The Other Side of the Hill

professors who have only interacted with other academics for years: “what do you MEAN you don’t know multi-variable calculus yet??”

professors with small kids: “thank you for not putting the lab equipment in your mouths when I turn my back”

Bringing this back to share that one time I slept through part of a zoom meeting with my PhD advisor (who has a toddler) and he told me it was fine, that just meant I was a good sleeper

Professors who work with graduate students: if you finish the multivariate calculus work this week you can put one (1) piece of lab equipment in your mouth

Once had a professor whose previous career was giving educational zoo tours to children, so he’d say stuff like, “now let’s meet our friend, acidic keratin!”

in high school I was in the child development class where we ran the preschool. Class ended and I moved onto the next class, an art class. Sit down next to my friend who was working on a serious piece and casually asked for my thoughts on it, looking for serious critique.

Preschool mode had not turned off so I looked at it, clapped my hands and said “WOW Really great work! Amazing!”, in that same kind of voice you’d say to a toddler who presented you with a random scribble on a piece of paper.

Friend loved the reaction at least lmao.

hey i saw these tags and i think i’m about to kiss you on the mouth rn

If you can’t handle my napoleon when he’s at his invading your country you don’t deserve him at his being the bestest boy

If y’all could do me a massive favor. It turns out that the protestors who were arrested got banned from campus for one year which is a BIG deal considering graduation for some is quite literally two weeks away.

If you could call the office of ius president and say this is unjust and that the students and faculty deserve amnesty I would LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU

Dragon Door Handle - Simontorya Castle Hungary

—Excerpt from a letter from Joseph Fouché to Joachim Murat, 5 July 1805. An accompanying footnote reads: “They (Fouché and his wife) had lost in the dark hours of their lives, from 1794 to 1796, three young children and mourned them.”

Source: Lettres et Documents Pour Servir à l’Histoire de Joachim Murat, Vol 3.

The part about men not seeming effusive about the loss of a child reminded me of a letter I once read from Prince Wilhelm of Prussia to his wife Marianne. They had just lost one of their twin sons and wrote (quite emotionally) about their feelings several letters long. At one point he writes to her in while in the campaign of 1813:

"[...] Do you remember how I used to say, that I could not understand how I got so lucky as to have twin sons, something I never would have dreamed of? It actually only was a dream which instead of lasting one night lasted a little more than one year. I shouldn't instill so many sad pictures in your mind, but since Anton's [his wife's brother] departure there is now nobody here who could understand me concerning this topic. One must have or had had children to be able to assess their loss properly. Most other people view little children like a toy, sometimes even like a small monkey or a small cat. Therefore, it is better to entirely seal one's pain within yourself, so that it won't be desecrated. People around here have often told me, that this loss must be very hard on you. They didn't talk about me at all, as if they wanted to say that something like this would be trivial to a man. The love to a child, the attachment of a child to their parents, their individual character, the hope and concern one has for them since birth - all that are things, which most people don't comprehend."

Just goes on to show how harmful gender roles are.

i'm such a big fan of laios using being well fed as proof that he's serious. like there's so many techbros & etc who will use not eating breakfast as proof that they're productive & just in general, the idea of being "too busy to eat" is getting more common (which is exactly what toshiro is doing here!) but laios is like. no. i'm so serious about this i'm thinking about what comes next. i'm so serious about this i'm making sure my body can do everything it can when i need it.

the fact that everyone in the party took care of themselves & carefully planned out their route & when they'd take breaks is what made them so successful. they always made sure to understand their limits

So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!

*sighs* this was so beautiful when the percentages were 20% : 80%...

Good morning to EDT and CDT, and to the early birds in the mountains

actual criticisms of academia:

criticisms of academia that get made:

remember when you were 10 and you would hang out with your friends in order to Look At The Computer together like you went to their house and experienced the information superhighway together. and then leave

How fucking old are you people?

normal amount

You see, there used to be a time (not all that long ago) when being offline was the default. And going online was the rare and wonderful thing that we (briefly) enjoyed.

It even came with happy modem noises.

They weren't happy noises.

They were polite and reasonable noises! The sound of protocol being followed! Negotiation and compromise!

The box would scream

in retrospect we should maybe have taken the unholy screams as a warning

I'm just saying, if there's a curse that runs along your family line and you don't tell your kids about it, how the hell are they supposed to go on a quest to stop it?

Tell your children about your medical history.

Make them straight adjacent for the homies

This is even sweeter when you listen to his InvestiGates podcast episode with Gates McFadden and learn that his mom worked in theater, that he grew up around a lot of her queer friends, and that he loved The Rocky Horror Picture show (specifically because of Frankenfurter and his queerness)

A real thing that happened is me as a teenager.

I had what turned out to be a dangerous walking pneumonia, for a week, but the manager at Burger King wouldn’t let me off.  My breathing was very loud and ragged.  I was coughing on and breathing on the food.

I wasn’t allowed to leave.  I was told if i called out, I was fired.

So Im shuffling around wheezing loudly swaying with my high fever as I work drive thru by myself, and a paramedic walked in to order dinner.

He goes ballistic, My friends.  He demands to see the Manager.  he chews him out at the top of his lungs so the whole restaurant can here.  Guys working the back came up to watch.  Customers staring and thinking hard about the infectious food they were eating.  Dude losing his shit about how infectious I was and all the people management had been endangering for days judging from my breathing and I needed to be home on antibiotics RIGHT NOW and the health Department was going to hear about this.

I went home.  i got the week off.  Didn’t even need a doctor’s note.

Getting friends management doesn’t know to do this WOULD WORK.

Same manager not letting me take my influenza home a year later  despite repeated vomiting?  Threw up in front of customers.  Customers demanded money back and started threatening the manager with lawsuits.

I got to go home and got time off until I stopped vomitting.

GO AHEAD and THROW UP in front of Customers.  THEY will Complain.

Don’t be shy.  

They are supposed to let you stay home when you are sick.  Stop protecting management. (Hiding how sick you are protects management).  They are abusing you.  Let them reap what they sow.

we DO grow old and happy. btw.

And you find love and it stays with you.

Older women are so, so beautiful, and older trans women are no exception. Celebrate the beauty of our elders! Celebrate trans beauty!

^^^

I wanted to share some more of these, specifically trans women of color. The images I'm posting are from a project called To Survive On This Shore and it's an interview project. I am only posting a handful so it's so worth checking out!

This is Linda, 60

Alexis, 64

Helena, 63

Kendrah, 72 (!!)

Tasha, 65

It was deeply healing to me to discover this project. The site has selected photos and attached interviews and it's definitely worth your time. I didn't include any because the focus of this post imo is transfems but there are a lot of beautiful interviews with transmasc people too if you're interested! But that'll have to be another post 💖

I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

That's love. 🐈‍⬛🐈❤️

cats are so very unclear on what is wrong with us but they want to help

Last time I had a really bad migraine my cat curled herself round my head and purred sympathetically, and actually stayed there through two of her normal mealtimes. It wasn't until I was able to stagger to the kitchen and grab a protein bar for myself that she gave a very small, polite miaow to the effect of "while you're up... could you get something for me too?"

The house from Practical Magic (1998)