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[monster-pirate]

[monster-pirate]

Helaena Targaryen – House of the Dragon – 2.01 The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Bryullov produced in 1830–1833

[monster-pirate]

Block any account that tells you not to vote.

You don’t need to waste your time investigating whether they are a bot or a psy-op or a misinformed rube. It doesn’t matter. Either way, they add no value to your dashboard. Block and move on.

Then make a plan for Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Register, confirm you’re still registered, check your voting location or register to vote absentee or by mail.

[monster-pirate]

This. I live in one of those 'flyover states' and the more I stay the more I love. It's getting more unsafe by the day but I was born and raised here. My soul is here and here it shall stay.

[monster-pirate]

[monster-pirate]

… I just needed an excuse to draw cursed cat Alastor before it dies out

[monster-pirate]

I wrote a silly little article about how you should consider planting your yard with native grasses and plants thinking it would just take up filler space in the local newspaper and people liked it enough to comment nice things on it.

So if you think what you're doing is insignificant just know that someone out there will dig it.

[monster-pirate]

every time i start to feel cringe for being too deep in the hyperfixation i remember the intense depression i have waded through and have to remind myself that enjoyment is fleeting (so grab it with both hands), and life is for loving (so hold that love close), and if anyone thinks i’m cringe they must not be having a very good time (and i hope they can find a good time soon).

[monster-pirate]

Sunshine

[monster-pirate]

black fallow deer seen in the Barycz Valley - Landscape Park in Poland

[monster-pirate]

I was a lifeguard at this place at the time and this happened in the early morning hours when I WAS ON WATCH for ray feedings! I was SO HAPPY that I was able to watch from afar. I waited for moooooooonths as that ray got bigger and bigger. This was truly a fun time to watch the vets deliver those pups! The daddy was Apollo, the mom was Nerina and the pups names were Jupiter and Juno!

Marine life specialists noticed a spotted eagle ray mother was having trouble and helped her deliver two baby rays 

(Source)

[monster-pirate]

Variegated Mantella (Mantella baroni), family Mantellidae, Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar

Poisonous.

photograph by Charles J. Sharp

[monster-pirate]

HB 3216 in Oklahoma right now is in the works and it aims to put anyone that has an abortion on a list and in the methods of causing abortion they list contraception that stops an egg from implanting on the uterus wall. This includes IUDs and the Plan B pill. The bills to take away birth control are already in the works and I will be in prison or six feet under if I'm told that I have to remove my birth control or be on a fucking list. https://legiscan.com/OK/bill/HB3216/2024

[monster-pirate]

leave the answers in the tags

[monster-pirate]

A little advice from someone studying extremist groups: if you’re in a social media environment where the daily ubiquitous message is that you have no hope of any kind of future and you can’t possibly achieve anything without a violent overthrow of society, you’re being radicalized, and not in the good way.

[monster-pirate]

In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton's hometown of Sevierville Tennessee was at 34% (Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate). That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood. They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day. As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels. That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education. The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge. What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of "Coat of Many Colors" dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

[monster-pirate]

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?