Flittin' All Around

Vegan lesbian nerd w/ too many cats. Physics major. Future teacher. Wallflower. Reblogger.




Reblogged from ponfarrisforwerewolves
Lion Hearted Girl: karnythia: A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You Dear...

karnythia:

A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You

Dear Girls,

You are powerful beyond words, because you threaten to unravel the control of corrupt men who abuse their authority.

In the United States last week there were people who wouldn’t let boys play a baseball…

(Source: ponfarrisforwerewolves)



Reblogged from neil-gaiman
“ Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Now, once you’ve selected the “Straight White Male” difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start — and how they are apportioned — will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you’re probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.
You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore. John Scalzi tells it like it is. (via neil-gaiman)

(via bandedshadows)


Reblogged from jessicavalenti
The day after Obama endorses marriage equality, it comes out that while in high school, Romney assaulted a student he thought was gay

(Source: jessicavalenti, via raphaellaskies)



Reblogged from douglaswolk
isabelthespy: douglaswolk: Julie D’Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and bang a nun. If nothing in that sentence at least marginally interests you, I have no idea why you’re visiting this website. (via Badass of the Week: Julie D’Aubigny, La Maupin) (thank you, Rachel!) maybe the best thing i’ve read all week

isabelthespy:

douglaswolk:

Julie D’Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and bang a nun. If nothing in that sentence at least marginally interests you, I have no idea why you’re visiting this website. (via Badass of the Week: Julie D’Aubigny, La Maupin) (thank you, Rachel!)

maybe the best thing i’ve read all week

(via beermuda)


Reblogged from shedsumlight
First Class Some of NASA’s first female astronaut candidates take a break from training in Florida in 1978 From left: Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathryn Sullivan, Rhea Seddon. HOTTT

First Class

Some of NASA’s first female astronaut candidates take a break from training in Florida in 1978

From left: Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathryn Sullivan, Rhea Seddon.

HOTTT

(Source: nasa.gov, via scishow)


Reblogged from brillopadpudding

katzecatchat:

brillopadpudding:

What Women Deserve - Sonya Renee

oh my god. just. this gave me chills. 

(via ladyatheist)


Reblogged from tyleroakley

tyleroakley:

MUST WATCH: Barack Obama makes history and becomes the first president to openly endorse same-sex marriage.

Love

(via itscandidlycara)



Reblogged from exploringthecosmos
exploringthecosmos: The Big Bang The Big Bang is a beautiful theory which is an effort to understand where the universe came from. Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our origins, such as that of the elements, can be explained with the Big Bang theory. But just where did everything come from? What existed before the Big Bang? Where did space come from? And what caused the Big Bang? Well, the simple answer is: We don’t know. We know the universe is expanding; it’s accelerating, actually. This means that yesterday, the universe was a little bit smaller than it is today. A month ago, it was even smaller. A year ago, smaller still. Turning the clock backwards, the universe seems to be getting smaller, the galaxies closer together. If we go further enough back in time, the universe was so small that everything was contained in a point of space and time. Everything that exists today; you, me, the Earth, our Galaxy, everything came from this point. Approximately 14.6 billion years ago, the Universe was created and it was very hot. Radiation (simply photons) dominated the early universe which cooled down as it expanded. Analysis of the CMB data suggests that the universe is a perfect blackbody; a higher blackbody temperature means typical photons have higher energies. In the early universe, these photons were so energetic that they produced matter-antimatter particles copiously seemingly out of “nothing” which can be explained using Einstein’s E=mc² formula (see this post.) The early universe was constantly creating matter and antimatter which quickly annihilated; this is the Particle Era. The universe was bubbling with matter, the prerequisite for everything in our Universe. Since our Universe is made of matter, and not antimatter, a baryonic asymmetry is proposed to be the origin of our matter dominated Universe. Once the mean photon energy drops below ~1MeV, nuclei may be formed. This is the nuclear binding energy and thus, the Nucleosynthesis Era. During the Nucleosynthesis Era, the universe is one big nuclear reactor. This era sets the primordial chemical composition of the universe: 76% Hydrogen and 24% Helium. The Nucleosynthesis Era is followed by the Era of Nuclei. Photon energies are at this point beyond the electron binding energy (~1eV). This era of the universe is foggy since photons are continuously being scattered by nuclei. At the very special moment during which photon energies drop below the electron binding energy, electrons may then bind to nuclei to form the first atoms - the fog is lifted. The Universe, during the era of atoms, becomes transparent. Photons are no longer being continuously scattered and they are suddenly released. This release of photons during the Era of Atoms is the origin of the Cosmic Microwave Background and is a significant use of study. Recall that beyond the CMB, before stable atoms are made, the universe is still foggy. It is for this reason that we cannot see beyond this point in the universe. Not only can we not see past this point in the universe, but we cannot (yet) study what is happening at the moment of the Big Bang. There are no mathematical tools that can be used at the moment of the Big Bang, and thus, we cannot study what happened before the Big Bang. The current laws of physics seem to break down at the singularity in the beginning of the Universe, similar to what happens when we attempt to understand what happens inside a black hole. What caused the Big Bang is still a mystery, and there is still a lot left to discover, but we have achieved a lot in our understanding. The origin of our species, of the stars in the sky, of the elements that compose our Universe, can all be explained with this elegant theory.

exploringthecosmos:

The Big Bang

The Big Bang is a beautiful theory which is an effort to understand where the universe came from. Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our origins, such as that of the elements, can be explained with the Big Bang theory. But just where did everything come from? What existed before the Big Bang? Where did space come from? And what caused the Big Bang? Well, the simple answer is: We don’t know.

We know the universe is expanding; it’s accelerating, actually. This means that yesterday, the universe was a little bit smaller than it is today. A month ago, it was even smaller. A year ago, smaller still. Turning the clock backwards, the universe seems to be getting smaller, the galaxies closer together. If we go further enough back in time, the universe was so small that everything was contained in a point of space and time. Everything that exists today; you, me, the Earth, our Galaxy, everything came from this point.

Approximately 14.6 billion years ago, the Universe was created and it was very hot. Radiation (simply photons) dominated the early universe which cooled down as it expanded. Analysis of the CMB data suggests that the universe is a perfect blackbody; a higher blackbody temperature means typical photons have higher energies. In the early universe, these photons were so energetic that they produced matter-antimatter particles copiously seemingly out of “nothing” which can be explained using Einstein’s E=mc² formula (see this post.) The early universe was constantly creating matter and antimatter which quickly annihilated; this is the Particle Era. The universe was bubbling with matter, the prerequisite for everything in our Universe. Since our Universe is made of matter, and not antimatter, a baryonic asymmetry is proposed to be the origin of our matter dominated Universe.

Once the mean photon energy drops below ~1MeV, nuclei may be formed. This is the nuclear binding energy and thus, the Nucleosynthesis Era. During the Nucleosynthesis Era, the universe is one big nuclear reactor. This era sets the primordial chemical composition of the universe: 76% Hydrogen and 24% Helium.

The Nucleosynthesis Era is followed by the Era of Nuclei. Photon energies are at this point beyond the electron binding energy (~1eV). This era of the universe is foggy since photons are continuously being scattered by nuclei. At the very special moment during which photon energies drop below the electron binding energy, electrons may then bind to nuclei to form the first atoms - the fog is lifted. The Universe, during the era of atoms, becomes transparent. Photons are no longer being continuously scattered and they are suddenly released. This release of photons during the Era of Atoms is the origin of the Cosmic Microwave Background and is a significant use of study. Recall that beyond the CMB, before stable atoms are made, the universe is still foggy. It is for this reason that we cannot see beyond this point in the universe.

Not only can we not see past this point in the universe, but we cannot (yet) study what is happening at the moment of the Big Bang. There are no mathematical tools that can be used at the moment of the Big Bang, and thus, we cannot study what happened before the Big Bang. The current laws of physics seem to break down at the singularity in the beginning of the Universe, similar to what happens when we attempt to understand what happens inside a black hole. What caused the Big Bang is still a mystery, and there is still a lot left to discover, but we have achieved a lot in our understanding. The origin of our species, of the stars in the sky, of the elements that compose our Universe, can all be explained with this elegant theory.

(via nprieto)



Reblogged from fairy-wren

yummytomatoes:

undead-kinkajou:

rhamphotheca:

fairy-wren: house martin gathering mud for its nest

(photos by m.geven)

OH NO LOOK AT IT’S LITTLE FEET it’s too cute I can’t handle it

ITSPEFFDJKLFD FEETIES



Reblogged from spaceghostzombie
rosalarian: duessa: lord-kitschener: dearjimmoriarty: theredzombie: OMG I tried to think of reasons not to reblog this I failed Well, this is right up my alley. We have the same alley.

rosalarian:

duessa:

lord-kitschener:

dearjimmoriarty:

theredzombie:

OMG

I tried to think of reasons not to reblog this

I failed

Well, this is right up my alley.

We have the same alley.

(Source: spaceghostzombie, via goddessofcheese)