Sit down and breathe a space

Call me Skates! Writing tag is 'I wrote a thing'. If you like my writing and feel like it, drop me a tip! https://ko-fi.com/skatingfirefly. Ebooks for sale! You can find them at most ebook retailers with these links: Binding a Page: https://books2read.com/u/4X5AB5 (now also in print with print on demand! Order from most book retailers.) Once Cursed, Twice Shy: https://books2read.com/u/mZ8nBB After the Storm: to buy, https://books2read.com/u/mKq0zv Or to read for free, https://michiganfleet.wordpress.com/read-after-the-storm/ Athena Merrill and the Midnight Chicken: https://books2read.com/u/31akq7 Learning the Ropes: https://books2read.com/u/3Gq8dL The Art of Boytoy Maintenance: https://books2read.com/u/49qpM0 Cross My Heart: https://books2read.com/u/38qkMO The Taste of New York: https://books2read.com/u/bPd6K7

[rollerskatinglizard]

Run Aground Update!

Today, May 31st, we start our third and final Act with Chapter 49! Read it on Royal Road, Wattpad, or our website. (And if you feel like reblogging this post, we'd be grateful!)

The early access ebook of Run Aground is available on Smashwords. The final, polished version of the ebook with illustrations and bonus extras will come out November 2026.

If you're reading on Royal Road, please consider giving us reviews and ratings as well as comments and favs: the former are what help the story's ranking the most and thus potentially get us more readers! Note: on Royal Road, a review is on the story as a whole, while a comment is on one particular chapter. You don't have to wait til the story's done to leave a review, just say what you like about it so far!

The seventh book (and second full-length novel) in the Michigan Fleet series, Run Aground, is now posting one chapter every Sunday on Royal Road, Wattpad, and our new Michigan Fleet website! You can read it wherever you like, and can leave us comments so we know who’s reading where! (Please give us feedback, we’ve been writing this book for so long...) Every other chapter is illustrated by the talented cowriter-artists Ray and Splickedy. The book should stand alone fine if you haven't read the series, although it will be a richer experience if you've read After the Storm and Taste of New York (and maybe Cross My Heart).

After years trapped in a wealthy monster’s harem, actor Rafael Caro is a ghost of his former self. When he meets Rich Merrill, the newest captive, unexpected kindness brings him back to life and headlong into love. Rich, Rafael and their friends in the harem try to keep each other sane and safe in this cruel place—but no one escapes without help from outside...

Note: The series so far has been reasonably delicate with the subject of sexual coercion, but this story has a lot to do with captivity, exploitation, and depersonalization. We take those subjects seriously, and though we try to keep the hurt balanced with comfort, the dark topics are still prominent parts of the narrative. If you have triggers around sexual coercion and abuse, be cautious about this story. If you're into this shit: hell yeah welcome aboard!!!

Content warnings: dubcon, noncon, sexual slavery, violence, alcohol use, noncon drug and alcohol use, murder, attempted suicide.

Now go, read and enjoy on whichever site you prefer!

[felikatze]

URGH. Emmerich Holyblade and I just went to The Ceremony to receive our RPG Job Titles, and he OBVIOUSLY got Chosen Hero Sword Saint. So now he's gonna set out to kill the Demon Lord of Darkness.

Me? I just got Dark Mage. Honestly, it's pretty rare, but the job opportunities are also limited. You either get into covert assassination or dungeon raiding.

God, just because we're the only two kids in The Village, Emmerich Holyblade automatically assumes this makes us friends. He doesn't even realize I hate him and his stupid smug swordsman ass.

URGGHHHH he just asked me to join his Grand Hero's Party. fuck. I can't just say no if the Grand Holy King himself is gonna payroll us to do this shit. Whatever man. Let's rock till the Demon Lord of Darkness is dead, and then I can retire and never see Emmerich Holyblade again.

[felikatze]

Help me. I've been trying to quit the Grand Hero's Party but Emmerich keeps introducing me as his childhood friend to all the new fucking party members. I hate them all.

The tank Ferron Shieldson gives me bro fists hard enough to bruise. Sister Savantha Healier has tripped over her habit ten times in the past hour.

Elfdame Woodsworth the beautiful elf archer huntress keeps dragging deer carcasses to camp. I'm so tired of venison.

[felikatze]

I've been trying to have the Grand Hero's Party kick me out, but instead of undervaluing my Super Secret Invisible Debuff Technique (which looks like I'm just standing there) Emmerich Holyblade figured out it stacks with his Five Phoenix Absolution to hit the damage cap.

Outside of combat, I've done a lot of very invisible low-tier work nobody really needs, such as managing all of our finances and inventory, yet they keep fucking including me and praising my efforts when they're having a drink at the tavern.

Emmerich Holyblade spilled some beer on my shadowy cloak when he slung an arm around my shoulder. His breath stinks.

[felikatze]

I'm so tired of camping, honestly. Random Farmers and Shit keep inviting us to stay with them for the night, but their beds suck and I hate the food.

Our reputation really soared when we stopped one of the Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West from destroying Capital City of the Holy Church Kingdom Nation.

Emmerich Holyblade insists my 70% Paralysis Debuff clutched the entire encounter despite dealing the Super Cool Omega Finisher, so everyone's asking me for autographs.

Shouldn't he know I hate social interaction if he claims to be my "childhood friend"?? LEAVE ME ALONE.

At least Princess Dowed Verily only has eyes for Emmerich Holyblade and his stupidly sculpted biceps. Weird he insists on ignoring her advances, though. Dude, you could be King. What the hell.

[felikatze]

Emmerich Holyblade truly is the worst. Princess Dowed Verily tried to have me exiled before the whole court, saying I'm just a leech on the Grand Hero's Party besmirching my "childhood friend"'s good name and status, but Emmerich Holyblade fucking defended me!!!

He said I'm invaluable to this party both as part of our battle plans, our day-to-day tasks, and as his "dearest companion". GROSS!!!

Doesn't he realize this was the PERFECT chance for me to disappear to another country???

Why did I think this Demon Lord of Darkness-slaying shit was a good idea in the first place?? Surely Emmerich Holyblade's boundless enthusiasm to be a do-gooder can't be an infectious disease??

[felikatze]

Another day, another trial. We journeyed to the Yggdrasil Holy Nature Origin Forest because it's said the Elves of the Yggrasil Holy Nature Origin Worldtree have the sacred sword Swordexcaliburn, the only weapon capable of permanently killing the Demon Lord of Darkness for good.

Except Elfsdame Woodsworth might be the Holy Nature Origin Princess, or something. I wasn't really paying attention to her dramatic backstory.

After we killed the Holy Nature Origin King (who was really one of the Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West in disguise), Elfsdame Woodsworth the beautiful elf archer huntress just kinda gave us the sword.

It's sunset right now, and I climbed a tree to just overlook the forest in peace, ALONE, except Emmerich Holyblade "knew I'd do something like this", so now he's HERE. HE ALWAYS DOES THIS!!!!

Blergh. Now we're watching the sun set over the whole Holy Kingdom Church Nation. It's pretty, but that dumbass Emmerich Holyblade isn't even looking at it. Idiot.

At least he's being quiet.

[felikatze]

By the way, we beat up the other two Four Demonic Kings of the East North South and West, because we don't really have the time to show all this onscreen, you know? Nobody really cares about them anyways.

We've reached the Demon Lord of Darkness's Dark Demonic Castle Keep now, and we're striking tomorrow.

It's my last chance to quit if I don't want to beef it tomorrow (I do not trust Ferron Shieldson to shield me), but Emmerich Holyblade said he can't do it without me. HE, singular?? So everybody else can do it without me??

And to make matters worse, he said he'd tell me something after we beat the Demon Lord of Darkness. Why the hell tell me you're gonna tell me something??? Just tell me in the first place so I can ditch.

And besides, as if anyone could actually kill the goddamn Chosen Hero Sword Saint. At the very least, he's gonna survive tomorrow. Doesn't he realize how stupidly contrived his powerset is?? Dude, as IF.

I told him that, and he ran off. I'm never going to understand him.

One more day, and I'm leaving forever. Grand Holy King better pay up good, or I'm covert assassinating his ass.

[felikatze]

Inside the Dark Demon Castle Keep, we had to fight through so many waves of enemies, like Sister Savantha Healier's Evil Twin, who worships the Demon Lord of Darkness instead of the Goddess of Good Stuff.

But mainly I was just standing in the back. Debuffing is a crazy magic drain, so I did get super tired, but the most exciting thing I was involved with was when Sister Savantha Healier's Evil Twin threw her weapon at me in a last ditch attempt to take at least one of us down, but Emmerich Holyblade intercepted it. With his body.

Sister Savantha Healier just healed him after, though, so it's fine. I might've been mincemeat had that hit my squishy self. I'm a proud backliner, okay. But it was still pretty stupid and unnecessary, considering we have Phoenix Blessing Revival Potion Stones.

Demon Lord of Darkness up ahead... Just one more boss and we're doooooone.

[felikatze]

Anyways, the Demon Lord of Darkness wasn't even that cool. The orchestra was great though. I gotta see if the piano player survived the Dark Demon Castle Keep's collapse.

Everybody weakened the Demon Lord of Darkness with their own strikes, so Emmerich Holyblade could finish him off properly with the holy sword Swordexcaliburn.

Before he did, he looked at me with these fucking... star-filled eyes and bright smile, which made everybody else also look at me, which made the Demon Lord of Darkness laugh, so I just nodded at Emmerich Holyblade to go kill the fucking Demon Lord of Darkness already.

God, that took so long. I'm taking a vacation. I'm disappearing into a forest without any elves in it and never talking to another person ever again.

At least now I get to know whatever Emmerich Holyblade wants to tell me. It better be good, because it's the last thing he'll ever tell me.

[felikatze]

He, uh. He. Well he. Uh. Hm. Well. How do I put this. Well. Hm. Uhhhhhhhhhh.

E-Emmerich Holyblade, well, he.

Much to. To think about. yeah.

[felikatze]

I said yes.

[curejune]

[felikatze]

JUNE. JUNE WHEN I GET YOU!!!! aurgh i love these. thank you so much. how did you know i kept imagining emmerich as blonde. AND THE PIANO PLAYER IN THE BACK RHRGH

[rainbowgaez]

evil great lakes

lake inferior

lake normal

lake offtario

lake hurton

lake michigan

[desert-love]

[ltwilliammowett]

The Danish training ship “Georg Stage” (1934) dresses in rainbow colour, 2021 

[dragon-in-a-fez]

not the kind of gay ship I’m used to seeing on tumblr but cool

[dubiousculturalartifact]

ship georg is an outlier but SHOULD be counted

[myspace]

Six flags commercial from 2004 you most likely forgot about.

[nonenosome2]

Nobody who has seen this has ever forgotten about it.

[twiststreet]

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Edited down a long tweet. (x)

[its-emimi]

Happy Pride month! 🌈

[weepingwidar]

Sahana Ramakrishnan (Indian, 1993) - The Earth at Night (Solar Storm) (2023)

[memories-of-ancients]

Mother of pearl decorated ewer, Gujarat, India, circa 1570-1620

from the Peabody Essex Museum

[telekitnetic-art]

ITS PRIDE MOTNH~!!

If you wanna support an Indigenous LGBTQ+ artist who is very much relying on any and all shop orders and freelance art opportunities to pay their bills, consider checking out my online shop!!! I'm running a 20% off sale on everything!! Just click the link below and/or use the code "GAY" at checkout!!

20% discount off TeleKitnetic's Shop

Visit TeleKitnetic at Ko-fi for 20% discount off Shop

And thank you so much to everyone who's supported my artwork endeavours all year!! You all give me the confidence to keep going through it all!!

[directactionforhope]

Every time you catch yourself going, "Fuck, are humans just inherently evil and naturally inclined to selfishness and harm???" you HAVE to remember that that's literally a core ideal of Christianity.

So if it feels inescapable and like evidence of it is everywhere, whether at times or always, that might just because you're in a Western country where you're surrounded by Christians who believe that, fundamentally, in their worldview. And also they talk and make art about it all the time and run the vast majority of news outlets. And spent over a thousand years burning any art or texts that disagreed with them. Etc. etc.

If you're gonna come to as drastic and painful a conclusion as that, at least take the time first to make sure you're not working with biased evidence (surrounded by too many people and cultural products that believe original sin is real)

And if it turns out the feeling WAS partly the result of cultural Christianity, then hey, that's great news, because it means there's that much (and it really is SO MUCH) less evidence that humans inherently suck. Which is good, because we don't

[vasyan-pupkinyan]

ignore that cultural trauma, ask an archeologist / paleontologist.

how often do we find human remains / burials attributable to a peaceful death of old age, or at least to disease / wild animals? and attributable to human violence, i.e. with traces of weapon impacts?

to use an old quote, the last ape became the first human not when he picked up a stick to reach some fruit, but when he used that stick to bash another ape over the head and take away his fruit.

[directactionforhope]

I disagree with pretty much all of that, actually. Modern archeology is only just in the process of pulling itself out of hundreds of years of racism, bias, colonialism, disproven assumptions, widespread graverobbing, and massive, blatant pseudoscience; many ideas and publications in the field that older than about 20 years are of highly questionable provenance.

I personally am much more convinced and compelled by newer theories that, if any piece of technology made us human, it was not the weapon - it was the carrier bag, the story, and/or fire. (But not fire with the primary purpose of violence, mind you - fire with the primary purpose of heat and food and sanitation)

Here's a quote on this from one of my absolute favorite thinkers and writers, Ursula K. Le Guin:

If you haven't got something to put it in, food will escape you- even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat. You put as many as you can into your stomach while they are handy, that being the primary container; but what about tomorrow morning when you wake up and it's cold and raining and wouldn't it be good to have just a few handfuls of oats to chew on and give little Oom to make her shut up, but how do you get more than one stomachful and one handful home? So you get up and go to the damned soggy oat patch in the rain, and wouldn't it be a good thing if you had something to put Baby Oo Oo in so that you could pick the oats with both hands? A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient. The first cultural device was probably a recipient. . . . Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier. So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women's Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody with in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky...? I don't know. I don 't even care. I'm not telling that story. We've heard it, we've all heard all about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news... It sometimes seems that that story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all , some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we'd better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one's fin- ished. Maybe. The trouble is , we've all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.

-via Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Originally published 1986, new edition with forewords and commentaries published 2024.

[directactionforhope]

Oh also if any technology did make us human, archeological evidence currently very strongly argues it was when we harnessed fire and invented cooking.

Fire is literally the reason our brains are larger than any other species of ape's, because harnessing fire meant we spent radically less energy spent on digestion - and those excess resources instead changed the evolution of the human brain.

Also fire is probably the reason we're not fully covered in hair anymore, evolutionarily - because we evolved in equatorial Africa, where not wearing a fur coat everywhere was an evolutionary advantage due to, you know, the temperature of it all. Once we could make our own heat to survive the cold nights and winters, less insulation was a huge evolutionary advance in equatorial regions especially

Why Fire Makes Us Human

Cooking may be more than just a part of your daily routine, it may be what made your brain as powerful as it is

Wherever humans have gone in the world, they have carried with them two things, language and fire. As they traveled through tropical forests they hoarded the precious embers of old fires and sheltered them from downpours. When they settled the barren Arctic, they took with them the memory of fire, and recreated it in stoneware vessels filled with animal fat. Darwin himself considered these the two most significant achievements of humanity. It is, of course, impossible to imagine a human society that does not have language, but—given the right climate and an adequacy of raw wild food—could there be a primitive tribe that survives without cooking? In fact, no such people have ever been found. Nor will they be, according to a provocative theory by Harvard biologist Richard Wrangham, who believes that fire is needed to fuel the organ that makes possible all the other products of culture, language included: the human brain. Every animal on earth is constrained by its energy budget; the calories obtained from food will stretch only so far. And for most human beings, most of the time, these calories are burned not at the gym, but invisibly, in powering the heart, the digestive system and especially the brain, in the silent work of moving molecules around within and among its 100 billion cells. A human body at rest devotes roughly one-fifth of its energy to the brain, regardless of whether it is thinking anything useful, or even thinking at all. Thus, the unprecedented increase in brain size that hominids embarked on around 1.8 million years ago had to be paid for with added calories either taken in or diverted from some other function in the body. Many anthropologists think the key breakthrough was adding meat to the diet. But Wrangham and his Harvard colleague Rachel Carmody think that’s only a part of what was going on in evolution at the time. What matters, they say, is not just how many calories you can put into your mouth, but what happens to the food once it gets there. How much useful energy does it provide, after subtracting the calories spent in chewing, swallowing and digesting? The real breakthrough, they argue, was cooking.

-via Smithsonian Magazine, June 2013. Emphasis mine. In the time since this article was published, what was considered a "provocative theory" in 2013 has become a matter of increasing scientific evidence and scientific consensus.

Richard Wrangham lays out his theory as a whole in his 2010 book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.

For more current summaries on the history of fire, and scientific and archeological evidence for its role in human evolution:

Evolutionary fire ecology: An historical account and future directions. August 2023. BioScience, volume 73, issue 8, pages 602–608. Permalink: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad059, paywall-free.

The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process. By J. A. J. Gowlett. June 2016. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, volume 371, issue 1696, epage 20150164. Permalink: doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0164, paywall free.

Or, less scholarly:

Fire and the Brain: How Cooking Shaped Humans | AMNH

It takes a lot of calories to power a human brain. Find out how cooking and gut microbes help us make the most of our food.

[reasonsforhope]

Humans are not defined by our capacity for violence.

Current archeological evidence suggests that humans are, if anything, defined by the hearthfire.

By cooking. By our ability to keep ourselves warm. By our ability to provide for ourselves and each other. By humanity's millennia-long quest to beat back the ravages of starvation and hunger.

By our millennia-long quest to make our lives, and the lives of those we love, more and more into something we can live

[kedreeva]

Also like do go ahead and ask an archaeologist/anthropologist. Ask them about the healed broken bones they've seen that is evidence of humans caring for one another since we became human. Ask them about the hearths they've found for humans to gather around, and the cookware they've seen crafted by human hands. Ask them about the small circle of bricks in front of hearths that confounded them until someone realized it was to keep chicken chicks in the house where children could play with them. Ask them about the tools of creation they've seen. Ask them about the musical instruments, and the artwork spanning back to when we lived in caves. Ask them about the children's footsteps, their play preserved in mud. Ask them about the clothing they've seen and the hands that stitched them or wove them.

Ask them how long ago we looked at wolves and saw friends. Ask them when we first tilled the soil and planted seeds so we could grow things on purpose. Ask them how long ago we began to travel simply to explore the world around us.

Ask them why they put their hands on the earth searching for history and spend hours digging through archives and talking to other humans about the past. Archaeologists and Anthropologists are like the #1 people to love humans so much they want to know everything about all of the humans across history, and IMO the questions you ask them are a bigger reflection of the person asking them than anything else.

[aetherograph]

We are a social species. In order to cooperate enough to hunt meat, to find enough food, we have to work TOGETHER. We have to make a together.

The Thin Veneer Theory--the Christian one, the one that says humans are inherently violent--falls completely the fuck apart when you realise that we would not have survived if we were that violent. We just would not have! If you kill someone in your very small group--because we lived in very small groups at first, under 10 people--then you've lost someone's knowledge, their hands, their legs, their eyes, their HELP. Help that you are going to need! Makes no sense. Not even chimps, our most violent cousins, are this violent to one another across their species. Because it's impractical for a social animal.

But the data says otherwise as well. Humans help. From birth. Other social animals also help--not just their immediately family or their group, but even other species of animal from them. Helping is inherent to being an intelligent animal that lives in groups, it seems.

But if you don't want to believe all those experiments and data, that's fine. Believe your own DNA then. Unless you are from Subsaharan African peoples, you have more than one species of human in your DNA. This means at some point, your grandmother and grandfather found someone of a whole other species attractive. That's a fact. And we keep finding more species hidden in our DNA even now--I think the most recent one was Denisovian! I don't know HOW you could interpret THAT information as "humans are violent and hate strangers" because it wouldn't be there if two people of two different species hadn't fucked enough to make a baby that survived long enough to make another and so on down the millions of years to now. That's incredible stuff. That means MILLIONS of humans had cross-species relationships! That means our species is SO friendly that we willing to reach across species and make babies with someone else! That is an incredibly high amount of friendliness!!!

We are a motley of many species of human being. That alone should be proof enough that we are inherently so full up with the desire to Make Friends that we will do it over and over to strangers and other animals unlike ourselves. We domesticated one of our main predators. We were so friendly and kind to cats they decided to bring us their babies and we were so friendly and kind we took care of those babies and now we make images of cats and put them everywhere and share them with one another. Even animals we eat, we are kind to and even decide that some of our gods are in their image, and make rules that say "it is Forbidden to kill this animal in a way that brings it suffering, it is Forbidden by the gods to make this animal suffer while it is alive" in MANY religions.

I do not fucking know what kind fo miserable attitude makes you say that you truly believe your species--your species, which has buildings and roads, maps and schools, books and movies, holidays and parades, sports and medicine and everything ELSE that requires lots of cooperation--is inherently NOT cooperative, altruistic, friendly in nature. We wouldn't HAVE society if we weren't a species that LIKES to cooperate with others! We wouldn't have agriculture! We wouldn't have ANYTHING! It ALL required cooperation!

[politijohn]

Source

Happy Pride Month!

[reasonsforhope]

Holy shit!!!!!!! HUNGARY DID IT!!!!

-via the Los Angeles Blade, June 1, 2026

[reckless-glitch]

[ramblingandpie]

[Video description: Gritty is turning the crank on a flagpole to raise the Progress Pride Flag. He gesticulates angrily that the flag is not blowing in the wind, then gestures offscreen. The flag begins blowing. As Gritty begins raising the flag more, the camera pans out to show a man in a suit and sunglasses, looking like a stern Secret Service agent, is holding a leafblower that points at the flag. End description.]

[plumslices]

Hand-painted Hilma of Klimt nails by @nailedbytav

[teaboot]

Do you have any advice for someone else who is in the very beginning stages of the "life is a precious gift rapidly escaping me, I have to change to become someone better and be happy before I've wasted all of it" transition? I'm tired of losing so much life and joy to grief and trauma and I also want to start creating and seeing and enjoying as much as I can for my tiny time as a carbon based lifeform but it's overwhelming to say the least

Actively seek out things that inspire wonder

Look for the good parts. There are good parts. There are interesting parts. There will always be good and interesting parts.

Treat yourself kindly. This one is difficult.

Do things out of ridiculous whimsy.

Practice cog itive behavioural exercises to self-examine and address beliefs and behaviors that are causing suffering.

Don't argue when people compliment you.

Don't rush yourself, and don't assume it'll be like this forever when you have a backslide. These things happen. Over time, they happen less.

Be honest with the people you love and trust.

Tell people how much they mean to you and what you like about them.

Help others and find satisfaction in being the stranger that did something good

Consider speaking to a medical professional, my antidepressants and anti-anxiety medical took some time to figure out but life is WAY better.

Have a silly little craft or hobby.

Let yourself be bored sometimes. Stand outside in the rain and let yourself get wet. Go on a walk. Put your phone in a different room and wander off. Meet up with a friend and go on a long walk together to nowhere in particular

Start doing things because you want to and it feels good, not just because you think it's something you should say yes to.

Say yes to things.

Take a random day of the week and go into a store or a business you've never been in before.

Compliment strangers when something about them is striking.

Read books and watch movies that make you feel the exact right amount of ecstatic and embarrassed, and make all the silly noises about it.

Collect scraps of fabric and little trinkets and all the little textures and colours you love and stash them in a shoebox or something like a tiny dragon's hoard.

Start a collection of something small and inexpensive. Like corks.

Make food with ingredients you've never used before

Make long lists of all your favorite things- flowers, bugs, songs, foods, places

Start a trash-book to fill with scraps of neat wrappers and bits of paper and colored fabric from old ruined clothes

Imagine yourself as a alien from a dead and barren world who has just arrived on this planet for the very first time and imagine how excited you would be by every little thing

Cannot recommend enough that you befriend a creature

[fibrearts]

Starry Night Microsweater

2022 1.3" x 1.6" ~50,000 stitches, 76 stitches/inch 500+ hours in the making. Over 70 different colors of silk thread including thread combinations

[jabberwockypie]

That’s Althea Crome’s work. You’ve seen her work before if you’ve ever seen the movie Coraline because she did the teeny tiny star sweater and gloves for the stop motion puppets to wear.

She does, however, work even smaller.

[elodieunderglass]

Thank you @eloso - look at the tiny knits!