[depsidase]

[wheelie-sick]

"oh, I live in a desert and-"

"wow that must be so terrible" "deserts are so ugly" "I would never want to live in a wasteland like that" "it's just empty nothingness"

wishing 10,000 exploding hammers upon you

behold New Mexico

[ID 1: tall, snowcapped rocky mountains rising above a plain filled with desert scrub

ID 2: brightly colored banded cliff walls of several mesas climbing their way into mountains

ID 3: a desert prairie

ID 4: colorful hoodoos against a twilight sky

ID 5: white sand dunes as far as the eye can see

ID 6: a collection of hoodoos against a stormy sky at sunset

ID 7: a juniper tree standing with a cliff wall in the background

ID 8: several juniper trees on a rocky landscape]

[wheelie-sick]

this post and all its wonderful additions (look in the notes) is circulating again. these photos and many of the ones added in the notes come from the US Southwest.

right now the trump administration is attacking the public lands in the Southwestern US. most recently (July 2026), in Utah the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments have been cut by over 90% to allow for mining. these lands are sacred to multiple Native nations in the area and contain irreplaceable archeological sites. additionally, the commission of Native representatives who aided in management of these lands has been dissolved leaving Native people without a voice in caring for the remaining land. (read more here)

here in New Mexico, the 10 mile buffer zone surrounding Chaco Canyon preventing oil and gas drilling is under attack. Chaco Canyon contains incredibly old and incredibly fragile archeological sites sacred to Pueblo people. these sites are threatened by mining and drilling. (read more here)

The attack on the Chaco buffer zone is currently in a public comment period open until July 29. PLEASE leave a public comment to save these irreplaceable places.

[spicycheeser]

"A marriage ending isn't a failure at all. I spent eleven years with her. We were so in love that we couldn't image life apart from each other. We got our own place, adopted a dog, and supported each other through school. I thought if tow people loved each other enough the rest would fall into place, except... love isn't everything.

And I didn't want to believe that, but we were sitting in counseling one day, talking about our future and I realized we were describing two completely different lives. Where we'd live, what kind of life we wanted, what made us happy. And it hit me that- I love this woman and this woman loved me. And after eleven years of loss, grief, career changes, we were so deeply in love... but we weren't aligned. And I kept thinking 'We just need to try harder. We can find some compromise to make this work,' because that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone, right?

But the reality was, we had just become different people. Her trade school took her in one direction, my graduate degree in another and trying to force us back into who we were five years ago wasn't coming from a place of love. It was coming from a place of fear. Fear that, if this ended, it meant we wasted eleven years. But sitting there across from her, I realized: That's not how love works.

Those eleven years happened. They were real. The dog, our home, showing up for each other through grad school and trade school. I wouldn't change a single thing because loving someone doesn't mean you're meant to stay with them forever. And letting go doesn't erase what you had. We measure marriage by whether it lasts forever or not, but what if we measured it by whether it mattered?

What if we measured it by the love we gave, the life we built, and the people we became? Because love's job isn't to last forever, it's to help you become fully completely yourself, and sometimes the most loving thing you can do is give each other permission to be yourselves, separately. But the dog doesn't know were' divorced. He just gets two Christmases now."

Pulled this from this guy Preston Rakovsky's Instagram (@prestonrack) because it is a beautiful perspective on love, marriage, and relationships in general.

[ashyminivet]

india is not a democracy anymore.

everyone needs to hear about the situation in india right now. the youth of this nation are going through hell and back to protect the foundations that our country was built on in the first place, while the adults who are supposed to actually be in charge try to silence our voices.

NEET, which is an exam taken by millions of students per year and is the ONLY gateway for medical admissions across the country, had its papers leaked. so many took their lives because this exam meant everything for their future. and NTA, the agency who conducts this exam, was not held accountable.

there was national backlash. cockroach janta party (initially a satirical political party formed by abhijeet dipke in retaliation to the remarks of the chief justice of india calling the youth "cockroaches" and "parasites of society") started protests at jantar mantar, demanding the resignation of the union education minister, dharmendra pradhan. the movement also asked for ten million inr (~100,000 usd) in compensation for the families of students who died by suicide and wanted NTA be held accountable.

sonam wangchuk, a climate activist and education reformer, also went on a hunger strike at jantar mantar to protest against this corruption in india's higher education system. his fast began on june 28, demanding the resignation of the union education minister. his fast lasted for 20 days until delhi police FORCIBLY removed him and admitted him to safdarjung hospital on july 18.

because of this, cockroach janta party announced "chalo sansad," a march to the parliament beginning on june 20th, 9:00 am ist. but the police seems to be responding with water cannons, mobile jammers, and baton charge. all of this, because of a peaceful protest led by people no older than 30.

and yet there has been absolutely no indian media coverage about a movement that spans the entirety of this nation. so, please, if you see this, keep talking about us. we will not let those old bastards stoop any lower than they've already had. we will not let them ruin our country any further. we will not be silenced

[your-mom-friend]

Please look it up. Students have been beaten bloody. They’re using electrified batons. They’re using batons with nails hammered in. They’re dragging people off and locking them up for no reason. People are being beaten, assaulted, and even molested by the police.

The government is doing everything it can except for actually having an honest dialogue with the protestors.

It’s important to note that despite all the police brutality, despite how the government has had extra forces airlifted to Delhi to help quash the protest, this has deterred no one.

Not only is the protest in Delhi going strong, the government closed down every metro station in Central Delhi in an effort to stop them and it still hasn’t.

There’s protests in most major cities in India in solidarity. Palakkad, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kochi, and probably more besides. There has been a protest in the UK as well in solidarity.

People who aren’t at the protest are donating so much food that the organisers have had to ask them to stop doing so because there’s more than enough. In lieu of that people are donating money for medicine, lawyers, cleanup, and umbrellas.

Most crucially, hopes aren’t broken. Spirits aren’t broken. People with bruises and broken bones are still showing up. People are showing up cosplaying as freedom fighters and super heroes and a dinosaur. People are doxxing goons who show up trying to incite violence. People are making reels. People in Mumbai literally opened a moving police detainment van to allow arrested students to escape.

*all links lead to Instagram posts or reels showing the same. Almost every major Indian news network has been bought and either ignores the protests or depicts them unfairly. All honest news comes from people on the ground and smaller independent news outlets.

[sweatermuppet]

closing statement from an article about being intersex & the possible connection of gender expression and sexuality in intersex individuals, published in The Gay Liberator, 1970s

[prunejuicepls]

I pan handled from the end of 2017 to the middle of 2018 and here 10 of my notes

1. The Midwest has the most caring racists. The amount of sleeping bags and hot chocolate was surprising and heartwarming, the amount of racism was alarming.

2. People love to give you stuff in Las Vegas

3. Christians love to record themselves giving you a water bottle or a slice of pizza. This is a trap they are going to talk to you about god, and yes some (all) think you are homeless because you are a sinner

4. Most teenaged panhandlers look older than they are (dirty, stressed). Remember they're kids. Most aren't drug addicts. Most are abused for one thing or another. Most of the time it's for being queer.

5. Dont trust RV people ever

6. Dont sleep anywhere where you won't hear people coming and wake up. Trash, sticks, whatever makes noise when people rustle through it. Car camping is so much better.

7. Cops aren't people, they're some strange demon sent to fool you with riddles and drag you away. Treat them like the Fae

8. No one gives handouts in the Northeast

9. No one calls 911 if a homeless person is ODing in California

10. Humanity is so much more about love and connectedness than any of us can understand. Sometimes you have to take advantage of that to eat.

[depsidase]

[theconcealedweapon]

[depsidase]

i say ban oil pipelines, period.

they will just be dirty poisonous empty pipes in 20 years when oil inevitably becomes a stranded asset.

and the straw ban isn't the worst idea in the world. it's just pretty obviously not as consequential to the overall problem as fucking OIL.

but i do think single use plastic needs to go. if we had a different attitude about this shit, like, if we reused plastic straws instead of throwing them in the garbage, they wouldn't be so bad.

we don't really have plastic straws where i live anymore but any time we come across one we rinse it and hold onto it to be used again instead of landfilling it. not just cuz of plastic waste but because they've become rare lol. it'll usually be a vietnamese restaurant that's still using them and its a bit like finding gold.

the alternative to plastic straws of course is to make the straws out of the many types of bioplastic being developed that are compostable and often made from recycled organics. but that's more expensive and no (large) company wants to pay for that.

all single use plastic is bad though. not just straws. focusing only on straws is silly. i think if the plastic isn't or can't or is unlikely to be reused it should be banned unless there are very specific reasons not to. like sanitation or medical uses or whatever. we shouldn't be throwing plastic out after one use out of convenience. that's boomer age shit we need to get out of.

and we need to ban petroleum. leave the oil in the ground. leave the methane in the ground. transition society away from using this shit as inefficient fuel. (more boomer age shit to get out of.)

very inefficient fuel that puts the whole global economy under the boots of wealthy oil barons and petrostates.

[indirectcomedian]

xena gave us trans drag lesbianism as a treat

[autisticexpression2]

There are layers to this. Earlier in the episode, Xena discovers her secret while they're sharing a locker room. A woman she has got naked with turned out to be trans. It's the exact scenario terfs are always fear-mongering about, but Xena just shrugs it off.

Also, the kiss was a big deal not just because it was gay but because the trans actress was HIV positive. They wanted to show the world that you can't contract HIV just from kissing someone. Bear in mind, the AIDS crisis was still fresh on people's minds in the 90s.

Happy Pride.

[effiecalvin]

I have this idea for a video game called Are You Out There? where two players control two different alien civilizations and the goal of the game is to invent spaceflight and then manage to find one another in a ginormous universe. You can try to leave signs for each other to find, or send out probes and radio waves, or colonize many systems so you're a bigger target, but its hard because the universe is really big.

Idk just a thought.

[mcgee-mcgoo]

could be i just don't yet have the education to argue about transmisogyny, but i (transfem) had a hard time finding the words while talking to my (transmasc) friend and maybe y'all lovely tumblr dot com users can give me a pointer

basically he argued that because trans men can be misgendered via transphobia, and then impacted by misogyny due to their transphobic perception as a woman, that trans men do experience both transphobia and misogyny and therefore, transmisogyny

my argument was pretty much that, while that's true, trans men are not transmisogyny's intended targets and that things like v-coding, sports bans, "femboy" culture and the egg prime directive are specifically intended to harm trans women. he seemed unconvinced that that meant transmisogyny is exclusive to transfems.

so basically i guess i'm asking, do i understand this concept correctly?? i'm second guessing myself and want to make sure not to spread misinformation before i make any future arguments. genuinely looking for help here, ty

[ramhornsntrauma]

Thinking about Grace eventually setting up a communication line on Erid. Going into Mary one last time and flipping on the recording. "I don't know if this will reach Earth while everyone I knew was alive. But I want you to know I'm not only alive, but that I'm okay! I have friends and family and... I've made a life here". He looks away from the camera and hums some kind of melody to himself. This isn't the Ryland Grace everyone knew. He's covered in gems and mesh and speaks with a strange up-and-down tone to his voice, almost like he's singing to a song no one else can hear.

"I forgive you." He says finally. "I will never return to Earth. I will never know if this reaches you. But I forgive you... You did murder someone that day. But... a new man was born out of it. I think I... I think I like him a lot more."

He adjusts the earrings he wears, now, "For all of my students, all of you -- every single one I've taught. I'm proud of you. You made me the man I am today, and I remember each and every one of you. You're going to do great things -- if you haven't already"

"Dr. Ryland Grace, signing off."

[End Recording]

Eva Stratt is in her 80s by the time this recording reaches their planet. She had been fighting to keep the connection up. She spouted many reasons, but everyone knew why. Just in case he was alive. Just in case he would return. Just in case. Just in case. Just in case.

He's not returning.

She can't bare the thought of taking them down now.

[dragonsareaqueerthing]

Anyone else thinking about how Important names are to Eridian culture, considering how Rocky addressed himself and Adrian, and what that would mean once Grace got to Erid. (ignore statements of time i refuse to do the conversions)

Imagine, after decades of your world becoming colder and colder, you are saved. A single Eridian, the only one of twenty three to survive, arrives in an alien ship, accompanied by a creature you can barely conceive.

Everything about the alien is so loud, hinges formed from tissue thumping and stretching in constant movement, even while unconscious. Completely organic, reliant of oxygen and hydrogen. Instead of a protective carapace, it regrows its damaged tissues. It has senses you do not, and technology so unlike your own, both able to utilise a force you have never heard of. The same force that killed almost your entire mission team. Highly adaptable, able to teach itself how to fly its ship in under a week, able to become fluent in the engineer's dialect in less than four years.

And if Erid's best engineer is correct (and there's no reason it wouldn't be), this creature not only managed to breed a predator of the warmth-taker to survive in various atmospheres, including Threeworld's, but also turned around to provide aid when it discovered that the predator could escape xenonite.

And you think: Surely, this creature which protects itself without a carapace, which sleeps so lightly and knows so much and learns so quickly, which saved two planets at the cost of ever returning to its thrum, surely, a creature so extraordinary must have a name to match

And you think: Perhaps it is strength, Mountain-Base or Lonsdaleite-Carapace. Perhaps it is intellect, Diamond-Claw or Lockpick-Mind. Perhaps it is courage, Song-Through-Silence or Path-Carver

And you think: None of these names hold the true weight of what this creature is to them. How do you describe something like that, which aids without expectation of anything in return, which risks its own life for the sake of a species it cannot touch, which performs miracles simply because it was asked.

And then you learn: Your saviour's name is Kindness

[solarpunk-nightbird]

Actually, fuck the myth of the Tower of Babel. The real beautiful utopia where we can all finally truly understand each other doesn't lie in sameness or uniformity, it lies in the giant and digital Rosetta Stone we are going to build and broadcast across the entire world

[solarpunk-nightbird]

So, genuinely no hard feelings, I get where y'all are coming from, but that was actually kind of my entire point

The Rosetta Stone was and is real.

This is indisputable. You can go see the Rosetta Stone on display right now!! I'd say you could even it touch it, but there's museum glass in the way, so that the oils on human skin can't further degrade this 2,000-year-old stele, which is one of the most important surviving historical texts in the world.

The Tower of Babel is not real, and it never was.

The Tower of Babel is a millennia-old religious story about a mythological tower, which serves as a mythological explanation for the origin of different human languages. Yes, there are some religious historians who speculate that the myth was inspired by one or another physical tower, but no, that doesn't prove anything other than "this is how many people in this cultural explained or understood that sort of event."

The Rosetta Stone, on the other hand, is an object of translation that actually exists

Photo credit: By © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved from Wikipedia article "Rosetta Stone." https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3153928

That picture is of a real object. It is not of a picture of a 3,000+ year old myth.

Our attempts to understand each other will not result in us being struck down by some force from on high!

And the true path to a world where we can all understand each other does not involve us all speaking the same language. That's racist bs

True understanding depends on ethical translation and language preservation, not on unity of language

[shamebats]

[0x1f41d]

@queer-joy-detector @this-is-trans-joy

[queer-joy-detector]

Queer joy detected!

[this-is-trans-joy]

This is trans joy!!!

[junejasprose-addict]

It used to be feminism 101 that using male terms by default is bad, but then trans women wanted a piece of that pie and suddenly everyone becomes philosophers and etymologists discussing the nuances of language instead of just listening to women