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blog/2020/april/give-me-your-story.html

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-				<p>Imagine, if you will, a <a href="https://archive.vn/x5NiF">MOGAI</a> teenager infected with Tumblr Syndrome, blog full of nothing but reblogs of other people. Sick with <a href="../../2019/august/consumption.html">consumption</a>, not the historical kind but the <a href="../february/consumeproduct.html">modern kind</a>, personality nothing but <del>fandoms</del> worshipping corporate creations. Scattered between movie GIFs are desperate attempts to co-opt genuine LGBT oppression with the sexuality or <a href="../../2019/may/gender-critical.html">gender of the week</a>, pride flags like someone put on a blindfold and threw darts at a color wheel set to random. Just as devoid of a working sense of color theory as they are of a coherent sense of self outside the internet, outside the Cathedral of Tumblr Zoomer Culture.</p>
+				<p>Imagine, if you will, a <a href="https://archive.vn/x5NiF">MOGAI</a> teenager infected with Tumblr Syndrome, blog full of nothing but reblogs of other people. Sick with <a href="../../2019/08/consumption.html">consumption</a>, not the historical kind but the <a href="../february/consumeproduct.html">modern kind</a>, personality nothing but <del>fandoms</del> worshipping corporate creations. Scattered between movie GIFs are desperate attempts to co-opt genuine LGBT oppression with the sexuality or <a href="../../2019/may/gender-critical.html">gender of the week</a>, pride flags like someone put on a blindfold and threw darts at a color wheel set to random. Just as devoid of a working sense of color theory as they are of a coherent sense of self outside the internet, outside the Cathedral of Tumblr Zoomer Culture.</p>
 				<p>I only paint this picture so that those who have experienced the kind of person illustrated will instantly know what I mean by "give me your toes". Vague and nonsensical non-threats pointed at anyone who dares to blaspheme or transgress against their Cathedral like "pee your pants" or "I'm revoking your kneecap privileges", non-threats because the standard "kill yourself" has lost its edge (and is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200405011157/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tell-someone-to-kill-themselves-and-you-could-end_b_5945800ce4b0940f84fe2f19">also illegal</a>). Usually these are accompanied by a poorly-photoshopped image of a celebrity or fictional character holding a gun and pointing it at the viewer.</p>
 				<p>It is with this same sense of semi-ironic desperation that I find myself more and more pointing the fictional gun at the video game collection on my bookshelf.</p>
 				<p>When I was about ten or so, I got a copy of <i>The Legendary Starfy</i> for the DS. For those who've never played it, it's a platformer about a little starfish dude (the titular Starfy) who gets woken up one morning by an alien rabbit dude crashing through his roof, and then the two go romp around the underwater world trying to find the rabbit dude's memories. Apparently it's the first game in a <a href="https://tcrf.net/Category:Legendary_Starfy_series">four-part series</a> that was originally for the Gameboy Advance, but only the first one was ever translated to English and remade. Since, at the time, I was only allowed to play handheld games in the mornings or during car rides, I spent almost every moment I had to take a car ride struggling through the levels in small snatches here and there. I always got stuck on the sunken pirate ship, trying to push a button and then pass through a gate before time ran out, and only rarely did I ever get past it.</p>

blog/2020/june/homo.html

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 				<p>But even if I tried to pull the autism card, there was no way that I could have possibly been given an exemption on those parts of the dress code. For the whole point of a dress code is to homogenize its employees as much as possible, turn former individuals into mere replaceable agents of whatever corporation they have the misfortune of having to work for. Doubly so during the Corona-chan party, when everywhere I go I am harangued into wearing a facemask that actually does little to protect me and just makes it hard for me to breathe. As much of my face as possible is hidden from the customer, my range of vision reduced to a small sliver as if I had been thrown into the depths of a fundamentalist Islamic country.</p>
 				<p>But, hey, at least it made it harder for people to see me cry, biting down the throes of a panic attack as I sprayed down trash cans!</p>
 				<p>I hate homogeneity. A collectivist pipedream, blending all the colors of the rainbow into the same shade of dirt I step over with my feet on my way to my favorite tree to read under. But this isn't my mother's garden. Nothing meaningful grows out of this brown, just holes ever-growing where worms slip under the earth and ants digging their colonies to be flooded when the rain comes.</p>
-				<p>"All people are born equal" is a lie. Some people are born with talents for art, some a predisposition for mathematics, others physically strong. People come in both neurotypical and <a href="../../2019/september/roophloch.html">neurodivergent</a> flavors. There are all kinds of races and ethnic groups and divisions and sub-divisions of all of them. And with the vast diversity of cultural practices and languages and food and celebrations... This world is a colorful place. So long as people are peaceful to each other, why would I want it to be any other way?</p>
+				<p>"All people are born equal" is a lie. Some people are born with talents for art, some a predisposition for mathematics, others physically strong. People come in both neurotypical and <a href="../../2019/09/roophloch.html">neurodivergent</a> flavors. There are all kinds of races and ethnic groups and divisions and sub-divisions of all of them. And with the vast diversity of cultural practices and languages and food and celebrations... This world is a colorful place. So long as people are peaceful to each other, why would I want it to be any other way?</p>
 				<p>I can only exist in a world where I am the only one of me. Unique, differentiated, separate and yet a part of the world. Even if the homogenization were of myself, making everyone see things exactly the way I do, I would still refuse to live in it, for without the differences of other people, there would be no surprises, no spontaneity arising from a mind I cannot access. There would be no point in being, for there would always be someone better than me at being me.</p>
 				<p>If every website in the world looked exactly as mine does, although the JavaScript menace would be defeated (assuming they were all blogs), it would be just as boring of a world. It would be just like everyone having the same layout of house and the same furniture. Part of the fun of going to someone else's house is exploring the space that they live in every day, seeing how they've arranged their house to do the things they want it to do. Part of the fun of going to someone else's website is figuring out the layout, where everything is, what all the buttons do. And both websites and people's houses tell you so much about the person living inside: whether they're a clean freak or more relaxed on the hygiene issue, what color schemes they find pleasant, whether they're a minimalist or a maximalist...</p>
 				<p>Granted, things like colors or advanced layouts don't work in browsers without CSS support. But given the Chrome/Firefox near-duopoly on the mainstream browser market and the prohibitive time cost of developing a separate browser engine not based on one of the two, the vast majority of readers would have to go out of their way to use a browser without even basic CSS support. And not everyone likes to have JavaScript enabled (for good reasons, and websites worth their time will at least pleasantly degrade to a readable state without it). But to have the <i>option</i> to have these things to give one's site just that extra pinch of individuality, I feel, is an important part of- dare I say it- <i>user sovereignty</i>.</p>