i think the california red sided garter snake deserves an appreciation post of its own just bc its so
gorgeous???
literally an Aesthetic Snake
pls reblog if you love your idols for more than their body
this is for science
Hi.
I’m your kid’s teacher, and I would take a bullet for your child. But I wish you wouldn’t ask me to.
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We had an intruder drill today.
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I have shepherded children through a lot of intruder drills. I have also, on one memorable occasion, shepherded children through a non-drill. When I was a children’s librarian in a rough suburb, armed men got into a fight in the alley behind our building. We ushered all of the kids - most of whom were unattended - into the basement while we waited for the police.
During intruder drills, some children - from five-year-olds all the way to high school kids - get visibly upset. At one school, the intruder drill included administrators running down the hallways, screaming and banging on lockers to simulate the “real thing.” Kids cry. Kindergartners wet themselves. Teenagers laugh, nudging each other, even as the blood drains from their faces.
Other children handle intruder drills matter-of-factly. “Would the guy be able to shoot us through the door?” they ask, the same way they’d ask a question about their math homework. In some ways, this is worse than the kids who cry. To be so young and so accustomed to fear that these drills seem routine.
And then there are the teachers. There is no way, huddling in a corner with your students, ducking out of view of the windows and doors, to avoid thinking about what happens when it’s not a drill.
.
People really hate teachers. I don’t take it personally. It actually makes a lot of sense: what other group of professionals do we know so well? How many doctors have you had? How many plumbers? How many secretaries?
Over the course of my public school education, I had at least fifty teachers for at least a year each. So of course some of them were bad. You take fifty people from any profession, and a couple of them are going to be terrible at their job.
So I had a couple of teachers who were terrible, and a few teachers who were amazing, inspirational figures - the kinds of teachers they make movies about.
And then I had a lot of teachers who did a good job. They came to school every day and worked hard. They’d planned our lessons and they graded our papers. I learned what I was supposed to, more or less, even if it wasn’t the most incredible learning experience of my life.
Most teachers fall into that category. I’m sure I do.
Looking at it from the other side, though, I see something that I didn’t know when I was a kid.
Those workhorse teachers who tried, who failed sometimes and sometimes succeeded, who showed up every day and did their jobs: those teachers loved us.
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Of course you can never know what you’ll do in the event. That’s what they always say. In the event of an intruder, a fire, a tornado.
You can never know until you know.
But part of what’s so terrifying, so upsetting about an intruder drill as a teacher, is that on some level you do know. You don’t aspire to martyrdom; you’ve never wanted to be a hero. You go home every night to a family that loves you, and you intend to spend the next fifty years with them. You will do everything in your power to hide yourself in that office along with your kids.
But if you can’t.
If you can’t.
.
When people tell me about why they oppose gun control, I can’t hear it anymore.
I’m from a part of the country where everybody has guns. I used to be really moderate about this stuff, and I am not anymore.
I can’t be.
Every day, I go to work in a building that contains hundreds of children. Every single one of those kids, including every kid that makes me crazy, is a joy and a blessing. They make their parents’ lives meaningful. They make my life meaningful. They are the reason I go to work in the morning, and the reason I worry and plan when I come home.
Parents usually know a handful of kids who are the most wonderful creatures on the planet. I know a couple thousand. It is an incredible privilege, and it is also terrifying. The world is big and scary, and I love so many small people who must go out into it.
So when adults tell me, “I have the right to own a gun”, all I can hear is: “My right to own a gun outweighs your students’ right to be alive.” All I can hear is: “My right to own a gun is more important than kindergarteners feeling safe at school.” All I can hear is: “Mine. Mine. Mine.”
.
When you are sitting there hiding in the corner of your classroom, you know.
The alternative would be unthinkable.
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We live in a country where children are acceptable casualties. Every time someone tells me about the second amendment I want to give them a history lesson. I also want to ask them: in what universe is your right to walk into a Wal-Mart to buy a gun more important than the lives of hundreds of children shot dead in their schools?
Parents send their kids to school every day with this shadow. Teachers live with the shadow. We work alongside it. We plan for it. In the event.
In the event, parents know that their children’s teachers will do everything in their power to keep them safe. We plan for it.
And when those plans don’t work, teachers die protecting their students.
We love your children. That’s why we’re here. Some of us love the subject we teach, too, and that’s important, but all of us love your kids.
The alternative would be unthinkable.
.
When you are waiting, waiting, waiting for the voice to come on over the PA, telling you that the drill is over, you look at the apprehensive faces around you. You didn’t grow up like this. You never once hid with your teacher in a corner, wondering if a gunman was just around the corner. It is astonishing to you that anyone tolerates this.
And the kids are nervous, but they are all looking to you. You’re their teacher.
They know what you didn’t know, back when you were a kid, back before Columbine. They know that you love them. They know you will keep them safe.
You’re their teacher.
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If you are a parent who thinks it’s totally reasonable for civilians to have a house full of deadly weapons, and who accepts the blood of innocent people in exchange for that right, it doesn’t change anything for me. I will love your kid. I will treat you, and your child, the same way I treat everyone else: with all of the respect and the care that is in me.
In the event, I will do everything in my power to keep your child safe.
I just want you to know what you are asking me to do.
All of this.
apparently there’s some Straight Girl discourse out there in the reaches of the internet about how bi men are unappealing to date?? and anyway i want to make this post to remind everyone that bi boys & bi guys & bi men are wonderful and awesome and you don’t need the approval of straight people EVER.
I hate the stereotype of you can’t be social and smart like um no I’m gonna go to parties and stay up all night and go to concerts and crowd surf and I’m still gonna work hard and get an A+ in all my classes.
i love speaking with people who are more intelligent in a certain field than i am, like it’s just great to sit back and listen to somebody educate you on shit they’re passionate about
Gun laws in Germany and school shootings
Let’s put things into perspective: The last mass shooting at a school in Germany was in March 2009, 9 years ago. 15 people were killed, before the shooter, 17-year-old Tim killed himself. 9 years. 9. fucking. years. And Tim was only able to obtain and use guns because his father broke the law by not keeping his guns in a locked safe. So, if Tim’s father, a law-abiding citizen would have done his job, the shooting in Winnenden wouldn’t have happened. This brings me to the previous big school shooting with guns. Erfurt 2002. The shooter, 19-years-old Robert was a sports marksman who obtained his guns then legally and killed 16 people before commiting suicide.
After Erfurt, the laws were changed so that sports marksmen cannot buy guns under the age of 25. After Winnenden, unannounced checks were established and gun owners regularily have to prove that their guns are safely stored. Rounds of shots were limited. The number of registered guns in my state has dropped by 15% in the first 5 years after Winnenden.
School shootings are rare. Obtaining weapons has never been so hard. As a teacher, I am drilled to react to fire alarms, not shootings. As a teacher, I can go to work without being scared of having to save my students from a shooter.
Gun laws work. Law-abiding citizens can still enjoy their hobbies. This is not rocket science.
can you imagine not being human & just living out your days as a weeping willow, though? beautiful? by the water? unburdened? ideal
I wanna be the one from Harry Potter that beats the shit out of everyone and everything
Group projects in school weren’t meant to teach you teamwork, they were meant to teach you how to deal with the incompetence of your coworkers in the workplace.
reminder to:
- straighten your back
- go pee goddAMN IT STOP HOLDING IT
- go take your meds if you need to
- drink some water
- go get a snack if you havent eaten in a while
- maybe wander around the house/stretch a little if you’ve been sat at the computer a while (artists especially: sTRETCH THOSE WRISTS)
- reply to that text/message from earlier you’d forgotten about
- maybe send a nice lil message to someone having a bad day?
I just would like to thank everyone who ever reblogs this so that it somehow ends up back on my dash because I usually need the reminder (especially the drinking water one)
fun story I first became obsessed with the harry potter series and hermione in particular in yr 3 of primary school and I decided I wanted to be like hermione in every way so I started reading *lots* and working super hard in school, got a reputation for bookishness and being the smart kid that I kept up into high school and lol here I am graduating in a few weeks from Cambridge all bc I adored this clever bookworm in a children’s book series and absorbed her into my personality as a child like ???
basically long story short female role models in kids media are EVERYTHING
a secret code between women: are you safe? in a contact of eyes. i’m here if you need me, the littlest shift of a skirt, of an inclined head, of watching the man who is asking you to smile, bitch. you aren’t alone on the walls of restrooms, i was where you are too. the quiet doling of emergency numbers, the shelters. the space between two women in a largely empty train station. the waiting game of two women strangers who walk, quietly and quickly, to their cars in abandoned parking lots, who watch to be sure the other leaves safely. text me you get home safe. the tally marks of drinks on hidden wrists, carefully disguised as other things ever since men picked up on what it meant and used it to target the “weakest link.”
my father tells me we have nothing to worry about. last night he sent me one of those email chains that say at the top “Safety Tips For The Women In Your Life!!!! Don’t Let Her Die!!”
me, and the stranger on the train. she is asleep and the man is asking me who i am going home to. i feel tears pricking the sides of my eyes. i am 13 while he towers over me. he reaches out one hand, and while i don’t know how she knows, she speaks up without opening her eyes: “If you touch my daughter, sir, I will murder you.” Whatever he grumbles is lost in history, because this moment I am so grateful for the existence of other people that I cannot breathe.
I am 19 and on my phone when i become aware of a 13 year old girl is smiling nervously at a man who’s saying disgusting things. I grab her arm. “There you are, cindy,” I say, and then look at the man like he is bile. “Do you need something from my sister?” i ask, and i walk away with her. she cries later.
this is the way of things: a silent, secret web. our promise to each other that despite our differences, when it comes to the wire, we become family, instantly. the unspoken promise. i’m here. i’m watching. i’ll witness.
book: “she has naturally red hair”
screen adaptation:
book: “she has naturally curly hair”
screen adaptation:
book: “red hair, freckles”
screen adaptation:
Book: “she was black”
Movie adaptation:
Book: She was asian
Movie:
reblogging for the last two
Electron microscope video of a needle on a vinyl record.
H O W
like you can tell me all you want how the sound is stored in the grooves but fucking H O W
HOW DOES THAT GET INTO THE NEEDLE
HOW ARE THE VIBRATIONS TURNED INTO MUSIC THAT YOU CAN HEAR???
H O W
The vibrations aren’t “turned into” music, they are music. When vibrations occur inside your inner ear, your brain processes this as sound.
The grooves in a record are an analogy for these vibrations, a method of remembering them so that they can be recreated later on.
Put your hand on a speaker while loud music is playing and you’ll feel the vibrations. Those are exactly the same vibrations happening inside your ear when you hear the music.
But how do you capture that?
Take a surface that vibrates strongly when a sound is played, like the skin of a drumhead for example. Connect that surface to a little tool - when sound causes the surface to vibrate, the tool digs a little bit into some wax, leaving behind a pattern that matches - in proportion - the vibrations of the surface caused by the sound. This is your analogy (hence: analog music).
Now, when there’s no sound playing, you run that little tool back over the pattern. This causes the skin to vibrate again, this time in response to the tool running over the pattern instead of because of an external sound. The vibrations should match, proportionally, the original vibrations of the music.. and thus these new vibrations, if you were to amplify them, would be a recreation or “recording” of the original music.
That’s oversimplified of course and things have changed a lot since the days of wax, but that is very basically how the process of recording music worked at first, and the general idea of how sound gets from a groove in a record into your brain.
The New York Times, New York, January 3, 1897
History in a nutshell
“What do women think about women?
WE ASKED A MAN”