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had a vivid, creative, engaging, compelling, horrific nightmare i was taking the "Tumblr SATs"

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Portraits

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"what did students do before chatgpt?" well one time i forgot i had a history essay due at my 10am class the morning of so over the course of my 30 minute bus ride to school i awkwardly used by backpack as a desk, sped wrote the essay, and got an A on it.

six months later i re-read the essay prior to the final exam, went 'ohhhh yeah i remember this', got a question on that topic, and aced it.

point being that actually doing the work is how you learn the material and internalize it. ChatGPT can give you a short cut but it won't build you the the muscles.

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Good Intentions

The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Even those who think they do not deserve it, because they believe themselves to have good intentions, have been ignorantly destructive in their casual wandering of the world. Even those who believe themselves morally righteous have betrayed their values in the name of convenience or avoidance of truth. It may, perhaps, be the most dangerous thing – to soothe one’s own conscience with the insistence that one’s intentions are good and pure. It is then that we begin to moralize misdoings as good and righteous, that we begin to sweep beneath the rug our transgressions and betrayals of value, gradually replacing this hidden shame with pride in one’s own toxicity. It is then that a person begins to care more about having the right to inflict damage upon the world around them than they do about adhering loyally to their morals and values.

It is then one abandons their own humanity.

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“If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging?”

— Ho Chi Minh, The Path Which Led Me To Leninism, 1960

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I love talking to kids about disability bc

1. they often just Get It, and

2. they have 0 concept of disability as a tragedy or something pitiable.

I've watched kids get into an argument with a teacher bc they thought wheelchairs were cool. I told a kid that I can't stand for too long sometimes and they replied, "That's okay, I can't do cartwheels sometimes, but I just do other stuff then. You can sit down with me if you want". Today a girl asked me what the headphones on a classmate's desk were for and I told her that headphones are important for some kids because noises bother them, and she said she wished she had headphones at home, because her baby brothers make a lot of noise and it makes it hard to think. The idea that different people could use tools at different times is intuitive and simple and when accessibility aids are explained neutrally, kids don't see them as bad or unfortunate, they're just things that are useful.

Even mental disability!! In Kindergarten the other day one of the kids asked me why his table partner got stickers when nobody else did. I started off by saying, "Well, when you do your work well, it feels good, right? That's your brain giving you a reward," and the kid just right away went, "Oh, and the stickers are like his reward?" YES! You are 5 and have a better grasp on ADHD than most adults! Kids blow me away every day.

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cultivating your taste is so important. you don’t have to be particularly structured or methodical about it, but you should develop real curiosity about why you like the things you do, how they make you feel, why it matters… to put yourself around things that are considered truly great even if you don’t get it yet. and learn to listen to other people who have cultivated their own taste, not to replicate theirs but to see how they do it and share in their expansive energy… the more you interact with good taste, whatever that means to you, the more depth you carve into your own soul… and if you crave success in some capacity, it has this strange way of making you seem more “real” and significant to others around you, and in a way that is so authentic and natural and pleasurable. it just creates an energy that propels you forward in every way. so next time you worry if you’re being shallow, you’re not, that’s a lie, you’re actually bringing great depth… what you like matters because how you feel matters. a lot. like it’s the most important thing. you know?

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I’ve think I’ve figured it out

I think I know what MDR is doing and what lumon is doing and where this story is going to go

It’s Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice dies and goes to hell, Orpheus descends down there and gets the chance to bring her back, but loses her forever because he turns round to look at her.

If mark is Orpheus, and Gemma is Euridyce, and the severed floor is hell, that means that by going down there as a severed employee Mark got a chance to bring Gemma back, but he’s going to lose it by looking back to find her. By reintegrating.

Gemma died. Like actually died. She wasn’t brain dead and intercepted by lumon. She died, mark identified the body. Somewhere between that and the cremation lumon took her.

Lumon is trying to raise the dead, presumably to bring back Kier (who’s body im sure is being preserved in some horrid cult place of worship somewhere in the depths of lumon) and has been pretty successful so far. At getting the body back. The mind is trickier, and that’s what MDR is doing. They’re tidying up brain waves, trying to bring a persons memory and conciousness back.

That’s why the files expire. The person gets too dead, their brain gets too damaged, and there’s no point trying anymore.

Gemma has been the most successful so far. She’s not just physically alive, but her brain is functioning too. Her position as wellness counsellor was an experiment to see how she interacts with other people, to see how well her consciousness is recovering

Coldharbour is her last file. When it’s done, she’ll be completely back and lumon will have successfully brought a dead person fully back to life, a major milestone for them. If it expires, she’ll be gone forever

Mark reintegrated. He’s going to be suspicious of lumon, suspicious of the work, and so caught up in looking for Gemma he won’t finish cold harbour

He looked back. So he’s going to lose her forever

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''what if my writing isn't good eno--'' what if it's a reflection of your soul. what if it has a place in this world. what if you write it anyway

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sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four

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imagine creating a new version of yourself that's free of sin so that you get to go to heaven with your husband and then that version of you ends up falling in love with and dying for another man fields im sorry to say but it's fucking over for you

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i kind of love that mark and gemma’s relationship is such a blank spot in severance so far. no flashbacks to their life together, mark never talks about her, devon has to skirt around barely mentioning her. nothing of substance has been conveyed about their relationship beyond the intensity of how her death shattered mark. it’s simultaneously the motivation behind his every move and something we as the audience know nothing about. there’s this harsh haunting nothing where those memories and love should be — the severance procedure represented by her total absence from the story. mark was so blinded by his grief that he followed gemma down into hell without even knowing she was there. it’s orpheus and eurydice playing out their roles totally absent of will and intention. they were face to face on the severed floor and he was unable to recognize her and unable to save her because he cut her out of his brain in order to live.

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I hope this hurts...

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Obsessed with what they're doing with Milchick this season. He's a guy with a job. An evil job. He just got a big promotion. He sees himself as a reformer. But not like, systematically, he just like, smiles a lot and plans little activities. He's being undermined by a teenage intern. He's gracious about The Board's racism. He carries elaborate fruit baskets on his motorcycle while working through the weekend. He averages firing more than one person per week. He dresses great. He almost got the CEO's daughter killed. He delivers even the most outrageous lies with panache. He doesn't have a single true ally. But! he is going to do whatever he has to do!

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my gf said something sooo insane about helly the other day and i cannot stop thinking about it. she was like. helena and helly’s relationship is almost maternal. the way helena created helly as an extension of herself, to serve her interests, to try and impress her own family. she scolds helly, talks down to her like a child. “i understand you’re unhappy with the life you’ve been given” “i am a person, you are not”. the way she envies and resents helly’s freedom. the way she feels entitled to helly’s life and is now living vicariously through her in the most literal sense. what if you created life and now they’re experiencing the things you’ve always wanted for yourself. what if you created life and they were flawed and loud and demanding and they were loved more than you’ve ever been. and you hated them for it. the mother/daughterisms are insane my girlfriend is insane

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this time I'm really gonna do it