ravencromwell

[ravencromwell]

Just a psa that an already hectic week got harder with a grim diagnosis for the husband of my fav acquired in blending families aunt--which detail I add in immense fondness because every time I do well in college (she never got to go, and still became a fucking badass on the shop floor god she has some remarkable tales of competing with the boys), she insists it's all inherited from her despite our not actually sharing genetics love her so goddamn much <333333333 :). Anyway, trying to finish up pre and finals stuff for the semester around having less days than expected thanks to visiting them. So if I owe you comments or answers or message threads, haven't forgotten you/am still deeply engaged in topic of question or prompt fill or whatever it may be.

#personal

[ravencromwell]

#ten. absolutely *sublime. the pop of the raisins! the way the raisins blend with the sweetness of oatmeal. without it becoming #overpoweringly sweet the way chocolate sometimes can. God I want some now

[ravencromwell]

bail funds for pro-palestine activists

a15 bail and legal defense fund (supporting community members criminalized in the us for solidarity with palestine)

university of texas at austin students bail fund venmo @ psc_atx (livestream)

columbia students bail fund venmo @ bcabolitioncollective

as of april 15 ct dissenters (new york and connecticut) need bail funs for arrested activists: zelle: [email protected] cashapp: $BristolAntiRacism (use "april gift" in your memo so contributions can be tracked)

the palestine legal defense fund supports acitvists across the united states

palestine legal defence also supplies free legal support for activists

the national bail fund network may update with local bail fund efforts as events continue to unfold

this list is updated as of 24 april 10pm EST. i'll try to update as i find further bail funds and legal supports: if you know of other funds or if information shared here is incorrect, please reblog with updated info (+ a timestamp) so people can give and access support.

palestine will be free, solidarity forever 🍉 🇵🇸

#these funds especially are so fucking important for the low-income scholarship students #or the students out there protesting who were previously reliant on their parents and may have that financial support pulled for 'radical #views'--Ryan Grim's done some stellar reporting about how a lot of the fury coming from elites is about the idea their kids are getting #'radicalized' on campuses--. and I hope we start seeing more expansions into emergency housing funds etc. just look at the reports coming #out of columbia: sometimes only a quarter hour to collect your things and then evicted. I'm seeing reports on twitter--fuck you Elon it's #twitter--of students being suspended for a year etc. in some of the camps after being arrested. they're out there taking huge risks that #could substantially derail life plans and god I hope the funds are ready to help with that after the immediate crisis #Palestine

[ravencromwell]

Here’s what you’re not being told: The most pressing threats to our safety as Jewish students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they come from the Columbia administration inviting police onto campus, certain faculty members, and third-party organizations that dox undergraduates. Frankly, I regret the fact that writing to confirm the safety of Jewish Ivy League students feels justified in the first place. I have not seen many pundits hand-wringing over the safety of my Palestinian colleagues mourning the deaths of family members, or the destruction of Gaza’s cherished universities.

#fuck this is good! nuanced and thoughtful #always pulling the convo back to the horrors of Gaza. freely admitting that of fucking course! there are fringe actors saying horrible shit #because that's just! what! happens! in protests! god that's the thing making me most furious: large chunks of the people weaponizing this #discourse know perfectly well this is a common element of protests; know it's something BLM. for instance. grapples with from Michael #Brown actions to George Floyd ones. and knows it is not emblematic of full protest movements #and it is absolutely being weaponized. both in a “squirrel look over here!” to avoid the Palestine horrors way and because money! that #most precious commodity of elites. is being threatened. the university might *gasp* divest. companies directly supporting the current #ghoulish Israeli right-wing government might feel tangible consequences for it. and by GOD they will do everything in their power not to #feel the pain of the purse. and it's just *vile* #with all that said: GOD! the solidarity is so fucking beautiful. the Seder service! the honoring of one another's dead! #these people are trying to conduct the protests with the largest possible amount of empathy which's such a joy when god knows our leaders c #Palestine #Politics

[ravencromwell]

most important thing to remember about being a woman is if youre married you have to go under the covers with your husband and laugh cutely and play wrestle so when you die to progress the narrative he can remember it in slow motion montages

#oh fuck. this's truth you'll cut yourself on about our fucked-up fiction stereotypes #feminism #film #lit geekery #book babbling

[ravencromwell]

So Bail, get this, Bail Organa sends some ships to an Imperial-controlled planet. And those ships get stolen by The Rebel Scum. Bail goes ‘how dare you let my ships get stolen I demand full compensation’ and the Imperial Senate goes ‘ohhhHH of course of COURSE we are SO SORRY here are your credits Mr. Senator Organa sir’ and Bail, get this, Bail uses those credits to buy MORE ships and send them on Relief Missions to planets Suffering From Rebel Presences and those ships get STOLEN right out from under the Imperials’ noses. How could this be??? The INCOMPETENCE. In THEIR GREAT EMPIRE.

And Palpatine, who knows Bail had tea on the weekends with Obi-Wan Kenobi, has seventeen different reports on his desk every week telling him that the Empire is compensating Alderaan for losses sustained on Imperial planets and he’s seething as he signs them because he just KNOWS it’s never an accident and he’s actually funding the Rebellion but he can’t do anything about it because Bail, when asked about it, just presses a dramatic hand to his own heart and says, ‘why, Emperor, I have NO IDEA how The Rebel Scum keeps acquiring my vessels. Maybe if YOUR security forces were more effective we wouldn’t be in such a TRAGIC situation so often. Sign here.’

#*clutches every one of these Bail as popular with grifters headcanons to my chest* #yes every fucking word of this. Bail is a political and tactical fucking genius and I love him to fucking bits #SW #Star Wars

[ravencromwell]

#yeah. problem is: we don't want it either! #cackling #with the lack of audio description in the '90's. I missed so many #Disney #films. both classics and favorites ofthe era. need to look this one up when I'm in the mood for side-splitting comedy since even if it #doesn't have description. which I suspect it does. given the push to get older media described. there is now an internet teeming with #visual detail #future reference #film #Sword In The Stone

[ravencromwell]

#this is just *gorgeous* #humans being awesome #for creating art forms that can convey marvels like this

[ravencromwell]

#so everyone! will expect me to pick the kitty. which would indeed be marvelous. even if ~kitty~ in this case is insanely dangerous wild #predator. but honestly? think I'd have to fulfill my unrequited childhood wish to have a snake! I used to go to this camp for disabled kids #--weird. weird place. run by some major vegetarians back when A. plant-based meats were not! as popular as they are becoming today and #consequently not! well-produced the meals there were. an experience. and not an enriching one. but togo along with the dreadful food and #stealth religious education--because anyone who wanted to roast marshmallows and hear camp tales--which all of us were convinced was #integral to camp experience. you were hearing bible stories--yes. most of us signed up b/c as disabled kids we knew we weren't getting a #lot of camp invites. we took our bible with our smores and were glad. along with those horrifying experiences. there was a lake! crammed #with water activities I still grin at nostalgically--you will never feel as free as when you're on an innertube or jet ski #because leg function or its lack in no way inhibits either of those experiences if there are strong men to help lift you onto the ski/ #slide you into the tube. so there were water activities. and there were snakes!!!! #breeds without a drop of poison. and who had been trained to be entirely chill around people. but most of the kids were still scared of #them. which meant I pretty much had dibs on holding Mamma Snake--my absolute favorite because she could wrap around tiny me about three #times over--pretty much whenever I wanted. when that camp closed and they were giving away the snakes I wheedled #for days to let me bring the Mum home--I was the first person on their list for re-homing the snake; GOD I adored her and they all knew it. #didn't happen. my poor Mom. I later learned. was deathly afraid of snakes and torn to pieces cause it was the first pet I'd actively wanted #but she was *huge* and Mom just. couldn't. but yeah. still deeply. deeply miss the snake and hope she had a magnificent final home. leaving #me with a forever soft spot for 'em. poisonous or not I don't care. snake familiars always their skin is just so wonderfully *pebbly* in #texture and they're such a heavy. comforting weight on your shoulders. like a living weighted blanket

[ravencromwell]

NASA Data Sonification: Black Hole Remix

In this sonification of Perseus. the sound waves astronomers previously identified were extracted and made audible for the first time. The sound waves were extracted outward from the center. (source)

#the universe is so beautiful and simultaneously hypnotic in its terror #I don't have further words except we are so fucking lucky to be living in a time when we can hear this #when we actually have the technology to bring back these marvels from millions and billions of lightyears away #science is awesome

[ravencromwell]

I went to a restaurant with a friend yesterday and upon entering we saw these splendid blueberry tarts under bell jars on the counter and we made jokey small talk with the waitress like oh, people will fight over these if there's not enough for everyone, it'll tear families apart, are you making more later? and she said no, I'm afraid that's our entire stock for today, but there are 18 slices, it should be plenty! It was a small village restaurant with only one menu du jour so there weren't any other dessert options but they don't usually get that many customers—but then a couple of large groups arrived and most people noticed the tarts like we did, and went ohh blueberry tart, it's been a while, I can't wait, and it became clear that when we'd get to the end of our meal there would be winners and losers in the blueberry tart rush

But later as we were about to order dessert I wasn't hungry anymore and I was like well that's too bad but someone else will be glad to get 'my' slice of tart—and my friend said yeah, me :) You should order it anyway, I'll eat both! At first I thought she was joking, but no. I said, there's not enough for everyone, you can't take two, and she said, we were going to order two slices, what difference does it make? and I was baffled that she couldn't see the ethical difference between two people eating one slice of tart each vs. one person eating two, when there's a limited quantity of tart. I felt like we were in a simplistic social justice metaphor it was so obvious, but there was no changing her mind. When I said "it's just... not nice" she said "okay" with a shrug, and what can you say to that. She added, you don't know any of these people and I was like, why are we reverting to tribal dynamics in a non-apocalyptic setting, how would you feel if we'd arrived a bit later and seen others ordering two desserts knowing you'd get zero? And she said, I would think that's their right, and I felt kind of amazed.

I pointed out that if she didn't think it was a wee bit wrong, she wouldn't ask me to order her second piece as if it was for me, and she said yeah maybe we don't need to do that, there's no law preventing me from ordering two desserts. What about Kant's categorical imperative Okay I guess you're not breaking any laws by taking more than your fair share of a thing other people also want, just failing a kindergarten-level morality test. I felt embarrassed for sounding like an annoying preachy rigid person so I dropped the issue, and as she ate her two slices she'd smile at me every time we overheard someone order coffee without dessert—like "See? There'll be enough, no one will be deprived of tart because of me!" as if that cancelled the fact that she didn't care in the first place. I guess it was one of these tiny issues that can still significantly alter the way you perceive a person. I tried to tell myself not to be so bothered about this small thing but I was! so bothered. And I felt like writing a letter to some agony aunt like "should I end a friendship over irreconcilable blueberry tart ethics"

#this would make me extraordinarily upset! like: just reading it I was entirely on op's side. like: I don't have anything coherent to say #except that I'm now deeply troubled by blueberry tarts. because I think it gets at a kind of awful banal cruelty: #we craft laws as a society. but laws. even common courtesies. can't be constantly enforced: when your internal meter of I will do this #right thing because I know it's right. because I know I will feel guilty even if no one sees me. starts to break like that--when we let #it slip for these small things. we're more likely to let it slip for larger ones. because being empathetic. fair. ethical. they're no more #inborn qualities than anything else. I'm thinking of Elodieunderglass's ~present practice~ as an example of how they have to be taught. #and I just. op's point: why are we slipping into tribalism over such a small! thing? I keep thinking about the starving girl in Palestine #carefully sharing scraps with her kitty. while this person gorged on blueberry tarts. and it feels like such a microcosm of burying our #heads in sand. of deciding not to care about things because it disrupts our comfort. and just so sad! like such a wasted opportunity for #communal joy and laughter and yeah. op. feel you. would also be having irreconcilable tart differences #philosophy

[ravencromwell]

TWO HOURS AGO: an incredible photo taken by a ut austin student capturing something deeply poetic in my opinion, a line of state troopers eagerly waiting to arrest student protesters standing just behind a sign that reads "what starts here changes the world. its starts with you and what you do each day."

#this has such deeply horrific. eerie resonances to the Vietnam war protests #Palestine

[ravencromwell]

Enoki Mushroom Fried Chick'n

#GOD this looks so good #recipes

[ravencromwell]

my fave greek history story to tell is that of agnodice. like she noticed that women were dying a lot during childbirth so she went to egypt to study medicine in alexandria and was really fucking good but b/c it was illegal for women to be doctors in athens she had to pretend to be a man. and then the other doctors noticed that she was 10x better than them and accused her of seducing and sleeping with the women patients. like they brought her to court for this. and she just looked at them and these charges and stripped in front of everyone like “yeah. im not fucking your wives” and then they got so mad that a woman was better at their jobs then them that they tried to execute her but all her patients came to court and were like “are you fucking serious? she is the reason you have living children and a wife.” so they were shamed into changing the law and that is how women were given the right to practice medicine in athens

#absolutely fucking amazing #ladies being magnificent

[ravencromwell]

"Much knowledge that was forgotten because it wasn't needed for many years has been recovered" sounds like something out of a fantasy novel, but it's actually from Voyager mission engineer Kareem Badaruddin wrt Voyager 1, and one of various awesome quotes in this article about the possible effective death of the Voyager 1 mission.

#they fixed it y'all!!!!!!!!!! at least a little! #so it can continue to be 'the little space craft that could' fuck I'm grinning like a lunatic over some metal and plastic and all the #other components of a proper craft <3333333333333333 #science is awesome

[ravencromwell]

#A. Pink should absolutely get a message from the most missed person #because there is such unmitigated joy in realizing someone you are thinking of is both thinking of you equally in return and will turn #the passive thought into the act of connection. B. this is the coolest as hell concept feel free to reblog and pick gifts :)

[ravencromwell]

🐉 woman 🐉 woman

twitter instagram inprnt

#GOD. GOD I just! the ferocity. paired with the beauty of the flowers #so very. very beautiful