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Honestly, in my work as a therapist, I’m seeing this A Lot, and tbh I still don’t have a satisfactory approach to it. A heavy dose of Existentialist “create your own Purpose” tempered with “when the plane’s going down, put your own oxygen mask on first”, but… yeah, there is no ethical way to work on individual emotional distress without acknowledging the systemic socioeconomic, geopolitical fuckery going on at the moment, and the sheer grief that comes with it.

I’m a guidance counselor/psychologist for teenagers and it’s getting really hard to motivate young people to work for a future they don’t believe in. 

 They look at ther future and see global warming, wwIII, unemployement, political unstability, poison in everything  they eat, the earth and animals dying all around them. 

I saw this video where someone was asking french teens in the 50s how they imagine the future would be. The war hadn’t been over for long and yet it was all positive with like peace and flying cars and such. Then they went and ask the same questions to nowadays teens and hell that was depressing. Some still had hope, but it was just that “well I hope I’ll have a nice house and maybe some kid” but there was such a hesitancy to it, like they didn’t dare to hope too much. 

People mock Greta Thunberg but what they don’t get is that when she said “you stole my dreams”, it was the truth. 

Young people don’t get to dream like they used to. They don’t dream anymore, they grief all that won’t be anymore and that’s just so fucking sad. 

The fact that both the tweet and these reblogs are pre-pandemic makes this post even worse

[TRANSCRIPT:

Paige: Hi, I’m Paige and I’m Autistic

Person 2: You are not autistic

Paige: Well, you don’t know who I am at all, so how can you even make that judgement?

Person 2: You’re nothing like my son, who’s 5 years old and a boy and autistic.

Paige: That’s funny because I’m actually a 20 year old woman, so of course I’m nothing like your 5 year old son.

Person 2: You don’t look autistic.

Paige: What does autism look like?

Person 2: uh it looks like my 5 year old autistic son.

Paige: Did you know every person who’s autistic is different, like any other human? And that I’m especially going to be different from a 5 year old boy?

Person 2: Yes but there are some things that are the same.

Paige: This is true, and this is why I’m diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Person 2: But you don’t show it well.

Paige: That’s because this is a 60 second TikTok.... That is scripted. And I am a 20 year old woman, I’m not having a meltdown 24/7.

Paige: I’m not showing you what I’m like at my lowest because I have clients and I don’t know you nor do I trust you and if I don’t fit what you think autism is, that’s not my fault nor my problem nor do I need to change to fit them. You need to change what you think autism looks like.

/END TRANSCRIPT]

Reblogging this version for the people who use screen readers. I hope I did a good job captioning the video, I feel like I’m not very good at captioning or even describing things.

not to Discourse but I’m a cis man and my partner is an afab enby and if you call us a “straight couple” I will personally come to your house tie you to a chair and make you listen to a podcast about gender identity on endless repeat

this is specifically @ the people who saw us at pride together and saw them wearing a “THEY/THEM” button and still referred to them as my “girlfriend” you’re all cancelled thanks

it’s called respecting queer people juice

y'know the really amazing thing about the notes on this post - apart from just the sheer number of people who are, like, viscerally terrified of the existence of a person who isn’t cis - is how many of them are responding to things that aren’t here. specifically, you’ll notice I said nothing about my sexuality. I didn’t say I identified as non-het, or that I considered myself part of the LGBTQIA community. on the flip side, I also didn’t give you any reason to believe I’m not bi, or that I’ve never been in a relationship with a cis man. y'all know nothing about my sexuality from this post and you don’t need to and I’m not going to tell you about it now because! this post! was not! about me!

it was about respecting my partner’s identity. and the fact that they don’t get that respect from people in the exact community that they should be able to count on getting it from.

ie, you.

they are not het or cis, and no relationship they are in will ever be a “straight relationship” because they. are not. het. or. cis.

everyone in the notes gatekeeping me because I’m “not oppressed”? I never said I was. the person you’re really attacking and invalidating by shitting on this post is them, a pansexual nonbinary person who is unerasably queer.

huh. it’s almost as if the whole “we can’t let straight men use queerness to worm their way into our community” discourse is just an excuse to hate trans people, isn’t it.

I reblog this every time I see it–

yes yes you’re very beautiful. Bewitching, even. AWFUL parking job, by the way

File under: even more blatant proof cis people can joke about trans people without it being at their expense

Imagine losing your phone (or having it stolen, nobody's entirely sure) but you've got the location thing on so you can check from your computer where the phone is when it's turned on. You try to map out where the fuck it is, but it's been wandering around in places that don't have maps and people shouldn't access. It turns out that no matter who stole it, a fucking raccoon has it now, and you're pretty much run out of battery. You need this phone so you try to fervently figure out how the fuck you're going to get it back.

Okay, it hasn't been moving in a raccoon-like fashion for a while, so you're pretty sure that it's not being carried around by the raccoon anymore. Oh, it looks like it's been found, someone turned it on and charged it! A notification pings on your computer, someone has sent a message from your phone!

"23rqrferq233rqrw434r". The phone is moving on the GPS again. It has been picked up by another fucking raccoon!

...And that is roughly how I picture Sauron feeling when the Ring was once again carried by another hobbit.

This post earned my trust then slapped me when I let my guard down

when you set out on the path of revenge, dig two graves. you never know when the other guy might’ve cloned himself

i feel like ur speaking from experience

weird coincidence, i also feel like ur speaking from experience

<|⟩:^(

<|⟩:^)

<|⟩:^)

TIL: Nebraska Senator Ernest Chambers filed a lawsuit against God in 2007, charging the almighty with “widespread death, destruction, and terrorization.” The case was dismissed with prejudice as God, lacking a fixed address, could not be properly notified of the lawsuit

via reddit.com

??¿??

The Vatican????

Reddit just discovered color theory

Someone went careening down the hallways spinning around a bloody corpse like a helicopter the entire way.

a hospital employee with an anime nosebleed and a spinny desk chair

... hires an improv grip l group instead AND IT WORKS

it's so chilling to walk through an area where the houses are surrounded by blank sterile lawns and see a big lilac bush in full bloom without a single bug on it. No bees, no butterflies, not a stir of activity.

The neighborhood association where I work hires a truck to spray the whole subdivision. It trundles up every driveway and sprays every yard with pesticides. The children excitedly tell me about "the bug man" and know which days he comes on. I know when he's been there, because in the following days I see the beetles, butterflies, bees, and more, all struggling on the pavement, slowly dying. The children do not realize why they are there. They poke at the bugs in fascination. I hate it.

That's. Horrible. I have no words

Like

Those insecticides are toxic to humans as well, many are proven carcinogens, and their residues stick around for years inside homes

But even if that wasn't so, insect populations worldwide are plummeting, and the entire food chain depends on them. Most plants and animals could not exist without insects, period

Keeping the insect ecosystem in balance is important for human health and long term flourishing. Not all species are impacted equally by these toxic chemicals, and the elimination of one species can cause an explosion in another.

For example, some of the major predators of ticks are ants, spiders, and beetles

If you kill all your ants, spiders, and beetles, it'll take a long time for them to re-establish, but ticks can return because of a feral cat walking across your grass

What's more, scientists have found that excluding animals from an area makes the amount of ticks that can be collected in that area to explode. We're talking 2-3 times the amount of ticks actively foraging for things to latch onto. It seems like hungrier ticks seek food sources more and bite people more. This leads to the hypothesis that global defaunation is one of the causes of the explosion in tick borne diseases in recent years

Many birds depend on insects for food, bluebirds specifically eat a ton of mosquitoes

If you wipe out most arthropods, the the small mammals and birds that eat the bugs will visit your yard much less. Guess what that means

Current projections predict that the insect declines will be heavily impactful upon bees, butterflies, and moths, but could increase the populations of...flies and cockroaches.

Not to mention that as all the natural predators of agricultural pest insects suffer, more and more pesticides will be needed to get enough crop yields and it becomes a vicious cycle of poisoning the planet and farm laborers more and more severely to avoid collapse of food systems

Your neighborhood association is creating a bleak, sick, hungry future for those kids and everyone else.

Like, think about it:

If you kill and destroy everything in your surroundings that doesn't benefit you directly, soon the only critters that can live there are the creatures that are parasites on you directly or that compete with you for resources.

And now they don't have any predators to keep them at bay.

reblogging this again because researching ticks changed my brain around

like I thought "Yeah re-wilding will probably increase the risk of ticks but we just need to make tick safety widespread and common knowledge"

but then I RESEARCHED it

and the research was like "Actually tick diseases have increased DRAMATICALLY over the past 40 years, and tick ranges are expanding hugely and it's mostly unrelated to climate change so far. And we did experiments and in areas where there aren't any animals, the number of ticks that catch onto things passing through the area explodes, it's like 2-3 times the number of ticks. Which is like, wait, weird, I thought animals spread ticks. But we think what's happening is that when there's no animals, the ticks engage in more questing behavior to find food."

and I was like "Wait, but if the decline of animals is making the ticks look for food more, wouldn't they...wait. Oh no. OH NO. We're the food!"

and I looked at more research

and the research said "so the main things that kill ticks seems to be spiders, ants, and beetles."

and I was like "spiders, ants, and beetles? the things that people see as pests and try to kill with chemicals that contaminate the whole ecosystem?—OH FUCK"

Basically it's like

Expectation: destroying nature= fewer ticks, which means less disease

Reality: destroying nature= hungrier ticks that want to suck your blood way more and less spiders ants and beetles to eat them for you

the uncommon allergy haver to anticapitalist pipeline

in January 2023, companies became required to label sesame on all products it was present in, and undergo rigorous cleaning procedures to prevent sesame contamination, after it was declared the 9th "major" food allergen in the United States.

so, instead of considering this a mandate to give a single shit about people with sesame allergies, almost all American companies decided to just add sesame flour to all their relevant products. because apparently that was cheaper.

it's almost impossible for me to find hot dog and hamburger buns without sesame now. and I am one of the lucky ones. I'm someone who just so happened to notice the label updates, not get caught unawares and have a severe allergic reaction. I'm someone lucky enough to be surrounded by multiple choices of supermarkets, and someone with the incredible privilege to have parents who'll help me search the shelves, and cover those costs that my allergies rack up. not everyone with allergies/other intolerances has all or any of those privileges to begin with.

most food allergies will never be prevalent enough that under capitalism, it will be profitable to give them the level of accommodation that they deserve. I speak from experience with a wide portfolio of hypersensitivity quirks when I say that the rarer the food allergy, the worse it gets.

and here's the thing: I can live without hamburger buns, with only superficial decreases in my quality of life. but sesame isn't my only rare allergy, and ever since this legislation hit, I've been lying awake at night, afraid of what I might lose access to next.

I've been lying awake at night wondering what I'll have to do to live, to obtain enough safe food to survive, if any of my other allergies get this same treatment. and I reiterate. I am one of the privlidged ones.

what these companies have done is completely legal. what these companies did has also cut off up to over a million people from what were previously safe, affordable staples of their diets. a system that has any incentive not to accommodate the dietary needs of any population is not a system that can be allowed to exist. this is the uncommon allergy haver to angry, fuming anticapitalist pipeline.

[Image description: two screenshots of tumblr tags, reading:

"also pea protein. mcdicks just added pea protein without any proper warning so if you got a legume allergy, don't eat their buns."

"did you know pea protein and pea flour is a thing. i didn't. but i sure found out quick after i ate frozen nuggets and when i got gravy from a restaurant. now i have to check fucking everything because i've also found pea protein in ice cream of all things." End description.]

thank you @butchwelddone and @insidejupiter respectively for these psas. signal boosting here for all my fellow legume-allergic folks, stay safe (and stay away from McDonalds buns)

Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002 Mild steel, 204 cm x variable width and depth

Mona Hatoum is a Palestinian artist. From Artform’s 2021 Rape is a Border:

"this comic transcends all language" those are cognates, dumbass.

I can't believe this site is free

Reblogging again. Firefox is an excellent, safe and fast browser and everyone should consider using it.

Don’t just consider it. If you have the ability to switch to Firefox, this is your official notice to do it.

Stop everything you’re doing and go download and install Firefox.

If you’re saying, “well, I need Chrome because I need such-and-such extension for my job”, the computer will not explode if you install another browser. Use Chrome ONLY for work tasks and use Firefox for everything else. If you’re concerned about losing your bookmarks, Firefox can import your Chrome bookmarks.

[ID: Firefox Library window. The “Import and Backup” panel is expanded, displaying the option, “Import Data from Another Browser”, which is also circled with a red MS Paint ellipse. ID end.]

And, don’t forget to install uBlock Origin while you’re at it.

Forgot a thing. Subscribe to Mozilla VPN for bonus points. It’s basically the only truly secure VPN service in the world right now.

For $5 a month, you can completely conceal your online activities from your ISP in a manner that isn’t just immediately monetised or turned over to the cops. No, it’s not free, it does cost money, but the money doesn’t go to line a billionaire’s pockets.

I wonder how much of this is because of work/school from home forcing people to use Chrome so all their stupid monitoring softwares and platforms can work.

This is also your reminder that you don't have to use just one browser. You can use chrome for all the monitoring bullshit your office wants you to run and use firefox for everything else.

Be sure to add the multi account containers extension to your firefox, which allows you to be logged in to multiple accounts on the same website at the same time in the same window but in different tabs.

look on my five open tumblr accounts (not sideblogs, accounts!) ye mighty and despair.

Firefox is super good, folks. It's good in a general "google shouldn't own everything in the entire fucking world" sense AND in a "this is an actual good product that does lots of cool shit" sense.

ALSO make sure to add the Ublock origin extension on Firefox - I haven't seen a youtube ad in five years and you don't have to either.

While you're at it, why not add the Wayback Machine extension so that if you go looking for a page that has been taken down the wayback machine will automatically offer you an archived version instead; also handy for documenting people's shitty takes and winning arguments after they delete the original post!

Worried that Firefox is going to slow down your computer? In benchmarks, modern versions of chrome and firefox are pretty much the same speed but you can still install the auto tab discard extension ANYWAY so that it will snooze unused tabs in order to keep your computer running faster. Set it to sleep, discard, close, and store tags at your discretion!

And while you're at it: install Firefox as your mobile browser for android and add those extensions to your mobile browser! Mobile adblock is here, baybee, save your data and enjoy a better mobile experience! And install it on iOS! iOS can't add extensions, but at least it's better than safari, and if you want a somewhat more private iOS browsing experience try firefox focus for iOS (which is also available on android but you can accomplish the same thing with extensions).

Anyway, firefox is good.

Also: in January 2023, Chrome is making some changes to plugin architecture that effectively neutering adblockers.  If you want good adblocking, you won’t have it in Chrome.  Use Firefox

(In fairness, some Chrome-derived browsers like Vivaldi and Opera have openly parted ways with Chrome about this, and more power to them, but Firefox is the way to go.)

Since everyone is running around shouting that the pandemic is over.

The pandemic is not over. The state of emergency over the pandemic is over because countries opened back up too early and COVID can no longer be controlled.

The pandemic is not over. The state if emergency of the pandemic is over because it doesn't work if no one was fucking listening to it anyways.

And professionals were afraid of announcing that the state of emergency was over because they were afraid of people responding like this.

-fae

TIL that most, if not all, uncontacted groups live in voluntary isolation - they are aware of the rest of the world, but choose to not have any contact. This is likely due to fear of diseases novel to them and violent clashes with traffickers and loggers.

via reddit.com