Notices by timberwraith (timberwraith@mastodon.social)

One of the gifts of being a misanthrope is that it becomes far less painful and fretful to acknowledge that many human conflicts do not involve a good party and a bad party in conflict, but rather, two parties of varying degrees of awfulness being awful toward each other.

I no longer feel compelled to automatically seek out the good and the bad parties when I see conflict. Instead, I feel compelled to understand the two kinds of oppositional badness I see pitted against each other.

That doesn't mean there isn't ever a "good party" involved in a conflict. They do sometimes exist. Sometimes two or more good parties wind up in conflict with each other. That's a thing too.

However, I know that our species has a tried and true penchant for being utter dickheads in so many matters. So, I accept that, more often than not, no side of a conflict has"good parties" engaging.

It's often assholes fighting to be top asshole.

"Help your country..."

Nope. You can stop right there. I'd happily do what I can to fuck over this country because that's what it deserves.

From the book that I'm reading:
"Damn, if the Alabama coast isn’t still the best kept secret in America."

Well, who the fuck wants to visit Alabama who doesn't live there already? It's a "secret" for a reason.

No one sees god around because they realized how badly they fucked up when they made humans and they're too embarrassed to show their face on Earth.

They're just waiting for our time to run out before they show up again.

God's off in another star system smoking weed and raising chickens for a few millennia. They needed a break from their own bullshit for a bit.

I honestly don't think we'll be missed after we do ourselves in.

I had this optimistic notion in my first 3 or 4 decades of life that humans' screwy, hateful ideas would improve over time. I would never have thought that the I'd be watching society graduate from "bunch of assholes and haters" status to "bunch of industrial grade assholes and haters" status a couple decades later.

It's a hell of a thing.

It looks like the u.s. tourism industry is circling the drain as Trumps' policies have discouraged travel by people both inside the u.s. and outside.

So much winning. 😕

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/6/11/save-what-we-can-economic-uncertainty-trump-rhetoric-hits-us-travel

I dunno, when "bile" is in your last name, the universe might be doing one of those funny coincidental naming schemes where you act in a way related to your last name.

It's kind of a thing. A coincidence that keeps on popping up over and over again. Makes you wonder if this all just a bad shared dream.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qz2ug5fzvpykfgnoffauafes/post/3lrbmj2trrc2r

Occasionally, I find myself blocking someone who is so far out in wacky-land that I'm not entirely sure how they remember to continue breathing.

Those folks are fairly rare in the fediverse but once in a while, one washes ashore.

@YouShallNotPass And I liked your story/parable very much by the way.

You're a good writer.

@YouShallNotPass The series was written by a cis person. So, it's lacking in certain sensibilities around trans issues and gender identity which we might take for granted at this point but the trilogy was quite extraordinary for something published in the 2000s.

@YouShallNotPass Have you heard of the book "The Bone Doll's Twin"? Your fairytale, as it were, reminded me a little bit of this book and the trilogy it's a part of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam%C3%ADr_Triad

Arrogance, ignorance, a lust for control, and a penchant for abuse, bound together as a whole.

I wrote this thread yesterday for two reasons:

1) A majority of cis people (as polls indicate) do not think trans people are who we say we are. Cis sex/gender identities are automatically positioned as valid and natural while trans identities are positioned as disordered, deluded, and artificial.

https://mastodon.social/@timberwraith/114638479968113839

And yet, it is cis people who wield the lion's share of power over forcing trans people's lives into forms of being and life patterns that incur untold amounts of trauma, all for the purpose of serving cis people's ignorance, fear, malice, and a lust for control over something they do not understand, nor to they care to understand.

And the issue here is that cis people, as a whole, position themselves as the sole valid arbiters of what sex/gender is, how it should be expressed, and how it should function in the world while operating from a place of lesser knowledge relative to what trans people are *forced* to learn about ourselves and our relationship with sex/gender, embodiment, social roles, and a multitude of other related matters.

2) While doing #1, cis people tend to operate in a position of *relative* ignorance about their relationship with sex/gender while trans people are literally forced to live as a variation of sex/gender that is in conflict with who we are. We are forced to "consider" the options of sex/gender in ways that cis people rarely are... because cis society forces us through this process. We have little choice in the matter.

And we learn things about sex/gender that cis people often remain ignorant of.

@gwynnion Right? I can't count the number of times I've encountered christians who've said variations of, "I'm a lowly sinner and I can not be relied upon to know what is moral. I can only rely upon the guidance of my god to know what is good."

It's like, wow, you sure are telling on yourself. You're saying that you have shit judgement, empathy, and cognition and need to be told how to be a decent person.

And why should I trust you with anything?

I think one of the few sexual exposés that hold the potential to sink Trump with his supporters is if it were ever revealed that he had sexual/romantic relations with a cis man.

I think his supporters would completely lose their shit if that happened.

That's about it.