my household is really putting pressure on me to go on disability because of my autism and i’d really like to not do that for a multitude of reasons so it’d be real swell if anyone wanted to order a commission
it seemed like communism was exceedingly good in all regards until one dickhead raised a litter of dogs to kill everyone who disagreed with him and became a dictator. in fact, the book goes to great lengths to luxuriate in how much more efficient and bountiful work under the collective was in comparison to the farmer.
i find it interesting that this book has long been held as the thing weiners tell you to read when you say anything about socialism or communism. like it’s supposed to change your mind. there wasn’t a subtle or gradual shift into the failure of the system caused by its own faulty construction. everything was just ruined by one cunt who had the power to instantly kill anyone, which seems like something that would cause any system to fail.
if i was on animal farm i would have killed that dickhead Napoleon in front of everyone with my teeth and it wouldnt even be hard.
it is so incredibly sad to constantly see kids on instagram and tiktok who are younger than my brother have to literally beg for shelter, food, water, medicine, and their right to exist as human beings
i mean, this young girl is only ten years old, yet she is essentially responsible for convincing random people scrolling through instagram that her and her family’s life are worth fighting for
on top of that, their gofundme is not even 10% funded and time is running out, please if you can’t donate, just share
I suppose there’s just no getting around the e-begging - I had to go to the emergency room on Monday because I was, for good reason, under the impression that I was experiencing a life-or-death medical emergency. This turned out to not be the case, and what I was dealing with ended up being unpleasant but not life-threatening, but now I have to pay for hospital fees and a litany of tests!
Any financial help at all would be massively helpful as I deal with paying off what is going to be, conservatively, two to three months of my current income for the crime of not wanting to die if I can help it.
I will stoop to the level of reblogging this because I am still paying for this (and the typical background costs of being chronically ill and uninsured) but now I’m also on the hook for a new pair of glasses. I make basically no money in excess of basic survival needs, so any help makes a huge difference.
Reblogging this again because it turns out that having missed a couple shifts for acute medical emergencies has made me actually unable to afford medication this month! While I’m picking up more work (which is only going to exacerbate my illness) I only get paid once every two weeks and make barely above minimum wage. My attempts to find work that pays better and/or doesn’t require physically exerting myself to the brink of what my body can handle continue to be unsuccessful as they have for the past two years at this point. I despise being reliant on the charity of others but it’s literally my only option.
hey! i’m val, i’m a trans woman, DJ, and a writer living in the UK and im reaching out bc i need to raise money to stock up on hormones!
i’ve been out of hormones for a few weeks now and i’m trying to raise £200 to buy 2 vials of estrogen and a blocker for emergencies
I currently can’t afford to pay for it myself as i’m currently on benefits and haven’t been getting much DJing work lately (though it should be picking up soon i hope!) anyways, if you could help out and/or share this i’d really really appreciate it, thank you for reading! ☣️ payp*l: paypal.me/vmclaren368 ☣️
i don’t have much to exchange but if you like i can send you some of my writing (zine+poetry+weird stuff!) , you can also check out my DJ mixes here
Writing Cuneiform. A skilled scribe could make imprints into clay extremely fast, almost machine-like, and with clay being an easily accessible material with no need for ink, Cuneiform was a practical writing method for over 3000 years.
Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare
A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.
In 2022, researchers at the Bee Sensory and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Queen Mary University of London observed bumblebees doing something remarkable:The diminutive, fuzzy creatures were engaging in activity that could only be described as play.
Given small wooden balls, the bees pushed them around and rotated them. The behavior had no obvious connection to mating or survival, nor was it rewarded by the scientists. It was, apparently, just for fun.
The study on playful bees is part of a body of research that a group of prominent scholars of animal minds cited today, buttressing a new declaration that extends scientific support for consciousness to a wider suite of animals than has been formally acknowledged before.
For decades, there’s been a broad agreement among scientists that animals similar to us — the great apes, for example — have conscious experience, even if their consciousness differs from our own.
In recent years, however, researchers have begun to acknowledge that consciousness may also be widespread among animals that are very different from us, including invertebrates with completely different and far simpler nervous systems…
‘One-in-a-billion’ giant sea monster skull breaks a world record
In 2023, a 150-million-year-old pliosaur skull found on the Jurassic Coast, with a bite force rivaling T. rex’s, made headlines. It’s now in the Guinness Book Of World Records.
“Between 1992–2003, $14.4 billion was spent in total in the 109 countries studied…That investment resulted in a 29 percent-per-country average decrease in the rate of biodiversity decline…”
This is one of the first large-scale studies to show that investment in conservation really does work. The study also examined how conservation dollars could be spent most effectively in different locations to slow biodiversity loss.
Sounds like we need to spend more.
This was over the course of 11 years. That 14.4 billion was spent over the gradual course of over a decade. This amounts to about 1.3 billion per year for what it accomplished, a pittance to most nations and truly a tiny amount if there’s multiple nations (like the 109 countries) covering it together. Never let anyone tell you dying ecosystems and climate disasters are inevitable or “too expensive” to prevent.
But there’s a significant silver lining here: If spending a “pittance” can buy us a 29% decrease in biodiversity loss, think how much loss could be prevented if countries seriously invested in this kind of thing!
This is one of the first big studies to show that investing in conservation translates to real, measurable, tangible improvements over the long term and in multiple countries. We aren’t just throwing money at something that isn’t working. That’s still really excellent news! And a big reason to invest more in conservation efforts!
“An accompanying commentary in Nature notes that halting the decline in global biodiversity would be “remarkably cheap,” amounting to less than 0.01 percent of global gross domestic product.”
works w/ youtube, soundcloud, twitch, twitter (gifs and videos), tumblr (video and audio), and most other websites you’re probably lookin to download stuff off of.
for anyone wondering about privacy and whatnot, i’m happy to say that the developers are pretty committed to have 0 trackers and 0 data retention. you can read more in their “about” section, but here’s the basic important stuff:
Let us be brutally honest with ourselves and with eachother for a moment. If he weren’t obese you motherfuckers would be capable of percieving evrart claires sexy sexy moral ambiguity and complex charms
op your tags are so good here 🫡 I’d like them on my blog
I would also like to note here that i consider people’s response to evrart claire being more negative on the whole than their response to joyce messier to be indicitive of successful writing/commentary on the za/um writers’s part. Namely that *harry* tends to like joyce better in terms of kneejerk response (which is, if anything, further indictment of joyce lol). I consider harry and the general audience’s comparative preference of joyce to evrart to be indicitive of the obstructing veil of respectability and prestige that seperates the claires and the rest of us dirtfolk from the messiers of the world so to speak.
Joyce has money. Shes got an old-money background i think. Shes aging gracefully, shes athletic and knowledgable enough to be sailing her personal ship across the pale without any evident assistance, she cuts a very dashing, trim figure. Shes got cool stuff, shes got good taste. Shes funny and charming and well spoken. All signifiers of her class status. Even her self assuredness is just the birthright of old money and the result of financial and social stability, lets be real here.
Claire is ugly, according to traditional standards. Hes obese and disabled with a wonky eye and big fucking glasses and hes greasy and hes balding. Hes vulnerable, physically in that his mobility has been severely compromised by his disability and weight. He is vulgar. His accent is grating and course, his voice is not soft. He is, like harry, someone who is grotesque in the Bakhtinian sense of the word. They are both men indelibly marked by poverty. Shaped by it. Dying from its knockon effects in the slow way that formative impoverishments tend to kill.
Hes obstructive and kind of offputting in his interactions with harry where joyce is amicable and easy. This is all cus of his *position*. Hes ugly and hes damaged where joyce is easy on the eyes and self reliant because *she comes from money and he comes from poverty* and because *she serves the interests of capital and he serves the interests of the union*. Of course hes meaner to you than joyce is- youre a goddamn cop and evrarts the head of a striking labor union. Do you know what cops historically have been tasked with doing to labor unions??? Of course joyce is cool and fun and gently amused. Youre a fucking cop. Do you know what corporate mediators and cops have in common in relation to labor unions? Theyre an oppositional force working in tandem to disempower this coalition of workers- shes the carrot and youre the stick its as simple as that.
So like its no ones fault per-se that people tend to find evrart more offputting- hes written that way on purpose. Its accurate. Common people *are* often uglier and meaner and more offputting than the wealthy. Of course we fucking are. They can pay for healthcare and ease and fun cool hobbies. We can’t. We have childhood illnesses that progress to actively disabling illness cus we couldnt afford the preventative and managing medicines. We are addicts because we self medicate cus healthcare wasnt available. We watch our friends get sick the way old people do- the way young people arent supposed to- because none of us can take care of ourselves the way we need to and no one can take care of us. We are vulgar we arent trained to do things well we are autodidacts at absolute best and at worst we are incompetent because the money to refine whatever interests we possessed was simply not there. Like cuno or cindy or the rave kids if we have talents they are coarse. We, on the whole, cannot afford vehicles or skincare routines or silk scarves. We are less cultured we are aging faster and more. We are suffering and less inclined to be droll. We are angry because we know all that and see it every day.
I think its good that the writing encourages you to examine the perversity of these differences. Joyce is *genuinely* a much more charming, attractive individual than evrart. Does that make her better? Does that make her right? I think the reason these two are often framed as being somewhat narratively equivalent is because they *are* but i dont think people should then make a moral equivalence. Joyce is defending corporate interests and threatening fascist violence. And all her appealing traits derive from the benefits of wealth. Evrart is defending his labor union. *imperfectly*- but thats what hes doing. Most of his bad traits spring from the sheer impossibility of that task and most of his ugly traits are born from poverty. Thats not irrelevant.
Oh and also obviously just to make things clear- i think that people on the whole responding to claire negatively is reflective of fatphobia, ablism, and classism and the reason i think that is cus on the whole people are way easier on joyce messier. Id also like to note that that i honestly dont consider the writing of claire to be fatphobic- *harry* has personal disdain for fat people (partially related to his own self hatred as is very common) and elysium as a whole, like our world, is virulently fatphobic. I dont really consider the text’s treatment of claire to be especially different than its indulgence in misogynistic or racist rhetoric- harry is harry and we see the world thru his clouded eyes.
It’s true that there’s no practicable way to frame “style theft” as intellectual property issue that wouldn’t have horrifying consequences for independent artist, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have sympathy for all the artists who’ve spent their lives perfecting the craft of drawing moist-lipped, glassy-eyed, vaguely oily-looking anime girls in three-quarter profile and now everybody thinks they’re a robot.
I’m not even being ironic here. Like, yeah, you can recite memorised leftist theory about generative art as a labour rights issue, but do you actually have sympathy for all the artists who’ve made their living churning out mass market friendly art-as-product who now can’t find work because everybody assumes they’re lying about drawing their own material? Do you give a shit about working artists losing their livelihoods even when you think they’re a bunch of sellouts?
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Howdy! You have, by a stroke of some luck or another, found yourself in the domain of the one and only Spuddy "Spudds" Buddy, renowned wizard extraordinaire! Not sure how that came to be, but enjoy your stay nonetheless! Feel free to peruse the wares as you please, and feel free to leave constructive feedback in the inbox if in my human ignorance accidentally reblog something bad and dumb.
Also I'm the #1 Vin JaD Fan on Tumblr trust me on this one
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