This series is my hardboiled egg.

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

tshirt that says NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY

bedtime story with my love !!

engie birthday pt 2...a gift from spy

♡ my DREAMBOY ♡

Alright let's imagine a scene that is all too normal in palestine. A palestinian business owner finds his building covered in graffiti stars of Davids and Hebrew that says "gas the arabs" and "death to arabs"

Now imagine there's a reporter there and asks the palestinian business owner what happens and they say "the jews attacked my business"

Pause. Now your response might be "uncle no. Say israelis not jews" and then this is when he would look at you like youre stupid because the israelis doing this are jewish. They are not the Christians or the druze or the palestinian ones with Israeli citizenship. They are Jewish israelis who believe in their religious supremacy. When you graffiti stars of david all over a palestinian business, car, or the street you seek that conflation. it sends a message, this is jewish land and you're next.

The problem is that these videos circulate in zionist circles. "Watch this video of children in gaza calling for the death of jews" "watch how they say they want to fight and kill jews" those children are referring to Israeli soldiers that come in night and do their raids with the star of David attached to their uniform or the ones that bomb them. It's easy to watch those videos and assume that palestinians are indoctrinating their children on anti semitism or you can realize that those children's only interaction with jewish ppl is through violence and parents cannot protect their children from this. Doesn't matter context is lost

Abby Martin went to Jerusalem and interviewed israelis for 2 hours and she says every israeli was extremely confident to say that this land is for them and that they should push the Arabs out and when she interviewed palestinians they spoke of freedom from occupation and their dreams. That's reality. Not the soundbites.

And yet we have invasive youtubers and interviewers constantly in the street of ramallah or wherever in palestine asking palestinians "do you hate jews?" And in those videos you hear those palestinians say "no we have no problem with jews we have a problem with occupation and we have a problem with zionism." Bc this is how we are trained to respond to this trope. Palestinians are very aware what the world thinks of us and the reality is that many palestinians have internalized it and we grow up reading books on the Holocaust and train ourselves to recognize anti semitic dog whistles so zionists don't get the soundbites they want.

So we say "anti zionism is not anti semitism" and we say "israeli zionists" and we do not say "jewish supremacy" even thought it exists in palestine but "zionist supremacy" and in these carefully worded speech we water down what is happening to us in an effort to not deter people away from solidarity. But it means nothing. The world categorically blames palestinians for rising anti semitism they blame us for jewish insecurity globally.

sometimes I think of all the on-the-surface warm, well-meaning but deeply ineffectual advice and attention john gives harrow through harrow the ninth (make some soup and get some sleep! get a hobby! don't be so hard on yourself! self care harrow! as long as I need take no actual responsibility in this relationship whatsoever I would have loved to be your dad!) set up against the stark truth that with his other hand he has been staging her attempted horrific murder again and again and again like a living nightmare on the logic that it will 'put her down or fix her'. and then I find that I wish there is a hell. a special hell where twitch streamers turned necromantic death emperors go

knighted

thinking about how Humans Are Space Orcs stories always talk about how indestructible humans are, our endurance, our ability to withstand common poisons, etc. and thats all well and good, its really fun to read, but it gets repetitive after a while because we aren't all like that.

And that got me thinking about why this trope is so common in the first place, and the conclusion I came to is actually kind of obvious if you think about it. Not everyone is allowed to go into space. This is true now, with the number of physical restrictions placed on astronauts (including height limits), but I imagine it's just as strict in some imaginary future where humans are first coming into contact with alien species. Because in that case there will definitely be military personnel alongside any possible diplomatic parties.

And I imagine that all interactions aliens have ever had up until this point have been with trained personnel. Even basic military troops conform to this standard, to some degree. So aliens meet us and they're shocked and horrified to discover that we have no obvious weaknesses, we're all either crazy smart or crazy strong (still always a little crazy, academia and war will do that to you), and not only that but we like, literally all the same height so there's no way to tell any of us apart.

And Humans Are Death Worlders stories spread throughout the galaxy. Years or decades or centuries of interspecies suspicion and hostilities preventing any alien from setting foot/claw/limb/appendage/etc. on Earth until slowly more beings are allowed to come through. And not just diplomats who keep to government buildings, but tourists. Exchange students. Temporary visitors granted permission to go wherever they please, so they go out in search of 'real terran culture' and what do they find?

Humans with innate heart defects that prevent them from drinking caffeine. Humans with chronic pain and chronic fatigue who lack the boundless endurance humans are supposedly famous for. Humans too tall or too short or too fat to be allowed into space. Humans who are so scared of the world they need to take pills just to function. Humans with IBS who can't stand spicy foods, capsaicin really is poison to them. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease, my god all the autoimmune disorders out there, humans who struggle to function because their own bodies fight them. Humans who bruise easily and take too long to heal. Humans who sustained one too many concussions and now struggle to talk and read and write. Humans who've had strokes. Humans who were born unable to talk or hear or speak, and humans who through some accident lost that ability later.

Aliens visit Earth, and do you know what they find? Humanity, in all its wholeness.

the significance of the number, 3 in tgcf gets me every time.

xie lian's third ascension is when everything changes (for the better)

hua cheng introduces himself as "san lang" when he meets xie lian after his third ascension. "san lang" means "third son." it's the third time, or the third form (his third life, if you will) that hua cheng has met xie lian in.

there are three calamities (if you ignore bai wuxian, and if you still count qi rong as a calamity)

there are multiple trios — xie lian, mu qing, feng xin; shi wudu, he xuan, shi qingxuan; shi wudu, pei ming, ling wen; and so on.

there were thirty three officials who disgraced xie lian; and were consequently destroyed by hua cheng.

hua cheng released three thousand lanterns for xie lian.

he also died three times for xie lian; first as hong hong'er, second as wu ming, and third as the supreme ghost king.

all this information, coupled with the fact that three is considered a lucky number in chinese culture just makes me feel so many emotions

The "Sansa reminds Sandor of his sister" motive that some people try to hitch to his character really just flies in the face of his actual attachments to her, doesn't it? Sansa reminds Sandor of himself. He sees the little boy who used to love knights in this girl who's been swept up by the same romanticism. He sees his abuser in her abusers, the much larger knight(s) beating on the helpless child. He sees how she is betrayed by every level of authority that should have saved her and remembers his father's neglect and Tywin and Robert's apathy for Gregor's crimes. He's protective of Sansa because he was Sansa.

And GRRM's design, that one of the strongest warriors in the series, a fearsome and cynical 6'8" guy who's "muscled like a bull" and has the face of death itself, sees himself in this soft and effeminate teen girl, and empathizes with her because he was an abuse victim too, is INFINITELY more compelling than "Oh yeah I bet she just reminds him of his sister," who he's never mentioned and who we know literally nothing about. Way to unnecessarily water down a character, you couldn't have ignored the black and white text more efficiently if you tried.

happy and proud!!

✷(print shop)✷

girlbossing too close to the sun.

It always grinds my gears when a writer doesn't seem to have any love for human beings. Everyone is inhospitable, or too stupid to function, or too much a stock archetype to develop in any meaningful way. Not because I personally think that human beings are intrinsically good ("good" is a useless designation for real people anyways) but because real human beings have the fucking range.

Most people aren't going to be inhospitable to random strangers, because that's not a useful way to live your life--being needlessly cruel is a good way to get your shit pushed in. If someone is being stupid about one thing, chances are there's something else they know a lot about, because nobody is blanket bad at everything. And of course most people are going to subtly contradict any stock archetypes they're assigned.

That's not to say that people can't be cruel and stupid and predictable; it's just that they're kind and intelligent and chaotic in equal measure, and when I see a writer forgetting that, it frustrates me, because that's good drama you're missing! You could be taking advantage of all that. And what are you doing instead? cheap bullshit. boring asf

a villain’s journey