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honestly kind of maddening that the jokes about shitty nurses still rely on invoking the ontologically evil mean girl who is just attracted to nursing for reasons of intrinsic personal badness, when what's actually happening is that pretty much any situation in which one person is in a position of structural power over another, and assumed to be more credible or reliable by dint of professional or social capital, is conducive to creating and enabling patterns of abuse

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I’d watch that

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Ok now do NYT columnists

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yeah if you don't voluntarily stop "functioning" like this, you will involuntarily stop functioning altogether. ask me how I know.

If you know anyone who seems really chill to the point of being virtually indestructible, like nothing could ever bother them in any way, could get hit by a train and just shake it off and be totally fine, laughing it off as soon as they've dusted themselves off and stopped bleeding, but who occasionally just randomly falls apart to complete fucking smithereens with seemingly no cause nor warning, only to get back up again a few minutes/hours/days later like "ok yeah I'm fine again that was weird lmao", and you've ever wondered what the fuck is up with that:

They are actually not ok and most likely are not ok at any point. The whole "hardiest person you know who just collapses randomly sometimes" thing isn't a deliberately constructed façade, as a matter of fact it might be something that they actually personally believe themselves to be. But in reality this is somebody who's either unintentionally learned or has been deliberately trained to hide negative emotions and mask symptoms at all costs, as the #1 priority that goes over any other survival needs.

So even though it may look like they go from 1 to 100 completely at random and unpredictably, and then swing right back again to being totally fine, you have no way of knowing how long they've been at 95% before the last line of defense broke down and the system collapsed. And once they flip back up, odds are that they just managed to scrape their shit back together again just enough to get their backup masking systems running. The "check engine" light never turned on because the wire was clipped years ago.

If this is you, this is your callout to seek some sort of help. I'm telling on everyone in this room including myself.

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it's literally three colors. where does the sensory overload come from?

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“Lolita isn’t a perverse young girl. She’s a poor child who has been debauched and whose senses never stir under the caresses of the foul Humbert Humbert, whom she asks once, ‘how long did [he] think we were going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy things together…?’ But to reply to your question: no, its success doesn’t annoy me, I am not like Conan Doyle, who out of snobbery or simple stupidity preferred to be known as the author of “The Great Boer War,” which he thought superior to his Sherlock Holmes. It is equally interesting to dwell, as journalists say, on the problem of the inept degradation that the character of the nymphet Lolita, whom I invented in 1955, has undergone in the mind of the broad public. Not only has the perversity of this poor child been grotesquely exaggerated, but her physical appearance, her age, everything has been transformed by the illustrations in foreign publications. Girls of eighteen or more, sidewalk kittens, cheap models, or simple long-legged criminals, are baptized “nymphets” or “Lolitas” in news stories in magazines in Italy, France, Germany, etc; and the covers of translations, Turkish or Arab, reach the height of ineptitude when they feature a young woman with opulent contours and a blonde mane imagined by boobies who have never read my book. In reality Lolita is a little girl of twelve, whereas Humbert Humbert is a mature man, and it’s the abyss between his age and that of the little girl that produces the vacuum, the vertigo, the seduction of mortal danger. Secondly, it’s the imagination of the sad satyr that makes a magic creature of this little American schoolgirl, as banal and normal in her way as the poet manqué Humbert is in his. Outside the maniacal gaze of Humbert there is no nymphet. Lolita the nymphet exists only through the obsession that destroys Humbert. Herein an essential aspect of a unique book that has been betrayed by a factitious popularity.”

— Vladimir Nabokov (tr. Brian Boyd), Apostrophes (1975)

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"Scientists should be working on curing cancer instead of doing [Thing]" just get funnier and funnier to me over time because

there's so many papers and studies about curing cancer that they drown everything else out. God help you if you're trying to research something that has ever been considered applicable to cancer research.

"cancer" is a whole category of diseases that includes hundreds of different things

The way i understand it, "cancer" is a consequence of cells aging and being exposed to stresses over time. The goal is to stop it from developing too early, curing cancer IN GENERAL is a bit like trying to cure entropy

the amount of progress we've made on treating and preventing cancer even in the last few decades is so insane, it's a lot more impressive than "curing" a single disease would be.

different scientists aren't interchangeable. What's a meteorologist going to do for cancer research

If we didn't have the other scientists, we would die a lot more of the other stuff

there WAS that one guy who programmed an AI to categorize different types of cookies and pastries that ended up being great for detecting cancer cells, so YOU NEVER KNOW

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I can’t state enough how beneficial it was to work at the sex shop as my first retail job. We were encouraged to practice shutting down inappropriate behavior and it became a well practiced skill set. I had a flat stare, icy tones of disapproval, and a demeanor of untouchable scorn to back it all up. I could get the most hardened of perverts to back off or leave in a matter of sentences if they harassed staff or other customers.

When I moved on to selling mattresses I came prepared to handle pretty much any situation with the unruffled calm of someone who has asked Santa to stop touching himself and leave. To my vast surprise it was a skill I needed on the regular at the mattress store. For whatever reason men thought it was the height of entertainment to sexually harass me because I was young and cheerful.

They would always quickly learn they’d picked the wrong target.

One day a man strolled in, sizing me up as he came. He saw a young, tiny, afab person alone in the store and came to a stop way too close. He used his height to leer down at me and said, “I’m looking for a new headboard. Which ones are the best for sex?”

It was so stupid. He looked down at me with half lidded eyes and the grin of a man who owns an unmarked white van. He probably expected me to laugh uncomfortably or act flustered. He wanted to feel tall and powerful or maybe even sexy.

He was not expecting what he got. My face stretched into what could technically be described as a smile but was more accurately a threat display. The temperature in the room plummeted as I dropped all warmth in my demeanor. He took a half step back, suddenly aware that he was alone in a room with me.

“Well, sir, that depends on what kind of sex you’re having. If you are looking for a headboard that is grippeable, I suggest this model. The metal is rounded and wouldn’t hurt a hand gripping it tightly. However if you want something that you can secure with restraints, I recommend this wooden one as the slats are wide and quite sturdy.”

He looked liked I’d hit him over the head with a board and stared down at me blankly, taken aback by the authoritative way that I discussed the merits of his lackluster sex life. I met his eyes, a veiled threat in mine, and said, “Which one will you be purchasing?”

He tucked his tail between his legs and bought the metal one. I pulled up a thin layer of friendliness as I rang him up but he had the chastened air of a man who just ran straight into an iron pole.

Another time a man crawled up onto a tempurpedic and thrusted into an invisible partner. He gave a cocky look over his shoulder, sure that he was going to discomfit me as he asked, “How are these babies for fucking?”

I gave him a deadpan look and and said, “That depends on if you’re someone who has to rely on the bounce of springs for your thrusts. Memory foam beds are nicer on knees and joints for positions like doggy style but they absorb a lot of kinetic energy.”

He visibly deflated and got down off the bed with a vaguely ashamed air.

He bought a spring mattress.

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Éirinn go Brách.

Saoirse don Phalaistín.

Cosaint do dhídeanaithe.

Bia don ocrach.

Ceartas do gach duine.

Inis an frírinne don chumhachtach, as Gaeilge, as Béarla, i ngach teanga.

Ireland Forever.

Freedom for Palestine.

Protection for refugees.

Food for the hungry.

Justice for all people.

Speak truth to power, in Irish, in English, in every language.

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they need to add two extra hours after ten pm where time doesn't pass so you can do some nice reading before bed

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Holy shit

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I think the funniest possible thing to do in a low stakes situation when someone subtly insults you is to ask them to elaborate.

In Seattle I was explaining environmental DNA and a woman said it “tickled” her to hear someone with my accent (rural Appalachia) “talk about science.”

So I said, “oh! 🙂 What an interesting perspective. Can you tell me more about what you mean?”

As you can imagine it went badly for her very quickly.

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Every contemporary video game RPG wants to give me a party of emotionally dysfunctional weirdos and then bends over backwards to ensure that none of my interpersonal decisions cause any intractable conflicts or have any lasting consequences, which just feels wrong to me – like the latter is actively undermining the former. I want to see an RPG that goes full early 90s dating sim. I want an RPG where organising my party composition is like that logic puzzle about getting a fox and a duck across a river.

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I'm not ashamed of wanting sex at all. I'm very open about desiring other bodies. What I am concerned about is how genuine the other person's desire is *for me.* I was raised in a cult and groomed to be a cult leader (long story), so on some level, I am always worried that I'm manipulating anyone who's sexually/romantically interested in me (while simultaneously being pleased and proud that I'm "fulfilling my purpose"). CNC addresses those anxieties. Also, a person who is willing to engage in CNC with me is much less likely to be scared off when they see me raw and unfiltered. I have a LOT of psychosexual baggage; I might as well have fun with it!

"noncon fantasies are a way to imagine the fulfillment of the desire for sex, while disavowing that very desire"

yeah sure, great theory, for many it is! but what about those of us for whom it is not the sex we want at all, but the violation itself? i dont have hypnosis sex fantasies for the sex, but for the hypnosis! i dont have forced sex fantasies for the sex, but for the forcing! many of my fantasies do not involve sex at all, but do involve some kind of deep violation.

the claim that people only fantasize about rape to cope with the shame of wanting sex has always felt so alienating to me. im not ashamed of wanting sex. i dont especially want sex. what i want specifically is something i do not want. i want the pressure, the alarm, the confusion, the dissociation. i want that stuff actually, not in a thinly veiled play-acting way as a precursor to sex. if it doesnt actually feel like a violation, i dont much like the sex.

it's just so frustrating to me when people act like nobody genuinely just has dark desires, that its all just a thin ruse to cover up an interest in vanilla sexual activities. some people do that sure. but us actual fetishists do exist.

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A customer contacted our team with questions, and then finished their email with: "I am daunted by the complexities and unknowns." I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

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super rare plants that ONLY grow in Appalachian region

Gentiana decora

Castilleja kraliana

Scutellaria montana

Clinopodium talladeganum

Blephilia subnuda

Phacelia fimbriata

Sarracenia jonesii

Euphorbia purpurea

Draba ramossisima

Paronychia argyrocoma

Trillium tennesseense

Marshallia mohrii

Convolvulus sericatus

Corallorhiza bentleyi

...and many more!...