OP made the post unrebloggable but said it's fine to screenshot and I'm in love with this

Hey Tumblr look at this newborn sheep.

Some more auction horses with, uh, names. 

So hey, remember how the current fascist govt in Afghanistan is making it harder and harder for women to participate in public life at all? My friends at Aseel, in partnership with several other orgs, are answering back with the 50 Women In Tech initiative.

This initiative aims to provide 50 Afghan women with a monthly stipend, a workstation, and payment for their internet service for one year so they can do a fellowship with receiving orgs and get into the tech workforce: aseelapp.com/50womenintech

Obviously this isn't something Aseel can do alone. It's a matter of people and organizations around the world pitching in for Afghan women. Aseel's advantage is that they're an Afghan-run tech company trying to help their own community.

You can help by donating, sharing the campaign, or if you're a member of or work for an org that would like to partner with Aseel, reaching out to them to get that partnership moving.

Help! My Girlfriend Didn't Appreciate The Awesome Present I Gave her

Dear Prudence, Slate, 9 January 2023:

Dear Prudence, 

My girlfriend thinks I’m trying to undermine her. How do I prove to her I’m not? My girlfriend “Katie” (33F) and I (30M) have been dating for three months, and so far it had been going very well. I even thought we could become very serious. However, something has changed, and I’m worried that she’s getting cold feet.

This all started a few days ago, when my parents dropped by my place to chat. Katie was in the kitchen, making the two of us dinner. My parents and Katie have met a couple of times before, and they seem to get along. Additionally, Katie’s normally very calm and easygoing. However, when my mom walked into the kitchen to help out, Katie seemed to become irritated. She said that she “prefers to cook alone,” and when my mom grabbed a knife and some carrots and started to chop them up for her, Katie asked her not to cut them because they have to be cut “a certain way.” Katie told my mom that she didn’t want help and demanded that she go back into the living room area.

I’d never seen Katie this upset, and I wasn’t happy with how she treated my mom. When my mom left the kitchen, I hugged her and said, “Sorry about that.” I asked Katie what was going on and she said nothing, but at the time, I was alarmed and suspicious. Later that evening, I had to get some groceries, and while I was at the supermarket, I decided to pick up some Midol as a nice gesture. I didn’t know if Katie was on her period, but knowing that she isn’t normally this irritable, it seemed possible to me and if she was, she might appreciate the gift. When I got back, Katie was watching the World Cup, and I silently placed the Midol on top of her bag. Katie gave me a weird look and asked why I had bought her Midol, and I said it was because of how she had acted with my mother earlier.

Katie did not like this explanation. She said she was annoyed because she didn’t want someone interfering with her cooking, not because she was on her period. She said it made her think that I don’t take her feelings seriously and am trying to “undermine the legitimacy of her emotions.” I explained that this wasn’t true, but I don’t know if she believed me. I think the damage might have been done. How can I salvage the relationship and win back Katie’s trust? — Midol Mishap

Dear Midol Mishap,

Does Katie usually have a problem with self-soothing, or does it mostly happen during meals where people enter her space uninvited and intentionally disregard her stated preferences when she tends to act out like this? Does bedtime/bathtime usually go okay? Can you drop her off at the office without tears and a tantrum? Figuring out the answer to this question will reveal the extent to which this relationship can be salvaged, but I think you're in for an uphill battle if silently leaving a box of bitch pills on a woman's purse doesn't have her running back into your arms with relief and appreciation for the thoughtful care you showed her while she was being a real cunt.

Usually women appreciate being told that their emotions are wrong, and welcome thoughtful explanations from men about how the things they have felt and experienced are incorrect due to being incongruent with a man's feelings and experiences. But some women, and it sounds like Katie might be one of them, lack the self-awareness necessary to recognize that the things they believe they think they interpret as being insulting, disrespectful, and patronizing are not that way because some dude somewhere said so.

It might be worth opening up a dialogue with your mother about how to handle Katie; I don't mean to suggest that all women are the same (that would be sexist, yikes!) but you have both experienced what it is like to be under the thumb of someone as cruel and controlling as Katie, and you may be able to offer each other some comfort while you figure out how to get the woman you've been fucking for three months back on the right path, in terms of her behavior and emotional regulation. Meds are a great start — Midol is an absolute miracle drug for shutting down an ungrateful cow — but you can't just crush it up over Katie's ice cream every night.

The right solution is going to necessarily involve some effort on Katie's part to tell you only what you want to hear and agree with everything you say, and she might just not be mature enough to do that kind of hard internal work right now. A lot of people wouldn't — they'd say they have a right to assert boundaries, be taken seriously as full human beings, and not have their legitimate concerns belittled as mere hormonal hysterics of an unstable female — but it's possible Katie is capable of real change. The next time she has one of her little episodes, try using a little babydoll to coax Katie into seeing what a silly little monkey she's being when she rejects the precious opportunity to bond with your sweet mama by letting her do whatever she wants no matter what. Katie could speak directly to the doll about how she believes she thinks feels until she's ready to express the emotions you want her to have.

If you try this, you might want to wait until after dinner, when the knives are put away, just in case. Best of luck, dear boy!

Hey.

I'm serious when I say I think the sentiment that kindness requires "zero effort" is harmful.

The idea that kind is a thing you can be innately, without having to think or feel anything about it, leaves a gap in the fence where the other idea "if I have unkind thoughts or feelings, I am by nature a bad, unkind person" can slip through.

Listen. That's bullshit.

Being kind to other people means paying attention to the effect your words and actions have on others, caring about it, and trying to make those effects better. That's work.

If you have a nasty thought about another person that annoys you and you contain the impulse, hold your tongue, and let it go? That was effort.

If you took time out to really think about something you wanted to say and make sure it would have its intended result without causing accidental harm that you wouldn't have noticed if you went totally off the cuff? Wow, that took some work!

If you were tired and angry and full of hatred but you still did the dishes so your housemate has something to eat their breakfast off of in the morning, that wasn't easy.

I don't think there are magical "kind" people who never have a mean thought and are always selfless and pure. That would be exhausting and impossible.

I'm not a "nice person," I'm a nasty, bitter, angry, sad person who tries to have good leash manners, control my worst impulses, and not jump on strangers because they don't deserve that shit from me.

I don't always succeed, but I'm trying. I'm trying and it's worth it.

my mouse is. dying

@sarahwithtea HELP HELP POTTERY EMERGENCY

Forgery of stag-shaped vessel / Place of Origin: Iran / Date: approx. 1900-1965 /  Materials: Burnished earthenware / Style or Ware: Marlik style

Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.

Is knowledge of "The Fall of the House of Usher" required to understand "What Moves the Dead"?

Nope! I mean, it’s probably a little more fun because then you can get a couple…I dunno, Easter eggs? References? but it’s totally self-contained.

Although Usher is actually really short, so you too can skim it in ten minutes and go “Wow, that narrator is USELESS.”

Hey Tumblr look at this vulture.

Forced discharge of thunderclouds (a projectile with a metal cable is fired, along which a thunderstorm discharge descends)

I cannot overstate the content warnings for starvation, desperation, and harm to children for this BBC article about conditions in Afghanistan:

International sanctions aren't hurting "the Taliban", they are murdering the children of Afghanistan. They are murdering the elderly of Afghanistan. Sanctions never hurt the people in power, who will always find a way to get the things they need, but instead hurt the most vulnerable people in a nation: babies and children, disabled people, elderly people, racial and ethnic minorities.

It's Black Friday as I'm writing this and if you have enough Stuff in your life and a little extra cash, please consider putting it here:

Just under US$2.50 lets Aseel buy enough food to feed one person for a week. You can't even get a Happy Meal for that anymore! But you can literally save a life.

Aseel is legit and one of the most reliable ways to get help into Afghanistan. You can read about them here:

Bless you if you can help with a couple bucks and/or a reblog.

Happy Falling Iguanas Season to those who celebrate :)

Fuck. Those fuckers at the store sold me No Purpose Flour again. What the fuck do I do with this

Even aside from all of this, the most endangered biome in North America is not in fact forests but grasslands. Because we're constantly plowing it under for monoculture high input industrial ag. This is a significant problem since these grasslands actually sequester as much or more carbon than forests because of the massive root systems on the grasses. The prairies of North America were once a carbon sequestration machine on the order of the Amazon rainforest and we've destroyed them. And yet we constantly blame countries in the global south for destroying wild lands that sequester carbon when we need to be looking A LOT closer to home.

People see that agricultural technology in the 20th century basically eliminated non-human-caused famines (correct) and conclude that current agricultural practices are ideal and that improving them is impossible (devastatingly stupid)