girl help I'm getting they/them'd by well-meaning people who don't know what a tomboy is

This feeling is strange and complicated. On the one hand it's legit quite cool that nonbinary pronouns are becoming more widespread! On the other, I've spent my whole life pursuing interests and hobbies and ideals that weren't seen as particularly feminine, and when I was younger this was a major source of bullying and stress alongside some generalized misogyny taking the form of "you can't do or be anything you think is cool because you are innately inferior and to do otherwise means violating your nature," and it took me a while to conclude that this was just straight horseshit top to bottom and I could do whatever I wanted and present myself however I wanted without in any way being Not A Girl, and now it's like the exact same concept has flipped sides and is coming from a point of theoretical validation but still calculates out to "that's not very ladylike of you, you must be something else". anyway she/her thanks gang

I think it's like. the understanding that the gender binary is a small part of a much wider space of identities is separate from the understanding that a lot of that gender binary is a false dichotomy that artificially walls off universal human experiences behind specific pronouns and while the first concept is gaining wider understanding the second is lagging a little, which means "I am a girl and I like doing boy things" reads as "oh I've heard about this, you must be one of the Others who don't do the binary" rather than "the concept of 'boy things' is stupid from the jump"

just to be 100% clear

what this post is NOT talking about: using they/them pronouns for someone you don't know, aren't sure of, hasn't had a chance to introduce themselves, etc.

what this post IS talking about: my highly personal experience seeing some people "correcting" my commenters that were using she/her pronouns for me, because, despite me exclusively using she/her pronouns and saying so whenever asked, through no action of mine they had gotten the idea that I was using "they/them".

girl help I put a nuanced personal experience on the reading comprehension website

dialectics

Fellas, is it counter revolutionary to eat.

I do enjoy that one text says “Pringle?” while another says “Pringles?”, possibly implying that at one time the situation called only for a solitary Pringle.

Every time I rewatch The Lord of the Rings I oscillate violently between “it’s important to show men having close, supportive friendships and I’m so glad Peter Jackson chose to show all the male characters being loving and physically affectionate with one another in a healthy, platonic way” and “damn, these bitches gay. good for them, good for them”

Personally I think that Azula should have been redeemed simply so that she can become Zuko's horrible little advisor who whispers evil little plans to him so that he can do the exact opposite

#the only reason she gets this job is bc he doesnt trust her anywhere else in the palace#its like enrichment for manipulative girls#also so that he can set her on asshole deligates like a rabid little lapdog#she just has mean fuckin pomeranian energy that thing bites then lights you on fire w flames so hot theyre cold#i think their sibling dynamic could be sooo fucking funny its insane (@madscientistenthusiast)

Zuko doesn't like instilling fear in people as the Fire Lord because it makes him feel too much like Ozai but sometimes motherfuckers NEED to be rattled so they don't try anything. Which is where Azula comes in. It's a win/win for everyone except for the poor sucker Azula has set her sights on

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

Who makes the porn bots.

Where do they come from. What do

they hope to achieve.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.

do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?

My voice repeats what

you all say: I love you I

love you I love you.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

This. This is the first time. The only time. That it was not an echo. It was not found. Oh god.

Yeah you say this, except there's a good chance you were chronically dehydrated as a kid. The reason you didn't think you were is because a) no one was talking about dehydration at the time, and b) the effects weren't immediately obvious.

But when my grown-up massage clients get on my table and I have to keep reapplying lotion because their skin absorbs the first layer immediately? When they have a million "knots" because their soft tissue fibers got dried out, lost their elasticity and became sticky, basically glued themselves together, and now it hurts when you move your arm like this, or your neck is always achey?

Yeah, that's chronic dehydration. That's shit that builds up over years of not drinking enough water (and/or not stretching, and/or having shitty posture, and/or not healthily processing your difficult emotions, and/or...)

Health is mostly maintenance. You have to act in "healing" ways consistently if you don't want to spend your life in a cycle of pain -> fix -> same pain again. And the younger you start, the better your results will be.

So yeah, treat the youth and yourself like beached orcas and drink that water.

So yeah, treat the youth

and yourself like beached orcas

and drink that water.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

"Health is mostly maintenance" is freaking awesome and reminds me of one of my favorite quotes ever: "Repetition is the only form of permanence nature can achieve." -- George Santayana

@plaguedocboi as our resident Marine Life Expert, is this true or false?

This is the Irukandji jellyfish, which has venom 100 times more potent than a cobra and sends 50-100 people to the hospital annually. It’s venom can cause fatal brain hemorrhages.

This is a viperfish. It only grows a foot long and can’t do shit to you.

So yes, I’d say it’s accurate.

Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.

The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

I followed the being in the suit.

Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.

I love how this shows the weirdness both of language and of culture. Excellent writing!

"Soil Starship Nichols"

This is what took me a moment.

Earth Starship [Nichelle] Nichols

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

Oh, god, I hate that this is correct.

"Engaging with the lever in any way makes me culpable for the death that occurs" seems to be the rationale behind most of the voting naysayers, so, and I am quoting wikipedia here, their rational is quite literally one of the positions of the trolley problem;

'...since moral wrongs are already in place in the situation, moving to another track constitutes a participation in the moral wrong, making one partially responsible...'

Their refusal to engage with the trolley problem has made them ignorant not only of how their position IS one of the sides they refuse to take, but also that the other option recognises their desire for moral purity at the expense of obligation, for what it is;

'Under some interpretations of moral obligation, simply being present in this situation and being able to influence its outcome constitutes an obligation to participate. If this is the case, then doing nothing would be considered an immoral act.'

People who refuse to vote because "they're both bad" may be taking the high ground, but there are still people on the tracks.

This post is stupid because there IS a third option. The party doesn't have to run biden again! The party can have anyone as a candidate! They're choosing to.

Don't run genocidal candidates if you want my vote. It's that easy. Surely you can find one Democrat willing to run for president who isn't also genocidal, right? Surely it can't be that hard?

You are still missing the point of the trolley problem, just like OP was saying people do.

The trolley problem is not "why couldn't they have given us a better track"

It's not even "should we take steps to prevent the kinds of people who would tie people to train tracks from having access to those train tracks"

The trolley problem is about reacting to the situation AS IT IS.

The trolley problem is; does taking steps to mitigate harm mean you are therefore responsible for the harm that has occurred as a result of your choices? Do you allow more suffering to happen because you are scared to be tainted by your association with *some* suffering? Or, if you make the choice to abstain from participation, are you then responsible for the harm that occurs because of your choice not to act?

We'd all love some morally pure option. But when voting day comes, there might not be one. So you will have to choose between getting your hands dirty in the hopes of some progress, or clean hands and letting the trolley rampage out of control.

Zuko: And finally, allow me to introduce the Avatar, Aang.

Aang: Ambassador Aang.

Zuko: Ambassador of what? You’re the only member of your nation.

Aang: And whose great-grandpa’s fault is that?

Zuko: Touche, ambassador.

Aang: I changed my mind now I’m King Aang.

Zuko: What.

Aang: King of the Air Nomad.

Zuko: That doesn’t even make any- whatever. Let’s just proceed with the meeting.

Vice President Aang

Zuko: Wait, who’s the president then?

Aang: *lifts baby Tenzin*

Aang: Don’t forget Lord Momo of the Momo Dynasty.

Zuko: I am not calling him that.

Aang: You’re disrespecting his dynasty, Zuko.

Zuko: Since when does he have a dynasty?

Aang: Well, most of it is gone, now.

Zuko:

Aang: Because of your great grandfather.

Zuko through gritted teeth: Your Momoness.

This post broke containment

bonus: grantgo

mere hours before "bingo" was scheduled to shoot, brennan subbed in for grant. an american hero. (posted with both grant and brennan’s permission.)

Its so fucking funny how off screen brennan is like "of course ill come on to do game changer :) happy to help!" and as soon as the game starts he goes "I fucking HATE this show I cant believe I was FORCED to be here this SUCKS. I am here AGAINST MY WILL. [Monologue that will be printed onto a coffee mug]"

lmaooo

We love to see it

#oh my god#all of them???

Yes! All of them! It's not a defect, it's a design flaw! They made an accelerator pedal that can accidentally wedge itself down flat!

I know I'm reblogging this again but I have to add my own two sense on the matter. Most other auto manufacturers have had the stuck accelerator problem in the past due to floor mats and they have all learned a very important lesson: if BOTH accelerator and break are all the way down, apply the breaks and cut the throttle.

And even then they also have it so mashing the start/stop button or pressing and holding it kills the car

From that one report of the cyber truck crashing even when the brake was pressed, it seems like Tesla has not done their research and may not even have a contingency in the code for this. So it's a hardware AND software problem

From what I understand, it's not so much a design flaw as a production flaw; they made a change in manufacturing. They used a different chemical for something at some stage and that's what caused the pedal cover to slip off.

This was a failure of process.

I assure you, every major manufacturer in the world is either in the process of examining their processes to make sure that this particular issue isn't going to affect them, or has already done so. (I'm willing to bet that, in most cases, the investigation consisted of confirming that they don't use the chemical in question, along with some kind of "...because we're not idiots" notation in corporatese.)

What a lot of people don't appreciate is that corporate bureaucracy exists for a reason. Bureaucracy is the corporate equivalent of legislation-- every layer of it was born in red ink. As someone who has managed software deployments in production environment on systems used by millions of people each day, let me tell you, every step in that process is necessary. Oh, sure, it might seem like a lot of rigamarole for a minor change, but the problem is that people are notoriously bad at judging what a minor change is. I have personally been frustrated by a two-hour process (preceded by a week of paperwork, meetings, and approvals) to make a change in production that I knew full well would have no impact that, in actuality, took seven seconds and didn't require the traffic routing, load testing, etc. And I was right, it went without a hitch. Then two days later I spent fourteen hours on a call where half the system was down and it turned out that someone made a very similar change, and didn't say anything the entire time because he honestly didn't see how what he did caused what happened. "It shouldn't have affected anything!" If he'd followed process, there would have been no impact at all.

These tech bros think that they can revolutionize an industry by "streamlining the process" when they don't understand that the existing processes are the streamline. Sure, if they'd taken a week to test the impact of the change in process, it would have cost them a week, but it's gonna take more than a week to collect the information necessary to find out how much money this cost them. It's not just the cost of the recall and repair, it's the immediate impact this is going to have on sales, the long-term impact on consumer confidence in the brand, and, of course, a stock chart that looks like this:

That is a bad chart. And it's not going to get better.

Oh, look.

My spouse went and read the Tesla narrative of the recall — keep that in mind, I am relating Tesla’s narrative.

The Cybertruck gas pedal is a lever with a pad attached. During assembly, the pad has glue squirted into it and then is snapped into place. Some cybertrucks hit a process error where it was difficult to snap the pad into place so the assembly workers used some hand soap as a lubricant to fit things together. That means that if the glue fails the hand soap can make the lever slippery enough that the pad slides up to where it causes the gas pedal to stick at full throttle. Fortunately every driver who has experienced this rapidly learned that depressing the brake makes it so that you can safely pull over. Tesla is going to put a rivet connecting the lever and pad and the problem will be solved in about 15 minutes!

So.

- they didn’t put this rivet in from the beginning

- the interior is designed so that a slightly longer gas pedal can be wedged into the “on” position by the body of the truck

- Tesla workers are scrounging around in bathrooms looking for appropriate assembly lubricants. This is a sign of a highly trained and well-supported workforce. Absolutely looking forward to finding out what they’ve stuffed with toilet paper or paper towels

- they do seem to have basically the vehicle stopping requirements written above

"so the assembly workers used some hand soap as a lubricant to fit things together"

Five to one, the correct phrasing of that is, "management, when asked about the problem, said 'fuck it use soap'".

Fun fact! Water actually turns “blood red” when it is contaminated by sulfur creating sulfuric acid. And scientists have discovered that around the time of the plagues a volcano went off that disturbed Egypt’s environment. So the plagues are scientifically proven. The other parts of the plagues are explained by the sulfuric acid river making the animals leave the river and escaping into the human population.

WHY DIDNT ANYONE TELL ME THE PLAGUES WERE PROVEN

if anyone wants a full list heres how they happened:

basically they all stem from a massive eruption of a volcano on the island of santorini off the coast of greece. the ash then floated over to egypt which kickstarted the plagues

1) blood: the ash carried the mineral cinnabar, which has the capability of turning water red

2) frogs: the ash also had many toxic and acidic substances so naturally, all the frogs are gonna flee the river

3) lice: given what was going on insects would have burrowed into dead animals/peoples skin and laid eggs, which then hatched

4) beasts: everything is getting poisoned from the ash and toxins, causing animals to freak the fuck out/die

5) pestilence: toxins again

6) boils: the ash would have caused storms that carried acid rain which when it fell, would irritate peoples skin causing boils

7) hail: the storm again

8) locusts: again with the insects and the amount of dead bodies and such which attract more insects. a lotta insects basically.

9) darkness: the ash covered the sky, blocking out the sun

10) slaying of the first born: given that children’s bodies were found in higher numbers than others, some archeologists think they may have been sacrificed to stop all the destruction, but they aren’t 100% sure about that. this is just me but I would say another possibility is that babies/kids are a lot more susceptible to toxins and shit, so while an adult may have been fine or gotten a bit sick, it might have been very dangerous/deadly for kids or babies

the volcano would also attest for the parting of the sea weirdly enough. the red sea was in fact the ‘reed’ sea, and was very shallow, probably waist deep or so. given the amount of shit dumped into the ocean from the volcano, this wouldve caused a tsunami to head towards egypt. the water would get sucked out from the reed sea right before the tsunami hit, letting people pass it easily, then the actual tsunami would hit, fuckin up anyone who tried to follow.

another theory is that the red water was caused by algae, which would cause the frogs and stuff to jump out as well. the algae also carried substances toxic to animals so if they ingested any they’d get sick and die, so more insects. in this theory there was a sand storm coincidentally that caused the rest

some sources: X X

The volcano wasn’t ON Santorini - it WAS Santorini, then called Thera. It completely blew away the Minoan settlements on the island and was one of the largest eruptions in human history. 

this is blowing my fucking mind

I love that if you really boil all this information down, what you get is something approximating “the sinking of Atlantis caused the 10 Biblical plagues of Egypt” which is, like, one of the greatest mythological mash-ups I have ever heard of.

things the tolkien biopic needs to include:

Ah Neil said something about real fans way back in 2014, that has stayed with me all these years