The whole “scientists use big words on purpose to be exclusive” is such a bunch of anti-intellectual bullshit. Specific and concise language exists for a reason; you need the right words to convey the right meaning, and explaining stuff right is a hugely important part of science. Cultures that live around loads of snow have loads of words to describe different types of snow; cultures that live in deserts have loads of words to describe different types of sand. Complex language is needed for complex meaning.

Science and math educator here. Technical vocabulary is absolutely a hindrance to learning!

Have you seen chemistry or biology nomenclature?! It’s ridiculous. It’s unnecessary. And physics is proof of that.

In physics the main vocab is force, energy, power, waves, momentum. These are all words that already exist in everyday language.

In chemistry, I have to learn what enthalpy is. Why can’t I just call that total heat? Like, why do I need to learn Latin to understand scientific terms? Why can’t you just name the scientific terms after the words in modern languages?

Physicists discover a new particle that makes quarks stick together! Let’s call those gluons! It’s a k in the equation! Let’s call these ones kaons! Oh, these ones we used pi. We’ll call those one pions!

We discover a new element on the periodic table! Let’s call it moscovium! Apparently it’s named after Moscow, where the research team is located.

And physics is not immune to this either. Physics has lots of terms that are named after people or Latin terms as well, but it’s not nearly as bad. But physics courses and textbooks are absolutely guilty of making relatively simple concepts stupidly inaccessible through walls of technical text. I was a junior in college and read four pages on the difference between electric potential energy and electrical potential difference (voltage), and I wasn’t confident that I really understood it. Then, I tutored a kid in 8th grade with his homework. He was doing an electricity worksheet that had little pictures of charges and explained the difference between the two side by side. And if my college text book had just given us that 8th grade worksheet as we were learning, we would have all been better served because it wasn’t actually any more complicated than that. And then we would have had a foundation to have a lot of deeper conversations where we could apply what we learned instead of spending hours trying to decipher a needlessly dense textbook.

Math is also a lot easier to teach without half the technical vocabulary.

Why is this important? If you make the language as simple as possible it’s easier to learn and then more people can use and benefit from the knowledge.

Calling it emesis instead of vomit is not anymore accurate or precise. It just makes you sound smart.

Ooh! I’m not done yet. Specialized nomenclature actually doesn’t help amongst experts either.

I have a friend who is an nurse practitioner in an otolaryngology clinic! (Don’t know that that is? Neither do most people! It’s also known as an ENT or ears, nose, throat specialty).

Anyway, my friend said that she knows all the technical jargon that is used in her clinic, but she says if she has to write a medical record and there’s any chance it’s going to a different specialists office (say a Neurologist!) she says it’s better to use the everyday terms because the neurologist may have learned the ears nose throat medical terms at one point, but they don’t use them daily and don’t remember them super well now. So if you write the medical note using the everyday terms medical experts with a different specialty can read and interpret your note MORE ACCURATELY than if you use all the technical terms.

She said this became clear to her trying to read notes from other clinics from other specialties.

I can tell you, I would prefer my doctors use everyday language that everyone - including my OTHER DOCTORS - can understand.

The whole “scientists use big words on purpose to be exclusive” is such a bunch of anti-intellectual bullshit. Specific and concise language exists for a reason; you need the right words to convey the right meaning, and explaining stuff right is a hugely important part of science. Cultures that live around loads of snow have loads of words to describe different types of snow; cultures that live in deserts have loads of words to describe different types of sand. Complex language is needed for complex meaning.

Science and math educator here. Technical vocabulary is absolutely a hindrance to learning!

Have you seen chemistry or biology nomenclature?! It’s ridiculous. It’s unnecessary. And physics is proof of that.

In physics the main vocab is force, energy, power, waves, momentum. These are all words that already exist in everyday language.

In chemistry, I have to learn what enthalpy is. Why can’t I just call that total heat? Like, why do I need to learn Latin to understand scientific terms? Why can’t you just name the scientific terms after the words in modern languages?

Physicists discover a new particle that makes quarks stick together! Let’s call those gluons! It’s a k in the equation! Let’s call these ones kaons! Oh, these ones we used pi. We’ll call those one pions!

We discover a new element on the periodic table! Let’s call it moscovium! Apparently it’s named after Moscow, where the research team is located.

And physics is not immune to this either. Physics has lots of terms that are named after people or Latin terms as well, but it’s not nearly as bad. But physics courses and textbooks are absolutely guilty of making relatively simple concepts stupidly inaccessible through walls of technical text. I was a junior in college and read four pages on the difference between electric potential energy and electrical potential difference (voltage), and I wasn’t confident that I really understood it. Then, I tutored a kid in 8th grade with his homework. He was doing an electricity worksheet that had little pictures of charges and explained the difference between the two side by side. And if my college text book had just given us that 8th grade worksheet as we were learning, we would have all been better served because it wasn’t actually any more complicated than that. And then we would have had a foundation to have a lot of deeper conversations where we could apply what we learned instead of spending hours trying to decipher a needlessly dense textbook.

Math is also a lot easier to teach without half the technical vocabulary.

Why is this important? If you make the language as simple as possible it’s easier to learn and then more people can use and benefit from the knowledge.

Calling it emesis instead of vomit is not anymore accurate or precise. It just makes you sound smart.

I'm very tired of this "queer college students should stop supporting Palestine, they'd kill you there!" I watched a hijabi ask a trans man, "but what name do you want to go by?" A butch giving a woman their hoodie so that she could keep her hair covered after the cops took her scarf. Muslim girls making sure the lesbian couple got through the system together. Religious men making sure green haired protestors got out safe. A Palestinian girl with an ex-southern baptist fiance, who definitely isn't a practicing Muslim, whose parents were raising hell for her. I don't want to hear it. Solidarity forever, free Palestine.

Queer muslim here. I couldn't have said it better myself. We are not free until all of us are free.

Nothing terrifies genocidal bigots more than the fact that solidarity between people transcends the artificial boundaries and categories they desperately cling to because they know it spells their doom

My conversations with children

Okay as a fifth year education major in a wheelchair who is constantly around very curious kids and very paranoid parents, this is single-handedly the greatest video I have ever seen!

A gentle reminder that accepting disabled people doesn’t mean ignoring their disabilities.

“That happens sometimes.”

I mean yeah it does.

also those crutches are 10/10 design

mobility help AND still being able to gesture and stuff.

at dusk

The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.

I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.

Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.

I needed this so much.

…holy shit

holy shit

oh shit

I gotta stop listening to the neurotypical person in a gc I’m in

Yeeeah, “just try harder” barely even works for neurotypicals. It’s actively nonsense for the rest of us.

You don’t understand, I NEED to see how Adrien would pretend to be Félix for something. I need some sort of situation where Félix needs Adrien to pretend to be him for a few hours so he can get away for a while and for Adrien to at first be like, “You sure? I’m kinda rusty but I think I can pull it off!” And then for Adrien to immediately dial up the dramatics the second he’s in Félix’s clothes.

I need Adrien to exaggerate all of his cousin’s traits, being over the top cryptic, cold, and snarky one moment then a dramatic showman the next. I need Adrien to visibly be having so much fun because he’s helping his cousin by making fun of him a little. I need Félix to witness Adrien’s performance and be like, “Oh no, he’s terrible, this was a mistake—” but then be absolutely wrecked by the knowledge that NOBODY is noticing a difference aside from like, Kagami and have a mini crisis of “Is this how I act?? That’s not how I act?? How are they falling for this??”

And by the end of it Adrien is like, “Y’know, that was really fun! We should do this more often, I see why you do it all the time! :D” And Félix is just sitting there. Head in hands. Grappling with this new information.

Also just:

Adrien, pulling out an absurd amount of stolen rings out of his pockets: Also what do you do with these once you’ve got them? I might’ve committed to the role a little too much.

Kagami, nodding along very seriously: Your method acting is incredible.

Félix, staring in horror: I’m not a kleptomaniac… Am I?

Mental Crop Rotation

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.

: A crucial part of crop rotation is that the field is let fallow sometimes. You plant what’s called a “cover crop”, which is something you don’t expect to harvest– it’s there for its roots to hold the soil in place, and often it’ll be what’s called a nitrogen-fixer, i.e. a plant that can pull nitrogen out of the air and fix it into the soil with its roots (but sometimes it won’t, sometimes it’s really just there to shelter the soil surface), and then you’ll till in that cover crop, or let the frost kill it and the stalks lie as mulch, and then you’ll rotate productive crops back into that field the next season. 

It’s important, though, to understand that during the fallow period, no nutrients are removed from that ground, and nothing is expected of it. Whatever the land grows then, it keeps, and it gets tilled back in or decomposes in place, to return its energy to the earth.

We’re not allowed, in our current society, to just let our minds be fallow for a bit, to produce nothing for export, to make nothing that can be sold. But it’s part of good land stewardship, to give every field time when it doesn’t need to give you anything back. 

So yes, grow and produce different things from time to time, rotate them around your mind and exercise different mental muscles, take different things from your creative processes, yes– but also, give yourself a fallow spell now and again, and let the field of your mind grow things for itself to keep, to break down and save for later. 

Positive mental health AND agriculture??!?

*slams reblog button*

hi trans people i hope you get to live. i hope you get to laugh so fucking loud and revel in how the wind blows through your hair and i hope you get to dress the way you like and i hope you get complimented on it. i hope you get to kiss someone or hug someone or hold hands with someone or be told how wonderful you are. i hope you get to dance to weird music and i hope you go swimming with no concerns other than how much sunscreen to put on and i hope you sing bad karaoke with your friends. i hope a kid spots you from across the road and realizes they don't have to live one way forever. i hope we all live

trans people i hope you get to eat some really good food and gasp at the animals and insects you see every day i hope you pick up a new hobby and it turns out to be pretty fun i hope you try on that coat and it makes you feel confident. i hope you get to tell people your name and i hope they tell you how cool it is i hope you get to rest i hope you watch a movie and fall over laughing. i hope you rejoice in living because you deserve to be alive and you deserve to have a joyous life

"The coral reefs of south Sulawesi are some of the most diverse, colorful and vibrant in the world. At least, they used to be, until they were decimated by dynamite fishing in the 1990s.

As part of a team of coral reef ecologists based in Indonesia and the UK, we study the reefs around Pulau Bontosua, a small Indonesian island in south Sulawesi...

In many places around the world, damage like this might be described as irreparable. But at Pulau Bontosua, the story is different. Here, efforts by the Mars coral restoration program have brought back the coral and important ecosystem functions, as outlined by our new study, published in Current Biology. We found that within just four years, restored reefs grow at the same rate as nearby healthy reefs.

Speedy recovery

The transplanted corals grow remarkably quickly. Within a year, fragments have developed into proper colonies. After two years, they interlock branches with their neighbors. After just four years, they completely overgrow the reef star structures and restoration sites are barely distinguishable from nearby healthy reefs.

The combined growth of many corals generates a complex limestone (calcium carbonate) framework. This provides a habitat for marine life and protects nearby shorelines from storm damage by absorbing up to 97% of coastal wave energy.

We measured the overall growth of the reef framework by calculating its carbonate budget. That's the balance between limestone production (by calcifying corals and coralline algae) and erosion (by grazing sea urchins and fishes, for example). A healthy reef produces up to 20kg of reef structure per square meter per year, while a degraded reef is shrinking rather than growing as erosion exceeds limestone production. Therefore, overall reef growth gives an indication of reef health.

At Pulau Bontosua, our survey data shows that in the years following restoration, coral cover, coral colony sizes, and carbonate production rates tripled. Within four years, restored reefs were growing at the same speed as healthy reefs, and thereby provided the same important ecosystem functions...

Outcomes of any reef restoration project will depend on environmental conditions, natural coral larvae supply, restoration techniques and the effort invested in maintaining the project. This Indonesian project shows that when conditions are right and efforts are well placed, success is possible. Hopefully, this inspires further global efforts to restore functioning coral reefs and to recreate a climate in which they can thrive."

-via Phys.org, March 11, 2024

Why are agriculture classes the first time I’ve learned extremely basic info about nutrition and how digestion works. Why isn’t this stuff in health textbooks or any easily accessible resource about healthy eating.

I dont want to talk in excessive depth about it because i’m not an expert, but it’s like…the agriculture textbooks go into detail about what the nutrients do for the body and how they are broken down, in the animal agriculture class talking primarily about how to feed your animals, the plant agriculture class talking about why certain crops are grown and how the agriculture system has to meet human needs.

The animal agriculture class was the first time I experienced each macronutrient (fats, proteins, carbohydrates) being discussed in depth from the point of view of being needs that MUST be met, rather than things it’s “okay” to eat “in moderation.”

My college health class actually used the word “macronutrient,” but it still mostly described fats and carbohydrates in terms of their calorie content and didn’t go into the same amount of depth about them.

My animal agriculture class on the other hand, was the first time I’d been taught in a class that the amount of nutrition absorbed from eating food varies depending on genetics, environmental factors, what the digestive system is accustomed to processing and what it was conditioned to process during development, and mechanical aspects of the digestion process like how much it is broken down by chewing (!!). Of course it was discussing these things from the point of view of like, cows, but it was really striking to me that I’d never been taught about human digestion from this point of view, where digestion is a complex process that can be affected by various biological and environmental factors.

At the beginning of the class we did a lab where we went over feedstuff analysis, and this was the first time I’d learned about where the numbers in nutrition labels come from, the kind of tests that are done to break food down to its components.

The class discussed how the digestibility of food was analyzed by testing the food, feeding animals the food, collecting the feces, and doing the same tests on the fecal matter to determine how much of the starting nutritional content was literally just going out the other end.

This raised a lot of questions for me: I don’t think Pop-Tarts are analyzed by confining a human volunteer to a small room and feeding them only Pop-Tarts, then doing lab tests on their poop. Does that mean we know even less about feeding humans than we do animals? At any rate, nutrition labels would have to be rough estimates to begin with, and then accounting for the variability in the way bodies process food, it’s even less descriptive.

Now i’m in plant agriculture, and I’m learning about the different types of proteins and fats and what plants and/or animals they come from. There are different types of protein with different sources. There are…nine? I think? different amino acids that have to be consumed in the diet, and different foods contain different ones?? The reason combinations of grains and legumes are so common as staple diets throughout the world, is that this is closest to being nutritionally complete for humans???

And also protein supplements are mostly useless unless you’re an Olympian or something, because the body doesn’t have a way to store protein for later. If you eat protein and your body doesn’t have an immediate use for it, it just gets taken apart in your liver and you pee it out. Sports greatly increase your need for energy far more than they increase your need for protein, but everyone thinks you should eat a ton of protein as an athlete and that carbohydrates are unhealthy.

I learned from the same chapter WHY fiber is important to help digestion (having texture to the stuff in your gut stimulates peristalsis which is the muscular movements that push things along).

I feel really weird and resentful about health textbooks and classes now, because it feels like they didn’t want us to have the facts on how our bodies work, and instead just taught us to see certain foods as “good” or “bad,” as though it was more important to be afraid of “unhealthy” food than to understand why food is needed. Health classes barely teach why food is needed.

Like, vegetables are seen as the quintessential “healthy” food, but what is traditionally seen as “vegetables” are mainly important because they provide micronutrients, fiber, and water (the water content in food is actually a big deal). There’s a reason they aren’t staple foods. You need carbohydrates and fats to live. Period.

I say “what is traditionally seen as vegetables” because it’s an incoherent category nutritionally. Beans, sweet potatoes, and spinach are doing very different things for your body. Are beans even a vegetable? Clearly “comes from a plant” isn’t the main criteria since grains, nuts, and fruits aren’t considered vegetables.

So like, the “myplate” graphic (and the “food pyramid” that came before it)? Total bullshit basically.

It’s really frustrating how writings on healthy eating assume you are probably already eating too much or are at risk of overeating. I learned very young about the harms of being “overweight” and eating too much of a certain nutrient. But I just realized from my reading in the plant agriculture class that I had never read a resource that teaches in the same detail about the harms of undernutrition.

It’s so easy to fail to get the nutrients you need, holy shit. Particularly protein, because it isn’t one thing, it’s a bunch of different types of molecule pieces that are found in varying amounts in different foods. People who eat animal products or soy don’t have to worry about it very much, since they are essentially complete in terms of protein, but if you are a vegan who doesn’t/can’t eat soy as a staple, you HAVE to be careful to eat a variety of foods that complement each other in terms of what they’re lacking. There’s something called the PDCAAS that rates each food by the amino acids they contain, but generally the best idea is to eat a bunch of grains and legumes.

I’m not saying that people can be “scared straight” out of developing eating disorders. But I am saying that young people can benefit from being exposed to scary information when they have the power to possibly encounter situations where that information is applicable. And the horrifying realization of what starvation is and does is such an information.

My plant agriculture text explained that carbohydrates and fats are the basic sources of energy under normal circumstances, and that it takes around 1,600 kcal per day to run your internal organs. Protein is only used for energy in unusual circumstances. When fat reserves are exhausted and there isn’t any food, the body starts breaking down proteins for calories—and the first ones to go are the ones that are already all throughout the bloodstream, found in YOUR ANTIBODIES. That’s right, when you run out of fat to burn off, your body starts EATING ITS OWN IMMUNE SYSTEM.

The plant agriculture book also says that digestion and energy needs vary from person to person, like literally when different people eat the same meal their blood sugar rises different amounts, and that how the body decides to store energy or use energy stores is determined by complicated feedback loops controlled by hormones. Meanwhile the average person thinks that it’s a matter of “eat too much = get fat and unhealthy, eat less = lose weight and be healthier” and even the college health class I took used more or less this model.

Like people are walking around with this completely wrong idea of how their bodies work and making AWFUL decisions based upon it because the resources they have to educate them think it’s more important to…make people afraid of food? I don’t think it’s even common knowledge that the body burns most of the calories you consume just from existing. I want to chew concrete.

Why don’t we teach everyone in school why staple foods are staple foods?! Not even getting into people who are so deep into eating disorders they think carrots have too much sugar, it’s so normal to do things like “cut out bread” or “cut out carbs” (????!??!) and to perceive hunger as an innately untrustworthy thing, when genuine success at dieting like this is a great way to Corn On The Kill Yourself.

I’m just kind of reeling right now at how much research and monitoring it would take to safely diet in the ways people constantly attempt to diet with NO research NO supervision NO medical testing, 100% believing that they are doing something good for their health.

If people aren’t taught what a macronutrient is and why you will die without it, they will think celery sticks are a “healthy” substitute for a chocolate chip cookie, and then not understand why they feel like shit.

Also… this is slightly different, but it’s connected to the problem of “people not understanding what food does to the body”. In the animal agriculture class, it was surprising to me how in livestock animals, things like muscle and fat composition are strongly genetically determined. All the modern breeds of cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. used in corporate farming have been bred to be very lean and have very little fat while having huge amounts of muscle tissue, because that’s what the modern consumer wants in meat.

With pigs, a lot of older heritage pig breeds were bred to store most of what they ate as fat, because pigs were used to change food waste into lard that could be added to cooking for flavor and calories. And most of these breeds either went extinct or dwindled severely to be replaced by “meat” breed pigs that don’t put on very much fat at all.

With humans, “everyone knows” that the amount of fat and muscle in your body comes from what you eat and how much you exercise. But a feedlot-finished beef cow that spends the last several months of its life doing nothing but gorging itself on carbohydrates will stay lean and put on muscle because it’s genetically predisposed to.

It violates common sense and yet a multi-billion-dollar industry revolves around cramming animals into a small area without much room to do anything, feeding the animals whatever crap has the most calories in it, and ending up with a lean, muscular carcass.

The post is very good, important, and informative.

But I can’t help but focus on what Corn On The Kill Yourself is supposed to mean; by context I know it’s ‘suicide by starvation’, but I seriously can’t get how ‘Corn on The’ [] adds to it!

It’s a reference to a tumblr post where someone says “I’m going to corn on the kill myself”

When I was still in scouts, during my senior year of high school, I was elected to teach some of the middle schoolers about nutrition and help them earn the nutrition badge.

I read over the “guide” for what we were supposed to do to earn the badge. It was quite frankly, awful. There was a segment about avoiding all packaged and labeled food, because packaging and labels=processed=bad. If we go off this logic, then rice, flour, meat substitutes, bottled water. etc. are off the menu. They wanted the scouts to track what they ate for a week, and then bring it in to compare to the rest of the scouts for who has the “healthiest” diet. They wanted the kids to “make up a fun song” so that they would resist the urge to eat something sugary. They wanted the kids to learn how to eliminate “the bad fats” Once again, these were middle schoolers. Now it wasn’t all bullshit, there was some good stuff about enjoying your food while you eat without distractions. But still, it was horrifying to read. Can you imagine going through your gangly middle school years, having a week where you’re eating a lot because you’re going through a growth spurt, and then getting shamed publicly for it because the fucking girl scout book told the leaders to do that? And, christ, they’re middle schoolers! Let them eat a candy bar without them worrying about if they should sing their “little song” about how evil sugar is.

Anyways. I had just finished an animal agriculture class, and went in using that as some of the basis for what I taught. Fuck the counting calories shit, you’re 12. Here’s what happens when you don’t eat enough of XYZ, it’s usually not pretty.

I was discussing carbohydrates, and briefly mentioned how a deficiency can cause issues in animals, when one of the moms who was watching off to the side pipes up about how humans don’t have to worry about that. There’s no way for us to get a carbohydrate deficiency. They just make you fat (and ugly, although she didn’t say that part specifically we all knew she was indirectly saying it), that’s all they do. I just stared at her in silence until she shut up, and then continued on like nothing had happened. Like??? Lady, I’m trying to plant the seeds of “food is good”, and you’re over here clearly wanting to fat shame your sixth grader for eating a goddamn sandwich.

Several of the girls did come up to me and thank me afterwards. They had never been taught how different nutrients are needed, and they thought it was interesting. And I think, especially at their age at that time, that it’s so so important for them to learn what their growing body needs. They don’t need this toxic diet bullshit about how to deprive yourself of the energy needed to grow to stay skinny or how to obsessively look at food labels to see if what they’re eating passes some arbitrary set of rules that’s part of the newest diet fad, they need to know how everything they eat has benefits.

We’d rather teach people, especially young girls, how to effectively starve themselves rather than how to fuel themselves.

an illustration for Maintaining a Professional Distance by @buggachat commissioned by @hartwign

I dreamt of miraculous last night, and it was great, so I turned my dream into a comic. I don’t even want to call this a shit comic, because who’s to say Nino wouldn’t do this?  And after I drew this, I realized I’d drawn Nino in this ridiculous getup right around Halloween time, so happy Halloween everyone! gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights Nino is back

Friendly reminder that LGBTQ+, Queer, and LGBT+ are the preferred terms for the community (x).

Friendly reminder that Queer is approved by 72.9% of the people, and the groups who don’t prefer it’s use as an umbrella term are straight people, exclusionists, transmeds, truscums, sex-negative people, and sex work critical people (x).

Friendly reminder that aros and aces are excluded only 9.2% / 8.1% of the time respectively while being included  78.9% / 81.2% of the time (x)

Friendly reminder that exclusionists are in the minority and aro/ace people are included in the LGBTQ+ community by the people within the community.

Also, i checked out the survey the second claim sources a while back: this is not OP choosing the words truscum, exclusionist, etc. These are labels that the survey gave people the option to self-identify as. It’s self-proclaimed exclusionists who dont like the word queer, not random accusations

yeah that’s super important. 

This one gets reblogged on main. The reclassification of ‘queer’ as an inexcusable slur is a recent development which stems in part from exclusionist rhetoric. We reclaimed it decades ago. Learn our history. You are not immune to TERF propaganda, but you can absolutely choose to educate yourself to spite it.

Be kind. 💜

“friend of Dorothy” was used to say you were gay discreetly for fucking years. Where did it come from?

“You have some queer friends, Dorothy”, and she replies, “The queerness doesn’t matter, so long as they’re friends.”

Like, it was popular enough for it to be a thing in ww2.

ladybug doodles

she’s so cute :)

if nobody has told you this i’m telling you now: it’s okay not to have a specific goal in life or one big dream you live and breathe for. i know there’s something awfully romantic about the idea of waking up every day working towards something specific and feeling like that’s your purpose in life, but that’s not all life is about, you know? if you have that, that’s great! and if you don’t, that’s great too! wake up every day wanting to try something new, to explore your mind and this world with it. there’s nothing wrong with changing hobbies every week, one person’s goal can be to play the piano like mozart, but you’re also allowed to just follow your curiosity and try 50 different instruments just to know how they make your heart feel. you can try ballet one day and explore heavy metal playlists the next. don’t let anyone tell you that you need a purpose to be happy and to feel like you really deserve to be here, because you don’t. your purpose is YOU and the magical mystery of how stardust came alive in the shape of your body, mind and soul. and that’s enough, i promise. YOU are enough, i promise.