Trying to organise my thoughts

Ana, British, Scottish Based centre left Unionist, trying to figure out my position before the 2021 elections

[zeezeepearl]

ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

[the-barefoot-hatter]

#copied from prev:#harry potter was not a covert attempt to brainwash children into fascism#they're very milquetoast 1990s british liberal#she used to fucking hate the tories#and yes there WERE some tells in her books that she had ye olde unexamined biases

#but in the wake of her going off the deep end people have twisted that into#''she was always a hateful bigot and hp was actually a nefarious attempt to corrupt children into sharing her bigotry''

#and like#no#she was once a well-meaning fairly progressive normie who just didn't think too hard about her own background assumptions about the world#and then she got famous and then she got older and she got radicalized by people who targeted her on purpose because she had#enough money and cultural caché to turn into real influence

#and she was completely unprepared to defend her worldview from people who were telling her that her knee-jerk reaction was always right#and anyone who said otherwise was not only a jerk but also a dangerous villain who wanted to hurt her and other innocent women and girls

#and y'all are not nearly as immune to those tactics as a lot of you think you are

#fuck the ghoul that jkr has become but the story of how she got here is not the story of a crypto-fascist who made it into mainstream#it is the cautionary tale of a normal decent person who fell down a bad rabbithole and got swallowed up by a hate movement

#re-writing history so you can pretend she was always evil won't protect you from sharing her fate

#you have to put in the effort to interrogate your own biases and your own knee-jerk disgust reactions#you have to take a minute every so often to step back and CHECK if you have ended up in an echo chamber bubble and touch grass a little

#because radicalization doesn't happen overnight and it can happen to any of us#it's very easy to let yourself believe that you're Correct and anyone who disagrees with you is Obviously Evil

#you have to force yourself to double-check that notion from time to time and to hang onto EXACTLY what it is that makes the other side wron#you can't just say ''well they're conservatives so obviously they're evil'' because that is how you wind up at ''these men are hurting youn#''girls by PRETENDING to be women in order to take advantage of the protections feminists have spent decades fighting for! and we shouldn't#''even be surprised really - men are awful after all. all they do is TAKE from women and PREY ON young girls. we all know this from our own#''bad experiences with men. and we were right to hate them for it! you see!!'' and whoops now you're a fucking terf

#it's easy it's so easy it's so fucking easy and i promise you i PROMISE you there is a hate group out there who has your fucking number#no matter how good and progressive and leftist you think you are there is SOMETHING that could radicalize you into hate if you let it#there is an argument about how certain people are Just Fundamentally Evil that would appeal to you and make sense to you

[jayalaw]

All this

[cakesandfail]

So I was just thinking about those posts you get in the Discworld tag about the way belief works on the Disc and how Vetinari and/or Vimes is so integral to the way Ankh-Morpork works that they might just sort of… not ever die.

You know, the ones like ‘Vimes is going to become a god of policemen and he’s going to hate it”.

Well. What if it happens to both of them? There are two parts to the city, after all. ‘Proud Ankh’ needs taking down a peg or two (or seven) by Sam Vimes, and if anyone can terrify ‘pestilent Morpork’ into being better then it’s Havelock Vetinari. And they can drive each other mad with stealth puns for centuries, if they want.

Also, this would potentially make them literally Law And Order, and that just seems very fitting in a way that would probably annoy them both.

[violent-darts]

My favourite sort of riff on this is the idea that they aren’t there ALL the time, but if someone who’s taken over their authority or whatever starts fucking up, they become Active. 

Sort of like Carrot’s comment in Men At Arms: when you need them, you REALLY need them, but when you don’t, best if they just go away and get on with things (in their cases, being dead). So when things are going all right it’s very quiet and ordinary. 

And then when things start going WRONG suddenly you have things like the current patrician waking up to a Very Angry Manifestation of the Late Duke of Ankh, proceeding to remind him or her (would it be matrician, then?) about How Things Are Done (By Law). 

Or the abusive Commander of the Watch coming into his or her office to find a calm man, thin man like a predatory flamingo there to discuss the virtues of temperance and accountability and not having his/her Watch-house and/or personal lodgings being literally struck from on high by a meteor (can’t be lightning, Vimes and Io can’t even exchange a civil sentence, but Vimes has always been good at getting around these things). 

And yes in the mean time when things ARE quiet, they can watch everything and get on each other’s nerves and it’s basically like Colon’s office except instead of for old street monsters it’s for ancient legends of civil justice who can’t quite stand to even fade away and still have enough people believing and invoking them that they can stick around and growl when people get out of line. 

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[zmpl]

“don🦍t believe anything your brain tells you after 9 pm” wrong. the prime time for decision making is when you🦍re sleep deprived

^example of what life would be like if we used gorillas instead of apostrophes

[deargodsno]

North Island brown kiwi 'no longer threatened' as population swells to 20,000

After years of intensive conservation efforts, the North Island brown kiwi has been moved off the "at risk" list.

After years in decline, kiwi numbers are bouncing back thanks to intensive conservation efforts by the government and volunteers.

The good news for New Zealand’s national bird was revealed in the Department of Conservation’s report into the conservation status of birds.

Of the five species of kiwi, the North Island brown kiwi is faring best.

Its numbers have grown to more than 20,000 which saw it reclassified from “at risk – declining” to “no longer threatened”, with its population expected to grow by more than 10 per cent over the next three generations.

Some good news to start the year.

[alyssumlovesthecosmere]

I am a "bad jew"

I am a religious jew. As a little kid that meant dressing a certain way, going to synagogue. As I grew up, whenever we went to other countries, my dad would switch to a black kippah/yarmulkah (so it won't be visible), and in certain countries, he would put a baseball hat on (so you couldn't tell he was jewish. Of course the fact that he wore a baseball hat randomly, in france, made him stand out as a religious jew, we would joke about that at home).

As I grew up, in post second-intifada israel, i understood. I understood that if there's an unknown bag - you try to find who owns it, and if you can't - you call the police (I had to wait to go in to school as a kid because they had to safely explode someone's bag, because it was unidentified). I understood that one day I'd be big and adult, and I'd have lost someone. Not my grandparents, may their memories be a blessing, and may they live for many more years. No, my friends. My family, maybe even my own life. A terror attack, a bombing, a war. Someone would die. It was just a fact. One year I'd be sitting on the sidelines during memorial day, the next year I'd be an active participant.

Growing up even more, I became more leftist than my parents. My generation had relative peace, after the second intifada (which is what led to the construction of those big walls), and after leaving the gaza strip. I believed, I believe, that there can be peace, that there can be a solution that doesn't involve more death on either side.

I believed that all humans deserve to live, to thrive.

I made friends with non-jews, non-israelis. I had times when I wasn't amazingly comfortable talking with them - how do you explain that your whole family was murdered, while their's stood aside, at best? How do you explain that "returning" or visiting those countries is painful at best, triggering and traumatic at worst?

But most of the time, I loved those friends. They saw me as human, they saw through the pain I had experienced growing up disabled, autistic, queer. They saw me as me.

Then, october 7th happened. My world changed, I couldn't breathe and my heart was no longer whole. I spent that day consoling a twelve year old, afraid not only for her life, but for her sister's boyfriend's life. I spent that day trying to explain that it's okay (12 kidnapped. parachuters over the wall. hundreds dead. it can't be - we're supposed to be safe it can't be) that it will be okay. When I finally got access to the news (I'm religious, it was on shabbos), I learned that my friends were in a city that had terrorists get into it (I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to be there.) They couldn't leave the apartment for 30 hours.

I learned my cousin wasn't at that party through sheer religious sentimentality. I learned my best friend's brother was missing- no, dead. I spent a week trying to be with that friend as best I could, before the shiva happened (shivas and funerals are supposed to happen within 24 hours-)

and as all this happened, the world was silent at best, cheering on those who raped and murdered and kidnapped at worst. Later, before israel had a chance to retaliate, people were telling us to ceasefire. We hadn't yet managed to count our dead.

200 kidnapped. 1200 dead. the numbers were growing each hour, those first few days. I kept checking my phone, hoping i wouldn't know anyone, but you can't. this country is too small. The farthest i know of is a friend of someone who's close friend/family member died. That's where I am.

I cried/vented in one of my social groups, one where i'm the only religious and israeli jew. I told them i'm alright, but i'm scared. They could do nothing, and they did nothing. one person gave me support, another acted like they did.

I saw, I heard, of the protests at the different universities, I felt the need to put on a black kippah like my dad- so the world wouldn't know i'm different than them. I didn't know if i should disclose i'm israeli - but i've never known how smart that is, it's a touchy subject (touchy, to be a citizen of a country.). I started to see friends spread lies and misinformation, i tried to correct them as kindly as I could, and then more and more angrily (how many "whoops didn't realise i did an antisemitism" can you stand from one person? how many from many?). I became quieter on certain groups, as other people became louder. Eventually i snapped, and posted my sorrow- only to have someone respond with "well, i care more for the plight of the palestinians" (did i say anything about them? or did i just center my pain, and you didn't like it?). I left that group. That person had nothing done to them, in fact- the group changed it's rules to allow discussion of what is happening here, when the only person in the group who is being affected by this horror is me (and "this horror" is the whole war. all of the pain. all of the deaths).

then another shabbos, and my family was at synagogue. the first time in a while my city had an alert, and my dog was outside. I had ninety seconds to grab her and bring her into the safe room - even though the iron dome gets the rockets, they do sometimes fall in populated areas. She didn't want to come. I screamed and begged, and then BOOM and boom-boom-boom. the rocket had been shot down. later, i'd learn it had fallen a few kilometers away from my house. where i was outside. trying to bring my dog in (i can hardly breathe while writing this)

a few more weeks, and i go back into the group. i'd blocked the person who hurt me deeply- more for my sake than theirs. i kept quiet when i saw misinformation, i was scared to even talk in the group. what if someone notices, what if someone knows, what if they think i'm evil incarnate for being a jew, for being israeli.

100 days of the hostages being kept in gaza, and the worst conditions ever. 100 days where the red cross wasn't willing to bring them medicine- no matter how much the family begged and pleaded (finally, on day 101 they decided to bring the hostages medicine which didn't get to the hostages, and to yell at israel for not helping the hostages. help how you dumb fucking usesless hating group. you did nothing. nothing at all. while we begged and cried). I posted on the group, i posted my pain and horror- making sure to not cross any lines with regards to the rules (tagged, spoilered properly, no discussion or debate)

a few days later, i was banned. I was banned for "benefitiing from a genocide" (what benefit? my friend's dead, my heart broken?) and for having a "different opinion on misinformation than the rest of the people in the group" (i thought misinformation had only one definition). i was banned because other group members had left due to my opinions both on and off the group (excuse me for centering my people's pain), and yet when i left nothing was done to the one who had caused that to happen.

i joined a new group- i still barely talk there. my name is too jewish, i'm too fiercely and proudly jewish to feel comfortable there without a baseball cap, hiding who i am. and i'm too fiercely and proudly jewish to be able to put one on without screaming.

i'm a "bad jew". i want my people to live safe lives, to have the right for self-determination in their ancestral homeland. I don't want more bloodshed, i don't want more palestinian lives taken, i don't want more israeli lives taken.

there is nowhere safe for me to go, nowhere safe for me to live. My home country (the government) has proven it's inability to keep me safe, to save me if anything were to happen. The rest of the world has proven again that they are more than happy to see me dead.

i'm a "bad jew", and i will stay one. i will not die. i will not hide.

[imsorryimlate]

it has actually been insane watching the same people who wring their hands about antisemitic tropes in harry potter or disney movies or gothic lit or whatever then go on and reblog disgustingly antisemitic posts on here… like oh i see, to you antisemitism is just a politically incorrect literary trope

[spot-the-antisemitism]

to you antisemitism is just a politically incorrect literary trope

[mixmangosmangoverse]

I hate to say it but everyone saying there's Pre-Holocaust vibes are correct

We're seeing a massive spread of unchecked, unrepentant antisemitism spreading quicker with social media now. People are cheering on murdered Jewish kids and then fact checking us to tell us it didn't happen

Blood libel is gaining traction like never before all the while Jews in the Diaspora are being attacked

So to all you proud Nazi Punchers, I must ask,

Why are you standing by, letting this happen, repeating things the Nazis could only dream of? Why aren't you standing up, dismantling antisemitism in your movement, helping Jews once again forced to hide in their homes?

Or was it never about protecting Jews? Just about protecting your egos

[hellochildrenoftheatom]

There’s a saying that I’ve heard for years, but I didn’t full grasp it until after October 7.

Everyone’s anti-nazi until it’s time to be pro-Jew.

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

EVERYONE’S ANTI-NAZI UNTIL IT’S TIME TO BE PRO-JEW

[alphacrone]

when i say i like hiking, i don’t mean “eight mile backpacking trip with special gear and an emergency beacon” sort of hiking, i mean a three mile loop to go look at pretty things and then a huge brunch after.

[alphacrone]

this is in no way a slam on hardcore hiking, it’s very fun, but i mostly just need to lower people’s expectations when i say hiking is a hobby of mine

[internationalcriminalmastermind]

Why I haven't said anything about Israel and Palestine

Because "I don't know enough to have an opinion" is a complete sentence

Because Hamas is a terrorist hate group but the citizens of Gaza are innocent

Because Hamas hides behind human shields and the Israelis should be strategic but Hamas wants to wipe us from the earth but the children of Gaza did nothing wrong but so did the children of Israel but Gaza shared a border with Egypt to and why oh why aren't we asking anyone else to help them to care for them why must it fall to Israel

Because they have always tried to wipe us from the earth, because we have always been in Israel, because sure if you go back to 1948 there were Arabs living there but there were Jews too and if you go back a little further they tried to eradicate us and it was the British who gave us that land anyway and we tried to live in peace and they attacked us first and we had help all along and maybe the problem is that a Jew is only sympathetic when he's dead not when he fights back

Because the Israeli government is flirting with fascism and we love you Israel but even my conservative synagogue criticized her on the Yom Kippur appeal this year, because we love you Israel but we never meant for you to be like this

Because every Jew has at some point thought about everyone they know "would they hide me or would they give me to the Nazis"

Because American Muslims are suffering and they have always been othered but also why is it so hard to condemn terrorism when it's about the Jews, why do you have to twist yourself into a sadistic pretzel to suggest that yes sure loss of life is bad but maybe they deserved it, because at a fundamental level so many so-called liberals fundamentally see Jews as "other" and will do whatever they can to avoid empathizing with us

Because Israel has been oppressing Gaza for years and we should be better and we should be able to expect more of Israel and why oh why hasn't anyone else stepped in to help them why is it just on us

Because the hard right ultra Orthodox terrify me and that is not the Judaism I recognize and it is a perversion of my faith and my people and if they are Israel we've already lost

Because the Jews haven't had a homeland for 2000 years and we finally have one we finally have someplace we're safe and the whole world feels qualified to weigh in on whether we actually deserve it, whether we're worthy, whether we've been the image of perfection they need us to be to have earned a place where finally no one can kick us out

Because I learned about the specific horrors of the Holocaust when I was 7 years old, because I can never lose the image of a mother being forced to chose which of her children will die or a rabbi being wrapped in a Torah and burned to death because they have always killed us just because we're Jewish and will continue to do so when given the chance

Because there's children dying who did nothing wrong

Because if a message is short and simple enough to be wrapped up in a pithy Instagram post it can't be true, because if it were simple enough to be expressed in a pithy Instagram post don't you think it would have been solved in something less than a 60 year quagmire

Because this doesn't fit into the dichotomies you're comfortable with of white people/POC and colonizers/colonized and oppressors/oppressed and when you try to express it in those terms you've already missed the point

Because I will always support the Jewish people and the uncomfortable truth of that is sometimes that also means supporting Israel

Because how can Israel claim the moral high ground when it commits atrocities

Because I have family in Israel and bomb threats at synagogues and JCCs at home and I'm scared

Because I am a member of the American liberal intelligencia so I am pretty safe all things considered but so were European Jews before the Holocaust and it's been drilled into me since birth that we're never really safe

And that's why we need Israel

Because I'm not smart enough or well informed enough to begin to have a hope of doing justice to this problem and lots of people much smarter and better informed than me have tried and clearly failed since here we are

So fuck your Instagram post, fuck your tweet, fuck your sanctimonious tumblr call-out. This is a tragedy, the internet the last place I would look to do anything about it, and the only thing anyone, including me, can do to help on the internet is shut the fuck up.

https://afmda.org/

https://donate.jdc.org/give/109212/#!/donation/checkout?c_src=jdcobtn&c_src2=Crisis%20in%20Israel:%20JDC%20Responds30240

https://www.allmep.org/donate-now/

[russiawave]

kot - a regular cat

koshka - a regular female cat

kote (internet slang) - a cute chubby little guy, every single cute cat on the internet

kisa -  a pretty, flirtatious, graceful, cranky and haughty lady

kisunya - an extra pretty, flirtatious, graceful, cranky and haughty lady

kis’ - just a dork, controlled by aliens

kotik - a bit more disney version of a regulat cat

koten’ka - cuddly little fella, will purr and knead you to death 

kotofei - usually a big, old, extra fluffy cat, who knows a lot of bed time stories

kotyandra - fast, thin and slinky, we not sure if it’s even a cat 

koshak - a tough street guy, dogs fear him

kotyara - extra round, exrta big, kind ass fella. 

[catsuggest]

So importante

[little-lynx]

Here’s what you should know about Russia.

We love cats.

I have two.

[beardedmrbean]

brookfieldzoo

[wombatappreciator69]

@popcorn-bearcat

[jurassicsunsets]

disc-winged bats have suction cups on their hands

sucker-footed bats are similar but they use sticky sweat, not suction cup hands

são tomé collared fruit bats have three lower incisors with one in the middle like tom cruise

mouse-tailed bats have really long tails 

new zealand short-tailed bats prefer to walk on the forest floor and often dig for food, they also sometimes dig burrows 

bulldog bats catch fish 

spectral bats catch and eat birds

bat wings have such large surface area with blood vessels so close to the skin that they can do up to 11% of their gas exchange directly through the skin, this is measured like this:

vampire bats are the only known vertebrates that lack maltase, the enzyme that breaks down maltose sugars

honduran white bats make leaf tents and sleep together in piles

now you know more about bats

[everythingfox]

(via)

[kyloren]

Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (2006) dir. Vadim Jean

[fireladybuckley]

The context:  Crabs and crab-like body plans have evolved independently (convergently) at least 5 times in earth’s history.  This is called carcinisation.

[neofelis----nebulosa]

Nobody:

Evolution:

[doctorwho247]

10 years ago today, the Doctor and Donna were reunited while investigating Adipose Industries in ‘Partners in Crime’! 

[earlploddington-deactivated2019]

this is still so fucking funny i’m sorry

[aro-as-in-straight-as-a]

the widnows scene was an unrehearsed improv done at 3 am, apparently all the script said was ‘they recognize each other’, (via aphony-cree)

[juju-fisher]

Any time David and Catherine get together is fire. They have such amazing chemistry.

[erthemesong-deactivated20190126]

Larger breast bras vs. smaller breast bras

[angry247]

t h is 

[steaku]

T H A N K   Y O U .

[khemicalvex]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! REBLOG THE FUCK OUT OF THIS BRO

[theasscrackbandit-deactivated20]

the only colors available after a c cup are white, brown, black, and for those special occasions…fluorescent orange.

[lareinadecorazones]

As a former employee of Victoria’s Secret, I can attest to this being the truth. Good luck finding a good DD bra in any section other than the Body By Victoria nude colors section.

[ainhochu]

You know what was my first tought when i lost weight and my boobs were a little smaller?

“I CAN FINALLY WEAR PRETTY BRAS WOHOOOOO!”

[moved-blogs-go-to-xyako-deactiv]

Bravissimo - size range - 28D-40L - Prices from £20  Cleo - Size range to up a J cup Curvy kate - size range cup sizes from DD to K and band sizes from 28-44 Elomi– Many sizes  Fantasie– Their bras start at 30D and go up to 40G with prices beginning in the low $40s Fauve– Standard sets but sizing mostly starts at 30D and ends at 40G Freya– Sizes start at 28D and bra prices start at $42 Masquerade– Band sizes start at 28 and go up to 38. Cup sizes start at D and go up to H Miss Mandalay– The size range is 28D to 38GG with room to grow if there’s more demand for more sizes Panache– Many sizes

(x) Here you go!

[phantomcat94]

MARRY ME

[sailorsol]

I swear by Elomi. Fun colors, sizes that actually fit! And you can sometimes get them on sale, which is even better. 

(Do take note the difference in cup sizes between US/EU sizing.)

[sheafrotherdon]

May I recommend Bravissimo?  I got the best fitting of my LIFE at their Chelsea, NYC store, and they have all kinds of bras for big-boobed women.  My boobs have never been happier or prettier.

[imfemalewarrior]

For anyone who may need it! 

-FemaleWarrior 

[theindependentconservative]

Make sure your bras fit and make you feel pretty!

(Seriously though - most women are wearing the wrong fit - go get a fitting a buy the right size bra)

[emeraldmercury]

OMFG this post is a mood