Sieveplayer - Sieve's

fanart for foreigner by cj cherryh

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED LAST NIGHT

but no yeah lets have the conversation:

"the CEO doesnt want to run that kind of website" Excuse, shouldnt have bought the 'go nuts show nuts whatever' website if thats the case. APPEAL DENIED

"we have to follow the TOS of the appstores we're hosted on" Excuse item one, no you dont, item two, you have since those days implimented infrastructure that would allow pornography and sex work on this platform Without violating TOS of any applicable app store. APPEAL DENIED

"we own the site we get to make the rules" Incorrect, this site has only ever made profit when the users willed it. we collectively own the site as a hive mind and no legal change in ownership will change that. APPEAL DENIED

"we have to keep this website safe for the children who use it" Argument based on fallacy banning pornography and sex workers does not prevent pornography and sex work from occuring on the site, it only forces aforementioned users to hide and avoid labling their content appropriately, which REDUCES the safety for children and sex workers alike instead of increasing it, this has been shown to the point that making this argument at all is tantamount to admiting fascist intent APPEAL DENIED

The Japanese green syllid Megasyllis nipponica, is a bristle worm native from the coast of Japan, but now is know to live in coastal parts of California where is stablished. This little dance seen in the GIF have a reproductive reason, and researchers now explaing better what is happening, and you may not be prepared to this.

The brown and dancing body segment is called the stolon, which detaches from the worm in a unique reproductive process called stolonisation or schizogamy. When gonads are matured, the stolon developed a head, which even posses eyes, antennae and bristles, then the stolon can break off and swim away, to break apart to release eggs or sperm. This bizarre process continues before the stolon detaches when it develops nerves and a ‘brain’, allowing it to swim independently from the original body.

Video and figure by Nakamura et al 2023

Reference (Open Access): Nakamura et al. 2023 Morphological, histological and gene-expression analyses on stolonization in the Japanese Green Syllid, Megasyllis nipponica (Annelida, Syllidae). Sci Rep

ok ok that thing about shackling people down with morals so you can feel more comfortable about their existence, it puts into words the feeling i get when zionists ask palestinian/pro palestinian people to condemn hamas first in their fight for liberation. i feel like beyond the question not being asked in good faith, it’s also because zionists first and foremost hate palestinians, they have to, palestinian existence makes them uncomfortable. so to hear and see calls for the existence that brings them so much discomfort, they must play a battle of morals. they get on their high horses to trample on palestinian liberation, because if you condemn hamas then really you can’t blame or condemn the settler colonial state in return because it’s hamas they’re fighting against, even though this is very clearly not the case. they’re unsettled tho because even when they get the answer they want, people are still against the settler colonial state. they can’t fathom it.

not caring if people think you're stupid is a life hack. recognising that you are kind of stupid is an even bigger life hack. we build entire societies to take care of each other bc we're all kind of stupid. it's fine.

Due to a combination of the residual childhood trauma hypervigilance and ADHD selective processing I am constantly on both ends of the spectrum of being aware of things. Did I notice the way someone shifted their arm in a manner that they usually don't, indicating that they may be irate with this situation? Yes. Did I notice that conversation in this room is not drifting towards a subject that these people would naturally talk about next, indicating that they are avoiding the subject? of course. Did I notice that the person who frequently parks here has removed that sticker from their car? Yeah clearly. Did I notice that truck almost hitting me? No.

My brain is the box that Schrödinger's cat is in, and there is no knowing whether I am aware of everything or absolutely nothing of what's going on unless you crack it open and check. Before that, I exist simultaneously in both the states of hyper-awareness and not being aware of jack fucking shit.

Clearer Thinking

Can astrologers use astrological charts to understand people's character and lives? Our new study put astrologers to the test

Astrology is very popular — both Gallup and YouGov report that about 25% of Americans believe that the position of the stars and planets can

Astrology doesn't seem to work.

The power of stealing a name.

“Jerboa”

The quaint rodent, the unique and lovable creature. Famous for its amusing and impressive skill at leaping and bouncing. An iconic species of the deserts of North Africa.

The first French nuclear bomb in the Sahara: Named after the jerboa.

France, in its imperial occupation of North and West Africa, used colonial Algeria’s Saharan landscape as the site of its first tests. The very first nuclear bomb unleashed by France, detonated on 13 February 1960, was Gerboise Bleue. The day before the bomb was detonated, French troops visited Algerians living in the test region, giving local residents chain necklaces to be worn. France detonated the bomb. Then French troops went back to collect the necklaces, which were actually measuring devices, meant to detect effects of the bomb. The French troops collected the data. But they didn’t tell the Algerian locals that they had just been poisoned, some of them fatally. They didn’t warn Algerians about the long-term effects of fallout, or what radiation would do to them, as residual poisoning continued to kill for decades. For many years, local people would harvest abandoned metals from testing sites, to refashion into jewelry, shelter, and other items. The French government knew that the remnants were toxic, but still failed to warn residents. After hundreds of thousands died in over 7 years of war, Algeria gained independence from France in 1962. Even afterwards, France detonated another 13 bombs in Algeria. The French government would not pass legislation providing compensation for victims of its nuclear bomb testing until 2010.

“Aldebaran”

The conspicuous orange-hued star Aldebaran. The seasonal arrival of this star, visible in the sky, has auspicious meaning. Especially in Polynesia where the stars, constellations, are sometimes referred to as “the roof of voyaging.” Stars guide oceanic navigation, and also guide food cultivation and harvest. For centuries and for many cultures across many islands across these seas, when the star became visible, would reemerge after an absence, the heliacal rising of Aldebaran in the skies of the tropical South Pacific signaled the beginning of the growing season for breadfruit, a quintessential resource across the Pacific and an iconic staple food. Breadfruit, of pivotal importance to food, sustenance. Aldebaran arrives, food can be cultivated.

Aldebaran brings life.

The first French nuclear bomb in Polynesia: Named Aldebaran.

After Algeria formally gained independence, France brought their weapons to imperial “possessions” in the South Pacific, to so-called “French Polynesia.” In May 1963, about 300 French personnel arrived at Moruroa, where 50,000 cubic meters of coral reef were obliterated to build access channels for the scientific/military infrastructure at what was designed as a testing/study site. Eventually, in the 1960s, over 10,000 French personnel and settlers (including civilian entrepreneurs and real estate developers) arrived in French Polynesia. The first bomb, detonated on 2 July 1966, was Aldebaran. French personnel recorded the environmental effects of radiation poisoning and fallout, but despite the immediate and extreme danger to Indigenous Polynesians, the French government did not declassify the results of those environmental studies until nearly 2010. By 1996, France had test 193 nuclear bombs in Polynesia. No victim officially compensated until after 2010. After the detonation of the bomb Aldebaran, over 400 kilometers away, drinking water at the notable island Mangareva contained 6 times the average amount of radiation; soil contained 50 times more radiation; unwashed garden vegetables contained 666 times more radiation; and, 3 months later, the rain falling on Mangareva contained 11 million times more radiation than the expected amount.

Thunderstorms, carrying poison. People hundreds of kilometers away had to hide from the rain.

Aldebaran brings death.

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The scale of the insult. To appropriate names, important to a culture, to a place, and then to ascribe those same names to the weapons that would then literally rain death upon those same people and landscapes.

I wonder: Do Americans know about american school buses? Not their existence in general, but how they're seen overseas.

Over here, they're one of the symbols of America, on par with the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the Eagle, and well ahead of any chain restaurant you can name. People won't know any US states, but they will know these vehicles.

The thing is, here in Germany, we don't have dedicated school buses. The general idea is that kids go to school on their own. When that's not practical, they're expected to use (and given free tickets for) public transit. Public transit is designed around this requirement; there are many places where there is a bus, and anyone can get on it, but the route and timetable really only makes sense for school children. In case a dedicated school bus is really needed, that's generally subcontracted out, and the lines either use something like a Sprinter Van for smaller routes, or a normal city or interurban bus (often a used one that's a bit older). School trips are normal public transit, or a rented bus, typically a coach or regional bus.

It's not a perfect system, in the past couple of years there's been an epidemic of people bringing their kids to school in their cars instead of letting them walk, which is less than ideal. It is what it is. But building a dedicated network of public transit lines only for students, and building dedicated vehicles only for that, has never occurred to anyone here.

Of course we know about these buses, from movies and such, but they're as foreign here as cacti or pick-up trucks (actually we're seeing more and more of these here) or yellow cabs (all europeans will assume all cabs in the US are yellow until they actually visit).

You do see these buses here at times, because people still generally like the idea of the US, even if they have a lot of issues with a lot of details, and so folks bring them over, along with stretch limos and stuff (also not really a thing here). And of course, if someone goes to all that trouble, they don't do it to haul school kids, they rent it out for city tours or as a party bus or whatever.

So you see these yellow things as a symbol of faraway places, scenic vistas, some vague undefined idea of freedom that doesn't necessarily hold up to any contact with reality, and it's just a huge part of the whole US aesthetic.

And then you go to a student exchange with the US, and you finally get the chance: You yourself get to ride in one of these iconic chrome yellow buses! It looks just like in the movies! You get in, you drive in them a little…

…and you realise they're shit. Just the worst buses in the western world. Terrible suspension. Uncomfortable seats with weirdly high backs (so they don't have to put seatbelts in, they just restrict how far kids can fly in an accident). Everything made out of the cheapest materials. Turns out the reason why the US uses school buses like that instead of normal modern city buses, which the US has, is to save money and because they just hate kids.

And then it hits you why US Americans say "as American as apple pie", a dish that is made and enjoyed literally anywhere in the world, instead of "as American as yellow school buses". Of course the Americans already knew all this. They got tortured by these things forever. It would never occur to them to see this as a symbol of America, it's just a normal part of life for them. It's a symbol of school and school life and sometimes normalcy, and tells us that these actors getting out of it are supposed to be teenagers, nothing more.

But most people in Europe have, of course, never ridden on these buses. So when they see them in movies and TV, that's a giant big yellow signifier that we're not in Hessen or Wallonia or wherever anymore. A symbol of a different world, one that may be at most a once-in-a-lifetime-experience for most people, just like a picture of a tropical beach, Mayan Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Hildesheim (there's no reason to go there twice). And I think Americans don't know that, and that's fascinating.