Make sure to write a description for this and save it to your drafts because this post is going to go hard as fuck when it’s a dead blog with a removed image
Welp, not gonna wait for them to nuke the image too.
[Image ID: Airy from Bravely Default, with her hands on her hips. A speech bubble leading to her head reads “I am a transgender woman! This statement is the express opinion of both myself and Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. and should be considered part of the official canon.” End ID.]
honestly i think it’s disgusting that people still share that five year plan fuck it we ball image as a funny meme, as if it doesn’t uncritically encourage self-destructive behaviors like starting a podcast
the thing about propaganda is that it doesn’t require a bunch of people to sit around rubbing their hands together going “muahaha we will deceive the masses with our evil propaganda!” and in fact it tends to be better and more convincing the more people involved don’t conceptualize what they’re doing as in any way propagandistic
when a i say something like “the new york times is a propaganda outlet for usamerican empire”, i’m not saying that the nyt board of editors all get together to say “today, we shall justify the atrocities of the usa and its allies and demonize its enemies!” – rather, that there are complex systems at play to ensure that this is the case:
the NYT makes millions in advertiser revenue: it has a financial incentive against publishing a story that would piss those advertisers off
the NYT has sources in the government and military: it is directly incentivised to remain on good terms with those sources to continue receiving stories from them
the NYT is set up in such a way so that all stories published are written from the perspective that the USA is fundamentally a good thing. people who think that the USA is a force for evil face several barriers where holding (and expressing) this opinion will prevent them from getting anywhere near publishing in the NYT: getting into a prestigious journalism program, getting hired at the NYT, getting promoted at the NYT, getting any story expressing this perspective cleared at the NYT–all of these are ideologically gatekept
this leaves a bunch of people at the NYT who might not believe themselves to be doing anything other than neutrally reporting vital truths, who have at no point decided they ‘want to produce propaganda’, but who nevertheless form an organization that relentlessly and constantly produces nothing but
of coures, sometimes the NYT just fucking lies anyway, but most propaganda doesn’t even need to do that. often just selectively choosing which facts to highlight can be propagandistic: if you, for example, relentlessly publish articles about how hamas is launching rockets at israel (true) while never mentioning that israel is bombing palestine constantly and killing far far more (also true), you can, without ever lying about events in the strict sense, present through sustained news coverage a totally distrotyed picture of reality.
(whatever your thoughts on chomsky, you should read ’manufacturing consent’ for a more comprehensive view on how these propagandistic institutions self-sustain without any need for a sinister conspiracy of shadowy deceivers–and check out the new york war crimesfor a deep dive into the propaganda techniques of the NYT specifically)
Samantha: do the people know about Ampersand Island?
me: … no…..
this is Ampersand Island. every time I come across a beautiful, interesting, or unusual ampersand in my archival travels I take a screenshot and place it neatly in this little pile on my desktop
I can’t speak for other social media webbed sites but I really enjoy how tumblr seems to just completely spin a wheel on whatever media is hot right now. Like yeah sometimes it’s a new show that’s big and actively coming out but also sometimes there will be a solid month where half my dash is Columbo memes. Defy authority. Get really into an book from the 1800s. Watch shows that haven’t aired in 40 years. Celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood. Become unmarketable
For those who need to hear it. To be ten pounds overweight is barely noticeable. To be ten pounds underweight is cause for concern if not outright alarm.
The primary health impact of being fifty pounds overweight is medical neglect. The primary health impact of being fifty pounds underweight is organ failure.
Skinny =/= healthy. You can not underfeed yourself into balanced nutrition. You can not subtract your way towards a healthy diet. You can not exercise all the spare calories off because bomb calorimetery is a joke of a scientific model that would have been laughed out of any other field.
The public library is a good source for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks as well as regular books. My local library has study spaces, meeting rooms, and even a seed library for gardens.
sometimes i simply wish ppl would realize that while alters are a defining trait of CDDs that we are extremely traumatized people and have symptoms outside of the alters. you know. the trance states, the somatic symptoms like joint pain and stomachaches and headaches. the high comorbidity of eating disorders, of personality disorders, of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. alters are something to deal with, sure. theyre stressful. its messy, with persecutors. its not all bad, with alters, either. sometimes its warm and good. but i wish people realized the hardship of these disorders rather than glorifying and aestheticizing what so many of us are going through.
Something we recently went through which was like one hell of an experience was that we dissociated and it was like so bad we genuinely had no idea what even was going on and like we are so glad that was over because that was genuinely insane tbh, it felt like being in water but having no control over your body and nothing feels real and everything is just there?
ALT
