[“Such groups suffer from a syndrome I call empowerment to the midline. We dedicate ourselves to empowering individuals, right up until the moment when someone actually begins to exercise power — defined simply as the ability to get what they want done. At that point, it’s as if they’ve stepped over an invisible line that separates the oppressed from the oppressors. Suddenly this person we’ve worked so hard to help find a voice becomes the person everyone wants to speak out against.
I also call this pattern empowerment to complain. We focus our nurturing and attention on anyone who takes the position of victim and complains about leadership. Anyone who takes action or sets direction is suspect. Unfortunately, this sort of empowerment is not very empowering. Nobody gets what they want, and often little or nothing gets done.
True empowerment implies action. Complaining is not enough. Taking action means taking responsibility — suggesting, offering solutions and doing the work to implement them. But in a group suffering from the empowerment to the midline syndrome, there’s no zone of action, no autonomy, no scope for creativity. The group may have done away with the inequalities of leaders and followers, of some people being the stars and others relegated to mere extras. But they’ve done so by preventing anyone from having the power to act.
Here are some of unspoken assumptions behind the empowerment to the midline syndrome in progressive and collaborative groups.
1. People who have extraordinary skills, experience, levels of commitment or other resources or who take on big responsibilities — call them leaders — are always suspect. They are fair game for attack. The result is that no one feels truly safe in the group. There is no trust. No one is able to train, to mentor or pass on skills.
2. Leaders should never receive extra benefits, perks or rewards beyond the joy of the work itself, or they are exploiting others. In collaborative groups, we are often reacting against a larger system of hierarchy, in which higher levels of responsibility confer marks of status and collateral powers. We don’t want to reproduce that sort of inequality. But we do want to allow people to earn fair rewards for their labors, marks of appreciation and respect. If a group continually sees its most experienced people drifting away or burning out, it may be a warning sign that this pattern is in force.
3. We must always sacrifice the needs, benefits and rewards of insiders to the needs of outsiders. Empowerment means always siding with the perceived victim or underdog. The group functions on power-under — people get their way by taking the position of victim. They gain social power, not by taking on responsibility, but by complaining about those who do. The complainers are not truly empowered to act, and those who do take action are undermined.
4. We refuse to acknowledge that people might have different levels of skill, experience, talent, commitment or responsibility, because to do so might affirm a hierarchy. The group is unable to make use of its members’ skills and talents. We can’t mentor and critique each other, we can’t assess what skills and forms of responsibility are needed or are operative in a group and we can’t set standards or hold one another accountable for meeting them.”]
starhawk, from the empowerment manual: a guide for collaborative groups, 2011
being so fr when I say that transmisogyny has put feminism back like 50 years
what i thought we had distanced ourselves from was the reduction of women to vaginas and wombs and the ability to bear children. i thought we had progressed past ‘dresses are for women and pants are for men.’ i thought we progressed past the idea that someone is less of a woman if she does not adhere strictly to beauty standards. i thought we progressed past the idea that naturally being comfortable adhering to highly feminine standards is vulgar. but i (sarcastically) guess no one could have predicted that trans-exclusive feminism would be the downfall of all the progress we’ve made
peeling those sour rainbow gummy strips into long thin strings and putting them into cheap energy drink to create something im calling battery acid spaghetti will update once ive finished it
dont do this
I really hope its not too bad bc i actually love both components.
it forms a dry skin at the top made of the sour pellets. not a great start.
tastes really good actually. i also feel like i am about to explode.
do not do this.
Unanimous consensus: Do not do this
Other people: Hold on I’m about to do this
I keep seeing this post going around so, for folks who want to know why not, here’s a chemist’s hypothesis:
-Rainbow sour belts contain malic acid (a common food additive as a potent acidifier and sour-flavor agent), citric acid (another common sour flavoring in pretty much everything) as well as ascorbic acid (aka vitamin C, used here mainly as a preservative). (https://candypros.com/products/sour-belts-bulk-rainbow)
-All of these acids when added to water would normally release their protons (H+ ions), thereby making the water solution more acidic. However, a chemical constant of these acids called the acid dissociation constant (pKa for short) indicates the pH of a solution at which acids are most likely to keep or release their protons. The pKa’s* of these acids are higher (3.4, 3.1, and 4.2 for malic, citric, and ascorbic acids respectively) than the pH of the solution (2.7), which essentially means that the acids can’t release their protons and all that acidic potential is trapped in the solid formulation of the candy.
-There’s also some evidence that sugar decreases the solubility of acids in water solutions (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3411471/ only sorbic acid is discussed here but it’s relatively structurally similar to the acids in discussion). The undoubtedly high sugar content of both the Monster and the candy therefore may contribute to the accounts of the sour crystals bubbling/floating on top of the solution instead of dissolving.
-Malic acid in particular is notorious for causing mouth irritation when eaten in high quantities.
-Thus, I can imagine that upon consuming the battery acid spaghetti, not only is the mix itself quite potently sweet/sour, but also the solid malic acid coming into direct contact with your mouth quickly becomes painful, and as the solution mixes with your (pH neutral) saliva the trapped acidity of the malic/citric/ascorbic acids is dumped into your mouth and esophagus, creating a sensation that I can only imagine is similar to consuming actual battery acid (pH = 0.8).
(*Each of these acids actually has multiple pKa’s corresponding to number of protons they’re able to donate, but really only the lowest pKa is useful here since once that one dissociates then all of the other ones are already dissociated too.)
I love the x-men so much because that’s just what leftist infighting is like! that’s literally all it is! xavier is a sellout and they all hate him but he’s the only one with any money. everyone complains about “they keep switching sides and dating each other it’s so fucking confusing” like my dudes have you never been a part of any socialist organisation, ever. then people will go “magneto is so strong how has he not killed a bunch of teenagers” HE DOESN’T WANT TO KILL THEM! this started in a goddam basement over coffee he does not want to hurt them he just wants them to shut up and listen and will fling cars to do so
reminder to worldbuilders: don’t get caught up in things that aren’t important to the story you’re writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics
HONESTLY also like. part of combatting misinformation is just accepting that you’ll fall victim to it sometimes. no-one can be an expert on every imaginable subject and most people don’t have the time to factcheck every single piece of information that comes their way. the key thing IMO is responding appropriately when someone points misinfo ie not doubling down and being like ‘no there’s no way I could be wrong about this’.
like a big part of studying history is learning that your previously held beliefs are hotly debated or even outright wrong and sometimes it feels bad bcos you realise you bought into what was, with the benefit of hindsight, an obvious lie.
and other times it feels bad bcos it’s actively disappointing!! often the lie feels better than the truth! historical myths get popular bcos they are, typically, better, punchier stories than what actually happened.
i’m starting a movement to stop calling this shit “artificial intelligence” cause it’s fucking not. it’s not intelligent, and the things it produces are not informed by logical choices. it doesn’t know how to research sources for you. it doesn’t compose art thoughtfully or meaningfully.
call it machine-generated, text generator, chat bot, but it’s not intelligent.
[id: a tweet from Read Wobblies and Zapatistas @ JoshuaPotash that reads “It’s not just that cops hurt people, it’s that they do it with money that could grant safety. They attack the homeless with money that could build housing. They police the mentally ill with money that could go to mental healthcare. They hurt us with money that could keep us safe.”]
to anyone in the areas impacted by the wildfire smoke, my #1 biggest piece of advice as someone whos been dealing with wildfire smoke in the NW united states for years, is build yourself a Corsi-Rosenthal Cube
they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!
i think it took us maybe a half hour to put ours together, if that, and we replace the filters every 3 months. it’s really made a HUGE difference, both when the air quality is bad, but also with our allergies
Saw these easy to read instructions on Twitter. Stay safe 💚
Hey, let’s talk about anons like this, because I know some people haven’t been in a position to see the patterns these play out in on broader scale and may indeed not spot the trap.
And it is a trap.
An ask like this has several purposes.
First, it uses social justice language in passive aggressive and manipulative ways to try to coerce a behavior. In this case, the desired behavior is usually for the recipent to participate in community shunning and/or harrassment. The language above is intended to put the recipient on the defensive where, in the haste to disassociate themself from the Bad Thing, they quickly disassociate themself from the bad person, often with no particular fact checking or evidence.
The message is also intended to create a sense of being surveilled and judged by an unknown amount of people with unknown amount of social power and an unknown amount of relevance to your life.
Notice that these asks are usually framed as if they are coming from a follower or potential follower, someone who is addressing you personally and who cares about your opinion and who your blog has an effect on. However this is usually…. very much not the case. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to watch a gossip campaign from like this from the outside, you will very quickly notice that messages like this get sent in mass batches to dozens and dozens of strangers. (You can often turn these up with a tumblr search, if you look.)
The sender does not know you and probably does not follow you. They have a person they don’t like (possibly for their stated reason and possibly not), and they are going through the reblogs of a post from that blog and mass messaging *everyone* with a form letter. They will not see your response and they will probably never even see your blog again.
Which brings us to the second goal of whisper campaigns like this:
Notice that I blacked out the names above? That’s because when the recipient answers anonymous asks like this, they provide a platform for the opinion on their blog. An anonymous message like this that gets posted doesn’t just spread gossip and apply pressure to the recipient, it is spread to the recipient’s entire community.
The *goal* is to get access to your community. The *goal* is to use you as a soapbox.
Is the information accurate? Did anyone check? Does the anon have an ulterior social motive? BIG SHRUG
If you go into the comments on one of these whisper campaigns you will see that *most people never bother to check.*
They assume good faith from a follower, they’re off balance defending themselves, and they jump straight to conciliation.
It’s a really, really effective form of social manipulation, and really really commonly misused.
This is what bullying on social media can look like especially in left-leaning/social justice minded circles. This is how otherwise caring people get roped into participating in harassment campaigns.
i think a lot of the magic of this shithole website actually comes from the fact that the search feature is completely useless… like the fact that you quite literally cannot search for a post even if you type it in word for word means that all the classic, beloved, and infamous posts are these ephemeral things that only come around every so often and can only be found organically when they happen to make it to your dash like a flock of rare migratory birds
Kia | she/her | 25 | anarchist I post whatever's on my mind. My ask box is always open if you have any questions or want to talk. Please ask if you want something tagged. (Profile picture by @hoelzelsbird on Instagram)
ALT
