So apparently Gravity Fall’s Lil Gideon’s design was based on actual 1960s child preacher, Larry Hal Larimore

Math and Science Week!

aseantoo submitted to medievalpoc:

David Unaipon

[x], [x], [x]

David Unaipon (1872-1967) was an Australian Aboriginal inventor, preacher and writer.

Nicknamed the Australian Leonardo da Vinci, he provisionally patented 19  inventions, but was unable to afford to get any of them fully patented. He also came up with ideas for a helicopter design based on the boomerang, researched the polarisation of light and tried to create a perpetual motion machine.

These achievements are all the more impressive when you consider that, until 1962, not all Aboriginal Australians had the right to vote in federal elections (before that there were a number of restrictions varying from state to state, allowing some Aboriginals to vote but not others). Not until 1983 was it made compulsory for Aboriginals to vote, as it already was for all other Australian citizens. Aboriginal Australians have for so long, and are still in many ways, treated as sub-human, second-class or not even really citizens of the country they’ve inhabited for longer than anyone else living there.

In that context, imagine how hard David Unaipon had to work, compared with a white Australian with similar ambitions and talents. And he still couldn’t afford to get his inventions properly patented.

I’m a New Zealander, and our own colonial government did untold cultural, social and economic damage to the indigenous Maori people, causing generations of poverty, loss of hope, confidence and self-esteem, and general marginalisation reflected in over-representation in statistics of crime, educational failure and ill health. I, and my country, don’t have any moral high ground here. But believe me when I say that Australia seriously needs to sort its shit out re: treatment of Aboriginal Australians.

N.B. Because the term was so commonly used for so long, a lot of people still don’t know that ‘Aborigine’ is incorrect and can be taken as a slur. Just a note that I hope will be helpful, because, like me until not long ago, you may have been using the word without realising it’s not okay.

Robin Thicke is unapologetic about how rapey ‘Blurred Lines’ is, meanwhile the dude who parodied it issues a public apology for one word.

And that is just one reason why I love Weird Al.

Excuse me but how the hell is spastic even remotely insulting?

So I just recently learned that in the UK calling someone spastic means the same thing as calling someone retarded, only much worse.

If it makes people in the UK feel any better, people in the US literally do not know this (like literally no one I have ever met and/or know). Here being spastic is usually meant to mean something along the lines of acting like a hyper-active child (like running around in circles yelling just because they feel like it please be quiet for just 2 minutes type of child). NOBODY here uses it as a slur.

Since Weird Al is a US musician and the US music industry is pretty non-international, yeah actually I think its entirely possible that none of the people who worked on this song actually knew that spastic was considered an awful slur in some parts of the world.

And I’m like 99.9999% sure that Weird Al is genuinely very sorry that he was accidentally offensive.

You learn something new every day.

We don’t use it as a slur in the U.S. I mean we use in in medical terminology: Spastic Colon (aka Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS). 

TELL ME MORE OF THIS EXCITING FRENCH WORD FOR EIGHTY THAT IS NOT FOUR TWENTIES

I would like to know as well

BERLINGOFF RASSMUSSEN AKA MAXXX HEADROOM, STOPS BY TO IMPRESS DR. CRUSHER.

Funny aside, the role was initially conceived for Robin Williams. But it was changed when he signed on for Hook (and his career got a second wind)