think for yourself

my posts are random af these days bc I've been on this site too long 😂. she/they - 25

[chilifrylizard]

Nobody:

JD Vance:

[hylianengineer]

86 Stories of Progress from 2024

Not everything that happened this year was terrible.

Would anyone like to join me in my New Year's tradition of reading about good things that happened this year?

[hylianengineer]

A couple highlights:

There are now ZERO COAL POWER PLANTS in the UK. Zero! Also zero in Slovakia, which closed its last coal plant a full SIX YEARS ahead of schedule! This is great because coal is like, the dirtiest fuel source ever. It's awful for the planet, it's awful for our lungs, it's just The Worst. Goodbye and good riddance!

Last year, EU CO2 emissions fell by 8%, and the data's not all in for this year yet but they're on track to drop even more. Yeah, you read that right - the EU may have already passed peak carbon emissions. Excuse me while I do a happy dance over here in the corner - this is a BIG FUCKING DEAL!

This may have been a bad year for abortion rights in the US, but we're an outlier - over the past 30 years, we are only one of four countries to tighten abortion restrictions, while 60 countries have made it more available. This year, France became the first country in the whole world to make abortion a constitutional right. Seven US states did so too - Colorado, New York, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Arizona and Missouri. That's right, Missouri! Shocking, huh?

A drug to prevent HIV infections was 100% effective in trials. That. That's insane. It's not a vaccine, but it is the closest we've ever been to one.

Deaths from tuberculosis, the deadliest infectious disease in the world, hit an all-time global low. Hooray for preventing a truly staggering amount of death!

Egypt and Cabo-Verde both eliminated malaria, and 17 countries started distributing the new malaria vaccine - remember that? Remember how insanely exciting it is that was now have a vaccine for malaria? It is saving lives as we speak.

Deforestation in the Amazon is half what it was two years ago.

The largest dam removal project in history was completed - removing four dams from the Klamath River, thanks to decades of activism by the Karuk and Yurok tribes. A month later, there were salmon spawning in the river basin again - for the first time in a century. Nature's pretty incredible at bouncing back, if we can just give it the chance. I repeat: Largest. Dam removal. In history!

China finished the Great Green Wall

Prewalski's horses returned to their homeland in central Kazakhstan, where they'd been missing for 200 years!

22 species were removed from the endangered list - let's hear it for the Saimaa ringed seal, Scimitar oryx, Red cockaded woodpecker, Siamese crocodile, Narwhal, Arapaima, Chipola slabshell and Fat threeridge mussels, Iberian lynx, Asiatic lions, Australian saltwater crocodile, Asian antelope,  Ulūlu, Southern bluefin tuna, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, Yellow-footed rock wallabies, Yangtze finless porpoise, Pookila mouse, Orange-bellied parrots, Putitor mahseer (this is a fish), Giant pandas, and Florida golden aster!

This year was deeply shitty in a lot of ways - but not all of them.

[byojaku-moved]

what if i told you there was one user on the russian social network/ video sharing website odnoklassniki/oднокла́ссники that has uploaded nearly every movie ever from 1896 to the current day, mostly with subtitles. and including that has uploaded every criterion collection film in full hd with subtitles. for free. all hail ok.ru user fleurinna guta

they keep their films in unlisted folders so you cant just see them all on their profile unfortunately but ill provide links. also don't ask me why this user separates their films in this way, i don't know and frankly it confuses me too.

EUROPEAN FILMS (sometimes includes west asian films?)

JAPANESE FILMS

CLASSIC FILMS (aka american and British films)

"MISC FILMS" (aka films from everywhere that isn't the usa, europe, japan. sometimes films from the GDR are in here which is confusing again because communist germany was still part of europe)

this is a much better alternative to stuff like 123movies or bflix because there are no hot singles in your area or games that you wont last 5 minutes playing. hope u enjoy and let us all praise and embrace user fleurinna guta

[yesokayiknow]

love that they inverted the trope of 'ai gains sentience and immediately starts killing the humans' by going what if the humans just had rancid vibes. did you ever think about that

[bumblebeebats]

OP turned off reblogs so this is my post now. Behold, the "Objective quality vs. degree of ferality" scale

Here are a few of my own personal datapoints:

[night-dark-woods]

i love women's hockey. someone had a sign that said "i [heart] lesbians" and when the dancecam showed them the entire stadium burst into raucous applause.

[thelma2017dirjoachimtrier-deact]

“For some time, Hollywood has marketed family entertainment according to a two-pronged strategy, with cute stuff and kinetic motion for the kids and sly pop-cultural references and tame double entendres for mom and dad. Miyazaki has no interest in such trickery, or in the alternative method, most successfully deployed in Pixar features like Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and Inside/Out, of blending silliness with sentimentality.”

“Most films made for children are flashy adventure-comedies. Structurally and tonally, they feel almost exactly like blockbusters made for adults, scrubbed of any potentially offensive material. They aren’t so much made for children as they’re made to be not not for children. It’s perhaps telling that the genre is generally called “Family,” rather than “Children’s.” The films are designed to be pleasing to a broad, age-diverse audience, but they’re not necessarily specially made for young minds.”

“My Neighbor Totoro, on the other hand, is a genuine children’s film, attuned to child psychology. Satsuki and Mei move and speak like children: they run and romp, giggle and yell. The sibling dynamic is sensitively rendered: Satsuki is eager to impress her parents but sometimes succumbs to silliness, while Mei is Satsuki’s shadow and echo (with an independent streak). But perhaps most uniquely, My Neighbor Totoro follows children’s goals and concerns. Its protagonists aren’t given a mission or a call to adventure - in the absence of a larger drama, they create their own, as children in stable environments do. They play.”

“Consider the sequence just before Mei first encounters Totoro. Satsuki has left for school, and Dad is working from home, so Mei dons a hat and a shoulder bag and tells her father that she’s “off to run some errands” - The film is hers for the next ten minutes, with very little dialogue. She’s seized by ideas, and then abandons them; her goals switch from moment to moment. First she wants to play “flower shop” with her dad, but then she becomes distracted by a pool full of tadpoles. Then, of course, she needs a bucket to catch tadpoles in - but the bucket has a hole in it. And on it goes, but we’re never bored, because Mei is never bored.”

“[…] You can only ride a ride so many times before the thrill wears off. But a child can never exhaust the possibilities of a park or a neighborhood or a forest, and Totoro exists in this mode. The film is made up of travel and transit and exploration, set against lush, evocative landscapes that seem to extend far beyond the frame. We enter the film driving along a dirt road past houses and rice paddies; we follow Mei as she clambers through a thicket and into the forest; we walk home from school with the girls, ducking into a shrine to take shelter from the rain; we run past endless green fields with Satsuki as she searches for Mei. The psychic center of Totoro’s world is an impossibly giant camphor tree covered in moss. The girls climb over it, bow to it as a forest-guardian, and at one point fly high above it, with the help of Totoro. Much like Totoro himself, the tree is enormous and initially intimidating, but ultimately a source of shelter and inspiration.”

“My Neighbor Totoro has a story, but it’s the kind of story that a child might make up, or that a parent might tell as a bedtime story, prodded along by the refrain, “And then what happened?” This kind of whimsicality is actually baked into Miyazaki’s process: he begins animating his films before they’re fully written. Totoro has chase scenes and fantastical creatures, but these are flights of fancy rooted in a familiar world. A big part of being a kid is watching and waiting, and Miyazaki understands this. When Mei catches a glimpse of a small Totoro running under her house, she crouches down and stares into the gap, waiting. Miyazaki holds on this image: we wait with her. Magical things happen, but most of life happens in between those things—and there is a kind of gentle magic, for a child, in seeing those in-betweens brought to life truthfully on screen.”

A.O. Scott and Lauren Wilford on “My Neighbor Totoro”, 2017.  

[curtailedwhale]

every time this shows up on my blog, I’m rescheduling it to show up again at a later date so I can keep remembering how important a child’s perspective is.

[xenosaurus]

I turn 30 next month so here’s what I learned in my 20s:

—don’t work for startups, they’re always one ‘innovative idea’ away adding ‘sell your kidneys on the black market’ to your job description.

—keeping a collection of basic OTC medicine on you will save your life one day. I recommend Advil, Imodium, and TUMS.

—those little single-use glasses cleaning wipes are 1000% worth the money

—overly self-depreciating jokes just make people uncomfortable, wean yourself off of them

—you can buy dehydrated mini marshmallows in bulk online and they’re a godsend for hot cocoa

—people don’t care if you have fidget toys on your desk they just want to play with them

—try to go to bed BEFORE the existential ennui kicks in

[thelittleblackfox]

Also drink water and eat a plant

[liz-squids]

This is all GREAT. I turned 40 last week, so permit me to add what I learned in my 30s:

keep on not working for startups

sometimes there comes a point where the thing (fandom, hobby, friendship, romantic relationship) you loved no longer brings you joy. And that's okay. Try to mourn the loss, take joy in the memories, and don't burn any bridges in case ten years go by and you find yourself back in that fandom/hobby/relationship again

it turns out that (ugh) moderate regular exercise is (spit) good for you. The sooner you make it part of your life, the easier it'll be

related: if you throw yourself into a new exercise regime too hard and too fast, without stopping to rest or consider whether a particular move is good for you ... well, shoulder injuries are painful and consults with orthopedic surgeons are expensive

knees are bastards too

don't even get me started on ankles

there may come a time when your digestive system is too fragile for ibuprofin. I'm sorry

one day you're gonna wake up and realise you no longer give any fucks about some things that used to bother you

on the other hand, you might be alarmed to realise what you still give a fuck about

never get down on the floor without an exit strategy for getting back up

[covington-shenanigans]

I turn 50 this year. what I have learned in my 40s:

"loving yourself" is less of a feeling and more of an action. you can start doing it any time and it will make your life better and better as you go on

this will happen incrementally - be patient

along those lines, if you haven't started making an active effort to quit shit-talking yourself, suck it up and do it

no, shut up. do it. "but it's haaaaard!" don't care. do it.

whether you like it or not, you are mortal and you need to go to the doctor for an annual checkup

stretch regularly - your future self will thank you

at some point you will encounter people much younger than you arguing passionately and incorrectly about history you personally remember and experienced

this will be infuriating and annoying

otoh, most other things just... will not matter to you as much

at some point you will shift from wanting to go out to being like "eh" and deciding to stay in. this is okay.

you will have absolutely no idea what The Youth are talking about and you will not care

but if you keep your mind open to new ideas you'll never be irrelevant

your company still doesn't love you - don't give them more than they pay you for

get a fucking hobby, especially a hobby that involves physically creating/handling something and/or moving your body in physical space. it will do you more good than you can imagine

[atlinmerrick]

Just turned 60 and let me say:

Find joy, every kind, it's always worth it

I'm talking that massive, never-ending Discord chat with your bestie? The one that makes you giggle through the day? It's not a "waste of time," it's what time was made for

If that's fanfic for your favorite characters who never even met on screen celebrate that!

If that's building a tiny fleet of snake villagers for your snake town and they just cover your mantel hell yes!

If that's collecting pillows and making a fort of them every weekend I'll be right over

Feeling and sharing joy is the whole point

[cricketcat9]

This is too tempting…, so, I’m 74, and: don’t fund startups

Please keep stretching and exercise enough NOT to need an elaborate strategy to get up from the floor. IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE

Say bye to your employer as early as you possibly can, unless you really love your job. You won’t be sorry.

Keep doing the annual checkups 🙏🏼

Enjoy that fucking hobby you’ve acquired in your 50, or find something new. Do try new things & adventures.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Dealing With Executive Dysfunction - A Masterpost

The “getting it done in an unconventional way” method.

The “it’s not cheating to do it the easy way” method.

The “fuck what you’re supposed to do” method.

The “get stuff done while you wait” method.

The “you don’t have to do everything at once” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be permanent to be helpful” method.

The “break the task into smaller steps” method.

The “treat yourself like a pet” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be all or nothing” method.

The “put on a persona” method.

The “act like you’re filming a tutorial” method.

The “you don’t have to do it perfectly” method.

The “wait for a trigger” method.

The “do it for your future self” method.

The “might as well” method.

The “when self discipline doesn’t cut it” method.

The “taking care of yourself to take care of your pet” method.

The “make it easy” method.

The “junebugging” method.

The “just show up” method.

The “accept when you need help” method.

The “make it into a game” method.

The “everything worth doing is worth doing poorly” method.

The “trick yourself” method.

The “break it into even smaller steps” method.

The “let go of should” method.

The “your body is an animal you have to take care of” method.

The “fork theory” method.

The “effectivity over aesthetics” method.

[kurai-hono-blog]

This is the sacred texts, this is the holy grail.

[brightlotusmoon]

[ghost-kings-court-jester]

More reasons why Zuko being the Firelord is objectively the funniest thing on earth:

HES SEVENTEEN

He hasn’t been civilised in 4 years, his entire teenage experience consists of living on a boat and sleeping rough. The most stable bed he has was probably in Ba Sing Se he probably will just nap anywhere.

He has customer service experience which means he probably uses his customer service voice on his minsters.

Additionally he probably just wanders into to kitchen to get his own snacks and tea because he forgets what servants do.

He probably has no idea why he can’t just chase after an assassin he used to hunt the avatar for Agnis sake why is the captain of the guard demanding he stay in his room he’ll find the guy first (he’s probably right)

Katara probably has a free pass on Eco terrorism because what’s he going to do challenge her, she’ll beat his ass.

If he saw a minster doing something shady he will either invite lady Beifong to detect their BS or commit B&E and look for evidence himself.

He somehow found a baby dragon and raises it.

He will be far to willing to give Kyoshi island anything they want cause he feels bad and Suki scares him.

He randomly insisted on giving some earth kingdom village 100 ostrich horses.

The Avatar will just show up call him Hotman and demand the go on adventures and the Firelord will just dip because he’s been confined to long and has the Zoomies.

He takes far to much advice from Sokka and will genuinely believe if someone doesn’t get Sokkas plans they must be an idiot because Sokka is 16.

Sokka and Zuko also get into a lot of teenage rebellion phases by accident.

Toph just walks in breaks a wall of his palace and demands a field trip that always involves the Firelord having to explain himself to the cops.

He somehow knows every dangerous teen in the world and they all come for tea uninvited.

He has broken into both the NWT and Ba Sing Se.

He has a really well documented facial scar and official portraits but still disappears to be Lee the tea guy like no one knows.

HES SEVENTEEN.

[oflights]

i think miyazaki fake retires every time not as a gimmick but to make sure joe hisaishi goes flat out balls to the wall this is my last shot and i will eat and leave no crumbs. and you know what? he always does, every time

[timemachineyeah]

(X)

[cameoamalthea]

When your movie is about Cats is so bad the original writer buys a DOG

[hithewall]

click on one. then see read more for what it means

pick one, read below

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Voting ended onDec 27, 2023

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[desinteresse]

Controversial take but if you wrote a novel about two women falling in love and you changed one of them into a man you would have the most enormous smash hit of a romance book on your hands

[desinteresse]

Maybe because I met like 15 butch lesbians who are the real life equivalent of the ideal male romance lead and I have yet to meet a man who fits the archetype.

[desinteresse]

Ladies do you want a man who reads you classical novels when you can’t sleep? Bakes cakes, knits sweaters and is able to remodel your bathroom? Good with animals, kids and has a career they’re passionate about? Handsome but not vain? Sweet, sensitive but charmingly rough around the edges? A good conversationalist? Well that’s not a man, that’s my friend Jennifer

[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!

[narrativelysignificantturtleduck]

it doesn't matter if roku and sozin were actually gay, all that matters is that every queer person in the fire nation is haunted by the possibility

[narrativelysignificantturtleduck]

like honestly i don't really think so. but i do think gay people in the fire nation, knowing

a) sozin was Close Friends with avatar roku

b) he didn't have kids until he was super old and it was absolutely necessary for maintaining the line of succession

c) part of what spurred his most drastic actions was roku's refusal to join him

might go. huh. what if The Guy Who Banned Homosexuality was gay. and gay for the avatar, no less. wouldn't that be fucking. insane

generations of queer people have been kept up at night by this question. and even when zuko (after a sleepless night of his own) begs aang to ask roku there's no resolution bc how would roku know? aang is like "hey do you think sozin had a crush on you and that's why he gave you the artifact and interrupted your wedding and was so pissed you wouldn't help him take over the world?" and roku is just like i never considered that. wow. that's crazy. maybe? i don't know

[cock-holliday]

Idk man it’s so easy to get bogged down in all the bullshit online but when my then-6 year old cousin found out I was trans he said “ok” then corrected my grandma when she misgendered me. I was once the third between a gay man and a lesbian. Two lesbians once invited me back to their place when I presented as a man. I met an AMAB nb butch who looked strikingly to outsiders like a cis man and it was one of the more sapphic experiences I’ve had. I nervously wore a boydyke shirt to pride and got 3 different cis-looking femme folks tell me they loved my shirt. I once told a trans group at a protest that any pronouns were fine for me and one person said “wow, I’m impressed and intimidated by people like that. I don’t know that I could be that chill with pronouns.” I once told a GNC friend I wished I could wear a type of “opposite” gender clothing after I had already transitioned and so it would be associated with my AGAB and he said “You could just do it.” I’ve had cishet men fight cops for me before. The first time I had a doctor ask me if my name was different than what was on my forms I had to try not to cry. Last week, a phone call with a doctor’s office where I am generally cis passing asked unprompted if my name listed is what I want to be called. It touched me then too. I told a lesbian friend once I felt like my attraction to men AND women both felt gay. She said “makes sense.” And we moved on. I go by different pronouns in different circles. I’ve had gay women love my facial hair. I’ve had gay men like my tits. It’s all out there, I promise. It can be hard to find it but I promise there is community like you and community who likes you. And it’s more messy and beautiful than tumblr discourse makes it out to be.