definitelynotscott

[definitelynotscott]

being on tumblr for a long time but never reading homestuck like

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I'm gonna be real with you, i don't think weirdo kinksters should be considered acceptable collateral damage when banks/credit card companies enforce adult content bans on sites like patreon and ko-fi

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it disturbs me that a significant number of people think that the issue with sexual violence, gendered violence, and misogyny is sexual desire rather than dehumanization, so they are relentlessly suspicious of others' (and their own) desires while simultaneously never at all interrogating others' (and their own) dehumanizing beliefs about other people, both within and outside of sexual contexts

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I'm putting a leather cover on my thread book to make it more durable, and debating a layer of board between the paper and leather for extra rigidity.

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We’ve temporarily lowered the AO3 comment rate limit due to bots leaving spam comments.

Posted: 16:42 UTC July 15, 2025

[definitelynotscott]

@keishid

For the first time in Saint Louis Zoo history, a cheetah has given birth to 8 cheetah cubs .

Awww look at their faces! I want to cuddle them!!

But I wont. 

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it’s so unfair that i can’t teleport

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it makes me sad the way cis women are so terrified of and disgusted by their own body hair. and i'm not talking "i have to shave for sensory reasons" i mean i keep seeing videos of women using hair identifier spray on their faces and hands so they can shave the tiniest barely-there bits of peach fuzz that came free with their bodies. hair that serves a purpose and that purpose is cleanliness and protection. i mean when i was in elementary school girls who had barely hit puberty were talking about shaving their arms. i mean full-grown adult women who will have a breakdown if they see two days of stubble on their legs/crotch/ jaw/pits because god forbid you don't look like a perfect plastic barbie doll. god forbid your body that keeps you alive comes with hair that may not be soft and glossy and photogenic. some women are so afraid of having any hair apart from their head and eyebrows that they've uno reversed themselves into six different kinds of gender dysphoria that they can't recognize as such because they're convinced that this unnatural state of highly-groomed capital-informed beauty is how women have always been. you're so scared of looking "gross" or "ugly" or "mannish" that you can't even look at your body in the mirror and recognize what it is. sister you are an ape. why are you so determined to deny your nature.

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okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

[definitelynotscott]

Iranian photographer Hossein Fatemi, offers a glimpse of an entirely different side to Iran than the image usually broadcasted by domestic and foreign media. In his photo series An Iranian Journey, many of the photographs reveal an Iran that most people never see, presenting an eye-opening look at the amazing diversity and contrasts that exist in the country.

[definitelynotscott]

Jul 9, 2025

The Flint water crisis began in 2014, after lead-contaminated drinking water was found to be leaching out from aging pipes into homes citywide.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Natural Resources Defense Council, with help from other activists and nonprofits, have released statements on the recent progress, celebrating the milestone.

The statements which they chalk up the crisis to “cost-cutting measures and improper water treatment,” that the state “didn’t require treatment to prevent corrosion,” after a “a state-appointed emergency manager” switched the water supply to the Flint River.

There is no safe level of lead exposure; each nanogram causes harm. In addition to long-known risks, such as damage to children’s brains and certain cancers, there is also significant evidence that exposure to lead is linked to numerous cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart attack.

The coalition mobilized the citizenry and filed a lawsuit against Flint and Michigan state officials to secure safe water. The result was a settlement in March 2017, under which a federal court in Detroit ordered Flint to give every resident the opportunity to have their lead pipe replaced at no cost, as well as conduct comprehensive tap water testing, implement a faucet filter distribution and education program, and maintain funding for health programs to help residents deal with the effects of Flint’s tainted water, according to the NRDC.

The coalition then returned to court six times in six years to ensure the city and state kept to the timeline, which was delayed by COVID-19, and other reasons which The Detroit News described as “spotty record-keeping” and “ineffective management.”

On July 1st, the State of Michigan submitted a progress report to a federal court confirming that, more than eight years after the settlement, nearly 11,000 lead pipes were replaced and more than 28,000 properties were restored where the maintenance had taken place.

Of the 4,200 buildings where lead pipes are known to still be in service, their owners have either left the properties vacant, abandoned, or have declined the free replacement under the Safe Water Drinking Act. The coalition has said it will continue to monitor city and state progress on these remaining lines.

“Thanks to the persistence of the people of Flint and our partners, we are finally at the end of the lead pipe replacement project,” said Pastor Allen C. Overton of the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, one of the organizations that sued the city. “While this milestone is not all the justice our community deserves, it is a huge achievement.”

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I hate it when people "um, ackshully" and they're like...not even contradicting the original statement?

Like with this shot of the Mauritius "optical illusion"

Everyone is always like, "It LOOKS like a waterfall, but it's actually sand!" Except there is very much a plateau there that drops off from 150m to 4000+ and the only thing you're arguing about is which substance is plummeting to the bottom of the ocean???

I don't care if it's ACTUALLY sand and that technically water doesn't form waterfalls underwater. I fucking know that. The elephant in the room is THATS STILL A 4000M DROP. We aren't taking about the WATER we're talking about the GLARING AND BOTTOMLESS UNDERWATER CHASM? HELLO???

Like is it even an optical "illusion" if it's just highlighting something that's normally not visible??

Or is this not actually how this works and I'm wildly misunderstanding the bathymetry here? Am I stupid??

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when you talk shit about drug addicts who aren’t “functioning members of society” you are talking shit about disabled people. this is not up for debate.

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sorry I can't make it, my mutual is spam texting me about their oc. yeah actually not sorry, this is very important to me.

[definitelynotscott]

Back in the office/ back on my bullshit

[definitelynotscott]