Looking back on 2020, I think it’s hilarious that Wellerman of all shanties is the one that blew up online. It’s not a song about life on the high seas or adventuring
There’s a regular at the fabric superstore. She’s at least 80 years old, and she just got back into sewing after giving it up for 40 years. We’ll call her Irma.
I love Irma.
Irma is constantly surprised by the newfangled sewing gadgets our store sells. Today she bought some extra-fine glass-head pins and a magnetic pincushion. As I’m ringing her purchases up, she tells me very seriously, “did you know, if you’re careful, you can sew RIGHT OVER those pins? You don’t need to take them out!”
I told her that I liked that you can’t accidentally melt the head of the glass pins with your iron, and she nodded. “They used to all be like that, but times changed.”
I love old sewing machines and asked what kind of machine she has, and she goes, “Oh, it’s an old Singer Featherweight that my husband bought me when we were first married. It’s probably not worth anything anymore, but the thing sews fine. Have you seen the ones those girls over there–” indicating the sewing machine sub-store in my location “–have? Those things go in every direction and the needle always comes to the top when you stop sewing! Imagine how handy that is!”
I mention that I used to sew on my grandmother’s Featherweight but now there’s a intra-family war about who owns Grandma’s Featherweight and so no one gets to use it. It’s genuinely the best portable straight-stitch machine I’ve ever used.
I warn her to never let anyone tell her that Featherweight isn’t worth something. “I know, I miss my husband and it’s always going to have a place in my heart, just like your grandma’s.”
“I mean, Irma, there’s that, but they’re also worth a really notable amount of money. The Singer Featherweight is really financially valuable. I almost never see them for sale around here for less than about $400, and that’s in bad condition.”
“It’s a good thing my husband’s dead, honey, because if you told him that he managed to buy a sewing machine that’s worth more in 2021 than he bought it for in 1950, well, he’d be so smug that I just wouldn’t be able to tolerate driving home with him.”
One thing I really like about how Murderbot relates to gender is how like–no wait, two things, in order.
So first how it is emphatically devoted to eschewing human gender categories. Like, it’s not a default thing; there are shown to be multiple nonbinary pronouns in routine use, and life would be simpler for picking one or even making a new one up, just as it would be for picking a name that it is willing to use in public.
But that’s a human thing, those are human categories,and it has that deep determination not to naturalize into humanity just because that would be simpler, would smooth the ugly edges between the categories of person and non-person and make an easier, more convenient story for other people.
But then also there’s the part where the two construct genders are, effectively, ‘cop’ and 'prostitute,’ as distinguished at construction per Murderbot’s own account by genital configuration, in this case 'having’ or 'not having’ 'sex parts.’
Leaving aside how easily that analogizes to human gender categories for the average reader, which I’m sure was an intentional writing move–Murderbot’s assigned gender is, in a meaningful sense, 'SecUnit.’
And what’s neat, and what I was going for to begin with only I had to set out my thoughts first for context, is how Murderbot actually performs its assigned gender pretty emphatically!
But in a deeply queer way, that only gains a sense of meaning as it’s able to detach the performance from service to the oppressive power structures that created it, and redefine the identity on its own terms.
all goofing aside I genuinely don’t understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene™ is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you’re willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I’m not even saying you can’t enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.
Isn’t Lady Gaga bisexual?
yes that is indeed why she’s on the list of famous women who like women
why have multiple people reblogged this with some horse-assed “um actually most of these people are bi or pan” did I fucking stutter I said they like girls. what is your point. I’m going to kill you.
POV: you make a good post and then encounter tumblr reading comprehension
btw to just clarify for anyone who sees this reblog of this post
op is basically saying something along the lines of “yea ik taylor swift is bi but like. why is she y'all’s only lgbtq+ pop icon when there are all these other lgbtq+ people in the pop scene???”
i might have worded this badly but hopefully i got the main point across
hi op here I certainly did not fucking say Taylor Swift is bi
Op is saying that liking Taylor for being QUEER or Lgbtqia+ is not a bad thing, but to also know she is not the only one.
He did not call anyone in the original post lesbian bi or pan.
Please actually read the post because Taylor Swift isn’t gay or queer you’re just protecting because you want a reason to treat a real person like she’s not humanly here.
If you want women or non-binary people to talk about their love of women there’s actual bi/pan/lesbian artists who talk about their love of women and sing songs about it. You literally don’t have an excuse to not listen to their songs at least once, especially if you’re after W/W rep that Taylor Swift literally can’t give you because she’s Straight.
It’s actually so simple in fact to find a song about kissing girls as a girl because there’s a fucking song titled “I KISSED A GIRL” By LADY GAGA!!!!!
I can’t believe I’m still doing this on this post but it’s not a cover, they’re completely different songs with the same names.
this is the Sobule song
and this is the Perry song
Me every time I see more bullshit added to poor OPs post:
op
Wow this post was already infuriating last time I saw it and now it’s so much worse. I genuinely hope people are just fucking with you op because there’s no excuse for reading comprehension this horrific
@batterseas I might piss on the poor, but for a solid moment I didn’t doubt op’s ability to delete the ENTIRETY of tumblr
(tbf, they should get this ability as damage compensation for this post)
I’m not sure the precise number of people I need to say this to but the answer to “reduce human suffering” is not “destroy suffering humans” much in the same way that setting your math test on fire in the exam room does not assure you 0% wrong answers and an A+ by default
Hi! Looks like this has reached the anti-abortion crowd, so lemme clarify a bit:
What I MEANT to say was that “people are suffering” + “kill those who are struggling most” = “net ratio of Suffering:Thriving shows rise in thriving and a reduction in suffering”, but it is still the wrong answer because it is like:
kind of like how “you can hold your breath for the rest of your life” is true but ONLY if you’re chill with dying in the following 4 minutes. It forgoes the INTENT in favour of TECHNICALITY.
Now, if I was talking about a human embryo in this scenario, I would be unilaterally saying that the embryo is the subject of suffering. It is not. I don’t know how to science this out for you but it doesn’t have a brain. And also the thing a lot of people tout to be a “heartbeat” is actually blood flow from the umbilical cord. So to a certain point, one could argue that it has all the capacity for pain and suffering as a tumour- which is, classically speaking, more of a burden for the HOST than anything.
And on top of that, my point- the nuance implied- was that the ROUTE we should be taking to reduce suffering is not letting the ill, disabled, elderly, and homeless die so the rest of us more privileged can wash our hands and not think about them anymore. The route to reduce suffering is not reduce those who CAN suffer, but reduce the suffering itself, because the problem is not the PEOPLE WHO CAN FEEL, but the SOURCE OF THE FEELING.
Which is to say- and if you are anti-abortion and skipped all of the above then this is the part where you should tune back in- that the only way to reduce suffering is to minimize opportunities for suffering to take hold.
I understand why abortion is seen as immoral. I understand why it’s seen as disgusting. The idea of a baby dying doesn’t make me happy- I don’t think that’s what abortion is, but if you do, then I understand that- but think of it this way.
Someone desperately wants to keep their baby, but it’s an ectopic pregnancy. It will not be born. There is nothing you can do to make it survive to term and emerge into the world as a baby. It will half-form and then die, and then the parent will get sick, and then they may die.
Removing that doomed embryo before it can think and feel is a reduction of suffering.
Maybe you think abortion is murder. Maybe you’re even against it in life-threatening cases. I’m probably not going to change your mind on that. That is what it is, I can’t fight you and I’m not going to try.
But if you can’t stop the suffering there, you have to go back further.
You can’t stop people having sex. You can’t stop sexual assault. Those are not things you can control, not entirely. So sex will happen, and the more sex, the more pregnancies.
So how do you stop pregnancies?
You educate the public on contraception. Yiu can’t stop them having sex, but if they don’t want a pregnancy, they’ll do what they can to avoid one on their own with the right tools.
You hand out free condoms. You hand out lube so the condoms don’t break. You support accessible health clinics where people who WANT children can get fertility tests done so it’s not too late when they find out they can’t carry to term. You fund research into more effective birth control. You fund resources for struggling young parents who WANT their pregnancy but can’t afford a child.
You don’t like abortion? Cool. I don’t like unwanted or life-threatening pregnancy. You know what we can shake hands on? Childcare and medical aid.
So MY question is, for the love of god and all that is holy, why so many of you are wasting your time and money and energy standing on the pavement telling people they’re going to hell for the situation they’re in when you COULD be preventing the situation before it happens?
Why are you pulling the heads off weeds when you could just as easily attack it at the root before it’s big enough to spread?
I’m pro-choice. I’ll never not be. But I’ll happily work side by side with a pro-lifer at a soup kitchen, or at a women’s shelter, or at a fundraiser for single mothers, or foster children, or after-school daycare.
My POINT was, setting your yard on fire reduces weeds, but it also reduces your garden. If you want something gone, attack it at the root.
the insane experience of missing a fictional character . like you can always go back and reread the book , replay the game , rewatch the show or movie , you can always go back & see them , but you can never experience them & their story for the first time again . its absurd to miss them because they’ll always be there , but you’ll miss when there were still new things for them to say .
for a small time they were real & growing and changing and you hung onto every new word, but now all they can do is repeat the same story forever&ever & they’re not real anymore because you know everything they’re going to do. & you miss them. its fucked man…
truly wild how driving really does become like piloting a mech after a while. like it sounds so car-bro-y but the car genuinely does become like an extension of your body. your muscles are simply making the correct micro-movements to perfectly manouvre a giant piece of machinery through a constantly moving maze while your brain is busy singing karaoke. you can physically feel when a gap is too small for your car-sona to fit through, like a cat putting its whiskers into a crevice. your brain is suddenly able to do on-the-fly s=d/t calculations in a milisecond and tell you exactly how quickly you need to move to avoid an oncoming vehicle while turning across the road. why does driving unlock the unused 89% of my brain
What the hell.
Is that what driving is for most people? I looked in the notes expecting to see a bunch of bewildered reactions but everyone is agreeing with OP and it’s not that I don’t believe you, but like.
I drove for years and hated every second of it because I was constantly aware of the fact that I was in charge of a massive chunk of speeding steel and glass capable of causing death if I sneezed at the wrong moment. Not for a single second did the car feel like a part of me. Driving always felt deeply unnatural and highly dangerous. It is indeed Wild to think that the vast majority of people apparently smoothly mind-meld with their car.
No wonder I hate driving so much. Everyone else is having a fun Carsona drift experience while I’m strapped into the pilot seat of a complicated memory game whose penalty for losing is dismemberment.
Can confirm that the above is how driving a car feels for me, it’s literally an extension of myself, but it’s actually common for neurodivergent folks to have the second experience because driving is an exhausting and highly stimulating experience that requires you to be constantly alert throughout the entire process. People don’t think about it much, but you know how you’re tired after you drive even though there isn’t much physical movement going on? It’s because all that energy is being used by your brain to stay focused and attentive, as well as all the stuff going on that you don’t consciously think about.
I’m really weird in that I have a natural ability to drive for long periods of time without getting bored or exhausted, but I am absolutely NOT the majority and know it’s unusual. It’s far more normal to be overstimulated and tired than anyone tells you, no matter how natural driving feels to you or not.
I also have an addendum: driving a car feels like an extension of your own body, but driving a steam locomotive is like riding a horse. Steam locomotives feel alive, and you rock back and forth as you move along and the steel animal beneath you lurches and chugs along. It’s you and the locomotive working together. It’s a completely different feel and it feels SO cool. (I have done it exactly one time. I need to do it again.)
Context is that lionfish are highly invasive in the Caribbean, so there are a lot of extermination efforts
The local sharks normally can’t eat them because of their venomous spines. After they die, their venom denatures fairly rapidly (although not completely), divers often chop off spines, and they aren’t alive to actively posture and poke spines into the shark.
Divers actively try and feed lionfish to the sharks so that sharks start to learn to predate on them to handle the problem long term. But of course, weirdo animals are gonna be weirdo little animals and develop behaviors like this.
Highly recommend checking out the original video too. OctopusLady on YouTube
i remember years ago in my early twenties i was at a club and i ended up dancing with a gay man and we kissed on the dance floor and when my group left i could tell the vibe was super off and i was like what’s up? and it turned out two of my friends were mad at me for kissing a man because i’m a lesbian and i was so dumbfounded by this because i operated under the impression that people kiss people they aren’t attracted to all the time for any number of reasons, one being that some people just enjoy kissing other people and attraction doesn’t play a role at all. but my friends were of two opinions: if I went on kissing men, regardless of why, it was wrong and bad for me to continue identifying as a lesbian.
and worse, if i went on kissing gay men at bars and identifying as a lesbian, it would be my fault implicitly that straight homophobic creeps think they can get lesbians to sleep with them.
which i thought was honestly a lot of responsibility to put on me for the sin of drinking a long island ice tea with a gay bar pour and getting a little carried away to an ABBA remix but alright
seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors
I work at a bookstore and hearing one of my male coworkers call smutty romantasy “the downfall of society” because it’s “literally just porn” radicalized me
Men have an entire industry. Entire industries dedicated to their sexualities. Let women have fantasy sex. there’s not even a camera crew involved.
