alex they're mushrooms

Gisella Perl was forced to work as a doctor in Auschwitz concentration camp during the holocaust.

She was ordered to report ever pregnant women do the physician Dr. Josef Mengele, who would then use the women for cruel experiments (e.g. vivisections) before killing them.

She saved hundreds of women by performing abortions on them before their pregnancy was discovered, without having access to basic medical supplies. She became known as the “Angel of Auschwitz”.

With the National Walk Out, and ongoing arguments about how we can somehow prevent school shootings by “being nice to the bullied kids,” let’s talk.

Let’s talk about Columbine.

Unlike ALL of the current High School students in America today (yes, it’s been that long), I remember Columbine. was 13, and just finishing 8th grade.

The media narrative that swirled around Columbine was intense— we’d not really had a mass shooting on that scale, and because it was a shooting accompanied by a failed bombing, a lot of people sought explanation that couched it in stereotypical HS cliches and cliques.

Instead of being placed within the narrative of ongoing tension and attacks from white supremacist separatists that plagued the 1990s (with the 1995 Oklahoma City attack being at the forefront), Columbine signaled the start of a brand new narrative—one sympathetic to the killers.

The shooters were outcasts. They were bullied. They were victims of a high school clique system that saw their love of violent video games and Marilyn Manson as freakish and worthy of bullying. They wore weird long trench coasts to school— the media dubbed it

“Trench Coat Mafia.”

But this narrative is a false one: Eric and Dylan weren’t outcasts. They weren’t considered losers. They didn’t target popular kids. They weren’t seeking revenge for being bullied.

They were actually following in the footsteps of McVeigh and his predecessors.

They wanted to bring the entire American nation to its knees. They were inspired by the infamy and media circus surrounding the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Note that Columbine happened the day after the 4yr anniversary of McVeigh’s attack.

The plan, as numerous sources point out, was not originally a school shooting. The plan was to blow up the school, but they wired the bombs wrong. Instead of exploding the entire cafeteria and killing nearly 600 kids, the bombs just created smoke and confusion.

The guns were back-up, to pick off survivors, not the primary method of attack. But when the bombs failed, they went in shooting.

Media from the time and for the years after dove after the idea that Eric and Dylan were loners and outcasts, that they behaved in ways that would have been easily identifiable had we just known what to look for.

But, as tired and predictable as it’s become, the “signs” are not being outcasts or loners or goths.

The signs are much more obvious and yet we’re very unwilling to confront them: they are the white supremacy, the misogyny, the inability to take no for an answer.

The false narrative of Bullied Kid Shoots Up School has stuck around immensely since Columbine once that narrative entered the common lexicon, we were basically lost.

What should have been seen as in the vein of white separatist terror was instead a brand new pearl clutching.

Admitting the Columbine shooters were popular kids who wanted to be famous through death might have made us confront our own biases as a society far quicker. At the very least, it would have nipped this idea that bullying kids is the problem.

(and you can guess where this thread is going). This is the genesis of the brazenly ridiculous #walkupnotout bullshit adults— adults who remember Columbine— have been saying. That if Eric and Dylan hadn’t be outcast— they weren't— they wouldn’t have shot up the school— they still did.

Don’t make today’s children responsible for reinforcing a narrative that’s simply not true. Columbine wasn’t about bullying. It was about white supremacy and infamy. No amount of “being nice to the outcasts” will prevent THAT.

We adults who remember the horror and terror of that day have a responsibility that we’ve shirked by diving into our “it’s about bullying” narrative.

It’s not about bullying.

It’s about white supremacy. It’s about violence. And it’s about guns.”

It’s another two-fer! Yesterday, two separate people texted me asking if I’d see the D.C. Councilman, Trayon White Sr., who blamed the Rothschild’s for manipulating the weather in Washington and causing recent snowstorms. And I’m like – dammit, I just wanted to enjoy my weekend. But alas:

“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he says. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.” 

“Intersex advocates are rejoicing at a paper released by three former US Surgeons General. The surgeon-generals called for an end to forced medical surgeries on young intersex people.

Dr Joycelyn Elders, Dr David Satcher and Dr Richard Carmona were the 15th to 17th Surgeons General respectively.

The three condemned genitoplasty and other procedures, which are often performed on infants with intersex traits.

Intersex advocates, human rights groups and even the World Health Organization recognize ‘corrective surgery’ can cause more harm than good.

The paper comes as a new study revealed people who did not have forced surgery grew up without predicted problems.

The French study found ‘so far no major concerns have been reported from patients and their families’ and ‘with appropriate medical care and psychological support, it is possible to defer genital surgery’.

and floridians are just as human as you and me!

and the moral of the story is that there are no deadly snakes native to alaska

you might know this guy as one of the only archaeologists cool enough to be mentioned by indiana jones

it’s my dream to have my name said by harrison ford

i’m not going to apologize for having this class at 6am because you paid for it and it’s your fault. 

we don’t all dress like lara croft. i tried to get it to be a thing on a dig and my colleagues yelled at me. 

they were pretty good archaeologists except they were too racist to realize anything they found. 

i take back what i said about us not dressing like lara croft because lewis binford here is wearing nothing but short shorts and a cowboy hat. take notes for an academic halloween costume!

archaeologists can be good artists! not me, though. or anyone i know. but if you can draw just know you have options.

sometimes you find dead bodies when you dont really expect it and you just have to deal with it

archaeologists are the only people allowed to get exited when they find corpses. 

once i ruined thanksgiving dinner when i told my family i had gotten my degree in archaeology and my uncle commented he liked dinosaurs too

ah yes. archaeologists. or, as i love to call us,  pottery analysts

i mean he was kind of a good guy for helping us beat britain but he owned slaves so that really cancelled it out.

archaeology is like cultural anthropology, except after you interview the person you turn around and shoot them in the head.

do not use trees! trees are bad! don’t do it!

usually you find shards, but it’s super exciting when you find a really big shard

it’s basically like a waterpark, except you’re fully clothed and walking through a dark tunnel knee deep in muddy water. so, basically splish splash.

 i dont believe in curses but my colleagues and i like to encourage the idea of them so people stop touching our stuff

usually, you would find a knife in a kitchen. or underneath your pillow to really freak out your roommate who is a history nerd and has no idea why you would sleep with a knife under your pillow and he’ll get really scared and freaked out and okay i’m getting off topic

no matter what the other scientists say, archaeology is a real science.

don’t worry, i promise you, and whatever government agency that’s spying on me right now,  that i’m not a crazy communist trying to overthrow the government

by now you’ve noticed the big “POP QUIZ” written on the board. there isn’t one, but i wanted to see the looks on your face when you saw it. but you’re all dead inside so it’s not really funny.

everything was fine except the citizens of pompeii just woke up dead the next day

the number one question you should ask when you read old archaeology papers is “how the hell do you know?”

nothing pisses off old men more than young people asking “why” and “prove it” so do that as often as possible

when in doubt, it’s ritualistic

coprolites are the only shit archaeologists get excited over

i know the only reason you’re not laughing at my hilarious jokes is because it’s early 

they called it the garbage project. which is also what people call the projects i work on when we apply for funding.

what you have to realize is that people are fundamentally weird. they do weird stuff now and they have done it thousands of years ago.

things come and go but pottery is forever

i dont know if you all know this but moose are terrifying abominations. 

and today’s lesson is about the difference between dirt and soil!

please, please, please do not eat old butter you found buried in a bog.

 1) it’s flat out untrue. Adulthood is a breeze compared to school. I have time to myself to do what I find fun and can make my own choices. Like, yeah, I’m poor and have to take care of myself, but the central activity of my life– work – is waaaaaay easier than school, mentally and emotionally. 

 2) Part of the reason school made me anxious to the point of considering suicide is that I had this wrong idea, drilled into my head by YEARS of people saying this, that if I didn’t do well in school, I would be a useless member of society, unable to be productive or do anything meaningful. Failing a class meant I might as well be dead. That’s the false equivalence this culture creates. But grades don’t mean SHIT in the workforce unless you’re trying to become a college professor or do something that requires a hella advanced degree. 

 3) it helps no one to say this! All it does is give mentally ill children, most of whom are already struggling to get through the DAY, the idea that it will only get much, much worse. I know I couldn’t cope with that thought. Any future planning past my 20s was blocked out in a haze of terror at the thought of having to persevere that long, only to get a shittier situation at the end. But it’s not shittier. I have to be more responsible, but this is a piece of goddamn cake compared to even High School. The only reason to say this to a teenager is to inflate your own sense of superiority over someone who is still learning how the world works.

And you know what?  IT’S OKAY TO FAIL SOMETIMES.  It’s okay to lose a job: Most of the people you’ll meet in life have lost a job at least once before.  It doesn’t make you any less of a person–or even a bad worker–and you CAN move past it.

I’m 34 and I do what I please. I work, sure, 40 hours a week. And I have to keep track of bills and pay them on time, yeah. But like. Homework isn’t a thing. Grades aren’t a thing. I go to work, do my job, and come home and hang out on tumblr. i write fanfic. I draw. I don’t have to write papers, and if I do presentations it’s because I chose to pursue that part of my job. It’s literally illegal for me to work on anything work-related without being on the clock. Turbotax is the friendliest, easiest program to use ever. The real estate agent and mortgage company we used to buy the house walked us through all of it. If you’re late on a bill, you might get a fee, but the company is just as likely to waive that fee if you call them and talk to them and explained what happened. 

Like. Being an adult is cake compared to being a teen. And even those of you in your twenties reblogging this–it gets easier still as you get older, ‘cause you get the hang of the whole ‘independent’ thing. 

This is so freaking real.