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the-perks-of-neurodivergency:

athingofvikings:

grumpyoldnord:

discouroborose:

leproblematique:

theroguefeminist:

delistylehardcore:

it rly is weird how theres this culture in progressive spaces where like you can be as mean, as CRUEL even, as you want as long as youre not being explicitly bigoted towards any marginalized group of people and still be seen as a really good person with good morals who nobody is allowed to have beef with bc theyve never done anything racist or homophobic

this culture enables actual abuse. ive seen progressives engage in gaslighting, guilt-tripping, stalking, harassment, witch hunts, death threats, rape threats, and suicide baiting. these abusers are protected by the idea that marginalized people cannot be abusive and that any criticism of the behavior is  “problematic” or tone-policing. the behavior likely emerged as a reaction to tone-policing, respectability politics and moderate liberalism, swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme of aggressive callout culture and groupthink. i also think many progressives are marginalized + disempowered in mainstream society and cope by replicating the same patterns of abuse in a microcosm where they have clout

Addendum: you can also be horribly bigoted toward other marginalized people, so long as you use the ‘correct’ language and attack a marginalized group that is already a popular target of lateral / intra-community aggression (or, as I like to call it ‘I’m too chickenshit to do anything that requires effort or sacrifice, so my activism is screaming at other marginalized people and blaming them for all my issues’).

This is very visible on Tumblr, with a rotating cadre of people (bisexuals, pansexuals, ace/aro people, nonbinary people, intersex people, trans people who don’t subscribe to transmedicalist stances) being the revolving Targets du Jour for some truly vicious hate and smear campaigns, by individuals *who should know better* (but don’t, because they enjoy the thrill of soft, easily reachable targets upon which to vent the rage caused by non-marginalized society). Fundamentally, this is what happens when one’s activism revolves around seeking VENGEANCE (and a completely misplaced one at that!) rather than justice.

Good post but I wanna add another example: people are literally allowed and even encouraged to be as mean-spirited and cruel towards people who exhibit autistic traits, so long as they never actually use the word “autistic.”

TLDR? If you find loopholes to be a dick to someone, you are NOT progressive.

#pretty sure this applies to anti-Semitism as well

@peachdoxie, oh so very much yes.  I’ve been chased out of progressive websites/online spaces nearly every year for the past ten years for the “crime” of being Jewish.

And sometimes people will attack someone they’ve decided is more privileged than them for the crime of being slightly wrong on the internet, and they will keep going until the person is begging for it to stop, or just abandons they’re account altogether. This is not activism. It’s just bullying, but people think they’re totally justified because they picked the ‘right target’ this time. This helps no one. All it does is make people afraid to ask questions in case they get hunted for sport.

Resources For Writing Science Fiction

adastra-sf:

wordsnstuff:

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Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress || Request

Space

Futuristic Technology & Medicine

Aliens, Creatures, and Robots

Science News

Worldbuilding

Constructed Languages & Miscellaneous

Support Wordsnstuff!

An update: James Gunn’s original Center for the Study of Science Fiction has been subsumed into a school department, and all the resources we posted there are gone.

On the plus side, we’ve launched the Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination to continue (and expand) support for writers, including these:

All these resources will keep growing, so stay tuned for more!

steves-babysitter:

winterrnightss:

“It’s literally impossible to be a woman.

You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow, we’re always doing it wrong?

You have to be thin, but not too thin, and you can never say you wanna be thin. You have to say you wanna be healthy, but also, you have to BE THIN.

You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass.

You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean.

You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas.

You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time.

You have to be a career woman, but also, always be looking out for other people.

You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is INSANE, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining!

You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood, but ALWAYS STAND OUT and ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL. But never forget that the system is rigged, so find a way to acknowledge that but ALSO, always be grateful!

You have to never get old. Never be rude. Never show off. Never be selfish. Never fall down. Never fail. Never show fear. Never get OUT OF LINE. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory, and nobody gives you a medal or says ‘thank you!’ And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also, everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself, and every single other woman tie herself into knots, so that people will like us.

And if all of that, is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don’t even know.“ -Gloria the barbie movie


this is it. this is exactly it oh my god.

This is the speech. Write it on every goddamn wall out there.

oldshrewsburyian: “ mapsontheweb: “ The countries that got tea via China through the Silk Road (land) referred to it in various forms of the word “cha”. On the other hand, the countries that traded with China via sea - through the Min Tan port called...

oldshrewsburyian:

mapsontheweb:

The countries that got tea via China through the Silk Road (land) referred to it in various forms of the word “cha”. On the other hand, the countries that traded with China via sea - through the Min Tan port called it in different forms of “te”.

I liked this so much I became curious… and it checks out! The explanation lies, unsurprisingly, in who was interacting with whom in early modern long-distance trade.

thebrazenphlegmatic:

infamousbrad:

kyacchan-comics:

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My contempt towards a brand is directly proportional to how often they interrupt my playlists.

My late father was the one who taught me to be cynical about advertising, for all that putting up ads was literally his whole job. He taught me from a very young age that advertising is expensive, and they tack that cost onto the price. That if something is heavily advertised, you can count on the fact that there’s an identical product out there, usually even manufactured in the same factory, that’s cheaper because they don’t spend all that money on advertising.

Another potential twist on this - be very wary of ads for any companies that can’t sell you anything, because *they still want something from you*.

I don’t mean “fringe product I’m not likely to buy”. I mean companies like Monsanto. If a company’s business model does not allow you, as an individual, to give them your money, and yet they will still spend millions telling you how great they are, take note. Search their name in the news. See what they did that was so bad that they are desperately trying to save face.

mckitterick:

fencehopping:

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How far back in time the new James Webb Telescope can see vs. the Hubble

the reason this works is that light travels at a finite speed (but still very fast - 300,000 kilometers or 186,000 miles per second)

the Sun is about 500 light-seconds from us here on the Earth, so the fiery ball we see in the sky we see is already 500 seconds old

if you spot Jupiter in the morning, what you’re seeing is light reflected from it 37 minutes ago

stars shine way farther away - light from the brightest summer star in the northern sky, Vega, took 25 years to reach us. it’s 146,965,000,000,000 miles away, or 25 light-years, meaning the light takes 25 years to travel that distance at light-speed

the nearest spiral galaxy, Andromeda, spins its stately dance some 2.5 million light-years away. guess how old the galaxy that we can see from Earth is?

so when the Webb Space Telescope imaged this galaxy from almost the beginning of the universe (some 300 million years after the Big Bang), it captured light that’s 13.6 billion years old:

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That red blob is the oldest known galaxy, GLASS-z13, some 13.6 billion light-years away. by now it’s possibly long dead or at least vastly changed since this light left its stars at the dawn of the universe

redlipstickresurrected:

Mark Laita (American, b. 1960, Detroit, MI, USA, based Los Angeles, CA, USA) - 1: Stormtrooper Python  2: King Cobra  3: Big Python  4: Orthriophis Moellendorffi,   5: Orthriophis Taeniurus Friesei  6: Royal Python (Python Regius) nestling its eggs  7: Speckled King Snake  8: Rhinoceros Viper  9: Black Mamba  10: Vogel’s Pit Viper (female), Photography

charlesoberonn:

charlesoberonn:

Historians Thank Donald Trump for Putting a Definitive End to the “Who’s The Worst President” Debate

For all the people saying it’s Reagan. I’m aware and agree that Reagan is terrible. But you’re underestimating just how terrible Trump is.

Not only was he openly fascist and a criminal, he was also just unbelievably incompetent.

When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and his advisors told him about what he should do, he asked them why they even had to help Puerto Rico. And not (just) because he didn’t care.

He didn’t know Puerto Rico was part of the United States. He was the president at the time.

Similar thing happened when he asked his advisors why the US was in NATO. Not just in a sarcastic anti-NATO way. He honestly didn’t know.

Trump’s fascism, criminality, and sheer incompetence eclipsed every US president in awfulness. Including Reagan.

bogleech:

zooophagous:

bonnettbee:

zooophagous:

Seeing people shoot raptors in other countries is fucking wild to me because we have a whole system of super strict laws governing how you can handle an individual FEATHER off of an eagle, and it doesn’t have to even be a dead eagle. One can molt and you can find it on the ground and if you’re caught with it the warden will fuck your entire life. What do you mean people are out there shooting them to protect a fucking pheasant. A pheasant??? That thing I have to avoid running over approximately 459 times any time I leave a major highway???

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My good friend @prismaticate has asked a very good question here, and while I’m not entirely sure I’m qualified to explain it and would love some input from more qualified sources, my SUPER simplified understanding of why the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its numerous modern revisions and addendums have clauses about this included is this:

-It’s basically impossible to tell a feather that’s been picked up off the ground from one that’s been taken from a poached bird

-This used to be a MAJOR problem when bird-feather hats and the like were in high demand back in the day, because several bird species on the edge of extinction kept getting poached in spite of the new laws protecting them since people would just say they “found” any feathers from protected species used in the stuff they were selling, and you couldn’t prove otherwise unless you literally caught them in the act of poaching

-This eventually got SO bad that they had to just make it illegal to have the feathers at all, with certain exceptions made for members of different indigenous groups, or authorized organizations that display them as part of efforts to educate the public about the species they belong to

@zooophagous is this a reasonable rundown? Was there anything I missed/any better sources you might recommend to learn more about this? I know it’s probably far more nuanced than that, but this was kind of the explanation I’d always seen floating around. 😅

That’s pretty much the gist of it! Eagles and eagle feathers have more laws on top of that because of their sacred uses in certain indigenous practices, how they relate to legal falconry, and because eagles at one time were highly endangered while at the same time being a national symbol. Where a cop or a game warden may shrug and look the other way if you, say, illegally picked up a chickadee feather from your bird feeder, if they see a real eagle feather they will notice and will be VERY interested in where it came from.

Not long ago here someone was arrested and charged for violating these laws because they tried to sell a plains feather bonnet at a pawn shop, claiming they had “found it while exploring an abandoned house.”

The clerk suspected it was real eagle, the warden confirmed it was, and because those feathers are so tightly tracked they were able to locate the family of the previous owners who said the item had been stolen some time ago.

If nobody knows you have it, obviously you can get away with it. But if they see it, or God forbid you try to SELL it, the hammer will fall.

Im surprised every time people think it’s a crazy sounding law, it is genuinely one of the only things preventing a lot of native birds from extinction or any asshole could kill as many as they want and just say they found them on the ground