[the-big-mood]

[wizardshark]

How do I explain Plato's allegory of the cave to my cat?

[sexshopshenanigans]

gato’s allegory of the fishtank

[circusheart]

OK so im a frog and the water is warm now. i swear it was cold a while ago but now its warm and i dont know when or why. But it's probably not gonna get any warmer

[thecryingcryptid]

On August 9, 2014, Brown, an unarmed black 18-year old, was shot and killed by Wilson, who is white. The shooting led to demonstrations, confrontations with police, and some looting and violence.

[snailspng]

Isopod (+ one millipede) PNGs

(1. Millipede statue by Tom Otterness, 2. Pottery isopod, 3. Armadillidium vulgare, 4. Isopod silver pendant & pin, 5. Isopod in amber (?), 6. Isopod with babies, 7. Tiny glass isopod, 8. Bronze isopod sculpture, 9. Isopod made of scrap-metal (?))

[sreegs]

whenever i find a good world heritage post i do my best to carefully remove unnecessary "why is this so funny!!" or "i cant believe i found the original" reblog comments. sometimes it takes a bit of work digging back through the reblog graph to accomplish this but fine art restoration is tedious but important work

[sreegs]

you get it

[guooey]

At a crossroads with mama

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

its so brave that you have such a 2012-coded url in this 2024 world

would you call a bear brave for standing in a new construction suburb or would you recognize the unfamiliar world they built around him

[sunsetmaiden]

Kenojuak Ashevak (1927 - 2013), Nunavut - Our Land – 1992 Lithograph on paper

[moniquill]

[reasonablywittyatbest]

Scrolled past this agakn and just can't get over how much I love it. We need to make things beautiful again and this is such a wonderful example. The beadwork on the wires of a utitarian object, contrasted with the grey concrete.

[chamacafeahorrible]

I NEED ENRICHMENT

[wizardshark]

here you go bud :)

[strange-aeons]

If tumblr dies for real where do you think people will migrate to?

[rylandsgrace]

This is cinema actually

[wizardarchetypes]

THE ALI FORESHADOWING LIKE SHE’S A WIZARD THEY’RE PREPARING TO FACE AND THEYRE WARNING US ABOUT HER LIKE BARDS.

ALI IMMEDIATELY LIVING UP TO THE BALLDS SUNG ABOUT HER.

THE FACT THAT ALL OF THEIR MAGIC COMBINED DIDN’T COUNTER HER SPELL

[bubobubosibericus]

Are you americans okay???

[punkahudsonia]

Everclear is what we have instead of universal healthcare.

[themythicalcodfish]

Wound cleaner, anaesthetic, surgical instrument sterilizer, and post-surgical cleanup, all in one convenient bottle

[languill]

It’s sad how much of what is taught in school is useless to over 99% of the population.

There are literally math concepts taught in high school and middle school that are only used in extremely specialized fields or that are even so outdated they aren’t used anymore!

[flavoracle]

I took calculus my senior year of high school, and I really liked the way our teacher framed this on the first day of class.

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

And I’ve never forgotten that.

[c-is-for-circinate]

THIS.

When it’s taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one.  Most adults don’t need to know integrals, but goddamn if I don’t wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.

Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricity–and they don’t need to.  But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.

History isn’t about dates and names of battles, it’s about people, patterns, things we’ve tried before and ought to learn from.  It’s about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely.  Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.

Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction.  But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.

The good thing is, students who learn the content are likely to pick up at least some of the context, some of the patterns of thinking, even if they don’t realize it.  (The unfortunate thing is how the current educational system prioritizes content so much that a lot of students, and a lot of adults, don’t see the point in learning either, and teachers are overworked and held to standardize test grading scales such that it’s hard for them to emphasize patterns of thinking over rote memorization, etc etc etc, but that is a whole different discussion.)

[fadagaski]

I would also add that giving as broad an education to as many as possible gives everyone the opportunity to follow a career that might use calculus. Or colour theory. Or electromagnetism. Or [insert specialism here]. If we gatekeep specialisms, those careers are only available for the ones who were privileged enough to have the background training. That’s why Classics as a degree subject is full of private school kids: it’s not offered in state education.

[ferrousferrule]

And when you gatekeep classics you get people who turn up their nose when people enjoy things ‘the wrong way’ like some (thankfully few) of the comments on the video of the girls playing Vivaldi on their marimbas with such joy.

[longseasons]

[elljayvee]

when I was in college in the 1990s I took a document design course and we had to go talk to an archivist at the university library

the library had a single page from a gutenberg bible (the bible had been damaged by fire and the remaining undamaged pieces cut apart and sold) and a CD sitting next to each other

we looked at the bible page, marveling at this 500+ year old page with its neatly set type, carefully kept under a sheet of glass to protect it

and then she held up the CD and pointed out that in 500 years, if a CD could even last that long, it was unlikely we'd possess the technology to read it

and we all got very quiet and look at the book page for a long time

and is evidenced by the fact I'm telling you about this almost 30 years later, I have never forgotten that blank-looking shiny piece of plastic sitting next to a beautiful, ancient piece of paper that someone pressed words into with a machine and left for me to read, hundreds of years before I was born.

[lamignonette]

[thelocalmuffin]

My dad sent these pictures of quail in his yard. Happy fat fuck Friday

[junglejim4322]

At the end of the day you have to understand some people are mentally ill like really really mentally ill on a level you can’t understand. I see this a lot when someone does something weird or incomprehensible and people are shocked trying to figure out their intentions and why they’d do it and it’s like there’s people who are psychotic or delusional or have rapid mood swings you’ll never be able to comprehend and very often people with other mental illnesses who are able to function more acceptably have a bad lack of understanding of that and compare what they can do and act like as the standard not understanding that’s not the same playing field

[junglejim4322]

People facing addiction, eating disorders, abuse, etc as well will do things you’ll never understand. Getting in the habit of not judging or at the very least not making the lives people who aren’t harming you worse, is actually, a pretty good thing to do