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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • “designed to be sung to the tune of ‘Home on the Range.’”
    (1) Oh, give me a clone
    Of my own flesh and bone
    With its Y chromosome changed to X
    And after it’s grown
    Then my own little clone
    Will be of the opposite sex.
    (Chorus) Clone, clone of my own
    With its Y chromosome changed to X
    And when I’m alone
    With my own little clone
    We will both think of nothing but sex.
    (2) Oh, give me a clone
    Is my sorrowful moan,
    A clone that is wholly my own.
    And if she’s X-X
    And the feminine sex
    Oh, what fun we will have when we’re prone.
    (3) My heart’s not of stone,
    As I’ve frequently shown
    When alone with my own little X
    And after we’ve dined,
    I am sure we will find
    Better incest than Oedipus Rex.
    (4) Why should such sex vex
    Or disturb or perplex
    Or induce a disparaging tone?
    After all, don’t you see
    Since we’re both of us me
    When we’re having sex, I’m alone.
    (5) And after I’m done
    She will still have her fun
    For I’ll clone myself twice ere I die.
    And this time without fail
    They’ll be both of them male
    And they’ll each ravage her by and by.

    Source: autobiography of Isaac Asimov





  • A bunch of other people have mentioned Ghibli movies and since I’m in the middle of a binge through every Ghibli movie I think I’ll recommend one that I hadn’t seen before a few days ago: Only Yesterday or Omoide Poroporo.
    It’s Isao Takahata, not Miyazaki, but it’s easily my favorite Ghibli movie and one of my favorite movies of all time. It feels so real and relatable, the whole movie is essentially a really slow-paced series of flashbacks to the main character’s 10-year-old self and every detail is so well-thought-out and interesting.
    Very worth watching, although I’ll mention as a disclaimer that all the friends I was watching it with thought it was super pointless and boring.



  • I love archaic inconsistent Japanese. 今日 (obviously きょう) used to be pronounced the same way but spelled… けふ. There’s a Wikipedia page on historical kana orthography and the example the use on the page’s main image is やめましょう spelled as ヤメマセウ. The old kana usage sticks around in pronunciation of particle は and へ. There also used to be verbs ending in ず that turned into じる verbs like 感じる. Here’s a post on Japanese stack exchange where somebody explains verbs that end with ず, づ, ふ, and ぷ.
    Honestly I’m glad I don’t have to learn historical inconsistent spellings, but part of me thinks that it’s really cool and wishes it was still around.



  • Sorry for rant
    There’s a thing in sociology (or social psychology? I don’t really know the difference) called “identity salience” that I think explains gender really well. Basically, people have any number of identities that describe them and they are of varying importance/salience. For example, it can be a big part of somebody’s identity that they are a “father,” but not a big part of their identity that they are a “driver” or “consumer.” Maybe all those words can objectively be applied to this person, but he would likely identify strongly with one over the others. Similarly, right now I’m a “commenter” because I’m leaving a comment. That’s something that objectively describes me, but I don’t consider it to be an important part of my identity at all. Gender is just like any other identity; it’s more or less important to different people. There’s already a distinction between sex and gender, even colloquially to an increasing extent, and gender is widely understood to exist as a spectrum or multiple spectrums. It’s reasonable to believe that people who don’t consider a traditional gender to be an important part of their identity could consider themselves non-binary.
    It’s true that gender stereotypes exist, but there are plenty of positive characteristics that are also associated with gender like “men are confident” or “women are understanding.” If somebody doesn’t identify with any of those characteristics or even stereotypes, then they might just feel like they’re not accurately described by gendered words. Of course, somebody who doesn’t fit the stereotypical idea of a certain gender can still be of that gender; it’s all subjective.
    If you’re interested in simple, objective, binary gender, it’s called sex, not gender. And even sex isn’t simple, objective, or binary when you really get detailed.