a friend of mine is a science educator. not a classroom teacher – he does the kind of programs you see in museums, fun experiments with lasers and dry ice and shit.
yesterday, a young girl asked him why he was allowed to pour liquid nitrogen all over his own arm but he didn’t want her doing it. I braced myself for some dumb “well I’m an adult so I’m allowed” non-answer, but instead he surprised me by giving some of the best science (and life) advice I think you can give a young person:
“well, it’s one of those rules designed to keep you safe. and following the rules really can help you stay safe, but they’re not perfect. sometimes, usually because they’re too simple, the rules let you do things that aren’t safe, or don’t let you do things that are safe if you know how to do them. one of the reasons I’m good at what I do as a scientist is I try to understand how things work so I can figure out my own rules for keeping myself safe. and sometimes my rules are little more complicated than what I might hear from other people, but they work better for me. like, I let myself play with liquid nitrogen, but only in really specific ways that I’ve spent time practicing. you should follow the rules you’re given at first, but if you take the time to understand how things work, maybe you can make your own, better rules.”
I loved this response. it’s a great encapsulation of two really important things I think people need to learn and re-learn all the time: on the one hand, listen to genuine authority figures; when someone knows more than you about a subject, don’t treat their expertise as “just another opinion” and act like your ignorance is just as good as their knowledge. but on the other hand, don’t obey anything or anyone blindly. recognize that rules and systems and established ideas are never perfect. question things, educate yourself, question things more.
and then, of course, a parent had to butt in and spoil this wonderful lesson by saying:
“but not the rules mom comes up with!”
everyone in the room laughed. except me. I gave her a death glare I’m pretty sure she didn’t notice.
because no. no. your rules are not above reproach if you’re a parent. the thing about the dictates of genuine authority figures – people who deserve to have power, and to have their positions respected – is that they are open to question. genuine authority figures are accountable. governments can be petitioned and protested and recalled. doctors must respect patients’ right to a second opinion. journalists have jobs terminated and credentials revoked if they fail to meet standards of integrity and diligence. scientists, to bring us back full circle, spend their entire careers trying to disprove their own hypotheses! you know who insists on being treated as infallible? megalomaniacal dictators, that’s who. oh, and parents.
I’m beyond sick and tired of this “my house my rules, this family is not a democracy, I want my child to think critically and stand up for themselves except to me ha ha” bullshit. my friend gave this kid the kind of advice that doesn’t just help people become good scientists – if enough people adopt the mentality he put forth to that girl, that’s the kind of advice that helps societies value knowledge and resist totalitarianism. and her mother shut it down because, what, she didn’t want to deal with the inconvenience of having someone question her edicts about whose job it is to wash the dishes on Mondays?
we already know you’re more likely to be a Trump supporter if you’re an authoritarian parent – and that this is a stronger predictor of your views on the current president than age, religiosity, gender, or race. I’ll say this another way in case you didn’t catch the full meaning: people who believe in the absolute, unquestionable authority of parents are more than two and a half times as likely to support Trump as people who don’t, and that’s just among Republicans. we can’t afford to treat the oppressive treatment of children or the injustice of ageist power structures in our society as a sideshow issue any longer. the mentality that parents should be treated by their children as beyond reproach and above dispute is a social cancer that has metastasized into the man currently trying to destroy the foundations of democracy in this country.
in short: parents, get the hell over yourselves before you get us all killed. and kids, learn as much as you can, and then make your own rules.
Tag: this
Nick Hornby, How to Be Good
…England takes whatever, whenever, however it wants.
Lives. Loves. Labor. Spirits. Homes.
It has taken them from me. I imagine that it has taken it from you. And when that veil drops altogether, they will come for more.
Things that the return of Thomas Hamilton does not give back to Flint, aka come on john silver, you can’t seriously think that the only thing motivating Flint was Thomas’ loss.
jake and amy’s relationship is one of the best heterosexual relationships i’ve come across in a while because:
- it’s an interracial relationship between an ashkenazi jewish man and a latina (specifically cuban) woman
- it’s genuinely loving, healthy, and dorky
- they support each other and they make each other better. their relationship adds to their happiness instead of taking away from it
- they always communicate and resolve conflicts maturely
- they retain their independence, personalities, goals, and ambitions while still sharing each other’s hobbies and ideas and enjoying each other’s favorite activities
- they don’t let their relationship get in the way of their career, goals, or obligations
- they have their own lives outside of their relationship and we actually get to see them navigate the lines between a professional and romantic relationship
- unlike most het ships, amy’s autonomy and personality aren’t reduced to jake. she isn’t jake’s love interest – she’s a main character of her own and her relationship with jake is just one part of her storyline and character
- unlike most het ships, jake doesn’t bemoan being in a committed relationship. he loves amy wholeheartedly and is willing to do anything for her, and his friends actually support him instead of mocking him for that
- they were friends before anything else. which means that they actually have fun. there’s nothing toxic or unhealthy about their relationship because it isn’t mired in heteronormative, misogynistic stereotypes. that is, they have a realistic and authentic dynamic because it isn’t all about ~ooh passion and melancholy and angst~. they’re cute and fluffy and it’s always presented as a good thing
#marmolita brought up the fact that flint doesn’t romanticize the ocean even a little #which is rare for a pirate captain #and #i kind of love it???? #he does not care about the Horizon and the Depths and the relentless longing of the tide #the sea is his Job #the sea is his 9-5 #all the romance in his entire soul is reserved for thomas and miranda #everything else is relentlessly practical (via @wildehacked)
Different anon, but I was even reading a Flinthamilton series for Flinthamilton appreciation week no less, and in the LAST one, they not only inserted a tad of silverflint into it, but they had Thomas fucking THANK Silver for what he’s done “for” James. I cannot tell you how grossed out and kind of betrayed I felt
THANK YOU ANON
‘oh yeah, thank you for telling my lover that my death was his fault. thank you for leaving me in this place after you found out i was still alive, and not telling him so that he could come and rescue me. thank you for sending him here in chains. thank you for refusing to apologise for it.’
fuck that.
Do you know what hurts most about a broken heart? Not being able to remember how you felt before.
also now that i’ve had two seconds to think about it, I am outraged at the very idea that anyone could possibly think flint and thomas stay apolitical and incarcerated because they’ve got each other now.
Thomas Hamilton, radical idealist, has just been wrongfully imprisoned and forced into manual labor for YEARS because England would rather see him dead than let him be in love, and he’s just found out that England murdered his wife and made their lover watch.
James McGraw tried to help Thomas Hamilton change civilization. James Flint tried to burn civilization down. He’s just found out that his lost love is alive, sure, but also forced into incarcerated labor against his will–for the crime of 1) trying to change civilization, and 2) loving him.
“Great men are made great by one thing only,” Miranda told James, smiling and confident and soon to be dead. “The relentless pursuit of a better world.”
convince me these men don’t try and restart madi’s war. really. try me.
WOW since we never talk about black sails, thomas for the character ask meme
WELL, FELLOW WORKPLACE ASSOCIATE, SINCE YOU REALLY ASKED FOR MY SLEW OF EMOTIONS ABOUT THOMAS HAMILTON…… well. ye shall receive
1. thomas is an incredibly stubborn idealist. he has what’s basically a pipe dream about remaking nassau and not repeating the mistakes of the old world, and he works tirelessly to make that pipe dream happen. he literally does not stop until his asshole father throws him into bethlem. as miranda says, he’s a Great Man not because he’s concerned with politics, or prudence, or propriety, but because he just doesn’t fucking know when to quit chasing that. he’s not crazy! he’s an idealist who is physically incapable of not working towards his goal, even when it lands him and the people he loves in dire straits. he knows he can’t actually ignore the “pirate problem,” but he sees it as a relatively minor obstacle in his way.
he’s compassionate and hellbent on doing the Right Thing, but he seems pretty unconcerned about what actually happens and what gets lost on the path there (i think this also ties into flint’s probably-true rationalization that ‘if thomas knew how far we’d come, i don’t know if he’d want me to stop’).“let them whisper,” he says about the london gossips, not because he is unaware of the consequences of that whispering, but because he is PERFECTLY aware and just doesn’t give a fuck. that’s why miranda tells james that men like thomas need men like him – at that point, james is still much more of a pragmatist (though, arguably, he remains one) who can be counted on to balance thomas’ fucking unbelievable determination.
2. thomas is probably, like, eight snakes in a trenchcoat level manipulative. he’s no john silver, who i would personally rank as uhh twelve snakes in a trenchcoat, but he’s definitely not an innocent uwu flower.
the flashbacks we get with him and james are rosy, but they’re also
revealing – thomas “i asked my former classmates who are your bosses at
work about you and realized you’re smarter than any of them” hamilton is thomas “would play devil’s advocate with the devil himself” hamilton is thomas “i need to trust you to do what i want to do for the Good Of Nassau and if i can’t do that then you can leave” hamilton. he basically says to james, “i know this plan sounds insane and i want you to talk me out of it, and i’ll counter each of your arguments point for point” and then, we can only assume, ACTUALLY DOES IT. this says that he’s smart and well-spoken, yes, but it also says that he knows exactly what to say to convince someone. during the Fateful Family Dinner, he says (way too calmly, by the way, which also speaks of a Lot of experience with not losing his cool) to his dad, “i can convince these 5 people of my plan without even starting to argue.” and he probably could!3. as has been written about already by wiser and more coherent people than i, thomas is someone who is capable of loving and being loved by james mcgraw and miranda barlow, which means he’s probably at least slightly an asshole. yeah, he’s forgiving, yeah, there’s a tendency even in his enemies to view him as somewhat of a saint (peter ashe), but like, he spends a pretty high proportion of time in the flashbacks chuckling at james’ asshole tendencies. HE THINKS IT’S HILARIOUS WHEN JAMES MCGRAW IS BEING A DICK. the “illiteracy is the real scourge” exchange, anyone??? and ALSO, an enormous theme in the show is the notion of letting go of shame – of being one’s truest self – and that comes to us from thomas to james. i think we can pretty safely assume that thomas knows about james’ moments that hennessey thinks of as “dark and wild” and loves him anyway, and doesn’t treat that part of james as something to FORGIVE. “know no shame” encompasses that, too; not only the shame of having loved a man, but james’ shame at not being good enough for thomas, from which we can infer that that TRUEST LOVE isn’t one which needs to forgive “shameful” qualities but one which acknowledges those qualities and doesn’t give a fuck.
4. lastly, for now, because i need to shut the fuck up, i think that thomas is one of the most interpersonally kind characters on the show. i don’t mean kind as “nice,” since as i said, he’s kind of a dick – i mean that he cares a great deal about the people around him. while i mentioned above that he isn’t super worried about what/who is lost on the way to achieving his goal, he’s also totally unable to NOT try and help someone if that’s within his capacity.
ANYWAY….. gonna stop yelling here, or i will yell forever, but. i am still down for more asks!!!
I think… one of the interesting things about online messaging and texting is that sometimes, writing out your feelings to someone is actually so much easier than speaking them. Like, I cannot easily express myself through verbal words. I stutter, I panic, I say “nevermind” because I can’t bring myself to admit the words out loud. But with online messaging, I can blabber on the keyboard like a stream of consciousness, and I can express myself to my friends in a way that’s sometimes very hard for me to do irl
Which is why I’m so defensive about this whole belief that face to face communication is more real than online interactions. In a way, yeah, it is, because it’s more literally “real,” and im not at all gonna deny the value in irl relationships. But online communication has genuinely allowed me, a socially anxious person with a fear of opening up, to develop meaningful relationships with people, and you don’t understand how grateful I am for that
Meg's Mumbles 