[anxietyproblem]

[ruinedchildhood]

[galileosballs]

The thing about aggressive age-verification procedures is that they're a sign of a low-trust society. It's the sign of a society that expects people to be lying a lot. That's not a good thing for a society to be, even absent other factors.

I've spent the past few months living in Austria, and one of the things that has really impressed me about this country is how much it... trusts me. Transit works via the honour system. Nobody tries to card me when I buy beer. When I explained my usual prescription to my doctor here, she didn't try to persuade me I wanted something else instead. You can buy a vibrator from a vending machine.

And it all just works. The transit system is well-funded, the ERs are not full of dead drunk teens (it's hard to do too much damage to yourself with the weak-ass beer here, especially if comparatively few people drive), and nobody seems particularly fussed about it. This is the safest, cleanest, and happiest city I've ever seen. I live in what is broadly considered to be the worst part of town, and it's miles more pleasant than the nice parts of some North American cities I've lived in.

Nothing destroys trust more than enforcement. And if you have enough trust, you don't need enforcement. Isn't that better?

[mariacallous]

[soup-in-the-inbox]

I honestly blame the rise of anti-intellectualism and things like hating on old books because they're not up to modern standards on why people can't think with nuance and are afraid of bucking the norm or forming their own opinions. You're going to read Of Mice And Men and you're going to be fucking uncomfortable because that's the goddamn point. You're going to read the original Romeo and Juliet and remember the whole point is to make fun of how stupid and dramatic teenagers are and you're going to sit there and be uncomfortable because the only way you're going to expand your horizons is if you're feeling weird and off and hate it for awhile.

You're going to have to sit in front of the trolley problem as hate that there's no "win" scenario because that's the point. There is no Everybody Wins and Nothing Bad Happens in real life 99% of the time.

You need to be uncomfortable. You need to be conflicted. You cannot be a complete, nuanced, and intelligent person if you refuse to engage with the gray. You are just a bad person at that point. And a stupid one. Because I'm done pulling punches.

[madlori]

the problems began when people got the idea that they have a right to always be comfortable and feel completely safe.

[schmergo]

The Lincoln Assassination is really just wild if you think about it for a moment. The younger brother of one of the most famous actors in the country- himself a famous actor and heartthrob in his own right- killed the President in a theatre and yelled “Sic semper tyrannis,” a line often associated with Brutus, a character that his brother had famously played.

Like, imagine if Liam Hemsworth killed the Prime Minister of Australia at a red carpet movie premiere or something and yelled “I went for the head,” and Chris had to leave the Avengers press tour to tell everyone, “I swear I had nothing to do with this.” Imagine how weird that would be.

[morrigan-disapproves]

#cant wait for liam to snap

[bluegrasskitty]

Yeah, but it gets way weirder, y'all.

(Prepare yourselves because Lincoln lore is kinda my jam.)

John Wilkes Booth is the more (in)famous brother now, but back then his older brother, Edwin, was America’s (& Europe’s) darling.

They were from the famous Booth acting family, who were essentially the Barrymore’s of the mid-1800s. Classically trained, truly gifted kinda people.

The whole family, save John, was pro-Union. They were from Maryland FFS. There was no reason for John to be Confederate at all, but I digress.

John was known as a notorious scene stealer who pulled focus in everything he did, but audiences found him so charming that people kept hiring him anyway. He even starred in a few plays with his brother.

Edwin wasn’t just good at acting, though. He was good at life, too. Think Chris Evans levels of goodness.

Once, while standing at a train station, he saw a small child fall off the platform & on to the tracks. He immediately leapt into action! Risking his own life by jumping in front of an oncoming train, & heroically saved the little boy just in the nick of time, returning him to his hysterical mother to great applause.

That boy? ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S SON, ROBERT.

Yeah. That’s right. The brother of Lincoln’s assassin saved his son years before the crime took place. Small fucking world, right?? & He didn’t even know it was them until he received a letter of thanks a few months later.

Just a stand up fucking dude all the way around.

Now, in the aftermath of said crime, Edwin felt a great & terrible shame over his brother’s actions and actually retired from the stage & public life altogether, moving to London & becoming destitute in the process.

He felt their family no longer deserved the love & praise Americans had always poured over them when one of their own had betrayed the nation in such a terrible way.

Eventually though, a grief-striken people cried out for his return. Thousands of letters poured in from both here & abroad, begging the man to return to acting & bring joy back to us. Even Mrs. Lincoln wrote him & granted him and the family forgiveness. (Her own kin had been Confederates, to her great embarrassment, so she understood how he felt.)

After a few years, Edwin Booth did indeed return to the stage to great acclaim. He continued acting until a stroke a few years before his death in 1893 & even founded the Boone Theater in Manhattan, which was quite popular until it was destroyed by a fire.

He is still considered by many theater historians to be the greatest American Shakespearean actor of all time.

Edwin Booth. American actor. American hero.

[when-did-this-become-difficult]

fact checked this and it’s true but it’s So Much my brain just keeps rejecting it

[animentality]

[tlirsgender]

Having parents who aren't as bad as they used to be is crazy cause they'll be sitting there doing some normal shit and you're like kubrick staring at them

[mangopit]

[its-funnytwittertweets]

[schifty-al]

[theconcealedweapon]

If it comes from parents who model the behavior they want to see, then this is good parenting.

The problem is that many parents don't model this behavior. Many parents are authoritarian and rule by fear. Many parents take advantage of the fact that they're bigger, they control the finances, their power is upheld by society, and their children are dependent on them. And they complain when their child starts treating people the exact same way.

[whumpshaped-deactivated20250109]

[delyth-thomas-art]

[hydeanachronism]

[pjowasmy1stfandom]

I literally thought of the third one and then it manifested in the notes

[peachfromcmbyn]

They should invent a method of asking for reassurance that nobody secretly hates you that doesn't make people secretly hate you.

[god-monsterr]

this reply deserves to be here.

[liberalsarecool]

Tax the rich. Abolish Citizens United. Recognize the class war. Respect all labor.

[animentality]

[fuck-customers]

[sataniccapitalist]

Same bullshit, different year

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.

[badwificonnection]

Blood is what now?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It’s imitation seawater what part is confusing

[badwificonnection]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums? 

Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.

Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.

[badwificonnection]

Thank you that’s…very disturbing

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It’s not my fault you’re human.

[apatheticshipwreck]

Ok but “It’s not my fault you’re human.” Is the best comeback ever.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

You can use it against anyone except children that you biologically helped to create.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing 

Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”

“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”

“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”

At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)

You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.

And that’s what a human is!

[elodieunderglass]

Well, there’s another few steps, of course.

Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.

A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,

and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“

“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)

“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life - using some of my own material, of course-”

“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”

And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“

“Like an egg.”

“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”

“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family - forget about support from your PHYLUM - all you get is criticism.”

“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”

“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”

You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.

“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.

“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.

“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”

Everyone waits.

“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”

Everyone looks uncomfortable.

“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”

You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.

The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”

And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”

That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.

[kyrosion]

It has been MONTHS, @elodieunderglass, and I am still mumbling “furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship” under my breath as a comfort phrase, and the FUCKING INDIGNITY that it came from this godforsaken post about THE HORRIBLE WETNESS OF MAMMALS!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“The horrible wetness of mammals” would make a great band name.

[gallusrostromegalus]

“hold hope, internally, at 37.5 degrees” and “Mammals internalize everything (eggs, grudges)” Now live permanently in my vocabulary

[liberalsarecool]

We all predicted this.

And this:

We were correct.