scoutingcore

[scoutingcore]

Hey kid, look at me.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.

These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you'll have to start all over.

[scoutingcore]

I'm so serious about being kind above all else. it has genuinely changed the way I interact with the world on a fundamental level and has made me so so much happier.

[scoutingcore]

"how can you be blogging about fun stuff while this horrible thing is going on?"

there's always horrible things going on somewhere. if you refuse to calm down until it all stops, all you'll do is give yourself a stroke

[scoutingcore]

one thing I highly recommend doing that's helped me through the last few days is creating a "self-care menu." the idea is to create a ready-to-go list of things that brighten your spirits or occupy your mind. on bad days, when you can't remember the things that cheer you up or can't muster the energy to make a decision, it's invaluable.

i've got mine divided into three sections: appetizers, entrees, and takeout. appetizers are small things that cheer me up quick (petting my cats, making my favorite tea, playing a favorite song). entrees are activities that take a little longer (rereading a favorite fanfic, tending to my stardew valley farm, taking a bath). takeout is things that get me OUT of the house (going for a walk, going to a coffee shop, getting a bouquet from the grocery store).

sometimes when i'm so drained of energy and joy that it's paralyzing, i pick an item off the appetizers list, then that gives me the energy to think and choose one of the entrees as well. sometimes i close my eyes and point to something at random and do that. sometimes just reading the list reminds me of all the small things that make me happy.

[scoutingcore]

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

[scoutingcore]

[scoutingcore]

i think the hill i'm going to die on here is that lasting anti-fascist activism begins and ends with unrestricted social services.

protests are great. kind of indispensable right now. but in times when we can be less reactive, you want to know what you're protesting *for*, not just against.

today i saw a post elseweb saying "why aren't white women fleeing maga? they have to know by now that tradwife means sex slave". and like... it's very simple. they can't leave because they would end up like me.

they're, we're, deliberately made unemployable so that we'll have to marry whatever mediocre white man picks us out. as it happened, i was unappealingly intersex, fat, butch, and autistic, so none of the mediocre white boys of my generation ever took a second look at me, but that didn't give me job skills or career connections.

i knew multiple women whose husbands divorced them and took the house as part of their midlife crises. they had to send the kids to live with relatives and take dead-end jobs like bagging groceries because they were in their forties with zero job experience. if they'd rejected the worldview, if they'd alienated their families and what few friends didn't victim-blame them for the divorces, they'd have had nowhere to turn.

it's been over twelve years since i got out. psychologically, medically, i'm healthier. but i've chased a fresh start through half a dozen states. i spent my inheritance getting a degree. none of it helped. there are no supports for abandoning (or being abandoned by) your support network.

you won't defeat fascism until my people are free to leave the cult if they realize they want out. until we can access free housing to get away from financial abuse, free comprehensive job training and placement services to help us start careers, national healthcare so we can flee across state lines if necessary without losing any medical care we're lucky enough to have access to, protections for children and teens so they can flee without needing a parent's help... universal basic income would be really good but there are smaller steps that could help with financial independence.

and it all has to be available to everybody, including people you think are "unworthy". people who hold the wrong opinions. drug addicts. people whose husbands or parents make too much money. people who aren't from around here. unrepentant bigots. if they want out, you have to give them a path out. minds can change later, once people are less scared and less pressured.

(i'm ex-catholic. do you want to hear about what happens when you force people to profess certain beliefs in order to access basic assistance? i have two thousand years of examples.)

"but if they really wanted out they'd do the Right Thing and leave without support!" Better to be one man's sex slave than turning tricks on the street. "staying just proves they're actually evil and there for the bigotry!" Live in your car for six months in 100°F heat, twice, and then talk to me again. There's no virtue in cutting yourself off from society just to prove some kind of moral point. All that does is get you dead or worse.

("JT, you're not dead" I'm a fucking cockroach. Most people would be dead by now. Survival bias goes both ways; we're not all the same model of airplane.)

[scoutingcore]

#Repost @gogreensavegreen

You might be more than one. You might be different ones at different times. 🫶🏽🫶🏽 you might not be one of these. There are more roles 💪🏽 but this is an amazing intro.

You can’t just like the idea and envision yourself in one of these roles you have to figure out how to be about it ♥️🫶🏽

Via @deiloh & @fablefulart

[scoutingcore]

products are so bad now that i have to do approximately 8 hours of research before i buy anything

[scoutingcore]

i feel like we as a digital society have forgotten the important rules of the internet

Don't feed the trolls

Never give out personal information

Anonymity is the best defense

Don't click suspicious links

Don't click popups and ads

Just because it's written doesn't mean it's true

You are responsible for your own experience

There is porn of everything, act accordingly

[scoutingcore]

[scoutingcore]

[scoutingcore]

[scoutingcore]

Since I'm therapist-posting recently:

Legitimately self-compassion is the biggest mental health life hack of all time. I'm NOT talking about self-esteem. You do NOT have to like yourself one bit. You don't have to believe that you're a good person who deserves good things. You just have to believe that you're a person who deserves the things all people deserve.

You can't get from "I'm the Worst" to "I'm a worthy and lovable person" without passing through "I'm just a regular fuckup like everybody else."

Try it on. If you're really addicted to being mean to yourself, you can start by framing it as I'm Not Special. Embrace being a regular fuckup like everybody else.

[scoutingcore]

[scoutingcore]

keep in mind that i'm using the words "(in)valid" and "(un)sound" here in their formal logic senses: a valid argument is one where the conclusion follows from the premises. a sound argument both is valid AND has evidence to support the truth of its premises. even if an argument is logically valid, it's not sound if you can't support the truth of the premises; and even if you have evidence for the premises, an invalid argument won't be sound either.

the reason it's so important to stay away from conspiratorial language is twofold:

one, it's literally just not even useful because it's fundamentally bad logic,

and two, if you don't fill in a specific value for the actor, someone else is very likely to fill one in for you, and that's one of the easiest ways to radicalize someone. if you're already primed to look for a target for your blame, all that a malicious actor has to do is aim you at their favorite target.

and to be crystal clear: being radicalized is BAD. antisemitism—because let's be honest, it always ends up turning into antisemitism sooner or later—is BAD. we do not want these things. they are the tools of very dangerous people whom we do not want to be like or be around. therefore we must avoid giving those tools and the people who use them a foothold in our discourse. conspiratorial language can very easily become such a foothold; therefore, we ought to steer clear of it.

[scoutingcore]

I have the best friends lol. Look at this lovely cross stitch piece a friend made me!