#Know Better Do Better

[amaditalks]

One of the most critical life skills to develop is being able to correct course when we have new and better information or understanding.

Or as Maya Angelou put it, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

[only1lorrie]

[strive-to-be-human]

I had a great interaction about antisemitism yesterday. I was watching the video lectures for my online university class and was shocked to find this image as the front card for one of the articles in this week's topic:

This is a stock photo of two pale-skinned hands holding gilded Jewish-star glitter. The title of the article the lecture will be discussing is "The Birth of a New American Aristocracy" by Matthew Stewart. (That's my prof in the bottom right corner.)

I stopped in my tracks and felt ill looking at this juxtaposition. Paying attention to the rest of the slide show was practically impossible. This class is called "Diversity in the United States!" WHAT THE HELL!

After getting a vibe-check or two - who confirmed that yes, this is kind of fucked up, especially for a college class - I wrote my professor.

One thing to which I'd like to draw your attention: your front card for the slide presentation on "The Birth of a New American Aristocracy" is troubling for me. The juxtaposition of "American Aristocracy" text on an image of hands holding gilded Jewish stars is probably not the message you're intending to send. It accidentally telegraphs that Jews are the American Aristocrats, which is NOT AT ALL what Stewart describes. Since the whole world (the US is not exempt!) has a long-standing history with antisemitism that describes Jews as greedy hoarders of wealth, I would really appreciate it if you would choose a new stock image for this presentation going forward.

I'm always nervous about drawing people's attention to bigotry, but ESPECIALLY to antisemitism, because it's so old and baked-in to most cultures that it's very difficult for people to recognize. I was prepared to hear nothing or push back. INSTEAD! I received this:

I'm so glad you spotted that detail in the presentation. You are right that I used the stock image without scrutinizing it carefully enough. My eye saw confetti. I entirely agree that it would be a serious error to juxtapose Jewish identity and aristocracy. You should expect a corrected presentation soon.

And that's all it takes! This is how you do it: Thank the person drawing your attention to the harm, recognize how it's harmful, and then fix it! It's no big deal, unless you make it one.

Thank you, Professor.

[theluxuriansecret]

Dearest Diary 07282023

1:03 pm

Okay. It's time to start healing and truly prioritizing myself. The last 72 hours have been so fucking chaotic like the shit is not funny. The moon was in scorpio, Venus is retrograding and so many things are just happening it's getting fucking scary. It's showing me that I am not healing the way I need to, and I'm not moving on the way I say I am. I'm participating in things I told myself I wouldn't. This is the post where I lay every fucking thing on the table. Every bad feeling, ever mistake, everything in my head. A total and complete dump because I refuse to bring any of this with me into August.

Let's start from Wednesday. I clocked into work and I receive an email from my ex with the subject line "Peace ?". Bruh, I was as peaceful as I could get before you messaged me that shit. He explains to me how he doesn't like how the bridge between us burned and how in our lives, we rarely make as meaningful connections as the one we had. I explained to him that I think that the connections we make mean something for sure, and each connection is different than the next, but not every connection we make is meant to last. I just don't believe that. He told me he even spoke to his new girlfriend about contacting me and that she's as understanding of the situation as she can be. Which, I feel kinda bad for her because, if my boyfriend came to me and was telling me how he wants to reach out to his ex girlfriend to rekindle, I'd be sick to my stomach soooo fucking bad. Having a connection to him does not benefit me and I lack to see where a connection to me would be beneficial to him too. I can't stand to be his friend. I can't stand to see how it was so easy for him to move on after everything. I can say that truly I am happy to not be with him, and that I do not want to get back together. But you found someone so quickly. You found someone new before we completed a full orbit around the sun from when we ended things. Like thats insane to me. And then you drag her into your past by trying to reconnect with me, that doesn't sit right with me. Quite frankly, I don't think thats fair to her, me, or him. Our communication this last time around wasn't bad, but I don't see how consistent communication would be beneficial.

Next, we have J..... I have got to let this fucking man go . Like it is mental illness atp. So let's go back through everything. Let's break it down. I met him last September on bumble, we chatted, shit was sweet, we hooked up. THE only difference between him and everyone else is two things. The first thing being that he was the first person to make me feel something since I had ended things with my ex. Was it all in my head? yeah. unfortunately. That was not his fault, but entirely, entirely mine. So we met up a few times, he made me feel love where none was present, and then he ghosted me. Obviously fucking up my ego because I had never been ghosted before by someone I felt something with and I really took a blow. I didn't handle it well at all. Like, was truly down bad. I turned to other men, obviously that didn't help. It just made me feel worse. He then comes back and I let him back and he gives me chlamydia. Cool. Even then I still can't get over it. He is still on my mind. I still watched out videos, I still listened to him say my name and tell me to cum for him. I still looked at picture of him in my phone, I still wished for him to come back. Why? I want him to choose me, why? I have no idea. I wanted to be chose by him. He made me feel special, although those were never his intentions, thats what his actions relayed to me. That how I portrayed that, and again that's no one else's fault but mine. Anyway that leads me into what I did yesterday. I was stalking his page as I do and I saw a comment under a picture of his dog that says "my little baby" for some reason ever since I saw it's been ringing in my fucking head, and it will not go away. I accidentally like the fucking comment like a fucking moron idiot. I unliked immediately. Long story short, he went private again haha. As he should, please block me tf out because I'm losing my fucking mind over you. I ended up blocking him. Blocked all his accounts on both my accts. I need to move on because it is actually causing harm to me. Emotional cutting if you will. I need to really heal. He didn't like me, he didn't want me, he never felt that way about me, he never ever did and he never will.

Lets move on to F..... . To be honest, I have very little to say about him because I was really over him after the first time he severely disrespected me, but he made me realize how scared I was to actually be alone. Thanks for that fucking lesson my guy. He also taught me not to tolerate disrespect. Ever. Not for a second. He did something unforgivable to me and I didn't address it the second he did it. What did he do? I don't think I've put it into words here, so let me do that now. He woke me up to have sex and then when i turned around his phone was out and he tried to hide it. What he was doing on his phone was between him and god. I really wish I slapped tf out of him for that. I really wish I got up and was like nahh and left and never communicated and never saw him again after that, but no, I let it slide, I let way tooooo much slide with him. I wish when he told me at the bar that "the only reason people were speaking to me because of him" that I walked out and left him there. I literally drove us there. Would have been the ultimate pay back. I can't go back and change the past, and I won't blame myself, but I do know better now so I will not stand for it. He also taught me not to lower my standards cause if we're being for real that mfker was UGLY. No more ugly men, never ever ever ever. I rather be alone than tolerate disrespect from an ugly man. YUCK.

Moving on to my rebound. I actually feel kinda bad that he was a rebound because I wanted him before I met F..... and he's a nice guy but thats it. ALSO, also, I'm doing the same shit with him that I did with J.... . Which is truly unfortunate. Making things out to be what they aren't. Okay lets tell his story because I really was so hesitant to speak on him at all with anyone or here because then it makes it real. I don't want it to be real. Anyway, lets call this man JC. I met JC back in February when I was initially dealing with getting over J.... . I went up to him at the club and if im being completely honest, I don't know what the fuck I could've said to this man because I was so so drunk. He messaged me on instagram about seeing me, but he wasn't really making plans, so I would never see him. I made it clear that I wasn't on instagram often and that when/if he dmed me I wouldn't see it until I opened the app. Anyway, after I cut F.... of I did the sam exact thing I did with J.... and hit up a bunch of guys I knew wanted me, him included. We ended up hooking up and like he's cool. But that it. He's just a nice guy who I'm attracted to and I've occasionally hooked up. My mistake was when I started to visualize what it would be like to be with him. I don't even know him. We don't speak on a day to day. We only speak when he hits me up for convenient sex. Which, I don't complain about because I go over there every single time. Even last time when my heart was screaming no, I still said yes. Will is say yes next time? I don't know. The only difference is like the things he would say, but I'm self aware enough to know his actions do not match his words. One time we linked, he brought up that when he texted me about my scent, it's because he smelled it and thought of me. Which is sweet. And then he told me that he would think if me every thursday when he had football because they would practice really close to the school that I attend. Like... Then the very last time I saw him, in between our kisses we were talking about my scent again and I told him I wore the one I knew he liked, and he said he liked both (in regards to me wearing a different perfume) and then he said "i like you" but like obviously his actions don't reflect the actual like that I feel like he talked about. like. He doesn't go out of his way to talk to me, or to see me often, or he isn't that interested in really getting to know me outside of only wanting to know me because it makes him feel less shitty for just sleeping with me.

I think it is truly time to start rebuilding my self esteem and my self worth and working on a deeper self love because whatever I thought it was before, is not. That small little foundation I have built has crumbled and I've made myself sad again. I need to put myself first truly. I need to respect my wishes and my desires. I need to say no when I mean no. I need to value myself higher. I am worthy something whether I am poor or rich. I am worthy something whether I am the most beautiful or the most ugly. I am worthy something just because I exist. I am worthy. I deserve love and respect because I exist. And I need to start acting like that.

SOTD: I Gotta Find Peace of Mind - Live by Ms Lauryn Hill

[trudlejack]

(+part 2)

[mybreadsmybutters]

when i was a kid i wanted to be a famous youtuber like dan and phil so that people would gay ship me with my irl best friend and we would be sooo weirded out by it and laugh and make videos joking about it but secretly it would make her realize her repressed gay crush on me and i'd help her through her gay crisis and then we would have a sickeningly sweet sappy romance and read fanfiction about ourselves together... anyways just found out she's married to a guy in the mafia now so i probably don't have a chance

[hinamie]

10 years later

[spyglassrealms]

had a fucking hilarious dream that tumblr replaced the "block" function with the far funnier "glock" function, which did the exact same thing except whenever anyone blocked you a random bullet hole, like a png of a bullet hole, would appear on your blog. discourse blogs were unreadable bc you'd go to the page and the sheer amount of bullet hole pngs stacked over the blogs obscured everything. I woke myself up laughing

[inbabylontheywept]

bad dating stories time: the shoe incident

so in highschool, my best friend wasnt allowed to go on dates unless there was another couple there to keep an eye on him. part of this was his parents being insane, but also, part of it was him being insane. in a problem with no reasonable parties, there are no reasonable solutions.

at some point in my junior year, my sorta-gf broke up with me, and i just wasnt feeling dating, which was bad for my friend, because he had a good thing going with a girl he met in court.

he kind of hounded me about it. kept pushing me to just put me feet back in the dating pool and i wasnt real thrilled about it, because i knew he was pushing me for his own benefit, not mine, so i kept telling him to fuck off, and after a few weeks of being told that i would date when i was damn well ready, he eventually said: okay. what if i paid for the date AND found you a blind date AND all you had to do was show up?

and i shouldve said no, i know, but i let him wear me down, and i will own my fault in that. a date starting on such a stupid premise could never have gone well.

but he still managed to find a way to make it worse.

i dont know how long he tried to set a blind date up. it couldve been multiple attempts. he couldve stooped to this immediately. but what happened in the end was that he called a girl from the ward he attended - a girl that he knew had a giant, mushy crush on him - and he said: hey! how would you feel about going on a date this weekend?

(you know, implying it was with him, but never actually saying it.)

and she said YES WOW I WOULD LOVE TO and he said great! and then he called me up and said he found me a date.

i did not learn about his crimes until several weeks later. i will die swearing before god almighty that i would never have allowed this travesty to happen if i had known.

that was on a monday. the date of the date rolled around that friday evening, and im sorry to confess, i really phoned the whole thing in. i showed up in my favorite comfy outfit, which was also a fashion crime: basketball shorts and flipflops and a baja hoodie. it was super comfy but it made me look kind of crazy. i picked him up first, and then i picked up his date next, and then we went to pick up my date, and thats where you're gonna get the play by play.

i arrived, walked across the yard, and knocked on the front door. she opened it almost immediately, like shed been waiting right by it, and i could see her expression go from OMG IM SO EXCITED to super disappointed, then disgusted and finally pissed. and because i didn't know about my friends sins, i thought it was from my outfit. which seemed... harsh. like, hey, im allowed to be quirky, fuck you. also its a blind date, i thought the deal was that we were both going to be sad broken sacks of mortality.

anyway, we looked at each other for several seconds before she slammed the door in my face.

i looked back at my friend. he was sweating bullets. i dont know what he expected from this, but there was this big long pause where we both tried to figure out what to do, and then the door opened up, and her dad invited me in, and he said she was gonna need a few minutes to finish getting ready, and that in the meantime we could sit and talk.

we did not talk. we did sit. i sat down on the couch, and he sat down in a chair across the couch, and then instead of talking he cleaned his pistol on the coffee table. i wasnt actually sure if it was a threat, or if it was just a fidget thing for 40+ year old republican men, but when i tried to help he got snappy so i just watched him put a pistol back together.

he was okay at it.

eventually my date came downstairs, still mad as hell for reasons beyond my ken, and i felt pretty guilty for being such a mess because i thought that was why she was so angry. i tried to make up for by walking her to the car and getting the door for her, just generally trying to be extra polite, but before i could make it back to the drivers side, her dad called me back to the door. so i flipped around, went to the door, and immediately regreted my decision.

soon as i was within range, her dad got waaaay too close to me, leaned in, and said "whatever you do to her, i will do to you," and my brain went into overdrive making three consecutive realizations.

realization one was, damn, the pistol thing was a threat. that sucks. what an asshole. realization two was, wait, im autistic and even i know theres a 0% chance me and my date even hold hands, least of all boink. does this guy actually think there's even a 1% chance of anyone in that car getting laid tonight? is he an idiot? and then realization three went through, which was wait, is this guy threatening to fuck me? and unfortunately, with my brain doing so much processing, my mouth was left to run amok, so somewhere between realization 2 and 3, i said:

"i can't get pregnant"

which, i swear, wasn't actually me trying to be a smartass, it was just me pointing out that he couldn't actually follow up on that threat. it just wasn't possible. we do not live in the omegaverse and im not scared of you.

still, it was an insanely catastrophic thing to say, and the moment we both heard it, we bluescreened. that single sentence obliterated both of our momentary streams of consciousness like a saltine in front of a sand blaster. problem was, he'd probably gone his whole life not even realizing someone could say something that stupid, and making that realization was going to cost him a lot of thinking time. me though? i had been saying shit like that for 17 years, i didnt have to rewrite my expectations of human nature, i just had to plan an exit and start striding. so i was already halfway back to the car before i heard "hey. hey come back. Hey. Hey. HEY. HEY WAIT. HEY GET BACK HERE. HEY-"

and then i was in my car, and i drove away.

if this happened today, he'd have called her, and the whole thing wouldve imploded then and there, but back then, there were still a decent number of teenagers without cell phones. especially the teenagers of insane, gun toting parents. so she just said: whoa what was that all about? and i said: dont worry about it, he'll tell you about it when you get home.

and she said: ok and went back to staring daggers at me and my friend.

WHICH SURPRISINGLY isnt even how the story ends.

we went to an improv comedy show, and it was a disaster. it shouldve been like, 7/10 tops, but between my date being mad, and my friend having a good time, and me having the existential terror of knowing that a guy with a pistol was probably waiting outside his house for me to come back, it was easily 11/10. i laughed way too hard at everything. especially the jokes that flopped. id sit there in this mostly silent room and laugh until i dry heaved a little, and my date was absolutely disgusted, and even my friend was a little embarrassed, which would just make me laugh harder. i laughed so hard that night i could barely talk the next day. and then the show ended, and my friend said, you know, that was a good time, but i think we should maybe do something a little chiller? who wants to walk around the park? and his date said yeah, and my date said no, and i finally had mercy on the poor woman so i said, look, im gonna drop you off. and i am so, so sorry about this, but im dropping you off like a block away. super duper sorry.

do talk to your dad about the pistols thing if you dont want this happening more in the future tho.

and she said: okay. so i dropped her off, and she walked a block down, and that was that.

then i drove my friend and his date to a park that was good for wandering. i figured they wanted something more private, so instead of following them around point blank, i chose a park with this 30 foot rope tower, and i climbed to the top and i said: hey i can see you anywhere from up here, you are officially chaperoned from a distance. get panopticoned idiot. except my friend really is an idiot, and he didnt really get the whole 'now i dont have to third wheel so insanely hard with you guys' thing so he climbed up the tower too, and then his date followed behind him, so there are three people basically sitting together on top of a telephone pole.

and then they started making out.

i was close enough to hear it.

i didnt really know what to do so i was just kind of sitting there, dissociating, when some college kids came around and started shaking the tower. my friend's date went aaaaaaaaaa im afraid of heights :( and my friend went oh, dont worry, ill hold you tight ;) and i went hey, im gonna climb down and ask them to stop.

so i did climb down, and i did ask them to stop, and they flipped me off, which i wasnt even mad about. at that point i was i was like yeah, it would be weirder if this wasnt a mess. gods plan has been to fly this day like a 747 into my metaphorical twin towers and brother he is close enough for me to see him grinning through the cockpit window. still, eventually the college students got bored, so they climbed up the tower, which gave my friend and his date a window to climb down, and together we walked back to my car.

now, i cant explain why this is, but sitting back in the drivers seat was my carriage-back-into-a-pumpkin moment. i'd been chill about all the chaos, just rolling with the punches, but sitting down made me realize how much of a shitshow the day had been, and while i couldnt go back and fix all of it, i could go back and fix one thing.

so i told my friend and his date, hey, you two, stay here and don't do anything weird. don't. then i walked back to the rope tower, and i started picking up the shoes the college students had left at the base in order to climb.

about halfway through this, i realized that if i took all their shoes, they might think i was in it for the money, and i actually wanted them to know i was in it specifically to spite them. fuck those guys. so i put all the right shoes back, gave myself a 100 foot headstart, yelled "nice shoes, assholes", did a little jig, and started running.

my advice to everyone is that college students are faster than you think. even with the headstart, and the whole climb down the tower thing, i was still only fivish seconds ahead of them by the time i got to my car. i flung the door open, looked in the backseat, didnt see anyone, flung the stolen shoes in the backseat, heard two "ow"s, took that as proof of presence, jumped in and pealed out of the lot.

my friend and his date popped up a few seconds later. they were, uh, doing something weird in the back seat. my one request - obliterated.

they climbed up to ask where the hell all the shoes had come from, and i was like yeah i stole them from the college students, and they were like oh. cool. hope you had fun. and i was like, i did. i did. but speaking of fun, what were you doing back there?

and for the first time in my buddies life, i think he was actually embarassed.

[qiinamii]

we'll do fine.

[laughingcatwrites]

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

[hansoeii]

crowley

[greykolla-art]

Alastor: “Now, let’s talk about literally anything else please!”

Me: “Good! Cause I don’t know where you went so I can’t go further with this!😂”

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael is very subtle about his daddy issues in FNAF..

[stil-lindigo]

ARTISTS FOR PALESTINE 🇵🇸 - On the 6th and 9th of March, I'll be doing art requests on stream with other notable artists to raise money for Operation Olive Branch and the PCRF.

I'm incredibly lucky to be counting quite a few big names in the roster, including known Jesus and Odysseus enthusiast @wolfythewitch, the extraordinary fanartist @denimcatfish, and the incredibly talented @troubledminnesotan, as well as Lilypichu from OfflineTV.

You'll be able to watch the streams on the day of the event either on my twitch channel here, or via the links provided by the artists below.

Lilypichu

Cuptoast

Akairosu_

Sevvanto

Wolfythewitch

[800db-cloud]

i’m literally shaking buy them brown contacts pls