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I can even kind of understand that university systems that charge students exorbitant amounts of money for their degrees affect the general view of education and "the academy," but the extent to which people have just stopped believing in and valuing expertise is so scary. You cannot replace scientific training. I am "only" a literary scholar but any person with a lit studies background will tell you that it is a vastly different experience discussing literature (of any kind! my area of expertise is romance novels!) with another scholar versus at a random book club. And it's not bad to not be an expert! You are not an expert about the vast majority of stuff! But when somebody says "I have dedicated years of my life to the systematic study of this subject in conversation and exchange with other people who have done the same, and based on our combined knowledge we conclude that x," that needs to be taken more seriously than someone who has not gone through this process.

An academic degree is no different from, say, a medical license or even a driver's license in the sense that it functions as shorthand for "this person has undergone the necessary training and passed the necessary tests to certify that they possess the skills needed for this specific profession/task." That's it! And yes, there are many problems within academia (these days, the majority of lecturers and researchers are in precarious employment. ask me how I know) and a university degree is no guarantee that a person can't be spouting absolute nonsense. But its purpose is to facilitate the pursuit, expansion, and passing on of knowledge, which is really, really important and should not be devalued by claiming you don't need formal training to know stuff.

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Fun fact: Many nordic people actually genuinely hate the all-white minimalist ~Scandinavian Interior Design~ type of decor. This kind of thing:

You know why? Because for about half the year, the whole entirety of the Outside World looks like this:

The people are already so goddamn starved of colour that they are getting scurvy. And then some evil fuck decided that the indoors can't have colour in it either.

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i hate when rich people condescend with the whole 'money can't buy happiness' argument like listen. just because buying your fourth car didn't fill the void in your deluded disconnected-from-reality life doesn't mean not having to worry about food/ bills/medicine wouldn't greatly improve the mental health of literally everyone else on the planet

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I'm gonna be real with you, i don't think weirdo kinksters should be considered acceptable collateral damage when banks/credit card companies enforce adult content bans on sites like patreon and ko-fi

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Nothing hit me like a squelching sound when I touched the foam

WAIT PLEASE CHECK HERE FOR OUR 4K CELEBRATION

Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4

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This is a sign for you to write that self-indulgent fic

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I don't think you guys realize but as a latinoamerican I have never met a person with a dishwasher who wasn't rich so every time you talk about the dishwasher I'm like holy shit my mutual is fucking loaded

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Reblog to give a trans woman a delicious Cuban sandwich

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One of the funniest things to me is when I go to Mexico and my relatives invite me for hamburgers because they genuinely have no idea that the whole stereotype about USAmericans and hamburgers is a thing

I mean fuck, my mom has been living in the US for over 30 years and she only learned about it a couple months ago cause I told her about it

Turns out that in my mom's part of Mexico the stereotype isn't "USAmericans eat nothing but hamburgers and other fast foods" but rather "USAmericans (and especially gringos) eat the weirdest shit ever"

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Reading the new checks that might come in due to the Online Safety Act in the UK and this is actually bullshit

[Image Transcript:

And how will I prove my age?

There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age. 

Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.

Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.

Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.

Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.  

Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18. 

Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

End Transcript.]

Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.

I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.

I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.

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the film i'm watching rn stars someone by the name of lionel atwill

now i'm wondering what you do when told to lionel at will

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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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I admit, I had expected a lot more fanfare for 20 years of same-sex marriage (locally, I know that other countries legalised it first), but apparently no one made a big deal out of it, to the point that it turns out the anniversary* was 2 days ago.

*we updated the act for human rights reasons after a court challenge, this was the anniversary of the legislation passing (I remember watching the vote with a friend), not of the court ruling that said "change the law or it gets struck down)

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Black hair 🤝 Technology - prettydarke