Notices by The Dread Slender Gnome (gnomeshatecheese@spinster.xyz)

Here's a thought.

The identitarian left speaks of "identity" in near-sacral tones, in that they seem to consider it a fundamental, immutable part of a person, perhaps even a foundational part of the human psyche.

But we know very well that in practice identity is anything but immutable. This is especially the case with identity concepts beyond just "I, me and myself", concepts that denote belonging in this or that thing or group. At best it has some sort of long-term stability (in some cases life-long), but it can also be fleeting and situation-dependent.

We know this, because we see it all around us. Yet, the identitarian left has made the questioning of any identity into something akin a new mortal sin.
Yes, some identities are very dear to people, and having the basis of those identities be compromised can be very uncomfortable. And if one hasn't yet grasped the idea that other people's opinions on one's identity don't really matter, questioning can also be very uncomfortable.
But such discomfort does not justify treating personal identities as inviolable, innate truths.

Where did this idea come from?
And how come practically nobody points out its obvious counterfactual nature?

Question.

Is the German sound written as "ch" genuinely so difficult for English speakers to pronounce, or have they just bee conditioned by ortography to pronounce it as a variant of /k/?

In my very amateurish opinion, it would be more correct if they pronounced the "ch" as /h/ as in the word "hint", instead of /k/. But I almost never seem to hear that.

This is relevant to mostly because of my interest in WWII history, and the insistence among almost all English speakers of pronouncing the relevant words as, essentially, "third reik".

Why?

@TriptychTwinsRidesAgain It has, hasn't it!

@TriptychTwinsRidesAgain Well, I for one find it absolutely hilarious when they TELL ON THEMSELVES like this.

Go on. Go "advocate" for your lot more. In public.
You're doing So Well.

@KeepTakingTheSoma @Flick Good luck with that one.

@KeepTakingTheSoma @Flick Well, no, as far as I can tell there is no such body anywhere.
The legislators, their support staff, and civil servants are supposed to police themselves on this, which they clearly are not doing.

What I'm talking about is a strictly separate body, that would only be tasked with this single thing and nothing else, and tied neither to political parties nor the rest of the civil service establishment.

Regarding the latest stupid law suggestion @Flick just linked to, here's an idea.

ALL legislative bodies should have attached to them a team of devil's advocates, whose sole job would be to find and publicise ways in which any proposed law could go wrong, lead to overreach or be misused.
They should be thoroughly apolitical and consist of cantankerous, yet rigorous contrarians who don't give a damn and delight in tearing apart stupid ideas. Bonus points if they could do it in an entertaining manner.

It wouldn't stop all stupid ideas from becoming laws, but it would at the very least guarantee someone with an official position would always be there to naysay.

An intimate image would have to show someone without their 'particular attire of religious or cultural significance' and be taken 'in circumstances in which an ordinary reasonable person would reasonably expect to be afforded privacy'.

So if I'm in a female-only space where there are also muslim women, and I take a photo of my friends and some muslim woman happens to be in the background without her modesty cage, I would according to this definition be guilty of creating AND possessing " non-consensual intimate images" equal to CP.

That's not chilling at all, nope.

'The Government should be cautious about creating yet more criminal offences.' (David Spencer, of the think-tank Policy Exchange)

When I was reading the article, I was reminded of a sign Mark Thomas saw in one of his mass lone demonstrations, reading "for goodness sakes stop making up crimes".
I see I wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.

@KeepTakingTheSoma @HebrideanHecate That's the million pound question everyone should be asking her, isn't it.

@HebrideanHecate I mean, really, it's not like there are a whole host of other healthcare professions this woman could go into, where she would never need to deal with the possibility of abortion at all... 🙄 /s

@HebrideanHecate Exactly. She's already demonstrating her unfitness, not by her opinions, but by prioritising her own desire to be a midwife, over the needs and desires of the patients. Before she even gets into the profession even!

Imagine a doctor wanting to become a heart surgeon, who was against bypass surgeries on people over a certain age, for whatever reason. In a sane world that person would never be allowed to specialise in that field.

@HebrideanHecate If she genuinely was an ethical person, she would not put herself in a position, where she might encounter an abortion in a professional setting.

I.e. if she really wanted to deal with child bearing issues, she would stick to things like routine monitoring of easy cases, nutrition and other health education etc. The fact that she still wants to be a full midwife, AND says there's no situation where she would "not object to" abortion, means she's putting herself and her own wants ahead of the needs of the potential patients.
That's not something a healthcare professional should do.

@HebrideanHecate I'm definitely of the view that people who think this way should be allowed to express their views, especially off the clock.

However, I'm also very much of the view that if a person does not want to participate in an established medical procedure, then that person should not attempt to join a profession where the professionals are expected to perform the procedure or assist in it. (Borderline dubious and genuinely dubious procedures are another matter.)

Jehova's witnesses for example probably shouldn't be in the medical field at all, if they believe blood transfusions are bad and immoral.

I guess these people think the wife should've either been fine with it, or at least not feel like the foundations of her marriage have been seriously shaken.

Imagine if a gay man had got married, then came out to his wife, and when the wife had an emotional crisis over what is to become of her marriage, an outsider commented *"I can't stand when people make someone else's sexual orientation about them, they need to grow the fuck up".

The people behaving narcissistically are the Reddit echo-chamberites egging each other on to not even acknowledge their actions affect the people they live with.

RT: https://hell.twtr.plus/objects/c875aed2-4f0a-4e03-80a4-5145d1147628

@KeepTakingTheSoma @HebrideanHecate @FeartnTired A lot of people, for some utterly unfathomable reason, seem happy to leave their kids to putter about on the Internet without supervision, much like they might allow their kids to watch regular TV before the watershed. It has to be either sheer ignorance, or just some form of laziness.

I am aware that adults have to make up their own minds. But at the same time, there are cultural ideas of what is admirable and what isn't. Right now vacuous glam-fluencing seems to be seen as admirable in the general culture, but there's no reason why that has to be so forever. I suspect at some point the influencer-economy bubble will also burst, and being an influencer ceases to be fashionable.
And then we might finally have some real respite from "people do stupid shit because influencer".

@KeepTakingTheSoma @HebrideanHecate @FeartnTired That only works for you though.
It does nothing about these influencers influencing those who don't know better.

But like I said, I don't see many options, barring just "influencing" becoming hopelessly passé and worthy of LOLs.

@HebrideanHecate On the one hand, I'm glad people are looking at amazing pictures and being drawn to getting outdoors. That in itself is not a bad thing.

But I do put a lot of blame on the influencers who post pretty pics without ALSO explaining that the outdoors aren't a joke. And I also think something has gone wrong in just learning basic life skills, when people haven't learned that it's not just towns and traffic that can be dangerous.

Then again, I consider the entire influencer culture to be fundamentally toxic in its utter superficiality.

@HebrideanHecate @FeartnTired I do dearly wish it was possible to make the vacuous influencers face responsibility for, well, influencing people to do stupid things.
Sadly, I see no feasible way of doing that, apart from perhaps public shaming.

@HebrideanHecate @FeartnTired Probably the only thing that could curb this in short term is charging for stupid rescues and publicising that heavily.

In the long term, I do think public education desperately needs to happen.

I don't begrudge people writing on Substack their option of putting some or all of their texts behind a paywall.

But I wish their front pages, or their archive pages, had some kind of a tag marking the paywalled posts. That way I wouldn't waste my time clicking on articles, only to find out I can only read the first paragraph or so.