If there was a way to run SUPER MEGA AD BLOCKER on this website I fucking would
“Please oh please open up your computer to a porn virus! If you don’t you’re evil!”
Freeloader Comin’ through!
We didn’t start this war internet users have with ads - We might have moaned about banner ads, but it was only when they started making noises when we might be listening to music or a podcast or whatever, causing two sound sorces at once, that we started trying to block ads universally rather than just a specific type of ad (pop ups).
And since then ads have gotten worse - Actual malware rather than merely breaking one of the fundamental sins of web design - though shalt not autoplay anything with sound. And the more aggressive a website is with ‘please turn off adblock’ the less I trust it to bother to vet ads and advertisers to make sure they’re not installing malware.
Not to mention that the idea that avoiding ads is “freeloading” is hilariously backward. Advertisement is a transaction between the platform and the advertiser, the user has no obligation to provide the views/clicks the platform has promised. Using an adblocker isn’t freeloading in the same way that leaving the room to get a snack during a commercial break isn’t cheating the tv network.
Ok y’all, I work as a web developer and I’m here to tell you that you are 100% right and that it’s shit. SO I’m going to tell you how to get around websites that block you from using their website if you’re using an adblocker.
Every website uses a language called JavaScript; long story short it’s a website language that allows developers to do the crazy shit you see on websites. Now the easiest thing to do is to disable JavaScript to stop them from knowing you have an adblocker:
Oh no! I’m blocked from viewing the website. It would be a terrible shame if I were able to right click and select the “inspect” feature
Click the three dots in the top right and open the “Settings” Menu
And then scrolled down to “Debugger” and checked the “Disable Javascript Option”
The ACLU has a know your rights guide for immigrants available in English, Arabic, Chinese, Creole, Farsi, French, Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
If you’re European, in a couple of weeks you will be denied any and all access to fandom contents on Tumblr and everywhere else on the internet. Here’s why.
On June, 20th the JURI of European Parliament approved of the articles 11 and 13 of the new Copyright Law. These articles are also known as the “Link Tax” and the “Censorship Machines” articles.
Articles 13 in particular forces every internet platform to filter all the contents we upload online, ending once and for all the fandom culture. Which means you won’t be able to upload any type of fandom works like fan arts, fan fictions, gif sets from your favourite films and series, edits, because it’s all copyrighted material. And you won’t also be able to share, enjoy or download other’s contents, because the use of links will be completely restricted.
But not everything’s lost yet. There’s another round of voting scheduled for the early days of July.
What you can do now to save our internet, is to share these informations with all of your family members and friends, and to ask to your MEP (the members of the European Parliament from your country) to vote NO at the next round, to vote against articles 11 and 13.
Here you can find more news and all the details to contact your MEP:
FOLLOWERS IN EUROPE! THIS IS FOR YOU ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
TAKE ACTION
Help save my internet. PLEASE. without it I don’t know what I would do and I’m not exaggerating it keeps my depression at bay reading your fics. Please help us
People horrifically fucking up facts about evolution and genetics too support their stupid beliefs or to seem smart and “rational” is probably one of my big pet peeves
Yeah. An enormous number of racists, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes I’ve met eventually whip out something about evolutionary biology and they never, ever, ever, ever have the slightest shadow of even a half-right idea what any of it means or ever cite a claim ever actually made by a scientific study.
Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:
Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.
“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.
“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.
“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.
Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.
People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.
No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.
Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.
Some of us did, however, cross-breed with Neandethal man. It is exclusively non-African races, such as white people, who still carry hybrid human/Neanderthal genes. Whoops, sorry “white purity” skinheads, you’re actually mixed with a whole other species.
Just had to reblog this because I am honestly so tired of people claiming that Africans are “less evolved” than everyone else
My addition to the above list:
Epigenetics does not have anything at all to do with genetic memories. It is a thing that affects characteristics like health risks, and this speculation floating around about how phobias could be related to some ancestral trauma is complete and utter nonsense.
It’s only a matter of time before such a claim is used as another pseudoscientific tool in the arsenal of people claiming that bloodlines have anything to do with the validity of one’s worship of European pantheons. “My ancestors were Swedish, and because of epigenetics I have genetic memories passed down from those ancestors, so therefore my connection with the gods is better than yours!”
Just, no. Stop. STOP.
gonna also chime in here:
saying the “male brain” works one way and the “female brain” works another way is ludicrous. for so many reasons, even beyond the obvious of imposing that tired old either/or mentality with regards to maleness and femaleness
occasionally you will read about how a study suggests that “men are naturally better at spacial reasoning” or “women are naturally better at cooperation”, but for one thing, given how early the brain wires itself and how easy it is to influence the wiring (like, disturbingly easy), and given the tremendous social expectations we face from pretty much the moment we leave the freaking womb, it’s impossible to study gender differences in a vacuum.
like, do your findings prove that “women are better at reading faces”, or do they prove that, when you are part of a group that has been socialized since birth to be “nice”, to take care of other people, and to above all avoid making folks angry, you damn well have to learn how to read the room, and read it fast.
also, the “left brain, right brain” thing is bunk. there are not, like emotion-driven people and logic-driven people. everybody is primarily emotional. that circuitry is older and reacts much faster, and this is why nobody is immune from sometimes making wildly irrational decisions.
I have had to deal with people in the past who almost religiously subscribed to the male brain/female brain thing and would constantly point out any little thing that confirmed their bias. It was fucking insufferable. It was patently clear they were ignoring the exceptions outnumbering their rules to go on insisting their traditionalist view has never been wrong.
This deserves reblogging every time
The misinterpretation of epigenetics really pisses me off because the fact that environmental stressors can have a long-term impact on gene expression should motivate us to eliminate poverty, especially childhood poverty, but instead we’re using it to revive tired white supremacist myths.
I WOULD PAY TEN TIMES AS MUCH FOR CHOCOLATE IF IT MEANT REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF SLAVES IN THE WORLD? HOW IS THIS ANY KIND OF PROBLEM.
good news, you can! the company’s called Tony’s Chocolonely and their entire purpose is to make slave-free chocolate and reform the chocolate industry.
Whole Foods carries it. If you don’t want to support an Amazon-owned company, World Market carries it. You can also buy it directly from the company.
It’s the best chocolate I’ve ever had and it’s 100% slave free. Tony’s Chocolonely works really hard to push for transparency within the chocolate industry and actually has and is following an action plan to eliminate slavery within cocoa production. They’re good people who make good chocolate.
So this is just a PSA, y'all should never sign a contract until you read it. I’m talking in rl right now. I just got through reading my employee handbook/service contract and my bosses slipped in a lot of bullshit like telling me I can’t complain about my job on social media, demanding I work off the clock in the name of good service, expects me to show up on time during inclimate weather, and considered disability or religious accommodation a direct threat to the company.
These are all things I took issue with and brought to my employer for further discussion before signing the contract. Most of my coworkers signed without reading, treating it like an internet terms of service contract.
Tl;dr real life is serious shit, lawyers write contracts to protect your employer FROM YOU, read contracts before you sign them - fucking ARGUE about contracts before you sign them
Also important to note, and something my bf has repeated to me many times: a contract is a negotiation until it is signed, and YOU ARE ALLOWED TO AMEND IT. Tech companies often put some bs in there about “we own everything you make while you work for us” which broadly applied also means anything done on your own time. He always ALWAYS does write-in amendments with initial and date to state that they only own things done FOR the company, on company time, because there have been companies that enforced that bullshit when somebody had a personal side project the company decided they wanted to steal. There’s only one company that threw a fit at his attempts to amend it and he considered that a huge red flag and refused to sign, turned down the job.
Never. EVER. Sign shit without reading it. Also: if your prospective employer won’t let you take the thing home to read before you sign it and says you need to sign it then and there THAT IS A RED FLAG. The job I had that turned out to be abusive as shit was like that. Every other job I’ve been able to bring the contract home to my parents to have a more experienced set of eyes on it. It’s also common practice in some fields to have one’s attorney look over it before signing. So never let them tell you that you can’t look over it with someone else. That’s a fat load of shit. For “lower level” jobs they may not accept amendments to the contract but if they won’t even give you the proper time to read it over, they’re trying to pull some bullshit on you and you’re going to regret it if you sign. Even if there’s nothing bad in what you signed it’s an example of how they are going to treat you while you’re there. Take it to heart and run like fucking hell.
Please also tell your coworkers. Inform others. Tell everyone. Please, for the lovee of everything TELL PEOPLE THEY ARE ALLOWED TO DO THESE THINGS.
Companies BANK on the fact you’re not going to read it. Then they slip in shit like ‘you can’t talk about your wages’ because they want you to keep quiet, so thy can pay that guy six bucks, and pay the guy over there fifteen and pay you eight. They want you to accept it all blindly. PLEASE DON’T STAY BLIND.
Yes, I’ve lost out on jobs because I wanted to read it and they didn’t want me to. Or they wanted m to resign and I said no to to the things they added that I pointed out were unfair and borderline illegal.
Read shit. Tell everyone else to read shit. BE INFORMED.
Absolutely 100% good advice ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
Never ever ever sign shit without reading and re-reading it! Take it home, show it to someone more experienced, if you can, show it to a lawyer. A contract is supposed to work for both sides. A company in Toronto tried to make me sign a contract with clause that in event of me leaving the job I will not work in a similar position anywhere in Ontario. Yeah, right, not enforceable in court, dudes, you can’t prevent me from making a living. Read the shit and don’t let them intimidate you.
Lin Manuel Miranda; Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; Terry Crews; Fred Rogers
Taika Waititi: Powerfully creative, Knows himself, Good humored, Takes his work and his relationships with other people seriously, Intentional as a creator
John Mulaney: Publicly supportive of his wife and other women in his life, Crafts humor without taking cheap shots at people, Supportive friend, Willing to laugh at himself yet confident
Andy Samberg: Uses platform and humor to publicly call out toxic masculinity and white privilege, Self-aware, Willing to cede the floor to others, Good friend
Will Smith: Very intentional about what type of actions he takes as a husband and father (if you haven’t watched him on The Red Table, you should), Good humored and professional, Dedicated to his craft putting in the hours and energy, Generous with his emotions and vulnerability, Responsive to others emotions and vulnerability
I read somewhere that one aspect of Toxic Masculinity is believing that being part of a “We” will erase the “I”; that selfhood is threatened by relationships with other people. It reads then that Healthy Masculinity (indeed, healthy people in general) create a “We” that enhances the “I”; that we can become more powerfully ourselves through relationships with other people.
All these men listed (and many more unlisted) live this type of energy, the one that builds connections without fear of losing the self - and in fact builds the self more with the building of connections.
Millennials have essentially been forced into a perpetual teenagerhood by socioeconomic circumstance, we desperately want to grow up, and we’re worried that we’re running out of time to do so
damn does this sting.
So existential crisis has finally been spotted in this mental wild west.
I want you all to know that an Arab Muslim from Tunis proposed the Theory of Evolution near 600 years before Charles Darwin even took his first breath. Don’t let them erase you.
Also, it was not the apple falling from a tree that made Issac Newton “discover” gravity. He was reading the books of Ibn Al Haytham, an Arab Muslim from Iraq, who pioneered the scientific method, discovered gravity and wrote about the laws governing the movement of bodies (now known as Newtons three laws of motion) some 600 years before Newton existed. Without him, modern science as we know it wouldn’t exist. Read on him. His achievements are far greater than what I’ve just mentioned here.
We fucking replaced a Muslim scientist with an apple?
In the middle ages, THE place to go for an education was the middle East, or, failing that, Spain. The Muslim world didn’t have the same limits placed on scientific inquiry that the Christian world did, and since they were willing to look at more than just Aristotole and actually compare texts to the observable world, they had some incredible scientific and mathematical advancements. And street lights and toilets. I mean theories and algebra are great and all, but street lights and toilets. In the 12th century. Also medical advancements, and fewer rules against women studying. Hell, women *should* be the ones studying the female body, would you rather a woman see your female relatives, or some old man? Would you rather have someone who lives in the same kind of body, or one who has no first hand idea what the parts can do?
Europeans erased centuries of knowledge from the East because of fear. When we “rediscovered” it, we were still too egotistical to admit that non-whites could have been smarter, so we invented our own mythology.
Bring credit back where it’s due. Honor the true pioneers.
Well fuck guess I’ll be yelling at my physics teacher tomorrow.
There’s a lot to consider here, so I’d like to start with the things said above that are true:
And key to this thread, these contributions are usually understated or ignored entirely by western science historiography.
Now then, lets discuss some of the misrepresentations above.
First, no human discovered gravity. Some fish in the Cambrian period crawled out of the ocean, dimly noticed there was some new pressure on its belly, and died of asphyxiation. Something like this happened constantly on earth for the next five hundred million years. And none of it matters all that much, because long before we understood its nature we were using it to our advantage. Catapults and siege engines requiring a clear understanding of what objects will do under the influence of physics, but don’t require any clear formalism.
What Newton proposed was an explanation that the gravity all humans are aware of has no upper end, that it just keeps going, and could therefore hold the planets and moons in place.
To do this well, and to finalize the rules that we still use to describe celestial motion, he needed Kepler’s notes on planetary motion
And Kepler need Brahe’s data
And Brahe needed good optical instruments.
So he needed some good optical and algebraic books.
And the best to consult at the time were the works of Ibn Al Haytham.
This is what Newton meant when he said “If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” He critically consulted the works of others and used them as a tool to gain scientific understanding.
As Al Haytham would have wanted.
This is a common theme in science history. We often ignore tributary works and focus on the end product. To give a more self contained example, consider
Maxwell’s Equations
There’s a whole story here that I won’t get into, but the basic story is this.
Benjamin Franklin (may his name be cursed till the end of time) was among a large number of people looking at the dynamics of electricity. Between the late 18th and mid 19th centuries there were several key relationships that had been worked out: Gauss’ Law, Ampere’s Law, and Faraday’s Law. Each named after it’s relevant scientist. Most physicists at the time could tell that there was some fundamental relationship between these laws, but it was foreign and counter-intuitive to human perception. Faraday took his observations to Maxwell and Maxwell, information in hand put in the final pieces. He saw how electricity and magnetism were tied together, how to write it with mathematical formalism, and how it could be manipulated in an arbitrary case.
Note that phrase, arbitrary case.
Maxwell’s equations, as they were soon to be known, could be rewritten and applied to anything with electrical charge. Even things that hadn’t been built yet.
Like electric generators.
Or computers.
This final set of equations held up largely unaltered until the advent of quantum mechanics, and even now is all you need for most electricity and magnetism problems. Nobody familiar with the story applauds Maxwell for doing all of it by himself. Maxwell was lauded because with his contribution the damn thing was done.
Which brings us to the crown jewel of this this train wreck:
Darwinian evolution
Darwin did not invent evolution. He wasn’t the first to suggest it by a millennium. So why did he get the credit/blame for it?
Because everyone seems to forget what was really revolutionary about his ideas:
Natural selection.
He suggested or noted several narrower points, most of which were available from other sources:
Organisms produce more offspring than are necessary for replacement (Malthus)
There is variation among those offspring (Whatever Sumerian invented animal husbandry)
That variation is hereditary (Mendel)
The variation that is best suited to survival will keep those individuals alive preferentially, and so be more represented in subsequent generations.
Over many generations, species will thus adapt to new environments (Darwin)
And so new species will form (Ibn Khaldun)
Darwin’s legacy was not his insight, but his synthesis. He gave us a reason why evolution was happening that held up to criticism and the data he and others had gathered.
And that is the essence of science. Using what you already know and what people have discovered before you to avoid literally reinventing the wheel every 20 years, while critically analyzing those same sources to make sure no one missed anything.
The contributions of non western scientists need to be taught better, but don’t act as though it is being hidden from you. The proper way to fix this is to share information and sources to help people understand the world around them and the history that informs it, so that everyone can stand on the shoulders of giants.
Reblogging for that last comment about Darwin. Because what Ibn Khaldun said it’s different from darwinism. It’s a base of ONE of the ideas for the explanation of evolution, but not at all what it is.
I agree tho that we should be taught those bases first so we can learn better.
