Taylor She/her

i get it. sometimes i get too enveloped in the realization that shit’s not the best right now.

last time i got really deep into it was around the end of january this year. i don’t remember why i was crying. actually, i think that in the moment, i couldn’t place why i was so down. i hung my head off the side of my bed and sobbed until my sinuses felt like they were filled with sprite. i just cried and cried and cried.

then i scrolled to self-soothe. there was nothing really comforting, and i was frustrated by the loop, the little glitch where you close an app, or the fridge, or a convo, then when you look to do something new, you open it right back up again. it’s fucking exhausting.

so i forced myself to try something new. not a real New Thing, just opening an app outside of my usual three. I picked facebook. Far away enough from the regulars to show some new things, but close enough where I won’t get bored and go back to the loop for more dopamine.

i haven’t been on in so long that i wasn’t aware they share your own memories back to you. it was the first thing that caught my eye. around that time years ago, i had posted something in my senior year of high school about these three older kids i knew. Zack, Bre, and Brittany.

I remember them vividly. one time in journalism class, Zack banged on the classroom windows. He was in the hallway trying to get the girls’ attention. when everyone jumped and looked in his direction, he licked the glass and galloped away. Bre was my freshman year crush. we would chat a bit, and i used to go to her soccer games. something would happen to the base of my stomach when i saw her wipe her face with the bottom of her jersey. the sun would hit her bright orange waist-length ponytail as she zipped left and right around her opponents and it would make me immediately aware of just how cold and hard the bleachers were underneath my hips. Brittany was my neighbor. her parents would keep a perfectly clipped lawn with a leveled American flag. When she got a swing set, I would try to come over just to play with it. Her parents would let her throw parties in high school, with the rule that any of the kids drinking had to throw their keys in a bowl by the door and stay the night.

in january of my senior year, they threw a party. everyone was invited, but i couldn’t go until i finished a research paper for my IB history teacher. i was so burnt out and sad that i was missing out. i thought then that i hated my life. that night, though, Bre, Zack and Brittany left in the middle of the party. they snatched the keys from the party bowl and drove on the highway. at some point, they merged on the wrong side. they collided headfirst with another car, both going as fast as any car on the highway at night would drive. everyone involved died upon impact.

Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.

I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.

Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.

"Two centuries later" just triggers a mental note to check if timing is consistent throughout the book, because it may mean more time jumps are ahead. "200 years later", or heaven forbid, "201 years later" will have me draw up a time line. The more specific the number, the more critical people become.

basically gricean maxims are a set of guidelines that we all carry in our heads that we expect other people to follow when having a conversation in good faith - i’m copying and pasting definitions from someone else because my attempts at summing up quality and quantity weren’t going so hot

The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.

The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

this is the message i have been sending, feel free to translate it/use it as a template/improve it/etc:

Dear sir/ma'am,

In 2022, following the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, pressure was applied to the Eurovision Song Contest to bar Russia from competing that year and all years since. It was widely rightfully agreed that the invasion was worthy of strong condemnation and that Russia should be given no avenues to rehabilitate its public image.

In October 2023, the state of Israel began a military campaign against the people of the already occupied Gaza Strip in Palestine. In a disproportionate, atrocious response to the Hamas attack on the 7th of October 2023, Israeli forces have murdered over 30,000 Palestinians and displaced almost 2 million from their homes. Palestinian civilians (journalists and doctors included), entirely unaffiliated with the Hamas party Israel claims to target, have been targeted and killed indiscriminately. Stripped of basic necessities like food, water and electricity by Israel, with intent vocalised by multiple Israeli forces to eliminate Gaza and the Palestinian people, this is no less than a genocide.

Thus Israel, much like Russia, should not be permitted to compete in a contest that has been used repeatedly to maintain its pristine public image while it brutally oppresses Palestine. Especially when it has been charged with genocide explicitly by South Africa, a case that took place in the ICJ, thoroughly elucidating the crimes committed by the Israeli state, a charge agreed upon by several countries and genocide scholars alike.

The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement has called for a complete boycott of Eurovision by broadcasters, artists and viewers and I ask that the BBC comply with this - abstain from broadcasting the Eurovision Song Contest and withdraw this years entry to the contest.

especially f you live in a country that participates in Eurovision, contact your broadcaster. even if you don't, there is contact info for broadcasters and an official sponsor at the following link along with a template email

Start appending date constraints to your searches - "before:2023".