what hath science wrought?

"edit images with AI-- search with AI-- control your life with AI--"

question what the tv tells you, question what a pop star sells you, question mom and question dad, question good and question bad

Fundamental life advice: never trust a product from a youtuber/influencer sponsorship

Idk maybe the learning platform ones are the exception but i never looked into them

Adding on to this. Skillshare is hard to cancel. There’s a slight chance this has changed but when I looked into subscribing, there was a lot of people complaining about having to email the company multiple times to cancel.

Since Squarespace is templets, they legally own whatever you make. If you decide to change providers, you can’t take it with you. You’re stuck with them forever or have to rebuild your website from the ground up. You at least own the domain name so there’s that, but for me it’s not worth the work if I have to restart should I ever decide I hate the company.

I want more people to know this because every time I’ve looked into something advertised by youtubers, it’s never been good.

Time to talk about SponsorBlock again.

This is a Firefox extension that automatically skips sponsorship messages in Youtube videos. The fact that these small-time corporations feel the need to make Youtube creators behave like trained animals for a tiny contribution is stupid in the first place.

I think it's important to understand that the vast majority of voters do not spend much time thinking through their political decisions because it's simply not something that occupies much space in their minds. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and it's extremely difficult to fight feelings with facts.

Now that the Democratic party's inner core is highly-educated cosmopolitan urbanites, it seems to have lost the ability to deal with that reality.

Most people do not feel like trump is a fascist, or that he wants to be a dictator. Most people do not feel like any of Biden's massive legislative/executive accomplishments improved their lives at all. Most people do not feel like Harris's platform would've actually gotten done or helped them. Most people feel like Trump ran a better economy and that it's Democrats' fault that inflation got so bad.

In an individualistic, selfish nation with one of the worst education systems in the industrialized world, a political party cannot win by serving up a charcuterie board of various poll-tested policies that it then tries to explain to people who could not care less and don't understand anyway. It needs to create an overwhelming feeling, a feeling that changes the minds of people who don't give a fuck about anything but themselves and their wallets. Trump found that overwhelming feeling. Through bravado, cruelty, and levity, he created this zeitgeist of blunt, confident grievance that countless prideful people who feel left behind by the economy could grab onto. This feeling inspired people far beyond his cult of enthusiastic fascists and self-identified bigots.

The country chose trump because Trump's brand, vibe, and message inspired compelling emotions in more people, especially in people who have no interest in civic engagement, don't follow the news, and have been given little understanding of government/economics by our failing education system.

This problem wasn't fully apparent in 2022 during the midterms, when more low-propensity voters stayed home and highly-educated, highly-engaged people made up more of the electorate.

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into is a really, really important message that needs to be internalized.

Feelings don't care about your facts.

In Doppleganger, Naomi Klein characterizes conspiracy culture as often "getting the facts wrong, but the feelings right". And when there are real unaddressed issues, real things people are feeling, it leaves a vacuum. And that vacuum leaves a lot of space for misinformation and disinformation to take hold; for right-wing strategists to speak to those feelings, even if the 'solution' they're offering will actually make the problem worse.

And it's very hard to combat that problem with facts, especially when the act of doing so is interpreted as telling someone that what they're feeling isn't real.

If facts don't work, what does? There is no easy answer, but here are some learnings gained from others who have lived through or studied similar challenges:

This isn't comprehensive by any means, but there are some shared themes. Other important elements -- like trust and how to rebuild trust that has been damaged or broken -- are also critical, but would warrant an entire post of their own.

Thanks to OP for the hard but worthwhile prompting thoughts. The road ahead will not be easy, and it can be hard to understand or grapple with perspectives so different and detached that it can feel like we're living in alternate realities instead of the same country as each other. When the things that seem to have such wild appeal to a certain portion of the population are so viscerally repellent to others. But at least we are gifted with the learnings and hard-won insights of other who came before or walk alongside us.

The article 10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won provides good advice here. First, trust yourself. Find others you can trust. Grieve. Release that which you cannot change. Find your path to resistance.

But then, at minimum -- even if you yourself don’t want to engage with them (which is fine) -- we’ll all have to give space to those who can and do experiment with new language to appeal to others who don’t share our own worldviews.

going to work

god i wish that fucking kid didnt have such bad aim

To all the trans people who see this tonight, no matter what happens, we will survive. Trans people will still be here 4 years from now and 10 years from now and 100 years from now and tomorrow. We have always existed and we always will. The world cannot unlearn about us; we are too public, too loud, too beloved, too present. Ill be here tomorrow. Please stay here with me.

yo it’s literally november 3rd. what’s next the 4th? and then. no it can’t be.

My Catradora Drawings