RyanSyn

A place to post things

[sexedplus]

This piece is about prude-shaming and compulsory sexuality. It’s sort of a companion to this other piece, which is about slut-shaming and how wanting to have lots of casual, unconventional sex doesn’t make you a bad person. Follow SexEdPlus or check out SexEdPlus.Com for more stuff like this!

[ryansyn]

Posting Patreons on Grommr

Ok - so a lot of you are talking about patreon today - and its a bit crazy. So lets drop some reality bombs.

Now before I get bashed for this I wanna just say that I support everyone posting their patreons, I support patreons for gainers, and I am glad that patreon exists because it is the perfect way for gainers to make a little extra cash to fund their gaining. I also do more to fight for the ability for you guys to post your patreons regularly than most people posting them deserve. I believe that it's a step in the right direction away from public media sources like youtube and I'm glad a more secure method exists for sharing these kinds of videos regularly. Do I miss seeing gainer vids on youtube? you bet. Do others? you bet. Does that cause problems for you guys - more than you know. Does that mean that its any less risky to share them there - no and that's one of many reasons I'm ok w/ paying people for creating content.

And now - the reality bomb.

You guys are horrible at Patreon. The average patreon subscriber donates about $12/month to all of the patreons they support. ALL OF THEM. COMBINED. This is worth it because they are able to - via multiple pledges - support multiple patreon pages and get a wide variety of content and a moderate amount of it. This is more than a Netflix subscription - and is worth it because of a couple of factors. 1. The amount/variety of content is worth it to that individual, 2. any difference in the worth between amount/variety of content available and the BENEFIT they gain from supporting a cause THEY support makes up for the loss of content in their personal value system.

You guys are not Netflix - so you can't charge Netflix amounts and expect Netflix subscription rates. That's silly.

Next you need to consider your competition. What makes your patreon better than the others? well if the prices are all the same (for some reason you all do $10 which is frankly idiotic when it comes to setting up a patreon page unless you're doing something of the quality of a professional youtuber and even then its high) then you're asking them to choose which gainers they like most and then it comes down to a popularity contest. Which I personally disagree with, (we shouldn't have to choose a small number of gainers to support if we want to donate) but we do.

Another competitor you all have is the platform you're all advertising on. Many of you seem to think that Grommr is some really big company making loads of money because of all the people on it. Well - it's free. For most people at least. A very small percentage (smaller percentage than you think) subscribe to Grommr for between $5/mo to $8/mo (more if you subscribe via the app because Apple/Google have to take their far too generous cut). If Joe Shmo your average grommr user (who btw does not subscribe to grommr) and he has the choice of 4-8 videos a month from 1 person, or access to unlimited blocks and picture views on Grommr - who do you think Joe is going to pick? Its highly unlikely he's going to pick the videos. Not entirely unlikely - just highly.

And finally the other competitor you have is literally any subscription service charging a similar amount. Why pay $10 a month for a patreon gainer when I can have netflix. Or Hulu + spotify. or all the new streaming services coming out. or Crunchyroll premium. There's a ton of stuff out there that's cheaper than $10 a month - and plenty of free fat porn, plenty of free gainer porn, and tons of gainer erotica out there to masturbate to. Your stuff has to be worth more than that if you're going to charge more than that.

Patreon is great because I can support a lot of people for less than my Netflix subscription. I've helped my friend get his Patreon business off the ground (he's not a gainer, just an artist) and now he makes enough money each month to live off his art. His base tier of $1/creation gives access to the art he posts, and he makes enough to live off. I know what I'm talking about here when I say that most of you should not be making content for $10 a month. If you want to make more off your patreon, if you want people to complain less about your patreon, and you want to keep posting your patreons, then I suggest you re-evaluate how you USE patreon.

Your subscription tiers should be more like $1/$2/$5/$10/$25(or similar levels of scaling) rather than $10/$20/$30* (*this example set of tiers is not indicative of any individual gainer's patreon, but just a trend of gainer patreons I've seen). If you have a base tier that gets minimal access - this should be $1 (minimum amount you can donate on patreon). Otherwise you're just fucking with people. All of my favorite artists that I subscribe to on Patreon have $1/creation or $1/month tiers with plenty of access to content. It has kept me subscribing to them for years even when they don't post in a given month, and most of them are professional artists whose primary source of income is patreon and commission work. At $1/month you can attract far more subscribers than $10/month. Since you guys are simply supplementing your gaining and not trying to replace your jobs - this should be more than enough. The point of patreon is to support A LOT of people (read gainers) not just 1. Make it affordable for people to support multiple gainers, and they will. Limit their choices to 1 and they'll get upset that they can't afford it (and frankly a majority of this site can't afford to donate to your poorly made gainer videos. Some can, most can't - be mindful of this).

And before any of you who have patreons say "well I can support other patreons" I'm just going to glare at you for your stupidity because your patrons are supporting your personal subscriber list not you. That's just a dumb argument. They pay you, you pay others, as long as your subscribING list is smaller than your subscribERS list then you're not paying for it, the people donating to you are.

Be smarter about how you use patreon. Don't break the rules (don't delete your patreon posts out of the newsfeed, make sure you're posting less than 1 a day, make sure you post 4 other things between any promotional posts, don't ask for donations, don't con people, etc.) And go on creating amazing content. Follow my advice and you'll probably get less complaints on a personal level. Or don't its up to you - but be mindful that this is a community site and if there comes a day when everyone is simply making posts to bide time between their patreon advertising, no amount of effort on my part will be able to stop the community from fighting back against that, and the creators of this site do listen to the cries of their community (despite all the complaints to the contrary).

[a-chicago-sunflower]

Chubby tummies are adorable

Reblog to spread some body postivity good vibes

[the-exercist]

how can i lose 20LBS in 20 days?

Why?

There is absolutely no reason to lose 20 pounds in 20 days. 

It can’t be for your health, because that extreme form of weight loss is going to be detrimental to your body. It is going to cause you significant damage, both in terms of your metabolism and your body’s ability to heal itself. Losing weight so quickly is going to make you extremely susceptible to gallstones, malnutrition, dehydration, heart attack, seizure and stroke. Extreme weight loss like this is outrageously dangerous.

It can’t be for your appearance, since there is nothing intrinsically more appealing about weighing 20 pounds less. Even looking past the All Bodies Are Beautiful aspect of this, you don’t actually know what you’ll look like when you lose 20 pounds. You don’t know where the weight will come from, where the fat may disappear, or how your body will feel. There’s never a guarantee. Idealizing weight loss is often a matter of romanticizing a concept and feeling unfulfilled by the reality. Even if you believe the myths that a small body is inherently better than a larger body, you have no way of knowing that your smaller body will fit within this mold. And I can practically promise that you won’t feel satisfied even if you succeed.

It can’t be for your self esteem, since it takes much more than a physical change and 20 short days to truly tackle your self-image. If you are genuinely uncomfortable in your body, the problem isn’t weight - It’s really necessary to reevaluate your self-esteem, your values and how you feel about yourself as a person. Changing your body is not going to change your self-image unless you actually begin to attack the feelings that are causing this problem: Your weight is just a scapegoat.

It can’t be that you want to establish healthier habits, because weight loss is not inherently tied to healthy living. Dropping so much weight in only 20 days isn’t a guarantee that your diet or exercise routine are any healthier. It just means that they are more extreme. If you are living healthy, then there may not be any direct ties to weight change. 

It can’t be for a specific event or outfit, since you’ll still be you in 20 days. You’ll still be the person you are, whether or not you’ve lost weight. There is no reason to represent yourself differently or feel that you have to outwardly change your body. There are a million outfits out there for you to wear, and a million different ways for you to look your best while still accurately and legitimately portraying yourself. You do not need to conform to a specific appearance, because you’ll still be you. That isn’t changing in just 20 days.

So why? Why intentionally hurt yourself this way? And why think that I would help you do so?

[budgetrealgood-deactivated20210]

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”

-Brianna Wiest, in Thought Catalog

[thelastmemeera]

What does it mean to be a billionaire?

So there’s been a lot of discussion floating around regarding billionaires and society, and I’ve noticed that most people have no idea what a billion dollars is for practical purposes - people tend to think of it as a vague, nebulous concept of “a lot of money” rather than something concrete you can wrap your head around. This is understandable, considering 1) a billion of anything is really hard to visualize and 2) the average person has no real reference point for an amount of money that large. So I’m going to try to break it down for everyone:

Okay, so imagine you have a billion dollars. What can you actually buy with that?

This is a mega mansion that will have an Imax cinema, a bowling alley, and a spa when it’s fully complete. It costs around 4.6 million dollars.

Now let’s buy one of these in every country in Europe - that’s 50 mansions you now own. So how are you going to travel between all your many homes?

This is a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, the fastest street-legal car in the world. It has a maximum speed of a face-melting 254 mph and can go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. It costs around 2.5 million dollars.

Let’s buy a dozen of them - you know, in case you total a few of them racing around the highway. But maybe a sports car is still to slow for you:

This is an Embraer Lineage 1000. It’s private jet that can seat up to 19 passengers, and we’re going to buy it for 53 million dollars.

How about a boat? The Tatoosh is a 303 ft private yacht, meaning it’s longer than a football field. We’ll take it for 369 million dollars.

Do you like art? Just for fun let’s buy Monet’s most expensive painting ($90 million) Van Gogh’s most expensive painting ($151 million), and this monstrosity, which is made with 8,601 diamonds and costs 65 million dollars.

Now that we’ve gone on our ludicrous and absurdly wasteful shopping spree, how much money do we have leftover? About 12 million dollars, which is almost an order of magnitude more than the average American with a bachelors degree or higher earns in a lifetime ($1.8 million). So if you for whatever reason decided to buy the 50 houses, 12 sports cars, plane, yacht, art pieces etc. and immediately set them all on fire, you would still have enough cash leftover so you never would have to work again if you so chose. This is what it means to be a billionaire.

But we’re not done yet.

The richest person in the world is Bill Gates, with a net worth of 86 billion dollars. If he liquidated his assets, what could he buy?

Well, for starters, the Burj Khalifa - the tallest man-made structure in the world at 2,722 feet tall, costing around 1.5 billion dollars.

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most advanced particle accelerator for 9 billion dollars.

The Hubble Space Telescope for 10 billion dollars (including 20 years of operating costs).

The Three Gorges Dam, the largest power station in the world, more than a mile wide.

And to top it all off, a fleet of five Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, the largest military vessels ever built for around 8.9 billion dollars each. If you look at the picture very closely you can see the people standing on it for reference.

If Bill Gates bought all of this, he would still have around 2.3 billion dollars leftover. That’s enough to go on the billionaire shopping spree I described above twice over (so 100 mansions, 24 sports cars etc.) and still have hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank when it’s all said and done.

But we’re not done yet.

Currently, it’s estimated that there are 2,043 billionaires alive today, with a combined net worth of around 7.67 trillion dollars.

This is Russia, the largest country in the world, extending more than six and a half million square miles, with a population of more than 144 million people. The United Kingdom could fit inside Russia 70 times.

In 2016 Russia’s gross domestic product was about 1.28 trillion dollars. This means that if the two thousand and some odd richest people in the world - less than half of 0.1% of 0.1% of the Earth’s population - liquidated and pooled their assets together, they could buy every single product and service made in Russia for almost 6 years.

So yeah, make of that what you will.

[thelastmemeera]

1 YEAR UPDATE

So it’s been just a little bit over a year since I’ve made this post, and holy shit I didn’t expect it to get so many notes… anyway thought I’d make an update. First, a few responses to common criticisms I noticed:

“That house costs more than you said it costs”

I provided sources for everything, I can’t click on the links for you broski.

“The map of Russia is incorrect”

Strange, my bad… didn’t notice until after I posted that the map I used includes Belarus and a few other countries as part of Russia, no idea why they did that, I should have picked a better map.

“Net worth somehow doesn’t count as worth because not all of it is literal stacks of cash”

First of all I distinctly specified that my figures were based on if said billionaires liquidated their assets, but more importantly that’s like sitting on top of a pile of solid gold bars and claiming you’re totally broke because you can’t use them at the supermarket. Seriously, this is just asinine.

*Insert impassioned defense of capitalism here*

Now if you follow my blog it’s pretty obvious that I’m a leftist, but something I did very deliberately for my billionaire essay was try to avoid ever mentioning left politics or making any moral judgements, i.e. more or less everything I wrote in that post was just objective, inarguable facts. I very intentionally ended the essay with “make of that what you will,” without ever actually commenting on whether the situation was good or bad. If you consider yourself a capitalist and want to remain consistent with reality, you really shouldn’t be offended by this post. If your first response upon looking at a neutral series of data points is to immediately rush to defend the system that produced it, it means you instinctually realize something is terribly wrong and you’re trying to justify it. Just saying, not a good position to be arguing from.

ANYWAY

As of the time of this update, Bill Gates is no longer the richest person in the world; the title now belongs to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with with a mind-blowing $147.7 billion. Now, what could he actually do with all of that? Let’s make a list!

End Homelessness in America

There are an estimated 553,742 homeless people in America. Jeff Bezos could hand every single one of them $50,000 cash for $27,687,100,000, which should be more than enough to get a roof over your head for a decent amount of time.

Give 100,000 students a full ride to Harvard

Going to Harvard University will cost a student about 60,659 a year including tuition, room and board, and various other fees. Paying for a full 4 years for 100,000 students would cost $24,263,600,000.

Buy Iceland for a year

The gross domestic product of Iceland is currently about $23.9 billion dollars, which means for that amount Jeff Bezos could buy every single product and service produced in the country for an entire year.

Fund every US national park for 10 years

This year’s budget for the national park service will probably be about $2.7 billion, so 10 years of funding would be $27 billion.

Give every Amazon worker a $20,000 bonus

Jeff Bezos has 563,100 employees working for Amazon. He could give each and every one of them a $20,000 bonus for $ 11,262,000,000.

End world hunger

It would probably cost around $30 billion to ensure that no person in the entire world suffered starvation and malnourishment this year.

And how much does Jeff have left?

After doing all of that, Bezos would still have upwards of $3.5 billion left over, which is not only far, far more money than a single person could ever spend on themselves, it also would mean he still gets to remain substantially richer than most other billionaires.

Funny world we live in.

[mockiato-deactivated20200315]

Fucking bleak

[tranquilambiguity]

This frustrates me. This isn’t right.

[biglawbear]

The partners I work for are so bad at managing that it’s causing infighting among associates

Like, we’re given so little direction and so much conflicting instructions that we’re arguing with each other because we can’t agree on what work needs to be done

So not only are we disagreeing on work but we’re all getting frustrated and upset so we’re taking it out on each other

I’ve literally been asking for guidance on this case for four months and I keep fucking getting ignored by the partners

And even though this situation is just, at its basic core, bad for business, I keep getting told that apparently the partners don’t care, because they still keep getting paid and don’t think they need to change

I. Hate. This.

These are the worst managers I have ever known.

[ryansyn]

I imagine that this is just how the businessmen of the world see Global Warming. “I mean, I’m making money and the ice caps are still there, surely this isn’t a bad thing.”

[atalana]

Our DM’s Guide to D&D Classes

[thecheshirecass-deactivated2018]

This may be the greatest writing on D&D of our lifetimes. I know it looks like a lot, but please read it, you will be so happy and you will either begin to understand D&D or else recognize this rightness in your SOUL.

[panpanpickerson]

@the-hugs-are-here

[jumpingjacktrash]

the one on rogues called out my retired pc cavino so hard he manifested physically in my house just long enough to hit me upside the head with the pathfinder rulebook

[ryansyn]

This is amazing.

[ixrose]

#chris evans #in where he is actually steve rogers

[urulokid]

#when is chris evans not steve rogers though

[stravaganza]

[an-other-people-deactivated2013]

#when casting is perfect I begin to wonder about Marvel #do they secretly grow these people on farms #let them loose on the world for a while to establish lives #and then cast them as the role they were grown for

[booksandwildthings]

I have

no idea

what you’re

talking about

[skeletoncl0set]

i do believe this is my fifth time reblogging this

[ilovewintersoldiersandsebastian]

apart form sebastian though he goes from this to this

[lastitalianwitcholdblog]

seb’s the weird cousin

[lovemarvel-trash]

@justaweirdthoughtstuff

[smthsmthurmum]

This is amazing oml

[i-is-surrounded-by-idjits]

Seb’s the fanboy they grew to connect with the audience

[itsanerdlife]

@snowyseba This explains everything!

[marveldcmistress]

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots on pinterest. I love it.

[themcuhasruinedme]

I think you missed the other fanboy…

[ellysiacat]

Love this

[sexylibrarian1]

Everybody says Seb isn’t like Bucky… but he IS. He’s Bucky without a mask on. Bucky’s always wearing some sort of mask. Even around Steve. Seb is what Bucky would be like if he’d had the chance to just ~be~.

[that-sokovian-bastard]

UH THIS

[mmmaff-blog]

Um we’re forgetting someone…

[linaofthemyscira]

ITS FINALLY ON MY DASH YESSS

[perpetuallyvex]

Not to forget our “Wizard”:

[formerprincewille]

Aldjaksnana

[patient-wave]

I’ve found it. I’ve found the perfect post.

[im-fangirl-trash-okay-deactivat]

it’s on my dash jdnckdmd

[laufyeson]

these dorks lmaoo

[waywardwilled]

I love everyone omg they’re all so amazing???

[coffee-swimmer]

YES

[ryangosking]

Don’t forget

[eraemx]

Chris looks so hot in that first gif set

[jrubalcaba]

Omg I found THE original post! Holy shit I’ve only ever seen screenshots of this!

[sheridans-dynamos]

This post pops up on my dash every few months and I will never not reblog it.

[lokis-helmet]

This is too good to not reblog

[the-marvel-what-deactivated2020]

Everybody see this, this is the quality trash I came to Tumblr in the first place.

[daily-marvel-dose]

Also

[adjectivebear]

This post is ALMOST perfect, but we’re forgetting someone:

[ryansyn]

Wow. I never realized how perfect the casting really is for the MCU

[233333nonam22me-deactivated2016]

[tackykawa]

me trying to hit a 5000 word count like

[ryansyn]

This scene is brilliant in the fact that at no point is Pinocchio lying, but by using a lot of words, he is absolutely concealing the truth.

Makes you wonder about politicians...

[mikedawwwson]

Why Did They Come?

[wobblyjimbles]

TOO FUCKIN’ phenomenal to NOT reblog!!!!

[mattincanada-deactivated2021031]

Reblog if you’re a grower not a shower.

[ampervadasz]

Unmute !

[ryansyn]

Watch all the way to the end!

[biglawbear]

I just saw a post with the word “homosexual” tagged as “h slur”

When the fuck did homosexual become a slur

What gets me is it was posted by an asexual SJW

Look, I believe asexuals belong in the queer community

But I don’t even think gay people should dictate whether “homsexual” is a slur, much less Ace people

[eevee-nicks-deactivated20200325]

I wouldn’t call it a slur but I would say it had a very bad connotation back around 2008 when the only context you heard it in was “homosexuals will burn in Hell” and “Homosexuality is a sin.” Around that time it was mostly used by extreme religious conservatives and republicans trying to keep same sex marriage banned. It also harkens back to when “homosexuality” was the term used to describe it as a mental disorder.

So I wouldn’t call it a slur but I do hate having to say it. Same way I’m still trying to get used to “queer” being a reclaimed term and not a term of disgust from straight people. I prefer saying lesbian but then that gets conflated with “queer women” and I have to grit my teeth and say “no I mean I’m a female homosexual”. The word leaves a bad aftertaste but it’s very specific and often necessary to use.

(For the record, queer women and wlw are great. Female-gender-attracted lesbians and trans lesbians are totally valid. I’m just a female-sex-attracted lesbian/homosexual and like to be specific about that upfront so as not to be misleading.)

[hamenthotep]

“Homosexuals will burn in hell” and “Homosexually is a sin” have been in use since long before 2008

It was just popularized by the opposition to the gay rights movement in 2008. It was always there, they just made it more acceptable to say it in public.

[eevee-nicks-deactivated20200325]

I know it was always there. I was just using the 2008 date to say that was when the slogans seemed most prevalent and ubiquitous, at least from where I was. At that time that was the *only* context in which I remember hearing homosexual, although I remembered hearing well before and well after that in different contexts.

[biglawbear]

Oh yes absolutely. I agree with everything said above. The word “homsexual” has very bad connotations. Its only uses are offensive (“homsexuality is a sin”) or sterile (“I am a homosexual”). I would never use it in every day conversation. But I think there’s a big difference between that and an outright slur.

[ryansyn]

I wish I could underline how massively important this distinction is to make. Words can have a negative connotation and not be a slur. In order for a word to be a slur it must come with negative intent. A slur is in an insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them or damage their reputation. In this sense, a word spoken without context is very rarely a slur. This is especially the case for words that can be used in the sterile case as @biglawbear points out. 

People who are using words as slurs, will find alternate words to insult someone - so attacking people just for the use of the word will rarely result in anything positive (ex. ‘homosexuality is a sin’ will just turn into ‘being gay is a sin’ - the slur still exists, even if the word changes). I invite you to consider that attacking people for the use of a word, except under the most extreme circumstances, is rarely beneficial and actually harmful to language as a whole.

It is important to keep in mind that language is an evolving tool that we use to describe our ideas to the world. Just because some words have historical connotations, does not mean that a given word is being used in animus or even in a way that will hurt others. Twenty years ago, “fuck” was the be-all-end-all of curse words, now it is easily one of the most common expletives in people’s vocabulary. The word “faggot” has a horrible historical connotation reaching back to the time of witch trials, but now many gay people use it to describe themselves in a proud manner. Similarly, the word “nigga” is based on centuries of oppression, but has been reclaimed the black community. How these words are used matters. The words themselves are not “bad” until they are used poorly. A straight woman calling a gay man she doesn’t know a “faggot” in animus carries different meaning than a gay man calling his other gay friend a “faggot” in levity. Is “faggot” a bad word? No. There are many cases where “faggot” is not a bad word. If that word is primarily used in these cases where it is not bad - then how can we consider it a slur? The thing that makes “faggot” a slur is how that word is used - similar to ugly, or stupid, or ridiculous. Language evolves, and it is up to us to use it and shape its evolution wisely. The more time you spend forcing people to consider certain words as “bad words” the more they become codified as “bad words” - a practice that in the long run is harmful to our language as a whole. Homosexuality is the best descriptor to define ‘sexual attraction between multiple individuals of the same gender identity’. Removing that word from vocabulary as a “bad word” because of a negative historical connotation, deprives people of a succinct word to express that idea when discussing it. The more verbose people have to be with their ideas, especially in today’s era of TL;DR, the less likely it is that they will spend their time discussing it. Discussion of ideas is how language evolves and how words take on new meanings. This is how words leave their negative historical connotations behind, and take on newer more positive connotations in the future. So if you think a word is “bad” examine that word. Examine why that word is a “bad word” and figure out how to prevent that word from being used in ways that will insult or damage people’s reputations. But don’t attack people for saying a word that was once used poorly - especially if that word isn’t currently being used poorly.

[mikalkhill]

“Donald Trump is the literal opposite of Fred Rogers.”

I posted that earlier to my facebook feed, and I’ll be honest…  When I did it I was kind of hoping it would encourage my friend who studied the life of Fred Rogers extensively to chime in because I knew he would have something pertinent to say.  I was not wrong.  

“Fred Rogers had such a huge problem with both Regan (who he programmed his show against) and Bush Jr. (The latter of which is much more complicated as they had a relationship that tested Fred’s boundaries.) that I can’t say “I can’t imagine how Fred would react” I know how Fred would react based on his interactions with the lesser evils of Reagan and Bush: 1. Had he not been retired, he would have themed weeks specifically against what Trump was putting in the news cycle. When Trump mocked a disabled reporter he’d have a week on disability and inclusion, when Trump promoted sexual assault, he’d program a week on respect and physical boundaries, when he bad mouthed women he’d have strong women on for a week. Fred would have travelled to do a week on Mexico and he would have moved in an Islamic neighbor. I know this for a fact because these are the actions he took with Regan both with his “conflict weeks” and his traveling to Russia for remotes during the Cold War. 2. Fred would have attended events Trump invited him to but he would do so on his terms. He would participate in these events as well as long as it was on his terms. Because Fred would rather speak truth into those spaces then avoid them. But Fred would not accuse, he would just bear truth, refuse to be seen as supporting an evil and exit. This is what he did to respond to the love the Bush family had for him and his work. He even offered prayer at one of their fundraisers: but it was a challenging prayer, one insisting that those in power and privilege use that for the least of these and especially children. After delivering that prayer Fred exited the building and sat outside like a kid after soccer practice waiting for his ride, spurning the thousands of dollars a plate dinner not even gladhanding with the bushes after. When asked why he said he had reached the limit of what he could do before becoming an accuser. He wanted to challenge but never accuse as accusation was what Fred associated with the devil. 3. Fred would accept invitations to news programs when those programs allowed him to educate parents on countering the negative things coming from the president for their children. He knew those things affected children so he wanted to spread tools on helping them reject war, violence, hatred, oppression and racism. He did this during any presidents term if it didn’t prevent him from meeting an obligation to children (he once turned down a spot on Nightline to talk about violence and children, one of his main causes, because he had a visit to an elementary school that same morning and knew he wouldn’t be mentally present for it if he was planning for Nightline in the afternoon.) So we need to be like Fred. Getting in between children and any normalization of Trumps ways or words. Fred would have been diligently working on how to handle Trump in the land of make believe. Just like when King Friday started building nuclear bombs with money he promised to schools. Yeah Fred wasn’t subtle.” - Rev. Kevin Ireland

[element-of-change]

Korra + Impossible Redirection

Aqueous + Ferrous Fluids

[ryansyn]

This last gif is actually really cool when you consider that Kuvira bent the meteor rock (the ferrous fluid) as if it were just a soft metal - while Korra is bending it like water because she’s trained in water bending and knows how to do that. In the words of Guru Pathik: “If you open your mind, you will see that all the elements are one. Four parts of the same whole.” To the Avatar, why can’t rock be water?

[feliicityrampant]

the athiesm of women/people of color/lgbt people is absolutely different than the athiesm of cishet white men and i feel like people forget that a lot

[paintmeahero]

how?

[windwardstar]

Don’t have spoons for long explanation - also this is only speaking for christianity - but religion has been a force of oppression for women, people of color, and lgbt+ people and the rejection of the religion is often coupled with the rejection of how religion treats them.

I’ll also say that abuse survivors are included in this because it is a reaction to and an attempt to reconcile how (christian) god would allow abuse to happen.

For straight white men atheism is usually rooted in intellectual and rational superiority complexes. It’s a “i am more rational and intelligent than you, how can you believe in something so obviously fake” thing as opposed to a reaction to a societal institution that upholds their oppression and abuse.

[bairnsidhe]

Women, PoC, Queer people, immigrants, trauma survivors, etc:  How can I believe in something that teaches you to be cruel?  How can I trust the books that tell me of peace and love, when you use your faith to hurt me?  How can a loving god allow [insert injustice of the day]?

White Men: I, as an Intellectual, eschew silly superstitions that say I might, someday, after my death, face one (1) single consequence.

[ryansyn]

I had not considered that my atheism is very different from the other white guys I know who are also atheist - but now trying to understand their atheism I find that it IS in fact rooted in this intellectual superiority complex, and not out of the fact that religion is cruel. While religion has never been directly cruel to me, I was raised religiously and had a hard time combining my scientific curiosity, the cruelty of the deeply religions in the South, and the concept of an all powerful, all knowing, all loving deity who lets bad things exist with seeming randomness.  Not all religions and religious people are cruel, but as a whole - they are. And once you recognize that, it becomes easy to recognize why those who are treated cruelly by religion abandon it.