Reblog if you had a Tumblr for 5+ years
“hi welcome to mcdonalds what can i get for you?”
“yeah can i get a deluxe quarter pounder with cheese?”
“absolutely, do you want the meal or just the sandwich?’
“uuuuuh hold on”
*fishes something out of my pocket*
“mikey what do i do?”
“get the fries. youll need the energy in the coming days”
*stuffs it back in my pocket*
“uhh yes please the meal would be great”
Now that it’s back it’s hard to remember a time where they sued to get the post taken down
The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.
Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.
Checkmate, nihilism.
This is a powerful positive message..
I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.
There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.
No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.
Knit a sock.
If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.
This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.
This is what “humans want to be productive” really means
We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators
Interesting to call this “confiscating” when it’s just making the rich pay their fair share, especially considering all the stolen wealth from the bottom 99% and historic tax evasion.
Besides the obvious, the hidden benefit of this is that it provides an endpoint to runaway growth.
The biggest problem with capitalism, the reason it's so destructive to the planet and to the workers and even, ultimately, to the capitalists, is that, after a certain point, the money's just a way of keeping score. The number at the bottom of the column has no bearing on what you can buy or do; as a result, there's no such thing as enough. The number can always be bigger.
Under this proposal, once you hit $1 billion, you've won capitalism. You beat the game, achieved the maximum score; you're finished. There's nothing more you can accumulate. You now have to find a purpose in life other that the relentless pursuit of profit. (And if we're really lucky, it might be something that actually benefits other people, but even if not, it's unlikely to be as damaging as whatever it is you were doing to get that $1 billion.)
Instead of companies expanding endlessly, like tumors, there's a point where, when all the major stakeholders are maxing out on profit, it makes sense to just hold steady. Keep doing/making/selling whatever it is you do/sell/make, but stop trying to do/sell/make more of it every year.
The problem with a tumor--what makes it cancer--is that it keeps growing and growing, until eventually it's taking up so much space and consuming so many resources that the surrounding tissues can't function. The tumor doesn't have to do anything better than the other tissues in order to crowd them out; it just does it faster. Stop the uncontrolled growth, and it's something you can live with.
Stopping the uncontrolled growth of capital means more opportunities for multiple businesses--big and small--operating in the same sector, since it doesn't make sense for any one company to gobble up too much of the market share. That, in turn, means more choices for customers--and workers, since they can take their skills to another employer doing similar things. It means less waste, as there's no longer an economic upside to spewing cheap goods out of a fire-hose before you even know whether anyone wants to buy them. That could mean slower, more thoughtful use of resources in the first place, but at minimum, it's going to mean not manufacturing products only to immediately throw them away.
just a reminder to my new followers that if were ever able to cross the explanatory gap and share our color perception qualia with each other, proving finally that we all do see colors differently, my red is real as shit and youve been seeing crap fake red. so come to terms with your shit fake red while it lasts
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY
25/26
i wasnt finished yet
oh my bad
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
26/26
portal was right. more video games should end with the antagonist singing you an emotionally charged original song
Been doodling Chainsaw Man stuff all week, so I tossed some colors onto this one.
pioneering something called "gritted teeth optimism" where everything is gonna turn out okay even if i have to bite and claw and gnash my way through it
Everything's gonna be fine and it's not negotiable.
Wow everyone is going through it. Hold my hand
reblog to hold the hand of the person you reblogged from
