This goes way before the Spotify thing. This is just a court ruling that took a long time to come through.

At a certain point, if your entire raison d’être is to do illegal things, you might as well fully commit

There’s actually a lot of trans women in the professional modelling world. One friend told me that due to preferences for taller women with particular bone structure, that the field actively selects for trans women. Like, there’s still way more cis women in modelling than trans women, simply because there’s way more cis women in the world, but trans women are disproportionately represented in modelling

It’s because there’s a significant proportion of people whose preferences are something behind “skinny, white, conventionally feminine woman”, and so when people outside of that demographic are featured in media, it freaks them out because their preferences are limited to people who fit within that narrow description, so wider diversity of people depicted in media is, to them, synonymous with a push for unattractive people in media.

That in and of itself isn’t a problem — they have every right to their own preferences, and I have no interests in trying to convince them of anything. The problem is because they have attached themselves to the idea that their personal preferences are the objective standard. So when they see more diversity in media, and others thirsting for people they would consider to be objectively unattractive, this destabilises the idea that their preferences are The Truth. This means that, rather than just accepting that people like what they like, they contort themselves into believing that this is all a big conspiracy to try to push objectively unattractive people into media. Framing things like that means they end up seeing this as something that is entirely a political push to erode all foundations of society as part of some Woke ploy. They feel threatened and genuinely scared that there will be a future where there is literally no-one who they find attractive represented in media. Which is to say that someone who is accustomed to being the boot distrusts people who want there to be no boot, because surely they must be lying so that they can seize power and be the boot and crush everyone else.

At the heart of this is a zero-sum way of thinking of the world. They have deeply internalised that if one group in society gains rights, or power of any sort, then it must come at the cost of someone else. Some of them occasionally show awareness of the moral awfulness of them using their privilege to oppress others in society, and they briefly have moments where they understand that if the oppressed wished to take our retribution against them, we would be justified. However, they are incapable (or unwilling) to actually reckon with all the cognitive dissonance they’ve built up, and so their fear causes them to become ever more rigid in their worldview.

I find it fascinating, really. I am a fat, queer punk, and my existence is viscerally horrifying to them, because I am the epitome of so much of what they hate, and it breaks their brains to imagine that someone could find me attractive (tbh, it still sort of breaks my brain a bit too, but I’m getting there with improving my confidence). They genuinely believe that THE WOKE LEFT want everyone in media to look like me, even though that would be the opposite of the diversity we actually want.

They don’t believe us when we say this though. Their zero sum thinking combined with their willful inability to acknowledge that their own preferences are as subjective as anyone’s means they don’t believe us when we say this though, and that this is all part of our dastardly plot to seize absolute power for ourselves and make them be the oppressed ones.

It’s quite sad for them in the end. I’ve found that a huge part of what has allowed me to become more confident in myself has been acknowledging and embracing all the non conventional things I find attractive in other people. For instance, I firmly believe that the most beautiful point on basically any human body is the point where the curvature of the calf turns from being convex to concave. And because I don’t feel the need to convince other people of this, I can just let myself like what I like and be free to bite my partners’ calves. Even if their tastes do genuinely align with what is considered to be this narrow notion of “conventionally attractive”, I can’t imagine they feel very free to actually enjoy their own desires and their own bodily potential

Playing it with my friends was one of the things that kept me sane during lockdown. It’s an incredible game. Decently fun single player too, but it really shines when playing with other people.

I really liked mining and foraging, so I’d go out and build super barebones outposts in various biomes, occasionally bringing back a heckton of ore for new weapons and tools. I also liked being the first one to get dibs on a new pickaxe when the new tier of tools was unlocked

This but pants

Pants often have pockets, but too small even for a normal sized wallet, or a smaller phone. And women who buy pants with shitty pockets absolutely complain about the pockets. Literally just this week, I complimented someone on her handbag, and she thanked me, and proceeded to complain about shitty pockets that necessitate having bags (she wished that she had good pockets, because then having a nice bag could be a deliberate, aesthetic choice, rather than a necessity.

Pants are generally crap, but they’re not the only thing that can have pockets: skirts and dresses can too. I love how often I compliment someone on their dress, and they put their hands in their pockets and say “Thanks! It has pockets!”. When I first saw this meme, I was delighted to see someone describing the exact same thing that I love seeing. Every time I see that posted, I see loads of people commenting on agreement. There is a truly incredible amount of solidarity in the experience of shitty pockets on women’s clothes. When we do find clothes with good pockets, it’s so exciting that we can’t wait to share that fact with anyone who compliments us on the outfit.

The trick is that most of the magic comes from the hands, not the brain. When I self taught calligraphy, I spend a long time just practicing drills. Pages and pages of lines, circles and isolated letters, where I was honing my muscle memory to be able to keep the pen at the correct angle throughout a stroke, or to make a stroke quickly enough that it looks smooth and not wobbly, but slow enough that it was still correctly aligned.

The brain-knowledge came afterwards. That’s why, even after years of not practicing calligraphy, I’m still decent at doing some halfway pretty writing. Whoever wrote the phrase in the OP must be at this point too, because writing in snow on a car window will obviously use very different hand and arm movements compared to writing on paper.

I also futilely spent a lot of time trying to write in a pretty manner when I was in school. I eventually gave up and felt like someone like me, who is not particularly artistic, just isn’t cut out for it. When I actually picked up calligraphy, some years later, I clicked with it surprisingly well precisely because I’m not an artist. It felt more like a technical skill, and I enjoyed the zen of just following the instructions for a particular script, and doing the drills.

I realised that part of my mistake in school was that I had been trying to jump straight to the level of being able to write in a decorative way. I only got good enough that I could do freehand, decorative style lettering when I had become proficient in 3 or 4 different calligraphy scripts. The only reason why it feels like the “writing” -> “art” conversion part of your brain doesn’t work is because it needs to learn through your hands.

If you’d be interested to give it a go, a pen that I loved learning with (and still use today whenever I want to be a bit fancy) is the Pilot Parallel. They come in a variety of sizes and are a super accessible way to be able to start learning a wide variety of scripts without the stress of things like dip pens. The swirly writing featured in the OP would tend to involve using a flex nib, which does typically require dipped ink, so I didn’t even touch that stuff for years, despite being enamoured with the pretty swirls. This is the book I learned from, and if I were to go back and try to regain some of the “hand-knowledge” I’ve lost over the years, this is what I’d return to.

I liked doing calligraphy because it allowed me to feel artistic without actually being all that creative. It’s also pretty great for gifts. “Half uncial” is pretty similar to the script used in Lord of the Rings, and isn’t too hard, so I used that to make a thing with one of her favourite lines from the book. Another friend got a postcard with “FUCK” written in fancy, gothic capitals. It took a while to get to that point, but it was pretty cool once I was.

I think the problem is that the vast vast majority of women’s clothing, especially fast fashion, lacks pockets of good size (or any at all). The smaller places that make garments with good pockets are usually priced higher because they’re inherently not targeting the mass market (because they can’t compete with the big companies, so their only hope is to carve out a niche in the high quality domain)

I have literally never heard a woman complain about having reasonably sized pockets.

You’re doing God’s work here. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve found myself wading into a conversation to clarify things. It always feels like I’m being a bit of a persnickety grump, but misconceptions like this are a part of why so many people are wearing ill fitting bras.

Far too many people feel like their bra is a cage, that they can’t wait to be free of at the end of the day. However, for people with larger busts especially, a good, supportive bra can feel like freedom.

Obligatory plug of the “A Bra That Fits” calculator. I make my own clothing and support garments (corsets, stays etc.), so I often get asked for advice on where to go to get fitted, and I always advise that it’s better to use resources like this (with someone to help measure, if necessary and available) rather than a professional fitting.

I knew someone who was previously wearing a D cup that she had been professionally fitted for, who went up to a H cup. It took her some trial and error to find the right band size, because what the calculator recommended wasn’t right for her, but once she got over the shock of “surely I can’t be an H cup!”, she was able to use other community resources to actually find something infinitely more comfortable than her old bras

It’s not just an engineering problem. Larger bras can be hard to find in interesting and fun colours, and there’s no reason why we can’t have pretty colours too. Plus even in smaller bras that have fancy trims and edgings, lace overlays and decorative strappy elements, they exist in addition to the main support structure of the bra, on top of it. There’s no reason why this couldn’t be done for larger bra sizes too.

It actually is done by more niche makers, so it’s definitely possible. Ewa Michelak, for example, is a Polish bra maker that is extremely well regarded amongst people who want their over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder to look pretty and make them feel sexy too. Here’s an example of something from their range for people with “very large busts” (Mildly NSFW) to give an example of what I mean.

Buying bras from abroad is a faff, and extra expensive due to import fees, but the fact that I know multiple people who do it speaks to how the quality and availability of the majority of bras for large boobs is just rubbish, both in support and aesthetics.

The problem is that this advice was made up by no-one. It’s like that perennially relevant IBM memo that says something like “A computer cannot be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision”

What it’s meant to mean is “yay us! We’re doing inclusivity!”

What it actually means, to me, is “we will make a show of valuing disabled people, but we won’t go so far as to actually include them in the design process, thereby making this bench an artifact to our own self congratulation, as well as making wheelchair users feel excluded in a far more insidious way than they already did”.

And I feel like an asshole to say it like that, but it’s so annoying to see well intentioned people fall at literally the first hurdle. Like, if they truly do see us as people who have intrinsic value that means we are worth including, then they also need to see us in our full personhood and include us in the process. The alternative is that their enthusiasm will just cause more money to be pissed down the drain on symbolic gestures that don’t fulfill their intended purpose

I can appreciate the thought, because as a part time wheelchair user, it does often wear me down when I feel like I’m perpetually perched on the periphery of any conversation.

However, like you say, this is just far too impractical for most people. I have a small, active wheelchair, and even that would probably put me in front of friends sitting on the bench beside me.

However, I can totally believe that this was made in earnest. I’ve seen some ridiculous “accommodations” that are ostensibly for disabled people that just show that the able bodied designer just didn’t involve any disabled people in the design process at all. And that’s why “nothing about us, without us” is a long used slogan used by disability rights campaigners.

If anyone wants to see an example of good accessibility design, I love how they designed the packaging for the Xbox Accessible Controller. They included lots of people with varied needs across multiple stages of the design process, and it really shows. And the end product is so elegantly functional. I like this quote from Solomon Romney, a “Microsoft Retail Stores retail learning specialist”:

"The whole thing sort of blossoms open in this really beautiful, fluid way. The package just sort of opens and hands you the controller. What’s wonderful about it is the effortlessness.”

It’s a shame it’s a secret, because this looks delicious!

If you can’t divulge the recipe, perhaps you could share a general tip or two for someone trying to make something similar?

I would probably step out of the way of the trolley, but I admit that I would hesitate.

If you saw my hesitation and if I was doing okay, I would say that I’m doing as well as I can be, under the circumstances. I am fortunate to have good people in my life. When things get to be a lot, connections with people I care about helps keep me grounded.

The world often feels so awful that I feel hopeless. I also often feel awful, sometimes due to the world, sometimes due to brain weasels scurrying around in my head. But in the end, I figure that if I am someone who is able to see all the bad stuff that’s happening as bad, then that suggests that I am probably a force for good, however small that may be. At least I can see the problem.

If I died, there would be one less person who understands that things need to change. My resolve is weak and weary, but it endures. As long as it does, I would step off the tracks and give the gun to someone responsible asap.

Edit: I know that the meme is a commentary on the recent murder of Renee Nicole Good. I was just waxing poetic on my own mostly-managed despair, which certainly is relevant to the topic of ICE’s crimes. It’s an interesting contrast: ICE would shoot the driver, whilst the rest of us are left to battle the dread that causes some of us to contemplate willingly falling to the trolley. That’s why I’m trying to stick around — because if I let myself die, then that’s just another injustice in the world.

I linked it in a top level comment, but if you’re someone who likes watching long, thoughtful video essays, this is an excellent one on the precise topic of your comment, from one of my favourite science communicators

Ooh, an opportunity to share a video from one of my favourite science communicators, the inimitable Dr Fatima (an ex-astrophysicist): “Einstein Was a Socialist; Should We Care?” (Duration: 1h16)

This reminded me of the edits of Disney princesses that make them look alternative that I often saw on Tumblr when I was a teen

You’re right, it was the .se one I used and I misremembered when writing my comment. Though this mistake highlights why adding sites like this to your bookmarks is important. Opportunistic scams are always common when a big domain goes down, and mistakes are easy to make