#I'm not being hyperbolic I'm Right

[trans-yllz]

sorry I can't stand aus where wei wuxian grows up in another sect. I mean this so genuinely without the yunmeng siblings the story is Nothing

[alexjcrowley]

Was just given a bit of attitude about being aromantic by the only people I've told I am aromantic really trying not to hyperventilate here

[baronfulmen]

So here's my problem:

I think paragraphs, like stanzas of a poem, should be defined by feel and flow and stuff. I don't like the rules.

SPECIFICALLY, I don't like having every single quote be its own paragraph. It's fine sometimes, but when you have a lot of back and forth it's just bad - and even when it's just one thing and then the reply to that thing sometimes they belong together.

I don't mean that I run them all into the same line, just to be clear. There's still a line break. So it's like this:

"Where did he go?" "Who?" "You know who! The fucking axe murderer!" "Oh, Bob?"

But when I do that, people complain. "Oh, Baron Fulmen, you have accidentally only used a line break and not a new paragraph! I can't possibly read this! It's too hard!"

So I go online and I search, hoping to find support and solace, and instead what do I find? YOU MUST START A NEW PARAGRAPH.

Well, fuck you.

...

Except.

Except if, somehow, that really is hard for them to read then I should fix it, right? But seriously you can't read it that way? Really?

[ellaenchanting]

Prompt for a ramble or a drabble or whatever you like if you want: what happens in REALLY deep trance? (can you tell what's been on my mind lol) happy to see you doing a little writing again :)

First of all, thanks! :) I hope the spirit will stay with me.

So- a REALLY deep trance -

Being a really deep trance is like falling back into the ocean from a cliff- closing your eyes and throwing yourself over and not even noticing when you hit the water- just going down down down in the dark. Sinking into a sea with no bottom.

A really deep trance is being swallowed by a huge creature and being carried off by it with no real control over where it'll spit you out. Feeling temporarily consumed.

A really deep trance is being dissolved - everything gets bigger and bigger as you get smaller and smaller and then you just ARE part of the bigness itself in a nice, ego-less way.

A really deep trance is being possessed- feeling so relaxed and distant that something powerful takes you over, mind and body. Something that feels like awe- like your very self will burst from trying to contain something so big.

It feels like an orgasm- but much more internal and not really physical at all. Something deep happens inside and you're on a precipice- like being at the top of a roller coaster hill. Gasping. But there's no shuddery down- it's just the sustained height and widening of the moment as it gets bigger and bigger. I'll find myself moaning from that stretching when it's really good. It's ecstatic in that religious way- like a medieval painting.

(It also doesn't HAVE to be that profound- it kind of depends on the other person and what's ok in the relationship and how the day is feeling yadda yadda. But it CAN feel that big and that's exciting. I'm really bad at spirituality in general and it feels like it's hacking my spirituality instincts- giving room to all of those ideas from my childhood that kinda died on the vine. A bit dangerous but worth indulging in with the right person.)

[raplele]

I think she's really the one!!!! I know I said that about the other 5 but this time it's different !!!!!!!

it's gonna work out once and for all and then I'll never be lonely again

[coockie8]

Actually it should be legal to rush the stage and start beating a guys ass when he starts being blatantly bigoted or predatory disguised as "jokes".

Standing on stage in front of a microphone is not a go-ahead to say whatever the hell you want without consequences because you're "joking", and so many comedians need to be reminded of that.

[songofwizardry]

my youtube home page recommended videos these days are like

video i've already watched

actual video i'd like to watch from a creator i follow

extremely upsetting video that has zero (0) relevance to anything i ever watch

video with ten views of someone's high school graduation or something

shorts i don't want

video i've already watched

video from my watch-later playlist that i saved five years ago

six (6) videos related to home improvement bc i made the mistake of watching one (1) video about fixing something once

tomska????

[david-watts]

maybe I'm a bit possessive but I HATE it when mainlanders and god forbid non-australians especially yanks are all 'we should bring back the thylacine because it's OUR fault it's extinct' like who's we? this is something white tasmanians did. if you wanna mourn an extinct species due to human action go find something local to you instead

[clownhooves]

Really hard not to get a big ego sometimes when EVERYONE ELSE IS SO FUCKING LAME seriously I swear to fucking god

[ms-spkhd]

It's not like there's anything inherently wrong with Steve. Just...weird. Odd. A wealth of other various synonyms to describe his decidedly bizarre behavior.

Well, Bizarre's a strong word.

But Eddie's point still stands! Steve's a little to the left and it makes Eddie feel endlessly awkward for noticing. The fact that he's uncomfortable about it compounds his unease over it.

"Wanna talk about it, then?" Jeff asks, riffling idly through the record crate. Of course, the one day off they spend window-shopping in Indianapolis results in Eddie getting the fucking 'let's discuss our feelings about things' talk from Jeff. He wonders how the man isn't green with sickness from therapizing all the goddamn time.

Eddie rolls his eyes. "I'd look like an idiot."

"Would the idiot keep running or confront his problems head-on?"

"This feels like a trap."

"Oh yeah," Jeff says simply.

"Like the ones with the cardboard box and the stick."

"Pre-cisely."

Eddie's shoulders slump in defeat. Better the idiot who speaks, he supposes. "He's very smiley about me being gay."

"Smiley."

"Smiley. As in he's acting like I vomit flowers and shit rainbows." Eddie shakes his head in frustration. "I'm not opposed to the support and everything...it's just that. He's like an octave higher than usual about it."

Jeff purses his lips in thought. "Like, his voice?"

"No--like...like, he's very enthusiastic about my sexuality."

Eddie leans back against the shelf behind him. Steve's a nice guy, really, but the way he goes about his support of Eddie feels like he's trying to compensate for something. A lack of empathy when he was younger, perhaps.

"He always asks if I have a boyfriend, or if I've been hooking up with any guys lately--which, hello, does he not know that queer metalhead nerd isn't a very hot item here?"

Jeff pulls a face but nods in understanding.

"And when I tell him obviously no, he says he can hook me up with his, what? Fucking father's brother's cousin's former roommate? It's like he's begging for a double date with him and his new squeeze, it's goddamn ridiculous." "New squeeze?"

"I'm hyperbolizing." Eddie blows a raspberry and shrugs. "He says it's sad that I don't have someone for how good-looking I am. You're making the face again."'

Jeff snaps out of whatever trance he's in, his drawn eyebrows shooting up to his hairline in surprise. After his gawking mouth clacks shut, he cautiously gestures at Eddie to continue.

"It's stupid," Eddie concedes, "but I really don't understand what changed, y'know? He used to be this cool, confident guy with a dorky side, but now he's just so...I don't know."

Jeff smiles lightly and knocks Eddie's shoulder with his. "I have a theory."

"Go on."

"I think Steve isn't being supportive."

"Uh-huh."

"Far from it, actually."

"Yeah. Whatever you say, chief."

"He isn't smothering you," Jeff points out. "He wants to fuck you."

Eddie blinks. Takes a moment to access and really take in what Jeff just said. "What?"

"Or at least, he wants you in an entirely non-friendly and possibly even carnal way."

"Excuse me?"

"Biblically."

"Dude," Eddie insists. "What. The. Fuck."

Jeff raises his hands placatingly. "Steve clearly likes you. A lot. He probably sees you being gay as an in for him."

"Okay, well, I don't understand. He tries to set me up with randos he knows all the time."

"He called you good-looking."

"While he was trying to set me up with said rando!"

"Guys like him have a really backward way of doing things." Eddie crosses his arms sternly. "Or he's straight," he says.

"Again," Jeff asserts. "Good. Looking. Dude, he's fucking obsessed with you! You said he's an octave higher around you now, right?"

"Because he's a well-meaning friend?"

"Eddie, remember when he crashed band practice last week?"

Oh yeah, Eddie remembers that. The man of the hour randomly parked in Gareth's driveway, leaned against his Beemer with his arms crossed, and watched Eddie play like he fucking hung the moon. Afterward, he'd sung his praises for the band and gave Eddie a yellow guitar pick attached to a sparkling silver chain. "Found the pick a couple of towns south with Robin the other day. Reminded me of you," he said softly. "Since you lost your last one."

It went unspoken where Eddie lost 'the last one'.

Eddie remembers smiling back at Steve with the force of a thousand supernovas, and thinking later in the night that it felt like a scene from a romance movie. Steve's favorite color is yellow, isn't it? It was like he wanted a piece of himself with Eddie at all times, right next to his heart.

Eddie didn't want to give himself that stupid hope. That Steve Harrington wanted in on his heart.

It doesn't feel so stupid anymore.

He looks back at Jeff and says, "Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

Part two

[karmaphone]

maybe I'm just a hoe with eds but people popping in their shoulders in media always bothers me. you don't grab and yonk it like that you make a fist and rotate it outwards*...........

[somecunttookmyurl]

basic necklace with a charm of the type found in claires:

lobster clasp: 5p

chain: 4p

jump rings: 4p

charm: 15p

2 minutes (VERY generously. ive never timed myself on that but earrings takes me 57 seconds? so) labour minimum wage: 38p

total cost 66p

being a crafter is so weird because it's like. here's a necklace that between materials and minimum wage labour cost me £1 to make. you will happilly pay me £6 for it because the same thing in claire's is £15. here's a blanket that between materials and half minimum wage labour cost me £700 to make. you will tell me to fuck off because you can buy a blanket in a shop for £100.

[spiritsonic]

Deleted my reblog of the post about possible Palestinian donation bots and scams. While I agree with the overall gist of the post, that we should all think critically about where all these donation drives are coming from, their more hyperbolic statements didn't sit right with me. Just as I don't think trusting every ask about donations is smart, I don't think reporting every ask you get is good either, as it will inevitably lead to legitimate accounts being punished for the actions of opportunistic bots. Also, dismissing them as fronts for human traffickers is impossible to prove, and makes it WAY too easy to vilify and dismiss every message you get. I don't want to support that train of thought, even indirectly.

If you want to signal boost or donate to individual drives you do you, please just practice due diligence and take a careful look at where they're coming from before putting money down. In my personal opinion I think it's more effective to donate to established charities with proof of the work they're doing on the ground, so I'm going to repost the list of links for some of those from the original post.

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Palestine Red Crescent Society

Islamic Relief USA

World Central Kitchen

Medecins Sans Frontiers

[psychoticallytrans]

There's this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they're abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that's not common.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don't know what's normal and what isn't. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.

[innuendostudios]

this is the final Alt-Right Playbook. it's called The South Bank of the Rubicon.

thank you for watching this series the last eight years. I'm not going anywhere, but I'll be turning my attention to topics other than conservative rhetorical strategies; going forward, I don't see our battles being fought with rhetoric.

support my work on Patreon and/or subscribe to me on Nebula. transcript below the cut.

---

The Rubicon is a river in Italy. The story goes that, at the end of the governorship of Julius Caesar, he was ordered to disband his army and stay north of the Rubicon. When, instead, Caesar marched his army across the river and towards Rome, it was considered an act of treason, and the beginning of the Roman Civil War, at the end of which Caesar would reign victorious. It is said, as he forded the Rubicon, Caesar declared, “The die is cast.”

In today’s vernacular, we refer to a metaphoric Rubicon as the point of no return. Children “cross the Rubicon” into adulthood, isolationist governments “cross the Rubicon” into international politics. Each of us will cast the die several times in our own lives. But we say also that movements, that people, cross the Rubicon when they become irredeemable.

When times are bad, we wonder anxiously how far from the Rubicon we are. When does an insurgency become a war, a demonstration a riot? When is the moment an economy in danger becomes one in collapse? We scan the horizon for the riverbank, hoping we didn’t cross it some ways back.

The thing about points of no return, the reason we worry over them so much, is it’s rare to know where they are until they are some ways behind you. The Rubicon is not the Mississippi; it is a muddy little creek history lost track of for centuries.

In the United States, we are increasingly comfortable saying that our democracy is “under threat.” That we are “at risk” of descending into authoritarianism. Few are ready to say that the threat has arrived. And I’m referring to myself as I say that: I’m not ready to say it’s arrived. No one wants to call it prematurely. The Right screams that “the Left” - Black Lives Matter or Antifa or some thinly-veiled caricature of The Jews - are ready to kick down your door and bash your teeth in. And I talk about why they say this, their need to exaggerate the threat from the Left, so that, when they aggress against us, it seems like self-defense. So that we are to blame for any violence we suffer. I talk about the danger of this thinking being accepted. I say the way mainstream conservative politicians and media legitimize these arguments is “worrying.” But I don’t say “they are saying this in preparation to kick down your door and bash in your teeth.” I want people to listen to me. I don’t want to sound irrational, and I don’t want to sound like them. And… I don’t want it to be true yet.

Say, for the sake of argument, you are, at this moment, ankle-deep in the water, desperately wondering how many paces you are from The South Bank of the Rubicon.

There was a time when any number of things would have been the moment. If you could go back to 2015 and ask, “Is a candidate promising to jail his political opponents, or a president building concentration camps at the border, or a lame duck provoking an insurrection to overturn a vote, the moment where you would unequivocally call him a fascist?” And we would have said, “No question.” But those moments came, and they went, and we called them troubling, we called them dangerous, but it still seemed alarmist to call them fascist. Journalists and policy wonks still reacted with surprise if you came anywhere near the word. You could still run a campaign on “reasoning with the Right.” Republicans have made great strides by being so blatantly horrible that accurately describing their behavior sounds like hyperbole.

It seems we are always approaching the other side of the Rubicon, never arriving. We can turn back. The north is still the nearer bank.

There is a knack to this. Everyone expects it to happen all at once. That one day we will wake up to swastikas and kids in cages and unmarked vans disappearing people off the street. But those all happened on different days. And the swastikas were a natural extension of the barely-coded language of the Administration’s supporters, the cages were the next step after their family separation policy, and the vans were not a surprise after years of police militarization. You don’t have to cross the river quickly, just steadily. So that every step makes the last one seem inevitable and the next one obvious. The people who say “this will never happen on our watch,” they will divert the river south to make it true.

It’s losing a little ground on a dozen fronts every day. It’s seeing so many lines crossed you can’t even remember where you used to draw them. It’s the readiness to give up on things being better and just wanting them to be quiet.

I can’t tell you if that moment has come. I don’t know how to call it any better than you. So, instead, I’m going to ask you to do something: I want you to decide, at this moment, what the Rubicon is for you. What is that undeniable instant where, if something drastic does not happen immediately, your rights and freedoms are forfeit. And don’t show up in my comments saying it happened years or centuries ago - you’re not wrong, but cynicism is acceptance. I’m asking when would be the time to act. Write it down. Put it on your phone or your dry erase board or a post-it on your bathroom mirror. So when that moment comes you will remember that this was your Rubicon, because it won’t feel like it anymore. It will feel like the next logical step.

And ask yourself, when that moment comes, what is the right thing to do? You don’t have to have an answer yet. But think on it. Cuz we haven’t been doing it.

As a leftist, the futures I envision are full of possibility. I am fond of saying “there are a hundred ways forward and only one way back.” So many things we could try if we allow ourselves to let go of white supremacy, of capitalism, of patriarchy. Imagining the future is a kind of world-building. To be on the Left, at least the way I try to do it, is to desire a spreading out, a pluralizing, an abandonment of hierarchy and a sharing of power between us all. I don’t know if that future is likely, but I know it’s possible.

That’s not how things look on the Right. For the Right, left to its own devices?

All roads lead to Rome.

[bogleech]

All the science fiction I grew up on told me some day there would be adorable quirky robots in every home and business that could hold at least a passably realistic conversation with you and help you out with little tasks and kid-me daydreamed endlessly about what that whimsical utopian life might be like. I even had an ongoing little kid daydream about being in the robot biz designing them my own way, maybe having a weird house full of my wacky machine creature family.

Now we have chatbots convincing enough that people get as hooked on interacting with them as they can any real person, we have near perfect voice synthesis and visual recognition software, we have actual robots that can jump around and dance with better balance than a human, we are RIGHT on the edge of little robot buddy world.

But absolutely none of that fiction framed robots as a heartless corporate product that would really just take opportunities from poor people and gather your data for advertising algorithms. Anyone who did not like the robots was supposed to just be mean and quite often a stand in for a *racist.*

Now that it's likely going to happen in the next 20 years I'm just ready to be one of those villains. If you send me a real functioning C-3p0 or Johnny 5 or Data and I see a Tesla or Google logo I am going to gouge out his eyes with a claw hammer and drink his microplastic blood.

This is probably a lie and at best I'd be crying the entire time but I hope you understand the sentiment behind the hyperbole