A semi-organised collection of semi-interests

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
sandersstudies
anagramofbrat: “heavenpoison: “ Svetlana Tartakovska (1979), Young Writer, Undated, Oil on masonite. Link: http://www.artist-view.nl/ ” I’m kind of obsessed with this painting and others by the same artist of Black girls. it is one of the few...
heavenpoison

Svetlana Tartakovska (1979), Young Writer, Undated, Oil on masonite.

Link: http://www.artist-view.nl/

anagramofbrat

I’m kind of obsessed with this painting and others by the same artist of Black girls.

it is one of the few representations of Black women in “traditional art,” for lack of a better term that shows the subject as soft, delicate and vulnerable, which are qualities ascribed to us so rarely it’s notable when it happens.

It’s painted by a Ukrainian woman. I don’t have time to unpick all the complexities there, but there’s enough fraughtness between Black women and Eastern Europeans that the source of this painting is equally as surprising to me as the tenderness of subject.

anunorganisedthought

Do follow the link to se the other paintings, they are realy nice!

theunfairfolk
spacemancharisma

hey uhhh but fr the concept of fallen angels existing but risen demons being an impossibility is kind of a great summary of sin in christianity

ashelyskies

holy shit

spacemancharisma

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no, no, come back here and tell me how stupid it is to talk about how the power dynamics inherent to christianity are built upon the rhetoric that failure is unavoidable and there is never enough you can do to make up for it

anunorganisedthought

I belive redemtion is like half the point/goal of Judeo-Christiandom though, humanity messed up by committing the orginal sin, and ever since they have to redem/prove themself. Like some of the rules Jews (and some christian) folow are specifically not about right/wronge (like the dietery stuff?) but like to prove that they are repenting or something? That some day the messiah will (or in the christian case has) come and forgive the sin(s)? 

I mean that doesn’t realy take away from the point that from the ops main point about modern christian rethoric, as the way of redemtion seems rather arbitray and unfair.

geturasstomars
izze-bizzle: “beatrice-otter: “the-adhd-society: “ adrienaline-rushed-art: “ littlenobodys-corner: “” ok so people are making fun of this but adding this with other anti-global warming tactics will work This isn’t adding ice just for the sake of...
littlenobodys-corner

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adrienaline-rushed-art

ok so people are making fun of this but adding this with other anti-global warming tactics will work

This isn’t adding ice just for the sake of denial, it’s adding to the Earth’s albedo. This in turn actually makes the Earth’s climate cooler, and then more ice will be produced naturally because of this.

It isn’t a process we need to continue forever, in fact it’s one that needs to be calculated so that we don’t do it TOO MUCH. The only worry would be cooling down too much.

So yes, this is a good idea. It simply isn’t the only thing we should do because we still have gross pollution.

the-adhd-society

For the love of god do it . anything just do it. Give us hope.

beatrice-otter

Here’s the thing: Most environmental catastrophes humans have ever or are currently creating can be fixed. It’s not just a matter of “oh no, things are ruined, and maybe we can stop the degradation so that things don’t get any worse, but we’re stuck with how things are.” There are some things we can’t do, like bringing back extinct species. But there are a lot of other things we can definitely do, many of which are being done right now. The problem is that most of our willpower and effort is spent on bullshit tiny things that won’t solve the problem (individual recycling, etc.) and not on the large-scale things that can and will make a large-scale difference.

Ice caps are melting? Guess what! We know how to make ice. It’s not that hard. Designing mostly-automated robot ships to go to the poles and rebuild the ice caps is well within our current technical capabilities. We just need to fund it.

Deforestation on a massive scale? Destruction of other biomes? Guess what! We know how to plant trees. We know how to plant grasslands. We know how to take barren, lifeless land and turn it back into a viable biome. It’s not that hard. In a lot of cases, if there’s neighboring areas where that biome still exists, all you have to do is dump a few tons of biomass (plant clippings, food waste, etc.) on the barren land and stand back and wait. The biomass will provide nutrients and keep the topsoil from blowing away, and the plants and animals from the neighboring biome will move in. In two decades, even if you don’t do anything besides dumping the biomass on it, you won’t be able to tell what was the barren area and what was the still-existing biome.

Coral reefs dying? Now, coral reefs are a bit more fragile than most biomes, but guess what! We still know how to replant/rebuild them, and in fact are working on that in places affected by coral reef die-off! And we’re learning how to do it better every day.

Desertification? Guess what! We know how to turn desert back into green space. They’re doing it on a large scale in China and sub-Saharan Africa. There are several different techniques, none of which are even very technology-intensive. It takes money and time and labor, but it’s perfectly doable. We know this because we’ve done it.

Plastic in the ecosystem, particularly in the ocean? Guess what! There’s a lot of people working on this, both on “how to remove plastic from the ocean” and “how to reuse/recycle it more efficiently.” And the techniques are improving by leaps and bounds every year. This is a solvable problem. These are all solvable problems.

So if you’re crushed by the weight of the coming environmental catastrophe … don’t be. These are all solvable problems! We can stop things from getting worse, and we can fix the things we’ve broken. The issue is political, not practical.

On the political side, of course, is the need to tighten up environmental regulations across the globe. (What’s the statistic, that 90% of pollution is caused by 100 corporations?) And then of course, we need to fund these programs on a large enough scale.

In some ways the political aspect is the hardest, but consider this: we are at a tipping point. Things are changing about the way politicians talk about climate change and ecological degradation. More ordinary people are concerned about this, which means more pressure on politicians. One of the ways that things are changing is that people–even conservatives–are starting to talk about “job opportunities in new green fields” and switching the conversation so that it’s not “rainforest vs. jobs” makes political action a lot more possible. And no, it’s not going to happen on its own, but it can happen.

This is a solvable problem.

izze-bizzle

I *needed* this. Climate change has had me feeling SO helpless, having a list of things that can actually potentially be done is beautiful

the-violet-galaxy
homunculus-argument

Also hey btw

The term "masterpiece" originally and traditionally meant a piece of work that an apprentice or other aspiring craftsman created to show off to his master or the town's guild. So naturally, it was intended to be the best fucking thing that you could make, demonstrating just how fucking good you are at what you're making - 100% to flex your skills. And if it was approved, the applicant was accepted as a member of the guild and could now call himself a master, and work in this craft in this city.

So the next time you're looking at The One Great Thing you made and think "this is it, my masterpiece, I have peaked, it's all downhill from here", consider looking it the other way: Making your masterpiece means you're only getting started.

anunorganisedthought

As an apprentice/acolyte you would help make ordered (commissioned) pieces. The master pieces was a piece made out of fancy materials, showing off your skills, to prove that you where a master. It also served as a portfolio.  My great grandfather was a carpenter, made tables, chairs etc. Did a wandering apprenticeship in Germany almost a 100 years ago, our familie stil has the piece.

the-violet-galaxy
serenata-your-neighborhood-lefty

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mayflower-gal

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

-Stephen Jay Gould.

las-lus

This quote is great because so was Einstein himself! He never saw himself as a genius, as a mind like no other. He saw himself as a guy who studied alot and he was very dedicated to give that opportunity to others. He also spoke very openly against racism and was one of the few professors that thought black people at the time. Here are some great pictures of him in 1946

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serenata-your-neighborhood-lefty

Adding onto this: I really recommend Einstein’s short, entry-level essay “Why Socialism?”, found here. It’s ~10 min read and it does a great job of explaining the crux of socialism. 

Here are some of his major points:

  • The individual and society form a symbiotic relationship. A healthy individual needs a healthy society and a healthy society needs healthy individuals.
  • Capitalism undermines democracy by concentrating wealth into the hands of an economic elite, which in turn funds a political elite to represent its interests in government. The ultra-rich also control the media and educational systems to manipulate public opinion and prevent free thought. (Here Einstein is pre-empting Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s propaganda model).
  • Capitalism’s profit motive entails human needs going unmet to satisfy human greed.   
  • The “worst evil” of capitalism is the crippling of individuals, which begins in school where an exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student.
  • A transition to socialism is necessary to overcome these problems, and is in fact imperative to avert constant warfare and ecological catastrophe. We need a fully democratic society where society’s productive capacity is not concentrated into the hands of a few, but owned by workers and society itself. 
hachama

Please do not ignore one of the bedrock reasons why Einstein identified with black people in America: Einstein was a German Jew.  Check those dates.  He fled the Nazis.

anunorganisedthought

Einstein left Germany earlier than that, he was already plenty dissatisfied with the conservative wing of the Weimar. He was convinced to com back to teach in Germany as he became more famos, but left because he didn’t like what Germany became.

the-violet-galaxy
crypticspren

what does it say about us as a culture that most of our microwaves have a dedicated popcorn button

cognito-ergo-hazard

i dont know but whatever it says, its magnified by literally every bag of popcorn saying “don’t use the popcorn button”

prokopetz

Funnily enough, there’s an answer for that.

In brief, the “popcorn” button was initially introduced by fancy high-end microwaves that used an integrated humidity sensor to tell when your popcorn was done; microwaveable popcorn vents steam as it cooks, so by monitoring the amount of steam in the cooking chamber, you can get pretty close to perfectly popped popcorn every time (though it’s generally only pretty close, since different brands of microwaveable popcorn have different moisture content).

As the feature became popular, manufacturers of cheap microwaves started adding a button labelled “popcorn” as well, in order to imply that they offer this feature. These “popcorn” buttons simply run the microwave for a fixed amount of time that the manufacturer figures is close enough to the printed cooking time of most commercial brands.

In practice, of course, the fixed-time “popcorn” button usually just sets your popcorn on fire. To make matters worse, owing to America’s permissive advertising laws, microwave manufacturers are allowed to make all sorts of misleading-but-technically-true statements in their packaging and instruction manuals, rendering it nearly impossible to tell whether a given model of microwave has a real humidity-sensing “popcorn” button or a fake fixed-time “popcorn” button before buying it.

In summary: the “popcorn” button that your microwave popcorn instructs you not to use exists because American microwave manufacturers are using a misleadingly labelled button in order to imply that their product has a feature that it does not in fact have, in a way that can potentially trick people into burning their houses down, for advertising purposes. This is perfectly legal.

So: what does that say about our culture?

anunorganisedthought

Technology Connections has a cool Video about these fancy but not so complicated things

otmaromanovas
beselflessbebrave

You know Ned Stark was like kid you better look like your mom because if you grow up with white hair and purple eyes it’s going to get tough for me

starcrossedsomething

Catelyn: Ned, why does your bastard have silver hair

Ned, a sweating mess: I slept with the queen

anunorganisedthought

So Ned vas actually sorta smart in that regard. After getting Jon at the tower of Joy, he went to castle Starfall, and return the family blad Dawn (taken from Ser Arthur Dayne). Ned had met his sister Ashara Dayne before, and house Dayne is a family who often have blue/purple eyes and paleblond hair. So if Jon had gotten targarian traits people would have assumed he was Asharas and Neds (something may did anyway).