Jay

DAILY AFFIRMATIONS

reminder that public inaccessibility is a form of violent oppression. it's so much more than a cute reminder to "let yourself take up space" when trying to navigate inaccessible public spaces can lead to expensive medical equipment damage, concussions and/or brain bleeds, dislocations, fractures, tissue injury, seizures, injury to service animals, and countless other traumatic situations. all of which most disabled people can't afford to remedy because many of us can't work or afford it on top of everything else.

Everyone shut up and look at this carving of a whale from the 1200-600 CE Chumash culture

“Pratchett went back to older throwaway jokes (like dwarves being apparently unisex) and used them as metaphors to discuss social change, racial assimilation, and other complex issues, while reexamining the species he’d thrown in at the margins of his world simply because they existed at the margins of every other fantasy universe. If goblins and orcs and trolls could think, then why were they always just there to be slaughtered by the heroes? And if the heroes slaughtered sentient beings en masse, how heroic exactly were they? It was a long overdue start on redressing issues long swept under the rug by a parade of Tolkien successors who never thought of anyone green and slimy as anything but a notch on the protagonist’s sword, and much of the urgency in Pratchett’s last few books seemed to be related to them. ‘There’s only one true evil in the world,’ he said through his characters. ‘And that’s treating people like they were things.’ And in the last of his ‘grown-up’ Discworld books, that idea is shouted with the ferocity of those who have only a few words left and want to make them count. Goblins are people. Golems are people. Dwarves are people, and they do not become any less people because they decide to go by the gender they know themselves to be instead of the one society forces on them. Even trains might be people, and you’ll never know one way or the other unless you ask them, because treating someone like they’re a person and not a thing should be your default. And the only people who cling to tradition at the expense of real people are sad, angry dwellers in the darkness who don’t even understand how pathetic they are, clutching and grasping at the things they remember without ever understanding that the world was never that simple to begin with. The future is bright, it is shining, and it belongs to everyone.”

" 𝕯𝖔𝖓'𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖐𝖊 𝖒𝖊 𝖑𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍! 𝕵𝖚𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖊? 𝕽𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘?! 𝕶𝖊𝖊𝖕 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖘! 𝖄𝖔𝖚 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖙𝖊𝖆𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖘 𝖕𝖎𝖘𝖘 𝖒𝖊 𝖔𝖋𝖋! "

do it while the ground falls out from under you; do it while everything you loved goes up in smoke; do it while the dream of your future is still burning embers around you; build anew on the hot ashes of everything you worked for; keep going, keep loving, keep living, even as all you want is to turn back (there is no turning back; it is gone already); do it through grief, which feels like fear in the body

The tag I have seen most often on this post is "I needed to hear this," and I am so, so grateful to have said something that was needed. These words came out of the depths of my own grief, and I am so grateful to have made this small connection with others in the midst of it. Grief is isolating and indescribable, but none of us are alone.

Bixia, may I ask what exactly is the significance of Mount Li and the nine springs? I fear I must have missed learning about it because it wasn't immediately relevant to being in your glorious military.

recent example. lady at my careers appointment had a post-it with her name on it stuck to the monitor, so i introduced myself by saying "hello, i'm eliot! you must be [name], it's nice to meet you!" and she stared at me as if i was the stupidest person alive and said icily, "yeah, i'm [name]. congratulations, you can read."