#scientific evidence of our existence we can fucking GET

[karmaphone]

singlets stop presuming that everyone is multiple to some degree, actually challenge

#bruh there's a big distinction #does everyone experience dissociation? yes most people daydream and read books and lose track of what exactly they're doing while driving #the big distinction is SEPARATE personality states #if you do not have more than one of you in your head then you're a fucking singlet no matter how much dissociation you experience #there's a big difference between say someone with did or osdd and someone with dpdrd #can it run the whole gamut of experiences thereupon? yea. are there some people who don't align fully with either and who don't fall into #neat little boxes because that's not how the human experience works? yea #but there is a huge difference between acknowledging the level of dissociation that people experience every day and not integrating multipl #personality states between the ages of six and nine #it's a literal documented thing. there's research about it. it's not like systems are doing ALL of this in the dark #it's not like systems are out here pointing at singlets and being like You Have Exactly 0% Of What I Experience because it's just not true! #everyone experiences dissociation but not everyone has multiple fucking people inside them!!! #compare me losing entire days and weeks and remembering NOTHING except vague minute long snippets to people suffering in school from not #being able to pee when they need to #is much of our daily life traumatizing? yes. is it so traumatizing as a whole that Everyone's A Little Bit Multiple Actually? hell no #we make up 1-3% of the population not fucking 10-20 or 30-50 and certainly not 90 #I realize this comes off as super psychiatry approval-y which I personally don't believe much in but like. we'll take what fucking #scientific evidence of our existence we can fucking GET #I'm. literally Angry right now ****** will probably delete this later but jfc are you serious

[lakesbian]

okay, as i have been encouraged by the public (like 2 people) to go forward with this research, i present the very scientific Tier List of Blonde Wildbow Characters Ranked From Most to Least Likely to Have A Piss Kink. virtually no one wanted this post. i did not want this post. it is 2.1k words long. i wanted to inform you of that before you clicked read more in case you were just expecting a tier list image and did not actually want to read 2.1k words about piss kinks.

wherein:

the tier list exists because of this ask, which was written in jesting response to the subject of victoria dallon's canon piss kink (more on that below) and somewhat intentionally misrepresented by me as being contextless because i thought it was funny to crop it and reply with 'ok.' which led to a massive containment breach and several thousand people not realizing anon was trying to make a joke. sorry. my bad, anon.

here, "likelihood of having a piss kink" is defined as "likelihood of having a kink that involves primarily or significantly urine," and genre of piss kink shall be clarified for the characters where it's a possibility.

no pictures are included for the characters because not all of them have fanart and also there's a lot of them and the tier list is only so big and i'm lazy

characters i do not know well enough to vibe check are not included

rationally speaking it would make most sense to presume that unless a character has a canon or heavily implied piss kink it is heavily implausible for them to have one but this post would be boring and pointless if i went that route so i'm going to include some somewhat baseless vibe-checking/discussion of hypotheticals where it's not explicitly disproven or improbable. with my bestest attempts to remain reasonable levels of character accurate given the post circumstances.

our ranks here are:

canon: this character canonically has a piss kink

highly plausible: there is strong contextual evidence that could be used to argue for the presence of a piss kink

plausible: based on more vibes/less solid evidence than "highly plausible," but a piss kink is still possible

could go either way: there is a lack of evidence in either direction, there's no way to make a clear argument on the matter

not very plausible: there is decent contextual evidence or simply Character Vibes that could be used to argue against the presence of a piss kink

strong evidence against: it can be deemed nigh-certain that this character does not have a piss kink

The Chart:

the characters who were not included because i do not know them personally (opinions welcomed):

all three ashleys

bianca

The Analysis:

Canon:

victoria: stated by wildbow to have some kind of "preferred fluid" you shouldn't drink, knows what urine tastes like. canon watersports kink. i hate her. i hope she stands within 20 feet of fentanyl and overdoses and dies. i hope she goes down a slide too hard.

Highly Plausible:

citrine: we know that accord is certainly and without doubt enough of a control freak (<- said w/ deep affection) that he insists that his ambassadors refrain from Wanton and Unprofessional Bathroom Breaks, but also insists that they never indicate they have to pee (or engage in any other basic bodily function) ever because that's Icky and if they do he will want to Rube Goldberg Machine But The Machine Is A Saw Trap them about it. and we know that citrine gets off on him being a control freak. it can thus be reasonably extrapolated that she's constantly doing accidental omorashi w/ accord and is just as into that as she is all the other aspects of control. the piss is incidental--the main point is still whatever appeals to her about the control in general--but, like, The Piss Is There. extremely does not want to experience what would happen if she ever even remotely fucked up holding, but presumably enjoys the mortifying ordeal of attempting to politely excuse herself to the restroom and/or stoically holding so she doesn't have to excuse herself in the first place.

paige (pact): she textually, literally, canonically, For Fucking Real, is a lesbian who enters into the world of pactverse magic because she's tempted by a hypothetical dom/sub dynamic with a hot professor who is actually a sphinx. (if any of you who haven't read pact yet are reading this post. Please go read pact.) this extrapolation is less blatant than citrine, but it's by no means unreasonable to assume that there could be some bladder control going on here. she can go to the bathroom when she's a good girl and finishes answering all of isadora's questions. etc. hey do you think pactverse would have really hardcore RACK omorashi where you make a statement that you are NOT going to go until [x amount of time] and it's your karma on the line if you fuck it up. i bet people with executive dysfunction in pact do this type of shit a lot. they're like i am going to start my homework RIGHT NOW!!! and then they Have to. i digress.

Plausible:

peter: we have no information about his love life beyond him flirting with ainsley amidst a Serious Disaster involving Demons, so this is just vibes-based, but he's mean and manipulative and unpleasant in a specific way that could theoretically insinuate that he would enjoy accidentally-on-purpose preventing a girl from getting to the bathroom & watching her squirm. you'll have to trust me on this.

Could Go Either Way:

ellie: my consultant re the pelhams vibes-based ranked her higher than peter, but i don't see it. i could see her having one, but it'd be in a different and grosser direction than peter. i feel like blake's comparison of her to a weak, groveling dog in a pack may be relevant here.

rose (old): i don't strongly see it, but based on what we know about her sex life i wouldn't be surprised if she participated in any heat-of-the-moment watersports.

rose (young): somehow coming in with the exact right bizarre psychosexual complexes to score higher than both blake and pre-meiosis thorburn. i don't think it's likely, but i somehow don't see a reason to mark her down as entirely implausible. her theoretical psychosexual complex about blake is marked by a few facts: she says that he has a "hate-on" for her, she does that weird thing where she hugs him for comfort & lets him give her his jacket (what if the lamb you were leading to slaughter was the man you could've been, and for just a moment, you wanted to take kindness from The Man You Could've Been despite the fact that, because you are not him, you will betray him regardless), when he sacrifices himself to fuse with/bolster her the fusing is described in ostensibly sexual language (being Inside her, the two halves grinding, etc), and she does that whole noticeable twice-over to his almost-naked body. she would absolutely never admit to wanting to fuck her "clone," but were she to envision it, the scenario she would mentally craft would involve blake wanting to fuck her (he never would & she knows this) and, like, eating her out like he wants to kill her or doing some boot frotting with splinters. oh and she would give him the most awkward dry unpleasant handjob on the planet where she's very clearly treating him like a program to experiment with, press button A and find out if it gets result B. I digress. one could also imagine a theoretical rose thorburn piss kink which remains an entirely subconscious psychosexual fixation that she freudian-slips into conversation at least once a la "hate-on," wherein the ideal scenario for her earlier into the book would be wetting herself for reasons entirely against her control despite being so very brave and stalwart and stoic, and imaginary blake is like "wow you were so brave and stoic about that...it's ok everyone has gotten into an awkward spot once or twice in their lives. in fact, [personal recounting of relevant horrible memory]. here have my jacket i will tie it around your waist for you with a lingering amount of physical contact." and later into the book that would switch to just Making The Fuck Up that he'd be really mean and humiliating about it and then getting mad about her imaginary vision of him doing that even though he literally would not do that ever. (the hypothetical of him being mean about it would be a kink thing for her also obviously. Hate On, she says.) okay sorry for talking so much about rose thorburn's psychosexual fixation with blake thorburn i think it's really funny for her to be extremely abnormal about the clonefucking quandary.

fell: i don't actually know him well enough to postulate what genre it would be if he hypothetically had one but despite not Expecting that he has one i wouldn't find it wholly implausible if wildbow got up tomorrow and made an announcement declaring that he does. i think this could be utilized primarily for the humor purposes of, like. blake being like "hey i know we can't really pull over right now BUT could you pull over? i need to take a leak. should i say want to? is it technically lying if i say need but it's not an emergency yet?" and fell being like No. Do Not Say Another Word On This Subject And Also I Hate You. which is because he is desperately and fervently and furiously and with great and genuine anger and rage attempting to Not think about Blake Thorburn, A Conventionally Attractive And Very Annoying Man, having to pee. but blake interprets it as fell being an asshole for no reason and is like ohhh ok fuck you i guess should i just pee on your seat then. you want me to ruin your car seat? [accusatory, fully bluffing, would rather kill himself than piss in fell's car] you're a car guy who doesn't even care about your fancy white upholstery? and fell is like [desperately doing mental math on if blake thorburn, whomst is already covered in fleas and bloods and mysterious liquids, would be petty enough to intentionally piss himself to ruin fell's car] . I will make you walk. like you can see my vision right.

Not Very Plausible:

kathryn: i simply do not see it. she could have something weird going on but it's not a piss kink. the vibes are not being served.

sandra: also a simple matter of the vibes not being there. has probably been exposed to it at one time or another but sees it as undignified and so on

callan: not sensing it

lisa: bathroom shit is surely beyond mundane to her just like everyone elses private bodily workings thoughts feelings etc. i dont even think she has any kinks or interest in sex in general

crystal: this is the only interesting one in this section! she was described to me as "very laid back, but also kind of passive. she's a slob in her private life. sort of goes with the flow to the point that it led her joining a paramilitary force with no oversight." i think being in the dallon-pelham torment nexus sort of intrinsically adds +20 Not Likely points unless youre victoria but i can only assume from this description of her personality that if someone she was fucking was into it she would just roll with it.

neil: was described to me as "neil barely gets anything. he's kind of reckless? he trained victoria a lot. he cheated on his wife with her sister. he liked knocking toddler-aged victoria over as a form of 'training.'" probably not very likely at all but who knows. maybe "declines to fuck sarah and watches panty pissing porn instead" is on his list of secrets next to "cheated on his wife with her sister."

Strong Evidence Against:

carol, paige (worm) (this is canary in case you forgot like i did), cuff, theo, sarah: the club of generic respectable milquetoast cishets who would not do any of that shit and would probably judge someone at least a little for any amount of kink (or in some cases even vanilla sex <3), with paige coming on on the less-judgemental end of the scale and carol coming in at the high end of the judgement scale.

ciara: not generic milquetoast or respectable but the idea of her being into it is just like. silly to me. faerie queens aren't into piss that would be ridiculous. unless they're pactverse faerie queens, then it's a "got bored of it 31 centuries ago" situation, but ciara is not a pactverse faerie.

elle: already struggles with keeping up with hygiene and like...general Existence. surely would not associate any bodily function w/ anything but a task to complete or a mess to clean (<- other task). also presumably might need help going to the bathroom/being reminded that she needs to go sometimes so that certainly would not b anywhere near sexual to her

scion: uh. well. I don't think he knows what any of that shit is to be real with you. Does he even fucking count as blonde?

blake: is textually extremely triggered and distressed and disgusted by being dirty/unclean & losing control over his physical body, to the point where not being able to regularly shave is actively seriously detrimental to his mental health. his tragic character arc of having his identity degraded to the point where "is that still blake" becomes debatable a la ship-of-theseus question is viscerally represented by the fact that bogeyman-blake is just constantly filthy, to the point of turning snow into gray, stained slush when he walks thru it. struggling to deal with basic bodily functions & cleanliness while homeless absolutely severely traumatized him. he would react to someone else wetting themselves with, like, appropriately blake-like levels of kindness & concern, but he would still 100% find the actual piss disgusting. he would try to avoid showing it, but he would find it disgusting. we see him reacting with immense horror to conquest threatening to make him soil himself. if he were ever actually forced into a circumstance where he was genuinely worried about the possibility of pissing himself--let alone if he actually did so--he would have a Category 5 DEFCON 1 Mental Health Moment. all of which is a great reason he should have pissed himself at least once during pact! (<- i just elaborated on this point at such great length i had to force myself to backspace it all and move onto the next bulletpoint)

PMT: exact same trauma as blake. because you know. They were Blake before they got got. unlike blake, still capable of wanting to fuck people, but, like, We Know They're Not Doing Anything With Piss. leatherdyke piss kinkster pmt is a beautiful beautiful vision but its not true.

there you go. thats it. thats the tierlist.

[mylifeisfruk4ever]

Group Project has been created

Patroclus has added Achilles, Odysseus, Menelaus, and Diomedes to Group Project.

Patroclus's name has been changed to Baby

Achilles's name has been changed to I'm sexy and I know it

Odysseus 's name has been changed to SmartAss

Diomedes's nickname has been changed to Fight me

Menelaus's nickname has been changed to Himbo

 

Baby: I'm starting to regret it.

I'm sexy and I know it: If you want, you can change your nickname.

Baby: Nope, I'm Baby and I know it.

Himbo: Did you just…did you just mention LMFAO?

Baby: Achilles' nickname is the fucking song name. I stated a fact.

SmartAss: Guys, this is ridiculous. It should be a science project group.

I'm sexy and I know it: do you want to change and become Gayleo?

SmartAss: Gayleo never existed.

I'm sexy and I know it: Speak for yourself. He is my guide and inspiration!!!

Fight me: Are you making gay jokes without me?!

I'm sexy and I know it: Never, bro!

SmartAss: guys, we should get organized for the project! The professor gave us carte blanche!

I'm sexy and I know it: we have time!

SmartAss: Three weeks!

I'm sexy and I know it: at worst you enter the professor's house and change your grades. It would not be the first time.

SmartAss: hth yu know?

I'm sexy and I know it: Gays know everything.

Baby: we saw you come out of Professor Nestor's window. You fell and rolled a few feet. Then you got up and pretended you were there for a walk.

SmartAss: You have no proof.

Himbo: I'm starting to think that maybe it was better to be in a group with my cousin.

 

6pm.

I'm sexy and I know it: so, I have a scientific headcanon…

SmartAss: Please say theory! You have a scientific theory!

I'm sexy and I know it: Anyway, I have a scientific headcanon. But I need Hector in a locked room and a gun.

Baby: Achilles, we will not use Russian roulette for our project.

I'm sexy and I know it: But it's for science! Probability theory! It's brainy.

Himbo: Still no. Let's use Paris.

Fight me: what if we put Paris and Hector in a room with only one gun? What would happen?

SmartAss: Bold of you assumes that Hector doesn't strangle his brother after five minutes.

Himbo: mood.

 

8pm

SmartAss: We need an idea!

Fight me: I think using Hector and Paris would solve our problems.

SmartAss: but it's illegal!

Fight me: and since when do you worry?

SmartAss: Since there might be evidence that can frame me, or too many witnesses. I have nothing against you guys, but I would kill you and hide your bodies so I don't end up in prison. No offense.

Himbo: We already knew that

Fight me: That's why Ajax hates you.

I'm sexy and I know it: doesn't Ajax hate him because Odysseus stole his job as captain of the rugby team?

Fight me: Also.

SmartAss: Some don't know how to lose.

Himbo: You weren't even on the team.

SmartAss: and now I'm captain. Your point?

Baby: Forget Hector and Paris. I want to study Odysseus.

I'm sexy and I know it: are you cheating on me for the dwarf?!

SmartAss: Hey!

Fight me: don't listen to him, bro. It is known that dwarves have something else that is very great.

Himbo: And how do you know?

Fight me: you'd like to know, huh?

 

8.45pm

SmartAss: studying the dysfunctional relationships of Ettore's family is not a bad idea...

Himbo: What changed your mind?

SmartAss: I went to take out the garbage…

I'm sexy and I know it: it's not nice to talk like that about Diomedes.

Fight me: Fuck you

I'm sexy and I know it: Baby already takes care of it.

Himbo: gross

I'm sexy and I know it: you're just jealous. You and Helen never like us.

Fight me:  I would kill them myself.

SmartAss: guys, focus. Social experiment. Relationships between brothers, and we use Hector and all his brothers.

Fight me: how many are there again? Twelve?

Himbo: now nineteen. Hecuba has just given birth.

Fight me: Nineteen?!

Baby: they should have stopped with the twins. It was enough. Hell, they should have stopped at Paris. They had to understand that it would only be worse later.

Himbo: but what job does Priam do? There are twenty-two people, two dogs, a cat, and Paris. How can he live in such a big house?

SmartAss: doesn't he work for the government?

Fight me: no government job pays this well!

Himbo: unless you're the president. 

I'm sexy and I know it: what if he is the head of the CIA?

Baby: Sure, and the head of the CIA came to this city to check out a high school and a very dangerous Blockbuster. Never mind that they sell DVDs of terrorists.

Fight me: But it would make sense because he has so many children. They are all future Spy Kids!

Himbo: if the fate of my country is in the hands of Paris, I will expatriate and change my name.

I'm sexy and I know it: Cassandra knows things. It's clearly spy training.

Fight me: Cassandra talks bullshit.

Himbo: You're only saying that because she told everyone that you had tea dressed as a fairytale princess with your six-year-old cousin.

Fight me: this has never happened! Cassandra is a liar!

Himbo: and where did the glitter in your hair come from?

Fight me: it wasn't glitter.

Himbo: And what was it?

Fight me: heroine

SmartAss: It was glitter.

SmartAss: Anyway, social experiment. We will observe Ettore and his family, thus describing their social dynamics.

Baby: Isn't that stalking?

SmartAss: no, it's science.

 

 

8am

I'm sexy and I know it: Outside school Cassandra came up to me and gave me a card with her family's schedule.

I'm sexy and I know it: she told me since you want to spy on us, better know when you will find us all.

I'm sexy and I know it: then she disappeared

Fight me: every time. Wtf.

Himbo: Am I the only one wondering how she knew or…

Baby: Dude, the fewer questions you ask, the better.

Fight me: this proves nothing! she just got lucky!

SmartAss: send nudes!!!

Fight me: I would love to do it but I'm almost at school.

SmartAss: No, idiot! No nudes. Dudes

SmartAss: Come help me! Ajax is chasing me! With a car!

Himbo: What did you do to him this time?

SmartAss: nothing!

Fight me: liar.

Fight me: give me a minute and I'll be with you.

 

8.30am

Fight me: RIP Odysseus

Fight me: he's not dead, but as soon as Ajax gets out of the hospital, he'll definitely kill him.

SmartAss: in my defense, he wanted to do me worse than send me to the hospital.

Himbo: Aren't you two supposed to be in class?

SmartAss: what part of Ajax wanted me dead wasn't clear to you?

Baby: How the hell you are alive? Ajax is twice your size.

SmartAss: If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

Baby: the alarming thing is that I never know when he's joking or serious.

Himbo: you guys scare me.

I'm sexy and I know it: you still have time to do the project with your cousin.

Himbo: better not

Himbo: I don't know if he would try to kill me, steal my girlfriend or sleep with my brother

Baby: i'm starting to think that it's not just Hector who has a dysfunctional family

Fight me: why don't I have sexy cousins who want to sleep with me?

I'm sexy and I know it: Thersites wants to fuck you.

Fight me: but he is not sexy!!!

Baby: If I have to go to therapy one day, I'll show these chats.

SmartAss: this should be a serious group chat...

I'm sexy and I know it: dude, did you see us?

I'm sexy and I know it: nobody here is normal. except Pat, but  he is perfect, so...

SmartAss: ...

SmartAss: we are doomed.

Fight me: prepare the copy of Nestore's house keys.

Fight me: you will need it

#fanfiction #crossover #au #books #quote #patroclus #patroclus x achilles #tsoa #incorrect tsoa quotes #tsoa achilles #tsoa patroclus #tsoa patrochilles #patrochilles #odysseus #diomedes #menelaus #ancient greek #ancient greece #greek myth #the iliad

[thetarttfuldickhead]

if the team played monopoly, who would gravitate to which piece?

Let’s assume they’re playing with the latest set of tokens (which I have googled for your edification and mine, gentle nonny), which gives us eight pieces and this highly scientific analysis of our players’ choices:

Colin selects the race car, which elicits (good-natured) boos and questions of his sanity, like fucking really, mate? Colin reasons that this is a car he can’t crash, right, and if he somehow did anyway, it wouldn’t matter ‘cause it’s super tiny! No one can argue with that logic. Live vicariously through mini metal motors, Colin! Safest for all, really.

Isaac gets the top hat, becaue he’s a top dog and also he can rock them costumes, yeah?

Jamie opts for the dog ‘cause he just passionate about dogs. Petting them. Loving them. Rubbing their bellies. (If he can’t choose the dog because Dani already beat him to it, he goes for the rubber ducky, due to its sexual connotations. What are those sexual connotations? I have no idea, but Jamie Tartt will know.)

Dani wouldn’t have minded playing the dog, but will happily settle for the penguin because it is such a happy and majestic animal even though it lives in difficult conditions. (Unless he’s somehow playing for the Mexico in the Monopoly World Championship, which apparently does exist: then he’s selecting the battleship and he’s going to fucking sink you.)

Bumbercatch will not play if he cannot play the thimble, which is one of the original pieces and symbolizes the poor (together with the now retired boot and iron, and in contrast to the top hat, battleship, and canon, which originally symbolized the rich according to the potentially accurate but potentially sketchy online sources I found). He will also never fail to explain the true meaning of Monopoly and its inherent criticism of capitalism.

Sam is inclined towards the cat because he admires the creature’s independent nature and insistence on going its own way, as well as its grace and ability to always find a sunny spot to rest in.

Coach Beard (who might not hang out with the team a lot in general but who will always show up for team board game night) is a rubber duck man, for self-evident yet mysterious reasons. Some things we are not meant to understand, merely to accept.

Jan Maas plays the battleship because it’s the piece left unclaimed after everyone else have chosen theirs. Jan Maas doesn’t care which token he gets, because the token doesn’t actually affect the outcome of the game, so it really doesn’t matter which one you play with. No one else accepts this perfectly correct but also horribly incorrect statement.

#colin hughes #isaac mcadoo #jamie tartt #dani rojas #moe bumbercatch #sam obisanya #coach beard #jan maas #afc richmond #a team of himbos #ted lasso #okay gang that's it for tonight i think #asks #kee's correspondence

[vergess]

Y'all got me googling about BDSM in Victorian Britain

Babygirl you have so many issues

Something I noticed was that Mina's response to getting attacked was "I've been righteous all my life and yet this happened to me... Clearly, I've not been righteous enough and need to double down" (She similarly complained that her husband has never hurt anyone ever in his life so he doesn't deserve the white hair of suffering.)

While Jonathan's was "well clearly being a follower to social conventions did no good.

So glad to be a positive influence on your life!! If you find any especially interesting sources let me know!

But yeah, that's a good point! Mina's response to society/god punishing her in spite of her perfect obedience is to become even more perfect. Which is obviously not sustainable behaviour in the long term, but does have the handy benefit of, as the Twilight fandom phrased it back in the olden days, letting Mina be Born Old as her primary vampiric trait. What with all of her unnatural patience and self control under Dracula's... IDK hypnosis? Telepathy?

In a way, we have to be grateful for her martyr complex and pathological obsession with moral purity genuinely bordering on OCD. Without all that, she may have gone as feral and violent as poor Lucy at basically any time.

But thank god (Bram Stoker) for Jonathan Harker not having the same moral obsessions and compulsions. They (Brams both stoker and vh) were not kidding when they called him wildly psychologically resilient.

Sorry, Jack, but Jonathan is the undisputed king of scientific methodology in this story. When a thing he does not know is true (god is good) contradicts a thing he personally has experienced (Mina is good), he sides with the existing body of evidence. When faced with a question (how to kill Dracula) he looked at his preliminary body of research (the novel Dracula up to that point), searched for a coherent and testable hypothesis (if a shovel was good a murderin' knife is better), prepared the experiment (bought a murderin' knife), recorded his methodology and data for future repetition (his chapters and epilogue), executed his methodology (killed Dracula), and summarized his findings (mostly his epilogue).

Meanwhile Jack doesn't even know which dates his cylinders have on them so that's about that.

Anyway, dragging Seward aside for the moment! Jonathan and Holmes can be besties in questionable but relatively well executed science because he really looked at the facts and said 'okay well lift god in one hand and Mina in the other and only one is real; fuck the invisible divine let's apply our practical skills to Killing A Fucking Vampire.'

And he was right to do it!

I don't have any opinions on how all this relates to Quincey as Mina's sworn knight situation. Yet.

I'm sure I will have several by the morning.

#y know i feel like twilight really is the best dracula spinoff #like in terms of modernizing the source material while keeping Mina/Bella the protagonist #but that's an essay for another day

[palestinenatural]

went to a talk circle about palestine today out of curiosity -the pro-palestine movement in my country is in diapers and I wanted to check out the few groups organizing it- and. jskdk lol lmao. it was announced as a space to talk about palestinian politics and create posters for the protests this week but maybe ten people showed up. and they all wanted to sort out their personal feelings about the news and congratulate each other on how well-informed about the occupation they are and they kept relating it to local "liberal" movements that have nothing to do with SWANA politics. and they wanted to upload this to social media. they couldn't get past recounting the horrifying suffering in gaza,,,,their idea of "coming up with solutions" was to print some catchy slogans on a t shirt and do "geopolitical analysis" which truly did not go deeper than "it sucks that the usamericans keep intervening in other countries it's very sad and unfair."

we were the only three palestinians in attendance so we were like oh we have to guide this discussion it's so embarrassing that this is the best allyship our country can offer bdjfjf so we went hey isn't it outrageous how nearly word for word western powers are reusing lies they made up about Iraq in the 90s and ppl aren't realizing? what can we do to help them discern and remember these things? and they answered that actually ppl aren't falling for it bc social media is so descentralized these days. so we were like ok if you say so! hey in our experience the general public in this country does not even know where palestine is and they only hear about us when the violence of the occupation gets worse, so their only image of us is as terrorists. and some guy was like um no actually I don't see palestinians as terrorists so that can't be true. and we were like our literal lived experience has been that people's 1st question is "your surname is weird where is it from?" and their 2nd question is "oh you must have family in isis right?" you HAVE to believe us (the palestinians) when we say that this country is not ready to hear about support for the resistence -they don't know where any of these places are, they don't know anything about our society or language or art or music or literature or scientific production or history! cultural relations between both countries are non-existent so it would be an excellent first step to promote knowledge of these things. It's difficult to feel empathy for a people you only see as violent, or as perpetual victims, but these kinds of restrictive narratives do make it easier to accept the dehumanization of the population. the occupation has been so successful bc they know how (and have a lot of help and funding) to market themselves to the world, how to share their culture and achievements beyond the violence. that's why it took us until 2023 to begin organizing an allied movement! no one knows anything!

and these fucking people. said to my face that we can't share palestinian culture bc us influence is just too great :( :( even though I had provided firsthand evidence to the contrary. and they went right back to discussing how palestinian resistance movements relate to our local history. shut up shut up shut up!!!!!!!!! why are you here praising indigenous liberation movements if you won't listen to the indigenous participants!!!!!!!!!! and you can bet they didn't let me speak for long enough to suggest some starting points for learning about our culture and history beyond the occupation. since they want to see us as poor little cardboard victims they can whip out whenever they need to shore up support for controversial local politics so bad

#so disappointing. I was writing an article about the dehumanization of palestinians in mexican media #but this experience confirms that nobody knows anything at all about us beyond the horrors and so they don't care about us as people #so idk I might ask the activist group the article was for to work with me on a cultural exchange project instead #you will see the moral bankruptcy of using us to advance your own political agenda or so help me

[lonelyvomit]

I would actually really like to know more about your world view and spirituality, I find beliefs really as long as people don't use them to be assholes

lmao let me get some key points I guess

main thing are the 3 powers that run the universe. not gods, as they're not sentient beings of any kind, they don't think nor have morale to judge people on, they're just energies - Fate, Time and Balance. I said my main teaching was "shit happens, roll with it" which is not far from the truth. the way I tend to phrase it more often is "what is meant to happen, will happen when the time is right, and the universe will always balance it out and make sure it fits in with everything else." that's why I have a star, an hourglass and a scale tattooed on my collarbone. these 3 energies work in a harmony with each other to make sure the world runs as it should and stays in balance. you cant fight them, but since they're not sentient, they also cast no judgement nor require any kind of worshipping. they don't know if you waste your time doing that or not. tho I do find it amusing that a "holy trinity" has been a thing in many religions throughout history and somehow ended up in mine too lol.

staying on the energy path, I do believe in souls, and I believe the reason we don't have scientific proof of this is because it takes a soul to detect another one. you know how you can sometimes feel someone looking at you or being there even if you didn't hear them? that's your soul feeling theirs. but since machines don't have souls, they cant find ours either. trying to get scientific evidence of souls is like trying to photograph a smell. our technology cant detect them, but it does explain why so many people believe in angels, ghosts etc. because people can. furthermore, the soul is like a cloud of cosmic energy, and it's running through us and in and out of us all the time instead of being a specific bundle of it that's just chillin inside you, and when a person dies, their current energy is freed into the world. and that specific soul will never exist again cus like. you cant pour a cup of water into the ocean and then try to scoop up the exact same water you had before u know.

which brings me to reincarnation. which is technically a thing but also not cus like. obvs the specific souls dont reincarnate, and the soul energy gets released into the world and might end up running through a new being at some point, but also we're talking about like, the entire universe/existence of everything, so the amount of cosmic energy that is ever actively inhabited by living beings at one time is like a teaspoon (or less) of water out of the pacific ocean. so a lot of it also ends up just floating out who the fuck knows where cus we humans sure as hell haven't discovered the limits of the world yet.

last but not least, what's the point of life then? simply to make things better. learn. love. understand. make others happy and let them make you happy. find your own way to make the world a better place, to turn the energy in you and around you more positive. humans are like purifiers, and what we do affects the energy around us and the world we live in, and our actions can either make the world better, or we can act all moldy and rotten and make things worse. we will never be able to purify all the energy that there is out in the world, both because there's too much of it and because bad and ignorant people do exist and do their fair share in making it all harder, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and do as much as we can. after all, it's not that hard. just do your best to be kind. in the mushiest way I can possibly say this, it's all about love. the purpose, the secret, the journey and the destination. the point is to love.

#OVERSHARING HOURS HUH #asks

[ithisatanytime]

the first gorilla specimen wasnt obtained until about 1901

they lie like shit about what they dont know. let me ask you something, lets say mountain lions are going extinct in your state. how do they know? when they havent seen one in a while, thats how they "know"

literally

what i mean to say is, we know a lot about what we know, but we act like we know even more about the things we cant fucking know.

this isnt an antiscience stance this is about scientific literacy. the fossil record is SHIT, its SHIT, and thats if you believe its totally legitimate. how much of the earths species do you think we have a specimen from? even just a tooth or a bone fragment? if you answered anything anywhere near half of one percent you dont know what you are talking about. how would we even know? how would we know when we were done discovering fossils? that we were close to being finished? if fossils were incredibly common wed have a pretty good idea once we started finding nothing but duplicates for a good while but they are exceedingly rare. the odds that a member of a species will be fossilized are low, then the fossil has to remain relatively intact for millions of years, than you have to fucking FIND IT.

archeology is best understood not as a science but a sideshow, a rough trade like gold prospecting where you search for or fabricate your own oddities. history cannot be a hard science and in acedemia it isnt treated like one, because of the nature of studying history hard physical evidence just wont exist so you go PRIMARILY on witness accounts from contemporaries who lived back then and had the good sense to write shit down. archeology should remedy this right? so why dont we demand hard proof that ceasar existed and instead rely on circumstantial evidence like eye witness accounts and coins with his face stamped on them? because we fucking have to! archeology is cool and all, but the finds are exeedingly rare and the stuff in ancient history for which we have HARD archeological evidence for is the exception to the rule, an incredibly small minority of historical facts we take for granted have hard archeological evidence to back it up.

all that to say, biologists can tell you a lot about the animals we have been able to study, but it can tell you NOTHING about animals for which it lacks a specimen, and do not let them fool you, thats most animals who ever lived. for most species who lived and died we have found no trace of them and likely never will. the fossil record is a fucking joke, imagine a pokedex with the original 151 pokemon and everytime you encounter a new pokemon the sillouhette of say pikachu for instance gets colored in, our pokedex would have like 6 pokemon filled in maximum. what i mean to say is, certain species of HUGE carnivorous dinosaur are known from ONE TOOTH, thats the only evidence we have that one tooth we found if we never found it we wouldnt even know they existed, and thats much of the time in paleontology, so what i mean to say, is if i found a tooth belonging to a yet undescribed animal fossilized in the dirt, and i look around it in the dirt layer it was discovered and determin it was from 250 million years ago, can i then determin that it went extinct 250 million years ago as well? i mean this is the only tooth found so its gotta be the last one right? therefor it went extinct two hundred fifty million years ago! the problem should be obvious, what if they only went extinct a million years ago, and i just only found this one tooth! hell its lucky to even find the one after a million fucking years (lucky to the point you should be skeptical of the field in general to be honest) by finding fossilized remains of an animal all you can say for certain is that it existed, fossilized remains cant show you when an animal went exctinct, if the fossil record was more complete, and fossils less rare, than you could do stuff like that with some degree of certainty, if there were for instance hundreds of intact t-rex fossils (instead of only the ONE) and found 98 of them during one era but then only 2 in the beginning of the next era, you could with some degree of certainty say they went extinct around that time. but the T-Rex, the most sought after fossil specimen by far, and a LARGE and quite distinctive looking fossil, we have found one that is near perfectly intact (and even that IM HIGHLY skeptical of, motherfuckers look at the provinance of amateur bigfoot hunters like giga skeptics why were they filming, but an archeologist goes to a random fucking spot and digs up a whole t-rex skeleton and you are like well damn she had a degree, look up the provinance of sue) whether legitimate or not, the fact is there is only ONE near complete t-rex fossil, and weve been looking a long time. remember we found out gorillas were a thing just 100 years ago, and in all that time leading up to then we found not a single fossil, it was thought to be a cryptid, and then bam heres a head i cut off from a living member of the species.

the point is the fossil record couldnt even predict the existance of LIVING megafuana, gorillas, komodo dragons, giant squid, these are large and highly charismatic animals, and they are STILL AROUND to this fucking day, how are they gonna presume to tell you based on fossils when an animal went extinct?

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Spider-verse, Angels, What We Measure

The things we associate with the divine is not What There Is to the divine.

It's what we can see, and/or what impacts us in the places and on a scale where we comprehend it.

That which we never perceive, collectively, we claim not to exist.

Scientifically, this serves. But also scientifically this has no basis, and a decent scientist will tell you so.

What is an angel? Some accounts say a beautiful man with wings who had children by one or more of the women in the village; children who then had no wings but did seem to have impressive abilities. Some accounts say a voice from the heavens. Looked upon, as we were asked to, the being had many eyes, formed in rings upon halos of light, wings and fire. The voice told us what was to come, and what we must do. This kind of thing is shockingly detailed but gains us very little ground toward answering the question of what an angel is. The two accounts differ on as straightforward a question of "is an angel a thing of flesh?"

By the nature of these events, if you assume they happened and everyone involved was being honest on the topic of their own lived experience, there remains an issue of vast swaths of unseen information. Questions like, "Why?" and "How?" are left practically untouched, and "What?" remains rather vague.

The question of "Why?" is seldom discussed and the reason given is that this can't go beyond speculation. That the "why" of godly things is not something to be known by humans. But many take it a step further and forget that "Why?" was ever a part of the missing information. Perhaps they fill in with their own theory and, in absence of proof to the contrary, they take that as truth.

This leads to weird questions of veracity. Like, how would a human distinguish between a demon - in some lore literally an angel who happens to be on the outs with the divine - and an angel? We admit we don't know any of what's going on behind the curtain but then make assumptions about our own capacity to judge what we haven't seen.

Were those angels who begat nephilim angels as the other ring-of-fire angels would call them? And vice versa? Would angels be offended if you referred to their fallen kin as Not Angels? There's all this lore hidden from us by virtue of the things we're talking about being of a core state we do not (and potentially cannot) understand. But we make all kinds of confident declarations about what a True angel is. About what is and isn't an angel. About the properties, purposes, and nature of angels.

Even if we trust our religion of choice absolutely and assume all the lore within scripture is true, we must assume functionally everything else is just made up. In terms of how much we can trust it, it might as well be.

This is one of the weird places I get to looking at Spider-verse.

Miguel has this utter certainty that being broken down by a failing of personal responsibility and driven by a need to make good on a debt that literally can't ever be repaid without resurrection powers is necessary to being Spider-Man.

We know he's been watching a lot of stuff in a lot of universes.

We also know he's biased as fuck. He's got his own hang-ups. And everyone wants to think other people think like them. Outside of contrary evidence almost everyone defaults to this mindset.

I also find his place as the gatekeeper for who does and doesn't get to be declared "really Spider-man" pretty funny, because a lot of fans rejected his comic series as just not being very spider-manny. A lot of his themes and even powers feel more like someone stuck Morbius into a spider-man outfit?

I dunno. There will always be Secrets of the Universe (or Multiverse, I guess) that we don't know. It's really important to recognize the points where you don't know things, and quit acting like you do when you hit those blank points in your own knowledge. We've absolutely got to keep working with the best knowledge we have. But the fact that it appears to have been functional so far doesn't mean we should ignore the possibility that it's faulty. The water pulling away from the beach does not mean this is a good time to play in the sand. It may seem that way, and indeed will be that way, until the tsunami arrives and suddenly it is Not At All a good time to be on that beach.

Assumptions that anomalies and everything associated with them are inherently a problem but the spider-verse travelers' travel methods aren't...Well. Those are some assumptions. And when you think about it, they're assumptions that happen to align with what a big group of people who want to Make It Right and can't do that in their own world would want to believe.

#spider-verse #theology #philosophy

[bearberrythief]

The whole thing adinosauraday went through the other day with people arguing that yes birds are dinosaurs but also not really has me thinking about my thesis. One of the things I noticed while I was writing it is that the idea of a dinosaur as a cultural object does not neatly overlap with scientific consensus of what a dinosaur is to the point that people feel confident arguing with an actual paleontologist that no, birds aren't dinosaurs actually. In my thesis I ended up saying that the dinosaur as a cultural object is "big, scaly and extinct" and that there is a refusal to confront that dinosaurs exist outside that description, even too the point that paleoartists had to convince audiences that dinosaurs were animals rather than monsters. I mainly dealt with how dinosaurs were understood at the turn of the nineteenth century, but I think there's an argument to be made that the dinosaur as it exists a cultural object has more in common with that nineteenth century understanding of evolution and dinosaurs than current scientific consensus. Plenty of it is down to a lack of science education and literacy, as well as a lack of curiosity, but I think some of it has to do with the life of images and the way people negotiate categorization. Most people don't know how to read a phylogenetic tree, but they can look at a Charles Knight painting or the crystal palace sculptures or the land before time and absorb that image.

There's something to be said about anti science beliefs here as well. I spent a lot of time in my thesis looking at how the category of dinosaur was not always placed with the category of animal, and how that got in the way of (and continues to get) in the way of understanding them as living and once-living beings. A lot of pre-darwinian approaches to categorizing living things relied on rigid, fundamentally hierarchical systems of orzanization, and I think that rigidity is still persent in many ways down to an outright rejection that the categories of bird and dinosaur overlap. And a lot of that rigidity comes from a deeply Christian understanding of living things as discrete beings made by God, unchanging and neat.

There's a reason why evolutionary theory met and continues to meet so much resistance from conservative and Christian places, and it's that it threatens the hierarchies those systems are interested in preserving. If that hierarchy of rigid, discrete categories, of men over woman, of white supremacy, human over animal, mammal over reptile, living over non-living is threatened, so are all the systems of power we deal with. The rigidity and inflexibility of holding birds and dinosaurs as separate categories (despite the scientific evidence!) Has an awful lot in common with the reluctance to break down the imaginary line between human/animal, white/black, man/woman.

But to take this back to birds the thing is, images of birdlike non-avian dinosaurs aren't new. Huxley proposed an evolutionary connection between birds and dinosaurs in fucking 1869, and scientists like E.D. Cope picked up that idea and used it! Insert Charles R. Knight Leaping Laelaps 1897. There are images of non-avian dinosaurs looking and acting fairly birdlike from the nineteenth century! They're just not as well known as other artworks. And there are a plethora of images of birdlike non-avian dinosaurs being produced right now, but they're being produced alongside things like the latest jurassic park movies that use an outdated, inaccurate image of dinosaurs. The cultural object of a dinosaur is in conflict with what scientists know about dinosaurs, and that is a problem.

As well as an issue with scientific literacy, I think there is an issue with art literacy. This is where I get out my big everyone should learn visual analysis and get an art education sign. One of the first things we in art history teach our students is to remember that a person made every image you see, and they made desicions about what to show and how to show it. Paleoart is an amazing educational tool, but I don't think the average person is necessarily comparing it with that cultural image of dinosaur=big, scaly, extinct beyond a casual glance, or aware of its limitations as an artwork. And they should be, just as the average person should have an understanding of evolution beyond a hazy idea of Darwin's finches.

I dunno, this is getting off track.

TLDR; birds are dinosaurs, the great chain of being haunts us to this day. more scientific literacy needed, more art literacy needed.

#dinos #me #thesis chat #long post

[refriedrambles]

rough notes

The Membrane family share alot of traits. Like correct me if I'm wrong here. I totally could be I haven't seen most of the show in like a year. (Don't bring comic or movie Dib and Membrane into this I haven't read or seen them. I'll get there. Don't worry) But I feel like Dib and Membrane are basically the same character aside from their interests and the fact that Membrane has charisma.

I think Membrane would be just as unhinged as Dib if say he wanted to be a doctor instead of a scientist. But Membrane makes stuff. He makes useful stuff. The man doesn't need to argue his case his inventions speak for themselves. Even if he may be discounting the contributions of others. It's always "his" inventions. "His" breakthroughs never "ours". He's proven himself. He doesn't need to make a case if he has a new theory, cause his background makes the case for him.

But Dib's interest requires convincing. It requires an arguement. And well, he's bad at agruing his case. He's in the theoratical even if he finds evidence, because it doesn't matter how good the evidences is if he's the one presenting it, it will be him being crazy or a hoax made in a sorry attempt to prove he's not to anyone else. His background fucks any proof he has. His presentation is garbage. And I think he tries to get better at that. Like he realizes it's holding him back so he tries different ways to tell people, but it's not the graphs or blurry photos or having people open their eyes that's the problem there. It's the fact that he talks to people like they're stupid.

Membrane can do that. Dib can not. And he doesn't know that. Why would he when he's lived with his absentee father for most of his life?

He's not having a discussion. He's not open to new ideas. Neither of them are. They're both close minded. (But saying that I think it's important to point out, as far as I'm aware, Membrane never once denies the existence of aliens. He denies the possibly we'd ever encounter them.) And sure Zim looks very weird, but there are some strange medical conditions out there, that most people have never heard of. So why wouldn't it just be a medical condition? It's far more likely, especially with the background mutants we see around the city, that Zim's human then he's alien that's travelled from an ungodly distance to reach earth and just happens to be humanoid/speak a human language/go to skool with his son. I'd might even argue Dib is more close minded then Membrane. We've never see Membrane out right deny something scientific (that I know of). The closest thing would be Dib's transmission in the first episode, but like he's probably heard Dib say the same shit a thousand times. Dib denies every cryptid theory we see presented from the outside. (don't remember Mr. Dwicky episode could be wrong here.)

And that could very likely because of the responces they're gotten. Membrane gets praise for his questions and pursuits. Fueling him to ask more and more. Fueling him to think bigger and better. He's created a power house in his field.

Dib gets rejection and ridicule and the crazy house for his. And thing is it's not unwarrented. He's not just being annoying with his strange interest, his unyielding dedication to his field. He's becoming a danger to himself and others. Love and attention aren't going to stop that. In fact they're just going to fuel it to higher extremes if he's not shut down. But that also carries a danger. Rejecting the paranormal, isn't just rejecting the paranormal it's rejecting him as person. That could make him double down. Make him take bigger risks. And that's why for someone close to him dismissal is the best option. So to some degree he's humored at home. He's allowed his fake science. Gaz never tell him he's wrong, she just tell him he's stupid. They're used to this.

They're both narcisstic. So is Gaz to some extent. Out of the three I'd say she has the strongest desire to interact with any of the others. She wants to spend time with her dad. She respects him. (I don't really have a lot to say about Gaz right now. I'd argue that family definitely seems to mean more to her then either of them. But that also might be headcanony bullshit. Again this is solely the show from my patchy ass memory.)

Membrane and Dib don't. Like they probably do on some level, but I don't think they hold much respect for the others. They don't hold the same interests so what's the point in caring that much. But "their" own things/events are the biggest deals ever. I could see Gaz fighting tooth and nail for annual family dinner night to be a thing for a long time before it actually happened, because "stuff" just keep coming up.

Gaz has given up on Dib. She already has on most of humanity.

I think THAT's the biggest difference between them. Membrane views humanity as something to be coddled and saved from itself, and he can do it because he's obviously so much better then everyone else. Dib views humanity as something to be enlightened and saved from its own stupidity, but its something that's actively rejecting his oh so kindly outstretched hand. Gaz has simply given up. Humanity is doomed and anyone who can't see that is too stupid to be helped. There's no point to do anything else besides drown herself in her games. And why shouldn't she, she seems to have a nack for it?

I wouldn't be suprised if Dib and Membrane shared a competitive streak with Gaz.

#refriedramblings #self notes

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

If You Were Never Born, Then You Will Never Die

(That is Why God Was Never Born.)

Stephen Jay Morris

4/3/2023

©Scientific Morality.

Question: Why can’t you remember your own birth? Because of course you can’t! The Basal Ganglia part of your brain was not yet developed. That is where memory is stored. You may have fuzzy memories about your 4th year of existence, but the Basal Ganglia was still under construction. I’m not metaphysical, by any means. But entertain this question: if you don’t remember your birth, could it be that you were never born? Or, maybe you always existed, got a bad case of amnesia, and then were reborn. As an agnostic, I believe in evidence. It must satisfy my senses in the way my vision, ears, sense of touch, sense of smell, taste, and other sensory functions are satisfied.

Buddhism could be correct about reincarnation. If so, how come you don’t remember your previous life, or lives? Perhaps, the Christians are right. If you kiss God’s ass, then you will live with him in eternity. However, that edict is erroneous and defies logic. If that game plan is in the bible, then why even exist? Doing God’s bidding when he can do it himself? If we are God’s slaves, then why even live. Life is rendered meaningless.

Satanists believe in egotism. You are here to serve you own selfish needs. Is life more than pleasure and material things? Yes, it is. There is more to life than happiness. If you haven’t worked that out by the age of 30, then you never will. Is life about altruism? Well, it sure beats the fuck out of Natural Law!

So, why do we have religion, anyway? Thanatophobia! Otherwise known as “the fear of death.”

Our ego is the underlying reason we don’t want to die. Another reason is the fear of pain. Since people are afraid of death, they will find a doctrine that says that they must follow certain, man-made rules, and then live with God forever and ever!

Rest assured that medical science is making strides in increasing human longevity. Life expectancy is getting longer and longer. In the 19th Century, life expectancy was 50 years old. I am 69 and I attribute my old age to science. But even so, each of us will eventually die. Maybe 200 years from now, science will develop a pill that guarantees eternal life?

I am happy with the way things are. I would hate to live forever, and I hope there is no after life. I always thought that, since I don’t remember what it was like before I was born, the same goes for after my death. I won’t know a thing. Why would anyone want to live forever anyway? Float around without hunger, no sexual concupiscence, no ego, science, no basketball? No way and no dice! Now, Islamic afterlife is more hedonistic, according to the Koran; it says that there is sex after death. Heck, a lot of women thought I was part of the living dead whenever we screwed!

What about good and evil? No such thing! It is strictly a religious construct. It means pro-God or anti-God. God has done a lot of evil things, like causing genocide by flooding the earth and killing the old, the very young, and pregnant women. What type of God is that? And this so-called, Arch Angel, Satan? What is he, a registered Republican? He hates poor people and the innocent. Read the gospel of Jesus. He loves the poor and the sick—more than Bernie Sanders does. The fact that those who accuse others of being evil, eagerly support a bastard like Donald Trump, makes me scratch my head!

These are existential questions of mine. Oh, I’m just as freaked out about death as anybody. That is the biggest issue in life. When I was 11 years old, I got the “cosmic slap,” and realized that all of this will one day end. Then I came to learn that my time spent on this earth can be better spent helping others. Well, now that I am a Senior Citizen, I want to enjoy life while I am still here.

This is the 21st Century and the kings of the earth continue their oppression, the “my God is better than your God” perpetuates useless religious wars, and greedy oil fiends relentlessly drive us into climate disaster. Well, I’ve had my fill of politics. I will continue to keep tabs, but that's all I’ll do. I’ve paid my dues, so fuck my critics!

#stephenjaymorris #poets of tumblr #religion #anti religion #anarchist movement #theology #atheism #christainity #anarchism #theism

[crazypossumman]

I’m sure literally everyone has heard the “adhd/autism/anxiety/depression/whatever-the-fuck-else is so over diagnosed these days” griping in their lives, but it actually got me thinking.

We’ve determined scientifically that species evolve over time. However, this process takes generations and generations to get anywhere. Humans—as a species—haven’t had generations to “evolve” to cope with the advances in technology. I mean, think about life one hundred years ago. Since then, we’ve gained television, internet, social media, nuclear weaponry, extreme climate change…

Technology, and henceforth the society we live in, has change SO MUCH in a very limited period of time. In no way could humans have evolved in time for our brains to be able to withstand the constant pressure modern society puts on us.

“People x years ago didn’t have adhd.” Well, how many things did those people have to focus on? Certainly they weren’t aware of 17 world tragedies currently happening, workers strikes around the globe, and the constant threat of nuclear winter.

“People x years ago didn’t have autism.” Well, how would anyone have known? If a person was quieter and isolated themselves but still pulled their weight, why would anyone have cared? They herded the sheep and brought them home at night; no need for people centuries ago to diagnose them with anything.

The same can be said for anxiety, depression, and any other number of things.

Now, before anyone misunderstands, I am:

NOT saying neurodivergent people are “less evolved” or some shit, so wait until the end of my argument to put words in my mouth

NOT saying these issues haven’t existed as long as humans have

What I AM saying is that:

We already know people with visible disabilities were typically murdered, meaning obviously we’re seeing more people with disabilities now that we’re not murdering them anymore.

With no resources to help them, a lot of people with severe mental illnesses likely died very early in life, whether at the hands of themselves or others.

If people hundreds of years ago were able to preform basic tasks, why would the same people who believed the world was flat have bothered with diagnosing them with anything?

The constant stress being put on the human brain that was not there even 100 years ago is likely making such disabilities far more evident than they would be without said stress.

Our minds haven’t changed in that span of time, but society’s expectations have, not to mention the amount of stimuli/information our brains are being constantly flooded with. The fact that there are people who are “neurotypical” is actually more surprising to me than anything, and I would venture to say that everyone could probably be diagnosed and treated for something if they cared to be self aware enough.

I suppose my point is: fuck you if you think these things are “new” or “over diagnosed” or whatever. Something not being diagnosed (accurately or at all) in the past doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For fuck’s sake, they thought the cure for every other illness was LEACHES for a while, and you want them to have diagnosed people with adhd? I think the fuck not.

#I’m not sure if this makes sense I’m bad at articulating things #sorry if this comes off as offensive to anyone cuz I worded it poorly #random #just thinking #neurodivergent #neurodivergent shit #roan rambles

[missmentelle]

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem. 

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati 

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial 

COVID-19 denial 

5G panic 

QAnon 

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch. 

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns. 

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food. 

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined. 

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage -  the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there. 

Our brains love proportionality. 

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event. 

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause. 

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger. 

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon. 

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying. 

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices. 

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it. 

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world. 

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable. 

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan. 

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side. 

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story. 

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult). 

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life. 

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world. 

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true. 

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew. 

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity. 

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity. 

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.  

There is a strong community aspect to these theories. 

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas. 

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed. 

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #conspiracy theories #cults #psychology #science #neuroscience

[teaboot]

Do you not believe in biological sex? I’m confused.

Hoo, boy. Apologies in advance, but this is gonna have a long answer.

The thing about "biological sex" is, it's a complicated science with a lot of nuance involved, and people who don't actually know anything about it love to use it to mean "penis is boy, vagina is girl".

Which, on the surface, makes sense to a lot of people. Its what we're taught our whole lives, and it's difficult to listen to any argument that contradicts our worldview. It's scary and confusing, and people automatically resist scary and confusing things.

The thing you need to know, though, is that what we call "Biological Sex" can actually depend on a range of factors: 

First off, primary sex characteristics: the bits directly involved in reproduction, what most people consider the defining indicator of gender.

Primary sex characteristics include the penis and testes, which are predominantly associated with men, and the vagina and uterus, associated with women.

This seems fairly simple on the surface, scientifically speaking, but bodies aren't that simple. People can and are born with combinations of these things and live long, happy, healthy lives with few or no medical complaints. Many don't even know they have undescended testes or ovaries at all, and only find out accidentally through unrelated procedures. Is a mother of three who's known herself to be a woman her whole life suddenly a man because she has 'male' sex characteristics? No? Then why should any other woman?

Someone who is still new to this might be experiencing a cognitive dissonance right now, trying to reconcile "penis is boy, vagina is girl" with "people can have both (or neither)", and they may try to do this by saying, "Well, this could be caused by mutations or deformities, so intersex people (people with mixed characteristics) are outliers, not to be included with "valid" genders."

Which brings us to the next factor: hormones.

Testosterone is Boy, Estrogen is Girl. That's what people know, so they don't want to accept any different. Different is confusing, confusing is scary, scary is bad.

But, like primary sex characteristics, these things can fly in the face of common understanding.

A woman, for example, who considers herself cisgender, who has breasts and a vagina and a uterus and all that, might have high testosterone. Because people have both! And because testosterone can give people body hair, among other things, this woman has chest hair and a beard. She LOOKS a lot like what we think of as "male", so do we tell her she's wrong about her gender? 

On the flip side, plenty of cis men with a penis and testes can have high estrogen for any number of reasons, and can develop breasts- does that mean they're women, now? 

Of course not. We have to listen to them to tell us what their pronouns are, what their gender is, and how is that any different from someone who's trans? It would be incredibly ride to tell anyone that "oh, you SAY you're a man, but you look like a woman to me, so I'm going to ignore everything you tell me and call you a woman until you can prove to my satisfaction otherwise."

So if primary sex characteristics aren't the final word on gender, and secondary characteristics aren't either, then what's left? DNA, right? Genetics don't lie, everyone knows that.

So, chromosomes, then. The barest evidence of human biological sex. XX means "female", XY means "male", forget all that mess about vaginas, breasts, and testes. Our chromosomes are the holy gospel of gender.

Except, again, nature isn't that simple.

Picture in your head a cisgender woman. She hits everything on our personal little checklist: breasts, vagina, uterus, minimal body hair, small jawline, high voice, everything. But she has XY chromosomes. 

Because, surprise! That happens! And it happens more often than you think! People can and do go their entire lives not knowing it! Because it isn't important to how we view our gender. We don't care. 

If you went to a lab today, got tested, and found that you had the "wrong" chromosomes- would you suddenly be fine with Becoming A Different Gender? Being treated like you're a different gender? Having to dress different, talk different, redefine your sexuality, because your DNA says you're wrong about your identity? How would that feel? Probably pretty shitty, huh? 

So, when we get down to it, what is the one true indicator of gender? We can't trust genitalia, because it presents on any number of variations and combinations. Secondary sex characteristics are out too, because hormones do whatever they want without rhyme or reason. Chromosomes do whatever the hell they want, fuck them, they're useless.

If we are to open our minds to what the science is telling us, then, what is it saying?

If we are to put our faith in "Biological Sex", then what does is dictate to be the truth?

That physical sex isn't just "boy or girl", it exists on a spectrum. It's not "pink or blue", it's magenta, mauve, violet, lilac, periwinkle, cyan, cobalt, or vermilion, and our idea of "boy or girl" is almost entirely a construct of our imaginations, of the society we live in. It's an illusion that dictates how we experience our lives, how we're treated, what makes us happy and comfortable or how we feel at ease.

Biological sex cannot dictate gender because they're different concepts with different rules grounded in separate realities, and no amount of pointless fussing can force them to cooperate. 

Sex is one spectrum, gender is another, and they don't know each other.

You can accept what the science says, or you can find excuses to justify the beliefs you're comfortable with. It really doesn't matter. 

Just don't be a dick about things that make you uncomfortable and the world will keep on spinning.

#Long post

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Does Archaeology - Part 1

About me, and about the site.

I’m gonna have to do this in parts because I tend to be, uh...wordy.  Actually...ok, so I believe very strongly that knowledge does no one any good behind a paywall, but I also have a hard time parsing it down for social media because, well, people are complex but also ADHD.  So if you guys have any feedback for me that’d be awesome.  I’ll probably do these as a series so they don’t get overwhelming to read.  Tag for ‘em will be kyidylCL

A caveat to all of these posts: archaeologists walk a fine line between “I’d love to tell you about this and here look at this cool thing” and “I don’t want to share a colleague’s forthcoming paper on social media before they publish it and also fuck looters”. We classify anyone who *isn’t* an archaeologist as a looter.  Because even when you find artefacts just lying around, as soon as you pick them up they’re removed from context and become near-useless for scientific research and data.  When we remove them we capture all that information via a prescribed methodology.  When other people remove them they tend not to.  And you can tell how legit someone is by how much they care about the context.  Context is key, that’s why we’re so meticulous.  Anyway so I can’t tell you where the site is specifically because I’m not allowed.  I also, though, have been heavily involved in this project so I’m mostly going to be telling you about my own research so it’s ok to publish it on social media.  Anyway, that’s why if you show an archaeologist something you just like found they’ll be like “gee...thanks...well...I don’t want to squelch your curiosity, buuuuuut...” 

A little bit of background on my involvement with this site: I’m a newly minted archaeologist.  I’ve had my MS a little over a year, and I’ve been doing things in that time to keep up my skills and get the field hours I need to be a registered state archaeologist (it’s basically just like a professional license for archs.) bc I didn’t get enough in school and my dissertation is on genetics and cannibalism (and if you want to know about *that* I’ll tell you, but in another post.), so yeah.  Anyway.  I’ve been volunteering with the local archaeology society, and they’re great.  They found this site because two of the members grew up in the area and just knew of its existence.  So I volunteer with them and am one of like 3 people they know who have a degree so I get to be really involved - probably more than I would be otherwise just cause people with my credentials are in short supply for them.  I’m basically the only member with a degree, and the rest are consultants they bring in for stuff like this (including the RSA who works the site - the site director.).  

Before a site can be dug there’s a lot of prep work involved.  It varies based on what kind of money you’ve got and access.  We have lots of access - it’s on private land owned by someone who is childhood friends with a member of the arch society - but almost zero money.  Before I showed up, in summer 2018, they did a series of what are called shovel tests.  Basically there’s a grid laid over the site and where the grid lines intersect they dug a round pit down to what archaeologists call “the sterile layer”, IE, where there’s no evidence of human activity.  Basically, you dig small holes to see if it’s worth digging big holes and in this case it was worth it.  

When I started working with them, I took all of the material from the test pits and sorted and catalogued it.  We’ll come back to this in the next post, so remember this.  Pause.  

I forgot to tell you where the site was.  Like not specifically, I can’t do that, but I CAN tell you that it’s in the Shenandoah valley.  Wanna see pics? Yeah, you wanna see pics (I took all of the images I’m gonna be posting so I give myself permission to post them. :P): 

The site is too big to get in one pic, but this is the far end looking towards the mountain.  The field continues off to the left of the shot.  

Here’s a nicer pic of the mountain: 

And another one cause it’s super pretty: 

And here’s my view when we’re eating lunch:

And here’s an artsy shot of the cows I pass on my way in, because who doesn’t love cows? ;) 

The site has been occupied for a long time (how long? Well, that’ll happen in the pottery post soooorry. ;), and I think you guys can see why.  It’s also on a slight ridge overlooking a river so it’s near fresh water, easily defensible, and is fertile.  Speaking of which... 

It’s also what archaeologists call “highly disturbed”. See, after the colonizers drove the natives out of the Blue Ridge mountains, they started farming the fertile land in the valley.  This site was farmed for several decades, and not only that but during the civil war they dug a big ‘ole defensive trench through the middle of it.  So whilst farming disturbs the finds, it tends to a, only be a max of 15 inches deep and b, keep the finds in the same relative area they’re pulled out of.  And we can tell where that layer ends (I’ll show you that in the post about our pits bc I don’t think Tumblr will let me add more pics.), so even though it destroys features and damages things it’s a lot less destructive than, say....building a giant war trench and shooting at each other.  

The site is an entire settlement.  It’s...several acres in size.  There are burial cairns in the woods around it, and some rumors that human remains have been found there in the past - although we have not, as of yet, found any (much to my personal dismay because, well...bioarchaeologist.). 

So who lived here? Well, when the colonizers drove out the natives they didn’t exactly keep good records about who lived where, but generally speaking the site is on both Massawomeck and Manahoac land. We don’t know which group lived there, and there were other groups coming and going in the general area so it could have also been Piscataway or Potomac or even one of the later nations that formed the Iroquois.  Based on the age though I think the best candidates are the Massawomeck or Manahoac.  

Next up, the prep work I did for the site and dig! 

(aaaahhhhhh hopefully I didn’t forget anything. x.x)

#archaeology #native american #history #science #kyidylCL