teal and black mix very badly. angles are stretching in odd directions. i can feel my insides. i would very much like this to stop. i need to stay awake. people need me. unless i just make it worse. i can never really tell.　

heysawbones:

politicalprof:

I’m off again for a while, meaning I won’t have access to a computer for a few days. So, another blast from the past, in honor of the forthcoming campaign … from July 2011.

———————

I know, I know: you’re thinking politicians lie as a defect of character. They lie because they’re liars. So why bother to discuss it?

I want to suggest that there’s a different, more persuasive account for why politicians lie: They lie because we make them lie. They lie because when they lie, we reward—meaning vote for—them. And when they don’t lie, we punish them—by voting for the other candidate—who, of course, lied to us.

My point can be made in a single, dramatic example, although I am sure that many will resist. In his Democratic presidential nomination acceptance address in 1984, Walter Mondale famously said: “Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

Walter Mondale went on to lose to Ronald Reagan in the greatest electoral college defeat of all time, 525-13.  After his reelection, Ronald Reagan raised taxes multiple times, including a massive shift in tax burden from corporations to individuals as a consequence of the 1986 tax reform act.

Ronald Reagan is considered an icon, even a saint, by many Americans. Walter Mondale became a political punchline and the symbol of a failed Democratic Party.

I know that many will now be saying, “but this is only one case!” Well, sure. But I only have so much time. So let me offer a shot across the bow for cutting off some lines of attack on my argument: before telling me I’m wrong, name for me a recent US politician who has told the American people something hard and unpleasant and then won office. Especially a presidential candidate.

Elections are not a contest between principled persons who say what they believe regardless of the consequences—at least they’re not for the winning candidates. They are contests for public support in which everything Candidate A says that alienates or offends the voters is a leverage point through which Candidate B can try to gain support. In the end, politicians have a choice: say the things voters want to hear and improve their chances of winning, or risk losing by saying things that might be true but that voters don’t want to hear.

We get the politics we demand. We demand being lied to. So we get lied to. The fault, Cassius told Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. The sooner Americans accept this, the better politics they will have.

It’s awesome and sort of validating to see an actual academic write a better version of something I’ve also written. hey guys a smart person thinks the same thing hey hey look

buttsen:

every person you pass on the street has their own life and their own problems and people that mean a lot to them some of them may have had their heart broken or they may be in love for the first time and sometimes we forget that people we pass on the street are more than just faces and that they all have lives to live and are impacted by something as simple as smiling at them on the street and acknowledging that hey we all have lives and they’re all equally important please be nice to people

i hate myself a lot sometimes. i dont know what this post is going to be about except that. im not going to look at the screen while i write it. i just really really hate myself a lot right now. i hate that even now i still snap and direct my anger towards people that dont deserve it. even if they dont get upset about it i still used them as a target. thats so unfair. i hate that i dont know how to defend myself and have to run away. i hate that i cant just suck up and do things that i know are someone elses responsibility. i hate that i cant make myself function enough to get through a whole week without needing to run away. i hate myself so much. and i know therrs good parts of me but i still hate me so much it hurts. i feel hollow. i have so much love for other people and at the middle of it all theres just. nothing. i couldnt stop smiling earlier. not a real smile but one of thsoe really frantic ones like youre afraid its going to fall off and never come back. now i cant stop crying. i feel sick from eating and sick from existing. i want to throw up but i dont think it would help anything. i just feel like theres all this bile coating my insides that needs to come out. theres always a really strong image for that. slick and black and almost alive like it can just crawl all through me on its own volition. squeeze up and out of my throat and change my tone of voice or make me say hateful things. maybe i should draw to get the image out. papaya draws. i should do that instead of hating and hurting and crying. i dont know. i dont know what to do. i hate myself so much. my room is too big and the rest of the house is so small i feel like im going to suffocate. my teeth feel like theyre going to fall out of my gums but thats stupid theres no reason for them to but it feels like they will. i have to be careful not to push them too hard or not enough because theyll fall outa nd it will hurt and i can practically feel the holes in my gums already all slick and smootha nd tasting like blood and i dont want that at all. i think my stomach is probably so coated in black that its alive by now. a black slug instead of a stomach squirming around and pressing up against everything else. maybe thats why i hurt. i can see all the spots and veins on my arms and hands in high definition and i dont know why. its stupid none of this makes sense. i have a scar on my left hand from where i broke skin with my nails and a scar that i remember being very confused about noticing for the first time. theres a vein on my left hand that sticks out a bit. ill probably have hands like grandmas when i get old. my jaw hurts. i dont know if ive been clenching my teeth. my chest feels heavy. maybe the slug moved up. i dont know. i want to sleep but i have to go back out. i want to sleep in a sunbeam with luce and go away and not ever come back. i dont want to be here. i feel scared and empty and alone and i want to be warm and loved and protected. i dont want to be here. im sorry. i want to be held. im crying again. my throat hurts. im hot and cold all over. i want to sleep. im thinking in pictures instead of words and theres white everywhere and its so empty and i cant get out adn i want it tos top. 

I don’t really know how to feel about my weight loss. On the one hand, I feel. I don’t know. I’m happy that I don’t have to worry about fitting into clothes. I’m happy to be closer to that unattainable perfect image that society tells you you’re supposed to be. But at the same time, I’m scared. I’m losing too much weight. I don’t eat for days at a time. My weight loss isn’t due to diet or exercise, it’s due to starvation. And yet everyone keeps complimenting me. Wow, you look great! Keep up the good work! Even Mom who actually knows the situation is constantly complimenting me on how thin I’m getting. It scares me and I don’t know how to tell people to stop. I want to feel pretty but I don’t want to be unhealthy. I’m so scared I’m developing an eating disorder but I don’t know what to do about it. Food is so off-putting and I don’t get hungry so why eat? Not to mention that half the times I eat I wind up feeling nauseous or shaky for hours after. And I really do like feeling not just comfortable in my skin but pretty. I don’t know what to do.　

madeleineishere:

last makeout comic i promise.

i had a ddreami was a convict in a mmagical world?? bbut ig ot out and sstarted trrying to lead the rebellion onlly then i accidenntally managed to uppset a protectiive thhing and wokke up a drragon and thennthere were like ssix dragons not even ccounting the ccave full of hatchlinggs and wwe had to ggo tell the guuy with the protecctive thinng that it had gottenn diicked up and he wouuldnt listenn so thenn we hhad to go actuually take thhe piecess to hhim so hthat heed believe us evenn though wed get arressted again andd someonne made fun of me ffor tryying to help and then i wet mmyself andd that was thhe end of the ddream what a GREAT NNIGHT

SCREWWED U P AN ENTIRE MMAGICAL REALMM AND SOILLED MY PANTTS A+

EDIT: I did not actually wet myself that was part of the dream but I didn’t really JSUT TO CLARIFY FOR FUTURE READINGS I GUESS??? I word rambles badly

fauxholmesart:

Doodles for friends who have weird fetishes idk.

i forget why but i was with two people and we had to get away from a mansion in the mountains?? like i think we were just ditching something idk. one of the people was a brat from the mansion and it was his/her car we were in and the other was a friend of mine but it kept switching who it was. it was nei at one point and it was faux at one point and idk man.

anyway eventually we wind up losing the car somehow and we have to climb down this whole rock thing over a bunch of waterfalls and me and the friend wind up getting separated from the brat but we find the entrance to a cave

so we go in and explore and there’s an entire sequence that’s gone vague that was more video game than anything where we beat a sorceress??? but the important thing is that this system of caves is freaking huge and there’s lava and stuff

so we wind up down there for a while and can’t really find our way out and eventually we find the brat again so we all three try to head out towards another exit

and about this point my friend fades out of existence and the brat solidifies as male instead of switching between sexes

so we manage to find an area we recognize but it wasn’t where nei/faux/whoever and i came in and i realize i’ve been here before

and there’s an entire flashback thing that replays like four times of someone trying to rape me in one of the caverns

and i feel sick but it’s not like voicing it will get us out of here faster and i don’t really want to tell the brat anyway cause what good will that do either of us and it’s not like he wants to know about my trauma just because i’m feeling anxious so i bite my tongue and we keep going

we pass the exact spot it happened without incident

and we get to the exit where the brat parked our car and suddenly he pushes me down and demands i repay him for getting us out and i just panic and shut down mentally and all i remember saying at all is making sure there was some kind of contraceptive involved because like hell i want a kid

i just felt really numb and detached i wasn’t even close to tears or anything i just. i dont know.

whatever was used as birth control was something that i recognized as common but didn’t know how it worked and there was a sort of sick realization that i could very well get pregnant because i had no idea if we’d used it properly or not.

so he finishes off and wanders back into the cave for god knows what reason and i just

spend entirely too long in convincing myself to leave without him because by the time i do he’s back, and he’s in the car and i’m just telling him to shut up or i will drive both of us over a cliff i swear to god i’ll do it

not that i’m a good driver anyway and there’s a lot of tight turns on mountain roads and i just want to cry and scream but i still feel so numb and disgusting and i know that i never said no so i don’t know if it was even rape and like hell i’m letting him drive us back to his house im going home

annnnd then i ran into someone else - i dont remember if it was a car or a person or what - and then i woke up