*does this to you*

Frankly beautiful way of phrasing it

not that transphobes are ever saying anything interesting or insightful but it makes me insane when they see a trans woman who wants a uterus and start frothing out the mouth about how the sinister trans cabal is going to start harvesting organs from the poor and vulnerable... worsties do you have any idea how many trans men and cis women would be THRILLED to rehome their uterus to someone who actually wants it? all I'm doing with mine is complaining about it for a few days every month, I'd happily pawn that shit off to someone who would be happy about it. yes I am on my period why do you ask.

"Rehome": as if it's a hyperactive puppy and not an irreplaceable part of your body. Friendly reminder that humans are not Mr. Potato Head dolls whose parts can be swapped and customized.

Without an inbuilt Community Notes feature, Tumblr users make their own.

can you all tell me and be haters for a bit

UB40’s Red Red Wine.

Couldn't resist.

Cottontail Rabbit in the Snow by Joel Sartore.

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

Important to not forget this isn't the only thing happening. The haka disrupting the vote in parliament is supported by nation wide hīkoi of thousands of people on their way to the capital to protest this

If you want to learn about what the proposed bill is that people are protesting and what it would actually mean for the constitution of Aotearoa if it went through...

the nuisance of our language is stunning

ahh but true slavs know they all have slightly different meanings ;)

english sucks because they have like 3 swear words combined

@one-time-i-dreamt can you answer this?

jebati - fuck someone

podjebavati - to screw around with someone

zajebavati - same as above but more joking and lighthearted

zajebati - fuck something up or fuck someone over

izjebati - could mean to fuck someone good or fuck someone up lol

ujebati - made a mistake

razjebati - break something

sjebati - fucked something up, made a mistake

nadjebavati - outsmart someone

jebuckati - to talk minor shit, also a more innocent way to say fuck

odjebati - ditch someone

najebati - get in trouble

prejebati - screw someone over, do something sneaky (bad)

dojebati - move somewhere, often said about people from rural areas moving to big towns

my personal fav - nejebica - state of fucklessness

Leonid Pasternak  (Ukrainian, 1862–1945) - The Torments of Creative Work

oh leonid, we're really in it now

Leonid, you really understand it.

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

Yup, these are actually *really* important. And a small bit of work helps, so it’s doable even if you’re snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.

It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.

I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.

It unexpectedly helped me with learning how to decipher premodern handwriting too, which proved really useful in my academic stuff. You *will* pick up valuable skills doing this. Put it on your CV.

Other places you can go to do citizen science, from the notes

(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)

Apps/Websites

In person

Also:

Even if you don't have time to spend, but do have some processor cycles to spare, check out the projects available at BOINC's Compute for Science: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Hey guys, these projects make a HUGE difference for science. For example, I run bplant.org and iNaturalist is the #1 source of images in ID guides and articles and other educational materials I develop. The plant observations are also helpful for assessing plant ranges and how these ranges are changing with climate change. And it also helps me identify local seed sources for use in restoration plantings. Use of iNaturalist, even casual use like a random person uploading pics of plants they see growing in their yard, or a random parking lot they were in, or a random vacant lot, those observations are MAJORLY helping in (1) education (2) science (3) conservation.

This stuff makes a huge difference.

Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.

But yeah, go do citizen science, please!!!

I thought I'd go back and repost this because there are probably a lot of people out there who, like me, reallllyyyyyy need something to distract them right now

So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead

I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.

From their website:

Data Everywhere

Ivan Pokidyshev Silence, 2023 Oil on canvas.

[ID: Oil painting of a man and woman reaching for each other, intimate, luminous. Their skin glows as if lit from inside; their hair, clothes, and background are dark. The woman, on the right bows her head and reaches one arm over her own head to cup her jaw, covering her mouth and chin. Her other hand reaches for the man's waist. The man, on the left, rests one hand on the woman's forehead, tipping it down slightly so he rests his chin on the top of her head. Their eyes are closed. End ID]

why is the human body composed of such capricious tubes

inside of you there are two intestines.

one of them is large, and the other is small.

I love people who craft and I love learning about other people's crafts because every single one is full of little things that non-practitioners wouldn't notice but others in the craft RAVE about.

Like, I'm a knitter, and before I started I couldn't tell a knit fabric from a crocheted one, and I mostly would appreciate pretty color choices and overall patterns. But now I drool over perfectly uniform stockinette or a good stretchy bind off, and don't even start me on neat floats on the back of fair isle!

Quilters will talk about the binding and stitch choice on a finished quilt, ceramics artists will gush over how a glaze turned out, embroiderers will sigh at perfectly smooth satin stitch, and a woodworker can spot a good join from a mile away.

There is so much more beauty and artistry in the world than we can see on our own.

[tumblr] is a beautiful website where all kinds of people come to diversify their echolalia

Thanks to our friends at USGS Astrogeology for creating these, and Happy Martian New Year!

Tumblr is a fate driven website. You can't find posts through the search function, you see them when you're meant to.

many of the ppl who are good at something have practiced copiously. practice copiously!!! you do not have to be naturally talented at something to do it well!!!!

I'd say most people. Natural talent can give someone the oomph to practice more but most of us - 99.9% of us - pretty much all suck at the beginning. Don't let that 1% fool you. Practice the Thing and you'll get better at it, I promise.