Me: “Yeah I read all the time! I’m always reading a book-”

My books sitting unread on my bookshelf:

its so shiddy when u have to convince yourself to do your hobbies. like, its fun, you like it, why cant you just do it. do it. do it. but what if.... mindless media consumption instead....

im so sorry to the seven thousand of you so far who relate

upset at the accuracy of these tags

No one I know has had the same experience as me getting on hrt and honestly it’s a damn shame

me, mentally bracing myself for months, if not years of psychological evaluation: “So I think I might be trans?”

doc: “cool cool cool cool”

doc: “so… do you wanna start estrogen today or…?”

This is the blessed post of ungatekeeping. Reblog this to never again have to barter with a medical professional regarding treatment of your mental or physical health.

Mongoose uses stealth

I’m aware that I’m definitely Jon Sims biased when I listen to TMA, he’s my favourite, so naturally it’s much easier for me to empathise with him. But every time I re-listen (I’ve lost count now but I think I’ve done 6?), I always legitimately try to let go of my bias and really consider the perspective of characters I instinctively disagree with. Something I’ve noticed is that, the one moment that always gets me, that I can never look past or empathise with, is Basira and Georgie’s response to Jon waking up in MAG 122.

It’s funny because I don’t think it is supposed to be some character defining moment for either of them and (maybe I’ve just missed it because I’m not super fandom active) I’ve never really heard anybody else talk about this. But the way they respond to him has always REALLY rubbed me wrong. Because I get it, they’re concerned about how much ‘Jon’ is really left inside the person sat in bed, but Jesus fuck. This guy wakes up after, as far as you know at the time, sacrificing himself to successfully save billions of people and the first thing you say is ‘no it’s not good you woke up actually’ - like damn he’s been conscious for 10 SECONDS could this not wait until later? Could you first idk, thank him? Say your glad to see your friend is still alive and save the ‘are you human?’ conversation for after he’s had a cuppa maybe?

The first thing you say to someone who’s woken up from a coma being ‘it’s not good you woke up’ just seems needlessly fucking cruel, regardless of how I attempt to spin it in my mind. And unless you’re literally talking to Satan the correct response to “Disappointed to see me alive?” is unequivocally NO not “We can deal with it later”. 

Overall, there’s a difference between caution and callousness, and while I understand the desire to be cautious with Jon as how much of his humanity remains is unclear, this moment always tipped into callousness for me in a way I struggle to empathise with even when I really try. 

I maintain that the Web/Jonah put people around Jon who would handle all of this badly and, when threatened, punch down - and Jon is safe to punch.

He’s not going to hit back.

He’s not going to hurt you like Melanie.

They hit him without fear of reprisal because they were having a bad time.

It goes deeper, too. I reference this again:

Not it.

Not it.

Oh sure, my friend who saved my life and “I won’t forget that” (MAG 123) is being mutated with a horrifying ghost bullet - but, you know, not it.

Oh sure, I have POLICE TRAINING, and can take down and restrain a person professionally and I could do that - but, you know, not it.

This moment shows Basira’s cowardice and hypocrisy in the extreme, especially compared to her bullying behavior of Jon since he woke.

She’s worried about being human? Well, only one person in this scenario is risking their life at the hands of a Slaughter-infected woman to try to save that woman’s life - and Basira? Is not it.

You guys know you can reblog my posts right

All it means when people say “you’re speaking from a place of privilege” is that you’re likely to underestimate how bad the problem is by default because you are never personally exposed to that problem. It’s not a moral judgement of how difficult your life is.

^^^^^^ read it. say it out loud. keep repeating it until you understand.

Been working in pest control for 3 months now and i can confidently say that nobody on earth seems to understand that sometimes You Will See A Bugs and that's Normal if you live literally anywhere with oxygen

Unfortunately it appears you have a garden that is growing several important pollinator food sources you will be seeing wasps sometimes. You want us to spray your flowers? That'll stop the wasps but only because your flowers will be Dead

I just think everyone would benefit from living in the woods for a week and having their bug tolerance forcibly increased by being forced to share a showerstall with a wolf spider the size of a half dollar everyday

(Life hack: if you consistently put out safe water sources for bees, the wasps will see you and they WILL eventually recognize you. And once you become The Bringer Of Water, they will become your own little goon squad. I used to get stung if I startled them by my compost bin, but now I have banged doors open just to realize a wasp was chilling right on the lintel, but all it does is wave its antennae at me. They see me carrying watering cans to my flowers and follow me. When I go to other places, the wasps there will also be friendly. Wasps are fucking amazing yall.)

I really hate how culture normalizes fear of bugs and reinforces and fuels insect phobias until they make it impossible to coexist with nature

I would never dismiss someone's phobia. I know what kind of hell on earth that shit is. And I don't mock people for being scared of wasps or bees because some people have allergies that can kill them and it's kinda dumb to be rude to someone who is afraid of something that might kill them. But it's done people such a disservice that culture tells people it's reasonable to be afraid of all bugs and that most bugs will hurt you or your house or your pets.

I see so many comments and tags on posts about nature saying things like "I would love to spend time outside but I can't handle being around bugs" as if it's normal! If you can't sit on grass or go on a hike because of your fear of bugs, that's like...clinically significant highly disabling stuff. It's locking you away from so many experiences.

Fears like this often get reinforced by witnessing other people's responses to a stimulus. We are social creatures and if you watch the people around you show disgust and fear in response to bugs, you will learn to respond that way too. If you hear on the internet and TV and elsewhere that most bugs are dangerous and want to hurt you or will give you diseases, it will be reinforced even more.

The fact is, bugs are just guys. We depend on them for almost every part of our lives. Our planet is teeming with so many wondrous life forms, and many of them are insects. They come in every color and every form of iridescence, they glow and sparkle and they are fuzzy and striped and spotted. They are not "gross" or dirty.

Insects worldwide are now dropping in number, and it could mean disaster for us and every life form on earth. Most flowering plants (80% or so) have a symbiotic partnership with insects where they are dependent on insect pollination to fertilize their flowers. Wasps, bees, flies, butterflies, and even ants and beetles are all important pollinators, and each plant's flowers are designed to be pollinated by a different group of insects. Without these insects, the majority of flowering plant species would not be able to exist. They would go extinct. That includes most of the plants we eat. No wasps, bees, flies and other pollinators= no apples, no berries, no peaches, no plums, no anything. That's a simplified summary but it expresses just how important they are.

A big reason for it is the use of insecticides that are highly toxic to a wide variety of non-target insects. For instance, carbaryl, typically known as Sevin in the US, was for a long time sold in every garden center in a powdery dust form, to put on garden plants that had holes in their leaves.

Carbaryl dust is incredibly toxic to bees and can be picked up by them in the same way as pollen, and in that way it can be carried back to the hive and kill the whole hive.

Many of these insecticides are also highly dangerous to humans, and using them in and around your home exposes you to poisonous and/or potentially cancer-causing substances. The residues of these insecticides linger basically forever inside homes. There have been studies done that found insecticides that have been banned for a long time still lingering in people's carpets and floors.

So it's not good that so many people are terrified of insects. And the best antidote is to learn. Learn about bugs and their diversity and unique beauty and intelligence. If videos are no good, look at books with pictures; if you don't want to look at pictures, books without pictures or podcasts might help. Maybe start with bugs that seem less frightening and move on to learning about others from there.

Learn about their ways and behaviors and how they are similar to animals you are more familiar with, such as birds or cats. Learn the ways in which they are similar to you—you will find that you share many important qualities, like "enjoy fruit" and "would defend friends and family." Join bug identification groups online. Learn from people who keep bugs as pets.

It is so, so rewarding and important.

If you can tolerate particular bugs like butterflies or bumblebees, I recommend looking at them close-up in videos and pictures to get more familiar with their shapes and movements and behaviors. Bugs are scary to a lot of people because they seem strange and unfamiliar (thorax??? legs??? many?!!) and their layout is quite different than, for example, a mammal. But once it becomes familiar, the creepiness is reduced.

A side effect of this is that you might become very upset because you want to pet bees and you can't pet the bees because your hands are too large and they are too small. :(

I was never severely scared of insects, but I did have a huge shift occur when I started seeing them as beautiful and cute. The world really opens up. It seems like such a wonderful miracle that I can get so close to these beautiful animals, many of which are fluffy and colorful and gleam like gemstones and have cute antennae and so many colors. They groom themselves like cats! There are tiny bees that make tiny buzzes when they fly. It's really a wonderful thing.

A fear of bugs is understandable. But a lot of people with a fear of bugs aren't just afraid of them, they hate them or don't consider them animals and so don't want to bother getting over their fear because it's more convenient to just kill them. I can sympathize with a phobia but I can't sympathize with actively not wanting to change it.

It is 100% possible to get over a fear of bugs. You have to want it. I used to be absolutely petrified if a bug was in the room, I wouldn't even go through the door. I was so scared of the idea of touching a spider that I shook out my bed sheets every night in case there was one. I didn't want to get over my fear because I didn't know anything about bugs, they weren't animals to me -- they were just meaningless mindless drones.

I started to want to when I started to learn more about them, their roles in the ecosystem, their behavior that actually makes a lot of sense because they're just animals. Step one was acknowledging every bug I saw as a living creature, saying to it "You're a lot like me, we are more alike than different, we want a lot of the same things (food, water, rest, not to get hurt) and we share the same space whether either of us like it or not." Even if I still wouldn't go near them, I stopped feeling the urge to kill them.

Step two was learning about my native bug species. I downloaded the app iNaturalist and started to learn to identify them. I uploaded a lot of pictures of flowers and mushrooms and birds but I felt encouraged to get closer to bugs so I could get pictures of them and identify them. Eventually I was able to get really up close with bugs I found outside, even bees and yes, spiders, to admire them. I really recommend this app if you're trying to get over a fear of something in nature -- be it bugs, or birds, fungus, etc.

Step three is getting comfortable with bugs crawling on, landing on and touching you. It probably sounds impossible if you're anything like I was 5 years ago. If you start with step one now, in 5 years you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's a process but it is absolutely doable. Because guess what, I used to HATE bugs -- I said it literally a lot, that I hated them. Now I LOVE bugs. They're some of my favorite animals and I genuinely feel the same appreciation about a lot of them that I do traditionally cute animals like cats. It's worth it. Please start teaching yourself about bugs, you'll find a whole world of wonder.

Let's go on an epic swag adventure

Day 29 - Psychosomatic Bullshit

Found the post!

(via 3hipa89x9jj91.png (PNG Image, 552 × 543 pixels))

Yup. I’d love to have met any of my aunts or uncles or cousins, the ones who stayed in Poland and Germany. There were so many of them. I’ve seen their names on holocaust memorials. My family became the ones who made it to England before WWI and the three sisters who survived the war in Poland and came to America. If they’d lived, the ones who died in the concentration camps would have had children too, and they would have been my European cousins. It’s the place the Family Tree was hacked and burned, leaving a branch in Britain and a twig in a America. And the emptiness, where the people aren’t.

This is the bit where so many people get caught up: but they’re so NICE! 

I remember this being said about the folks in the circuit camp who hung a giant Trump. They latched themselves on to a hate filled, racist, misogynist and every time I said anything about it to mutual friends, those friends would say: “but they’re so nice and kind.” 

They’re only nice and kind to YOU. And to people like YOU. 

If you align yourself with a party of hate, you get painted with those same hate colored stripes. I don’t care how nice you are to the people you aren’t racist or biased or hateful towards. 

And if you’re the one declaring “they’re so nice:” that’s literally your privilege of being someone they’re not biased against. Like if you’re the person the schoolhouse bully has a crush on. Sure, they beat up other kids at recess every day, but look - they bought me a bag of candy! They’re so nice! 

This is the bit where

so many people get caught

up: but they’re so NICE!

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

People who are only kind to those that fit in boxes of their choice, can never truly love. If you would hate someone you once loved the second you find out they’re gay or Jewish or trans or whatever, you never truly knew what love was.

I want to add something.

They always know.

When it gets to the worst it can get, they say they didn’t know. But they knew.

A friend of mine who was at the liberation of Buchenwald told me that he shoved a man toward a pile of bodies and ordered him to look at it. The man said he didn’t know what was being done. My friend looked the man in the eye, barely able to keep from hurting him and asked “what did you think they were burning? Do you see any missing trees?” The man never answered. My friend said that after that time, it was common to find suicides in houses with notes that said “we knew”.

They knew. As kind as they are, they tied their name to crimes for the sake of privileges and ease, and they must accept the consequences of that.

Make better choices. Not excuses.

Caterpillars do not perish and liquefy as a pupa and then a separate butterfly emerges from the goo. The wormy’s body and organs change and move around a lot (ex: respiratory system gets bigger because flight requires more O2) but it’s still the same individual animal.

With bugs that cover their pupa with silk or something, if you take off the silk and look inside it’s just a not-quite-finished adult bug. a lot of butterflies don’t make a physical cocoon though, the outside is just their actual skin, so if you damage it they bleed. Maybe this is what causes the confusion.

(antlion pupa with cocoon opened just looks like a half-finished antlion)

Also see actually naked butterfly pupa (see the unfinished wings) or “chrysalis” vs moth pupa that covers its nakedness with silk “cocoon”

“Oh that animal doesn’t LIKE you it just TOLERATES you” …..So? If that’s the most a non-social organism can feel towards you isn’t that just as special an honor as whatever it is you think affection means??

“This creature with no natural social instincts outside of mating allows me to freely interact with it, while causing it little stress” is fucking DOPE AS SHIT

also… are you SURE? like, we’re still finding out so much about animals. Wolverines fathers, who we thought were not involved in caring for kits, turn out to travel around and collect all their kits from multiple mothers and take the whole group out on camping trips. Some spiders have tiny frog pets (!) or group up to communally raise their young. Wild sharks, crocodiles, and snakes have formed strong, documented relationships with people. 

this man Gilberto (Chito) Shedden nursed this crocodile back to health after it was shot in the eye, and they were best friends for the rest of the crocodile’s life.

this python came in out of the wild as a baby snake and curled up next to the family’s infant, Oun Sam­bat (or Oeun Sambat?) and they were inseparable for 12 years

Cristina Zenato removes hooks from sharks and they let her stick her hand down their throat to do it and they even bring other sharks who need help to see her.

It’s a relationship that goes beyond a single helpful interaction. For example one of the sharks that would show up when she first started swimming with them was a shark she called Foggy Eye who really didn’t like to be touched. One day, Foggy Eye showed up with a hook in her mouth that Cristina Zenato removed, and ever after, Foggy Eye cuddles when she visits, putting her head in Cristina’s lap and enjoying some petting

 We don’t know SO much. Some wolf spiders will adopt unrelated orphaned spiderlings and raise them. We recently discovered that the ant-mimicking jumping spider (below) produces “milk” and suckles its young until they are nearly fully grown.

SO. Don’t assume we know all about what creatures do or feel or whether or not they form social connections or bond with others.

Stuff like this is why I honestly think… not that really simple, nuance-flattening ideas like “speciesism” are correct, but that… we do need to be humble when tempted to base how we understand our moral duties to other beings on how much their behavior or even their neurology resembles ours.

This is what bothers me about how every time someone says “this animal don’t feel X the way we do” about an animal, they seem to mean “this animal doesn’t feel X at all.”

Usually in some depictions, other planets are only inhabited by a few other creatures. Write about a planet that’s just as biodiverse as Earth.

An Open Letter to Tumblr about the Adult Content Ban and How it is Hurting Your Users:

Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more. 

You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again. 

We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue. 

 Multiple other social networking websites, such as Wordpress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole.  There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough. 

You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:

Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind. 

We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems - particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile - only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography - but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.

 If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to. 

You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.

If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise. 

Sincerely, 

The users of your website. 

@staff @support

They flagged this post immediately and I’ve submitted it for review… this is… quite a week.

If you believe these words, reblog it, please. I want this to be right in their face because I couldn’t email them directly. 

this is the money dog, repost in the next 24 hours and money will come your way!!

ehh what the hell

OH MY GOD SO NO FUCKIN BULLSHIT I SWEAR To GOD. I reblogged this an hour ago and IM NOT Lying My Tax Refund which I did in late march popped into my Bank Account, and it was a Decent sized amount……

WHAT THE FUCK Is THIS MAGIC!??!?!?! Im trying this again IM NOT BSing hahahaha thats actually pretty cool xD

yooooo

yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

FUCKIN YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

no BULLSHIT I KID YOU NOT! Look what I found while walking Home…..

OH MY GOD

OH MY F*CKIN GOD

THIS POST FUCKIN WORKS?!?!?! THIS IS PAST A COINCIDENCE NO WAY!??! NO FRIGGIN WAY!!! 

Im Going to reblog this every day to test this, its MAGIC ITS FRIGGIN MAGIC 

I need to believe in the heart of the post…

Oh? Well… *reblag*

i reblogged this and now my uncle is giving me 250 to dye my hair nani the fucko

I have nothing to lose

my palm was itchin today not riskin it

I always reblog the money posts cause I can’t afford not too lol

It works. I just got $300 for no reason.

Money dog is my friend

Money dog is the shit

I believe in the money dog😀

I believe in the money 🐶

Bless me pls money pup 🙏🐕

Just woke up 🙌🏿

Pplease😭🙏🏽

As an appreciation for all my followers and my love of gifting I will be doing another giveaway!

The prize(s)

You don’t have to be following me, this giveaway is open for everyone. You can even enter it for someone else!

Likes will not be counted, you can like to save this post.

Rules are simple

Winner will be chosen December 27th! If the winner doesn’t respond within 48 hours I will be forced to pick a new winner.

Good luck and Happy Wintersday!

Hey, errbody! My business partner and I decided to host a small giveaway this Holiday season to show our appreciation for all of our fabulous followers, customers, and supporters! This giveaway is also on Instagram (kit_cat_studio) if you’d like to get an extra 2 entries! One lucky winner will be able to pick any item from our shop that is listed for $15 or less (aside from that one green gel necklace)!

Rules: - you don’t have to follow me, don’t worry. Though I’d appreciate it if you did~! - reblog this post ONCE. - this giveaway will end @ 8 p.m. on December 24th, 2017. The winner will be chosen randomly and announced within 24 hours. - if you win, you will have 48 hours to reply (I’ll send a message) or I’ll have to pick another winner!

Good luck, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays! ❄️💕

https://www.etsy.com/shop/KitCatStudio

💎800 Gem Giveaway: Final Countdown!

So, fun things – we have a giveaway sponsored by ArenaNet (@guildwars2​) of 800 gems. To enter:

Mod note: Homestretch everyone! It’s been incredibly exciting to reach out to so many of you over the last few months, and especially these last few weeks with your support in sales. That said, as of this post, there are exactly 6 days left in the preorder period, and 76.2% of our books have found homes. We’ve also broken our minimum charity line, and it’s all thanks to you.

We, of course, hope to get that number in homes to 100%. Please find the store at gw2zine.bigcartel.com!

We are also officially opening up PDF sales of the book, which will be mailed out the week of Jan. 1, 2018. All proceeds from digital sales will go directly to charity. They are $12.50 in the store.

Thank you to @qesque​ for her permission to use her piece for the header. <3