a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

you came back wrong and i am racked with guilt because i cannot bear to see you like this and i should have let you rest. i loved you so much that i defied death itself but i do not think either of us are happy

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

im getting my oil changed and i heard the mechanic go "tee hee hee". whats happening

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

this is going to sound like the most boomer take ever but I genuinely think increasing reliance on technology for entertainment in youth is draining creativity. it's that instant gratification which allows you to shut your brain off for a while. these kids aren't having to resort to their own creativity when bored. there's always a solution to "bored" now. BRING BACK PLAYING WOLVES UNTIL BEDTIME

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

I'm a bit late, but anyways.

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

Did some fancy repairing, my pal said this would probably "do numbers on tumblr"...so ta da!

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

There’s a particular attitude I often see on the internet that goes something like “If you aren’t part of a particular marginalized group, then you could never understand their experience, so don’t pretend to relate.” And while obviously you’re never going to relate to every aspect of that identity unless you are also of that identity, I feel like this attitude really diminishes opportunities for finding kinship and bonding in similar experiences even if those experiences aren’t exactly the same and/or are the result of different identities.

For example, I’m white and neurodivergent, and I was talking to a Black neurotypical friend about masking, and how I feel like I have to change the entire way I present myself in order to not be considered weird in public. She responded with “Oh, some of that sounds kind of like code-switching— how I have to switch away from using AAVE in white-dominated settings in order to be accepted.” And then we bonded over how frustrating and ridiculous it is that AAVE and stimming are both considered unacceptable in “professional” settings.

Another time, a straight Jewish friend was telling me about a book she had just finished reading, which was written by a Jewish author and had a Jewish main character. She was saying that it was really nice to read a book written by a Jewish author, because even when gentile authors do their research and write a pretty accurate Jewish character, they never quite feel Jewish— you can always tell the author was a gentile. And I said “Oh that sounds kind of like when I read queer characters written by straight authors— you can always tell the author was straight even if they do their research and get things fairly right. So even though I’m happy when any book features queer characters, it’s really especially nice to read queer characters written by queer authors.” And we bonded over this similar experience, and we were both excited that the other understood even if we were coming to this experience from different angles, and then we swapped book recommendations. This conversation is also a great example of when that internet attitude DOES apply— when someone outside of a particular group is trying to understand that group’s entire experience well enough to accurately write the world as seen through their eyes. They’re never quite going to get it right, and that’s ok! It just means it’s important to also have Own Voices authors writing those types of stories also.

Sometimes it seems like people who have been in internet circles exhibiting this attitude for too long are afraid to ever try to relate to the experiences of anyone in any groups other than their own for fear of causing offense, which is honestly pretty counterproductive. Understanding each other and bonding across groups should be the goal! Relating to each other is not a bad thing!

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

introducing my four year old niece to the concept of "moral dilemmas" by telling her that i'm a monster that eats children and that i know it's wrong but i'm so so so hungry and everything else tastes yucky. i've tried all the human food in the world and it all tastes so yucky i can't even eat it. i can only eat children and i'm so hungry

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

nyt connections puzzles are all either A. easy as hell or B. will have the last two categories be like "colloquial names in the mining trade for the mineral 'galactonite'" and "common visual and thematic elements featured Ingmar Bergman's unreleased short films 'The Wages of Sin' and 'From Beyond the Mist', both of which were only screened once at a film festival in a small village 100 km north of Stockholm in 1957"

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

it's so fucking frustrating to be in college and know everyone uses chatgpt and to be tempted by it constantly while also knowing intellectually that it doesn't work and it's a bad idea. like, i hang out in the library a lot, and i see people using chatgpt on assignments almost every day. and i know it isn't a good way to learn, because it's not really "artificial intelligence" so much as it is an auto text generator. and it gives you wrong information or badly worded sentences all the time. but every week i stare down assignments i don't want to do and i think man. if only i could type this prompt into a text generator and have it done in 10 minutes flat. and i know it wouldn't work. it wouldn't synthesize information from the text the way professors want, it wouldn't know how to answer questions, it just spits out vaguely related words for a couple paragraphs. but knowing my classmates get their work done in 10 minutes flat with it while i fight every ounce of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my body is infuriating.

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

Tiny Human was fussing today, until I asked "do you know what day it is?"

"Yah?"

"It's shabbat!"

"Shaaaa!"

So I lit the candles, and as usual I sang Shabbat Shalom while bouncing TH. When the song was over, TH tried to get me to continue. "Shaaaa shohmm! Shaaa shohmm!"

So, from my family to yours, shaa shohm.

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

Thinking about this..I'm so happy for him

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i will try very hard to be kind until i die

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]

attention this is your captain speaking chag sameach pesach to all celebrating and a reminder do not open the airlock to greet elijah the vulcan rabbinic council ruled that opening the door to the room where the seder is occurring is sufficient elijah can get on a starship just fine himself he just likes to be personally invited in to your seder we dont need another incident like last year thank you

[a-few-of-my-favorite-turtles]