What Does It Take To Teach A Bee To Use Tools? A Little Time, A Good Teacher And An Enticing Incentive.

I don’t know if it’s just me but the second someone tells me they hit their kids or want to hit their future kids I immediately never want to talk to them again.

“Down here - he said - you will find people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no.”

Guards Guards! - Terry Pratchett

i love gaboon vipers why do they move like that

My life has been so much better ever since I traded my impostor syndrome to brilliant conman -syndrome. Do I deserve anything in life? Fuck no! Will I grasp it anyway? Fuck yes!

 My art has never been worth shit, but watch me bullshit my way into art school! I am a horrid goblin, but watch me make these people like me! Am I qualified to do this task? Well I sure have the certificates that say that I am! And how did I get those? Who knows! Not me! I am so good at cheating, I don’t have to break a single rule to do it!

 I am brilliant, fast, and absolutely drunk with power!

I don’t know who wrote this or why, but this writing is just *chef’s kiss*

**Editing to add: I now know that this was said by Lindy West in her book The Witches are Coming. Good to know! 

how do i break the cycle

prepare yourself for the absolutely insufferable lack of satisfaction found in forgiveness

“Here’s what I know: if someone’s much better than you at something, they probably try much harder. You probably underestimate how much harder they try. I’m not saying that talent isn’t a meaningful differentiator, because it certainly is, but I think people generally underestimate how effort needs to be poured into talent in order to develop it. So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours. If you’re doing it wrong you can do it a thousand times and not produce any particularly interesting results. So you have to make sure you’re trying the right way. […] I’m curious about the ugliness of trying, the years and years of wanting and hoping and working. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by craft. I think it’s because it requires such a sustained tenacity. Like Michelangelo saying that he just chips away at everything that didn’t look like David: a hundred thousand little motions to reveal the underlying beauty. I think a lot of people want to be but they don’t want to do. They want to have written a book, but they don’t want to write the book. They want to be fit, but they don’t want the tedium of working out. They’re ashamed of rejection and they’re ashamed of imperfection. I might want lots of people to subscribe to this Substack, but do I want to workshop a post every day? Donna Tartt once said in an interview that if the writer’s not having fun the reader isn’t either. I think people make the best things when they love the process, when they willingly shoulder the inherent uncertainty and pain that comes with it. It’s almost like a form of prayer: you offer up what you can even though the reward is uncertain. You do it out of love.”

— Ava, effort (via luxe-pauvre)

Warlock concept: A warlock multiclassing as warlock.