➡️ @glitternoodle@cybre.space @glitternoodle@witches.town

So many fears of and threat models for AI are just the projection of fears over capitalism and bureaucracy onto technology, and they are no less legitimate for it.

"Pistachio nuts are highly flammable when stored in large quantities, and are prone to self-heating and spontaneous combustion." wtf?

destroy the idea that trans lesbian polyamory is inherently less ~wholesome~ than cisheterosexual monogamy

no single person or office should have the power to threaten nuclear war, bomb cities, or issue sweeping orders affecting millions

@silby chomp chomp chomp https://witches.town/media/FNzScYtvegGFsgF3WzI

keep your friendships healthy: the food of friendship is not crisis but 'doing friend things'

UPDATE ON THE CUM GNOLL SITUATION

@Bingo_Springus HAS POINTED OUT

RATHER THAN Musk -> Ksum -> Kum -> Cum

THE SECRET IS TRULY

Musk -> Ksum -> Skum -> Scum

SCUM KNOLL

There are significant differences between the lyrics of "Taxman" by The Beatles and the actual tax code as it is currently enforced, and it should be used with caution as an educational tool for this reason

To be specific, it is a "taxperson" now

Don't forget to hydrate yourself !

Not only lack of hydratation leads to headaches and belly aching, but it can also affect your mood indirectly ! Go drink a glass of water, can't hurt much !

Follow the example ! Its flowers blossoms thanks to water.

https://witches.town/media/ZucAQKF0Us5cjWpsAqc

https://mastodon.social/media/YLzw7AGJv36bPdfvExE

I think one of the primary tests of good game design should be "is it still fun when you lose?"

I love when people ask me why I hang around so many furries because I see how they react when I casually say "leftism and high-quality queer porn".

List of pre-internet memes I have been reminded about:

Sator square
Three hares
Delenda est
Snails
Kilroy was here
the S thingy (wait was this pre-internet)

InspiroBot™ will never let you down.

Hell have any of yall ever been so fucking thirsty you take an actual drink of water

you ever want to fight a cookie

i have been thinking a lot of thoughts about the difficulty in finding language to describe the subject of my song cycle about #transfeminine mundanities so here are some thoughts about that!

in the broadest conceptual terms, you could say that it's slices of life from "trans women and ppl like that", but that obvs Others and decentralizes nonbinary ppl which (shocker!) i'm not super jazzed about. i often (as above) say it's abt "transfeminine" ppl, but that feels like an uneasy shorthand: "transfeminine" is a term w/reasonable legibility, but i know butch trans women who bristle at it, and i also have a ton of AFAB nb friends who present very femme — they're femme and they're trans, so it seems counterintuitive for "transfeminine" to not describe them (and i know trans ppl who *would* describe them as such!), and that makes me feel like that term isn't the ideal for the group of ppl i'm writing about here

i used "AFAB" above — "Assigned Female At Birth" — which implies the equivalent "AMAB", and from a technical definitional standpoint, yes, absolutely, i am writing about #AMAB trans ppl. but! *many* such ppl *really* hate that term b/c it feels like an invalidation, a la: "sure, you might be a woman *now*, but your defining feature is that at one point everyone thought you were a man!". i think that's super valid! it seems like the very least one can do is find a term that doesn't alienate the very core of the target demographic i'm writing about. which leads me to things like "i'm writing about ppl who experience #transmisogyny", sometimes codified in Expert-Level Trans Discourse as "Transmisogyny Confined (TMC) people". but 1) that's super cumbersome, 2) it makes the cycle sound like such a downer, 3) no one outside that discourse knows what "TMC" means (thus curtailing its utility), and 4) it's not exactly a definition one wants to build one's identity around, you know? i wouldn't say "don't define me by my oppression" is a rallying call per se, but it's a v understandable position

but like the thing is, that's kind of all that's there? sure, some of this is Julia Serano's Activist Language Merry-Go-Round, but some of it is also that "trans" as an identity only exists thru transphobia/cisnormativity

in utopia, when we've truly ended all the -isms, there would still be ppl of different ethnicities and cultures, ppl of different genders and sexual orientations. there wouldn't be trans ppl. there also wouldn't be cis ppl! b/c in utopia, we wouldn't assign newborns to a gender based on their genitals. we'd just parent them and let them tell us their gender(s) in their own due time. ppl would still change their hormones/bodies/names, but absent the transphobic foundation of coercively gendering infants based on genitals (and everything that flows from that), "trans" and "cis" as identity categories evaporate

"trans" as an identity owes its existence to transphobic oppression, so it's not surprising that it's hard/impossible to define a subset of trans ppl without reference to their subset of trans oppression

anyway, i still don't know what exactly i'm going to print in the program notes for this piece, but at least i feel Intellectually Justified in struggling so much

every class/seminar/article on musical #entrepreneurship i've encountered has included a deeply incoherent segment on marketing that includes the concept (often even the phrase) "you are your brand!", meaning that the goal is to get fans who are invested in *you*, not just one of your projects; you should have a defined social media presence; being authentically *you* is how you will stand out from the crowd etc etc etc

but "authenticity" is exactly where things fall apart. "you are your brand" often carries the subtext (or even text!) of "therefore you need to curate your online presence lest you Sully your product with 'off-brand' content, "off-brand" ofc meaning: explicit politics, "too much" non musical content, negativity in general but also mental health downs, anything queer unless it reads as SUPER assimilationist/non-threatening — all the usual "professionalism" bullshit. basically: be a happy anodyne cog in the capitalist machine whose Marketable Quirk is making music of some sort(s)

but here's the thing: i am a mentally ill anti-assimilationist trans queer who hates capitalism and thinks silence on (explicitly) political topics is itself a deeply political choice and statement. if *i* am my #brand, my brand must necessarily encompass all of that. if my brand can't encompass all of that, if i have to curate and edit and hide parts of myself from my branded image, then my brand is clearly separate from me, i am *not* my brand, and all this talk about #authenticity is specious

(and like, i think you can totes make the argument that "authenticity" will always be a constructed façade w/o true substance and that "authenticity" is vastly overrated as artistic currency! but i don't think we need make those arguments to push back on branding talk)

i write music, music that sometimes reaches the empyrean sphere of profoundest emotion. i write that music as a messy, specific individual with all of my features, faults, and foibles. those things make some people uncomfortable! i refuse to sanitize myself for them. i refuse to grant strength to the notion that that empyrean sphere belongs only to the straight, the healthy, the Unmarked. (this doesn't only apply to homophobes and the like! it applies in every direction. ppl who are/do things you don't like can make art that moves you deeply. this is one of the hard, distressing truths abt the world i think we have to grapple with and doubt we'll ever "solve") (and also the obvious corollary of that is that i'm not a Perfect Unblemished Being Who Has Done No Moral Wrong — tho i don't think anyone capable of making moral choices is, and saying this feels very performative)

i think insisting that artists shear away the Marked aspects of their existence in order to gain access to the Realm Of #Art only serves to further stigmatize those aspects; it reinforces existing hierarchies of power. one can certainly argue that some things (like bigotry) absolutely _should_ be stigmatized, but that argument requires a rigor and specificity about what those things are that i have never seen in a discussion of curating a personal brand

anyway, that's why so many of my social media presences are uncurated streams of political screaming, puns, and shitposts from queer furries — i refuse to play a game where "winning" means i lose. (also i am lazy, and cultivating a "presentable" image takes way more energy than i have and also reminds me of being in the closet again so like ew gross no bye)

This is an "at will" employment state. Which means you can walk up to anyone and, if you will it, they're now your employee. Pay them. Give them health insurance. They can't even stop you.