cool bug

gonna be my own damn hero

[ketrinadrawsalot]

We conclude Sharktober with an illustrated guide to the sharks of the world, past and present. Though some sharks may seem scary with their sharp teeth, large appetites, and mysterious ways, they aren’t voracious monsters. They are animals and an important part of the ocean’s ecosystem.

Available as a print!

[runawaymarbles]

i am begging you all to stop treating politicians like fandom faves and start treating them as what they are: highly ambitious people juggling several different agendas who we elect in the hopes they will vote for things we support

[runawaymarbles]

#do love aoc tho

I’m not trying to pick on this tagger but this is exactly the thing I’m talking about: as AOC advances in her career, if she’s going after genuine political power (and it’s not going to be a bad thing if she does: that’s how you turn your platform into legislation,) she is going to compromise. She is going to support bills you don’t like and not support things you do like. Right now she’s one of four hundred representatives and is in a good place to grandstand, but if she ever gets into the Senate, or the cabinet, and even if she just spends the next 20 years in the house, she will do things you disagree with and have to make compromise votes you don’t think went far enough and have to give up on legislation with no path forward that you really wanted and support things that are necessary but make you feel icky.

After which, two paths are likely to follow: she will either be Canceled, because we were all rooting for her how dare she let us down like this, it just goes to show you can’t trust anyone in the system– regardless of whether there were practical reasons for her to do what she did– or her supporters will just go into mass denial. A few years ago I had very liberal friends of mine decided that gun control wasn’t really important after all…   as soon as they learned their favorite congressman didn’t support it. (Because I guess they considered “I disagree with him on this point but support him anyway because the things we do agree on far outweighs what we do not, compared to the other candidates running” as admitting defeat? I don’t know. They sure were on the gun control train again after the next mass shooting, though.)

And the reason the congressman didn’t support it wasn’t some deep moral failing: it  was because he was from a state with a strong gun culture, and he wanted to keep getting elected. This is how representative democracy is supposed to work. And because of that track record, I didn’t support his higher ambitions– because while I didn’t always agree with his opponent, the gun thing tipped the scales into “agree more than I disagree, compared to the other candidate”– which is also how representative democracy is supposed to work. Right now, AOC and elected officials like her are in a position where they can support the things they support and still win, but that might not always bet he case.

I admire AOC. I respect AOC. I agree with a lot of AOC’s platform. But we’re setting ourselves up for a mess if we keep acting like AOC is a fun twitter celebrity who posts good clapbacks, and not, you know, a highly ambitious person juggling multiple agendas who we hope will continue to vote for things we like.

[stillwaterseas]

And as fun as it is to see AOC playing video games, and it IS fun and delightful, I worry that the parasocial relationship she’s cultivating with excited young voters is only going to exacerbate people’s feelings of betrayal when she inevitably acts like a professional rather than your friend. She is an incredibly smart and driven woman and I hope she has a long career in politics and makes lasting change and to do that, ditto all the above, she will HAVE to compromise. And the more people feel like they really “know” her, or she’s their friend, or she’s like a friend because she plays the same games as you and talks about life experiences you share, the stronger the backlash is going to be, bc it’s going to feel personal. And it’s really, truly, not.

[bing-art]

the same blastoise.

[pitbolshevik]

does anyone else still get really caught offguard when like famous streamers or youtubers or other internet people mention trans people in a positive way

[pitbolshevik]

when i was a kid i watched a ton of youtube and whenever trans people were mentioned, it was usually like in the context of a joke making fun of them. so hearing fucking jerma or whoever being like "yeah trans rights" just pleasantly surprises me no matter how often i hear it

[pitbolshevik]

some cis gamer dude: i think you should be able to change your name in animal crossing because like what about trans people who realize they're trans after they've already named their character?

me:

[lazulisong]

Yo as we enter into the final hours of the latest countdown to our collective like, doom or whatever, reminder that:

It’s gonna happen if you refresh the internet or not, so put your phone down and do something else for a while

Keep hydrated

Take your god damn pills

If you can’t sleep at least close your eyes in a dark room for a while

Eat. Anything. I personally reccomend vegan freezer burritos but as long as it puts calories into your body eat it.

Stay safe and if you go out to the streets be careful!

[aristhought]

capitalism is like. resting is a waste of time. eating is a waste of time. sleeping is a waste of time. playing is a waste of time. living is a waste of time. you must prove your worth to live here and everything else is a waste. and we’re taught not to question it. 

[aristhought]

i will eat my meals and take my naps and sit on benches and i will stop to do nothing and i will cherish those moments.

[bearsintreesofficial]

hello! tiktok did not like this video. but tumblr? i think this is for you

[lemonsharks]

My ancestors, watching me dump an entire stick of cinnamon, two cloves, an allspice berry, and a generous grating of nutmeg into my tea, sweetened with white sugar and loaded with cream, while I sit in my clean warm house surrounded by books, 25+ outfits for different occasions, and 6 pairs of shoes, in a building heated so well I have the windows open in mid-autumn:

Our daughter prospers. We are proud of her. She has never labored in a field but knows riches we could not have imagined.

[malkaleh]

Oh my gosh I can think of my ancestors being proud of me this is delightful 💕

[evilvillain123456789]

at the art museum working myself into a rage when i feel a work is concerned with the carnal and not the sublime

[insufferable-catboy-deactivated]

Hmm. The carnal and the sublime are both governed quintessentially by awe, and thus with the loss of self before something primal. Both are celebrations of surrender… as if to be taken, helpless, by the tides of chtonic oceans heretofore unknown… if carnality is to be swept by its elemental torrents, then pondering the sublime is to be subsumed by its vast depths.

What I hate is intellectual jack-off shit. Get out of your own ass! Idc! Go learn to feel powerless and kneel before something terrible and mighty!!

[evilvillain123456789]

that’s nice insufferable catboy, now get in the carrier it’s time for your neuter

[gatheringbones]

in the realm of hungry ghosts, by gabor maté

[bitegore]

[ID: three screenshots of an online book with several highlighted paragraphs. The first paragraph says:

“Addicts should not be coerced into treatment, since in the long term coercion creates more problems than it solves. On the other hand, for those addicts who opt for treatment, there must be a system of publicly funded recovery facilities with clean rooms, nutritious food, and access to outdoors and nature. Well-trained professional staff need to provide medical care, counseling, skills training, and emotional support. Our current nonsystem is utterly inadequate, with its patchwork of recovery homes run on private contracts and, here and there, a few upscale addiction treatment spas for the wealthy. No matter how committed their staff and how helpful their services may be, they are a drop in comparison to the ocean of vast need. In the absence of a coordinated rehabilitation system, the efforts of individual recovery homes are limited and occur in a vacuum, with no follow-up.”

The second paragraph says:

“To expect an addict to give up her drug is like asking the average person to imagine living without all his social skills, support networks, emotional stability, and sense of physical and psychological comfort. Those are the qualities that drugs, in their illusory and evanescent way, give the addict. People like Serena and Celia and all the others whose portraits have appeared in this book perceive their drugs as their ‘rock and salvation’. Thus, for all the valid reasons we have for wanting the addict to ‘just say no,’ we first need to offer her something to which she can say ‘yes’.”

The third paragraph, outlined in a different color from the earlier two, says:

“We must provide that island of relief. We have to demonstrate that esteem, acceptance, love, and humane interaction are realities in this world, contrary to what the addict has learned all his life.”

end ID]

[thatgirlonstage]

All of the McElroys’ cultural jokes and references can make canon sense if you assume that they all refer to people and things from different planes they visited during Stolen Century. However that does also mean that even though Lucretia managed to erase Taako’s entire sister she could not destroy Tres Horny Boys’ determination to meme

It also means they all spent a decade wandering around making jokes about singers no one had heard of until they met each other

[puppetmaster55]

You’ve made Merle’s disowning by his family because of his love for Kenny Chesney like five times more funny h o w

[hustlinghelltwins]

Tres horny bois meeting each other and just realizing in amazment and awe that they all understand the same cultural references and this is why they put up with each other even though they deadass sell each other out on literally everything else for at least the first three arcs

You stick with people who get your memes no matter how horny for plants they are

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[comradekatara]

I’ve seen ppl say that katara ending up with aang over zuko is unrealistic wish-fulfillment on the part of the writers who wanted the beautiful heroine to end up with the loser nerd instead of the hot older guy, but the funniest thing about that claim is that aang is 100% the Cool Kid, and zuko is, without a shadow of a doubt, a loser nerd.

[voidfaucet]

how dare you hide this in the tags

[lielking-deactivated20220530]

pride skies part 1

[1] [2] [3] [Old Skies] [Demi Sky] 

[redbubble] 

[joshpeck]

there’s something about living life deliberately…wearing clothes that you actually want to and that you feel reflect you and your style not just because you’ve had them for years and don’t know what else you would throw on….listening to songs and creating playlists that excite you and represent your actual mood not just listening to songs that you’ve had downloaded for years that don’t make you feel anything special anymore…it’s VERY easy to stay with what you’re comfortable and it might take a bit of experimenting before you find what feels like a deliberate choice that reflects more of YOU but it’s absolutely worth the leap of faith you may have to convince yourself to make in order to stop feeling like a passenger in your own life

[meteor-sword]

i might elaborate later but fanfic replies literally develop writer’s metacognition and make them better writers

[meteor-sword]

so, Metacognition is the practice of thinking about thinking or identifying one’s cognitive process . in essence, metacognition is understanding how you prepare for academic challenges, exams, or tasks, and then being able to reflect on whether you did well, you prepared adequately, and what was most effective. in a writing setting, this type of self-awareness helps you transfer skills in writing, say, fanfiction into writing academically, competitively and professionally. 

here’s an article from brown university on the subject i’ll discuss further. there are 3 parts of practicing metacognition identified in this article: planning, monitoring, and evaluation. how might this look like for a fanfic writer? 

planning: asking oneself ‘what is my goal?’ ‘what strategies should i use to meet that goal?’ ‘how much time/length do i need to meet my goal?’. so maybe my goal is to write a meet cute where two characters kiss. i’ll need to use a perspective, an upbeat tone, and forward characterization to do this. it’ll probably take 5000 words and two days to write. 

monitoring: asking oneself: is my story making sense? am i reaching my goal, or do i need to summarize more succinctly to keep it to 5k? maybe you started with a lot of exposition and now you’re 6k in and the characters haven’t met yet. what went wrong/changed? is it ok that it changed or did you not realize it got away from you? what now? 

evaluation: asking oneself: did i reach my goal? was it effective? what would i change next time? 

this is where comments come in

it is incredibly difficult to evaluate yourself. comments like “i love this!” actually do begin to touch on the evaluation step of metacognition. it means, in general, the writer is on the right track. comments like “i loved the dialogue between x and y” or “the emotions of this section really hit me” begin to answer the questions of was it effective, did i reach my goal and conversely answer what would i change next time (by adding more of whatever was specified as working well). HYPER SPECIFIC comments, like analyzing the story between the lines or pasting in a line that you really liked and explaining why, is like jet fuel for the metacognition process and i’m not exaggerating. specifically pointing out what was effective and why is incredibly useful 

i can straight up credit my writing style to all of my friends and readers who have given incredibly detailed comments. when i found a community who gave feedback like that, my writing improved a thousand times faster than before. so! i guess what i’m saying is give feedback! it goes so much further than you realize!

[unnecessaryligatures]

Wired: Leave comments because it makes your fav writers feel good

Inspired: Leave comments because it will make them write better

[disregardcanon]

Eureka-d: leave comments because it will make YOU write better too. It develops your meta cognition as well

[dumpsterprophet]

*has a gay little theology question that angers the pastor*

[haileyastraea]

*has a gay little theology question that interests and pleases the rabbi*

[dumpsterprophet]

This is not the first time I've gotten this exact comment about a rabbi liking the gay questions and let me say how does it feel to have religious leaders this cool