#live talks

[sassysophiabush]

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[bellqmione]

wheelchairs and canes and glasses and hearing aids and every single other disability aid should be free btw and if you disagree i hate you

[hack-saw2004]

platforming palestinian joy is just as important as sharing the suffering they're enduring during this genocide. despite continued displacement and bombardment, you cannot steal their joy and spirit. happy birthday to this sweet baby 🖤🇵🇸 may they grow up to see a free palestine

edit: @saffronlesbian made a video description for this post!!

[vd: a screen recording of a tweet from the 20th of April 2024 with 2.5 million views, from Ruhi @/ruhi_hi. the caption reads, "This video of this little Palestinian angel celebrating his bday in a refugee camp" followed by three emoji of a smiling face with teary eyes. the video clip is 11 seconds long and shows a one-year-old baby seated on the sandy ground, smiling hugely and clapping his hands while people sing to him from offscreen and a large cake is placed in front of him. stuck into the top of the cake is a decoration that reads "happy birthday" in english. the video has the tiktok handle @/ibrahim.jamal99 visible in it. /end vd.]

[panstarry]

heads up: this games charity bundle was finally approved on itch.io! it opens this friday, april 12th, and will run for a week. all proceeds will go to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund.

you can check out the bundle on itch.io and follow @vgforpalestine on twitter for more updates!

—

EDIT: as of april 20th, 2024 this bundle is now live!!

[stil-lindigo]

frankly, the people whose kneejerk reaction to bisan asking for a global strike form the 21st-28th is to say that it takes years to organize a general strike are really unhelpful! no one is saying otherwise, but palestine will be a smoking crater if we all wait for years to do anything - bisan is asking us to do something now. Like are we only supposed to do something if we can do it perfectly??? At some point it’s a valid critique about the work that goes into social movement, and at another point I feel like some people are just trying to absolve themselves from not putting any effort into observing a week of economic inaction.

like idk! I get it, okay! People have bills to pay that don’t magically go away for a strike, we don’t have nearly enough social infrastructure in place to support people to fully stop going to work for a week. But fuck, dude! Stop immediately responding in such a defeatist way! Cut out unnecessary purchases! Try to shop local! Put more effort into promoting Palestinian voices online! Attend a protest, call a local rep, do something!

[perfectlyripeclementine]

calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

[deep-space-netwerk]

So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

[nouverx]

Redraw of my favourite scene. I don't know how to be normal about this, I love them so much

[sassysophiabush]

October 18th

[violottie]

"No sugarcoating the Palestinian cause to make it palatable for Westerners. We don’t want peace—we want freedom. We don’t want to live side-by-side, we want the settlers to leave our land. There’s no conversation to be had. The demand is clear—we want to return to our home. We don’t negotiate with terror!sts. Long live the Palestinian revolution. ✌🏼🔻🇵🇸"

from sbeih.jpg, 01/Apr/2024:

[gimmickblog-taxonomist]

How do you become a gimmick blog?

step 1: think of a gimmick

step 2: blog

[lylahammar]

the way that this page in particular was adapted just OOZES studio trigger tbh. like I know everyone likes to joke about studio trigger being the horny studio, but the quick jerky animation direction is what truly makes their work recognizable to me. I can practically see Lio Fotia bleeding through the pixels in that 5 frame animation of Falin peeking through her fingers

[anonymousdandelion]

A general tip for students who are sending those dreaded Religious Absence Emails to your professors: Rather than asking permission to take the day(s) off, politely let them know that you will be taking the day(s) off.

In other words, consider not saying this:

"May I miss class on [date] so I can observe [holiday]?"

It's not that there's anything wrong with the above, per se. But because it's phrased as a request, it risks coming across as optional — a favor you hope to be granted. Problem is, favors are not owed, and so unfortunately asking permission opens the door for the professor to respond "Thanks for asking. No, you may not. :)"

Instead, try something along the lines of:

"I will need to miss class on [date] because I will be observing [holiday]. I wanted to let you know of this conflict now, and to ask your assistance in making arrangements for making up whatever material I may miss as a result of this absence."

This is pretty formal language (naturally, you can and should tweak it to sound more like your voice). But the important piece is that, while still being respectful, it shifts the focus of the discussion so that the question becomes not "Is it okay for me to observe my religion?", but rather, "How can we best accommodate my observance?"

Because the first question should not be up for debate: freedom of religion is a right, not a favor. And the second question is the subject you need to discuss.

(Ideally, do this after you've looked up your school's policy on religious absences, so you know what you're working within and that religious discrimination is illegal. Just in case your professor forgot.)

[metanarrates]

I genuinely feel like an alien compared to my coworkers when they try to chat with me about things like dating and weight loss. like what are you SAYING about "oh you know it's just so hard to make your man understand the instructions you give him?" why are you trying to connect with me by complaining that you gained 15 pounds? is this how most people form connections in the workplace? i for real do not get it