I Don't Consider "normal" A Desirable Or Praiseworthy State, So The Usage Of The Word To (ironically)

I miss when I would get Tumblr asks that actually said things and weren't just digital panhandling scams.

happy holiday everyone!

On this day, July 27th in 1987, a single was released that would change the world forever.

It's Rick Astley's debut single, Never Gonna Give You Up!

Let's say there's an online community of people who all have Whatever Syndrome. They talk about all the difficulties and frustrations and issues etc related to Whatever Syndrome. They share advice, they vent, sometimes they just chat and enjoy talking to people who can relate to them properly. Sometimes they make fun relatable observational comedy-style memes about common Whatever Syndrome experiences.

Some of the experiences they make memes about will probably overlap to some extent with the experiences of people who are not on the WS spectrum at all. Let's stipulate (made-up, obviously meaningless numbers incoming) that 10% of the memes they make appeal to a non-WS audience in this way, but 90% are highly specific to the WS niche and won't really be appreciated by outsiders.

In this scenario, the 10% of universally relatable memes will, because they are universally relatable, likely spread far beyond the core WS community. The 90% of niche ones will not (why would they?). From the perspective of someone without WS who doesn't engage with the WS community directly, this will look like 100% of all WS memes seeming to be about things that are just universal human experiences being described as WS-specific experiences for no particular reason. This person might begin to suspect that WS is just a trendy diagnosis that arbitrarily groups completely normal personality traits as a medical issue and that the whole thing is maybe kind of fake. This person is not being unreasonable given the information they have, but for reasons that are hopefully obvious the information they have is very skewed.

On the other hand! If this sort of thing distorts the public perception of what WS is about strongly enough, some people are going to latch onto the relatable memes about it, relate to them (because they're relatable), and wonder if maybe that means they themselves might have WS. This person might do a bit of googling and discover that, in addition to all the relatable stuff they relate to, there are other symptoms that they don't really identify with as much... but then, no one really seems to talk about those things very often, you mostly see people talking about [relatable stuff] when WS comes up, so the latter must be like, the main part, right? So (they think) it can't be too important if the other stuff doesn't apply to me.

[also the whole medical establishment is nightmarishly hard to access and a lot of doctors suck and make diagnoses based on random whims and prejudices, blah blah blah you know all this, the point is that the most obvious solution to "how do I confirm whether I do or don't have a specific medical thing?" is often not reliable.]

Well now, given all of the above... stuff might get confusing huh!

Okay, okay, (you might say), that's all well and good as a toy model of things that might be underlying the discourse you're alluding to, but to what extent is this dynamic actually responsible for what's actually happening? Aha! I have no clue whatsoever, sorry. I'm just the ideas guy.

Nur für mich (“On My Own" in German)

For the Lyrics Across Languages project: Below the cut are the German lyrics to On My Own with a translation. (Link: German lyrics masterpost; multilingual lyrics masterpost.)

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*Zyggy, as in Zygoballus sexpunctatus

as someone who just finished moby dick & also is rediscovering their love for the mountain goats, I was wondering what your top moby dick tmg songs are. you are the best person i can think of to answer this :)

wow it is truly an honor and a privilege... im limiting this to my personal favorite reading of moby dick which is of course that it is a memory play ishmael puts on ad nauseum because he lives inside the shipwreck and doesn't know how to get out; ahab/whale dynamics would be a whole other project and this already got away from me as it is lol. so, some songs that are about compulsively reliving the day your life ended:

woke up new — i began to talk to myself almost immediately

how to embrace a swamp creature — got out of bed, could not remember my own name / condemned to walk the soil amongst all creatures wild and tame

the slow parts on death metal albums — stock up on gauze in case of accidents / try to keep my story straight

lab rat blues — living water to quench my thirst 

going to mexico — i imagined your touch / it was almost too much

keeping house — and when you set the table, set it for two / the ghost on your doorstep has to eat, same as you

maize stalk drinking blood — this is an empty country, and i am the king

historiography — you were warm and that's all i remember

moon over goldsboro — spend all night in the company of ghosts, always wake up alone

almost every door — the moment’s never going to come / when anyone can say that the coast is clear

mobile  — lord if you won't keep me safe and warm / then send down the storm, send down the storm

southwestern territory — i try to remember what life was like long ago / but it’s gone, you know

bleed out — i’m gonna make a gigantic mess / but it meant something important i guess

divided sky lane — i will someday learn how to let you go

i could literally keep doing this for hours. but what does everyone else think

en.wikipedia.org

Christmas truce - Wikipedia

happy 110th to the christmas truce!

:3

And looking at all these kinsmen so arrayed, Arjuna, the son of Kunti,

Was overcome by deep compassion; and in despair he said: Krishna, when I see these my own people eager to fight, on the brink,

My limbs grow heavy, and my mouth is parched, my body trembles and my hair bristles,

My bow, Gandiva, falls from my hand, my skin’s on fire, I can no longer stand—my mind is reeling,

I see evil omens, Krishna: nothing good can come from slaughtering one’s own family in battle—I foresee it!

I have no desire for victory, Krishna, or kingship, or pleasures. What should we do with kingship, Govinda? What are pleasures to us? What is life?

The men for whose sake we desire kingship, enjoyment, and pleasures are precisely those drawn up for this battle, having abandoned their lives and riches.

Teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandfathers, maternal uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, and kinsmen—

I have no desire to kill them, Madhusudana, though they are killers themselves—no, not for the lordship of the three worlds, let alone the earth!

Where is the joy for us, Janardana, in destroying Dhritarashtra's people? Having killed these murderers, evil would attach itself to us.

It follows, therefore, that we are not required to kill the sons of Dhritarashtra—they are our own kinsmen, and having killed our own people, how could we be happy, Madhava?

And even if, because their minds are overwhelmed by greed, they cannot see the evil incurred by destroying one’s own family, and the degradation involved in the betrayal of a friend,

How can we be so ignorant as not to recoil from this wrong?

~the bhagavad gita 1:27-39, johnson trans