SnowflakesinCalifornia

perhaps some will disagree, but i think the world got worse when we changed the colour of the night

this is what i mean

Via @bulbaderp

To be clear, THIS is how nights of the future should be lit

This is bat friendly street lighting, which not only looks sick as fuck but allows bats to pass through without disturbance, as they cannot see red.

orange and especially white lights deter bats and prevent them from reaching feeding grounds at nighttime. Please if you can, write to your local council and encourage red street lights!!!!

The thing about Katara is that she was angry.

She was angry that the Fire Nation killed her mother.

She was angry that her father left them.

She was angry that she was the only Waterbender left in the south pole.

She was angry that the only person her age was her brother, who constantly disregarded her interests and her role in the tribe.

She was angry that what little waterbending she knew, had to be self-taught and how she struggled with that.

she was angry that a twelve year old instantly picked up what had taken her a long time to learn.

she was also angry that her tribe wanted to kick that twelve year old into the wilderness over a mistake.

she was angry over the earth-benders the fire nation had captured and put into a metal box.

she was angry.

And she knew she was angry.

Because she knew her own anger, she was the first to empathize with Aang when he got angry.

And it was because of it she could tell Aang forcing himself to lock his emotions up was not the answer.

Because she knew her own anger, she kept herself under control in the dessert, when everyone else was a mess.

Her anger empowered her. where anger was a tool of self-destruction for firebenders, for her it was what helped her push forward.

It was her anger that freed Aang.

It was her anger that helped her stand to Pakku.

Her anger was her strenght.

She was angry. And this was neither a mistake, nor a writing flaw.

hedonism is good actually rich people just suck at it

i think not only do we have a moral obligation to preserve human life but also a moral obligation to maximize the pleasure of others and ourselves (provided it doesn’t hurt anyone)

people don’t just deserve to eat food, they deserve to eat good food that tastes good without worrying about nutritional content

people don’t just deserve clothes, they deserve nice clothes that are well made and fit their personal style

people don’t just deserve the bare minimum, they don’t just deserve to be alive, they deserve to live and have nice things for no other reason than making that particular person happy

It's always so disappointing when sci fi and fantasy books call their languages "Basic" or "Common". No language is apolitical or universal if they're all calling one language Basic, who made it that way? Why is THIS dialect "Common" and all the others are Special/Magical/Incomprehensible??? Show me even a hint of the politics, or give your language a real name

Okay so kind of along with this, I think what is really missing when languages are called things like Basic or Common is how abjectly political that actually is. Think of the level of imperialism required to have a language so common it's just called Common. How much do you have to destroy? Who has died in the pursuit of a Common language? Who has killed for it? What does their education system look like?

It's English but they have so stripped it of national and cultural context that it's Everyone's language now. Who did it come from? Has it changed since its origins, to account for all of the people it swallowed, or has it stayed aggressively the same, l'Académie Française-style? Did it flatten out the cultural nuances of other languages or did it assimilate them? Is it a mish-mash or is it one original language that has taken over?

writing fanfiction is just. i’m being so creative and original. i’m plagiarizing everyone by accident. i’m a genius. i’m cringe. i’m too angsty. i’m too cheesy. this is not in character. it doesn’t matter that it’s not in character because these are my characters now. i love my hobby. this is the worst possible use of my time. i’m seeking validation. i’m projecting my own personal problems onto this story and i’m barely hiding it. i know so many words and i’m using all of them wrong. im on tumblr posting about it instead of writing it.

#and then you do all that and you STILL have to think of a title

the current electoral system is an unfairly weighted corrupt mess that will not save us, but

there is no materially revolutionary argument against voting if you are at all able.

I love the term “loanwords” because it implies that you intend to give them back.

*dumps a box full of words on French’s front porch* You never came back for your shit.

Loanwords, loaned to the British Museum so

Would everyone like to know the best thing??? There are two types of borrowed word - loan words and calques. Loan words are words taken directly from the language i.e. tattoo, sushi, guillotine. Calques are words literally translated from the language before being borrowed i.e. beer garden, scapegoat, killer whale (incorrectly calqued, the original actually means whale killer which is a whole other post).

Did anyone notice the fun thing?

Loan word is a calque (German lehnwort lit. Loan+word) and calque is a loan word (French calque - tracing or imitation). Have a good day!

Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest

Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind

Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone

Not socialist in a “I won’t have to work” type of way but socialist in a “I’ll still be working but I won’t be worried I won’t make the rent” type of way. In a “billions won’t be hoarded by one person” type of way. In a “janitors, fast-food workers, child care workers, preschool teachers, hotel clerks, personal care and home health aides, and grocery store cashiers, will live comfortably” type of way. In a “the sick and elderly will be cared for” type of way. In a “no child should work” type of way.

In a “disabled people live comfortably even and especially if they can’t work” type of way.

In a "no one has to work themselves to the bone for bare survival" kind of way

LOUDER

I think the mentality of "why bother doing something if you're not good at it?" feeds directly into "if you're good at it why aren't you monetizing it?". At its core I really think its about commodifying every last shred of labor and experience.

THIS

Adding that this is literally a huge reason we don’t leave unsolicited criticism on things like fanworks- fanfiction, fanart, fan crafts etc. Because there’s a LOT of people out there who are just doing this for the fun of it. They’re doing it for the same reason people go on walks- to feel good. And receiving crit they didn’t ask for doesn’t feel good.

Suzanne Collins gripping my face with her hands: listen listen the first step to evil is dehumanisation, always, the second you start to see people as less than people no matter what they've done to you that's when you start heading down a path of selfish destruction and violence

can’t think of a worse feeling than coming up with a really great meme, like, 2 months after the image format dies

the key to not fanonizing your faves is to simply become academia-brained about it. never make a statement about a character you can’t back up with at least three references to the source material

Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries

I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing

To make things worse, if you’re under 50-60 years old, you can’t even remember what normal seasons were like because you weren’t alive to experience them

In the graph above, you can see how there’s a clear tipping point in the late 1970′s, which is when global temperatures first began to really skyrocket.

I was born in 1997, so about 20 years after this shift occurred. There is an immense difference between the climate now and the climate I remember growing up in, but the way I experienced the seasons in my childhood was already fundamentally different from what the seasons were supposed to be like! My parents were pretty much the last generation to experience a normal climate, and that’s just... incredibly sad

I am processing this information in a normal way devoid of rabid rage and bloodlust i am processing this information in a normal wa-

I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a kid. In The Long Winter, Laura talks about sleighing when it’s -40 degrees (Celsius folks, that’s where your thermometer and ours converge, so it is exactly as cold as you’re thinking), and how dangerous it is, and how her parents are terrified she got frostbite. I thought she must be exaggerating for effect. Yeah, she was in the Midwest at a time when it wasn’t built up yet so there weren’t really any windbreaks, but -40? She had to be misremembering. There was no way the mercury actually froze in the thermometer.

Lately I’ve started noticing that when I talk about having “too cold” days as opposed to “snow” days from school as a kid, because if we had snow days we wouldn’t go to school from October to March, I see teens and people in their early 20s directing the same look at me that I directed at The Long Winter. “Ten degrees? You had to blow dry your way out your front door because the snow was piled so high? Come on, Nina, pull the other one.” They might be polite about it, but they don’t believe me.

It happened. I swear it did. I have PHOTOS of it, for fuck’s sake. And not that long ago, either. This was the 90s.

I no longer think Laura Ingalls Wilder was exaggerating.

I wish I had the luxury of still thinking so.

It used to snow on Halloween where I grew up! If it didn’t snow it was freezing cold and windy—and you had to layer your costumes so you didn’t get hurt from the cold!

It snowed on Thanksgiving too. And Christmas—basically all through winter and up until about March/Easter it would be snowing and sleeting with milder days once in awhile.

It has changed dramatically since then and I don’t know if I’ll ever see a snowy Halloween again unless I move to the far north in Canada or something! It’s frightening how much the climate has changed just since I was a kid, and it worries me that our future generations will be living in a world where snow is just a story that people tell—a myth that no one really believes.

SAME. I remember back in the days of internet 1.5 when email was basically for sending funny jokes to each other, I found a “you might be from western Pennsylvania if” list, saw one that said “your mom bought your Halloween costume three sizes too big so your winter coat would fit underneath" and I smiled and nodded and then saw the next item and lost my shit laughing because it was “you smiled and nodded at the last point.”

It used to be such a thing my mom would hand out hot chocolate on Halloween. Now….even in December it’s barely cold.

Love is in the air 🖤🗡💀

oh he 100% doesnt know what year it is

i am not happy with our choices this election. But you should know that the reason he's the first president to "refuse" a cognitive test is because one isn't included in the presidential physical exam in the first place.

There was a petition of doctors who wanted Trump's cognitive function tested during his physical exam, and everybody involved on the republican side said no, and then Trump himself actually insisted he did take one in a fit of ego. He was, as far as i can tell, the first president to ever take one while in office.

At his request for the cognitive testing, Trump's doctor administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment which is like 5 questions and has not been proven to be an accurate test of much at all. It's a lot like when you hit your head and they ask you the date and your name and stuff -- answering correctly in no way means you don't have a head injury or concussion or whatever, it's just a couple of first step questions. Then Trump said a lot of lies and bullshit about his "cognitive test"

Now republicans and right leaning publications are spreading shit like this. Biden didn't "refuse" a cognitive test, his aides confirmed that, as usual, a cognitive test is not included during the president's doctor visit.

again, i think our choices are shit this election, i don't like how old Biden is, and i think the way our first-past-the-poll voting system automatically results in an extremist two party system fronting candidates that the majority of the country doesn't like is some fucked up bullshit

but our house is on fire and one candidate is a bucket of water that won't help much and the other is a bucket of gasoline, and, y'know, angry as i am about it all i am still going to vote for the bucket of water while we look for other solutions

Don't let them trick you into letting gasoline get thrown on this fire please

At this point I’m not even posting this for politics reasons, I’m posting it because my GOD you gullible bitches need to learn how extremely basic propaganda works. Jesus christ.

Discworld: Wyrd Sisters Director: Jean Flynn | Studio: Cosgrove Hall | UK, 1997

It genuinely upsets me that there are people who call this animation and voice acting bad, there’s so much heart and soul on display in just this clip alone

At first glance: ‘lol this is going to be one of those hilariously cheap animations’

30 seconds in: ‘…Oh my god this is fantastic’

“WHO DARES TO INVOKE WXRTHLTL-JWLPKLZ?” “Where were you when the vowels were bein’ handed out, behind the door??”

oh MAN the whole thing’s free on YT

usamericans do really love making posts about parking lots. i met god in a parking lot. fighting my ex in a parking lot. it's like their main biome