Destroy the myth that libraries are no longer relevant. If you use your library, please reblog.

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star trek explores these strange seemingly inconsequential extremes because it wants you to consider the possibility that your concept of ethics doesnt and could never possibly account for every scenario. It wants you to consider the ethical ramifications of just wiping out the little nanites taking over your ships computer even though eventually this will kill you all becuase

-What if they're alive?

-What if they're sentient?

-What if they don't realize they're hurting us?

-What if what hurts us is what they need to live?

-What if we can communicate with them?

Star Trek takes the situation of, "these computer bugs are eating our ship and in an hour we'll all be dead and we COULD just wipe them out utterly but...what if they're like us?" because the ramifications effect what risks we ourselves are willing to take in the name of pacifism and understanding. it says that even the smallest most immenently dangerous creature deserves as much of a chance to live peacefully as we can possibly give it through understanding.

without examining ourselves this way, through these made up seemingly inane situations, we will never be able to understand ourselves and what we're truly capable of, what levels of understanding can be achieved. without the ability to place ourselves in a difficult situation and reach beyond our first instinct of fight or flight and self-preservation, we will never be evolve as a global community

[Image description: a tweet by star wars aggie (pew pew) @.mowwymauk that says, "Star Trek is obsessed with debating the ethics of shit youve never even heard of. shit youve never even considered. If a guy makes an inside out nuclear bomb but only uses it on beetles he teleports in from the future should he get the chair? and they spend three episodes on this." /end image description]

All of this is so true but don’t forget the primary reason for this is not theoretical. Star Trek asks us to think outside of our limited understanding so that we’re not only question the deepest ideas of existence but the very mundane biases that we exist in.

Remember, TOS asked questions about unlimited, godlike power and, perhaps more revolutionary, wondered why a ship’s crew couldn’t consist of a Black woman, a Japanese man, and a Russian, in the 60’s.

“i liked it before it was cool” well i liked it AFTER it was cool when everyone abandoned it

It's never been cool and I still liked it 🤷‍♀️

i liked it when i liked it and at some point it was cool and i have never figured out where the overlap is

When my husband and I were newly married (and we got married young. I was 20) I was unlearning really shitty ways to act I had picked up from my parents. So when we had a disagreement I would often reach a point where I could tell I was no longer able to regulate my emotions and I needed to stop immediately before I said or did something awful

So I would tell "BANANA!" which meant "we need to stop and have some time so I can calm down before continuing the conversation"

Bonus: it's very hard to stay angry if you just yelled the word Banana out of nowhere

It worked and I would take the time to try and calm down and regulate my emotions so I could respond appropriately

It's not a tool we have had to rely on for a long time but it absolutely saved our relationship and helped me learn to recognise and regulate my emotions better

Just as another of example of how safewords can be used

A friend and I are both neurodivergent, but in different ways. Certain ways that they communicate would feel like lies or attacks to my brain (especially my unmedicated brain). We decided on a word -- a food that we both don’t like -- that would mean “I am stopping the conversation for now because I need time away”.

At first, it started out as something for my friend to use when I was being a complete bitch as my brain saw the worst intentions in everything.  Or if they were tired from work and their brain wouldn’t brain right for conversations. And even when I was FURIOUS and wanted nothing more than to throw the worst insults I could at them, if they said the word then I disengaged.  I had to respect it, or I couldn’t expect them to take it seriously when I used it.

The safeword allowed us to claim time and space to recharge when we needed it.  It also helped me figure out WHEN I was flying off the handle, which helped me figure out the triggers for WHY.  I started using the safeword for myself, when I recognized my building anger.  I used it for my friend, as I started seeing when I drained their energy.

We even started using it if one of us had an important call to make, or something else where our usual back and forth chatting would be a distraction. It’s been very useful and adaptable.

Imagine growing up being allowed and even encouraged to say no…

Let your kids say no

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2020)

i am once again asking you to watch the 2019 shakespeare in the park production of much ado about nothing

#signor bene D I C K

oh shit that is glorious

Oh fabulous. I was unaware of it and now I need to find out if there’s a recording I can watch.

YES! The camera work in the clip above made me wonder if it was from a professionally filmed performance and in fact there’s a Great Performances version up on archive.org:

ALL HAIL ARCHIVE.ORG

listen to me. if youre an adult you have the ability to be an unfathomably kind influence on a child. i had a good teacher who let me break down in the hallway for the whole period because he noticed me crying in class, and before that he complimented my writing skills and encouraged me to persue writing. and man ill never forget that teacher as long as i live for even the miniscule acts of kindness. be kind to kids. you never know whats going on that you cant see.

"I'm sure this has been done before"

Yes me too but I want to hear your interpretation. I want to hear your play on it. I want to see how you connect the dots, how you shift the puzzle pieces and make them fit. Show me it through your eyes.

I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF

This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.

I’m normal about you guys

New writers I am begging you to take writing advice with a grain of salt. And pepper. Maybe some cloves. Or garlic powder. What I mean is spice up your writing, instead of listening to stale rules that might not work for everyone.

Happiness Will Come To You.

when tho

When You Least Expect It. Probably Late March

reblog for happiness to come for you in late march!

I reblogged this last year and I hung out with blink-182 backstage on March 30. Reblogging again because it worked the first time.

honestly, last year one of the best days of my life happened in late March

A 13-year-old girl speaking at the Grand Rapids City Commission meeting in regards to the murder of Patrick Lyoya

https://twitter.com/Imposter_Edits/status/1547364174124224521

Her voice needs to be heard.

After all these years, the app I really really want to exist is still Pokémon for Naturalists.

Seek from iNaturalist is good, if limited, but dammit, I want REAL gamification. I want people to get a serious hit of dopamine from their citizen science. Especially plants.

I want to record sightings of ten different shrubs and BAM you get a Shrubasaur, but he’s not gonna evolve into Oakdaimon until you log fifty species of tree. I want obscure-ass Naturemon that only show up if you’ve successfully logged thirty species of nearly identical lichens. I want to walk into a swamp and find a gamer in hip waders grinding water bug IDs so that he can finally get Belostoman, the Toe-Cutter.

Then ideally I want to be able to battle other naturalists. I want to yell “Sedgizard, I choose you!” and have my opponent stare in mingled awe and horror, because bitch, it took me years to document three hundred native sedges, and NOW IT WILL EAT YOUR FACE.

…I am pretty sure I am not the only person who would be down for this.

Science symposiums would be so much BETTER!

reading a textbook for class and i’m going insane. why is this just poetry. what. this is a STEM class what’s going on.

HELLO????? HELLO?????

can’t get over when famous gangster lucky luciano was like “hey lansky seems like quite a hassle getting all those nazis offa your terf you want us to help ya out” and meyer “Left Russia Because of Pogroms and Became A Gangster In The US” lansky was like “no. no getting to beat the shit out of nazis is reward enough for us. sorry lucky this one’s personal don’t worry about it”

here’s a quote from a New York Times article abt it

also bonus quote from that article

“quick question about the punching, judge perlman: how about murder instead”

everybody says that “the government” enlisted these mobsters to beat up nazis, but like. no. no that didn’t happen? judge nathan perlman illegally called up a man who could have him shot dead at a minute to say “hey. i’ve scoured the fucking law books tryna find a way to get these fucking nazis out of here, but my legal means have unfortunately run out. so-” and meyer fucking lansky was like “ah say no more boss lemme call a buncha friends and we’ll get this sorted out real quick don’t even bother paying me.“

can you imagine that phone call. like genuinely. how am i supposed to continue living my normal life knowing this happened. people who loooove talking about punching nazis, taKE FUCKING NOTES