#i have many many many anecdotes

[ryllen]

they are all BEST boys, but who is the one in most dire need of comfort

[apaethy]

"mary & george" could've easily been two if not three season of high political drama, but all we got was a weird conjumbled mess of events with fantastical plot points to tie it together and crammed in one season. im quite disappointed. everyone should just read the book, the actual events that transpired were so much more entertaining than what the tv show showed on screen

[tiredhawks]

Hunting falcons are so interesting because everytime they bring prey back to you, they're making a choice. They are free, in that moment, and they have just proven through their own talon that they can hunt and provide for themselves. That they are self sufficient. But when you call for them, they being that prey back to you only for a price to be given in return. The falcon is raised from birth to think it needs you, to rely on you, yet the dynamic is entirely one sided. It can be said you provide protection and food when a hunt fails, but the bird will always be wild at heart, and it's dependency is something you created. Everytime you let it go to hunt, it has to decide to come back. Yet if it ever chooses to fly the other way, there's nothing you can really do to stop it.

[thenegoteator]

my thesis is currently at 9200 words/ 10,000.

i have a full chapter and a conclusion left in my plan.

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

“they’re saying only 1% of people die of covid so why are you worried?” ok then. not looking at any sources, let’s go off that statistic for this post. note: we’ve lost over a million people and counting in the united states alone.

i’ve seen some estimates saying 10%-30% of people end up with continuing symptoms (fatigue, brain fog, etc) after the end of infection, which could mean tens of millions of people. however, if even only 2% had persisting symptoms and we go by that 1% death statistic, that could be 2 million people living with some form of long covid impacting their daily life.

don’t wanna listen about covid? ok, let’s compare it to another disease known for its lasting symptoms and its “long” form: polio.

polio could be asymptomatic, but symptoms presented as flu-like if there were any. all things considered, paralysis was rare in comparison to infection numbers. i’ve seen a lot of polio statistics, and some say only 1 in 1,000 (0.1%) polio cases resulted in paralysis, though this seems like a rough average between the three variants. still, there were tens of thousands of cases of poliomyelitis paralysis. 1952 alone had over 20,000 paralysis cases reported, and that’s one year of many polio outbreaks (the most well known u.s. outbreak was 1948/49-1952).

just because a percentage seems low does not mean the damage is minuscule. be knowledgeable about how information is being presented to you and what the actual impacts are. small numbers do not equal little harm.

[creatediana]

Miley Cyrus is thirty, and I used to think that sounded old but now it just sounds thirty. Hannah Montana was my first pop icon—or obsession. I remember my shoes, my shirts with her teenage face printed on with that flimsy wig—I wanted one just like it, or of my own. Just wanted to be someone different and older. And I'm twenty-four now and I still haven't dyed my hair blonde. Still a redhead, I'm afraid, but that made my dead grandmother very proud. I remember that 3D concert movie in third grade premiering in theaters. You know I wore my favorite shoes to it. I had to. How could I go out to the live Hannah Montana experience without those dirty white sneakers with a cheap gold paint? My prized possessions. And she sang the first song she ever wrote, "I Miss You," for her grandfather, and I just thought: Wow, what a big girl, who can do so much, make her own music, sing it in front of millions, and who has experienced so much. Now it seems like not all that much to me. When Meet Miley Cyrus came out as a double-album with Hannah Montana 2, you know I was blasting it in my bedroom, singing and dancing to those songs like I wrote 'em. Like they were mine. I suppose they still are, and so were Bangerz and Dead Petz for me in high school, and Younger Now when I was eighteen, a legal adult but a little baby, but supposedly not "stuck in East Northumberland High for the rest of my life"— I guess people do change. But did I really? And did Miley really? Surely she did, she has, over and over again. Changed genres, sounds, and looks. Supposedly so have I. I wear bras now, at least when I go out in public, but Miley also taught me what nipple pasties are. You see? She's an icon, a legend and an educator, a role model but never wanted to be one, was never old enough to be one when she was forced to be. Miley Cyrus is thirty, and I'm twenty-four. Now she says we used to be young. Can't deny that that's true. The years go by, though, and we're still in our same skins, with new cells, with changed voices, but still singing.

"Miley Cyrus is Thirty" - an ekphrastic free verse of "Used to be Young" (2023) by Miley Cyrus, written 8/26/2023

[lightbulb-warning]

I LOVE WORDS! WORDS DONT LOVE ME BACK!! </3

[peachdoxie]

Maybe instead of working myself into a tizzy over job searching questions, I should schedule a meeting with career services at my university. That would be the smart move.

[clonegirlie]

My partner: I don’t really understand why you like Hunter so much

*literal minutes later*

Me: *sitting literally across the coach a few feet away*

My partner: you smell nice, I like it

Me: *staring at them* yeah I wonder who Hunter reminds me of

[stardustedknuckles]

As a tutor, there's no better catnip than a kid who really wants to get what you're saying. I wasn't too sure about tonight's session bc past note said he disconnected randomly (usually a bad sign, means you didn't do it for them so they left) but as I spent a few minutes sussing out the exact prompt he'd been given and the examples provided, once I started "drawing lines" from the paragraph he'd started to the example, he was fully like "OH. That makes so much sense." And man. There's really no better feeling. It's why I vastly prefer tutoring over teaching in general. Teaching can spread you too thin to get a real lightbulb moment out of someone. You're just there to present the information and check for vague/broad understanding. One on one is where I shine because if the other person is really willing to put their time in, there's nothing I can't connect for them. Feels good. It's why those two years I tutored in college are still my favorite job I've ever had, and it's why I am even considering getting my masters in teaching (and therefore implicitly choosing it as my general life path, if not necessarily in America).

[rideroftheoctocorn]

Maybe this is my “I’m from New York so I didn’t choose to live here I was just already here” kicking in but can we actually learn to respect people’s privacy and acknowledge the fact that not everyone who lives in a major city is doing so because they want to be famous or the main character or an influencer or whatnot. I’m so sick of seeing tiktoks go viral that are just plainly stalking or doxxing random people who didn’t ask for attention or fame and are just living their lives. Especially given how many people in NYC are living with a wide variety of mental states, abilities, divergencies, and diversities treating them as a spectacle for your entertainment is deeply dehumanizing. Particularly in the past few years seeing so many content creators move here and gain their fame here it is becoming increasingly frustrating to feel like just existing in my home is not coherent with the burgeoning voyeurism culture that’s growing online. I, nor anyone who lives in a large city, should have to leave their homes every day worrying about the potential of being recorded and ridiculed online for just being a person.

People should be able to live their lives with the right to privacy. This isn’t to say that certain instances of internet activism shouldn’t have happened; for instance the Central Park bird watching incident (google it if you aren’t familiar but a woman was being racist towards a black man bird watching in central Park and his recording on the incident vindicated him). But instances like those are the exception and not the rule and many cases of publishing interpersonal conflicts/interactions is not from good faith activism or even from an activist point at all. Honestly what sparked this for me was that dumb tiktok that blew up of that girl looking for the person who kept writing “monke” on the whiteboard at her gym and the series of videos she made amassed more than 25 million views as she made a very public game out of trying to find the identity of this person. Some of her tactics included staking out at the gym waiting for this person or even asking the employees at the front desk who the person was. Maybe this person didn’t want to be a viral tiktok sensation and just wanted to write something goofy on the whiteboard at their local gym. Instead, this person has millions of strangers online seeking them out using unethical/invasive methods. All over someone who just wanted to write “monke.” Can we not just be a little silly in public without being at risk of it being the next internet sensation? If you live in a busy metropolitan area is it now your responsibility to make yourself as invisible as you can every time you step outside your front door? I genuinely leave for work each day wondering if I’ve maybe picked the wrong outfit, makeup, or maybe there’s an embarrassing stain or issue with my appearance that someone is going to see, record, and share online. I’ve even now seen TikTok’s of people recording through peoples windows commenting on how they’re living in their private lives now as well (the video in question is of a young woman recording a couple dancing through their apartment window). Even the guy who goes around “turning average people into models” initiates these videos by first taking non-consented photos of strangers on the street. Invasion is not flattery as much as people on the internet might like to think it is.

It is deeply unfair to ask human beings to live their lives in an unending panopticon. We should be able to go outside, make a joke, leave a silly note, have a bad day, an embarrassing moment, an emotional outburst, leave the curtains open with the knowledge that these moments belong to ourselves and are not suddenly (and without our consent) just become something for the masses to consume. Small spats that should remain small spats become global debates, a conventionally attractive or unattractive person becomes the internet’s object of desire or disgust. Let people exist. Let them have their dignity.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Workforce Tuvok is my cringefail babygirl

[pleuvoire]

(sorry i make a post like this every few months) man 2020 tumblr mdzs fandom was really just a minefield of scrupulosity havers taking it out on each other like how i had a friend for years who would constantly take out their scrupulosity on me and constantly lecture me about some kind of discourse faux pas i was committing and it made my own scrupulosity ntm my overall self-esteem so much worse. except like, a whole fandom full of people like that

[quietwingsinthesky]

funniest thing about even is that if ten had taken them to a pride parade, because of their whole. Everything. they would have no idea what is being celebrated or why. but they would be so happy to be included

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[aeide-thea]

have been reading fic & thinking abt my relationship to fic, which is of course also among other things a mirror of my relationship to my own psyche, and like—i think all the discourse abt its being ~internalized misogyny~ to mostly/entirely read m/m is not ultimately, whatever the truth of it, all that helpful, either to readers or to Women! but of course that doesn't stop me from feeling weird guilt abt the fact that i don't read more f/f than i do, because if there's anything i love to do, it's feel unhelpfully bad abt myself on the slimmest of pretexts…

however! i did end up reading some f/f earlier, specifically transfem f/f, and it got me thinking—basically what i'm usually mostly reading fic for is the romance/sex, right? like, don't get me wrong, i love when a fic gives me a gorgeous double helix of, like, casefic and romance twisted together, that's ideal, but fundamentally most of the time the feeling up is what i sat down at the table to eat. so in a complex aegosexual way it's a fantasy i'm—not projecting onto, exactly, i don't want to be one of the people in it; but, like, lurking in the wings of with eyes big love-crumbs, to steal a phrase from a relevantly-named poet. :) and so it's no wonder that mostly i don't want to read cisfemme4cisfemme stuff, because that's not a dynamic that feels like it has any room for me, or even like i'm particularly welcome in the room. but like. if it's trans women? i'm there, i love that for them and for me. if there's a butch? i might get tripped up by our differing lenses on gender feelings and stub my toe a little but even so i'm probably here for it. (thinking here abt that one butch/femme geraskier ~cisswap which is, like, a gorgeous bruise i keep periodically pressing. <3)

so really it's just like. shocker: i'm not personally moved by fantasies abt romance which feature conventionally feminine cis women whom i don't personally find relatable or sexually desirable! and when i put it like that, it really instantly dissolves the weird useless discourse-induced guiltgunk. like. give me a woman who's, idk, tall and charismatic and strong and clever and talented at something (though honestly it's like that siken revised tweet, a lot of those characteristics are ultimately negotiable!), like women i've historically crushed on irl, and then give me a pairing for her that's like. another woman who's also enough of those things, or a man who's—honestly the kind of m/f i'm open to would be its own whole post bc holy shit am i fussy, it very much does exist but for now let's just stick a pin in that one—or somebody nonbinary, which… idk that i've ever actually seen nb/f in fic? i'm sure it exists! but i'm not sure it exists in any fandoms i've been into. pondering the question did get me really thirsty for a good 'farmgirl (of the luke skywalker variety) is absolutely stunned-and-ringing-like-a-struck-bell captivated by confident flamboyantly genderqueer love interest (example wanted)' dynamic, though…