The Monarch (Danaus plexippus)
Day: August 7, 2018
That thing about how cats think humans are big kittens is a myth, y’know.
It’s basically born of false assumptions; folks were trying to explain how a naturally solitary animal could form such complex social bonds with humans, and the explanation they settled on is “it’s a displaced parent/child bond”.
The trouble is, cats aren’t naturally solitary. We just assumed they were based on observations of European wildcats – but housecats aren’t descended from European wildcats. They’re descended from African wildcats, which are known to hunt in bonded pairs and family groupings, and that social tendency is even stronger in their domesticated relatives. The natural social unit of the housecat is a colony: a loose affiliation of cats centred around a shared territory held by alliance of dominant females, who raise all of the colony’s kittens communally.
It’s often remarked that dogs understand that humans are different, while cats just think humans are big, clumsy cats, and that’s totally true – but they regard us as adult colonymates, not as kittens, and all of their social behaviour toward us makes a lot more sense through that lens.
They like to cuddle because communal grooming is how cats bond with colonymates – it establishes a shared scent-identity for the colony and helps clean spots that they can’t easily reach on their own.
They bring us dead animals because cats transport surplus kills back to the colony’s shared territory for consumption by pregnant, nursing, or sick colonymates who can’t easily hunt on their own. Indeed, that’s why they kill so much more than they individually need – it’s not for fun, but to generate enough surplus kills to sustain the colony’s non-hunting members.
They’re okay with us messing with their kittens because communal parenting is the norm in a colony setting, and us being colonymates in their minds automatically makes us co-parents.
It’s even why many cats are so much more tolerant toward very small children, as long as those children are related to one of their regular humans: they can tell the difference between human adults and human “kittens”, and your kittens are their kittens.
Basically, you’re going to have a much easier time getting a handle on why your cat does why your cat does if you remember that the natural mode of social organisation for cats is not as isolated solitary hunters, but as a big communal catpile – and for that purpose, you count as a cat.
cat socialism
This is even cuter honestly I love my colonymate
People Who Take Instructions Too Literally.
I love the kid that named the rectangle Tedison
ok but that alphabatical order one – what that kid did was way harder than the original task and demonstrated the same skills so i hope they got a goddamn A+
just once I want to see a good post critiquing makeup culture that doesn’t turn out to be made by some janky radfem blog
oh hey!! I’m not a janky radfem I can do it myself!
makeup culture is wack and normalizes a ludicrously high bar as the bare minimum women can do. I saw a “lazy"makeup tutorial the other day that listed 22 separate goddamn products. you’re supposed to buy and know how to use 22 different things on your face just for the privilege of being considered lazy and that’s uuuuuuh what’s the word? bullshit.
Really, five products could work, even 3. Just frame the face, eyes, lips, and you’re done.
0 products also works great
because I’m gonna be real here, the idea that 22 products is a minimum sucks but it’s really upsetting that any amount of makeup is the bare minimum at all
I would really just suggest some powder foundation, concealer, mascara and lipgloss/lipstick, or tbh just mascara works too, but that’s up to you
I’m sorry if I didn’t express this clearly enough in the original post but I’m not really looking for more concise makeup regiments. my intention was to point out how it’s Bad that makeup is considered a bare minimum at all, regardless of individual feelings on the matter
“But makeup makes some women feel better / more empowered!”
Consider why they felt bad about or disempowered by their appearance in the first place. Consider why the thought of leaving the house without even those five products on makes you uncomfortable enough that you recommend it to random women you encounter because you genuinely want to help them avoid feeling how *you* feel without makeup on in public.
There are things about makeup that are ABSOLUTELY AWESOME, but what makeup *culture* normalizes is (as said in the post above) that there’s a “bare minimum” a woman should be doing in the first place. That no woman’s face is fine to show to others just how it looks because their natural appearance is inherently flawed and in need of correction.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel pretty. It’s the fact that women are socialized to not feel pretty unless they have makeup on that we ought to be examining.
(And yes, it’s entirely possible to maintain the point of view that this is A Bad Thing while also appreciating amazing makeup jobs as the works of art that they are.)
Part of my anxiety was that I couldn’t leave my room without mascara on. Not to go to the bathroom, or to the kitchen, nevermind even outside. Somebody might see me, whether that be roommates or strangers. What will they think.
Part of my depression didn’t allow me much time to get ready. I missed class because I couldn’t shower because I couldn’t go to the bathroom because I couldn’t put on enough make-up just in case I ran into anyone. I couldn’t do the most basics things, nevermind get groceries. I starved myself, I peed my pants – all because I didn’t look put-together enough in my mind. But it doesn’t matter I missed a weekend full of meals, haha, because I can stand to lose some pounds, eh? That’s what I told myself.
I’m fine now, because I moved back home. Because I finally reached the point where it was admit to my parents what a mess I am or fall. I chose the former. I can even leave the house in sweatpants and without any make-up at all, but it was hard work to get there.
Beauty culture is insidious. We need to normalize the no make-up look that actually does not contain make up.
As a transgender man I want to add on to this, not to take away from the female experience, but to support OP.
One of the biggest hurdles of my social transition was learning not to wear makeup. Because while I still looked like a woman, I wanted to make sure I was seen as “presentable” in the eyes of my coworkers and boss.
They all know I’m a trans man so this may seem ludicrous but the thing is, it is so deeply ingrained in us from such a young age that we MUST wear makeup to look even decent.
It took me years to put the mascara down and only when I began passing did I stop caring about makeup.
We have got to stop forcing women to buy hundreds of expensive products so that they dont look “tired” or “lazy.”
If men don’t have to wear makeup to work, neither should women. If men can go into their job and not be called any number of things (“Are you sick today?”) then neither should women.
Its brainwash and its terrible.
If you want to wear makeup thats okay.
But we need to end this stigma now.
Nothing should be REQUIRED.
englishreformationsuggestions:
insist that your problems are not due to personal errors in judgement but rather result directly from cardinal thomas wolsey setting demons on you
I wish people would stop believing US ruling class propaganda nonsense about what the lives of poor people in the US are like.
For every person making a half million a year, there are over ten without clean water (and that’s not even counting the 43 million people whose water systems are considered “private” and are not included in EPA water safety laws).
The wealthy eat gold covered donuts while 40% of the US has vitamin deficiencies.
The bizarre nature of the US economic system means that poor people in the US can have a smartphone (under $30) and a choice between 20 different colors of $1 socks but then have no choice but to die of a tooth infection because that costs hundreds of dollars in order to access treatment.
This shit that “nobody starves, doesn’t have running water, has untreated parasitical diseases, etc. in the US” is flat out nonsense. And I can’t imagine how these beliefs could withstand any actual extended contact with poor communities in the US unless someone was intentionally refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of their eyes.
Because america is so segregated. Not only by race but by class.
I grew up 7 miles from the poorest county in America, in one of the wealthiest, and didn’t even know until I read about it in college.
America is amazingly fucked up.
I grew up where poaching was a big part of the diet, where low tides had the beaches covered with poor families gathering shellfish. Huge home gardens were the difference between survival. And my stepdad was lucky and normally employed. Until he broke his back in a mill, but at that time they had training programs and he got his GED and Assoc. Degree and combined with his experience he got a good job, we could actually buy all we needed in stores. Amazing.
Really, the galling thing about the golf industry is that it doesn’t need to be nearly as environmentally destructive as it is. In most parts of the world you can construct a totally acceptable golf course using native grasses, trees and shrubs, leaving the only the greens – which are a tiny portion of the course’s overall land area – as the high-maintenance bits. The only reason we insist on importing non-native grasses to climates for which they’re wildly unsuited and blowing a million gallons of water per course per week keeping them alive is because somebody decided that all golf courses everywhere need to look exactly the same.
It’s also as a display of status and power. Golf courses are a weird garden where you hit a ball with a stick into 18 holes and admire the architects grand plan on how they made this place beautiful. So some golf course architects show off their skill as masters over nature and completely ignore local grasses, sticking to what they’re comfortable with.
Conservatives are really enjoying this ‘fuck your child’s life’ and ‘fuck the planet’ sense of white entitlement.
Right Wingers say they want a small government, but they really want it big and as oppressive as possible toward non-white citizens
Non-white everybody, really. The toddler who died wasn’t a citizen, but it is no less appalling what happened for that reason. The US is supposed to be granting everyone basic human rights, not just citizens.
To critique or not to critique (of the unsolicited kind)
Spoiler alert: I firmly belong to the not camp.
A post just crossed my dash that put the worst taste in my mouth. I don’t want to reblog it, but I do want to address the contents because I think the subject is super important.
The post basically boiled down to: fanfic writers are thin-skinned babies “these days” because no one can take constructive criticism. In “my day” we all sent page-long critiques like the dedicated heroes we were! It made us better writers! Moreover, if I didn’t like something, I told the writer all about it! It was my job!
Hold up, what?
I’ve been posting fanfic online since 1998. Twenty years. Pre-archives. And “in my day” we had betas if we wanted/needed/asked for them (whose critiques didn’t have an audience). We said “concrit welcome” if we actually wanted constructive criticism. We did not show up unannounced to point out a work’s flaws because that is rude. Look, I am an editor. People pay me real money to edit things for them. I would rather cut off my own fingers than burst into someone’s comments and start “critiquing” their work without being asked first.
Here’s something that needs to be addressed: fanfiction is real writing, yes, but it is, by its nature as something that isn’t monetized, a hobby. As in, a thing people do for fun. A thing that hopefully brings both authors and readers joy! The story an author posts a is a gift; how dare anyone rip a gift apart in front of the gift-giver and all the other party attendees? How entitled and ungrateful can you be? Fandom is not a frigging battleground where authors learn to harden themselves for war. It’s a hobby. Done out of love and enthusiasm.
Yes, some fanfiction writers (certainly not all!!) aspire to be original fiction writers. They may use fanfiction as a training ground. They may want or benefit from constructive criticism. Still, they have to ask. They have to start the conversation. I know (think?) it’s harder to find betas these days, but it’s always worth asking around if real critique is what you want. Put “concrit welcome and even begged for” in the author’s notes and hope someone takes you up on it.
Some fanfiction writers with original fiction aspirations still don’t want criticism about their fic. Fic may be their fun-writing outlet. It may be about instant gratification (and there’s nothing wrong with that; we’re not in the business of denying ourselves pleasure out of some moral superiority here. It’s fandom). It may be the place where they post to get around their fears of showing things to others. It may be the place they take risks they wouldn’t in their original work because the stakes are lower. When you work on your original writing all day, every day—often putting that work through far more vigorous and exhausting paces than fanfic sees—the last thing you want is someone showing up during your time off to point out a frigging comma splice or shift in POV.
The point is unless someone asks for critique, you don’t know what’s going on with them. Maybe fic is the only fun thing they have in their lives. Maybe they’re writing in a different language. Maybe they are 14. Or 82. Maybe they’ve never written fiction of any kind before and this is their baby step forward. Maybe fic is just escapism. Maybe they are depressed or anxious as hell and criticism is going to push them over an edge. Fandom belongs to everyone. Not just people deemed “good” or “perfect” or “permitted” or “thick-skinned.” People don’t need to be saved from grammar mistakes or poor turns of phrase or even plotholes so wide a semi could drive through them. Authors sure as hell don’t need to be told when a reader just doesn’t like something. There is no fandom police force in charge of perfection. If critique is so important to you, advertise your willingness to beta. If you do not like a story or think it’s “bad” hit the freaking back button.
Unsolicited criticism is not helpful. Maybe you just catch someone off-guard and startle them. At worst, you may totally shatter someone’s self-esteem while they are partaking in a hobby they 100% do for fun—and not in pursuit of some unattainable perfection.
Don’t ruin a stranger’s day or week or hobby because you “know better” and somehow think you need to prove it. You don’t.
Another real-life editor here to agree with all of this. If concrit isn’t asked for, don’t leave it. Remember that you are consuming FREE media.
Also, on a pressional note, unstructured feedback, ESPECIALLY if it’s unkind, does not actually help most writers. Effective editing is unemotional and definitely cannot he distilled into an AO3 comment. It takes multiple readthroughs, at least some familiarity with the author’s style, awareness of their goals, and many other nuances.
I’m not saying you have to be a professional editor to be helpful, but for your criticism to be effective, you do have to put in more effort than casually reading a story.
You are not providing a service, you are not helping someone grow a thicker skin. You are most certainly not improving their writing. You are in fact achieving the exact opposite by breaking them down.
If concrit isn’t asked for, don’t leave it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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