to anyone reading this: be proud of yourself for continuing on— even when you thought you couldn’t hold on any longer. I see you, I love you, and I am routing for you every step of the way.

incredibly, the architect behind both the building that melts cars in london and the building that burns people in las vegas foresaw this exact problem happening for BOTH buildings, did not do anything to prevent it, and describes the effect as "phenomenal". King

i looked up pics of people cooking eggs in the building's reflection and

this is like a renaissance painting

I am very endeared by humanity’s tendency to check if it’s truly hot somewhere by attempting to cook an egg

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

Have you guys noticed how much the internet/technology just does not listen to you anymore? I click “don’t show this artist” on Spotify and I get recommended a music video by them on the front page. I click “skip this update” on a pop up every time I open a file organization app and it’s right back there every time. I click unsubscribe on a newsletter and it keeps showing up in my inbox!! I click “delete my account” and the next time I open the website they suggest I “reactivate”.

I can’t speak for other social media webbed sites but I really enjoy how tumblr seems to just completely spin a wheel on whatever media is hot right now. Like yeah sometimes it’s a new show that’s big and actively coming out but also sometimes there will be a solid month where half my dash is Columbo memes. Defy authority. Get really into an book from the 1800s. Watch shows that haven’t aired in 40 years. Celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood. Become unmarketable

oh shit i almost missed it!

Oh man, the Boston Molasses Flood.

Official Post of Massachusetts

to anyone reading this: be proud of yourself for continuing on— even when you thought you couldn’t hold on any longer. I see you, I love you, and I am routing for you every step of the way.

I mean, I don't want to sound stupid, but I always assumed that the Ancient Romans were mammals

Just a peaceful moment

"Single people are on average less healthy, less financially stable, and overall less satisfied with life than partnered and married people are. This must mean that monogamous relationships and marriage are the solution to society's problems"

Huh, it's almost like society, both socially and financially, is set up to specifically benefit people who have monogamous relationships and get married and punish people who don't partner or get married. It's almost like there are financial benefits that exist specifically to incentivize people to get married and have kids and be a nuclear family. It's almost like it was very culturally normal until very very very recently to just not have any deeper platonic relationships after you get married, meaning that single people past a certain age just get left behind and get treated as spinsters or loser bachelors. It's like life just is not designed for single people to be able to easily participate and survive while still being single. Huh, very weird. I'm sure marriage will fix this.

everyone give thanks to the middle eastern and north african people of over ten thousand years ago for domesticating the african wildcat and providing the entire world with some of the best pets ever 🙏🙏🙏 it was probably the best idea any human has ever had.

you can honestly tell that this is the ancestor of all domestic cats. look at it. just a lil tabby cat. with long long legs.

crazy that in the 1970s they were like, "fine, women can play sports. but because they're innately less athletic than men, only in a special ghettoized League For The Frail And Delicate where they get paid less 😊". And not only is that still the system in 2023, but viciously lashing out at the smallest challenges to that system gets framed as Feminist Praxis

even setting aside the fact that gendered bodytype averages aren't universals, and plenty of individual (cis) women and (cis) men could easily go to toe to toe. have we considered that the fact that all the most prominent and well-paid sports are ones that require things like Being Tall and Having Muscle Mass, as opposed to, ex, gymnastics...is itself an artifact of sexism

Also consider the existence of sports where women would have an advantage, and yet, somehow, the most famous and well paid ones are not women.

I'm thinking of jockeys. Jockeys get an advantage from being smaller and lighter, and while obviously you need sufficient strength to stay on the horse, a well-trained horse does enough of the work that you don't need upper body strength to do the job. Given this and that the majority of children obsessed with horses are female, you'd think most jockeys would be women. Yet somehow they are not.

NASCAR at one point threatened to handicap Danica Patrick by putting extra weight in her car to compensate for the fact that she is smaller and lighter than other racecar drivers. If she gets an advantage as a driver, why is she like practically the only female racecar driver, or at least the only one anyone knows about?

Women, apparently, have an advantage in long distance swimming. Higher body fat percentage and higher endurance means that women can go greater distances in the water. Is long distance swimming even a competitive sport?

Women have actually been excluded from competitive Olympic skiing on the grounds that the jumps required could damage their uterus. The people who actually have unsupported reproductive organs hanging outside their body are considered to have better support than the people whose reproductive organs are nestled in alongside unisex organs like the small intestine and stomach. How does this make any goddamn sense at all? If a uterus could dislodge from the force of a skiing jump, so could intestines and the sport wouldn't be safe for anyone.

Theoretically, any sport where you get an advantage from low center of gravity, better balance, higher flexibility, or being closer to the ground, women should have an advantage. This should include soccer (football in non-US places), and might include hockey if the hockey players hadn't introduced unnecessary viciousness to the sport.

So in any sport where women would excel over men, they're either excluded, unfairly penalized, the sport doesn't exist, or the sport is considered unimportant and no one makes money on it. Hmm. I am thinking the problems here are not actually what the TERFs and transphobes make them out to be.

For those of you wondering "Why did OP say the 70's?" It's because that's when Title IX was passed in the US, prohibiting gender-based discrimination in federally funded education, e.g. public schools & universities. So anti-feminists couldn't just straight up say "no girls allowed" but instead resorted to what's been described above.

It's as if intolerance can't be magically be solved with pieces of paper alone.

chris is literally nonbinary

ppl really do just say "cisgender" for anyone who isnt "trans enough" huh

this is literally just how ppl treat nonbinary amabs

X

star trek explores these strange seemingly inconsequential extremes because it wants you to consider the possibility that your concept of ethics doesnt and could never possibly account for every scenario. It wants you to consider the ethical ramifications of just wiping out the little nanites taking over your ships computer even though eventually this will kill you all becuase

-What if they’re alive?

-What if they’re sentient?

-What if they don’t realize they’re hurting us?

-What if what hurts us is what they need to live?

-What if we can communicate with them?

Star Trek takes the situation of, “these computer bugs are eating our ship and in an hour we’ll all be dead and we COULD just wipe them out utterly but…what if they’re like us?” because the ramifications effect what risks we ourselves are willing to take in the name of pacifism and understanding. it says that even the smallest most immenently dangerous creature deserves as much of a chance to live peacefully as we can possibly give it through understanding.

without examining ourselves this way, through these made up seemingly inane situations, we will never be able to understand ourselves and what we’re truly capable of, what levels of understanding can be achieved. without the ability to place ourselves in a difficult situation and reach beyond our first instinct of fight or flight and self-preservation, we will never be evolve as a global community

preserving creekfiend’s tags because GOLD

#star trek does this because its the space talmud actually

this is unequivocally true. the rabbi at my childhood temple made it a point to bring a Star Trek scenario into every single d'var, and there was always something relevant!

slightly worried by how many people seem to have been taking the things they see online at face value before genai was a thing

"it sucks that genAI means i have to verify everything i see online now!" you shoulda been doing that anyway though

remembered im posting this on the infinite chocolate website

How many of these have you read?