smells like mice

Recently minted PhD trying to figure out research/academia/life during a pandemic

[tonyzaret]

[madscientista]

I have forgotten what it is to be “human” because I have a tiny human here who absolutely curses his flesh prison, especially when he has gas/has to poop, and frankly, I’ve never been so frustrated but also I think this is the human condition as described in all literature classes/analyses, so there’s that. Also I’ve watched a lot of Arrested Development and The West Wing and also not slept a lot and now I’m shouting into the void so we’re doing well I think.

[medievalswords]

mash + reductress 

[internetwerewolf]

Listen, there's no secret mankind won't one day know and perhaps regret knowing

[bakugeorge]

any australians in the crowd tonight, the national library’s fabulous online resource trove is losing funding next year and if nothing happens to change that it will likely cease to exist. trove is not only a valuable resource for historians like me, it is a national cultural archive that is of great importance to australian society today. it is also completely accessible and free of charge to anyone with the internet; how fucking rare is that! we can’t lose it. i can’t even imagine the consequences.

if you’re as emotional about this as i am, or even if you’re not but love pestering people in power for any reason whatsoever, please contact your local mp and ask them to save trove and commit to funding this invaluable resource beyond july 2023. you can find your local member here. please also contact susan templeman mp, the special envoy for the arts, and tony burke mp, the arts minister.

non-australians, i would really appreciate a reblog. funding needs to be secured for trove and it needs to happen now.

[voynichs]

fwiw that kind of “omg they totally should not have made me read lord of the flies in middle school” rhetoric is very close cousins with “children should not be exposed to books about racism and trans people.” you’re coming from the same basic ideology that books written for children are somehow also unsafe for children, that books intended to educate will actually traumatize, and that what children should read should be heavily restricted and censored. it’s anti-intellectualism babes.

[voynichs]

like i get that you think you’re just talking about old yeller or whatever book you must of read where an animal dies and it made you sad when you were 9 and for some reason as an adult you can’t let go of that, but this is word for word the same exact argument people will make for demanding libraries pull books like julián is a mermaid. i am not exaggerating.

[indieninja92]

teaching children how to navigate upsetting and challenging stories is excellent, actually. fiction is a great tool in learning resilience as it helps us take as many practice runs as we like at things that upset us.

I dont just mean reading issues-based fiction either where the whole point is to learn about idk eating disorders or addiction or something. Getting upset about a story is a safe and healthy way to practice getting upset, whether it’s about teen pregnancy or gay hobbits.

If a child is distressed by a story, you can talk to them about it. teach them how to tell someone that they’re upset, how to articulate distress, how to navigate those feelings. teach them that things can be upsetting and its ok, theyre still safe. they can be upset and safe at the same time and that doesn’t make either of those things untrue. teach them that feelings aren’t always things you need to act on - its ok to just be upset for a while, or to process that in other ways and then let it go.

everything is new to a child. the more we can introduce them to in safe, controlled, communicative contexts, where they can ask questions and explore their feelings, the better prepared they’ll be when those things come at the unexpectedly. this is true of positive things like representation and diversity, and its true of upsetting things like grief, fear and uncertainty.

[accordionsrule-deactivated20240]

I read a lot of coming-of-age stories years before I was ready for them. I was not traumatized, just a little bewildered. I did, however, flash back to them years later and go “oh.”

[guerrillatech]

[jv]

This is akin all those hot takes about the 2k bug being an hoax:

"Remember when they told us every computer was going to crash on 1/1/01 and there would be chaos and then nothing happened?"

Yeah, I remember. And I'm sure every programmer and sysadmin that contributed the billion person/hour global effort to prevent it also remembers.

[alarajrogers]

No one talks about acid rain anymore, either. And that's a very good thing.

[oligopspispopd-deactivated20221]

see also START and START II, which significantly reduced nuclear stockpiles

[cop-disliker69]

International cooperation is actually so effective that most people don’t even notice it happening, and then erroneously believe it can’t solve anything.

[lonestatus]

*struggling w/ writing an email* they didn't have to deal with this shit in ancient babylon

ancient babylonian: *struggling to compose a cuneiform tablet* by god i wish i could do this shit with a computer

[queerdandelion]

Every year my mom vandalizes a reflection calendar with pictures of Keanu to make a “with Keanu” calendar for her friend. These are some highlights:

[pajamasecrets]

This is Art™️.

[hotvampireadjacent]

Things are dire in Britain huh

[creatures-of-wikihow]

[vampiric-pansy-deactivated20231]

@pangur-and-grim wikihow drew pre-op Pangur!

[talesfromtreatment]

…. why…. why does this cat have 23 upper incisors??????

[cerleansky]

The legacies people leave behind in you.

My handwriting is the same style as the teacher’s who I had when I was nine. I’m now twenty one and he’s been dead eight years but my i’s still curve the same way as his.

I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We haven’t spoken in four years.

I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.

I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.

I learned to love books because my father loved them first.

How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I don’t know it. How beautiful.

[speaklavenderthoughts-deactivat]

absolutely obsessed with these tags

[lurker-no-more]

Agreed, and the popcorn thread is just excellent. (Three flavors!) Do I want to see it all the time? Nah. But we all deserve to be petty when it’s warranted. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[caesarsaladinn]

”grad student shanties” is probably an enormous untapped market. people whose lives are miserable slogs, and are educated/pretentious enough to enjoy dated music styles

[froodycartographer]

"Soon may the Ombudsman come, to tell our advisors to move it along. One day, when the bench work's done, we'll take our thesis and go."

[ardinwriter]

@neat-deadandlive-things

[inamindfarfaraway]

Shoutout to the maned wolf, which is technically neither wolf nor fox but has its own genus called Chrysocyon! Why -

why are your legs so long?

I mean, intellectually, I understand that it’s because you live in grasslands and have evolved to be able to see over the grass, but emotionally… why? Are they?? Like that??? Surely there was a way to make your body more cohesive and proportional-looking?

[horseonketamine]

i will never shut up about maned wolves

just look at it

look at this

one of the animals for sure

wretched beast

[whatacartouchebag]

If it’s neither wolf nor fox, then it’s cat software running on giraffe hardware.

[what-a-bastard]

I think y'all should know that the closest relative to the maned wolf is the bush dog which looks like this.

[atomic58-blog]

[white-cishet-snail]

Our blessed tumblr

[greatnorthernofficial]

A holy site

[toastyboobs]

Nah nah nah, you ain’t hiding this in the tags

[nicehatgeorgia]

The two year-old is now a solid two and a half. Just now, he was sitting on the couch playing with his pretend flip phone and he frowned and said “for gods sake. My battery is empty.”

The other day at breakfast I asked him if he was going to eat any more of his oatmeal and he said “no, I think I’m just gonna move on with my life.”

[nicehatgeorgia]

Today we were walking along and he asked me “How many Octobers is it today?” I told him it was the 21st. 

He tried a bite of his hot soup at dinner and made a face and said “Mama, my soup is a little too temperature for me.”

[nicehatgeorgia]

Upon being served 1% milk for the first time, instead of his regular 2%: “is this water?”

Me: “no, it’s milk”

Kid: “but are you sure?”

[nicehatgeorgia]

Came up to me the other day, the middle of his pants totally soaked, and said “mama, I’m having a situation called ‘I peed in my pants.’”

[nicehatgeorgia]

I don’t think I even told you guys about the six months he spent saying “fuck” instead of “truck.”

[the-emblematic]

I have to laugh at the folks in the notes claiming this is fake because “no 2-yr old is that advanced”. My guys, I work at a daycare almost exclusively with 2-3 year olds and let me tell you some of the wild shit I heard this last week alone,

“Uhhh, i ASSUME we’re going to the playground soon??” -2.5 year old girl

“[3 year old boy] pushed me because he doesn’t have a manners.” -2 yr old girl

“Did you spill your water?” “No no no no it’s not a concern” -2 yr old boy (while running away, dripping wet)

Kids are hilarious and smarter than you think

[catgirlcaliphate]

If you don’t have a lot of interactions with young children:

Kids are smarter than you think

Six months makes a really big difference when that is 1/5 of the total time you’ve been alive

[thewrittenpost]

All this, and also, they can tell you lots about their favorite things. My 2 year old nephew can tell you all about Star Wars (the 8 movies he’s seen at least) and loves going out of his way to bring up how Anakin was good and bad and good again when he died. Trust me, little kids learn and mimic and reenact all the things they get attached to. Also, he named his first fish Jengo Fett, and all following fish Boba Fett, so juries still out on how much he understands clones.

[atreefullofstars]

Kids pick up the language that’s used around and to them. Mannerisms too. They are tiny, efficient mimics and it will come out at the WEIRDEST times. Young kids will ABSOLUTELY say all the stuff listed here.

[bundibird]

My cousin was somewhere between two and three, and I’d just arrived at her house, and she’s animatedly telling me a story of some kind, and I listen as I make my way through the house, get to the couch, and kick my shoes off. She stops dead in the middle of her sentence, puts her hands on her hips, levels me with a glare the likes of which I haven’t seen since, and goes, “WHAT are they doing there? Do you think the box at the front door is for DECORATION?”

Her mum, standing in the kitchen and watching all this, was GOBSMACKED. Apparently she said that exact phrase more often than she realised, and her kid had picked it up verbatim and started using it on unsuspecting guests (me).

(I got up and put my shoes in the box at the front door immediately)

[lasrina]

My family’s lore includes the time my mother offhandedly said to Cousin’s son–who was maybe five–that Cousin’s wife certainly did have strong opinions about some minor thing, and the kid let out a sigh and said, in the driest and flattest and most world-weary tone you’ve ever heard, “Tell me about it.”

[mod2amaryllis]

once i was helping with a class of 3 year olds and during drawing time one girl asked for a lion, specifically a lioness. i drew it and she just looked in silence so thinking she wanted a more liony lion i was like “do you want me to draw a boy lion next?” and she gives me this 🤨ass affronted look and says “umm she doesn’t NEED a man.”

[aqueerkettleofish]

Kids will do three things reliably:

Repeat what they’ve heard, incorrectly and/or in the wrong context, to comic effect

Repeat what they’ve heard in exactly the correct context, which is somehow even funnier

Casually knock you on your ass with some offhand, but utterly profound, original statement