Untitled

[newsandstuffisee]

[achillesinhighheels]

janicemascarenhass via IG

[theplantqueer]

[ID: Janice, a brazilian artist, drifting in the street with their wheelchair, with sparks flying out behind them and a whole rig of speakers modded onto the chair. The back of the chair says "Chillwave cripple punk". They're in a brown halterneck and ripped jeans, with braids and metal pieces attached like arm braces. /end ID]

[nitewrighter]

Parent: I just don't know how to get my child excited about reading!

*child grabs book off the shelf*

Parent: No, you're not reading that.

*child grabs another book*

Parent: Or that.

*child grabs another book*

Parent: Or that. *sigh* It's just such a shame that my kid isn't interested in reading!

[nitewrighter]

I need parents to understand that reading the same Lankybox graphic novel over and over is actually a gateway drug to Reading Stuff Other Than That. And shutting down books kids get excited about is a gateway drug to kids Not Reading Period.

[nitewrighter]

When I was a kid I would read Simpsons episode guides. Simpsons episode guides! I was reading literal summaries of a tv show in a book that was designed to be leafed around in rather than read cover-to-cover! And guess what! It built up positive associations with reading for me and established reading as a habit! Hell, because the Simpsons isn't necessarily a kids show, I could actually return to it and get more out of the jokes as I got older! Let kids read garbage! To quote Mac Barnett, kids have just as much of a right to read garbage as adults!

[i-am-bic]

"There's no platonic explanation for this" <-you need to be nicer to your friends. Right now

[esmeralda-anistasia]

#STOP SAYING 'PLATONIC' WHEN YOU MEAN 'CASUAL'#RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE PLATONIC AND ABSOLUTELY DERANGED

[puppygirllaika]

"X did nothing wrong" actually no, X did a lot of things wrong. X fucked up. But I also know that people like X live their lives under a microscope, and that accusations against them tend to get magnified by bias both conscious and unconscious alike, and frankly it scares the crap out of me that you have not only chosen not to question what you've heard, but that you are seeking such drastically disproportionate vengeance on a total stranger. that's not normal.

[puppygirllaika]

this post has generated a staggering number of comments/replies/asks all saying some version of "Nice try laundering your argument, but we all know you're talking about [specific person], and i hate you for defending them." and literally none of them have correctly identified who i was thinking about when I wrote this, but all of them have named a trans woman as said specific person.

[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.

[evilwriter37]

Insane to me that disabled people will say: "Hey, your glorified idea of revolution is going to get us killed" and then be treated as collateral damage or a necessary sacrifice. Like, yeah, the systems in place now are oppressive and literally based on eugenics, but a Revolution™️is not going to save us. How are we supposed to trust you (abled people) to put good systems in place if you're ready to kill us to get rid of the old one. That's not saving people. Treating disabled people as if they're ridiculous for not wanting to die and pointing out how bad a revolution would be for us is insane. You're actually a horrible person if you do this.

I don't know, folks, I'm just so fucking tired of us disabled people either being ignored or told to shut up. We're treated as worthless and expendable. I'm not dying for your Great Revolution™️. I need my meds.

[jayalaw]

This is what I said! A revolution needs to save everyone or we save no one. Lives aren’t expendable.

[germaerobics]

i keep seeing art that I can only describe as "y/n ship art" where ppl draw a character ppl wanna fuck paired with like. a faceless blank paper white bald silhouette that's supposed to represent you. and I genuinely wonder who it's supposed to appeal to. because if someone did that w a character I liked I couldn't take it seriously because I'd just be thinking Who The Fuck Is The Bald Homunculus

[shuttershocky-deactivated202512]

Western passport holders will never understand. To go anywhere with a third worlder passport like a Filipino one, you need your tax returns, certificate of employment, bank statements, marriage certificates, sometimes a recommendation from a citizen of the country you want to travel to, everything possible to prove that you have a job and a family at home and you're not planning to be an illegal immigrant, JUST to get hit with a rejection because the embassy didn't believe you had enough proof.

Did you have travel plans? Already booked the plane tickets and hotels? Fuck you, better hope they issue refunds (they don't).

[bloodmech]

Americans and Western Europeans will never understand how insanely hard and bothersome it's to travel anywhere with a weak passport, let alone immigrate.

You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.

You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.

But if you marry one of our first-world citizens, then fine, you can come. Because we can't upset them, after all, they are a real person, unlike you.

[xantissa]

EU Advice to people who have friends in places with weak passports- go to your department of foreigners and ask for something that called Formal Letter of Invitation or something similar. It usually is called something similar and costs a few euro/whatever currency you have. It will not be more than a fancy coffee at Starbucks or such place.

You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.

But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.

It's some effort, but if it's for a friend it's worth it. And it's way less costly than the ridiculous loops the friend is being forced to go through and pay for multiple 3rd party services just to get a freaking visa for a month.

[noelle-ism]

I will not call myself or other people "gooners" or "npcs" or "larpers". i will not call things i dont like "slop". i will not use terms like "-oids". i dont like how common language is slowly becoming more focused on shorthand terms for hate and apathy

[skylarrikin]

Tags from @crystaltoa

[batshaped]

Unrequited

bsky mirror

[acti-veg]

‘While bats can only sense the outer shapes and textures of their targets, dolphins can peer inside theirs. If a dolphin echolocates on you, it will perceive your lungs and your skeleton. It can likely sense shrapnel in war veterans and fetuses in pregnant women. It can pick out the air-filled swim bladders that allow fish, their main prey, to control their buoyancy.

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

-Ed Yong, An Immense World

[namu-the-orca]

Cetacean echolocation is one of those things that boggles your mind once you really start to think about the implications. They can see each others' hearts beating fast with fear or excitement. They can see if another dolphin is healthy, or pregnant; how the fetus is doing; if they have ingested debris. Their echolocation is also incredibly precise: a bottlenose dolphin could discriminate between cilinders differing in wall thickness by just 0.23 mm (0.009 inch) from 8 meters away!! And they certainly notice when something is off.

I'm not sure if I ever shared this story before here, but in Curacao, when I was allowed to assist in a guest interaction programme, there was suddenly consternation in the pool behind us. A guest had entered the water and the dolphins were going crazy, paying no heed to the trainers anymore. The lead trainer that was with me gave the dolphins to me to watch over while she went to help. When she came back she told me what had happened. The guest that had caused so much uproar had left the water again and was asked if he had done anything to upset the dolphins. He hadn't, and he couldn't imagine what was wrong... until he mentioned he had a pacemaker. The younger dolphins in the pool had never seen someone with a pacemaker before and apparently it rocked their world.

It was such a wild experience, and offered such a cool insight into how dolphins experience their world. I'll never forget it.

[aelita15]

Comment by @queeraroace

[untimelytophat]

@crabussy yeah I am not normal about, this is super cool.

[imrix]

@aenramsden

[byjove]

Heterosexual relationship culture is so alien to me and I don’t know if it’s the fact I’m not cishet or the fact I’m autistic but I hear so many things that make me go “Am I insane or are they?”

There’s a lot of hate on widowers and I saw a woman say “You cannot compete with a dead woman.” which is perhaps a reasonable statement to say if he’s constantly comparing you to his dead partner but that wasn’t what the post was about. And I realized “Oh my God, these people genuinely feel like they’re constantly in competition with their spouse’s exes and the ex being dead makes them feel insecure that they cannot best her.”

There’s also been an uptick in the ‘men and women cannot be ‘just’ friends’ rhetoric which I feel like is extremely dangerous and reflects the rise of fascism and sexism. Some of these stories of women feeling threatened by their husband’s female best friend have some merit and others are like “I feel angry that my husband still talks to the girl he grew up next door to and she and her wife are invited to family gatherings and included in family photos sometimes. Am I right to be suspicious?” No. No you’re not. I cannot imagine being you and living with that high level of stress and paranoia and constant torment and jealousy about your husband having a positive relationship with anyone who isn’t you.

[covington-shenanigans]

okay look i know this isn't relevant to this post past the second paragraph but. here's the thing. the facts of the case are as follows:

1) I am widowed. my Beloved Wife of Blessed Memory(tm) died in 2019

2) I got together with my current partner about 18 months later

3) when I am committing acts of Foolishness my current partner loves to gesture at the sky to my dead wife, like "do you see this shit, my liege" and regularly says to me things like "[wife's name] was right about this" when my Foolishness inevitably comes back to bite me in the ass

4) this happens. all the time

more importantly:

5) my current partner is on tumblr

6) they love to incessantly send me posts

WHICH MEANS:

7) they just sent me this post with this commentary:

8) they really, really are ganging up on me with her. god help us if there's an afterlife and those two ever actually meet. "eternal rest" my ass, i will never know peace again

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[fruitcakebro]

Holy moly they're GOOD. The music is fucking FIRE, and the outfits??? They're all so PRETTY???

[snoodly-boop]

Does anybody know who these are??? Do they have albums!! 🤩🤩🤩

[raspberryslut]

I was so curious that I had to go find this band. They're called Fortress Dwellers and they have a website with all of their socials!

They released an album too! I don't think this song is on it but the rest of their stuff is SO GOOD !!

MUSIC | Fortress Dwellers

Step into the fantasy world of Fortress Dwellers. A fantasy Renaissance musical collective blending epic original music, immersive performan

[swarnpert]

NO MORE SONGS UNDER 3 MINUTES. GO BACK INTO THE STUDIO

[beanmom]

I MISS BRIDGES I MISS REPRISES I MISS KEY CHANGES I MISS PRECHORUSES

[heyitsmeisa-blog]

[americana-plus]

jamr0ll:

This never stops being hilarious

[thelibrarina]

Do you love the color of the–

HONK

[caffeinewitchcraft]

A 75 yo man proudly came into the cafe wearing an Ultra Maga hat. I excused my barista from the register to handle the transaction.

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

Anyone wearing that type of shit and preying on workers for their own spank bank material is a brainless fucking sheep.

[headedoutleft]

something i want to mention because i’ve seen it growing as a trend online is that not only do people do this just for their own gratification, but watch for glasses. smart glasses are a growing segment of the consumer market, and creeps like this are harassing people in public in order to gather content without the victims being aware they’re being filmed

good job on how you handled it, op!