Speculative education

What the hell is speculative education?

[poombis-nerd]

I go by he/him pronouns out of convenience but in truth I don't think I have any emotional attachment to any form of gender identity at all. I've seen people go on and on about their gender identities, describing them with colors, smells, and the like, and I've heard various descriptions of gender being something you just know you are and some core of personal identity and of course there is the "it's what's in your pants" crowd. But none of that has ever clicked with me. I don't "feel" like anything. No label or pronoun has ever felt more right or wrong than any other. I've never felt sick to my stomach when people call me the "wrong" thing and I've never felt any better for being called anything out of the ordinary. I feel absolutely nothing towards my gender. I am me no matter what and nothing makes me feel any more like me than I already do. He, she, they, xie, duck, dog, or shark, I don't think it matters to me like people say it should. I am as much me as I'll ever be.

All that being said I have felt body dysmorphia. But it has never been about gender. I want to climb trees and cliffs and walls of buildings and get so high up the ground turns hazy blue. I want to fly and be free from my earthen shackles, to soar above the clouds and dive till I nearly touch the ground, going so fast that not even falcons could catch me. And I want to run. I want to run and keep running until my legs go numb with exhaustion and then I want to keep running anyway. I need to move but the ways I want to move are impossible. My legs are horrible constructions of flesh with no redeeming qualities and have never felt like me. My arms, my very hands, they feel like alien constructs that I am controlling from a remote location. My body isn't me. It can't do the thing that I want it to do. If I could trade parts of my body for new pieces that suited my needs then I would. I am so uncomfortable in my skin all the time. Maybe it's the chronic pain talking or maybe I watched too many superhero cartoons as a kid and the idea of being a large reptilian monster rubbed off on me. I don't know what is wrong with me. And I know even less if I should fix it. If I had the chance to open up a character creation screen and change myself as I saw fit, I would be a very different creature. Just the very thought of being able to change makes my bones hurt. I've thought exercising might help but it is really only going so far. I want to change more. Just typing this out has me overthinking my body so much that I can feel every joint in my body aching and my skin turning to itch and my bones becoming sore and my stomach churning.

I don't want to seem too dramatic, I am just trying to describe what I feel and these are the best words I could come up with. This is why I have such a fascinating with evolutionary biology. I find the idea of bodily forms changing over the course of generations a very cathartic outlet for me. Same with super hero stuff there are so many examples of bodily forms that feel more like me then anything else. For a few examples: the lizard, morbius(yes that one), venom, technovore(specifically the one from iron-man armored adventures), balto (not a super hero thing but it still applies), killer croc, cheetah, spiderman, black cat, super boy (not super man for some reason), Martian man hunter, ragdoll (from the flash), basically all of the X-Men (except cyclops), squirrel girl, blue Beatle (specifically Jeime Reyes), hawk man and hawk girl, all of the non human races from world of Warcraft (but especially trolls and worgens), xenomorphs, and lastly, those beefed up dogs from that episode of Justice league unlimited were super man is stuck in the future. This is by no means a complete list but I think it properly displays my range. These characters make the ache stop. When I put myself in their shoes and see the world through their eyes, I don't feel uncomfortable anymore. I feel like this is who I need to be. Also that one really punk looking person with the giant praying mantis prosthetic legs I saw on tiktok, just god, the euforia I felt when I first saw them is indescribable.

I'm really just writing this to get it all off my chest. It feels good to have it all out in the open. I've never said it all out loud to anyone and this helps. If there is a more specific name for this other than crazy I would love to hear it.

[poombis-nerd]

Dear @jif,

Gogurt tubes full of peanut butter.

You're welcome.

[poombis-nerd]

Unethical experiment time. Could we give a raven a gambling addiction?

[pukicho]

I AM TRANSFERRING FLAVOR DIRECTLY INTO YOUR TASTEBUDS. DO NOT BE AFRAID.

LEMON

BLOOD

LEMON

BLOOD

LEMON

BLOOD

VINEGAR

LEMON

BLOOD

[poombis-nerd]

These are also the alchemical ingredients to make your own pukicho homunculus.

[poombis-nerd]

Okay, probably a terrible idea but, what if you wanted to train a house cat to be a good hunting companion.

1. What functions could it perform?

2. What breed would best fill the role?

3. If you made it a proper breeding program what will the resulting breed look like in 100 years?

4. What is the limit of possible sizes for house cats and how will this change the possible roles the "hunting cats" could take on?

This is probably a bad idea but I think it makes an interesting question.

Thoughts?

[poombis-nerd]

In my limited experience, sometimes teaching history incorrectly is better than not at all.

For example, a friend of mine had never heard of manifest destiny in the context of America's westward expansion and also had no ideas of all of the horrors that came out of it.

I however had been taught about manifest destiny in school but with the spin that it was only a good thing and like them I was oblivious to the horrors.

I still had it better in some ways because when I got older and was passively exposed to the broader truth of history I quickly got to experience the horror that is recontextualizing what I thought I knew about America's westward expansion. My friend however despite living in the same area and having the same opportunities to learn never came to understand that part of history until I introduced them.

So I reiterate, the worst way to mis-represent history is not to rewrite it, but instead it is to lose it entirely.

Growing up my siblings and I were told by multiple teachers to our faces that there are no living native Americans left. When we told them we have native ancestry they accused us of lying.

History needs to be taught. And not in a morally sterile way but with some righteous anger and with sadness and joy and proper moral evaluation. We need to tell people what foundation they are standing on.

So when people say we should stay away from telling kids the whole of history to avoid promoting negative actions (something I have heard on both sides of the political spectrum) it pisses me off a bit. Tell the whole story and don't skip out on the morals of things. Talk about cause and effect like you're telling a story with intent of bestowing a morel.

Thank you for reading. That is all.

[wildemoth]

Gender is a performance and it’s time to play the music it’s time to light the lights it’s time to meet the muppets on the muppets show tonight

[poombis-nerd]

Getting back on this hill that I will most likely die on, it truly bothers me when both cis people and queer people harp on just a little too long about their gender. Like at some point you over-mixed in your idea of gender with being a part of your personality which I'm not sure is very healthy.

Like here, try removing any notions of gender from your mind for a moment and just make a list of likes and dislikes based on nothing more than your personal experiences. Ignore all supposed links to your chosen gender and just a flat line yes or no does this thing make me happy? This is much closer to putting together a personality then some silly exercise where you describe your gender as "a shady glen with flowers and a lizard sitting on a rock".

Gender is an important part of your core identity but it isn't your entire personality. You should be a fully realized person with likes and dislikes and preferences and a personality outside of the made up restrictions for your gender.

Okay to understand my frustration just try listening to some people talk about their genders but replace the gender with a random zodiac sign. This is how I hear it.

Some people talk about it very sensibly and address it as a core part of their personal identity and they also have a full life built around it while others will say things like "well I'm a he/him xey/xer proto fusion to the third quarter and that's why I only drink espresso" and there is nothing wrong with identifying as a he/him xey/xer proto fusion to the third quarter but that's not why you like espresso. You like espresso because you have trash taste and it has nothing to do with your gender.

Maybe I'm only saying this because I have no sense of gender and would very much like to shape shift into an eight foot tall genderless lizard person, maybe I'm on to something and should write a book. Who knows. Idk.

[poombis-nerd]

Every time I look out at a beautiful scenery or a nice grove of trees or a pretty spot of grass in a clearing do you know what I'm thinking?

I'm thinking "wow. I'm looking at just so many ants right now".

What is wrong with my brain, that it forces me to be constantly hyper aware of the number of ants around me at any given time?

[critifull]

Background jumpscare 😨

I felt he just went to Fix-It-Felix half the time to piss off Gene

[actuallynickels]

If I were to set up a personal patreon what rewards would you want to get? Early access to art is a given but I don’t really know what else people like to get out of patreons lol maybe tutorials?

[poombis-nerd]

As a non professional non artist with an opinion here's a short list of ones I have seen.

* prints/high rez PDFs - weekly/monthly

* stickers and buttons - monthly/quarterly

* early in progress sketches from a finished work - weekly

* time lapses - as often as art is made

* "spicier" art the artist likes making but doesn't want to post on other platforms - monthly

*sometimes I have seen an artist do a "commission tier" where every once in a while they'll open it up for a really high price and people will join in for a chance to get a commission. It isn't always guaranteed that joining the tier means you get a commission but some people will join just for the chance and the knowledge that they are supporting their favorite artist. - This tier is also almost always temporary and the longest I've seen them go on average was a couple weeks.

Genuinely just about anything you can imagine selling normally can probably be reconfigured into a patreon tier with just a little creativity.

Hope this helps.

[poombis-nerd]

Hello reading and writing people of Tumblr. I have a problem. I would like to do more reading and writing but you see I have terrible dyslexia and this makes it very difficult to do both. This is further made worse by the fact that I don't actually want to write and really only need to write so that I can do the other creative things I'd like to do but they keep needing these pesky things like plot and dialogue.

Please if anyone could suggest resources to help with this problem it would be very appreciated because I am just so lost right now.

I am not looking for a lazy way out I'd just like to be able to read/write more than 100 words without getting physically nauseous.

Please help.

[poombis-nerd]

I have both native American and Irish ancestry and I have to make peace with the fact that I inherited nothing culturally from either people. No songs, no stories, no history, no "old family recipes", nothing. And it's not my parents fault, they didn't get it either.

My cultural heritage has been made like a blank canvas that used to have something on it. It was a beautiful shifting mosaic made by many different artists and every new artist who saw it added their own influence but by the time it got to me, the canvas was blank and empty. Someone has scrubbed it clean so that I will never see it.

I can see other people's canvases, some of them still have much of their original art, but they aren't my canvas. I can repaint my canvas with what I see on others, their canvases are similar to what mine could have been, but it won't be my canvas. History tries to describe my canvas in that sterile tone that it has, but it won't tell me what color it was or what shapes were on it. I can't get the art back.

Dropping the metafore for a minute I am talking about genocide. My ancestors were victims of genocide, and their descendants still are. I was not given my ancestors culture, not like I should have been but I still have my canvas and, whether I try to or not, I am painting on it.

I decide what the canvas will look like when I pass it on, and I won't leave it blank. There will be recipes and songs and stories and weird holidays no one else celebrates. I will pass on a colorful painted canvas filled with life and art and my descendants will make their mark on it as well.

My life in many ways has been marked by the genocide of my peoples but I want to grow past it, and make something beautiful.

[poombis-nerd]

Probably terrible summer camp ideas:

Food Camp. You personally go through the entire process (fully hands on) of producing a couple common foods starting with harvest.

For example bread.

The process would begin with large bags of unprocessed grain which the participants would have to separate then mill into flower.

From there they will mix dough, let it proof, score it, and bake the dough. That can be a day.

Next day they move on to another food idk what I'm not going to do all the effort for a camp I can't afford to start.

[poombis-nerd]

Why this the Tumblr logo though?

[poombis-nerd]

Magatron: coughs(or cybertronian equivalent)

Star Scream: lord Megatron is weak!!! The decepticons deserve a new leader who will be strong and lead them into their rightful glory!!!

Megatron: shoots Star Scream

Knockout: Thursday already?

[poombis-nerd]

Remember that time they made a Lilo and Stitch remake but the only change they made was they introduced Reuben at the beginning of the story and had captain gantu try to use him to catch stitch. Good times