my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion
“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”
“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*
*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”
“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”
imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues
“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we - did we break our human?”
a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises.
“no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.”
“Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”
On this, the anniversary of the lunar landing, let us also celebrate the greatest post-mission achievement by a crewman.
I refer, of course, to the time Buzz Aldrin (age 72 at the time) cold-cocked a moon landing conspiracy theorist straight in his smug face after being accused of being a coward, liar, and thief.
Yes, someone was indeed dumb enough to tell a man so unafraid of death that he was willing to go into the void on a fragile explosive rocket, a coward.
Said dumbass was filming this confrontation as some sort of proof of moon fraud, but has instead captured this glorious moment of near-cosmic justice for us to loop for all time.
Aldrin was not charged with any crime. He should have been given another medal for public service.
I’ve had a lot of blood draws lately, which are really tricky because I have tiny veins that do not like to hang out at the surface, so I have to drink like a gallon of Gatorade the night in order to get the veins to be hydrated enough to appear.
That, of course, made me think of what might happen if a vampire ever decided to try to feast on my blood…
Student: I can’t find any scholarly articles on this subject!
Me: Okay, what’s the subject?
Student: Creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies.
Me: Alright, and what/where have you tried searching?
Student: I searched “creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies” on the library website!
Me:
I’m still mad about this because it happens frequently. Students at all levels of education need library and research instruction–they should get it before graduating high school, they should be getting it in several different classes in college, and there should be something in grad school–seriously, there are people in my master’s program who don’t know anything besides Google.
And don’t say “they should have learned in [previous level of university education].” Do you think every person continues education within a few years of their first degree? THEY DON’T. Even if they did get a then-good introduction to research, you think nothing changed between 2008 and 2018? How about the doctoral student I met today whose last degree–and last experience with academic libraries–was in 1996? How about the guy in my master’s cohort who got his bachelor’s degree in 1987?
Because look. See that very specific topic the student wanted? There may or may not be actual scholarly articles about it. But here are a few things you can do:
First, zoom out. Start broad. Pick a few phrases or keywords, like “tech companies” and “culture.” See what comes up.
Actually, back up. First, does your library’s website search include articles, or do you have to go into a database? My library’s website searches some of our 200+ databases, but not all. And you’ll need to find (in advance search or adjustable limiters that pop up after your initial search) how to limit your search to scholarly and/or peer-reviewed articles.
What other keywords are related or relevant? For the search above, you could use a combination of “silicon valley,” “company/ies” or “organization/s,” “sharing,” “collaborative,” “workplace culture,” “social culture,” “organizational culture,” and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.
Did you find something that looks promising? Great! What kind of subjects/keywords are attached (usually to the abstract, sometimes in the description section of the online listing)? Those can give you more ideas of what to search. Does it cite any articles? Look at those! Some databases (ilu ProQuest) will also show you a selection of related/similar articles.
If you’re researching a very specific topic, you may not find any/many articles specifically about your subject. You may, for example, have to make do with some articles about west-coast tech companies’ work cultures, and different articles about creating sharing/collaborative environments.
That said, this student did the right thing: they tried what they knew to do, and then reached out for help.
They tried what they knew to do, and then reached out for help.
I get goddamn professors pulling this shit, there is not one single level in the academy where research literacy isn’t lacking.
Also: Everyone has forgotten how to browse the stacks. As in, find a book that’s relevant, go to the stacks, then look at what’s near it on the shelf. You will find stuff that way that would never turn up on a search. It really works and can be a useful supplement to electronic research even though it involves your corporeal form and books made out of paper.
my law school requires a legal research class. you take it as a 1L, and it’s mandatory. you are signed up for it automatically along with all your other 1L courses. it’s a wise thing to do, because you’re fucked as a lawyer if you don’t know to find, you know, the law.
I have a library and information science degree, which I often refer to as a degree in google, and I’m only being a little facetious with that. I often impress people with my ability to find things online, but it’s only because I’ve taken so many classes in research methods that I know how to phrase a search well. It’s so important, not just in school!
Goddammit there is so much information and so many way to access it that it burns my biscuits when we don’t give students the tools they need to succeed at this. Hell yeah all y’all above!
And here’s what I’ve got to add:
Ask a Librarian
Seriously guys librarians are here to help. We would love to help you find the right resource for your particular informational need and we’ve been trained to do so as efficiently and effectively as possible. Nowadays you don’t even have to go to the library in person as many libraries offer online chat services as well as the option to contact via email. Further, and I think very importantly we are dedicated to our patrons rights to privacy. To quote the American Library Association the “rights of privacy are necessary for intellectual freedom and are fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship.”
Search the Stacks
This is one of my favorite ways to immerse myself in an area of study. While a good subject or keyword search will lead you to some good results sometimes is just as fruitful to go the library and plunk yourself down in section and browse all the books in a topic area. Libraries will label the (book)stacks based on whichever classification system they use and you can use the links below to figure out which area of the stacks you’ll want to look through.
Some websites like gutenberg project are dedicated to making public domain books accessible to the public. Using the search term public domain books is a good way to go about looking for more sources of them. Open sourced is another good term to use when trying to find freely accessible books online and that’s not just limited to fiction books but textbooks are also offered by various sites.
Project Gutenberg is an online archive of tens of thousands of books that have enter the public domain that can be freely accessed.
Openstax is one website that provides access to Higher Ed and AP open sourced textbooks.
Libguides and Pathfinders
As stated above librarians are in the business of connecting people to resources. If we can’t do so in person then we also do so by creating guides that can be found and used when we aren’t around. These guides are filled with search terms, books, articles, reviews, lists, links, and anything else we think would be helpful for patrons trying to explore a particular topic area.
Pathfinder is a particular term used for these guides. Libguides is a particular platform which to host these guides. Using either word at the end of your search terms online will bring up guides that have been created in that particular subject area. Or you can explore libguides directly with your search terms to find what guides librarians across the country have created.
Note: Using pathfinder in your search terms may pull up resources about Paizo Publishing’s same titled tabletop RPG series and while dragons are cool you can modify your search to library pathfinder to exclude these resources.
Other than using a search engine or libguides directly I find a great many pathfinders on university library sites. Usually what I do is find a university’s library webpage, find their pathfinder/research guides/guides section, and then browse through their lists of guides. These are generally organized by field of study so just pick the one you are interested in and look through the resources they have listed.
Some of the resources will be accessible for anyone while some might be locked for students of the particular university. If the article, book, or resource is locked by a school portal you can either search for it online outside of the university portal or you can go to your own university/public library to see if they have access to the resource there. Even if they don’t have it currently in their collection libraries are often connected with other branches and may be able to request an interlibrary loan of what you need.
Online Reference Resources
Sometimes the problem isn’t finding information but finding good information. Below are two sites that I use regularly to help me with this issue when searching online for resources.
The Ipl2 is a good authoritative source to find general information on a variety of topics. Even though the website is no longer updating there are still a plethora of subject guides that can be explored.
Open Sourced Journals and Articles
Just as there are open sourced books and textbooks so too are there open sourced journals and articles available. Again you can add the term open sourced when searching for these resources.
DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals and you can search through here to find both articles and journals freely available to access.
Journal Article Tips
Finally whenever I’m searching through journal articles there are a few things I always like to keep in mind.
Build context. Once you find an article that is relevant to your search you can do this by exploring the citations. Both those that the article you are using references in its bibliography and those that reference the article itself.
Every database is going to do this differently but generally with a few clicks you can find out who has cited an article that you have read. If nothing else try popping the title of your article into google scholar and you’ll see a blue ‘Cited by’ below the description. Also in some cases you can click on the author directly in a database to see what else they have written in the subject. Totally ask your librarian for help navigating the particular database you are using again they will be stoked to do so.
Building this context of literature by finding and reading these extra articles is important to building a critical understanding of your topic and will allow you to build the best possible defense of your arguments. This will also allow you to see if the article you’ve initially selected is in itself a viable position or if it is an outlier of its field.
If you can try and find reviews of literature articles and special issue/special topic editions of journals. These are your best friends in the resource world as these types of articles and journals compile a great deal of information on particular topic in a tiny space. They are immensely helpful in building context in an area of thought and useful to finding out what to read further to be informed in an area of study. Add those words to your search terms to see if you can get some useful resources.
this is why it’s so fucking irritating to see smug Europeans be like “Americans have no excuse for your ignorance when Google is free” - hey shitbag, knowing how to ask the right question is in and of itself a valuable skill that must be taught, and having the resources to ask the question at all is only half the battle. Google may be free but the rest of this is in short supply
Research is one of my favorite things in the world, simply because so many things are unknown, unresearched, forgotten, and buried in old documents no one looks at anymore, or hidden in sources people don’t usually see as academic, or tucked away in a totally different field.
It’s a fun and interactive quest, using your skills of observation to sniff out something that might be a clue and follow its trail until you discover a lead.
The best is when you are following a chain of citations and catch an author being sneaky and straight-up lying about or misrepresenting a source. Betcha thought you could get away with it, huh????
A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity ……….
The Trump crime Syndicate
trump and his family stole from a kids’ cancer charity.
Just a reminder this isn’t exactly true. Trump’s done enough evil in his life that’s very easy to find evidence on, you don’t need to spread false information too
To summarize the fact check (and thank you for it!)
The tweet conflated two separate and unconnected issues.
1. A past New York AG sought for Trump to be banned from operating any charity in the state of New York. This was ultimately not granted. So he has never been banned from operating a charity in NY.
2. Eric Trump’s foundation engaged in inappropriate self-dealing, paying money to Donald Trump’s properties. This isn’t straight stealing as in embezzlement, but it is improper use of funds in a way that enriched the Trump family, which is… not unrelated. However, this was not part of the issue that was being prosecuted when the request for charitable management ban was made.
I'm a measure with my hand-span and cut; measure with tape-measure and cut; and then finally bring item over to spot and cut it there person
When it comes to measurement, you are one of two kinds of person. You can be measure-twice-cut-once, or you can be cut-twice-measure-never. Personally, I’m the latter kind of person, and I’ve never quite gotten along with the measurement-uber-alles crew.
You see, life is short. That’s why I always cut long. If it doesn’t fit the first time, well, you can trim it right down. Then, you look like a hard worker and a fast worker, all in one. Cutting long saves a lot of time, and sometimes it even makes up for all of the dumb mistakes you made while not-measuring. I can tell I’m starting to lose some of the C-students in the back, who are now playing five-finger-fillet with the bandsaw out of sheer boredom. Let me give you a more concrete example before I have to remember how to make a tourniquet.
A couple years ago, I had signed onto this group of palaeontologists. That’s a fancy Greek word for “dinosaur touchers.” Their job was to dig deep into the earth, pull up some bones, and then sell those bones for not enough money to museums who grudgingly added them to their existing piles of dinosaur bones. I got hired because they needed a guy to drive the Jeeps, and occasionally make huevos rancheros. Not with the dinosaur eggs, I asked.
Anyway, the thing is, as a generic fixer, they also wanted me to build stuff all the time. Fences. Planter boxes. Scaffolds. Shallow, animal-proof graves when they had to betray a fellow palaeontologist over a big find. Things got dark out there in the desert, but that’s a story for another time. Once, I had to build bathroom stalls, so they’d have a place to human-poop, while they were digging up dinosaur poop. I got a lot of practice measuring, and even more practice cutting.
Oh, I can see that the start of this interminably boring story has caused a couple of you to inadvertently maim yourselves. Okay, I’ll get the Gojo® Blood-And-Guts-Cleaner. I guess my story ran a little bit long. So hard to estimate when it’s going to end.
Most people you meet have never committed a murder. I’d hazard a guess that they’re incapable of it, too. Sure, Hollywood movies have programmed the average suburbanite into thinking they’re one bad day away from being an almighty, unstoppable death-dealer, but why get such a negative vibe going in the first place? It’s better to just hang out and blow up car engines instead.
Cats, on the other hand? Every single one of those cute little fuzzy-wuzzums harbours the heart of a true, stone-cold killer. Even the most incapable fluffy doofus could lay waste to untold scores of mice. You’ll leave the house to go to work, and come back to a cat that has known what it is to take a life. That’s why we like them. They remind us of how cruel and vicious nature is, even when they’re incompetently chasing a housefly around your kitchen and keep jumping into the middle of your Aunt Martha’s elderberry pie in the process.
We’re not intimidated by it, either. You might think it’s because they’re small. I don’t think so, though: lots of folks are terrified of the hunting prowess of the humble house spider. Cats aren’t, as they consider this fearsome death dealer to be its own eight-legged protein boost. I think it’s because we know the cats are working for us. Our vicious employees, ripping through the rodent problem in order to protect our grains.
As awful as it sounds, humanity was born to be middle management (cats are both workers, and also upper management.) Don’t get your hands dirty. Put your feet up. Watch a television program where someone whacks a whole bunch of gangsters. Your cat might even watch, and gently scoff at the lack of realism on display.
I will reblog this absolute snacc every single time it comes across my dash
Ok i admit I only remembered this one bc Awooga but listen I got in new shirts that shrunk a little in the wash and hes RIGHT IT WORKS do it up top a lil for the titty area if you got em
we had a couple guinea hens to help protect our chickens when I was a kid.
HELL YEA!!!! they get a bad rap because they’re mean but that’s what they’re made for…they’re birdie guard dogs but they’re usually chill with the people they know well. also they are small and very funny
Awkward amount of white wool left, I’m gonna see if I have enough for an incredibly stupid project idea
Everyone in the notes thinks this yarn is a brain but I will continue to stand my ground and refuse to learn to take photographs properly
I didn’t see an organ, but I definitely was wondering why you put that pizza dough in a bag. Not to question your cooking practices or anything. I’m sure they are all perfectly normal.
My choice to take this photo in the kitchen to avoid startling Diesel with the IR focus on my camera (he was in my bedroom and HATES the camera) has backfired in hilarious ways. Nobody can help but see this as some kind of food.
I’m happy to believe you that this is yarn, but fucking heck, this is the most ominous photograph of yarn I have ever laid my sweet innocent eyes upon.
Why does everyone on this website hate my photos so much
elijah hadley was a 17 year old from the mescalero apache reservation. on june 25 he was walking alongside the road when a sheriff pulled over, elijah dropped the airsoft gun he was holding immediately, even before being properly addressed, and the officer shot him 4 times, elijah collapsed to the ground and says “its just a bb gun” and the officer calls in the shots, and that he is unharmed, asks for backup, and tells elijah not to move. elijah layed on the ground for 3 minutes when the officer yells “dont go to that gun” and proceeds to shoot elijah more than 15 times, elijah was left laying on the ground on the side of the road until additional officers arrived, checked his pulse and declared him dead. otero county sheriffs office have not released the name of the officer who killed elijah. last week they released the footage of the murder of elijah hadley
I think it’s important to know, there’s an older picture of David signing stuff, with his father-in-law WHO WAS THE FIFTH DOCTOR, holding a very similar sign behind David’s back. I don’t have the pic, but you can probably find it if you look a bit.
ALT
