Ghost

Shadow. Est: 1990. trans*/Queer. screaming into the void here.

[callese]

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

pdfdrive.com

[left-reminders]

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[stabbyflower]

To clarify: slavery as "punishment for a crime" is legal across the US. These 5 states are voting on making it ACTUALLY illegal, even in prisons.

These are NOT the 5 states I'd have expected to be on the forefront of "make slavery actually really truly illegal" and it's a GOOD thing they're trying to do.

So go vote if you can.

[guerrillatech]

join the praxis discord

[plasticterrarium]

Alison Bechdel wrote this book and chose violence

[ampervadasz]

[tell-the-stars-hello]

this was cute until i realized the fish is probably trying to not get eaten

[killhitleragain]

A fish trying not to get eaten wouldn’t slow down when the “predator” slows down. It also wouldn’t constantly swim in a circle near the edge of the tank; It’d try hiding. Also a fish in a tank in a a public place that is constantly filled with people is not likely to see people as predators.

[darkwingsnark]

Animals, I think people tend to forget, also enjoy playing.

[bunjywunjy]

yeah that fish is absolutely playing with that kid, if it really wanted to escape it would just dive into the reef in the center of the tank!

(Moorish Idols are reef fish and naturally will seek shelter in the nearest nook or cranny if they get scared.)

many people don’t realize this, but fish aren’t stupid animals! most of them are on par with mammals like mice and squirrels in terms of intelligence, and they absolutely do play.

[i-need-glitter]

I was at an aquarium a few years ago and decided to sketch a fish. It came up to me.

I decided to flip the book around and pressed it against the glass. Fish lost it

Swam away then came back with MORE FISH

to this day I love those little sketches and I really love how I got the fish to bring me it’s friends

[mysticdoodles]

Hi! Professional marine biologist and aquarist here- fish absolutely play, and not only that, can be trained.

I accidentally trained a fish once through playing.

Let me explain.

The small-time aquarium I worked at about 4 years ago had a decent sized female Sheephead. Sheephead are bright red with the males sporting a black head, and get big. I’m talking almost 1m long at full maturity (and may or may not transition from female to male depending on the number of males present). Point is, even though not fully matured, this Sheephead was a bit of a heavyweight in her kelp forest tank with a length of about 1ft making her the resident Biggest Dog In The Yard. And she absolutely knew it. She would bully her tankmates if she wanted to steal their food.

The thing about this Sheephead- let’s call her Red- is that she had one heck of a ‘tude. Red was known to splash aquarists whenever they fed the tank, and at almost a foot long with a wide tail, her splashes had quite a bit of heft and would soak you from the torso down. We were advised to bring a towel or two to protect ourselves from most of the drenching. When it was my go-around to feed Red’s tank, I was fairly new to the little facility, but I had been warned in advance of Red’s penchant for food thievery. I noticed she would follow my hand movements, so I slowly moved to drop her food in a far corner, and fed her tankmates directly from my hands or by tong if they were too deep. I always made sure Red had plenty to eat, but I didn’t want her to associate the food with bad behavior, so I treated her to a bit extra food whenever she didn’t steal food. One day, she made a beeline to the surface so fast that she did a small jump, her entire head breaching the water. She wasn’t bothering her tankmates or doing anything remotely dangerous- and full disclosure, it was cute seeing a fish jump for joy- so I laughed and gave her another piece of food.

Naturally, positive reinforcement led to her connecting the dots that jumping at the surface, even the tiny jumps she was doing, meant she got more food.

This started to become an everyday occurrence, whenever I was assigned to feed Red’s tank. She would jump, just enough for her head to pop out, then she’d wait patiently for me to give her the treat she CLEARLY earned. It even got to the point that she’d open her mouth and I’d drop the food right into those massive jaws- this was preferable to her Kenghis Khan-ing her way through a shower of chopped squid like the Tasmanian Devil, as there was less risk of her accidentally (or purposefully) biting a tankmate that got too close. Red became a polite eater for the first time.

It wasn’t until I noticed she followed me around outside of feeding time that I realized Red was playing with me.

I never got splashed by Red even once. My coworkers, however, received quite the dunking whenever it was their turn to feed the kelp tank.

[sleepyowlsleeps]

There are many benefits to being a marine biologist

[youllalwaysfindyourwaybackhome]

King Charles’s staff given redundancy notice during church service for Queen

Exclusive: Employees said to be livid and shaken as up to 100 Clarence House employees told they could lose jobs

Dozens of Clarence House staff have been given notice of their redundancy as the offices of King Charles and the Queen Consort move to Buckingham Palace after the death of the Queen, the Guardian has learned.

Up to 100 employees at the King’s former official residence, including some who have worked there for decades, received notification that they could lose their jobs just as they were working round the clock to smooth his elevation to the throne.

Private secretaries, the finance office, the communications team and household staff are among those who received notice during the thanksgiving service for the Queen, at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on Monday, that their posts were on the line.

Many staff had assumed they would be amalgamated into the King’s new household, claiming they were given no indication of what was coming until the letter from Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s top aide, arrived. One source said: “Everybody is absolutely livid, including private secretaries and the senior team. All the staff have been working late every night since Thursday, to be met with this. People were visibly shaken by it.”

[babyfoxcollectionthings]

[pandariousgooch]

i never realized cuneiform was made with the corner of a cuboid tool, i thought the wedge shapes were carved such that you would press straight down with the tool at a 90° angle to the clay

[kitchenwitchupinthisbitch]

Wow! My mind is super into this new information

[ferret-on-pancakes]

[writingmaz]

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

[neil-gaiman]

I knew about half of this when I started writing. It’s amazing the stuff they don’t teach you in school that you have to work out on your own. And look, all beautifully laid out for you.

[lesboevils]

idk im really tired of 15-17 year olds who have never interacted with the gay community irl and spend too much time on tiktok trying to act like the authority on all that is lgbt+ 

[lesboevils]

  mean this in the kindest possible way. if you are too young and unsafe to go to your gay community center or pride here’s some ways you can connect to gay history.

the oral history project from act up

the lesbian herstory archives

the transgender archives of the university of victoria

the digital transgender archives

glbt historical society (digital)

lgbtq digital collaboratory

[lesboevils]

since it was suggested in the tags

anything that moves

the bisexual manifesto

[lesboevils]

the Samuel Proctor oral history project

a masterpost of lesile feinberg’s works by @genderoutlaws

more to come

[lesboevils]

the queer zine archive

the dyke march compilation 

paris is burning 

how to survive a plague

united in anger: a history of ACT UP

one archives

new york public library lgbtq archives

[lesboevils]

for today’s update:

screaming queens

a collection of audre lorde’s poetry

the arquives

dykes to watch out for

the bi woman’s quarterly (1/2)

[gryphye]

I am an old and didn’t know most of these resources existed. Thank you.

[prokopetz]

I fully understand that the preponderance of evidence is that George Lucas put absolutely zero thought into what Naboo’s culture was actually supposed to look like outside of what we see on screen, but as far as unintentionally effective worldbuilding goes, establishing that Naboo a. has a tradition of electing literal children as figurehead rulers of its planetary government, and b. apparently also has a tradition of assassinating these children with sufficient frequency that dressing up a bunch of other children as decoy targets has become standard operating procedure by the time of Padmé Amidala’s reign suggests that maybe the fact that this random backwater is a breeding ground for Sith Lords isn’t as unlikely as it initially appears.

[lemeute]

#yes! this is what i’ve been saying! #i’ve always headcanoned that the reason they have child monarchs in the first place #is to try and discourage the assassination attempts #like #alright i know you’ve poisoned our last five queens #but this one’s an adorable child! #you wouldn’t poison a CHILD would you? #and even if you would no you wouldn’t #because ACTUALLY you’ve poisoned the decoy

#and like… headcanon part 2: if I were trying to discourage assassination attempts #you know who I’d recruit to be my handmaids and decoys? #that’s right: the daughters of my political rivals #you thought you poisoned the queen? #psych you idiot that’s the minister of finance’s niece #fuck it maybe that’s YOUR niece

#sure you haven’t seen her since the Queen ‘invited’ her to join the Royal retinue #but are you really gonna risk it? #better to just cool it on the poisonings for a bit isn’t it? #try out this fun new thing called ‘diplomacy’ i really think you’ll like it!

#and like– maybe they did cool it and Naboo as a society moved on from that era #and kept the trappings as a reminder of how far they’ve come #or maybe they didn’t and the whole system is just threats behind smiling faces #who knows! certainly not us outsiders! I’ve heard Naboo’s a peaceful society and very fond of diplomacy actually #and what a quaint little government they have! their queen’s fourteen i hear #how very… sweet (via @allogrim )

[shutyourmoustache]

Jeff Bezos and Amazon are a fucking blight upon the working class. He got rich by treating rank and file employees like hot garbage toiling under dehumanizing, backbreaking conditions for shitty pay. When there are this many random strangers across various sectors/departments of a single company sharing similar horror stories, that can’t be dismissed as just a few disgruntled ex-employees. Grievances like these are why I quit using Amazon. They made my life easier at the expense of thousands of hardworking people being mistreated and disrespected behind closed doors. (thread)

[princessbubblegumandjustice]

Amazon’s turnover rate is so high, mostly because they treat everyone like garbage, that they are now at risk of running out of people to hire in the US by 2024, some locations, like California, may run out as early as the end of 2022.

[alanaisalive]

(this thread)

Had a bit of a rant this morning. Gender is a construct and biology is a joke. Trans lives matter.

[glitchhologram-deactivated20230]

“You don’t care what my biology is or what gender I am. You care that I’m not performing femininity to your standards.” 

That’s a fantastic way of putting it. It reminds me of that 2016 news story from 2016 of a woman, assigned female at birth, who was forced out of a women’s restroom by 3 male cops. She didn’t present as feminine in her baggy Men’s section clothes, short hair, and backwards baseball cap and that was enough “proof” to call the cops and drag her off. 

This is why TERF ideology is so self-destructive. TERF’s claim they’re “pro-women, pro-female empowerment, pro-keeping women safe” but put into practice, it harms AFAB women as well as trans women.  When women are told “you should conform more to patriarchal beauty standards or you deserve harassment”, forced to present their ID (containing their home address) to “prove” their gender, when the women’s restroom fills with male cops to drag out someone for being suspiciously androgynous. 

That isn’t Feminist at all! It’s an anti-woman stance. 

Excluding Transgender Women from Female Empowerment is Counter-Intuitive to the Cause! Trans Women are Women! Policing Gender Expression is Regressive! 

[gayfeatherfiend]

Yeah. I listened to a self-identified Black butch lesbian talk about how a white woman called the police on her for being in the bathroom and the white male officer asked to feel her chest to “prove” she was a woman.

The Black butch - cis - lesbian was giving this talk at an anti-bathroom bill rally by the way. She was revealing this horrible story to the audience to make them understand what transphobia really is, and really does. And yes it is related to racism.

Seriously. FUCK. TERFS.

[87437732156806533-deactivated20]

[silentiumlitwicks]

I can feel The dryness of those markers in my bones

[the-silent-screamer]

Fun fact those dry markers were supposed to have water put into them to make them work. You take off the bottom thing and pour water in and bam, instant marker success. Only learned about this four years after I’d lost my set 🙃

[bemusedlybespectacled]

WHAT

[a-girl-with-sparkling-lies]

WHAT

[bee-dot-exe]

WHAT

[maximumsunshine]

Hey. Reblog to save some poor kid lots of grief.

[no-lo-lo]

Fucking what?!

[tinydooms]

Every ‘90s child on Tumblr raises their head in outrage.

[pseudophan]

mads mikkelsen and robert pattinson need to do a movie together just because the promo interviews would be chaos personified

[pseudophan]

don’t hide this in the tags say it loud and proud

[smilingformoney]

Interviewer: So what makes this film good?

Rob: It sucks.

Mads: I haven’t seen it.

[liberalsarecool]

Where is the 'people don't pay anymore' articles?

[parlezvousladybug]

Adding the link because this is a must read

Analysis Shows 'Quiet Fleecing' of US Workers—Not 'Quiet Quitting'—Is the Real Problem

"Workers are more productive than ever, but their pay hasn't kept pace while top 1% wages have skyrocketed," says the Economic Policy Instit

[irishshauna]

[marmotini-of-the-world-unite]

Learning this was an intentional genocide changed me.

[fighterkimburgess]

I know most of those following me know this, but just to make it super clear. An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger/the Great Famine) was a deliberate genocide of the Irish people. There was enough food grown in Ireland to make sure everyone was alive and healthy and survived. Instead it was exported, sent to England and elsewhere for profit while men, women, and children starved in the streets. While the English landlords fucked off and evicted starving families who couldn’t afford rent. While babies were too weak to cry and died at the side of the road.

They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. And we owe so much thanks to the other oppressed peoples, in particular the Choctaw Nation and the Masai, who sent money and grain to us.

Let me repeat that. The Choctaw Nation who had just gone through the Trail of Tears sent us money to try save Irish lives. It’s led to an understanding between Irish people and Native American tribes, most recently when we donated to the Navajo and Hopi fundraisers for COVID-19 relief, because while it may be a different tribe, Irish people will never forget those who helped us and we’ll help back.

The entire population of the island is less than seven million people. We’re still a million less on this island than pre famine. And it’s not that long ago. My grandmother’s grandparents lived through it. We’ve told the stories, it literally changed the DNA of the country. We have a national fear of renting, because so many people were evicted. People joke about Irish people always offering loads of food, but it’s because there’s that cultural memory of not being able to.

They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. We will not let them take our lives, we will not let them take our language. We lost so much, but we will not lose it all.

[saltedweather]

This is why I get so angry when people say “it was the potato famine, it was because of monoculture/microbes.”

Nope. The potatoes were the only thing Irish people were allowed to fucking eat, because as pointed out, the rest of the crops they were growing were for their landlords to ship to England. So when the one “worthless” crop they were allowed to eat rotted in the field, the English crown, empire, landlords, all shrugged and carried on. People starved to death lying next to productive fields.