Looking in different directions is literally directly associated with memory recall. It’s the concept that led to trauma therapies like EMDR and brain spotting. Also used as an interrogation tool as supposedly people look in different directions for recalling info vs. generating lies. It’s literally insane to expect people to remember information for a test without looking around.

holy fuck how can you be this evil with zero guilt

Anne’s hope is to provoke her husband into beating her badly enough to besmirch him in the eyes of the public - a classic womanly strategy of provocation that her husband has fallen for.

It’s been clear for a while that the country would eventually just give up on covid, but I really didn’t realize this would involve getting rid of case numbers and such entirely. That’s what makes me most anxious out of all of this. If we’re going to have continuous waves of covid I need to see when the wave is peaking and receding so I can plan doctor appointments, travel, etc. It’s a real testament to how absolutely fucked this place is that they’re not just neglecting the issue, they’re being actively malicious towards anyone who wants to reduce their risk.

Ugh, this gets right to a massive pet peeve of mine regarding mainstream climate change coverage. This relentless fucking fixation on having hope, the absolute strident necessity that we all feel the “correct way” about what approaches us. It’s toxic positivity. It’s emotional policing.

All of these people are terrified of death and they have no idea what hope even is! Yelling at some teenager grieving the destruction of the biosphere, “Be more optimistic! Look at the cool tech!” - it’s not just ineffective, it’s the literal opposite of helpful.

Hope isn’t optimism! Hope isn’t believing that we will win. Hope is when you’ve gone fully into despair and then find yourself, somehow, still alive there. This facade of positivity they call hope will break at the first sign of stress; that’s why they push it so hard, insisting we all perform optimism as well, propping up their fragile feelings for them. I just want to shout it in their faces: You can’t have hope without death! You can’t have peace without grieving! Fuck you, start weeping!

I think about this a lot as someone who was abused as a kid. It’s always the evil characters who have a tragic backstory, and they are never shown compassion for it - it’s just presented as an explanation for why they are awful, and never touched again. It sucks to feel that the only path for someone with a past like yours is to be further ostracized.

This is why She-Ra is probably my favorite show. The handling of parental abuse and its effects is actually really good.

Why does every streetlight need a flag? Do you need help remembering what country you live in?

I’m done with capitalism. Like, I’m just sick of it! Capitalism is over!

… did it work?

I can’t party at the end of the world because I already got disabled by the plague :deeper-sadness:

As someone who spent a long time suicidally depressed while outwardly achieving at a very high level, I can’t describe how angry this statement makes me