a study(blr) in spots

abby + oggy | conned my way into a doctorate degree

[j-tee]

Comic about my weird old dog

[introverting-rn]

The Champions from BOTW become so much more heartbreaking when you incorporate TOTK lore, because it makes Revali, Mipha, Urbosa and Daruk the first attempts of the sages to uphold their vows. Seeing that Ganon was rising, seeing that Zelda and Link were born, they chose Champions to fulfil their old vows: the Sage of Wind gave the advantage of height, wondering if such a power would have enabled them to overwhelm Ganon; the Sage of Water gave the strength of healing, wondering if it could have saved Sonia; the Sage of Lightning gave the ability to infuse lighting into your strikes, wondering if the extra strength would have broken through Ganon’s shields; and the Sage of Fire provided the strongest possible protection, wondering if it would have saved Rauru.

They witness their Champions join up with Zelda, their old companion, and Link, to whom they have sworn service.

They see every single Champion succumb to Ganondorf in spite of everything. A century later, as the princess barely holds on and the knight barely wakes up, they choose new gifts for their Champions.

For Tulin, a horizontal gust - allowing for evasion of the fatal wound that took down Revali.

For Sidon, a shield - there is no need to heal if you can prevent wounds in the first place.

For Riju, ranged lightning - it is better to keep the enemy out of melee range.

For Yunobo, a roll - offence is the greatest defence.

They blamed themselves for the calamity, and so they tried to fix it.

[inkskinned]

my brother got covid because he's a college professor and there's not much he can do to mitigate exposure when he has 200+ students per lecture. he's got a baby at home, so he does his best, but.

the governmental website for covid information is now propaganda. not a joke, not hyperbole, not an exaggeration: it's genuinely the definition of propaganda. this is biased misinformation determined to push a political stance. it is being hosted on a government server. it looks like something you'd find in a "top 10 weird internet conspiracy stories (and their origins)" youtube video.

my brother called me when he saw it. he had me type it into google. for a second i legitimately thought that i had typed something wrong. we have both taught college: we have both said "a .gov site is usually a reliable resource." i just stared at my phone for a long, long time.

i thought about how when i was a kid, conspiracy theories were mostly fun and a little spooky. unserious. i remember reading some long, complicated website about how avril lavigne is dead. how bigfoot is real. it used to be funny-and-a-joke.

over seven million people (globally) have died from covid. america has the highest death rate with over 1.2 million people.

the thing is - every time a person dies from something like a mass shooting or poverty or treatable illness - we are told don't make it political. we are told it's just something that can happen. we are told it's sad but what can you do!

the president of the united states is using a government website to try to erase the very-real deaths that he personally caused due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. the president of the united states is using a government server to host propaganda, undermine science and medicine, and encourage distrust amongst his followers.

nothing is going to happen. nobody's gonna, like, do anything about it. it's a thursday today, and we are just going to move on from this like we have been moving on from everything else.

yesterday my brother was outside walking his dog, mask included. a guy in a truck pulls up and shouts something about covid and whatever the fuck else. my brother has a good sense of humor, described it to me as enthusiastic! i hadn't ever been catcalled before, this was new and therefore thrilling! i do see why you hate it, though. like. i have actual covid, does he want me to cough on him?

my brother doesn't get extra time off work anymore, because the cdc practically doesn't exist. my brother said i'm not exposing 200 students to covid. his boss shrugged and said: who cares? they're going to get it eventually anyway. like it isn't a pandemic.

like it's just a fucking thursday, and who cares about it.

[fifthnormani]

I do want you to know that there are people who are trying to do something about it. Even if they are a drop in the bucket, they exist.

They are The People's CDC (they are a nonprofit who have 0 affiliation with the real CDC). I'm subscribed to their emails and they keep me updated, as best they can with their limited resources, on the spread of Covid as well as Calls To Action. This morning, at 11:30 AM, they had a virtual Press Conference to discuss the current attacks on science and what they can do about it. I unfortunately missed that one, but yeah.

[luulapants]

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

[queer-as-city-folk]

I mostly talk about transit and local politics but seriously do as much of this as you can, it really does help

[strawlessandbraless]

What an unsurprising & completely expected turn of events that literally everyone saw coming 😮

Source 🔗

Free 🔗

[ubernegro]

So Israel is using weaponry that makes smoke burst from people’s heads. You think I’m joking but it literally looks like steam being released from a pressure valve except replace the valve with a child’s fucking head.

They are using weaponry that reportedly make people evaporate on the scene. This sounds like some cartoon shit but I’m just repeating reports from eyewitnesses.

[whatevergreen]

[soon-palestine]

Over 20,000 children estimated to be lost, detained or buried under rubble

Up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in the chaos of the war in Gaza, many trapped beneath rubble, detained or buried in unmark

[classycookiexo]

[capricorn-born]

Oddly specific. Got a deposit for 6,837 today

[weaselle]

fuck it, i never ever do those “reblog for X, this one really works!” posts, but this one doesn’t have any of that BS, this is just straight up wishing us good things; and then the comment doesn’t even say any of that either. Zero claims on this post, all positive vibes

May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love

[vmohlere]

May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love

[dosomethingbabesaysomething-dea]

rb to give the previous person a fucking break because life aint life-ing the way its supposed to life and it fucking sucks.

[bibyebae]

[thebrownart]

8 months of Genocide and, 15,500 children killed

30,000 orphans

35,000 child amputees ( Gaza has the largest population of child amputees in the world)

and there are people out there still justifying this??? like are you not human enough?

DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT PALESTINE!

[luntfontanne]

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

…

Academic research published recently has shown that, when individuals develop skepticism toward a single vaccine, those doubts often lead to uncertainty about other inoculations. Lucey and other health experts say they saw such a scenario play out in Pakistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency used a fake hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad as cover to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Discovery of the ruse led to a backlash against an unrelated polio vaccination campaign, including attacks on healthcare workers, contributing to the reemergence of the deadly disease in the country.

…

“Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate,” said Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and Philippines government during the pandemic. “We don’t have our own vaccine capacity,” she noted, and the U.S. propaganda effort “contributed even more salt into the wound.” […] “I’m sure that there are lots of people who died from COVID who did not need to die from COVID,” she said.

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”

[thenameisgul]

[sayruq]

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide has released a statement saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and the United States is complicit. The statement was released in the aftermath of the horrific attack on a refugee camp in Rafah

In April, Lemkin also issued a genocide alert for the West Bank

[ear-a-corn]

On April 30th while reporting on the Students Revolution at Columbia University, CNN anchor Kasie Hunt made reference to Hind Rajab as 'A Woman Who Was Killed in Gaza." Hind Rajab was six years old.

[sayruq]

If you, for some reason, still have a subscription to the Atlantic, cancel it

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

[ketchappu]

ID: Tweet by user LizzMurr56 saying:

"You don't have to be nice or civil about ending a genocide. The idea that people who are actively funding a genocide have any moral authority to demand civility is ridiculous. Civil people don't create mass graves! Civil people don't give weapons to those creating mass graves!"

End ID.]