man this has been said before by cleverer folks than me, but sometimes you have to sit down and let the sheer size and age of the storytelling tradition just completely overwhelm you, ja feel?
like— think for a second about how mind-bogglingly incredible it is that we know who osiris is? that somebody just made him up one day, and told stories about him to their kids, and literally thousands and thousands of years later we are still able to go “there was a god whose brother cut him into pieces”, it’s so arbitrary, it’s so incredible
that in talking about scheherazade and her husband, you are doing something that someone in every single generation has done since it was written— you are telling stories that have lasted an impossible amount of time
can you conceive of telling a story, and then traveling into the future and hearing that same story told— with alterations, and through media that you could not possibly conceive of, but your story— in the year 3214?
the fact that we! as a species! have been telling the same damn stories for so long— the fact that we’ve seen homer’s troy and chaucer’s troy and shakespeare’s troy and troy with fucking brad pitt because we never fucking stop telling stories! never ever ever!
we never stop caring about stories, or returning to the same stories, or putting our own spins on stories. we never stop talking about the characters as if they were real, or asking what happened next, or asking to hear it again.
generation after generation, they never ever ever stop mattering to us.
"you are addicted to screens" no no you see i am actually addicted to my friends. unfortunately they live in there
Talking with someone about something serious and typing "Olay" instead of "Olay".
speakng from a place of privilege (favorite character who is alive),
What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
I am extremely not going to dignify that 'walkable cities ARE ableist actually' post which has crossed my dash with a reblog, but four things to keep in mind:
'Walkable cities' is almost always a shorthand for 'cities which deprioritise cars as a mode of transport and make it possible and enjoyable to travel by other modes instead', rather than a call for everybody to walk and only walk everywhere all of the time. We live in a golden age of micromobility options, for starters. And when most people do not need to use cars, it will be much easier for people who do.
Advocacy for walkable cities and active transport often does slide right into ableism and fatphobia and this needs to be directly challenged whenever it appears (as someone who has been a cycle commuter my whole adult life and overweight for all but five minutes of my whole adult life, if I never hear "if everybody cycled we would solve the '''obesity epidemic'''!!!" again...)
AT THE SAME TIME, while this will change in degree from place to place, the Venn diagram between 'people who advocate for walkable cities' and 'people who advocate for accessible cities' has a significant degree of overlap. There's probably at least one car-centric conservative out there who genuinely advocates for accessibility by the law of averages, but it's neither a coherent nor common position. Walkability IS a form of accessibility. It is not accessibility for everybody but no single kind of accessibility is, which is why we need cities with MULTIPLE kinds.
Therefore, as with goddamn near everything in life, if you actually want to see more accessible cities...advocate for more accessible cities, and what that means for you. Going 'but there are some people who will always need cars therefore walkable cities is ableist' does exactly nothing except turn people off the idea of change. Say what you want to see. Be specific. Imagine better futures. TL;DR - cui bono when we lock ourselves into "cars vs walkability"? you guessed it - people who benefit from the (observably harmful) car-prioritising status quo. so is this assertion always a cynical psy-op? No. Does it function as one in practice? fuck yes. be smarter.
Roasted chicken, ginger, daikon, shiitake mushroom soup with lime, cilantro, broccoli sprouts, and rice noodles
Snowy days bring me so much happiness❄️🤍
i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.
Anytime I see someone complain about leftists who use too much “jargon” I instantly dismiss whatever else that person is about to say. Babygirl sometimes you are going to have to learn words to talk about economic theory.
Dulce María Loynaz, tr. by James O’Connor, from Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems
[Text ID: “Your hands have a strange clarity. Have you been walking among the stars?”]
high heeled boots. the song fast times by sabrina carpenter. these are the two worms in my life blood
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