that comment about how you should not borrow grief from the future has saved me multiple times from spiraling into an inescapable state of anxiety. like every time i find myself thinking about how something in the future could go wrong i remember that comment and i think to myself: well i never know, it might get better. it might not even happen the way i think it will and if it does happen and it is sad and bad ill be sad about it then, when it happens. and it’s somehow soo freeing

Public speaking is actually really easy if you don't respect a single soul in that room. I've had an incredibly easy time delivering speeches when I hated everybody I saw and they all thought I did amazing because my disdain was read as confidence. I don't have any tips for you I'm just telling you a fact

Read this in “stats & curiosities from HBR”

so much of taking care of yourself as an adult is just learning to eat at home and going on walks

i just need to eat a sandwich that tastes like someone really loves me and cares about me and then i think i’ll be ok

"How i love being a woman" it's a 5 second video of brain rot consumerism

youre an olympic level hater. i respect it.

they asked me to represent my country in the sport of hating i said no. i hate my country

thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

regardless of a myriad of other AI discourse talking points i'm not touching with a 10 ft pole, i think it should always be disclosed when i'm looking at something AI generated. like that's a basic level of societal courtesy, right. AI images more than any new technology that has changed the course of humanity seem to be inseparable from a purposeful obfuscation of their origin. the gimmick is to deceive human perception, their entire purpose is to make you believe you are looking at something created by sentience. AI is at its core a tool for deception and i mean that as a neutral statement. it's a mimic, a pantomime. impersonation. and that is, ethics aside, annoying as all fuck

Art nouveau buildings in Cuba. Photos by Michael Eastman.

“Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass. […] We’re in the world, not against it. […] The world is, no matter how we think it ought to be. You have to be with it. You have to let it be.”

— Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (via exhaled-spirals)

Cocaine was a stimulant used by a priestly caste of the middle period United States called businessmen in order to commune with The Market. [1]

you cannot advertise to me in a way that matters.

lol i hate today’s era of absolutely zero nuance takes. a friend didn’t behave exactly as you’d wanted them to? cut them off. a guy didn’t text you back instantly bc he has his own life? he’s just giving you breadcrumbs. doing something makes you uncomfortable? don’t do it anymore. someone isn’t instantly available for you? disinterest. just absolutist statements that often don’t apply to the multilayer situations of everyday life. like. stop. literally just stop it