RIP Greg Hildebrandt 1939 - 2024. Very Sad To Hear The Last Of The Legendary Hildebrandt Brothers Has

"Anti-aging"? Nah bro, I'm pro-aging. Aging is a privilege, a blessing.

I both do and don’t believe in astrology partially because I’m agnostic and also because people are annoying about it. I do know my full birth chart and how weird it is. Also I don’t tell people my sign because I’m a Scorpio and they assume bad things about me. But Happy Birthday to me (it’s not today but it’s close)

it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation

I agree because I’ve had some shitty doctors. They don’t listen to the patient and want it to be easy. Then I find out later that the meds they give you for the problem they want it to be make it worse. Anyway don’t be afraid to do your own research and ask questions. This is also why people watched the show House MD.

Doctors should snark at each other more, be a bit mean. Not for no reason, mind you. But if five doctors blow me off about symptoms and doctor number six FINALLY runs actual tests and gets a diagnosis, I think it should be Doctor Six's right to call up the other five and tell them they're lazy pieces of shit. That should be socially encouraged. Those first five doctors clearly can't listen to patients, but maybe another doctor might finally get to them.

Honestly bizarre that tomatoes get all the flack for “not being a vegetable” because they're technically a fruit when:

A) There are a ton of fruits that get categorised as vegetables. Like this also applies to pumpkins, squashes and cucumbers.

B) The fucking mushrooms are standing there at the back of the crowd in this witch trial, trying to look inconspicuous because they somehow got into the vegetable club with no fucking controversy despite the fact that they're not even plants.

Witch by Jay Williams

Lake Nipissing, North Bay, Canada

Lianhao Qu

Ludwig Schwarzer, Der Planet, 1977

i recently saw a tiktok where a woman asked "girlies: what are some things you do to be more whimsical? I love knowing cute little habbits"

and i've never loved a comment section more. some of my faves:

(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

I’d like to live through a week that’s not a whole new verse of “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Reading this as I’m lying under a blanket so soft because it’s not made with natural materials. Kings in history would be jealous of just those things we take for granted. Never mind our medicine or air conditioning. This is such a good reminder to be thankful.

I really wish that people had a better grasp on what The Average Person's Life was like pre-industrialization. If you're living in the global North the odds are good that your life is, in fact, better than a medieval king- yes, even with the political stuff- and would make your ancestors cry wild tears of envy.

The things that suck about your life are things that suck about the baseline human condition (at least since the invention of agriculture, but that's 10,000 years of humanity). Yes, including all the political stuff.

The baseline human condition is "being terrified of losing the harvest and starving", compared to that, losing a job is no big deal. (It's bad, it can be life-upendingly bad, but it's still not "you are guaranteed to die if you screw this up" bad for most people.)

The baseline human condition is "getting kicked around by a tin pot dictator", whether that be a king, a baron, a warlord, or a chief; it's taken centuries of social technology to get the world to a point where that's Not Normal.

The baseline human condition is "losing multiple siblings and/or children at a young age to diseases that are entirely preventable". That's a shocking tragedy now. The baseline human condition is "being in the pathway of said tinpot dictator's wars of conquest" and having to deal with soldiers' pillage, looting, and worse (even if they're nominally on your side). That is, again, a shocking tragedy-- it still happens, and happens in way too much of the world, but no one is going to tell you that it's normal.

I'm not saying that we can sit back and rest on our laurels. We can't. I've been calling the pre-industrial world the "baseline human condition" for a reason- unless you're very, very careful, that's what your society eventually reverts to. It takes a lot of people working very hard to make sure you don't have to live at the baseline human condition, and if you start slacking on that, you start backsliding into it.

How we treat each other- and how we use the technology, material and social, that we've developed to make things easier- matters. We can make the world even better than it is now. We can also make it significantly worse. The choice is ours.

...But if you know that you can reliably have food regardless of the season, you don't live in fear of a random attack killing you tomorrow, and you can listen to music on command whenever you want? You do actually live a better life than a medieval king. Because even kings and emperors were much closer to the baseline human condition than a random farm worker in Bumfuck, Iowa is today.