#shared articles

[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

[hoovesandfloorpaws]

"That said, both Styles and his therapist have questioned why he cares quite so much about being likeable. This is one of the things he thought about a lot in his big pandemic reflection. In part, it's a choice, he explained. He recalled moving to London after The X Factor and hearing tales of petulant celebrities screaming because someone got their coffee order wrong and deciding to never be that guy, to never give someone a petty reason to bad-mouth him. But more recently he's come to worry that the drive for approval came from a more complex place, a place of caution, fear, control." "Styles said he often spent interviews terrified about saying the wrong thing until he stopped to question what abhorrent belief or bizarre opinion he was scared he'd accidentally reveal and realized he couldn't think of anything."

"And he thought about the cleanliness clauses in the contracts he used to sign, which would dictate that they would be null and void if he did anything supposedly unsavoury, and about how terrified that used to make him. And about when he signed his solo contract and learned that the ability to make music would not be affected by personal transgressions, he burst into tears, a reaction he still seemed shocked by, retelling it to me now, years later. "I felt free," he explained."

"When Styles began therapy about five years ago [so in 2017], he was reluctant initially, feeling it was a music industry cliché. "I thought it meant that you were broken," he said. "I wanted to be the one who could say I didn't need it." He returned to the home theme that has underpinned our conversation, explaining that therapy has allowed him to "open up rooms in himself" that he didn't know existed, allowed him to feel things more honestly, where before he had tended to"emotionally coast.""

"Recently Styles began to work through issues related to intimacy, dating, love. "For a long time, it felt like the only thing that was mine was my sex life. I felt so ashamed about it, ashamed at the idea of people even knowing that I was having sex, let alone who with," he said."

"You look back, especially now there's all the documentaries, like the Britney documentary, and you watch how people were abused in that way, by that system, especially women. You recall articles from not even five years ago, and you're like, I can't even believe that was written."

He has been thinking a lot recently about autonomy, ownership, privacy. About what he should be able to keep to himself, what he should be able to simply communicate through his music without follow-up questions or prying. Around the time of Fine Line, he faced scrutiny around his sexuality. People became incredulous that he wore dresses, waved Pride flags, and yet hadn't clarified with precision, publicly to a journalist or on social media, the specifics of who he'd slept with, how he defined. This expectation is, to him, bizarre, "outdated." "I've been really open with it with my friends, but that's my personal experience; it's mine," he said.

Despite the acceptance that some things could, should, have been different, he still feels lucky every day, he said, lucky to make music, lucky to do what he loves.

"You can't win music. It's not like Formula One," he said. "I was like, in my lifetime, there will be 10 more people who burst onto the scene in that way, and I'm only going to get further away from being the young thing. So, get comfortable with finding something else that makes you happy. I just found that so liberating."

"I just want to make stuff that is right, that is fun, in terms of the process, that I can be proud of for a long time, that my friends can be proud of, that my family can be proud of, that my kids will be proud of one day," he said.

-- original interview link, Better Homes And Gardens Magazine 26 April 2022 (remake of this post)

[wuntrum]

impeccable taste once again ms stallion

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Autism (Non-stereotypical) vs Autism (Stereotypical)

Neurodivergent Insights

[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

[amazingdevilfanpage]

TAD is on this list at #6.

“The Amazing Devil are a truly bewitching band and there's no question that their next release, whenever it comes, will continue on in their tradition of dynamic and theatrical folk.”

[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.

[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?

[daughterofthesunlands]

Sharing this aricle because I don't have the words to describe how disgusted I even feel in this moment.

Duster is and always will be an amazing series. It is truly their loss. All the talent is on my radar now, and i wish them continuing success.

[singemall-stayallnight]

Led Zeppelin at a party thrown for the band by Atlantic president Ahmet Ertegun, Cosimo Recording Studios, New Orleans, 14 May 1973. The guests included Ernie K-Doe (top two photos) and Professor Longhair (bottom right photo).

Here are a couple of snippets from an article about the party:

As a Memphis boy, [Phillip] Rauls had something in common with Zeppelin. 'They always wanted to talk about blues music and Memphis music, and that was the small bond that I had with them.' He found Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to be very polite, very British, but they could get down with the best of them.

Rauls helped coordinate that party and remembers the event like it was yesterday. 'They didn’t need some ritzy ballroom,' he says. 'Just going to a funky, soulful recording studio in a beat down part of New Orleans and to meet the guys they grew up listening to—they were in seventh heaven. Willie Tee was still alive, Ernie K-Doe was there, Professor Longhair—all these guys were former Atlantic artists that Ertegun had a relationship with. To bring them out at Cosimo’s party, it gave the band a woody.'

Full article

[666thtoolofhell]

[slutforpringles]

via: Daniel Ricciardo: Late braker | The Australian Weekend Magazine Nov 12-13 2016 | Trent Dalton

[911bts]

Sneak Peek | The 118 diffuse an explosive situation