Yotsuyu wind-down painting

teenagers, amirite

everyone is deleting the caption to this but this work is called “perfect lovers” by the gay artist felix gonzalez-torres. the piece is about the illness and death of his HIV-positive partner ross laycock:

“Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit where it is due: time. We are synchronized, now and forever. I love you.” (Gonzalez-Torres, 1988)

I assigned a writing prompt a few weeks ago that asked my students to reflect on a time when someone believed in them or when they believed in someone else. One of my students began to panic.

“I have to ask Google the prompt to get some ideas if I can’t just use AI,” she pleaded and then began typing into the search box on her screen, “A time when someone believed in you.”

“It’s about you,” I told her. “You’ve got your life experiences inside of your own mind.” It hadn’t occurred to her — even with my gentle reminder — to look within her own imagination to generate ideas. One of the reasons why I assigned the prompt is because learning to think for herself now, in high school, will help her build confidence and think through more complicated problems as she gets older — even when she’s no longer in a classroom situation.

She’s only in ninth grade, yet she’s already become accustomed to outsourcing her own mind to digital technologies, and it frightens me.

When I teach students how to write, I’m also teaching them how to think. Through fits and starts (a process that can be both frustrating and rewarding), high school English teachers like me help students get to know themselves better when they use language to figure out what they think and how they feel.

. . .

If you believe, as I do, that writing is thinking — and thinking is everything — things aren’t looking too good for our students or for the educators trying to teach them. In addition to teaching high school, I’m also a college instructor, and I see this behavior in my older students as well.

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This! This is what scares me the most about AI! Physical exertion is difficult if someone isn't used to it, and it gets easier the more often it's done. When it's done often enough, it becomes a habit. Mental exertion is exactly the same. Thinking is a learned skill just like a sport is, and an entire generation is growing up without that most critical skill.

An unthinking populace is a more easily controlled populace.

the brainworms r eatin me alive

joined magma at some point, now I run away

When I'm out in the garage working, Vice gets to tag along and hunt dust bunnies in the garage attic. I pause every so often to call him down, just to make sure he hasn't gotten into trouble.

He always has a Lot to report.

some of you guys do not thump the baby to get the demons out, which is fine because sometimes cats don't have demons in em. but you have to understand that Vice is full of demons (Anxiety, Phobia of Furnace Repairmen, Fear of Babies, Hairball) and needs to be sqashed. He does not want light gentle touches. that is bad stimulation. He wants to be pulverized.

To be clear for those of you who haven't been here the whole time, Vice isn't a barn cat. Vice is an extremely anxious housecat that gets gently carried out to the garage so he can cosplay having a real job. He caught a mouse once and went into a panic about it.

now that we have a proper view of tfone soundwave's back (blokees soundwave figure), it's fun to take a look at his alt mode again and find the details 💙

...is that gonna happen. like. every time?

it is absolutely essential to have friends you can have extremely insane pervert conversations with. this is kind of what makes life worth living

I think kafka’s diaries are the strongest evidence that journaling is not necessarily good for your mental health

it's because he didn't use washi tape

university professors love to create the most fucked up pdf ever known to mankind. it's enrichment for them.

what HAPPENED here

unfortunately no eclipse photography can ever outdo the waffle house one from 2017

i love when fic writers who have clearly never tried any kind of alcohol in their lives try to write someone drinking bc they're always like

"he ordered a tall glass of hard liquor. after three large glasses he was feeling tipsy" like babygirl i can't be sure but i think u just sent this man to the hospital

"the amber liquid tasted sweet" bestie i can assure you it did not

cant even hornypost about falin touden bc im just gonna get dozens of people responding with marcille speech bubble image edits

this is like lingerie to me

Type of shit a cat walking on two legs would wear

you get me

He's going through a pre-flight checklist to make sure your spacecraft is up to code before departure.