she wears trouble like a crown

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real: Nature.com

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Artwork by @kaaatikoart (IG)

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To 2025:

Hell, they even cover the devastating heaviness of MASS SHOOTINGS without censoring or watering anything down.

They've been doing this for YEARS, and it's ALWAYS handled with dignity, respect, seriousness, understanding, and love.

This clip is from 1968 and discussed assassination after Bobby Kennedy died.

If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.

If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.

This is the very simple "starting from zero muscles" program I followed, highly recommend it or something similar:

the image of the voodoo doll as a magic doll you stab to hurt people actually comes from a practice by english pagan witches of making poppets. the poppet would be made in the shape of someone you hate and filled with their hair and then stabbed with big needles repeatedly. and the poppets got conflated with voodoo dolls later on.

voodoo dolls were actually a way of keeping records when black people were prevented from reading or writing. a voodoo priest who would serve as a communities doctor would make a doll that looks like the patient, and stick a pin in it where the patient was experiencing symptoms, this would let the doctor keep track of who was having what issues. for example if a patient has a headache, the voodoo priest puts a pin in the dolls head. the priest gives the patient a treatment, when the patient comes back the priest knows which doll is theirs because it looks like them, and they know they're dealing with a headache because the doll has a pin in it's head. when the symptoms resolve the pin is removed, until then the doctor has a reminder that this is an ongoing issue for a specific patient.

I wrote this because when I saw it this post had a TL;DW that conflated the information about poppets and the information about voodoo dolls, creating new and original misinformation about voodoo dolls that comes from confusing them with poppets so like don't reblog that one maybe.

also someone else in the chain included this freeze frame so you can read it

Add a second problem that won’t stay in its lane. While the main conflict grows, introduce another issue that keeps interfering and making choices harder.

Give every victory a cost. Let each solution create a new complication instead of clean relief.

Turn side characters into sources of pressure. Their needs, secrets, or mistakes should actively affect the main plot, not sit politely in the background.

Reveal information at the worst possible time. Timing alone can make a simple twist feel devastating.

Force the protagonist to choose between two things they want. The plot thickens when there’s no option that feels “right.”

Let past actions come back ugly. Consequences that arrive late hit harder and deepen the story’s layers.

Complicate the antagonist. Give them leverage, allies, or a point that almost makes sense.

Change the stakes midway. What the story is about shifts, even though the conflict stays connected.

Introduce a secret that reframes earlier scenes. Not a random twist—one that makes the reader rethink what they already know.

Let the character’s inner conflict sabotage the plot. Their flaws should actively make things worse.

KEEP READING!

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

Talk to people when things go to shit.

I don’t just mean get it off your chest, although that’s good. I mean: Something’s wrong with your paycheck/you lost your job/you had unexpected emergency car repairs and now you’re broke so your credit card payment is late. Like, not just 15 days late. We’re talking, shit got crazy and now you’re 90 days late with compounded interest and late fees and the Minimum Payment Due is, like, $390, and you’ve got about $3.90 in your bank account. Call the credit card company. 

I know it’s scary. I know you feel like you’re going to get in trouble, like you’re gong to get yelled at or scolded for not having your life together. But the credit card company isn’t your parents; they’re just interested in getting money from you. And you can’t squeeze blood from a stone or money from someone who doesn’t have any. So what you do is you call them. You explain you’re experiencing temporary financial hardships, and you’re currently unable to bring your account up to date, but you don’t want to just let it get worse. Can you maybe talk to someone about a payment plan so you can work something out? Nine times out of ten you’ll be able to negotiate something so that at least it’s not just taking a constant, giant shit on your credit score.

- Can’t pay your power bill? Call the power company.

- Can’t pay your full rent? Talk to your landlord.

- Had to go to the hospital without insurance and have giant medical bills looming in your place? Call the hospital and ask if they have someone who helps people with financial hardships. Many do.

- Got super sick and missed half a semester of class because flu/pneumonia/auto-immune problems/depressive episode? Talk to your professor. If that doesn’t help, talk to your advisor.

You may not be able to fix everything, but you’ll likely be able to make improvements. At the very least, it’s possible that they have a list of people you can contact to help you with things. (Also, don’t be afraid to google things like, “I can’t pay my power bill [state you live in]” because you’d be surprised at what turns up on Google!) But the thing is, people in these positions gain nothing if you fail. There’s no emotional satisfaction for them if your attempts at having your life together completely bite the dust. In fact, they stand to benefit if things work out for you! And chances are, they’ll be completely happy to take $20 a month from you over getting $0 a month from you, your account will be considered current because you’ve talked to them and made an agreement, you won’t get reported to a collections agency, and your credit score won’t completely tank.

Here’s some helpful tips to keep in mind:

1. Be polite. Don’t demand things; request them. Let me tell you about how customer service people hold your life in their hands and how many extra miles they’ll go for someone who is nice to them.

2. Stick to the facts, and keep them minimal unless asked for them. Chances are they’re not really interested in the details. “We had several family emergencies in a row, and now I’m having trouble making the payments” is better than “Well, two months ago my husband wrecked his bike, and then he had a reaction to the muscle relaxer they gave him, and then our dog swallowed a shoestring and we had to take him to the emergency clinic, and just last week MY car broke down, and now my account’s in the negatives and I don’t know how I’m gonna get it back out.” The person you’re talking to is aware shit happens to everyone; they don’t need the details to prove you’re somehow “worthy” of being helped. They may ask you for details at a certain point if they have to fill out any kind of request form, but let them do that.

3. Ask questions. “Is there anything we can do about X?” “Would it be possible to move my payment date to Y day instead so it’s not coming out of the same paycheck as my rent?” The answer may be “no.” That’s not a failure on your part. But a good customer service person may have an alternate solution. 

This website reads Terms of Service and ranks them so you don’t have to – because, let’s be real, you don’t.

the “humans are inherently evil and will seize on any opportunity to fuck each other over” trope is not only tired, boring, and cynical, it’s just…wrong. I mean, to reiterate & get the obvious point out of the way, yes, anyone who espouses this view is not to be trusted. 99% of the time the person is just telling you what they would do when given the chance. You don’t want to be friends with someone who has fantasies of becoming some Mad-Maxian water-hoarder enslaving people for food. 

but aside from that—the idea that people are horrible whenever given the chance is just…not backed up by real life. I’ve seen some shit. I was in Charlottesville on That Day and saw some really horrific sides of humanity that I have thought about almost every day since. But on the way back to our car, all of us filthy and sweaty and with low-key chemical burns from mace, some strangers saw us and asked if we needed help. They let us into their home and gave us water and food and let us shower before we drove home. They are probably part of the reason that I didn’t get hit by the car, because the time window we missed it by wasn’t a lot. 

in February, Texas had a snowstorm/freeze of historic proportions. our statewide power grid was minutes away from a failure that would have left us all without electricity for months. Temperatures got down to teens here in Austin, where houses aren’t built to handle that & most people don’t know what to do, and a lot of people died (probably way more than official counts). I can’t get into all the hows and whys re: the disaster and its scope, but it’s definitely the closest thing to an apocalypse that I’ve lived through. 

What happened during that week and the next, while some people had power and food and water and others didn’t? Did the haves leave the have-nots to die? Sure, some people cozied up in their homes and ignored the disaster, but a lot of us didn’t. My coworker (who didn’t have power himself) was running a crockpot from his truck so he could bring hot meals to people in need. I collected fallen limbs and turned them into firewood deliveries. Every local Facebook group I’m in turned into an ad-hoc mutual aid group, organizing food and water dropoffs. Strangers let other people into their homes, in the middle of a pandemic, whether to stay for days or just to shower and do laundry or eat a warm meal. My friends in other states contacted me, unprompted, to send me money so I could get more baby formula and food to give to people in need. 

I think about this a lot: 

Anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture.

Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts. We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

— Ira Byock, The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life (Avery, 2012)

This is who we can be, and often are. We can be civilized and kind and help each other. It’s not the path of least resistance in our current culture and societal structure, it’s not the easiest path, but it’s there. And I do think most (maybe not a vast majority, but a majority) people want to follow it, but a lot of them don’t know how and haven’t been shown yet. When you do that, when you work with mutual aid groups or help the lost child or carry the heavy groceries for the stranger that isn’t up to it, you’re showing them. You’re a guiding light to a better way for all of us to be. 

March 27th 2026

Idaho senate passes one of the most extreme trans bathroom bans in the US, it has yet to be signed into law by the governor. This bill- unlike other bathroom bans- doesn’t have a duty-to-depart provision, meaning you do not have to be asked to leave first, you could be arrested on the spot, and it applies to both public and private bathrooms.