Reblogged
Buff keith... and obama being a coward...
haha wow im so sexy
You're a literal child...
fuck off man u suck bigch die
Reblogged bi-ace-mess
im in philosophy and were talking about how you can doubt everything’s existence except for your own consciousness and the guy that sits in front of me just turns around tears streaming down his face and goes “i am on so many drugs”
world heritage post
Reblogged gracemainblog
[text ID: a tweet by @rhododaktulos that reads, ““my child is completely fine” your child’s favourite trope is found family”]
Reblogged bi-ace-mess
on the first day of classes professors will usually ask us to fill out a little notecard with our name, pronouns, major, and email. one dude in one of my history classes was very clearly one of those Anti-SJW Bullshit People and went “Uhhh pronouns? Ha, what’s that supposed to mean? I’m clearly a dude I don’t understand what you’re asking” and the professor just looked him in the eye and went “If you don’t know what a pronoun is then maybe a college level course isn’t for you” and i think about her every single day of my life
Reblogged black-cubes
seeyoucowpoke-deactivated201605
Other girls: slutty clothes, skinny legs, flat stomach
Me: classy clothes, 6 ft tall, vice president, i am joe biden
Reblogged quenchyest
The worldbuilding in Avatar and Sokka's character especially would have only benefitted from including Inuit/Inupiat cultural things in the Water Tribes.
The belief that you can hear the universe talking to you if you're quiet enough, the aurora being playful kids' souls, women's beauty tattoos, the concept of teasing cousins, all neat little details that would fit in the worldbuilding.
Maybe there could have been a scene where Sokka's burrying something near the roots of a tree and Aang is asking him what he's doing, so Sokka explains that it's the guts and bones from his kill the other night. He has to use all parts of the animal, or it offends the spirits and the game makes itself scarce. They aren't able to do anything with the leftovers before they go bad, so he'll give them to the trees, which will grow strong and give more animals places to hide. And then Aang walks away from that and doesn't flinch when Sokka mentions hunting, because he knows he isn't throwing away life, just borrowing it.
I dunno, there's just so much more potential than what we got.
Do you know that there is a city on Earth that actually lives in a dystopian future? and it's terrifying.
Who are the Uighurs?
The Uighurs are mostly Muslims, and number about 11 million in western China’s Xinjiang region. They see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations, and their language is similar to Turkish.
But in recent decades, there’s been a mass migration of Han Chinese (China’s ethnic majority) to Xinjiang, and the Uighurs feel their culture and livelihoods are under threat.
Nowhere in the world, not even in North Korea, is the population monitored as strictly as it is in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Oppression has been in place for years, but has worsened massively in recent months.
- Uighurs can no longer openly practice Islam
- Men are not allowed to wear beards. Exception only for old people
- They can no longer learn their native language at school
- They cannot move freely around the country and cannot leave it
- All mosques have been turned into shops and office centers
Beijing has also turned Xinjiang into a security state that is extreme even by China’s standards, being a police state itself. The provincial government has recruited over 90,000 police officers in the last two years alone - twice as many as it recruited in the previous seven years.
At the same time, Beijing is equipping the far-western region with state-of-the-art surveillance technology, with cameras illuminating every street all over the region, from the capital Urumqi to the most remote mountain village. Iris scanners and WiFi sniffers are in use in stations, airports and at the ubiquitous checkpoints - tools and programs that allow data traffic from wireless networks to be monitored.
Checkpoints are installed in every district of the city. In simple terms, you can not get from one area of the city to another without passing the checkpoint and the police.
The data is then collated by an “integrated joint operations platform” that also stores further data on the populace – from consumer habits to banking activity, health status and indeed the DNA profile of every single inhabitant of Xinjiang.
Anyone with a potentially suspicious data trail can be detained. The government has built up a grid of hundreds of re-education camps. Tens of thousands of people have disappeared into them in recent months.
“Qu xuexi,” meaning to go or be sent to study, is one of the most common expressions in Xinjiang these days. It is a euphemism for having been taken away and not having been seen or heard from since. The “schools” are re-education centers in which the detainees are being forced to take courses in Chinese and patriotism, without any indictment, due process or a fair hearing.
Xinjiang, one of the most remote and backward regions in booming China, has become a real-life dystopia. It provides a glimpse of what an authoritarian regime armed with 21st century technology is capable of.
Uighurs are very intimidated and refuse to talk to the press, even if they miraculously escaped the country.
What’s happening in China is terrible. Maybe some people finally realize that the concentration camps are the reality of our time. There are concentration camps in America too. Don’t forget that.
Glad I learned about this in school. I’m sure not many people have though, so here. It’s terrible.
The situation with Chinese internment camps for the Uighur people is only going to become more aggressive unless they are pressured from other countries. For that to happen more people need to be informed on what’s happening, but unfortunately the nature of Chinese security makes it difficult to find a plethora of first hand sources, apparently.
If you’d rather listen to a basic outline of the problem, here’s a very well done conversation piece from Chris Hayes’s podcast, Why is This Happening.
Source: spiegel.de
awkwardsmilememe
THIS CROW FUCKING UNDERSTANDS WATER DISPLACEMENT. WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE TO BE TOLD EVERY YEAR BY A TEACHER HOW WATER DISPLACEMENT WORKS. DO THEY THINK I’M LESS INTELLIGENT THAN A FUCKING CROW? FUCKING DONE.
Crows discovered the principle of displacement in the third century BC, when the philosopher Awkimedes, upon noticing the level of his bird bath rose in proportion with the amount of his body that was submerged, reportedly exclaimed “EURECAW!” and flew through the streets of Athens shouting his discovery.
EURECAW
Stop taking people with dementia to the cemetery
“Oh yeah, every time that dad forgets mom is dead, we head to the cemetery so he can see her gravestone.”
WHAT. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this awful story. Stop taking people with dementia to the cemetery. Seriously. I cringe every single time someone tells me about their “plan” to remind a loved one that their loved one is dead.
I also hear this a lot: “I keep reminding mom that her sister is dead, and sometimes she recalls it once I’ve said it.” That’s still not a good thing. Why are we trying to force people to remember that their loved ones have passed away?
If your loved one with dementia has lost track of their timeline, and forgotten that a loved one is dead, don’t remind them. What’s the point of reintroducing that kind of pain? Here’s the thing: they will forget again, and they will ask again. You’re never, ever, ever, going to “convince” them of something permanently.
Instead, do this:
“Dad, where do you think mom is?”
When he tells you the answer, repeat that answer to him and assert that it sounds correct. For example, if he says, “I think mom is at work,” say, “Yes, that sounds right, I think she must be at work.” If he says, “I think she passed away,” say, “Yes, she passed away.”
People like the answer that they gave you. Also, it takes you off the hook to “come up with something” that satisfies them. Then, twenty minutes later, when they ask where mom is, repeat what they originally told you.
I support this sentiment. Repeatedly reminding someone with faulty memory that a loved one has died isn’t a kindness, it’s a cruelty. They have to relieve the loss every time, even if they don’t remember the grief 15 minutes later.
In other words, don’t try to impose your timeline on them in order to make yourself feel better. Correcting an afflicted dementia patient will not cure them. They won’t magically return to your ‘real world’. No matter how much you might want them to.
It’s a kindness of old age, forgetting. Life can be very painful. Don’t be the one ripping off the bandage every single time.
I used to work as a companion in a nursing home where one of the patients was CONVINCED I was her sister, who’d died 40 years earlier. And every time one of the nurses said “that’s not Janet, Janet is dead, Alice, remember?” Alice would start sobbing.
So finally one day Alice did the whole “JANET IS HERE” and this nurse rather nastily went “Janet is dead” and before it could go any further I said “excuse me??? How dare you say something so horrible to my sister?”
The nurse was pissed, because I was “feeding Alice’s delusions.” Alice didn’t have delusions. Alice had Alzheimer’s.
But I made sure it went into Alice’s chart that she responded positively to being allowed to believe I was Janet. And from that point forward, only my specific patient referred to me as “Nina” in front of Alice—everyone else called me Janet, and when Alice said my name wasn’t Nina I just said “oh, it’s a nickname, that’s all.” It kept her calm and happy and not sobbing every time she saw me.
It costs zero dollars (and maybe a little bit of fast thinking) to not be an asshole to someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Be kind.
nintendogamergirlexe
I wish I had heard this stuff when Grandma was still here.
I read once that you have to treat dementia patients more like it’s improv, like you have to take what they say and say to yourself “ok, and” and give them more of a story to occupy them and not just shut it down with something super harsh.
A nurse I used to work with always told us: “If a man with dementia is trying to get out of bed to go to work, don’t tell him he’s 90 and in a nursing home. Tell him it’s Sunday and he can stay in bed. If a woman with dementia is trying to stand because she wants to get her husband’s dinner out of the oven, don’t tell her he’s been dead for 20 years. Tell her you’ll do it for her and she can sit back down.”
Always remembered that, always did it. Nothing worse than hearing someone with memory loss ask the same question over and over again only to be met with: “We already told you!”
Just tell them again.
mondengel
This. Please, please just follow along with whatever they think is going on.
Please never do any variety of the “game” my ex-aunt (I have disowned her for a number of reasons and no longer recognize her as family) used to do to my grandma.
Grandma would be happily sitting with us all at the table in the nursing home cafeteria - cheerful, focused intensely on eating a piece of pumpkin pie with a straw -, and then my ex-aunt would get this malicious little smile and say. “Hey, who do you think that is?” and point at my dad. “Who’s that sitting beside you?”
My grandmother would look at him, head bobbling a bit as she task-switched from sucking the end of the straw she’d been spearing into the pie and study my dad. Then she’d smile a bit and say her long-dead brother’s name.
And my ex-aunt, that rotten bitch, would chuckle, “No, that’s [my dad’s name]. That’s your son.” Then she’d go around the table pointing at people and asking my grandma to identify them, and correct her when she got it wrong.
Every single time she did this, gleeful like a kid pulling the wings off a butterfly because now she could “get back” at her mother for a life of “slights”, I tried to stop it, interrupt, talk to grandma to get her to focus on me, loudly bring up another subject, even tried to physically put myself between them or wheel her chair away, but my aunt was undaunted and would just carry on.
And every time, I had to watch my grandma live through a horror movie as she realized the people surrounding her, people she thought she knew, family and friends, loved one’s she’d grown up with, weren’t those people. They were someone else. Someone she didn’t know, didn’t remember. Strangers with faces she thought she knew.
The look on her face.
How quiet she’d be before the haze of forgetfulness took the horror away.
It never, ever mattered to me that she forgot the whole thing in a few minutes, watching someone go from happy and festive because there’s pie on a crinkly plastic tablecloth with pumpkins and turkeys and the whole family is here! :), to literally the middle of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was awful.
Just let people with dementia and Alzheimer’s be happy. It costs nothing to let them think you’re someone else for a few hours.
Source: dementiabyday.com
Reblogged
i don’t think people get what these fires mean for California.
the fight against climate change is not “for the future” or “coming up”
no. it is now. for california, for me, for the 37 fucking million of us who live here, it is now. it is now. it is fucking now. there is smoke blanketing my entire city. the other day there was ASH FALLING FROM THE SKY. there are people who are living with red, terrifying smoke, right outside their front doors. i can’t open a window because it all smells like a fucking fire. the sky is entirely grey, because it’s all fucking smoke. my entire fucking STATE is affected by this shit. my STATE.
by the way, california? our population is 71% of England’s. an entire country.
and yes, there are issues other than climate change that have caused this shit, of course. but I’ve grown up through two droughts. I’ve watched the fountains in my town get shut down, I’ve watched them grow dusty and old. I’ve fixed my sprinklers to account for the new water restrictions. I’ve grown up knowing each winter was colder, each summer hotter. I’ve grown up seeing this shit.
every year, we come to fire season, and i hope and watch and desperately wish that it’ll be okay. that thousands of people won’t lose their homes this year. that i won’t have to walk home with a red sun blazing over me and smoke so thick i can’t stop coughing. that I’ll be able to step outside and not smell it. that people won’t lose their towns, their belongings, their livelihoods. every damn year.
my entire state is kindling. my friends outside of cali reach out to me about the fires, telling me they hope I’ll be safe. but i can’t go outside without inhaling lungfuls of smoke. i can’t do anything but watch as hundreds of thousands of acres burn.
2.5 million acres have burned this year. million. 2.5 fucking million acres. 20x what burned last year.
my state is on fire. my city is covered in smoke. a one year old boy DIED because of these fires, and who knows how many will join him by the time this is over.
so yes, please, donate. but i am tired as shit of people pretending that wildfires in california should be normal, that this is okay, that this is just “something that happens” no. no. vote for politicians who support renewable energy. vote for politicians who care about climate change. because, in the grand scheme of things, what we need is restrictions and laws and regulations. one person installing solar panels isn’t going to do shit.
those bottom photos are san francisco. my state is burning.
you can donate to help here. but this isn’t something that’ll go away. it’s going to get worse and worse, unless we fucking do something.
natasharxmanov
tags from @astrum-cipher. this is a huge fucking devastating problem.
I woke up this morning and could see the smoke before I even opened my blinds, just form the yellow quality of the light peeking in under the door. I’m from Oregon. I grew up with a color pallet of grey and green and blue, of rainy winters and forests that are supposed to stay lush through the summer. With this smoke, it’s dark like it is under the blanket of clouds in the winter, but this brings no rain, just ash falling from the sky. I don’t want to open the blinds because the world outside is orange, not green. I don’t want to watch the world I love burn. This is Not Normal.
just wait until the smoke clears. 150,000 acres of the McKenzie corridor is gone, all that green and blue is black now. i’ve driven that road hundreds of times, and i’m going to absolutely fucking weep the next time I go out there.
I grew up in San Diego County. I was 3 years old when the Cedar Fire ravaged my area, and was considered the largest wildfire to ever hit California burning 273k acres of land.
That record was beaten in 2017 by the Thomas Fire.
Then it was beaten again in 2018 by the Mendocino Complex Fire.
Then it was beaten again three times over by the LNU Lightning Complex Fire, the SCU Lightning Complex Fire, and the August Complex Fire all in August of this year, 2020.
A record for largest wildfire ever that had been held for 14 years was beaten five times over in the span of not even a full 4 years. This is not fucking normal.
Growing up, I knew about fire season. I lived in an extremely fire prone area, so I was no stranger to the smell of smoke in the air, getting prepared to evacuate, watching the news with flames dancing across the screen. But it never happened every single year. Our fire season used to be September - November. Now, since 2017, fire season has started sooner and sooner, and now most people would say it begins in July.
It has gotten exponentially worse over the past few years. This is not normal for California. Yes, we’ve always been fire prone. But never like this. So no one should be saying that this is ‘normal’ because it’s fucking not. I remember when summers used to be pleasant and not terrifying. In my short 20 years of life, things have changed so drastically with our weather, it’s ridiculous to even try to claim that this is somewhere in the realm of ‘normal’.
i’ve seen these wildfires from my window. it’s terrifying, and i havent even seen the worst of it.
Reblogged bi-ace-mess
I know this site is very US-centric but I need to say that what the UK government has done to teenagers' exam results is absolutely disgusting and if you're in the UK please take a moment to sign this petition (from the Labour party, I recieved this via email because I'm a member) imploring the Tories not to fuck up the futures of kids who don't go to private fucking schools
The tl;dr is that students obviously haven't been able to sit exams this year, so the government has devised a clever algorithm that spits out grades for them based on the school's past performance and moreover the postcode of the school. This has resulted in tens of thousands of students being given grades way below what they deserve and most importantly has denied them conditional university places and bursaries they would have gotten with their correct marks.
In the past two days I've read dozens of stories of students who aced their mocks and coursework, who had predicted grades of As and A*s, only to be given Ds and Es because of where the school is. I've read dozens of stories of deserving pupils losing their places at prestigious universities because their grades are too low.
Rest assured this algorithm had no ill effect on private schools, which were in some cases awarding their students significantly higher results than their prior grades indicated.
The Conservative education secretary was notably quoted saying "The danger is that pupils will be overpromoted into jobs that are beyond their competence", as if that doesn't describe the entire Tory cabinet, in particular B*ris J*hnson.
to all uk students affected by this, I'm so sorry. Remember that you'll be able to vote in the next general election.
#ToriesOutNow
As an employee at a software company, I can tell you from experience that algorithms are not dependable to make decisions. They may provide insight but should not be relied upon solely in making important decisions.
This action by the UK government is seriously flawed and will hurt many many young people who are in low income postal codes.
To use an algorithm to determine grades based on location is unethical and morally wrong.
If I lived in the UK I would be all over the Tory government to clean up their act. Clearly this is an excellent example of class exclusion that the UK is so known for in the past and still continues to use today.
WarriorMale