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When it comes to founding early civilizations, I can’t recommend fertile river valleys highly enough

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

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I tap the mic. “Most people don’t want to crawl down your chimney and steal your dog.”

the crowd murmurs uncertainly.

“If someone wants to steal your dog,” I continue, “there are easier ways to do that. They don’t have to crawl into a chimney.”

Murmuring intensifies. People stand in their seats and begin to boo.

“People disguising themselves as chimney sweepers and stealing dogs is not a rational fear,” I shout. “Literally anyone could steal your dog. Why make sweeping chimneys illegal?”

“I have a list of chimney sweeps who stole dogs from parks!” Someone yells, throwing a shoe.

“You seriously think no chimney sweepers could possibly ever steal from a home?” Another cries.

“Only a dog thief would even want to crawl into a chimney to begin with!” Says a third.

A single tear rolls down my cheek. They are all so fucking stupid

This is a metaphor

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I love that psychic powers are still "allowed" in science fiction. They're an acceptable part of the aesthetic. Like you can't have magic, but you can have brain magic, because it's more Science.

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i want to shake those two little Victorian girl bitchs hands who faked the pictures of themselves playing with fairies and thank them for paving the way.

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When I (M29) was a young boy (M7) my father (M35) took me into the city (X167) to see a marching band (M23, M21, M22, F22, M24, M25, F21, M

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Having a boyfriend is literally free

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Have you guys heard of cats. They're great.

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"nothing is real atoms never touch each other youve never touched anything in your life" ok. well when i pet my dog he is soft and when he licks my hand it is wet and that is far more real to me than whatevers going on at an atomic level

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@positivelyapunovexponent-good peer-reviewed tags

Internet User: Your chatbot isn't sentient and relying on it for information is a bad idea, you are being scammed by a techbro grift.

AI Stan: Um machine learning is used for lots of cool purposes? Don't you know machine learning is really good for protein folding??

Internet User: Language models are distinct from the useful scientific applications of machine learning shut the fuck up

A secret third faction: How dare you say there are useful applications of machine learning? Have you not considered that big tech is evil?

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environmental storytelling

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Hey, a little bit about recognizing eugenics. Eugenic logic often consists of 3 steps:

Some people have a trait that makes them less 'productive' or different.

The trait is hereditary / fixed from birth

Actions must be taken to prevent the occurrence of this trait, like preventing the births, killing the current trait-havers or promoting the health and birthrate of the people without this trait and with traits that we like.

And that's bad.

But I see a lot of conversations about whether something is hereditary / fixed from birth, here people assume that the yes/no answer to that is defined by eugenics.

So for clariry: NOT eugenics is:

Some people have a trait that makes them less 'productive' or different

The trait is hereditary / fixed from birth

Being different or less productive is totally fine actually! Everyone has inherent value. Diversity and co-dependency are strengths, even if we can't always see why.

So, ya know, if you see someone arguing that a trait is partly or completely hereditary or fixed from birth, maybe check what value they assign to that before calling someone a eugenicist?

I see some people insisting that any nature/nurture debate must always be settles as 'it's nurture' because anything else would be a slippery slope to eugenics, and that's often just not the case. It's all about what value you assign to difference.

Enforcing a dogmatic insistence that hereditary or unchangeable disabilities or traits don't exist at all isn't the great anti-eugenics strategy that you think it is. At best it's factually inaccurate, at worst the idea that everything must be changeable can lead to the insistence that everyone who is different should just change to become more productive or more normal.

And that's also bad.

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@ilikeloons

I do hope someone makes one since this is a genius idea but I don't think I'll ever finish this sketch lol - was a very fun use of 50 minutes tho!

Wow i really didnt stick to the reference oops. Looking at the photos now I think it would look more hydra-ish if I used their actual anatomy haha.