Interesting Links for 31-01-2022

[andrewducker]

When you're trying not to make any noise in the middle of the night

(tags:rickroll noise night video )

No, Ivermectin Is Not Making People Poop Out "Rope Worms". The Truth Is Much Worse

(tags:idiocy Pandemic OhForFucksSake )

Bigots Launch Attacks on the Women's Sector in Pursuit of a Trans-Free World

(tags:transgender women rights OhForFucksSake bigotry )

Spotify: Streaming giant announces plans to clamp down on Covid misinformation

(tags:lies Pandemic streaming )

Plant-based diets + rewilding provides massive opportunity to cut CO2

(tags:food globalwarming )

Huxley vs. Orwell - who was right?

(tags:AldousHuxley GeorgeOrwell society )

A Billion Years of Time Are Mysteriously Missing. Scientists Think They Know Why. (Glaciers)

(tags:ice geology time )

University Study Finds Reducing Inequality Can Reverse Political Polarisation

(tags:inequality politics )

How the popularity of different movie genres has changed over time

(tags:movies visualisation time )

Comments

[nancylebov]

I've believed for a long time that a lot of transphobia starts with misandry, but it's possible that transphobes hate women, too.

[cmcmck]

Still this great mystery- if I'm not saying I'm trans how do they suppose they'll know?

I don't fit their 6' hairy giant in a frock topos all that well at 5'6" and slight. Then being straight and into guys (one guy in particular these days) doesn't work all that well either...........

[naath]

Mostly they don't know, and are as likely to misgender a tall, butch, cis woman as the average trans woman. Pests the lot of them

[cmcmck]

I have an old friend (maid of honour at my wedding indeed) who is just as you describe- she has been misgendered where I never have (I transitioned at fifteen so have had plenty of time to get it right).

[naath]

trans folk who have been out for a few years tend to perform their gender much more than I bother to (shave? sod off, heels? not if I'll need to stand up, makeup? I have no time; you are lucky if I washed and put on clean clothes) but I'm 5' and curvy so I don't tend to get scowled at in the ladies loo (these days I have a wheelchair and use the accessible loo anyway), lucky me...

[cmcmck]

Heels? Nope. Like I need that at sixtysomething!

Shave? Not much to shave.

Makeup? During all this with masks and the like? Sod off! I suspect I've forgotten how.

[calimac]

I'm trying to parse the layers of misunderstanding (at best) or bigotry (more likely) in the "Even though men commit 99% of all rapes?" tweet.

First there's the ever-popular "trans women are just men in disguise" one, as if they were all Monty Python "pepperpots" or other cross-dressing camp performers. Meeting a few actual trans women should cure that delusion, but it probably won't.

Second, sexual assault by women is a lot more common than tweeter thinks.

And thirdly, tweeter seems to have assimilated "men commit 99% of all rapes" to "99% of men commit rapes."

Tweeter is a rape victim, so can be excused some sensitivity on this subject, but bigotry isn't sensitivity.

[andrewducker]

"Bigotry isn't sensitivity"

Absolutely. I remember the storm around Liam Neeson wanting to kill a black person after a black person raped a friend of his. That wasn't okay, and neither is this.

[calimac]

The film genre popularity statistics are sometimes at cross-purposes with the history of great film. Think of the classic horror films like Frankenstein and Dracula from the early 30s when the chart says horror was of low interest. Presumably such movies didn't make much of a dent on the popularity charts, compared to other movies of the time.

I'm particularly intrigued by the severe drop in fantasy (also SF, though not as strongly) in about 1930-45 as compared to before as well as after. Something about the depression and the war seems to have painted fantasy (especially the kind of light fantasy popular in films) as frivolous. This was true in literature also. In the late 30s, Robert Nathan published an omnibus edition of some of his 1920s fantasy novels, and felt obliged to include a preface defending fantasy in an age of social realist literature. He pleaded that there was still a place for it, and he turned out to be right. For not only was Portrait of Jennie, his biggest hit, still ahead of him, his preface was dated December 1937, which was the very month that some Oxford professor sat down and began writing The Lord of the Rings.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes - I sometimes think that it's harder to get an intereting take on a genre made when the genre is popular. You either need to be in at the start or wait until the noise has died down.

[birguslatro]

Huxley and Orwell: I think the difference between them is that Huxley had lived in the US and Orwell hadn't.