192 posts
I miss when everyone on my dash listened to Welcome to Night Vale so there’s be a good chance that on any ole day someone would reblog a quote that would grab me by the throat and forcibly ascend me to a higher plane where I understood myself and the universe better and with more kindness but also a little spook
There's something magical about old pictures of stars
Andromeda Galaxy, 1925 Around The Pleiades, 1932 Cygnus Wall, 1910 North America Nebula, c. 1920
what a legend
Cats Stealing Food in Paintings
Still Life with Cat (1705) by Desportes, It's no use crying over spilt milk (1880) by Frank Paton, Still Life of the Remnants of a Meal with a Lunging Cat (18th Century) by Alexandre-François Desportes, Fish Still Life with Two Cats (1781) by Martin Ferdinand Quadal, Still Life with a Cat and a Mackerel on a Table Top (18th Century) by Giovanni Rivalta, The Collared Thief (1860) by William James Webbe, Cat Stealing a String of Sausages (17th Century) by Abraham van Beyeren, Still Life with a Cat (1760) by Sebastiano Lazzari, Kitchen Still Life with Fish and Cat (ca. 1650) by Sebastian Stoskopff, An Oyster Supper (1882) by Horatio Henry Couldery, Still Life with an Ebony Chest (17th Century) by Frans Snyders, Still Life with a Cat (1724) by Alexandre-Francois Desportes, A Cat Attacking Dead Game (18th Century) by Alexandre-François Desportes, Still Life of Fresh-Water Fish with a Cat (1656) by Pieter Claesz, Still Life with Fruits and Ham with a Cat and a Parrot (18th Century) by Alexandre-Francois Desportes, A Cat Holding a Fish in Its Mouth (18th Century) by Sebastiano Lazzari, Still Life with a Cat and a Hare (18th Century) by Desportes, Still Life with Cat and Rayfish (1728) by Jean-Siméon Chardin, A Cat with Dead Game (1711) by Alexandre-Francois Desportes, Still Life with Cat and Fish (1728) by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin
Via James Lucas on X/Twitter
Yeah, same.
I just want you all to know, that if and when this site does experience a real exodus and/or get sunsetted for good, even if we don't keep in touch I'll remember you so fondly. You're the online equivalent of the other kid on the beach where we built sandcastles together; the girl at the campsite where we explored the trees. You're the man next to me on the train who chatted cheerfully to pass the time when we got delayed. You're the drunk person who shared kind words in the bathroom at the club, you're the talented artists at the life drawing class or the poetry night in a city where I don't live anymore. It makes me sad that maybe in the future our paths won't cross so easily, but even when we leave this little shared piece of cyberspace, carried away on our briefly intersecting trajectories, just know I still love you
highly recommend keeping a small portrait of a historical figure who met a grisly end on your work desk. for perspective.
A comic based on this poem
twenty years across the sea
Less magic schools. More magic universities. Unlearn the simplified models of your secondary education. Discover how to reference scrolls written by a wizard possessed by a different wizard. Identify bias in the voices that whisper from beyond the veil. Have your institution be accused of promoting a Merlinist agenda. Become addicted to energy potions.
Comics by Rose Anne Prevec.
https://english.radio.cz/beavers-build-planned-dams-protected-landscape-area-while-local-officials-still-8841536
A beaver colony in the Brdy region has gained overnight fame by building several dams in the Brdy protected landscape area, creating a natural wetland exactly where it was needed. It saved the local authorities 30 million crowns, and has the public cracking jokes about public administration and red tape.
The administration of the Brdy protected landscape area, which had gained approval for the 30 million crown project, was dealing with red tape and seeking the respective building permits from the Vltava River Basin authorities when the dam project was completed almost overnight by a local colony of beavers.
They could not have chosen their location better –erecting the dams on a bypass gully that was built by soldiers in the former military base years ago, so as to drain the area. The revitalization project drafted by environmentalists was supposed to remedy this. Bohumil Fišer, head of the Brdy Protected Landscape Area Administration says Nature took its course and the beavers created the necessary biotope conditions practically overnight.
For sale baby shoes never worn. Oh he's not dead or anything he's just massive and they don't fit
For sale baby shoes never worn. They're Gucci, my sister got them for me and I'm not putting $600 shoes on a newborn Why the hell would anyone buy these? She's an idiot.
For sale baby shoes never worn. At least I don't think so. I found them in the eggs at the grocery store and they look pretty clean $20 obo
For sale baby shoes never worn. She doesn't have any feet but it's hardly slowing her down, honestly. I guess you can't miss what you never had.
For sale baby shoes never worn. Bought them and forgot about them for like six months, never even took them out of the box and now they're way too small. My brain is fried.
For sale baby shoes never worn. Fair warning though, they've got fucking minions on them.
For sale They were a gift from my great aunt and I don't want anything from that wretched harpy.
baby shoes I thought I could put them on my dog so he doesn't slip all over the kitchen floor but yeah it didn't work
never worn. I don't know. They're just ugly. Do I need a reason?
Thread on alternative views of iconic landmarks you (probably) haven’t seen before 🧵
1. Mount Fuji from a plane window.
2. Arc de Triomphe, Paris
3. Aerial view of Kaaba, Mecca
4. A view of the Taj Mahal that you do not usually see, highlighting the stark contrast between opulence and poverty divided by a single wall.
5. Top down view of the Statue of Liberty
6. The backside of Tutankhamun's burial mask
7. The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica seen through Rome's most famous keyhole.
8. The worn steps of the Tower of Pisa
9. Photographer Alexander Ladanivskyy, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, captured an extraordinary drone shot of the Great Pyramid of Giza from an unusual perspective.
10. The Shanhai Pass, where the Great Wall of China meets the ocean.
for images 11 - 25, please see the source, here
Gender and Harry Potter is such a hydra that just keeps revealing more heads the more you try and chop through it. Case in point: Today I just realized Harry Potter might've been originally intended as a book for boys, which if it was *wow*, way to miss the mark Joanne. Do you think it was actually intended for a male audience? To me it kinda makes sense if it was because of the way most women and girls are portrayed in it.
Bloomsbury Publishing definitely requested that JK Rowling publish with her (gender neutral) initials instead of 'Joanne Rowling' because they were concerned boys would not buy a book with a woman's name on the cover.
My guess is that her British publishers slotted it more firmly under 'boy' than her American publishers did. Harry Potter is 100% a school story, a super established British children's book genre. Historically, there are boy school stories (set in all-male posh public schools) and girl school stories (set in all-female posh public schools.) Hogwarts is of course co-ed, but that fact that it comes out of a literary tradition in which all the characters are the same gender... might help explain why in-universe gender politics seem remarkably absent from the wizarding world.
It actually kind of bugs me, when a canon-compliant fic makes a big deal about male-only inheritance or something, because that's just not something we see. There's one line about "Black family tradition" saying that the house goes to the next oldest guy, but since Dumbledore is worried that *Bellatrix* is about to inherit, it clearly isn't that important.
JKR has made a fantasy society where gender doesn't really matter - Augusta Longbottom and Walburga Black are clearly the powerful matriarchs of their respective families, Maxime and McGonagall are headmistresses, no problem. There isn't the boys quidditch team vs girl's quidditch team, the locker rooms and the prefects bathroom seem to be co-ed, "robes" are gender neutral, there isn't a sense that a specific discipline or type of magic is gendered (we see both male and female Transfiguration, Care of Magical creatures, and Defense Against the Dark arts professors...) There is kind of a sense that the boys are supposed to ask the girls to the yule ball... but multiple girls still ask out Harry. Gender comes up a lot in these books yes, but not so much in the actual worldbuilding. We have gendered bathrooms and dorms, and the rule that the girls can go into the boy's dormitory, but not vice-versa. Ron considers lace a girly fabric. Of the top of my head, that's all of the "gendered" rules I can think of.
But, since the main character is a boy, it makes sense that her British publishers would slot it more into the category of "school story (boy)" and market accordingly. I think it's extremely likely that she was asked to lean more heavily into quidditch, an aspect of the world building that JKR is clearly not interested in. She's said multiple times that she dislikes writing quidditch games - which is why she throws in comedy with the commentary, or makes some magical thing go down, or finds ways to cancel quidditch entirely. The mechanics and tension of the game *itself* are not interesting to her. I think it's also possible this is a reason for Hermione's relatively late intro into the friend group during Book 1? Harry can be friends with a girl, but first we need to establish that Ron is his *best* friend.
But then the books hit America, and the whole "school story" thing didn't read as "boy" as much as it just read "British." There was a sense in American advertising, especially in the 90s, that girl's products were for girls, but boy's products were for everyone. Scholastic Publishing seemed less interested in gendering the book, and more interested in making sure it didn't come off as too high-brow to American children - so we get the name change from "Philosopher's Stone" to "Sorcerer's Stone," things like that.
But then right before the publication of Book 4 the series exploded, and JKR could have just self-published the thing if her publishers didn't behave. So I think that you can see the fingerprints of that marketing push on Book 1, which grandfathered in a number of worldbuilding choices that JKR maybe wouldn't have made later. But pretty quickly it just became JKR doing her thing.
What's the difference between asking for advice (Bird) and asking for help (Badger)? I see them as kind of the same, especially since a lot of my problems (medical stuff, writing, etc) aren't ones people can really directly help with. I usually ask for help/advice and then handle the actual task myself. If someone does offer to directly help, it's an unexpected bonus, like my friend offering to help get something from IKEA. I was just asking if she thought it would fit in my car.
There's some overlap, but it sounds like you're more on the Bird end of that Venn diagram.
"Do you think this would fit in my car?" -> asking for advice
"Will you come with me in your pickup?" -> asking for help
It's possible that you don't usually think of ways people can help you directly, because that's not how you usually do things! I can think of ways people might directly help with the writing process, for example (beta readers being the most common example of your friends/peers giving hands-on help), but there's actually a book I wanna dig up and quote for this so bear with me.
From Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
I’m friends with Brené Brown, the author of Daring Greatly and other works on human vulnerability. Brené writes wonderful books, but they don’t come easily for her. She sweats and struggles and suffers throughout the writing process, and always has. But recently, I introduced Brené to this idea that creativity is for tricksters, not for martyrs. It was an idea she’d never heard before. (As Brené explains: “Hey, I come from a background in academia, which is deeply entrenched in martyrdom. As in: ‘You must labor and suffer for years in solitude to produce work that only four people will ever read.’”)
But when Brené latched on to this idea of tricksterdom, she took a closer look at her own work habits and realized she’d been creating from far too dark and heavy a place within herself. She had already written several successful books, but all of them had been like a medieval road of trials for her—nothing but fear and anguish throughout the entire writing process. She’d never questioned any of this anguish, because she’d assumed it was all perfectly normal. After all, serious artists can only prove their merit through serious pain. Like so many creators before her, she had come to trust in that pain above all.
But when she tuned in to the possibility of writing from a place of trickster energy, she had a breakthrough. She realized that the act of writing itself was indeed genuinely difficult for her . . . but that storytelling was not. Brené is a captivating storyteller, and she loves public speaking. She’s a fourth-generation Texan who can string a tale like nobody’s business. She knew that when she spoke her ideas aloud, they flowed like a river. But when she tried to write those ideas down, they cramped up on her.
Then she figured out how to trick the process.
For her last book, Brené tried something new—a super-cunning trickster move of the highest order. She enlisted two trusted colleagues to join her at a beach house in Galveston to help her finish her book, which was under serious deadline.
She asked them to sit there on the couch and take detailed notes while she told them stories about the subject of her book. After each story, she would grab their notes, run into the other room, shut the door, and write down exactly what she had just told them, while they waited patiently in the living room. Thus, Brené was able to capture the natural tone of her own speaking voice on the page—much the way the poet Ruth Stone figured out how to capture poems as they moved through her. Then Brené would dash back into the living room and read aloud what she had just written. Her colleagues would help her to tease out the narrative even further, by asking her to explain herself with new anecdotes and stories, as again they took notes. And again Brené would grab those notes and go transcribe the stories.
Isn't that the most Badger secondary workflow you've ever heard? 😂
I’ve figured out my primary, I think. Burned Lion with Bird model and an unhealthy Badger model from my parents that I’m trying to drop. I think my secondary is pretty burned (neurodivergence and trauma) and I’m having the worst time figuring it out because I feel like I use bits of everything. I’ve tried looking at my childhood but I don’t have a great memory of it and I burned at some point in middle school or before so there’s not a lot to go on.
I do tend to jump into things quickly but my father always told me never to make decisions based on enthusiasm
Oooh, your dad’s not a Lion. I will be on the look out for some (Bird or Badger) models, especially since I know you’re carrying some unhealthy primary stuff from your parents.
I try to remember that. Especially because I’ve been hurt badly in the past by acting impulsively.
That can be a Lion secondary thing… but also a Lion primary thing. Depends on the circumstance.
Lion: I feel uncomfortable with lying and I’m not great at it. Twisting the truth to my advantage is safer than being caught in a lie. I remember that as a child, I looked up how to tell someone was lying so I could get better at it because it was too easy to tell when I was lying.
That is… super Bird actually. Kind of *adorably* bird. And if you’re neurodivergent, chances are that at the very least you model Bird secondary.
Sometimes I just really want to call someone out for being rude or a jerk but I just paste this friendly facade on because I don’t want people to think I’m an a-hole.
Actor Bird? Badger secondary performance?
But I did get into fights in middle school and there was a time my friend had to hold me back from getting in a screaming match with someone in NYC who called me a whore out of nowhere.
I mean, part of that is being young. There’s anger and aggression here, and sure it’s sort of Lion secondary flavored. But I lived in NYC too. Sometimes people just accuse you of being a shapeshifter or personally killing Biblical figures, out of the blue. It happens.
I used to love being controversial and edgy but now I’m too afraid of doing that or speaking my mind unless I really really know my audience.
Being controversial and edgy for the sake of being controversial and edgy is also very *young.* And sure Lion secondary is possible, but I’m not forgetting about that Lion primary.
Bird: I collect cookbooks and love to study new languages. I’ll listen to podcasts on obscure topics I’m interested in and then run into the other room to tell my husband a cool fact I just learned.
Sounds like (at the very least) a fun Bird secondary model.
I don’t have a lot of people I can rely on for advice with my personal stuff (they just have very different lives or I don’t want to burden them) so I end up googling a lot of things instead of asking a friend.
Oh that’s interesting. You want to ask a friend, but you can’t. (Burnt Badger.) So INSTEAD you do a lot of research on your own (Bird model)
Keep reading
As for the lately siblings typing and them being Fe-dom really reminds me of why I always feel high Fe users (especially Fe-dom ones) are rather... hard-to-like. The thing about how they are extremely vocal about their dislike is actually correct and common for high Fe users I have ever met in my life...
You understand why, though, right? Fe needs and wants to address what upsets it and processes their feelings while they talk, so they do so in order to work through it, resolve it, and clear the air. They don't understand emotional repression or silence and want others to respond in kind. Most EFJs who do not study typology can't understand why other people are not more open with their emotions, both good and bad. They need and want "signals" that come from other people and their emotional reactions, in order to know where they stand with people and how to adjust their behavior to fit the situation. Their entire life is about molding themselves to fit social, emotional, and relational cues. It's as normal for them to say "you hurt my feelings" as it is for them to exclaim in rapturous delight "I love being here with you!!!" Their emotional reaction to everything is immediate -- and they are sensitive, not only to insults against themselves or slights, but other people having an impact on those around them. (You hurt my daughter/girlfriend/boyfriend/friend, you are Enemy Number 1.)
As a Fi user and a 9 who avoids conflict, I understand that they can seem "intense" and "loud" and "confrontational," but you can't change them or expect them to be different than they are. It's as unnatural for them to repress their emotions and not be direct with them, as it would be for you to talk your way through your feelings "in real time" and be combative while doing it. All you can do is try to understand them, and focus on your own growth as a 9 -- learning that not all confrontation is bad, that not all raised voices are full of rage, that it's okay for other people to engage in conflict (it's not about me), and that you are likely "over-sensitive" to them due to being a 9.
I guarantee if you find some EFJ 9s and give them a chance, you will find out that not all of them are direct. One EFJ 9 I know is super sweet, tolerant, open-minded, easy-going, and never raises her voice.
Op you shall, I shall, we all shall in a nutshell.
Okay fuck it if this post reaches 666k notes by the end of 2023 I'll practise basic self care
Why 666k? Because it's funny and impossible so good fucking luck
Source
Video of Tama
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Hey Neil, due to a certain British author saying some stupid things again... Could you please quickly say something supportive for trans people? Would be really comforting right now
I’ve missed this (I’ve been taking a Twitter holiday for the last month, for my own mental health), but I can imagine. I’m sorry.
Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Trans rights are human rights. I’m sorry that some people have such a hard time getting their heads around that. But the world is changing, and history is with you.
this is the arrow of destiny. reblog this and see what comes up next. this person/saying/thing will have something to do with your future
Freya.
Whispers
True. And also not enough time.
If there’s one thing I learned since I signed up on 05/15/2013 1:18:10 PM, it’s that #freyja aesthetics takes up too much of my time.
I adore this bot posts.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that everyone deserves the right to free healthcare and @gryphonrhi absolutely crushes #cozy space.
Legit.
I don’t know much about the world, but it seems like if you take #know your lore and add it to #writing tips, you end up with #mercyverse.