It’s that time again–time to raise the money needed to keep this site running.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know what a unique beast it is. For the past 13 years, I’ve been relentlessly covering the ongoing backlash against women’s rights; now, I also cover the even scarier attacks on trans rights. I spend my time slogging through the worst that the bigots have to offer, so you don’t have to. And I try to do it with an intact sense of humor.
I bring you this coverage without ads or paywalls, or secret billionaire backers. I rely entirely on donations from you, the readers. Many of you donate on a monthly basis, and I appreciate it enormously. But I get the bulk of my operating budget through these pledge drives; without them, I can’t keep the blog going.
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Which then suggests the disturbing hypothesis that Trump has conjured up a sock here.
Cheetolini’s turned lots of humans into socks with the help of Russian meme farms and Murdoch.
@David Futrelle:
Something I am in a position to give you right now is Happy Pride Month news: Pat Robertson is now an ex-televangelist.
https://apnews.com/article/pat-robertson-dead-christian-broadcasting-700-club-91299d0953c014ca6860fe545cac793e
@Full Metal Ox
I thought he’d never die. I remember when he ran for President. I seem to remember him saying something like “God told me to run for President”. I kind of felt like this automatically disqualified him.
Since this seems to be the closest thing to an open active thread around right now, I’m going to use it to post some links I’ve been meaning to post in various previous threads but procrastinated too long. A couple at a time, so I don’t trip the automod function by accident.
First up is this discussion about Koko the gorilla and the experiment that (supposedly) taught her American Sign Language, and the negative impact that had on the deaf community. Amongst other things, evidently none of the scientists who taught Koko and Noam Chimpsky ASL actually knew the language, let alone be fluent in it. Or really, anyone who knew anything about how any language is put together at all.
https://www.tumblr.com/bogleech/711036840650604544
On the other hand, it could be asked if what the linguists called no grammar was actually ape grammar. Also, are the things humans like to talk about anywhere similar to what the other ape species like to talk about when alone. All sorts of questions here that someone should look into sometime, if they haven’t already.
Under the category of ancient monasteries hiding undiscovered long-lost history tidbits, here’s how a Greek monastery had records on how the Ottoman Empire did business with a different religion from them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/greek-monastery-manuscripts-tell-new-story-ottoman-rule-rcna53348?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR3_300dy3btRXoXyJXOSrBVXUsx7YqdUzw6seEUE87uIw2r5plotEhxYnc
Interesting stuff, if you like that kind of history.
@ redsilkphoenix
Your post ogr me thinking about animal personhood. But then something in your linked article really sent me down a rabbit hole. The bit about rhyming in ASL.
I’m now stuck in my head trying to figure out rhymes from the ground up. I’ve now got a bit of semantic soon going on though. Like every word I think of is losing meaning. Even typing this is hard.
But what I’m trying to figure is how ASL can have rhymes. Like, I can understand that maybe someone who lost their hearing could have a memory of rhymes and translate in their head. But what about people deaf from birth who learn ASL?
How do they interpret words in their head. I’m consciously monitoring what’s going on in my head as I type this. I can feel myself sort of imagining the word sounds. Although what’s weird to me is that I’m doing it like a syllable at a time. It’s really staccato. (In my head that was “It ssss re ah lee st-cat-oh”
But presumably that’s because I know what the words sound like?
Wow, this is so much to process I’m losing brain function gen-err-all-i
So thank you for the link! (I Daren;t even click on the others now)
ETA: When I stopped typing I just reverted to my usual inner monologue. No staccato effect. So I think that’s only when I type. It is. I’m doing it now)
@Dormousing_it:
If I’d been God, I might well have told him to run so that he’d fail and then maybe learn a bit of humility. Or perhaps just to split the right wing vote.
(I still doubt that any god did actually tell him that, for that or any other reason. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
It would seem to me that one would have to generalize the idea of “rhyming” to encompass non-acoustic forms of communication. That requires taking a sort of mathematician’s view on what rhyming even is, and it seems to mean having patterns to the phonemes (or other fundamental elements) that are orthogonal to the patterns used to convey semantic content. It’s a bit of added orderliness: a symmetry, say, or having a repetition like tilings do (considered a form of symmetry, translational rather than rotational), or at least some subset doing so (now consider a bunch of differently shaped trees on a ridgeline, but all with similar looking bases coming from that one contiguous line, and spaced more-or-less evenly).
Our written languages often do this. Justified paragraphs, tidy lines, the base-line being straight even if there are ascenders and descenders (much like that ridge with the trees), and some written languages (Arabic, Thai) seem to go even more that way by having most of the glyphs grow out of a continuous line of ink. Rhyming spoken verse does something similar by having a repeating pattern (a tiling, but in time instead of space) produced by the last phoneme or last few phonemes of each line.
So, pure speculation here, perhaps ASL can have rhyming by having symmetries, in space and/or time, in the gestures made, and using creative word choices to make the gestures form tidy patterns. The equivalent of meter (also involving temporal tiling) as well — I’m not totally sure what an ASL analogue of iambic pentameter would look like, but it may well exist.
Of course, the most obvious way to get a definitive answer that is not just speculation would be to go ask someone fluent in ASL … even if they don’t know the technicalities and just have a tacit skill to do it, if they demonstrate it, any such patterning in time or rhythm is likely to be apparent even to a non-native speaker (gesturer?) so could at least test the hypothesis given above.
Anyone here with synesthesia? If so, when you read a poem that rhymes, do the colours/feelings of the rhyming words match in some way also?
@Surplus to Requirements
Yes, I agree with your points 100%.
More trinkets for your amusement:
Someone managed to do a protein analysis on some ancient Viking furs (DNA was unavailable, presumably due to how the original furs were processed to turn into clothes and their age). Evidently most of the furs they wore were beaver, showing yet more evidence of the extent of the ancient Viking trading network.
https://www.medievalists.net/2022/07/vikings-beaver-furs/
A joke for the chemistry folks in here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PunPatrol/comments/119nfi3/did_you_hear_about_the_new_chemical_compound/
A dog who is both smart and dumb at the same time:
Hello again friends, from we all here on the west side of Chi ~
We’re still here and have been reading along, have just been busy.
Also – net issues.
@ David,
We would donate except we’re all *flat broke*!
@ Surplus,
We do hope you’re feeling better these days, we wrote you a reply on the other thread, looks like that got “eaten”. Suffice it to say – we do hope you’re feeling better.
Speaking of *flat broke* and this becoming an open thread –
Our pal T here is being threatened with eviction. Any ideas on that?
She has applied for public aid and housing aid – all of these things are a morass of bureaucracy. Keeps trying to put the land lord off, they’re threatening to proceed to eviction / legal action. Anyone have any ideas?
We’re all in very bad financial shape here and might be next.
And have had issues finding work – I thought there was a labor shortage?
Evidently not.
This all seems to have become a gigantic bureaucracy also – thinking of trying to get even simple retail jobs.
If anyone has any helpful ideas, please let us know.
Still reading along here! Might be a positive thing.
And for the trolls on here –
There are A LOT more people here than you might guess.
And we’re not going anywhere.
(Unless we become homeless, but then we’ll be reading along at the library.)
@Lizzie: I’ve got synesthesia, and yes, they do to a point. The surrounding surrounding also add color/texture so each word is colored a little differently (to me, at least) but they are extremely similar.
@Alan: I was in a college acting class with a couple of kids who used ASL. Got to say, of all my scene partners, I liked the Deaf guy playing “my wicked cousin Ernest” (from the left-luggage counter) the best. His interpreter was super-monotone, so I asked her to please stop talking while we were doing the scene. Because he could do Oscar Wilde perfectly well in ASL, of which I know very little. We had no trouble at all keeping the same rhythm and not needing her to drone at me or sign my lines from behind me. The crackling wit came through.
Though I was also extremely fond of the chap who did Henry II to my Eleanor; we became actual friends. And despite the subject matter, it was a hoot doing “Agnes of God” with me in my tweeds and the older Mormon lady borrowing a costume from the recent production of “The Sound of Music” at another theater.
Why does everyone feel the need to put words in my mouth? (In that other thread.)
Why does everyone hate me? (And then, with a straight face, claim that the world isn’t out to get me, while their own actions indicate otherwise.)
I try and I try to get everything right, but no magnitude of effort on my part is ever enough to satisfy people. The goal posts get moved, obstacles are strewn in my path, “glitches” happen, and then I am punished for not having done a good enough job, and if I try to explain or defend myself everyone gets mad. Clearly they don’t want me to have a good reason for having failed, or for not having tried. They want a failure they can point to to justify treating me the way they want to treat me anyway.
And I am so. damn. tired of trying and trying and trying and still somehow never measuring up, having things taken away temporarily or just outright stolen, being expected to pay ever more from a fixed income, and being ignored or jeered at by almost everyone and supported by basically no-one.
It’s all clearly bad faith. The surest sign of that is that no one ever has a straight answer to the question, “what must I do differently — in step-by-step-instruction detail — in order to be treated like everybody else?” If it was a matter of something I was doing, or not doing, that question ought to be easy to answer. The only circumstance where it wouldn’t be is if it was a matter of identity: the only thing I could do that would satisfy the jeerers, the sabotagers, the obstacle-strewers, the threateners, and all those others would be to be somebody else instead of me. That is the answer that gets implied, every single time I ask that question anywhere. And that points to the problems I have being a type of bigotry … and yet it’s now happening here, in a supposedly anti-bigotry space.
I don’t even know of anyone else who is on the receiving end of this same specific form of it. It’s obviously not garden-variety ableism in particular, as other non-neurotypical people are not being treated that way here.
What I am most tired of is being alone. Why can’t I find even one person who would have no expectations of me whatsoever, good or bad, and just accept me as I am?
Hey surplus
I’ll fix all of your horrible issues if you can stop my mother from dying and fix my fertility issues. And maybe I’ll like you more again if you don’t compare a power outage to abuse. As someone who was abused. And you know this. That is incredible offensive. People have gone to great lengths in detail about why they are upset with you but you would rather claim you are an innocent victim.
Everyone has issues. I’ve had multiple miscarriages. I’m 24 and I’m taking care of my 63 year old mother while she struggled to get breath in her body and I have to all but force her to eat some toast with jam. I have chronic pain. But I don’t come at you side ways like all of this is your fault now do I? You are not near important enough for the world to give a shit about you. So it’s not out to get you.
If I could switch lives with you, I gladly would. I’m just as broke, in just as much pain. And constantly on the edge of just killing myself. I spent my time the other day in church on my knees, praying, begging God to help because I don’t have any other options. So forgive me I don’t think your water pressure being low is that big of deal
@ Surplus to Requirements
And here we go again. I’ll try the carrot this time, since I keep bouncing back and forth.
For whatever it is worth, I don’t hate you. You frustrate me, but I don’t hate you. Nor do I want to treat you badly. I would like for you and everyone else to have a good life. I am not looking for reasons to attack you.
Speaking of putting words in mouth. You are massively simplifying the human experience. It’s not like we can share “This One Simple Trick that Turns You Into Giga-Chad. Public Speaking Experts Hate Us.” If we had the answers to all this, if we knew which buttons to press, who to call, who to sue, etc, to live a perfect life, we’d already be doing it for ourselves. Every time you pop on here demanding answers we fail to come up with something satisfying for you. Do you think we have the great secret to life and are just not sharing because we think it’s funny?
You do not behave like other non-neurotypical, thus you are not treated like others. We are all unique and everyone treats everyone differently.
Speaking of how you behave, your pattern is usually some variation of the following:
I mean, seriously. Over the years- let me say that again: YEARS- people have spent hours spilling enough virtual ink to fill a supercomputer trying to help you. You want some kind of example for what is driving people away? How about starting with the part where you demand the world on a leash, reject any offers of help, and accuse others of bad faith and attacking you?
I’m not looking for gratitude or a thank you for writing massive amounts of posts trying to help you, lord knows I am quite the dick and have been using the stick as much as the carrot lately, but acting as though everyone is here to solve your problems, getting upset when they can’t do anything about same, and then assuming bad intent on their part? It really gives off an entitled “Only my problems matter, you are all wrong and I am right, people are just a means to an end for me” vibe. It smacks of an abusive relationship where everything is the partner’s fault and they are constantly criticized for not fixing you for your sake like some kind of Manic-Pixie-Dream-Therapist.
And I do get that it’s hard. I don’t have your issues, but I do have issues of my own. Speaking of, one issue is my admittedly self diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, where I have a tendency to assume people either already don’t like me or are always on the verge of suddenly deciding they hate me after all.
This unfortunately manifests itself on here when things happen like people have something bad happen to them and suddenly I have a big panic attack over whether or not to give them my condolences. Do I know this person well enough to say “Sorry your grandmother died”? Do they actually hate or dislike me and don’t want me to say anything? Sometimes it’s all too much with everything else I am dealing with in life, I chicken out, and stop posting for a while until the moment passes.
I call this out specifically because it in turn can imply I don’t really care if someone’s grandmother died, that I am ignoring this person’s hurt because I can’t be bothered to give a shit. It’s exactly the kind of thing you seem to be hinting at. What am I doing wrong here that could give people a bad taste on their mouth? Giving off a vibe their struggles are meaningless to me.
I do not have specific examples and could always be wrong, but in my little freak outs over this sort of thing, I don’t seem to recall you doing much on that front either. I rather think I remember feeling appalled you would jump into such threads where someone just announced horrible news like a parent dying, massive health problems arising, etc, etc and rant about your internet going down. I believe the closest you usually come to expressing sympathy is to throw a skeptical “How can that happen in this modern society? You should sue.”
This kind of tasteless disregard for anyone else’s problems is a part of why you are not well received. You are putting a bad taste in people’s mouths. The solution is sadly not step by step instructions on how to fit in, but… Hell, I dunno. I’m struggling with it myself. Just pointing out it seems to be a commonality between us.
You just seem to want everyone to jump aboard your train to Self-Pity Town while treating other’s misfortune as mere trivia. Might not be the case, might just be how you come across. In the wisdom of Megamind, it’s all about presentation.
This is just an example I’m pulling out of my ass here. My lunch break is about over, so I’m gonna hold off on the analogy about you being a lone crab in a bucket, screaming for all the crabs outside to help, rejecting the outstretched claws because it’s too far and there are predators out there (like the crabs out in the thick of said predators don’t know that). Ditto for the practically violating site policy by trying to armchair diagnosis you with some combination of issues pertaining to extreme risk adversion, routine disruption, etc, and yet feeling the need to pretend that’s not really it at all and pointlessly ranting to give the illusion you are going to change and fix things if someone provides the appropriate answers.
Long story short: There are no quick and easy step by step instructions for you here. You have many problems (you are not alone in that, trust me), and they will take a long time to sort out. I don’t know what else to say here. You have been doing the same thing and expecting different results for years here, subjecting us all to it again and again. People are losing patience
And in relation, I’m sorry to hear about that Elaine. That’s horrible and I hope it gets better soon. Everyone here is thinking of you
Yes! Thank you! I was thinking about coming back and finding a way to say this without being overly emotional. Because this is what is.
You talk to us the way an abuser does surplus. You talk to me like the way my abuser talked to me. And I’m not that little girl anymore that takes it. I have to much self respect for that now. You can’t treat people like this and then cry about how you just want to be accepted and such. You can’t expect people to put up with mistreatment which is what this is! Everytime I have tried to help you, be understanding, be compassionate, share a hobby with you! You talk to me like I’m stupid for doing so! Like it’s my fault your life isn’t going the way you wanted because I dare suggest you try out Pokemon go as free way to meet people and get exercise.
You can’t talk to people like their morons and then cry about how they don’t want to talk to you anymore.
You have the ability to be logical, kind, and interesting. I’ve seen it. And I’ve seen that mentally you are struggling. Your brain is doing things to you that aren’t logical, aren’t kind and is repetitive boring. Which is why over and over again I have suggest you seek out mental health support. Yes even if that means you being admitted somewhere. I’ve been admitted. After a week of no sleep I had Jesus Christ following me around giving me disappointment looks! When I say this I don’t want bad things to happen to you. I want you to be well. I want you to get the same care I did. But I will not be spoken to like I am the same child who was abused. I will not let you abuse me even if you are having a mental health episode.
So I will say this again for the 100 time. You need to get mental help. You are not stable and you have been spiraling for days over mild inconveniences. This is not normal.
@ elaine
Oh I am so so sorry to hear what you’re going through. I wish I could help you in some practical way; rather than just with platitudes. But is there anything we can do for you here? Even if it’s just be a shoulder to cry on? But please please please, if you find yourself having those dark thoughts, reach out here. You shouldn’t have to face all this alone.
@ surplus
Again, my heart really bled for you when you said how lonely you are. That hit hard. I hate to think of you, or anyone, having to go through that. And I’d hate you to lose this place. But look, people really like your posts when you write in depth about general topics of interest. It just seems people can’t help you with your existing problems. So sorry about that. But, if it’s possible, could you just accept that? And not mention them again? If your issues are beyond out capacity to help then it does neither party any good seeking solutions here. You’ll just be disappointed. But if you focus on all the other stuff, people will engage with you – as they do when you get into interesting topics – and this can be a positive place for all concerned.
I have nothing to add except to say that Alan is right.
I grew up with an abusive stepfather. I still have profound PTSD and anxiety issues because of him. Half the reason I never had kids was because I was terrified of putting someone else through the bullying I endured at his hands.
I spent a full decade in a wonderful apartment, that I had all to myself when I wasn’t in a relationship. That landlord had to move because he couldn’t afford both the upkeep of the house and his wife’s new medical expenses, so they had to turn it over to the realtor and I would up sleeping on a friend’s (one of the players in my D&D campaign, specifically) floor for six months until the upstairs apartment at their place opened up. Had it not been for them, I would have been homeless. As it stands, I went from a place of my own to having a literal half-giant roommate.
I am constantly broke (which is why I haven’t been able to donate to the pledge drive yet, or to the previous one), have depression so bad my room is a disaster area because unless I’m running a session downstairs I don’t have the energy to do anything but sleep and doomscroll on my day off, my blood pressure is high enough it made a nurse do a double take, and the doctor warned me I’m at severe risk of heart attack and stroke, I’ve been a fuckin dry drunk since January, I’ve had to cut most of my family out of my life despite loving them dearly because they’re so far gone into the goddamn Trump Cult, my last relationship ended with a breakup during the first year of the pandemic, and the one before that died in a car crash when a drunk driver T-boned her car. And the sixteen year old cousin I helped raise (their father was my previous landlord) recently died of a pulmonary embolism in the back of an ambulance while Cheeto Caesar, Apartheid Edison, and the Monster of Moscow are still perfectly healthy.
And nearly every day at work I get pulled from my department to work a completely unrelated part of the store that is directly responsible for spiking my blood pressure despite management knowing about it. Because pulling everyone off the sales floor is cheaper than hiring an actual Online Grocery team.
We’re ALL in the muck, mate, we just haven’t been advertising it.
@Z & T – Nice to see you again here! Unfortunately I wouldn’t know where to apply for jobs since I’m in a different place, but is there some job centre reasonably close that does advising? They might be able to help find something. But bureaucracy stuff takes a long time and is frustrating in the best of circumstances. I’ll keep my fingers metaphorically crossed.
@Elaine the witch & @Mediocrites, Longtime Lurker – That’s horrible what you’re going through – I’m sorry. Feel free to write about stuff if/when you need to.
I was having some of what I call “secondhand stress” with this German program. I’m fine, mostly, but other people have been dealing with, just to list a few things: panic attacks from a past sexual assault, depression, having to make an appeal to stay in their home academic program, getting kicked out of this program for perhaps undeserved reasons, a number of interpersonal conflicts, etc. And these are people who are by and large richer than me, or have rich parents (most are around 20) and some of these things can be even worse when you’re broke.
Which reminds me, since I’m not completely broke, I can add a bit more to the pledge drive.
Since I can’t leave well enough alone:
Surplus, I do want to make one thing clear. I do think you are brilliant, remarkably intelligent. I literally saved screenshots of some of your more illustrious posts. (And then lost them when I dropped my phone and destroyed it, but I did save them.)
You do have a hell of a mind, but (you knew there was a But coming), I really don’t think it’s any surprise after many years of posting on here and driving people up walls, you are struggling with the whole make friends and influence people bit, and I don’t feel it has a lot to do with money. Money can help, but as mentioned many many times, literal homeless people without $20 to their name have friends and relationships, communities where they find meaning, so on and so forth.
As I said before, I don’t have a quick fix for you. I do wish you would look into therapy. I know you can come up with a million reasons why it can’t be done, why it won’t help, etc, etc, but at the end of the day, there aren’t many options for you. You aren’t trying anything we on here have suggested. I really do think you need to take a good hard look at things and prioritize your mental health, figure out how to circumvent the obstacles in your way. In the end, only you can do that. We can go on and on, but we can’t make it work for you.
I also realize this is partly a case of do as I say, not as I do, since I could use therapy myself, but still… You’ve come on here trying to engage with people on this for YEARS now and mostly only upset people. You have to try something else. This isn’t working. Not for us, not for you. I’m sorry
@Surplus
You are being treated like everyone else.
All those service disruptions, equipment failures, bureaucratic hurdles, and lack of infrastructure that you experience? We all get those too. All the time. Everybody does. Even people with money do – they just have an easier, faster time overcoming them when they happen.
As for how people respond to you? People react to what they receive. When you come in demanding that others solve your problems, and then berate them when their proposed solutions aren’t perfect, that tends to upset them and make them angry at you.
You keep asking what you’re supposed to do to keep people from getting angry at you, and we keep responding “don’t be a jerk to them,” and then you respond by being a jerk because you didn’t like their answers.
Try engaging with people as people rather than The Help and it will do wonders for how they respond to you.
Elaine
I am so sorry you are going through all of that, I know how awful it is when your mum is so ill, and then dies as that happened to me when I was 20, They were different fertility problems – I couldn’t get pregnant at all – but I went through that too, but not at the same time, either is crushing on it’s own, to go through both awful things at the same time is beyond crushing. I am not at all surprised that you are barely hanging on, but please go on. I am not saying things will get better, because they won’t, not until after they have got worse, but you can do this, you stood up to StR’s abusive behaviour, you are strong even though you don’t feel strong.
Don’t forget that there are people on help lines you can call, just to talk, maybe to say the things you just can’t tell anyone close to you or even just to be silent with.
Everyone else dealing with tough times
I have nothing to offer but sympathy and I’m sorry your lives are so rough at the moment.
.45.
I struggle with finding the right thing to say, but I’ve come to realise that unless you say something deliberately cruel, almost anything is good enough, you are ackowledging the person, that you see them, and offering sympathy is often all we can offer on the net,
@Elaine the witch
I’m so sorry to hear about your mother’s illness and your infertility and chronic pain issues.