Lil' Grimlynn

Camping in the woods

[what-even-is-thiss]

Some people might think I’m an optimist but I’m not. I’m a realist that’s going to try to increase the good things in this world if it kills me.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I want to severely push back on the idea that cynicism is any more realistic than optimism. There are good things in the world and there are bad things in the world. Totally ignoring one or the other doesn’t make you more correct.

You also have the power in your individual life to crowbar the long arc of the universe towards justice. Don’t just expect that things will be bad or good. Start yanking. Beat the darkness back with a stick, dammit.

[hope-for-the-planet]

I hope you don't mind me jumping in here, but I wanted to add that this outlook is very much backed up by the peer reviewed research.

Jamil Zaki is one of the biggest researchers in this area. He describes both pessimism and blind optimism as flawed viewpoints that demonstrably obscure how we see the world.

Research shows that even though our society tends to view a cynical viewpoint as smarter or even more moral, cynical people are worse at problem solving and cognitive tasks, worse at telling whether someone is lying, have measurably worse physical and mental well being, and are less likely to vote, protest, volunteer or otherwise take steps to make the world better.

Instead Jamil Zaki advocates for "hopeful skepticism".

Skeptical in the sense that you evaluate people and events from a neutral place based on evidence and personal experience, not on fitting them into an assumed narrative of "people always bad, things will always inevitably get worse" or "people always good, things will always inevitably get better".

Hopeful in the sense of knowing it is possible to make things better than they are now, curious to see possible paths to a better world, and understanding that we all have agency to move the needle in a better direction.

Social media and mainstream news do not provide a hopeful skeptic perspective--they are almost always a barrage of pessimism. This is on top of the already formidable human negativity bias. Most of us have to go looking for sources of positive news and intentionally shift our focus to see the good in other people to balance out the negativity.

If anyone is curious to learn more about this, episodes S9E11-S9E14 of The Happiness Lab podcast are free and do a really good job of covering this research. Jamil Zaki also has a whole book about it called Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.

[forgotten-emerald]

This applies to both of them

[deadgenerations]

in more pleasant news: this year is seeing the biggest humpback migration in Australian history, bigger than it was PRE whaling. That's right, there are more humpbacks migrating off the coast of Australia than there were BEFORE industrial whaling started.

A huge, fat W for environmentalists and Greenies. what an achievement

[lumsel]

we did it! we saved the fucking whales!!!!

[the-tao-of-fandom]

These whales were hunted to 150 individuals. Now there are 50,000 of them

Once hunted almost to extinction, the population of humpback whales currently migrating down Australia's east coast has bounced back and is

Further info for those interested

[pnwnativeplants]

Environmental activism works!!! If they tell you its hopeless they're lying and/or selling some shit!!!

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

#know your fandom history

[walkingproof]

the worst thing you can do is let this world steal your whimsy. protect your whimsy at all cost. don’t let these joyless doofuses steal your magic

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[creatingblackcharacters]

I can't remember where I read it last week, but the person discussed how when we think of chattel slavery in the US, we tend to think of massive plantations of cotton or tobacco, with one very rich white master or mistress with lots of land and lots of enslaved people. But we very rarely think of the many families that had just one or two slaves, in smaller homes.

Because it's not like you had to pay them, so once your family owned someone, they owned them and their descendants indefinitely. Could you pay and eventually free em- sure! You could also send them anywhere you want for any labor you want, could have an enslaved woman bred for more children, or maybe save up and buy new slaves and sell the old. Like cattle (thus, chattel slavery).

So it's interesting that many people go "oh well it's not like my family owned slaves!" Because like, one, how do you know that? Have you ever actually asked your grandmas about their grandmas? How many of your family members grew up with mammies? Have you ever asked? I wonder how many people have actually done the digging for the truth (or was it easier to just benefit). Because I've talked to my grandma, who picked cotton in the sea islands. She had to have been doing that for someone in the 1930s and 40s!

And two, it's easy to think that because your family (or someone else's) didn't own sprawling stolen land and generational blood money like a plantation owner, that it wasn't as important. But... It was. That was still someone's entire life. That was a person, whose labor benefitted and saved a family money that could be used in other ventures. How often do we think of them?

[han-the-human]

People who are like "I don't understand your identity so I won't respect it" perplex me

Like bro I don't understand how my toilet flushes but I don't leave shit in the bowl

[silvermoon424]

This tweet read me to filth

[lil-grimlynn]

Damn it tumblr is clocking me again.

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

settlers are always so enthusiastic about ''foraging'' and then you'll start talking to them about indigenous horticulture & sustainable harvesting practices and they quickly reveal that they're more interested in the aesthetic of being a Crunchy Woodland Creature than like reducing their reliance on exploitative industrial agriculture or rebuilding their local foodshed

[specialagentartemis]

sometimes I go on Reddit (my first mistake) and come to the car-crash-like realization that a lot of people genuinely think "friend" is the word for "a kind of relationship that is fundamentally and definitionally not deep, close, or meaningful" and any kind of depth or closeness automatically means you are "more than friends" and then I just. get really sad for the state of everything. no wonder the Loneliness Epidemic exists damn

[starlightxraven]

Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google

Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry.

[appalachian-werewolf]

"Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry."

It fucking better.

[mrsjdavis]

Like to charge, reblog to cast?

[mjalti]

[david-goldrock]

Smart woman next to an unbelievable achievement is a picture niche that will never get old

[awnerd]

Then you’re gonna love this photo of Annie Jump Canon.

Working at Harvard in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as a “Computer”, Annie Jump Cannon cataloged stars using their spectra from photographic plates, in an effort to understand the mysteries and peculiarities of stellar spectra.

This was hard, detailed, nuanced work. By 1889, three years into her work, she had classified over 1,000 stars. By 1913, she could classify 200 stars an hour. She could classify three stars a minute, just by sight. Using a magnifying glass, she could classify stars down to 9th magnitude, 16 times fainter than the human eye can see. And she did this all with exceptional accuracy.

Over the course of her career, she personally classified more than 350,000 stars, accounting for a mind-boggling 98% of all contemporary stellar spectra classifications, a feat that wouldn’t be bested until the 1990’s with automated digital sky surveys.

Cannon used these classifications to develop the Harvard spectral classification system (O–B–A–F–G–K–M), organizing stars by surface temperature and physical properties.

It is hard to overstate just how foundational her work was to modern astronomy and astrophysics. Her classifications have enabled more than a century of breakthroughs in stellar structure and evolution, including the understanding of how stars change over time and how temperature, luminosity, and composition are related. The system underpins the Hertzsprung–Russell (HR) diagram, one of the most important tools in astrophysics, and remains embedded in modern research, from stellar population studies to galaxy evolution.

The immense scale of her work was itself a massive contribution to astronomy. For comparison, before Cannon, star catalogs contained between 600 and 4,000 stars. Her work single-handedly proved that large-scale stellar classification was both feasible and scientifically valuable. She helped establish systematic star catalogs as a core method of modern astronomy and laid the groundwork for astrophysical research on stellar structure, evolution, and populations that continues today.

[renthony]

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately that tell dropouts "you can always go back!"

And that's not bad! It's true for a lot of people! You CAN go back later! You can apply to university, you can get your GED, you can pursue whatever level of education you want. It's not bad to share that message. If you dropped out and want to go back eventually, there is zero timeline. You can go back at any age, with any life experience. You do not have to graduate by a specific age.

But as someone who dropped out of college over a decade ago, sometimes "you can always go back!" starts to feel a little like an empty platitude. Sometimes it starts to feel grating instead of hopeful. Even when it might technically be true, sometimes it still feels like a hollow sentiment.

I just want to say, to anyone else out there who feels that way, who dropped out and CAN'T go back, potentially EVER, whether it's due to poverty or disability or any other reason:

It's okay to drop out and never go back. It might feel shitty, and you may even feel grief over it. That's real, and painful, and allowed. But you are not lesser. Even if you never go back, you are not a failure or a loser. Academics do not define your worth. You are not stupid. And it is almost certain that the system actually failed YOU.

With love,

A fellow burnout

[anthropologist-on-the-loose]

It is not nearly common enough knowledge that most Native tribes in the U.S. don't actually own all of the land within their reservation. There are millions of acres of reservation land that tribes don't legally own and they have no control over how that land is used. Like, there are a lot of different concepts tied in with the land back movement, but a major one is literally just getting reservation land back into tribal ownership.

[mbrainspaz]

idk what neurodivergent young adult needs to hear this but you are NOT supposed to give 100% at your job. I've gotten more promotions and raises since I started giving 40-60%, which my evil CEO uncle informed me is what bosses actually expect when they say 110%. My mental health has improved tremendously. I've spent 2 out of 5 workdays secretly writing my novel for the last 2 years and I've never been more respected and appreciated. Also--when you see glaring wasteful errors in the company's operating systems, say absolutely nothing! Embrace inefficiency. It is your friend in this capitalist hellscape.

[jabberding0]

The chanclafone (Papua New Guinea)