โWhen I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklynโs streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogsโ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably wonโt last: the reinforcerโthe silence or the cessation of the annoyanceโwas exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.โ
โ Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)
21K notes
ยท
View notes
โI hate the script, the vault dwellers sound so cheesyโโ my Brother in Steel you realize thatโs the point, right? They were bred to act like the physical embodiment of an HR e-mail. Did you not catch the memo that Vault-Tec put out regarding their experiment facilities?
3K notes
ยท
View notes
A werewolf boyfriend giving you a quick kiss while he steals a couple fries off your plate is the same as a dog doing tricks for table scraps you cannot change my mind.
3K notes
ยท
View notes
Hear me out :
Teen Dazai and Chuuya going around finding every single arcade in the entire city and always having the very top two high scores in most of the games to the point where every single teen who has ever lived in Yokohama and has gone to any arcade is like "I don't know who the fuck Mackerel and Slug are but they're annoying."
1K notes
ยท
View notes
i think a lot about how in Blood of Olympus, Nico was supposed to be sentenced to death as a traitor by the Romans alongside Reyna, and how he was just 100% ready to throw down with Michael Kahale (who is like, twice his height and weight) if Reyna gave him the word. By the end of their quest Nico was really just ready to start biting people if Reyna asked him to and gave absolutely zero shits about potentially dying.
1K notes
ยท
View notes