Sweetheart Haely @sweetheart-haely - Tumblr Blog

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

hypokeimena

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

etakeh

As Theodore Sturgeon said, ask the next question.

canary-prince

Do yourselves a massive favor: practice asking for help BEFORE it's an emergency.

I am a social worker. I have worked in community mental health and in home-based healthcare. And it is much, much easier for me to help you when the situation you're in is not yet a full-blown crisis.

"I'm out of money and have been for a while and now I haven't eaten for three days." This is a crisis. A crisis where I'm likely going to have to put you in the car and take you to the nearest food bank--except food banks require appointments now, and the next opening is in four days, so you're staring down the barrel of a week with no food. That's obviously not going to work, so, let's call eight different food banks until we've found one that has an appointment the next day...except it's in the neighboring county and you can't drive. So now I'm calling your doctor to try and brow beat an emergency plan of care update out of him so I can come back the next day and drive you to the food bank. And we haven't even started on the "constantly broke" part of the problem.

"I don't think I have enough food to make it to my next paycheck. I have (xyz) in my house and that will only last until (date)." This is bad, but not a crisis. We have a few days. We make you an appointment at the food bank and contact your brother to make sure you have a ride there. Now we can spend our visit talking about what bills are causing you the most problems and make a jump on a long-term solution, like looping in a community action agency to cover your utilities and getting you an OTC card from Medicaid to cover some of your groceries every month.

"I'm ten months behind on rent, and my landlord said I have a week to get out, or the cops will throw me out. I don't have the money, and if I get evicted, I have nowhere to go." This is a crisis. Every single thing we do here is going to be some version of a Hail Mary. In Michigan, we have the state emergency relief fund for rent issues, but process time is well over one week. There are community action agencies that we can call to assist you with payment, but they are unlikely to have sufficient funds to cover nearly a year of back rent. We can contact legal aid clinics to try and prevent your landlord from evicting you, but they may look at your case and determine that too much "fault" lies with you. Most likely, I'm going to have to put you in touch with homeless shelters and the public housing office.

"I'm two months behind on rent and I don't think I'll be able to pay next month either." This is bad, but not a crisis. This is solvable. We have time to apply for SER, or put you in contact with community action agencies. We have time to review your finances and see if you qualify for a public housing wait list or other forms of ongoing rental assistance. We have time to talk about a million possible adjustments to try and ease the burden of your rent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my elderly parent who has dementia and is emotionally volatile and fully dependent on me. I have not slept through the night in weeks and I have not had an actual break for over a year. I am having screaming meltdowns multiple times a week and I am threatening self-harm unless someone comes to collect my parent and take over all caregiver duties." This is a crisis. This is a crisis where the ethical code of my profession demands that I call 911 and report the conversation to them. They will likely come to the house and interview you. If they determine your threats were serious, they will have you forcibly committed to a psych ward. Your parent will either be dumped into a random hospital or rehab center, or left in the house on their own. Upon release from your psych hold, you will be expected to resume caregiving duties as though nothing happened. Except, now, adult protective services is actively investigating you, because it was determined you may be an ongoing danger to your parent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my demented parent, and I have not had a break in a couple of weeks, and I feel angry and weepy most of the time." This is bad, but not a crisis. We can get you in touch with volunteer groups for respite, and apply for state funded programs to get more day-to-day help, and talk about long-term planning for when the dementia symptoms get worse. We can get you the phone numbers for crisis lines and enroll you in a support group.

Obviously, you can ask for help at any point. Don't use this an excuse to never ask for help. If you always wait until it's a crisis, fine, you have free will. But you are ALLOWED to ask for help BEFORE you're in a blind panic, and it is always easier to get help when you aren't screaming and sobbing because you think your life is over.

sweetheart-haely

This applies to much less severe situations too BTW. Even if the rest of your life is fine except for This One Thing, you can always ask before it starts to really bite.

Ask for help. Wouldn't you want to BE asked by people you care about? On average they probably feel the same way.

theconcealedweapon

zooophagous

I know I sound like your mom but you kids need to stop fucking vaping

joshgrobanscock

1) Vaping is confirmed to cause cancer. Vaping coats the lungs with toxic substances, such as heavy metals and benzene, which are known to cause cancer

2) Many vapes contain diacetyl, which, when inhaled causes popcorn lung, or scarring of the lung

3) Ultrafine particles, when being inhaled, can be lodged in the trachea (not good!)

4) Ultrafine particles can also constrict the arteries in the lungs potentially causing A HEART ATTACK

5) Vaping is relatively new. Not much studies have been done in comparison to tobacco. Plus, the vaping companies are powerful people. There is a large chance that they are purposely downplaying and even burying any evidence that vaping is harmful - just like the tobacco companies before them. They do not care about you, or your health, or the truth. They only care for money

letsoulswander

Also STOP VAPING INDOORS AROUND OTHER PEOPLE. Holy shit, if you're gonna wreck your lungs at least give me the option not to wreck mine.

cephalopodvictorious

It’s such an issue that the MTA had to run a campaign about it

yeahokayillreblogthat

yeah okay ill reblog that

stripedroseandsketchpads

Please I’m begging yall as an asthmatic, your fruit-flavored vapor will still give people around you who are smoke-sensitive attacks. So will weed. Don’t do it inside; if you’re at a bus stop or something try to not stand right next to people or move downwind of them if you can.

roycohn

if you are a left-leaning person in a political debate/argument with someone (a normal person - not an avowed fascist but someone who is being polite and open to hearing you out), there are a few questions you need to get comfortable and reliable about asking yourself:

am i treating the other person like it's their first day in the real world and need to be taught what to think, or am i doing the basic decent thing and assuming they have put some amount of thought into their existing beliefs with which i must contend and out-reason?

am i advocating for something, or am i just trying to make this other person feel small or stupid?

in the process of this discussion, have i actually made the case that what i'm advocating for will improve the other person's life in a material way?

and if the answer to some or all of these is "no," what you are doing is venting, preaching, or otherwise not helping to make a persuasive case for your beliefs. as we get closer to the midterms in november, it's going to be important to convince and persuade people to support various issues, and the first thing to do is not enter into those conversations with the attitude that all americans are temporarily embarrassed socialists who just need to be lectured about their own moral turpitude until they agree with me. contrary to popular belief within a not-insignificant subset of the internet, persuasion is not capitulation, it's just politics. if people don't see you as someone who genuinely has their best interests at heart, they will eye you and everything you're espousing with suspicion at best and outright anger at worst. and hostility and grandstanding doesn't convince anyone who isn't already on your side! so once again, i really gotta urge people to try to be thoughtful about the language and rhetoric they use to communicate their platforms to others. use accessible language to advocate for policies in a way that meets folks where they're at and assumes their best intentions. most importantly, again, don't treat people like they're stupid - treat them like you're trying to help them. because ultimately, you are.

(i've made this point before and gotten called everything but a child of god for it, but all i can say is i helped raise over $30 million last year at work that went to unambiguously good programs and causes, so i do know what i'm talking about in terms of persuasive communication. i would like democrats to win a majority this election season, and i think we can do this if we behave like serious people. and if you're not american, i especially don't want to hear from you in the notes. this is a triage election, not a pie-in-the-sky one.)

callmearcturus

I actually love how Grace wears his glasses. I know a lot of folks pointed out "people who wear glasses would never." And I've worn mine since I was 10, and I would never do any of the shit Grace does.

BUT what I realized is Grace's use makes perfect sense for someone who hasn't worn them his entire life and only needs them for reading. They're a tool, not a part of his body (as they are for someone like me).

Before Rocky's arrival in the ship, Grace is working on his amnesia, so he has his glasses on to see the whiteboard. (Note, in another whiteboard shot, he has jotted down something about his glasses, determining they aren't "all the time" glasses.)

When he goes to check the movement alarm, he's doing the head-tilt thing to look over them, still has them on just in case. And he has them back on and is looking through them when consulting the laptop/translator.

But tucks them down and away whilst chasing Rocky.

When examining the astrophage sample, he actively switches between glasses and not-glasses.

I have absolutely known people who wear glasses for specific distances and do this exact thing when looking up from a book to look at something across the room.

Look at this man. Have you ever seen someone more in need of progressive lenses in your life?

There's even some shots that seem to have smudgy glasses, which is exactly what his cavalier fidgeting would cause.

Someone get this fool a glasses chain and 20 pocket-sized microfiber cloths.

sweetheart-haely

As someone with only slight nearsightedness, this is real. I don't wear them if I can help it for the most part, so when I do I'm very conscious of them and tend to futz with them, including sometimes letting them be loose or spinning them around like a fidget toy in a free hand.

prokopetz

Basically what I'm getting from the present "giving 100% at work" Tumblr discourse is that a lot of people have fairly narrow notions of what blue-collar versus white-collar jobs actually entail. There are in fact manual labour jobs where a significant chunk of your average work day consists of Fucking Around, and conversely, there are desk jobs where you crunch eighty-hour weeks for years on end until you suddenly drop dead from heart failure at age 32. It's absolutely true that you're more likely to end up in a No Fucking Around Allowed situation in a blue-collar occupation, but you can't tell whether or not someone is in that position based purely on whether or not they work in an office. Shit, call centre workers are white collar on paper, and the kind of fuckery a lot of call centre workers are subjected to involves genuine human rights violations.

vedajuno

it’s crazy to me that Homestuck has apparently influenced every single piece of media to come out of the mid 2010s and yet I have somehow never played an indie game that attempts to lift any of this sylladex shit for its inventory. there should be 10,000 games out there by now with inventory management systems even HALF as fucked up and evil as “items can only be stored in inventory slots equivalent to their name’s Scrabble score”

deckuscarde

Let’s see what I can come up with off the top of my head

items fall to the bottom of the inventory, with the items that are physically heaviest at the bottom if you remove an item, you also remove any items above it

if an entire row or column of your inventory is full it disappears block blast style

whenever you need to retrieve something from your inventory an item is randomly chosen

queer-here-and-in-fear

the last one is canon! its called the miracle modus and its only used by gamzee and kurloz makara :)

sweetheart-haely

A game called Backpack Hero kinda does the first one. Among others.

@staff

No.

Thank you.

wholesalemagnesiumoxide

i think "bedtime abolitionist" is an unserious pejorative and i think less of people who use it. it's bad that children's lives are so heavily regimented, actually, and it'd be good for them to have more autonomy in these matters.

but, yknow. ruthless criticism of all that exists unless it makes you look like a whiny child, or something.

jackawful

I used to work extensively with kids and I am unironically a bedtime abolitionist.

Specifically at summer camp, I noticed that trying to enforce a bedtime would result in nights of me going cabin to cabin telling kids to be quiet repeatedly until 1-2AM. Then we would all be cranky and exhausted about it the whole week, and it made me come off like a controlling asshole to the kids cause...I was being a controlling asshole. And like, I was young enough to have really salient memories of having been a camper, so excited to talk to new friends that I didn't sleep - the kids had good reason to stay up!

So I figured out that I could, instead, lay out the first night that they could stay up as late as they wanted, and talk to their friends, as long as they were physically in bed with lights off. I would get a lot more sleep and was better able to function in the morning, and if a kid complained about being tired the next day, I would ask about how long they stayed up the previous night and let them connect the dots themselves. Inevitably, most kids would stay up really late the first night, and then they would self-regulate and get to sleep way quicker, because they were motivated to balance their own wants & needs instead of an adult breathing down their neck about an arbitrary externally-imposed sleep deadline.

I started extending this method to more things, trying to make sure my role was less Authority Figure and more resource for learning how to care for themselves. I went through college and found it was backed up by a lot of the research out there on parenting and teaching styles. Literally just respecting the autonomy of kids in my care and talking them through decisions instead of telling them what to do would make "behavioral issues" evaporate, and make both me and the kids happier. It helped even more when I started working with traumatized kids and teens in foster care after college. Sometimes a kid would even point out to me when a given rule in a workplace didn't make sense and I could give them an exception and/or go to my boss and try to get things changed. Often, arbitrary rules from higher-ups made things way more difficult for everyone.

Trying to explain this to authoritarian parents AND my worse bosses over the course of my childcare career was like pulling teeth.

Kids deeply crave autonomy and responsibility, and if you give them the former they will often gladly take up the latter, but you have to give them the chance to make their own choices and make non-life-threatening mistakes first. But to someone who views a kid as property, or even a well-intentioned perfectionist parent, the idea of giving a kid that autonomy is terrifying, so they try to make it sound absurd to justify maintaining control.

Anyway, yeah, bedtime abolition forever. The kids will do just fine without bedtime.

deactivated-this-account-deacti

I ended up having a really interesting conversation with some people at the bus stop today. They were getting out of some sort of ‘clean and sober’ meeting and had starting saying how they were so bored because they didn’t have anything to do, and had to stay at home because all their old friends would pull them back. So I said something like, ‘So this is the time to do all the stuff your parents told you they didn’t have money/time for!’ “Whatcha mean?” “You know, like when you were five and you REALLY wanted to have that toy or do that thing and you were like, ‘Please mom please I gotta have this I gotta go do this’ and they went ‘Hell no you think I’m paying for that do you want to goddamn EAT?’ “ And this light went on in their eyes. The lady is going to go check thrift stores for an Easybake Oven and I told her about Wilton cake decorating classes. The dude is going to Griffith Park and ride horses, because, ‘I always wanted to be a cowboy, and you can’t drink when you’re on a horse ‘cause you’ll fucking die!’ Fuck it. This is what being an adult is. Sure it’s bills and work and relationships, but damn it, it’s also time to do the things you LIKE. I signed up for a free class/lecture on Water Gardens. I’m going. It’s time.

ruthfully

Jill. Jill you are wonderful.

lostwolfling

no joke, this is such an important aspect of overcoming trauma. I mean the trauma of abusive parents, the trauma of broke ass parents who got toxic because of it, the trauma of capitalism. Like fuck it. Go to Wrestlemania. Build a shit ton of terrariums.

sweetheart-haely

Acquire joyful thoughts to bully the intrusive thoughts.

ryan-sometimes

As an autistic/adhd person going through the job search process I’ve learned to phrase my autistic/adhd traits as corporate friendly things. Here’s some examples:

I have trouble reading between the lines and picking up on implicit information? Actually, I’ve learned the importance of giving and receiving precise, specific instructions in order to avoid time consuming miscommunications.

I’m easily bored with only one task? Actually, I have a curious mind and thrive in places with a wide range of tasks as I prefer dynamic environments where I can contribute to many projects.

I have trouble with white lies that are merely social niceties? Actually, I prioritize a transparent work environment where we can tackle issues head-on.

This way I don’t have to lie, but rather just spin my truth in a way that’s palatable to them.

sweetheart-haely

For those of you writing resumes and interviewing, remember: You're playing a character. A worksona, if you will. Playing a piece of theatre. They're doing it too- the 'normal' people. They're just convinced it's normal. which is pretty fukin weird tbh

anxietyproblem

zero-two-ten

this site has one setting

jenroses

I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record. And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.” So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)

It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful. It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons.

kittydorkling

There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:

The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.

You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!

But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.

bogleech

You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking

chipjrwibignaturals

any computer people wanna explain how the hell this works

it wont let me do shit bc i apparently have 81 gigs of apps clogging my c drive, but my largest app is 0.4gb?????? its not system applications either because system is its own segment of storage. wadda hell are you talking about

chipjrwibignaturals

guys i installed a program to show me exactly where the data is hidden and i think i found it and youre never gonna believe it

todd howard im fucking coming for you

chipjrwibignaturals

"thank you random microsoft customer support agent" we all say in unison

hylandude

Here's your friendly neighborhood trans girl programer to tell you WinDirStat is a free open source alternative and you don't have to sign in to the annoying microsoft app store!

sweetheart-haely

Likewise, but school computer technician. Windirstat good.

josephbrassey

Some myths that need debunking because they're being pushed by bots and it’s making me angry:

1. "He's gonna declare martial law!" Okay, so what then? This isn't something you can enforce nationwide on a country of 350 million people with a military that has a combined force of less than 3 million people, including all support and logistics staff. That doesn't equal half the population of Los Angeles. Y'all need to fucking stop acting like we're approaching a mythical point where shit gets "serious." We're already there. People are already being disappeared.

Civilians are already being killed in the streets. We're there. And you know what? They're already getting near the limits of their ability to force compliance. ICE is dedicating a double digit percentage of their manpower to Minneapolis and they're not controlling shit. People are pushing back. Your default response when the administration says "We will force you to do this" shouldn't be "Oh no they're gonna make us do this!" It should be "Fuck you. Make me."

2. "Americans are doing nothing!" I did a post about this recently, but it bears revisiting: I don't know where the hell you're getting this, because everywhere that ICE or other arms of the federal enforcement apparatus go, they are being pushed back on, humiliated, driven out of neighborhoods, and shown the door. People are fighting back on a truly awe inspiring level. Stop assuming that "doing something" looks like an armed mass of civilians storming Washington and fighting the military in a pitched battle. This is movie bullshit. The world has not looked like that since the early 20th century. What you are seeing, right now, is what "doing something" looks like. Stop it stop it stop it. We ARE doing something, in vast numbers.

3. "He's gonna cancel elections!" This one has been pushed by bots for the last year, and big name people have been picking it up, and it frustrates the hell out of me so I'm going to hold your hand and tell you bluntly: He. Cannot. Do. This. There is no mechanism. Elections are controlled by the states, and they decide when they happen. There is no federal mechanism for control of elections. What's Trump gonna do? Post soldiers at every polling place in every swing state? Do you know how many polling places there are in every district? How much manpower this would require? He doesn't have the people to do it. He doesn't have the mechanical ability to do it. There are no tools to execute this plan. Is he gonna try to make elections unfair? You bet your ass, but our elections have never been fair. Voter suppression has always existed and will continue to exist until we fix it... but a blanket ban of elections or even some ability to make them not happen? Lol. He doesn't have the manpower or the means.

But what if he did? Let's game this out: Congress--or at least the House of Representatives--is not a perpetual body. At the end of 2026 the current congress ceases to exist, and the next one isn't convened until the following year. Mike Johnson will cease to be Speaker at the end of the year and wont be Speaker again in '27 unless his party wins a sufficient majority to elect him. Remember if there are no elections then republicans will not have their seats in 2027. There will be no congress, and without congress, Trump does not have a mechanism for governance. I dunno about you, but those Republican reps like having their jobs, their staff, their salaries, and all the perks that come with office. They do not get those if there is no Congress. That is not something they want.

But he said he was gonna! And? So fucking what? He says a lot of things. He issued an executive order at the start of his second term ordering all school districts in the country to immediately cease teaching "DEI" whatever the hell that means. Do you know what most districts that weren't actively kissing his ass said? "That's nice. Make me." And then he didn't, because the states control their own education systems, not Trump. His words don't have the force of law, and are limited by what he actually has levers of power to accomplish. We are **still having elections.** Several happened last week. The States decide this. Trump doesn't.

The Midterms are gonna happen. They're gonna matter and they're gonna have consequences. And you all need to stop acting like he has power over things he doesn't just because he says he does. That's propaganda and you're falling for it.

As with all things Authoritarian, when Trump says "I'm gonna force you to do this," your response should be as I articulated above:

"Fuck you. Make me."

I love you all. Be safe. Don't comply in advance. Don't give them power they don't have just because they say they do.

meatdiaz

what they don’t tell you about online relationships is how easy it is to ruin them by simply having nothing to say. i like you so much but i don’t know how to hang out with you in silence. i don’t know how to text like a person so now you think i hate you. aaaaaaaaa

vitamaeternum

This is a major issue I've found with online relationships. Ironically, despite actually meeting people IRL being more difficult, hanging out IRL is so much easier, since you can just sit with someone and vibe whereas if you're on the phone then you're just sitting in silence with the magic slab.

sweetheart-haely

My personal advice with this- and I struggle with this too!- is to literally just say what happened to you today, or pose whatever stupid thought just entered your head to your friends. Also, and I know this isn't always practical, but if you can collect some of your friends in a discord or other kind of server together, the collective posing of stupid thoughts will keep conversations going longer and more engage-dly.

thememedaddy

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Sweetheart Haely