Productively Crying From Stress

26. Under 18 dni. I am not appropriate. Also reblogging politics, nerd shit, my bad writing, and jokes.

[mariamlovesyou]

At least I don't have a tumblr

[quasi-normalcy]

This is just my opinion as a Canadian, but it has always seemed to me that America, as a culture, fundamentally has always thought that killing people is kind of cool.

Like, you look at rates of serial killers by country and no one else is even fucking close. If you look at American movies and television that are considered "high culture", it's all stuff like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Godfather, etc. I actually happen to like a lot of those shows, but they are about men who kill other people. You can make the case that "if you idolize [Homelander / Scarface / Patrick Bateman] then you're missing the point" and you wouldn't even be wrong, but my god are there ever a lot of people who do idolize those guys, and that seems worth interrogating.

And it's not recent American culture either. Think of every famous gangster and bank-robber and Old West outlaw that you've ever heard of. Other countries...really don't do that, at least not to the same extent.

Anyways, all of this by way of saying that, as with so many other things, people like Trump and Hegseth are really just taking what's been implicit for many years and making it explicit.

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

I'm always saying this (like when I ranted in these tags a few months ago). There's something sick in the very assumptions USAmericans have about life (I say, as a USAmerican myself!) that makes violence and killing seem kind of cool. Most people won't admit it out loud, but it's obvious. You can see it in the Punisher bumper stickers, the gun collections, the fanboy behavior over Tarantino... I could go on. It's wrong and it's rotten and as it intensifies, it bleeds out into distrust of our neighbors, giving a pass to cops who murder people in cold blood during traffic stops, and the never-ending list of school shootings. I genuinely think that at the root of all of this is a sort of worship of physical might and power/domination over others.

This even goes for good people who are generally anti-violence! I would have described myself that way a couple of years back; but last year, totally on accident, I stumbled on a piece of media that made me reevaluate all of my thoughts and feelings about violence and I realized that I too, despite being against violence in general, still saw it as kind of cool, in some weird and twisted way. Like I'd watch action movies and be like "woah, cool move." You know? And I don't think those kinds of feelings are unique to USAmericans, but I would say that USAmericans seem to somehow be bathing in the "violence is cool" kool-aid that other folks are maybe just drinking from time to time. IDK.

It's really hard to pull yourself out of that mindset. I know people aren't just going to change their minds about this overnight. But if I had the power to beam one thing into everyone's brains, including my own, it would be an understanding of how unnecessary, embarrassing, and disgusting violence really is.

[enki2]

[do-not-u-dare]

”Explain yourself” followed by “stop making excuses” has always baffled me because the fuck you think explaining myself is????

[thepleasuregoblin]

Because Catholicism and by extension Christianity are so big and normal I don't think a lot of people consider how strange the Vatican is just conceptually. Like yeah in the capital of a long-dead empire there's an opulent temple district that acts as it's own sovereign nation, still speaking the dead language of that empire for their rituals, ruled by a prophet-king chosen by a secret conclave of the high priesthood. Yeah his followers eat a lot of fish in the spring.

[moonshynecybin]

have you guys ever seen a crocodile with its fingies out

[moonshynecybin]

[lilcowzia]

why is it that ppl hear "fetish" and immediately think "devoid of morals" like ur genuinely not making sense. ppl dont actually become inhuman and beast-like when theyre turned on, thats something we are told bc it aligns with christian patriarcal values, u know that right? desire isnt actually bad. it doesnt make you evil, or incapable of having/respecting boundaries

[lilcowzia]

i got a response to this abt how men get horny and "lose their minds" and "causes" them to behave vile. i rlly rlly neeeeed ppl to understand that men behaving inappropriately when turned on is something they are *choosing* to do, and when you equate that to human nature you are enabling them and diminishing the seriousness of that choice

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

fun thing about getting older as a dedicated lifelong non-athlete: i'm as fast and limber as I've ever been! which is not very. technically I'm in the best shape of my life. that is to say, middling

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

actually going from deeply-unwell-teenager to reasonably-functional-adult has inured me to the Common Laments of Aging:

"I can't run as fast as I used to" running is sweaty & gross hard pass

"i miss having stamina" you had STAMINA???

"ugh back pain" my inner teenager-with-scoliosis-and-mysterious-bone-pain is unphased

"ugh neck pain" do most people not spend the majority of their lifecycle hunched over screens from puberty onwards? if not that's my bad

"I used to be able to pull all-nighters" chugging energy drinks and depriving your brain of sleep to perform miserable labor is fucked up actually, and shouldn't be normalizd in or outside of college. given half a chance corporations would have your 60-year-old aunt hopped up on caffeine pills retouching powerpoints at 4am. thank fuck we're not expected to be 21 forever

"I used to be so flexible" why

"my metabolism 😭" kill your inner fatphobe, enjoy the comfy extra padding/circulation, buy a cool new wardrobe, and go forth, eat well, and GIVE NARY A FUCK.

"I miss having young knees" that one's valid

In conclusion my personal fitness goals remain, as always: to be able to carry multiple grocery bags, and go for a nice little walk (not jog!) around the neighborhood.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

let me rant for a minute about how fucked up it is that "fitness" gets pushed first on teenagers as 1) school sports/athletics (which cause a statistically enormous amount of lifelong injuries) and then as 2) instagram gym culture aka being skinny+muscular for aesthetics. we pretend this is what "health" looks like, and it's not.

fitness & excercise should be about improving your day-to-day life. which means fitness needs vary a lot by individual, age, medical conditions etc. here are just a few examples of what practical fitness goals can look like:

stretches/exercises to reduce pain in daily life (e.g. carrying groceries up a flight of stairs without being sore the next day)

increase mobility (e.g. walking around a museum with fewer rest periods)

increase stamina (e.g. running to catch a bus)

increase muscle mass e.g. to prepare for your 60s/70s, bc apparently that stuff sticks around and makes getting older waaaaay easier

increase balance/flexibility to prevent falls

build/preserve bone density to prevent osteoporosis

general injury prevention, bc that shit sucks

basic maintenance, to help preserve a lifestyle that works for you

screw this anti-aging bullshit. no one needs to be a professional athlete or permenantly 21. what we deserve is to be able to age comfortably and live long, fulfilling lives. fitness is a tool, not a moral duty. it should work for you, not vice versa.

[depsidase]

[doggirldick]

[april]

screenshots of hope and joy

[the-axiom-of-choice]

peace and love on planet earth

[joy-and-whimsy-official]

Official joy and whimsy post

[funstyle]

having audio processing issues is so humiliating like yeah i heard you and yeah i was actively listening but the problem is i dont know what the fuck you sayed

[jacobtheloofah]

i was paying attention, i was listening, but you see the problem is....it didnt work

[whoscallingwhoafraud]

[funoftheday]

You don’t say.

[a-spoon-is-born]

[timemachineyeah]

For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. 

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. 

[hatey-mchaterson]

You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.

[snarklordofthesith]

“I never thought leopards would eat MY face, until I realized they totally would, and they will eat your face, too!” warns defector from the leopards-eating-faces party

[aqueerkettleofish]

don’t hide this in the tags….

#really important actually#like. it’s so important that we allow people to STOP voting for leopards eating faces#because if you attack anyone leaving the leopards eating faces party when they realize it’s bad#the only support system they’ll have is the people who want them to come back to it#you have to make it possible for people escape instead of considering them forever tainted and impure and inherently evil

[elfwreck]

The #1 trait of anti-vaxxers is not “they’re stupid” or “they fell for propaganda” but “they don’t know who’s safe to trust.”

The movement is pushed by women, especially suburban moms, because they know damn well you cannot trust doctors. You cannot trust the medical industry, the billion-dollar corporate zone of “you should lose some weight and maybe the pain will stop.” Cannot trust the ones who keep changing diet advice - is it no sugar? No carbs? No fats? Is it dangerous to let kids eat things in wild colors? Food pyramid: good or bad? They cannot trust the BMI chart that says they should lose 75 lbs to be “healthy.” (Whether or not they “should” lose 75 lbs, they know damn well that “healthy” does not describe any part of the journey to getting there.) Cannot trust the ones who keep giving them incomplete and sometimes incorrect information about contraception. The ones who said “that’s false labor; you have two weeks more” 12 hours before they gave birth. And so on.

So they have their kids, and they want so much for their kids to be safe, and the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

So they ask: What about if there’s complications? An allergic reaction? Side effects?

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

This is… not reassuring.

And they ask, My sister-in-law’s cousin had a really bad reaction to the MMR shot and I want to know how I can tell it’s safe for my kids.

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

Throw in the right-wing/libertarian faction yelling YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO and the insurance companies saying “hey um you need a specific type of coverage for that; we probably cover those vaccinations but you’ll need this special paperwork to be sure” - and then you have the actual anti-vax propagandists yelling some combination of cherry-picked statistics and outright lies, and you get a whole lot of moms willing to say BUGGRE ALL THIS FOR A LARKE.

There is no amount of facts that can fix this. They’re swamped with facts from 300 directions. What they need to fix this is empathy and the kind of connections that lead to trust.

They need to trust that, even as the medical industry dismisses a whole lot of womens’ concerns, in this particular area, they’re right.

[embervoices]

Add in the consequences of having a significant portion of your social support network tied up in a particular worldview, leaving it, much less openly condemning it, is really hard and means losing your community support. In a world where the system can’t be trusted to pick up that slack, Moms can’t afford to risk the change - until the cost of staying clearly outweighs the coat of pushing back, not just in general, but for their kids.

Kindness doesn’t just matter because it’s more ethical - it'salso a more effective strategy.

[genderkoolaid]

Don’t normally do this but

Kindness doesn’t just matter because it’s more ethical - it'salso a more effective strategy.

Get this into your fucking heads. Kindness and compassion and one might even say “love,” are strategies, not just vague fluffy inoffensive emotions. Cruelty will never save us.

[nochd]

Gods damn I wish there was an option so’s you could see the latest addition to a post when it swims across your dash instead of the first.

KINDNESS IS A MORE EFFECTIVE STRATEGY. CRUELTY WILL NEVER SAVE US.

[akashicrecord]

the lesbian computer from portal was right. given the circumstances ive been shockingly nice

[ivy-connivy]

insane like/reblog parity on this post btw

[elvishcostello-deactivated20260]

i think a lot of people internalized the misogynistic idea that “men are rational and women are emotional” and just went “that’s true… but it’s a good thing!” instead of saying “that’s obviously bullshit and we shouldn’t perpetuate this belief in any form”

[quasi-normalcy]

So what I think is that there's this default belief in patriarchy that men are superior to women and therefore the "masculine" sphere is superior to the "feminine" sphere. And so, as feminists have fought to expand the number of allowable female activities, men (on the aggregate over generations) have retreated from those activities because they're now seen as "feminine", and so partaking in them is incommensurate with their belief in their own superiority. And, unfortunately, as this has progressed, this has resulted in a lot of men sectioning themselves off from, frankly, everything that actually makes being alive worthwhile. It's a misery spiral, and the only way out is to abandon male supremacy.

[quasi-normalcy]

#god so many men cant have hobbies anymore#because of this fuckass mindset#cant paint cuz its girly#cant do pottery because its girly#all arts and crafts? girly#any musical instrument that isnt a guitar or drums? girly#like baby no this is literally killing you#your only hobby CANNOT be an impact sport#that shit will not keep you sane when you are sick or injured#or OLD#have you considered#that you will need to give up aggressive soccer when you get OLD#and they you'll have nothing to do because you refuse to do any arts#why do men#ugh

[ohgoshohfuc]

I’m uh literally enjoying life again and everyone can tell.