Also, current estimates state that the human population will max out at around 9.4 to 10.4 billion; the simple fact is that birth control combined with massive populations condensed into small regions means that people are having fewer kids (the latter because they no longer need to have a dozen children to ensure that maybe half of them will survive to adulthood and keep your family farm functional), and that's okay. Any starvation or lack of supplies that happens is not the result of overpopulation, but of poor supply chains- war, trade disputes, corrupt politicians, and corporate greed are the reasons why not everyone has enough to eat or a house to live in, not overpopulation.

"I cant draw" then do it bad who gives a fuck.....

Partake in the joy of creation just for the fun of it. Just for a laff.

Me @everyone in the notes

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

Someone who says they don't care if dudes wear dresses and makeup is a better ally than someone who says they're a safe space for women and non-binary people. I am not joking.

yeah I went to a gay bar recently with my husband tumblr user beemovieerotica, and a VERY confused capital S Southerner straight man in cargo shorts and a trucker hat showed up

apparently he (who through my drunken memory I remember only as Earl) liked some woman, and she told him that he wasn't cultured enough and needed to attend his first drag show (she also flaked on him)

Now I'm reasonably androgynous and was wearing makeup, a short leather skirt, and black heeled boots, but still when this guy came up to me when I was standing off alone and asked "So. Do you come here often?" with a very earnest expression, I thought. Surely not. This guy doesn't think I'm a straight woman does he????

Anyway I start talking with this guy and he has no idea what the fuck is going on but he is just a very kind and earnest dude and asked a lot of questions (while asking if it was alright if he asked those questions). I track down my husband and friends and I'm like y'all. We need to make sure that Earl has a Good Fucking Time tonight.

Man was completely out of his depth. At one point they put on a puppy auction to raise money for Pride, that started with a 6 ft drag queen in all her glory leading a leather pup out on a leash to the tune of that damned RSPCA "in the arms of the angels" song

We look at Earl. Nervous. He squints, laughs, and then goes "I was wondering why people were dressed like that!" He turned to me and asked "So they're like dogs?" And I said yeah pretty much. And he just chuckled and went "Yeah I thought so with the tails! Never seen this before!"

When the first drag king came out, Earl looked at me wide eyed and went "There's a dude version too?!" And I said yeah they're called drag kings. And he said, low, "Drag kings."

During one of the queens performances, he frowned, shook his head and told me, "Your legs are better than hers." in a tone that implied he thought there was some travesty taking place and I should also be getting paid

When he found out I was there with my husband (and that I am not a woman) he profusely apologized and said "I'm so sorry, it's dark in here and I thought you were a hot chick! I wouldn't have said nothing if I knew you had a husband, I'm so sorry about that."

When beemovie invited me to the dance floor with him later and I still had a drink in my hand, Earl said "Oh don't worry about that I can hold your drink, you get on out there and shake your ass with your husband!" Then before we left, Earl bought me drinks for "Putting up with me all night and answering everything. Y'all helped me have a great time tonight."

like. You gotta recognize there's going to people who have never had interacted outside of their of their own community. This includes you. And just because your community is familiar with all the right vocabulary and how to correctly say something, it doesn't mean they're actually going to support you. If someone like Earl shows up, confused and out of their depth but kind and curious and earnest, you gotta have patience and truck through the small things, so when he goes back to his friends and his coworkers and they snicker asking how the drag show was, he can genuinely talk about how included we tried to make him feel and that he had a great time

The person matters more than the language

I will reblog this EVERY TIME.

Sanitized language is a tool of oppression, always has been and always will be.

And yes, I get being pissed off by slurs. I do. But in the times we are living in right now, we really need to all pivot our priorities to safety.

"Earl" will talk to all his Busch drinking, tractor-pulling, gun toting, conservative voting friends about the nice and friendly and harmless trannies he met, and they will understand him.

They do not know what gender non-conforming, trans-femme/masc, demiboy, agender genderqueer bisexual lesbians are, and quite frankly, they do not need to.

What we need from Earl and his friends is for them to feel neutrally enough about us to not become violent with us, and to spread the idea that violence against us is not necessary or warranted. They are simply not going to do that in a language that is not their own.

Here’s a quick and comprehensive video of how I made paper 📝

late night Adventure Time thoughts: the genuine love that Finn always has for alternate versions of himself means so, so much to me

His refusal to hurt Farmworld Finn, despite knowing that he is putting the entire multiverse in grave danger

The way he mourns for Finn Sword after accidentally shattering him, which in itself was done in a desperate attempt to save him from being used against his will to commit evil deeds

And of course, Fern. Who, despite trying to literally murder him multiple times, Finn only ever shows unwavering compassion towards

As someone who struggles a lot with intense self-hatred, there’s just something so….heartbreakingly beautiful to me, about Finn seeing these other versions of himself, who share his love and his pain and his courage and his torment, and immediately and unconditionally offering them love.

Finn saying “You are me, and therefore I love you” has left a huge impact on me, and it encourages me to try, against all odds, to do the same.

WoL: “Is this the hill you want to die on? Because I can make that happen.” Is a solid disagreement beginner and finisher as well as an effective threat to an enemy.

You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.

For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

Don’t fuck with flamingos

….. Didn’t know most of that

Huh… so that’s why zoos don’t put them somewhere warm during winter.

Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.

American flamingos just drink that shit

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.

requested by anonymous:

RATING: RELIABLE

Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.

Source: ‘All flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planet’s most extreme wetlands, like caustic “soda lakes”, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.’

They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.

Source: ‘More than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).’

They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.

Source: ‘They can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.’

The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.

Source: ‘The birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.

“You’ll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,” Dr. Arengo said. “And as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.”’

The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.

It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.

Source: ‘The lake’s landscape is surreal and deadly—and made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s lesser flamingos are born.’

Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.

Source: ‘Flamingos have very specialised diets. And their food is responsible for their famous pink colouration. The two species in Planet Earth II eat a lot of floating microscopic algae, which contains carotenoid pigments, the same types of chemical that make carrots orange. These pigments turn their feathers pink, orange and red – without them, flamingos would be white.’

… @todaysbird ??

yeah they’re just like that

information that is also important

Reblogging for adorable shark and ‘boop the snoot.’

you cannot advertise to me in a way that matters.

Having thoughts about how Toph found people at the Earth Rumble who treated her as an equal and respected her for her skill and listened to her. How she became the Blind Bandit there and the first people to ever take her seriously were The Gecko and Fire Nation Man and the others.

And then she joins the Gaang, people who also treat her as an equal and respect her skill and listen to her, and she starts calling them Twinkle Toes and Snoozles and Sugar Queen and Captain Boomerang.

She's giving them stage names. Because gaining her stage name was the most empowering thing that happened to her up to that point. Because stage names are earned. Because the people who were kindest to her in her life (by treating her how she wanted to be treated) were people who went by things like The Boulder.

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

So what is a rain shadow?

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

this is so on the nose

THERE’S A TERM FOR IT?!?!?

One of the most memorable interactions was Saturday. Into our booth strolls a small family, tempted by free samples of freshly brewed tea. We chatter and give them the spiel, that the tea is character merch and we’re a cozy health-based app called Forage Friends.

The young girl zeroes in on our pride pins.

“They have my pin!” She says excitedly. “They have my flag!”

The dad blinks. He is surprised, but also calm and positive when he sees it’s the lesbian flag. “Oh. That’s… different from what you told me.”

“That was months ago, dad.” And she rolls her eyes. Definitely a teenager.

I turn to him and say, “Yeah, dad.” And we share a little laugh about it.

He says, “No, it’s great. That’s amazing, honey. It was just news to me.”

“Well, I guess I just decided to stop lying to myself. About liking guys. Like right now.”

A little lesbian just came out to her dad and he was super cool about it.

I’m standing there in my tie-dye mask and my cheery blue apron pouring tea and making small talk and I’m trying really hard not to cry or compare it to my experience, the fire & brimstone, the disgust, the conditional acceptance as long as I never bring it up.

So as this beautiful bonding is going on, the girl’s even younger brother turns his gaze around. He’s in a snorlax hoodie and bored and wants to go look at the swords across the hall. But on the other side of our booth….

“WHY DO PEOPLE DRAW THAT?” He asks loudly, and we all turn to our neighboring booth.

Our neighbors were extremely lovely people. Every time we had a break we would talk, and we became good friends over the weekend. They kept apologizing that their booth was next to ours and we kept repeating that it was totally fine. Their booth was great. I even bought their merchandise.

The thing that was so contentious, that they felt the need to apologize for, was that they were selling explicit titty hentai stickers of popular characters. They were censored with little yellow R18 labels but the content was very clear.

So back to the family: I freeze and immediately go somewhere else to let dad handle this question. With adult customers I’ve been loud and positive about our neighbors. (“Man, how has it been boothing next to them?” It’s been great! They bring a lot of foot traffic and they’re kind and wonderful professional neighbors. If anything it’s a fun juxtaposition. We believe in artistic freedom. I bought a sticker too!)

But this is a kid, it’s not my place to explain anything…. But I was extremely curious about what this chill dad would say.

“Well,” dad says with a long measured silence between each word. “Sometimes people are horny.”

This dad sounds so chill and yet, so tired.

"Oh...okay...Daughter's a lesbian. Gotta remember that. And Son is still immature. Wish he'd grow up. I need more tea...."

The dad voice in my head is just... he doesn't know where that sentence is going. Each word is a new surprise to him. "Sometimes. People... are...

....

...

horny."

THAT’S EXACTLY HOW HE SAID IT

having to come to terms with the fact that love is not an everlasting performance in which you attempt to retain the attention of your significant other but rather a release of control and putting faith into them and trusting them to choose to stay with you no matter what you have to offer

to love and be loved is to rest

"So YoU'rE sAyInG mEn HaTe OtHeR mEn?"

Yes. Yes I am. And you can ask literally any marginalized man and they will tell you American Patriarchy hates them, too, specifically because they are being men in the "wrong way".

Like fuck, this is feminism 101.

Edit: it's non-radfem feminism 101.

Just look at the way that manosphere wierdos talk in reference to other men: they are competitors to be dominated either socially or with explicit violence. The whole grift is built on selling men the idea that they can climb their way to the top of the pile

^^^ This. It's like a pyramid scheme of abuse. "If you throw fifteen men under the bus and convince five of your friends to throw fifteen other men under the bus, you can Win at Patriarchy, we promise!"

I can't agree enough with this, and it's something more and more men are speaking up about, even if our voices aren't being heard.

Man box culture, as some call it, starts when we're young. It's pervasive - the competition to be a real "man" as defined by violence, dominance, and this absolutely fucked up concept of emotional detachment. It's a raw struggle to not appear weak, and it starts with how adult men treat male children - the toxic values they instill, sometimes with words and sometimes with fists. And even if you grow up in a less toxic and more loving environment, you're never really free from it. Your male role models, male adults like teachers and such, but especially male friends who are your age, all get caught up in this toxic system of abuse. And "real men" don't have emotions, right? So you have to bottle all that up rather than understanding any of it because it's *weakness.* All of that tends to come out in the one emotional state that men allow each other to display: anger. Shit, by the time most boys reach high school, they've been struggling against each other for years. All that hate, that anger, that uncontrollable rage? That's been taught to them long before teenage testosterone hits. And by that time, it's gotten worse because the patriarchy has defined how "real men" see and treat women. Underneath everything is this deep, deep fear of failing and becoming the weak punching bag. There's so much shame to it all.

It isn't always like this for every boy growing up, but no one is left unaware of its existence. And the only true way to stop it begins when we are young.

This is fucking heartbreaking.

One of my friends in law school once opened up to me and a few other people in our mixed-gender friend group that he didn't really have friends before he knew us, even though he thought he did. We sort of nodded like, yeah man, we're glad you're our friend too, sorry people back in your home town were shitty – and he stopped us like, no, you don't understand. He told us that he thought he had friends, and that those people thought that they were his friends – but that his all-male small-town social circle constantly hurled abuse at each other, and that they all thought that that was normal. He told us that he used to go out partying with them, and whereas when we'd go out, we'd talk each other up – like, man, nice shirt, love what you did with your hair, I bet chicks are gonna dig it, etc. – back in his old circle of friends? All they'd ever do before going out was talk each other down. You're dressed worse than your friends? You look like trash. You're dressed better than your friends? Why do you care so much about you're appearance, are you gay? You're dressed exactly the same as your friends? Wow, look at this loser copying other people's look. You could never win, you could never even break even, and you were expected to not only put up with this, but to participate, because that sort of normalized constant stream of verbal abuse was the main way that you and other men your age socialized. He literally did not realize that men could have actual, real friendships – with women, sure, but also with other men – until he met us, because to him, the act of hanging out with people who you weren't dating was so deeply intertwined with toxic competitive expectations that he flat out didn't know that there was a different way to be until he moved halfway across the country for law school in his late 20s.

It's incredibly fucked up, and men should be able to talk about what a patriarchal culture like that does to them without being silenced.

Tough Guise came out before the turn of the millennium for fuck sakes! 

This used to be settled feminist theory! I studied it in uni! It wasn’t controversial!

This rad fem bullshit has set us back decades....

My wife was in (or teaching? I forget...) a hobby workshop that devolved into various discussions around safety and consent.

It was unsurprising to hear that most of the women in the room were afraid to walk though the local park late at night alone, for fear of being attacked and sexually assaulted.

They were very surprised however to discover most of the men in the room were afraid to walk through the same park anything BUT alone, because in groups they would be likely to be attacked and physically assaulted, usually by other groups of men looking to fight. (I should add that the men doing this hobby were... by nature of involvement in this hobby already failing masculinity a fair bit and a lot of them werent even doing so well to start with.)

But she'd had no idea. How we can deconstruct the patriarchy if we don't even understand what we're looking at. Those experiences men are having are forming half the bars of the cage we're ALL in. We have to see them if we want a chance to cut through them.