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@ari-the-aries
i do find the rules around clothes fascinating because of how made up it all is. we invented the idea of covering our bodies from the elements because we lack fur like other mammals and then made up all these rules around it and now people will unironically tell you "men cant wear skirts its unnatural" girl none of this is natural. we are born naked and made up the rest as we went along. hope this helps.
#1 thing you can do to be a better driver is to be at peace with going the wrong direction for a little while.
like it is not the end of the world if you miss your turn. all the roads are connected to all the other roads. you will find your way very quickly.
unless you're experiencing a genuine emergency, dont even think about making a sudden movement, ESPECIALLY across one or more lanes, just to avoid missing a turn
just relax. be at peace with the way the universe has led you. who knows you might discover something you never would have seen, like a nice restaraunt or a park you didn't know about. just. fucking relax
The best driving advice I ever got was "you get there when you get there."
Miss a turn? It's okay. You get there when you get there.
Left the house late? Nothing you can do about it now. You get there when you get there.
Stopped by a train, or an accident on the highway? It's out of your hands. You get there when you get there.
I know all of these things can be anxiety-inducing. But by the time you're in the car experiencing them, no crazy maneuver will make a meaningful difference in the time it takes to get where you're going, and that maneuver will be at the cost of your safety and others.
Nothing is more important than your life.
You get there when you get there.
The ‘Harry Potter’ author is posting through it.
“Hope. All we ask for is hope,” Duane wrote on Instagram Stories shortly after her victory, per People. Manivann, who is a trans Tamil immigrant, told a crowd of onlookers after their victory, “I am to some in this country everything that the hateful despise and I am standing here as your MSP now with care,” as The Independent reported.
May 11, 2026
J. K. Rowling's now represented in Parliament by a trans woman. 😊
unless she's moved, rowling is now represented by a non binary trans person who goes by they/them, actually. let's keep the facts honest and joyous, yeah? <3
anyway. the hugest congrats to both of them. i wish them both the absolute best
academic dishonesty is not something you can spin as moral lol i do not want to share a career field let alone a social sphere with a bunch of chatgpt using ass bitches
"you're just scared your diploma is going to devalue" i'm afraid you dumb bitches are going to become my colleagues and drag social services to hell
I'm afraid they'll become scientists and data that lives depend on will turn out to be wrong - and people will die.
I'm afraid they'll become engineers and sign off on bridge designs that collapse - and people will die.
I'm afraid they'll become medical professionals who don't know what they're doing - and people will die.
The assumption that academic dishonesty is okay is rooted in the idea that what you're learning to do doesn't matter.
I think about Azula shooters often and their common refrain of "if Azula hadn't had a mental breakdown, she would've won" and I'm here to tell you that no, she wouldn't have.
There is no universe in which Azula was winning that fight with Zuko (or Katara, for that matter).
Azula spent so much of Book 2 being built up as this deadly terrifying force against whom the heroes are badly outmatched that it can be difficult to catch exactly how quickly Zuko is advancing.
Back up a bit to Book One. For the fearsome exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko's not that impressive a firebender. He's not bad by any stretch, and he's able to lay the untrained Sokka and Katara flat pretty easily. Then he gets in the ring with Aang, who is an airbending master, and the difference between a regular bender and a master becomes apparent when Aang literally puts his ass to bed:
People have attributed this to the fact that no one's fought an airbender in 100 years, but I think it's also worth noting that Aang (a 12 year old from a pacifist nation) has probably never fought anyone before. Like, ever. And yet the second Aang thinks "okay, I'll attack back", the fight's over.
Zuko's got the same genetic predisposition for firebending talent that Azula does, yet it never seems to manifest because of his mental blocks. At the beginning of the series, he's already so beat down that all he really has is conviction, pride, and anger, so even with training from Iroh (the firebending master, thank you very much), he struggles. Yet throughout Book 2, when he has no time to train because he's on the run, he actually seems to advance faster. The fact that his bending is literally tied to his character arc (as his morals become tangled and he has to fight off aforementioned mental blocks) is pretty brilliant. Like, by the time of the Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko getting his ass handed to him by Aang is a pretty consistent feature of the show--he just can't match wits with him.
Hell, at the beginning of the series, he and Iroh (again: the actual firebending master) launch a combined power surface-to-air attack...which Aang casually swats away into a nearby ice wall. Come the Crossroads of Destiny, however, and Zuko by himself launches this bigass fireball that blows through Aang's defenses.
Zuko advances so quickly that it's scary. That prodigious talent is in him even if it doesn't come through as cleanly as with Azula. Who, by the way, was busy about to get flattened by Katara some few dozen feet away, until Zuko took over and then effectively stalemated her himself.
All of this in retrospect makes it abundantly clear why Zuko's firebending seemed to skyrocket so much when he learned true firebending from the Sun Warriors: it was really the only thing left. He's hard a hard road learning how to fight waterbenders, earthbenders, and airbenders, and even if unconsciously, he's applying the philosophy Iroh taught him about augmenting his bending style with aspects of other styles (see also, the waterbending-like fire whips he uses in the above gif). Once he actually understands fire and how it works, he's got it mastered. Hence why any gap between him and Azula effectively disappears as soon as their next fight--before her friends have betrayed her and her stability goes out the window. There's no real sense of urgency to their fight at the Boiling Rock prison. True, Sokka's presence with the sword helps, but Zuko doesn't look remotely worried and he counters Azula's every attack perfectly.
All her life, Azula only ever learned fire. She was taught by the best people the fire nation can employ, so she knows all the cool tricks, but she's still poisoned by the corrupted firebending practiced in the modern ATLA timeline. Unlike Zuko, who managed to get the basics if nothing else from Iroh (fire comes from the breath, and can be used to survive as much as to kill), Azula has always used fire as a weapon and a means to hurt others. She has no true knowledge of the craft, meaning she's got the same weaknesses as Zhao, she's just better disciplined to the point she can make up for it.
Zuko's victory was a given considering Azula's complete loss of control by the time of Sozin's comet, but even had she been in a perfect mental state, she'd have lost, because in many ways Zuko is simply the better firebender.
And that's the truth of it.
I drink two cups of coffee per day not because I have an addiction, but because my body has adapted to the presence of caffeine enough that its absence causes mild but unpleasant side effects.
I dusted the TV stand not because it was dusty but because it was covered in fine particulate matter that settled from the air.
I reblogged this post not because I liked it and wanted to share it, but because reading it elicited a pleasant sensation that I felt would be appreciated by others
vampires are so full of shit. "oh the human race is beneath us, you're just livestock to us" I don't think you know what livestock is. do you feed us? care for us? protect us from predators? no. you just slink around dark alleys and ambush people. that's not what a higher being does. that's a bottom feeder. a parasite. karate punches your head off
She Would Say That. She would DO that.
im going to become the joker
@rachamemories yes thank you for saying this!! like, the idea that a culture can be distinct from a country is actually not that unusual at all. and on that note, the idea of a religion being associated with a particular culture or tribe is not actually unusual either!
also it's so weird how people want everyone to identify with nation-states above all. pretty right-wing tbh.
I heard this metaphor growing up, and in my case, it backfired supremely, because I went out into my neighbor's backyard where a rose bush was growing, and the one I tested had like 30 petals (it was yellow, but definitely a rose of some kind), and as a very logical lass, I came to the conclusion that you could have premarital sex AT LEAST ten times before your future husband would even notice something was up. Moral of the story? Test your metaphors on the weirdest and most neurodivergent child you know before writing your weird religious propaganda.
the thing that annoys me the most about it is that it's just some random metaphor, like, why should I even agree with the premise. "you are like a beautiful rose" based on what? oh we're just making up stuff, well then I say you're like a restaurant tip jar and every time you have sex someone adds a shiny coin to the pile. you're a beautiful photo album and every sexual partner is an interesting polaroid to add to your collection. since we're just saying whatever
the pistachio food trend is soooo interesting because it's like. i've been following the californian pistachio water politics for years, as a californian with personal connections to agricultural workers but! basically there's been a big push in california agriculture over the last decade to pressure farmers to produce pistachios, because iran has dominated the global market in pistachios for decades, and the US government has been trying to weaken iran economically, so they want to make california pistachios a competitor. which is ridiculous, because california's agricultural infrastructure is suffering under a drought, and pistachios take insane amounts of water. so a ton of water is being redirected from the people in order to engage in a trade war with iran over fucking. pistachios.
anyway now that the US (i.e. california) is producing more pistachios than iran, the next step is to drive consumption of pistachios, so that the farmers who are producing these pistachios can continue to make money on them. ergo all the fancy pistachio coffees at starbucks and similar shit like suddenly being able to find pistachio butter in grocery stores when five years ago it was exclusively available at specialty stores and online, and the huge boom in pistachios foods in instagram and tiktok recipe content. like i watch a lot of instagram foodie reels (cooking/baking is one of my hobbies) and these get thrown onto everyone's feeds, to promote the purchasing of pistachios, so that the US can stick it to iran. it's. kind of incredible to watch this happen in real time, because it sounds like deranged conspiracy thought, but like. i've been watching this trend for the past decade and it's fucking real.
anyway one of the vegan recipe accounts i follow just posted like five pistachio-based recipes in a row and it makes me feel some kind of fucking way
it is extremely relevant that pistachios are so easy to acquire here, but acorns, which are an indigenous California food staple crop, are impossible to find even in the best stocked grocery stores, and knowing how to prepare them for consumption is a rarer skill than sourdough starter
Your kid probably already knows about sex. Despite your most careful efforts, they probably have figured it out at least a little bit.
My aunt was pregnant with my cousin when I was 4. My other cousin gave us a kitten because his female cat 'got out of the barn' when i was 5, and i had to learn what 'spaying' was. It was rumored (correctly) that I was a lesbian when I was 7. When I was 9, a couple of boys on my bus were gawking at a playboy one of them stole from their dad.
When I was 11, I was friends with a girl who was a victim of sexual abuse from a family member. My parents gave me 'the talk', which was largely about consent and why bodies are weird. I watched "Revenge of the Nerds." When I was 12, I was friends with someone who wrote rape fantasies. I learned what hentai was. I learned what a furry was (though i have a more nuanced understanding of it now). When I was 13, I was told by a classmate that I seemed like the kind of person to (extremely graphic description of a bdsm kink that I didnt know existed.) My church gave me 'the talk,' which was largely about STIs and why you shouldnt have sex til youre married. My school also gave me 'the talk,' which was largely about the names of body parts and what pregnancy is like. I saw a South Park episode. I saw some John Hughes movies. I watched a friend deep-throat a banana as a joke. Crime procedurals were on TV. When I was 15, most of my friends were on fanfiction.net and livejournal (I am old) or roleplaying through online forums. I learned what yaoi was. One of my friends had a restraining order on her ex for stalking.
At 16, I was largely inexperienced with sex- had never been on a date due to a complicated relationship with the closet. But it seemed everyone else had quite a bit of experience, whether good or bad or neutral. So I learned some things this way.
When we talk about banning books for being 'sexually explicit,' my mind goes to "Speak," by Laurie Halse Anderson- which is about a teenage rape survivor. One of the reasons for its banning is that it includes the rape scene, but the narration fades to black before it becomes graphic.
I read that when I was 13, and it made me think of Sasha- my friend who was a SA victim at the age of 11 and who knew how long it had gone on, who dropped off my radar after 5th grade. And I would think about that book again and again every time I would make a friend with that kind of story (surprisingly often.)
So... all of this. All of this gets revisited when we talk about purity culture, when we talk about 'sexually explicit books with minors,' when we talk about 'protecting their innocence.'
I, a nerd that never went to parties, was not the target audience for this book- even if it helped me relate.
The target audience was Sasha. Or Kelsey. Or Nicole.
And here I am, arguing with some asshole on the internet who probably calls himself a 'protector of children' by supporting drag bans and book bans and defunding planned parenthood, because he thinks that a young adult book about navigating toxic relationships that has the words 'hand on my thigh' in it should be banned because thats 'sexually explicit' and I'm tired.
Your kid probably knows about sex. Through friends at school, through family members, through observation. I think its okay to let them read books where the lesson is that they're allowed to say 'no' to it.
This, by the way, applies to a host of 'inappropriate topics' that books get banned over.
The book about drug addiction might not be for you, but it is for the kid whose dad is in and out of rehab.
The book about child trafficking might not be for you, but it might be for the kid whose cousin disappeared one day.
The book about the school shooting will likely not make your kid a school shooter, but it will provide understand for the kids who have been through one.
The book about racism isnt supposed to make you feel bad for being white- its supposed to help the kid that feels bad for being black.
The book about a gay kid wont turn your kid gay, but it might help the kid who needs to come out.
The book about the transgender kid probably wont make your kid trans, but it will give a voice to the kid that already is.
Your kid probably knows these things if they've interacted with the world outside their nuclear family at all. If youre looking at a reading list and thinking that the books should be banned, it might be prudent to instead ask yourself 'who is this book written for?'
"Because I Love You" by Lex Marie.
She spent hours upon hours just beating the canvas with a belt...
when you look at the finished painting, you can almost see letters - but there aren't any. It's all noise. a lot of adults process this sort of beating by insisting there is a lesson in it. with the title and artist statement in mind, it's like they're trying to read a message of love written in that chaotic canvas.
I loves her
I had to draw this odd, disconcerted sack of elbows
Source: index.hr
Please spread the actual story because the false narrative people have spread will just cause harm to innocents
Censoring words like "abuse," "rape," "sex," "molest," etc. has never helped a single survivor in the history of ever. It is nothing more than a concession to a puritanical culture that wants to silence survivors. Do not give this culture a single inch. Stop censoring scary words.
I'll also add: the cutesy rhyming slang for serious topics is inappropriate and disrespectful unless you're actually trying to get around a platform censorship guidelines. It's not "sewer-slide", it's suicide. It's not "grape", it's rape. Just use the proper words and pay the topic the respect it deserves.
Hot take: we should also not be torturing incarcerated people with disgusting-on-purpose food, because they are human beings.
Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.
Arepo built a temple in his field, a humble thing, some stones stacked up to make a cairn, and two days later a god moved in.
“Hope you’re a harvest god,” Arepo said, and set up an altar and burnt two stalks of wheat. “It’d be nice, you know.” He looked down at the ash smeared on the stone, the rocks all laid askew, and coughed and scratched his head. “I know it’s not much,” he said, his straw hat in his hands. “But - I’ll do what I can. It’d be nice to think there’s a god looking after me.”
The next day he left a pair of figs, the day after that he spent ten minutes of his morning seated by the temple in prayer. On the third day, the god spoke up.
“You should go to a temple in the city,” the god said. Its voice was like the rustling of the wheat, like the squeaks of fieldmice running through the grass. “A real temple. A good one. Get some real gods to bless you. I’m no one much myself, but I might be able to put in a good word?” It plucked a leaf from a tree and sighed. “I mean, not to be rude. I like this temple. It’s cozy enough. The worship’s been nice. But you can’t honestly believe that any of this is going to bring you anything.”
“This is more than I was expecting when I built it,” Arepo said, laying down his scythe and lowering himself to the ground. “Tell me, what sort of god are you anyway?”
“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth. I’m a god of a dozen different nothings, scraps that lead to rot, momentary glimpses. A change in the air, and then it’s gone.”
The god heaved another sigh. “There’s no point in worship in that, not like War, or the Harvest, or the Storm. Save your prayers for the things beyond your control, good farmer. You’re so tiny in the world. So vulnerable. Best to pray to a greater thing than me.”
Arepo plucked a stalk of wheat and flattened it between his teeth. “I like this sort of worship fine,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll continue.”
“Do what you will,” said the god, and withdrew deeper into the stones. “But don’t say I never warned you otherwise.”
Arepo would say a prayer before the morning’s work, and he and the god contemplated the trees in silence. Days passed like that, and weeks, and then the Storm rolled in, black and bold and blustering. It flooded Arepo’s fields, shook the tiles from his roof, smote his olive tree and set it to cinder. The next day, Arepo and his sons walked among the wheat, salvaging what they could. The little temple had been strewn across the field, and so when the work was done for the day, Arepo gathered the stones and pieced them back together.
“Useless work,” the god whispered, but came creeping back inside the temple regardless. “There wasn’t a thing I could do to spare you this.”
“We’ll be fine,” Arepo said. “The storm’s blown over. We’ll rebuild. Don’t have much of an offering for today,” he said, and laid down some ruined wheat, “but I think I’ll shore up this thing’s foundations tomorrow, how about that?”
The god rattled around in the temple and sighed.
A year passed, and then another. The temple had layered walls of stones, a roof of woven twigs. Arepo’s neighbors chuckled as they passed it. Some of their children left fruit and flowers. And then the Harvest failed, the gods withdrew their bounty. In Arepo’s field the wheat sprouted thin and brittle. People wailed and tore their robes, slaughtered lambs and spilled their blood, looked upon the ground with haunted eyes and went to bed hungry. Arepo came and sat by the temple, the flowers wilted now, the fruit shriveled nubs, Arepo’s ribs showing through his chest, his hands still shaking, and murmured out a prayer.
“There is nothing here for you,” said the god, hudding in the dark. “There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to be done.” It shivered, and spat out its words. “What is this temple but another burden to you?”
“We -” Arepo said, and his voice wavered. “So it’s a lean year,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before, we’ll get through this again. So we’re hungry,” he said. “We’ve still got each other, don’t we? And a lot of people prayed to other gods, but it didn’t protect them from this. No,” he said, and shook his head, and laid down some shriveled weeds on the altar. “No, I think I like our arrangement fine.”
“There will come worse,” said the god, from the hollows of the stone. “And there will be nothing I can do to save you.”
The years passed. Arepo rested a wrinkled hand upon the temple of stone and some days spent an hour there, lost in contemplation with the god.
And one fateful day, from across the wine-dark seas, came War.
Arepo came stumbling to his temple now, his hand pressed against his gut, anointing the holy site with his blood. Behind him, his wheat fields burned, and the bones burned black in them. He came crawling on his knees to a temple of hewed stone, and the god rushed out to meet him.
“I could not save them,” said the god, its voice a low wail. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so so sorry.” The leaves fell burning from the trees, a soft slow rain of ash. “I have done nothing! All these years, and I have done nothing for you!”
“Shush,” Arepo said, tasting his own blood, his vision blurring. He propped himself up against the temple, forehead pressed against the stone in prayer. “Tell me,” he mumbled. “Tell me again. What sort of god are you?”
“I -” said the god, and reached out, cradling Arepo’s head, and closed its eyes and spoke.
“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said, and conjured up the image of them. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth.” Arepo’s lips parted in a smile.
“I am the god of a dozen different nothings,” it said. “The petals in bloom that lead to rot, the momentary glimpses. A change in the air -” Its voice broke, and it wept. “Before it’s gone.”
“Beautiful,” Arepo said, his blood staining the stones, seeping into the earth. “All of them. They were all so beautiful.”
And as the fields burned and the smoke blotted out the sun, as men were trodden in the press and bloody War raged on, as the heavens let loose their wrath upon the earth, Arepo the sower lay down in his humble temple, his head sheltered by the stones, and returned home to his god.
Sora found the temple with the bones within it, the roof falling in upon them.
“Oh, poor god,” she said, “With no-one to bury your last priest.” Then she paused, because she was from far away. “Or is this how the dead are honored here?” The god roused from its contemplation.
“His name was Arepo,” it said, “He was a sower.”
Sora startled, a little, because she had never before heard the voice of a god. “How can I honor him?” She asked.
“Bury him,” the god said, “Beneath my altar.”
“All right,” Sora said, and went to fetch her shovel.
“Wait,” the god said when she got back and began collecting the bones from among the broken twigs and fallen leaves. She laid them out on a roll of undyed wool, the only cloth she had. “Wait,” the god said, “I cannot do anything for you. I am not a god of anything useful.”
Sora sat back on her heels and looked at the altar to listen to the god.
“When the Storm came and destroyed his wheat, I could not save it,” the god said, “When the Harvest failed and he was hungry, I could not feed him. When War came,” the god’s voice faltered. “When War came, I could not protect him. He came bleeding from the battle to die in my arms.” Sora looked down again at the bones.
“I think you are the god of something very useful,” she said.
“What?” the god asked.
Sora carefully lifted the skull onto the cloth. “You are the god of Arepo.”
Generations passed. The village recovered from its tragedies—homes rebuilt, gardens re-planted, wounds healed. The old man who once lived on the hill and spoke to stone and rubble had long since been forgotten, but the temple stood in his name. Most believed it to empty, as the god who resided there long ago had fallen silent. Yet, any who passed the decaying shrine felt an ache in their hearts, as though mourning for a lost friend. The cold that seeped from the temple entrance laid their spirits low, and warded off any potential visitors, save for the rare and especially oblivious children who would leave tiny clusters of pink and white flowers that they picked from the surrounding meadow.
The god sat in his peaceful home, staring out at the distant road, to pedestrians, workhorses, and carriages, raining leaves that swirled around bustling feet. How long had it been? The world had progressed without him, for he knew there was no help to be given. The world must be a cruel place, that even the useful gods have abandoned, if farms can flood, harvests can run barren, and homes can burn, he thought.
He had come to understand that humans are senseless creatures, who would pray to a god that cannot grant wishes or bless upon them good fortune. Who would maintain a temple and bring offerings with nothing in return. Who would share their company and meditate with such a fruitless deity. Who would bury a stranger without the hope for profit. What bizarre, futile kindness they had wasted on him. What wonderful, foolish, virtuous, hopeless creatures, humans were.
So he painted the sunset with yellow leaves, enticed the worms to dance in their soil, flourished the boundary between forest and field with blossoms and berries, christened the air with a biting cold before winter came, ripened the apples with crisp, red freckles to break under sinking teeth, and a dozen other nothings, in memory of the man who once praised the god’s work on his dying breath.
“Hello, God of Every Humble Beauty in the World,” called a familiar voice.
The squinting corners of the god’s eyes wept down onto curled lips. “Arepo,” he whispered, for his voice was hoarse from its hundred-year mutism.
“I am the god of devotion, of small kindnesses, of unbreakable bonds. I am the god of selfless, unconditional love, of everlasting friendships, and trust,” Arepo avowed, soothing the other with every word.
“That’s wonderful, Arepo,” he responded between tears, “I’m so happy for you—such a powerful figure will certainly need a grand temple. Will you leave to the city to gather more worshippers? You’ll be adored by all.”
“No,” Arepo smiled.
“Farther than that, to the capitol, then? Thank you for visiting here before your departure.”
“No, I will not go there, either,” Arepo shook his head and chuckled.
“Farther still? What ambitious goals, you must have. There is no doubt in my mind that you will succeed, though,” the elder god continued.
“Actually,” interrupted Arepo, “I’d like to stay here, if you’ll have me.”
The other god was struck speechless. “…. Why would you want to live here?”
“I am the god of unbreakable bonds and everlasting friendships. And you are the god of Arepo.”
I reblogged this once with the first story. Now the story has grown and I’m crying. This is gorgeous, guys. This is what dreams are made of.
This is amazing!
