with one foot in the world

Always carry with you a well used, dog eared copy of the Constitution, illegibly annotated in pencil. Just in case.

[smirkingbenevolence]

it’s been several years since I’ve made a post and white people on the internet still leave me hate mail because they’re angry I called them out for their appropriative fucking hairstyle

[argonauticae]

im putting together a couple of scottish folk mixes bc that’s what i do and im honestly curious if anyone in my country has ever been unequivocally happy about anything ever

[argonauticae]

scottish trad music genres:

Everyone I Love Is Dead

The English Have Stolen All My Sheep

You Want To Be My Boyfriend? First You Must Answer These Riddles Three

The Protestants Have Stolen All My Sheep

I Love You A Lot But You’ve Left Me And It’s Raining [fiddle solo]

The Sea Is Treacherous, Just Like The English

One Time Bonnie Prince Charlie Punched Me In The Face And It Was Awesome

The Fairies Have Stolen All My Sheep

[telegantmess]

smirkingbenevolence, is this accurate?

[smirkingbenevolence]

So fucking accurate telegantmess.

[smirkingbenevolence]

On the way home from the vigil.

[smirkingbenevolence]

Google adwords is sometimes so deliciously appropriate.

[theeyecandy]

[wretchedoftheearth]

Tragically, the well-off and the poor are often united in capitalist culture by their shared obsession with consumption. Oftentimes the poor are more addicted to excess because they are the most vulnerable to all the powerful messages in media and in our lives in general which suggest that the only way out of class shame is conspicuous consumption. Propaganda in advertising and in the culture as a whole assures the poor that they can be one with those who are more materially privileged if they own the same products. It helps sustain the false notion that ours is a classless society. When these values are accepted by the poor they internalize habits of being that make them act in complicity with greed and exploitation. Who has not heard materially well-off individuals talk about driving through poor neighborhoods and seeing fancy cars or massive overeating of junk food? These are the incidents the well-off emphasize to denigrate the poor while simultaneously holding them accountable for their fate.

bell hooks (via humanformat)

[blackcosplayersofficial]

X

Character: Geordi LaForge

Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation 

[apolloadama]

[lancrebitch]

Awww the kitty looks so happy to be getting scratches

[punlich]

For everyone on my dash who needs some excessive cute to make up for the normal shittiness of tumblr they deal with. <3

[allbrook86-blog]

[itsokaytobesmart]

There’s no science in this post. I just know we’re all gonna want to save this picture for future reference.

[smirkingbenevolence]

Perfection, thy name is Neil deGrasse Tyson.

[lifedeathandeternity-deactivate]

[so-treu]

obviously.

[wrcsolace]

lawl at how #relevant this is

[telegantmess]

gee, this sounds like someone I know

[smirkingbenevolence]

Why won't reality conform to my expectations and perceptions of reality.

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!

[julierthanyou]

reasons a cyclist might appear to “swerve” into the travel lane/ need to take the whole lane:

- a pothole

- a patch of sand or gravel

- a sunken-in sewer drain, or one with holes bigger than the tires

- broken pieces of cars

- broken beer bottles (could you stop doing that?)

- a fallen tree branch

- a dead animal

- an alive animal

- low-hanging branches that would smack us in the eyes

- street signs or mailboxes that would smack us in the shoulder

- a parked vehicle

- a parked vehicle with a door opening

- a vehicle pulling out of a side street, well past the stop line

- a vehicle backing out of a side street with limited visibility

- an oncoming vehicle, where two vehicles passing each other plus one cyclist would not fit (guess who loses in this equation?)

-a blind curve (see above)

- a metal plate for a construction site

-a puddle (unfortunately, many of us do not have the e.s.p required to judge how deep it is or if there is glass or metal in the bottom of it)

- a pedestrian

-a slower cyclist

- a trash bag

-a mattress

- a piece of furniture

- a teenager on a bridge jumping into the shoulder at the last second to show off for his friends (i almost died that day)

- sand, grass clippings, a bug etc., in the cyclists eyes, nose or mouth

- a leafblower ahead

- a malfunction of the bicycle (flat tire, broken spoke, etc.)

- the cyclist had to sneeze

- trash or rocks being thrown at the cyclist

- a gust of wind strong enough to push us a few feet over

GIVE CYCLISTS SPACE, EVERY TIME.

IMAGINE EVERYONE ON A BIKE IS THE PERSON YOU LOVE THE MOST IN THE WORLD, AND PASS THEM ACCORDINGLY.

[b-interesting]

I HATE SNEEZING ON THE BIKE!

[onthebounce]

Gagging on bugs is up there, too…

— OTB

[smirkingbenevolence]

This applies to more states than just Connecticut BTW. K? It's the law in Pennsylvania and New Jersey too and probably a lot of other states.

And you motor coach drivers don't need to swerve all the way into the opposite lane on a two lane road with double solid median lines just to make a point.

oh, and additional reason:

- parked car opening door(s) with out looking or warning

[itsokaytobesmart]

The Last Nail in the Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Coffin

Rest easy, folks. Einstein’s legacy and theories are safe. CERN released a statement today reporting that several follow-up experiments have made it clear that last year’s claims of neutrinos being clocked at faster than the speed of light were incorrect (my collected posts on the whole saga). 

It wasn’t relativity, or strange physics, or the movement of the Earth’s crust that led to the odd result, either. It was a loose cable.

I’m not sure what the fallout will be for people’s trust in science, or science news, or boys crying wolf. People paid attention to something very exciting, and many of us learned something new about physics that we never would have. But part of it was a result of people overblowing overblown overblownalities. A trade-off of integrity and education. I tend to agree with CERN’s Sergio Bertolucci:

The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments. That’s how science moves forward.

And move forward we will. Just not faster than the speed of light.

[smirkingbenevolence]

I was soooo rooting for a heretofore unexpected/undiscovered burble in spacetime deep underneath the Alps.

It's good to have an answer though.

[fuckyeahcycling]

Fans cheer on Sweden’s Frederik Kessiakoff climbing at the end of the eighth stage in Porrentruy, Switzerland on July 8, 2012. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/GettyImages) (via Tour de France 2012: Part one - The Big Picture - Boston.com)

[smirkingbenevolence]

Are the Norwegians cheering the Swede or preparing to slaughter him?

O_o

I mean, they're probably just fans, but with those two countries' historical relations I find it more amusing to imagine the alternative.

[zombiesloveagirlwithbrains]

seems legit

[pyrzqxgl]

I think I had this job but there was no costume or lasers. 

[smirkingbenevolence]

Wow, times certainly have changed. When I was a canvasser we had to supply our own clothes and nobody ever gave us lasers.

[egrlfrnd-deactivated20231228-de]

NASA Hubble Space Telescope Images (via Hubble Heritage)

[calmingmanatee]

[Image description: Two manatees are grazing. One is much smaller than the other. The larger one s grazing, and is just touching fins with the other. The smaller is looking up, looking happy and safe. TEXT: “You don’t have to go through this alone.”]

[youngbadmangone]

Y'all couldn't even handle white history month

No, I mean it, I’d love for you to have one but you couldn’t deal.

A single month highlighting every atrocity committed by white society?

Little white chillins would go home and slit their wrists.

[wildunicornherd]

Make it one of the long ones like October or something

In no particular order:

Columbus and the conquistadors

European antisemitism, antiziganism, pogroms and the Holocaust

The triangle trade and slavery in the British Empire & U. S.

Lynching and Jim Crow

The invention of gynecology, the Tuskegee experiment, Mississippi appendectomies

South African apartheid

King Leopold and the Belgian Congo

The Chinese Immigration Act/Chinese Exclusion Act and the head tax

Japanese-American/Japanese-Canadian internment

Residential schools, Indian boarding schools

Stolen Generations

The Philippine-American War

The Iran-Contra affair

Embargoes against Haiti

Cecil Rhodes and his legacy

“White flight” and gentrification

“First wave” suffragists and race

Feel free to add on…

[telegantmess]

18. COINTELPRO

19. The crack epidemic

20. the War on Drugs

21. Exclusion from the GI Bill

22. Exclusion from labor unions

23. The rise of white supremacist violence in response to radical Reconstruction

24. The link between the creation of the KKK and the institution of policing in the US