ischemgeek

[ischemgeek]

Watch: Viral clip shows a woman in genderless clothing being ejected from a ladies’ bathroom by the police.

[ischemgeek]

Regardless of the numbers on your paycheck or in your bank account, nobody is less than you.

Also most people in NYC are working more than 1 job. I know people living out shelters working 2 jobs.

So the fact that people are working 2 jobs and living in shelters shows that having a job or jobs doesn’t prevent homelessness. So there should still be no superiority complex in these employees.

[ischemgeek]

Other reasons I’ve seen babies cry:

I am teething and it sucks

I am teething and biting things makes it feel better and I bit my toe but I didn’t know my toe is attached so I bit it real hard and now my toe hurts

I can’t figure out how to get off my belly and it makes me angry

I have GERD and it hurts (untreated GERD is a pretty common cause of baby ‘colic’) 

It’s too noisy and I’m scared

It’s too quiet and I’m bored

You didn’t let me put something I’d choke on in my mouth

You didn’t let me eat dirt

You took me away from an animal I was accidentally hurting before the animal hurt me back

I scared myself with hiccups

I scared myself with sneezing

You scared me by sneezing

A stranger is here

I can’t figure out how to stand and I’m frustrated

I could go on. 2 is more common than you’d think. I’ve seen one kid who got pissed that biting her toe made her toe hurt, so she kept biting it harder and harder and screaming louder and louder because dammit she was going to make this toe thing pay for hurting her! 

“Babies only cry if they are hungry, need changing, or need to be picked up”

Lies

Babies (and small children) also cry for reasons such as:

1. “I am tired and that makes me angry”

2. “I scared myself with a fart”

3. “You are the wrong parent”

4. “I ran into something with my face”

5. “I’m facing the opposite direction then the one I want to”

6. “I fell asleep in one place and woke up somewhere completely different”

7. “I am a very small person in a very big world”

8. “I got scared because YOU farted”

Babies have more then 3 states of being and sometimes you just have to hold them and bounce them gently while saying solemnly “yes it is very hard to be a baby” because frankly it is

[ischemgeek]

Almost every time the NDP has gotten in power in a province, there has been a huge hue and cry that they’ll wreck the economy.  Most of the time, it’s just not true. The few times it has been true were typically the times that the NDP made concessions to neocon politics and broke from their principles (Bob Rae’s government in the 90s, I’m looking at you).   I mean, I myself am somewhere between the NDP and Liberals (I count myself as a solid swing vote). But hell, one of my relatives is a hard-right libertarian gun rights type from NS, and even he had to admit when the NDP were in NS, and I quote, “I thought they would bankrupt us and tank the economy. I hate to admit it, but I’ll give credit where credit is due: I was wrong. They’ve done a pretty decent job.”  That NDP government took power in 2009. Between 2009-2013 (ie during the height of the biggest depression since the Great Depression), when they lost power, the NDP managed to largely halt the ongoing contraction in labor force that other governments were dealing with (source: https://novascotia.ca/finance/statistics/topic_news.asp?id=13649) - a lot of seasonal variation since NS is a resource and tourism based economy mostly), but the takeaway is NS had unemployment in line with the national average during the crisis and that the unemployment spike NS experienced was not as severe as the unemployment spike in other provinces (see here for comparison: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2017001-eng.htm). This was despite it being a very bad economic time for resource and tourism industries.  What about BC? From the same Stats Can page I cited earlier, you can see that since they’ve taken office, the unemployment rate dropped a full point (or about 20% since it’s a healthy region to begin with). Middle-of-oil-crunch Alberta? How has their government done? Since the start of the oil crisis in October 2015, no effective change (there was a spike in unemployment for a while, beyond Notley’s control since no Premier can wave a magic wand to keep oil prices high given how closely tied Alberta’s economy has historically been to the oil industry, but the recovery from that is largely complete, and largely attributable to the NDP’s efforts to diversify Alberta’s economy since oil prices still aren’t at a level where oil sands development is profitable - $70/barrel oil is pretty much the break-even point for oil sands production, and we’re still below that number). BC has had neutral economic conditions and in the past year managed to effect a significant improvement in unemployment rate. Alberta has experienced disastrous economic conditions - the kinds of things that usually see the province enter deep depression - and although the province did get knocked around quite badly for two years, the government has largely succeeded in executing an effective strategy of economic diversification.  It’s almost like NDP governments don’t tend to tank the economy any more than other governments. 

ratpoutine replied to your photo “Looks like the only two provinces run by NDP governments are the #1…”

Do you smell that? I smell bullshit! those happen to be the leading provinces for the past 65 years

So you either have to admit one of two things if you believe that:

1.) That it doesn’t matter what political party is in power if you believe that this doesn’t matter for job creation (in which case you should stop bashing the NDP)

2.) Acknowledge that the NDP is playing a positive role in economic growth (because that chart shows that NDP lead provinces are leading in job growth)

I’ll wait. :)

[ischemgeek]

Remember when people didn’t vote in part because of an active propaganda campaign by a hostile power to make people in swing jurisdictions feel like voting wasn’t going to matter...

Russia’s up to shit again. It is in their interest if President Orange Terror continues to have the power to send your country down the porcelain pisshole.

And to some degree, you’re not wrong: Yes, you’re fighting an uphill battle in the next US election. The system is set up for you to fail.  We were fighting one here in Canada in 2015, where the system is literally set up so the biggest minority wins (the whole point was to frustrate the will of the majority, if you read the early writings of those setting up the system), and our government was actively engaging in voter suppression (with ID laws, “phone bombs” - i.e., mass calling of confirmed non-supporters on election day to make it difficult to get out the door -  challenging of voter registrations, scare tactics, and misleading robocalls and targeted online ads, where voters were directed to the wrong polling station) and preventing existing government institutions from doing their job in countering these activities (they de-funded and revoked the authority of Elections Canada to advertise to Canadians about our rights and about the correct polling station information). We were set up to fail. We won anyway. We won by getting out the vote in such numbers and with such strategic vision that it overwhelmed their attempts to suppress us. Did we win the best outcome? No. But what we did achieve was the ouster of a government actively hostile to gender, race, and religious equality. And that was a big win. I’d argue it was the best outcome that was possible. And we achieved it by energizing the vote, and drowning the government’s disinformation campaigns in correct information about how and when to vote, how and when to register, helping each other register, giving each other drives to the polling stations, and where appropriate, taking the government to court. 

To totally mangle a metaphor, you don’t win an uphill battle by taking your ball and going home. That cedes the fight to the other side, for free. Do you want to hand Trump control of your country for two more years on a silver fucking platter? Cuz that’s how you hand Trump control of your country for two more years on a silver fucking platter. You don’t win anything that way. 

You win by digging in and fighting harder than they think you can, slyer than they think you can, longer than they think you will. They don’t have to beat you, they just have to make you frustrated enough to give up, and you’ll beat yourself. So don’t give up.

Look at it this way: Cynicism is cool, but cynicism enables those in power. Cynicism is cowardice in a fad hat. Cynicism keeps people down, keeps them supporting the status quo by default because “it’s not like anything’s gonna change anyway.” It prevents them from seeing that what keeps shit the same is that everyone’s too damn cynical and resigned to the status quo to demand change. Go ahead and be cynical if you want, but do it with the knowledge that cynicism gets fuck-all done. 

Remember?

#politics #cdnpoli #us politics

[ischemgeek]

This reminds me of a fantasy trilogy I read a while years back.  The initial story setup was basically Fantasy Trope Central. Noble prince is framed for a crime as part of a villain’s villainous attempt to usurp the throne, barely escapes with his life, and travels around raising an army to get his throne back.  Except for three things: 1, the prince was a drunken, spoiled brat. Not a bad kid, but someone who’s never known hardship and always been pampered and believes that his pampered upbringing is due to how special and exceptional he is. So a big part of it was him learning things like treating people like shit will result in them dumping your ass in an ice cold river and not helping you out until you apologize, and various other things. Like every time he was a brat, he got penalized appropriately in the story and you were able to grow to like him despite his brattiness because you could sympathize with this kid realizing that all the privilege he’d grown up with wasn’t his own brilliance or what have you but just the effect of unearned power, and deciding he wanted to grow into a person who was actually worthy of having so many people trusting in him. It was fantastic to have a classical fantasy protagonist who wasn’t this great noble spirit but really more of a sulky teenager in over his head. It made the main character far more believable than about 90% of fantasy protags out there at the time (I found this book in mid 00s, and I think the trilogy itself was written in the 90s). 2, The story actually delved into the moral questions of leading a war. Things like the effects on civilians and the strain of sending people to their doom and what have you. The main character started having to make compromises on his principles. By the mid point of the third book, he was off-hand doing the same sort of shit that the original villain had been villainized for: Raising farm fields to cut off the food supply, etc. 

3, The female characters were people in their own right, even though the story was focused on a guy, and they didn’t exist to be the main character’s harem (Wheel of Time, I’m looking at you) or love interest. They had their own ambitions and desires, and were every bit as complicated and interesting people as the male characters in the story.

So it was really interesting to read him vow to be better and then, despite his best intentions, become corrupted by power. And it was also interesting to watch everyone around him react to this character arc - because the book also delved into issues like speaking truth to power and the cost for it, when it’s appropriate to end a friendship due to someone doing something you find abhorrent. Like this trilogy dived into heavy shit, and did it in a very compelling and thoughtful way.  ANNND THEN the author ruined everything. Y’see, his corruption wasn’t the effect of power or his own decisions and flawed character, but waaay back at the start of the second book and something never mentioned again he was attacked by a vampire in a side quest that literally started and ended over the course of about 10 pages (in a 300+ page book) and apparently he was sick with vampire plague which was corrupting his soul and magic happened and now he’s good again and everyone lived happily ever after. That was the last 25 pages of the last book.  And I was so pissed off.  Because the first two and a half books were building into a fantastic tragedy with a Pyrrhic victory. Yeah he won, but in the process he became the monster he hated. While I was reading it I told anyone who listened that it was becoming my favorite trilogy ever because here was this genuinely fresh and thoughtful take on fantasy tropes, and delving into concepts that fantasy normally doesn’t even consider, let alone deal with in depth.  And then the author, or their editor, chickened out and shoehorned in some Disneyfied happy ending that didn’t fit. Cuz a good surprise ending? Is foreshadowed. It surprises you when you first read it, but if you think back, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, okay, I can see where that’s coming from.” This thing wasn’t foreshadowed at all. It didn’t fit. It was literally as if the editor gods came in, chopped off the real ending and told the author, “You need to make it happy. Say everything he did so far was a curse, I don’t care. But this is fantasy, it needs to have a happy ending!” 

... and as a result, instead of that series topping the list of my favorite trilogies, it’s one I warn everyone off of. “The first two and a half books are great, and the last 25 pages or so ruins everything.”

When you’re writing, don’t chicken out. You’re not only being untrue to your idea, your robbing the reader of the story they want to hear. Because the reader can tell when you chickened out, and it feels unsatisfying as all hell. 

Petition to sit down all the people who make coma theories about Adventure Time and tell them “listen, this fucking show is about the last human living in a post-apocalyptic world where deadly magic has been reawakened following a global thermonuclear war that wiped out the rest of the human species, how much fucking darker do you want it to be”

[ischemgeek]

This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question

[ischemgeek]

^^ This.  Consider that a lot of men see women as basically walking fap material, and that’s widely accepted as a sign of sexism, not that sexism is over. 

I mean, what those dudes experienced was basically the cis gay version of what happens to me as a bi-person who’s often read as a cis woman if I come out to a straight dude. Cue leer and crude threesome joke. It makes my skin crawl when that happens - not just cuz of the misgendering but also cuz of the objectification. People’s lives aren’t for your sexual gratification. 

I am a dude with a boyfriend.

We’re both Asian.

We went on a bus and sat in front of two girls.

I kissed behind his ear (and then he punched me in the arm, he’s shy in public) and I heard one of them whisper to the other something along the lines of “We get to see close up yaoi on here!”.

(Neither of us are even Japanese)

I was kinda offended, so I took my boyfriend by the hand and left.

It made us feel very uncomfortable.

I just want to say:

Our love and relationship isn’t for your entertainment.

Nor is it here for you to fetishize and sexualize.

Please just keep your “yaoi xDD” to just fiction, and please do not call us “yaoi”.

Many dismiss this as not a problem, which I find rude as they have never experienced this so they don’t really have much to say against this.

Thank you for reading.

- Submitted by Anonymous

* ^^^ Sorry to hear that anon D: that’s pretty terrible.

[ischemgeek]

Reading aloud is the actual worst.  Back when I was in elementary school my third grade teacher didn’t believe I could read as well as I could (I was tested that year as having a reading level equivalent to a typical tenth grader) because I couldn’t read aloud. I have a stutter. It was severe in third grade. And like anyone who has a stutter will tell you, reading aloud is awful. The teacher wanted to hold me back in third grade because I can’t read aloud. Thankfully, the principal and my folks vetoed that idea.  Hell, I’m 30 now, and my stutter is mild most days now, and I still can’t read aloud. At all. My stutter won’t let me.  The other thing I can’t do: Field sobriety tasks involving talking like trying to say the alphabet backwards or counting out loud on one leg or something. A cop thought I was publicly intoxicated on Hallowe’en when I was 15 because of my stutter and tried to do a field sobriety thing on me.  Thankfully my little sister was with me and was like, “She can’t do that, she has a stutter. And she’s not drunk!” If she hadn’t been with me, I’m pretty sure I would’ve been arrested solely because I stutter. 

advice for writing a stutterer from an actual stutterer;

okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!

we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.

we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.

we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word - it clings in there, so don’t forget it.

some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).

we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.

we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.

sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!

we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!

it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed - when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.

I hope this was helpful! feel free to add on and spread around!

#stutter #reading aloud #ableism

[ischemgeek]

I didn’t know there was a word for saying my name in a weird sing-song to avoid stuttering on it.  Out of curiosity - would rephrasing when I’m just having a hell of a time with the saying of a sentence count as an “avoidance behavior” or is that something else? Sometimes I’m just blocking or stuttering on a word so hard I give up on it in frustration and try something else because I’ll be there all day before I can say it. Recent example: I rephrased, “heat of phase change” to “Heat of melting” a while back because I was blocking just after the f sound of the word phase. Usually if I’m stuttering on something I can work through it but if I’m blocking on it it’s better to just rephrase because I’m just not gonna get that word out in that sentence for some reason. Like, the block itself isn’t that long but it’ll just keep popping up in the same spot and I can’t get past it so it’s easier to go around.

advice for writing a stutterer from an actual stutterer;

okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!

we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.

we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.

we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word - it clings in there, so don’t forget it.

some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).

we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.

we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.

sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!

we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!

it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed - when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.

I hope this was helpful! feel free to add on and spread around!

[ischemgeek]

A few additions:

Often, it’s worse when we’re tired. My speech therapist when I was a kid said this has to do with the same thing as when you’re anxious or stressed - basically the more strain your brain is already in, the less energy it has to focus on talking.

Blocks are a thing. Stuttering isn’t just repeating noises. Sometimes it’s weird, out of place stops. These are called “blocks” and they suck. Imagine you’re talking and suddenly your mouth/throat decide nope, no noise. It’s harder to write blocks than repetition of sounds, but they exist. I block far more often than I repeat sounds, and blocks are really frustrating for me. Sometimes I can even be having a nice, fluent sentence and then suddenly a ten second block nukes it from orbit. “Hi, I’m ischemgeek, I work ... ... ... ... ... ... for [the group I work for].”

Sound prolongations are often a part of stuttering.  Mine like to pair up with my blocks, so it might sound like, “I work ffff- ... ... ... .... fffffooooor [group I work for].” Most people would just think that’s me being my weird self. It’s my stutter. 

Stuttering is not associated with lying or dishonesty. A person who stutters is not likely to be more dishonest than someone without a stutter. It’s a common stereotype that people stutter if they’re lying, and that’s not true.

Stuttering is not a sign of being intoxicated. People who are intoxicated often do exhibit atypical speech patterns, but stuttering is not one of those patterns. Also, I don’t know why, but my speech actually gets more fluent if I’m mildly intoxicated. I’ve had cops assume I’m drunk due to my stutter on more than one occasion. The funny thing is, if I’d actually had enough to be unsafe to drive, my speech would be fluent enough someone who is not a trained speech expert wouldn’t notice anything unusual. 

Some stutterers have a lot of trouble saying their own name. For me, it’s hit or miss and depends a lot on what kind of a day I’m having. On bad days, I say my name in a little sing-song just so I can get it out (singing often bypasses stuttering). It makes me seem really weird and silly, but people get to hear my name, and I don’t attract the wrong kind of attention by being unable to say my own goddamn name. I’ll take weird and out of the conversation over weird and center of attention while I stutter endlessly any day. 

Stuttering is not caused by not organizing your thoughts or not taking your time with speech. That’s actually a related disorder, called cluttering disorder. Folks who stutter often have fully crafted speeches in their heads that they know they’ll never be able to get out. If someone has a genuine stutter, advice to “take your time” or “take a breath”, it will make us have a harder time by making us more self-conscious of the stutter.

Most stutterers have an easier time with pre-planned speech than with spontaneous speech. When I give a talk to a room, I often don’t stutter at all during the talk. Why? Because I’ve already planned out and largely scripted what I need to say. My contrast, in spontaneous speech at a meet-and-greet, I’ll fairly often stutter at least moderately. Other stutterers, however, find that public speaking makes them anxious, which makes them stutter more. 

advice for writing a stutterer from an actual stutterer;

okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!

we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.

we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.

we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word - it clings in there, so don’t forget it.

some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).

we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.

we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.

sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!

we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!

it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed - when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.

I hope this was helpful! feel free to add on and spread around!

[ischemgeek]

Consider also that left-wing politics often don’t mean you’re immune to racism. Consider how in Quebec the NDP tanked after coming out against the burka ban as a case in point. For a lot of people the racism trumps the economic/social policy. Some of these folks are swinging to Bernier because he validates their own pre-existing prejudice. 

I mean, despite how much left wingers (myself included sometimes) like to pretend otherwise, a person`s preferences for social policy and economic policy don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. A significant chunk of my extended family self-identify as socialists, are in favor of a strong social safety net, want a minimum income, etc... and also want non-heterosexual identities criminalized, and also think that the government had it right when they were still trying to exterminate the FN peoples. And they feel strongly enough about wanting non-het identities criminalized to tell me, an out bi person, to my face that “Hitler wasn’t wrong” about everything and that people like me should be locked up in camps to protect children from our influence. These are current NDP and Liberal voters who believe this, who may well be swayed to Bernier’s party if he’s vague enough on his economics.  On the other extreme, some in my immediate family are hard-core right-wing gun nut libertarians... who I have personally seen go out of their way to speak out against racism, and are the sort of folks who are behind the Conservative party’s decision to stop trying to roll back marriage equality on the grounds that the government shouldn’t butt in to people’s private lives. 

It’s easy to treat right-wingers as a monolith, but they’re not, any more than the Left is. 

Bernier’s party, from what I can tell, is primarily aiming for the white nationalist, gun rights, and libertarian wings of the CPC, but given his dogwhistling towards “core conservative principles” I am guessing he’s hoping a good chunk of the religious conservatives will come his way as well. Really, all he’s doing is taking the hard-right arm of the party - the group that made up the former Reform party and never really fitted in with the PCs all that well int he first place - and splitting them back off again.

Folks who fall in the camp of economically left wing but socially right wing (these are folks that exist even if they’re not represented by any major party in Canada) may be attracted to the fact that he’s offering a party more overtly racist, sexist, and queerphobic than any since the former Reform party. This also isn’t unprecedented and shouldn’t be surprising. When the Reform merged with the CPC, some of the voters who were with Reform because xenophobia and social conservatism decided to vote with their economics because they felt their social politics wouldn’t get enough voice in the CPC anyway.  And then, as others have pointed out, some folks will vote for any party that lets them feel like a rebel (the libertarian and white nationalist arms of the current CPC are very much like that, as are a subset of current Green and NDP voters).

those previously on the left falling for right-wing false populists isn’t an unheard of phenomenon-it happened in the american midwest. these are people who are easily swayed by anti-establishment ideals. people who know something is wrong. what they think is the problem is left up to our efforts to counteract right-wing propaganda. these people aren’t stupid. they are sometimes ignorant, but that’s because someone else prefers it that way.

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#cdnpoli

[ischemgeek]

I was brought up in the Reform party.  The hard-line right wingers don’t take their cues from GOP any more than the GOP takes its cues from Canadian hard right wingers. If you remember: Reform started with the “harmless buffoon” marketing of Manning in the early 90s, guess what GOP did in the 00s with W? Why? Because the harmless buffoon strategy worked. Left-wing voters stayed home because they thought Manning (and later W) couldn’t possibly win because he was such an idiot. Not all of them, but enough to make a difference.  

The Alliance staged a hostile takeover of the CPC in the early 00s, guess what the Tea Party did in the 10s? I could go on. They do both give each other inspiration, they learn from each other, and they collaborate and bounce ideas off each other - just like the Canadian Left does with left-wing activists elsewhere in the world, and for the same reason.

The right-wingers in Canada are their own breed. They do take some marketing tactics from the US (frex, “fake news”), but they don’t just try to transplant everything here, whole hog. For one, Canadian legal institutions have a very different structure. For two, Canadian culture as a whole is different from US culture. A thoughtless transplant won’t work, and frankly, the Canadian hard right is savvier than that. 

I am not a right-winger anymore (I count myself pretty far Left on the spectrum these days), but I think the left does itself a disservice by writing off the right as “just stupid.” Because, they’re not. They are so not. If they were stupid, do you think they’d be able to get a stranglehold on Canadian government for almost a decade with one of the most unpopular PMs in recent history? If they were really as incompetent as the left likes to tell itself they are, they wouldn’t get votes.

A right-wing reunification and a shift farther right is a very real possibility. Indeed, it's already happened twice: when the federal PC's merged with the Canadian Alliance, and when the Alberta PC's merged with the Wild Rose. The most vocal and virulent of Canada's conservatives have been gaining more and more power for at least the last 20 years, leaving more moderate voices with nowhere to go. This is what happens when you take your ideological lead from the GOP.

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[ischemgeek]

Never assume anything leading up to an election. Assuming your favorite will win - or your least favorite can’t possibly win - will lead to complacence and an unhappy surprise the morning after the election.

You don’t even have to go South for an example of this - look at Harper’s final majority. Everyone just assumed that Harper had lost favor of the electorate with so many do-nothing minority governments and didn’t get out the vote. Harper instead got a majority. 

So I assume the CPC is officially fucked in the new election? I mean, I’m guessing a lot of people were sticking around more for Bernier than for whatshisface... Looks like this next election is gonna be a clusterfuck, here’s hoping that the NDP pulls through and that a Grits/NDP coalition is actually possible. (That, or the NDP just frickin’ steamrolls everyone else, but I am not exactly counting on that.)

Its too early to say. It’ll depend on whether Maxime Bernier’s new party actually gains traction. If it does it could split the right vote.

Yeah ideally I’d either like a Liberal Minority supported by the NDP (or vice-versa) or an NDP majority. We’ll see what happens.

#cdnpoli

[ischemgeek]

I genuinely was a sex-repulsed acearo at 14 (although I didn’t have the language to explain it). I also thought I might be androgyne/agender.  At 30 I ID as a pansexual trans man.  As you grow, you get to know yourself better. Sometimes you realize what you thought you knew about yourself is only part of the truth (my discomfort with feminine gender roles was my being trans which I’d figured out, but because I was weirdly sheltered and fond of old literature - where androgyne is a real concept that’s explored but other types of transness weren’t so as far as I knew, my options were woman or androgyne). Sometimes who you are changes (I am no longer a sex-repulsed aroace. That changed). Both of those are okay. 

so this has been bouncing around my head for a while and I’m still not sure if this is the best way to phrase it, but…

making opportunities for everyone to explore their gender and orientation means nothing if it’s not safe for people to be wrong about their gender and orientation. otherwise, “exploring your identity” becomes limited to “confirming what you were already pretty sure of,” which isn’t going to do anything for anyone who isn’t already at that stage.

[ischemgeek]

When memes are right

The best thing about that Inigo Montoya social skills meme going around is that it’s actually right. Networking self-introduction 101 really is a four-step process:

Polite greeting

Your name

Personal tie (if relevant)

Manage expectations

You’ve seen the Inigo Montoya example, here’s a hypothetical real-world example. Say you work for a capital equipment firm, and person who’s talk you attended was complaining about a problem they don’t know how to fix. A networking greeting might look like this:

“Hello, Person X. I’m [your name]. I saw your talk, and you said you’re having [a problem] - my group actually works in that field. If you want we could have a chat and see if it’s something we might be able to help you with?”

Greeting, name, personal tie (I saw your talk), manage expectations (next step is a meeting to evaluate if it’s something your group can help with, not guaranteeing you can help). 

Just as an example. 

#social skills #memes

[ischemgeek]

Awesome thing is, if death metal is your thing they’re not bad. :) 

Metal is the best genre and this is why