Tobacco users aren't dirty or stupid, and some of y'all are deeply poisoned by DARE-style propaganda.

Even from people who are supposedly "supportive" of addicts and users, I see so much hateful vitriol toward smokers, as if nicotine addiction is somehow The Worst Kind, and it's okay to target them as Terrible Monsters, even from people who should know better.

"But I have TRAUMA--" Trauma doesn't give you the right to be cruel to every single smoker in the world. It does not give you the right to assume the worst of every single smoker you meet.

"But they pollute my air--" Designated smoking spots in public areas have been a thing for decades now, and I have never met a single smoker who wasn't perfectly willing to move to another location to smoke, as long as they are asked respectfully and not treated like criminals or monsters just for smoking. If you approach a smoker and treat them like a criminal and act like they're intentionally trying to poison you, they have every right to get annoyed at you. And if an individual smoker is a dick about it? That's still the individual, not smokers as a whole.

"But it sets off my asthma--" This is what is known as a "competing access need." Smokers deserve space to smoke, because drug withdrawal is severe and is a legitimate medical issue. Non-smokers and those with respiratory issues deserve smoke-free air. Two things can be true at once, and the answer is not, "so we dehumanize smokers!" Also, y'all may be shocked to learn this, but there are asthmatic smokers. I know several. Using asthmatics as a gotcha against smokers is not productive or kind to either group.

"But tobacco companies--" Are not the individual smokers, and are not responsible for tobacco companies' actions. Blaming Joe Schmoe Smoker for the actions of Big Tobacco is the exact same as blaming someone for climate change because they bought a pack of Walmart-brand hamburgers. Not only is it not effective, it doesn't target the core issue, and it's a douchebag thing to do.

"But it's bad for you--" Suicide and self-harm are worse, and cigarettes are the only thing keeping some people alive. Blame the system, not the individual.

"But vaping is obnoxious and bad for kids--" Vaping originated as a way to help people stop smoking, and it is not the fault of individuals that vaping became another predatory industry. Removing access to vapes, which are commonly still used as a tool for addicts to help quit, is not the fucking answer.

Stop being cruel to smokers and pretending you're progressive for it. Unlearn the DARE propaganda, kill the cop in your head, and recognize that someone's humanity is not dependent on their drug habits.

[ID: A screenshot of the original post highlighting the text, "And if an individual smoker is a dick about it? That's still the individual, not smokers as a whole." End ID.]

People keep telling stories in my notes of individual smokers being shitty as some sort of gotcha, and I would like to highlight where I already addressed that.

Y'all are worryingly quick to demonize smokers as an entire category of people, and it's disgusting.

Can you read.

Like, seriously, jackasses, why do so many of you see "treat smokers better, they are human beings" and somehow read it as something akin to, "Ren said every single smoker should be allowed to come blow smoke directly in the exposed face of an asthmatic baby, and then slap them, and kick their mama in the shins for good measure."

Reminder that the Australian Government okayed the destruction of two 46'000 year old Aboriginal caves for iron ore.

One of the world's earliest human settlements destroyed forever for a profit.

I gave my soapbox speech about how weight loss is mostly bullshit to two different patients in a row yesterday and so help me I’m pretty sure one of these days someone is going to say “but SURELY you agree I’d be HEALTHIER if I lost weight!” bc you can see the disbelief in their eyes. And like. Sure, maybe! You might see some improvement in biomarkers like LDL and A1c, and your knees would probably feel better. But you would be amazed at how much more good you can do for yourself by focusing on things you can actually meaningfully change without resorting to making yourself miserable. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables—it’s hard bc they’re more difficult to prepare and more expensive per calorie and go bad faster than other foods, but they’re what we evolved eating the most of so they’re what our bodies need the most of. And walk around more; sure, cardio is great for you, but if it sucks so bad you don’t do it, it isn’t doing shit for you. And we evolved to walk very very long distances, a little bit at a time, so our bodies respond actually very well to adding walks into our schedules, which is vastly easier than adding workouts that are frankly designed to be punishing when the definition of punishing is “makes you less likely to do it again in the future.”

You get one life. It is shorter than you can begin to imagine. Don’t waste it hating yourself because somebody is going to make money off that self-hatred. You deserve better than to be a cash cow for billionaires who pay aestheticians and dermatologists to make them (or at least their trophy wives) look thin and beautiful no matter what they actually do.

And ONE MORE THING—listen. We are NOT evolved to lose weight, we are evolved to hoard it. We came about in a world of famines. Not only does your brain have MULTIPLE failsafes built in SPECIFICALLY TO PREVENT WEIGHT LOSS, but there are epigenetic factors—factors that are not DNA but travel with it and affect how it is expressed. So if your parents or grandparents lived through a famine, like, oh, say, the Great Depression, YOU are more likely to gain weight and more likely to have difficulty losing it. AND! We live in a world highly affected by industrial pollution—there is no corner of the world free from it, micro plastics and industrial chemical pollution have been found literally everywhere ever studied—and many of those pollutants affect our endocrine systems. Looking at records of lab animals going back to the 1960s, where we have excellent records of what genetically essentially identical animals ate, we know that LAB ANIMALS FED THE SAME AMOUNT OF THE SAME CHOW WEIGH MORE NOW THAN THEY DID THE IN SIXTIES. So no. You’re not fat because your willpower is somehow busted. (Willpower, fun fact, can be depleted! By DEPLETING BLOOD SUGAR! Baumeister’s work in the 2000s demonstrated that.) You’re fat because your body wants you to live, and because the ultra rich have knowingly poured poison into the world because they don’t care if you die.

So YOU need to care if you live. And how you live. Please love yourself, because the billionaires will never give a shit about you. Weight Watchers has a 96-99% failure rate. Weight loss is a scam that makes billions of dollars every year. Love yourself too much to fall for that. Don’t wait until you’re thin to love yourself or to start living, because a) that day may never come and b) it’s okay if that day never comes. You are worthwhile and enough right now. I promise you that.

Did I mention that all studies on the subject are very clear--like, we do not need more studies on this, which is a bananas thing for a scientist to say--exercise does not lead to weight loss. It just doesn't. Anyone who tells you it does is wrong. It's good for you because it's good for you, not because it makes you thin. It improves your blood vessel health; it improves your heart health; it improves your body's ability to manage blood sugar; it improves your muscular health. It does not make you thin.

Reducing calories can reduce weight, but your body, as previously mentioned, is trying REAL HARD not to lose weight. I see a lot of recommendations for 1200 calorie a day diets. Google "starvation study" and look at how much the men in that study were given. It was over 1500 calories a day, and they were miserable. They became skeletal. They felt awful, depressed, foggy--because your brain is the single biggest user of calories in your body. It is so metabolically active that your brain uses around 30% of all the calories your body uses. Guess what happens when you starve your brain? You feel like shit. You feel stupid and depressed. Don't starve yourself. It doesn't work and it makes you feel awful and you will get rebound weight gain above whatever you lost, guaranteed, and then you'll blame yourself for "letting yourself go" because our society is built on lies.

We also cannot and should not ever suggest that anyone can lose more than 5-10% of their body weight and keep that off. It's just not possible. Bariatric surgery is a WHOLE other can of worms, I don't have the energy to explain why I almost never recommend it to my patients, but just know that if anyone has ever suggested you lose more than 10% of your body weight through behavioral changes, they are bullshitting you.

Shoe Wings // Wren Werde on Etsy

I think it's really weird that Marvel movies became the go-to poster for shady film industry practices when a lot of shit Marvel pulls is pretty industry standard. The entire industry is built on rotten foundations, which is why there's a big strike happening that you may have heard about.

Like, Marvel Studios are a horrific den of abuse, but they're not uniquely terrible, and the fixation on Marvel feels like a reaction against how popular The Avengers was with teenage girls on tumblr from like 2011-2018. It went from the fandom on tumblr, to being the go-to thing people fixated on when they make those annoying "watch another movie" posts. There are so many more studios making movies exactly like Marvel does.

Marvel Studios could go under tonight and there would still be an entire industry of shitheads who want full freedom to abuse entertainment workers. It's not a "Marvel movie" issue, it's an industry issue.

There's a handful of notes on this going "well fuck you, do you know how hard it is to BE the speaker and not have anyone greet you?" and uh, yes, yes I do, because I did those stupid ass soft skills/resilience/insert other assorted nonsense workshops for schools for a living for a while, and I still agree with this.

The key to being an effective speaker is the ability to understand your audience. You need to understand people in order to build a rapport with them. And you need to build a rapport with them in order to effectively guide them from where they are, to where you need them to be.

So. Here is the situation from the perspective of the audience: this random person, whom they have never met before and do not care about, is being paid by employers/school powers that be to come speak on a thing. In other words, the speaker is the one benefitting from being there. Meanwhile, the audience has likely been ordered to be there, for no immediate, tangible benefit in return. It is early in the morning, they are sleep-deprived and under-caffeinated, they have a shit ton of stuff on their to-do list, they are unconvinced whatever the speaker is going to say is going to be of any use or relevance whatsoever, and so they see this talk as a waste of time that they could instead be spending on sleep or at least finishing off things that are actually necessary for work/school. And now this rando, whom I repeat, is supposed to be the service provider, whose presence is already a pain, is asking for even more effort on the audience's part by asking them to smile and be chipper. All before saying a single other word that might convince said audience that they are going to get any benefit whatsoever out of being there. Fuck that.

You gotta understand, you are not some rock star that people are already invested in and actively want to see. Those get to do the "scream! I can't hear you! LOUDER!" thing. The fact of the matter is, you are probably someone your audience has no interest in seeing, and until you give them a reason for wanting to be there, you cannot ask them for even more emotional effort. That's not going to endear them to you.

I am by no means a particularly great speaker, but I can tell you now that I have gotten far more immediate rapport and engagement by simply going "hello hello, morning, how is everyone?" and then when I get the predictably unenthusiastic mass groaning and grumbling, and unenergetic "morning"s back in return, replying "heh, big mood. It's final project season innit; how sleep deprived are y'all? --yeouch, intense, well I'll try my best to keep this as painless as I possibly can; I'm here today to talk about--" etc etc. Simple, sympathetic, and while it's not the most energetic and enthusiastic thing in the world, it puts me on "their" side and opens a connection that I can build on for the rest of the talk, instead of instantly making my audience feel 10x more tired and hostile.

If you are not a speaker being paid to be there, but are instead someone giving a presentation for an assignment or presenting a paper or whatever, then I've found that being sincere and a little self-deprecating, possibly just a tiny bit vulnerable works pretty well: "Oh god, so full disclosure, I don't speak very often and I'm sweating bullets right now, and also I tend to babble like a bullet train when I'm nervous so if at any point you cannot understand me please ask me to slow down, but I have a thing I need to present, and I think it's pretty cool, and hopefully you do too." Your audience has probably been in your shoes before, and are now inclined to be nice to you out of sympathy.

In both cases, it's about understanding your listeners and where you stand in relation to them and using that to build that initial connection. You cannot demand connection; it never fucking works.

The generation gap between me and ppl of my own age

Happy 15th birthday to Rise of Scourge

if you cant even handle someone using funky neopronouns then i cant imagine how unbearable you are to be around. i bet you suck all the life out of the room and make everyone around you miserable

you're mad bc someone wants to use cake/cupcake pronouns? you hate fun?🎂🧁 you're just upset bc cake knows how to enjoy and play with cakes identity and you are a boring loser who has no friends

Protector of Childhood Dreams

shoutout to boring queer people who don’t do shit. just go to work or school and then come home to watch shows. while gay

todays littlest pet shop of the day is … persian #182 !!

TRANS CAT

TRANS CAT

Download and start using Firefox if you don’t already, I made the switch back to Firefox after not using it for years and being a chrome person until 2020 and have never regretted it

firefox is so amazing.  Seriously.  If you haven’t, give it a try.  At the very least, you can watch youtube videos with 0 (zero) ads.

Notice: not only do your friends actually like you, they secretly like you twice as much as they let on

An experience that made me feel much more assured in my friendships was at college, a friend and myself were talking about a third friend of ours and how cool and knowledgeable and smart she is and how we feel like we could never be that cool. The next day I was working with a professor on some paper presentations we were about to have and when I came out of the staff room I was informed that these two aforementioned friends were having the same discussion about me. And it turns out we spent a lot of time thinking about our friends who aren't currently in the room and gushing over how cool and smart and talented they are without being able to say all of it to their face.

Your friends secretly love you a lot more than they already express, just like you love them so intensely that saying it all to their faces would sound clumsy to your own ears. It's true though

people get so confused trying to figure out the Lois/Clark/Superman situation that somehow they come to the conclusion that Clark is cheating on Lois with Superman

I mean Lois clearly has nothing to hide, everyone from here to Krypton’s seen Superman fly her with a chaste hand around her waist. but Clark puts an awful lot of effort into making sure no one ever gets a pic of him and Superman together

what is he worried Lois will see

people shake their heads sadly every time Superman visits the Daily Planet and then Clark emerges from a closet disheveled and tucking his shirt back into his pants. but if Lois won’t see it there’s nothing they can do

When Lois finds out she thinks it’s hilarious, and when someone finally tries to ‘break it to her’, she’s all ready. 

“Oh, I know.”

“You… know?”

“Neither of them would ever lie to me.” 

“So… *gears frantically spinning* this is like some kind of threesome thing?” 

“Oh! No, no, no, absolutely not. *Lois pauses and grins the most lascivious grin she can produce* I just… watch.” 

Clark gets a lot of very weird looks that day that he can’t understand at all. 

@elidyce​ no, no, no. don’t hide a shit-stirring bruce and chaotic lois in the tags. this is an important addition, too. just gives that final touch that’s dearly needed to really complete this, y’know?

three orions thursday….

strap on jokes aside why are you. as a man’s rival. walking into his doctor’s appointment and recommending porn to him. while literally hiding behind your back a present you got him. and it’s a baby.

Uterusless and slightly drugged up ❤️

Reblog this post to get your reproductive system removed and to have two giant dykes lovingly squirt a syringe full of drugs into your mouth