seewetter - Tumblr blog

[seewetter]

Look, a lot of stuff that west germans say about the DDR is just superstition, but the DDR was a police state; that doesn't change just because marxism was taught in schools. The only people that want to live in a police state are snitches and bootlickers.

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i love you, silly

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Wait are we sure that's the pelicans actual enclosure? I assumed it had wandered off somewhere it didn't belong?

Not to be a killjoy (though it is what I do best) but the unsafe and rough handling of a baby Pygmy hippo in a pretty substandard Thai zoo being meme-ed into something funny and cute really shows just how much groupthink plays into public perception of animal welfare.

Moo Deng shows avoidance, threat displays and stress around her keepers that are constantly man-handling her, blasting her with a hose and harassing her. The enclosure is mostly concrete, which is horrible for her soft feet. There looks to be some substrate but there doesn’t seem to be any areas for wallowing or deep water wading.

There’s also very easy access of this hippo to the public with no places to hide. I’d love if someone could shed more light on the enclosures but from what I’ve seen it’s not great.

Also the free contact and forcing into tubs that the keepers do is only going to create an avoidant and potentially aggressive and dangerous Pygmy hippo.

But the public happily overlook that because she’s cute. It’s a similar attitude with seals too.

Stop rewarding bad husbandry with clout. Baby animals deserve agency and respect and to grow up without getting harassed and feeling the need to defend themselves constantly.

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That goes even for the strategy of threatening not to vote. A strategy that is useless unless you also express a potential to vote.

Voting matters.

I know the US government acts like a corporation but it’s not.

Not voting isn’t the same as a boycott. Because you can’t bankrupt a government by not voting. All you get by not voting is less control over what the money is doing.

The money comes from taxes, not voting. Abstaining from voting does nothing to reduce the governments ability to get money and spend it on shit.

So yes, sometimes you vote to reduce harm because not voting WILL NOT REDUCE HARM.

It’s not a boycot. Abstaining doesn’t take power from the government. It just reduces the number of people they feel answerable to.

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Then they should write a wish-fulfillment fic where they get to bully AO3 authors, make it really nasty bullying and post it to AO3. :P

no but how much audacity and sheer entitlement do you have to have to tell people they need to stop posting their darkfic and porn fic and any other fic you don’t like to ao3 so you can have a safe space when ao3 was literally created as a safe space for writers to post their content without fear of it being randomly wiped out by pro-censorship assholes with an agenda like what has happened to plenty of other fic archives before?

“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” - lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either

ao3 is not, has never been, and will never be a site meant for nothing but children’s stories. you can “see it” like that as much as you want but there’s a difference between fiction and reality and that view of what ao3 is like is as fictional as the stories posted on it.

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forbidden knowledge

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I have that problem in every language.

Consumption of english language media and internet culture made it possible for me to actually become fluent in english, but slowly the fear is setting in that it has also resulted in my use of the english language forever sounding like that of an overdramatic teenager / boring tv show protagonist. Oh, and I'm sure all the mediocre academic articles, sometimes written by non-native speakers and sometimes not, somehow figure into this, too. Like they always think they're so funny and clever.

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Heresy is such a weird concept, especially in lists like these.

I like generalizing concepts just to see if they have utility in other contexts.

Like apostasy for example: I can picture a person who once professed a set of ideas but later just isn't the same person anymore, and seems to (for no good reason) have abandoned their previous ideas.

And blasphemy too: people who make derogatory remarks about things that mean a lot to people around them are a dime a dozen.

But heresy? Belief in tenets contrary to those of a faith one professes...sure, that makes some amount of sense. Hypocrisy, basically. But "selective belief in only some of the tenets of a faith one professes" -- so selective beliefs that aren't hypocritical. So a forthright, honest person that isn't a hypocrite...is being selective about what, exactly? This definition of "heresy" implies "a faith one professes" is not the faith you profess. Because if you professed that faith and you follow it without holding to any tenets that contradict your faith... then you "belief in only some of the tenets" would be redundant. There would be no reason to mention it again. So this must refer to a different meaning of "selective belief". The so-called heretics aren't selective about their own commitments, they are selective about "their faith" as defined by other people for them. So a heretic can just be a label for people who have differences of opinion, with zero reason to assume that they are wrong or committing a moral failing. Wild.

FOR THE LAST TIME

👏 APOSTASY is the rejection of a faith after having professed it;

👏 HERESY is selective belief in only some of the tenets of a faith one professes, or belief in tenets contrary to those of a faith one professes;

👏 BLASPHEMY is derogation of the honour due to God.

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This blog has been telling you not to trust pelicans for over a decade and this is why

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I think you've been exposed to enough social media that that's not really the case.

Like people on here talk pretty normally at least half the time.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Consumption of english language media and internet culture made it possible for me to actually become fluent in english, but slowly the fear is setting in that it has also resulted in my use of the english language forever sounding like that of an overdramatic teenager / boring tv show protagonist. Oh, and I'm sure all the mediocre academic articles, sometimes written by non-native speakers and sometimes not, somehow figure into this, too. Like they always think they're so funny and clever.

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I'm so fascinated by languages with different levels of formality built in because it immediately introduces such complex social dynamics. The social distance between people is palpable when it's built right into the language, in a way it's not really palpable in English.

So for example. I speak Spanish, and i was taught to address everyone formally unless specifically invited otherwise. People explained to me that "usted" was formal, for use with strangers, bosses, and other people you respect or are distant from, while "tú" is used most often between family and good friends.

That's pretty straightforward, but it gets interesting when you see people using "tú" as a form of address for flirting with strangers, or for picking a fight or intimidating someone. In other languages I've sometimes heard people switch to formal address with partners, friends or family to show when they are upset. That's just so interesting! You're indicating social and emotional space and hierarchy just in the words you choose to address the other person as "you"!!

Not to mention the "what form of address should I use for you...?" conversation which, idk how other people feel about it, but to me it always felt awkward as heck, like a DTR but with someone you're only just becoming comfortable with. "You can use tú with me" always felt... Weirdly intimate? Like, i am comfortable around you, i consider you a friend. Like what a vulnerable thing to say to a person. (That's probably also just a function of how i was strictly told to use formal address when i was learning. Maybe others don't feel so weird about it?)

And if you aren't going to have a conversation about it and you're just going to switch, how do you know when? If you switch too soon it might feel overly familiar and pushy but if you don't switch soon enough you might seem cold??? It's so interesting.

Anyway. As an English-speaking American (even if i can speak a bit of Spanish), i feel like i just don't have a sense for social distance and hierarchy, really, simply because there isn't really language for it in my mother tongue. The fact that others can be keenly aware of that all the time just because they have words to describe it blows my mind!

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had a fascinating dream last night where there was a new, virally popular trading card game - it was called MOUNTAIN (stylised in all caps) and the whole gimmick was that you couldn’t buy boosters or anything - you had to find them?

nowhere sold MOUNTAIN - I mean, I expect players did, once cards were in their hands.

but acquiring cards meant noticing a box lying around, and just….nabbing it? they’d be in weird places - in a skip, wedged high up in a fence, nestled in the branches of a tree? nobody ever saw who left them there, and there was a lot of debate about how MOUNTAIN boxes were sometimes hard to acquire without risking one’s physical safety - but then, that was also bragging rights. especially as harder-to-reach boxes seemed to contain more elusive and sought after cards…

no, I don’t remember anything about the actual gameplay, we never played any MOUNTAIN. alas. I know there were “frame cards” that were literally transparent but for a fancy metallic or holographic border, which I guess upgraded the card they were applied to? frames were super rare, my coworker literally ran up to me in the pub purely to show off the frame he’d just found

dream brain gimme the deets on MOUNTAIN’s actual mechanics, I’m invested in this controversial unpurchasable scavenger hunt game

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