Nessie

This blog has lived its time. Its days are probably numbered now.

[pillarsalt]

[haunchylaurels]

Altering your body is cool and fun and OP is a terf

[b4tf3m-deactivated20250316]

[sua-sponte-deactivated20200331]

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

[is-the-post-reliable]

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

When we were children, my sister had private music lessons at her violin teacher’s house. I only visited there once, but I still remember that afternoon. The teacher had an artificial pond in her yard, a large beautiful thing with lily pads and plant life. And in the pond, there were goldfish. I had never seen such enormous goldfish. 

I spent several minutes just staring at them (and trying to convince them to bite my fingers.) When my sister’s violin lesson ended, her teacher came out to the yard and explained that these goldfish were the same small creatures that were often unfortunately sold in plastic bags at state fairs. They were only about two inches long apiece, when she bought them and put them in the new, empty pond. In essence, they were like every goldfish I had seen before, but they had been given a much larger, much richer environment in which to flourish. As a result, they had grown into some of the most remarkable, vibrant creatures my twelve-year-old self had ever met with. All because of a pond. 

Funny what lessons children remember. My sister doesn’t play the violin anymore, but that was the first time I caught a glimpse of the overwhelming extent to which it matters, the way the world treats us.

[yellow-hatco]

Reblogged again for this drawing I made for it

[221b-hound]

Give us room to grow and see how we flourish.

[luulapants]

Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

[lazyscience]

This is the problem writ large in our current scientific communities, not just industry but academic - only correctness is rewarded, and this stunts us both in the types of questions we ask and in what we’re willing to do to answer them. The guardrails of science work when you are free to disprove your hypothesis, to find out “oh. that did NOT, in fact, work.” That is not a failure! That is still information about what you were trying to learn about! however, nobody wants to publish that. nobody wants to make stuff from that. So if you conduct your study accurately with an ambitious premise but fail? Welp. No more money for you, then.

So people ask questions in ways they know they can get right. And especially if the data is CLOSE, but not quite over the line of significance? Well. That could have been circumstance or error too, couldn’t it? Couldn’t we tweak it JUST a little, because I know in my heart what’s really happening, and keeping my lab open and my techs and students paid, my mortgage and student loans up to date…oh, we set these things in front of people and then expect them to be moral when all our current metrics are poised to punish them for it, and then we blame people for falsifying data. And that before taking into account the grifters who think they’re owed personal fame and glory and have NO compunctions about lying as long as they think they can get away with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I think falsifying data is bad and we pay for it in coin up to and including peoples’ lives, and a lot of people who do it are not poor little meow meows but privileged and powerful people who feel entitled to whatever they want, including success. But i also think when this is the system they operate in, it’s going to keep selecting for liars rather than keeping the honest people, not because they’re bad scientists but because they weren’t profitable for their company or their university.

[fox-bright]

Swarovski can continue to fuck off.

In 2021, Swarovski (the company that makes the very sparkly crystals you see in certain jewelry, on figure-skaters' twinkliest outfits, on red carpet dresses), decided they didn't want the grubby fingers of small-time jewelers, clothing designers and costumers and crafters on their shiny beads and rhinestones anymore. They decided to limit their sales to "luxury" and couture creators, not girls who sell stuff on Etsy. The tenor of their press release on the subject was snide and insulting. Resellers (like your favorite bead shop) would no longer be allowed to carry their product; the average Jane on the street would not be able to purchase them. You could only get them if you had an authorized business agreement that bound you to very strict brand behavior. And those of us who still had good stock of the crystals would no longer be "permitted" to use the brand's name in our listings for sale.

Every bead shop and craft supply place and many, many small clothing makers--wedding shops, prom and dancing dress suppliers, the sort of salt of the Earth mom and pop time machines of shops that are the backbone of the field--scrambled to find something that could replace them. The last of the stock dwindled quickly, all of us grabbing what we could get while there was any chance of it, and then it was gone and we no longer had any access.

I was Big Pissed about it at the time. It was just so goddamn stuck-up, when wholesalers and indie jewelers had made them so much money, when some people I knew--when *I!*--had been brand-loyal for decades. But with no recourse, everyone pivoted fairly quickly, most of us to Preciosa Crystals. Those are Czech, quite sparkly, and considerably less expensive than Swarovski. The faceting method they use is different, but not worse; any differences are hardly noticeable when you're seeing them as a hundred pinpoints of light.

Well, out of nowhere, Swarovski just dropped this: https://www.harmanbeads.com/swarovski-brand-policy-update

"Effective June 1, 2026, Swarovski updated the distribution and brand usage policies introduced in 2021. Businesses may now purchase Swarovski Crystals without signing a Brand Control Agreement, and Authorized Distribution Partners may once again sell Swarovski Crystals to resellers, including bead stores and online retailers. Businesses may also use the Swarovski brand name when following Swarovski’s Proper Use Guidelines. Designers, manufacturers, artists, brands, retailers, and resellers are now eligible to purchase Swarovski Crystals through authorized distribution channels."

They want us back. A lot of the companies who could have kept a brand relationship with them also have swapped to Preciosa, over the last half-decade, in solidarity with indie creators and out of a sour awareness that it could be them, next. And it doesn't hurt that Preciosa was able to expand their line quite a bit now that everyone who wanted sparkle had no choice but to go to them.

And I'm not seeing nearly anyone who intends to return. The feeling is, "Y'all told us to fuck off! Off we fucked! And now, that's what you can do, too!" I'm seeing a lot of "How many of us did you stab in the back?" comments from the people whose money they're hoping to attract.

And personally I'm sitting over here all rubby hands, mean snickering, because they really thought they were going to be able to outclimb the people who actually provided all their profits, and now here they are, hat in hand.

[northw0man-deactivated20201019]

It’s so unfair that the women who led the Temperance movement (which led to alcohol prohibition in the 1920s in the US) are painted as these joyless prudish nags who hated when others had fun, when really their issue was the fact that male failure to responsibly consume alcohol led to the rape, neglect, battery, and murder of their wives and children. They couldn’t stop male violence, but they did what they could to stop what exacerbated it. 

[radfemverity]

To add to this, men controlled the family finances. So if it was going disproportionately on booze, that is less money for food, sanitation, rent, clothing, and household supplies. Men were impoverishing their families in favour of the drink.

[katell-radikal]

I recently read Compañeras, a book about women Zapatistas living in autonomous communes in Mexico, and one of the things these women really insist on is banning alcohol. Because men drink and waste the little money they have, or don’t earn any money and just work in exchange for alcohol for pay, and then they come home drunk and beat and assault the women.

All the communes where these women have significant say in the organisation have banned alcohol.

[radtistical]

once I see a group of women being painted as “joyless, prudes & nags” I just know it’s a patriarchal campaign against survivors of abuse

[pollsforadults]

Spin the wheel. Now, imagine you're on a first date with someone who says they`re a [result]. How does this affect the odds of a second date?

100% guarantee I'll want a second date

It's significantly more likely

The odds don't change

It's significantly less likely

There wont be a second date. Absolutely not

Remaining time: 2 days 10 hours

Picker Wheel - Spin the Wheel to Decide a Random Choice

Picker Wheel is a wheel spinner for a random picker. Various functions & customization. Enter choices or names, spin the wheel to decide a r

(anon submission)

[radfemme-rage]

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[scottbaiowulf-deactivated201805]

Male writers writing female characters:

“Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.”

[m1ssc0mmun1cat10n]

‘ She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards’ is the greatest fucking sentence I have ever read.

[silly-activites]

THE ORIGINAL??

[dduane]

(smh) Never thought I’d see it in the wild. Yet here it is. :)

[browniejeane]

always gotta reblog the ‘breasted boobily’ post

[thuriweaver]

[literally-black-jesus]

I hate people who say shit like "I prefer to date people with afab bodies" no you don't you prefer people with vulvas and boobs who look more "fem" to you and its perfectly fine to say that. I'm afab and I don't think you'd like my beard or body hair or anything about me so don't rope me in when we both know what you meant. SAY WHAT YOU MEAN I FUCKING BEG YOU

[evenlesssentimentaltranslator]

OK. She means she’s a lesbian and she wants heterosexual men to stop sexually harassing her.

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Voting ended on6h

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Voting ended on6h

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Voting ended on6h

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[uglyparkbench]

Women on Stamps: Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iraq, and Morocco.

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

[star-pocalypse]

Eloise and Benedict's dynamic is both so important and so, so sad to me because like, here are two siblings, both second-born, both have great passion, and both want something greater than the conventional life their society is offering them, they are the only two people that truly seem to understand each other, and so they really only have each other to confide in

But the thing is that Benedict is ultimately allowed to have what he wants, he gets to study art, he gets to be a rake, and explore his sexuality, he gets to marry below his station, and he gets to explore who he is, and what he wants, and nobody stops him

And then you have Eloise, who gets... none of that

While the show allows Benedict to explore who he is outside of the confines of the ton, the show—and the fandom—punishes Eloise anytime she tries to do anything that is not expected of her

She enjoys writing? Violet belittles her interests and the show absolutely refuses to allow her to pursue this

She attends political rallies? She is outed to the ton, and her entire political plotline is dropped

She falls in love with a working class man, who is literally the only person in the show who actually cares to hear what she thinks? Penelope sabotages that relationship to stop Eloise from finding out her Whistledown secret

Eloise doesn't want to get married? Violet is going to punish her for it, and when Eloise is upset about it, the show is going to demonize her, and make her apologize for not loving the tradwife lessons being forced on her

Eloise wants to be a spinster? Violet is going to punish her, and the show is going to make it seem as though what Eloise wants is ridiculous, isolating, and lonely, as if there weren't societies for spinsters as 25% of noble women in that era remained unmarried

The show lets Benedict be different, it lets Benedict explore who he is, and it rewards his unconventionality

But Eloise? She is insulted, and belittled, and constantly beaten down by everyone around her, so that when becomes a man's live-in bangmaid and stepmother to children she never wanted, the audience sees it as plausible because she's now a shell of the woman she once was

This isn't character development, this is literally a twisted alt-right fantasy of leftist/childfree women being 'fixed' by a man and conforming to societal norms, becoming tradwives because their feminism and independence was really just a byproduct of how lonely they really were or some bullshit like that

The fact that the show used essentially the same archetype for two of its main characters, but the man is rewarded for the very same traits that his female counterpart is consistently punished and humiliated by the narrative for displaying is very telling of the writers mentality, and how they view feminist/childfree women

[skodasforge]

You’re watching a YouTuber that discusses online radicalization, at some point they get radicalized in the opposite direction. You sigh and move on. You’re watching a YouTuber that discusses online radicalization. At some point they get radicalized in the opposite direction. They show no self awareness that this has happened. You move on. You’re watching a YouTuber that discusses online radicalization. They have excellent insight into how distrust and misinformation lead to conspiratorial thinking and how the internet as we know it today is designed to feed these impulses. At some point they get radicalized themselves. You’re watching a YouTuber.

[insertusernameici]

[unicornempire]

I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.

[theheroheart]

#there was a time when parker wouldn’t have noticed, #not because she lacked the capacity to care, #but because she had narrowed herself, #to stay alive she cut off as many unnecessary things as possible, #watching her get them all back, #is one of the glories of this show (via @seananmcguire)

[jack-the-bear]

Leverage hands down has the best character development I’ve ever seen.

[lets-go-steal-an-ot3]

This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc I’d had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).

But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.

Ever since I saw this the first time, I’ve imagined it was Parker doing it. That she and Hardison had a free weekend and decided to take it out on a collections agency. That I was one of the lucky ones who got a little Leverage.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I don’t remember the exact process but basically there’s a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But it’s also entirely possible for people to just… buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that it’s possible to exploit it for good sometimes.

Like, the main reason I know about this is because John Oliver did a piece on debt buying a few years ago, and ended it by revealing that he’d bought 15 million dollars worth of medical debt just so he could forgive all of it. Both to expose how broken the system was because some random fucker like him could buy millions of dollars in peoples debt with zero regulations, and also just to take the record for biggest TV giveaway in history.

[mikkeneko]

A charity where you can do this, right here.

Be Parker! Be somebody else’s Leverage!

[melyzard]

Reblogging for the website.

[nianeyna]

yes! if you want to help with the medical debt crisis in the US and have some extra money please donate to RIP Medical Debt if you can. They’re completely legit and really do what they say - you really CAN relieve an incredible amount of debt for the needy with even a small donation. I’m a monthly donor and receive a quarterly report of the debt they’ve abolished, and it truly is amazing. Based on those reports the average amount of debt abolished per person is actually I would say about $600 - which means, if you’re doing the math, that with a $6 donation to RIP Medical Debt, you can potentially pull one person out of a poverty spiral - maybe even one family. For six dollars. that’s a pretty good deal, I think.

[bethanyactually]

RIP Medical Debt is now called Undue Medical Debt!

Undue Medical Debt Homepage

Undue Medical Debt makes it easy for donors to make an impactful difference in the lives of those struggling with medical debt.