msvelawciraptor

[msvelawciraptor]

I think the hardest part about addressing child abuse is getting people to acknowledge, not just intellectually but actually responding accordingly, is that the biggest threat to children, the biggest risk of abuse, is family and parents.

it is of course most often parents who are crowing about needing to protect children (often against far smaller threats than family), and pointing out that they are, statistically, the biggest threat to their kids is not gonna be received well.

[msvelawciraptor]

[msvelawciraptor]

"Deny, Defend, Depose! Viva Luigi!! There ain't no 'us' in the private trust!"

Seen in Medford, Oregon

[msvelawciraptor]

carl sagan said in contact that one measure of a relationship's intimacy is in how many of each person's sub-personas can see and commune with each other. and that hit. do you wanna see if our inner children want to play together 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[msvelawciraptor]

Remember kids, the government will test out their bullshit on minor citizens and if that’s successful they’ll move on to adult citizens.

That anti-abortion trafficking law that says if you bring a minor out-of-state for an abortion without parental permission? If successful, they’ll try it on adults next.

The ‘Kids Online Safety Act?’ If successful, they’ll monitor and censor content for adults, too.

The anti-trans healthcare for children Supreme Court case that’s going on right now? Same deal. If they can get it so they can deny trans kids care, that opens the door to prevent trans healthcare for adults, too.

And if you support any of these for any reason, you support censorship and the state controlling aspects of your life. Protect kids’ rights because if they can successfully take legislate away the ability for a minor to travel for healthcare, their ability to use the internet, and their ability to get gender affirming care, they will come for your ability next.

[msvelawciraptor]

[msvelawciraptor]

fashion is cyclical

[msvelawciraptor]

[msvelawciraptor]

[msvelawciraptor]

Having dug out the Unfinished Tales to reference a conversation Tolkien wrote between Gandalf and Pippin (but didn’t publish) I thought I’d share it. Gandalf is talking to Pippin about the history of Thorin’s company, hobbits and why he chose Bilbo.

This is evidence for the grand statement I just made about how Bilbo was intended to be a catalyst that changed his society, and that hobbit society was indeed significantly different after his journey, with large social changes occurring between The Hobbit and Fellowship. But it’s also a very funny passage to me so here it is:

‘And then there was the Shire-folk. I began to have a warm place in my heart for them in the Long Winter, which none of you can remember.

They were very hard put to it then: one of the worst pinches they have been in, dying of cold, and starving in the dreadful dearth that followed. But that was the time to see their courage, and their pity one for another. It was by their pity as much as by their tough uncomplaining courage that they survived. I wanted them still to survive.

(😭😭😭😭. Also the theme of having pity for each other is what redeems both Bilbo and Frodo re: Gollum.)

But I saw that the Westlands were in for another very bad time again, sooner or later, though of quite a different sort: pitiless war.

(This is possibly one reason why this passage didn’t make it to publication - Gandalf shouldn’t have had this much foreknowledge of the upcoming war of the ring.)

To come through that I thought they would need something more than they now had. It is not easy to say what. Well, they would want to know a bit more, understand a bit clearer what it was all about, and where they stood.

(It’s also explaining that Bilbo’s role in Thorin’s company was predetermined both by a more omnipotent Gandalf and by Fate; that Gandalf selected Bilbo to be a social catalyst, to return and provoke hobbit society into a more adaptable, resilient state; therefore increasing their chances of surviving.)

They had begun to forget: forget their own beginnings and legends, forget what little they had known about the greatness of the world. It was not yet gone, but it was getting buried: the memory of the high and the perilous. But you cannot teach that sort of thing to a whole people quickly. There was not time.

(Thus Bilbo was supposed to be changed, and return changed by his journey, to teach his people.)

And anyway you must begin at some point, with some one person. I dare say he was “chosen” and I was only chosen to choose him; but I picked out Bilbo.’

‘Now that is just what I want to know,’ said Peregrin. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘How would you select any one Hobbit for such a purpose?’ said Gandalf. ‘I had not time to sort them all out;

(He is SO funny)

but I knew the Shire very well by that time, although when I met Thorin I had been away for more than twenty years on less pleasant business. So naturally thinking over the Hobbits that I knew, I said to myself: “I want a dash of the Took” (but not too much, Master Peregrin)

(This is brilliant we are always BODYING pippin constantly. NOT TOO MUCH TOOK 👀. We were ROBBED not having this in canon )

“and I want a good foundation of the stolider sort, a Baggins perhaps.” That pointed at once to Bilbo.

(Eugenics! Observing them like laboratory mouse lines! Call him a Charles River BILB/o the way you’re genotyping these poor little bastards for your purposes)

And I had known him once very well, almost up to his coming of age, better than he knew me.

(??? Hiding in the bushes spying or…?)

I liked him then. And now I found that he was “unattached” – to jump on again, for of course I did not know all this until I went back to the Shire. I learned that he had never married. I thought that odd, though I guessed why it was; and the reason that I guessed was not the one that most of the Hobbits gave me: that he had early been left very well off and his own master.

(Was it cos he’s gay as fuck, Gandalf)

No, I guessed that he wanted to remain “unattached” for some reason deep down which he did not understand himself – or would not acknowledge, for it alarmed him.

(I 100% now and for always love a narrator in a constant state of Just Fucking Lies To Everyone All The Time, Giving Us Nothing, Acknowledging Nothing Including Himself. NOPE NOT PROCESSING ANYTHING TODAY THANKS. WE’RE CLOSED. COME BACK TOMORROW. just A Massive Liar about everything and for what!!! Bilbo Baggins my beloved you were born wrong.)

He wanted, all the same, to be free to go when the chance came, or he had made up his courage. I remembered how he used to pester me with questions when he was a youngster about the Hobbits that had occasionally “gone off ”, as they said in the Shire. There were at least two of his uncles on the Took side that had done so.’

You can see why I love this! And I can see why Tolkien didn’t include it, too. Still very fun passage and near enough to canon to be used if you ever want to.

[msvelawciraptor]

[msvelawciraptor]

so was anybody gonna talk about the new ecology paper proposing Ethiopian wolves as potential pollinators of native nectar-rich flower inflorescences positioned on stalks conveniently within wolf enjoying height AND that it includes photos of said wolves doing said unconfirmed alleged pollination (delightful) AND that it has observational evidence suggesting some wolves do like 1 flower and are done and other wolves just get really into it and spend upwards of an hour going between 20 and 30 flowers for up to 4-5 minutes per cluster just utterly going at it, lost in the nectar sauce? because I cannot BELIEVE I haven’t seen something on this webbed site about it yet. it just has everything this site enjoys

[msvelawciraptor]

"Don't let the internet turn you into an asshole" didn't mean "find an acceptable minority of people to be mean to so you can continue being a bully" it meant. As a general rule of thumb. you should not be a dickhead to strangers on the internet

[msvelawciraptor]

Apparently this is a controversial take now but just FYI spreading misinformation is still bad even if you think it's funny or have decided it's for the One True Cause.

[msvelawciraptor]

no offence but I’m tired of stories about childhood sweethearts and first loves can we see some more stories about people who found love later in life or after making mistakes

[msvelawciraptor]

[msvelawciraptor]

it’s time to stop supporting businesses who have funded trump’s win and champion his ideals among their workers and customers. teslas are fucking awful to begin with. stickermule are lame sellouts who don’t pay their workers enough anyway. leave them in the dust while you support small businesses, particularly those supporting people struggling the most