have courage, dear heart

gen z has to reckon with its radicalization problem. you are not a morally pure and superior generation of youth come to save the world, your men and boys are radicalized at an unprecedented level and you ignore it because it’s too hard to address but you have to. these boys are in your classes, they date your friends, you know them and you cannot continue to pretend this is an “old white guy” problem

girls are contributing, too. the coquette aesthetic, the “i don’t want to girlboss i want a man to pay my bills”, girlmath girljob girlmoney. it’s a joke, it’s clothes, it’s whatever, i get it but it is driving a mentality of traditional gender roles and you know you’re joking but your boyfriend doesn’t. your kid brother doesn’t. you have to stop this shit it is a contributing factor

Here’s a video so you can hear the water and the thrushes. I took it for you because you couldn’t be there. <3

Sharing this again for anyone who could use a few seconds of peace and light today for whatever reason.

shut up

This man is actually willy Wonka and he needs to be stopped. Someone needs to stop him. This is out of control.

what a week huh?

A recap of what happened the last time we had a presidential election here in the USA.

at least sisyphus only had one never-ending task. i have like 50 and all of them cost money

New Crow Time - When you drink from silly fountain you get cartoon powers.

If you love Crow Time, consider supporting our comics on Patreon! You can support all our comics for $5, or just Crow Time for $2! What a steal!

Thinking about Laika again

I finally found a brush I like on procreate!

'you have x many followers' those r cadavers girl. corpses. abandoned vessels of blogs who once were. its the apocalypse in there. its me and my 5 mutuals against the world.

Recently saw an insta vid where a musician was singing lyrics that described their intrusive thoughts as a person with OCD, and in the comments every so often there would be people writing like "bro what is this 🤨🤨" and "keep this between you and your therapist dont post it on the internet" and it just further fueled my belief that OCD symptoms and intrusive thoughts need to be talked about more because a majority of the struggle with the disorder is the shame surrounding its symptoms. OCD is not able to be easily romanticized or 'quirky'fied like other disorders or neurodivergencies have been*, and as a result its symptoms are more quickly met with disgust or repulsion.

Other people in the comments were thanking OP because it captured the struggle of real intrusive thoughts instead of impulsive ones. Impulsive thoughts are more of the 'I'm gonna dye my hair randomly on a thursday night' thoughts vs the intrusive 'what if I drove my car into that family and suddenly killed us both' thoughts, the latter of which make OCD as a disorder truly debilitating. And the people that immediately assign bad morals to intrusive thoughts? They only further condemn people with OCD to never wanting to talk about the symptoms they've already been struggling with shame about.

I feel it needs to be made more blatantly explained to the public that OCD intrusive thoughts aren't desire based. They're fear and disgust based. You fear hurting anyone so badly your mind can't stop thinking about what if you hurt someone. You fear molesting anyone so you never want to even touch anyone. Your mind fixates on the 'what ifs' and distorts them into the idea that, because you think this way, you must want to act this way--when the reality is the exact opposite.

If a person with OCD ever confides to you one of their intrusive thoughts and you feel a knee-jerk reaction of disgust towards them, it needs to be reiterated that:

1. the person does not want to be thinking about this, their brain is legit hardwired to make those thoughts pop up

2. the person themselves also feels this disgust, often intensely, and they very likely resent themselves for ever thinking it

and

3. they have no desire to enact the intrusive thought, because its intrusive nature hinges on the person's fears and dislikes.

*And to clarify what I mean by romanticization and 'quirk'-ifying, I do not mean to imply that romanticizing any disorder or condition is inherently a good thing. It's only to state that conditions like anxiety and ADHD have been made such common/'trendy' topics recently that they're less taboo to speak about--leading to more people talking about their struggles with it, and helping others realize they might have it too and aren't alone. Because certain OCD traits aren't as marketable (obviously) a lot of those with it are left rather isolated.

I dont think a lot of people understand how agonizing it is to have your brain constantly, without your input or consent, vividly reenacting all of your worst, most horrifying fears to the point that it makes you loathe yourself only to have society answer any plea for help or understanding with "yeah you actually are a disgusting monster for thinking that, what the fuck is wrong with you, have you tried just not being a complete freak?" like there's a reason I only talk about this stuff with my therapist.

A lot of people, including myself, talk about how freeing it felt to be diagnosed with ADHD bcs it was akin to someone finally telling you "you're not a lazy idiot, your brain is just doesn't regulate it's chemicals correctly and it isn't your fault" but like, god that doesn't compare to the weight that was lifted off my chest when I finally had someone explain to me what real intrusive thoughts are and that they're a sign of OCD, like you legit live life thinking you're just secretly a horrible irredeemable monster who wants to maim everyone you love but no, it turns out your brain is just set to autoplay "would this be fucked up or what" 24/7 and it's a fucking shame that people don't even try to understand that.

If you get that depression and adhd and anxiety is irrational and involuntary pls extend that grace to people with "scary" symptoms bcs I promise you we don't want to be thinking/feeling this way, we legit don't have a choice, and most of us would rather be locked in a empty concrete room for the rest of our lives than even come close to enacting anything our brains like to torment us with.

played sims 4 for the first time and one of the married cis men had a desire to try for baby with his cis husband. i accidentally pinned it and could not unpin it. trying for baby is physically impossible. I tried to use cheats to give him a viable womb in create a sim but it wouldn’t let me do so retroactively. so I thought, maybe if they adopt the want for pregnancy will go away, and had them adopt a toddler daughter. but then the try for baby desire did not go away. since they now had an unwanted adopted child I tried to remove the toddler from the household, thinking this would send her back into the ether. it did not. instead she wanders the neighborhood like a feral cat. i thought the social worker would come and take her back so someone else could adopt her, but I guess there is no social worker in sims 4. so now the neighborhood is haunted by a smelly miserable baby that has no home but cannot die and everyone who sees her is uncomfortable. fucking omelas scenario.

no one is feeding her but every time she gets hungry she simply produces a carton of milk out of the ether and drinks it

OP— do ctrl+shift+C and type “testingcheats true” and then “cas.fulleditmode” into the bar, then go into CAS and change one of the sims to be able to get pregnant. mpreg is possible ALWAYS

thanks. the womb installation worked.

I'm sorry, this was dune mpreg the whole time and you never thought to mention? Iconic.

it wasn’t relevant to my journey

This a a reminder to not fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you invested time and energy into something, does not mean you should indefinitely waste more time and energy on it, if you decide it’s not what you want anymore. This goes for anything, from books, to relationships, to jobs, to hobbies, etc.

If it’s not serving you anymore, move on.

This is honestly one of the places I find Marie Kondo's advice most helpful. I stop, look at the thing I've spent time and money on only to realize I dislike, and I say, "Thank you for teaching me something about myself and my preferences. I think I've learned this particular lesson and we can part ways now."

And then I don't feel like I "wasted" things or made a mistake. I just tried one path of learning about myself, learned something, and now it's time for a different path. Works a lot better for my brain.

leoreturns:

omg

This has been in my queue for months.

be sure to leave out milk and cookies for brutus tonight

You can leave as many cookies as you want but he’ll only et two

this remains the funniest addition anyone’s made to one of my posts

Late to the party, but something for @hilda-appreciation-week Picking a single favourite for any of the categories is too hard for me, but Twig is a strong contender for favourite creature, and the Deerfox for favourite episode

Ref

Threatening Storm, Me, Pen and Ink, 2021

Explanation:

>Japan bombs Pearl Harbor which brings America into World War II

>The draft for WWII creates a labor shortage in the US

>Because of the labor shortage, companies start significantly raising wages.

>FDR is worried that if wages go up too fast it could create runaway inflation, so he signs an executive order creating the National War Labor Board, which standardized salaries during the war in order to stabilize prices.

>Companies wanted a way to compete for talent in a limited labor pool despite not being able to offer higher salaries, so they started offering benefits packages to attract workers, the cornerstone of which was health insurance

>After the war, companies didn't want to give up their role in providing health insurance because it served them well in terms of both recruiting and retention (i.e. you're less likely to quit your job if it means losing your health insurance)

>This model becomes increasingly common across the US to the point where private health insurance companies are paying for the majority of healthcare expenses in the US

>Because the majority of healthcare costs were being paid by insurance companies rather than the people receiving care, hospitals began massively inflating the sticker price of their services with the expectation that the insurance company would negotiate those numbers down (as private insurance companies are want to do)

>Insurance companies take advantage of the increase in sticker prices by increasing premiums and passing off more of their costs to the consumer while continuing to negotiate down the actual price paid to hospitals

>This cycle repeats until the average hospital bill is completely divorced from any of the actual costs of the service

>In 2024 the average cost of giving birth in America is over $18,000