#We read it critically to learn if we're doing it correctly

[caparrucia]

Full offense and pun fully intended, but I genuinely think the very existence of "dead dove, do not eat" was a fucking canary in the mines, and no one really paid attention.

Because the tag itself was created as a response to a fandom-wide tendency to disregard warnings and assume tagging was exaggerated. And then the same fucking idiots reading those tags describing things they found upsetting or disturbing or just not to their taste would STILL click into the stories and give the writer's grief about it.

And as a response writers began using the tag to signal "no, really, I MEAN the tags!"

But like.

If you really think about it, that's a solution to a different problem. The solution to "I know you tagged your story appropriately but I chose to disregard the tags and warnings by reading it anyway, even though I knew it would upset me, so now I'm upset and making it your problem" is frankly a block, a ban and wide-spread blacklisting. But fandom as a whole is fucking awful at handling bad faith, insidious arguments that appeal to community inclusion and weaponize the fact most people participating in fandom want to share the space with others, as opposed to hurting people.

So instead of upfront ridiculing this kind of maladaptive attempt to foster one's own emotional self-regulation onto random strangers on the internet, fandom compromised and came up with a redundant tag in a good faith attempt to address an imaginary nuance.

There is no nuance to this.

A writer's job is to tag their work correctly. It's not to tag it exhaustively. It's not even to tag it extensively. A writer's sole obligation, as far as AO3 and arguably fandom spaces are concerned, is to make damn sure that the tags they put on their story actually match whatever is going on in that story.

That's it.

That's all.

"But what if I don't want to read X?" Well, you don't read fic that's tagged X.

"But what if I read something that wasn't tagged X?" Well, that's very unfortunate for you, but if it is genuinely that upsetting, you have a responsibility to yourself to only browse things explicitly tagged to not include X.

"But that's not a lot of fic!" Hi, you must be new here, yes, welcome to fandom. Most of our spaces are built explicitly as a reaction to There's Not Enough Of The Thing I Want, both in canon and fandom.

"But there are things on the internet that I don't like!" Yeah, and they are also out there, offline. And, here's the thing, things existing even though we personally dislike or even hate or even flat out find offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable existing is the price we pay to secure our right to exist as individuals and creators, regardless of who finds US personally unpleasant, hateful or flat out offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable.

"But what about [illegal thing]?!" So the thing itself is illegal, because the thing itself has been deemed harmful. But your goddamn cop-poisoned authoritarian little heart needs to learn that sometimes things are illegal that aren't harmful, and defaulting to "but illegal!" is a surefire way to end up on the wrong side of the fascism pop quiz. You're not a figure of authority and the more you demand to control and exercise authority by command, rather than leadership, the less impressive you seem. You know how you make actual, genuine change in a community? You center harm and argue in good faith to find accommodations and spread awareness of real, actual problems.

But let's play your game. Let's pretend we're all brainwashed cop-abiding little cogs that do not own a single working brain cell to exercise critical thinking with. 99% of the time, when you cry about any given thing "being illegal!!!" you're correct only so far as the THING itself being illegal. The act or object is illegal. Depiction of it is not. You know why, dipshit? Because if depiction of the thing were illegal, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. You wouldn't be able to educate about it. You wouldn't be able to reexamine and discuss and understand the thing, how and why and where it happens and how to prevent it. And yeah, depiction being legal opens the door for people to make depictions that are in bad taste or probably not appropriate. Sure. But that's the price we pay, creating tools to demystify some of the most horrific things in the world and support the people who've survived them. The net good of those tools existing outweighs the harm of people misusing them.

"You're defending the indefensible!" No, you're clumsily stumbling into a conversation that's been going on for centuries, with your elementary school understanding of morality and your bone-deep police state rot filtering your perception of reality, and insisting you figured it out and everyone else at the table is an idiot for not agreeing with you. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and read a goddamn book.

#shut up rie

[altargarden]

hello! we hope this is ok to ask, it's totally fine if you don't answer- but we've recently become interested in satanism and demon work, but we know exactly nothing about it or where to start. we did some basic research with academic sources like wikipedia but have no idea where to go from there. we're hesitant to just dive in on our own because we know there are a lot of bad sources and groups to avoid but don't actually know what those things are.

anyways, we trust your opinion and recommendations so we wanted to ask if you had any suggestions on how to go about researching and learning about theistic satanism for an absolute beginner! recommended books or articles, groups to avoid, red flags, anything like that would be very appreciated 💚 thank you so much!

okay so, this may be a controversial opinion but in my opinion (KEY WORD OPINION) you actually shouldn't only stick to unproblematic and valid uwu authors, because i'll be honest (in terms of satanism and demonolatry), there ARE no pure and good authors out there. every author out there, especially if you're reading a text from a long time ago, is going to have something you disagree with. you need to practice some form of critical engagement, additionally, because engaging with a text critically and understanding why it is wrong is way more important than just shutting out the information altogether. you will not learn anything if you pretend that problematic texts do not exist. i'm not saying this to be harsh, but there is a reason we research a variety of texts and perspectives in high school english class. you need to continue that kind of method when researching anything.

now that is covered, i'll tell you what i have read personally. taking the above into consideration, there are no authors here that don't have something deeply wrong about their texts. i did read their works, and i came to my own conclusions on whether i'm going to dub them an authority on satanism, and i suggest you do the same. satanism is about knowledge and drawing your own, unique conclusions. just make sure what you do adopt doesn't throw any groups of people under the bus, because we're not here to read books and thoughtlessly believe whatever the book says, especially when the book can have misinformation, or offensive content. this is very common in satanism; as much as people love to treat it like it's revolutionary and all-accepting, it can be just as, or even more, discriminatory or outright hateful as christianity, especially in the texts.

the most easy-to-find material:

ars goetia > pretty basic info, but very handy and simple to read

the infernal gospel > probably my favourite book on this list

the complete book of demonolatry > i don't agree with the author, but i got this one in my early days before i knew anything about said author. it's got some useful information, but there's a lot of misinfo

book of the fallen > useful rituals if i remember correctly, i sold this book so i can't recheck

at satan's altar > also an interesting book

the goetia devils > has a lot of what i assume is upg... seems to conflict with what i've seen from other practitioners

the goetic hymns > second favourite book

the satanic philosopher > i found this one hard to read personally

esoterica > youtube channel with amazing information on demonolatry and its history, i suggest getting into this before doing anything else.

all of these websites.

and lastly, i also got like 50+ older texts i got as a bundle off etsy that i can't remember the names of. i wish i could give them to you, but i genuinely have lost every single text i got in the bundle due to me changing computers. i suggest looking on etsy for similar bundles on satanism and demonolatry if you want to get into the historical meat of things.

that being said, my actual last thing i want to say is not to get too entrenched into the theory. the texts are handy, sure! but the one thing i have found the most useful is by engaging with the community. most of my wealth of knowledge did NOT come from texts or media, it came from those around me talking about their experiences. if you want to learn, and i mean REALLY learn about demons and satan, get into the community hardcore and you will learn something new every day. talk to people, make friends, don't do this alone.

edit: okay one more thing. this does go against what i was saying to some degree but i do have a limit to that logic. avoid joy of satan. they're n/eonazis and come on this website regularly. avoid them, avoid them, avoid them.

#bun talks #theistic satanism #demonolatry #satanism #i wanted to write more but i'm admittedly on a time crunch :(

[rollercoasterwords]

i think a huge problem with the whole “fanfic doesn’t need to alone with your own moral code” argument is that people are using if to defend things like racism. and that i don’t get. sure everyone has different morals but hurting marginalized groups especially if you don’t belong to that group is objectively wrong. i think it goes past just morality

hey! i think i understand where you're coming from, and i talk in this post about my view on the best course of action if you are concerned that a fic is genuinely perpetuating harmful stereotypes or rhetoric. it is very late at night for me so i don't have time to write another entire essay, but just one thing i want to say before i lose the thought.

i tried to make it as clear as possible in my post that i think good art is a conversation. this means good art will sometimes engage with difficult topics in a way that may make you uncomfortable, and as long as it's properly tagged, it is up to you whether or not you read it. do i think people should put effort into researching and sensitively portraying topics that they have no personal experience with? absolutely. but because fanfiction is a hobby and is often not thoroughly edited and whatnot, people are inevitably going to fuck up. i think, because fanfiction is meant to be a community, it's important to go into it giving each other the benefit of the doubt and assuming that people are trying their best. for me, when i come across something that i find offensive or inaccurate, i typically assume the person is uneducated or has some internalized biases they need to work through, and not that they are actively trying to perpetuate harm.

however. that being said. what you're referring to is racism. with everything i just said in mind, i'm going to assume we are on the same page about what racism is here--which means actively feeding into a harmful stereotype or rhetoric, rather than just discussing racism within the context of the story in a way that may be triggering for some people on a personal level, but is properly tagged and warned so that each reader can make the best decision for themselves about whether they are in the right headspace to engage with heavy material (does that make sense? hopefully i am explaining that difference correctly.)

if we're talking about racism, in that context, then that falls outside the bounds of what i said in my previous post about morality and art. that is because racism, by definition, is doing the thing that i said bad art does--it is presenting a set of moral guidelines and telling you to accept them as truth. it is not a conversation; it is not inviting critical thought; it is pushing the narrative of white supremacy and expecting you to agree with it. racist art is bad art. full stop. and it is bad art because it is not a conversation, it is a fucked-up set of moral guidelines.

for me, personally, when i am evaluating like....the morality of a piece of media, what i come back to is the question of conversation. i am wary of any art that tries to sell me a narrative as absolute truth and expects me to swallow it. but i am open to engaging with topics that make me uncomfortable, as long as they are presenting those topics in a way that is clearly meant to make me think critically and ask questions and draw my own conclusions. when i say fanfic doesn't have to align with your moral code, i mean that i think it is okay and even healthy sometimes to read about characters who do and say and act in ways that are shitty, but that give us something to think critically about and reflect difficult realities in our own lives. i do not mean that fanfic should be like....imposing a shitty moral code on you, because i don't think any art should be doing that. but there is a difference between those two things, y’know? and it's important to learn how to suss out that difference and recognize it when we engage with any form of media.

#hopefully this is coherent #and clarifies what i mean about moral codes in my last post #it is. 1:21 am for me. so #also as usual these are my own personal thoughts and opinions #nobody has to agree w me #etc etc #i am only ever seeking conversation #not trying to start arguments or declare my perspective as Ultimate Truth #ranting and raving #ask

[oonajaeadira]

You make a really great point. Like for example, I specifically disclose its a female reader in most of my fics but provide no other physical disclosures. I absolutely try to make it inclusive, but almost none of us can say we never do those things. Especially with reader inserts, we typically imagine ourselves to varying degrees and so things slip in, like physical acts of running through your hair, or inferences to a reader who may not be thin, because accident or not, most of us will include descriptors beacuse its natural to do.

I don't subscribe to coming across reader attributes that arent matching to yourself and getting angry about it, beacuse most of them aren't done in malice or to be exclusionary. You are right that if you claim the reader has no descriptions then you should be more careful about how you write it, but when screw ups happen, people need to remember that we make mistakes and gently pointing it out so we can fix it and learn from it will ALWAYS be better then storming into the writers inbox with hateful rhetoric.

I think theres a tendancy to turn annoyance into outrage and claim that it comes from an negative place on the writers side when thats not true. We write readers to be inclusive, but if small mentions of things we may not even have noticed we wrote will upset someone so greatly, maybe they need to take some time away from reading fics and learn how to cope with that frustration, rather than taking it out on the writer. If I dont give any specifications about the reader one way or the other, it doesnt mean Im only targeting one type of person, it means I am trying to be as broad as possible and when there is a standout factor that matters more than others, I'll point it out beforehand (i.e female reader, plus size reader ect)

We as writers truly do our best to be inclusive but it will never be perfect, and I think the fandom needs to take a step back and rethink the tendancy to attack for small upsets to an aggressive degree as if they are ill intended. I just agreed with your take a lot beacuse sometimes writers in this fandom arent given the benefit of the doubt.

I agree with you. Nobody does this out of malice. And, *laughing at myself* I'm going to be honest here.

Sometimes I'm just frustrated because I have an instinct to reach out and help the author do better so their fic is better received.

In my day job, I assist new producers/writers/makers of theater. I help run an organization that helps put new work out into the public eye and we actually run marketing workshops. And one of the big things we teach new producers is how to correctly market their work.

If you promise something and don't deliver, or you pull a bait and switch, your audience may get upset because of that unmet expectation, and then you know what happens? Negative reviews.

The #1 way to please an audience (besides putting out stellar content), is to set up promises you can keep and fulfill any expectations you set before them.

So half of my frustration often sits not in that "hey, you offended me by not including me" it's in that "oof, this is bad practices for your art and you should not be setting up promises you can't keep" pet peeve of mine.

At the same time, as someone that's been making art for a long time, I still make the mistakes I warn new producers about. And as a fic writer I KNOW I've done these things. I am--as I believe everyone is from time to time--a raging hypocrite!

But. I think we're living in an age where any infraction is treated as a life-or-death situation and people can get really shouty about their criticisms. I understand that it's hard to see there's an individual behind the blog/counter/whatever and that emotions can us all feel like shouting at one person means everyone who should hear it will hear it. No.

And by that same token, it's easy to believe that everyone who comes to you with shouty, mean anons is attacking you and only you when in fact, they are just hurting and want someone to know it and fix it all.

That's why I wanted to clarify my post and say more here too. I think it's worth looking at myself and trying to see WHY I'm frustrated and where it comes from. And that any time I've been frustrated with an author that promises what they can't deliver, it's not a life and death situation. They're not doing it to personally offend me. They have learning and growing to do. I have learning and growing to do.

Gentleness is key. We should--as the post that's been circling lately says--approach every situation as if best intentions are meant. And be gentle with each other.

[techeest]

Plagiarism: Don't Get Caught Stealing Someone Else's Work!

In the vast world of information, originality can sometimes feel elusive. We're bombarded with content every day, and it's tempting to take inspiration – maybe a little too much inspiration – from the amazing things we see online and in libraries. But there's a fine line between borrowing ideas and outright theft, and that line is called plagiarism.

Unmasking plagiarism is crucial, not just to avoid academic or professional trouble, but also to cultivate your own voice and develop strong research and writing skills.  So, let's shed light on this sneaky culprit and ensure your work shines with authenticity.

What is Plagiarism, Really?

Plagiarism isn't just about copying someone else's work word-for-word. It encompasses a wider range of unethical practices, like:

Paraphrasing too closely:  Sure, you might rephrase a sentence or two, but if the core ideas and structure remain unoriginal, it's still plagiarism.

Failing to cite sources properly:  Even if you paraphrase or summarize someone else's work, you need to give them credit by citing them correctly.

Passing off someone else's ideas as your own:  This includes things like using statistics, data, or even creative concepts without proper attribution.

Why Should You Care About Unmasking Plagiarism?

Here is the Unmasking Plagiarism and it can be severe. In academic settings, it can lead to failing grades, disciplinary action, or even expulsion.  In the professional world, plagiarism can damage your reputation, cost you your job, and even result in legal trouble.

But beyond the consequences, avoiding plagiarism is about intellectual integrity. It's about respecting the work of others and developing your own critical thinking skills. When you learn to properly research, analyze information, and express your own ideas, you become a stronger writer and a more informed individual.

Unmasking the Plagiarism Monster: How to Stay Original

Here are some tips to help you steer clear of plagiarism and write with confidence:

Develop strong research skills: Learn how to find credible sources and take effective notes.

Understand proper citation styles: Whether you use APA, MLA, or another style, familiarize yourself with the rules for citing sources.

Paraphrase effectively: When you do paraphrase, make sure you're truly rephrasing the ideas in your own words, not just rearranging a few sentences. 

Use quotation marks for direct quotes:  Always enclose any text you take directly from another source within quotation marks.

Develop your own voice:  Read widely, but don't be afraid to let your own ideas and writing style shine through. 

Use plagiarism checkers as a tool, not a crutch:  While plagiarism checkers can be helpful in identifying potential issues, they shouldn't replace your own critical thinking and research skills.

By understanding plagiarism and taking steps to avoid it, you'll be well on your way to becoming a responsible and original writer. Remember, the best way to unmask plagiarism is to be proactive –  cultivate your research skills, cite your sources meticulously, and let your own voice ring true!

#Plagiarism

[liviavanrouge]

Jasper Birthday Bash

Aura: Happy Birthday, Jasper

Jasper: *Grins and pops his head off, holding it out to her* Why thank you, Aura!

Aura: *Giggles*

Jasper: *Pops his head back on, smiling*

Aura: Seems like you're having a good time!

Jasper: Of course, my friends put their back into the decorations and everything! Back in Halloween Town we would have the biggest birthday bashes ever!

Jasper: All my friends and family would be there! The mayor would come congratulate me himself, residents from the nearby towns would get word and send happy birthday cards and gifts

Jasper: *Laughs, placing a hand on his chest* It was quite the party, mountains of food, gifts and more

Jasper: Fun games for both the adults, teens, tweens and kids! My parents always have everything prepared~

Aura: That's amazing, sounds like quite the party

Jasper: Yep! I remember one time that the mayor of Winter Town came to give his sincerest birthday wishes, I was only eight at that time!

Jasper: Gave me this huge present, there was a scarecrow doll inside, I still have it to this day

Aura: That's cute~

Jasper: *Chuckles embarrassed* I guess so, I named him Jackster, and the mayor of Winter Town sometimes teases me about it through letters since I cannot sleep without it for the life of me

Jasper: I'm proud to have Jackster with me, even though others might criticize me about it. It's none of their business, it's mine so they can bud out and go about their day

~~~~

Part 2

Aura: How do you spend your days outside of club and classes?

Jasper: I take a leisurely walk through the orchard but only when it's growing dark, I like how things look at night it's calm and comforting

Jasper: Sometimes I run into Malleus and we take a stroll together talking about our respective things. I'm quite interested in gargoyles thanks to him

Jasper: That's actually why I'm apart of his club, who knew gargoyles could be such an interesting topic to discuss with others, we're going to make some next meeting

Jasper: That reminds me, I got a book on gargoyles from Malleus, I've been reading it every single day, I even ordered other copies with the allowance my parents send me

Aura: You must have a big allowance

Jasper: A huge one, my family runs a Scare Factory, where we create Halloween stuff and all that, my elder brother, Casper, will be taking over one day

Jasper: I even suggested making scary looking gargoyles and you know what? He liked the idea! Everyone did, we even had a three hour call with Malleus about it all

Jasper: *Chuckles, tapping his cheek with his thumb* We're all really excited to see what they're gonna look like when everything is finished!

Aura: That's adorable, I'm glad you two get along

Jasper: Me as well, he's a cool dude!

Aura: Haha...don't let Sebek hear you call him 'dude'

Jasper: *Chuckles*

~~~~

Part 3

Aura: So what's one thing you're good at? Or a hobby you have?

Jasper: Ah, I like to learn history from ghosts

Aura: *Stares in surprise* Excuse me?

Jasper: Hehe, I like talking to the third and learning history from them, did you know Halloween Town used to be called Halloween Kingdom

Jasper: A tyrant king ruled over it until his children ultimately decided to strike him down and rebuild everything from scratch thus creating Halloween Town in the process

Jasper: I was shocked to hear my hometown was a kingdom and not a town, but everything starts from somewhere you know

Aura: When did you start learning from the ghosts?

Jasper: If I remember correctly....I was five or six when I started learning from them, a ghost had told me a random fact out of the black and got me hooked on it

Jasper: *Places a hand on the top of his head* I remember always running outside and bothering the ghosts about the history of each place in Twisted Wonderland

Jasper: I asked about how blot came to exist, the fae and human war, Halloween Towns massacre-

Aura: Massacre!?

Jasper: Oh yeah, my ancestor went crazy once and went on a murder spree, but they were stopped

Aura: Oh dear...

Aura: Anything else?

Jasper: I'm good at mimicking peoples voices, I tend to do it whenever I don't wish to be found or talk to someone

Jasper: I use it mostly on Kalim and Bishop, because I really wish to avoid them. Livia as well, she's treasured greatly by Malleus and gets spoiled

Jasper: I don't wish to be on her bad side or anyone else's, that's why I mimick the voices of those they know and send them running away

Aura: Oh, alright, they'll be kinda hurt when they hear that you know

Jasper: I know,maybe one day we'll be chill but not right now, I can't handle shining bright people

Aura: I see

Aura: Well, the interview as reached it's end! Happy birthday again Jasper!

Jasper: *Pops his head off* Why thank you

Aura: *Laughs* You're silly!!

Jasper: I know~~

-----

Jasper: *Tosses his head up in the air, Vil looking shocked while the others laughed or smiled at how silly he was acting*

@anxious-twisted-vampire

#twst oc #disney twst #disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland #twst disney #twisted wonderland disney #twst #twst vignette #twst birthday #twst event #twst wonderland #twst ocs #twisted wonderland oc #twisted oc #twistedwonderland #twst jasper

[prismleadindia56]

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[yourjadedmuse]

♕ 01♢25♢2023 || 4.55pm

➶ We couldn't deny that some things have to end.

🪶 Today is a bittersweet farewell to one of our colleagues once yet. The first to leave this year and I wouldn't deny that I kinda feel a little bit regretful that I had to watch a comrade leave while also wanting him to stay when in fact I've been detached from this place already since a long ago. Regretful wasn't rly the right term for it, I think I have yet to find the right word but maybe it's a mixture of a little bit of sadness, excitement and joy, all at the same time. He was the best yet colleague that I've ever had who also is around our age bracket and the smartest person I have met at the same category so far. I did think the valedictorian of our high school years was the smartest person I've ever known since then but that is a whole another story left for maybe another time. I was sad that maybe this colleague could be such a good influence figure to whoever that would enter in our organization for I do well crave meeting someone who has such an intellect and capacity to do and understand so many things for such a young age and yet he has to leave today. Moreover, we did share a lot of well-meaning memories (no malice attached) even within the very short duration of time that we've been working together and sure, I did learn A LOT from this small yet terrible kid. It was the urge to know along and do along with someone so eager as him which pushed me to understand what we're doing in a deep-enough-sense and it was such a thrill to be hearing from someone who's as curious as him. I don't know abt others but I also have this undeniable sense of security whenever I'm with someone who's so intellectually capable for they have this type of judgment that assures me is coming from that feeling of compassion and understanding since a well-read, wise person is such a huge box of great ideas that helps him navigate correctly and sensibly enough in this world full of mad judgment and awful criticisms. I would be loving to hear a lot of good stuffs from his mind and it's kinda terrible that we only shared a short period of time to work on a certain project together. And while it may sound so fake since I also am planning to leave this place anyway, I do wanna emphasize that the company of great minds make me wanna stay in a certain position or place more than anything else and maybe this melancholy feeling is actually rooted from that and not directly from the fact that he's leaving. Such a wise person is so rare. Well I'm not losing hope to meet more people like him but I did wish I could have heard more surprising stuffs actually coming from someone so young who's supposed to be saying party and social stuffs more often than not as the usual status quo.

In spite that <regretful> feeling though, I'm still personally happy and excited for him on his travel on his new journey. That idea makes me excited to pursue what I want as well and do take the risk that lowkey scares me and disturbs my comfort zone at the same time. It's like the feeling of wanting to be so confident that I could go through what ever which adds fuel to my desire to take my own journey at the same time. And I don't know about that, to be honest. A part of me is telling me that this is the place where I'm supposed to exert my gift into but a part of me is also urging me to create a place where I can be free to just be. Perhaps the very restriction of staying in a place ruled by somebody else is that you gotta live accordingly and sure, it doesn't have to be so scary as it sounds or too demanding as it sounds but I do know to myself that I crave being myself somewhere I am not restricted to do anything. I can't be bending rules in somebody else's territory, I can't be doing things on my own will, especially for a long time in a place thriving in a very particular set of rules, I can't be living in a place where my creativity and freedom feel so restricted simply because several rules don't apply to my reasoning. And I can't be a rebel for so long, so to speak. I know deep down that I need to make a place for myself soon enough someday. I want to leave soon without feeling all these things; without having to tip toe on whether or not I'll be leaving several people in remorse, whether or not I'm doing the best or worst; I wish farewell, even though assumed to be unreal since a person's existence doesn't rly necessarily fade although physically invisible, doesn't have to have <melancholy> attached to it as well as all the mixture of negative feelings. Well, it can't be, no matter how we romanticize it or look at the positive side of things but I do wish it would make sense to anyone just as how I'm making sense to other people's farewell that them, leaving also sounds so exciting and thrilling for the idea of "risk" itself is so appealing as if we humans, can only take a few of it which we gotta make worthwhile forever.

☾ to be cont'd ▪

#random musing #daily journal #random though of the day #farewell #risking #to be yourself is a risk itself #tumblog

[fantasy-costco]

Bro dark academia is literally not that deep a bunch of people were like "old books and soft lighting and Oscar Wilde quotes are pretty let's look at those things to make us happy" and now a bunch of people are like that's classism? My man poor people can like argyle and brick buildings we all know that actual academia has major issues it's literally just an aesthetic relax

#Source im fucking poor dude I just like old books #Edit I think people also point out racism and sexism in classic lit as reasons why da is bad and if they don't they should #But like here's the thing #We aren't stupid. We know that writers from a hundred years ago were racist and sexist #Writers now are racist and sexist #We read it critically to learn if we're doing it correctly #Like if you're in to Da enough to be reading the books and shit you should also be reading critically #My favorite playwright is Oscar Wilde #I think the way he uses timing and dialog is excellent I think his humor is hilarious and I think I can try my best to use him to make #Myself a better writer #Was he antisemitic? Yes. He wasn't a nazi or anything but most people then were and he's no exception #NOT AN EXCUSE IT'S STILL BAD #I can say 'Oscar Wilde was a good playwright' and 'Oscar Wilde was not a good person' in the same breath that's not a contradiction #I'm reading critically. I'm understanding the things that were bad. I'm using his work to learn about his time #If we never look at works that aren't perfect art won't exist anymore #And if we don't understand that otherwise good seeming people can be hateful #That people can be complicated #That being gay or an artist or working on women's magazines doesn't stop someone from being antisemitic #Then we develop a black and white view of the world that let's evil take over because it's hiding itself #I got way off topic #Most folks with da blogs don't care this much they just like the brick buildings with gray filters and good for them they're fucking pretty

[nicanario]

this post is a product of its time

tw: discussion of racism, homophobia, misogyny and a short mention of sexual abuse.

ok, this is basically gonna be a very long rambling post about my not fully developed thoughts on the justification many people give to bigotry when talking about the past: "it was a product of its time"

it would be fair to say, with me being a raging SJW socialist scumbag, that I don't think this is a very good argument and is most of the time actually an excuse to not think about the problems inherent to our society, historical or not, and, by extension, the problems with ourselves. but I do think that sometimes, just sometimes, this can be a valid point, or at least one that raises some interesting questions.

I'm going to cite examples from several pieces of media, but fear not, I'll try to make this as accesible as I can.

so, let's take Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as our first case study. this show has, correctly, been called progressive by everyone except for clueless people who don't know much about Star Trek's history, Star Trek's crew, Star Trek's cast, or, frankly, Star Trek. because if you ignore the clear, sometimes in-your-face political history and present of the franchise, I don't think you know much about it at all. I do think you can call yourself a fan if you like it, you may have watched every single episode for all I know. but lots of mental gymnastics are needed to ignore the political progressiveness Star Trek has had since its very beginning.

episodes like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield are obviously anti-racist, at least in their intention. but the episode in question really is "a product of its time," and at the very end fails to uphold its ideals. the episode ends with the two aliens (who are LITERALLY. BLACK ON ONE SIDE. AND WHITE ON THE OTHER. BUT IN THE OPPOSITE SIDES.) fighting each other on their devastated planet, and the crew is like, "oh yeah if they both would give up on their hatred that they both share both of them equally" when it has been firmly established that one is the oppressor and the other one is the oppressed.

and that's a lot of Star Trek, not just TOS. even Discovery, one of the most recent series, has done Bury Your Gays (and Trans) TWICE (though both times literally rectified it, which is cool). there are episodes of the franchise that are overtly racist, or misogynistic, etc. TOS is lauded, mostly justifiably, as very progressive, especially for the standards of the time. they put a woman of colour as one of the senior staff, for fuck's sake. of course, when you analyse that same character, as with most of their intentions at being progressive, you'll see that she was relegated and sometimes even outright mistreated when she had the potential to be much more. but, at that time, it was a lot.

I had a friend (emphasis on "had") who, after I told him about TOS's both progressiveness and constant misogyny, told me something like "imagine feminists trying to complain about a show from the 60s." so, with unearned spite, he was, in some way, trying to make the argument that it was a product of its time.

you could say Star Trek, all of Star Trek, is "a product of its time" in the sense that it's not always perfect. uh, yes, I would agree. but that doesn't mean people have to accept it. well, I mean, the show is kinda over, you have to accept it's that way. but you don't have to accept that it's not wrong just because it was a product of its time.

H. P. Lovecraft, as another example, was a greatly influential writer whose works still shape a lot of people's ideas to this day. I have only ever read like one of his stories, so don't expect me to have an opinion on his works. but I can have an opinion on what I know about him as a person (he did have a life outside his writing, after all). and, yeah, he was a huge asshole. if you want to know more in depth about the subject, please watch Hbomberguy's video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u8wZ0WvxI

but basically, he was incredibly racist & homophobic. some people might even say, "he was a product of his time." well, there are two possible rebuttals to that. the surface level one, and the one that examines why that argument is wrong to the core.

The Surface Level Response to "it was a product of its time": um, no it wasn't. Lovecraft was more racist than a lot of people even in his time. he wasn't just a guy who carried the racist beliefs of his society like everyone else, he was a reactionary who actively thought and discussed how racist he was, and how right he was for being that way. but that's only applicable to Lovecraft. one can't argue the same for Star Trek: TOS, because TOS did try to be more progressive and more anti-racist than the rest of its society. that leads us to the next response.

The Response that Actually Deals with the Fact that No Matter How Progressive You're Trying to Be, Your Failings Can Still be Criticized: the thing is, trying to excuse Lovecraft's or Star Trek's bigotry because they were "products of their times" misses the fact that racism is still wrong, and some people knew that in those times as well. people from these times weren't all naive or stupid or whatever. they had the capacity for rational thinking. they could stop and think, "hey, maybe what we're doing is wrong." and the fact is, some people did. not perfectly, not to our standars, but they did. everyone could have stopped and think. but most of them didn't, and we can criticize them for it. racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. HURT PEOPLE. horribly. massively.

also, even if you agree with the "it's a product of its time" argument, some people aren't criticising people's or work's bigotry: they're explaining why they don't want to experience it.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a 1977 Doctor Who serial, and it's one of the show's more racist stories. almost all the villains are Chinese, every single Chinese person is a villain. there's yellowface, slurs, stereotypes, the Doctor speaking nonsense words instead of actual Chinese, and a general belittling of Chinese culture.

note that I'm neither Chinese nor of Chinese descent. I have been searching for hours for a few posts I've read a while ago (some by people who are of Asian descent) about this episode and I can't find them. sorry.

suffice it to say, even though I love Jago & Litefoot (the audio series and the characters), it's not an acceptable episode at all. but it's also important to remark that, because of it, some people aren't going to want to watch it. sometimes, people aren't saying "the episode shouldn't be this way," which causes others to answer that it was "a product of its time." sometimes, people are just saying, "this is an episode that attacks real people. I don't want to see it. I don't care if it was common in that era to be racist, i don't want to experience it."

however, there is an interesting point to the "it's a product of its time" argument. after all, everything is influenced by its society, for better or worse. and we can't change it anymore. TOS sometimes didn't quite understand the political themes it wanted to explore. Lovecraft was a horrible bigot. Talons was racist towards Chinese folks. and that's that. I don't think we should change the episodes/stories or anything. edit them in any way. that would be, in a sense, changing history. and we wouldn't learn anything from it, about how we can do better.

I think there are two solutions to this:

1. warnings before starting the text: this was done with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. on Britbox, where you can watch Classic Who, this serial has a content warning before the start. that's good.

2. the removal as a whole of the text from some places: I think before applying this one, there should be a lot of thought put into each case. I don't think removing a whole serial of Doctor Who or Lovecraft's stories from anything would be, well, fair. especially on tv episodes a lot more people worked on those, not just the writers and the directors. Lovecraft's writing influenced thousands. we shouldn't erase them or anything. but sometimes, for some cases, we should.

those in the US might seen a Confederate statue being taken down. that is, in a way, a form of removal of a piece of history.

but that is a good removal. statues glorify. one sees a statue and probably thinks "this was a person worthy of admiration." they should be taken down, maybe even with a permanent mark of why this was done (a plaque that reads "a statue of X was here, but he didn't deserve it because of Y" could be put in place of the statues, for example).

another example is the removal from DVDs of the short episode A Fix with Sontarans, a Sixth Doctor minisode that featured Jimmy Savile, a presenter who was later found out to be sexually abusing children.

the removal of that minisode is good, actually. it's not a full episode (it's not even Doctor Who). some might say that's "erasing history" but, like, you can still find it online or information about it if you want. this minisode deserves removal from DVDs and Blu-Rays and whatever more than content warnings. it's not an important part of the show and it prominently features a horrible person who did horrible things during that time.

so, after all that, I have explained why I don't like the "it's a product of its time" argument. it is an interesting point that deserves to be examined, but it's not very good.

I have had this in Drafts for so long I've probably forgot some of the points I was going to make, but eh, what can you do? hope you enjoyed reading this.

bye

#THIS POST IS A PRODUCT OF ITS TIME #IMAGINE FEMINISTS TRYING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT A POST FROM THE 2020S #THERE WAS A LOT OF MISOGINY BACK THEN #AND RACISM TOO #BUT THERE'S NO NEED TO THINK ABOUT ANY OF THAT ANYMORE #GO BACK TO SLEEP #CLOSE YOUR EYES #star trek #star trek tos #tos #the original series #star trek the original series #Let That Be Your Last Battlefield #lovecraft #hp lovecraft #h p lovecraft #doctor who #classic doctor who #classic who #fourth doctor #4th doctor #4 #four #the talons of weng-chiang #talons of weng-chiang #jago #litefoot #jago and litefoot #jago & litefoot #a fix with sontarans

[monkey-d-evy]

Theory / Thought: One Piece No 2 Luffy, the man who dreams of turning the world upside down.

⚠ Attention ❗Spoiler for Chapter 1000 and previous ⚠

So, in Chapter 1000 Ace told Yamato off screen what Luffy's dream is and asks him not to laugh about it, even though he and Sabo laughed about it when they were children. I didn't even notice it at first, but after reading it for the third / fourth time I noticed something about Yamato's answer.

Yamato tearfully replies that he would never make fun of it because the Pirate King had said exactly the same thing. So in this case it cannot be his dream of becoming the pirate king, because there is no way that Roger would ever have dreamed of holding this title. Roger never persued it, he was named that by Morgans (the newspaper) after doing what he did. I will not go into any further detail about this but...

Holy shit! We're not talking about Luffy's dream of becoming the pirate king!!

And then it hit me like Luffy's elephant gun, it might be his dream to "turn the world upside down". If I remember correctly, that was what he said to Rayleigh, when they said goodbye on Sabaody after the timeskip. And from Rayleigh's flashback we know that it was Roger's dream aswell (what Yamato might have known about), which he uttered when he met Rayleigh for the first time. Luffy probably put it into concrete terms to Ace and Sabo and they laughed. After all, they were just kids...

But what could be meant by turning the world upside down? Well, very likely to fight the injustice between the rich and the poor or to overthrow the ailing system with the tenryuubito and the nobility. I know, I know, this sounds too much like Dragon, although the two are not particularly similar in personality, never met and taken independent paths. Luffy is still a D and therefore "a natural enemy of the gods".

We must not forget that Luffy has a better understanding of the world than one might think at first glance. In Dressrosa he also remembered Goa and was able to draw parallels, such as the throwaway-mentality, not only of everything that is against the system but also simply everything that does not contribute enough to it, illustrated by the toys or the gray terminal, that he has obviously known since childhood and it will be clear to him that it is a global problem, what we can clearly see in Wano, which also suffers hunger, poverty and disease because of its ruler.

But Evy, he only learns that by visiting these islands, you might say now., but I would say they are manifesting his dream of ending tyranny. Learning about the world is a process that most of us go through as we get older. For Luffy, this process began with the Gray terminal and the nobility of his homeland, about which he must have learned a lot from Ace, but also above all, from Sabo, who has detailed insight from his origins.

A particularly dramatic experience was the conflict between Ace and Dadan regarding Sabo's death or more precisely Sabo's murderer, which Luffy overheard. We remember, Ace wanted to take revenge on the world aristocrat, who did this to Sabo, but Dadan stopped him and said, "It was this kingdom that killed Sabo. It was the world itself." Since he was so young, Luffy has not only learned that Goa is just a miniature of what is wrong in the world, but also who is the real enemy of the freedom that he not only wants for himself but for all people. And here we are again at Yamato and it becomes so clear why that moved him to tears, because he himself longs for this freedom and sees what Ace saw, Luffy as the man who is ready to fight for the freedom of all.

So why should he laugh at the man who dreams of turning the world upside down.

__________________________________________________

But that was just a thought I had. I hope I could explain what I mean, unfortunately, English is not my native language. Feel free to leave your thoughts on this in the comments below, I'd love to discuss this with you guys! Please remain factual and friendly even if you disagree. I am also very interested in constructive criticism if you find linguistic errors or have improvements in my writing style.

#one piece #luffy #kaido #op wano #opinion #straw hat pirates #thoughts #straw hats #wano kuni #straw hat luffy #fire fist ace #portgas d. ace #chief of staff sabo #monkey d dragon #monkey d. luffy #tenryuubito #yamato #dadan #dadan family #sabo #dressrosa #gold roger #gol d. roger #dream #freedom #goa kingdom #goa

[lascivo-derrame]

why do you consider yourself an atheist? do you really believe human consciousness is something that arose naturally? you don't believe a single thing on earth is too good or too bad or too strange to not be of divine origin? you think we're made out of cells which are made from molecules which are made from atoms? you think there are millions of planets and stars out there, infinitely? how could have simple chemicals have aligned so perfectly to create this very moment? how can something as great and vast as the universe exist without divine interference? what is it that makes you say "god does not exist" rather than "we can never know for sure whether god exists or not"?

1. Why would you assume I'm an atheist? Do you even know what does being an atheist means? It seems to me as crystal clear that you people should read some Wittgenstein, Saussure or Derrida idk just citing out of my head. In doing so you would understand that concepts are not individual entities whose meaning arise out and by themselves. Words are signs of meaning. And the meaning of a sign (a word or a concept wtv) is achieved by putting it him into relation with other signs by which he gains his meaning and offer possibilities of meaning to the signs he was once put into consideration. Language is a game of social and historical references. Language is a complex tree of signifiers and signifies and its imprudent to call someone an atheist just because I ve manifested my opposition to the influence religions had, have and aim to achieve in society. THAT SAID, NO I DON'T CONSIDER MYSELF AN ATHEIST. An atheist is someone who REFUSES THE EXISTENCE OR POSSIBILITY OF EXISTENCE OF DEITES. I DON'T. I DO NOT DISCARD THE POSSIBILITY OF THEIR EXISTENCE!!!! I can't say they exist as well as I can't say they do not. But what I can say is given the fact that we are unable to answer that, people can't impose their unsustained belief in world matters. Simple. Ffs. Let's follow.

2. Once again we fail to understand that knowledge is limited by our own biology and that's Allright. It does not mean that there s some superior creature out there that input it into you. Why would he do so? Why would he then feel the need to write to us (conscious beings made by himself) to lectures on what we are doing wrong or what we should be doing like wtf?! He would give us a conscious only aware of him and his truth. Why then do we even question his existence? The fact that you can't provide an answer to the origin of consciousness is more of a problem that arises from within you and precisely by that can't be solved. The mechanisms you use to comprehend things lie inside the thing you re trying to explain. Makes sense or not? You don't even know what conscious is. What does conscious means? We are unable to formulate the problem because we re trying to explain something which is paradoxically within you (the experiment of it) and beyond you (the way to correctly express it). No clear answer to that but a lot of appealing improvements on the question. See Penrose or Bennet about it.

3. This one I'm not even answering lol. If it s too bad it can't certainly be of divine origin ahahah like what the fuck you saying? There are marvelous things and enigmatic yes I conceed that and that's all. Nothing to do with the divine.

4,5,6. Ok now it's getting easier to answer. I don't think lol. WE ALL KNOW OR SHOULD KNOW THAT WE ARE MADE OUT OF CELLS and so on. Cmon bruh! They were even discovered by a Christian monk ffs. It is the basic structure of life and all the experiments realized proved it an indisputable truth. Yes atoms and molecules too. Idk if you type this questions on a smartphone or laptop or wtv but i can assure you that they are the combinations of units of matter present in Medvedev s periodic table. DAMN! you learn this shit in school and I should not even be extending myself about this. It was all scientifically proved. Millions of planets in our galaxy no. But there are other galaxies already discovered such as Andromeda which make pretty reasonable the existence other planets yes. As for the stars they already exist in that number in our own solar system.

7,8. Not losing time with these ones. The first has been answered before and you just have to educate yourself a little (a basic Google research) to understand how quantum physics works. The second is just a product of your biased, blind belief. If you want to belive it is a work of divine intervention fine just don't expect the community of Reason to allign with such a lunatic view of reality. And above all don't try to impose those supra natural hallucinations in a evidence governed society.

9. I ve answered in the first point. We will never know of his existence. Both views reject themselves as none of them can prove a direct link to his manifestation. What matters here is to live in accordance to what we know, pursue subjects of interest and promote a critical spirit to attain "new" truths. One thing is for certain, believing in a God does not give anyone the legitimacy to kill people, conquest territories or disturb the actual state of affairs sustained by the principles of scientific knowledge. As Wittgenstein would put it, religion is of course a very important and curious matter but as it cannot be disputed or even logically talked about its meaningless. By other words it must not interfere in worldly affairs.

Done! don't bother me again with questions like this. I think I ve made my point pretty clear.

#fuck religion

[ambulanceperson]

Long but worth the read. From SARmed on Facebook:

The Trauma Blanket.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same.

It's an old saying that holds a lot of weight in every aspect of life. It holds particular weight when it comes to trauma management.

A lot of things have changed since I first took a first aid course. A lot of things. But when you boil it all down to what works, a lot of things have also stayed the same, except for us. How many of us have taken the best of what we learned back then and incorporated it in our every day practice?

Be honest with yourself.

I remember one of the most important things in every first aid kit used to be a blanket to keep the patient warm. Eventually as I got more education and increased my scope of practice, those blankets became something very different in most of our eyes.

In fact with many of us, those blankets became a little bit of a joke. A sign of the limitations of those with a more limited scope of practice.

But the irony is, those trauma blankets should actually signify many of the things you should be doing in your practice to manage the critically injured patients. Every patient really.

These days we can use vacuum spine boards, pelvic binders, IV's, TXA, chest decompression, intubation, surgical airways, meds... the list goes on.

But if we're not managing hypothermia well.....well, there's a reason they call it the Trauma Triad of Death(every time I say that I hear "DUN DUN DUN").

Coagulopathy, acidosis, and hypothermia. Intertwined and each potentially deadly on their own. But combined together in a case of trauma, they're lethal.

The Trauma Triad of Death is a leading cause of death in trauma. And we're terrible at treating it.

I'll take you back a bunch of years to a shooting.

25 year old male, multiple GSW's to the chest from a long rifle. If I remember correctly he had 7 entry wounds and 6 exits. He was alive and panicked. He knew what was coming but we gave him everything we could. For better or for worse.

It was dark, raining, and barely above freezing. We cut his clothes off to assess his injuries, applied dressings to the entry and exit wounds, slid a board under him and moved. In transport, we kept him supine and kept him stripped to reassess the wounds, decompressed both sides of his chest, started a couple of 14g IV's and ran normal saline wide open. Then we followed up with morphine to control his obvious pain.

When he arrested, we rushed to start CPR and intubate him. But he didn't survive the trip to the hospital. His wounds were too severe.

But did we really give him everything we could? In hindsight, maybe not. We gave him the best of what we thought we knew at the time, but if I were to do that call again today, man, I would sure do things differently.

Let's take a look at everything we did for him back then and think about what we know now.

We stripped him down in a cold, wet environment to assess his injuries. Put him on a cold board, decompressed both sides of his chest and then started big IV's and bolused him with saline. Then we followed it up with good old Morphine.

The classic trauma strip is a double edged sword. Let's face it, we've discovered a huge amount of injuries that would have been missed without a trauma strip. But is it best practise to leave the patient stripped, uninsulated and cold? Radiation and convection (lets be honest we probably turned the air conditioning on in the ambulance because we were working hard) are both at play now, further cooling this patient and making sure the trauma triad has a better chance to work.

Your interventions these days should include updated hemorrhage control techniques, especially for extremity hemorrhage. If direct pressure doesn’t control the hemorrhage, go straight to tourniquets. The sooner the better. Early tourniquet application saves lives. Late application is a missed opportunity to intervene and perhaps save a life. High and tight are the general rules, but lets just make it “high, tight and early”.

Wound packing and hemostatic agents absolutely have earned their place too. Don’t be afraid to control hemorrhage aggressively. If you’re loading into a helicopter, or any transport modality that causes vibration, you need to step up your hemorrhage control to the next level or you’ll find your patient bleeding out. Vibration further inhibits the clotting cascade and will increase hemorrhage.

That cold board falls into the triad also. The spine board or clamshell has been stored in an unheated compartment and now it's pretty much a superconductor, stealing heat away from the patients core to ensure that the board warms up instead of the patient.

Next is our aggressive IV therapy. Two large bore IV's and crack em wide open! Well, I still like the large bore IV's (thanks to Freddy Siegers), but now, I'm sure careful with my "fluid resuscitation".

If you look at the IV fluid warmer in a hospital, you'll notice that the temp is between 38-42c. It's that temp for a reason. Bluntly put, if your IV fluid temps aren't maintained at those temps, you are making your patient hypothermic. Let me say that again. You are making the patient hypothermic.

Average IV fluid temps in an ambulance sit between 17-20c... Let that sink in for a bit. Less than half the correct temperature for safe fluid administration.

And don't get me started about failing clotting factors secondary to hypothermia, interruption of clotting factors secondary to fluid boluses, and hemodilution.

Then morphine comes up. Morphine does a few things. One good, a couple bad.

Pain control is actually extremely important to my practice. The saying "nobody ever died from pain" is a brutal, terrible phrase.

Shred the mountain doctor sure drilled it into me that treating pain should be part of our practice and it's stuck with me. Thanks Shred. You made me a better practitioner, and a better person.

I'd want some pain control if it were me. I can tough it up with the best of them, but please treat my pain. There's enough literature out there showing that pain control reduces PTSD that it's prudent to still treat a patients pain.

But know your pharmacology inside and out. One of the quirks about morphine is the effect it has on the patients ability to shiver. Adminster morphine for pain control and you will inhibit the patients ability to increase their body temperature with shivering. And if you're administering entonox.... cold gas....cold gas=cold patient....

It will also blunt sympathetic tone, thereby reducing the ability to maintain blood pressure through an increased heart rate. This will exacerbate hypotension and further complicate the course of treatment.

If you have other pharmacological choices, maybe morphine isn’t the best option anymore....

Let's fast forward to today. What would I do differently?

First off the trauma strip is now focused. Get the critical interventions done as fast as possible, get into a microclimate (bothy bag)or the back of the ambulance and then finish the trauma strip in a warm environment, then cover them back up as soon as possible.

If you have a heating device, or ReadyHeat blankets or vests, using them can mean the difference between life and death. Warm the core, front AND back. Forget the groin and focus on the fastest path to the core organs. Warming the back is absolutely the fastest approach to warming the core.

If you're using a board, clamshell or scoop still, get them off it as soon as possible and get them on a stretcher mattress (depending on your treatment guidelines). I'm a big vacuum spine board guy and it's clear that the proper use of a blanket and VSB will increase patient temps, but if I'm working for an employer that doesn't use VSB, I'll store the board or clamshell in as warm a place as possible to limit conductive heat loss.

If you're in an austere setting and don't have a VSB, board or stretcher, get the patient off the ground and onto an insulating layer like a foam pad or thermarest.

Bind pelvises prophylactically if there is mechanism to suggest a pelvic injury. Don't make your decision based on palpation. You could iatrogenically worsen pelvic hemorrhage. Bind the pelvis based on mechanism.

I'll still start large bore IV's but I'll definitely limit fluid resuscitation. Especially in freezing environments. The risks far outweigh the benefits. Far outweigh. Titrate fluid resuscitation to achieve a palpable radial pulse as per permissive hypotension guidelines.

And be early and aggressive with TXA . For every 15 minutes you delay TXA administration, efficacy drops by 10%. We all know you need to administer it within 3 hours of injury, but how many of us are aware of that time related drop in efficacy? Get on it and get on it early.

Pain meds? Oh I'll still give them. Without a doubt I'll still treat a patients pain. We're supposed to be in the business of treating patients and making them feel better. But I'll be mindful of not blunting sympathetic tone, and I'll up my hypothermia management game.

At the end of the day, aside from transport to a surgeon (a diesel or Jet A bolus), perhaps the most important thing we can give a patient is the very thing we've joked about and looked down on all these years.

That Trauma Blanket....

#ems #emslife #emt #emtlife #emergency medicine #ambulance #paramedic #medic #medblr #emergency #code green campaign #emergency medical technician #code green #emergency medical services #911 #emsblog #medicine #first responders #ambulance driver #codegreencampaign #emergency services #not just an ambulance driver #hospital #emergency room #flight ambulance #savingpublicsafety #trauma center #firefighter #combat medicine #medical

[expfcultragreen]

I havent lately met a cis person who says this, but i suspect that its obvious that whats meant by whatever variation of "its trans-inclusive" is said is, "i don't just fancy men and women, but everyone including people who arent men or women" and binary trans people find this very offensive because they feel like they're being told that all trans people are some other thing and they individually and specifically are having their binary transgender identity actively erased or redefined

And I think that that's where the push back to say that pan identity is biphobic comes from it comes from trans people who don't want to be told that they are not men or women but some other thing that all trans people are

Binary trans people tend to really dislike non-binary trans people, along sort of similar grounds as why cis people don't like binary trans people; we raised all sorts of questions about identity and identification. questions some people find existentially unsettling, even dangerous. Personally dangerous.

Being bisexual is for liking men and women and being pansexual is for liking everyone including non-binary trans people

That's literally what the words mean

This is a conflict about whether whats relevant is [people misusing the word pansexual to enshrine the ideological separation of trans men from cis men and trans women from cis women] or [people correctly using the word pansexual effectively dismantles the patriarchal capitalist ideological construction of a gender binary--the binary being a construction that marginalizes and erases all of the people who don't live within that system--regardless of how ooky and cringy the people who do fit the binary might find that]

And I feel like we're arguing across decades at one another

But that's because the social spheres surrounding the people making the arguments manifest different eras of thought and language use so we can simultaneously be correct about our own situated points which is what makes the whole thing really fascinating and sometimes fraught

Because someone can be [speaking completely honestly from their personal experience of dealing with the transphobia of people who use certain categorizations to undermine certain trans people] while simultaneously [looking like an agent provocateur dead set on undermining non-binary people and erasing all words that pertain to us from public discourse]

Because this image very specifically doesn't say the word pan has a place within the discourse it says stop using it because bisexual is the right word, and I have to do a lot of kind interpretation and guesswork to see it as anything other than, how shall we say, non-binaryphobic

And because I don't like to do kind interpretation and guesswork but prefer to stick to text, my tendency is to see this stuff as an altright psyop that a lot of young dumb people on tumblr bought into; a lot of people are now concerned that they will face criticism for identifying as pan because they've read something reblogged by a binary trans person saying that identifying as pan is biphobic and transphobic and unwanted by the community in general.

Learning to speak our language so we will listen is not particularly difficult because we have our conversations in public

All of this stuff is about the shifting of the conversation; the thinnest edge of the margin can be sliced off for entertainment purposes (look how we turn on one another, how easy it is to confuse us) and from there they work inwards along each skin of the onion until they've destroyed everything that the Nazi world hates

[cladeymoore]

How we're scaling our platform for spikes in customer demand

How we’re scaling our platform for spikes in customer demand

In 2017, the world saw an explosion in the popularity of cryptocurrency, and the ecosystem’s total market cap jumped from $20 billion to $600 billion. During this time, almost every component of Coinbase’s technology was battle-tested, and it showed our team that we need to focus on the reliability and scalability of our platform, just like we do with security. At MongoDB World 2018, myself, Michael de Hoog, and Jordan Sitkin, all engineers at Coinbase, gave a talk about the lessons we learned in 2017 and how we’re scaling our platform now. You can watch the talk here or read our recap below.

Lessons learned from 2017

Our traffic patterns in 2016, the year before the explosion in cryptocurrency popularity, had been remarkably consistent. Ahead of this boom, if we had drawn a red line where we expected our platform to experience issues, we would have put it somewhere around four or five times our typical daily maximum traffic of about 100,000 backend API requests per minute.

Here’s a quick look at backend requests per minute in 2016 before the price of ether skyrocketed.

However, in May and June of 2017, the price of ether skyrocketed and traffic exploded past that red line. There were several days during this period where we experienced sustained traffic in this red zone, during which we experienced periods of downtime.

During the early heavy traffic period in 2017, here’s what backend requests per minute looked like.

To solve these scalability issues fast, the Coinbase engineering team started by focusing on the low-hanging fruit in our environment. We worked around the clock to perform tasks like vertically scaling, upgrading database versions to take advantage of performance improvements, optimizing indexes, and splitting out hotspot collections into their own clusters. Each of these improvements bought us headroom, but these low-hanging fruit were beginning to dry up, and traffic was continuing to climb.

During each outage, the pattern was the same: our primary monitoring platform would show a 100x spike in latency, along with a strange 50/50 split between Ruby and MongoDB time. As our primary datastore, it made sense that MongoDB time would experience this high-latency during periods of heavy traffic, but the Ruby time wasn’t adding up.

In earlier monitoring systems, this is how “the Ghost” appeared.

We affectionately began to refer to this issue as “the Ghost,” as our existing monitoring tools were unable to provide clear answers to some of our most critical questions. Where were these queries coming from? What did they look like? Why was there a correlated spike in Ruby time? Could the issue be originating on the application side?

Simply put, our existing monitoring services were not able to utilize all of the context available to us inside our environment. We needed a framework for answering and visualizing the relationships between our environment’s components.

We began to further instrument database queries by modifying MongoDB’s database driver to log all queries above a certain response time threshold, along with important context like the request/response size, response time, source line of code, and query shape.

Here’s a glance at the important context to be logged on all slow MongoDB queries.

Our improved instrumentation provided us detailed data that allowed us to quickly narrow in on some strange characteristics that were present, even during non-outage situations. The first major outlier we saw was an extremely large response size object originating from a device find query. These massive queries would result in a massive network load when our users would sign in to make purchases or view the dashboard.

The reason for this extremely large response size was that we had modeled the relationship between the users and device classes as a many-to-many relationship. For example, some users might have multiple devices, while some devices may have multiple users. A poor device fingerprinting algorithm had bucketed a huge number of users into the same device, resulting in a single device object with a massive array of user_ids.

To solve the issue, we refactored this relationship to simply be a one-to-many relationship, where each device maps to just a single user. The performance impact was dramatic and gave Coinbase its single biggest performance boost in 2017.

This finding illustrated the power of good monitoring. Before granularly instrumenting our database queries, this was a near-impossible issue to debug. With the new tools, it was now obvious.

Another issue we set out to solve was large read throughput on certain collections. We decided to add a query-caching layer that would cache query results in Memcached. Any single document queries on certain collections would first query the cache before querying the database, and any database writes would also invalidate the cache.

We were able to roll out this change across a number of database clusters simultaneously. The query cache was written at the ORM and driver level, which allowed us to affect multiple problematic clusters at once.

As it turns out, the massive surge in traffic we experienced in May and June was nothing compared to the surge we experienced just a few months later in December and January. With the help of these fixes and others, we were able to withstand even larger surges in traffic.

The spike from early 2017 is just a blip compared to December and January

Preparing for the future

Today we’re proactively working to make sure we’re prepared for the next surge in cryptocurrency interest. While it was easy to work on these improvements during the heat of a real firefight, we needed to find a way to improve our future performance, even during lower periods of traffic. The obvious answer is to load test our environment by emulating traffic patterns at several times the levels we experienced in the past to discover where our next weak point could originate.

Our chosen solution is to perform traffic capture and playback, specifically on our databases, to generate artificial “crypto mania” on demand. For us, this method is preferable to synthetic traffic generation, since it removes the requirement to keep synthetic scripts up to date. Every time we run the suite, we’ll be sure the queries map exactly the type of traffic our application is producing, based on our captured data.

To do this, we built a tool called Capture, which wraps an existing tool called mongoreplay. After choosing a specific cluster in our environment, Capture simultaneously kicks off a disk snapshot and begins to capture raw traffic on our application servers directed to that cluster. It then saves encrypted versions of these captures to S3 playback at a later time. When we’re ready to perform the playback, another tool called Cannon, based on mongoreplay, plays back the recorded traffic to a freshly launched cluster based on the previous cluster snapshot.

One challenge we faced is how to capture all of the MongoDB traffic for a single cluster across several application servers simultaneously. Cannon solves this by opening a 10MB buffer from each capture to simultaneously merge and filter the captures.

The final result is one merged capture file which can then be targeted by Cannon toward a freshly launched MongoDB cluster. Cannon allows you to choose exactly the speed to replay the capture in order to simulate loads thousands of times larger than what we may be experiencing on any given day.

We’re just getting started with Capture and Cannon and are excited to see the types of discoveries we find as we perform these types of load tests on all of our MongoDB clusters.

One major discovery as a result of our work with Capture and Cannon comes from one of Cannon’s debug features. Cannon has the ability to inspect a specific capture file and see the first 100 messages in it. Upon inspection, we noticed something interesting:

Notice the ping commands intermingled with the finds? Turns out that the MongoDB Ruby driver was not correctly following the MongoDB driver spec and was performing a ping command (to check replica set state) alongside each query to the database. While this behavior was unlikely to have been causing our downtime related issues, it was almost certainly the cause of the “ghost-like” behavior we observed in our monitoring.

After all the effort put into tackling these challenges, we’re proud of the current state of reliability at Coinbase. The events of 2017 reaffirm that a customer’s ability to access and view their funds is critical to our ability to fulfill our goal to be the most trusted place to buy, sell, and manage cryptocurrency. While security has always been our number one priority, we’re excited to focus on ensuring that the reliability of our platform is a top priority too!

We’ve formed three separate performance and reliability specific teams to prepare for future waves of cryptocurrency enthusiasm. If you’re interested in these types of challenges, please visit our careers page!

Except where noted herein, the images displayed are from Coinbase.

How we're scaling our platform for spikes in customer demand was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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