The TumblrBot’s response to the “do you want to be human” question made me crack up.

It’s fantastic. A bit insulting, playful, charming - man, that’s amazing. I’m going to be randomly giggling about that answer. Coming from an AI… haha!

Yes, omg! And the world building idiocy drove me absolutely insane.

Like, this one part where the were-something (might have been a werewolf?) was like, “only the first born of any pair of weres will also be a were” or something, and the immediate reaction… was to wonder why the were population wasn’t taking over the whole country or whatever. And the were took that seriously, saying the only reason their population wasn’t huge was a large number of stillbirths and such.

They try to backtrack that a few books later, and deal with the actual consequences of the fact that they literally can’t increase their population without polyamory - clearly someone informed the author of how stupid that was - but still, that initial response was some of the most obviously not-thought-out world building I’ve seen.

… okay, maybe that’s not true, but some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a book I continued to read, anyway.

I dunno, I’ve seen some really low bars :P

None of this is saying don’t hit on women.

It’s saying that some men are complete assholes when they’re rejected, and so it’s not a simple and straightforward thing to reject men.

Don’t invalidate the experiences of women who have had reason to have trouble. Don’t say stupid shit like “just say no, why do women gotta do things like ghost people,” etc.

And if you do hit on women, don’t give them a hard time for rejecting you! They’re allowed to say no, for any reason, and they aren’t required to justify themselves to you.

But absolutely continue to pursue women - respectfully.

Thank you very much!

Yeah, I’ve run into that plenty myself. Hell, I’m a woman and I have a wife, and I was once accused of being homophobic… as I was trying to explain why I was happy about living thousands of kilometers from my family.

It really bugs me when people accuse people like my grandparents of being “hateful.” If my grandparents see that, they’ll just see more “proof” that left wingers have no idea what they’re talking about.

I can’t do anything to fix the issues on the conservative side of the fence - I really wish I could - but I can hopefully help on my side of the fence, with fostering better understanding and communication.

My break from conservative thinking was… uh… perhaps best described as a violent psychological event. I went from thinking we were the good guys, to maybe getting some things wrong, to suddenly realizing I’d been unknowingly on the side of evil my whole life. Meeting someone who was gay and hearing his story, about the abuse he took from people who acted exactly as I’d been taught to… Stars above, that ripped out my heart.

And if I hadn’t already had my beliefs cracking and under pressure, I’d have blown off his story as pure manipulation.

It’s a whole thing, for me. I can only hope for reconciliation of some kind. My family members aren’t really evil people - they mean well, even if they only consider people who are straight, white, and Christian to be fully people.

But calling them things they aren’t won’t ever get them to listen.

Not that I know what would get them to listen, beyond convincing their pastor of things…

I get where you’re coming from and why, I really do, but I think saying stuff like that is really unhelpful.

I’m about as left wing as they come, but I grew up in rural Florida. All the bullshit you see about the place? That’s my family. None of them specifically have shown up on the news, but still, it’s them - their beliefs, attitudes, etc.

The issue isn’t deception or manipulation from regular conservatives. When my grandparents / cousins spit out that sort of bullshit, that’s not what’s going on.

The issue, rather, is a complex one that is, among other things, a thing of trust.

They believe, honestly and truly, in Fox News. They believe in their preachers. They believe that homosexuality is a demon that possesses people, and by interacting with “the gays,” you “open the door” to demonic influence in your life.

That last bit is an example of something I was outright taught.

When my grandparents talk about how it’d be good for America to round up all the gays and put them in concentration camps, what they’re feeling is protectiveness. They want to protect people from Satan’s influence, and if someone has accepted the enemy to the point of being proudly gay, then why should people be sympathetic to them? Get rid of them all, obviously.

Yes, it’s insane and hurtful and stupid and so frustrating that I haven’t spoken to my extended family in a few years.

But they’re not trying to trick people. They don’t need to think about what they believed before, they don’t need to second guess what’s right, they know what’s right. What’s right is believing in the authority figures they’ve been trained to believe in. What is right is to listen, to obey, to fight as they are directed to fight, for the good of all.

It’s horrifying from the outside, but from the inside, it’s a safe little bubble where you don’t have to wonder and worry about what is the right thing to do. It’s easy - the only hard part is acting on it. Do what’s right, and everything else will fall into place. It’s simple and feels good.

To challenge that way of thinking, to suggest that they have to figure it out themselves - that’s a huge ask. Going against what they’ve been taught their whole lives, and for what? To have to deal with moral uncertainty and unsolvable moral dilemmas? That’s hardly a reason to change.

That is an excellent point. Yeah, PSI would totally read as pounds times square inches which would be something else entirely. Adding in the extra P would fix it, too. PPSI. Suppose it’s another thing that people just have to get used to, haha.

Because in^2 is generally said “square inches.”

So it’s “pounds per square inch.”

Sometimes “per” will get its own letter, like in PPM - parts per million - and sometimes it’s left off, as in PSI.

I’ve explicitly taught this concept in my English classes, actually.

A run on sentence, for example, is a fantastic tool for expressing overly excited rambling from a character.

It only works for that purpose if the rest of the writing isn’t full of run on sentences.

You have to know the rules and follow them well in order to break them for effect. I told my kids that if they obviously broke a rule for effect in their writing, I wouldn’t hold it against them, but it’d only work if they were otherwise near perfect with that rule.

I had one take me up on it! It was cool. She also wrote a postscript explaining what she did and why, which was hilarious, because it was pretty obvious. She’d used sentence fragments to show incredulity. It was great.

I didn’t see this as him saying that people know better than doctors.

I saw this as him saying that self diagnosis, especially with multiple tests from reasonably reliable sources, is a valuable tool in a wide variety of circumstances, and with autism in particular, has very few ill effects and is a net positive.

Including as a first step in the official diagnosis process.

There may be a number of reasons not to get an official diagnosis. When I self diagnosed for autism about… maybe 15 years ago, there was a three year wait list for the only psychiatric diagnosis thing I could afford. (I can’t remember the details, it’s been a while, but it was some government funded program.)

I have since gotten an official diagnosis, but getting the unofficial one first was extremely helpful for me in narrowing down where I should focus my efforts.

The guy, towards the end, was even encouraging people to get the official diagnosis - if they’re able to, financially, etc. But starting with self diagnosis makes a great deal of sense.

The whole thing was about cutting down the myths and attacks around self diagnosis and saying people should be allowed to start there without getting attacked for it. That’s all it is.

I, incidentally, am not anti vax or anti science. I’m a science teacher, as it happens, and science is totally my jam. I love how he included study information on accuracy rates of self diagnosis, and misdiagnosis rates for mental health issues with the medical field. I love how he encouraged people to get official diagnoses, and how his suggestions for the medical field were to increase access and affordability for people. This video did not strike me as anti science or anti psychiatry at all.