fractalspaces

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BY THE WAY! Want a secure, free VPN for all your privacy needs?

✨ USE! PROTON! VPN! ✨

Set it to Netherlands and you'll be 100% good to go. They also have a mail service btw, it's awesome, go go go. IT'S FREE. And voted best for several years in a row.

how i sleep knowing i will pirate every single thing released on disney plus

#Nothing beats sleeping well #Except doing so for $0 #Also use ublock if you wanna stream #Haven't seen an ad in years #Op please let me rec this in the comments just a second #It's for the cause #take back the internet #Anticapitalism #internet security #internet privacy

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CrimethInc, y'all usually have good stuff but BLEASE tell me/tell the kiddos the "Femme's Guide" is tongue in cheek. Like... Yeah, it's a fun article. But you don't want cops (or cameras, or basically anyone) to know who you are, or anything identifiable about you, and if you can avoid giving away your gender without binding then for the love of Kropotkin - go for it. Makeup is anathema. Use solid blacks. You're aiming for function.

For the rest - Hide those tattoos, take the piercings off. Protect your eyes with safety googles if you can instead of a ski mask: I modified mine with reflective film (because facial recognition is a thing) and secured my old glasses inside with wire. Hell, have my antifascist self-care tag too.

I don't have a lot of reach here but if I can help one person be safer protesting that's great already.

If you are participating in protests, encampments, or occupations, you should understand how to dress to minimize your risk factors.

Most importantly—if you wish to protect your privacy, you will need an outfit that conceals your identifying features. You should change into it in a location that is not under surveillance, wear it for the entire duration of the activity, then change out of it in a location that is also not surveilled. You should not be seen with any elements of the outfit before or after.

Consider reading these short instructional guides:

Fashion Tips for the Brave

https://crimethinc.com/fashiontips

The Femme’s Guide to Riot Fashion

https://crimethinc.com/riotfemme

#antifascist selfcare #glitter is terrible #it stays on for days #shit's worse than tear gas #palestine #acab

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The emotional response IS anger - it's your system's answer to injustice, the way your body knows "I Don't Fucking Deserve This." Let it move you. Don't let it control you.

Do you know how many people I'd love to guillotine? The violent fantasies coming to mind every time I hear some billionaire or politician is fucking over the peoples or the planet? It's there! And maybe one day we'll have to indeed physically fight for our lives - Many already have to.

But as a political system? We can't stand for prison abolition and executions at the same time. We can't look at the past and go "ok so one of the problems with past revolutions WAS authoritarianism" and then decide we can wield it right, actually.

We gotta kill that cop in out brains, daily.

When I say “free water, free food, free shelter, free healthcare, free education for everyone” in that “everyone” I even include the people I hate. Too many people get surprised at the idea that I do wish for the people I hate to have better lives.

#And it's the hardest fucking thing #And a duty from the left #I'm an anarcho communist #Precisely because it's our original sin #antifascism #Anarchist communism #Anarchism #authoritarianism #Leftist praxis

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Full Transcript at the link; 3-minute listen.

Quote:

By taking biopsies from long COVID patients before and after exercising, scientists in the Netherlands constructed a startling picture of widespread abnormalities in muscle tissue that may explain this severe reaction to physical activity.

Among the most striking findings were clear signs that the cellular power plants, the mitochondria, are compromised and the tissue starved for energy.

"We saw this immediately and it's very profound," says Braeden Charlton, one of the study's authors at Vrije University in Amsterdam.

The tissue samples from long COVID patients also revealed severe muscle damage, a disturbed immune response, and a buildup of microclots.

"This is a very real disease," says Charlton. "We see this at basically every parameter that we measure."

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this is going to be difficult -> i am capable of doing difficult things -> i have done everything prior to this moment -> this difficulty will soon be proof of capability

#Let this be uni #Marx pls I'm begging u #Send me your philosopowers #It's exams week

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BUT SIR, THE IDEA THAT MARX'S ATHEISM AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM INHERENTLY RULES OUT THE CONCEPTS OF PERSONHOOD, FREEDOM, AND DIGNITY; CONDEMNING HUMAN BEINGS TO ECONOMICAL DETERMINISM??? THAT... THAT IS ANATHEMA TO MARX HIMSELF???

SIR, I'M REALLY TRYING TO STOP INTERRUPTING YOUR CLASS. I'M INTERESTED. I RAISE MY HAND EVERY WEDNESDAY BECAUSE IT'S INTERESTING. BUT WE'VE AGREED IN LIKE THREE THINGS SO FAR, AND YOU'RE MISREPRESENTING A MAN JUST BECAUSE HE DOESN'T JIVE WITH YOUR SAINT THOMAS' IDEA OF AN IMMORTAL SOUL THAT BEGINS AT CONCEPTION. YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT MARXISM WITHOUT INVOKING THE HUMAN SPIRIT. THE MAN HIMSELF TALKS ABOUT THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND ITS STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM AND THE ALIENATION OF WHAT MAKES LIFE WORTH LIVING AND HOW THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER OF A FEW STRIPS EVERYONE ELSE OF THE DIGNITY THAT'S THEIR BIRTHRIGHT AS HUMAN BEINGS AND AND AND

SIR PROFESSOR PLS THE CLASS WAS CALLED "ANTHROPOLOGY", YOUR SAID IT WAS ACTUALLY GONNA BE "PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY", AND SO FAR IT'S NEITHER.

#i am in despair #this man is going to hate me #i swear i don't mean to debate him #i participate because i'm interested!!! #It's usually 'huh ok don't share that pov but hey! knowledge!' #but jesus fucking christ #today it was like 'wow not a single thing he said is right' #karl marx #marxism #just uni things

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...he is weaving the chocolate. Do you copy, this bitch is WEAVING CHOCOLATE

#I hate him. I hate this. #I'M HAVING AN ENVY ATTACK #HIS UNRIVALED TALENT #HOW DARE YOU #Chef Guichon has Chernobyl'd my inner cook again #Someone please get on his level #Just to show others can get there and therefore #This fucker is a mortal #(I admire him and I hope has the best life ok just-- do you feel me here????)

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Revolutionary Girl Utena

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Not to speak of how much from yourself you have to cut away. Your time isn't yours, it belongs to your spoons management. How many do I have today, how much will every action cost? Is it today a Bad Pain Day, a Bad Fog Day, or both? This balancing act, daily. This acknowledgement that doing one fun thing means days and days of recovery. Was it worth it? Reaching out costs! But so does being lonely.

Chronic pain means phantom pain - and the thing you're mourning is you.

#Reblog brought to you #By getting my first fibro crisis at uni #I've been stupidly happy there #So much i spend every spoon in the morning #And then i still have to commute 2hrs #And i should be studying because the exams are approaching #It scares me #I know i can shine here #I don't want to burn out so soon and fail...

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virgin mary barbie doll from argentina

#VAMO VECINOSSSS #les salió de pana la exposición #es muy tlt-coded #the locked tomb #tamsyn muir saw this in a dream

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I'm a woman in the way someone stifled by their hometown left it to see what else was on the road.

I'll always have grown up there. My family and friends live there, so I keep in touch, visit, and sometimes even stay over. Keep an eye on the news, on history and politics. It's going to stay engraved on my accent unless I change my body on its very structure, and the accent will always get me pegged as a migrant - so I'll be treated as such wherever I go.

There's no place I'll want to grow roots in. I'm never coming back.

It's perfect, actually. I was a stranger before I left.

This is my personal experience, of course. Just one of the infinite possibilities of Queerness. But if I'm my mother's son and my father's daughter and my own third, foreign thing... Being a permanent traveler, yet caring fiercely for this place where I was never truly happy; it isn't much of a stretch.

Por mí y por todas mis compañeras, Women's Rights are Human Rights, and we won't stand being told to wait for other issues to be solved first.

#8M #8 de Marzo #March 8th #international women's day #this post brought to you #by me getting into uni #and changing my social name and pronouns #hi I'm Dante #all pronouns & genders apply but #everyone assumed “he/him” #and I'm quite alright with it

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There, in the sunlit forest on a high ridgeline, was a tree I had never seen before.

I spend a lot of time looking at trees. I know my beech, sourwood, tulip poplar, sassafras and shagbark hickory. Appalachian forests have such a diverse tree community that for those who grew up in or around the ancient mountains, forests in other places feel curiously simple and flat.

Oaks: red, white, black, bur, scarlet, post, overcup, pin, chestnut, willow, chinkapin, and likely a few others I forgot. Shellbark, shagbark and pignut hickories. Sweetgum, serviceberry, hackberry, sycamore, holly, black walnut, white walnut, persimmon, Eastern redcedar, sugar maple, red maple, silver maple, striped maple, boxelder maple, black locust, stewartia, silverbell, Kentucky yellowwood, blackgum, black cherry, cucumber magnolia, umbrella magnolia, big-leaf magnolia, white pine, scrub pine, Eastern hemlock, redbud, flowering dogwood, yellow buckeye, white ash, witch hazel, pawpaw, linden, hornbeam, and I could continue, but y'all would never get free!

And yet, this tree is different.

We gather around the tree as though surrounding the feet of a prophet. Among the couple dozen of us, only a few are much younger than forty. Even one of the younger men, who smiles approvingly and compliments my sharp eye when I identify herbs along the trail, has gray streaking his beard. One older gentleman scales the steep ridge slowly, relying on a cane for support.

The older folks talk to us young folks with enthusiasm. They brighten when we can call plants and trees by name and list their virtues and importance. "You're right! That's Smilax." "Good eye!" "Do you know what this is?—Yes, Eupatorium, that's a pollinator's paradise." "Are you planning to study botany?"

The tree we have come to see is not like the tall and pillar-like oaks that surround us. It is still young, barely the diameter of a fence post. Its bark is gray and forms broad stripes like rivulets of water down smooth rock. Its smooth leaves are long, with thin pointed teeth along their edges. Some of the group carefully examine the bark down to the ground, but the tree is healthy and flourishing, for now.

This tree is among the last of its kind.

The wood of the American Chestnut was once used to craft both cradles and coffins, and thus it was known as the "cradle-to-grave tree." The tree that would hold you in entering this world and in leaving it would also sustain your body throughout your life: each tree produced a hundred pounds of edible nuts every winter, feeding humans and all the other creatures of the mountains. In the Appalachian Mountains, massive chestnut trees formed a third of the overstory of the forest, sometimes growing larger than six feet in diameter.

They are a keystone species, and this is my first time seeing one alive in the wild.

It's a sad story. But I have to tell you so you will understand.

At the turn of the 20th century, the chestnut trees of Appalachia were fundamental to life in this ecosystem, but something sinister had taken hold, accidentally imported from Asia. Cryphonectria parasitica is a pathogenic fungus that infects chestnut trees. It co-evolved with the Chinese chestnut, and therefore the Chinese chestnut is not bothered much by the fungus.

The American chestnut, unlike its Chinese sister, had no resistance whatsoever.

They showed us slides with photos of trees infected with the chestnut blight earlier. It looks like sickly orange insulation foam oozing through the bark of the trees. It looks like that orange powder that comes in boxes of Kraft mac and cheese. It looks wrong. It means death.

The chestnut plague was one of the worst ecological disasters ever to occur in this place—which is saying something. And almost no one is alive who remembers it. By the end of the 1940's, by the time my grandparents were born, approximately three to four billion American chestnut trees were dead.

The Queen of the Forest was functionally extinct. With her, at least seven moth species dependent on her as a host plant were lost forever, and no one knows how much else. She is a keystone species, and when the keystone that holds a structure in place is removed, everything falls.

Appalachia is still falling.

Now, in some places, mostly-dead trees tried to put up new sprouts. It was only a matter of time for those lingering sprouts of life.

But life, however weak, means hope.

I learned that once in a rare while, one of the surviving sprouts got lucky enough to successfully flower and produce a chestnut. And from that seed, a new tree could be grown. People searched for the still-living sprouts and gathered what few chestnuts could be produced, and began growing and breeding the trees.

Some people tried hybridizing American and Chinese chestnuts and then crossing the hybrids to produce purer American strains that might have some resistance to the disease. They did this for decades.

And yet, it wasn't enough. The hybrid trees were stronger, but not strong enough.

Extinction is inevitable. It's natural. There have been at least five mass extinctions in Earth's history, and the sixth is coming fast. Many people accepted that the American chestnut was gone forever. There had been an intensive breeding program, summoning all the natural forces of evolution to produce a tree that could survive the plague, and it wasn't enough.

This has happened to more species than can possibly be counted or mourned. And every species is forced to accept this reality.

Except one.

We are a difficult motherfucker of a species, aren't we? If every letter of the genome's book of life spelled doom for the Queen of the Forest, then we would write a new ending ourselves. Research teams worked to extract a gene from wheat and implant it in the American chestnut, in hopes of creating an American chestnut tree that could survive.

This project led to the Darling 58, the world's first genetically modified organism to be created for the purpose of release into the wild.

The Darling 58 chestnut is not immune, the presenters warned us. It does become infected with the blight. And some trees die. But some live.

And life means hope.

In isolated areas, some surviving American Chestnut trees have been discovered, most of them still very young. The researchers hope it is possible that some of these trees may have been spared not because of pure luck, but because they carry something in their genes that slows the blight in doing its deadly work, and that possibly this small bit of innate resistance can be shaped and combined with other efforts to create a tree that can live to grow old.

This long, desperate, multi-decade quest is what has brought us here. The tree before me is one such tree: a rare survivor. In this clearing, a number of other baby chestnut trees have been planted by human hands. They are hybrids of the Darling 58 and the best of the best Chinese/American hybrids. The little trees are as prepared for the blight as we can possibly make them at this time. It is still very possible that I will watch them die. Almost certainly, I will watch this tree die, the one that shades us with her young, stately limbs.

Some of the people standing around me are in their 70's or 80's, and yet, they have no memory of a world where the Queen of the Forest was at her full majesty. The oldest remember the haunting shapes of the colossal dead trees looming as if in silent judgment.

I am shaken by this realization. They will not live to see the baby trees grow old. The people who began the effort to save the American chestnut devoted decades of their lives to these little trees, knowing all the while they likely never would see them grow tall. Knowing they would not see the work finished. Knowing they wouldn't be able to be there to finish it. Knowing they wouldn't be certain if it could be finished.

When the work began, the technology to complete it did not exist. In the first decades after the great old trees were dead, genetic engineering was a fantasy.

But those that came before me had to imagine that there was some hope of a future. Hope set the foundation. Now that little spark of hope is a fragile flame, and the torch is being passed to the next generation.

When a keystone is removed, everything suffers. What happens when a keystone is put back into place? The caretakers of the American chestnut hope that when the Queen is restored, all of Appalachia will become more resilient and able to adapt to climate change.

Not only that, but this experiment in changing the course of evolution is teaching us lessons and skills that may be able to help us save other species.

It's just one tree—but it's never just one tree. It's a bear successfully raising cubs, chestnut bread being served at a Cherokee festival, carbon being removed from the atmosphere and returned to the Earth, a wealth of nectar being produced for pollinators, scientific insights into how to save a species from a deadly pathogen, a baby cradle being shaped in the skilled hands of an Appalachian crafter. It's everything.

Despair is individual; hope is an ecosystem. Despair is a wall that shuts out everything; hope is seeing through a crack in that wall and catching a glimpse of a single tree, and devoting your life to chiseling through the wall towards that tree, even if you know you will never reach it yourself.

An old man points to a shaft of light through the darkness we are both in, toward a crack in the wall. "Do you see it too?" he says. I look, and on the other side I see a young forest full of sunlight, with limber, pole-size chestnut trees growing toward the canopy among the old oaks and hickories. The chestnut trees are in bloom with fuzzy spikes of creamy white, and bumblebees heavy with pollen move among them. I tell the man what I see, and he smiles.

"When I was your age, that crack was so narrow, all I could see was a single little sapling on the forest floor," he says. "I've been chipping away at it all my life. Maybe your generation will be the one to finally reach the other side."

Hope is a great work that takes a lifetime. It is the hardest thing we are asked to do, and the most essential.

I am trying to show you a glimpse of the other side. Do you see it too?

#a compass for the delights #holy shit i am sobbing irl #yes #i can see it #thank you so much

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Actually life is beautiful because the sound I make while trying to breathe around hot food sounds like my dog trying to eat an apple. When I yawn my cat tries to put his face in my mouth like a little dentist man and when he yawns I put my finger in his obligate-carnivore trapzone and we both know he will not hurt me. When I do not fold my clothes, they do not hold it against me.

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said "look! It's snowing!" so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn't the first snow and it won't be the last but wasn't it lovely, like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.

This is the process of getting better. With wonderful people and wonderful strangers and wonderful friends: I am getting better, slowly. Thank you, whoever you are. In some way, you've been wonderful, and left a wonderful place in the world to ripple out to me. In some small way - isn't it beautiful - I promise, you've been helping.

#a compass for the delights

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HOLY FUCKING SHIT I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING NOW.

*sets this down in front of you*

*rushes to a nearby bush and peeks at you through the leaves*

#some patterns do be hardcoded #dont apologize op you're wayyy onto something #you just gotta swap who's got the chronic illness #fullmetal alchemist #conqueror of shamballa #also yeah i did ship it #i was 15 when this movie came out come on #what of it #jayvik #edfons #(?) #ed x heiderich #(as per the old ways)

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Archetypal mad scientist who is an Ecologist and her evil plan is always something like put Baikal seals in the Great Lakes

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Revenge Bedtime Procrastination! It's $Free.99!

#i'm in this picture and i'm too tired to dislike it

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@staff , I hope y'all know you've murdered Tumblr.

I'm not trying to be dramatic. I was there when LiveJournal went down as a fandom, art, and writing hub. Remember the causes of its painful, drawn-out, inevitable death - Bans of NSFW content, purging of accounts with no recourse, the CEO throwing tantrums and personally deleting users, making the site hostile to post in to maximize profit (back then, ads everywhere), and changes in the TOS that severely killed privacy.

There's a threshold for distrust, and once you've lost your userbase's good will, there's no way back. People will hop onto the next platform, and it won't matter if it's a wreck as long as it's not as bad as this.

You ought to know. It's why us ancient mummies came here and made this place a thing.

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 

We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.

To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 

For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 

Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

#those who don't learn from history #etc #tumblr #staff #fuck ai #i just hope the next mass migration #isn't to fucking Discord #i heard cohost is nice