I'm not aesthetic but I am a vibe

Silver inlaid axe head, Scandinavia, 11th-12th century

Sure, the Northern Tribe might have benders, but they have such a different culture/identity around bending compared to the South. We see in Hama's flashbacks that the Southern Tribe had male and female benders at the helm, fighting equally, learning the same things, sharing the same tactics. They weren't left behind as strictly healers or defenseless women given a man's gift, they were strong.

And the thing that separates Katara and Aang's stories being the last benders of their nations is that Aang remembers what it means to be an Air Nomad. There are obviously blind spots because of how young he was, but Aang knows the customs and the culture and spiritual practices. He was able to pass those down to Tenzin and his grandchildren, he was able to start the process of rebuilding what was lost.

But Katara? She was even younger than Aang was when the Southern waterbenders were eradicated. There are Southern practices that are most definetly just... a fractured part of history because she never got to experience them. There are ways of hunting, of building, of navigating the waters, ways of healing, probably even spiritbending, that are simply lost to time.

And maybe her grandmother can clue her into it, memories from a nonbender living aside benders, but it's not the same. She didn't get to hear it from the waterbenders, she didn't get to learn from a Southern waterbender, she doesn't even know what to rebuild because it was never something she was versed in.

That's why The Puppet Master is such a heartbreaking episode. Because Hama could have been the Southern teacher Katara clearly wanted, she could have shown her more, but ended up passing on her legacy of Bloodbending. And on the inverse, I can't even fully call Hama a villain for wanting Katara to know how to bloodbend, because the ache of thinking you were the only one left for so long, the rage against a Nation known for destroying nations, would've driven anyone insane.

They see electricity, the same electricity of your brain. If something is not charged they can't see anything at all, and a room of non-conductive objects would be a complete sensory deprecation chamber. They can see a little bit, but they are nearly blind and only use it to notice sudden changes. If you flash a light at them they scream. Instead they just bring a device that generates a charge everywhere they go. They claim their whole planet is charged, but you have doubts

This apparently allows them to see secrets of the universe. They knew about the big bang through out their entire history, because they can apparently just see the beginning of the universe. They find it beautiful, but not all that interesting. You are jealous

Despite being in space, they have not yet discovered steel or had the industrial revolution. It's basically still alchemists and philosophers, but the alchemy and philosophy works and got them to space. You are no longer jealous

They rely on the temperature being way below 40 degrees Fahrenheit so all the fat stays solid and frozen, and die if it's warm. They consider you burning

They get all their energy from air, like eating, to the point they cannot hold their breath at all. They get other things from food, but refuse to prepare it aside from digestion. They just plop it in basically untouched

They age in dog years, dying a few months after turning 9, and only reach adulthood at age 4. That's an absurd amount of time to spend as a child. The one you met is apparently 5 and considers himself a mature adult. The tantrums say otherwise. Yes, he also has arcane knowledge naturally. You are more surprised they live this long considering everything else about them

They have 4 genders and assigned you one, maybe randomly. Kind of rude, apparently very complex, but they have no idea how to explain it. You aren't asking

Then humans start spotting predators, ambushes, and hidden creatures in complete darkness before any of the aliens can detect them.

Apparently, when a human says, "That shadow has a face," the correct response is no longer, "You're imagining things."

It's, "Everyone stop moving."

from the second video:

But building on that essay [first video], and what we’ve discussed today as a prime example of a narrative born from the “homophobes are secretly just gay” trope, I want to examine why it’s so resistant to correction, and why people that are otherwise usually media literate and concerned with truth over comforting myths might grab onto this with both hands and refuse to let go. And I'm including myself in this. The first time I heard the Grindr crash thing, I laughed. I'm not coming to you from moral superiority. I'm coming from a position of "I also fell for this and then felt annoyed about it and made it everyone else's problem in the form of a video essay because I think the truth is actually a more effective political weapon than a lie." So why does this work? I think there are four main reasons, ranging from "understandable" to "I'm not sure that's healthy babe." The first reason: yo, it feels good. Queer people are constantly on the receiving end… Of right-wing politics in a material, tangible way. These aren't abstract disagreements. These are people who've campaigned on the premise that your love is invalid, your identity is a disorder, your existence is a threat to children. And when the power imbalance is that stark, there is something extremeeeelllly satisfying about the idea that the oppressor who thinks they are so much better than you is nothing but a fraud. They can’t even meet their own bar for “deserves rights.” It's the political equivalent of "the bully has a crush on you." We're told that story from childhood. So when someone offers an adult, political version, "they're homophobic because they're secretly homosexual", we’re already primed and lubed, and it slides right in to how we understand the world. And suddenly, the power dynamic feels more manageable, they’re just pathetic self-hating gays, I’m not scared of that. It feels good, and it feels true. And that’s the exact kind of story that goes viral, regardless of whether it’s based on evidence.

The "Republicans crash Grindr when they gather" claim has every quality of what misinformation researchers call “sticky”, as in, it’s sticky. It’s sticks to your brain. And it does so, even after you learn the truth. Researchers call this The Continued Influence Effect (CIE). It’s a cognitive phenomenon where misinformation continues to influence a person's reasoning and beliefs even after it has been clearly and credibly retracted. The paper posits that people continue to use misinformation because, on some level, they still feel it is relevant or useful, even if they know it's false. This paper frames this not just as a problem of forgetting the correction or new information, but as a problem where the feeling of familiarity and narrative coherence from the original misinformation overrides the factual knowledge of its retraction. We believe, because it feels true.

Stop backing up my fucking files.

Stop asking me to back up my fucking files.

Stop taking my fucking files off my fucking computer.

I don't want a fucking reminder in three fucking days. Let me fucking say no.

Here's a text tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 11.

Here's a video tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 10.

Here's a video tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 11.