Love art and stuff

i call this one “nobody likes you when youre 23”

uploaded this at 1 am thinking ‘oh no one is going to see this, whatever :)’ but reading your thoughts, your heartbreak and ultimately your hope made me feel like the world is one yknow what? We got this

i call this one “nobody likes you when youre 23”

uploaded this at 1 am thinking ‘oh no one is going to see this, whatever :)’ but reading your thoughts, your heartbreak and ultimately your hope made me feel like the world is one yknow what? We got this

#is that robert reich father of sam reich game changer man

He's also the former US Secretary of Labor and served in the administrations of multiple US presidents but yes, he is the father of sam reich game changer man

#im sorry was no one gonna tell me Sam Reich Game Changer is the son of the former US Secretary of Labor#not to take away from the initial message (even though like yeah we been known)#but like that feels like information tumblr would be more forthcoming with in their praise of that show

Why do you think the dropout cast all joke about him being a nepo baby?

The reason he's the CEO of dropout is because when collegehumor was dying and the cast all wanted to keep working together and having fucking jobs, he was the only one in a mass of starving artists who could afford to buy and try to resuscitate it. That was a massive financial risk and the fact that it seems to be working is nothing short of a miracle. Everyone thank former US Secretary of Labor and general champion of worker's rights Robert Reich for raising a son with financial security.

For raising a son with financial security and a drive to get other people financial security too.

Sam is the guy that capitalists want to pretend Elon Musk is when they talk about "job creators"

Thank you for pointing out that Robert Reich is very progressive because I see so many people claiming that just because he's a politician he's not and it drives me lowkey nuts

Anyone saying that should go to his tumblr page, it's been nothing but absolutely eviscerating Trump and Musk for ages. He's an anti-corporate-power, pro-worker's-rights leftie who writes books about the failures of late stage capitalism and income inequality, and has spent most of his political career doing shit like passing bills guaranteeing medical leave and fighting to increase the minimum wage.

#im sorry do u mean samreichs tumblr or ROBERT REICH's tumblr????#cause i knew abt sam reich but the way u worded that implies that robert reich has a tumblr too???

Yeah Robert Reich's tumblr

@robertreich

If you’re someone who watches things on the YouTubes and you aren’t subscribed to Robert’s channel you’re missing out on excellent, scathing, intelligent, nuanced political commentary from someone who actually knows what he’s talking about; he has a group of folks across the spectrum of ages, cultures, identities who work with him and for all that he’s honest he isn’t a defeatist.

Also, to be clear, Sam is not actually a nepo baby. That is a joke. People seem to be seriously calling him a nepo baby in the comments -- he's not. He'd be a nepo baby if, for example, he was able to successfully get into politics because his successful politician father used his influence to get him a job he didn't deserve in the White House and smoothed his way towards good jobs in politics, or something like that. What Sam is, is somebody raised with the level of financial security that should be standard for everyone, which enabled him and the rest of the dropout people to save the company their own damn selves.

There has been no nepotism involved in his life, just regular financial security. Sam is the average we're all shooting for.

"lying is wrong" what evangelical nonsense is this???

listen to me. lying is morally neutral. and for many people in shitty situations it's a survival tactic.

lying in order to cause harm is often wrong, because causing harm is generally wrong. lying is also done for a myriad of other reasons, including because it isn't safe to speak truth, or because privacy is a thing and damn what an incredibly invasive question to ask in the first place.

truth is earned, my friend.

also, sometimes lying is funny. sometimes it saves time. sometimes it's easier, sometimes it accomplishes a goal, sometimes the truth is nobody's business, or is tricky to articulate, or you don't know what the truth is but are expected to have an answer regardless. sometimes you just straight up want people to stop bothering you. sometimes lying is an experiment to see how much you can get away with. sometimes you just want to be a little mean, yeah.

and in none of these situations is lying automatically "right" or "wrong" it is simply a tool that people will use, and that you will have to make your own decisions about based on situation and context.

climb out of the dark pit of assigning moral values to neutral behaviors. that's puritan thinking that's got its greedy fangs in you, rip 'em out by the root

this is KILLING me

Man who is waiting for you to answer his riddle

bro really did the "does he know?" meme for the camera

Boulders in now abandoned Dogtown, MA. In the 1930s Roger Babson commissioned unemployed stonecutters to engrave 35 boulders with “inspirational” phrases after the announcement of the stock market crash that would lead to the Great Depression.

sorry to these men but you'd think with something like stone engraving the idea of being extra careful about kerning would be taken really seriously

i imagine this has been done before, but not in a way that includes ME (the most important person)

for the record, i think it tastes a bit like soap and i love it

it's like if soap tasted good.

yes exactly!

What kind of soap are y'all eating?

cilantro is a 'sharp'/astringent flavor like alcohol. without embedded sociocultural exposure, some people associate that sharpness with the astringency of soap. with sociocultural exposure, there isn't an association with soap until/unless suggested. so. culture.

honestly the cilantro tastes like soap thing is a combination of regular cultural racism (why are we not comparing cilantro to actual human food or gin or vodka?) and weird genetic racism (why don't white people like cilantro? do we have different genes? (no. the "cilantro soap gene" is actually just a region of DNA makes some tastes sharper. our culture is what associated that sharpness with soap.))

So its an aldehyde thing! Cilantro leaves contain aldehydes, and cyclamen aldehyde is fragrance molecule that has been commonly used in soaps since ~1920.

I guess that technically means that cilantro doesn’t taste like soap. Modern soap just smells like cilantro. Which is Wild.

that is really interesting, actually!

I think it tastes like coriander 😜

“ Madison, who works a customer service job at an airport spa, has an employee handbook that says “makeup should be well maintained” and “hands and nails must be well manicured.” She says the few men she works with just ignore these guidelines “because they’re meant for women but [it] doesn’t explicitly say that.” Her wages ($13.25 per hour + 15% retail commission) do not include additional pay to purchase manicures or makeup. During her interview, her now-boss commented on how nice her makeup looked and how well her shoes matched her purse—comments that make her feel like she needs to keep up that kind of appearance even though she already has the job. 

It’s well known that a persistent wage gap exists for women workers in the United States, a gap that becomes even wider when race, industry, age and geography are taken into account. But less frequently discussed is the often silent expectation around appearance imposed on women workers, which has its own financial costs—known as the “grooming gap.” The grooming gap refers to the set of social norms regarding grooming and appearance for women, including the time women workers must spend to conform to these norms and the material consequences it has on their lives. 

We’ve all heard the common advice to “look the part” at work. For men, that can often just mean business casual clothing and a short haircut. For women, it can mean hours spent each week on makeup, hair styling and curating an outfit that’s both attractive and professional. 

The rules are usually unspoken; even when employers do not explicitly require workers to wear makeup, for example, women workers often feel required to wear it anyway. 

They’re not wrong: Sociologists Jaclyn Wong and Andrew Penner found that physically attractive workers have higher incomes than average-looking workers, but that this relationship is eliminated when controlling for grooming in women. In other words, if you purchase the right clothes, makeup and haircut, higher wages are more within reach. It’s true that men need to abide by certain grooming rules, too, but they are less complex, less expensive and less time consuming. Men’s haircuts, for example, often cost much less than women’s haircuts—regardless of hair length. The grooming gap essentially constitutes a pay cut catch-22: If women don’t conform, they are paid less; if they do conform, they’re expected to use those higher wages on beauty products and grooming regimens. 

Grooming costs for women can be extremely expensive; the global beauty industry, valued at $532 billion worldwide, directs aggressive advertising toward women to convince them they need to purchase a whole host of products to have a chance at being beautiful, well-liked or successful. The industry relies on maintaining impossible expectations around women’s looks so it can continue to rake in enormous profits. One 2017 study found the average woman puts $8 worth of product on her face each day; another found the average woman spends up to $225,000 on skincare and makeup during her lifetime. And then there’s the “pink tax”: Studies confirm that, 42% of the time, products marketed to women are more expensive than comparable products targeted to men. 

The grooming gap also results in a loss of free time: 55 minutes each day for the average woman, the equivalent of two full weeks each year. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFACWA), says that, in her industry—a workforce that is 79.3% women—the expectation around appearance literally “interrupts your sleep”: Flight attendants get minimal rest between flights, and that rest time is further shrunk because they are expected to appear “perfectly coifed” before their next flight. Nelson says that all of her grooming tasks took 30–40 minutes each day (more than two hours in a five-day work week). Madison agrees: it takes her 45 minutes to do her makeup and style her hair before her 7 a.m. shift—and she wakes up at 5 a.m. to get it all done. Prior to this job, Madison says she worked at the beauty department at Target, where she spent $200 on products every other week. 

Restaurant and hospitality workers are perhaps hardest hit by the grooming gap, as they rely on tips to survive. When I was a barista in 2010–2011, the only official dress code rule was to wear closed-toed shoes, for safety. Still, I knew I had to show up looking pretty to pay the rent; I made less than $10 an hour and I needed the tips.

Katie, 36, a veteran bartender and server in Fort Smith, Ark., says at her current job, it’s “understood” she should wear makeup. At a previous restaurant, a manager even told her and her coworkers they would “make better tips if [they] wore makeup.”

“Based on my own appearance—weight fluctuations, makeup versus no makeup, jewelry versus no jewelry—there’s a definite difference,” Katie says. She adds that she was passed over for the most lucrative bartending shifts at her previous job after overhearing her managers say they wanted “cuter girls” to bartend instead.

Multi-billion dollar industries also market fad diets and anti-aging products to women. Both Katie and Jeeva, 24, a bartender and member of UNITE HERE, the union representing hospitality, hotel and airport workers, worry about aging. “As you get older, as a female bartender, your tips can go down,” Jeeva says. Katie says she “hope[s] to leave [the service industry] in the next 10 years, before I get too ugly.”

The grooming gap’s effects are compounded for women of color. According to Restaurant Opportunity Center, restaurant owners look for workers who are “clean-cut, [have] good hygiene or a professional appearance, all potential code words for race.” For instance, Black women spent $473 million on relaxers, weaves and other hair care in 2017, in part because of racist ideas that natural Black hair is not professional or attractive. Black workers annually spend nine times more on hair and beauty products than other workers. 

For transgender women, too, there can be an added layer of work, stress and self-consciousness. Autumn, who transitioned while at her current publishing job in Washington, D.C., says she quickly realized how much time and energy it takes to perform femininity for work. She used to spend 20 minutes to get ready in the morning, but now takes at least 45 minutes. Autumn adds, “I have to do things that cis women don’t have to… [but] it’s gotten easier with time and practice,” like tucking and dealing with facial hair. Because she presents extremely femme, Autumn says she hasn’t dealt with enforcement around her appearance, but other women workers around the country have been disciplined and even fired for appearing insufficiently feminine. Women workers have sued—and won—over gender discrimination that manifests as attractiveness discrimination.

Nat, a trans woman who works at a union in the Washington, D.C., area, says, “I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be a woman if I liked masculine things. It delayed any kind of self-reflection” about gender and identity “for such a long time.”

At work and in the world, all women—cis and trans—feel the pressure to conform to normative standards of femininity and attractiveness. But the solution to this problem isn’t to throw away all the eyeshadow or take out a new line of credit for weekly manicures. The solution is to organize together.”

Continued in the link to the article, but uh

TL;DR: There’s a significant wage gap between women who conform to traditional feminine beauty standards by, for example wearing makeup and heels and using a lot of hair and beauty products, and the women who don’t. Meaning women are financially punished for not conforming to femininity or beauty standards. The gap is worse for women of color and trans women because there’s higher beauty standards for women of color and trans women.

And when women do get those higher wages by playing the game and conforming to beauty standards and femininity, they have to spend 2x-3x+ more on grooming and their appearance than their male colleagues, so those high wages just disappear and go right back into keeping up their looks, making it difficult if not impossible to keep up financially with men, this isn’t even mentioning how much more time women lose each day to having to keep up their “professional” appearance compared to male colleagues.

Canada is trying to enter rare mineral mining in Sarawak btw which could potentially cut down thousands of acres of virgin forest, the Borneo forest is considered the lung of Southeast Asia jsyk

hey let's start spreading the reminder now that you cannot safely self-manage an abortion with herbal medicine or essential oils. natural abortifacients function by poisoning you; you wait for your body to realize you're dying and reject the pregnancy in order to conserve resources, and hope that happens before the rest of your organs shut down.

i think there will be an upsurge soon of unscrupulous and/or malicious actors preying on desperate pregnant people; do not help them kill people. don't spread recipes for herbal medicines or ingestible essential oil mixtures that purport to cause a pregnancy termination.

Abortion pills work using mifepristone and misoprostol -- the former blocks progesterone and the latter expels pregnancy tissue. Anything else will, at best, do nothing, or at worst, kill you!

It is also important to know that pregnancy tests are not accurate for determining whether a pregnancy has been terminated, as the hormones from said pregnancy will linger even after an abortion. Instead, you should get blood work or an ultrasound a week after the termination to accurately confirm.

"We don't exactly live in a world built for humans, do we? There's no guidebook for happiness or success or a sense of place in the world, and the people claiming to have one for you are really just trying to sell you something. We spend most of our little lives struggling to make these feelings fade away or find something to placate them. It's either ennui, or being… on weed. I know it's a little pretentious, but we're all searching for a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, and those things are hard to come by. There's a little bit of nothing in all of us. And we'd like to fill it with something. I feel like I know who I am, and how to live my life, and that makes me feel happy and somewhat complete. And I don't think I'd have ever found myself if I was trying to chase someone else's sense of completeness. Basically, no one knows how to live your life, and you might not either. But the only person who's gonna figure it out is you. And you won't find that by trying to be the next… that person. You can only be the first of whoever it is that you are."

This post has been sitting at the back of my brain demanding attention, and I think it's because I internally feel like there is a guidebook for happiness, and it's both broadly applicable and not something someone can sell you. But then I realized I've accumulated this knowledge over the course of my adult life, because of all the effort and research I've put into understanding intrinsic motivation, depression, and ADHD. So here, a guideline for happiness and I stand in no way to benefit:

The foundations of happiness and intrinsic motivation that I've found are:

Other things that really help a lot with day-to-day mood and experience of life:

But these are all things that you can't buy (aside from the vegetables and fruits), which means they can't be used to make a profit, which means no one is advertising for them. The first batch are diametrically opposed to what most Americans' 40 hour/week jobs provide. These things are diametrically opposed to a money-focused capitalistic system. But they are central to life satisfaction.

There. There's a road map. It's not complete, but I think it's a pretty good start.

Small correction, if you're hypermobile, you can skip stretching to maintain *your* full range of motion is that range of motion extends past the healthy and safe range. Instead, work on building strength at the ends of your range of motion.

Source: dumb things I did to myself + advice from a physical therapist who focuses on hyper mobile patients.

Young people have GOT to stop talking about conservatives like they're scary menacing monsters. Yes the policies they back are horrifically destructive but that's entirely because of how individually stupid, fearful, emotionally stunted, weak willed and catastrophically gullible they are. That all is what made them become right wing to begin with. Just the most easily manipulated zombie sheep on earth.

People I have encountered in the past month who voted for Tr*mp include:

- Homeless girl who asked for my pronouns immediately and used them correctly every time

- Hispanic woman with a large family who just got her citizenship and is still working on her English

Neither of these women understood what they were supporting, they mostly saw ads that he was going to reduce grocery prices and voted based on that. Neither of them have consistent access to information or any relevant political education, nor the time, money, or energy to seek it out because they are focused on surviving.

A vast amount of republican voters are exactly the same, and it's a direct result of the GOP strategically denying them resources. We cannot move forward if you throw people to the curb for not knowing any better.

I need to emphasize that these people are "stupid, fearful, emotionally stunted, weak willed and catastrophically gullible" because they have been forcefully kept in poverty without access to proper education, therapy, or community support and fed fearmongering propaganda their entire lives without anyone ever showing them life can be better. They are traumatized and exhausted and a lot of them are trapped in religious cults.

They are like this because the GOP has meticulously engineered huge swaths of the country to be that way. It is not an inherent personal failing and it is very likely you would be the same had you grown up in the same circumstances.

You do not have to shake hands with bigots, but you need to have compassion and understanding for people who have not yet been given the resources and political understanding you have.

I'm not done here actually. Dehumanization like "zombie sheep" is in direct opposition to the kinds of strategies we are going to need to survive after January 6th. Yes, these people voted for something horrific, but they are still people and as things get bad most of them are going to be negatively impacted– and when that happens we need to be there to support them because that is how we get them to join us and fight back. Everything that makes them susceptible to right-wing propaganda will work in our favor in the right circumstances.

We simply will not get anywhere if we are determined to not see people we hate as people. Humans can learn and grow, zombie sheep cannot.

ETA: Since people are misconstruing my meaning here, we punch fascists on sight. But if someone says "I didn't realize this would happen when I voted for the fascists" or there's even a single crack in their loyalty you scoop them up ASAP no matter how much you want to toss them off a cliff because with a bit of compassion you can get them to turn against the fascists, and that is how we win.

Bonus:

first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line

second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all

third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below

fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?

fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves

sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it

seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him

eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night

ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him

tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk

eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important

twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go

thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme

fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader

fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that

sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why

he would not say that.

I was there when he said it actually

"oh yeah even if your opponent has an unexpected advantage that completely turns the tides of battle (you thought they were unarmed when they aren't) you shook totally just keep going with your current plan, otherwise you're a coward"

he would not say that.

you're just afraid of a big thick girlcock

Whether Sun Tzu would be into girldick is completely orthogonal to whether he would give bullshit bravado advice that will get you killed. He's the "logistics win wars" guy.

His ladycock advice would be more like "The wise general chooses an adversary who uses familiar techniques."

there is a lot we will forgive for girlcock on this site but misconstruing Sun Tzu is NOT on that list

OK, this has been driving me nutty for years so:

About 11 years ago, I came across an obscure word that means "a shit province that you send a disgraced official to administrate".

about 10 years ago, I thought, I want to use that word in a Smallville fic. It's "katzenjammer", right?

No. Katzenjammer means "confusion/uproar". In bafflement I searched through the "one vocabulary word a day" emails I thought I'd learned the word from, but no luck.

A decade on it still haunts me. So. Does anyone know?

FOUND IT FOUND IT FOUND IT. by idly scrolling through Philip Pullman's twitter! Screencap is from the Jan 19th 2014 email from A Word A Day. I apologize for the garbled definition in the original post that probably put people off the scent.