Slappin’!🔥

My counselor once told me to make sure I wasn’t doing things to distract myself from the boredom rather than try to sate it. I feel its one of the most important things he ever said to me.

When I’m distracting myself from the boredom, I read or game excessively so I don’t feel the emptiness of boredom. It’s a short term thing, and it only staves the boredom as long as I’m doing the thing.

When I’m sating myself from the boredom, I pursue things I am genuinely interested in and so find myself feeling fulfilled and happier for a longer period of time. Even if I stop doing it temporarily, I don’t immediately fall apart as I would with the distraction.

the fact that there's an 8 fucking pm curfew in new york is so unfathomably insane to me. like, a city of 8 million or whatever all has to go home when the sun is barely down because cops are that addicted to upholding white supremacy? i was out and some cop drove by and said thru his loudspeaker "go home! what are you still doing out!" what are you doing driving around in a caravan with your lights on fucking harassing people in the street? get a real fucking job

listen living in nyc is wild right now, but the curfew makes total sense when you see it from the NYPD’s perspective.

i was out today 4-7pm, cops surrounding us marching with full riot gear, batons, shields, tasers, the works, and following the march were at least 15 NYPD vans. i kept wondering, what are they waiting for??

they were waiting for the FUCKING CURFEW. as soon as 8pm hits, everyone--EVERYONE--on the street is a criminal, because you’re out past curfew. if you’re out after 8pm, you’re breaking the law. you’re a criminal,  and if you’re a criminal, the cops can do anything to you that they want. it is literally night and day. i left today’s march before the curfew, with zero violence from police, but as soon as night fell, suddenly those very same cops got out their batons and tripped up everyone they could find. 

the curfew exists SOLELY to give the NYPD a cover for arrests, beatings, stealing people’s bicycles, paper spray, tear gas, any of the violent things those motherfuckers fantasize about doing every single hour of the day.

and when you see people argue, “oh if they didn’t want to be arrested, they shouldn’t have been out past curfew” THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT. it’s a state-sanctioned crack down on otherwise free speech and assembly. they WANT to trap people into “committing” “crimes” so they can be violent. they WANT to beat and maim all the peaceful protesters doing the day, and without a curfew, they wouldn’t have as many good excuses for doing so. 

the curfew is only so that the police can commit violence against peaceful, first-amendment protected citizens and scare everyone else into staying inside. it’s a goddamn shame and i will go to my grave ashamed of myself for ever thinking cops are good people.

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

THIS ONE FUCKING WORKS. REBLOG IT.

That’s why we keep getting hacked lmao

its because schools are so caught up in violating students every rights to privacy that they are blatently disregarding thoes same kids safety. zoom allowes you to track eye movements. mousepad/mouse movemenst. the browser activitiy of the user. its horrifying and dare i fucking say litteral motherfucking spyware. its not a app its a fucking virus.   its so horrifically easy to guess every facet of zoom that im guessing that schools just looked at the violation features and took them in without a second throught or trial. they disregard better functioning programs like discord because they are horrified that thoes programs would give students a sliver of privacy their instistance on using zoom is a very clear direct cause of schools horrific obsession with micromanageing every single facet of a students life.  report the fucking app.  get it taken down

If you have to use Zoom, your best bet is to run it from the browser. The Zoom website will try to get you to use the app, but if you keep declining that, it will use its browser-based interface. Since browsers have much better security, they’re unable to do any kind of persistent monitoring and have almost no access to system activities. When you close the tab, you can be assured that it isn’t running.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/security-tips-every-work-from-homer-needs-to-know-about-zoom-right-now/

^^^^^^^ REBLOG THIS VERSION TOO

Now I'm effing paranoid

US healthcare, ladies and gentlemen.

People have written a lot of touchy-feely pieces on this subject but I thought I’d get right to the heart of the matter

This is 1000% more motivating than every preachy “real writers write every day” post on all of Tumblr.

I love this too much for words…

could it be...? a good political cartoon?

The artist is Clay Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a veteran of his craft. Here’s some more of his work: 

The wire hanger one hit me like a ton of bricks.

!!!

Also in the New York Times and the Guardian. Article with no paywall here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/anti-inflammatory-drugs-may-aggravate-coronavirus-infection.

Repost to spread. (Not really humor)

Christian said

In case you aren’t familiar, Michael Scott Moore and David Rohde are both journalists. Moore was held by Somali pirates for 977 days. Rohde was held captive by the Taliban for 7 months after being abducted in Afghanistan.

and while we’re at it the swedes did more to enable nazi germany’s genocidal wars of conquest than anyone else through massive exports of desperately needed iron ore

it was also supposed to be temporary 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggests correcting mercenary post 9/11 power grab

When they say help Americans they really just mean themselves. There are a lot of white working class Democrats that feel there are “line jumpers” for help. Immigrants, POC, etc so they vote republican instead

So, I looked in the comments, expecting to see discourse or historical background etc, but I found none. Therefore, I decided to learn more and add background. Apparently this machine was used because of polio because polio paralyzes your lungs. According to the wiki article on this bad boy, patients would spend two weeks in there sometimes. They still have these machines, though much, much more modern but they’re barely used at all anymore: “In 1959, there were 1,200 people using tank respirators in the United States, but by 2004 there were only 39. By 2014, there were only 10 people left with an iron lung.” (x)

I’ve read about one man who still lives in an iron lung. He taught himself how to breathe again by gulping down air, but it’s quite laborious because of the paralysis. His name is Paul Alexander, and he’s a lawyer. He’s 71 years old and has spent 65 years in an iron lung. Wild, right? He’s been working on a memoir that he was inspired to write by the recent resurgence of cases of polio caused by anti-vaccers.

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4414081 (can’t hyperlink because I’m on mobile, apologies)

It’s amazing to me to recognize that we only defeated polio in this past century - that my mother’s father had it (he got lucky, it only deformed his feet and thereby kept him out of a couple wars); my mother got the big vaccination that left her upper arm scarred; and by the time I was vaccinated, polio basically didn’t exist. My grandfather must have been born like around 1900, so - in the space of less than 75 years, this was no longer something that parents dreaded the possibility of every summer.

In the 1950s, my mother would go to the corner shop. The owners had a daughter a few years older than my mum. She lived in an iron lung in the back of the shop. Vaccinate your fucking kids.

Reminder that children were in these iron lungs. Children who just wanted their mums and dads, or wanted to cuddle their precious stuffed toy, but couldn’t because of the nature of these machines. Crying because they don’t want to go in this big scary tank, but if they don’t go in the iron lung they would die.

And there’d be hospital wards of these.

This BBC documentary is an excellent one to watch, first as just as a history into the polio vaccine’s creation and why it was important, but also to get a glimpse of the iron lungs in action - 6:58 is when you can see footage of children in these things.

The polio vaccine exists so children wouldn’t have to have a machine breathe for them. All vaccines exist because we don’t want people to suffer. Please vaccinate and get vaccinated.

My mom spent 8 months in the hospital due to polio.

My uncle was hospitalized for over a year.

They were two. years. old.

Give your kids the goddamn vaccines.

My maternal grandmother spent over a year in an iron lung when she was 17 - she and her little sister got sick in the same week.

ALSO!

Post-polio syndrome is a thing!

It’s not super well-understood* but basically, in a certain percentage of people, decades after the initial infection - assuming you survived, that is - you start having more paralysis and more fatigue and more weakness. And you can die!

*Because we started fucking vaccinating people for a fucking REASON, and it’s not a problem if you’re not getting polio in the first fucking place!

In my grandmother’s case, her lungs already weren’t great from the first time around, and she ended up going into cardiac arrest in and had to be on a ventilator for a year, and couldn’t walk anymore - she’d been able to use crutches and go short distances before that - this would have been in the early 80s, so a good 35-40 years after she first had polio.

So even someone “lucky” like that person up-thread’s grandfather, might have severe complications later on, even if they survive it initially!

Vaccinate your fucking kids!

we all know pokemon was made by an autistic person but consider the idea that it was made for autistic people as well:

1. absolutely nothing in the entire game requires dexterity or quick reaction time. you can beat the game with no problems even if you have the reaction time of a shuckle

2. game mechanics based on categorization, things placed neatly into categories that are easy to memorize

3. there are multiplayer elements but the game itself? completely single player. no social interaction required to enjoy the hell out of this game

4. you are not only encouraged but expected to have empathy for and form an attachment to these virtual creatures that do not actually exist, which is very easy for an autistic person with hyperempathy to do

5. the whole point of the game is collecting things. autistics will understand this one