@arugula / arugula.tumblr.com

kimi | 21
Avatar

sorry but it’s actually so horrific how little of a sense of community people have, how little regard they extend towards the other humans around them. killing people for being loud on the subway or turning around in your driveway. loading your gun and waiting at the door because a child ran your doorbell unexpectedly. ring cameras, neighborhoodapp, community watch group Facebook pages. you’ve assigned yourself the role of the one true peacekeeper and casted everyone else around you as a threat to be controlled. there’s no connection or love or compassion. just a deep distrust and hatred.

and the people who face the most significant consequences from this are the ones who are already deemed as outsiders. people of color, especially Black people, disabled people, people with mental illnesses, homeless people.

and so many people are willfully promoting this complete alienation from each other. the obsession with true crime, the hatred directed at children for existing in public spaces, the policing and controlling of where homeless people are allowed to be / what they’re allowed to do, the constant fearmongering about public transportation. you are building a society of FEAR. you are conditioning yourself to distrust everyone around you. you need to make an active, conscious effort to engage with the world and the life around you in a healthy manner.

Avatar

young me especially would have hated hearing this but networking is literally the most important thing you can do to improve your situation like forget economic barriers to education etc just keep making friends with different people and eventually someone will offer you a hand up just because they dig your vibe and that is exactly all that's happening when undeserving people surpass you anyway

Avatar
neil-gaiman

When I look at how I survived my 20s, it was always helpful friends putting work my way. And often the helpful friends were people I had only known for weeks.

Avatar

i love GUTS because it makes space for teen angst in a world that's so deeply misogynistic and cruel towards teenage girls. olivia is so unapologetically adolescent and that fucking rocks. i just wish she was around when i was in high school because maybe then i would have felt valid enough to share the things i wrote about similar topics.

Avatar
Avatar
probablyavpd

Not many people talk about how deep emotional neglect hurts you.

I’m afraid to want things. I’m afraid to ask for help. I’m afraid to tell someone something if they seem in a bad mood. I can’t process when someone is nice to me. I can’t handle rejection, but my brain literally short circuits if someone gives me a compliment to the point where sometimes the rejection is better.

There are lots of overlap with emotional abuse, but emotional neglect hurts just as much. And it’s even worse that it usually goes undetected, so a lot of people can’t tell they’re being neglected until it’s too late.

Avatar
reblogged

we are in a media literacy crisis

friendly reminder that characters don't need to be saints to be entertaining. and telling a story does not mean endorsement. art does not need to be all about morally good people.

Avatar
vergess

IDK if this was meant as hyperbole but it's literally true:

We are genuinely in a crisis of media literacy, with ever fewer genuinely factual resources available in the style and language used by contemporary audiences.

It may sound condescending, but we genuinely need to remind people, or worse, explain to them for the first time that art is not evidence of real world behaviour.

So, thank you, for this reminder. Genuinely.

You're correct:

Art does not need to feature exclusively morally pure characters. Art is not proof of the creator's secret, violent desires.

ETA; Yes, the links are US American; no your country is not immune to propaganda. Be POLITE in asking, and I will help you find the data for your own country as well.

Avatar
reblogged

I originally had typed up a whole ass angry rant about how fucking awful some of the takes are about Oppenheimer (it seems primarily from people who haven't even seen the fucking film), but I decided against posting it (and then I wrote this which now that I'm reading over it, still ended up being a bit of an angry fucking rant so oops).

But what I will say is that the film does not glorify the bomb or what it was used for. So please shut the fuck up about that. Also, this is a story about J. Robert Oppenheimer. The bomb is a large part of the story because it was a huge part of his life. But the focus is on him and his emotional journey through the film. They are trying to pack about 600 pages of dense material into three hours. There is simply not enough time to go on a side quest to address a lot of the things many of you are insisting be addressed. Especially when Oppenheimer himself was not directly involved in them.

I've seen many people say that this story should never have been told. And, kindly, fuck you. We live in an age where people are constantly trying to change, discredit, or dismiss history. We desperately need more people to become engaged with it again. Prior to this film, there were a whole ton of people who had been so failed by their history classes they had no idea who J. Robert Oppenheimer even was. People still know alarmingly little about the bomb and the scientists who worked on it and if this film allows them to be more interested/educated in that topic, that's a win.

This film brings to light more than just the bomb. It's a discussion on morality and the relationship between scientists and the government.

Also, you don't get to say that a piece of art shouldn't be made just because it makes you fucking uncomfortable. Don't consume that piece of art, then. But you have no right to say someone shouldn't make something, or others shouldn't consume or enjoy it just because it makes you uncomfortable.

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.