it's nonsense season!

honest to god can’t stop thinking about this song about jeff bezos by philip labes (link takes you to his spotify). it’s such a good example of politically driven folk music.

Lyrics:

Jeff found a genie in a bottle Who said, “I can give you anything you ask” “You can have your wishes three And a million more for free It’s unlimited, just set me to the task.”

Well, Jeff thought a while, Said, “I want houses, “I want boats, I want fancy modern art, I want tickets to the Met, I want my own private jet, And a rocket into space just for a start.”

Well, the genie waved her arms and made it happen His every wish bolted from the blue And folks all over town grew enamored, gathered ‘round To admire the man whose wishes had come true

They said, “Let’s hear it for the man who has everything! By good fortune he’s been set so far apart.” “Yeah, let’s hear it for Jeff who has everything! ‘Cause his wishes are only at the start.”

Well, Jeff heard their shouts and he grew worried He said, “Everybody’s getting in my way.” The genie smiled as before, “You’ve got a million wishes more. You can even give a bunch of them away.”

Well, Jeff got confused and sorta quiet ‘Til he finally said, “I have just one wish more.” “I am satisfied, so I wish that you would die So you cannot grant wishes anymore.”

Well, the genie’s eyes got big and sad and shiny ‘Til she finally said, “Your wish is my command.” And with an effervescent sigh, she disappeared before his eyes And no wishes were ever granted there again

So, let’s hear it for the man who has everything! By good fortune he has set so far apart Yeah, let’s hear it for Jeff, who’s got everything! Every single fucking thing except a heart

Ok, question. Why not use the For You page at that point?

Because it sucks

boi no. go back while you still can. a good chunk of my answers are in the quads

My math prof puts this on the instruction page of all his exams

[ID: screenshot of black text on white background saying “an exam is just another means of communication between you and me to help me understand what you have learned so that I can provide you with guidance on how to improve. It is not a measure on your worth as a person nor your intelligence or aptitude as a student. Just give this your best try. END ID]

she’s in her early 20s ⁉️ she should be in her room jerking off face down on her bed

Frothing at the mouth every time I see a sex ed resource that says "use condoms" without any further elaboration. "Condoms prevent STIs and pregnancy in the vast majority of cases when used correctly" but then they don't talk about what correctly IS

Correct use of a condom means

Bonus: a lot of people think hand stuff can't transmit STIs. Wrong! If you give your partner a handjob and then touch yourself you can get HPV, herpes (low risk), and infections like chlamydia and gonorrhea

This isn't meant to be stressful, and the most common STIs are the most treatable - and often curable - but getting gonorrhea in your eyes after a facial still extremely sucks and yet no one talks about the fact that any mucous membrane can be effected, not just your genitals (yes this includes your mouth and throat)

In ten years of doing sex work where I saw 10 clients a day most of the time I've had 4 condom fails ever. One was what I mentioned above when it snapped on my leg, one was a client on top of me didn't get off fast enough after he finished and the condom came off, and the other two were a Glyde brand magnum that was inexplicably twice the thickness of a regular condom and didn't stay put on anyone so I suggest just avoiding Glyde entirely (their water based lubes also stain fyi). With all other brands correct use = extremely safe

I don't trust anyone who hasn't acknowledged their capacity for evil.

"I'm just a smol bean uwu" No sir, what you are is someone who is so habituated to thinking of yourself as innocent that you will continue to do so even when you're guilty.

To quote Chris Fleming

"You know that thing where the most toxic person you've ever met over-relates to woodland creatures on social media? I call it Vibe Dysphoria. She'll put up a picture of a mouse in a jean jacket with 'It's me.' That is not you. I don't know how you got under the impression that you are a mouse in a jean jacket. You are an eel with a gun.She posts a toad with a basket of mushrooms like 'Me doing my little things.' Oh madam, there is nothing little about your things. You gave me psychosexual issues I'll carry to my watery grave. You are not a toad in the forest...You are a cruel woman who just happens to be small."--Chris Fleming

A win for gig workers.

This ruling may have a rippling effect across the country

Met an old teacher today and we got talking about ‘the good old times’ and ten minutes into the conversation I jokingly said the one regret I have from middle school is that I never won anything at her magnificent tombolas? Because, like, she used to hold this game about once a month so we’d learn the numbers in French and it was never big prizes, but as a 12-yo I desperately craved them - a cactus-shaped eraser, a bright blue notebook with slightly larger-than-usual squares, a set of coloured pens - and never ever got a single one of them. 

(Actually spent a good few months thinking I was genetically unlucky and researching ancient family curses with my grandma.) 

So today I don’t know what I was hoping for - nothing, really?

(I mean, that part of me that’s still twelve was probably expecting this sweet old woman to have a set of glitter stickers in her purse and just go ‘You know what, you’re right - I’ve been saving this one for you all these years, here you go’ but I’m a solidly rational person and I know that’s stupid.)

No, I thought we’d just laugh and it would be a good shared memory and that would be it. Instead, my teacher got flustered and a bit embarrassed and explained the game was rigged. It was never about learning French at all. She’d just noticed some kids couldn’t afford even basic stationery, so she’d buy a few half-fancy items every month with her own money just for them. She didn’t want them to feel different or left out. And obviously the way she used to walk around in the classroom, looking over our shoulders - it wasn’t to prevent cheating. It was because she was cheating herself, wanting to see which number a particular child needed to get a Minnie Mouse pencil case.

Guys - the world is fucked up, but so many people out there are just good and kind and humbly heroic it honestly gives me hope. 

It’ll be alright, you’ll see.

Twitter LGBTs are so sanitized it’s embarrassing

Why are they like this

this was a prophecy

Legit tho if this is your attitude towards sex workers & ppl who engage with us, you are not an ally to us, you’re 1 step removed from SWERFs & I don’t trust you!

patrick bateman: *licks a strawberry icecream he got from an icecream truck* hm yummy ice cream

his internal monologue: look at me . eating processed flavoring. There is no strawberry in here. It’s but a pastiche of the real deal. An ice cream with artificial flavoring, a momentary joy. Tested countless times in a lab, masquerading as if it’s authentic, genuine. Me and a strawberry icecream are alike in that sense: gentle on the outside, palatable and unassuming. The only difference is that I don’t come with nutrition facts advising of any warning signs concerned parents will scan over, and by the time I strike, itll be too late

disclaimer i have never seen this movie I just think the soul of this guy possessed me

disclaimer revoked i just watched this movie and this was dead on

The exception is cheesy local commercials. Those should be the only ads. I will listen to someone who runs a store in my city doing an awkward rap. We once had a furniture store with these awful CGI ads and the slogan "where the deals are so low, it's almost criminal!" and then they got shut down, by the cops, because it turned out. It turned out the deals were so low because. You're not going to believe this but the prices were so low it was in fact

When people look at abstract art and go "uh I could make that"

Fuck, I wish you would!

I wish you would let this inspire you. I wish that seeing a piece of abstract art would move you to self expression.

I wish you would go to the craft store, buy a cheap canvas and some cheap paint and let yourself play with color and form just to see if you can.

I wish that there were more amateur painters, trying their hand at geometric abstraction and color field painting. That would be so fucking cool.

"I could make that" should be a joyous revelation, not a snarky dismissal.

You could make that? Holy shit. please. Please make that.

Putting the original back at the top of the dash.

Let art inspire art.

You could do that. You could. You should try. It'll be fun.

its so disturbing how many people get appendectomies when there's no evidence that it even helps with appendicitis :/ hm? oh? no i know about that but it wasn't double blind so it doesn't count. you know. one of those double blind appendectomy studies where we give people with appendicitis a placebo appendectomy and the doctors doing it also don't know if they've actually removed the appendix or not at the end of the procedure. yeah nobody's done one of those so the evidence doesn't count and if looks like there's just no evidence for appendectomies :/ and some of the people getting them might be autistic so idk if they can really consent to having their body permanently altered... but of course you can't talk about any of this because of Woke nowadays...

i hate that "that that" is grammatically correct. why is english the joke language

jack and john were both writing but couldnt work out whether to use ‘had’ or ‘had had’

jack, where john had had ‘had had’, had had ‘had’. ‘had had’ had been correct

i feel like people really underestimate catholic trauma. like my catholic school literally gave us tests on why we should feel guilty for eating and sleeping in general, literally made us recite prayers where we insisted we were worthless, and told us that the only alternative to being catholic wasn't just a general "burning in hell" but was straight a description of graphic torture taken from some old doctrine. like literally i know some people raised catholic have probably never heard of this shit but my school went deep into catholic doctrine and teachings and this is genuinely what a lot of die hard catholics believe.

like a sin i was told to confess when i couldnt think of any sins to confess (at 10 years old) was like "did you eat any candy this week? yeah you should confess that. it's an indulgence that's unnecessary to keeping you alive, so that's a sin"

also unless you've gone through religious or cult trauma, you're really not going to understand how it affects a person.

like i genuinely hate how people's responses, from friends to therapists to romantic partners, have always been "well that belief sounds fake so stop that thought. that's your solution!" when i bring up any deep embedded beliefs i have because of religious trauma

like it's not just a belief. your foundation of how you understand humanity and how human relationship work is informed by these fucked up teachings. you don't choose to believe it, you are told it's the objective truth. and often times, they don't just brush you off when you question it -- a lot of times, religious groups do have answers that make logical sense if you approach it from the same world view. and of course you have the same world view, since it's the only world view you know. even learning about new world views doesn't help, because just hearing about something doesn't mean you believe it.

and when you finally break away and try to believe other things, it's often because you have no choice. the only reason i left catholicism is because i realized i was queer and my choices were to either kill myself (huge sin, wouldn't go to heaven), go deeper catholic, or leave the church and hope everything i was ever taught was wrong. and even then! you can't just overcome the teachings you were taught as a child, especially if you were well educated by them -- because you know how to argue against everything secular logically and intelligently, because you were raised to do so. like religious trauma is like constantly being at war with yourself over what you truly believe. and sometimes, since you're rightfully afraid of the concept of being tortured forever, you sometimes doubt your new beliefs since there's no punishment if you don't believe them -- but there is for leaving your religion, which you can still make logical sense of a lot of the time.

anyways. i feel like the world really isn't kind to those with religious trauma and it's mainly bc they don't understand how it works.

and not all negative interactions with religion are religious trauma. which is why you'll find (often ex xtian) people being like "fuck the church!!!" or whatever and have no issues absolutely writing off its teachings and living life free from the constraints of their former religion.

which like, good for them. but they clearly did not get traumatized -- or at least did not traumatized specifically by the religious teachings, even if something related to the religion traumatized them. i feel like a lot of ex catholic in specific (bc i can't speak for other religions) genuinely didn't get the full doctrine and teachings of the church -- which is why you'll find a lot still identifying with it but living a normal life, or you'll find some that have just written it off but hardly think about it.

so idk. things to think about.

I support this wholeheartedly -- I grew up in a religious family in a deeply religious/conservative part of the United States, and it's really hard to have to unlearn a lot of the things that get etched into your psyche early on. Folks at my church would go up on Sunday and preach that "the world" is evil and that we as good Christians needed to show them a kinder path forward, and then spend the other six days of the week spouting the most bigoted things to all of us impressionable youths. Even the tamest adherents are still difficult to get through to -- my mom for all of her flaws is at least sorta tolerant and progressive, but she shrugs off any world problem as "something that'll be fixed in the Second Coming", which is absolutely not a good way to live life!

When I realized I was queer, the first thing I did was try to kill myself to make it easier on my family. I've heard way too many stories similar, not just from queer kids in religious cultures, but from just regular kids in religious cultures. Mine believed that you became fully responsible for your own decisions at age eight, and once you turned eight all "sins" would be held against you. I've talked to dozens of people over the years who have mentioned wishing they'd die before their eighth birthdays so they'd automatically go to heaven. I don't care what the justification is, a child wishing for death is fucked up.

Life isn't a sin! Being happy is not a sin! A lot of religious trauma comes from efforts to warp that fundamental truth. One of the things I learned as a kid was "men are that they might have joy", and then we spent months learning that "joy" was not experiencing happiness, having bodily autonomy or anything of that sort (that was in fact, "wickedness", which "never was happiness"), but simply doing whatever our leaders demanded we do. When I learned that the highest leadership weren't bound by those same rules (they have a special "anointing" ordinance that permanently absolves them of any sin; it's secret but documented by outside sources), it irrevocably broke me inside.

Anyways sorry for hijacking your post, it just really struck a chord with me. So many people in the world are going to live their lives with permanent scarring from exploitative religion, and sometimes it makes me want to scream.

honestly, thank you for sharing this! it's good to hear other people's experiences, especially when it's similar but not the same.

I hate hardcover books so much. Sure, they’re beautiful on the shelf but the actual reading experience is just not it

Now, the penguin paperbacks with the black design? They’re so good, comfortable to read, good quality and I think they’re cool to look at