When trains were introduced in the U.S, many people believed that that “women’s bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour,” and that their “uteruses would fly out of [their] bodies if they were accelerated to that speed.”
I have so much respect for historical women not murdering every man they know
(Source: The Wall Street Journal, via unpretty)
“hiraeth” — (hɨraɪ̯θ), noun | A Welsh, untranslatable feeling, hiraeth is loosely described as a homesickness for a home you cannot return to anymore or a place, which never even existed. Connotations of sadness, yearning, profound nostalgia, and wistfulness are imbued into the state of hiraeth. Overall this beautiful, but painful longing is a an expression of an empty desire and grief over a past life or place. It is the ultimate signifier of a bond, which has ceased to exist. (via 16pc)
(Source: wordsnquotes.com, via primarybufferpanel)
[video]
[video]
gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining
because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe
and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them
and then
we built robots?
and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image
and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone
but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?
the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.
and they told us to tell you hello.
So, I have to say something.
This is my favorite post on this website.
I’ve seen this post in screenshots before, and the first time I read it, I cried. Just sat there with tears running down my face.
Because this, right here, is the best of us, we humans. That we hope, and dream of the stars, and we don’t want to be alone. That this is the best of our technology, not Terminators and Skynet, but our friends, our companions, our legacy. Our message to the stars.
I’m flat out delighted, and maybe even a little honored, that I get to reblog this.
(Source: swanjolras-archive, via lupinatic)
So, today, Marvel published issues of comics revealing that in fact the Nazis were always supposed to win World War 2, and the Allies invented the Cosmic Cube to rewrite history to prevent that from happening.
That was released today. April 19th.
The anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt during World War 2, the first urban uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe, begun when the Nazis decided to completely wipe out the Warsaw Jews on Passover eve. Instead, the Jews held out for nearly a month, with whatever they could fight with. They’re honored to this day.
And Marvel published their Nazi-stanning dumpster fire of a retcon today.
so how many people on Marvel’s editorial board are white supremacists?
Fucking ridiculous
But no, the reason we all bailed was too much “diversity.”
There’s something more insidious going on here than just “the Nazis were supposed to win” and I think it needs examination.
And by that I mean let’s talk about Steve Rogers, Straight White Cis Man.
A lot of the early superheroes were very explicitly invested in social justice - Wonder Woman fights sexist dictators and empowers women, Superman goes undercover to bust the KKK and advocates for the working class. And of course it’s not that surprising that Superman, the explicitly Jewish-coded immigrant, or Wonder Woman, the female superhero in a world of men, strike out against the power structures that oppress the groups they represent; they stand to gain greatly, after all, from the freedom and elevation of their peers.
But Cap is a little different. Cap, actually, is a lot different, because Steve Rogers is a white man with blue eyes and blonde hair. Steve Rogers is not just physically fit and able-bodied, but an outright ubermensch who can tough out gunshot wounds and knock around cars. Steve Rogers would be treated like a goddamn king in Hitler’s Germany, he is literally everything they claim to love and want and honor. Steve does not stand to gain greatly by fighting Nazis. Steve stands to gain greatly by joining them. The only thing he, personally, can achieve by his battle is personal loss; at best, of institutional privilege over basically everyone he’ll ever meet, at worst, of his very life.
If you think it is an accident that two Jewish guys made this character the dedicated, justice-loving ultimate enemy of the Nazi state, I do not know what to tell you other than that you are hilariously, incomprehensibly, obviously wrong.
This is a guy who could have the bad guys eating out of his hand, but opposes them instead because it’s the right thing to do, full stop. No matter the cost, no matter what anyone else says he in particular should care about due to his own station, he’s going to help people instead of hurting them. Steve Rogers is not just a guy who punches Nazis, he is a promise to Jewish kids that Gentiles, too, can and will punch Nazis, and a reminder to Gentiles that just because they’re not Jewish is no excuse not to. More than that, even. He is a promise to every marginalized fan that yes, there really are allies who will fight for you all the way to the end. He is an example to every privileged fan that real heroism means being that ally for others, that it is not only possible but important and even imperative to defend the less privileged. If Diana teaches us that we can fight for ourselves, Steve teaches us that we can fight for others. And that is a kind of hope and inspiration that most superheroes never even get to pretend to.
And so think about what Spencer is saying, when he says that that isn’t real.
In Spencer’s new Cap universe, it is natural, inevitable, that a smart, strong, authoritative white dude would ally himself with Nazis. In Spencer’s universe, if you want a person with privilege on your side, if you want that person to actually put themselves at risk fighting on your behalf, you have to literally rewrite reality. Are you a person with privilege? Great, don’t worry about it, you have no obligation to give a shit, because no sketchy minority rabble-rouser has brainwashed you with a cosmic cube. Are you a minority rabble-rouser? You’re on your own, good fucking luck. Straight white cis dudes are your natural enemy, and since you live in the real world without cosmic cubes, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Spencer has taken a character created by two Jewish guys to explicitly say “you don’t have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people” and turned him into a character that instead very aggressively says “actually you do have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people. Race war is the Real World and that Steve is a fantasy.”
So, you know. Fuck him.
I wish that I’d been able to put this into words half as well as @bluefall-returns did.
(Source: onwardmotley, via windbladess)
I can’t believe that the two greatest party songs of all time (I Gotta Feeling and Party Rock Anthem) came out within two years of each other and mankind will never create a better party song
Some people have been defending various other party songs in the notes, and while I respect all of your opinions, the only song that can qualify as a POTENTIAL exception is Tik Tok by Ke$ha
What about Allstar, great for every occasion
All Star is, in my opinion, the Greatest Song of All Time™ and while it great for every occasion, the three above are the best suited for parties. Like rich chocolate is good for every dessert, but milk goes better with Oreos than more chocolate, ya know?
I was not ready for such an educated response but completely agree
I come prepared for this discourse
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
This really isn’t a terribly interesting story, but it is something for the annals of human stupidity. I can’t remember the exact details, and I really don’t care to do an exhaustive search the Internet, but I’ll sketch it out for you as I recall having read about it some years ago.
In 1474, in Switzerland, a hen that was thought to be a cock, laid an egg. Nowadays this wouldn’t even cause concern, as it is known that certain female chickens exhibit masculine traits and even grow coxcombs. But in those days, if it looked like a cock, it was a cock, and when this intersexed chicken laid a yolkless egg, it was seen as a sign that some witch in the village was attempting to create a basilisk. A basilisk is supposedly made with a yolkless egg from a male chicken. This was of course the Devil’s work, and so the chicken was put on trial for witchcraft and the heinous crime of laying an egg.
The chicken’s attorney argued that while this may have in fact been a demonic act, it was involuntary and the chicken could no more help laying the accursed egg than any possessed person could help their actions while under the Devil’s sway.
The chicken was found guilty and burned at the stake.
The sad thing is they probably didn’t bother to baste him. Probably didn’t even eat him. What a waste.
This is the WEIRDEST and most entertaining story I’ve read all month.
The title made me rofl
It’s all true.
Okay but. The most important part of this entire story is that the chicken had legal representation. Why? Was it a legality? Was someone obligated by law to represent the chicken? or did someone just feel that strongly about its innocence?
Yes, precisely. The attorneys of the day were just beginning to work through the philosophical theories of the juxtaposition of a religious state with necessary fairness and unbiased doctrine of law. This was at a crucial point in history, a kind of nexus between the feudal and the renaissance. These types of events were somewhat commonplace.
Ideal time-travel destination: The Chicken Trial
For the defense, this was basically free practice, and if they lost the case, it wasn’t like they had lost street cred, or had to deal with the next of kin.
Indeed. It was an intellectual exercise, but it was also more than that, because it was the beginning of the notion of equal and adequate representation. Lynch mobs and backward assize courts were nothing new. Barons and lords presided over matters on a constant basis without any presumption of fair treatment or ethical judgement. No representation was given, nor guaranteed. Moments like this were the strange psychotic delusions that mandated some sort of rationality. You’ve put a chicken…a non-speaking animal, on trial. For a crime that biblical texts tell us is only possible with intent, and as the Bible indicated according to the doctrine of the time, was incapable of having such intent. So there was a moment there of absolute insanity that was reined in.
“That chicken is a witch! Put it on trial!”
“But a chicken is an animal. It can’t be a witch.”
“Well………it’s being used by a witch!”
“But how would a witch use a chicken, and how do we get an animal to testify which witch is manipulating it?”
“Well………..give it an attorney who can make that argument.”And from there on out, the precedent was set that all people brought before the law were entitled to representation.
Now, that is not to say that became common practice, nor that all such individuals obtained even a passing assistance from their representation, but when documents, laws and documents regarding the rights of citizens began to be adopted, moments like this became pivotal.
“You mean to say you would let a chicken have an attorney, but not a man accused of petty theft? What sense does that make?”
To the point that, James I, who had himself written a book about how to find and prove a witch “forensically”, actually used common sense to show that a person was not a witch, himself acting on the witch’s behalf.
So such things were an integral part of modern western legal principles…
But my heavens were they stupid.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
imo he was being super salty about that tendency guys have to blame their anatomy for their bad choices
it’s like “oh i don’t want to be a creepo but my dick has a mind of its own” “well here’s a scissors fix your life”
or maybe, you know, have some damn respect, and don’t pretend you don’t have a choice of whether to be nasty
i think people have a tendency to take jesus literally when he was actually throwing shade, or to take things in this really smarmy martyrish way when they’re actually pretty snippy
i mean “turn the other cheek” sounds like being a doormat until you picture how it would play out: someone smacks you, and you turn and go “do it again, go on, take a swing buddy, does that make you feel better, do you feel like a winner now?” cuz you know what 90% of the time they will get curled up shame toes and shuffle off
tl;dr: no jesus did not actually want you to take a spoon to your eyeballs for babe watching, he wanted you to take responsibility for how you treat people
All of the actions Jesus told his followers to perform are actually passive-aggressive actions meant to oppose and resist Jerusalem’s Roman colonizers. Like, turning the other cheek is actually a matter of forcing the Roman to either break proper slapping etiquette or to hit you properly- thereby treating you as an equal instead of someone he’s subjugating. If a debtor is taking all your possessions in court, you include the shirt off your back so his greed is causing you to commit public nudity. And when a soldier forces you to carry his equipment (as per the law of the time), you go the extra mile with him- literally carrying his bag beyond the distance that the law stipulates and therefore making the action illegal.
Context matters.
(Source: ithelpstodream, via windbladess)