when doctors ask if i have any history of cancer in my family and i have to say that yes my grandmother had 2 types of gastrointestinal cancer and they're like oh wow okay so we'll keep an eye out for that but i'm like no it was probably just all the nuclear radiation and they're like ok hm ok what the fuck do you mean and it's very weird seeing the look on american doctors' faces when you have to explain to them that believe it or not atomic bombs were dropped on this earth 2 generations ago and it did have consequences

Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

sometimes i feel like people forget autism is a disability. and that’s not a bad thing! i’m all for disability acceptance, im proud of my disabilities. but i feel like we forget autism can hurt.

it hurts that i have to put more time and energy into socializing than others.

it hurts when i need to move so bad, usually cause im overwhelmed by either my surroundings or emotions, that i thrash and hurt myself.

it hurts that i cant be in places that are too loud or too bright, which on bad days can be as simple as a small, quiet noise or dim lights.

it hurts that i struggle to tell when im hungry, thirsty, tired, etc. so i can’t properly take care of myself. it doesn’t help my insomnia and i get very nauseas and get UTIs.

i 100% believe in autism acceptance. i don’t want a cure. but i also want us the acknowledge that it can hurt. it doesn’t mean my entire life will hurt, but some parts will. and i want a community where we can see both sides, see the hurt, and celebrate it anyway.

I think I’m going to think about this youtube comment forever

“Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction. Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment. […] We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.”

—

Johann Hari,

Does Capitalism Drive Drug Addiction?

(via bigfatsun)

“Right inuff ma language is disgraceful * Ma maw tellt mi ma teacher tellt mi thi doactir tellt mi thi priest tellt mi * ma boss tellt mi ma landlady in carrington street tellt mi thi lassie ah tried tay get aff way in 1969 tellt mi sum wee smout thit thoat ah hudny read Chomsky tellt mi a calvanistic communist thit thoat ah wuz revisionist tellt mi * po-faced literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi past tellt mi po-faced literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi future tellt mi ma wife telt me jisy-tae-get-inty-this-poem tellt mi a wainz came hame fray school an tellt mi jist aboot ivry book ah oapned tellt mi even thi introduction tay thi Scottish National Dictionary tellt mi * ach well all livin language is sacred fuck thi lohta thim”

— ‘right inuff’ by Tom Leonard, written in Glaswegian Scots/Scottish English (hard distinction to make sometimes, but going with the latter, because all the words are English in origin, if not in original spelling)

saw an article about how the water crisis in catalonia is causing problems for british travelers' annual spain holidays by 'forcing pool closures' and just the fact that water crises are positioned as annoying inconveniences for wealthy people on vacation rather than a very real problem for The People Who Live There Always is such a perfect example of how classism is applied on a global/international scale. i couldn't give less of a fuck about a brit's spain holiday being ruined, tell me how the water crisis is causing problems for locals and how tourism is exacerbating the issue.

Epistemicide can be broadly defined as the destruction of knowledge systems and the knowledge that they generate. The Latin American sociologist Ramón Grosfoguel explains how epistemicide played a crucial role in Europe's colonization of the rest of the world, including the settler colonization of the Americas. It granted European philosophy an “epistemic privilege,” allowing it to become the “new foundation of knowledge in the modern/colonial world.”

In other words, it created a world in which only knowledge produced by European colonists and settlers was deemed legitimate, while colonized societies were compelled to construct new systems from scratch — often mirroring those of their colonizers — because their own systems had been destroyed. As a result, the structural conditions of knowledge production that facilitated the mechanisms of their colonialization also imposed constraints on their liberation.

Everything movies taught me about archery is wrong. This is a complete mind-blower. 8D

If you are even remotely interested in archery or medieval combat, check this out, it’s just great!

Halsey - BADLANDS [2/2]

“Black is the colour of womb and tomb; we meet at night on the dark of the moon. White is the colour of bone and ash; to speak to the dead we bathe and fast. Red is the colour of blood and death; we rub the bones and give them breath.”

— The Necromancer’s Chant, Sarah Anne Lawless (via thecadaverousportrait)

“I think [fanfiction] it’s a great creative outlet and a beneficial way of watching TV and using your talents at the same time.”

probably my favorite thing ever; the 4 stages of a woman’s life. from The Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky)

here are all the playlists that were requested:

smoking weed with fairy royalty

you’re sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool lit by neon lights, but instead of water the pool is filled with peach soda

you’re an alien visiting your human boyfriend on earth and you’re entering the earth’s atmosphere but you’ve done it like thirty times so you’re just chilling

everything is endless cornfields and stormy skies and the end of the world is coming so the radio’s playing apocalyptic tunes

you’re sitting outside dairy queen at 2am w cherry topped sundaes and you’re wearing your best friend’s faux fur jacket

you’re at 7/11 at night minding your own business but when you go to leave you realize the door won’t open and all the power goes out except for the slushie machine so now you’re just chilling on the floor in a 7/11 in the blue light & hum of a slushie machine

a tiny dancer living in a dusty music box

you’re really tired and it’s late and you feel numb but you’re laughing at memes and feeling intense love for your friends

when you’re in the woods alone and you’re following a tunnel to a house, you hear a sound behind you and when you look around you realize this tunnel doesn’t have a start or an end, and it never did

Chinese Model Hao Yun Xiang by Anders Overgaard for the Harrods Magazine‘s Winter 2016 Edition