Sorry If I'm Mixing You Up With Someone Else, But You've Worked Security Before, Right?

"A cishet person must have made this, no queer person would ever portray queerness in this way."

"This artist must be white."

"No SA victim would ever handle the subject in this way."

"No woman would ever write women like this."

"This creator is obviously neurotypical. Everyone with autism/ADHD/depression understands-"

Nope.

People who make these blanket statements are very frequently proven wrong when the creator comes out as a member of that group. And even when they aren't proven wrong, even in cases where the creator isn't from the group in question, actual members of the group who don't fit whatever arbitrary criteria are being expressed will see these statements and feel excluded and erased.

Not everyone in your group is going to share your experiences. No single individual gets to personally decide what does or doesn't count as a "valid" expression of trauma or being part of a particular group, and creators are also not obligated to out themselves in order to "prove" their validity.

If something doesn't resonate with you, all that means is that it doesn't resonate with you. You don't have to like it. But you don't get to decide what it means to someone else.

I didn't think it was possible to shorten words verbally without removing syllables but sailors managed.

A Twitter Thread from David Bowles:

[Text transcript at the end of the screenshots]

I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.

Most classroom practice is astrology.

Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.

We’re still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.

Most teachers perpetuate the “banking” model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.

Thus the elite “Lyceum” style of instruction continues even though it’s ineffectual with most kids.

What’s worse, the key strategies we’ve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents I’ve known flout research.

Some definitions:

Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.

Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.

Things we (scholars) DO know:

-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.

-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).

-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.

Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.

Maintaining the status quo? Nope.

Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.

If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.

They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.

And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.

For what?

It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.

WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.

We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.

The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?

Education is all about capitalism.

"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.

THAT is why modern education is a failure.

Its basic premise is monstrous.

"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"

Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.

Currently rereading Eric Flint's 1632 and reflecting on just how influential Flint was to me and my approach to both praxis and politics as a teenager. I found Flint when I was about thirteen or fourteen, around the time I found Pratchett I think, and he's left an equally wide thumbprint on my soul. Isn't that the most wonderful thing about stories, that people you've never met can help shape our adult selves? Mother of Demons I often recommend for its SFF worldbuilding--Flint built a species with at least four genders, only some of which are reproductive, and associated "normal" sexual orientations, and then proceeded to write in a textually intersex character and queer the hell out of it.

1632, though, is the one where a little West Virginia town in 2000 gets picked up and dropped in the middle of Thuringia, Germany in the eponymous year--right in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The local United Mine Workers of America chapter plays a major role, particularly its head.

As I write this I'm listening to the scene where the little town of Grantville, having admitted after a few days that they are probably not ever going home, is crowded into the high school gymnasium listening to the mayor lay that reality out and suggesting an interim council to help the town set out a sort of constitutional convention so they can work out what on earth they're going to do moving forward--especially since there's a bunch of displaced refugees collecting in the forests nearby. Sensible of them, really; the Americans murdered the shit out of the local soldiers that displaced them, on account of how the shaken mine workers that went out to figure out WTF happened not being super down with suddenly running into a bunch of fuckheads raping the locals and torturing people to find out where their valuables might be. After that, said Americans proceeded to retreat into the town boundaries and gibber quietly to themselves. I would go lurk in their woods, too.

Anyway, the mayor sets up this proposal, everyone agrees, and a CEO who was visiting for his son's wedding at the time steps forward and says: look. I know how to lead, and I'm probably the most qualified person here. I lead a major industry corporation effectively and I did that after my time as a Navy officer. I put myself forward because I'm qualified. Now, we're going to need to circle the wagons to get through the winter, tighten our belts, but we can get through this. We can't support all these refugees, though; we'll have to seal the border so they can't bring disease--they're a drain on our resources we can't afford--

and the UMWA guy, he gets really mad listening to this. There's this Sephardic refugee woman he's real taken with who got swept up in the town first thing, and she's sitting in and listening; he's thinking about throwing her out, thinking about how much she knows about the place they're found in, and he's furious. But he gets a good grip on his anger and he marches up and he says, look. This dude has been here two days and he's already talking about downsizing?! You're going to listen to this CEO talking about cuts, cuts, cuts? Nah. Trying to circle the wagons is probably impossible, it's stupid, and if you think my men and I are going to enforce that, you can fuck off. That proposal is inside out and bass ackwards. We've got about a six mile diameter of Grantville here; how much food do YOU think we're going to grow? How about the soldiers wandering around, do you think we're going to be able to fight armies off on our lonesome? Look at the few refugees we already have in the room, they'll tell you how those armies will treat you! We could do it for a while, the amount of gun nuts here, but so what? We don't have enough people to shoot them! Not if we're going to do anything else to keep us going! We have about six months of stockpiled coal to keep going, and without another source or getting the coal mines working, we're screwed. We have technical strength but we don't have the supplies or resources we would need to maintain it. Those refugees? They're resources. We need people to do the work we will need to keep ourselves. The hell with downsizing; let's grow outwards! Bring people in, give them safety, see what they can bring to the table once they've had a moment! He invokes: send us your tired, your poor!, and the CEO yells in frustration: this isn't America! so he yells back "it will be!"

And of course everyone cheers. I love Flint for many reasons but he is unapologetic about affection for the America of ideals--ideals, he freely admits, that are often honored in the breach rather than the observance, ideals that are messy and flawed, but nevertheless ideals that can work to inspire us to become the best version of ourselves. For Flint, history is as valuable as a source of stories to inspire ourselves as it is a repository of knowledge, and on this I tend to agree with him. We must learn from our moments of shame but equally we must learn from moments that show us how to be our best selves.

It's been twenty three years and the text is now an interesting historical document in its own right, hitting points and rhythms in beats that are sometimes out of place today. It's not perfect. But the novel contains a commitment to joy and to emphasizing the leaps of faith and understanding that regular, everyday people make every day to try and support each other that I routinely try to match in my writing.

Anyway, one of the strengths of the novel, I think, is its gender politics: it's a very ensemble kind of novel, lots of characters, and it's preoccupied with positive masculinity in a lot of ways. There's a lot of these hyper masculine characters--Mike Stearns perhaps more than anyone else--and--and...

... And Flint's characterization of Stearns, as he sketches out who the man is--his pivotal American leader, ex boxer, working class organizer, big man.... well, it lands equally on "he is delighted and astonished to find a local woman who quickly assesses how the cushion of air in tires works," and "he considers who to set up a Jewish refugee in the middle of Germany up with and he thinks to ask the Jewish family he grew up with to host her and her ill father because he thinks she'll be most comfortable there", and "he views people as potential assets rather than potential drains." A younger man asks him for advice on whether to pursue a professional sports career because of the boxing and he says no, you're in the worst place of not being quite good enough and you'll blow out your knees without accomplishing safety. He frames that interaction such that he allows his own experiences to make him vulnerable and invite the younger man to understand when a struggle have worth it.

It's actually a really deft portrayal of intense masculinity that also makes a virtue of a bunch of traits more usually associated with women: empathy, relational sensitivity, the ability to listen. As a blueprint for what a positive masculinity can look like, vs the toxic kind, it's very well done. I think sometimes when we look at gender roles in terms of virtues, and when masculinity is defined in terms of opposition to femininity, people get lost by arguing that virtues assigned to one gender are somehow antithetical to another gender. In fact that's never been the case: virtues are wholly neutral and can appear in any gender. What the gender does is inflect the ways we expect that virtue to appear in terms of individuals' actions within their society.

Gender isn't purely an individual trait, basically; it's a product of our collective associations. Two characters with different genders can display the same virtues and strengths, but we imagine them expressed in different ways according to our cultural expectations around gender. And I just think that's neat.

Mutie Lord (Vorkosigan saga)

Corry Csurik has a scar on her lip.  It’s because she’s a mutie.

Most people don’t know that, just by looking.  There’s plenty of ways a person could get a scar like that, people don’t assume “mutie” straight off.  But Corry’ll tell anyone who asks how she got it, she ain’t ashamed.

Everyone in Silvy Vale knows of course, and none of them mind one bit.  Least ways, none of the younger ones mind, some of the adults probably do, but none of them says nothing.  Folks in Silvy Vale know better, nobody dares say anything against Corry or her Mama, not since the Mutie Lord came and set things straight.

Corry was born in the hospital in Hassadar like the rest of her siblings, and she came out with her lip split in two and a hole going up straight through the top of her mouth.  Mama showed her pictures when Corry asked, and it looked real delightfully gruesome, but the doctors in Hassadar fixed it up right quick, and all she’s got to show for it now is the scar.

Corry’s the oldest of Lem Csurik’s kids, all of them born down at Hassadar General.  She’s the oldest and the only mutie, except that she’s also not.  Corry could have had a big sister, born way back ages ago, before Mama even went and got her education. Her name was Raina and she was a mutie just like Corry, except she was born up here in Silvy Vale instead of down in Hassadar, and she was murdered by her grandmother.

That’s when the Mutie Lord came, to bring justice for Raina, because Mama walked all the way down the mountain and asked him.

There ain’t many Count’s sons, Corry thinks, who’d go and do a thing like that for any baby, let alone a mutie one.  But the Mutie Lord did.  There’s folks as says that the Mutie Lord only came because Raina was a mutie, but Mama says that ain’t so.  The Mutie Lord came because he cared.  Because the Mutie Lord cared about Mama and he cared about Raina, and he cared about justice, even in Silvie Vale.

Old folks up here still talk about old Count Piotr, who fought the Cetagandans from these mountains.  Most poor folks in other districts don’t care much for their counts one way or the other, but us as belongs to the Vorkosigans are different.  Old Count Piotr was a legend, not the sort as stays far away in some castle, but the substantial sort, as gets its hands dirty and is of some use.  Everyone’s proud of Count Aral, of course, because he was Regent and Prime Minister and all, and Mama says it was him as let her tell about Raina, gave her an audience all formal like, and sent the Mutie Lord to be his Voice, so Corry supposes he’s all right enough too.  But it’s the Mutie Lord, who will be Count one day, who is the best of all of them, Corry thinks.

Mama and Da go down to Hassadar sometimes to argue with folks about Silvie and the rest of the villages up here in the Dendariis.  What sort of things they need up here to make their lives better, and what sort of things they really don’t need, whatever the Countess says.

(Mama’s got a whole lot of respect for the Countess on account of all the things she’s done for them as lives out in the backcountry, enough she named Corry after her even.   But the lady’s got some strong ideas about what it is they should want when it comes to modernizing and so forth, and Mama gets right fed up sometimes explaining to her and her city experts that it ain’t their right to get to decide what’s best for them, them as belong to these mountains are more than capable of doing that on their own.)

Anyway, Mama goes down to Hassadar a lot, and she brings the kids along too a lot of the time, and it was in Hassadar that some city boy punched Corry for calling the Mutie Lord the Mutie Lord.

Corry just stared at him sorta aghast for a second after, because didn’t this boy’s da ever tell him it ain’t right to hit girls?  But then Corry supposed he could be from a modern family that thought that old fashioned chivalry was a kind of oppression, so maybe the punching was a sort of compliment.

“Don’t you dare call Lord Vorkosigan that, he’s our Count’s son and I won’t let some backcountry bumpkin disrespect him,” the boy said.

And if he’d had the sense to stop there, Corry might’ve let it be, might even have apologized.  Because there’s folks as think calling anyone a mutie ain’t right on account of the word itself being dirty.  Corry’s never agreed with it, mind, so far as she can see, words is words, it’s peopleas have to go and be rude about it.  But if the boy just didn’t like calling him the Mutie Lord on account of the word, that’d be fair enough.  But then he had to go and keep talking.

“Lord Vorkosigan isn’t a mutant, he was deformed by a soltoxin attack, but his genes are as good as anyone’s.”

Corry’d crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes at him real stern, “What difference does that make?” She said.

The boy looked baffled, “It’s the whole point isn’t, it?  We can’t have a Count with some kind of mutation. The whole line would be tainted.  And a mutation like that , they say he’s completely deformed.”

Corry’d turned her eyes into a full on glare then, she knew how to be right scary when she wanted, “There ain’t nothing wrong with being a mutie, I’m a mutie,” Corry said, and the boy stared at her, shocked, that she was a real honest breathing mutie standing in front of him, and that she’d said it right out like that in broad daylight, “D’you think it matters to the Mutie Lord one bit how he got the way he did?  Bet it don’t hurt less to have his bones all stunted and fragile on account of soltoxin instead of a mutant gene.  And anyhow, if you’re so worried about the precious bloodline, you know for certain any Vorkosigan babe’d be cooked up in one of them fancy uterine replicators and gene cleaned and all.  But it don’t matter either way, because being all mutie looking as he is doesn’t make the Mutie Lord any less of a Count’s heir a smidge.  It don’t make him less clever, and it don’t make him less kind, and it don’t make him less wise, and he’ll be best of all the Vorkosigans there ever was when he’s count, mark my words.  So you’ll take it back, else I’ll have more than words for you, and you may be egalitarian enough to hit a girl, Piotr Gansy,” (that being the boy’s name) “But I’m betting you ain’t so egalitarian you’d fancy being beat by one.”

The boy didn’t apologize, but he did run off, and Corry supposed that was satisfaction enough.  She likes to think she gave him something to think on, at least.

Corry thinks on it often enough, certainly, her and the Mutie Lord.  Because the Mutie ain’t a mutie, technically, but he looks it, and Corry is a mutie, but she don’t.   The folks in Silvy Vale, they know what’s what these days.  But Corry’s heard folks down in Hassadar, grown folks she ain’t in any position to lecture.  They talk about the Mutie lord, and sometimes they talk something ugly.  And Corry supposes it’s even worse in other places, where folks aren’t predisposed to like him, him being their very own Vorkosigan, and she supposes it was worse when he was younger, before he went and got himself made Lord Auditor and all.  And there ain’t nothing he can do about it, because everyone who looks at him sees a mutie.

Corry’s not sure what she wants to do with herself when she’s grown, but she’s got an idea of going to university on one of Countess Cordelia’s scholarships, maybe all the way in Vorbarr Sultanna.  She’ll have a choice then, of whether or not she’ll tell folks she’s a mutie.  She supposes it ain’t none of their business, really, but she thinks she’ll tell anyway.  Because she can , see, and Raina can’t.

Mama says that uterine replicators are getting more and cheaper all the time.  By the time Corry’s ready to be thinking of having children of her own, maybe there’ll be some even for folks in Silvy Vale.  Someday, maybe there won’t be any more muties like Corry.  There’s always been accidents, though, and there’s always been war, and Corry can’t see that changing any time, so there’ll always be muties like the Mutie Lord.

It matters , Corry thinks.  It matters how folks think, and it matters how folks see each other.  It matters what and who folks count as important.  They learned that, they as live in Silvy Vale, when the Mutie Lord came all the way out to bring justice for Raina.  So Corry’ll tell folks she’s a mutie, because she was lucky, growing up in Silvy Vale.  She’ll say it because it matters, and she won’t be shamed.  She’ll say it for all those as don’t get a choice whether to say or no.

"AO3 doesn't need a "dislike" button"

Um, actually, it already has one. Depending on your specs, it might look a little different but over all it looks kinda like this:

You can find it at the corner of your screen, which corner is dependent on your layout.

Anyway, if you dislike a fic, you can hit this Dislike Button until the fic goes away. It really is pretty amazing actually.

To some people you’re an NPC

To other people, you’re the special, unlockable character that they worked and worked to finally get- and when they do they’re so happy because they got the game just so they could find you.

I don't want my cellphone to have AI I want it to have 3 days of battery time. I don't want my computer to have AI preinstalled I want it to have seven usb ports and high ram at affordable price. I don't want my games to have AI built levels I want them to be so optimized I could run them on a nokia.

Vorkosigan Saga fanfic where Mark and Kareen, sometime post-Cryoburn, find out that they’ve actually been legally married for years.

I’m not writing it, but here’s the bullet points:

like 15 years ago, they bought a house in Vorwhatever District for tax purposes. As business partners, they had to joint-sign the papers.

today, they receive a form letter in the mail informing them that an assortment of antiquated laws are being cleaned out of the books in Vorwhatever District, including one that if a man and a woman co-inhabit a domestic building for ten years, they are legally assumed to be married in the District - and thus, thanks to federalism, in every other District across three planets. Though the law is being removed and updated, the letter assures them, their marriage will remain binding and valid. If they wish to have it annulled for any reason, they may petition the office of the Count

after a non-zero amount of swearing, they decide to fly down to Vorwhatever District and petition him directly

Count Vorwhatever frowns, staring at the paper. “Wait, Vorkosigan - ah, you’re technically in the line of succession, aren’t you? For the District?”

Mark waves his hand. “After all of Miles’ children, thank god, which will probably be several dozen by the time he dies.”

The Count shakes his head and pushes the paper back across the table. “I cannot interfere with another count’s lineage. I’m afraid you’ll have to take it up with him.”

“Absolutely not,” Mark says promptly. “He’ll laugh himself stupid.”

Some arguing later, Kareen says thoughtfully, “Could we petition Count Vorkosigan’s liege lord instead?”

Gregor, when they sneak in time for an appointment, does not laugh himself stupid. Gregor, it turns out, knew all five years, because of ImpSec’s general alert for for the name “Vorkosigan” showing up in a legal context anywhere in the Empire and also on several other planets. He hadn’t mentioned it because he’d assumed Mark and Kareen knew, and that they hadn’t mentioned it to anything because it was either private or they just regarded it as a fairly irrelevant business thing.

okay, Gregor laughs at them a little bit. He does the Gregor thing where his eyes widen and he smiles just a little and if you know him, you know that he’s trying not to laugh openly.

He also reads over the paperwork they give him and then hands it back with an almost entirely deadpan expression and an apology that no, even as Emperor he cannot annul their marriage, due to not just restrictions on Imperial interference with a Count’s inheritance but the intersection of that and some other fairly esoteric laws - in force across all the Barrayaran Empire, actually, and put into effect during the Regency, that make Vor/prole non-Vor marriages particularly complex to dissolve. 

“Trust me,” Gregor adds, “I studied these laws quite thoroughly, when I was anxious about proposing to Laisa.”

Kareen grimaces. “Miles is going to laugh himself stupid at us.”

Gregor is not foolish enough to disagree. “Not quite as hard as Ivan and Tej will,” he instead says helpfully.

Mark groans.

Smash cut to Mark and Kareen sitting in Miles’ study while Miles laughs so hard he nearly falls out of his chair.

also, I guess, he dissolves their marriage, if they want.

they probably don’t end up doing that. 

they send a letter to select friends and family a week or so later informing them that they are, in fact, married now, do not want gifts or a party or anything but just FYI