Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them.”

I need this quote framed in every room of my house, thanks.

Something I find kinda jarring about this here 21st century is that the average person with an internet connection and an ounce of pirating know-how has access to more movies and tv shows than anyone has ever had in the history of forever and yet there are still people trying to argue that the screenwriter strike is bad because it means we might experience a temporary lack of new television

A secret cabal of vampires is actually trying to fix the world’s problems. Not because they’re good people, but because modern Humans are so stressed and unhealthy and filled with pollutants that it makes their blood horrible to drink.

A majority of emissions are emitted by the 100 largest companies in the world, and it's safe to assume that right behind them are the world's largest governments, even if we factor out the fact that not a few of those 100 companies are state-owned. Gazprom and Sinopec aren't exactly what you would call "private" enterprise. But plenty of groups you could call that were perfectly willing to work with the former until the invasion of Ukraine, and plenty are still working with the latter right now despite all that China's done.

why are they emitting the carbon, marc?

Pure malevolence, I suppose. Certainly nothing related to our daily normal life -- going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling. We could just continue doing those the way we always have even if the companies stopped emitting carbon.

Oh, and home heating. That also has nothing to do with all those companies emitting carbon.

Those are factors, yes, but a significant amount of carbon emissions is completely out of your (the consumer's) control. Taking cold showers and turning off all the lights and walking to work and so on barely matters compared to the enormous amount of Chinese factories still running on coal. Also, I'm pretty sure the average Joe is incapable of, like, causing an oil spill like Deepwater Horizons.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region

Well, obviously. China just runs those factories out of spite. It has nothing to do with producing goods for export to the developed world. You would still have access to cheap Chinese consumer goods even if China shut down its industrial economy entirely.

The reason China is doing so well economically is because the US (the government and its major corporations) have outsourced pretty much all production of material goods to them, yes. This decision is simply out of the scope of the average American voter's ability to do anything about it. Our government doesn't seem inclined to decouple our economy from an authoritarian dictatorial empire actively rounding up its undesirables, because it's cheap to outsource every consumer good to some corporation making their slave labor employees work 14 hour days on the other side of the ocean. It'd be expensive and time consuming to try and restart American industry, and the American companies saving money by skimping on labor would never spring for it.

Again, there is literally nothing Joe Schmoe can do about any of this - except maybe carry out an individual boycott of stuff made in China, for whatever good that'll do.

If only there were a way to figure out whatever good that would do, some sort of equivalent in carbon emissions for a consumer choice, like a "carbon cost," or whatever you might want to call it.

Snark aside, this topic is something that really bugs me. I hate the idea that global warming is the "fault" of fossil fuel companies and that consumer choices have nothing to do with it. In fact the lifestyle of the population of the developed world is a huge part of the cause of global warming. Pretending otherwise isn't helpful.

I mean, you make a good point. Bigger actions such as a country's emissions are generally made up of a lot of little actions, and so it's worth looking at what little actions you can take, particularly if you can persuade others to take the same action. Composting, recycling, taking public transport, these little things all help the big picture.

On the other hand...

A lot of the big emitters are big, powerful companies, and they make big, powerful choices, and a lot of the time those choices are not made to benefit humanity as a whole, so if an energy company sees that switching to renewables would be beneficial for the world in the long run, but difficult and costly for the company, they're never going to do that. They just aren't. So while we're all out here recycling, the big companies (and militaries, and whatever else) are out there polluting like crazy.

This isn't to say there's nothing we can do. It's just that the focus should be on what we can do collectively! It's like unionising: one person withdrawing their labour hardly matters to any company with more than about five staff, but a whole bunch of people withdrawing their labour at the same time can bring a whole industry to its knees. In the same way, one person taking the train (or, these days, working from home) instead of driving to work doesn't make much of an impact on emissions, taken by itself. But if we start building infrastructure that supports a more environmentally friendly style of living, if we put pressure on legislators to put pressure on polluters, if we push for changes in the way our countries think about environmental resources...then we might start making some impacts.

So I think the whole "only 100 companies" thing is one of those phrases that gets taken apathetically sometimes, when it should be a call to action - not "nothing we do matters," but "here are the companies we need to bring back in line."

I like microdosing my weirdness and fucked up sense of humor on new people. You throw it back at me? Green flag. You make weird faces or shitty comments? You're weak, your bloodline is weak, and you won't survive the winter.

@ the ladies

wouldn’t it be cool if we could like… be ugly… but then…. not be considered subhuman for it

I have written in long detail about my issues with “everyone is beautiful” and this text post summarizes it in 18 words

i hate shark slander. theyre literally just sitting in their own living room

he doesn’t know wtf is going on

I have been told to reblog this as USPS propaganda.

USPSPSPS

Universal Basic Income for everyone AND in addition Disabled people also get extra disability pay. UBI is not a replacement for disability aid and people who suggest it deserve to be vaporized into atoms by my brain.

came across this on letterboxd and i fucking canmt

not to Discourse but I’m a cis man and my partner is an afab enby and if you call us a “straight couple” I will personally come to your house tie you to a chair and make you listen to a podcast about gender identity on endless repeat

this is specifically @ the people who saw us at pride together and saw them wearing a “THEY/THEM” button and still referred to them as my “girlfriend” you’re all cancelled thanks

it’s called respecting queer people juice

y'know the really amazing thing about the notes on this post - apart from just the sheer number of people who are, like, viscerally terrified of the existence of a person who isn’t cis - is how many of them are responding to things that aren’t here. specifically, you’ll notice I said nothing about my sexuality. I didn’t say I identified as non-het, or that I considered myself part of the LGBTQIA community. on the flip side, I also didn’t give you any reason to believe I’m not bi, or that I’ve never been in a relationship with a cis man. y'all know nothing about my sexuality from this post and you don’t need to and I’m not going to tell you about it now because! this post! was not! about me!

it was about respecting my partner’s identity. and the fact that they don’t get that respect from people in the exact community that they should be able to count on getting it from.

ie, you.

they are not het or cis, and no relationship they are in will ever be a “straight relationship” because they. are not. het. or. cis.

everyone in the notes gatekeeping me because I’m “not oppressed”? I never said I was. the person you’re really attacking and invalidating by shitting on this post is them, a pansexual nonbinary person who is unerasably queer.

huh. it’s almost as if the whole “we can’t let straight men use queerness to worm their way into our community” discourse is just an excuse to hate trans people, isn’t it.

I reblog this every time I see it–

sex isn't sexy unless it's a little bit gross. have you forgotten that you are a divine ape? plastic smooth skin, plucked hair, painted faces, scripted reactions, scrubbed til only the smell of perfumed soap remains, proportions that are conflictingly cookiecutter yet unattainable, none of this is even a little bit interesting.

you can laugh at napoleon's "home in three days, don't bathe" letter to his wife, but there's more sexuality in that one line then there is in the entirety of the hypersexualized but painfully unsexy internet.

I like saying "I'll allow it" only in contexts where I have no power or authority

this was a great read. “Laziness Does Not Exist” by Devon Price

anyways if/when your most favoritest blorbos get cancelled or don’t come back in the fall when they’re scheduled remember that it’s because the people who put their time and love into making them are fighting for fair compensation to keep doing that 

haha i like you. I’ll be growing on you like moss now if that’s alright

More stories from hell (retail) today I was ringing up this lady and she goes oh I want to do part of this on a gift card and the rest on normal card and I go ok and then she hands me a folded piece of paper. I think oh OK it must be folded around the gift card, right? Wrong. It is a folded sheet of 8×11 printer paper with "$40" written on the inside in ballpoint pen. I go what is this. She says a gift card. I say this is not a gift card. She says yes it is. I say this is a piece of paper with "$40" written on it. She says "well it's a gift card." I say it absolutely is not. I am grinding my teeth. She says well I want to use it. I say you physically cannot do that bc it is a piece of paper. I cannot scan or swipe it. I apologize, as if this is my fault, and not because she is completely insane. I hate it here

Look, this is probably going to end up as an unpopular post, because God knows the level of brainrot capitalism and fast consumption caused in people's brains, but I'd rather not get TV shows for a while if it means writers get their rights defended and recognized.

Entertainment can't come at the cost of fair pay, healthy work environment and ethical practices.