Academics are the pettiest assholes you will ever meet and I say that with a lot of love and affection because I am one. Let me give you an example:
First some context: Back in 2007, I was a sophomore in high school and I was minding my own business, trying to get my Harry Potter fan fic fix, when a Whole Bunch of Drama started about fan archives and the OTW and the folks proposing the archive that is now the AO3.
I thought the OTW folks had the right idea. After strikethrough and boldthrough and the FF.net purges, they were willing to not only make us a free archive that promised no censorship or deletions or trying to profit off fan work, but they were also willing to put their real-life professional selves at risk to defend transformative work as protected by fair use. These ladies were #goals to my 15-yr-old self.
Except obviously there were detractors. They were a minority, but they were vocal. And I recall reading multiple LJ posts from “anti-OTW” blogs and being So Angry because if a 15-yr-old like me could go study up on copyright law and agree with the OTW (with, you know, actual lawyers and law professors on their board) how were these adults getting things So Wrong? In some cases, it seemed they were even blatantly spreading misinformation. Why?? Except when I tried to point this out I was treated… let’s go with “badly.”
Ok flash forward a decade and change: I’m now writing my dissertation about digital fandom with a focus on the AO3. It’s the most-trafficked fan archive in the world and the second-most-trafficked digital archive full stop. It just won a Hugo. I’m having a lovely time interviewing all my teenage heroes. I’m living the dream. And then it came time to write about criticisms or detractors in the archive’s history. Some concerns are very valid, and I have over a dozen pages talking about these serious, often complex, criticisms. But you wanna know what else I did?
I went back and I found my journal from 2007.
I found the names of those posters on LJ who had such derogatory things to say about the OTW and the AO3, who took so much pleasure in bashing a 15-yr-old who didn’t understand why they were spreading misinformation. I found the old LJ posts (I had to use the Wayback Machine for those that had been taken down). I referenced some of those posts in my dissertation. I illustrated that every legal complaint, every fear (and fear-mongering tactic they used) was proven unfounded. I spent probably more time than I should going through their archives to discover that nearly all of them migrated to AO3 within 2 years of, often vitriolic, condemnations of the AO3. I footnoted this fact with a degree of euphoric malevolence that frightens even me.
saw a pic of a maria martinez vase on the dash and had to physically hold myself back from reblogging it to tell everyone abt her burnishing technique
that’s not even glaze do you understand that’s not glaze that’s burnished slip!! she was just that fucking good!! some of the most beautiful pottery on earth imho
Martinez is from San Ildefonso Pueblo in northern New Mexico.
At work there used to be a sign on a few things that would say like “if this bubbles, run for your life” and “if you hear thumping run for cover” and “bears can and will kill you” and really in general I wish the park service was more willing to say “you are not at home, you are not at disneyland, you can die here and you can die so badly your family will have to bury an empty casket because no one will risk their own life to collect your idiot corpse.”
If we’re gonna make people more scared of something, it should probably be cars, infections, and heart conditions, not “outside”.
THESE FACTS WILL BE RELEVANT I SWEAR:
Boiling point of water: 212°F
Crock pot temperature: 140°F-180°F
Crock pot depth (commercial, 100 gal): 3 feet, could not submerge most humans.
Meat begins to cook: 105°F
Water burns skin within 3-6 seconds: 140°F
Steak/chops/roasts are safe to eat: 145°F
Collagen melts into gelatin, meat “falls off the bone”: 160-180°F
Average tourist: 30% collagen
Stomach acid: pH 1.5-3.5 (lower is more acidic)
YELLOWSTONE FACTS!
Max recorded temp of a Yellowstone pool: 280°F in Norris Basin
Depth of spring that dissolved a man: 10 feet, Norris Basin, could and did submerge an adult human
Lowest pH (most acidic) pH of a Yellowstone pool: pH 2-3 in Norris Basin
Yellowstone pools:crock pots full of stomach acid
I think if people ARE outside – say, tourists near a spring – they should be warned that the spring will cook them, then dissolve what is left. Because you CANNOT tell by looking.
We should be a LOT more afraid of some parts of Outside, actually.
turns out! when u spend time to knit the second sock. you finish the second sock. and then! you get a pair of socks. who knew!
tumblr isnt allowing to tag the person who wrote this:
but i want u to know that u have slain me where i stand, bc in the time that i have finished 2 pairs of socks (and i expect to hit 3 today), a single mitten has been languishing in a project bag. when i last touched that second mitten, i had never knit a sock before. how dare u.
i promise you, op, it was a self callout
in a fit of foresight, i knit the year i made the first mitten into its thumb, so i can constantly shame myself for having spent Ten Entire Real-Life Years having made only one mitten
“Artificial intelligence is a label for the marketing team. It reminds people of their favorite science-fiction stories—evokes wonder. It’s a buzzword to pump up the stock price. None of that is real, and none of this is intelligent.
amhrancas 