Artemis

RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/117350025254524066 It's weird how the moment where everything "went wrong" coincides with the moment when silenced voices began to reach new audiences, telling truer narratives of the past & present. It's almost as though the division long predates some of us becoming more conscious of it.

Ed Sheeran just feels like the definition of an "industry plant". His utter obliviousness to the moral & political commitments of his co-performancers is part of the evidence of it, I think. Ed has made it as far as he has by always kissing the hand that feeds him. Somehow he was blindsided that his backing band, who say they are "founding members of the Irish Artists for Palestine movement", ditched him for his cowardly, sniveling obedience to a pro-genocide billionaire.

Asexuals belong at Pride. Asexuals belong in queer spaces. Asexuals deserve to be heard & believed & accepted. And don't let nobody replace the "A" in LGBTQIA with "ally". Allies don't erase people.

RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/117327062168676578 Eagle-eyed readers will spot that I have listed women I don't think got their full due, but what do you know? Those are all white women. SOME women did not even get the same limited opportunities as those women. It's important to remember.

Privileged white liberals will tell you that caring about trans rights & other "woke" stuff like that is a privilege that "regular, working class" people don't have. They have that exactly backwards. They think it is a "privilege" to have opinions on this stuff because they are so privileged that they think of these opinions as accessories. It's a meaningless way of "expressing yourself." It's a game to THEM.

"People should have to use their real name/identity online." Cool, cool, so if I wanted to write about my childhood trauma, I would effectively have to "name & shame" my parents & siblings? Among many things that would do, it would make it impossible to be honest about abuse & trauma without also angering people you know or hurting people you love. It's almost like certain people would really love it if we just shut up about abuse & oppression. Almost...

"I can't endorse radical political change because the disruption would harm too many people." Do you SEE the world we are in? Do you SEE how bad things are now & how much worse they are likely to get in the NEAR future? More people slip below the poverty line, unable to feed themselves & their families, unable to access healthcare, abused by a system they are too poor to resist. Immigrants (& those who would defend them) are abducted & imprisoned. When is that disruption going to be enough?

RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/116850872786759058 Land Back because we need to start over & actually take care of the world around us. Europeans showed up to North America & were like "look at this pristine, untouched wilderness" completely ignoring the fucking human beings who had been acting as caretakers instead of simply extracting resources. "Untouched"? No, touched by plenty of human hands...just not by colonizers.

Oh my fucking God. This is what I meant when I said the real issues of The Odyssey are not going to turn out to be primarily aesthetic: >[Javier Bardem] posted on his Instagram account: “For 50 years, Morocco has occupied Western Sahara, expelling the Sahrawi people from their cities. Dakhla is one of them, converted by the Moroccan occupiers into a tourist destination and now a film set, always with the aim of erasing the Sahrawi identity of the city.” https://africasacountry.com/2026/07/odyssey-to-africas-last-colony

A lot of people now do all their internet searches through AI, right? Occasionally I will use Google AI search to get a sense of how other people may be seeking online information, & it disturbs me. Ask a question & you get an answer. You might have to do significant research to find out if that answer is actually correct, but you got a confident-sounding answer.

"You can feed 4 people on $300 a month. In this video, I will show you how to make a thin rice gruel..." (The first sentence is really from a real person. The second is what I assume came next)

Saw someone saying that in Inception, Christopher Nolan took the wild & weird great collective unconscious & turned it into a corporate training seminar, & I can't stop thinking about it. Because it's true. Nolan's films often take absolutely *wild* concepts, but they never get weird with them.

I was going to pick Sam Altman (deceased), but I kept scrolling & saw "Steve Jobs (deceased)", so I guess they mean "predeceased." You don't get to choose to have the dinner guest killed. 🫤

Spent a while yesterday looking through the Art of Andor book, & damn is it amazing! They designed every little thing, every location, object, article of clothing. It explains why it was astronomically expensive to make that show, but also why it felt so whole & real & grounded despite the space fantasy of it all. The art collected in the book goes to show that in every episode, in every scene, everything was planned meticulously. Every costume, every location, it's all there!

Emily Wilson, author of an acclaimed recent translation of Homer's Odyssey, manages to contextualize issues with Nolan's film as an adaptation in ways that I could not. She really gets to the ambivalence at the middle of this film. Nolan wants to have everything both ways with regards to Odysseus' guilt & culpability. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

Periodic reminder to watch what you write about acts of resistance you intend to carry out or would like others to carry out. Just be aware that your words may be read by less-than-friendly parties. It's a tricky balancing act, because you want to get the word out about stuff without bringing heat down on yourself or anyone else. Think strategically. Choose your words carefully & decide where you should talk/write about what.

Continuing my art series... #MakingArt #DeadBilionaire

My husband works in auto parts retail, & people come in & yell at him that he's wrong about which part they need because their AI bot said something different. They scream into their phones & hold up the screen to show him. Then they come back later, mad that they got the "wrong" part (the one they bought because the machine told them to even though he told them it wouldn't work on their vehicle).

I kind of want to start a national advertising campaign to teach people why they should zipper merge where the lane ends, not get over a mile beforehand. A lot of people think it's "rude" to go all the way up to the end & merge when traffic is backed up, but not using all lanes is *why* traffic gets so backed up in those scenarios. Use all lanes until the lane ends. Then cars in the lane being merged with should take turns. This creates a better traffic flow.

The Harry Potter fandom Wiki includes "blood status" as the second element on a character's "biographical information". It's giving "wizard Nazi". I get why within this story-world "blood status" is occasionally relevant: bigotry & targeted violence are often based on someone's "blood status" (or perceived status), but to list it as part of basic biographical information is to legitimize it in a weird way. (I searched a character from the Harry Potter play out of vague plot curiosity).

In progress on the final pages of this little sketchbook. There are 3 or 4 other pages I need to return to finalize, but once I finish these two, the book is full! This book (80 sheets) represents a 7 month journey of creativity & expression: acrylic markers & paints, tempera paint sticks, watercolor, ink, colored pencil & collage. #MakingArt

RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/116834581761727275 Basically, if someone was intentionally unkind to me, & you tell me I misunderstood them or am overreacting when I directly point out that they were unkind, you would be trying to get ME to act according to YOUR social expectations without respecting how I want to associate & interact with people. Personally, I don't want good social relationships with people who are not kind to me, & I do not appreciate being pressured into that.

You know it's a hawk when it sounds like an eagle from a movie. (Hawks sound cool...eagles squeak)

WISCONSIN RESIDENTS: Tuesday, August 11 is the Democratic primary for the governor's race. Please mark your calendar & take time to vote for Francesca Hong. Her campaign's policy page should tell you why. https://francescahong.com/policy/

Just said in a reply to someone: >I think our older sister being kind of a bully & never acknowledging that is a big part of how Apollo (aka Lil Bro) & I ended up being so personally committed to trying to do what's right. She really managed to set the example of everything we didn't want to be. It's a weird fucking thing about being a younger kid in a big family, I think. Younger kids have the opportunity to sort of see "possible futures" in their older siblings.

Part of the reason that pseudo-intellectuals like Chris Nolan bother me so much is that I was raised in a subculture absolutely brimming with them. I didn't grow up in "don't think, just feel evangelicalism". I grew up on the "intellectual" side of Christian conservatism, & that involves a whole lot of men constantly posturing, speaking profound-sounding inanities that I was taught to think were terribly deep & insightful. That left me very sour on shallow people being hailed as deep.

"I once learned a certain definition of eugenics, so despite not being informed on the subject, I'm going to tell you—a person who is more educated on this & related topics—that you are wrong when describing fatphobia as a function of eugenics." Here's the deal: the definition (you think) you learned in highschool for an extremely complex topic is either a) completely wrong or b) woefully inadequate. It's best not to correct people based on partially-remembered beginner information.

Wisconsin residents, one last time: today is Primary day. Take a moment out of your day & cast a vote for Francesca Hong for the Democratic nominee for governor. It's worth a shot. #Wisconsin #WisconsinPolitics

The thing about an ancient work like the Odyssey is that it only comes to us courtesy of an untold number of unknown scribes. If we were to count up the "man hours" it took to compose, repeat, compile, enscribe, copy, & preserve this fucking thing for millennia... the number would be astronomical. One reason this work deserves some goddamn respect is the sheer fucking effort that has been put into it not by one person but by an unknown number of people across a vast span of time.

I think I've *sort of* been unaware of people bullying me for being "weird" (autistic), because they do it in such neurotypical ways. It still does the intended harm: it singles you out & makes you feel "wrong" in some way, but because it's hidden in someone simply factually commenting on something with no explicit mockery, as an autistic person I think I often assume the other person doesn't realize their words are hurtful & don't see that they did in fact say the hurtful thing on purpose.

I think I've worked out some of the shit I need to talk to Bestie/Fox about, & it's a lot smaller & less sweeping than I originally thought. I think there's a needed acknowledgement of certain things that have happened, but emoting it all on Fedi helped me get somewhere. It seems like some of the dynamic that is bugging me is a 2-person thing, & I need to take some responsibility for naming things that bother me when they happen rather than pretending to be ok while feeling uncomfortable.

My parents really fucked us up in some ways by making "both sides" apologize after an altercation between siblings, especially because my older sister always managed to make her apologies basically add up to "I'm sorry you're so sensitive," but my little brother & I have also realized as adults that we ARE grateful for the WAY they taught us to apologize.

I probably have more interesting things to think & write about than Supergirl reviews, so I'll try to keep this to a minimum today, but I really am scratching my head over the attitudes towards films that I think I'm seeing from people. It seems to me that a lot of people feel that they were promised something specific, with certain rules, because they expected the film to be a standard genre film.

Just received a link to a "survey" about candidates in the Democratic primary for the Wisconsin governorship that appears to have actually been primarily intended to "inform" me that Republicans are supposedly supporting the democratic socialist candidate Francesca Hong because they supposedly think she will be weaker against their pathetic candidate (Tom Tiffany). Uh-huh. Someone with real policies that real people want is standing up in the Democratic primary. Must be a Republican op. 🙄

You're going to rock up in my replies with something unrelated to the topic at hand & just state a flat contradiction to my strongly-held & carefully-considered beliefs, & then I'm supposed to do what exactly? Am I supposed to change my views? Am I supposed to feel bad about myself? Am I supposed to waste my time with a "change my mind" challenge-type person who thinks they can demand I defend my beliefs to them specifically right here & now? What's the desired outcome?

Reading a long series of interactions of several people with a reply guy in someone else's replies, & it's amazing that this person is telling everyone that they missed their point. Bud, if everyone is "misunderstanding" you it's likely that either a) you are not communicating your point in a way other people can understand or b) (more likely) YOU don't understand the point you're making & think it has merit & makes sense, & it doesn't Or c) you're just full of shit. That one's very common.

It is so, so much easier to find holes to pick at in someone else's argument than it is to form a cogent & persuasive argument yourself. If someone feels proud for making someone else flustered or getting them tied up in knots trying to perfectly & flawlessly communicate their own position, they've set the bar pretty low for themself.

RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/116851392694241031 I see people criticizing James Gunn even for creative decisions which I strongly think he allowed the people actually making this movie to decide on. I'm pretty sure he doesn't mind being the one taking the heat for what people don't like. But when people blame him for everything they don't like about this movie, they are saying he *should* be the studio dictator controlling every DC project lest anything not meet exact audience expectations.

That's the thing about reply guys. They don't usually have the confidence in their convictions to really lay it all out & make their own case. They want to show up in the mentions of people they disagree with to try to upset them or poke holes in their arguments. That's pretty weak sauce. If you really believe in a thing, you shouldn't need a debate opponent to be able to talk about it.

So we rewatched Supergirl, & I have to admit it's not a "perfect" movie, but (in my opinion) most movies aren't perfect. I still think it's quite good, but there are some pacing issues: the story doesn't have a lot of room to breathe, & it sounds like test screenings & recuts may be to blame. It's frustrating that it feels like something has been removed when the movie comes in at well under 2 hours, so there was room for more.

Continuing to think through conversations that need to happen with Bestie & her headmate Fox (Bestie is a plural system) about Fox's kind of controlling, self-focused treatment of people at the sex party (yes, my sex life is juicy). The hard part is, that it's really not just Fox whom this happens with.

RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/116952880740105569 In the current mainline DC continuity, Bruce Wayne has lost much of his wealth, demoting him to the ranks of the "fairly wealthy", which I think was necessary for the character of Batman as a hero to retain any plausibility. Meanwhile in the Absolute series, we have a poor Batman who becomes the hero he is through strength of will & ingenuity with no massive fortune backing him. Bruce Wayne the corporate billionaire is the worst fucking Bruce Wayne.

The thing is: if you're interested in what I believe & why, it is all right here. I'll write even more about it in the future! Look at my old threads or wait for me to post new ones OR (get this) write about your OWN views on your OWN timeline. Argue for them, explain them, defend them. They're YOUR views. You don't have to be in a debate with anyone to share them. If it's important to you to persuade people, then write persuasively. It's what I try to do. You're welcome to try your hand at it.

I think most of my followers know this, given how many are autistic (or have autistic partners or close friends), but autism does not need to be cured. Being autistic can be challenging, but a lot of those challenges come from a world not adapted to our needs. It could be different. Some people's challenges are greater depending on the autistic traits that are strongest, but outsiders still make judgements about quality of life that are NOT theirs to make. Autism does not need to be cured.

"This Farmer Played Himself. The NYTimes Wants You To Feel Bad For Him" I have been really enjoying Sarah Taber's videos about farmers in the US. She is a farmer herself & speaks from a level of knowledge informed both by personal experience & actual data. There is a mythology around farmers in the US which allows them to act like literal landed gentry while crying "oh poor me! Won't someone give me more subsidies?" https://youtu.be/BVRRcQjKcPM

What I think is really cool about the DCU is that we have 2 feature films now, neither of which requires you to watch the other, but they are thematic twins: 2 different answers to "what does it mean to be good?" I really like that they fit together *thematically* rather than having plot/lore dependencies.

@neutronstar@infosec.exchange Yeah, I definitely have no issue with someone who replies more than they post. We all have different ways of interacting on here. I'm just glad I'm getting better at telling the difference between someone who is joining in the conversation & someone who is showing up to be a dick about something. Leaves me more energy for the good conversations.

I think I have dyspraxia, a common thing with autistic people. I think I would have to say that 90% (or maybe more) of the distress that has caused me in my life has been social in nature & only about 10% has been genuine problems caused by my physical awkwardness. Sure, I drop stuff a lot, fumble with things, & sometimes bump into walls, but most of the time no harm happens to me. The embarrassment of being seen to struggle with "simple" movements, however, has been constant & intense.