"it's easy to get people to agree with you if you use their in-group buzzwords" is not restricted to conservatives guys. i see you guys doing this all the time

On related note, a few years ago, the Entomological Society of America officially discontinued the use of "gypsy moth" and "gyspy ant" as common names for Lymantria dispar and Aphaenogaster araneoides. L. Dispar is now known as the "spongy moth," so named for the appearance of their eggs, but I don't think a new common name has caught on for the ant species yet.

These changes we brought about, in large part, by the advocacy of Romani people in academia. You might not think that bug names are a very serious issue, but I believe that language matters. These species became known as "gypsies" because their attributes were likened to certain stereotypes and negative perceptions of actual Roma, so the continued use of those names reaffirmed those negative associations in the public consciousness. Slurs and pejoratives can never be truly decontexualized.

In my mind, one of the biggest obstacles that Romani people face when we are trying to advocate for ourselves is a lack of recognition as a marginalized group that deserves the necessary consideration. Even for seemingly trivial matters, like bugs or comic book characters, the way that people talk about us-- and talk down to us, when we get involved-- is telling. So, I always think that changes like this are a win, because it means that people are willing to learn and grant us the dignity we deserve. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to effect change in your own field, even arts and science.

when i was a kid i had moments of being so fucking diabolical because i realized at some point the best way to leverage power over my family was to do shit that would make everybody late

our house was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods so when i decided i didnt want to wear dresses anymore if we were going to some event & my parents insisted i had to wear a dress i would just go hide in the woods. was so committed i almost made us miss a flight once bc my mom packed a dress in my suitcase

i only promised to stop doing this if my parents got me formal boys clothes to wear which eventually they did. i don't feel bad about resorting to violence bc i asked politely and they said no. proud of 10 yr old me for evil annoying lesbian behavior

5th grade was the last time I wore a dress for school pictures. When my parents attempted to force the issue for 6th grade, I climbed onto our roof and pulled the ladder up after me. My dad borrowed the neighbors ladder. As soon as it touched the roof I pulled it up too. By the time I had 3 ladders they were willing to negotiate, and 2 hours late for work.

i have a habit of wanting to treat my friends to coffee or boba or snacks a lot even while being broke as fuck and my friends have taken to joking that i’d be a great sugar daddy and as funny as this concept is- i’m going into the arts. what am i supposed to spoil a twink with? i dont think they let you use grant money for that

@batmanisagatewaydrug

You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 

Hey, so I know you mean well with this. I know you do. But, ok, a few things. Different ethnic/racial groups are not different species. Calling non-native people an invasive species that can’t be part of a local ecosystem is…not helpful. It’s the same “humans are parasites” argument with some asterisks thrown in.

The problem isn’t that humans who are descended from one continent are now living on a different content, outcompeting the local species for resources because there arent any predators in the new ecosystem evolved to deal with them like rabbits released in Australia or kudzu vines in the deep south. The problem is that because of colonialism and capitalism, the majority of humans living in America (and many other places) are not doing so with systems and practices that are sustainable and mutualistic with the ecosystem.

Also- groups of people who ARE historically indigenous to an area can still have environmentally unsustainable economic systems for all sorts of historical and geopolitical reasons. *Gestures to China as just one example* it’s not a question of indigenous-ness, but of mutualism and sustainability.

Land Back and the general philosophy of looking to indigenous practices and knowledge for how to live in a more sustainable and mutualistic way are obviously awesome. But so are new technology and practices that would improve sustainability and mutualism. And that holds true world wide.

I want us to fight the urge to paint indigenous people as being magically more in tune with nature and white people as being irredeemable parasites who cannot be part of the natural world.

‘For years, there’s only been one passenger waiting at the Kami-Shirataki train station in the northernmost island of Hokkaido, Japan: A high-school girl, on her way to class. The train stops there only twice a day—once to pick up the girl and again to drop her off after the school day is over.It sounds like a Hayao Miyazaki film. But according to CCTV News, it was a decision that Japan Railways—the group that operates the country’s railway network—made more than three years ago. At that time, ridership at the Kami-Shirataki station had dramatically fallen because of its remote location, and freight service had ended there as well. Japan Railways was getting ready to shut the station down for good—until they noticed that it was still being used every day by the high-schooler. So they decided to keep the station open for her until she graduates. The company’s even adjusted the train’s timetable according to the girl’s schedule. The unnamed girl is expected to graduate this March, which is when the station will finally be closed.’

Baby girl graduated

i just found out tumblr was storing over three GIGABYTES of cookies on my device without me knowing and that's why it's been running so fucking slow recently... incredible. anyways everyone go clear your fucking cookies. don't let this website run a goddamn video game's worth of disc space in the background for no good reason.

on firefox: settings → search "cookies" → scroll down → "manage cookies" → tumblr should be at the very top because of how much space it's taking → select it → clear cookies → save changes. done

literally going insane over the fact that so many companies refuse to send rejection emails like it’s disgraceful tbh. you put so much time and effort into putting together an application and they can’t even be bothered tell you via some measly automated message that you didn’t get the job. you’re expected to just infer

"i'm literally tweaking" "are you restarted" "you sound acoustic right now" "this has crackhead energy" "my ex is such a narcissist" "i'm going nonverbal for an hour" "intrusive thoughts won"

"High is just slang for acting silly and fun!"

i’m willing to believe some people are genuinely idiots who don’t know that 90%+ of polish jews were killed in the holocaust (and made up half of all poles killed in wwii), but. it’s almost like this shit helps nothing and no one

“When my father was a young man in Vilna, every wall in Europe said, ‘Jews go home to Palestine.’ Fifty years later, when he went back to Europe on a visit, the walls all screamed, ‘Jews get out of Palestine.’”

-amos oz, a tale of love and darkness

almost like people perceive “don’t live here or here either or here either or here either” as “don’t live”. almost like i/p doesn’t boil down to “jews living in a place”

also worth noting that the core jewish population in poland isn’t even close to 10,000-20,000. it’s 4,500. there were 3.3 million jews in poland in the early 1900’s, who had been there for a thousand years. the polish jewish population shrank by 99.9%.

99.9%

World Infrastructure Map

by Peter Atwood

this may or may not be a fantasy writing exercise for me. please reblog

learning that people want you in their lives is a skill you can develop if it does not come naturally

it feels fake but your friends miss you sometimes

the reason you've been hanging out with your closest friends fairly regularly for the past 12+ years is because you have fun together

people who don't like you that much will not stay in your life for over a decade asking to hang out and inviting you to things and texting you