I literally cannot stop laughing at this

IT GOT BETTER THAN WHAT I SAW ON TWITTER

@perditious

I laughed way too hard at myself for bristling at the description of kal-toh like my dude, just cos Tuvok is the best Vulcan since Spock does not mean Vulcan Jenga is cool

fucking hate it when the stuff everybody says "actually works" does actually work.

hate exercising and realizing i've let go of a lot of anxiety and anger because i've overturned my fight-or-flight response.

hate eating right and eating enough and eating 3 times a day and realizing i'm less anxious and i have more energy

hate journaling in my stupid notebook with my stupid bic ballpoint and realizing that i've actually started healing about something once i'm able to externalize it

hate forgiving myself hate complimenting myself more often hate treating myself with kindness hate taking a gratitude inventory hate having patience hate talking to myself gently

hate turning my little face up to the sun and taking deep breaths and looking at nature and grounding myself and realizing that i feel less burdened and more hopeful, more actually-here, that i am able to see the good sides of myself more clearly, that i am able to see not only how far i have to grow - but also how much growth i have already done & how much of my life i truly fill with light and laughter and love

horrible horrible horrible. hate it but i'm gonna do it tho

Me, starting a video that says it's going to explain how Victorian poorhouses fucked up the concept of charity forever: ok, show me what you've got

Video: it starts with the ideas of the Christian philosopher --

Me: DON'T SAY IT DON'T FUCKING SAY IT

Video: -- John Calvin

Me:

Who (he asks, half to piss you off and half because he genuinely doesn't know)

You can't piss me off with that question, because unless you were raised like I was - deeply religiously and within an Evangelical Protestant family - you will probably have never heard of John Calvin.

In short: John Calvin was a French theologian during the Protestant Reformation. He was a philosopher in the same way that ebola is a living thing, or the same way that C4 on a bridge revitalizes a riverfront. If you're familiar with the way that many people say that Reagan is to blame for everything shitty about modern American politics, well, they're half right.

A lot of it is actually John Calvin's fault, but that's just because his shit philosophies are responsible for ~90% of the shit you hate about American life, period.

I'm British but wow

Good (actually terrible, but) news: John Calvin is also responsible for fucking up where you live!

Anglicanism's major tenets were formed largely by Thomas Cranmer attempting to negotiate a "middle way" between Lutheranism & Calvinism. Many aspects of Calvinism were adopted into the Reformed traditions central to Anglican theology & the via media, or middle way, is unfortunately basically just two shitty people playing tug-of-war over the exact way in which Anglicanism would be terrible. This is so foundational to the Church of England that it is addressed in the 3rd paragraph of the opening section of the Wikipedia page on Anglicanism.

Sorry to be the bearer of shitty news! John Calvin is the Worst!

Calvinism, in brief, for those unaware:

All of this bullshit has of course had a heavy influence on:

... and half of the other shitty things that happen in our society, basically. Calvinism is horrific and it underlies a lot - especially in the US and UK, because the Puritans and Roundheads were mostly Calvinists.

(This was the religious freedom that the Pilgrims were seeking. The freedom to be horrible antisocial creeps.)

This is a pretty good basic summary, yep.

i see "men bad" jokes as very similar to suicide jokes. like making them every once in a while isn't the worst thing, but if you Keep making them constantly. it DOES shape how you start thinking and you WILL become a more unpleasant and bitter person and also make people around you uncomfortable. and sometimes you just gotta choose to not make or engage with certain jokes, even if they are amusing to you, because its just not who you wanna be

Honestly, the fact that terry Pratchett has experience around nuclear power makes so much sense once you realize what magic is standing as a metaphor for in the discworld. Like, look at this fucking quote from going postal:

"That's why [magic] was left to wizards, who knew how to handle it safely. Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards—not "not doing magic" because they couldn't do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn't. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you knew how easy it was. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again."

Like... It feels incredibly obvious what he's talking about once you know the context.

“You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become” - Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

it’s seasonal lads

IT’S SEASONAL AGAIN LADS

My hand slipped

This scene, in both book and tv adaptation, is framed as Death imparting wisdom - benevolently, kindly perhaps, but with otherwise no real emotion behind it.

But knowing as we do that Pratchett wrote the Discworld fuelled by an internal anger at how wrong and fucked up the world was, we can reframe this as probably one of Pratchett’s angriest moments.

Death, in Discworld, speaks IN ALL CAPS. This is supposed to represent his voice sounding a bit like tombstones falling from a great height, but in any other context, SPEAKING IN ALL CAPS MAKES IT SEEM LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING.

To me, there is a palpable, vicious anger behind those words. It’s the anger of someone who is grieving, because in reality death does not care and will strike without warning or mercy or justice. In reality, death is not fair. In its wake, mourners are left feeling bereft and, amongst other things, furiously angry. Angry at the universe for taking away a loved one.

I’m still processing my grief, probably will be for quite some time. Mostly, i settle on anger at the moment. I don’t express it, but at times I feel angry enough to march through the gates of Heaven and scream at God Himself.

That’s the anger that I see behind Death’s words here. That desperate, white-hot, tear-filled anger that screams at an indifferent universe “SHOW ME. SHOW ME THAT THERE IS JUSTICE. SHOW ME THE MERCY.”

And of course, as we are forewarned in Mort, there isn’t any. Not really. Justice, mercy, etc are human concepts. We created them. We have to believe in them, otherwise they cannot exist. And we can see what happens when they break down.

I think it’s one of the best facets of Pratchett’s Death that he is like this, that he is a physical manifestation of the most indifferent force in the universe and yet still cares about the job he does and the people whose souls he reaps. As he asks Azrael in Reaper Man, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

What a beautiful question. That Death asks a question like this shows he cares enough about humans to want them to believe in the fantasies of justice and mercy so wholly that he woudl go to extreme lengths to preserve a smaller fantasy about the personification of Christmas/Yuletide/Hogswatch. When our end comes, may we all get such a caring reaper.

i genuinely think ocd is incredibly underdiagnosed bc i will see people posting what are obvious rituals, compulsions, intrusive thoughts, spiralling, hyper morality, etc and its like Have You Considered This Might Be An Issue

it isnt actually good or normal to have moral dilemmas every day about which posts you reblog. it isn't actually good or normal to check and recheck every message you send "just in case" you sent porn instead of a 'hi how are you'. it isn't actually good or normal to believe that your day will only go well if you have a specific keychain or whatever with you. like i'm not going to diagnose you but i do think some of you need to look into obsessive-compulsive disorder beyond "ha ha funny man wash his hands" portrayals.

seriously being on Tumblr as someone with scrupulous OCD is hell I just have to block so much bc that shit is straight up normalized here. like no I should not be having a panic attack about a nonsensical discourse post morally shaming me for any thing under the sun. you should not be moralizing every single thing you do and hyper analyzing every action like "does liking this post make me a bad person" and you should also not be obsessively policing others and searching for receipts. It's EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to curate your online space because you can be triggered so incredibly easily and it's GENUINELY dangerous. And I wish the online culture around these kinds of posts would change a bit as well

And even if it turns out it’s “only” Anxiety Disorder or even just a higher-than-average level of non-DSM anxiousness, you should still pause to examine why you’re doing things. There’s a lot of suffering in life and you shouldn’t have to live with more of it than already comes standard with existence.

The Hummingbird

The Story of my Father’s Very Brief military career.

Content Warnings: Military, guns, hummingbirds, Profanity, Lots of Profanity, spectacular incompotence, catholicism mention, alcohol mention.

As usual, all names have been changed or redacted to protect people’s privacy.

In the fall of 1969, my Dad was hit by a car and suffered a serious concussion, causing him to miss midterms and put his grade in a hole he wouldn’t be able to recover from, as this was the days before a lot of professorial accountability.  Like a sensible person, he decided to Withdraw for the semester and focus on recovering and maybe take a part-time job to pay for spring tuition, because you could do that back then.

“Son,” My grandfather asked, sitting on the couch with Dad shortly after he was discharged from the hospital. “What about your college deferment? I’m worried about you getting drafted.”

“Dad,” Dad said, filling in job applications. “I’m legally blind without my glasses!  I’d be a danger to anyone around me with a gun.  Even if I get drafted there’s no way in hell I’d pass the medical exam.”

“Don’t swear in my house.” Said Grandpa, under the entirely mistaken impression that the US Military was run with any sort of competence.

Literally a week later my Dad’s draft papers came in, and he reported to his local draft board, driver’s license and doctor’s note in hand to prove He Is Legally Blind Without His Glasses, only to be waved through without so much as a sideways glance by anyone resembling a doctor.

“They must be desperate.”  My dad concluded when he got home that night to pack.

The news was devastating to the family, as both his parents had siblings to WWII.  Grandpa was ready to beg, bribe and otherwise compromise his intensely catholic morals to get Dad out, and Grandma prayed to any available saint that would save her son from the fate of her brothers.  She had quite the collection of saints in her sewing room, some forty figurines and dozens more candles and images, along with some stained glass she’d made herself of saints, landscapes and animals, including a large hummingbird that lived on the sewing room window since they’d moved into the house.

Dad pleaded with them to not do anything they’d regret, and returned to the base for basic training.

Dad’s drill sergeant was a man whose real name was “Ross” but insisted on being called “Bulldog” or “SIR!” by everyone depending on rank.  Dad supposed this might have been a defense mechanism as Bulldog had an intensely jowled and acne-scarred face that did greatly resemble a fighting dog well past their prime.  The image was not helped by the fact that he was constantly smoking rose-flavored tobacco in a pipe that had seen better centuries, and consequently smelled like a terrible combination of trailer park and the women’s perfume counter at Macy’s.

Bulldog was also… not great about following protocol, which is a terrible failing in a Drill sergeant, but Dad supposed at that point in the war Bulldog had become horribly depressed by the sheer numbers of young men he was sending to their deaths and had kind of stopped giving a fuck about their safety and his own.

Which lead to an incident about three weeks into Dad’s training camp when in the middle of a Weapons Qualification lesson, Bulldog pulled Dad’s glasses off and bellowed “YOU WON’T HAVE THOSE COKE BOTTLES WHEN THOSE [incorrect slurs, because there’s no such thing as an informed bigot] BLAST YOUR ASS TO KINGDOM COME.” before stomping off to go change the paper targets, leaving Dad standing there with an M-1, squinting in what he hoped was the general direction of the targets.

To give you an idea of HOW bad my dad’s vision is, I once asked him at what distance things got blurry, and he responded by taking off his glasses, putting his hand up to his face, and slowly moving it back.  He stopped about eight inches from his face and nodded.  

“So I can see my hand from here but I can’t distinguish my fingers.  I think that green blob over there is your mother.”

“I’m in the living room.” called mom. “You’re looking at the blender.”

So it should come as no surprise that as soon as Dad heard someone shouting “Ready! Aim! Fire!” He did precisely that.

Hummingbirds are often mistakenly characterized as Delicate Little Rainbows that are a gift Direct from Heaven when the truth is they’re really Vicious Little Bastards thrown out of Hell for being too Nasty.  

You would be too if you could eat nothing but frappuccinos and the occasional chicken nugget, everything around you was at least the size of a pickup truck and regarded you as a tasty snack, and you were forced to defend your fridge from not only equally vicious rivals but goddamn insects that are bigger than you are.  

Being a hummingbird is awful under normal circumstances, and now there are maniacs with loud machines and projecties as big as you are stomping around and yelling and well-

At that exact moment, one of the nesting hummingbirds, having grown progressively more exasperated with the activity on the base, dive-bombed my father, hurling it’s tiny body directly into his ear and slicing the lobe up, and making him jerk slightly as he fired.

He missed Sergeant Bulldog by mere inches. Dad still isn’t sure if the Hummingbird caused him to miss or put him closer to accidental manslaughter, but it mattered little as Bulldog grabbed him by the head, shrieking in spittle-flying fury-

“ARE YOU FUCKING BLIND?”  He roared.

“YES!!” screamed my father, also hysterical. “SIR THAT’S WHAT THOSE ‘COKE BOTTLES’ ARE FOR SIR!”

Bulldog stopped, suddenly and uncomfortably confronted with the nature of causality.  He only let it stymie him for a moment.  “GET YOUR IDIOT ASS TO THE MEDIC, I’LL DEAL WITH YOU LATER!”

At the medical center, an extremely befuddled doctor dilated Dad’s eyes, took pictures because Dad had the worst case of myopia he’d ever seen and wanted to put him in a medical journal, and asked him:

“What the HELL are you doing here?”

“Very nearly shooting people sir.”

“Well, we can’t have you shooting people while you’re in the army!  I’ll get your medical discharge started.”

Dad decided not to comment on that statement, thanked the doctor, and wandered blindly back to his bunk.

It took them a full thirty days to process Dad’s discharge, perhaps largely due to the fact that actually FINDING the captain was a task for hercules- The man had an almost phobic aversion to his office and a tremendous love of whiskey so actually locating the man and early enough in the day that he was still sober enough to sign anything was a race against time and a battle against the wits of a man determined to get out of work, which is when humanity is at its peak intelligence.

In the meantime, it simply wouldn’t do to let dad bike the five miles back to his home and come back for the paperwork, nor let him sit quietly and not accidentally maim anyone, so he was put on garden duty.  

Supervised by recently-suspended-from-instruction Sergeant “Bulldog” Ross.

By the second day Bulldog had mostly run out of steam, perhaps out of a sense of really, whose fault was that? So He would mostly stand in Dad’s general vicinity, waxing philosophical on the nature of war, government and whatever else he could be crotchety about that day while continuously smoking his rose-flavored tobacco in his pipe.  Dad planted a frankly absurd number of flowers, trying to make a planted display that would spell out the name of the base in eight-foot letters, just in case someone has managed to miss all 824,863,359 signs beforehand.

On day five, perhaps attracted by the bright colors or the stench of artificial rose, the Hummingbirds found the new garden.

At first, it was timid little trips to the edge farthest from Dad and Bulldog, testing this new territory for both risk and bounty, but upon finding it full of sugary goodness, they became bold, getting closer and closer to Dad, zipping in as soon as he got up to get the next flat of flowers, then not waiting for him to finish planting them before they were up in his face, squeaking angrily for him to get out of the way of their lunch.

One male objected to Dad and Bulldog’s presence particularly strongly, dive-bombing and buzzing angrily at them, an ounce and a half of glittery impotent rage.  After a month, he’d gotten quite aggressive, and one day flew directly up to Bulldog’s face to chitter curses at him eye-to-eye, only for Bulldog to take out his pipe and blow a cloud of smoke at him, laughing as the bird tumbled over backwards in midair.

Agitated with the sudden noxious cloud, or perhaps merely a violent psychopath in its own right, the bird flew back, then straight up into the air for a good fifty feet before going into a dive, aimed directly at Bulldog’s face.

Dad doesn’t recall actually moving, only a sense that he ought to do something, and launched himself out of the dirt, arms outstretched to clap and force it off course-

“SHIT! What the hell was that for?”  Demanded Bulldog.

“Well, the hummingbird looked like it was going to attack you, Sir.  So I stopped it.”

“How noble.  What are you standing there like an idiot for?”

“…I think I caught it sir.”  Said Dad, staring at the tiny bill poking out from between his gloves.  The two of them leaned in close as dad very slowly opened his gloves and peered inside.

The hummingbird immediately forced it’s tiny head out to peep furious profanities at them both.

“How is it,”  Bulldog wondered aloud as the hummer continued to curse the both of them for the next seven generations. “That you can’t see to hit the broad side of a barn but can pull a shitty little bird right out of the air?”

“I’m wearing my glasses, Sir.”

Bulldog looked up at him, glaring with such intensity his face ceased to be a face at all and transformed into a dali-esque collection of wrinkles.

“Fuck you. Now go take that damn thing to the other side of the base so it doesn’t come back.”

“Yes sir.”  Dad nodded, nearly saluting out of reflex before remembering that he was holding a live and very angry bird.  It took him several hours to get to the other side of the base, with literally everyone stopping to ask him what the hell he was doing, well I have this bird sir and I was told to release it on the other side of the base- how in hell did your blind ass catch a hummingbird, well I had my glasses on- Fuck you, go ditch that thing already.

At three o'clock on the dot the very next morning, two MPs woke up my dad and told him he needed to report to the front office right away, no time to get dressed, right away right now.

They marched him directly to the main office, barefoot and in his Pajamas to be greeted by not only Sergeant “Bulldog” ross, but nearly every officer on the base, including the lieutenant and the Captain, all of whom were… attempting to stand at attention with varying degrees of success, most weaving slightly, some snorting with poorly-concealed laughter, and the entire room reeking of booze.

“GENTLEMEN!”  hiccuped the lieutenant, before shaking himself and continuing, “WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO HONOR OUR ‘COMRADE’ -snort, giggle- IN ARMS -louder derisive laughter- FOR HIS BRAVERY AND SERVICE IN THE FACE OF EXTREME DANGER-”

“IN THE BEAK OF EXTREME DANGER!” Howled one of the assembled officers.  

“-AND FOR HIS SERVICE IN DEFENDING AN OFFICER OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY.  I AM ~SO~ PLEASED THAT WE HAVE CAPTAIN [REDACTED] HERE WITH US TO PRESENT THIS MEDAL.”

He turned to the Captain, who took out a small box and motioned Dad forward.  Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a chocolate box from See’s Candies.

“[REDACTED], in honor of your brave and frankly improbable service in the defense of Euge- sorry, Sergeant Ross, and the capture of a dangerous wild animal, we award you this medal-  The Flying Purple Bastard.”

He opened the chocolate box to reveal this*:

(Image Description: A piece of cardboard cut out approximately in the silhouette of a hummingbird, by someone with only a passing familiarity with what hummingbirds look like.  The cardboard has been haphazardly covered in tinfoil and cartoon eyes drawn on.  It’s attached to a scrap of ribbon and a safety Pin.)

Which was then pinned crookedly to Dad’s nightshirt, after accidentally stabbing him a bit, saluted him as someone attempted to play the bugle but made a rather melodious farting noise instead, then slapped Dad in the face with a manilla folder full of papers and shouted. “DISMISSED!”

“Dismissed, sir?”

“Those are your discharge papers.” Said Bulldog. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“Yes, Sir!”

At which point Dad biked home in the rain, and thus ends my father’s military career.

*Pictured here is actually The Flying Purple Bastard 2.0, as the original was destroyed when partially eaten and fully regurgitated by one of the cats.

If you’ve enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Paypal, as due to health concerns, telling funny stories on the internet is my ONLY means of income.  Thank you!

Gallus rostromegalus

When I was in high school, I was the part-time henchperson of a Mad Scientist.

I’m not exaggerating about “Mad Scientist”.  “Riley” (Name changed for his family’s privacy) was a former Medical Doctor, as well as an artist, microbiologist, pilot (as in, designed and flew his own experimental aircraft), magician, computer programmer and musical composer, and had an outbuilding attached to his house where he kept things like his hand-made 3D printer, electron microscope and drone-dirigible assembly devices.

Riley had ALS and was eventually wheelchair-bound, so by 2006 I was being called in on the odd school night or weekend to go out around FoCo and the surrounding mountains. “I need a younger set of legs and someone with no fear of heights” He’d say.  Being that I was a very boring child that had no interest in sex or drugs and always called when I was going to be late, and that Riley was a trusted family friend, My parents trusted me to go out at like 9PM  and come home at 2AM on a Tuesday.  

…To do things like scale locked fire escapes and climb around on rooftops that we DEFINITELY did not have permission to be on to do things like install speakers and bluetooth broadcasting devices at strategic points around Old Town so that if you download the right app onto your phone (I’ve got it backed up somewhere, I’ll post it when I find it) , you can walk around town and be exposed to the ghostly, extremely shady side of FoCo history for his 2007 Halloween project.

We did get caught by the cops but I was 17, short and white as goddamn mayonnaise so when the cops asked me what I was doing “It’s for a community art project!” actually worked.

My favorite Mad Science Project was in 2009, Gallus rostromegalus.

I was home from college for summer, and Riley had been messing around with Rotational Physics and had managed to make Giant (24’ x 18’) extremely realistic Chicken eggs, weighted and everything so that if you picked one up, it would feel like there was a heavy yolk wobbling around inside.  They’re amusing all on their own, but after leaving them in the slash pile from spring cleaning, Riley realized they had POTENTIAL.

So we went around getting permission from a few businesses and the art museum, and I spent a few nights making plausible enormous chicken feathers in Riley’s lab out of grass, acrylic glaze and some other odds and ends laying around, and filling up the back of my mom’s van with as much of the backyard slash pile as fit in there, then drove out in the middle of the night to set up giant nests for the eggs, strewn with feathers and surrounded by Traffic cones and orange construction mesh and signs from the entirely fictitious “Department Of Fish And Wildfowl, Specious Relocation Division”

(an incomplete nest on the steps of Fort Collins Museum of Art)

(signage, responsibly warning people to stay away in case of giant chickens)

Riley even made QR codes that linked back to an obviously false Wiki- if you scrolled to the bottom, the page was covered in feathers and after five minutes it would start to make chicken noises.

People. Went. INSANE.

Crowds turned up to take selfies with the nests and Riley tracked down literally dozens of tagged photos captioned “IS THIS REAL????”.  

Someone wrote a very worried and not terribly facetious-sounding letter to the editor concerned that Giant Chickens were roaming around FoCo, something that big could hurt someone!  There was an entirely-serious-sounding counter-letter that we Humans have clearly invaded this majestic creature’s natural habitat, where are they SUPPOSED to make their nests, huh?   

Multiple people called the police to report having seen the elusive Gallus rostromegalus up in the hills or skulking around downtown. Reports claimed it was anywhere form five to twelve feet tall, with dramatic plumage and an eerie, yodeling sort of call.

A few nights after installing each nest, we went back, collected the eggs, and left broken ‘eggshells’ and extra down feather around each of the nests. One of the nests was put up at the local Garden Center and I remember one of the assistant managers coming outside just after we finished the ‘hatching’ and shrieking “OH GOD I THOUGHT THOSE WERE FAKE THEY’LL GET TO THE TOMATOES SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE!”  That woman would later become my manager when I worked there for a summer, though she never made the connection between me and The Chickens.

Riley passed away in 2015 after a good and well-lived life, and was kind enough to leave me The Eggs in his will.

It was a truly splendid bit of ruckus, and I miss him terribly, and I very much treasure the memories.  And the Eggs, which I am absolutely going to inflict on some unsuspecting neighbors at some point, in his honor.

(If you’ve enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Paypal so I can support myself telling stories, thank you!)

watch the full video @ https://m.youtube.cvom/watch?v=ymf8d38KkmY

AAAAAAH! THANK YOU FOR FINDING THE VIDEO!!! Riley and his stepson did the filming becuase I have a wretched pokerface. ( re-embedded so you don’t have to leave tumblr)

Also, contrary to what the gentleman in orange says, it’s pronounced “Gal-us  Ross-tro-mega-lus” (Which is terrble latin for “big-nosed chicken”)

I left it to tonight to write in a submission to the treaty principles bill and now the website is possibly not working and isn't submitting it 🙃

Submissions close tonight Jan 7th

Link via green party because I don't want to touch the parliament submissions tab while mine is submitting

Ey it worked on my 4th attempt.

Submit by midnight!

I think at its most basic, self-compassion is seeing what your needs are and then making sure they get filled. A reminder I need very often!

Rings my fucking bell, like a perennial fucking plague maiden:

Center harm, not disgust!

When in doubt (and when not in doubt, just swept by problems bigger than you and assured by someone that they know the answer, so don't think right now, just Do!), center harm.

Focus on what specific harm you're reducing with your actions. Make sure it's tangible and concrete. If your actions are minimizing hypothetical harm at the cost of real, tangible harm on others, 9 out 10 times you're on the wrong fucking side, being weaponized by propaganda.

If a conversation revolves around disgust as a driver for action, you're being radicalized. If a call to action depends on your emotional response, you're being manipulated. I'm sorry, this isn't the 90s anymore, social media has eroded the web of respectability of the pre internet society. The primary axis for misinformation to spread in this day and age is emotional response: half the things you believe are true and share as such are not based on fact, expert opinion or personal research. Social media has conditioned us (all of us! You and me and most dangerously of all, the idiots we put in power) that if something feels true, it probably is.

But do you know for sure it is? Do you think it's true because you have first hand experience or actual time spent on reputable sources learning it to be fact? Or just because it aligns with your worldview and it would be nice for you if it were true?

Are you taking action because you're angry and a group of fellow angry folk invited you to join them? Do you have a plan or is this just catharsis? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions or are you drunk on rage and focused only on the immediate future?

Center harm. Center specific actions and their consequences.

Discomfort is not harm. Disgust is not harm. Hypothetical paranoia is not harm.

The reactionary pipeline is real and your self-image as a progressive is not actually enough to save you from falling down the hole. Radicalization is not hinged on politics alone. Saying you're a leftist is worthless if your thought process and actions themselves are indistinguishable from qanon losers. Conspiratorial thought has literally no politics inherently, and your insistence it does is pure lack of critical thought on display.

Center harm, not feelings, not politics, not group think.

Center harm, and remember that individual actions cannot dismantle systemic structures on their own, so anyone who calls for individual action at the cost of community structures is not actually trying to change anything, and instead actively suppressing efforts to make anything better in any way.

you can read or listen to the full piece for free here

My recommendation for you would be to slow down the process. If your instinct is to automatically say yes, just don't say anything for a second. It's okay if the moment feels awkward. It's not a weird thing to stop for a moment and think. You can even say "I need a moment to think about that." when someone throws you a question or recommends a course of action that you aren't sure how you feel about.

If those options fail, and you still reflexively say yes, you get to change your mind! You can call back and say "I need to change the time for an appointment." You can text your friend and say "Actually, I decided I don't want to see that slasher movie, sorry." You are allowed to speak up after the fact! That is just as legitimate! If you can't access your feelings in the heat of the moment, give yourself some time and space, and then do what you wanna do.

I agree!

“It’s important to learn to distinguish between a situation where you have no freedom to speak up, and one where you can live authentically as yourself, and simply get more comfortable with not pleasing everyone.”

This can be genuinely difficult, and it’s something I’m still trying to figure out. I ended up making two lists: one with my people-pleasing traits, and one with my authentic traits. Having behaviors written out helped me to decide which of my authentic traits can be considered personality quirks, and which ones I need to hide around family or at work. Turns out I still have some freedom to be myself, even in situations where I have no freedom to speak up.

required reading for autistic folks

not letting people rush you is a safety and security habit.

if your job is to guard a door, and somebody can get in your face and yell at you that they're too important to let you call in your supervisor to check because their records don't match up? Then you will let in somebody who isn't supposed to come in.

if somebody behind you on the road tailgating you and flashing their lights and swerving around can spook you into speeding up when you know it's not safe? Then you are likely to get into an accident.

rule number one of safety and security is: I am not in a hurry, and anyone trying to make me hurry up is suspect and I need to take my time even more carefully with them.

This line of thinking is also a great means & incentive to practice the skills of distress regulation and separating your own feelings from somebody elses. Person is stressed and frantic and yelling at me??? Okay. Thats their problem. I will focus on calming my own body down.

still so fucking weird to go from real life, where a cis man being flamboyant/effeminate/camp is judged like 70 % by how he speaks and carries himself, to online queer communities, which often seem to have no concept of male gender non-conformity that doesn’t involve wearing a skirt

i promise you, a man can be fem to the point of being in danger while wearing literally exactly the same thing as a hypermasculine guy. a boring basic black suit. a t shirt and jeans. a UNIFORM. gender conformity is not only about what you wear

None of you have watched that heartbreaking scene in The Birdcage where Albert gives up wearing everything he likes to try and blend in for their son’s conservative prospective in-laws and is so awkward and uncomfortable that no one says much until finally he says, defeated, “I know what you’re thinking - dressed like this, I’m even more obvious, aren’t I?” and it shows.

Here, have your queer heart broken:

This is what I’m talking about. This is still literally how it is in most places in the Midwest if you’re trying to “pass” for straight/cis/whatever.

I cannot begin to describe how hard I cried when I saw this scene the first time and how confused my conservative family was as to why I was crying.

It’s so funny how literally the way a man holds his wrists is an indication of femininity but also people think it’s all about makeup and clothing. But we’re also at a point that if you have a suit that is any color other than black, dark grey, or navy, it’s flamboyant.

Men’s sartorial stylings are so rigidly controlled it’s painful. Tim Gunn here is at the very absolute bleeding edge of “acceptably masculine” here for most cishet men, just for some noticible stripes, patterns, and purple, and that’s before he even moves. This is how restricted it is.

But Trixie Mattel (out of drag here) wearing standard masculine garb is could still be deemed unacceptably feminine for body language alone.

This is why we talk about “toxic masculinity” – the idea that any expression of emotion besides anger or even wearing colorful clothes is non-masculine and therefore restricted is horrifying. It sucks! Men should be allowed to express themselves outside of a tiny box of acceptable behavior, because they’re, y'know, people, and people have a wide range of expression in the way they like to look and move and act. I honestly feel like it’s gotten worse over the last couple decades, too. If you look at men’s fashions from the 70s and even into the 80s, there’s a lot of style choices that look pretty cringe to us, but…. you also see a lot more color and pattern in suits than you do now. I’m not sure when this started to shift, or if it’s tied in to the increasing lack of color in all consumer products, but it sucks.

Ima talk about a moment regarding my brother.

He’s a straight guy. Really basic dude who wears buttons downs and jeans, got a lil beard. Not really emotive with his facial expressions. Can fix some stuff, played video games, so there’s some basic ‘we recognized this look and activities as basic passing masculinity’ stuff.

But. He didn’t grow up with a man in the house, we don’t have a dad only a mom. He got to pick how to be a hetero dude, and he’s smart and a weirdo, so he basically cared about almost none of it and just got to slide on passability through sheer uncaring.

Anyway, one time I went to visit his family on his birthday. He’s married with a wife and kids and they live nearer to his wife’s family. This was one of the first times outside of the wedding that a lot of her family got to see one of his family members, me. So I’m standing there, talking to some of them and they get to question me about him and they’re like.

“He’s really very….huggy, your brother….” and I was like, he is? He’s not very touchy feely as far as I can tell…? and they look over and he is actively hugging each new person that is into it who has come to his birthday party to wish him well. And I had this moment of realization, oh this is one of those secret shunning performative masculinity things he has clearly chosen not to buy into and never addresses it directly, but his boys are there, calmly taking it in and will not grow up with toxic bs in the background radiation of their life.

I basically said I didn’t think so, seemed normal- and wandered off.

if a hetero basic guy can’t hug his loved ones in a private only loved ones party what the hell is going on that he can do that is appropriate? Ugh so dumb. Let ppl perform gender in whatever way they waaaaaant

Something on this vein I have discovered, which makes me sad and furious all at once: When someone is clearly going to give me shit for being a fag in public, the safest thing I can do is let them think I’m stoned. I don’t dress gaily, I look like a scruffy greebo tradie, I look like a Gypsy - and that racialisation is IMPORTANT - and I look poor.

So when I’m smiling at a beautiful view or sniffing a flower or absentmindedly laugh when someone’s dog does something cute, and some observer decides that is Dangerously Queer and gets in my face… The thing that defuses it, is when they realise that my eyes aren’t quite focusing and my smile isn’t slipping off even when I’m clearly in danger, and I’m calling them mate pal mush man and telling them that the sky has never been this colour before. And then THEY laugh too and they get a little giddy and maybe they shake my hand or give me a little hug or dance with me, and they continue on their way.

Because pretty much every straight cis guy gets more faggy when he’s high, because they are suppressing all those connections- to their body, to their friends, to the beauty of the world. So their initial sense of “this is a queer I can bash” gets turned into “this is a fellow straight man, on drugs. Lol.” And often specifically “Oh this is a Gypsy boy, of course he’s high, he’s probably nashed off work… And his cousins are probably waiting in the van just around the corner… Leave him be.”

But really, the sad part is that they ARE suppressing this shit, all the time. They could smile at horses and stare into the sky watching a kite and hug their friends and tell them “I love you mate”, but they don’t because they don’t feel allowed to. Unless they’re high.

Hey, happy Earth Day! Who wants to talk about climate change?

Yeah, okay, fair, I kinda figured the answer to that would be "ugh do we have to?" What if I told you I have good news though? Good news with caveats, but still good news.

What if I told you that since the Paris Agreement in 2015, we've avoided a whole degree celsius of global warming by 2100, or maybe more?

Current projections are 2.7C, which is way better than the 3-5C (with a median of 3.7C) we were expecting in 2015. It's not where we want to be - 1.5C - but it is big, noticeable progress!

And it's not like we either hit 1.5C and avoid all the big scary consequences or fail to hit 1.5C and get all of them - every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid is going to prevent more severe problems like extreme weather, sea level rise, etc.

This means that climate change mitigation efforts are having a noticeable impact! This means a dramatically better, safer future - and if we keep pushing, we could lower the amount of global warming we end up with even further. This is huge progress, and we need to celebrate it, even though the fight isn't over.

It's working. Keep going.

That’s right. It took effort and it was a real concern, but because of that effort and many others, the ozone layer is healing, acid rain isn’t melting our statues and buildings anymore, whale populations are increasing back to pre-whaling levels.

We ARE able to change our planet for the better. We have proof. Let’s keep up the good work.