Huh… I had no idea my partner of 15 years was quietly slinging above the pornstar mean. This is what you get when you are an ace trans masc guy who never dated around and doesn’t watch porn…

Sitting on this embarrassment of riches all this time and never knew! (pun absolutely intended).

If your wages are hourly or salary then they might be raised dependent on either a “performance” bonus which works as an incentive or by a fixed yearly raise but neither is tied to profit. It’s technically just engineering the workforce to give more output by dangling a carrot. The size of the carrot distribution is factored into the labor cost - it is distinctly not profit, it is operating budget which deducts from profit because it is counted as an expense.

Here is the thing about profit - it comes from saving money on labor, resource or overhead. Sometimes it’s a neutral or good thing when the profit comes from a source like a clever innovation that solves a problem or by fulfilling a highly desireable market demand… But a lot of the time that isn’t the case. Those profits can come from collaboration with competitors to pay labor less, finding cheaper materials that shunt the costs onto other people outside the business by means of pollution or utilizing exploitable workforces with less health or legal protections, outsourcing.

Yes people are motivated by money but why do people want money? In the case of your average worker the demands are quite small. Money equals security - a non toxic and comfortable place to sleep, food on the table, assured care for health when sick or old and creature comforts to create fulfilling free time. Profit oftentimes incentivizes removing these things from other people in service to an investor class. Creating protections against this is often the prerogative of government because government depends on the wealth of it’s people to perpetuate itself so it’s incentive is to protect the majority of people whom hold them accountable on the whole from becoming exploited into poverty, sickness and death because those things can be profitable. One can say “that’s just the way it is” only so long as once a large enough group of people see no value or security in living life they generally start banding together to become violent.

Technically workers do not care about profits, they care about wages. The average worker doesn’t benefit from profit because they represent a fixed expense. The work they produce is worth more than their salary which is how a company produces profit. As long as a company breaks even and the salary is enough to meet one’s needs a worker does just fine. However a worker’s job could easily be axed in the name of profit because they are what is being profited off of, not the entitled beneficiary of the business as a whole.

Profit it just the take home winnings of the investors or owners of the business and the few jobs at the top where compensation is based off of profit percentage or lavish bonuses for making the targets.

I think I am just thankful for the giant feature length works of art that descend once a year crafted with the forethought and precision of one who refuses to compromise on the lengthy process of research.

This strikes me as a common misconception. A cat’s affections are more difficult to earn than a dog’s and they regularly have only a few people they legitimately attach to. Cats must be approached on their own terms, to connect with one you must adapt your behaviours to it. Dogs however have pack instinct and adapt to what norms humans set. They want affection as one of their primary needs and they will compromise their own behaviours to learn and assimilate. Dogs basically are much harder to fail attaching to.

It doesn’t surprise me that most groups whose needs are not often centered in society that favors the comfort of cis, straight men and require understanding on their own terms to flourish because they often comprise on their own needs to assimilate to get by… Enjoy the company of critters whom must be approached on their own terms to flourish and refuse to compromise because they have no need.

You only really understand cats once you become part of one’s true inner circle. They become incredibly attached, loyal and work to understand you back. Like if your cat keeps bothering you at your computer and messing with your keyboard one solve is to give them their own keyboard because what they really want is to mirror your behaviour and do what you are doing even if they don’t quite get the appeal.

I like both but it took me awhile to understand the appeal of cats because when they are around outsiders they avoid PDAs with their owners and some owner and cat combos just never unlock that affection at all.

Yes you did do it right, lol…and pokemon is pronounced Po- kay (or like Quay) and the same mon as in monster.

And I absolutely don’t intend to put you on blast. It’s just you can kind of look at language as a kind of technology. That tech can be used to spot minute differences to inform people of a lot of things… Trans people often have to live a little bit like spies in high risk situations so dogwhistles can actually be helpful technology to us assess an environment and risks. Muddying the water can actually make things harder.

Like I for instance pass mostly as a cis person… though not in the way I would hope for. I am not physically transitioning for partner related reasons so while a lot of people can suspect I am some kind of queer they often falsely assume my gender and pronouns based on my body.

Because I am always working with new people I basically take mental hits every all day at work that other people are entirely unaware of. It tends to absolutely wreck my self esteem and makes me feel really isolated…But it’s sometimes safer than being “out”. People who make a mistake because they don’t know are trans are a lot easier to deal with then people who know and aren’t adapting well. Like when someone is making a bunch of mistakes with my pronouns it brings way more attention to the fact their brains do not register me as my gender and they are undertaking an artificial process. When they undergo that process I have to work a little harder to teach, and let them know that I am okay, that I understand, reassure them they are doing fine… It takes a lot out of me to do. EVERYONE fucks up pronoun changes. Coming out and getting people used to me is work that I am gunna be doing over and over and over. If I am gunna have to do that I am gunna pick candidates who I know will be worth the personal effort of onboarding or who make my job easier who already have the playbook down and just haven’t put it into practice.

Currently I am out selectively only to people I judge as safe. How I judge rather people are safe are not is by how they comport themselves. What sort of language they use, how attentive they are when I use they/them pronouns when referring to friends of mine when trading stories, how they react to different conversational topics, what do they find funny and how willing they are to defer to someone else’s needs… It could be veganism, or a religious practice done for comfort or making adjustments for a person with a disability, if you show that you are willing to make concessions or small behavioural changes because you value other people’s comfort that’s a MAJOR green flag.

It sucks but I am literally running an active risk assessment of everyone I meet in a professional setting. I do this because even if they aren’t actively bigoted they can make my life a hell.

I had a boss who just wanted to debate trans talking points all the time while we could not leave our posts and I lived in constant fear he’d figure me out… because becoming his personal entrapped ambassador for a community he had zero understanding of was going to add way more patience and effort just to get through my day than any of my coworkers would be required to muster. I would likely lose my job because even if he was not intentionally mean dealing with being the subject of his intensified curiosity and questions that are generally invasive would drive me to either need to leave or do something that would get me fired.

We trans folk are generally skittish of folk who take a little too much interest in us because of our transness. It’s can be a lot of work to just get people to calm down, not be self conscious around us like you’re scared doing of something wrong and not treat us as special. Just making us feel like comfortably normal people doing regular people things is a wonderful gift. In the case of your store based acquaintance it’s generally safer to like compliment her clothes or jewelry or something. It’s like saying “I think you’re cool” without making her feel self conscious that people are staring at aspects herself that trigger that fear of being observed as something abnormal.

So if it helps think of the adaptation as learning to speak trans safety code. If you are saying “trans people” in an office full of co-workers who use “transgenders” you are using language technology to fly your green flag in a sea of ambiguously checkered red. We’ll spot you.

The thing about that… Is that whether or not something registers as cool or not generally needs to come from the group. As an example you could try to “take back” an n-slur from bigoted use … but if that initiative isn’t coming from the community to whom that term is levied you are basically just using an n-slur because you believe yourself entitled to use the slur for your own personal reasons.

It’s not just about sticking it to the Conservatives, it’s about listening to the why that comes from a community that is often talked about rather than talked directly to… At best trans people who hear you are going to think you are out completely of touch like people who pronounce pokemon like “Poh-key-man”… Or that you cannot be counted on to listen, that you are a different kind if problem and you are someone to hide from being openly trans around if they can because it’s ultimately safer than rolling the dice against whether you are a transphobe or not. Places (for example a work place) where terms like “transgenders” is openly used without challenge from other people is a message to us that that community is either not safe or at least very very ignorant… And that self advocating in that environment is going to be an uphill struggle of dealing with people who are convinced they know what’s best for us more than we do…

Oh good! I accidentally replied to the wrong person a couple days ago and had a moment of wondering if maybe my app was fritzed.

How the absolute hell… During the reply section the correct comment was featured and I swore I double checked… Jerboa, why dost thou forsaketh me?!

Sorry stranger. Keep on being awesome.

Small nomenclature heads up “Transgenders” is a common conservative dogwhistle. In correct use trans and cis or transgender and cisgender are adjectives , it’s always paired with a noun. For example “Transgender people” , “trans woman” , “trans man”. It’s like the rules for the racial term “black”. Drcently cool to use as an adjective but when you hear someone nounify it to “the blacks” it leaves a certain impression.

The space between the words is actually important as well. In the UK changing the adjective into a noun by removing the space is used by TERF groups when they operate in more public discourse to signal to each other they imply that they aren’t talking about a specific type of man or woman but a distinct second category. As in "That’s not a man, That’s a transman™.

It’s not a huge deal, nobody’s offended or anything, the post body is obviously trans supportive so nobody is gunna think you are repping the anti-trans agenda or anything but I figure it’s something you’d probably want to know? I am not intending to be pedantic just sorta handily educational.

How often do you sit cross legged on the floor? A lot of stretching routines are basic maintenance but getting to actual comfort is a different thing entirely. Getting up regularly and relaxing into floor sitting while watching tv has done me wonders personally. The first while is rough though.

Don’t get an SUV or Raised truck. They might be comfortable but they are dangerous to other vehicles on the road.

It might be more about what vehicles share the road. SUVs and pickups tend to cause the majority of fatalities in crashes because their bumper height basically being non compatible with cars and vans and their larger blindspots… That design might not play particularly well with the Keis in crash situations.

But that being said SUVs and raised pickups are menaces to road safety across the board and we should be looking at phasing them out.

Yes it does suck on your end but on the other side of the phone your perspective date is probably having a whole mental breakdown about it. For a lot of trans folk disclosure is absolutely nessisary as early as possible and preferably for safety reasons not when you are face to face…

Buuuut they also are very likely to get really vile transphobic backlash from a perspective date as much as they are honest rejections based on genital preference which sucks to be rejected for but is nobody’s fault. There’s a lot of trans people out there who feel like they are never going to be given a chance. Either way steeling themselves for one form of rejection or a vile reminder of the awful people out there who think you are subhuman and are offered up a nice juicy target on which to let loose their bigotry does tend to make for disordered social niceties. Once someone has been burned enough they get pretty damn shy and the procrastination is more of a case of battling personal traumas until the last possible second where one absolutely must do the right thing.

I would advise not taking it too personally.

Yeah… If anyone starts talking too much about the shape of the human skull as if that means anything whatever they are selling ain’t worth the pitch

As a Socialist that subscribes more to the historical strain of Saint Simone and Robert Owen that broke out and away early from Marxism to become the Chartist movement and the history of American non-Marxist socialism … I am often tired of how one note Tankies are. They seem obsessed with a sort of internal purity which denies a rich history of socialism other than Marx and Engles. Once one of them goes off about Stalinism or Maoism I basically just disengage because at that point they are basically so enamored with the aesthetics of communism that they aren’t going to be listening to anything. They want to be devout to the ideology while whitewashing the bloodstains of past failures. I understand a collectivist mindset is more or less what Marx aims to cultivate in his work but it seems often at the cost of tolerance of any level of apostasy.

The flattening of a mass of political thought into cardboard cuttouts to snipe at and sneering at the range of Socialism hybrids with No True Scotsman flavour condescension as political ideologies simply not complete worldviews in their own right has got me rather depressed in dealing with the average Communist on here. People in general often just seem to want to find something simple and easy to hate.

Same!

I think I am hardly a mover and shaker politically aside from showing up to town councils a few times a year and doing some union safety and advocacy stuff and occasionally hyping Raven Trust. It’s a weird place to be because with indigenous issues you want to be kind of tasked with something to do or at least have a signoff that what you are doing is helping but if you don’t belong to those groups you really don’t want to recommend any courses of action? I mostly do a lot more LGBTQIA+ related stuff because that is my wheelhouse. A couple buddies of mine are way more personally impactful in their work regarding Indigenous advocacy because they operate inside more exclusive power strucrures. I think I am kind of the layabout.

I think one of the most nerve wracking things on the indigenous front I ever did was run a D&D one shot for the former National Chief of Canada. Like I have done a lot of thinking on the implicit colonialist history of the game and the implicit bias wherein that reinforce that mindset through mechanics… But it’s one thing to know that intellectually and another one entirely to pick through your homebrew materials with a fine tooth comb looking for fault.

I also feel like there is no silly in acedemia. Stories tell us a lot about a culture and picking things apart can tell us a lot about psychology, culture or philosophy. Like RPGs they have mechanics that inform the tale though everyone interprets those mechanics differently and sometimes they aren’t really there to “say” anything. Sometimes there is no moral of the story you’re just being invited to have fun. Like Star Wars I think is one of those. Like the Jedi give the veneer of mysticism but I don’t think their internal logic is meant to be extrapolated out to be the author’s world veiw. I think they are basically just a warrior stoic fantasy… But there are thousands of acedemic papers on Star Wars. Every student who goes through the system is there to demonstrate they can think and dissect thought using the current methodology. It creates a body of convention which then they might use to pointed effect in their own work one day. The process refines and changes the process which in turn alters the process and the cycle goes on. It’s fascinating.

If you are into podcasts I might recommend “Revisionist History” “Invisabilia” “Radiolab” and the like for wonky dives into minutia and seeing stories from interesting angles. On YouTube I recommend the trans philosophy suite of Philosophy Tube, Shanspere, Kat Blaque and Alexander Aliva, the history and lit stuff with Crash Course, Extra History, Kaz Rowe, J Draper… I wish I had more indigenous forward stuff to offer but I tend to get a lot of that through books or personal connections willing to talk shop. The book “The Red Deal” was pretty evocative but also at odds with a lot of the things that we tend to have going on with local efforts. The books deal with efforts to make society at large run less on a western colonialist mindset but through a more combative nature. Like you can lock horns with the government as the book more suggests … Or you can just change the dominant culture at ground level to normalize forms of reconciliation and restorative justice and work inside those systems indiginizing and hybridizing the structures. Like there’s surprisingly little stopping my union department meetings or say public library management from adopting a restorative justice circle model for arbitration. Anyhow I hope that list of things has some fun stuff on it for you!

I mean I am having a blast writing a novel here. This has been one of the funnest interactions I have had on one of these platforms in years. I came from a family that couldn’t afford to put me through a philosophy or literature based degree and had to be more practical about vocational training for the job that would feel more fulfilling because I didn’t want a job in acedemia. I have way too much ADHD for that. Still I imbibe to a god awful number of podcasts and books on the subject and pick the brains of my buddies who did go to school mercilessly. My sibling actually wrote their dissertation for their Masters on dystopias in science fiction and became a librarian and got a lot of benefit telling me about the major points as a way to codify their own understanding. It has been requested that if they ever display a desire to go for their PHD that I should smack them… But I secretly hope they do.

I love Dune particularly as an example because it’s got a lot all of these weird neat sticky points that intersect with the field of indigenous philosophy and unpacking colonialism which has become a personal interest. I would shake your hand if I could button masher. This has been a good time!

I usually go for processesing them into kibble route while the non-cannabal friendly colonists take a walk to the next colony over. If you cross me then my ducks will feast on your pulped and dried flesh. Thems the rules.

I don’t really have the issue of using power over others. At some level Hierarchy is efficient which is why a lot of Democratic structures have in built heirachy to address speedy action…

But there’s more nuance in what’s going on in Dune. Fremen are kind of Bedouin / Islamic / Haudenosaunee confederation coded. On the one hand you have the tropes around the Confederacy, fierce warrior culture, connecting to the land, noble Democratic society and then you have the Islamic religious belief system represented in the cult of Paul basically becoming something analogous to the Prophet Muhammad. Both of the cultural trope bodies come from places that have dealt with Colonial occupation. There are aspects we are meant to see as noble and admirable. We see through Paul’s eyes as he witnesses injustices and gains an appreciation of the culture which adopts him. There is a long history in the west of Romantization of indigenous peoples. Benevolent racism is still racism though. We follow Paul so we see as he does but the narrative framework doesn’t always match what Paul does. His ability to understand the grand weight of his actions puts him beyond normal human senses of scope. When he behaves in ways based on personal sentimentality Prescience essentially pops up in the corner of the screen and says “The world will Remember this.”

The frame always pops back up to tell us that by sympathizing Paul is going to cause a massive war. He is the fulcrum which the universe balances on and it is his choice whether he causes a massacre of incredible proportions. He’s coded as morally principled- A good man maybe but also the narritive paints weak, unable and unwilling to stop the rising tide because his alliegences are ultimately to the indigenous peoples. He cannot get ahead of the war because the people beneath him of that indigenous culture will never be satisfied with peaceful emancipation but enact instead a holy war. Others must suffer for the Fremen of Dune to be self determining. The deaths of billions rests on the nessisary exploitation of Dune’s spice resources the same way the world relies on oil. The deaths of billions is always cast as the inevitable consequence which is the main problem I think.

Take this back to it’s roots and you see some of the regular pushback you see against civil rights movements. The idea that people fighting for rights or emancipation are instead just looking to turn around and subjugate others. That it must enevitably come down to a war where someone replaces the old form of subjugation with a new format. The jihad is this idea codified. Paul’s actions are often framed as ultimately bad in the story but he fills the role of the person both enchanted by and betrayed by romanitic exotisism.

The story seems to be of someone who sympathizes with indigenous plight but also legitimizes the need for it. Paul is a tragic figure because he is given no third option. The story isn’t interested in exploring any positive potential outcomes. It’s a seesaw where the pain always lands on someone not in reasonable concessions but all or nothing battles. This is where the idea of Dune being an anti-colonization narrative starts to get very shakey.

I don’t know if this was a struggle internal to the author that he was working through in real time as he wrote it, , if we are supposed to see the points of both Paul and the Framework as legitimate or if we are ultimately supposed to conclude that Paul was ultimately misguided… Of those two options both are problematic in multiple ways. In the Framework and Paul are right model you have essentially “what’s done is done” Colonial apologism. If Paul is ultimately supposed to misguided by sentiment that’s basically the plot saying “Do not sympathize it will only lead to the bad stuff happening”. The Fremen can never be stopped from worshipping Paul as saviour and moral guide and the resulting massacre is his reward.

This narrative ignores the idea there are a range of different potential options to deconstructed colonization which are based on different peaceful reconciliation measures that are admittedly less narratively interesting than a winner takes all war. These are based on the appeals to seeing pluralist takes where compromise and actual respect is the work of non-romantic empathy. Different places are currently handling it differently…but that’s not really what Dune seems to consider. It’s structured so that at all times you know as a reader for certain that Paul’s actions and particularly his bleeding heart sentiments will cause death on a scale far beyond Arrakis. It seems mired with ruminations more in line with Utilitarian ethics trolley problem situations which paints Paul as an ultimately divisive figure. The main issue is that it’s using themes of indigenous emancipation to ask these questions which have fairly direct and poorly concealed real world counterparts. Precience exists to force the framework as emancipation as only choosing who is ultimately the worthiest of violence or what is ultimately worth sacrificing because of personal sentimental attachments.

It is what the author wrote but it’s basically like saying Winnie the Pooh has themes of childhood innocence… Yes. It does, sure, but would you bother writing an essay on it? Deeper reads of the text give you a lot more subtext. Like for instance how the plight of the Fremen and the spice trades mirror the political situations in the Midde East, Atraidies and Harkonnen are rips of Greek and Finnish names with many of the main offworld characters having Biblical (Hebrew or Roman) names while Fremen are specifically sort of coded as Bedouin /Islamic Zen Buddhist mashups and sometimes they straight up speak Arabic. So the offworld Empire gets kind of “Western Civilization” coded and the desire for emancipation is taken over by an inevitable religious fanatism caused by essentially an offworld sympathizer who is the result of hundreds of years of Eugenics becoming a messiah figure basically being a better indigenous people then the indigenous people who are ultimately pawns in a female lead conspiracy that fucked up because of one woman’s choice to have actual reproductive autonomy…

Dune’s got a lot subtextually going on worth talking about but “Tough conditions tough people” isn’t what I find interesting about the story. I get that from a lot of places so it doesn’t feel particularly unique or special to the story.