You, you support trans men.

it's our week :)

ty for stealing this one much appreciated

people in the notes suggesting it was "improper" for the juror to do this or that it "introduced bias" to the court proceeding 🙄 the ice agent in question accused a moc of assaulting him / resisting arrest. how is the agent being a white supremacist not relevant. what universe are you living in

As a member of the world’s SECOND oldest profession, I assure you this is just one of many ways the justice system is systematically fucked up.

For anyone who wants to know how to fact check something you are told while on jury duty without getting fined:

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” --- like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

There are a lot of problems with our legal system, and I think one of the biggest is that jurors aren’t educated about what they can and can’t do. Juries have a lot of power, if (and only if) they know how to use it.

Reblogging for that last post, because frankly, “what to do as a juror” is one of those things the schools should really be teaching us. Serving on a jury is one of the most powerful rights of citizenship and everyone should be educated in how to exercise it correctly.

Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!” 

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D

Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.

Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirable genetic traits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.

Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.

Holy shit. I never thought of the “zombie virus” to be this take. It makes total fuckin sense. Shit

The Salem News, Ohio, January 13, 1908

These are so cute they’re almost physically painful

i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid

have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS

sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

there was once a little boy.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.

and he did not just keep the duckie shirt either

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)

MAN [IN THICK ACCENT]: Black cat bring good luck.  Not bad luck.  I have black cat - See, him face - And I am not dead today: Good luck!

“See him face”

I sure fucking do see him face

Him face

Reblog him face for good luck in 2021

Reblog him face for good luck in 2021 (2)

alright, so, last year I moved back to my home state (Oregon) and restarted my life via what I could carry in two suitcases and the good graces of my best friend’s parents who let me crash at their place.

I had no car and needed work, and conveniently there was a landscaping supply company within walking distance. I thought to myself, “I hate retail jobs and have always wanted to work outdoors, I bet this could be fun!” so. I applied and got an interview

now, all of this sounds very unremarkable until you realize one crucial fact: I am going into this interview as a transgender blue-haired twink. I literally look like this

somehow, I fail to properly think about this fact until I arrive on the premises and am surrounded by blue-collar, salt of the earth trucker men, and all of them are looking at me like I’m a flamingo escaped from the theme park. suddenly, I decide I have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this job

.... luckily, it turns out that I am an extremely resilient snowball

somehow, through the sheer dumb luck of the universe and the joys of the absurdity of life... I get a second interview. they ask me to get an Oregon driver’s license so I can be put on the company insurance plan. I run into my future boss at the DMV and he smiles at me and claps me on the shoulder. I get officially hired that very week......... as a trans guy with shoulder-length blue hair and the build of the aforementioned flamingo

and......... it ends up being AMAZING. I mean obviously, there’s some confusion about me at first - I had to apply under my deadname, and I’m only a year on T so I don’t pass very well even without the hair. BUT... I’m a hard worker and good on a forklift, so after a handful of “what should we call you?” questions and a single “so... are you a girl or a boy? sorry - this is all so new to me”... I am officially One Of The Dudes.

I get nicknamed right off the bat (”Blue”). I get invited to weekly trivia night at the bar (it turns out that true gender euphoria is having a 6-foot tall bearded trucker man tell you “I don’t care if you’re gay, trans, or whatever - you can drive a forklift good and that’s what matters”). the guys in the truck workshop help me with my car troubles when I do eventually get a car. I end up being very useful for crawling inside of small spaces, like inside the lapidary (stone and gem work) saw and behind storage areas. they also find out I’m good at power washing and they fight over who gets to have me wash their rigs next. all in all..... I’m made to feel welcomed, valued, and even a little loved.

anyways, here’s some more pics:

me in the saw:

Clifford The Big Red Truck, freshly washed (all the trucks had names):

operating the Komatsu:

when it came time for me to quit, everybody signed a goodbye card for me and my boss gave me this sick obsidian and turquoise knife:

also I ended up with biceps like this

SO......... moral of the story? Instant Landscaping in Bend, OR is trans-inclusive and has competitive starting pay. also anything is possible I guess

I keep thinking about this job in light of the ‘people don’t want to work anymore!’ complaints from companies...... I loved working here despite it not being my passion (I’m anti-lawn and most of what I did was selling lawns) because I was respected, paid $16 an hour, and given a good work schedule. like....... I’m a queer trans artist currently wearing rainbow leggings and dyed pink hair, and my favorite job I’ve ever done was driving forklifts and tractors and doing manual labor - BECAUSE THEY TREATED ME WELL

people DO want to work. they just don’t want to suffer for it

Ah, tumblr, where a man can get accused of appropriating his own neurodivergence.

Though, quite frankly, even if you didn't have it listed in your bio, I'm tired of this shitty toxic tumblr culture that pressures people to list all their disabilities on their profile to avoid getting called a faker.

Forced disclosure is fucking toxic, and people with ADHD aren't the only people with hyperfixations, nor are people who are autistic the only ones with special interests.

Plus, let's be really clear: those terms are accessibility anchors for diagnosis. If you have a special interest, you may not be autistic, but if you realize that you're going from special interest to special interest, and that you really do have special interests rather than just liking stuff, maybe you're autistic!

And since ADHD and autism have stunning under-diagnosis rates, especially among Black and brown folx, CAFAB folx, otherwise-disabled folx, and a ton of other intersections, making those terms common and commonly-understood and not rigidly policing their use actually helps people figure themselves out.

I wasn't diagnosed as autistic until I was 35, and I just got my ADHD diagnoses & medication this year, at 43. I don't know if I would ever have gotten the assistance I needed, or started working on my own accessibility without much help from doctors, if I hadn't been surrounded by a community that helped me understand myself by using those terms.

Seriously, though, Forced Disclosure is toxic, stop gatekeeping useful terms, no one owes you (anon) an explanation of why they're using terms like special interest or hyperfixation.

The only one being a 'downer' here is you.

Putting on my “I am a for real therapist who makes diagnoses as part of my daily job routine” hat here.

FIRSTLY, Vaspider is right about everything.

Additionally, diagnosis for autism is a checklist. A CHECKLIST. You meet a certain number of criteria and you get a diagnosis. There’s no magic or deep algorithms involved. There’s specialized language, and nuance to standards, which is why professionals are helpful, but at the end of the day, if I’m diagnosing an adult or adolescents with autism, it’s based first and foremost on their own SELF REPORT. As in I say “hey do you experience X?” and they say “yes, and it causes things to be hard for me”. This isn’t rocket surgery.

The criteria for diagnosis has changed within your lifetime. It’s changed during my career. These diagnostic criteria are not carved in stone and frankly the conversations about what gets included in the DSM and what doesn’t are laden with politics, power moves and other less-than-scientific forces.

All this to say that someone might genuinely, legitimately struggle with a number of ADHD or autism traits and not meet diagnostic criteria. That doesn’t mean they don’t HAVE them, it means if I want the insurance company or employer to pony up some support I need to come at it from a different angle. We can still work on those issues IF those issues are causing harm to the client in question. (I honestly do not give a shit whether their parents or whatever think special interests or hyperfixations are annoying. They can go suck eggs.)

So NO, you can’t reasonably say that only ppl who jump through the correct gatekept hoops get to use those words, because those are NOT the only people who have those experiences. Pretending otherwise hurts a wide array of people and makes accurate care even more difficult to access.

/end soapbox

This is all very good but I do have to say I especially agree with the 2nd paragraph.

the thing about “well-behaved women rarely make history" is that the author, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, didn’t write it about women who would be considered “badly-behaved;“ she wrote it in a book about a midwife, about women who had been largely ignored and erased from history because as a result of their “good behaviour.” So it’s not a “BAD GIRLS DO IT WELL" kind of quote; it’s a reminder to respect and pay attention to the women who go about quietly living their lives.

it’s a reminder to respect and pay attention to the women who go about quietly living their lives.

That is in fact the very best cow. 10/10 would bury my face in the floof.

Do you have a personal favorite name? Or a name you've been saving for a Special Dragon

don’t awoo

“don’t appropriate wolf culture” this zoo is run by fucking sjws trying to create some kind of safe space bullshit

But how agitated do the wolves get? Do they just stare at you like some humans do when you attempt to speak their language?

According to the local sanctuary, howling is how wolves establish territorial barriers and  unknown howling can trigger “OH SHIT WE’RE BEING INVADED” panic attacks.  Some of the animals have to be given canine vallium during coyote season out here because they get that wound up. 

It’s less of an issue if they can see the offending human, but it’s still very upsetting for some animals.  and even if it’s not panic-inducing, you’re still being LOUD during what is probably wolf nap time- Wolves are crepuscular and want to sleep during much of the day.

So yes, howling can be triggering for wolves, in the clinical sense, and you need to be quiet around them

Like to charge reblog to cast

6.8.21. Minnesota

A DHS/CBP pilot illegally intimidates protestors by flying a helicopter feet above protestors to create a dust storm and fear of collision. CBP in collaboration with Minnesota law enforcement are fighting protestors against Line 3 on behalf of the Canadian corporation Enbridge. Enbridge, with the support of U.S. armed forces, is attempting to build an oil pipeline through Anishinaabe/Ojibwe treaty land.

Global capital is in collaboration with capitalist governments to exploit Indigenous people and land. This is not limited to the U.S. or Canada nor recent decades.

[Image description: four tweets and a video.

The first tweet is by Evan Frost @efrostee and says “DHS/Border Patrol is using helicopter rotor wash to try to clear out activists from an occupied #Line3 pump station north of Park Rapids. More than 24 activists are locked down to equipment inside. @MPRNews”.

The video is a minute long and shows a helicopter flying close to the ground above a ground of people standing on a gravel road, which kicks up a huge cloud of dust. Towards the end of the video someone asks, “You got glasses?” and another person responds “I got some.”

John Edwin Mason @johnEdwinMason quoted the tweet and said “This is *exactly* the tactic that I saw South African apartheid police use in 1989 against peaceful protestors who were trying to desegregate a whites-only beach.”

giniw collective @GiniwCollective tweeted “Minnesota law enforcement enforcing Enbridge trespass on Ojibwe territory. They’re getting paid by Enbridge, via the MN-overseen Public Safety Escrow Trust. How many times does this injustice against Indigenous people & our lands play out, @potus @ginaMcCarthy46? #StopLine3” on June 7, 2021. Two photos are attached, showing police standing in a line in the site and a group of protestors outside of the line.

Honor the Earth (verified) @HonorTheEarth tweeted “Over 200 folks from #TreatyPeopleGathering remain camped on the Enbridge matting near the Mississippi headwaters, in solidarity with @RISEandEngage. Their ask? @POTUS honor the treaties and #StopLine3.” They attached two photos. The first is taken from above and shows a group of people lining a road holding a sign that says “Stop Line 3”. The road is painted with the message “Biden / Honor the Treaties / Stop Line 3” in black, white, and red capital letters. Yellow triangles on either side point to the message. The second photo shows two lines of tents on wood planks.

On June 8, Resist Line 3 @ResistLine3 quoted that tweet and said “Our movement is strong, and it grows stronger each day. With each new water protector, our collective voice grows. Join us to #StopLine3: linktr.ee/stopLine3.”

The thumbnail for the linktree is a photo of a group of protestors with their faces blurred, carrying flags and signs with messages. The readable ones say: Water Protector, Stop Line 3, Respect Treaties. They are also carrying a small red banner with six badges on it, edged with feathers.

The thumbnail for the Stop Line 3 website is a photo of a group of people carrying a blank banner with stars. The first word is cut off but says “Gaa-bimaji’wemagak / We Will Stop Line 3.” They are carrying the same feather-edged banner.

End image description]

Tumblr when Bezos' rocket malfunctions and vaporizes him

like to charge, reblog to cast