-
Alone: In the Wild by Dave Morrow’s Custom Creations on Flickr.
Alone in the wild? BUT WHO WAS CAMERA?
(via fuckyeahhiking)
-
:o What is this?! I need to know! For science!
15 Seconds and Google: It’s from this video — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F9O8YV_36Q
This is exactly why I hate out of context GIFs.
(via zannyblogging)
-
The Bible if you are into that kind of thing quite clearly states that the Garden of Eden was vegan. Humans only started killing and eating meat after the fall and the world was under Satan’s rule. I’m not religious but I do know Theology. The world as God intended it was vegan.
Christians like Satan more than God.
I prefer the dark lord and I’m still vegan.
Not to start a shitstorm or anything, even though it will… But… If we were originally intended to be vegan, can you tell me why, without supplements, you’ll generally become malnourished?
I have never met a malnourished vegan.
Not to start a shitstorm or anything, even though it will… But… Can we not open our mouths before think about what we say?
I heard a great quote about baby cows. They only eat grass when they stop breastfeeding, and they need protein to grow right? But they only eat grass. So where does the protein come from? The grass.
If you are doing veganism right in fact you’ll become so nutrient dense you’re flammable.
Going to bed now.
I cannot facepalm enough. The reason cows can get protein from grass is because: 1) They eat obscene quantities of the stuff. & 2) They have specific biological mechanisms for breaking down the cellulose in plant material into carbohydrates (something we, as humans, do not have to the same extent), which they can then use to synthesize their own proteins.
The fact that we have lost this function biologically suggests a sufficiently long history of more direct protein consumption, enough that we have drifted evolutionarily away from depending solely on plant resources. Looking at hunter-gatherers, you don’t see total avoidance of meat products (insects are a part of this, too — larvae and some adult insects are important sources of fats and protein for indigenous peoples worldwide), though you definitely would see a dietary emphasis on plant material when it was more available. Try surviving traditionally in the Great Basin post-Pleistocene living only off of plant material. You can’t. You would die. (Pinyon nuts are seasonal, labor intensive, and not present in sufficient quantity). Many undomesticated plants also contain at least some level of toxicity, which also impacts health. That said, foraged plant materials give more dietary breadth and can provide a wider variety of vitamins and other nutrients than in agricultural contexts, something I will shortly address.
Where we start seeing the modern health problems associated with this sort of thing is during the emergence of agriculture, where dietary breadth begins to shrink to a set of renewable and controllable domesticated plants. You see a reduction of toxins (or mitigation for in the case of manioc, sweet potatoes, acorns, and other HCN or tannin-containing crops), but fixing diets to a few staples can create regional nutritional deficiencies and health issues depending on the number of utilized crops and the level of availability of other plant and animal resources throughout the year. (Also, give acorns and dental wear a google.) The ability to stockpile grains and derived foodstuffs lead to both accumulation as a social institution and more constant calorie intake throughout the year. Things change again with more widespread use of chemically novel or concentrated pesticides in recent decades, and the use of GMOs (which is an equally complex historical and biological minefield that deserves a more nuanced view than most people are willing to give).
The ability to metabolize milk past childhood is evolutionarily recent and is not as widespread as the NDC likes to pretend, but the spread of this genetic abnormality throughout the world to its current extent does reflect a selective advantage to that ability. That does not mean that milk is essential or that excessive consumption does not have consequences (especially today, with all of the factory farming craziness). Meat is a similar story of reduction of breadth and recent excess and health risk through industrialized agriculture, so I totally understand why, health-wise and ethically, people want to avoid eating products derived from modern farming practices, but to cherry-pick or ignore the complexity of human history to justify that ideal is inconsistent at best. So I guess what I’m trying to say is: it’s complicated.
(via machineinthemist)
-
Richard Dawkins rage toon with CSI flavor
YEEEAHH!
-
Grammar…
YOU FLOOZY!!
(via fonsecadelsur)
-
Glitchmt
-
(via loki315)
-
Fantastic.
cannot unsee. shall go check in fridge if this is legit…
it’s legit.
-
Cultural Appropriation and the Myth of “Reverse Racism”
I’ve probably been a part of this problem in the past, and it is for exactly that reason that I reblog this.Here’s your dictionary definition of cultural appropriation:
Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, can take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.
Let’s add to it. Cultural appropriation involves the objectification of a minority and ethnic culture to be used for a racially privileged group. Hawaiian luaus with grass skirts and coconut bras? Cultural appropriation. Two kids playing “Indians and Cowboys”? Cultural appropriation. Kim Kardashian wearing cornrows? Cultural appropriation. Perhaps most notoriously, a white girl in a traditional Native American war bonnet. Cultural appropriation.
I can already hear people going, “It’s not fair to stereotype the entire white race into a racist blob of cultural appropriators. Plus, my ancestors didn’t kill them.” Sure, maybe your ancestors didn’t contribute to the slaughter of Native American, but you still benefit, as a white person with white privilege, from the systematic oppression of POC. This is the same privilege that protects you from being the target of racism, or more commonly called, “reverse racism.” As a white person, you will never be oppressed based solely on the color of your skin. It has been set into all of our minds from a very young age; white is beautiful, pure, clean, and innocent. Black is evil and darkness. Brown is dirty and plain. There was a study in which children were presented with two options: a white baby doll and a black baby doll. Fifteen of the twenty children in the study said that the white doll was good and pretty, and that the black doll bad. In that study, black children tended to prefer white dolls over black dolls, leading analysts to conclude that they were internalizing their second-class status — believing themselves to be inferior. Everyone wants to be white. Blame imperialism and internalized racism/shadeism within cultures. But not just white! Western white.
POC are losing their cultural identities in order to fit in with the mainstream. But when they start looking into mainstream media and culture, to their horror, their culture is being taken away from them, fashioned into this new, “exotic” object, and packaged and sold to the masses with the shiny stickers “unique,” “fashion forward,” “ethnic,” “exotic,” “eccentric,” and “alternative” plastered to this grossly modified product. Let’s take wearing bindis (especially this recent discussion with Gwen Stefani. Look at the notes on it for some more of the thoughts about it.).
A bindi (from Sanskrit bindu, meaning “a drop, small particle, dot”) is a forehead decoration worn in South Asia (particularly India, Bangladesh)[1] and Southeast Asia. Traditionally it is a dot of red colour applied in the center of the forehead close to the eyebrows, but it can also consist of a sign or piece of jewelry worn at this location.
When I wear a bindi, proud of my Indian heritage, most people are ignorant and extremely rude. “Why the hell are you wearing a random red dot/crystal between your eyebrows. It looks like a pimple.” (Oh, I’ve heard it before) But when a white person, like Gwen, wears the exact same Bindi, it’s suddenly a super cool and edgy concept. My culture is not your fashion statement. White people are often called “lacking a culture,” so they take ethnic identities and modify them to fit their taste, wearing it like a sparkling crown of their uniqueness. But if you were to scrape away all of that popularized glitter, you’ll start to see all of the cultural insensitivity, extreme offensiveness, and just plain ignorance. This white person is a descent of the same people that called my ancestors disgusting. “They eat with their hands, how unhygienic! Their women wear red dots on their foreheads and draw red powder lines up their hair parts, how alien! Their women’s noses are pierced, how unlady-like! They walk barefoot, how uncivilized! They sit on the floor, how crude! Their women just wear yards of cloth wrapped around themselves, how primitive!”
These cultural appropriators are taking my previously (and currently!) spat on and vilified culture and somehow, managing to wear it as their own. How dare you take my culture and shrink it down to that little crystal in your forehead without realizing its cultural significance and without realizing that what your ancestors did to my ancestors is horrifying. So then, when eventually, the prominent figures in your white race go “Oops, sorry” later, after all the damage is done, you, in your white supremeness expect us to be, dare I say it, grateful that we’re even getting an acknowledgement from you. Years later, you still continue to discriminate against my colored sisters and brothers and oppress us all, all while wanting to “help our poor lost souls” by “civilizing” us and making us let go of our distinctly unwestern culture and convert to your faith. I’ve already lost a great deal of my heritage because of people like you, and now you think that it’s okay to take what I have left? If I were to go out there and wear that same bindi again, I’d be told that “America is for Americans.” HOLD UP. You were once an immigrant too. Hypocrite. The Native Americans are the original Americans, but you can’t spare two ounces of cultural sensitivity and enough care to dredge up some respect.
What you had done to us, what you have done to us, and what you are doing to us is unacceptable. Stop this insensitive bullshit RIGHT NOW.
