Contradictions 13

Even when unattributed, all encountered in the wild.

Hey you. Be yourself. But also tone it down a little. Read the room. But also speak your mind. Be responsible with your future. But also take risks, life is short. Kindness is everything. But also you'll get nowhere if you're not fighting. Don't sell out. But also grind/hustle. (@PrinceVogel)

We include everybody except people who aren’t inclusive.

I've had fascinating conversations with media people who say they want viewpoint diversity, but "no social conservatives". (@asymmetricinfo)

It’s academics’ job to be critical about everything – but not gender. 

Childhood: punished for being different, punished for thinking you're different.

If women’s rights are anti-trans then trans rights are anti-women.

Men: Women ought to get married and have babies.
Also men: I'm not ready to settle down.

Feminists used to say that looks don’t matter but you should also wear ugly clothes and no makeup. They also claimed that men would be attracted to you anyway. (They weren't.)

Be spontaneous AND be prepared.

I was overwhelmed with information about how tough it was to be a parent at the same time as I was being told it was the most extraordinary, blissful, transformative rite of passage and that there was no other love like it. That I was, in essence, living half a life by not having children of my own while simultaneously being so incredibly lucky to pursue a responsibility-free ... girl about town, career woman existence. (Article in the Times on infertility)

Saw a post that said doctors being so bad at identifying Autism is hilarious when you consider how good children are at figuring out who's Autistic when they're deciding whom to bully. (Via FB)

Sometimes the world goes through enormous changes and people hardly notice or comment. The rest of the time they write articles (or tweets) claiming the world is going thru huge changes thanks to some trivial aspect. They make far more noise about the second case.

There is a third category – where the world goes through enormous changes and large numbers of people choose to be wilfully ignorant of it, because despite vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, they don't want it to be true. (@GhostOfOrwell84)

How did “medieval man” reconcile a deterministic worldview (Fortune with her wheel) with Christianity, which relied on personal responsibility? (He didn’t. The church thought the concept of “Fortune” was Satanic.)

A post on Facebook isn’t going to incite violence whatever it says. Meanwhile, words are violence when it comes to saying “Human beings can’t change sex”.

Terfs must be silenced because words are violence and there may be distant knock-on evil effects. But these guys can wave placards saying "The only good terf is a dead terf." 

Why do we sneer at the previous decade and its awful décor and hairstyles when we were the ones sporting the mullets and installing avocado bathroom suites?

“Does my bum look big in this?”, but bum-enhancing injections are a dangerous underground business.

Be as much like most people as you can. AND stand out.

Accept what you can’t change is a popular American mantra, also “You are responsible for everything that happens to you” and “the solution is in yourself”. How does this not clash with the American dream of hustle your way to the top and tread down the other frogs in the bucket? Go west, young man!

The English simultaneously do not exist and are responsible for all historical injustices.

More here, and links to the rest.