LES MUSES ONT SOIF

POÈTE DÉCHUE, Voilà un beau catalogue représentatif de mes inspirations du moment. Dessinez moi un mouton ou racontez moi une anecdote. Je vais vous répondre ou utilisez vos propos dans mes écrits. Suivez moi sur mon blogue: http://lesmusesontsoif.blogspot.ca/. C'est là où je publie certains écrits.

[insert-witty-user-name-here]

[irlitgirl]

[dearxeli]

[dogpuppy]

[bigger-rat]

Vladimir Serov, The Worker (1960) and The Builder (1964)

[reddus-sideblog]

She’s winding up to slap his ass

[vergonpeludo]

buenos días mandy

[cutecipher]

two things doctors know:

leave patient alone in a room for 6 hours

incorrectly file paperwork

[cutecipher]

the doctor i was trying to get to treat my pain a couple of years ago referred me to a chiropractor twice

[terriblyhumane]

mourning

[wifegideonnav]

“bits to use in everyday conversations”

[luulapants]

If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

[naamahdarling]

Finally, a good fucking take.

[brightlotusmoon]

[catboybiologist]

Imagine if a like 8 foot tall guy that looked kinda like an alien species just kinda showed up at the house you rent a room in and crashed on the couch and at first everyone hated him but you kinda just accepted this weird massive kinda-human alien species thing as a part of your group even though he's like twice the size of everyone else there

[catboybiologist]

Cuz that's literally happening to sea lions in San Francisco right now

[catboybiologist]

So there's two species of sea lion in North America: the California sea lion, ranging along California (including Baja) but not ranging into the north coast or into oregon

And the Stellar's sea lion, which are WAY bigger and live in Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska

A male Stellars sea lion showed up in SF like a month ago and just kinda. Didn't know what to do, and joined a colony of California sea lions, and is just kinda chilling there now.

[catboybiologist]

Weird vagrant species happen from time to time, but this is just a particularly funny instance of a highly social species getting very lost, and just trying to blend in with its closest nearby relatives

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

I will never understand how normalized it is to put cameras in your home now. I can recognize some scenarios where it makes sense- if I had a stalker for example, but like. It would have to be That Big for me to consider it. People today use it to tell their kids it's time to stop playing video games and do homework like. Like?? I do not understand how you don't understand how harmful it is to raise kids with the sense they're always being watched like why does anyone under normal circumstances invite this into their home

[wizardarchetypes]

saw a video recently, recorded by a camera in a child's bedroom, of a toddler reading her favorite book after bed time. her mom went in and told her it was time to sleep, and she said, 'but i just love reading so much.' her mom laughed indulgently and told her to sleep once the book was finished. she agreed, but before the video ended, she said, 'you're so silly for watching me!'

she was smiling when she said it, but i found that one sentence so abysmal. that toddler knew her mom didn't just happen to come and check on her. she understands that there is a camera in her room by which her mom (and as far as she might comprehend, any adult) can access her in her private space, in her private time, at all times.

can you imagine? never on your own. can't sleep? too bad. you're a child and the grown ups are watching you. lie in bed in the dark. pretend to sleep. behave.

it's 10 pm and the rest of the house is enjoying winding down after a long day. your parents don't need to worry about putting on a professional face like they do at work. your older siblings get to be themselves instead of who they have to be at school. everyone gets to relax. but not you.

it's 10 pm, and you're three years old, and you must continue to do everything right, because they are watching you.

oh, and when you don't behave, if it's cute enough, your mother will post footage of you in your bedroom for millions of strangers to watch!

[the-big-mood]

Source

[pixiecaps]

big fan of whatever the youth is doing to torment scientology buildings

[pixiecaps]

they couldnt take the heat

[doctordotdj]

[weirdtranssexual]

call me crazy but i think public transportation should explicitly also be for actively drunk/high people. so they don’t, you know, drive under the influence.

[weirdtranssexual]

i literally don’t care how afraid you are of drunk people. if they’re behaving well enough then there’s no reason to kick them off the bus.

if you can’t recognize it’s better for society for drunk people to have a way home that doesn’t involve them driving and potentially getting people killed then you just kind of suck actually.

[roboriders]

picture of a cute lazy slob girl surrounded by video games and plushies and open bags of junk food but its me with the paper bags and capsules from the 13 different meds its taking to keep my frail body alive

[transhuman-priestess]

the way teenagers are treated these days is wild. when i was a teenager we were all watching porn, jerking off, and going to horror movies with 3000 gallons of blood. Nowadays they make kids get a permission slip to watch anything darker than Barney the Dinosaur. Insane.

[transhuman-priestess]

Every year we infantilize teenagers more and more and act surprised when they grow up to be terrified, angry, emotionally stunted adults.

[genderkoolaid]

& then for some reason people fixate more on "ugh these teenagers just want to be treated like babies!!! teenagers are to blame for the rise in puritanism!!!!!" than how this is a very obvious example of ageism and the increased control over a socially vulnerable and exploited group

[absolxguardian]

I think a commonly overlooked part of this coddling is that it teaches kids and teenagers to be afraid of things they don't need to be afraid of, which is exactly how they end up as "puriteens". I remember as a child being terrified to change the channel on the tv because I had ended up with the impression that seeing even seconds of an R rated movie or tv show would give me nightmares. And then as a tween every time I saw swearing I felt sick to my stomach because I had been taught such a thing is bad and harmful. I think I would have suffered less if I hadn't been raised with everyone around me acting like mature media was so bad. By the time I was a teenager I had figured out this was bunk, but understandably a lot of people don't. By making this whole system worse and stronger you have teens who have been told that seeing explicit or dark media Will Harm Them, and so they act in ways that would be appropriate if it really was the info-hazard it's implied to be.

[headspace-hotel]

^^ never heard anybody specifically talk about this but yeah. parents acting like sexual or any "dark" content in a story or show was going to put bad things in my head that were going to be there permanently just gave me a deeply distressing sort of contamination anxiety

[teardownthewall]

On a related note, I think a lot of folks my age and younger would benefit from learning about moral scrupulosity, which generally comes up in folks who meet diagnostic criteria for OCD, but can also be sub-clinical. To keep it short, moral scrupulosity is when someone is fixated on doing/thinking the morally correct thing, to the extent where ambiguity is very difficult to tolerate and comes with a lot of distress. I see a lot of young therapy clients reporting this, so I think it’s helpful to know what it might look like.

You might have heard about people praying incessantly to get forgiveness from God for some imagined thought crime. There are still people who do that, but now, moral scrupulosity is more likely to show up as fixating on consuming the right media, holding the right political views, and being extremely concerned with not having done anything bad (as opposed to attempting to do good even if it’s not perfect). This can lead to a lot of analysis paralysis and learned helplessness, as you simply can’t do the perfect thing.

Examples I’ve seen on tumblr are:

1. Feeling the need to confess and seek forgiveness for real or imagined slights against a marginalized group, which usually results in uncomfortable interactions with strangers for the trans and BIPOC who haven’t been chased off of tumblr already

2. Constantly asking for media recommendations that aren’t problematic (spoiler alert: no media is unproblematic) and discoursing media to death as a means to feel less complicated about the stuff that one enjoys

3. Shutting down/“I just can’t enjoy anything anymore”/giving up on awareness of social justice because of the complicated feelings it evokes about the things one enjoyed before

4. Harassing or getting into internet slapfights with people who disagree about the moral goodness or badness of media, or leaping to the defense of content creators who are getting called out for doing things that one does in real life

5. Restricting activism to online posting and infighting, as real-world action would increase the likelihood of making a mistake and needing to feel like one is still learning

6. Getting extremely defensive when others point out any of the above

I am not writing this to ridicule the people who do these things. I want to acknowledge that this behavior makes sense in the current socio-political context. But that doesn’t mean the behavior isn’t harmful toward others. Focus on doing what you can to improve the material reality of the people in your community, rather than being able to say “my hands are clean” at the end of it all.

[ro-fromthestars]

Made this, think it applies to them