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akathecentimetre

@akathecentimetre / akathecentimetre.tumblr.com

[formerly @commonplacecaz] historian/ac-admin currently in residence in New Jersey, with a Husband, toddler Twins, and a Cat; writer, musician and chocoholic rampant

Charles Darwin: period-typical racist especially about Pacific / AAPI socieities he encountered while on the Beagle; period-typical sexist who thought that men and women were biologically unequal; was fine with selective breeding to weed out the 'inferior'; basis for notoriously racist, ableist Social Darwinism; original works frequently overlooked apart from evolution as being completely hijacked by the rightwing manosphere; even evolution is more frequently analyzed as Lamarckian these days

Also Darwin: "As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races... This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings... as he regarded more and more, not only the welfare, but the happiness of his fellow-men; as from habit, following on beneficial experience, instruction and example, his sympathies become more tender and widely diffused, extending to men of all races, to the *KLAXON* imbecile, maimed, and other useless members of society, and finally to the lower animals - so would the standard of his morality rise higher and higher." [Part 1 Chapter IV Concluding Remarks of Descent of Man]

EVEN DARWIN SAID TO BE CIVILIZED WAS TO BE KIND AND TAKE CARE OF *EVERYONE* YOU INCEL DIPSHITS

Tr*mp take 2 is just like: the bar is set so freakin' microscopically low and here's all these assholes going LIIIIIMBOOOOOO

the most annoying stage of burnout is when i want to write, and i have the urge to write, and somewhere in my skull are the words that want to be written, but they have to get through the cursed minotaur maze first and nobody remembered to bring string

Pisses me off how good Shakespeare actually is. Like yeah he's actually that good. People hype him up like he's the best English writer ever, and yeah he's actually an S+ tier writer.

Insane that he did all that while naming his characters shit like Count Evilcount and Peter Penissex.

it remains insane that he wrote a love sonnet hinges on the idea "you will live forever because this sonnet, specifically, will be remembered for all time" and that sonnet, specifically, became so famous that it serves as a synecdoche for the very concept of poetry. world historic called shot.

I keep seeing the 'make sure you have empathy for the Trump voters when they come back' post on my dash and surely I can't be the only one who's just like... nah?

We've waited 3 election cycles for these people to wake the fuck up. We've soul-searched and yelled and cried and suffered. I can absolutely acknowledge that social pressures shape our education & media habits but I also happen to think that every person has agency, and I respect the agency of everyone to vote how they please even if I personally think they are deranged and/or idiotic assholes.

If they get fucked as a direct consequence of their vote, even if they felt 'tricked' - they watched and listened to and believed all the news coming from Absolutely Heinous And Disgusting human beings and they chose to fuck other people so they wouldn't, supposedly, get fucked. Now they are finding out.

Actions have consequences, fuckers. Learn the lesson. I have no empathy left to give.

Noticing likes from my mutuals but no reblogs - just to say I have no ambitions of going viral or shoving this is anyone’s face but if you feel like sharing this please do, my dears. As someone with a PhD in history (oh my god) from Columbia (oh my GOD) who currently works in grants administration at another R1 (OH MY GOD) I feel I have, as they say, earned the right to speak on this debacle. ✌️

I keep seeing the 'make sure you have empathy for the Trump voters when they come back' post on my dash and surely I can't be the only one who's just like... nah?

We've waited 3 election cycles for these people to wake the fuck up. We've soul-searched and yelled and cried and suffered. I can absolutely acknowledge that social pressures shape our education & media habits but I also happen to think that every person has agency, and I respect the agency of everyone to vote how they please even if I personally think they are deranged and/or idiotic assholes.

If they get fucked as a direct consequence of their vote, even if they felt 'tricked' - they watched and listened to and believed all the news coming from Absolutely Heinous And Disgusting human beings and they chose to fuck other people so they wouldn't, supposedly, get fucked. Now they are finding out.

Actions have consequences, fuckers. Learn the lesson. I have no empathy left to give.

“Evil conquered?” Gwydion said. “You have learned much, but learn this last and hardest of lessons. You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself to be so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them. Against these even a flaming sword cannot prevail, but only that portion of good in all men’s hearts whose flame can never be quenched.” - Llyod Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain 

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