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reading and watching “classic” books and films is such an interesting experience because, before you get into them, when you only know them by name and maybe the vaguest plot outline, they’re intimidating and stuffy and up on a pedestal, but then you finally take the leap and check them out and realize that almost every story that’s achieved such a legendary level of popularity did so because something in its emotional core reached out and grabbed a lot of people by the throat and you are NOT immune.

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It's bizarre how a quasi-denialist stance on COVID is becoming the accepted one in mainstream discourse, like, questioning masks and lockdowns and asking Questions about lab leak theory as the Enlightened stance. There are more mainstream stories insisting we must take lab leak seriously and treat it as if it's basically true, even though we not only haven't turned up any more evidence for it since 2020, we've turned up more evidence that it came from animals at one specific market in Wuhan. There was a piece claiming to turn up evidence, and the evidence was...that some scientists privately mentioned it as a possibility in emails early on. It's not even partisan anymore bc I've seen liberal and leftist publications & influencers all say we need to ask Questions and insist that masks and lockdowns didn't work, or at least made people angry, and thus we shouldn't have done them

The weirdest part, though, is that most of these Reflections just...write out Donald Trump and anti-vaxxers? They talk about "scientists" giving mixed messages and about the CDC, but some of them straight up don't mention Trump, and like. I feel like if you're talking about confusing messaging about COVID, the entire response being headed by a deranged anti-vaxxer who said whatever came to his mind about how horse medicine would cure it would be a major factor to address, but apparently not! It's just public health officials who dropped the ball. Hell, it almost feels like people have started to misremember COVID to think Biden was President during the lockdowns, just another step in the strange memory holing of Trump's first term

(They mess up the basic history of events that happened five years ago, too, like how a lot of these takes talk about how "confusing" it was that they went from "masks are for medical professionals and the most at risk" to "masks for everyone"...without mentioning that wasn't a random choice, but down to a shortage of masks early in the pandemic. Literally nothing was the result of outside factors or the government, all of it was just scientists confusing us for no reason)

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I feel like tumblrites have been a bit down lately, we really could use another British Royal Family Death to boost morale.

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(parent feeding a baby in the 1800s before airplanes were invented) here comes the nothing

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it must be fucking awesome to be a balloon floating away from a crying child like fuck yessssssss get out of there

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"One of the coolest examples of creative living that I’ve seen in recent years, for instance, came from my friend Susan, who took up figure skating when she was forty years old. To be more precise, she actually already knew how to skate. She had competed in figure skating as a child and had always loved it, but she’d quit the sport during adolescence when it became clear she didn’t have quite enough talent to be a champion. (Ah, lovely adolescence—when the “talented” are officially shunted off from the herd, thus putting the total burden of society’s creative dreams on the thin shoulders of a few select souls, while condemning everyone else to live a more commonplace, inspiration-free existence! What a system . . . )

For the next quarter of a century, my friend Susan did not skate. Why bother, if you can’t be the best? Then she turned forty. She was listless. She was restless. She felt drab and heavy. She did a little soul-searching, the way one does on the big birthdays. She asked herself when was the last time she’d felt truly light, joyous, and—yes—creative in her own skin. To her shock, she realized that it had been decades since she’d felt that way. In fact, the last time she’d experienced such feelings had been as a teenager, back when she was still figure skating. She was appalled to discover that she had denied herself this life-affirming pursuit for so long, and she was curious to see if she still loved it.

So she followed her curiosity. She bought a pair of skates, found a rink, hired a coach. She ignored the voice within her that told her she was being self-indulgent and preposterous to do this crazy thing. She tamped down her feelings of extreme self-consciousness at being the only middle-aged woman on the ice, with all those tiny, feathery nine-year-old girls.

She just did it.

Three mornings a week, Susan awoke before dawn and, in that groggy hour before her demanding day job began, she skated. And she skated and skated and skated. And yes, she loved it, as much as ever. She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy. Skating made her feel alive and ageless. She stopped feeling like she was nothing more than a consumer, nothing more than the sum of her daily obligations and duties. She was making something of herself, making something with herself.

It was a revolution. A literal revolution, as she spun to life again on the ice—revolution upon revolution upon revolution . . .

Please note that my friend did not quit her job, did not sell her home, did not sever all her relationships and move to Toronto to study seventy hours a week with an exacting Olympic-level skating coach. And no, this story does not end with her winning any championship medals. It doesn’t have to. In fact, this story does not end at all, because Susan is still figure skating several mornings a week—simply because skating is still the best way for her to unfold a certain beauty and transcendence within her life that she cannot seem to access in any other manner. And she would like to spend as much time as possible in such a state of transcendence while she is still here on earth."

From : BIG MAGIC - creative living beyond fear. By Elizabeth Gilbert.

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at first I was thinking this was a bmw, but then I noticed they actually acknowledge turn signals so it can't possibly be one of those

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big fan of being able to see visible history on something its like ghosts in the snow

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the funniest thing that’s happened to me recently is that someone seemingly tried to update my pronouns on the medical system but accidentally made it so that my actual name is now “They Them”

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people will be like “i don’t see the problem with the government controlling who is and isn’t able to have children or a meaningful fulfilling life or maybe a life at all, because they’ve promised they’re only going to cull Official Bad People, which they also decide the definition of”

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so crazy how people in 2017 were called batshit crazy for being tumblrinas and sjws but we needed them and now more than ever i need bitches dying their pit hair blue and screaming i hate men and arguing with bigots loudly in public this soft nice shit is getting us no where

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Affirmations pt 1

I HAVE ONE MILLION DOLLAR

Money flow to me instantly

My ass look good in all clothing

I Always win Spider Solitaire

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PSA

the internet archive is getting sued for a bajillion dollars. you can voice your support for the archive and its services on change.org here or below.

the actual internet archive staff are pushing for signatures, so i figured i would support. + definitely reblog if you feel so inclined.

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@todaysbird Could you spread the word with your larger platform?

The Houston Audubon is trying to protect important habitat in Texas before it is destroyed by development!

Endangered birds could lose Texas habitat to beachfront homes https://share.google/uoXszceA5puK8IeEW

Protect Bolivar Flats | Houston Audubon https://share.google/wTUI2qVklkhrUpYr0

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Twin Peaks (Season 2, Episode 29) dir. David Lynch (1991)