Somebody found this last week and reminded me it existed, so I'mma bring it back to this blog because it's about ten days until some of you will need that last one. :D

i strongly & emphatically reject the concept that any greco-roman authors are 'timeless' in that i think it's important to approach their writings as objects borne of their culture and social context like any others. that said i do think reading thucydides as a teen was formative for me in a good way because i will so often see a political argument and be like 'oh its just the melian dialogue again'. because people have just kept having the melian dialogue forever and ever

what is the melian argument? i googled but i couldn't understand what you are connecting to.

essentially the melian dialogue is an argument between the idealist position of the melians and the materialist / realist (in the IR sense) position of the athenian envoys -- the position of the melians being 'it would be morally and legally wrong for the athenians to attack us' and the athenians saying 'lol yeah but we're going to do it anyway to benefit our empire. it doesn't matter how right or wrong you think it is it's going to happen'. and the melians don't listen to this and refuse to surrender, and then they get invaded and suffer mass execution & slavery for not surrendering.

& obviously it's important to note that this is not an exchange that really happened, it is a dialogue that Thucydides is placing in the mouths of these people to convey what is obviously his viewpoint of warfare and international politics (that states are inherently amoral actors & waving morality or law in front of them in the hopes of preventing them from acting in their self-interest) in a way that sees it vindicated by the events he's recording.

but moreover he's right & what he depicts is less of a 'dialogue' and more 'two people with totally incompatible paradigms of what constitutes international politics speaking past each other', which is something i see happen often (esp. liberals vs. marxists)

We are all dogs

In a really hot car

It's called "plus size" because it's a plus when a girl is that size :3

if ur confused about why animal people advocate for keeping your pets at a "healthy weight" but sometimes also in the same breath will advocate against human diet culture, its because we know what body condition a cat is supposed to be at optimally. but literally there is not one for humans as far as we can tell.

humans are a weird, opportunistic, hyper-adaptable and variable primate and we have evolved to have a LOT of variety in size, shape, metabolism, and weight retention. this has been essential to survival in hard times and easy times. you know the thing people talk about sometimes how about half the population are night people and about half are morning people so we'd be better able to watch at night as a group? yeah, weight variation is like that: there's a lot of latent variation in human populations because as a community we survive significantly better if some of us are fuckin ready to not die during the longass winter of death and some of us can eat their weight in fish and then run a mile immediately after. this is also why some people gain muscle crazy fast and some people don't: muscle requires a lot of energy, so some people are built to gain a lot during a plentiful season and be really efficient then and some people are built to use less energy over time and be more useful during a long hungry period. cats and almost all other vertebrates simply don't have this kind of complex community variation built in, and tend to be much more uniform in build and weight. humans tend to be really variable in body and brain, and that's one of the biggest factors that's made us so successful! there are just a LOT of ways to be a human being.

all of the "science" on "ideal human body condition" we have at the moment is almost entirely bullshit and was done by white supremacists for eugenics purposes. it's just not something we know, and right now there's significantly more evidence that there is no ideal body type for everyone to reach. recent research indicates that humans are healthiest at a variety of weights and builds, and dieting is almost universally bad for you. even if the culture hasn't caught up yet.

I know it's a thing on here to treat ppl who are unamused by horoscope shit as wet blankets but frankly there is something uniquely aggravsting abt telling another person your star sign in order to participate in what you assume is lighthearted convo and watching a respected adult peer actively adjust how they feel about you as a person in real time bc of the day of the year you happened to be born on

yeah

As the homie that's not gonna make it, I'm gonna make it. Fuck you.

Fuck that does sound so good though

No ojn can tell me not to make world famous Dutch burbon chocolate cream. I will be the homie who makes it.

reading a quote from marcus aurelius's meditations to my middle school students at the start of every class has been one of the best decisions i ever made as a teacher, partly because it exposes them to ancient literature but mostly because now i have a bunch of twelve year olds who talk like this

Marcus Aurelius is like some kind of fucked up vitamin to middle schoolers. I did this as a camp counselor. I think god stuck me with plague for it, but it was worth it to see a 11 y/o argue with a councillor about going in the water like he was a roman philosopher.

Come here my little pogchamp

Caine is bill cypher but they took the pussy out of him. Jax is bill cypher with out the Caine. Is this anything.

reluctant friend: puppy dog city is a myth, we should turn back

grizzled mercenary: it's getting dark, keep moving

puppygirl: puppy dog city's real. it's a city full of puppy dogs, a place i'll belong & fit in, it's home. i saw it

eccentric scientist: the implications are astounding

cant wait to start feeling normal again I think to myself knowing that i have not once felt normal not at all my whole life not ever

my first experience reading orv

my mom, dead in the middle of a conversation, slams on the breaks in the middle of a country road so she can pull over and take a picture of all these cows running for cover from the rain and adsfkjlfkdjg and thi dskfjfgj

rthis is the only picutre she took sfdkjlfgddfs MOM this almost literally could not be worse fdkjfjkdf i love you so much

she also took a pictuer of a bluejay 

and believe it or not, a squirrel

mom vs the focus on her expensive camera vs her bad eyesight

ok i swear this is the last one but please look at this bluejay