Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • “but what has Hillary ACCOMPLISHED?”

    bicatperson:

    Yeah, okay, I’m gonna do one more of these.

    Because it’s an ugly sexist myth that Hillary Clinton has never gotten anything done, and Donald keeps saying it anyway, because he knows his supporters will never bother to look it up. (Also to distract from his own record of bankruptcies and lawsuits and not getting an Emmy.)

    And even on the left, you get people saying “how can we trust Clinton, even if her positions sound good, how can we know if she’ll follow through?”

    Gee, I dunno, maybe we can look at her forty-year track record and extrapolate from there.

    (Buckle up, this one’s gonna get long.)

    In fact, let’s go back farther, let’s look at Hillary Rodham the Wellesley undergrad, 1965-1969:

    And then let’s talk about Hillary the law student, lawyer, and professor, with some First Lady of Arkansas thrown in:

    Let’s talk about First Lady Clinton, 1993-2001:

    HRC followed that by immediately getting elected Senator from New York, and then re-elected by an even wider margin, so she served from 2001-2009.

    I’m just gonna focus on the 77 bills Senator Clinton sponsored or cosponsored that that became law (although she introduced more than 2000, so imagine what could’ve happened with a Democratic majority):

    At this point she was also running for President, but in swept Barack Obama and charmed the hearts of America, so Clinton ended up serving as his Secretary of State from 2009-2013.

    There’s no Big Flashy Showpiece you can point to from Secretary Clinton’s tenure. A lot of her diplomatic work was straight-up post-Bush-administration repair work and maintenance. A lot of it was, frankly, unsexy. No one writes breathless headlines about statistically-supported initiatives to distribute lifesaving low-pollution stoves.

    Also, she didn’t singlehandedly bring peace to the Middle East. So, y’know, missed opportunity there.

    But she was obviously doing something right, because Hillary Clinton had a 69% approval rating when she left the State Department in 2013.

    A quick roundup of some things Secretary Clinton pulled off just fine:

    People keep talking about how Clinton is, historically, one of the most unpopular presidential candidates. Those people usually don’t mention how, three years ago, she was the most popular politician in the United States.

    And, look: no one is saying she’s only done good things. You can’t work this long in politics and expect to make only the right choices – follow only the strongest intelligence – back only the best policies. Reasonable people can find plenty to disagree with in her record. Plenty to criticize.

    But when people try to claim she’s done nothing?

    Or that she doesn’t have any consistent beliefs or principles – that her record doesn’t have constant themes that she’s been reliably standing for since the 1970s?

    Hillary Clinton has made real, substantial progress for women’s rights.

    Real, substantial progress for people with disabilities.

    Real, substantial progress for the rights and protections of children.

    Anyone tries to tell you otherwise, you laugh in their faces and start listing things. I bet you anything they run out of patience before you run out of list.

  • micdotcom:

    On Tuesday, actress and author Mara Wilson explained in a string of tweets why this year, for the first time ever, she fears being openly Jewish. She goes on to say that Trump is dangerous because he’s like “a balloon”

  • the-moonlight-witch:

    tumblr + history

  • marlynnofmany:

    kiramartinauthor:

    airyairyquitecontrary:

    aprillikesthings:

    tsfennec:

    roachpatrol:

    prokopetz:

    I’ve seen a lot of videos going around of urban-dwelling critters coming to humans for help with various problems, ranging from boxes stuck on their heads to young trapped down a storm drain, and it’s gotten me to thinking:

    On the one hand, it’s kind of fascinating that they know to do that.

    On the other hand, setting any questions of how this sort of behaviour must have arisen aside for the nonce, does it ever strike you how weird it is that we’ve got a whole collection of prey species whose basic problem-solving script ends with the step “if all else fails, go bother one of the local apex predators and maybe they’ll fix the problem for no reason”?

    well, come to think of it, we’re at the top of the food chain but we almost exclusively hunt and kill prey out in the country. 

    raccoons and possums and foxes and crows all succeed in an urban environment because they’re opportunistic and observant. and almost none of them would have observed us pounce on one of their species and then start eating it, you know? a lot of them would have observed that we scream and chase them out of wherever we don’t want them to be, but other animals are territorial too. but there’s a number of situations where humans feed whoever’s bold enough to take them up on the offer, and we do tend to pull garbage off of other animals as soon as they slow down enough for us to catch. ‘a human got me but nothing bad happened’ is a much more frequent thing than ‘a human got me and tried to eat me’.  

    anyway like, we’re masters of our environment, we make weird shit happen all the time, we have lots of great food and sometimes we share, and we almost never eat someone. it makes sense for urban animals, over the last century or so, to just keep an eye out for opportunities to use us, and to pass the habit on to their kids. 

    It really is a weird, funny thing. Like yeah, technically they’re predators, and they get pretty screamy, especially if you try to take any of their stuff… but given the chance it seems like they’d rather help us out and sometimes they’ll just randomly give you food, so???

    I mean, I guess in fairytales and myths we’ve got our fair share of stories about dangerous people/creatures who might well kill you or otherwise ruin your life, but to whom people nonetheless turn for help in desperate circumstances. So it’s not like the perspective is exactly a foreign thing to our own mindset, really… It’s just that, y’know, we can’t actually go make a deal with the faeries when there’s something we can’t figure out.

    (Which brings me to an interesting thought about the ubiquitous rule about never eating the faery food lest you find yourself forever unsatisfied with anything in the human world – and the potential parallels to the dangers of feeding wildlife human food lest they become addicted and too tame and dependent to be safe for either themselves or us. Hmm.)

    I mean, isn’t “we didn’t kill them when they ate our garbage” basically how we ended up domesticating dogs? 

    Are we accidentally sorta domesticating crows and squirrels?

    (Some rats have already been domesticated–pet rats and wild city rats are the same species, sure, but city rats do not like direct human contact and pet rats would quickly die if let loose)

    THE IDEA THAT WE’RE FAIRIES TO RACCOONS IS MAKING ME GRIN.

    It is the fourth day of the mysterious object stuck on my head. I am so very hungry. The ketchup smeared on the inside of the object is waning. The elders say it is time now, that this has gone beyond what our village can handle and into the supernatural. I am scared. But they say that They can help. That They will either help me or kill me. But I am dead already if I go without food for much longer. Tomorrow, I journey to Their world.

    It is the morning of the fifth day. I watch Them through tiny holes that the elders manage to gnaw through the object. I look at the hands that I’ve often seen clutching small bones, at the first finger, seeming broken and shriveled against the others. But any youngling knows it is the key to Their power. They tower above me but I swallow my fears and approach Them, my death or salvation close at hand.

    The Human has metal and wood pieces thrusted through the soft skin of its ears, nose, and lips. Dark marks swirl on its skin. Pure power and danger seems to cloud its very presence. It notices me immediately. I tremble as it speaks, its voice soft and as old as time.

    “Hey there little buddy, need some help?”

    Somebody who doesn’t have a NaNoWriMo plot nailed down needs to write this RIGHT NOW.  (Go!  Shoo!  Get on it!  We need to read it!)

  • micdotcom:

    Sen. Bernie Sanders railed against the proposed Dakota Access pipeline on Monday, vowing to stand with the Native Americans and environmental activists who are protesting its construction. Read more

  • The English “please” is short for “if you please,” “if it pleases you to do this” — it is the same in most European languages (French si il vous plait, Spanish por favor). Its literal meaning is “you are under no obligation to do this.” “Hand me the salt. Not that I am saying that you have to!” This is not true; there is a social obligation, and it would be almost impossible not to comply. But etiquette largely consists of the exchange of polite fictions (to use less polite language, lies). When you ask someone to pass the salt, you are also giving them an order; by attaching the word “please,” you are saying that it is not an order. But, in fact, it is.

    In English, “thank you” derives from “think,” it originally meant, “I will remember what you did for me” — which is usually not true either — but in other languages (the Portuguese obrigado is a good example) the standard term follows the form of the English “much obliged” — it actually does mean “I am in your debt.” The French merci is even more graphic: it derives from “mercy,” as in begging for mercy; by saying it you are symbolically placing yourself in your benefactor’s power — since a debtor is, after all, a criminal. Saying “you’re welcome,” or “it’s nothing” (French de rien, Spanish de nada) — the latter has at least the advantage of often being literally true — is a way of reassuring the one to whom one has passed the salt that you are not actually inscribing a debit in your imaginary moral account book. So is saying “my pleasure” — you are saying, “No, actually, it’s a credit, not a debit — you did me a favor because in asking me to pass the salt, you gave me the opportunity to do something I found rewarding in itself!

    David Graeber in Debt: The First 5,000 Years (via fivepips)

    Words and phrases that have a conventionalized rather than a literal meaning are also known as phatic expressions: other examples are greetings, farewells, and basic checking in such as “how are you?” or “what’s up?”. It’s not that you can’t ask about someone’s actual well-being, but you need to use alternative phrases to do so because certain ones are conventionalized as greetings instead. 

    (via allthingslinguistic)

  • Green disease

    tifoti:

    A tree growing out of a long abandoned truck (source)

  • anexperimentallife:

    frowningfoxbones:

    agentquinn:

    sepulchritude:

    my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion

    “look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”

    “the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*

    *human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL’EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”

    “this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”

    imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues 

    “she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we – did we break our human?”

    a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises. 

    “no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.” 

    “Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”

    “Human Steve, I have read about your ritual dance called ‘The Hokey Pokey,’ performed mostly at mate-bonding celebrations after the guests reach an elevated level of intoxication. But Human Steve, how do I know WHICH left foot to put in, put out, and shake all about? I do not… Human Steve, why are you laughing?”

  • Untitled post 18285

    misstaxidermiss:

    pbandpye:

    dxisybuchanan:

    everythingcanadian:

    ariaste:

    wildhaunt:

    everkings:

    kid-communism:

    combatbooty:

    1) they expensive bruh 2) none of us kno the dif btwn a fucking diamond and some fancy ass glass ur capitalist rock hierarchy has no control over us

    3) mostly mined with slave labor

    4) we get excited when our date buys us an appetizer, we don’t even comprehend people buying us rocks that would force us into debt for ten years

    5) They aren’t actually that rare and the price is artificially inflated. 

    Pro tip from a former Jared’s salesperson: You want a sparkly white rock that will look like a diamond to the untrained eye and will literally cost the price of a nice dinner for two? Created white sapphire. They’re lab grown and cost *pennies* to make, so you can get a 1 or 2 carat white sapphire for like… $30-80 probably. You can get one as huge as you like, perfectly clear, perfectly flawless. And no one will ever be able to tell the difference except a professional appraiser. Also, sapphires are the second-hardest gemstone (right after diamonds) so they are very durable! Very unlikely that they’ll chip or crack. Get that bitch set in sterling silver and you are GOOD TO GO. Whole thing should cost you less than $200 unless you get a fancy band with a lot of extra stones. Of course, created sapphires come in every color of the rainbow, so if you want something more exciting than plain white, you TOTALLY CAN. 

    Created sapphires and silver: The poor Millennial’s engagement ring. 

    THANK YOU EX-JARED’S BASED GOD. 

    engagement rings: HACKED

    Raw diamonds are also cool and pretty cheap.

    @lilrabbitssong shinies!!

  • incisedpottery:

    Every one should go to bed. Let’s all go to bed and figure this out in the morning