#YOU make the difference

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[sturgeonposting]

Do you love the colour of the sturgeon?

Which one?

[great-and-small]

should i get into bird watching?

[morganbritton132]

No one tells you when you get a Big Serious Job™ how many fucking abbreviations you’ll be forced to learn.

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[bereft-of-frogs]

There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

[junglejim4322]

do you think a 5'4 and 6'2 height difference is predatory?

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[and-corn]

shoutout to the "foolproof" bread recipe I fucked up entirely for inspiring this

[batbabydamian]

happy booping! 🐾

[borrelia]

if you donate one single us dollar to the unrwa, you will have donated more money than you would have by clicking that stupid arab.orb link every day for four and a half years. yes, they do actually donate money to the unrwa, but even with tens of thousands of clicks, most of that money is the baseline $90 they send every quarter. from 2023 quarter 4, half a million clicks turned into $380.57. maths out to six hundreths of one cent per click. just donate to unrwa.

[captainkirkk]

Concept: Peter actually got bitten by a totally normal spider. It's just a coincidence that his mutant powers were awakened around the same time

[prolibytherium]

One of my all time biggest pet peeves with historical(ish) fantasy is when the writer constructs a religion with a clear bias that it's stupid and false and therefore only the Stupid People and/or commoners believe in it and all the smart/elite main characters are like, quasi-atheists or otherwise just routinely flout established religious conventions of orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy because they're Too Smart for it or etc.

It's usually an extension of assumptions that people in the past were just less intelligent than in the contemporary, just being like "I know that the sun is a star millions of miles away that the earth orbits, but this ancient religion describes it as a chariot flying through the sky" and not really bothering to learn the context and just (consciously or subconsciously) settling on 'that's a crazy thing to think and was probably believed in because they were Stupid'.

And that whole attitude pisses me off so much. People were as 'smart' 10,000 years ago as they are today. These beliefs aren't just desperate, random flailing to explain phenomena that could not directly be accounted for either, it's not like people just looked at the sun and went "Uhhh I don't know what the fuck that thing is, actually. I guess it might be a chariot or a boat or something?? Yeah let's go with that." and based entire religious practices on this. Every well-established belief system exists within broader contexts of cultural values/subjective perceptions of reality/knowledge systems/etc, and exist as part of a historical continuum of religious practices that came before. Even when not Materially Correct, they have context and internal logic, they're not always dead literal with zero levels of allegory, and they're never a result of stupidity.

[embervoices]

[Transcript of a conversation on Bluesky]

K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com

One holdover that's stuck with me from Trump's term in office is how few people actually call in. My congressman's office said they were BOGGLED at how many calls they had gotten on a particular issue, so I asked how many...

They replied, "Seventeen."

jamie quinn 🏳️‍⚧️ @threnody.bsky.social KOSA is moving through the senate right now, where it has significant support. but nothing's final until it's final. if your senator's a democrat, call & email. use this script. it's timed to 1:00 and it won't take long. even with enforcement moved to the FTC, this bill is too easily weaponized.

[Embedded Text Image Transcript]

My name is _ and I'm one of your constituents. I'm calling to urge you to vote NO on KOSA - the Kids Online Safety Act. The bill's sponsors claim it will protect kids by placing a duty of care on online platforms to prevent anything that could be harmful.

The power to decide what's harmful has been ceded to the FTC. FTC leadership is made by presidential appointment. Current president Lina Khan may proceed fairly, but what happens when the next Donald Trump is in the Oval Office? What if it's Trum himself? Do you trust a Trump appointee not to abuse this enforcement power?

KOSA claims to protect kids, but it's poorly designed and, given time, it will absolutely and without question, harm LGBTQ children, adults, and anyone who needs information on reproductive health or abortion.

KOSA author, Senator Marsha Blackburn, said she introduced KOSA in part - and I quote - "to protect minor children from the transgender in our society." The Heritage Foundation proudly said they'll apply pressure through KOSA to block information about abortion, reproductive health, & LGBTQ issues.

Vote NO on KOSA.

[/Embedded Text Image Transcript]

K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com

So, yes, your voice does make a difference because if everyone else is thinking "Well, my voice doesn't matter so why bother" then you and sixteen of your online buddies can go ahead and straight-up boggle a congressman.

Feb 15, 2024 at 12:34 PM

[/Bluesky Transcript] (Emphasis mine)

[cosmiclove-heavenstruck]

TORI SPRING: SOLITAIRE

"I think you should know that I make up a lot of stuff in my head and then get sad about it." Tori Spring, played by Jenny Walser

[dilfdyke]

betraying someone who trusts them deeply is one of the sexiest things a character can do its unparalleled. cause either the relationship is irrevocably changed and said character is completely at fault (guilt complex, hot) or it isnt and then both sides have to deal with the fact that they care about each other enough to overlook the betrayal (unceasing devotion, also hot)

[stil-lindigo]

lighthearted.

if this comic resonated with you, please consider donating to this palestinian escape fund (vetted by @/nabulsi and @/el-shab-hussein) as it is less than $7,000 away from it's goal.

i turn 24 today. To celebrate, I made this comic to be a spiritual successor to lead balloon, a comic in which I talked about the darkest period of my life so far.

A lot has changed since my 23rd birthday and this one. My priorities have shifted a lot, in ways that I think are mostly good. But i think the best part about today is that suicide has gone back to being a far away notion. I'm really lucky, and I'm grateful for that.