I am thankful for Tumblr and it’s never-ending cornucopia of great posts… reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it … Continued
it’s completely acceptable to stay alive for tiny reasons. because you want to hear your favorite song one more time. because your dog will miss you if you leave. because the moon is just too pretty to never see again. because you haven’t seen the next season of a really good tv show. because you want to see the christmas lights this year. if you’re alive, you’re doing enough. if you’re surviving, i’m proud of you.
Young native man from the Ojibwe nation, reports being openly targeted by a police officer using “non-lethal” weapons to cause serious harm.
“He shot me with a rubber bullet right in the belly button, and when I showed him that he had hurt me, he just smiled and shot both my kneecaps,” he said.
“I was tear gassed over 15 times, which made it hard to breathe and left my face burning for hours. I got hosed down with a water cannon in freezing temperatures leaving me hypothermic, and I was slammed into a barbed wire barricade out of panic caused by the police after a flash grenade was thrown and caught fire to a field,” said Cheyenne, a young native woman from Michigan, whose face was streaked with tear gas, and whose eyes were red and swollen.
Yep. Thanksgiving. Native American Heritage Month. Celebrated in 2016 by encroaching on Native land and assaulting Native bodies.
It’s the traditional American way.
Oh yeah its the time of year to be thankful, therefore give thanks for rubber bullets, tear gas, water / sound cannons, concussion grenades and the freedoms for a bunch of evil bastards to attack groups of unarmed people without the “legal” ability to defend themselves.
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
‘But surely you have records of volcanic activity doing tremendous damage to human settlements.’
‘Yep. Pompeii is legendary. Entire cities went. Towns buried under lava, peoples’ brains boiled in the first rush of heat, loads more killed by falling pumice.’
‘ah, good, they learned their lesson and didn’t build there again.’
‘…well…’
‘Are you seriously telling me this volcano is legendary for killing several urban conurbations and you built on top of it AGAIN?’
‘In our defence it hasn’t actually done it since.’
‘What about earthquake-prone areas? Tell me you’re at least vaguely sensible about those.’
‘Oh yeah. After the first major earthquake that flattens a city, we build them better.’
And then the aliens learn what it means to “facepalm” despite not having palms per se….
I’m not saying I’m definitely an NPC, but if I am a protagonist, the game I’m starring in is probably free-to-play.
Makes sense:
I can only do something useful once every few hours
Ads are everywhere
The pacing seems designed to be deliberately frustrating
A lot of the hassle would go away if had a ton of money
I feel like I must be the protag of one of those abandoned indie games that got popular and then forgotten. There’s no patches to fix anything ever, no comprehensive FAQ anywhere, you can play the game OK enough but wow it could use a lot of improvement, and there’s just so many glitches. Also no ending or satisfying conclusions, ever. If I turn a quest in, I might get a reward, or it might make the whole thing crash, it’s a gamble.
Though I think they must have updated it with a disastrously hard mode, 2016 and all, that I cannot opt out of.
Do not wear contact lenses if you are in a situation where you may be tear-gassed. When I went through basic training, we were warned that there was a possibility the tear gas they were using could melt contact lenses.
BOOOOOOOOOOOST!!!!!!!!!!
Jesus christ.
also: if you’re asthmatic; get the HELL out of there. tear gas can cause and extreme reaction and kill you almost instantly. your inhaler will NOT do shit. just get the fuck out of dodge.
Shit. Reblogging for more vital information.
^ ATTN: sickle cell anemia:
trouble breathing due to tear gas can cause a crisis if you have sickle cell anemia. I know this because Bahrain, which had protests, had several deaths and hospitalizations due to this. Considering sickle cell is prevalent in people with African heredity and no one’s mentioned this, thought I would share.
Former Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein may be eyeing a recount in three states.
Political observers on Wednesday noticed Stein had launcheda fundraising page on her website for a recount.
“After
seeing compelling evidence of voting anomalies, the Stein/Baraka Green
Party Campaign is launching an effort to ensure the integrity of our
elections. With your help, are raising money to demand recounts in
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania– three states where the data
suggests significant discrepancies in vote totals,” the page reads.
It goes on to say the group needs to raise “over $2 million by this Friday, 4pm central,” to ensure a recount.
This has to be for Hillary Clinton since there’s no way she’d call for an audit herself. Jill Stein knows good and well she didn’t win any states.
Reblogging here to get word out as fast as possible. Donations to the fund for a recount are needed by THIS FRIDAY by 4 PM CT.
Even if you feel in any way uncertain about this, isn’t it better to donate the money and it go to nothing, than to not donate and find out something that could’ve been done wasn’t due to lack of funds?
So the deal as I understand it is:
* If Clinton were to call for a recount in any state, and the recount in that state did NOT turn out to elect her in that state instead, she would be required to pay the cost of the recount in that state.
* They do that to keep people from just vengefully, constantly demanding recounts for no reason.
* When it says Wednesday here, it means today. As I write this. November 23rd. (Awww, it’s also the 53rd anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who! ANYWAY)
* When I first saw the call for donations, it was at $45,000 out of their $2,500,000 goal. An hour or two later, it was at $80,000.
* It’s been less than 12 hours and they’re now up to $1.3 MILLION, more than halfway to their goal.
* They’re actually going to pull this off.
* I am not going to look it up for each state (you can google “who can ask for a recount in Wisconsin” or wherever but WI has a whole book about it and no thanks), but it looks like yes, Jill Stein can in fact ask for a recount. In Michigan, you have to be one of the people who ran, and lost, to ask for a recount. That seems to be standard practice.
* If Jill Stein calls for a recount, she DEFINITELY has to be the one to pay for it, since there is no fucking way it’s going to be like “Hey, guys, Jill Stein actually won!”
* I honestly think this is amazing. Even if it doesn’t work.
* Because this means that there were like… unless there are other third-party candidates that were on all three states’ ballots, there were probably only threepeople on this earth who had the ability to call for a recount. Two people with the interest. And one who is actually doing it.
* And for the first time in history, there is actually a way for everyone who wants this to immediately find out that it’s possible and throw money into the pot.
* Everything Trump is already doing is so fucking horrible, and the only saving grace is how incredibly hard people are organizing around every. freaking. single. thing. Again, we’ve never simultaneously had an election like this here, and an organizing tool like the internet, and it’s just.
I have multiple friends who are spontaneously posting to Facebook with shit like, “I am horrified that it has taken this kind of election for me to finally
start hearing through my white privileged ears. I was not in action. I
was complacent. No more.” (actual quote from a middle aged, upper-middle-class, straight cis white woman in Minnesota)
People who were already radical are now even more radical. There’s a powerful shift happening, and powerful communities being built.
I’m seeing people come together to support projects and nonprofits and communities and issues that were already SUPER necessary, that they are finally realizing desperately need support. Doing things that were always needed, that now they perceive as an emergency and want to do anything to fix.
Everything is so horrifying, but this gives me so much hope in the middle of it.
Like, earlier today I was crying because Trump announced he was going to eliminate funding for NASA to study climate change because he thinks it’s “politicized” science.
Now I’m crying because I’m so moved by all of these people giving whatever they can to make sure there is a recount in the most important states. By the visible evidence that we’re a real force now; that people aren’t just committed at a “tweeting/reblogging about it” level, people are like, NO. WE FUCKING STOP THIS NOW.
* And in the time it took me to write this, they’re now at more than $1.4 million.
here’s the problem with people of color being excluded from fantasy and sci fi narratives (additional to the problem with people of color being excluded from all narratives in general):
sci fi/fantasy is supposed to be the realm of “anything is possible.” and when white people remove people of color from the realm of “anything is possible,” the overt implication is that the presence of people of color is what holds us back from achieving the impossible. it’s like, in order to create a beautiful, amazing, fantastic world, we have to kick out all the brown and black people. that’s the point. that’s what they’re saying.
Let’s start calling “third world” and “developing countries” Previously Colonized Countries, because this way, we’re not ignoring the fact that these countries aren’t just slow in their development, or just happen to be poor, or low on resources. Let’s acknowledge the fact that white Europeans and Americans are the reason our nations are decades behind them. Because for every decade they are ahead of us, there was a decade where our labor power, our resources, our land, contributed to THEIR development.
2. This man is Trump’s pick for Secretary of Commerce.
To be fair I am also gay and think that the blood of young people might be a component for a cure for aging.
I get where you’re coming from but just consider the pure iconography of it.
A billionaire who already exists as a metaphorical parasite on the working class shamelessly casting off the metaphors and demanding our blood to prolong his own life.
But did any of them INSIST on remaining black? I don't think so.
Ben Stein: Barack Obama is the most racist president there has ever been.
Me: Twelve of the forty-three men to serve as president have owned slaves. Eight of those twelve have owned slaves while they served as President. Five of those eight personally owned more than a hundred slaves. Franklin Roosevelt forced Japanese people into concentration camps. Five US presidents have been alleged to be members of the Ku Klux Klan with varying levels of participation in their activities. George Washington made a habit of punishing his slaves for attempting to escape or general "misbehavior" by trading them for casks of wine or barrels of rum. Thomas Jefferson's horrific racism could, and probably should, be the subject of a 12-volume series of books. I'm pretty sure Andrew Jackson just straight-up liked murdering people and coming up with creative ways to murder people, especially Native Americans. Abraham Lincoln was, at the time of his election, probably the least racist president so far, but he was still pretty racist. Ulysses S. Grant famously kept trying to solve problems by expelling all Jews from the area and hoping the problem would go away on its own. "Most racist president ever" is not exactly an easy contest to win.
“Oh please. Taxes are not *your* money. If people could give up the idea that it’s THEIR money being pried out of their hands, rather than just another bill, there’d be a lot less whining. You want lights, you pay the electric company. You want a place to live, you pay the bank or landlord. You want food, you pay the grocery store. You want to live in a civilized society, you pay taxes. Get. Over. It.”
