Harrow The Ninth Is Really Like. What If Orpheus Didn't Turn Around. What If He Wasn't Going To Turn

Oh, and by the way, that Supreme Court ruling is where that Harry Potter money goes.

Nothing exposes the inability of people to navigate power imbalances quite like the relationship between drivers and pedestrians.

For example, I just had a driver get screaming-at-me mad because I stopped walking at a slip lane to make sure he was going to stop. And like, buddy, I know I have the right of way, but if I assume you are going to stop and I guess wrong, I will literally die. Whereas if I wait to see if you're actually going to slow down, I am just delaying both of us by a couple of seconds. And that might have more to do with why I made the choice that I did than my being a stupid bitch who needs to learn the rules. Like, if you can't understand why the fact that you could effortlessly accidentally kill me (and likely face no consequences) means I am reticent to assume the best from you, maybe you just shouldn't have any power over anyone ever.

Beautifully-observed & realistic figure of a sleeping Antelope incised on rock up to 10,000 years ago at Tin Taghirt, Tassili n'Ajjer in Algeria, one of the largest & most important groupings of prehistoric cave art in the world.

ph: Linus Wolf

Ruthless Rhymes for Martial Militants. These conservative cartoons from ~1913 depicting angry suffragettes as brutal anarchafeminists were somehow actually supposed to make the subjects look bad, instead of amazingly badass.

One thing I can tell you as someone so zoology obsessed is that books, articles, blog posts, any literature at all is highly likely to let you know if an invertebrate or reptile has ever been known to eat its own young but not nearly as likely to admit how many widely beloved mammals will do the same (most of them) or how often (way way more often than the scorpions or snakes)

I always wondered why the Western Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac were both called zodiacs if one was associated w astronomy and the other w time in general. Like what defines a zodiac that the word is only used to describe these two things? Looking up the word “zodiac” in the dictionary didnt help bc it only talked about the western one.

Well, I decided to look up the etymology for zodiac and it turns out it comes from the Greek for “circle of little animals.” I love humans

Join me in Chicago where the pigeons have their own mini fire pit.

I’ve been thinking about the significance of names in GotG 3, and how it plays into the movie’s themes of intelligence and a being’s intrinsic worth.

Each of the test subjects’ names shows a different level of abstract thought:

Floor, seemingly capable of only very basic associations, named herself based on where she was while picking the name

Teefs named himself after a distinctive personal feature, and didn’t quite get the grammar right

Lylla picked a “real” name that she decided fit for her

And Rocket named himself aspirationally, using his name as a metaphor for the kind of person he wants to be

And the great thing is that all of these names were enthusiastically accepted by the group of friends, regardless of the complexity of thought that went into them. Because unlike the High Evolutionary, who places all living things on a spectrum from least to most evolved with only the most developed and “pure” being judged worthy of life, Rocket and his friends loved and valued each other for the beings they were.

This theme is then carried over to another naming scene at the movie’s climax: when Rocket declares himself to the High Evolutionary as “Rocket Raccoon”.

Throughout the series Rocket has taken offense to being referred to as a racoon, not wanting to be seen as “just an animal”. But in the climax he looks at a cage of baby raccoons and sees himself, not as the intelligent creation of the High Evolutionary but as the baby animal he once was, who never deserved what was done to him. And he looks at the other animals (the camera lingers in particular on a rabbit) and sees his friends, who were never as intelligent or “developed” as him but were no less valuable and important in his eyes.

And so he accepts the moniker of “Raccoon” alongside his personal name of “Rocket”, and insists that every creature on the ship be saved, not just the “higher lifeforms” as the other Guardians said. Because the truth he comes to realize is that there is no such thing as a “higher life form”: every living being has value, regardless of how intelligent, “developed”, or “evolved” they are.

While we don’t have sentient raccoons in our world, this is still a message that is so important, and so relevant to issues we face. It has takeaways for environmental stewardship and animal welfare (not as much separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom as we like to think, and it’s important to treat all living things with respect and care), as well as for issues of fascism, eugenics and disability rights (there are no types of people who are inherently superior to others; a person’s intelligence and/or level of functioning has no bearing on their status as a human being deserving of dignity, respect and self-determination).

It’s a lesson I hope we all can learn someday. Bless Guardians of the Galaxy 3 for portraying it in such a clear and meaningful way.

Yes I’m a gay man. Yes I have no interior design sense. Yes we exist.