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For the ones that need it today

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I think more historical fantasies and alt histories that have gay marriage be allowed should mess around with the societal implications of this. If your aristocracy allows gay marriage, why? As a release valve for inheritance problems, like monasticism was in parts of medieval Europe? As a way of removing your failchild from the line of succession by legally binding them to the failchild of your political ally, ensuring any offspring they both have will be illegitimate? How about a society where the lower classes are allowed to be gay but the nobility aren’t? Idk there’s just a lot of options that are more interesting than “homophobia just doesn’t real”

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hanif abdurraqib on “why his poems be like that”

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if shes your girl then why have i slowly been replacing her parts until there’s nothing left of her original body? is she then still your girl?

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I just remembered my second Pride, where I made different flag themed daisy chain bracelets/necklaces to hand out. I need folks to understand something:

They were free.

They were fucking free.

They were maybe ¢60 of acrylic yarn each at the most, and the whole ziploc bag of them took 2 hours max.

Three people gave me sad eyes until I took their money.

Someone who was clearly the mom friend of their group made me take a $5 and gave a 10 minute pep talk.

At least four more people insisted on getting change to pay for the, once again, free bracelets.

In spite of all these shenanigans, the absolute best was this one person who I can only describe as, “queer surfer dude who looks like a boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend.” I can remember nothing of the outfit, only the impeccable vibes. I did the same thing I did with everyone else, explaining the bracelets were free, and they nodded along as they took the last 6 strand rainbow bracelet. As soon as they had it on their wrist, they pointed at something over my shoulder and, like a fool, I looked.

Next thing I know, they’re running off cackling, yelling, “YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME!” and I’m holding a fucking $20. I had to stop at least two people from chasing them, cause they thought the person stole something, and then they tried to give me money cause they thought it was funny seeing me flail over people being Too Nice.

That was the year I got reverse-robbed at Pride. I hope everyone out there is having a good time and, in particular, that queer surfer dude is out there still causing benevolent chaos.

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NASA advertising "do you want to be an astronaut" to tumblr users surely means something. What have you found out there, NASA? What have you found that you believe tumblr users, specifically, are best equipped to handle?

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Memes shared by kids who grew up on starships I think they should have sea scout/land scout beef with kids that grew up on Starbases

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World surpasses 40% clean power as renewables see record rise

This is from the Global Electricity Review 2025 by Ember. Although this isn't something you are going to see in newspaper headlines, the progress we made with renewables in 2024 is a pretty big deal and if you're someone who likes a lot of data and graphs it's really worth reading.

I'm going to leave this video here because Hank Green does a better job of covering it than I am going to.

"This to me feels like news. It feels like a big deal. It feels like things are changing, like we are hitting a moment with electricity generation that really does matter. And over the next five years we will hit the point where we are generating less and less energy with fossil fuels every year. That's great. And that's not news. I didn't see anyone covering this [...]. It's not news because it's not bad and it's also not news because it's not like 'we did it, we hit the moment!'."

I think this quote from Hank's video does a good job of encapsulating how the slow, gradual progress that is happening often doesn't make it into the news--because it's not a dramatic emergency or a "we did it, we fully solved climate change!" kind of moment that makes for good headlines.

But that then gives people the idea that we're hardly making any progress on addressing climate change, which is not true at all. The fact that we need to continue to double-down on this progress to do it more and faster does not negate that so much progress has already been made.

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I had the greatest time in tightwire class yesterday. Which is to say it was hard, it was scary, and also my teacher “had an idea” and the idea was shockingly, incredibly painful to even attempt.

So of course we were just laughing hysterically through that five minutes.

I don’t think of myself as a masochist, but I can appreciate the brain chemicals I guess.

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Jacob Cress, Oops!, cut and hand-carved mahogany, 2002. Smithsonian American Art Museum

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Shel Silverstein predicting ChatGPT in 1981

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The best thing I ever learned about queerness after I came out as bi is that you don't need to apply the same rigid structure of straightness to it. Like, heterosexuality is pretty narrowly defined as "this not that" so when you come to terms with your queerness it's very easy to get caught up in the same paradigm but with different genders. You can get trapped in this lens of feeling like your sexuality has to be based on exclusion, and has to follow certain rules like your straightness did.

Queerness is about rejecting those rules! Not about tying yourself up in new rules. When you think you might be less-than-straight try not to rush to find a label. You might end up with a new set of rules you box yourself into.

People get really hung up on the labels side of things- "Wait, am I still a lesbian if I only like dating girls but I have liked one guy and I have crushes on fictional men?" "am I bisexual if I'm a guy who only likes girls who look like boys or am I gay if I like that and I like anal sex??"

Just experience for a moment, the freedom to see yourself as you are. Go through the world with an openness to your feelings. Gradually you can unlearn the "this not that" strict mentality and learn what you actually like. You'll start to see the world with fresh eyes. Maybe you find someone attractive who you had never considered before. Maybe you notice, as I did, that you find certain traits attractive regardless of gender or sexuality. The way someone speaks, the way they move, the way they treat others. In time you'll start to define your unique sexuality.

Try on labels like clothes. They're not who you are. They're just tools to speed up communication between you and others. Eventually you may find one that fits well enough to tell others about, and remember you can always change it later. Queerness is about the freedom to be yourself, and to take time to experiment and learn what that really means to you. That's kind of the beauty of 'queerness' that those in the community are always going on about. The freedom of getting to know yourself without restrictions.

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this is one of the better things i posted on cohost and i wanted it to be more easily accessible again because i still believe it very much. i wrote it in february 2023.

I've been thinking about the things people have said about my art that have stuck with me the longest, and trying to synthesize that into a personal philosophy about how I talk about other people's art - and I think I've got it to a point where I just want to get it out into the world somehow. It does also start with a bit of a humble brag but the story is important to get to my conclusion.

One time I practiced a single piano piece for weeks on end for a once-in-a-lifetime live performance. I was playing a piece called Familiar by the German pianist Nils Frahm... in front of Nils Frahm. This was terrifying. He was sat literally on the floor about 2 metres away from the piano while I played - his eyes shut. After everybody at the performance had played their pieces, Mr Frahm came up to me and said something that justified the work I'd put in: that he really appreciated how delicate my touch on the piano keys was. It made my weeks of practice feel visible and worth it in a way that wouldn't have been quite the same if he'd simply said that he'd enjoyed the performance.

So when I am responding to art of any kind, this is what I say to myself: find a small detail in the work - something technical, some specific element of it - and talk about that. Be honest about what you appreciate about it. Be precise. You could say a piece of work is beautiful, and sincerely mean it, but if your aim is to compliment the artist in a way you want to land you could compliment the brush strokes on the shadows of the archway, or how an artist captures the slow movement of the ocean in their line work, or the contrast in the colour palette between the artificial and natural. Find something small and intentional, because the small stuff can be the part of the process of making art that consumes our effort and thought the most.

Since I've started trying to apply this rubric in my day to day life, I have found two things: the first is that I've started taking in art of all kinds on a more detailed level, and found a deeper appreciation for the technique involved in its creation; the second is that nobody (so far, and so far as I can tell) has taken this form of response poorly.

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Do not write fanfiction. One second you're normal and the next you're downloading a calendar from 2004 and tearing your hair out over what specific date every event in your fic happens

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people needdddd to wear headphones in public because while on an otherwise very lovely walk in the park today i saw a guy sitting under a tree watching a porn parody of the star wars prequels

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In light of some of the many things happening across the world this year, I thought this Pride Month needed a special illustration.

Happy Pride Month, may we all stay safe, look after each other, and keep painting our rainbows, no matter what. 🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

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I was walking through the toy aisle at Target when I found this thing and had a VIOLENT AND IMMEDIATE FLASHBACK to when JP first came out and they had a bunch of REALLY COOL T Rex toys that I would have sold one of my scrawny small-child limbs for but my mother wouldn’t get me one because they were “too violent and also ate people” :(