Three things

[cimorene]

OTW racism
Woke up and read the new posts on synonymous: jaw-dropping as usual and all that, but this time I actually laughed! I can't remember the last time something in this trashfire was ridiculous enough to laugh at without also being too worrying for the laugh to get through.

Watching (Good Omens)
I haven't used Twitter for months and I don't see ads on Tumblr, which I've been opening about once a week tops since I never get time at my desktop computer now thanks to this cat divorce. As a result, I haven't seen any spoilers about Good Omens yet. waxjism has to work today and she's going to probably be exhausted because she's doing Ticketmaster support and there are two festivals in Finland today. 😬 So we can't start watching it until Sunday and we might not finish it until next week. We haven't watched the new season of Ted Lasso, either, because Wax is feeling stressed and not 'in the mood' for comedy. When she needs something soothing she can only watch bad crime drama. I find that the opposite of soothing (often upsetting enough that I have to leave), but I do read badfic for the same purpose.

House
My painting projects keep getting delayed because it rains. You can't paint the lovely linseed-containing Uula paint at higher than 80% humidity. And in other painting news, I'm using acrylics for the mirror frame upstairs - it doesn't need a breathable surface and I have a ton of old acrylic to use up - but omg, it's been such a long time that I forgot not only how awful acrylic smells, but how persistent the smell is! The mirror is right by the balcony door that's nearly always open, but it's still stinking up the whole upstairs for days after each bit is dry to the touch! I'm probably not going to buy more acrylic after this. I'm interested to explore traditional homemade paints for future decorative furniture painting - the paints that would've traditionally been used for those projects: tempera and glue paint.

Comments

[yvannairie]

It's incredible to me that OTW is falling for the mistake of trying to protect racist individuals in their community when they're in full awareness that interpersonal drama is one of the main reasons highly communal history like fandom gets lost in the first place.

[cimorene]

It's amazing but at the same time, it's a phenomenon you see repeatedly in a dysfunctional organization. Just as an org with good guidelines and setup can prevent individual incompetence from happening, a dysfunctional one produces dysfunction even from well-meaning or aware individual actors. Idk if psychology understands how that works, but I know it started being studied sociologically and anthropologically in terms of institutions and bureaucracies a very long time ago. And it's also sadly true that you observe the same patterns in a lot of volunteer orgs, especially progressive ones, but the dysfunction of established political parties - for example, the failure of the us parties to effectively respond to Trump - is another example.

[yvannairie]

I've also noticed that people are weirdly resistant to recognising their own hypocricy in general. Like, you can factually demonstrate to them that they are doing the exact same thing as the people they're criticising and they will simply be incapable of recognising it as such, or they 'acknowledge' and immediately sublimate it as something else, such as persistent misunderstanding of their own actions. And, like, I don't get it, if it's actively demonstrated to you that your actions do not produce the results that you claim they do, I don't understand how people keep persisting in those actions.

Is there some kind of... asshole reality distortion field that I don't know about?

[cimorene]

Lol.

I think that's maybe one of those strong cognitive biases that affects people in general. Adjusting your view of your own opinions is not a trivial matter, from the point of view of how hard the brain has to work. It has a lot of ability to rationalize, and everybody is vulnerable to doing that without realizing they are (but to different degrees no doubt, as with other cognitive biases).

I think maybe it ultimately does count as an asshole reality distortion field, because at some level self deception requires caring less about reality than about making yourself feel good. But that isn't to say that it requires conscious assholery. It seems to me that people who ignore reality like that are often earnest and fully convinced of their own good intentions, just with some fucked idea underneath from a trauma somewhere or something.

[viggorlijah]

We don’t have days below 80% humidity! This explains the last time I tried to varnish with linseed oil.

[cimorene]

A lot of paint recommends that. You can still use them, I think? I think it affects drying time mostly - but maybe other things too I guess. And of course indoors the humidity is often lower...