tamartia

[tamartia]

Have your thoughts on October 7 itself changed?

absolutely not. it was a horrific attack that needlessly targeted hundreds of civilians and did not achieve hamas' goals. cheering it on in the aftermath, saying "this is decolonization" and "settlers aren't civilians" is wrong. questioning jewish people anywhere on their allegiance to israel is antisemitic and insulting, as is saying "settlers go back to poland." there was a definitive rise in antisemitism in the west after the attack, with synagogues, jewish schools, etc. marked with swastikas. politics is often not a straightforward business, neither a firm commitment to a label nor a position on a compass axis, but my principles compel me to stand against repression, violence, and murder.

we are now more than half a year removed from october 7. since then we have seen genocidal intent by israel, as 40,000+ palestinians have been killed, the majority of them children, gazans starved, and half of gaza itself made unlivable, with further dispossession taking place in the west bank. there has been an equally sharp rise in islamophobia in the west, but this has not received nearly as much media attention. recently, one of the students at columbia was asked, out of the blue, "would you be able to smoke in palestine?" by a new york times reporter who saw her vaping; columbia suspended palestinian students who were taking finals nowhere near the encampment. these are only the latest and smallest examples of what muslims have faced in america.

the same principles that caused me to react with horror then cause me to react with horror now. the endless invocation of october 7th and "bring them home," the constant, deliberate blurring of antisemitism and antizionism, the calls to condemn hamas, and the outright fabrications of what is happening on campuses in the face of demands for divestment is not meant to de-escalate the violence, or, really, to bring anyone home—and not to make anyone safe—but as a red herring to distract, distort, and desensitize from what is now happening in gaza and the west bank. the united states cannot continue to aid and abet the catastrophe that is unfolding there. palestinians deserve to be free.

[tamartia]

[tamartia]

[tamartia]

five recipes for an exciting life (in my opinion)

spending enough time creating things with your hands (baking, drawing, scrapbooking, doodling, crocheting, journaling and so on)

keeping track of things like pretty skies, milestones, happy memories, appointments you're looking forward to

listening to music that genuinely makes you feel happy and energetic

making a habit of reaching out to people in a way that's comfortable to you (i send my dad songs he might like, my friend sends me monthly life updates)

being kind to all your five senses → like investing in a scented candle or essential oil dispenser or body mist, having a soft blanket or socks (or a soft animal to pet), listening to birdsong or the rain, looking at the sky more often, and having your favorite foods enough times

[tamartia]

I love when dogs and cats just let you pat the shit out of them and they enjoy it so much. Like yeah dude real quick I just need to play you like a bongo and they’re like god yes I’ve been waiting for someone to play me like a bongo

[tamartia]

We really do need to bring back the word "trolling" and warning ppl not to feed the trolls

[tamartia]

Don’t look at things you know will make you angry. Don’t read the comment sections. Don’t look at the blogs of people who add dumb comments to posts to confirm that they’re dumb all the time. Don’t read old conversations you had with people you don’t talk to anymore. Go look at pictures of kittens or something instead. Protect yourself from negativity in every way you can.

[tamartia]

PADS SHOULD BE FREE !!!!!! TAMPONS SHOULD BE FREE !!!!!!! LITERALLY ALL HEALTHCARE UTILITIES SHOULD BE ACCESSIBLE AND FREE!!!!!! ANYTHING YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IS A RIGHT NOT A PURCHASE!!!!!!

[tamartia]

The majority of people are horny. People are always going to be horny. You cannot stop people from being horny. Throughout history there have been extensive attempts to suppress horniness and they haven’t worked. You can be mad about it all you want but horniness will prevail against any adversity. There will always be an aspect of horniness within society. Sexuality cannot be contained by having missionary sex with your spouse alone in the privacy of a dark bedroom.

[tamartia]

I know that its not actually that hard to learn to draw. or paint. or cook. or learn to speak a new language. or code. or any of a myriad of other possible skills or hobbies. but at some point you need to pick some single digit number of those ten thousand things that anyone can do, and to everything else say "i have other priorities" because otherwise you will never do any of them.

and so i think when people say "i wish i could..." they usually don't believe that they couldn't do it if they really tried, or even that they've overestimated the difficulty of doing so. I think what they're really wishing for is that time and energy were not finite quantities and that everything that was worth doing could also be done. because it's cosmically unfair that that isn't so.

[tamartia]

I have, to be fair, a personal philosophical disagreement with Felix Faust that makes me unable to side with him in the end—where his argument to JEDD is that, if immortality is to upload souls into the network then it defeats distance by default. But it's not a kind of immortality I find appealing. I don't think the ultimate goal of humanity should be to defeat death by defeating the concept of being organic. Now, it's not the kind of immortality Terra Ignota suggests is the most likely to happen in the world it depicts, because that's not how Bridger's potions work at all. But it did get me to think, because in some ways... well, I wouldn't say Terra Ignota sides with me on that, not quite, but.

There is do much space given to the physical expression of people; their stature, their form, their expressions too. Mycroft will wax poetics about a smile or a face, emotions are always so intense and dramatic and overwhelming for those who feel them. There is so much emphasis put on food; whether Mycroft has eaten lately (and, well, what he eats), or A9 feeling grateful everytime someone shares food they like. There is so much emphasis put on sex—the series is so relentlessly horny, even when there is no room left in the plot for full insane sex scenes there is room for having babies off screen, or for admiring a cop's biceps as they stretch next to you. There is so much emphasis put on sadness and tears; a whole plot twist is centered around Dominic being unable to see JEDD cry.

And thrice in the story, four if you count the fake account of Lorelei Cook, the worst thing that happens to characters is being imprisoned into their own skin, with no access to their own senses. When A9 comes out of it they almost cry because Carlyle brought soup. They're holding hands during that whole next scene. JEDD, to make Faust yield, also imposes something similar on themselves: to stop acting, to close themselves off, forcing Faust to reach out.

The one thing that ever goes in a slightly different direction is the conversation Eureka has with Carlyle about their childhood and set-set training—where Eureka defends themselves again the idea that they lost something by not spending afternoons in the sun as a kid. But they also in the same conversation insist on the sensory aspect of their existence, on the fact that their nerves have been reworked to feel new things, that others can't even imagine. And it's interesting because Faust is against the concept of set-sets, when they are in fact the closest thing that exists in that world to the kind of immortality they suggest as a goal: bodies modified to perfectly fit into a virtual environment.

And the fun part is that I think Terra Ignota does that to make me feel the conflict at the core of the Utopian position: distance is excruciating to experience, and it is excruciating because holding hands or sharing food on the couch with your friend feels so good that it warrants the narrator to stop the wartime chronicles to talk about it for a moment. I wouldn't say the books side with me on the fact that Faust's idea of connection is a terrible perspective; I think I'm supposed to empathize with how he sees things. But at the same time, the books are never pretending not to be biased; it's even part of the point that it isn't, that you're not reading an exhaustive historical manual but a madman's emotional rambling about things happening to him and around him. So in fact, this is a celebration of our physicality: yes, we are limited things, little contained universes of our own, and distance settles, inevitably, even between our held hands. And it's good that we have hands—and eyes, ears, voices, tongues—to reach out at everything that's outside ourselves. And to blindly go, etc.

#excellent analysis

[tamartia]

[tamartia]

all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.

#poor op #braver than our troops fr fr

[tamartia]

cars will need to use buttons, dials, or stalks for hazard warning lights, indicators, windscreen wipers, SOS calls, and the horn.

Absolutely insane to me that this isn't already required. Disappointed that it doesn't also apply to climate control and music.

they should make this a legal requirement everywhere

#jaime speaks

[tamartia]

More people should abandon Internet discourse and get into observing/engaging with local politics. I say this not because local politics often offers more meaningful opportunities for effective praxis (although it does), but because local politics often offers just as much highly toxic and entertaining petty drama.

I highly recommend city council meetings. You might make yourself an informed voter and active community member or something. You also might get to watch an ongoing soap opera of old men ready to murder one another over trash collection ordinances, and unlike the Internet, none of them can effectually tell one another to kill themselves no matter how hard and how clearly they are thinking it.

[tamartia]

learning that apparently several hundred people have been pronouncing 'miette' as 'mighty' has actively worsened my day

[tamartia]

i say this with love: yall will make yourselves feel bad about fucking anything, i swear to god. you feel bad about feeling too much. you feel bad about feeling too little. you feel bad about what makes you feel good. you feel bad about not knowing what you like. you feel bad for not being able to survive easily in a world hostile to you. you feel bad for the tactics that you use to survive. you feel bad for how you identify. you feel bad for being unique. you feel bad for experiences that you share with millions of people. you suspect that every feeling, experience, desire, fear, and question in your brain is somehow evidence that you don't deserve to exist.

i can be so so reassuring about all of these things but ultimately you are the one that's gonna have to make a conscious choice to stop measuring yourself in these ways. there is no authority who gets to determine whether you have the right to exist or not. you already do. there is no body that votes on whether you get to feel, identify, or think as you do. you already do. your existence as it is is non-negotiable. stop trying to justify yourself. you're already here. the world is going to have to deal with it anyway.