You know you grew up on Steve Irwin when you see a photo of a crocodile and think, “Wow. Just beautiful.”
And you see Stingrays as the devil themselves
nah man Steve would have forgiven that stingray and absolved it of its sins
He would have apologized for getting into the stingray’s space and making it afraid.
He actually did! Some of Steve Irwin’s last words were, “it wasn’t his fault. I startled him.”
He actually did forgive the stingray. He knew that he had scared it, and that it was only acting to protect itself.
If you put your ear up to a seashell you can hear the sound of mY HEART BREAKING INTO A THOUSAND LITTLE PIECES
This is why I get so mad whenever my folks have Animal Planet on lately and it’s all about WHAT ANIMALS ARE GOING TO MURDER YOU IN YOUR FACE?
EXOTIC PETS RIP OWNER TO SHREDS!
SNAKES! WILL THEY EAT YOU? (YES)
Steve Irwin (and at the time at least his contemporary follow-behind Jeff Corwin) ushered in such a pure unbridled LOVE of exotic, ferocious, terrifying animals. He respected the animals so much, he loved them.
Yes, crocs would charge and snakes would lunge, but he would respect when the animal deemed its boundaries well crossed and let it go back on its merry reptilian way.
This was the Tone for my childhood. My education of wild animals was Steve Irwin talking about how beautiful this deadly crocodile was, how majestic and chill and peaceful coexistence could be.
It was Jeff Corwin screaming and yelling at people at the discovery of a snake carcass, killed because of ignorant fear of it. It was harmless, and lost, and scared, and decapitated and he was livid. Why? Why would you do that? It was non-venomous, it didn’t want to be where it was any more than you wanted it to be where it was – why didn’t you call someone to release it?
And now it’s just… “Everything is murderous and animals will eat your face and everything is Ruthless Killing Machines”
and just.
I feel like I’m watching my own father’s work be tainted whenever AP is on. It’s so upsetting.
Because education and understanding don’t sell ad time.
Also why so much of Shark Week has become LET’S PISS THIS THING OFF TILL IT TRIES TO BITE US. “GREAT WHITES ARE MINDLESS KILLING MACHINES AND THEY WANT TO EAT YOU PERSONALLY, SUSAN.” is a lot more ‘exciting’ than “These things are gigantic and they feel with their very sharp mouths but they don’t actually mean anything by it they just don’t know what you are (also you taste nasty to them get over yourself.)”
u know what … i changed my mind… all u scientists out there who worked ur butts off just to have your research purposefully ignored by the government… do your science thing and bring back the dinosaurs… catch them ignoring you when a velociraptor is our next president…. like ding dong what’s that? it’s science, it doesn’t care about your silly ignorant opinion… it’s back with a vengeance… and it’s hungry, bitch
I hadn’t considered Jurassic Park as a solution to the Dump Truck presidency but I’ll take it
"Accidentally capture the wrong base"? .....tell us more? Please?
this was before we got agent agent back as our handler, and part of the reason why he finally turned up for work again.
so the thing about clint is that hes 1. not a good listener and 2. hes deaf. mostly. these are separate issues because being mostly deaf doesnt stop him from understanding what people are saying most of the time, it just means that you have to be sure he knows youre trying to communicate with him before you say something. (and also that you should make sure your mask doesnt cover your mouth so he can lipread, but whatever.)
we had this agent—incredibly boring guy in the worst sort of way–who’d requested clint, nat, and i for an op. nat and i were supposed to hit two of the leaders of a crime syndicate while clint got the third. easy peasy, kill some guys, free some hostages, small country liberated, total cakewalk. but the agent running the op and the briefing took FOREVER. he was talking us through like none of us had ever overthrown a country before, explaining every minute detail. nat and i could just kinda zone out and let things wash over us, picking up the pertinent details, but clint cant really do that. his hearing aids help but they weren’t perfect, so he also had to be kinda lipreading just to keep up. which takes a lot of focus for incredibly boring info. naturally he zoned out too.
which was how he missed the fact that his guy was not actually staying in his incredibly fortified base-slash-villa. his hostages were, but he wasn’t.
luckily, they covered this in the briefing packet we were each provided with, which was a mere 362 pages.
so obviously none of us actually read it.
we poked through, got blueprints, guard schedules, alarm systems and so on, but didnt bother with most of the rest of it.
they dropped us in the air over each of our respective targets, clint last. i had the cliffside resort, nat had the downtown headquarters, and clint had the base-villa. nat and i handled ours like pros, of course, corpses everywhere, and clint did too–mowed right through the security, got the hostages, and then called in that his syndicate leader wasnt there, what the hell, who gave me this bad intel.
which was when he was informed that the big bad wasnt IN the villa, he was on the ISLAND ACROSS from the villa, and that hed been supposed to covertly infiltrate the beach house there and quietly capture him. ideally without ever setting foot in the villa; he was just supposed to steal a boat from the villa docks and not get spotted by security.
unfortunately, clint had blown up all the watercraft at the villa’s docks to keep syndicate members from escaping. which meant he still had to get to the island and capture this guy, but now there were no motorboats left. and if this syndicate jerkoff got away, fury was gonna have his hide.
and thats how clint wound up launching a one-man amphibious assault on an international crime syndicate from a paddleboat.
i just received a text from my best friend that said “so i think i’m gay” out of literally nowhere
so i’m like “dude sweet for real just like suddenly you realized or?”
and she says “well i pretty much just had sex with a girl so”
AND THEN DOESN’T ANSWER ME FOR AN HOUR
HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT AND THEN NOT EXPLAIN IT AT ALL
update: she couldn’t answer me because was still banging the girl
I wish this wasn’t so glaringly fake cause it would be kinda funny if it were real but its not real so its not funny and I’m being redundant for the purpose of conveying shut the fuck up and don’t make up bullshit for notes
i just scrolled back three months into a conversation to prove you wrong lmao bye bitch get off my fucking post
THE POST GOT BETTER
every time i see this i sit and read the whole thing bc it just makes me laugh. every time
You know, I always feel a little sorry for Master Dennet. The Inquisitor is like, hey, I need a horse expert! Here is a horse expert! And he comes along to be your horse expert.
And for a while all is well. He brings his own fine horses, and the Inquisitor adds to the stable as she finds new breeding stock—often excellent. Where she got the charger from, he doesn’t know, and he feels too honored by having it in his care to ask.
And then the Inquisitor starts coming back with like… deer. And Dennet scratches his head, because he knows horses, and just because it has four hooves and you can put a saddle on it doesn’t make it a horse. Hell, the food and space and exercise requirements for a cob and a draft horse aren’t the same—a goddamn deer is presumably completely different. But he goes around Skyhold rounding up Dalish elves until he finds one who knew something about halla, on the principle that that’s probably the closest thing, and they work it out. (He’s always respected the way Dalish treat their halla, so it’s not that big of a leap. And even though Dalish—the Charger—doesn’t know anything much about how to raise halla, he looks the other way when she wants to spend half a day in the deer’s box stall being all affectionate at it. Can’t hurt.)
But deer of various kinds are at least still… well… grass-eating hoofed animals. Things don’t begin to really go sideways until they bring back the first dracolisk.
It’s a lizard. It’s a giant meat-eating lizard. Dennet is a master of horse, and he will stretch that to deer in a pinch, but asking him to figure out the care and feeding of big spiky lizard things is a bit much. It is—he tries to explain, first to Cullen and then to Josephine and finally to the Inquisitor herself—as if someone had decided that because you knew how to knead bread, you were obviously a master pugilist, because both things involved punching things. For his trouble he got a friendly clap on the shoulder and a “Just do your best! We can free up some funds to hire you more help!” (help from where? was he to hang up fliers somewhere for dracolisk handlers? where exactly was one supposed to go for that?).
(We will not even discuss the zombie horse with a sword through its head. We will not. The zombie horse got a stall to itself and was studiously ignored, on the principle that it was dead, and not much Dennet did could either help or hurt it.)
Dennet knew that he was in over his head and then some when the Inquisitor showed up with a charming grin and a giant fucking nug, and all he thought was, “Better see if any dwarves know what to feed it.” (Dagna does, but he’s a little afraid because she keeps having these ideas for ‘experimental feed,’ and….)
Hey guys, so I wanted to add to the humans are weird thing that’s going around, and this kinda came to me in the shower, so…enjoy?
Zah Rem was dying. They knew it the moment the Ra-Sek corridors
of the station began to feel cold. It had been easy to dismiss the chill at
first. The Humans always kept the main corridors to a barely tolerable 24
degrees Celcius, the Terran unit of heat. So Zah Rem had kept to Ra-Sek
corridors, content to survey the movement of their officers from the comfort of
warmer areas.
But then they had Stopped in the Ra-Sek sustenance area. The
area was used infrequently as most of the new officers preferred to communal
sustenance area, and so some time had passed before a Terran ensign
accidentally stumbled across them. The human had run to get help, and that’s
how Zah Rem found themself in the infirmary, a heat unit glowing above their
bed as machines monitored every pulse of their internal fire.
To the Ra-Set, the Cooling was a very private matter. It was
some small mercy really- a natural death for a Ra-Sek happened over the course
of only days, and after the initial passing ceremony the Ra-Sek left the dying
in peace to contemplate their life. At least, that’s how it had been before.
A human, mouth closed
in a Ra-Sek neutral expression, sat at the end of their bed, eyes occasionally
flicking between the machines and their pad. This one was the human counterpart
of Zah Rems previous station and they knew this one well. She would not be
leaving unless the dying process miraculously reversed. Humans always seemed to
treat this like a logical possibility.
Zah Rem had lived such a long time, even for a Ra-Sek. They
had seen the rise of space travel for their people, the first contacts with
other races, some friendly, some hostile. They had seen stars flicker out of
existence. And then, they had seen the arrival of Terrans. What a ludicrous,
terrifying thing that had been.
The humans had arrived in strange, nonsensical machines
seemingly only barely capable of long distance space travel. Most of them had
arrived asleep. The Ra-Sek had initially been very wary of this smaller race. Humans
could regulate their own body temperatures. Humans lived short lives but took
life-threatening risks, seemingly for pleasure. Humans reproduced quickly and
freely, having offspring even in space, so far from their own world. Humans
would fight, losing limbs they could not regenerate, and then fight more.
In short, they were too dangerous not to make allies of. And
so the Ra-Sek had, and in their many years, Zah Rem considered this one of the
wisest choices of their people. The humans had helped them explore planets
previously thought uninhabitable. They had seen human shipmates run headfirst
into aggressive unknown flora and fauna and categorize it, collect it, and make
it known. In one instance, they had seen the entire brunt of humanity brought
to bear on a now extinct warmongering race, simply because this race had been dubbed
“bullies that don’t play fair”.
The human shifted in her chair. “Hey dragon, still alive?”
Zah Rem exhaled a plume of steam. They knew this word
referred to them, and that it was a reference to a Terran creature that may
have never even existed. They had seen a picture once, and they did see the
similarities to a Ra-Sek. That didn’t mean they had to answer.
The human sighed and flicked her eyes up and across, a human
gesture of annoyance. “I know you’re alive, your monitors are going. I wanted
to ask if you need anything.”
“Need? I am dying, there is nothing more I need.”
The human curled her upper lip, almost perfectly mimicking
the Ra-Sek gesture of annoyance. Human mimicry really was uncanny. “I know
that, but, is there anything you want? Water? Food? A book? Are you just…gonna
sit there until it happens? Aren’t you…y’know, uneasy?”
Now that was a strange word to use for this state, and Zah
Rem wondered if their translator had translated the Terran Common incorrectly. “Uneasy?
Why would I be…Uneasy?”
The general shifted in her chair again, suddenly transfixed
by her pad. “Well, I mean, are you…afraid?”
Zah Rem tilted their head, trying to mimic a gesture they had
seen humans use. “Why would I be afraid? I am dying, this is a normal process
for all living things.”
The human seemed frustrated, and Zah Rem once again saw the
wisdom of their own tradition of leaving the dying to cool in peace.
“I know that! I
just mean…aren’t you afraid of what happens next? Like, to you…after you die?”
her shoulders curled inwards.
After…death? Zah Rem snorted. “Nothing happens after death.
Death is the end of life…is it…is it not so for Terrans?” A pang of fear
twitched in Zah Rem’s core. Humans…died completely, true? They thought of all
their deceased human shipmates the other humans had burned, or buried under
soil, and suddenly they were…uneasy.
The general waved at
the air “Don’t call us that. And yeah, yeah, human’s die all the way too-“Relief.
“But, some humans…we have this…idea, that a part of us, the sentient part,
lives after we die. And, I don’t know where it goes, but death comes to collect
it, and guide it to where it’s supposed to go next.”
“Death…comes? As in, the concept of death is…sentient? and… travels to the location of the dying to
take their consciousness? Where? Why?” Zah Rem’s internal fire quivered, and the
monitors began to chirp and hum in complaint.
“Woah woah take it easy!” Their human counterpart stood,
touching their forelimb gently. This gesture would have been aggressive among Ra-Sek,
but they had long since learned that humans touched other beings freely. Her
hand was warm, and the heat soothed Zah Rem’s own heat. The monitors quieted.
“Y’know what? Forget I said anything, it’s just a dumb
Terran myth. You wanna see this picture of a cat I found?”
And, for once, Zah Rem really, really did.
The next few days passed quietly. Healers checked the
monitors as discreetly as possible and the general was a constant presence,
sneaking back in every time the Ra-Sek healers shooed her out. For the most
part, she worked on her pad, guiding the directors of her officers. Zah Rem was
mildly envious of this, but they felt the cooling settling in, and they were
content to reflect on past action instead.
Well, mostly content. Try as they may, Zah Rem could not
shake the idea of death as a sentient presence, and tendrils of fear began to
snake into the waiting, fear that, like in so many impossible ways, the humans
might be right about death. They did not want their consciousness to be taken. They
took to scanning the room when their human wasn’t looking.
This fear was probably what exacerbated the process. It
happened suddenly, their internal temperature falling, falling, and the general
was shouting, calling for help and Zah Rem knew they were beyond help, nothing could
help, but they were so afraid of Death being attracted by the cries, if only
they could-
And suddenly they were alone in a space that was not bright,
and was not dark. They…no longer felt cold, but not warm either. It made Zah
Rem…uneasy. And then they heard footsteps, and in the distance there was a
small flicker of light.
The light drew closer and closer, and with it Zah Rem began
to make out a figure in strange clothing. The figure wore long, black clothing
that flowed downward, with a hood that obscured the head. It was carrying a
long stick with what looked like a small ball of fire on top. They also saw the
glint of long, sharp looking metal, reminiscent of a Terran knife.
Zah Rem bared their teeth. A weapon. This must be Death. If
it was, it wouldn’t steal their sentience without a fight.
The figure closed in.
“Stop. Come no further.” Zha Rem growled. “I am Zah Rem of
the Ra-Sek. I have seen races rise and fall. I have seen stars flicker out of
existence. I have fought alongside humans.
I will not let you take my consciousness.”
There was a moment of silence. And then a strange sound came
from the hooded figure. A soft, musical sound, not unlike a Ra-Sek trill, very
much like…a human laugh. The figure lowered it’s hood.
Of course, Death would be a human.
Zha Rem felt the anger leave them all at once. The human
smiled, mouth closed, and reached its dark hand out to touch Zha Rem’s forelimb.
Their touch was warm, and Zha Rem felt the warmth coil around their core, lighting it once again.
i keep thinking about how inconvenient that room above cullen’s office is, though it has potential. like what if the inquisitor just walks in during a meeting. people turn to look at her, and she just silently climbs the ladder up. they eventually turn away after she reaches the top. then they hear something hitting the ground–the inquisitors shirt. then the rest of her clothing piles up on the floor from the upper room. everyone slowly turns to cullen as he looks up, “it’s time for you all to leave.”
i still maintain that anakin was great with younglings (and we have canon proof that he was a good teacher)
but anakin as a role model is a completely different matter. like the council probably had to put a stop to weekly lessons with master skywalker after one stormy afternoon at the temple
youngling, timidly raising her hand: master anakin, what happens if your lightsaber gets hit by lightning?
anakin: great question! come on, kids, let’s grab our rain ponchos and find out!
in other words, anakin is a more chaotic, less education-oriented ms frizzle
Among my many headcanons is the fact that while Anakin is great with kids, and a good and willing instructor in many areas, there is still an absolute ban on him going anywhere near the speeder bay with anyone below the rank of Jedi Knight.
“Master, I heard you’re the best pilot in the galaxy. Is that true?” “I won a Podrace when I was nine and I once made my Master vomit over the side of a speeder.”
Also, he once taught a group of Padawans how to reprogram a bunch of Temple droids. Hilarity ensued–for the Padawans, that is. The Council…wasn’t so pleased.
nah, the hall pass/lockdown drill thing is something we do in my aussie school too. hall passes are accountability and are a (somewhat ineffective) method of reducing truancy. there are indeed people who cut class quite often, hence the hall pass (though we call it something diff here) and while you could argue that it's one's own responsibility to take care of one's studies, the school legally has a duty of care to us which gets problematic when someone is unaccounted for (cont.)
(cont.) just in case something were to happen. now, the ineffectiveness is because we don’t log toilet trips and so on into the school network, and rely on paper. if your student is missing carrying the only written record of them leaving at so-and-so time to go to the locker/toilet, what the hell is the use of that? the end goal is to make sure you’re in class as much as possible, because the point of a school is, after all, to educate. as a student, the place we are supposed to be (cont again)
(cont. 3) during lesson times is in class, learning. the point of kids going to school and then cutting class IS inherently contradictory to the point of a school, and i do not find that outrageous. now, one of the phrases most kids in my mandarin class (not in aus, though, this was a while back) could speak accurately was, translated, ‘teacher, can i please go to the toilet?’ i suppose it’s respect for the teacher/school as well as making sure you go where you’re supposed to be going. (cont)
(sorry this is getting so long) getting to lockdown drills and so on, we do those here too. it’s just safety. we understand the likelihood of someone showing up to school with a flamethrower or grenade launcher or simply handgun is not awfully high, hence why the kids dont take it so seriously, but the adults are Dead Serious because there is always a risk and people should know how to react. like i said, its simply safety (cont but i swear last one)
(sorry) teachers and admins have to know who’s out of the classroom and where they’re going (or where they say theyre going), not only to verify truancy and accountability stories, but also in the event of an evacuation (fire/shooters/freak floods/elephants raining from the sky), then emergency responders know where and for who to look. so i dont find it all that outlandish. sue them, theyre taking precautions. (thanks for the long read lol)
First of all, this was genuinely a fascinating trip through Australian school regs.
Second of all, particularly in the US…I still feel like a lot of problems could be sorted out with tighter gun regulations. That being said, yeah, I think there’s something to be said for knowing where your students are because, like, damn people definitely just wandered off in the middle of the day at my high school. THAT being said, I think US schools get a little…obsessive.
Third of all, in the interest of full disclosure, I can guarantee you’ve never seen a school give less of a fuck about student safety than my high school, in this context. So like I dunno if I’m the best source on this one.
So that makes Steve Patro.... Patty. And Bucky is Achilles? (I can't spell. :x)
Yeah, Patroclus would be default-Steve and Achilles is the unfortunate victim of getting a bit mindwiped. Which incidentally is not how I would assign those roles if, say for example, I was going to do some kind of reincarnation plot. Because literally the entire post-CA:TWS plotline can be summed up as “sing, o muse, of the wrath of Steven Grant Rogers when you fuck with Bucky Barnes,” which means that obviously Steve is the golden god-born hero of legend and Bucky is his anchor to mortal life and the cause for great ruin of their many-armed enemy upon his death at their hands. Complete with Pyrrhic victory.
help i just finished a psych analysis of a dogme 95 movie i didnt watch and im gonna give it back today for 15% of my final grade why am i like this
If it makes you feel any better, I have to research and write three chapters of my thesis in the next month, so…like, at least you’re not the only one who’s like this.
okAY so maybe ive been thinking a lot about that winter soldier/tsoa/iliad thingy you posted and maybe i have also written like... a bit on it, but so WHaT huh
gwendoline christie utterly epitomises the “get u a girl who can do both” meme. girl can stalk across a scorched battlefield dressed in full armour & covered in men’s bloodAND float down the red carpet in a gorgeous flowy dress and high heels looking like the actual personification of spring and sunshine. warrior harbinger of death and floral goddess. when will ur fav ever. when will anyone get on gwendoline’s level.
#okay now I need the movie #where they’re the four horsepersons of the apocalypse #except they’re all a bit disgruntled with their job assignments #so they decide to throw a spanner in the works #it would be like good omens but with more stabbing
(tags via @madmaudlingoes and may I just say that is an awesome idea? XD)
1. Progesterone: not for everyone, but for many people it may increase
sex drive and WILL make your boobs bigger. Also effects mood in ways
that many find positive (but some find negative). Most doctors won’t
prescribe this to you unless you ask. Most trans girls I know swear by
it.
2. Injectible estrogen: is
more effective than pill or patch form. Get on it if you can bear
needles bc you will see more effects more quickly.
3. Estradiol
Cypionate: There is currently a shortage of injectible estradiol
valerate. There is no shortage of estradiol cypionate. Functionally they
do the same shit.
4. Bicalutamide: This is an anti-androgen that
has almost none of the side-effects of spironolactone or finasteride.
The girls I know who are on it are evangelical about it.
Are there HRT medications that don’t increase blood clot risk? I’m already at risk because of my blood pressure, and my doctor won’t prescribe HRT that increases clot risk while I’m on the medication - and I may never not be on the medication.
Absolutely.
The concerns surrounding venous thromboembolic events as a side-effect of hormone replacement therapy can mostly be traced back to one particular study known as the Women’s Health Initiative. This study was an enormous undertaking which, unfortunately, demonstrated significant adverse effects of the hormone therapies studied. As a result of this the use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal cis women was dramatically reduced as the medical community began to question whether or not the therapy caused more harm than good.
Naturally, trans women have been suffering from this fall-out ever since.
What physicians seem to fail to recognize is that the study examined a very specific hormone regimen which was, arguably, outmoded at the time the study was conducted: It examined the use of conjugated equine estrogen (Premarin) with or without the use of medroxyprogesterone acetate. Neither of these drugs is regularly used for the treatment of transgender women.
The estrogen most commonly used to treat transgender women nowadays is 17β-estradiol either in pill form or in the form of a sticky patch that you apply to your skin. Esters of estrogen (e.g. estradiol valerate) are also sometimes used either in a pill form or as an intramuscular injection.
Transdermal estradiol patches are the gold standard when it comes to treating women who are at high risk of a venous thromboembolic event. It simply does not increase the risk of developing a venous thromboembolism. The only thing you should keep in mind is that patches are not always well tolerated because of the lifestyle changes required to keep them from falling off and the fact that they tend to irritate the skin.
It’s difficult to find hard numbers regarding the relative risk of venous thromboembolic events with regards to hypertension. The best I could find after an hour or so of searching was this study regarding VTE in lung cancer patients. Hypertension increased the risk by a factor of 1.8.
As far as the anti-androgen is concerned: The primary use for spironolactone for cisgender people is as an antihypertensive.
Even if the risk of thromboembolism was truly significant with modern hormone replacement therapy it wouldn’t justify what your doctor is doing to you. The fact is that mortality in the transgender community from suicide–caused in part due to the lack of access to hormone therapy–is substantial. The quality of life lost when a trans woman is denied hormone therapy is substantial. The fact that your doctor does not appear to be taking this into consideration when they weigh the risk of thromboembolism against not receiving necessary medical care is deeply concerning.
I strongly recommend that you seek a doctor who is more sensitive to your medical needs as a transgender woman.
Edit: Fixed a minor, but embarrassing, error.
oh wow this is so helpful & good info
Everyone who cares about transfem people please reblog this
this was really fucking helpful
I know a lot of trans women dont have acess to information like this and its very helpful.
In American schools, if students move from one classroom to another during the day, which is the norm in middle and high schools (roughly age 11 to completion of school), the whole school does so at the same set times during the day. Being in the hallways at these times is Passing Classes, which is fine; being in the hallways at any other time is Roaming the Halls. A student who is Roaming the Halls is presumed to be Up To Something, and may be stopped and interrogated by any member of staff who witnesses said Roaming.
Of course, it does occasionally happen that a student has a legitimate reason to be in the hallways outside of designated passing times. In those situations, the student carries a pass (”hall pass”) which can be presented to any member of staff who stops and interrogates said student. Usually, the pass is written on a form that is signed by the teacher who authorized the student’s presence in the halls: at my school, the form had spaces for student’s name, date, time, where the student is going, and from whence the student is leaving.
Filling out the entire form every time a student wants to go to the toilet is a pain in the ass, so some teachers use some other form of pass. In my day, it was either just a regular pass that was pre-filled and laminated, or a block of wood with the classroom number and “Bathroom” written on it. Apparently nowadays, using some cumbersome and humorous object as the bathroom pass is A Thing.
This is all regarded as completely normal, so much so that I have explained it in what may be a tedious amount of detail, because I’m unsure what part of it strikes you as unusual. How is this situation handled where you went to school?
By raising your hand, saying you need to use the bathroom, teacher saying okay and you going. Nothing else.
So if another teacher sees you on your way there, they just…mind their own business?
That would never work here.
Would it never work there because of actual logistical issues, or do you mean people would not accept it as a safe solution?
Over here if a teacher sees you (they’re all in class anyway too so it’s unlikely anyone would be in the hallway during class unless they have a reason) they mind their own business, unless you’re dicking around or actually doing something troublesome or loud, or if they know you and know you’re supposed to be somewhere else, and you’re clearly not going to the bathroom. Or if they’re in a shitty mood and wanna yell at you for sitting on the windowsill which was forbidden in my school but nobody cared anyway.
Otherwise, no, no one’s gonna care. Not in high school, anyway- but in lower grades yeah because the kids are younger, but elementary schools will usually have a custodian walking around the halls. They’re still not gonna question kids going to the loo.
Would it never work there because of actual logistical issues, or do you mean people would not accept it as a safe solution?
Short answer is, the second one. Long answer is, the American school system is permeated with a sense that teenagers are this chaotic force that must be contained at all costs. (I’m right now having this very clear sense-memory of a hall monitor * saying “You can’t just roam the halls any time you feel like it!”** in the same sort of tone in which one might say, “You can’t just stab people any time you feel like it!”) It’s not even so much a matter of what you might do while out in the halls unsupervised; the very idea of teenagers Roaming the Halls (of a school, which is full of both teenagers and halls) is understood as being inherently contradictory to the purpose of a school. It isn’t even that you might go somewhere you’re not supposed to be; it’s that at any given time, there is only one place any given student is supposed to be. A hall pass creates a temporary change in your prescribed location, without undercutting the fundamental principle that your location should always be prescribed.
(*My school had professional hall monitors–grown adults who were paid a salary to keep order in the halls.)
(**At one point one teacher issued me a Permanent Hall Pass, for Reasons, essentially licensing me to roam the halls whenever I felt like it. I forget how long that lasted, but eventually a hall monitor stopped me with it and was, naturally, convinced it was fake. They hauled me to the office and were like, “We’re going to call down TeacherName and show her this,” and I was like, “Please do.” So finally they did, and she was like yes, that’s my signature, yes, I wrote that; what are we doing here?” I ended up getting detention anyway, “because the policy is that if a hall monitor brings you to the office, you get detention.” The teacher was also instructed to never issue an open-ended hall pass again.)
Today’s question: is the USA actually a giant prison?
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WHAT THE HELL????????? What if you have no class in the middle of the day? We’d just hang out in the halls. Not everybody went to the library or sth. I probably spent a year of my life in the halls. It was actually kind of a way to socialise with people.
Yeah, there’s even a stock phrase as Gaeilige which is about the first thing you learn in school (my dad taught it to me before I started Big School, i.e. age of five) asking for permission to go to the bathroom.
If a teacher sees a kid hanging around the corridors instead of being in class, they may ask them what they’re doing and wait to see if they head off to where they say they’re going (the usual dodge is “Miss/Sir, I have to get my books out of my locker”) but there’s no Hall Pass or any of the rest of this.
Dear America, why is your education system so strange?
Well for one, there’s never supposed to be a period where kids aren’t in class. There’s no study hall period, no free period, and you’re carefully monitored when you go to and from class as well as to and from lunch period. The idea is that, if kids are free-roaming, they’re going To Do Something like leave school (truancy) or cause some sort of problem.
But really, its more about training children for future jobs where their employers will treat them exactly the same way. If you are not in class/working, then you are doing something wrong.
You’ve also got to understand that, in American schools, not only is there a serious lack of trust between teachers and students, but also that the school systems will try to cram AS MUCH CLASSES into one day at a time to “maximize learning.” This includes having extremely short lunch breaks and hall passing times (I swear lunch breaks in my elementary school were like ten minutes long, which contributed to how fast I wolf down my food to this day. I also distinctly remember passing time being only three minutes at my middle school and having a panic attack on the third day of school because i couldn’t get my locker open and I was that afraid of being caught skipping class). Oh, and by the way, we watched a documentary in high school that took place in a prison once, and I was shocked at how much the prison in question actually DID look like a high school.
schools operate on the premise that All Teenagers Are Inherently Criminals
Added to this, since the late 90s, teachers and administrators also have to know who is out of their classrooms and why and for approximately how long, so they can make an accounting of which kids might be in the path of a random shooter.
Because it’s more important for adults to have the FREEDOM to amass huge arsenals of guns than it is to protect the physical and emotional safety of children.
My daughter has been in school for six years (she’s 10), and she and her classmates have had to practice hiding in the classroom corner in silence with the lights off about twice a year.
American students and teachers now go about their business every day with the background knowledge that at any moment, a kid with his dad’s guns can show up and try to slaughter them all.
Tell me that doesn’t do something to your psyche.
By the time you hit high school you don’t bat an eye at lock down drills or hall monitors. They’re pretty much part of the scenery. According to my friend who was a grade below me, they stopped letting kids have free periods at all after i graduated. Previously, they would lump your classes together and either you could leave early or come to school late, but it was a steady stream of classes.
American schools are also basically wide open to the public if you come in the front door. So hall passes are supposedly for child safety too.
why does no one ever talk about how lewis and clark met why isn’t that taught in history classes it’s like some rom-com meet-funny trope and i’ve literally never heard it brought up. literally the start of one of the most famous friendships in america and no one talks about it.
Wasn’t Clark just Lewis’ commanding officer? I guess I don’t know this story either. Can you tell it?
yes!! oh my god!!
so at twenty-one years of age, stupid stubborn hotheaded ensign meriwether lewis decides to get hella drunk and crash the party of one of his superior officers, starting an argument over politics (namely, defending thomas jefferson, his neighbor and veritable father figure) and insulting his host and basically being an embarrassment. so, he’s arrested and leveled with a court martial!! because this ridiculous boy can’t mind his fucking manners when he’s tipsy apparently!!
but instead of having to explain to his poor mother why he got booted out of the continental army, he’s acquitted (”with honor” bc apparently i’m not the only one who plays favorites when it comes to meriwether lewis), but he has to be reassigned so he doesn’t piss off his commanding officer again (awk). and whose brand new sharp-shooting rifle unit does he get transferred to?? take a wild guess!!!! that’s right, william clark’s!!!! and over the next six months meri falls deepfuck in totally platonic bro-love with him until clark resigns his commission for family reasons. then, roughly eight years later, lewis writes him to ask if maybe he’d like to travel to the ends of the earth by his side and, well, the rest is history.
But how do you know it was platonic
i hope you guys understand that when i say “platonic” i say it in the patronizing sarcastic tone of voice i always use when i talk about meriwether lewis’s big ol’ crush on his bff. maybe i can’t prove totally that he was v gay and probably at least a little bit madly in love with clark, but damn i wanna believe love exists ok.
lewis’s obvious sexual repulsion of women, his inability to find a wife, his desire to live with clark after the expedition, that last letter he wrote to clark before his violent death that we don’t have because clark burned it – we can read a lot into all of this if we want to, but even besides all of that the point remains that meriwether lewis was intensely fond of clark, and that they cared deeply for one another, and that their personalities complemented and completed one another in a way that makes you think twice about soulmates.
actually, sacagawea was a sixteen-year-old kidnapped shoshone girl sold into sexual slavery to a french trader named toussaint charbonneau, who pissed power couple lewis and clark off to no end due to generally just being who he was as a person.
whereas lewis had no real interest in women from what we can tell from his writings, he actually wrote about how much he admired sacagawea’s extreme fortitude and numerous skills that helped them throughout their journey. lewis also actually delivered sacagawea’s child!! she had a very difficult birth (probably because she was a child), which sent lewis into multiple kinds of panic. clark, however, really doted on sacagawea and her son; he gave them both nicknames, looked out for their safety during the trip, and was very close to them even after the expedition and ended up adopting sacagawea’s son. he was also a notoriously bad speller and i don’t think he ever spelt charbonneau’s name correctly ever not even once (which makes me think of the blenderdick cucumberpatch meme tbh).
i mean yeah there’s also a lot of angst here too because after the expedition their lives went in very different directions.
clark comes home and immediately acclimates to a hero’s life. he gets married and has a son who he names meriwether lewis clark after his best friend. he has a respectable government position and lives a long and happy life.
meanwhile lewis struggles to get accustomed to civilized life again. he misses the freedom of the expedition. he still sleeps on buffalo skins spread out on his bedroom floor. he writes that he is determined to find himself a wife but no woman can seem to stand him; one even flees town in the middle of the night to avoid seeing him again the next day. with his lifelong history of depression (which comes in bursts which, to me, seem a lot like manic depression), lewis spirals downward. he’s hated and conspired against in his political career, he starts to drink heavily, he stops talking to all of the people who had been closest to him.
he finally works himself up to taking a trip to dc to deliver his journals to jefferson and on the boat trip up he attempts to kill himself multiple times. he’s described as appearing frantic and afraid, and tries to calm himself down by repeatedly telling himself that clark is on his way, that clark will be coming to save him. we know that at this time he wrote clark a letter, but clark burned it so we don’t know what it said. i’m ashamed of the things i’d do to get my hands on that letter.
lewis dies in an inn on the natchez trace of two bullet wounds, and it’s still debated whether it was suicide or murder; everyone close to him seemed to accept it was suicide, including clark, who wrote, “oh, i fear the weight of his mind has overcome him”.
But what happened to Sacagawea and her son?
ok, more on sacagawea, because she deserves any and all the credit she gets plus a whole lot more honestly:
when sacagawea was about 12 years old, she was kidnapped by the hidatsa tribe and sold alongside another shoshone woman to charbonneau as his “wives”. charbonneau was officially hired by lewis and clark not just because he was a french fur trader who knew the pacific northwest territory as well as the hidatsa language, but because sacagawea’s knowledge of the shoshone language and people would benefit them as they traveled through their lands. sacagawea was not just some inconvenient extra, she was a purposeful and valued addition to the corps.
sacagawea had her son, jean-baptiste, while l&c and co. ™ were still wintering at fort mandan, so she was literally carrying this child on her back for the entire journey. she was also the only woman travelling in the corps! and she was given duties! strong and capable and literally perfect i love her so much!
while travelling on a riverway, the boat sacagawea was travelling on capsized, and along with saving her son she also rescued valuable supplies and papers; both the captains were blown away with how well she acted under that sort of duress (and how badly her husband did lmao). travelling through native lands, tribes were more likely to think these men were not dangerous purely because sacagawea was with them, so she literally saved their white asses through association. she was a necessary and important figure in council meetings between the corps and tribal chiefs. clark called her “janey” and called her son “pompy”. (cute.) when they do get to the ocean, sacagawea literally demands clark (which she would have to do through like three layers of translators) to let her go to the shore with them, because damn it she worked just as hard as anyone else and she wants to see the fucking whales man.
perhaps most remarkably, when the corps finally did encounter the shoshone tribe, among the very first group of people they encountered was sacagawea’s brother, who she hadn’t seen for five years. that’s. so incredible. like, that’s one of the most amazing things to me. this survivor of child sexual abuse bravely treks across huge stretches of territory with a military expedition and is reunited with her family, however briefly, and. god. i’m crying.
sacagawea was not paid for her contributions to the expedition, because the contract was with her husband. she gave birth to a daughter, lisette, six years after the expedition. she died at 25 years old of a sickness she apparently had throughout her adulthood (which may have been further complicated from her early abuse and pregnancies). after her death, clark adopted both of her children.
i love this beautiful brave bird woman just as much if not more than i love my adventurous southern sons.
i’ve seen a lot of comments about the really sorry state of spelling and grammar in the expedition journals, and just wanted to let everyone know that, since no one had a dictionary with them on the expedition, they had to spell out words phonetically, and for the most part everyone wrote how they talked. by that logic, linguists have determined that by reading the journals of expedition members aloud you can actually start to mimic their accents! lewis was a virginian with some book learning, so his passages tend to have more eloquent language and less visible accent. however, clark was kentucky born and bred, and manages to misspell “mosquito”more than sixteen different ways.
Also, there’s a national memorial in Montana that Clark carved his name into, called Pompey’s Pillar. Clark named it after Sacajawea’s son.
In another of your regular “this is the kind of person you follow” updates, I would like to remind you all that, in my latest novel (the “earth is where the trouble comes from” one), I have created an entire race of super OP plant mages who are descended from dryads solely so that I am able to point to my MC’s right hand woman and say “She’s asexual, and before you ask, yes, she is a tree.”
pop culture intertextuality is just so damn *fascinating*
today a parody movie (50 shades of black) comes out, based on the 50 shades of grey movie, which was based on the 50 shades book, which was based on twilight, which was somewhat based on interview with the vampire (which anne rice based on an earlier short story she wrote), which was based on Dracula and other vampire stories, which originally came from Dr. John Polidori’s The Vampyre (even though Vampires were a thing in folk tales before then, he was the one who made them all classy, etc.)
so really, like so many things, this is all Lord Byron’s fault.
My brain (and my impending deadline) says work on my thesis, but my heart says continue writing Cesare/Micheletto fic. Someone please motivate me to do the responsible thing here.
*pictures you eating fully-grown musketeers, screaming and stabbing ineffectively in your mouth*
I feed on the blood of heroes and the hearts of virgins. They flail and writhe to no avail, for I am a dark and eldritch thing from beyond the stars. It is vital that I believe in myself, for my worshipers are…gone, now. We shall say no more about their fate.
It is the best goddamned thing you’ve seen all day.
Say hello to the Infinite Jukebox, an experiment in looping songs. See those curves cutting through the circle? What this bad boy does is analyze the song for similar beats and sounds, then randomly skips between said beats forever.
Yes, you heard me. Forever. With this piece of musical genius, you can literally play the same song for as long as you want - It will create the song that never ends.
And if that’s not enough, you can upload your own MP3s to this bitch and it’ll loop those as well.
Have fun, kids.
heads up - you can’t put this in a tab in chrome, then switch to a different tab and forget about it, because it’ll stop. But if you open it in its own window it’ll happily go on indefinitely.
More “wtf are humans, please leave the rest of us be” stuff:
Human reactions to fear!
No, I’m not talking about screaming or freezing in one spot and pissing yourself. I’m talking about the weirder, more specific-to-only-humans fear reactions.
Like singing.
Idk how many of you have watched people play horror video games, but a surprising amount of people start narrating what’s going on in a sing-song voice.
Imagine being an alien, walking in a horrific, dark tunnel with these weird gangly creatures, you’re all scared out of your wits and then one of them starts fucking singing.
In a dark cave. While everyone’s terrified.
“ ♫ ~We are all gonna fucking die, this is terrible and I wanna go hooooome~ ♬ ”
Imagine being a human in an alien crew in space and leaving with bright blue or pink hair and the color fades and everybody on board wonders WHY you are losing your colors??? Is it the lack of greens? Are you sad? Angry? They just don’t know??
“HUMAN BIOLOGY IS BAFFLING”
These are the kinds of pure posts I come to this place for.
i swear to god, men raising their voice is the most terrifying thing in the whole world. they dont understand, like its an immediate panic response, game over
I actually had no idea women found this so scary
my downstairs neighbors fight on a regular basis, and every time he starts yelling i’m a little afraid he’s going to kill her. i have no reason to think this except that he is a man and he is angry
My math teacher has a loud voice and a temper and he scares the living shit out of me almost everyday. He’s made me and other kids cry more than once and he and his teacher buddies make a joke out of terrifying students.
this was women in general? i knew my gf didn’t like it but I was unaware if this affected most women
Yes, it does
As a woman, I had no idea it effected other women like this. I was too afraid to even talk about it. I thought I was weak. Thanks for bringing attention to this.
My dad thinks it’s funny that I used to cry when he raised his voice. I freak out whenever some one does. Once my director did, and I started crying I couldn’t stop. I’m glad to see I’m not alone…
This is so important– seeing how common this is– and I also want you all to know that this is not normal. It isn’t something instinctively ingrained into women, to be afraid of men. There is no natural state of men being a threat that women constantly have to be afraid of. This is cultural. So many women and girls here have a mutual understanding of this feeling, and I think it really shows an unsettling truth about our society, particularly about how men are raised to act and how so many women have this defensive reaction gradually develop. It’s so important that these people have their voices heard, because it teaches us about problems that we just can’t deny the existence of any longer.
I’m glad I’m not the only one
My fellow men, pay attention. I didn’t realize how scary this could be until one of my exes explained it to me, and it’s heartbreaking.
Also, when we move too much during an argument, or lean forward, it’s scary, and I never knew. I was even a little insulted at first, because surely she didn’t think I would hurt her. But see, that doesn’t matter. It wasn’t a sign that she mistrusted me specifically; it’s a conditioned response. (Although if you keep doing it once you realize it scares her, she SHOULDN’T trust you.)
Not every woman has been physically harmed by a man she trusted, but every woman KNOWS a woman who has.
I used to be horrible about this, because I didn’t realize how intimidating it was. I didn’t understand why the woman I was with clammed up or tried to tell me what she thought I wanted to hear, and I only got angrier, and acted even more like an asshole. It was wrong. It was abusive. It didn’t matter if I INTENDED it that way; it was still emotionally abusive. And it was inexcusable.
I get that when passions are high, and when you’re frustrated, it’s a natural tendency to let your voice get louder, to shout and gesture and lean forward. But you can train yourself to do better. You can train yourself to keep more of an even tone, to refrain from large and fast gestures, to not lean into her personal space. I did. I’m not perfect at it yet, but goddamn it, I WILL be.
Don’t tell me it’s too hard, that you just can’t do it, or that you “shouldn’t have to.” I’m 53 years old and just now getting the hang of it, and if this old dog can learn something new, so can you.
