human tire fire

I know people mean well when they say it but hearing the phrase “you know your body best” as someone with chronic illness is so funny, like man no I don’t I ain’t got no clue what that fucker’s planning and I’m scared to find out

Them: Listen to your body!

My body, whispering in the night: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn

my camel straight up told me "man i am not carrying another fucking straw" like wtf asshole its just one straw whats your fucking issue

Abbas Kiarostami, from “A Wolf Lying in Wait; Poems,” published c. 2015

Islam is used for oppression in Islamic countries, Christianity is used for oppression in Western countries, atheism is used for oppression in China, Shinto is used for oppression in Japan, Native religions are used for oppression in our tribes, etc, etc. The point isn't that any or all religion is inherently evil or violent, just that cruel and selfish people seeking power will use anything they can to control others.

honestly, the greatest threat to any religion is not the forces that actively seek to destroy it, but rather those that seek to twist it into a weapon to turn on their enemies, or a means of social control. it is much easier to fight an enemy that declares itself an enemy, but one that disguises itself as an ally, or even as your champion, can deceive you into willingly betraying all that your faith stands for, turning it into a farce of the worst kind.

okay but have any of you read the Qur'an or lived in a Muslim country before?

Islam is a living religion that does not end with the Qur'an, just like Christianity exists beyond the Bible and Judaism exists beyond the Torah. You can point to any religious text that has exist for 1000+ years and find horrific things, because history is full of horrific things, but that does not mean that that is a complete reflection of the modern religion.

Again, this post is literally about how religion is weaponized by people in power no matter what. Fascists, dictators, and other power hungry bastards who twist religion and culture to suit their own needs are NOT representative of their religions or cultures as a whole. When people are able to practice safely and by choice, Islam is just as beautiful and meaningful as any other religion and Muslims just living their lives so not deserve to get lumped into regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran.

a state religion will not align the state with the religion's professed values. the state will use the religion to profess state values, and those values are always authoritarian exploitation of its subjects through violence.

the only national religion is NATIONALISM.

I'm trying to figure out a good way to say "you really should actually learn the basics of small talk" with sounding like I'm biased against autistic people.

So here's the thing:

I see a lot of neurodivergent people talk about small talk as this baffling and meaningless waste of time that neurotypicals do for some unknown reason, and as an autistic person in an industry that is extremely based on building relationships and engaging with others, I've actually found a few really key important pieces to small talk.

1. Small talk can make interactions feel less mercenary or transactional. Having even brief exchanges about something beyond the reason that you're interacting can make it feel less like the only goal of the interaction. Especially for relationships that are not fully transactional (e.g., coworkers), this can help build a relationship with them.

2. Small talk can be a way to find commonalities and help bridge cultural or power divides. Recently I was on a call with a couple of Indian colleagues, and while we were waiting for everyone else to join I asked them where they lived in India. They didn't expect that I had heard of it, but I knew it because my dad had traveled there for work every couple months for a year or so, so we could chat about it briefly. Even for a couple of minutes, we were able to connect on this unexpected commonality. If I hadn't had that connection, I would have been able to learn about somewhere, helping narrow the privilege gap of them being expected to know more about where I live than I am about where they live.

3. Small talk can show knowledge about a person, which both builds connections and indicates that you see their life as important enough to remember about. The stereotypical "How's the wife?/How are the kids?" shows that you know the person has a wife/kids and have enough interest in their life to even ask.

4. Small talk can ease tension and reduce pressure from others, especially in a professional setting if more junior members are expected to speak. Especially for junior staff members, it can be difficult to be the first person to talk and break the silence, so engaging in small talk beforehand allows for a lower-pressure transition from silence to whatever the presentation is about.

5. Small talk provides a low-risk way to identify commonalities. While conversations about religion, politics, etc. may lead to tension or discomfort, even if they bring out commonalities, small talk is specifically structured to minimize tension while still providing the opportunity to learn more about each other. A conversation about the weather can reveal that you both like hiking when it's nice out; a conversation about the weekend can reveal that you both have family in the same state.

Small talk in many cases is signaling, a way to indicate certain things to people. It's a more indirect version of it than many autistic people like, but it is one.

But, you cry, I don't know how to do small talk!

Small talk actually has some pretty clear guidelines, even if they are often unspoken.

recommend this linguistics podcast episode about the linguistics of small talk if you want to learn more!

Making a coffee table infinity mirror!

"Now *YOU* can have that Long Dark Tunnel To Nowhere in any room in your house!" 🤯

I feel like starting an urban legend about a demon that kills you if you don't have headphones on when browsing tiktok in public

Tangentially related to the last rb but it is weird to me when people act like mixed race people just didn't Happen historically. Cause like, yeah the world used to be Less connected than it is now so certain combinations could be unlikely depending on specific times and locations, there were anti miscegenation laws, etc etc, but. The thing about people is that they have boats and it's notoriously difficult to stop them from having sex with each other. Also the pillaging but I assure you it could be consensual, even

There's this narrative that's like... everyone just stayed where they were from and Europe Used To Be White, Dammit & it's very provably False. Because people have had boats and sex for like thousands and thousands of years. & people will sometimes bring this up to be like "well yeah, the pillaging" and that's absolutely a significant part of it! But people also just... Have Babies Sometimes

Strangest thing is how... historical mixing denialism ??? Will come from white supremacists obviously but the same ideas will be echoed by just anybody. And every so often there'll be some story that's like "Dutch man finds out he's .02% Maori for some reason" "medieval european knew black people existed?" & it's like Yeah dude ... the boat

It was probably very similar to today though: much higher racial mixing in big cities and very homogeneous in the rural areas.

I moved a lot as a kid. In large cities, I went to school with a diverse range of nationalities, when I moved to a rural town/city (20,000 people), there were one or two families who weren't white in my entire 1300 student high school. This rural town was 2 hours from Toronto, one of the most multicultural cities in the world.

I don't think it's unrealistic for a person who lived in a rural, inland town to have never even seen a person of another race in the past. However, a person living in a port city? No way.

That's because this is Silmarillion

What if I abandoned Spanish and learned mandarin instead? What if a language had no genders? What if life could be dream?

I’ve started practicing output somewhat and as you may be able to tell by my public mental breakdown it’s been a rough start

I keep seeing posts about the differences between the book and the Ghibli adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle, and honestly there's a totally charming interview with Diana Wynne-Jones at the end of the kindle edition about how it worked :)

Of course she'd like the stairs scene. This is the woman who wrote Deep Secrets

rambling again abt sensationalization of cults because this comes up whenever i discuss the fact that I was raised in one, but... like many other forms of abuse, i think there ends up being a popularly conveyed idea of an "outside world" where there's going to be unambiguous freedom. and don't get me wrong, being outside a cult or any other abusive environment is way better than being inside one, but you get outside and if you have eyes you notice the ways that society is abusive and coercive. you notice the ways your personhood gets curtailed by things by school & work & government. the idea of the cult being a sensational, unique outlier is at best a comforting lie told by people who don't want to notice parallels, and at worst, I can't help but see it as an intentional scapegoating of cults and of abusers to distance broader society from being implicated in having caused similar harm. don't fall for it. a cult is an intensifier of patterns that already exist. abuse is an intensifier of patterns that already exist. it is absolutely not unique lol!

girls who are one emotional day away from walking into the forest and never being seen again are in your area. for now.

my mom’s childhood town

I'm still yet to figure out how to do that VHS effect without overdoing it.

damned if you’re employed damned if you’re not