Let’s Talk Expertise

This will anger some people, like my age post did, but it also needs to be said and is about something I have been seeing consistently. If you are in your undergrad and taking major courses, you are not an expert on the subject material, let alone the profession itself. You are a student who is just building their foundational knowledge for your chosen field. You have not accumulated enough knowledge on the subject matter to speak from a place of expertise, nor have you learned enough to parse through the nuance of your chosen field or reached any of the milestones to be considered as such. There’s a reason why we actually have an expertise system here in the USA that is paired with the legal system and our government employment system. If you go onto a government job site and look at their listings you will see some combination of Degree, Degree + Experience, Degree + Equivalent Experience and Amount of Time. What does this mean? It means that if a job is asking for someone with a Master’s degree in a specific field they will consider individuals with the appropriate degree, but they will also consider people with a Bachelor’s degree and the equivalent amount of time and/or experience in their field that makes them as knowledgeable as the MS candidate. The reason for the Time/Experience component is that not everyone pursues a graduate degree, but that does not mean they lack the knowledge required. However, there is an equivalency in Time/Experience to those graduate degrees and the special knowledge they impart. This gets even more complicated in higher levels when a position is asking for a PhD + 10 years of experience, that means a BS might be right out unless they have 20+ years of experience and an MS might need 15-20 years alone. In my time as a professor I have seen scores of undergrads present themselves as their major professions when they haven’t even finished their junior year. Sometimes it’s benign so that they can puff up in mixed company. Other times? Not so much. Several years ago I saw an undergrad present themselves as a psychologist that was “recovering traumatic memories” and got a multitude of people falsely accused of various violent crimes. This culminated in several court cases where the student had to admit they were falsely representing themself as an expert and therefore falsely producing “evidence”. In light of the ongoing conflict I have seen a number of blogs on here present themselves as historians/experts on various related subject matter, while openly admitting that they are undergrad students and/or do not work in any capacity relating to the material. The latter can be fine up to a point, but if you are not working in your field and it comes to being an expert according to the GS and/or Daubert Standards, you most likely are not making the cut. The person regularly publishing papers and working as the profession will be considered the expert over you. If all you have is a few papers to your name and no other activities relating to the subject…well it’s not a good look to be considered an expert. “AVTP this is elitist! Not everyone can go to college/grad school on *subject matter*” That’s right. Not everyone can go to school for psychology, history, ecology, polisci, let alone go and make it their career. These people are not experts then. Plain and simple. You don’t get to call yourself an expert because you listen to podcasts or do deep dives on Wikipedia. (And note, this is not about the blogs who are posting about how they did a hyper fixation deep dive on frog naming nomenclature when they were in high school. I am talking about the persons who are presenting themselves as knowledgeable authorities and using phrases like “As a *insert specialist field here*” while they pick courses for their sophomore/junior/senior year.)

I don’t think people realize what rare and beautiful gifts really good full AMVs are.

Like… that’s hard. Really, really hard.

Something I’ve learned is that the longer you’ve been editing, the more time it takes to make an edit, which is probably the reason AMVs can take literal months to make, and most vidders usually cut the songs down and/or make short edits.

To keep up consistently good timing, clip choice, pacing, transitions, effects, and possibly even masking or typography over give or take three and a half minutes of song is a huge challenge.

It’s generally considered to take three hours to edit one minute of a movie. Apply that here, and we have it taking about nine hours for a fairly short AMV… and given that we don’t get paid to make these, and have to wrestle with hitting every single beat of the song, it can take much longer.

And we also have to keep our motivation up, find time to edit, not grow to detest the song, and struggle with technical difficulties. All of that is really grating.

I’ve been editing for a couple months over a year now, and, while I started out making almost exclusively full AMVs, I can’t do that anymore. I’ve improved a lot, and by this point, using the whole song is intimidating and requires a level of dedication that I could not possibly achieve every time I edit.

It’s been literally a year since the last time I’ve edited a full-length song that I didn’t trim.

So if you find an awesome full AMV, appreciate it! Tell the vidder that you love it!

I’m honestly just so in awe of AMVs and the people who edit them. Vidders are really badass.

Cherish them and their work.

I don't wanna @ anyone because I understand how fast things seem to move in today's landscape of streaming shows dropping entire seasons in one day, and networks pumping out new series constantly to try to attract more subscribers with no intent to actually maintain those shows over time but I just saw someone self-deprecatingly lament that they are still thinking about a show that ended almost a year ago, making fan art and playlists for it, and I want to be very clear:

you can still create fanworks when it comes to old media!! PLEASE do!! there are always going to be new fans who will appreciate it, and veteran fans who are dying for new content and new perspectives. also, less than a year is NOTHING. the original Star Trek series was on TV six decades ago and there are still people losing their minds over it, writing stories and reblogging gifsets daily, and that's only one example.

a fandom lasts as long as there are people who love a thing, even if it's only a handful of people. love what you love and write and draw and make gifs and playlists about it!

Why? WHY??

U.S. CDC taking comments on potentially limiting COVID vaccine availbility by age or health status. Never mind that the vaccine is crucial to limiting long-term effects that could lead to immunocomprimisation. 🤬🤬🤬

You can comment here.

Comment Period Ends in 3 Days!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(noted on 6/14/2024 0425 EST)

Talk about how you want yourself and your loved ones to be safe. HOw restricting the vaccine will just disable &/ kill more people than if it wasn't restricted. The neurological/cognitive effects of covid affecting your community, children, etc. The thousands and thousands of people with long covid that maybe couldve been saved with masking and boosters. Whatever you want I just made all that up just now.

A sweet little story about one of the many modern variations of a family.

My brother started dating a woman a while back who has a six years old son, Jamie. He’s an anonymous donor child, meaning he technically doesn’t have a father. At least not one he’s ever likely to meet. His mother has no siblings so his whole life his only family has been her and his two grandparents.

My brother, despite his mental illness, has taken the caretaker role upon him as best as he can and Jamie has accepted him fully into the family.

Now my brother and his girlfriend are about to have another child together. This child will be calling my brother “dad”, our mother “grandmother” and my sister and I “aunts” so my brother and his girlfriend agreed with my mother that Jamie should of course be allowed to call us those things too so he won’t feel excluded.

Thing is, no one told me about this plan.

I was looking at my phone when Jamie snug up on me and said in a quiet but very deliberate way “You’re my aunt”

We have different words for people who are related to us by blood and those married into the family. He used the blood relative word. Thanks to my ADHD I don’t always know what will come out of my face but luckily my response that day was “....Yeah, I suppose I am”

He gave me this huge excited smile and since then he has regularly tried to figure out what we all are in relation to him. What should he call my sister’s boyfriend and should he call our mom’s husband “granddad” even though we don’t call him “dad”? There’s more possible words to use for family members in Danish than in English so he hasn’t quite settled on what to call us but that will most likely happen automatically when his baby brother is born and is told from the start what we are.

It’s just really sweet how excited he is about suddenly having a much bigger family. He’s especially excited for the biggest Christmas he has ever had (12 people, but that’s huge when you’re used to 4)

"they should teach media literacy in schools" english class "they should teach students how to spot misinformation" it's english class "they should teach kids critical thinking" it's called english class

I teach English courses at the college level, and I do cover these 3 things in all of them as part of research strategies. These elements are part of the learning objectives for most English classes at this level. I’m always concerned when I don’t see these elements on a syllabus.

(I might be misreading the meaning of this post, i.e. it sounds to me like the emphasis on the class being called “English” means those things aren’t included in it for a reason, but like…any teacher who thinks critical thinking, spotting misinfo, and media literacy shouldn’t be part of English education, it’s to their students’ detriment.)

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

Occurs to me that Christian cultural hegemony can be pretty well encapsulated by the fact that it is normal for people to say "Happy Chanukah to those who celebrate," and it is normal for many of those same people to say, "Merry Christmas, everyone!"

Yes, exactly! And this is a precisely why I feel that people saying “Merry Christmas to those who celebrate” or “Merry Christmas if you celebrate” would be such a radical shift that I’d really like to see.

Since this post is going around again and there seem to be some themes emerging in the notes, I think it is worth mentioning that "happy holidays" is also not quite the all-inclusive solution it seems to be, as not everyone is celebrating a holiday at this time of year at all.

Kind reminder that the people who truly care about your wellbeing will respect your boundaries. It's that simple. Stop looking for excuses.

at times when hope is too big of a thing to have, curiosity (even clinical or small) is a very good placeholder

I hate that planned obsolescence is starting to reach fandoms. I hate that fandoms are starting to die after two, three years, I hate that whenever you stop getting content that means the fandom will die and be gone.

I need people to stop trying to brush off old interests as being 'cringe' as soon as you lose interest, or worse: make it seem like it's imoral to like something that they themselves held so dear before.

Fandoms are meant to last for years and years, the moment content stops being created is the moment we truly thrive because we keep creating the content ourselves the way we love it and expand on the things that are already there for us.

I don't care if you lost interest on something, it's fine and normal even, but stop trying to blame and make fun of people who still do love the fandom and the content and the things we can create.

I need people to enjoy fandom again

ALT

If your best was simply getting out of bed today then I’m proud of you. If your best was finally doing the dishes, or taking a shower then I’m proud of you. Your best is always good enough.

I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I don’t “look autistic” and I never have the heart to tell then that I’m really not comfortable with being told that because it can hold some pretty negative connotations.

Check out my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aspierations

I kind of wish that the idea that you can just be was a little more mainstream.

Like, having drive and ambition is great. But it gets drilled in kids’ heads that there is some pressure to constantly be looking for the next move up, to be bigger than life. It wears you down to never be satisfied.

Not everyone is destined for greatness. It just doesn’t suit some people.

There’s nothing wrong with having a quiet life, making enough to get by, having a small apartment where you’re comfortable, and just living. You don’t have to constantly be looking to go onward and upwards. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to just be.

because I've seen a couple posts like this recently:

Do not be discouraged if you see someone with the same idea for a fic as you! Because that's what we want--the same exact stories, over and over, through the unique lens of each writer! That's the beauty of fanfiction: you can read the same story, slightly to the left, as many times as possible!

So please, post that fic that has the same premise as someone else. Write your version of it, and rest assured knowing that at the very least, one person will be delighted to find the same kind of story as one they just finished!

ao3 is not instagram, and it’s not embarrassing to comment on a story that’s old. we understand that you just happened to come across it now; writing is magical in that you often come across the right story at just the time you need to read it.

also, authors will literally cry over their keyboard if you comment on the stuff they write.

Don’t try to be perfect. Don’t try to be some idealized version of yourself that the world thinks you should be. It’s awesome to want to grow and become a better person, but remember that you’re human.