Parataxis

You don’t have to feel like it’s true. You don’t have to believe it. It doesn’t matter. I sure as hell didn’t. Don’t, even. Present-tense, some days. All the “it gets better” shit sounds like crap, and it never really stops sounding a bit phony, but here’s the thing:

“Better” doesn’t mean happy-go-lucky perfect, on top of the world forever and always. It just means “better”. One day you’re walking to a bus stop in the freezing rain after a bad day and realize you’re actually kind of glad you didn’t die in your sleep when you wanted to. You catch yourself excited for something and it surprises you, cause you didn’t think you could still feel excitement anymore. You fuck something up and manage to shrug it off instead of hating yourself, and you notice.

So you feel worthless. You’re probably gonna feel worthless for a long time. You’re probably gonna feel worthless tomorrow, and the day after that, and a week from now. Maybe in a month, or a year.

But, and speaking as a 🌟 clinically depressed nightmare🌟, that feeling isn’t real.

We invented the concept of “value” and “worth”, so it’s not a fact of the universe. It’s not an objective truth. If there is no cosmic force that’s decided you alone are special and the best, then there’s also no faceless void that has chosen you to be the worst.

You’ve been birthed into the cosmos without your consent and all you’re really obligated to do at the end of the day is keep your body running so you can fuck around. That’s it.

And step one of having fun with it is not regurgitating the self-hating crap your brain likes to generate.

Yeah, it feels true, but it isn’t, and saying it out loud or writing it down or reading it over and over again on a screen isn’t going to do anything but force you further into that belief.

I like to say I’m fantastic. I’m godlike. I’ve never done anything wrong and I’m never gonna die. I’m the big dick wizard of sexy man Nation and my grilled cheese could make the pope weep.

Is it true? Fuck no. But it’s fun, and it makes me laugh at myself, and if I’m gonna say things that aren’t true then why say things that feel like shit? Why not feel better?

So yeah, actually, I may have fucked up with that edit. Here’s a better one:

- the setup process is easy, and even fun! if you’re using tumblr rn, you can handle it, and if you’re the kind of tumblr user who likes customizing your blog or tinkering with xkit, you can have a lot of fun personalizing really granular settings and picking themes and extensions and everything, it’s very customizable and i happily spent like 2 hours getting everything perfect.

- you can use a command line entry tool to change specific settings right from the search bar! i did this to make firefox stop auto filling my email information since i use a different password locker (which you should too! try bitwarden!), and it was easier than digging through a bunch of submenus for a setting i wasn’t sure existed. you can just turn shit off!

- there’s a preset theme called aurora that’s purple and VERY pretty

- once you get ublock origin and as many other blockers as you’d like set up, no ads, anywhere, ever! streaming sites, youtube, all the basics, totally no stress and no compatibility issues for me

- in browser screenshot and picture in picture functions!! holy shit i use these every day, the PiP is especially helpful, it replaced an extension i used to use on chrome and it’s leagues better and works on all video content pretty much

- overall better downloads management imo, it’s a lot easier to get to your downloads and find them later

- better bookmark system, with the ability to organize your bookmarks with searchable tags and assign them a shortcut you can type into the search bar to go to

- containers! you can have two accounts to the same website open in two different tabs and switch between them without having to switch accounts. also gives firefox the ability to contain facebook and their trackers, so you can click that party invite link without feeling like you just let mark zuckerberg into your house

UBlock Origin - THE adblocker. should come preinstalled w firefox

Privacy Badger, DontTrackMeGoogle, Decentraleyes, TrackMeNot - a healthy suite of track blockers and such, you can never have too many until it starts affecting your performance

ClearURLs - removes all the tracking garbage pages add when you copy paste a url, also makes them shorter and less ugly

Cookie Autodelete - deletes unused cookies whenever you leave a page

I Don't Care About Cookies - according to voices i trust in the security community, this extension was sold to a data seller, remove if if you have it installed

Return YouTube Dislikes - does what it says on the tin, install it and forget they were ever gone!

Shinigami Eyes - applies off of tumblr! will highlight news sources and blogs as anti-trans as well

and if you read through this whole list and still somehow havent yet

tumblr is a website that wasn't designed to produce any specific kind of content, and in the end it mostly boils down to shitposts that mean absolutely nothing, and american political discorse where all sorts of liberals and communists duke out about which way is the best to oppose the political right

For 37 years it’s been up there on the flat roof of Mark Gubin’s building in the flight path of Mitchell International Airport. A sign painted in letters 6 feet tall tells people arriving here by air: “WELCOME TO CLEVELAND.”

“There’s not a real purpose for having this here except madness, which I tend to be pretty good at,” Gubin said

Above that the roof, he was having lunch one day in 1978 with a woman who worked as his assistant. Taking note of all the low-flying planes, she said it would be nice to make a sign welcoming everyone to Milwaukee. “You know what would even be better?” Gubin said.

The next thing you know, he’s out there on the black roof with a roller and white paint creating the sign that would bring more notoriety than anything else in his long career. A story about his confusing message ran in thousands of newspapers and magazines, on national TV news, “The Tonight Show,” Paul Harvey, all over.

(Fact Source)

Lambs carried by donkeys in special side-saddle as flocks of sheep move from pre-Alpine hills to summer pastures on Lombard plains.

There's a huge sense of social isolation that comes with being perceived as male, because now people are subconsciously treating me as a potential predator. All strangers, no matter their gender, keep their guard up around me.

It made me realize that there is no inherent camaraderie in male socialization as there is in female socialization—unless, of course, it's in very specific environments. And the fact I don't amnbiently experience this mutual kinship in basic exchanges anymore is an insanely lonely feeling.

Absolutely, because it's an extremely sticky issue.

Frankly, this is something I would've never understood without living the experience.

It's now blatantly clear to me that most cis men probably experience chronic emotional malnutrition. They're deprived of social connection just enough for it to seriously fuck with their psyches, but not enough for them to realize that it's happening and what's causing it.

It's like they're starving, but don't know this because they've always been served 3 meals...except those meals have never been big enough.

This deprivation comes from all sides of aisle, by the way.

In the case of women: When I'm out in public and interact with women, all of them come off as incredibly aloof, cold, and mirthless. I have never experienced this before even though I know exactly what this composure is—the armor that keeps away creepy-ass men.

As someone who used to wear it myself, I know this armor is 100% impersonal. Nobody likes wearing it, and I can say with absolute certainty that women would dump the armor in favor of unconditional companionship with men if doing this didn't run the risk of actual assault. (Trust me when I say women aren't just being needlessly guarded.)

But I only have a complete understanding of this context because I've experienced female socialization. If I hadn't, I would've thought this coldness was a conspiracy against me devised by roughly half of the human population. Even now, with all that I know about navigating the world as a woman, I'm failing to convince my monkey-brain that this armor isn't social rejection.

And as for male socialization? Again, it seems taboo for a man to be platonically intimate with men for reasons I have yet to fully understand, but I think it boils down to a) the fact society teaches boys that it's not okay to be soft with each other, and b) garden-variety homophobia. Our media only shows men being intimate with one another when they're teamed up against a dire situation, and I'd bet real money it's a huge reason why men gravitate toward activities that simulate being teamed up against an opposing force.

But men are not machines of war. Yes, testosterone absolutely gives you Dumb Bastard Brain, but that just makes you want to skateboard a wagon down a hill or duct-tape your friend to the wall, not kill someone.

The human species looks so much colder standing from this side.

I can see how men might convince themselves that their feelings of emotional desperation is personal weakness as opposed to a symptom they're all experiencing from White Imperialism. Because this human connection, this frith, is as essential for our wellbeing as water is.