i’m back benches

i love you guillermo del totoro

[ID: Four gifs of Guillermo del Toro in an interview. He says, “I think the sublime confusion is from 19 to 29. You think you are late for everything, you’re a has-been, nothing is happening, there’s no opportunity for you, the world is closed, everything is a disaster, you wanna die. And then you’re 30.” /end ID]

I just reblogged this w/ no comment but I actually do want to add: the rich are so good at/experienced with stealing from us, that they’ve created an entire system that has brainwashed you into not paying attention to/normalizing their theft. The last thing you need to do is defend them.

Casual cruelty has become so ingrained in a lot of people because we live in a society that is structured in a cruel way. To be quite honest you are obligated to consider the harm of your words and actions no matter your personal hardships.

if a girl is reading a really interesting book she shouldn't have to go to work. she's expanding her mind and bettering herself and her employers should understand that

The thing is that like “edgy humour” really is a GIANT red flag among young white men……you hear white boys making racist jokes all the time but people tend to brush it off and assume they’ll grow out of it or that they’re just going through a harmless edgy humour phase and like…..some of them might grow out of it but that’s not the POINT! They’re racist NOW! They’re spreading islamophobic ideas NOW and we brush it off because we assume they’ll grow out of it in the future but whether they do or not is irrelevant; they need to grow out of it Right. Now. Or more lives will be lost.

As someone who has worked with teenage boys, most of whom actually liked and/or respected me, the best tool I had for shutting down edgelord bullshit was a flat stare and “you’re better than that”. Simultaneously conveying “I am disappointed”, “I have expectations of you”, “you have otherwise met them”, “that sort of behavior is unacceptable”, and “you are better than the people who engage in that sort of behavior, but only so long as you don’t join them.” is an incredibly powerful tool with kids who care about what you think. The worst I ever had to escalate to was ‘disappointed headshake and “I thought you were better than that”.’ I’ve never had to repeat the sentiments or escalate after deploying that one. Actually made one of them cry once with just that. He felt that bad about letting me down, and we had a solid talk after. With guys my age, “I guess you’re not the kind of man I thought you were.” has proven effective.

I think this is something that we need to carry with arguments with these kinds of people. It is a sentiment grounded in humanity. 

Look we all want a robo dog but if you kill someone with a sledgehammer to steal theirs, they are going to find you. There's no way a 75k$ dog doesn't have gps

we are killing the dog

PLEASE do not forget that the gay men who survived being put into concentration camps by the Nazis WERE NOT FREED BY THE ALLIED FORCES. They were deemed rightfully convicted criminals and moved to prisons. This was not the battle Otto Frank was fighting and judging him as if he should have been fighting all the battles at once is not fair or realistic.

Also, being queer did not “add to the danger” Anne Frank was in. Does anyone really think Nazi soldiers are going to read her diary after capturing her and go “oh, this one’s a Jew AND a queer. She gets extra death.” Like… ??? She died because she was Jewish, and only because she was Jewish. What could possibly be more dangerous than actually dying? How does it get more dangerous than being a victim of genocide?

international friends: here’s the deal. South African scientists have been tracking the COVID genome and keeping an eye out for mutations. Most places in the world aren’t doing so. When we announce a new variant, it’s not necessarily from South Africa, we just publicised the fact that we detected it here. And yet, because we’re a country in the Global South, it doesn’t matter that our scientists are incredible and are doing the world a service by tracking and reporting these things, because our ordinary citizens are being blacklisted because of it and being prevented from entering other countries and placed on red lists for no reason 

For those who aren’t aware, this is exactly how the Spanish Flu came to be named the Spanish Flu. It didn’t originate in Spain. Spain was just the first country to acknowledge there was a global fucking pandemic and do something about it.

we are not born to die!! what are you talking about!! do you think a book begins just to finish? do you think a song opens with a beautiful chord just for it to end? you don’t read the book to finish it, you read the book to eat up the excitement and the emotions it evokes!! to learn and to digest and to fall in love and be heartbroken!! you listen to the song to dance and dance and sing your throat raw!!! to cry and smile and swell with the harmonies!! yes, we are born with the inevitable fate of death, we are mortal after all, but that is merely the finale of the play!! the final act, the closing of the curtains - we are not born to take a bow and exit stage left!! we are born to love and be joyous and yell and move and learn and cry and feelfeelfeel!!!  we are not born to die, silly, we’re born to live!!!

This is so violently hopeful and uplifting everyone needs to see it