kindnessinsilver

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That particular disappointment of the more literate-than-average child upon discovering that “gaol” is just pronounced “jail”

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“The Talmud makes a challenging statement. If you have the desire to spill blood, say the Rabbis, become a butcher, and if you have the desire to steal (in other words to take hold of and possess) other people’s money, become a collector of charity. In other words, take the desire you have, and use it for a good purpose. This is a crucial idea within Judaism. There are two aspects to who I am as a person: the gifts and desires I am given, and what I choose to do with them. Everything we are given in this world, however challenging this may sometimes be, is ours for a reason. We all go through life with our own little package, our own suitcase, full of our talents and skills, desires and foibles; all the things that bring us up, and all the things that bring us down. There isn’t much we can do about that. Each of us has a suitcase, and whatever we think of it, it is ours to keep. Some are born tall, maybe they will become basketball stars, and some have musical talent, and others, the gift of knowing when and how to smile. Many of these talents we do not really earn, they are ours to develop. The question, however, is what we choose to do with them. And if everything comes to me from G-d, then even my weaknesses can be a gift, if I will only find a way to channel them for the good. If I have a desire to steal, it must come from somewhere, and therefore there must be a way to make good of it. Our challenge in this world is how to do just that.”

— Rav Binny Freedman (via yidquotes)

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so was anybody gonna talk about the new ecology paper proposing Ethiopian wolves as potential pollinators of native nectar-rich flower inflorescences positioned on stalks conveniently within wolf enjoying height AND that it includes photos of said wolves doing said unconfirmed alleged pollination (delightful) AND that it has observational evidence suggesting some wolves do like 1 flower and are done and other wolves just get really into it and spend upwards of an hour going between 20 and 30 flowers for up to 4-5 minutes per cluster just utterly going at it, lost in the nectar sauce? because I cannot BELIEVE I haven’t seen something on this webbed site about it yet. it just has everything this site enjoys

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IDGAF (I draw giant ass fish)

Prints

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had the Wildest Fucking Experience of my life at a gay trans wedding today lads.

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suck, and i cannot stress this enough, my cock to the fucking base

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(source: The Independent Observer, December 23, 1948.)

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there's something so compelling about stories where a character's virtues intensify into flaws that lead to their downfall. loyalty and love becoming so all-consuming that compassion outside of them ceases to exist. duty overwhelming any moral compass until order becomes more important than justice. selflessness so intense it becomes self-destruction. let me watch while whatever saved the hero in the beginning destroys them. let me see them fall to their own worst impulses disguised as what once made them good.

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'Tis the season to unpack some stuff about Christmas from a minority perspective:

Christmas is a Christian holiday. The fact that many celebrate it in an irreligious way (which is valid!) does not change its origins, connotations, symbolism, nor what it has historically meant for religious minorities.

The idea that Christmas is "secular" (read: neutral) is a product of Christian hegemony and the blindness of many in Christian countries to the permeation of Christianity as "default" culture.

When someone says they don't celebrate Christmas since it's a Christian holiday, it is not actually reassuring or helpful to say something along the lines of "oh well it's just a secular day of family & presents for everyone! So you can celebrate it too!"

Though the above statement is usually well-intentioned, it is often distressing to hear because it is untrue and is erasing our lived experiences. The reflexive effort to make Christmas universal is a cultural reverberation of the millennia-old evangelizing effort to make Christianity universal, and as such, can be very uncomfortable for religious minorities.

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there's no better feeling than putting my fingers in someone's mouth and exploring around and watching the light drain from their eyes as they sink deeper and deeper into subspace 🥰🥰🥰

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Scientific Method

by James Tadd Adcox

Picture the ocean. No. Picture the entire thing, all at once. You are not doing it. It’s okay. One day something terrible will happen, and I will not be prepared.

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the first person to turn an apple to sauce... what hubris. no other fruit gets this treatment. well, except for the wretched tomato. but that's a punishment, because the tomato is morally corrupt.

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SHAPE HELL

Yup.

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new tumblr update just dropped

also curious in the tags what ur ratio was i.e. i dropped about 300 followers and i was at just over 1200 before

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Instead of apologizing for liking "trashy" media, consider: what is it doing well? If you like it, if it's making you feel pleasure and interest, then it must be succeeding at something. Is it shaping a set of emotional beats that you find satisfying to watch play out? Did it craft a character you find really compelling? Is something in the styling and aesthetics speaking to you? Did it unexpectedly resonate with a mood or experience you needed to see reflected right then?

However shallow or flawed a piece of media is, if you like it, it's because of something it did well - at least well enough to affect you, on the day that you encountered it.

There are a lot of good reasons to acknowledge this. One is about gratitude and manners: someone worked hard on that thing, and if they provided something that gave you happiness and pleasure, it's nice to honor that. Another is about breaking down the insidious habit of sorting everything into simple good/bad boxes. A piece of media, like a person, can do a lot of things wrong and a lot of things right, and the things on one side do not magically erase the other.

But the most important reason, I believe, is to get in the habit of celebrating what brings you pleasure and happiness. All your life there have been and there will be people telling you that you find joy in the wrong things, that if a particular thing makes you feel good it shows that there's something wrong with you. I reject that utterly. If a particular thing makes you feel good then there's something right, about you and about that thing. I'm not saying that pleasure is the only important thing or that every pleasure should be indulged indiscriminately. All I'm saying is that pleasure is in and of itself a good thing, and deserves notice.