wild-aspen

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"idk i just don't think feminism has been beneficial to women" says woman who wears pants and has a high school diploma

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One reason I see people hesitant to join the Fediverse/Mastodon/etc. is because of the lack of sideblogs.

DO YOU WANT SIDEBLOGS?

WAFRN now has sideblogs aka multiple accounts!!!!!

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autism is real

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The entirety of Pritzker's speech today is extremely important, and I highly recommend everyone read it (or listen to it if you prefer), but I would like to share some segments that highlight the overall point of his message.

"I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country."

"Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago."

"What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American."

"If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police?

Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections."

"There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention."

"So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump's military occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago.

Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois."

"To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is."

"Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab."

"Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, 'Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?' Instead, I say, 'Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.'

You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.

Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more-alarming grabs for power."

"To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your National Guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people, you would be failing your constituents and your country. Cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to."

"Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.

This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back."

"You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law."

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in middle school my english teacher and gym teacher actually were married but the english teacher was a man and the gym teacher was a woman #queeringheterosexuality

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Whats the weirdest of the permian, in your opinion?

I think you know the answer to that question...

Cotylorhynchus

Art by PrehistoryByLiam

Cotylorhynchus 

is an extinct genus of herbivorous caseid synapsids that lived during the late Lower Permian (Kungurian) and possibly the early Middle Permian (Roadian) in what is now Texas and Oklahoma. The large number of specimens found make it the best-known caseid. Like all large herbivorous caseids, Cotylorhynchus had a short snout sloping forward and very large external nares…

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotylorhynchus

illustration by Nobu Tamura 

#NotADinosaur!!!

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Excerpt from this story from Northern Public Radio:

Next year, “rewilding” will officially be a part of the conservation approach in Illinois.

A new state law explicitly includes the concept as part of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ strategy. It’s the first time a U.S. state has included rewilding in its legislation, people working in conservation said.

The goal of rewilding is to reintroduce native species and restore whole ecosystems. Advocates often describe it as helping nature help itself, or putting nature back in the driver’s seat.

Cynthia Kenner is the executive director of Prairie State Conservation Coalition in Illinois. She said the new law formalizes the work happening in the state already.

“It's allowing the continuation of practices that are already in place, but it brings more meaning to really letting nature come back,” she said.

An example of rewilding is occurring in the northern part of the state in Rockford, where the Severson Dells Nature Center is working to transform a former golf course into 170 acres of prairie, forest and wetland habitats. The area will serve as a wildlife corridor as well, allowing species to pass through to other nature preserves in the area.

Rewilding often focuses on repairing habitat suited for apex predators like mountain lions and keystone species like beavers and bison. The idea is when these species can succeed, other species will start to recover around them, said Jason Kahn, board president of the Rewilding Institute, which supports large-scale conservation projects across North America.

Perhaps the most well-known example is the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s. In South Dakota, black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced to Badlands National Park, and bison are roaming prairies in Illinois and Iowa. These keystone species have helped to recover native habitats in the area.

“It doesn't cost a lot of money,” Kahn said. “Nature knows how to take care of itself. If we stop insulting and abusing it, all you would need to do for something is to let it grow, let it mature and let it be. And the wildlife will find a way in.”

Rewilding isn’t just about restoring large swaths of the landscape away from humans, said Cathy McMullen, a faculty member in the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Iowa State University. She said one of the most meaningful approaches to rewilding can take place on your block.

“There's a buy-in for everybody, say, in a neighborhood,” she said. “You plant a pollinator patch, and you maintain that pollinator patch, and if you scale that up to a whole neighborhood, no one person gets overwhelmed by all the work. Everybody's doing their piece. In the process, they’re going to learn some bugs and birds and make a connection to nature.”

“This bill adds rewilding as a strategy that the agency can implement,” she said. “They are also already doing many of these practices, and they already have the ability to consult with their ecologists, the biologists and the folks that make these decisions for the state to add species to the landscape.... This doesn't give them any new authority.”

The law goes into effect at the start of next year.

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Of the decision to have O'Brien appear shirtless, director David Livingston commented, "I thought it was important. He represents the common man on the show, and common men, when they get sweaty, take off their shirts. And so what if he doesn't look like Fabio. He looks real, like a Human being. (…)" On the prospect of being a sex symbol, Colm Meaney (Miles O'Brien) joked, "It would seem to me that there are far more likely candidates for it!" (x)

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE season 2, episode 11

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Perhaps the most effort I’ve ever put into the stupidest punchline, but this drawing is so good that I had to do something with it. Go see The Day the Earth Blew Up!! If we’re lucky, this’ll be the next Snow White remake!

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sad news, my son Crispin Shopify III saw a picture of me when i was breastfeeding him as a baby. the psychiatrists all agreed that exposure to this act which is potentially incestuous and sexual was equivalent to infinite permanent sexual trauma, and so we've decided to euthanize him and just start again from the beginning. hopefully i wont fuck it up again this time. god bless.

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I don't care if its uncalled for, I don't care if it doesn't fit the genre, I don't care if it was necessary to the plot. I will never not love an Akira slide.

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yall is it really such a fucking ask to stop using intersexist slurs

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ppl will see one transmasc post something or reply one time and be like "UGGH MEN ARE TAKING OVER EVERYTHING. GIRLS CAN'T HAVE ANYTHING" literally shut up, not everything is about you

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weird how quick fascists went from “the world is overpopulated. close your legs. stop having kids.” to “pop out 3 babies right now. you have no choice. you have to. it’s your duty and your only purpose.” when they realized they might not have enough vulnerable individuals to exploit in the labor force if the birth rate continues declining

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what would you guys do if you went to shabbat dinner and there was someone there with a denim kippah. a jarmulke, if you will

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In a radical shift from traditional Christian theology, women in the 19th century (those who were White, middle-class, and Protestant, that is) were granted and assumed a new symbolic status and moral authority based on the belief that they were innately sexually passionless. First wave feminists ran with this as an argument in favor of the increased political power it conferred. White racists enthusiastically jumped aboard and used White women’s purity to penalize anyone (i.e. Black men) rumored to have crossed the color-line by threatening White women’s virtue. The mythic innocence of White womanhood functioned as a nationalistic trope that White women could and did choose to embrace for the benefit of their sex, their race, and their nation. That the Department of Homeland Security’s celebration of Homeland Heritage therefore extols the virtues of White womanhood is not surprising. This is a common practice within far-right organizations seeking cultural respectability. Studies of gender within these groups have found that women are especially useful for conducting public relations because they offer a “softer” presentation of the group’s goals. By leaning into these feminine traits, women lend their “good reputations” to the movement. White women in the contemporary U.S. have these good reputations for the same reasons they did in the 19th century—because they use their racial power and moral authority to support White, heteronormative, male-dominated hierarchies. In turn their good reputations allow them to forward deeply disreputable ideologies like White supremacy.

— "DHS’s ‘Homeland Heritage’ Campaign Highlights Danger of Innocence Myths of a White Christian America" by Sarah J. Moslener for Religion Dispatches.

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Superman is, above all else, a Nice Jewish Boy