#children...

[polarpics]

Polar explorers in school sports (Debenham, Macklin, Cherry-Garrard, Simpson)

[nerdfins]

Acid Storm: "If you bite me again, I'll be forced to remove your head to check you for rabies."

Slipstream: "I DON'T HAVE RABIES! I CAN'T GET RABIES! QUIT MAKING SHORT JOKES AND I WON'T BITE YOU!"

Acid Storm: "See? You're practically frothing at the mouth. A sure sign of rabies."

Starscream: *watches with a 😑 face as Slipstream bites Acid Storm...again.*

[cosmicharm]

Soooo I finished Dragon's Dogma and I'm not fine now. Overall it has been a pretty fun game, enjoyed it a lot... And cried like a mf with the end hehe.

[sniffanimal]

god I could be so wealthy if I had no ethics. that's so fucking frustrating. I'm living paycheck to paycheck because I'm not grifting vulnerable idiots on TikTok. I feel like I have the ability to very easily scam people. I could make a killing with AI. but god. I have morals and ethics and so I get to be poor as shit. I hate this fucking world

this post got too much attention so I sniffered it

[whatbigotspost]

Two years after being tasked with commissioning a review of medical evidence surrounding gender-affirming care for trans youth, Utah’s own state health department has concluded that trans healthcare bans “cannot be justified.” The Republicans who commissioned the study aren’t too happy about it.

Back in 2023, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill that placed an indefinite “moratorium” on doctors prescribing gender-affirming care like hormone therapy and puberty blockers to trans youth. That bill ordered the Utah Department of Health and Human Services to compile their report in order to produce recommendations for the state government on whether or not to lift the moratorium.

This week, the department delivered their long-awaited, over 1,000-page report — which is dated August 6, 2024 — to Utah lawmakers. The report’s authors found that “the consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric GD [gender dysphoria] patients.”

The authors added that “the evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer.” Trans youth who had received gender-affirming care were within the bounds of normal, non-pathological ranges for these conditions.

y’all this is huge. please don’t “water is wet” all over it! I understand that we all already know this… The point is that the world doesn’t know or care or believe and so these studies really fucking matter!

[houseofmcallister]

Saw a tiktok of a guy saying he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to minors because he’s 19. And it’s just. I’m so fucking tired of this.

And like to be clear, I’m speaking as a victim of pedophilia when I say: We need to get over this collective fear of endangering children. Because holy shit, this stuff is getting out of hand.

The average person is not a threat to a child.

And also!!! It is actually really really good for kids to have friendships with adults that aren’t their family.

Having friendships with adults when you’re younger prepares you for adult life in a better way then only interacting with adults that are family members or teacher as well.

And also if there’s any sort of weird behavior happening with adults or teachers, it’s very helpful to have unrelated adults, you can go to, and also have a model for what normal adults are supposed to look like.

And also! You’re just making it way easier for pedophiles to prey on children when you completely avoid interacting with them as an adult. Because kids are naturally inquisitive and curious. They are going to want to interact with adults and they are going to want to ask questions. And if the only adult adults that are willing to interact and speak with them or adults who have ulterior motivations. Guess what’s gonna happen.

Also on a more general note. Having a model for what a normal healthy adult is supposed to look like makes it way easier for kids to be able to recognize and identify when adults in their personal life are being weird.

[inbabylontheywept]

my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

she then told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and go to heaven, and be able to talk to the worms face to face. that i'd be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident, driven only by excessive Love, and that she was positive they would forgive me because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

[blueskittlesart]

i’ve started babysitting for a VERY christian family which is great because they pay me a lot of money but as someone who was raised almost completely agnostic it’s kind of insane. the 2 year old keeps asking me to read her stories from the bible. (why are we reading david and goliath to a 2 year old????) the 5 year old told me today that he was going to bring his legos to heaven with him. he also has repeatedly told me that the lego spaceships he builds are stronger than jesus. (not sure what to say to that. do i deny it??? are things allowed to be stronger than jesus??) had to stop myself mid sentence today because i almost told them im not going to heaven which would DEFINITELY have caused several meltdowns. they’re also both completely fascinated by my nose ring

[rambling-red-wizard]

I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.

[prxnce07]

Eyeliner ♦️

[lovely-v]

Did NOT expect the new season of phineas and ferb to have a sharp and acute criticism of unpaid internships and their exploitation of college students but i really do approve the moral of this episode

[delsincloud]

[podcastwizard]

if you're in the throes of cosmic despair i cannot recommend museums enough. art or science or history it doesn't matter. oh we're all connected, all of us and everything, throughout all time and space, and no one, no one, no one is alone? awesome. that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure.

[sayruq]

If you, for some reason, still have a subscription to the Atlantic, cancel it

[motherofplatypus]

This is how many bullets they shot on a fucking kid.

This post has been compiled in Record of Genocide.