i have to respect the anti-theism of the age of arcanum. i have to respect it.
it’s one thing to be atheist in an inherently meaningless and chaotic world. it’s another thing entirely when the gods are real, you KNOW they are, you can SEE them and you’re like yeah, LET the dawnfather turn up to my dinner party. i’ll call him a bitch to his face, too.
have y’all ever had communion bread that was just so….nasty? like i know we have to suffer as christians, but do we really need to have whole wheat bread as the body of christ?
my old church used hawaiian bread. my standards are high
Some old housemates of mine were Syrian Orthodox. At their church different members of the church took turns baking the bread that would be consecrated for the Eucharist. This was all well and good until one woman baked raisin bread. This led to the memorable occasion of a rather flustered priest, who had not seen the bread until that moment, declaring, “This - except for the raisins - is the Body of Christ.”
EXCEPT FOR THE RAISINS omg
Raisins are just dried grapes though, and wine is his blood so really its like a two in one shampoo & conditioner except with jesus
like a two in one shampoo & conditioner except with jesus
mythbusters was so good because it wasn’t a killjoy show. they didn’t just say “see, it doesn’t work” and leave it there
whenever they find that the stunt doesn’t work as portrayed in the movie, they immediately ask “what would it take to make this happen?”
“we know it takes this amount of explosives to work, but what if we doubled it anyway?”
Some myths I’ll always remember:
* Are elephants scared of mice? (They only did that because they were in Africa and had access to elephants.)
* Will a bull run amok in a china shop?
* Is it better to run zig-zag or straight when chased by an alligator?
I love these because NONE of them turned out the way they expected. They went into all three with pre-conceived ideas of how it would go, and each time they “failed.” Elephants WILL cower from mice. A bull moves very gingerly through a china shop. It doesn’t matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON’T CHASE YOU.
And each time, they reacted with just… pure glee. “Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!”
And that, to me, is what science is. Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information.
When are we going to start teaching kids that it’s okay to disagree with adults? That it’s okay to demand respect from them and that them being younger doesn’t mean they deserve to get treated like shit just because adults are “always right”? When are we gonna start doing that?
yes, but i gotta add:: when are we going to start telling adults that kids should be allowed to disagree with them? when are we going to teach adults that a kid disagreeing with them isn’t disrespect? when are we going to tell them that adults gotta apologize to kids when they make a mistake? when are we gonna tell them that kids should be treated with respect, despite the young age? when are we going to tell them that there’s no problem if kids start questioning adults & that they should do so?
Fun facts: The word “narc” being short for “narcotics agent” is actually a backformation. “Narc” has meant “police informant” in English since at least the 1800s and originally comes from the Romani word for “nose.”
The thing about car-dependency is that… it sucks for people without a car. Big news, right. But, it’s not like that incentive curve is something we can just ignore. When our desire or ability to leave our house at all is conditional on being in a car, that affects all of our behaviour on every level.
Kids are the prototypical ‘person without a car’, and in a car-dependent area, they become dependent on their parents. In a normal, walkable city or suburb, children walk on their own to school, they cycle, they take the bus. Instead of needing to get parental approval - and enough enthusiasm to dedicate the time - to be shuttled around to any given activity, children walk to the park, or to a friend’s house. Even in rural areas, with the infrastructure, children will cycle to school. In a car-dependent suburb, a child is trapped in a single-family McMansion on the edge of town, forced to beg their parents to be able to go anywhere, always under supervision - is it any wonder they’d rather stay inside?
Even in a city, if it’s car-dependent, this is still an issue. When the roads are 100-decibel, 6-lane monstrosities, with cyclists expected to intermingle with traffic, and the busses stuck in the exact same jam, kids aren’t going to be able to get anywhere, assuming their parents even let them cross the street. This isn’t just about proximity, it’s fundamentally related to safety. Car-dependent places are a lot more dangerous to be in, on account of all the cars, so parents feel it’s safer for their kid to be in one of those cars. To boot, when everyone’s in a car, there are less people around, less people who can notice someone in trouble, less people who can help. When places are built with the assumption that everyone will have a car, they become places for cars, which humans can stupidly venture into.
This doesn’t just apply to children. We are all, at some point or another, a ‘person without a car’ - in fact, we’re a ‘person without a car’ most of the time, until we get into one. A lot of people would prefer to remain that way; driving a car is stressful, it takes a lot of effort and concentration, and not everyone likes it at 6AM. But, when your environment is built with the assumption you’re inside a soundproof, crash-proof metal box, that becomes a requirement. The second you’re outside of those conditions, scurrying across deafening, hot tarmac, and dodging heavy-duty pickup trucks (carrying solely one guy and his starbucks order), of course you’d decide that not being in a car sucks. But, the thing is, it’s designing for cars that made it suck, even for the car-drivers.
A place designed for cars, a place that people cannot walk, or cycle, or take public transit through, is a place full of cars - you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Studies have shown that the average speed of car traffic, over sufficient time, is completely unrelated to the thoroughfare of roads. Eventually, because of induced demand, the new seven-lane arterial road will have exactly the same congestion as the two-lane it replaced. The one factor that sharply determines how slow road traffic gets is, listen to this, the speed of non-car travel. It is solely when alternatives become faster that people stop driving and free up traffic. Shutting down main street, only allowing buses through, would drastically increase the speed of the rest of the road network - because each of those buses is 40 cars not in traffic. If you like driving, you should want as many people as possible who don’t want to drive to stop doing it - and whoever you are, you should want to be able to travel without depending on cars.
When I was in the biggest depressive slump of my life, and I could barely get out of bed, I still went shopping for food nearly every day, and even traveled to visit my partner. The supermarket was 10 meters out the door of my apartment, and I could walk five minutes to either train station if I had to. It was peaceful and quiet outside. My disabled mother doesn’t like living in cities, but she loves public transit, and will always take a train ride over a long, tiring car journey - and when every store doesn’t need a parking lot twice as big as itself, whatever walking she does have to do is over a much shorter distance. When I’ve had to call an ambulance in a ‘car-hostile’ place, it has arrived inconceivably faster, on those clear roads, than when sitting in the traffic of the highway-lined carpark that makes up so many cities.
Car dependency sucks for everyone, including car drivers, but it sucks the worst for people already suffering. It strips you of independence, and forces you into a box you might not fit in - and I haven’t even touched on pollution. Car-dependency makes cities and suburbs into dangerous, stressful places, devoid of everyone except the most desperate. The only people it benefits are, really, the CEOs of car companies.
one time in minecraft i built myself a secret underground base because i was experimenting with redstone, i built a lighting system of redstone lamps, as well as an emergency self-destruct feature
i put the light switch and the self-destruct switch next to each other
There have been so many posts that have circulated over the months and years regarding the experience of Working With The Public as a science/nature educator and the “dumb” things The Public asks or believes about nature and animals and plants
The general vibe is often “look how stupid people are,” in a similar vein as posts about customer service and the “dumb” things customers demand.
This must stop. Many people don’t know the most basic things about nature—this is not a personal failing to be mocked online, this is a symptom of a huge problem with our world.
All of those people once were children, curious and driven to incessantly ask Why and What and How and What If.
What happened?
If an adult says to you, “Wait…aren’t dolphins fish?” and you make them feel like an idiot for thinking that, you’re teaching them not to ask questions and not to learn
Humans don’t learn because of fear of shame and punishment, they learn because of curiosity and wonder
Our most critical periods for learning are the same periods where we have yet to develop a sense of shame associated with not knowing something
Most adults’ curiosity is very battered and damaged and it’s important to be kind to that delicate and essential instinct
