stuff i like to think of

LIVE (nothing wrong with me)

LAUGH (nothing wrong with me)

LOVE (nothing wrong with me)

Pour one out for a real one.

Image description: Headline reading Milton Diamon, sexologst and advocate for intersex babies, dies at 90 The byline says: He pushed back against doctors who recommended surgery on infants born with ambiguous genitalia, arguing for acceptance of diversity. Underneath is a picture of an older bearded man, who is smiling kindly. /end ID

queer as in gay but also queer as in unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe

when you guys see this post getting reposted for the 3948734987th time just remember: i'm op, me and a buddy did this at work while bored, it's real and afterwards my buddy threw pennies at the motherboard until it shorted something and stopped turning on

“When she applied to run in the Boston Marathon in 1966 they rejected her saying: “Women are not physiologically able to run a marathon, and we can’t take the liability.” Then exactly 50 years ago today, on the day of the marathon, Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes and waited for the race to begin. When about half of the runners had gone past she jumped in. She wore her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a pair of boy’s sneakers, a bathing suit, and a sweatshirt. As she took off into the swarm of runners, Gibb started to feel overheated, but she didn’t remove her hoodie. “I knew if they saw me, they were going to try to stop me,” she said. “I even thought I might be arrested.” It didn’t take long for male runners in Gibb’s vicinity to realize that she was not another man. Gibb expected them to shoulder her off the road, or call out to the police. Instead, the other runners told her that if anyone tried to interfere with her race, they would put a stop to it. Finally feeling secure and assured, Gibb took off her sweatshirt. As soon as it became clear that there was a woman running in the marathon, the crowd erupted—not with anger or righteousness, but with pure joy, she recalled. Men cheered. Women cried. By the time she reached Wellesley College, the news of her run had spread, and the female students were waiting for her, jumping and screaming. The governor of Massachusetts met her at the finish line and shook her hand. The first woman to ever run the marathon had finished in the top third.”

here she is in 2021 with her own statue, which, by the way, she sculpted herself

My #1 recurring thing as an editor is to guide people away from writing shyly and defensively. If you preempt aggression and try defuse it in your writing itself, you are showing your belly. The audience wants blood.

If you write with the expectation of being hated, you are writing for your haters. This is exactly what they want. So the more you do it, the more of your readers will be haters.

You don’t say.

For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. 

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. 

You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.

“I never thought leopards would eat MY face, until I realized they totally would, and they will eat your face, too!” warns defector from the leopards-eating-faces party

Never underestimate the power of fear of being proven wrong, of admitting you were wrong and having to deal with the consequences of your wrong choices. This thatkes nerves to admit publicly and stand against previous held beliefs.

Papi Senshi for the win, parenting the dungeon like a mf!

This is the second time in my voting history that I’ve participated in flipping a red seat in Alabama for Democrats (the previous time being my beloved Doug Jones) so it’s always funny to see people turn around and say voting doesn’t matter when I’ve seen it twice in the past ten years flip seats in what is supposed to be safe Republican country. Republicans are digging their own grave with their radicalization and it is making them lose (and with your help we can make them lose harder). Vote.

Vote. If yours didn't matter, they wouldn't be trying so hard to make sure you couldn't do it.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in the US.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in several "red" states - the Rs just work very hard to keep them from voting.

In "red" states, every Democratic vote matters, even if they don't win; it proves support, and it makes the Rs nervous about pushing their agenda. (And in states where there is also voting on laws, the public can block some of their agenda even without voting in a Democratic governor or majority in their legislature.)

In "blue" states, Democratic votes help remind everyone that we outnumber them, and help push the Overton window to the left.

If voting didn't matter, nobody would be wasting money trying to convince you not to.

Medical issue has stricken someone in my family but that's not the point of this post. The point is that my mother proclaimed "It's the eclipse that caused this" and for several seconds I was sitting there like :V until she continued "...He was standing out there with his head craned up for hours yesterday and strained his neck."

I think it was put 10 million years ago just for cats

(Source)

the catholic church just called and said the 7 deadly sins are now gooning, price gouging, FOMO, binge watching, ragebait, mukbangs, and reaction videos with just someone in the corner pointing at the content and nodding along

@boggmann that falls under familial abuse, which the church is totally fine with as long as it's done catholicly

understandable have a nice day

I think adults need summer vacation. Like let's just close down all our jobs for three months and play outside. Please. I'm so tired.

Love to see this post getting notes again. None of us are ok.

i may just be french but do americans really not get paid summer vacations? you don't go to the beach with your kids? "There is no federal or state statutory minimum paid vacation or paid public holidays" am i reading this right? like i'm not trying to rub anyone's face in it but you're just stuck in the rat race year-round until you're old and that's normal and accepted??? in the 21st century???

It's worse than that - the ability to retire is also disappearing and being made less accessible. Social security, which does not cover as much for basic needs now as it did in the past, may completely disappear in the 2030s. This year, I have had someone clearly in their 70's taking my order on multiple different occasions.

So we are back to work until you die, hopefully without being too much of a financial burden on your kids at the end of your life.

cats don't even unstick their claws out of things anymore they will just sit there with their claw stuck in a blanket and look at you like this until you unstick it for them