Eh.

demonlikejudgeoffire:

afloweroutofstone:

Sorry to everyone who’s enjoyed the last 130 years of science and culture journalism, but Disney needs the money to fund Toy Story 9

Link to article here. A summary for those blocked by paywall:

These were the second set of layoffs in the past 9 months, and fourth since 2015 when NatGeo partnered with Fox. The partnership was bought by Disney back in 2019. Last September, Disney laid off six top editors.

• All of the staff writers have been laid off, including 19 editorial staffers. “Article assignments will henceforth be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by editors.”
• Audio department was cut
• “The magazine has curtailed photo contracts that enabled photographers to spend months in the field producing the publication’s iconic images.”
• Physical copies will no longer be sold on newsstands in the US

National Geographic is one of the most popular magazines in the world. At its peak in the ‘80s, NatGeo had more than 12 million subscribers in the US alone. While print magazines have dropped out of popularity, the quality and rigor of its publication endured. At the end of 2022, it still had just under 1.8 million subscribers.

This is an incredibly sad turn for journalism. While NatGeo will continue to exist in digital form and will still be sold outside of the US, it’s very difficult to say that the publication can still boast the same quality when it has been gutted of the top-notch team behind it.

(via obstinaterixatrix)

bogleech:

revretch:

I see people getting confused about what “male” and “female” means for non-human animals (and plants), because it is not at all the same thing as the way it’s used for humans, because there are too many variations across many different animals. (I won’t even touch on how weird it is for plants.) So to break this down:

Sex: The gametes an animal produces (female for the big gametes, or ova; male for the small gametes, or sperm; monoecious/hermaphrodite for both; asexual for neither). When referring to non-human animals, literally the only thing this means.

Gonads: The organs that make the gametes (ovaries for ova, testes for sperm). Sponges can make gametes without gonads, so gonads are not required for having a sex.

Genitals: A dizzying array of parts that can be used to transfer gametes between individuals. Some males have claspers for opening. Spiders have “penises” in their “hands.” Female bark lice have siphons for sucking the sperm out of males. And the vast, vast majority of animals have no genitals at all, because they live in the ocean and just spray their gametes into the open water. Because this varies so much and can even be lacking entirely, it is also not the same thing as sex.

Genotype: What’s genetically encoded in an animal. In some, like humans, there’s an XX/XY chromosomal system to determine whether an organism makes sperm or ova. In birds, it’s ZZ/ZW (that is, two of the same chromosome for males). In wasps, ants and bees, it’s haplodiploid, where males have only one set of all chromosomes (the females, like almost all other animals, have two). In some animals, it’s not related to genes at all–in crocodilians, sex is determined by the temperature the eggs are incubated at! So, genotype is not the same thing as sex.

Phenotype: The physical expression of an organism–the body. Up to you whether you’re including gonads and genitals with that. This can vary depending on sex, to make it more likely animals producing different gametes will be able to identify each other. In some animals, there is absolutely no difference in phenotype between sexes at all. So, this is also not the same thing as sex.

Sex-Linked Behavior: Again, not even present in a lot of animals–or if it is, usually limited only to courtship and mating, because most animals aren’t social. Also not the same thing as sex.

Gender: A complicated system that varies dramatically across cultures and is specific to human beings, and tied very closely to human language. Some cultures have only two genders. Some have three, four, or more. What an individual thinks of gender can vary irrespective of culture. It ties in with all the previous things in so many overlapping, intricately linked ways I could not go into them here. This can also be considered “sex,” but not at all in the sense that we use it to refer to animals. Likewise, animals cannot be considered to have gender, because they lack the specific human language and culture that gender arises from.

Tl;dr: Please stop using “sex” the same way for both humans and animals. The human definition makes no sense for non-human animals because they get so weird, and it’s just plain rude to refer to humans in the animal sense.

This is also important to know for world building and creature design because I see very little science fiction or fantasy using these quite right, or even if they do, they’re kind of boring with it and only seem to understand how it works for birds and mammals.

(via seeyouguyslater)

cock-holliday:

Remembering the time my old nb roommate who went to an LGBT law conference and was heaping the absolute biggest bitchfit texting me cause “some cis guy” was talking about trans people and trans men in particular and my roommate refused to listen to what this guy said cause “why should I listen to him” and I said “are you sure he’s cis?” And then towards the end of the presentation he said something that indicated to the crowd he was a trans man and then suddenly my roommate started to consider what had been shared.

Absolute loser behavior, but not completely unique. We’ve all gotta stop saying only x people can talk about x issues for us to listen. Too many people in the in group will have dogshit takes no one wants to challenge because “well, they are x identity.” Likewise, plenty of people on the out group actually know what they’re talking about and have something to contribute to the conversation.

Especially when it comes to sexuality and gender, you relying on someone outing themselves or you clocking them to decide whether their words have merit is shitty, because you won’t always know if they ARE the group “allowed” to talk about it. And even beyond that, I knew a fuckload about transness before I realized I was trans, it helped me REALIZE I was trans. “Listen to x voices” got sooooo warped in the discourse.

(via foodforthot)

vanarana:

ITS PRIDE MONTH AND YOU GUYS ARE CONSISTENTLY WEIRD ABOUT LESBIANS, THE LESBIAN FLAG, THE LESBIAN EXPERIENCE — THEREBY YOU ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO OFFER YOUR SUPPORT TO EMILY GWEN, THE CREATOR OF THE LESBIAN FLAG WHO IS CURRENTLY STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE WITH NO JOB AND NO CLOTHING FOR INTERVIEWS

KO FI • THREADLESS • REDBUBBLE • SOCIETY6 • IF U DONATE THIS GUY WILL DRAW FOR U • IF U DONATE I WILL ALSO DRAW FOR U

(via liquidstar)

mrsmarymorstan:

anneemay:

😭

Reminder that SevenSeas have a monthly readers survey where you can go and recommend titles for them to pick up and publish!!! They already publish Yuri titles like “Even Though We’re Adults” and “Doughnuts Under A Crescent Moon” so I think this one would really suit them as a publisher!!!

Find the June Survey here !

(via gundelsol)

dykemd:

dykemd:

the lack of dykes n more specifically butch dykes in post apocalyptic media is bizarre bc every single lesbian i know is the most prepared person in any room n not even for survivalist reasons we do that shit for fun

exactly

(via ladysantos)

firebuggg:

i hope oceangate gets sued to hell for violating basic safety principles in pursuit of profit, i hope a teenager doesn’t die a horrible death, and i hope the world pays much more attention to the fact that 500 migrants died that same horrible death last week in a completely preventable sinking that was engineered by bureaucratic racism and cruelty. where were their millions of dollars and manpower hours in rescue efforts?

(via wrenrouge)

prismatic-bell:

saathiray:

Never gonna know them, but shoutout to the healthcare workers who are breaking the law to help their patients get life-saving care. I’ll never see an article about you because knowing you would risk everything including jail time. Nurses who lie on medical records so their patients can get abortions. Doctors making up shit so their patients can have HRT.

Wherever you are, you are keeping your promise to help your patient.

My mom is dead so she can’t get in trouble for this.

Many years ago when she was still healthy enough to work, she was the manager at one of those select-your-own-tests labs. They didn’t take insurance, which meant they had no insurance department, which meant it was actually cheaper sometimes than even getting the same test elsewhere WITH insurance, so her clientele often came in with doctor’s orders, and it is about one such patient I’m about to tell you. He was four years old and had leukemia.

At 3am the day my mom did his labs, she got a stat call. “Stat call” means “drop everything, contact the doctor, these numbers are outside the acceptable range and urgency is required.” She woke me to drive her to the lab so she could try to get in touch with the doctor on the way and say “I live five minutes from the lab I want you on the phone as soon as I get those numbers from my email.”

The doctor did not pick up.

Standard protocol at this point is to wait 20 minutes and call again, repeat until you get an answer.

My mom was not allowed to interpret lab numbers. She didn’t have the official credentials. But she was a medical assistant and had self-taught a lot of medicine to make herself a better MA (call it unofficial continuing education), and she took one look at this little boy’s numbers, and she had to make a judgement call. That call ended up being “Mrs. X, this is Catie from [lab name]. I received a stat call for your son and can’t reach the doctor. I’m not legally allowed to interpret these numbers for you. But pick an ER, I will call them and send the numbers and have them waiting for you. Go NOW. Don’t wait. I cannot stress enough how urgent it is that you GO RIGHT NOW.”

Had she chosen law over life, that little boy would have been dead by morning.

Instead she risked years in prison and being stripped of her license to practice. She got cupcakes and a thank-you card instead. As far as I know, the boy went on to make a full recovery.

When I think of my mom, this is what I want her to be remembered for. Nobody could ever know while she was alive. I want everyone to know now.

(And if you’re a 14-year-old on this website in 2023, and this sounds eerily corroborative to a story your mom has told you, and you grew up in Arizona, hi. My mom would love to meet you if she was still alive. But in her absence, will you tell me how you’re doing? I’ll tell her the next time I get up to her grave. She’d like to know.)

(via kairyu-dragonite)

toskwar:

assamiscuddlepillow:

predstrogen:

done pretending that furries aren’t an easy target online for bigots and a growing target in general right wing spaces and news because to them furries embody the sexual deviancy they see as inherent to being gay and trans (especially because of how many gay and trans people are furries). and if you deny it i think i will just beat you with a hammer for a little bit until im bored

furry hatred has always been fueled by queerphobia.There was an article maybe a decade or almost ago about a bunch of people that were big in the early 90s and 2000′s furry hatred on the internet (many of them from SomethingAwful, because everything bad comes from SomethingAwful) and how they admitted that yeah, furry hatred was because they were openly and unabashedly and unashamedly queer and that was not allowed.

I’ve said it many times before- possibly on this blog, despite how new it is. I’ll say it again here.

I have a litmus test for whether or not someone has interrogated their beliefs, or whether they may be easily led, unaware, or an outright bigot.

It’s furries.

If someone bashes furries just because (As in, the general “ew furries lol” kind of bashing), I know they fall into one of those negative groups- easily led, unaware, or bigot. They, at best, have not examined what they believe in any meaningful way, and at worst, have done so and decided that they like being a bigot.

(via weirdmageddon)