Risa

A Group Which Almost Became Historic 

It's been over a decade since I first read Les Mis, and first drew this, (which still floats around in reblogs, the original post now being deleted with my old blog) and I thought I ought to finish this for Barricade Day. At the time, that illustration was the most ambitious I had ever drawn.

In the last ten years, Les Mis has perhaps felt more pertinent than ever. In Australia, where I live, bigoted, far-right political parties that were previously considered fringe are leading polls on the back of racist, anti-immigration rhetoric. I donate regularly to a charity that supports refugees that is local to me, the Asylum Seeker Resource Center, and am going to do so again today. I encourage you to do the same, either to the ASRC, or to an equivalent charity in your area.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

Fascism thrives best in the cesspool of hopelessness. They want us so confused and hopeless that we give in. When you give in, you don’t fight back.

If you wait for life to look good to do the things that bring you joy; life will still be bad - you will just have less joy.

As someone who has struggled with my mental health a lot for the last thirty years, I know this struggle firsthand. And changing this belief system - the one where you spend all of your time expecting bad things so you won’t be surprised when they happen - it’s the hardest work that I have ever done. And I’m not perfect; I still have setbacks. I still experience really real fears about the state of the world and the US, in particular, because that’s where I live.

But I made a vow to myself that I will not let the choices of others ruin my life. When I made that vow, I was thinking of my parents - but it applies to the state of the government right now, too.

There are still flowers in my garden, and ripe tomatoes, and it’s almost pick-your-own apples season, and I have plans with my friends to go to as many cemetery ghost walks as we can find this October.

I still deserve to live. I still deserve to laugh. I still deserve to love. I still deserve to be as happy as I can be.

But you freely admit the system is bad. That it values the wrong things.

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.

Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.

talking to your foe as if they are your friend can get you a long way. patience and kindness are difficult but necessary skills in debates.

choosing your battles is important. if it's going nowhere, disengage

if it seems too egregious to be a real opinion, it's bait. move on!

try not to use buzzwords that will turn your opponent's brain off! people will stop listening to anything that comes after a word they KNOW they disagree with. use their lingo to win them over.

try to understand the root cause of their argument, not just the surface. what are their core beliefs? cutting off the leaves of a weed won't stop it from growing. think about the roots!

insulting someone in the same breath as trying to convince them will cause them to stop listening. be the bigger person if you genuinely want to change their mind.

are you actually engaging with their points? trying to understand them? make sure you're having a discussion and not just ranting at them. people are more likely to listen if YOU seem like you're listening.

if they stoop to personal insults, make them aware of it. do NOT retaliate if you don't have to. even just "hey, I'm happy to have this talk, but that was unnecessarily unkind" can very quickly diffuse someone's hostility, especially if they said it without thinking.

whataboutisms and pedantic comments aren't constructive. keep the focus on the topic at hand. don't try to use semantic nitpicking to win. you'll end up distracting yourself!