Letters To Whereever, I Dont Fucking Know Anymore

Puppetry Grad Student. I don’t post really, just repost. Sorry, I’m not very good at the whole “social” part of social media.

[fan-a-tink]

Tom Hayward truly invented yearning, cause not only does he give Mary an incredibly thoughtful gift, he also actively chases the memory of her touch for the rest of the scene, almost caressing the spot where her finger brushed against his...

[marlboroughmills]

details from the other bennet sister novel that will make you love the show even more:

tom is not just a friend of the family—he's the son of mrs. gardiner's cousin, and she tells mary early on that tom has been kindhearted since childhood

not only that, but tom has... you guessed it... four sisters, and is the younger son, hence him being a working man

tom is way more teasing and flamboyant in the book, which makes his lack of self-confidence when it comes to matters of the heart even more interesting

tom wanted to be a poet but realized early on he had no talent for it. he became a barrister instead because, he says, there were clear answers to seemingly everything (character building !! but as a lawyer myself i'm like um 90% of the law is "it depends")

since he can't be a poet, he is a published poetry critic instead. and he defends wordsworth's writing so fiercely that his friends make fun of him for it

in fact, after tom leaves and mr. ryder is courting mary in earnest, they talk about poetry reviews. mary mentions that tom dislikes one of them, and will responds, "that's because its reviewers have not always been kind to his adored wordsworth. you know how loyal he is, once he has found something to love." (help i've been stabbed)

mary doesn't just read poetry at tom's recommendation: they have a challenge where they each must read the other's choice. for tom, mary chooses a volume and a half of catharine macaulay's history of england. for mary, tom chooses wordsworth's lyrical ballads

mrs. gardiner is scared that tom will hate reading it and be bored to death when talking to mary about it. instead, when the two meet in the drawing room to discuss their reading, she keeps checking on mary and tom only to find that they discuss it for hours

before she even knows that it's his favorite, mary tells tom that "tintern abbey" is her favorite wordsworth poem

tom doesn't just do a poetry recitation. early one morning, he takes her and mr. gardiner to westminster bridge in a carriage to replicate wordsworth's vision in "composed upon westminster bridge" (rather than in a garden)

as mary is falling in love with tom, she takes up playing piano again

a scene that isn't included in the show is when tom goes with mary and the gardiners to visit vauxhall gardens. he and mary play a game while walking around in which they make up stories for the strangers they pass by. tom gives one man a jobless fortune-hunter background and says he lives at the "wrong end" of brook street. coincidentally, we meet will ryder moments later... and he reveals he doesn't have a career and lives on brook street...

mr. ryder visits the gardiner home multiple times to talk to mary. he tells mary that tom "has an excellent opinion of [her]—he always speaks of [her] in the highest possible terms—and there is no-one whose perceptions [will] trust[s] more." so part of the reason mr. ryder initially becomes so interested in mary is how tom talks about her <33

at the dinner party mr. ryder hosts, mary takes some sprigs of lavender out of a bowl. tom leans over and asks to have one for himself. when she gives it to him, he wears it in his buttonhole for the rest of the evening

at the same party, mary, tom, and mrs. gardiner discuss jam (lol). mary insists she won't eat anything weirder than raspberry or strawberry jam. tom responds, "so even if we were married, i could not obtain the wish of my heart—greengage jam at breakfast." (!!!!!)

when mr. hurst is drunkenly yelling to his wife about mary being "perfectly tolerable" when the party breaks up, tom gets super mad and apologizes for not running down the stairs and telling him to shut up

since the character of ann baxter doesn't exist, nearly the entire time tom knows mary, he's secretly building up the courage and money to propose, with no other impediments… only to be thwarted by will at the lakes

when they're at the lakes, tom gives mary a sprig of honeysuckle before mr. ryder even arrives. and when will gives her the primrose on the hike, the petals are actually a little crushed. mary turns to tom and says she saved his flower in a vase, but he's too preoccupied with jealousy to hear her

when tom leaves, he leaves a letter for mrs. gardiner, and the last line, all by itself, says: "i beg to be remembered to miss bennet"

when tom disappears, he specifically goes walking around tintern abbey to wallow

after tom proposes, there's a reference to emma: "i might add in my own defence that if i had loved you less, i might have ventured more. it was hard to be bold when i was only too aware of what i stood to lose."

tom leaving due to jealousy and self-abasement, as well as having an unwanted "attachment," is a parallel of frederick wentworth in persuasion

[nessa007]

"I knew quite clearly from Ryder's incredibly irritating behaviour that he had a liking for you. As I also had... As I also have." THE OTHER BENNET SISTER (2026)

[bobparkhurst]

dónal finn as tom hayward in the other bennet sister

[finnwaller]

This is basically the same as making out.

[finnwaller]

When you are a kind and sweet man but Ryder just keeps. getting. in the. way.

(For those playing at home, number 9 is my favourite.)

[ninanation]

Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people

[ninanation]

please keep talking about how Becky from Maryland doesn't like the rising gas prices. It's clearly the more pressing issue.

[creacher-art]

USA folks, that is a consistent temperature range hitting 113°. Death Valley temperatures. In Banda, it hovered between 116°-118° (47°-48° C) for a week straight.

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving

Raise India (Project Tapan)

[rosettyller]

Behind the scenes of PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026)

[vervaincircle-deactivated202411]

slapping this badge on my blog

[porterdavis]

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus Ted Lieu (D-CA) tells reporters the Epstein files contain allegations that President Trump raped and thr

[rythms-of-synthax-deactivated20]

Quote of the day

[baffledtreesquid]

I’m seeing a lot of people saying this post changed their brain chemistry, and as a neuroscientist I wanted to say yes!!! Yes it does!

Wanting something requires dopamine signaling, but liking something doesn’t.

If you have a mental illness/disorder that affects dopamine, you might feel that you don’t want to do the things that you like. You do still like them. You will appreciate having done them.

Let your likes guide you.

(If you want to read more, here’s one experimental paper about it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/ This theory called the incentive-sensitization theory was originally created to explain behaviors in addiction but can be applied elsewhere as well)

Rewards are both ‘liked’ and ‘wanted’, and those two words seem almost interchangeable. However, the brain circuitry that mediates the psych

[deathtoskinnyjeans]

A Twitter Thread from David Bowles:

[Text transcript at the end of the screenshots]

I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.

Most classroom practice is astrology.

Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.

We’re still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.

Most teachers perpetuate the “banking” model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.

Thus the elite “Lyceum” style of instruction continues even though it’s ineffectual with most kids.

What’s worse, the key strategies we’ve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents I’ve known flout research.

Some definitions:

Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.

Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.

Things we (scholars) DO know:

-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.

-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).

-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.

Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.

Maintaining the status quo? Nope.

Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.

If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.

They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.

And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.

For what?

It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.

WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.

We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.

The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?

Education is all about capitalism.

"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.

THAT is why modern education is a failure.

Its basic premise is monstrous.

"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"

Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.

[girl-with-bones]

I love the fact that even the people the system is supposedly for - the academics, the ultra-studious, the researchers - also suffer in the end.

I was at one point the highest attaining student in my entire high school. I took 12 GCSEs (you only technically need about 4 most people take 8 or 9), and by the end, learned almost every subject basically cover-to-cover, so much so that I had many a lesson where I just did my own thing because they had nothing left to teach me.

I learned a lot from that. Yes the content of the courses, but moreso life-lessons.

1 - The system is 'designed' for nobody. Those who lag behind, fall behind, are left behind. Those who push ahead, are literally stopped from doing so.

Don't believe me? Here's an example:

I've always been interested in maths. I love complicated mathematical concepts. I love the beauty that emerges from such simple rules. So it follows that I spent basically my entire school career waiting for the curriculum to catch up with what I found exciting. I remember being thrilled at the end of primary school that we were "finally" doing a bit of algebra.

But yet again, by year 11, at the tail end of the GCSE course, I was done. I mean this with full honesty when I say I could get full marks on GCSE maths papers in my fucking sleep. I did it. I finished the course. There was genuinely nothing more to do.

So my teacher let me study higher level stuff. At that time I was planning to do A-level maths so I started working my way through that. Differentials, integrals, complex trigonometry, interesting stuff to my little school brain.

One day the head of maths, accompanied by some sort of important school governor person, walks in and sees me doing differentiation. Flash forward a week, banned. I was banned from STUDYING. MATHS. IN A MATHS CLASS. I was required to do GCSE level work, even though there wasn't any left.

Thankfully, my teacher was like 'wtf no' and sneakily gave me more interesting stuff to do, but that taught me something. The system is genuinely not built to handle exceptional students. It's not built to push people, to challenge them where they are LITERALLY ASKING TO BE CHALLENGED. Nope, it's all standardised. Your passions? Standardised. Your hopes? Not according to data in a spreadsheet. Your life? Don't even think about it.

And that's not me being hyperbolic or edgy. I was not living.

2 - making school your life is fucking. Dreadful.

But it's all I'd ever known. I was always a goodie-two-shoes-teachers-pet-whatever (and kind of still am ngl). But that attitude did such serious damage to me in the long run. It drove me away from others my age, away from socialising, away from dumb fun. I was a serious person who took everything seriously 100% of the time. And so, those were my friends too. The people who's entire life was based on huge ambitions, and numbers on a page at the end of an exam season.

You wanna know how many times I hung out with my high-school friends, outside of school? You wanna take a guess?

0. Zero times. I basically only had a social life at all after one of my not-school friends forced me to download snapchat lmao

Sometimes I feel like I barely had a teenage-hood. I was so strict, so laser-focused that I maybe lost sight of what the fuck I was doing it all for in the first place?

3 - You will work yourself to death for numbers on a page. It will not feel good at the end.

I don't even think I need to explain this one.

Our exam season was split into two halves, with a week's break in the middle. It's supposed to be a break. It's also supposed to be a chance to study, revise, and get ready for the last, grueling weeks of exams.

Given the fact that 'break' and 'study' are kiiind of contradictory, you can probably guess that I actually did neither of those. I just crashed. Fell into a slump and crashed.

And yeah, sure, I picked myself up by my bootstraps and got right back to work at the end of that week. But I don't really consider the stress of failure beating the stress of exhaustion as a huge win if I'm honest.

So, where does that leave us?

Right now, tired. Tired as fuck. I look back on a decade-long life of schooling and education and I don't know who I really am or wanna be.

I bought into the system so hard. I threw myself in and literally came out on top. And I don't even know if it was worth it lmao.

To be fair, there are other things at play. Probably an anxiety disorder, depressive tendencies, and being a young trans girl in an "all-boys" high school is not exactly a recipe for a healthy young person lol

But I can't help but think if it had just been a little less strict, a little less enabling of all those fears and anxieties, a little less focused on achievement over experience, I might have a little bit of better relationshio with myself.

But, oh well. What's a girl to do but build a life for herself. I'll get there. One day at a time. And when I look back on myself as I am today, hopefully, I'll be proud as fuck of the girl who worked her ass off for herself.

[ministarfruit]

HAPPY CANON APOLLO JUSTICE ACE ATTORNEY STARTS TODAY DAY

apollo was in fact not ready for what was about to occur

[ladyshinga]

Really wish we'd, on the left, stop laughing and assuming this is ACTUALLY about strippers. I'd be willing to bet this ISN'T about some one with the actual job of stripper being somehow hired and sent to a school, that indeed DOESN'T happen - instead it will be used to target any female teacher who, like, wears a bikini on social media one time. She'll be called a "danger" to children and fired, as a cover for the fact that she's pro-queer or too far left or doesn't support ICE enough on that same social media. The bikini pic will just be the legal tool used to ruin her life

[ladyshinga]

A friend helped me out by looking up the actual bill and YUP, it's to target queer people and sex education. NOT. STRIPPERS. STOP MAKING IT ABOUT THE FUCKING "STRIPPERS".

[theshampyon]

Anyone who thinks ladyshinga might be off track, here's the breakdown.

Actual bill name: Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.

Purported purpose: "to protect children from being exposed to explicit material in the classroom".

How it's sold in the press: "Ban strippers and porn from classrooms!"

Actual text of the bill: Expands the meaning of "sexually explicit content" to include the words "or involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism".

Not and. Or. Meaning "involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism" is in and of itself enough to be classified as sexually explicit.

Actual result: Illegal to mention the existence of trans people or admit to being trans in a classroom under threat of being prosecuted as a child sex offender.

[nubesrosasart]

Baldurs Gate 3 pinup. But just the guys ✨️

[leresq]

WE LOVE YOU PEDRO

[milfuetoast]

This is actually such a huge thing for an actor to do. Like we know he is wonderful and correct about this and not afraid to say so but when was the last time an actor this famous called for a boycott of a series this popular on a network THIS BIG.

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

The US tortured a chinese scientist to death and the media calls it "hostile questioning"

[deadpowol]