I see you...

If you are someone with trauma-- maybe someone with C-PTSD, or a dissociative disorder, or a cluster A or C personality disorder-- who feels comfort in scapegoating your trauma to "borderlines" or "narcissists" or "sociopaths"... I just want you to process and understand that you are capable of harm.

Cluster B personality disorders are demonized heavily because their symptoms are often outward, loud. They are noticeable, they stand out. That is what separates you from them more than anything. Not that you are a victim and they are a perpetrator.

Passivity can hurt people. Dependency, avoidance, paranoia, self-hatred. These can all take a toll on people around you. You can eat someone from the inside out without ever being loud or angry. You can manipulate, you can be self absorbed, you can cause trauma. You are the same as those other mentally ill people. You have the exact same capacity to heal and harm others.

Abuse is a cycle, not group of people you can isolate and avoid. Even the most neurotypical human being on earth is capable of hurting others.

LMAO the last one! The strongman’s immediately like “No. No, absolutely not. Nope.” and the bodybuilder looks around like “Are you kidding me? I’ll die. You know that, right? I’ll die?”

The Rogue, the Paladin, the Barbarian have a day to themselves and enjoy some friendly competition.

This is such a fun video to watch. Not only do you see 3 versions of masculine fitness and strength but with each movement you can almost see where their weight is distributed and where they place their control. Which makes it fun to think about body builds and fantasy characters.

On Saturday I hung out with my 84-year-old ecologist great uncle and he stopped in mid-conversation (abt the return of the whooping crane) and very seriously told me that "you can go one of two ways, as a naturalist"; either you keep sight of the hopeful possibilities, or you don't. I'm one of nature's wretched little pessimists but when an old ecologist literally holds your hands in his and tells you, "don't despair," you have to try, I feel.

I'm immune to a lot of the "hopepunk" narratives about ecology but...

The Karner Blue butterfly was extirpated from Canada the year before I was born. He donated to one of the projects to bring it back for years, and even though the project he was working on fizzled out, I told him about the branch in Toronto, still going strong. They save every lupine seed they can harvest and germinate them carefully so that in 20, 30, 40 years we might have enough habitat to bring the Blues back. He was part of the first wave of that effort.

Fuck!!!! What do you do with that kind of care? You have to at least try to believe that better things are possible!

is this both a pun and also fucking loss

an Iraqi gamer's beautiful review of Disco Elysium

[Image ID: Screenshot of a post from r/DiscoElysium by u/beamoon2016.

Text reads:

"Never thought I'd read a story that so effectively captures why life in a broken system is worth living"

"I grew up in Iraq. When people hear this in the US, where I now live, they usually say: "Wow…that must have been hard."

I mean? I guess? I've been a couple hundred meters from ISIS bombings. The government is spectacularly dysfunctional. You never know when the electricity might be on. Most summer days are 50 C. The tap water is salty.

And I also love the wonky little generators people wire everywhere. I love the weird shark statue with Saddam torn off the top. I love the guys fishing in the river despite the fact that it's greenish black. I love how excited everyone gets about the government building one tiny new overpass. I also love the random overpass sitting in the desert connected to zero roads. I love hearing our friend giggle as my dad ribs him for driving a Toyota Hilux, a favorite of terrorists transporting weapons. I love the stray cats that carefully pick their way over the barbed wire on our walls. I love the people that run towards a bombing instead of away because they want to help the survivors. I love the guy who fixed my glasses with a wrong-sized screw because he lived through sanctions and doesn't need dumb things like correctly-sized screws.

But it's almost impossible to explain this to most Americans. They picture a normal Iraqi life and think it would be their worst nightmare. So I'm used to just not sharing that part of my life, or ever seeing it in media.

So this game totally caught me off guard. We're in a setting in between apocalypses, starring an alcoholic fuckup from a corrupt occupier-aligned police force, who at best might keep a couple people from dying in a gang war. It's pretty bleak. It's also incredibly fucking joyful.

Just the prose alone is so sincere. You can't write stuff this goofy, flowery, beautiful, dumb, and moving ironically. The writers clearly love words far out of proportion to how much they might be able to actually change fundamentally broken systems.

And all the characters, the worldbuilding details, the interruptions from Shivers and Esprit de Corps, hell, all the bits and pieces of your brain. There's so much attention and thus so much love everywhere in this game for humans and what humans do. Doesn't matter if they might all get shot, blown up, or wiped clean by pale in a couple years. Doesn't matter if they brought it all on themselves. Right here, in this moment, they are human, and so they matter.

I feel like this game gets why my life in Iraq was worth living. Even if a lot of my fellow Americans think the world sure would be nicer and simpler if Iraqis just didn't exist.

I thought I had signed up for a fun 20-30 hour diversion, not the feeling of being loved?!" /End ID]

Chinese sellers on Aliexpress are trying to sell giant land snail eggs as "Little Hatch Toys" which is adorable and hilarious except of course that this is the most illegal animal in the United States and even a zoo or scientific institution would get in trouble for having any

The fact that snails are top tier invasive species threats is such common knowledge in all the nature hobbies and sciences I constantly forget that I need to explain it. Why wouldn’t they be? They’re just non-stop eating machines that breed exponentially and the bigger they are the fewer predators they have. In Hawaii these have driven at least dozens, possibly hundreds of plants and animals extinct over the past few decades.

This is fascinating and I love the part with the mushrooms and the worms if this really works but my favorite part is that we spent decades like “oh no....oil is soaking into fur and feathers....if only we had something that could soak up all this oil”

“In one of the most notable moments in sports history, Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was just a few feet from the finish line, but became confused with the signage and stopped thinking he had completed the race.

 A Spanish athlete, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him, and after realizing what was happening, he started shouting at the Kenyan for him to continue running; but Mutai didn't understand his Spanish. Fernandez eventually caught up to him and instead of passing him, he pushed him to victory.

A journalist asked Ivan, "Why did you do that?"

Ivan replied, “My dream is that someday we can have a kind of community life where we push and help each other to win.”

The journalist insisted “But why did you let the Kenyan win?" Ivan replied, "I didn't let him win, he was going to win.” The journalist insisted again, “But you could have won!”

Ivan looked at him & replied, “But what would be the merit of my victory? What would be the honor of that medal? What would my Mom think of that?” Values are transmitted from generation to generation. What values are we teaching our children? Let us not teach our kids the wrong ways to WIN.”

Remember The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock? The movie showed how a kid who had an extremely rough upbringing got help from the family of a school friend, found success in football and ultimately ended up being adopted by the family. Turns out he was never adopted.

Michael Oher says that he was tricked by the Tuohy family into signing documents that made them his conservators. Since he was already 18 at the time the family told him, “that it means pretty much the exact same thing as 'adoptive parents,' but that the laws were just written in a way that took [his] age into account.”

Oher also says that papers were signed so that his story and likeness were given away for free to use in The Blind Side. He also never got a single royalty check for the hugely successful, Oscar nominated film in the 14 years since its release.

It just continues to baffle me that they essentially purchased a young Black man's life to make football money off of, like buying a racing horse, except a person. Like, I don't know how else to say it. And then made everyone think it was something wonderful they did to "save" an "impoverished, Black boy", and he's been saying it for years to no avail that they took advantage of him!

The original tweet is the corniest thing I’ve ever fucking seen

A. They're not gonna tip you, periodt. So already the $10mil is looking better.

B. They're not gonna talk to you, so any "business advice" you thought was gonna be worth more than $10mil, that's null and void, aint happening.

C. Here's the real secret of their "success"; they're all bad people. That's literally it. They're willing to lie, steal, cheat, bully, oppress, rape, etc to get what they want, and their appetites are never sated, so they never stop lying, cheating, etc. You don't get that kind of money through hard honest work. If you're willing to be a big enough piece of shit, you could easily be one of these guys.

So yeah, if someone's offering that choice, get it in writing and stay the hell away from these creeps.

But if you're serving them you can poison the food

“if no art makes you feel anything, make your own art and feel something” is too raw of a line to have come from a jenna marbles video of her painting a rainbow/polka dot seahorse saying “it’s seahorse time” on a denim jacket

Why do you people feel profound thought has to come from high places? The gutter looks at the stars too

not only did you prove your point, but you showed an example of it in the same sentence

Unbelievable. Link to article.

The first ever suicide prevention hotline was created in 1935 bevause a man conducted a funeral for a 14 year old girl who ended her life because she got her period. She didn't know what it was and assumed it was a STD. Learning about periods and sexual health is life saving. Republicans are unapologetically just evil.

You know, here's a thing: I went to Catholic school from age 5 to age 16. (My family's not Christian, but the local public schools weren't great, so -- )

In 4th grade, girls were given a clear, scientific, extremely bland pamphlet about menstruation. It was Boring and Educational. There wasn't any class about it or anything -- just the pamphlet, provided in a plain manila envelope for you to take home.

Starting in 5th grade, the school provided a small pack of pads to girls. This was probably so that anyone who unexpectedly started her period at school would have an emergency supply, but the thing was: this boring pamphlet, this pack of pads handed to you by a nun, made menstruation...so normal. It's so normal that a nun hands you a pack of pads. It's so normal that there's a boring pamphlet. It's just a thing your body does. (It's so normal that you realize, oh, nuns have periods, huh.)

It kills me, KILLS ME, that this totally boring and bland form of education about human bodies is somehow Too Much, Too Scary, Too Sexy, for some people.

“Omg I made this prom dress for only $10!”

- already owns $200 sewing machine, $100 dress form, full supply of thread/haberdashery

“You can recreate your favorite fast food menu items at home for less money and more flavor,” says the person with $3k in Le Creuset cookware, six professional kitchen appliances, living in the heart of a large city with ample grocery selection, sponsored by Hello Fresh and Skillshare.

"You can cook this full course meal for less than five dollars!" says the person who acts like you can buy $0.001 worth of salt, $0.05 worth of flour, and $1.27 worth of pork.

I'm sorry @chigrima but this just passed peer review:

I think one of the worst things a story can be is unproblematic.

Nothing makes a story more unreadable than being able to see the author squirm apologetically for the story they actually want to write—wringing their hands and imploring the reader please, please don’t be mad, I know it’s ideologically questionable but I need you to not be mad at me!

For example: a Good King™️. It’s one thing for a story to present a fictional monarchy and ask me to root for it. It’s another thing for a story to say, hey, I know what you’re thinking—but don’t worry! I can justify this premise! I have introduced a lot of convoluted self-aware political justifications for why my king is good and likable without actually asking any risky ideological questions! These characters aren’t actually problematic! Don’t be mad at me!

Commit to the bit. Apologetic, defensive writing designed to bypass obvious criticisms often winds up offending me far more than stories that are just kind of surface-level problematic. If I’m gonna be a hater you cannot stop me; the more you insist that a character is actually a good oil tycoon because of all these exceptional situations and beyond my reproach, the more I resent you and hate your stupid book.

Consider, from the perspective of ten years ago, an ex-president saying he used to constantly fantasize about fucking men, and the reaction being "yeah, whatever, poser."

People aren't talking about it because it's completely unvalidated. Here's the original source for this, the right-wing rag that is the New York Post. Obama didn't say it, it's a letter from Obama's ex-college girlfriend, that was redacted, then copied over by hand by another third party. So, someone says that someone says that someone says that Obama said that. Not exactly reliable info.

Even in this clearly biased article about the book it comes from, it’s clear the author also has very specific biases and has likely misquoted, misunderstood, or made bad faith interpretations of things Obama said. So ya know, grain of salt and all that

if you are in your late 20's or early 30's you are finally beginning to experience a true sense of separation and alienation from youth culture and to natural identify more with other adults as your peers, and that's a normal part of being an adult and moving into that stage of your life, and you MUST recognize it as such and resist the ancient Joker's Trick that is the urge to jump to the conclusion that nothing has changed about you and it is instead the children that have gotten weirder.

this is incredible

goodnight, sweet prince

If you've ever wondered why people in Hawai'i hate tourists, try to wrap your mind around the fact that there are CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW, tourists sipping martinis and looking at fish within swimming range of the fresh corpses of local people who couldn't escape the overnight destruction of their entire town.

Try to comprehend that there are fully functional, high capacity boats passing through the waters in front of an area full of survivors who are stranded and in need of supplies, refusing to help. They are hosting snorkeling tours.

Really think about, try your best to actually picture over two thousand people unhoused and in need of shelter, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nothing to return to. Understand that the island, stolen land, is littered with hotels full of air conditioned of rooms with beds and showers and toilets, each fully equipped to host hundreds of families for weeks, turning these people away because they're booked up with tourists who refuse to leave.

And understand that these tourists were offered free transport to return home or be hosted on other islands. Free. Courtesy of local tax dollars. 4,000 wealthy tourists were offered free flights shelter on Oahu and begged to leave the island, BEFORE the survivors were given shelter.

And enough still insisted on remaining and carrying out their vacations that people are left without shelter and resources while they enjoy "their stay in paradise".

In case this gains any traction, I NEED people to understand that this is not an invitation for mainlanders to get on a soapbox and start telling each other whether or not or how to visit Hawai'i. The tourism situation is complex and difficult and you don't get it if you haven't lived through it at minimum wage. You don't fully understand the complexities and you will not. And you are liable to do more harm by trying to dictate rules and ethics of visiting the islands to each other.

If you want to help, listen to local people. Seek out and boost what they're saying. Send each other local sources of information. Research from local sources. DO NOT take this crisis as an opportunity to insert your views and speak for us.

Here's to the people who weren't abused by their parents, but whose parents sucked anyways. Here's to people whose parents fucked up raising you out of ignorance and not malice. Here's to the kids whose parents didn't know what to do with you so they did nothing at all. Here's to people whose parents are getting better and growing as people but still hurt you. Here's to every mean comment that wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't come from your mom; here's to awkward family dinners because you're all trying to forget;

here's to you, survivor of a thousand 'not as bad as it could have been' hurts. I see you. You aren't alone.