alright story time folks. this actually happened a few months ago, but i was just reminded by @yawpkatsi‘s FUBAR.
i was sitting in the waiting room at my therapists, and this middle age man with a service dog walk in and sit down across the room from me. his dog has a service vest on and immediately lays down underneath the chair his owner is sitting in (not an easy feat as he was a pitbull mix of some sort). anyway, the man and i start talking, and he says his dog (can’t remember his name, so lets call him james), is for his ptsd. we keep talking and after a while james starts whining. i stop talking, cause idk what that means. but the man just smiles and asks me if i want to pet james. i, of course say yes, never turn down an opportunity to pet a doggo. he looks down at james and tells him to “go on then”, and immediatey james leaps the few feet seperating us and sits at my feet. he starts nuzzling at me and licking my hands, and i look up at the man, cause this doesn’t really seem like proper service dog behavior. i tell him that, he laughs, and says james is much better behaved when they aren’t here, cause james tends to get overwhelmed here. i’m kinda confused, its not like there are a lot of people or noise or smells in here? but he continues and says it’s because james’ primary job is to comfort ppl in distress and in a waiting room for a therapist, just about everyone needs some comfort.
so that’s the story of the dog that wanted to help everyone and almost made me cry cause he cared about me so much.
i see you, tumblr, talking about intersectionality, unless the subjects in question are trump supporters, in which case there is no intersectionality IT’S JUST RACISM THEY’RE ALL EVIL RACISTS
nobody’s telling you to agree with trump supporters, just to acknowledge that their racism IS ALSO bound up with the death of the middle class and the death of rural communities, that their horrible white-man howling is NOT ONLY about one thing BUT ALSO about multiple shitty things, and that economic woes can fuel racism (but are obviously not the ONLY things that fuel racism, a position that no one is espousing anyway)
think hard about why you’re willing to talk about intersectionality when it matters to you but not apply it to those you despise
See, here’s the thing though. I don’t despise those people. Those people are my family. I get, better than most people, that there are a huge variety of factors at play in making them what and who they are. I grew up with these people, in that culture. There’s socio-economic factors. There’s religious factors. I have family that literally did not have running water in their homes until well after I was born. I GET how shitty things are in some parts of the country. My father and grandfather were both Kentucky coal miners who left KY to move to Detroit and work in the auto industry.
Yes. Rural areas are underserved and depressed and things are hell there. I get WHY Trump has support there. I also do not think they deserve a pass for not thinking that I’m a full human being because I’m queer, or that “those people” are here to destroy the country, just because their lives are hard. I wouldn’t give that same pass to someone who lives in Manhattan. Why would I to someone in a rural area?
There is a difference between “this candidate is promising to make my life better by making sure I can earn more money” and “this candidate is promising to make my life better by making sure all those subhuman people get what’s coming to them”.
Intersectionality ceases to apply when some of the people in question want me dead.
The racism isn’t fucking wrapped up in it. THey were already racist and their racism is being used to get them to support the very people who fucked them over. This isn’t an intersectional issue.
Signed, someone whose family also consists of more than a few rural white folks.
New Rule: you don’t get to use the word intersectionality if you don’t know what it means. Being a racist is not an axis. It doesn’t work that way.
Like…you DO know there are probably poor people who DON’T support Trump, right? This just comes off as somewhat classist to me, assuming that poorer people get a pass for being racist.
minority communities are disproportionately poor and yet almost none of us are supporting Trump. the class issues are real, that pain is 100% sympathetic, but what’s not sympathetic is the fact that folks are EXPLICITLY getting excited about the openly racist white nationalist rhetoric.
these same folks didn’t respond to Bernie Sanders the same way. there’s little overlap between Sanders’ supporters and Trump supporters despite speaking to similar populist concerns, and there’s a reason for that.
nobody has to be sympathetic towards people who are hateful and openly advocating terrifying violence towards them. nobody gets a pass for being a wretched nightmare of a human being just because they’re going through economic hardship - we’re ALL going through economic hardship but only Trump supporters get excited about dehumanizing and even murdering their unwanted brown/LGBT/non-Christian neighbors.
Btw I live in rural KY and…LOTS OF US ARE VOTING FOR HILLARY. AND MANY OF US ARE NOT WHITE. OR STRAIGHT. OR CHRISTIAN.
do you ever think about how perfectly steve, bucky, and sam typify the 3 big wars america’s fought in over the past century?
steve is the soldier who fought in world war 2. he’s the tail end of the glory and honor of war. his reasons for fighting are clear cut, moral, as far as he can tell. but the weapons used are too deadly, too fatal for glory and honor, really. there’s the attempt to treat enemy combatants with respect, with honor, all while killing them quick than has ever been possible before. there’s the unease of the shift from the old style of fighting to the new. there’s the tiredness that only comes from a second global war in only two decades. there’s the closure that comes from unprecedented total destruction. the thought of “maybe now we can go home. maybe now we can build lives like our parents, those of us that are left.”
bucky is the soldier who fought in vietnam. he’s the one that couldn’t dodge the draft, that couldn’t evade the fight no matter how hard he tried. he’s the one who followed the orders he had to, and rebelled against all the others. his uniform was askew, more civvies than not. he didn’t look a soldier, and he didn’t fight like one either. he didn’t know why he was fighting, who he was fighting. he saw too many innocents die by the hands of his comrades, of himself. he felt agent orange burn his lungs, saw orphans crying in the streets. he came home, the rat-a-tat of machine guns echoing in his ears, always. he disembarked a plane, and was spat on by anti-war protesters. he couldn’t even be angry– he agreed with them. he participated in the winter soldier investigations, confessed what he’d been forced to do, and that almost abated the weight on his shoulders. almost.
sam is the soldier who fought in afghanistan. the modern soldier, with just as much shit as the rest of them. the difference is, where steve was greeted with celebrations and bucky was greeted with vitriol, sam is overlooked, forgotten. he suffers in silence, expected to endure without protest. sam copes, but not all vets are able to do the same. afghan war vets are the ones who take their own lives in droves, the unacknowledged, unknown aftershocks from an invasion founded on half-formed ambitions from men in suits who’d never have to bear the real burden. sam is the modern day vet, unknown, unseen, unthanked.
No wonder they’re all Captain America
So is Nat the Cold War? People don’t see a soldier when they look at her, because she really isn’t, just like the cold war was never really a “war”. Nat is the spy on the run, the power never fully unleashed, the constant sense of fear that there is no backing down, no running– there are no vets of the cold war, but there are always the living casualties.
New species of bat found, Niumbaha superba, and it’s adorable.
Oh wow! I’m glad people are as excited about animals as I am. Here’s some additional photos. Fun fact: this bat is so different from others that a new genus was created!
FUZZY FUZZY CUTE CUTE
MARBLE CAKE BAT MARBLE CAKE BAT
What a darling little baby we now have on the earth. ;u;
okay no.
this bat? this bat looks like a bee.
i do not like bees. do not like bees at all. I mean I appreciate how they keep me alive with their pollinating stuffs but a giant BEE IS FUCKING FRIGHTENING.
I thought it looked more like a giant fucking moth which I know for some people is very frightening but I think they’re super fluffy and cute. But then I also like bees?
Random Headcanon: The Klingon Empire’s “honourable warrior” culture isn’t such a weird, dysfunctional caricature just because of bad writing - it’s actually like that from an in-character perspective, too.
Most of the Klingons who appear on-screen are nobility of some description, and what we’re looking as is a warrior caste that’s made an imperfect transition to being a class of bureaucrats and administrators at some point between the Original Series and The Next Generation - sort of like what happened with the samurai in post-Shogunate Japan.
They’ve got a lot of cultural anxiety tied up in that role shift, and they’ve overcompensated by constructing this nostalgic mythos of a Golden Age of Glorious Battle that never actually existed. The vaunted warrior’s code is a recent invention - largely post-dating that transition, in fact - and those who take it most seriously typically hail from clans whose “warriors” haven’t seen real combat in generations.
Basically, imagine a society ruled by self-hating historical cosplay nerds who have the authority to have you killed if you point out how ridiculous they are.
Pretty sure “money can’t buy happiness” is meant to actually mean “don’t neglect emotional health and caring for the people in your life in the pursuit of more wealth than you need”, but instead middle-class and rich people use it to tell poor people “don’t strive to have financial security even though I have it”.
write disabled characters! write disabled characters who arent the villain! write disabled characters who stay alive! write disabled characters who are realistic!! write disabled characters who dont get cured!!!!
In the same vein as other ‘things humans do that aliens might be weirded out by’ what if human pattern recognition skills were the thing? Like the ability to see a cloud resolve into a dog, or faces in wall patterns. Stuff that evolved from predators having camouflaging abilities, or let’s face it, bugs that can look basicaly like a leaf to prey ON.
Imagine an alien being super confounded by a human being like ‘oh, that control board looks like a face’ and it’s just this big grouping of random lights and line but no ALL the humans on board think it looks like a FACE and theyve started NAMING it. And it just seems so confusing- is there anything on this flat painted wall? ‘No of course not’ HOW IS THERE AN OF COURSE NOT. What about in that galaxy? And the human squints and stares at it and says ‘yeah, it looks like a cat.’
And they an draw out what they’re recognizing in the lines but it’s just so strange.
And then an enemy develops ‘cloaking technology’ that’s based on camouflaging and are so angry that every single human is able to point it out because it’s a completely obvious moving shape to them.
or: alien species are introduced to leaf insects, tigers, and that one octopus that imitates a coconut and freak the heck out.
god I love this kind of post
The Girrami had never known deception until they started expanding into the greater galaxy. They did not like it. The closest word in their home language for deception translated roughly to “speaking before having all the facts”. It had taken time to learn that other races would outright hide information, or worse, speak untruths for their own ends.
It was fortunate, the Girrami thought, that they had resources that the race who called themselves “Humans” desperately needed for medical supplies. The fact that the Girrami had (in line with their overarching philosophy of sharing what was needed) offered these resources freely, without (as the Humans would say) “strings attached”, had made many the Humans quickly warm to the Girrami, and in turn, freely offer the Girrami advice on how to better negotiate.
Human: “Honestly, that was almost embarrassing to watch. Tell you what, you said that you had contact with the Farop?”
Cappa Girrami: “Yes. We have had… difficulties in our dealings with that race.”
Human: “Yeah that must have been like watching puppies walk through a meatgrinder. Those guys are total assholes. Tell you what, your medicine saved my little boy, so I’m willing to do a little quid pro quo. Are you people familiar with the concept of a corporate lawyer? Because I am willing to offer you my services for cheap. No, don’t thank me, this will be my pleasure.”
Humans sometimes had the most odd and upsetting turns of phrase. But once the Girrami started contracting these… lawyers and businesspeople to conduct major negotiations, many of their dealings with other races did seem to be flowing a lot more smoothly.
It did however make the Girrami wonder just how it was that the humans had become so adept at sensing deception. It seemed natural to them to start learning to “lie” and detect untruths from an early age.
And then the Girrami scientists were invited to observe a collection of specimens kept in a “natural history museum” and suddenly it all made sense.
Girrami Scientist 1: “Wait, what is that!?”
Human: “It’s a stick insect.”
Girrami Scientist 2: “And that?”
Human: “A leaf insect.”
Girrami Scientist 1: “…your insects practice deception?”
Human: “… I guess you could call it that? It’s a form of camouflage.”
Girrami Scientist 2: “What is this…’camouflage’?”
And then the Girrami realised that the Humans came from a planet where deception was so endemic that even plants practiced it.
No wonder the Humans were so good at detecting it.
In October? That's a good way to lose toes. Or, at least, to WISH you'd lost toes.
It’s Fall in North America, and that means it’s probably about to rain where you live, or it just finished raining, or you’re reading this blog outside in the rain right now and your phone is all wet. Nobody likes to be all wet! That’s for fish. Avoiding wetness is why humans invented the raincoat, the umbrella, and Crocs. And yet, truly I say to you today: wear flip-flops in the rain.
all the little hurdles they had to overcome– like getting the neural network to hone in on the most useful fragments of the incoming message, and teaching it to identify semantically different responses instead of generating, say, three variations of “let’s meet tomorrow” to reply with
ANYWAY:
Another bizarre feature of our early prototype was its propensity to respond with “I love you” to seemingly anything. As adorable as this sounds, it wasn’t really what we were hoping for.
i walk into starbucks and order a pumpkin spice latte with 13 shots of espresso. i tell the barista that i intend to transcend humanity and become a god. i ask for no whip cream
you say this jokingly but i had a customer actually order a pumpkin spice latte with 9 shots of espresso (also no whip) and when i asked her to verify that she did indeed want 9 shots of espresso she looked me dead in the eyes and said “i have 5 kids”
“Most millennials I know struggle with mental illness to some degree. Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and more. I wonder how much of that anxiety comes from being told that wanting a living wage, affordable college, or adequate healthcare means that you’re being a spoiled entitled brat. It really doesn’t. The generations before us HAD a living wage, affordable college, and adequate healthcare. But now, inflation has far surpassed the minimum wage, college tuition and loan interest rates are through the proverbial roof, and medical bills are the top cause of bankruptcy in America.
These things were not caused by millennials, but after being raised on a steady diet of “you’re entitled,” we don’t even need to hear it from other people. We believe it about ourselves. As a society, we now romanticize struggle, busy-ness, and “the hustle.” If you’re not losing sleep and working two or three jobs, you must not want it enough.
What if we’re actually not crazy? What if wanting to work one full-time job and have the ends not only meet but actually overlap a little is NOT an entitled pipe dream?”
Imagine having one straightforward job - hard work, but work you can handle - that you know will be there tomorrow, and will be there with raises in ten years. It pays for your nice little home, you have no debt because your education was affordable, and groceries, medical/dental care, utilities, and a bit of entertainment all fall inside your budget - with enough left over to put away in a retirement plan. You are safe, you are solid, and life is sensible.
When I imagine that, I first get heart-sick at how impossibly beautiful it sounds, and then I feel how the fear and stress and self-destructive-coping-mechanisms would just float the fuck away.
Like humans aren't pretty much murder machines without the cuteness.
“Like y’all cat people know that cats are just tiny murder machines that only look cute as they’re trying to murder everything”
I don’t understand why people don’t understand that this is part of their appeal. Hell yes when my kitten plays and does that cute back-leg-kicking thing I am WELL AWARE that she’s attempting to snap the neck of whatever “prey” she’s attacking (most recently a shirt)… that adorable killing instinct is part of why we love these cute little purring beasts
You have superpowers but you decide not to be a hero or a villain, instead you use your powers to be really good at your mundane job.
This is less a writing prompt and more “literally what I fantasize about every day”… What’s that, I can use telekinesis to clean the dishes while I sit my crippled ass on the couch and rest? Fuck yes give me the thing
So I got tired of not seeing any news on HRC’s actual positions because every single media outlet is busy fact-checking Trump’s latest Twitter tantrum, and decided to look some up.
Also, tired of stories about 26-year-olds complaining that they can’t get behind Clinton because they don’t know what she stands for, and also have no idea who Ralph Nader is, even though these frickin’ kids are only two years younger than me and also Wikipedia exists
omg you guys, her plans for addressing autism. Note the total absence of the word “curing.” It’s all about “providing support” and “early diagnosis” and “improving access” and “increasing opportunities.”
You know how otherwise work-ready people sometimes get stuck as unpaid caregivers when a family member becomes sick or disabled? Well, Hillary wants to give those people credit where credit is due.
She’s planning to upgrade our 25 most costly freight bottlenecks
Did you know our country had a cost issue with freight bottlenecks?
Because I had no idea
and this happens over and over with her policies
things you didn’t even know were things
but Hermione Rodham Clinton has already looked up the statistics, talked to the experts, and written the ten-page memo
and listen, voting for HRC for no other reason than to keep Trump and his tax-evading business-bankrupting employee-stiffing racist sexist across-the-board-hateful loose-cannon general inanity out of office is completely legitimate –
but if I never see another “why don’t we know more about her plans?? it is a hopeless unsolvable mystery for the ages!” post again it will be too soon.
This is the conscience I’m voting.
Do not come at me with any lesser of two evils bullshit or “well, at least she’s not Trump.”
Bitch has her shit together and it’s time people start respecting that!
