I'll just put this here.

Skeptic, crank, grouch, looker-up of things arcane and mundane, ground crew for the Tiny Air Force. Here be music, maps, memes, monsters, mountains, movements and monoliths. Also masks, meteors, motion, mechanisms, monstrosities, miscellany and maybe magic. Or whatever. Hope you like it.

[rejectedprincesses]

Sutematsu Oyama (1860-1919): Japan’s First College-Educated Woman

Full entry (with footnotes) here. Patreon here. Art notes behind the cut.

Keep reading

[laurelhach]

using microsoft word

*moves an image a mm to the left*

all text and images shift. four new pages appear. paragraph breaks form a union. a swarm of commas buzzes at the window. in the distance, sirens.

[teaberryblue]

A terminology request

Please, please, please don’t refer to nonbinary people as “enby” or “enbies” unless you are talking about specific nonbinary people whom you know identify with the phrase.  It is a cutifying phrase which is alienating and exclusionary to a lot of us who do not want our identities to be cutified.  If you want to be inclusive, please use “nonbinary” or “NB.” 

“Enby” is fine to use for people who like that term but it’s by no means a universally acceptable term and quite a lot of people are uncomfortable with it so using it when talking generally about all nonbinary people is going to make it hard for some people to take part in your dialogue.  Recognize when you use it that you are alienating people whom you are talking about, who already feel alienated by a lot of conversations around gender that we have difficulty relating to. 

And please, if you are a nonbinary person who relates well to the term “enby,” take the time to make sure the people you are speaking to know that that is *your* term and not a term appropriate for all nonbinary people.

I am feeling deeply discomfited, excluded from & silenced in conversations I should be able to take part in by people’s insistence on using labels that make me feel resoundingly not-okay.

Thanks! 

[what-eats-owls]

Can you watermark your Captain's Orders poster so I can distribute it on other sites? I just saw it on FB with no source attributed.

Yeah, I’ve seen it floating around in the wild myself! If y’all would like a watermarked version, here you go:

Please use responsibly. ;)

[mudshark58]

Shuttle Enterprise, " Free flight Test ", ABC News, August 12, 1977 40 years ago today.

[mudshark58]

Laverne Cox Shows You The Long, Intense Fight For Transgender Rights Is Still Marching On | TIME  

The ACLU presents: Time Marches Forward & So Do We. Laverne Cox is the first Trans woman of color to have a leading role on a mainstream scripted television show and was the first transgender actor to play a trans-character as a series regular on network television. But the fight is marching on. 

See also: http://time.com/4894647/trans-transgender-rights-video/

[mudshark58]

Temperature anomalies arranged by country 1900 - 2016. by Antti Lipponen Via Flickr: Temperature anomalies arranged by country 1900 - 2016. Visualization based on GISTEMP data.

[mudshark58]

Temperature anomalies arranged by country 1900 - 2016 🌡. #dataviz #climate #climatechange #globalwarming Download 🎞: https://t.co/JnaU0tKDlc pic.twitter.com/w3yjmddpOe

— Antti Lipponen (@anttilip) August 1, 2017

[churchofsatannews]

The Metro #396: 80′s and New Wave with Violent Femme, Duran Duran, and more

Now available on Radio Free Satan:

This week on The Metro, Warlock JNothing brings the following bands for you weekly trip back to the 1980s: Captain Sensible, Talk Talk, Violent Femmes, Duran Duran, The Go Go’s, Thompson Twins, Madonna, Nick Heyward, P.I.L., Billy Idol, Til Tuesday, Missing Persons, Bobby McFerrin, Frank & Moon Zappa, The Bangles, and finishing up with The Romantics.

Listen to this episode and other satanic podcasts at radiofreesatan.com.

[mudshark58]

Nikita Koshkin: Usher Waltz John Williams, guitar

[mudshark58]

Ruth Gordon: On Assholes

"Follies of God" by James Grissom (Alfred A. Knopf)

Oh, there are a lot of lousy people in the world. Also, a lot of terrific people. You've gotta remember that, and you've got to move in the right circles. I have days where I just want everyone to go fuck themselves or walk off a cliff, but I only say that to myself, and I smile and I walk home and I have some tea, I talk to Garson [Kanin, her husband], I might take a nap. Then I wake up and I write, and in writing, I wipe away all the unpleasantness of the day, of the people, of the city, whatever. We have it in our power to overcome assholes, and I think we have them thrown into our path to see if we have the chops to handle them. Handle them. 

[angrygoatgirl]

Hypo Hypno

Non-diabetics have asked me what hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) feels like, and I’ve always found it indescribable. I could list symptoms, but nothing really conveys the feeling. And I am talking about a level of hypoglycemia *only* someone on artificial insulin could understand. Then I came across this optical illusion and instantly thought “That’s a hypo!”. Hypoglycemia feels like this. Your whole body, your thoughts, your feelings, and perceptions (sight, hearing, everything), feel like this. I know it is an abstract illustration of an abstract description, but this is the best representation of how a low blood sugar feels that I could possibly imagine:

[mudshark58]

A. Khachaturian - Gayane Ballet Suite in "2001: A Space Odyssey"

Aram Khachaturian's Gayane Ballet Suite (Adagio) in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) by Stanley Kubrick. Three fragments (trzy fragmenty).

[mudshark58]

Fairport Convention - Big William

[mudshark58]

Jodie Whittaker's Doctor Who is the heroic female super nerd we've been waiting for

Those complaining about a woman taking over the Tardis are missing the point.

Doctor Who is a different sort of hero. The Doctor solves problems not by being the strongest, the fastest or the one with the biggest army, but by outthinking everyone else in the room. Far too many female characters are two-dimensional. I’m ready for one that can travel in four. I’m ready to watch a woman save the world again and again by being very, very clever and very, very moral, without having to have a man sort anything out or come and save her. I’m ready for a woman hero who’s older than recorded history and weirder than a three-day bender in the BBC props cupboard. I’m ready for a female super nerd. And so is the rest of the world.

[postcardsfromspace]

Stop HB2796

HB2796 is an absolutely blatant attempt to strip away the civil rights of transgender people; and it’s absolutely fucking terrifying.

Quoting the official summary of HB2796:

This bill prohibits the word “sex” or “gender” from being interpreted to mean “gender identity,” and requires “man” or “woman” to be interpreted to refer exclusively to a person’s genetic sex, for purposes determining the meaning of federal civil rights laws or related federal administrative agency regulations or guidance. No federal civil rights law shall be interpreted to treat gender identity or transgender status as a protected class, unless it expressly designates “gender identity” or “transgender status” as a protected class.

HB2796 is currently with the Republican-majority House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. Please, PLEASE–especially if you’re cisgender, and doubly if you’re one of their constituents–call the Representatives on the committee and explain just how much damage this will do, how many lives it will destroy, and how many legislative careers (hopefully) hinge on its passage or failure.

Committee members are:

Chairman Steve King (R-IA-04; King is also one of HB2796′s sponsors) - [phone]

Vice Chairman Ron DeSantis (R-FL-06) - [phone]

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ-08; Franks is also one of HB2796’s sponsors) - [phone]

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01) - [phone]

Rep. Karen Handel (R-GA-06) - [phone]

Ranking Member Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) - [phone]

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD-08) - [phone]

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY-10) - [phone]

(Note - Listed phone numbers are for DC offices only, but links go to pages with both district and federal office information, as well as additional avenues of contact.)

[mudshark58]

Tom Lehrer Is Not Dead! He Just Wants You to Think He Is.

Tom Lehrer is the greatest comic songwriter of the last century. Okay. Maybe that’s too much. But he’s definitely the most hilarious of the last 89 years. (His 89th birthday is upon us.) At age ten, I was introduced to Tom Lehrer by one of parents’ best friends, Mr. Tully. The Tullys were the best-educated, the most bookish, the most sophisticated (in a good way) of my parents’ friends. And Mr. Tully was a laugh riot. He always treated me as if I were five years older than my actual age, which was a great boost to my on-the-brink-of-adolescence ego.

Over the years, Lehrer has explained to interviewers that in the 1960s it was easy to write a comic anthem about the threat of a nuclear holocaust, because what fool would be in favor of it? But in the decades since he stopped accepting gigs, the issues of the day have become so splintered and bitter that he can’t find anything funny in them. He told one interviewer that social polarization does not lend itself to comedy. Do you support affirmative action or race-based quotas? As Lehrer said, you can’t write a successful comic lyric that includes the phrase “on the other hand.” Speaking with a reporter from People magazine about the stream of appeals he receives to start writing again, Lehrer said, “I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.” 

I missed this when it was published in March, so here’s a link now.