Category: Uncategorized

wanderindreamr:

runawayyogi:

simchiller:

they outlawed this move just because she was the only woman who could do it. 

Surya Bonaly was infamous for (among other things) doing aone blade backflip in the 1998 Olympics, and is the ONLY figure skater who’s ever pulled that off. Not just the only woman, the only figure skater PERIOD. There’s like all ofthree Olympic-class male skaters who did backflips in their routines, and NONE of them could do it one blade.

But wait, there’s more.

Backflips were banned from the 1976 Olympics onward on the official justification that skating jumps are supposed to be landed on one blade, whereas backflips are landed on both blades. The unofficial justification was it was too dangerous, both to the athlete and to the rink — if you didn’t land it perfectly, you could not only break your ankle, but also punch THROUGH the ice surface.

Surya Bonaly was openly contemptuous of the figure skating judges, because they were a bunch of openly racist white men who always screwed her over by giving her lower scores than she deserved. That one-blade backflip was her ultimate FUCK YOU! to the Olympics judges, because she took an “illegal” backflip and made it legal by landing it on one blade. Pretty much DARING them to mark her down for being epic awesome and pulling a move that their precious coddled white girls didn’t have the guts to even think about.

They did, of course. White racism knows no bounds. But she utterly owned them with that move.

not only did she do a fucking backflip and land, she landed then went right into a triple loop. like holy fuck

And worth noting is the fact that, lest her colossal “fuck you” go misinterpreted, she ended her routine with her back to the judges, which is not only unheard of in the competitive skating world, but is considered extremely disrespectful to them. She just wanted to be absolutely sure they knew that she was trying to tell them she didn’t give a fuck what they thought.

Ooooh, Radiolab did a good story on her earlier in the year!

captoring:

librarianarchy:

I love when small children identify all quadripedal animals as “doggy!”

It always reminds me of the time Plato offered the definition of a human as any “featherless biped” and Diogenes busted into the Academy with a plucked chicken screaming, “BEHOLD A MAN!”

i love the implication you were there when it happened. good times right

slide-effect:

trashchansenpai:

waluwadjet:

smurflewis:

imguiltyofthis:

andiamburdenedwithgloriousfeels:

Do you ever start bullshitting a paper, and then look over it halfway through and think, ’…Wait a minute, I could be onto something here.’

this is the definition of college.

Literally I was writing a paper on Asian salt water crocodiles, like a simple about them paper for a college class, and I started noticing some inconsistencies in the scientific papers I was sourcing and I accidentally discovered that the crocodile has been misdiagnosed as least concerned on the endangered species list when they should be classified as endangered and now my professor is having me write a formal report to the international Red List to have them reclassified and all I wanted to do was write this paper on an animal I thought was cool and now I’m considered an expert on this species…

this is how it works half of esteemed biologists trip and fall into their specialty while pursuing something else. one lecturer i just went to started as a biochemist researching antibiotics and discovered that crocodiles change colors based on environment and now he has 30+ crocs in his yard for research purposes and he’s just like… “wait… i’m a chemist…”

How did so many people end up with crocodiles on accident?????

did it happen in florida