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i have been SO stressed recently. someone come turn my mind off?

Right now, I have students who are crying in class.

Students who won't even come to class, who I'm sincerely not sure will come to class again for the rest of the term.

Students who say they're leaving the country and will find a way to get me out too if I'd like.

Students who are texting, e-mailing, and Discord-ing me saying that they can't stop crying, that they can't cope with the uncertainty and chaos anymore.

Students who are asking me what to do and how to cope. My job is to help students learn, and a big part of learning is learning how to interpret and contextualize things, and how to approach problems in a productive and meaningful way.

I don't know how to approach this. I don't know what advice to give them. I don't know how to stop them from crying beyond telling them it's okay to cry, even though they're all adults and they know that already.

If you voted for him, you did this. If you put the price of bread or imaginary boogeymen or some abstract "need for change" above the well-being of your countrymen, you did this. If you didn't vote, or voted for an unwinnable third-party candidate because of some moral purity bullshit where it's more important to be right than practical, you did this.

If you did this, you've traumatized an entire generation with your selfishness and short-sightedness.

If you did this, I don't want you anywhere near my students, and I don't want you anywhere near me. Unfollow me, block me, blacklist my tags, fuck off to your closed-minded corner of the Internet and get the hell away from me. My obligation is to myself, humanity, to my LGBTQ+ and biracial family members, to my friends from all walks of life and all countries, to the students of color in my research group, and to my fellow women.

Not to you. Not to him.

recently i’ve been wearing ribbons in my hair a lot and it’s been making me feel so cute and ditzy.

as a geology nerd, i LOVE this

Here is a potentially silly question: how do you feel about birthstones? Do you think they fit the months (by season or astrological sign)? Do you have other stones you'd rather see as birthstones?

Okay, so, birthstones make absolutely no sense.

I mean, look at this mess. We’re doing beryl and corundum twice! I get that they get Special Different Names for their Special Different Colors, but it's just lazy. And why are we giving some months cheap, common gemstones like garnet and amethyst while the poor June birthdays have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for FREAKING ALEXANDRITE? That’s incredibly unfair! We should be picking birthstones that are all roughly the same price. And why do some months get multiple gemstones? I’ll tell you why: because nobody can agree on an official list and every attempt to standardize this thing has just added MORE birthstones to every month.

So obviously the answer is to standardize it again, by throwing out everything and starting over. Here are our goals:

Fair pricing. You should be paying roughly the same amount regardless of what month you were born in. We’re getting rid of those ridiculous outliers like diamond and alexandrite.

More customization potential! Nobody should be stuck with a stone they hate. We’re picking gemstones that come in multiple colors or varieties, so that everyone can choose a variant they like.

Wearability. Some birthstones are too fragile to be worn as jewelry. We need to replace them with stronger stuff.

No more duplicate gemstones. Every month gets a stone or family of stones with a unique chemical composition.

Now without further ado, I present to you:

The New And Improved List Of Birthstones With No Problems Or Flaws That Everyone Will Definitely Agree On And We Can Start Using Right Now Immediately

JANUARY: GARNET

I've got no problem with garnet. It's a fine, classic birthstone, so January can keep it. But I would like to see a little more garnet diversity. January birthdays shouldn’t be confined to just red. The garnet family of minerals contains a rainbow of different colors, like orange hessonite, green uvarovite, pink rhodolite, yellow grandite, and many more. They’re all garnet, so we should be wearing them all!

FEBRUARY: QUARTZ

The original birthstone of February was amethyst, which is… kinda boring. Super cheap and common and you only get one color? No, we can do better. February gets ALL the quartzes now. Keep wearing amethyst if you want, but also feel free to branch out into clear quartz, citrine, rose quartz, smoky quartz, rutilated quartz, tiger eye… actually, take all the agates too. If it’s quartz, it’s yours!

MARCH: SPODUMENE

March was originally aquamarine, but I’ll be giving all the beryls to May, so we need a different stone here. Let’s stick with that theme of pale pastels and go with spodumene. For an April birthday, bedeck yourself in green hiddenite, pink kunzite, or yellow triphane. Despite its subtle colors, your birthstone has some amazing fluorescence, with really cool pinks and oranges under a UV light.

APRIL: FELDSPAR

Diamond is too pricy for this list, so we’re replacing it with something less expensive and way more interesting. April will now be represented by the feldspar family. We’re talking labradorite, moonstone, amazonite, aventurine, and sunstone. While you don’t have much variety in color, your stones are full of shimmery schiller which glitters and shifts as it catches the light.

MAY: BERYL

May’s original birthstone was emerald, which is great and can stay, but we’re also adding its siblings! May is now represented by all beryls: Emerald, Aquamarine, Morganite, Bixbite, Heliodor, Goshenite, and whatever other varieties I’m forgetting to list. A bright and saturated rainbow of colors is represented here, so everyone born in May is sure to find something they like.

JUNE: ORGANIC GEMSTONES AND FOSSILS

It’s time to address the alexandrite in the room, and obviously we’re getting rid of alexandrite. A stone worth $15,000 to $70,000 a carat does not belong on the same list as friggin amethyst. Instead we’ll look at the other traditional June birthstone, pearl. The problem with pearl is that it’s a clear outlier in this list. An organic gemstone, by some definitions not even a mineral. Should we replace it? NO. We are OWNING it. All organic gemstones now belong to June. Pearl is joined here by jet, amber, coral, ivory, ammolite, petrified wood… in fact, June can have every fossil ever.

JULY: SPINEL

July was originally represented by ruby, which is a fine stone and won’t be kicked off the birthstone list - we’re just shuffling it down to September. Replacing ruby for July is spinel. (See, it’s funny because historically spinel has often been mistakenly identified as ruby! That's a little gemology humor for you.) Available in any hue you could possibly desire, spinel offers some nice color options to a month that previously only featured red. Of course if you want to keep wearing red, red spinel mimics ruby so well that you’ll barely notice the difference.

AUGUST: PERIDOT

Nope, we’re not changing this one. Peridot is the ideal gemstone and you ungrateful August whiners can die mad about it. HOW ABOUT YOU LEARN TO APPRECIATE PERFECTION

SEPTEMBER: CORUNDUM

Sapphire is a wonderful, classic stone and it deserves its spot on this list. But the corundum family has been separated for far too long, and we’re finally going to reunite them. Joining sapphire in September is its sister ruby. Between the pinks and reds of ruby and the many, many colors of sapphire, these two stones give September a nice variety of colors.

OCTOBER: TOURMALINE

Look, as gorgeous as opal is and as much as I love it, it is both way too pricy for our list and also TERRIBLE in jewelry. This stone is just too brittle to wear around from day to day and can be ruined just by getting it wet, which makes wearing your birthstone a huge hassle. We’ll kick opal out and hang on to October’s other traditional birthstone, tourmaline. Pink tourmaline may be classic, but this stone comes in plenty of other colors. Whether it’s brown dravite, watermelon elbaite, or the rare and beautiful blue indicolite, you can wear them all!

NOVEMBER: TOPAZ

November can keep topaz, but we’re not confining it to the color yellow. This stone comes in a huge variety of colors, and now they can ALL represent November. No further notes; it’s a nice, classic stone.

DECEMBER: ZIRCON

I dunno, I’ve had to come up with 12 of these, I’m burnt out. Sure, zircon, whatever.

“BUT WAIT,” you say. “Now instead of having a single color assigned to each month, almost every month is represented by almost every color, making it impossible to tell anyone’s birthstones apart and removing what made them special and recognizable as symbols!”

Well CLEARLY you didn’t read the title of this list.

We should treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion - mandatory 48 hour waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he's about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence, and a mandatory invasive ultrasound procedure. Let's close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, with people shouting at him that he's a murderer, begging him not to buy a gun.

It make more sense to do this with young men and guns than with women and healthcare, right? I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds.

nice sadists are so so underrated.

if a someone told me they loved that i suffer for them? omg im gonna nut

tenderly caressing my cheek, then slapping it? beautiful 10/10

that fake pity voice? GOD

when they give you a break between spankings to play with your pussy? i’m in love

on that same line of thinking, when there’s playful spankings, and you’re giggling and trying to get away until they’ve had enough of your squirming and they make you stay still? literally ughhh

orgasm denial bc they love hearing you whine?? YES

making you come so many times you cry because they love to see you cry? please please please

don’t even get me started on humiliation.

i got some new clothes today and took my last final for the semester

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