Doing Things in the Desert @doingthingsinthedesert - Tumblr Blog

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I am once again begging my brain to stop spiraling into oblivion at the slightest provocation

vexheart

This

findyoump3

is it ok to add this image

insidestory1

We need to stop praising resilience in children. We need to stop giving them the idea that there's some kind of morality in dealing with the rotten things life throws at you without complaining, or in shouldering other people's burdens for them. As soon as you start to do either of those things, you're on a one way path to your own breaking point.

beef-estrogenoff-deactivated202

VACCIMEL is a therapeutic cancer vaccine composed of four irradiated allogeneic human melanoma cell lines rationally selected to cover a wid

argentinian melanoma vaccine btw

hometoursandotherstuff

prime-factorizer

66 factorizes as 2×3×11

78 factorizes as 2×3×13

homoidiotic

Steve Dain (1940 – 2007) was an FTM who transitioned in the late 70's and lost his teaching job, he was a gym teacher in Union City. Although the court would eventually decide in his favor, and allow him to go back to teaching, he was not able to find a school that would hire him.

"Later, I would meet Steve Dain. Steve had been Lou Sullivan's hero. In those days, most trans men in the Bay Area went off on a pilgrimage to meet him as we entered medical transition. Lou had met with Steve years before when he began his transition, and Jamison Green would meet him a short time before I did. It was nearly a ritual, a rite of passage to meet with Steve. There were no trans men that we knew of who had come before him. Steve was nearby and our most visible example, and someone who each one of us hoped would confer wisdom, and a kind of blessing or validation. I think we all were a bit awestruck. And, Steve didn't let us down. I know he didn't let me down. I still remember meeting him in Union City, he picked me up and I was taken with his easy and total masculinity. He was hirsute, and handsome, confident and kind. He was sensitive to each question I asked and his answers would influence me for the entirety of my transition." -Max Wolf Valerio (quote from his blog) (photos by Mariette Pathy Allen 1980s)

howtocan

Baby bird season is incoming and I’d like to remind everyone that birds do not have a significant sense of smell. Bird parents will not reject birdlets because you have handled them.

If you see smol birbs with few or no feathers on the ground, you can safely put them back into their nest, bird parents will still care for them.

If you see smol birbs with some or most feathers on the ground, please leave them there, as bird parents are probably nearby watching and feeding.

jumpingjacktrash

nakey bird = accidentally fell out, is cold and scared, put back in nest! if you can’t reach the nest, try to put it on a wide branch or fork so predators can’t get at it as easily.

scruffy feather bird = starting to try the fly thing, not very good at it. only put in nest/branch if predators abound, i.e. you have four outdoor cats and they’re licking their chops.

fluffy feather bird = smol fly guy! do nothing. can probably get away from predators and will flip its shit if you pick it up.

thefingerfuckingfemalefury

Reblogging this because I’d always heard the ‘Don’t touch a distressed bird its mom will reject it’ thing treated as fact before now, I didn’t realise it wasn’t true…

illogical-bullshit

Spring is coming, time to reblog this again.

prokopetz

More favourite numerical memes:

Implicit or implicit enumeration of uncountable things (example: taking inventory of the fucks which one gives)

Suggesting the divisibility of things which are not customarily thought of as able to be subdivided (example: "six whole people")

Using words that aren't numbers as numbers (example: "one William dollars")

Technically correct but contextually misleading estimates (example: looking at a group of several thousand things and observing that there are "at least three")

Incongruous qualifiers for apparently simple sums or tallies (example: she was twenty-seven years old, not counting 2014)

greatmountainfloofsquatch

I love all of these, plus I would like to propose two additional, both things that I do on the regular:

6. Comparing a stated number to a somewhat larger number in a context where this adds no information. (example: "I found 50 dollars!" "Wow, that's almost 60 dollars!")

7. Improper use and conversion of units. "I'm turning 21 tomorrow!" "Wow, that's 69.8 in Fahrenheit!"

tentacleteapot

if I may add a couple of my personal favorites:

8. Saying “maybe more!” when someone very clearly states an exact number, ie, “I have $2.45 on me right now.” “maybe more!” “no, just… just $2.45”

9. dismissing a legitimate fact because the method used to confirm it is also completely legitimate: “it looks like there’s 75 copies of this book in here.” “I mean sure, if you count them.”

angelinajoliesbottom

squeemez

sighinastorm

COW NAP COW NAP COW NAPS COW NAP

nerdingsposts

aaaaaAaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

derinthescarletpescatarian

Love the way our bodies are shaped so both the human and cow can be like “oh sweet a pillow”

thereschocolateonmykeyboard

@farm-paws

cipheramnesia

Love that we all collectively gave up on jokes about what's marked mature content, like okay cow naps, sure

slimedryer

days 1-9 of any month are pretty chill but it's always the 10th where it starts feeling like it's essentially the 15th which is essentially the 20th which is essentially June which is August which is October which is December and that's next year and you're turning x years old and you haven't changed at all since you were 14 but you'll never feel like that again (crushing) but you'll never feel like that again (bliss)

youareagoodperson

thank you Canada 🇨🇦

the-gimmick-hospital

FUCK YEAH GO CANADA!!!

youdeservesunshine

REBLOG TO LITERALLY SAVE A LIFE

my-fav-tiktoks

SIR.

What are you doing to that chocolate

cipheramnesia

he canNOT keep getting away with this

girilimoni

So, lately there was a massive ++k reblog of my inktober comic of last year, but the post features my old deactivated url, for this reason just 70!! people could visit my blog :( So I reblog it myself, just hoping that people will reblog from my active url (I already contacted tumblr for this issue but I had no answer..)

imsobadatnicknames2

So stardew valley is capitalist propaganda, the incredibles is randian propaganda, wall-e is fatphobic propaganda. Is there anything that's not propaganda for you people?

category 5 tail wagging the dog moment

imsobadatnicknames2

When I point out the implicit ideological assumptions of a piece of media, choosing to interpret what I'm trying to say as "X is basically Y propaganda" (either from the angle of "can you believe this crazy sjw thinks X is Y propaganda?" or the angle of "OP is right, I can't believe I never noticed X was Y propaganda all along") that's a complete inversion of the causality I'm trying to establish. I don't think and have never claimed that the creators of the media I talk about are deliberately trying to promote the politics and ideological values that are implicit in it, but rather that these politics and ideological values pop up in the subtext because they are common and normalized enough in society and popular culture to go completely unquestioned and be replicated in the ideological framework of media, even (or especially) when this media isn't conceptualized by its creators as trying to make any kind of political or ideological statement in the matter.

When I chimed in about that post about the portrayal of the humans in Wall-e I wasn't claiming that the people behind the movie were deliberately trying to promote a poor view of fat people, but that they leaned into an already existing trope of fatness as visual shorthand for societal decay and widespread hedonism which is almost universally accepted and unquestioned due to the way fat people are already seen by society at large.

When I talk about how police procedural shows almost universally depict cops being forced to follow due process and respect people's rights as an obstacle that gets in the way of the heroes' ability to do their job and deliver justice™ to the dangerous criminal who's obviously guilty (who they could easily put behind bars if only there weren't so many rules preventing them from violating people's privacy to get the damn evidence they need) I'm not accusing the writers of those shows of making anti due process propaganda, I'm claiming it's deeply revelatory of widespread societal views about law enforcement and the justice system (which is why I'm kind of annoyed by all the comments in that old post going "OP there's actually a name for this it's called copaganda").

In general when discussing the implicit ideological assumptions of media (especially popular, mass-market media which is more likely to align with culturally hegemonic ideological biases) I think it's much more useful to think about it in terms of it reflecting the default, implicitly accepted ideas and values of the culture it was created in, rather than in terms of it promoting or even creating them.

I don't think people are convinced of having these ideas because they show up in media to promote them or legitimize them (which is the implication of calling something propaganda), I think these ideas show up in media because a lot of people already implicitly share those opinions and they are normalized and unquestioned enough that they don't even register as political implications to the average audience members or even to the creators.

imsobadatnicknames2

To put this a different way: All media communicates ideas. Many people consider it unthinkable that the pieces of media they like (often at least partially because they come from nominally progressive authors) might communicate ideas they find unsavory because they (whether consciously or not) mentally enshrine The Ideas The Author(s) Meant To Communicate as the one true interpretation of a work. But actually, when you divorce a text from The Ideas The Author(s) Meant To Communicate and take a honest look at it on its own, you can interpret The Ideas The Author(s) Actually Ended Up Communicating.

The Ideas The Author(s) Meant To Communicate and The Ideas The Author(s) Actually Ended Up Communicating have a variable degree with overlap with each other, depending on several factors, but they will very rarely (if ever) actually end up 100% in alignment with each other.

And there's a particular subset of The Ideas The Author(s) Actually Ended Up Communicating which I find particularly interesting to think about and discuss, namely: The Ideas The Author(s) Didn't Realize They Were Communicating, which often (but not always) manifests in the parts of the work where the authors(s) are not intentionally trying to convey any political or ideological position or make a statement about their beliefs, and often have to do with the things that they consider to be value-neutral, apolitical, or common sense. And I find this part of works of media the most interesting to think about and discuss because it's often the most deeply revelatory of the author's base-level beliefs and unexamined ideas about the world, which are in turn deeply revelatory of the cultural values under which a work of media was created.

theunfairfolk

the spirit is unwilling and the flesh it feels not so good also

dunmertitty

texas is funny. this one time a guy(in his truck) yelled at me(outside)(in summer) for wearing a cowboy hat(to provide shade)(while working)(in the sun) while i was working in the garden (in summer)(in texas)(on a sunny day)

sorry i’m a #FakeCowboy for wearing a cowboy hat(in the summer)(in the sun)(while working)(in a garden) instead of wearing my cowboy hat(meant for working)(in the sun) while driving a truck(air-conditioned) like a #RealCowboy who does Manly Work (with his truck)(spotless)(unblemished)(with AC)

dunmertitty

does someone have this post. i need to see it again

kuromi-hoemie

lakesbian

ive just seen the american psycho characters drawn as my little ponies and honestly i dont think patrick should have been given that cd as his cutie mark. i think you're doing it wrong if you're not making him a perpetual blank flank

lakesbian

look if you're gonna draw characters as my little ponies you have to remember that the cutie mark can't just be any old imagery you associate with them. it has to be Representative. it's their Unique Characteristic. to quote the pony wiki page i just googled, "Twilight and Applejack point out in Call of the Cutie how lacking a mark means that ponies still get to experience 'the thrill of discovering who they are and what they're meant to be'." there's narrative shit going on here there's Themes. and patrick bateman is NOT unique. he has NOT discovered who he is or what he's meant to be. the end monologue of the book is literally about how he has absolutely nothing going for him in this regard & is simply a vacant, hollow person merely vacuously gesturing at the idea of having depth. and when he rants about music, that's what he's doing there, too. his lyrical analysis is shallow/vaguely inaccurate summaries at best and completely warped at worst. everything he has to say about music--and in general--is intensely fixated on commodities and on appearing normal and intelligent while being entirely devoid of any intelligent or individual thought. so no, his cutie mark is not music. mr "missing that hip to be square is about making fun of conformist squares & proudly proclaiming that its actually about how fucking Awesome it is to be conformist and consumerist" does NOT have a fucking cd cutie mark. He's a blank flank. He has no unique identity. There is no future for him. There is no self identity. He's a fucking blank flank. okay? sorry i got a little passionate about this. there is no exit and he has no cutie mark

lakesbian

@epeboch see, I agree, but also, being a blank flank is against the social norm, so I imagine he has a fake one that he wears.

ok now this is important intellectual discussion about the subject. i agree i was personally imagining him like. always having it covered with pants or something. but he would have a fake cutie mark. he would totally get a fake cutie mark tattooed or something in my little american psycho world. in fanart however if this cannot be briefly conveyed then i think for the sake of clarity with regards to his character it needs to be blank. just so its clear he doesnt have one

letourswordsdecide

After the first time he chops somepony up with an axe he stands there, feeling nothing, no catharsis, but he still can't stop himself from turning to look at his reflection.

It's still blank. He looks at the axe as though it is the thing that has betrayed him.