青春

hi yes hello! i'm yvonne, nice to meet you.

[sydsketch]

happy 20th anniversary to the prisoner of azkaban!

[owlmylove]

can we like…. talk about what a healthy relationship with technology looks like? not just for us, but for future generations: its super easy for us to accept tech unquestioningly bc many millennials and gen-Zers grew up alongside the growth of tech, and had a naturally evolving level of exposure to it. but what about the 5 year olds with tablets? the 8 year olds with perfectly curated instagrams?? i’m as obsessed with my phone as the rest of us, but can we please stop simply bemoaning how none of us read as much as we were kids and start exploring how all these screens might be affecting the kids growing up right now?

[owlmylove]

i work in customer service and please know that i am not baby-boomer aggrandizing when i say i have seen so many children, literally toddlers, dead-silent and completely, utterly absorbed in tablets bigger than their heads. i’ve seen a shitton of pre-pubescent girls posing for pictures together, planning their angles and backgrounds, and checking what shots their mom took bc they’re worried “they might look fat.” like. i’m talking 7 year olds. this isn’t meant to be some holier than thou bullshit, this is me being legitimately terrified about a problem i really haven’t seen any of us discuss or even acknowledge

[natura-non-facit-saltuss]

In one of my psychology classes the teacher told us about a study that showed that toddlers nowadays have a hard time learning how to write and do fine motor things because of the skip the stage of learning with their hands and all they do is swipe and click.

[owlmylove]

oh!! my god!!! that is an incredibly literal/physical symptom of these newfound techno-reliances we’ve formed. a professor of mine referred to it as our “tech fetishization,” this expectation that all updated forms of tech are innately and unquestionably good things. we see technology as an amorphous, abstract concept vs. a substantive influence in our mental, emotional, and physical states but holy shit it really, really is

[mixingpumpkins]

@ y’all in the notes completely missing the point and thinking this is about millennials turning into the ‘Thomas Edison was a witch!’ or ‘kids these days!’ crowd…

Look, I fucking love technology. I love what the advancements in my lifetime have been able to make possible. The sheer amount of information and communication and creative tools available is incredible, and I often wonder how different my life would be now if I’d grown up with all these things available and accessible. (How many more things would I know how to do? How much more music could I have written? How much more art could I have produced? Could I have started my own businesses sooner? How many more people from how many more places would I know?)

But the things in the above posts are problems. I see plenty of bitching now about the effects that ‘TV / video game babysitting’ had on you - you think handing a 2-year-old a tablet to shut them up isn’t just another incarnation of the same thing? 

We bitch about how fucked up algorithms are all over the internet, and you don’t think kids having nearly unmonitored access is a problem? You don’t see a potential for how this could be fucking someone up? Open a YouTube page as a new user (with zero history, cookies, etc.), click on an innocuous video, and let autoplay run for a bit. It gets weird real fast. (Even with filters.)

As difficult as ‘don’t worry about looking like the people in the magazines, they don’t look like that either’ was for us, you don’t think there’s a potential for more damage with social media etc. now? Everybody has access to filters and photoshop etc. The whole ‘influencer’ thing is that ‘anybody can be a star, you can make yourself, you don’t have to wait for a studio etc. to discover you.’ Seven-year-olds obsessing whether they look fat or if their instagrams can compete with some random person who’s edited the shit out of their photos (and they’re not a movie star, just a random person, so it must be real!) is messed up. 

Kids coming into schools with lower vocabulary levels because they haven’t heard as many words from people by a certain age - because it’s easier to sit them in front of a pretty, addicting game to keep them occupied and behaving than spend the time interacting with them person-to-person - is messed up.

There are so many amazing tools we have now that are awesome for helping kids learn and grow. (I would have killed to be able to have ‘how to’ videos on YouTube when I was a kid - there were so many things I wanted to learn that if my parents didn’t know or the school / library didn’t have resources on, I was SOL.) But I’d love to see actual conversations about the problems growing up with tech is causing - without it devolving into the usual thinkpieces and comments that do just break it down as ‘tech is bad!’ or ‘tech is fine, ya loser dinosaurs!’ There’s absolutely a healthy balance here somewhere. I just don’t think people are all that invested in finding it. 

[sableaire]

This is an absolutely vital conversation to have, and it often gets shut down as a “fear of progress.” No, we need to acknowledge that technology evolves exponentially faster than our biology, and we need to examine what that means and what kind of repercussions that might have on our future generations.

[amphiaria-deactivated20250226]

this is the most sophisticated phishing e-mail I have ever received and if they had sized the logo correctly and actually proofread the fucking thing I probably would’ve clicked that button

[amphiaria-deactivated20250226]

actually please reblog this because someone else got it too. do not click on the links in this e-mail if you get one like it, just forward it to [email protected] and delete it

[zyu10]

Himeji, Japan, 2019

[1000125]

It’s school season again so I’m back at trying to save up money for tuition and stuff. Support my edumacation by commissioning me and sliding chips under my door. 

Payment will be in USD and upfront. Pay anywhere from $7 to $150 for a good time

I can draw from description and image references

I draw both OCs and fanart

Read link for more info and how to order

[INFORMATION HERE]

[cottagepatch]

Create a home thats so welcoming and comfy, even strangers get homesick 🏡

[highlandvalley]

[catsuggest]

😻

[clairki0-0-deactivated20190315]

[undeadhousewife]

Tidying up isn’t about minimalism

I have been a huge fan of Marie Kondo since her book first launched. And trust me, I binge watched her new show in an evening. However I often see people talk about how they couldn’t do it because they aren’t fans of minimalism (even my own sister said that) which blows my mind because I am far from a minimalist!

Here’s where I feel a lot of people get her ideas wrong. Because it’s not about throwing out everything and embracing a minimalist life style. It’s about only keeping things you enjoy. If having a bookcase full of books you love sparks joy great! A stack of magazines in a box in your basement isn’t doing the same for you. Keeping a dozen ugly oversized t-shirts isn’t bring joy to your life, they should go. Loving funky printed socks and having a drawer full on the other hand might spark joy in you so keep those.

This is why I actually recommend people read her second book “Spark Joy” before actually reading her first book. She breaks down the idea behind keeping only things that spark joy, and even explains what she means by that. I often see people ask “how can a can opener bring joy? Or a toilet plunger? How about my recycling can??” and as she explains it, you are thankful to have these things when needed, so indeed they spark joy.

Konmari isn’t about tossing over everything and living minimalistic, it’s about making sure you surround yourself with things you love so you can care more deeply (and in turn take care of them) it’s about being aware of what we have in our homes, and maybe becoming more aware of what we bring into them. It’s about envisioning the home you want and working positively towards that goal. If for you it is a simple and sparse home wonderful, but if not konmari is still for you. 😊

[somemachi]

「ちょっとだけ特別な朝食」

[yuzu-hanyus]

2x Olympic Gold Medalist, Yuzuru Hanyu: One Confused Boy

[gayhaircut]

My advice to everyone is to develop a thick skin but not to lose ur softness. Like moisturise spiritually

[miseducatedmelanicmuse]

[mgngcat]

羨ましい…

[meghanmclovin]

You know what’s really hot? Not having to guess someone’s feelings or intentions

[mixedgirlrants]

““Mother,” I slowly repeated in Korean. “I am not a boy. I am a girl. I am transgender.” My face reddened, and tears blurred my vision. I braced myself for her rejection and the end to a relationship that had only begun. Silence again filled the room. I searched my mother’s eyes for any signs of shock, disgust or sadness. But a serene expression lined her face as she sat with ease on the couch. I started to worry that my words had been lost in translation. Then my mother began to speak. “Mommy knew,” she said calmly through my friend, who looked just as dumbfounded as I was by her response. “I was waiting for you to tell me.” “What? How?” “Birth dream,” my mother replied. In Korea some pregnant women still believe that dreams offer a hint about the gender of their unborn child. “I had dreams for each of your siblings, but I had no dream for you. Your gender was always a mystery to me.” I wanted to reply but didn’t know where to begin. My mother instead continued to speak for both of us. “Hyun-gi,” she said, stroking my head. “You are beautiful and precious. I thought I gave birth to a son, but it is OK. I have a daughter instead.””

— Andy Marra, The Beautiful Daughter: How My Korean Mother Gave Me the Courage to Transition (via a-witches-brew)

[heatherwitch]

I think the reason I enjoy Ghibli so much is it romanticizes the little things. It makes me want to bake, study, clean the house, garden, and more while listening to happy music and occasionally picking wildflowers and lying in the grass. It helps me find joy in day-to-day life and that’s honestly sooo important for my mental health.

[oldumbylievable]

Hayao Miyazaki has said on numerous occasions that he wants children to know that even when the world seems harsh and life is hard, it is always still worth living, and there is always something beautiful in it.

That mental health boost is intentional and Miyazaki wants you to believe that you should continue to live, even if just for those little things.