I can't believe it's not canon

If your application has this and you fill out the section for professional references with personal references then you have technically committed a crime. Now, 9 times out of 10 nothing will ever come of it, but down the line they can use it as an excuse to not only fire you, but to press criminal charges and possibly claim damages (I.E. it gives them ammunition for suing you for money, whether or not you lying on your application actually lost them any money. They can make all sorts of claims once they have proof of dishonesty)

If you're going to do this kind of thing, here's how to make it real (and thus, no longer perjury):

You and your friend group should work on projects together and take turns, per project, on who is the "boss" supervising the project. These can be anything from organizing a canned food drive for the local Food Bank, to picking up trash on the sides of the road or on a beach, to beautifying a public garden, to trail-clearing, etc. Make sure all the projects are volunteer work type projects because 1) volunteer supervisors count fully as professional references! and 2) volunteer work always looks good on a resume.

You don't technically need to volunteer through a non-profit organization, but the name-dropping often helps for legitimacy. So, if you're doing the food drives, for example, you can say "I worked under [your friend's name] organizing quarterly neighborhood food drives for [Name of Food Bank]."

If you guys go hiking and you pick up trash along the trails, touch base with the local park rangers to say "hey, our group does this thing where we help beautify parks by picking up any trash we find on the trails. Can you tell us where the bins all are?"

Then, if/when the employer follows up, the Food Bank or Park Rangers know you enough to say "oh yeah, that group comes by all the time. The to good work!" Ta-da! You've now given your non-existent volunteer group legitimacy, and so when you say you worked under your friend doing this project you are now telling the complete truth.

Your volunteer project can legit be as simple as offering to put up fliers for a fund raiser. "I worked under [friend's name] for the [fundraiser event]." "Oh? What did you do?" "Mostly helped out with the marketing doing the advertising."

You can spin a LOT if stuff into legitimacy for your applications and interviews without needing to outright lie and risk being caught out committing a crime.

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.

A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.

And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator.  He is estimated to be just over 6m.

This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:

It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.  

The Bull Shark lost.

THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out.  The Dominator:

And that’s STILL not the biggest.  

The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs).  He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines.  It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.

And here’s why:

Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.

Here’s him with a prey.

And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!

Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.

This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.

So how big is Gustave?

No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.

His estimated size is of at least 5,5m  but some give him over 6m.

The terrifying parts are:

1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.

2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.

3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.

And this is NOT ALL.

Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.

He lived to tell the tale - my question is:

What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?

THIS is Gustave:

And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE.  He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.

This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:

And THIS is a god among his kind:

This is it, folks.  The Final Form.  THIS is what peak performance looks like.

Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship.  Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth.  EVER.  Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates.  Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet.  It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.

That’s a problem.

Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure.  Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.

But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM.  What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces.  A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area.  The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.

Compare, 26 inch skull:

vs 29 inch skull:

Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).

And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:

and Purussaurus:

The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure.  This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:

and a truly extraordinary individual:

One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look.  A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth.  They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down.  Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.

Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:

than the pinnacle of his kind:

1. You ate that burger so fast. You ate that burger so fucking fast and now the whole Red Robin is staring at you god what the fuck

2. You started eating like a normal person, but then you started talking or daydreaming and now the waitress is handing you the check but you’ve still got half a plate of cold fettuccine

3. You were going to go out to eat, but then you saw a video in your YouTube recommendation that drew you towards it like moth to a flame, and now it’s 10 pm and you’ve got an empty bag of tortilla chips in your hand and shame in your heart

I was once at a training seminar in Toronto led by a famous (among therapists) & beloved somatic psychologist. She spoke brilliantly. I asked her how healing from trauma was possible for ppl for whom violence & danger are part of everyday life. She said it was not.

Colonial psychology & psychiatry reveal their allegiance to the status quo in their approach to trauma: That resourcing must come from within oneself rather than from the collective. That trauma recovery is feeling safe in society, when in fact society is the source of trauma

Colonial somatics & psychotherapies teach that the body must relearn to perceive safety. But the bodies of the oppressed are rightly interpreting danger. Our triggers & explosive rage, our dissociation & perfect submission are in fact skills that have kept us alive

the somatics of social justice cannot (i believe) be a somatics rooted in the colonial frameworks of psychology, psychiatry, or other models linked to the dominance of the nation-state (psychology was not always this way, but has become increasingly so over time)

the somatics of social justice cannot be aimed at restoring the body to a state of homeostasis/neutrality. we must be careful of popular languaging such as the “regulation” of nervous system & emotion, which implies the control and domination of mind over emotion & sensation

bc we are not, in the end, preparing the body to “return” to the general safety of society (this would be gaslighting). we are preparing the body, essentially for struggle—training for better survival & the ability to experience joy in the midst of great danger

in the cauldron of social justice healing praxis, we must aim for relationality that has the potential to generate social change, to generate insurrection. we must be prepared to challenge norms. acknowledge danger. embrace struggle. take risks.

& above all, we must not overemphasize the importance of individual work (which is important indeed) to the detriment of a somatics that also prepares us, essentially, for war. somatics that allow us to organize together. fight together. live together. love each other.

I know that you are powerful, mighty Jabba, and that your anger with Solo must be equally powerful. I seek an audience with Your Greatness to bargain for Solo’s life.

With your wisdom, I’m sure that we can work out an arrangement which will be mutually beneficial and enable us to avoid any unpleasant confrontation.

Self-Introduction (I am Luke Skywalker) 

Establish Credentials (Jedi Knight) 

Explain how you learned of this opportunity (Friend to Captain Solo) 

Establish Purpose (I seek an audience with Your Greatness to bargain for Solo’s life.)

Forgot what you were doing because your brain zoomed way ahead and you were left scrambling to remember why you’re holding a dishtowel? Adhd

Looked up from your computer screen and realized you’ve been reading wikipedia articles about the mating habits of spiders for the past five hours and you haven’t eaten all day? Adhd

Can’t do the mildly intimidating task because every time you try to think about how to do it, your brain skitters away from the topic like a nervous mouse? Adhd

Didn’t do the dishes because you remembered them on the drive home but by the time you arrived you had already moved on to other topics? Adhd

In the winter of 2013, I wrote a piece titled, “Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable.” Over the next four years or so, this piece would become the bane of my existence. Let me explain.

This piece sort of exploded – I was receiving emails and messages that the piece was really resonating with folks doing justice work across all types of communities. It was true and probably is still true how tired we all are of the constant worry that we cannot make mistakes – not even among those who we call friends, family, and/or comrades.

There have been numerous challenges that have arisen since the publication of this piece. The first is that it was so wildly appropriated by white people to rationalize or justify their own racist behavior. It’s been wildly appropriated to push away valid critique of racist or otherwise oppressive behavior. I remember as Ani DiFranco was being called out for playing music at a slave plantation, that white lesbians were quoting “Calling In” to tell Black women and women of color that they shouldn’t be critiquing Ani (or other white people) in such a harsh way. I don’t think I need to offer any more examples on how this piece or this concept has been misconstrued to mean, “I can do whatever I want and you have to be nice to me.”

The second challenge actually has a lot more to do with my own political development than external factors—how it was being read by my community or how it was being used by those inside and outside of my community. In the four years since writing this piece, I regret to some extent not writing more about the relationship we have to each other in movement versus our relationship to each other and that relationship to the state – the apparatus which seeks to and often succeeds at dividing, repressing, and conquering (literally and metaphorically) us.

I have become regularly frustrated by some of the contexts in which “calling in” has been used or named. It’s less about people annoying me (because people annoy me a lot) or some idea that I am the arbitrator of what “calling in” as an accountability practice or process actually means. It is actually more about the individualistic ways we think of accountability, power, and our relationships to each other. In many ways it is not surprising that we conceptualize ourselves as simply individuals. We are born into this world by ourselves (unless we’re a twin or a triplet, or something, but you get my point), we experience much of the world with only ourselves (even if many of our experiences involve others), at night we fall asleep and wander into the dream world on our own, and when we die – and we all die – we die alone.

We take the reality of the human experience as being both terrifyingly and rewardingly lonely and compound it with the deadliest economic, political, and social system in existence, capitalism, and most of us end up having a lot of shit to unpack around our individualism, and specific to this context, our understanding of harm and repair.

So what does it mean to hold each other accountable in a world that is incredibly messy? In a world where we don’t have much to rely on but the reality that things are incredibly messiness? That isn’t to say that there aren’t topics or issues where we are capable of drawing a clear line. We know how to do that – that’s why we have vibrant social movements.

But we have to start figuring out the space that exists between ourselves and our communities, our communities and the movement, and the movement and the state. Not only do we have to start figuring out that space, we have to do this in a way that is honest, transformative, and real.

When they get defensive about “our friendship/relationship/etc really means so little to you???” Come back with “Ive always thought our relationship was built on more than whether or not I find X funny, but if it isn’t, then we’re not really compatible.”

I am annoying sometimes.

And that’s okay. It’s not the death sentence I was led to believe. People will love me even if I can’t read their signals sometimes. Not understanding is forgivable. I don’t have to hold myself back so I don’t annoy anyone ever.

Y’all really act like white women are innocent until proven innocent until proven innocent

No one is absolving white men, we’re holding white women accountable for their equal role in creating, maintaining, protecting, and upholding white supremacy.

Racism and white supremacy is not a creation of white men that whites women have been silent partners in. It’s a creation of white people that white women have played an active and equal role in.

When I first saw the music video for Montero (Call Me By Your Name), I just kept thinking about how I had never seen a music video like it, ESPECIALLY from such a well-known artist. I’ve seen plenty of videos where a man is being sexy, but never in the way that Lil Nas X does it in that video. He sings about riding dick while giving a lap dance. I’m sure there are so many music videos where a male singer does this, but I’ve never seen them because gay men who express their sexuality in that way are usually prevented from becoming household names.

And he is getting a lot of pushback for it. People are saying that he’s trying to indoctrinate children, that he’s pushing an agenda, that he’s part of the ruination of society. Gay men are seen as sex-crazy predators, and so are androgynous men. For him to make this video expressing himself and his sexuality in the way HE wanted to, knowing how people would take it, especially as a black man, and then attaching his real name to it?

It’s trending at #1 on youtube and there’s been a huge positive response to it, but he’s risking a lot by releasing this video. The whole theme of the video is religious persecution, and we’re seeing that exact thing happen to him in real time. He’s being called a sinner, he’s being told he’s going to hell, he’s being told that god doesn’t love him. 

This song and video are resonating with SO MANY people. People who grew up with a religion that teaches that people like them are wrong, with parents who seek to destroy what they do not understand,  who have had a closeted partner who only told them they loved them in private, who told themselves that they would never come out to anyone, with people who have struggled with internalized homophobia. 

Since the world already has their eyes on Lil Nas X, he’s decided to represent himself the way he wants to and tell the stories he wants to tell. From this video to wearing a bright pink leather harness on the red carpet to doing drag on halloween, he is showing everyone that he is not ashamed of who he is and he’s willing to put himself and his career at risk to be that person. By doing this, he’s showing others that people like him exist and it’s ok and it’s good.

When we talk about Lil Nas X, we talk as though this flamboyant gay man is what he set out to show us. But the truth is he was a closeted gay man who wanted to make music, and the same voices that object to him now are the ones who wouldn’t let him exist in their spaces when he was trying to be as accomodating to them as possible.

we need to acknowledge this because pretending love isn't work will never make people like me feel less guilty for accepting love. we need to talk about it so people don't feel bad for having boundaries and not always being up to do the work. we need to accept it so we can properly appreciate what others do for us and what we're doing for them.