Notices by Joan Westenberg (daojoan@mastodon.social), page 3

2/15 They’re precision weapons, engineered to hijack your focus and dismantle your autonomy.
Think of your attention as a finite currency—except you didn’t sign up for the bank account, and every time you try to withdraw, someone else has already spent it.

my body at 18: i can survive on caffeine and spite
my body at 30: if i drink water too fast, i have to lie down for 2 hours

History doesn’t remember the sycophants. It remembers the Senecas—the ones who had the guts to stand up and act for the good of the whole, for humanity, for their neighbours, for the principal, even if it cost them their lives.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/stoicism-isnt-all-about-you/

First rule of social media: Never let anyone know what you’re doing. Ever. Every post should be a decoy. Post about spaghetti, but secretly you’re at a funeral. I’ve been within 500 feet of the coroners office for days. I leave no trail. That’s how you Keep ’em guessing.

You don’t actually miss Twitter. You miss who you were 10 years ago.

How to Destroy a Generation? Make Them Think the World Runs on Their Feelings—and Then Use Those Feelings Against Them.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/how-to-destroy-a-generation/

first they came for literally everyone all at once and i did not speak out for i like cheaper eggs

you can tell marvel movies broke our brains because the election ended weeks ago and we’re all still glued to the screen waiting for a mid-credits scene where some C-list superhero shows up to give us one (1) crumb of hope

every morning i wake up, gaze into the unfeeling void of the internet, & thank god with all my strength for people who post about how many followers they had on twitter. bless you. keep those follower stats coming. inject those sacred numbers directly into my bloodstream. my family is grateful

if you’re LGBT and you voted for Trump, you need to study Ernst Röhm

it’s only “the resistance” if you’re prepared to actually put your safety and or comfort at risk to stand up for and protect people who are at greater risk. otherwise, it’s just sparkling clout etc etc

4/10 Their “critical thinking” snaps right into alignment with every crusty institution they swore they were too smart to follow.

3/10 But half of these Galileos turn into righteous inquisitors the second anyone brings up trans rights. Suddenly, their “bold science” becomes a couple of Biology 101 slogans stapled to a tired, thousand-year-old, deeply religious Catholic ideology.

2/10 They imagine themselves staring down the Catholic Church, the mob with their pitchforks, all because they’re too brave, too logical, too truthful for this world. They’re ready to risk it all just to tell you the sun doesn’t spin around the earth.

1/10 Every tech visionary wants to be Galileo, you notice that? They want to be that lone genius standing up to the forces of ignorance, “questioning dogma” in the name of Science. 🧵

7/10 They’re the ones putting themselves on the line to expand how we see each other, pushing for a future that doesn’t have a place in the tech intellectuals’ flowcharts.

6/10 We’re in this bizarre situation where the people actually challenging norms—trans people, queer folks, anyone even slightly outside the “normal” box—are the ones facing down all the backlash.

5/10 These are the people who wear “Question Everything” T-shirts but can’t fathom questioning their idea of gender because it’s “basic biology” or whatever flimsy excuse they found in a freshman textbook fifteen years ago.

9/10 Meanwhile, tech’s rationalist LARPers just keep clutching their pearls, citing “immutable truths” like they’re reading off a papal decree. They claim to be free thinkers, but they’re really just defending the same boring old hierarchy in slightly shinier packaging.

8/10 They’re doing what Galileo actually did: they’re making everyone uncomfortable by suggesting, hey, maybe our understanding of reality isn’t complete yet, maybe there’s more to the universe than a rigid little belief system.