I have not been okay lately.

In late March, a dear friend’s husband passed away. In April, I almost had the chance to acquire a home — something rare for Millennials and even many Gen Xs — but due to family reasons, it fell through. Then friends’ pets kept passing away or getting very ill. As mentioned a few times here, I have thanatophobia, a rather unpleasant phobia of death. In addition to being pretty empathetic and caring about my friends, this was all rather hard. …

Saddle up, kids, because the Magpie is mad about a video on the internet again. Content warnings apply for discussions of sexual assault, consent, queer stuff, and a whole plethora of different types of prejudice and phobias.

As readers of my articles and general members of my social sphere may know already, I’m a big proponent of sex work advocacy. I find the area interesting, it’s sometimes ethically fraught and complex, and it’s one in which a lot of marginalized oppressions and issues dovetail together. There’s a ton of societal prejudice involved as well. …

I’d been sitting on this concept for a while, and then I found myself relaxing on Youtube one night, watching a film reviewer’s analyses — and I was jolted from my comfortable mood and into a flurry of expository frothing.

Possible content warning for talk about cults, general acts of violence, the dark side of humanity, cops, abuse — you get the idea.

Now, I think Ryan Hollinger does a great job of analysing this giving the constraints of his expertise and knowledge. I generally love his channel, and would recommend it. …

If you’ve been on the internet for a few minutes, or a few years, it’s quite easy to notice that sometimes — or, actually, often — people who purportedly agree with each other can have quite unpleasant dust-ups. Why does that happen so often in political discussions?

Content warning for talk about sexual assault and graphic, frank language in this one.

Source.

I was talking to a few friends about this regarding an article, when — to everyone’s surprise — one person declared that she didn’t think the clothes were appropriate, actually.

There was some consternation, so I thought I’d…

So, people who remember the 90s and early 2000s, or even the early 10s, might remember the recurring cultural fixation on being “unlike other girls.” A Youtuber I particularly enjoy just put out an excellent video essay on the topic, and it covers a really interesting angle that isn’t necessarily being talked about much.

A quick note about gender to preface things — some of the people who look like “other girls” are either transgender or non-gender conforming, and the issue of gender for trans people, especially re: gender performance for both personal reasons and survival reasons, is really complicated…

So, I mentioned in a previous article that I’ve been agonizing over leftist infighting issues for — well — a few years now. Despite the sharp tone of my previous posts and some others, it should be noted that I don’t hate modern communists — in fact, I generally agree with a lot of their aims (with the exception of the small number of dictator apologists). I am, however, significantly more comfortable around people who talk about democratic socialism and who generally aren’t demanding a one-party state, because of my previously stated vehement opposition to totalitarianism.

But today, I want…

People who’ve read The Meaning Wars series might recall that in book 2, The Stolen: Two Short Stories, the novella “Wordthieves” depicts a society that has some of the trappings of leftist and liberal groups — meditation, organic food, yoga, vegetarianism, basic housing and healthcare — yet behaves like Christian extremists. To wit, they exert behavioural control over members, demand obedience and a lack of questioning,

Part of my goal with this was to vent frustration at the controlling behaviour and culture present in the Health Sciences faculty I was studying in, under a now (thankfully) deposed Department Head. The…

I was crawling through my Discord and Facebook threads about politics and chatting with friends when a buddy shared a screenshot of a tweet that made my jaw drop. (Discord is a social chatting platform similar to old IRC chats, but with a nicer interface; if you don’t know what Facebook and Twitter are, I would like to know the location of your rock, and exactly how many other blind salamanders live under it, because it should probably be protected by UNESCO.)

Anyway, there’s a content producer called Peter Coffin. They create video essays on Youtube, and since I tend…