I See An Ivory Tower and I Want to Paint It Black

PhD Candidate in Anthropology & American Studies // Gradblr // Retired Party Goblin // Curmudgeon

[oystertongue]

Okay I know it's AUGUST but I am making a new year's resolution here. New semester resolution. I am done agonizing over emails. No more fiddling with phrasing and punctuation. I cannot control reality through my painstaking syntactical gymnastics. Just gonna say the thing. The end. Done. Send. Over. Banished from my psychic dome.

[oystertongue]

i can do THREE push ups now

[oystertongue]

NOW i can do SIX push ups AND like 1/3 of a body weight tricep dip

[fairiedance]

I put this on a bunch of shirts and stickers and stuff, I figure it'll be good for protests and campus activism. Found here. As usual ALL PROCEEDS are for my Palestinian best friend, to help take care of his loved ones. He'll donate any his family doesn't need to the charities he works with.

To my fellow grad students: this friend and I are working with our department on making it easier for grads to bow out of research they have a moral objection to. We're also working on putting together a statement on Palestine. If you have a lot of colleagues on your side and particularly if you're in a program like engineering, physics, astronomy or applied math (with a lot of military applications) you should try to see where your funding is coming from and support grads in divesting from ethically questionable research. I won't say too much about what we're doing because I don't want to risk doxing my friend, but here are some examples of statements from grads at the Goldman School of Public Policy and the UCSC Astronomy Department. We (STEM students in particular) are the next generation of minds behind the military-industrial complex. It's up to us to make it clear we will not be complicit in work that supports genocide.

You can also find my full shop here. To see a design on different products click on the display product and scroll down or go here to browse by design. Here's a small sample of some of my other work, I make stuff in a bunch of different styles so there's something for everyone:

Thank you to everyone who has helped out with my fundraiser so far!

[theslimeologist]

Its viscerally upsetting that our preferences are apparently respected but we’re all automatically opted in for tumblr’s AI 3rd party “partners” to supposedly scrape our posts and content? L O L

BLOG SETTINGS -> VISIBILITY -> ENABLE “PREVENT 3RD PARTY SHARING”

If you’re on mobile *you must first update the tumblr app*

THIS MUST BE DONE FOR EVERY INDIVIDUAL PUBLIC BLOG YOU HAVE

[oystertongue]

Opting out means nothing in this context.

If you check the box, Tumblr will "inform" the AI ghouls that you "prefer" your posts not be used, but there is nothing binding about it.

[oystertongue]

if I cannot Doodle, I cannot Think

[oystertongue]

i can do THREE push ups now

[oystertongue]

.

[wilwheaton]

Value of X has fallen 71% since purchase by Musk and name change from Twitter

Mutual fund Fidelity, which owns stake in social media platform, marks down value of its shares in disclosure obtained by Axios

And there are countless mediocre men who continue to think this guy is some kind of genius.

[oystertongue]

The Free Market is God except when it confirms that Elon Musk is a clown.

[oystertongue]

the thing about "what if we just kill everyone who isn't like us" is that difference never stops proliferating

[oystertongue]

With all the blood and soil nationalism going on - all over the political spectrum - I always want to ask (but never do) what is to become of the stateless, the multiracial, the in-multiple-diaspora?

[oystertongue]

I have never really been a ~ social butterfly ~ and I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm not a particularly likeable person. Social graces do not come naturally to me. I come across as aloof and unfriendly, or so I've been told. I've never had a large social group or a lot of friends. But the ones I do have. Are just so good. I'm so grateful for them.

[oystertongue]

I like sex because no one looks at their phone during it.

[oystertongue]

[oystertongue]

Sitting down with a hot cup of coffee to slurp up eight hours of dead kissinger memes.

[oystertongue]

Welcome to USAmerikkka! On this episode of racists not even doing hate crimes correctly because all brown people look the same to them,

[crevicedwelling]

roach and orb

(female Blaptica dubia, orb. 2018)

[oystertongue]

[oystertongue]

The other day I had this intense, bizarre ten second daydream.

I was thinking about how creeped out I am by "smart home" products and virtual assistants - like I can't believe people voluntarily let these gadgets into their lives to suck up data that Bezos et al do god knows what with.

Then I imagined - what if, in the future, I had a child, and the child went over to a friend's house, and the friend's family had a Google nest or whatever and then my kid came home and asked why we don't have one. Like, how do you explain surveillance capitalism to a child? I imagine myself bungling this conversation horribly in a way that makes my child effectively racist against robots, which will be a Real Problem in the future, and then they grow up to become the leader of a human-chauvinist political movement and I look with horror upon what I have wrought.