Cosmic Funnies
styofa doing anything
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TVSTRANGERTHINGS
@theartofmadeline
One Nice Bug Per Day
🪼
AnasAbdin
todays bird
Kiana Khansmith
if i look back, i am lost
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
tannertan36
occasionally subtle
Peter Solarz
Love Begins
Misplaced Lens Cap
tumblr dot com
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
seen from India
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@blessherhearttx
Nothing Box Survey
My partner is capable of thinking about nothing. He calls it his nothing box (credit Mark Gungor.)
Our nephew and I insist this is not something most people can do, and he's now surveying his friends. So, hello Tumblr.
Can you think about nothing?
Yes, of course. Why is your brain noisy?
No! All the boxes in my mind have something in them.
That's what sleep is for.
this is in perfect iambic meter and sounds like the first line of a weird poem
Rule #2
Don’t ever hug a lobster when you see one on the street,
For decorum is essential when a lobster you must greet.
You may comment on the weather, compliment his choice of hat,
But crustaceans like their space if one should stop them for a chat.
Don’t ever hug a lobster when you’re strolling down the coast,
Simply nod and give a greeting, or a handshake at the most,
For a lobster’s first priority is formal social graces,
And one seemes over-familiar if a lobster one embraces.
Don’t ever hug a lobster when you meet one in the sea,
For a lobster’s spines and chitin make it difficult, you see,
And he might become self-conscious if you bring that fact to light,
So don’t ever hug a lobster, simply put, it’s impolite.
Overlock Stitch by @clothes_reetzy
Damn, that's useful
good to know
Tbh germ theory DOES sound crazy. Like if you told a regency-era nobleman that tiny creatures lived on the surface of everything and THAT’S what causes consumption, they’d be like “ah, I see you are a lunatic. Would you reside in my hermitage? Rantings and ravings do so amuse my guests”
But if you told a Medieval person this they would probably go "Ah, so when the miasma settles on surfaces it gains evil life. I understand."
Yeah, actually, it would probably be pretty easy to explain germ theory to a Medieval person as tiny evil spirits that live on everything, but they can be purified by soap and water, or by alcohol, because that is why God has granted us those things. And because they can float in the air, if you cough or sneeze after they have infested you, that can cause them to infest others. And when you are sick, the angels God has deputized to defend the bodies of His beloved children are at war with the evil spirits, and, sadly, sometimes they lose, but the best way to help your angels win their battle is to rest, drink plenty (this would probably be small beer in this time period, not water, because the water was also infested), stay clean, and for the sake of God do not allow anyone to let your blood, for the angels need that blood in their war against the evil spirits. Bloodletting is good for some types of illnesses but not the kinds caused by the tiny evil spirits.
boiling as a sterilization measure is also easy to explain. water returns to the air when heated and it rises as steam back up to the floodgates of heaven; we know God created the world in seven days, He's not up there making more water every time it rains. it circulates. the returning of water to heaven also purifies the water of unclean and malign influences. you know wormy water from a muddy puddle will kill your kid. you know you wouldn't wade into a bog and have a slurp. water that remains in the low places of earth absorbs all that is unclean from our waste and it may also sponge up new diseases from hell, we're not totally sure about that one, but it seems likely. God set up the heavenly water cycle so that the earth's waters wouldn't totally fill up with gunk.
what does this have to do with boiling your surgical tools? well look, the boiling water releases bubbles of steam which carries the malign influences up to heaven. you boil a knife, you send all the miasmic particles off with the steam to heaven. if you rinse the knife off in a bucket the water isn't hot enough, the particles go into the water and then right back on to the knife. you gotta boil it to get the particles all the way away. how can a tool or rag or a bed have miasmic particles on it when you can't smell them? humans have a lousy sense of smell. look at your dog on the hunt. are there no rabbits in the woods just because you can't smell them? we know that miasma is carried on the air, and is what makes stench so dangerous, and we know that humans can't smell worth a damn compared to dogs cats horses etc. a dog can smell if a rat died in a corner of the room last week. you can't. do you think licking the spot where the rat died is going to go well for you? luckily, what humans lack in snout we make up for in brains. we have extra brains where our sniffers should have been. God set that up for a reason.
and why does a rinse with wine spirits work? man, look how fast alcohol evaporates. my guess is that because wine contains a lot more vice than water, it evaporates a whole lot faster, in sort of an equal and opposite way that a rock falls faster than a feather. if you want the miasmic particles to get off there FAST, you dunk it in something that's going back to heaven at a gallop.
what's up with honey? it just preserves things against corruption. doesn't clean them off. honey doesn't evaporate at all. probably because bees don't sin. it's not good for ridding a tool of particles-- it's sticky-- but fine for preserving anything you don't want to go to heaven OR hell. this is why you wash the wound with wine spirits or purified water FIRST, to sluice the miasma out, then slap the honey on AFTER. and boil the damn bandage, too. you wouldn't put a rotten door in a sound doorframe and expect it to keep out bandits, would you? cmon.
This is the story of Toni and Charlotte who escaped the Nazis. It's the first Trans+ History Week article of 2024
Prague, 1942. A refugee Jewish couple light Shabbat candles as night falls. The words of their Shabbes prayer ignite the Friday night darkness, alongside the hesitantly kindling flame. Together they create a holy space of rest in the middle of an increasingly hostile world that persecutes them: for their faith, their sexuality, and because both women are trans.
so i'm in this backyard chickens group on reddit and someone just discovered their hen is transitioning and everyone is stoked
anyway in case you didn't know chickens will sometimes spontaneously f2m and it's pretty cool
these absolutely cannot stay in the tags
This is extremely common among chickens because a) like most birds, they only have one functioning ovary and b) their ovary does a LOT of hormonal heavy lifting in the sex department. So they're one ovary malfunction away from their body going "guess we're doin' rooster now" and growing different feathers and having them start crowing.
Hey btw, here's a piece of life advice:
If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.
If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.
I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.
There is no correct way to live that's just supposed to suck and feel bad all the time. You're allowed to figure out how to make it not suck so bad.
I’m having a moment of high anxiety, and to deal with it i’m making a post to say what i want someone to say to me right now, in case anyone else is in the same boat and needs this, too:
If you’re also feeling some big bad way about something, say out loud: “this feeling is not going to last forever.” I know that seems dumb and cringey, but just say it with me please.
Even if the thing making you feel a big bad way isn’t something going away any time soon, the *feeling* you have about it will ebb and flow. It’s bad right now, but you’re going to find relief from it. The fog isn’t endless even if you can’t see the edge of the cloud yet.
This feeling is NOT going to last forever.
I went to reblog this because i’m having another Moment, and then realized something meta that helps a little bit more: I can’t remember what the original post was about. I remember the feeling of being consumed by anxiety, i can remember where i was when i wrote this—but the cause is already out of my head
Anyway some reinforcement to try and disbelieve my brain telling me this will never end or it will end in tragedy
the thing about being "good with kids" is all it takes is literally just not trying to control and mould them with every interaction. it's just being a normal person and engaging with them through normal interactions like having conversations and playing games. it's just being genuine and friendly and not perceiving them as lumps of wet clay you are there to shape. "oh you're so good with kids" thanks it's because I think they are people
My Shakespeare students (they are 12) wanted to summarize the lessons they learned this semester. If. Um. Anybody would like to see.
I cannot emphasize enough that they made these with very little input from me.
Henry the Fifth
- ALWAYS encourage others to do their best.
- NEVER talk about people behind their back.
Antony and Cleopatra
- ALWAYS check your produce for pests. [They liked this one so much made a rap about it.]
- NEVER count your chickens before they hatch.
Hamlet
- ALWAYS act decisively
- NEVER tell your girlfriend to go to a convent and become a nun [Oh boy they REALLY liked this one]
Romeo and Juliet
- ALWAYS collect all the important information before making an important decision
- NEVER bite your thumb at us, sir. [They enacted this scene in the original language a lot, except they swapped every “sir” for “bro.”]
The Merchant of Venice
- ALWAYS pay your debts.
- NEVER judge based on appearances, because “all that glisters is not gold.”
The Tempest
- ALWAYS try to forgive others.
- NEVER be a colonizer. [Yes, a middle schooler said this]
Midsummer Night’s Dream
- ALWAYS stay on forest trails
- NEVER fall in love with an ass. [They were excited about this one for obvious reasons.]
Twelfth Night
- ALWAYS stay in touch with those important to us
- NEVER read other people’s mail
Macbeth
- ALWAYS wash your hands. [One of the girls performed Lady Macbeth’s entire Out Damn Spot monologue at the end of the semester]
- NEVER succumb to peer pressure.
"Dignity For All" is anti-capitalist. 👏🏻💫
I think maybe one of the most pernicious (and recognisable) things about the way Luddism has been interpreted, both historically and contemporaneously, is how people conflate "being against an innovation" and "being against how an innovation will be handled and the impact it will consequently have."
Like, Luddism as we most commonly think of it (the machine-breaking riots of 1811-1812) did not come out of "here is a brand new technology, we don't like it and we abstractly hate mechanisation."
It came out of the observation that for decades, large manufacturing capitalists had already been working successfully to repeal trade protections, lower wages (without lowering the price of cloth commensurately), and take shortcuts to produce lower-quality products and maximise profit (e.g. cut-up stockings).
It wasn't "we hate machines". it was "these machines are a tool for a ruling class who are actively looking for tools to minimise the benefit anybody else gets from their production methods."
You can see that in the fact that, while steam-looms and spinning mules were targeted, other similarly productive innovations (like flying shuttles and domestic-scale spinning jennies) were not, and were largely welcomed by the same communities that took up hammers and crowbars against factory technologies. Because the objection wasn't to technology, per se, it was against factory industry, which took textile work out of the home and thereby robbed workers of autonomy, family wages, social mobility, and the ability to look after their children while working.
You can also see it in Nottinghamshire, where the same sorts of knitting frames might be smashed (if they were of the size used primarily for cut-ups or if they belonged to an owner with a reputation for labour violations) or spared (if they were smaller frames, being used to make traditional stockings at the traditional piece rate).
It was never about technology. It's about who you trust with it.
a clear modern example is generative AI, where there is conflation on all sides of the discussion between "AI (the technology) is ontologically evil and should be rejected in all contexts" and "AI is a technology which can and will be used to attack the rights and labour of working people, and/or to spread misinformation and shape politics for the worse".
those are two different positions! and I think most people who have thought about it in any depth probably hold the latter view more than the former. but that isn't how it's taken, and an argument against one position is viewed as an argument against both.
for a non-technological example, compare, for instance, discussions around Brexit in 2016, where I got really exhausted by left-wing Leave voters going "the EU is a capitalist endeavour, and in a socialist utopia we wouldn't be part of it! we would be internationalist and not give advantage to European markets!"
and then viewing me saying "ok but we don't live in a socialist utopia, do you really trust this government to set its own agenda and trade freely internationally without wider oversight, also doesn't it seem pretty obvious that this is about racism and immigration?" as being about my position on the EU and not what leaving the EU would do under the current circumstances.
you have to be so fucking careful with your wording. but also you don't have to at all, because regardless of how clearly you say "I think this technology/policy/innovation should be rolled out carefully and with consideration for its impacts, and if it's causing avoidable harm then intervention is needed", people will hear "I hate progress".
A customer contacted our team with questions, and then finished their email with: "I am daunted by the complexities and unknowns." I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.
Reblog if you are daunted by the complexities and unknowns
.
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This.
This is why people who stay in my life are neurodiverse like me!
this!! I swear I lost like all my friendships bc of this, like I had a group of friends in hs that one day I realized “huh I haven’t talked to this people in a while” and popped in to say hi and they were all awkward?? because they hadn’t seen me in a while?? and that’s when I realized that friendship works different for them?? I was like yeah I haven’t talked to you in like four months but it’s not like I’ve forgotten about y'all why would anything change, and they were all like we haven’t talked to you in four months why are you here again acting like nothing happened? and it was really confusing for me
YEAH! THAT!
Also I have a thing where I just put the people on pause. If I don’t see them or contact them, my brain kinda put them in stasis. I don’t think about them nor misses them, and I stay on what I last knew about them (how they look, what they study/work). So when we meet again I’m like “wait, you’ve aged?” and I have the same familiarity with them thanI had before.
Anyway all my mutuals I haven’t messaged in forever - this is why
oh my gods this makes so much sense??? there are people who i haven’t talked to at all for literally over a year and we’ll pick up like nothing happened, but for their people it’s just like…… falling apart but onesided???? i think we’re still on the same level but actually we’re strangers??
Ohhhhhh
OHHHHHHHHH….
Ok but listen, on the other side of this, as a person who moved hundreds of miles away from everyone i knew and then became a hermit for several years, it was SUCH A FUCKING RELIEF to get in contact with an old friend and have him be like, “my friendship levels do not degrade, so in my mind we are still awesome close buddies” and i almost fkn cried. I thought he would be mad or would have moved on because i had slacked on my reaching out to him and staying in touch and doing all the friendship things. But NOPE. 800 miles of distance, depression, and life changing circumstances didnt steal our friendship and i am SO GRATEFUL.
#came back to tumblr after four years #lottie and I immediately went like that spiderman meme yknow tags via @rudjedet
I have literally no friendship degradation whatsoever. I will not have spoken to someone for 5 years or more, and they’re still as much a friend to me as if I had only seen them yesterday. I’m just very bad at communicating if someone is not in my direct orbit. So when Sonja reappeared on this site I basically screeched into her notes like a banshee because I was delighted and we picked straight back up where we’d left off.
Happy to go on the record that I don’t expect regular contact and will welcome hearing from people after a long time
Holy shit, I didn’t actually realize this was a Thing.
Things like this always take me to that trend I used to see a while ago - “what if we patologised neuronormativity the way neurodivergence is patologised”. Because babe, how is friendship degradation not a disability?
Like, this girl is disabled because her object permanence is weird and if you hide something from her she will forget it existed, oh, how abnormal and disfunctional! But this girl, who is your best friend, suddenly doesn’t care about you if you haven’t met and talked in several months and this is normal somehow??? Are you fucking serious?
Sorry, but if someone stops caring about me because we weren’t in touch for a while, the only logical conclusion for me is that they never actually liked me, they just hanged out with me because I happened to be around and it never meant anything.
“It is very hard for neuronormative people to develop meaningful connections. They tend to form many shallow bonds with random individuals that are physically present in their daily routines. But those bonds break easily and must be constantly maintained.”
THIS! YES!
Talked to @goannasun about my “object permanence issues but with people” and did not realize it was REAL!
BTW, that last paragraph is fantastic.
I've had conversations like this with several people in my life recently. It's pretty common and not some great moral failing.
Tennessean Charlotte McLeod, 28, was the 2nd US trans woman to obtain gender-affirming surgery in Denmark after Christine Jorgensen. I love this 1954 photo with her father. You clearly see the love and support in his eyes. He adored his daughter and celebrated her for who she was.
At first, Charlotte McLeod's father didn't support her medical transition. However, after her surgery, he explained, "now that it’s over, I’m ready to accept Charlotte as my daughter[...] It's a little hard to get used to after all these years, but I will, you can bet on that."
Unlike present newspapers, nearly all reporting on Charlotte was positive and celebratory. A 1954 issue of the Nashville Banner noted her beauty and that all her friends, neighbors, etc accepted her. How cool would it be if they still did this (with some improved language) today?
i REALLY like existing. what an absurd blessing to receive out of nowhere. really hard to quantify this much gratitude
