hitomi nakamura photographed by julian serna
I think my favorite thing in Marie Kondo's work is the section in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up where she talks about branding and labels contributing to visual clutter.
She explains that if you go through the whole tidying process and still feel cluttered and anxious in your own home, one thing that might help is looking around to see how much visible text and logos there are in your home. It can make you feel like you're constantly being advertised to, which makes you less comfortable in your living space, because you're basically in a showroom.
She suggests taking labels off of packages, storing items in different containers if you can, and making sure you take every purchase out of its packaging when you bring it home.
I think about that advice a lot when capitalism starts to get to me and I feel like I'm never gonna escape. Taking all the branding and advertising off of things has genuinely helped make my home feel more like my home. Peeling labels off candles, storing envelopes neatly on a shelf in a plain box, putting flour and sugar in canisters instead of leaving them in the bags, creatively covering logos on my tech...it all helps so much. Like, goddamn, it really made me realize just how much we are constantly being advertised to even when we think we're not.
YES but with one caveat:
You need to be careful with foods when you do this. Part of food science is engineering packaging that keeps the product safe and untainted. If you start moving to different containers -- glass, plastic, airtight vs porous-- be aware that the freshness and spoil time can and will change.
Remembering the time my old nb roommate who went to an LGBT law conference and was heaping the absolute biggest bitchfit texting me cause “some cis guy” was talking about trans people and trans men in particular and my roommate refused to listen to what this guy said cause “why should I listen to him” and I said “are you sure he’s cis?” And then towards the end of the presentation he said something that indicated to the crowd he was a trans man and then suddenly my roommate started to consider what had been shared.
Absolute loser behavior, but not completely unique. We’ve all gotta stop saying only x people can talk about x issues for us to listen. Too many people in the in group will have dogshit takes no one wants to challenge because “well, they are x identity.” Likewise, plenty of people on the out group actually know what they’re talking about and have something to contribute to the conversation.
Especially when it comes to sexuality and gender, you relying on someone outing themselves or you clocking them to decide whether their words have merit is shitty, because you won’t always know if they ARE the group “allowed” to talk about it. And even beyond that, I knew a fuckload about transness before I realized I was trans, it helped me REALIZE I was trans. “Listen to x voices” got sooooo warped in the discourse.
#This perspective of X only talks about X is a biiiiiig reason I stay out of SJ spaces#If you set up a space where certain ppl only get to have opinions you get a lot of gatekeeping dogshit#Same with the extremely Idpol focus on race & sexual identities in HWood which essentially forces actors to out themselves#if they wanna take certain roles w/o being villified#idpol truly rots brains
A seahorse checks out its own reflection in a diver's watch. Don McLeish.
The New England Aquarium education staff frequently talks about how intelligent and trainable lumpfish are, but man, this video really brings it home. I’ve seen fish trained to swim through hoops before, but the spin behavior is really cool (and the super retro music definitely set the tone of the entire video).
Very beautiful. Very powerful.
Colombian Emerald, Diamond and Tanzanite Earrings by Farah Khan Fine Jewelry
here is solomon
this post permanently became a fixture in my brain and i cannot get it out. the other day i was looking out the window to see the streets were damp from rain and thought "god has pet them wethands style"
This thing looks like it belongs in an early gamecube game. Maybe N64.
sometimes I randomly think about the time a girl posted in this girls only Facebook group I’m in telling everyone how she broke up with her boyfriend and he lied saying that he lost the spare key she gave him, only to then break into her apartment when she wasn’t home and steal the cat they’d adopted while they were together, but then he denied having done this and she didn’t really have proof that he took the cat since he wouldn’t let her come into his place and look for it. And then another girl saw this post and knew her ex-boyfriend, and she was like “girl. I used to hook up with your mans back in xxxx and I still have his number. If you want, I’ll hit him up and get him to invite me back to his place and see if your cat’s there.” And the OP was like “bet.”
So this woman hit up homie dog, asked him out for drinks, went home with him, slept with him, and then woke up in the middle of the night and TOOK THE CAT. Like she had only said that she would confirm if the cat was there but then she took it upon herself to steal this woman’s cat back. Like she full on Trojan horsed this man and then hit up homegirl like “I got the goods. Where you wanna meet.” And then the two of them posted a photo of them together with the cat to the group.
And I just think women supporting women is so beautiful.
Google Charleston East Campus Sculpture
