bambi

It’s easy to lose sight of some of life’s simple pleasures when you’re mired in the politics of a land you’re forbidden to enter. But every now and again we deserve to be reminded of just how beautifully the sea sparkles in the Gaza Strip, or just how high the rainbows over the West Bank’s grassy hills can go, or just how easy it is to visualize the earthy way of life in villages wiped away in 1948. 

Source: Sixteen Minutes to Palestine

another thought about "gen z and gen alpha don't know how to use computers, just phone apps" is that this is intentionally the direction tech companies have pushed things in, they don't want users to understand anything about the underlying system, they want you to just buy a subscription to a thing and if it doesn't do what you need it to, you just upgrade to the more expensive one. users who look at configuration files are their worst nightmare

Not feminist as in "women should be included in the draft" but feminist as in "being drafted is a violation of bodily autonomy for any gender".

The draft should not exist. Drafting people into the military is a violation of human rights. You should not be able to force someone to risk their life. If you can't find enough people who care about a conflict to keep it going then it simply shouldn't keep going. You can't even force someone to donate a kidney using government power, why the fuck can you force them to donate their whole body and life to a cause they don't agree with or don't care about?

fairytales which tell you to be both kind and clever fairytales that say to be kind is to be clever and to be clever is to be kind fairytales that say the cleverest thing you can ever do is choose kindness and that cruelty or thoughtlessness are always foolish but not kindness never kindness

you bring oil for the gate and food for the dog and clean out the oven and bake bread in it and the oven will hide you and the dog will not betray you and the gate will stay open for you and close on your pursuers, to be clever is just to know that if you are good in a world made of rules, goodness will be returned to you.

In [fairy tales], power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness —from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sown among the meek is harvested in crisis.

— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

Josef Karel Frans Posenaer - Doves drinking at a Fountain in a Courtyard (1903)

Charles Joseph Frederic Soulacroix

French-Italian, 1825-1899

“Meditation” (details)

(by aloha_catlife)

Shopping sustainably may weaken the fast fashion industry, but it fails to address our compulsion to consume. “Ethical” buying lets us avoid the root of the issue: overidentification with products as indicators of worth and signifiers of our identities. Our self worth should not be built around what we can or cannot buy.

I hate when people say ohhhh your pets only love you because you feed them. as if that wasn't the first form of love any of us felt. get real.

So true. Food is literally what we use to tell animals we won't hurt them. We give them food and then don't do anything to them and the animal learns you're a cool dude, and becomes open to bonding. When you bond, you Know your pet loves you. It's the primary way we get feral kittens to start trusting humans. It's no different really with people and how we come together, we bond over meals all the fucking time.

Also like. There is no higher praise than knowing an animal feels safe enough to come to you with their basic needs. That's why I like when it's cold and my cat comes to sit on my chest. She could go directly to the heater and often does when I'm at work, but does the heater cuddle back? Does it thumb rub her ears and talk to her in a voice she recognizes as contented and pleased?

In mine and many other east Asian cultures, the dragon traditionally symbolises things like power, wealth and strength (imperial symbol and all)

I think we often forget that in the story of the Great Race, the dragon came in fifth because it'd stopped to give people rain. Then it'd stopped again to push a rabbit adrift on a log across the wide river so it reached the shore safely (that's why the Rabbit year comes before the Dragon).

Dragons aren't meant to just be powerful - they are meant to do good with such power, and to help those in need.

So in this lunar new year, I hope you gain more power, so that you might be able to help others. I pray you have abundant resources so you may give to yourself and those around you. I wish you courage, endurance, kindness and generosity, for yourself and your people.

I hope you, and I, will be rain givers, life preservers, joy bringers.

I hope we will be dragons.

Henry Nelson O’neil — Pleasant Dreams. detail. 1852

archive moodboard for @2ugars

There's this perception on here among neurodivergent people that neurotypical social behaviour is all fake and arbitrary. That it's a cruel, baseless game played to "weed out" ND people or to cause pain and complicate things on purpose.

This is wrong. All of those social rules and nuances ARE communication. Sorry if this is rude but it's not the NTs' fault if things don't gel- the gap goes both ways. Just because communication doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean it's random or purposeless. Remember this post?

Every interaction in an NT conversation has purpose, and communicates something, and I don't understand why nobody ever explains this to ND people. There's information on basic stuff like facial expressions, but never what any of it actually means.

Small talk about the weather isn't about the weather. It's about how nice it is to be around the people you're talking to, or feeling out their understanding of the world, or just saying that you're both present and people and you're being people together. It's not literal. The words are, but the broad scope isn't.

A conversation is not just an exchange of words, it's an exchange of acknowledgement, attention, and emotional understanding. Of course it confuses people when their part in that exchange is met with flat affect or unembelished words. It's like looking in a mirror and not seeing your reflection.

While this article frames them in terms of romantic relationships, I find that "bids" often appear in relationships of all kinds. We may interact with those bids differently or have different expectations related to bids depending on the kind of relationship we have with someone, but realistically, a lot of how we interact with each other in the world, especially fiddly little social cues and expectations, have to do with these!

The way we choose to respond to, prioritize, and make bids within our various relationships can have a lot to do with how connected we feel with others, how effectively we are able to communicate our needs and capacities, and how comfortable/secure we are able to be with others.