Feline alright?

random stuff, random thoughts, random things I like

[puttingherinhistory]

I will never ever understand why anyone would want to make another human being upset on purpose. I never have and never will understand the appeal of "getting a rise out of" another human being. I will never understand why some people find joy or amusement over another human being's suffering and distress.

And the fact that this behavior is so widely acceptable and tolerated really is the root of so, so many problems. Sexual assault and abuse wouldn't be so rampant if this behavior wasn't so socially acceptable, you can't change my mind. Today's "he's just trying to get a rise out of you because he thinks it's fun to make you upset, but it's not a big deal and it's completely harmless that he likes to make you upset for fun" is tomorrow's rapist and/or abuser.

[dailymanners]

#and then it like somehow switches to you being in the wrong for being upset or something like you're just making a fuss about nothing#like damn how dare I get upset when someone is making me upset on purpose???#How come when I try and do anything about it suddenly everyone's preaching about being the “bigger person” or whatever#and just letting them get away with it

I've never understood this, and the most insidious part of it is how this dynamic (the person being tormented is in trouble for getting upset, while the tormentee doesn't face any consequences at all) seems to be most common in children. Or more specifically, how adult caregivers manage these situations with children.

What a horrible message to send to children. No wonder victim blaming is so prevalent in our society.

[biglawbear]

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

[biglawbear]

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

[biglawbear]

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

[biglawbear]

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

[i-justreally-like-cats-okay]

Calming CAT!

[fuckingfuckersfucked-deactivate]

Well, it’s finally finished.  It was a genuinely satisfying project. I present you Ankh Morpork in the guise of Google Maps.

[seiya234]

brb, ugly happy screaming.

[agentquinn]

WOWWIE THIS IS GREAT 

[seance]

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY + the mothers.

[harperhug]

Video of a kitten at a vet’s office protesting loudly as it’s scooped from the floor. Another kitten turns around the corner and walks up to the camera, also protesting loudly for its friend. From here.

[borderlands-disorder]

[serenityfails]

[sforzesco]

Kakang Pule, Rody Herrera

The painting depicts a moment on the journey that brought Apolinario Mabini to Emilio Aguinaldo. Aguinaldo had read Mabini's writings and was so impressed by it that he had Mabini (who had suffered from polio which caused paralysis in his legs) brought to him from Batangas to Kawit, carried by hammock through a series of relays.

One of the copies of the scheme which I had drafted reached Mr Aguinaldo’s hands by chance, and he thereupon wrote, although he did not know me, asking me to help him. Although I was just as unacquainted with him, I wanted to help in the common endeavour as far as I was able, and I called on him at Cavite port on the 12th June 1898, the very day on which the independence of the Philippines was being proclaimed in the town of Kawit. I immediately asked him about the agreement he had concluded with the United States Government, and to my great surprise learned that there was none, and that the (American) consul in Singapore, Pratt, and Admiral Dewey had only given him verbal assurances that the United Sates Government did not want any part of the islands and that it designed only to help the natives destroy the Spanish tyranny so that all the Filipinos could enjoy the blessings of an independent government. I realized then that the American representatives had limited themselves to ambiguous verbal promises, which Mr Aguinaldo had accepted because he ardently desired to return to the islands, fearful that other influential Filipinos should (rob him of glory and) reach an understanding with the Americans in the name of the people.

-The Philippine Revolution, Apolinario Mabini (trans. Leon Ma. Guerrero)

When Emilio Aguinaldo returned to the Philippines on board a US ship and announced the continuation of the Philippine revolution against Spain, he sent for a Batangas lawyer famous for an “ulong ginto” (head of gold). Carried from Batangas to Laguna in a hammock, Mabini endured all discomforts patiently, even when he was abruptly dropped on the ground to be picked up by the next relay. He arrived in Kawit in time for the declaration of Philippine independence, the waving of the Philippine flag, and the premiere of the Magdalo March that became our national anthem.

-Mabini: Conscience of the Nation, Ambeth R. Ocampo

[keikomivra]

lola is sweet on peter 2 😊

[catasters]

[tracing-rivers]

[impactvelocity]

and the actor sub-genre

[kleefkruid]

My dad was dealing with some mixed feelings so I told him "In therapy when something is too complicated to do a simple 'pro and contra list' we sometimes do an excercise where you imagine all these mixed feelings around a table in some kind of conference, letting each tell their bit and you leading the debate."

and my dad didn't really respond and just stared ahead so I kept preparing lunch. Until a few minutes later when he suddenly piped up: "I am having a bad time at the conference"

[whelvenwings]

God I hope the future is kinder. I hope that they have it figured out better. I hope people don't have to work so much for so little. I hope there's time to explore passions and interests and skills. I hope people get the support they need. I hope the people from the future look back at our problems and are bewildered by them, like I'm confused by how they used to put poisonous lead in make-up, just... "how did they ever think that was okay? How did they live like that?" I hope the cruelties and hidden poisons of our world are one day so distant that they're used as fun facts in trivia games. Please be kinder, future

[femalepope]

if we want to stop the patriarchal concept of surnames being passed down the male line, we have a few options options that i’d be 100% fine with:

children get whichever surname is cooler, to eliminate uncool surnames over the generations

children get whichever surname is rarer, to achieve a utopian future in a few centuries where all surnames are more or less equally common

children’s surnames are randomly generated: say, heads for parent #1’s surname, tails for parent #2’s surname

parents pick the first names first, and then a court decides which surname fits it better. so if a couple named mr. madison and mr. liu want to name their daughter alison, she’ll get the surname liu, because alison madison sounds ridiculous

everyone stops having children right now

[lostsometime]

6) both parents’ surnames are combined into a new name, in the same vein as portmanteau ship-names

[tolkien-feels]

7) We adopt elvish naming customs and have upwards of three names for each individual, none of which are surnames and all of which may be translated to any other language for any reason at any point in our lives. This has no advantages but will really annoy every government on earth and I just think it’d be really funny to watch them figure out the paperwork for that

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

I once completed a name change for a Miss White, she was getting married to Mr. Black

They both changed their name to Mr and Mrs. Grey

[sword-and-nightingale]

No one will ever do this better than them.

[tilthat]

TIL that hard disks are so sensitive to vibration, that just screaming at them diminishes their performance

via reddit.com

[rnoonpie]

getting screamed at diminishes my performance too, u ain’t special

[sensiblereblogifposts]

Reblog if getting screamed at diminishes your performance

[sithholocron-deactivated2012090]

[spockglocksrocks]

sometimes there’s videos that make me happy to exist on this planet

[cameoappearance]

i’d reblog this even if it was a still image

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I know it’s a sesame street clip but seriously, who is the target audience for this?

[cameoappearance]

Parents watching it with their kids, I guess?

[loreweaver]

literally everyone

[elfwreck]

Everyone. No, really… everyone.

For adults, the appeal is Sir Patrick Stewart doing a kid’s educational bit in full Shakespearean dress and style; there’s a delightful cognitive dissonance between the very serious presentation and the very simple content.

For very small children, it’s educational: this is the letter “B”; here’s how it’s shaped; here’s some words you know that start with it. Oh, and here’s a word you may not be familiar with that starts with it, so you can recognize that it’s the sound that matters, and not whatever other connection you made between the other two words.

For older kids: you’ve probably heard that “to be or not to be?” speech, or at least part of it, so you can enjoy some of the parody the adults are watching. Also, here’s how to describe how a letter is made - how to teach young siblings who don’t read yet, how to explain both the shape and the sound.

For kids with dyslexia: here’s how you differentiate a “B” from a P or D or E. You may have to go slowly and look carefully at the exact shapes that make up the whole, but there are differences and you can learn to recognize them. 

For teens or young college students: In addition to whichever parts of those are relevant to you, here’s what Shakespearean acting sounds like. Here’s how to enunciate clearly and slowly, so your audience can understand terms they may not recognize and still follow the gist of what you’re saying. If you’re reading Shakespeare in school, try sounding it out like this and see if that helps it make sense.

For new RenFaire workers: Here’s how to pronounce “zounds.” 

[frislander-deactivated20220305]

One of the most glorious things in the world is Shakespearean actors doing stuff like this.

[dreamadove]

I want to be politically informed and educated but I also wanna have a good day and be in a good mood. Do you see my problem?

[everythingfox]

speed

(via)