[biestcallisto]

I’m BACK

I decided to leave my pagan blog and get more active on this blog. Cause I missed you guys. So in the future I am going to be more active. I’m also going to post/reblog things from the pagan sphere of tumblr.

[tyrsbeast-blog]

Hey, pagan friends. I am leaving tyrsbeast and will reactivate my other blog. It was originally my fandom blog. Now I am going to post/reblog pagan stuff from my main blog instead of here. So there I will post what I used to post here but also fandom stuff, Z Nation, Last of Us, tomb raider and other stuff. 

So follow me there, if you like. I still got loads of posts in my queue here

[tyrsbeast-blog]

This is the last one in my queue. Like I said, I'm now active over there. Would be pleased to have you there.

[soupmoss]

please look at my kitty…don’t mind my clocks chiming in the bg…

[brunhiddensmusings]

Wait wait our idea of dirty medieval peasants is based on a *tax aversion scam*??? Please tell me more I need to know this. *bounces excitedly*

shortly after william the conquerer came to power he initiated something known as ‘the doomsday book’- he sent envoys to survey his new lands to record the properties he now controlled so they could pay accurate taxes. every acre of field, every mill, livestock, buildings and their relative size- all would be recorded to determine the wealth of each settlement so a percentage could be expected as rent. for an example of what this book meant;  the previous king was aware of and collected taxes from about 20 grain mills in england, william’s audit shot that number above 200. you dont know the meaning of ‘pedantic’ untill you start reading about medieval grain mills, theres a church that paved its floor with confiscated ‘illegal’ millstones to ensure that the town had to get its flour from the church’s official mill and one war simply about stealing the same millstone back and fourth for quite a few decadesof course word of these envoys traveled faster then they did, virtually every town they came to had time to claim they had far less taxable wealth then they actually did have by the time the audit arrived. in one of the more over the top cases an entire village pretended to have caught insanity- when the taxmen arrived they saw screaming laughing idiots with underwear on their heads so they left as fast as they could considering at the time insanity was thought to be literally contagious. it would be over five years before anyone tried to audit that town again. its safe to assume a large number of other villages also had sudden cases of strange diseases, mysteriously disappearing cows, or very large shrubberies and haybales shaped like buildings and you dont need to look over that hill either. thats not even touching how many small communities just plain didnt technically exist because they were too small, somewhere weird, or in legal limbo of who owned itof course when the feudal part of feudalism started moving its gears you found that the local lord of that village was unlikely to divulge the exact amount of rents they could collect to THEIR lord either, knowing that the more they admitted to receiving the more they were expected to hand over. this was not exclusive to england either, the more you learn about feudalism the more you have to ask how all these minor lords out in the boonies kept having the money and soldiers to do all the political intrigue bullshit, the answer is also tax evasion. each village kept claiming it had fewer people living in shittier houses with less land and fewer livestock then they actually had, and each local lord kept claiming they were receiving less rents then they actually took so were also adverse to an accurate audit.their knowledge of tax loopholes also extended to finding out that clergymen were either exempt from tax or received a far lower rate of tax, so proving you qualified as a clergyman was an endeavor that paid dividends. specifically to prove you were clergy you proved that you could read and write enough Latin to satisfy an official, so you could spend some money to hire someone to tutor you enough Latin to fake it. its estimated that due to this fully ten percent of medieval english households wrote ‘clergy’ on their tax forms.another and even more extreme example was the peasants revolt of 1381, london was swarmed by the unwashed masses from all sides instigated by an official trying to collect (a lot of) unpaid poll taxes, an angry mob driving a teenaged king Richard II to retreat to a boat in the river, and culminating with 1500 peasants being executed by an emergency militia. this doesn’t sound like a huge success untill you dig into some of the details- peasants from a large number of villages all arrived at london at the same time, leaving dedicated forces specifically to stop ships from acessing london to break the siege, the peasants executed a select number of court officials and started burning paperwork- but systematically only burning the ones detailing who owned plots of land, debt records, and a few criminal records. the peasants who besieged london and scared the king into the river had successfully purged a whole lot of debts and reclaimed a lot of land in one very ballsy and highly coordinated move that relied on them being seen as illiterate dirt farmers with no ulterior motives besides pitchfork mob riot and trying to kiss the queen mother while they touch everything in the tower of london with their grimy hands

[hopesterling]

found it. this is… this is amazing. I did a BA in Medieval British History and we never, ever, once considered this. Not once. At a major Canadian university.

jfc this changes my entire brain

[patrickat]

Direct action works. Take notes, friends.

[welcometoyouredoom]

Why Americans Are the Weirdest People in the World

Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.

As the three continued their work, they noticed something else that was remarkable: again and again one group of people appeared to be particularly unusual when compared to other populations—with perceptions, behaviors, and motivations that were almost always sliding down one end of the human bell curve.

In the end they titled their paper “The Weirdest People in the World?” (pdf) By “weird” they meant both unusual and Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. It is not just our Western habits and cultural preferences that are different from the rest of the world, it appears. The very way we think about ourselves and others—and even the way we perceive reality—makes us distinct from other humans on the planet, not to mention from the vast majority of our ancestors. Among Westerners, the data showed that Americans were often the most unusual, leading the researchers to conclude that “American participants are exceptional even within the unusual population of Westerners—outliers among outliers.”

Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.

[jackironsides]

look i haven’t read the attached paper but i can tell you that non-americans already knew this from one glance at your politics and mainstream media

[tienriu]

See my entire exchange with @oh-emdee yesterday.  Americans seem so normal, until they’re not.  It’s somehow worse than culture shock.

[ithotyouknew-deactivated2015051]

I put on my Tinder profile that I hate sports, I don’t drink beer and I’m 150% feminine all day all the time and so many guys are like…offended? One guy was like “what if the guy you like loves sports, you won’t even watch with him?” And I asked “will you wake up at 8am during fashion week to watch live streams of shows with me because that’s what I’m really interested in. And he said “I don’t really find that interesting.” And I’m like THEN WHY THE FUCK WOULD I CARE ABOUT SPORTS FOR YOU OMG. 

[wyldwoodfaye-deactivated2015080]

this isn’t an isolated thing. women are expected to change for men. if you don’t want to have children (ever) then someone is bound to say to you: well, what if your husband wants to have children? i was thinking about dyeing my hair & my dad says, what if the guy you’re dating doesn’t like it? we’re expected to lose weight & to dress in a certain way to appeal to men. we’re expected to be less opinionated, less assertive, less talented when competing against a man… it never fucking ends.

[feministsexworker-blog]

DO YOU AND WEED OUT THE WEAK MEN 🌺

[kateordie]

Every time someone tells me they won’t dye their hair/do something they like/wear something/make a choice because their boyfriend wouldn’t like it I suggest eating him alive and moving on to stronger men

[nodaybuttodaytodefygravity]

Seriously, weed out this kind of person. So many people stay with a guy like this because they assume that’s what all men are like so they think they might as well deal with it.

Don’t settle for someone like this. There are really good people out there that won’t pull this crap. I know that my boyfriend hates tattoos but when I decided to get my first one he just said okay cool. He’s never tried to talk me out of one and never shit-talked the ones I have gotten. In fact when I said I wanted to get another one he said he works with someone whose brother is an awesome tattoo artist and he could get me in contact with them.

He doesn’t deserve or ask for a trophy for this. We both consider support to be a minimum requirement in a relationship. There are fortunately guys that will support you so don’t ever settle for anything less.

[feminismandmedia]

I’m just waiting for the guy who will sit up with me to watch Fashion Week or watch all my barbie movies with me. Hell yeah I’ll watch sports with you if you watch my stuff. Relationships are two-sided. Weed out the assholes who just want you as trophy.

Mod Bethany

[systlin]

@queerenbian I saw you ask if Aphrodite had fat rolls

A statue of her from the 2nd century C.E. A roman copy of a Greek original. 

Another statue of her from around the same era. 

A third. 

Of course she does. 

[antielricest]

"I don't support it in real life"

Then stop normalizing it Then stop romanticizing it Then stop pretending it’s “hot” Then stop pretending it’s “cute”

[barrenwomb]

will you ever understand that fiction is NOT reality

[antielricest]

the brain reacts to fictional situtations they same way it does with real situations

a collection of links to articles about how fiction affects reality

but yeah, fiction totally doesnt impact reailty

[denimdisaster]

you cant say “representation is important” and then in the next breath say that “fiction does not affect/ isn’t reality” like of Course fiction affects people, why the fuck would it make us feel things otherwise

[shirleyjacksons]

one difference between cats and dogs is that dogs do absolutely nothing to mask their clinginess while cats pretend it’s a coincidence they’re in the same room as you 97% of the time

[sabertoothwalrus]

unmute

[copperbadge]

I have never so joyously reblogged a bird video in my life. 

[wedding-shemp]

@binomist

[sophiainspace-deactivated202409]

[Image description: Screenshot from twitter. User @Foodmancing writes: So this happened the other day: I was walking behind a woman with a white cane and pink hair. A woman behind me says to her friend “if she can’t see why does she care about the color of her hair?” Woman immediately shouts over her shoulder “TO POINT OUT WHO THE ABLEIST CUNTS ARE”. Next tweet, same user: @TheBloggess this was my happy moment of the week]

[kelpforestdwellers]

fucking iconic @shrimp-bird

dude god could come down from heaven with a million angels and tell me that gif is pronounced “jif” and i still wouldn’t fucking do it

[nudityandnerdery]

I’d just shrug and say, “Okay, thanks, Jod, I’ll keep that in mind.”

[srahpls]

#THIS IS THE HILL I WILL DIE ON (x)

[trickstertime]

I WILL FACE JOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL

[hewson-wehaveaproblem]

Toronto has had a serial killer operating in the gay Village for nearly a decade.

Gay men have been going missing in Toronto’s gay village since 2010. Last month, an arrest was made by Toronto police and Bruce McArthur has since been charged with 5 counts of first-degree murder. Today, police announced that six bodies were discovered on his property.

In June, I went to Toronto for the Gay Pride Parade. I spent a lot of time in the Gay Village. The first afternoon I was there, a friend took me aside and told me to be careful because people were going missing from the Village.

“Okay,” I agreed. No questions, no surprise. I went to Pride. My friend and I had a great time. We went out. We stayed out. And we were careful.  

I was in Toronto visiting friends over Christmas. On New Year’s Eve, my girlfriend at the time and I decided to head to the Village with some friends and hang out at a drag bar.

When we made plans, we were all keenly aware of the fact that there were rumors of a serial killer operating in Toronto’s gay village. We knew because we are queer, and we have queer friends, and we spend time in queer spaces.

In other words, we knew because we had to know.

It took me an afternoon of Googling to piece together how many people had gone missing in Toronto. The articles I did find generally came from the families of some of those who had gone missing, desperately searching for information, or from queer voices out of the Village, wondering why no one had bothered to take notice of a serial killer targeting a specific demographic of Toronto.

It was a rhetorical question. We all know why.

To make matters worse, a strong element of racial bias undergirds the entire investigation. The outcry from Toronto’s LGBTQ community details a sickening degree of racism and willful ignorance.  

I should disclose that I live fulltime in Montreal.  But my best friend lives in Toronto. I had a girlfriend there for several months. Two of my closest friends visit their parents in the city regularly. I made it my business to know when my friends were headed to the Village, and to make sure they checked in with me at the end of the night. There are some things that you don’t, as friends, always acknowledge openly. As a gang of queers in our early twenties, we tacitly agreed to keep an eye on another as best we could. Certainly no one else does. We knew that, too.

Toronto had a particularly intense cold snap at the end of December, and the city was offering free public transit for New Year’s Eve, so we gladly avoided walking when we could— we stayed warm, and, I thought, avoided ridiculous Uber fares.

“I wouldn’t want to take an Uber anyways,” one of the local girls remarked as I expressed fascination at the efficiency of Toronto’s streetcar system.

“Why not?” As someone who grew up in a small town with minimal public transit, and pitiful taxi service, I couldn’t imagine not taking advantage of [carpooling services].

“Well, they think the guy abducting people from the village has been posing as an Uber driver,” my friend told me nervously. “So I don’t really want to take an Uber to the Village and back. Just in case.”

By this point, 7 people had gone missing from the village since 2010. The latest victim had disappeared only a month prior, on November 25th, 2017.

On New Year’s Eve, I smoked a joint on Bloor and paraded my drunken self up and down the street with no problem. I did not see a single police car or officer.

Toronto’s police force has been under fire for months for abandoning previous investigative projects regarding the missing men. Despite outcry from the LGBTQ community, Toronto police declared last year that there was no evidence of a serial killer at work in the Village.

Between 1975 and 1978, 14 gay men went missing from the Village. Police suspected a serial killer at the time, but half the cases—in which 7 gay men were brutally and violently murdered—remain unsolved today. McArthur was in his mid-twenties at the time.

It took me a fair amount of research and time and reaching out to put together enough information to realize the scale of silence and avoidance on behalf of media across Canada and the Toronto police department. I don’t wonder why. Dead queers are not headline news. Especially if they aren’t White. Or they’re queer women. I suppose, in the end, a serial killer is only as interesting as his victims.

And so this is Toronto—Canada’s largest city, where the crosswalks are painted in rainbow colors. And this is homophobia. This is transphobia. This is racism. And this is Montreal. New York. Every small town, big city, or backwater village in North America. Rainbow flags in storefront windows do not mean a damn thing when we are being picked off and abandoned. We cannot be quiet. I will not be quiet and pretend like this is not happening merely because it is happening to people condemned to expendability by virtue of their sexuality, ethnicity, or gender.

I’m done hearing things about living in a “post-gay” moment. I’m sick of listening to people whine about tolerance and inclusivity and bathroom policies. “It’s 2018,” people sigh at me. “No one cares about this stuff anymore.”

I’m going to start telling people that they’re right. No one does care about this stuff anymore.

I’m just not sure they ever did.

(source)

–

I wish all the victims and all those affected by the atrocities in Toronto–friends, families, fellow queers, and LGBTQ folks alike—peace, wellness, and justice. Don’t sleep on this. We cannot be silent. 

RIP. 

Skandaraj “Skanda” Navaratnam

Abdulbasir “Basir” Faizi

Majeed “Hamid” Kayhan

Selim Esen

Andrew Kinsman

Alloura Wells

Chase Kincaid

Tess Richey

Majeed Kayhan

Soroush Mahmud

Dean Lisowick

[mossymammal]

@allthecanadianpolitics do you know anything about this?

[allthecanadianpolitics]

I’ve posted a LOT about this.

You can find all I’ve posted about this disturbing story under the following hashtags: #Bruce McArthur, #Toronto, #LGBTQ, #Serial Killer, and #Homophobia.

Tonight I posted a new disturbing development in this story:

Remains of 6 people found at property tied to alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur

[mogifire]

Black and White painting  by Bob Ross

[historicaltimes]

West Berliners as they climb the Berlin Wall, near Brandenburg Gate, November 10, 1989

via reddit

[cachien]

Honestly there’s something deeply moving about reading something about a deity and feeling it resonate in your soul, and suddenly it’s as if this ancient being is there with you, helping you breathe, and you want nothing more than to lay under the stars and feel that presence.

[orestian-deactivated20180120]

fun fact - the human uterus automatically rejects and flushes out/kills around 70% of all fertilized eggs, so defining life as beginning at conception essentially makes it illegal to have functional reproductive organs.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

The human uterus is one of the most hostile places for an embryo to implant. Guess all of our uteruses are potential serial killers.

[im-just-tired-a-f]

do any of you guys know what miscarriage is.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

A miscarriage happens when a pregnant woman’s body doesn’t think it’s a good idea to continue the pregnancy. An abortion happens when a pregnant woman doesn’t think it’s a good idea to continue the pregnancy. Only real difference is the one is spontaneous and thus can be rather dangerous, while the other is planned and can thus be done safely. Much in the same way that our immune systems know how to kill off some infections naturally, but vaccines and antibiotics help it with those it can’t. Then again, there’s a definite overlap between anti-choicers and anti-vaxxers, so it’s possible I’m just speaking to a wall.

[geekinglikeaboss]

[nelyafinwe-fucker]

Yassss

[yayfeminism]

An 18-Year-Old Said She Was Raped While In Police Custody. The Officers Say She Consented.

When Anna said she was raped by two on-duty cops, she thought it would be a simple case. She had no idea she lived in one of 35 states where officers can claim a detainee consented.

“When Anna said she was raped by two on-duty cops, she thought it would be a simple case. She had no idea she lived in one of 35 states where officers can claim a detainee consented.“

One of 35..

[imoldbutimstillintothat]

What the entire fuck????

[jedda-martele]

When we talk about unequal power and inability to give meaningful consent there is probably not a better example than when one person is literally imprisoned and the other is one of the people responsible for the imprisonment. Cops should definitely not be allowed to ‘have sex’ with people in their custody. The room for coercion and outright abuse is way too high.