River doesn't know what to say

Of course. Employment numbers can be near impossible to adequately cross compare like that because they are massaged so thoroughly.

I work in customer service/healthcare and by one metric my job is mostly bullshit in that an extraordinary chunk of my labor is "wasted" dealing with insurance bullshit. But it's also vital, because without me there, people can't access their medical care.

But that all the talk about bullshit jobs in that book directly led to a bunch of people believing in AI as the solution.

What I would have liked to hear about and didn't, what are employment numbers like, because if you are comparing us to countries with more labor laws, then productivity growth also makes higher unemployment possible.

Bullshit Jobs

Yeah, I'm with Michael in that this is a bullshit book. Mischaracterizing a labor phenomenon as being about bullshit jobs is a big problem in that it directs people away from the actual problem to solutions that actually make things worse. open.spotify.com/episode/1Qgg...

"radical centrists" are propagandists, and are the most responsible for the fascist take over. They are not poor lost lambs. The median voter does not exist because it is a statistical mirage of what actual voters actually think.

Leftist making centrists feel bad is a national crisis, whereas actual state oppression is just an unfortunate circumstance, but since it doesn't happen to "real people" (ie, themselves) it doesn't matter as much as their feelings.

What is happening in radical centrists minds, is that they both are racist and transphobic, but absolutely need you to believe they are not, and what you believe about them is more important to them than the policy. Which is why they always blame the left for "making" it happen.

The important thing to realize, is that the Democrats who say they are only chasing opinion, are just as dishonest as the conservatives. They are asking the questions purposefully to get the answer they want. Then laying the blame for their own racism and transphobia on the public.

Most people are lied to by conservative media about trans people and immigrants, so when you use that framing you get predictable conservative answers. But when you ask the question as it actually is, they "become" liberal.

Some have been using the term "radical centrists" to describe people who (mostly as a media phenomenon, not voters) prescribe a centrist view, wherein the centrist view is to maintain both side-ism when most people don't actually think that way.

" more precisely, the median voter is in two (or more places) at once, depending on how you ask them a question. The median voter is like Schrödinger’s cat — both liberal and conservative until a question forces them to pick an answer."

as change. I didn't regret the decision to take hormones. I wouldn't have survived much longer without passing. And the surgery was a gift to myself, a coming home to my body. But I wanted more than to just barely exist, a stranger always trying not to get involved. I wanted to find out who I was, to define myself. Whoever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live it again. I wanted to be able to explain my life, how the world looked from behind my eyes. Yet I was so afraid to come out and face the world again. I wondered why I had to choose the opening years of the Reagan administration and the rise of the Moral Major-ity to demand the right to be myself. Would they arm villagers with torches and stakes and stalk me through the countryside? Would I stand alone, handcuffed in a precinct cell, with no one to turn to if I survived the nightmare? But then I acknowledged that no matter who had been in the White House, it had always been hard to be me. Between a rock and a hard place-something told me this lifetime wasn't going to get any easier. I'd already been through a lot though, and it didn't seem to me it could get much worse. Once again I couldn't see the road ahead. I was still steering my own course through uncharted waters, relying on constellations that were not fixed. I wished there was some-one, somewhere I could ask: What should I do? But no such person existed in my world. I was the only expert on living my own life, the only person I could turn to for answers.

Rereading Stone Butch Blues

What "it's a distraction" people fundamentally need to understand about fascism is that fascism's entire mode of operation is diverting popular anger/anxiety/despair into channels of violence against the Other (both internal and external).

It's not flailing, it's the whole strategy.

Black and white photo of Marjane Satrapi with the quote: "The world is not divided between East and West. You are American. I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same."

Once again.

Trapped to never rest.

Lost Hope

Meme of Trump-to-NYT translator: Trump: ... THE SOMALI PIRATES RANSACKED MINNESOTA ... EVEN AS HE WAS GUSHING BLOOD, WHICH WAS FLOWING BACK DOWN THE AISLE HELICOPTER LANDS AT A STEEP ANGLE .... BELIEVE IT OR NOT, HAMAS WORKED ALONG WITH ISRAEL AND THEY DUG, AND THEY DUG, AND THEY DUG... I'VE ALWAYS WANTED THE CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR... NYT Translation: In his first State of the Union address of his second✩ term, President Trump offered a rosy portrait of a U.S. that has lost confidence in his leadership.

People's common categories in their head also completely ignore non binary amab people who do not transition and do not believe they exist, or are all just basically trans women lite. I keep the expanse in my mind even if I don't talk about them directly.

And that person is going to have very different experiences in life vs a person who transitions, or who presents that way intentionally or not. Identity shapes our experiences but is not guaranteed to shape our place in society.

This is important because in discourse many nonbinary afab people are lumped together as one identity. But nonbinary is more about what you are not than what you are. Nonbinary afab includes people who present and be seen as women in society, some of whom also more or less identify as women even,

I don't have space to fill in every small nuance, so while the majority of the people I talk about within transmasculinity are afab, it's not a part of the definition. Who I am talking about includes a lot of nonbinary people, but not all, and is not just another way of saying afab nonbinary.

I talk about it specifically from the perspective of people who transition in a masculine direction, since that identity is my own personal experience, is a perspective that is silenced, and in particular is illuminating to how gender and the patriarchy works.

As a reminder: I use the term transmasculine conceptually about gender social systems. It's about the way people who are a man or masculine but are not categorized as such within a patriarchal society. It's not about a self gender label primarily.

It's a disservice to trans people to talk about the way cis men claim ownership of transmasculine people without mentioning how cis women do as well.

A podcast that every cis woman should listen to and learn from.

is life just a series of days where you're tired in the afternoon and wide awake at night, running behind on weekly deadlines, and seeing pants get slim and big and then slim again over the years until you die?

You could have stood up to this when it mattered, but back then it was cringe & you care more about your identarian signaling than you care about marginalized populations, so you didn't. You should feel bad about yourself & you should keep "never again' out of your mouth. You don't mean it.

What I believe is that it is good to have an increase of audio and video, but bad that reading is neglected. Children need to have a base understanding of different forms of communication, and all have available the access to more at their own discretion.

People are different! Our brains are different! There are things about how reading works that can't be supplanted, but there are weaknesses to rely on reading as the only form of information communication.