it's never that deep

introduce yourself 

[politicallychargedhummus]

My aunt is trying to evacuate her youngest brother and his family (four people total) from Gaza (hopefully I don’t have to go into why they need to evacuate). If you could please donate or, at least, reblog and/or share the link around I would appreciate it.

https://gofund.me/018b034f

[kkujo]

i just saw someone describe a disabled person as "someone with beautiful abilities" i cannot do this anymore

[kkujo]

god can we stop softening the term "disabled". disabled isn't a dirty word. it's not "special abilities" or "differently abled" or whatever the fuck you want to call it. people have disabilities that cause life to be hard and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that?? it feels so invalidating when people are like "ohh you're not disabled!!! you have special abilities!!" like. omg a) it feels so infantilizing. b) by saying that you're basically saying our struggles aren't real...? some conditions are disabling. it's not hard to understand?? like there is NOTHING wrong with being disabled & using the word disabled. it's not offensive it's not a dirty word can we take the shame out of it pls oh my god. this goes for physical & non physical disabilities btw

[greenwire]

Euphemism treadmill. This occurs when the concept itself is seen as distasteful, so there's a constant turnover in the language as new euphemisms are created and old euphemisms become offensive. That's why using the toilet has so many euphemisms (water closet, bathroom, restroom). The euphemisms aren't the problem, it's the actual concept they're describing that's seen as embarrassing.

The disabled are considered so lesser that even things tangentially related to disability (calling people "special" because disabled children went to "special education", referencing "short bus" because of the smaller wheelchair-friendly schoolbus, the term "handicapped," even diagnosable conditions) are considered grave insults.

They also tried this with "differently abled."

[queenelephant]

They don't want to think about what disability means. Yes, I am disabled. I can't do all the things you want me to.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Learn to articulate how you're feeling without accusing anyone of having bad intentions. You can say "I'm afraid of being alone" without saying "you're just going to leave me like everyone else." You can say "I need some reassurance" without saying "you probably don't love me anymore." You can say "I'm afraid I've hurt your feelings and I'd like to talk it through" without saying "you don't even like me anymore." You can say "I want to spend more time with you" without saying "you've gotten tired of me." You can say "I feel misunderstood" without saying "you always judge me." Try not to let your emotions get the best of you. Have a conversation focused on finding solutions instead of escalating the conflict.

[ladylingua]

I keep seeing people being shocked and bewildered about airbnb being so crappy to use now

and it’s giving me the impression not everyone knows that is by design- all of those “disrupter” startups operate exactly the same way. So let me lay it out:

First the company starts with an enormous amount of seed money, and they enter an established industry offering the same product but dirt cheap and with the feel of luxury. They operate at a loss for years. They offer their product at such a reduced rate that they literally cannot profit off of it. They rely on their seed money and investment from other wealthy friends to get by. They do this until the other established companies in the industry are on their knees and begging to be bought out. Once all of the competitors have either collapsed or been bought out, the new disrupter company is safe to jack up its prices and reduce services/perks to get to a level that is profitable. It might end up being much more expansive than the industry was to start with, because now that competitors are gone the disrupter business has more room to squeeze customers dry without fear they’ll go to another company instead. The “we’re shaking this industry up to bring high quality products direct to the consumer” pitch has nothing to do with consumers and is entirely about eliminating competitors, particularly long standing well established ones.

This is how uber works, airbnb, all of those. It’s the same game the laundry mat chain in my neighborhood who offers free drying is playing- driving out competition so they have more freedom to price things higher.

Individual consumers often don’t have the luxury to be so choosy about what companies they buy from, but just be aware going in and don’t get taken by surprise later on.

[grison-in-space]

By the way, Amazon is absolutely playing by this handbook, and so did Wal-Mart before it. It's very, very, very predictable.

[deenbot]

[weltenwellen]

Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

[sweatermuppet]

To be fair, it does sound like neurotypical advice

listen, i kno u want a world where a great dramatic event can change everything, but unfortunately, seldom is that the case & yes the system is shitty & yes the world is awful, but there are things within yr reach that need to be changed & it will have to be gradual, it will have to be habitual, you will have to put in the effort, you will have to ask for help, you will still have bad days, you will find that recovery is terrifying, but it is smthng you can do & if you don't wanna hear that then idk block me ive been depressed for a decade, ive been medicated, ive been suicidal, ive been to several different doctors & it sounds stupid but sometimes you need to stop wallowing in your crust bed & get up & open the windows & have a banana or an orange & read a good book & it won't fix EVERYTHING it might not fix ANYTHING but sit in that moment for a second & realize that you must carve a path for yrself, you must wrench the tender pockets open & crawl inside. also that post was meant for ME, not the cesspool of tumblr. god bless

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Having to tell people directly what you need and want from them is actually an unavoidable part of healthy adult communication, not a sign that your friends or partner don't genuinely care about you. So stop waiting for people to read your mind and learn to speak up.

[ghostfacekill-monger]

[nowitsgevaudan]

The feelings you most suppress are the most important ways you guide yourself. Your apprehension to listen is not your own desire. It’s fear of being something more or less or greater or worse or simply different than those around you have implied they will accept.

When you choose to value having other people’s acceptance over your own, you accept a fate of battling your instincts to assimilate to the needs of other people’s egos. In the meantime, a world and lifetime of listening, leaning, allowing, following, perceiving, feeling, and experiencing…constantly eludes you.

Sadness will not kill you. Depression won’t, either. But fighting it will. Ignoring it will. Trying to escape it rather than confront it will. Denying it will. Suffocating it will. Allowing it no place to go other than your deep subconscious to embed and control you will. Not that you’ll take your life or destroy everything “good” you do receive (though you might).

But it will kill you in that it will rob you of every bit of life you do have: You either let yourself feel everything or numb yourself into feeling nothing. You cannot select emotions. You are either in accord with their flow or in resistance to their nature. In the end, the choice is yours.

Book: 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

[julaibib]

Bilāl b. Saʿd رحمة الله said : 

A brother who, whenever you meet him, points out to you one of your faults (for you to correct yourself) is better for you than a brother who, whenever you meet him, puts a dīnār in your hand. 

— Al-Mujālasah wa Jawāhir Al-ʿIlm

[treygotguap]

be feeling down sometimes but remind myself gotta keep it gangsta

[lohver]

you don’t have to accept things you are not okay with.

[am1na]

Source

[squareallworthy]

Do kids today even understand why podcasts are called podcasts?

[squareallworthy]

Well, you see, kids, almost twenty years ago Apple produced a portable audio player called – wait, I need to go back further.

[squareallworthy]

Okay, so in the 20th century, the new inventions of radio and television were known as broadcast media – no, wait, that’s not really the start either –

[squareallworthy]

Broadcasting originally refers to throwing, or casting, handfuls of seeds onto prepared ground, typically used with grain crops, which, uh –

[squareallworthy]

– the Agrucultural Revoution, which begain circa 10,000 BC in the Levant, was when humans began preserving seeds for replanting –

[hersparklingqalb]

To anyone reading this:

may Allāh grant you a love that is good for you and your deen.

may Allāh distance you from a love that destroys you and your deen.

may Allāh cause your heart to not grieve for a love that is not meant for you.

اَمِين يَا رَبَّ الْعَالَمِيْن

[namrekeya-deactivated20161028]

What they don’t tell you about prolonged periods of introspection and careful observation is the harm that can come from being totally alone in that process, with no one to remind you that feeling, learning, watching, and healing are communal. When lonesome thought is fetishized, you feel obligated to suffer in silence, to see all struggles as individual rather than collective. You tell yourself that maybe you’re just growing apart from things you thought you knew, that you’re not doing healing right, and this must mean you’re just inadequate. And at some point, you obsess over this cultivated lifestyle of being quiet, small, and invisible as a means of personal protection that you feel forgotten about and in the end, you have no one but yourself to blame.

Sometimes I wish I could speak and write like I used to. But the more I see and interpret, the less I speak because I become increasingly aware of my own mental boundaries as well as the structural limitations I didn’t want to know existed. And the less I speak, the more I simply think myself into non-existence – or at least, what feels the closest to thinking but not really living.

What does it mean to be seen without desiring all of the accompanying narcissism that attaches itself to forms of recognition? I’ve been thinking and re-thinking the politics of recognition for almost exactly half of a year. Recognition is something so paradoxical to me, and thinking about it is bound to drive you to a point in your mental health where any mention of soap-bathing, bubble-blowing “self-care” rituals make you want to disappear a little more with each passing day. I wonder what it does to a person to ponder alienation in alienation for this long, in addition to all of the recognition rituals that compensate for it. My heart hurts just trying to wrap my mind around that.

I grabbed coffee with a friend I admire so much yesterday, and I asked her if she was feeling this way, too. She said something I knew to be true, but so desperately needed to hear and be reassured by: “Everyone is feeling this way. This feeling is political, not just personal. It permeates daily life and it’s only getting worse and worse.” And I can feel it all the way from Egypt to the United States, the two places I keep escaping for each other only to find myself retreating again for the other. The current global crisis in capital that is building up is wreaking havoc on so many of us in the most insidious ways imaginable. But even attempting to communicate this is difficult and frightening because alienation is so often strategically pathologized, misdiagnosed as “depression”, and written off as individual suffering. And so, we all suffer in silence.