[theunitofcaring]

A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.

What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it’s awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.

It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.

Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.

[torontostar]

#OTD in history, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind with the historic first moon landing. In this July 20, 1969, file photo, astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., lunar module pilot, descends the steps of the lunar module ladder as he prepares to walk on the moon. | 📸 NASA

[itsfullofstars]

Rare Space Artifacts Auction

It was 47 years ago, on July 20, 1969, that astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon.

This year, on that anniversary, New York auction house Bonhams is holding a Space History auction, an occasion that offers a rare peek at some fascinating artifacts from the space age, including some from the Apollo 11 flight and Soyuzmissions.

Items up for auction include astronaut training equipment, spacesuits, original documents signed by astronauts, full size models of satellites, navigation aids used in space and photographic prints.

See them all here - going once…

[humanoidhistory]

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin makes history on the Moon, July 20, 1969.

Forty-six years later, he tweets about it.

(@TheRealBuzz)

[attndotcom]

One guy’s hilarious post is exactly how we all feel about this photo of Obama, Trudeau, and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. 

[nasahistory]

Happy Moon Landing Day (July 20, 1969)

[humanoidhistory]

TODAY IN HISTORY: Presented sequentially, photos by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong show fellow spaceman Buzz Aldrin at work deploying experimental equipment on the surface of the Moon. (NASA)

[ohbabyitslucasarts]

“Oh good, more inventory.”

[vgjunk]

Contra Spirits / Contra: The Aliens Wars, Game Boy.

The Planck Length

[s-c-i-guy]

The size of the Planck length, 1.616199(97)×10⁻³⁵m, can be visualized as follows: if a particle or dot about 0.1 mm in size (which is approximately the smallest the unaided human eye can see) were magnified in size to be as large as the observable universe, then inside that universe-sized “dot”, the Planck length would be roughly the size of an actual 0.1 mm dot. In other words, a 0.1 mm dot is halfway between the Planck length and the size of the observable universe on a logarithmic scale.