Fuck Texas's A-G right now. No respect for women, Texas Republicans? No peace! (sorry for misquoting from "The Simpsons" episode Homer Badman there!)

There is no better illustration of why I shout that ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES than the the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned. It's absolutely frightening -- especially when you see the threats made by the Texas Attorney General in the case of the woman who won court approval to terminate a non-viable pregnancy that could cause her significant future fertility issues and life-threatening complications otherwise:

It's disgusting and heartless, and just another indication of how drastically life has changed for people in the United States since 2016. Even if a court-approved procedure that could save a woman's life (and potentially preserve the lives of future children that she may have) were to take place, the top law enforcement official in the State of Texas is threatening the doctors, nurses, hospitals, and any other care-givers with criminal prosecution and the possibility of civil lawsuits that could be brought against any of them by any random citizen of the state. This is our country now.

what I was talking abt earlier. we have fully looped back around and away from feminism, societally, whereas before it was very Feminism 101 to acknowledge that many parts of existing as a woman in a misogynistic society are painful and upsetting. not that being a woman is Inherently Negative in a bubble. but that living on this earth, in the conditions we're living in, is hostile to women. and that gender is a performance. that many of the Staples Of Femininity as accepted by society are things that you have to create and perform and mold artificially and aren't inherent, that COMPLAINING about day to day difficulties of existing as a woman is something that you're allowed to do. acknowledging these basic, again, feminism 101 things, that something tied to womanhood is more time consuming or more expensive or more dangerous Because Of The Problems. does not CREATE the problems. that when women complain about having to perform femininity, they are not, in fact, oppressing themselves. the call does not come from inside the fucking house. saying that you HAVE suffered does not fucking equate that you believe you SHOULD have suffered.

like I could talk about this for hours. how braindead and one-dimensional the Takes are getting. "being a woman is looking in the mirror and going fuck yeah i'm a woman" damn. I guess any negative experiences you have by living in a misogynistic world... are your fault if you are anything but positive? "you don't actually want liberation" we've fully gone back to telling feminists "you WANT to be oppressed" when anything negative about our society is pointed out. it's not real until I say it out loud, I guess, and then I'm actually the one who caused it. if anybody expresses any unhappiness with how they're treated or the status quo or the language and culture surrounding womanhood and femininity. they've created it, right that second. they invented it just now. it wasn't a problem before somebody complained, right? also trans women aren't braindead zombies who just follow the flow of whatever cis women around them say. I am pretty fucking sure they are very much aware of pain, and are MORE than aware of the swirling torrent of misogyny and standards of femininity than anybody else. actually. and I am pretty sure someone complaining on tumblr that being a woman means always putting on a performance is going to make someone change their mind about transitioning. also "performing femininity" as a necessity to being treated well as a woman is not fucking NEWS to your Local Trans Woman. I AM PRETTY SURE SHE GETS THE CONCEPT. using trans women as a scapegoat for this braindead perspective on gender politics is spineless, meritless, and pathetic.

velvette and valentino absolutely both have their own money, in excess, but will ask vox to buy them things partly because they like being spoiled and partly because they know vox is (secretly, he thinks) delighted by playing the exasperated guy who can be cajoled into buying you something just this once, but you'd better not try the puppy eyes and kisses again next time, it won't work! (it continues to work, always.) it makes him feel very masculine

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saw alot of comments on prev pages; saying 'i HATE that mean teacher! im gonna FIGHT HIM!!' & i LOVE the energy!! it WOULD be nice. to have that catharsis. but the story of young tidestrider is Not one of catharsis. it is a story of being so small and so special and sucking so bad.

What is this weirdly feelyweely status exclusive to yakumo

this is the information that we had about D dog. that's the info on her page (put through a translator, but its accurate) regarding how she is with other animals, and during the interview reactivity was only mentioned as a possibility not as a known fact about this dog. only dog? no problem. no cats? even less of a problem. potential for reactivity? sure. it can happen with any dog. known aggression towards other dogs? why the hell are you waiting for people to apply and go through a fucking interview before letting them know a week later that they're not fit for this dog and that that's the reason why. all that does is give people false hopes and upset that could be avoided by clear, direct, honest communication of a dog's issues/challenges. i heard about the specific language/way of wording things shelters and rescues use but i had hoped it wouldnt be a universal thing, at least not something i'd experience myself. turns out i was wrong!

maybe im being immature and unfair to these people, they probably dont all have the same amount of knowledge of the dogs and communicating all that inbetween volunteers/workers/and us can be difficult. but im angry and im allowed to express that ffs.

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im just gonna come out and say it: the young royals doesn't grapple with whiteness, racism, xenophobia, and class differences as much as it should. like. the show completely fails.

for a popular band i dont see nearly enough people freaking the fuck out about the lumineers on here! i have to do everything my damn self! anyway listen to their album III in order WITH the music videos and maybe you'll feel significantly worse about everything ever

The thing about AI art is, it is easier than conventional art, but it's also not. Like any other art form, it has an infinitely high skill ceiling. It is entirely possible to spend just as much time and effort on an AI-created piece as it would take to produce a visually identical conventional one; it just involves a different skill set. However, the skill floor - the minimum amount of skill required to create something a layperson will find visually appealing - is lower.

And I want to make something crystal clear: as much as I bitch about reckless and malicious use of AI art, I do not believe that taking advantage of that lowered skill floor to make something pretty inherently counts as malicious. It's the factor that enables a lot of that malice, but on its own, I wholeheartedly believe that it's not even just neutral, but a good thing - which makes it all the MORE offensive how it's abused by some really loud and obnoxious voices.

Art is possibly the #1 reason I could never be a capitalist - because art is a "phantom need"; while not as urgent of one, it IS a human need as real as food, water, and shelter. It's about communication, expression, being able to look at something and go "oh, I was here", and all kinds of other things that...sound simultaneously as fundamentally necessary as they are, but also kind of pretentious when written out, because they've been devalued for so long in most English-speaking cultures (that good ol' Catholic guilt + Protestant work ethic and frugality gospel). Most people's mental health suffers drastically without it, even if they don't realize they're seeking it out or suffering without it. Art is even good for physical health - patients have better outcomes in hospitals that don't skimp on art and aesthetics. Art therapy is a very real thing that can save or extend lives; in fact Van Gogh's body of work can be seen as the prototype for art therapy - what makes his work so impactful to so many people isn't just the visual itself, but understanding that this brought a person the tiny scraps of joy and relief he needed to stay alive just a little longer. Lack of enrichment shortens people's lifespans. Art is one of the most universally human ways of getting that enrichment.

Something that lowers the skill floor to make nice art, or makes it attainable with a different skill set, makes that accessible to more people. When we step back a moment and theoretically remove it from capitalist bullshit, that is a wholly good thing with zero caveats and if you somehow disagree on any grounds other than "but we can only do that in theory", then, to be brutally honest: I don't trust you.

Unfortunately, yes, we CAN only do that in theory, so yes, that fact...gets abused. We're seeing it. It's not theoretical. Recall that the two reasons I'm here are 1) watching people's objections cross the line from complaining about those abuses to just plain dangerous reactionary neophobic gatekeeping reminiscent of when digital illustration's "danger" to physical art media was a hot-button issue (and look back now - turns out, just like I predicted then, physical media didn't die out; physical and digital painting and illustration can coexist peacefully!), and 2) wanting to do my part to embarrass the people who maliciously use the lowered skill floor to materially harm conventional artists and see that harm as a feature, not a bug, because so many non-artists, especially those with commercial products that need art, see art as a pretentious frivolity that doesn't deserve recognition or payment. (Trust me, I'm well aware, I've been dealing with them since I was 9 or so--)

But what I'm saying is...it's disgusting that those types even have the POWER to potentially be more than an annoyance in the first place, all because art - a "phantom need", one of the earliest things that defines us as humans, something we've used to communicate since before written language, something we handed down from parent to child in the Stone Age, is wrapped up in this exploitative system of people literally living and dying by what a bunch of rich clowns think. There's always going to be a conversation about the value of art as a form of expression attached to an artist, and the value of art as a part of collective culture detached from the artist; the fact that we have to complicate it with the additional aspect of monetary value in a system that declares that if you don't produce enough monetary value you deserve to die - it's bad enough that such a system exists in the first place, and it just gets messier and uglier when you ensnare art in it.

Thing is, it's natural to want recognition for your art - it is, after all, about expression, and a lot of the time that's about seeking connection. It's not natural to be put in a position where you might not be able to feed yourself, let alone your family, if you don't either get that recognition or give up on art completely for some other abusive undervalued job, and it is certainly not natural to be surrounded by people who think this is fair and just and you don't DESERVE to be able to keep yourself alive no matter how hard you work because either you're pretentious and lazy, or you're a sellout, depending on which side of the survivability line you land on.

Making it easier for people to Make Art is not, and will never be bad. Making it profitable for the people who think that art is for either lazy do-nothings or greedy sellouts to take over artists' work, however...to put it in less-than-academic terms...ew.

We are leaving in 9 hours and I wish my mom's stress had peaked but I Know it hasn't

feeling just. extremely weary and sad abt people who imo are both wrong and mean in their analysis of oppressive dynamics. also at some level laughing at myself that this is legitimately what's gotten me down. well. also global warming and microplastics.

anyway. not gonna get into specifics bc some of you agree with them, lol, but. i guess i just wish we all focused a little more on staying in our own lanes and articulating our pain in its own context instead of jumping so fucking fast to framing suffering as a zero-sum game and using our own to justify dismissing other people's by comparison.

pov local cis woman expresses HORROR at the idea of a trans man obtaining a body that is more proximous to the one of a male, and within all her attempts to 'empathize' she states that it's horrible to do this to young girls and that you cannot just remove a girl's growing chest. but surely there's no experience that could cause her (a woman's) reaction to this phenomenom (in which supposed girls lose their body's female traits)??? surely not?

i'll give you a surprising answer: it's dysphoria! of course a woman would be terrified of this experience, and surely, if she was granted the body trans men wish to have, of course she'd want to get rid of it, right? because i wonder what women experience this aside from the cis detransitioners??? and i wonder whether they try to take the steps to gain back their destined body, too?

because surely, a woman must understand this terror, right? and you'd expect her to be there for her fellow women, right? but she isn't! i think you can see why this is bad.

I got a job as a summer camp counselor for kids ages like... 6 to 13 or so, and i get to teach arts and crafts ! Which i am just. So ridiculously excited about. But im having a hard time figuring out what kind of projects are kid friendly (especially for the little ones). Here are some attempts at making some sample projects. On top are two very simple friendship bracelets, which im very happy with and which is definitely going in the curriculum, and on the bottom are two crocheted pouches (the laptop im using as a background is tiny, btw, as are the pouches). Those im not sure about, if for no other reason than i only have 45 minutes with each group of kids, and i just dont think theres time. I made the small one in about 20 minutes, so its maybe doable. But if the beginning demonstration is 10 minutes or so, thats only half an hour for kids who are totally new to crocheting to make something.

Anyway, if anyone has any fun arts and crafts ideas for kids that take... a very minimal amount of time but still teach skills that arent cutting paper and glueing it to other paper, im all ears

Shitstorm of a day

i think it's quite silly that atheists are still pretending like you cannot prove gods don't exist in 2023 tbh. all gods start out as an explanation for natural phenomena humans could not explain and the god hypothesis has a failure rate of 100% so far for explaining those natural phenomena. for every single hypothesis that god has been the assumed answer for, they have failed. your argument of "you don't know what came before the big bang!" is literally just another god of the gaps argument but updated to reflect all the science we DO know about now. it's extremely unlikely that the god hypothesis will succeed on try one million and two tbqf.

"you can't prove god doesn't exist" yes we can prove that 99.999% of all gods ever created by humans didn't exist. why is your god any different? because u say the things that would prove him false actually prove his existence? yeah okay do u see how crazy u fucking sound?

like why are we still debating this in 2023???? please bro. how is it that every single time we've tried to prove a certain god exists, we come up with a new science field and learn even more mindblowing things in the process, none of which are the result of said god? idk if u wanna believe in santa claus as an adult, that's your business but pushing it onto society as a whole because you've convinced yourself santa is really going to torture you for eternity if you don't please him is like... next level.