Ensign’s Log

Reblogs of stuff I find interesting.

[aquilacalvitium]

Okay fuck it if this post reaches 666k notes by the end of 2023 I’ll practise basic self care

Why 666k? Because it’s funny and impossible so good fucking luck

[lizluvscupcakes]

Well, OP, I’m officially invested in this shit. Your whiny ass is doing self care if I have to drive to your goddamn house and do it for you.

[aquilacalvitium]

By Talos this can’t be happening

[oysters-aint-for-me]

reblog this everyone i wanna see what happens when op’s reverse-hubris forces them to practice basic self care.

why? because it’s funny and completely possible actually so good fucking luck op

[tungsten-moon]

I figured out roughly how many notes it’s been getting per day and multiplied that by the number of days left until the end of 2023

If we keep it going at this rate we’ll be far past 666k

[aquilacalvitium]

IMPORTANT

Okay so clearly I’ve underestimated y'all

So how about we make this more interesting?

I will practise self care if this post reaches 666k BY THE END OF 2022

[moonlarking]

Op you have fuckethed with the devil this post has gained 30,000 notes since I reblogged it last night

[catgirlcaliphate]

OP I hope you are ready to practice some self care because if there’s one thing the gremlins of tumblr love it’s a challenge.

[saint-batrick]

i normally hate these “oh noo don’t give me a ton of notes” posts but this one? this one i love.

posts that have 666k notes TO ME. and hopefully to you, too, OP. 💜

[solarmama-plantsareneat]

Let’s all practice self care if this post hits the magic number…

[purpleblobfrompluto]

Yes

[purpleblobfrompluto]

YALL HELP US

@bigfootshonkers @dollopheadsandclotpoles @gwaine-the-rock-johnson @hannahhook7744 @knightofwoodsbeyond @reality-schmality @thirteenthedoctor @yoursassybookwormfriend if you want to of course @fuckyeahsnackables

[purpleblobfrompluto]

Op telling us we’ll never make it to 666k by the end of 2023 (only having to make it 2022 after all):

Us:

[aquilacalvitium]

I was going to wait until y'all hit the mark, But I feel like I should say this now

When I made this post, it was supposed to be a joke

I mean, none of my posts ever get more than 20 notes if I’m lucky, so what are the odds of one reaching 666k? Impossible, haha

But then, something happened, something I didn’t expect

People actually began to… like it? And… reblog? And comment?

Before I knew it, my notifications were swarmed with comments after comments after reblogs after comments all on this one post

Then, still in the mindset of this being a joke, I realised I’d made the goal too easy, so I upped the stakes

But… the notes just got more frequent from there

And it started to hit me just what was happening

For a while, I was overwhelmed with a feeling

A feeling I wasn’t used to

It was like… all of a sudden… I mattered…

My existance was actually noteworthy

People actually… cared?

It wasn’t a game anymore, it was a race to assure a stranger on the Internet that they were actually worth something

Hundreds of people all gathering in one online place to help out

Leaving messages and well wishes

Making me smile

Making me laugh

Funny comments

Jokes

Fun facts

Even simple comments

It all suddenly felt so real

This was never a joke to you

This was important

And I won’t let any of that go in vain

So… stay tuned I suppose

I’ll look after myself, and I’ll post proof of it too

I’ll catalogue every time I put my health first

Physical and mental

I’ll acknowledge my bad days and celebrate my good days

But most of all

I won’t forget this

Any of this

Ever

(Tagging all the people in that screenshot)

@deepsea-bathyna @royalsampaguita @timeturnerturns @twerkyvulture @reblogspamletsgoooo @gender-crisis-time @obsidianstrawberrymilk @shana-rosee @thefandombringer @sunshinedarlingiloveyou @bregee13 @moonlarking-blog @arcan6yo @crazyw3irdo @xinea @ghastmaskzombie @killthestairs @abalidoth @leesbian42

[kittydesade]

THIS ONE. REBLOG THIS ONE. LET’S GO SELF CARE 2023

[sixfiveotwo]

Hey, take a f&cking shower!

[liberalsarecool]

Health care includes abortion.

[another-exclus]

Everything is like “QUEER history” and “List of QUEER young adult books” or “Top 10 QUEER movies” and queer this and queer that and for the love of god please just say LGBT.

But queer is more inclusive

[a-tired-humanist]

And faster to pronounce if you are talking instead of writing.

[another-exclus]

It’s not more inclusive, and if your excuse of using a slur as a blanket term is “it’s faster to say”, GENUINELY what is wrong with you

[a-tired-humanist]

It’s called economía del lenguaje.

It’s also the respected academic term?? The acronym isn’t static and it’s usage is varied by things like generational difference, location, and knowledge of the community. Even just in the U.S. in the last few decades the common usage gone from GLBT to LGBT to LGBTQ, to LGBTQA/LGBTQIA/LGBTQIAP/etc (Which, let me tell you as someone who has given presentations in the past using these updated acronyms, are all real mouthfulls), to LGBT+.

Also yes, queer is more inclusive! Especially coming at it from an academic standpoint, people didn’t always use or identify with the terms we use now and you can’t always try to cram them into our modern perceptions of sexuality. We can argue for years about whether a famous historical figure was gay or bisexual or straight and trans or whatever, but if we can all agree that they were somehow queer then using that term allows us to move past the debate and into productive discussion. And not everybody everywhere shares the same terms for sexual and gender identity, or even the same concepts of those things, so queer really is a more inclusive term in a lot of cases.

Like yeah if you’re talking specifically about gay or trans people you can just say gay or transgender, but if you’re talking about more than one identity or someone who doesn’t conform to our perceptions of ‘LGBT,’ or a person or people whose identity you don’t know, queer is just the better word.

[jabberwockypie]

“That’s SO gay”, “Oh my god, you’re not a LESBIAN, are you?”

Your words are slurs, too. Why do you get your words, but I don’t get mine? What makes you so special?

I’m here, I’m queer, go fuck yourself.

[levynite]

queer is not a slur, stop drinking the TERF koolaid

[darthsuki]

[matronofthevoid]

every time one of you fools spout about ‘queer is a slur’ a terf laughs because their fucking plan to make that word ‘taboo’ is fucking working you dipshit.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I did not get my degree in queer literature for you all to keep pulling this bullshit.

[moki-dokie]

baby gays,,,, i beg of you to learn your queer history and stop listening to terf bullshit

every single one of our labels has been used as a slur against us.

terfs and -phobes are always going to try and hurt us with what we identify as. but the fact remains these are OUR labels and always have been.

we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

[hyperactivehedgehog]

I don’t know if this is just because I’m not American but I’ve never heard queer used as a slur. Ever. Meanwhile gay was the insult in the 2000s here. Everything you didn’t like was ‘soo gay’. Queer wasn’t even a word most of us knew back then.

It just baffled me that people would think an identifier is automatically a slur just because someone uses it to mock someone. If we did that gay would be a slur. Stupid would be a slur. Autistic would be a slur.

The reason people are upset about the word queer is that it’s a unifying term. You can say you’re queer and all people will know is that you’re part of the community. But you can’t say you’re LGBT, you have to say you’re gay or trans or ace. They don’t want you to be ambiguously queer. They want you to say which kind of queer you are so they can decide whether you’re undesirable.

[tapacamino]

yeah in the 90s and early 2000s kids would call each other “gay” as an insult. But no one ties themselves in knots over whether “gay” is a slur. So yeah, please ffs learn your history.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[rabidchild67]

They want you to say which kind of queer you are so they can decide whether you’re undesirable.

[madlori]

When you insist that queer is a slur, you are giving the power to define the term to the bigots and homophobes, instead of to the people to whom it applies.

[uncanny-tranny]

There's a stereotype that trans people are so insecure in our genders that we require a ton of affirmation in who we are, but as I transition more and more, what I found is this:

While this is a stereotype, trans people aren't unique in this. Cis people also do the same, and many cis people do want affirmation in their genders by others, and by themselves. Us trans people are simply put under the spotlight for a variety of reasons, which means that our actions are under scrutiny. Cis people, you aren't immune from wanting to be affirmed for who you are, and it's not an indication that somebody isn't the gender they say they are because they want affirmation.

[uncanny-tranny]

Once I realized that cis men are just as if not more insecure in their own manhood as I was in mine, I found it so much easier to see that cisness isn't a divine state of self. It's just another human experience.

[toastbutteregg]

[random-jot]

Standing directly in the doorway to achieve peak mental health.

[meowtalhead]

[triviallytrue]

Hey so I know the discourse is doing an end-run around this point, but I was curious about how to interpret your "American Football should never be played" post. Are you saying it should be banned, or legally discouraged? Or maybe it should be socially discouraged but legal for consenting adults? Or something else?

wasn't really a policy prescription, but at the bare minimum: shouldn't be an organized sport played by minors, shouldn't give people chances to get scholarships, and the NFL shouldn't exist

[self-loving-vampire]

[jotaro-kuujo]

American parents honestly see an opinion like this and start frothing at the mouth like "it's an american tradition to give our kids brain damage!" "A little brain damage is good for kids, actually! It makes them stronger!" and most confusingly "How dare you disrespect the athletes who play football! You could never do what they do!" And it's like

on one hand, I can get brain damage just fine, which is the thing being criticized here but on the other hand nobody says "football players aren't real athletes" so I don't understand how the get to that conclusion. These guys perform superhuman feats on a daily basis while accumulating said brain damage and that's fucking impressive, props to those guys for being really fucking athletic, real fucking tough, etc but like. We shouldn't really put financial incentives behind people wrecking themselves like that for our entertainment. Like those guys could be olympians in much less brain-damaging sports but there's this culture here surrounding football that is so insane and it makes me so sad that there are entire communities where people's ONLY SHOT at getting out of extreme poverty is being good at getting brain damage. "I have to be so good at destroying myself that I get picked up by the NFL or my family will be homeless" is a fucking tragic thing to consider. And people looking at stories of black kids getting off the street because of football and thinking that shit is heartwarming is terrible because in reality it's such a physically harmful sport and it should absolutely not be these kids' only shot at getting out of poverty like clearly there's something wrong there.

And people look at it as "well being an athlete is a fine way to try to break out of a bad situation" but this isn't JUST being an athlete, he's not JUST good at running really fast, he's not JUST really strong he's literally just accumulating injuries and brain damage. And when you phrase it as destroying himself instead of "being an athlete" it sounds worse, and people will say that's inflammatory, but I think focusing on the athleticism and ignoring the brain damage is trying to sugar-coat it because the reality is you like watching football and you can't imagine a world where someone takes your precious game away from you and you'd rather keep the culture of people being thrown into the football pipeline with literally no good outcomes (either they break themselves or they get depressed because it requires so much effort that they put all of themselves into it and have no backup) than lose the sport.

[captain-kit-adventuress]

I used to babysit a kid who eventually went on to play American football professionally. He was a sweet boy, if a little obsessive about sports, but hey, everyone’s got their thing and it made him happy. And he got to live his dream! He had the talent and worked so hard to turn those comments of “Wow, you’d make a great linebacker!” into reality (I don’t know actually what position he played.) I can only imagine his feelings as he stepped onto the field that very first time as a pro player, even for practice, and what that must have meant to him.

He’s now retired, in his early 30s, because he had no other choice. He was diagnosed with a medical condition that will make it impossible for him to play, and may even paralyse him in the long-term. All because he took hit after hit between playing as a kid, playing for every school he attended, and eventually, getting drafted. All because he felt he had to play pro football, and not just because it was his dream. All because he got his dream and now his brain is too damaged to function properly. Sure, he’s got a lot of money, but he’s also got mounting medical bills and may possibly need progressively complex long-term care, which can bankrupt millionaires, too.

He’s staring down a future where he has frequent, random anger outbursts because his brain can’t regulate his emotions well, and that’s going to affect his relationships with everyone in his life, like his wife and kids, his family, friends, everyone. He’s staring down a future where he could accidentally choke to death in his sleep because the nerves controlling his swallowing might just stop working at any time. And to top it all off, he’s likely to experience at least some memory loss, and maybe some of the memories he loses are of playing pro football.

But, hey, he got to play in the NFL, right? He got his dream. I wonder if he’d say it was worth it.

And then there’s the kids who are just as talented and work just as hard but they don’t make it. They never play pro, they don’t see their dreams realised. But they do still have the same medical condition, the same issues and the same threat of death, but no money to access the care they need. Do you think they’d consider it worth it? “What’s a little brain damage if you get to play in the NFL?” some might say.

What’s a lot of brain damage if you don’t?

[silverskyy]

[ID: tags reading "I don't really believe in like. banning people from doing dumb shit that gives them brain damage #but i do think there shouldn't be a structured 'give children brain damage' pipeline with financial incentives", /end ID]

[obedientlyviolentshepherd]

football is trully the modern day gladiator battles

[aquilacalvitium]

Okay fuck it if this post reaches 666k notes by the end of 2023 I'll practise basic self care

Why 666k? Because it's funny and impossible so good fucking luck

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I think this is reachable and we can do it SO PREPARE FOR SELF CARE

[sixfiveotwo]

Go go go

[talesandfluff]

gotta say, thought it all season long and especially in the finale, you can REALLY tell Headless was co-written by a woman in the way these women interact with one another

[marykatewiles]

This is pretty important to me. 

I am a female actress and producer. Throughout my career, I have gotten to play a wide variety of female characters. Bold, brash, quiet, clever, detached, excited, unsettled, curious, aching, scheming characters. I am so proud of them all. But the majority of them - despite being wonderful female characters - were written by men. In projects directed by men. Often white men. 

And I really like all those men! They’re wonderful people, and I am very thankful that they cast me in their projects. Many of them are my great friends. But it is not often that I get to play a female character written by a female. Zelda, Artemis, Tatiana, Hadey, Ally, Kim, Anastasia - all characters written by men in projects directed by men. (Not including Lydia here because The LBD had multiple female writers although it was, of course, created and directed by men.) The list of characters I have played who were written by women outside of Shipwrecked projects is slim.

Yes, Joe Stribling, who directs all our Shipwrecked projects since 2016, is a man. But Shipwrecked is run by women - one of whom is me. And the Persauds are mixed race writers/creators, one of whom is female. I know there is a certain bias I can’t escape because I can only see what we experience, and not what other groups experience. But over and over and over again, we have to work twice as hard to get a fraction of the attention that our male peers get - from an audience that I feel like is made up of folks who largely don’t identify as male. And I’m not just talking about Tin Can or Starkid. When we go to Buffer, the majority of groups or filmmakers who are making similar types of content for the internet are male. Sammy Paul, Jack and Dean, Dom Fera. All men that are great at what they do, whom we love and are glad to know and call friends. But still…there are so few female creators who get lifted up in these spaces. And even fewer female creators of color. 

One of the things I love most about Headless is that it’s Ichabod’s story, yes, but…Sinéad and Sean have taken this classic folktale that’s pretty devoid of a female character who’s anything more than pretty and made it full of interesting, varied, powerful female characters whose story it is just as much as Ichabod’s or Brom’s. And that’s one of the many reasons I wish more people were watching it. 

Thank you, @musicalsandfluff, for recognizing this. Thank you for recognizing Sinéad Persaud as a writer/creator and lifting her up. We need more folks to recognize the work she is doing and the contributions she is making as a mixed-race female voice in this white male dominated space. And yeah, Shipwrecked as a female-run group as a whole. ♥️

[wilwheaton]

“Christianity didn’t become a world religion because of the quality of its teachings, but by the quantity of its violence”

— Eleanor Ferguson (via wilwheaton)

[fishingscam]

that quote like “god gave us transness for the same reason he made grapes but not wine; yeast but no loaves — so we may partake in the divine act of creation”

[genderkoolaid]

- Julian K. Jarboe, quoted in Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

[godshideouscreation]

Y'all hate sex workers so much you'd rather put stolen (and/or unconsensual) porn on your dashboard &/ blog rather than support us. Reblog us with our links to our content if you want to really support sex workers. Posting and reblogging stolen, unsourced porn does not help sex workers, it's not supporting sex workers.

[phluphfy]

tumblr allowing titties again is cool and all but are they gonna do anything to un-blur all the accounts that have been blurred for things like titties.

[thirstybipeach]

Tumblr isn't doing it themselves, but I was able to get this blog unflagged manually! I went through the process at the end of this page, and in the comment field for the form just put "blog now conforms to new Community Standards," and in about two hours I was unflagged!

[nickyandmikey]

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

[nickyandmikey]

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

[irrelevantlyvalid]

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

[chokolattejedi]

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

[executeness]

I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

God I’m not okay about it

[ramshacklefey]

Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.

[saint-batrick]

[dankmemeuniversity]

[dectech]

preperations for the long journey ahead, friend

[higgsboshark]

The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.

Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.

Checkmate, nihilism.

[cheskamouse]

This is a powerful positive message..

[pluckyredhead]

I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.

There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.

No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.

Knit a sock.

If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.

[adhd-informative]

This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.

[hyperactivehedgehog]

This is what “humans want to be productive” really means

We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators

[beesandwasps]

Something which has worked for me: go help somebody else with their chores. It’s really hard to motivate yourself to seriously clean your house — all those decisions to be made, and then you have to do the labor on top of that. It’s surprisingly easy to help somebody else — they make the decisions, you help with the labor, things get clean, you get to feel like You Made A Difference.

[doubleca5t]

the thing that strikes me about this latest wave of anti-trans hate and legislation in the U.S. is that it feels like it's *kind of* about trans people but really about a fear fundamental to all conservatives that a day will one day come when they will no longer be able to completely control their children

[doubleca5t]

american conservatism is a death cult. trump made this incredibly obvious but it's been trending that way for a while. it is spiteful, bigoted, cruel, morally bankrupt, and all evidence in support of it has either been fabricated, forged, deceptively edited, or disproven. being conservative goes against a fundamental human desire to be kind to those around you and I think on some level conservatives know this, and thus, they know that the only reason children would subscribe to these values is if they are indoctrinated into them with cult-like single-mindedness

Conservatives have been pushing for homeschooling for decades, they've been raising concerns about teaching evolution in schools since the early 20th century, they've made wedge issues out of sex ed, history textbooks, and now gay and trans teachers. They want a world in which children are taught to be conservative from birth and any attempt to teach them anything else is a literal crime. They want this because they know, deep down inside, that most children would not agree with them unless they were literally brainwashed into it.

[doubleca5t]

also worth pointing out that most child abuse (sexual or otherwise) takes place within a "traditional" family structure or a "traditional" religious institution and I have to wonder if people who want to abuse kids have a fundamental investment in preserving strict hierarchies in which adult men have unquestioned authority over children

Like I'm not saying *every* conservative is like this but perhpas their emphasis on "groomers" is a wee bit of projection

Anyway abolish the family trans rights are human rights institute fully automated luxury gay space communism now

[silvermoon424]

This tweet sums it up pretty well:

This is another big reason why most conservatives bitch about higher education; a lot of younger people (myself included) undo their conservative upbringing brainwashing after being exposed to new ideas, meeting new and diverse people, and getting a higher-quality education when they attend college. 

This is also, of course, why conservative lawmakers constantly seek to undermine public education and make it shittier so the kids who go through it are more ignorant. An educated and well-informed populace is the GOP’s worst nightmare.

[gynoidgearhead]

[Image caption for last addition: tweet by Louisa (@LouisatheLast) reading: “Just occurred to me that of course conservatives who are fearmongering about trans kids think progressive parents must be forcing this on their kids and programming them into accepting it—because that’s how they relate to their children, with authoritarianism.” End caption.]