“When I First Heard It, From A Dog Trainer Who Knew Her Behavioral Science, It Was A Stunning Moment.

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

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1 year ago

I had a crush on like every Neopets Faerie.

1 year ago

fundamental to bioessentialist and zionist ideology is a refusal to recognize that victimhood is situational rather than ontological

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just spent like an hour playing “who’s that pokemon” w my sibling and i was flabbergasted when they couldnt identify like half the pokemon they were seeing. (shrek voice) he didnt even know garganacl


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1 year ago

the western liberal anti-war sentiment of 'war is always bad and pointless, soldiers don't die for their country they just die, everyone who died for their country was a clown' is like. great in the context of their own imperialist participation in wars, but it's not actually built off a theoretical understanding that can differentiate between that and anything else. instead it just universalises the negative aspects of imperialism. the revolutionaries and anti-colonial fighters opposing imperialist invasion were not fighting a 'pointless' war, they were not idiots for dying for their people, and their sacrifices made a real and measurable difference to the lives of the people they fought for. to the western liberal mind, war is something you choose to travel overseas to do. to the rest of the world, war is something that arrives to you, uninvited. oppose unjust war, inter-imperialist war; and support just war, revolutionary war. nothing else will do.

1 year ago

Whyd no one tell me alligator Gars scientific name is Atrocious Spatula


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1 year ago
Nose On The Grindstone, Kim. I'm A Man Of Many Layers
Nose On The Grindstone, Kim. I'm A Man Of Many Layers

nose on the grindstone, kim. I'm a man of many layers


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7 months ago

these new MLB rules where they can use 8 different pitchers across multiple timelines simultaneously are getting out of hand


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Plissken, 27, white, e/em/eir (aux: they/them/their)

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