erin

All the labels are made up, there are no rules, and you might identify with multiple categories. I use the labels bisexual, pansexual, and lesbian interchangeably, because they have different connotations and familiarity to most people. Need to communicate that I’m with a woman? A lesbian relationship. Want to make it clear that I’m attracted to all sorts of gender identities? Bisexual/pansexual, depending on who I’m talking to and what terms their familiar with/how specific I feel like being.

The labels don’t have hard and fast rules. I’m attracted to women, I’m gay, I’m lesbian, I’m non-binary, etc. It doesn’t matter. They all apply to me and can overlap to varying degrees. I know a trans guy that calls himself both a gay man and a lesbian. I know trans women that refer to themselves as twinks. Specificity and semantics aren’t as important as communicating what you intend to whoever you’re talking to.

Gender and sexuality aren’t hardwired rules, but influenced by our culture and environment. This is true for everyone. This isn’t to say that someone’s gender or sexuality isn’t intrinsic to that person, but how they think about those and present them are part of an ongoing performance for themselves and others. If you’re interested in learning more on the subject, I can recommend some excellent books on the subject, or feel free to ask followup questions here or in DMs.

Don’t use tipped services if you’re not going to tip. There are alternatives. You’re offloading your “political action” at the expense of the worker, while the owners won’t care. Support legislative change, don’t use your politics as an excuse to harm the workers of a service you chose to use.

Please, do not repeat this, because it’s terrible advice that causes people that otherwise could benefit greatly from antidepressants to avoid them completely. Don’t spread misinformation.

It’s true that antidepressants don’t make you happy, but they don’t categorically make you feel nothing. Every person works differently, and a drug that for some regulates emotion and prevents stress in others suppresses emotional extremes completely. For me, Lexapro made me feel nothing. For my mother, it made her feel normal again. I have a combination of drugs that make me feel normal, but for my wife, might make her feel awful. Antidepressants don’t “make you feel nothing.” Some might have that effect, but it’s the job of a psychiatrist to find the right blend for each person. It took a few tries to find mine. If your antidepressants make you feel nothing, you need different antidepressants.

Those are great questions to be asking. An artist may intend one thing, and the viewer gets another. That’s the nature of art. There is no objective right answer. I always ask myself, why did the artist make the choices they did? What is this painting trying to say by the choices in techniques and composition? Those might be hard questions to answer, depending on how much context you have, but thinking about them anyways is valuable.

Personally, I get what Pollock was going for, but it falls flat for me, whereas Rothko and others made that point more effectively. When I first view a Pollock, for example, I think, what is the subject of this painting? There is no obvious center of focus, and the play between positive and negative space is relatively even. Perhaps the subject is color, or contrast, or randomness, or even art itself. I consider each option. On first glance, I see randomness. I look closer, I see that there is intentionality, but the technique was simple (dripping). The artist is clearly capable of more advanced techniques (the background is evenly applied with precise brush strokes, and perhaps I’ve seen another painting of his that uses different techniques) but chose something simple instead. Why? Maybe to say art doesn’t need skill? Maybe to say that simplicity is beautiful?

There are no right answers, but by asking these questions I develop my critical thinking ability and understanding of art. You might ask these questions and still arrive at the answer, “I hate it, and it’s dumb.” That’s okay. It is still art, and art can mean different things to different people. It just wasn’t for you. Pollock isn’t for me, but I still gained something by thinking about the meaning and the purpose behind his paintings.

If you are interested in developing a greater appreciation, or at least understanding, of art, study the history. Even a cursory understanding of the social, political, and artistic movements of a time can tell you a lot about why an artist made the choices they did. Impressionism was a movement born out of an era of photorealism and perfect proportion. Pollock’s paintings came from an era of established subjects and rigid techniques. Regardless, you don’t need to know the history to think about art.

No, it’s a tort. A crime is a criminal offense. A tort is a civil offense. Both are illegal, meaning against the law, but whether that is civil or criminal law is the distinction.

You clearly didn’t read my whole comment. Your argument is the exact same that was made against Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc. It’s not about the artist. I didn’t say it was, and I don’t understand why you replied like I did. It’s about the meaning behind the art, the statement it is making. It has nothing to do with whatever influencer thing you’re talking about, and everything to do with what the art is saying.

By rejecting the traditional realism of their time, artists like Van Gogh and Monet made a statement that perfection and realism weren’t all there is to art, and that impressions of the subject can be beautiful. Artists like Rothko made the statement that the subject does not have to be literal, but can be the art itself. Cubism was all about this. Pollock is doing the exact same thing, but pushing it to an even more dramatic extreme.

IT ISN’T ABOUT THE ARTIST. Do me the basic respect of understanding this one part of my statement. It’s about art meaning something because of what techniques were used, how it is presented, when it is presented, and the context that inspired it.

What is on the page is important, but why it’s on the page and what message the art is conveying is equally so, and I’d argue much more. You continue to misinterpret this fact as not only less than quintessential to art, which any artist will tell you that it is, but insignificant and silly to consider.

Why? Why ignore the process? Why does the idea of thinking critically about what the art means and not just how the art looks make you uncomfortable? You don’t have to do anything, but trying to make an equivalence between someone taking actions in their field to challenge established ideas and someone who is only known as an artist due to unrelated atrocities is ridiculous. You’re making the exact same arguments that traditional painters made against impressionism, now widely recognized as masterful artworks (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc), which were similarly making statements about what could and could not be considered art. Just as with any of those other artists, you don’t have to like Pollock’s work, or agree with the statement he was making with it, but to act like it isn’t art, or that the things we’re saying with art don’t matter, would be pretentious.

I don’t like Pollock’s art. I don’t think the statement he was making was particularly revolutionary, and I think other artists he was contemporary with accomplished the same statement far better (Rothko). However, this “just focus on the paint on the canvas” thing is silly, and artists have widely rejected it. Art should mean something. It’s why human design and intent will always be worth more than AI’s best Monet facsimile.

Well, almost half of women that voted supported him! Guess we’ll just have to abandon the whole lot. Problem solved.

Hitler didn’t kill millions of people to make you think about his art. Pollock intentionally wanted to create art that makes people think about what counts as art. His methods certainly worked.

There are leftist and progressive streamers making a lot of money. I would guess that more than half of streamers are not conservatives. Most successful streamers are very supportive of progressive causes and inclusivity.

It’s simply unrealistic and excessive to expect people to stop using one of the most accessible services that comes built in to most phones, and has features that cannot easily be replaced. All my privacy and data options are restricted in maps, but I’m sure they still collect some data. I have no intent though to stop using a service that is incredibly important to organizing and planning my life (traffic, community driven reports of detours, construction, cops, etc, weather specific reroutes, fuel efficiency route selection) because someone online has absolutely unrealistic expectations of others’ data privacy. Navigating to someone in maps is not the same as uploading a picture of them. Google sees my location and my destinations already. All that changes when I turn on my location tracking is that so does my wife. Your argument doesn’t make sense and is unreasonable.

Are you seriously arguing that navigating to someone’s house with Google maps is violating their privacy? When I do share my location, I’m sharing through Google maps, directly to my wife’s Google account. Google can already see my location for maps purposes. They have obtained no new information. If you are in fact arguing that using Google maps violates the privacy of anyone you navigate to, then I just don’t agree and can’t take you seriously. If you’re arguing that somehow sharing my location to my wife’s account in Google maps is somehow fundamentally different for privacy than using Google maps is already, then I just don’t understand you. You’re okay with people using maps but not sharing their location within those maps apps. That’s a very confusing moral stance.

This has nothing to do with the tracking. You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone. Turning on GPS tracking for me and my wife has not given Google new data on our locations, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I’m violating someone else’s privacy by doing so. I’ve also opted out of any app using my location without my express permission. You certainly wouldn’t have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don’t trust the corporations on the other end, because you have no idea what service, what precautions they’ve taken, and if they’re actively sharing. If you were going to do so, then you should also inspect people’s phones for having location turned on, and check all their apps permissions for location.

Consensually choosing to share my location with my wife is not the same as not caring about my data being collected or sold. I don’t have any intention to break her trust, but that has nothing to do with why we share location. It’s all about safety and convenience. I know when she’s working late. She knows when I made it back to my car safely after a night out. I know when she’s on her way home, even when she forgets to text me, so I can start cooking. As two gay women in a conservative area, it just made sense.

My wife and I share our location. We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information. I think if this is demanded of someone unilaterally, it would be both a breach of privacy and trust, but it’s just so damn convenient for our lives and makes us both feel safer. If I’m out late in the city to see a friend, my wife can easily see that I’m safe making it to my car and driving home. If my wife is working late and forgets to text, I can easily check and know she’s still in the building. As two gay women, it was a no-brainer for us. I would never demand that of someone. It seems like a lot of people in the comments see sharing location as an intrinsically harmful or negative action, whereas it’s far more context and consent dependent for me. Hell, I even share my location with a friend for a few hours if I’m doing something sketchy.

Are you mad at fictional characters for their hypothetical hypocrisy lmao

I think it’s kinda weird to assume there are any intrinsic traits about large, diverse groups of people. There are so many Americans of so many diverse backgrounds, that I think any generalizations we can make are gonna be wildly off for a great many people. It’s certainly true that most Americans did not act to prevent the current administration. However, most Americans are completely uninformed, propagandized to daily, and held down systemically so they don’t focus on their oppressors. Blaming the people is easy. They should’ve prevented this. They shouldn’t have been complacent. It’s their fault for the radical individualism.

I see this happen constantly, whether it’s American, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Israeli, Palestinian, British, etc… people, being blamed for the evils, perceived or otherwise, of their government. Often, these people are only as complicit as an abuse victim is to the person that has controlled their life and worldview to suit their own needs. Their actions and beliefs may be malicious, they may be indifferent, or they may simply be ineffective, but they receive the blame that would be more accurately aimed at those controlling their sources of information and communities.

Blaming the system takes more effort. There has been a slow, insidious, and very intentional subversion of American and global politics for decades, and it’s handwaved away as conservative buffoonery and incompetence, which while present, is a very incomplete part of a larger picture. This isn’t an election that people didn’t turn out for. This is decades of the subversion of a democracy, the media, and a gradual pressure placed against the entire working class to keep the focus on putting food on the table, and a new culture war punching bag for each election season. I don’t blame Americans. I blame the fascists that have snuck into government on populist platforms, and the people that should have been in positions to act as the safeguards who instead rolled over and gave in to the corruption.

No one is immune to propaganda. I can only hope that we rebuild better.

This might not really apply to you and your beliefs, but I think it’s a discussion worth having and considering.

There are (were, I guess) trans woman competing. Why would their presence change their right to compete? Additionally, the studies are few and far between due to very low sample size, but there isn’t good evidence proving that trans women have a statistically significant advantage in women’s sports after being on HRT long term (2+ years). Most trans women that previously competed in men’s sports perform similarly compared to women after HRT as they did to men before.

The conservative “evidence” for trans women having an advantage is simply pointing and going “see!!” any time any trans woman places better than any cis woman, even if they’re well within the statistical range of women. If trans people are allowed to compete, are they allowed to ever win? In professional sports, getting lucky in the genetic lottery plays a large role in determining success. Katie Ledecky is incredibly successful due to her practice and training, but wouldn’t be nearly as successful without a body conducive to swimming. What’s the difference between a cis woman being born with broad shoulders and longer arms and a trans women doing the same? No one is transitioning for a competitive advantage. It’s a ridiculous notion. There really isn’t a good argument against trans women in sports that doesn’t rely on invalidating their gender or vibes-based cherry-picked pseudoscience.

It isn’t sustainable. My car takes significantly less damage per mile than a gas only car, and the gas is nearly negligible compared to the pay when you get consistent 40+ mpg. Even then, it’s still not sustainable. I wouldn’t recommend the job to anyone, but if someone was desperate or really set on it, then it should really only be a temporary stop-gap to something more sustainable.

I cannot see this as a valid and reasonable response to “we aren’t likely to see an AI powered socialist dystopia in our lifetime, if ever.” AI isn’t even profitable for the capitalists that run it, and needs to constantly feed off real humans to avoid decay. It’s definitely not doomsaying to see AI as a bubble and generally a grift as it’s presented now, when it’s likely to fit in a much more specific niche as a tool in the future. Art will stay uniquely human until AI can create without needing constant human training data.