Physics & Math.
Learning is my passion.
Kanaka Maoli.
Māhū.
They/Them.
Haluhalo
🌺 Polynesian Viking 🌹
Indigenous Rights.
Native Lands in Native Hands.
Black Lives Matter.
Racists, TERFs, and every other bigot, DNI FUCK OFF
A few months ago I realized something I couldn’t un-realize about Minecraft and that is that villagers being killed by mobs is a direct result of the player’s existence. Hostile mobs only spawn within a certain radius of the player. Villages are so unprotected because they straight up don’t ever have to deal with monsters before I get there. They live, they work, undiscovered, and then I bring them apocalypse by walking slightly too close at night.
Knowing that, the least I can do is help villages I find to survive it, so I build them a wall and new homes and traps for the creatures of the night - but all that time, they’re creatures I created. To the villagers it must seem like the world started ending, hoards of the undead pouring out of the earth, and then this hero emerged to save them from it all, but the danger and the rescue are one and the same and they will never really understand that, and THAT makes me go completely feral. The player is a thing of infinite life which death follows like a shock wave in the fabric of the Universe. We are a self fulfilling prophesy. How is this a thing we’ve all just gotten used to in the funky cube game
a lot of it just boils down to “as you move through the world sometimes you will see ugly people, and that’s not a problem that needs solving”
you will see people who are old. you will see people who are fat. you will see people who are disabled. you will see people who are not making an effort to keep up with their hygiene or their hair or their clothes. you will see people wearing clothes and makeup and jewelry of a subculture you find disturbing and offputting. this is all fine. this does not need to be solved.
the offered solution has often been to say “oh no, don’t say ugly, they’re all beautiful in their way!” but that’s not the point. nobody has to be beautiful just to exist, to be in public, to be in your view. that road leads to dudebros saying that women they don’t consider sufficiently fuckable should wear bags over their heads. to HOAs urging residents to call the cops on homeless encampments being an ‘eyesore’ on their beautiful streets. to people pushing for institutionalization so that they don’t have to share a public with neurodivergent people. to people demanding that physically divergent people trigger tag photos of themselves.
“everyone is beautiful” works up until you find someone you can’t see the beauty in. but it doesn’t matter. nobody is entitled to a world populated exclusively by beautiful people. no matter what tv and the internet may have led you to believe.
people misunderstand what ‘gifted kid’ actually means but it’s ok it’s fine it’s cool it’s good
it’s not about actually being gifted, it’s about an initial higher scoring on standardized testing that means little to nothing or being good at learning in the way elementary and middle school wants you to, so you get marked as ‘advanced’. in reality, maybe you had faster development in certain areas, but the issue with being a gifted kid isn’t that “everyone told me I was so cool and special for reading and then I actually wasn’t :(” it’s “I wasn’t properly taught to handle things not coming easily to me, but the adults around me were counting on me not being a ‘difficult’ child in school.”
people who use it as some weird bragging method or interpret it that way are ignoring the way a lot of school systems force certain roles on students to simplify the learning process. If your kid doesn’t need to take notes to understand a science concept bc they get it naturally, well that’s good, but now you’re not teaching them how to take notes and they’re not learning that important soft skill. but because ‘gifted’ kids are easy and don’t show that they’re falling behind in learning in other categories that are harder to quantify, they eventually fall behind after that catches up to them. It’s about the failures of a one size fits all school system trying to compensate in the worst way possible.
And also the thing where ‘gifted’ kids are super likely to also be neuroatypical, which they don’t get screened for because they appear to be doing well in school. Or “You can’t be ADHD/autistic/etc, because you’re doing so well in school!”. Or being shamed for developing mental health issues/generally not being able to keep up with school work later, because you USED TO BE able to do it just fine.
Or the assumption that just because you can read well or you like math class, you’re somehow more EMOTIONALLY mature than your little kid brain is actually capable of being.
Or gifted kids whose parents and teachers put immense pressure on them to Do Great Things and Save The World and you’re like. “I’m 10 and I have no idea how to do that, but everyone is saying that’s my job?”.
This is the best “gifted kid” post out there. I never took notes until college because I didn’t have to, snd when it got challenging I had to literally teach myself note taking at age 18. It also fucks with your perception of asking for help - you’re advanced, you’re competent, you should be able to understand every topic easily. Asking for help/going to office hours/asking for a tutor feels like failing when you were praised in your early years for not needing to do that.
