[josephbrassey]

“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.

[sevenfactorial]

Went to read (a journal article) outside the math building and found that someone had been studying galois theory.

No clue who. I didn't see anything that seemed too unreasonable for an undergrad class, but I also don't know if they even do galois theory in the undergrad abstract class here.

[sevenfactorial]

It was the grad class! (The intro/qualifying sequence one.) They were out there again, including the professor, and some other professors took photos :)

[humanoidhistory]

The Sun rises over Earth in a postcard illustrated by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, recalling the 1965 mission when he became the first human to walk in space.

[carryonmysociallyawkwardson]

Alexei Leonov was a prolific and talented artist, and drew and painted many pictures inspired by his experiences in space

This particular picture is rather special though, because he drew the first draft for it while in space using coloured pencils he took with him:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/31/first-picture-space-cosmonauts-science-museum-alexei-leonov

[bullgirldick]

The first walk in space coincided with the first art in space. Humans literally can’t not do art

[helila]

my dude Alexei made some insanely cool space art

As I pulled myself back toward the airlock, I heard Pasha talking to me: “It’s time to come back in.” I realized I had been floating free in space for over 10 minutes. In that moment my mind flickered back for a second to my childhood, to my mother opening the window at home and calling to me as I played outside with my friends, “Lyosha, it’s time to come inside now.”

[x]

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[isquirtkerosine]

That elderly couple who volunteers at the soup kitchen after church on Sundays and attends every town hall meeting has done more community direct action than 99% of internet leftists 🤷🏽‍♀️

[isquirtkerosine]

#lol this post is stupid spup kitchens were created by the gov after they literally destroyed black radical organizers lives#and since when does going to a town hall meeting and working within the system help anybody in any significant way

100% agree homeless people should just starve and dumpster dive till le epic revolution happens!

and for sure local politics is so stupid it only handles dumb things like your schoolboard, judges, infrastructure, and rent laws! now tweets? Thats where the real work happens! 

[what-even-is-thiss]

Local activism stopped garbage collection from being privatized in my hometown and local activism is what defunds the police and keeps libraries and community gardens open and gets done most of the things people waiting around for a revolution claim they want. The weird former hippie suburban wine moms donating bags of quinoa chips and money to the food pantry I go to sometimes have done more for me materially then any defeatist political rant on tumblr ever has.

[iamnmbr3]

#local politics#so many people saying local elections won’t do anything for police brutality#when a lot of places in the US elect their sherrif!#and judges!#and all the other people in charge of the police!#but no I’m just a filthy moderate for suggesting we use EVERY tool at our disposal to improve the state of things (tags via @sofiadragon)

[melyzard]

My spouse goes to every single school meeting they host, and often is the only person to show up. When the school was debating putting The Ten Commandments in every school room, they held a meeting about it. Guess who was the only parent to be at that meeting? Guess who voted “no”? Guess what the school released as a memo after the meeting? (“Due to popular vote we will not be hanging religious writings in our school rooms.”) And this is just the only time I can prove his vote was the deciding factor in policy change, I know he’s probably swayed more changes (or prevented changes), like taking books from the library or imposing collective punishments on students or letting cops run around inside the building. Because he always shows up.

Go to your local meetings. Vote in the small elections. You will see direct, real change in your world.

[timemachineyeah]

Imagine if we took the cop budget and turned it into a free ride service budget

[timemachineyeah]

Bringing this post back because I wanna talk about it more.

Read an article in the local paper submitted anonymously by a woman who got a DUI two years ago.

My first instinct was to hate her. Because I hate drinking and driving. Viscerally. Anyone who knows me knows how intense I can be about impaired driving of all kinds (drunk, high, tired). It’s not worth it. It gets people killed. I lost a good friend to a drunk driver. Don’t ever. I’ve gotten in fights with people! I have stolen keys!

“Don’t ever” was, in fact, the point of her writing it. But not because of the danger posed to others. Because of how much a single DUI had ruined her life for two straight years. This also didn’t garner much sympathy from me, because obviously the REAL reason not to drink and drive is because you could kill someone. What do I care if someone irresponsible is inconvenienced?

Anyway, this woman was pulled over after leaving a bar where she had two beers to drive a few blocks to her friend’s place. This didn’t really make me more sympathetic because I’m a hardass when it comes to drinking and driving, but she wasn’t pulled over for any kind of impaired driving. She was driving perfectly. It was clearly the kind of stop that happens late at night when the cops are just fishing. The cop made up something about her stickers being placed wrong or a faulty light, before making her take the normal physical impairment tests (as someone with dyspraxia these scare the shit out of me, but that’s neither here nor there) which she passed just fine. In fact, her driving was perfect, her reactions were perfect. But then came the breathalyzer. And her blood alcohol was just too high.

She got arrested.

And the rest of article was her detailing her attempts since to try to get her license back.

The for profit companies she had to take classes from, the for profit companies who make you pay to install the breathalyzer in your car, how if you are able to plead poverty to get aid for that installation you also have to commit to going once a month to a for profit company that will calibrate your discounted breathalyzer and how if you don’t go your car will get remotely bricked and how the pandemic interrupted the hours of these places without notice meaning her car needed to be towed when she missed an appointment after the place was closed when she expected it to be open, how this added to her sentence, how she lost her insurance.

As I read this, I thought, sure, about how much I hate drunk driving. About my knee-jerk, visceral lack of sympathy. And I asked myself:

Does any of this actually make me feel safer?

And it doesn’t. It doesn’t make me feel any safer at all. This woman was writing this article to say “Don’t drink and drive. Not even once. It’s not worth it.” But what I got from it was, these punitive measures aren’t preventing people from drinking and driving. They’re just… giving cops and for-profits fun new ways to mistreat and exploit normal people. People we, people I personally, can feel disinclined to protect because of judgments we have about them.

Meanwhile, people are still going to drink and drive.

And I thought about what would work. What would make me feel safer. And you know what would make me feel safer? If people who hadn’t planned ahead could still get a ride home. I’d much rather someone call the police (or a service that’s one of the many we institute to replace them) and go “I drove here but I don’t think I’m safe to drive home” and have the reply be “someone will be right there”. Then a pair of public servants show up, one to drive you home and one to drive your car home, and you get home safe.

I would love for traffic safety to be, like, the actual goal of how we manage traffic laws.

But more than that, punitive attempts to control people, blatant disproven behaviorism, doesn’t work. If your political philosophy is about finding the “bad” or “undeserving” and ensuring they struggle, I can’t identify with it. It’s hard to come up with a type of “common crime” that I have more disdain for than drinking and driving, but disapproving of the way this woman has been treated is not the same as justifying her actions. I don’t care! I don’t care if she learns her lesson! I don’t care if I like her! Everything you’re doing to her for a single breathalyzer failure is not keeping the roads safer!

The moment she failed the breathalyzer, you should’ve just given her a ride. That’s all I need.

[chilewithcarnage]

no amount of budgeting will make up for the fact that we simply do not make enough money

[raddagher]

no amount of therapy will make up for the fact that we simply do not make enough money

[moss-wizard]

no amount of working will make up for the fact that we simply do not make enough money

[yourlocalnautilus]

the fact that generative A.I. has created a completely new fundamental doubt in reality (checking to see if an artwork we see is manmade or not) and doubt in the instinct of enjoying art is unforgivable. its sickeningly tragic, and i mean it. NOTHING is worth this price and i hope that everyone will one day realize this.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

congrats on finally winning your war on pennies!

YOU CAN'T CHANGE CURRENCY WITHOUT AN ACT OF CONGRESS AND IF CONGRESS WAS ON FIRE IT COULDN'T PASS THE POUR WATER ON CONGRESS ACT.

[barryogg]

I wish all environmentalists a very suck cocks in hell

[barryogg]

I wish that this person would receive perfect clarity of mind about her actions and their consequences, and I wish a gun with a single bullet would be placed before her so that she could make good use of this mindstate

[barryogg]

Step 1: Mandate alternatives to emission-heavy systems

Step 2: Fail to provide energy for said systems

Step 3: ???

Step 4: ??? still

Step 5: Guess I’ll die

[barryogg]

Ma! Maaaaa! The Germans are blowing up their power plants again!

[shieldfoss]

[i-love-linux-and-need-cat-ears]

my favorite graph regarding nuclear

[dragon-in-a-fez]

reminds me of the time I said something pro-nuclear to my ex and they said “I don’t think you’d feel that way if you grew up near a nuclear plant like I did” and I asked “oh what happened” and they were like “well. nothing. nevertheless”

[headspace-hotel]

no discussion of nuclear power is complete without the fact that coal and other fossil fuels very much do produce toxic and radioactive waste

[theemeraldwings]

Anyone who is anti-nuclear is anti-environment. Nuclear is safe, it is clean, and it is even more energy dense than fossil fuels. It might not be truly renewable, but there’s so much energy available that it doesn’t make much of a difference. To try and shut it down is to put down one of your strongest allies in the fight against fossil fuels.

[whisperingsoup]

Everytime this comes around again, I remember that there was a push to refit coal power plants to run on nuclear, due to the fact that other than the power source, your still just boiling water so everything else is the same.

They couldn’t get the ok to refit the coal plants tho, because the coal power plants were too radioactive to pass nuclear power plant standards.

THE COAL PLANTS WERE TOO RADIOACTIVE TO BE TURNED INTO NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.

[chestersbraincell]

Broth and tea are the closest things we’ll get to potions I think. Like how cauldron-like is it that we put these BONES and LEAVES into a bunch of heated water to harness their essence for status effects such as health buff or relaxed

[wizard-council-bureaucrat]

you too can be a wizard this season with mysterious brown ooze that you can add to water in your cauldron to make a delicious potion

[littleluciddreamer-blog]

Reblog if you're hoping 2011 will be a fresh start.

[jellogram]

It's crazy how humanity invented bicycles and decided to try it with one big wheel and one small wheel BEFORE they tried having two wheels the same size

[experimentaloatmeal]

This is not quite true, though it would be very funny if it was.

The classic "old bicycle" we're all thinking of, which looked like this:

Is actually a technological compromise developed in the early 1870s. The very first bicycle was invented in 1817 and it looked like this:

It had no pedals and the rider would push it along with their feet, the same way toddlers learn to ride bikes today.

In about 1864, a mechanic in france came up with the idea of adding pedals to the front wheel, making the first self-propelled bicycle.

This was a great improvement because it's a lot easier to move and a lot more fun than the Fisher Price version above. It was a big thing for about five years, but there were some drawbacks.

First, because the pedals were directly attached to the front wheel, you couldn't go very fast without moving your legs incredibly quickly, which takes a lot of effort. It also is kind of awkward to steer because your legs are in the way of the wheel.

The other issue was bumps. Roads were not very smooth in the 1870s, most of them were unpaved and full of ruts, potholes, and rocks. And at first there were no rubber tires, just wooden wheels with metal rims. Altogether this made for a very bumpy ride.

The big front wheel, which was made possible by the invention of wire spokes and solid rubber tires, solved all of these problems. A big wheel runs over bumps more easily: think of how rough it is to ride roller skates over bumps in a sidewalk that you would hardly notice on a bike. And the bigger the wheel, the faster you can move with one push of the pedals. Having the seat on top of the wheel, instead of behind, also makes steering less cumbersome.

There are of course drawbacks to this design, in particular being so high up makes it very easy to go over the handlebars if you crash, and more likely to hit your head or break your arm.

Two more inventions helped drive this comical beast into extinction and bring back a more balanced, and safer, bicycle.

The first was the pneumatic tire, which contains a cushion of air, and makes for a much softer ride compared to a solid tire or a metal one. The cushion effect eliminates the need for a big wheel to smooth out the bumps in the road.

The second invention was the sprocket and chain drive. This lets you put the pedals anywhere you want on the bike, and with a big gear at the pedals and a small one at the wheel, you can get more speed out of a small wheel.

The first modern bicycle to combine a sprocket and pneumatic tires was built in 1879. It was an instant hit, not just because it was much less dangerous, but because the low drag profile and the smooth pneumatic tires made for a faster ride, and the trendsetters in cycling, then as now, were the racing community. There have been plenty of innovations and modifications in the years since, from ten-speed gears to carbon fiber frames, but these are all variations on a theme. The basic form of the bicycle has not changed.

Happy riding.

[jellogram]

Okay full disclosure I was high as a kite when I made this post, otherwise I might have fact-checked my joke before posting, but this is awesome. Thank you for the bicycle lore.

[orvillepeckspocketpussy]

one thing i am quite grateful to Brian David Gilbert for is the phrase "If you needed ME to tell you that... I'm glad I told you that."

it has been etched into my brain for the past six years, fundamentally altering how i consider knowledge gaps held by others, as well as myself. people usually need to be told stuff before they can know it! that's how knowing stuff works! this is an extreme example played for laughs but it's a legitimately helpful philosophy!!

[star-anise]

Feminist fantasy is funny sometimes in how much it wants to shit on femininity for no goddamned reason. Like the whole “skirts are tools of the patriarchy made to cripple women into immobility, breeches are much better” thing.

(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)

The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”

Hm yes story checks out

peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts

skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything

skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life

no skirts for anyone, that’s definitely the moral of the story here

[beatrice-otter]

Now, a skirt that’s too long will be harder to work in–skirts brushing the floor may look elegant, but is also a tripping hazard–but that is not a problem with skirts in general, it’s a problem with that particular skirt not being suited to being worked in. Skirts are very practical. You can hike them up if you’re hot or need more freedom to maneuver (this is called “girding your loins”). If you need to carry something, you can lift up your hem and make a pouch just like the person in yellow in the bottom picture above. If you need to handle something hot, a skirt generally has enough material you can hold it out from your body to use as a hot pad. (Tight skirts were only used by people who didn’t need to work/move until the invention of elastic fabric.)

[star-anise]

Long skirts were markers of class almost as much as gender. Both men and women in the European middle ages wore extravagantly long garments to indicate both “I’m so rich I can afford THIS MUCH fabric” and “I don’t walk in the mud, I pay servants to do that for me.”

Skirt hiking: Definitely a Thing. (Janet’s tied her kirtle green/above the knee and not below…)

Love this post, and want to add: another example of the “empowerment means shitting on feminity” is the bizarro way that this genre attacks basic survival skills like cooking and sewing as pointless, inferior or mutually exclusive with masculine pursuits (like your lady knight should probably know how to cook for herself and sew her own wounds and patch her clothes while she’s on her quest through the North to rescue her boyfriend, or this happy couple is in for a world of hurt!)

Or to quote one of my all favorite posts, “fuck women’s contribution to our survival.”

[whatevercomestomymind]

Historically, skirts have been the garment of choice for almost every culture, gender and class. Breeches, or pants, were created specifically for riding horses.

[eric-coldfire]

Meanwhile, men wearing skirts.

[star-anise]

*bangs gavel* NEEDS MOAR SKIRT

(Seriously, the notes on this post are a goldmine for people mentioning their cultures where men wear skirts. I couldn’t fit them all in. This is missing toooons of cultures from every part of the globe, especially Asia, Africa, and the Americas.)

Ancient Rome

Modern Morocco

Medieval Europe

Traditional Saudi Arabia

16th century Russia

Traditional Papua New Guinea

16th century Turkey

Modern India

[wowsyri]

i deliver propane.  this means driving a large truck, then dragging a heavy hose up to one hundred and fifty feet through people’s yards, usually in deep snow and severe cold.  i was the first woman my company ever hired.

and when i showed up for work in a skirt, all the men went BALLISTIC.  they told me i’d trip, i’d get stuck, i’d freeze, i’d quit within the month when i found that i had underestimated how hard the work was.  i asked what they thought women wore to work outside before the mid twentieth century, and they told me “women didn’t work outside then.  they stayed in the house all the time.”  and that’s when i learned that hatred of the skirt is another way of erasing women’s history–if you can pretend that all women were too hobbled by their clothes to even function, you can pretend that they never contributed jack shit to society.

anyway i’ve been doing this job in a skirt for three years now, and all the men should be jealous of my complete range of movement and infinite layering potential.

[skyprowler]

This post gets better everytime it crosses my dash!

Also remember the Romans at least classified everyone who wore trousers a babarian so¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[prismatic-bell]

Pictured: a whole bunch of people who couldn’t do anything, apparently.

Incidentally, I work in a factory and show up in skirts all the time. I have never had a skirt-related injury on the job.

[brenshor]

Read a fucking comic man

[ordinaryschmuck]

The third Superman story ever is about him screwing with a party of billionaires because the head one cut the safety budget that almost got his miners killed. I'm not kidding.

[leebrontide]

One sad side effect of big box stores is that you just don’t get lifelong hyper fixation guy access like you used to.

Like yeah I can go to Menards and buy a door.

But it used to be I could go to the door store, and speak to a man whose sole passion in life was doors and who would talk about the history of door insulation patterns over the last 50 years without stopping to breathe.

That man is gonna find me the BEST door option for me.

Seriously my neighborhood had one of these. They were across the street from the lighting shop owned by the guy who could tell you the exact date, off the top of his head, that your property got electrical wiring based on your address.

Now these guys rarely get to own a shop, make a good living, and sell the very finest doors for decades. They’re relegated to Reddit posts which are informative but ultimately do not replace door guy having a door shop.

I don’t want to talk to some miserable, underpaid 20 year old who was in plumbing last week and in doors this week and doesn’t know a hammer from a hanger.

I want my door guy back.