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so I was at work today and John Green of all people walked in?? wild thing to happen on a random saturday

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something I also appreciate is the characterization of Noor and how she was portrayed as being judgmental without being a religious extremist. Her (and her friends by extension) are preppy, but full loose coverage is not part of their dress code. It’s a small detail but it makes such a large difference in how they’re characterized- yes, Noor criticizes Amina’s clothing, but not for it being somehow not Muslim. Noor herself wears half sleeves, turban style hijabs, makeup and jewelry. She’s not trying to make Amina dress “more Muslim”, she’s trying to stop Amina from standing out. with her redemption arc in season two, it becomes a lot more evident that she is struggling with a lot of internalized shame and it’s so beautiful to me that she explores that in a scene with exclusively other Muslim women. purity culture is the problem Noor struggles with, not Islam. shame and criticism is what drives a wedge in between Noor and Amina, not Noor’s expression of faith. you don’t get that nuance without a Muslim writer in the room, imho

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learned a new game today that I think tumblr would like, it's called the genie game and the way you play is one person is a genie and the other person gets to make wishes. the genie has to explain how they would fulfill the wish but in a way that bites you in the ass somehow, like if you wish for money and the genie piles you under so many gold coins that you're crushed to death. it's a fantastic time-killer game bc it requires zero supplies and no setup and can go on basically forever, plus it's fun and creative and silly, and you can easily include more people by just letting more than one person suggest wishes or ideas for how to "fulfill" the wish

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I know that realistically you can only fit so many movies into a list of approximately 100, but I cannot take that "How many of tumblr's favorite movies have you seen?" list that's been going around seriously because there are some truly egregious omissions.

Some of it is very clearly recency bias, which makes me wonder if the op truly wasn't on here in 2013 or so, but you're telling me you made a list of "tumblr's favorite movies" that doesn't include Pacific Rim or Mad Max: Fury Road? Because, like, I was there, Gandalf.

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I can be shaped by more than the things that hurt me

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where is my favorite painting i need to find my favorite painting

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we have all noticed that "self-care" basically ended up as a replacement word for "pampering" in a marketing lexicon and not as an active set of behaviours intended to allow the body and brain to adequately rest and revive in the face of the ceaseless crushing grind of capitalism yes

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sixth

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the emotion i just experienced is kind of indescribable

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The other day my girlfriend and I got to talking about our strategies for self talk especially re: hobbies and sports.

She was talking about how she has read study after study about the effects of positive talk. if you have a group engaging in negative self talk, one engaging in neutral or solutions-focused ralk, and one engaging in flatly positive self talk, and set them to complete a challenging task -- say, a climbing problem -- the positive talkers will come out leaps and bounds ahead. As a result she has adapted the Bob the Builder theme song into her rock climbing anthem, and she softly sings it to herself on difficult or frightening problems.

Meanwhile, I've been getting into fantasy lit again. As you might know, fantasy heroes occasionally encounter awful mind-warping psychic baddies, who always have some brain attack in their arsenal that tells the hero to give up! you're worthless! you could never win anyway! with the motivation behind the psychic attack being that actually, the heroes are a HUGE threat to the bad guys and will probably thwart all their plans, and that if they could shrug off the mind assault they would absolutely body the bad guy in a fair, non-psychic fight. So whenever I start to beat myself up I internally pretend I'm a Force for Good or like, an anime protagonist so I grit my teeth and go "No... you will not Corrupt me, Demon! I am destined to become the one to defeat you!!" and imagine the unkind words burning away and shrieking like, AIEEEE NOOO.

Anyway, all this to say that the end result of us both having Succeeded at Therapy is that when we run into a really difficult climbing problem she ends up breathy-singing Bob the Builder while I sit broodily on the mat with my brow furrowed doing my best impression of an anime protagonist with beads of sweat dripping down his temples from the psychic exhaustion. Yes, it works. No, we haven't made many friends at the climbing gym.

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i have this stuffed crab i want to gut and fill with rice so it can be a heating pad. a menstruation crustacean, if you will.

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should i eat first or shower first *has phone in couch time for another 3 hours due to choice procrastination, a behavioral phenomenon observed in pigeons and rats as well*

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Derek Buckner - Port Cranes, Sunlight on Water (c.2023)

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Not "humans are inherently good" or "humans are inherently evil" but a secret third thing (humans are inherently social animals which means that we're very good at cooperating and being compassionate towards those we perceive as being part of our community but we're also very good at being tribal and violent towards those we perceive as threats to our community and everyone defines their community differently)