I couldn’t even eat a whole sandwich for dinner, and it tasted fine… until it didn’t anymore. I don’t know what my problem is. Well, depression and/or anxiety, but I don’t know what to do about it. I’m worried that if I get my dose of medication increased that will only make it worse because SSRIs/SNRIs tend to suppress my appetite or make all food seem unpleasant to me even if I feel hungry.
why is lube always right there in fanfics i want a fic where there’s no lube and the characters are just like fuck we needa go to walgreens put ur dick away
Photographer Mattias Klum from National Geographic gets close and personal with a lion.
“and all of a sudden you feel very small” damn right
IT JUST WANTS TO BE LOVED AND SAVED
please, if you are able, do what you can for the asiatic lion. donate, get involved, spread information. there are only about 300 left in the world, and they all live in Gir Forest National Park in India.
the african lion is also estimated to be extinct by 2050 due to habitat loss, sport hunting, and loss of their prey base to the bushmeat trade. these beautiful creatures could be extinct in our lifetime. the next generation may not ever have the chance to see these creatures, there will be no more cute lion vines, there will be no more documentaries, there will be no more zoos or sanctuaries containing lions. there will be no more lions.
if you have any love for nature, any love for animals, any love for life, and if you care at all about the permanent loss of a species, especially one so beautiful and iconic, if you care and if you are able, please donate to help save lions.
My favorite is when they offer no arguments for what they believe, just respond to yours with, “If you believe that, you’re wrong.” I’ve seen this a lot when I call the obedience disk a torture device. I say it’s used on slaves. I say that it’s clearly shown to be painful for Thor and Loki. I say it makes it impossible for Loki to move (and even if he wasn’t in pain, your muscles spasming for an indeterminate amount of time would be fucking horrible).
I point to the intention in the script in extreme cases. Yet still I am wrong. I am delusional. And I’m one of those people who don’t care if people want to think of it as not that bad, because I get the appeal of faith, but I get very irritated when my reasoning is dismissed outright.
Flat, un-argued-for denial – effectively, the playground whine of “nuh-uh” – is always fun, but even better is when they blow past both counterargument and contradiction and go straight for accusations and insults. These tend to come in two flavors:
1. “You’re just a stupid straight girl who’s wet for Whedon’s psychopathic bad boy Tom Hiddleston in leather and wants him to dominate you like 50 Shades of Grey.” Often comes with a side of “You’re too homophobic for a queer character you can’t fetishize through slash,” ignoring the facts that a) Ragnarok never explicitly confirms that Loki is queer; b) the gay relationship that it strongly implies is a fucked-up exploitative sugar daddy arrangement with a sadistic, casually murderous slavemaster; and c) at the same time that it plays up Loki’s gay coding, it also presents him as shallow, narcissistic, stupid, and ineffectual. Real great queer representation, that. Not to mention that the “fetishizing through slash” has, if anything, ramped up post-Ragnarok (both Thorki and Frostmaster).
2. “You must just be a racist who hates that people of color are succeeding if you don’t worship Taika Waititi and everything he says, does, and makes.” There’s really no good way to rebut this one, because once you’ve been accused of racism on Tumblr there’s always a presumption of guilt. You say you loved Black Panther? Well, you must be racist against Maori/Polynesian/indigenous people. You really liked Moana? That’s like saying “Some of my best friends are [fill in the racial group].” You liked What We Do in the Shadows but thought that irreverent tone and the disrespect for the main characters was inappropriate for a Thor movie? You’re just mad because a POC wasn’t showing proper respect for white male characters and you can’t stand that characters of color (Valkyrie and Heimdall) were more awesome than the white characters. You liked Valkyrie and Heimdall in Ragnarok but that’s not enough to outweigh the outrageous retcon of Thor and Loki, the main characters you’ve been invested in for 3-4 movies? Why do you think white characters are so much more important than characters of color?
I’m not sure I agree Loki ever really wanted the/a throne, even after he discovered his entire life was a lie. The throne is more a symbol or a means to achieve what Loki actually wants at any given moment.
In the latter half of Thor, that’s acceptance and validation from Odin. He works so hard to keep Thor away because, as regent, Loki has the power to defeat the Frost Giants without costing Asgard anything. He thinks that defeating this enemy will prove he’s worthy, and that he belongs on Asgard. That he’s not one of those monsters…
In Avengers, Loki says he wants to rule Midgard, but it seems far more likely that he’s trying to hurt Thor, embarrass Odin, and above all free himself from Thanos. Others will argue that Loki’s trying to lose. Either way, he doesn’t actually want to rule Midgard. At the same time, this is when he begins repeating that he was the rightful King of Asgard, that he was promised a throne, etc. But, again, it’s not the throne Loki cares about, it’s the injustice of being promised something no one ever had any intention of giving him. Being promised his father’s approval, his people’s acceptance, worthiness (or the opportunity to receive it, at least), only to discover that what you are is entirely incompatible with everything you ever wanted. So he harps on about a throne–about that part of the lie–because it allows him to appear detached. He’s much less vulnerable demanding power than he is demanding acceptance, especially when he doesn’t even believe he’s worthy of that acceptance (internalized racism is a bitch).
The deleted scene from TDW contributes to that idea. The fantasy isn’t about ruling or holding power, it’s about the people celebrating him (the way they do Thor). It’s about being worthy. Loki does get the throne again at the end of TDW, but he usurps it because he wants freedom and safety, and he can get that by masquerading as Odin. And even then he offers it to Thor. He might have anticipated that Thor would reject, but he still offered the choice.
@philosopherking1887 What about those who refuse to determinedly adopt anything and keep their thoughts to themselves? Those who sift everything and keep only what they wish to? Those who hover about like a silent blimp? Is there an answer? Just wondering. I told you some time ago that I dislike reading philosophy because I find it subjective, that’s why I’m asking. You are learned in this field and I wanted to know if you read something about that kind of person.
@angrymadsygin this criticism is certainly not aimed at “those who refuse to determinedly adopt anything” and “who sift everything and keep only what they wish to.” There is definitely a philosophical term for people who continually weigh considerations and never come down on one side of an issue or the other: Pyrrhonian skeptics. A common interpretation of this late Hellenistic school is that they had a quasi-dogmatic policy of avoiding “dogmatism,” which is to say, of suspending judgment on every question and ginning up arguments on both sides of any issue until they achieved “equipollence,” i.e., until the considerations on each side appeared to have equal weight. The goal of this policy, according to this interpretation, was ataraxia, non-disturbance or peace of mind: if you never commit yourself to a position, you won’t be bothered about working to defend it, and you won’t be troubled by arguments or evidence that appear to show that you are wrong. However, the Pyrrhonian skeptics themselves (including their most prolific spokesman, Sextus Empiricus) denied that this was a policy, and said that suspension of judgment was simply the natural result of continued inquiry and ataraxia a fortunate side effect. The name itself, skeptikos, means “thoughtful, inquisitive [person]” and is derived from the verb skeptesthai, “to consider, reflect, look into.” I am a fan of the Pyrrhonian skeptics; I think they were cool. Clearly I am not one, however, because I do have strong opinions and I express them… but I make sure that I am always able to defend them with reasons. And I also (try to) remain open to changing my view when presented with sufficient reason to do so.
The people I was criticizing in the post you replied to are the people who unthinkingly parrot a party line and/or defend that party line with half-baked “arguments” that are easily pulled apart and debunked with just a slightly closer look at the issue in question. Obviously, I was talking about the person in the post I’d just reblogged who claimed – with no evidence other than the things Thor* says in Ragnarok (or that Taika Waititi has said in interviews) and in direct contradiction to what we saw in previous movies – that Loki has been trying to kill Thor for their whole lives and enjoys hurting and betraying Thor, and Thor showed the patience of a saint in putting up with him for so long. (So much for “show, don’t tell,” right? Apparently the things Thor*, TR, and TW just tell people take precedence over the things they’ve been shown for 3 movies.) I’m talking about the post that claims that Taika Waititi characterizes Thor and Loki much better than Joss Whedon because Waititi has a better understanding of Norse mythology and Whedon sees everything through the lens of Christianity, while Waititi remains unsullied by the influence of Christian culture (indigeneity fetishism, anyone?). I’m talking about the post that says “honestly the only way to explain joss’s loki is to say he was strung out on torture and space meth the whole time” when yes that is actually the explanation Joss was telegraphing (well, maybe not the space meth part, but Loki has definitely been through some shit). I’m talking about the post with a gif of Steve saying “son of a gun” next to a gif of Steve saying “son of a bitch” that claims that this shows the difference between Whedon’s inept good ol’ boy from Kansas characterization of Steve and actual Brooklyn army vet Steve… when the second gif is from Age of Ultron, which was *written by Joss Whedon*. And I’m talking about the people who thoughtlessly reblog these posts without disputing these claims even in the tags, thereby endorsing the view that they’re seeing coming from everyone else around them.
As to the view that philosophy is “subjective”: it is, like most things, a blend of subjectivity and objectivity. Unlike empirical sciences, philosophy doesn’t rest on experimental data that can be quantified – and that which is measurable or quantifiable is, these days, the paradigm of objectivity… to the extent that you can give just about anything an aura of objectivity if you put some numbers in. Numbers are only objective if everyone knows exactly what’s being measured and how. But philosophy is NOT, contrary to the picture in the popular imagination, simply a matter of some mystical guru types – or white men speaking from the authority of their whiteness and maleness – pronouncing some unsupported doctrines and expecting other people to take their word for it.
What sets philosophy apart from, e.g., religion, or ideology, or just plain making shit up, is that philosophers present reasons for their views: they defend them with arguments and with appeals to some commonly available evidence, such as general observations about everyday life, or history, or human nature. If you disagree with the philosopher’s conclusion, it’s then on you, the reader/interlocutor, to determine what part of the argument didn’t work. Was the reasoning invalid – i.e., did the conclusion not follow logically from the premises – or was one of the premises false? Figuring out what you think was wrong with the argument makes disagreement more than just a matter of people shouting contrary views at each other. If you can show that the argument was invalid, you force the philosopher (or their followers) to rethink the conclusion; maybe they can come up with a valid argument, but it puts the onus back on them to produce one. If you can point to empirical evidence that one of the premises is false, again, they need to rethink the conclusion. Often the disagreement is on a premise that is utterly unprovable: something about the basic nature of humanity or of the universe (is the universe basically rational, intelligible, orderly or irrational, unintelligible, chaotic? are human beings basically good or basically evil? does the good life consist in dedicating oneself to relieving the suffering of others, or in creating something by which one will be remembered?). These very fundamental premises may rightly be called “subjective,” because they might ultimately boil down to a very general feeling, reflecting one’s own character and/or needs (Nietzsche and William James, my philosophical heroes, both emphasize that point). But it’s still helpful to distinguish the disputants’ common ground from the points on which they can’t be reconciled. This giving and demanding of reasons, the effort to find common ground and maybe even come to agreement on the basis of logic and evidence, is the objective component of philosophy.
Loki is the Philosopher King 