#free & trusted information

[artharakka]

Beautiful, But Broken

#bg3 #tiefling #tw blood #c: Viivi #so I redid my bg3 character because I wasn't feeling durge that much. So now my sibling does durge and I regular tav Viivi #(changed her to tiefling for funs) #at least I meant to do regular tav but uhhhhh things have gone very unfortunately very fast #anyway. Viivi is an artist; she does painting sculpting poetry and some prose. Experimenting with this and that #unfortunately she is deaf which made making connections a bit hard in the fine arts world #fortunately she has a patreon with one very generous patron (she's fey warlock)✨ who has bestowed some gifts of charms for her #which have opened doors of many art galleries #She's not a fighter so although she is confident in her own lane she is also very aware of her mortality #so she avoided any fights she could #which might have saved her but also got her into the mess of her lifetime #you see she couldn't fight the entire goblin camp and their leaders. She would've just not survived that. So she convinced them #that she is a True Soul. She is good at convincing people. It worked. They thought she is on their side. Good #Halsin also though Viivi was on their side. Halsin attacked Viivi's party. Now Halsin is dead. #So Viivi and her group were still alone deep within enemy fort. Viivi made new plans. She frees the prisoner who says he will warn the grov #Good thinks Viivi now they know to flee. I will go to Minthara and tell we got the information from prisoner of the grove location #she will trust us and we walk off #when we get back to grove they have not fled and Minthara is at the gates #Minthara wants Viivi to sound the horn. Zevlor wants Viivi to sound the horn. Viivi asks Zevlor to please tell this plan in detail. #Zevlor says just blow the horn already. Viivi does that. Minthara thanks Viivi for leaving the gate open as planned #Zevlor does not thank Viivi for that. Viivi is confused as she did not leave the gate open. (for real the damn gate was left open) #So I did a Massacre. #now Karlach is gone Wyll is dead. Lae'zel is also dead #but apparently Minthara is ready to be very loving and sincere with Viivi. The most helpful person she has met in very long time. #Viivi might love her #so that is how she's doing.

[hussyknee]

I'm really not a villain enjoyer. I love anti-heroes and anti-villains. But I can't see fictional evil separate from real evil. As in not that enjoying dark fiction means you condone it, but that all fiction holds up some kind of mirror to the world as it is. Killing innocent people doesn't make you an iconic lesbian girlboss it just makes you part of the mundane and stultifying black rot of the universe.

"But characters struggling with honour and goodness and the egoism of being good are so boring." Cool well some of us actually struggle with that stuff on the daily because being a good person is complicated and harder than being an edgelord.

Sure you can use fiction to explore the darkness of human nature and learn empathy, but the world doesn't actually suffer from a deficit of empathy for powerful and privileged people who do heinous stuff. You could literally kill a thousand babies in broad daylight and they'll find a way to blame your childhood trauma for it as long as you're white, cisgender, abled and attractive, and you'll be their poor little meow meow by the end of the week. Don't act like you're advocating for Quasimodo when you're just making Elon Musk hot, smart and gay.

#this is one of the reasons why #although i would kill antis in real life if i could #i also don't trust anyone who identifies as 'pro-ship' #it's just an excuse to shut down legitimate ethical questions and engaging in honest self-reflective media consumption and critique #art doesn't exist in a vacuum #it's a flat impossibility for it not to inform nor be informed by real world politics and attitudes #because that's what it means to be created by human hands #we can't even make machine learning thats not just human bias fed into an algorithm #if the way we interact with art truly didn't influence anything then there would be no value in it #just because antis have weaponized those points in the most bad faith ways possible #doesn't mean you can ignore them in good faith #anyway fandom stans villains because society loves to defend and protect abusers #it's not because you get the chance to be free and empathetic and indulge in your darkness and what not #it's just people's normal levels of attachment to shitty people with an added layer of justification for it #this blog is for boring do-gooder enjoyers only #lol #knee of huss #fandom wank #media critique #pop culture #fandom discourse

[communistchilchuck]

I was asked to help spread Shahed's fundraiser. Shahed is a Palestinian engineering student urgently raising money to evacuate she and her family from Gaza to Egypt. The IOF's planned invasion of Rafah is imminent, and she has only raised $5,971 CAD out of her $94,838 goal! Please share and donate, and if you can't donate, please still share!

Shahed's Twitter/X account: @Shahedmort3

From Shahed's GFM:

Hello

I am Shahad, a Palestinian from Gaza. I study in the College of Engineering. I am contacting you with great sadness for help in getting me and my family out of Gaza.

I lost my cat during the bombing and destruction of the neighborhood, including our homes and businesses.

I was on my way to complete the third year of study, but the occupation destroyed my university and my future became unknown, and I cannot continue my studies. Even my brother Muhammad was on his way to prepare for his last semester at the university, which is the graduation semester, but unfortunately he was not able to do so due to the destruction that befell the university.

During the war, we were evacuated from north to south and we became homeless. We were evacuated more than 7 times until we began to live on the streets and why did we have a place to live?

My sister has a little girl who is one and a half years old, and we cannot find diapers or provide milk. In addition, she has lost approximately 7 kilograms of weight and her temperature has risen four times since our displacement until now due to the extreme cold and lack of clothing.

In addition, my mother suffers from high blood pressure, and my sister’s husband He suffers from diabetes, for both of which we cannot find a cure. My father also suffered from skin diseases due to polluted water.

All members of my family are highly educated, and they all work in offices, banks, and companies, but they all lost their jobs due to the bombing of their workplaces and had no source of income left.

As a result, the only hope for them to leave Gaza and move to Egypt is this link. Please help me collect the fees and travel costs for eleven people (my family is 6 people and my sister’s family is 5 people). In order to facilitate travel, I set up a GoFundme to raise an amount of 94,838 US dollars, which was Divide the amount based on the costs of travel, housing, food and other necessities that help us live in Egypt.

Every donation, no matter how small, will make a big difference in our lives. My family and I are very grateful and I am grateful for any help that is provided at this time. Please spread this campaign among your friends and colleagues so that we can obtain security, obtain our goal, and live in safety and peace.part of our suffering.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart

Shahad Murtaja

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #given the information on her twitter profile i fully trust this fundraiser #mutual aid

[whetstonefires]

The thing about the Shazam! (Captain Marvel but they don't have the rights to call him that) movie is that overall it's pretty good? Even if I question the pacing choices made in terms of screentime breakdown for '14yo boys making mortifying life choices and humorously failing judgment calls' vs. 'character development wrt to literally anything else about this fairly large cast.'

It's hokey; it should be. It's got some decent themes and fun character bits and set up good solid hero/villain parallels to subvert.

But.

But it massively clotheslined itself with a major storytelling fuckup connected to the opening hook mystery, whose resolution is meant to be the emotional inflection point of the whole film.

Because the thing is, this movie chose to be slightly interesting in how it approached its 'family' themes. In a variation on 'family of choice' (since your foster family are in fact assigned by the government and Billy not having a choice about living with them only about trusting them is a major story element) it went for the more nuanced and kind of interestingly grimy take that the people who are actually in your life giving a shit about you matter, if you let them, and that you need to stop giving the people who failed to love you power over your happiness.

Which is not a bad premise at all! As messages for a movie about a kid being sent to a group home go, that's the most upbeat you could possibly get and still be tied to reality.

The Vasquez couple are written and played well in these terms too because they really, genuinely care, and are making so much effort, but as system graduates themselves they never had competent parenting modeled for them and god does it show.

And the mental health problems of the kids who got enough characterization to have them were similarly...realistic in a best-case-scenario sort of way.

But! Still with the but! Even though they pulled off a lot of this fairly touchy premise rather well, there's a crack in the foundation that makes the whole movie kind of collapse on a thematic level.

Because the movie (following the prologue introducing the villain's backstory) opens with a juicy emotional hook where small Billy is separated from his mother at a Christmas fair and never sees her again.

Cut to some years later, establishing status quo scene, he's a Troubled Youth rebelling against the system in an endless quest to find his mother and go home. He is committing minor felonies to get access to police information about women surnamed Batson so he can go to their houses because eventually one of them has to be his mom.

His case worker after he's picked up again refers to his mother as 'someone who clearly didn't want you,' which Billy rejects as bullshit, and he's valid! Because that is not what you say when you have actual information. That's a surmise. That's a sentence that says Child Protective Services and the police couldn't find her either.

Especially because you don't immediately chuck a kid into foster care because he's found unattended. Maybe you do that later, after a lengthy period of oversight, depending on his mom's reaction to having him returned and her race and socioeconomic status and apparent mental health and so forth. But you don't just not contact her, and you definitely don't refuse to tell the kid about the result once you have.

The only normal situation where an accessible record exists of a kid's original parentage but it's denied to the kid is in sealed adoptions, which are a formal procedure that clearly didn't happen here. There is every indication in this opening sequence that his mom was never found.

Which means she's a missing person. Either because they located the correct Billy Batson and his adult never came back to their house (which would suggest foul play or some other drama) or because despite being old enough to be in school and knowing his own name, no one could find evidence that Billy existed prior to turning up at that street carnival.

Which would constitute a very mysterious situation! What is he, from a cult? Another dimension? Did someone (in the social worker's proposed scenario, Billy's mom) erase all record of her kid somehow? Was magic involved?

So: the way we're introduced to this scenario, there's a legitimate weird mystery here that none of the adults in Billy's life care enough about to do anything but tell him to write it off, the way they have. That his missing person clearly did it on purpose.

Billy's being ridiculous because if what he's trying would work then he wouldn't need to do it; his social worker could have arranged a meeting years ago. So it's a useless self-destructive behavior he needs to let go. But he's valid, in that he's being very obviously failed by the system and is doing the only thing he can think of to try to address his situation for himself.

And then! The Big Reveal is that his mom has been living under her maiden name in the same city as him this whole time.

Which the Gamer Kid Who Turns Out In This Scene To Be A Hacker (he's about 10) learned by. Breaking into a federal database.

So he goes to her house and it turns out. She'd been a teen mother and her babydaddy walked out after marrying her, and her parents cut her off, and she was depressed and felt like a bad mother so. When she saw the cops had her kid, she just walked away. And she wants to believe he's been happy and better off without her.

And the emotional arc of the film rests on how Billy comes to terms with this. With the fact that his past will never take him back and he has to learn to find joy in himself and his present situation and his future.

Having let go of that idea, he's able to emotionally commit to his gaggle of foster siblings and realize that unlike the villain, who was obsessed with punishing the people who never loved or accepted him, or the wizard who was focused on finding The Perfectly Worthy Champion, what you needed to be good and not lost was to be part of a mutually supportive group, like the wizard Shazam was before he and his siblings were betrayed. And then they can be a superhero team, woo!

And that part is actually depicted fairly well, all things considered!

But the problem is that the audience, to vibe with this properly, has to roll with the revelation that Billy was wrong to cling to the mystery of his vanished, beloved mother and the fantasy of going home again.

We have to be willing to participate in the idea that the Resistant Child Subjected To Foster Care was in the wrong.

And he wasn't! He wasn't wrong! His understanding of the situation was flawed but it should not have been flawed in this manner.

Because this scenario as it's depicted doesn't make any sense. The cops do not just keep your kid without following up if you fail to collect him from the baggage claim. CPS does not fail to provide a kid with the readily available evidence that he's been voluntarily surrendered to them, when he keeps running off trying to go home.

Why would they do that, after all? Billy's misbehavior was a huge hassle for them. They gained nothing by denying him access to his mother and the information about her that was, you recall, sitting totally available in a government database that could be hacked by a random 10 year old asian-american orphan. They just...made their own lives harder for no reason, while extending the suffering of a child in their care.

If the cops tried to return him back when and she said 'no i left him with you on purpose please keep him' maybe she gets prosecuted for child abandonment and maybe not, but either way, billy would know about it.

But if the screenwriters had made it clear early on that this information had been offered to him and he'd chosen not to believe it, they couldn't get a proper Reveal at the end because it would just be Billy being unable to continue pretending something the audience had known not to believe all along.

And they couldn't cram a good reason for the scenario they'd set up into the space they'd accorded it.

So they were just like, it's fine, if we cram enough cliches into this space people will react to the familiarity and go 'ah yes i know this one' and go along with it, and not notice that this isn't an actual coherent reply to the question that was set up an hour ago and therefore is emotionally unsatisfying somehow.

Anyway this is an important storytelling guideline: if you put in a mystery to control either the actual plot or, even worse, the emotional storyline, that mystery and its resolution have to make internal sense.

If you pull the Real Situation out of your ass, and it's not a matter of red herrings or That One Fact you didn't have that makes all the rest fit together differently, but in fact no one involved could have figured this out and especially if the people who did say this in the first place had no good basis for it, but still get narratively awarded the Correct trophy in a way that contributes to the thematic climax so the audience has to care. Then that will not get good results. It will make it hard to deliver on your intended themes.

Some people will not notice or care! This is true! But a lot of people will, and you'll get enough of a better punch even with the other folks, if the setup and denouement fit together properly and don't require reaching, to matter.

And when people do notice at all, rather than their naturally flowing along with the climax you're steering toward and experiencing A Story, there will be a tendency to notice you standing there placing roadsigns toward the Intended Emotional Response, and call you a hack.

People call out plotholes way too vigorously sometimes, so I want to be clear: it's not the lack of supporting logic I mind. It's that the active presence of illogic, of what's presented as a chain but is broken along its length, means the central character arc intersects with the core theme in a noticeably forced way. Which is bad craftsmanship on a meaningful level.

There is a loss of cohesion where you cannot satisfactorily resolve how the scenario we were initially shown came to be superimposed over the revealed truth, because that relationship between elements is very important to making a 'revelation' storyline land, you know?

In this case it's particularly vexing to me because the last-minute asspull and its thematic weight reaches back around and at the last minute moves the whole movie thematically to the other side of the line wrt whether it's approaching Billy, our protagonist, as a subject with whom we're supposed to identify or an object whom we're supposed to observe.

It makes all the high-school-freshman-posing-as-adult gags retroactively less funny because we were now more explicitly laughing at him, and takes a lot of the depth out of the emotionally sincere moments.

Up to that point I had really appreciated how, despite wavering that way, Shazam! hadn't actually fallen to the MCU Spiderman temptation to dehumanize its protagonist. Which seems to arise out of this weird tendency I've noticed to assume the natural sentiment of adults toward adolescents is bemused contempt, and that therefore if they ask their audience of paying grownups to empathize too closely with a teen hero instead of setting him and his Immaturity up as a clown for our amusement, they'll get themselves banished to the Children's Fiction ghetto.

And, of course, if they'd been fully committed to one side or the other of 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to closely' or 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to distantly,' they wouldn't have gotten snarled up about how much information to hand over when.

Committing to either option (giving us only as much information as Billy had and constructing a story that was solid from a being-Billy angle or giving us more information than Billy and operating confidently in the realm of dramatic irony) could have worked quite well. But because of the mixed signals and unstable narrative distance, they wound up with a distinctly weakened finale.

#hoc est meum #in real life things happen that you have no good reason to expect all the time #but in real life we know they happened for some kind of reason as in #causality exists and even in situations where we can't dig into the chain #we have cause to understand that it's there #in fiction they happened because they'd be convenient #so the rules of what information can be available and how you frame new information being revealed exist #to keep the audience from feeling jerked around #you have to earn people's trust and if you lose it #that limits the kind of results you can get #when writing fiction one of your tools is the reader's mind #if you give them reason not to allow you free use of it your composition contracts #screenwriting #shazam #and like in this case there's a profound betrayal of the protagonist and thus of the audience who connected with him wrapped up in it

[gxlden-angels]

I cannot express the anger I experience being unable to do anything about anything while Christians salivate over the idea of the Israel-Hamas conflict being a sign of the Rapture

#anyways Free Palestine #Hamas attacked innocent people #The Israeli government is terrorizing innocent civilians that just want the right to live #Jewish people deserve to have land where they are safe to go to if there is another rise in antisemitic attacks in their current home #Palestinians deserve to have their homeland respected and safe for them to live on #All of these statements can be true at the same time #and I say all of this from the safe comfort of the US #I am not the one that you should listen to about the situation. #I am not the one who you should trust to give correct information about what is going on because I get the same information you do #We should be listening to Palestinians and the Israeli civilians affected #And unfortunately the news in the US is based on Christians who want nothing more than to escalate this #They do not want to recognize Palestinians unless it brings about a world war that triggers the Rapture #And I am enraged by it #I know people currently living in Israel #I know students from Palestine #And I am infuriated by christians treating them like pawns in their little Jesus War #These are people. These are fucking people #They are friends and family and lovers and so much more #I genuinely cannot express just how frustrated I am by my inability to do anything as I sit in safety #If you get nothing else from this post please listen to Palestinians and the war crimes they've experienced for decades now #If you get nothing else please listen to Israeli civilians begging for their government to stop escalating this conflict #Please listen to Jewish people and Muslims when they say shit like this increases violence against them around the world #Anyways I'm at the doctor and someone had CNN on and I'm tired #antisemitism tw #islamophobia tw #israel-hamas war tw #rapture tw

[why-the-heck-not]

death to services that ask for ur payment info even tho they are free >:( then why in the good goddamn hell would u need that info then hhUH ???

#trying to use fly.io to get this stupid app to the internet and dude I do not want to put my credit card info there #it’s for one (1) course I don’t want to suddenly wake up some day and see that I have a big ass bill for something I thought was free #bc i don’t trust anything to actually stay free #and fly.io ’’ we don’t offer free-tier. instead we offer some free resource allowances that include enough usage per month to run a small #app for free’’ but like that seems sketchy?? like are they going to inform me like hey so if u don’t take this down we are going to start #billing you?? seems like it’ll be ’’hey so ur app is actually not what we consider ’’small’’ so we took the liberty to rob ur entire #apartment for payment thanxx <3’’ #stupid heroku deciding that u now how to pay for it like literally what can u do in this world without putting ur bank account on the line?? #literally nothing #september 2023 #2023

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

You’re totally right Tumblr doesn’t manage the for you section. But this is so fucked up

https://www.tumblr.com/elitefourkylewantstobattle/732071926522167296

Typically when things like this happen on here it is because the post (and person) were mass-reported.

Reminder that my original owlvid blog was deleted because of fatphobic weirdos spam-reporting my blog when I was making posts about BMI being made by eugenicists who wanted to make Americans look more physically imposing to other countries and that many people classified as “morbidly obese” by the scale do not have high enough levels of body fat to actually impact their health, and that BMI and similar “ideal weight” metrics don’t take the weight of muscle into account and the weight loss trend has caused millions of people to develop eating disorders throughout the years.

A video like the one posted in the link you provided is going to be controversial because zionists won’t like it and the wording used in the video is unfortunately very easy to make look antisemitic. The section of the video where the speaker started saying “this percentage of Jews think they’re smarter and better than everyone” or whatever does align dangerously with a lot of antisemitic beliefs, so because he didn’t continue to say Israelis or Israeli Jews to speak against this nationalistic culture, it makes it extremely simple for zionists to point to that and spin the entire video as being lies and antisemitic propaganda. That leads to mass-reports against it.

I don’t doubt staff has Zionist sympathizers among them simply because staff is largely if not exclusively American and it is very difficult for people in this country to access accurate information about the Israel Palestine conflict because the government sponsors so much propaganda supporting Israel and against Arabs and Muslims in general, leading to a large amount of Americans drinking the koolaid and believing Israel to be justified. However, there is also a good chance that this person and the post were mass-reported and taken down automatically because staff doesn’t always back-check to ensure someone or their posts were actually dangerous if they reach a certain threshold of reports they just terminate everything.

#Anyway #free Palestine #but also don’t phrase important information about the conflict in a way that comes off as disparaging Jews #anyone who uses zionists as an excuse to be antisemitic is just as bad as anyone using ISIS to be islamophobic #I see it a lot online and it’s incredibly dangerous because there has already been a terrifying uptick in violence against #Jews and jewish communities in a lot of countries recently #I am very happy Palestine’s plight is becoming more visible online now #but I am very cautious about how some have responded to this #because random Jews on tumblr shouldn’t get attacked or questioned by random gentiles assuming they’re zionists #and there have been little snide remarks against Jews I’ve seen on otherwise good posts about Israel that have prevented me from reblogging #Which puts me in an awkward position because I do want to be more vocally in support of Palestine on here #Because it is very important to me #but I really don’t trust a lot of the ways people speak about it #because there are a lot of people who take any excuse they can to be extremely antisemitic

[liveandletrain]

I really think that the entertainment world is sleeping on the comedy goldmine that would be a sitcom of rural electrical linemen working night storms.

(Literally as I was typing this the radio went live with one lineman whispering another’s name over it. No context. There has not been a response yet.)

#hear me out #there is nothing funnier #than listening to a bunch of rednecks razz each other #and reluctantly seperate when I inform them that they do actually need to split up #and they cannot travel in a pack like middle school girls #I don’t even know how to tag this #I guess I set it free #and trust my mutuals and followers to help it find the right crowd #I do have other gems of radio conversation #if anyone is interested #rain rambles #rain’s day job (is actually a night job)

[vamptastic]

Hey so I doubt anybody cares about this given that my blog has like, 50 followers and half of them are inactive or old friends, but if anybody's been wondering why I have so few posts on here about Israel compared to other political issues it's because I'm not putting anything on here that isn't credibly sourced. I noticed quite a few posts containing misconceptions and some straight up hoaxes early on and I've just really not noticed anybody start to think more critically since then, so I'm just not posting anything unless I can take the time to verify it.

I think a large part of this is just that I'm on the English side of the internet and most people are not able to read Hebrew and Arabic so there's just going to be more misinformation than American current events. But ngl, there's been some stuff that I really can't understand why anybody would not immediately flag as a hoax unless motivated by anti-Arab racism or antisemitism of the conspiratorial variety.

Also I just have complicated feelings because I grew up very involved with Judaism and my first Rabbi was a hardcore Israeli Zionist, and I also spent a lot of time at Chabad which was also quite Zionist. So while from a logical & moral standpoint I am, as far as I can tell, quite anti-Zionist, there's just some personal feelings in the mix that are hard to let go of. So I'd rather not invite conversation unless it's with people I trust to be understanding because I grew up with an extremely biased view on this and there might be some ideas I still hold without realizing they're motivated by my upbringing and not the reality of the situation.

Again, I can say with 100% certainty that Israel's actions since October 7th have been reprehensible and that it is their actions in the years before that led things to this point, and that I wish Israel had at the very least not had such heavy British colonial influence in its' founding, if it was ever possible to found a morally good Jewish state in the first place.

#uh if you absolutely most know my exact opinion on things to follow me you're always free to message me #I just don't want other people's posts on here unless it's literally just a link to an article that I can go read & verify #After that whole Israeli troops are stealing Palestinians organs things I am just kind of. Not very trustful anymore #Or all the nonsense about Palestinians IQs or stuff about beheading babies that as far as I can tell is totally unfounded #Or the all the Jews need to go to Europe/New York/Just kill them all stuff #Just. There's a lot of random Americans with zero stake in this saying fucking whatever online #And when you've positioned everything as like. You need to have an opinion on this or you're a bad person #When there's also massive amounts of misinfo that also conveniently creates black and white narratives #It's just. Not a good combination! And a lot of well intentioned but ill informed people will blindly fall for it #So just. Trying to stick to stuff that I know can actually directly help people

[sparklypunk]

I was having a horrible nightmare last night where my family was murdered and the killer was going to show me how he did it (a lot of stuff happened before hand too, like I was in the dream for a few days kinda thing) and it was so vivid. And once he showed me my stepdad dying I felt so much sadness and fear and some part of me was like NOPE WE ARE NOT DOING THIS and went to a wall and started punching it to wake myself up. But I was like "this isnt a dream, this is the real world.." I could feel all the memories ive had in that world but a part of me was like "this has to be a dream I cannot witness this. I am done being here" and i saw the wall crack up and I looked up the stairs and woke up

#it just really threw me off #because i fully believed i was in the real world or my waking world and i just didnt believe that it was a dream #i was in so deep but my instincts took over to take me out even tho i didnt trust them but i was so scared of seeing my family murdered- #-that i had to dip out. i had to believe there was another way but i still doubted it #like.... i feel so hung up on that #i had memories and feelings of it being real but it wasnt #but im so thankful that i punched my way outta the nightmare #idk what to do with this information #part of me is like does it mean something that i knew physical violence would take me out #that i was shattering the house i was trapped in #anyways i believe dreams have meanings #and if you read it this far feel free to send me dream interpretations #personal #my dreams

[nientedal]

god that post made me mad. "humans just CAN'T be persistence hunters, because persistence hunting doesn't make any sense to me personally! no i'm not going to cite any sources, just trust me, i read about it in school!"

okay, mmhm, sure...except it does work. it does work, and we know it does because it was still in practice by modern humans in the central Kalahari until AT LEAST 1990. some of those people have even explained some of the challenges and nuances of the practice as well as the knowledge they use to make it easier. it's not the only method of hunting humans have used over the years, but it is definitely one of the methods in our repertoire.

"humans can't run for multiple days without food and water (which is how i assume persistence hunting works, for some reason)! and they're not fast enough to chase an antelope without losing it! and tracking is a stupid concept that doesn't work, and i'm going to scoff and ignore it!"

you don't have to run for days. you don't have to be super fast. you just have to be fast enough to not let your quarry rest long enough to recover, and you do have to be able to track-- which is absolutely a real thing that people can and do learn how to do.

(i suspect the OP ignored tracking as a possibility for the same reason they tried to discredit any information about the indigenous peoples of the Kalahari as basically being (1) all noble savage bullshit from the 60s or (2) irrelevant because it's not what their forefathers were doing-- their anthropology course probably taught them about the challenges these bands are facing with colonialism, and probably also taught about the rampant misinformation about them, but it did not teach any actual respect for their cultures or knowledge. or for them as, you know, people. whose grandparents remember the way their grandparents hunted, and can talk about it, even if they are no longer able to continue the practice.)

(knowing the noble savage stereotype is bad doesn't make it less racist when you still talk about people from a stance of "but my modern ways are better than their hungry primitive ways and i'm going to talk as if they're already extinct and have no expertise worth discussing.")

"there's no POINT to it! we have tools! and weapons!" the point is not getting gored and kicked to death by a wounded animal four times your size that didn't die when you hit it the first time. the point is that an exhausted kill is an easy kill where you don't die. it's a decent point. it's fucking reasonable. also, afaik there's decent odds we learned hunting before we learned tools.

and yeah, i get that the OP was just upset and yelling in the initial post. i do understand that. and I understand their frustration at hearing a theory misrepresented as fact. but their subsequent reblogs and responses are equally thoughtless pseudointellectual posturing, and i'm sorry, it's garbage. someone pointed out modern pursuit hunters exist, and they basically went "mmmmyeah, all of that is just outdated, cherry-picked misinformation and you're very stupid and i'm very smart, look at me i know lots of tribe names and i'm going to link some articles about why these people no longer matter, isn't that sad and TOTALLY relevant to this conversation." someone else mentioned tracking, and they ONCE AGAIN basically said if you lose your line of sight, that's it, you're done, you've lost your quarry. tracking isn't real, don't even bring it up. hoofprints in wet ground in the rainy season? those are fake. doesn't happen. broken brush where a panicking animal has run? lol, that's not real. you can invent tools, but learning to follow an animal? bullshit. total malarkey. it's all just guesswork. you can GUESS where the antelope went but that's the best you can do.

🙄

anyway, i don't know enough about human evolution to guess why we're shaped the way we are, and i'm not going to speculate on it today. but what i DO know is that i am willing to believe the G/wi and the !Xo when they say, hey, if you drink a lot of water and then chase a large ungulate through the hottest part of the day in the fucking Kalahari at a steady jog, it will probably overheat and collapse before you will. because one, i kinda figure they know what they're talking about, and two, it does actually make sense when you stop and think for thirty fucking seconds. sure, you need to be physically conditioned to run distances in extreme heat, and you need to be able to find your quarry again if you lose sight of it. but conditioning and tracking are both things you can learn, no matter how badly certain clowns wish it wasn't because it doesn't support their bias. 🙃

#persistence hunting #is not the only kind of hunting in our evolutionary history #but it does work #and has BEEN working for humans for a LONG FUCKING TIME #like i am super fucking sorry but you are not presenting me with anything even RESEMBLING a coherent argument! #is persistence hunting the reason we're shaped this way? i don't fucking know! #but i do know it works as a technique! jackass! #god. i'll probably turn off reblogs in the morning but I'm still too angry at the absolute goddamned stupidity #and the way people in the notes were like Oh this makes so much sense! This is my favorite informed rant on tumblr! #BITCH W H E R E #i have not read nearly as much on this as i'd like to but jesus #just from the holes in what they're saying #JUST from the holes #what they're saying is a steaming crock of shit #and! are they right about the gaping holes in the persistence hunting theory? i dunno! maybe! #but i can't trust anything they say! obviously! #ooooo you're not gonna run carrying an ostrich egg full of water ooo #no of course you aren't! you're going to drink the water first! and then run! because that's what you've been conditioned to do #BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THIS WORKS ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh #feel free to reblog for now at least #god #dal is a scream #i got to their shit about tracking being a totally ludicrous proposal and lost my damn mind

[monty-glasses-roxy]

all these asks got me thinking about roxy experiencing the outside world for the first time lmao most conversations beginning with "HEY CASSIE / (CASSIE'S DAD) COME SMELL / FEEL / TASTE THIS" and it's just. a really big stick she found.

This is my favourite part of Meteors! The excitement and the sheer awe at the world around them as they experience it for real for the first ever time.

In this version, she would only be with the other animatronics in the ruins for a little while and she'd probably not want to leave yet. She'd be running around having her fun discovering how everything feels under her paws and showing off to everyone what she can do now. When she gets to live with Cassie and her dad and actually get to go outside of her own volition, she's absolutely like what you said too.

Running around, finding the most mundane things ever and shouting to Cassie to come see what she found. Cassie returns the favour by finding things like a different coloured leaf to the one Roxy found to show her. Cassie's dad still isn't entirely sure how he should interact with her and she's not as familiar with him yet so he would only really get involved whenever Cassie kind of invites him to get involved. He's more than happy to watch them though. He looked away for two seconds though and Cassie was cheering Roxy on to climb a tree which... he knew he probably should have tried to stop her but like. She was digging her claws in trying to climb and it wasn't going great so he left them to it. Until she yelled 'TO HELL WITH THIS' and just fucking leapt at it and pulled herself up as Cassie cheered. He's never moved so fast in his life lmao

But yeah, Roxy is losing her mind. She's running through grass, fascinated by the clouds and the dark sky (they had to wait till it got darker out because of the light sensitivity), climbing trees, having Cassie yell at her for trying to eat leaves, finding snails and having them and everything else she finds explained by Cassie... It's all so new and so amazing to her she loves it all so much already and she's so damn excited to see everything. She'll admit, it can get really overwhelming a lot of the time, but she wouldn't trade it for anything! Her tail is a blurr it's wagging so hard and if she wasn't so light sensitive, she'd have been out there all day every day if she could!

Cassie is so tired by the time they can drag her back inside. She's had to explain everything from how grass grows to how the clouds move and why the leaves fall off the trees. Anything she couldn't answer was redirected to her dad. Cassie loved it almost as much as Roxy did though. They played games in the park as well as all of the exploring stuff for as long as they could, they had a blast and a half!

And Roxy took a few dandelions, leaves and cool rocks back with her at Cassie's suggestion and Cassie's dad's insistence she do what she wants. When Roxy gets her prescription goggles, they go out in the day and she keeps telling them it's like a whole other world but they just can't quite see what she means. She's got questions for days though and they're both happy to answer them for her of course

#meteors au #pop rox answers #ruin dlc spoilers #this is BEFORE she starts watching TV and sees even MORE stuff she's never seen before #and she's not allowed internet access for um #a while. #cassie's dad has decided it would be best for her to wait a bit before she has that #cassie shows her stuff though #he trusts cassie not to give her free reign of it since the internet and how to stay safe on it isn't something that comes right after- #the conversation where he explains which tv programs are acting and fake and which ones aren't #there's no rush for it she's fine #he wants to make sure she's not overwhelmed with new information and knows enough before she gets into it #he might be a little bit overprotective with this one but roxy's having fun without it for now anyway #so there's really no rush #he'd be more comfortable giving her access if she would stop being stubborn and at least TRY to make some friends #'but I HAVE friends already!' she always says and cassie agrees #cause she doesn't really have friends outside of them either #but this just becomes a conversation on how they both need friends outside family #which immediately turns on him because oh??? he sees the animatronics as family now??? OHH??? REALLY???? #it's just circles in this house lmao #hasdfdsfd roxy finds vanessa again after everything and she's like 'see?? FRIEND.' #he's not impressed. #vanessa: are you really STILL using me to get out of your problems? #roxy: old rabbits die hard. #cassie: habits not rabbits #roxy: same thing! #vanessa is more amused than annoyed honestly she's missed roxy's bullshit more than she'll admit #and she's happy to see her so happy #it's all good

[unopenablebox]

ok, i have some regrets about having agreed w/ 🌸 that we would both come home early from work to hang out, since i came home myself and then was advised that their work was taking longer than planned. because i hadn’t put my usual aggressive anti-self measures in place that allow me to remember to have the mental action of checking where i am, what time it is, and if i should be doing what i am doing, i just like accidentally lost two and a half hours of time since that is how long it took for them to get home after all. so i could have stayed at work and gotten some desperately necessary tasks done, or at least come home and gotten desk work done before they arrived, except that of course they also have work to do tonight still so we are absolutely not going to spend any time together regardless and this was all an absolute waste of my time. and now i have to be at work for 5-6 hours tomorrow to make up for it. it is just not a good bet to make a plan where 🌸 finishes work or does not work or stops working, i have to stop doing this, i am so stupid

#box opener #it was my idea that we do it and i should not have trusted their agreement to it. that did not mean anything and #when it happens it is not information #''impulsive regret that we don't get to take naps together because we are not both at home and not doing work during a day ever'' #is not an emotion that can be used to inform any future decisions or ideas\ #this was a malice-free action and bringing it to their attention will have no effect except distressing them intensely #experiments are hard to predict the duration of no matter what; i also take much longer to finish things than i think i am going to; #also nothing is ever going to change and it would be a shit move to hurt my girlfriend on purpose for no reason. #however. i am going to be sulking about it indefinitely and i am not good at pretending not to sulk so i am. exorcising it here #they want to hang out this evening still but i can't hang out this evening! i'm busy being upset #and i used up a lot of my hanging out time on a two and a half hour window of forgetting things exist or that i exist in an environment! #now i have to proofread union documents instead.

[badolmen]

‘Can’t believe people are buying the stupid check marks lmao tumblr is not your friend you’re so dumb’ babes this ain’t AO3 - this site wasn’t built to run on the devotion of volunteers and donation drives. We live in a capitalist hellscape and this site is the lesser of many evils on the internet. If some people paying a few bucks to do stupid harmless shit like get some goofy check marks next to their name pays to keep the servers running I honestly can’t complain. This site has been an unprofitable sink full of unwashed dishes for years now. Be one with the mold or go buy a new sink to forget your week old tea mugs in.

#ra speaks #personal #tumblr #don’t get me wrong there are some absolutely insidious people in the tumblr company who want to milk every last cent out of you #and you’re free to leave and make your own microblogging site or find a new one #all corps are evil and greedy sobs but where are you going to go? twitter? YouTube video comments? #by all means show me the magical site that runs on faith trust and pixie dust. or make it yourself I’ll be doubly impressed. #but at the end of the day tumblr is the least soul crushing social site by a mile and if throwing cash at them #keeps them from releasing whatever plague of advertising information farming that’s infected every other social site #then I think people should keep throwing the occasional 10$ their way

[sunny-bunny-bird]

I’m gonna be deadass I am so pissed abt the bullshit I just saw.

Schizophrenia is not an excuse!! I’m sorry those fucks were being mean to you. I agree they are being like, genuinely ableist. But as a PROFESSIONAL ECOLOGIST you have a responsibly to say “I’m sorry, I was wrong” not edit a tumblr post (which you admit on this site isn’t effective) and then deflect any blame by focusing on the backlash you’re getting.

And I swear to god before any says “this is tumblr who cares lol” maybe the other schizophrenics like ME who LIVE IN THAT AREA and had to be in your delusional over-reaction with you for a bit while they did the research you AS A PROFESSIONAL, SOMETHING YOU ARE CURRENTLY TALKING ABOUT AS AN EXCUSE FOR WHY YOU WERE SO UPSET could not be assed to do because you saw a twitter post???

you have not plainly apologized and recanted your statement. anything that could be remotely taken as such has been padded in layers and layers of you talking about how bad YOU feel. fuck. off. oh my god.

#solar.txt #if you know you know i just #i'm mad. i'm genuinely mad. for the first time in my life i'm genuinely personally mad at a big tumblr blogger #do I get an achievement or something? #i highly doubt anyone's going to come at me for this because I'm not popular but just as some food for thought: #if he's allowed to post a giant rant of misinformation because he's schizophrenic and emotional to his thousands of followers who trust and #believe him as a professional. then why am I as a fellow schizophrenic who would be personally impacted by the events he is blowing way out #of proportion not allowed to vent on my personal private blog that has maybe 50 followers? why am I not allowed to be upset and say #irrational things? like holy fuck I'm actually so mad. I want to say he'll come back and realize he fucked up but also like. this is tumblr #he's going to start chanting that. this is tumblr this is tumblr!!! like he wasn't just taking a twitter post as gospel and chanting #i'm an ecologist I'm an ecologist!! no one was advocating for bullying you either. being rude? yeah. but that's because you started it #and then dug your fucking heels in throwing up the I panicked!! I'm just passionate!!! defense like.... #you could make the post unrebloggable you know. you can do that now. you could make a pinned post with actual information. but will you? #i'm gonna guess no because you're already accusing people of gaslighting you so hey. you'll probably get off scott free

[publius-library]

sorry for inflicting you with henry clay pain but do you know if any of the triumvirs, outside of webster, had any godsons? If so, what were their relationships with them??

You hate me. (/j /lh)

I can't find anything about Clay or Calhoun having any godsons, so I'm assuming they didn't have any. They both had plenty of kids though. Thank you for the ask.

#asks #henry clay #john calhoun #daniel webster #i love that y'all trust me to provide information on these men as if i've researched them at all since last year SFHSJKF #it's chill tho i don't mind researching historical figures i don't know a lot baout #about* #my information just isn't as detailed or well thought through #im just working with public archives #i do have an encyclopedia set that im going to read at some point down the line #i actually should bring that out of the Vault (tm) bc its pretty reliable #i think ill do that this weekend to hopefully provide better information on these dudes #so yeah feel free to keep asking!! im just a little bit behind on the 19th century rn