“Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

LGBTQ+ Pride in New York City, 1994

It doesn’t say which episodes, and the BBC doesn’t officially have a hold of them yet, but there’s further confirmation that they know where at least 6 episodes are and are working on getting them.

If you’re ever unsure about an animal’s level of okayness with something that’s happening, there are three spot-check questions you can ask, to common-sense your way through it:

1. Is the animal capable of defending itself or making a threatening or fearful display, or otherwise giving protest, and if so, is it using this ability? (e.g. dog snarling or biting, swan hissing, horse kicking or biting)  2. Does the animal experience an incentive-based relationship with the human? (i.e. does the animal have a reason, in the animal’s frame of reference, for being near this human? e.g. dog sharing companionship / food / shelter, hawk receiving good quality abundant food and shelter and medical care from a falconer)

3. Is the animal a domesticated species, with at least a full century of consistent species cohabitation with humans? (Domesticated animals frequently are conditioned from birth or by selective breeding to be unbothered by human actions that upset their feral nearest relatives.)

In this situation, YES the eagle can self-defend, YES the eagle has incentive to cooperate with and trust the human handler, and NO the eagle is not a domesticated species, meaning we can expect a high level of reactivity to distress, compared to domestic animals: if the eagle was distressed, it would be pretty visible and apparent to the viewer. These aren’t a universally applicable metric, but they’re a good start for mammal and bird interactions.

Pair that with the knowledge that eagles reserve those chirps for calm environments, and you can be pretty secure and comfy in the knowledge that the big honkin’ birb is happy and cozy.

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

join a union

this is such a good interview because he’s basically narrating the reason why the working class is actually the most powerful force in society. by striking and shutting down production, the writers are showing that they are truly the profit producers because when they withdraw their labor profits don’t get made. and by withdrawing their labor they flex their power as the gears grind to a halt.

it can be the same for climate change if the same tactics were applied instead of trying to always approach things from an individualist or consumer activist standpoint. fossil fuel workers withdrawing their labor and inviting other unions and members of public to join and/or support the pickets in solidarity would actually grind the system to a halt. manufacturing workers withdrawing their labor and demanding their workplaces be refitted to manufacture parts for renewable energy could tip the scales.

Like, you suddenly notice a string instrument in the background music and you haven’t seen a few of them in a while. And the more musically versed you are, the more you figure it out (like in a mystery novel if you happen to have in-depth knowledge about the current riddle) while the “normal” people can get fooled into twists.

The non-musically versed audience hears a new brass instrument and is like “Oh shit, the dude with the tenor horn is probably dead!”, but then he suddenly appears perfectly fine and one minute later they find the body of the Euphonium player.