Recommended
Curated picks from recent work and the archives.
Who’s Assimilating Whom?
This was originally published online in April of 1998. I was once a very passionate advocate for trans liberation when I wrote and posted essays on the Android Sisters blog that I ran for a few years in the late ’90s. The contrivance of…
December 2, 2021
Math is Hard
(From my blog “Android Sisters”, May 1998) When I start to think myself too much of a smartypants, I read about math. The problem is, that I get so dingdanged excited about it, it just makes me want to become a theoretical…
June 21, 2022
Morality, Star Wars, and Obi-Wan Kenobi
>> Warning: Spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi , Episode I and II << Obi-Wan Kenobi ’s first two episodes — of six total that have been filmed for season one — are out, with a third coming the day after Memorial Day. I watched them last night…
May 29, 2022
Slave Morality
https://youtu.be/aPhrTOg1RUk I watched a philosophy video by Natalie Wynn yesterday that blew my mind. In it, she talks about Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and “slave morality”. This somewhat undermines my whole view of morality…
August 11, 2021
The Politics of Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2
The author as a rough man; sleep well, sweet dreams. White House for scale. © 2019 Jonnie Wilder “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf” — Richard Grenier…
March 22, 2019
Start ’Em Young: Embrace the Violence of Video Games
©2019 J. Wilder I’m surrounded and the enemy is closing in. Backing away from them, I look over my shoulder at the edge of the futuristic Egyptian garden wall and imagine myself leaping into the mists below, where I will surely perish.…
February 14, 2019
Bullies Rule The World Only Because We Demand It
©2019 Johanna Wilder For most all of my childhood, and quite a bit of my young adulthood, I was bullied. Growing up in rural Indiana in the ’70s and ’80s was a challenge that required a child be either rugged brute or resilient target.…
February 12, 2019
Morality Monday: M*A*S*H
"War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse." -- Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce How do I do what's right when I'm given every encouragement to do what feels wrong? That's how I felt…
April 17, 2017
The Terrible Flag of My People
Trans-sexual and trans-gender warriors marching under a battle standard defined with muted pastel colors around a milky white center do not inspire. Is it because my people spend so much of our lives trying not to stand out, but to fit…
June 21, 2017
Quantum Rocks
I ran into a friend today on my walk. He was running down the Blaine Street steps just as I approached to walk up them. We walked up together. He was carrying with him five small stones, pebbles really. Each one represented a trip down…
April 26, 2017
A Few Simple Rules For Artificially Intelligent Companions
As we make advances in machine learning and robotics, the day of non-human companions comes closer. Whether they be cybernetic buddies, android companions, positronic au pairs, robotic service agents, or automatic nursemaids it seems…
March 28, 2017
What the Autopsy Revealed
Originally appeared in The Stranger; volume 1, issue 1; September 1991 under the byline "Tony Ramirez". It has been edited to remove some errors and inconsistencies in the original. My conversations with Lydia Bordland began in the late…
November 9, 2021
I wrote "Vacuum" from The Onion, November 15, 1988
Under the byline Mike Evans, because we used a lot of fake names back in those days instead of the current "no bylines" policy. The first year of The Onion had a lot more "creative writing" in it. Only the front page story was a "fake…
May 21, 2019
The Benzobuddies Chronicles
For three and a half years, I wrote updates on my recovery and posted them on the website Benzobuddies.org , mostly in the “Birthdays and Celebrations” sub-forum, but a few times in the “Exercise Support Group”. I was out of my mind a…
April 22, 2019
Social Anxiety
O’ how I wish the shaking would cease insecurity’s siblings: Doubt and Misgiving go away now and leave me in peace O’ how it pulses the heartbeat inside Adrenaline rising my self I’m despising please let me finish diminish, denied Were…
August 10, 2021
Farewell, Worthy Adversary
© 2019 Jonnie Wilder Seattle Weekly ’s last print issue hits the streets today. It’s another exclamation point at the end of a string of exclamation points that signal the exasperation of excitable writers witnessing the end of an era…
February 27, 2019
Don’t Force Feelings: Feel Them, then Let Them Go.
This is how it's done, and at the end, I read the poem for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIon55v0E9w
February 1, 2019
My Cyberpunk Future
The Seattle Metroplex, Circa 2018 I'm finally living in the cyberpunk future I've dreamed of living in since I was a kid. In my younger mind, the cyberpunk future was a cultural mélange raising a new age Tower of Babel over an aging…
July 15, 2018
International Noobs' Day
Amazon should be most famous for getting credit for other people's achievements. Instead, the ubiquitous internet company that couldn't even come up with its own name has been getting a lot of grief for poor treatment of its workers:…
May 1, 2017
Rebirth and Resurrection as Metaphor
There are bodies buried beneath the cherry trees. #sakura A post shared by Jonnie (Johanna) Wilder (@badselfiesinseattle) on Apr 8, 2017 at 1:19pm PDT This winter was the most difficult. There was the sickness, then the other sickness,…
April 14, 2017
Not Doing It Right Should Never Stop You From Doing It At All
Perfectionism kills good ideas. It's a terrible tragedy to see the graveyard of perfectly wonderful ideas that were struck down in their infancy because they couldn't be done the way they should be. I'd never have gotten anything done…
April 4, 2017
Johanna Wilder, Alternative Newspaper Mogul, Shuffles Off Mortal Coil
As waves of humans download themselves into robot bodies and lay their flesh-and-blood bodies to rest, memorials of human remains and their achievements remain in fashion As the light on the USB-4 hub that was attached to her…
March 19, 2024
Battling Back
I've resisted turning this into a personal blog, but resistance gives way to determination. Long story short: I got sick, I'm getting better. Today, I'm seeing if I'm brave enough to start doing what I used to do back when I didn't care…
March 27, 2017