hey netizens! i’m not sure how many people are aware, but youtube’s been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can’t be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate
BUT, if you’re a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard to get rid of it!
reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3
Where do I copy-paste these to? “My filters”? “My Rules”?
‘my filters’! if you look closely you’ll notice the format is different between the two pages. the (website)(##)(additional text) format goes in filters
Is there a word for that like, “bright darkness” you get in winter?? When it’s been snowing or it’s supposed to snow past sunset and the sky isn’t Dark Enough. One of my favorite things
Thanks to @raindropwindow and a handful of articles, it’s called snow albedo, skyglow, snowglow, or just light scattering! It’s the result of moon- or artificial light reflecting off ground snow, low clouds, or ice crystals.
hi, gentle reminder that you can reclaim slurs for yourself but not for the entire community! Please don’t say g*y when talking about other fags, it is a harmful word that has been used against the queer community to hurt mlm, use less harmful words like cocksucker, faggot, queer, and fairy! Thank you ✨
how long until someone takes this one seriously I wonder
To everyone who read g*y as goy, you know what sure new discourse just dropped, calling people goy is homophobic now and you must call non Jewish people fags that’s the rule I’m sure we can wrap the slur discourse enough to lead to that conclusion
I think one of the absolute most frustrating things for me personally about the current climate crisis / late stage capitalism hell is that ontop of people just outright denying it and acting like the rising temperatures are normal- there’s been like. A VERY noticeable decline in the amount of insects yearly. As someone who goes out of my way to see bugs, every single year for the past decade there has been a sharp decline in bugs. What used to be fun filled summer months running around, catching grasshoppers and petting caterpillars… there’s nothing. I’ve seen one grasshopper this year. I’ve not seen a single caterpillar! It’s currently the ant nuptial flight season in my area and I’ve seen 0 winged ants. They used to all but infest my home during flight season
I remember as a kid, I used to excitedly find ladybug larvae, and I’d relocate them to plants covered in aphids. But I’ve seen one ladybug in the past 5 years, and 0 larvae. I’ve not even seen any aphids. It’s so tangible, it’s so noticeable to me as someone who considered this my absolute favourite season to do my favourite activity in. And I know if the bugs are dying off, other things that eat those bugs are to.
And the absolute worst part? When I tell people about this, the average reaction is ‘good!’. A lot of people will express joy over there being less bugs in the world. Most will express how they’re glad they’ve been experiencing less mosquitos and I want to just grab by the shoulders and shake them and yell TONS OF BUGS JUST DISAPPEARING SHARPLY OVER THE YEARS IS NOT A GOOD THING !!
Anyways. Fellow entomology nerds, have any of you also noticed a drastic decrease in bugs you’re finding yearly or is my area just in a bug deficit.
I believe you. I also believe that this is a terrible fate that can be changed.
The need to tidy up and sterilize our outdoor environments is going to kill us all.
No more nonessential use of pesticides. No more nonessential mowing and weed-whacking. No more raking up leaves And putting them in garbage bags. No more non-native plants thinly decorating English-style lawns and gardens.
It is hard: tall and thickety weeds are repulsive to the suburban aesthetic standard. They are associated with uncleanness, poverty, lack of maintenance, ugliness, poverty, and decay. The uncontrolled and chaotic growth of a meadow is so reviled as to be unthinkable.
The Human World is supposed to be covered in uniform green Surface like carpet, so turfgrass, kept carefully short, must be enforced everywhere… This is so ingrained in us that “grass” might as well be another word for the ground outside, and even in video games and children’s books, this is shown: flat, featureless green Surface.
This, before your eyes, is Death. No ecosystem = No life.
For a year and a half, I have been planting trees and native plants, letting large areas grow wild and unkempt and introducing more plants to them, weeding and clipping selectively instead of indiscriminately hacking everything down (how thoughtless!)
And I’ve started to see bugs I’ve never seen before just about every day. I have watched the amount of life in my little corner of Earth increase dramatically. There are multiple species of lightning bugs, dozens of dragonflies, butterflies everywhere, stag beetles and cicadas, loads of bees, innumerable moths.
I remember the sad decline in bugs as well, the summers with hardly any lightning bugs, but I see now that we can change it.
Outside isn’t supposed to be NEAT and TIDY and WELL-KEPT, outside is supposed to be alive. Outside is supposed to have fallen leaves, wildflowers, logs, sticks, tall plants, thickets, and trees (any of those things appropriate for your biome). Possibly hundreds of plant species have been wiped out from your corner of Earth, but by planting native plant species, you can restore them to their rightful place.
And remember that “Weeds” are simply plants that have evolved to thrive in disturbed environments, and they in fact help heal a destroyed or disrupted habitat! They are Emergency Medical Technicians for the Earth.
Their aggressive growth and deep, stubborn roots stop erosion and topsoil loss, and they create conditions where a greater variety of plants can begin to grow and thrive.
So when weeds overtake a lawn that has not been mowed, that’s because the lawn is an empty, devastated environment where most everyone has been wiped out, and they are doing what they evolved to do.
It’s actually more complicated than that—many weeds, on top of being disturbance-adapted species, have specifically coevolved with humans, to live in human-created environments!
We make Weeds…and Weeds make Us.
Recognize, name, respect, and learn from every creature, and you will see the Weeds for what they are. You will learn of these plants’ heritage as food and medicine, their deep kinship with the impoverished, the displaced, and the marginalized, and you will see the awesome dignity, beauty, and power of the most detested Pokeweed, maligned Dandelion and hated Crabgrass.
Knowing the weeds is the beginning of everything.
When everything feels hopeless, just remember the most vital secret: The human species is not alone in this fight.
We cannot, as individuals, destroy the scourge of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture—but Amaranthus palmeri just might.
(edible, highly nutritious plant used as crop by Native Americans) (USA’s most costly agricultural weed) (it and its weed buddies fucking kneecapped Roundup Ready corn by evolving glyphosate resistance so goddamn fast) (simultaneous resistance to SIX. FAMILIES. of herbicide. was recently documented in a population in Kansas) (chemical companies have been trying to ~innovate~ new ways of using chemicals to stop herbicide resistance and it’s literally only made resistance evolve faster) (like seriously its absolute carnage in the agrochemical industry) (these motherfucking plants are on levels of evolution heretofore unseen on planet Earth and billions of corporate dollars are getting sent straight to eeby deeby trying and failing miserably to get ahead of these weeds) (fun fact Amaranth traditionally symbolizes Immortality) (I WONDER WHY) (research underway to grow amaranth species as climate change resistant crop) (mutualistic symbiosis apparently includes destroying corporate hegemony)
(since industrial agriculture is probs the biggest cause of insect decline…I think there is very real reason to feel encouraged.)
there isn’t a “kill all the ____” that will fix the problems of the world, because,
1. you probably can’t. 2. if you did, more of them would probably come into existence, or 3. other people would come to fit the same social position. 4. There isn’t a group of Fundamentally Bad Evil People that Cause All The Problems, because 5. Harm isn’t caused by a type of person. everyone causes harm and an effective system of addressing harm has to contend with that. 6. you will end up expanding the definition of ____ to include whoever else you want to kill anyway. which will suck. 7. Destruction without building will leave nothing behind. New harms will arise. Old harms will continue. Because there is nothing to replace them. There is nothing Helpful being done. a better world isn’t created by just getting rid of all the bad stuff and calling it a day. you have to actually make something that meets peoples needs. 8. structures of power and harm sometimes maintain themselves even if no one intends them to or purposefully wants them to. 9. systems of power will end up finding a scapegoat. they will convince you that some marginalized group are the real ____ and you should focus on them. and in your zeal and blood thirst you, or at least some of your allies, will fall for it. And you will commit atrocities. 10. The world that is created can only come from the world that is.
And look, whatever group you are thinking of – yes I mean them too. Pedophiles, rapists, murderers, sociopaths, nazis, billionaires, cops, you name it. Harm and oppression is far too complicated to ever be solved with Finding The Right Group To Kill.
And there are lots of really great arguments to be made about why eliminationist rhetoric is ethically bad, or historically questionable, etc. I am open to that being added on and talked about too.
But my point is that It Will Not Accomplish Your Desired Results. You Will Have Committed Atrocities and You Will Have Failed At Achieving Your Initial Goal.
People say that you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, but I say that it’s amazing how many eggs you can break without making an omelet.
“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”
-Ursula K. Le Guin
religious argument for your unpleasant aunt: look, god himself tried to kill all the bad people off in one big flood, but there were bad people again in like one generation. why do you think your favorite political party is going to do better.
The Romani people who were the easiest
to record and exterminate were those who were the most integrated in
society. Like the Jews, these people existed on census records, military
rosters, and school files. The decimation of this Romani middle-class
meant that there were few strong voices who were in a position to speak
up about the Romani genocide after 1945.
There were no Sinti or Roma called to
testify at the Nuremberg trials. There were no Romani scholars, no
Romani lawyers, no civil servants. No one left to document the
atrocities committed against Romani people alongside the Jews – the only
two peoples specifically targeted by the Nazis’ Final Solution to ensure German racial purity.
Whereas census data for Jews can be
compared before and after the Holocaust, this is rarely the case for
Sinti and Roma, meaning the total loss of Romani life is extremely
difficult to piece together. Estimates vary somewhere between 500,000
and 1.5 million people. In 1939, around 30,000 people referred to as
‘Gypsies’ lived in what is now Germany and Austria. The total population
living in Greater Germany and its occupied territories is unknown,
though scholars Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon have provided a rough estimate of 942,000. Of the Sinti and Roma living in Germanic Central Europe, only 5,000 are thought to have survived.
Kallitsounaki and Williams found that transgender participants did in fact report alexithymia symptoms at an elevated rate, compared to their cisgender peers. This effect also held strong when eliminating all Autistic participants from analyses, which indicates that even non-Autistic transgender people are worse at naming and recognizing their feelings than non-Autistic cisgender people are.
The study’s authors concluded from these findings that non-Autistic transgender people appear to exhibit “subclinical” Autistic traits.
“Future studies mighty usefully examine whether alexithymia is a potential “marker” of autistic traits in transgender people who do not meet full criteria for autism,” they write.
To put it another way, they believe the alexithymia that non-Autistic trans people report is still caused by (mild) Autism.
But this conclusion carries with it a faulty and as-yet untested assumption: that alexithymia must be caused by Autism directly, when in reality it could just be a natural consequence of living in a marginalized and othered body.
Just because a transgender person struggles to name and recognize their emotions doesn’t necessarily mean they’re Autistic. It could very well be the case that both Autistic people and transgender people struggle to understand our feelings, because we have experienced a lifetime of questioning and invalidation.
And if we look to the broader research literature on alexithymia, we see even more evidence that this might be the case. … It’s not just Autistic people who have been found by researchers to experience alexithymia. Sufferers of trichotillomania, or compulsive hair-pulling, have repeatedly been found to be alexithymic too.
It makes sense that a mind that’s well practiced in the art of detachment might stop checking on its internal states entirely. A body that has often been the site of your abuse is one you can’t dwell in comfortably. If you can’t count on your caregiver to provide you with regular nourishment, there’s little reason to make note of your own feelings of hunger. And if your cries for help or comfort are never heard with sympathy, you may quickly learn not to even recognize sadness within yourself at all.
These findings also dovetail with an observation that Kallitsounaki and Williams make in their paper, but don’t take much time to dwell on: they found that the cisgender men in their sample were significantly more alexithymic than cisgender women.
This finding also suggests that there are environmental and social factors that contribute to a person’s awareness of their own emotions — and populations that are discouraged from sharing how they feel are far worse at understanding their feelings as a result.
Women aren’t innately more attuned to emotions than men are. They’re simply expected to be more emotionally aware, and given more tools to make emotional recognition and expression possible. Men, on the flip side, are denied the freedom to be openly emotional, and also relieved of the responsibility to look after their own or others’ feelings. This results in them understanding emotions a whole lot less.
If we can’t assume that the alexithymia of men is innate, then we shouldn’t assume it’s innate in Autistics or transgender people either. For just as men are discouraged from openly crying, asking for help, or showing other signs of supposed “weakness,” both transgender people and Autistics are actively discouraged from expressing discomfort or seeking emotional aid for ourselves.
Ahhh this is tying in so much with what I’ve been thinking/talking about earlier.
People tend to take cues on what is real from other people around us, particularly very trusted people like your parents when you’re a child. (Or people who have a lot of power over you. Ditto.) When subjective experiences like physical pain, psychological pain, hunger, cold/heat, sensory overload, etc get treated like they’re real, people take them more seriously than when they’re either treated like they’re not real or like a thing that is real but which you should ignore.
If a parent or similar thinks that you covering your ears and screaming is a proportionate response to a fire alarm, you believe it is a proportionate response and are more likely to notice similar sensations in the future. If a parent or similar thinks you covering your ears and screaming because a clock is ticking at a normal-to-allistics volume is “being dramatic” or “being too sensitive” or similar, you might try to not notice that sensation going forwards. Because you were just told that you should not notice it.
(if you’re told the way you’re being bullied is something you should just ignore or just put up with, you might learn to ignore how you feel when you’re being bullied. If you’re told boys don’t cry, you might not develop the skill of recognizing sadness. If you get showered with attention when you express an interest in playing dress up and told that you like playing dress up but denied attention or get diverted to something else when you want to talk about dinosaurs, you might conclude that you like playing dress up and don’t like talking about dinosaurs, and if that is wildly out of alignment with what you actually like and don’t like, you might have trouble telling what liking or disliking things even feels like.
