how old is the oldest song you could sing on the spot (you dont need to have the lyrics memorized)
2000 or later
1980-1999
1960-1979
1940-1959
1900-1939
19th Century (WCM Romantic or later)
17-18th Century (WCM Baroque or Classical)
15-16th Century (WCM Renaissance)
11-14th Century (WCM High or Late Medieval)
6-10th Century (WCM Early Medieval)
Earlier than the 6th Century
its old, idk (eg a folk song you dont know the origin of. BUT LOOK IT UP FIRST)
Voting ended onAug 12, 2024
please do look it up if you dont know the date bc there may be at least an approximate answer and otherwise the last option will completely dominate and this poll will be boring.
and dont be like 'but i cant sing'... just answer the earliest tune you know well enough that you COULD sing it
periods of western classical music provided only for reference
When a space cares a lot about making sure its members are queer enough to participate, you get a space that aggressively polices the queerness of its members. There's no way around that, it's pretty much tautologically true. Only by paradoxically not actually caring if you're queer or not can a group really accept the full range of what queerness can look like.
Also, a space that has room for a cis straight guy who means well and wants the best for his friends has two crucial things going for it.
1) it has space for people who are learning and might fuck up a bit while they figure things out, and that learning process is probably not so godawful and unpleasant that a guy with other prospects would have to be a fool not to go find some nicer friends. This is nice because it is very difficult to personally embody the entire alphabet at once, and learning how to be good allies to one another is a crucial part of queer solidarity. It's nice for that process not to be painful.
2) it has space for people who aren't yet willing to or comfortable with presenting an externally queer label to continue to exist and soak up the queer vibes and information, which means it's welcoming to actual questioning people rather than the theory of questioning people. Probably it therefore has more interest in actually doing things rather than hierarchy politics.
3) it's probably not a radfem tar pit interested in weaponising you against people they've decided to hate in a social smear war that benefits nobody and nothing but their need for a power trip
Oh itās even more than that! The cis straight guy is very often a ride home, dad or husband. Or a Bob which I will explain in this essay is a signifier of a healthy ecosystem, like frogs are.
This is a 3 am take so consider this a blanket apology and a readmore but if you hate this post you were warned.
If heās someoneās ride home, then his presence enables queer people to show up. Note this importance in, say, rural America or where the person might use a wheelchair or need care or canāt drive. Or where the meeting place is generally awkward.
If heās someoneās dad, his presence enables kids to show up. I know a 5 year old trans kid in real life. I know a nonbinary teen in real life whoās allowed to do a lot on their own, but their parents worry, and if theyāre hanging out with adults the parents want to attend and meet the adults. Teenagers are so liminal with this.
If heās someoneās husband, thatās a perfectly common accessory for a bisexual, nonbinary, or trans person. I think it adds a delightful dimension to queer spaces. I think itās great that thereās a whole class of sexuality thatās ābi wife energyā or āstraight except for loving this personā or āstraight since I think nonbinary people are considered a different gender to my own - actually Iām completely lost about whether thatās true but weāve been married ten years?ā or āstraight except for the fact that my partner transitioned, and weāre still married, and itās none of your business.ā At this point theyāre so common that theyāre their own subspecies. I think all spaces should have a slightly bewildered guy in his late forties who owns a set of good screwdrivers. I am bi and have one myself; it is a common pairing. āWhy would your husband come to your social thingā idk this is a genuine thing people do sometimes in non-tar-pit spaces. They stop by. Itās almost like birds. You meet this incredible ornate, splendid older queer person and then they introduce their husband Professor Robert āBobā Kevinsworth, whoās just this extremely straight old big fat Linux geologist in a 90s t-shirt with a trout on it, theyāve been married 45 years. Evolutionary pressures mean that the Bob must be relatively drab in order to camouflage themselves on the nest or something; if you want to attract the flashy half of the couple to your garden, then you have to provide habitat for Bob. idk itās 3:46 am right now. But itās like frogs; the presence of Bobs indicates a healthy and established ecosystem, like Grison and Derin indicate. Because frogs, who absorb environmental toxins readily through their skin, are an indicator species for pollution and biodiversity; a Bob means there is going to be less toxicity and more diversity.
[And also itās none of our business but there are an awful lot of queer Bobs (Bob himself, again, possibly being queer) and itās really none of our business. Sure, maybe that person looks like a straight grandpa. A lot of people do/did. I have always hated the idea that you can āspotā a queer person by their haircut, clothes or youth (largely because I donāt look very unusual or amazing myself.) the oldest nb person I know is a sort of Bob with a big white beard and grandchildren, and Iām sorry but at their age they are NOT going to be getting a different haircut! Let alone pink Shein dungarees and black circle sunglasses to signify their queerness to gatekeepers. A lot of people seeing them would assume they are cishet. Nope! Just old, fat and unfashionable.)
So a space that doesnāt have room for a cishet guy is a space that has made decisions about children, non-drivers, a large proportion of bi and nonbinary people, straight trans women, dads, and so on.
Which is fine in itself I suppose, but what theyāre clearly kinda selecting for is a population of able twentysomethings who can all have sex with each other. and the thing is that thereās often a vibe they feel annoyed by seeing people they donāt want to fuck (children, middle-aged people, unfashionable queer people, people unironically wearing trout t shirts).
So in my admittedly highly limited personal experience, the exclusionary āqueer spacesā just tend to be an elaborate drama-production exercise for twentysomethings to date each other, the rituals are intricate etc.
And all the rest of the weird queer people are just. at the seed swap.
making art is just like showeringā¦ā¦ā¦canāt get up and do it, canāt stop when youāve started. you want to crawl out of your skin if you donāt do it often enough. everything in the world is the exact same
The most horrifying aspect of parents saying "my kid could do that" about art is that they never ever ever mean "wow my kid is good enough to be in a museum" and they always always always mean "I want to disrespect you so much I'll do it by implying that this thing is just as worthless as the things my child makes with their hands" and right in front of them too. Your kids can hear you u know, and the things they make with their hands are the least worthless and most precious aspects of human life I'll kill u
Listen my three year old child handed me a picture of a āweird bugā they had drawn this morning, and the explanation about the intention for it was as deep a journey into the universe as I could ask for. I instantly wanted to send it to everybody, not even to show it off, but just to explain things a bit. Look at this way of looking at the world, before one is taught differently; before one is shaped forcibly. Look at the purity and clarity of intention (something that my favourite artists and makers strive for, and which is what I am most attracted to: clarity of intention. The ability to communicate from brain to brain across the gulf of time, death, language, background, common ground. Knowing where youāre going! Knowing what you want to achieve - and doing it! The form does not matter!)
(Also, horrible things with legs. Iāll always give them attention too.)
(This was also a horrible thing with legs.)
So much of what we search for is here, all along. So much of what we chase after is already in this bug. The child scribbles it, hands it to the baby, who obediently folds it up and puts it in their mouth; the child answers a few questions, then runs off to get sticky; you are left holding the wonder, going: somewhere in here is something we are missing, something weāve lost track of, and I could spend quite a lot of time trying to pin it down (anthropologically, psychologically, poetically, in a very special episode of a childrenās cartoon, in a degree, as an instagram account)
What the hell else is art for, if not to send you on a little journey. If an artist can do that with a scribble then you should give them your attention. You should show other people, explain it a bit. Keep it forever as evidence of something - maybe a building, a collection that makes sense. You could call it a life or even a museum.
most damaging idea of the 21st century: the conviction of vast numbers of people that human history will end within our lifetimes
climate change represents world-altering tragedy if unchecked, but not even in the worst-case scenario does it mean āliterally everyone diesā
yet so many people have jumped already to āitās over, the world is going to end, we can do nothing about itā and are just paralyzingly cynical. How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential for creating it
you know the thing where trauma can cause you to just. not expect to live much longer so when you get to 30 you donāt know what to do because you thought youād be dead by 25
That is happening to all of us right now on a society-wide scale
A lot of people are like. REALLY angry at me for suggesting that ābe depressed and do nothingā isnāt necessarily the only response to climate change.
this, this, this, this, this, this, and like, 700 other sources will tell you that most of the effects of climate change will be reversible even if we pass the āthresholdā of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature
BUT. Even if the worst happens, it will be important to be doing things other than wallowing in misery???
Iām not trying to be callous but for people living today itās wildly unlikely for the results to be āliterally immediate death.ā
People will get displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. We have like, years, probably decades, before that happens. It seems so fucked up to decide that we should do nothing, because weāve already decided theyāre going to die anyway????
If a bunch of us are going to die, why not die trying to help each other? Why not try to make sure fewer people die? Why not do something that might reduce someoneās suffering or give them food or clean water or a place to sleep?
I donāt know how to explain to you that people need socks during the apocalypse
Literally even in the most severe, cynical, and immediate predictions made by scientists rapid climate change is far away from now. If it does happen itāll take effect over the span of a decade or so, no a day.
And thereās still hope! Did you know the hole in the ozone layer is closing? It was actually caused by one specific chemical thatās been banned. A lot of endangered wildlife populations are growing because of so many efforts to protect them. Many mining companies are being prevented from mining in our remaining clean waters and forests. We have all the technology we need to reverse this crisis, itās just a matter of implementing it.
It will be ok. Things are improving. People are getting on board. Donāt lose hope while we still have a chance to use it.
My mom was just reminding me earlier about Copper Hill, Tennessee, which I encourage y'all to look up
In the 1980ās, the area was absolutely devastated by copper mining, to the point that the land had a āMartianā appearance. It was utterly devoid of vegetation and wildlife. No trees, no grass, no frogs, nothing.
I own a historical fiction book, A Bird on Water Street, about how the area was restored. The astonishing thing about this place is that people were able to fix the damage.
In a lot of ways in the 80ās and 90ās, many species and environments were successfully saved from the brink of disaster.
Does anyone remember DDT? As the above poster said above, CFCās contributing to the ozone hole? Do y'all remember how saturated the 1970ās were with lead and asbestos and all sorts of toxic shit? Getting specific chemicals banned or working to save specific species DOES HELP.
Iām begging everyone to research conservation projects going on near them, like, in or near their hometown. The state of Kentucky very successfully reintroduced elk to the mountains after they went extinct there. There are examples like this everywhere.
Things look bad and theyāre scary but they would be a lot worse if the people before us hadnāt worked their asses off trying to preserve the world for us. People are out there working hard to save the world right now.
Conservation success stories of 2021. Last year, several species believed to be extinct were rediscovered, long-dead preserved specimens of endangered ferrets were cloned, and several species that nearly went extinct had population explosions.
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.Ā It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search termsĀ
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.Ā As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
ā
Google is so powerful that it āhidesā other search systems from us. We just donāt know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free
