According to science, cold is just the absence of heat, and darkness is the absence of light. With that logic, evil is not the opposite of good, just the absence of it.

you motherfuckers better be lifting with your legs and not your back

It’s sad how much of what is taught in school is useless to over 99% of the population.

There are literally math concepts taught in high school and middle school that are only used in extremely specialized fields or that are even so outdated they aren’t used anymore!

I took calculus my senior year of high school, and I really liked the way our teacher framed this on the first day of class.

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

And I’ve never forgotten that.

THIS.

When it’s taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one.  Most adults don’t need to know integrals, but goddamn if I don’t wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.

Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricity–and they don’t need to.  But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.

History isn’t about dates and names of battles, it’s about people, patterns, things we’ve tried before and ought to learn from.  It’s about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely.  Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.

Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction.  But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.

The good thing is, students who learn the content are likely to pick up at least some of the context, some of the patterns of thinking, even if they don’t realize it.  (The unfortunate thing is how the current educational system prioritizes content so much that a lot of students, and a lot of adults, don’t see the point in learning either, and teachers are overworked and held to standardize test grading scales such that it’s hard for them to emphasize patterns of thinking over rote memorization, etc etc etc, but that is a whole different discussion.)

thank u <3

If you could instantly be granted fluency in 5 languages—not taking away your existing language proficiency in any way, solely a gain—what 5 would you choose?

Octopus Emoji Review

very shiny !! she is incredibly shy and her appearance is off-putting, but she is very friendly and trying her best, 10/10

a silly boy!! loves to party and is an excellent dancer, 10/10

calm and kind, probably a librarian, loves kids and likes to stay indoors on friday nights, mild but wonderful nonetheless! 10/10

pink!! so pretty!! a little bit odd and lumpy looking, but a wonderful friend, 10/10

very small, very quiet, makes people uncomfortable but tries to be better about participating in conversations, actually quite funny and charming once you get to know them! 10/10

a blue gal!!!! she loves punk aesthetic and breaking away from the norm, and is very friendly and sweet, 10/10

very handsome and cute!!! a detailed and realistic yet simple fellow!! very curious about the world and loves learning!!! 10/10 an absolute treasure

another cool colored octopus!! a bit spindly, but helpful and agreeable, 10/10

chubby and cute, a little dead inside, but has a lot of personality and is very loyal to their friends! 10/10

scary at first glance, but very happy to see you! look, he’s waving! hello! 10/10

look at that smile!!! she likes bubblegum and flowers, and is great at pep talks, 10/10

noot noot 10/10

Being a good person is a choice. Don’t let people fool you into believing that truly good people never have bad thoughts, are never tempted by the easier path, by the low road, never mess up or act out selfishly. Never believe a person can be good without making a conscious effort.

Every single time you do something good, you’ve made a decision to make the world a little brighter.

Goodness is not an inherent trait, it is a choice. Keep making it! I see you, I’m proud of you, and I’m rooting for you!

There’s this girl at my school and she’s really nice and I remember sometime last year at one point she would carry a clicker around and click it everytime she had a happy thought/something good happened/she laughed etc. It was always kind of cute how you’d just hear the little click every once in a while throughout class it always made me smile knowing that it was bc something made her feel happy idk

she was training herself to be happy oh my god

does it work???? Imagine feeling yourself slipping into depression and you just click a few times and your brain says “wait, this is the sound of happiness I have to release serotonin”

She fucking Pavlov’d herself, the absolute madwoman

my parents didn’t raise me to order something expensive when someone else is paying

reblog if you too are scared to drink anything but water when someone takes you out to eat

the fight is harder each year.

gotta keep going because nothing ever stops.

you deserve to be new and whole.

boot up, Bitch

The thing is, you don’t have to walk up those stairs.

There’s this perception surrounding recovery that you must go through it entirely on your own, with your head held high, without slipping or falling even once, but that is complete and utter nonsense. Recovery is hard. Recovery is messy. And the idea that you have to go it alone, without help, and that if you mess up all of your progress is lost, is a ridiculous one.

Look at the picture above. There are handrails along the stairs. They are there to be used! Grip them with both hands and carefully, slowly climb up the stairs. Your recovery is not any less meaningful just because you take it slow. Recovery is not a race. There isn’t a deadline. Carefully climb up the stairs while gripping the handrails. All that matters is that you reach the top; doesn’t matter how you get there.

For that matter, maybe it’s hard to walk up the stairs on two feet. Okay—so crawl up on all fours. Make use of your hands, dig into the ice. Cling onto it when you slip. If you feel like you’ll fall anyway, start on your stomach and slowly crawl. There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in taking a different route to recovery than others. And again, this isn’t a race, there is no time limit. Go as slowly as you need to.

And if you do slip? If you fall? If you fall down six or seven steps, or even almost to the bottom? Take a moment to assess yourself for injuries. Take a moment to calm down and breathe, and then start again. With stairs this icy, everyone falls once, or twice, or ten times. There’s no shame in it, we’ve all been there. All that matters is that you start again.

Boot up, yeah. Those boots are a tool there to help you. But there are other tools, too. You don’t have to run these stairs, you don’t have to walk up them without any handrails or help. Everyone’s journey up the stairs is different. Everyone has a different pace that works for them. What matters is that you find yours, and you live your life as the happiest and healthiest that you can be.

World’s biggest firework ever (Malta 2016)

It’s the 10 year anniversary of 2009…

we let fireflies be a hit the same year tik tok dropped what the fuck

This nigga from 1920 be living in 3020

Wow it makes so much sense tho..

Why tf we ain’t got these?

Give me the forbidden parallel parking tire!

millenials fucked it up again!!

i am pretty upset i did not end up 6’ tall with a bad ass xena costume

Adele voice: WE COULD’VE HAD IT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL

i’m so disappointed

Footage suggests they are able to store oxygen and then breathe it while they’re underwater, behaviour that has never been documented or even seen in lizards before.

as someone with a bachelor’s degree in english, i am inexpressibly tired of people telling me to get highly specific jobs that often require highly specific degrees. “just go write for a magazine!” you need a journalism degree for that. “just teach!” you need a teaching certificate, and also fuck you. “just go work at a tutoring place!” tutoring children with learning disabilities, which make up the majority of the clientele at those places, requires not only a teaching certificate but a specialized master’s degree. “just go work at a library!” you need a master’s degree in library science to be a librarian. it is actually a highly skilled and extremely competitive field. you don’t just “go work at a library,” you train for years in the vain hope that you will get one of handful of available jobs. “just go work at a library.” the nerve. the unmitigated gall. “just go work at a library.” ugh.

alright listen up. i had no idea this was going to be the most popular post i ever made, and i’ve gotten some really nice comments and some pretty condescending ones. let’s get a few things straight:

first, this post is based on MY experiences and MY research in MY geographical area. i don’t know if it really is any different in big cities, small towns or elsewhere in the world, but where i live this is how it is.

second, this post is not about my burning desire to work in a library. i honestly don’t want to, it’s just something that’s been recommended to me ad nauseam. 

thirdly, i don’t KNOW what you can do with an english degree. if i knew that, would i be having all these jobs recommended to me? i don’t have a job! i haven’t figured out what i’m doing with my life! i don’t KNOW!

and finally, several people have expressed their confusion about why i or anyone would get an english degree if there are no jobs for it, and i find these comments to be especially tedious.

i. was. told. there. would. be. jobs.

english is the only thing i’ve ever been good at, so i knew that’s what i wanted to study. it was my passion, and i was assured that following your passions was what college was about. i went to a meeting for prospective english majors freshman year and the head of the department told us all that he was constantly getting requests from employers who would tell him “send me all your english majors!” he told us if we majored in english we’d have the critical thinking skills to do whatever we liked. we’d be in impossibly high demand.

these were all, as i have found out, baldfaced lies. BUT, not in the way you think.

it’s true, english majors are not in as high demand as the department head led us to believe. but you know who is in incredibly high demand? NO ONE! there is no major that makes you imminently employable, not a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree or a doctorate. you are equally unemployable with a business degree, or a law degree, or a degree in marine biology. you could have a degree in any STEM field and you’d still struggle to find a job. the only difference between those degrees and an english degree is where you’re told to “just get a job doing x.”

we are in an employer’s market right now. there are more people than there are jobs to be had, partly because none of the baby boomers will fucking retire, but also because of all the people who have to work two jobs to make ends meet because nowhere pays a living wage anymore. no one is safe, nothing is sacred, and if you think “well if you’d only gotten a different degree this wouldn’t be happening lol” then you need to pull your head out of your ass and look around you my friend. this is not a result of our poor choices. we did not do this to ourselves. it was done to us, by the ivory tower shit-heads who line their pockets with our student loan money.

tldr: major in english. eat the rich.