Just a Banana on the Internet

30 No theme but I’m getting really into animal crossing again…

[segamascott]

[strongermonster]

perhaps some will disagree, but i think the world got worse when we changed the colour of the night

[strongermonster]

this is what i mean

[degenderates]

Via @bulbaderp

[itistimetodisappear]

To be clear, THIS is how nights of the future should be lit

This is bat friendly street lighting, which not only looks sick as fuck but allows bats to pass through without disturbance, as they cannot see red.

orange and especially white lights deter bats and prevent them from reaching feeding grounds at nighttime. Please if you can, write to your local council and encourage red street lights!!!!

[anarchistmemedistro]

ALSO! red light doesn’t fuck up human night vision much so you can go in and out of lit areas without readjusting

[anarchistmemedistro]

[thicque]

the red light not fucking up human night vision is also why a number of older cars had gauges that lit up red at night

[b0ggyb1tch]

i legit miss red lights in cars and appliances n stuff. red city lighting is goated

[plantnerderyallday]

The more time I spend around my new coworker, the more I understand about why plant id books and foraging resources are written the way they are.

For context, my mom is the one who taught me to forage, and it was and is just part of life. She regularly added foraged foods to our everyday meals. I knew how to identify huckleberry before I learned the alphabet. Foraging was just another part of feeding ourselves, along with gardening, raising chickens, and going to the store. And the firmest rule was that you didn't eat a plant unless you were willing to bet your life on it being what you thought it was.

So to watch my coworker see a berry, say 'strawberry!' and then pick it and have it three quarters of the way to his mouth before I could point out that it was actually an unripe blackberry...

Well, it was a striking moment. Because while that particular mix up would not actually hurt you, the lack of paying attention it takes to mistake an unripe blackberry for a strawberry and the lack of caution it takes to put a plant that you've hardly looked at into your mouth- no wonder some people think bittersweet nightshade is a look alike to red huckleberry!

And it explains a lot about how secretive most people are about their foraging spots. If you don't care enough about your own health and well-being to actually look at the plant you're eating, how could I trust you to care for the health and well-being of the plants you want to forage and the ecosystems you want to forage from? I want my foraging spots to be better off for my interactions with them. I want to be able to go back to the same spots year after year and decade after decade and see the native plants thriving, the invasive species losing ground, and the biodiversity increasing.

Can I trust you to help with that, if you won't even look at the berry before you pick it?

[anti-parent]

ok i've been working on my book notes repository enough that i'm ready to promise that i'll deploy it on august 11th! i've been working on critical reading guides for it: a general one and then ones tailored specifically to each book i want to cover.

but i also remember how, even just a few years ago, it was SO hard for me to focus on getting through books at all. for like a solid ten years i struggled to read any books outside of what was assigned to me for class. and you know. even then. like my attention span was so shot that i couldn't make it more than a page or two at a time.

over the past four years i've really been working on that by setting incremental goals (10 books a year, then 25, then 50, and now 100). i wanted to share some of the tools & tricks that have been the most effective for me. since i'm constantly asking y'all to read some book or other, it felt like the right thing to do, lol.

if you've been through this process & have anything that really worked for you, feel free to add it in a reblog!

Building Reading Stamina

A guide for people who want to read more, but aren't sure how to get there.

[anti-parent]

another thing that helped me that i only just remembered is reading more longform journalism. for over a year now i've been subscribed to this newsletter that sends out a compilation of articles every week. the curator is vocally anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, etc. & just seems like a pretty cool dude based on my interactions with him.

The Lazy Reader

Longform journalism. For Lazy Readers.

[atleasttheyvegotstars]

dance yrself clean. then dance yrself clean again just to make sure. ocd soundsystem

[iwannabeaswampwitch]

Lots of drama in our household

[what-even-is-thiss]

When I suggest people go to the doctor for something a lot of them seem to assume I don’t know what it’s like to have doctors that don’t listen to you. Yeah I do actually. I still think you should go to the doctor.

[felixdeon]

Paintings of black women (cis-gender, trans, and gender fluid) in love, from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, and across 100 years in time. Because love is love. You can find them all as prints in my Etsy shop. Just click on the link here.

[youngadultread]

“Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions. Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time. In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows: “The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.” In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts.”

—

PBS: Language as Prejudice - Myth #6: Women Talk Too Much (via misandry-mermaid)

Every EVERY women’s studies class I’ve been in has had this problem and failed to address it. 

(via iamayoungfeminist)

[chickensnack]

TUESDAY AGAIN NO PROBLEM

[bisexual-engineer-girl]

you are weak of mind and horny of spirit

[pjackk]

and metal of body

[reagantheteenagewitch]

maybe if we keep speculating about mitch mcconnell more different repub senators will drop dead

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 2 July 1839 enslaved people aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad rebelled off the coast of Cuba. The mutiny was led by Sengbe Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinqué, a Mende man from what is now Sierra Leone aged approximately 25. The Amistad was sailing from Havana to Puerto Príncipe in Cuba with 53 people who had recently been kidnapped from Africa. The Africans were mistreated and tortured on board, particularly by the sadistic cook. Before daybreak on July 2, the enslaved people got together and escaped their chains, killed the cook and the captain, and ordered the navigator to sail them back to Sierra Leone. But that night, the remaining Spanish crew secretly changed course and headed north-west, hoping to be rescued. Eventually, on August 26 by Long Island, they came across a US Navy vessel, who quickly freed the Spaniards and imprisoned the rebels in Connecticut, which was still a slave state at that time. There followed a high-profile legal battle, with former president John Quincy Adams offering to defend the Africans. After 18 months of imprisonment, the Supreme Court eventually upheld a ruling of a lower court ruling that the Africans had been taken to Cuba illegally and therefore were not legally enslaved, and set them free. The abolitionist movement then set about raising funds to take the men home. Two of the rebels were killed in the mutiny, some died in the subsequent journey and one died of possible suicide. In November 1841, the 35 survivors finally boarded a ship back to Sierra Leone. Learn more about struggles against slavery in the US in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/the-american-crucible-slavery-emancipation-and-human-rights-robin-blackburn

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 27 June 1869, Emma Goldman, the legendary Jewish writer, feminist, birth control advocate and anarchist was born in what is now Lithuania. Emigrating to New York City, she worked in many different jobs, like in textile sweatshops, as a masseuse, and in an ice cream parlour. Goldman stressed the importance of the interconnectedness of different struggles, like women's rights, as well as the need to transform our everyday lives: "The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she realise that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is, therefore, far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration, to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds." For her activism she was arrested many times, jailed repeatedly and eventually stripped of her citizenship and expelled and deported to Russia. We have some of her work, as well as items celebrating her life, available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/emma-goldman

[subversivegrrl]

"At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman, Goldman s lover], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance… My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, .should demand the denial of life and joy. . . If it meant that, I did not want it."

-- Emma Goldman, in Living My Life (1931)

[butch-king-frankenstein]

We need to start sexualizing the janitor's jumpsuit as the butch equivalent of the maid's uniform

[traegorn]

That thing where the coveralls are unzipped and the arms are tied around their waist like a belt...

[kuttithevangu]

Being a calm, gentle, non-reactive person is really hard work, which is probably why many people are none of these things. Personally I think it’s worth it but sometimes one does want to just roll around on the floor wailing at the top of one’s lungs

[kuttithevangu]

People in my notes who think I’m repressed or dissociating: you will feel better when you learn emotions are not a binary of Not Feeling It vs Being Overwhelmed By It

[existennialmemes]

I don't think it's unreasonable for our public officials to be expected to prove they're alive and not in a coma to be able to retain their office.

If someone were, as a random example, say hospitalized for over two weeks with no explanation, I think that should automatically trigger a special election to replace them.

If you're still able to do your job, then prove it. And if you're not, then you're actively obstructing democracy by not stepping down.

Which is to say, that if a public official were to pass away or into a coma, and their handlers choose to obfuscate that fact, this should be seen as intentionally obstructing democracy.

And there should be, you know, consequences for the people who would do such a thing.