Soap Bubble Girl

୨୧ | ae/aer | 20s | not a girl | 🐑 | ୨୧ Eco anarcho-communist leftist. No terfs no conservatives no zionists. a will-of-the-whisp, follow with care.

[shareddreamingexperiment]

mouse with wheat thin

[scurviesdisneyblog]

Mary Blair's concept art for Alice in Wonderland (1951)

[gouged-doll]

heyshiro matsuoka, no one

[orcboxer]

Hot take but praise is a good tool for encouraging healthy behavior. Positive reinforcement is good. Relying exclusively on punishment to change people's behavior is both cruel and ineffective. If someone does better than they did yesterday, let them know you appreciate it, let them know that they're improving!

[orcboxer]

"Don't praise anyone for doing the bare minimum" is a shitty take that prioritizes your sense of superiority over the actual betterment of people. I understand that things shouldn't be as bad as they are, and anger can often be justified, but you need to get over the propaganda that kindness is naïve, that cynicism and bitterness are intellectual. Withholding praise from those who haven't caught up with you doesnt actually help them, it doesn't motivate, it doesn't encourage, it only discourages them. It breeds bitterness and apathy, which are antithetical to empathy.

Growth isn't something you do on your own. People need support, they need community. Bootstraps won't get them there. Kindness will. Do you want results or do you just want to feel superior?

[sleepy-sham]

!!!!!!!!!!!

This isn't up for debate. We have the studies. Positive reinforcement is far & away the most successful method to not only change behavior but KEEP it changed long term. One of the most important things I learned for my psych degree.

[life-on-our-planet]

The honey possum, also called a noolbenger, is the only flightless animal that feeds exclusively on nectar and pollen. As such it’s an important pollinator in the grasslands of southern Australia. Grassland Films

[goatmilksoda]

A question I get asked a lot while working at a public library is "how do you deal with homeless people?"

And the answer is, we don't.

The unhoused people who come here seeking refuge 99% of the time understand that they will be kicked out if they misbehave.

The people you have to watch out for are Jessica, who only came because the kid she didn't want had to visit for a homework assignment and she just *needs* to yell at her child for asking to borrow two books or stay an extra five minutes, or Michael, who came in to look at porn on our computers for whatever fucking reason, or Karen who just wanted to come by to throw a fit that the particular book she wanted was checked out and harrass our staff about our collection being too limited.

99% of the time, the people we need to ban are middle to upper-middle class white people while the homeless and mentally ill/disabled people mind their own damn business and are honestly some of the best patrons we have.

[goatmilksoda]

I bring this up because today we had a man come in. He stopped at the desk, pulled up a chair and said "I'm newly homeless and was living in my car. I'm disabled. It was impounded. It's raining. I don't have a phone and I don't know where to go tonight."

And we did what we could to help. He was incredibly kind and patient despite his obvious anxiety and stress, more than most able bodied, housed patrons are to us under much less dire conditions. I liked knowing that we were the first place he came.

We have so many people like this who come in everyday. Many are quiet and keep to themselves, but sometimes they talk to us.

They tell us about how they're taking a few courses on a scholarship they applied for from our library's computer at the local community college to get their diploma. Or ask about a manga or dvd or book we might have to help them pass the time.

One woman, who comes in daily with her tattered walker always says hello to me and likes to work on the new jigsaw puzzle with me when we set one out.

So like, treat unhoused people like people. Treat disabled people like people. I don't want my library to feel like the only safe space in the world, but I'm glad it can be one of them.

I'm so sick of hearing about how "the homeless are ruining everything" when they are some of the kindest, most respectful people here. Sometimes they mutter, might not have had a place to shower, and might need a little extra space for their backpacks but that's FINE. It Doesn't Matter Actually. None of that is a problem or any of my business to care about (unless they request help/services), and I also don't think it's any of yours.

[pusheenthenerdcat]

libraries provide vital and lifesaving services and i will die on the hill you have to let people who are mentally ill and disabled and homeless and politically disagreeable to you still access those rescourses. its simply too important to society

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

One of my proudest life achievements was helping a close friend leave a controlling, emotionally abusive partner who happened to work as a librarian. Part of how I knew this guy was a terrible person was that he used his workplace experiences with homeless patrons as a justification for his increasingly reactionary right-wing politics (which were CLEARLY imported from manosphere tiktok, not his job). When she’d started the relationship he was a pretty normy lib with a few hangups from his patriarchal catholic upbringing. When he left his job (and finally got kicked out of her life, at around the same time) he was a trump-voting weirdo with an addiction to expensive men’s fragrances. But somewhere in the middle of that I was telling my friend “this guy is bad news. Every other librarian I know is super compassionate about & appreciative of the unhoused people who come in. I think it’s going to get worse and you should get out now.”

Anyway I was right and her life is so much better without him and I thank every other librarian who helps provide a safe, quiet place for people to rest and access resources.

[glowcowboy]

i am full of love and also fatigue

[selfcarereminder]

small kindnesses to yourself, done consistently, add up to something huge over time. start today, however small

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

[creamypancakebatter]

this is actually really helpful and affirming thanks

[breelandwalker]

[aaaaaarchive]

[ser-william-the-third]

I need to disappear into this grass, milord. For my enrichment, you see.

[jabir29]

[papayajuan2019]

must feel so good to be soil absorbing rain

[rn-deliabusby]

flickr

[capvonlakers]

[madmonksandmaenads]

I wish I could make white people(and not just white Americans) understand how diverse the pre-columbian Americas were. The history, religion, culture, politics was at least as complex as Europe's. There was the full gamut of religions, from monotheists to animists to ancestral religions. There were city building empires, village farmers, nomadic traders, and so many other ways to live. This is all just based on what we know, the fragments left behind and the stories of survivors of an apocalyptic plague. All this before the most extended campaign of genocide in history was waged in an attempt to wipe out those survivors.

Over 500 years spent trying to cut down a whole trunk of human culture.

Do you understand how much poorer our whole species is because of it? Can you imagine where art, religion, and science would be if we still had these vast bodies of knowledge? The stain of the colonial project will never be fully washed clean. We owe more than just the land to those we stole from. We owe them a whole future, a future that could have been brighter for all of us. If only greed and fear weren't allowed to rule this land.

[houndmother]

many of you just. genuinely don’t believe that people can grow and change.

[houndmother]

this is about the death penalty and its also about call out posts about people who have already apologized for things they did a long time ago and it’s also about using ‘toxic’ or ‘abuser’ as if its an immutable class of person, and its also about any other circumstance with permanent consequences or wherein you assume someone is still the same person they were.

[memeuplift]