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Okay. This seems pretty insane if you don’t know what the existing state of terminally ill patients’ options is. So let’s go over that.
Terminally ill patients can sign up to be part of pre FDA approval trials for treatments which might potentially cure them. As these treatments are experimental, untested, not guaranteed to get results, and intended to provide profit to the medical provider in the long run, patients cannot be charged for these experimental treatments. As it should be. It’d be pretty unethical to get people to pay you to be your guinea pig for treatments which may not even help them.
This “right to try” law changes that. It makes it legal for terminally ill patients to be charged for experimental treatments. Furthermore, it removes FDA testing restrictions from the process. Currently a company which tries an ‘experimental’ treatment they know won’t work will get the hammer dropped on them by the FDA. But under this new process, medical providers would be legally allowed to provide ‘treatments’ they know won’t work, without oversight. This would legalize medical predation on terminally ill patients.
Labeling this bill ‘right to try’ makes it seem like terminally ill patients aren’t allowed to seek out experimental treatments right now. But they are! All this bill does is make a terminally ill patients more financially burdened and more vulnerable to predation.
That’s why the Democrats blocked it.
Thank you for explaining it
Reblogging for EXPLANATION
(via seananmcguire)
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The entirely unnecessary demise of Barnes & Noble
“Whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover. Among marine architects this is known as the zero-moment point – the point of no return.” –Sebastian Junger, “The Perfect Storm”
Posts like this aren’t my usual fare, but there’s a lot of readers on Tumblr. So y’all might be interested – or, if not, you really should be.
On Monday, this went down:


That’s the bloodless, matter-of-fact, ho-hum business event way of describing it. Let me paint you a different picture.
On Monday morning, every single Barnes & Noble location – that’s 781 stores – told their full-time employees to pack up and leave. The eliminated positions were as follows: the head cashiers (those are the people responsible for handling the money), the receiving managers (the people responsible for bringing in product and making sure it goes where it should), the digital leads (the people responsible for solving Nook problems), the newsstand leads (the people responsible for distributing the magazines), and the bargain leads (the people responsible for keeping up the massive discount sections). A few of the larger stores were able to spare their head cashiers and their receiving managers, but not many.
Just about everyone lost between 3 and 7 employees. The unofficial numbers put the total around 1,800 people.
People.


We’re not talking post-holiday culling of seasonal workers. This was the Red Wedding. Every person laid off was a full-time employee. These were people for whom Barnes & Noble was a career. Most of them had given 5, 10, 20 years to the company. In most cases it was their sole source of income.
There was no warning.
But it gets worse.
Sweet Jesus
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I’m????
Oh my God this actually explains so much.
So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.
So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.
So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.
This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner.
So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.
The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.
The next time a guy says, “What? You don't want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.
y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves
(via zohbugg)
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thoughts on the friendzone
when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors. we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards. he wasn’t the only one. there was ben, and mitch, and noah—but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”
i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was
in the first grade there was rich and joseph and i got sent to detention with them almost every day with a smile on my face. we built block towers and sang to my teacher’s lion king soundtracks when she’d turn the lights off during lunch time. one day they got in a fist fight over me at recess, and i wondered why they felt they needed to share my friendship, like it was something they owned.
in the second grade zach and i played yu gi oh under our desks during free time and i got moved for talking to him constantly. everyone in the class would tease him and i for talking, asking when we were going to date already, asking him if he’d kissed me, and he stopped being my friend.
when i was 11 i met a chubby boy with the name of a colour who wore puffy vests and unwashed t-shirts, with greasy hair and bright blue eyes and a smile that hid hurt behind it. people didn’t like him because he was silly, but i liked him, because i was also silly. he became my friend the day he bought me 5 giant roses and asked me to be his girlfriend, and i politely declined but promised him i’d be his best friend because i’d always wanted a best guy friend that stuck around. we burnt our feet on the concrete during the summer and walked home with the sunset silhouetting us. he talked often about how he loved me, but never blamed me for being me, even though he refused to move on. that boy dyed his hair jet black and sat on the end of my bed playing songs to me on guitar, and all that pent up rage from before didn’t show until the first time he slapped me across the face and called me a dumb cunt.
in the 7th grade there was a boy named ryan who sat next to me on the bus and talked to me about manga. he’d ask me personal invasive questions but i didn’t mind because it was attention and i liked attention. i was dating another guitarist with curly brown hair, one who was much more kind-tempered than the other, and ryan mentioned how much of an asshole he was every day. i wondered, why, why does he think the love of my life is an asshole? but whenever i asked him, he just told me, “girls only date assholes. there’s no room for nice guys like me.”
i wondered, if he was so nice, why did he say such mean things?
he never stopped with me, taking me to movies, hanging out with me, you know. being friendly. i thought we were friends. but then, how many times had i thought that before?
how many times had i bonded with a boy, thought they got me, only for them to ask me if i wanted to make out?
how come when i told ryan i was coming out as a lesbian, he stopped being my friend, and said “damnit, the one girl i really want to pound into a mattress, and she’s only interested in chicks!”
there was a boy my junior year who stayed up all night with me until the sun rose, talking about life, past loves, hopes, dreams. beneath a million twinkling stars spanning forever, he brushed long brown hair out of his eyes and listened to me talk about the history that made me. then he asked me if i’d ever consider dating a guy, and complained about how he’d never get laid.
when i told him no a couple hundred times, he found new girls to listen to.
i would sit on the couch and play zelda with dakota, and he’d talk about all my favourite games with me. he was the closest thing to support i had, and the letters and poems he wrote me were always so kind and friendly. but he’d put his arms around me on the couch, and no matter how many times i told him i was uncomfortable, he’d still come over every day and do it.
“don’t you know how it feels to love someone and not have them love you back? don’t you know what it feels like to be friendzoned?”
when i meet guys who talk about the friendzone, who talk about the girls who don’t give “nice guys” like them i chance, i always want to just say
when i was 10 years old i met a girl whose brown hair fell across her shoulders and whos eyes sparkled when the sunlight hit them, whose voice was like velvet and whose scent was like mountain smoke, who made me dizzier than a fly climbing a sugar hill. and i’m 18 years old, and i still love her, and she knows, and she doesn’t love me.
but my first thoughts upon hearing her rejection were not “what a bitch,” were not “she just wants a douchebag and not a nice girl like me!” were not “im going to keep pushing her until she dates me,”
they were
“she is the best friend i have ever had, and i am the best she’s ever had, and i would hate to take that away from her.”
so before you play the victim, mr. Nice Guy, before you angrily throw your fedora on the ground and blame the girl you claim to adore so much:
put yourself in the shoes of a girl who thought she made a wonderful friend, only to find out that he just wanted her for sex. that he just wanted her for a relationship. a girl who was just an object to win, a prize. a girl who’s trust you’ve just shattered.
maybe she friendzoned you. but you girlfriendzoned her, first.
I am clapping for this, you just can’t see it.
okay honestly wow I’m oh my god just
GIRLFRIENDZONED!! OH MY GOD YES
(via zohbugg)
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This map shows every state where women are more likely to live in poverty than men
Wait… hold up. Every state is colored in. That can’t be right… right?
Unfortunately, the map is accurate. And it’s especially problematic for millennial women, who are much more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher than millennial men, but who are consistently earning less living and living in poverty more.
SLAMS THE REBLOG BUTTON
“But women earn more degrees” and still get paid less, so eat my whole ass
Something I see a lot of people missing in the reblogs: KIDS KIDS KIDS THIS IS LIKE 92% ABOUT KIDS
Yeah, there’s other factors too, but “women don’t ask for raises” and “pink-collar jobs aren’t valued” are smaller factors than the simple fact that caring for your own children is mandatory for women and optional for men.
Here’s the life story of, I’m going to say, about half the women I’ve ever worked with:
- Had children. Possibly voluntarily, possibly through lack of contraception education and/or funds.
- Broke off relations with the father. Frequently this was for a reason that was not a choice on her part, like he abused her or went to prison or just plain disappeared.
- Kept the kids. Even if it was an amicable split, she likely has weekday custody and is the one who takes charge of the vast majority of their needs.
- Dad may or may not pay child support, but even if he does, the average child support is $2550/year and the average cost of raising a child in a low-income family is $8610/year.
- The mother can’t afford paid childcare, but she has some friends/family members who watch her kids, but they can’t commit to a consistent schedule, which means she can only work limited hours and has to take a lot of unplanned time off.
- This drastically limits both which jobs she can take and how much she can earn from those jobs, and completely locks her into poverty until the youngest child is old enough to be home alone. But by then she’ll have an unimpressive resume of assorted part-time gigs, plus likely health problems from 15 years of eating junk and barely sleeping, so it’s not a fabulous career launch point.
There’s lots of factors in why women get paid less than men, but lack of childcare is hugely, gigantically more important than stuff like “women don’t speak up enough in meetings,” or even stuff like “female neurosurgeons make less than male neurosurgeons.”
I’m writing this without my source which I’ve misplaced (so, like, this may be not entirely correct), but I’ve also heard that when you look at the achievement gap for women in STEM it narrows dramatically if you only look at single, childless women. A huge amount of it is due to the demands of child and elder care that female grad students/postdocs/professors/etc can’t avoid, which their male colleagues can.
(via aimee-b-loved)
Posted on June 13, 2017 via Mic with 247,380 notes
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i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because:
- i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live
- most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person
- im not a pissbaby
my white friends that have reblogged this give me life
4. Sometimes I am a shitty white person and the jokes remind me to FUCKIN STOP
If ur white and like this post I fux with u
^absolutely
5. It’s hard to be offended when white people jokes involve bland food/tourist dads in socks and sandals/white girls in yoga pants obsessed with pumpkin spice/suburban PTA moms and other harmless and mostly true stereotypes while jokes about POC involve them being called thugs/criminals/slurs/uneducated/illegal immigrants.
i fucks with u heavy if ur white and you reblog this
6. They’re usually really fucking funny and don’t perpetuate stereotypes that will ever affect me economically, politically, or cause me any true harm, let alone create risks that “justify” my murder and/or death
Waits for my white mutuals to reblog😌
yesyesyesyes
(via aimee-b-loved)
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Chaz Smith explains us why men are the only problem in sexual assault
it’s that simple
this is cool. (Don’t read the comments; they’re just heartbreaking evidence why this is so fucking necessary)
IT IS THIS FUCKING SIMPLE.
(via zohbugg)
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I spend a fair amount of time teaching women to kick men in the balls, and I’ve learned that this activity tends to generate controversy. Here, according to actual adults who have actually said these things to me, are some reasons you should not kick a guy in the balls:
1. It will make him angry.
I should hope so. I’m not sending him a friend request. If I kick him hard enough, there’s a good chance I’ll render him unable to act upon his anger. That’s my goal. His feelings are his problem.
2. It will make him hurt you worse.
Statistics say otherwise. And anyway, he’s already demonstrated his desire to hurt me. Why should I give him carte blanche to decide how much he’s going to hurt me? I’d rather be an active participant in that decision-making process.
3. Groin kicks aren’t really that devastating; I’ve seen lots of guys get hit in the balls and it hardly fazed them.
This response (almost universally from men) is so common I’ve come to think of it as “groinsplaining”—you can see it many of the YouTube comments in the videos linked above. These people rarely volunteer to demonstrate their own iron balls in a real kicking situation, but they confidently assert that men in general can shrug off all kinds of damage to the groin. All I can say is, I’ve seen two-year-olds take down grown men via the groin, and toddlers don’t even have any training. I do. I like my odds.
4. We shouldn’t be teaching people how to kick men in the balls; we should be teaching men not to do anything that would make us have to kick them in the balls.
Hey, that’s a great idea! Do you have a detailed, research-based plan for teaching all men everywhere to behave themselves all the time? And do you have funding for your efforts, and buy-in from politicians and community leaders, and a network of trained, experienced instructors who can effect this change? If not, better get started on your grant proposal. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here teaching people how to kick guys in the balls. That’s what I do.
5. Telling people they should kick an assailant in the balls is the same as telling victims who didn’t kick their assailant in the balls that they did something wrong.
No, it isn’t. It’s a practical way to reduce the number of future victims by giving them more viable options to disrupt and survive an assault.
Fact: We have the power to damage the bodies of men who try to hurt us. You’re saying we shouldn’t let people use that power. I’m offering people more choices; you’re trying to take them away.
6. Kicking a guy in the balls just makes the world a more violent place.
Maybe, in the short term. But if it stops him from killing someone, or putting them in the hospital, isn’t that a net win for non-violence? The Dalai Lama thinks so.
One in four women will have good reason to kick a guy in the balls at some point in her life. Luckily, it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it! And ball-kicking’s efficacy is beyond dispute, as the men of MMA so nobly helped us illustrate here. Gentlemen, if any of you are reading this, and conscious: Cheers, and get well soon (the non-wife-beaters among you, anyway).
AIA REPORTING FOR DUTY
okay, so!
There is a trick to it. You do NOT want to soccer kick the dude because that’s a little projectile aiming at a littler target.
It’ll do in a pinch, and it’ll hurt, but it won’t incapacitate, which is what you want. You don’t want “ouch!” Or even “FUCK!”
You want him puking on the floor, and this is how we do:
There’s two ranges where a groin kick works: close and mid-range.
Say someone grabs you face to face, or pins you to the wall, and your hands are blocked.
Now you’re close-range. What do you do?
You come in closer, as close as you can, and with every ounce of adrenaline and aggression in your body, you do a can-can kick.You know the first step in the can-can, where you raise your knee up as high as it’ll go as strong as you can?
Do that, as hard as you can, repeatedly.
If that doesn’t work, here’s the alternative. You’re going to take your hand, grasp between the thighs underhand. Its going to feel like you’re “cradling” the testicles. Dig your fingertips into the fragile skin BEHIND the scrotum. Then, once you have a good grip, you turn your hand into a vise, with your fingers digging inwards to the material. If you do it right, you should feel the testes INSIDE the scrotum. You want, whenever possible, to hook your fingers under them.
Then, with your hands in a claw and your fingertips latched behind the testes, you turn your hand sharply, as though you were turning a doorknob. Simultaneously, haul your elbow back and up as hard as you can.
If done properly, this technique can tear the scrotal tissue, and done with enough force, can tear the testes out of your attacker’s body.
No matter HOW pissed he is, he’s gonna drop. I’ve tried this technique on guys wearing cups and even with protection, it is not a fun feeling.
If you’re mid-range and have enough room for a kick, the goal becomes to use your shin.
The shin is actually called the tibia, which ounce for ounce is one of the strongest bones in your body. So, here’s what you do, my little bloodthirsty beaus:You aim, you scream “DO NOT COME CLOSER I SAID NO!” (legal purposes, because now you’re officially exercising your right to self-defence). Maintain a 360 degree awareness, just in case he has friends, and then, when he’s close enough, connect your shin full on soccer kick with the delicate squish of his testicles.
What you want is as much upwards force as possible in combination with as much momentum as you can manage. When he collapses, which he will, then stomp on his groin again, and then run.
The latter has less of a trick to it. It’s primarily about momentum and force.
Remember, if you’re close enough to put your hands on him, use your knee. If he’s coming at you, use your shin.
If you can smell the nachos he had for dinner, rip his fucking balls off.
It’s easy to do, they’re tiny little squishiness wrapped in a delicate flap of skin about as thin as a toenail.
Remember: if he’s coming at you, he’s ALREADY out to hurt you. Might as well give the fucker a reason to be pissed.
Someone once told me that the way to train a proper knee in the groin (with appropriate aggression if you want to hurt him enough to let you go is to train and act as if you’re not aiming your knee at the groin, but aiming for somewhere much higher so that your mind knows to really ram your knee upward.
A male friend of a friend of the family once generously and kindly advised me that if anyone with nuts ever got up on me without me wanting him to do so, to “grab his balls as hard as you can, squeeze, and yank away from his body until they feel like marmalade. Then run.”
I have never forgotten this advice.My self-defense trainer used to say: “Eyes are like grapes. Ears are like pull tabs. And if you’re going to grab some, girls - grab, pull, twist, and bring those balls home to mama.”
…I really need to embroider that on a cushion.Reblogging for my women followers. Know how to protect yourself, okay?
Fun fact: we did a groin attack drill in krav recently, and one of the guys’ cup was secured improperly. When he got kneed he made a noise like someone dropped a bag of rotten tomatoes from a third floor balcony, and hit the ground retching.
A few of the guys snickered and called him a wimp, so our instructor decided EVERYONE was going to do the drill with no cup to see how little force it took to incapacitate an opponent.
I was paired with a friend of mine who looks like if the Rock and the Mountain Who Rides made a little Boulder Love Baby.
I apologized in advance, he said he was ready, and I flicked him in the nuts.Flicked.
Not hit. Not tap. Not punched. Flicked. The same amount of force I’d use to maybe kill a mosquito, using the blade of my hand.
He went the colour of cement and nearly threw up on my shoulder.
It takes MINIMAL force to fuck a guy up. Now, if you’re grabbed from behind, snap your head back into his face and while he’s distracted you can either make a fist and strike back at the groin (arch your hips to the side for more room) or karate chop from the elbow.
He’s gonna be pissed–but he’s gonna be puking first, and that’s your opportunity to kick him in the kidney and run like the wind.
Mother Nature put mens balls on the outside as as a woman I will 100% use that to my advantage in a fight.
self-defense
I always reccomend using it as a one two punch. Groin strike, the go for the eyes, throat, twist/break fingers, or the opposite. Go for face/finger breaking/twisting, then groin, maybe even hit them in the groin twice, really devastate.
A lot of dudes will go down from groin strikes. But some might be on drugs, drunk, just incredibly hopped up on adrenaline/anger. So dont RELY on one groin strike. In self defense never rely on any ONE strike. Unless you been training martial arts for years. Always go for 2-3 good hits, and run.FYI
SING
Solar Plexus - instep- nose- groin
Balls Kicking 101
One of my friends who taught at Feminist Eclectic Martial Arts would sing a little ditty that went “Eyes, knees, groin, throat” over and over. I’m 6′5″ and 300 lbs and unlikely to need to use that, but it’s awfully catchy.
(via aimee-b-loved)
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Here is the deal, friends:
White police officers are murdering black citizens.
Full stop.
Here is the other deal:
Every time – every single time – this happens (and the fact that it has happened more than once, and keeps happening, and will happen again, fills me with unending shame at the state of my nation), police officers en masse clam up. Not a word is said.
Let me restate this in an effort to bring the point home:
A group of professionals have obvious murderers in their midst – murderers caught on video, no less – and this group of professionals is making a concerted effort, through their silence, to protect these individuals who, let me say this again, are murderers. Show me another profession where this is allowed to stand. I dare you.
So, let me say this, then:
If you are an officer of the law, and in particular, if you are a white officer of the law - because, let us not kid ourselves that these murders are anything other than a deadly manifestation of institutional racism – then it is incumbent upon you to speak up, to condemn these murders and these murderers. Say “not all police” all you like, the fact remains that expecting citizens to trust the police, when those same police, who are sworn to uphold the law, do nothing in the face of obvious and heinous crimes committed by those with whom they share a uniform, is ludicrous at best.
I cannot trust the police, I will not trust the police, until they show me through words and deeds that they place more value on the laws of the land and the citizens they are sworn to protect than they do on the relationships they have with their co-workers and the murderers they currently harbor.
I know there are literally thousands, tens of thousands, of good police – even good white police - in this country. But their silence is as much a problem as the actions of the murderers on their forces. I struggle with what I can do to help – and my next steps are to research and discover exactly what it is possible for me to do – but those who can help most are, without question, the good police out there.
Right now, when a white officer murders a black citizen, that officer can count on a network of support that will help scrub their sin clean. So, good cops: Take that away. Clean your house. With prejudice. When you stay silent, when you allow these crimes to stand, you let these murderers stain you and everyone else who wears a badge with the blood they spilled. You can change that, you can regain the trust of citizens, but you have to earn it with words, earn it with deeds, earn it with actions.
I want to trust the police. I think we all do. So, please, all you good cops out there, please help us. We need you more than ever to be the heroes you are, to serve and protect, even when the one you’re protecting us from is one of your own.
Co. Signed.
I don’t see police out here very often but when I see police action I am going to stop what I’m doing and witness and/or film it. I will not be part of a culture that allows people to be in fear of their lives from police. The least I can do is stay nearby and bear witness to what is happening.
Co-co-signed.
Trust is earned, not owed. Respect is earned, not owed. Power is earned, not owed.
Remember that.
(via aimee-b-loved)



