Autistic Changeling

I think one of the goals of society should be that someone who requires expensive medicine and a lot of care can live an amazing life, the longest life they possibly can, with dignity, even if they have no friends or family or anyone who cares enough about them to help. the goals of a society should be to make life better than if we are alone, society should want life to be as good as possible for as many people as possible, and those goals should account for people not having social support networks.

social life aside, the most hated or ignored person in town should be able to live as good and fair and just of a life as the most loved person in town. survival needs to stop being a popularity contest.

when the subject of "why do people believe things that are seriously wrong and harmful" comes up it feels like you kinda hear one of two perspectives:

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.

i know you're doing your best. we're all doing our best.

Practical tip for those dealing with wildfire smoke now: you can make a very effective air filter for a reasonable amount of money using a box fan & one of those filters meant for your furnace.

Also, I've managed to pick up 2 of the box fans for very cheap/free from yard sales. Make sure you get a filter rated for wildfire smoke, I think this one cost about $20.

These make a huge difference in the indoor air quality.

Posting again because of the fire situation up in Canada and resulting smoke. If you're dealing with wildfire smoke, these are surprisingly effective and relatively cheap.

Just tape the filter to the fan, making sure the air can't sneak around the edges. I used painter's tape, but I'm sure duct tape or similar would work just as well.

once again

Guys I’ve been trying to figure out ALL DAY why my little weather thingie on my computer has been saying “Haze” and “poor air quality.” Like I don’t check these things very often but we usually have nice air quality in this portion of Ohio. 

Then I finally put the pieces together. 

It’s smoke. From Canada. Enough to cause noticeable haze and polluted air warnings in southern Ohio.

I had no idea it was that bad up there. Praying for you guys, please stay safe!!!

Every time I have to grab my cat and move him off the counter I feel like one of those irritating hand things in like, Zelda games, that grabs you and moves you to the start of the dungeon

And much like in a Zelda game, my cat is just trying to reach the final boss (space above the cupboards he likes to sleep in)

A mirror breaks

at long last, I can finally gather my friends, my granda, a goat that died a couple hundred thousand years ago, and a stunt flier presumed dead around the campfire :)

either you’re out of the hole or you’re in hell

Shoot god with a bullet made of sins to save the world

Whoopsies! You hit God But Evil with a hammer and now you get to marry him if you want!! Or you get to kill him :(

Hm. Sunlight.

she’s not really dead

there’s three endings, actually

happily ever after :3

you later receive a phone call from that one guy

they show up to call you a bitch and erase the timeline

The sun moth is dead so you and your hundreds/thousands of agender siblings decide to do void shit to everything

(one of the multiple endings. Also you and your siblings killed the sun moth yourselves)

bad ending : weeehehehe wow it sure is a long fall off this very tall building… :3

Good ending: lemme just traumatize all my friends (again) and then move away lmao

got to top of mountain. ascend

You capture God

God decides that you won’t be erased by the change in space-time

Bonus ending: fuck you nightmare satan

never pay more than $20 for a video game

You’re trapped in a cycle of pointlessly trying to reset a universe that can’t be fixed from inside it and will end in minutes, but that’s probably lifetimes anyways so like. It’s fine.

This isn't a Garashir post, but I guess you could read it that way if you wanted?

Everyone seems to think Garak would be proud of Julian for keeping a secret so long, but on the flipside...

His secret got found out.

To Garak and other Cardassians, isn't that a huge fucking deal? Like, life ending? So, instead of just simply expressing 'I'm so proud of you for being so good at lying' and whatnot...

Garak probably wouldn't wave off Julian's discomfort with being 'found out'. He'd think 'what a perfectly reasonable response to having your entire life flayed open like that', I think.

He'd likely think not mentioning it would be a courtesy, but then the Doctor mentions it first and of course. It's no longer a secret, so he no longer has to hide it-- so Garak just says, very gently, that he's sorry the Doctor's secret was found.

And if he knew the details, that it was found because his father was not only incompetent, but also fought and tried to make up with lackluster apologies so often that he didn't even pause to think over his words before running off at the mouth.

That the 'family secret' was ruined because his relationship with his family was bad.

All of that seems like something that Garak would feel really bad for Julian about. But he'd say it you know, sideways.

~

"I suppose you know by now."

"I suppose I do."

"Nothing to say about it?"

"I am sorry"

"S-. You're sorry?"

"It was such a precious secret to you, wasn't it?"

"...yes."

"One your family had been protecting all your life."

"Yes."

"I am sorry you lost it."

~

Something like that.

I love when cats hold things in their little paws, it’s so good

Case in point

[ID: 11 gifs from season 3, episode 22 “explorers” from the tv series “star trek: deep space nine”, the gifs show miles o'brien and julian bashir inside o'brien's personal quarters. they are both drunk. julian is seated on the couch, and miles is on a chair behind the couch.

1st gif: "unless she really ignored you because she can't stand you." miles tells julian and then keeps laughing to himself.

2nd gif: miles is still laughing while julian says, "isn't there some explanation in between?"

3rd gif: miles stops laughing and sits up, he tells julian, "well... you're not an in-between kind of guy." and julian asks him, "what do you mean?"

4th gif: "well, people either love you or hate you." miles tells him matter of fact, he is holding a snack with his fingers. julian has turned to face miles, "really?"

5th gif: "i mean, i hated you when we first met." miles tells julian, pointing towards himself and chewing on his snack. "i remember." julian replies.

6th gif: miles leans back in his chair, "but now..." he trails off chewing his snack, and eating the one in his hand.

7th gif: the camera cuts to julian as he turns his head to look at miles once more. "and now?" he prompts him.

8th gif: the camera cuts to miles, he turns his head to look towards julian, he tells him, "well... now i don't." then looks ahead once more and goes to eat more of his snacks.

9th gif: the camera cuts to julian as he turns his head to look ahead. he is nodding while telling miles, "that means a lot to me, chief. it really does."

10th gif: miles leans over the couch, he tells julian, "really! now... that is from the heart, huh?" julian is nodding as he speaks and he pushes his fist against julian's shoulder to stress his words.

11th gif: julian turns to look at miles who continues talking, "huh? i really do. not hate you anymore." miles seems surprised with the realisation as well. /end ID]

@thebibliosphere seems like this would be in your wheelhouse

DOCTOR WHO | The Shakespeare Code (3.02)

this is superior humor

I have some to add:

M O R E

I hope you enjoy

Doctor Who "Oxygen"

I've been a little confused by the revisionist history of people saying Dave Chappelle was never funny. Maybe not everyone dug him, but he has been on quite a few GOAT lists for stand up. During his peak in the 2000s it was not uncommon for folks to consider him the best performing stand up since Carlin and Pryor. I was among those people. Perhaps the people saying he was never funny were too young to appreciate him during that time. I don't know.

But I don't think we need to pretend like he always sucked. His fall from grace is an important thing to acknowledge. With people like him and JK Rowling, we are collectively trying to figure out how to deal with artists we love letting us down. It's a good conversation to have. If we just say "well, they always sucked" I think we are avoiding dealing with it.

I’m glad JKR was mentioned comparatively too because she’s always the first person I think of in these discussions about revisionism.

And yeah it feels like a side effect of purity culture tbh. People feel this need to try and easily pigeonhole media as either Good or Bad and if it’s Bad it was always bad and people should be ashamed for ever liking it, but if it’s Good it’s exempt from criticism. Which is just… not how anything works. There’s something almost victim-blamey about it, although that’s probably the wrong phrase. This idea that you can somehow sniff out Badness through someone’s work even when it hasn’t really made itself apparent yet, and anyone who doesn’t just isn’t trying hard enough, and “if I’m just careful and vigilant and only consume the purest of pure media I can avoid falling into the trap of getting attached to something Bad!! I knew all along!!” feels like it’s coming from the same line of thinking as “you should have known there was something shady about that guy!”

The point about thinking only bad people can be radicalised being dangerous is an extremely important one. 

There was a time when JKR was viewed as the unproblematic queen of the left. It may not have been in the text but she made Dumbledore gay when it was barely legal to mention anything queer to children (I’m being very literal there. The first five books were published and the sixth written when Section 28 was still law and no publisher would have been legally able to mention a gay character in a children’s book).

At that time the very idea that she could ever be viewed as homophobic, or ever even remotely consider siding with a Conservative government on any issue was bizarre. The face she showed the public was inclusive and very anti Tory.

But she also went from as poor as you can be without being homeless to astronomically rich in a short period of time, had the eyes of the world on her and was really quite viciously stalked and harassed by the less ethical corners of the press. Her phone was tapped, her children stalked, friends she hadn’t spoken to in years and distant family members had people turn up on their doorsteps trying to dig up any possible story about her. 

As a result she wound up extremely paranoid. I live in Edinburgh. A workman who came to fix something at my house told me he’d worked on a garden wall for her and there had been a rule of no phones allowed anywhere near her property and there was a line around the house that they weren’t allowed to cross or even approach. I’ve heard similar stories from people who have friends living near her.

People who live in that kind of state of paranoia (whether justified or not) are very easily radicalised by anyone who plays on their fears and offers any kind of safety, whether real or imagined. Yes, it could be that the bigot who has recently sided with the Tories on several occasions was always there underneath. But it also equally possible that in the past there was only ignorance on some things and that the bigotry and political swing is new and entirely the result of paranoia enabled radicalisation.

The desire to retroactively demonise everything she’s ever done and assume she was bigoted from birth is understandable, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of how people can and do change for a whole variety of reasons and that sometimes even the best people can become something you’d never have imagined possible.

It’s actively important to remember that good people can go down some horribly twisted paths, because if you reassure yourself that ‘good people’ will always remain good then you lose the ability to self reflect and examine your own ideas, or examine the difference between an actively malicious viewpoint and a confused and ignorant one.

If your idea of what a good or a bad person is excludes any possibility of one changing into the other, then what you’re saying is that being good or bad is not a choice. And we can’t judge people for things they had no choice in becoming. So what is it? Are bad people forced to be bad by nature of birth and therefore it’s not their fault, or is there maybe good and bad inside everybody and it just depends on what they choose whenever they get a choice?

The most inaccurate part of the Star Trek universe is that there aren't regular mandatory team building exercises.

Sorry, the senior officers can't come to the phone right now, they are paintballing as per orders from Starfleet command.

And yes, they all have to wear matching t-shirts and are given lanyards for no apparent reason.