#<- YES WE DO!!!

[lazylittledragon]

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024

[creed-of-cats]

"If voting changed anything they wouldn't let people do it-" grabs your face THEY DIDN'T JUST "LET" PEOPLE DO IT, MOST PEOPLE COULDN'T VOTE FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS. PEOPLE OF COLOR ONLY GOT THE FULL RIGHT TO VOTE 50 YEARS AGO IN THE US, THATS BARELY A GENERATION.

IF IT DIDNT MATTER AT ALL WHY WOULD THEY SPEND SO MUCH TIME GERRYMANDERING THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYWHERE?? WHY CAN'T FELONS VOTE?? WHY CANT PUERTO RICO VOTE? WHY DO THEY KEEP SWITCHING DATES AND LAWS AND TIMES AND WHATEVER THEY POSSIBLY CAN TO STOP PEOPLE FROM VOTING?? WHY DO THEY MAKE EFFORT AT ALL??

BEING DISILLUSIONED IS A REASONABLE RESPONSE. BUT PEOPLE FOUGHT AND DIED AND ARE STILL FUCKING DYING FOR THAT RIGHT, DONT SPIT IN THEIR FACE.

[tiger-grace]

Flash: what the hell happened with no metas in gotham?

Batman: Signal is a special case, I trust him solely as one of gotham’s vigilantes-

Flash: What? No. I’m talking about the blue one. I saw him lift like, 1000 pounds the other day.

Batman: … it was that or therapy

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[evilmafuyu666]

[stil-lindigo]

Bisan is calling for another global strike!

I saw some posts just outlining Jan 21st, and wanted to clarify that Bisan has called for a full seven days of action.

What a global strike would look like is:

calling in sick to work

purchasing bare essentials ahead of the week so you can observe the general boycott of goods / buying as little as you genuinely can

putting in a concerted effort to elevate Palestinian voices and make it clear that this strike is in support of a permanent ceasefire!

For those who will have to purchase necessary goods during this time, please observe the brands that the BDS movement is asking us to boycott!

♢♢♢

Right now is also a good time to mention some better uses for your money during this week.

Available e-sims in Gaza are running low!!

Mirna El Helbawi and her team are working round the clock to continue to connect Palestinians as Israel does its best to cut them off from the rest of the world.

You can learn how to purchase and send e-sims here, and below you’ll find a list of what is currently needed (the areas in brackets indicate what region you should select to buy e-sims in).

--

CareforGaza is an organisation that does verifiably good work, distributing supplies directly to Palestinian families.

They have a Gofundme set up at the moment, but because of Gofundme’s poor track record regarding refusing to transfer funds to Palestinians, I’d recommend continuing to donate directly to their PayPal here.

Good luck to all of you. Don't turn away from Palestine!

[demaparbat-hp]

He truly did.

[reasonsforhope]

Literally begging anyone who can vote in US elections to vote, and to vote against Trump. Which means voting for Harris, not abstaining or voting third party.

My family actually did move here from an authoritarian country, where voting literally didn't matter, they literally did throw out your vote, and they literally did assassinate citizens who spoke out against them.

We would all very much like to keep living in a country where those things are not the case!

You know, the same things that Trump and his stooges have openly said they want to do. And two of the main propaganda lines for why people in the US shouldn't vote, which is a lie.

Voting matters. The parties are not the same.

And make sure to vote in down-ballot races!!!

And like. The fact that voting matters in the US is a very real reason for hope. It is something you should genuinely appreciate. We can make a difference.

And a lot of people risked their lives or even died to earn that right, and it's a right not everyone has.

[official-time-loop-posts]

Thank you to @sleepnoises for making the original poll & for giving us the idea to to this :)

Sorry if we couldn’t get your favorite on here, we were limited to only 12 options (11 if you don’t include the “other” option).

[egophiliac]

everyone out of the way, this is the only thing I'm going to be thinking about from now on.

(okay, there is one more thing)

[hinamie]

I'm always pushing you away from me / but you come back with gravity / and when I call, you come home

[tofixtheshadows]

Sorry but Kabru is so fascinating to me as a character, in a pure mechanical sense, because of what Ryoko Kui does with him. Everything about him is a red herring. He's deliberately introduced as some kind of rival for Laios, a party leader who is hopeless against monsters but absolutely brilliant with people both in and out of combat, and who has good reason to oppose him.

By the end of chapter 31, you might even think Kabru's going to end up as some sort of anti-villain, an antagonist with the best of intentions who nevertheless tries to foil our hero's plans. He wants to defeat the Mad Mage himself, he suspects Laios of being too irresponsible to be trusted with control of the dungeon, and his crew even thinks that Laios's party stole from them (and they're kind of right!). All signs point towards an inevitable showdown.

And then ... none of that happens.

Confrontation over the stolen treasure? Kabru is literally too smart to fall for the classic miscommunication trope and correctly decides it's not worth making a big deal of.

Kabru's deadly PVP skills? Aside from trying to take down Falin, he never fights another human again.

Wanting to be the one who defeats the dungeon? Turns out he was only doing that because he didn't think any other adventurer would have people's best interests at heart, and he's more than willing to play a support role in the whole affair.

Thinking Laios is up to no good? He really did just want to get to know the guy more. He has his misgivings, but ultimately ends up trusting Laios with his life.

Is Kabru going to get some sort of comeuppance for hating monsters and not appreciating their ecosystem? Well no, he has good reasons for hating monsters. He ends up wanting to learn about them through Laios's eyes, but he's never forced into any "Wow, guess I was wrong about them!" revelation.

Hell, even his implied ladykiller ways, which might lead you to think he'll end up being the stock "chivalrous lech" type of character, don't really manifest. He has a lot of opportunities to act flirtatiously around women, but doesn't. He's just a guy whose natural charisma makes him into human catnip.

And that's all hysterical to me, to pull it off. It's a fascinating way to tell a story. To introduce a character explicitly as a rival, potentially even a villain, and instead make them a deuteragonist. It's like a magician making a coin disappear, then slowing down their trick to show you the misdirection. "Did you see what I did there?" they ask with a wink. "The coin was in my other hand the entire time."

[adhdandcomics]

shout out to my folks with insomnia & depression & delayed sleep phase disorder & sleep apnea & disabilities & other sleep disorders diagnosed, undiagnosed, and just my plain old night owls & night shift workers!! we r so fucking cool & exist every day in a society not made for us at all. and NONE of us are lazy bums or bad people for staying up late & sleeping in till noon or two or whatever whenever you get up!! no matter what anyone says!! you’re incredible and i love you!!!

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[layzeal]

ok I'm curious so put in the tags what country you are from and whether or not you own/use a rice cooker