Ok so can someone explain to me how cryptocurrency pollutes? Like what crazy calculations are they running that they need enough brainpower to significantly effect things? Like I’m assuming what’s causing the pollution is increased electricity consumption but… how does sending lil pretend money tokens back and forth or whatever cause so much pollution?

Also, what the fuck is “mining”? How d'you mine… like bitcoin is not a naturally occurring resource, and I assume that you can’t just make it, cause that would make it instantly worthless… help?

So you get “coins” as a reward for performing the cryptographic calculations necessary to update the public ledger which is the blockchain. This is, by design, an increasingly complex and resource intensive process to slow down the collection of (intentionally finite) coins.

So every transaction with bitcoins requires the ledger to be updated with the current ownership of every already existing bitcoin, which also requires encrypting and decrypting a bunch of information and sharing it across the public ledger. So every transaction made with bitcoins increases the energy requirements of updating the ledger making it harder and harder to complete the latest version and get the coin which is a reward for doing that work.

There’s a lot I don’t fully understand myself but the long and short of it is that the actual value of any crypto currency is pretty much just what people agree on, except instead of a fiat currency where a government says it’s worth something and a mint that makes physical currency, there’s a bunch of nerds who agree that solving certain math problems is worth rewarding.

Feeling like adding on for a bit of context, I know it’s kind of hard to understand how mining for really any kind of crypto is hard to imagine, but seeing what a bitcoin mining facility looks like for the first time really helped me realize just how energy intensive it is.

See all these warehouses? They’re quite literally filled to the brim with specialized computers that do nothing but mine, each one filled with thousands of these computers, just row after row of this:

So all the power consumption winds up adding up like crazy.

Yep, that’s why cryptocurrency and NFTs are considered major contributors to pollution – because the energy needs of all those computers doing the calculation are equivalent to a medium sized country. Currently, crypto consumes more energy than Argentina.

Guess what’s inside a lot of mining rigs? Gowan, guess.

Graphics cards! 

Lots and lots of these puppies side by side, spinning their little fans as fast as they can go because as it turns out: GPUs are perfect for doing the calculations required for mining cryptocurrency.

Which means amateur miners buy a lot of these things.

So many, in fact, that there is now (May 2021) a world-wide shortage of NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards and building a new gaming rig is damn near impossible because of the shortage. 

OR you can pay a ridiculously inflated price by GPU scalpers on eBay.

Seriously. Places that sell GPUs impose quantity limits because if they don’t… some crypto asshole will buy out their entire stock in one go.

But the “good” news is that the professional miners (like the Bitmain site up there, in the photos) use dedicated ASIC mining rigs which don’t use consumer GPUs. But (bad news) they DO use the same sort of chips that NVIDIA & AMD rely on to make their products, which just starves the supply pipeline at a different point.

Bottom line: not only does cryptocurrency mining consume terawatts of electricity, it also consumes megatons of computer hardware. Which is expensive to produce (in resource terms, like rare metals, petroleum, water, electricity, paper) and will, someday, require even MORE resources to recycle. Or else it ends up in a landfill.

Note that current dedicated mining rigs are so highly specialized they are useless for anything other than mining. They cannot be easily repurposed to  (say) sequence DNA or fold proteins for miracle cures.

What a waste.

was anyone gonna tell me that some nerds peepee poopoo “currency” is the reason why graphics cards are sold out everywhere or was i supposed to find that out from comments under a screenshot from twitter user whoreganic cop puncher explaining how bitcoin is just an artificially complicated math problem

Today, on this fateful day in sex ed, I have to teach 25 9th graders how to put condoms on wooden dicks without losing my composure. Wish me luck lmao

Now to find a way to discreetly transport this entire drawer to the other side of the building...

Today went well overall. Lots of great conversations took place alongside some... very silly ones lmao.

Here are some highlights from this morning’s lesson:

Me: *removes the wooden dicks from my bag and slaps them on the table*

Students collectively: o_O

That one student: nice

—

Me: *demonstrating how to put on a condom*

Also me: *puts it on wrong the first time, even though I practiced twice beforehand* So everyone, here we see what not to do. Let’s try that again

—

Me: *finished demonstration, holding a sheathed wooden dick* so what questions do we have about condoms before I unleash you all to practice on the models?

Student: *raises hand* yeah, I’m wondering how you’re feeling about your life choices up until this point?

Me: o-o

—

Student 1: *raises hand* miss, why are the condoms so... slimy?

Me: thats lubricant, it helps get rid of friction that might cause discomfort during intercourse.

Student 2: *raises hand* can you use lube on a slip and slide?

Me: *genuinely considering the possibility*

—

*during a conversation about excuses people have heard for not wearing condoms*

Student 1: I had a guy tell me he was too big to fit in a condom

Me: *opens a condom, puts entire forearm inside and pulls it up to my elbow* here’s why that’s not true

Student 2: I once saw a video of somebody that put an entire watermelon in a condom before, so unless that dude’s got a watermelon shlong, that’s cap.

Me: *slowly losing composure behind my mask* you have the right idea, but let’s refrain from using the word ‘shlong’ in class, please.

—

Me: what are some ideas of things we can say to people who try to pressure you into having unprotected sex?

Student 1: tell them you don’t want their penis cooties!!

Student 2: penis cooties? Pretty sure that’s just herpes

Me, internally: like... you’re not wrong

—

Me: alright everyone, time to return the wooden models up front. Remove the condoms by firmly grasping the base of the model and sliding it off. Don’t forget to throw it away please!

Student 1: FIRMLY GRASP IT

Student 2: idk if I can return it now, miss. I’ve become attached to mine(the wooden dick)

Student 3: yeah, most men are

Me: *trying to keep a straight face*

—

Student 1: miss, why are the wooden dicks so shiny when you take the condom off

Me: oh, that’s just the lubricant from the condom.

Student 2: so you know you put the condom on right if your dick is shiny after?

Student 3: yeah! If your dick is shiny, you’re doing it right

Me: *trying to keep my composure pt. 36716159* uh, yeah that’s not necessarily the case. You see, these models are wooden. Penises are not.

Student 3: then why is it called morning wood?

Me: *internally self destructs*

—

Me: *casually wiping off the lube from wooden dicks w/ a paper towel before returning them to my bag* so what questions do we have about the use of contraception?

Student: miss can you please not make eye contact with us while you do that?

A comic about the spectrum of responses to stress - we talk alot about the more extreme ends of this and trauma, but the more subtle and every day responses can be harder to spot. if we can understand our own and other’s responses better, problems Are easier to confront and blaming is less likely to happen :) hope it’s helpful!!

That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.

These

are more genetically compatible than These

and that’s why morphology-based phylogeny has Issues

@aviculor

The problem is perspective. People always think dogs are the ‘standard’ animal, the metric to use for whether or not two organisms “look like” they’re related. When in fact they’re a massive outlier due to the fact that we fucked up this lineage of wolf beyond recognition with selective breeding. It’s why people always say “breed” when they mean “species”, especially when talking about groups like lizards which can’t even be defined cladistically since some of them are closer to snakes than each other. To say nothing of fish.

I once read an article that emphasized there is no such thing as a fish. Sharks and rays, lamprey, lobe-finned fish like lungfish and coelacanth, bichir and sturgeon, and of course the multiple infraclasses of more “modern” fish groups are all only very distantly related to one another. They’ve maintained semi-similar body structures only because there are limited ways to efficiently move through water as a vertebrate. 

This

And this

Are more distantly related from one another than you and I are from a lungfish

Which is absolutely fuckin wild.

Not only that, but all of us air-breathing land vertebrates, all the lizards and chickens and people and frogs, are closer to one another than those three “fish” are to one another as well.

these

are genetically closer than these

and…

these

are genetically closer than these

and my personal favorite, it really fucks with people…

these

are more genetically similar than these

COOL. 

just the other day, one of my friends mentioned this book, “Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History,” which apparently has a (tongue in cheek) chapter that argues that Cows are actually Fish.

quick little feeling from the other day because recovery is slow but it’s still recovery. also i just love tea

His name is Eugene Goodman. In a now-viral video, he is seen confronting White Supremacists and using himself as bait to provide cover for the evacuation of lawmakers. He was alone in a hallway when the mob reached him, and Congress was being evacuated to the left. He lured the mob away from lawmakers, drawing them in the opposite direction and up the stairs. 

Officer Goodman deserves recognition for his amazing bravery and selflessness. Because of him, Congress was evacuated safely and no lawmakers were assassinated on that terrible day. He risked everything to save others, and he is a hero.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/eugene-goodman-capitol-police-officer-hero-video.html

I remember watching the video clip of him running up the steps and thinking ‘oh god they’re going to murder this man, God protect him’

Fighting Covid When Kept Home

This was shared on a Covid survivor group…have heard many of these before but it seems helpful: HOW TO FIGHT COVID AT HOME when you are not hospitalized.

“When the nurse came in to discharge me, I asked her, What can I do to help fight this at home? She said:

1. Sleep on your stomach at all times with Covid. If you can’t sleep on your stomach because of heath issues sleep on your side. Do not lie on your back no matter what because it smashes your lungs and that will allow fluid to set in.

2. Set your clock every two hours while sleeping on your stomach, then get out of bed and walk for 15-30 min, no matter how tired or weak that you are. Also move your arms around frequently, it helps to open your lungs. Breathe in thru your nose, and out thru your mouth. This will help build up your lungs, plus help get rid of the Pneumonia or other fluid you may have.

2. When sitting in a recliner, sit up straight - do not lie back in the recliner, again this will smash your lungs. 

3. While watching TV - get up and walk during every commercial.

4. Eat at least 1 - 2 eggs a day, plus bananas, avocado and asparagus. These are good for Potassium. 

5. Do not drink anything cold -  have it at room temperature or warm it up. Drink Pedialyte, Gatorade Zero, Powerade Zero & Water with Electrolytes to prevent you from becoming dehydrated. Water with lemon, and little honey, peppermint tea, apple cider are good suggestions for getting in fluids. No milk products, or pork. (as a singer I know milk products produce phlegm and always advised my students to have none for 3 days before a performance)

6. Vitamins D3, C, B, Zinc, Probiotic One-Day are good ideas. Tylenol for fever. Mucinex, or Mucinex DM for drainage, plus helps the cough. Pepcid helps for cramps in your legs. One baby aspirin everyday can help prevent getting a blood clot, which can occur from low activity. 

7. Drink a smoothie of blueberries, strawberries, bananas, honey, tea and a spoon or two of peanut butter. 

We always hear of how Covid takes lives, but there isn’t a lot of information out there regarding how to fight Covid when you are not critical. I hope this helps you or someone you know, just as it has helped me.”

(Wow, @thetimetostrikeislater  wish you’d had this info when you were ill)

@cptdorkery  @fortheloveoftrekuniverse  @peridotsarelongterm

I definitely wish I had this info when I contracted Covid back in March😓 it was so hard on my lungs! and I couldn’t go to the hospital because it was too full. Stay safe my friends.

Yup

man the west just looooves thinking that every non-western country and nation is so underdeveloped and so primitive and so in need of help like this just reeks of racism and pretty much just the inability to even humour the idea that the countries that the west loves to think are below them are, in fact, better.

anywho props to all of the countries in africa.

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

VIDEO

Finally. People need to realize aliens aren’t the answer for everything (when they use it to erase poc civilizations and how smart they were)

(via TumbleOn)

What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”

Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it

And the Iroquois told Europeans that squirels showed them how to tap maple syrup and no one believed them until they caught it on video

Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.

Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.

Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/

Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄

Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year. 

“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.

In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.

“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/inuit-canada-britain-shipwreck-hms-terror-nunavut

“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”

Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.

“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/sammy-kogvik-hms-terror-franklin-1.3763653

Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.

Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.

oh man let me tell you about Indigenous Australian myths - the framework they use (with multi-generational checking that’s unique on the planet, meaning there’s no drifting or mutation of the story, seriously they are hardcore about maintaining integrity) means that we literally have multiple first-hand accounts of life and the ecosystem before the end of the last ice age

it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.  

Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with  the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians.  So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least

Ain’t it amazing what white people consider history and what they don’t?

I always said disservice is done to oral traditions and myth when you take them literally. Ancient people were not stupid.

— The Museum of the Fossilized Internet (via probablyasocialecologist)

Okay non-European tumblr, I’m gonna explain to you why ‘white’ isn’t as simple here as it is in the rest of the world

- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’

- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction

- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour

- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’

- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc

- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from

- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant

- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white

- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’

- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired

This is all basic stuff and it’s very much taken for granted here. Race and ethnicity are not as clear cut, so it can be very confusing for non-Europeans to wrap their heads around. Which is fine. But I implore you to stay in your lane, because when you say things like ‘no white person anywhere in the world ever knows what it’s like to face racial discrimination’, it’s really fucking offensive to all of the European immigrants who are denied jobs, harassed by the police and beaten by racists, because foreign is foreign to these people, and they don’t give a shit if you’re technically white. So when you mean white American, say white American. 

This doesn’t just apply to “darker skin” Europeans either (which I’m sure some Americans would argue are POC for some reason or other). Try being slavic in Western Europe. Hell, try being Sinti or Roma in any part of Europe.

Especially in the UK you can be as white as you like but if you aren’t from Britain (or in some cases just England) then you face discrimination. It really isn’t that clear cut in Europe and it drives me mad when people say white people can’t experience racism because that’s such a US-centric idea.

And if you’re from anywhere in South-East Europe then you should prepare for your country to be slandered in every UK paper. Seriously, you can’t turn on the news, go on the internet, read a newspaper, without being told how Romanian, Ukrainian, Polish people are a drain on the UK’s resources and they should be banned from the country. And guess what?

(That’s Mila Kunis. She was born in the Ukraine.)

(Sebastian Stan. From Constanta, Romania.)

(Mia Wasikowska, from Poland)

(Nina Dobrev, who was born in Bulgaria.)

They are white! Just because they are white, it doesn’t mean people from their countries cannot face horrible discrimination, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t be constantly told that they don’t work as hard as people from Western Europe, and that they don’t deserve basic human rights.

So just before you force your ignorance onto people who don’t hold the same views as you due to where they live operating in a different way, just remember that not everybody lives in America.

Here it is guys, the post that finally puts what I’ve been trying to say for far too long into words!

…I didn’t know Sebastian Stan was Romanian.

But as somebody who has lived in England and the US, I can vouch for all of this. The race issues in Europe and the race issues in the US are not the same.

For the last few years, there has been an awful backlash against immigrants from Poland, with some of the same language used that Americans use about “Mexicans” (By which, half the time, they mean anyone from south of the US/Mexico border).

It’s worth understanding that

1. Racism and discrimination are everywhere.

2. They don’t take the same form everywhere.

I have lived in England for over 10 years now, and can confirm all of the above. As soon as I open my mouth people can tell, of course, that I was not born and raised British.

I was yelled at in the street because a lady thought I was Polish. People have pushed their chairs into my parents and insulted them in a restaurant because they were recognised as Germans.

Being white is not that cut and dry over here.

And being “socially” white as opposed to just pale skinned evolves over time. I mean, there have been times in America when Irish and Italian people have not been considered “white”.

READ THIS POST IF YOURE AMERICAN

I’m American and this is the FIRST time I’ve ever heard any of this. I always think I’m up to date on world issues but wow I am not. Thank you to everyone for sharing! 

About discrimination between nations in Europe, speaking Finnish and Sami languages in schools in Sweden was forbidden from students because Finns and Sami people were considered to be the lower race. Of course Europe has racism against black people, but yes, thinking about Europeans being “white” as whole is weird because a white Finn and a white Greek person couldn’t be more apart with their cultures.

Yes, all of this, and let’s not forget people like the Finnish speaking Finns have historically and from some cultural standpoints a lot more common with native Americans and the Asians and Blacks in America than white Americans, despite our recent “rise” in the social rank of race.

Less than 100 years ago we were considered mongoloid (and while it’s not entirely wrong, though Uralic or North-West Asian and Caucasian mix would be lot more accurate), and were oppressed by another nation (Russia) that tried to enforce cultural and linguistic genocide on us, and before that we were oppressed and practically enslaved by Sweden, not all that differently as in any other colonized nation–which we were for 800 years.

For all intents and purposes, our “whites” are the Swedish-speaking Finns, who to this day continue to be a lot more privileged than the Finnish-speaking Finns, on average.

In Italy, Southern people are considered less than Northern people and I, as a Northern people, can assure you sometimes it’s pretty bad. Mostly thanks to an idiotic right wing party that thinks that Italy should be divided in two: over the Po and below the Po (our longest river). They even think our ancestors are Celts lmao. Also a lot of people from the South are “less white” (again it’s stupid but whatever it’s just to make you understand), because they have ancestors from Africa so they are mixed, therefore their skin isn’t white as snow.

Also in Italy people from slavic countries are often victim to xenophobia, people are always ready to see romanians/albanian/russians…etc as culprits for everything, and it’s not unusual to hear someone says “this hairstyle makes you look like an albanian!” or “why are you going out dressed as a romanian” yeah they use slavic people as an insult bc people are led to think that they come here just to steal everything from us. And guess what most of them are white as snowflakes!

I’d like to point out that also italian people have faced discrimination from other european countries. We were, and sadly often still are, always seen as part of the mafia and therefore dangerous, or inferior and poor (y’all can find signs saying pretty nasty stuff online, and i’m leaving this here even tho it’s in Italian), i’ve heard a lady telling his son to stay away from me and my family because we were speaking italian and so we could do “bad things” to him and there were times when in shops we were made feel not welcome because we are italian…..and guess what my family is white.

So please when you are outside the us don’t try to apply your “racial standards” bc they are not valid in europe.

Bless this post forever and ever

The Scottish, Irish, and Welsh are “white” peoples yet have a long history of oppression by white England. Even to this day you’ll hear celebs from those places (which are in the UK or even on the same island as England) discuss the same things as a POC actor in America, like “there are very few roles for us on TV” or “I only got the job because I changed my name and accent” and “I’ve had to play a servant or a stereotype for most of my career.”

This discrimination may seem less bizarre to Americans when you understand that the white minorities of the UK are descendants of peoples who lived there long before the Romans marched in and set English history as we know it in motion. It’s not about skin color, it’s about conquest, as usual.

yall really gonna use Mila Kunis as an example of a Ukrainian who faces discrimination and leave out the fact that she’s Jewish?

When Heroes first came out in Australia, I was watching it with my then-partner, my sister, and a couple of friends. My then-partner, who is American, mentioned that the show had faced criticism because nearly all the main characters were white.

“What are you talking about?” say my sister and I. ‘There are two Italian guys RIGHT THERE.” 

“OMG you cannot say Italian people are not white,” he says.

“Yes we fucking can,” says the Italian friend watching the show with us, deeply offended. 

And then we had to pause it and a lot of complex explanations ensued. (Including the fact that Greek and Italian people generally aren’t considered White in Australia and in fact many a Nonna will smack you if you suggest otherwise.)

Basically, ‘white’ is a category upon which no two cultures/countries can agree on the definition, they all think they have the only possible definition, and it usually boils down to Preferred Flavours of Bigotry.

I mean, I’m of sufficiently Irish descent not to have been considered White in New York at certain periods, and I’m so pink and white I couldn’t get stopped at an airport if I tried, so basically it’s all bullshit and ‘white’ is like ‘normal’… everyone thinks they know what it is, but it doesn’t actually exist except as a tool for dividing people up into The Good Ones and The Rubbish Ones.

A really good book on the historical whitening of European ethnicities in America ^^^^^

When it comes to ethnicity in the Netherlands, we used to have two catergories: ‘autochtoon’ and ‘allochtoon’. ‘Autochtoon’ means ‘from your own country’, or that both your parents were born in the Netherlands. ‘Allochtoon’ is anyone who has at least one parent born outside of the Netherlands. Even if you were born here, grew up here, you’re an allochtoon. Your children won’t be, as long as you marry a ‘native’ Dutch person.

The kicker is that our royal family has been allochtoon for generations. Our reigning queen is from Argentina, so our princesses are all allochtoon.

Except the government now changed the terminology, because ‘allochtoon had negative connotations’ (go figure). It’s now ‘people with a migration background’, but the term still functions the same. The government is still profiling these people more heavily for tax and social benefits fraud, especially the ‘people with a non-western migration background’, which is a whole different can of worms.

‘Non-western migration background’ is not as straight forward as you’d think. Indonesia, for example, is considered western, because it used to be a Dutch colony. But Curacao is not considered a western country, even though it’s still part of the Dutch kingdom. The government’s categories of western and non-western have more to do with how close you are to the equator than whether you are West or East on the map.

Gerwin van Schie has written a lot on this topic if you are interested to learn more.

admittedly I don’t normally like modern shakespeare adaptations but once I went to see my cousin in a midsummer night’s dream and it opened with a high schooler saying “I don’t wanna read this play” so he sits down and eats an entire chipotle burrito on stage and then immediately falls asleep and the play begins but instead of the forest the faeries all hang out in a rainforest cafe TM and at one point in the middle of a scene the guy from the beginning just slowly drifts across the back of the stage on a skateboard, staring at all the characters as the events of the play transpire in the form of some sort of chipotle-induced coma lucid dream

THAT is EXACTLY what Shakespeare would have wanted

I swear if this isn’t floating around on the internet I’m gonna cry

Oh buddy IT’S ABOUT TO BE. I am like, 98% sure this was my high school’s production and I’ve got photos and video clips like craaaazy…

Here are some fun additions… the Mechanicals were also based on the characters of The Breakfast Club (here I am below, eating an actual Captain Crunch and Pixie Stix sandwich on stage.)

…and the one on the longboard was actually our Puck - he rode it through the whole play in the background. Please note his “Forest Cafe” shirt… which we also had logos for on the cups.

…and we had both a flash mob at the end AND an interlude where myself and one of the other Fairies danced to “Sexy and I Know It” while we were cleaning up the tables at the cafe.

I will post more of this later. I have a DVD at my house and will endure cringing at myself to bring you some quality clips… there’s probably one of K eating the burrito before the start of the play, too.

@hullaballoons Here is more Ktown Lore for you 

@cupcakelirry 

Here ya go kids… all 2h20m. if you make it through the whole thing once, that’s probably more times than any of the cast watched this DVD. You can probably see why. Tbh if you watch this, I am sorry in advance.

Important notes:

- Chipotle burrito makes a cameo about 30 min in,

- the end has a flash mob and a “commercial” for the Forest Cafe, 

- unfortunately, the lunch scene where all the mechanicals whistle like the Breakfast Club got mostly cut for some reason?

–

@vampireapologist in case you have any interest in reliving this… at the very least you can prove to any doubters that there was, in fact, a Chipotle burrito onstage.

I cannot even fully conceptualize, much less put into words, how wild this chain of events has been.

I have dozens of posts going around that have broken 50,000 notes, and plenty that have broken 100,000.

On every single one of these posts, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of comments and tags calling me a liar and the story fake, but none so much as this post.

This post was my most doubted of all.

And you came in………

with a Two and a Half Hour Long video.

I’ll never forget this.

We have a bond forged in fire and spirit now.

This whole thing originally felt like some online urban legend… and then @cyanideending comes through with video proof and first person participation. What a time to be alive

NEVER forget

Over the past few months I have asked a male architect for ideas & drafts for the renovation of the farmhouse, and at every turn I am stunned by his utter disregard for any cleaning-related concerns. For example, he is very into the idea of having in the living-room a big, non-openable window near the ceiling—which, granted, looks pretty, like having a piece of blue sky when you raise your eyes, but immediately I’m like, with a high ceiling, how will I clean this? You can’t open it so you have to clean both sides separately, and you can’t easily reach either side. I’ll need a tool with an absurdly long telescopic handle. He says, a stepladder. I’m like, but I’ll need to carry it by myself to the living-room and the front of the house every time. “So?” So a very tall stepladder is heavy? And it will be hard not to get dirty water dripping down the wall. He reacts like he can’t believe he is being asked to bring the concept of dirty soap water into his grand designs, like these are base, trifling considerations, when to me it’s a crucial factor in the decision to add this decorative window.

Similarly we both agree on leaving most of the wood beams exposed because they’re old and beautiful, but when I ask if we ought to insulate in such a way as to cover every other one, so the remaining ones are farther apart and it’s harder for spiders to use them as ready-made anchors for their webs, he just looks disgusted, like “I am talking about Architecture and you bring up spiderwebs.” At this point I start to entertain the idea that men make horrible architects. You design someone’s house to give them a nice, convenient space to live in, not to make their life more difficult. A man who has never used a sponge in his life should not be allowed to graduate from architect school and that’s the end of it.

Related reading: 

All of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses had leaky roofs and were basically uninhabitable

Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture

My mom is an architect and I can confirm . Male architects are overwhelmingly pretentious douches that half ass their projects

Im currently studying interior design and have been involved in the field in and off for a long time. I can’t even begin to tell you how many people live in ‘architecturally designed’ houses where the male architect was more interested in winning awards so he could upgrade his Maserati than designing something humans can actually live in.

Whenever I see fancy architecture, my first thought is nearly always “this is gonna be a bitch to heat”, closely followed by “that staircase looks terribly unsafe”.

I don’t understand why so many fancy architects don’t seem to consider, that people would have to live in that house. If you are an architect and people don’t actually want to live and spend time in your house, aren’t you a failed architect?

I live in a country where it rains 265 days of the year, and it irritates me immensely how many modern buildings locally have clearly been designed by architects who either don’t know this, or don’t care. Why would you ever design a flat-roofed building in this climate? There are so many new buildings here that look fine when it’s sunny, but are grey and depressing when it rains. And so many slightly less new buildings which are streaked with rust and mold because they’ve been rained on constantly for the last ten years, and the architect never considered what that would do to them.

Architects need to look to traditional building techniques. Houses in England have steep roofs for a reason. Houses in Israel have flat roofs for a reason.

I’ve seen what English weather does to a flat roof!

Best architectural disaster remains the French Library Bibliothèque nationale François Mitterrand

The building is slowly sinking into the ground

Because the architect didn’t take into account THE WEIGHT OF THE FUCKING BOOKS

My high school was an all glass cube wall place designed by a famous architect but the custom ordered and shaped glass was from a defunct company and less than 5 years later there were wooden planks replacing the glass floor tiles and wall panels in several places from normal ware and tear as well as a hurricane. The school was expensive to clean and teachers had to put up curtains in all the rooms or everyone in the hallways could just see into the classroom and people in the hallway would stare in like classrooms were fish aquariums.

If architecture doesn’t consider the consequences of a space being used and maintained over time it is ultimately more hubris than art.

My college has some acceptable 1950’s architecture, but the town around it is more fascinating

I disagree with the article wanting to abolish the skyscraper entirely, though, as there are many good art deco skyscrapers

Oh, thank God, a post where I can bitch about brutalism. Because fuck that shit. Where’s the joy? Where’s the adaptation to climate? Where’s the fucking comfort? WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT.

Read the second article lierdumoa posted above because it is the most delicious tea ever. I haven’t read such a good article in a while.

Oh, I did. The author gave ZERO fucks. The sarcasm, the burns. All very well-deserved. Also some awesome pictures of the Alhambra.

“Capitalism eats culture, and it makes ugly places. Money has no taste.”

“Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep” – Mary Elizabeth Frye

Happy Pride 2019!

sure he’s well versed in leftist theory but does he do the dishes

this is such a succinct critique of  male leftists who think of it as theory only & won’t even get off their ass to clear the table

This is my favorite form of entertainment.

Sequel:

Geek gatekeeping is a deadly occupation, and NOBODY has to do it.

Learn from the examples of the fallen, fellow nerds. Don’t be that guy.

oh shit mr gaiman straight up murdered the person

This still makes me giggle 😂

This is right up there with those screenshots of a person mansplaning comic books to Gail Simmone,

It’s funnier when you find out that’s his dad.

that fact made this even better

That actually makes it 100000000% better bc it means it’s not some creepy rando getting up in his face.

Me seeing the video without any context: that’s rather unfortunate that even men reporters are getting harassed now when we want it to be no one getting harassed when will the public learn

Me seeing the context: oh that little shit loves his dad and just wanted to mess with him at work this is certified cute now

Context makes me so happy