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Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

Reducing the calories does not inherently increase the healthiness of your food.

The revolution isn't loud, it's a candle flickering in a ruin no one visits anymore

saw a variation of this conversation on twitter earlier

being weird and full of love can save you

I don’t have a raccoon daughter because I’m a raccoon biologist. I have a raccoon daughter because I moved to South Africa because I had what I thought was a “prophetic dream” (I had scurvy and also an evil psychiatrist prescribing me the wrong meds) where I was in South Africa and there was billboard with a woman on it in a lab coat holding a red fox and a raccoon that said “Dr Foxy: This Could Be You!” And then in the dream I looked across the street and saw a billboard the said “Come Visit Hooters in South Africa.” And I woke up and was like “I know what I need to do” which was not “go to school to study native wildlife” but instead was “visit Hooters in South Africa.” But I didn’t want to go for just a little while because it was expensive and I didn’t like the idea of the long flight, but I knew I HAD to go to the Hooters in South Africa. So I figured it would be more economical to just go and finish art school there. Except COVID happened and I literally got trapped there and the hooters in the city I moved to had apparently been closed for years and also I got a concussion and when I went to the doctor they said I had scurvy. So I had to do intensive eating treatment where I drank a lot of fruit juice and also learned to eat macaroni that was shapes other than SpongeBob. And after listening to my yapping about raccoons, my therapist, who had never met a raccoon, told me I should get a raccoon to help me keep fresh fruits in the house. And so when I got back to America I found someone trying to get rid of one Facebook because it was apparently evil and bit her toddler and then I did.

#thats exactly what id expect from anyone who's made it big post dashcon

I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record.  And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.” So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)

There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true: