Oh ok so it turns out ive been borrowing grief from the future ! it turns out ive been preparing to lose the things i love rather than basking in the light of them while they last. Maybe i should nt do that
btw the katy perry/bezos' girlfriend/other four irrelevant billionaires 10 minute space stunt was not the first all female expedition no matter how much they try to market it as such. the first all female mission was in 1963 with soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova, Irina Solovyova and Valentina Ponomaryova - all three of which were working class and had to pass incredibly hard exams to be chosen from 400 potential candidates. just in case we started falling for the propaganda machine again
Thinking out loud
My brother in law recently became a veterinarian and it has really driven the point home as to how fucking bonkers veterinary medicine is. We don't expect human physicians to really know much outside of their own specialty - a dentist, an otolaryngologist, and a maxillofacial surgeon are three totally different dudes. Meanwhile a veterinarian at a wildlife rehab center is doing orthopedic surgery on a hawk and then doing rounds on baby hedgehogs in the hedgehog NICU and administering antibiotics to a ratsnake. And he also knows how to perform surgical interventions on a cow! What the fuck! Those are all totally, wildly different kinds of animal!!
Shout out to veterinarians, they know Too Much.
Your parents can love you and still be shitty abusive parents. They can mean well and still fuck up. They might fuck up without even knowing it's abuse.
Sometimes I think about how, when I was 5, my dad would make grilled cheese sandwiches and cut them into dinosaur shapes for me. Other times when I was hungry, he would refuse to feed me at all, because he decided that 5 was old enough for me to cook for myself when he didn't feel like doing it.
I think about how he taught me to swim, and fish, and (yes) throw a ball. In the summer, at night, he would wrap me in a huge comforter and carry me around outside to show me the constellations. But I hated being left alone with him because he was often bad tempered, mean to me for no reason, and I couldn't count on him for basic things like food.
Sometimes I think about how my mom raised hell in my high school principal's office in front of multiple faculty members because they weren't complying with my IEP (disability required accommodations). She always saw red if someone else laid a finger on me, even figuratively. When we were at home she screamed at me for things I had no control over and said I was using my illness to get my way.
I think about how she bought me art supplies and paid for lessons for all of my hobbies. She attended every single concert, performance, and game. I don't think I went a day without being told she loved me while growing up, and she constantly told me how proud she was. But I could never trust her mood and she could go from loving mother to terrorizing me before I knew what was happening.
My parents love me but I still flinch if someone in my vicinity washes a dish a little too aggressively. My parents never intentionally traumatized me, but my nervous system never knew the difference. Neither of my parents saw anything they did as abuse; they believed they were good parents. It wasn't until my mom was in her mid 60s that she grasped that her own childhood had been abusive, too.
They're not bad, irredeemable people. They're complex people with a lot of their own trauma who lacked many skills necessary for good parenting. I could hate them for it, but I don't. I'm not obligated to forgive them, and I don't think I have, and I don't know whether I ever really will. My parents damaged me a lot in ways that have affected my whole life, and I still have good memories with them.
Foxes disguised as monks. On the left from Japan and on the right from Denmark.
I have literally had To Noise Making dedicated to me by friends so this is actually perfect
Back with another spin this wheel ✨Hozier song poll✨ (apparently this happens twice a week til I run out of ideas or one of you stops me)
“the arts and sciences are completely separate fields that should be pitted against each other” the overlap of the arts and sciences make up our entire perceivable reality they r fucking on the couch
saw a tiktok of a mother taking her very tiny daughter to an art museum and she’s just walking around going “whoooa” “woooaah” to everything but then they got to a marble statue of a nude woman lying on her back and the girl points and goes “mommy🫵” and i just immediately welled up with tears and all the comments are just laughing about it and of course it’s funny but how are you not insanely moved by the way art connects everyone on earth from a centuries-old sculptor to a toddler in 2023