ليلى

many different ways to say the same thing

[xxds8]

[scorpionlafemme]

[aetas-aurea]

My prediction…

We are entering a period where knowledge as a currency is collapsing in real time. The ability to write, to research, to synthesize information, to produce competent work across essentially any knowledge domain is being democratized to the point of worthlessness as a differentiator. Anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can now produce in minutes what used to require years of specialized training and the market has not fully registered what that means yet but it will.

What rises in value when knowledge becomes abundant and cheap is everything that cannot be generated, replicated, or approximated by a system that has never felt anything. Genuine human emotion expressed through art, music, movement, storytelling. Creativity. Originality. The specific and irreplaceable quality of a performance that came from a real body with a real history and real pain and real joy behind it. Presence. The ability to move a room not through information but through feeling. Connection that is visibly and verifiably human in a landscape where the distinction between human and generated is becoming increasingly difficult to establish. I think we are about to enter a period where technical flawlessness becomes the hallmark of the artificial and imperfection becomes the watermark of the real.

Singing, dancing, painting, acting, writing that is unmistakably personal and unmistakably felt. Not because AI cannot produce technically competent versions of all of them but because technical competence was never actually the point and people are going to feel that absence acutely once it is the only thing on offer everywhere they look. Niche knowledge based on extensive experience that you won't find on google. Developing expertise in human messiness. Physical craft and making with your hands woodworking, pottery, cooking, tailoring, building. Being real and embracing imperfections. You’ll be fine…. You can't outwork the machine, you can't outsmart it, but you are the thing it is pretending to be.

[unreadable]

[cinnamonsugarnspice]

My life improved so much when I started forcing myself to do things: forcing myself to exercise, to cook from scratch; forcing myself to go to the movies or to museums alone, to wear that really cute outfit just to run errands; forcing myself to read a book, to strike up a conversation with a stranger, to ask for a raise.

Once you begin forcing yourself to do the things that you had been too scared or too lazy to do, you feel a sense of accomplishment that gives you momentum to do even more. It gets easier to get out of your comfort zone & to do hard things.

[neshamama]

i convince myself through conversations with my cat, as it can feel gentler than saying i'm "forcing" myself to do something i don't want to do. because ultimately, the healthy choice will be worth it. so i will turn to my cat and say, "should i get up now? head to the gym? do the laundry? wash the dishes? take meds? go to therapy? call the doctor?" and we go back and forth and i imagine she's reminding me why i do want to take care of myself and make my life better. now i look at my cat and we both just know.

[seeyetoi]

July 4; my American summer

They upheld my birthright but dismantled my right to repre$entation

It was all in a days work, and the brown girl ran in fly adidas sambas

I still live with 2nd (class) hand anxiety and the dreams and mistakes of both mother and father

All she ever wanted was to belong

All he ever wanted was peace

Well I went to that place they used to belong to

“American,” they would sneer proudly in my face

As if I had led the storming of Falluja myself

It wasn’t right for me to be granted access among them

My seat at their table was bought by Benjamin$

Dismayed to find that I came from nobody’s from across the ocean

Without a silver spoon to boot

I could be just like them, I could be even better

Yet, I didn’t belong

Even if they and the facts said else-wise

The English was too perfect for them, like bad dentures their celebrities wear

Made outside the body, removable for my Arabic

Unlike the post-colonial caretakers who looked to the past in her glory

There was me seeking the wretched of the earth that year

As my tongue was dismantled 1000 times; My identity torn to shreds each time;

Only to be put back together by the 3rd culture

2nd-(class) hand anxiety shouldn’t have been mine

In 2016 I watched Barcelona and Real Madrid every Wednesday night there

Football was not soccer, soccer did not exist

But petty fascists did everywhere

In 2026, birthright citizenship took me back to petty fascists again

But this time soccer was football, carried for us by a birthrighter too

My identity restored

But my voice gone

[savemebarry]

The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022 dir. Martin McDonagh

[nobrashfestivity]

William Steig Illustration for Wilhelm Reich’s Listen, Little Man!, 1945

[roseillest]

AFRIQUE, JE TE PLUMERAI // AFRICA, I WILL FLEECE YOU (1992) dir. JEAN-MARIE TENO

[stuckinapril]

Controversial take but I think we more often need to accept that sometimes it’s not personal, but that a person still doesn’t fuck with us. They don’t want a relationship with us, they don’t wanna be our friend. We’re not their type for whatever reason. They don’t hate us but they aren’t interested in building something with us in any capacity. It’s not that they have a lot going on, it’s not that they can’t receive love, it’s not what a lot of people concoct just not to deal with the sting of rejection. Sometimes we’re just not somebody’s type. And that’s okay and we don’t have to curl up in fetal position in a corner about it. We will not be the type of every person we encounter and that is natural and nothing to lose sleep over

[stuckinapril]

I just want to be the smartest girl in the room and to know how to speak 7 languages and to always have books in hand and to always be best dressed and to always be on top of my studies and to smell really good and to do flash cards on the treadmill and to not be distracted by the things that don’t matter and to still have time for all my passions.

[red-lamb]

[stuckinapril]

Very true

[matchagirl]

daisy edgar jones shot by szilveszter makó!!

[funeral]

On the surface, avoidance, minimization, distancing, splitting, and attempting to place a positive value on painful experiences may look like dreadful self-deception. In reality, however, this self-regulation of negative affect performs a life-saving function. For precisely that reason, trauma patients find it dangerous, even impossible, to give up these survival strategies and self-healing measures, even though they block creativity and growth and lead eventually to stagnation and decay. [ . . . ] The sacrifice of one's self-protection strategies and the loosening of one's rigid defense mechanisms are dreadfully painful and threatening processes, for they uncover old wounds associated with safety, trust, power, esteem, and intimacy.

Ursula Wirtz, Trauma and Beyond: The Mystery of Transformation

[ryan-sometimes]

I love how Zohran Mamdani is wearing a suit everywhere. And if he has anything else he puts it ON TOP of the suit. A basketball jersey. A high-vis vest. All worn over the suit. He’s like the mayor character in a cartoon who’s always dressed as The Mayor. If I didn’t know who he was and he biked past me in NYC I’d be like holy shit was that the mayor

[arschfrech]

[soracities]

Mia Mingus, from "Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability" [ID'd]