Tag Archives: knock-it-off

Friday Cat Blogging – 5 August 2016

by AbelOchsajq Posted on August 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hilbert, like all cats, likes to hunker down on any kind of flat object you might lay down somewhere: clothes, paper, books, iPads, you name it. But like all cats, he’s also very hard to fool. He only wants to lie down on this stuff if it’s somehow annoying to the humans. Here’s the morning newspaper, for example. There’s a bunch of sections I’m not reading at the moment. He ignores those. The only part he’s interested in is the section I happen to be reading at the moment.

This seems to be universal behavior. How do they do it? Do they track our eyes, so they know what we’re looking at? Is it feline telepathy? Whatever it is, the message is clear: You are paying attention to something other than me, and you need to knock it off. Capiche?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 5 August 2016

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How to Deal with Cretinous Twitter Mobs: A Bleg

by HeatherCohen Posted on May 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m going to venture into dangerous territory and just hope that everyone will give this a sympathetic reading. I’m not trying to shift blame or dismiss a real problem.

The problem in question is the treatment of women by men on Twitter and other social platforms. In a word (or two), there’s a subset of really loathsome assholes out there who harass women mercilessly: comments about looks, about rape, about death threats, etc. etc. The best solution, of course, is to get these men to knock it off, but there’s no way that will happen quickly. At best, it will take many years to leach this kind of misogyny out of the internet.

In the meantime, the problem is that this treatment causes women genuine pain and stress. I don’t get anywhere near this kind of abuse, but I sometimes get a bit of it, and it’s no fun. So I have at least a glimmer of what it’s like.

So here’s my question: is there any kind of relatively simple therapy that can train people not to succumb to panic attacks over Twitter mobs attacking them? I’m not talking about ignoring genuine threats, like folks posting addresses and suggesting someone should be raped. Those should go straight to the police. It’s all the rest that I’d like to learn to take in stride as nothing more than the meaningless ravings of cretinous sad sacks.

So: Is there anything like this? Does anyone know a reliable method for building up a thicker skin? Sort of like the hypnosis of Peter Gibbons in Office Space, except something that actually works. I know we shouldn’t have to, but sometimes it’s worth it even if it’s galling that we need to do it at all.

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How to Deal with Cretinous Twitter Mobs: A Bleg

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