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.
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.
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
Sometimes you gotta stop worrying about being the smartest and funniest person in the room and just enjoy being in a room with smart and funny people
I really implore y'all to stop letting the need to prove yourself get in the way of just enjoying life and the people you share it with. I’m using the word “implore” so y'all know I’m serious about it, btw
This must resonate so much cause like. Either we all need to hear this or we know somebody who really does
I know from trying to get my college to divest from its fossil fuel investments that this is Big Fucking Money for these institutions and they will not let go of a single stock without a hard fucking fight. Nothing like getting escorted out of the president’s office by security for the heinous crime of suggesting that maybe, just MAYBE, profiting off the destruction of the entire planet isn’t the most ethical choice when your students are going six figures into debt for an education
Solid bandaids: okay, but pretty wack how the glue comes off the bandaid the first time you wash your hands but it stays stuck to your fingernail for a month
Liquid bandaids: pretty lit, it’s waterproof and flexible and when it starts coming off you can just peel it or slap on another coat. Stings like hell tho
Gas bandaids: cool in theory, but the constant whooshing noise and fine mist of blood spraying from my open wound is keeping me up at night
Also be aware that a LOT of companies substitute cheaper ingredients in their food products. Which is obnoxious but fine, unless you’re allergic to the substitute ingredients.
Olive oil, tea, honey, cinnamon (not that lead is exactly “safe” to eat), vanilla, coffee, fish, blah blah blah. The list goes on. Any corners a company can cut to save .001%, they will. Usually the substitutes are mostly harmless, but it isn’t as if companies care about consumer safety when there’s profit to be made.
To clarify, the list linked is ALL hand sanitizer products officially recalled (and may have ongoing additions). It is NOT just the Aruba Aloe brand; there are many brands by various manufacturers on the list. So please check to see if you own anything on that list.
To clarify further and reduce overall panic: methanol isn’t that bad if you get it on your skin. It causes blindness when you ingest it because your liver tries to break it down like ethanol (as in, sippin’ liquor) and accidentally creates formic acid, which dissolves your optic nerve.
Interestingly, one of the best ways to prevent methanol toxicity if medical treatment is unavailable is to just drink a fuck load of ethanol (i.e. get shitfaced) because your liver is like “oh, shit, now THERE’S the good stuff!” and just kinda ignores the methanol for a while until you pee it out. This also works if you are a complete moron and you drink antifreeze, but through a different mechanism that keeps the antifreeze in solution instead of allowing it to crystallize inside your kidneys. If methanol gets on your skin (like from windshield washer fluid, where it’s used to lower the freezing point of the liquid below temperatures typically found on this planet), it evaporates even faster than ethanol or isopropanol, so the odds of absorbing a toxic amount from a little squirt of hand sanitizer are pretty low.
Just don’t fucking drink your hand sanitizer or slather your entire body with it a la Frank Reynolds and you’ll be fine.
The situation in the Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza needs attention!
Not only did Israel declare that their operations in the north had ended, only for them to return in full force, but Israel’s nonstop strikes are targeting a densely populated area as well as invading UNRWA schools.
Each of these UNRWA schools has been sheltering about 10,000 people. Six of these schools are being directly targeted right now and reports are saying that tanks are approaching the entrance of these schools.
Also, if you know anything about refugee camps you know how houses are almost on top of each other with barely any space and alleyways are so narrow sometimes only allowing one person to pass through at a time. This can paint a picture of the amount of destruction and death that will be caused by Israel’s invasion and strikes of the Jabalia refugee camp.
As a reminder there are no fully functioning hospitals in the area and the wounded are expected to die as a result of not only lack of medical support but also because Israel makes it impossible for ambulances or people to get to the wounded by targeting the ways leading up to them.
Everything I mentioned above has been something we have at some point screamed about during the past months and in fact the past years. None of this is a new tactic or approach by Israel. Yet, this continues to happen because despite its obvious crimes, Israel is allowed to enact with complete impunity. We were worried about allowing Israel to set a precedent, but what does it tell you now that Israel had repeated the same heinous crimes over and over again while they’re being televised?
the genius of megamind (beyond the obvious genius ofc) is that it’s superman parody actually presents a genuinely unsettling depiction of the “hero” that I like wayyy better than “what if superman was evil” or “what if superman was wrong”… it’s “what if superman didn’t care”
I wouldn’t say he “didn’t care” more like he was burnt out
He played the role since he was a child and now is in his what 30s? 40s?
He knew there was never any real danger with Megamind in charge so decided to pursue something that’s a passion and doesn’t come naturally easy to him
One of the things that always jumped out to me about this reveal is that it implies that Metro Man was also the very first person to recognize that MegaMind wasn’t really evil. He knew his nemesis wouldn’t actually hurt anyone if he won, he knew that this universally reviled pariah never really had any more choice than he did.
The rest of Metro City treats MegaMind like a real, sincere, serious threat once he’s unopposed, and it takes them a while to learn otherwise. But Metro Man? He’s not surprised to see him and Roxanne working together, he doesn’t act like there’s any kind of threat beyond his cover being blown. He wastes no time in coming clean once the cat’s out of the bag. He’s been working with this guy all his life. Besides his own mental health, I get the impression that he also recognized that this would be good for MegaMind too.
I just really love how in a superhero pastiche that asks “Is the villain really so bad, and the hero really so good?” the answer is “no, but that’s okay”. It’s okay that Metro Man isn’t a paragon. It’s okay that he has to take care of himself. It’s okay for him to step down and live his own life. It wouldn’t be okay for him to leave people in danger, but it’s pretty clear he knew he wasn’t doing that.
And it carries to the end. MegaMind becomes the city’s new protector, but it’s clear that he’s still got some issues to work through, and he’s getting help working through them. He’s got a support network, he’s willing to put in the effort, but he’s not the shining paragon Metro Man was believed to be. And he doesn’t NEED to be that paragon. He’s still good. He’s still protecting people. And he’s not alone in it.
God, there’s just so many shitty “Superheroes would have character flaws too, and that’s why they’d actually suck” deconstructions floating around, it’s nice to see a story that acknowledges that no one can live up to that kind of role, but that’s okay!
megamind once again proving to be the best modern superhero movie
children existing in public spaces is genuinely like. necessary for the continuation of society. it doesnt have to be your kids you dont have to volunteer at a daycare or whatever but you need to be able to tolerate the presence of someone who is learning how to exist as a human and interact with people
One of the best stories humanity ever produced was a draft of a rewrite of the Epic of Gilgamesh written by a Ecuadorian poet in 1935. It was tossed into a fireplace by an angry boy and lost forever. Another of humanity’s best was told 65,000 years ago and was overheard by a small tribe of embarked Neanderthals boating down a river in what is now northern Georgia. A short woman at the bank scrubbed a wooden idol in the water and sang an ancient tale in an unknown language. These two are eclipsed by everything produced by two brothers at the coast of what is now Cameroon between 503 BC and 490 BC, which they shared with some family and friends, and were beloved by everyone except a sour uncle.
I’m on the bluegrass music part of youtube right now and i stumbled across this comment on a really talented banjo cover
The idea that some serbian dad is in the same part of youtube as I am and his 5 year old son is hearing this fire banjo rendition of Foggy Mountain Breakdown for the first and going absolutely ape shit he likes it so much that he’s running and jumping all across and around their house is just sending me. Peace and love on planet earth.
I’m on the bluegrass music part of youtube right now and i stumbled across this comment on a really talented banjo cover
The idea that some serbian dad is in the same part of youtube as I am and his 5 year old son is hearing this fire banjo rendition of Foggy Mountain Breakdown for the first and going absolutely ape shit he likes it so much that he’s running and jumping all across and around their house is just sending me. Peace and love on planet earth.
I’m on the bluegrass music part of youtube right now and i stumbled across this comment on a really talented banjo cover
The idea that some serbian dad is in the same part of youtube as I am and his 5 year old son is hearing this fire banjo rendition of Foggy Mountain Breakdown for the first and going absolutely ape shit he likes it so much that he’s running and jumping all across and around their house is just sending me. Peace and love on planet earth.
I got an ask from someone who felt timid about drawing curlier hair and wanted some advice! This is by NO means exhaustive and is mostly just my thought process for my own stylization. There are tons of resources for drawing more textured hair, so for this I just wanted to focus on curls. hope it helps!
I’m in awe of how we ran historical revisionism on the civil rights movement so bad that people truly believe it was quiet self-sacrifcial non-disruptive christ-like activism that forced progress and not — like — the incredible economic pressure of boycotts and outbreaks of illegal civil disobedience
Yapping to the choir but eughhh it burns me up girl effective protests have to be loud and inconvenient for change to happen because silent cries die in the dark that’s the entire pointtt
Also, a lot of the so called harmless examples used for peaceful protests were specifically supposed to be disruptive as all hell. Like, take sit-ins, for example. What you were probably told is that black people just refused to leave white only establishments to make a point.
But how they actually worked was manipulating racist policies to cause as much of a delay as possible. They’d sit down at the bar to order (that’s how those restaurants worked, you had to sit down to order and there weren’t many tables) and when the waiter said they couldn’t serve them, they’d respond that they would wait until they could be served. And then all their friends who they organized this with would do the same, and they would sit there at every seat until they’re holding up the whole line. Then nobody could order and the restaurant was forced to either close, serve them, or try and fail to work around them. It wasn’t just to make a point, it was to cost them money and time.
Even what was framed as “quiet peaceful protest” was actually very disruptive both socially and economically.
Does this look quiet, peaceful, nondisruptive?
And the struggle didn’t stop after formal integration, once the Civil Rights act had passed. Because even when they are legally required to serve you, they can make you really fucking uncomfortable and threaten you and the cops probably will take their side.
For one example, there was a cafe that would serve Black people, but would then publicly break the dishes so that no white customer would ever have to eat off a dish a Black person had eaten off of. This was done publicly, right as the Black diner was done eating. The waitress takes the plate and smashes it. This is a signal both to the white diners “see, we hate them just as much as you do, you’re safe here” and also a threat of violence to the Black diners. “If you’re not careful we’ll smash you just like we did this plate.”
But at the same time, if Black people go there and eat every day … how long before the cafe can’t afford to do that? How long before they have broken so many dishes that it’s eating into their profits? How long before the white diners start getting used to eating alongside Black people and simply don’t care as much any longer, or start getting annoyed at the noise and fuss and mess?
Black people eating in white establishments was loud, inconvenient, and disruptive. Because that’s the nature of challenging the status quo.
I’m in awe of how we ran historical revisionism on the civil rights movement so bad that people truly believe it was quiet self-sacrifcial non-disruptive christ-like activism that forced progress and not — like — the incredible economic pressure of boycotts and outbreaks of illegal civil disobedience
Yapping to the choir but eughhh it burns me up girl effective protests have to be loud and inconvenient for change to happen because silent cries die in the dark that’s the entire pointtt
Also, a lot of the so called harmless examples used for peaceful protests were specifically supposed to be disruptive as all hell. Like, take sit-ins, for example. What you were probably told is that black people just refused to leave white only establishments to make a point.
But how they actually worked was manipulating racist policies to cause as much of a delay as possible. They’d sit down at the bar to order (that’s how those restaurants worked, you had to sit down to order and there weren’t many tables) and when the waiter said they couldn’t serve them, they’d respond that they would wait until they could be served. And then all their friends who they organized this with would do the same, and they would sit there at every seat until they’re holding up the whole line. Then nobody could order and the restaurant was forced to either close, serve them, or try and fail to work around them. It wasn’t just to make a point, it was to cost them money and time.
Even what was framed as “quiet peaceful protest” was actually very disruptive both socially and economically.
Does this look quiet, peaceful, nondisruptive?
And the struggle didn’t stop after formal integration, once the Civil Rights act had passed. Because even when they are legally required to serve you, they can make you really fucking uncomfortable and threaten you and the cops probably will take their side.
For one example, there was a cafe that would serve Black people, but would then publicly break the dishes so that no white customer would ever have to eat off a dish a Black person had eaten off of. This was done publicly, right as the Black diner was done eating. The waitress takes the plate and smashes it. This is a signal both to the white diners “see, we hate them just as much as you do, you’re safe here” and also a threat of violence to the Black diners. “If you’re not careful we’ll smash you just like we did this plate.”
But at the same time, if Black people go there and eat every day … how long before the cafe can’t afford to do that? How long before they have broken so many dishes that it’s eating into their profits? How long before the white diners start getting used to eating alongside Black people and simply don’t care as much any longer, or start getting annoyed at the noise and fuss and mess?
Black people eating in white establishments was loud, inconvenient, and disruptive. Because that’s the nature of challenging the status quo.
In writing, epithets (“the taller man”/“the blonde”/etc) are inherently dehumanizing, in that they remove a character’s name and identity, and instead focus on this other quality.
Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!
They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn’t know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later (“the bearded man” is much less likely to show up again than “the man with the angel tattoo”)
They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she’s acting on behalf of the state
They can reveal the narrator’s biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator’s mind
But these only work if the epithet used is how the narrator primarily identifies that character. Which is why it’s so jarring to see a lot of common epithets in intimate moments– because it conveys that the main character is primarily thinking of their lover/best friend/etc in terms of their height or age or hair color.
I dunno how many people this will even touch but, I miss my younger self, I wish she wasn’t so traumatized and I wish I was there to help them. they would be so proud where we are now. I love you so much.
