I was a long-hair male teenager in Texas and got to experience this first-hand. Besides the frequent disparraging comments from teachers and staff, I was also kicked off the track/CC team for my hair because I "Didn't match the image the school wanted to present at athletic events." I had a 4.0GPA, was active in school activities, enrolled in all AP/Pre-AP classes, and was, most importantly, good at and enjoyed running. As a freshman I ran a 5:20 mile, 12:10 two mile, and <20min 5K and was up for varsity consideration in my sophomore year. Despite this, the coach told me, point-blank, that I could only stay on the team if I cut my hair above the ear.

My parents, pissed, yelled at every school admin they could get a meeting with to no avail. Ultimately, even the principle was impotent, apologizing for how this must be "upsetting" but saying that she couldn't do anything. Apparently the athletics coordinator who made the rule didn't report to the principle, but to the district athletics office. My parents told me they would be behind me to fight it up the chain, but I decided that the experience had ruined competetive running for me and moved on.

The enforcement of white, christian, heteronormative values to teens' hair is so insideous. It is used for racism against black teens with braids, homophobia/transphobia against queer teens who don't conform with gender stereotypes, and in my case, just to be fascist assholes to a white cis-het teen boy with long hair. Nowadays I am covered in tattoos, oscillate between long/short/natural/neon hair, and have never felt like a better representative of my institution. I am about to get my PhD, was the president of my department's graduate student association, have taught and ran summer and afterschool science programs for under-represented kids, and fought for (and gotten) better compensation for graduate employees at my school.

Fuck every petty school admin who supports this shit, I am proud of my image, I am proud of teenage me for holding onto his individuality, and I hope that any teenagers in a similar situation can feel proud of themselves too, regardless of how they express.

I didn't know the European Space Agency organized E3. Learn something new every day.

I had a decent section of my right side of my face forcibly removed via a dog bite when I was 3. The cosmetic surgeon did an amazing job putting my face back together (no visible scarring other than the puncture mark and my eyelid acts weird sometimes), but the rip started at the corner of my eye, and as a result, that hole never healed up quite right.

It is about the size of a grain of rice and is really annoying. When I blow my nose, it acts as the third escape route for any congestion, which is gross as hell, popping my ears ranges from tricky to impossible, the eye is more watery than the other, and when I cry because my parents treated me like the fuck up that I truly am and I am undeserving of love, that eye is prone to irritation. I can make a really high pitch whine from it on demand though, so it is all worth it!

This is the truth. I am a few months away from getting my PhD in particle physics and the core questions being raised in all levels of the field at the edges of our decent big-picture understanding are so exciting.

Axions are super cool, they solve two longstanding questions in particle physics (they are a potential dark matter candidate and solve the Strong Charge-Parity problem) and are named after a brand of soap because they clean up the standard model of physics, I shit you not. I am about to finish my PhD in particle physics and spend a lot of time studying the types of detectors being used to look for dark matter (axions, wimps, etc), as they are adjacent to the detectors I use in my field of neutrino physics.

Sometimes stuff does. Othertimes, it is more open for debate. As a rule, I like to imagine that stuff might, but only if it will make stuff more confusing.

My PI has 2 walls covered in cork board in the hall outside our meeting room. Every paper we publish gets pinned there. It is the "Profesional" equivalent of getting your report card put on the fridge, we have a whole pinning ceremony and everything.

Cries in Texas Graduate Student who is legally prevented from unionizing 🫠

Having to petition my university for basic considerations (not owing back tution to the university despite being employed by them, getting health care covered, getting pay raises so we can afford to live where we work) has been hell without any union support.

Fuck Texas, can't wait to finish up here and move.

An old granny bard, based in no small part on my own grandma. She doesn't channel her magic through song or dance, but through her sassy remarks, telling stories about her childhood, and making baked goods, sweets, and presents for her adopted grandkids (the adventuring party).

Bardic Inspiration? Reminding you how much she loves you and is proud of you. Alternatively, giving you some candy for later or promising that if you do well, she will bake you a pie or take you out for icecream for being so brave.

Healing spells? Blown kisses, band-aids, and warm cookies.

Hypnotic Pattern/Hold Person/etc? Telling a rambling story (that she forgot what the point/moral was before she even started) but the enemies are too polite to interrupt her.

Dissonant Whispers/Visious Mockery/etc? Asking when you are going to get a boyfriend/girlfriend, graduate, get married, or get a real job. Telling bad (and slightly innapropriate) jokes, for her own amusement, often messing up the punchline. Asking if you have talked your mother recently ("You know, she won't be around forever, and I am sure she wishes you'd write more.") Simply saying "Bless your heart."

Party Buffs? Giving you knickknacks, homemade gifts, or old hand-me-downs she really thinks you'll like. Passing down age-earned wisdom and giving encouragement to just try your best. Making breakfast for the party, using far too much butter, cream, and other artery clogging goodness.

Don't worry about Roundup causing cancer, a washed up former greenpeace hack turned shill suckling at the teat of companies responsible for the declining state of the world Patrick Moore assured me that it is non dangerous. It is even perfectly safe to drink a quart of it!

https://youtu.be/uh8lxKrFmQs?si=DO-x-Ag0sZt6VCJ9

A true Sapphic Barbie Utopia is too powerful for normies to gel with

It was one of our family dogs, and we all loved her dearly. I was playing on the couch and fell off, landing on her tail and hurting her. She instictually snapped and it resulted in, unfortunately, the worst possible outcome (it is shitty, but it is one of my first well formed memories). Despite it being a freak one off, my parents couldn't feel safe given what happened and rehomed her to a family friend who didn't have children. She lived a long happy life and my dad still got to see her regularly, as he was heartbroken that he had to make this choice. I personally don't think my parents letting their kid play around the family dog, one that they had since before I was born, should have their faces readjusted.

Not just guitar audio! I own a tube amp for my guitar and 2 tube amps for driving my higher-end headphones! They are neat little pieces of electronics history, not just in how they run, but also because most of the best tubes are old military surplus. My oldest pair are from 1945 and were made for early army/navy radar systems.

1945 JAN-6AK5 tubes

Hair holds a deep significance for many demographic groups, often along racial lines due to differences in style and texture. This frequently involves hair length. For some people, hair has religious significance, for others it is more an expression of heritage, but opressors have forced people to cut/change their hair as a means of stripping people's cultural expression for a long time. Shaving newly enslaved black people as a means of erasing their cultural heritage goes back to the 15th century, as many groups had distinctive styles and slave owners wanted to impose conformity. Forcing Indigenous Americans to cut their hair was done to homogenize children removed from their peoples and punish/demoralize adult men, stripping both of them of an important religious and cultural signifier in the process.

A lot of modern hair discrimination has its roots in this more explicit racism, denouncing hair that isn't in line with western-european beauty standards as unprofessional, unkempt, or unsightly. Length of hair and specific styles hold value to many different ethnic groups today, just as it did hundreds of years ago. Many black people see the display of black hairstyles (including long braids, dreads, afros, etc.) as a form of cultural reclamation, many indigenous americans still view hair length as religiously meaningful, tons of Sikhs, Muslims and Jews have strict beliefs regarding hair/beard cutting, the list goes on. Forcing these people to conform or face discipline is absolutely discrimination, and these groups are often a different ethnicity or race than the person mandating the hair be cut.

Is forcing people to maintain a certain hair length always solely racist? No. It can be discriminatory in a plethora of ways. It can also be sexist, queerphobic, and/or a form of religious discrimination. I was subject to the purely sexist aspect of this by old white guys for having long hair as a white, cis-het teenage boy, no racism involved. The label for any discrimination relies as much on who is being discriminated against and how it is applied as it does the views of the person enforcing it, making it an intersectional issue

A good rhetorical example of this multitargeted discrimination would be the banning of necklaces with stars on them. Is it inherrently discriminatory on its own? Not in a vacuum, no one is born wearing a necklace with a star. But consider two major religions that involve star iconography (judaism, islam) and you can see how this rule is antisemitic and islamiphobic whithout ever mentioning jewish or muslim people explicitly. Which form of discrimination it is contextually depends on the person experiencing it. Hair is no different. Making a black guy cut his dreads/braids is both racist and sexist when viewed in this light, as it targets a cultural symbol (a black hair style) and is likely unevenly applied across genders (black girls aren't usually required to have short hair). I hope this answers your question, if asked sincerely, and here are a few sources if anybody wants to learn more:

EEOC Guidelines on Title VII protections against religious garb discriminatjon, including hair

NAACP on Black Hair Discrimination.

CNN on Native Hair Discrimination.

ACLU Article on a legal fight against sexist hair discrimination in Texas schools.

ACLUTexas Article about transphobia via hair discrimination.

1991 Duke Law piece on the intersectionality of hair, race, and gender, with the key takeaway quoted below.
"Judgments about aesthetics do not exist apart from judgments about the social, political, and economic order of a society. They are an essential part of that order. Aesthetic values determine who and what is valued, beautiful, and entitled to control. Thus established, the structure of society at other levels also is justified."

The Mattel Cinematic Universe is the true MCU

Someone who understands. I have never seen a recipe call for x cloves that wasn't infinitely better with 5x cloves.

So in my DND campaign setting, I had planned on black powder being a pretty recent discovery, called flashsand by the country who discovered it. One of my players wanted to be a gunslinger, so we worked out that he would have the first gun, built by his father who had to hide from the military to keep it out of the wrong hands. He wanted a revolver and to be a proto-desperado type, and I frankly didn't want to litigate logistics with a first-time player. I had been having a tough time squaring the circle between "first gun" and "revolver" but this is a perfect middleground!

I have in my menagerie of cats:

Gamera: Guardian of The Universe; Nicknames- Gambi, Gambini, Gamberooni, Grayby

Gyaos (pronounced Gauss); Nicknames- Gyaos-a-mouse, Mouse, Goose, Goose-a-moose, Moose

Drax The Destroyer; Nicknames- Droopy, Droops, Droopy-poopy, Drax-attacks, Drakattaka

Marceline the Vampire Queen; Nicknames- Marcy, Moops, MooMoo, Marmie, MooMoo Bean the Stinky Queen

Cookie; Nicknames- Cook, Cookie-Books, Bookie, Book

Yep. Current me would have told younger me to get the fuck out and go to a different grad school literally anywhere else. I now tell that to prospective graduate students whenever I meet with them.

Used to have a drive with every episode of futurama on it, but I lost it :/