Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
@mwfrancis.bsky.social
1.1K followers 380 following 1.4K posts
Social worker. Educator. Activist. Researcher on substance use recovery. Views are my own. They/them ♿ 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
priscillapage.bsky.social
have been desperately looking for this old erotic Spanish comic I stumbled on almost 10 years ago called "El secreto de Frankenstein" and I'm so happy to report I finally found it
black & white comic panel depicting a sexy, thicc Frankenstein's monster disrobing in 3 different poses - pulling his shirt of his shoulder, seen at an angle; from the front, shirtless, beginning to take his pants off; then almost totally nude as seen from behind. the words at the top read "Strip-tease de Frankenstein..."
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
nbedera.bsky.social
One of the fundamental truths we need to acknowledge in this moment is that domestic violence is where fascists learned how to get away with their violence.

“What did you do to provoke him?” is exactly what victims hear when they try to seek help in an abusive relationship.
mskellymhayes.bsky.social
Y'all who keep lecturing protesters to "not give them an excuse" need to pause for a minute. Imagine yourself telling a DV victim, "Be sure not to mouth off or make any mistakes so he won't hit you. Don't give him an excuse! It's what he wants!" That's what you fools sound like.
mwfrancis.bsky.social
I want to hold this
nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social
Grasshopper — Babylonia, c. 1750 BCE
Hematite
Statue of a grasshopper done in a stylized kind of condensed form looks great
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
tressiemcphd.bsky.social
Are yall ever just sitting around and out of the blue you remember — again — that all of this is because of ONE Black President?!!

Just the one!!
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
drlindseyfitz.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse.

Newspaper clipping, 1906.
A newspaper clipping from 1906 that reads: "Noisy, Hungry Frogs Sadden Farmer's Life. They scare his cattle and they also eat his flannel shirt."
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
tomtomorrow.bsky.social
America is currently a giant experiment to see how long we can keep stuffing a year's worth of news and outrage into every single day before everyone's heads explode
mwfrancis.bsky.social
I'm pretty sure I will owe the same $25K for the rest of my life, especially now that I didn't get my NIH loan repayment program award renewed. I basically pay the interest unless I miraculously have extra to dump into it, and if I have that, it's going into retirement instead.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
“.. he worries he won’t be able to keep up with his monthly loan payments and may have some of his paycheck withheld by the government. .. ‘I’m going to be working until the day I die,’ Fausone said.”

@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/personal-fin...
mwfrancis.bsky.social
LLMs can only produce results based on their input data. This is also true of human samples, of course, because sampling strategies affect who is included. But humans are FAR more complex than we can model, so we will never make LLMs with as much variability as even the most limited human sample.
jamiecummins.bsky.social
Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵
The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention
Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...
arxiv.org
mwfrancis.bsky.social
I'd like to say that I'd stay up all night, but I'd actually get cranky and fall asleep somewhere around 10 PM 😂
mwfrancis.bsky.social
Someone once told me that *buying* art/craft supplies and *using* them were two different hobbies and I have never felt so seen or called out in my life.

At least I've leveled up my Art Hoard hobby by buying high-quality supplies now?
kbspangler.com
My stack of untouched blank sketchbooks: See what you could do if you tried?

Me: You’re right, let me buy another blank sketchbook.
mwfrancis.bsky.social
I am so tired of explaining that I'm real to others. I would love to hear your deep dive on Godzilla instead, especially if we can get into the psychological aspects of why we need monster myths and how shared cultural experiences shape what form those myths take!
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
restingdinoface.bsky.social
We’re not a puzzle to work out. It’s not my obligation to prove I’m not a threat. I don’t have to ask for the space where I stand.

The picking apart of how we fit into a world no one is happy with, that we could all change if you took in our wisdom… I should get paid if it’s going to go like this.
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
restingdinoface.bsky.social
It’s always a little strange when cishet acquaintances ask me to explain transness to them. I try my best to educate and make connections, but it can be so draining. I could give you a deep dive on Godzilla. We could talk music, food, pets. But here I am, in front of you, having to explain I’m real.
mwfrancis.bsky.social
The worst I worry about in cities is tripping on the effing sidewalks that always need repair and that someone will clip my car mirror while trying to drive their obnoxiously large SUV down a normal-sized city street.
mwfrancis.bsky.social
I've lived in big cities most of my adult life, and spending time in small towns freaks me the fuck out. I did a long run in extremely rural Iowa while visiting family and worrying about meeting some conservative whackjob with a gun on the dirt roads 2 miles into empty cornfields.
faineg.bsky.social
the amount of raw, unadulterated fear that many Americans have of even small cities is never going to stop being darkly hilarious to me
mwfrancis.bsky.social
This is so important.

Sometimes we lose, but that doesn't give us permission to stop trying. We regroup, we mourn and heal in community, and then we keep going. We're in it for the long haul, not just this one part.
whetmoser.com
of all the things about ta-nehisi coates’s philosophy i wish people would internalize the main one is: sometimes you lose
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW
phillewis.bsky.social
A message from Assata Shakur's daughter, Kakuya Shakur:
“At approximately 1:15 PM on September 25th, my mother, Assata Shakur, took her last earthly breath. Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time,” Kakuya Shakur, her daughter, wrote on Facebook.

“I want to thank you for your loving prayers that continue to anchor me in the strength that I need in this moment. My spirit is overflowing in unison with all of you who are grieving with me at this time.”
mwfrancis.bsky.social
I would like to be gently scrubbed by machines while I leak in peace in my repair cubicle
qwantz.com
We deserve and demand a special zone to be scrubbed clean in by patient machines, and I dare say it's criminal we are denied.

www.qwantz.com/index.php?co...
T-Rex: I have a machine that washes my clothes...
T-Rex: (I DO SOMETIMES CHOOSE TO WEAR THEM!)

T-Rex: ...and I have a machine that washes my dishes... T-Rex: ...but why is there not a machine for the thing I wash EVEN MORE OFTEN?? I speak, of course, of my body!
T-Rex: I WANT A BODY-WASHING MACHINE.
T-Rex: I want to enter a DARK BOX and just SIT THERE whilst machines get me clean! 
T-Rex: And to be clear, I want nothing more than what we already grant dirty ware, both glass- and under-!
Utahraptor: But -

T-Rex: Let me just add: I know "wear" and "ware" are different words. But they SOUND the same!
Utahraptor: That was my only concern. A flying car may be unreasonable, but a WET SUDS CHAMBER with NIMBLE, GENTLE, and GENEROUS robot arms is NOT. Narrator: MEANWHILE, IN A BETTER UNIVERSE:
T-Rex: I come home exhausted and fell asleep in my wet cleaning box for EIGHT FULL HOURS!
Off panel: What happened?
T-Rex: I merely got SUPER extra clean!
Off panel: Frig, I love this universe!!
mwfrancis.bsky.social
I feel this deep in my soul.
I must either decide to give my bodymind the care it deserves or to meet the (frankly unreasonable and constantly escalating) performance metrics in academia. I can't do both well. I seesaw between the two because I need to pay the bills but I also need to rest & heal. 🫂
realqrampage.fightins.online
life is sleeping 4 hours a night so you can do capitalism and be so exhausted that you can’t enjoy anything ever
mwfrancis.bsky.social
Snipping turtle!
Or as @bowlerhatscience.org says, "safety scissors turtle" 😂