The Sin Bin

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers' markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR

and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"

and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER

But they will go, because there might be baby goats.

cuntyjugheadfromriverdale

Since I made this post, dozens and dozens of people have left tags telling me that it was the first thing today that made them want to continue living, that it was the first thing that made them consider that they might be okay years in the future, that they might grow old, that it was the first and only post of its kind they'd ever seen—the first post that boldly predicts a future where we make it.

And many other people have been just spitting, foaming at the mouth fucking FURIOUS. How dare I have the audacity to imagine a future where things get better?

Don't I know how BAD things are? Am I not aware of the TERROR and DEVASTATION of climate change and fascism and biodiversity loss? How dare someone be so bold, so callous, as to imagine something other than misery and suicide. How dare someone suggest it will get better. How dare a person propose that there is a future where we will be okay, in the face of so much terror. Hasn't she seen the abyss opening its jaws before us?

Well? What do you think?

Do you think I've seen the abyss?

the idea that there is hope for the future is the only way we have this kind of future.

there were kids who stayed inside because of the black plague and went on to help cure it.

there were women who sat at home and cleaned the house and dreamt up a world where they could vote and have jobs.

there were kids in the mines who thought up a life outside of it. there were children who hid in annexes and wrote a diary where they prayed for a future without a terrible man in control

there were slaves who wanted freedom so badly and had hope that it would get better

there were gay people who hid in the corners of clubs and fought back for a future where they could walk down the street together

do you know what all of that has in common? they had hope that things would get better and they made that change. they looked at the world in its cruel ways and fought back.

so now, there are kids and teenagers and young adults and new adults who dream of a world so beautiful and the only amazon their grandchildren know is the rainforest

and it is in everything we do that we find this hope. wishing on dandelions, counting the stars, making our own clothes out of crochet or knit or sewing it, watching the sunset, going to the farmer’s market, feeding the birds, planting seeds.

step by step, we dream up, like our ancestors before us, a beautiful world

greatmountainfloofsquatch

THE ONLY AMAZON OUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL KNOW IS THE RAINFOREST

sevdrag

You can have hope and fight. In fact, it’s the only way we will possibly succeed.

#solar pink

ristay

Sorry if it’s a little cramped- had to make this all fit in ten photos. Hope you guys like it….. and again…. sorry Andrew

Follow me on Webtoons

ruby-white-rabbit

The window visual did me in I’m wheezing

floralpopie

WELP

doctor-seamonster

I haven’t seen this in years and yet it is burned into my memory forever.

anotherdayforchaosfay

This is on the short list of Eternal Reblog because it’s fucking legendary.

magrowette

An honourable candidate for the @hellsite-hall-of-fame

#comic #for when you are sad #this is one of my favourites

this is a highly controversial opinion, I have no doubt King Arthur was bisexual but I think he was one of the few people in Camelot not interested in fucking Lancelot. he wanted to retain him as an employee but it did not cross his mind that Lancelot was fucking his wife because Lancelot is such a weird little twerp that he did not perceive him as a sexual being. my interpretation.

So true. The Galehaut/Lancelot relationship was like a dynastic marriage to resolve the conflict between two imperial powers. I like to imagine Galehaut was like “I have decided to abandon my plans of capturing [what is now] all of southern England and surrender to you despite my military advantage, all for the love of my achingly beautiful and spectacular new male wife, Lancelot du Lac.” and Arthur was like “Okay. Weird. Not homophobic or anything but Lancelot? You’re in love with Lancelot?”

Co-signed. That’s some real shit you said. Also, unlike Arthur, he was willing to yield and share his lover for everyone’s benefit. And then he died for love. A real freak. One of the best freaks in 13th century French literature.

he’s the most interesting gay wifeguy in literary gay knight history

elodieunderglass

I started a mental sentence with, “well, when we diagram the Arthurian polycule-“

And then realised that would be such a good title for a paper. “Diagramming the Arthurian Polycule: Mapping the Dynamics of the Round Kitchen Table”

#Lancelot #king Arthur

re: the loneliness epidemic post, it's genuinely so so so hard right now as someone whose Job is organizing events for LGBT university students. our whole goal is to help them find peers to connect with, but it often feels like they're working against us.

not on purpose, of course, and I never want to sound like I'm blaming students for their own feelings of isolation. there are a lot of factors that make it hard to socialize, ranging from a very full class/work schedule to various neurodivergences to the majority white attendance at many campus activities to the fact that many of these students spent some formative years in quarantine.

but man, it's hard when students talk about feeling hated and unwanted by a club because no one there talks to them, only to drop that they never even try to initiate any conversation themselves. or when a student complains that they're not making any friends on campus, but when asked where they're going to meet people outside of class they seem confused and say they hardly leave their dorm for anything but class. we're currently administering an anonymous survey to assess student satisfaction with our programs, and one person wrote that they'd like to attend more of our events but don't because they don't know anyone there and don't know what the vibe will be. the solution to both of those problems feels very obvious, to me, and it's frustrating to see mild uncertainty be such a hurdle.

especially given that, again, these are queer young people, who a.) have a lot of reasons to despair right now and b.) have a lot of awful online spaces they could be spending time in instead of touching grass, it's a fucking bummer to see them so wary of hanging out in physical space with real people.

johannestevans

A skill i've been working to get better at when I go to conferences and conventions is to basically approach tables of interesting looking people and going "May I join you?" and listening to their conversation and joining in

And it is a skill! You are approaching strangers, you are making a bid for connection and interaction that may end in rejection, or just not clicking fully, or anything similar, and that can be scary!

But I think a problem that a lot of younger people have in how harshly regimented many schools and then colleges are, and ditto how little free time they're likely to have outside of their workplace and commute, made worse by isolated housing and lack of free or even affordable third spaces

Is that there's very little development of the skill of seeking out the people who look interesting or otherwise compatible with yourself, approaching them, and beginning the process of connecting with them

People are very used to only making new friends and connections when circumstances, and especially an authority, force them into proximity with one another

Esp in a surveillance state where there's anxieties about meeting new people in case they're bad or incompatible with your beliefs, sometimes people only want to connect with new people when they can scope them out on socials first, and that only adds to this anxiety of meeting people as a social skill!

wiseguynephile

tbh if i was chilling at a table talking with my friends and some rando walked up and said "may i join you?" i would be offended and creeped out

i do empathize with and agree with a lot of OP here but at the same time so much of that post and especially the reblog are placing all the onus on the lonely people. all the work of seeking out connection is being placed at the feet of the people with the least social power and wherewithal. why should that be how it works

if there's a cool group of people talking, i'm never going to walk up and bother them. they're the ones with a solid social footing and comfortable position, they're the ones who can afford to invite me in to what they're doing if they want to.

if i'm new at college and I go to a club meeting, it's not my job as the newcomer to start conversations! I've got no social capital, if I try to start conversations I'm being intrusive and rude! It's their club and I'm some rando who wandered in! If I'm the newcomer it's their job to be welcoming if they want new people. I should be humble and wait, and they should be inviting me in and making me part of what's going on.

all of this follows from the basic fact that our society is structured to reward pushiness and arrogance, and expects people to "assert themselves" and "put themselves out there" and look after their own interests. that's what we admire and that's what we expect, and even OP, firmly goodhearted and wanting to help these people, is seeing it as a failure on their parts that they're not pushy and rude enough to make friends. that's just a bad way to structure a society! the work of fixing loneliness should be done by people who aren't lonely; they're the ones with the power to do so.

okay. so. in the space of this answer you have both indicated that a.) you think the impetus of social inclusion should be on people who already have an existing social footing and also b.) if you were in a position of being the person with an existing social connection and the opportunity to make space and welcome others in you would find them offensive and creepy.

so I'm not really sure what you want me to take from that.

wiseguynephile

I had a comfortable social position, then I would absolutely be using it to invite in other people who didn't have that. If you see an acquaintance (someone who's just joined the club you're in, for instance) standing around awkward and lonely, you throw them a line, you make them part of the conversation.

If on the other hand they didn't wait to be invited but instead invited themselves, if a total stranger didn't just make themselves available but instead started acting like we were already friends, that is what I would find offensive and creepy.

you do understand that we're talking about social events where the explicit purpose is for people to be making new connections and introducing themselves to each other, yes?

ancelineonline

… I’m beginning to see the problem you’re talking about OP. Also I’m taking bets on how long it is before this post results in the Ben Affleck smoke break photo.