What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.

What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’s not merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the ‘unworthy’ rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.

also: the way “gifted” children are taught largely just rewards them for already knowing things or having a specific skill come easily to them, and thus not only gives them severe anxiety about asking for help or not knowing something right away for fear of disappointing those adult mentors, but also actively discourages them from learning HOW to learn things and pick up new skills, thus sabotaging any life they might try to pursue outside of that institutional career.

Plus, not only is it possible to be “twice exceptional” - aka “gifted” and have a disability that can make learning more difficult - if you’re “gifted”, people usually don’t notice you have a disability.

So you spend your life split between being academically smart and then also unable to do basic, day-to-day functions and being told that you’re “too smart to struggle with this”.

Like, I do believe that neurotypical “gifted” kids are also fucked up by the system, but the majority of people who I personally know who complained about the system turned out to be neurodivergent in some way but didn’t know when they originally started in “gifted child” discourse.

And I’m going to take a stab and say that the people hit the hardest by this are probably women with ADHD, as their presentation usually looks like their life falling apart at/post-uni.

So you can spend your entire life being told you’re definitely going to succeed - and usually you’re pushed to specific career/life goals - and then overnight, your life falls apart and you can’t figure out why.

And I’m going to take a stab and say that the people hit the hardest by this are probably women with ADHD, as their presentation usually looks like their life falling apart at/post-uni.

And women with autism.

Nonbinary and GNC afab folks too- because being “raised female” unfortunately means you deal with a lot of the same shit, even if it turns out that you’re actually not a woman.

On this, the anniversary of the lunar landing, let us also celebrate the greatest post-mission achievement by a crewman.

I refer, of course, to the time Buzz Aldrin (age 72 at the time) cold-cocked a moon landing conspiracy theorist straight in his smug face after being accused of being a coward, liar, and thief.

Yes, someone was indeed dumb enough to tell a man so unafraid of death that he was willing to go into the void on a fragile explosive rocket, a coward.

Said dumbass was filming this confrontation as some sort of proof of moon fraud, but has instead captured this glorious moment of near-cosmic justice for us to loop for all time.

Aldrin was not charged with any crime. He should have been given another medal for public service.

part 2

This is the reality for the writers sadly...

Follow the writers guild (east and west) on socials. Pay attention to what's happening and the progress being made (or lack there of).

If you live in an area that you can attend a picket or rally, please do it. Numbers matter. Support and solidarity is everything.

If you don't have that access, talk about it on social media. Use the hashtags.

The strike has been going on for 51 days now.

LAST TIME I REBLOGGED THIS THE LAST COMPARISON WASNT ON THERE

This is the best thing I have ever seen

@klubbhead You used a cinnamon roll for Rey and not Leia?

Dam it it got better

S T O P

@klubbhead

Do Darth Maul next!

This is why I love Tumblr. Do Yoda next please or Boba Fett.

Oh god. I can’t even think of something for them lol

Yoda gotta be raisin bread.

ENOUGH

NO

do grand moff tarkin.

The last one got me.

I CAN’T

B R E A T H E

XD

i was mildly amused until the last one, at which point i broke

The post of legend has come again

OH GOD IT GOT BETTER

This is best post on this shit hole of an app

Holy shit

Me: Why do I still have a Tumblr account?

This post: *exists*

Me: Oh yeah.

sjflksjaldj it keeps coming back, better than before

I AM SCREECHING

The last time I reblogged this, the canned bread was not there. That got me.

It’s not bread but honestly I’m not sure we’re keeping track anymore

may I? 

HOW THE FUCK IS IT STILL GOING AHAHAHAHAHA

Whoever posted Yodito with the macaron is clearly a time traveler.

IM W H E E Z I N G

THE CANNED BREAD HAD ME S E N T

I don’t know what on Earth I just found, but this… is… ART!!!!!

HELL YEA WE GOT THE BAD BATCH

star wars heritage post

Move over, Amazon.

You don’t know the meaning of “Prime.”

Here, here!

Have some favorite moments of my favorite Prime.

I don't see the Funny Girl tour casting getting much traction on here but I just have to say that I am so goddamn sick and tired of all the bad faith arguments. The point is not that you can only play a character if you have the exact same ethnic background and life experience as them. The point is that Fanny Brice is Jewish. She is brash and Yiddish and sings a song dressed as a German officer wearing a belt of bagels. And when she does it it's reclaiming all of these Jewish stereotypes, in a way that a Gentile performing that number doesn't. And the thing about Fanny is...she's the star. She's the romantic lead, the once in a generation talent. And whenever there's a Jewish character like that, they're almost always played by a non-Jewish actor. Think about it - non-Jewish Rachel Brosnahan as the charming lead in Mrs. Maisel, non-Jewish Adam Driver (I know, I was surprised too) as the heroic detective in Blackkklansman, Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oscar Isaac in Scenes From a Marriage and Moon Night and The Sign in Sidney Brustein's window and wow love the dude but someone should maybe have a chat with him, all the siblings in Transparent, the lead character in a movie literally called Shiva Baby. Steven Spielberg cast his own Orthodox Jewish parents as non-Jewish actors in a sign that perhaps making movies isn't a replacement for therapy. Meanwhile, who do Jewish actors get to play? The embarrassing lower class husband's family in Mrs. Maisel, the stereotypical Jewish mother in Big Bang Theory, the nebbishy side character (take your pick). When I was a little Jewish girl growing up in the 90s, I idolized Fran Fine, and look it's no coincidence that she idolized Barbra. We don't get characters who are boldly Jewish, the romantic lead you're meant to root for, and who are actually played by a Jewish person! And to come back and say "well how Jewish does she have to be, Lea Michele is only half Jewish is that enough, what if my cousins are Jewish, what if I had a Jewish friend, what if I watched the Rugrats Hanukkah episode, see this is all ridiculous Scarlett Johansson can play a tree" - well, that misses the point. Do I enjoy it when I see Mark Cohen played by a Jewish actor in Rent? Sure. I would even go so far as to say I prefer it. But it doesn't offend me when he's not in the way that seeing these characters who are defined by their Jewishness cast, over and over and over again, with non-Jewish actors. In media, we can only root for a Jew when they're not actually Jewish.

And the thing with that is - it matters. It matters in all the subtle ways that my grandparents told jokes in Brooklyn accents, that anyone with an ounce of Jewish knowledge knows you don't ever let a kippa touch the ground, that you don't eat brisket on Yom Kippur (cough Marvelous Mrs. Maisel cough) because you've been fasting all day and if you eat something that heavy you'll be sick. It matters because of the specificity with which Rachel Bloom writes songs about Jewish mothers. I don't want to (Parade spoilers, I guess) see an actor say the Shema before Leo Frank is murdered without him having the full understanding of what that moment means.

So look, I'm sure Katerina McCrimmon is a lovely person and probably a very talented actor and it's hard to fault her for being unable to turn down the lead in a high profile national tour. And it's not like the casting in this show has been unimpeachable in the past (Jane Lynch was so bafflingly miscast that when it was first announced I thought it was a Glee joke). So perhaps this isn't the show to build the hill on which I die, but I can't get over how many people seem to just willfully miss the point whenever this issue gets brought up. I'm not saying that every Jewish character has to be played by a Jewish actor. I'm just saying that, I don't know, maybe let's just try it for awhile until it stops being a big deal when they are.

They did it again

even with those four numbers there are countless possible combinations good luck with figuring out which one is the right one you punk

*straightens calculator*

It’s pretty likely that it’s a four digit number, and as there are four digits chosen there, that means that there cannot be any repetition. This mean that there are:

n!/(n-4)! possible orders. As ‘n’ is 4 (number of digits available). 4!/0! which becomes 4x3x2x1/1 which simplifies to 24. That means that there are 24 possible combinations of codes. This would take you about two or three minutes to input all possible codes.

Unless an alarm goes off if you don’t get it right in 3 tries

*straightens calculator again*

Kick the fucking door in

well ‘technically’ the code is most likley 1970. statistically, a majority of people, when told to choose a 4 digit code will choose their birth year. and this key pad is obviously a few years old to put it nicely, thats most likley it. 

some sherlock holmes shit just went down over here

No, no, no. Don’t base your deductions of psychology. Let’s talk chemistry. When you first press a button, there’s more of the natural oils on your skin, and therefore it wears down the numbers on the keys faster. Obviously 0 is the first one, then. Try 0791 first.

Sherlock out.

woah.

it got better

and this is why the sherlock fandom could either rule the world or end it….

Close, but not quite, I think. People will almost always choose a number they can remember. What’s memorable about 0791? Try 0719 - a birthday, 19th of July. That is more likely.

Those deductions are great and all, but unnecessary.

The light is green.

The door is already open.

And that’s why we have a John Watson.

This is “top 10 favorite posts” level.

Omg, it’s actually on my dash! This post is like a fossil!

Idk if I’ve rebloged this before, but I’ll reblog this legend again

Smithsonian? I’ve found the quintessential Tumblr and Sherlock fandom post. Yes. I would consider it definitive.

Ahh it’s back.

Legend of a post. 10/10 recommend reblogging.

this post is on my dash I feel HONORED

THE POST OF LEGENDS HAS RESURFACED ON MY DASH

I’VE ONLY EVER SEEN THIS IN SCREENSHOTS OMG

On your dash? I dig for gold like this,,, by looking at my mutual pages.

I’ve only seen this on Pinterest!

*gasp* THE SACRED TEXTS!

:O

THIS IS A LEGENDARY POST I HAVE BEEN GRACED BY IT’S APPEARANCE!!!

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

yesssss

Why did Tumblr stop doing stuff like this, it’s genuinely fascinating, and cute that we include our favorite media in things we do

Well. Since you asked. I was on tumblr as this post was being built in 2013. The height of superwholock. Which has, since then, been declared peak cringe. So people picked new fandoms to openly love in earnest. Which were also eventually declared cringe. Eventually the youth decided to cut out the middleman, and declared loving anything in earnest to be fully cringe. So it has been a really long time since the day to day users of tumblr have let any fandom create anything nearing the cultural phenomenon that was superwholock. And it is exactly those cultural phenomena that are needed to create posts like this.

So. What happened? Cringe culture happened.

Try and imagine what would happen if this post wasn’t the “sacred texts” only ever seen in screen shots and in pinterest. Try and imagine any current pop culture detective media fandom creating this post today. They’d be slaughtered for being cringe by the time (in this case) Sherlock was mentined.

But because this post is 10 years old and completely broke containment, it’s celebrated when it graces our dashes.

I blazed a small fandom event announcement.  Because I was genuinely excited to be part of a Big Bang for a wonderful movie.  One of the first responses I got was “Why would you blaze this?” Because of genuine excitement. Because I wanted to celebrate the friends I’d met in the fandom To spread joy to people who might also like the content but hadn’t seen it yet.   The fact that that was genuinely not realized made me sad.  I love thing, I celebrate thing.   I’m too old for cringe.  Cringe is dead.  Love what you love.  Enjoy the small things in life, it’s too short to do otherwise.

CRINGE CULTURE DIED AND WE KILLED IT.

CRINGE CULTURE DIED AND

WE KILLED IT.SPREAD THE LOVE FOR

YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

U go funky little haiku bot

Ch🤪

Blasphemous angels being cast out of heaven

me a few years ago: its so weird how right wingers always wanna blame the "elite" given that alot of them are in the global 1% of wealth and therefore almost by definition the same "elite" they claim to hate. weird right? lol right wing logic makes no sense

me now: oh my god they mean Jewish people. its always been Jewish people. and the insistence of online leftists to use words like "elite" and "cabal" (to refer to a handful of ultra rich people who dictate a lot of how our lives are run) kinda makes them sound like antisemites too. maybe this whole idea that the world is run by a select few is a gross oversimplification which only serves to reinforce antisemitic stereotypes... oh no. maybe i have a lot of shit to unlearn. maybe i need to start vocally defending Jewish ppl. also local community building is the only way out of this

This post has been making the rounds on jumblr and I've had a few different reactions so I just wanna weigh into some things here.

First up:

Jews I love you and I'm so glad that this little thoughtramble I wrote a month ago resonated with so many of you. I hope it helps with educating some people on just how widespread and insidious antisemitism is.

Secondly: I'm a gentile so I'm by no means an authority on these things. But a couple fellow gentiles in the notes are saying stuff along the lines of, "but can't we criticise billionnaires?"

To which I say, watch where you step, cus you're on thin ice. I've learned a litte the past few years and here's my conclusions:

Also, please consider your motives:

And especially,

Lastly I want to highlight these as well:

Absolutely correct. The amount of times I've come across online bigots who are like "George Soros is funding BLM!" or "LGBTs are elites trying to plunge this country into immorality!" This is all antisemitism. In general just be wary of anyone wanting to blame "elites" or "rich people" (yeah even that one cus historically Jews are stereotyped to have money!!! and also not all rich ppl are inherently evil!!!!) or "shadow government" or "globalists" or "lizard people" or really, literally anything that seems to imply that a small, select group of people is secretly running the world: That's antisemitism baby. It's all antisemitism. It's disgustingly common.

By all means, criticise billionnaires. But be specific. It's one of the best ways to make sure it's not veering into antisemitism. We know who these billionnaires are, for the most part; we know their names and we know their crimes. Talk about them specifically.

It doesn't help if you just swap out "elites" with "billionnaires" or "the 1%" if the rest of your rhetoric remains the same. It sounds exactly the same to antisemites, and they will feel empowered. In truth, it is much more complicated than "billionnaires are running the world and fucking us all over"; some billionnaires are using their fortune for good, and they don't directly cause our problems - they may exploit a system that was set up long before they were born, sure, but your problems are also caused by Sue from accounting and your neighbour ratting you out to the authorities and that kid across the road yelling slurs at you. Your problems exist because society lets them exist, and that includes everyone. The system makes it hard to fight this, and sure, most billionnaires don't help the issue. But again if you're just looking for someone to hate on, it's very likely you're actually reinforcing oppression rather than "punching up".

Sweeping statements are dangerous and a lot of your talking points have been used to justify genocide in the past. Just cus the world's been a lil less overt about its antisemitism post-Holocaust, does not mean antisemitism has disappeared, far from it. And it's being revived at an alarming rate just now so please, Gentiles, pay attention to what the dogwhistles look like and don't reinforce harmful stereotypes.

Thank you.

PS: A few blogs that have helped me unlearn and unpack antisemitism are @spacelazarwolf, @hadeantaiga and @gehe-lihiyot-androgynos-varda with a special shout out to @softness-and-shattering for being very patient with me rambling about jewish/antisemitism related stuff in dms. Youre all soooo great n I appreciate you soooo much <3

There's also lots of Jewish ppl in the notes of this post, I'm sure a lot of them have lovely blogs to follow.

There's some reading recs in the notes as well:

I haven't read these books myself, I've read a preview of Jews Don't Count and it's on my list of books to order when I have more money, but basically, go look at what actual Jewish folks have written on the subject, I'm just a random Gentile who doesn't like bigotry so don't take it just from me.

just go see an ob-gyn

Help me ob-gyn kenobi, you’re my only hope.

She needed more midwife-clorians. 

I really hope everyone reblogging this followed the link and read the article, because it’s larger point is really good “Reproductive health and childbirth is a crutch, and Lucas gets away with it because his audience accepts that these things are mysterious and cannot be intervened with the way that that the loss of limbs can be remedied with robot prosthetics, or the way Luke can be rescued from near-death on Hoth by being submerged in a bacta tank. Having babies is worse than being mauled by a wampa ice creature or being chopped up by lightsabers and falling into a river of lava. Lucas can write a world like that, and worse, the audience will accept it. But uteruses aren’t made of malignant magic. Women’s bodies are real physical things that can be studied and understood and when necessary, cured. ”

IDK about everyone else, but I’ve actually been certified as a doula and childbirth educator and worked in women’s health media for most of a decade.  All points valid, but “Help me OB-GYN Kenobi” broke me. 

And this is how you can tell a story was written by men because pre-natal healthcare never even occurred to the writer. Women’s insides are a mysterious and magical place that no man either can fathom, or just just not want to think about, so in stories like this they just handwave it away as” dying in childbirth”.

Help me, OB-GYN Kenobi.

https://www.deviantart.com/capnchef/art/OBGYN-Kenobi-438450694

I love how everyone’s like YES ALL POINTS VALID

But

to be fair, it is a brilliantly executed pun

Apparently Rachel’s sister deleted her Instagram. Previously that Instagram was full of pictures that showed Rachel and the fam celebrating Christmas and Easter, and had pictures of the family at church, wearing crosses, decorating trees, buying trees, the home with wreathes, etc. Rachel was tagged in all those pictures and they’re not on her profile anymore. Maybe she put her account on private which made the pictures disappear, idk. I also have no idea when it happened, someone just told me this rn, I haven’t checked in a while.

What does this mean? They’re trying so hard to bury anything that shows Rachel isn’t Jewish. Rachel literally got my Instagram shut down after I 1. Posted about Judaism 2. Posted about antisemitism 3. Posted about why her casting in the movie is antisemitic 4. Told her I was disappointed in her part in erasing Jews and told her I was open to having a conversation with her about everything which would stay totally off-record. 5. Her new role was announced on her story and I responded “Oh, not another Jewish role?” The account was suspended a day after #5. She is entirely aware and not happy about it.

So my Instagram was shut down, her sister’s Instagram that linked Rachel to Christian stuff is missing, and all comments on her posts about Nora being Jewish are gone (thank you to the people who’ve told me they asked, but the comments didn’t stay), and the production continues to remain silent.

At this point they are doing it all on purpose. They’re trying to erase all evidence so that when someone tries to see if Rachel is Jewish, they see nothing pointing to her being Christian. News flash, I have screenshots, links to interviews where Rachel is said to be active in church, and Rachel’s own insta still has a few pics on it. Good thing is, I’m first in the google searches.

The truth will come out about how wrong and antisemitic RWRB was to erase their only Jewish character. We will get the apology we deserve. If you wouldn’t do this to another minority with nothing, you shouldn’t do it to Jews either

surely this is a good idea that doesn’t have the capacity to end real fuckin badly

Bridges aren’t supposed to have weight restrictions on them. That is, they don’t come with weight restrictions on them when they’re new. So a bridge with a weight restriction on it is a sign that something has gone wrong and the bridge does not meet current standards.

The maximum weight that a vehicle is allowed to carry on the Interstate System per federal law is 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (with a max of 20,000 pounds per axle). That’s 40 tons. That limit applies to every inch of pavement, not just the bridges. Since this is a known cap, a new Interstate bridge will be designed to accommodate an 80,000 lb GVW load on it. You could say the bridge’s weight limit is 80,000 lb/40 tons but that doesn’t really have much meaning, because a load higher than that would be illegal to transport on public roads anyway, and the road leading up to the bridge has the same weight restriction. (In practice, the bridge doubtlessly will be designed to have a little bit of let to it just in case some idiot tries to squeak by a few hundred extra pounds.)

Now, note that that law applies to the Interstate System only, because the federal government only has a governing interest in the Interstate System (and other roads that together make up something called the National Highway System) because they partially fund it. Most long-distance roads are owned and funded by the states. The states could theoretically set lower standard weight limits and/or design bridges with lower weight limits…but in practice they don’t.

One, because all of that 80,000 lb GVW traffic on the Interstate system has to go somewhere when it exits the system.

Two, because a group called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO, who are best known for picking the road numbers) maintains a catalog of standard components for making bridges that meet Interstate System requirements. Engineers are expensive on a per-hour basis, so if you can direct your engineer to use standard components and make a standard bridge, that’s a lot cheaper than having them design a bridge from scratch to go over the creek in Nowheresville. As a result, most new bridges meet Interstate standards and have an 80,000 lb GVW rating even if they aren’t on the Interstate system. (This is also why all new bridges kind of look the same, but we’re not worried about how boring the bridges are for the sake of this post.)

So a bridge only has an explicit weight limit if it has been damaged in some way (through failure to properly maintain it usually) or because it predates the application of Interstate System standards and the standard AASHTO bridges.

Older bridges often have other problems in addition to the weight limits: many older designs are what we call “fracture critical”, which means that if one component of the bridge fails the whole thing collapses. Modern bridge designs have redundancy designed into them so that if one beam fails the other beams will carry the load until the damaged beam can be replaced. Older bridges also often don’t meet other standards, like height (16 ft clearance) and width (12 ft per lane plus 14 ft for shoulders) requirements.

Biden isn’t advocating eliminating weight limits and letting it be a laissez-faire free-for-all where trucks can just go wherever they want. He’s advocating for replacing bridges that carry weight limits with new ones that don’t have them.

wow i got absolutely schooled thank you for all this this is really informative. i have learned so much

This is a great explanation of what the fuck Biden was talking about in his tweet. because I will freely admit that I also went “…….wtf?????” when I read it. So thank you.

Today I learned about civil engineering.

Fun fact! Civil engineers are pretty much the only engineering discipline absolutely required to take professional licensing exams before they even complete their degrees. They are held to higher standards because all civil engineering projects are going to have a safety critical portion.

You made a friend. Mission accomplished.

NUMA in THE CLONE WARS | 1.20 Innocents of Ryloth

They made a friend for life.

Numa grew up to fight with Cham Syndulla into the Rebels era. She wore a sleeve of clone armor with Boil’s name stenciled on it.

It's June 1. It's time.

Go be gay.

I dont want to be rude, but Pedro was right 😂😂😂