weevil enthusiast

he/they/xe 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 multi-fandom blog and fitness enthusiast 19 this blog has nothing to do with weevil

[omtai]

oh log we’re really in it now

[status-quo-hater]

I think some of you forgot that autistic people sometimes act strange and say things that are poorly worded and speak with incorrect tone and misunderstand or miss social cues because they are autistic

[proteusolm]

The Ojibwe nailed it. Wawa is exactly the right name for a goose.

[happilyloudwonderland]

Speaking of Ojibwe! There’s a new point and click game to help teach the language! It’s called Reclaim! Azhe-giiwewining, and is currently on sale on Steam!

[spinus-pinus]

Tree Swallow Tachycineta bicolor

3/10/2024 San Joaquin Marsh, Orange County, California

[lexthermxtt]

sorry I'm awkward and a loser, do you still wanna makeout?

[allonsybadwolf]

"crochet can't be made by machines" went from being a cool fun fact to being a call to action of "so if you see mass manufactured crochet in Target, that was made by a person and they were underpaid and you should boycott it" which is true, it was made by a person, but EVERY item of clothing you own (that you did not purchase from a company using ethical labor) was made by a person being underpaid (at *best*.)

Sewing machines are operated by *people*. Knitting machines are operated by *people*. Yes lots of the process is automated but you cannot tell a machine "make me a t-shirt" or "make me a knit cardigan".

Higher awareness of fast fashion, and the true human labor and abuse behind it, is GREAT, but let's not pretend that the crochet hat in target is THE problem. Every article of clothing in target is the problem. "All clothes are made by people" is the jumping off point here into understanding this issue it's not just crochet it's the whole thing ahhhhHHHHHHHHHH

[enerdsout]

[marzipanandminutiae]

If you've ever seen images of sweatshops in the early 20th century, in New York or the UK or other developed countries

Guess what

Your clothing is still made in a place that looks like that. The only thing that's different is the tech level of the sewing machines and the race of the workers 

[kaylmao]

has anyone seen my pet bacteriophage its name is styrofoam and its about [hand touching the floor] this tall

[partywithponies]

One of the most annoying genres of people on the internet are people who act like they believe science is one single monolithic thing. Like, you'll see an article saying something like "scientists studying the movement of tectonic plates", and then in the comments there'll be several smug people saying "smh why are scientists doing this instead of finding a cure for cancer", like. Why would a geologist be doing that.

[shirtsthatgohard]

[evolve-rat]

HANNIBAL EATS PEOPLE

[nothorses]

If you can’t imagine a middle ground between seeing trans men as “just cis women” and seeing trans men as “exactly like cis men in every way”, you still have work to do.

Trans men are men just as much as cis men are, absolutely. We also have different experiences from them because we’re trans: different relationships with gender, different understandings of manhood and womanhood, different positions under the patriarchy, different experiences with childhood and manhood and masculinity and oppression.

We’re not any less men for being trans, but we are different from cis men by virtue of being trans.

That’s why statements like “trans men are men, which means if you try to differentiate trans men’s experiences from cis men’s, you’re saying they aren’t actually men” don’t make any actual sense. Why do we need to be like cis men in order to be men? Why is the only legitimate kind of manhood you can conceptualize the cis kind?

Cis manhood is not the gold standard of manhood, and insisting that the only way trans men can be men is by adhering to what cis manhood is- is ultimately transphobic. Our experiences with transphobia, misogyny, and our unique position under the patriarchy do not make us any less men.

Beat that into your heads: cis manhood is not the gold standard of manhood. Erasing trans men’s experiences does not “validate” our genders, because cis male experiences are not the standard to which every man must adhere.

(Specifying trans men rather than all transmascs, bc many nonbinary transmascs might relate to this, but not all transmascs actually want to be seen as men in the first place.)

[fullmoonguidance]

evil great lakes

lake inferior

lake normal

lake offtario

lake hurton

lake michigan

[weevil-enthusiast]

met gala is famous and rich people dressing up as birds for a night to me.

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

These fucking techbros are so fucking childish. "Let's rebuild the twin towers as AI Bots With Lasers" is the most 8 year old idea I've ever heard.

Then again, 9/11 TWO on the AI Laser Buildings would rule

[weevil-enthusiast]

is that the sears tower in the background???? that’s the wrong city????

[dimetrodone]

People horrifically fucking up facts about evolution and genetics too support their stupid beliefs or to seem smart and “rational” is probably one of my big pet peeves 

[bogleech]

Yeah. An enormous number of racists, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes I’ve met eventually whip out something about evolutionary biology and they never, ever, ever, ever have the slightest shadow of even a half-right idea what any of it means or ever cite a claim ever actually made by a scientific study.

Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:

Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.

“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.

“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.

“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.

Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.

People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.

No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.

Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.

Some of us did, however, cross-breed with Neandethal man. It is exclusively non-African races, such as white people, who still carry hybrid human/Neanderthal genes. Whoops, sorry “white purity” skinheads, you’re actually mixed with a whole other species.

[sunny-butch-deactivated20220919]

Some more stuff!

Humans are actually more genetically homogeneous than most people suspect. This is possibly due to a population bottleneck at some point in our evolutionary past. Two chimpanzees from different sides of a jungle are likely more genetically different to each other than any two human beings in the world.

Our big brains may help us use tools, but what was really principal in their development was the need for empathy, communication, and cooperation.

Humans. Are. Social. So social it drove an incredibly energetically costly increase in our brain size.  Don’t believe anyone who says its our nature to fight “every man for themself.” We’re humans, not bears. We fight for each other.

And we always have. Fossil remains are found of ancient humans who bore signs of crucial mobility impairments that lived to notable ages. Some even have sticks or other mobility aids – community care and support is our way. We don’t cast off those with impairments, we stand by them.

Human sexual dimorphism is on a decreasing trend. Our ancestors had greater difference in canine size and overall size. Our dimorphism gap has gotten smaller.

Occam’s razor is the principal that whatever is the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. Don’t believe someone who says the reason we evolved bipedalism is so that males could carry gifts to females to woo them. Yes, this is a real ‘theory’ on how bipedalism evolved.

Skin tone is an adaptation of UV levels vs vitamin D levels. Both come from the sun. UV is harmful, so where sun is plentiful populations develop a darker skin tone for more protection. The skin needs sun to create vitamin D, so where sun is scarce, the skin tone lightens to allow more sun in. This is literally all it is.

Final thing: No one’s mind is really equipped to fully understand how long a billion years is, or a million, or even tens of thousands of years. Evolution takes place over a loooong time. Its very, very, slow, slower than we can really comprehend. We can’t “stand in the way” of natural selection by caring for our ill. We don’t need to “help” evolution in any way. It inevitably happens, but not on any sort of timescale we could possibly affect, so don’t fall for anyone that tells you not to “stand in the way” of natural selection. That’s fascism, and its utterly pseudo-scientific.

Not to mention natural selection doesn’t have a “will” that you can stand in the way of. Its not an entity with wants, its a millions-year long process. And its impossible for our decisions to “stand in its way.” Our decisions to care for one another are what brought our species where it is, plain and simple.

[weevil-enthusiast]

something that’s been happening recently and really bothers me is the way people try to erase my transness.

a cis person telling me i “was always a boy”

being treated like a cis man

i know this is the way some trans people want to be perceived and i respect that. but. for me, being trans is integral to my identity. the way i move through the world and interact with others is largely shaped by the fact that i spent the the majority of my life being perceived as a girl/girlfreak/weirdgirlfag.

i’ve been publicly out as trans for almost 6 years but i did not pass in the slightest until about 10 months ago. i was not mistaken for cis until i started college. being trans is an important aspect of myself that people need to know about me in order to understand me as a person. when people choose to dismiss it as just a fun fact or something that can be ignored, even if in the name of allyship, they dismiss an important part of me.

i was not always a boy. i was a girl on the elementary school playground facing sexism for the first time. i was a girl on the soccer field where “feminist” was hurled at me as an insult. i was a girl on a wrestling mat, explaining to her coach that no one would practice with her because she was a girl. i was the only girl on my high school wrestling team for my first two years there. even when i knew i was not a girl, i was still treated as such so i still learned how to interact with the world as if i was being perceived as a girl.

and i am not a cis man. like i said, i spent almost 18 years of my life being perceived as girl or girl adjacent. while i do aim to look like a guy when out and about, i want the people who know me, the people who take the time to talk to me, to know i am trans. if i want to have any sort of relationship with someone, they need to know i am trans, the same way they need to know i am autistic. to treat me as if i am cis, as if i am incapable of understanding what it is like to be a woman, erases the first 18 years of my life. a friend of mine told me not to use “bitch” in front of her because i am a boy. and while i respect her request, i do wonder if the fact that i have been called “bitch” before ever occurred to her. i wonder if she’s placed me in the box of “boy” and forgotten that i could have once been in situations where i had to tell people that they could not call me a bitch in any context.

i wonder when we will be at a point socially where people realize that transness is not just something to be celebrated until it can be hidden.

[weevil-enthusiast]

beginning to think i’m a bit more bisexual/pansexual than i originally thought…