AnarchistArtificer

Does Nitter still work? I thought it had died

The red and white garb is from The Handmaid's Tale. I think the original cartoon might be suggesting that the voting booth is a chance for women to shed the garb that's representative of patriarchal oppression. Given reproductive rights are a big topic this election, I think that seems true, to an extent.

For figuring out what the twitter user was talking about, let's consider a more general interpretation of the cartoon, such as "the themes of theocratic and patriarchal oppression are relevant to this US election". It seems that they have picked up on the fact that theocratic patriarchy is a thing in the Handmaid's Tale, but they have (likely due to cognitive dissonance) concluded that the author clearly couldn't be talking about Christianity, because Christianity is Good, and they are Christian, and they are also Good, you see?

Now, I haven't actually read The Handmaid's Tale, so I don't know to what extent it is targeted allegorical criticism at Christianity. It is true that some Muslims also ascribe to (and attempt to enforce on others) a theocratic patriarchal ideology, and also the shape of this kind of oppression looks pretty similar no matter what religion is driving the theocracy — so it's certainly plausible that The Handmaid's Tale could be used to criticise theocratic patriarchal manifestations of Islam too. However, the twitter user is clearly not thinking along these lines. I think they believe that The Handmaid's Tale is aimed at Islam because it helps alleviate some of the cognitive dissonance they feel from a book that is directly criticising them. It definitely is very Christian coded though, I feel like this twitter user is so close to getting it that they're a self-awarewolf

Because certainly not all Christians are patriarchally oppressive. Some do the most progressive, compassionate people I know are Christian and they will be the first to acknowledge the argument that Christianity itself may be inherently patriarchally oppressive (as well as other kinds of oppressive). We can sort of imagine a separation, where there's an abstract "Christianity", and then there's the ways in which Christianity has been used as a tool of oppression by powerful people. I like the way my friend put it: "I really want to say that the assholes [who use Christianity as an excuse to hate and oppress others] aren't real Christians, but that feels too easy and appealing to do — denouncing them in that way doesn't feel very Christian of me, because it would allow me to ignore them. I think my duty as a Christian is to acknowledge the discomfort and be on the watch for this and challenge it where I can, especially in my own community."

TL;DR:

• the Handmaid's Tale is against religious theocracies (such as what conservatives Christians would have the world look like)
• this election is big for women's rights, which have been eroded largely by religious conservatives
• a Muslim theocratic patriarchy would look similar to the Christian version, especially considering that theocratic patriarchies aren't about religion per se, but using religion as a tool of oppression.
• thus the Handmaid's Tale can be seen as a criticism of both Muslim and Christian theocratic patriarchy, though it's obvious to most people who have read the book that it is more directly critiquing the Christian variant.
• The twitter user has (presumably) read the book and seems to have been close to "getting the point", but their xenophobia saved them from having to do some uncomfortable and difficult self reflection about their own (presumed) Christianity.

The key is considering who is going to be using these systems. Certainly Google search AI is never going to be useful in this way because the kind of info a patient needs is very different to what a doctor would find useful.

And if we do make systems for doctors, then it's pretty damn important that we consider things like you have, taking into account that doctors are already overwhelmed and spending way too much effort juggling medical notes. I read a thing a while back which highlighted how many doctors are struggling with information management and processing all the info they need to because of how IT systems have tended to be enforced on them from the top down, with some doctors even saying paper notes were far easier to deal with (especially for complex cases). Digitisation definitely has huge benefits, but it seems like the needs of doctors have been largely ignored.

Even besides doctors, I feel like the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been way too focussed on ways of wringing out more money from people, with not enough focus put on how we can make technology that empowers people. It's no wonder why: If I were a HCI researcher, I know what kind of project would be more likely to get research funding, and it's the ruthlessly capitalistic ones.

"An 80% false positive is still quite useful, so long as the 20% helps and the rest is easy for a human to filter."

This gets at a key point, in my opinion — even when one ignores the straightforwardly scammy "AI" nonsense, a lot that remain are still overly focussed on building systems that do stuff for people (usually in a way that would eliminate or reduce people in the process. Many examples of this exist, but one is "AI teachers" which still requires a human in the room, but only as a "learning facilitator" or some nonsense). I work in a field where machine learning has been a prominent thing for years, so I'm in a weird place of being sick of hearing about AI, and also impressed by what we do have. Mainly though, I'm exasperated because we could be doing so much more with the tech we have if we made tools that were intended to be used by humans.

Humans are dumb and emotional and silly, but we are also pretty cool and we can make awesome things when given the opportunity to. I will always be cynical about tech that seems over keen to cut humans out of things

Thanks for this breakdown, I can see why people are protesting. The situation is fucked

I hadn't heard about bulldog ants before and was incredulous about your statement, but damn, yeah, bulldog ants are wild

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecia_(ant)#interaction%20with%20humans

You're certainly not the only one considering getting one after this post

and that she has seen it in the past

Damn, that's just sad

I'm reminded of a clip that I've seen that originates on Tik Tok about a guy who says something similar to what you're saying here, including a clip where the guy went and shouted at a neo-nazi to basically say "you're not welcome here, fuck off".

I found it interesting because he explained that this isn't usually something he would do because he's very much a voice against toxic masculinity and this means that generally he doesn't want or need to take the role of the angry, scary man. In this instance though, of the many members of his community who were uncomfortable with a neo-Nazi spewing hate, this guy was best situated to challenge this. I found it especially interesting because there's a particular kind of aggressiveness to it — like, obviously going up to someone and shouting at them is aggressive, but it was clear that this guy wasn't going for a fight

I respect your approach. I bet you're the kind of parent who apologises to their kids when you make mistakes

I always find it tricky to understand how tools all relate to each other in an ecosystem and this is a great example of why: the fact that Ansible can do this task, but Teraform would be better suggests that they are tools that have different purposes, but some overlap. What would you say is Ansible's strong suit?

That sounds beautiful. You really captured the moment

I understand why you feel uncomfortable with the word "feminist". I personally don't believe that feminism is inherently anti-male, but I also can't ignore the people whose behaviour doesn't fit inside my definition of that term; to do otherwise would be doing the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. For me, identifying as a feminist means having to contend with that — that is to say that if I want feminism to account for the ways that men are fucked over by the patriarchy, then it's important that I challenge hateful rhetoric in supposedly progressive spaces.