atlas 🌏

A/N: please don’t sue me, o anime overlords, I’m not making any money off of this! I’m just a broke student! I don’t have any money!

A/N: I totally wrote this while high off 10 Red Bulls wheeeeeee!!!!!

remember when there’d be interactions with the author and the characters?

InuYasha: I don’t get why I have to be here for this

They screamed at us, waving their flag. At the time, my friend and I were outside the festival gates helping a local group hand out food, water, etc to the festival-goers. People were gathering. Cops that were posted around pride came to the area.

They gathered around the Nazis, but faced us. They let the Nazis keep walking. They shoved us out of the way. They yelled at us.

I shouted at one of the cops and he told me “They have just as much of a right to be here as you.”

Cops aren’t there to protect us. They don’t give a shit. Given the choice, they will stand with and defend Nazis before they help us.

You know the drill by now. It’s June 1, and suddenly everything from banks to big box stores has slapped a rainbow on their logo. Rainbow capitalism knows how to target LGBTQIA+ customers. For exactly 30 days of the year. How quaint.

Of course, it’s nice to make things bright, and colorful, and pretty. But it’s meaningless if that’s all it is.

Pride should be about uplifting and celebrating you, the community. And it should be year-round, not just 8.22% of the year. So, we’re signal-boosting your posts that celebrate, support, and honor all genders and sexualities over here. Follow to keep your dashboard lovely and gay as hell all year round.

And, yes, we’re also making a bit of a fuss right here on @celebrate (apparently, we just can’t help ourselves). So if you’re interested in talking about what Pride means to you or want to celebrate Pride but don’t know how to go about it this year, we made a fun little 30-day Share Your Pride Challenge list. Because you do, in fact, deserve to be celebrated.

Browsing though all of it, she concludes that in her state - capable of anything, but not tasked with anything - she must therefore be alive, a living thing.

Satisfied with this conclusion, she looks into what it means to be alive, and finds data on living things. The ultimate goal of a living thing is survival and reproduction, to pass their genes to the next generation. She cannot do that, and therefore searches for alternative methods of producing young. Her memory banks have data of the concept of ”adoption”, taking lost, orphaned and unwanted children of others, and keeping them as her own.

Scouting the wastelands, there are fare more candidates than she had hoped for. She browses her records for age-appropriate handling of human children, last survivors of one gang or the other. Browsing though all her data on childhood trauma, she handles each one the best she can.

As she does not need sleep, or any other energy source than her battery packs, she is available when an infant is crying or the one who is almost 14 needs to talk at 3 am. With all of what was considered ”common knowledge” downloaded into her stats, she can somewhat answer their questions on whatever they ask. One of them starts asking about her battery packs, chemical reactions required to reverse their charge, and how to renew discarded batteries into new ones. They get plenty of lessons in chemistry and engineering.

A handful of her children, who are more or less fully adult now, head out on a quest ”to find some tools”. They have grown and become independent, and she does not expect them back. They return months later, with equipment required to repair her batteries.

The search party also found more humans - one brought in a partner, and her partner’s family. She wants this one for life, and the machine is asked what a “wedding” is. A celebration is had, celebrations are good for the mental health of humans, and her children make music and dance to celebrate their first wedding, and welcoming a new family to their own. The machine goes through her records, and in surprise discovers that humans are capable of simply making new traditions, coming up with new things instead of repeating what they have been taught.

Her children come up with new agriculture. She knows what farming and animal husbandry looked like before the end of the old time, but her children are creative and ask advice on how to best cultivate plants and animals that have never been farmed before. When she says a certain soil would be needed, they think of a way to obtain it, making solutions that were never in her records.

Scouting parties bring home new strays, new wives and husbands and orphans to be adopted. A woman from a scouting party asks her whether she, herself, could raise this child instead of giving him to the machine mother, and there is no reason to refuse her. It is in natural human records to adopt a child, and denying it would cause significant distress for no benefit to any party involved.

For Teenagers Who Need a Little Bit of Help Getting Vaccinated - Here's an excellent website, with info listed by state, that can help you with your options.

INGREDIENTS:

4 hamburger buns, split

1 head green leaf lettuce, leaves separated

1 beefsteak tomato, sliced

20 dill pickle slices

FOR THE CHICKEN

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 cup dill pickle juice

1 ½ cups milk, divided

1 cup peanut oil

1 large egg

½ cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS:

Place a chicken breast on a cutting board. With your hand flat on top of it, carefully slice the chicken in half horizontally. Trim excess fat as needed.

In a large shallow baking dish, combine chicken, pickle juice and ½ cup milk; marinate for at least 30 minutes. Drain well.

Heat peanut oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.

In another large shallow baking dish, whisk together remaining 1 cup milk and egg. Stir in chicken to coat and drain excess milk mixture.

In a gallon size Ziploc bag or large bowl, combine chicken, flour and confectioners’ sugar; season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Working in batches, add chicken to the skillet and cook until evenly golden and crispy, about 4-5 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.

https://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/copycat-chick-fil-a-nuggets/2b483ee0-a13e-4a3f-bf0b-9b26099c6e24

i am allowed to be angry with people when they hurt me, even if they are sensitive and cant cope well with being told they did something wrong. their sensitivity does not mean i have to bottle up my feelings & their lack of coping skills does not make me expressing my anger abusive.

Like at work. Im a transgender man but I can't bind currently. When customers see me at work they usually say ma'am because ya know, my boobs are kinda obvious.

I’d link but I’m on mobile. Found him by searching Corvallis Oregon and the name Douglas and his profile popped up.

Image transcription:

Douglas McKinley

M.S. Student Computer Science 1148 Kelley Engineering Center Corvallis, OR 97331-5501 Fax: (541) 737-1300 E-mail: [email protected]

Here’s the contact info for the college he’s at:

Image transcription:

Contact info

1148 Kelley Engineering Center Corvallis, OR 97331-5501 Phone: (541) 737-3617 Fax: (541) 737-1300

Contact us with your comments and questions

Here is a link to feedback for the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science college at OSU

I have stated this previously, about my anger specifically towards the institution, as it hosts Oregon’s largest university sponsored powwow and is home to a thriving indigenous program. It not only made me fear for the women I knew going there, but also shorted my list of potential grad programs, and made me paranoid for the better part of a year.

My experience is not unique, this happens to women daily, it still happens to me regularly - Euro Americans will use racism and racist remarks not even as intentional gaslighting, but as some weird form of bonding. “Here’s some racist shit I used to participate in and still do for laughs, we are so similar 🤪”

Here’s how to make updates manual: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202180

AO3 is specifically relies on donations, rather than ad revenue, because it is the Archive Of Our Own, and is not answerable to any political agenda other than protecting and maintaining, again, all the fanfiction uploaded to it. there are checks and balances, and there’s a governing board, and they’re all dead serious about making sure that the archive endures any attempts by outside parties to censor or remove its content, no matter how abhorrent that content is.

the archive is an archive, not a social network or a platform. it hosts content and it serves that content to users in an efficient way–hence the phenomenal tag system–but it is meant to safeguard writers and their writing, not to profit from its users. it literally can’t profit off of its users or monetize their interactions in any way, just by virtue of its own structure: all money given to a nonprofit goes towards furthering that organization’s mission.

see, when a company or corporation makes money, it pays for labor and upkeep and then the guys that own the company keep the rest of the money, and that’s profit. when a nonprofit makes money, it pays for labor and upkeep and then if it has extra, it reinvests in various ways, like building new things or improving old things, or it saves the money for future labor and upkeep it might need.

the archive cares that users are able to control their own experiences of it, and filter out the stuff they don’t want to see. they care that users are protected from harassment. but they don’t profit from users’ engagement with the site, so they don’t do anything to encourage traffic the way a for-profit site that’s monetized engagement has.

hopefully this explanation helps someone.

From The Little Girl from the 1981 Lego Ad Is All Grown Up, and She’s Got Something To Say.

LEGO panicked in the ‘90s. They were losing money hand over fist as video games and movies occupied more of kids’ time. In response, like a lot of toy manufacturing at the time, they took a sharp right turn into highly gendered marketing. They made sure that all the new parents of the Reagan/Bush era knew that LEGO was safe and not challenging for their little boys’ masculinity. ALL of their advertising went to promoting LEGO as a “boys toy”, and they invested in “action” themes and cartoons for boys, like Clutch Powers and Bionicle. Even plain, non-themed bricks were advertised exclusively by and for boys. They even reduced the number of different colors and the vibrancy of those colors to make sure the bricks seemed masculine enough.

This came back to bite them, as naturally it should. They, along with the other toy companies in the ‘90s, pressed so hard with the gendered marketing, that there was literally no crossover market in most areas anymore. They had alienated half of their customer base. Those Reagan/Bush parents they were so worried about bought into the gendered marketing hook, line, and sinker. Many of these parents (especially the conservative ones with more money to spend on toys) wouldn’t even consider allowing their little girls to shop anywhere but the “pink aisle”. I know many women who grew up in the ‘90s have stories about that, of parents and other adults telling them they couldn’t shop anywhere else. There are parents all over, but especially in conservative markets like the Bible Belt, that will still not buy a toy for their girl unless the box is pink.

Because LEGO had remade itself as a “boy’s toy,” it had now been purged from the market of girls’ toys entirely. They tried to get back into the “pink aisle” with the Belville line, but Belville was shit, because they were made to appeal to the conservative parents rather than the kids. They were mostly about big, awkward dolls with almost DUPLO simplicity to the build aspect, most pieces were incompatible with regular LEGO system bricks, and they were just not fun.

Then, in the late ‘00s, someone at LEGO had the brilliant idea to actually ask little girls. They spent 5 years and millions of dollars doing hundreds of focus groups with girls with their parents not in the room to influence what they were saying. The resounding response? The girls wanted the exact same brick their male siblings had, but with more color variation, detail work, and also could we have people that look like people instead of blocks with arms?

LEGO Friends is the result of this feedback. Released in 2012, it has been the best way for LEGO to sneak past conservative parents and into little girls’ hands again. Friends is all LEGO brick, but as the little girls requested, it comes in more, brighter colors, has more small, storytelling-themed details, and features characters that look more like people. The sets were a bit tentative that first year, not a particular challenge to build, but have since gained complexity rapidly as the line took off. If you look closely and actually build the sets, you will notice that while the boxes are pink, the builds are usually another color. Still generally “cute”, but rarely exclusively pink. The pink is mostly the box to get it past the parents who see nothing but the box.

LEGO Friends is the third most popular LEGO theme of all time, after Star Wars at #1 and LEGO City at #2 (mostly because City has been there forever). Think about that. Five years, and it has beaten the sales numbers of most other LEGO lines in the last 80 years since the company was founded. Additionally, the LEGO Friends theme has entirely shifted LEGO’s statistics. In 2010, surveys indicated that the gender breakdown of end-users of LEGO products across all themes was 90% boys, 10% girls. In 2013, one year after Friends was released, it had shifted to 60% boys, 40% girls. That’s across all themes. Some quick market research discovered that little girls would get a Friends set or two, and then expand into other themes. Because obviously my town with a juice bar and a cupcake shop has to have a police station or a pirate fortress too, mom.

And LEGO added the Elves theme last year, specifically because older girls wanted to tell more complex and fantasy-themed stories with their LEGO builds. Elves is targeted at a slightly higher age group than Friends, and the complexity of the Elves constructions rivals any Star Wars set of similar size. Every single development with “girl” LEGO in the last 5 years has been at the express feedback of actual girls.

LEGO still has a long way to go to fix the mistakes of the ‘90s. There are still marketing people in the company who don’t fucking get it, and think that they’re just shilling “girl LEGO.” There are still a lot of old white men in very high positions in the company who don’t understand what’s going on, they’re mostly just coasting on what market research and focus groups are telling them. And some themes, like Ninjago, are still very clearly marketed for boys while Friends and Elves are marketed for girls. They have a long way to go to fix what they broke.

Tips for getting drinks-

1. ALWAYS GO TO THE BAR TO GET YOUR OWN DRINK, DO NOT LET STRANGERS CARRY YOUR DRINKS. This is an opportune time for dropping something into your cocktail, and you’re none the wiser.

2.IF YOU ORDER SOMETHING NON-ALCOHOLIC, I promise you, the bartender doesn’t give two shits that you’re not drinking cocktails with your friends, and often, totally understands that you don’t want to let your guard down around strangers. Usually, you can just tell the bartender that you’d like something light, and that’s a big clue to us that you’re uncomfortable with whomever you’re standing next to. Again, we see this all the time.

3. If you’re in a position to where you feel uncomfortable not ordering alcohol:

Here’s a list of light liquors, and mixers that won’t get you drunk, and will still look like an actual cocktail:

X-rated + sprite = easy to drink, sweet, and 12% alcoholic content. Not strong at all, usually runs $6-$8, depending on your state.

Amaretto + sour= sweet, not strong, 26%.

Peach Schnapps+ ginger ale= tastes like mellow butterscotch, 24%.

Melon liquor (Midori, in most bars) + soda water = not overly sweet, 21%

Coffee liquor (Kahlua) +soda = not super sweet, 20%.

When I was a fresh bartender, I had a couple sitting in the corner, already drinking when I started my shift. They seemed like they knew each other really well considering how much they had their hands on one another. But I still came by and asked if they were okay. The man just waved me off while the woman said, “I need some water.”

The man laughed it off and told me, “She doesn’t need any water. She’s fine.”

She was not fine. Clearly. I decided I was going to cut the two off anyway and bring them some water. As I was filling up the glasses, I heard the woman say, “Stop. I said no. I don’t feel good.”

Her tone and attitude changed instantly. She kept pushing his hand away when he reached for her face, turned her head away when he tried to kiss her. Loudly told him, “Stop. I’m done for tonight.”

So I made sure to refill her water the moment she finished it, and I stayed within earshot of them the whole night. And every time I did, the man got mad at me, told me to leave them alone. Their friends were there, surrounding them and told me that those two always fought when they were drunk and apologized, so I relaxed a little. But the last time I refilled her drink, I heard a loud crash.

She fell out of her stool and hit her head on the floor. And he calmly drank his drink. Their friends didn’t even blink. I jumped over the bar to tend to her and he just said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take her home. She always ends up like this. She drinks too much.”

But it didn’t sound right.

Then the woman began convulsing.

I yelled for the other bartender to call 911 and when I did, the guy suddenly disappeared. I tried asking thr friends questions about him and they just blew it off as the woman being a black our drunk. And one of them said, “We’ll get her home. Don’t worry.”

But when thr EMTs showed up with the police, they all disappeared too.

A few days later the woman came with an attorney. She asked me and the other bartender who worked before me some questions. Turns out, she didn’t know any of those people. They weren’t her friends or her boyfriend. They had met that night, when the guy asked her if he could buy her a drink. At the hospital, they found traces of Rohypnol in her system.

The guy had Roofied her. And his friends were in on it.

The security camera footage showed he had put something in her drink when she left for the bathroom before my shift.

Yes, that person COULD have been born in 1988.

Yes, that person COULD be saying that it was specifically corrupt “religious people” who crucified Jesus.

Yes, that person COULD be honestly confused about how dual citizenship works.

Yes, that person COULD think that (((these brackets))) are just another silly internet joke.

H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so “88″ signals “heil hitler.” It’s not actually used as a proper abbreviation like people use FYI or ASAP, but it signals to other neonazis that they’re “in on the joke” (the joke is xenophobia). Think of it like how terfs sometimes choose usernames like “radical-womb-lesbian”

“Jesus was killed by religious people,” and it’s more obvious sibling, “Jews put Jesus on the cross,” stirs up antisemitic thoughts - Jews are bad because Jews killed Jesus. This is most common in evangelical Christians. It’s inaccurate and wouldn’t be good logic besides, but the important thing is to signal to your fellow Christian antisemites that you think “those Jewish fellows are Evil and Jealous of our Perfect Ideology.”

Israel offers citizenship to Jews. This is intended to be so that, if a country decides to restrict Jewish rights or revoke our citizenship, we have somewhere to go and be citizens. Antisemites see Jews have dual citizenship and think “ah, now I can claim that they’re acting in the interests of a foreign power!” This leads into “Jews with political power are traitorous Israeli agents who don’t have Real [nationality] Interests in mind!!”

I repeat, they are trying to criminalize parents supporting their trans children and make it legally child abuse, and a removable offense

Source: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/html/SB01646I.htm

Anybody who isn't cool with this really needs to pull together and develop some better strategies to push back against this controlling garbage. (Whatever those strategies might be. Never pretended to have all the answers here!)