Okay, I frickin’ adore the Earth Is Space Australia business, so here’s my two cents. Someone did a great post about laughter as a fear response and how freaky that would be to aliens.
There’s another thing we do when we’re about to go into battle and we’re scared out of our minds.
So Alien Steve is minding his own business as the new guy on the Starship Incandescent. It’s a mixed ship, about half human, a quarter Silesian, and the rest a grab bag of species, but he hasn’t had any major problems so far. Then the pirates show up and shoot out their FTL drives so they can’t escape, and they’re outnumbered ten to one, and he calculates their odds of survival at very low. The comm link is still active, so they can hear the pirates laughing as they get ready to tear the Incandescent open and vent them all into vacuum. At least the end will be quick.
And Human Steve starts chanting. It makes no sense. Human incantations are for birth anniversaries, or aquatic grooming rituals, or for the ancient rite of passage known as “ka-ra-oke”. This is not a time of celebration. It is a time of preparing for imminent and ugly death by gravity cannon. But every human on the bridge starts chanting, too.
The pirates aren’t laughing anymore. Human Steve wraps his fingers around the main gunnery controls, and the crew descends as one into battle.
Teradecads later, his students will beg him for the story of how the Incandescent destroyed the Tyn’x Syndicate. To this day he credits their victory to the invocation of the great Human battle god Queen.
And the damndest thing, Alien Steve will say later, is the way they all knew the chant. Not just knew it, but agreed that this was the right one to use. Because the thing about humans, Alien Steve will tell his student, the thing to remember is that they spar recreationally, and they do it *all the time* and over the most meaningless things. Appropriate chants for a situation are an especially common thing to spar over, and it’s exceedingly hard to tell just how recreational it is sometimes.
(There are reports of sparring sessions that got so out of hand they almost jeapordized entire missions. Alien Steve has a friend whose fur still stands on end in fear at the thought of the human utterance, “Turn that off or so help me God I am turning this ship around.”)
The point is, Alien Steve will say, the humans on that mission had very different ideas about appropriate chants. They were well behaved about it, but Human Janet and Human Steve especially seemed to worship Gods who demanded very different chants. And yet, when Human Steve began invoking the war god, Human Janet was the first to join in.
Humans have been scientifically determined to have no hivemind or psychic abilities, but sometimes Alien Steve has to wonder.
Human-Steve knew what he was doing, because the coda to that war chant is the victory hymn.
(as a shy and nerdy high school kid, my one moment of transcendence was, during a prolonged technical difficulty kicking off a pep rally, getting the entire student body to breathe and pulse as a single being by stomping my feet twice and clapping once from an obscure corner of the bleachers.)
You ever read some shit so evil it kinda pumps the brakes on the rest of your day?
Are you fucking ready for this knowledge? To my exasperated followers, give me a break, I haven’t given a good historical rant about her in a few months. Also who the hell uses the word ‘vegetable’ anymore? Yeah, I’m taking over this post. Here we go:
Rosemary Kennedy was JFK’s sister. Joseph Kennedy manipulated his children for years, always wanting them to be the picturesque family to help gain political traction. “Oh, they’re so pretty, oh, they’re so well-behaved, oh, they’re the definition of family ideals” that stuff.
For the most part, the rest of the Kennedy children obliged.
Rosemary?
Rosemary left her boarding school to go on dates.
…Yeah. Yeah, that was it. Rosemary left the boarding school and went on dates. That was her “rebellious nature”. She was a tad bit clumsy, she might have actually had borderline Asperger’s due to her inability to pick up on social cues, and she left her boarding school to go on dates with boys. That last one pissed off Joseph so that, by the time Rosemary was twenty-three (the above cruce post makes it seem like she was a teenager but no, she was twenty-three, I’m not saying this to diminish anything, I’m saying that she was a fully-grown adult and still under her father’s manipulations), he took her to Walter Jackson Freeman without consulting his wife. If you haven’t been privy to any of my rants, Walter Jackson Freeman was a man who used icepicks and knives to cut into people’s heads, chopping off pieces of their brain, a process known as the frontal lobotomy. Icepicks. The things you used to chip ice. Icepicks. Although I’m pretty sure he used a kitchen knife on Rosemary because, you know, that’s so much better. Anywho, not only was she forced into the operation, not only was she forced to sing God Bless America, but she was forced to say The Lord’s Prayer. The. Lord’s. Prayer. Until. She. Couldn’t. Because. They. Paralyzed. Her.
Joseph was so disgusted by her new state (you know, because she was paralyzed) that he sent her to a far-off asylum where she remained for decades. When JFK ran for his presidency and was asked about the whereabouts of his sister, he said that she was away, teaching and/or studying.
Nobody visited Rosemary for decades.
Nobody visited Rosemary for decades.
When her mother finally visited, Rosemary lunged at her in anger and had to be sedated. Her mother’s response? You ready for this? I mean, seriously, are you ready? Like I know what you’re thinking: “Mate, you just went into a rant by memory (yeah, I’m typing this all by memory) about a woman whose brain was hacked up using a butter knife so that she wouldn’t embarrass her family during their political campaign, only for that woman to become paralyzed and institutionalized without visitors for decades, what the fuck can be worse than that?” Seriously though, brace yourselves.
When Rose Kennedy saw her daughter for the first time in decades (after Rosemary was institutionalized as a result of Joseph’s severe medical abuse), when Rose saw her…her first concern…was that she was fat.
Like I said, I wrote this all from memory, but have a bundle of sources confirming everything:
Lobotomies to “correct” misbehaving children weren’t isolated to this family. This was considered a parent’s right. This family isn’t specially cursed, this was fucking “normal” at one point.
Even now, there’s disabled kids who have to fight their parents about invasive and detrimental surgeries and “medical treatments” like this.
It’s part the abuse culture that surrounds parenting – that parents can do what they want to their kids and nobody can tell them otherwise – and part more standard bigotry. The lines between sexism, racism, and ableism tend to blur when it comes to parental abuse culture.
And shit like this is happening in everyday homes,
“In the spring of 1940, when the Nazis overran France from the north, much of its Jewish population tried to escape the country towards the south. In order to cross the border, they needed visas to Spain and Portugal, and together with a flood of other refugees, tens of thousands of Jews besieged the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux in a desperate attempt to get that life-saving piece of paper. The Portuguese government forbade its consuls in France to issue visas without prior approval from the Foreign Ministry, but the consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, decided to disregard the order, throwing to the wind a thirty-year diplomatic career. As Nazi tanks were closing in on Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes and his team worked around the clock for ten days and nights, barely stopping to sleep, just issuing visas and stamping pieces of paper. Sousa Mendes issued thousands of visas before collapsing from exhaustion.
The Portuguese government—which had little desire to accept any of these refugees—sent agents to escort the disobedient consul back home, and fired him from the foreign office. Yet officials who cared little for the plight of human beings nevertheless had a deep reverence for documents, and the visas Sousa Mendes issued against orders were respected by French, Spanish and Portuguese bureaucrats alike, spiriting up to 30,000 people out of the Nazi death trap. Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust.”
—Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
dudes in their 20s who try to talk to high school girls are losers
girls please think about why these guys cant get girls their own age please. its not because they’re sweet or misunderstood, its because they’re damn loser scumbag babies who cant attract anyone who knows better.
Say it again for the people in the back
Dudes in their 20s go for high school girls because it sets up a power imbalance, AND THEY KNOW IT. They 100% know it. There is a fucking reason adult women won’t go near them. Protect highschool girls.
I remember being in middle school during a pep rally when a speaker went up to the podium and started talking about high schoolers and adults trying to hit on girls our age. He touched on several points that get talked about a lot on here, and the audience’s response was lukewarm, which is normal since children rarely like being lectured about anything, least of all topics that make them feel like theyre being condescended to. But there was one point he made (related to a study) that I’ll never forget, because it was the one statement that finally made this crowd of middle schoolers erupt with disgust:
“When these older guys were interviewed about why they were going after younger girls, do you know what the number one response was? ‘Because they’re easy.’”
Adults and older teens who flirt with children do not do so because they think they’re mature, they go after them because they know they’re immature enough to fall for a one-sided trap.
Friday, July 6th: Hi, I’m Gemma and I’m so sorry to ask this but, would anyone be able to send me a few £’s so I can get groceries + supplies for next few weeks?
This is a continuation from my benefit sanction post (please click to read about my situation), as I still desperately need help to get food/supplies for this month and due to a donation chargeback, I’m now back in the red and can’t even afford to eat. I need at least £90 to help get me out of it and to cover me for some upcoming bills (council tax, electricity/gas) as well as getting groceries/household supplies (laundry powder, toiletries etc..) and at the moment, I really need help to get these essentials as I have skipped on eating for the past few days in a row now to try and make ends meet and it is really taking its toll on me.
If anyone could spare any amount to help me, even if it’s just £1/$1/€1, it would literally save my life and, sharing definitely helps just as much as donations. Nobody has to donate if they can’t or don’t want to, I know we’re all struggling. Thank you for your help 💖
Trump regime is using the power of the state to chill dissenting voices. In addition, it is perpetuating a culture that doesn’t just condone, but requires, lying to the American people.
“He helped craft a statement to the media saying, “Some of them were able to elude us thanks to the mayor’s irresponsible decision.“ He was comfortable with that statement, he said, because it included the words “some of.“
“This is a spin statement. This is what every public affairs officer does,” Schwab said.
A week later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ language was noticeably different. He said “ICE failed to make 800 arrests” because of the mayor’s statement. Sessions’ words didn’t sit well with Schwab.
“Completely false…that made me extremely uncomfortable,” Schwab said.“
Like idk his whole job is lying to the American people under the Obama and Trump administrations he basically admits that himself. He only got uncomfortable when the lies got too specific.
Like yeah it’s beyond fucked up that DHS sent investigators to intimidate him but how do you think we got to this point? Chelsea Manning was imprisoned, Edward Snowden is in exile he got off easy compared to whistleblowers during the Obama administration
You are born with the ability to see whether people listen more often to the angel or the devil on their shoulder, based on the opacity of each- if they listen more to the angel, it’s more solid and the demon is more transparent, and vice versa. You recently met a guy online and you’re finally going to meet. You go in for a handshake and glance at his shoulders, but you can’t see the angel. Only a solid demon.
Run. That’s my first thought and it keeps playing in my head over and over again. Run!
“You OK?” asks the man before me.
I realize I’ve been standing frozen, probably looking spooked. “Yes,” I fake what I hope is a convincing smile. I look back at his right shoulder, there’s nothing there, then to his left shoulder where a solid colored devil rests.
As he turns to our table I glance over the restaurant to make sure my powers are still working. There’s a woman one table away with a transparent devil and a translucent angel, she listens to the angel more. The woman across from her has a devil that’s translucent, she listens to it a little more than she should.
I’ve had this power my whole life, to see which side one listens to, but never before have I seen a completely solid devil, never before have I seen the angel completely gone…
Run!
Turning back to him I seen he’s pulled my chair out for me, watching me expectantly.
I could run now but what if he follows? Maybe it’s best I don’t tip him off, assuming I haven’t already, and sneak out while he’s not looking.
“Thank you,” I sit down.
He sits across from me and looks down, pulling on his long sleeves. “Order whatever you want,” he mumbles, “don’t pay attention to the price.”
“Oh, OK thank you.” I can barely pay attention to the menu. I glance over the restaurant, planning an escape route from the restroom.
“It was at 5:50,” he says, picking right up from where our last conversation online left off.
“I watched that video a dozen times and couldn’t see it.”
As we talk he seems just like the shy sweet boy I met online but then I glance at the devil on his shoulder and remember to be scared.
I’m looking at his shoulder so often that he glances back to see what I’m looking at. Worried about it I glance down and gape; on his arm a cut peeks out from under his sleeve.
He sees me seeing it and panics, pulling his sleeves down.
My gaze falls to the table and we sit there in silence.
This whole time I’ve been avoiding the people with the more solid devils because they listen to them more, I never questioned what the devils were saying. His devil isn’t telling him to hurt me, it’s telling him to hurt himself, that he’s worthless and doesn’t deserve me; and me acting scared of him isn’t helping.
“Don’t listen,” slips out before I’ve finished getting my thoughts together. I take in a long breath and speak slowly. “Don’t listen to the voice that tells you you’re useless, that you’ll never make a difference… You’ve made a huge difference to me.”
I risk looking up and see him teary eyed. “Thank you,” he whispers, and beside his head a barely visible angel fades back into existence.
Thank you so much for doing this prompt @hannahcbrown!
To all the amigos out there, know that you are loved ❤️
