hollanov brainrot

I’d die on the hill that “stranger danger” is a deeply unhelpful mentality to have. “Ooooh everyone is out to get me they’re all gonna perpetrate harm that’s actually more likely to come from someone I already know. I better never talk to anyone in my community who I don’t already know, just to be safe. I’m sure there are no other biases interwoven with this mentality” like oh my god human traffickers do not just randomly spawn in every parking lot. You don’t have to go solo hitchhiking across the country but you also don’t have to live in fear that every guy on the street is the knife man who’s gonna get you. Like have situational awareness, yeah. But most of the time the guy on the street is not knife man he’s actually just a guy on the street and he’s probably pretty chill, and you’re driving yourself crazy by living in a constant state of unnecessary fear.

less "fiction affects reality" and more "fiction is a reflection of reality" and "fiction can introduce you to new ideas, but you should always be healthily skeptical of them" and "fiction reinforces beliefs that already exist in the real world but no piece of fiction is going to turn someone against their own morals, and if it does, that person's morals were not very strong in the first place" and "fiction is a conversation between the story and the reader, you are responsible for accepting your own agency in your role of consuming a piece of media instead of just blaming the media for any bad things you (or any other audience member!) may or may not take from it"

like many people have said this better than me but no it IS odd that we've come to think of potatoes as so quintessentially european that their presence in historical fantasy where they're anachronistic doesn't jar. and yes people are trying to have the trappings of post-colonial europe without engaging w the icky colonialism part and yes people are neglecting to imagine what a european cuisine without potatoes would be like.

im fully in favour of 'let people have fun w their fantasy world' but is considering how the potatoes got there in the absence of colonialism not a fun exercise? maybe every year the dragon riders go on a great transatlantic potato pilgrimage

that post about how sports should be desegregated is ruffling some serious feathers & every response arguing against me is like “but testosterone literally makes you stronger you naive moron” like yeah man. but how many sports are strictly based on raw strength and nothing else. like sure men would likely generally dominate weightlifting but women would still dominate gymnastics. it’s almost like genetics have always played a part in performance of sports and the sex binary is just one genetic factor that people can’t seem to let go of. michael phelps isn’t put in his own category of “people shaped like a torpedo” even though he has an unfair genetic advantage. like i don’t get why raw strength is seen as the end all be all when most sports don’t rely on that alone for performance

I know she’s not dead BUT: rest in peace Nikki Freeman you would have loved Mamdani.