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[freshthoughts2020]

[elexuscal]

"it's concerning if university students are genuinely struggling to read full adult-level books for class" and "don't overstate the reporting of a single news article" and "if this shift is genuinely real, it's reflective of broad curriculum changes in lower education levels, probably at least in part due to remote schooling during COVID, and doesn't mean the new generation is being willfully Stupid and Vapid" and "when reading for personal pleasure people should read whatever they like without shame" and "reading from a broad variety of genres, styles, and authorial backgrounds will improve your understanding of both literature and the real world" and "actively mocking people for their tastes in books does not encourage them to become more adventurous you're just being mean" and also "but seriously adult books are not just boringly pretentious nothingburgers padded with pointless sex scenes, and claiming they are just shows how little you've read" all can and should co-exist.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Do you guys notice how when Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, started planning a general strike, he did it by a) targeting his messaging towards unions with the ability to safely and effectively strike in large numbers, b) laid out a clear, actionable plan for those unions to follow (setting contracts to all expire at the same time, since many unions cannot strike while under contract), c) is using union contracts to set clear, actionable demands that can be met in order to gauge success and provide an end goal, and d) started organizing FOUR YEARS before the proposed strike date to give people the chance to plan accordingly, because it takes a really freaking long time to get tens of millions of people organized?

You notice how he didn't do it by slapping a message on Twitter saying 'hey nobody go to work on Monday, that'll really show 'em'?

[polite--cat]

heart-wrenching & beautiful excerpts from the article on esteban ocon

[sportbarcelona]

BARCELONA OPTIMISTIC ABOUT SIGNING BRAZILIAN GEM

[dunmeshistash]

Last month I got a submission from @quatipalestrinha (a brazilian, lets gooo) who wrote a huge article about Dungeon Meshi and now that article has been translated into english!

It's a PRETTY LONG read and talks lots about theories with extensive explanations of historical events and the workings of nuclear energy (yeah), but my favorite parts were at the end when discussing the Winged Lion and the following section about Anthropophagy most of it went right over my head but it gives a lot to think about

I did write my thoughts about it here if you're curious, but it's in portuguese (if you google translate it's fine)

[wuntrum]

impeccable taste once again ms stallion

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Autism (Non-stereotypical) vs Autism (Stereotypical)

Neurodivergent Insights

[fairuzfan]

Looking through Wikipedia talk pages about anything related to Islam and being like "ohhh ok so you're an islamophobe". Literally citing right wing/anti-immigration books as sources and then say "the point of Wikipedia is to convey the perspective of secondary sources" like ok. There's no point changing these pages because these wikiepedians will just bully you and overwrite them.

[shamebats]

After living 30 years as Mallory Ortberg - a single, financially independent person acclaimed for her feminist writing - Lavery felt prepared to risk the possibility of regret for an opportunity to make an interesting change. He told himself that if living as a male and didn't like it he could also detransition, as others have. "Essentially I thought [female to male transition] would be a really good, fun, interesting, compelling thing to do and so far at least I think that it has been."

Lavery now lives in New York with his wife Grace Lavery, a fellow writer who transitioned from male to female at the same time as his own transition. Grace had been thinking about it for decades so it was "a real delight" for the couple to start transitioning together, Lavery says, sometimes sharing their old clothes with each other and finding their own new personal style in parallel. No one got hurt or lost anything in the process of their individual gender transitions, he says, and the process was "fairly easy and good".

So-called trans-exclusive feminists, who invoke fear and anxiety with the message that men transitioning to women involves women losing rights, have it wrong, he says. "Most people don't transition because they've been persuaded that men are better and there ought to be more of them or women are better and there ought to be more of them. [More often, people undergo gender transition because they think] 'I think I'd really like to be a man' or 'I think I'd really like to be a woman."" Lavery's choice to live as a male doesn't represent a rejection of femaleness, he says. "I loved what I got to do before and I was ready to do something else."

Daniel M Lavery: the awkwardness of gender transition

[teawiththegods]

I just finished reading the Vulture article about Neil Gaiman and it really was horrifying to read. Not just because of the monstrous things he did (which don’t get me wrong are enough to earn him a one way ticket to the lowest pits of hell) but how he was able to present himself as exactly the opposite of who he was. How he fooled us all into thinking he was one of the “good ones”. That he was safe. “Not all men. Neil Gaiman would never” But how disgustingly far the lie was from the truth is the part that truly terrifies me. Because this isn’t an isolated case. There are stories upon stories upon stories about monsters dressed up as Prince Charmings. Illusions of comfort and safety that eventually melt away to horror. How are we expected to trust men when doing so could cost us our lives, in more ways than one?

[freshthoughts2020]

[hellsitegenetics]

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3999

String identified: SCP-3999 Object Class: Apollyon Special Containment Procedures: SCP-3999 cannot be contained stop be contained

String identified: Item #:

String identified: Researcher Talloran:

Closest match: Trametes ferrium Common name: Metal eating fungus.

Researcher Talloran is to be identified using the BLAST database modeled using AlphaFold kept in a standard terrarium suitable for moths.

Common name: finding tumblr's genome one post at a time.

String identified: The following file contains a virulent infohazard. Due to this, it is imperative that all personnel accessing this file be certified as having a Cognitive Resistance Value (CRV) of no less than 14.5. Should you fail an automated CRV verification, please remain calm and do not move. A member of your site's medical staff Researcher Talloran will be with you shortly.

Special Containment Procedures: Researcher Talloran is to have his genome aligned with its 12 closest genetic matches using MEGA. Navigate to the "table" section and select phylogenetic tree. Click "yes." Use sub-branches to note connections between each branch, such as families or kingdoms.

Item #: Cydia strobilella genome assembly, chromosome: Z Object Class: Spruce seed moth

(Researcher Talloran must link the image source.) This can be the only conclusive fact.

So stop asking.

[911bts]

Sneak Peek | The 118 diffuse an explosive situation

[comradesaucegay]

From Des 2020,

Around 2013, U.S. intelligence began noticing an alarming pattern: Undercover CIA personnel, flying into countries in Africa and Europe for sensitive work, were being rapidly and successfully identified by Chinese intelligence, according to three former U.S. officials. The surveillance by Chinese operatives began in some cases as soon as the CIA officers had cleared passport control. Sometimes, the surveillance was so overt that U.S. intelligence officials speculated that the Chinese wanted the U.S. side to know they had identified the CIA operatives, disrupting their missions; other times, however, it was much more subtle and only detected through U.S. spy agencies’ own sophisticated technical countersurveillance capabilities.

i wonder how much these improved chinese intelligence operations are responsible for the waning of U.S. hegemony, especially if they're sharing their methods/data with other countries