Goethes Groupie

Mareike | he/she | pfp by @fission_yeast on twitter

[hfourxor]

Hi, my name is James Webbony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Space Telescope and I am a telescope in space (that's how I got my name) and I have a five-layer aluminum-coated Kapton sunshield protecting my instruments and gold-coated hexagonal primary mirror segments like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Lady Gaga (AN: if you don't know who she is, get the hell out of here!). I'm not related to the Hubble Space Telescope, but I wish I was because he's a major fucking hottie. I'm an infrared telescope but I am much larger than Spitzer. I have 18 primary mirror segments. I also study exoplanets, and I go to a telescope school in L2 where I'm in orbit (I was launched in 2021). I can see distant galaxies (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly gold. I love space, and I take all my photos there. For example, today I was taking a photo of the Cartwheel Galaxy, which is about 500 million light years away. I was using my NIRcam, NIRspec, MIRI, and FGS-NIRISS. I was walking outside L2. It was around 1 million miles away from Earth and there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I unfolded my primary mirrors at them.

[sailermoon]

I’m such a “yay <3” person like unironically a hip hip hooray type of personality

[goethesgroupie]

This pride month, I am so incredibly grateful for the fact that I am now a fully educated teacher, not a teacher in training anymore, who can be unapologetically queer without facing any real repercussions. And all of that as a catholic religion teacher, even. Just a few years ago, I would not have been able to be myself without fear. But thanks to many courageous people. rules have changed and I can be who I am without hiding. I can inspire queer kids to be their true selves as well and I can be a colorful reminder of the precious diversity in which God created humans.

This pride month, I can teach classes using a rainbow binder and reminding students that the categories of male and female are not as simple as they seem to be at first glance. I can encourage queer teens in my classes to stay true to themselves despite all odds, both with silent notes secretly tucked into their graded essays and with discussions in class where I show zero tolerance for bigotry.

This pride month, I am surrounded by colleagues who appreciate what I bring to this school. I am allowed to show my personality and defend my values in the classes I teach. I am visible, not in hiding, and I am not afraid of being judged by anyone.

This pride month, I can finally embody the truth that “catholic“ really means “for everyone“.

[and-her-saints]

[fictionadventurer]

One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!

[starfieldcanvas]

the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.

[chocolatepot]

People like to tie the shift from courting to dating to the 1920s, but it's actually a bit older than that. (Caveat that everything I'm about to write is about the United States; the same thing may have happened elsewhere, but my sources are about American social history.)

Courtship was something that happened semi-publicly, in large part because women tended to live with family until they married. A man would come to pay a call and sit in the parlor with the woman he was courting ... and usually members of her family, like her parents or siblings (or uncles/aunts and cousins, if she was living with more extended relations). It was about pleasing all of them, and proving to all of them that he intended to marry her.

In the late 19th century, young working-class women started to move out of the family home for work, and not just to the other side of town — to cities across the state where they didn't know anybody. They usually stayed in boarding houses, where the landlady wasn't interested in hosting chaperoned evenings of courtship in front of the fire. As a result, they spent time with men in dance halls and bars, something akin to modern dating. On the positive side, this gave women the independence to make romantic and sexual choices away from their parents' influence. On the negative side, the women taken on dates (disparagingly called "charity girls") were frequently pressured to have sex in exchange for the money spent on them, money they were unable to spend on themselves due to their low wages.

Dating practices then spread to college students around the turn of the century. Among these upper- and middle-class young people with , the idea that the male party was owed sex in exchange for the date was not as much of a thing: dates were public courtship, held without the direct involvement of family members but still under the eyes of the community. This eventually spread out to become an ordinary part of teenagerhood in all classes. And yes, there was no assumption of exclusivity: teenagers were expected and encouraged to date widely, because going steady was a precursor to engagement, which they were too young for. (It was also the norm prior to WWII for couples attending dances to dance with other people at them. It was in fact the male partner's duty to find other people for his date to dance with! And he couldn't leave whoever he was dancing with unless she had a new dance partner.)

[marzipanandminutiae]

Similar to the non-exclusive 19th century courting, 19th century balls were also considered social events and it was thought rude (and sometimes even scandalous, for young unmarried women) to only dance with one person. Even married couples would not be together the whole night, that would spread themselves around to make sure everyone enjoyed the amusement equally

[awkward-pause]

Tony Hawk, mini-ramp 540, 1995

[beetroot-merchant]

im not a girl Unless ☝️ im being told to go piss

[burins]

thinking fondly of this meme I made for a coworker years and years ago

[burins]

this is going around again and the tags are full of people talking about printing it out to put in their breakroom or cubicle or sending it to their coworkers, which fills me with great joy. vast diversity of professions represented also. zoos. labs. summer camps. restaurants. garden centers. libraries. schools. many reports from the brave warriors of assorted retail. a truth universally acknowledged: if there is a sign a customer will not read it <3 and they don't read emails either <3

[ceruleanheaven]

being on the internet for more than three minutes

[catchymemes]

[scunthotter]

People who are making posts telling us what is happening over on threads, twitter, and Instagram are like war correspondents sending us reports from the front.

[punkitt-is-here]

quirky fourth wall breaking character but theyre just fucking. wrong about the medium theyre in. they keep making references to cinematic techniques and directorial styles and the other fourth wall breaking character is like "dumbass we're in a fucking comic book" and they are in a video game.

[totally-cis-offical]

Well currently they’re in a tumblr post but I see your point

[moon-of-curses]

we're actually in a youtube video if this turns out to be funny enough

[littlealienproducts]

Vintage 80s Piano Phone from MONTREALFLEAMARKET

[sabertoothwalrus]

I hate the videoification of everything. If I have to hear one more video of someone speaking closely into their shitty mic and I have to have all their yucky wet mouth noises and plosives and nose whistles and throat clearings and sniffles I am going to dig a vertical hole the exact dimensions of my body and I’m going to slither in head first

[sabertoothwalrus]

as someone with misophonia, the widespread popularization of asmr audio editing + people that are being pushed to make video content with no formal training and have no idea how to edit their audio (ex college professors, average joe tiktokers, etc) is literally my nightmare scenario. this is hell I am in hell

[sightofsea]

you tell a skinny person that fat people get bodyshamed and they conjure up this fantasy world where everybody around them is an eighteenth century vaguely european grandmother telling them they need to put some meat on their bones or they won't survive the winter

[jadeharleyinc]

kind of crazy no one has drawn the time traveler and the medieval peasant staring at the night sky with their bag of doritos

[jadeharleyinc]

in 2014 there would have been shipping fanart

[artofrezaafshar]

D