Tavy @QuaternionCats@cybre.space

Remember to #BoycottEurovision this year because it is being held on occupied land (and due to winning with a kinda racist performance to boot)

I love living in Glasgow bc there's just monuments like this around which commemorates the time the river Clyde said "Fuck Landlords"

ACCIDENTALLY PULLED A PRANK AT THE WAX MUSEUM. WAS STANDING STILL TO LOOK AT A WAX SCULPTURE AND A WOMAN STARTED STARING AT ME, THINKING I WAS MADE OF WAX. I TURNED TO LOOK AT HER AND SHE SCREAMED AND RAN AWAY. PERFECT EXECUTION

A little old lady bursts out of the front door, furiously brandishing a short broom.
"OFF! OFF!" she shrieks, her hair blown wildly around by the helicopter's downdraft. "YA DAFT BASTARD, MESSIN' IN MY HUMMINGBIRD FEEDERS! I'LL SMACK YOU A GOOD ONE, I WILL! OFF!"
The helicopter retracts its refuelling probe in an instant, then rises rapidly into the air, swinging side to side as though to avoid the sharp swipes of the broom.
"Third time today!" the lady mutters as it vanishes into the clouds.

A little house sits atop a rise in the middle of a wide prarie.
A rumbling, thudding sound is heard overhead: a gigantic black military helicopter, bristling with sensors and weapons, descends out of the clouds.
The helicopter drops rapidly, seeming to be about to crash, but then pulls up at the last moment and comes to a complete stop in midair, directly in front of the house.
Slowly, gingerly, it extends its in-flight refuelling probe towards the hummingbird feeder hanging from the porch.

praising rich people for giving to charity is like congratulating an arsonist for drinking a glass of water

Yes, bitch, all of it! https://redd.it/blrilm

testosterone is not a male hormone because CIS WOMEN NATURALLY PRODUCE TESTOSTERONE

in fact, the only women who ever had zero testosterone levels are trans women.
if testosterone is a male hormone then trans women are less male than cis women, and I don't see any cis people making THAT argument EVER

if student debt cancellation happened after i paid off my student loans, i would be happy, because im not a fucking shithead who demands that the entire world revolve around me and i can be happy for other people getting a fair deal

Hey everyone! Stop and shop workers aren't getting paid while on strike. In order to get by, persevere, and keep striking until management gives in, they need money!! Please donate to our local strike fund in order to help our fellow workers get by on strike!! Share this around and boost please!

https://chuffed.org/project/pvdsa-stop-shop-workers-strike-fund?fbclid=IwAR0IdgoLxjPB8JZYBeVu5nUKWlD9pUSZi3TRa2s3Sybg7vnMN22nGk09el4#

Allison and Kel sit on the couch, late one night. Kel is half-asleep already, and Allison is absentmindedly flipping through the channels. Nothing good on. She keeps flipping.

Whatever. The local news will do. It’s not like they ever discuss anything interesting.

The two of them pay no attention to the B-roll and minor human interest stories about what’s going on in the city, but a few minutes later, Kel zones back in, concerned that something might be amiss.

“Hmm?” Allison looks at Kel’s quizzical expression as the two start staring at the TV, a nice LCD display, but perhaps not the best suited to a Morph club.

….

“My name is Irene Lemmon, and I’ll be your debate host for today. Tonight, an extra-special topic of discussion– is magic real?”

….

“Oh god”, Kel mumbles under her breath. “Are they really playing this up as an equivalency?”
“Looks like it,” Allison answers with dismay.

….

To my left, we have the ‘no’ side, represented by behavioral psychologist Dr. James, or J.B.S. Stoddard. And to my right–apologies for the arachnophobes among you tonight–we have local journalist Quinn “Epiphany” R. Nice to meet you both.
“Thank you”, the doctor says.

Allison signs as well, and notices the scruffy Dr. Stoddard to the left looking somewhat concerned at the cat-spider woman in front of him. At least the hosts had the decency to bring a stool to this patently absurd ‘debate.’

“Dr. Stoddard, would you like to begin?”

“Of course. In my field of psychology, we subscribe to the concept of methodological naturalism. We do experiments to understand the world. Formulate hypotheses to account for those observations, and reject them if they don’t apply. Of course you can’t treat everything as a rat in a cage–internal experience is important too– but the universe has rules, and they can be systematized. Where does magic come into this? Nowhere. We’ve had no need for it and I’m not going to throw up my hands and say that now we do.”

Quinn shakes her head slowly, and takes a while formulating a response.

“James, I see your point, and truthfully I would have agreed with you until a couple of years ago. But part of skepticism is to change one’s beliefs when extraordinary evidence is presented. And it clearly has. I’ve trust you’ve seen the reliable video documentation of Morphic waves, and the various changes people undergo after they are exposed to them. I’ve done transformation magic for months now, changing myself and others in ways that were physically and biologically impossible until recently. Hell, if it’s replicability you’re concerned about, pick up any of the guides on demonic summoning and work through the exercises.”

Stoddard furrows his brow for a moment.

“But how do you know it’s actually the magic you’re going on about, as opposed to some deeper physical phenomenon only now uncovered? Or worse, a collective delusion? I don’t know what you glasses types get up to, anyway?”

“Is my fur a delusion? Tell me, which part of the mammalian genome codes for egg-laying and a segmented body plan?”

“Well…”

“Well, what? I can demonstrate right now.”

Quinn takes a small ladybird out of her backpack. “This, right now, is a perfectly ordinary bug that I found outdoors earlier today. No special effects or anything, you can take a look if you want.”

She passes the bug around to Lemmon and Stoddard. The two approve, if grudgingly, and they hand it back.

“Now watch closely.” Quinn mutters a few words under her breath, before bringing the bug up to her now-bared fangs, and gingerly tapping its carapace. “That should do it,” she says as she holds it out on her upper-left hand.

A few seconds later, the insect begins to shimmer and shake violently. Soon, things reach a breaking point, and its exoskeleton shatters as it rapidly gains an order of magnitude in size.

The other two on stage are transfixed, as is Allison watching. Kel only smiles.

And Quinn is bouncing her right leg in excitement. “Say hello, cutie!”

The now mega-ladybird talks in an uncertain squeaky voice. “ehw…hello?”

Irene is astounded. “You can…make insects talk?”

“Fun fact: Turns out they have souls too.”

“Huh.”

Stoddard is less impressed. “Feh. If you can do magic tricks like this, why haven’t you shown up to JREF and grabbed your million?”

“Believe me, I’m not the only one. Everyone’s knocking down their door about now. Still sorting out the distribution.”

Stumped, the bearded man searches for an answer. “Humph. Say it is real, then. But what’s the point of all this? Can growing ladybugs do anything useful for society?”

“Quite a lot, actually. My goal is to help everyone achieve their best self, and that’s why I volunteer at the Morphic clinic downtown. Let’s just say it’s much easier to be fulfilled and productive when you don’t hate your body 24/7.”

“By turning into a half-human…spider…?”

“You of all people should know how plastic the mind is.”

“Still, losing such an essential part of one’s humanity sounds worrisome, and rather dangerous.”

“Truthfully, that’s not my concern. Humanity is, if anything, an impediment to my–our–mission.”

“Shouldn’t you be more concerned?”

“That’s what they all say. Plummer, Humans at Fart, the Pope. “Oh my, it’s the annihilation of Man in the image of God!”“

Quinn’s outer eyes open, and gleam with intensity. The bug formerly on her hand takes the moment to leave the studio.

"Damn all those people. And especially damn the speciesists who subjugate my kin in the name of their ideal ‘humanity’.”

Now Stoddard is getting angry. “Again you’re bringing in those ‘isms’! It’s not bigotry that humans are going to find something wrong about giant mutant spider-women!”

“Then what is it?”

“The natural order of things!”

“Tell me, what else is natural? Women in the kitchen? Volcanoes? Tobacco?”

Stoddard laughs at the last one.

“What?” Quinn asks.

“Nothing…it’s just that of course you people are going to bring up this junk science. Of course smoking might be risky, sure. But you can’t say it’s lethal!”

Quinn rolls all four of her eyes at once, as Allison and Kel stare at each other in confusion.

Lemmon interrupts. “Dr. Staddon, the scientific literature is quite clear about the lifetime health burdens associated with cigarette smoking.”

“‘Quite clear’ if you have an axe to grind! All of those ‘studies’ were done by people who just needed that sweet lawsuit money. Too much shoddy inferences from weak trends, just like those ‘global warming’ alarmists that suddenty aren’t saying a peep anymore now that it’s stopped.”

“Actually it’s–”

“Yeah, actually something something Gaia put some ice cubes in the drink. How does anyone believe this mumbo-jumbo?”

Quinn sighs…and then lets out a toothy smile. “You know, this is going nowhere.”

“You don’t say.”

“Any more hazy climatology predictions, or…?”

“What are you implying?”

“I mean, your positions were almost intangible. Wispy even…”

With that, the spider raises her right hand and mutters some magic words under her breath. It would serve him right, the fucker, to have his prejudiced thoughts turn to smoke along with the rest of him. A few seconds later she’s almost ready…

No. She can’t do this. That would be a miscalculation. Human at Heart would retaliate, and only further endanger vulnerable Morphs.

She lowers her arm, and turns to the anchor.

Lemmon looks up with a nervous gaze. “Uh…thank you to Dr. Stoddard and Ms. Quinn, our two debaters, time’s about up for today, but see y'all next week!”, she mouths hurriedly before quickly passing the feed back to the main newsroom.

….

Allison grabs the remote, and turns off the television.

“Ugh. Stoddard was such a tool.”

“You bet.” Kel voices her disgust. “I just hope Cyp is all right.”

“Who?”

“Cypress. My friend. She comes here occasionally.”

“Oh.”

“And she’s Dr. Stoddard’s daughter.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe I should call her, just to make sure.”

“Please do. Tell her she’s safe with us.”

“Absolutely.”

ever notice how at school they'll teach you about the civil rights movement right up to MLK's assassination and then just stop the year before the formation of the Black Panther Party?

LOCAL BEE DECIDES TO TAKE SAVING THE PLANET INTO HIS OWN HANDS

in computer science, there are basically three values we care about: zero, one, and many. which is why now that I've had two cups of coffee today, i may as well have 8 more.

Declaring your candidacy on MLK is a bad move not because MLK day is holy or anything but because the news on MLK day is always about the struggle to have the most problematic take on MLK day and Kamala Harris will be lost in the swirling morass of bad looks and this is good because Kamala Harris is a cop.

other lady in the home improvement store: "hi, do you work here?"
me: no I'm just a dyke