froborr

[froborr]

Have you ever read any Star Trek New Frontier books?

I don't think I have? Most of my Trek book reading was in the mid to late 90s, I've read maybe four or five since then and none in years.

[froborr]

Wait.

Wait wait wait.

Are cobblestones called that because they're stones for walking on???

looks it up

Dang, they're not, they're called that from a German word that means round and flat derived from the word for head. Apparently nobody knows why cobblers are called cobblers, which is kind of fascinating?

Cobbler should be in charge of cobblestone. But you know what he does? He does shoes.

Fuck this.

[froborr]

Also nationalism (read: even more virulent racism, largely about what languages people spoke) was really getting going around that time and "alchemy" was very obviously Arabic in origin, so they dropped the "al" to make it sound more like it came from a European language.

when did alchemy become chemistry?

Basically to make a long story short, it was around the late 1700s when we finally got off the corpuscular theory of matter, and switched over to something more resembling modern atomic theory.

Because what that did, was effectively remove the concept of transmutation. Alchemical transmutation can't happen if there aren't essences you can distill and switch around. And you can't really have alchemy without transmutation.

[froborr]

And if Greenland should be included, Denmark should too, because they are technically the same country.

Countries were the US has dropped atomic bombs

by IIIlllIIIlllIIIEH

[froborr]

Update: I have been informed of the error of my ways regarding EVE and she has been moved to the Solid Yes tier.

Two words: vibration mode

Wife spent her day at work making a Hottest Disney Characters Tier List, as one does, which I filled out for fun:

Decades of artistic development and billions of dollars and Fox Robin Hood is still the hottest thing to grace this green earth, no amount of time is gonna change that. Also mad respect for "that mouse sex worker giving a striptease at a bar in Basil on Baker Street" for making it to A Tier, who wouldn't slip her a Benjamin for a half hour in the back room after all.

[froborr]

Going off pure gut reactions with no thought. Also, I just stuck people into tiers, I made no effort to organize them within tiers. So for example Esmeralda would be the top of "Enthusiastic yes" and Belle probably the bottom*, but I just stuck them in wherever.

Not that BRIAR ROSE is *fans self*, Princess Aurora is several tiers lower.

*Yes, I know what I said. That too.

Wife spent her day at work making a Hottest Disney Characters Tier List, as one does, which I filled out for fun:

Decades of artistic development and billions of dollars and Fox Robin Hood is still the hottest thing to grace this green earth, no amount of time is gonna change that. Also mad respect for "that mouse sex worker giving a striptease at a bar in Basil on Baker Street" for making it to A Tier, who wouldn't slip her a Benjamin for a half hour in the back room after all.

[froborr]

Reminder to my American friends that we are most likely NOT going to be able to flee to Canada when shit goes south here. Setting aside that it's always actually been REALLY HARD to immigrate into Canada, it's getting just as bad there. We need to fight in both places, as well as everywhere else--the number of places safer for trans folks than the least dangerous parts of the US is tiny and shrinking fast.

Alberta's Transphobic Government

I try really really hard to keep this blog about RPGs and writing. I really do. But when someone comes for my students, fists gets thrown.

We've seen the rise of transphobic legislation in various US states, as well as in Saskatchwan and New Brunswick. Now Alberta has joined the party. Despite the premier pointing out that there are trans youth in her extended family (I don't know how close the relation is, but somewhere in her close family) and swearing to not marginalize trans youth in the last election.

And ohhhh boy oh boy, my home province is once again aiming to hit the bottom of the barrel

Here's the tl;dr (quoted from the article):

Top and bottom surgeries will be banned for minors aged 17 and under. Doctors say bottom surgeries aren't performed on youth and top surgeries are rare.

Puberty blockers and hormone therapies for gender affirmation will not be permitted for children aged 15 and under.

Youths aged 16 and 17 will be permitted to start hormone therapies for gender affirmation "as long as they are deemed mature enough" and have parental, physician and psychologist approval.

Parental notification and consent will be required for a school to alter the name or pronouns of any child under age 15. Students who are 16 or 17 won't need permission but schools will need to let their parents know first.

Parents will have to "opt-in" their children every time a teacher plans to teach about gender identity, sexual orientation or sexuality. Alberta law currently requires parental notification and gives them the option to opt students out.

All third-party teaching materials on gender identity, sexual orientation or sexuality will need to be approved in advance by the education ministry.

Transgender women will be banned from competing in women's sports leagues. Smith said the government will work with leagues to set up coed or gender-neutral divisions for sports.

This goes well beyond what SK and NB have passed. It violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but Smith doesn't care and will likely use the Notwithstanding Clause to bypass it. Parents, medical professionals, and educators have all reacted with justified outrage. It is clear to those of us who care about youth that these policies will kill.

There is flattly no way in hell I will be deadnaming my students. For a government that says they want to remove red tape and bureaucracy, making parents opt-in to every single lesson involving anything other than heteronormativity sure seems like trying to use red tap to make teaching anything other than their ideology impossible.

What can you do to help?

If you are in Alberta, raise holy hell. Call your MLA, show up at the protests, add your voice to the chorus screaming that we don't want this.

If you are in Canada, there are also demonstrations in support of trans youth going on across the country. Let your MP know as well.

If you aren't from Canada, solidarity and visibility help! We've all seen how this shit has gone down in Florida and elsewhere. We need to stand together to stop this tide.

If you have business ties to Alberta and are able to divist them, please let the Alberta government know you are planning to do so if these proposals become law

Donate to 2SLGBTQ+ organizations in Alberta.

This is not the content I want to go viral from me... but if I have to choose one, make it this one. Please help us proect our kids.

[froborr]

Ūropi (Europe)

Ūropi, also known by its indigenous name “Europe”, meaning “wide-gazing” or “broad of aspect”, is a small continent first discovered in 1806 by Moehanga of Ngāpuhi, although indigenous Europeans had been living there for many thousands of years. Modern researchers believe the indigenous Europeans originally migrated from the Middle East, and over time split into separate tribes or “kingdoms,” with many retaining their ancient rangatira (called “monarchs” or “nobility”) to this day.

While many see Ūropi as timeless and exotic, indigenous Europeans have actually adapted well to the modern economy, often exporting cultural products like baguettes and vodka, the former of which may be recognisable as the basis for bánh mì.

[froborr]

One of my mother's proudest achievements in life was convincing a congressman to drop his opposition to stem cell research by proving to him that the soul cannot possibly enter the embryo prior to two weeks after conception, because up until that point it can still split into twins.

pro lifer blocked me on twitter for asking this but if embryos have souls, and then they're aborted, exactly how sapient are they in the afterlife? Are they forever doomed to float around with no thoughts in their heads? Is it like just animal intelligence like a little happy goldfish? Do they still have an embryonic form? I've always seen an assumption that child souls are still in child form so I guess so. Do the other people in the afterlife keep abortions as little pets? Will they stay in a fishbowl or are they too stupid + intangible and float right out again?

[froborr]

[froborr]

Also it makes him look like a Muppet.

(I feel like one of those moments in kid's shows where a character says something in a really sophisticated, detailed manner, and then the dumb who didn't understand a word of it replies "Yeah, plus [three-word version of what they just said]." When it comes to art, that's me, I'm the dumb character.)

the “the colonel calls me riza when we’re alone” scene is/was.. lifechanging tbh

[froborr]

I was thinking the other day that it’s funny, Matt Smith was a twenty-something, who in the role of the Doctor felt fucking ancient, but Peter Capaldi is fifty-something and feels in the role of the Doctor like a twenty-something undergrad whose skipped every single class of their anthropology course in favor of eating a month’s supply of ramen and playing “Blitzkrieg Bop” 17 times in a row.

[froborr]

This website is elite. This website is the blueprint, it's the pinnacle. There is no website like it. I lwill never leave this website

[froborr]

One of my favorite yuri related things is actually this Japanese article I found once that was like. Directed at younger himejoshi. So I put it through google translate because I was curious and it had a bunch of tips like "if you have a friend who is also a yuri fan... maybe you can go see a movie about girls together! But REMEMBER. Be sure to let her know in advance if you want to be 😳 more than friends 😳" and I genuinely thought it was so funny and cute that it was like "WARNING: we know manga likes to string things along but you cannot do that in real life you need to make your intentions known" LMAO

[froborr]

Homura is just straight up one of the weirdest people imaginable. Like, forget about the time loop tragic doomed romance for a bit, I want to see what it looks like if she wins and then actually tries to romance Madoka. She has a massive collection of illegal firearms. She builds her own bombs. She lives in an ultra-modernist white box apartment that she's decorated with a couch made of concentric circles, a giant swinging knife pendulum to remind her of the ever-present flow of time, and a wall of several dozen screens. She communicates primarily in vague and ominous warnings and is more or less incapable of saying anything directly. She addresses everyone she meets by their full name with no honorific which comes across as bizarre and intimidating. If you count time loop years she's 26. She was raised in a catholic orphanage. I want to see her take Madoka on a horrifically bad date and cry in the bathroom partway through when she realizes she's fucking up

[froborr]

What I don’t get is why the initial response is always to circle the wagons and be all closed-fisted about terminology.

So let’s talk coalition building. A bunch of cishet kinksters developing a political consciousness around their status as sexual minorities is literally the best possible thing that could happen to gay rights. Whether we understand them as officially queer, or as part of a broader classification of movements that included both kink and queerness under the same umbrella, a bigger tent is virtually always better.

Kinksters were never considered to be queer qua queer, but it was not so very long ago that issues like no-fault divorce, access to birth control, access to abortion, opposition to censorship of pornography, and queer rights were understood to be broadly related movements in favor of sexual freedom and of consolidating the gains of the sexual Revolution. Radfems kicked the pornographers and kinksters out of the coalition, South Park ceased being blue coded and became red coded, but it can’t be denied that much of the success of the LGBT community occurred in a time when we were more explicitly connected to the sexual freedom of cishet people.

The reason is pretty simple. The more votes you have, the more power you have. If the majority considers your struggle to implicate values that are important to them, or that directly impacts their material reality, they are more likely to support your cause.

And people are swatting away the olive branch because… I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s because cishet kinksters are deeply uncool. Well, I’m done with high school and all the cringe by association politics that comes with it. I have a husband that I love and a big ol gay life that I love and I’m not waiting for the backlash to crest before figuring out how to protect them.

So if a cishet kinkster wants to take the first watch tonight, I’m not too proud to refuse the help.

[froborr]

happy birthday to the worst girl in the universe (23 november 1986 - 2016 (eventually))