had a surreal experience at work this morning. i was the only person on the floor when we opened and a customer came over and was like "do you mind if i ask you for help with something?" and when i jokingly said "i don't think you have much of a choice to be honest" he replied "we always have a choice" and then we both just stood there opposite each other like rival wizards of light and dark for several moments.
ALTit literally felt like this
SHE IS A TRUE HERO
No, she’s a bitch is what she is
what do u mean???? it was clearly an accident she even said “Oooppsss”
LMFAOOOO
Look, rather than being petty and destroying it, why not talk to the girl. Really ask them why they are using the confederate flag. But no, low level terrorism is the answer.
LOW LEVEL TERRORISM?
Low level terrorism
ICONIC
world heritage post
touching grass is not enough i need to see the night sky as it looked to an ancient greek
One of many things that is amazing to me about astronomy is that Polaris—the star we moderns regard as the "pole star" in the Northern Hemisphere—wasn't the pole star 2000 years ago. A pole star is the star that doesn't move as you watch the night's sky, which a long exposure photograph makes clear:
Because of the Earth's axial precession, the "celestial north pole" (as well as the celestial south pole) changes position. That is, the axis around which stars in the night's sky appear to rotate from our perspective shifts very slightly over the course of thousands of years. The circle marked with numbers indicates the position of celestial north pole at different points in history:
We happen to live in an era when Polaris—a particularly bright star of the Little Dipper AKA Ursa Minor—is very closely aligned with the celestial north pole. Circa 1000 BC, the nearest bright star to the true celestial North Pole was Beta Ursae Minoris AKA Kochab, but as you can see above, it was an imperfect reference point. There was no time when Kochab was actually at the celestial North pole.
When the Egyptians were building the great Pyramid of Giza, the pole star was Alpha Draconis AKA Thuban.
Axial precession wasn't known to Shakespeare when he put the words
But I am constant as the Northerne Starre,
Of whose true fixt, and resting quality,
There is no fellow in the Firmament.
in the mouth of Julius Caesar. In Caesar's time, the Romans approximated celestial north as halfway between Polaris and Kochab. there's no star visible to the naked eye in that part of the night's sky (even absent modern light pollution). By Shakespeare's time, celestial north had moved close enough to Polaris for it to be known as the "northern star." It's even closer to true celestial north for us today!
If we don’t microdose delusion we won’t make it through this reality babe….
So I remember reading about this study in grad school where they have a bunch of clinically depressed people and a bunch of non-clinically-depressed people a game that was partially chance and partially skill, and asked them to estimate how much control they had over the outcome.
The depressed people were far more accurate in estimating how much influence their actions had on the outcome of the game compared to their nondepressed counterparts, who consistently overestimated the effects of their own choices on their chances of winning.
Then I remember this other study (CW animal testing) where they put rats in a bucket of water that they couldn’t get out of, so they’d have to swim. There was a fairly consistent point at which the swimming rat would falter, and stop swimming, fated to drown.
Except that that’s when the researchers would pull the rat out of the bucket, give it a nice rest warmth and a meal.
When those SAME rats who had been rescued before were put in the same situation again, they swam much LONGER than they had before.
Why? The risk was the same either way- drowning. You’d have thought that the fear of drowning would keep them swimming to their maximum length no matter what.
The researchers conclusion was that the rescued rats had something they hadn’t had the first time- they had more hope. A miraculous rescue could come, and that let them swim for longer, just in case.
I think we do microdose delusion because sometimes that little overestimation of our chances, of our luck, keeps us swimming that little bit longer, just in case something good happens. And sometimes, that little margin really does make the difference.
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
-Terry Pratchett, Hogfather.
hey, don't just leave the quote there! the last line is what MAKES it!
"YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?"
...Re: The power of being human...
woke up today and realized that tumblr entirely killed fuck ya life bing bong so here ya go again
“Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content.”
This? In particular? Pisses me off. I hate it.
I hate the implication that all porn is interchangeable and devoid of cultural value, so it’s no big deal when a decade’s worth of creative endeavor produced by a vibrant subculture is destroyed, because, whatever, it’s just dirty pictures.
I hate the disingenuous inability to see a distinction between a website that is about porn only, and a website that allows people to blog about all of their interests and aspects of their lives including sex and porn because those are normal parts of the human experience.
It’s the most tone-deaf bullshit.
This post was made after the porn ban of Dec 2018. I’m reblogging because OP is still right.
I was gonna go in a longer rant but I'll leave it at this: when capitalists talk about economic freedom they mean submission to capital, and especially in our current context, submission to Usamerican capital. Argentina is not "business unfriendly" because it's hard to start and keep a business here, it's easy, way too easy in fact. It's an unfriendly country because it has resisted Usamerican capital and even commited the cardinal sin of re-statizing things after perhaps the worst failure of neoliberalism in a single country. For both the US and "los caporales nativos" in the words of Galeano, Argentina must be Punished to show what happens when you stray away from the neoliberal system. It is also very convenient to blame "populism" and "leftism" because the 2001 catastrophe is the most plain example of the failure of neoliberalism, and it has to be hidden somehow unless a popular uprising happens elsewhere
So Argentina is punished by legal means, is punished by economic means, and since claiming Argentina is no democratic would be ridiculous even for them (oh but they try), it's propagandized as a "Not Economically Free" country. This is not unique to here. Dozens of countries are being punished in the same way, and they have it even worse.
autisticbright asked:
Hello Mr. Gaiman, what is your take on platypuses?
neil-gaiman answered:
I am wary of their venomous knees.
Okay but platypus venom is actually one of the weirdest things about them.
So like, everyone knows how famously weird platypuses are. Semi-aquatic egg-laying mammals with duck bills and beaver tails, but too few people mention how strange their venom is.
First of all it's only found on males. I'm no scientist but from my (limited) research, I can't find any other example of a vertebrate where only one sex has venom. Venom in mammals is rare enough already anyway, but sexual dimorphism in the venom in a mammal is all but unheard of.
Next, platypi primarily use their venom on each other. The males produce venom from their leg knives year round, but venom production goes in to overdrive during mating season, leading scientists to believe that they mainly use it on each other to compete for mates. As an additional not here, not only is it injected through their legs, but they use their legs as a vice, trapping their victims between them and repeatedly stabbing.
Now, what the venom actually *does*. It will temporarily paralyze other platypa, but will quickly kill other small animals. There have been no recorded deaths on humans from platy-venom, but if you get stung by one, you'll wish you had been thr first. The pain is "immediate, sustained, and devastating". Fortunately, there have been so few examples of humans being stung that the results are not very well-researched, but what has been seen is enough. It will cause the afflicted area to swell up with extreme pain for days, weeks, or even months. Without end. Even 25 years later there have been reports of continued stiffness and pain in afflicted areas.
I've saved the worst for last though.
It's immune to painkillers.
That's right, even morphine is inadequate to stop the pain from these guys. You get stung? Debilitating, inescapable pain for months on end with lifelong aftereffects.
Tl;dr: you're right to be wary of their venomous knees. Never go near a platypus unless you know for certain it's female.
(Edit: clarified the bit about sexual dimorphism in vertebrates)
Transcript (thank you to @witchstone for sending me the missed and/or unknown words/places)
Hello! I'm back to show you how to make one fashion blunder after another starting with these pyjama pants. Which are so big each can be used as a sleeping bag. And then, from the children's department, I got this tiny little vest. Please have a look at my pecs, I went to the gym today. Look how tight that one is.
Okay, too tight around my big pecs. I then went and got this vest that came from Dolly magazine 1970's Christmas Edition. Fix my hair, clap clap for that.
Nope, I'm not going out in pyjamas anymore. I decided I would just put on these plain ordinary jeans. Doodgewone jeans for any occasion and just have a look at that. That's not too bad. And then bring out the slippers, because I'm still quite keen on the nightwear thing.
And then check if I can dance, yes I can as long as I don't move my feet. And back to 1970s where I got this jacket from the old man down the road. He said I could use it, but I said no not today, I don't wanna wear it out too soon. Found a little bag from the girl down the road again and now look at me!
I look like the gay plumber from Pofadder.
[Video description: A tiktok by eiitanbroude, captioned, "my mum does my voice over lol." A fairly skinny man, shirtless with black pants on, is reflected in a floor-length mirror. He holds up a large pair of shiny, pale pink pants and puts them on. They're pretty oversized, the bottoms pooling at his feel and seeming to barely stay on his hips. He then holds up and puts on a white undershirt, which is a bit too small. He feels his pecs and then takes the undershirt off, replacing it with a cream sweater vest.
He runs his hands through his hair, claps them together twice thoughtfully, and then takes off pink pants and replaces them with a pair of jeans. He holds up a pair of slipper-like shoes and slides them on, then does a little standing-in-place dance.
he then puts on a dark brown jacket (that looks like it has some lighter splotches on it, as if tie-dyed), smiles at the mirror, and takes it back off. he holds up a small, teal bag with a long strap and puts it on cross body. he poses for a moment and then turns and walks away. /end ID]
[‘Law of Holes’ - Wikipedia, ‘The Song with Five Names, a.k.a. Soapbox Tao, a.k.a. Checkmate Atheists! a.k.a. Neospace Government, a.k.a. You Can Never Know’ - Will Wood and the Tapeworms, ‘Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In!’ - Will Wood and the Tapeworms, MAG 88 ‘Dig’ - The Magnus Archives]
