obliviousally | some articles recently

i'm awake too early. took a sick day but woke back up around work time anyhow, so i'm just putzing around online

Toxic Positivity: When Nice Isn't Kind

You don’t have to reduce love to trivial smalltalk. If you want, set that boundary and watch what happens in your life. The people who don’t love you will be put off, and the people most willing to love you will be attracted.

this one above got a WILD spectrum of commentary on it in the chats i shared it in. made me wonder if we were reading the same words, tbh. it's been fascinating to see

some random responses from the various discussions. no shade to any of these individual people, just noting the juxtaposition of opinions

- I'm glad I don't know this person, they sound like the biggest killjoy in the world
- It really articulates what I’ve already been thinking
- it's a little "stop being happy, people are dying"
- i mean i find that stuff annoying, too. it feels like a way of making things about yourself while pretending you’re being altruistic or nice.
- Jesus. I’ve never seen someone so upset over random compliments to the general public
- nobody drive by cares about 1000 people at once in any meaningful way, it’s just making noise for no reason
- I think the person who wrote that got some deeper issues than just being annoyed because it’s a random compliment XD
- Superficial, generic messages like the one that kicked off this article are one of the things that's made sites like Facebook unusable; it becomes 80% meaningless fluff and no actual content. And using it to change a topic of conversation is just selfish; "I'm uncomfortable, so I'm going to derail the entire chat to better suit myself instead of coming back when the topic is more relevant to my interests."
- I feel like the kind of person who's writing this has a lot of free time on their hands lol
- It really articulates what I’ve already been thinking
- it's also full on armchair psychiatrist nonsense
- This is the kinda stuff that needs to get talked about more. I don’t feel more loved when people throw that out there. Personally I feel more isolated because a random person in a chat or a TikTok video is the only way that’s been communicated and makes me feel even more alone
- Not gonna say they're an asshole. I don't know them enough and I can't judge it from one post. I can say it is quite a rant and seems to do a lot of assuming and projecting.
- It's kind of selfish, really. "I'm uncomfortable, so I'm going to derail the entire chat to better suit myself."
- Tl;Dr I don't think they're malicious just that they lack social skills and awareness

Moms for Liberty Has Aggressive, Predatory Tactics—and They’re Working

Ingram was also doxxed by members of the group because of his off-duty activism around removing local Confederate monuments. “I received death threats like, ‘he shouldn’t be breathing, much less teaching,’ as well as people emailing my principal and our superintendent that I should be fired for ‘indoctrinating children’ and teaching ‘CRT.”

As Rail Profits Soar, Blocked Crossings Force Kids to Crawl Under Trains to Get to School

An eighth grade girl waited 10 minutes before she made her move, nervously scrutinizing the gap between two cars. She’d seen plenty of trains start without warning. “I don’t want to get crushed,” she said.

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths

Today, the evidence of human impact is all around us, but now we know that even the most pristine of wilderness areas have many missing pieces. We’ve learned to see the ghosts of the lost megafauna in the rotting fruit, poor dispersal, and useless thorns of Osage-orange, Kentucky coffeetree, honeylocust, and others. But what are we still missing?

Calvinism and the American Conception of Evil

Calvin believed that humans were fundamentally depraved and incapable of being good. Only God is good and only by God’s direct action could a human think or act with moral goodness. Without God’s intervention, humans are left in the clutches of Satan, who would use humans for evil purposes. The world is infected with sin, because this is Satan’s world, and the devil “howls outside the door.”