its time to talk

[soulfulfilled1]

Why Gratitude Helps Your Law Of Attraction:

The Basics: Every great Law of Attraction teacher will urge you to be grateful for what you have, in order to attract more. Oprah Winfrey began her gratitude journal in her late 30s, and it has resulted in her meteoric rise in all areas of her life. And in the Bible it is written “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” The Question: So why is it important to be grateful for what I have already? How does that help me attract what I don’t have?

The Answer: Whatever you want, you want for the feeling. When you have what you want, you can’t help but feel grateful. However too often when we want something we focus on the absence of it. We want it more, and more, and more. But we see it’s not here now. To bridge this distance, you need to create the feeling of having it. When you feel gratitude, the Universe hears, “He/She loves this feeling. I will continue to provide them with what they want.” The Universe has heard all your asking and is well-aware of what would make you smile right now. The task: By hand, list things you’re grateful for. Do this at an honest level. It should not resemble your shopping list! Get real about what matters to you and why. Above is an example to help you get started!

[blackfemmejeanvaljean]

I’m about 90% sure the economy is never gonna “improve” 

this is capitalism in it’s final form

this is it honey 

[wumblr]

except, you know, those companies that do a charitable thing for every thing they sell

that’s kinda new and interesting. benevolent capitalism

[blackfemmejeanvaljean]

lmao

[wumblr]

Pay attention, class: This is what it looks like when one is unwilling to consider new information.

[alexandra-erin]

It’s not new information, though. It’s misinformation.

First, it’s not that new.

Did you know that there was a time in U.S. history—which is by definition recent history—when a corporation was generally intended to have some sort of public interest that they served? I mean, that’s the whole point of allowing corporations to form. Corporations are recognized by the commonwealth or state, and this recognition is not a right but a privilege, in exchange for which the state (representing the people) is allowed to ask, “So what does this do for everyone else?”

The way the economy is now is a direct result of a shift away from this thinking and to one where a corporation is an entity unto itself whose first, last, and only concern is an ever-increasing stream of profits. What you’re calling “benevolent capitalism” isn’t benevolent at all. It’s a pure profit/loss calculation designed to distract from—not even paper over or stick a band-aid on—the problems capitalism creates. And the fact that you’re here championing it as “benevolent capitalism” is a sign of how ell it’s working.

Let’s take Toms, as one example. The shoe that’s a cause. Buy a pair of trendy shoes, and a pair of trendy shoes will be given away to someone somewhere in the world who can’t afford them.

That’s not genuine benevolence. That’s selling you, the consumer, on the idea that you can be benevolent by buying shoes, that the act of purchasing these shoes is an act of charity. The reality is that their model is an inefficient means of addressing the problems on the ground that shoelessness represents, and severely disrupts the local economies of the locations selected for benevolence.

(Imagine what it does to the local shoemakers, for instance.)

The supposed act of charity is just a value add to convince you to spend your money on these shoes instead of some other shoes. It’s no different than putting a prize in a box of cereal.

Heck, you want to see how malevolent this is?

Go ask a multinational corporation that makes shoes or other garments to double the wages of their workers. They’ll tell you they can’t afford it, that it’s not possible, that consumers won’t stand for it, that you’ll drive them out of business and then no one will have wages.

But the fact that a company can give away one item for every item sold shows you what a lie this is. A one-for-one giving model represents double the cost of labor and materials for each unit that is sold for revenue. Doubling wages would only double the labor.

So why are companies willing to give their products away (and throw them away, destroy unused industry with bleach and razors to render them unsalvageable, et cetera) but they’re not willing to pay their workers more?

Because capitalism is the opposite of benevolence.

“Charity” is by definition exemplary, above and beyond, extraordinary, extra. “Charity” is not something that people are entitled to. You give people a shirt or shoes or some food and call it charity, and you’re setting up an expectation that you can and will control the stream of largesse in the future, and anything and everything you give should be considered a boon from on high.

On the other hand, once you start paying your workers a higher wage, you’re creating an expectation. You’re admitting that their labor is more valuable to you than you were previously willing to admit, and it’s hard to walk that back.

Plus, when people have enough money for their basic needs, they’re smarter and stronger and warier and more comfortable with pushing back instead of being steamrolled over. They have time and money to pursue education. They can save money up and maybe move away. They can escape from the system that depends on a steady flow of forced or near-forced labor.

So companies will do charitable “buy one, give one” and marketing “buy one, get one” even though these things by definition double the overhead per unit, but they won’t do anything that makes a lasting difference in the standard of living for the people.

Capitalism has redefined the world so that the baseline of ethics is “How much money can we make?” and every little good deed over and above that is saintly.

But there’s nothing benevolent about throwing a scrap of bread to someone who’s starving in a ditch because you ran them out of their home in the first place.

[left-reminders]

This is one of the best anti-capitalist posts on the entire site.

[liberalsarecool]

One of the reasons your tuition is high and classes are getting cut.

[signifi-cunt-deactivated2021051]

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

[thepageofhopes]

fact checked and…apparently this is completely correct.

[sciencetoastudent]

And people wonder and complain when I am “down” on sports.

[solitaryfossil]

This is gross.

[lotrlocked]

I love it when my hatred is factually justified.

[specialestspecialist]

Rip

[porcupine-girl]

And hey FYI, college students - a lot of your classes are taught by people who aren’t even classified as “untenured professors”. Postdocs and lecturers often make anywhere from $30-50K/year. And adjunct instructors? Less than $30K (and that’s if they teach a full course load fall, spring, and summer) with no benefits and no guarantee they’ll be hired again next semester. For people with PhDs.

[tiltedsyllogism]

I was scrolling down, thinking “yeah, but ALSO” and then PG said it.

Adjuncting gigs range from $2k to $5k per course per semester. And most schools cut you off at 2, because any more would mean they have to start paying benefits, and humanities departments in particular can’t get the budget approval to do that.

So if you’re paying off student loans, it’s not even a matter of living thin; unless you land at a high paying school you can get to from your parents’ basement, there is no way to get by teaching at just one institution. People teach 4-6 classes, at 2 or 3 schools, just to get by (Which also means lots of driving. what a great way to spend your money and time, amirite)

If grad students or contingent faculty at your school are unionizing, SUPPORT THEM. Volunteer with them, if you can. Tell your friends. Tell your *parents*. Institutions care a lot more about what their undergrads think than about most of their grad students (because, again, we aren’t a big donor pool.) Raise a stink. You are more powerful than you know.

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

out of all the aspects of millennial-bashing, i think the one that most confuses me is the “millennials all got trophies as a kid, so now they’re all self-centered narcissists” theory

like— kids are pretty smart, y’all. they can see that every kid on the team gets a trophy and is told they did a good job; they can also see that not every kid on the team deserves a trophy, and not everyone did do a good job

the logical conclusion to draw from this is not “i’m great and i deserve praise”— it’s “no matter how mediocre i am, people will still praise me to make me feel better, so i can’t trust any compliments or accolades i receive”

this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.

where did this whole “ugh millennials think their so-so work is super great” thing even come from it is a goddamn mystery

[geardrops]

what fucking kills me is, yeah, maybe we got the trophies, but who gave them out

[violent-darts]

this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.

Which is pretty much what mental health practitioners observe happening.

It’s also what I observed happening as a singing teacher: the older kids literally would not believe a positive word I said until I had proved I would tell them they screwed up/had done badly/etc. I did so in as useful a way as possible (“So this passage. We really need to work on this passage. A lot. This passage is not good yet.”), but with almost every adolescent I taught I had to prove I would give them straight-up criticism before they would parse my praise as anything other than meaningless “the grownups always do this” noise.

[rnoonpie]

Personally, as a millennial myself, I never even saw participation trophies; literal or metaphorical. Like, I grew up my entire life with a pretty severe case of ADHD and I was always the “problem kid” who wasn’t “making enough of an effort” when it came to my schoolwork. But with art and creative writing? Oooh, I was soooooo gifted!!

But honestly, my self-esteem started plummeting around middle school when I started seeing kids with better skills than my own, and I started realizing that adults were full of shit and just praising my stuff because that’s what they were programmed to do.

I’m 24 now and I still have a pretty damn difficult time accepting when people are actually praising my efforts. Like, with literally anything. If I cook dinner I have to anxiously ask everyone who eats it if it tastes okay, and when they say it’s really good, I don’t really believe them. I feel mediocre with about everything I do.

[doomy]

participation trophies is a failed parenting technique implemented by generation X but for some reason we gotta deal with people saying millennials want that shit

[freyjapup-blog]

Its been NINE YEARS and i still dont think anyone knows exactly why teen titans was cancelled

[mediumsizetex]

Same reason Young Justice and Green Lantern The Animated Series were canceled: Girls liked it. Bruce Timm finally up an’ said it out loud in an interview a while back when he was asked why in the hell GL:TAS had been canceled when it was doing so well on every front; DC’s animation department has institutionally decided that feee-males don’t/can’t/shouldn’t like superheroes, so even if a show is drawing in great viewership numbers and has great toy sales, once they find out that it’s popular with women and girls, they pull the plug on it. Cartoon Network loved Teen Titans— two million viewers for new episodes will do that— and wanted a Season Six, and the production staff was already in the planning stages for it; they were going to have a big arc about Terra and why she was Living Normal, and do a lot more with the extended Titans team members.

[silkktheshocka]

This is so fucked up.

[prokopetz]

To elaborate on this point a bit, the reason this happens is that modern television merchandising aims for total market segregation.

In a nutshell, it’s much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.

This is why children’s toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits they’ve decided to use is “boys versus girls”.

Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? That’s market segregation in action.

The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; they’re viewed as “stealing” the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully “owns” it.

This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? It’s not just artificial, it’s deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying “this is the ways it’s always been” or “this is just what the market wants”, they’re lying through their teeth - this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.

(Interestingly, the reverse isn’t always true: if a specifically girl-targeted show unexpectedly becomes popular with boys, sometimes rather than being cancelled, its merchandising will shift to court the male collector’s market. TV execs are so sexist, even their sexism is sexist.)

[taxfrauddotcom]

It gets worse.

Paul Dini, a writer/producer said this on a podcast: “ That’s the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I’ll just lay it on the line: that’s the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, it’s like, ‘we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys’—this is the network talking—’one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as boys, but right there.’”

Cartoon network and Warner brothers deliberately made the conscious decision to dumb down their female characters because they want to push female viewers away. In fact, Tower Prep was cancelled because it had too many female viewers because the writers made too many well written female characters.

So shitty representation of girls isn’t something that just happens. It’s the result of deliberate planning just so the execs can make more money.

And it’s not just cartoon network. I mean, why do you think Nick fucked over Korra so badly? Remember them telling Bryke they didn’t want a female Avatar? Why do you think there are no Korra figurines or action figures?

Source: http://www.themarysue.com/warner-bros-animation-girl-market/

[offbeatorbit]

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr. | Letter from Birmingham Jail 

[morbidology]

[morbidology]

18-year-old Ashlee Martinson from Piehl, Wisconsin, is currently serving a 23 year sentence for the murder of her mother and step-father. She expressed recently that she currently feels much more freedom than she ever did while living at home. After enduring a lifetime of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, Martinson finally snapped on the 8th of March, 2015.

Martinson shot her stepfather, Thomas Ayers, to death, before stabbing her mother, Jennifer Ayres, 30 times. Before the murders, that were caused by an accumulation of the abuse she had endured, Martinson had contacted the police to report the abuse she and her sisters had been suffering. On one occasion, Thomas even killed the family puppy in front of Martinson and her sisters. After the shocking slayings, Martinson fled to Indiana with her boyfriend where police eventually tracked her down. “I’m not a monster. I never meant any of this to happen. I want people to know that I myself was a victim in this. It doesn’t make it right, what happened. But at that moment, I felt like I didn’t have a choice,” she later said.

After her arrest, she relayed how her stepfather had abused her mother and her sisters as well - a claim that was corroborated by her sisters. At one point, he even held a gun to their mothers head, threatening to kill her. Martinson confessed that on the day of the murders, she had taken her stepfather’s shotgun and taken it to her bedroom. She was considering suicide, but when she heard her stepfather, she became afraid - she knew he would be infuriated to know she had his gun. Instead of killing herself, she turned the gun on him. After killing Thomas, she said her mother came at her with a knife. She managed to grab the knife from her and stabbed her over and over. She plead guilty and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

[asokkalypsenow]

YO DO YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY FUCKED UP THING I HAVE JUST LEARNED

okay so apparently when people die on mt everest they just leave the bodies there bc retrieval isnt possible and theres an estimated 200 bodies just like UP there and bc its so cold and oxygenless the bodies are perfectly preserved and people use them AS LANDMARKS most famously this one guy named green boots (so called bc hes wearing green boots and they dont know who he is) oh my god thats so fucked up???? why do people keep climbing this death mountain???? why cant we invent a way to get the bodies down we can go to fucking space but not the top of a mountain apparently???? oh my god????

[rapacityinblue]

honestly i went back and forth on whether to address this but here  am. okay so before this goes any further 2 things: 

one: i’m a hobby climber. i’ve never climbed everest and I’m never fucking going to because it is so death mountain 

two: it is incredibly fucked up and i’m not here to debate that it’s just that it’s manifestly MORE FUCKED UP than this post even covers.  this got really long so

Keep reading

[micdotcom]

Maybe Trump should start by taking his own advice (x)

[afunnyfeminist]

Didn’t that email lady make an advertisement with this information, which was taken from an interview this moldy orange did with David Letterman?

[personality-studies]

Tips for Dating Idealists

Tips for Dating an ENFJ Personality

Consider finding creative ways to indulge your partner in his or her ability to pick up on the emotions and feelings of others is a great way to show that you care. A local play, for instance, would give your partner tons of feelings to pick up on and can be a very moving experience for a “giver.”

The time may come when you need to offer your partner some constructive criticism. Be careful how you deliver your thoughts and feelings, as ENFJs are extremely sensitive in this regard. Failure to do so could leave your “giver” blaming his or her self and feeling unworthy. 

Avoid taking a tone that implies accusation when speaking to your ENFJ. Having a few solutions ready to offer can help your partner feel less emotionally attacked. 

They may seem overprotective or have a constant need to hear a partner verbalize their feelings and/or thoughts. The latter can be healthy in moderation but in excess you may begin to feel as though your partner isn’t giving you enough space.

If you begin to feel unhappy then you need to express these feelings to your “giver” in the smoothest way possible while asserting your positive feelings for him or her at the same time. Explain that you care about them and you appreciate that they want you to be happy, but that their overzealous attempts to provide for your needs have become stifling.

Your partner may also be prone to completely forgetting their own needs. When you partner begins to do so, take a page from their book by perceiving and fulfilling your significant other’s needs yourself. Not only does this show how thoughtful you are, but it will help you to feel more productive and active in the relationship. 

When your “giver” begins to lose his or her self in the personalities of others, do something to remind them of who they are. A well-versed love note is a wonderful way to remind your partner of why you care for them and can shake them out of any “chameleon personality funk” they  might fall into.

Tips for Dating an INFJ Personality

A prospective partner needs to understand the INFJ’s need to take it slowly when revealing their inner self. It can be difficult to be around someone who so easily seems to understand you, especially when they give so little back in the way of opening up. Patience and an appreciation for your INFJ’s passionate and enthusiastic nature will go a long way in the relationship.

Eventually you will crack the stubborn shell of your “protector” and get to know the creative, sensitive, and compassionate soul that lies beneath. 

You will find that your INFJ partner has high expectations of you. For the most part, these will be reasonable expectations but don’t be afraid to speak up if you begin to feel that your partner is laying the pressure on too thickly.

If you begin to feel overwhelmed with your significant other’s need to seek control, take the chance to gently remind your partner that you deserve to have your opinions and thoughts heard. 

Ultimately, don’t take your partner’s feelings about you lightly; if they are willing to stick around then you should know that they genuinely care for you and will eventually let you through each layer of their being.

Your INFJ partner easily picks up on the moods of others around them and often seeks a way to make everyone happy. This can be exhausting for your companion, so respect their inevitable need to “recharge” after a social situation. 

Some quiet time at home will usually do the trick. Although your partner may appear to be a social butterfly, remember that at heart he or she will struggle to divulge their own feelings to others, even your friends; so don’t be too upset if your partner doesn’t instantly open up to your pals. 

Also, too much spontaneity and impulsiveness can send up a red flag to your partner, making it difficult for them to view you as a stable, long-term partner. Ultimately, this may lead to an inadvertent relationship sabotage.

Tips for Dating an ENFP Personality

In order to be a good prospect for the ENFP, you need to be capable of going with the flow. Rigidity and strictness, especially in your schedule, will make your partner feel stifled which can inevitably cause the relationship to fail. 

Be prepared to travel, try new hobbies, and amaze your partner with thoughtful acts that will take them by surprise. 

Your efforts will keep your partner on their toes which is exactly the kind of lifestyle that the “inspirer” craves! It doesn’t always have to be dramatic, but try to keep things fun. Your partner will thank you by meeting or exceeding your efforts in order to see to your happiness, too.

ENFPs are excellent conversationalists blessed with the ability to talk, gauge a person’s reaction, and carry on in just the right direction to hold their audience’s attention and interest.

 Being able to react and contribute to such conversations will impress an “inspirer.” Your partner has a knack for expressing his or her self very well and you should be able to listen attentively 

Give your honest input whenever necessary – but keep it gentle, as this kind of persona is very sensitive and struggles to take criticism without suffering a serious emotional blow.

Tips for Dating an INFP Personality

Your INFP partner has a desire to keep things interesting and in order for this to happen you will have to be willing to slacken the reins and allow your partner to keep things interesting in his or her own way. In addition to this, you will also need to throw your own effort into trying new things, suggesting new activities, bringing home an occasional surprise, and also picking up the slack in everyday activities that are too mundane for your partner to complete all the time.

Contrary to your INFP’s perfectionist tendencies, you may find that he or she has trouble keeping their personal space clean. This could be a car, hobby room, bedroom, or even an entire house – basically any space that serves as their “private place” where they can completely unwind and recharge after social activity. Don’t be too pushy regarding this area as your partner may feel you are trying to trespass into an area that is very special to them.

Remember that your partner’s inner self contains many layers. You will have to show gentility and patience in order to access a new layer and in most cases it will be a lengthy process. Don’t expect to know all of the ins and outs of your partner overnight. Prying will only cause your partner to clam up even tighter. 

INFPs are often much more capable at expressing themselves through the written word. If you have trouble getting your significant other to open up, consider asking if he or she would be willing to write letters or create a journal to which you are granted access.

If you’ve known your INFP for a while, you may have noticed that they can become very emotional when something upsets or impassions them. In times like this you will need to be the kind but truthful voice of reason, especially in a serious situation where your partner is completely failing to see logic. Your significant other will likely balk during a crisis, in which case you will need to be the dependable one.

[scienceetfiction]

A few samples:

7 January: Mathematicians, as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, report the discovery of a new prime number: 274,207,281 − 1.

14 January:  Astronomers report that ASASSN-15lh, first observed in June 2015, is likely the brightest supernova ever detected. Twice as luminous as the previous record holder, at peak detonation it was as bright as 570 billion Suns

18 January: Light-activated nanoparticles able to kill over 90% of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are demonstrated at the University of Colorado Boulder.

20 January: Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology present the strongest evidence yet that a ninth planet is present in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun every 15,000 years.

26 January: Researchers at the University of Washington announce a new handheld, pen-sized microscope that could identify cancer cells in doctor’s offices and operating rooms.

27 January: Google announces a breakthrough in artificial intelligence with a program able to beat the European champion of the board game Go.

28 January: Research into the nature of time by Griffith University’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics shows how an asymmetry for time reversal might be responsible for making the universe move forward in time.

11 February: Scientists at the LIGO, Virgo and GEO600 announce the first direct detection of a gravitational wave predicted by the general relativity theory of Albert Einstein.

13 April: A quadriplegic man, Ian Burkhart from Ohio, is able to perform complex functional movements with his fingers after a chip was implanted in his brain.

20 June:  China introduces the Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest supercomputer, capable of 93 petaflops and a peak performance of 125 petaflops.

30 June:The first known death caused by a self-driving car is disclosed by Tesla Motors.

4 July: NASA scientists announce the arrival of the Juno spacecraft at the planet Jupiter.

5 July: China completes construction on the world’s largest radio telescope.

2 May:  A study in PNAS concludes that Earth may be home to 1 trillion species, with 99.999 percent remaining undiscovered.

10 May: NASA’s Kepler mission verifies 1,284 new exoplanets – the single largest finding of planets to date.

18 May: At the I/O developer conference, Google reveals it has been working on a new chip, known as the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which delivers “an order of magnitude higher performance per watt than all commercially available GPUs and FPGA.

3 June June: NASA and ESA jointly announce that the Universe is expanding 5% to 9% faster than previously thought, after using the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the distance to stars in 19 galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

27 July:  Neonicotinoids, the world’s most widely used insecticide, are found to reduce bee sperm counts by almost 40%, as well as cutting the lifespan of bee drones by a third.

29 July:The seafloor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone – an area in the Pacific Ocean being targeted for deep-sea mining – is found to contain an abundance and diversity of life, with more than half of the species collected being new to science.

4 August: A team at the University of Oxford achieves a quantum logic gate with record-breaking 99.9% precision, reaching the benchmark required to build a quantum computer.

5 August: Research by Imperial College London suggests that a new form of light can be created by binding it to a single electron, combining the properties of both.

11 August: The Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) is found to be the longest-lived vertebrate, able to reach a lifespan of nearly 400 years.

10 September:The second largest meteorite ever found is exhumed near Gancedo, Argentina. It weighs 30 tonnes and fell to Earth around 2000 BC.

16 September: The development of 1 terabit-per-second transmission rates over optical fiber is announced by Nokia Bell Labs, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the Technical University of Munich.

21 September: Scientists report that, based on human DNA genetic studies, all non-African humans in the world today can be traced to a single population that exited Africa between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago.

11 October: Scientists identify the maximum human lifespan at an average age of 115, with an absolute upper limit of 125 years old.

4 November: Researchers in the UK announce a genetically modified “superwheat” that increases the efficiency of photosynthesis to boost yields by 20 to 40 percent. Field trials are expected in 2017.

8 November: Lab-grown mini lungs, developed from stem cells, are successfully transplanted into mice by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System.

13 November: The University of East Anglia reports that global emissions of CO2 did not grow in 2015 and are projected to rise only slightly in 2016, marking three years of almost no growth.

28 November: Scientists at the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially recognizes names for four new chemical elements: Nihonium, Nh, 113; Moscovium, Mc, 115; Tennessine, Ts, 117 and Oganesson, Og, 118.

15 December: Scientists use a new form of gene therapy to partially reverse aging in mice. After six weeks of treatment, the animals looked younger, had straighter spines and better cardiovascular health, healed quicker when injured, and lived 30% longer.

22 December: A study finds the VSV-EBOV vaccine against the Ebola virus between 70–100% effective, and thus making it the first proven vaccine against the disease. 

and a lot more…

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

The west: Assad must step down because of gross human rights abuses, violations of people’s rights to assemble and protest and genocide

(NATO member Turkey bulldozes kurdish neighbourhoods, removes heritage and language markers of ethnic minorities Turkey committed genocide of 100 years ago and arrests minority democratic members of their government as well as members of the press)

The west: …

The west: (looks away)

The west: Assad must step down because people are dying in Aleppo

[guayabas]

[purplebuddhaproject]

And that’s what innocence is. It’s simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades.

Michael Jackson (via purplebuddhaproject)

[scientificphilosopher]

I’m a cis male in a relationship with a cis female. My partner is a beacon of wisdom, strength, humor, patience, and compassion. I am regularly in awe of her opinions, her ideas, her actions, and her very being. I often defer to her judgment and, while we don’t always agree, I strive to hear out and understand every thought that occurs in her beautiful mind. Considering this, it disturbs me that there is no shortage of people (and men in particular) who would see my respect and admiration for my partner as nothing more than me being ‘pussy whipped’ or ‘not manly enough’, as if my regard for her is somehow a weakness or indicative of an undesirable relationship dynamic. Bullshit. If being manly consists in belittling, condescending, or controlling a person simply because she is a woman, then I want no part. Healthy relationships, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual identity, or romantic involvement, are built on foundations of mutual respect and understanding—not arbitrary and toxic social expectations.

[egalitarianbunny]

But don’t you know? Being respectful makes you a, wait for it…

CUCK?!

[jalopyrustbucket]

The more important question is whether your girlfriend is also in awe of your actions, thoughts, opinions, and very being in return, while also often deferring to your judgment.

The problem implied when people use the word pussywhipped is that the respect and admiration trends to only go one way. From your description, it honestly sounds like you’re choosing to place yourself underneath her, and you’ve given no indication that she returns your feelings at all. Choosing to spend time with you does not imply love or respect.

The fact that you’ve chosen to imagine a more standard relationship as a “being manly consists of belittling, condescending, or controlling of a person just because she is a woman” straw man would contribute a lot to why some people think you’re just trying to smear any dissenting opinion rather than actually get any communication done.

From your use of the phrase “arbitrary and toxic social expectations”, I’m going to guess that you might believe in the idea of toxic masculinity. If you do, and if you actually have sources that you consider valid that talk about it, ask yourself about what these valid sources that only want to discuss healthy gender relations have to say about toxic femininity.

The problem people are seeing is that you’re not only presumably performing your traditional role of sacrificing yourself to protect and provide for her, if only in passing for all (or only most) of the dates, but that you’re practically worshipping the ground she walks on, without any indication that she’s treating you like an equal, or anything other than a sycophantic slave.

Again, the limited and illustrative information selection you’ve chosen to share, along with your preemptive strawmanning of any opposition to the situation that you’ve described paint a bad picture.

Where are the posts about women practically worshipping their boyfriends to the same degree you’ve expressed towards your girlfriend? There isn’t a lot of equality in this subject floating around in the zeitgeist, and that makes some people suspicious.

[scientificphilosopher]

I’m going to have to take this point by point.

The more important question is whether your girlfriend is also in awe of your actions, thoughts, opinions, and very being in return, while also often deferring to your judgment.

I agree that it’s vitally important for those traits to be mutual in order for a relationship to be truly healthy. Hence why I wrote, “Healthy relationships, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual identity, or romantic involvement, are built on foundations of mutual respect and understanding…” I would never advocate for an imbalanced, emotionally abusive, or non-consensual relationship.

The problem implied when people use the word pussywhipped is that the respect and admiration trends to only go one way.

It may be true that when people use the term ‘pussy whipped’ that they think they’re expressing concern over the respect going in one direction. However, the problem is that our culture reinforces the idea that men are supposed to be more dominant and more assertive than women and it’s difficult to know when those expectations are playing a role in our evaluation of relationship dynamics. We internalize those social expectations whether we know it or not. I grew up in a world of toxic masculinity. I lived in a world where ‘fag’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘pussy’ were commonly-used insults. Anecdotally, I have seen (and even perpetuated) situations where a guy is called 'pussy whipped’ not only for putting a female’s needs/desires above his own, but even for putting a female on his same level. If a man isn’t being dominant, then he’s too often viewed as being impotent. This is a false dichotomy. The middle is gone, and it is often in the middle where equality and mutuality dwells.

From your description, it honestly sounds like you’re choosing to place yourself underneath her, and you’ve given no indication that she returns your feelings at all. Choosing to spend time with you does not imply love or respect.

As I expressed at the end of my first post (and reiterated at the beginning of this post), a healthy relationship is founded on *mutual* respect. It’s telling that you felt that I gave 'no indication’ that my partner returns my feelings when I deliberately chose terms like 'mutual’, 'healthy’, 'partner’, and 'respect’. I would think that those language choices would implicitly (if not overtly) indicate mutuality. I didn’t care to go out of my way to talk about how much my partner loves and respects me because I felt that it distracted from my point, namely, the unfortunate fact that a man’s respect for a woman is often misconstrued as weakness or impotence, a symptom of toxic and fragile masculinity. I wasn’t writing directly about her love and respect for me (although I did attempt to make it at least implicit—and, to quell any of your lingering worries, those feelings are indeed reciprocated), I was writing about the way that my respect for her is viewed and construed by many in our culture. More broadly, my post was something that I personally wrote and I didn’t feel the need to speak for my partner. She’s her own person and I don’t need to act as her mouthpiece.

The fact that you’ve chosen to imagine a more standard relationship as a “being manly consists of belittling, condescending, or controlling of a person just because she is a woman” straw man would contribute a lot to why some people think you’re just trying to smear any dissenting opinion rather than actually get any communication done.

First, never did I say anything about what a 'standard relationship’ looks like. I spoke about cultural expectations and gender roles, but I didn’t say that a 'standard relationship’ is one of condescension and control. I did say, however, that 'manliness’ often connotes those traits. (So you just kind of pulled a straw-man while accusing me of a straw-man.) Secondly, who are these 'some people’ you’re speaking of? I am unaware of this group of people who feels that I smear dissenting opinions and fail at communicating. How do I join this group? Do they have t-shirts? In all seriousness though, I do worry that anyone who’s willing to write about complex and controversial topics is destined to be accused of such things. Regardless, communicating complex scientific, philosophical, and political ideas is very important to me, even with those who are in complete disagreement with my stances, and I genuinely try to understand where others are coming from. I encourage fruitful disagreement, so long as the interaction can remain civil. I will never be able to please everyone, of course, but I still try to be reasonably charitable (even if I sometimes fail). It’s a bummer (though an inevitability) that many (including you and the 'some people’ with whom you’re apparently in correspondence) feel otherwise. I’ll just have to keep on trying!

From your use of the phrase “arbitrary and toxic social expectations”, I’m going to guess that you might believe in the idea of toxic masculinity. If you do, and if you actually have sources that you consider valid that talk about it, ask yourself about what these valid sources that only want to discuss healthy gender relations have to say about toxic femininity.

I do believe in toxic masculinity. I’ve lived it. Gender roles in general can lead to toxic behavior because they are limiting and confining and they dictate behavior through stereotypes. Femininity can be toxic too, but our culture is dominated by masculine ideals. We value power, greed, assertiveness, and dominance, all of which are associated with masculinity. Masculinity also reinforces various forms of violence, physical and otherwise. Maybe this isn’t fair to 'true’ masculinity; maybe we need to dismantle and reconstruct masculinity. That’s fine, but we can’t do that by living in denial of how masculinity manifests in the here and now. And masculinity is far more problematic right now than femininity. 

The problem people are seeing is that you’re not only presumably performing your traditional role of sacrificing yourself to protect and provide for her, if only in passing for all (or only most) of the dates, but that you’re practically worshipping the ground she walks on, without any indication that she’s treating you like an equal, or anything other than a sycophantic slave.

I went out of my way to avoid terms like 'revere’, 'worship’, 'venerate’, etc. I did this in an attempt to circumvent the specific misunderstandings that you’ve presented here, but also because I don’t, in fact, worship my partner. I respect, admire, and love her, but I also understand that she is human and imperfect and that disagreement with one another is both inevitable and healthy. Worship is necessarily one-sided and based on unrealistic and unhealthy projections—respect certainly isn’t. I don’t worship my partner and I didn’t say so anywhere in my post. Moreover, I certainly don’t sacrifice myself to protect and provide for her and I don’t know where you got that idea (internalized gender stereotypes, mayhap?). She is a strong and autonomous human who is perfectly capable of protecting and providing for herself. (She’s also strong enough to know when she does in fact need help, an undervalued quality of true strength.) 

And wow, a sycophantic slave? Strong language. I write a post about how respect and admiration for women is often seen as weakness or impotence—and all the sudden I’m a sycophantic slave? I don’t know if that’s ironic or fitting. Oh, and also, you said 'the problem people are seeing…’ Again, what people? Who is this group of people discussing my failures?

Again, the limited and illustrative information selection you’ve chosen to share, along with your preemptive strawmanning of any opposition to the situation that you’ve described paint a bad picture.

Where are the posts about women practically worshipping their boyfriends to the same degree you’ve expressed towards your girlfriend? There isn’t a lot of equality in this subject floating around in the zeitgeist, and that makes some people suspicious.

I agree that there isn’t equality in this topic floating around the zeitgeist, but I’m afraid it’s going in the opposite direction of what you think. It’s a social expectation for women to worship and submit to men. It’s why we have phrases like 'man of the house’ and 'the man wears the pants in the relationship’; it’s why men are still expected to be the 'heads of the household’ and to make more money and to control the finances; it’s why a disproportionate amount of the housework falls on the shoulders of women regardless of who works more at a paid labor job; it’s why paid labor is so much more valued than unpaid labor in the first place. The list goes on. Many anti-feminists, men’s rights activists, and their ilk seem to think that we are living in an overly-feminized world, that the progress we’ve made toward gender equality has caused a reversal of power and men are now being systematically oppressed and marginalized. To be completely honest, such a stance utterly baffles me.  It is clear, based on both personal experience and empirical evidence, that ours is a patriarchal world where masculinity sets the sociocultural standards. I don’t expect you to agree with me on which direction the evidence points, but the direction seems quite clear to me based on my research, experience, and understanding. In many places, such as the U.S., the dynamic is beginning to shift. But this isn’t a bad thing—it’s quite the opposite. We have to shake things up so we can make legitimate change and progress. Empowering women does not mean disempowering men. To empower one is to empower all.

[restlesscreature]

Thank you! Say it a little louder for the people in the back, please.

“Empowering women does not mean disempowering men. To empower one is to empower all.”

[zenmister]

A Compassionate Approach

When painful feelings arise, we have a choice to make. We can either go towards them or away from them. We can be open or closed to them. We can feel them or reel from them. When these feelings arise, we make the choice immediately, based on our habits. It is not really a choice when we don’t make it, it is a reaction. When we notice our reaction, then we make the choice. It can take seconds, months or years to notice our reactions. We can react to a single, painful event for our whole lives. We can also start fresh, every moment, approaching our pain with compassion.

Our general habit is to go away from pain, to close off to it, to reel from it. Sometimes that works and the pain passes on its own. Usually, the pain follows us. Even though we are closed to it, we feel it. It keeps coming back to us, forcing us to deal with it. When we notice that we have to deal with our pain, we can approach it with compassion. We can see that the pain hurts, see that we don’t want to hurt, remember that we don’t deserve to hurt, and in that way, approach our suffering with compassion. When we look compassionately at our pain, with openness and awareness, we can see its source, solution and actions we can take to bring about a resolution.

To practice a compassionate approach to our suffering, we begin by noticing our suffering, acknowledging that something hurts. By doing that, we let ourselves be present. We breathe with whatever is happening. If we are reeling, that compassionate breath can stop the spinning. Then we can look at the thoughts and beliefs that prop up our emotions. When we look from a place of wisdom, openness, and non-judgment, we can see into and through some false or harmful beliefs. We notice damaging ideas and habits. By noticing those ideas we change them.

Because these ideas and beliefs are supported by habits, they may come back. As we continue to practice a compassionate approach, we can improve our response times. We can approach pain in minutes instead of months. When we develop our habits and build a compassionate approach to our suffering, our suffering will not send us reeling anymore. When that happens, we can choose to use our compassionate habits to approach other people’s pain. Choice by choice we can heal the world.

[panatmansam]

Lately I've been having anxiety that everyone secretly hates me

This sounds like a mild form of paranoia probably stemming from social anxiety disorder. People don’t secretly hate you. That thought is coming from within you. The problem is that you don’t like yourself.

Resources:

Social Anxiety Support

Beek: Overcoming Social Anxiety