New chapter of France Adventures is up now!
Includes: McHart being cute, pancakes, and stag beetles

New chapter of France Adventures is up now!
Includes: McHart being cute, pancakes, and stag beetles
The poll feature really took off because it taps into tumblr's favorite activity: being extremely opinionated about things that don't matter
I hope that clears things up a little! 😉
this is the best news i've heard all week :D
he's the worst man alive he's the love of my life he's covered in blood he's weird about god and he's a lot, he's not perfect, but most importantly he's bisexual
this is about king david
I have a story that’s topical; I’ve told it before on tumblr, but it’s topical to this and thus worth repeating.
Back around 2005, I ran into a Baptist missionary who spotted my kippah and basically took that as permission to attempt to missionize at me.
I defended myself, using the basics of the knowledge I have of Christian theology and texts that I learned specifically to fend off missionaries.
We went back and forth and back and forth, and he wouldn’t leave me alone for… oh, probably the better part of an hour.
And then…
Then this part is seared into my memory. I have nightmares about it.
He smiled at me and said that, with my knowledge of the Gospels, I am sure to be one of the Elect when the time comes.
I asked what the hell that meant.
And he told me. He told me in a tone of utmost sincerity–even envy, because to his belief system, it was a good and enviable thing…
Because to be one of the “Elect” is to be one of the 144,000 Jews who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior at the Apocalypse. This will happen when all of the Children of Israel have been Gathered in the Land of Israel; war will break out, the Assembled Jews will have the Gospels preached to us, and 144,000 Thousand–Twelve Tribes times Twelve Apostles times One Thousand–Jews will spontaneously convert to Christianity.
Once that occurs, all of the Jews die in the Apocalypse, but the Elect ascend to Heaven to be Jesus Christ’s personal escorts down to Earth for his Second Coming (the rest of the Jews go to hell for eternity, in case you’re wondering).
In short…
He told me that I existed to be a human blood sacrifice to bring back his god. I was not a person to him. I was nothing more than a means to that end.
And he was jealous. Jealous of the fact that he viewed my knowledge of his religion, something that I had learned specifically to fend him and his kind off, as proof that his religion was right and correct and inevitable. That in learning it, I had made myself more valuable to his worldview.
Jealous that, because I was more valuable, because I existed to die for his god, I would meet that god before him.
It was terrifying, to be told that I was to die… and he thought that it was a good thing.
This is how Evangelicals view death. Not as something to be avoided, but something to seek, something that is a positive, and not just for themselves… but for everybody.
They are the closest thing to a full-fledged Religion of Evil on the planet, and I say that without hyperbole.
When you guys say the US is being controlled by a death cult, you werent kidding!
It’s also worth noting that a significant number of premillenial dispensationalists (aka people who believe in the rapture - actually a pretty small minority of christians found almost exclusively in the USA) not only think the end of the world is good, they think they can rules lawyer their way into making it happen.
when I was a little kid I used to build nests out of sticks and leave them in trees, because I thought we’d get more birds that way. If I created the conditions in which I knew birds to exist, that would cause birds to appear. That is how a lot of evangelicals think armageddon works.
they’re surprisingly pro-israel, even by american standards in general, which seems off given how virulently anti-semitic they all are. until you remember that they think the twelve tribes gathering in israel is one of the conditions for triggering the end times. they don’t just hate palestinians because they’re islamophobic, they literally think them living in jerusalem is stopping jesus from coming back. (This is also how they justify the fact that most of them want all jews removed from america - they want to send them back to their ancestral homeland *cough*to be a human sacrifice for jesus*cough* so how could you ever think they’re antisemitic?!)
this also creates their extremely weird attitudes to the UN, which most of them think will be responsible for the antichrist (the apocalype of john says he will unite all nations - and never mind that we know who he was and he’s been dead nearly 2000 years now, and uniting all nations meant bringing them under the rule of the roman empire, which provably didn’t happen), which they want to happen because it’s a precursor to Jesus, but also don’t want to happen because wanting it would mean supporting satan and if they do that then they won’t be part of the group who get saved during the rapture.
(Also satan is definitely real guys, he’s really really real and 100% in the bible and not primarily a product of medieval pop-culture at all!)
and hand in hand with the ‘we can make the world end’ thing comes the belief that this is going to happen soon, any day now, so why worry about stuff like depleting resources or climate change or loss of species, because it’s all going to be destroyed within 1 generation maximum, probably next year, so who cares?
oh, and don’t forget that america is overwhealmingly calvinist, voted mainstream protestant theology most likely to fuck up your brain 471 years running! Basically Calvinism is founded on the idea that God knows in advance who’s going to be saved, and most people are actually on earth not to excercise their free will to attain grace, but just to suffer, because they were born inherently bad and god knows it and is basically fucking with them. You can never become one of God’s elect, you can only prove that you already were. On an individual level this is bad, but not that much worse than other christian denominations, you prove you’re one of gods elect by doing good christian things like prayer and charity, if you sin you might go to hell. It encourages more pettiness and rules-lawyering when considering sins, but overall, pretty standard stuff.
Where it gets really fucked, and the reason why John Calvin is number 2 on my list of Christian theologians to punch in the face if there turns out to be an afterlife (right after augustine of hippo), is that it encourages you to think of everyone who isn’t you as either good or inherently evil with hope of redemption. and since everyone wants to think they’re a good person, the criteria for inherently evil with no hope of redemption basically becomes ‘not like me’, or at least ‘not like the ideal my religious community holds up as an example’.
I would posit this is also why they evangelise in the way they do - they’re not actually trying to “save” anyone else, they’re trying to prove to their community that they’ve already been saved
so yeah, they don’t just look forward to death, they’re literally trying to end the world, and fuck everyone else, because anyone who isn’t exactly like them was born evil and can never actually be saved. and these people are in government in the most powerful nation on earth.
Horray!
No for real tho, evangelical shit fucks a kid up. While I was TERRIFIED of a shooter coming to my school after the Columbine shooting in ‘99 (I was 13), I also was ground zero for all the propaganda about Cassie Bernall.
For context, Cassie Bernall was a student at Columbine who purportedly was accosted by one of the shooters, asked if she believed in god, and was fatally shot when she said yes. (ftr this has since been found to be untrue - the exchange was overheard by a student who misidentified Valeen Schnurr, who survived the shooting, as Bernall, but the myth had spread super far by the time this fact was known and it’s a whole thing.)
Cassie’s mother wrote a book about Cassie and her faith in god and her martyrdom called “She Said Yes”, and someone bought it for me (probably a parent? I have no idea) and I devoured it. I wanted to live a life like Cassie’s, and Rachel Scott’s (another Christian student who was killed), and if that meant being a martyr then I would surely be brave at the moment of truth and face my death bravely.
Because yeah, they called these girls martyrs. These children who were senselessly murdered, had their memories used by their own families as essentially martyrdom inspiration porn. And let me tell you, a LOT of evangelical kids my age bought into it, at least for a while. Like please try to imagine being thirteen years old and actively hoping that you would get a chance to be murdered for your god.
Like, yeah a little bit of that was probably the slowly growing depression but mostly it was just… I was taught that was one of the best ways I could serve god, was by being an example and refusing to deny him even in the face of death. Because people would be moved by my testimony and feel the holy spirit and come to god or w/e.
I literally cannot explain what it was like to be that kid to someone who didn’t live through that too. There are no words. Evangelical premillenial dispensationalist Christianity is a death cult, and it is terrifying.
Also hey btw
The term “masterpiece” originally and traditionally meant a piece of work that an apprentice or other aspiring craftsman created to show off to his master or the town’s guild. So naturally, it was intended to be the best fucking thing that you could make, demonstrating just how fucking good you are at what you’re making - 100% to flex your skills. And if it was approved, the applicant was accepted as a member of the guild and could now call himself a master, and work in this craft in this city.
So the next time you’re looking at The One Great Thing you made and think “this is it, my masterpiece, I have peaked, it’s all downhill from here”, consider looking it the other way: Making your masterpiece means you’re only getting started.
a great thing about people transitioning is it presents us with scenarios where we have the perfect control variable to undeniably reveal sexism in the workplace. I read about a trans man neuroscientist who was told he was “so much smarter than his sister” (his sister being his pre-transition self)
and damn i knew the gaming industry was notoriously sexist (even more sexist than other stem fields, and that’s saying a lot) but seeing it laid out so clearly like this is so demoralizing.
Ben Barres was that neuroscientist
i spent $32 on this fucking bowl at the moma and at first i felt bad buying it bc it was so expensive but ive had a terrible day today and every time i look at my lil bowl im like :o) you know what. i can get through anything with this bowl by my side
i literally get what marie kondo was talking about now
bc everyone keeps requesting to see it filled :)
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Time seems to pass differently. But the place is cozy and private so I have no complaints. And whenever I’m hungry, I go outside with my bowl and walk down the hill to the shore. Sometimes the lake is made of soup. Sometimes it’s huge pasta noodles the size of barges. Sometimes it’s breakfast cereal. Sometimes it’s dumplings the size of great whales. I dip my little bowl and take a portion and carry it back up to the house.
Today I found a new bowl! In its center is a little hill with a little house. I will carry it down to the shore and fill it up, and whomever lives in that little house can have a tiny portion of my meal. I hope they have a nice bowl to put it in..
This post on r/AmItheAsshole (and the OP’s follow-up responses) have me cry-laughing – please enjoy
“I will erupt, feral, from the cardigan screaming, pounce over the counter and eat the entire five kilograms of cheese”
“we’re sending in the least threatening among us”
THE UPDATE:
"Steve Irwin of Los Espookies" gets me every time.
File under: even more blatant proof cis people can joke about trans people without it being at their expense
[I.D.: Tweet by gianmarco @/GianmarcoSoresi
Ran into someone from my high school who told me they had recently transitioned and I was over the moon bc I had forgotten their name./end I.D.]
if they rebooted austin powers it would either be the most tone deaf unfunny incredibly offensive movie in years OR they'd do it right and really keep with the times in being very self aware and it would be one of the best films in decades. austin powers would be a massive support of trans rights because trans women means more women for him to shag
oh your pronouns are she/they? well baby lemme she/them titties shagadelic
austin powers discovers bisexuality and it blows his fucking mind
bold of you to assume austin powers done right wouldn't already be bisexual.
Need to be mindful for our feathered friends!
I’ve queued this to post around the time that alot of babies will be hatching.
Go buy some frozen veggies and feed the babies
It is baby season right now. A lot of babies are being born right now and people keep bringing them into the sanctuary. Sometimes its best to leave them alone.
I forget where it was but I saw jeans for sale and like they were labeled as “girlfriend cut” instead of ‘boyfriend’ and like the irony to me is that the term “boyfriend style jeans” was originally done as this weird way to heterosexualize the dangerous idea of women wearing slightly loose pants so you knew you weren’t a dyke but like apparently the use of the term “boyfriend” was like too much of a gender confusion crisis for the buyer so they had to change it *again* as opposed to just calling it “loose fitting” to begin w and now it has fully no-homo’d itself into a corner and it just sounds like yr stealing yr jeans from some butch girl yr dating
My fave quirk w boyfriend jeans is that time the gap didn’t realize that having jeans that were “boyfriend” cut and “pegged” style would turn out greater than the sum of its parts
wheezes
69
I’m going to go out on a limb and say at least one person knew exactly what they were putting out into the world on that one, and we should thank them.
“No homo” cries the team at the dig site. The head archaeologist sinks to his knees, sobbing. He has dedicated his entire career to the pursuit of homo habilis, an important part of the hominid evolutionary line. All his work led up to this archaeological dig site. But now, his whole life has been for nothing. There is no homo….there is only Australopithecus.
I read this to a group of archaeologists and they completely lost their shit
if there ever comes a time when i do not reblog this post, please assume i am dead and act accordingly.
Owls confirmed to be the creepiest birds ever. LOOK AT THE FUCKING THINGS. If you fail to notice the one on the left fucking SWALLOWING a rat, then you have the dude singing some satanic chant or something next to him, and then you have those two other fucking psychos synchronized to make you feel creeped the fuck out with their soulless dance of FUCKING DOOM.
I really am tempted to reblog this every time it’s on my dash. That description is one of the best things on the internet.
Yeahhhh, I want this on my blog again.
OMG MY FAVORITE TUMBLR POST EVER IT’S FINALLY BACK YAY!
Here, have another of my all-time favorite Tumblr posts.
We were just discussing this again and I had to reblog it again because IT IS MY FAVORITE
I’m permanently traumatized that you introduced me to this over lunch, EGT.
::bows with a flourish::
There’s a gif out there of some people reenacting this that makes me laugh til I puke every damn time.
YASSSSSSSSS!
Ahahahahah OMG AMAZING.
This post = the gift that keeps on giving
OH MY FUCKING GOD IT IS SO SCARY AND CUTE-