Day: November 7, 2018

fierceawakening:

bi-starlight:

omegaman255:

simulpony:

It’s a mistake to become entrenched in tribalism. It’s the very definition of regressive. “The other side” isn’t a monolith. It’s made up of individual people with individual and nuanced views.

I normally don’t post political things, but this is important. Our society has become far too black and white about these things. There is not “us vs them.” It’s just “us.” To view the world in extremes and absolutes will be the end of us all.

Nuance is great but when as the Atlantic put it, the problem isnt “tribalism” it’s racism.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/racism-not-tribalism/575173/?utm_medium=offsite&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=newsstand-ideas

When the other side staunchly refuses to vote for healthcare, unanimously is against action on climate change and has similar unified views on other issues… You can call it a monolith.

That’s the problem with the people who took over the GOP, yes.

Is it a problem with everyone who ever used the label? I don’t know about that.

I think they dragged a whole coalition of people who were decent but wrong out of the club and all that’s left is indecent.

Should the people they pushed out give themselves a new name? Sounds good to me, especially if they call themselves moderate Democrats.

Do they have to?

No.

bemusedlybespectacled:

heatherings:

can we please stop making the only LGBT+ narrative we see “i always knew?”

like, i didn’t always know i liked girls too. i wasn’t having crushes on them or kissing them on the playground when i was five years old like you see on tv or read in books. i didn’t know for sure that i’m bi until literally this year (i’m 17 as of writing this). a former friend of mine is a trans girl. she didn’t always know. she didn’t realize she was trans until she was nearly eighteen years old. some people don’t realize it until they’re twenty, or forty, or sixty.

some people do always know. good for them! but can we please please please make it known that you don’t have to have always known for your identity to be valid? it makes it so difficult for people who are figuring themselves out later in life, because it feeds into this idea of “why didn’t i know it before? is this even real? if i haven’t known i’ve felt this way all along, how do i know i feel it now?” and that’s only making worse what’s already such a difficult time in life

give me eighty year old women who are just figuring out they’re lesbians. give me middle aged accountants who realize they’re actually trans. give me a guy who doesn’t know until he’s twenty-eight that he’s actually into dudes. god just please give us some other narrative, so we can be reassured that even if it took us a while to get there, our identity is no less valid than that of a person who’s known they’re LGBT+ since elementary school. stop telling LGBT+ people that that’s the only way they’re really LGBT+

Incidentally, “I always knew” narratives are also harmful not only to LGBT people thinking they’re invalid themselves, but also help straight people invalidate LGBT people: “I would have known that you were, you would have done X as a kid, so therefore this must be a phase/a lie/etc.”

pervocracy:

2hon5:

goawfma:

bitch i got adhd lmao

Carbon dioxide has only one atom more than carbon monoxide just in case you think breathing is harmless

These are kind of silly arguments.  Adderall really is similar to meth, in both composition and effect.  A lot of posts like “these chemicals look similar, they must be the same” are bullshit, but in this case they’re not far off.  They’re both amphetamines.

The most important difference between Adderall and meth isn’t chemical, but how they’re taken.  If you took controlled amounts of slow-release methamphetamine under medical supervision, it would be a safe and effective treatment for ADHD.  In fact, it is used that way.  Conversely, if you smoked unrestricted amounts of crudely homemade Adderall all day long, it would be quite likely to ruin your life.

Honestly, this is the case for most drugs of abuse.  Heroin is given as a painkiller in some countries under the name diamorphine.  Cocaine is used as an anesthetic for ENT procedures.  What makes these chemicals dangerous is not their inherent composition but their effects when abused.  Adderall, like many other drugs, has a potential for abuse but also a potential to do good, and the difference between the two uses is more about the user and their support system than the chemistry.

typhlonectes:

Fish with no scales, thin gelatinous skin, and a bulbous head? That’s the deep sea for you!

Snailfish (Family Liparidae) have long, tadpole-like bodies with large
heads and small eyes. They live throughout the world’s oceans from the
Arctic to the Antarctic and from the shallow intertidal zone to many
thousands of meters in the deep sea. They eat small benthic crustaceans,
molluscs, polychaete worms, and other small invertebrates.

This
snailfish, Careproctus longifilis, was photographed using ROV Tiburon
3,300 meters (>10,800 feet) deep in the Monterey Canyon. ⠀

via:
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)

regnum-plantae:

Poncirus trifoliata/Citrus trifoliata, Rutaceae

Considered by some to belong to the Citrus genus, while genetically different enough to grant it its own, Poncirus, by others, the bitter orange is a uniquely interesting large shrub I was ecstatic to find loaded with fruits when wondering through the gorgeous Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli in Milan back in October. I still have to write about it in detail on this blog, but I have a passion for raising citrus plants indoor from seed, and with five species (seven plants in total) currently growing in my living room, it’s quickly getting out of control. 

This species has some peculiarities which set it well apart from your common citruses though, the most relevant being its hardiness. Native to Northern China and Korea, it is hardy to -15

°C if placed in a sunny, sheltered position on well-draining soil. Being deciduous and performing a great deal of photosynthesis in its young branches are adaptations that help make this feat possible. Interestingly, it is genetically close enough to other citruses to hybridise with them and, more commonly, to be used as a rootstock in grafting to improve cold resistance in more tender species.

The small, yellow fruit is downy like a peach and very fragrant, with a sweet floral scent similar to that of the blossom, but it’s actually extremely bitter and mostly filled with seeds. It can be used to make a marmalade and a dry seasoning powder, but is also an ingredient of Chinese medicine. 

The seeds require cold stratification to germinate, so after washing them well I placed them over a layer of moist sand in a sealed container at the bottom of my fridge. I’m curious to see if I will be able to raise this species successfully in my allotment here in Scotland, and it might give me the opportunity to experiment with grafting my other citruses and test their ability to survive a Scottish winter outdoors, obviously with plenty of protection still provided.