i ended up liking how gendered french is solely because i can say that i want people to use he/him pronouns for me the same way they use it for angels, blood and blunts
i asked a trans friend to give me her fem version of this and she said that people should use she/her with her the same way they use it for the sea, flesh and stuffed toys
I don’t speak French but I speak Spanish and I’m nonbinary so the whole gendered language thing is… difficult. I couldn’t get this post out of my head and so I wrote a poem. It’s a first draft but i just had to get it out there
It’s called “Masculino como el amor, femenino como la espada”
Si tienes que usar el masculino conmigo, usa el masculino cómo lo usas para el azúcar para el lobo el amor y el mar. Pero si tienes que usar el femenino, úsalo cómo lo usas para la tierra para la anaconda la guerra y la mar. Llámame masculino cómo el día cómo el melocotón el pecho y la cometa. O, llámame femenino cómo la noche cómo la piedra la leche y la mano. Masculino cómo el viento, femenino cómo la tormenta. El hueso, la sangre. El mito, la magia. El sol, la luna. Si tienes que usar el masculino conmigo, o si tienes que usar el femenino, llámame femenino con la boca y la lengua o llámame masculino con los dientes y los pulmones. O si puedes llámame por mi nombre. Llámame yo.
Translation: Masculine like love, feminine like the sword
If you have to use the masculine for me, use the masculine like you use it for sugar for the wolf love and the sea. But if you have to use the feminine, use it like you use it for earth for the anaconda war and the sea. Call me masculine like the day like the peach the chest and the comet. Or, call me feminine like the night like the stone the milk and the hand. Masculine like the wind, feminine like the storm. The bone, the blood. The myth, the magic. The sun, the moon. If you have to use the masculine for me, or if you have to use the feminine, call me feminine with your mouth and your tongue or call me masculine with your teeth and your lungs. Or if you can call me by my name. Call me myself.
no one speak to me this poem cut me open
alsdkfjalsdkj thaaaaanks! I made a few typos but i’m fairly proud of it hehe
“In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.
The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.
Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.
Those concerns were put aside, for now, as environmental activists hailed the new jobs program, which is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, as part of the New Deal.
“Young people nationwide are excited to see the launch of the American Climate Corps, enhancing career pathways in clean energy, conservation and climate resilience,’’ said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, an organization that promotes education, registration and mobilization for voters age 18 to 35.
“Young people are fighting for climate justice every day in their community, and now they have even more opportunity to continue this fight in their careers,’’ Ramirez said.
More than 50 Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had also encouraged Biden to create a climate corps, saying in a letter on Monday that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale.’’
…
White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said the administration will work with at least six federal agencies to create the climate corps and will pair with at least 10 states. California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan and Washington have already begun similar programs, while five more are launching their own climate corps, Zaidi said: Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Utah.
The initiative will provide job training and service opportunities to work on a wide range of projects, including restoring coastal wetlands to protect communities from storm surges and flooding; clean energy projects such as wind and solar power; managing forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires; and energy efficient solutions to cut energy bills for consumers, the White House said.
Creation of the climate corps comes as the Environmental Protection Agency launches a $4.6 billion grant competition for states, municipalities and tribes to cut climate pollution and advance environmental justice. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants are funded by the 2022 climate law and are intended to drive community-driven solutions to slow climate change.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the grants will help “communities so they can chart their own paths toward the clean energy future.”
The deadline for states and municipalities to apply is April 1, with grants expected in late 2024. Tribes and territories must apply by May 1, with grants expected by early 2025.”
i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it’’s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i’m not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i’m talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it’s literally not even that difficult and it matters so much
i truly believe that knowing how to cook is a basic survival concept and the fact that so many people can’t even make simple dishes is depressing as hell this is the sorta thing that should be taught at a young age. being able to take the ingredients you have around your home and turn them into a meal is like, essential and will make life so much better. you don’t need to be a high end chef you just need to understand some things that can be easily taught… but then again maybe the education system is playing a roll against this and ultimately they want you to grow up to rely on mcdonalds for dinner. i don’t know. please learn how to cook for yourself if you’re able. i’m not asking you to hunt for specific ingredients to make some expensive youtuber’s “best” recipe but if you know the basics of cooking you can do a lot with cheap canned ingredients. cooking can be affordable i promise you just need to learn how to make do with what you can get
Can anyone point me towards resources that teach those basics cus I would LOVE to teach my child this stuff but i dont know how to cook
kitchen tools (although the specific suggestions are pretty expensive even with the lower end scale items the basic categories are solid, and you can evaluate what items you will realistcially need - eg. if you dont need to read temp for steaks etc the temp reader will not be relevant) &
the western supermarket playlist of chinese cooking demystified (more recipes available but these are accessible if you dont have “specialty” ingredients)
cooking with boris (bear with me here i know he does it exaggeratedly humorously but a lot of them are actually solid and beginner cook friendly. mostly slavic/russian)
you suck at cooking (also falls into the intentionally humorous category but most of the recipes are pretty solid anyway)
how to cook that (baking, also does debunking videos of viral cooking hacks - breaks down the reasons the hacks dont work, pretty important to understand those basics imo)
i REFUSE to recommended joshua weissman because he is fucking insufferable but if you want you can try if you can deal with it, the techniques/recipes seem fine for the most part
again definitely not a comprehensive list but it touches on most of the basics
i hope they find a stupid tiny fish or something on mars and make mining illegal, just like the devil’s hole in california
these endangered bastards and their bathtub-sized habitat (just the surface shelf of a giant cave structure thanks) singlehandedly pissed off SO many businessmen lol
Knowing that Howl went “Fuck finishing this PhD, I’m ditching this universe to go chase girls, consort with demons, and live my wizard ladykiller dreams, while owning my own home at age 27” makes him much more understandable as a character
You work at a company where there are no assigned desks. There is a large supply of small white mugs for tea/coffee. One day, a larger blue mug appears in the dishwasher. Is that mug available for anyone to use?
Yanno what? This is a good point, we should be making a stronger case for Samus. So, it’s propoganda time.
While she may not have as much in the way of crazy off-the-wall abilities as this guy, (though there is certainly some of that as well, later) I do want to make a case for quality over quantity, and the meaning each part of her divided nature gives to her. (Obligatory heads-up for spoilers)
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First off, there’s the fact that she was originally just a normal human. This is probably the least notable or focused-on part, but still important for the baseline it sets, and how it factors into her relationship with other humans. She was born on a modest Galactic Federation mining colony planet called K2L, to Rodney and Virginia Aran. When she was a child, said colony was attacked by raiding Space Pirates, with both of Samus’s parents sacrificing themselves to try to fight back and protect her and the other civilians - and those sacrifices that allowed her to remain as the sole survivor.
Her hybrid nature and Chozo upbringing has her alienated from other humans, and as an independent bounty hunter who keeps to her own moral code instead of following orders, she is on rocky terms with the Federation. Even so, I feel that the significance of her initial life on K2L and how she survived its fall, is that despite what’s transpired since, she still believes in and wants to see the best in people, and still takes her major missions from the Federation even after parting ways with them in an official sense. (And even if diverging from how they may want her to carry those missions out, when the need arises.) It is also important in one other way, but I will save that for when I discuss her Metroid side.
—
Then, there is her Chozo side, which is probably the most significant overall. To make a longer story short, the Chozo were a race of bird-like aliens, and originally the dominant force in the galaxy; with extremely advanced technology, weaponry, and most important, capabilities with genetic engineering. They also were split into a great many different factions, or tribes, each with their own distinct ideologies, and due to the aformentioned genetic tampering, unique variations on the basic Chozo biology. However, they eventually fell into a decline, and have for the most part gracefully bowed out to let newer, younger races take their place, leading to the present state of affairs with the Galactic Federation and the Space Pirates. By this time, there are only three known Chozo tribes important to the games; the warrior-scientist Thoha, the imperialist warrior Mawkin who rejected the Chozo’s downfall, and the peaceful and spiritual Tallon tribe, who were wiped out by a recent calamity on their homeworld but continue to haunt it even after death.
After the raid on K2L, Samus was found and taken in by the Chozo named Grey Voice and Old Bird, specifically of the Thoha tribe. At this point, they lived on a nearby planet called Zebes, which was of a rather harsh climate, the kind she would not be able to survive on as a human child; and so they quickly implanted her with Thoha genes to grant her the means to not just survive, but live there without suffering.
Also, while the exact details of how this occurred are yet ambigous, we know that despite the Thoha and Mawkin tribes not getting along, the Mawkin leader Raven Beak was also present at this time, and contributed his own DNA to the modification process as well, likely for the political leverage it might give him; but also with the effect of making Samus more connected to the Chozo as a whole, rather than solely part of the Thoha. Regardless, her upbringing was primarly done by the Thoha, both training her as a warrior in their traditions, and imparting their culture and values, particularly of the importance of life, balanced ecosystems, and a true peace in space.
Again, while the main result of this modification was simply the greater-than-human level of durability and strength to allow her to survive the harsh environments of Zebes, it also allows her to use the Chozo’s advanced technology, most notably their powered and armored space suits, and the vast array of modular upgrades thereof, that are a big feature of the series’ gameplay. I could spend a whole other tangent listing the various abilities she has from this, though admittedly those tread a fine line between being just technology and being indirectly attributable to her hybrid nature.
On that note, this is also an underappreciated element of Samus’s strange biology, as the suit is also biotechnology; and contains organic components underneath the armor that are bonded to Samus and essentially a part of her body as well. While she can ‘dematerialize’ the suit from physical space as we know it, it is still a part of and connected to her, and cannot be removed by more conventional means. So really, the suit’s organic systems could be considered to be a secret extra ingredient in her hybrid nature. (In Fusion and Dread, where some sections of her suit’s outermost armor layer did end up getting removed, the organic parts are more visible, such as the yellow musculature here.)
Arguably more significant than the abilities, though, is the connection to her adoptive family, and by extension the legacy of the Chozo as a whole. With old ruins and former sites of their long-past civilization scattered consistently throughout the galaxy, every former home of theirs has significance to her, even when there’s not as direct a connection as with the Thoha and Mawkin; a good example being when she visits the ruins of the aformentioned Tallon tribe in Metroid Prime and helps their spirits find peace. In general, with the Chozo nearly gone and soon to die out completely, she is the one left to carry on and answer for their legacy, with the equal amounts good and bad that entails.
—
On that note, the third and most recent, yet arguably most important, piece of the puzzle is her Metroid DNA. The Metroids are a species of predatory vampiric jellyfish-like creatures, originally created by members of the Thoha tribe living on a different planet from Zebes, known as SR-388. The Metroids were created to destroy an even more horrific species of shapeshifting parasites called X, but unfortunately themselves became known as one of the biggest threats to the galaxy. They did indeed counter the X as intended, keeping galactic civilization from being overrun by the infection, but the Metroids’ own unique ability to drain the literal lifeforce of other creatures until they were reduced to dust, made them terrifyingly deadly to all life as well.
Furthermore, many parties with more malicious intent - the aforementioned Mawkin tribe, the Space Pirates, and even certain groups within the Galactic Federation itself - sought to obtain and study them for their potential as biological weapons. This is where Samus comes in, with many of the earlier games centering on her efforts to prevent the Metroids from falling into the wrong hands, and eliminate them for the existential threat they posed. This culminated in the events of Return of Samus/Samus Returns, where the Federation sent her to SR-388 itself, to exterminate every last member of the species so they could no longer be used as weapons.
But while she carried this out for the most part, eliminating every Metroid she found and eventually their Queen, in the end, she chose to spare one, a freshly-hatched baby that the Queen had been guarding, perhaps seeing some of her younger self in it. The hatchling did not ultimately live for long, as the Space Pirates kidnapped and eventually killed in in a last-ditch attempt to complete their original plans, but this moment, and Samus’s decision, is a central turning point in the series.
With the Metroids gone, the X-parasites were free to begin spreading again, and nearly killed Samus herself, until something of a cure was found. Samus was yet again genetically modified, injected with recovered DNA from the Hatchling, making her part-Metroid, and so now of the same creatures she had once ruthlessly hunted down. This had the benefit of making her immune to the X-parasites, and able to absorb and feed off of them like the other Metroids once did. Of more personal significance, this meant that the Hatchling basically posthumously saved her life, in exchange for her having spared it before.
Furthermore, the aformentioned Mawkin leader Raven Beak, who as you’ll recall had also contributed to Samus’s genetic modification when she had been taken in by the Chozo, hatched a plan to try to bring Samus under his power and more fully awaken her Metroid abilities, to fulfill his ambitions of bringing the Chozo back to their former dominance and glory. This scheme ultimately backfired on him, of course, but was successful in the sense of indeed awakening the full potential of her Metroid side, with her gaining their same lifeforce-draining power, and ultimately transforming her (and by extension her suit) into this:
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In conclusion, Samus is the hybrid deserving of a win not just because of how many different things are mixed into her genetics, but how each of them are incredibly important to her story and who she is as a character.
Her humanity and caring, even when estranged from the Federation she was originally born under. Her Chozo upbringing and philosophy, both carrying on and also confronting their monumental, complicated legacy. And her newer Metroid aspect, terrifying yet so important, the end result of the central, evolving dynamic between her and them, that every installment in the series up to this point has focused around in some way or another.
You cannot have Samus or Metroid as we know them, without understanding her nature as a hybrid, and so that is why I feel she most deserves to win this poll. Good day.
The most terrifying part of having memory issues is when you can feel something from 5 seconds ago be thrown out the window and there’s an empty hole where it once was. You remember that you forgot something.
yesterday i learned that mannequins with nipples cost the same as mannequins without nipples. today i saw three cheese ravioli priced the same as four cheese ravioli. these are but some of the innate contradictions of capital.
