it’s too bad smoking is expensive and bad for you and everyone around you because we will never be able to replace the specific intimacy of lighting someone else’s cigarette for them
“how do you just know this” is a question I get asked a lot, because I tend to be someone who can contribute unusual facts or insight on whatever topic a casual conversation turns to, and I never know how to answer because “I pay attention” sounds rude and isn’t super actionable. but that is really it, I just take an active interest when I encounter something curious or unusual.
like recently one of my friends linked me a funny paragraph from a very badly written erotic novel. it was so bad that I thought “I wonder if this is real”, so we looked up the book it was from and learned it was a vintage horny housewife type story by someone who wrote a lot of shitty cheap porn back in the 80s, all of which now seems to be completely out of print.
in the course of googling the author, I discovered that one of their works had been cited in a 2004 court case over a prisoner’s right to keep erotic novels in his personal library after the prison confiscated them. a bit more googling turned up the case details in a legal database. the guy had received the books by mail and kept them, among others, in his cell. the prison seized them, citing a policy against prisoners having pornography. his lawyers argued that 1. erotic novels are distinct from pornography because they have artistic and expressive content beyond the depiction of sex acts, and 2. since he received them by mail they are therefore protected under his constitutional right to freely access non-disruptive information from outside the prison. I don’t know if he got his books back, but he won his case.
then we googled the defendant and found out he was in prison for helping a woman to drug and murder his boss (who she lived with), mutilate the body with acid and dump him in a ravine.
anyway my point is, take an interest. that’s how you learn weird stuff.
Grandmas were so right about puzzles and knitting and crocheting and solitaire and reading slow and slippers and baking and watching deer in the backyard send post
played sims 4 for the first time and one of the married cis men had a desire to try for baby with his cis husband. i accidentally pinned it and could not unpin it. trying for baby is physically impossible. I tried to use cheats to give him a viable womb in create a sim but it wouldn’t let me do so retroactively. so I thought, maybe if they adopt the want for pregnancy will go away, and had them adopt a toddler daughter. but then the try for baby desire did not go away. since they now had an unwanted adopted child I tried to remove the toddler from the household, thinking this would send her back into the ether. it did not. instead she wanders the neighborhood like a feral cat. i thought the social worker would come and take her back so someone else could adopt her, but I guess there is no social worker in sims 4. so now the neighborhood is haunted by a smelly miserable baby that has no home but cannot die and everyone who sees her is uncomfortable. fucking omelas scenario.
no one is feeding her but every time she gets hungry she simply produces a carton of milk out of the ether and drinks it
OP— do ctrl+shift+C and type “testingcheats true” and then “cas.fulleditmode” into the bar, then go into CAS and change one of the sims to be able to get pregnant. mpreg is possible ALWAYS
thanks. the womb installation worked.
I’m sorry, this was dune mpreg the whole time and you never thought to mention? Iconic.
my favourite thing about Crowley calling Aziraphale “angel” is how many layers it has. Because to us, the human viewers, “angel” is a term of endearment. But Crowley is a demon, for whom “angel” is akin to a pejorative, since angels represent everything demons despise. Except, as we know, Crowley doesn’t have such a black+white distain for the chaps from upstairs, or more specifically he doesn’t feel that way about Aziraphale. So it swings back the other way to something akin to an Insult of Endearment: “angel (affectionate)”, like “little shit (affectionate)” or “seaweed brain (affectionate)” - but the key thing here is that (affectionate) still needs to be specified. The affection isn’t implicitly understood. However, “angel” is also a statement of fact. Aziraphale is an angel. So Crowley can further obfuscate the presence of that (affectionate) modifier with the excuse that not only is “angel” simply the objective truth, it’s also used dismissively, in place of actually using Aziraphale’s name. And so ultimately the way he uses it is a reflection of the tightrope he walks with his and Aziraphale’s arrangement - all of these layers give him plausible deniability if he’s caught by other angels/demons. It’s an insult, it’s a statement of fact, it’s a way to be dismissive. But we the viewer have enough insight into their relationship that we can circle right back to the beginning, to “angel” as an endearment because we understand the intimacy lurking under all of those layers
leftist antisemites are really everywhere on this hellsite making & reblogging their posts like “the Jews have too much power and privilege and actually their very recent genocide was not that bad compared to what my group experiences and antisemitism doesn’t even exist in my country and especially not in liberal spaces”
Goyim should reblog posts like this one instead of always only acknowledging antisemitism when it is about jk rowling’s goblins or easy shit like that.
Challenge the antisemitism that is coming from inside the house. Be a little brave. Because you will lose followers for reblogging a post like this, because there are antisemites following you that think this way, and assume you do too.
I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.
And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.
Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.
When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.
And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.
And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.
Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.
I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.
My random unsubstantiated hypothesis of the day: the popularity of “stim” videos, fidget toys, and other things like that is a warning sign that something’s Deeply Wrong with our world.
Don’t freak out. I am autistic. These things are not bad. However, can we just…take a second to notice how weird it is that there are entire social media accounts full of 10-second videos of things making crunching noises, people squishing slime in their hands, and objects clacking together, and that enjoying them is mainstream and normal?
It seems that nowadays, almosteveryone exhibits sensory-seeking behavior, when just a decade ago, the idea of anyone having “sensory needs” was mostly obscure. It is a mainstream Thing to “crave” certain textures or repetitive sounds.
What’s even weirder, is that it’s not just that “stim” content is mainstream; the way everything on the internet is filmed seems to look more like “stim” content. TikToks frequently have a sensory-detail-oriented style that is highly unusual in older online content, honing in on the tactile, visual and auditory characteristics of whatever it’s showing, whether that’s an eye shadow palette or a cabin in a forest.
When an “influencer” markets their makeup brand, they film videos that almost…highlight that it’s a physical substance that can be smudged and smeared around. Online models don’t just wear clothes they’re advertising, they run their hands over them and make the fabric swish and ripple.
I think this can be seen as a symptom of something wrong with the physical world we live in. I think that almost everyone is chronically understimulated.
Spending time alone in the forest has convinced me of this. The sensory world of a forest is not only much richer than any indoor environment, it is abundant with the sorts of sensations that people seem to “crave” chronically, and the more I’ve noticed and specifically focused on this, the more I’ve noticed that the “modern” human’s surroundings are incredibly flat in what they offer to the senses.
First of all, forests are constantly permeated with a very soft wash of background noise that is now often absent in the indoor world. The sound of wind through trees has a physiological effect you can FEEL. It’s always been a Thing that people are relaxed by white noise, which leads to us being put at ease by the ambient hum of air conditioning units, refrigerators and fans. But now, technology has become much more silent, and it’s not at all out of place to hypothesize that environments without “ambient” white noise are detrimental to us.
Furthermore, a forest’s ambience is full of rhythmic and melodic elements, whereas “indoor” sounds are often harsh, flat and irregular.
Secondly: the crunch. This is actually one of the most notably missing aspects of the indoor sensory world. Humans, when given access to crunchable things, will crunch them. And in a forest, crunchy things are everywhere. Bark, twigs and dry leaves have crisp and brittle qualities that only a few man-made objects have, and they are different with every type of plant and tree.
Most humans aren’t in a lot of contact with things that are “destroyable” either, things you can toy with and tear to little bits in your hands. I think virtually everyone has restlessly torn up a scrap of paper or split a blade of grass with their thumbnail; it’s a cliche. And since fidget toys in classrooms are becoming a subject of debate, I think it pays to remember that the vast majority of your ancestors learned everything they knew with a thousand “fidget toys” within arm’s reach.
And there is of course mud, and clay, and dirt, and wet sand. I’m 100% serious, squishing mud and clay is vital to the human brain. Why do you think Play-Doh is such a staple elementary school toy. Why do you think mud is the universal cliche thing kids play in for fun. It’s such a common “stim” category for a reason.
I could go on and on. It’s insane how unstimulating most environments humans spend time in are. And this definitely contributes to ecological illiteracy, because people aren’t prepared to comprehend how detailed the natural world is. There are dozens of species of fireflies in the United States, and thousands of species of moths. If you don’t put herbicides on your lawn, there are likely at least 20 species of plant in a single square meter of it. I’ve counted at least 15 species of grass alone in my yard.
Would it be overreach to suggest that some vital perceptive abilities are just not fully developing in today’s human? Like. I had to TEACH myself to be able, literally able, to perceive details of living things that were below a certain size, even though my eyes could detect those details, because I just wasn’t accustomed to paying attention to things that small. I think something…happens when almost all the objects you interact with daily are human-made.
The people that think ADHD is caused by kids’ brains being exposed to “too much stuff” by Electronic Devices…do not go outside, because spending a few minutes in a natural environment has more stimuli in it than a few hours of That Damn Phone.
A patch of tree bark the size of my phone’s screen has more going on than my phone can display. When you start photographing lots of living organisms, you run into the strange and brain-shifting reality that your electronic device literally cannot create and store images big enough to show everything you, in real life, may notice about that organism.
5 states including kentucky (!!) voted to protect abortion access. 3 states did away with slavery (prison labor) as punishment for a crime. 3 states made massive commitments to affordable housing. illinois made collective bargaining a protected right. 2 more states legalized weed. connecticut is moving towards early voting. alabama removed racist language from the state constitution and is investing in statewide public broadband internet. california massively expanded funding for arts and music programs in public schools. colorado raised on the wealthiest in order to provide universal free school lunch to students. georgia may no longer pay cops who are suspended on a felony indictment. massachusetts massively expanded funding for public education and infrastructure, massively expanded dental insurance, and will allow residents to get a drivers license or state id regardless of immigration status. montana will now require a search warrant for access to electronic data. nebraska will increase its minimum wage to $15. new mexico will massively improve and expand senior facilities, public libraries, higher ed, special public schools, and tribal schools, residential utilities (water, internet, electricity). new york is putting 4.2 billion towards climate change mitigation. rhode island is increasing funding for public education and environmental protection. south dakota expanded medicaid.
louis, mon cheri, share avec moi these airpods….. i have discovered a most captivating songstresse, a mademoiselle Carly Rae Jepsènne. écoute….. does not this saxophonne bewitch you? truly she is the donizetti of her time. and this next song, oooh my leuouis….. the poetry of this lyric….. before miss jepsènne’s beloved came into her life, she missed him so bad. it seems to me she sings of our invisible cord, non?
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Reopening the crypt that is my old tumblr from the days of yore. Jae | 29 | Funky Little Lesbian | NSFW
