Aurora Australis @elennare - Tumblr Blog

Lots of drama in our household

one way to combat this is to be confidently proactive and no-shame reactive. they're still little enough that they think the world of you as a parent or an adult. the key is being casual instead of shocked and upset.

"oh, i don't think that's just for girls. it's pink, but anybody can like pink."

"oh yeah, purple is a great color! colors are for everybody."

"you're right-- i am a girl. that means i have a strong body just like a boy, and i can [climb/use a drill/take out the trash] with my arms."

"hm i don't think we're letting private parts make a decision about this toy."

"if other kids give you a hard time, you can just say you like this toy (or this color) and that's why. if anyone is rude to you, it might hurt, but they're the ones being wrong."

"i think it's cool that we both have eyes that can cry if we're feeling overwhelmed or sad. it helps us communicate how we feel."

"some kids might tell you this is for girls, but it's really just for people. we can have fun and play with anything safe that's interesting. it's sad that some kids don't have adults that teach them that."

"it's important to play and learn all kinds of skills. what if you find out you like to cook? what if someday you have a friend who needs help?"

"you know who buys the MOST glitter? people who make paint for boats. guys who go fishing spend more time with glitter than anyone else."

"it's divided into girls and boys because some grownups maybe care more than they should about colors. but that's not a real rule."

like. you gotta prepare them to stand up for themselves and you gotta normalize *recognizing* and dismissing those comments, or they WILL start to win out. walk your toddler sons or nephews down all the toy aisles. let them hold a baby doll. take your girls through the hot wheels and nerf sections.

and don't make the mistake of swinging to the other extreme. trying to talk a four year old boy into the pink version, or trying to talk a four year old girl out of wanting a frilly dress are JUST as gendering. you're sending signals that they should ignore their own preferences to appease an adult's preferred worldview, and they're going to equally cave when it's in support of an ideology you don't like. let them gravitate toward what they like and give them the language to recognize it as personal preference-- to identify and disregard comments, or defend others-- even if their preference is 100% mainstream.

the goal isn't to make sure little boys have pink toys and play house, or that little girls get construction tools and wear blue.

the secondary goal is to strip away the gender-signaling in toys and prepare kids to stand up for OTHER HUMANS.

the primary goal is to equip kids to play and wear what they like without shame or fear.

and it's so fucking sad it starts so early, but it can work both ways-- you can have kids going home from the same daycare suddenly equipped by peers to say, NO I DO WANT THE TOOLBOX FOR MY BIRTHDAY, NOAH SAYS HIS MOM FIXES EVERYTHING IN HER HOUSE and I LIKE THE ONE WITH FLOWERS, SOPHIE SAYS HER DAD LOVES FLOWERS.

maybe this means liam in kindergarten spends most of his playtime with baby dolls and glitter stickers. or maybe it means liam plays with monster trucks and wears red shirts with basketballs, but will tell a peer, "oh it's cool that you like pink. is that your favorite color? i like red but pink icing is my favorite on cake." and it's because a beloved uncle or big brother or parent said, "oh strawberry icing is MY favorite, too! i always want pink icing on my cake. the cake doesn't care if i'm a boy or a girl."

or maybe liam had an experience like my five year old, where he was going across a construction store parking lot in his bright pink crocs and a man tumbled out of his SUV fifty feet away to stick a leg in the air and yell, "HEY, WE BOTH HAVE PINK CROCS!" just to be nice. because pink is for humans.

tl;dr -- i get the grief here. i've felt it, too. but the way we change this isn't with shock or dread. it's with intention and grace and being involved. in modeling conversation and comments without spite or criticism.

galileosballs

There was a kid in my class the other day who asked me "why do you sound like a boy?" to which my response - after a startled pause - was "well, why do you?"

He of course answered "because I am a boy"

(I was prepared for this)

I then replied "well, do you sound like a boy because you are a boy, or are you a boy because you sound like one"

This perplexed the child, hopefully complicating his understanding of gender forever. When in doubt, the Euthyphro dilemma is yours to deploy.

morhath

I hate when king arthur has all these fussy little steps in the instructions and you're like "no way do these fussy little steps matter" but you try it and they do. they matter so much.

bookaddict7342

I thought you meant Camelot quests and I was like "that's fair, 'never pick a four leaf clover on the last Wednesday of the month' IS a fussy little step that shouldn't matter" but then I was like "wait isn't that also a flour company"

morhath

nooo I am not a beleaguered knight of the round table I am making elaborate focaccia 😭

copperbadge

"I hate when King Arthur has all these fussy little steps" -- Camelot cleaning staff, probably

bobbole

Sheila Norgate, Raven with Issues

nerdvanauniverse

Harrow's ciunterpart to Nona's Worm with Problems

lordtableshark

prospitianescapee

[image description: screenshots of a series of Tweets, transcribed below:]

Joel Burgess (@JoelBurgess) - 2018-08-21, 7:57 AM

Alright, so inspired by @NPurkeypile’s bee post yesterday, here is one of my favorite bits of Skyrim oral history - the myth of the treasure fox.

I’ve told this story before in talks/etc, but I don’t think I’ve shared it with twitter. Here goes.

druid-for-hire

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

ambrosial-sunshine

For the painting especially there’s a beauty in depicting some of our most advanced technology as synonymous with the most ancient. Very few people throughout history have had the privilege of seeing the face of Jupiter but many would recognize the sling thrower immediately.

dajo42

5001 being divisible by 3 doesnt feel right

dajo42

shinyhappygoth

Shortcuts to determine if an integer is divisible by:

This is a given.

If the last digit is divisible by 2 (a.k.a. even), then so is the whole number.

If the sum of the digits is divisible by 3, then so is the whole number. The recursivity of this means that if the sum has multiple digits, you can add them up again until you get a single digit and see if it's 3, 6, or 9.

Like the rule for 2, but check if the last two digits are divisible by 4.

If it ends in 5 or 0.

If the rules for both 2 and 3 apply.

No shortcut. Alas.

Like the rules for 2 and 4, but check if the last three digits are divisible by 8. (Yes, this pattern keeps going for 16, 32, etc.)

Like the rule for 3, but the sum of the digits (or the sum of the sum of the digits, etc.) must be 9.

If it ends in 0.

k25ff

There are actually several rules for 7 (there's a bunch of rules for all of these, in fact). Here's a simple one:

"Subtract twice the last digit from the rest, check if it gives a multiple of 7. Repeat until it's a small enough multiple for you to recognise."

Example:

92911: 9291 - 2 = 9289

-> 9289: 928 - 18 = 910

-> 910: 91 - 0 = 91

-> 91: 9 - 2 = 7

Therefore 92911 is a multiple of 7 (13,273 x 7)

sometiktoksarevalid

bisexualbaker

Happy Moon Landing Eve! Remember to leave out milk and cookies for Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, and don’t let Michael Collins convince you to prank NASA!

bisexualbaker

If Tumblr is still here next July 19th, I fully expect this post to obliterate my activity feed.

gailynovelry

The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.

sabertoothwalrus

don’t you hate when you feel like you’re forgetting something but you can’t remember what it is because you forgot about it and the absence of what it’s supposed to be is so present in your brain it’s like a popup ad in the corner of your field of vision and you can’t close out of it and you can’t see what it says but you also can’t see past it either. am I making any sense at all

sabertoothwalrus

it’s like someone put a sticky note on my forehead as a reminder but the words were written on the other side

teaboot

I hate you Ozempic craze I hate you 'heroin chic' I hate you weight loss ads on public radio I hate Burn Fat Fast ads every thirty seconds I hate you I hate you I hate you