Birches. The Boys’ And Girls’ Readers: Seventh Reader. 1926. 

Red flags for Love Bombing:

The person doing it is someone you met recently (days, weeks, month ago), or they recently decided they want to get closer to you

They decide that you’re perfect (friend, relationship partner, peer, employee, student) before actually taking the time to get to know you

They talk about you as if you know each other for a long time, and make statements about you as if they’ve known you forever

They talk about plans they have for you; they’d love to be closer, travel together, live together, meet you more often, some will even talk about marriage or some kind of partnership early on even though you’ve only met recently

You get a LOT of positive attention from them, to the point where you don’t feel the need to get positive attention from anyone else, and you end up giving your full attention to them

You feel like this is the person you’ve been waiting for, someone who sees everything good in you, you consider them special and feel flattered and grateful to finally get the attention you lacked for all this time

They always seem to say the perfect things, drop perfect lines you’ve been waiting to hear, to the point where it can sound like a movie or very idealized version of reality

You feel intensely reassured about your worth, your appearance, your value, your actions, your pain, it causes a rapid change in your daily feelings about yourself

You enjoy your new perception of yourself, but it’s completely tied to this one person who created it for you, and you don’t feel special or interesting or important out of that relationship, your identity is now tied to what they feel about you

You get the sense of ‘this feels to good to be true’ but you dismiss it because you don’t want to be suspicious or anxious about one good thing that finally happened to you

Their promises get overwhelming to the point where it doesn’t seem like they could possibly deliver them but they give you a chance to indulge yourself in daydreaming and wishful thinking and you hold onto that

You feel tied not only to this person, but to the future they’re promising, and even if you don’t know them for a very long time, you feel intensely about wanting to keep them in your life, do anything to not lose them and to keep the relationship as is

If you believe in soulmates, twin souls, or any new age spirituality, this person will feel like your destined one, or they might even suggest it themselves, that they were sent by an entity to 'fulfill you’ or 'destined for you’

Your life changed from how it normally was to the point where you feel like you have a life 'before’ and 'after you’ve met them’, you even kind forget who you were before them, as you find it’s painful and lonely life you don’t want to go back to

With time, you get anxious about their perspective of you changing, because it would shatter everything good you’ve started to think about yourself because of them

It’s very hard for you to think about them critically or in a negative way

If they started thinking badly of you or started mistreating you, your heart would break

Love bombing is a manipulative tactic of getting someone attached and dependent as quick as possible, and it’s done with over-the-top attention and affirmations, future faking, mirroring, and creating an idealized version of you without actually getting to know or understand you. The promises, feelings, gestures, imagined future and compliments are not real, they’re there so you would be invested enough to ignore any other red flags, to forget to context of the relationship, to bond to the point of not leaving even if it develops into abuse.

If you’ve fallen for it, do not feel guilty; this is designed to get your defenses down and to make you feel fulfilled to the point where your reasoning turns to mush and you grasp that break from being devalued and neglected all of the time like it’s a lifeline. It’s often impossible to resist the strong emotions and relief at being offered, however fake, positive attention. Previous victims of abuse, neglected children, mentally ill, autistic, or in any way vulnerable members of society are very susceptible to this, because they’re often the ones starved for attention and will not question the kind of attention they get because they need it too badly. Whoever uses this tactic is aware of this, and is ready to dangle affection in front of you in order to trap you into abuse. You are not responsible for falling for it, doing this to you is criminal. This is what a start of an abusive relationship looks like.

As much as I do love the ‘SpaceX is just burning money for no reason, Elon Musk is personally designing these rockets badly, the whole company is a joke, Elon’s going to blow up on his way to Mars’ banter, I think it’s important to reckon with the actual reality of SpaceX as a military contractor.

Their ‘Starship’ is not, and never was designed to fly to Mars - that’s a marketing scheme, and it makes no sense if you actually look at the vehicle. SpaceX is able to throw money at this project because they’ve got a military contract to produce it as a military cargo drone. Their ‘Starship’ is designed to deliver a C-130′s load of US military cargo to anywhere in the world within an hour.

SpaceX, from before its first ever launch, has been partnered with the US military - as noted in the incident where the company stranded its workers without food on an island owned by the US Army. SpaceX’s constant failures with their rocket come from a simple calculation - cost versus time. To slowly and methodically design a rocket such that, by your first test flight, you’re confident in it, is just that: slow. Blowing up rocket after rocket and iterating is fast, but expensive - but when you have military contractor money, it’s worth it.

This is far from SpaceX’s only time contracting for the military, having launched military payloads with their Falcon rockets, and even designed satellites for the military. There’s a reason only USAmerican citizens are allowed to work at SpaceX.

The image of SpaceX as an eccentric billionaire’s quest to colonise Mars serves as a marketing ploy which distracts from the company’s real existence as part of the US military industrial complex, beholden not to the Reddit-fueled whims of an egocentric moron, but to the massive economic and structural forces of modern capitalism.

Keep reading

So I've been meaning to start a german diary for a while now and I did it today after seeing this post (which is, funnily enough, a screenshot of a Tumblr post, which I couldn't find).

Here is the link! What an amazing idea ❤️

Death of the author: Treating the author’s stated interpretation of their own work as merely one opinion among many, rather than the authoritative Word of God.

Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.

Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.

Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.

Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.

Weekend at Bernie’s of the author: Insisting that the author would personally endorse your interpretation of the work if they happened to be present.

what does it say about us as a culture that most of our microwaves have a dedicated popcorn button

This is an unposted overview of my planner last school year. Four more days, and I will be a 3rd-year college student🤞🏻

I was talking to my therapist about some anxiety symptoms --- "In my mind, I know I'm going to be perfectly okay, but my body doesn't listen and reacts anyway" --- and she recommended TIPP as strategies to keep in my toolbox of dealing with distress in the moment. I really appreciate having more than one option to try in moments of overwhelm!

Transcription below:

If you're feeling overwhelmed by anxiety or other strong emotions, TIPP is a set of techniques that use the body's natural physical responses to bring you back into balance.

TIPP stands for

temperature

intense exercise

paced breathing

progressive muscle relaxation

Temperature:

The body naturally lowers its heart rate in response to cold. If anxiety is making your heart race, try an ice pack, a cool washcloth, or a walk outside in cool weather, and it should help you calm down.

Intense exercise:

Anxiety is typically a symptom of your body going into fight/flight mode. If your body is coursing with nervous energy, burn it off with 10 minutes of jumping jacks, dancing, climbing stairs, or another cardio activity to complete the stress response cycle.

Paced breathing:

Deep, slow breathing from the belly can also help signal the body to come out of fight/flight mode. Try inhaling for a count of four and exhaling for a count of six until you feel more relaxed. (I like to hold the breath for a count of two between each inhale and exhale.)

Progressive muscle relaxation:

If anxiety makes your body tense up, try this. Start by squeezing the muscles in your toes and feet for five seconds, and then intentionally relax them. Move up to the calves, up your legs, and every region of your body to purposefully let go of extra energy.

When you're feeling overwhelmed, try one or more of these to see what works for you.

link to free pdfs

I’ve been collecting pdfs over the years and I put them all in this google drive folder. I divided them into literature and theory and then by language: english, spanish, basque, italian, portuguese, turkish, russian and french.

anarchism | black people & liberation | capitalism | colonialism (& gender) | disability | economics | education, pedagogy | feminism (& marxism, womanism) | health, eating disorders, fat studies | history, biography | imperialism | incarceration | judaism | leftism, antifascism | lgbt, sexuality, gender | linguistics | marxian economics | marxism | mlm/maoism | palestine & israel | philosophy, sociology | postcolonialism | psychiatry | psychology | race, racism | translation (& lgbt issues & colonialism) | turkey

last updated: 17 january 2021