Bronwyn

IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BE SELECTIVELY PROGRESSIVE 

You can hate Ann Coulter. But if you suggest that she deserves to be raped, you are a misogynist.

You can hate Woody Allen. But if you say he’s part of a Jewish conspiracy or joke about putting him in an oven, you are an antisemite.

You can hate Michael Vick. But you call for him to be lynched or call him the N-word, you are an anti-black racist. 

You can hate Caitlyn Jenner. But if you misgender her, or make comments about her genitalia, you are a transphobe. 

And you can hate the military. But if you deliberately try to trigger veterans with PTSD, you are an ableist piece of shit. 

You do no get to pick and choose which people to treat fairly when it comes to acknowledging and combatting prejudice. 

Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:

Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.

“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.

“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.

“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.

Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.

People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.

No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.

Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.

Humans are actually more genetically homogeneous than most people suspect. This is possibly due to a population bottleneck at some point in our evolutionary past. Two chimpanzees from different sides of a jungle are likely more genetically different to each other than any two human beings in the world.

Our big brains may help us use tools, but what was really principal in their development was the need for empathy, communication, and cooperation.

Humans. Are. Social. So social it drove an incredibly energetically costly increase in our brain size.  Don’t believe anyone who says its our nature to fight “every man for themself.” We’re humans, not bears. We fight for each other.

And we always have. Fossil remains are found of ancient humans who bore signs of crucial mobility impairments that lived to notable ages. Some even have sticks or other mobility aids – community care and support is our way. We don’t cast off those with impairments, we stand by them.

Human sexual dimorphism is on a decreasing trend. Our ancestors had greater difference in canine size and overall size. Our dimorphism gap has gotten smaller.

Occam’s razor is the principal that whatever is the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. Don’t believe someone who says the reason we evolved bipedalism is so that males could carry gifts to females to woo them. Yes, this is a real ‘theory’ on how bipedalism evolved.

Skin tone is an adaptation of UV levels vs vitamin D levels. Both come from the sun. UV is harmful, so where sun is plentiful populations develop a darker skin tone for more protection. The skin needs sun to create vitamin D, so where sun is scarce, the skin tone lightens to allow more sun in. This is literally all it is.

Final thing: No one’s mind is really equipped to fully understand how long a billion years is, or a million, or even tens of thousands of years. Evolution takes place over a loooong time. Its very, very, slow, slower than we can really comprehend. We can’t “stand in the way” of natural selection by caring for our ill. We don’t need to “help” evolution in any way. It inevitably happens, but not on any sort of timescale we could possibly affect, so don’t fall for anyone that tells you not to “stand in the way” of natural selection. That’s fascism, and its utterly pseudo-scientific.

- Report produced by the U.S Strategic Bombing Group (employed by Truman) to survey the air attacks on Japan concluded that: 

“Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” - page 52-56 

- Dwight Eisenhower future president and then Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces also said:

“I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to [the then Secretary of War] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” - page 380

- Admiral William Leahy, one of the highest ranking officials in the US army during WW2 wrote of the usage of the bombs:

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. […] My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” - page 441

- General Douglas McArthur, another high ranking US official in the war:

“[When asked about his opinion on bombing Japan] He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” - page 70-71

- On September 9, 1945 Admiral William F. Halsey commander of the Third Fleet publicly quoted as saying:

“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment… . It was a mistake to ever drop it… . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it… . It killed a lot of Japs.” - online source

- The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, speaking to President Truman:

“I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon [the atomic bomb] would not have a fair background to show its strength.” - diary of Henry Stimson which can be found online here 

- Even those deploying the bombs questioned the decision to drop them on civilian cities:

“I thought that if we were going to drop the atomic bomb, drop it on the outskirts–say in Tokyo Bay–so that the effects would not be as devastating to the city and the people. I made this suggestion over the phone between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and I was told to go ahead with our targets.” - online source

- Lewis Strauss Assistant to the Navy Secretary James Forrestal on the locations of the bombings:

“I remember suggesting […] a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. […] Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation.” - page 145

So to recap: 

A lot of American generals were against using the bomb as they felt it served an empty purpose.

Those who agreed with its usage completely disagreed with dropping them on cities.

Truman went ahead and had them detonated in two highly populated civilian cities anyway. Two cities that had remained mostly untouched by regular bombings throughout the war precisely bc of their lack of value to the Japanese war effort.  

Growing up in the computer age, we’ve become masterful at filtering junk information, and that includes advertising. It doesn’t matter how much a politician or restaurant or whatever memes, we’ll find them funny, but we’re still not going to shop there or give them our money of we dislike them. The way brands become successful with Millennials is actually just word of mouth.

About 6 or 7 months ago, my neighbor got a drone. I don’t mind people having hobbies, but for some reason he insisted on flying like the biggest jerk possible. He would hover in front of other houses and windows, try to “race” cars going down the road, and worst of all he had a habit of flying his drone in my fenced back yard buzzing over my dog, diving low just over my dogs head before circling around to do it again. My dog isn’t small, he’s about 70lbs and a Malamute, but the drone terrified him, and I was worried what would happen if it hit him.

I asked my neighbor several times to please not fly in my yard and explained that it was scaring my dog, he basically told me to get lost and laughed in my face. When it still continued, I called the police. Unfortunately there wasn’t much they could do other than ask him to please not fly over my house/property.

Finally, in late December it happened - my dog got tired of his shit and managed to catch the drone right as it was diving towards him. He shredded the drone, the thing was just a jumbled mess of wires and plastic.

Neighbor was pissed. He stormed over to my house swearing and threatening me, which I ignored. A week later, I got a summons to small claims court - he wanted $900 for the cost of his drone and an additional $300 for supposedly denying him access to his property (the drone sat in my yard for a couple hours before it was retrieved). F*ck that. He could have killed my dog. I don’t have kids or a girlfriend, I just have my dog who is my best friend for the past 7 years. That dog has moved with me three times, was there when I graduated college, saw me buy my first house and my first new car. I love my dog.

Went to LegalAdvice, got some great help from them. Turns out, him suing me was the best thing to ever happen. When we got to small claims court, the judge basically laughed away his claims that I had intentionally trained my dog to attack his drone. But little did he know I was prepared. I had dozens of photos of my yard showing it was impossible for him to “accidentally” fly that low to my dog, videos of him harassing my dog in the past, and I had saved all my medical bills from taking my dog to the vet. $700 for an xray? Check. Another $250 to sedate him during? Why not, don’t want him being uncomfortable. Full dental exam with tooth cleaning/repair? $400. Then there was the cost of anti-anxiety meds and a secondary check up, wet food for a week in case his teeth were hurt, and extra just for good measure. In the end, the a-hole ended up owing me almost $2,000, and now is being investigated by the FAA for not having a registered drone and violating several FAA regulations concerning drone flight, too near an airport, too close to other people, out of sight of operator and waaay above the maximum altitude.

The Perfect Explanation of Privilege – In One Powerful Punchline

“The Pencilsword” is a comic strip by Toby Morris, an illustrator from New Zealand. His most recent comic, “On a Plate” hits hard at the heart of the issues of concerning wealth and privilege.

How many times have you heard the “I’ve never been handed anything on a platter” argument in regard to social security and other social benefits?

Toby wrecks this argument by showing how two children can grow up, be loved and supported, and yet still have two very different outcomes.

First marriage had to overcome fiancees parent’s unhappiness with their daughter marrying a Roman Catholic (which they did)

His wife and baby daughter died, and both sons were injured in a crash just weeks after he was elected senator - an election in which he was the underdog, and his campaign was mostly managed by his family with little funding (1972)

Wanted to resign in order to care for his sons

For his boys’ sake he commuted an hour and a half each morning and evening to Washington DC  so he could see them everyday

Hosted barbecues and christmas dinner annually for Amtrak crews

Amtrak crews would sometimes hold the last train for a few minutes so he could catch it

Never works on December 18th, the day his wife and daughter died

after his first election as U.S. senator for Delaware he was re-elected 6 times - usually with around 60% of the vote

May 1999 he set the mark for the youngest senator to cast 10,000 votes

Ranked as one of the least wealthy members of the senate

Was banned in 2008 from receiving Holy Communion by the bishop of his original hometown, Scranton, because of his support for abortion rights

Was caught on microphone telling Obama that signing the ACA was “a big fucking deal” during live broadcasts

Obama’s daughter Sasha and Biden’s granddaughter Maisy attended the same school together, which helped form the obama-biden friendship

Biden’s friendships on the senate floor were often instrumental in passing major legislation

In 2015 he reduced his schedule to spend more time with his son Beau, who was fighting and later died from brain cancer  

One of only 4 recipients to receive the presidential medal of freedom with distinction

Jill Biden, his wife, is one of only 2 second ladies to continue her day job