SomeBrashAtom

Courage is the first term in the series approximation of perfect virtue.

@goblinodds "she/they, ayn rand apologist" actually communicates most of what you want, to those of us in the know about gender issues. That's not many people, though. P(gender atypical | female & "ayn rand apologist" in bio) is honestly pretty high even with no further info

decided to take pronouns out of my bio, here’s a bunch of jumbled thoughts on the topic and gender stuff more generally: i made two critical errors, i think CRITICAL ERROR #1 i thought of pronouns as a way to communicate information... but also had an autistic commitment to pretending they communicate what they *should* communicate and not what they *do* communciate i feel they *should* communicate “this person experiences gender in a weird way that doesnt map to their sex” and that it should give people a cue that they dont have to treat me with kid gloves the way they ordinarily would treat a woman this is a pretty funny and very fucking autistic error to make bc it’s not like i didnt realize what i was actually communicating was “this person is woke” (wildly inaccurate), i just thought that it *shouldn’t* be. because things should be about the text and not the subtext! i think(?) people online figure out pretty quickly upon interacting with me that i’m not woke and thought i could offset it with “ayn rand apologist” (which…idk maybe that works) but i was trying to compensate for the “I AM A WOMAN TREAT ME LIKE A WOMAN” flags that my body sends people (which...doesnt make a lot of sense bc people checking my bio wouldnt know this unless i’d v recently posted a selfie) and instead sending an “I AM A SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR” signal, which is somehow even worse lmao also an actual real problem i have is that everything about my aesthetic preferences ALSO signal “I AM A SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR” and i really do not need to be enforcing this out of some misguided attempt to communicate something to people which hardly anyone is going to understand there might be a small subset of people who see it and get accurate info out of it but i kind of suspect they would figure this stuff out anyway?? in general i need to worry less about trying to be legible and explaining myself. when i was a Youth my idols were Oscar Wilde and Camille Paglia and i seem to be happiest when i let myself lean into that CRITICAL ERROR #2 i thought of pronouns as a way to describe myself, but they’re not! they’re a way for third parties to identify me to each other. it’s nothing to do with me at all, whatever makes it easy for them to communicate is fine. tbf i was already most of the way there, this is basically how i’ve always approached it, it’s not like i was going around correcting people bc, while i do like the Feeling of Being Understood, if you have to correct people then you’re like… not actually achieving anything on that front are you i mean people are going to think of you how they’re going to think of you and you can try to give them info that will update their perception but you dont really have control over whether it gets through. what i want is for people to understand me, not for people to like parrot some words i feed them.

Every time I leave New York City and get behind the wheel of a car again I feel childlike joy. I know I live in walkable paradise or whatever, but there's just something about being in control of a big piece of metal driving through an empty wasteland that hits

@lapislagoons Looks pretty clean for a subway sign, too

I love this sign so much

My hometown makes beer so good, that even New York City imports it! They don't make anything as good! Nice feeling

@seeared_faced This far, I believe, I am with you. However, "don't fail" as the character of good faith implies that one who has reached one's potential should have only goals which are certainly within one's reach. This is what I disagree with. Slim chances are often worthily pursued.

@seeared_faced To the extent that one's faith is good, a failure is a mistake or an attempt at growth. We misjudge our ability, or intentionally take on a challenge beyond it that we might improve. With perfect wisdom, at peak potential, one neither makes mistakes nor needs improvement

The closer you are to your maximum physical potential in the foreseeable future, or the present, which means adaptive capacity should be high, & you are arguably in the proper station regarding power+responsibility, good faith no longer means "try hard". It means "don't fail".

Going to church today for the proto-anastasian liturgy (Easter is tomorrow for us Orthodox Christians), I have to admit I have some doubts about the Resurrection and the whole story of Christ being the Son of God. Usually I can sort of deny these doubts within myself, but during Holy Week, the sincerity of the people around me, the Church services every night and during the day (not that I go to them all), and just the general intensity of everything really brings my cognitive dissonance to the forefront. I'm about a year and a half post my conversion to Orthodox Christianity, and when I took the vows to follow Christ, bear His cross, and keep to the strictures of the Nicene Creed, I was sincere. At least as sincere as I could be. I had doubts of course, and my priest was well aware. After all, I took the name of the premier doubter in the Christian mythos, Saint Thomas the Apostle. When I was converting, I had multiple experiences of Christ coming to me. I dealt with extreme chronic pain, debilitating suffering, and He saved me. I don't talk about this often online because it feels gauche, and I won't go into detail now. But suffice to say I had genuine experiential evidence to believe the Christian story. Unfortunately, as Christianity has ceased to be novel and exciting and a big chance in my life, that evidence feels more and more hollow, less convincing to my overly rationalized, modern mind. More and more I find myself thinking: "Is this really true? What if His body was just snatched away and lies were spread? Wouldn't it make more sense for all the women at the tomb and the apostles to just be delusional, even if they genuinely believed it? The Jews said that they stole the body, the early Christians obviously claimed they were lying, how can we ever know for sure?" When I first started to doubt, even before I converted, these thoughts would plague and torment me. Sitting there in church I would fret, "How can I feel this way and sing hymns, how can I take communion while not genuinely believing that it's the Body and Blood of Christ?" Still today these doubts and thoughts bother me, but I'm learning to be more at home with them. I can't ever know the truth of the Resurrection. In all likelihood, the intense experiences that convinced me to convert won't come back. My spiritual father and my elders in the faith have all warned me that's the case. So, if I doubt the Christian story so much, why continue going? Aren't I living a double life? Aren't I lying to myself and my community? Perhaps I am. It certainly bothers me, as I pride myself (heh) on being an honest and open person. I discuss my doubts with my priest and close confidants, but generally keep them close to the chest in my broader church community. In a way it would be easier to just leave church. To take the path I took as a teenager, be an atheist, say it's all fake. But I simply can't deny the beauty of Holy Orthodoxy, the haunting power of Christ's story, and His words. When I first saw an Orthodox Divine Liturgy, I was blown away. I came back a second time and ended up bawling the entire service, crying more in that couple of hours than I had my entire life prior. Eventually one of the parish council members had to shoo me out of the pews, because I stayed there crying so long that everyone had packed up and they were closing the church. Something about Orthodoxy, something about Christ, just compels me. Even if it doesn't make sense to my rational mind, my heart can't let go of Him. Reading the pre-communion prayers, I do honestly have difficulty firmly and strongly acclaiming that YES, I DO believe this bread is the Body of Christ, and the wine is the Blood of Christ. But I can honestly say that I love Him, that I want Him dearly, that I long for Him to be a part of me. I can say that when I participate in the Eucharist, I feel filled with a mysterious life that I can't explain, that perhaps isn't divine but certainly is closer than almost anything else I've experienced in this world. Who knows what actually happened two thousand years ago in the tomb of Christ, it's probably one of, if not the most, controversial historical topics ever. We will never truly know what happened, regardless of what evidence comes out or new techniques archaeologists discover. All I know is that for me, the beauty and power of Christ's Church and His legacy that has been kept alive for almost two thousands years by His followers is something I can't seem to do without. It has made my life better in every way, and made me more like Him. My role model, my Lord, my Savior. When the mood strikes me, my King and my God. Perhaps I'm a hypocrite, one of those people Christ condemned that mouthed the prayers without really believing deep in their hearts. I certainly know I'm a sinner. But ultimately, I just can't seem to walk away despite the dissonance and the doubts and the confusion. I'm reminded of the story in the Gospel, when Christ was about to go to His Passion, and he gave his disciples the ritual of the Eucharist. He told them that they would be eating His body, drinking His blood. Many of His followers, even those healed by Him, were freaked out, and understandably so! They went Ok dude, we can accept that you're a holy prophet healing us, but you want us to be cannibals? You want us to EAT you?! That's a little too weird for me, sorry, I'm out. Christ turned to His disciples and said, "Will ye also go away?" Simon Peter responded, in a quote that haunts me two thousand years later because I feel the exact same damn way. He looked at this beautiful Man, this incredible healer, teacher, prophet, king. He searched his heart, and responded: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

New York City has approximately 1 billion places to get good Chinese food but only two that have good tacos.

Slue-foot Sue did it first

@qorprate @Actualwebutante How would you describe those? I have never been around Jews enough to learn these things, but I am in NYC now and it would be nice to have insight into the increasingly Jewish social spaces I find myself in.

@SomeBrashAtom @Actualwebutante they definitely do all of this, just wish they got the other half of Jewish social norms too, the ones for when you're outside of Torah study

what is it like being a rationalist?

@qorprate @Actualwebutante Yeah, I endorse that. Content-wise it's Anglo-Protestant. I was getting more at the discursive norms and mood Extreme verbosity, definitions lawyering, confrontational approach, and neurotic scrupulosity about utils and epistemics feels more Jewish with a dash of Catholic

@Actualwebutante @SomeBrashAtom Rationalism partly Jewish in shape but where it counts it's Protestant, in its moral coupling of "epistemic virtue". Similarly the utilitarian ethics fall neatly out of Anglo Protestant thought, but although this is deeper rooted it's less visible bc it's background American.

@Actualwebutante Rationalist thought is stylistically Jewish: Verbal-dominant and systematic in the way that produces Sabbath Elevators. For some minds, this style is unnatural and unergonomic. Conforming to a foreign style for too long bends one out of one's proper shape, like mental scoliosis.

@SomeBrashAtom lmao at Judaism, bro what

@agitbackprop TBH I think it's come around again

⚠️ NOTE: Naming your company "The [Noun] Company of [Location]" has lost its aura premium, and now carries negative aura. Keep this in mind for future corporate naming decisions. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

@Actualwebutante But by the same token, almost no one in this world experiences the deep relief and joy one rationalist feels when meeting another

@Actualwebutante Also, at risk of stating the obvious, anxiety, depression, autism, judaism, gender dysphoria. These are all attributes of people who self-select in and I don't have direct experience of all of them, but I'm pretty sure that rationalism exacerbates all of them.

being a good person has an extremely high skill ceiling