‘til human voices wake us,

and we drown. 🍂Zilla🍁 icon and mobile background by @dappermouth

[valarinde]

maskerade (1995)

[skunkes]

[95wonder]

No. I know this is probably just a casual commiseration but I think it's a real and important question to ask and answer. If doing the stuff you're expected to do everyday is super hard, then something is probably wrong.

Anyone who relates to this too hard, I'd recommend looking up spoon theory and starting to make a record of how you feel and your experiences that you can bring up with some kind of health professional. Chances are if doing laundry feels like climbing everest, it's because you're disabled in some way. Whether that disability is some invisible chronic illness or depression or ADHD or burnout, *something* is wrong.

Almost all disabilities have some form of treatment or accommodation that can make your life easier. If you can get a diagnosis, you might also be eligible for official accommodations and benefits. Social security sucks ass and is almost impossible to access but like, it's not the only thing out there set up to help disabled folks and usually local organizations are gonna be better anyway.

Plenty of people reblogging this probably already know they're disabled in some way but if even 1 person sees this and can learn something important about themselves then it's worth saying.

TLDR: people who aren't disabled don't find acts of daily living extremely hard. Maybe look into that and see if you can get help making your life less hard.

Sincerely, a multiply disabled person.

[kiricat]

This is super important okay. Like, I used to try to ask my conservative family/church/etc. for help, and they’d just be all, “suck it up; life is hard for everyone; quit being such a baby”... and then I went to, like, actual experts, and they were basically like, “um, wow, you’re clearly super depressed and suicidal; you should actually be proud of yourself for still being alive!” And I’m still trying to unlearn the former and accept the latter, even after all this time. And I’m so mad that I’ve wasted so much time just trying to “push through it” instead of getting help I clearly need(ed), and that’s still a thing I struggle with.

Please, please seek real help if you need it. Like, I understand that there are shitty doctors and shitty therapists and whatnot, but it’s so worth expending what effort you can to find good ones who can help. If you have mentally ill friends -- which, if you’re reading this in the first place, you almost certainly do -- they might be able to point you in the right direction.

[ledeadface]

[ID: a screenshot from the Too Afraid to Ask reddit that reads: "How do people just so stuff? Is life not incredibly hard for everyone?" /end ID]

[eatember]

I have a friend with insane ADD and we have this same conversation sometimes

She can't actually even define laziness (which is weird) but she thought she was just lazy, life was that hard for everyone, and that everyone else was just being more responsible at managing it. I told her laziness feels good once and she blue screened.

Like if you can't define laziness, you've probably been convinced it's something that it's not. Probably something nebulous and hard to describe. Like, idk, an unknown disorder.

In case you're one such person, laziness feels great. It's not stressful. It's like the opposite of stressful. If you're being stressed and lazy at the same time you've managed to do it wrong somehow. The only struggle in being lazy is wanting the tv remote and being to darn comfortable to want to move. (But you get it anyways, because it's not an inability to get the remote. You were just cozy.)

Think of it like a cat sitting near a warm heater or a hamster so relaxed it "melts". If there were danger, or if the animal were hungry, it would get up. It probably doesn't want to get up because it's comfortable but it will. If the hamster is actually genuinely hungry but it can't get up and it's just laying there stressed and starving, you would take your animal to the vet because it has a problem.

[dollsonmain]

That’s how it was for me growing up, too. I seriously thought everyone was constantly exhausted, confused, and in pain like I was and I was just really, really bad at dealing with it, didn’t want to try hard enough, and was just lazy.

[bostonbakeddeans]

Additional gentle reminder that the regular amount of unidentifiable/unexpected pain is none. The normal amount of unidentifiable/unexpected pain is none.

Sore the next day after a workout? Makes sense.

Sore for the next week after a workout? Not normal.

Barked your shin on a low coffee table and have an ache/bruise? Expected.

Gently brushed past the doorframe and your arm feels like it's on fire? Not normal.

Joint pain in your teens/20's is not normal. Heart problems in your teens/20's are not normal. Continual (AKA chronic!) fatigue despite diet/sleep schedule is not normal.

If you cannot point to an event or series of events that caused the discomfort/pain you are experiencing ("I fell off my bike", "I walked 3 miles", "I slept poorly", "I haven't been getting all the nutrients I need"), it's probably not normal! And it is okay to want that discomfort/pain to stop, even if it's mild! Most people are not going through their daily lives consistently uncomfortable or in pain.

Most people are not going through their daily lives uncomfortable or in pain.

You deserve to be comfortable and to have things be easy. Whether that looks like readjusting your life and expectations or getting professional help (medical/mental/other), you deserve it. I promise.

[damndorothea]

i saw this somewhere else but reply / tag what you did today so everyone can see that we all did something different today

[bisonwares]

🌕🩸REVENANT - TRANSFROM 🩸🌕

Live on Kickstarter

Bison Wares is a trans🏳️‍⚧️ owned small business run by two artists, Mark and Smi.

Everything we create is hand drawn by us with the company of our two cats Ame and Flea

We are very excited to present our newest project, vampire and werewolf themed jean Sherpa jackets.

Included in this Kickstarter are other items such as patches, blankets, enamel pins, tapestries and more!

Above you can see several of our concept pieces to be added soon! 🌕🐺🦇🩸

Kickstarter link here!

[lectern-fullcauldron]

I know we talk a lot about keep jumping on boxes, but I'm honestly so grateful for Joe hills' knife theory; a variation on spoon theory that says once you're out of spoons, you can choose to take knives instead in the knowledge that it will hurt later. and the number of times I've told myself 'ok let's take the knives' is so high that I've found it really helps to acknowledge it. Thanks, Joe

[bogwitchgirl]

I think there is a message here that a lot of people don’t get: there is a cost when you do not have the spoons for something and some force compels you to do it regardless

this is the first I’ve ever heard of “knives” in the context of disability, but I’m disabled and retired entirely because I took more knives than I can even begin to count at my old job, and was never given a chance to recover from all the stabs and slices

so i feel like “knives” could do for being more widespread, so that people better understand the choice they’re making and the toll it can take if they do things that they don’t have the spoons for

[gardenspells]

i love you apricots. i love you nectarines. i love you peaches. i love you plums. i love you stone fruit. i love you!!

[anglaised]

we need to remake anything greek related with just black actors just to piss ppl off i think

[mistergalaxywide]

or, and i know this is a stretch, bear with me: we cast...Greek people. because Greek people still exist.

[anglaised]

do you think greek people and black people are entirely separate categories that never exist as both bc i promise you the reason that you think that is bc of racism

[mangled-by-disuse]

people have this tendency to view the wheel as a benchmark of human development.

and i feel like people forget just how many parts of the world didn't use wheels consistently until the last couple of centuries

like. not because they were "primitive" or hadn't thought to invent it, but because there are terrains and regions where wheels just aren't useful. in deserts. on islands. in places with a lot of bog or heavy snowfall.

in the upper pennines, wheeled carts only came into common use when the coal industry grew in the 18th century and the gravity train was developed. until then, roads were too hard to maintain and most people just used horses, mules, or sleds for heavy transport.

in argyll and the west of scotland, where mountain terrain hits the coast and where the lochs mean that there is a lot of coast, it is much easier to use boats and rafts than to try to transport freight overland. so small freight was similarly carried by livestock or dragged, and only as far as the nearest body of water.

in the southern fens (before they were drained) rafts were more common than carts, usually being dragged over mud and bog rather than floating in deep water.

and it is relevant to note that all of these were in England and Scotland, places which had, on aggregate, been using wheels since the neolithic. none of these places failed to invent the wheel. they just uninvented it. because it was useless. other cultures in broader terrain areas (like the steppes, or the deserts, or the Arctic) may never have invented the wheel at all, bc, like, why would you? it's useless.

and. idk. i think about that a lot when people talk about progress and universal human development. it puts me in mind of a book from the 1860s i read that was like "and those backwards people in subsaharan africa haven't even thought to invent doors! on an unrelated note all the houses we, the Enlightened Whites, build in the area are unbearably hot and full of flies. wonder what that's about." like. wow. you really are just of the belief that the ideal technological development looks the same wherever you are, huh?

[elfwreck]

The wheel is invented by most human cultures.

They used it for pottery. They used it for children's toys. They used it for spinning thread. They used it to turn a spit while cooking. They attached it to a box with handles and used it to carry supplies to and from the battlefield. They stuck it in water and used it to power a mill. They made it out of rock and spun it to sharpen blades. They made them tiny and put them on necklaces.

The wheel's a very useful device and it got invented for a thousand purposes, some common to many cultures, some limited to just a few.

They didn't use it for transport until they they had roads.

And a lot of terrain does not take well to roads, not without a whole lot of time and money being spent by someone other than local farmers. You need a whole lot of people using the exact same route, over and over, to justify the hassle and expense of building & maintaining a road that's faster to navigate with wheels than by either loading your stuff on a string of donkeys, or dragging it behind them on a blanket stretched between two poles.

They didn't "fail to invent the wheel"; they failed to invent the ox-drawn cart. Because they had nowhere to use it.

[sturionic]

"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.

As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.

I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!

The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.

With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.

Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!

Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.

You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).

[sanlorenzoherald]

good morning

[sztupy]

[thatlittleegyptologist]

You’ll need the link!

Who wants to help Cards Against Humanity f*** with Elon Musk?

We got Musk off our land. Let's build a monument to remind him he's a sad little b**** with no friends.

[ashleeabutton]

Not all heroes wear capes, sometimes they publish questionable card games

[pokemoniker]

“We need a robust impersonal state-sponsored safety net for the elderly, disabled, and mentally ill, because not even severely antisocial people should be left on their own to die” is a statement that i agree with. But it’s an issue i think people tend to oversimplify, because well. caring for insane bigoted old people sucks ass

[pokemoniker]

When people invoke this sentiment, i think they often make the same error seen in, say, calls for stronger online content moderation: a lack of consideration for who is going to do this work.

In the US today, around a quarter to a third of aides and caregivers for the elderly are immigrants [1, 2], the vast vast majority of whom are women. (From what I can tell) a major reason for this is that nursing or social work degrees/certification programs provide a straightforward (well, relatively) pathway to citizenship or permanent residency; and many simpler caregiver jobs only require a high school diploma, which is useful for immigrants in the US who may not be able to attend college. While I'm sure many of these workers have a sincere passion for caregiving, in a world without severe immigration restrictions and these obvious pipelines the numbers would not be this skewed. I do not think most of these people would put these careers as their first choice.

For starters, they do not pay very much. Average base salary on Indeed for caregiver jobs was $16.83 an hour. For seconders, how often have you had to deal with older relatives making sexist, racist, or otherwise uncomfortable comments at family gatherings? Frankly, lot of old people suck to be around! So do a lot of mentally ill people! Mentally ill old people (so, a lot of the ones receiving home care or living in facilities) can extra suck to be around!! Sexual harassment, violence, and abuse towards workers is common in home care and facilities. [1, 2, 3]. Many caregivers of color experience racism from coworkers, patients, or patients families. Now, many of these people are not fully in control of their thoughts or actions (hence why they require care). And even if they were, being a racist abusive serial harasser doesn't mean somebody deserves to be tortured or medically neglected or left to die.

But we aren't talking about abstract hypotheticals and who "deserves" what. We are talking about real people. When people say things like "the worst person you know still deserves care", it feels like they are expecting the care provider to just manifest out of the ether, and be willing to do whatever is needed without complaint. How much money would someone have to pay you to visit your shittiest relatives for eight hours a day? How long do you think you could retain a warm, kind bedside manner while being sexually harassed, called slurs, or physically assaulted? A week? A month? This is what providing care for the elderly, disabled, and mentally ill can entail, and this is what needs to be addressed if we want to prevent abuse and neglect of patients.

[pokemoniker]

I feel like i didn't connect the first and the second two paragraphs very well... my point in bringing up demographics was that

1- most of the people in caregiver jobs currently are not people who can really have their pick of whatever careers they desire. This is relevant because people often bring up "care provided for people who need it regardless of their sociability" in the context of like, what we as a society should work towards as an ideal. But in an ideal world, how many people would choose the career path of "care for the assholes nobody wants to deal with"?

2- many healthcare workers are nonwhite and experience racial harassment

3- the fact that "who is going to provide this care" seems like an unimportant concern for people reflects how the needs of immigrant workers are often overlooked and invisiblised by those unfamiliar with them. Similar to when people say "We need more content moderation!" without considering the thousands of content moderaters who do exist (mostly in poorer countries) and are being traumatized constantly

[its-arson-time]

inside of you there are two intestines.

one of them is large, and the other is small.

[feyburner]

Man at my job just told me to “hold your little horsies just a little longer ☺️” about the task I’ve been waiting for him to complete or at the very least update me on for six weeks. Brendan, I will fuck your adult son. You’re gonna start seeing me at family Christmas. Horsies in tow.

[aya--bb]

genuinely I'm so sick of people wanting all fiction to be ethical. can we all just get a little gross with it. the point of fiction is that it's not real. we can be unethical in fiction; same goes with being perverted with fiction, being unrealistic with fiction, and being grotesque with fiction. not all fiction has to be ethical, not every character has to be ethical, and that's okay. can we stop with the puritanism. be gross. be unrealistic. be whatever. if I don't like it it's not my business as long as we're all clear that its fictional.

[notemily]

via ered.bsky.social, the only kinds of unethical fiction:

people in the replies are going "what about books glorifying unethical things" and "what if it's propaganda" and you, my friends, are who this comic was made for

[laterkiss]

i am like the breadloser of the family

[soup-mother]

As someone who isn't a furry but has very much grown up around furry art I kinda forget that it's shocking to some people. It's kinda just what a bunch of queer art looks like. That anthro dragon girl might as well be my coworker, what's your fucking problem?

[aholefilledwithtwigs]

I have never read or watched Death Note and i know the whole ‘book that kills people’ premise but from all the shit i see on here it seems to be two teenaged boys acting out this scene over and over