skimmingthesurface

writer, 30s, aquarius sun, pisces moon, libra rising. also a spork. before sporks were cool. she/her, tumblr writing blog: @skimmingmilk

[briannyssey]

Oh easy mistake. Yearning actually rises from the floor and longing hangs from the ceiling

[briannyssey]

🥺🥺

[giraffeter]

I often see posts about curating your own online experience that make the point, “content creators aren’t your parents.” And, yes, that is absolutely true! And I try not to be like “as a parent,“ but as a parent…

EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

And leave the person who created the thing that upset you alone.

[elumish]

I honestly think Gen-Z and younger simply does not understand how recent widespread smartphone adoption is.

I am not that old, and I didn't have a smartphone until probably late high school. For most of my life, many if not most people were not walking around with a magic internet machine in their pocket that they pulled out and used constantly for everything.

[sandumilfshous]

reblog if you remember having to ration your text messages and accidentally opening the internet on your phone was the end of the world

[post-to-poll-pipeline]

How old were you when you got your first smartphone?

Younger than 10

10-13

13-16

17-20

21-25

26-30

31-40

41-50

51-60

Older than 60

Never had a smartphone

Remaining time: 2 days 13 hours

[cozylittleartblog]

thank you toby for inventing gay people for like the 12th time

[molabuddy]

really specific trope i like that i feel like can only be explained in a diagram

[skewedcanvas]

Cleaned Up and Colored Some Abstragedy Sketches

[cut13k1ttyc4txd]

Eepying together <3

[sticksandsharks]

Johto Beginnings, Myths & Legends

[osanzo]

me when anything even remotely inconvenient happens

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

The concept that married people live longer is interesting. I'm sure there is some merit to the idea that if you're married there is someone there to nag you about going to the doctor, but I think much larger factors are having the finances of dual incomes and access to an immediate support person.

Surgeries require having a designated person to look after you. Many injuries require driving to somewhere like an emergency room which can be hard to do if you are the one injured. If you're home with the flu, it's hard to tell when it's bad enough to go to the hospital without another person checking on you. And if you pass out it requires another person to find you like that to get medical aid.

You can prop it up as the benefits of marriage, but I think there's a much deeper discussion to be had about how we've built society around marriage as an inevitable conclusion and neglected to build support systems that function outside of romantic pairings.

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

thinking about this further, people often cite this as a sort of See It's Better To Be Married and mostly accept it as a fact that being married is better for you overall and proceed to breakdown why marriage leads to longer lives. Instead I think we need to be looking at why the system is failing single people and what we could do to close that gap. What structural societal changes can we make to help single people rather than treat it as a Well Obviously foregone conclusion that everyone will eventually pair up.

It's not Why Are Married People Healthier? It's Why Aren't Single People as Healthy? And then actually examine the causes rather than hand waving it away with whichever stereotype of being single or half remembered memory of the last time you were single in your early 20s.

[cthuroo]

silly strings

[positivelypresent]

Which one(s) are you taking?

[requiem-on-water]

Sulfur combusts on contact with air to create stunning blue lava-like rivers of light in the Kawah Ijen crater on the island of Java | Ph: Olivier Grunewald

[what-even-is-thiss]

A lot of people’s idea of “California” is just Los Angeles and also I think specifically the rich parts of Los Angeles

[pile-of-worms]

As a European, my idea of “California” is honestly just. Warm America. With beach? I think?

[what-even-is-thiss]

There’s cold rainforests and snowy mountains there

[what-even-is-thiss]

All California.

[sastreon]

i was too busy to draw yesterday but happy belated international nonbinary people’s day to zooble, thank u for existing and inspiring me to also keep existing

[0dmg]

Flareon ✿ Pokémon Black & White (2010)

[gorusiti7]

Kawkaw wants to play!