Life is a Beautiful Thing

Feminism. fandom. random lawblr musings.

[virgoasf]

[curlsandstems]

I need this.

[poni1kenobi-deactivated20250915]

Reblogged last year, hoping it comes this year

[homo-sex-shoe-whale]

I have something extremely important to say

[homo-sex-shoe-whale]

My aunt’s dog has a paw print on his paw

[royalharkinian]

The small little gasp I let out is heard universally when you view this picture

[animentality]

[cop-disliker69]

[sprachgefuehle]

“That sounds like a good idea…….”-“Is there something bothering you with the idea?”-“No, the idea is GOOD…..🙂”

[biteswhenprovoked]

Can someone explain this to me?

[cop-disliker69]

Old people use quotation marks to indicate emphasis, as a substitute for italics (which many of them could not produce on the old typewriters they learned to write on), whereas young people use them to indicate sarcasm or falseness. They’re used as “scare quotes”.

And old people use ellipses simply to indicate a pause, or for some other incomprehensible reason I’m not aware of. But young people use ellipses to indicate passive-aggression.

So an old person could type something like:

how are things going with your “boyfriend”….

and what they mean is

How are things going with your boyfriend? [Im so excited for you, sweetie, and I wanna hear about it]

But a young person would interpret that sentence as

How are things going with your so-called boyfriend…. [I say, while seething with contempt for him and possibly for you too]

[kaispeakshermind]

The linguistic difference across generations is beautifully explained here thank you

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

[radiofreederry]

[tinycanuck]

I just feel like my coming of age can be tracked by which characters I’ve found attractive in lord of the rings over the last two decades:

Frodo -> Legolas -> Aragorn -> Eowyn??

[radiofreederry]

[onlyjellyillputinmybelly]

[guerrillatech]

[simariethehawk]

and hilariously that is not why it is called that.

It is the circle of the bears cause of ursa major and ursa minor, and the circle without bears cause ya'know opposite part of the sky.

We lucked right into that one....

[nerdfighterwhatevernumbers]

#so what you’re saying is#the stars dictate whether bears do or do not exist in places

[team-bear-arms-deactivated20220]

Astrology is real but only for predicting where bears will be

[the-tired-tenor]

Bears do not travel to places they cannot see their gods

[tippenfunkaport]

there is something so darkly comical about tumblr potentially outliving twitter

tumblr, which is held together with duct tape and madness, run by three raccoons in blood stained Yahoo! hats and a handful of crabs, its only discernible source of income the sale of shoelaces from an inside joke so inside no one knows the original source anymore and fake blue checkmarks... that website still lives on

truly the cockroach of social media and I love it for that

[wilwheaton]

[vykodlak]

Love that he also types like an old man

[parkermunson]

His name is spelled Jonathan.

His birthday is September 4.

His age was estimated at the time he was found in 1882. This species matures at around 50 years old and he was past that age, so he might be older than 189 but we will never know.

He lives on a South Atlantic island, Saint Helena (aka the place Napoleon Bonaparte lived until his death in 1815) where he’s well taken care of by the governor of the island. According to his vet, he likes listening to tennis.

The average lifespan for his species is 150, but he’s super healthy aside from cataracts in both eyes and possible loss of smell.

Jonathan has a mate, Fred, who until recently was thought to be female. Fred is male.

His species (which is a subspecies of Aldabra giant Tortoise) are on the endangered list with only about 80 recorded worldwide. However, many giant Tortoises currently hold the record for longest living land animals with a few others’ ages ranging between 175-250 years. So Jonathan still has a while to go!

Here’s Jonathan (on the left) in 1882 upon his arrival to the island:

(photo courtesy of Guinness World Records)

Jonathan has lived through both world wars, the Russian Revolution, 39 U.S. presidents, 7 British monarchs, the creation of the typewriter, the completion of the Eiffel Tower, the coronation of Queen Victoria, the release of the first postage stamp, the building of the first skyscraper, the first photograph of a person, the first lightbulb, and the first powered flight.

[heroofthreefaces]

According to Wikipedia Jonathan is still alive as of this writing 10/21/22, and as of 2022 is the oldest tortoise of recorded age ever, the previous contender having died at 189 in 1966.

[gizkalord]

actually toxic masculinity was permanently defeated when aragorn cradled boromir’s face and said “be at peace son of gondor” and then tenderly kissed him on the forehead

[fandomsandfeminism]

What Happens When A Country Bans Spanking?

Researchers look at countries that have prohibited corporal punishment for kids and their rate of youth violence.

Now a new study looking at 400,000 youths from 88 countries around the world suggests such bans are making a difference in reducing youth violence. It marks the first systematic assessment of whether an association exists between a ban on corporal punishment and the frequency in which adolescents get into fights. 

[puolikarhu]

[F]or both boys and girls, [prof. Elizabeth Gershoff] said, “We found [spanking] linked to more aggression, more delinquent behavior, more mental health problems, worse relationships with parents, and putting the children at higher risk for physical abuse from their parents.”

“People often ask: Why didn’t you look for positive aspects?” she continued. “My answer is: We did, and there were none. We see consistently that the more children are spanked, the more behavioral problems they have in the years ahead.”

[quasi-normalcy]

Once again worth emphasizing that this is pretty much the exact opposite of what authoritarians said would happen

[fandomsandfeminism]

@iwouldliketoeatrandy

Hey. So, I say this genuinely and with kindness- it’s because you were hit as a kid.

And that’s hard. A lot of people were spanked/hit by their parents and *know* that their parents love them, tried to do their best as parents, were doing what they thought was right. And largely those people had good childhoods and became ok people.

But that’s because lots of factors can cushion a person against the ill effects of being hit. But all the research shows that it’s really not a question of *whether* hitting kids is bad for them. The question is *how badly* will hitting a kid hurt each individual one.

And even in a best case scenario, you end up with a person who has been shown and told “sometimes the people who you love will hurt you and they will say it’s for your own good and that you deserved it.” AND “if someone does something bad, they deserve to be hit and it will be justified” and those aren’t good attitudes to internalize.

[beardedmrbean]

I'm gonna need to remember this prompt for when I'm having a bad day

[fiercestpurpose]

“I very proudly entered the forestry school as an 18-year-old and telling them that the reason that I wanted to study botany was because I wanted to know why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together. These are these amazing displays of this bright, chrome yellow and deep purple of New England aster, and they look stunning together. And the two plants so often intermingle rather than living apart from one another, and I wanted to know why that was. I thought that surely in the order and the harmony of the universe, there would be an explanation for why they looked so beautiful together. And I was told that that was not science, that if I was interested in beauty, I should go to art school. Which was really demoralizing as a freshman, but I came to understand that question wasn’t going to be answered by science, that science, as a way of knowing, explicitly sets aside our emotions, our aesthetic reactions to things. We have to analyze them as if they were just pure material, and not matter and spirit together. And, yes, as it turns out, there’s a very good biophysical explanation for why those plants grow together, so it’s a matter of aesthetics and it’s a matter of ecology. Those complimentary colors of purple and gold together, being opposites on the color wheel, they’re so vivid, they actually attract far more pollinators than if those two grew apart from one another. So each of those plants benefits by combining its beauty with the beauty of the other. And that’s a question that science can address, certainly, as well as artists. And I just think that “Why is the world so beautiful?” is a question that we all ought to be embracing.”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Intelligence of Plants”, from the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett (via peatbogbodyhasmoved)

[wack-ashimself]

[espanolbot2]

It’s wild that back in the day futurists assumed that with increased automation and computers it will enable people to have more free time, but in actuality it just make the capitalists decide to make people do more work for less instead.

Like, “Oh, you did what used to be a week’s worth of work in a few hours? Then you can gets months of work done in an entire week! Make more money for me faster, hooray!“.