friends are family

humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast

vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast

humans: hahaha yeah

humans: it did tho

vsa: IT EXPLODED

Impulsive, passionate to a fault, the social structures they build to try and regulate this hotheadedness ironically creates even greater levels of sheer bull-headedness. Even their “cooler” heads take action in months or weeks.

vulcan science academy: get what

klingons: you vulcans are a bunch of stuffy prisses but you’re also tougher, stronger, and smarter than humans in every single way

klingons: why do you let them run your federation

vulcan science academy: look

vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores they don’t do experiments on one and save the other for if the first one blows up

vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores, they will ask for a third one, immediately plug all three into each other, punch a hole into an alternate universe where humans subscribe to an even more destructive ideological system, fight everyone in it because they’re offended by that, steal their warp cores, plug those together, punch their way back here, then try to turn a nearby sun into a torus because that was what their initial scientific experiment was for and they didn’t want to waste a trip. 

vulcan science academy: they did that last week. we have the write-up right here. it’s getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how. 

vulcan science academy: this is why we let them do whatever the hell they want. 

“but why” said the one Vulcan in the room.

“because that would fucking rule” said the humans, high-fiving each other and slamming cans of 24th-century Red Bull.

Like: “Guys, we totally wouldn’t do that!” But this always fails to get much traction, because the authors can always say: “You totally did.”

“That was ONE TIME.” 

There’s that movie where humans invented vaccines by just testing them on people. Or the one about those two humans who invented powered flight by crashing a bunch of prototypes. Or the one about electricity. 

And human historians go, “Oh, uh, this is historically accurate, but also kind of boring.” To which the producers respond: “How is doing THIS CRAZY THING boring????????”

“what is the word ‘fuck’ for,” the innocent young vulcans want to know. “surely there are more logical intensity modifiers.”

“yeah, you’d think so,” say the weary, jaded vulcan professors. “you’d really fucking think so.”

The Borg can adapt to the brilliant millitary strategies of the Romulan Star Empire, the Klingons and even the cold logical intellectual prowess of the vulcans

Love letters Hans Christian Anderson wrote to Edvard Collin contain elements that appeared in The Little Mermaid, which he was writing at the same time

Several people who knew James Dean have talked about his relationships with men 

Letters and poems allude to a romance between Emily Dickinson and at least two women 

Nikola Tesla was adverse to touch. He said he fell in love with one women but never touched her and didn’t want to get married 

Freddie Mercury is well known for his attraction to men but was also linked to several women, including Barbara Valentin whom he lived with shortly before he died. Friends have talked about being invited into their bed and walking in on them having sex (documentary Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender) 

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are two of the best-known activists who fought in the Stonewall riots

Florence Nightingale refused 4 marriage proposals and her letters and memoir suggest a love for women 

Leonardo da Vinci never married or fathered children, was once brought up on sodomy charges, and a sketch in one of his notebooks is 2 penises walking toward a hole labeled with the nickname of his apprentice 

Condivi said that Michelangelo often spoke exclusively of masculine love

Jane Austin never married and wrote about sharing a bed with women (Jane Austen At Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley)

Hatshepsut took the male title Pharaoh (instead of Queen Regent) and is depicted in art from the time the same way a male Pharaoh would have been

Me:

Matt 5:39

This specifically refers to a hand striking the side of a person’s face, tells quite a different story when placed in it’s proper historical context. In Jesus’s time, striking someone of a lower class ( a servant) with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. Another alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect putting an end to the behavior or if the slapping continued the person would lawfully be deemed equal and have to be released as a servant/slave.   

(via thefullnessofthefaith)

THAT makes a lot more sense, now, thank you. 

(via guardianrock)

I can attest to the original poster’s comments. A few years back I took an intensive seminar on faith-based progressive activism, and we spent an entire unit discussing how many of Jesus’ instructions and stories were performative protests designed to shed light on and ridicule the oppressions of that time period as a way to emphasize the absurdity of the social hierarchy and give people the will and motivation to make changes for a more free and equal society.

For example, the next verse (Matthew 5:40) states “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” In that time period, men traditionally wore a shirt and a coat-like garment as their daily wear. To sue someone for their shirt was to put them in their place - suing was generally only performed to take care of outstanding debts, and to be sued for one’s shirt meant that the person was so destitute the only valuable thing they could repay with was their own clothing. However, many cultures at that time (including Hebrew peoples) had prohibitions bordering on taboo against public nudity, so for a sued man to surrender both his shirt and his coat was to turn the system on its head and symbolically state, in a very public forum, that “I have no money with which to repay this person, but they are so insistent on taking advantage of my poverty that I am leaving this hearing buck-ass naked. His greed is the cause of a shameful public spectacle.”

All of a sudden an action of power (suing someone for their shirt) becomes a powerful symbol of subversion and mockery, as the suing patron either accepts the coat (and therefore full responsibility as the cause of the other man’s shameful display) or desperately chases the protester around trying to return his clothes to him, making a fool of himself in front of his peers and the entire gathered community.

Additionally, the next verse (Matthew 5:41; “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”) was a big middle finger to the Romans who had taken over Judea and were not seen as legitimate authority by the majority of the population there. Roman law stated that a centurion on the march could require a Jew (and possibly other civilians as well, although I don’t remember explicitly) to carry his pack at any time and for any reason for one mile along the road (and because of the importance of the Roman highway system in maintaining rule over the expansive empire, the roads tended to be very well ordered and marked), however hecould not require any service beyond the next mile marker. For a Jewish civilian to carry a centurion’s pack for an entire second mile was a way to subvert the authority of the occupying forces. If the civilian wouldn’t give the pack back at the end of the first mile, the centurion would either have to forcibly take it back or report the civilian to his commanding officer (both of which would result in discipline being taken against the soldier for breaking Roman law) or wait until the civilian volunteered to return the pack, giving the Judean native implicit power over the occupying Roman and completely subverting the power structure of the Empire. Can you imagine how demoralizing that must have been for the highly ordered Roman armies that patrolled the region?

Jesus was a pacifist, but his teachings were in no way passive. There’s a reason he was practically considered a terrorist by the reigning powers, and it wasn’t because he healed the sick and fed the hungry.

(via central-avenue)

In other words, Jesus was executed by the State because he challenged the State’s power.

(via rindle-spikes)

Yes, and isn’t it telling that the state ultimately adopted Christianity and started teaching everyone that Jesus said to obey your parents and to just do what you’re told…else he’d send you to hell?

(via iandsharman)

This is why context is important, folks.

(via beahbeah)

Also interesting that the Romans had perfectly understandable reasons for crucifying Jesus as he challenged the authority of the state but when the Romans adopted and spread Christianity suddenly the story put all the blame on the Jewish people as a monolithic group. Something which still today fuels antisemitism

(via gentlenight)

I had never heard any of this before and it’s fascinating…

JEFFREY BROWN: In filling in the story, though, you get to look at a lot of bigger issues, because you’re seeing Britain as a colonial power.

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: You’re taking us to Trinidad. The Dr. Watson character is a black man, so you’re taking this into racial issues. Slavery is in the story. KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR: And just what it was like in England after slavery has been abolished, and how people relate to the colonies, because every time you see Victorian England depicted, they only look at London.

Well, London was attached to all of its colonies, so that attachment really hasn’t been explored.

Mycroft Holmes is the elusive and possibly more intelligent older brother of Sherlock Holmes. Now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – NBA All-Star, writer and Arthur Conan Doyle devotee – has co-authored a novel about the lesser known but no less intriguing brother Holmes. Jeffrey Brown sits down with Abdul-Jabbar to discuss his latest work. View the Full Story/Transcript Here