⊹˚₊ ꒰ა🌙໒꒱ ₊˚⊹

☆ river ☆ they/xe ☆ angelic pretty enthusiast and sleep deprived diva ☆

[kunaigirl]

just casually leaving this here for no particular reason

[kunaigirl]

You know what? Fuck it I'm adding more context. Sesame Street has talked about the topic of death more than once and it's done with such gentle carefulness without watering down or censoring the heaviness of the situations. It treats heavy subject matter with respect and dignity and has been for DECADES. From the early 1980s:

To 2025:

Hell, they even cover the devastating heaviness of MASS SHOOTINGS without censoring or watering anything down.

They've been doing this for YEARS, and it's ALWAYS handled with dignity, respect, seriousness, understanding, and love.

Whenever I see people censoring words because it "might offend" someone or the big ad companies that are currently trying to run everything? I just want to say to them: "What? Is Sesame Street too mature for you?" Because really...what the hell are we doing.

[pancake-surprise]

Mister Roger's Neighborhood also covered difficult topics with respect, age-appropriately, and without pulling a single punch. It's crazy that we've worked ourselves up so much that we're self-censoring like it's always been the norm.

This clip is from 1968 and discussed assassination after Bobby Kennedy died.

I'm not sure when this clip originally aired, but it was likely sometime in the 1980s. They talk about murder and, incredibly by today's standards, what sort of emotions (anger, fear, loneliness) might drive someone to hurt or kill other people + how we can manage our own difficult or painful feelings.

[rosslynpaladin]

The ability to talk about hard and awful things

is the ability to process these things.

taking away the words for bad things

means when they HAPPEN- and bad things will still happen around us-

WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM without the WORDS.

When the word is accurate, USE THE WORD. Say Death. Say Murder. Say Rape. Say Prison, say Riots, say War, Say Famines and Disease. Say Bigotry. Say Hate crime. Say Racism. Say Fascism. Say Abuse. Say Hurt. Say Pain. Say Grief. Say Fear.

We must not lose the Truth of what a word means.

All of these things need to be talked about. Do Not GIVE UP YOUR WORDS.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but the doctor down the street who gives me my T shots in a clinic so small that it's just two rooms was excited for me when she said my voice had dropped yes, India made legal gender change impossible but the receptionist who could see that I was a man didn't bat an eyelash when I asked to see the gynecologist and called me sir when he asked how I wanted to pay yes, India made legal gender change impossible but the barber cuts my hair exactly how I want it and never gave me strange looks for being in a men's salon not even back when I didn't pass as one

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my friends have always gendered me correctly and stick to it even when it confuses other people and my friend's little sibling calls me older brother in Kannada yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my dog learned my new name quicker than the humans and she runs to give me a kiss when she's told to without being confused about who's being referred to

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but I can feel the Adam's apple growing in my throat and my muscles getting stronger, and my smile more real and I'm growing a beard, and I talk more freely

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but I'm here, and I'm alive, and so are you and there are good people, people who care and don't let them make you forget that-- you are not alone.

[charlesoberonn]

Heartwarming story: Little girl doesn’t have to do anything to fund her dad’s surgery because his expenses are covered by his country’s universal healthcare.

[charlesoberonn]

Human determination: Man bikes 18 miles to work every morning because he wants to and not because he can’t afford a car and would be fired if he’s late.

[charlesoberonn]

Spirit of Brotherhood: Neighbors host housewarming party for elderly resident who doesn’t need help in paying rent because his pension is more than enough.

[hyperlexichypatia]

SO INSPIRING: Local middle school students bake dozens of cupcakes because their home economics class is doing a baking unit. Their school is fully funded with everything they need.

[blandandtasteless]

This feels like calibrating my normal detector

[3rabbit]

daughter (non-practicing)

[3rabbit]

sister (deadbeat)

[acegender]

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[sanguinifex]

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

When we choose to avoid history because it's Problematic or Says Bad Things, we are choosing to divorce ourselves from understanding how we came from that time to this one, which makes it even more likely for the cycle to repeat, with no one but a few people with shelves of old books aware that it's happened before.

[swimmingblue]

and this shit's important. Media from the past tells us how people from the past acted and thought and behaved.

Plus, a lot of these media pieces were socially acceptable and/or progressive for their time. For example, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while it contains a lot of words and ideas that are offensive now, was very progressive for its time. The book is a statement piece for how a young man who's grown up in a racist environment, with no words to explain himself other than racist and bigoted ones, decides that the whole system is shit and he's not going to follow those rules any more. So not reading or engaging with it because it uses the n-word a lot really misses the point.

[bovid-beauty]

"Fascism"—New Federal Rule Would Require Federal Funding Recipients To Deny Trans People Exist

The rule could have heavy impacts towards trans people across society.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitation—hospitals could be targeted not just for providing care to minors but for providing gender-affirming care to adults, because prescribing hormone therapy to a transgender patient of any age could be deemed promoting the belief that "sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic."

[junequeer]

THIS IS OPEN TO COMMENT UNTIL JULY 13, 2026

[featherandstorm]

This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that it’s worse and more sweeping than just eliminating trans research.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Please, if you only ever write one public comment, this is the one to do.

[rowlfthedog]

[miraclemaya]

dress up is one of the most important pillars of gameplay that is often ignored by game developers to disasterous results

[trans-ralsei]

[dramatic-dolphin]

i love declining birth rates 🥰 "what a horrible problem! society will collapse!" oopsie it looks like you're gonna have to make having children worth it 😊 teehee you're gonna have to improve society in order to fix this problem, or it will all collapse. oh noooooo. how horrible. :3c

[weirdthingifoundonline]

[rotzaprachim]

“hallelujah” by leonard cohen being played as an easter and christmas song, “zombie” by the cranberries” being played as a halloween song, and “born in the U.S.A.” by bruce springsteen being played as a Fourth of July/generic us patriotism song have got to be a special trifecta of the most no-listening-comprehension musical moments that happen on seasonal playlists every single year 

[20thcenturywomen2016]

I’m a lover by nature except for when I’m a wretched hater cunt bitch which I also am by nature

[preserving-tiktok]

[girldraki]

[shop5]

let’s be real the pressure to use AI as an adult is exactly what they said the pressure the do drugs as a teenager would be like but the people that told us that caved immediately for the AI and definitely did not just say no

[murkymarco]

Caught myself spiraling and then remembered it's just my body not wanting to exist in these temperatures