When You're A Child And You Stay Up Past Your Bedtime You Get Punished By Your Parents, When You're An

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“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)

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

need people to see this i feel insane

"little" and "freak" are my favourite adjective noun combo. like not only are you peculiar in nature but you are also rather small.

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

I'm going through everyone I followed on Art Fight and checking them out on their various socials so if I just followed you that's why. This blog is new, and I'm posting my art on @polyedron but I'm still sort of setting up my blogs atm. Slowly trying to actually start using them.

once you start saying “yippee!” you will never stop