why are we on this earth? to suffer? every day I get emails

malay ~ 35+ ~ she/her || 🔞 || svsss main lol || if you're an anti, honestly just block me now || if i've followed you and you would like me not to, please just let me know and i'll stop || yell at me on bluesky || watch me on twitch??

[gollumpanties]

[fishgummy]

dolly parton if she was a streamer: jerma nine eight five what a way to make a living

[fishgummy]

Hi Tumblr user explosionshark, thank you so much for your review of my post! I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it much, but I am glad to receive your recommendation nonetheless. If you would like, please feel free to check out my more famous works, such as "why so adjective", ">buy impossible burger", "ibuprofeon", and "in the club fucking wheeking". Thanks again for your support as a reader-- your feedback is very much appreciated!

[stephanisoejono]

happy new year -------------_--------------------

[calamity-aims]

[specialagentartemis]

Grace and Rocky, giving a tour of the Hail Mary to fascinated Eridian scientists and diplomats.

Pointing at things and explaining what they are and how the ship works, lots of awed and appreciative noises are made.

Until one of the visiting Eridians points out a specific item. “And that?”

It’s a strange, circular thing, a xenonite disk mounted upright on some sort of pivot so it can spin freely, but around the edges it has… spokes? Pegs? Sticking out of it, that hit against a stiff flap that would slow down the spinning.

It is also separated into sections decorated with crude etchings of a human and an Eridian.

“Ah,” Grace says.

“That,” Rocky says.

“That’s. Um.” Grace seems somewhat embarrassed. “That’s the sacrifice wheel.”

The Eridian visitors clearly do not know what to make of that. “We think we misunderstood Savior Grace’s word,” they say, apparently hoping this is a vocabulary mix-up. “Explain (question, polite)?”

“Didn’t misunderstand,” says Rocky, sounding very sheepish. “That is sacrifice wheel.”

“So. While we were on our way to Erid, we might have gotten… anxious about each other’s well-being,” Grace says, which everyone is already very aware is a wild understatement. “And, well, you heard what happened at Tau Ceti, and after. There were a lot of unexpected dangers for the whole trip that required a lot of, at least, attempted self-sacrifice to solve. We ended up almost dying for each other several times. And we had an argument about what we’d do if another crisis like that came up. And we couldn't agree.”

“Grace argued that Grace already was unlikely to survive long-term on Erid, so he should be the one to do any potential deadly but necessary maneuvers to make sure I was able to bring taumoeba back,” Rocky says.

“Which made sense.”

“Did not make sense! Grace already sacrificed so much for me and for Erid, wouldn’t be fair to make you do it again—“ Rocky cuts himself off with a huff. They have obviously had this conversation before. “So sacrifice wheel was compromise.”

“Yeah,” Grace says. He spins it to demonstrate; it whirls around in a blur and a rattle of the flap hitting the pegs, then eventually slows down, and stops—pointing at the segment depicting a very bad but very clear image of an Eridian. “Rocky made the wheel, I spin the wheel, and whoever it lands on, that’s who gets to sacrifice themself to save the other and the other person does not get to argue. This way, we wouldn’t waste time debating who does the self-sacrifice and who survives, it’s just a plain fifty-fifty chance. Or, eighteen-eighteen chance in base six. But the point is it could be either of us and we would have to accept the outcome.”

Rocky started fidgeting while Grace was explaining. When Grace finishes, proud of the equitable solution they came up with to allow them to die for each other fairly, Rocky says, “Now that we are back and we don’t need sacrifice wheel anymore… I have confession to make. About the wheel.”

“What about the wheel?”

Rocky doesn’t answer. Grace frowns, first confused, then suspicious, and spins the wheel again.

It lands on Rocky again.

He spins the wheel again, and again, and again, and it lands on Rocky every single time.

“Rocky!”

“I weighted the wheel,” Rocky admits.

“Rocky the whole point was that it was equal, that was why we even made it—“

“Never was necessary so doesn’t matter anymore!”

“But you WOULD have!”

“And you never noticed because you were hungry and cranky and distracted and so would have done bad job on heroic self-sacrifice anyway!”

“I would not! I would have done fine!”

(The Eridian scientists and diplomats are still here watching this btw. Slowly dawning on them that 1) these two are extremely not normal about each other 2) if Erid ever does another space mission they NEED to send a therapist aboard because this is what happens when they don’t)

[comradekatara]

yue suffers under the traditionalism of her culture the same way katara does but since she doesn't actively fight against it up to and including her death no one talks about it. the instant iroh (a firebender she does not know besides his moment of fighting zhao) suggests that the solution is to sacrifice herself she is ready to do it without hesitation. even her dad doesnt seem sad about it upon hearing the news, he just accepts it

yes 💔💔 #myrosebride

before i elaborate more on yue, i would also like to point out something crucial about katara that i think a lot of people neglect: from the ages of 11-14, her village was almost entirely female. with the exception of sokka, everyone she interacted with on a daily basis during these extremely formative years in any child’s development were with women and girls of various ages. while women of course can still maintain the system in the absence of men under patriarchy (and we do see this to be the case in their village to an extent), katara does not have to worry about being abused by the men around her, because there are no men around her. of course, her life is under potent threat, but that threat is external, not from her own people. sokka may be a pain in the ass, but he doesn’t actual wield any material power over her. she takes out her frustration with being forced to do domestic labor out on him, but he’s not even the one ordering her to do that: their grandmother is. sokka only has any authority whatsoever because he tacitly agrees with everything kanna believes, and she is truly the one in charge. katara feels stifled, miserable, and angry in her village not because of the traditions of her people, but because of the genocide they are facing. perhaps, in a world where the fire nation did not devastate the southern water tribe, katara’s greatest gripe would be the patriarchal traditions of her culture, but we really have no way of knowing that. she takes her anger out on sokka primarily because she has nowhere else to put her rage, and as her older sibling, he is the easiest target. that is the social dynamic that characterized her early teenage years.

while katara did technically still grow up in a patriarchal society, it was a highly unusually organized one, since it was still being led by women, with no men save for a single teenage boy. katara has the ability to fight back against the sexism she faces because she was actually raised to value herself. she is confident in her own agency and strength and feels it is distinctly cruel and foolish to deny a woman their rights on the basis of their gender because the only misogyny she ever truly faced growing up was her brother saying “boys rule girls drool” and inane shit like that. she was certainly never raised to think she couldn’t be a great waterbender, and we see from hama’s pov that for at least a century women waterbenders in the south have been at the vanguard of the resistance and actively fought against the genocide of their people. the fact that pakku denies her is thus totally absurd to her, because from her point of view, it’s quite literally the first she’s ever heard of the notion that women cannot use waterbending combat forms. of course she is familiar with the idea that men and women each have distinct social roles (and she has definitely internalized some of these notions subconsciously, even if she also resents its most obvious manifestations), but she has never once truly entertained the idea that her life’s only value is to serve men, so she balks at the idea that she “belongs in the healer huts,” that she is already engaged despite only being fourteen, that she must be the one to apologize to someone being unreasonable and cruel to her simply because he is an old man and she is a young girl. she has the frame of reference to notice how fucked up these manifestations of patriarchy are, because she grew up in a village surrounded by women telling her how amazing and special she is, and so she knows her own worth and will never compromise that for anyone.

yue’s situation is entirely different. after all, katara is not her mirror; sokka is. if anything, katara is her foil, her opposite. katara has the agency yue is denied. yue was raised with privileges katara was not: wealth, safety, resources, comfort, security. but katara had the privilege of being allowed to value herself. keep in mind that even though kanna may torment katara by making her do laundry, she’s still the type of person who crossed the entire globe to get away from cultural values she disagreed with, and those are the kinds of beliefs she is imparting upon her granddaughter. katara would never stand for being forced into an arranged marriage against her will; to her, the very notion is unthinkable. but to yue, it is her duty. she is a woman (read: just turned sixteen, therefore of marrying age) and a princess, and so she has equal duties to her father and her people (note that katara is also the daughter of the chief, but she displays absolutely no feelings regarding this fact whatsoever one way or another; hakoda is just her dad to her, nothing more). although yue is clearly a person brimming with desires, emotions, passions, interests, hopes, dreams, joys, fears, thoughts, humor, excitement, wisdom, and curiosity, her personhood is not recognized by anyone in her tribe (that we see). her father sees her as a symbol, her fiancé sees her as an object, and they both view her as property to be traded in an exchange she is not privy to and has no real say in. yue does not want hahn in the slightest, and yet she will be expected to bear his children, his heirs. in a beautifully tragic way, becoming the moon spirit was actually the best option available to her. in her final moments between human and spirit realms, she can finally exercise her own autonomy, and chooses to kiss sokka without guilt or shame. she can only reclaim her agency once she renounces her humanity.

there is a lot to be said about the ways in which yue and sokka parallel each other. it is, after all, yue’s primary relationship in the narrative. she was constructed specifically with this dynamic in mind. I could and often do enumerate the many ways in which they function as mirrors to each other, the most obvious being the ways in which their duties to their respective father-chiefs and cultures/people leads them to fully internalize the notion that their martyrdom is not only logical and necessary, but indeed, the ultimate exercise of their utility, which means that self-sacrifice is actually aspirational, because all they are good for is performing their duty. yue’s duty as a Woman and sokka’s duty as a Man involve functional differences when practiced, but ultimately arrive at the same conclusion: their ultimate purpose is to die for their people. their bodies are mere vessels, they must endure their pain silently for the sake of their people, their lives are not their own. yes, sokka complains a lot, but never where it counts. yes, yue cries a lot, but she never renounces her duty. and sokka would never force her to renounce her duty, because even if she claims he doesn’t (which is funny in its own way, lol he literally doesn’t tell anyone anything!), he understands what that’s like. sokka and yue’s story could only ever end in tragedy, because as much as they love and value each other, they do not value themselves enough to fight for their happiness. had the siege not happened, yue would have married hahn, and been miserable. the only person who could possibly intervene on their behalf and advocate for yue’s agency is katara, not sokka. and that is not because katara loves yue; after all, she barely knows yue. but unlike sokka, and unlike yue, katara loves herself.

as katara says in “the painted lady,” you can’t wait around for someone else to save you, you have to help yourself. that is the ethos that guides her. even when she acts in service of helping others, it is with the philosophy that she is doing right by herself before all else. she is her own hero, and by exercising that heroism, she is proving her own strength and power and reaffirming her own heroic narrative. of course she has a great deal of compassion for others, but that stems, first and foremost, in compassion for herself. she is guided by a very strong self-belief that what she is doing is right, that she is always fighting on the side of justice, that her anger and passion is always righteous, that she has the capacity to be a hero. and again, that is because she was raised by kind, competent women who told her time and time again that she is special, that she is the embodiment of hope for their culture, that she is valuable and worthy and strong. sokka grew up believing that his ultimate duty was to lay down his life for katara, and katara was raised with the belief that her duty was to live. to live, and to be a hero, and to bring hope back to her people. and so, if given the opportunity, she would fight for the right for yue to choose whom to marry, to dictate the terms of her own fate, to act upon her own desires. because katara knows this to be a fundamental right that she deserves, and so she recognizes that everyone else deserves it too.

[mimosa-sexypeople-contests-2026]

Thanks for the warning @goofishh and @wellcome-to-chaos stay safe out there guys

[tearsofrefugees]

Clerks smile and 'flip off' security camera while 'sneaking' immigrants out of courthouse: DOJ

Two Utah court clerks have been dubbed "anti-ICE vigilantes" after they were allegedly caught "sneaking" immigrants out the back door of the

[antifainternational]

That's how you show real solidarity!

"After they overheard that ICE was at the courthouse to arrest someone, they improperly accessed court databases to determine who was not born in the United States," a DOJ detention filing says. "They then snuck every suspected illegal alien who was at the courthouse out a back door, where ICE, who was waiting in the parking lot for their target to leave the building, could not see them."

Think about what you can do at your job or in your daily life to resist fascism when the opportunity presents itself!

[genderoutlaws]

fundraiser for their legal expenses x

[depsidase]

[crashington]

CUMMING

[rubikor]

i’m finally back home, with you

[twofingerswhiskey]

seasonal depression tip: if you live in the global north, even if you spend all day in the sunshine, get a bottle of 1000IU+ vitamin D3 right now and take one daily. it saved my life. it improved my mood and helped my worsening depression when i had no access to the sun last winter during the blizzards. it takes a few weeks to fully work but it's a vitamin almost all of humanity is lacking. we can't just make our own, especially in winter! it can be found in food but is best taken as a tablet. my doctor cosigned on this advice and also said get your flu shot

[noctivae]

friendly reminder that findtags is the best way to search tumblr’s absolutely destroyed tag system. it actually accurately looks through the tags without omitting results. it’s the only thing i use at this point because it’s the only thing that works

[seiya234]

i was today years old learning about this and it’s great!

[oldbookist]

I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.

And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.

Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.

When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.

And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.

And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.

Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.

I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.

Anyway, that’s why I’m crying today.

[oldbookist]

@istradion

[ponett]

my quality of life has improved tenfold ever since i was introduced to breezewiki, a site that exists solely to remove the bloat from fandom.com wikis. no more ads, quizzes, random autoplaying videos, popups, recommended pages from other sites, or discord server member lists. just the wiki. these things are finally readable again

[taffywabbit]

BreezeWiki is SOOOO good! they even have an instruction manual on their site for adding an extension to your browser that will automatically redirect you to the BreezeWiki version of any Fandom link you happen to visit, which has been an absolute game-changer for me. i've literally already forgotten what regular Fandom pages looked like, it's beautiful.

i just discovered today that they ALSO have a function (if you install the auto-redirect extension) that will usually stop you to let you know if a Fandom wiki you're visiting has a non-Fandom alternative you can visit instead. for example i was trying to look up a Zelda thing today and was greeted with this message:

so yeah, love the work they're doing over there! can't recommend BreezeWiki enough. i wish an inevitable and humiliating death to Fandom and i'm very grateful for intrepid heroes like these folks.

[dduane]

CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says problems with its AI can't be solved because hallucinations are an inherent problem in these AI tools.

And this is why you switch to DuckDuckGo. :/

[inqorporeal]

Don't let them lie to you about this. They're acting like the llms are some inherently uncontrollable natural process.

My mom used to write code for the US Navy, and one of the first things she drilled into me when school was teaching us LogoWriter was "A computer is only as smart as the person who programmed it." The creators of these systems have full control over how they operate and what kind of input they're "trained" on. They were just lazy about it, and now the consequences are too big and costly to be worth fixing.

Don't let them lie to you about how this works. They just don't want to take it offline (costs money) and spend the time and money actually doing a good job. They just don't want to admit that it wasn't ready to be released.

[gallifreyburning]

[cowplantblues]

Actually when I say “fuck all billionaires” I particularly mean Taylor “having my wedding in the middle of the busiest city in the world on the busiest weekend in the world in the part of the city the majority of commuters need to get through because fuck working people” Swift

[norondor]

fuck you if you like this dumb nepo baby white supremacist.

[writtenoffantihero]

Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year

Google says it’s no different than checking IDs at the airport.

This is just another form of censorship, control of what we can/can't see and engage with, and another means of getting our private information.

[monarchofmonsters]

Alternative forks of AOSP (Android Open-Source Project) which are not maintained by Google and will not be affected by this:

LineageOS (I use this one)

Graphene OS

Functionally they are virtually identical to stock Android. Android began as an open-source project, and these versions are built off of that.

Fuck Google.

[mordcore]

[amiibo-king]

for those like me who cannot install alternative android forks on their phone because the phone in question is thoroughly unrootable, I would recommend downloading anyapk on your phone while you still can. In their own words:

anyapk is a lightweight Android application installer that bypasses Google's developer verification requirements by using local ADB (Android Debug Bridge) connections. Smoothly install any APK file on your device without restrictions, gatekeepers, or corporate approval.

If you're reading this after Google's lockdown date and are unable to install anyapk the regular way, there is a method outlined on the github linked above which tells you how to install anyapk on your phone by plugging it into a computer with ADB installed on it. Once you have anyapk on your phone, you will not have to do that ever again (unless you delete anyapk off your phone)

[aromanticbastards]

[Description for the first image:

a tweet by @/Pirat_Nation:

From September 2026, all apps, including those outside the Play Store, must come from verified developers.

No more anonymous sideloads. No quick comebacks for malware gangs.

First: Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand.

end description]

[chromalogue]

[Description for the second image: a post from jrepin that reads:

"Sideloading" is the rentseeker word for "being able to run software of your choosing on a computing device you purchased". There is no reasonable case for an operating system developer having a say over what programs you run on your hardware.

--Eugen Rochko of Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/115093185284473606]