#and a rant

[orzszq]

Some days I feel totally inadequate. I want to post my drawings but get overwhelmed with anxiety. Even though I create what others might regard as art I can’t make myself say that I am an artist. Even in my head. So I’m the person who doodles, sketches, or has a hobby. I downplay myself, my skills, any progress I have made. During these days I forget that creating brings me joy. I struggle.

[saucylittlesmile]

I miss the pattern, too.

The fact is it's not very hard to stand on the ice and flail your arms and wiggle your hips. And because of all the stationary breaks and lack of skating skills, teams are looking slow as molasses this year.

None of the new "trick" movements they've added like sliding motions and assisted jumps seem to have the difficulty factor of skating intricate steps while so close it seems like your skates are going to run into one another. And it's not as if they're replacing the pattern with equivalently difficult skating sequences. It's just empty side-by-side skating. Sometimes it even looks like pairs, but the jumps never come.

All of the other disciplines are adding more difficult tricks. The jumps and twists and spins are getting more complex. Ice dance is getting easier and people are going to notice. It's really hard to promote ice dance as a sport if there's no great new feat to reach.

The choreographic elements can makes for entertainment- though even that isn’t guaranteed lol - but often it has little to do with skating, and as you said, are easier. I am still kind of stunned that they replaced the pattern with… nothing. Just choreography, character based, and aside from exactly where it has to happen on the ice, there are not any requirements and it’s all subjective from the judges as to how well you did it, like all the other choreographic sequences.

The pattern was the one thing left to challenge the skaters - any step sequences they create can still be difficult but they still have the freedom to do what works for them - though last years pattern I obsessed enough over the changes so many teams were making. Still, the pattern offered us so much, and now poof! it’s been replaced with jazz hands.

I don’t know if the lack of technical difficulty would necessarily deter new skaters; but not knowing how to improve to receive the favour of the judges certainly could. So much of ice dance is now marked on “I liked it more” or “your country is aligned with mine” or “you are the chosen one” or “you waited for your turn” that it feels like the new 6.0 for sure.

[chiisana-lion]

[grungekitty-77]

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

[euniexenoblade]

the story of kfc fucks me up man. the colonel founded this gas station that expanded to restaurant, the chicken at the restaurant gets popular, makes KFC, it gets big and he sells it to a corporation for a lot of money. realizes he got sorta scammed out of the true worth of kfc so tries to get more money and they refuse and the courts side against him. then he starts a new chicken restaurant claiming the corporate people were not making chicken to his standards and kfc sued him because kfc owned the colonel's likeness and the courts agreed. a corporation owned this man's name and appearance. he wasnt allowed to use either, thus legally erasing his reputation making it harder for him to get taken seriously in any food venture. the man, to the day he died, was going into kfc's and throwing fits because the food had fallen into such bad shape he hated it was associated with him. and it's like, whether he's a bad man or a good man or whatever, a corporation owned his identity, stopped him from using his reputation and identity in other businesses, and refused to acknowledge his outrage that they changed his recipes and still attributed it to him. this is literally the obnoxious plot of a jay and silent bob movie, but it was this dude's real life. what the fuck.

[ithappensoffstage]

I am genuinely so worried for all the young horny dykes going into adulthood thinking there's something "problematic" / "wrong" with them for being horny because fucking tiktok lesbians think any horny dyke content is "male gaze fetishistic"

[lobautumny]

This problem is nothing new, but this specific example with these numbers puts it into a fucking brutal perspective.

To put these numbers a different way: A Taco Bell burrito that used to cost ~7 minutes and 20 seconds of minimum wage work now costs ~30 minutes and 30 seconds of minimum wage work.

You used to be able to work at Taco Bell anywhere in the country and make enough money in one hour to buy at least 8 burritos (maybe 9 if you're a manager or something) and feed, like, 3-4 people a decently-filling meal. But now, the same amount of work at the same job will get you one meal for one person. And this change has happened over a mere 15 years.

Remember this whenever you see rich people demonize younger generations for our financial situations, when they call us irresponsible for not investing a ton of money in savings accounts.

[thottybrucewayne]

Sonya Massey's family asked that the video not be shared on social media. You do not "have to watch to know this stuff still happens." Black death is not your education tool. You should not have to see us gunned down in our homes to see our humanity. If you truly care about Sonya Massey's story, donate to her family's gofund me, and don't use her death as your intro to police brutality course.

[welcome-to-the-shit-library]

hey so we put your morally grey character in a fandom. yeah half the fanbase makes them into a perfect angel who did nothing wrong and the other half depicts them as a cartoonishly evil villain who hurts people for fun. no we dont know how to explain that people can do bad things for good reasons or good things for bad reasons. sorry man

[catmask]

when u go to write a mentally ill person in ur story you are presented two options. the first option is to write your mental illness realistically as you actually experience it with all the ups and downs and people who are like you will resonate with it and feel seen. except every person who reads instagram infographics on mental health that uses the phrase narcicisst for anyone who does anything that crosses them and unironically call themself a dark empath will call you scary and tell you that youre demonizing mentally ill people

the second option is to lie and write inspiration porn for those people to get hard to

[sniffanimal]

no more group chats. we meet once a week from now on and everyone prepares 2 personal stories and 3-5 memes and we sit in a circle and have a Socratic seminar covering these topics

[mokeonn]

I think at some point in time we need to sit down and start explaining to artist who want to make a career out of art that there are FAR more options than just "living off of commissions" and "posting my art online and praying I get paid for it".

[euniexenoblade]

Honestly, it can stand as it's own post. The tobacco industry is evil they want to get you smoking yadda yadda you've heard it a million times and like. I think we hear it so much but that a lot of the younger generations in the us dont really get why there's such an aggressive anti smoking campaign, I think people buy into the narrative South Park has spun about it "the cigarette companies are all upfront about it and people still chose their service and everyone against smoking are just obsessive fascists" and it's like. Genuinely, the cigarette companies are some of the most evil entities this world has ever seen. From knowing cigarettes caused cancer before anyone else and lying about it, to being the reason the majority of 50s television existed (shows like I Love Lucy existed to sell you cigarettes) to specifically making flavors of cigarettes and cartoon mascots to sell to kids. And I'm not saying that if you smoke cigarettes you're bad but I do really want the tobacco industry abolished and have it's wealth distributed to the society it controlled for so fucking long.

Seriously, go read about it. They did shit that manipulated the country, politics, and the lives of your parents and their parents, and likely their influence is affecting your life in this day and age still.

[queer-is-future]

so when straight people ask me why I say I’m “queer” or “gay” instead of sharing my actual identity as a panromantic demisexual non-binary sapphic queer I just tell them “ok look, when you’re talking to someone who isn’t local and they ask you where you’re from and you either say the name of the largest city nearby or ‘town name, suburb of large nearby city’ so they can get some geographical context of where you’re located right, bc they’re probably not going to know the name of the little town you actually live in.”

but if you’re talking to a local you can say the name of your actual town bc they have a greater chance of knowing where/what that is.

ok well when I’m talking to a straight person I start with queer bc chances are they aren’t as familiar with the context of all the little towns in that big queer city and need gps (gay positioning system) to find me.

if I’m talking to another queer person and I say I live in a suburb of gay city in a town called panromantic on the demisexual side of the tracks which is in the county of queer and I live off the intersection of non-binary and sapphic, they’d probably be able to find me with little to no problems, make sense?

[bendgineer]

I think one of the reasons the Harris / Walz ticket has so much momentum is because the campaign is genuinely trying to put out this vibe of fun. Like that's all the "brat" thing is, the coconut jokes, just being kind of silly and fun.

And I think it's working, because let's be real, we are all exhausted. It's been all about preserving democracy, defeating fascism, the past eight years. The message has been "vote for us because the country is literally on the line". The vibes are not good when we are stuck back at that fight, and not even discussing trying to make progress on things like housing, healthcare, education, etc. And the fight to just stop fascism? All still true. Project 2025 is real and is extremely scary. We can't let that man back into office.

But the vibe was "vote for us otherwise we're all fucked :(" and now has shifted to "get in, we're making popcorn and then bullying fascists." Like a lot of the issues conservatives bring up, the Harris / Walz is just not engaging them in good faith, as they shouldn't. Republicans bring up abortion, and the Dems are just like, "you want 14 year old to give birth? Weirdo" and just leave it at that. Like YES, that's what you should do. Because it SHOULDNT be a debate. And it's working. This is how you defeat the identify politics thing Republicans have been trying to push for a while. Just mocking them for the stupidity of it all. "Like seriously? You think a book can make someone gay??? Hahaha." None of the Republicans are reacting well. They can't stand it. Vance even complained about bullying!!! Like do you KNOW who picked you as vp??? It's actually laughable, because they have no room to stand on when it comes to bullying.

And a huge part of the mocking and dismissing of Republicans is that the message is clear - were done debating all this stupid stuff. We've won the last two elections' popular vote - most Americans do NOT want christo-facism. It's time to move on. And that's what gives me hope, and the feeling of hope I think a lot of people have picked up on. It's time to address all the issues we've all wished we've been addressing the past decade. It's important we move onto that, and that's the message I'm getting from this campaign (We're not going back). I think it will resonate with a lot of people, because plainly, we're all just sick of this same old news cycle and fake rage bait over things like "should women have rights?", "Should gay people be allowed to exist?" The general populace have answered YES to both these multiple times, and it is time to move on. Maybe I'm being naive, but I am genuinely excited at the idea of putting to bed these debates (it's exhausting trying to fend your very existence) and moving on to actual economic and social policies that could fix a lot of deterioration over the last 2 decades.

[bonivers]

this this this