Sleepless With Their Dreams

I Love You - Fontaines D.C.

daily affirmations: you are isildur’s heir, not isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.

guys I had this realization the other day that Redwall works really well for reading aloud, and kinda half-remembered something about the author reading to kids? So I looked it up to see if I had made a connection.

And it turns out, yes, actually, because he read aloud to kids at a school for the blind. But all the books they gave him to read were depressing. So he wrote Redwall, a story about heroism and courage and making it through struggles, and filled it with so many sensory, visual details so he could give them something better and I just-- that's so wholesome-- help

i remember reading the Redwall books as a kid and noticing that they talk about food all the time. like, both that food and eating keep coming up in the dialogue, and also that characters have tons of feasts where every dish is described. at the time, i think i found it a little repetitive but now i realize he was probably lingering on those details because he knew sense of taste was something his audience could access and appreciate, and that is in fact very—well, sweet.

from the Redwall cookbook

Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin, 2016. Translated by Lisa C. Hayden.

anyone who calls all individual actions like thrifting, going vegan or using public transport bad or useless, and instead encourages people to just wait for some kind of big revolution to happen before even considering making any change in their own lives is not actually that interested in things getting better

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

AUTUMN SONATA (1978) dir. Ingmar Bergman

Old willow at the sacred spring on the summer solstice

Billy Collins, “Marginalia.” 1996

so many people are failing so hard at the most basic fundamental question of democracy that faces as voters in 2024:

fascism or nah?

democracy or nah?

authoritarianism or nah?

but the way some of you talk about Joe Biden it makes me think you wish that he was more authoritarian. I choose to believe people simply don't understand the legal separation of powers, I choose to believe it's a civics failure

but more and more I think there's just an appetite for authoritarianism. I think that's what draws people to Trump, actually. I think that's where you get dummy leftists saying "Why didn't Biden just sign an executive order to [insert thing that the courts would CERTAINLY immediately overturn here, like student loan cancellation, which is exactly what happened]?" and you're like "well, the courts" and they're "why didn't Biden just stack the courts" and you're like "well, the Senate" and they're like WHY DOESN'T HE STEAMROLL THE SENATE and it's like BECAUSE HE FUCKING CAN'T IT'S AGAINST THE LAW. And why isn't the senate better? because stupid fucks don't vote

people just want a benevolent dictatorship without realizing that such a thing has always been a fucking fantasy. a dictator is a dictator is a dictator.

the way some people talk about Joe Biden looks like they wish he was MORE authoritarian

The appeal of authoritarianism is that it looks "simpler" than democracy.

And it is.

It's also far, far more cruel.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux by Michel Esteban, New York, 1975

She was reading a book

Jess Allen, 2022

Me: In November, either Trump or Biden will win. There is no third outcome, so we should vote accordingly for the option that will mitigate the most harm.

The people in my notes: Oh, so you think direct action is bad? You think voting is literally the only thing we can do? You hate activism? You love Biden and endorse everything he does and think nobody should criticize him ever? You think voting will just magically solve all our problems? You think protesting is wrong? You love the status quo and think everything is fine?

Im Still occasionally getting people tagging me in that post to get mad at me for agreeing with you, its so funny (depressing)

I keep seeing people saying things like "Don't @ me with your weak-ass harm reduction argument/lesser of two evils argument" like bestie, literally, what is the alternative? You have a schedule for the glorious revolution I don't know about? Have you worked out how to have a glorious revolution that won't kill a bunch of people? 'Cause last time I checked..... (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

I know living in Oregon and having vote by mail I'm pretty spoiled with how little time it takes me to vote. I know there are lots of areas that make it hard, particularly if you are working class and can't get the day off, but voting is only a few days a year at most the people who vote have plenty of time to do other stuff as well.

If you want to do a revolution against the current power structure you need to pay attention to how that power structure works, and what needs people have that it isn't fulfilling. So it's not like ignoring current politics saves you time to work on other stuff either. You're making the other work you are doing harder through willful ignorance and not using all the tools available to you.

I have also seen people on other social media sites implying that the only people calling voting “harm reduction” are people who live in blue states or states that are currently leaning heavily blue (aka “people who have it ‘good’”)

My sibling in internet, I live in fucking Alabama and cannot name a currently elected Democrat anywhere in this state off the top of my head—I would have to Google for it—and I am seriously begging people to vote for Biden because another Trump term with Things As They Are is not something anyone in the world should be subjected to.