I once said to my therapist after a particularly hard week, “I wish I could just fix all of my problems and move on to live a normal life”
And he looked at me and said, “There is no finish line”.
Those words felt like a stab in my heart, but they were words that I desperately needed to hear. There is no finish line to my problems. It’s not possible to get through a certain point in life and have my problems simply disappear. And it’s unhealthy to think that way. Up to that point in my life, that’s what I though recovery was. I thought it was like working your way forward until it seems like your problems never existed in the first place.
The finish line does not exist. Instead, everyone has a capacity for recovery. You may never completely rid yourself of whatever causes you pain, but you will move miles from where you started. Don’t set your expectations too high and create that theoretical finish line in your life, or you will only end up chasing it. Instead, focus on your own capacity for recovery, and be proud of yourself for every step you take.
Just saw Eighth Grade and reblogging the heck out of this bc wow it gets so much better if you just take it one step at a time
Okay but I cant help but hear “there is no finish line” and immediately respond with “then why am i running the race?” What is the point*? Where is the benefit of putting in the effort if its not going to ever end? If i am always going to battle I would rather just give up the fight.
*(Im not saying recovery is bad or whatever ppl wanna reach for, this is my personal view)
That’s the thing, though: it’s not a race. It’s a garden.
No matter what your garden looks like in the beginning, you have to weed it before it can grow into what you want it to be. And when your flowers are planted and growing, you still have to keep up with the weeding. You have to keep up with the weeding even after your flowers are tall. A garden can’t survive on its own. There will always be weeds.
But there will be flowers, too, if you give them space to grow. Give them room, give them time, and keep checking in to make sure the weeds don’t get too tall. You will always have weeds, but you will also have flowers.
And maybe your garden doesn’t look exactly like you imagined it would. Maybe you aren’t sure how to get rid of that one big thistle in the corner. Maybe you’ve got bindweed and nutgrass (which will always, always come back). Either way, you’ve got flowers now, and it’s a nice place to sit and look around, and it looks nicer than it did before, and it’s yours. Keep going with it. If you miss a few days, or months, or years, that’s okay. Pull up the weeds when you’re ready, uncover your old flowers and plant some new ones, and keep going.
Gardening is a process, not a project or a problem that can be solved. The same is true for your mental health. Weeds will grow, but you’ll get better and better at pulling them, and you’ll grow flowers, too.
dogs are omnivore and IF YOUR VET APPROVES your pooch MAY be able to go on an APPROVED(!!!!!) commercial vegan dog food like the brand “v-dog” which has all the essential vitamins, protein, etc. (the oldest record winning dogs have been vegan)
cats are CARNIVORE and cannot fucking live on a vegan diet. a vet would laugh in your face and probably find some way to have your pet taken away from you because you’re obviously not fit to have an animal if you think you can feed a cat a diet based on your own ethics
i’m vegan but this is so fucking harmful.
it’s about minimizing your harm, not putting your animals on risky diets in an attempt to be perfect.
DON’T FUCKING DO THIS TO YOUR PETS
Idiot people
If you see someone you know doing this, report them for animal cruelty and neglect.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This posts, and many of the notes on it, are bothering me. Ladies, gentlemen, esteemed colleagues from outside the confines of the gender binary; gather ‘round. Let’s throw some science in this joint.
1. Humans. Humans are not cats. Humans are not dogs. One would think this obvious, but people have a tendency to attempt such interspecies comparisons when discussing diet. Humans are order omnivora; we have essentially evolved in a manner that attempts to give us as much dietary flexibility as possible. We do, however, require a substance called B12 (or cobalamin), which is extremely important for brain and nervous system functions, as well as the synthesis of DNA and the construction of red blood cells. We cannot produce this vitamin ourselves–no animal, plant, or fungus can. The enzymes used in cobalamin production are essentially unique to bacteria and archaea–some species of which hang out in the digestive tracks of other animals. We get cobalamin in a roundabout way from fish, shellfish, meat, eggs, milk, and dairy products. While there is no naturally-occurring, vegan source of the vitamin that has been demonstrated effective in a human study of statistically significant sample size, effective synthetic forms do exist and can be used as a substitute. Cyanocobalamin is one of the most common and is frequently found in fortified foods and vitamins. In short: Humans are omnivores. Humans have evolved for dietary flexibility, including viable vegetarianism. Humans did not evolve for veganism (be extremely suspicious of people who tell you that we did, as they are lying), but due to modern technologies, veganism is also a viable diet that humans can thrive on, should they so choose.
Now, I did manage to find two veterinarians who disagree with every other study I dug up and the American Veterinary Medical Association. Their articles are here and here. They don’t really have sources, and are essentially wholly dependent on anecdotal evidence (“my dog is a vegetarian and hasn’t died!”), but for those of you data cherry-pickers reading this, there you go.
As a rule, dogs and cats need meat. If that makes you uncomfortable, that is your problem, not theirs. If you try to implement a vegan or vegetarian diet for your pets because you implemented one for yourself, you shouldn’t have those pets. That is animal abuse. (By the way, those of you not feeding your cats and non-allergic dogs the food they need to survive and thrive? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you not love your pets?)
TL;DR If you do not want a pet that must be fed meat, you should under no circumstances acquire a cat or a dog. Thank you for your time.
Rebloobing for the more detailed info on B12 and obligate carnivore vs true omnivores
sat through a lecture on paleolithic and neolithic culture and society and all i can think abt is how from as early as there have been anatomically modern humans (and even before in some cases) there is archaelogical evidence of gender and sexual variance, caring for the elderly and disabled, a drive to make art and music, a powerful affection for animals and each other, and a desire to learn as much as possible about the world as we can and yet people will still insist these things are not human nature and therefore unnatural, that the things we consider to be essentially human in nature are very recent in the span of our history or felt by only a rare few and not something integral to our humanity and success as a collective whole.
the more we study and analyse history the more we learn what it means to be human, all the good and all the bad, the closer we come to understanding that many things people have considered to be weaknesses of character, illnesses of the person, or meaningless in the face of our mortality are functionally necessary to our humanity and cannot be erased or ignored
wow this is so good… you are a Keeper of these Truths now, and you gotta tell them (also a fundamental feature of humanity)
Humans are social animals who tell stories, look after each other, and are generally open to new experiences. everything else is just a sticker on top of a complicated machine.
Ella Dawson has genital herpes, and she wants to tell you about it.
She’s not speaking up for the shock value — she’s telling you because she wants all of us to be able to talk about STIs without shame or stigma. When we make it okay to talk about, she says, people are more likely to get tested and less likely to be afraid to share their status.
In her badass talk at TEDxConnecticut College, Ella tells the story of her diagnosis, how she overcame feeling like “human trash,” and why we need to end the stigma — now. It’s packed with information (and a shot of humor), and if you didn’t already agree with her, you will by the time she’s done.
(Full disclosure: Ella is TED’s social media manager. This post was written by her boss who is so incredibly proud of how fearlessly she speaks out.)
OK What the fuck is wrong with this bitch. Getting herpes is most definitely a reflection on a bad decision!!! There is something in this world called condoms!! Oh yeah and they are free at Planned Parenthood so you can’t even use the fucking excuse that they are expensive or your broke so you couldn’t buy any.. Seriously what the fuck I am not saying you have to make it a big deal that you have herpes and have to tell the fucking world but you need/should tell your sexual partner..
Hi! That’s me. I’m that bitch. Nothing wrong with me except for an anxiety disorder and a runny nose today.
Here’s a fun fact you should probably know: condoms do not prevent the transmission of herpes. That’s because herpes is transmitted through skin contact, not fluids, and a condom does not cover all of the areas where genital herpes can express itself. Herpes is also often transmitted through oral sex, which most people do not use protection for. Using condoms and dental dams can greatly reduce your risk of getting herpes, but telling people to just use condoms is quite useless advice. I should know—I was a Planned Parenthood volunteer who used condoms religiously when I contracted genital herpes.
Many people do not tell their partners that they have herpes because they do not know they have herpes in the first place. That’s because many people can carry the virus without showing symptoms, and herpes is not tested for in most standard STI tests. But most people have herpes—in fact, according to the World Health Organization, 2 in 3 people in the world have HSV-1, which is the strain of herpes that I have. In all likelihood, you have herpes too. You may have even contracted it from a family member who kissed you on the mouth when you were little.
I tell all of my partners that I have genital herpes before we have sex because I think they have the right to decide what they want to do with their bodies. I consider it part of obtaining informed consent. My partner who transmitted herpes to me did not give me the option to decide whether or not I wanted to take the risk of contracting the virus, and I think that was probably because he did not know he had the virus. I harbor no ill will towards him for transmitting to me. If he’d disclosed his status to me, I would have fucked him anyway.
Considering the fact that you know that condoms are available for free at Planned Parenthood—and that your tumblr is full of porn GIFs, no judgment!—I hope that you have been tested recently for herpes as well. It requires a blood draw, so if you’ve been peeing in a cup for your STI testing, you don’t know your herpes status. If you test positive for herpes, which you probably will, statistically speaking, I’ve written this guide on what to do after you’ve been diagnosed. I hope you will find it helpful!
Thank you for watching my TEDx talk, which you absolutely made sure to do before calling me a bitch, and have a wonderful evening!
they usually live to be 150+ years old. cutting one down in Arizona, where they’re native, is a felony with a maximum 9 months in prison.
in my brief wikipedia exploration to find out how old they could be for this ask i found out that there was a dude in 1982 who was vandalizing one (which is also highly illegal) by shooting at it and then poking at it, and not only did the 500 pound arm of the cactus he was shooting at fall on top of him, but the actual trunk of the cactus then also proceeded to fall on him. he died. smited by the cactus gods for his transgressions
There was one we had in our backyard that fell on our fence and buckled the steel bar. When the guy came by to take it away he sliced into roughly foot long segments and we kept one. It was really cool in the inside, also the chlorophyll is on the inside. My mom turned the outer layer into a lampshade
Sorry it’s dusty lmao no idea how to clean it
i…………..idk how to react to this but this is definitely an item i wasn’t expecting
here’s another fun fact about saguaro cactuses (or cacti – both are fine!): when they die, the flesh on them erodes away and leaves these really cool wood-like structures
I‘d love to read an in depth explanation why it isn‘t real. What I saw so far seems real to me and tbh I‘m really worried.
This is article 13. This is the article that everyone is (apparently) freaking out over.
I personally think that the hysteria that has been spreading is because of a very delicate mix of the far-right and the anti establishment hijacking the American net neutrality movement to push for their own agendas, a misguided SJW culture that’s way too America-centered here on tumblr, and just a general misunderstanding of how the EU works.
(Remember how the first thing that most britts googled after the EU referendum was “what is EU”? Yeah, it’s a bit like that.)
So, being upfront and transparent about this; I really don’t care about if you think the ideas being presented up in article 13 is horrible or whatever, because I personally haven’t really decided on it yet. What I want to set straight is that the apocalyptic death of “the European net neutrality” isn’t what article 13, or the directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market, is about.
Now, I know that EU and its bureaucracy is a literal hellscape. I’m a law student, and I’ve studied 15 points of EU and constitutional law, and 10 points of international law, and it wasn’t until I studied intentional law (2 years later) that the EU law finally started settling for me. (And from the sound of it; for the rest of my classmates too.)
So I know that the EU is complicated and stupid and that they don’t make it easier for themselves, but I just want everyone to know that the EU isn’t the life-sucking demons that the far-right is painting them up to be. They can be a massive pain in the ass, but they aren’t an all-powerful despotic.
And here’s why;
So starting with the basics of the overall law making process in the EU; Article 13 comes from a directive. It’s often been compared to GDPR, which is, weird, but also understandable, seeing how big of an impact GDPR had. But GDPR had such a huge impact because it was a regulation.
There’s two different ways the EU makes laws; through directives and regulations. Regulations, like GDPR, are directly applicable on all member states, are directly incorporated into member states’ national law systems, and can be directly plead for by EU citizens. Hence the huge impact.
Directives, on the other hand, are frame regulations with goals set up by the EU, and then it’s up to each and every member state to incorporate the directive into their national law systems and make sure that those goals are met. That is why the wall of text up there is a literal hot mess that makes little to no sense; it’s because it sets up a framework of what the EU wants to accomplish, then it’s up to the member states to come with their own solutions of how they want to accomplish that.
So, unlike GDPR, the copyright directive isn’t going to change the internet overnight once it’s voted through. It’s going to have to go through several different national law procedures, with various different outcomes, which could take years and, in some cases, might not even change anything at all.
(There are ways in which directives can be directly applicable for EU citizens, but then it has to be battled out through the EU court, so let’s make a noise if it comes to that, then, shall we?)
So you can’t fight this at an EU level. I mean, I guess you can, but be honest with yourself, did you even vote in the EU parliament election? Do you even know who’s representing you in the EU parliament? Do you even know what the EU parliament is, or what it does?
If you want to fight this, it would be so much more effective to do it on a national level.
First of all, depending on which member state you live in, this might not even effect you. The most common procedure when it comes to directives is that the national parliament/government looks at the goals the directive sets up, goes “lol ya our national laws already live up to this” (even if the national laws doesn’t live up to the directive, because, honestly, no one really gives that much of a damn, and the commission has too much to do to keep track of all the directives they spew out), and then everyone goes on with their lives.
But let’s say that your government would actually take measures to incorporate the directive into your national law system. Now, the law procedures are different in every country, but unless you live in a quasi-democracy (looking at you Hungary. And Poland.), you as a citizen, or at the very least an association of citizens, get to have a say in the matter.
They will most likely draft their own proposal of how the directive will be incorporated into your national law, and then you can take a stand if the change is for something good or bad. Call all your national politicians, twitter bomb them, whatever floats your boat. But the directive isn’t going to actually affect you until it reaches the national level.
The European net neutrality is not going to be killed over a night through a directive.
First of all, because that’s not how a directive works, and second, the EU doesn’t have that kind of power, even if they wanted to.
The EU is an odd bird in the international community. It has its own, unique way of operating, and it’s the only “semi-above” association of nations so far in the world. But it’s still an association of nations, and the union’s entire basis is the surrendering of sovereignty from each member state. And while that scope of sovereignty is a constant battle between the union and its member states, that sovereignty still always originate in the member states.
And no member state has surrendered enough power to allow the EU to censor the entire internet.
Copyright laws are also so weird. Like, I can’t speak for any other country, but in Sweden we already have copyright protection for every human made creation. It’s already forbidden by Swedish law to use others copyrighted material without their consent. (We’re one of the countries that would most likely just go “lol ya our national laws already live up to this” if the directive was passed.)
But copyright laws are so incredibly futile.
In Sweden we have laws forbidding piracy copying of just about everything. Still I can (illegally) stream countless of episodes of my favorite TV series, and movies, and music, and download pictures left and right, and no one really bats an eyelash. It’s a shitty thing to do, yeah, sure, and the copyright holder has every right to chew me out over it.
But the point still stands; we already have regulations of it, but nothing really happens.
Copyright infringement is simply too big of a problem, and not acute enough, to be solved. Like, yeah, it’s shitty downloading copyrighted material, but it’s a little more urgent to actually pay attention to our collapsing environment and the impending third world war.
So copyright regulations are statement regulations. They tell us that “yeah, this is a shitty thing to do, please don’t do it”, and then most of us do it anyway. Because a proper sanction system isn’t in place. And it’s most likely going to take a hell of a long time before it does, if it ever.
And it’s not going to come from the EU.
Because then there was the goddamn “link tax”. I just. Oh god.
First of all, “link tax” is the literal worst name to use, because the EU is outright and strictly forbidden to deal with taxes. That’s one sovereignty posts that absolutely no member state is willing to give up. The EU has nothing to do with taxes whatsoever.
So again, this would be dealt with and regulated on a national level. Even if it would be a tax or a fee, it would go to the national economy, and not to the EU. The EU is directly funded by the member states budgets (which they are actually discussing right now, tbh), import duties (because while the EU has no right to deal with taxes, import duties are an entirely different matter because of the inner market), and fines from when you don’t follow EU regulations (which, once again, the commission is way above their ears trying to sort out (hello Sweden’s continuous refusal to become a part of the Euro)).
So if the “link tax” would in any way end up benefiting the EU, it would be through a fine, which would only happen if your member state refused to incorporate the directive. Which is a long way to go, and tbh, isn’t that likely.
And as you can see above, article 13 doesn’t mention a “link tax”, or links, or taxes, and neither does the rest of the directive.
So, no, the EU isn’t gonna make you pay for linking stuff. That’s ridiculous.
And you wanted an in-depth explanation of why that fucking video isn’t real, and I barely even touched the video and haven’t even started going through what article 13 even says, but I’ve already talked my own ear of and this probably makes no sense so. Don’t be afraid to ask me more-head-on questions, and I’ll try to answer them as best as I can!!
Just. Don’t freak out. The internet is safe, for a good long while still, no matter what happens to the directive once its voted on on June 20th.
Figment, the recently closed writing website, has just launched (after a long delay) their long-awaited successor to figment known as Underlined, where users can post their work and receive feedback, supposedly.
DO NOT USE UNDERLINED. DO NOT POST YOUR WORK ON UNDERLINED.
Underlined’s terms and conditions contains a clause stating that the rights to all your work that you post on their website belongs to them!!!!
Underlined belongs to Penguin Random House. This is an extremely dirty trick for them to play on writers, especially young writers and children, who come to the internet to get feedback and will lose the rights to their work. Please boost!!!
For my writing friends looking for an online writing community, DO NOT USE Underlined.
I went to confirm @greater-than-the-sword‘s post, because seriously publishers are still pulling this garbage? And yes, they are. If you want to check out the full terms and conditions, have at it. They are full of writers’ nightmares, a few of which I’ll highlight under the cut.
Frankenuff’s Castle 