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Four Pages on a Red Balloon

@justaquickquestion / justaquickquestion.tumblr.com

White, nonbinary, late 20's. He/they pronouns. I like fibercrafts and gardening and social justice. Some parts of this blog setup are relics from as much as a decade ago. Just follow for pictures of other people's dogs, or something.

A tale of "why don't we riot like the French"

Also worth noting is that in France it’s fucking illegal to hit a protestor with your car and there are no Stand Your Ground laws.

Why can’t we protest like France? BECAUSE WE’LL GET FUCKING KILLED.

Not quite correct, lib.

I’ve seen some weak ass takes about how after 2020 the police are “more militarized” and thats whats stopping us from rioting.
Thats some big “you’re lucky I'm held back” energy. As if people across the planet in the global south arent facing off with pigs who routinely fire live rounds at protestors. Compared to that, we have it easy in some regards here.
Police in El Salvador, Mexico, Iraq, Venezuela, the Philippines etc. have militarized police and security forces that kill with impunity. These places are also raveged by violent right-wing militias, gangs, and cartels that terrorize indigenous, queer, and working people.
- Black Velvet

On March 26, in Sainte-Soline (France), our comrade S. was hit in the head by an explosive grenade during the demonstration against the basins. In spite of his critical condition, the prefecture first intentionally prevented emergency services from intervening, then prevented them from transporting him to an appropriate care unit a second time. He is currently in neurosurgical intensive care. At this time, his life hangs by a thread. The outburst of violence that the demonstrators suffered inflicted hundreds of injuries, including several serious physical injuries, as announced in the various reports available. The 30,000 demonstrators had come with the objective of blocking the construction of the mega-basins of Sainte-Soline, a project of water monopolization carried out by a small number of people for the benefit of a capitalist model that has nothing left to defend but death. The violence of the armed arm of the democratic state is the most striking expression of this. In response to the window of possibility that the movement against the pension reform has opened, the police are mutilating people and even trying to assassinate people in order to prevent an uprising, to defend the bourgeoisie and its world.
- Communique About S.

also WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHY CAN'T YOU PROTEST LIKE WE DO IN FRANCE, YOU LITERALLY DID DURING BLACK LIVES MATTER, YOU PUSHED COPS OUT OF A CITY

some people just love to whine, "oh we can't protest there'd be repression" no shit "oh it's better over there" no it's fucking not, "oh these guys who protested didn't protest right" yeah right fuck you

Shout out to French protestors rioting once again. Y’all are taking real risks for a better world and you don’t deserve these pathetic online takes that disregard your bravery, written by folks who would never riot even if we armed the police with teddy bears and marshmallows.

Cops killed Nahel, a 17yo kid, last Tuesday. It's another person killed because of cops' racism. It's the match that makes the explosion. We French now riot whatever laws are. The minister of police is a racist and rapist, the cops are protected from everything, the French government spits in our face since too long. Before we were rioting because its our right, but this riot is not because we can, but because we must. Laws are still made to protect the cops, but this time laws won't stop us. 994 people were arrested for rioting since Tuesday, most of them are poc people, because they're the most touched by all of this, and they are still proving it. It's not a riot like the ones for the abusive retirement laws, it's a riot to avenge people's lives, and to show we won't let that happen without acting. It involves lots of destruction, maybe not the places we should target first, but our wrath is too big.

Justice for Nahel, and all the other victims!

stop saying youre investing in posts. i dont make my jokes for any kind of economy. banker-like behaviour of you

nurturing this post while it's young

supporting and cherishing this post in its infancy.

fairy godmothering this post to retain the sense of implied mischief and uncontrolled wildfire menace of “investing,” while also prompting the post to personal growth and giving it the tools to do so

Getting jealous of this post's future and cursing it to sleep in a tower for 100 years

Thwarting the curse by teaching this post proper health & safety guidelines for textile production

… so that it can make a long thread

🥂

Patent Model - Improvement in Boats for Duck-Shooting, made by Robert Bogle, 1957, in the collection of the Hagley Museum (@hagleyvault) of Wilmington, DE.

Bogle's patent was an improvement to "a low floating boat or battery for trailing and shooting duck and other water-fowl, in which the gunner is secreted, as well as the boat, and protected from the surrounding water, while he can propel the boat toward the game by his feet and legs…" (Patent number: 17,192)

tagging @elodieunderglass because horrible things with legs

my friend asked me to pretend to be her boyfriend because her parents are homophobic af but they ended up hating me so much that they were glad when she said she was gay task failed successfully

okay so

  • be a goth. conservative christian parents don't approve of goth men. show up to their house wearing all kinds of satanic symbols if you can
  • know more about religion than the parents. they'll try to introduce you to christianity because you don't exactly look like a christian but your dad's an ex priest and has a phd in theology so *cracks knuckles* you'll correct them on every little mistake they make
  • call your fake girlfriend every annoying petname under the sun. i'm talking about babu, shmoopie, snuffleupagus. when you run out of annoying english terms of endearment call her shit like "my liver" or "my little cabbage" (actual greek terms of endearments but the parents won't know this they'll just think you're annoying :3)
  • to continue this, talk to your fake girlfriend in the most high pitched annoying voice possible but talk in your regular voice to everyone else
  • stare at her older brother's ass for just a little too long
  • have an annoying laugh. think of sybil fawlty but a stereotypical villain playing a church organ in his castle
  • let them quote bible verses to you. then ask "so when were those two destroyed for sodomy?". it's very funny to do this when judas kisses jesus, and it's even funnier when you've just corrected them over a minor mistake in church history
  • ask WHY abraham was begging for sodom. it doesn't make sense to you why a good christian man would go and beg for tha-
  • be over possessive of your fake gf (dont really do this, it's just an act)
  • go and fuck her brother in an alleyway. the parents won't know about this so it's an optional step
  • use words no one knows the meaning of. do this without realising because you always talk like that
  • just be yourself! that's enough on its own to make them despise you tbh

yes

i kissed him on the lips infront of his parents and claimed it was the usual greek greeting between men is that enough for you

Are you…. Are you secretly dating her brother OP?

yes

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I wonder why

Show up again to admit to dating the brother, but dress like a typical suburbanite and act like you've never met the parents before. Absolute power move.

asdgfgsjfh im totally doing this

want an update?

ofc you do

but i'm too tired to write all of what happened down right now so instead try to imagine the most awkward situation you've ever been in.

now multiply the awkwardness by 100

first of all i'm just gonna show the difference in what i was wearing

an example of what i would wear as my friend's fake bf:

and as my boyfriend's actual bf:

when my bf and i showed up his dad did such a double take

sooo yeah my bf told his parents he's gay, they looked surprised but told him it was fine... then they shared a look of pure horror (seriously, it was like they had just found out they're in the matrix) and said

"and uh. why is...he here?"

i went and introduced myself like we had never met before and said i was their son's boyfriend

:3

i've never seen two people look more angry before but they weren't gonna say anything because they had other family members over

the family members who had never met me before and therefore knew nothing about the fake relationship thing started asking me what faith i am. i said i was raised protestant, though i'm not very religious now, but that's something i want to change. i had never mentioned anything about being a protestant before and i had said several times that my family was greek orthodox but gaslight gatekeep girlboss

aaaand then the awkwardness began. those were probably the most awkward minutes of my life (we didn't stay for long because i thought the dad was gonna hit me [he probably was. i saw him clenching his fists several times]) and i don't think anyone has ever looked at me with such murderous intent as my bf's parents

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Oh god there's more! Yaaaas! I want all the updates

hey i know that i dont talk about it a lot on here but this blog is pro masking. official govt and world organizations ending the health emergency doesn't mean covid is over. long term organ damage happens w every infection. the chances of long covid increase w each infection. we are facing an ever evolving infectious disease with no institutional protection. respirators protect you and others, please mask up!

you can request free n95 masks from project n95 here:

all we have is each other, mask up and take care of your community

as air quality worsens each year during fire season here's a reminder that n95s also help protect against smoke

if you live so close to the fires that even indoors is smokey an air purifier is a good investment. you can build a high quality purifier yourself with a box fan and filters

its going to get worse every year so we need to start thinking now about how we protect ourselves as climate change threatens our health. no one is coming to save us so we all need to step up and start making plans to protect our communities from disease and air pollution.

my air quality is in the red today so im reblogging this again. get some masks, tape a filter to a box fan, stay inside if you can and limit activity as much as possible.

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

Instagram and TikTok have successfully created the Torment Nexus from Jim Carrey's iconic work, "Don't put people in the Torment Nexus"

This is the standard winged nightjar and it has one singular stupidly big feather on each wing... if you even care.

Love this guy

That’s standard as in “pennant” or “banner”, not standard as in “normal”.

But it’s not a pennant-winged nightjar. THIS is a pennant-winged nightjar… if you even care.

can’t forget the Lyre-tailed Nightjar! there’s actually a number of these ridiculous guys, and they’re partly why caprimulgiforms are some of my favorite birds

also the Sickle-winged Nightjar, which is. come on, that’s just a weird moth

Everyone does care about nightjars 🥹

biologists will be like this is a very simplified diagram of a mammalian cell

chemists will be like this is a molecule

Image

okay but this is what the best render of a human cell looks like

They are not kidding

We are full of so many fuckign guys

Researcher and doctorate @NoraEpstein on Twitter just posted a video of the new tattoo she got commemorating her PhD.

And… she footnoted the artwork, with a literal footnote 😂 I love this so much

To be clear to those unfamiliar: these are the companies that libraries use to lend ebooks.

They are literally cutting off library access to minors.