in other news today the psd for my cityscape pic hit a quarter gigabyte
congratulations to me i guess
Junior meeting Washington and calling him “the yellow stripey one” and Wash kind of rolls with it because he thinks Junior must not speak English very well, or it’s some translation thing. And Tucker, later, cuz he knows Junior speaks English fluently, is like “you know you can call him ‘Washington’, right?” and Junior is like “nah, fam, let’s see how long he lets me call him ‘stripey’.”
Coming from that rural-centred background, it’s frustrating to me to see agricultural justice activism co-opted by urban-dwellers who hysterically yell about getting cancer from everything, when they have no connection to, or idea about how food is produced, or who produces it, or even who needs it most. It’s easy for the perpetual consumer to say “hell no GMO!” and talk about the purity of the natural world, or an ethic of noninterference, but I dare them tell the kid halfway around the globe with nutritional deficiencies that amino-acid enriched sweet potatoes should be banned, because they are “unnatural.”
This shouldn’t be about drawing artificial lines between manmade and natural: we gave up the right to complain about that when we domesticated animals and started farming during the Neolithic Revolution, 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. Nothing about the way we live now is “natural,” but paradoxically, that sort of means everything we do is, because we too are evolving biological organisms, and technology—as well as being masters of our own genetic destinies—is a part of our evolutionary trajectory. If there is anything I learned in studying anthropology, it’s that this nature/culture divide is a false dichotomy.
With that in mind, one of my goals here at BiodiverSeed is to change the conversation about GMOs: let’s make it about scientific ethics, about not using poor people as guinea pigs, about food justice, about affordable land access, about protection of biodiversity, and about protecting open-source genetics, instead of debunked studies about GMO corn causing tumours in rats. Let’s centre an agricultural and food justice movement first and foremost on the needs of the people who produce our food, and around the people in the world who need more food.
We can change the conversation if we make a point of being critical, scientifically-literate, and open-minded. We started “playing God” when we invented agriculture, surgery, vaccines, and 3-D printed organs. We’re not about to stop with our food; so let’s make sure that food is healthy and accessible, and doesn’t continue to destroy the integrity of our biomes as we produce it.
what do you make of house elves being better off left slaves because they wanted to be? it made me feel weird that there was a species MEANT to be slaves.
but that’s not canon at all.
a lot of people believed this throughout the series, including sympathetic and wise characters like Hagrid, but they were wrong. Rowling lets good people be wrong and doesn’t chastise them in the text for it. She doesn’t bother spoon feeding readers social justice, but the message that “even good people can condone awful things” is one of the strongest themes of the story. the house elf situation is a perfect example of why you can’t just read the surface text of Harry Potter and assume the author is speaking through the characters when they say slaves love being slaves and change the subject.
like, look at hermione’s SJW phase. the surface read on that? she tried to fix something that wasn’t broken, and she failed hilariously and gave up because nobody cared, even the elves.
except no. she was right about house elves. ideologically, she was seeing something Wizard culture was blind to, and she was 100% right.
but in her SJW phase, she wanted to fix this enormous and culturally accepted horror by trying to force the house elves to make choices that conformed to her notion of what was best for them.
she tried to free elves without their consent, she lectured them about their situation from her position of almost total ignorance, she ignored their wishes at every turn, and she tried to control their liberation and make it be on her terms, and it didn’t work. time and again, no one listened. humans didn’t really mind having slaves, it turns out, and because the house elves she met had never known anything but a world where their lot is servitude, why should they give a fuck about a 14 year old human child’s notion of social justice? she expected the world to change on the strength of her moral outrage, and she failed utterly
this storyline was not meant to impart the message that Hermione was wrong all along. it was meant to represent the vast chasm between meaning well and doing well. even very clever, kind people fuck up a whole lot, and there’s no one cleverer or more kind than Hermione Granger to demonstrate this point.
of course the house elves don’t want to be freed! they’d been abused, degraded and indoctrinated to see “freedom” as a threat. being good at servitude is the only value they’ve ever been permitted to hold since birth! a choice between this familiar, unhappy servitude and the shame of being cast out into the world with no skills, no friends, and no support system is not a choice most people could ever make.
Hermione was instructing victims to stop being victimized on her say-so, and she was offended when they didn’t jump at the chance to throw out what little safety they could count on in life in favor of a freedom that was basically meaningless to them.
She didn’t learn some shitty moral lesson about how house elves are better off as slaves. she learned that paternalism and a massive savior complex are terrible reasons to start a movement. she learned that putting the burden of changing systematic injustice on the oppressed and superimposing your own cultural beliefs on them with no regard for their own feelings is insulting and degrading.
she learned that absolutely everyone will tell you to fuck off if you pull condescending SJW shit on them, even if it’s in their best interests to do what you want them to do.
and Hermione took this lesson with her when she finished school. she became a House Elf advocate within the Ministry. She used her influence and power to enter the system and stop the fuckery from the human side instead of telling slaves to stop being so slavey and being annoyed when they stayed oppressed.
you think a genius like Hermione Granger couldn’t figure out with a little bit of experience that systemic change has to come from within the ranks of the powerful? man, not even.
This might be some of the best meta I’ve ever read.
Student Caught With Notes During Final; Found not to be Cheating, but Studying for Next Exam
The John Hopkin Newletter, May 9, 2014 (via paradoxical-dreams)
#the real-life plausibility of this is terrifying
(via jaywalkingthroughjhu)
Excellent history fact to remember;
Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo Da Vinci, most likely at the behest of the Borgias, once conspired to steal a river.
That’s right folks. They planned to change the course of the Arno River so that they could steal it from Pisa and make Florence accessible by sea.
Please take a moment to imagine that.
Please.
‘So we just divert the -’
‘Don’t worry they won’t notice a thing’
100% better than National Treasure.
dear tumblr’s automated pop-up system
it’s true that i often like posts tagged ‘bears’
but when i want to see a naked hairy fat man i just take a shower
the bears i like are animals of the genus ursus
you may need to learn how to differentiate because i could see that going really wrong for you with some underage users
also mannn that homestuck update was good