MBTI: Even The…

in honor of her passing, types as carrie fisher quotes please?

ISTJ: “I don’t want to be thought of as a survivor because you have to continue getting involved in difficult situations to show off that particular gift, and I’m not interested in doing that anymore.”ISFJ: “I act like someone in a bomb shelter trying to raise everyone’s spirits.”INFJ: “There are definitely some things that are only mine. I am someone who dreams at night, and you don’t know what I’m dreaming.”INTJ: “I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.”ISTP: “I was street smart, but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive.”ISFP: “I don’t want my life to imitate art, I want my life to be art.”INFP: “I don’t think Christmas is necessarily about things. It’s about being good to one another, it’s about the Christian ethic, it’s about kindness.”INTP: “Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.” ESTP: “I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere.”ESFP: "Instant gratification takes too long”ENFP: “Someone has to stand still for you to love them. My choices are always on the run.”ENTP: “If my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.”ESTJ: “There’s no room for demons when you’re self-possessed.”ESFJ: “Two of the saddest words in the English language are, ‘What party?’ And L.A. is the 'What party?’ capital of the world.”ENFJ: “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”ENTJ: “There is no point at which you can say, 'Well, I’m successful now. I might as well take a nap.’”

The Galápagos Islands via NASA https://ift.tt/2Hf4zB6

“I struggle with a lot of the books/youtube channels on this subject as they tend to relate to people that focus their entire life on sustainability, rather than people that incorporate sustainable habits into their normal life.” 

^it’s about being mindful, not giving yourself grief every time you forget to bring a reusable cup with you. Love this.

Do you have any tips for someone who's interested in a more sustainable lifestyle but not sure where to start?

I would suggest spending a bit of time watching some youtube videos and reading some books about it. The book ‘Zero Waste Home’ by Bea Johnson is a good starting point, and the ebook is inexpensive. I will paste a link HERE to a list of youtube channels that talk about living low waste / sustainably. 

When you are ready, you can start making small changes like carrying a water bottle or coffee cup, and buying products in less packaging. 

Just remember that you don’t have to make every single change at once, and it’s also totally okay if there are certain changes that you don’t want to make at all. Use the resources for ideas/inspiration -  not as an exact guide! 

(I struggle with a lot of the books/youtube channels on this subject as they tend to relate to people that focus their entire life on sustainability, rather than people that incorporate sustainable habits into their normal life). Small changes can still make a huge difference, don’t underestimate them :) 

i went to the gym today and there was a guy going to TOWN on the punching bags so i asked him “rough night?” and he said “my wife’s on a business trip and i miss her” and if that isnt the most steve rogers thing in the world idk what is

Starscape js

Adding this to my bucket list

Breakfast far above the clouds, Pokut, Turkey

*curtsies* So, I really, REALLY don't want to offend anyone, Duke, but a question has been bothering me for a really long time and I was afraid to ask it because I didn't want to piss off anyone and since you're really eloquent and knowledgeable, I thought I'd ask you. So here it goes: you always say that arts and sciences are equally important, but how can analysing Chaucer or ecopoetics or anything similar compare to biomedicine or engineering in improving human lives? I'm genuinely curious!

*Curtsies* All right. Let me tell you a story: 

When I lived in London, I shared a flat with a guy who was 26 years old, getting his PhD in theoretical physics. Let’s call him Ron. Ron could not for the life of him figure out why I was wasting my time with an MA in Shakespeare studies or why my chosen method of providing for myself was writing fiction. Furthermore, it was utterly beyond him why I should take offense to someone whose field literally has the word “theoretical” in the title ridiculing the practical inefficacy of art. My pointing out that he spent his free time listening to music, watching television, and sketching famous sculptures in his notebook somehow didn’t convince him that art is a necessary part of a healthy human existence. 

Three other things that happened with Ron: 

I came home late one night and he asked where I’d been. When I told him I’d been at a friend’s flat for a Hanukkah celebration, he said, “What’s Hanukkah?” I thought he was joking. He was not.

A few weeks later, I came downstairs holding a book. He asked what I was reading and when I said, “John Keats,” he (and the three other science grad students in the room) did not know who that was. This would be like me not knowing who Thomas Edison is.

One night we got into an argument about the issue of gay marriage, and at one point he actually said, “It doesn’t affect me so I don’t see why I should care about it.”

Now: If Ron had ever read Number the Stars, or heard Ode to a Nightingale, or been to a performance of The Laramie Project, do you think he ever would have asked any of these questions? 

Obviously this is an extreme example. This guy was amazingly ignorant, but he was also the walking embodiment of the questions you’re asking. What does art matter compared with something like science, that saves people’s lives? Here’s the thing: There’s a flaw in the question, because art saves lives, too. Maybe not in the same “Eureka, we’ve cured cancer!” kind of way, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Sometimes the impact of art is relatively small, even invisible to the naked eye. For example: as a young teenager I was (no exaggeration) suicidally unhappy. Learning to write is what kept me (literally and figuratively) off the ledge. But I was one nameless teenager; in the greater scheme of things, who cares? Fair enough. Let’s talk big picture. Let’s talk about George Orwell. George Orwell wrote books, the two most famous of which are Animal Farm and 1984. You probably read at least one of those in high school. Why do these books matter? Because they’re cautionary tales about limiting the power of oppressive governments, and their influence is so pervasive that the term “Big Brother,” which refers to the omniscient government agency which watches its citizens’ every move in 1984, has become common parlance to refer to any abuse of power and invasion of privacy by a governmental body. Another interesting fact, and the reason I chose this example: sales of 1984 fucking skyrocketed in 2017, Donald Trump’s first year in office. Why? Well, people are terrified. People are re-reading that cautionary tale, looking for the warning signs. 

Art, as Shakespeare taught us, “holds a mirror up to nature.” Art is a form of self-examination. Art forces us to confront our own mortality. (Consider Hamlet. Consider Dylan Thomas.) Art forces us to confront inequality. (Consider Oliver Twist. Consider Audre Lorde. Consider A Raisin in the Sun. Consider Greta Gerwig getting snubbed at the Golden Globes.) Art forces us to confront our own power structures. (Consider Fahrenheit 451. Consider “We Shall Overcome.” Consider All the President’s Men. Consider “Cat Person.”) Art reminds us of our own history, and keeps us from repeating the same tragic mistakes. (Consider The Things They Carried. Consider Schindler’s List. Consider Hamilton.) Art forces us to make sense of ourselves. (Consider Fun House. Consider Growing Up Absurd.) Art forces us to stop and ask not just whether we can do something but whether we should. (Consider Brave New World. Consider Cat’s Cradle.) You’re curious about ecopoetics? The whole point is to call attention to human impact on the environment. Some of our scientific advances are poisoning our planet, and the ecopoetics of people like the Beats and the popular musicians of the 20th century led to greater environmental awareness and the first Earth Day in 1970 . Art inspires change–political, social, environmental, you name it. Moreover, art encourages empathy. Without books and movies and music, we would all be stumbling around like Ron, completely ignorant of every other culture, every social, political, or historical experience except our own. Since we have such faith in science: science has proved that art makes us better people. Science has proved that people who read fiction not only improve their own mental health but become proportionally more empathetic. (Really. I wrote an article about this when I was working for a health and wellness magazine in 2012.) If you want a more specific example: science has proved that kids who read Harry Potter growing up are less bigoted. (Here’s an article from Scientific American, so you don’t have to take my word for it.) That is a big fucking deal. Increased empathy can make a life-or-death difference for marginalized people.

But the Defense of Arts and Humanities is about more than empirical data, precisely because you can’t quantify it, unlike a scientific experiment. Art is–in my opinion–literally what makes life worth living. What the fuck is the point of being healthier and living longer and doing all those wonderful things science enables us to do if we don’t have Michelangelo’s David or Rimbaud’s poetry or the Taj Mahal or Cirque de Soleil or fucking Jimi Hendrix playing “All Along the Watchtower” to remind us how fucking amazing it is to be alive and to be human despite all the terrible shit in this world? Art doesn’t just “improve human lives.” Art makes human life bearable.

I hope this answers your question. 

To it I would like to add: Please remember that just because you don’t see the value in something doesn’t mean it is not valuable. Please remember that the importance of science does not negate or diminish the importance of the arts, despite what every Republican politician would like you to believe. And above all, please remember that artists are every bit as serious about what they do as astronomers and mathematicians and doctors, and what they do is every bit as vital to humanity, if in a different way. Belittling their work by questioning its importance, or relegating it to a category of lesser endeavors because it isn’t going to cure a disease, or even just making jokes about how poor they’re going to be when they graduate is insensitive, ignorant, humiliating, and, yes,  offensive. And believe me: they’ve heard it before. They don’t need to hear it again. We know exactly how frivolous and childish and idealistic and unimportant everyone thinks we are. Working in the arts is a constant battle against the prevailing idea that what you do is useless. But it’s bad enough that the government is doing its best to sacrifice all arts and humanities on the altar of STEM–we don’t need to be reminded on a regular basis that ordinary people think our work is a waste of time and money, too. 

Artists are exhausted. They’re sick and tired of being made to justify their work and prove the validity of what they do. Nobody else in the world is made to do that the way artists are. That’s why these questions upset them. That’s why it exasperates me. I have to answer some version of this question every goddamn day, and I am so, so tired. But I’ve taken the effort to answer it here, again, in the hopes that maybe a couple fewer people will ask it in the future. But even if you’re not convinced by everything I’ve just said, please try to find some of that empathy, and just keep it to yourself.