Dreams from Dogpatch

teaboot:

Supporting evidence:

1. Humans say ‘ow’, even if they haven’t actually been hurt. It’s just a thing they say when they think they might have been hurt, but aren’t sure yet.

2. Humans collect shiny things and decorate their bodies and nests with them. The shinier the better, although each individual has a unique taste for style and colouring

3. Humans are not an aquatic or even amphibious species, but they flock to bodies of water simply to play in it. They can’t even hold their breath all that long; they just love to splash!

4. When night falls and the sky goes dark, humans become drowsy and begin to cocoon themselves in soft, fluffy bedding.

5. Some humans spend time in each other’s nests! Just for fun! It’s not their nest; they’re just visiting each other.

6. Some humans use pigments and dyes to make their bodies flashy and colourful! They even attach shiny dangly bits to their cartalidgous membranes!

7. Humans are very clever, and sometimes adopt creatures from other species into their family units. They don’t seem to notice the obvious differences, and often raise them alongside their own young!

8. If a human sees another creature in distress, they can commonly be observed trying to help! Even at their own risk, most humans are deeply compassionate creatures!

9. If a human hears a particularity catchy sound or tune, it will often mimic it, even to the point of annoying themselves!

10. Sneezes are entirely involuntary, and completely adorable. Especially when the human in question becomes frustrated

11. Humans love treats!!! Some more than others. Many humans will save these treats specifically for a later date when they are in need of comfort or reassurance. IE, pickles, pop tarts, Popsicles, etc

12. They’re learning to travel in space!!! They can’t get very far, but they’re trying!!! So far, they’ve made it to the end of their yard, and have found rocks

sisterofiris:

Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians called the night ngi, the stars mul, and the moon Nanna.

Four thousand years ago, the Akkadians called the night mūšu, the stars kakkabū, and the moon Sîn.

Three thousand years ago, the Hittites called the night išpanza, the stars haštereš, and the moon Arma.

Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks called the night nux, the stars astra, and the moon Selênê.

Two thousand years ago, the Romans called the night nox, the stars stellae, and the moon Luna.

Kings and queens and heroes looked up at them. So did travelers coming home, and little children who sneaked out of bed. So did slaves, and mothers and soldiers and old shepherds, and Sappho and Muršili and Enheduanna and Socrates and Hatshepsut and Cyrus and Cicero. In this darkness it didn’t matter who they were, or where they stood. Only that they were human.

Think of that tonight, when you close your window. You are not alone. You share this night sky with centuries of dreamers and stargazers, and people who longed for quiet. Are you anxious? The Hittites were too: they called it pittuliyaš. Does your heart ache? The Greeks felt it too: they called it akhos. Those who look up to the stars for comfort are a family, and you belong to them. Your ancestors have stood under Nanna, Sîn, Arma, Selênê and Luna for five thousand years. Now its light is yours.

May it soothe you well.

oliverpaulot:

oliverpaulot:

i am SO SICK of unhappy endings. idk about anyone else but the #1 reason i like fiction is because everything can always work out no matter how bad it is. “what if the good guys lost” shut up. you are so fucking boring. give me happy endings or give me nothing

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”

“But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”

hufflepuff-betty:

higglety:

simonalkenmayer:

afanofmanystuffs:

thesuninperigee:

ariaste:

feminesque:

naamahdarling:

roachpatrol:

roachpatrol:

ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this.  you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.

humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.  

i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy. 

i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet. 

it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more. 

have a cookie.

i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine. 

i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.

1. The universe is indifferent. We ought not be.

2. A good quote: There are two kinds of people. Those who think, “I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did.” And those who think, “I suffered; why shouldn’t they?”

3. Two good quotes by Kurt Vonnegut: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

And: “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”

#hopepunk

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

-Rebecca Solnit; Hope in the Dark

I really needed this right now. Thank you

Indeed.

I think it’s important to clarify that radical kindness doesn’t mean you have to be kind to your abusers, or to asshole men in power (like the orange one or his horrible judge). It’s not biting your tongue, smiling, and allowing yourself to be mistreated in order to fulfill some sort of fucked up ideal of “the high road” or whatever. It’s refusing to allow anyone else to be mistreated without comment. It’s extending kindness to other survivors and other folks facing oppression, even when that oppression is different than the kind you face. The folks in charge want us broken down into easily-controlled bite-size chunks. Empathy, compassion, communication, cooperation, collaboration - these are kindness, and they are powerful, radical tools that we can use to help one another heal and to build our communities into something stronger and better.

Be kind out of spite.

chohakkaifan:

This election may be hell and try me to my fullest but at least I got my wedding photos today. No matter how much may be against us in our future me and my wife will be damned if anything shall tear us apart. Even if everything this election stands for fights against us in every conceivable way we will still be with each other.

Stay strong my love. We have each other. Now and forever.

fandomsandfeminism:

backwardsflow:

smarter-than-the-republicans:

butmymomsaysimcool1:

nu11-pointer:

smarter-than-the-republicans:

theconcealedweapon:

We should have universal healthcare and universal basic income. We can fund it by taxing rich people.

But taxation is theft, you say? Fine. Make it voluntary. Businesses can opt out of paying taxes. If they don’t want government involved in their business, then government won’t be involved.

But that means no government involvement at all, even when it benefits them. That means no patents, trademarks, or copyrights, since those wouldn’t exist without government. They want a free market? Then they can compete with someone else stealing their customers by selling their products at a lower price.

If a company loses money, they’ll foot the bill for once and not us. No government bailouts when they intentionally make dumbass business decisions.

They want government subsidies for not paying their workers enough? Too fucking bad, Wal-Mart, you’re not getting special treatment for being shitty employers anymore.

Oil/gas/coal companies want to keep people from using their own solar panels and wind generators? Go to hell, you don’t get to write the laws anymore.

Also no taxes, no special labels. So if you want to label your product “made in America”, but don’t pay your taxes, too bad. Want to use government certifications? You better pay those taxes. FDA approval? Better be paying those taxes. Run out of money? Too bad you didn’t pay your taxes, cause you can’t file for bankruptcy.

No no no, it’s not just that

You wanna deliver your goods? Tax money paved those roads. You want electricity? Too bad, govt-run power grid.

Holy shit, this is getting better each time.

This is why the whole ‘taxation is theft’ idea doesn’t work. At their core, businesses exist to make money. Money that is created and given value by the government. If your business doesn’t want to pay taxes to ensure the continued operation of the government, then what right does it have to use its currency? Your money has no value outside of the value assigned to it by the government, so you can’t lay claim to any value you supposedly have before paying your dues to the organization that gives your paper slips meaning.

I love it

xenoqueer:

blogging-phelddagrif:

commandtower-solring-go:

The problem with the idea of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of recreation as a structure for a day is that it simply can’t work that way. If I’m expected to be at work at 9, then my work day must begin at 7. Allowing myself a rushed experience to wake up and get to work. And I live close to work. So either my recreation or my sleep needs to take a hit, but for some people it could be more. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as a basis for full time work is honestly unreasonable at that point. Because it isn’t actually 40 hours a week, it’s 50 hours a week lost to a job, of which 10 is unpaid.

some of my coworkers have 2h of transit to get to work, which takes 4-5h off their free time. working full time is a bad idea and shouldve never been a thing

This is, it’s worth noting, by design.  

It’s perfectly well known that people can only really “work” (in that they can only consistently and effectively perform tasks and create products) 3-6 hours a day, for 1 hour to 2 hours at a time. Generally speaking, the broad consensus among actual researchers is to aim for about 4 hours a day.

The rest of these work hours, and the associated sunken time necessary to get to and from these work hours, serves one purpose:

It exhausts people.

People who don’t have leisure time are stressed. People who are stressed need conveniences. People who need conveniences will pay for them.

People who are stressed also don’t have the energy to fight for their rights, having expended all that energy in just staying alive.

And let’s not forget that maintaining a clean home and providing food for yourself takes over 20 hours a week (appx 20 hours in-house, and varying hours spent running outside errands) if you are completely abled.

manonthestone:

madameliberty:

some of y'all: science has more evidencial support than religion, and it is the more reliable and believable truth. in the ancient contest between empiricial science and religion, modern achievements have declared science as more accurate and the better source of truth.

the truth: Scientific empiricism and religion aim to understand different kinds of truths, and they have never truly been at odds. Science gives the mechanical explanation of the world. Religion gives a philosophical explanation. Both are inexorably intertwined, but each have their own realm of study. In the last 3000 years, men of science have typically also been men of religion. Much of modern science today relies upon the accomplishments and theories of men who were religious. Further, if you devote serious time to the study of either the sciences OR religions and philosophy, you will discover that there are very few discrepancies and they actually correspond to one another. The real problem comes when science attempts to make a philosophical observation, or when religion attempts to make a mechanical observation. Religion’s role is not to explain how clouds form, how cells function, or how light travels. Science’s role is not to explain the meaning of life, whether or not God exists, and what morality is. All in all, each are good and legitimate areas of study.

that’s how you can be both, kids