On and on and on

Stuff.

[podencos]

I’m too lazy for dating. Why can’t someone materialize out of nowhere and agree that we should spend the rest of our lives together

[keplercryptids]

i’ve been on hold at my library for a book about asexuality for a few weeks and i just read an article about some concepts in the book re: consent. and holy shit. blew my mind. i’ve NEVER read about consent in the context of a relationship with an ace and an allo that resonated so strongly with me, and as a person in such a relationship!! it’s so!!! i’m even more excited for the book now.

for anyone interested, the article is How to Negotiate Better Consent: An Asexual Perspective and the book i’m waiting for is Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society and the Meaning of Sex.

[keplercryptids]

god okay, just to gush about this more, the author suggests using the categories of enthusiastic, willing, unwilling and coerced consent (rather than just “enthusiastic consent” or “no means no”). i really recommend reading the whole article linked above, but what blew my mind is the distinction between enthusiastic and willing consent. it gets broken down like this:

Enthusiastic consent:

When I want you

When I don’t fear the consequences of saying yes OR saying no

When saying no means missing out on something I want

Willing consent:

When I care about you though I don’t desire you (right now)

When I’m pretty sure saying yes will have an okay result and I think maybe that I’d regret saying no

When I believe that desire may begin after I say yes

and like!!! it made me realize i may have never actually enthusiastically consented in my life, but like, that doesn’t mean i have never or cannot consent! i almost always fall into the “willing consent” framework and i’ve never seen that….validated anywhere. anyway, it’s just given me this perspective about my sexuality and consent in general and better ways to relate to my partner and!!! idk!!! thank goodness for other ace people, is what i’m saying.

[queeranarchism]

This is very useful and a lot of sex work can also be best understood as willing consent, where the indirect consequences of having sex (getting paid) are what is desired and the direct consequences (having probably-mediocre sex with someone you don’t actively desire) are not considered so negative that they outweigh the indirect consequences.

Which is a definition of consent that gives sex workers agency and sees their consent as a choice made again and again based on the pros and cons, not something that is coerced and also not something that always exists by default simply because they are sex workers.

Recognizing willing consent is probably validating for a lot of people who have consent to sex without meeting the definition of enthusiastic consent. 

[whitepeopletwitter]

[catrinecat]

I won’t lie, the way everyone talked about Sir Terry Pratchett made it seem like he was alive, I literally just found out he died 5 years ago. I guess the saying “memories keep people alive” was very true for Terry Pratchet. Huh.

[mustangsally78]

That's rather the point. #GNU Terry Pratchett

[catrinecat]

GNU?

[mustangsally78]

Bless.  GNU is something from the Discworld books that Terry came up with (I’m quoting the Guardian here): Pratchett’s 33rd Discworld novel, Going Postal, tells of the creation of an internet-like system of communication towers called “the clacks”. When John Dearheart, the son of its inventor, is murdered, a piece of code is written called “GNU John Dearheart” to echo his name up and down the lines. “G” means that the message must be passed on, “N” means “not logged”, and “U” means the message should be turned around at the end of a line.  . .  .  The code causes Dearheart’s name to be repeated indefinitely throughout the system, because: “A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2015/mar/17/terry-pratchetts-name-lives-on-in-the-clacks-with-hidden-web-code While we GNU Terry Pratchett, he goes on infinitely.

[madeleineengland]

Church of San Tiburzio, Parma, for the Florilegium exhibition by Rebecca Louise Law, during the Institutional event “Parma Capital of Culture 2020” (Italy)

Rebecca Louise Law is a british artist, best known for artworks and floral installations created with natural materials, and her talent would offer an alternative concept of beauty.

For this specific exhibition they used 200 thousand flowers. The title Florilegium comes from the Latin “to keep and to preserve flowers”.

[prettynerdieworks]

this show is actually a comedy, change my mind

[scoutsmoocrew]

Me: we don’t know what plants experience or don’t and it seems arrogant to automatically assume they’re completely inanimate and unfeeling

People: lose their damn minds at me

[fumblebeefae]

Oh hey I studied animal cognition so I 100% agree. As early as the 1960’s scientists didn’t believe animals had any captivity for cognition beyond eating, mating, sleeping.

Researchers like Associate Professor Irene Pepperberg, were often mocked for suggesting animals were capable of feeling emotions and reacting to stimuli. You tell that to anyone today and they’d think that’s just crazy, obviously animals have emotions and cognitive functions.

The same attitude is still true with fish and insects now. It’s not too far fetched to think plants may be a little more then what we currently give them credit for

[loving-not-heyting]

Confidence that animals experience certain forms of cognition while plants essentially do not is extremely ancient, and we have atteststions of it in the West dating back to at least Plato and Aristotle. The general consciousness that animals—including insects—feel and see is in no way whatsoever a product of the last half century

In case anyone is unclear what is going on here: op is a vocal and persistent apologist for the agricultural industry and its atrocious treatment of animals for food. “Well what if plants feel!” is a common tactic by anti-vegetarian/vegan activists to paint a moral equivalence between omnivorism and vegetarianism/veganism (and between all plant agriculture and all animal agriculture), and you should not let it sucker you out of denying the obvious inhumanity of animal agriculture

[fumblebeefae]

I wish I had half the misplaced confidence as a tumblr user arguing with an expert, on a subject they googled for 5 seconds. And the balls to finish it off with “oP Is A SHrilL FoR BIg aG”. Classic tumblr. 

Anyways let’s actually talk the history of animal cognition!

The very brief history of Animal Cognition 

It would be outright stupid to think that animal cognition research and the scientific community have known since Aristotle that animals are capable to cognition. 

While Pliny the elder, Aristotle, and Descartes all speculated on animal behaviour and believed animals to have minds they believed they were under that of humans and capable of only sensation and mobility. Much of what they speculated was rarely accurate and of course there was no proper scientific studies. 

People were under the assumption up until the 1960′s that animals, while conscious, lacked any capability for emotion, feeling, thinking, higher cognition.  

The first actual scientific study of animal cognition was recorded in 1880, at the very earliest with Charles Darwin and George Romanes. They both used an  anecdotal method, collecting stories of animal behaviour that they pointed to as evidence of cognitive capacity in some animal species (not exactly the best science but getting there).

This work at the end of the day had many flaws, it lacked any statistic information, as well as the anthropomorphism, selection bias (people are of course only going to report intelligence or interesting behaviours) and ignoring frequency of behaviours.

At around this time a Black biologist, Charles H. Turner, was actually pioneering proper cognition science similar to what we use today! He published research on comparative brain anatomy, individual variation in behaviour (repeatability!) and learning + problem-solving. Including on insects such as bees and ants! The very cognition research I do! 

Turner’s ideas were largely ignored due to racism, as this challenged the dominant consensus at the time that animals were only capable of very simple learning. 

As Turner’s work was ignored, It wasn’t until the 1900′s that we actually had any proper animal cognition studies. Lloyd Morgan was a skeptic of Romanes anecdotal studies, he coined Morgan’s Canon against anthropomorphic approaches to animal cognition. Around this time Edward Thorndike developed his learning theory and Ivan Pavlov his famous conditioned reflexes in dogs. 

This research lead to the wide held view that animals were only capable of simple cognition and a dismissal of the idea that mental processes controlled animal behaviour. It never even occurred to them that cognition (the mind) was connected to behaviour. 

Is wasn’t until the 1960′s that we saw a “cognitive revolution” in animal cognition research that lead to reinventing alot of Turner’s work, and finally the acceptance that animals were capable of complex cognition, feelings, emotions, language, and so on. Research like Irene Pepperberg’s on African grey parrots.

The point to my post, is that animal cognition is (ironically) complex and it’s only fairly recently we accepted animal’s ability for complex functions. Even only a few years ago we were debating insect and fish capability for cognition. And we no longer think brain size or a prefrontal cortex is the be or end all of cognition. 

The point isn’t if plants are secretly conscious or what your views on eating animals are. I don’t give a shit about vegans. I just want to talk about cognition and encourage the idea to ask questions like OP has!

[everythingfox]

Ferret sees snow for the first time

(via)

[bluejayrambles]

[curseworm]

ok but seriously why is “much older internet friend uses you as their personal suicide hotline” such a universal experience for kids on the internet. fyi for any kids/teens following me if an adult tries to make you be their therapist just flat out block them you dont have to explain yourself or try to reason with them and ur not responsible for their mental well-being. just block them

[curseworm]

you are all such fucking freaks i am literally an adult who experiences suicidal urges and being suicidal does not fucking entitle you to traumatize a child by making them responsible for your survival. i fucking KNOW you know better. call a suicide hotline, talk to a therapist, or talk to an ADULT FRIEND whos willing and able to support you! not a fucking CHILD

[lainerouge]

“I’m entitled to talk to my problems to a child/teen” is so fucking predatory. If you can’t talk about it to your adult friends or make adult friends then using a teenager to fit your needs isn’t the answer ffs.

[unseelie]

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[dredsina]

Don't worry bro your ass is fat and everyone thinks the hand lotion in your guest bathroom smells nice

[punkjabi]

[renthony]

My teenager has more hours of homework per night than I got in my entire university career, and it doesn’t teach them a goddamn thing besides how to hate themself for not being able to do it all.

If my wife isn’t expected to labor outside her designated work hours at her literal job, why is my teenager expected to labor outside theirs?

[renthony]

If my kid has three hours of homework a night, that extends their work day to ELEVEN FULL HOURS. That’s inhumane. If an adult told me they were working eleven-hour days, I’d give them my wife’s number and tell them how to start unionizing. Like????

[dcbicki]

SENSE8 REWATCH ⊵ 1.06 “Demons” — Remember to be careful, child. They are afraid of you. And they will hurt you if they find out. Find out? What you are. What am I? The future.

[blackqueerblog]

The original cowboys were black and latinx people because the ranches were the only place they could get employment in the west

[saturnineaqua]

Everything that white man said “culture diffusion” is literally colonial smash n’ grab.

[theonlyleftydesk]

The terms are LITERALLY right there.

White men never would have been called cowBOY in the first place…they called them cowMEN. It was only Black and Latinx/Latine people who they denied the respectful term “man” to, calling them “boy” and “girl/gal” pejoratively.

Literally, the word ‘cowboy’ was a pejorative used in reference to nonwhite cattle handlers, and this was common kowledge up until the late 1940s, white people decided the word looked cute and they wanted it for themselves. Hence when all those westerns became popular TV shows in the 50s and 60s, they started calling white men cowboys, and removed all people of color (except the stereotypical Savage Indians, who were usually played Latinx/Latine actors…)

And the word ‘buckaroo’ is a corruption of the Latine/Latinx Spanish term “vaquero”…which literally means “cow man”…because racist white people couldn’t be assed to learn Spanish or how to roll their Rs.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

Also Black Cowgirls today. History is the present.:

[birble-bobble]

It also seems pretty offensive to compare the cultural significance of a feather headdress to a cowboy hat…

[prismatic-bell]

You are correct.

A feather headdress, or war bonnet, is like the Plains Native version of this:

(See all those pins and patches and medals? Those are awards of merit telling you where this soldier was stationed, what his rank is, what job he does, and what he did while stationed there.)

A cowboy hat is the “I work outside in the heat” version of this:

Unless you’re a modern country singer, in which case it’s “I have probably never done a day of hard labor in my life but I want to LOOK like I have.”

There is NO comparison.

(And actually, I earned that hat by making metrics goals. An actual one to one comparison would be with my regular hat. But I don’t have a photo of that.)

[rocktheholygrail]

1x06 || 2x08