[Image caption for @themythicalcodfish's addition: meme with a row of kiwi fruits with stickers and a single very small orange kitten with a kiwi fruit sticker on its back, with a caption reading "I may be cringe but you're mean and that's worse". End caption.]

"Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they're 15" this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit

"It's okay to have sex and do kinky stuff" and "People can be unhealthy and hurt themselves with sex/kink" are both true and IMPORTANT statements.

Blind positivity is just as bad for people as blind shame and disgust. Being reckless and making unsafe choices is not better than being ashamed and unable to respect yourself as a sexual being.

There is not a "side" to pick here. You should be concerned with being responsible and healthy, and with seeing to your own sexual pleasure. Both are needed for mental and emotional health.

The idea that one of these is correct and the other is wrong, that people are degenerates or enlightened just for wanting to cum, or that they're prudes or are righteous and moral for talking about unhealthy behavior, is what's got people fucked up. Stop trying to win and start trying to grow.

i know it’s been said before, but it bears repeating: a big, big part of maintaining your confidence & self esteem as a creator is fully embracing the concept of “you don’t have to be good like them.  you can be good like you.”

for example, i’m not someone who’s particularly good at coming up with complex, elaborate plots or incredibly unique ideas.  it’s just not how i choose to write.  and it would be easy for me to look at someone with an elaborate, super unique plot & decide that because i don’t write like that, i’m not a good writer.  after all, unique plots are good, and my writing lacks those, so my writing must not be good, right?  well, no, actually.  i just have different strengths, like taking a simple premise & digging super deep into its emotional depths.  that’s what i do well & it isn’t any better or worse than people who do elaborate world building or come up with really creative and unexpected plots.

your writing is never going to be all things to all people.  it just isn’t.  inevitably, you’ll have to make creative choices that favor certain aspects of writing over others.  there is truly no getting around that & it’s honestly a good thing, because it means you’ve developed your own style.  but you’ll always encounter other creators who posses strengths that you don’t.  it doesn’t mean one is better than the other or that your writing isn’t good enough. 

comparing yourself like that would be like taking a piece of pizza & a cupcake & going “oh no, that cupcake is so sweet & my pizza isn’t sweet at all.” or “gosh, the garlic crust on that pizza is delicious and my cupcake doesn’t have ANY garlic.”  obviously your pizza isn’t sweet.  obviously your cupcake doesn’t have garlic.  a food can’t have every single delicious flavor at once.  the cupcake is good like a cupcake.  the pizza is good like a pizza.  so you don’t have to be good like them.  you can be good like you.

For bonus points share one thing you wish would have happened in that extra season

Tech bros who think digital is forever and that uploading your consciousness to a computer is immortality crack me up. Like bro, you'd be "immortal" on the computer for like a year until your own company sends out some software update that makes you incompatible and whoops, there goes TechBro.soul into the great Recycling Bin in the sky

[Image ID: Tweet from Variety on April 18, 2024 reading: "Giancarlo Esposito was so broke before "Breaking Bad" that he considered arranging his own murder.

"If I got somebody to knock me off, death by misadventure, [my kids] would get the insurance. I had four kids. I wanted them to have a life. It was a hard moment in time. I literally thought of self-annihilation so they could survive. That’s how low I was...Then I started to think that’s not viable because the pain I would cause them would be lifelong and there’d be lifelong trauma that would just extend the generational trauma I’m trying to move away from. The light at the end of the tunnel was ‘Breaking Bad.'”

Read more here: (link to article)."

Below is a picture of Giancarlo Esposito on the red carpet. /End ID]

Guattari’s idea is both refreshing and profound. He suggests that when a person experiences psychosis, her psychosis changes according to her surroundings, and, therefore, treating her with fear by locking her up, keeping her in restraints, overmedicating her, and exposing her to other methods of suppression only serves to change her psychosis to a psychosis of fear and paranoia. Who, psychotic or not, in the same situation wouldn’t also feel terror and paranoia? Indeed, there is a legitimate reason to be paranoid and afraid. Further, the shock of being treated inhumanly, the sense of alienation and of betrayal, and, perhaps paramountly, the realization that humans can and do treat other humans in this way, is itself shocking and traumatizing. It is a shock and trauma that alters the psyche, changing the personality of the person who undergoes it.

Cynthia Cruz, Disquieting: Essays on Silence

There's the Medical Model of Disability, and the Social Model of Disability. There's also a third one...

The medical model of disability frames the disability as starting and ending with the individual and their impairment. And dealing with that means fixing (curing) what is broken about them.

The social model of disability frames disability as emerging from the society in which the individual lives -- that an "impairment" becomes a "Disability" when it is not accommodated or accepted.

I was recently reminded that there's also the moral model of disability, that says that disabilities are punishments for sin, or evil in a person.

In today's "Scientific Age," we (in the industrialized West at least), like to think that we've left the moral model of disability in the past -- that the Puritans in the early American colonies might have believed in that stuff. But we don't believe in demons and curses anymore.

But I actually think that the medical model of disability is a direct descendant of the moral model; modern medical schools may not give lectures on demonology. But doctors and other clinicians still treat disability as some sort of "taint," that the person must be purified of before they can rejoin "normal" society. Cure (or as close to it as you can get) is the first, last, and only, acceptable goal.

If that doesn't smack of exorcism, I don't know what does.

please do not go so hard at "Elon is terrible and the Cybertruck is a dumpster fire" (which is true) that you somehow make your way to "electric cars are all ticking time bombs" (which is false, and mostly said by people who want to keep driving combustion engine cars perpetually because they think the climate crisis is made up)

good sensations can sometimes be extreme, and i know i personally enjoy a good few of those, so i wanted to know which of these types of pain are the most commonly enjoyed :)

basically my question is. am i such a touch deprived weirdo that i'll enjoy fucked up sensations no one else likes or am i normal

saying 'usamericans' is like referring to congolese ppl as 'democongolese'. we know what u mean when u say american its okay

last i checked there was a pair of continents called the americas and not even one called congo. what do you think should be the name of the people living in them? should that demonym get to belong to the worlds most annoying and self involved local hegemon? latinoamericans speak and write about why they do this, which also functions as a response to us hegemony in the region. i do it to annoy tedious people and you have made my day by telling me you exist.

if I forgot your favorite subgenre or misclassified a band feel free to argue in the replies 👍

while i was out running errands just now, i overheard two adults having a conversation about selling kids' toys for money when they become desired by collectors. one of the people said verbatim, "I didn't know you're not supposed to open your toys! Nobody told me, I was a dumb kid!"

welcome to capitalist america, where children aren't allowed to play with their own fucking toys. actual children are being pressured to forego playing with their own toys because they might be worth more down the road (and more than likely, for the parent's profit, not the child's.) children. can't play with their toys. those things that are made for children. to be played with. kids can't even LOOK at them because they're being locked away in closets and safes to be in "mint condition" for collectors down the line.

toys aren't made for profit, they're made to be FUCKING PLAYED WITH. children's toys are not "baby's first investment." they're CHILDREN they don't need to worry about how much their TOY will be worth down the road. fuck this system. not even kids are safe. i want this shit to burn to the ground. i want kids to be able to fucking PLAY and be happy. please for the love of god just let kids be kids. let this shit be over with once and for all, our CHILDREN are suffering.

Working at the sex shop really did rewire my brain. There was basically no topic that was too taboo to talk about, and what little propriety I’d had evaporated. I’d be out walking and chatting with friends about erotica I’d had to read that day only to be shushed and realize people were staring at me.

It always struck me as a little bit silly but I learned to curb myself for others comfort levels. Mostly.

But I have one distinct memory of decorating holiday cookies with my parents and my grandmother. My mom had worked in a sex shop back in her day, and I never hid my line of work from my family, so I was telling a work story.

I was conscious that my dad was slightly more sensitive, so I was using pretty broad descriptions, but I happened to mention silicone lube and my nana asked, “What’s that?”

I went into full sales mode. Focused on the little reindeer cookie I was decorating I started info dumping, “Oh, it’s pretty great. Water based lubricants get absorbed through vaginal mucous membranes, but silicone is too dense and our body can’t absorb it the same way. So once you apply some silicone you never have to worry about chafing, and a little goes a long way. It’s especially popular with older women, because they start producing less natural lubricant and absorb water based lubes so quickly.”

There was a silent beat after this statement.

I looked up.

My mom and grandmother were looking at me with rapt attention, and I belatedly realized I was addressing two older women who probably would welcome extra lubrication.

And then there was my dad, blushing so pink with embarrassment that I thought he was about to faint.

“I can talk about something else,” I offered in apology to my dad.

“Like hell! He can go in the other room, tell me more!” My nana declared. My dad scampered off to busy himself in another room while I answered their questions and talked about brands and pricing.

I slipped them each a small bottle of silicone lube for the holidays.

“Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. When you look up the stage directions, it says, ‘Exit Ariel.’”

— Tom Stoppard, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 (via flameintobeing)

all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.