It gives a lovely light.

"Stuff like this is made to brainwash young girls into thinking that they can 'fix' dangerous men. Such girls usually end up in abusive relationships and their parents are right to worry."

It is rather strange to come across such a gross generalization, operating on an assumption that girls are blank slates whom anyone can manipulate and who can't distinguish between real and make believe on top of it.

In my entire "career"(if you can call it that) of engaging with fiction , the girls and women that I have run into in fandoms happened to be some of the most intelligent, talented, cool, witty and insightful people I have ever met. I've devoured the fics they have written. I have delighted in the arts and edits they've made. Their perspectives and interpretations about the characters and their relationships are genuinely fascinating to read about regardless of whether I agree with it or not. They are the ones who are most often at the receiving end of the antis' ire for no valid reason but they just keep deriving joy and inspiration from their favourite characters and ships and keep sharing it with others through stories, art and thoughts. They are not just smart but incredibly resilient, sensitive and aware not just about the media they consume but about the world around them and its issues.

Came across this art installation, Liza Lou's Kitchen, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. It's a kitchen made of tiny glass beads, that artist Liza Lou did, taking 5 yrs. to complete, from 1991 - 1996.

My favorite part is the sink.

This comic is, as is usual for Wednesday’s comics, chosen by my Patrons. Speaking of…

You were the victim, and it wasn’t fair, but it’s over now. Nobody came to save you, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late for anyone to go back and do it different.

You’re suffering over something that cannot be resolved. You’re allowed to feel angry, or outraged, or betrayed, but there will eventually come a time that you don’t feel that so violently anymore, and you’re going to want to have something good left to go back to.

You can’t make anyone love you the way you need to be loved. That’s how a lot of good things end. Not with a clear sign, something blocking the road that says “do not proceed”, just a splitting of the path that’s still moving somewhat in the same direction.

You can’t fix them. Nothing you can do will fix them. And if they fix themselves, they can’t do it for you- they have to do it for themselves as well, because otherwise a day may come when they’re alone, and as long as they live, they are their only true constant. So you can support, and you can encourage, but the hardest part is up to them. And sometimes they can’t do it even with your help.

Sometimes letting go of someone feels like mourning at their funeral before they’ve died, and every time you see them after it’s like talking to a ghost that doesn’t know it’s dead. Sometimes that happens. You’ll both still wake up tomorrow anyways.

I understand that you’re afraid, and that you’re afraid for good reasons. And I understand that being brave isn’t as easy as just turning that fear off, and you would if you could in a heartbeat. But the thing is, as long as that fear is able to dictate your choices, it will have power over you. If you don’t believe you can try to fight it, if you accept that it will always be in charge, you let the frightening thing stay present in your life. It will exist as long as you stay paralyzed. And that sounds cruel, but it isn’t something anyone can fix for you.

The person you may let yourself become after experiencing the terrible thing may very well grow into a much bigger, much more terrible thing, and someday it will swallow the first terrible thing whole. And all that will be left is something far worse for someone else. And you will not be able to shrink it down by explaining where it came from, because terrible things that are dead and gone are never as terrible as terrible things that are alive right now in front of you.

it just makes real that human feeling of like, something HAPPENED here. it can't just be THIS, can it??? it has to be SOMETHING --

That is, when an official told you, a rice farmer, that you owed more taxes than you really did, it was very useful if you were good enough at math to know he was lying (and could prove it) and if you were good enough at writing to write a letter to your government defending your case.

Education in Japan didn't become widespread, with nationwide standardized exams, until after the Meiji Restoration. Japan of course wasnt a democracy; it was blooming into a fascist nightmare. So why was this the time when education became available to all people, the rich and poor, boys and girls alike?

Education as a universal human right was not a motivation for the Japanese government.

Instead it was motivated by the desire to cultivate 人材, jinzai, human resources/talented people. Jinzai could help the empire expand. Even today, the Japanese government explicitly uses the term jinzai prominently in its Ministry of Education documents.

So if, today, we're heading into an era that looks increasingly fascist, the government could still be motivated to educate its people in order to remain competitive.

But let's say that 50 or 100 years from now, AI is doing for us what the jinzai of the past used to do: the coding, the engineering, the diagnosing, the war commanding, etc., etc.

Let's say we actually only need a few flesh-and-blood jinzai to oversee what AI is doing. Those people would need to be incredibly intelligent and skilled, but if the need and desire for everyone to be educated has dissipated, then who are the select few who will have the opportunity to become educated? Will we fall back into a society where only the wealthy can school their children?