Hi there! If I'm following your blog, it's because I like your blog. It's not complicated.
If I recently I UNfollowed your blog, it is not intended as hostile or passive aggressive or saying I don't think your blog is good. It's just not what I'm looking for on my dash right now.
I will make a heroic effort not to descend like a swarm of monotropic locusts and spam like half your blog, but honestly no promises. Unless you have something in profile or pinned saying not to, I do try to check for that.
I post/reblog
Lots of Murderbot Diaries content
Like, a lot :D
Also OCD and autism stuff
Also just cool stuff like nature and cute cats
Also sometimes politics
I'm "old" (40ish)
I don't have a DNI and I don't vet blogs I reblog from at all. I don't even do an ideological purity test on blogs I follow. When I post or reblog something onto my Tumblr, however, I do attempt to filter out the following:
Obvious OCD triggers. I can't catch em all, but I'm at least not going to repost "reblog or you're a bad person" stuff
Political despair
Racism, antisemitism, TERF and radfem stuff, transphobia, erasure, sus call-out posts (that's most of them), etc
Things I think are interesting include various fandoms, nature pics, cats, animals being cute or cool, marine life (OCTOPUSES! WHALES!), space, mental health, neurodivergence and neurodiversity, psychology in general, childhood and child development, parenting, children's rights.
I have OCD and am very interested in how to live well with it.
I don't have an autism diagnosis, but I have found that about 80% of what LSN autistics say about their experiences and effective life hacks applies to me, so ... I am EMBRACING the ambiguity, which I love SO MUCH (sarcasm).
My age is greater than thirty.
I don't give away money on Tumblr. This is a hard line. Doesn't mean I don't believe you, don't think you deserve help, or don't think you should be asking for it. Does mean that asking me here is a waste of your time.
I don't engage while too angry to think. I also have a busy life. These are two possible reasons I'm not replying. Second is more likely.
I am currently trying to learn about narcissism and NPD for several reasons. One being that, once I started researching it on Tumblr, I found I had some of the symptoms. The other being that I've experienced abuse from a friend who almost definitely should have been diagnosed with NPD. The third being that I just think psychology is interesting.
I may currently be following your blog because of this interest, and if so I'm putting in a warning that the next part is me processing difficult stuff and talking about "narcissistic abuse". (And while I hope you won't block me, I understand if you do. I will absolutely take it personally, lol, but I won't, like, have an online fit about it)
Being a condescending asshole about abuse victims may get you blocked. This includes abuse victims who describe their experience as "narcissistic abuse." Yes, the "narcissistic abuse" survivors community is ableist AF. It's also what got me out of a soul destroying, physically dangerous situation. Sometimes things are complicated. Abuse victims, other than a weird mostly non-existent subclass of perfect innocent ideal victims who responded exactly right, are also a huge target of social prejudice. If you don't understand this, and the way it contributes to things like toxicity in the "narcissistic abuse" community, maybe just... don't be rude about abuse survivors?
That said, if you're describing your own experiences as "narcissistic abuse," I'd encourage you, once you are out of survival mode, to consider moving away from the term, for a whole bunch of reasons.
I know it sounds squarish but I genuinely don't think it's good to cultivate rage. Extreme emotions use up a lot of energy and have cumulative effects on the body; they're meant to be turned into action, not kept and fed. Anger can be justified, it's the reaction that tells you something's wrong, but it's still a poison and needs an outlet. I think a lot of folks here feel like the absence of rage is complacency, but complacency is really the absence of action, and if you spend more time on feeling the right feelings than on taking the right actions, you're just spinnin your wheels and feelin miserable. Do something with it and let your heart rest.
So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.
Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?
The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!
This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.
Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:
Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or
Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.
The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.
The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).
Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.
So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.
it is my experience that people with dermal implants and eyeball tattoos and 34 visible piercings are the sweetest people you'll ever meet and will cry if they see a pigeon with a broken wing. it is also my experience that clean-cut people in polo shirts with perfect smiles will vote against your rights and say the most disgusting things imaginable once they think you're out of earshot.
So I 100% agree with the sentiment here but... there's a principle behind it that I think is more important than any specific Subculture Signifier. Making it about the Subculture Signifiers can wind up twigging people out when they don't need to be twigged out.
There's nothing wrong with wearing polos. Or keeping your house clean. Or shaving, or 'politeness', or whatever. But.
... A very important test of someone's character is how they deal with things that Society (TM) in general, and their social circle in particular, thinks are Not Okay. If society says it's Not Okay to be gay, are you capable of being decent to gay people? If society says you Have to like drinking, and you can't stand the taste or effects of alcohol, are you gonna let people pressure you into drinking anyway, to get along with others? If your social circle says that it's Not Okay to listen to certain music, are you going to listen to that music anyway? If your social circle says that people with Political View A are all evil bastards, are you able to be decent to someone with Political View A? (Or someone with Political View C or Religion Q that vaguely looks like Political View A, if you squint?) Things like that.
If you see someone who has stripped their life of anything that society disapproves of, that's not a great sign. If you see someone who has stripped their life of anything their social circle disapproves of, even if they're alt and anti-government, that's also a bad sign.
You need to have something in your life that is yours, that is not dictated by someone outside you, that no one is going to take away from you. You need to have some part of your life that you will defend and hold onto, even if everyone else is telling you that it's wrong. Even if everyone you know thinks you're dangerously bad and stupid for it.
Because if you don't have that, if there is nothing that you will face god and walk backwards into hell for, if there is nothing that you know is right and good regardless of what anyone else says... that is when you turn into Polo Guy from the OP. It has nothing to do with whether you like normie bullshit and fold your underwear- there's plenty of punks and goths and metalheads who don't have it, and there's plenty of people who look like your mom who do.
i’m gonna cry it’s raining right now and i just passed by a family where both parents were without an umbrella but their kid who couldn’t have been older than like 3-4 was proudly holding this GIANT umbrella whose diameter was as tall (if not taller) as the kid. both the parents were getting absolutely drenched but u could tell the kid was just so happy to have an “adult” task and carry the umbrella themselves and i think that sacrifice is what love is all about
it saves your life in a situation where no one else would have been fast, strong, agile, and composed enough to do so.
your security team is immediately more alarmed by its presence than the attack that is obvious to you as the bigger issue at the moment
they insist it's dangerous and struggle to relax enough to take their weapons off of it
then a combatbot attacks your group
somehow this secunit, much smaller than the bot, unarmored, without any heavy weaponry on its person, manages to take it down. some real jaw-dropping action, all over in less than a minute
then it leaps into a room with two combatbots and not only survives, but it gets your unconscious friend out alive
then it immediately comes to your own rescue, disabling impressive combat armor
it then is dead-set on killing your attacker who is already immobilized and harmless
clearly this is an incredibly competent and dangerous and powerful person
then miki tells you that it IS rin and you finally put it together that not only is this person competent in the field, but it is also calling all its own shots and has truly come here all on its own and volunteered its services to help and protect you without needing to be asked or ordered
so this person is incredibly competent, dangerous, powerful, AND kind, AND fiercely protective, AND reassuring, AND intelligent, AND selfless
and it's still coming up with great ideas and still thinking proactively about how it's going to face down or distract another combatbot as though there's no doubt in the world that it, still bleeding heavily, still unarmored and barely armed, is ready for another round with a terrifying machine that appears to be nothing BUT armor and weapons
so you step forward to help treat its injuries
and it jerks back a step with the single most frightened face you've ever seen, as though you had lifted your arm to inflict pain and it was helpless to stop you
behind you, even miki can read the devastating expression that's breaking your heart and says "abene won't hurt you, secunit"
where did the fearsome fighter from moments ago disappear to?
The Hobbit movies would have been vastly improved by going the same route as the The Princess Bride movie
Just constant cuts to the future with Frodo chiming in as Bilbo tells the story to be like “that’s not how you told it when I was little!” and “wait, you never mentioned these orcs chasing you!”
And Bilbo hems and haws like “well, I didn’t want to scare the children” etc and we see the same scene get replayed multiple times with slight variations as Frodo and Bilbo bicker about the details of what actually happened
(And then we can do an extra gut-punch at the end where Bilbo tells the little kids “yeah, the dwarves were all fine, nobody died, they recovered from their wounds and went on to rule the kingdom” and maybe we get a glimpse of a universe where that happened… but Bilbo turns away as soon as the children are gone and stared out the window while he relives the truth all over again 😭)
plus we could have seen the original version where Gollum just gave the ring to Bilbo as the prize in the riddle contest, and then have Frodo say "That's funny because Gandalf told me...." and then the true version, at which point Bilbo clears his throat awkwardly and looks at the ceiling.
