Syn

Autistic, scientist, magic-curious. they/them/theirs, gender indifferent, elder Millennial. I matter. I don't matter. I am matter. I am wave.

[silverbridge-harbor]

A juvenile bug isn't called a larva until it reaches the surface. While it's still underground it's called a margma

[catchymemes]

This was posted on a ‘second hand finds’ Facebook page…

…only to be followed by this amazing message.

The roller coaster ride started.

With a happy ending…

…and a sweet poem to finish.

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[duckprintspress]

Pick up your ticket for Pride!

💙

💚

💛

🧡

❤️

💜

💗

🤍

🤎

🖤

💓

💖

Remaining time: 3 days 3 hours

Pick a heart then pass it on!

[gatheringbones]

“Life after menopause is exceptionally rare in animals. It can evolve only in creatures where grannies help younger family members survive. Only human, killer whale, and short-finned pilot whale females routinely live for substantial periods after they stop breeding. Like humans, killer and pilot whales have roughly twenty-five to thirty childbearing years, then can live another thirty or so. And as Ken’s just explained, some live a lot longer. Up to a quarter of the females in a group are postreproductive. These whales are not waiting to die; they are helping their children survive. As human children often benefit from their grandmothers’ attention, killer whale grandmothers boost their grandkids’ survival. A rather bizarre twist of killer whale society is that killer whale mothers remain crucial to the survival of their adult children. When older killer whale females die, their adult children start dying at high rates, especially males. Male killer whales who are under thirty years old when their mothers die suffer a tripling of the annual mortality rate compared to males in their age group whose mothers are still alive. Male killer whales who are more than thirty years old when their mothers die face death rates more than eight times as high as males in their age group whose mothers are still living. Daughters under thirty show no mortality increase after their mothers’ death. But daughters older than thirty when their mothers die have more than two and a half times the death rate of same-age females whose mothers are alive. Males’ handicaps of the extra drag of their huge dorsal and pectoral fins and the extra food required for their immense size (at around 20,000 pounds, males can be one-third more massive than females) seem to make them reliant on their working mothers for food. Females don’t have the males’ impediments, but while raising young, females may rely on food shared by their no-longer-breeding mothers. Adult females share essentially all the fish they catch, and more than half goes to their children. Adult males share their catch only about 15 percent of the time—usually with their mothers. While no one fully understands their strange death pattern following the loss of a mother, extreme parental care is likely at the root. Toothed whales are the world’s champion nursers. Short-finned pilot whales continue to produce milk for up to fifteen years after the birth of their last calf, likely nursing other females’ young. In bottlenose and Atlantic spotted dolphins (further study might reveal others), some females never give birth. Denise Herzing dubbed them “career females,” because their role in society does not include motherhood. They might be infertile. They might be gay. But their contribution is crucial: they do a lot of babysitting. When Herzing entered the ocean with a visiting nine-year-old girl, “White Patches, the eternal babysitter herself, had never seen me babysitting a young human before. Her excitement vocalizations were audible and electric and she continued to swim around us, eyeing the human youngster attached to me.” (Researchers sometimes call babysitters “aunts.” That’s precisely who they often are.)”

— Beyond Words, by Carl Safina

[was-once-somewhere-else]

I keep seeing people asking ‘is solarpunk really punk?’ because it’s too happy and optimistic and stuff

and I’m picturing a perfect moment in a solarpunk community — the neighbourhood mayor standing with a shit-eating grin on her face when the cops come and cut them off from city power, and nothing turns off

[solarpunknetwork]

This is my absolute favorite example of how solarpunk is punk. Also, Detroit (and a lot of other places) could probably use something similar for water. Especially in places where it’s illegal to harvest rainwater. I dunno, maybe water tanks cleverly designed as yard art?

[thewritingsquid-deactivated2020]

Like… yeah it’s happy and optimistic, but my view of solarpunk at least is in complete defiance of many capitalist ideals so if that’s not punk … ‘Punk’ isn’t edgy, dark and gritty. Not to me. Building a society completely based on renewable resources, accessibility for all, and constant sharing is a big fuck you to the current system if you ask me.

[solarpunknetwork]

Exactly. Near future solarpunk especially requires rebelling against the current system. Punk is about defiance (at least that’s what it’s come to mean colloquially). Defiance doesn’t have to be destruction and violence and grit, it can look like stubborn creation and community building and rejecting many of the dominant system’s values. 

[caffeinated-transpression]

Wait. Why would harvesting rainwater be illegal?

[watsons-solarpunk]

There’s an interpretation of the concept of property that says if something has value, then someone should be getting paid for it. Despite being flatly absurd and riddled with obvious logical flaws, this has been one of the major philosophies of property in the US, in some contexts (including water) for over a hundred years. This Washington Post article gets into it in detail. 

According to this logic, if there are water suppliers in a region, then they’re entitled to money when people get water. Collecting rainwater for yourself gets around that, so, in this concept of property, it’s a form of theft.

There have also been legal battles over people growing food in their lawns, generating their own electricity, etc. If you’re looking to extricate yourself from the systems wherein you have to serve the interests of specific wealthy people to survive, many parts of the western world are ready to use the force of government intervention to stop you.

[shiisiln]

I feel like a big chunk of the ‘dark, gritty’ aesthetic punk is associated with came as a reaction to the bright, glamorous ‘American Dream’ imagery and patronizing ad campaigns of the 50s. But now that we’re being sold “The future is bleak and dirty and there’s nothing you can do about it,” being optimistic and cheerful is the most punk and rebellious thing you can do

[kintatsujo]

This is an extremely well put point.

[sunflowersosa]

Nigerian Pride 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇬

I meant to have this out yesterday. Happy belated pride. :)

[sunflowersosa]

I'm glad you all like the Nigeria Pride post!

Originally, I went in worried the opposite would happen. Growing up, I've been taught that Nigeria, the country, is homophobic. (I was born in America.) But over time, I learned that there's tons of other queer Nigerians; some are out, and some are in the closet 😭.

I'm also not used to this much attention, lol

Thank you all!

[dogpuppy]

[squirrelly-13]

they got married btw

[visit-me-here-in-wonderland]

oh you’re not kidding

[isbergillustration]

Prideful Awooing

[thydungeongal]

So like. I've been on HRT for a bit more than six months now. And I feel despair.

Despair of sweet titties lmao.

[manuciruja]

awww the like button turns into a rainbow when you press it! that's so cute...hey staff what's with all the trans women you keep nuking?

[manuciruja]

i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users

[smadsel]

would be remiss not to mention that the rainbow notably straight up just removed the trans flag colors from it. like they’re gone. it’s the progress flag minus the trans flag colors.

[smadsel]

that’s not the whole flag, now is it

[manuciruja]

hey staff what the fuck

[villainessbian]

hey staff don't you think you're being too on-the-nose

[shrodingers-catgirl]

HEY STAFF DONT YOU THINK YOU'RE BEING TOO ON-THE-NOSE

[tlirsgender]

Many jokes about packers flopping out and bouncing away and such but I still wasn't prepared for how genuinely disconcerting it is for a second when your brain has accepted this as Part Of Your Body & your thang fell off. My pebis

[tlirsgender]

Every time I pull my pants down to go to the bathroom and watch My Penis go with them I have to like. Recalibrate

[fratboycipher]

(via @lunnefisk)

[domwitch2]

Monster boy x human woman where the males have complex courting rituals to prove their worthiness to potential partners. He starts nesting, building a soft, inviting cocoon for her when she visits. He hunts larger and fiercer prey to prove he can feed her. He fluffs up his fur and grooms himself to make sure he looks his best for her. When she comes over, he flops onto his back and exposes his tummy to show his submission and let her mount him, but she pats his belly instead, which leaves him frustrated. He's never met a woman who doesn't immediately takes what she wants, so why isn't she taking him??? He's trying sooo hard to show that he's fertile and willing, and she's clearly into him given the way she flushes when he purrs in her lap, so why isn't she mounting him already????

[domwitch2]

Bonus points if the monsters have sexual dimorphism where the females are bigger and stronger than the males, but males are still much larger than humans. He thinks the reason his human gf isn't taking charge is bc of his size, so he makes sure to crouch down or flop onto the ground so he's face-to-face or below her, in hopes she'll get the message. This just leads her to think he wants to cuddle. She's more than happy to scritch his belly and under his chin until she notices that he's been rock hard the whole time.

[luulapants]

Got into a discussion about emergency response at a professional retreat recently and everyone was going on and on about agility, and I was like, "Okay but what about contingency?"

And they were like "What?"

And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."

And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"

And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.

And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.

Anyway, that's how I figured out I'm Batman-coded and also learned how Batman must feel talking to supposedly professional superheroes who never bothered to run disaster scenarios until I pointed out that it's insane that they don't already have a plan for if Superman turns evil.

[nestofstraightlines]

There’s a phrase that really stuck in my head around this. It was from one of the British divers who enacted the Thai caving rescue, though I couldn’t tell you which one or which interview.

As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“

And the diver said, “No, actually people always get that exactly wrong. In an unexpected and urgent situation you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.”

[throckmortons-thrussy]

[elierlick]

Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.

[lucieslucidity]

post so nice had to reblog it twice and force it down everyone's throats

[fleshengine]

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

We gotta fix that.

[dancinbutterfly]

Progress.

Onwards!

[onthedriftinthetardis]

I can't access the full paper, but their conclusion is right there in the abstract:

While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.

[viralfrog]

[themainspoon]

A quick update for all my fellow r/196 migrants about how things are going back in the motherland. A saga has unfolded:

It began with a basic hornypost, and a comment under said post:

So, the fatal BreadSlice was getting clowned on in the replies, until:

So yeah, the more things change the more they stay the same I guess.