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Hellooooo

@ham-nah

am ham

over time the thing i have had more access to - through healing, maybe, or because i got out of that house, or because i was lucky, or because of those who taught me, or all of it - was this sense of a type of love that was all-encompassing and easy. nonromantic; it wasn't anything rose-colored but rather a world seen through honey.

it is this sense that i am in love with birds, and puddles, and how the nose of my dog moves. i am in love with my best friend's hands, and i am in love with your eyes, and i am in love with the little blades of wildflowers turning their heads towards the sun. today my mother told me one of my favorite flowers - lily of the valley - is endangered. i almost wept. i love them, i said.

when i was younger, and i said i am staying for the love, i thought love could only fit into a single birdwing. like a nesting doll; you could only find love somewhere balled up; hidden. you had to pry first, unlock. it would not absolve; only give you a moment's rest. somehow i thought - that was all.

oh but. this love, now. a love of how trains move, and how clouds scud the blue, and how when i asked does anyone have a bandaid i received offers from each person in the room. it is the love of a grey sunday and of mixing paint and of jazz music and seeing my neighbor sigh while he leashes his dog. this sense that it is all lovely and magical, that it is all romantic. the sense that i am in love with breakfast foods and i am in love with book nooks and i am in love with poetry and plants and how you braid your hair and how we shift our weight at the bus stop; and how each of these flood me, effortless and sleepy, like a memory of something i learned as a baby.

i think tomorrow for practice i will teach myself how to love the grey carpet of my ratty apartment; and how the fibers all hold hands with each other and snuggle into bed together, their forms all spooning. i think tonight i will love how my yoga mat leaves little imprints on my knees; a marathon of sticky kisses where the grooves all begged stay with me please. i think i will love the melon rind and i will love the ugly dark bruise.

while we're at it - although we are apart and have never met, i think right now, dear reader. i love you.

Streaming companies are the landlords of media. You will rent in perpetuity, and never actually own anything.

✨🏴‍☠️ PIRATE AND DOWNLOAD YOUR FAVORITE MEDIA IMMEDIATELY. PIRATE AND DOWNLOAD YOUR FAVORITE MEDIA IMMEDIATELY 🏴‍☠️✨

1. Download Firefox

2. Add the following extensions: uBlock Origin, AdBlocker Ultimate, Privacy Badger, Privacy Possum, minerBlock (ClearURLs and Don’t track me Google also recommended but not necessary for this)

3. Go forth brave soldier

*says a fact in a conversation and a wikipedia citation appears next to my head*

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lazygravez2

*clicks the citation*

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beckaboi

*text pops up saying “this is not true. He saw this in a youtube video once in 2014 and took it as fact”. the words “youtube video” are underlined and in blue”

*clicks on the link*

Bitches out here roleplaying internet trolling

the trick to a good insult is sort of talking around it and making them think so that it hits harder when they realize what you’re talking about

“you look like the minotaur” -> whatever

“you look like you have a bull’s head” -> slightly funnier

“you look like you should be imprisoned in an underground labyrinth for the safety of crete” -> there we go

Something I randomly think about a lot is how when very old castles, manors, and large country estates were built, they were built with the expectation of guests. In eras when you rarely travelled over a hundred miles from home, when one did travel guests stayed for long periods of time with friends and relatives. Wealthy people would have guests in their home frequently (virtually all the time, if you were royalty), so huge houses (and staffs) accommodated for multiple guests on long stays. More homes were multi-generational, too.

And now when people live in big houses it’s usually just themselves. Maybe 4-6 in a family, and when the kids get married and move away? Maybe only 1 or two. Guests rarely “sleep over,” and almost never longer than a weekend. I don’t know exactly what caused the cultural shift, but it fascinates me.

Every time I read an old book and some young person “visits a friend in the countryside” for weeks or months I get emotional. Imagine if your friends had the resources to host you at their house for that long. And you would live there very like if it was your own home. Nowadays even if you do stay with friends or family, there’s usually events or activities intended to fill the time. Suppose if you just went to visit your friend for a month, and the two of you just read books or took walks together.

I think a big reason why "children are an oppressed group" gets (wrongly!) read as a "pedophile talking point" is that everyone treats children so terribly that actual child molesters can speedrun winning a kid's trust by like, actually respecting their needs and perspective, at least at first. Which means that the only way out of this mess is for all of us adults to treat children with respect, so that abusers can't use the rareness of that respect as a weapon.

Yeah I've been thinking a lot about how cults will prey on marginalized people and how it's so much easier to push an "us versus them" mentality on a person who already (legitimately, accurately) perceives the world as hostile to them

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It however does not cast Social Services in a bad light. Cobra Bubbles does a lot to try to keep Lilo in Nani’s custody and I hate how overlooked that is. He legit shows remorse when he does try to take Lilo, which he only did because of her very reasonibly alarming phone call and the destruction of their house. Point is they didn’t make social services into a heartless judgy entity

they actually made a good point about how a system originally designed to be consistent and fair can also lack the sensitivity and flexibility needed to deal with complex situations. this is shown both when Stitch is labeled a monster and when Nani is judged for not being able to earn a living and constantly watch Lilo at the same time. Neither happened because the people making the calls were cruel--Bubbles and the Grand Councilwoman seem to mean well, but both were expected to make judgments very quickly by their organizations... and both used loopholes to make kinder, fairer decisions for our heroes.

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Let’s note that those decisions and loopholes included allowing Jamba and Pleakly to move in with Nani and Lilo, thus giving her some additional support (no matter how dubious) in maintaining the household and caring for Lilo.