Raise Your Hopeful Voice

Alex. 23. Dramatist, Musician, Podcaster, Robot Rights Activist. Appalachian Activity Grrrl. Co-Host of the Cryptid Keeper Podcast & A Horror Borealis. 

[modern-day-minstrel]

well i guess i’m restarting this thing. under construction today.

[starlitheals]

Also! Do you like cryptids? Would you enjoy listening to detailed conversations about the origins and legends of various cryptids? Check out a podcast recently started by a friend of mine @modern-day-minstrel called The Cryptid Keeper! They’re on Soundcloud and iTunes. :)

[modern-day-minstrel]

This is so sweet!! Also, it proves i should REALLY GET BETTER ABOUT KEEPING UP MY TUMBLR. But yeah! @peacocktales and I have a podcast now and we'd love for you to take a listen! Thanks so much for spreading the word! 💙💙💙

[modern-day-minstrel]

hey hi sorry to come back after a FOREVER LONG TUMBLR HIATUS but my best friend and I just launched our new podcast, a comedy-horror-informational-anthology-advice series about cryptids! Please listen, like, share, and give us feedback on what you love or hate!

[margesimpsonannoyedgrunt]

[riflegarden]

today at work a man brought a pug in on a leash and that pug was so excited and happy to see me it was as if we were old friends who havent been in contact in 7 years i felt so loved in that moment

[riflegarden]

today a bassett hound came in and wagged her tail so furiously all of her loose skin started to jiggle and she was so pumped to see me i want more dogs to come into my store they make my life whole and worthwhile

[riflegarden]

I’m so glad this came back cause a golden retriever named Milly came in today who put her paws on my register counter and wanted to say hi to me and I loved her so much and I scratched her ears and she gave me that classic dopey dog smile 

[riflegarden]

yesterday a girl came in with her boyfriend and in her hand was a tiny tan colored dog that she told me was a chihuahua/pekingese mix and he had a severe underbite and one little canine tooth was poking out and his ears were like bent at the tips and i immediately commented on how amazing he was and she goes omg thanks do you wanna pet him and i was like there is literally nothing more i want to do while being on the clock right now than to pet this incredible tiny dog and he was so sweet and licked my hand and his name was spike 

[riflegarden]

yesterday these people came in and put a blanket into one of our shopping baskets and it started to move and i was like omg whats in there and they set it down on the counter and the blanket kept moving and the suspense was so good like is it gonna be a cat is it gonna be a ferret maybe a lizard and then the smallest chihuahua ive ever seen in my life popped her little head out and licked my finger and i died 

[riflegarden]

A baby german shepherd named Jonathan came in tonight and since i was on the sales floor and not behind a counter i say to the owner omg can i pet this angel and they were like yeah of course and i crouched down and Jonathan ran into my arms and almost tripped over his puppy feet it was 12/10

[riflegarden]

TODAY a german shepherd named london grabbed one of our lanterns off the shelf and was carrying it around and the owner was like, “london no, we’re not getting that” and gave him the merchandise she was buying instead and he carried it to me and dropped it on the counter at my register and i could have cried 

[sedgewina]

Founding Feathers

[oac47]

[almostsebastien]

Who is this!?!??

[quartermoose]

His name is Steven Martin. This is his IG, and here is an article with other amazing, stylish plus sized guys (yes it’s buzzfeed I know).

[arianagrowlr-deactivated2017041]

This is amazing omg

[queenciityconfidential]

I’m shocked. This is the first time I’ve EVER seen a plus sized male fashion model that wasn’t super muscular.

[tarynel]

Oh wow!!

[immaplatypus]

oh, hello there new follower! very nice to meet you

??? okay that’s weird, and they followed one after the other. maybe the same person has two viking blogs? but why would a viking blog be following m–

w h a t

[immaplatypus]

OKAY WHAT THE HECK I WAS WONDERING WHY THIS SIMPLE ASK GOT SO MANY NOTES AND THEN

THERE ARE MORE

W H Y  A R E  T H E R E  M O R E

[stalker-among-the-stars]

Are these the new porn bots? Viking Bots?

[officialearthbound-deactivated2]

GIMMIE THE VIKING BOTS

[youtubeandsatan]

reblog in 15 seconds or you will never be followed by a blessed viking bot

[peachou]

Anxiety distraction games

I know with all that’s been happening that some of you have been feeling anxious so here’s some links to some of my favourite calming distraction games:

Art game

Flow game

Galaxy game

Giraffe game

Balloon game

Planetarium Game

Imagination Game

Liquid particles Game

I hope this helps x

Links to more anxiety/panic help posts under read more:

Keep reading

[phantabuloustrash]

This is so helpful omg thank you

[girlsgetgaming]

This is the best thing.

[mama-gretta]

These are so much fun, I’m gonna use them a lot.

[notbecauseofvictories]

can you please talk about those protections to curtail executive power I'm really, really scared and could use the reassurance thank you

THINGS A PRESIDENT CANNOT DO:

Reverse any Supreme Court decision 

This includes Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage a constitutional right; Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which reaffirmed a woman’s right to choose first articulated in Roe v. Wade, another Supreme Court case. Grutter v. Bollinger, which instituted affirmative action, the entire body of Civil Rights case law, plus anything related to due process, including the right of minors to due process, your right to an attorney, Miranda rights, inadmissible evidence, etc.

(Even if Trump appoints the worst possible SC nominee, they still can’t reverse any of these decisions without a really significant case coming before the Court with new facts, and then they have to write an opinion stating how this case is different than that other case…it’s unlikely to happen.)

Write law or repeal any existing law

While traditionally, presidents have exerted influence on the legislative agenda (see, Obama’s role in advancing and promoting the Affordable Care Act) they cannot actually write or pass legislation. Bills, joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions, and simple resolutions must be introduced in the House by a Representative.

Presidents cannot strike down law. Only Congress can repeal laws, and only the Supreme Court can strike them down as unconstitutional.

Presidential influence is just that—influence.

(And if—for example—you are hated by 95% of the party you joined last week, and burned all your goddamn bridges by insulting them at various points in your campaign…..they’re unlikely to partner with you in crafting legislation.)

Make any law or declaration that infringes in any way on the rights of the states

So in the US, most of the rights are reserved to the states. You name it, it’s a state-run power. Criminal procedure and law? States. Medicare and Medicaid? States. The definition of marriage? States. Insurance, health departments, housing, unemployment benefits, public education, all these are state programs. And the president cannot infringe on those powers given to the states.

(This is why down-ticket voting is so important, because Mike Pence as governor of Indiana had 800x the power he’s going to have as VP.)

Declare war.

This one is the most complicated, because with the advent of our “conflicts” in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. there has been a significant shift in the articulation of the war doctrine, and it is one of the least restricted of the president’s “restricted” powers. But, despite all that, a president still has no power to declare war.

Unilaterally appoint heads of administrative departments

Unilaterally make treaties with foreign nations

Essentially, while presidents have a lot of power, it’s mostly unofficial—they can’t make sweeping laws, they can’t overturn existing rights, the most they can do is refuse to enforce them (which is absolutely a threat! and a problem!) but we aren’t electing de facto royalty here.

[femboy-fever]

Everyone, I encourage you to read this. This is important information that every American–no, every person should be armed with. Hopefully, it will stop some of the fear-mongering and help us all maintain a more logical view on things.

[purelintrash]

Lin-Manuel Miranda SNL opening monologue

2016 needed this

[stevenduffysstuffy]

Where is it???

[jetvein]

a dark secret

[rubyvroom]

This was the crossword puzzle in the New York Times yesterday. 

Tausig’s crossword is a so-called Schrödinger puzzle, named for the physicist’s hypothetical cat that is at once both alive and dead. In a Schrödinger puzzle, select squares have more than one correct letter answer: They exist in two states at once. “Black Halloween animal,” for example, could be both BAT or CAT, yielding two different but perfectly correct puzzles. Only 10 such puzzles have now been published in Times history.

It’s the theme of Tausig’s puzzle, though, that makes it special. Four entries in Thursday’s crossword can include either an “F” or an “M.” Both are correct; neither is wrong. For example, “Part of a house” can be either ROOF or ROOM. The long “revealer” answer, tying those select entries together and spanning 11 squares smack-dab in the middle of the puzzle, is GENDER FLUID.

This puzzle, with “M”s and “F”s that aren’t fixed, is a masterful blend of subject and structure. “It potentially really evokes what gender fluidity is, which is not moving back and forth between two poles, but actually not being committed to either pole, and potentially existing in many states at different times,” Tausig said.

[mournjargon]

This is … really cool.

[chief-of-project-e]

Irish people; The faeries aren’t real

Irish people; No fucking way will I go in that faerie ring

[queer-trans-amazon-deactivated2]

#look#you don’t go in a fairy ring and you don’t fuck with a stone in the middle of a field#these are just facts#nobody does it#fairies will fuck you up#Ireland#folklore#fairies (Via @false-dawn)

[false-dawn]

Look, I don’t believe in God, but I will not disrespect the Good Gentlemen of the Hills. That’s just common sense.

[ohmeursault]

Between this and the Icelanders with their elves I do not understand what is going on above the 50th parallel.

[superindianslug]

My general rule of thumb: you don’t have to believe in everything, but don’t fuck with it, just in case.

[elocinneem-deactivated20160605]

^^^ that part

[dduane]

This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.

Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.

This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.

Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.

I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.

And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.

You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.

So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)

Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.

They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.

Atlantic islands. Faerie: we haz it.

[rubyspurflower-deactivated20240]

Pressing questions

Did medieval witches baby-talk to their familiars?

“Who be the finest rat in all of this hamlet? Be it thou? Be it thou?? Yes it be!”

Corollary question: did they come up with the same kind of brain-drivel I spit at my dog?

“I hath thine foot. It be mine now. Thou need'st the wheel of a very small ox-cart to replace thine foot.

Okay. I will lease thee thy foot, so thou no longer need'st the wheel, for I be very generous. Thou be welcome, small friend.”

[jon-snow]

some girls do a messy ponytail and look like magical fucking fairy princesses

i do a messy ponytail and i look like a goddamn founding father

[beallmysinsrememberd]

that’s fucking badass and if anyone tells you differently you should declare independence from their stupid ass

[unexplained-events]

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

VIDEO

[smileforthehigh-deactivated2017]

Finally. People need to realize aliens aren’t the answer for everything (when they use it to erase poc civilizations and how smart they were)

[desiremyblack]

(via TumbleOn)

[pearlsnapbutton]

What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”

[kiwianaroha]

Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it

And the Iroquois told Europeans that squirels showed them how to tap maple syrup and no one believed them until they caught it on video

[theopensea]

Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.

[thegirlthewolfate]

Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.

Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/

Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄

[kammartinez]

ALL OF THIS.

Would also like to add that attributing “alien help” to almost all of ancient humanity’s achievements is absolutely 100% racist, because it suggests that humans - especially not-white humans - were too dumb to figure out things like advanced astronomy and complex mathematics on their own, because they would’ve needed the help of White Men to Achieve Such Great Things.