for what its worth

[problemnyatic]

the most valueable skill a white leftist can ever learn is how to take an L with grace.

[problemnyatic]

You gotta be able to take an L if your moral and ethical belief systems are to be capable of guiding you. Otherwise you just have an idealized self where you get really mad and scared when anyone points out it isn't actually you. How the fuck are you gonna walk the walk if you can't handle being told when you are not, in fact, actually walking it

[problemnyatic]

you cannot just socially transition into being a good person you are going to have to settle for being a messy human being who has to try and fail and keep trying to get better like everyone else. yeah even when it's embarassing and sucks for you a lot.

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

kind of making me insane that people have been thinking about grief and death like this for thousands of years

[elisary01]

“has turned to clay” I know exactly what theyre referring to but there’s also something about the epic being written in clay. like. like. enkidu can only now be remembered. his story can only be preserved, in clay. there’s nothing left for him, except clay

[sandersstudies]

Sick list of symptoms bro. Now try humanizing your behavior instead of pathologizing it.

[sandersstudies]

Pathologizing: Hey sorry I yelled at you. I have this ADHD symptom called RSD that makes me really sensitive.

Humanizing: Hey, I’m sorry that I blew up like that earlier. In the moment I felt really attacked and overwhelmed and I reacted badly, but I know you didn’t mean to offend me with what you said, so that behavior is on me.

[queer-asinfuckyou]

Because I just saw a post bitching about this one, I want to add: this post is saying that you need to take accountability for the way you hurt other people, even if it happens because of a symptom of your disability/illness. It's also saying that using terms (especially acronyms) that aren't common knowledge isn't a helpful way to explain yourself. It is NOT saying that you need to let people walk all over you because "your disability isn't an excuse."

If you're diabetic, you don't have to eat the honey glazed ham that will send you into a coma (their example). But you also can't yell at the person offering it and accuse them of trying to kill you. You can just say "thanks, but my body can't handle that kind of sugar intake, so I'll pass"

Edit to add: this post is about people who are already apologizing. If your circumstances mean that you are not in a state of mind to apologize, this post does not apply to you. This post says that IF you are giving an apology, make it a meaningful one.

[immaturewitch]

this is NOT to be left in tags

[rabbitscreams]

we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist

[rabbitscreams]

female characters are always lighter than male characters. strong characters are almost always dark. aggressive characters are almost always dark. peaceful and intelligent characters are almost always light. even amongst darker characters the lightest one is usually either the leader or the girls. dark is evil and light is good.

[rabbitscreams]

if you try to explain this to a white person they look at you like youre insane

[gay-milton-quotes]

briefly pursuing a career in animation radicalized me on this. So many stories from the industry about how you have to start with your character design as dark as possible, because INEVITABLY you'll get "notes" from higher-ups asking you to make them lighter.

In a class about making a pitch bible my teacher once role-played as a shitty executive with a classmate, pressing them in intentionally abrasive ways about why they made their characters diverse. He emphasized that we had to learn to defend these things, because the racism in the industry is extremely deliberate.

[vforvalensa]

Ronald Wimberly's comic essay, Lighten Up, stays evergreen

[sadhoc]

the pistachio food trend is soooo interesting because it's like. i've been following the californian pistachio water politics for years, as a californian with personal connections to agricultural workers but! basically there's been a big push in california agriculture over the last decade to pressure farmers to produce pistachios, because iran has dominated the global market in pistachios for decades, and the US government has been trying to weaken iran economically, so they want to make california pistachios a competitor. which is ridiculous, because california's agricultural infrastructure is suffering under a drought, and pistachios take insane amounts of water. so a ton of water is being redirected from the people in order to engage in a trade war with iran over fucking. pistachios.

anyway now that the US (i.e. california) is producing more pistachios than iran, the next step is to drive consumption of pistachios, so that the farmers who are producing these pistachios can continue to make money on them. ergo all the fancy pistachio coffees at starbucks and similar shit like suddenly being able to find pistachio butter in grocery stores when five years ago it was exclusively available at specialty stores and online, and the huge boom in pistachios foods in instagram and tiktok recipe content. like i watch a lot of instagram foodie reels (cooking/baking is one of my hobbies) and these get thrown onto everyone's feeds, to promote the purchasing of pistachios, so that the US can stick it to iran. it's. kind of incredible to watch this happen in real time, because it sounds like deranged conspiracy thought, but like. i've been watching this trend for the past decade and it's fucking real.

anyway one of the vegan recipe accounts i follow just posted like five pistachio-based recipes in a row and it makes me feel some kind of fucking way

[sadhoc]

it is extremely relevant that pistachios are so easy to acquire here, but acorns, which are an indigenous California food staple crop, are impossible to find even in the best stocked grocery stores, and knowing how to prepare them for consumption is a rarer skill than sourdough starter

[ace-and-ranty]

I gotta say, one of the greatest achievements of my 20s was that I learned (mostly) to differentiate between:

"I truly do not want to go" and

"I'm just feeling the Demand Avoidance, and I will like it once I get there."

[ace-and-ranty]

Well, goodness, this one resonated much more than I was expecting. I mean, I get it. My mind was also blown wide open when I found out "demand avoidance" was a thing that existed, and that I'm not the only weirdo in the world who suddenly wishes it wasn't her birthday after anxiously waiting for her birthday for days.

Loads of people in the tags are asking how I do it? I feel this won't be groundbreaking advice, but here is what I have learned:

Previous experience. Really no way around it. Now that I hit thirty, I feel like I have done enough things to know, intellectually, from experience, what will feel nice if I overcome the avoidance, and what won't. For example, every time I go to the beach, I wake up early and would rather eat a tire than get off the bed. But I remember that every time I got up and went to the beach, I was glad I did it. So I just get up, feeling like shit, and get ready, feeling like shit, and I get to the beach and magic!! I feel great, I love the beach!! Sometimes you just gotta do it scared feeling kinda like shit.

Am I avoiding the thing or getting to the thing? I have a lot of demand avoidance around just, y'know, getting up, getting ready and going out the door. Universal human experience. If I notice that doing the actual thing (Swim in the pool!) sounds nice, but I'm avoiding having to rally myself to go do that (Fetch swimsuit! Sunscreen! Towel!), then I know it's demand avoidance and I should just fucking go.

Is the thing making me feel excited at all or just anxious? I have had previous occasions when I did the opposite; I convinced myself it was just demand avoidance when I really just. Hated the thing. And wanted to stop. If you feel a mix of excitement and dread, or excitement and anxiety, that might be demand avoidance. But if thinking of doing the thing just makes you feel actively anxious, then yeah. You don't want to do the thing.

Do the thing a little bit. Used often with dishes. I've seen this advice float around Tumblr a lot and it's correct. Commit to doing just a bit of the thing; a little bit of the thing; the smallest bit of the thing you can do. Getting started will make it clear right away if you don't want to do it (and in that case, you have permission to stop), or if you just having trouble getting started.

[homoquartz]

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

[piratedgender]

[missmentelle]

Is it possible to “beat” mental illness? Or does it depend on type/circumstance?

“Beating” mental illness is actually the norm, not the exception. Most people who have a major depressive episode never have another one. 80% of people who survive their first suicide attempt never make a second attempt. 93% of Borderline Personality Disorder patients achieve remission. Up to 74% of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder achieve significant clinical improvement in their symptoms, and 20% achieve full remission. Half of Generalized Anxiety Disorder patients achieve remission after the acute phase of treatment. Even disorders with relatively low rates of remission - bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid personality disorder - generally become milder and easier to manage as you age. Psychiatric symptoms tend to peak in your 20s and generally drop off as you get older, especially if you seek treatment. 

This is why the narratives we use to talk about mental illness matter so much. Right now, the dominant narrative is that mental illness is “an imbalance in the brain” and that it’s largely something that people are born with. There are upsides and downsides to this. The upside is that it promotes the idea that mental illness is not the ill person’s fault, and it helps us understand that mental illness can impact anyone, regardless of their life circumstances. The downside, however, is that it’s sort of given us this idea that mental illness is inborn and unchangeable. People have taken on the idea that “that’s just how my brain is”, when the reality is that, for most people, mental illness is less of a stable trait for them, and more of just a shitty thing that they are going through for a little while. The idea that mental illness is just “in your brain” also erases the very real connection between your life circumstances and your mental health - while it’s very true that a wealthy person in a happy marriage can become depressed, it’s also very true that living in poor conditions and being in an abusive marriage can be the cause of depression, and that improving your life circumstances can lessen or eliminate mental health conditions. 

If you have a mental health condition, it’s very important that you not resign yourself to the idea that you’re going to be like this forever. Chances are, you won’t. Even if you have a mental health condition that is associated with low rates of remission, it is possible to make leaps and bounds in your functioning, and to get to a point where managing your condition becomes second nature to you. Our understanding of mental illness is improving every year, and new therapies and treatments are becoming available all the time. If you seek treatment and do your best to manage your condition, you have every reason to believe that you will make huge improvements. 

Hope this answers your question!

[depsidase]

[lycanthology]

i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing

[lycanthology]

sometimes someone is acting selfish because they just didnt think you had any interest in what theyre hogging. sometimes you dont get invited to the movies because your friend could have sworn that you said no. sometimes you think someone is mad at you because theyre bad at hiding how little sleep they got. we are all like little worlds that briefly crash into one another from time to time and we just arent physically capable of seeing the whole picture at once in those moments. and learning that really changed everything!

[foxofninetales]

In my head, I call this "vase of flowers" thinking.

See, when I started driving, I would get irritated by people who drove Soooo Slowly... like, the ones who slow down to 10 MPH to take a turn kind of slow. And then one day I was taking a vase of flowers to an event, and even though I'd strapped it in carefully you can bet I was taking the turns extra carefully to keep it from tipping over, slowing way down, and... oh.

And, like, there are definitely unpleasant people in the world. There are definitely people who are toxic, or just don't care about other people, or have a pattern of hurtful behavior. But there are a lot of people who are just trying to deliver a vase of flowers.

[prokopetz]

Mushrooms are the reproductive organs of subterranean mycelial networks, and are typically harvested for food just before the stage of growth where they'd release their spores, so if certain fringe theories about mycelial intelligence are correct, we've basically made a culinary industry out of edging a hivemind.

[fluxxdog]

Well I WAS going to have mushroom alfredo tonight...

[prokopetz]

[dolcresabernathy]

camille l'espanaye ▬ the spin doctor.

[n64retro]

Quest 64 Imagineer / THQ Nintendo 64 1998

[samglyph]

Very important to have friends who enjoy media you don’t personally enjoy, both because having friends with varying interests can help you understand why someone might enjoy something even if it’s not your cup of tea which can help build empathy skills and also because there’s nothing more fun then being able to explain the plots of your respective obsessions to each other and have the other respond with “what the fuck”

[crabussy]

crazy how much your life can improve if you just Move Somewhere Else

[crabussy]

my mental health was abysmal when I lived next to a 10 lane motorway in a tiny cramped city that was too hot for me... as soon as I moved back home to aotearoa and got to live by the sea in a small town with lots of green spaces and libraries and cafes and art galleries and sea lions and dolphins and penguins and native birds my mental health SKYROCKETED to the point where it's honestly ridiculous. like saying "I LOVE BEING ALIVE... WOW WOW" out loud on occasion ridiculous. I'm so happy.

[crabussy]

moving somewhere better is lifesaving. wishing everyone trapped in a shitty area the absolute best of luck moving somewhere someday that makes you glad to be alive [: it makes such a huge difference.

[oak23]

Marie Kondo really isnt fucking around

[oak23]

If anyone is curious what she says directly after this quote: 

When one or the other of these thought patterns makes it hard to throw things away, we can’t see what we really need now, at this moment. We aren’t sure what would satisfy us or what we are looking for. As a result, we increase the number of unnecessary possessions, burying ourselves both physically and mentally in superfluous things. 

The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don’t. Quests to faraway places or shopping sprees are no longer necessary. All you have to do is eliminate what you don’t need by confronting each of your possessions properly. The process of facing and selecting our possessions can be quite painful. It forces us to confront our imperfections and inadequacies and the foolish choices we made in the past.

 Many times when confronting my past during the tidying process I have been so ashamed. My collection of scented erasers from primary school, the animation-related goods that I collected in junior high school, clothes I bought in high school when I was trying to act grown up but which didn’t suit me at all, handbags I bought even though I didn’t need them just because I liked the look of them in the shop. 

The things we own are real. They exist here and now as a result of choices made in the past by no one other than ourselves. It is wrong to ignore them or to discard them indiscriminately as if denying the choices we made. This is why I am against both letting things pile up and dumping things without proper consideration. It is only when we face the things we own one by one and experience the emotions they evoke that we can truly appreciate our relationship with them. 

There are three approaches we can take towards our possessions. Face them now, face them sometime, or avoid them until the day we die. The choice is ours. But I personally believe it is far better to face them now. If we acknowledge our attachment to the past and our fears for the future by honestly looking at our possessions, we will be able to see what is really important to us. 

This process in turn helps us to identify our values and reduces doubt and confusion when making life decisions. If we can have confidence in our decisions and launch enthusiastically into action without any doubts holding us back, we will be able to achieve much more. In other words, the sooner we confront our possessions the better. If you are going to put your house in order, do it now.

[auroradiation]

My ganderbend Terminator.