Y’all need to have a greater degree of 1- healthy suspicion in Alexa and corporate surveillance devices personal assistants, and 2- understanding of how dangerous this kind of algorithm is in the hands of a multinational company (and anyone for that matter.)
To begin with, that data is both available for sale and able to be subpoenaed by the government. Alexa’s records and recordings have already been used in criminal trials. In the US, a digital record of your emotional patterns can be used to deny you housing, jobs, and to rule on your ability to exercise your basic rights. Consider that psychiatric stigma and misdiagnosis can already be wielded against you in legal disputes and the notion of a listening device capable of identifying signs of distress for the purpose of marketing to you should be made more clearly concerning.
Moreover we have already seen the use of algorithms like this on Facebook and other “self-reporting” (read: user input) sites capable of identifying the onset of a manic episode [1][2][3], which have been subsequently been linked to identifying vulnerable (high-spending) periods to target ads at these users, perhaps most famously in selling tickets to Vegas (identified in a TedTalk by techno-sociological scholar Zeynep Tufekci where she more generally discusses algorithms and how they shape our online experiences to suggest and reinforce biases).
The notes on this post are super concerning- we are being marketed to under the guise of having our emotional needs attended to by the same people who inflicted that emptiness on us, and everyone is just memeing.
I’m already exhausted just imagining the kind of person who would wear these and how eagerly they would look for an opportunity to explain what they do and why they’re not one of those Cell Phone Sheople
RE: that these are good for epilepsy
A few people have pointed out that you can actually make the same glasses for just a couple bucks worth of material, so that doesn’t need a kickstarter project to happen, and they’re selling these things for EIGHTY DOLLARS each.
You can watch their video here and their intention is totally just “oh we’re so enslaved by technology, this is our symbolic stand against the tyranny of screens!!!”
I know “we will outlive them” is very specifically a Jewish resistance slogan
(it comes from a song, there’s a really badass story about it, you can hear about it here )
what I want to know is: should people who aren’t Jewish use that slogan? cuz I would suspect it’s a pretty emphatic no
please advise if you’re Jewish and have the energy, thank you 💙
Mixed-race Muslim/Jewish fam of @alder-knight here, and I’d be inclined to say it depends on whether your “we” when you use it explicitly includes Jewish folks in your other statements and actions of solidarity. Like, I hope you outlive them too, you are part of my “we” when I say it.
– The reason you get extra hungry before and during your period is because your body is physically burning more calories, sometimes as many as 300 more per day for the duration of your period, with an elevated BMR (base metabolic rate) in the days before it starts. So no, you’re not being weird or gross or undisciplined if you want to eat a bunch of chocolate – your body is just burning the same amount of calories you’d expend in 25 minutes on a crosstrainer to shed your uterine lining.
– This is especially important to remember if you’re already, for whatever reason, eating fewer calories per day than it takes to maintain your current weight, which is about 2000 for an adult, though it can be dangerous to have much less than 1300 per day. Think of it like this: if you’re eating 1600 calories a day out of a potential healthy 2000, and your body suddenly wants an extra 300, you’re not craving 1900, but 2300, which is the difference between wanting a chocolate bar and a slice of toast, and wanting an entire extra meal. So, I say again: DO NOT feel bad about wanting to eat more during your period. Your body is working hard, and needs fuel!
– Paradoxically, despite the rate at which you’re burning calories, you’re also retaining water, which can make you both feel and weigh as heavier. Speaking personally, I’ve noticed my weight fluctuate by as much two kilos (4.5 pounds) before and after a period, rising before and during, then dropping sharply afterwards. So if you’re struggling with body image or weight issues, this is a suboptimal time at which to get on the scales: the result you’ll get will only reflect a temporary reality, not your actual progress, and is therefore unhelpful.
– If, for whatever reason, you’re self-conscious about easing your cramps with a hot water bottle where other people can see it, whether at home or work, consider using a plastic soft drink bottle filled with hot/boiling water. Even if you put it openly on your lap, instead of tucking it under a shirt or into a front hoodie pocket, it will just look like a regular bottle of water, and any relief is better than none!
– No, it’s not weird if you shit more during your period than usual, either. The hormones your body releases that make your uterus to contract and release sometimes end up in the bowel, particularly if you happen to produce a lot of them, which means that bowel contracts and releases, too.
– If anyone tries to make a dumbass sexist joke about your being more [insert stereotypically negative feminine quality here] while on your period, you can tell them that actually, menstruation raises testosterone levels, not oestrogen. (Telling them to go fuck themselves with an angry cactus can also be therapeutic.)
– The cramps and lower back pain often experienced during menstruation, when the uterus expels its contents and your hips shift slightly wider to accommodate it, are a microcosm of what happens during actual labour. So yeah: it can hurt!
– That being said, we’ve culturally accepted the idea of massive period pain as normative to such an extent that many people don’t realise their pain is a sign that something’s wrong. Despite how common they are, a lot of conditions like PCOS and endometriosis are poorly understood in terms of their etiology, which means it can be hard to get an accurate diagnosis. But if your periods regularly have you screaming, vomiting or totally incapacitated, get checked out: you shouldn’t have to just shut up and endure because it’s ‘meant’ to feel like that. It’s not, and there are ways to manage it.
– As well as being a form of birth control, you can take the pill to control or stop your period. When used to prevent menstruation, the pill tricks the body into thinking you’re already pregnant, which stalls your cycle (and stops you from actually getting pregnant). Though some people worry that it’s unnatural not to menstruate for long periods of time, or for your body to ‘feel’ pregnant for so long, it’s also important to remember that, after an actual pregnancy, especially if you breastfeed, your period won’t resume right away. This is called
lactational amenorrhea, which can work as a form (though not, I hasten to add, a 100% reliable form) of natural birth control. Basically, it means your body is focussed on producing milk for an existing child, such that you can’t easily conceive another one until the first child is weaned. While this varies from person to person, the important thing to remember is that there’s ample biological precedent for stopping menstruation for long periods of time whether you’re pregnant or not, and that choosing to do so via the pill doesn’t make you unnatural, nor does it cause your body to do something it otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t.
In conclusion: periods suck, but knowing how and why they work and how best to manage them can make them suck slightly less. So go ye forth, and be educated!
As someone who had to have a uterus removed for severe endometriosis, I will always reblog this sort of information. Don’t sit and endure, and don’t listen to the twatwaffles who insist that the pain is normal or you’re just overreacting. It isn’t just in your head and you are in legitimate pain.
alder-knight 