How Do We Know/guess How Latin Was Pronounced?

Finally some good fucking news

The hard truth about autism acceptance that a lot of people don't want to hear is that autism acceptance also inherently requires acceptance of people who are just weird.

And yes, I mean Those TM people. Middle schoolers who growl and bark and naruto run in the halls. Thirtysomethings who live with their parents. Furries. Fourteen-year-olds who identify as stargender and use neopronouns. Picky eaters. Adults in fandoms. People who talk weird. People who dress weird.

Because autistic people shouldn't have to disclose a medical diagnosis to you to avoid being mocked and ostracized for stuff that, at absolute worst, is annoying. Ruthlessly deriding people for this stuff then tacking on a "oh, but it's okay if they're autistic" does absolutely nothing to help autistic people! Especially when undiagnosed autistic people exist.

Like it or not, if you want to be an ally to autistic people, you're going to have to take the L and leave eccentric, weird people alone. Even if you don't know them to be autistic. You shouldn't be looking for Acceptable Reasons to be mean to people in the first place. Being respectful should be the default.

I personally wanna see less ‘you are not a burden/it’s not work to love you’ and more ‘you are worth the work it takes to love you.’ I KNOW I’m a burden sometimes. that isn’t such a terrible thing! humans are strong. we can carry burdens. and it is work for me to be there for my friends, but it’s work I’m willing to do.

we need to acknowledge this because pretending love isn’t work will never make people like me feel less guilty for accepting love. we need to talk about it so people don’t feel bad for having boundaries and not always being up to do the work. we need to accept it so we can properly appreciate what others do for us and what we’re doing for them.

yes it does take work to love you. but guess what? you still deserve love, and you deserve people who are willing to do the work to love you. it doesn’t make you bad. all love take work. and everyone is worth it.

As it is Passover again, it is time for the annual debate as to whether the frog plague, which thanks to a quirk in the Hebrew, is written as a plague of frog, singular, rather than the plural, plague of frogs, was in fact, as generally imagined, a plague of many frogs, or instead a singular giant Kaiju frog. This is an ancient and venerable argument that actually goes back to the Talmud because this is what the Jewish people are. If we can't argue for fun about this sort of thing, what are we even doing.

In that spirit, I would like to submit a third possibility, which is that in fact it was one perfectly normal sized frog, who was absolutely acing Untitled Frog Game: Ancient Egypt Edition. One particularly obnoxious frog, who through sheer hard work, managed to plague all of Egypt.

I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money. 

“A scam” people are fucking wild.  

reblog to give the person you reblogged from one piece of Halloween candy

Thing is that is not the worst response, "Climate change does not existence so we should pollute as much as we want" is also a response people have

today my wisdom is: the ecological crisis of our planet is not a thing that will Suddenly destroy us sometime in the next century—it has taken decades of continuous work for our biosphere to be preserved thus far, and it will take decades more of continuous work to continue preserving it.

The apocalypse is not a single event hovering in the future bearing down on us while we sit helplessly. We are at least 150 years into an ongoing "apocalypse."

Things will continue to steadily get worse without steady action, but "augh! it's already too late to stop climate change and mass extinctions!" is specifically the worst response

biggest reason i make so many flop posts on here is because everything i do reeks of the desperation to make a popular tumblr post. this is deliberate, because it is what protects me from ACTUALLY making a popular tumblr post. so long as i crave it, tumblr fame will never find me. it is only when i turn away, and accept my fate of obscurity, that people will lay their eyes upon me. and it WILL be because i tripped and fell on my stupid face while i was turning

A Twitter Thread from David Bowles:

[Text transcript at the end of the screenshots]

I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.

Most classroom practice is astrology.

Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.

We’re still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.

Most teachers perpetuate the “banking” model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.

Thus the elite “Lyceum” style of instruction continues even though it’s ineffectual with most kids.

What’s worse, the key strategies we’ve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents I’ve known flout research.

Some definitions:

Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.

Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.

Things we (scholars) DO know:

-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.

-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).

-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.

Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.

Maintaining the status quo? Nope.

Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.

If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.

They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.

And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.

For what?

It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.

WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.

We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.

The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?

Education is all about capitalism.

"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.

THAT is why modern education is a failure.

Its basic premise is monstrous.

"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"

Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.