You can dance if you want to
(via)
watch this right fucking now
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@takeitorrrleaveit
You can dance if you want to
(via)
watch this right fucking now
its so funny watching people veer so far to the left that they start reinventing things like race science, segregation, purity politics, censorship, misogyny, bioessentialism, anti-theism, nationalism, lynch mobs, capital punishment and group punishment, etc.
and by funny I mean fucking terrifying but I have to laugh otherwise I'll spiral.
To anyone worried this might be them:
(I'm holding your hand while i say this)
You might be right.
You might have opinions that you feel have veered off into unacceptable territory. You might have come to feminism with a "fuck all men, we should start treating them like shit, see how they like it" mentality. You might have come to anti-christian nationalism with a "christianity is so patriarchal and imperialistic, anyone who practices it hates me and i hate them" mentality. You might have come to environmentalism with a "there are too many people on this planet, we need a new plague" mentality.
You might have noticed your opinions slipping further and further into radicalization but you might also feel like you started on that path from a genuinely good place and you've had only the best of intentions.
But (and this is the part you need to internalize), it is not too late to course correct.
Whenever I worry that my desire to make a better world has led me to accept opinions, beliefs, rhetoric etc. that I don't actually agree with, I take a step back and ask myself three questions:
First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I'm a person?
The root of all evil is the incredibly tempting tendency to treat other people like they're not exactly as much of a person as you are. So take a beat and ask yourself if you're treating them like they are.
(This can go in both directions by the way! Treating someone like they're less than a person is obviously harmful and dehumanizing but treating them like they're more than a person can lead to objectification, tokenization, and more. Not good stuff.)
Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?
The saying "you have to love the oppressed more than you hate the oppressor" will untangle you from so many impossible ethical dilemmas, I promise you.
And third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?
This is actually a two part question because the first step is asking yourself, "Am I directing my anger towards the person or institution I am actually mad at?" If the answer is no, then you are effectively yelling at a Walmart employee about how evil the Walmart corporation is and expecting them to be able to do something about that.
Then you move onto the actual question, "Am I putting my anger somewhere useful?" If the extent of your civic engagement is getting into fights on social media, I can assure you the answer is no.
So for example...
Let's say you are a girl in your early-mid 20s. You learned about feminism from your friends and maybe a teacher or professor or two and you've accepted the fact that patriarchy is real and harmful to women but you find yourself repeatedly thinking "Ugh, I wish all men could just fuck off and die. I should be able to treat them exactly as terribly as women have been treated since the beginning of time."
This is an understandable thought. I see how you got there. Misogyny is incredibly exhausting to deal with, many men have done exactly zero work to become less misogynistic, and living your life with the crushing weight of "a significant portion of the world's population do not think of me as a full and autonomous person" is very very difficult.
So what do we do about it? What is our response.
Here is where we pause and ask the questions.
First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I am a person?
Am I treating "men" like a monolith in the same way that misogynists treat "women" like a monolith? Yes? Okay then what's the reality? (Hint: it is always more complex than you first think).
For me, the reality is that "men" includes my best friend from college who loves me and the world so much he's spent 12 years learning about feminism and gender theory just so he could be a better person, a better friend. It includes Brennan Lee Mulligan (and Lou Wilson and Zac Oyama and more) who prove to me that it is possible to be a public figure without promoting toxic masculinity. It includes my favorite professor who still checks in on me and my career, even years after I stopped being his student. It includes trans men I want to celebrate and love, both for their trans-ness and their maleness. It includes so many men whom I love and who love me. Which brings us to....
Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?
When I have the knee-jerk thought "I wish all men would just fuck off and die" what am I actually saying? I'm saying I wish the world were safer and kinder and better for women. I'm saying I want women to live the lives they want to live, regardless of whatever a hateful man might think about it. I'm saying I want a higher quality of life for women.
And so....
Third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?
Do I actually think all men should die? Do I think men should be violently eradicated from the planet?
No, that's ridiculous and not useful at all and certainly not coming from a place of love.
So instead I'll ask myself "How can I make my anger work for me?"
Well, what do women need to have a higher quality of life? They need to be paid a fair wage, they need access to high-quality health care, they need subsidized childcare and birth control and abortions and education. So those are the things I will fight for. Those are the things I will talk about.
Boom, I have turned hatred for misogyny into love for women, love for the world. And I have given myself useful and productive motivation to make the world a better place. Dope. We're doing great.
“People are inherently terrible” no!!! Have you ever seen a child wait for their friend while they tie their shoelaces? Have you ever known someone who would bring hurt squirrels and rabbits and mice to the nearest vet just so it doesn’t suffer? Have you seen someone grieve? Have you ever read something that hit your heart like a freight train? Have you looked at the stars and felt an unexplainable joy? Have you ever baked bread? Have you shared a meal with a friend? Have you not seen it? All the love? All the good? I know it’s hard to see sometimes, I know there’s pain everywhere. But look, there’s a child helping another up after a hard fall. Look, there’s someone giving their umbrella to a stranger. Look, there’s someone admiring the spring flowers. Look, there’s good, there’s good, there’s good. Look!!!!
"We took in a kitten that was starving, injured, and shot with a pellet gun."
"Oh my god, people are awful!"
"They're not. A person rescued her, other people who are trained in helping animals treated her injuries to make her healthy again, and so so so many people contributed to pay her medical costs, I don't even know how many. That she was hurt by...what, one person? Three? Certainly not many. Is honestly maybe the least important and least meaningful part of her story."
"...Oh."
I am holding a triumph of human kindness in my lap right now and her name is Fancy.
I’ll never forget I once had to break the news to two women that their dog had cancer, and as they cried and hugged and asked me questions I said something about how I was grateful this pup had such a loving family to support her- only for these ladies to inform me one of them wasn’t actually an owner at all, she was just the other woman’s Uber driver…
So this driver tells me she’s literally never met the other lady in her life, but when this passenger started crying in the car with her dog because she was worried, this angel in the form of an Uber driver went off the clock, came inside the building, and waited over an hour in a busy emergency room with a complete stranger just so she would have someone there by her side in a scary situation. This woman even took notes about everything I said so the owner wouldn’t have to try and remember it all later.
I see plenty of stuff at my job that makes me tempted to lose my faith in humanity but all I do is remember that Uber driver and it comes roaring back to me just like that. Humans are so unbelievably good, man.
#weirdly it ended up being a uterine tumor (not super common) and the dog was cured with an OVH#a rare feel good story from the ER 🥹#Uber driver came for the dog’s follow up appointment as well!!!
"the world is a cold and uncaring place" then warm it up. care, dammit
“the world is a cold
and uncaring place” then warm
it up. care, dammit
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
does anybody want to see this baffling drawing i did when i was like 8 and i assume just learned what gay people were
what the fuck does this mean. the rest of this notebook is homestuck ocs
You read Homestuck at 8??
no but i did look at the pretty pictures of the characters on pinterest and take "what god tier are you?" personality quizzes
OP, I regret to inform you that you seem to have been drawing a tumblr post in your childhood notebook
WHAT
this shouldn't be hidden in the comments:
Really the kicker about discussing colonialism intrinsic to certain fictional tropes/archetypes/genres/what-have-you is that white bitches et al get SO mad about it. "Ohh so I'm not allowed to play farming sims? Wearing a silly hat makes me a fascist now?" I was just exercising critical thought but yknow what? Just for you? Yeah it does
& it really speaks for... a certain way of thinking about how racism works, the way they'll jump to this dichotomy of Allowed vs Not Allowed. Cause that's not really how it works. If we actually wanted to simply #cancel everything with any sort of Historical Context or Unsavory Implications it'd never fucking end, due to the world that we live in. Good thing we're just telling you to think even a little bit about the ideas you engage with & this suggestion makes people Really Mad
It's that whole thing of, like, being more afraid of being labelled A Racist than really caring about minimizing harm. "Oohh this thing I like can't be racist because I'm Not Racist" no ❤
12 February, 1929 The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf (1924-1941)
love your friends, let your friends love you
When my cousin's then-boyfriend texted her that he would be coming home late because he would be stopping by the department store on his way home from work, she, knowing full well that he hates going there, never buys clothes there if he can help it, and generally asks to stay home whenever she goes, knew instantly that he could only be going for one reason: To buy an engagement ring.
Practical-minded, she responded: Don't forget the coupon we got in the mail, there's a discount on rings. Ever helpful, she sent him a photo of the coupon code.
He left her on read. When he came home, he was cagey and grumbling, and when she was like "Did you remember to use the coupon" he was like, "I don't know what you're talking about, why would I be buying jewelry, etc.," not meeting her eye.
Few weeks later he took her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, spent the entire night grumbling under his breath and shaking his head in disbelief, before going "아이씨" and pulling the ring box out of his pocket and slamming it down on the table. "How the hell did you know," he said, begrudgingly impressed.
She was like, "It's really not hard" and then was like "Did you use the coupon" and he was like "Yes I used the coupon"
And to me, this is romance
Thing that made me accidentally cry today:
Going for my daily run in the cemetery and seeing someone had filled the entire space of a grave with about an inch deep of bright yellow Ginkgo biloba leaves. There's no Ginkgo tree (or any tree) nearby; whoever arranged them must have collected them by hand and brought them in a container. The grave was an 84 year old woman who passed back in May.
Everything feels so bleak and mean and cynical, but sometimes the love in the world just hits you like a fucking freight train.
Gaga couldve just said lets have some fun this beat is sick i wanna take a ride on your penis dick. But she went with disco stick because shes a what? poet.
God sometimes I'm writing smut and I'll like, delete a sentence because I'm like, no, I can't write that. It's too indulgent. And then it's like. Girl, what the fuck are you even going to the candy store for if you're just going to buy raisins. Get real.
"what the fuck are you even going to the candy store for if you're just going to buy raisins" is honestly the thing I needed to hear today
at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you
at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.
at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly
at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.
Everyone got that one friend that was a failed vessel for something greater 🤣🤣🤣
A short poem: The thing we couldn't do becomes the thing we can
By @ goodthings4blackgirls.