Thinking About The Way Eddie Stops In Their Tracks And Looks Down At Their Bare Toes Just For A Second

Nikolai Dubovskoy - Silence, 1890

Love the argument "oh but if you transition you'll have to deal with being trans your whole life" because first of all there is nothing bad about being trans and second I'm still gonna be trans even if I don't medically transition I'll just be trans and miserable instead of trans and happy

[Image description: text reading, #file under reasons I don't reblog activism posts with guilt trips attached /End image description.]

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

I would date the hell out of this person, what is WRONG WITH HIM

One of the people I worked with at the sex shop was a lady in her early forties. She had the most deranged sex stories and to be honest I could never tell how much was real.

I think probably all of it was true? But when someone tells you that a man showed up at her door with a sheet cake he wanted her to sit on so he could eat it off her ass it’s fair to be somewhat skeptical.

Aaaanyway. She hooked up a lot and ended up on a casual date with this guy. She was really stoked to be wearing a button up shirt with snaps, so later when they got to his place she could rip the shirt open like in the movies.

Now, it's worth noting she was a bigger gal, and her cleavage could have suffocated a grown man, it was substantial. There was a lot of boob real estate, okay?

So they get back to his place, and she finally gets to have her moment. She rips her shirt open dramatically, displaying the wealth of her cleavage. At first her dates face was excited and delighted. But as his eyes trailed down he began to slowly frown, which I think we can all agree is not what anyone wants when you've just laid yourself bare in a literal fashion.

She looked down to check herself, and there, nestled like a little baby bird in a nest of boob, was a single dorito.

When she told me this story she admitted, "I knew I had a choice. I could get laid, or I could eat the chip."

She ate the chip.

Her date looked repulsed, but she wanted to take one last crack at riding that man, so she did jazz hands and sang in a silly vaudevillian accent, "🎶You should probably put yer meat in me! You should probably put yer meat in me!🎶"

He drove her home shortly afterward, the coward.

[Image description: apparently a social media post from user God, reading Thou shalt not deny gender is a spectrum while claiming to be manlier.

If you can rank it, it's not a binary. /End image description.]

I'm too stoked. I can't focus, can't work, I can't think about anything else right now. Here is some stoked music:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[First image description: tumblr user @hawkpartys has shared an infographic titled How to differentiate sharp-shinned haws and cooper's hawks. There are two photos of hawks. In the first photo, a sharp-shinned hawk is captioned SSHA are MUSLIM. An arrow and the word hijab point to its dark hood. In the second photo, a cooper's hawk is captioned COHA are JEWISH. An arrow and the word kippah point to its dark cap. After this are the words, "this image came to me in a dream" /End first image description.]

[Second image description: @hawkpartys has shared a screenshot of another tumblr user's post tag reading, #how neurodivergent must you be about hawks for this to happen in your DREAM /End second image description.]

[Third image description: @hawkpartys has shared a screenshot of a website in which bird observations are catalogued and identified. According to the screenshot, hawkpartys is ranked fourth place globally among users of this website who have shared their identifications of hawks, eagles, kites and allies. Hawkpartys has shared 80,263 identifications. /End third image description.]

[Fourth image description: Tumblr user @elbiotipo has shared a page from a manga. In an auditorium, an athlete kneels on the stage with their head bowed, in clothes for martial arts practice. In the seats, the audience are also kneeling with bowed heads. The caption reads, EVERYBODY WAS KNEELING OUT OF RESPECT. /End fourth image description.]

this image came to me in a dream

lunar eclipse with mars opposition. moons like a mangalsutra.

[Image description: text reading, #this is literally it. this has psychological support. #time as we perceive it "slows down" during new and/or challenging experiences #because our brains are encoding more details about the experience. more data = larger file size = a "longer" memory #hence time "slowing down" during highly stressful events. in fight/flight/freeze we take in A LOT of detail that we otherwise wouldn't # and one of the reasons childhood and adolescence feel so long in retrospect is because we were having novel experiences all the time! #the older we get the less "new" everything is #UNLESS we make an effort to continue learning and growing and trying new things whenever we can. #it's not only good for you but your life will literally feel longer. time will literally feel slower. #anyway i just think it's neat. :^) #psych #tags /End image description.]

literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.

Reblog if you love and fear Pando

Eyes of the forest. Aspen trees