Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Experimental Reddit debate strategy du jour:

Rebut all conservative political arguments with the phrase "cat tummies smell good."

Today a big mean cat had lunch with a grumpy lizard and a mangy scavenger.

It's so much like the old days in Boston, I could weep. :D

Who am I kidding, I got WAY too much fish to be sad. <3 <3 <3

Today's fun fact:

TIL the Chinese term for "paparazzi" is 狗仔隊: "puppy squad."

@JulieSqveakaroo *hugs tight* Yeah, I kinda wanna go on a mauling spree this morning, myself... Anyone you want fanged while I'm up, sweetie? <3

OK, here's a case in point about what I was saying yesterday: This "6G" story about Trump is, IMHO, really stupid. It seems pretty obvious to me that he was speaking about a hypothetical, there. It's a real cheap shot, no way around it.

I'm not saying don't lash out at the guy. I'm saying AIM first. >_< Everything we say is at high risk of being turned against us by his side. Each unfair attack we make will surely will be manipulated to make ALL our attacks sound unfair.

Granted, they're going to try to do this to us no matter _what_ we say. But the least we could do is not make it easier for 'em. Don't fire blanks at this SOB. We gotta put him down for good, so every shot has to count. (Uh, rhetorically, I mean. Yeah.) >_<

There is something oddly reassuring about this manual of "legal" and "illegal" LEGO engineering. I love that the whole thing revolves around "can we save a child a bunch of frustration via good design?"

http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pdf

@Oneironott @Thaminga And wifi antlers ffs! :O :O :O

And if you're wondering how this doesn't contradict my earlier rant about going easier on other leftists in the coming years... yeah, it's an admittedly subtle distinction. I want MORE criticism between leftists and FEWER fights. I want actual discussions. I want us to listen to each other. I want us to extend each other basic civility and benefit of the doubt.

And FWIW, I'd love for us to plan ahead for how we can extend those things to conservatives again, even just maybe some select ones who abandon Trump. But I'll be honest with you... I'm not gonna ask you to do it right now. 'Cause I'm not. I've basically cut off conservative America like an abusive family member, and we ain't talkin' until they show us they're getting some therapy and taking some responsibility. >___< But I still don't like it when we outright demonize them, dehumanize them, or tell ourselves self-serving fictions about them.

Anyhow. Ranting, sorry. Literally feverish with the first signs of a cold here, so I demand full amnesty if I just said something stupid again. :)

Mark my words well, younglings.

Sociopaths and exploiters will fill any niche that benefits them. That's just basic evolution. It would only be evitable after a massive rearchitecture of human culture and/or neurology.

Someday, we leftists WILL have our own Trump. They won't have all of King Stubby's traits, but they'll have the same talent for marshalling people through paranoid BS.

And we leftists will have our own set of rationalizations about why he is totally okay and everything is fine. And the fact we are absolutely cock-sure we are the Good Guys will do nothing but serve that hypothetical bastard's purposes.

Now, I _do_ think leftists do have a few common traits that will help boost our immunity. We don't have, for instance, entire social institutions like the church or Fox News devoted to keeping us in line. We don't really treat authority the same way that conservatives do. And we're _usually_ on the side of social change.

But I'm sorry, we can be dogmatic as hell. And every single day, I see leftists accusing people, even allies, of being The Enemy just for offering criticism or saying "yeah, we do that too-- that's a human thing, not a conservative thing."

(I'm getting really sick, for example, of the thought-terminating cliche that anyone who points out both sides do a given bad thing is an evil centrist and should just be casually written off. I understand it's a tactic they exploit and we should call it out when it's used as a distraction tactic, but... jesus christ, people. We're not saints, and if you think being leftist makes us all morally perfect.. yeah, you're just wrong. Yes, we DO have bad habits. Yes, they DO need to be criticized. LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RIGHT WHEN THEY STOPPED ACCEPTING CRITICISM. >_< )

Honestly, I think that's really dangerous. We NEED to be able to fact-check either other and point out when we're the ones falling into mob mentality, cognitive bias, or self-serving logic. We need to be able to say things like "Listen, I think Trump should be fired into the sun, naked and screaming, as soon as possible... but this *particular* news article about him makes some really bad, illogical points."

Like I said earlier. We are probably gonna be in a whole new type of cultural war for the next several years. We have to get REALLY good at filtering out bullshit, RIGHT now, INCLUDING our own. -_-

I wonder how many of my differences with other leftists come down to the fact that so many of you have _never_ been a conservative in your life and have never even had a single conservative friend.

I came from the other side.

I had a lot of help, since my mom was pretty much a hippie, but ideologically speaking she raised me very laissez-faire and when I become a pseudo-fundie at 11 all she really had in the way of resistance was a rather sororal "No... seriously?! You believe this shit?" over coffee in our kitchen at 3 am.

But I got myself into conservative beliefs for some very well-meaning reasons, and I can still model that world. I'm also _agonizingly_ aware of what a tremendous intellectual house of cards it is, which is paradoxically why I'm so harsh about holding leftists to high standards of intellectual integrity.

It's because I basically have nowhere left to go politically, and I'll be damned if I'll see the same memetic-zombie scenario I saw on their side happen on ours. No, being the Good Guys isn't enough to protect you. You're a human being. It's in your fucking neurological code, and if you don't fight it constantly, it happens. Look at all the things I'VE fucked up, and I sweat this stuff every moment of my life. >__<

@Oneironott Honestly? I'd like other leftists a lot more if an increasing amount of other leftists weren't trying to make people feel morally abhorrent in general. I don't like that we're basically the New Prudes.

I lost my absolute last shred of patience or respect for the call-out crowd when I saw the Your Fave Is Problematic tumblr bitch out a classic film for casting a white person as Cleopatra... WHO WAS A FUCKING PTOLEMEIC GREEK WITH MACEDONIAN HERITAGE. She had more DNA in common with _my_ dago ass than the typical African woman.

I hate to say it, but much of the time, our dear allies have absolutely no knowledge of the subject they're ranting about and their ideological worlds have the approximate semiotic complexity of a goddamn traffic light. >_<

@LexYeen@snouts.online And the thing is... the utter long-term victory of furry fandom over the "lol fursecution" crowd kinda proved this meme to be TRUE. Pretty good evidence that "cute and sincere" *can* beat "cruel and relentless," and I'm hoping it turns out to be true on a larger political stage. (Lord knows both Trump and Putin are MORE than happy to march right off the same cliff of "high power, low social fundamentals" that the Soviets did...)

@Leucrotta Hit me up tomorrow for the 2nd-generation Korean dentist story. :|

@rey Also note that the original inspiration for my whole rant was actually NOT the news or Masto discourse, but a book about parasitology ffs.

There's a great section in Carl Zimmer's _Parasite Rex_ about the concept of the "Red Queen's Race" in biology. Like the one in Alice Through The Looking Glass, it's a race where you have to run in order to keep still. Parasites and predators constantly evolve new offenses, so herds develop new defenses. The process will never, ever end unless evolution itself ends. And for better or worse, it seems to apply to politics too. :|

But just like with biology, sociopolitical exploitation breeds some really beautiful monsters and some really miraculous order out of total chaos. You try to put something like liberated sexuality or genuine empathy down for good, and all you really do is bring it back a little WEIRDER. It's been one of my major life goals to accelerate this process as much as possible. >:D

@rey Ikr? I was just talking with some friends about this over the past week. Furry fandom, especially, has proven UNBELIEVABLY resilient to being coopted by corporate culture or by mainstream values about sex, gender, and affection. It's kind of amazing.

When I was a teenager, I absolutely revered the 1960s counterculture. And now I look back at them... the way they left the world... and some of the terrible, terrible attitudes some of them had. And honestly? I think I've transferred all my loyalties to furry. In many ways, we're arguably doing BETTER than they did at keeping the dream of an affectionate, fluid, expressive society alive in the face of the proverbial Minions Of Greyface*. :)

*(See: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Principia_Discordia#THE_CURSE_OF_GREYFACE )

@LexYeen@snouts.online Yes... but be warned if any Eeyore Lenin types show up to tell me it's all futile, their rhetorical blood is on your hands, not mine. :D

Ok. You've probably seen the news: we are gearing up for an honest-to-goodness ideological war in 2020. Propagandists, homegrown and otherwise, are already gearing up to sow discord and confusion on the left.

And, um, bad news: you and I are basically the remaining counterculture. If people at our level don't prepare themselves to fight, we're probably not going to win.

Start thinking about it NOW. For instance, it wouldn't hurt to get an elevator-pitch sized case against Trump into your head. Personally, I'm thinking of starting a list of undeniable Trump "fun facts" we can use to steer forum threads back on track. (e.g.: "Hey, isn't Trump ALREADY a known fraudster because of that Trump U thing?" "Hey, didn't Trump's own biographer say he's probably a Kremlin agent?") (I know, the base is hard to crack and never admits it's wrong. We're not _aiming_ for the base.)

Next: be wary of anything you see that turns you against a fellow Trump opponent. Remember that we KNOW FOR CERTAIN some of that is deliberate sabotage. Save your ire for the opposition-- and even then, think ahead to how we can draw them into the fold if Trump is ever properly defeated and humiliated.

And most importantly: for fuck's sake, don't despair. I grew up with the sincere expectation we would all be reduced to radioactive ash by the time I was 20. Instead, the Big Bads collapsed. Granted, they came back in a new form, but... here we are, still breathing.

This is a new era. We are the FIRST. GENERATION. EVER. to face this kind of targeted memetic infiltration online. You don't even know what we're capable of. The memetic immune systems we develop now could protect American humanists and progressives for generations. Quit fixating on a doom that will only become truly inevitable *if* we keep fixating on it.

We get back from NOLA on March 13th, incidentally, though I will probably beg for a week to myself, to recuperate and plan our Grand Exit Strategy. :)

If it's any comfort, there's a chance we'll be leaving as soon as April, but that looks really unlikely. Peg and I are both expert procrastinators, so it's probably going to be more like June?

Since I'm terrible at saying no... my social calendar is now officially BOOKED SOLID. No new visits until Peg and I get back from our week and a half in NOLA.

I've stretched as far as I can to try to accommodate everybody-- and I really, really truly don't mind, 'cause I want to see as many people as possible-- but if I stretch any further I'm gonna start losing day-job hours, and I just can't afford to do that right now.

I'm saying this here and now, because I know I'll cave if you ask me in person. :) This DOES NOT MEAN I want to cancel any existing visits-- I am TOTALLY into them, and I'm not quite freaking out YET. :) But I absolutely can't do anything else until I get home. I'm probably already facing a short workweek from the trip itself.

EUROPE: "Haha, silly primitives! Look at them hulling this 'maize' stuff with their primitive technologies! We have MACHINES to do that!"

ALSO EUROPE: "Hey, let's take a bunch of this 'maize' back to Europe and eat it, without bothering to talk to the locals about it first, since everything basically belongs to us and we're smarter than everybody!"

ALSO ALSO EUROPE: "Hey, let's die in heaps because we never learned about nixtamalization, we aren't getting any niacin out of this snazzy new food, and now we all have pellagra!"

ALSO ALSO ALSO EUROPE *STILL*: "Man, I can't believe how much more sophisticated we are than everybody else."

ALSO ALSO ALSO ALSO EUROPE (AND ITS KIDS) STILL: "Let's base our entire diet around maximizing corporate profit and discover bold new health problems nobody has ever seen before!"