Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

Oh hey this is the post I was going to write as a follow-up and now I don’t have to. Anyway, see everything above for why blaming the way women respond to men on the internet who they have no existing relationship with for the rise of alt-right misogyny is extremely beside the point. Effective activism leverages existing relationships - and requires people who are committed to doing activism in the first place.

Apple propaganda notwithstanding, the reason tower PCs are big isn’t because they’re outdated. The reason tower PCs are so bulky is because they’re designed to be user serviceable. The case has lots of open space so your big, meaty hands can easily access all of the components, and everything is secured with friction-fit tabs and standard machine screws to minimise the need for specialised tools. A properly laid out tower PC is fully serviceable with a single Phillips-head screwdriver and no greater manual skill than your average Lego playset – heck, for some of the more modern case layouts you don’t even need the screwdriver, unless you’re performing major surgery like a full motherboard replacement.

Like, think about who benefits from convincing you that a fully modular computing device that can be serviced and repaired with your bare hands and minimal technical skill is unfashionable.

I pray the manufacturers will never take away my ability to KA-KLUNK a new PC part into the massive case, then plugging the thick power strips into each other like I am doctor Frankenstein puling my kreatur to greatness*

*‘greatness’ defined as playing minecraft without frame lag

biologists will be like this is a very simplified diagram of a mammalian cell

chemists will be like this is a molecule

okay but this is what the best render of a human cell looks like

They are not kidding

We are full of so many fuckign guys

This is actually a full on interactive map! You can put your cursor over any structure to focus on it and see its name, you can focus on all the structures that are part of a specific pathway and, when you click on proteins, you open it up on PhosphoSitePlus, which is a curated database of proteins and their post-translational modifications. It has a helpful description and summary for each protein!

This is a HUGE complementary resource for learning molecular biology! It really helps to make sense of each individual pathway and it puts everything into perspective. It only focuses on human, rat and certain other animal cells, so it won’t have all the pathways one would wish to see… But for the pathways it does include, consider opening the image and accompanying it as you learn or revise them!

oh wow, thank you for the additional information, i had no idea, that’s so much cooler than just the flat picture.

Where has this been all my life???

Normalize this response

Go play your itch.io backrooms ps2 lowpoly cave simulator, you fucking elitist, self-congratulatory schmuck.

Yeah man, that'd be a great argument if video games were music and not video games.

I can say N+ or Dyson Sphere, Earth Defense force, or Antichamber. Maybe Inside? Worms Armageddon? The Witness? Dwarf Fortress? - is that not niche enough for you, fucker? Should I be saying shit like Fancy Pants, La Mulana, Space Engine, Endless Ocean 2? Still not niche enough? I once played a game where you control someone's grandma, and then she fucking keels over and dies. should that be my favorite game? the grandma-death game? Is that the sorta answer you're looking for?

Do you even play games to have fun, or do you simply scour the cesspits of mid-tier shlock to fulfill some sort of lacking personality-trait or general insecurity? Does knowing something others don't give you a sense of superiority? I imagine someone like you would seek any sliver of superiority they could get, considering your sad, sad, sad circumstances.

This attack makes no sense to me. Let's continue pretending music and video games are the same (they're not but let's pretend). If someone asks me for my favorite music I do go for my more well known favorites rather than my favorite deep cuts and obscure bands. Because they're trying to create community, develop a relationship, or just pass the time. They're not playing a weird game where the person who says the most incomprehensible sounds wins.

So I answer with some favorite genres and popular bands, and they actually understand what I just said to them. Then they either say that's not their vibe or (most often) excitedly say some stuff they like that's in the same ballpark. Then we can narrow down our shared interest and give each other recommendations. That's a normal human interaction. I don't immediately go to that one metal band I know that created their own micro-genre by exclusively using a parakeet vocalist, trash cans made in the Iberian peninsula for drums, and lyrics using only Betty Crocker cookbook recipes because yeah they're obscure but that's not the fucking point of the question. Y'all are weird as shit for this

I choose the most funny/concerning ones. If anyways is genuinely curious about the answers to these then... Uh I guess I can tell you. Anyways, which one are you?

"Can you tell your sister she's a bitch?"

Story time! I do have a sister, but was never once asked this in regards to her. I was very close friends with a girl who had a fraternal twin sister. Because of that I spent a decent amount of time around both of them from the ages of 5-18. Her twin sister was, admittedly, kind of a bitch. And because I was always around them and looked a good bit like them people assumed we were triplets for some reason.

So on two separate occasions I was talking to my actual sister when someone came up to me and angrily said "god your sister is such a bitch!" before storming off. My poor sister wasn't used to this like I was so she was baffled and a little hurt. The first time it happened she looked at me and said "what did I do to them?? I don't even know them??" The other time it happened the girl said "tell your sister she's a bitch!" then looked at my literal sister and said "oh hey T, see you in math class :)" and walked away completely oblivious to the confusion she just caused.

I never passed the message on to my "sister" that people said she was a bitch. She already knew and didn't particularly care. Because she was in fact a bitch

netflix subtitles are great for when you want to read a caption with like 50% resemblance to what's being spoken

character in a movie: buddy, i'm gonna tell you what i've got to do

netflix subtitles: i'll say what i must do

character in a movie: *exhales*

netflix subtitles: (blows raspberry)

character in a movie: ciao!

netflix subtitles: (in italian) bye!

*character in a movie: ciao!

netflix subtitles: (speaks foreign language)

IF YOU LIVE IN THE USA

THIS IS ILLEGAL

REPORT THEM TO THE FCC

THEY HAVE A LINK ON THEIR WEBSITE TO RWPORT IT

ITS REQUIRED BY THE ADA THAT SUBTITLES EXACTLY MATCH THE DIALOGUE

i reported basically every Star Trek show on Paramount+ because the subtitles were all fucked up. they sent me auto emails to let me know they were working on it, and then a real life human being got in touch with me after they had fixed it, to ask if i was still experiencing the issue. they WILL do something, they are required by FEDERAL LAW to do something.

...well, today I learned something.

You can see someone else also using the devices' second seat, and I think that's so cool. Mobility devices help everyone, here other employees also get a chance to sit while they're working. I just love mobility aids, man. It's like the cut curb effect

okay this reminded me of the strongest human being (I use that label with some reservation) I have ever met and I still think about him like once a week because about 4 years ago on Thanksgiving night my sister, cousin, and I were going to pick up a friend about a 40 minute drive from home, and I got lost and tried to turn around on a little gravel pull-off on the side of the road, but my front tires got stuck in the snow.

we were in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, and the only sign of life was a single, completely dark house across the road from us.

We all did our best to push the car out, and we’re strong people, but we couldn’t make it budge. Cold and stuck, we climbed back and wondered what to do. A car full of men pulled over beside us and asked if we needed help, but getting out of our locked car on a backroad at night with strange men felt like a bad idea, so we said a tow was coming and waved them along. We did that twice before finally deciding our only option was to accept the next offer for help and just risk it,

when a man came out of the house across the street.

He’d clearly been watching us and figured out why we’d been lying to people, which really surprised me & he said “it’s okay, you can stay in your car and keep the doors locked. Just start backing up when I say so.”

I had the window cracked and told him “it’s too stuck. There’s no way we’re getting out. Could you call a tow?”

And he said “just back up when I say so.”

So he walked around the front of the car, squatted, and said “okay back up,”

and I did, and

he lifted

the front of the car Into The Air. Off its front wheels, and we backed up while he essentially wheel-barrowed us back onto the road.

And we were honest to god yelling. We couldn’t help it. We just yelled until all four wheels were back on the ground and he was waving us off while we thanked him.

And then I looked at my sister and cousin & said “he REALLY told us we can KEEP our doors locked as if THAT WOULD’VE FUCKING STOPPED HIM!!!! As if he couldn’t have just RIPPED EM OFF THE HINGES.”

I later looked up the weight of my car, and it’s 3200 pounds without anything or anyone in it.

This haunts me.

the power of respecting women

this is the only valid response on this post

I just needed to find this post again to reminisce.

My dad did this once! He and my mom stopped when they saw someone stuck in a snow bank and asked if they needed help. It was an older couple so they said they had no chance of pushing the car out so my dad volunteered to push while the guy reversed. It was a big car but it was front wheel drive and just the front wheels were stuck so my dad figured he didn't have to push far.

My dad told the guy to slowly hit the gas on his mark, got ready, and said "ok now!" The problem? The guy wasn't in reverse. He was in drive. So he started moving towards my dad instead of away. My dad, in a moment of panic and anger, simply picked up the fucking car and rolled it out of the ditch. Then he had to yell at the guy to get off the gas while still holding the car up like a wheelbarrow.

My mom watched the whole thing in a state of shock. The couple was shocked. My dad was shocked. My mom asked my dad afterwards if he knew he could do that and my dad said "hell no I didn't know I could do that! I'm glad I had a witness because otherwise no one would believe me." And he's right. Because who picks up a car???

anthropomorphizing animals is cool when people draw frogs in hats fishing and living in a cute little house. Not so cool when people say zoos shouldn't exist because they don't understand that animals aren't people

I don't think healthy people realize how for chronically ill people getting a diagnosis isn't sad or even disappointing for us, it's a relief and a vindication. So many people with chronic illnesses take many years to get diagnosed, and are told that 'it's just anxiety/your period/psychological' or that we're exaggerating or that everyone experiences that, so for us getting a diagnosis is being told that we weren't faking it and that this wasn't normal and it's also finally knowing what exactly is going on in our bodies.

I think many healthy people think of it as if it were them being told they have this lifelong debilitating illness, and they would feel awful because they are going from perfectly healthy to disabled, but they don't fully realize that we already have all the symptoms and impacts of said chronic illness and that we are just finally finding out the name, and that knowing what it is means that we have access to more treatments and more knowledge as to what we can to do alleviate our symptoms.

A diagnosis means access to treatment. Before I was diagnosed with POTS I was just fainting constantly and no one knew why or how to make it stop. Because I have a diagnosis I have a way to make my symptoms manageable.

A diagnosis means community. I can find people who share my ADHD experience and I don't feel as alone or like I'm crazy.

A diagnosis means knowledge and strategies. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome doesn't have a cure but I have found a million shortcuts, products, and strategies to make my life easier. If I didn't have a diagnosis I wouldn't know where to begin and I would be far more disabled than I currently am.

A diagnosis means medical safety. My doctors know to take a different approach with me because of my Ehlers-Danlos. My anesthesiologist knows I won't react normally to anesthetic, my surgeon knows to stitch me up differently to accommodate my fragile skin, my physical therapist knows to offer me more support to keep me from hyperextending my joints, etc. Before I had a diagnosis medical staff accidentally hurt me because they didn't have that vital info. (Unfortunately a stigmatized diagnosis can work against you so it can be a downside as well but that's for an individual to decide)

A diagnosis means accommodations. Many workplaces, government organizations, and private companies require proof of diagnosis rather than proof of symptoms. So if you don't have an explanation for your symptoms you're out of luck.

A diagnosis means validation. I was told my fainting was anxiety, that my chronic pain was in my head, that my bipolar depression was because of my period, even though none of that made sense. But if enough "experts" tell you that your experiences are wrong.... you start to believe them. You start to wonder if you can trust yourself. The test came back normal, the doctor says I'm fine, I don't know anyone else that has this problem, maybe I don't actually have a problem at all. Maybe I'm making it up, maybe I just need to tough it out, maybe I'm "doing this" for attention like they say. And that seriously fucks with your head especially if it happens for years. A diagnosis says that you're not crazy, you're not making it up, you were right. I cannot overstate the relief of knowing that you can actually trust yourself

Many people view a diagnosis as if you go in for a normal checkup and are given a cancer diagnosis out of the blue. And yeah that happens, but most of us KNEW there was something wrong we just didn't have a name for it. The name itself doesn't hurt you. But lacking that name can kill you

the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body

but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.

the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like

all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that

there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are

but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo

this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury

and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that

bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent

the number of people who are pregnant and don't know about what induced labour entails and what post partum bleeding is horrifies me

Here is a story about the depths to which pregnant people are seen as a vessel for a baby, and the importance of finding prenatal care that assumes you are a human and not a baby holder:

When I was pregnant I was in a million forums for pregnant people because (cough adhd hyperfixation) and I had something called SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) (not Sensory Processing Disorder though I also have that) which is where your pubic bones separate early (more or less) because they get all loosey goosey as your body gets ready to crank that baby out.

Except my pubic bone got confused and got misaligned at like 3 months pregnant. I could barely walk. I couldn't roll over in bed. Doing something that required me to shift my weight from one foot to another like opening a door knob was like an excruciatingly painful knife being stabbed into my pubic bone, I can't express how intense and blinding it was.

So I am in one million baby forums like "am I dying what is happening why is there a knife in my pubic bone" and all these people are like "I have that too! my doctor says it's normal and not to worry because it doesn't hurt the baby. I just deal with it by laying in bed for months in excruciating pain and think about how lucky I am to be having a little miracle growing in my body."

So lol nope. I went to my midwife and they are like, "Oh squeeze a can between your knees look up a physical therapy youtube on SPD" and I did that can-squeeze thing and it CURED THE PROBLEM in ONE DAY. I had been SUFFERING, y'all, it felt miraculous.

And I was so full of rage (flames, flames on the side of my face) that people are being told "Oh, it's NORMAL just deal with it" "It doesn't hurt the baby." Like, look, yes it's NORMAL but it's 100% treatable!!! SPD (again, not Sensory processing disorder) affects 1 in 5 pregnant people.

I was lucky to have amazing midwives (need a gender neutral term for that profession, but they see pregnant men and women)(side note highly recommend midwives if you are gender nonconfirming/a man/etc) and I have DOZENS of examples of shit like this.

(Another example is post partum friends being like "oh I am peeing my pants 900x day after giving birth" and my doctor says it's NORMAL so I just dealt with it for decades. My midwives were like "Oh that's normal and also physical therapy cures that in like 2 sessions")

When my sister was looking to get pregnant she was given the best advice. She was told that being pregnant is an experience akin to being in a moderate sized car crash, in terms of risk and lasting injury.

Some people in moderate car crashes are very lucky, and walk away with zero injury. Some are very unlucky, and die. But most people fall into the third category, where they'll be injured at the time, then heal, and then for the rest of their life they have some minor and liveable complication from the injury. Like a knee that lets you know when the rain is coming, or a back that doesn't like seats without lumbar support, or a shoulder that never quite gets its full range of motion back.

The vast majority of people survive and thrive, like. But their body is never the same again. And people should know that when they make the choice of whether to put their body through that or not

my mom had a complication postpartum that caused pain and swelling in her left leg. at the time she was told it was "milk leg" and that it was normal and she'd be fine, but it never went away or got better. she finally found a doctor recently who was willing to do some tests and found out it's a condition called "May-Thurner syndrome" and had surgery to fix it

she's been suffering with this since she gave birth to me. I'm 38 years old. she had that surgery last week.

there needs to be more dialogue about the things your body goes through during pregnancy. "that's normal" or "everyone goes through that" need to stop being used to shut down conversations about the horrific, permanent damage that can be done to bodies during pregnancy and childbirth. just because it's "normal" doesn't mean it needs to be endured

Childbirth is widely recognized to be one of the most excruciatingly painful things a human can experience and often causes permanent damage or disability, on top of risk of psychological trauma and extreme depression or psychosis from rapid changes in hormones.

Anti abortion, pro-natalist, "traditional" types just pretend none of this exists and make up a version of reality where people giving birth will magically not be distressed or traumatized by, for example, needing their genitals ripped open and stitched back together, because childbirth is Natural and Supposed To Happen, so the pain, injury, and risk of disability or trauma don't "count" as those things in the same way they would if there was a violent accident.

Having listened to a lot of pro-lifers speak

I think some of these folks think women are automatically not going to be traumatized or feel horrified or really suffer in a fully human way, from pregnancy and childbirth, because that's what women are For.

And to accept that women can feel and perceive pregnancy and childbirth to be just as distressing and traumatizing as any equally excruciating, physically violating, potentially lethal or disabling event, would explode their entire worldview, because that's the Point of women, that's what a woman Is, a thing that is Supposed To do that.

So even if they are women themselves, they convince themselves that God/nature has miraculously made pregnancy and childbirth an Exception to typical human reactions to things.

So when somebody says "That sounds awful and I would do anything to stop that from happening to me." they think that this feeling will be erased by a magic cloud if the person actually got pregnant.

Acting like people aren't capable of feeling the full range of emotions about something because of their biology is really dehumanizing! Just because somebody has the capability to give birth, doesn't mean their minds cannot experience it as a nightmare, a torture, or a trauma.

It is the same horrid dehumanization of insisting that every woman will have a magic switch flip in her head that will throw every previous opinion in the garbage and make her want to have baby baby baby baby.

When I was still quite young (like literally a child, not like mid-20s or some shit, some people just couldn't talk to anyone female without talking about their breeding potential) I had someone tell me I'd change my mind when (not if, I note) I found "the right man" and got pregnant. I'd become fed up with pointing out that if he wanted kids then he was not the right man for me and who says I'm getting married anyway and so on, but I knew she was arachnophobic, so I asked her how she'd feel if she knew there was a big bag of spiders inside her.

I'd never actually seen someone turn grey while trying not to throw up. So I cheerily added "but it'd be fine if they were magic mind control spiders that would make you want them there, wouldn't it?"

She never spoke to me again and must have told her kid not to as well, because she stopped taking every opportunity to be a bitch, so double win.

That's an awesome response, sounds like you were a pretty cool kid hahaha

Something can be normal and be a problem at the same time. Yes it's normal to have bladder issues postpartum, its also a problem and an easily solved one. Yes its normal to experience morning sickness, but it can also be absolutely miserable and cause malnutrition. When people say something is normal it just means that its relatively common, it shouldn't mean that you should just shut up and accept it.

My mom got an infection at her c-section incision. That's a pretty normal issue. It also nearly killed her. My sister had trouble getting her baby to latch onto her nipple or a bottle. Also a pretty normal issue. Also could have starved her baby to death if it wasn't addressed. This rule still exists when the stakes aren't as high. You deserve comfort and happiness. Something can be normal and a problem at the same time.

Wicked dolls by Mattel have the wrong website of the film printed on the packaging which directs you to an adult film website.

Every day this movie gets better and better

So apparently this is exclusively an issue with Mattel’s products for this movie.

Mattel also apparently announced about six months ago that they were integrating generative AI into product package design.

Take what you will from this

I hate to be the "well akshually" person, but as much as I would like to blame Mattel for this, this likely is not their fault for an assortment of reasons.

It's important to take a few things into account here:

1) Toys, and dolls in particular, have potentially the longest development process in all of licensing. This has to do both with where the toys are manufactured (because toys are shipped via container ship and take 6+ months to arrive to retailers) and also because sculpting likenesses, bodies, and accessories, tooling those items, distilling the clothing textiles and patterns into doll forms, and then receiving approval on all the aforementioned from both the studios and actors involved.

2) Mattel's usage of AI is for box art *only* at this time. They use Adobe Firefly, which as of this writing (11/13/24) does not generate text.

3) Due to NDAs, the packaging design for the Wicked dolls would almost certainly have to be done by humans because licensor agreements would not let them feed those assets into an AI due to the potential for leaks.

4) Because the AI they use only handles graphics, the text, logos, contact information, legalese, etc would have had to be put into place by a human. Templates may have been setup and used, but the information would still need to be input by a human.

5) This is probably the biggest factor of it all, Universal would have provided that information, including Universal's copyright information, URLs, etc to Mattel along with the branding and identity kit once they had reached a licensing agreement. Upon accepting, Mattel would have received branding guides, logo files, font packs, etc to allow them to move forward with the packaging design stage.

So this is speculation on my part, but as a graphic designer I think this is the most likely thing that happened:

• Universal provided all the information and assets to Mattel with an intent to secure the URL.

• Mattel does the packaging design, goes through revisions, and receives design approval from Universal.

• Mattel fills in all of the aforementioned text, legalese, contact info, etc and requests final approval from Universal (this also probably involved a physical proof of some sort so that Universal's marketing team could verify all of the printed information).

• Universal approves, meanwhile forgetting to secure the wicked.com URL, and packaging production gets underway.

So this is likely an oversight on Universal's part, and the marketing team forgot to secure it (or provide an updated URL to Mattel prior to production) during the year or more before the dolls reached retailers.

It is important I recognize the last bit is speculation on my part, but as a graphic designer who is familiar with doll production timelines and has seen some pretty wild things get approved and produced, this is the most likely scenario I could see happening. (I once saw a customer, unknowningly to us at the time because we were using the information provided, approve their competitors phone number on their graphics. This only came to our attention *months* later when the customer called to get replacement phone numbers after mentioning they incorrectly approved the wrong phone number.)

The TL;DR/main takeaway from all of this is that this it is highly unlikely this is Mattel's fault largely because that information would have been provided by Universal and also because verifying the information provided, especially extremely early in the design process, when that information wouldn't be public knowledge, much less readily available to verify, isn't the responsibility of Mattel and isn't the result of AI.

the other tl;dr is that the lead time on producing a doll--from the initial design stage through getting it manufactured, and then shipped across the Pacific on a container ship for several months, to the time it takes to get distributed to individual stores and put on the shelf--is way more than "about six months ago," especially when licensor approval is involved

A manatee rescue that I follow responded to a call about a female manatee with two calves because one of her babies had been injured by a boat strike. The entire family was temporarily relocated from the wild into a wildlife rehab facility for the injured male calf to undergo treatment. While there, vets noted the female calf was significantly larger than the little injured male. They did genetic testing and determined that big sister calf actually wasn’t related to the other two manatees at all! She was in fact an orphan calf that the adult manatee had found and taken in to care for right alongside her own little one.

Wild to think this manatee calf was literally adopted and nobody would have ever known if it weren’t for random coincidence and human curiosity. Every animal that you cross paths with in life has a fascinating personal story that you’ll only ever catch a glimpse of (if you’re lucky).

Family photo 💕

Bingo of bad naturalist takes you can fill out when someone's being stupid about wildlife

@cathartidae you asked to be tagged when i posted it well here it is :>

Additional squares, if I may

*Decorates home with taxidermy bats

*Lets dog off-leash to chase birds

*Posts vacation pics of riding an elephant and cuddling tiger cubs

*Claims water moccasins regularly chase humans (they don’t)

Hi there! Could someone explain to me why parasites are and "are not" ecologically important? I understand each of the other points, as I am in my 4th year as a wildlife ecology and conservation major, but I have only just started my parasitology course this semester and we have not yet mentioned any aspect of this. I'm curious!

@lessrthanthree Well, we've all heard the popular idea of how the food chain works, right? The plants eat sunlight, the deer eats the plants, and the wolf eats the deer. Nutrients move "up" the food chain, so the nutrients that were in the plants end up in the apex predators.

But there's a problem, which is beautifully articulated by Shel Silverstein in the poem "Fish?"

Most animals are tiny. There are way more small birds and frogs than there are deer, and way more ants, beetles, and spiders than there are small birds and frogs. But these predators are too small to kill a deer, so the nutrients the deer consumes are lost to them. Only a large predator could benefit from those nutrients, and if the predator is an apex predator with no predators of its own, the nutrients are "stuck" until the predator dies.

In this scenario, the biggest animals that are closest to the "top" of the food chain can basically hoard the nutrients away from everybody else. This would mean the little guys are at a disadvantage.

But it doesn't really work that way...because of parasites.

One scientist (I forget his name sorry) described parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one." So imagine that a tick bites a wolf and takes some of the wolf's blood. Later, the tick falls off and is eaten by a spider.

Wait, what just happened?!?! The nutrients that were in the huge, powerful predator, are now in the tiny spider?? It's like the food chain went backwards!

This is basically what parasites do. They turn the food chain backwards, so big creatures become food for little creatures. Parasites also limit how much a single kind of creature can monopolize all the resources. If there are 1000 deer in a forest, those deer will have way more parasites than if the forest only had 50 deer. If the parasite loads are high, the parasites are consuming a lot of the nutrients those deer consume, and those nutrients are getting redistributed into other organisms instead of going into making more deer.

There are loads of other things parasites do, but hopefully this is a good picture of why the ecosystem needs parasites.

thinking about how the hunger games were designed to prove that without society, order, government, someone to rule, we devolve into little more than animals, and how the games themselves prove over and over again that this is not true. We see it in every single game we witness.

Katniss placing flowers around Rue's body in the arena. Thresh sparing Katniss because she was kind to Rue, even though he was making it that much harder for himself to win.

Haymitch going back for Maysilee after hearing her scream even though their alliance had been broken. Haymitch holding her as she dies the same way Katniss did Rue.

Coral's "I can't have killed them all for nothing" when she realizes she's not going home. Lamina cutting down Marcus at great personal risk. And, my favorite moment in tbosas, Reaper collecting the bodies of his fellow tributes, his peers, even the ones who tried to kill him, into a pile. Taking the weapons from their hands. Closing their eyes and crossing their arms in the best approximation of a proper burial he can manage, covering them with the Capitol flag as a makeshift shroud.

The Games bring out the worst in people, yes. But despite the extreme circumstances, despite the exterior pressure of the Capitol, despite the fact that it could mean pain and heartbreak and death, it also shows that people have an enormous capacity for goodness. That even in a situation purposefully designed to make empathy impossible, people can't help but have it anyway.

Snow looks at the Games and all he can see is what's inside himself-- this pure animalistic drive to conquer and defeat. He kills and it feels good and he thinks that everyone else must feel that way too. He doesn't realize (maybe can't realize) that he is the exception, not the rule. He cannot see outside himself, outside his own warped perspective, to realize that the fact that people do show humanity in the games proves his entire worldview wrong.