Mental Miscellany

in case you haven’t heard it today, or don’t fully realise it yet: i promise you that most people in this world are kind, loving and understanding. the people around you want you to succeed, they do not want you to fail. your friends don’t hate you, they love you, and they want to see you grow and prosper. 

the world is not as bad as it seems. don’t forget that.

Sounds fake but ok

good news: it’s not fake. everything i said is true. being dismissive towards good things is a damaging mindset to have. you’ll feel a lot better if you have some trust and if you’re willing to consider optimistic viewpoints.

Is this what non depressed people feel like ? Damn. You’re so lucky

i’m extremely mentally ill and extremely depressed at that. deflecting good advice that encourages you to think positively about life by claiming that the person who said it is not depressed (when i very much am) is also a very damaging mindset to have.

OP is the opposite of the “Then Perish” meme. All of OP’s replies read as “Then Prosper”.

Hey all y'all, it turns out that saying positive things and encouraging others with them even when you don’t quite believe them yourself is an excellent coping strategy for clinical depression. I know it’s hard to understand when you’re in the pit, and if I’m honest it’s still hard for me to grok, but the more you say positive things, the more they start being true. If that means lying to yourself, lie! Your brain chemistry is already lying to you about bad things, you may as well lie right back about good ones.

“Your brain chemistry is already lying to you about bad things, you may as well lie right back about good ones.“ 

Wow. That is a really fucking good point. 

THEN PROSPER

THEN PROSPER!!

the day when people realize that nb people are trans is the day that my face will clear

“The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning, or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives.”

hey, reblog this actually

Some dude in 2020: You should not judge a historical figure, a man from the past, by the modern ethics! He was a product of his time. 500 years ago his actions were completely normal! It’s present-ism, we can’t judge… bla-bla-bla…

People from 500 years ago: Oh my, this guy is such a bastard, a genocidal butcher, a total piece of garbage. Let’s keep records of this douche so people from the future shall hate him too. 

Columbus’s crew were writing about what a genocidal monster he was. There were mutinies and uprisings by his crews and colonists constantly. If his contemporaries were willing to risk the ire of the queen of Spain to oppose him, we have every right to call him out on it too.

My fave professor always says “there have always been antiracist people doing antiracist work”. So yeah, I can hold historical peeps to a higher standard because there were good, ethical people who knew better

Saying “you can’t judge the founding fathers on slavery” because “they didn’t know any better” or “that’s just how it was back then” is a cop out. It’s a standard whitewash that is still used to excuse racists today.

And I can promise you that there absolutely positively were people back then who knew slavery was wrong, and voiced their opinion that slavery was evil. Starting with the slaves themselves.

And if the words of the slaves somehow isn’t good enough, then listen to what one of the founding fathers had to say about the evils of slavery: (x)

Saying people didn’t know any better is whitewashing history, and perpetuating a false image of white purity and innocence. Slavers knew exactly what they were doing. All in the name of free labor and profit. The exploitive nature of capitalism hasn’t changed very much. I’ll bet 100 years from now people will argue that Jeff Bezos didn’t know he was risking the lives of his employees in the middle of a pandemic. Because “times were different back then.”

So yeah, people who insist that “times were just different back then” are racism apologists, whether they realize it or not. That worn out excuse is as old as slavery itself. Call those fuckers out.

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

-Stephen Jay Gould.

there are good things left. there are good things coming. there are good things waiting for you. whoever you are, wherever you are, however you are, it can and it will get better.

Big Eden (2000)

mutual on twitter recommended Big Eden to me and so I finally watched it. I remember a post was going around here about this movie but I was never really paying too much attention to it. Well SHAME ON ME. This movie is a true gem. Also HOW WAS IT MADE IN 2000?? how? no homophobia? great acting? cute plot? soft spoken native american character/actor? scenes that made me cry like a baby? main characters that will make you go “these idiots”? it’s got it all!

if you wanna watch this (you should) I rented it on vimeo

Big Eden is fucking me up in the best way

this may be an Unpopular Opinion (even on tumblr) but like the 8-hour workday is just Too Gotdamn Long

like even sitting in an office for eight hours a day isn’t particularly pleasant (or healthy, as we are beginning to see) but when we’re talking about doing *actual work* for that same amount time it gets pretty fucking brutal

doing literally *anything* (even leisure activities) for eight hours straight tends to be less than enjoyable but when we’re talking about things like construction, landscaping, factory work, and hell, even foodservice and retail, eight hours is a fucking ETERNITY

i might just be a lazy weak-willed bitch but honestly i think i’m not entirely wrong

this was being worked towards by leftist labor unions way back in the day after the time of FDRs new deal. people in the 40s and 50s were already starting to realize that we no longer actually needed an 8 hour work day or even a 5 day work week.

even with the comparatively primitive factory tech of the time we were already creating a huge amount of excess production back then and companies were making massive amounts of profit. So it already stood to reason that companies should either let their employees work less and thus each employee could work a shorter shift without lowering the yearly compensation of each employee, or in cases where businesses provide an active service they would shorten the shift but hire more people to cover the necessary operating time. but of course that would mean less money for people at the top so companies fought back hard and we ended up with nixon’s bullshit and so on and now its considered the norm for us to spend the vast majority of our lives doing work that really just amounts to waste. 

The IWW realised this and were fighting for it all the way back in the 1930s. This is a take with a lot of historical and theoretical grounding, OP, so you’re standing in good stead.

I’d also like to add it’s also been studied and scientifically proven that after 6 hours, we have an extremely noticeable drop in productivity. Sweden saw nothing but benefits from a 6-hour work day, including worker productivity, happiness, and half the amount of sick-leave used when applied to nurses.

https://onlinemasters.ohio.edu/the-six-hour-workday/

don’t know why terror seems like the correct emotional reaction to this but it is

From someone who sails and reads a lot of books about the history of sailing? Terror is entirely the correct emotional reaction.

“I am so sorry. You broke that expensive thing for me. I am truly sorry, my lady.”

For some reason people stopped talking about autonomous zones after the CHAZ was shut down, so most people don’t realize that both George Floyd Square in Minneapolis and the James Talib-Dean Memorial Encampment in Philadelphia are still autonomous 3 months later

They’re also both facing regular threats of invasion and could really use visibility and support. The cops are expecting to be able to clear these places out without anyone else noticing

Just found out there’s one in Los Angeles too, under the banner Black Unity LA

The folks at George Floyd Square and Black Unity LA are also both holding regular community assemblies to organize and start conversations around these movements

This is far from over. Don’t take your eyes off of what’s happening

#she did that

Debating Ben Shapiro

I would literally take the ghost of Ronald Regan with running mate Bill Clinton’s boner circa 1997 over Donald Drumpf do not test me

Yeah I’m a socialist and don’t like the current state of the democratic party either but if you don’t vote for Biden you’re literally taking a chance to drag the country a bit farther left and just ignoring it. I dunno what to tell you.

Biden would also be our oldest president. He probably won’t last more than one term. Do you want four more years of an actual wannabe dictator or four years of a 90s Democrat who can be pressured farther left if we try hard enough like seriously

Biden: thinks the post office should exist and global warming is real 2020

Also there’s potentially several Supreme Court seats that could go up for grabs in the next four years. We don’t want Trump to be able to fill them. Those are lifetime appointments.