Twirling towards freedom.

My patronus is Tina Belcher hitting on Ron Weasley

[battlefem-deactivated20170404]

you wanna see some badass shit from the early 20th century?? The Lumière brothers created the first full color photograph… in fucking 1903! So these dudes dyed potatoes (in red, blue, and green), mashed them down into just pure fuckin’ starch, and used these dyed potato starches as filters to block out/let in certain wavelengths of light. They coated one side of a glass plate with the starches and sensitized the other side with a mixture of gelatin and light sensitive materials (silver nitrate) and loaded these plates in their cameras.. This is a really simple explanation of the process and I may have missed some things A few of my favorite autochrome photos:

[itsoldjohn]

that last one is literally a LOOK

[cassiocantdrink]

yes!

but lets not forget sergei prokudin-gorskiy, who developed a similar process in 1902, published in 1903 and then toured russia to take hundreds of color photographs:

AND the guy developed color slide processing as well. as a person fairly familiar with modern b/w processing at home, but never EVER stepping into color (negatives or slides) territory, i’d say, BAMF to the highest degree. 

[petermorwood]

Here are a few more Prokudin-Gorskiy / Gorskii shots, and a reminder once again that these aren’t recently colourised BW images but original colour photos taken about 120 years ago. Many colourised pics don’t look this good. Some modern colour pics don’t look this good (as I know all too well. “Delete image Y/N? Y!”)

This is Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”.

Alim Khan, Emir of Bukhara…

…and his Minister of the Interior.

A Type B-15 steam locomotive…

Another of those peasant girls with guest-gifts of berries…

The Church of St John the Baptist at Staraya Ladoga…

…and a Sergei Prokudin-Gorskiy self-portrait.

Unlike some current selfies ;-> he’s not dominating the image, so here’s a closer shot.

Nice hat…

[maykitz]

the persecution of lefthandedness is insane to think about because it was so intense for so long, in some places still is, without any clear profit motivation. sheer love of the game. as late as the 70s at least they were smacking my stepdad's hands for it with a wooden ruler at school, to this day he's in weird ambidexterity situation where he's not great with either side and notably clumsy due to poor hand-eye coordination. just wtf

[seeingteacupsindragons]

It is fascinating to me that people also think of handedness as an example of bigotry that just...went away. As you note, it...hasn't in some places. I know people who grew up in the mid-late 90s who still had this problem.

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

But the point is, bigotry isn't just a mindset shift. People can't just decide they're not bothered by that particular difference anymore and everything's fine, because society is still structured and designed to cause problems for marginalized people. And they're never even going to notice all the little ways their life is bent to convenience them that inconveniences others.

[kkelenca]

When kiddo was learning to write, their teacher—who was a beautifully kind, caring, compassionate person who even thanked me for making them aware of certain kinds of left/handed supplies, because their new toddler was a lefty and they’d never even thought about it—was teaching the kids a method for word spacing that involved placing their free index finger down at the end of each word and then writing the next one.

Pause for a moment, especially if you’re right-handed—and I’m being serious here, physically do this if you have two functioning arms and hands—and grab a writing tool in your left hand. Now place your right index finger down and try to start writing a word next to it.

Yeah. Great technique, huh? Really convenient and comfortable and easy. 🙃

I sent in a small baggie of small popsicle sticks I’d custom painted for them and labeled with their name for kiddo to use instead, but ultimately they stopped because it wasn’t as convenient when nobody else had to get something out.

Writing in English is difficult enough when you’re left-handed (most of our letters are designed with pull motions, but lefties must push), but even other foundational basics are made more difficult than they have to be, because their needs aren’t considered, even in situations where overt hostility isn’t intended.

Even now, in an older grade, they’re now all sharing a lot of the supplies, but my kiddo has their own pair of labeled lefty scissors they keep in their personal cubby. Teacher was 100% chill with me sending them in, but didn’t even consider to take the step further when I’d asked about whether or not they had them to just… get some for all the lefties. I know there are other kids, know some of them personally. (I made a set of writing spacing sticks for the single one that I knew of back in 1st grade.)

Regarding computer mice? Kiddo had standardized testing last year. They do it on chromebooks now at their school. They did their entire first day with the track pad instead of the mouse, because none of the teachers proctoring or assisting even knew you COULD switch the sides/toggle a setting to switch which button was the dominant select. We happened to have one at home thanks to remote learning during Covid’s early days, so that night we sat down together and found the setting ourselves so they could fix it the following day. But on a student account at school, they couldn’t change that setting. And? None of those teachers knew enough about technology to be able to override it. So even when I went above and beyond and personally sought out the skills and tools to help my child level the playing field on their own, the teaching staff was so unaccustomed to even considering this as a need or problem, that they weren’t able to remove the incredibly basic barriers to a fair schooling experience.

And this is honestly a good school, with staff that care and work hard and take 99% of bigotry concepts very seriously, teach about truth and compassion and how to recognize at this kid level a lot of the basic seeds that can grow into hate and hurt and also healing and helping. But the fact that left-handed needs are different? It is so ingrained to default to right-handed layouts that even left-handed staff don’t conceptualize these problems, because they were taught the exact same way.

[sailermoon]

having unwashed hair will have you believing shit like i can’t be saved

[birdsareblooming]

[tarragonthedragon]

idk i just feel like "it is more acceptable and in fact encouraged to mock anything enjoyed primarily by women" and "being enjoyed primarily by women does not make thing feminist and righteous" are thoughts that can and should coexist

[tarragonthedragon]

oh and also "even if the thing is bad your criticism of it can come from a place of patronising misogyny"

[anarchistmemedistro]

[noneedtofearorhope]

"While those working at private companies can at least earn a little money, they face possible punishment if they refuse, from being denied family visits to being sent to higher-security prisons, which are so dangerous that the federal government filed a lawsuit four years ago that remains pending [note: article is from 2024], calling the treatment of prisoners unconstitutional.

Though they make at least $7.25 an hour, the state siphons 40% off the top of all wages and also levies fees, including $5 a day for rides to their jobs and $15 a month for laundry.

Turning down work can jeopardize chances of early release in a state that last year granted parole to only 8% of eligible prisoners — an all-time low, and among the worst rates nationwide — though that number more than doubled this year after public outcry."

Alabama profits off prisoners who work at McDonald’s but deems them too dangerous for parole

No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama.

[elbiotipo]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

[elbiotipo]

If you read ecology books printed in the 70s and 80s, they were absolutely convinced that whales and tigers would not survive the century. There's a whole plot in Star Trek about how whales are extinct actually. Here in Argentina, we were sure that yaguaretés would have gone extinct. It was thought that rainforests would be forever lost, because there was no way that such complex ecosystems would be restored.

Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?

We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.

I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.

Millions of people are working on this. You can learn about it, perhaps even become one of them. Or be a pointless doomer in my ask box. Your choice.

[crabussy]

if there are people who care, it's never a lost cause. at one point, kākāpō, a nocturnal flightless parrot species from aotearoa, were thought to be entirely extinct for decades. until 1977, where booming calls from males were heard on the small island of whenua hou. now, thanks to people who care so much they dedicated their lives to caring, kākāpō numbers are close to 300. despite the setbacks. despite the small gene pool causing infertility and health problems. people cared so fucking much that they survived. this is one of COUNTLESS, countless similar stories. I'm studying ecology so that I can go into conservation and all around me, every day, I see people who care enough to put years of their lives into learning about and solving environmental problems. I don't know man. hope isn't just some nebulous thing. it's tangible if you do something with it.

[kedreeva]

Tim Wong saw the decline of the pipeline swallowtail butterfly, and dedicated himself to providing habitat and raising babies, and it worked.

Spix's Macaws were extinct in the wild for 70 years, and now captive breeding and conservation groups have reintroduced a small population (with more on the way) and there are babies being successfully raised in the wild again.

And what else is there, but hope? We exist for the grace of hope. Those who have lost all hope don't stay here. If you are here to send an ask like this, it is not because you have given up, it's that you are hoping someone will show you that that hope is worth having.

It is!! It always is!!

There will be good things and if you cannot find them, make them! The time will pass anyway, you can choose what to do with it, and so many, many people are choosing to try to help.

[coinin]

The Lord Howe Island rodent eradication project never fails to make me cry, it’s so beautiful.

The population of an entire island working together to eradicate every last rat and mouse to save the native bird populations. They had to trap a bunch of the birds and keep them in captivity so they wouldn’t be hurt by the rodenticides, and released them after the rodents were gone. Normal residents helped by phoning in tips whenever they saw rodents. And they did it. Lord Howe Island, last I read, remains rodent free, and the native bird populations are rebounding!

Acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer, both of which were terrifying specters of my childhood, have been largely dealt with. Ecosystems devastated by acid rain are also recovering.

We are making a difference!

[aetherograph]

In 1979, an audacious, expensive conservation project was begun to try and breed california condors in captivity toward being released into the wild again. This was considered useless and hopeless by many people, but many more people said we had to at least TRY.

In 1991, the first captive-raised condors were re-introduced to Big Sur, Pinnacles, and Bitter Creek.

In 2006, three months before I turned eighteen, the first wild pair of condors was seen nesting in Big Sur in over a hundred years. A hundred years.

We did that. We fixed it.

How about another example.

When my mom was small, in the 1960s, there were many, many days of the year she was not allowed outside. Days and days they had recess indoors, because the air was so poisonous to breathe. Here's an article about it, with some good pictures.

My mom was 13 in the picture on the left. She was 50 in the picture on the right.

In 1987, there were 27 California Condors in the world, all captive.

In 2024, there were 566.

369 of them fly free.

That happened within my lifetime, and I'm not even 40 yet.

When you lose hope, think of our stories we're telling you. Recount them to yourself like a prayer. That's what I do.

There are 369 California Condors flying free in the sky right now.

There is no more acid rain.

There is an ozone.

There are wild tigers.

There are still birds on Lord Howe Island.

There are 369 California Condors flying free.

[dragonfly-wings1]

Black footed ferrets were considered completely extinct in 1979. Then we found a single den in Wyoming in 1981. In 1996 it was classified as extinct in the wild.

By 2013, there were approximately 1,200 living wild, across 18 dens. Their numbers increase regularly, and while the face challenges due to habitat loss, climate change, and their limited genetic diversity, they're in a much better place than they were.

Because people cared, and they worked, and they fought to make things better.

[nuclearfaggot]

@hopepunk-humanity

[hatersmad]

thinking about that one wordless calvin and hobbes sunday strip thats just calvins dad ditching his work to go play in the snow... its going to make me cry

[hatersmad]

ohhhh my god

[faithful-grigori]

”#I LOVE that the comic keeps the lens on Calvin’s dad to the degree of not even showing Calvin’s excited face when his dad surprises him, #You can see the joy and excitement of the moment in his pose and reflected in his dad’s expression, #it’s a great little artistic decision, #I realized what gets me about it it’s the hat covering his dad’s head and hair so the dad just looks like Calvin. #you don’t HAVE to show Calvin! You already see him in the dad becoming a kid for a moment you only have to draw that once”

[rederiswrites]

Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

It's rude.

[thorsbaratitty-blog]

“Just because you are different does not mean that you have to be rejected.” - Eartha Kitt

[jonzinmybonz]

✊🏽Black men deserve peace.

✊🏾Black men deserve respect.

✊🏿Black men deserve to feel safe.

✊🏽Black men deserve to grow.

✊🏾Black men deserve to thrive.

✊🏿Black men deserve to love.

✊🏽Black men deserve to be themselves.

✊🏾Black men deserve to live their lives.

[cowardsexual]

the eva stratt in my mind is a conglomeration of movie stratt and book stratt because god fucking bless sandra huller put her entire pussy into that performance, but while weir is bad at character writing (women especially) he IS disconcertingly good at coming up with plots that generate interesting character concepts through circumstances... which due to story cuts the movie sadly missed out on.

it's really interesting looking back at both iterations of the story and how stratt and grace's rapport hinges on unrequitedness. there's obviously the karaoke scene in the movie acting as grace's bid for human connection vs stratt's necessary refusal in order to do her job. the book rarely if ever interrogates stratt's interpersonal relationships in the project and how her sense of duty and utilitarianism extends to them (well, aside from grace. more on that in a sec). She's a History major and an administrator and She Loves Humanity, but it's a characteristic that when analyzed deeper rings pretty hollow (possibly because the author thinks social analysis/critique in science fiction is stupid and thus doesn't exactly have much to say about People like someone in the humanities would. SAD!) so that's an addition to her character from the movie that i'm deeply pleased about. what i don't like as much is that the bid for connection starts from grace.

because book stratt and grace? the one sidedness of their rapport is the driving emotional conflict of the entire pre-launch plotline—and of grace's character development throughout the whole book.

like most scientists on the team, grace was brought onto the project by force, but he's the only one who fulfilled his purpose, was allowed to return to his own life, and then came back of his own volition, out of a sense of personal duty and responsibility. which is the reason stratt takes him back on! and why she begins to rely on him more and more, as an administrator, as a mediator, as a scientist, as an advisor. she has all the more reason to do that when she discovers he's coma resistant, but she was already doing all that baby!

grace spends the rest of their relationship half-assing that sense of responsibility. one thing i adore about book phm is how merciless it is with grace's "modesty" "insecurity" and "social anxiety". children are easy to dote on. they're not stupid, obviously, but on an interpersonal level they're not your equal, they have no way to actually demand accountability from you and call your ass out. he doesn't actually think he's a failure, he's not blind he should know damn well he's not like the other scientists. "science lapdog", "ooo i'm just a little guy cmonnnn i'm just a middle school teacher", he downplays his own importance because if he genuinely grappled with the level of responsibility she holds him to towards the people in the project he'd run like a fucking dog.

he is a good man AND he is a coward. stratt's relationship with him verges on the tension between those coexisting truths. he is both someone she wants to respect but can't, someone she can rely on but has to act behind his back least he realizes. she WANTS them to be equals, she WANTS him to understand. on the day the hail mary is scheduled for launch she paces HIS prison cell like SHE'S the caged animal, trying to get through to the glimpse of the man she saw that day, the one who barged into an FBI guarded facility, looked atlas in the eye and told her scoot over, i'm carrying this with you. she cares about him. she wouldn't feel so betrayed if she didn't. please understand why i'm doing this to you. please understand why i need you to be that fundamentally good man. i am tied to the tracks right next to you. and as far as she is concerned, ryland grace dies on earth saying "no".

[butch-tradwife]

For everyone who ‘used to love reading’ but now hasn’t finished a book in years, you CAN get it back. Genuinely start bringing a book (preferably short and either fiction or a non fiction topic you already really enjoy) everywhere you go and when you have 5-20 mins waiting for the bus or at the doctors office or mechanic or whatever, get out your book and read it! You don’t have to finish it quickly or even read it often but it is so good for your brain and fun to get into the habit of reading more (and replacing being on your phone for those moments). Source: I read 0 books in 2023 and I’ve read 12 in the first 4 months of 2026

[myheadisloud]

[idonotneedthisrightnow-deactiva]

you are acute coffee pie

[bonerfart]

you are narrow, scalding and irrational

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

For those who needed to hear it today

[03josten]

stop fucking using the word psychotic to describe bad behaviour and violence already god fucking damn it

[03josten]

oh my god i'm so tired psychotic does not mean violent it does not mean angry or erratic. it refers to a person suffering from psychosis, a loss of touch with reality that includes hallucinations and/or delusions. psychotic people are not inherently violent and y'all need to understand how much stigma you create when you again and again incorrectly use the word psychotic without even thinking about it

[03josten]

would appreciate if non-psychotic people could reblog this

[daysleftofsecondterm]

Hey.

Yeah you- the person reading this. Stop scrolling for a second.

You’re going to be okay. You have to believe that. It might take a long time and who knows how much work, but you’re going to be okay.

You’re going to be okay.

You’re going to be okay.

[thememedaddy]

[chucktaylorupset]

(via hornedchick)

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.