Maxwell insisted on grand titles – “International Journal of” was a favourite prefix. Peter Ashby, a former vice president at Pergamon, described this to me as a “PR trick”, but it also reflected a deep understanding of how science, and society’s attitude to science, had changed. Collaborating and getting your work seen on the international stage was becoming a new form of prestige for researchers, and in many cases Maxwell had the market cornered before anyone else realised it existed.

If you explain to any outsider that what we call science is a game of collecting and showing off units of prestige, they will be flabbergasted. Maxwell catered to the most superficial and vain aspects of the human psyche, and traded in a measure of righteousness. This is genius, I will grant him that, but opposite to the objectives of science. He made the worst possible metric about which to measure everything, and created a global system of narcissistic organizations selling their souls to publish to these journals.

And scientists are the least probable to rebel against this status quo. If anything, it will make them appear as big-time asses who are full of themselves. They are bound to project more legitimacy onto the system, similar to doomsday cultists.

Aspesi was not the first person to incorrectly predict the end of the scientific publishing boom, and he is unlikely to be the last. It is hard to believe that what is essentially a for-profit oligopoly functioning within an otherwise heavily regulated, government-funded enterprise can avoid extinction in the long run. But publishing has been deeply enmeshed in the science profession for decades. Today, every scientist knows that their career depends on being published, and professional success is especially determined by getting work into the most prestigious journals.

It is the departments’ choice to cancel subscriptions anytime and start publishing on their own terms. They are equally to blame when they esteem reputation above all, and measure reputation by publishing to these journals. Let’s not pretend that big-shot universities are simply taken hostage by a handful corrupt billionaires. They’re in on it.

It is as if the New Yorker or the Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill. Outside observers tend to fall into a sort of stunned disbelief when describing this setup. A 2004 parliamentary science and technology committee report on the industry drily observed that “in a traditional market suppliers are paid for the goods they provide”. A 2005 Deutsche Bank report referred to it as a “bizarre” “triple-pay” system, in which “the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product”.

Racket.

During COVID I had structured my day with specific activities. Some hobbies, then some movies, then some book, then some games. A limited number of cigarettes per day. I went on long walks outside as much as possible, and got a couple online friends over Discord. It helped the time pass. It is not a long-term solution, but it is a start.

Another thing I came up with is the time factor. Or the pacing if you will. We have also received that from those other platforms. I have turned to reading e-books instead of scrolling and I have found my attention span has improved. It is the time factor that is internalized and doesn’t allow careful consideration of everything. Conflict and weaponization of sincerity might well be a side effect of this one.

I think it was all over the repo.

I don’t even know if it is about conflict per se, or the very notion that it is virtuous to engage with these media politically. Even these alternative platforms, because they are modeled after Twitter, Reddit, and the like, possess the same qualities, by making us react and respond to similar ways. I guess digital infrastructure for activist groups should be more similar to private infrastructures of orgs rather than corporate social media. And they should be community first, with a sophisticated take on the channels available to communicate to and from the organization and the rest of the community.

Until some time ago, I was still on the fence about Lemmy though. On the technical level it has some desirable attributes in the community structure and federation, that could possibly help. But the user culture, me included, is so fucked up that only with insane levels of moderation it could ever fulfill such a purpose. For this another medium should be considered in Lemmy’s place (I don’t think Mastodon is the one either), that would constrain antisocial and non-social user behavior on the technical level. So, this is a loose argument that Lemmy and Mastodon are not tools for social change, and should be abandoned as such.

I did not expect when I posted this that it would be a field trip on the very phenomena Cross is taking issue with.

You are not jumping with me anywhere. I invited people to comment on the quotes of another author.

Negligence of COVID prevention is important. To me, trans equality rights are important. And a score of other not only important but critical topics, from climate change to ableist structural eugenics.

But by dunking on each other in places like these, even if Lemmy / Mastodon is not corporate, achieves nothing. Your comment does nothing. My comment does nothing.

We had this mentality passed on from corporate social media, and it is just wrong to think that our posting achieves anything good the internet has to offer, to activism or otherwise. This is the true message of the quote, and not minimizing the importance of any macro-, structural, systemic topic.

That said, for those still grasping with the notion of weaponized sincerity, the above comment is the more fine specimen of it.

But the worst people in the Valley also thrive on all the demobilizing disengagement that their platforms have slowly led us towards. They have alchemized activism into toxic Twitter beefs and seduced us into thinking that we’re one viral campaign away from solving some massive socio-structural problem, which makes it all the easier to devote our energies to pursuing these digital white whales in lieu of more tangible goals in our lives and communities.

First and foremost, one of the ugliest side effects of terminal COVID-posting that proliferated amongst the Extremely Online was a deepening mistrust of their fellow human being; every time they fell for outrage-bait about some wanker being a dick about not wearing a mask, their inevitable response was, “I don’t trust people anymore!” This is a neat fit for conservatives, whose entire movement is built on a notion of Original Sin, developed through two centuries of monarchism, fascism, nativism, and lesser varieties of know-nothingism, that treats strangers as essentially threats. But for anyone to the left of Mussolini, such contempt for your fellow human being, such unwillingness to reach out to one’s neighbour for fear they’ll be like That Bitch from Panera Bread I Saw on TikTok, is extraordinarily dangerous — and fatal to realizing the ideals we share, which are necessarily collective.

This myth of social media’s indispensability to our movements, not just as a tool but as the forum for change, is dangerous. If we internalize it too deeply, it actually demobilizes our movements, lulling us into mistaking quote-tweet wars and “clapbacks” for meaningful political action, seducing us into seeing nanoseconds of digital catharsis as an adequate substitute for change. It seduces us into mistaking the profitable content we generate for truly resistive speech — as well as tying our worth and our success, as people and activists, to the engagement metrics created by large tech corporations.

Social media is chock-a-block with political content, hashtag activism, and disinformation that turns grandparents into fascists. How could it be anti-political? Because it demobilizes and scatters the polity; it makes it much harder to come together, deliberate, and effect change in our communities. Worse, social media tricks us into thinking that that’s exactly what we’re doing. What results is a “public square” where real people can get hurt but nothing ever really changes.

The notion of a marketplace of ideas selecting the best ideas and rejecting the worse ones is interesting. It suggests that marketplaces always select for quality, especially the more unregulated they are, which is not something I’ve noticed to be true about how any actual marketplaces operate.

The idea that Nazi “ideas” need to be defeated in open debate, which will cause them to lose power, is also interesting. It presupposes that debates are always won by the most correct idea, which I’ve noticed is often the opposite of how debate works.

It also suggest that the Nazis’ plan is to participate in bloodless debate over their ideas, and accept the outcome if their ideas are rejected, which is not a plan I think Nazis have ever pursued, or the sort of arena in which they have ever admitted—much less accepted—defeat.

It also suggests that what Nazis have are “ideas,” when we know that what they actually have are intentions, and those intentions always create real-life violence toward marginalized communities along racial, ethnic, religious, and other lines of bigotry—and they do so the more effectively Nazis are able to gather and organize and promote their “ideas” into the mainstream.

Source: https://www.the-reframe.com/questions-for-substack/

Also, I find the very definition of your “zero point” as a self-contained bad faith argument. It is quite close to notions of “snowflakes needing safe spaces” or sth, but real life anti-nazi tactics are, and should be, more militant. To this bad-faith zero point my position is either a -10, or on another axis entirely lmao.

to let a generic phrase be forever attached to a political movement in any setting is a bit much

ahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

BTW this is a prolonged ‘Aha moment’, not a typesetting symbolism of laughter.

“Living space”, like? Displacing other peoples to provide an ideal amount of population density to your own people is still not OK. Or it should be anyway.

Good, but the way the developer spells “nazy” makes me to follow the quoted advice on my own brain process:

if you want to change the wallpaper during runtime, you must pkill the daemon, and then start it again

The first name of the project was “The Final Solution to your Wayland Wallpaper Worries”. The developer reports he was unaware of the connotation until the Ukraine war happened.

Let me highlight some bits of your message:

I clearly have attitudes that being trans is monstrous

Exposure therapy has been helpful, and my overall distress from trans people is much less now than it was at the start.

But surgeries do not resolve trauma and setbacks formed through years of closetedness, dysphoria, and denial.

I am beginning to feel like this is one of the biggest sources of my continued distress - it’s not just that I am trans, it’s that I lived so long as a man and what that did to me (physically yes, but mentally is what I mean).

But I have get across other people who like you have gone through surgeries to find something to be desired at the other end.

I do think this is the right take-away, the fact that neovaginas are lined with skin that will never be like or function like a natal vagina is a technicality - the bottom line is that vaginoplasty has excellent outcomes and are totally worth it. (Even if it’s not quite as good as you mentioned.)

Let me start by that last part. I meant that a bit differently. I meant that I have met people who have undergone SRS and then they want to be done with gender dysphoria and the trans label. A person might develop dysphoria later in life about a facial feature for instance, but fails to realize it is dysphoria, because she is “done” with surgeries, and done with “being trans”. This is related to the misconception that HRT and SRS eventually “make you cis”. Because supposedly they define transness as the presence of dysphoria, thus relieving dysphoria makes you not-trans anymore. That is why I prefer (and WHO) to base the definition on gender incongruence, or simply “being trans”. It might also be based on an individualist and assimilationist approach to transitioning. And it is rooted in internalized transphobia, in your case with a prominent disgust/aversion element.

This might also make you want to be singled out and not be lumped together with the category of trans people. You framed your exposure to us as exposure therapy. This might come off as a bit dehumanizing. It is the solidarity and community with other trans people that is a substinence and steadfastiness parameter, the opposite of individualist assimilationism. It is very important for marginalized groups to come together. Come to think of it, I was active in support groups both online and IRL, and that also helped me get through transition. Actually this is a reason I sought out to be a member of this community, solidarity among trans women must be a given. Just being together with other people like you is something of itself. I always feel relief and sisterhood in the company of trans women, not that I hadn’t been disappointed or betrayed. I have.

I tend to think that psychology is just not a matured discipline and operates on poor theories, and at the very least most psychologists leave the field ill equipped to deal with the kinds of issues I had.

This is the closest to the possible reasons I intuitively thought that would be a barrier for you to be helped by therapy. I think you are in error about this on multiple levels, the first is that I don’t see a direct link from academic psychology to therapy practice. But some of it is related, and there are studies that show that therapy is effective. The school of thought of therapy is not significant, it seems that the critical factor is the relationship with a therapist and the process itself. So it is a process. These attitudes, together with rationalization, might have been barriers for you to be helped.

Of course it goes without question that the therapist must be knowledgable in gender dysphoria. I also see that you feel like your problems are to specific and particular to be handled by just any therapist, or the field of psychology itself. I don’t have an answer for you right there, but I have seen it before. I don’t know what it means, but I know that it has hindered people from starting therapy or make them postpone it till their problems become overwhelming. Of course you said you have tried therapy consistently, but you might have been looking down at psychology as a discipline and at the same time not trusting it to understand your specific situation. Rationalization and possible neurodivergence also may be part of it. Your eclecticism (eg PhD psychologists) might not be helpful, I don’t know the Southern US situation well, but a PhD could be too sterile academic work. You need someone with relevant field knowledge, clinical experience, and a good fit to you personally. All these are more important factors than PhDs.

To continue a thought from before, this is a way you’re setting yourself up to not be helped by therapy. You already bring up yourself several issues that you need to process within a relationship and within a community. So you are smart enough to see that your nightmare and following post here was literally the tip of the iceberg, and there is a bullet list of topics already, internalized misandry, internalized aversion to transness, being unprepared for your new normal, and then the self-esteem issues and being made redundant, which is stressful in itself. Also, this is already too personal and you should not be so open about it on the internet. It belongs to therapy, or other trusted setting. There is also this community’s matrix which has encrypted channels and an emotional support room. Best of luck!

You have read more books than me, and I won’t suggest more. Knowledge does not seem to help you. Two things I learned early in transition and helped me come alive on the other side. These two things (and faith). The axioms are: 1) Being trans sucks. 2) But being trans is not wrong.

Surgeries are anyone’s own privilege and they should not be gatekeeped. But surgeries do not resolve trauma and setbacks formed through years of closetedness, dysphoria, and denial.

You choose to fixate over the tissue details, at a scientific detail I can’t follow. But I have get across other people who like you have gone through surgeries to find something to be desired at the other end. As a congenial stranger, a fellow trans person, I see you deprive yourself of options and also deprive yourself of happiness.

Happiness many of us achieve with and without surgery. You will definately benefit from therapy, although finding the right person can be challenging. Mine was an LGBT specialist, but had also a background in cognitive therapy and dealing with trauma. I had other therapists before, and had lots of groundwork done before even tackling transition issues. (Don’'t get me wrong I would never achieve a basic level of psychological functioning without transitioning.)

You had many therapists and none helped. With all respect and solidarity to your troubles, this might mean that you are not allowing yourself to be helped. Many therapists will also be intimidated by your intelligence and attention to detail. This is a tricky bit, with many of us, growing up accustomed to being the smartest person in the room.

You have your advanced takes on things, your intelligence and diligence and it might be hard to make yourself vulnerable enough to allow and be helped (either by therapy or faith). But you’re setting yourself up. You need to change route, and I worry about you.

Instead of trying to nullify your transness, consider what being trans has done to your psyche, as you have mostly done whatever is possible for the part that relates to your body. Not having been helped by many therapists still means you have not received the care you need on that front. You still owe that bit to your future self, as you did with SRS.

I no-op and further down in my transition, I also know several other women closely, so I hope I am not overstepping here. We all have internalized shit in our brains about how are bodies are supposed to be, and this is why gender-affirming counseling and studying transgender theory is as important as medically transition. Many people have psychological set-backs even after transitioning. Your tissue down there is the exact same tissue that it would be your vagina. The surgeon restored the vagina you would have naturally developed. Same goes for HRT, as it activates the exact receptors that would be active if you had undergone typical female puberty. That is the whole reason HRT works on our bodies in the first place. It can’t turn us into dolphins, but it can activate our DNA expression that would have been, because human beings can develop one or the other or yet intermediate ways with respect to sex differentiation. The same embryonic tissue can form the one or the other way, and there is not an essentialist difference between a neovagina/vulva and a typical one. We all have old trauma with our past dysphoria that raises its ugly head but has nothing to do with who we are now and what our bodies look like now. Look, I really don’t want to say more, transition is a very private journey, and many people, myself included, have benefited from discussing such things with a specialized affirming therapist. Best of luck and congratulations on your milestone.

If your threat model involves all these, then you can only be one person, and he has already been arrested due to stylistics. /joking

BTW your advice to use AI against writing style fingerprinting is not what I have heard, and some people don’t want to use AI, especially OpenAI. You should at least make your remedy about local models, but those are not as good as the commercial ones.

The correct response here is: style guides.

Style guides are specifically designed to make multiple staff writers to all sound the same. There are tools like back-and-forth translation and reading level analyzers that you can use offline to minimize peculiarities in your writing.

But is is all very cumbersome and error prone, and for low threat scenarios just mimicking another person at a lower reading level than yourself is the most accessible method.