before you speak, THINK:

• is it TRANSSEXUAL?
• is it HERESY?
• is it INCONSIDERATE?
• is it NEURODIVERGENT?
• is it KILLING SOMEONE?

november is the saturday of christmas

if a transbian asks you to “watch anime” with her, DO NOT GO. It is not code for sex, she will show you something called “Revolutionary Girl Utena” and your only choice will be to revolutionize the world. The path will have been prepared for you.

ALT

Blackouts, Justin Torres

The thing is that the portrayal of Neanderthals as having been inherently grotesque and alien to H. sapiens is something we will never have proof of. But we do have proof that, in different locations and in different populations across time, we all found eachother desirable. We saw eachother and wanted to touch. And the offspring were held by their mothers and raised and had their own offspring in turn.

When you look for the first proof that H. sapiens found Neanderthals repulsive, you have to wait until the Victorian era, when the white masters of empires were busy portraying Neanderthals as stupid, brutish, and (of course) dark-skinned.

In more modern times, we’ve had people arguing that instead of seeing Neanderthals as Benighted Savages, they should instead be seen as Noble Savages, (allegedly) cruelly destroyed and driven from their lands by H. sapiens. Which one of their two you believe says more about your modern political views than it does about ancient H. sapiens.

And, whether we construct Neanderthals as Savage or Noble Savage, the fundamental assumption we project into the unfathomably distant past is still that H. sapiens saw Neanderthals as an Other, with the language we use being almost explicitly that of modern racial dynamics.

But we have no proof of any of that. We have no proof of hostilities. We know we co-existed and we had sex. That’s it.

Humans obviously have sex with some humans and kill others. We also know that, when small groups of humans occupy vast spaces with infrequent contact with others, unique cultures will always form, some more hospitable, some more neophobic/xenophobic. But many cultures of small settlements placed among huge unpeopled landscapes place supreme emphasis on hospitality to strangers. Plus, we fucking love other social animals, as evidenced by how we befriended wolves.

I’m a humourless weirdo and a wet blanket about popular constructions of Neanderthals as “monstrous”, and I freely admit it. But that’s because it’s tied up in legacies of imperialism. Not only that, but it also privileges one culture (yours, mine, modernity’s) as being most human by implicitly assuming we can project it onto people in the past. Since you don’t pretend that all global cultures share exact same values as you do, it doesn’t take more than a few moments’ reflection to realise you can’t do that to the past.

περπατώντας σπίτι σήμερα, την πρώτη πραγματικά κρύα νύχτα αυτής της εποχής, κατάλαβα ότι η πόλη αυτή δεν φτιάχτηκε για τους χειμώνες. εδώ, τα σπίτια μοιάζουν εκτός τόπου στο κρύο. μπορώ ακόμα να δω, τόσο καθαρά, την ομίχλη του ξημερώματος να απλώνεται στον κάμπο, ένα σύννεφο που αναπαύτηκε στη γη, και να διαλύεται με το πρώτο φως του ήλιου. σκέφτομαι τη λάσπη, τη γη στις πρώτες καταιγίδες, το πρώτο χιόνι, με όλη τη σιωπή και ηρεμία που φέρνει, και τις φωνές των κοράκων να σπάνε το πρωινό κρύο. πως να νιώσεις χειμώνα χωρίς τα κοράκια να κράζουν; πως, χωρίς τη βροχή να πέφτει σαν λευκή κουρτίνα στο βάθος και τις καμινάδες να καπνίζουν; οι χειμώνες της νιότης μου ήταν απέραντοι, σιωπηλοί, αργοί.

εδώ, το χιόνι δε πιάνει κάτω, ούτε καν στις σκεπές, και οι τέντες, ακόμα κατεβασμένες, περιμένουν τον ήλιο να γυρίσει.

"omg you'll post 'i need him' on the most average men" "she's mid" most of us are average and it's good that we can find beauty and desire in average people

I redownload this app for one day once every maybe two months and unfortunately I’m rewarded every time

I’m sure you’ve noticed in your Chinese studies that there are some words for which you can switch the order of the characters and get a new word! In Chinese these can be called 倒序词. I’ve put together a list of 20 倒序词 pairs, most of which I’ve stumbled across over the past couple years. It’s so interesting to see the relationships between the words! Most example sentences are via Pleco.

牙刷 yáshuā - toothbrush
一把牙刷
刷牙 shuā//yá - to brush one’s teeth
我每天睡觉前刷牙。

开放 kāifàng - to bloom / to open / to be open (to the public) / to open up (to the outside) / to be open-minded / unrestrained by convention
图书馆从上午9点开放到下午6点。
放开 fàng//kāi - to let go / to release
妈妈放开了女儿的手。

喜欢 xǐhuan - to like / to be fond of
你喜欢不喜欢中国音乐？
欢喜 huānxǐ - happy / joyous / delighted / to like / to be fond of
她心跳加速，满心欢喜。

著名 zhùmíng - famous / noted / well-known / celebrated
我们的中文老师是一位著名的小说家。
名著 míngzhù - masterpiece, famous book, celebrated work
我最近读的名著有点太多了。

犯罪 fàn//zuì - to commit a crime / crime / offense
听到她的犯罪历史，我大吃一惊。
罪犯 zuìfàn - criminal
警察还没有抓到那些罪犯。

事故 shìgù - accident
事故的原因还在调查之中。
故事 gùshì - old practice || gùshi - narrative / story / tale
这是一个真实的故事。

女儿 nǚ'ér - daughter
他们的三个孩子都是女儿，没有儿子。
儿女 érnǚ - children / sons and daughters
儿女有赡养老人的义务。

蜜蜂 mìfēng - bee / honeybee
一只蜜蜂
蜂蜜 fēngmì - honey
一罐蜂蜜

继续阅读

cannot get over this comment on a chess tournament video

“but what about separating the art from the artist” buddy. listen to me. joanne kathleen rowling is relevant for one reason and one reason only—she wrote harry potter. that’s why she’s famous. that is the bedrock of her fucking platform. jk rowling is the harry potter lady and harry potter is the jk rowling guy. this is not the same thing as listening to a song on repeat even though the keyboardist was an asshole, or reading a novel by some dude who sucked ideological shit in the 1800s. jk rowling has a hate platform right now, today, and she sustains it off of harry potter bucks. u will forgive me if i am unwilling to advertise for her

when I was a little kid at some point I got upset with my parents because I didn't have a crucifix in my bedroom and they did- I was like why do YOU get to be safe from vampires??? you're okay with me getting my blood sucked???? so we took a little trip to the catholic store but the one closest to us was run by a group of nuns that had been moved here from romania. I got a little baby pink cross and this sweet old nun was like 'aww, is this a baptism gift?' and I was like no. I need to be protected from vampires. and she immediately got SO serious and was like 'this is the best one we've got, you'll definitely be safe' and since she was literally from vampire land I was convinced she was like, van helsing. like the whole time my parents had been laughing about how cute my fear was but she literally Knew dracula and was taking my concerns seriously I held this over my parents for so long lmfao

“the male loneliness epidemic” is just incredible because loneliness is actually an epidemic in all layers of society among all kinds of people but men always thing they’re the only ones disadvantaged when they’re experiencing an issue caused by the way our society works

Like women are lonely too but they don’t usually go on murder sprees when they can’t get laid so who cares I suppose