lupin5th

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pizzaback:

pizzaback:

improbabledreams900:

unpretty:

julius caesar as just Some Dude is tripping me out

Cleopatra:

Louis XV:

julius caesar yells at the einstein bros. manager daily

cleopatra is writing her PhD thesis and is sick of people undermining her intelligence

louis XV is a business professional currently being investigated by HR

more takes from yours truly

nefertiti is a child star who fell from grace but rose again like a pheonix

alexander the great is ***NOT GAY*** and on academic probation

caligula is under investigation by the FBI

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msfcatlover:

neil-gaiman:

madsciences:

robotsandfrippary:

robotlyra:

paranoidgemsbok:

newshour:

What does it take to teach a bee to use tools? A little time, a good teacher and an enticing incentive. Read more here: http://to.pbs.org/2mpRUAz

Credit: O.J. Loukola et al., Science (2017)

clockworkrobotic

“Friend? Friend push ball? I push ball. I do good.”

Bees.  Smart enough to push a ball, not smart enough to not be fooled by a stick masquerading as a bee. 

maybe they know and they’re just being polite

Other dimensional beings are undoubtedly amazed at what human beings will accept as human beings too. “But it’s just a stick with a person on it.”

#excuse me neil but what the FUCK was that #thanks for that terrifying thought (nooby-banana)

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elumish:

I could write a whole essay about this, but.

Fanfiction as a collective exists as a combination of the ideal state and all the broken pieces that are left behind. Fanfiction shows us all the things that should have happened, if the world was a little bit kinder: someone adopts Harry Potter, the Avengers live domestically together, people fall in love and admit it. Fanfiction says, things are awful but we’re kind anyway, because we can be, because kindness costs little and gives much. It is democracy at its best, a collection of people solving problems together, solving plotholes and heartbreaks and deaths, a conversation of solution responding to solution because the whole of fandom is, itself, its own canon.

But at the same time, fanfiction is about all of those holes and jagged edges and wounds left unhealed, about what happens when the war is over and everyone who’s left needs to go back home. It’s about the fact that surviving is usually the hardest part, and we rarely get to choose what’s done to us but we do get to choose how we survive afterwards. It’s about the child soldiers who no longer have a war, and about the trauma of getting past the trauma you’ve survived. It’s about injury and depression and PTSD. It’s about recovery, yes, but also about those things that do not recover, those things that will never recover. It is a reminder that we live in a world where many people don’t get white picket fences and 2.5 kids and a happily ever after, but also a reminder that there is life beyond that, survival, yes, but also life. It is a reminder that characters’ lives don’t end with the last page and nor too do people’s lives end with their trauma, but that after that hurt comes comfort and healing and putting one foot in front of another because the best way to get through hell is to keep going.

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lauraannegilman:

pengychan:

fluffmugger:

amazingmotionpicture:

Heartbreaking scene from the film

Schindler’s List (1993)

OK LEMME TELL YOU STRAIGHT UP ABOUT OSKAR SCHINDLER.

 Everyone knows the story, right? His protected workers?  How none of his ammo worked?  The full story is a lot more complex and a hell of a lot more breathtaking.

He wasn’t a saint. in fact, he was a bit of a douche, all things considered. Whored around on his wife, worked for the Abwehr, he was a member of the nazi party - not a particularly devout follower, but because he was a big fat remora fish who realised this particular shark could give him business opportunities, and if he wined and dined the upper crust that scored him even better ones.  He realised very quickly he could make an absolute killing on the black market and dove in headfirst with the profiteering.  Hell, he initially hired Jews in his factory because nazi strictures made them much much cheaper labour than hiring normal Polish labourers.  

But the thing is, once you start surrounding yourself with a particular, persecuted demographic, you begin to notice things.  You hear things, things you aren’t insulated from.  You begin to realise something.

And Oskar Schindler began to dimly grasp what was happening and he realised that it was not something he could countenance.  And his whole gameplay changed.

He no longer wined and dined for business opportunities, but to protect his workers.  He went flat out fucking balls to the wall to rescue a group of his workers from the jaws of Auschwitz, and built them a “camp” that offered at least the barest of human comforts, right under SS supervision.  He moved his entire fucking factory to save his workers, he realised an SS-provided list of names was left with blank spaces and just started filling in more.  He blew everything he had made profiteering and scheming to protect 1200 people because he found that there was a fucking line and it had to be drawn. He arranged for three thousand Jewish women to be moved to textile factories in the Sudetenland to give them a chance of surviving the war.   He blew all his money, resources and time on feeding, caring for and trying to protect as many Jews as he could.

After the war he failed every business venture he tried.  He became a raging alcoholic, surviving on donations sent by Schindlerjuden.  According to some, he traded the ring gifted to him by his workers for Schnapps.  He died in relative obscurity, almost penniless.

He wasn’t a great man, or a saint. He was an average schmuck, and spent most of his time fucking around until he abruptly found himself in a situation where he couldn’t.  He almost stumbled into his decency.  But once he had, he absolutely took hold of it,  and directly because of him 8,500 people are alive today.

Never, ever doubt the ability of a single human to RISE.

This guy is Giorgio Perlasca.

He started out a fascist. Right from the beginning. He fought in East Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and in the Spanish Civil War. He was awarded a diplomatic mission from fucking Francisco Franco.

Then, he starts noticing things he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like how close to Nazis they’re getting. And then, in 1938, racial laws against Jewish people are passed in Italy and that is when he realizes that fascism is a pile of shit, and that he fucked up, but at that point he’s in too deep. He had a duty to his country, he thought, and worked to aid the army. What else could he do?

As it turns out, a lot.

On 8 September 1943, Italy surrenders to the Allied forces. Italians had to choose whether to join the fascist Italian Social Republic or side with the Allies. He chooses the latter and, due to his status as a veteran in the Spanish Civil War, he obtains political asylum at the Spanish Embassy in Budapest, changing his name in ‘Jorge’.

That could have been the end of it for him. He could have stayed safe and comfortable until the end of the war. He did not.

Perlasca worked with the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires, Ángel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states to smuggle Jews out of Hungary. The system he devised consisted of furnishing ‘protection cards’ which placed Jews under the guardianship of various neutral states. He helped Jews find refuge in protected houses under the control of various embassies, which had extraterritorial conventions that gave them an equivalent to sovereignty. They could provide asylum for Jews.

When Sanz Briz was removed from Hungary to Switzerland in November 1944, he invited Perlasca to accompany him to safety. However, Perlasca chose to remain in Hungary. The Hungarian government ordered the Spanish Embassy building and the extraterritorial houses where the Jews took refuge to be cleared out. Perlasca immediately made the false announcement that Sanz Briz was due to return from a short leave, and that he had been appointed his deputy for the meantime. 

Throughout the winter, Perlasca was active in hiding, shielding and feeding thousands of Jews in Budapest. He continued issuing safe conduct passes (initiated by Sanz Briz), on the basis of a Spanish law passed in 1924 that granted citizenship to Jews of Sephardic origin (descendants of Iberian Jews expelled from Spain in the late 15th century). 

In December 1944, Perlasca rescued two boys from being herded onto a freight train in defiance of a German lieutenant colonel on the scene. The Swedish diplomat-rescuer Raoul Wallenberg, also present there, later told Perlasca that the officer who had challenged him was Adolf Eichmann. During 45 days period from 1 December 1944 to 16 January 1945, Perlasca helped save more than 5,000 Jews.

After the war, he returned to Italy and lived a quiet life. He told no one what had had done in Hungary - not even to his wife, who got the shock of her life when a group of Hungarian Jews finally found him in 1987, only five years before his death. When asked why he’d done what he did he just answered - “What would you have done in my place?”

He started out a fascist. He became of one the Righteous Among the Nations.

You don’t have to be a saint. You may have been on the wrong side. You may have made choices that are bad and stupid and just plain wrong. You don’t necessarily have to even be that good a person. But sometimes it comes down to one choice and one choice only and sometimes, despite everything, you just do the right thing. 

They are called the Righteous for a reason.  Not because they were saints (most weren’t), but because they were able to see wrong in the world where others looked past it, and not only refused to be party to it, but opposed it with their lives.

We are all capable of Righteousness.  

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findingfeather:

greenbergsays:

allofmystudentsrunaway:

other parents: how did you do that?

Me:do what?

Other parents: your teenager is eating a salad..

Me:i never forced him eat, now he will pretty much eat anything…except chicken casserole which we both agree is gross

Other parents:we don’t get it.

Me: our only rules are bed at eleven on a school night and don’t hack any important government agencies.

Other parents: you don’t restrict screen time?

Me: you know 95% of kids will self regulate, given the chance?

Other parents: thats not true

Me: have you tried it?

other parents:…but, now he’s reading 1984

Me: he has had a university reading level since he was 12, what am i going to do censor his reading material?

other Parents: what if he reads something you don’t approve of..

Me: i fail to see your reasoning…

Me: you know he cooks too..it’s our mother/son time, we talk about his friends…

other Parents: he talks??

That “he talks??” bit gets me

Yeah, kids talk. If your kid doesn’t talk to you, it’s because of one of two reasons:

You’ve created such a hostile/unwelcoming home environment that they don’t feel comfortable enough to talk

You have signaled to them somehow, some way, that you don’t care about what they have to say. That what they have to say isn’t important.

Kids are not stupid, not at any age level. They pick up on shit and they remember and then when they grow to be teenagers, they know who they can talk to about stuff and who they can’t.

My 13 year old nephew is not particularly affectionate with his mother and he rarely talks to her about anything important, but there are times I can’t get that kid to stop hanging off me and he has those serious conversations with me, like when we discussed his friends coming out to him as bisexual.

It’s not even that hard to make a kid feel loved and welcome. I don’t even know what my nephew is talking about half the time with his games, but they’re important to him, so I let him talk and I make appropriate noises of shock and sympathy when they are needed.

He watches a lot of YT channels, so we’ve discussed the importance of regulating your media, because I don’t want motherfuckers like PewDiePie shaping his world view.

He reads anything from Stephen King to manga and he does that because I’ve been reading him books since he was a baby. I do it with all of my nieces and nephews; when they get school-aged and old enough to read on their own, our “us” time is going to the bookstore and letting them pick out a drink and a book.

Because reading is important to me and I want it to be important to them, too. Now, it’s not something I suggest, it’s something that my nephew asks for.

“I finished my book, Aunt [Dessie], when can we go to the bookstore again?”

And when I tell him a date, I make sure to keep it.

Saying, “You can talk to me about anything” and “you can rely on me” is all well and good, but words are just words. You have to mean it and you have to show them that you mean it.

Otherwise, when it gets to those important moments in their life, they’re gonna shut you out rather than let you in.

Seriously though, you guys. Like.

Here is a secret:

Children and adolescents are actually fucking desperate for adult attention and approval. They really are. Even the ones that have in fact kinda got fucked up so far and have learned that The Only Kind Of Attention They’ll Get Is Bad and so act like shitheads, or the ones that have learned to be inhibited (and it might not even be you who inhibited them, it mighta been their peers or some teacher somewhere, which sucks!) and learned that by showing need they’ll just end up humiliated, or whatever?

Yeah them too.

Kids want to make you happy.

They’re often TERRIBLE AT IT. They’re kids. Their brains don’t work right, their bodies are weird, they have terrible impulse control, horrible deferred satisfaction, they’re shitty at projecting future consequences, and especially if they HAVEN’T been taught they’re probably bad at showing you positive emotions!

They’re BAD AT IT. And they often don’t want anyone to know it. And they’re embarrassed about it.

But they desperately want to. So much.

So one of the most crucial things is:

a) make sure they know how to make you happy. Don’t assume they can figure it out! They probably can’t!

b) make sure that’s something that is literally possible for them to do.

c) make sure, when they do it, that you SHOW THEM YOU’RE HAPPY WITH IT.

It is absolutely ASTONISHING HOW FAST this can create a self-sustaining cycle with the SMALLEST of starts.

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plaidadder:

thesaltofcarthage:

carissime72:

tienriu:

carefulwiththataxe:

helenarasmussen87:

captain-kiri-storm:

oregonpipeline:

cazador-red:

i-fear-neither-death-nor-pain:

dad4god:

ash-ash-bo-bash:

Washington State is in a state of emergency due to the measles outbreak which is now at 31 cases. Measles has been confirmed in 3 other states. Measles has an R-0 of 12 to 18. Measles is incredibly easy to transmit and can stay alive in the air for 2 hours and has an R-0 of 12-18 (honestly terrifying).

you know what happens with measles? permanent hearing loss due to ear infection or brain swelling, pneumonia, and intellectual difficulty again due to brain swelling. 1.5 in 1,000 will die. and again, even if you get away relatively unharmed, the infection rate is massively high and plenty others wont be as lucky.

one final note: there is precedent of multiple courts ruling that not vaccinating children is a form of medical neglect.

good job you insufferable, delusional fuckwads.

And the only people who suffer are the unvaccinated.

As for the general fearmongering this post has implied, keep in mind that measles was fairly common and often parents would bring their kids over to a house that had mumps, measles or chicken pox and while unpleasant, we generally recovered.

Now, I’m al for vaccines, but honestly, why are we so afraid of getting sick? It’s not the end of the world.

And the unvaccinated are mostly babies that are too young, the immunocompromised who will never be able to get vaccinated and people whose immune systems were wiped out by severe illnesses like cancer. Measles is the end of the world for those people. It’s not just “getting sick”. Measles is nothing like the common cold.

Severe Complications

Some people may suffer from severe complications, such as pneumonia (infection of the lungs) and encephalitis (swelling of the brain). They may need to be hospitalized and could die.

As many as one out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of death from measles in young children.

About one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability.

For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.

Measles may cause pregnant woman to give birth prematurely, or have a low-birth-weight baby.

The Measles chapter of the Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine Preventable Diseases (Pink Book) describes measles complications in more depth.

Long-term Complications

Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a very rare, but fatal disease of the central nervous system that results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life. SSPE generally develops 7 to 10 years after a person has measles, even though the person seems to have fully recovered from the illness. Since measles was eliminated in 2000, SSPE is rarely reported in the United States.

Among people who contracted measles during the resurgence in the United States in 1989 to 1991, 4 to 11 out of every 100,000 were estimated to be at risk for developing SSPE. The risk of developing SSPE may be higher for a person who gets measles before they are two years of age. For more information, see Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE): MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html

And it’s spreading into Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Nevada.

Anyone who doesn’t vaccinate their kids should be moved onto an island away from society.

VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN

Having been born in a developing nation, we fought tooth and nail to get vaccinated. I am still in shock that people in developed nations turn their noses up at vaccines.

I got chicken pox before I could be vaccinated and it’s only luck and my parent’s diligence that kept me from dying.

Vaccinate your kids!!

Something else to think about:  “Back in the 1960s, the U.S. started vaccinating kids for measles. As expected, children stopped getting measles.But something else happened.Childhood deaths from all infectious diseases plummeted.”

So scientists studied it and discovered that “The measles virus may erase immune memory, leaving patients vulnerable to other infections.” FOR UP TO 3 YEARS

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2015/05/07/deadly-shadow-measles-may-weaken-immune-system-three-years

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/05/07/404963436/scientists-crack-a-50-year-old-mystery-about-the-measles-vaccine

https://thepathologist.com/subspecialties/measles-induced-immune-amnesia

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6235/694.abstract

Want to know why there used to be chicken pox and measles parties? It’s because there were no vaccines and if your kids got it at a certain age (i.e. after 6 but before puberty) than they were more likely to survive without long term effects (i.e. sterility and/or death).

OP above thinking ‘falling ill is nothing to worry about’ - those parties were all about playing statistics on making sure your children didn’t die.  So yeah, fuck off you nitwit..

Ok so I’m relatively old (53). I did get some vacs but contracted chicken pox. From my perspective as a parent the nonvaxxers fears are real. However, if vaccines were given one at a time instead of loads of 2 or 3, perhaps fears would be allayed. Why are children given so many at once? Is it the insurance companies mandate ? If so, then the possible dangers of vaccines as we know it might be allayed. Both my kids are vaccinated but I was really scared my oldest was going to be Autistic. I realize now (again, the perspective of age) that that fear was ignorant and prejudiced. An Autistic child is not a “to be avoided at all cost “ outcome. Trust me, you really would rather have an Autistic, or deaf, or blind child than not to have THAT particular child at all. And for all the other reasons stated above:

Vaccinate your children!

Vaccines are given in groups to reduce the number of needles the kid gets — it’s literally for the child’s comfort. 

Modern vaccines have fewer antigens (the active bits) than older ones, so even when you are vaccinating your child, there’s less going into your child.

http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/combination-vaccines-and-multiple-vaccinations

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/1/124.full

Other than for people who have demonstrated, medically diagnosed allergies or reactions to some part of the vaccine, or who are immunocompromised, the “dangers” of vaccines were invented by Andrew Wakefield to make money.

Wakefield was (IS NO LONGER) a doctor who had developed a single measles injection. But the NHS used an MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella) and wasn’t interested in using his single shot.

So he found a group of lawyers who were willing to file lawsuits challenging the combination MMR shot. He rounded up 12 children (for statistical purposes, 12 participants is equivalent to supermarket gossip; it’s not reliable and you can’t extrapolate results from it), of varying developmental abilities and both with and without bowel issues, did NOT inform their parents of what he was testing, and injected them with his vaccine. He also performed painful and unnecessary procedures like colonoscopies (ON CHILDREN) and lumbar punctures. 

Two already had gut issues. NONE OF THEM BECAME AUTISTIC AFTER THE SHOT. But Wakefield flat-out lied and faked his data so he could file a lawsuit.

Wakefield’s article in the Lancet was retracted, his medical license was revoked for fraud, and he is FORBIDDEN from practicing medicine in the U.K.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. They never did.

As for the scheduling:

What happens when you get a vaccine shot is that your body produces an immune response. For many diseases, you produce let’s say a 50% response — you’re halfway protected. As the months go by, this falls to 25%. That’s when you need the next shot. So you get a second shot. This produces a 50% response again. This gets you to 75% protected. Months go by and you’re back down, but to 50%. So you get the last shot which should put you over the top.

This why children get multiple rounds of vaccines over several years. The point is to allow their bodies to become accustomed to the antibodies and learn resistance. 

I had a coworker who never had chicken pox as a child and never got the vaccine. She visited a friend who didn’t vaccinate her kids. The kids had been exposed to chicken pox but didn’t actually have it. 

She ended up with Bell’s Palsy. 

She looked like she’d had a stroke. She was on short-term disability for six months because she was simply too exhausted to function. It forced her to retire early because she no longer had the stamina to work.

Vaccinate. Your. Kids. 

Vaccination has always produced a certain amount of suspicion and anxiety, often in populations who have good reasons to be suspicious of state institutions. What’s weird about this go-round is that it is being fomented largely by people who have never been subjected to state terror and have no real reason to fear that they ever will be. It seems to me to be part of the kind of search for ‘purity’ that also drives cleanses, diet crazes, etc. and which is in part created by anxiety about the fact that our environment is now thoroughly and possibly irretrievably polluted. This anxiety is especially acute in first-time parents–because it is deliberately fomented by the baby industry. 

Seriously, when Mrs. P was pregnant with PJ, we were absolutely bombarded with messages about how threat-filled the world was and how it was our duty to spend money to protect our future child from all of these threats. We are encouraged to see the child as a ‘pure’ body that we must keep pure at all costs. It is too late for us; we are already polluted; but the child represents a brand new body who could, we are encouraged to believe, be kept free of taints and toxins if we only work hard enough and buy enough products. Don’t use the wrong kind of plastic in your baby bottles, even though there may well be enough plastic in your drinking water to damage your child regardless of what vessel you put it in. Make your own baby food out of organic vegetables, even if you will be freezing it in ice cube trays made out of the wrong kind of plastic. And so on. It is easy for me to see how some parents who were overtaken by the purity gospel would slide from “don’t let environmental toxins touch your child” to “don’t let anyone put anything into your child’s bloodstream if you can’t personally verify that it is not a toxin”–which of course no parent can actually do. 

Anyway. Vaccinate your kids. And maybe also accept that your children live in the same polluted world you live in and you can’t make the world any better for them without making it better for everyone.

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Some fairy tales may be 6000 years old:
dwarven-beard-spores:

soufre-de-paris:

soufre-de-paris:

GUYS THIS IS AMAZING

SERIOUSLY

6000 YEARS

STORIES THAT ARE OLDER THAN CIVILIZATIONS

STORIES THAT WERE TOLD BY PEOPLE SPEAKING LANGUAGES WE NO LONGER KNOW

STORIES TOLD BY PEOPLE LOST TO THE VOID OF TIME

STORIES

GUYS LOOK AT THIS

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS

GUYYYYYSSSS

“Here’s how it worked: Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (and the analysis revealed they might), for example, chances are the story can be traced back to the “last common ancestor.” That would be the Proto-Western-Indo-Europeans from whom both lineages split at least 6800 years ago. The approach mirrors how an evolutionary biologist might conclude that two species came from a common ancestor if their genes both contain the same mutation not found in other modern animals.” 

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elodieunderglass:

gurguliare:

Orlando Furioso is so fucking funny because there are images in it that I just… didn’t know existed in 1516, like, I didn’t think humanity had the mental technology to compose them, for example: a superpowered man kicking a donkey so hard it flies into the sky and, visually, dwindles to “the merest speck.” I don’t know WHY I didn’t think this was a comic shorthand people could resort to in 1516. I just didn’t. It didn’t occur to me.

I wasn’t expecting to see Orlando furioso / Orlando innamorato discourse on Tumblr, but I would like to submit for your further consideration the fact that everyone in 1495-1516 was ready for Bradamante in the exact same way that people in 2018 are for Gwendolyne Christie.

Everyone, in a sort of Greek chorus: Bradamante is so precious! Her eyes are adorable! Cupid’s arrow has rendered me, tbh, a very deep gash. She is the sweetest little wee muffin and I loved her instantly

Bradamante: (carving a walking stick by whacking at a branch with a fuckin sword) okay

Everyone: God! She’s so tender! So fair! So sweet!

Bradamante: (belligerently chasing down a hippogriff with a stick) if you say so

Everyone: GOD! Have you ever seen a more gentle maid? 

Bradamante: (killing twenty knights and causing lesbian revelations in at least 5 sorceresses) Yes. Yes I have actually

Everyone: What a precious flower of graceful womanhood! I wish she’d just. lay on my back in full armor. and crush me,, into the ground.