Magic Moon

Emma | Lesbian | She/her | Fiction Writer | Psych Nerd | if I followed your writeblr follow back @dontjudgemeimawriter | 23

[cranberry-branflakes]

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[renthony]

People in my notes of my youth liberation post keep asking me if I think kids should be allowed in bars, and it's driving me up the wall for two main reasons:

1. My original post was talking about the ways I watched my mother get harassed for bringing toddlers to *the grocery store.* Jumping to "omg so you think kids should be allowed in BARS?!" is a hell of a stretch.

2. If you have to be 18 or 21 to get into a bar/club, duh, that's not a place for kids. They check ID at the door for a reason. But not every bar is like that. My favorite local bar is actually a brewery and family pub with board games and big tables for game nights. They host food trucks and have a nice outdoor seating area. I have been up there for multiple community events that welcome kids and families. I have literally held a toddler at the pub while their mama got herself a glass of cider from the bar as an "I just stopped breastfeeding and can have a drink again" treat. Family-friendly establishments that also serve alcohol are, like, 100% a thing. Hell, *Applebee's* has both a kids' menu and an alcohol menu.

[depsidase]

[highhappyhog]

I made a Zine about this! If anyone ever wants to print and hand it out, please do!

[cock-holliday]

hey i have unfortunately become mired in trans discourse lately and i was trying to find what privileges people seem to think trans men have and found this

and well, they did not include sources for their claims, so i was wondering if you had come across anything to support or refute these stats since I believe you are a bit better read than i am in these areas. And also if you had thoughts on this „male privilege in comparison to xyz demographic“ especially as it relates to trans men (when the intersectionality here is entirely gender/sex related) because it doesnt sit right with me but i cant tell if thats bc i am resistant to the idea or if its bc it actually doesnt make total sense.

The thing is, studies that discuss wages, housing, hate crimes, etc have the same pitfalls that intimate partner violence and sexual assault studies do. Which I talked about here.

Trans people are underrepresented, trans people are misgendered in studies that includes them, trans people are often lumped in as one category in studies not about being trans, there is never clear distinction between stages of transition (ie trans man who goes by he/him and doesn't pass vs a trans man who passes well and is stealth) so what Trans Man are we comparing to what Trans Woman? Trans men are often extremely underrepresented in studies even about trans people ("4 out of 5 trans men had a great time versus only 25 of 40 trans women", and now in studies where we see more trans men than women, the bias is pointed out--which is good, but when it's only one side the biased results still win out). Sometimes a study comes out marginally higher for one side and then another study comes out marginally higher for the other, and then regardless of marginal difference one way or the other trans people as a whole are WILDLY disadvantaged compared to cis peers.

"Only 30% of trans men have to worry about this while 35% of trans women do" and then the stats for cis people are like 2% and 5% for cis people respectively.

The last thing I will say before getting into actual findings is that these people never use the word "intersectional" correctly, which is always a big red flag for me. First, marginalized identities are not multipliers for being "most oppressed" or to say, the inherent oppressed vs the inherent oppressor. Second, "who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor" is still contextual, and failing to grapple with that is how you get weaponized victimhood.

You can have a queer disabled neurodivergent woman and if she is racist to a Black cis man, she is still the "oppressor" in the situation. Power is situational, and so is oppression. For the thousandth fucking time, trans men are marginalized because of their gender. If they were not men, they would not be facing transphobia in this way. This is an experience that is not comparable to "poor men" "gay men" as classes--those classes (devoid of other intersections) assume cisness, which these men are not.

Now, all of this is using primarily US studies cause that's the perspective these debates come from, right? Occasionally the UK, or Canada and sometimes sparingly somewhere else in Europe but with no mention of even how non-English language affects transness let alone cultural and ethnic factors, and never with non-western, non-northern hemisphere perspectives included. Countries where people viewed as women are not viewed as people at all have some wildly different experiences when it comes to both gendered violence and transition opportunity. If your goal is to be a troll only, you can say "well women in x country are property so trans men cannot ever transition and trans women can retain male privilege" and that would be just as unhelpful and lacking in understanding anything about the situational nature of transness.

This cyclical argument is never about making things better, it is about being justified in one's isolationism and misery.

A widely held up study about the specific plight of trans women claimed that the average life expectancy of trans women was 35. This has filled people with fear for YEARS. I can't tell you how many birthdays I've seen where you celebrate having beaten the statistic. But it's not true. 30-35 was the high end age of Brazilian trans women who were murdered at the time. This is not a universal statistic. It is very specific and situational, and not just "trans women" but Brazilian trans women of color, most of whom were in sex work. Their race is a factor, their class is a factor, the lack of protections for sex workers is a factor. Brazilian politics is a factor. Many were elated to find out that they actually weren't doomed to die by 35. Others were upset to lose this stat as a talking point.

At the end of the day, information revealed that things were not as bleak as we thought, and this makes material difference in people's lives, especially the relief at no longer needing to count down to your assumed death. But if your motivation is internet fights splitting hairs, this was a blow to your arsenal. Different priorities I suppose.

Pay

This study says that for every dollar earned by "the typical worker", trans women make .60 while trans men "and nonbinary people" make .70. It raises a lot of questions about how many of each group were polled and also the association of trans men with nonbinary folks with no further explanation is not great, but sure, here is one that says that trans men make slightly more. The same study says that lesbians make .87 while bisexual women make .75. The gap between lesbians and bi women is larger than the gap between trans women and trans men (and nonbinary people I guess?), all trans people make less than cis people, and everyone is making less than cis men and even the "typical worker"

This Canadian study cited by American institutions actually separates nonbinary people by AGAB (and is seemingly the only to do so), and so while trans men in this situation actually were the highest group relatively across the board, they were still 20% below cis men at a maximum. And then it gets interesting when you look at NB folks, because nonbinary people assigned female at birth PLUMMET below all other trans people. I'm actually attaching the graph cause it's wild to look at.

According to this, trans men *do* slightly benefit but transmascs are extremely extremely behind everyone else. Do we take the average then or....?

Most other studies do not actually do their own polling and continually quote the study that said .70 trans men and .60 trans women, and then omit nb folks from the conversation.

Job Security

This study suggests similar unemployment rates among trans men and women (some others say a percent or two higher for trans women) but both have rates 2-3x higher than cis peers--9-16% vs 5.3% for cis folks.

The same study also says "those assigned female at birth tend to have lower incomes and are more likely to work part time than their similarly situated counterparts assigned male at birth."

BUT it also says that nonpassing out trans women receive harsher penalties than nonpassing trans men

AND suggests that gender pay discrepancy and job security comes more from the gap between trans men who pass and trans women who don't. Duh! Of course someone you think is a cis man is going to be out-rewarding people that someone thinks is a woman or specifically a trans woman.

Some studies from 2016 found that outing significantly increased the chances of a trans man being fired while not really increasing the chances for trans women, while more recent find similar rates.

Housing Security

An interesting 2019 study found that gender nonconforming people in general were at even higher rates of homelessness than trans people (and both were much higher than cis people). I can imagine there is a correlation between having the language to describe yourself and access to transition materials that correlates with having basic needs met, essentially "how many of these people are also trans but have no way to know or pursue transition and so are just gnc?" on top of just the chances that general nonconformity will get you kicked from your homes.

The Trevor Project found in 2022 that trans boys were slightly more likely to be homeless than trans girls, but race is much more of a factor than gender in disparity

This study suggests that trans men report extremely high rates of homelessness as well as an extreme lack of resources. The study wonders if the disparity is so high because of trans women being underrepresented in the study, which I agree with, but this is also a rare housing study where trans men DO heavily outnumber trans women reporting, and the same discrepancies can be observed. Essentially: the studies where there is actually a huge gap between trans women and trans men are the ones where there is disparity in polling. Go figure. Many studies for adults cannot meaningfully separate the two, and even the ones with bigger gaps pales in comparison to the rates for cis people, even cis women.

Hate Crimes

While trans men have higher rates of sexual violence (in several studies higher than cis women), the one category where trans women really take the cake is in murder. It is true that trans women are more likely to be victims of violent hate crimes, but the truth is that trans women of color are most likely. In 2024, 87% of trans murder victims were women of color. When comparing white trans people, there is significantly less difference, though still a higher rate for trans women. Race is again much more of a factor than gender alone in these scenarios, a staggering majority are women of color.

Survival Sex Work

Unfortunately we do not have good studies on trans people sex workers--partly due to the criminalization and partly due to gaps in who is talked about/permitted to speak. Essentially, there are comparable rates of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness between trans men and women and the pivot to sex work is comparable.

As lamented in this article by Professor Angela Jones, studies ONLY talk about trans women and never trans men (and assume any male sex workers are cis and that nonpassing trans men are women) but this is not simply just a case of erasing trans men, but also of demonizing trans women. These studies do not care about the safety, health, and livelihoods of trans women sex workers, but dare to mention them at all as public health crisis due to fears about HIV exposure. So everyone is really fucked in this, being erased and being accounted for are both bad.

Trans men are also typically at risk of pregnancy. In sex work, as victims of sexual violence, and in their daily lives. Also true of HIV, with a lot of cis studies on the matter forgetting about trans men entirely. And with pregnancy comes all the misogyny of reproductive care battles AND the transphobia of being a pregnant trans man--which, by the way, is the story of the first trans man I ever heard about. Deeply dehumanizing and condescending article, so warning for that.

Imprisonment

It's difficult to categorize rates when trans people are misgendered and sent to prisons that do not align with their gender, and often the only way that news reaches the outside is through LGBT orgs dedicated to this. There are lots of things that affect the results

Number fucking one always and forever is race

Trans men and women both are arrested at higher rates than cis peers

Background environment: foster care, homelessness, records from their youth, or 1. race 2. race, and 3. race

Trans men's hormones are controlled substances, where trans women's are not, though it's not clear how often that becomes an actual factor in criminalization vs a massive deterrent to DIY

Trans women are more likely to be violently attacked and if they fight back they are fucked. Trans men are more likely to be raped and if they fight back they are fucked

Old crossdressing laws seemed to hit trans men and trans women pretty evenly, with both at risk of sexual violence in jail.

AKA these days, jailtime is influenced by factors beyond trans identity or even gender, and all of those are influenced most by racism

Trans women are abused in prisons and handed over to violent inmates in what is called V-coding

Trans men are abused in prisons by staff and inmates, and it gets very little attention and are rarely included in prison studies at all

Healthcare

I noticed this was mysteriously absent from the list, and I'm sure I know why--it makes everyone very uncomfortable (cis and sometimes trans alike, it seems) to acknowledge the deep disadvantages trans men face in healthcare--particularly reproductive care. It's hard to dismiss trans men without dismissing cis women, and it's difficult to downplay the role of repro care for trans men without connecting what it means for trans women too. I think for some there is both resentment and disgust that trans men might choose to carry their own children, but whether its personal or the fear that highlighting an area where trans men may actually have it considerably worse, the thing I want to say is, this gap doesn't really matter either. At least not as a "gotcha."

Trans women also have a dogshit time in healthcare. Both are misgendered, have care redirected to their genitals, are assaulted by hospital staff, are held hostage to invasive questioning. And trans women are not not involved when it comes to repro care. So many trans women don't understand what's happening to them when they experience periods. They aren't thought of when it comes to new developed tissue (similarly, trans men aren't considered despite new studies showing growth of prostate tissue). They aren't thought of for post-bottom-surgery vaginal care. Reproductive care is about more than being pregnant. STI information, safe sex practices, and issues of sterilization impact trans women as much (if not in some cases more) than others, especially cis peers.

Trans women shouldn't be pushed out of the conversation, trans men are simply asking that we do not erase them.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

So to sum up...no. lol There are some areas where trans men are marginally better off, but there are areas where trans women are marginally better off, and I don't think those areas deserve exceptionalism either. Every study polls very small populations within a small population, and a lot of the heavier statistics are hard to track due to criminalization or are stats that only exist once we are dead.

In no category is the difference between trans women and trans men a big one, incorporating nonbinary people and gnc into the mix makes it even less clear, the largest divide comes between passing trans men and nonpassing trans women, and studies assume closeted trans people are cis men and women respectively--where the gap between men and women is larger. And still, money made by a closeted trans woman paid cause they think she's a cis man is not really a privilege compared to the cost of inauthentic living. Beyond that, no gap between trans women and trans men is bigger than the gap between trans people and cis people. And beyond even that, all divide between trans women and trans men is also wildly eclipsed by the divide between white trans people of any gender and trans people of color, particularly (in the US) Black trans people.

White trans women have closer stats to trans men than either do with Black trans women. And STILL separatism isn't the answer. True intersectionality recognizes how struggle overlaps and how it might not.

What we need to do is make space for people to talk about their experiences. We need to recognize where we relate and where we don't. There is no one label that holds a person in the most marginalized position above all others, and it certainly isn't "woman"--this is TERF rhetoric.

The statistics are lacking, our representation and recognition is lacking. We are misgendered. We ALL have experiences outside of our gender identity--pre-transition, passing and not-passing. These "who has it worse" fights are both needlessly divisive but also misunderstands our experiences.

I had experiences as my AGAB before I knew I was trans. I had experiences when I knew but couldn't do anything about it. I faced barriers accessing transition care. For the entirety of my care. I had experiences when people assumed I was my AGAB, when people assumed I was the "opposite" cis gender, and when people were threatened because they weren't sure. I HAD binary trans experiences and cis experiences. And THEN I realized I was genderfluid. I've passed as "both" cis genders, I have passed as my desired gender, I have been read as neither or something else--with admiration and danger stemming from it. My fluidity has caused me to be mistaken for a range of things, and with it, treated as if I was that thing. It made me even more sympathetic to people whose gender identity I do not share.

I've seen white trans men who pass and are rewarded for seeming to be cis get sexually assaulted at the OBGYN. I've seen trans women wrestle with guilt because she knew she climbed ranks higher than her cis women peers before she came out, and now transition could cost her the position she has climbed to.

It's not cut and dry.

While we are shit-sling, trans folks are in material danger.

A 19 year old trans girl was stabbed to death at her uni. Now you could say "well, many trans people cant even go to college", or "the suspect is Black, would they be looking for the killer if he wasn't?" or "her identity is being concealed, out of privacy? Out of respect? For her family safety? How do we know she was a trans woman? Is this police speculation or did someone who knew her verify?" or "an american college student is not misgendered, but sex workers are deadnamed in their murder reporting"

All of these things are on some level worth considering, but in the long run, none of that weighs against how the college has been stoking anti-trans resentment and platforming nazis like TPUSA. None of it fucking matters next to murder. She is being treated differently to plenty of other trans coverage, and it's fair to wonder why--the intense effort of local community to honor her?--but she's still dead! And the context of her murder is not infighting, it's anti-trans posturing on campuses by cis people.

39 year old Lucas Redbeard Knapp was murdered defending someone from harassment, and the killers had been hostile towards him in the past for his trans identity, and nearly all reports of the incident leave out his murder, degender him, or vaguely reference that someone has been killed in favor of focusing entirely on the suspects, going even so far as to humanize them. Is erasure privilege? Is being omitted in the report of your own murder a sign of your overwhelming oppressor status?

Why are we doing this? What does this do? Who does any of this help?

We are getting nowhere with this while actual danger spreads. And at the end of the day, the people holding funerals, speaking out, fighting for our rights are fighting under united fronts. Trans men and trans women have been each others biggest champions in court, in legislation, in orgs--there IS a sense of unity among the ones doing the work out there.

I'm sorry to folks who have bitter resentment to the people in as much danger as them. I'm sorry to folks who think that oppressor is an inherent state and not something people opt into and out of all the time.

There IS no great divide between trans men and women. And frankly no great divide between the both of you and the rest of us nonbinary people these discourse stirrers love to forget about or sort into a binary to suit their arguments. And even beyond that, there is no great divide between trans and cis people--because cis people can realize they are trans, because all of us have been assumed cis at one point or another in our lives, and even cis people as a class are not our enemies, because they have a deep overlap in our struggles and have ALSO been some of our biggest champions.

These people want proof we are all segmented clans with hard borders and isolated fights? Look elsewhere.

[depsidase]

[barkingbarghest]

Here is an article from NPR about it (May 22, 2026):

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):

While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.  Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.

And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:

When Google first started implementing AI-assisted results, news publishers warned of “catastrophic” impacts on the industry, much of which relies on Google search to drive users to their websites.  Last year, news websites saw significant traffic declines as chatbots increasingly replaced Google search as the primary way to find sites and ask questions.  Small businesses also noted drops in traffic to their sites from Google, which has traditionally delivered customers.   Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy & research at Amsive, a digital marketing agency, warned as early as last year that Google’s planned changes to search are “going to have a devastating impact on the Internet.”  “It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivize content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more,” she told Technology Magazine.  

[the-crying-bitch]

[cythraul]

This is you reminder that, even in Google's own Chrome, you can set the default search to DuckDuckGo.

[despazito]

His little pony...

[saulwexler]

Hey did you draw that evil feminist caricature to warn men how their wives would act once they got the right to vote? Illustrator: sure did boss. real sexy, just like you asked.

[gothkrispies]

“So you agree, this is a shitty way to make someone live and you’d be miserable if it were you”

[ftmtftm]

I see a lot of Tumblr users who don't know their feminist history attributing the fact that women* are "allowed" to be masculine under the patriarchy as some sort of facet of the patriarchy universally accepting masculinity over femininity and that shit pisses me off so bad.

The reason why women* are "allowed" to be masculine when men* "aren't" allowed to be feminine under patriarchy is because DYKES and BUTCHES and other masculine women* SPENT DECADES FIGHTING FOR THEIR RIGHTS TO EXIST PUBLICLY.

The fact that women* can wear pants and suits etc. and are not constantly forced to be hyper feminine/in adherence with strict gendered dress codes without punishment (AND ONLY IN SOME COUNTRIES!) is a win on behalf of feminist political action NOT because of some baseline acceptance of masculinity in everybody by the patriarchy.

(*and people forcibly socially classed as women and men)

Like oh my lord some of you need to shut the fuck up and learn what it was like to be socially classed as a woman before the sexual revolution and what it continues to be like outside of the imperial core.

You are reaping the benefits of the activists who have come before you but because you do not know your history you are treating it like the boons of the oppressor classes and you are blind for it.

[just-a-gurl-in-the-world-deacti]

I think you need to shut up and learn your place and stop interfering with transfems’ battle to exist against your transmisogynistic asses. Men seriously need to learn how to stfu

[ftmtftm]

Okay so like. every bone in my body is screaming that this is either a troll or a form of extremely disenfranchised lashing out and neither of those are really worth my time to engage with but I unfortunately feel compelled to say something anyway.

If you think that the feminist history of women fighting to wear pants has nothing to do with "transfems' battle to exist" you're ignorant. If you think that trans women aren't part of that fight you're ignorant. I truly implore you to actually learn more about the history of literal gender policing (strip searches against gnc queer people, trans people, and drag artists to decide whether or not they were wearing enough garments of the "correct" gender) and the history of trans people of all genders being denied care because of their presentations (including trans women being denied care because they wear pants).

Like, congratulations! If you're a trans woman who wears pants you have the work of a lot of wonderful queer women, nonbinary people, trans men, and other feminists to thank for that! And if you maliciously misinterpret "queer women" as "cis women" and not "women of multiple orientations and gender identities, very explicitly including trans women" your ignorance is showing again.

I get that you're probably like 18 or if that's not what your blog title is referring to you're clearly still young, and the world is fucking terrifying for you right now, but genuinely things will only be worse for you if you can't accept other trans people as allies with similar struggles who are fighting against the exact same systems as you. No one can stop you from going on depressed and angry tangents and talking about how much you think other trans people should shut the fuck up and get forcibly impregnated and exploded or whatever, but that's miserable tar pit behavior. Basing your whole online persona on how much you hate other queer people will eat you alive and just make your isolation and depression worse, but you're probably just going to have to figure that out in your own time.

You're the most consistent person in your own life and you get back what you put into this world. So if you want to be miserable and hateful and violent towards other queer people that's your choice, but when it comes back to bite you in the ass don't act surprised when you're still just as alone and depressed and miserable as you've always felt.

[stickthisbig]

I do not want to be in writing training

I am thinking about making a passionate defense of the passive voice just to cause trouble on purpose

Look once you learn how to use the passive voice it will become clear to you why I spend half my time deliberately writing in it

[stickthisbig]

Fuck it, let's talk about it

Warning: Passive voice can be used for evil! Do not do it! Do not write sentences like "The man was shot by police." No! Do not hide state violence in sentence structure!

You should use active voice when:

1. You introduce new information

2. You take or assign responsibility

Active voice is key for clarity when the sentence doesn't have anything to refer back to. If you have to put "by (person, organization)" at the end of the sentence, it should have been active voice. Ex:

Our company fucked up the project and we're sorry

NOT

Regrettably, the project was fucked up by us/on our watch/by one of our teams

But here's why passive voice is great: because it collapses who did a thing and centers the fact that it happened. When you are referring back to something the parties already agree upon, it puts the result up front.

All project review will be completed by 18 Never 2029.

NOT

Kyle | Mark | us Arch | itects, Jim's Construction, the Statesonia Department of Endangered Hummingbirds, the Federal Bureau of Staying the Fuck Out of It and like twelve other people will complete their reviews by 18 Never 2029.

No! Bad! The completion of the action matters, not the parties involved. And no, "The parties will complete their reviews" is absolutely not clearer, because it requires the same knowledge.

In fiction, passive vs active refocuses a sentence towards what you want the reader to pay attention to. Active:

A fog covered the city

Passive:

The city was covered by fog

Nothing wrong with either of them. It's just what you want the reader to think about. Bonus round: the sentence feels more natural if you put the bulk of the description in the second half, so you can add more without making it impossible to follow. Active:

A fog covered the quiet, unsuspecting city as it slept

Passive:

The city was covered by a terrible, choking fog that crept through the silent streets

These are different sentences, but nothing's wrong with either of them.

Passive voice gets a bad rap largely because even the dumbest professional development expert can ID it fairly regularly. It's bad when it makes a sentence less clear; it's good when it makes a sentence clearer. That's it.

[sazandorable]

AND it can have immense humoristic potential, for the exact same reason you outlined, because passive voice reads as an attempt to dodge responsibility and misplace blame.

"The man was shot (by police)" and "The project was fucked up by us" are bad in serious contexts and actual writing.

But you can have a lot of fun with things like:

"My boss has been described in impolite terms."

"Alice's boss has been described in impolite terms by someone who wishes to remain anonymous."

"I have been vilified, demonised, slandered, calumnied, scapegoated, lied about, written horrid pamphlets about, unlistened to, and reputationally walked all over."

"The priceless crown jewels known as The Fanciest Rock Ever, insured for 100,000,000 billions and entrusted in our care by HRM the Queen of Fancyland, were found to have been misplaced this morning and have not been located at this time."

"He was separated from his head."

"He found himself divorced from."

Useful friends in such cases: euphemisms, unexpected verbs, grammatically questionable sentence constructions, and obfuscation of the responsible party when it is glaringly obvious to the audience that there should be one or even who it is, etc., etc.

[uhanekahiko]

Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.

[baddestvenus-in-virgo]

sometimes I am just amazed at how my ancestors managed to navigate the entire Pacific Ocean with these. knowledge that was nearly lost and is being re-learned.

[gamebird]

AH! I'd heard of these, but this is the first time I've come across pictures.

[butch-tradwife]

For everyone who ‘used to love reading’ but now hasn’t finished a book in years, you CAN get it back. Genuinely start bringing a book (preferably short and either fiction or a non fiction topic you already really enjoy) everywhere you go and when you have 5-20 mins waiting for the bus or at the doctors office or mechanic or whatever, get out your book and read it! You don’t have to finish it quickly or even read it often but it is so good for your brain and fun to get into the habit of reading more (and replacing being on your phone for those moments). Source: I read 0 books in 2023 and I’ve read 12 in the first 4 months of 2026

[magicmoon65]

Other tips:

You're allowed to start with a reread, like a book you know you love already.

If you don't like it enough that you're avoiding it even when you think of it and have the time to read it, drop it and move on. Feeling like I had to finish what I started kept me from reading for a long time.

[detectivehole]

what's that one thing where they asked how ripely from alien was so realistic and believable as a female character in scifi for once and they were like "well we just took the dude from the original script and made him a girl and changed nothing else. it works bc men and women are the same?" and people were like "woah no way" and then didn't learn anything from that for 20 years

[detectivehole]

"how do you write such believable men as a woman?" "how do you write such believable women a man?" and the answer people who are good at it always give is "i just write people. were literally the exactly the same. do you think the opposite sex is some sorta totally different animal???" and people respond "woah that's wild. yea i do. and im not gonna stop thinking that goodbye :)"

[anarchistmemedistro]

[self-loving-vampire]

[cannibalchicken]

[icedoatmilkmatcha-deactivated20]

also

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

Yeah okay Ill reblog that!

[aggressivelybicaptainamerica]

Not a scholar at first, but the guy who wrote Jaws hated that people used it to justify hating sharks so much he dedicated the rest of his life to shark research and advocacy.

[ruffboi-mags]

The woman who popularized gender reveals wishes she hadn't, afaik.

[fall1ngfeather]

(afaik- the woman who popularized gender reveals did so because she had a long history of miscarriages. The reveal was a celebration of the fact that one of her pregnancies had gotten far enough that there WAS a physical sex to reveal. It was never intended to be like... *gestures at modern gender reveals* all that. That same kid later came out as trans and yes, the family had a second gender reveal for that lol.)

[p00pym00py]

This whole thread is so beautiful to me that I can explain it

[my-random-fandoms]

[pouncequick]

K-Cup coffee pod creator wishes he'd never thought of them | CBC News

The man who invented the K-Cup coffee pod almost 20 years ago says he regrets doing so and can't understand the popularity of the products t

[jackironsides]

L. David Mech, who popularised the idea that there were 'alpha' and 'beta' wolves in his 1970 book The Wolf, has spent the rest of his career trying to debunk this. (The original studies were done on captive wolves, and thus didn't simulate an accurate model of wolf pack dynamics.)

Is the Alpha Wolf Idea a Myth?

The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator, or alpha wolf, comes from old studies of captive wolves. In the wild, wolf packs a

In the wild, researchers have found that most wolf packs are simply families, led by a breeding pair, and bloody duels for supremacy are rare.

“What would be the value of calling a human father the alpha male?” says L. David Mech, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied wolf packs in the wild for decades. “He’s just the father of the family. And that’s exactly the way it is with wolves.”

[49wasagreatyear]

[kosmogrl]

[glowingghosty]

[vruba]

“I don’t like this expression “First World problems.” It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”

— Teju Cole  (via feminizt)

[nimblermortal]

May I recommend: twenty-first century problems. Because the concept is useful: I am upset about a thing that, I recognize out loud, is a solvable issue that many would be lucky to have. It’s the phrasing that’s racist. Whereas, in dunking on the past:

Find me a pre-twenty-first century human - outside of tenth century Denmark - who is struggling to connect with the right Bluetooth.

[parkchanwoohoo]

I've posted about this before but back home at my old job I used to get pho so fucking often that the owners of the place stopped asking me what I wanted and stopped handing me menus when I walked in. After I moved to NY and I could only go back to Chicago like once a year, I sat down and they gave me a menu and I was like "Oh no I already know what I want, can I get--" and they were like OHHH #36 WITH EXTRA NOODLES YOU'RE BACK and I almost cried