Come & Take Me Away

Y’all be safe playing among us. I now its a social game but like don’t give out your name or what school you go to. Like I’m sure people might Not track you down using that information but im 23 years old and I grew up during a time were they made us fear strangers and putting information online.

For my followers that play Among Us, PLEASE watch out for people like that. If ANYONE you don’t know asks you about your age/where you live/go to school, that’s a red flag. Please be careful, candy call people out if you see them doing this shit.

I was in a lobby where someone admitted they were a 16 year old girl and everyone kept asking her for her phone number, her instagram, etc and i got kicked because i kept telling people that it was creepy and they should stop. Seriously do not share anything like that on public servers, especially if youre an underage girl

To illustrate how big a deal this is, outside of people getting harassed online, if someone has your phone number, they can track down where you live. If someone has your instagram, they can use it figure out where you live if youre not careful. Ive had do exactly this a couple times so i could send something to the right address. Do not give strangers your social media. Do not give them your age. Do not give them any identifying information.

Also! A tactic that was very popular Back In The Day but gen z doesn’t seem to indulge in as much:

Lie!

Whether it’s to some creeper asking too many questions or just some random website you’re signing up for... you can lie, kids. While obviously it’s great to not respond to weirdos seeking your personal information, there are times that for various reasons it’s difficult to avoid giving out any info entirely. So just bullshit. Name, age, gender, location, whatever you want. Just lie about it.

You are not beholden to an honor code with strangers or random websites on the internet. Just fake whatever. It’s not only completely fine, it is many times more advantageous for you in the long run (not only in dodging creeps, but it helps keep your IRL info and online info separate). You can pick and choose w/e online friends you want to be honest with, but signing up for social media or being asked invasive questions by a stranger? Just fuckin make shit up.

Literally lying about your age or location or whatever was so common online 15+ years ago, so that it wasn’t just anyone who could find out your actual private information. Revive this practice.

Covid is not over and black lives still matter. Stop trying to "go back to normal" when shit is still happening.

Stop going on trips and going to restaurants without masks.

Keep educating yourself and protesting and calling and donating and signing petitions.

Wear a mask. End white supremacy. Defund police.

I know it's tiring but it's not over for either thing even though people are pretending it is. I know the overlap is exhausting. But be safe, social distance, and keep fighting the good fight.

Quote from Welcome to Night Vale

in case you didn’t know, The Dixie Chicks, an extremely successful country singer trio in America, recently changed their name to The Chicks, as ‘Dixie’ is apparently a nostalgic name for the Civil War-era South.

They have also released a new song and video, which is what I really wanted to bring up - I would never have known about it, because I am in no way involved or subscribed to country music, but my mum learned about it and passed it on to me and I’m so glad she did - it’s called ‘March March’ and is absolutely worth listening to but 100% MORE worth watching. It REALLY doesn’t matter what music genres you love or hate I really think you, like me, if you believe in activism and progressive change, will at least feel a little moved by this music video. It’s very well done and quite powerfully edited. Here’s the youtube link.

awesome other stuff to know about them, thank you @littleredruns​ and @dancingatbraebent​

No, seriously, you need to watch this.

Give it a watch.

This isn’t what most of us think of country these days- the nationalist pop songs where the twang supposedly makes it country. This is some proper old school Johnny Cash sort of music and it’s got something to say.

in 2019, Ken Burns and PBS just did a really fascinating retrospective on Country Music.  And one of the things that resonated with me was that if you were interested in the folk tradition, or female singer-songwriters in the 90′s, chances are you listened to country.  Because that’s where the women who were forced out by the pop machine ended up.  

9/11 changed that in one fell swoop.  Almost overnight, I went from listening to, and buying, a LOT of country music, to feeling alienated and frightened by it.  The aggressive, jingoistic, and very, very masculine wave of post 9/11 country music swept away a lot of excellent artists, and left us with the ‘bro country’ that we’re still dealing with today.

BRB, off to dust off a few cds.

Just to share a little history for those who may not be American (or for Americans who either haven’t learned about this yet or their education twisted the facts), dixie is in referral to the mason-dixon line. Or the surveyed line that separated the “free” north from the slavery of the confederate south. The south used to, and unfortunately currently still in some of the more conservative parts, is nostalgically known (and I say that with ire and sarcasm as a southerner) as “dixeland”. You may have heard the term in country music songs, but at it’s core, “dixie” is a negative racially charged term. One account calls the word “dixie” a preservation of the name of one of the north’s more cruel slave owners before the m-d line was surveyed and the north was “freed”. *as a note, I am using quotations around “freed” because while chattel slavery may have been outlawed, we are all well aware of what the prison system here was set up as.*

For the Chicks to formally reject what had become one of the south’s most recognizable nostalgic terms of southern pride and endearment is huge. I personally wish they had done so before now, but as they have continued to demonstrate through their career they are very much on the side of equality and justice. And for a post 911 country group who had already been blacklisted to speak out and do it again? That’s ballsy as hell. (Now i’m not a historian and this is just a general gloss over the term, I would encourage you to go read up on it if you have any other questions about it!)

Plus they have awesome music.

do you guys even know what anne carson is like. you reblog her quotes all the time but are you aware that seeing her in person is a spiritual experience

she came to my college in the spring of 2019. she was wearing a flannel under a pinstripe suit, cuffed trousers and bright red sneakers, and she had her hair up in a messy bun. I didn’t take a picture but here’s my artist’s rendition

the whole room was full of Classics wlwTM and we Absolutely Could Not Handle This Like Even a Little Bit. I got so distracted thinking about her during my workout today that I accidentally did 15 more jumping jacks than I was supposed to, which I think is the gayest sentence I’ve ever written.

how do I describe the way she speaks? it’s this very floaty, dignified, vaguely curious, uncompelled, but very intentional style of diction, like if you met god at a garden party and she handed you a pitcher of cream and asked you why you think you should get into heaven. I wrote down the phrase “Your ridiculous little glasslike soul” and I don’t remember in what context she said it, but THAT’S the vibe.

she is screamingly funny but relentlessly deadpan. “You know Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for—” she pulls down her glasses and looks at us, like a librarian who moonlights writing erotica – “sodomy.” She had us do an “interactive portion” during one of her poems, instructing the right side of the audience: “Your part is simply the word Deciduous? With a question mark at the end.”

She has flawless comedic timing, and she does not use filler words. Remember this line from Elektra? it sums up her sense of humor PERFECTLY:

She spices up her wit by dropping in the occasional mind-blowing quote like “Tears are all about the weeper, aren’t they?” and “Roses and hurricanes are too much as they are to be anything else, to be damaged by metaphor.” and “Do I frighten people, saying there’s no back wall? Nothing between you and your heart of darkness?”

like. she is an incredible writer and I’m not about to denigrate her translations by saying she didn’t put work into them, but I honest to god think that is just How This Woman’s Mind Works. she is on “not to me, not if it’s you” and “someone will remember us I say even in another time” levels of galaxy brain wordcraft, but IN REAL LIFE.

I came up to her after the reading and asked her to sign my Bacchae copy. I did not say much to her besides that I was a fan, because I got the sense that if I formed a complete sentence in her presence she would see directly through me and reach into my body and swallow my entire ribcage like a snake.

she signed my book “regards, A.C.” I’ll never forget her.

A paean to the best in the biz

So yeah it’s lush UK that’s pro cop and lush US said black lives matter but honestly u should still be buying from black owned businesses

if you guys want a good black owned business that makes amazing bath and body products, skincare, and candles, i really recommend shea shea bakery! they specialize in making pastry themed products that look so much like the real thing it’s amazing!

one of my favorite black owned bath and body brands is foxie cosmetics, it's run by a black woman who experiences chronic pain and she actually has a pain relieving blend that she puts into all of her bath bombs which i am absolutely obsessed with. she also has some truly outstanding skincare products, and imo her formulations are WAYYYYYYYY better than lush's ever were.

can’t get over @asimplefavors reading out @chloebeale ‘s smutty fic out loud on discord last night scjdjdjsk my brain will never recover

it was so good tho like im reeling

This is such a great image. Reminds me of the time my friends read smut that someone else had written while I was working at a school and was on skype with them in between calls.

This is wildly accurate.

fucked up how cooking and baking from scratch is viewed as a luxury…..like baking a loaf of bread or whatever is seen as something that only people with money/time can do. I’m not sure why capitalism decided to sell us the idea that we can’t make our own damn food bc it’s a special expensive thing that’s exclusive to wealthy retirees but it’s stupid as hell and it makes me angry

bread takes like max 4 ingredients counting water and sure it takes a couple hours but 80% of that is just waiting around while it does the thing and you can do other things while it’s rising/baking plus im not gonna say baking cured my depression bc it didn’t but man is it hard to feel down when you’re eating slices of fresh bread you just made yourself. feels like everything’s gonna be a little more ok than you thought. it’s good.

bread is amazing and it’s also been sold to us as something really hard to make? Every time I tell someone I made a loaf of bread I get reactions like “you made it yourself???” and “do you have a bread machine then?” I haven’t touched a bread machine in probably 10 years. You CAN make your own bread, folks, and it’s actually pretty cheap to do so. I believe the most expensive thing I needed for it was the jar of yeast. It was about $6 at the grocery store and lasted me MONTHS (just keep it in the fridge.) The packets are even cheaper. destroy capitalism. bake your own bread.

You can also make your own yeast by making a sourdough starter, so that cuts cost even more.

But you have to feed the starter daily/weekly and that means it grows quickly, but there are tons of recipes online for what to do with your excess starter. Cookies, pretzels, crackers, pancakes, waffles, you name it!!

Here’s a link to The Home Baking Association’s site. It has recipes and tips.

Make it even easier - “No-Knead Bread”. All YOU do is mix the ingredients together and wait until it’s time to heat the oven. The yeast does all the rest.

Here’s @dduane​’s first take on it and the finished product. We’ve made even more photogenic batches since.

Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, get hands-on. It’s like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat - it takes about 10 minutes - until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesn’t stick to things and feels silky-smooth.

Here’s what before and after look like.

My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.

Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and “knock it back” (more kneading, until it’s getting back to the size it started, this means there won’t be huge “is something living in here?” holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever - we’ve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roaster…

You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.

Let the dough rise again until it’s high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180°C / 355°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.

Here’s some of our bread…

Here’s our default bread recipe - it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.

Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we don’t bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a “ready for my close-up” glamour shot.

I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf. We’re happy to have it on our table.

Even if your first attempts don’t work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like this…

can we have more posts like this in future please? this is really useful and could help those who are struggling

Also, hey, if anyone ever has questions about bread, I’ve been baking since I was 3 and my first degree was in baking and pastry arts from one of the best culinary schools in the country.

Feel free to ask me about bread anytime, buds! More than happy to help!!

You gotta have a plan…

This is the mist motivational and inspiring thing I’ve seen all goddamn week

This is incredible.

Rational thought is Gandalf and I love this

home where you stack your books on the floor because you ran out of space on your bookshelf

Actual orthodox jews in hospitals:  *will do pretty much anything to save a life* let me check with my rabbi who will check with serious medical professionals  *values life above all* *values medical advice and opinions* *believes in scientific advances and medicine*

orthodox jews in hospital tv shows: uh…..i think god would want me to die rather then take your medicine bc it once touched a pig and that’s the extent of my religion why don’t you get a random rabbi to come bless me 

I hope it’s ok to add to this post bc I want to explain further, we have a principle called pikuach nefesh that basically means preserving life overrides almost any other commandment. It’s the same reason ill and pregnant people don’t fast on Yom Kippur. I don’t know much about specific halachic debates vis-a-vis various medical treatments but there is NO concept of enduring unnecessary suffering because it’s “what God wants”, i think that’s an exclusively christian way of thinking.

Pokemon evolving but they molt like bugs