Some women are conditioned to be fragile and weak, and to believe that it's a sin to outperform a man. Her feminism would involve allowing women to be strong.

Some women are expected to be strong at times when they can't. Her feminism would involve reassuring her that it's okay to not be strong.

Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're too stupid to ever amount to anything. Their disability activism would involve reassuring them that they're capable.

Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're smart and gifted, and are expected to live up to impossible standards. Their disability activism would involve allowing them to fail, make mistakes, be stupid, etc.

Some children are constantly reminded "you're the child, I'm the adult" in order to deny their autonomy. Their youth rights activism would involve treating them like an adult at times when they feel ready for it.

Some children are treated like adults in order to justify increased expectations or to downplay abuse against them. Their youth rights activism would involve allowing them to be a child.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to oppression. Each individual person's experience is different. Whatever trauma is caused by their oppression, the activism should focus on undoing it.

The Halloween Story

As with most of my life stories, I have to clarify beforehand: Yes, this is real, and it is real because (and ONLY because) I am stupid. This is not something that happens to normal people because they wouldn't ever get close enough to a situation like this for it to happen. That being said, without estrogen my brain's "keep this idiot alive" switch was not turned on and I was, I think, biologically incapable of making good decisions.

Another thing to know is that I did not have a lot of friends as a kid because I'm terminally awkward; additionally, most of the friends I did have were maybe better described as "people who tolerated me but who I would take a bullet for." This is important for later.

Anyways, I was like 9 or 10 when this happened, and my littlest brother was like...5 or 6? This was his first Halloween where he was allowed to Trick-or-Treat past the end of our block, and he HAD to be accompanied by me or another older kid so he had begged me for DAYS to take him. And while I held the title of oldest brother, I feel like I put my whole pussy into being a good oldest brother, so I of course took the family's babiest of babies for his first ever trick-or-treat adventure!

I went dressed as Dartanian because I've been gay for a while, and he went dressed as a skeleton because he's adorable. We went trick-or-treating only in areas I knew, so mostly within the boundaries of our l'il Mormon ward, and we had fun. About a half-mile away from home, he started saying he was getting tired, so I told him we were gonna turn back and watch "Scary" movies, which was actually just two old VHS Scooby Doo episodes my mom let us watch because she only let us watch episodes where the monsters were fake because if they were real we'd get nightmares. So we start walking back. It's not too far and we know the way so it's going great. Littlest bro's first trick-or-treat adventure went swimmingly, we've got pillow cases full of candy, and we're about to watch scooby doo and eat skittles until we pass out. Life, for us, literally could not have been better.

BUT

I'm amused by the fact there's a creature called the tarantula hawk wasp

Like

Yeah, that sure is a collection of animals

Imagine if we had more of those

"Run! It's a jaguar dolphin iguana!"

The bimbo feminism girls who love Legally Blonde really missed like the whole point of the movie. The point is that she's not a brainless bimbo. She saves the day with her knowledge of haircare, sure, but she got in the room by going to law school. You cannot reduce that movie down to "Girl knowledge saves the day!" because the perm wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't spent the entire rest of the movie working her ass off in an unrelated field. The feminist angle is that she can have girly interests and also be smart, not that having girly interests is feminist in itself

I think it's also worth adding that the main reason Elle is so effective is because she's sweet to everyone and finds ways to connect with people. She's not sitting around judging other women for knowing less about beauty than she does. So if you're making tiktoks about being That Girl or snarking at other girls, you did NOT learn your lesson from Elle Woods.

Oh, we really can't be keeping THAT gem in the tags.

My dad will listen to me talk about the same ten things that have interested me since I was 8 years old, and I am 27 now but he still thinks they're fascinating. He has like, a best-hits-of-Babylon rants, and when we're in a topic adjacent to them, he'll occasionally just invoke them. We'll be talking about the 1960's, and he'll be like, so, whatever did happen to those original Apollo rocket engines, and he knows what happened to them because I've told him about it like thirty times, and he knows that I know that he knows, but he also knows that I love talking about it and that this is a carte blanche to spend the next ten minutes spinning a yarn about the lost machining arts and the death of knowledge and the constant red-queen-hypothesis style sprint that technology is locked into just to try and preserve itself.

So I'll do the rant again, and he'll listen to it like it's his first time hearing it, and he'll ask the best questions because he's been hearing this rant for 19 years, you can bet your ass he knows the best questions, and it's... beautiful. The words are almost adjacent to the dance.

I can remember reading a book once, where there was a perfect translator. Too perfect, because it translated for meaning alone, independent of the words. A man might ask his wife, "Hey, do you remember that hotdog we shared in 1972?" and the translator would spit out "We have been many different people, but we have always loved each other. Isn't that beautiful?" And I've imagined it for those rant-dances, and tried to imagine what the words would be. I think his parts would just come out to something like "Your handful of intense interests are something that I love about you, and I want you to know that they are not merely tolerated." And my parts would come out to something like "I am sharing who I am with you because I trust you. And I've always been able to trust you. You are, and were, and remain, an amazing dad."

Watching Star Wars in chronological order is so funny.

Obi-Wan Kenobi really took one look at R2D2 in the middle of the desert and said “No, Luke, I’ve never seen this fucking droid in my life. Looks like a real bitch though. Not that I’d know. This is my first time meeting the asshole.”

No one in that whole franchise was Gatekeep-Gasslight-Girlbossing quite like “Ben” Kenobi, regular human-man.

“I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid.” More of that highly specific certain point of view speech Kenobi was so good at. Not “I’ve never seen this droid before” but “I def don’t own this beeping bitch, I don’t think anybody can own him.” And he does kind of side-eye R2 when he says “let’s see who you are and where you came from.” Like “has this lil bastard had his memory erased? If he rats me out, he’s getting a laser circuit adjustment.”

Even though we know Lucas hadn’t written in fully that Luke and Leia were twins, or even that Anakin was their father at this point in the original drafts, it still plays like Kenobi has secrets and he is so done. He sees Leia’s hologram and just sits back like he knows it wasn’t a coincidence that Anakin’s son somehow purchased both of his parents droids and one contains a message from the boy’s long lost sister. At that point Padme could have risen from the grave and he wouldn’t have blinked.

one of those time travel AUs where Vader goes back into his body as Anakin before he fell to the dark side and fixes everything. Palpatine is dead, the Jedi are alive, and everyone's happy. He never found out who Luke's twin sister was, but that's fine because this time around he'll get to know both of them from birth. The twins are born and Padmé says she wants to name their daughter Leia! :) And Anakin thinks, Hmm. Looking back I can see that Princess Leia was a good person, and we were only enemies because I went and became a Sith. Okay we can name our daughter Leia :)

Years pass and Leia starts growing older. The Organas adopt a completely different girl. Anakin's looking at his daughter like no, it can't be. No way. Do NOT tell me that Princess Leia was Luke's twin all along, but time keeps passing and it becomes increasingly apparent that this is indeed the case, and now he's having a Crisis

apparently I'm physically incapable of posting an au and then not drawing something for it

You know, I would bet money that if this were possible, if Anakin could go back and not fall to the dark side and raise his children with a still living Padme, that Leia would not have become a senator.

It’s a lot like the fix it AUs where Leia grew up on the farm and Luke was raised in a palace. If the roles were reversed and Ben Kenobi had said “we need to go to Alderaan, here’s you dad’s lightsaber,” to Leia, he wouldn’t have finished the sentence before she would have grabbed that out of his hand. Give Leia a lightsaber and she’d be unstoppable. Luke is sensitive and thoughtful, he looks like Anakin, but his entire personality is Padme. Even in RotJ, Luke would rather talk things out with Vader than actually fight him. And in ANH, Leia looks like she’s weighing the odds of seizing Vader’s own lightsaber and trying to kill him and Tarkin in one go right before Alderaan is destroyed. Leia is her father’s daughter through and through. She would have followed in the Jedi direction and Luke would be the politician apprentice of his mother. I think the twins were pushed into these roles, but I do not believe either actually wanted them.

Beyblade heavyweight division

my issue with the argument that "disliking ai art is inherently reactionary" is that it acts like pro-ai art people are somehow less reactionary on their views on art, when like the majority of defense's of ai art as like a higher form art are indistinguishable from the arguments people use to defend the art of like. hitler

like the logic is that hitler was actually a great artist, entirely hinges on the belief that "objectively good art" is just art that looks detailed if you've never drawn before, which like why ai artists who want to prove their actual artists will just make a pretty looking building or lady, cause it's all about aesthetics i guess

like i'm not saying your a nazi if you like ai art, i just think it's silly when people act like anti-ai artist's are just hysterical luddites, and that ai artists are the ONLY people who actually care about art, when 99 percent of ai artists on twitter only care about art that's "beautiful" on an extremely superficial level.

Jacob Geller dissected the intersection of Fascism and modern art in 2020, sadly before the AI art boom, and goes into better detail than I can about how abstraction is a threat to fascist ideals. I also want to draw attention to possibly my favorite commentary on modernism.

Comic by Ad Reinhardt, an abstract painter, who's made multiple comics about art and perception.

AI slop only bring repetition and lack of original idea to the table. it's an advanced form of stolen art collage. It seeks only to trace and multiply without provoking. It's the anthesis of art.

The way I explained it to my young cousin was like this:

Back before cameras, paintings were just recording reality, and that's why painters tried to be as realistic as they could, and only paint things that could exist in the world around them--objects, and people, and animals. Sometimes they did paint things from their imagination, but only to illustrate stories, like stories from their religion.

Then, cameras came along, and painters were free to paint things cameras couldn't see--things like the artist's feelings, or ideas, or thoughts, or lots of things. Some artists tried to see if they could paint from every angle at once, and we call that Cubism. Some artists tried to paint very quickly, as quickly as they could, so they could capture one single moment of the daylight, or their impression of a moment, with all the feelings light gives, and that's why we call them Impressionists. Some artists were more interested in the process of painting, like Mr Rothko; or in finding the most intense versions of a colour, like Mr Klein. Some were more interested in the spaces between things, like Mr Mondrian. But art, after cameras, could suddenly SAY something, say something by itself! And art, as it turns out, has a lot to say!

"I can do that too! I can do that!" You can, little friend! We all can!

My little cousin didn't get mad looking at modern art; she was excited, and asked her parents if she could have fancy grown-up paints, because she didn't know Art could be something she could do, could be something about expressing her feelings and ideas. This is a child who can't yet write very well, and not nearly as fast or as well as she speaks, so you have to understand something clicked for her, that she could express the complex human things inside herself with colour and shapes and images, instead of struggling to learn how to spell "melancholy" or "excited" or conjugate verbs to a degree that could encompass it.

Because words take TIME to master as an art form--I should know, I've been practising using them to express MY ideas and feelings artistically for 36-and-a-half years! Paint, however, doesn't require such mastery in order to begin expressing the artist; certainly it helps to know skills, but it isn't as required as it is with words. You can just scream and yell with paint, you can experiment more purely with images than with sounds, which after all are regimented into languages before we can begin to use them at all, let alone for the art words make.

And honestly, why are whole-ass adults not understanding that "I could make that!" should be exciting, should inspire you to go and make that! Why are you so mad? "I could make that!" Yes you can! And you get to! And you're an adult, you don't have to ask your parents to buy you paint and canvas and brushes, you can go and do that yourself and be expressing your own feelings this very afternoon! Nothing is stopping you! You don't NEED that plagiarism machine, you can do better art yourself! And nobody else in the whole world, now or in the past or in the future, is EVER going to be able to make the art YOU can make, the art YOU have inside you! So go make it!

I've gotten a few notes on a few different posts where someone in the tags brags about intentionally "body checking" someone else when they're in their way.

For example on a post I made about leaving the way clear for people exiting elevators or public transportation instead of standing right in front of the door blocking it I got a few notes from people saying "haha yeah I always give someone a good body check if they do this and I love seeing the shocked and offended look on their face"

or on a post about leaving room for the flow of traffic I had people in the notes bragging about giving "body checks" to people in their way on a sidewalk or in a hallway.

Do. Not. Ever. Ever. EVER intentionally bump into people aka give them a "body check". Anyone who brags about this kind of behavior in my notes is getting blocked. You are literally physically assaulting someone and then bragging about it. Physically assaulting another person is actually a lot worse than accidentally being in someone's way, and I have no tolerance for it.

The times in my life where someone has intentionally "body checked" me have been when I was disassociating and/or about to pass out from low blood sugar, or quite literally was as far off to the side as possible (literally up against a wall or packed up against other people in a crowded area) and every time this has happened it has ended in me having a full blown panic attack that I need to take emergency meds to come down from due to my PTSD.

You never know why someone could be in your way. They could be visually impaired. They could be disassociating. They could be about to pass out from low blood sugar. They maybe just experienced a disturbing or traumatic event that's shut down their pre-frontal cortext. All sorts of things. So congrats I guess on physically assaulting someone who might be disabled or disassociating or about to faint from low blood sugar. You sure are showing them.

Not only that, but it's unsafe for you too. There are violent and unstable people in this world, and you might "body check" the wrong person one day. I had a friend in secondary school who would brag about this kind of behavior, and when I was talking to my aunt about it one day she said to me "one day your friend is going to do that to the wrong person and find herself cleaning herself up off the floor."

And if you're only "body checking" people you think it's "safe" to, people who you're pretty sure won't be able to fight back? People smaller and weaker looking than you? Congrats, not only are you definitely a bully then, but you're also perpetuating systems of social injustices in this world like ageism and ableism by only going after "the weak".

can also see how this could be dangerous to rollator users . and yes , easy enough to think oh , would never do this to someone with mobility aids - but truth is will not necessarily always see mobility aids before snap decisions like this .

weight of rollator will depend on several factors , but 7 to 9 kg seem like fairly average guess . rollator users , naturally , can weigh 10 or ( many ) more times that . if balance of rollator user is thrown off , that rollator can easily glide ahead . given purpose as mobility aid , very likely for user to have at least one hand on rollator - which means that person will follow , and fall , and possibly get very hurt . this is true even with brakes on - brakes mean very little against full weight of person .

even one small snap decision can seriously hurt someone .

Really important point. When the doors for an elevator or public transportation open, and you see someone standing what you deem too close to the door, you really do only have a second or two to decide between a) saying excuse me or asking them to move b) just squeezing around them if you're really in a hurry and have no time to ask them to move or c) giving them a "body check" to punish them for being in your way.

And yes, you are 100% correct, in the second or two you have to decide between those options, you might not notice a mobility aid, and if you go for option c for a mobility aid user you can seriously hurt them.

Also, not everyone who is physically disabled and at serious risk of being hurt from a "body check" uses a mobility aid. My mom really should be using a mobility aid, she has vertigo so badly she sometimes has to old onto my arm if we go anywhere together in public, and she has really bad arthritis in her feet that make it harder for her to walk at quicker than a shuffling pace. And yet because of her not wanting to look "too old" she refuses to use mobility aids, and insists on running errands by herself on days her vertigo isn't "too bad". But if someone were to get annoyed with my mother, who moves extremely slowly and often wobbles from side to side, and they decide to give her a "body check" due to their impatience, they could seriously hurt her.

Also, my mom often uses accessories like wigs to try to hide her age, so even though she's pushing 70, when she's wearing a wig it's not always obvious. So if you think "Well, I would never do that to an old person" it's not always obvious, some people don't look their age and/or are good at hiding their age.

Hey guys did you know "pushed somebody and they fell and hit their head" is like. One of the most common forms of manslaughter?

The Plagues song in Prince of Egypt goes so hard

Somebody: *annoys me slightly*

Me in my head: I send a pestilence and plague. Into your house, into your bed. Into your streams, into your streets. Into your drink, into your bread. Upon your cattle, on your sheep. Upon your oxen in your field. Into your dreams, into your sleep. Until you break, until you yield!

How Mexicans feel about duendes too.

True. Most Irish people, as Norwegians do with Trolls, will happily let the 'fairies' be a thing to make tours for tourists and idle threats to make children behave. Most Irish people will have a very normal and mature explanation of fairies as a common folk mythology that expresses some dimension of Irish culture but are not, obviously, to be taken literally.

And most Irish people, if you ask them to move a stone from a fairy circle will immoveably, flatly respond with 'absolutely fucking not'.

Construction projects have had to halt and be abandoned for it.

At work me and a couple coworkers (black, white, and mexican) had a fun discussion on whether there are more ghosts at a hospital or a cemetery.

everyone individually took a moment to specify that ghosts probably aren't REAL real. then weighed in on where and why.

for the record my position was that there's probably way more ghosts in hospitals because that's where people die horribly, but since you can only see ghosts in dark, solitary conditions, graveyards at night is where the majority of ghost sightings occur. hospitals are usually well lit and busy, so even if they're crammed with ghosts the living are too damn busy to see them. meanwhile if a cemetery has even one ghost that followed her corpse there from the hospital, she'll be spotted because that's where all the ghost hunters go to look.

this theory was received as extremely sensible, and a coworker drew the conclusion that that's why abandoned hospitals are even scarier than graveyards. once the place gets abandoned then you can tell how much ghosts got built up.

we all liked this explanation a lot and explained it to everyone else all night. and of course, none of us believe in ghosts.

I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know

I think...you might be right

what the fuck

The exact opposite of Tiffany btw. People think Tiffany is a recent name but it dates back century, while Madison seems like it should've been around since forever but is instead very recent.

Tiny Mechanical Insects Made of Watch Parts

[PHOTOS TAKEN: MARCH 4TH, 2025 | Image IDs: Three photos of a black, red, and yellow metric paper wasp, licking up something off of a glass surface /End IDs.]