cassie 🐺

“hey wanna come hang out this weekend?” “sorry but-”

Excellent answer and I’ll also jump off this to say this applies to marginalized groups just as much as anyone else, in a way I see a lot of people forget all about. Some percentage of marginalized people, through being in the right place and/or putting themselves there, do experience upward mobility through capitalism and therefore identify with it.

People forget that queer conservatives exist, but think about a gay couple with a lot of wealth, living a fairly standard nuclear family existence with an adopted kid or two, integrated into a society that probably still doesn’t fully trust them but sees enough signifiers of “normality” that they’re willing to let it slide. Which side of the political divide benefits them the most to align with? And what ideological principles will they come to internalize in the long term? Might they come to see themselves as somehow different or better than others in their marginalized community?

I’m getting tired of the fluff pieces expressing shock at the fact that some % of black voters are conservative, clutching their pearls at the thought of that number increasing, and speculating about black churches and “social conservatism.” While also completely disregarding the fact that black voters have always leaned left yet are also affected by some of the same political shifts that every other demographic is. Our first loyalty is generally to our class.

Climate Change Any% (Cheats Enabled) Speedrun [WR]

Hi are you doing anything later you probably don’t want my bank account but I can bring some material to blackmail me with or something

Ultimately, we’re discussing two different styles of communication that I don’t see as any better or worse than each other - everyone finds what works for them in their circumstances and environment and your style probably works great for yours!

There’s a fair bit of hostility and harassment I encounter in public for various reasons, and I also have some inherent difficulty processing speech and verbalizing. As a result, I take a pretty blunt approach to communication - one in which I do not mind showing that I’m angry, because that is a necessary thing to be sometimes.

I practice mindfulness a lot and do not generally feel required to say the first thing that comes to mind. But if a drunk asshole is following me home, I’m not looking to outwit em. I’m looking to stay focused on my safety while letting em know that I see em and I’m probably more trouble than they’re looking for.

In serious conversation with people I care about, I do swear, but it’s because phrases like “I’m so fucking sorry that happened to you” come naturally to me and are effective. The emphasis that a little bit of swearing can add in moments like that is pretty useful.

This all doesn’t have to be your thing, like I said this is all down to personal preference - but it would be a mistake to assume that people who swear aren’t communicating as meaningfully. It’s just another tool that we have at our disposal.

My answer too.

And also for the benefit of anyone who’s just played the base game: the DLC is basically a sequel, and I found it even more impactful than the base game!

1. why is letting off steam indicative of a weak character? I think that when under stress, it’s actually indicative of someone being emotionally intelligent to recognize they need to let some stress out and find an avenue for it. I can’t explain exactly why, but swearing has always been a pretty effective way for me to let out some stress mid conversation while staying focused on a problem.

2. some contexts call for aggression. i.e. If someone’s making me or someone I care about uncomfortable in public, it can be pretty useful to bare my teeth back. A simple “fuck off” doesn’t require me to engage with any of their bullshit at all, gets the point across, and carries it with a mild aggression that actually does make people fuck off much of the time.

3. it is imprecise, but in many contexts it’s precise enough to convey displeasure and dismay enough to get the point across. In fact the power of “fuck you” is in how concise yet universally applicable and understandable in so many situations.

Much of the time communication isn’t about being creative or coming off smart. It’s about effectively conveying meaning with the tools you have. Sometimes that means simple, crude language is more effective at conveying something than all the wit in the world.

So when I’m in a situation that calls for its use, I don’t care that “fuck off” is a dime-a-dozen phrase that doesn’t make sense. It’s never misunderstood, it’s cathartic to say, and I don’t need to think on the spot to figure out something more eloquent - my mind is on, y’know, who or what needs to fuck off instead.

Especially considering a lot of the creative talent behind Valve’s acclaimed single player catalog are no longer at the company. Valve is a different company now and so their games will be different too.

ooh I fell in love with Taking Water by Billy Strings a day or two ago and it’s been in my head since

As much as I pretend to be one, I’m not really a fighter. I think this war may not need me to be one. The time to respond has already begun, and while front-line protests aren’t my strong suit, supporting protestors in my community is the place for me right now. If a greater conflict escalates, I’m probably not like doing the active fighting, but I can sure as shit help with supply lines as well as helping people who need to recover in the backlines. If I ever need to be in a fight I intend to be prepared, but there’s a lot more to do in a war than fight. And by the time anything like that would happen, I hope to have a resilient community around me who can support each other through hell. The fight’s already begun to an extent, and it’s important to remember that our best place may be “back-of-house” so to speak.

While this is true to an extent, from experience this line of thinking has its limits and is very easy to misapply. On the one hand, yes you can tell people their ideas do not gel with the vision of the project, and sometimes that’s the right call. And sometimes doing this a lot is best for the project.

On the other hand, even if a majority of the work is coming from one person, not only does your community learn your project, they also spend time contributing to it, fixing bugs, and helping other people. I feel it’s only to a project’s benefit to honor them and take difficult suggestions seriously, and get to the root of why those suggestions are coming up. Otherwise you risk pissing off your contributors, who I feel have the right to be annoyed at you and maybe post evangelion themed vent blog posts if you consistently shut down contributors’ needs and fail to adapt to what your users actually want out of your software. And forking, while freeing and playing to the idea of freedom of choice, also splits your userbase and contributors and makes both parties worse off. It really depends on the project, but it pays to maintain buy-in and trust from people who care enough to meaningfully contribute to your project.

I used Copilot for a while (in a Rust codebase fwiw) and it was… both useful and not for me? Its best suggestions came with some of the short-but-tedious completions like path().unwrap().to_str().into() etc. Those in and of themselves could be hit-or-miss, but useful often enough that I might as well take the suggestion and then see if it compiles.

Anything longer than that was OK sometimes, but often it’d be suggesting code for an older version of a particular API, or just trying to write a little algorithm for something I didn’t want to do in the first place. It was still correct often enough when filling out particular structures to be technically useful, but leaning on it more I noticed that my code was starting to bloat with things I really should have pulled off into another function instead of autocompleting a particular structure every time. And that’s on me, but I stopped using copilot because it just got too easy for me to write repetitive code but with like a 25% chance of needing to correct something in the suggestion, which is an interrupt my ADHD ass doesn’t need.

So whether it’s helpful for you is probably down to how you work/think/write code. I’m interested to see how it improves, but right now it’s too much of a nuisance for me to justify.

I forgor 💀

that an offer, or…?

wait wait wait, but I’m on the internet! :o

It always depends but tbh I hope you feel free to use whatever terminology you find useful to describe yourself! and I think there’s no valor that can be stolen, identity is what you make for yourself. It’s always a joy to learn someone I know is queer in any form. Lots of us have had times where we’ve doubted how we describe ourselves too and gatekeeping labels doesn’t tend to help anyone. You will come across people who do here and there, I did myself, but in my super objective opinion they’re annoying, smell bad, and stifle people just trying to figure themselves out. Labels are just tools for further conversation and more people using queer labels is a good thing.

+1 to this for sure. Applies for gender identity too. Speaking just for myself, the longer it’s been since I transitioned the less my actual labeled identity has mattered, to the point that these days I just say “nonbinary” and move on. It’s what makes a lot of the “what is a woman” rhetoric baffling, given the label and definition matters so little in day to day life.

My bf comes off pretty much straight, but he describes himself as pansexual and attracted to feminine people. It’s cool to see him engage with the queer community despite being more or less able to “pass” as cishet if he wanted to, and his nebulous labeling was really helpful in settling my nerves as a newly-out trans woman. Less worrying about whether or not I was woman enough, more just hearing him say he likes me and that’s that.

Was just about to post IDLES here myself. It goes and it goes and it goes