Nonflamable Ink

do x reader writers know how hated they are by a majority of tumblr users. like i honestly wouldnt even care that much if they could all 1. use a read more. a basic function of the site. and 2. tag their posts with just "#x reader" thats it. no character. please. god please i just want to blacklist these without blocking you but you make it so hard

Reblog to give a trans woman a delicious Cuban sandwich

something i've noticed. people seem to think the most nature-y nature is forests. so forests are always prioritized for conservation, and planting trees is synonymous with ecological activism. my state was largely prairies and wetlands before colonization. those ecosystems are important too. trees aren't the end-all be-all of environmentalism. plant native grasses. protect your wetlands.

deserts also!!! it sucks so bad that people think of desert as 'wasteland' just because it's not suited for western european style ag development, they're beautiful and delicate and valuable ecosystems and, i think it's good to point out that humans have been living willingly in them for thousands of years

i live in a shrub steppe desert. it has been like this SINCE THE ICE AGE. mentioned it to a friend and their immediate response was "i could totally fix that and restore that into a forest like it used to be." LIKE IT USED TO B- it's been like that since the ICE AGE! you can't "fix" a biome into a forest just to save trees and nature. you need shrubbery, you need grasses, flowers, WEEDS, vines, bramble, water plants. NATURE! ISN'T! JUST! TREES!

Also! When we say ‘used to be’, to what state are we referring to? Homeostasis is a state of change. Yes, we should encourage nature and more undeveloped spaces, but to what standard are you holding it to? 50 years ago? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Do we even have data on what it exactly looked like then?

It’s never going to be exactly what it once was. We can just allow the process of succession and change to continue at its own pace (or hardly at all for some specific ecosystems), and simply try not to bulldoze over whatever nature is trying to do.

Also @headspace-hotel this thread seems like your vibe

It is! Thanks for tagging me :)

Now, we need to keep a few things in mind:

As much as it is a mistake to presume that forests are universal, it is also a mistake to (for example) take the open, treeless tallgrass prairie to be the "original state" of all of the American Midwest.

There is a wide spectrum of intermediates between closed-canopy forest and grassland, and opener wooded land with grasses and small plants etc. on the ground is often called woodland (good explanation here)

In particular, a lot of the United States Midwest used to be (and still could be!) not prairie, not forest, but a secret third thing: oak savanna!

Maps disagree on the exact extent of the oak savanna. North-Central Kentucky, known as the Bluegrass now, was once a very rare open woodland type environment similar to the oak savanna.

Basically, oak savannas are grasslands full of large, open-grown oak trees, which are resistant to the periodic fires that maintain the prairie. Oaks, unlike many other trees, do very well growing to large sizes in the open.

But ecosystems get much more specialized, and it requires a holistic approach to pin down the exact nature of the place you live in. This is frustrating, but it also lets you discover the rare and unique characteristics of your area's ecosystems.

I'm going to go into just how wild this gets for a bit, so buckle up.

For example, I'll talk about the state I live in—why? because I live there and I know lots about it. Kentucky is divided into 27 ecoregions. In a single day, I could visit a dozen ecosystems unique to this area and to nowhere else in the world. The seeds to this uniqueness were planted hundreds of millions of years ago. Look at the linked map, and see how closely it matches this one:

The north-central-east area in pink is the Bluegrass, collared by the Knobs, a weird ring of Devonian and Silurian sandstone and conglomerates that forms little eroded plateaus and mountainous outcroppings. The lavender and dark blue is the limestone-karst plateau that holds the longest cave system on planet Earth. The east, in pale blue, is Lower and Middle Pennsylvanian (aka Carboniferous) deposits, making up the Appalachian Mountains.

The ancient Appalachians were once as tall as the Himalayas, but they are simply so old that they are eroded down into rounded, soft, wavy ridges that slowly fade into steep rolling hills, making it a subject of debate where they actually end.

Let's focus on the limestone and carbonate rock-dominant regions that cover much of the state though. This is what's known as a limestone karst region.

Limestone and dolomite are carbonate minerals. Instead of normal stuff like silicate minerals, they are made of the dissolved skeletons of billions of ancient aquatic animals, like brachiopods and bryozoans, which can be found fossilized throughout the state. Limestone is made of CaCO3, calcium carbonate—which, unlike other rocks, dissolves in acid.

This has two immediate consequences:

As you can see, a unique ecosystem that existed over 450 million years ago can directly create unique ecosystems that exist now!

Kentucky's limestone karst regions, especially near the mountains, have another quirky characteristic: the limestone bedrock is exposed or nearly exposed in many places, with little soil on top of it. I don't know exactly why this is, but instead of several feet of soil on top of the bedrock, we often get just a few inches. Almost any construction that involves earth-moving requires dynamite. Hillsides used as pasture for cattle erode into slopes of broken rock.

This creates another form of unique ecosystem: limestone glades. Places with only a few inches of topsoil don't develop into closed-canopy forests, but rather limestone glade meadows, where the dominant trees are these guys:

the majestic Eastern Red Cedar (which is actually a juniper), a pioneer species that, unusually for pioneer species, can live a long time...over 900 years.

Red Cedars might outlive every single other tree in a forest, but they don't thrive in there. They hate the shade and want to be alone in a meadow. Why, then, do they live so long? I have a hunch the answer might be that they're not exactly pioneer species at all, but rather specialized for mountain ridges, rocky outcrops, and limestone glades where other trees cannot grow. They provide food and great nesting sites for birds.

But limestone glade meadows aren't as important to Kentucky as the ecosystem that used to be so distinctive, it's been hidden in the state's name the whole time: the canebrake, a stream-side forest of the United State's native bamboo, giant cane.

Kentucky, (at least according to the book i'm reading by Donald Edward Davis titled Where There are Mountains), was once Kaintuck, or CANE-tuck. Giant cane, like the oaks of oak savannas, is fire resistant, meaning it thrives in areas managed by frequent fires.

In my state, the canebrakes used to stretch for miles, dense bamboo forests that could grow up to 25 feet tall. But they were all destroyed, meaning this ecosystem is practically extinct. The giant cane still lives, but only in small patches.

Canebrakes are considered extinct (although they could be restored), and oak savannas are one of the most endangered ecosystems on the continent. I suspect that the reason is that people are stuck with the old, simplified categories of ecosystem that they learned in school, and ecosystems that don't fit into those categories are hard to imagine.

Everything in biology is much, much more complex than high school teaches you, and ecosystems are no exception. There is probably a super rare, unique ecosystem close to you that doesn't get enough recognition.

To protect them, people have to care, and to care, people have to know they exist...so everything starts with being curious. Learn! Tell others! It will save the world.

^^

This! And if you wanna know what sort of modern living can be done in such landscapes - how to feed your folks, how to house your folks, how to clothe your folks, what regional games you can plan with stuff that's right there - look to the lifeways of the folks native to that bioregion as the seed to sprout! As I was reading @headspace-hotel 's bit, I kept getting flashbacks to watching the Cherokee nation's YouTube channel, where their cultural program talks about clothing, food, traditional housing, making toys, weaponry, etc., and how I'd been struck the entire time how different the material culture was from that of my grandma - ɬáqtemish (coast Salish) oak savanna, saltwater islands, estuaries, cedar groves, berry thickets, intentional basket pastures, artificial wetlands and clam gardens - and that of my grandfather - Piikáni (Piegan Blackfoot), mountain passes and grasslands, river bottom oases in seas of tallgrass, bison roads and chokecherry groves - and how so many of the plants and stones involved in the Cherokee, Muskogee/Miccosuke, and Choctaw ways of life - bodarck, hickory, their own oaks, rivercane, limestone, sandstone, and a lot of their flint varients - aren't things I could ever recreate here.

It's both illuminative of the severe trauma of being forced out of your terrain into reservations elsewhere - a forced astronaut colony on a alien planet - but also a once-and-future pattern of bioregional diversity of human culture, networked by trade and travel, that certainly was and may yet be again. I'd love to wire up a traditional cedar plank house with a wind turbine for my computer and Bluetooth speakers, and add canning and books to our old way of life. If I lived among my grandfather's folk, to do so with an underground house, updating an earth lodge to my modern sensibilities. To pick and choose what technologies have been foisted upon us from the outside, and integrate it with two-eyed seeing into a way of life that was composed in inspiration from the land that sustains it, the biome the gives the necessary gifts for it to be. And to imagine, traveling to a friend so as to experience a whole other system of architecture, cuisine, fashion, pastime, and art, and to have it be just over on the dry or wet side of the mountain. Such hopes, that come from such memories.

Some pros and cons -

Rabbit-

Pros-

Cons-

Guinea pig-

Pros-

Cons -

I like rabbits more as they bond strongly and are so soft and pretty.

But others like guinea pigs for the cheerful noises and gentle nature.

There is no right or wrong answer.

Updated -

I have changed it from brick to potato rat. Said brick as saw a show judge call them a brick wrapped in silk. But it sounds mean.

Also forgot to put guinea pig popcorn

Opossums for pest control.

if you often find it difficult to understand how i (or any other communist) could have arrived at a position that flies so flagrantly in the face of common sense -- remember "ruthless criticism of all that exists!" to be a communist is to accept nothing as neutral, to realize that there is no constant or baseline to human existence, only the present set of conditions, all of which without exception came from somewhere and will lead to somewhere else.

"common sense", "obvious truths", etc. are all obfuscatory moves to paint social facts as timeless and neutral, basic laws of existence like gravity, when in reality they are manufactured and upheld in a thousand different ways as the direct result of a thousand years of history

things that are "just the way they are" were not that way much more recently than people seem too think! there are oak trees older than the idea of nationhood! when you are a communist with the whole study of history before you, "time immemorial" no longer butters any parsnips!

When I'm in charge of the planet, it will be illegal to make a job posting unless you are actively searching for a candidate.

Lean staffing will also be illegal. If you need three people to do a job, you're hiring four.

You are also either earning an amount or you are not earning that amount. 'Earn up to 21.50/hr' no. Either you're paying 21.50 or you are not paying 21.50. Tell the truth or jail for employer for 1000 years.

If someone asks for 2 years experience for an entry level job paying just above minimum wage, you should be legally permitted to launch them into the fucking sun.

Is Chris Evans Steve Rogers or is Steve Rogers Chris Evans?

good

“Fellas, is it gay to be a good father?”

Shout out to Harry Hill

I think Piers is somewhat of a national laughing stock by now

if I don’t reblog a good burn on piers morgan, assume I’m dead

The logic of “Brands will only hop on the train if they can prove it’s profitable” makes it so much funnier when they clown on this fool. “Yeah we crunched the numbers and we found it to be profitable to call this clown out in public. Jacob hit the post button.”

Don’t mind me…I’m just thinking about how spiders are naturally talented and skilled weavers and they know how to weave their webs and even make functional, stylish homes and nests and whatnot.

So maybe that’s why Spider-Man knows how to sew his suits. He inherited that trait from the spider and just instinctively know how to weave his suits. Maybe. That’s my explanation for it.

Aunt May: You're buying an awful lot of yarn lately. Are you making something?

Peter, who after getting bit by a spider has felt an inescapable need to knit and now his room is covered head to toe in yarn: Nope. It's just new hobby.

yknow what. i complained a lot about how it was unrealistic to suddenly know how to put together stretch knits and a perfectly fitting, absolute banger of a suit, but this is an explanation i’ll gladly accept

TIL The Double Empathy Problem theory suggests social difficulties experienced by autistic people when interacting with non-autistic people are due to reciprocal differences, not an inherent deficiency, most autistic people are able to display good social reciprocity with most other autistic people

via reddit.com

okay but the BEST part of the first study discussed (conducted by an autistic person!) Is that it shows that while easy, calm, mutual communication and social interaction is often more natural between two autistic people than it is between an autistic person and a non-autistic person, it is ALSO like this when an autistic person encounters a non-autistic person who imitates the autistic individual’s behaviours- neurotypical parents copying autistic children’s play, for example, apparently receive more positive engagement from their child- which is SERIOUSLY FUCKING IMPORTANT and VERY VERY GOOD because it is, once again, scientific evidence that bullshit like aversion therapy and enforced conformance and FUCKING “quiet hands” aren’t “”“”“solutions to the autism problem”“”“” and that “”“”“problems”“”“ with autism don’t stem from BEING autistic, but rather, from how NON AUSTISTIC PEOPLE TREAT AUTISTIC PEOPLE.

IE, once again, there is nothing bad or wrong about being autistic

Do Not Let HR do this to you. It is not illegal to talk about wages in the work place. I did and got a 12% raise!

True info. Now let me add something: The power of documentation. (I was a long time steward in a nurses union.)

Remember: The "'E" in email stands for evidence.

That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.

But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.

Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: "I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx" Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.

Case 2: You have a schedule you like, you've had that schedule for a while, it works for you. Your supervisor comes to you and says "We're really short-handed now and I need you to change your schedule just for a month until we can get someone else hired. It's just temporary and you can have your old schedule back after a month." A month goes by and they forget entirely that they made that promise to you. So, once again, when they make the initial request, you send them an email "I'm happy to help out temporarily, but just want to make sure I understand correctly that I will get my old schedule back after a month as you promised." Documentation.

[Image ID: Text reading: In the middle of a busy clinic at our practice, I got pulled in by my manager to speak to HR, who must have made a special trip because she lives several states away, and told I was being 'investigated' for discussing wages with my other employees. She told me it was against company policy to discuss wages.

Me; That's illegal.

Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh...

Me: That's an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.

HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.

Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.

I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.

HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.

Me: You still haven't given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.

HR: Oh haha yes here you go.

I just received a paper with legal letterhead and an apology saying there was no verbal warning or write up. Don't even take their shit you guys. Keep talking about wages. Know your worth. /End ID]

At one of my old (shit) jobs my boss would continually come have these verbal discussions with me and would never put anything in writing I took to summarizing every discussion we had in email. Like “just to confirm that you asked me to do X by Y date and you understand that means I won’t be able to complete the previous task you gave me until Z date - 2 weeks later than originally scheduled - because you want me to prioritize this new project.

The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.

Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.

Paper your asses babes. Do not let them get away with shit. If they won’t put what they’re asking you to do in writing then write it up yourself and email it to them.

Honestly!!! This is just psychological trauma in the making

THANK YOU

I’ve asked parents about this and they always say they are teaching the child responsibility and “respect for other people’s things.” If I point out that the child accidentally broke their own toy they always say “I bought them that toy” or “my sister gave that to them.”

The problem is that parents view all possessions as not really belonging to the child. A part of them always seems to think that the adult who provided the money is the real owner

If a parent breaks a dish they see it as breaking something that already belonged to them, but if a child breaks it they see it as the child breaking something that belonged to the parents

People raising children need to realize that household possessions belong to the entire household. If everyone has to use that plate then it belongs to everyone and anyone can have a forgivable accident with it. It’s okay to deem certain possessions as just yours and ask everyone in the house to respect that, but extend the same respect to your child’s belongings

Big mood. I know most of these are talking about little little kids, but here’s a tale from middle school. I had forgotten to charge my phone one night, and this was back when cell phones used to beep loudly when they were low on battery. I kept hearing the noise throughout the afternoon and not recognizing what it was because I’d never heard it before. When I finally did realize what it was, I was in science class and my fellow classmates were making presentations. I reached into my bag to try to turn off the phone, and then the low-battery sound went off, loud enough for the teacher to hear it. She confiscated my phone in front of everyone, and I didn’t get it back until after the weekend because it was a Friday. I was really embarrassed, especially to tell my parents.

When I got my phone back that Monday, my teacher said it was important for me to learn this lesson now since in college they wouldn’t tolerate phones going off. Fast forward to when I was in college, any time someone’s phone went off, either the professor would tell them to turn it off, or they would say, “Oh, my bad,” and turn it off themselves, and everyone would move on. I even had a professor who danced around while someone’s phone went off, and it was a welcome moment of levity during the lecture.

I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.

God I’ve been reading these posts for a while and each time I am struck with the realization that certainly not all parents were supposed to be a parent

“I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.” YES this

The problem is, even if families are forgiving the culture around children still effects the child. I use myself as proof of that.

A few times between the ages of 4 and 18 I broke things. I broke my grandma’s favorite Christmas ornament. Her first question was: “Are you hurt?” and when I apologized profusely she said “I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”

I broke a few plates. I broke a couple glasses. Every time my dad’s first response was “Did you get cut?” the second step was cleaning up the broken bits, and the third was a discussion of what led to me breaking it and how I could avoid doing that in the future.

Same with spills. Same with stains. My biggest “punishment” from my immediate family was being taught how to clean up the mess I made and being shown in detail how to avoid the same mistake in the future if it was avoidable. There were consequences for my actions, but they were the direct result of those actions and nothing much beyond that.

My family tried so hard to teach me how to deal with accidents in a healthy way. They were patient. They treated every slip-up as a learning opportunity. They showed me a lot of love. The other adults still got to me. Teachers still punished and publicly shamed me and other students for our mess-ups. Extended family members outside of my small supportive circle still yelled at me. My friends’ parents still got mad.

To the point where whenever I messed up my first instinct was that my dad or grandparents were going to punish me, or yell at me, or hit me, even though they never did. They just didn’t. They always responded with patience and an attitude of “I’m glad you’re safe and I want to help you learn from this.” And I was still afraid of messing up. Mortified. Expecting the worst every time.

It’s like… we need to change the culture around this, man. Completely.

Also, not entirely related but this shit exposes one of the biggest things I habitually point out about the hypocrisy of the pro-hitting children moral framework: it’s generally would be seen as morally wrong to physically harm an adult for messing up the same way.

Like if an adult guest (adult, fully capable of defending themself from me) came to my house and accidentally dropped one of my plates and I started trying to beat the shit out of them everyone would agree that it’s assault and morally wrong for me to do. But if it’s a child (easily physically overpowered, can’t stop me from hitting them) then suddenly some of those same people would think that beating them for that same mistake would be not only okay but, in fact, a moral imperative. All justifications for why it’s okay to hit children are ultimately fronts for their actual reason, which is simply “i think beating children is okay because I can do it and they can’t stop me”

It's worth noting that the Nazis called him from the lobby of the building and threatened him, and King Kirby, an accomplished boxer, said "Sure, I'll be right down" and they weren't there when he got there. Because they wanted to intimidate him, and, having failed, got the hell out because their power comes from fear.

It’s called “environmental amnesia” and it’s an actual issue environmentalists discuss how to combat. The climate crisis makes it more widespread but it’s been something that’s happening for generations. The story of The Lorax describes it beautifully. The idea that what you remember is what you consider normal, but if the changes happen slowly over generations, you don’t see how large they are because you don’t personally remember them being very different, even if you were told stories about it.

climate grief is also a thing.

That feeling where you go " didn't we used to have four seasons? It wasn't this hot when I was a kid was it??" And then you have to figure out if it's just that you're getting older. And then it turns out no the entire planet is falling apart.

I think Americans in general should maybe start taking xenophobia more seriously. Because with the. Everything going on in the world right now. It's gotten really really bad. And while lefties might not be reactionary to the same extent as republicans it's still very much prevalent. I went to dinner with my family recently and the stuff they said about my cousin's family who emigrated from Russia made me feel like I was losing my mind. He's 2 years old. How are you going to discriminate against a baby with a clear conscience. Then you read the news and it's like "China is spying on you with TikTok and weather balloons" and you hear people on all angles of the political compass repeat it. Are you hearing yourself right now. Are you for real

Cannot believe I have to say this but I am Lakota. as in native american. As in almost everyone's family came to the united states from another country at one point, except for the people who were already living here. Like my mom's family. And I live here.

Immediately assuming I must be a white european because I disagree with widespread american xenophobia is prelly wild. Honestly. When I mentioned my family and America in the same post I thought it was clear that I live here.

"But you said you had family from Russia?"

Yes. People get married sometimes. My cousin married someone from Russia. They had a baby. He's a good baby btw. Fantastic little dude. I hope he grows up in a better world than this one.

I can't speak for people living in other countries because I don't live there. I live here. I don't think it's my place to berate people from other countries because that's kind of the problem. Maybe I should have started this post out like a presidential speech. My fellow Americans. Now more than ever.

Reading comprehension test:

2. What does "xenophobia" mean?

3. Is possible to care about other people? if yes, then:

3.1: even if they're from another country?

3.2: even if they speak another language?

3.3: even if I don't like their government?

ID in alt

Too many people are forgetting these things too quickly:

-SESTA/FOSTA passed. Despite the many, many warnings of sex workers.

-A bunch of apps started their censorship policies because Apple directly threatened their revenue if they didn't promise to cut down on the amount of porn on their sites

-MasterCard and VISA tried to outright stop processing OnlyFans work SPECIFICALLY because of the association with sex work, and no other feasible financial reason.

There is not a sudden regressive movement among individual people. Free The Nipple didn't fade into obscurity because people didn't care. It was stopped. By policies. By laws. By arrests. By censorship. These things have been purposefully put in place by companies and politicians. They saw the work we were trying to do wrt bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and sexual freedom, and they forcibly put a stop to it.