Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology

by Ellen Ullman

a while back I made a post along the lines of "every STEM major should have a required 'history of science' course that's just all about previously wrong and bad scientific theories like sperm all containing homunculi and spontaneous generation" and I got a lot of responses like "but STEM majors already have gen ed requirements!" and would not understand why I was specifically asking for a course that would teach people about why science is not infallible and does not exist in a vacuum and THIS IS EXACTLY WHY ACTUALLY

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

Oh, god, I hate that this is correct.

"Engaging with the lever in any way makes me culpable for the death that occurs" seems to be the rationale behind most of the voting naysayers, so, and I am quoting wikipedia here, their rational is quite literally one of the positions of the trolley problem;

'...since moral wrongs are already in place in the situation, moving to another track constitutes a participation in the moral wrong, making one partially responsible...'

Their refusal to engage with the trolley problem has made them ignorant not only of how their position IS one of the sides they refuse to take, but also that the other option recognises their desire for moral purity at the expense of obligation, for what it is;

'Under some interpretations of moral obligation, simply being present in this situation and being able to influence its outcome constitutes an obligation to participate. If this is the case, then doing nothing would be considered an immoral act.'

People who refuse to vote because "they're both bad" may be taking the high ground, but there are still people on the tracks.

This post is stupid because there IS a third option. The party doesn't have to run biden again! The party can have anyone as a candidate! They're choosing to.

Don't run genocidal candidates if you want my vote. It's that easy. Surely you can find one Democrat willing to run for president who isn't also genocidal, right? Surely it can't be that hard?

You are still missing the point of the trolley problem, just like OP was saying people do.

The trolley problem is not "why couldn't they have given us a better track"

It's not even "should we take steps to prevent the kinds of people who would tie people to train tracks from having access to those train tracks"

The trolley problem is about reacting to the situation AS IT IS.

The trolley problem is; does taking steps to mitigate harm mean you are therefore responsible for the harm that has occurred as a result of your choices? Do you allow more suffering to happen because you are scared to be tainted by your association with *some* suffering? Or, if you make the choice to abstain from participation, are you then responsible for the harm that occurs because of your choice not to act?

We'd all love some morally pure option. But when voting day comes, there might not be one. So you will have to choose between getting your hands dirty in the hopes of some progress, or clean hands and letting the trolley rampage out of control.

with ANY power comes responsibility. You have power (the ability to vote in an election which will influence the lives of many, including far more people who are not granted the ability to vote) and therefore you have a responsibility to use to it to do the greatest amount of good possible (which often constitutes mitigating harm)

there's a lot of work we need to do in order to make running less-shitty candidates a viable option, and that work will also be much easier under a candidate that is not actively and openly planning to overthrow the current government and install a fascist state.

anyways (I say this as someone who is deeply critical of the united states government, military, unchecked capitalism, police, etc) I am SICK of people treating america as if it has no cultural value or positives so….. I love u 85 million acres (bigger than italy) of national parks. I love u harlem renaissance. I love u groundhogs day. I love u sweet tea and fried chicken and jambalaya. I love u apple cider donuts and maizes on crisp autumn days. I love u 95k miles of coastlines and new england fisherman and hand knitted sweaters. I love u halloween where millions of people dress up and give candy to strangers and carve jack o’lanterns. I love u small talk and small towns and potlucks and bringing over casseroles to your struggling neighbors. I love u cowboys and ranch hands and arizonian cactus. I love u appalachian trail and dirtbikes and divebars. I love u sparklers and fireflies. I love u mark twain and toni morrison and emily dickinson and henry david thoreau. I love u rock n roll i love u bluegrass and hippies i love u jimi hendrix and nirvana and CCR and janis joplin. I love u victorian houses and jonny appleseed and john henry and mothman and bigfoot. I love u foggy days in the pacific northwest and neon signs and roadside attractions. I love u baseball and 1950s diners and soft serve. I love u native american art and pop art and poptarts. I love u blue jeans and barbecues and jazz musicians 

I would genuinely love to hear what a resident of china or russia loves about their home bc I’m not a fucking bigot and I know a government doesn’t define a culture but thanks for ur exposing yourself babe xoxo

anne carson: simple moving poem about awkward dinners with not-quite-friends and the ennui that comes with realizing this mundane unhappiness is all adult life is sometimes

insane people on twitter: has she ever tried being happy? i like going to dinner with friends, what’s wrong with her? she can afford to go out to dinner, she shouldn’t complain. just be a cooler hang, skill issue. this isn’t my exact experience (i like my friends) therefore this poem is bad and unrelatable and pretentious. she can’t debone a fish? loser.

going through the quote tweets with my jaw hanging

The poem's about feeling disconnected and rejected, and the audience stumble over themselves to avoid connecting with it and to reject it. I kind of like how closely the sad fictional world of the poem and the callous reality dovetail together 💔

#i would never be sad i would never be sad i would never be sad <- internal monologue of the commentary

anxiety is so weird like why is my mental illness in my stomach

Your stomach is connected to the mental illness glob with lots of tiny soggy strings.

These Jezebel commenters are right and they should say it

I know you mean the Magazine, but it’s funnier to imagine you calling these two commenters Whores.

Turn the reblogs back on coward

How is bnha anime of the decade...... they aren’t even anime of the hour of the minute of the second

The notes on this post were so toxic that staff just axed em

1969.........

Yes, when the original post is deleted from the server (not just the blog, but the Tumblr servers), there is no root post for notes to be added onto, and also no root post for time to be counted from, so it starts from zero. Most computer operating systems use Unix, which was launched in 1971 with t.he epoch date of midnight on January 1, 1970 as 1. Therefore zero is one second behind that date: December 31, 1969. Also, very unfortunately, this also means nobody except you and anyone you reblog it to will see this explanation, as you cannot open the notes to see comments when there are no notes.

grandpas this grandmas that did we all see the video of hayley williams shouting out mcr as being one of the bands that’s always treated her/paramore as equals

“…that treated us as equals, we love all of you. My Chemical Romance, you’re one of them, thank you for treating us so good.”

@deathchic sent this in our chat earlier..

(via @ephedrineshot)

(via joe trohman’s memoir)

While I didn’t see this coming, I can’t say I’m surprised.

every single villain with minions would be utterly fucked if the heroes just introduced them to the concept of workers’ unions

While that Shrek scene is one of the best, I do feel some villains would survive the unionizing. Gru, for one, would have been fine even as a bad guy since he was still a good boss. Megamind would absolutely let Minion unionize, even if the union was just Minion.

Roxanne: A union?

Megamind: Yes, we’re very forward-thinking in this organization - very cognizant of workers’ rights.

Roxanne: But the point of a union is collective bargaining, and Minion is-

Megamind: Look, I weighed the costs and benefits, and if you want to have a three-hour debate about this, you do it.

Heinz Doofenshmirtz’s backup dancers are canonically unionized iirc

@poplitealqueen

PFFT. Headcanon accepted.

#she has the bravery of leia#the skill of luke#and the dollar symbol eyes of Han

Tags by @poplitealqueen

my friend who works in theatre just pointed out to me that WICKED is still showing tonight and the first line of that musical is "GOOD NEWS! SHE'S DEAD!" i really don't know how they're gonna work around that one

the cast of WICKED after holding a minute's silence and then immediately launching into the opening number:

b99 is more culpable, actually

all cop shows are propoganda, but most cop shows are made for 18-49 white men who’re scared of face masks

b99′s target demographic, however, is young, queer and racially diverse. b99′s target demo is all the people who’re the most vulnerable to police brutality. b99′s target demo is all the folks who absolutely should never be lead to believe the way to view the cops is the way you view jake fuckin peralta.

b99 had a bisexual Latina cop laugh and say she suggests police brutality, later showing interest and excitement over the exact sound weapon we’re now seeing used in retaliation to protests (side note: when i saw that episode, i thought that weapon was made up because it seemed so sci-fi villain-ish).

they have their whole host of cop characters, including the straight-laced official types, regularly treat their job like a game.

yes they had an episode about racial profiling. but what was that episode telling us? that at the end of the day, there are good cops within the system actively fighting corruption and winning. i recently saw someone in exact words say “b99 taught me that not all cops are bad.” that’s copaganda. even if you believe in your heart that some cops are good, they are still people with weapons designed to kill whose job centers on apprehending anyone they deem a trouble-maker, and they are. not. your. friends.

b99 wants you to believe that diversity within the system creates fair treatment, right? that a gay Black captain and a crew of racially and sexually diverse cops are the Good Guys.

in real life, the Seattle chief of police is a Black woman who is AT BEST allowing the people in her command to terrorize their city, and at worst actively commanding it. the tear-gassing in seattle? the little girl who got pepper-sprayed? that happened under the leadership and command of a Black woman. because cops are cops first. the job itself demands that they abandon their communities and their humanity. we joke about being [x thing] first and human second a lot, right? well, cops really are.

b99 talked about the prison industry, right? they talked about guard brutality, retaliation, in-prison violence, right? but think about the fact that within that plotline, the cops were the only characters who we were told didn’t belong there. how cinnamon roll jake peralta, a Good Cop Who Didn’t Belong in Prison, was interacting exclusively with people like a gang leader and an unrepentant cannibal.

b99 is deeply insidious cop propaganda. and i’ve watched it and i’ve enjoyed it! and i don’t believe the creators set out to make copaganda. i think they were trying to do a lighthearted riff on your standard procedural, and they cast a diverse group of actors, and they tried to write socially conscious scripts, and they slowly snowballed their way into copaganda while we were all distracted by andy samberg getting hotter.

i’m not at all saying don’t watch cop shows, if that’s your thing, i guess. hell, i’ve enjoyed more than one of them in my life. but please think critically about their messaging and choose to reject what does not align with your values. think critically about your values, and what influences them. and for the love of god, stop responding to people’s angry, grieving cries over Black people being systematically murdered by cops by defending your favorite fictional cop. real people are dead.

Black lives matter more than fake cops. that’s all.

seventeen - alessia cara // little women (2019) // ribs - lorde // peter pan (2003) // turning out - ajr

do you ever think “ogggghhhh narrative parallels that’s crazy” when you’re experiencing your real life

You have no idea how much I want this mass migration to tumblr to be real. I would love it if there was an entire ecosystem on tumblr of tiktokers who don't know or don't want to reblog anything, so they are functionally incapable of interacting with the rest of this website. Nothing is funnier to me

"I understand. You found paradise on TikTok. You had a good fyp, you made good content. The censors protected you and they were friendly for advertisers. So you didn't need a friend like me. Now you come and say "Tumblr, give me content." But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer reblogs. You don't even think to call me "Hellsite." You come into my house on the day my blorbo is to be married and you ask me to do content - for likes."

The Zootopia gif after the Godfather reference both destroys my soul and is also the Most Appropriate Thing for Tumblr.