ds9 staff at their next job interviews: yeah sorry you can’t call my previous boss for a reference - he ascended to a state of being beyond time and space
One of the things I resent most about being Animal Brain Apex Predator trapped in Maximum Productivity Society is that I have to work when the weather is gross, instead of following my natural instinct to burrow myself into something dry and soft and sleep until Optimal Foraging Conditions
It is dark and cold and wet and miserable and I have a warm dark quiet hideaway full of food and drinking water that is safe from interlopers and for some ungodly reason instead of holing up there to conserve my energy, I am standing up in a brightly lit beige room for several hours. A possum wouldn’t put up with this shit. I’m going to bite someone
reading a book with a medieval setting and i was v excited for it BUT these characters have such modern hangups about touch and personal space that i keep forgetting it’s meant to be the fourteenth century. lads. get in bed together, it’s cold.
like this man is freaking out about sleeping next to someone (for warmth) because he has never shared a bed before
sir??? you are from the fourteenth century??? surely this is not such a novelty to you
also so far christianity does not exist in this book. we have not even so much as mentioned passing a church while travelling.
i repeat: sir, you are from the fourteenth century,
honestly i need somebody to write “there was only one bed with five other people in it” immediately, that sounds like it’s either going to be incredibly full of repressed yearning, incredibly funny, or just an orgy, and i would love to see it go in any and all of those directions
to the left of me: an impoverished noblewoman and her loyal man at arms and their forbidden cross class love doing an Only One Bed. to the right of me: two priests in full vestments and their forbidden gay catholic love doing an Only One Bed me, in the middle: eating turnips as quietly as I can while i take in the drama
what do you mean i can’t read every book, study every academic subject, taste every food, live in every city in every country, visit every museum, listen to every single song ever produced, learn every language, meet every interesting person, memorize every particle of knowledge to ever exist ???
Liu’s figurative paintings — inspired by shunga, Japanese erotic art popularized in the 17th century — are ruminations on her upbringing in a family where sex and nudity were taboo. When she first began to show these works, a dealer suggested she recut the canvases to eliminate the exaggerated genitals (the work in this article is a relatively tame example). “I can’t do that,” she said. “They were like, ‘Well, do you want to sell? Do you want to create this career?’ I found that so outrageous. [I was] being censored once again. As a child I was not allowed to ask questions but now I can’t even show …” she trails off. “I know it’s aggressive, maybe it’s not your taste, but that’s not the point of the piece.”
“Hanging on the wall of Liu’s studio are three large paintings of nudes. In one, two females crouch head-to-head as if sharing a kiss — or a secret. Get close enough to the canvas and you can see a window ornamented with a flower box; you realize that there is another painting underneath: The original works are paintings of old family photographs.”
There are always consequences. Take you, for instance. Someone, a long time ago, made a little decision, then another, then a big one, then one of absolutely no importance. And then by and by, you were born. On that day, you were the consequence of a harmless choice made by someone in a moment where you didn’t even exist. And that choice defined your whole life. You are consequence, Perry. And tonight, you are consequential.
THEFALLOFTHEHOUSEOFUSHER (2023) Created by Mike Flanagan
Me: Exercise does not cause weight loss. This is a fact that has been demonstrated so robustly in research that even doctors, who hate and fear evidence, are grudgingly starting to admit this.
Someone reading that post: Cool, but have you considered that exercise leads to weight loss?
does it? not for people exercising for their non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Interactive computer-based reminders to diet and exercise are useless.
I mean, I literally went to Cochrane Reviews, one of the best-respected sources for massive meta-analyses, and I just input the keywords “weight loss” and “exercise,” and I’m tooling through the results. Every one of the damn things shows that we do not have high-quality research indicating that exercise leads to weight loss. So no. I’m right, and you need to adjust your worldview–ask yourself, if not for weight loss, then why? Re-read those sources: exercise improved muscle density, insulin sensitivity, and cholesterol. It’s good for your blood vessels, it’s good for your strength, it’s good for your brain.
But it won’t make you thin. Maybe two pounds, maybe five, but that’s about it. If you’re looking at short-term, like a year, sure, you can lose weight–but the effort will almost always result in your body going “oh shit, we’re living in a famine” and you will regain it, and now, with your body at a new set-point, losing it will be harder. Regaining will be easier. Welcome to the life-destroying yo-yo.
#then what the fuck are we supposed to do?
Exercise and eat lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains because those things will keep you healthier longer, regardless of how much you weigh, and pick up your pick-axe in the ongoing horribly slow and frustrating fight of chipping away at the idea that being fat is a bad thing that means you’re a bad person. I recommend the book Fat Talk for a good place to start.
“We have many times more empty houses and apartments than we do homeless people, but America can’t have laws limiting investments in single-family residences (which are being snapped up as passive investments by foreigners and Wall Street) because the industry owns so many politicians. Investment companies own about a quarter of all American single-family homes: last year, investors bought 22% of all American homes sold and “donated” millions to politicians. Many were purchased specifically to leave them sitting empty, because real estate goes up in value faster than even the stock market. By pulling all these houses out of the housing market, these investors and speculators are driving up — intentionally — the price of housing. And as the price of housing goes up, so does homelessness: there’s a linear relationship between the two when the price of housing in a community exceeds one-third of the community’s median income. So why can’t we regulate that? Why can’t there be at least some disincentive, some penalty, for this destructive form of investing? Citizens United.”
