Not To Be A Hedonist But. Pleasure IS The Whole Point, My Loves. We Are Made For Pleasure. Humans Have

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

Don’t fall for the exclusionist bullshit. They WILL eventually find a target that you feel threatened enough by to consider their arguments, whether it’s ace/aro people, pan people, mspec lesbians…etc. Consider whether that group is actually hurting you by existing and self defining or if you’ve just been made to feel that way.

The exclusionist rabbit hole goes deep and for some flat out leads to TERFville at the end.

Radical inclusion and solidarity is where it’s at and if you’re still too stunted to see that then get well soon I guess.

Identity is a prison! Let yourself respond authentically to each moment as it arrives, without being bound to the narrative of who you think you are! The self is a construct! The truth of your existence is ever changing and infinite as the universe is ever changing and infinite! Abandon the stories of your past selves and be present and alive in this very moment! IDENTITY IS DEAD! THE SELF IS DEAD! YOU ARE ALIVE!

be busy. busy not checking messages. busy reading those books you never started or finished. busy having a good night of sleep. busy taking care of yourself and your skin. busy moving your body. busy helping your community. busy reflecting on your life and what you can improve. busy doing things aside from the capitalistic viewpoint of “productivity.” busy slowing down.

in case you haven't thought about switching to firefox yet, here's an extension that will...

Notify you if a website you're on has employees that are on strike

Bypass paywalls for major news outlets like the New York Times

Change the browser theme based on the time of day

Directly install third party non-extension scripts

Save individual browser sessions to be reopened at any time

Use the TV format of YouTube in-browser

Make all chrome extensions compatible with Firefox

Turn YouTube dislikes back on

Fix Twitter and make it way less fucked up

Automatically remove trackers from URLs

And many more!

Feel free to add any other firefox extensions you think are slept on.

today i got locked out of watching youtube videos entirely on adblock grounds, so i did some tinkering.

ublock does not, in fact, seem to circumvent this, but i did find out something new through circumstance as well as trial and error:

bf told me two bits of information that turned out to be rather useful. 1) he hasn't really gotten the youtube adblock notifications much. 2) his work laptop blocks youtube cookies completely. (this annoys him a bit because a couple quality of life features function off cookies)

so when i was trying to troubleshoot how to wrangle youtube into letting me listen to music without constantly throwing intrusive as hell ads at me, i decided to block youtube cookies just to see what would happen.

well wouldn't you know, it has stopped complaining about ads being blocked entirely. for now anyway.

TL;DR: looks like youtube is using cookies to check for adblockers, so blocking them seems to cause it to leave you alone.

this quote from hbomberguy’s plagiarism video really resonated with me:

“creative people have trouble recognising their skills as skills, because eventually they feel like second nature. […] this stuff really is valuable. if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t be stealing it. creativity doesn’t feel special or unique until you realise people have to plagiarise it”

your craft is and always will be valuable, please never let anyone make you doubt that

“no matter how badly you think you’re doing it, someone else has done it a lot worse and been fine” is applicable to a wide, wide range of things and i say it to myself all the time

Transfems read this thread

And the most important thing to remember is that you have time. Time to discover new people and new projects and new places; time to heal from your past and your wounds. You might feel like you’re getting nothing done and nothing is happening, but you have time to discover your soul. It will happen for you <3