this has the potential to be the best big brother episode of all time if they cut to the living room and cory and jared are still fighting

re: Not having kids, the ancients at their peak were masters at building both mechanical and organic lifeforms, so at some point they probably created some sort of sci-fi Ultimate Birth Control that everyone was on. They mention that they have parental obligations towards the iterators, and Moon even calls them her parents, so I suppose they channeled their instincts to raise children into the iterators/other lifeforms they created. (I think you touched on this with UI?) Why make kids when you have "kids"?

Ohh godd I don't know! That's a cool idea!! Still sounds unethical, there's no way every single ancient was fine with that!! I think!! How do you enforce that!! Does it just?? Oh man!!!!

As for iterators being their kids? Well yes, but I wouldn't say they are a replacement. Iterators have been around for MANY MAAANY generations. Aka when ancients could still have kids, iterators aren't a replacement to that. And it is very different to have a child in your household and to have an iterator who honestly takes care of you more than the opposite. I imagine they could interact with their iterators kind of like you can just call up Alexa, but that's not as personal as adopting or having a kid you raise into an adult, I'd say? I doubt it could satisfy everyone that's for sure.

The joke I drew with UI was that ancients missed having kids around so much they designed an iterator after one. Not like they stayed around for her at all.

Jokes aside UI IS really designed with the concept of a child in mind. The thought process was that perhaps the solution required a special kind of approach. So they made her super small and child shaped and named her Unparalleled Innocence as that's what you connect with kids. Their lack of experience and naivety has them approach things in a specific/unique way. And the last iterator ever made will inevitably be the one lacking the most context about the world.

Perhaps the solution required some out of the box thinking other iterators couldn't reach anymore. Either way UI didn't find the solution anyway so what can you do.

maybe doing the nagito edit remake but ggang team can cure my depressive state

Getting gender envy from your own siblings hits different

i want squidkid to meet dream

that would be so sweet:( especially since he was in dreams techno tribute as well

Post on tumblr dot com: this terrible thing is happening in the world! You should probably know about it! Here's some information on this!

Me: aw man... that's absolutely terrible, you're right. I don't really have the monetary resources, but at the very least, I'm gonna reblog this.

Same post: WHY haven't you known about this??? Why are you, as a human who is not online all the time with your own problems and your own life, unaware??? What is WRONG with you? Do you not care??? If you really cared you'd reblog this specific post, if you ignore this you deserve to die in a horrible fire

Me: ... what the fuck-

This Friday's meme is: the perfect being

mitsukis song is a yoasobi soundalike lmao i love it

hey, you guys wanna see something completely fucked up?

why the FUCK do these match so well. i didnt edit SHIT.

scheduling lethal company gaming sessions via discord events. made an event banner for one

My addict sister is now claiming that her most recent drug test only showed amphetamines in her system because she had been self medicating her self diagnosed ADHD with meds that she stole from our dad's house after he died.

This is ridiculous and unlikely and also illegal and scummy anyway as this story would still entail her stealing prescription medication from her own daughter. But while we tried our best to clear all drugs out the house in the first few days, dad was such a fucking messy hoarder that we can't actually rule this possibility out

and the complaining: because of legislature a few yrs ago failing my exams means im uuuuh maybe going to have my stipend cut off if I cant document that my brain shat the bed in an unexpected way for which I need to have papers proving ive been getting treatment at a psychiatrist or gp and while I have a referral for a psych I never scheduled an appt. because the thing that is fucked up w me is largely increased disorganisation and erratic behaviour so uuuuuuhuhuhuh might have gotten on student disabilities just in time to be thrown off student disabilities!!

what replaying undertale in 2024 feels like

(via How to sleep for 7 hours)

ok im obsessed. admittedly.

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.