thedreadvampy

[thedreadvampy]

A debate has been sparked after a schoolgirl turned down a classmate’s Valentine’s Day request, prompting a wave of sympathy for her would-be suitor. The controversy began when the boy’s mother, Heather Starr, wrote on Facebook that her son Roman, who is neurodivergent, had made a poster to ask a girl to be his Valentine. It didn’t go well. “You guys. My oldest baby is 14, he has Autism, is very shy and socially awkward,” Ms Starr wrote in a post on Feburary 14. “Yesterday he made a poster for a girl at school and asked her to be his valentine at lunch in front of everyone. She said no.” Ms Starr’s story got national attention — and plenty of sympathy for her son at the school. The next day at school, a number of Roman’s classmates approached him with kind words and offers to be his Valentine. According to Today, one of his fellow students presented him with a poster like the one he had made to ask the girl the day before. “They asked him to be their Valentine and he said yes,” Ms Starr wrote on Facebook. “Then the entire cafeteria cheered so loud that they disrupted nearby classes and everyone got in trouble and had to have a silent lunch period after that.” The experience, Ms Starr said, was a highlight for her son. “He told me it was one of the best days of his entire life,” she told Today.com.

Parents like this are everywhere and are why incels exist.

He's going to grow up believing that he's being wronged whenever someone rejects him. He's going to grow up believing that getting people to feel bad for him is the best way to get what he wants. He's going to grow up believing that no woman will ever want him willingly and that pressuring women is the only way he'll ever get women to interact with him.

He's most likely going to feel overjoyed by the popularity he experienced from this. But it will eventually fade. He'll eventually go back to being lonely and having no idea how to socialize, while everyone downplays how difficult it is. Many people will use his short-lived popularity as evidence that his social struggles vanished. He'll want to recreate that popularity. And since he achieved it by getting people to feel bad for him, he'll very likely try again to get people to feel bad for him. But he won't get the same result this time.

Most of the time, when people feel bad for you, they hurt you more. Look at how homeless people are treated. When you're homeless and people feel bad for you:

They want you out of sight so they can forget that you exist. They pass laws forbidding you from existing in public.

They convince themselves that you did something to deserve it so they can stop feeling bad for you.

They demand that you accept any help you receive, even if you don't actually find it helpful.

They make a spectacle out of every tiny nice thing they do for you.

Once you're no longer at rock bottom, even temporarily, they assume that your struggle has ended. If you then continue to struggle, they assume that you're choosing it.

That's how people are going to treat him if they feel bad for him. People love to help when someone experiences a single quick misfortune that can be solved easily, but not when people have chronic struggles. And he's going to struggle for his whole life. He'll never get anywhere by relying on people feeling bad for him.

He'll also see any humiliation the girl experienced as karma. When another woman rejects him, he'll need her to suffer some sort of karma instead of just leaving her alone and peacefully moving on.

There will be times (probably many times) when he's actually being bullied, and he needs to know the difference. For example:

Someone who personally rejects him is not bullying him. Someone who attempts to systemically reject him is bullying him.

Someone who doesn't invite him to an event isn't bullying him. Someone who invites everyone except him is bullying him.

Someone who rejects him even after he did favors for her isn't bullying him. Someone who convinces him to do favors for her by pretending to like him is bullying him.

[thedreadvampy]

You literally can't be punk. It's impossible

[thedreadvampy]

Mixed feelings about the video itself but why is that Alexei Sayle halfway through?

Left wing academics - absolutely savage and spot on 😂

In 3 minutes he says what's taken me 15 years and 50,000+ posts to write

[thedreadvampy]

brief midge demo after sitting still for 35 minutes to draw (I am on strong antihistamines so on the plus side they have not really blown up)

me attempting to deal with the Increasing Midge Situation later in the walk:

(unsurprisingly I have a bunch of bites on my cheeks and eye sockets now)

I just got off a ferry to Orkney. I drew a bird.

[thedreadvampy]

noodles are technically a kind of pasta but the fact that Americans think this works in reverse and that all pasta is therefore noodles is. utterly unhinged to me.

since apparently this is controversial, reblog with your country in the tags and whether or not you think noodles and pasta are the same thing

[thedreadvampy]

How to begin a sustainable way of life

This is a draft of something I've been writing for a couple months. It is mainly focused on the culture of the USA. Feel free to repost or otherwise share, with or without credit.

Do not tell people what to do—help them do it! 

Give the gift of relief from being forced to engage in society’s unsustainable ways of life. 

“People need to eat more plant-based foods.” ->Talk about your favorite recipes, give others recipes, cook for them, and grow vegetables and plants in your garden and give them away as gifts. 

“People need to repair their clothes.” -> Offer to repair others’ clothes, and teach people how to repair their clothes. 

“People need to buy less clothes.” -> Give them old clothes that you don’t want, help them repair their clothes

“People need to buy less plastic stuff.” -> Learn to make things that can serve the same purpose, such as baskets, and give them as gifts. Let people borrow things you own so they don’t have to buy their own. 

“People need to stop using leafblowers and other gas-guzzling machinery.” -> Offer to rake the leaves. You can use them as compost in your own garden. 

“People need to be more educated about nature.”-> Learn about nature yourself. Tell people about nature. Be open about your love of creatures such as snakes, spiders, and frogs. Do not show awareness that this could be strange. You are not obligated to quiet down your enthusiasm for creepy crawlies to demonstrate awareness that it is weird. Point out at every opportunity how these animals are beneficial. 

“People need to use cars less.” -> Offer rides to others whenever you must go somewhere. Whenever you are about to go to the store, ask your neighbor or your friend who lives along the way, “Is there anything you need from the store?” 

You cannot control others’ behaviors, but you can free them from being controlled. 

If you think to yourself, “But this would be so difficult to do!” ask yourself WHY? Why does your society coerce you into less sustainable ways of living, forcing you to consume excessively? After thinking about this, consider that it is less simple and easy than you thought to make more sustainable choices, so why would you judge others for not doing it? 

Do not act alone—act with others! 

Environmentally friendly behaviors that can be done alone, without collaborating with or consulting another person, are the least powerful of all. Whenever an “environmentally friendly” behavior is suggested, figure out “How can I give this as a gift?” or “How can I make this possible on the level of a whole community?” 

“Personal choices” do not work because every single person has to make them individually. If you are focused on making your own personal choice, you are not focused on others. If you are not focused on others, you are not helping them. If nobody is helping each other, most people won’t be able to make the “personal choice.”

You inherently share an ecosystem with your neighbors  

            Start with your neighbors, the people physically close to you. You live on the same patch of land, containing roots from the same plants and trees. You can speak to them face to face without traveling, which means you can easily bring them physical things without using resources to travel. 

            Always talk to your neighbors and be friendly with them. Offer them favors unprompted and tell them about how your garden is doing. Do not be afraid to be annoying—a slightly annoying neighbor who is helpful, kind, and can be relied upon for a variety of favors or in times of need is a necessary and inevitable part of a good community. If you make the effort to be present in somebody’s life, they will have to put up with you on some occasions, but that is just life. We cannot rely on each other if we do not put up with each other. 

Simply spending time with someone influences them for good 

Every hour you spend outside with your neighbor is an hour your neighbor doesn’t spend watching Fox News. Every hour you spend talking with someone and interacting with them in the real world, eating real food and enjoying your real surroundings, is an hour you don’t spend only hearing a curated picture of what reality is like from social media. 

            Isolation makes it easy for people to become indoctrinated into extremist beliefs. When someone spends more time alone, watching TV, Youtube, or scrolling social media, than they do with others, their concept of what other people are like and what the world is like comes more from social media than real life. TV and online media are meant to influence you in a specific way. Simply restricting the access these influences have to yourself and others is helpful. 

A garden is the source of many gifts 

If you grow a garden, you can give your neighbors and friends the gift of food, plants, and crafted objects. This is one of the foundational ways to form community. When you give food, you provide support to others. When you give plants, you are encouraging and teaching about gardening. It is even better when you give recipes cooked from things you grew, or items crafted from things you grew. You can also give the gift of knowledge of how to grow these plants, cook these recipes, or craft these objects. 

More on gift-giving

            Some people are uncomfortable with receiving items or services as gifts. They want to feel like they are giving something back, instead of having obligation to return the favor hanging over them. 

            It can help to ask a simple favor that can be easily fulfilled. People generally like the feeling of helping someone else. 

When you give someone a gift, it can help to say something like “Oh, I have too many of this thing to take care of/store/eat myself! Do you think you could take some?” This makes your neighbor feel like they are helping you. 

When allowing others to borrow items, you might not get them back. Don’t worry about that. It just means the item found a place where it was needed the most. You can ask about the item if you think it might have been forgotten, and this can create an opportunity for a second meeting. But don’t press. 

If the person you give to insists upon some form of payment, this is a good opportunity to negotiate a trade. 

Ask to be given compostable or recyclable things 

Ask your neighbor to save compostable scraps, biodegradable cardboard and paper products, and any other items that might be put to use. Use them in your own compost pile. Or, start a compost pile at the edge of the yard where you both can add to it. Remember that “wet” compost like vegetable and fruit bits needs to be mixed with twice as much of “dry” and “woody” compost like cardboard, leaves, small twigs, paper and wood bits. 

Use the front yard for gardening

Overcome the cultural norm that the front yard is only decorative. Use the front yard for gardening so you can be seen by others enjoying your garden, and others can witness the demonstration of the possibilities of land. In the front yard, anything you do intentionally with your land can be witnessed. It also makes you a visible presence in your community. 

Grow staple foods 

Don’t just grow vegetables that cannot be the core component of a meal themselves. Grow potatoes, dry beans, black eyed peas and other nourishing, calorie-dense foods. Grow the ingredients of meals. You could even build a garden around a recipe.

Invite neighbors and friends over to eat food made from things you grew 

Be sure to send them home with leftovers.  

Grow plants for baskets 

Containers are one of the fundamental human needs. If we had more containers, we wouldn’t need plastic so much. You can learn to make baskets, and to grow plants that provide the raw materials for baskets. 

If someone rakes their leaves, ask to have the leaves  

If you see someone putting leaves in bags, don’t be afraid to ask if you can have the leaves. More likely than not they will be happy to agree. 

Collaborate with neighbors to plant things in the no-man’s-land of the property line 

In the border land between your neighbor’s yard and your yard, it is almost always just mowed grass because no one can plant anything without it affecting their neighbor. But these border lands add up to a lot of space. It would be much better if you talked to your neighbor about what would be nice to plant there, and together created a plan for that space. 

Give others the freedom to wander 

Make it clear that you will not get mad if the neighbor’s kids play in your yard or run across it. Invite the neighbors onto your land as much as possible. Tell them they are allowed to spend time in a favored spot whenever they would like.  

The power of the hand-made sign 

If there is a yard sale, you always know about it because of the hand-drawn signs placed around. Therefore, a cookout or unwanted item exchange can be announced the same way. In rural areas I have seen hand-made signs that say: FIREWOOD or WE BUY GOATS or EGGS. This is one of the few technologies of community that remain in the USA. If someone who looks to buy and sell can put up a hand-made sign, why shouldn’t you?  

Religious people or people with strong political opinions like to put signs everywhere. If they have the confidence and courage to do so, why shouldn’t you? 

So if there is a message you would like everyone to see, use the simple power of the hand-made sign. Proclaim “BEE FRIENDLY ZONE!” above your pollinator garden with all the confidence of a religious fundamentalist billboard. Announce to the world, “VEGETABLES FREE TO ALL—JUST ASK!” “WE TAKE LEAVES—NO PESTICIDES.” Instead of YARD SALE, or perhaps in conjunction with YARD SALE, you can write, PLANT EXCHANGE or SEED SWAP or CLOTHING SWAP. Who can stop you? 

Someone has to do it for society to change  

Some of these ideas might be eccentric, strange, or even socially unacceptable, but there is no way to change what is normal except to move against it. Someone has to be weird. It might as well be you. 

[thedreadvampy]

Turns out there's no buses on Sunday anyway so I did go to Meeting and it was nice and then we went for a long walk and had a picnic dinner on the beach at Scapa

annoyed because I was going to go visit Orkney Meeting tomorrow but it turns out they meet at 1:15 not at 11 like normal people and I GUESS that makes sense cause people have to travel from the other islands but it also kind of means that if I go to Meeting I've used up a whole day of my holiday cause I probably won't be done until like 3 and it takes TIME to go to PLACES

[thedreadvampy]

I just got off a ferry to Orkney. I drew a bird.

[thedreadvampy]

I think when you correctly identify a trauma that is the base of a woe of yours it should just disappear. It should be like "aaahh. you got me" and vanish and leave 100 dollars behind

[thedreadvampy]

Saw a post pointing out that the idea of a Saturday-Sunday weekend is in itself cultural Christianity being applied to the whole “secular” world, that in Israel the weekend is Friday-Saturday and in some Muslim-majority countries the weekend is Thursday-Friday or only Friday (in others it’s Friday-Saturday as well.)

Anyway to make a truly secular and inclusive world I propose a Monday-Wednesday work-week and a Thursday-Sunday weekend. I think anyone of any or no religion could all get behind this.

[thedreadvampy]

annoyed because I was going to go visit Orkney Meeting tomorrow but it turns out they meet at 1:15 not at 11 like normal people and I GUESS that makes sense cause people have to travel from the other islands but it also kind of means that if I go to Meeting I've used up a whole day of my holiday cause I probably won't be done until like 3 and it takes TIME to go to PLACES

[thedreadvampy]

Adobe is going to spy on your projects. This is insane.

[thedreadvampy]

my patchwork kilt is like a magnet for old ladies. cannot go two hours without a nice old lady waylaying me to tell me they love my kilt it's SO GRATIFYING.

[thedreadvampy]

I'm stealing this from Twitter

Here's the link

I am a high-definition gateway drug body double!

[thedreadvampy]

They should invent a type of flirting where I can tell when it’s happening

[thedreadvampy]

I turned on closed captions for the Swedish Chef and I just started weeping with laughter.