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Just an Honest Merchant Sailor

@honestmerchantsailor / honestmerchantsailor.tumblr.com

"The pen is mightier than the sword, if the sword is very short and the pen is very sharp." (He/him. No minors, please. Follows/RBs do not amount to endorsement.)

"Domestication" is one of those concepts in biology that seems straightforward but upon further examination is based in Eurocentric assumptions that exclude many indigenous peoples.

The idea of plant domestication assumes that the plant is "Removed" from a "Natural" environment and becomes dependent on an artificial, human-made environment.

However this excludes agricultural models where the agricultural system is integrated with the natural world.

It assumes a strong boundary between "Artificial selection" and "Natural selection," however why consider human influence on the environment to not be "Natural," when much of evolution is driven by similar negotiations of symbiotic relationships?...

Some character designs with some…atypical color choices? I guess. I don’t know what’s going on in that area.

This is Nimona and her supervillain friend (He doesn’t have a name yet, I’m working on that). Nimona is his sidekick/squire, they’re like the Batman and Robin of slightly Medieval villains, but she’s actually way more evil than him. He does what he does to make a point, and he doesn’t really want anyone get hurt - Nimona just gets a kick out of destroying stuff.

I’m going to attempt to make a two page comic with them? We’ll see how this goes.

This was tagged #homework and posted in December 2011.

So within two days of each other, Fox News writes an article comparing aromanticism and asexuality to pedophilia, and then Matt Walsh releases a video saying asexuality is a mental illness and asexuals are tricking teenagers into having depression.

Not sure what’s going on right now over in Conservative World, but it’s a hell of wild U-turn for them to suddenly switch from “Oh no! The left is sexualizing our children!” to “Oh no! The left is asexualizing our children!”

It’s a reminder, I guess, that they’re coming for all of us. The fash and the white supremacists will not make nice distinctions between the queers when they put us up against the wall. There is no gatekeeping, no label-policing, no purity-purging and no assimilation that any of us can do that will save us. They want us dead, and while they’ll start with whoever is most vulnerable at any given time, they’ll get around to all of us eventually.

Queer solidarity means all of us because the fash are coming for all of us.

All Dividers are Feds. Stand united or die separately.

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ANYONE who is trying to divide our community is a fucking Fed. That includes other queers who like to argue about who is and isn’t “allowed” in our community.

Gee, Tumblr would probably really hate it if you shared and spread this damning article … To the surprise of absolutely none of Tumblr’s LGBTQ users, it turns out the independent NYC human rights agency Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) found that Tumblr’s ham-fisted adult content ban in December 2018 disproportionately targeted LGBTQ users. The CCHR’s investigation revealed Tumbler’s moderation algorithms is demonstrably biased against queer content. As part of the settlement, Tumblr was obligated to review their prejudicial anti-gay moderation policies. Even more mortifyingly, they’ve also had to hire an expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues and provide unconscious bias training to their moderators. I frankly doubt Tumblr has learned a thing from this humbling experience. Just recently the Tumblr algorithm flagged three ancient posts of mine as violating their terms. All three “offenders” were vintage homoerotic beefcake images (softcore by modern standards) roughly 50 – 65-years-old by Bruce of Los Angeles, Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland. (These are of course pioneering queer artists who routinely faced censorship and imprisonment in the fifties and sixties. Plus ca change!). They've been visible on my page - corrupting viewers -  for years at this point. I appealed all three immediately. Only the Tom of Finland one was approved. The other two are now hidden. So, they haven't learned much. Apparently, Tumblr – who loves to declare how hip, youthful, inclusive and progressive their values are - wants to restore trust with their queer users. I’d recommend we remember their hypocrisy when Pride rolls around and Tumblr splashes rainbow flags everywhere and attempts to pink wash their image.

In honour of Pride Month, this is worth a reblog! Don’t buy into Tumblr’s hypocritical “pink washing.” 

I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.

-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a

~*Spiritual Experience*~

I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.

Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.

He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only BARELY enough space for the fireworks and certainly none for his truck.

So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand. This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.

He begins, and this is crucial to what happens next, by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it unsecured on his lawn.

Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.

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2D Legend of Zelda style game where the Princess gets sealed inside a giant crystal and the Hero has to save her, as one does, except the Hero manages to obtain the crystal at the end of the tutorial dungeon.

The bad news: nobody knows how to break the giant crystal without killing the Princess in the process.

The good news: the Princess is fully aware inside the giant crystal and can still use all of her Magic Princess Powers within a limited range.

(The Big Bad knows this, and tried to work around it by keeping her in a large empty room with nothing nearby for her to target. That didn't work out so well!)

The whole rest of the game is basically the Hero lugging this big stupid crystal around in order to bring the Princess within range so she can use her magic to actually solve the problem at hand.

The Hero plays basically like Link from a typical Zelda game, except all of the Hero's upgrades relate to making them a better crystal-carrier: throwing the crystal, teleporting to the crystal, doing an AoE attack that affects a line between them and the crystal, etc.

When you switch to playing as the Princess, you're both invulnerable and physically immobile, and the joystick moves your targeting reticle for your spells instead. Those spells are mostly puzzly environment-manipulation stuff with an elemental theme, plus some basic damaging blasts to discourage monsters who get too close. There are recurring sequences where the Hero is indisposed for some reason and you need to figure out how to use the Princess' spells to move her into position to solve the current puzzle and un-trap the hero by using environmental effects and contraptions to fling the crystal around.

(In the final battle, the Big Bad proves to be completely immune to both the Hero's weapons and the Princess' spells, and winning involves setting up some sort of Rube Goldberg sequence of events which causes the Princess to fall on the Big Bad's head from a great height, killing him instantly.)

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There's a recurring prophecy throughout the game that the only way to defeat the Big Bad is to turn his own magic back upon him, and long-time Zelda fans are likely to assume that this means some sort of magic missile tennis, but it actually means a different thing.

Best News of Last Week - July 3, 2023

🐕 - This dog is 'disc'-overing hidden treasures! Get ready for the 'paws'-itively successful fundraiser, Daisy's Discs!

More than 60% of U.S. unionized railroad workers at major railroads are now covered by new sick leave agreements, a trade group said Monday.

Last year railroads came under fire for not agreeing to paid sick leave during labor negotiations.

Esther Wang, 16, had been hiking with three other people through the Maple Ridge park on Tuesday.

The group made it to Steve’s lookout around 2:45 p.m. that day.However, when they headed back down to the campsite, after about 15 minutes of hiking, the group leader realized Wang was missing. They returned to the lookout to look for Wang but couldn’t find her. The leader headed to the trail entrance to notify a park ranger and police.

“Esther Wang has been located. She’s healthy, she is happy and she’s with family.”

Meet Daisy, the yellow Labrador retriever with a unique talent for finding lost Frisbee golf discs at Grand Vue Park in West Virginia. Four years ago, while on a walk with her owner Kelly Mason, Daisy discovered a disc in the woods and proudly brought it back. Since then, Daisy's obsession with finding stray discs has grown, and she has collected an impressive cache of 155 discs.

Mason and park officials have now come up with a plan to return the discs to their owners if they are labeled, and any unclaimed discs will be sold as a fundraiser to support the park's disc golf courses. Daisy's Discs is expected to be a success, with many excited about the possibility of recovering their lost discs thanks to Daisy's remarkable skills.

A tiny earless dragon feared to be extinct in the wild has been sighted for the first time in more than 50 years – at a location that is being kept secret to help preservation efforts.

The Victorian grassland earless dragon, Tympanocryptis pinguicolla, has now been rediscovered in the state, according to a joint statement issued by the Victorian and federal Labor governments on Sunday.

All of Detroit’s municipal buildings are going to be powered by neighborhood solar as part of the city’s efforts to combat climate change – check out the city’s cool grassroots plan. Meet Detroit Rock Solar City.

The city has determined that it’s going to need around 250 acres of solar panels in order to achieve 100% solar power for its municipal buildings.

The fight for cruelty-free beauty in Canada has seen a significant breakthrough as the Canadian government legislates a full ban on cosmetic animal testing and trade, marking a victory for Animal rights advocates and eco-conscious consumers.

This landmark decision is part of the Budget Implementation Act (Bill C-47), not only prohibiting cosmetic animal testing but also putting an end to the sale of cosmetics that use new animal testing data for safety substantiation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has certified Belize as malaria-free, following the country’s over 70 years of continued efforts to stamp out the disease.

“WHO congratulates the people and government of Belize and their network of global and local partners for this achievement”, said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Belize is another example of how, with the right tools and the right approach, we can dream of a malaria-free future.”

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That's it for this week :)

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Also don’t forget to reblog.

friendly reminder for the new twitter refugees:

  • change your icon/pfp and put something coherent in your blog description or you're going to get blocked bcs people think you're a bot
  • this site is built around reblogs, so please actually reblog posts(especially art and fics!!)
  • you can set your likes and follows to private
  • checkmarks here are a meme and mean nothing
  • follower counts are private and we like it that way, so get used to not judging people by that metric
  • drama and discourse is boring, use your blacklist and block button liberally
  • DON'T CENSOR YOURSELF!! we can swear and say kill and make fun of corporations all we want, and if you tiktok-ify your tags people who have things blacklisted for whatever reason will still see them, and people who want to see that content won't be able to find it!! spell words out normally, you won't get in trouble!!
  • tumblr live is sketchy as hell and full of fake accounts, if you decide to use it anyway may god have mercy on your soul o7
  • be nice to the reddit refugees, they're our friends <3

this is a confession to the star wars fandom because I have to get this off my chest. last summer just for fun I taught myself to read aurebesh and. you fanartists have Got to Continue putting the most Hilarious stuff into the background of your art because it is literally my favorite thing

here’s a couple of excellent things I’ve read since I started keeping a list just last month:

- “I hate drawing lightsabers”

- “Idk what to put here”

- “stupid fucking sign”

- “eat paste, it’s good”

- an entire news article on a phone screen which I actually found really impressive

- a few funny misspellings but the best one so far was ahsoka somehow becoming “asock”

- wanted poster of obi wan that read “wanted for fashion crimes”. the caption translated it as “wanted for high treason”. like blatantly lying to my face. love it.

- door on a ship was labeled “cake storage”

- “shopping list: frogs, hair gel, lightsaber polish”

and my personal favorite:

- “if you’re reading this you’re a fucking nerd”

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My favourite thing about the latest Twitter meltdown is all the artists reanimating their dead Tumblr accounts today and immediately being greeted with hundreds of notes because even a Tumblr account they literally have not posted to in 3–5 years has more active and engaged followers than the Twitter account that they've been updating daily.

I know I've been over this but man HRT is good stuff. I wanna shake the hand of whoever invented it. It's a crime that I don't know who that is actually. They're more important than Einstein

id also been really curious about the history of hrt so i had some tabs open:

The first hrt treatments were mostly estrogen extracted during pregnancies to be used for menopause symptoms, but the first usage of those medicines for trans women is credited to the world's first Trans Clinic, opened in pre-WW2 Germany by Magnus Hirschfield, a gay jewish man.

Oh he looks delightful

Thank you grandpa

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The comparasion to Einstein was actually made at the time too! He was commonly refered to as “the Einstein of sex”, to which he supposedly once replied that he would rather Einstein be called “the Hirschfeld of physics” lmao

Oh my god

The story of the Institute of Sexology should be mandatory learning in all schools. It is arguably where the science of gender and sex were codified and became a field, featuring such hits as development of HRT, gender affirming surgeries like top surgery and bottom surgery, and understanding of gender and sex which were inclusive of gay, bisexual, asexual, trans identities, etc. Hirschfeld advocated free sex education and contraceptives, and destigmatization of LGBT identities. He coined transsexual, as a departure from transvestite, and wrote medical passes for trans people to show police who would hassle them for crissdressing.

The Institute of Sexology, was burned by the Nazi regime. It was one of the earliest targets and one of the biggest, of the book burning efforts, and the majority of photos depicting Nazi book burnings were from that one specific event. It had medical research, records, case studies. The burning of the Institute set back the entire scientific field entire decades.

I know I've been over this but man HRT is good stuff. I wanna shake the hand of whoever invented it. It's a crime that I don't know who that is actually. They're more important than Einstein

id also been really curious about the history of hrt so i had some tabs open:

The first hrt treatments were mostly estrogen extracted during pregnancies to be used for menopause symptoms, but the first usage of those medicines for trans women is credited to the world's first Trans Clinic, opened in pre-WW2 Germany by Magnus Hirschfield, a gay jewish man.

Oh he looks delightful

Thank you grandpa

Avatar

The comparasion to Einstein was actually made at the time too! He was commonly refered to as “the Einstein of sex”, to which he supposedly once replied that he would rather Einstein be called “the Hirschfeld of physics” lmao

Oh my god