no but "He's on a work trip with Jesus to afford your blueberry budget" is so fucking bad
work trip -> she's gonna think he's coming back
YOUR blueberry budget -> puts the blame on her even if that isn't what you intended
your BLUEBERRY budget -> what if she just stops eating because she thinks that will being her dad back? bc girls growing up in the usa don't already have enough of a complex around food i guess
your blueberry BUDGET -> teach your kid early to minimize herself and her needs by associating her favorite healthy food with her dad dying and leaving forever
From the media that brought you "Millennials are killing [insert industry here]" articles for years and years and years, now we have....
"Hey, Gen Z, we're gonna relabel vacations into something else now and tell you how you really should be wary of taking vacation because it might impact your financial future."
The idea is to take frequent and longer breaks from work during your career. These breaks are not your standard PTO—they’re intentional, unpaid time to rest and recharge.
Micro-retirements can look like:
- Quitting a job, and finding a new job when you’re ready to work again.
- Setting up a plan with your employer that allows you to take unpaid frequent work breaks.
- Taking breaks from your business if you’re a business owner.
True. Most Irish people, as Norwegians do with Trolls, will happily let the 'fairies' be a thing to make tours for tourists and idle threats to make children behave. Most Irish people will have a very normal and mature explanation of fairies as a common folk mythology that expresses some dimension of Irish culture but are not, obviously, to be taken literally.
And most Irish people, if you ask them to move a stone from a fairy circle will immoveably, flatly respond with 'absolutely fucking not'.
Construction projects have had to halt and be abandoned for it.
At work me and a couple coworkers (black, white, and mexican) had a fun discussion on whether there are more ghosts at a hospital or a cemetery.
everyone individually took a moment to specify that ghosts probably aren't REAL real. then weighed in on where and why.
for the record my position was that there's probably way more ghosts in hospitals because that's where people die horribly, but since you can only see ghosts in dark, solitary conditions, graveyards at night is where the majority of ghost sightings occur. hospitals are usually well lit and busy, so even if they're crammed with ghosts the living are too damn busy to see them. meanwhile if a cemetery has even one ghost that followed her corpse there from the hospital, she'll be spotted because that's where all the ghost hunters go to look.
this theory was received as extremely sensible, and a coworker drew the conclusion that that's why abandoned hospitals are even scarier than graveyards. once the place gets abandoned then you can tell how much ghosts got built up.
we all liked this explanation a lot and explained it to everyone else all night. and of course, none of us believe in ghosts.
As a rule, I don’t believe in folklore. I know that my parents house does not have a Nisse living in the attic. I also know that the one year we forgot to feed the Nisse at Christmas, my parents had to, in the span of the next year, buy a new dishwasher, oven, fridge and Kitchen Aid. The new dishwasher had to be repaired twice. I know that probably, it is my stepdad who eats the porridge we give to the Nisse. But now, we’re always very careful to remember to feed the Nisse. But we don’t believe in Nisser.
Those little examples of institutions "going green" — like the "we're using less paper" proclamations, the flimsy biodegradable straws, the calls to increase gas taxes and to fly less, etc......the reality of it is some of the most disheartening shit. Socialists know that these usually-performative gestures are drops in an ocean compared to the seismic amount of pollution and emissions put out by the overall capitalist economy, and what really sucks about it on the ideological front is that these gestures arguably just reinforce capitalist realism.
Conservatives see these examples as a kind of rigid austerity imposed by a Hippie Elite, and they in turn will oppose most of the measures advocated by climate activists under the pretense of "populism" or "freedom" or whatever the fuck. They're playing right into the hands of Big Oil and the broader capitalist ruling class, but at least they're free to drive their trucks right off a cliff with the rest of the planet.
Liberals see these examples as a sign that everything is going a-okay 👍 That climate change can be kept in check by Green Growth™ 👍 That Business Leaders™ and Thought Leaders™ will make the right decision to curb their emissions voluntarily and with some light regulation 👍 And then everyone clapped Bill-Maher-ily 👏 Get in the street to protest for climate action, sure, but make sure you have the go-ahead from the state first ✊ This is the most radical you can reasonably be ✌
Capitalism and a livable future are incompatible. Both Sides™ (read: the center-right-wing side and the right-wing side) are propping up the former to the detriment of the latter, not because individual rich people are greedy (though they usually are) but rather because profit accumulation is the core imperative of the system and it will be pursued with little-to-no thought given to other concerns. The system itself needs to be attacked from all angles, in a way which can unite oppressed people and workers and eco-activists and the lay liberals and lay conservatives who have chugged false consciousness juice all their lives but who aren't beyond hope. Another world is possible and another world is necessary.
my local Jewish antizionist group keeps getting emails from very confused Jews trying to square the circle of how we can be Jewish without professing loyalty to Israel so i made some educational memes
i also made one for the Christians so they wouldn't feel left out :)
I lived in a room and board that failed the burrito test. (”If you’re not allowed to get up in the middle of the night to microwave a burrito, you live in an institution.”) No one stopped me from going to bed, but they did tell me I had to have my lights out by 10, and that I had to be out of the house by 10 the next morning. When I complained to my outpatient program that I needed more help than I was getting, they threatened me with board and care, where my cell phone would be taken away and I would lose contact with the outside world. My case manager sounded so damn smug, like he had caught me out, when he said, “if you’re really as helpless as you say, then you need to be in a board and care.” Like my only options were struggling to do things I couldn’t do, or surrendering my life to an institution.
When I tried to talk about these things with other people, they always rationalized it away. (I told my dad once that my caseworker was reading my e-mails as I wrote them, demonstrating extreme disrespect for my privacy, and he said, “Well, she’s probably making sure you don’t use the internet to goof off.” I was 22 years old.)
People tend to mock the idea that telling an adult when to go to bed, when to eat, etc., is a human rights violation, even though they would find it outrageous and absurd if anyone came into their lives to do the same thing to them.
And this is what people seem to think when they tell disabled activists we’re just not disabled enough to understand that some people really do need to be locked up and deprived of all autonomy.
They don’t want *any* activists for mentally/developmentally disabled people. If you’re able to advocate for your rights, you’re not “disabled enough” - and if you were disabled enough you wouldn’t be able to advocate for your rights.
IF ALL OF THEM WERE GONNA DIE AT THE END WHY DIDNT WE GET TO SEE
A: BETTER MOTIVATION FOR THIS END CHOICE (why didn’t we spend the the season with them realising they missed their powers and were better off with them and actually (ACTUALLY) hated their life without them, subsequently realising that because it would inevitably lead to the end of the world, they’d actually prefer giving up their life to save the world. Just change the choice (Sake) at the start to all of them voting to get their powers back and then it’s an ACTUAL tragedy)
OR
B: HAVE A SCENE WHERE THEY (at least (at FUCKING least)) LAY THEIR LOGIC OUT, about their end.
Also: the world is grim enough as it is. I don’t need a blob swallowing the heroes, without them getting bare minimum a semi-happy ending.
(Why didn’t anyone (Viktor/Allison) believe Klaus when he talked about how Ben died??? Why were they all apparently clueless? Cuz RH could’ve messed with Klaus’s white matter, but Klaus has been hanging out with Ben ever since)
Also, also: how tf does the family exist without them? Like… that doesn’t track at all? How? And why/how is Reggie the voice-over, for the end?
Furthermore: I don’t necessarily agree with the read that Lila and Five would not have started a relationship. What I don’t get is
1) why it would’ve taken them so long (Lila and Five have had a whole Enemies/Lovers thing since she showed up) (In my opinion this should’ve occurred during the time-skip (I don’t agree with Lila/Five, but the “sub”text has been there))
2) Why Five would’ve withheld the fucking map. Like. Why? It makes no f*cking sense. (AND WHY WOULD HE NOT JUST HAVE LOGIC’ED IT HIMSELF. THEY WERE THERE FOR SEVEN. YEARS. If we were gonna have a betrayal, make it his own work that Lila then finds, for crying out loud.)
Also what happened to the Ben on the tube in Japan? Or is that me just having a Mandela effect memory?
Adding: If you wanna give me a tragic ending, give me one. But then you gotta make it so that it is all of (or bare minimum, most of) the heroes choice, that we end up there. Like… The simple quick fix here is that a way back in time is found, to stop Ben with the sake, and subsequently everything else.
(If you wanted to make Abigail Hargreeves an Anti-hero/villain type, then make her “adopt” all of them, the second they came to this timeline. Would’ve made the twist WAY better.)
Which brings me to my last point:
2 ways the series could’ve ended, that would’ve been way more interesting/dope:
1: Everyone (semi-)unanimously vote to get their powers back. The season follows much of the same plot, except they’ve all SELECTED it. It becomes a tragedy, about heroes so unwilling to let their powers go, that they would rather not live at all/end the world, than be without them.
2: Abigail is the “mastermind” in the “true” timeline. This still leads to the Umbrella Academy, but the Jennifer Incident does not play the same:
A) Reggie is killed before ‘89, leading to Abigail (who honestly seems WAY smarter and more caring than Reggie), to not lead them on the Jen mission, but something else, way more juicy happens (cue ep 7 & 8, a)
B) She “instructs” Reginald to only kill Jennifer, since Jen&Ben do not touch skin to skin. The Durango is still loose (cue ep 7 & 8, b)
I will come back to my to proposed 7&8’s soon. Promise.
Also what’s up with good series f*cking up their endings recently? The hells going on???
And for people who do not have children - 20 years from now you will only have an empty space where wonderful time with your friends, your partner, and yourself will be. You won’t remember (or likely profit from) the Very Important Thing your company needed you for. You will be poorer for it, because in that space and time you could have had concerts, dancing, being there for friends that needed you, reading a great book, learning a new language, trying a different recipe, drinking wine and sharing your thoughts with someone you love.
Live your life for yourself and the people that love you - not for a corporation or a company.
THIS APPLIES TO TEACHERS TOO! EVEN THE STUDENTS WHO CARE THE MOST ABOUT YOU DO NOT OVERRIDE YOUR TIME WITH LOVED ONES, OR EVEN YOUR NEED FOR TIME ALONE.
REST AND ENJOY CULTURE. CRAFT WITH YOUR HANDS FOR FUN. GARDEN. READ A BOOK. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ENJOY YOUR LIFE!!! JUST CHILL WITH YOUR PALS. ZONE OUT IN YOUR LIVING ROOM. DO SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF AND NOT A PAYCHECK!!!!!
we have already. They don’t know exactly what is up with it, other than the sweat being slightly more acidic than normal and the acidic mantle being thicker and Way more acidic than normal, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with acidosis. As far as we have tested, our family has had this since at least my great grandpa, and the guy lived to be 93 years old.
Imagine trying to claim op is wasteful for using a plastic keyboard after they show off something that looks like it belongs at Old Friends Senior Keyboard Sanctuary.
Me: “I’m barely on the autism spectrum, it’s really mostly cuz I have ADHD. I barely even stim.”
Also me: I know this isn’t my house, but this is now my cup. If anyone else uses it when I need it, I will have a meltdown.
Me, furthermore: I only eat these three things for breakfast and if I can’t have them, I will not eat breakfast. Also a bit of the same issue with Lunch.
Me, additionally: Cannot help but finish patterns of noise, will at random moments repeat or say a thing cuz someone else said something that reminded me of it, to the point people might think of Tourette’s. (Echolalia)
Me, baseline: “Why are we following this bullshit rule that there’s no reason for? What do you mean it has ‘always been this way’?! That’s dumb! I’m not gonna follow it!”
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.
then they started fighting Covid precautions.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.
now my parents think climate change is a myth.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.
then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.
now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.
you can guess who they voted for.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.
I remember adults telling me, as a kid that girls can be equal to boys in all fields including athletics. Now, they consider girls to be delicate flowers who could never hope to compete against boys.
Azula and the Issue of Diagnosis- an Essay Which No One Asked For
With the avatar fandom resurgence, I want to talk more in depth about something that I’m noticing an increase of with the increased interest in the show- and that is the occasionally troubling, sometimes deeply ableist, issue of diagnosing of Azula.
What I tend to see most frequently is the use of words like “psychopath” and “sociopath,” often followed by “psychotic” or “narcissist.” Occasionally I’ll see someone refer to her as “schizophrenic,” and perhaps most troubling of all are the people using ableist slurs against her like “psycho” or “lunatic.” Even words like “crazy” in this context are a bit bothersome- it’s not a word I’m going to advocate banning from the English language, but directing it towards a character who’s visibly mentally ill has an unfortunate side effect of continuing to perpetuate stigma against mental illness.
It’s not cute.
So we’re going to talk about this today. Let’s talk about Azula, diagnosis, and mental illness.
My background
Before we deep dive, however, I want to state this plainly. I have a master’s degree in clinical psychology, and I am currently a second-year doctoral student in a clinical psychology PhD program. I’ve been in school a total of five years post-bachelor’s degree specializing in this field. I work in my school’s training clinic and have active therapy cases with a wide variety of diagnoses. I have patients who were easy to diagnose and patients where it took several months to decide what the most accurate label was. Like many mental health professionals, I have also had my own struggles with my mental health which I am not going to disclose today. But I have been in out of my own therapy since I was a teenager. In short, while I am still a trainee and still operate under the license of a supervising clinician, I know what I’m talking about.
