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silly boy aesthetics

@aguamieles / aguamieles.tumblr.com

24 β€” he/him β€” πŸͺ±
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blog of pretty things i like and lots of funny bugs β€”
i am a multidisciplinary artist i post my work on @faescia

I'm sorry but it's way too sketchy to have to "sign up" for a protest. There's no reason you should have to give anyone your full name, email, phone number, and/or address in order to march in the streets. People are getting arrested left and right because cops have access to information that connects people to the protests they were at. If an organization is having people "sign up to join the fight," all the cops need to do is access that list.

Just go. Don't leave a fucking paper trail.

Ideal work schedule:

  1. I show up and am given a list of cognitively engaging but achievable tasks
  2. I complete the list
  3. I leave immedietly

Yeah this can't be left in the notes

Changing people's minds on major things is actually a very long and difficult process for both parties. I didn't actually believe that pedestrian-centric city design would be better for people that drive cars until I spent almost a year living without a car and watched hours of youtube videos explaining the issue to me. Turns out that traffic actually does go down and driving does become more pleasant if you make it harder to drive a car and easier to walk. I just straight-up refused to believe that for years. Because people just talked about it like it was obvious. But it wasn't. Because I had spent my whole life in a car-centric city going around in a car and also I was an English major in college who did not study urban planning. You can't expect me to change my entire mindset around transportation all at once. I did reach a eureka moment like two weeks ago but that was after like three years of getting exposed to these ideas periodically and living without a car for 11 months.

And yeah this post is about my big dumb animal brain accepting the science behind narrow roads and the evils of certain types of zoning laws, but it's also about stuff in general. If you don't know why someone isn't changing their mind on something, it's probably because the information they're getting hasn't reached a critical mass in their monkey brain yet. Whenever you hear stories about people changing their minds on things or leaving a certain ideology the story never goes "A person on the internet did a slam dunk on me and then I changed my mind."

It's usually a long process that happens over the course of months or years. Seeds planted here and there that coalesce eventually into a new thought or ideology over the course of years or snap together or send someone down a new path after a certain event. Same with me about pedestrian-centric cities. For me the tipping point was finding this video, which isn't necessarily super special or the best and the guy who runs the channel, in my opinion, isn't the most qualified or the most sympathetic towards every city in every situation, but it was the feather that tipped the scales in my brain to "Oh, wait. Maybe everything I thought I knew about how cities work is wrong actually." But that video alone didn't change my mind. With the amount of stuff and people that have gradually and gently been giving me information over the past couple years, something else was bound to eventually change my mind.

People on Tumblr yelling about abolishing the car, if anything, slowed down me changing my mind. Every time I saw a person saying that driving cars is stupid and that cars are bad I took a step back into my old way of thinking in defense. Because I grew up only ever using a car to get around. Rhetoric like that felt like a direct attack on my family, who I know to be loving people who care about other human beings and who drive cars literally everywhere.

And you might say, posts and videos like that aren't actually an attack on people that drive or have to drive. Okay then. Why are they phrased like that? Because that makes you feel good? Because you're angry? Alright, your anger at how it's currently impossible to get around if you don't own a car and how people who don't actually want to drive are being forced to drive is reasonable. And now I understand why it exists. I'm kind of angry too now that I get how this stuff works. However, is calling the people you're trying to convince stupid to their face and immediately bombarding them with your most radical ideas that might be completely detached from their reality and how they understand the world really the most productive way to channel your anger?

What about a guy with a knee problem that lives in rural Appalachia? Do you think he is gonna be convinced by your angry rants about bike lanes? No. He lives on a mountain that he can't climb or bike up because he's disabled and has only ever known getting around in a car. What about a person who overheats easily living in a suburb in the middle of the desert? Do you think she is inspired by your green lush pictures of trolleys running through parks in The Netherlands? No. If she leaves her house for too long without ice water she could literally die and you're going on about getting rid of, in her mind, the only thing that lets her go to the grocery store and not faint.

And again, this post is about my inability to comprehend walkable cities, but it's also about everything else you might ever want to convince someone of. The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.

The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.

hey, i've done a few courses in science communication, which basically just teaches you how to emotionally manipulate people into believing science, and OP is spot on here!! a few extra summary points i want to highlight because people tend to overlook them but they’re so, so important when you’re discussing things like this:

  • there are two major types of understanding: facts and belief. facts have no emotional connection to them, things like β€œthe sun is exactly this wide across” or β€œthere are 47 species of frog in my local area”. if someone tells you different and gives you a source as to why on a fact, you’re very likely to just go β€œhuh” and change your mind. however-
  • almost all knowledge the average person has on complex topics is held as a belief. beliefs are primarily emotional, and usually get applied to complex systems like big social issues. they’re very strongly linked to our morality systems and sense of right and wrong. this can be a problem, because-
  • it is physically and mentally impossible to force someone to change a belief. (short of like, violent brainwashing). if you hit a belief with contradicting facts, you make it stronger. if you attack someone for having it, you make it stronger. beliefs intensify every time the person holding them feels under threat and that includes lecturing or yelling. interestingly, this is probably why mormons send their young people out on missions. the rejection they get from people forces them to strengthen ties with the church.

so how do you change a belief? here are a couple of tips! for proof of concept, i once used this method to convince my uncle climate change was real.

  • don’t hit facts with facts. hit feelings with feelings. the person you’re talking to holds this belief because of an emotional connection. identify it, acknowledge it (and if you can, explain how you used to/still do hold the same values), and then present YOUR emotional link to the other side of the argument.
  • tell a story. don’t tell them how to feel. tell them how YOU feel. in OP’s example, they might talk about how much they loved their car, but how that changed when they gave it up, and how they see things now. give an anecdote that explains your point; maybe a day you caught the bus and a friend drove to the same place, and you got there first, or a day you read an amazing book on public transport, or how you found a great new coffee place while cycling to work.
  • ask them, gently, to think about it, and leave them with some resources. you can’t change someone’s mind in a day. just like OP says, you gotta wait for things to click. this won’t always happen right away or even on the first try, and you have to reach critical thought mass before they start to feel lectured/condescended to. give them some resources and encourage them to read up on your topic, or to ask you if they’ve got any questions. letting people come to their own conclusions WITHOUT being told what to think is the most surefire way to reforge belief.

(terrifyingly, this is also exactly how QAnon works - they tell you to β€œdo your own research” and then flood search engines with fake anecdotes. if someone’s trying to reset your beliefs, always check where the resources they’re giving you come from.)

that’s literally it. be kind to people, tell them stories, and give them a book or a video to go on with. don’t get impatient, and don’t get mad if it doesn’t work. the fact thatΒ  no one on the left knows how to do this is why we’re such a fucking trainwreck 99% of the time. also case in point why cancel culture literally creates bigots.

Please read the post

Very good post

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KΓ€the Kollwitz (1867–1945)

β€œTod und Frau um das Kind ringend” (Death and Woman Wrestling for the Child), 1911

hey americans there is a recall on testosterone gel because they found benzene in it! please check the lot numbers on your batches, benzene is really not something you want to be rubbing into your skin, also you might be eligible for compensation because this is just insane what the fuck

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Lucas van Valckenborch - An extensive rocky landscape with travellers on a path and a mill beyond

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