Math is really tiring, im so glad i finally get to relax and do some knitting and crochet and i oh god oh my what the fuck

Ready to fight

(via)

y’all should watch supernatural because thor the norse god is there and he looks like this

chris hemsworth wishes

i said supernatural instead of stargate im losing my fucking mind

I thought it was an honest trolling attempt and I respected you for it tbh.

Me, before reading the rest of the post:

Unmute !

The Aussies have a thing or two to learn it would seem.

I’ve never seen an Ostrich look SO offended in my life.

Let’s hear it for unorthodox animal handling skills! 

The ostrich is either so offended that it just can’t stand it, or it’s so confused that this other ostrich thing has gone and shapeshifted on it.

There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

There once was a man from Verdun

There once was a man from the sticks Whose limericks stopped at line six. They were fine till line five Then they took quite a dive — But the problem is easy to fix If you just ignore the last line, it doesn't even follow the rhyme scheme oh god I've really lost control of this thing I'm so sorry...

There once was a man

From Cork who got limericks

And haiku confused.

There once was a man from the sticks

Who liked to compose limericks

But he failed at the sport

Because he wrote them too short

@limerickshere

There once was a fellow named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan. When told this was so, He replied, "Yes, I know-- It's because I try to squeeze as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can."

companies underestimate how much locking their content behind needing an account will just make me go do something else. oh your website wants me to make an account to view this content? oh your website doesn't show media to logged-out users? okay. i didn't actually want to see it that bad. yeah. bye ✌️

My contempt towards a brand is directly proportional to how often they interrupt my playlists.

Here’s the thing.

I am not the kind of person who wants to squeeze the world in my fist just to make a few dollars drip out.

But let’s say I was.

I would not make a social media site so calculated towards my own financial interests that it was unusable to the people I wanted to lure into using it. You can’t even just look at the people you follow on Threads. It doesn’t let you see posts chronologically. It’s a ton of shit you don’t want to see, in the order you don’t want to see it. It’s everything I currently hate about Twitter after it devolved from what it used to be.

If I hate using it, if I just go delete your privacy violation nightmare now, how does that make anyone a profit? Would you not rather make even a somewhat appealing service to keep people using it? Or, from another angle, would you not dial down the privacy nightmare enough for it to be legal in the EU, a rather significant user base?

If you can’t do something because it’s the right thing to do, can you at least see how it might be the savvier thing to do?

And if you realize you made a mistake and try to delete the app, you'll take out your Instagram account with it. Hostage situation!

While I agree on it being a terrible model from a generic user perspective, I can understand the twisted logic behind it. Zucky doesn't care about those of us with enough self-preservation to back away, he only cares about the ones who don't care; the more apathetic they are, the better. He's built his empire on data harvesting and privacy violations so he knows that even if he misses out on some markets, the ones he does net will still make him bombad profit. Americans in particular have, I think, reached a point where they just expect these kind of violations, so it doesn't faze them.

There are also a growing number of people in the younger generations who rely on the algorithm to sort things for them. For them, having an algorithmically-generated "just for you" feed is exactly what they want. It makes my skin crawl, but I've seen enough examples in the wild to know that at least some people out there prefer the Algorithm so they don't have to do any of the work themselves.

Add to that Facebook/Meta's long history of hosting (and ignoring) malicious content and I can see Threads becoming very popular with hate groups and other domestic terrorist-type orgs. There's profit to be found in those markets as long as you don't mind a complete absence of moral integrity. Zuck only cares about money, not people, so he'll be perfectly happy.

You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

Okay howmst the fuck has a ship doctor in the far future never handled a birth without the father present? Are sperm donors and gay couples and trans women no longer a thing in the bajillionth century CE?? :/

I while understand the frustration with erasure sometimes it helps to look at things through the cultural context of when something was made. Star Trek the Next Generation was made in 1987, this particular episode I believe aired in 1988 a time when a future where the husband was always present for the birth would have been amazing to many of the people watching the show as men had only been allowed to be present for the birth of their children for 10/15ish years at that point in the US.

Women (and many men) fought for decades with hospitals to even have men allowed in the delivery room during the early stages of labor, which can last for several hours, and hospitals only began to give in to their requests in the 1960s but even then they would be kicked out of the room by hospital staff before the actual birth took place. So many of the couples watching the show would have had to go through labor without having/being allowed to support their spouse regardless of their wishes. Having the child’s father present for the birth only began to happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Which means most people watching this show either went through birth without the support of their spouse, were not allowed to support their spouse during the birth of their child, or their own mother’s went through that during their birth.

A future where the husbands were always present for the birth was still a little crazy to consider in the late 1980s. A good kind of crazy for the people living in that time, it showed a future where the wishes of the couple were finally consistently listened to by medical professionals as a result of the actions of people during their or their parent’s lifetimes. And it does that by also subverting it in allowing Data to step into the role of the father when the father was unknown and/or unwilling/unable to fill that role (I’ll be honest my knowledge of Next Gen is a bit spotty and I have not seen this whole episode, just a piece of it at family Thanksgiving). The woman’s desires as to how she would give birth are listened to and respected, something that still doesn’t happen in many hospitals now and would have been seen as even more revolutionary then. So while it isn’t perfect I think this scene was actually fairly impressive for its time and cultural context and shows a future that many people of that time would have seen as ideal.

I think this kind of contextual understanding and analysis is really important because things that look antiquated now were revolutionary then. I remember reading that the mini skirts in Star Trek TOS were legot just in fashion (about 64’ ish), one of the actresses (the one that played Rand) requested they be in the show and both her and Nichelle Nichols said they didn’t see them as demeaning but liberating in that time and context. Where as NOW it looks like ‘sexy male gaze’ but then it wasn’t.

Miniskirts are comfortable and easy to move in - unlike longer bulkier skirts, which had previously been required for “modesty.” And unlike the approach of “we’ll just put them in pants,” miniskirts made a statement that women crew-members weren’t being treated like men. Miniskirts were a way to say “I can be an attractive woman, wear comfortable clothes, and still look professional and do a serious job.” 

The clothing for that message today would be different. 

This is also why the bridge crew of TOS may seem “tokenistic” today. When it came out, the Cold War was in full swing and “Soviets” were maligned and hated, Black people could not count on their right to vote being honored, and mixed-race people (like Spock) were called horrible things like “half-breed” and “zebra.” A white man was in charge of the ship, but Gene Roddenberry was fully aware that a chunk of the viewership read him as queer, and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DISCOURAGE THAT READING, at a time when “homosexual activity” was illegal in the United States!

By today’s standards, “one of everything? How tokenistic.” In 1966? “A Black woman, a Russian, a man from multiple cultures, and a man who loves differently, all top of their fields, all working together and finding common ground to learn, grow, and help where they can? What a wonderful future!”

Also I’m sorry but like. A show also featuring a Japanese man who isn’t a stereotype but part of the crew, having a Scottish character be a part of the central cast (idk if I need to get into why this is important, but considering how England has continuously tried to erase Scottish culture and identity, and the stereotype of Scots as bumbling bumpkins, etc, its kind of nice to see a Scotsman who’s the best of the best at his job).

Moreover, a lot of kids watched this show. MLK himself contacted Nichelle Nichols and asked her to stay on the show when she was considering leaving, because “you don’t have a Black role, you have an equal role,” and there wasnt many Black role models on tv. I can only imagine how Black kids, Asian kids, and mixed race or mixed culture kids felt seeing people like them on tv. Hell, seeing Uhura on screen is what inspired Whoopi Goldberg as a little girl.

Also, yeah, its easy to look back and say ‘damn, fathers weren’t there in the delivery room? What assholes’ but no like they legitimately were not allowed in there.

Tiny correction: while George Takei is Japanese, and while Sulu thus looks like what we in the 20th-21st century consider to be an ethnically Japanese man, Hikaru Sulu was Pan-Asian by design. His last name is not Japanese. And Roddenberry designed him like that intentionally, because while there was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in the US at the time (I mean, hell… George Takei himself spent years in Japanese internment camps during WW2), there was also a lot of other anti-Asian sentiments, and Roddenberry intentionally put ALL of it on the character of Sulu.

Like, all the years of anti-Chinese racism in the US? Sulu. Anti-Japanese sentiments left over after WW2? Sulu. Korean War in 1950-52? Sulu. The Vietnam War, with Johnson in 1965 (a year before TOS started airing) choosing to start sending American troops into the conflict? Sulu.

Sulu was Roddenberry’s desperate attempt to show all Asian people as inherently worthy, inherently human, and yeah, he probably put kind of too much on Sulu’s shoulders, but it was the 1960s and Roddenberry fucking cared about representation, so he did what he could.

Just, you know… a little bit more historical Star Trek context

Also to hammer this home?

Scotty was third in line for the captain’s chair. The only non-Kirk who had the con more then him was Spock.

He was smart, he was a *ranked* crewmen, he was a gentleman, he wasn’t a skirt chaser, and he was capitol L loyal. The only time he got into a fight was when someone both went after his Captain, AND his Ship.

And he was Scottish. 

That’s so above and beyond the typical Scottish stereotype even TO THIS DAY.

Dr Polaski was coded as something of an arse just so they could make their valid points about equality and bigotry using her as a foil. Yes it was kind of clumsy from a modern perspective, but it was also kind of groundbreaking (not least because you didn’t usually get arses being played by women)

I am hard-coded to put this on any post that mentions MLK and Nichelle Nichols.

Also, it’s very worth noting that the “token minority character” label doesn’t apply in any way to these characters.

Tokens are there to present the appearance of diversity. Whereas Roddenberry created a diverse cast in an era where there wasn’t even a need for the appearance of diversity. Roddenberry didn’t put these characters in because he wanted to look diverse– he put them in to BE DIVERSE.

people today with access to more raw information than any other period: the earth is flat

german artilleryman in 1916, who barely washes his own ass: I need to account for the curvature and rotation of the earth when plotting my firing plans

Eratosthenes, an Egyptian, in 3750 BC when fucking mammoths hadn’t even gone extinct yet: Oh hey I can use these two obelisks to calculate the earth’s entire circumference based on the length of their shadows and the Earth’s curvature. Neat.

Erastothenes was born in 276 BCE.

The last mammoth died on in island off the northeast coast of Siberia in ~1650BCE.

And as I’ve pointed out previously, the Coriolis effect was known even earlier than that, although it may not have become important to gunnery.

I find it utterly bizarre that humans saw these megafauna.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/science/woolly-mammoth-extinct-genetics.html “ In fact, the Wrangel mammoth’s genome carried so many detrimental mutations that the population had suffered a “genomic meltdown,” according to Rebekah Rogers and Montgomery Slatkin of the University of California, Berkeley. Analyzing the Swedish team’s mammoth data at the gene level, they found that many genes had accumulated mutations that would have halted synthesis of proteins before they were complete, making the proteins useless, they report Thursday in PLOS Genetics. “ That “genomic meltdown” is one of the reasons feminism is so potentially lethal, because they keep pushing for asexual reproduction, or trying to combine ovaries, when the most likely outcome is a population running about - unable to reproduce sexually since the whole “male genocide” bit - with incredibly damaged chromosomes. Sex exists for a reason, and no, “because it’s fun” is not the answer, sorry. It works better than reproduction otherwise. Which is why every complex species uses it. Intelligence requires a lot of things to be working correctly, and if you have an all female species that is over the tipping point of idiocy, then there won’t be enough people to maintain the technology to continue to reproduce. And humans will go the way of the Wrangel beasties. Fortunately, feminists are horribly lazy bastards, so i doubt they’ll continue to get their way, but it does made for a decent plot for a dystopian fiction…

What …the fuck?

That went off the rails so suddenly like I thought I was just gonna learn something cool about mammoths and then WHOA.

I scrolled past this thinking “the earth is round, yes, something, something, mammoths…’ 

But the second time it came past I saw 

And I think I got whiplash from that pivot. I also laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe. 

I’m????

Point and laugh at the MRA, kids. 

How … does he think … mammoths reproduced …

Never mind, not sure I want to know.

reblog to support Mammoth Feminism,

ignore for G E N O M I C M E L T D O W N

I here af for my Feminist Mammoth ladies, bring the species back!

DOWN WITH GENOMIC MELTDOWN

I… what exactly is combining ovaries supposed to achieve? 400 lazy feminist babies at the same time?

Shhhh…you weren’t supposed to tell anyone.

FEMINISM KILLED THE MAMMOTHS

I feel like we’re getting away from the main point here, which is that the world is flat

the world is only flat because it was trampled by feminist mammoths

reblog if you support your army of genetically-melted feminist mammoths that trampled the earth flat

Don’t anybody tell this guy about that species of lizard where there are only females it might break him

My head hurts after reading that. 

I’m sending this post to @wehuntedthemammoth

Why would you hurt me like this?

I teach genetics, I don’t deserve to have to explain why this is so wrong and yet. Oh my god. 

I reblogged this before but I have to do so again because of the above takedown with its glorious insults. Also, it’s always fun to point and laugh at MRAs.

I am in awe.

“Mueller’s Ratchet kind of presupposes that going in and manually editing a genome isn’t a fucking option, shitwad!” and “you pathetic snailsucking weed in the garden of knowledge” are honestly awe-inspiring and I’m fucking blessed I read them today

This is beautiful

It’s been long enough since I last saw this post that I’d nearly forgotten and it still fucking hit me like a goddamn freight train.

Fucking poetry there, Shakespeare would be hard pressed to improve upon these lines.

@shitpostsampler The snailsucking jellyfish fellator quote is golden.

Are we just going to ignore “a crumbling, confused pile of enraged starfish”?

‘oh hey that’s funny :D man, flat-earth sure is one of the stranger conspiracy theories isn’t it. ooh who was Eratosthenes? i should look him up! and now we’re talking about mammoths,  cool , i love mam

“a crumbling, confused pile of enraged starfish”

now this… this is a post on tumblr dot com

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.

If you heard of writer’s block, get ready for reader’s block. You want to read. You have time. You know what to read; how have a pile of books ready to be read. You cannot sit still and focus enough to do so or you can’t even open the book.

So, going by the idea of "every truly great story has a random Texan" (see: Dracula, His Dark Materials), I asked my Tolkien encyclopedia wife what race/culture in The Lord of the Rings is the Texan equivalent. They got real mad when I suggested the Rohirrim (because horse culture, I didn't actually think that was the answer but I wanted to provoke my wife), and... I'm gonna step aside so my wife can rant about who in LotR is the actual Random Texan.

Horse =/= Texan.

See the thing about the Texan is that they’re alien, they think overly much of themselves, and they’re not actually as good at shit as they think they are.

You know who hits all those buttons?

LEGOLAS GREENLEAF.

1) he’s not familiar to the POV characters, being an elf.

2) He and all Silvan elves think very highly of themselves even when it’s not really justified anymore.

3) he foregoes a saddle in a situation where riding bareback is actively harder and more inclined to overexertion, probably bc he doesn’t actually know how to handle a saddle but is, bc of point 2, unwilling to reveal he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing.

Legolas Greenleaf is the Texan of Lord of the Rings.

I was thinking the dwarves myself, but yeah, this fits.

dwarves are miners, misunderstood, and live in the ancient mountains. Dwarves are Appalachian.

#accurate #but also i had to stop and think about my current project #and realized that both of the main characters are from Texas #so I'm not sure what the rule is for that (via @shadowen​)

I think if your main characters are actual Texans, you need a random Brit. Like they don’t actually need to be British but they need to have that same sort of old tradition culture and poshness etc etc.

A guy from Maine that the two Texans are absolutely convinced is English because they saw him drink tea once

@telltaletypist the “third space” refers to a space between work (or in teens’ case school) and home! Basically it’s a comfortable space that allows you to mentally transition between the mental states of work and home. One of the reason why Starbucks ended up as such a widespread coffee chain is because they heavily modeled their locations on this concept. Libraries are also increasingly trying to make themselves “third spaces” for their respective communities. But capitalism doesn’t really like people just hanging out in spots and not spending money, so third spaces that aren’t commercial are getting increasingly rare. There is also something to be said about the general pathologization and criminalization of teens literally just hanging out. Like teens will hang out in a parking lot and proprietors will put up “no loitering” signs. One more third space eliminated.

Old folks are right about settin on the porch

barista just asked me "... and who are you?" instead of asking "can I get your name?"

i didn't even do anything

Twitter users will not survive the winter

do you know how rare it is for me to have a post on my main blog that breaks 1k notes? this is is really the one the people have chosen?

THIS WAS NOT MY WHOLE MEAL. I WAS JUST GONNA ADD IT TO INSTANT RAMEN. DON’T KICK ME WHILE I’M DOWN.

That much oregano in instant noodles is just Terrible Spaghetti

what farming items in mmorpgs has taught me: i used to think using ice trays to make ice cubes was free but after thinking about it i have to pay the electric bill to power the freezer so every moment that i’m not freezing new trays of ice cubes is a moment that i’m underutilizing the freezer and increasing the cost of ice cubes. i have to constantly swap out ice trays for new ice cubes on an hourly rotation on a 24 hour basis or else i won’t produce the maximum amount of ice cubes possible and will underutilize the full potential of my electric bill. i need to stop using all other appliances and utilities in my home to make more ice cubes