ThePrettiestOne

altalemur:

judeoceltische:

kuttithevangu:

Gorillas are another good example: for many years, nobody thought gorillas could pass the mark test. Turns out, the test was just very uncomfortable for them. Eye contact is a thorny social issue for gorillas, often leading to fights, several researchers said. More than that, gorillas are easily embarrassed, says Robert Mitchell, foundation professor of psychology at Eastern Kentucky University. Instead of messing with the mark in front of the mirror, they would sometimes go away, hide in a corner, and wipe the mark off there. Gorillas got what was going on, they just didn’t respond the way we thought they should.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/kids-and-animals-who-fail-classic-mirror/

oh noooooooooooooo 

So when animals don’t have Anglo-American social manners, we have trouble figuring out what they understand. Is this what I’m taking away here?

for the love of anthropology, y'all need to read Songs of the Gorilla Nation by Dawn Prince-Hughs. she is autistic anthropologist with the best gorilla behavioral analysis EVER.

Campaign Action

FBI Director James Comey's opening statement during today’s House Intelligence Committee hearing was extraordinary, confirming far more than anyone had expected.

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counter-intelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.

Comey has confirmed this statement in conversation with Democrats, but he's said nothing about it to Republicans. Why not?

Because they haven't asked. Despite the explosive nature of Comey's statement, Republicans are suddenly interested in only one topic: low-life leakers. Reps. Devin Nunes, Tom Rooney, and particularly Trey Gowdy demonstrated that they had absolutely no interest in Russia or in wiretapping.

Instead, all three asked Comey over and over (and over) about penalties for leaking. Gowdy—who was so “careful” that he refused to say Michael Flynn’s name, but only referred to him as a “U.S. citizen,” named a list of potential issues including former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was ousted and is testifying today. Gowdy stopped just short—by millimeters —of lapping Trump's wiretap claims by directly accusing President Obama of leaking Flynn’s name to the press. 

All three were also blunt in threatening Comey with taking away programs if he wouldn't give them what they wanted. So we're getting the spectacle of a hearing on Russia and wiretapping in which Republicans are interested in neither Russia or wiretapping, but instead are badgering the FBI director to do exactly what Trump wanted by threatening programs the director just declared vital.

glamourweaver:

Yvette Nicole Brown wrote this joke based on actual experience with directors who didn’t want to use the word “sassy”  but 100% wanted her to play it sassier.

Tempting to start calling my mental illnesses “brain illnesses” so maybe people will start remembering the brain is a fucking organ that can malfunction like ANY OTHER body part.

systlin:

girly-fanatic:

reichenbackdatassup:

wow my brother was telling me this joke and he said

“if you’re fighting with a woman and she pulls a knife on you, just pull out the bread and cheese and meat and her womanly instincts will kick in and she’ll just make you a sandwich”

then all of a sudden our mom emerges from the kitchen holding a huge ass knife and she approaches my brother asking “sorry what was that?” and he started screaming

100000000 points to mom.

This is 10000000% my mother

aellagirl:

mercedesbenzodiazepine:

frankenfemme:

marcitlali:

thick in the waist cute in tha face

I’m vegan but I’d shoot the shit out of this no hesitation

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOO

can someone please explain this to me right fucking now

“What are you … chicken?”

“Goddamn fucking right I am.”

“But more fundamentally, Trump’s style of business is far more representative of modern American capitalism than Henry Ford. Smash and grab business, coordinated by Wall Street — where corporations are bled dry for quick profits and competitive markets are rolled up into stagnant oligopolies — is far, far more standard today than the plucky start-up entrepreneur. As economist J.W. Mason has shown, corporate profits and borrowing are mostly no longer sunk back into the business — instead they are immediately kicked out to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee was a specialist in just this sort of bloodsucking financial chicanery.”

-

Donald Trump shows why businessmen make bad presidents

I was thinking about this while I was jogging this morning. The minimum wage is so low, compared to the cost of living, it’s harder and harder for people to make ends meet, let alone spend the time and energy and money required to advance in a career, go to college, or do anything other than just work, eat, and sleep.

The ratio of CEO salary to worker salary is appalling. I wouldn’t have as big a problem with that as I do if workers were paid more, and if money they helped the CEO earn went back into the company, the community where the workers work and live, or toward bonuses for those workers. But workers are literally working themselves to death with no hope of having a better life (and forget their children breaking out of the cycle of poverty) because the only organizations that can ensure that happens are labor unions and the government.

And one of the greatest scams the right wing ever pulled was to trick people into thinking it was unions that were the problem, instead of the company managers and owners who would (and once did) work them to death if they could. The second biggest scam the right wing ever pulled was convincing those same people that government – which regulates industry, among other things – is the only reason that those poor folks who are working themselves nearly to death without union protections are trapped in a cycle of poverty.

So it’s not shocking that a lot of those people voted for a Smash and Grab president. A guy who literally lived in a golden tower, who wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire, who yelled at them that he was going to improve their lives, but who is really more interested in playing golf and using the power and machinery of the federal government to enrich himself.

laughlikesomethingbroken:

areeceyafterlife:

 My favourite thing about the whole ‘no man of woman born’ thing is that it applies to a very broad church.

 For example:

•  People born via c-section (no man of woman born, meaning natural childbirth, aka, the Shakespeare approach)
  
•  Women (no man of woman born, aka, the Tolkein approach)
  
•  Non-binary types (see above)
  
•  Aliens (no man of woman born, with the meaning of man being in the ‘mankind’ sense)
  
• Artificial intelligences (see above again)
  
• Transmen (no man of woman born, the man-ness appears to come later as gender is a social construct. Arguably borderline, I know.)
  
• People carried by a man (no man of woman born)
  
• People grown in vats (no man of woman born)
  

 Basically, anyone who isn’t a human cisgendered male delivered via natural childbirth by a woman could kill Macbeth. (Given the equipment via science!, the child of a transwoman born via natural childbirth would still count as unable to.)

 It’s odd that you can divide mankind into ‘Macbeth killers’ and everyone else, even though everyone else is in the minority, especially if aliens are real and we create AIs capable of murdering Scottish kings.

there are two genders: macbeth killers and macbeth

archiemcphee:

Cat vs Human suggests that perhaps Snow White’s stepmother wasn’t so much an evil queen as she was a crazy cat lady.

princeloki:

queerrussetpotato:

jumpingjacktrash:

dogbirthday:

tastefullyoffensive:

(photo by bowlerhatbear)

go with him

he wants to show you something

he has a side quest for you

this is how people get taken by the fae

dailydris:

First Official Poster for “The Dark Tower” (X)

We both just WEPT with laughter. Nothing else to say…

copperbadge:

cenabisbene:

umblrgumblr:

romantically-trans:

the cis are getting out of hand

fucking furries assigning their children fursonas before they’re even born

also??? it’s a baby??? it’s gonna be a fucking FAWN for christs sake, you’re not giving birth to a teenager

It also comes off strongly as though if the child is male, they’re excited to be able to hunt him. 

stimmymage:

I wonder if they realized what they were doing making Data, and how relatable he is to some of us

atopfourthwall:

pridefulpufferfish:

out-there-on-the-maroon:

last-snowfall:

mastress:

brigidkeely:

nick-bottom:

mephostophilus:

songofspoilers:

gildatheplant:

I feel that anyone who believes Romeo & Juliet is about some kind of Great and Timeless Love TM* needs to see this.

WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS TODAY IN MY SHAKESPEARE CLASS. 

If you go and actually read what Romeo says to Benvolio in the first scene, you will realize that he is only upset because HE WANTED ROSALINE’S BODY AND SHE SAID NO AND SO ROMEO WAS MOPING AND PITCHING A FIT ABOUT IT. Then, the second he lays eyes on Juliet, he’s basically saying

External image

During the balcony scene, Romeo talks about how he scaled the wall of the garden to see Juliet. That is not romantic. That is disrespectful to her. This is a private area of the Capulet home, and Capulet built the wall around it to protect his daughter. This was a time when a woman’s virtue was the most important thing she owned. If Juliet was found with a man in this very private part of her home, everyone would think she was no longer a virgin, her reputation would be ruined, and it would be much harder, if not impossible, for her father to make a good marriage.

Speaking of good marriages, Count Paris is seen as the bad guy because he “comes between” Romeo and Juliet. Capulet had arranged for Paris to marry Juliet in 2 years time, when she would be 16, in a time when most women were already married and mothers by the time they were Juliet’s age at (almost but not quite) 14. Most fathers would have already had their daughters married by now, but he wants to wait two more years AND PARIS IS OKAY WITH THAT. Not only that, but Paris is young (her father could have had her married to a 60 year old man), titled (he’s a fucking Count), wealthy (again, he’s a count, which means Juliet will have financial stability), and, from what we see of him, he is a very good guy. Capulet could have done a LOT worse in choosing his son-in-law.

Finally, here’s something to consider: Juliet was 13, Romeo was 17. Their relationship lasted 3 days, defied their parents, and ended in the deaths of 6 people.

If I ever hear you say that Romeo and Juliet is the greatest love story ever told, I will bitch slap you.

That is all.

And then, in Shakespeare’s next play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he basically went out of his way to make fun of the people who thought that Romeo and Juliet was so deep and romantic in writing the “Pyramus and Thisbe” sequence performed by a bunch of lousy, middle-aged men who saw too deep into it.

Rejected dude on the rebound initiates a murder-suicide, OMG GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD.

Shake-speared!

Bitch I have a degree in this, so you can fucking try to bitchslap me but I will punch you in the face, because you have serious genuine factual errors and reading comprehension FAIL.

Which is to say, without the nasty attitude, this post is actually wrong about a bunch of stuff.

POINT THE FIRST: Let’s start with the stuff about Juliet and Paris. Let’s also start with this “everything you ‘know’ is actually wrong” problem with the idea that sixteen was a normal marriage age.

It wasn’t. The average age of marriage in Shakespeare’s day and culture was MID-TWENTIES. Marriage of kids younger than that was something the aristocracy did, mostly to secure alliances, and was seen as kind of squicky. Even there, a lot of those young people stayed with their parents until their late teens. It was rare - not Unheard of, but rare - for girls younger than that to be encouraged to have children because, bluntly, IT TENDED TO KILL THEM, and that’s a waste of a good alliance.

Further, Italy was the place where you set stories when you wanted to get away with Ridiculous Edge Cases. You know how, like, _The King and I_ is set in “Siam” so these things can be pushed to their ludicrous and most violent edges? Same with setting shit in Italy. English audiences would go LOL THOSE CRAY ITALIANS AMIRITE and not get hung up on feeling insulted/etc. The fact that Juliet’s thirteen and Paris is going “younger than she are happy mothers made” and her dad’s giving in etc is SUPPOSED to be skeezy as fuck. Paris pushing for her marriage RIGHT AFTER Tybalt dies and, again, her dad giving in is SUPPOSED to look like they’re being assholes, because they ARE. Capulet threatening to throw Juliet out on the street when she doesn’t want to marry Paris isn’t supposed to be “normal”, it’s supposed to make him look like the pride-bound domineering asshole he is.

Same with the whole “walled up young woman” thing: that’s another “those fucking Italians, lol” touch.

Which brings us to POINT THE SECOND: Romeo and Juliet’s love affair didn’t kill no-fucking-body.

THE FEUD killed four people (Mercrutio, Tybalt, Romeo and Juliet) and Paris being a fucking gross and uncompassionate selfrighteous dick killed two more.

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT Mercrutio and Tybalt! The morning after the Capulet party, Tybalt wants to kill Romeo. He wants to kill him, not because of his cousin - as neither he nor anyone else has the FAINTEST IDEA that Romeo and Juliet are in love - but because Romeo showed up at the Capulet party the night before PERIOD.

One: Romeo didn’t even want to go to the party. Mercrutio insisted (and insisted, and insisted) that they gate-crash in masks. Two, Capulet, Tybalt’s uncle and the head of his family and THE GUY IN CHARGE basically told Tybalt to chill out, it’s fine. Tybalt’s devotion to The Feud is so intense that he’s ignoring that because of the ~*insult*~ Romeo has done the Capulets. Three, the Prince just said YESTER-FUCKING-DAY that if he caught anyone feuding again he was going to kill them.

Remember the previous day? When Romeo didn’t know Juliet from Eve nor she from Adam, but we opened the play with servants fantasizing about killing the other sides male servants and raping their female ones? Because of The Feud? Just checking.

Tybalt gives no fucks. Tybalt is going to avenge ~*his family’s honour*~ by at the very least beating the shit out of if not killing Romeo.

And you know what Romeo does *because of his love for and romance with Juliet?*

He refuses to engage. He says no, Tybalt, I know you hate me but I don’t hate you and I’m not going to pay attention to the insults you’re slinging at me, I apologize for wrongs I’ve done, let’s call it all fair. No, I’m still not gonna fight you even if you keep insulting me.

For love of Juliet, Romeo tries like crazy NOT TO FIGHT.

Mercrutio, on the other hand, either can’t stand to see Romeo insulted or thinks because he’s the Prince’s nephew he’s special and the no-brawling rule doesn’t apply to him, pulls out his sword and starts to fight. It’s IRONIC that in trying to stop Tybalt and Mercrutio, Romeo gets in the way of Mercrutio’s parry and gets stabbed, but it’s also Mercrutio’s own damn fault. His “a plague o’both your houses” speech may be very quotable and thunderous, but it’s also hypocritical as hell, considering how DELIGHTED he was to participate in their Feud for his own amusement right up till he got stabbed.

(Watch out for Shakespeare: he likes to do things like that.)

This, really, is the point of the entire prince’s bloodline in this play: they every damn one of them think they can just sort of ignore or deal lightly with the Feud, and the Feud gets them.

So that’s two for the Feud.

Then Juliet fakes her own death. Well, actually, after being told by her father she has no choice but to marry Paris whether she wants to or not, and RIGHT NOW, or he’ll physically throw her out on the streets to starve to death or whore herself, she shows up in Friar Lawrence’s cell saying “fix this or I will fucking kill myself.”

And Friar Lawrence is a coward and fails her. Because here’s the thing: she and Romeo are married. End of story. All Lawrence has to do to FORCE the Prince to get involved and give them protection (or for that matter the local bishops and even the pope) is walk out there and say “they’re married, I witnessed it, we’re done.”

The thing is, this is entirely likely to get the FRIAR into a metric shittonne of trouble. So instead he concocts this huge complicated bullshit plan, and to the appearance of everyone except Lawrence and Juliet, she dies. Then Romeo thinks she’s dead so he kills himself, then she finds him dead and kills HERSELF and wait why was this all a problem in the first place?

OH RIGHT, because of the Feud. (Otherwise frankly the Romeo/Juliet match is fucking AMAZING and would give both families the economic power to dominate Italy. Seriously they’re idiots.)

Now, on his way in to kill himself Romeo also kills Paris and Paris’ servant, in both cases in self-defense. They’re there because despite Juliet rejecting him Paris basically feels a proprietary ownership of her DEAD BODY because her father promised him her living one. Basically.

Just think about that for a while. Think of how GROSS that is. Because it’s really gross.

Those are the only two deaths you can sooooort of blame on the actual romance. I feel they’re more appropriately blamed on patriarchy, but whatever makes you happy.

But. The point is: THIS PLAY IS ABOUT HOW THE FEUD KILLS PEOPLE. Like it literally tells us this in the prologue. “Two households, both alike in dignity/in fair Verona where we lay our scene/from ancient grudge break to new mutiny/where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” Aka “so these two idiot families start brawling and killing each other over an old grudge.” The relevance of the children is not that they were in love: it’s that they were BECAUSE of their parents DOOMED. That’s what “star-crossed” means. It means “you are fucked”. It means “fate says you can’t have this.” Their “misadventured, piteous overthrows” - aka their fucked up, incredibly sad efforts - “doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.”

This is a tragedy about how THEIR PARENTS STRIFE killed them. They’re doomed from the start. And you know what Romeo and Juliet’s romance - their “death-marked love”, which is to say “the love that will get THEM killed” - ACTUALLY FUCKING DOES?

It saves Verona.

“The fearful passage of their death-marked love/and the continuance of their parents’ rage/WHICH BUT THEIR CHILDREN’S END, NAUGHT COULD REMOVE/is now the two-hours’ traffic of our stage.”

Again, translating for those who need it: this really sad and fear-inducing story of their totally fucking doomed romance, and how NOTHING BUT THEM DYING would make their parents stop fighting, is what we’re going to show you in the next two hours.”

People were already dying from the feud. They were being injured. Property was being damaged. Brawls were spreading out and killing innocent bystanders. *The Montagues and Capulets were effectively having a gang war.* What Romeo and Juliet did was *make it stop*. Except that everyone involved, the Prince included, had their heads so far up their asses that nothing but their children killing THEMSELVES because of THE PARENTS’ ACTIONS (or in the Prince’s case two of his relatives getting killed along the way) could make them realize oh shit, this is not good, and make peace.

The Prince reiterates this in his closing remarks, in case anyone missed it, even blaming himself: “and I, for winking at your discords, too have lost a brace of kinsmen.”

Modern readers should actually hone in on this pretty well, because we’re still doing this shit. The publicized suicides of queer kids, of girls who were raped, of trans kids - notice how there are all these things a lot of society was fucking ignoring until those happened?

(And actually killing yourself explicitly to bring attention to the wrongs and abuses being done to you that you cannot escape was a cultural norm even then, and can be found behind a ton of ghost stories and revenge stories. Shakespeare knew what he was doing.)

POINT THE THIRD: let’s talk about Romeo and Rosalind vs Romeo and Juliet.

Some context: Shakespeare is not a boy band. Shakespeare is Fall Out Boy. NEVER take anything he’s saying at surface level. His most famous cycle of sonnets is actually a super bleak charting of the failure of love between an older and younger man that sort of devolves into this sordid triangle between Narrator, Golden Youth and Dark Lady, and that whole “my mistress’ eyes” sonnet is nowhere near as complimentary or appearance-positive as people seem to think it is. (The Narrator - who is a character in his own right - is tearing down other women, not elevating his mistress.)

So there was this guy named Petrarch, who popularized the sonnet to HIS format (in Italian) by writing a whole bunch of poems to Laura, who was unobtainable, not interested in him, and eventually dead. THIS BECAME THE FASHION: devoted love and adoration to this woman you couldn’t have, who didn’t want you, and perferrably died chaste so you could idealize her without fear she’d do something human. And Romeo is ABSOLUTELY being a Pining Petrarchan Lover with Rosalind. He’s also writing cliche drivel so cliche it’s MEANT to sound like cliche drivel, to a woman we never even see on-stage.

Then there’s Juliet. And you know what the BIG difference is with Juliet?

Juliet is right there. She’s *PARTICIPANT*. She is matching him passion for passion and lust for lust and, in poetic form, EVEN LINE FOR LINE. Their speech together COMBINES into sonnets - SHAKESPEAREAN sonnets, aka the form Shakespeare made up for himself because he thought Petrarch’s wasn’t as cool. And suddenly cliches are being thrown out. The cliche was the mistress being the moon: fuck it, Romeo says, Juliet is the SUN; the cliche was to swear by the moon, the stars, and Juliet says no don’t do that, swear by YOU. They even get into blasphemy. Juliet is the OPPOSITE of a Petrarchan mistress: she is right there, she is SO right into Romeo right back, she’s alive, and the more he encounters her and the more she’s human and wanting and silly and joking the more he adores her. He loves her MORE after they’ve fucked, after Juliet is manifestly no longer the chaste unachievable idol.

Is it true love? Who knows. They’re both babies, and it’s a play: conventions of the theatre DO allow for people to fall in love at first sight. But whether it’s love or just infatuation, the point is they’re both right there, they’re both feeling it equally and as partners, and Juliet gets to be a living participant with her own desires.

(Like seriously her wedding-night speech before she finds out Tybalt’s dead is pretty damn sexy, guys.)

And whether or not it’s love or infatuation the play and the text very clearly come together to indicate that what’s between Juliet and Romeo is DIFFERENT than that crap with Rosalind.

POINT THE FOURTH: And minor, but still important - R&J and the Dream were almost certainly written more or less at the same time, and it’s of note that the Play Within The Play in this case both STARTS OUT lacking all the other context thats attached to Romeo and Juliet’s story as I laid out above, but that Bottom et al go on to strip it more and more and more of its meaning and context as they go on, rendering it nothing more than silly melodrama. The joke, thus, is rather more complex.

SUMMARY: Romeo and Juliet is a stunningly rich play that is mostly about how feuds fuck people over badly and how if you have to wait until YOUR KIDS OFF THEMSELVES to figure that out you deserve to lose your children. Romeo and Juliet are victims of the feud and its mindless death-lust, not perpetrators of death on others. They’re not supposed to be figures of ridicule OR representatives of True Love: they’re supposed to make the audience go “oh BABIES, no, you’re going to end so badly” and then be sad when they do.

Also common knowledge about social practices of the past is usually wrong. Thank you and good night.

I have been waiting for this rebuttal for ages oh my gods. 

Sassy gay friend! This man is my hero.

I have no stake in one interpretation or the other, I just like these kinds of intellectual deconstructions filled with snark. =)

“…unobtainable, not interested in him, and eventually dead.”  :) Fabulous. And so true.

witdiseased:

Executive dysfunction is basically going “Okay one two three go. And now. Aaaaaaannnnnnnd we’re goinnnnng now.” for like three hours before the thing happens

jamyesterday:

burntcopper:

questbedhead:

homeworldlapis:

to add to this “humans are weird” thing
did you know that humans are the only species on earth with the ability to throw things with any significant degree of accuracy and force (apes can throw with about the force of a human ten year old, but cant lock their wrists well enough for accuracy)

and we just never really think about it bc its so easy and simple to us that pretty much all of our sports are based around the concept of throwing things accurately

so
what if the concept of projectile weapons takes most species FOREVER to get the hang of, or even come up with in the first place.
a human goes onto a ship and throws some trash into the nearest reclaimer, shouts “kobe!” and all the other aliens on board absolutely LOSE THEIR MINDS

I definitely didn’t know this about humans but it’s actually really neat

‘This place needs a dartboard.’
*darts is explained*
‘You… throw sharp objects at a tiny point on a circle with the expectation of hitting it and mock those who do not achieve this amazing feat.’
‘It’s better if you’ve had a couple of beers.’
‘You insist that you’re more accurate when partially intoxicated. I have seen you intoxicated. Fine motor control is not something I associate with intoxication.’
‘The one sport where doping is actually encouraged.’
'Humans. How. Just how. ’
'You think this is hard, try throwing cards.’

I’m now super enchanted with the idea that there are all these alien racs out there that basically didn’t do projectiles until at least they had geometry and aerodynamics worked out– no throwing stones or slings and arrows, nothing range until catapults with some heavy maths calculations behind them because they couldn’t eyeball it. And some of them not even having that– going from hand-to-hand to computer-targetted bombs, pretty much. And then coming to earth and finding out about spears and bows and arrows and slings and skipping stones– and suddenly there’s a rush on their homeworlds of all these really bad pop-xenopyschoanthropology books about the effect of being able to kill at a distance on our pyschocultural development, how it effects our perception of ourselves and the universe - all these bad science, lurid explanations about how this has effected our strange alien minds to give us warped senses of territoriality or death or social-unit-bonding.

ohfili:

please watch brooklyn nine-nine

Cheerio's bee-friendly flower mix includes some invasive species:

clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead:

which sux BUT this article links to Cheerio’s partner which has specially sorted groups of plants for different regions, including endangered plants!!

I looked up all the plants in Xerces’ Eastern Great Lakes Region mix (good for Indiana, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and western New York) and all are native to my region. Many are endangered, so planting them in these areas helps to restore their populations in areas where they may be disappearing.

Xerces also publishes regional gardening guides to help you figure out the best plants to buy if you prefer a DIY approach. Meanwhile, if you want to check the status of a random plant you’ve brought home from a garden store, check out the USDA’s PLANTS database. If your state is green, that means the plant is native there. Click on the “legal status” tab to see if the plant is on any federal or state noxious weed lists.

But there’s more to creating a bee-friendly habitat than just planting flowers. If you spray pesticides on or near the flowers, the bees are once again in danger, so you need to be aware of what you (or your lawn service) is spraying. Xerces would like you to sign a pollinator pledge swearing that you’ll lay off the insecticides, and that you’ll grow plants that nourish bees and other pollinators (like butterflies and their caterpillars) year-round.

bairnsidhe:

That child has an excellent “Watch me, Bitch” face.

violent-darts:

zorohime:

Straight people know that you’re supposed to like your partner right? Like enjoy them as another human being?

There are times I seriously wonder. 

npr:

Now, as adherents of the great and terrible AP Stylebook — which also eschews the Oxford comma — we must admit the moral of this story flies in the face of everything (or one thing) NPR’s own sentences stand for.

But we offer these stories as a reminder that every punctuation mark deserves a fair hearing, a glimpse into the glories of grammar(,) and a quiet rebellion against the tyranny of copy editors everywhere.*

*Just a joke, NPR copy desk! Please don’t break out the red pen.

The Oxford Comma: Great For Listing, Pontificating, And Winning Court Cases

Image by Chelsea Beck/NPR

Team Oxford Comma FOR LIFE.

incorrectbioware:

Dragon Age:Origins/Parks and Recreation

youcancallmepotter:

do u ever think back on old conversations with people and think “oh! foreshadowing. that was real life foreshadowing.”

prorevenge:

About 6 or 7 months ago, my neighbor got a drone. I don’t mind people having hobbies, but for some reason he insisted on flying like the biggest jerk possible. He would hover in front of other houses and windows, try to “race” cars going down the road, and worst of all he had a habit of flying his drone in my fenced back yard buzzing over my dog, diving low just over my dogs head before circling around to do it again. My dog isn’t small, he’s about 70lbs and a Malamute, but the drone terrified him, and I was worried what would happen if it hit him.

I asked my neighbor several times to please not fly in my yard and explained that it was scaring my dog, he basically told me to get lost and laughed in my face. When it still continued, I called the police. Unfortunately there wasn’t much they could do other than ask him to please not fly over my house/property.

Finally, in late December it happened - my dog got tired of his shit and managed to catch the drone right as it was diving towards him. He shredded the drone, the thing was just a jumbled mess of wires and plastic.

Neighbor was pissed. He stormed over to my house swearing and threatening me, which I ignored. A week later, I got a summons to small claims court - he wanted $900 for the cost of his drone and an additional $300 for supposedly denying him access to his property (the drone sat in my yard for a couple hours before it was retrieved). F*ck that. He could have killed my dog. I don’t have kids or a girlfriend, I just have my dog who is my best friend for the past 7 years. That dog has moved with me three times, was there when I graduated college, saw me buy my first house and my first new car. I love my dog.

Went to LegalAdvice, got some great help from them. Turns out, him suing me was the best thing to ever happen. When we got to small claims court, the judge basically laughed away his claims that I had intentionally trained my dog to attack his drone. But little did he know I was prepared. I had dozens of photos of my yard showing it was impossible for him to “accidentally” fly that low to my dog, videos of him harassing my dog in the past, and I had saved all my medical bills from taking my dog to the vet. $700 for an xray? Check. Another $250 to sedate him during? Why not, don’t want him being uncomfortable. Full dental exam with tooth cleaning/repair? $400. Then there was the cost of anti-anxiety meds and a secondary check up, wet food for a week in case his teeth were hurt, and extra just for good measure. In the end, the a-hole ended up owing me almost $2,000, and now is being investigated by the FAA for not having a registered drone and violating several FAA regulations concerning drone flight, too near an airport, too close to other people, out of sight of operator and waaay above the maximum altitude.

Enjoy never being allowed to fly drones again, d*ck.

scientia-rex:

OH GOD MY HEART

theghostoffawkes:

dendritic-trees:

elidyce:

dendritic-trees:

for a Humans are Weird story.

So human babies REALLY need to be touched. Its totally critical for development. Small babies can literally die if you don’t cuddle them enough.

But imagine that the aliens are more like reptiles, in that they just sort of hatch and their parents feed them or stay around (and presumably, like, educate them, since they’re intelligent aliens), but don’t carry them around or cuddle in the same way.

So one of them gets stuck with a human baby that they’re responsible for and of course, they go ask a xenobiologist or someone ‘what do you do for a human baby, they’re all weird and squishy’.

And the scientist says: well, you have to stroke them. Like actually pick them up and stroke their skin.

Why, says the alien, what could that possibly accomplish. Does it make their skin tougher. Will they grow proper scales.

No, no, that’s just what human skin is like, you just… you have stroke them or they won’t grow right. They get a stroking-deficiency and can die.

Suddenly our obsession with petting everything makes sense to them.

“Why do they ask to pet our fur? Why do they touch every animal we find? Humans are so strange!”

“No, no, Pod Leader, we have discovered the reason for this. Humans require tactile contact for health. Their young will actually die without frequent touchings of skin, Even as adults, their health deteriorates if they are isolated from touch. Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is trying to nurture us and preserve our healthfulness with this touching they offer.”

“… they actually believe that touching our fur with their grubby paws is healthful?”

“For humans, Pod Leader, it is.A little unsanitary, we are understanding the reservations, but it is kindly meant. We think it is actually very nice of Human Technical Adjunct Rupert to be so concerned with our healthfulness.”

“We are still not sure we believe this. That sounds like a weak attempt at deceit to us.”

“Let us show you this vid of humans nurturing their young, it is very instructive.”

Some time later, Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is bewildered but pleased to find that fur-petting is now encouraged provided they have washed their paws. This seems reasonable to Human Technical Adjunct Rupert.

I LOVE THIS ADDITION SO MUCH!

😢

voidbat:

berniesrevolution:

These guys are literally asking what “benefits” (to the rich) Meals on Wheels provides and since it doesn't give any benefits (to the rich) they should be dismantled.

i am not surviving this administration.