#maybe ill do something more with it one day

[aceofdumbass]

Okay, I might be biased, bc 1) psychology is my special interest 2) I study this field 3) I am fucking poor as fuck, and not long ago it was the kind that makes you unsure if you will be able to put food on the table tommorow

BUT

I honest to God can't remember being old enough to know what stress means and not knowing that being poor (or in prolonged stressful situation really) will quicken your death.

Is this really something that most ppl don't realize?

If you pay 50% of your income for place to live (and that usually means your income isn't this high - unless you live in some fancy place, possibly?) that means you have only this remaining half to cover food, medicine and healthcare, cleaning products - and having to possibly skimp on those categories is obviously dangerous.

If you are lower income person, you probably can't afford to take too many sick days - with current economy employers often prefer to fire people they find to be not so important, and, while not always, most low income jobs are ones you don't need to have much education or experience. Maybe to do it well, but who is gonna care if their barista/cashier/storage worker does things properly when faced with thousands of them? CEO of Starbucks? Walmart? Amazon? On the other hand, being absent from work is clear data, no analysis needed. But this is not about job situation now - it's about stability, which is inherently needed for humans to feel secure and safe.

And so, this is also one more point for healthcare being obstructed. I went to work, (in fucking museum reception!!!! In place where I talk to ppl and pass them things constantly!!!) with covid and 38,5°C body temperature right after they took back lockdown in my country bc I really fucking needed that work and my boss thought that wearing mask is enough.

Guess what, got fired anyway. Probably ppl from other desks complained about sick worker...

Point is, no rest for the wicked - or poor in this case. Many ppl will not stop dragging themselves to work unless ambulance has to pick them up. Huge part of those would have to first have a good soul call the ambulance for them after they passed out or something, bc the possibility hospital will tell them to stay for few days (and consequently, not be at work) is not worth it for them. Long live human rights!

Now, imagine it's a family household. Maybe two ppl and a child, a unit every country pushes for to get that sweet sweet "we are not dying out as a nation" marker. Two adults have low income jobs, and kid needs to go to school or preschool or whatever. Now those adults will have to decide, each time more than one of them is sick (or god forbid have more and more normal recently permanent illnesses) if they can afford all the doctors, all the medicine, all the sick days, who takes care of who... - if there is enough for all of it, or maybe they need to cut dow or something. Does their child go to doctor with a fever or maybe the father doesn't take his diabetes medication this month?

Fuck this life, but what can you do? Surely it will get better someday...

And then there are young ppl, who nowadays actually almost always have to borrow money to be able to get a house or flat. If you want to stabilize, not pay extra money for renting out or get rid of crazy landlord - prepare to be eternal slave to some bank, and to be hounded down like a criminal if you are late with few monthly payments. I would know, what with all the loans I took out for my parents as a very stupid 18 years old.

Yeah, getting screwed over by closest ones is a thing too. If you are poor as fuck, chances are, they are too, or you don't keep in touch or you have to observe how much their life is better - or you live with constant knowledge you are going to be forever indebted to them for their kindness. All wonderful situations, and I can mark each of them - what stupid prize will we get for full marks in this test? Ah yes, the top ones include depression (more medical bills), going to jail for desperate measures, and booking it out of here express way - maybe making a headline in newspaper about ppl not managing the pressure in extreme situations (and extreme is not something objective, mind you). Miserable.

Even if you aren't this bad off, jealousy and comparing and feeling inferior (and money is a sign of success right????) doesn't feel fine. Feels fucking awful, in truth.

Not having stability is fucking stressful. Pressure is fucking stressful. Having to make decisions that can hurt your closed ones is stressful! Do you know what our bodies do when we are stressed? NOT VERY MUCH RIGHT. Our hearts beat too fast, and get used up too much too quickly. Our hormonal balance flies into the sky with how much adrenaline we have and how little of serotonin and other good things are produced. We start having problems with being able to absorb vitamins and such. Consequently, the immune system gets weaker, we fall sick easier. Our memory may fail us. Deep sleep is hard to achieve, rest doesn't really "rest" us. Our body tries to switch all resources to get away from danger, at the cost of it's normal functions - but this danger is not what our instincts we made against, so many of those are useless. There are probably other things that happen which I don't know of or don't remember at this moment.

And after some time, our brain gets used to it. Now NOT being stressed is ALSO suspicious, a reason to be stressed about! Congratulations, humanity! Achievement unlocked: Anxiety Disorders! Wheeeey...

That thing five years ago that you sometimes remember and want to self-combust because of? Guess what, it's your body going "we are stressed. Danger. We need to fuck off asap. Quickly, think. Oh, long ago we were also stressed=danger, but we lived! Surely there is a way to avoid this danger too somewhere in this memory!". And now, it's going to happen ALL the fucking time. When you are on a date. When getting to work. When brushing teeth.

You started hyperventilating before job interview and look like unstable mess during? Well, danger, you know. Gotta dash, horta have enough oxygen for that, make that blood flow. Diarrhoea (or the opposite) before meeting with important client? There is a chance your body tried to make you lighter to get away easier, or maybe get the predator to leave, like a skunk. Or possibly, brain figured out it really isn't a time to go to bathroom so we are gonna stop that for next half a week till this sudden random pain makes you wish you were dead when you actually can't physically not go. Might be other reasons, of course, but stress can and sometimes will induce those responses. Ones, which may very well induce even more stress - for whatever you fuck up because of them or for your health (which really can't detonate right now, bc you don't have enough left for doctor visit from this month's paycheck, and no sick days left!).

This fun train is on express course for a crash - and you just saw conductor throwing out the brakes through the window. Delightful. Wanna buy that overpriced chocolate cake or coffee for 20 bucks to eat through the stress?

The long and short of it: little money means stress. Stress means you need to pay more money to be able to live on. Pressure means stress. See the pattern?

And even if you are the chillest person out there, if you break a leg and can't get yourself treated, you might lose job, go hungry, get some infection in it and die way quicker than you would without it. You will just be slightly less bothered about it, I guess.

Welcome to the world, where everything is for money, and you get those through luck (uncertain), slaving away (uncertain) or human life protection (uncertain) or social help (uncertain).

And no shit, did researchers really say that people die quicker if they are rid of half their income? Wow.

[simplyhale]

whatever @sleepymissy put into her fics and this gif of tim had me write out this wip . let me know if yall would actually wanna read the rest and maybe ill continue on it 🥸

—⊹₊~ ‧ ₊˚ෆ

The cold metal of your desk relaxed the pounding feeling in the right side of your head. The pain had been so bad that it caused your whole body to heat up. Of course today was the day that the universe decided to align. Not only did you have a mind splitting migraine but the weather had created a heavy monsoon. And the cherry on top were the countless people that thought that the rain would make them better at driving.

Today wasn’t your day.

But did it have to be this fucking bad?

The sound of ceramice hitting the metal next to your limp body. Picking your head to see the white mug with beige colored coffee on the inside almost caused your knees to buckle. Nothing was touching the pain in your head but you hadn’t had the time to try and chug anything with caffeine in it. Pushing your palms into the edge of the desk to help prop yourself up onto your elbows. Trying not to move too fast. Pulling the mug closer to you by the rim before lacing your hand through the handle. “If you’re about to say we’re going out on another call, I will through you through that glass window.”

“And here I thought I was your favorite.” Tim’s voice remarked.

Looking up you watched as her leaned against the frame of the entrance of the meeting room. Bring his own mug up to his lips before taking a long sip from it.

You were one of Tim’s first boots. You were the walking blueprint on what he would now do in order to teach his boots now. Tim would be nitpicking every little thing that you did wrong on a call. In result causing you to challenge and argue that if it was as big of a deal as he made it then why did the call end pretty well. This would then result in an argument that would last till the next call where he would pick something else to complain about. People would start taking bets on how many arguments the two of you would have before lunch.

Your thoughts on him changed once you graduated from being his boot and becoming an official officer. His overprotectiveness, by-the-book attitude that made you want to throw something at him came from a place of care. Your life was in his hands and he wasn’t about to let anything happen to his first boot.

This realization caused the two of you to become more friendly, working yourselves up to friends. Still having moments where two of you would argue in the shop as both of your boots watched wondering if it would end a bloodbath or the back of a supply closet.

There it was again. That feeling in the bottom of your stomach that you had suppressed when he was your TO. Was now rearing its ugly head back to light. Taking a long deep sip from the mug as your eyes stayed on him. The way his shirt was tight around his biceps that you of course spent a little too long looking at. His hands were wrapped around his mug. The same hands that you had imagined the feel of them along your skin – Nope not this way. A distraction was something you wanted, needed right now. Anything to get away from the pain. But not this type of distraction when the muse of it was looking right back at you.

Throwing your head back, closing your eyes before the bright white hanging lights above you met your eyes. Taking a deep breath, bring your free hand up to rub your dry tired eyes. “The shift feels like it’s never gunna end.”

“It ended five minutes ago.”

Your head shot towards him with wide eyes and brows knitted in confusion. He wasn’t right. The last time you checked the clock it was still an hour and a half left. But the smug smartass smirk on his lips made you question yourself. His eyes not leaving yours, silently daring you to look away and prove him right. Watching the brim of the mug reaching up to lips. The things you had thought about doing to them. The things they could do to you.

[asheepinfrance]

i wrote this for so long i have no mildly witty intro. i love patrick and he's romantic to ME. comments and critiques welcome as always

He could stare at the curve of your shoulder all day and the thought is entirely foreign. Foreign but most certainly not unwelcome. In fact, when it made its way into his brain he welcomed it with open arms and walked it into the corner where he kept all the other you-based things he had stored. You on the day he’d met you at that stupid party you most definitely didn’t want to be at, you the first time he kissed you (the first time you’d been kissed, period), you just an hour ago when you asked him to spend the night. Now here he is, watching you watch some shitty movie he’d stopped paying attention to about 15 minutes ago. He’s watching the muscles beneath your skin bend at the will of your bones, watching your shoulders shake each time you laugh, hearing you steady your breath to prevent any sound from coming out, softening entirely when you fail. He remembers you saying you hate your laugh, and he thinks that’s just about the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. It’s not entirely shocking to him that he could feel this way for someone like you, because really, how could he not? Even he had some domesticity tucked under all that bravado, he just needed the right person to coax it out. And god, were you the right person.

Patrick forgets, sometimes, that you’ve never done something like this before. Shared yourself down to those ugly, nasty bits of your soul (though that only really applies to his half of your partnership, in his opinion). Inexperienced was what you were, and remain to be. He only forgets because it’s all come so naturally to you. You love like it’s the simplest thing in the world to be vulnerable. You love him like it takes no effort to, and it warms him up a little. He hadn’t been easy to love since he was 12 and found someone equally eager to be a man as him. His mother had always insisted he’d have to mellow out for someone to accept him, his father telling him to keep himself in check, women don’t like a man without that trademark stoicism. You’d proved them wrong. So he’s fine with just tracing the shape of your arm with his fingertips, eventually finding yours. He likes to think maybe, just maybe, if he held your hands long enough, your fingerprints would become one and the same. 

“Hey… I’m sorry, you know. For being slow about things.”

He looks up from your hands, which were so soft in comparison to his it made him feel ill, to the smallest bit of your eye peeking over your shoulder. 

“Why are you sorry?” 

He knows you, mind included, well enough to know the slew of stupid answers you can supply. ‘It’s embarrassing to have so little experience under your belt at my age’, ‘you’re you and you have sex all the time, so waiting for me is stupid’, so on and so forth. He knows these things because you’ve said them all time and time again, over the course of the 3 months he’s been doing this with you. 3 months went by quite fast. 3 months has never been so blissful. He’d also never experienced a longer wait in his life, not that he’d admit it. But he’d wait till his hair ran gray and his bones could hardly hold his own weight anymore. He could be happy just to see the orange hue to your skin in the dim lamplight of your room. 

“Don’t be, ‘kay? Don’t wantcha to be.”

You open your mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a sigh. He hopes it’s not a sad one. You turn over to place your cheek to his chest, stretch, bend, and soon fall asleep. He knows the sound of your breathing well enough to know the pace it takes in unconsciousness. He reaches out a careful, steady arm to turn the lamp off, his skin tingling with lack of contact until he places it back in its rightful place around your waist, exposed with your lack of a shirt. He’s more than happy to follow your lead in this, and he feels his eyes flicker closed in rhythm to your soft puffs of air against his skin. 

“Hey… Patrick, you awake?”

It’s darker out now, a dark that bleeds into the room enough that he doesn’t see you even if his eyes are open. He rubs at them until you come into a view, and he settles a bit. 

“M’yeah, what’s up? You alright?”

The digital clock you never actually use flashes the time: 3:23 A.M. Late enough that he’s more concerned to see you awake than happy to have this time to talk to you, though he’s happy with any time at all. 

“Patrick, I was thinking… well, you know, I had this dream and…”

You’re heated like a small sun under the palms of his hands, enough that he can feel a thin layer of perspiration at the points of connection between the two of you. And he’s listening as well as he can, what with his tired brain and general boyish inattentiveness, but he thinks he’s got enough of a grasp on things to understand where this is going. He’s grinning in the dark like the Cheshire cat, and he wouldn’t be shocked if all that was visible was the shine of his teeth against the moonlight. 

You’re still talking, though he’s not quite making the words out anymore, blood running past his ears in waves. He still registers that soft tone that you only adopt with him, though, and he’s trying to use it to pull himself out of the sunken, warm ocean of a wait coming to its end. He’s pulled to the surface with a gasp when your lips meet his, not unlike the times previous, but it’s not a feeling he thinks he’ll ever get used to. He’s gripping into your hair just as tightly as he can without hurting you, attempting to mumble something reassuring against your lips for the millisecond you pull away, but it’s swallowed up just as soon as it’s spoken. At least he’s sure that you’re sure. 

He’s well aware he’s been growing harder since the second you woke him up, he’s fairly certain you know it, too, but he refuses to let you acknowledge it yet. He slowly shifts his lips to your cheek, jawline, neck. He can feel your pulse thrumming in the vein in your neck, feels your skin jump against his nose with the strength of it. He can die happy just knowing that he made your heart race, but he’d live happier to continue doing just that. He’s soft, provoking, easing you into things. A gentle lead rather than a harsh tug. It’s what his girl deserves. He wants to bury himself in you until he’s beneath your lavender scented skin. He wants to watch each new crease, furrow and wrinkle in your skin appear in real time. He watches your head dip back, your hair shielding him from the outside world, caging him in possessively, tenderly housing him in. He sees your front teeth press into the plump flesh of your bottom lip, sees it dimple under that pressure. Hears the sigh that forces itself through that gap and he thinks that’s the sound he’ll hear when he goes to heaven.

He hears the relief in just the way you sigh when he opens your bra, and he doesn’t understand how you possibly could have kept the sight of you bare away from him. It’s almost cruel that he’s been in the presence of what could only be a goddess and you hadn’t proved as much. But he’s got the confirmation now, if your sweet, loving demeanor hadn’t been evidence enough, and he’s got all the time in the world to worship you. He trails kisses over the divots of your collarbones, between the newly exposed skin of your chest. He peeks through his lashes at you, sees the mess of your sleep-tossed hair against your shoulders, the glossy, half-lidded flutter in your eyes, the way your stomach jumps beneath his affection until he’s pressed between your thighs and he can feel how warm you are and he wills himself not to be selfish. You don’t pull away, but he refuses to move until he knows your mind is made up. He feels knuckles brush against his cheek, snake through his hair, and that’s all he needs before he’s pulling fabric over the width of your hips, the plush of your thighs and off your legs. He can see some unfamiliar scars and freckles scattered about, and he tracks them the way an astronomer would a constellation. 

“Fuck, I love you so much.”

He’s almost painfully gentle and it’d be frustrating if it wasn’t so sweet. Each brush of his tongue makes the muscles in your thighs constrict, and he’s whispering his apologies about the added intrusion of his fingers against your skin. He can feel you twitch around his face, watches your mouth fall open, your cheeks flush, your chest heave. It’s a bit of encouragement that he’s doing well, which he’s only ever been concerned about with you, and when the pitch of your gasps heightens, their frequency picks up he pulls away just as unhappy to ruin your incoming peak as you are not to experience it. His fingers are slick, lips wet, and the scent of you left on him is enough to have his eyes rolling back.

He lays you down, cradling your head despite there only being pillows beneath you, and with a kiss to your forehead and a nod from you he’s kicking himself out of his painfully tight boxers and slowly pressing into you. He chokes back a gasp, stills himself on his forearm, watches your brows pinch together in discomfort. He kisses you soft, slow, until you’re sharing gasps between your open mouths, and he doesn’t stop moving until he hears that same high-pitched cadence and watches you fall apart. He’s never seen something so beautiful as you writhing around.

“Wait- Wait, you didn’t-”

“Babe, it’s fine. All that matters is that you did so well.”

You look at him, visibly exhausted, and he looks back. You fall asleep just as easily as you did before, a quiet mumble of an ‘I love you’ into his skin that he returns. He doesn’t need to tell you that he finished in his boxers about an hour ago, even if he knows you’d laugh about it. Right now, he’s content in just having you close, watching your body move. He could stare at the curve of your shoulder all day.

[squidhominid]

Luigi Mangione and the theory of the Great Man

Luigi Mangione. So much has been said about Luigi Mangione. But I think people fundamentally don't understand the place he inhabits, nor the place they inhabit by worshipping him.

Luigi Mangione was not a leftist revolutionary. He was not striking out against class struggle. He was a child of privilege, striking out against systems he felt disillusioned by. He was a Rationalist, who believed in AI, and believed in the potential for AI to shepherd us into a new age.

But something changed.

Maybe it was the Unabomber Manifesto. Maybe it was something else. But something changed within him that made him reject, if not AI, the way it was being used. He still held onto the general idea of technology as a savior, hence the 3D printed gun. But he saw what he thought was a Great Force, AI, being warped by the healthcare industry into a means to harm, a means to reject claims en masse, and THAT was why he claimed 'Delay Deny Depose', because he saw a Great Evil using what he thought was a Great Good for its own ends.

Was he rejecting Rationalism entirely, or just the way AI was being 'misused'? I don't know if we'll find out. But he, decidedly, was no leftist revolutionary. And yet.

And yet.

The main thing Mangione achieved is giving people a convenient savior figure that they could look to rather than themselves engaging in any meaningful action. People see him as a physical embodiment of class struggle, even though that is decidedly not why he did what he did. He's been given the mantle of a sort of leftist messiah, ill as it may fit.

Firstly, pardon my digression but I feel this is burying the lede; he's through-and-through a child of privilege, who acted the way he did out of disillusionment. This, itself, is meaningful because it means the system is eating itself. But that's a very different thing from him being a leftist.

But secondly, and more importantly, it's people shifting the burden of responsibility. Pardon the reference, but I can't help but think of the intro to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker:

This boy, who traveled through time to save the land, was known as the Hero of Time. The boy's tale was passed down through generations until it became legend... But then, a day came when a fell wind began to blow across the kingdom. The great evil that all thought had been forever sealed away by the hero once again crept forth from the depths of the earth, eager to resume its dark designs. The people believed that the Hero of Time would again come to save them... But the hero did not appear. Faced by an onslaught of evil, the people could do nothing but appeal to the Gods. In their last hour, as doom drew nigh, they left their future in the hands of fate.

I can't help but think of The Protomen, and their rock opera:

They looked to me once Now they turn to you Do you understand now? Do you see that the truth is They don't want to change this? They don't want a hero! They just want a martyr A statue to raise I've given everything I can There are no heroes left in man So it begins! No matter which one of us lives The ground we're standing on will crack and blow away And you will fight But when you fight, you'll fight alone And in the end you'll see there was no other way I've been here before. I've stood where you stand They called me their hero, The Hero of Man But why should we save them When they stand for nothing? If they deserve life, let them stand for themselves

I can't help but look at the situation with Luigi Mangione and think that these passages are speaking to a deeper truth here. The majority of people don't want to fix the system, they want someone to fix the system for them.

They speak of a coming civil war, they speak of glorious revolution, but they don't want to, themselves, be responsible for it, either because they're scared to put their lives in danger, or they can't square the circle that it might require them to violate their own morals in the name of a greater moral cause. They look to decisive figures to do it for them, ironically what they want is an Übermensch to fight the Nazis.

The United States is facing what is essentially an authoritarian coup. If you actually look into how Trump created DOGE, what it was legally supposed to be, what it is instead doing, and what rights Musk even has within government, there is no other word for what it is except a bald-faced coup, and people want a Great Man to stop it. But the only way we stop it is by stopping it. Each and every one of us doing what we individually can. Fundamentally what's going on is people wanting to use fascist theory to fight fascist theory, and that's just not going to work.

The American experiment is founded on the idea of Great Men doing Great Things. Ranging from George Washington and the Founding Fathers, to how the American education system boils all of Civil Rights down to a whitewashed caricature of Martin Luther King Jr., leaving out all the parts that point towards socialism and broader class struggle. But Luigi Mangione is no Great Man, and he will not save us from Trump. No-one will save us from Trump but ourselves.

Friends, do what you can. Do everything you can. Find each other, build networks, and do what you can together. Because together we may be able to affect change. But only once we let go of saviors and Great Men, because no Great Man will be there to save you when the chips are down.

It was, after all, the idea of the Great Man that got us into this mess. The idea that an Übermensch will arrive to Fix America is, indeed, the idea that Trump and Musk are playing upon to begin with, to justify their coup.

As Trump put it, quoting Napoleon Bonaparte, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law".

And you cannot, you mustn't, counter fascism with fascism. All that will do, is get you right back where we started.

[zetsu--bou]

Breaking Bad Ball but it's Aomine and Harasawa

[puppppppppy]

doodles of my fav sillies

anton belongs to @poicyss

[luck-of-the-drawings]

"And soda; runs off into the street..." "...and soda... is totally okay!"

[ancient-bloodslut]

Finding out swifties have been fighting iwtv fans made me have visions and i created whatever this is in a complete daze

[breadbox-draws]

practice and revelatory goofs, starting with everyones favorite banana

(feat. a brief moment of okiroash’s fiansissel design!)

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

uhhhh i think they were kinda fucked

[jaal-ama-daravv]

despite the complexity and heartache of my life 12 months ago - im grateful that I have found peace, and the ability to dream and hope, and love still.

[azuzula]

testing out a new style of rendering with this guy

[almalex24]

yaayyyyyyyyy

[madaqueue]

i only cried once today after being yelled at/scolded for two hours straight!!!!! i would like my hug and pat on the head for being so good now please!!!!!!!

[jehanjoltaires]

Haha wow apparently all it takes to get my inspiration back for writing is a man who activates my praise kink mid battle and a spicy dream

[rolandkaros]

gonna get emotional abt this for a moment sorry. i have to believe taylor can win a slam. like i dont know what it is i cant explain it there is just something inside of me that thinks if i stop believing he can win a grand slam then everything i love about the sport of tennis must be annulled. so i have to believe he can.