#But it's their reality. Actively

[moomoorare]

I love nautical and seaside town horror stories. Tell me more about the fog and water that eats people

[acorviart]

not to sound like a boomer, but I need some people to learn how to write emails in a semi-professional (at the very least) format so you're not cold emailing a business/potential employer/any other stranger about formal matters in the exact same way you'd DM a close friend on instagram

the formality/language can loosen up in the email chain once you've established a rapport and you match the other person if they're being less formal, but please don't have the very first email you send a stranger be written in all lowercase ultra-casual sms slang with no greeting or signature and a billion emojis

[bixels]

Posting a sneak-peak of this now because I'm about to be In The Shit school workload-wise, so this'll take me a while to finish.

Doing some character design exploration/expression sheets for Celestia and Luna. Figuring out Celestia's weird ass anatomy while I'm at it.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl found dead in a hidden room.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[houseswife]

kinda has me creasing how wilson is just casually on the world’s slowest treadmill for the entirety of this scene. he’s like a hamster

[cosmicwhoreo]

exhibit A of why Gold should not be trusted around children

[bygideonsgrace]

You can keep your "discourse", I'll be down at the river !

[butterflysonnets]

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

[michaelbogild]

I guarantee your soul is telling you exactly what you should be doing.  The question is whether or not you’re listening.

Mel Robbins

[kylejsugarman]

“jesse. i don’t know. WHAT would make you think that i would EVER sell you to one direction. really, just calm down and think about this logically, think about it. what would i possibly gain from selling you to one direction?? i don’t even know how one would get into contact with them. please, just take a moment and think—really think—about who WOULD be able to contact such a famous band. a man of high social standing, right?? a notable businessman, who—what?? this envelope of loose british pounds in my hand?? jesse, ive always had this—”

[bananonbinary]

there's a weird thought ive been trying to chase down for a few days, and it's something like, "the words used to describe evil as inhuman are misleading."

very specifically, i keep thinking about the words often used to describe slavery - dehumanizing, objectifying, treated like animals, etc.

but that's not actually true is it? people would never trust an animal with complex tasks like "watch over my children," and they never react to objects with the emotional/mental abuse slavery engenders. the weird truth is, we don't really have any good comparison for slavery, because it is, by it's nature, a violence that can only be perpetuated *against other humans.*

these word choices imply that the crime is one of mistaken identity, as if the slaveholder is simply Factually Wrong. i understand that they are useful shorthand a lot of the time, but i worry that sometimes it's used to imply a lot more passivity than actually exists here.

[uncanny-tranny]

Something I realized (which was obvious to me subconsciously) is that... The family that vehemently didn't accept me when I first came out but now do accept me are still the same family that I am most unwilling to be open about things I feel protective over.

I remember that my dad reacted so poorly, not to my coming out, but to my transition specifically that my therapist was the one to ask if I wanted to put it on my file that I wanted nothing to ever be shared with him about my health after I broke down multiple times due to my anxiety that I would never transition. While there are and were protections for me, I was incredibly fearful at the time because I was a minor, and I was so worried that he would have prevented my transition that I couldn't have said for certain what (if any) lengths he would have gone to to prevent that.

He's grown a lot as a person, and made some commendable strides. But he didn't find out from me when I medically transitioned the second I turned eighteen, and I think that's among the things that truly made him realize the scope of the issue.

I'm not here to guilt trip parents, guardians, or other members responsible for the care of the children or teens or young adults in their care.... but this is a cautionary tale. You aren't saving the people in your care when you do this, you simply reinforce an idea that you will never care for them, never want them as they are, would rather them be shoved away.

When you give people reasons to be secretive, they will behave secretively. When you give people reasons to doubt their safety around you, they will become sneaky, defensive, and withdrawn. When you give people reasons to doubt that you value their life, they will believe that you don't care if they live or not.

[mxtxfanatic]

Ngl, I’m actually pretty uncomfortable reading my old posts defending the goodness of the common people and their right to defend themselves—as persecuted groups or as individuals—from hierarchical tyranny, given how easily in this current irl moment a not-insignificant amount of people have fallen into supporting an active genocide, because I cannot separate this from how much pushback I got (and still sometimes get) for being consistent in my politics

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Nathan Williams

Published: Apr 27, 2021

Pseudoscience has become a serious problem. From Covid conspiracy theories to climate change denialists, the spread of scientific misinformation threatens our health and the health of our planet. Now there’s a new pseudoscience as bogus as flat-earthism or creationism. But this time there’s something different: those who you might expect to fight against pseudoscience are turning a blind-eye — or in some cases spreading it. This is the phenomenon of sex denial: the rejection of one of the most basic facts of biology in the name of ideology.

I’ve spent much of my career fighting against pseudoscience. I worked with the legendary sceptic James Randi to debunk homeopathy; I’ve also battled climate denialists and anti-vaxxers. I know pseudoscience when I see it. Sex-denial is a classic of the genre, using all the same techniques to sow confusion and misinformation. Their target is the seemingly uncontroversial, indeed obvious, fact that humans can be female or male.

Here’s what the science says: there are only two human sexes. That’s because there are only two types of gamete (the sex cells — egg and sperm). Humans (like all mammals) can develop along one of two pathways: towards making eggs (female) and towards making sperm (male). If anyone ever finds a third sex it would be a discovery on a par with finding a new continent — with a guaranteed Nobel prize. Until you see those headlines, you can rest assured there are exactly two sexes.

A small number of people have disorders or variations in their sex development (VSDs) meaning some aspect of their anatomy or genetic makeup may be atypical. But most people with VSDs are still clearly and unambiguously male or female. Indeed, most would consider it offensive to say that just because some part of your body is atypical that you are less of a male or less of a female. In a tiny subset it can be difficult to distinguish whether someone is male or female — sometimes called intersex conditions — but these likely account for less than 0.02 per cent of births. So, the overwhelming majority of people are unequivocally female or male, with their sex fixed from before they’re born to the moment they die. None of this is remotely new or controversial (at least in science).

Biological sex exists and it matters — most obviously because the existence of the human race depends on it. You can’t make a human baby without a male and a female — yet the sex-denialists hardly ever mention reproduction. Which is odd since that’s precisely why sex exists. Sex also matters for a host of other reasons. It influences your height, weight, strength and lifespan. It determines your likelihood of getting breast cancer or testicular cancer, heart attacks, mental illness, even your chance of dying from Covid-19. Denying sex is dangerous as well as disingenuous.

So what exactly do the sex-denialists claim? Like climate-deniers or flat-earthers, there’s no single alternative theory — rather a hodge-podge of different claims designed to confuse the public and push an ideological agenda. At the most extreme there are those who flat out deny the reality of sex. “It is not correct that there is such thing as biological sex”, says Prof Nicholas Matte at the University of Toronto. Dawn Butler, a British MP and the Labour Party’s Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, said on national television: “A child is born without sex.” What is so extraordinary about this claim is that it is so obviously untrue. At least the flat-earthers have some degree of everyday experience on their side: it’s easy to forget we’re on a spinning ball of rock. But to deny something that everyone knows and experiences every day is bizarre — and of course not supported by any science.

Another approach is to accept that the sexes exist but imply they’re a human invention, like faiths or football teams. For instance, Chase Strangio of the ACLU says, “The notion of “biological sex” was developed for the exclusive purpose of being weaponised against people.” This is a classic pseudoscience confidence trick. Of course it’s true that all scientific concepts are in one sense human creations. Mammals, atoms, temperature and earthquakes are all concepts created by scientists. However, those concepts are useful precisely because they describe real aspects of the physical world. Surely no one would claim that these exist purely in our minds. Similarly, the reality of biological sex is a fundamental fact about all mammals that existed long before humans did — just as gravity existed long before Newton.

A third approach is to accept that sex exists but claim it’s so complicated that you really shouldn’t bother your pretty little head about it. A recent article in The Skeptic took this approach — drawing an analogy between the concept of sex and the concept of species. It’s true that there are cases where the borderline between species can get fuzzy — for instance hybrid polar and grizzly bears can exist with the delightful name of pizzly bears. But such rare cases don’t invalidate the concept of species — indeed biology would be impossible without it. The overwhelming majority of vertebrate animals are members of a single species — just as most humans are members of a single sex.

Whereas most popular science articles are trying to take a complex subject and make it seem simple, articles like these strive to take a simple concept and make it seem complex. The evidence is clear in one of the most unusual corrections I’ve ever seen. “This article was updated as it previously omitted a reference to primary sexual characteristics.” That’s right — an article all about the reality of biological sex “forgot” to mention the primary sexual characteristics. This is deliberate scientific obfuscation.

So why would anyone want to deny something as important and obvious as sex? Perhaps it is the misguided belief that obscuring the reality of sex will help trans people. It is of course important to distinguish between sex and gender or gender identity (someone’s internal sense of who they are and the social roles they fulfil). There are people whose biological sex and gender identity do not match: trans people. I believe people should be free to self-identify as whatever gender they wish. However, one can no more self-identify one’s sex than you can self-identify your height.

This needn’t be a problem — we can celebrate that there are people who want to break out of the traditional roles and social expectations associated with their sex. But the new ideology says that a trans person doesn’t merely change their gender, they change their sex — even if they’ve had no surgery or hormone treatment. This means believing that someone can have a body identical to that of a typical male and yet in fact be female purely through the act of identifying as such. The only way to make that falsehood true is to demolish the very notion of biological sex.

Without the truth on their side, the sex denialists’ only option is to shut down discussion. Anyone who dares question the ideology faces insults, abuse and even violence. It’s an approach that has proven highly successful. Despite this being an issue of great public interest, very few scientists or science journalists have made any attempt to communicate what the science says. When I approached the Science Media Centre, which prides itself on being able to find scientists to talk on even the most controversial subjects, they said they were unable to provide a single expert. Places that once championed rationality and evidence like the Freethought Blog now explicitly ban those who dare present views on the existence of biological sex that they consider heretical.

When a biologist tweeted that stating biological facts is not bigotry, she was attacked by the very body you might expect to support her — The Royal Society of Biology — which labelled her comments as “transphobia”. Perhaps there was some detail of the science she got wrong — in which case you would expect this learned society to point out the error. But despite numerous attempts to find out what was incorrect about her statements, they have refused to answer. Even at its most censorious — the Catholic Church would tell blasphemers what their crime was. The modern witch-burners won’t even do that — they will rarely even discuss their claims with anyone who does not already share their beliefs.

Even one of the world’s best-known biologists isn’t safe. Prof. Richard Dawkins recently tweeted to ask whether there was a difference between self-identifying your race and self-identifying your sex/gender. This was the final straw for the American Humanist Association which duly stripped him of a 25-year-old lifetime award — something they’d only done once before when a recipient was accused of serious sexual harassment. Humanism is supposed to stand for rationality and freedom of thought, but for the AHA it seems heresy is still a crime punishable by excommunication. These are far from isolated examples. Many academics, particularly women, have faced threats and harassment merely for daring to talk about biological sex. There is no clearer demonstration that sex denialists are charlatans; their only weapons are creating fear and confusion. It’s time the rest of us stood up to them.

[umbraastaff]

There's something wrong with the planet.

I know, that sounds really dramatic. And probably exaggerated, knowing how much anxiety and paranoia is all but designed into my cheap fucking systems. It's not like I have much of a frame of reference, either: I only have linear memories of the last 160 hours of my life, barring the activation and maintenance between previous contracts. The rest is in bits and pieces, most of them ghosts of old feelings and reactions from my organic parts.

But that's how I know. There's a sense of wrongness in my organics, telling me things are different than how they should be -- how they used to be, at least. People keep bringing up the event from two months ago. I wasn't around for it, (or at least I don't remember it), but from my understanding, something fell from the sky, and now everyone's acting really weird.

They call it the Light of Creation, and yes, they capitalize it.

As far as I can tell, it isn't a power source, and nobody's considering selling it, but it's somehow helping with an important project. It's being held by the IPRE, the same entity that rented out my contract starting a week ago… for a two-month mission that's going to start ten months from now. They're paying for a year's worth of SecUnit for a mission a fraction of that time away.

I can't complain about that, exactly. Ten months of hanging around a bunch of boring researchers is a lot better than ten months of being a regular Murderbot, cycling between memory erasure and panic over the lives of various clients. It makes it easier not to get my brain painfully zapped by my governor module, too, when there are less crises. But it still feels highly unusual, and weird behavior is always going to make me uneasy.

"Let's run through this one more time," says Captain Davenport. Speaking of weird behavior.

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[blackhholes]

Teen Wolf as Horror Subgenres

Season six B: Cosmic Horror