darkfrog24

[darkfrog24]

The Senate voted to cede their power to Trump 51 to 48. That is razor close. That is why you show up and vote every time. Even if you don't like the presidential candidate, show up and vote for House and Senate even if you leave the pres slot blank. Show up in 2026. Show up in 2028. Show up and vote in state elections this year, but VOTE.

[darkfrog24]

[darkfrog24]

Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

[darkfrog24]

This is something I think about a lot, and not just for ASD kids: How often do the teachers pick the targets?

When a teacher makes that face, you know the one? "You have missed my social cue but I'm not going to stop playing games and just tell you what I want because then I'd have to admit out loud that I want it"? I think a lot of the other kids in the class see it and go, "Ooooooh, the teacher doesn't like this kid."

And then when the target kid gets into a conflict and the teacher says something out of the "You're too sensitive" column, then the rest of the class goes "Ooooooh, people are supposed to mess with that kid. Look at that guy not getting punished."

On some level, do teachers think that a class needs to have a kid to use like that? I've heard that the K-12 system was built off a Prussion model that was meant to suppress free will to create obedient soldiers, and it's natural for kids to rebel against that and assert their autonomy. Are some of these teachers saying, "Here. Assert it on this person"?

every piece of ""autistic representation"" in hollywood sucks not just because of the infantalization and inspiration porn but because movie executives always fail to realize the real universal autistic experience: spending your childhood slowly and unfalteringly realizing all of your friends not so secretly hated and/or merely tolerated you at best and you've missed every social signal about it ever

[darkfrog24]

I really hope young folks just discovering Leverage understand that in 2008 a Tesla meant basically the opposite of what it means in 2025. They were so exciting. We were so hopeful.

[darkfrog24]

[darkfrog24]

To be honest I never understood the whole 'Daleks are a n@zi allegory' and actually I think that promotes a dangerous and sadly prevalent idea.

Like, Daleks are biologically engineered to experience no emotion but hate. Here's the thing about the n@zis: they weren't aliens, or monsters, or 'psycopaths', or genetically any different from the rest of humanity. They were people. Like us. And they did horrible things, things it is impossible to imagine ourselves doing, which is why we so easily tend to assign a non-human catagory to them, in order to somehow make sense of the evil. But evil doesn't make sense and it isn't alien, it is human. And it is the opposite of helpful or meaningful to imagine n@zism as some biologically determined ideology rather than a human invention, which used very human emotions and systems to further itself.

What you’re doing when you say that Daleks are an allegory for the n@zis, is that you’re reassuring the bigots and the antisemites and the fascists that they couldn’t possibly be like the n@zis because they're not like the daleks.

[darkfrog24]

I'm not sure he's innocent, but every accused person should get due process. We need to defend that more than ever now.

Update! Luigi's Attorney Dickey confirms that his "outburst" where he tells the cameras that this is unjust, was because he was never read his miranda rights and was under the impression at that time that he was being denied the right to a fair trial, an attorney, or any legal representation.

He is angry and terrified in that footage because they have failed to follow basic procedure to inform him that he has any rights at all. This is a major red flag of police corruption. This is UNACCEPTABLE and further means any interrogation they did of him is unlawful, and inadmissible in court.

[darkfrog24]

Y’all.

Y’ALL.

So I’m in Minneapolis right now, and decided to visit the art museum. Y’all I need to show you what I just found in a collection of Dutch paintings.

Look at the boy’s eyes and smile.

Y’all.

I’ve seen that face before. On more than one person. Those exact eyes, that exact smile.

HE HAS DOWN SYNDROME.

He’s the focal point of this painting, or more precisely his fish is, and he’s got Down syndrome.

This is from the 1600s, y’all.

“Where were the disabled people back then” FISHING, APPARENTLY.

Disabled people have always been here. You just have to look.

[darkfrog24]

I have had a really full and busy day today, but the highlight was:

So I'm sitting in the staff work area and one of my colleagues comes up to me. There's an open day this weekend, and so we need to plan an activity for the would-be students.

"Simple!" I say. "Let's get them to dissect some owl pellets. Hands on, fun, they get to play with skulls."

"Good idea!" she says. "But we'll need something even fancier for the open day in February. What can we do? Perhaps we can take some soil samples."

And as we're debating the photogenic merits of soil Vs dead mice...

Suddenly, a Dashing and Handsome Stranger (read: an autistic engineering lecturer) appears with a flourish (read: launches himself into a seat beside us while visibly and physically vibrating with excitement about his special interest being Useful) and asks "HELLO I'M SORRY DID YOU SAY SOIL BECAUSE I HAVE A RAMAN MICROSCOPE"

"Amazing!" declares my colleague. "...Who are you?"

"COME AND SEE IT!!!" he says, currently the human embodiment of the :D emoticon.

We went and saw it. It's an excellent microscope and his ten minute infodump about it was both spectacular and also extremely useful. We're going to use it to assess microplastics.

I have a new friend.

[darkfrog24]

Fairy: Hey I didn’t get your name.

Me: Yeah that was on purpose.

Fairy: Oh my god stealing people’s names has been categorized as a war crime for like a hundred years. Do I seem like the kind of fairy that would do war crimes?

Me: Well yes, but that’s just my impression of you personally. Not fairies in general.

Fairy: You’re smarter than I thought.

[darkfrog24]

As in they're deliberately delaying it until after the 2026 congressional elections.

Who passed this bill? Congress did. Elect a new one in 2026: Democrats, Republicans who aren't afraid of Trump, any others who are on board with saving American democracy and as much of our economy and reputation as we can manage.

[darkfrog24]

I love the way men and/or lesbians love.

My secret is that my wife was in an extremely bad period in her life when she entered into a contest for knitting supplies. She loved knitting as a teenager and wanted to get back into it as an adult, but felt like we couldn't afford it. She wouldn't buy anything, and wouldn't let me get anything for her because it would be "a waste of money." So when she got an email from a knitting newsletter she followed talking about the contest, she entered and won third place - a little basic kit that got her excited to start and started pulling her out of her dark place.

This is when you go "aha. You cheeky devil. Did you cheat slmehow? Is that your secret?" But no. My secret is, I faked it all. I created a fake knitting blog, and sent it to her as "something I found." I ran it for a few months talking about made up craft projects with photos off the internet and things. Then I faked the contest, sold some of my possessions to buy the "prize" and let her win. Six months later I stopped posting and she didn't even notice. She still talks about that prize she won as turning her life around, and she'll never know I invented the whole thing.

Now this is some real lover shit!!!

[darkfrog24]

In the late 1970s a glowing orb appeared in the sky. Every day at about 5:00 Greenwich standard time, the orb would go somewhere new, shoot out something similar to a laser, and kill one person. Every day, always at the same time, always exactly one person.

The person killed by the orb seemed completely random, with almost fifty years of studying it we've been able to find no rhythm or reason to who it kills. It kills the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the urban, the rural, anyone. Every human on earth seems to have an equal chance of being killed by the orb. It's a headline the few times someone of note is killed by the orb: Britain famously lost a Parliament member to the orb, Brazil to this day remains the only country where a head of state was killed by the orb while in office, there was a short lived sitcom in the 1990s called Friends that ended halfway through its first season due to the orb killing one of the main actors on set. However, these are outliers, on any given day the person who dies via orb is very likely to be someone you never heard of. There are billions of people on earth, and only one is killed by the orb every day. In almost fifty years only a little over 18000 have died because of the orb, which is nothing in the face of the sheer amount of humans that exist.

When the orb first appeared people were horrified. Both the US and USSR thought it was a weapon from the other side. Almost every religion made some claim of it being proof of their beliefs, oftentimes claiming it was divine punishment. Atheists claimed it was proof no loving God could exist. People were so very apocalyptic and horrified by it, they thought of it as part of the end times, because when it was new that's really how it looked.

However, it's been long enough so that's changed. Most people have lived their entire lives in a world where the orb exists. The orb isn't that scary a concept. People know their odds of being killed by it are low and that it's not going to end the world or anything. The orb has become normal, and we've accepted that the orb is just something that kills people the same way cancer, or heart attacks, or natrual disasters, or car crashes kill people. In the nineteen eighties there were efforts to find a way to stop the orb, but it's since proven to be extremely difficult, and it's as distant and nebulous as finding a cure for cancer. When a community is struck by the orb you'll see that community in mourning, but it's not a global thing anymore.

So people grow up learning about the orb, as part of science, like anything else. A lot of gen z remembers learning about the orb from Magic School Bus. It's just something normal. There are a few people with an orb hyperfixation, and a few cults that give the orb importance but it's not most people's concern. The orb is how we first confirmed that interdimensional objects existed and are possible. A lot of people theorize dimensional studies wouldn't exist without it, meaning without the orb we might not have thermitizers or grand drives, we might not even have a moon base without the orb. Some have even rather tastelessly claimed that the orb has saved more lives at this point than its taken with all the knowledge it's given us.

Which is why I regret to inform you, that just last week, without warning, the orb killed two people in one day. And for the past seven days it's been killing two people instead of just one. Nobody knows why.

[darkfrog24]

Mosquitoes actually are not replaceable in any ecosystem that naturally has them and that includes replacing them with any of the non biting species because these are the traits that make them so core to food webs:

Tiny

Can use every single pool of moisture to raise generations no matter how dirty and stagnant and low in oxygen

Can fly

Males get by on just sugars

Females take protein from larger animals to manufacture thousands more eggs

All these things combined allow thst ecosystem to make huge volumes of insects from conditions barren to most other macroscopic life. You might think there are other insects that seem to make huge massive swarms out of nothing but there's really nothing that hits all the same qualities *except other insects that also suck blood.*

It's the precise combo of being able to "prey" on things millions of times larger and breed in nothing but a few drops of filthy rainwater or the moisture in a rotten log. That's the most efficient combination for anything that size to multiply that rapidly where nothing else can even survive, except of course the things that can move in because they eat them :)

[darkfrog24]

Tourists are fucking up the Giants Causeway in Ireland by wedging coins between the rocks which are then eroding and staining everything and in some cases causing the rocks to crack. For any Americans on here planning to visit Ireland: There is a mystical and ancient Irish tradition says that when you visit any of our places of natural beauty you should speak at a normal volume, leave no trace you were there and fuck off home. Tell your friends and family.

Stop ruining fucking everything.