#everyone should have beef with thomas edison

[mushroom-through-the-stargate]

every smart person should be required to have a Dumb Friend purely for the joy of teaching. if you only have Smart Friends they'll most likely already know the thing you're bursting at the seams to tell somebody about like it's new information. but Dumb Friends? Dumb Friends don't know any of this stuff, its all new information to them. and that's beautiful.

[hinatastinygiant]

8 | Lady Emma Hamilton

Pairing: Ominis Gaunt x Fem!Reader

Serpents and Roses

The following afternoon, you walk into your brother's class with a grin on your face. You take a seat next to Luna, who leans over and whispers, "Where were you yesterday? We missed you."

"Oh, um, I went out," you say quietly, knowing it would be hard to explain where you had gone.

"Oh yeah?" she grins. "Anyone interesting?" she asks, just as your brother looks up from his desk and scans the room.

"No," you shake your head and do the same, only for your eyes to fall on Ominis and Sebastian taking their seats across from you and Luna. Your heart drops to see Sebastian glaring daggers in your direction.

"Y/N," your brother calls out. "Despite being a muggle, I do hope you'll pay attention to the lesson today. Or perhaps, would you prefer to take a trip to my office?"

"Sorry, no," you say, feeling your cheeks grow warm as everyone turns their gaze to you.

"Very good. Now, as I was saying, open your books to page 108. There's a story there I'd like to discuss," he announces.

You look over at Luna who already has her book open and out on the correct page. Just how long were you staring off for?

Once everyone has turned to the right page, James begins to read aloud, "The lightbulb was invented in 1890 by Thomas Edison. This allowed humans to have electricity running through their homes, which led to more and more technological advancements. One such invention is the telephone, which was created in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell..."

You can feel yourself about to fall asleep as your brother's monotonous tone lulls you into a daze.

"Y/N?" James' voice suddenly calls out to you.

"Yeah?" you answer, jolting upright and wiping away a bit of drool.

"Do you know anything about this story?" he asks, causing a few students to chuckle.

"Yes," you answer, trying to remember what he'd just read.

"Can you tell me what happened in 1890, please?"

"Um, yeah," you nod, looking at your textbook.

"Take your time," he smiles.

You scan the page, trying to find the answer. Finally, you see it, "In 1890, Thomas Edison and his team perfected the electric light bulb..."

"Very good," James nods. "Five points for Ravenclaw."

"What?!" you hear a Gryffindor in the back yell. "How the hell is that fair? You can't just give her points for saying something we already learned!"

"Mr. Prewett, I believe you should mind your own business," James frowns. "Now, if you have nothing else to add, please keep quiet. Perhaps if you focused more on the subject, instead of making a scene, you'd learn more, hmm?"

The room falls silent once more and James continues reading.

Luna sighs dreamily, resting her head on her hand. "God, he's so hot when he's mad."

You glance at her, a little surprised at the comment. "Luna, what the fuck?"

"I mean, I'm just saying," she shrugs. "You have to admit, he's not bad to look at."

"I think I'm gonna be sick," you groan. "Please don't talk about my brother like that in front of me."

"Don't worry, he's not my type anyway," she laughs. "But he is definitely a hottie. If I was a few years older, I might have gone after him myself."

"Luna!" you snap.

"Alright, alright," she grins. "My apologies. But I do need to tell you that he's definitely catching the attention of more than a few female students."

You roll your eyes. "James is smart enough to keep to himself, I'm not concerned about that."

"Maybe, but you should still keep an eye out," Luna whispers. "Just in case."

"Yeah, I will."

"Oh, by the way, I thought you weren't taking this class? You know, since you're a muggle anyway," she then asks you.

"Yeah, I wasn't going to but I figured it might help beef up my credits so here I am. Besides, maybe I could be of some help? I don't know," you shrug.

By the end of the first class, James' mood has certainly soured. He's never taught before, so it's no surprise that he's quick to become frustrated when a student can't answer a question.

"Since you all seem to think you're experts on muggles already, I propose a project. You will choose a famous muggle artifact and create a presentation on this item to present it to the class. This will count as your final exam. If you do not receive a satisfactory grade, I will fail you. Understood?" James explains.

"What kind of an assignment is that?!" a student cries.

"One that will challenge you to think outside the box," he says.

The class groans and you smile. You're sure to get an easy A with this project, so there's no way you'll fail. There's more than a few things you can write about.

After James dismisses the class, a Slytherin slams his hand down on the table where you are and leans down close to you.

"You're an interesting one, aren't ya?" he smirks. "Bet I could write a damn good paper on you. I bet you'd love that, wouldn't ya?"

"Um, no thanks," you say, leaning away.

"Don't be like that," the boy continues. "We could have some real fun together, you know? I could write all about the things you'll let me do to you."

You're speechless, unsure of how to respond. Thankfully, Luna is still next to you. You turn around to her seat, but she's gone. Instead, she's up in the front of the room talking to James.

"I'd rather die," you mutter, turning away from him and grabbing your bag.

"That can be arranged," the boy snarls.

"Enough," a voice from behind says.

"Mind your own business, Gaunt," the boy retorts.

"I'm afraid that is not an option. Now, I'd advise you to leave Y/N alone," Ominis tells him.

"What's the matter, Gaunt? I thought your family didn't let you be friends with muggles."

"Shut up, Nott. Now go away. Before I make you," Sebastian snarls, chiming in.

"You're nothing without a wand, Sallow," Nott smirks. "Don't think I don't know."

"And yet, I've beaten your ass more than a few times with just my fists. Want me to prove it again?" Sebastian asks, standing up.

"I wouldn't, Nott," Ominis says calmly. "Just leave the girl alone."

"You're right. She's not worth it. Perhaps I'll see her 'round, though. Without the likes of you getting in the way," the Slytherin then sneers before walking away.

"Are you alright?" Ominis asks as he approaches. "Sorry about him. He's always been a bit of a prick."

"Yeah, I'm alright," you nod. "Thanks guys."

"No problem," Sebastian shrugs, glancing between the two of you.

"We should get going, Y/N. Don't want to miss dinner," Luna says, grabbing her things and walking over. "Ugh, what do you two want?"

"They were-"

"We were just saying goodbye," Ominis interrupts in the most elegant way possible. "Have a nice night, Y/N."

"Yeah, but-"

"Come on, let's go," Sebastian says, cutting you off and pushing Ominis out of the classroom.

"Luna! What the hell was that?!" you frown as the door shuts behind the two of them.

"What?! Those guys keep bothering you. It's like they're trying to steal you away or something!"

"Steal me away?" you laugh. "Luna, I'm not some kind of object. They're my friends."

"Well, maybe, but still, I don't like it," she says, crossing her arms. "There's something off about those two."

"Whatever," you roll your eyes. "Let's just go get something to eat. I'm starving."

***

Later that evening as you are sitting in your dorm, you open the small book that Ominis had given you the day before. You can't get out of your mind the moment when Ominis slammed his hand on your book, not allowing you to look inside. Is there something he didn't want you to see? But, if that's true, then why would he give it to you in the first place?

"Hmm," you say out loud, wondering if perhaps the pages have been enchanted. You open the book to a random page and look around. Everything seems fine. You start reading about the Kelpie in the Great Lake.

Subconsciously, you reach up to the necklace that Ominis had given you and toy with it between your fingers. It's beautiful, you have to admit, and it fits you well.

"Damn, this is some cool shit," you mutter as you turn the page and begin reading about the Acromantula. "Terrifying, but sick."

And then, you reach that page on Thestrals. Tears begin to well up in your eyes. You flip the page again and notice that there is not much information on the Thestral. Instead, it says, "Thestral cannot be seen by anyone who has not witnessed death. Their bodies are skeletal, and their wings resemble that of a bat's."

You blink, thinking that perhaps your eyes are playing tricks on you. You shake your head and keep reading.

"Thestral are believed to be very docile creatures, although it has been known to attack a human if provoked."

After, you gently shut the book and lean back in your bed. Thoughts of James fill your head from back when you were much younger.

"Remember, Y/N," he says, holding your hand as the pair of you walk into the grocery store. "If anyone asks about Mom and Dad, you tell them that they've asked us to take up more responsibility around the house and that we're the ones picking up the groceries from now on, understand?"

"Don't they know that mommy and daddy-"

"Shh, not so loud," he tells you. "Remember, this is our secret."

"Okay," you nod, following him down the aisles.

When you reach the cereal aisle, he stops and picks up the most bland thing he can find. Of course, because it is the cheapest. Neither of you has any money and since your parents disappeared, there's no money at home either.

"Can we have something sweet?" you ask, eyeing the chocolatey treats nearby.

"No, this is enough. Now, come on," he says, tugging your hand.

"James," you whisper as the two of you pass a mother pushing her daughter in a shopping cart. Your eyes begin to water and, even though you know James will be pissed, you can't help it. "Don't mommy and daddy love us anymore?"

James stops abruptly, causing you to bump into him. "Jesus, don't you know how to shut the hell up, Y/N? Answer your own damn question. Do you think they'd leave if they cared about either of us?"

As he turns back around and continues to pull you along, a few tears escape and trickle down your cheeks.

"No," you answer, knowing that he's right.

"Good," James mutters, leading the two of you up to the checkout. "Now nix the crying and wipe your face."

You sniff and quickly brush the tears away, doing your best to keep yourself from breaking down again.

"And what about Hunter," you say, twiddling your thumbs. If you don't cut the crap soon, James might snap.

"What about her?" he asks, paying for the food.

"Are we going to have a funeral?"

"Babies don't need funerals," he shakes his head.

"What are you going to tell the social worker?"

"That's not your concern," he frowns, grabbing the bag and pulling you away from the cashier. "Time to go home."

You had received your first black eye that night. It wasn't because James was abusive or anything, but because you fell while running after him all day long. James did everything in his power to take care of you, and for the most part, he was a pretty decent older brother. However, you never understood why he never held a funeral for your little sister. After all, both of you did see the gruesome way in which she died.

"James," you whisper to yourself.

"He's not coming, Y/N," a voice suddenly replies, making you jump. You turn around to see Luna and Amit standing in the doorway.

"Uh, what're you guys doing here?" you ask as you wipe the drool from your chin.

"Waiting for you! It's after nine already. We've got to go to breakfast. Come on!"

Serpents and Roses

[madamlaydebug]

WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE? Pythagoras (570-490 BC) – For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. Buddha (563-483 BC) – To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.. Hippocrates (460-370 BC) – The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. Plato (428-347 BC) – The Gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies; they are the trees and the plants and the seeds. Plutarch (46-120): A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare . . . There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. Voltaire (1694-1778) – How pitiful, and what poverty of mind, to have said that the animals are machines deprived of understanding and feeling . . . Judge (in the same way as you would judge your own) the behaviour of a dog who has lost his master, who has searched for him in the road barking miserably, who has come back to the house restless and anxious, who has run upstairs and down, from room to room, and who has found the beloved master at last in his study, and then shown his joy by barks, bounds and caresses. There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table, and dissect him alive, in order to show you his veins and nerves. And what you then discover in him are all the same organs of sensation that you have in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering? Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) – My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties . . . The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. Henry David Throeau (1817-1862) – One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other. -Henry David Thoreau Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) – Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you – alas, it is true of almost every one of us! Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) – A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. Mark Twain (1835-1910) – Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he’s the one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot. Thomas Edison (1847-1931) – Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. George Benard Shaw (1856-1950) – Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay. Animals are my friends and I don’t eat my friends. -George Bernard Shaw Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) – At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society. Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky (Russian, 1865-1941), from The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci – Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1955) – It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures. The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. -Mahatma Gandhi Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) – Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind. H.G. Wells (1886-1946) – In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, but now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse. Ruth Harrison (1920-2000) – In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people. William Roberts, MD (1932-present) – When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings. Carl Sagan (1934-1996) – Humans–who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals–have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and “animals” is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them–without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us. Colin Campbell, MD (1934-present) – [W]hat we have come to consider as “normal” illnesses of aging are really not normal. In fact, these findings indicate that the vast majority, perhaps 80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet. The Dalai Lama (1935-present) – I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality . . . Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures. Paul McCartney (1942-present) – If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. Neal D. Barnard, MD (1953-present) – The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of “real food for real people,” you’d better live real close to a real good hospital. k.d. lang (1961-present) – We all love animals. Why do we call some “pets” and others “dinner?”