please clap

my two main thoughts on this are:

-i dont think it's immoral to not care or to even laugh at the deaths of some shitty billionaires but i dont think it's immoral to like, have the tiniest shred of sympathy for their situation either.

and

-i think it's very strange how the migrants in greece being murdered is being positioned in the discourse here. i fully understand juxtaposing the way countries are flocking to rescue these five rich people while scores of innocent struggling migrants just trying to enter a nation to seek livelihood were murdered by an EU nation. it's both topical and representative of a deep sickness in our collective culture. but it's at a point now where it feels like people are almost solely using it as a cudgel in some ideological debate around this hodgepodge submarine. and i think it deserves far more than being a rebuttal in an internet philosophy debate.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, January 25, 1920

is the world really such a terrible place? yesterday i asked if oat milk was extra and the barista said yes so i said ok just regular milk then and when she gave me my chai latte she whispered “i used oat milk ;)” doesnt that make u want to live another day?

here is my life philosophy: next week there might be someone ahead of you in line at the store who’s short a quarter and you have a quarter and you can give it to them. if you weren’t there, they’d have to put something back. the week after that you could be getting lunch and the waiter might ask if you want some pancakes someone else ordered and never picked up. you could find someone’s lost cat. you could watch someone’s bag while they go to the restroom. there are so many ways you are going to touch other people’s lives and they are going to touch yours and there’s no way to know when it’s going to happen. so you have to keep living!!! i wouldn’t want to die knowing that tomorrow the barista will give me free oat milk just to be nice. 

When I was 11 years old - we went to Sea World for my birthday. This was to avoid the realization I had no friends, and no one to come to a birthday party and probably because someone gave my mother free tickets at work. It was kinda a shitty day despite being at a theme park full of cute animals. There was a new roller coaster there that had just opened so we decided to go on. I was nervous. I’d never been on a roller coaster.

A group of 6 college kids were ahead of us in line and started chatting with me. Full on just having a fun conversation with someone literally going through the beginning of a very awkward middle school period. I was so shocked they wanted to talk to me. I think my mom mentioned it was my birthday. They were very nice about it. When we got on the ride they told us to go ahead of them so we could sit at the front of the car since it held 8 people.

Now the ride (called Journey to Atlantis - I believe it is sadly no longer there) started with a slow ride of beautiful visuals of dolphins and oceans and computerized images of this imaginary Atlantis before going up the hill to the beginning of the coaster, where it paused for about 30 seconds, and then the ride started. The college kids must have known there would be a pause. Maybe they’d ridden it before I’m not sure.

But as we sat there on that peak, 6 people I’ve never known, and will never know again, sang a very very lonely 11 year old happy birthday. Loudly. And with gusto. They were happy and laughing and joyful. And it made me feel less alone in the world.

I am 29 years old this year, and I still remember them. I still remember that kindness. It is so important. It doesn’t go into a vacuum. It exists beside me in my daily life. And I love the idea that I have been that person to someone else too.

It’s stunningly lovely to be human when we’re kind to each other.

OH THIS CAN’T BE LEFT IN THE NOTES

getting into your 20s and realizing you would never treat minors the way adults treated you as a teenager is such a punch to the gut

E-MORTALITY / @blueskies-bluescreens / status of a steam user / death, virtual grief and your digital footprint by kelley edwards and johanna j. lunn / STurner4077 on twitter / the new forms of mourning: loss and exhibition of the death on the internet (2016) by julie alev dilmaç / description for all the ghosts in the machine: illusions of immortality in the digital age (2019) by elaine kasket

You know, when I see fictional characters who repress all their emotions, they're usually aloof and very blunt about keeping people at a distance, sometimes to an edgy degree—but what I don't see nearly enough are the emotionally repressed characters who are just…mellow.

Think about it. In real life, the person that's bottling up all their emotions is not the one that's brooding in the corner and snaps at you for trying to befriend them. More often than not, it's that friendly person in your circle who makes easy conversation with you, laughs with you, and listens and gives advice whenever you're upset. But you never see them upset, in fact they seem to have endless patience for you and everything around them—and so you call them their friend, you trust them. And only after months of telling them all your secrets do you realize…

…they've never actually told you anything about themselves.

Daily Mirror, England, January 23, 1923 Image © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

I forget who originally said it, but there’s a quote about “Great science fiction isn’t predicting the automobile, it’s predicting the traffic jam”

I want a home mostly just to welcome people into it. There will be bowls of candy for guests, and the cookie jar is full. I’ll always say “I was just about to make a coffee/tea/cocoa, would you like one?” when somebody walks in. There’s lemonade and iced tea made fresh on hot days. Once it hits That Hour and they start saying they really should be going, I’ll remind them that the futon is always open, and I’m making cinnamon rolls tomorrow. There’s champagne and sparkling juice hidden on a high shelf just in case somebody announces their engagement or their pregnancy or their new job while they’re here. There is an extra chair in the living room, at the table, and on the deck, and it’s for you. I want to be able to say “if you’re ever in trouble, come to me.”

Despite every moment of life being indescribably precious and a wondrous mystery, I will spend it caring about dividends and how many rental properties I have.

Rich people are truly dead inside. 

I can't imagine caring this much about numbers that absolutely will never impact my life. This person is making more in passive income than I've ever made in my life and he's just like "but but I need more :(".

I mean, fuck that guy, but psychologically it's interesting.

Some desperate remnant of his soul knows what he needs. As soon as his debt is cleared, he goes on to live what many would call an utterly charmed life: working no more than 20 hours a week, travelling and spending time with friends (which he, at $150,000 a year and no mortgage, has ample money to do). He has a loving relationship also.

But his brain is so rotten that he cannot understand happiness anymore. He is incapable of conceptualising it other than in money.

A man who has everything except the ability to feel it.

How poetic.

But fuck that guy.

I want to hit this man.

I want to rob this man.

Meow appears beside Rogue, holding a sign: "Heist? Heist."

This man is so so so close to realizing a fundamental truth to how humans operate, but I genuinely don’t think he’s going to get there. Although I’m not sure he realizes it this man views the money he earns as a direct translation of his sense of personal achievement and engagement. 

Which means that when he says he regrets the months he didn’t pick up more hours to earn more money, what he’s describing here is boredom. He’s doing it in the crassest, shallowest, most income-obsessed and unattainable for most of us way possible, yes. But this man is expressing that once he achieved a certain financial goal he relaxed, enjoyed himself, got bored, realized on some level he was understimulated, and then started working more hours to meet whatever stimulated activity threshold he personally needs. 

This is infuriating because this man experienced the counter-argument to that nonsensical talking point that if we meet people’s financial needs with a universal basic income they’ll grow lazy and won't do anything. 

Anyone trying to develop $200,000 in passive annual income is not working three minimum-wage jobs to live paycheck-to-paycheck. This man’s basic financial needs were met. Working more hours to make more money is just his own personal code for ‘I still needed to use my mind to do things’ (using what might be the only metric of personal achievement he might actually have). This man lived the argument for universal basic income and I genuinely don’t think he realizes that. Once his basic income needs were met he still needed to do things to keep himself stimulated and engaged with his own life.

You see a version of this play out with retirees who leave their jobs, go home, and very quickly find themselves in need of new activities or friends or engagements to keep them present and stimulated in their lives. Ensuring someone’s basic financial needs are met doesn’t make them stop doing things, humans don’t work that way.

Reblogging for the psychology lessons

There is, I believe, a line in an Agatha Christie story about a man so desperately unhappy he doesn’t know he’s unhappy. “Ah, a rich man,” responds the nun.

This is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life

source

this is about what I would expect from the author of Azumanga Daioh writing a Sailor Moon doujin

my friend was testing perfumes out at the store and she sniffed a bottle and anounced "ngl this bitch kind of sucks" The girl at the counter suddenly looked really sad, and my friend was like "I'm sorry, I wasn't talking about you." And the girl looked up and said "No don't worry, I didn't think that, but I just crushed a ladybug with my shoe" We both took a peak over the counter. she'd stepped on a red m&m

does anybody have that cat poem, you know the one. not mary oliver's poem. the one about a cat growing up with you like brothers but him still being small whereas you've grown tall. i need a good cry

this poem is literally my last straw

Transcription of the poem for easier reading:

it takes years to develop your craft. do not romanticize the idea of an ‘overnight success’. be a student. grow organically. get really good. hate your work. start over. find new ways to express the same ideas. the student becomes the master. your time will come.

Let’s hear it for bagel & cream cheese