If You Persevere, In Time You Will Have An Entirely Different Problem – Not That Life Is Meaningless,

I think about this sometimes. How did I learn that there are some things you just don't do to people, no matter who they are or what they've done? I used to think I learned it as a young adult working my first few jobs. I did some childcare and a shitton of foodservice, and in both types of work it was really clear to me that if I didn't do my job right -- if I made a mistake with an allergen, or forgot to lock the child lock on the basement door -- someone could be badly hurt or even killed. That was a heavy thing to realize and it made me so aware of my responsibilities to other people, it really solidified it for me that you don't do to your enemies what you wouldn't do to your friends. But I think I must have learned it earlier. I think I learned it by...needing help from other people, and getting it. I think I learned it from times when I was in trouble, and someone helped me. The people around me had enough empathy for me, enough of the time, that I learned empathy too. Maybe "learned" is the wrong word, even, because it wasn't a thinking process. I think empathy is more like grammar: it's not a sense like sight or touch, it's a thing you can feel if the people around you have it. You absorb it from them via mirror neurons.

It's funny because I know, in a cerebral way, that abuse can damage children's empathy. But it's really different to see and feel how that relates to me, personally, and to the people I know best. I have the empathy that I have because people were decent to me when I was small. That's it, that's the entire reason. And that's so strange because it wasn't something that was in my control. It's not something I had, or have, the power to choose.

Lately it's giving me patience for people. Because no one is born an asshole. And because something that's been damaged can be repaired, sometimes.

really devastating to realize that my belief that “there are some things you can never to do to another person, regardless of who they are and what they’ve done, because they are a person” is held by so few people. they aren’t upset by the unjustifiable, they’re simply unhappy that it happens to the ‘wrong people.’

People's knees are so cute

At the Window - Ilya Pyankov

Russian , b. 1972 -

Oil on canvas , 110 x 65 cm.

Empty Kingdom by Fuke

I think we need to appreciate this part of Brennan Lee Mulligan's WIRED interview a lot more:

"The evangelical right in this country needs to manufacture outrage to hold onto its voting block. [The satanic panic about DnD] was arbitrary, as the targets of their outrage always are. Fight the power."

May 2025, overgrown house

my mother taught me to crochet when i was young. she was left handed, so she taught me how in the bathroom mirror so her hands would be in the right position.

she learned to crochet from her grandmother, who was right handed. her grandma was the one that originally used the bathroom mirror to teach her granddaughter properly.

i find something poetic about that. here in this bathroom mirror, through generations, we adapt to our young who have a different way of learning and interacting with the world

I love that Cath is even in character X-D

It’s no mystery that we’re stoked about this news! #Deadloch is coming back for a second season on Prime Video

Same energy

man, i just love a keeled scale. not that there are bad scales, keeled scales are just so good.

I'm assuming you will like this gorgeous little friend...

Hairy Bush Viper aka Rough-scaled Bush Viper (Atheris hispida), family Viperidae, found in central Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Cristian Torica

photographs by Mark Kostich