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I hope Nael knows their poem made me cry

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Very excited for this ngl

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Tolkien: Tom Bombadil is a funky little dude who lives in the forest with his hot wife. Also the most evil thing in the world has no effect on him.

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Fun little math trick I find really helpful: the ratio of a mile to a kilometer is within 1% of the Golden Ratio. That means that if you have a good memory for Fibonacci numbers (1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89) you can convert pretty accurately by taking consecutive Fibonacci numbers.

For example, 89 kilometers is really close to 55 miles (55.3). Or, say you need to convert 26 miles to kilometers: 26 can be written as 21 plus 5, so taking the next Fibonacci number up gives 34 and 8, meaning it should be around 42 kilometers. Sure enough, it's 41.8 km!

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“When I was a student in yeshiva, I asked one of the rabbis why Jews talk so much. We were studying Talmud, and I was trying to understand the comprehensive, obsessive inquiry into questions from the minuscule and seemingly pedestrian–are the water cisterns adjacent to a house included in the price of its sale?–to the transcendent, like what is the nature of God. “Jewish time is circular, so we work to make things perfect for the next time around,” he replied, before adding world-wearily: “Also, we don’t believe in perfection.””

— Alana Newhouse, NYT Book Review of Stranger in a Strange Land by George Prochnik (via spikenards)

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One massive, legitimate way to improve as a writer or artist or in any creative endeavor really, is to become absolutely obsessed with something and to allow yourself to be weird about it. Genuinely mean this btw.

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Unethical lifehack: if your landlord calls landscapers to remove your garden, replace it with blackberry bushes

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Story of my life people. You know what’s real ? The struggle.

Happy Pride Month ♥

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Things my extremely Italian physics professor has said:

“If you are walking in the woods nearby Chernobyl, you will probably be fine. But if you pick something up off the ground and eat it, you will die of radiation poisoning. Of course you may die if you eat things from the ground in other places, also, but likely not of radiation.”

“Unfortunately there is nothing I can teach you that will prevent you dying if there is on your house a hydrogen bomb. That is a politician problem. If any of you are president later, please do not hydrogen bomb my house.”

“Radioactivity could perhaps be used by terrorists, but it has not yet. Likely this is because terrorists do not study much physics.”

“Why is it that physics graduate students cannot make a nuclear bomb? It is not that they do not want to. They simply have not the money to buy the materials. Or anything else.”

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Older Black gay men in long term relationships are rarely covered or seen by main stream media.

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i kind of wish the anti voting people wouldn’t dance around the idea of what happens after the election. Like okay, the democrats lose, you taught them a lesson (and fwiw, I do think its a legitimate message to send- the people are not happy with the actions and status quo of the DNC). Now What. Trump, the multiply indicted crime president who incited a violent mob upon the capitol, is now President. He has all the qualities you hate about Biden, AND more, except he and his administration have even less reason to be sensitive to the wishes of their democratic constituents. He is a puppet for the far right and white supremacists and christian nationalists. I really shouldn’t even have to go over this- we LIVED it already. Genuinely asking, is this what you want? Because frankly I do not think 4 more years of Trump is worth it over Biden. Your hands are not clean, this is the future you want to choose. I just don’t understand why.

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i love the 18th/19th century use of the word "exploded" to mean "debunked" cause theyll say stuff in fankystine like "cornelius agrippa's theories were exploded long ago!" and i just imagine a bunch of scientists going up to cornelius agrippa and saying hey man. your theories are wrong and stupid and they suck. and then they kill him with bombs and guns and dynamite and fire and

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Why is the yasseline more

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moth

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I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.