Thorns

This post on tumblr suggested contacting local politicians whenever you're in the mood to shout at someone online for being wrong on the internet, and it occurred to me that might actually work for me, if only as a way to divert my occasional FIGHT ME mood away from getting me in trouble. I've tried contacting politicians before when I was feeling like Being Productive and it felt overwhelming and depressing.

I haven't actually done it yet but I looked up some information! So I'll summarise what I've found here for anyone who might find it useful, further advice/info definitely appreciated!
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pedanther linked this article by Antony Green(*) about some changes to how voting works in Western Australia and I just...I mean I understand some of it.

(*)A respected Australian political analyst
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Make no mistake: Gamergate condones harassment, of Zoe Quinn, and of others. And the thing is, Gamergate is not the first time people supporting a good cause have found themselevs associated with awful people. But usually what happens is people go "Wow that is AWFUL I really don't want to be associated with them" and they make a really clear strong break. Like, cis feminists who don't hate trans women pointedly and publically cutting ties with TERFS.

I reblogged and commented on a post about politisization which then led me to to I can tolerate anything but the outgroup. As he admits at the end, this purports to be an objective skewering of partisanship while deep down actually being incredibly partisan propoganda for centrism. And he is far less self aware about the MASSIVE CLASS ETC BIAS of his POV, even aside from the fact thast is US focused I'm pretty sure red vs blue looks pretty different to a disabled trans black street kid or even, like, Barack Obama. THAT SAID it still made some good points and made me think.

Like, the thing he's criticising is the way people turn every complex specific situation into "proof" that their pov is better, and that the other "side" are a bunch of selfish ignorant harmful losers. But of course his moral often ends up being "not-being-too-political is the best pov, and overly political people are a bunch of selfish ignorant harmful losers" which is EXACTLY WHAT HE'S CRITICISING. It is not inherently bad to have strong, specific, and possibly extreme opinions on the world which mostly align with some existing politcal movement. That is not actually the problem. The problem is how you deal with people whose opinions of the world differ to yours.

I had more thoughts but they got incoherent. Maybe later.

Let's see if I can remember what I wanted to say for any of them...

Jennifer Lawrence And The History Of Cool Girls. I had some further thoughts on tumblr (which I'd been pondering turning into a post here but tumblr got to me first) This ffa discussion of what people consider a feminist character touches on related points.

I've been thinking a lot about the moral obligations of adults towards the teenagers we encounter online, especially now I'm on tumblr which is FULL of teenagers. I deliberately seek out friends around my age and still have heaps of teen followers, some of them mutual because we genuinely have stuff in common.
How we were fooled into thinking sexual predators lurk everywhere argues that we need to look out and care for vulnerable teens more than worry about malicious adults (though that's important too) Here's a discussion on ffa of the issues around teens and adults and porn, something I don't have to worry about as much personally since everything I create tends to be at most PG rated anyway but still find disquieting, mostly when I encounter the porn my teen friends are into (I don't object to them being into it I JUST DON'T WANT TO KNOW). But that particular aspect aside I feel like...I have a responsibility to be a NON creepy adult rather than just avoiding younger people, or the only adults teenagers will meet are the creepy ones (and not just sexually creepy, they can take advantage emotionally or monetarily too)

Meditation Nation On the intense emotional upheaval meditiation can cause, and the difference between doing it for personal gain and religious insight.

Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start About constructing social networks that encourage good social norms.

The difference between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange

Inspiration Disinformation on the artists vs haters dichotomy.

Why Are Doctors Skeptical & Unhelpful about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Why I no longer engage the “Are aces queer?” question The important thing is respect and inclusion in general, eg if people who didn't see aces as queer didn't THEN divide the world into "straight vs queer" instead of "straight, queer, or asexual" there'd be much less of a problem.

The People vs the Political Class The gap between politics and what the people (of Australia, and in general) actually want.

This is a lot of unfinished thoughts.

I didn't agree with all of Cyberlibertarians’ Digital Deletion of the Left but it was throught provoking. It makes the valid point that many "benevolent" technological groups are quite libertarian in effect and motivation. Also any sort of digital utopianism is blatantly bunk, technology is at best value neutral, it's a tool not a complete solution. I am glad of the link to this essay comparing intellectual property to other sorts of property in terms of freedom/enclosure etc, though I've only read the preface. And the idea that "information should be free" is definitely leveraged by businesses like Google to invade the privacy of and profit from everyday people.

But I think it acts like you're either pro-government or pro-business, and there are plenty of people who are neither. Also I'm pretty sure the EFF aren't the unambiguously pro-big-business force for evil they're painted as, they seem to help defend the little guy from oppressive big business a moderate amount of the time, and I know the Chair of the Australian branch is a card carrying member of Labor (and also quite left wing ;))

And...ok, Jimmy Wiles is pro-business and there's lots of obnoxious hierarchies and biases in Wikipedia, but I'm hard pressed to see it as an overall Force for Capitalist Evil. Not that the article says it is, it just mentions Jimmy Wiles and moves on instead of examimining whether libertarian techno-utopian projects may do social good regardless of their founders' politics. Or am I missing something?

Anyway, it got me thinking about what it means for a non profit or anyone to be "left wing".
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Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall The anti-social libertarian intellectual emptiness underlying a lot of TED-esque ideas.

On political and value neutral Everything with any message at all has a political subtext.

Why I don't like the dragon argument Points out that "if you can have dragons why can't you have POC" has some unfortunate implications that work against it.

words against communication and Also you get things like... The way worrying about appropriation/stepping on disabled people's toes can stop some people from realising they are disabled themselves. (Not that able bodied people shouldn't worry, just that it's complicated!)

Refusing to have the “What You Did” conversation "1 The ‘what you did’ conversation implies the ‘what you are’ conversation. 2 The ’what you are’ conversation is uncivil and silencing. 3 Therefore, it’s uncivil and silencing to discuss ‘what you did.’"

Frustrations of being a black gamer playing BIOSHOCK INFINITE

Sweatshops still make your clothes

Meet the 28-Year-Old Grad Student Who Just Shook the Global Austerity Movement

Vilification and 'just having a laugh' About the racist jokes in my old Uni's satirical newspaper

Righteous Wroth Rarely Is OMG a criticism of excessive social justice where the group making the criticisms (in this case, women) are the victims of the oppression ostensibly being attacked with too much zeal (eg sexism) I have Thoughts about the very complicated way mental illness (which often creates an inability to behave in the way society demands) interacts with the somewhat narrow sets of behaviours expected of a Good Ally/Activist but am not quite up to articulating them.

$300 for Julia Gillard's NDIS scheme? Please, my wheelchair costs $22,000 Apparently some Australians are ok paying taxes and levies for roads and schools but draw the line at helping disabled people.

And from the hahaha what department...
( Worse than global warming??? #followateen )

Utterly utterly brain dead today (I have down graded my plans for the day to "Don't fall asleep again until bedtime") but have been annoyed at the overly simplistic framing of the accusations against Julian Assange, while also finding the broader attacks on Wikileaks disturbing for what they say about the lengths power will go to to defend itself. And it's such a huge thing I just feel like saying…Wow. This is a thing. (Did I mention braindead? Yeah)

Anyway. Have some links (plausibly triggery)

A systematic rebuttal of the myths about asylum seekers Nicely short and simple. (Apparently the comments are terrible, though)

Do not vote the Greens, Australian Election 2010 A "Christian" ad so effective in getting across the message of "If you aren't a dogmatic theocratic Christian vote Green" that I have to wonder if it's actually a viral marketing ploy by the Greens. Note that no actual "pro-Christian" alternatives are named, not even on their website, and the Liberals aren't even mentioned explicitly. In general I find that any fundamentalist religious rhetoric which isn't either innocuous or scary and depressing is fake. But I could be wrong!

I keep hearing about these terrifying irrational anti-government American conspiracy theorists, yet all the Americans I meet online seem pretty in touch with reality (even the Republicans are VERY ASHAMED of the tactics being used) But then today I encountered this post on claymaker, a community for discussing making stuff out of clay. Text below since I imagine it will be deleted (it's ever so slightly off topic).

I think the thing that offends me most is the anti-vaccination rhetoric. That sort of attitude kills babies >:/ EDIT: Wait, no, it all offends me
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So it's pretty clear that the writers of West Wing season seven, lacking the guidance of original show-runner Aaron Sorkin, decided that the best way to come up with a plot was to use a time machine to view the future and copy that.(nb, my understanding of american politics and the plot of west wing are both pretty fuzzy, feel free to corect parts!) EDIT:via stephiepenguin, the new york times describes it better

( Cut for spoilers, though reality has pretty much done that already )