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Dashcon 2 was a fever dream.

Here is the full article

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In contemporary American self-help literature, the magic word is healing. The term refers to self-optimization that is supposed to therapeutically eliminate any and all functional weakness or mental obstacle in the name of efficieney and performance. Yet perpetual self-optimization, which coincides point-for-point with the optimization of the system, is proving destructive. It is leading to mental collapse. Self-optimization, it turns out, amounts to total self-exploitation. The neoliberal ideology of self-optimization displays religious - indeed, fanatical - traits. It entails a new form of subjectivation. Endlessly working at self-improvement resembles the self-examination and self-monitoring of Protestantism, which represents a technology of subjectivation domination in its own right. Now, instead of searching out sins, one hunts down negative thoughts. The ego grapples with itself as an enemy.

Psychopolitics

Byung-Chul Han

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Sorry about the rant I'm just SO sick of this "we have to be on all the time never look away if you aren't upset about politics and traumatizing yourself watching people die on Twitter you're wrong and complicit and evil" like I know things are fucked and we need to stay angry but we can do that while also taking a minute to crack open a cold one with the boys or have gay sex or get tipsy at the line dance, we HAVE to have joy to remember why the fuck we're refusing to give up in the first place. Fight like hell for your loved ones and then also go home with them to smoke weed and drink sweet tea and make biscuits covered in honey and butter please, please don't deprive yourself of joy, you're allowed to be happy BEFORE the work is done. You're allowed to be happy.

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why would you do this to me

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— Megan Fernandes, “Do You Sell Dignity Here?” from I Do Everything I’m Told

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I see everything. I remember it all. Gently, lovingly, I preserve it in my heart.

Anna Akhmatova, from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

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It's not a virtue to focus totally on your own peace and disregard problems around you. Ironically, it's also not a virtue to stew in your own anxiety.

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“Like, we’re being taught by mainstream culture that getting an English degree is a waste of time, and that thinking about the meaning of stories will not prepare you for life in the world. This, in turn, comes from the assumption that the purpose of a college degree is as a qualification for a middle-class career — rather than a sign that you have learned something that has value in its own right. That you have gained critical thinking skills, of exactly the sort that studying literature would give you. If I were feeling extra snarky, I might point out that critical thinking skills would indeed be a drawback if you’re trying to get a career pumping up the A.I. hype bubble, but never mind.”

— Why the Worst People Are So Keen to Wreck Art and Culture (via wilwheaton)

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Mary Oliver, from “On Meditating, Sort Of” in Blue Horses: Poems

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You have to let people love you. You have to let people get to know you. You have to let people help you. Being so completely selfless that you try to erase yourself off the face of the planet and never ask for anything and reject everybody's offers of support makes you very hard to love! Unfortunately. Emptying yourself out of everything that makes you, you is not actually what your loved ones want from you, generally. They want to make you happy! They will be so so sad if you don't give them the chance. It's not all selfish. I promise.

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"If you ever feel heavy because you care deeply about injustice, suffering, and ecological destruction, remember that a trillion dollar propaganda machine was built to make you numb and it didn't work on you"

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It's impressive how Neil Gaiman vanished from the internet. Wish Rowling would do the same.

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I've been planning this wedding for the last six months.

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE | 5.22, "Jake & Amy"

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Joy Sullivan, “My Mother Says Kissing a Man Without a Mustache Is Like Eating Eggs Without Salt”, Instructions for Traveling West

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Art by Madeleine Jubilee Saito

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