Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

YOU play video games to feel powerful. I play video games to feel new, previously undiscovered shades of grief and sadness. we are NOT the same.

...that's what MAKES me feel powerful

I couldn't have said it better myself.

As a 30 year old man who escaped the Alt-right pipeline, you're not going to be happy about the answer.

All I hear from leftists is how much they hate me for my immutable traits, how much they blame me for everything wrong with the world, how much they want me and everyone who looks like me dead.

Whereas Alt-right types would call me "brother" and welcome me into their ranks so long as I hated the right ways.

Do you understand the difference?

I'm an ally and support equality because I feel it's the morally correct choice to make, but holy fuck is it difficult to reconcile that with the fact that means fighting for a lot of people who see you as the scum of the earth.

Read this and then read it again and then read some fucking bell hooks because this is a legitimate problem on the left.

"To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being." - bell hooks, The Will to Change https://bellhooksbooks.com/product/the-will-to-change/

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: one of the most successful alt-right psyops 4chan ever pulled was sealioning leftists in general and feminist women in particular to such a degree that, in response, we started reacting to every polite, 101-level question about feminism or leftist politics from men with anger and hostility, thereby driving said men directly towards the sympathetic arms of the alt-right, which was the entire fucking point of conditioning us to do that. I cannot emphasise enough that 4channers did this on purpose, as a concerted strategy, to make the left look unhinged, misandrist and unreasonable, and that we, collectively, took the fucking bait.

which is where the role of radfem/terf shit in furthering the same gender essentialism espoused by the alt-right really needs to be acknowledged: because as necessary and overdue as #metoo was on a cultural level, the framing of so many subsequent discussions as Yes All Men is radfem brainrot, not because patriarchy doesn't exist (it does!), but because patriarchy is an institutional and sociocultural problem rather than some inherent, indelible facet of masculinity, and that distinction matters, because you cannot solve the problem of patriarchy by treating it as fundamentally unsolvable.

this doesn't mean excusing misogyny. it doesn't mean absolving shitty men for their shitty actions. it means acknowledging that, at a basic psychological level, the vast majority of people do not react well to an all stick, no carrot approach to self-improvement, and if your response to that reaction is to say, "well, but they shouldn't need a carrot - they should just know to do right anyway, for its own sake, and the fact that they don't is why they deserve the stick," then I'd invite you to consider exactly how many different groups with individual, often radically self-contradictory definitions of right exist in this context, and how many of them, as opposed to you, are distributing carrots.

like, listen: I know that it sucks that people, universally, are not born with an innate, collective knowledge of The Best Way To Run A Society And Treat Each Other, and it additionally sucks that, even if we somehow figured out the perfect answer, some would still take convincing, others would still be on the fence, and a terrible few would still commit to being assholes. but that's what it means to be human, and there's no shortcut to getting around it! the work is the work. men are always going to exist, which means you can't build a better world without them - and if your better world doesn't acknowledge that, then it's not a better world at all; just a silo away from reality.

get in loser we’re living past the end of our myth

lost, we live beyond the end of our history

via indiarosecrawford

Frog Paints a Water Lily Pond 🪷🎨🐸

𝑓ₒᵣ ⲕᵢ𝑛𝑔 ₐ𝑛𝑑 𝑐ₒ𝑡𝑡ₐ𝑔ₑ

Ok, I adore the Frogs to begin with, but the sheer finesse and dedication of this one boggles my mind.

me: this is cute and precious

my brain: 45 years ago this person could've made a public access television show that ran for half a decade on the strength of this concept with the right framing device and it would've been paid for with federal arts grants and maybe even national syndication rights. now they're begging for a single minute of engagement on tiktok in the hopes that maybe someday the abstract metrics of digital media platforms will translate into a tangible career

me: yeah me: cute frog though

my brain: it is a cute frog

wishing spiders a successful strike, may they get everything they want

I mean like the game devs from the company Spiders who are on strike right now. Not the. Not the leggy fellers. I don't think they're on strike

Important not to confuse game developers with web developers.

Putting spoiler tags on the sentence "fought my first dragon!" in the game Dragon Age is a true Dragon Age experience.

My Dragon Age II playthrough was an EXPERIENCE for all the people in my life.

confusing Odysseus and Orpheus is like confusing a liar and a lyre. send post

Looking back, Nobody found this funny.

@copperbadge

I keep trying to come up with a pun in response to this but nothing is going to beat "Looking back, Nobody found this funny". Nothing is even going to touch that. All I can do is stand here and admire it.

I know this happens and it looks suspicious but

this image? we have every reason to think it is a cucumber, like it was made in clay models in burials period, it's painted green, it's on the small side of things (9.6 cm or 3 3/4 inch)

oh right and it was placed on a model offering table with small model bread and drinking cup

sometimes a cucumber really is a cucumber.

Even a cucumber ritual is correctly identified twice a day

Hey remember when Sophie’s feral gremlin children were like “hey mom :) pick out anything you want :) we want to cheer you up.” And Sophie was like “I want to kidnap this messed up lawyer.” And Sophie’s kids were like “ok!!!!!!! We love a kidnapping!!!!”

“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”

The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and it was the kind of question she tried to avoid.

Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.

“You a cop?”

The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”

A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.

Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”

A nod.

“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”

A nod.

“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”

A tiny, miserable nod.

“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’

“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”

Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.

The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.

“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”

The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.

“I can work with that,” said the witch.

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

To be fair this is an accurate though process for someone stuck living in survival mode

My dad was dealing with some mixed feelings so I told him "In therapy when something is too complicated to do a simple 'pro and contra list' we sometimes do an excercise where you imagine all these mixed feelings around a table in some kind of conference, letting each tell their bit and you leading the debate."

and my dad didn't really respond and just stared ahead so I kept preparing lunch. Until a few minutes later when he suddenly piped up: "I am having a bad time at the conference"

I too am having a bad time at the conference

Reblog if you too are having a bad time at the conference