Why do people wantto live in the sad little world where STEM is the only thing worth doing, anyway? Is your ideal society a battleship with no windows because seeing outside is a needless luxury? Is your personal mascot a worker ant? Do you read 1984and sigh wistfully, then throw the book away in rage because reading fiction is not Productive and writers are not Productive People?
or are you big ‘ol hypocrites who actually enjoy the fruits of art and design and liberal arts every day, but you just don’t want to admit it because then you won’t feel special for knowing how to slap together three lines of javascript
Honestly I tend to find that anyone who acts like “STEM” is a be-all-end-all of anything actually has as little support for many folks in a number of STEM or STEM-adjacent fields as they do for those in more solidly humanities-oriented ones, so the well of hypocrisy goes even deeper than you’re suggesting. To a certain degree, they do place importance on some areas of the acronym, but not many of them – somehow “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” has been watered down to mean “Engineering, Expensive Luxury Tech, and Medicine, Because We Can Make Money Off Those Things”
If people that said they only valued “STEM” actually put any of their money where their mouth is and paid attention to the whole acronym, paleontologists wouldn’t have to resort to public crowdfunding in order fund their excavations, evolutionary biologists could do genetics research without having to come up with convoluted explanations about how really, this could be a medical thing, please just let us have some grant money, and we’d have sent a whole lot more expeditions to space, among countless other things. Not to mention, where’s these hypocrite’s support for people with crossover skillsets in the sciences? The science illustrators, the science writers, the scicommers, the people whose work is critical to connecting STEM to our daily lives? What about them?
People who hide behind one field or another to pretend it’s the real reason they don’t support a diversity of human pursuits and intelligences and skillsets are hypocrites in more ways than one and I wish they’d stop painting other fields that suffer from their lack of vision as the “reason” for it when really they often offer them just as little support – what they really think is important is capitalism and making money off of others, and they belittle and attack any area of the human experience they struggle to figure out how to exploit, as well as build false divides between other people who would otherwise realize they have significant reasons for solidarity
this is a very, veryhot take, but bodily autonomy inherently involves mental autonomy
the right to decide what your body is like includes the right to decide what the inside of your head is like, even if it’s a state of mind most people would consider ‘disordered’ or 'uncomfortable’
as long as you’re not materially hurting anyone else, you have the right to be as crazy as you want to be
it’s actually relatively easy to quantify material harm, because the materialpart is the operative part, not the harm. Basically, if someone can’t explain how you’re hurting them in a way that’d hold up in court, you’re not materially harming them.
are you damaging their body or health? (and, when it comes to mental health, are you doing more to them than 'existing in the same space they are?’ part of living in a cosmopolitan, multicultural society is accepting that you’re going to see things you don’t like. if you’re in your own space talking to yourself or holding your same-sex partner’s hand? that’s one thing. if you’re intentionally sending someone triggering material, or telling strangers uncomfortable personal information, or shouting slurs at them? that is a whole nother kettle of fish.)
are you damaging their property? are you breaking their stuff? are you making their apartment a biohazard zone? are you stealing from them? if the answer is 'no’ you’re in the clear.
are you intentionally damaging their reputation or their ability to interact with people who are not you? the 'intent’ is once again the operative factor here. there is a difference between 'being weird and gay on your own terms, and embarrassing your parents because of it" and “intentionally spreading lies about how someone is abusive”.
if someone doesn’t want to be With you, they can always walk away. if they think you’re Too Uncomfortable To Be Around, they can go somewhere else. if they think you’re embarrassing to be around, they don’t have to acknowledge you. and, like I said earlier- we live in a cosmopolitan society, and part of that is accepting you’re going to see things you don’t like.
…you’re not materially harming anyone by being crazy in the same space. no matter how uncomfortable they get. their discomfort is theirproblem to handle, not yours.
this is a very, veryhot take, but bodily autonomy inherently involves mental autonomy
the right to decide what your body is like includes the right to decide what the inside of your head is like, even if it’s a state of mind most people would consider ‘disordered’ or 'uncomfortable’
as long as you’re not materially hurting anyone else, you have the right to be as crazy as you want to be
It’s crazy to me that A Series of Unfortunate Events isn’t more popular in the dark academia corner of the internet. A pretentious secret organization obsessed with codes and puzzles that thinks reading classic literature makes you noble and superior to other people and everyone without academic interests is morally corrupt? Come on!
WOAH. Someone finally has the same thoughts about these amazing books series!
I wrote the following six years ago when I was 15, my dad was abusive and my mom ignored it I just found it in an old notebook. A child should never feel this much pain and fear. Someday I hope I can make this little girl proud.
Yellow Oak Tree:
The sun is hot and burning
The earth is cruel and harming
Fear surrounds the innocent
Can nothing be saved?
But as I lay beneath you shade a cloak of serenity cascades around me
All I want to do is close my eyes and when I open them be somewhere far away from where I am right now, where no one knows me but everyone wants to, and I a chance to finally be something.
Is anyone else stressed about classes even more now that they’re online? Like I asked one of my professors if he could start recording the zoom sessions in case anyone missed a class/ didn’t understand/ didn’t want to come, and he said he looked in to it. He didn’t. I emailed him again asking about it and HE DIDNT RESPOND!! Like EXCUSE YOU… I KNOW YOU AINT DOING ANYTHING! I feel like I just got left on read by my own teacher. Like WTF…
It’s 2AM and I just cut all my hair off because I felt my life spiraling out of control yet again and I wanted to and I wanted to feel in control again. Now I’m kinda freaking out but I also kinda love my new hair!
It’s Mermay and somehow I’ve only ever been able to draw mermaids in the context of pollution.
Every time I take my dogs to the beach, it’s covered in trash and dead leopard sharks, rays, and sturgeons. We are witnessing mass extinction in real time.
