Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest
Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind
Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone
i always think about that study where they had adults hold a baby, and when they were told the baby was a girl the adults said she was cute and small, and when they were told the baby was a boy they said he was big and strong. they rated the baby’s ability to do things and tendency towards certain toys differently. they even held the baby differently. (x) or when they rated the baby’s physical ability to do various tasks such as climbing up a slope differently, (x) & when they measured how much parents told their girl children vs. their boy children to be careful and stop being so rowdy (x), & when they measured how often girls and boys were told to be quiet. (x)
this was, obviously, all unconscious behavior in the adults. they’re not all like, raving sexists who outspokenly believe that women can’t do stuff or that girls really should just be quieter, be more still than boys. like its not even counting the direct, actual messages, its just literally how every single person in your entire life treats you, and if asked they would probably deny that its even because you’re a girl. how the fuck am i supposed to believe this doesn’t affect a child’s development when its literally constant throughout the entire process
This shit starts as soon as early as when someone’s still a fucking fetus. I’ve heard the saying “discrimination starts as soon as you leave the womb” but it actually starts earlier than that.
GoddAMN I am so sick of genders
“Delusions of Gender” by Cordelia Fine goes over all this in lots of detail if you want to be REALLY infuriated (and educated!)
A drabble is like a sonnet. It has rules. The rules make it an art form. It should have exactly 100 words.
This has been around since the old fandoms, of live journal and newsgroups.
Ficlet. Flashfic. Those are short things.
A drabble is 100 words.
With due respect to OP, while sure, this has been around since Ye Olden Days (and before the internet, iirc), it is only honest and truthful to note that people have also been fucking with/ignoring this definition and calling things that are not perfectly 100 words “drabbles” just as long, as well as the ongoing fight about how to count those 100 words.
I feel like this is important to note.
I looked it up and Drabble comes from publishing contests and science fiction in the 1970s. (Apparently it started with Monty Python, which is fun.)
Part of the fun of a drabble is the challenge of working within 100 words, and cutting down, or finding just the right thing to add. Like other strict word forms, part of the fun is the structure.
If a writer is tagging it a drabble and it’s not, they’re missing their audience and there are so many other words that are available.
I come from a place of drabble enjoyment, where the restrictions are fun, and it is an art form. I think it takes skills worthy of celebrating to write something that is only 100 words.
I like the ease of writers and readers who enjoy the strict 100 words being able to find each other.
The orthodox, traditional drabble is there for those who enjoy it, and it’s fun.
As noted, I am a drabble agnostic and honestly don’t care (and can’t write anything that short to save my life anyways).
My point is that people REFUSING TO CARE that this is The Orthodox Meaning and using it to apply to things that are not strict 100 words is has ALSO BEEN AROUND THAT LONG. I personally have been watching both sides of this fight since the 90s, and it was already an “oh god this again” thing at the time.
And what I do care about are statements that appear to refer to history I was there to see for their authority that represent that history as far more unified than it was.
Trust me, I have been watching fights about whether it matters how people use the word for so long.
Yes, it is a child of pre-internet fandom. So is the fight between drabble purists and the people that persist in not giving a shit about how the drabble purists feel and just use it to mean a very short fic.
I have watched flame wars beyond sanity fought over this, you understand? I watched people get BANNED FROM PRIVATE ARCHIVES and watched FRIENDSHIPS END.
Yes: the word was invented to mean this. It was also more of less immediately used less strictly. There has never been actual functional consensus.
(And people also fought over how to calculate the word count: does an em-dash count as one word or two (many word processors count it as two, fyi!); what about ellipses?? What about digits versus written numbers? (We count all of these as solved issues now bc we tend to just accept what word count the automated word counter tells us – never mind that they disagree!) Do we include prepositions and conjunctions? Some older, pre-word-processor methods of counting words do not! And so on.)
And regardless of one’s position, it is only honest to note this, especially when making an appeal to “old fandoms” as a source of authority. There were screaming matches about it on livejournals and I was there.
Arguing the value of the orthodox definition of them is something I’m happy to leave you to! Acting like there was consensus for more than about the length of a single competition in the 1970s and that people haven’t been fighting about of ever since…. not so much.
Piece of financial advice, because I’ve seen too many people make this mistake: never pay off medical debt on a credit card unless you are 100% sure you will be able to pay the credit card balance off in full as soon as you get the first bill. Why? It is ALWAYS better to have medical debt than credit card debt. There is a long list of reasons why.
State and federal laws severely restrict medical debt in ways that credit card debt is not restricted.
Credit card debt can charge much higher interest rates, and in general it IS much higher in rate. Medical debt sometimes charges no interest, at least for a certain period of time. When it does charge interest, the rate is lower, and in some states it is capped as low as 5%, always at 20% or lower. Credit card interest rates are almost never below 15% and are sometimes MUCH higher than 20%.
Medical debt is less damaging to your credit history than credit card debt. And it is easier to eliminate in bankruptcy.
Medical debt also does not affect your spending limits on a credit card. If you use a credit card for monthly expenses, adding medical debt to it can bring you closer to your credit limit which might make you unable to use the card for expenses (even ones you could afford to pay off immediately.) This negatively affects your credit rating through increasing your credit utilization, it can reduce your potential to earn rewards, and it can reduce your spending power in an emergency.
Also, the penalties and fees for deliquency on medical debt are much milder and those for credit card debt are more severe. Again, laws are more restrictive on medical debt. You will have far fewer fees or penalties going delinquent on medical debt.
Also it is often easier to get medical debt forgiven or negotiated down, than credit card debt,
If you ever end up with medical debt, keep it as medical debt and keep paying it as medical debt. Go delinquent on your medical debt before switching it to a credit card. Once you put it on a credit card, you can’t go back.
By keeping your medical debt as medical debt, you save money, protect your credit history, and increase your chances of having the debt forgiven, negotiated down, or eliminated through bankruptcy.
amhrancas 