JessiJynx

Sunflowers, willows, and radishes, Part 2

rapid fire things i learned about my boyfriend this morning.

Your misbehaving boyfriend is not funny to me

seeing a lot of discourse on my dash about the wattpad/ao3 situation, and it is becoming increasingly clear that people really don't want to accept that there is no such thing as a universal morality hierarchy

there are sooo many ppl in the replies of these posts saying that they're fine with pretty much anything, except child sexual assault/pedophilia (none of them actually use the real words, but that's a problem i have already complained about extensively in a different post), and they treat that like it should be an obvious, universally held belief, and anyone who doesn't agree to censor those things is a disgusting monster, but couldn't i say the exact same thing about murder? or any violence, or rape, or abuse, or torture, or whatever the fuck. aren't those things also bad? so who exactly is ranking these taboos into what must be censored and what is just ok enough to get a pass?

once you start giving people authority to rank value judgements you start getting super puritanical super fast. that's how you get anti-lgbtqa+ laws. that's how you get abortion bans. that's how you get discrimination written into the literal law. partial censorship is not a thing, bc as soon as you allow for the censorship of one topic you open the door to the censorship of others, because you have no logistical leg to stand on. no matter how reprehensible you find a specific act to be, you cannot empirically prove that one is worse than another

i am not pro pedophilia, i am not pro the harm of others, but in an environment where the only victims are fictional and therefore unable to be harmed, i am very much pro freedom of expression. even if i think it's disgusting. even if it "glorifies" it. i don't know why people are so convinced that reading a fictional story that goes against their morals will suddenly make them change all their beliefs and go out and commit heinous crimes. i didn't watch breaking bad with the intention of making and distributing meth. i didn't watch hannibal for recipe ideas. if your personal values are so tenuous that a fanfic about gay anime characters having underage sex can turn you into pedophile, maybe consider that it's not the fictional story that's the problem here

there is no way to rank moral taboos in a way that is not immediately on the fast track toward authoritarianism, so if you are truly anti-censorship, you have to be okay with the things you hate the most still being allowed to be talked about freely. it is your responsibility to not engage with material that you don't approve of. you do not unilaterally get to decide for everyone else, because that's where the real harm comes in. no matter how good your intentions, any form of censorship is dangerous. so if you actually want to keep real actual people that exist in the world from harm, you need to let the fictional people in make-believeland get their shit fucked up in any and every way people decide. no exceptions

I do love a good archaic minced oath. "Zounds" ("God's wounds") is of course a classic, but I've always had a soft spot for "blazes" ("hell"). "What in blazes" simply has a ring to it that "what the hell" lacks.

Jim Kirk famously tells a Klingon to "Go to the Devil" because the NBC censors wouldn't let him say "go to Hell" and I always thought that was a lovely image.

people got mad the last time i said this but you HAVE to stop pretending that people of the past were more intellectual and thoughtful and you need to model yourself after them because modernity pales in comparison. that's nazi shit

basically

was reminded of that youtube channel that records footage of that bridge that scalps trucks today. one of the fascinating developments that's happened since i last heard about it is that, in one of their many attempts to stop the trucks from being can-opened, they installed a traffic light that detects when a vehicle that's over the allowed height is coming and turns red so the driver can stop and hopefully notice the signage all around that's screaming "YOUR VEHICLE IS OVERHEIGHT TURN AROUND" and avoid an accident. However as a result sometimes drivers see the light turning yellow and IMMEDIATELY start flooring it to avoid having to stop, ensuring that the roof of their truck just gets fucking annihilated instantly. Really beautiful stuff you should check it out

the comments have me in tears

@rogue-bard

It DOES have a sign. It turns on when it detects something too tall for the bridge. It even flashes. And the traffic lights will go red to get people to stop when it detects an over height vehicle so they read the signs. (note this lovely example where the lights are red, because the truck thought it was better than the lights)

every time I see this post I've forgotten how clearly signposted the canopener bridge is, and every time it hits me like a truck (hitting the canopener bridge and getting the top of its trailer ripped asunder)

Important update, out of curiosity I went to look at The Can Opener on google maps and discovered that they have since opened a THEMED FOOD TRUCK PARK RIGHT NEXT TO THE BRIDGE

Sit down and crack open a cold one and if you're lucky the bridge will crack open a cold one with you.

the webcam is also visible on street view

being able to kill everybody in a room without ever even entering it just seems... unfair. who needs guns or swords?

honestly, i'm considerin switching. i went with the quickhacks because it felt like the most unique thing this game has to offer, but... it's just too easy, yknow?

i was trying to microwave pasta last night (do not do this) and spontaneously remembered when robert pattinson did the same thing and literally exploded a microwave during a zoom call interview

A couple of years ago we were all terribly concerned about the fact that a lot of American high schools are assigning such crushing homework loads that some kids literally don't have enough time to eat or sleep (and all this in spite of the fact that there's no good evidence that assigning homework actually improves academic outcomes at the pre-university level), but now we're hearing stories about those same schools struggling to stop kids from using ChatGPT to write their essays and suddenly It's The Children Who Are Wrong. Like, do you think maybe there's a certain level of cause and effect in play here?

i keep trying to explain to people that teenagers are making mostly rational decisions based on the information they have, and no one seems to believe me

you probably won't be surprised at the pushback I've gotten from teachers at the college level (who by and large don't have to worry about NCLB guidelines and tests) at suggesting that if critical thinking is the problem being lost, maybe we should change our testing and assessment styles to directly measure critical thinking on the fly rather than throwing up our hands and blaming TECHNOLOGY

the trick is that these assessment styles often require more work to think about and construct assessments for and that is work that college instructors are typically compensated very poorly if at all for, so like, I get it. but that's how you fix this shit. and I think if you are invested in the project of education for its own sake, you have to consider the ways in which incentivizing your students not to rely on chatgpt involves changing the structure of your shared activities together such that failing to learn and digest material is routinely boring or unpleasant and that knowing it is the only way to feel that one is succeeding in class in small, low-stakes, frequent interactions rather than single high-stakes ones.

i have a suggestion

Got another one!

the haunting song of the humpback whale, transcribed lovingly onto the side of a utility trailer

I look just like buddy holly

This is perhaps my new favorite video

I would like to state for the record i’ve ignored this post the last 50 times i’ve seen it bc i thought it would be some hyper cutsie anime girl voice and i’m overjoyed to report it is instead Weapons Grade Miku complete with war horns that fuck