Email To My First Year Students About The Career Assessment The University Forced On Them:

On of the less intuitive things about love, I've found, of any kind, is the importance of needing things.

I didn't realize it until recently, but I've always seen love as something requiring sacrifice, selflessness, patience, and generosity- to ask for nothing is to be the best person I can be, small and quiet and never in the way, always happy and helpful, self-sufficient and present when desired.

It's only as an adult, now, that I'm beginning to see the selfishness of wanting nothing.

I cut my friend's hair in my kitchen the other day. They wanted a trim and I had the skills, so I offered, and was genuinely excited when they stopped hesitating over "bothering me" and took me up on it. It was a peaceful afternoon, and we had tea and chatted for an hour or more.

My brother and I shared popcorn at the movies a while ago. When I came time to pay, I pulled my card out like a wild western sheriff and slapped it on the machine before he could fight me for it first. The satisfaction was delightful.

Someone called me crying on the phone the other day. Kept apologizing for disturbing me at work, talking about how they were bothering me on my lunch break. I was telling the truth when I told them that really, I was flattered and honored and relieved, knowing that if they were hurting I would know, that I didn't have to worry in silence. It felt good to hear them slowly come down, and to know that they knew it would be better soon, and to hear them laugh wetly on the other end. We're getting together for a visit next week.

It's hard to need things, if you've trained yourself not to. It's hard to want things, when you don't know how to want anymore. Trusting people is difficult, and so is relying on them, but I don't know where I'd be without the people who rely on me.

I've heard a lot of people say, "Nobody will love you unless you love yourself". I've had a lot of thoughts about it. It's not right, but it's not wrong, either, I think.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... I've always taken that to mean, "You will not be lovable until you develop a positive view of yourself as a person".

Now, I think it's sort of inside-out.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... because nobody can show their love to you in a way that you can accept until you treat yourself kindly, and learn what you need, and what you want, and how to ask for it, and then give that vulnerability away.

Love, for me, is someone I ask for a ride to the airport. Whether they end up doing this or not is irrelevant.

It's not needy, or selfish, or taking up energy. It's giving the gift of being wanted, and needed, and thought of. It's giving someone the security of being part of someone's life.

SQUIDTEMBER 2024 STARTS NOW!

It's finally #Squidtember!! We have so much coming your way this month.

Together with OceanX & ALCES, we've created a whole MONTH of squid education programming.

We're hosting a competition for the best 🦑!

We'll have art prompts and weekly quizzes on OceanX's social media!

The Squid Zine is OUT! 

Squid biologists from the USA to Spain to New Zealand will be hyping squid all month. It's going to be great. Can't wait to celebrate with all of you.

Follow along with all of the content with this delightful calendar, featuring illustrations by Meg Mindlin!

And of COURSE we have squid merch that supports our program, designed by Philly designer Corey Danks. Thank you for helping us decide which design to use!!

Corey designed shirts highlighting the dangers of deep sea mining, and a very weird very delightful bumper sticker highlighting one of my all-time favorite squid, Magnapinna!

Get 'em both here!

As always, shirts and bumper stickers support science education nonprofit Skype a Scientist! Host of the squid facts hotline, and many many other free programs for science education!

im fucking sobbing why did they kill him twice in a row in the community notes

Friends of ours lost their 22yo son to suicide recently. He was struggling, but kept the depth of it hidden. There are no words of comfort to give, only grieving alongside those who have lost one that they love.

A good friend pointed out that in the midst of this weeping, while it does not diminish the grief, perhaps something good might come out in that those who are similarly struggling with thoughts of suicide might get some perspective that their lives matter beyond the tiny world mental illness traps you in. Your life matters and is worth living.

Our brains are a precariously balanced mix of meat, electricity, and chemicals. Sometimes because of our experiences and/or biology our brains begin to lie to us. It withholds joy and pleasure. "It’s like trying to laugh at a joke that isn’t funny. Trying to smile for a photo you don’t want to be in. It’s like waking up in the morning and hating that you actually woke up. It feels like someone is just draining the energy out of you all the time, every moment you are awake." Doing anything requires immense willpower. Just plain old staying alive becomes a conscious choice made over and over again. You are just so tired and everything is just too much to deal with. The constant state of suffering leads one to try various ways to feel something positive, feel anything, or just escape the emptiness. It's why depressed people try so hard to bring joy to others and help others- they want to prevent others from suffering too and it allows them to feel some happiness vicariously.

The inevitable diminishing returns on the attempts to feel better, feel anything, or just escape eventually lead to the conclusion that there is only one way out of this hell. And depression shrinks our awareness of our own meaningfulness and inner world. The void is all we can perceive. The knowledge that we are loved, cared for, or important is lost. We can sincerely believe that our loss will not so drastically affect our loved ones and escape through death is a viable option.

These are all false of course. Falsehoods our sick brain tells us with honesty, because suicide is quite reasonable given what we are perceiving.

If you are feeling like you don't want to be here, wishing you would not wake up, desiring an accident, imagining about killing yourself, drugging yourself into oblivion, or seriously thinking about if or how you might kill yourself, you need to talk to someone. I got lucky. Someone who loves me more than I love myself saw me spiraling into self-destruction and made me get help and continues to support me in spite of myself. I spent years where my full-time job was not research or teaching, but just keeping myself alive. It's still my job now and then. But the difference now is that after many years of therapy and prescriptions I know that feeling is temporary and false.

I'm sorry it hurts so much right now. When you have some distance from these feelings (I hope that you will give yourself the chance to), I hope you can see that your life is worthwhile and important because you are.

But the only way out is through and that requires talking. I hope you have people nearby who love you you can talk to. If you do, talk to them. If you don't, this will be harder. Either way, you should also get into counseling. A good counselor will help you find ways to survive, build better mental pathways, & develop tools for processing emotions.

Brutal honesty- American mental health treatment system is shit and difficult to navigate. We have far too few professionals in many areas and online is often the only option. But you are a fighter. Look at you all alive and shit when depression has been trying to kill you 24-7. Live a little bit longer. You can do it. And if you are going to live a little bit longer, counseling can help you live it a little bit better.

Just because you can’t understand something, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

being a woman is like would you rather be dehumanised for being sexy or for being ugly

Coat movement! This weekend it’s the silly version of Vash with a friend, but I hope to do an actual full Vash, soon!

None of this stuff is serious or complete and it all comes with a huge helping of "perhaps" and a grain of salt.

Nothing here should be taken as the final word on anything. No matter how sure of myself and arrogant I may sound. I know most of this stuff I write is silly or off-kilter or flawed in major ways.

So don't look for the flaws. You will no doubt find them. Look for what is new, different, insightful, creative, revolutionary, outrageous, or true. Try to understand the ideas and test those. Maybe each blog entry, as a whole, is a wreck for you. But there will parts that are treasures for you.

It ain't all that earth-shattering or revelatory to the world either, just to me at the time.

We are all becoming and we all figure things out or learn things at different times in our lives and often independently of others. Sometimes we really are the first person to think of an idea. Usually not. There are over 5000 years of recorded human thought and at this very moment there are around 8 billion other people. There is going to be a lot of convergent thinking going on. And a whole lot more of me hearing things sometime somewhere but forgetting where I heard it from (because I am a very curious and highly educated person who's been around and thinking for a longish time and it's hard to keep track of where all the shit in my head came from and which I created) from others or getting bits and pieces others worked on first and I had heard/read and then put a few things together in my head thinking it was all me.

So I don't promise they will all be new ideas. But they will all be new ways of looking at them. And I do think you'll find a few real originals in there as I transfer stuff from my gmail drafts over to this.

If I have a weird-ass idea or loving take on things that changes the world for the better, God bless it. But mostly I'm just here to share what my brain spit out for our mutual shits and giggles.

Even if I think there might be some really good stuff buried in there for anyone to find if they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to understand.

A new myth. A myth is not meant to be accurate history, but to tell a story that conveys a deeper spiritual truth. Stories are powerful.

This myth is the over-arcing story of Genesis to Jesus.

I'm not trying to save you or anything. And I don't think God is waiting for us somewhere else. God is always with us, walking with you and me and every other person through time and never turns away. But home is where the heart is. And God wants us to come home to the heart of God where there is Love, kindness, justice, generosity, Creation, the poor, the oppressed, etc. The things God loves and cares about.

I don't even really want you to believe the truths within the story. I just want you to consider the possibility and see if it resonates for you with history, our experiences, scripture, and who we know God to be as revealed in Jesus. You need to wrestle with this angel and make it make sense to you. Especially if you can't understand. The less you understand the more I beg you to listen again and sit with it.

You might hear a bit of anger or derision especially in the first few minutes. I'm not angry or derisive towards you or Christians in general or Jews at all. Any anger or derision towards people/powers towards those much, much higher up the food chain than you or anyone you know (probably).

As I tell the story, I am using lots of voice inflections to tell the story and that include sometimes a sing-song or sarcastic tone. The tone of the story is never to make fun of the reader or Christians. It's never to say that I'm smarter than anybody or put people down or anything like that.

The purpose of the incredulous voice inflections is occasionally to draw your attention to a joke, but usually it is to highlight the absurdity of the story we were given. The absurdity of the theology we were given. And the absurdity of the judgmental, autocratic, 1-strike picture of God we were given.

I really don't want to convince you of anything. If you have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and understanding, you'll probably be able to recognize the messages in here.

Rather than looking to confirm or reject the ideas you are expecting to find, please just consider. These are brand new ideas (for you anyway) using old pictures and familiar stories. But they are not the same ideas or messages. I'm telling a different story.

See how it is different.

Consider what's different about this story & consider a few of these as you go:

-what is different from the original stories we were given (as you know them)

-what is different about the meaning

-is it more or less likely to be true than your present understanding of things, given all we know?

-Does it resonate with who we know God, humanity, creation, & the World to be?

-Does it seem truer in meaningful ways?

-Does it somehow misrepresent God or Truth?

-Does it encourage more things of God?

-Does it more things of the World?

-What do you think of the Paul and Philemon story?