. I feed the cat, the cat eats my food, and we're in each others' social networks.

"But what if I can't build relationships like this?"

It's okay if this is impossible for you right now. You're not going to be a Bad Pagan or a Bad Witch because you can't do something that is literally impossible at the moment.

But, if a connection is something you want to have, at some point? Get studying. You want a connection with nature at some point? Okay, then start studying ecology. Learn about the rain cycle. Learn about environmental damage. Find materials about the plants and animals in your area.

What about a culture? Okay, go learn about its history, go learn what kinds of problems its people are currently facing, and work on perceiving them as real, complex people instead of whatever stereotype you have in your mind right now.

And above all, remember: that's not a mystical connection you're feeling, that's fascination.

Hey! I just saw your reply to the post about knitting the national parks. If you haven't tried it yet, ladderback jacquard would probably be a really great option for managing those huge floats. Hope you haven't gotten a million of these, and good luck with your project!

(In reference to this post where I moan about liking the knitting pattern I’m doing, apart from the COLOUR FLOATS)

Oh my GOODNESS look at this:

That is QUIRKY AS HELL. Thank you so much!

However, while I wail and weep and moan, I don’t want to put people off this pattern entirely. “Great Basin” is not actually the WORST pattern in the world, and can be managed by wrapping colour floats every 4 stitches or so, in the Fair Isle method; we won’t die of doing this, nobody has ever died of doing this, and plenty of people with better brains can pull it off more gracefully than I have. Even I can do this, and I’m a hater.

Hang on lemme just curate my life pretentiously real quick, like a proper knitter, so that the parts of my life I reveal on the internet look desirable enough to make you think I’m a good knitter. OK. I’ve - I’ve got some wood grain visible, and a twee swan - I feel comfortable. I could almost do Instagram.

Here’s my messy backside 😌 you can see it’s irregular, and you wouldn’t say I was managing it gracefully, but it won’t kill anybody. I am a massive hater but the pattern IS technically workable and feasible. try Great Basin today!

I LOVE this new technique! thank you so much!