Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

I don't want to silence these Earnest Young People. I just want them to consider what the return is on some of these linguistic causes du jour.

I think memetic hygiene is like any other sort of hygiene: if you achieve perfection at it, allergies develop. (Read Ian McDonald's Out On Blue Six for a vivid example.)

I don't want my logosphere squeaky clean. I want it a little sleazy, and governed by context and genuine kindness. I'll decide when it's time to break a taboo, thank you.

Keeping blatantly hostile slurs, with no valid use except for degradation, away from public discourse is a noble and entirely valid goal.

Less comfortable with people policing words, however problematic their etymologies, that are not used with hostile intent and/or have plainly evolved past original meanings. (Example: "dumb," whose etymology is REAL ableist.)

I worry that they aspire for purity. Purity makes me nervous. It never ends well. I escaped purism, and I'm not going back.

As a budding young Discordian, age 13 or 14, I was home sick and caught an episode of a daytime talkshow.

There was an old Bible-thumper on it, arguing Huckleberry Finn must be banned. He had a big' sign that counted how often the book used the words "hell" and "damn."

Every time he was contradicted, he thumped the sign. He had no other argument. The words' very presence was argument enough.

Some of my allies are starting to remind me of that guy. I really dislike linguistic purism.

Still pretty meh.

Back is still improving, but I still can't stoop or slouch. The latter is a particularly annoying imposition against my bohemian lifestyle. :)

Things are fine otherwise. I'm just feeling exceptionally grumpy about politics again, both community and national.

Feeling old, feeling alienated from The Kids. Feeling old and cherished intellectual boundaries threatened by people with the best of intentions. Worried about forces of ideological drift and becoming obsolete.

"Annotator" in this case basically means "work-from-home geographical research." It's the same job I do, basically, only in Chinese: quality control for a GPS/maps company, working from a sheet of guidelines and determining the quality of randomly generated results for various real web searches. It mostly just requires good research skills and patience. Probably pays something like $20 to start-- I don't have that info, sadly-- most likely 15-20 hours a week.

Here's the full info I have for that researcher position:

"We have a USA opening for a Chinese-language annotator position. If you know someone who can legally work in the USA, is able to work 15-20 hours, and is proficient in the written Chinese language, please feel free to forward the attached listing to them. If they are interested, have them contact ext-albert.lin@here.com with their resume."

Meh.

I guess I have a lot to be grateful for right now, since my back's mending fast. Peg's been ultra-nice to me, even handling her being (quite understandably) a bit tired of my company fairly graciously. It looks like we're probably not on the hook for any of this financially, and things will soon be back to normal.

So I can have a nice, normal mope about everything. Just the usual isolation, ennui, and frustration with human nature. I'm okay, just feeling drained as fuck.

Kids, I can not emphasize enough that I am a PROFESSIONAL. Do NOT mix opiates and geographical research*.

*unless of course you're some kind of dullard with zero kinesthetic intelligence who somehow injured yourself doing basic household chores, but I know you're all better than that O:)

Oh, before I forget:

Anybody out there REALLY fluent in Chinese (mostly written) and need a job?

My bosses are hiring. It's basically the same geographical work I do (i.e. really cushy if you're good at lateral thinking), but in Chinese. That and basic web literacy are the main requirements, though knowing a bit about global culture sure doesn't hurt.

Let me know if this interests anybody!

My boss-in-law just announced a geographic research challenge at work: find 10 ultra-obscure items on Streetview and report findings. There are no rewards and no prizes, just an opportunity to outscore the other annotators.

I think you can guess how I feel about this, but here's an Artist's Conception of my current expression just in case.

https://www.wpromote.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/stinko.jpg #moodsnapshot

I'm watching an argument that the expanding brain meme is "ableist" and should be removed from discourse.

Y'all, I'm definitely taking the day off from my allies.

Hey, everybody! For those who have been following @anthracite's toots: I am alive. :)

Basically I pulled a back muscle so badly I lied down and couldn't stand back up. I'm embarrassed, but every doctor and nurse was totally understanding and insistent that we had done the right thing.

More than anything, no offense Dad, but I'm just proud to have finally proven I'm less of a butthead than my late father, notorious for toughing these things out when he shouldn't have. -_-

Here we go.

https://vimeo.com/215550296

"Come to Portland! We have... bridges. And... welding?"

The really sad thing is, when Peg and I visited Portland, we were only there for two days and covered most of the above highlights. :p

To be fair, Powell's is pretty damned impressive. And I actually really love Portland, in part _because_ it's a nerdy, run-down town without a lot of tacky surface glamour. Same reasons I like Seattle.

There's a commercial from the Portland Tourist Bureau currently in heavy rotation on Hulu, and it's driving me crazy.

It's a cute little animated ad with a disgustingly stereotypical millennial couple. Its pitch basically boils down to "Come visit Portland! It's... a city!" and it's one of the highest-pathos things I've ever seen. :|

We can't win the Red Queen's Race of innovation and cooptation, but if we're smart and compassionate we can run in place for a real long time before anyone catches us. <3

I deliberately avoided defining postfurry, but I'm pretty sure if it ever loses certain elements -- radical empathy, skepticism towards stereotypes, faith in the power of play -- it WILL break good and hard. In fact, I pray it does, and curse the perpetrator to have only one name and one body for the rest of their lives.

These questions were absolutely integral to what I wanted to do with postfurry from the very beginning.

My very first inorganic space-weirdo character was Hannah Rose Kincaid, a disabled human who got herself uploaded into a bioplastic lavalamp-fox shell.

Her entire background explicitly came from a desire to imagine a world where "we" were the Bad Guys. So I made her be from a world of radical humanist Flower Child types who had gone all reactionary against the transhuman era...

Not because of anything y'all specifically are fucking up, just because that's how all movements go. <3

Everything is awesome and exciting re: PF right now as far as I'm concerned, and I can't be happier. I've liked every one of the current gen that I've met. This is just random musing about the future!

But it's still interesting to contemplate how ideological drift might make us betray ourselves someday. A postfurry orthodoxy, how exactly would that even work?