oh gee discord should I try adding numbers? should I try that???? should I try adding numbers to the end of my username so that it’s individualized and only mine???? should I try adding numbers??????????
This is what I’m talking about when I say “You don’t really want a pet wolf, they already make a wolf you can keep in your house and it’s called a dog.”
Can anyone tell me if the Unabomber was problematic
The fact that pre-Unabomber Kaczynski was a once-in-a-generation mathematical genius means that citing his research can be a tadawkward unless you just roll with it, which has resulted in the greatest footnote ever written.
I appreciate the efforts of everyone sincerely explaining to me why the unabomber is problematic but truly the only people who deserve any of my attention are the above commenters and this person in the notes
Can I watch a great film knowing the actresses in it were terrorized and mistreated the entire time? Can I watch a football game knowing that the players are getting brain injuries right before my eyes? Can I listen to my favorite albums anymore knowing that the singers were all beating their wives in between studio sessions? Can I eat at the new fancy taco place knowing when the building that used to be there got bulldozed eight families got kicked out of their homes so they could be replaced with condos and a chain restaurant? Can I wear the affordable clothes I bought downtown that were probably assembled in a sweatshop with child labor? Can I eat quinoa?
Can I eat this burger? Can I drink this bottled water? Can I buy a car and drive to work because I’m sick of taking an hour each way on the subway? Whose bones do I stand on? Whose bones am I standing on right now?
On one hand, it’s a privilege to be able to choose to acknowledge these horrors or not–we’re going to acknowledge that privilege. On the other hand, I once attended a lecture by the explorerer-conservationist Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s daughter and son and they had a lot of opinions about what we could do to help the environment and the ocean and I talked about how in my country, we have to drink bottled water, because it’s a desert and there’s only salt water all around, but we’re contributing to pollution and all of these things…
And she looked at me and told me not to fall into the trap of “activist guilt.” I couldn’t remember the exact words, but, it was the first time I’d heard the term and it took a weight off my shoulders.
We do what we can. It’s so much better than giving up entirely or not doing anything at all because we can’t do it perfectly. It doesn’t benefit anyone in the end if we just sit around feeling guilty about every little thing in life. I’d just joined tumblr back then (haha, so like, eight or nine years ago at this point?), I was being exposed to way more than I’d ever been before (I was previously just into feminism and animal rights/wildlife conservation/environmentalism since I was a kid), and it was weighing on me.
As long as humans are humans and living flawed lives, many consumed by greed, there will not be anything in this world untouched by evil.
I usually avoid stuff that says it was made in China or other cheap looking knockoffs, out of fear of them being made in sweatshops (now, I know even a lot of big brands use those…), it’s exhausting. Then, I read something about how people who actually lived and worked in those would still buy this cheap stuff and how this shocked the foreigner reporting on it, but they just looked confused like, it’s what they can afford and them avoiding consuming it isn’t going to change the whole system from the ground-up.
… it went on about how “money talks” and choosing where to put your money still feeds the whole capitalist system and is nearly a way of comforting yourself, but you not buying doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. What needs to be tackled is at a much higher level than any of us can reach.
Of course, I’d still, given the choice, give my money to companies I agree with and I’ll boycott what I know to support awful stuff, but I also feel no superiority over this and know now it’s not as black and white or easy as I thought it was.
This is the same reason that moral purity “you can’t enjoy [x] because it’s Problematic ™” is such nonsense, because nothing is pure. There’s something bad about everything if you dig deep enough. As long as we lived in flawed human societies we’ve got to make the best of what they offer us. If you have the choice and means, please, do support those who do good, but also, don’t beat yourself up over not living up to an unattainable ideal.
No one can. You’ll just make yourself so miserable, you either burn up and stop fighting entirely or you’ll make yourself a non-productive, depressed heap just out of a bleeding heart left unchecked. You can’t make a change to this world if you refuse to engage in it.
Purity is one of the worst, most harmful myths humans ever invented.
Rebloging for this amazing reply telling us how to actually handle this, because yeah, sometimes I’ll simply shut down trying to find something that doesn’t cause harm to anyone
when florence and the machine said “I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject” and when romeo x juliet said “a simple life with you would be paradise” and johnathan coulton said “it’s okay, I like you in glasses” and everything everywhere all at once said “in another life I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you”
How you doing friend
realizing more and more as I grow older that a mundane and imperfect life shared with the people I love is all I could ever really want or need and that I’m so thankful for the chance to experience it hbu
travelling back to the paleolithic era to explain to a neanderthal that in the future there will be food that is simultaneously disgusting and also the best tasting food you’ve ever eaten. the neanderthal nods and says “oh yeah we have that” and leads me to a clearing in the woods where a perfectly normal mcdonalds sits.
was in the car with my friend when I saw the car we passed had the license plate “SADNESS” and I went oh wait we gotta slow down so I can get a pic, but every time we went slower the other car also slowed down. so I looked behind us to see what was going on and the passenger also had their phone up and wheezing the same way I was, and that’s when I remembered my friend’s license plate is “LOSSJPG”
you think I would do that? just go on the internet and tell lies?
