One thing that pisses me off is people seeing fish in aquariums (the establishments, not home aquariums) and being like “It’s so sad because the ocean is so big and the tank is so small and they’ll never know freedom blah blah blah-“ I’m not talking about sharks and marine mammals here but the majority of fish are not at all bothered by being in an aquarium instead of the open ocean. Like, I personally would love to be a little clown fish in one of those big reef tanks. Fed regularly. Whole team of people monitoring my health and well-being. No predators. Medicated if I show signs of illness. Aquarium fish have cushy gigs in comparison to their wild companions.
I saw someone say this about a blue lobster that was wild caught and brought to an aquarium. Like dude. It’s a lobster. They’re solitary sedentary creatures. They live in little crevices and they don’t move from them often. They abhor other creatures. Also, this lobster is distinctly bad at being a lobster because it is bright neon blue. I don’t think he’s yearning for the open sea. He’s probably yearning for his next mussel. Which is, coincidentally, the same thing he’d be doing if he wasn’t in an aquarium.
There is no “after the revolution.” No “ideal world.” I don’t care how much progress we make, we will always fail someone, hurt someone, and the best thing we can do is accept that, and keep striving to make it better as we go.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t say this to discourage anyone from trying to make that ideal world. Quite the opposite.
I feel like it’s very naive to continue to approach these big changes we want to make in the world as if there’s an “after it’s all over” when we don’t have to worry about it anymore.
We should always be striving to make life better, even when life seems pretty damn good.
cloth fibers ranked by how much sense they make to me
wool. the most sensible and natural fiber. wool is hair from meaty, not very bright animals. I have hair, meat and did not excell in school, so I relate and understand this best
cotton. Cotton is made from plants, but don’t be scared yet. these plants are basically small sheep for they are wooly and have hard seeds in them like how sheep are wooly and have hard bones inside them
silk. I was fairly terrorized as a child by caterpillars that made massive silk tents in mulberry trees. We came in into conflict because both of us liked to eat mulberries and climb mulberry trees and also because they liked falling out of the tree upon my person. this was distressing for me for various reasons primary amongst them was that I had been told by the wisdom of my peers that if one of them bit me I would die. anyway I believe that silk comes from caterpillars because I have seen it I have witnessed it I have lived it
linen. bizarre. have you watched videos of people turning flax into fibers? I have watched video after video of flax being transformed from plant to linen and none of it makes any sense. One moment, it’s a plant and then if you comb it enough it becomes hair. utterly incomprehensibe witchcraft
PLASTIC? PLASTIC? PLAstic??????
spandex. incomprehensibe. uncontainable. might as well be string theory to me.
President Biden signed the executive order January 27, 2021. This is the first time I’ve even heard of this. Here are a couple of links with more info:
Biden gets a lot of flack for being a generic neo liberal rather than a cool leftist, and trust me I’m 100% on board with criticizing Biden, but it occurred to me that, at least by my standards, he’s the best president I’ve lived under. Clinton was just “What if Reaganomics but with a saxophone”, Obama did pass the ACA, but he also cut it to bits to appease the republicans who didn’t vote for it anyway, and he constantly bombed middle-eastern civilians. I’m not even gonna bother mentioning any of the republicans since I don’t need to convince my intended audience that they’re bad.
Biden, while he’s obviously had some major bad decisions (breaking the rail strike, failing to defend trans rights), has done more actual good than I think anyone else I’ve lived under. He’s nearly completely ended drone strikes, he’s addressing the debt crisis (everyone knows about the $10k, but very few I’ve seen know about the changes he’s made to how federal student loans work that make them far less of a burden/deathtrap), and now there’s the above, which I’m just learning about.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good, and while Biden is very far from being a perfect president, I’m pretty comfortable calling him a good one.
For all the people who insist they never trust politicians, they are sure adamant about waiting until the stars align and political Jesus comes down from the clouds to save us. If you actually didn’t like or trust politicians you would accept that the great majority of the time we are going to have to work with mediocrity.
Biden is boring and uninspiring for sure, but he is significantly less offensive than the vast majority of other options and he is someone we can influence. We want someone we can influence and push towards our positions. Biden has shown that if he isn’t an ally, he at least can be persuaded or pushed into doing what we, the left, want. There are few candidates we can actually say that about.
The point is not that he’s perfect. The point is that he’s very clearly shown that he cares about using his political mandate to make things better. The point is that he cares about accountability. The point is that he cares about what historians will say about him in the future.
The point is, these are good qualities in a leader. The kind of qualities that we can work with.
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.”
I assume some kind of deal was cut in which silence on these issues was a condition of the agreement so I just want clarify.
IT IS A BAD THING that democrats are not making a big show of their accomplishments.
It benefits the conservative agenda to keep these things out of the news.
It benefits the conservative agenda for progressives to be kept in the dark when the administration makes real progress.
It benefits the conservative agenda for progressive constituents to believe that our leaders are ineffectual, and that voting for them doesn’t accomplish anything.
If the administration isn’t going to make a big show of it, we need to.
🖖 Leonard Nimoy discusses the Jewish connection to the Vulcan salute he used on Star Trek.
Video: Yiddish Book Center
Wexler Oral History Project
that’s so fascinating about the letter ש (shin) - i’ve been noticing its prevalence in words about time: hour (שעה), second (שניה), year (שנה), and clock (שעון) all begin with ש, as well as the words for change (שינוי) and the sun (שמש). this is unusual, since the letter’s frequency in Hebrew is only 4.77% - and even stranger, it also begins the word shalom (שלומ) meaning peace, and occurs twice in sigsug (שגשוג), meaning “prosperity.”
in conclusion: the letter shin perfectly represents the blessing “live long and prosper.” 🖖
Saying this as an Irish person since the new Hozier album just came out and there are lyrics in Irish; it’s Irish or Gaeilge (pronounced “gwhale-ga” or “gale-ga” depending on region), not Gaelic or Celtic or any other name people come up with.
It’s just a normal language that people speak in their everyday life. We learn it in school in the republic. People like myself are bilingual in Irish and English. It’s not a “fairy aesthetic cottage core leprechaun” language.
Please respect it. Our language is a touchy subject seen as how England tried to erase it by forcing English on us and severely punishing those who spoke Irish.
At the same time that does NOT mean it is a dead language. Our (in the republic) road and safety signs are in both Irish and English, same with legal documents. Our politicians speak it, and we are trying to preserve the language!
It makes me sad to see how common the hate for zoos is in leftist circles. To me, zoos are so symbolic of the determination and optimism in leftist thought that I often use these facilities as an example to keep me going. So when I hear fellow leftists wanting to abolish zoos it makes breaks my spirit a bit. Especially considering how necessary zoos are in the fight against the current environmental crisis.
I am the first to admit that no zoo is perfect. I have worked at a world class, accredited, non-profit zoo and it was FAR from perfect. The institution treated me and the other workers like shit. Burnout, lean staffing, and poor adherence to safety protocols resulted in poorer animal welfare outcomes for the animals. And this is a world class facility. There are many facilities out there that shouldn’t exist at all that are hardly better than the menageries of feudal kings.
BUT
Zoos are vital if we want our ecosystems to survive the current mass extinction event.
No other type of institution on earth has saved as many species as zoos. From tiny snails to 1-ton bison, entire species have been returned to the wild thanks to their preservation in zoos.
There are approximately 40 animal species listed as Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN, most of which ONLY exist in zoos and aquariums. Many of these animals are only able to be taken care of because of the decades of animal husbandry science and institutional knowledge built up by our zoos and aquaria by working with other species.
There are many extinctions I cry for, but the ones that hurt the most are the ones happening in front of our eyes. The Javan rhino is all but gone. It’s estimated that there would need to be about 100 rhinos for the species to survive genetically intact. There are now less than that, and none in human care. All it would take is a single tsunami or volcanic eruption and the entire population could be wiped out.
But if there were some in human care, if we had acted sooner and established a breeding population based on the centuries of knowledge we have of caring for their closest relative, the Indian rhino, we could have saved them.
So, when I see leftists talking about how all zoos are inherently destructive, I ask you to think ahead. To when polar bears, chimpanzees, or elephants go extinct in their natural homes, don’t you want a place where we can save them? Where experienced animal care professionals can foster a population in human care so that one day these creatures can return to their homes? A global system of world class facilities dedicated to the survival of wildlife? So even more creatures don’t end up like the Javan rhino; a species we could’ve saved if we’d had the will and the space to do so? If there had more zoos instead of less?
I’m not asking you to love zoos, I’m just asking that you recognize the practical necessity of their existence in the modern age. We won’t survive the coming crises without other species. And they won’t survive without us.
also although this works as a convenient analogy for racism, it is also just a factual description of how the vast majority of buildings and public infrastructure in use today do not accommodate the disabled. like please don’t overlook that part. this is literally just how it actually is for disabled people.
The tags on my whiteness post said to me that white people (at least those that are racially aware) and colonized natives perhaps have more in common than most people think. Or at least more than they talk about it in public.
Not that they’re the same. Misogyny and transphobia are not the same, but they are both veins of oppression in a patriarchy. Similar.
In the same way, that empty hollowness white ppl feel where your culture should be is not unlike what I feel as a native, from what I’ve read of your accounts. Learning your ancestors chose whiteness and safety and comfort over culture and identity. That now you have nothing because of the colonization and assimilation your grandparents experienced when they got to the USA. Because of whiteness. Because of the power it has even just as a concept in the US.
We experience these for much different reasons and at least your loss bought you privilege.
… but they aren’t total opposites either. A hollowness where you know rich history used to be? Having culture but feeling a disconnect where you know More used to be? Feeling like you only have scraps of the culture your family used to have? Clinging to what you can get your hands on? Feeling like it’s so detached that it’s not really yours?
I get that and I bet I’m not the only one.
The USA’s habit for white supremacy, racism, and colonization hurt all of us.
And it will benefit all of us to discard the systems those things built. They’re still there and still hurting every one of us.
We can build a future that benefits us all instead as soon as we all start working on that together.
But we can’t do that if some of us refuse to admit the system is what’s hurting us. If we refuse to acknowledge that even with perfect politicians our Systems would still prevent progress because they are built on outdated and white supremacist ideals we’ll just continue to suffer together under those systems instead.
We can’t keep attacking each other just because some of us refuse to look at the ideologies fueling our current reality.
