Hi! I am a fat 40-something white introvert in NC. I worked in the NCSU Libraries for 13 years, then was an insurance agent working with Aflac (quack!) for about 9 months, and currently work as a substitute teacher in Roxboro & a repairer/maintainer of sewing machines out of my home.
My preferred pronouns are he/him/his; my preferred nicknames are Doc or Dok, or Science Squid (or Jon).
I am a fan of... things. So many things.
* Comics (DC Comics, Marvel Comics)
* Tabletop RPGs (Dungeons & Dragons/D&D/DnD, Eclipse Phase, GURPS, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, World of Darkness) (My OCs, my games)
* Video Games (Elder Scrolls series, Fallout series, Minecraft)
* Podcasts (Binging with Babish, Critical Role)
* Webcomics (Order of the Stick, Oglaf, SMBC, Schlock Mercenary, xkcd)
* Geek Culture / Geek Life / Misc. Geekery (including memes)
Basically, if it's got cosplay, fantasy, horror (esp. body horror and zombies), science (or SCIENCE!) & sci-fi, steampunk, or superheroes (or supervillains), I'll probably love it.
I also try to keep up with actual science and technology, especially body modification and transhumanism.
I also blog about libraries and library- & librarian-related things (including books), in part because I'd worked in a library for thirteen years, and about education (especially education in NC and education in America) due to my work in academic libraries and as a substitute teacher. And about language and linguistics, as those fascinate me.
Also about jobs and job hunting, since I've been unemployed or underemployed for an uncomfortably long time, and we could all use a little help there.
I also enjoy cooking (and food), which is a type of science. Here are some recipes I've collected.
This being the internet, I also reblog posts with cute animals. I'm especially fond of bats. And squid, cuttlefish, and other cephalopods. While I'm listing animals, I may as well provide a link to my cat posts. It is the internet, so there are a lot of them.
I'm a big fan of/believer in people being themselves, and of consenting adults being able to do whatever they want however they want with whoever they want, no matter what others think. (I.e., body positivity, sex positivity). I try to keep this blog SFW -- the only porn I'll be posting here are food porn and technology porn -- but I do sometimes talk about sex (esp. sex education) and burlesque (there are some great burly troupes in the Triangle & Triad area).
I struggle with mild depression and anxiety issues, so sometimes my blog may get a bit maudlin. But I also try to give advice on dealing with those, too.
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Things I've Liked (Note: May contain some NSFW posts)
My Tumblr Crushes
My personal blargings
About Me / It Me
Getting To Know Me
My TMI Tuesday blargings
My Feels
Conventions!
* Animazement
* ConCarolinas
* ConTemporal
* Cosplay America
* Dragon*Con / Dragon Con
My Face
My Facebook
Art-related blargings
Music-related blargings
Most Fridays nights I’m at the Retro Film shows at the the Carolina Theatre in Durham. Come join me!
TIL “Yankee Doodle” was written by the British to mock americans. “Doodle” is thought to come from the German “dödel”, meaning “fool” or “simpleton” and “macaroni,” a flamboyantly stylish type of dress, painting the Yankees as morons who thought placing a feather in one’s cap made them a “dandy.”
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Too often, Democracy is presented to us as the boring, moderate option, only chosen by conformists and the indecisive masses. I am here to tell you:
Democracy is not Moderate. Democracy is Radical.
Democracy is the last major political ideology to insist that legitimacy rises from the many and not the few.
Every other system - no matter how it dresses itself up - rests on the same grim foundation: that power must be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Sometimes it is in the hands of The Party's Politburo, sometimes it's the Guardian Mullahs, sometimes a Noble Bloodline, sometimes it's the President-for-Life and his pathetic cadre of sycophants.
It doesn't matter what ideology props up Tyranny. The labels differ, but the structure is identical - a small group decides, and the rest of us obey. Strip away the slogans and you find the same contempt underneath: a profound distrust of humanity as a whole.
And that is how it has always been - in most places, and for most of human history. But Democracy is the rejection of that structure at its root.
Democracy is not tidy. It is not efficient. It is not comforting. It is a stubborn, defiant insistence that ordinary people - in all their conflicted ignorance, prejudice, generosity, and brilliance - are entitled to govern themselves. Not because they are perfect, but because they are human.
It assumes that the people are not livestock to be managed, nor children to be shielded from dangerous thoughts, but moral agents capable of judgment, disagreement, and correction.
There is nothing moderate about that.
And that is why Democracy and Freedom of Expression are inseparable. A system that depends on the people’s consent must allow the people to speak - to argue, to offend, to be wrong, to be foolish, to be alarming. Either you trust the people or you do not.
Democracy cannot survive on curated truths and sanitized discourse. It requires exposure to bad ideas so that better ones can defeat them in the open. It requires citizens who can hear something repulsive and reject it for themselves.
Authoritarian systems have no need for Freedom of Expression. They do not require educated citizens, only compliant ones. They do not need critical thinking, only discipline. Speech is dangerous to them precisely because it invites comparison, skepticism, and refusal. So the Authoritarians of all colors regulate it - not for any public good, but for their own survival.
Here in America, Democracy is strained. The public sometimes chooses poorly. Demagogues rise. Falsehood spreads. But the system is showing its cracks precisely because it allows us to see them.
The answer to bad democratic outcomes is not to abandon democracy - it is to defend it more fiercely. A system that permits error is the only system that permits correction.
I know that the temptation, in moments of fear and frustration, is to reach for guardians - to wish for someone stronger, smarter, cleaner to take the wheel so that you do not have to confront it yourself. That temptation is ancient, but it has always led to the same place: The surrender of voice. The criminalization of dissent. The quiet suffocation of truth.
Democracy asks something harder of us. It asks us to believe that people, together, can learn - can improve. That exposure to ideas does not inevitably corrupt. That sunlight does more good than silence. That freedom - including the freedom to create and consume shocking, offensive, unsettling ideas - is not a threat to legitimacy, but its foundation.
Democracy is not easy and it is not perfect. Democracy rejects the fantasy that some flawless leader will come along to save us. It does not falsely promise us good outcomes every time.
What it promises is something far more radical: that no one gets to rule us instead of us - and that includes ruling our minds.
“What to the Slave is 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech [source]
“In a Fourth of July holiday special, we hear the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, he gave one of his most famous speeches, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society. This is actor James Earl Jones reading the speech during a performance of historian Howard Zinn’s acclaimed book, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.” He was introduced by Zinn.” [5 min 41 sec]
Just to be clear to anybody, especially in the USA because I know that Catholicism isn't as common there, this is not a cool rebellion against authority. While some traditionalist Catholics are purely interested in ecumenical things like the Latin mass, in the USA a significant portion of the movement for traditionalism is made up of violent antisemites. The "church's understanding of, and relationship with Judaism" they reference here is the idea that all Jews are not solely personally responsible for the death of Jesus
The Vatican responded Thursday to a traditionalist society that consecrated bishops without the pope's consent, declaring the Society of St.
This headline is missing some important nuance -- it's a headline, there's only so much they can do -- in that the Vatican said "this action you have taken excommunicates you." That is, 'we're not actively doing this to you, you are doing this to yourself, because we told you this was beyond the acceptable boundaries.'
The Vatican went way beyond what most of my Catholic friends expected -- they expected the bishops and maybe some priests to get excommunicated, but the laity and the nuns and... the Vatican has basically said 'bet, try it. See what happens.' (Excommunication, that's what happens.)
If you are on BlueSky and you are not following Claire Willett, you are truly missing out on some good fucking tea. Claire is a lesbian lifelong Catholic from Portland who knows her shit & has been sitting watching all of this with a giant bucket of popcorn and translating for the rest of us:
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so one of the largest open source data communities on the internet, data.world, got bought out by a company called ServiceNow, who has decided to fucking delete all of it by July 11th. they've given users barely any notice, no emails, just a fucking banner at the top and a blog post from June that gives barely a month to download your data before they fucking delete it all.
a bunch of archives of incredibly important government datasets like maternal mortality statistics are about to be deleted forever. in a regime where they're known to fudge numbers, we can't trust a lot of the data coming from them to not be altered. open source backups like those found on data.world are vital to being able to verify that the data coming from our government is still intact and not altered. and they're about to delete all of it.
i don't know if we need to start a petition or what. nobody seems to fucking care. there are millions of users on data.world and yet nobody is raising the alarm bells and it makes me feel like I'm going insane. somebody needs to do something. i don't know what to do. it feels like more and more of this world is being destroyed and dismantled. it's not only US centric data, either! it's all sorts of countries from around the world! and they're about to fucking delete everything.
the only things that won't be deleted are private companies who happen to use the paid version of their platform (which isn't accessible data to the open source community; some people have just been using their service to host their own data on privately)
and the kicker? this announcement was made... via an AI generated blog post. so not even any sort of human touch. just a generic, soulless announcement made by a soulless human about to take a wrecking ball to one of the more important websites that exists on the internet.
an example of some of the things that will be deleted on July 11th:
I haven't, I don't really have a reddit anymore. if somebody else would be willing to do that, that would be great. I'm pretty sure it only lets you post with a certain amount of karma now which is annoying
Hey, we’re in line for some absurd temperatures here in the southwest this week. This is very important to know and keep in mind. Be safe, stay hydrated, stay out of the sun as much as you can.
Additional you can also put them on your palms, also, make sure to always use a light towel or kitchen paper and don’t put the ice bags directly onto your skin!
Okay, yearly reminder: the “Red Man” diagram is crap and outdated by over a decade. This is not the correct way to assess anyone for how they are reacting to heat.
If the person has a *CHANGE IN MENTAL STATUS* that is they become drowsy, confused, disoriented, unconscious, or have a seizure(s), THAT is heat stroke. Everything else is a continuum of symptoms that should not guide your decision making. If someone is having symptoms, get them to a cooler place and get them something cool to drink.
If they have a change in mental status, call 911 right away and if you are trained to do so, begin active cooling.
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Bruce makes secret hair appointments cause he’s going gray. It’s just one of the many cosmetic things he does on a regular basis.
At first, it was only for Jason. Jason missed out on a lot of years after being dead and always seemed to become distraught whenever Bruce showed any signs of having aged.
He understood. Suddenly coming back after being gone for so long, only to realize everything has changed, is a huge shock.
That’s fine. He can handle that.
But then, he noticed that the rest of his children would also have not-so-quiet mental breakdowns right in front of him if he showed any signs of aging.
Dick gets a quiet, faraway look in his eyes whenever Bruce reminisces about their time together, like it was a hundred years ago, before refusing to leave his side for a few hours. Then he would disappear when Bruce wasn’t looking, never for more than an hour, only to return shortly afterwards with puffy red eyes and a death grip on his hand
Jason would pretend he didn’t care, seeing the wrinkles on his face settle like they’ve been there since forever, before forcing Bruce to hug him, fixing his face away so no one could see it, and crying his eyes out right then and there, lamenting loudly on the fact that Bruce was apparently ready to drop dead at that very moment
Cassandra would get a sour look on her face when Bruce let out a soft groan as he got out of his seat, which was saying a lot, since she didn’t often show much emotion on her face. She would sit beside him, holding his hand in her own, her fingers pressed against his pulse. She would refuse to speak for hours, not even bothering to sign if it meant taking her hand away
Stephanie, despite not being his child in a legal sense, dropped her milkshake on the ground in shock when Bruce complained about something being too sweet when it was, in fact, not that sweet at all. She gently touched his face and shook her head, tears brimming in her eyes, “You’re so old.” She whispered before insisting on having a movie night with just him
Tim seemed as though he had a conniption when Bruce needed to put on his glasses after a few hours of staring at a screen. He goes on a long, rambling rant about how Bruce could stare at screens for days on end before collapsing into Bruce’s arms and cursing out the weakening lenses in his eyes. Then he made Bruce take a screen break for two whole days, while trying not to cry and failing
Duke’s hands shake when he realizes Bruce takes more naps than he used to. He stays by Bruce’s side when he naps, even as he complains in a shaky voice that if Bruce spends all his time sleeping, he won’t have any time to spend with him. Bruce then has to sleepily comfort a crying Duke before they finish the nap together
Damian throws himself into Bruce's arms, and Bruce has no struggle with it at all. But Damian’s eyes get watery when he thinks that one day, it’s possible that Bruce will never be able to hold him up ever again. Maybe he would have to be the one carrying an old Baba around. He makes Bruce carry him around everywhere on days when he can’t keep those thoughts out of his mind
Alfred had to stop and close his eyes for a second; he truly believed he was staring at Thomas before realizing it was just Bruce. And as Bruce continued to get older and older, he could no longer see Thomas, because Thomas never got to make it as far as Bruce did. Despite the fear gripping his heart as Bruce continued to age, he couldn’t help but be grateful that Bruce still could age, that being Batman hadn't taken him away far too young.
Bruce knows they all understand that despite their complaints and tears, nothing is going to stop him from aging. At times, they seemed awed that his stupid self-sacrificing moves haven’t already killed him, but Bruce can’t fault his children for being weepy. It’s cute, he'll never tell them that, just so they'll keep their dignity
So yeah, he’ll take the time to dye his gray hairs black, and he’ll use his most expensive wrinkle cream to smooth out his features. He’ll muffle his groans when sitting down or getting up, and he’ll wear his contact if he needs to do a lot of reading. And he’ll take shorter naps or skip every so often so he can hang out with his kids, and he’ll continue working out so he can lift all his kids when he needs to
On the plus side, the jokes about him being an old man have lessened
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These are from Australia & show a bat that is probably now extinct. The bat depictions were found on a sandstone wall protected by overhangs, near Kalumburu.
There's a bit in Godel Escher Bach analyzing how Jabberwocky was translated into other languages. It still amazes me. How would you even begin to translate Carolls semi-nonsense words into other languages? There is no French equivalent to "galumphing" or "vorpal" so you have to find equivalent French words that can be evoked and played with until they are parallel semi-nonsense.
I remember reading that for the first time and feeling s distinct sense of linguistic/semiotic coyote-time. What the hell is any of this language bullshit. What are we doing? It's all ridiculous. Translation between languages feels like a trick that will be patched out of reality at any moment, and people are doing it with poems. Ridiculous.
