academics grabbing their pickaxe to go down for a shift in the Emphasis Mine

Adage For Planarian Worms

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This is Orange Juice. He prefers you call him Juice though.

While the CDC has given up on providing any guidance on risk control measures for covid, The People's CDC is filling the gap and continuing to track and update guidance as the situation evolves. Here's where you can download their Safer In-person Gatherings Toolkit:

Here's an extremely detailed guide on what to do if you have covid that includes how long to isolate for, how to set up your house with hepa filters and ventilation, what supplies to have on hand, when to go to the hospital, and guidelines on how to pace from the MEAction Network in the event you end up with long covid:

The work these guys are doing is amazing. They're still tracking wastewater data too so you can still figure out transmission levels in your area and not just the hospitalization levels. Check them out!

some people are so so so unwilling to acknowledge that - even if they are disabled in some way - there are disabled people who cannot do whatever they think most people can do. some disabled people can't leave the house. some disabled people will need support to run a blog like this. some disabled people are spending all their energy on managing their health to do whatever else you think is more important. if a disabled person says "i can't do x" there is never a time where it's appropriate to say "i did it and i'm disabled" because all you've said is that you're less impacted by that disability than the other person

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Gofukuyasan

He knelt beside her, so they were face-to-face, "A girl whispers if she fears to speak aloud. Whisper it now. Is it Joffrey?"

Arya put her lips to his ear. "It's Jaqen H'ghar."

Even in the burning barn, with walls of flame towering all around and him in chains, he had not seemed so distraught as he did now. "A girl . . . she makes a jest.

— A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin

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funds for indigenous communities affected by the canada wildefires

i’ll update this as i find more fundraising initiatives and please free to share your own. reblogs with anything than sharing resources/mutual aid requests/fundraising opportunities get blocked. 

Donations for evacuees from Little Red River Cree Nation can be sent by e transfer to Roseann@lrrcn.ab.ca (ref # foxlakedonation15043)

And a (nation approved) gofund me has been set up:

Part of my reserve burnt down, including my grandmother’s home and my workplace. No lives were lost but we are recovering. Please consider donating if you can!

updated with more resources, reblog this version please

To understand the full context of the American-led ‘53 coup against Mosaddegh in Iran it is imo critical to recognize anti-communism as a proximate cause. Write-up below:

Keep reading

Wow. How bad did the British have to be that even Eisenhower’s CIA was like, whoa, hold up, this is excessive.

(Well, initially, anyway)

It was actually the Truman regime that put the brakes on to start, but also the late Truman regime’s CIA which put out that memo (important to distinguish the politics of the administration with the CIA, a separate organization in itself). The transition to Eisenhower in ‘53 did bring along more intense anti-communist sentiments, as William Blum describes the new Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as an “apocalyptic anti-communist [who] saw in Mossadegh [sic] the epitome of all that he detested in the Third World” (Killing Hope). 

But more importantly, this is not a competition of “badness”. The US was not any less “bad” than the UK; it was not any moral high ground that drove American anti-interventionist policy in 1951 and 1952. 

British economic interests in the region were concentrated in their command of Iranian oil resources, and this was under threat by Mosaddegh. American economic interests in the region consisted of maintaining a barrier against communism which, at the time, constituted a salient global threat to capitalist hegemony. Mosaddegh, who was at root just a nationalist, would stand as part of such a barrier so long as his nationalism could draw the support of the broad spectrum of domestic capitalists (landlords, merchants, wealthy clergy) interested in nationalizing capital to put to their own use. The Americans were not concerned about British excess—they were interested in the potential for Iran, which had only just begun the transition from decentralized feudalism to capitalism via the proletarianization of much of the rural populace, to serve as an arm of capitalist imperialism. Who cares if the Brits lose a bit of liquid gold in the process?

Neither the US nor the UK gave a shit about the people in the region; neither of them were acting in anything other than their own rational self-interest (insofar as we can attribute motives to states, which is a convenient sleight-of-hand when talking about a political apparatus propped up by shared economic interests). There was no “whoa, hold up, this is excessive” but rather a “whoa, hold up, we need this guy to use for our own purposes.” 

Respectfully, at no time can the actions, demands, policies, etc. of imperialist states be entered into a proper ordering based on how “bad” they are. These are all political structures on equal ethical footing in that their incentive schema do not take ethics into account, just self-preservation and feeding their core.

American marten (Martes americana) Québec, Canada

Photos [1, 2] © Serge Rivard

To understand the full context of the American-led ‘53 coup against Mosaddegh in Iran it is imo critical to recognize anti-communism as a proximate cause. Write-up below:

Keep reading

For RI and Southern New England followers: Calling friends and family!

The Seaconke Wampanoag tribe will be gathering at the RI statehouse on Tuesday 6/13/23 and Thursday 6/15/23 staring at 2:30pm each day - the planned demonstration is about 2 hours each day. This rally is to bring attention to the Seaconke Wampanoag's fight for state recognition by RI.

If you have southern New England followers, please reblog this!

It really upsets me that keeping big cats as pets is both horribly unethical and also suicidal. I would love to have a large kitty cat in my house. I'd prefer an animal with the form factor and personality of a common housecat, large enough to put its front paws on my shoulders, but I'll take anything at this point. Dog lovers can have a very large dog as a pet. It's so unfair cat lovers cannot have a very large kitty. Instead of breeding horrible squashed noses and long hair, cat breeders should be trying to create the feline great dane.

rpf tier ranking

tier 0: actors. too easy. actors fall in love all the time due to proximity and amount of time spent together, especially if they are playing characters who are themselves in a relationship.

tier 1: bands (post-80s). writing songs together is incredibly intimate and requires emotional vulnerability. tours are great opportunities to spend a lot of time in an enclosed space together. sometimes they will sing into the same microphone at the same time so their mouths are close together which is basically making out if you think about it.

tier 2: bands (pre-80s). see above. however this requires slightly more mental fortitude because a lot of their fans will insist on their heterosexuality and get really mad when you say simon and garfunkel were kissing on each other or whatever.

tier 3: contact sports team. sports can be emotionally intense if you care about that sort of thing and obviously there are a lot of opportunities for intricate rituals wrt touching another's skin and locker rooms and all that. but this requires more imagination because there is less text (i.e. songs or correspondence) to use as evidence.

tier 4: solo artists. this is where things can fall apart. you have to choose both figures in the ship wisely and exercise a decent amount of creativity because they are not compelled to be together all the time (see above). you can cast a wider net but that lack of specificity may hurt those with weaker imaginations. also they don't always write their own songs.

tier 5: historical figures. this varies a lot both in terms of plausibility and social acceptability. depending on how old the figures are you could legitimately turn this into an academic dissertation if you wanted to commit that hard to it. however you may also come up against a lot of opposition among your colleagues. one must be intellectually prepared to present concrete evidence and argue one's point. (however, you are also more likely to convince people b/c the figures are old and dead and can't deny it. and probably didn't know what rpf is.)

tier 5.5: historical figures who have been fictionalized in media. this depends on the tone you take but unfortunately you will always be up against thomas jefferson hatsune miku binder as the starting point for the general public's thoughts on your hobby. so good luck.

tier 6: racecar drivers. if you are into racecar rpf i assume you are capable of seeing colors that are not visible to the ordinary human eye. they are literally in cars. the creativity required to wring a [romantic] narrative from people driving cars around a track is beyond my comprehension.

tier π: living politicians. you are a pariah among even your most deranged peers. no one respects you. you are categorically a weirdo and beyond help.

Okay, this is super preliminary, but since we've been talking about zoo accessibility I wanted to launch a project I've been planning for a couple months.

One of the hardest things about visiting zoological facilities when disabled is the lack of knowledge ahead of time, right? Often the information on the zoo's website about accessibility doesn't contain everything folk need to know to plan a visit. I think we can probably help fix that, even if it's with just crowd-sourced knowledge!

This is a google spreadsheet for recording accessibility information for various zoos. It is super unfinished right now, FYI. That's partially because I need to fill in more of it from my own experiences, and partially because there are things I didn't note or experience - which I'd love for y'all to chime in about.

Categories for the spreadsheet so far include rentable assistance options, service dog information, accessible bathroom locations, mobility, vision, auditory and sensory issues (or accommodations), food allergy options, and general notes. I'm also including the information each zoo website provides, and guest assistance phone numbers, so all the information is in one place.

To add to this crowd-sourced zoo accessibility resource:

I'll take information as it's submitted and integrate it into the sheet. If the zoo you've visited isn't on the list yet, I still want to add it! This resource is going to stay US-based, however. (I just don't have the capacity to manage an international one).

Obviously, I can't personally verify everything people submit, so this is very much a resource and not a definitive guide. Date stamps are crucial important for keeping track of what's recent and what might have been updated since someone visited.

Let's make zoo, aquarium, and sanctuary visits more accessible for everyone!