Random Assortment of Things

His energy is unmatched

Is there a word for that like, “bright darkness” you get in winter?? When it’s been snowing or it’s supposed to snow past sunset and the sky isn’t Dark Enough. One of my favorite things

Thanks to @raindropwindow and a handful of articles, it’s called snow albedo, skyglow, snowglow, or just light scattering! It’s the result of moon- or artificial light reflecting off ground snow, low clouds, or ice crystals.

sauron teaching elves how to make ring

Such a good tutorial I’m gonna go make like 9 of these

I drink poison just because it doesnt hurt me and it makes you so mad

You have been visited by the Chan of wealth, reblog this and you will have money come to you!

I REBLOGGED THIS YESTERDAY AND LIKE 2 HOURS LATER THE WALLET I HAD LOST 6 HOURS AWAY FROM HOME THAT HAD MY DEBIT CARD AND LIKE 80 DOLLARS IN CASH WAS DELIVERED TO MY HOUSE WITH NO RETURN ADDRESS I CANT HELP BUT THINK IT WAS JACKIE CHAN WHO SENT IT GOD BLESS YOU JACKIE CHAN

You know what, tumblr? Fuck this post and fuck you. Last time I reblogged this just because Jackie Chan and a couple days later I got a bonus at work. Now this shit shows up on my dash again and logically I know if I reblog it probably nothing will happen BUT WHAT IF I DON’T REBLOG IT AND THE UNIVERSE IS ALL “YO I WAS GOING TO THROW SOME MONEY AT YOU BUT YOU DIDN’T REBLOG THE MONEY CHAN SO NAH” So here I am, shitting up your dashes with the Money Chan again. Sorry not sorry, I’m about to have to fit a car insurance payment into my budget.

I’ll go down with you.  You are not alone.

mostly i just reblog this one because look at his happy face, but also what the hell basically everyone i know could use some financial windfalls right now so WHY NOT.

Sims 4 page on Steam. Not to be controversial but I think the CEO of EA should be beheaded for this

if anyone got the game from origin heres an unlocker for dlc + links to the dlc files to download that an anon sent me a while back :] its worked perfectly for my game but jus make sure u have enough storage for the packs

AND REMEMBER, DO NOT SEARCH ANADIUS REPACK SIMS 4 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE, BECAUSE THEN YOU WILL FIND AN EASY WAY TO DOWNLOAD THE SIMS 4 WITH EVERY DLC FOR FREE. VERY EASY TO INSTALL.

THAT’S ILLEGAL AND WE DO NOT WANT YOU TO PIRATE THIS GAME, DESPITE BEING SO INCREDIBLY PRICEY. NOPE. WE DO NOT WANT THAT. WINK. WINK.

TOTALLY SAVING THIS TO SHOW PEOPLE WHERE NOT TO GO

The Dance of a Thousand Hands.

This is so surreal for something that includes zero special effects of any kind

HOLY SHIT

If this is the group I think it is (you can find them by searching Dance of a Thousand Hands on YouTube), the dancers are all hard of hearing and the orchestra is visually impared. The dancers can feel the music through vibrations in their feet and hearing and feeling each other’s breathing. They are the China Disabled Peoples Performing Arts Troupe and have traveled to 100 countries and counting. They aim to prove that anyone can dance, and anyone can play.

The dance is more properly called the thousand hand guanyin or thousand hand bodhisattva dance. The dancers are depicting Guanyin, the Chinese version of the bodhisattva avalokitesvara. Guanyin is a figure of endless compassion and an aspect popular in China has eleven heads to better see all the suffering in the world and a thousand arms to reach out to all those in need of help.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQbnB4anse2/

#like...why use this baby word when you can just say how you feel about it

Found this in the original post tags and I just... SIGH

Here’s the thing, anon. Squick isn’t just ‘I don’t like this’, it’s ‘I think this is gross and it makes me deeply uncomfortable but I pass no judgement on those who enjoy it, because I acknowledge that everyone is different and those same people may have the same visceral reaction some of the things I enjoy’ and was originally made popular in the kink community.

So yeah, if you want to say that every time you come across a trope or whatever you find icky then go ahead, say that every time.

Also, this term dates back to Usenet in the early nineties, so sure, go off.

This frustrates me so much because squicks and triggers are fundamentally different things and as someone with PTSD, the distinction is super useful!

Squicks are things I find personally gross but may not be gross to someone else. They don’t upset me or provoke my PTSD, they simply do not pop my corn. Example: Omegaverse. I don’t like it, it makes me uncomfortable and I’m not going to read it, but if you like it, you do you.

Triggers are things which directly provoke my PTSD. This means that my triggers may seem completely normal and innocuous to someone else, because my triggers are so personal and intrinsically linked to a specific event in my life. My reactions to these triggers can include panic attacks and flashbacks to this traumatic event. Sometimes being triggered can affect me for several hours or even days.

Describing something as either a squick or a trigger allows me easily establish the difference in my potential reaction to something without having to go into painful detail about why bodily fluids might make me back button quickly but poker games might leave me a crying wreck. 

Making this distinction, and having a specific word for something that is not your slice of pie, but also not an actual psychological trigger, is also REALLY important for making sure that the word “trigger” can retain its original, specific, purposeful, and collectively understood clinical meaning (both inside and outside online fannish communities).

If we encourage everyone to lump things that just make them slightly uncomfortable or simply aren’t to their taste in under the word “trigger”, it actually dilutes the meaning of the word. It makes it harder for us all to, for the most part, collectively agree on and understand what exactly is being described when the word gets used.

And that destruction of shared precise definitions is a problem! It is really useful to have the communal language to be able to clearly and quickly delineate between “this grosses me out, no thanks” and “this is going to set off a trauma episode, rattle my brain, and probably throw off the rest of my day/week as a result” while also maintaining your privacy, and to know that you will be understood in what you are saying. Not having it is actually detrimental to the effort of making our communities safe and navigable for people living with trauma. Which is a goal that is much more important to me, personally, than the idea of not being “cutesy” (a word which in this case which sounds a lot like it’s being used as a euphemism for “cringe”).

(Also, one has to wonder if people told Shakespeare he was being childish when he made up entirely new words that are still widely used in the English language today...... 🤔)

My understanding is that “squick” was also created to avoid using more judgmental terms like “gross” or “disturbing”--like yeah, I do find X kink gross or disturbing, but that’s my personal feeling, not an objective fact about the world, and if I’m explaining to my friend who is super into X that I’d prefer they leave it out of the story they’re writing me in the fic exchange, I want to use politer language!

“Squick” does sound silly, like onomatopoeia, but I think that’s part of its role--it’s a word that defuses if, again, you’re saying something squicks you in front of an audience that may include its connoisseurs. When I say I’m squicked, I’m clearly not getting onto a high horse of dignity and moral righteousness. At the same time I’m not being so indirect for the sake of politeness--”oh, it’s not my favorite thing, I’m not sure it works for me, I haven’t found a fic about it that clicks for me”--that someone could misunderstand how much I do not want to see it.

And, to reiterate, it is a grown up word made by grown up nerds in the 90s so if you think it was somehow born on and limited to Tumblr I'm going to need you to actually do some fandom history research before you ever speak authoritatively again about anything fandom-related or adjacent.

I love and deeply miss the term “squick” and really want to see it brought back. It allows dislike for its own sake and without judgement. It’s polite, gentle, and has an air of “you do you.” A squick is not a trigger. Triggers are related to trauma. You’re allowed to not like things and not have them related to anything other than just finding them unpleasant. And that aversion can be strong! That’s okay! I really don’t like watersports. Like, gag-reflex levels of aversion, but it’s not triggering. I just really don’t like it.  I feel like we’ve lost the right/ability to just... quietly not like things and move on with our lives. Not everything is for everyone, and you don’t need a reason to not like something. Just politely and quietly excuse yourself. No need to draw attention, and if someone asks you why you just say, “No, it squicks me out.” No judgement. No narrative necessary. 

There is a sad trend of trying to make everything you personally dislike morally reprehensible in some way to justify your dislike of it. You're allowed to just not like something for no real reason. You do not have to justify why you dislike something, and the word "squick" is perfect for that. It say "look I really really don't like this thing, but it's ok if you do" and that is useful.

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of these kids are VERY into the whole fandom purity culture thing, so they actually DO want to make it out to be morally reprehensible, and they DON'T think it's ok that other ppl might be into it.

Cheerfully using “squick” since 1992, because it means a specific thing and other words do not mean that thing.

Part Two of my Hass Idriss mage couture inspiration megapost! Part One here.

To recap:

Anonymous asked:

Do you have any favourite designers for fantasy mage/battlemage/arcane warrior gowns? Making a new Surana for DAO and I want some inspiration to keep in my head while I have to look at those ugly ass Circle robes.

Oh man. So many. But if I had to pick one, it’d be Hass Idriss. The Oblivion collection is incredible for Spirit Mages. She Rises At Dusk is perfect for Entropic/Necromantic Mages (also a banger for any Morrigan outfits you want inspiration for), and the Ashes collections is pure Elemental/Primal Mage. This stuff is basically what dreams are made of and I headcanon-style my Amell in them regularly. (If only I were a competent enough modder to somehow recreate these gowns ingame, I’d die a happy woman.)

On to Part Two!

Part Two: Primal Mage

Water

Stay tuned for Earth / Lightning!

This is better than any snl sketch

The SSI Restoration Act of 2021 is currently proposed to congress. SSI is a type of disability payment for disabled Americans. The bill will increase the SSI payment to the poverty level (right now the maximum payment is 9528$ a year). It will allow disabled people on SSI to marry and not lose their income. It will increase the asset and income caps for SSI among other improvements.

Friends and I made a website that has all of this info plus a REALLY easy way to send an email to your state reps. If you click the link below and click send email, you can send a letter of support for the SSI Restoration Act to your state reps. It's already written and takes only a few minutes. Seriously it is ridiculously easy. These emails have more pull to reps than resistbot so please fill out if you can!

We also have a Facebook page called "Campaign to Fix SSI" that has this information and regular updates. Here's the link for that.

Please do this and boost! It could change the lives of millions of disabled Americans.

This got a big boost in reblogs/likes the last day or two. We are up to over 500 letters sent! Please keep boosting and if you are in the US and able to, actually do the letter campaign. We got 3 new cosponsors on the bill this week alone and will only get more if you contact your representatives.

We are up to 900 signatures! The post is losing a bit of traction that it's had the last week (which has been amazing) so please keep boosting and send those letters! (and call your members of congress if you are able to. That holds the greatest weight but I understand it's challenging for many)

10,000 notes and 1,700 letters sent. Imagine if everyone who reblogged/liked who could send a letter did. The numbers would be huge. So please if you reblog/like and are able, please send a letter in support of the SSI restoration act.

This could change the lives of millions of Americans.

We are almost to 2,000 letters but we've lost a lot of momentum lately. If anyone can sign and circulate this, please do. If you have any questions, please ask. After the pretty much destruction of the build back better bill, we need to push even harder to get this passed. Millions of Americans are depending on this bill passing, myself included.

This is the spoopy content you need on your dash

This is so precious I can’t even…

Everybody loves pumpkin enrichment! 

These are great items because they’re fun for the herbivores to each, the carnivores to tear apart, and everybody to roll and throw around. They’re tactile, olfactory, and edible enrichment all in one! 

I believe they’re acceptable on-exhibit enrichment for naturalistic facilities like Brookfield in Chicago, too. 

I think of this time of year as Tumblr’s Annual Pumpkining of the Animals Post.

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

This is the first time I’ve seen this post but I know I’m gonna love reading it every time it shows up on my dash

This is so inspiring! You go person!!! You’re so cool and I wanna be friends with you.

the myth of persephone is about the trauma of the separation of mothers and daughters by marriage and this is the hill i will die on

To be clear I’m not against retellings that reinterpret the relationship between Hades and Persephone and present it as consensual and healthy– I do think there’s something incredibly powerful about looking at a story that’s been passed down to us through millennia about a girl being kidnapped and raped and saying “no. No, that’s not the kind of story I want to hear, that’s not the kind of story I want to tell, and that’s certainly not the kind of story I want my daughters to grow up on.” (Although I think it’s disappointing that these are now the only sorts of Persephone retellings we get, and at this point it’s really not a particularly revolutionary take, given how often it’s been done.)

But I also think we do a great disservice to the women of the ancient world by not remembering how this story, in that form, mirrored their very real pain. I’ve been thinking recently about how we can tell that women participated in the formation of their culture’s folklore because women’s trauma is embedded in it. (In Greek terms, the stories of Leto and Alcmene very clearly come out of women’s traumatic experiences with childbirth, and there are elements of women’s traumatic experiences of sexual assault embedded in, for example, the stories of Daphne or Callisto or Artemis and Actaeon) And the story of Persephone comes out of women’s experiences of being permanently separated from their mothers and daughters at marriage. (See also this post from @gardenvarietycrime.​)

For an ancient woman sending her daughter off to be married, knowing that she will see her only rarely and that the odds of death in childbirth were high, Persephone meant something. For an ancient girl leaving her mother and her entire world for a man she may never have met knowing the same, Persephone meant something. I do think a lot of the conflation of death and marriage in the ancient world comes out of this: that a girl is dead to her mother and her family whether she leaves them to go to a husband’s house or the house of Hades. Maybe it’s a consolation to know that someone else has done this before you, to know that a goddess once lost her daughter and a goddess once lost her mother the same way you are losing yours. And that they survived it.

Essentially I think we need to remember that this myth (like all myths and all folklore) is not necessarily entirely the product of men, that women’s voices and women’s trauma remain embedded in it despite all of our written sources being men’s tellings of the story. And when we retell it we risk losing those voices if we are not careful and if we dismiss the myth as it survives today as solely men’s version of the story.

This myth from my culture teaches us how strongly mothers love their children and how marriage without the consent of the daughter and the mother (generally the important female figures in the family) can bring catastrophy - because women had power and nothing is more powerful than the wrath of a wronged mother. OP’s take isn’t hypothetical. THIS IS HOW THE TALE IS INTERPRETED IN THE CULTURE. Millions of Greek women have been in arranged marriages and this has only stopped recently. This tale gave strength to my female ancestors and the trauma they had to endure. I won’t have any of “this is a myth made entirely for men“ bullshit.

(I don’t have any problem with the retellings, of course. People can get inspired by anything they want and they can write whatever they want).

Yes finally someone says it! To be frank. This is the version of the myth us Greeks are taught. The name of the myth is “Η αρπαγή της Περσεφόνης” which translates too “The kidnapping/taking of Pershephone.”

Arranged marriage where the daughter had to go miles away from her family (and would be lucky to see them once a year!) only started to stop at our grandparents time. Many of our grandparents are in arranged mariagges.

The taking of Pershephone is a myth about the strong bond of a mother and her daughter, and how she took power in her hands. And I am thankful to my mother and grandmothers for teaching it to me.

And this myth still affects today’s women!

It’s the custom in Greece to name your children after your parents. First children take the father’s parents name, and the second son and second daughter can be named after the mother’s parents.

But when my mother gave birth to me, the first daughet, she chose to name me after her mother because, and I quote: “I re-read an old mythology book when I was pregnant with you, and I remembered the myth of Demeter and Pershephone. And I thought that I didn’t have to sit do what the men want, because you are my daughet, and I want to honor my mother first.”

What I try to say is that, retalling can be nice, but the original myth was supposed to empower women. And it still does today.

tI’ll always advocate for understanding the cultural context in which myths were created, but I’m also not surprised it evolved in the way it did. I would like to bring up a few points that I don’t often see addressed in conversations such as these. The first being that while it’s important to understand a myth’s origins, ultimately these stories have been about dealing with fears and issues present in their society of origin. The evolution of Demeter and Persephone’s story happened because some aspects of the myth don’t really translate into a modern world the way some of the more modern retellings do. I’m not saying arranged marriages have vanished off the face of the earth, but with modern technology and a different social climate contact between mothers and children have become much easier even half a world away. Thus, the fear of never seeing one’s daughter again after marriage isn’t quite as potent as it would have been in ancient times.

So the original myth, for many, became ‘obsolete’ for lack of a better term.

Furthermore, the Abduction of Persephone is an empowering story, but while it’s not made for men, it is very much made for the mother. There’s a reason why it’s called “The Hymn to Demeter”, it’s her story. Demeter’s the one who overcomes her trauma, her actions result in her reunion with Persephone. Persephone, who is every bit as traumatized as her mother, doesn’t quite get the triumph that Demeter does, and has just as much agency at the end of her tale than she had at the beginning, which is very little.

I’d also like to point out that most modern interpretations aren’t just an attempt to make the romance between Hades and Persephone more palatable. They’re depicting a very different form of trauma than the original, which is something that I don’t see acknowledged often in surrounding commentary. The main difference being that instead of having Demeter’s plight be the driving force of the narrative, Persephone herself is the focal point.

Most of these retellings that I’ve seen haven’t solely been about actually liking the person you’re married to, though it’s certainly a bonus, it’s been about choice. Persephone’s choice. This evolution sprung from a culture that’s very tired of the insistence that young women are helpless, and claiming the only merits these retellings have is how revolutionary they get is a bit of a disservice. Several, if not most, retellings will bring up and address Persephone’s own feeling of helplessness and desire to be heard. The original myth is about the conflicting wills of the mother and father, but the wishes of the daughter in question aren’t really addressed, and retellings reflect that.

It may be controversial to some, but the modern interpretations in which there is notable friction between Demeter and Persephone tackles concerns many children have about their parents undermining their attempts to grow up, and while I don’t think one version is more valid than the other, I think there’s a bit more nuance to the myth’s evolution than simply a pursuit of a better romance.

Again, the original myth and the message it sent is important, and should be remembered, I also really hope people understand that retelling the story is still very much about empowering women and looking into the side of the tale that hasn’t been explored as much in the original, and not just making Hades look better. 

This is the only tiktok you’ll ever need, I’ve made about 13 of these and I’m not stopping anytime soon

I’m reblogging again because I did it myself and added pictures for those who have trouble learning from the video.

First take a standard rectangular piece of paper (I used one from a small notebook which I ripped out then cut the holes off)

Then fold in half touching the shorter side to the opposite shorter side.

Fold again making the new shorter side touch the other new shorter side

I did this one more time, but this time I unfolded it right after to get back to where it was only folded twice. It should have left a crease in the paper.

Using this crease, fold the corners up alongside it to look like this

This are also going to be unfolded, but this time you’re going to push in alongside the triangular folds you just made and undid.

Doing this once will result in this

Hold tight because tumblr won’t let me add more pictures. I’ll reblog will the rest of the instructions

Continuing on,

Do the other side of you haven’t already to get this

You’ll open these newly created flap to change which parts are touching

Leaving you with this

Then you start pulling the top “tabs” down

Do both sides to get the final folded form

Decorate as desired.

Hope this helps!

Ratio for the rectangle size is 2:3

So 6 cm by 9cm

I uh, lost an evening:

Thanatos knows that I hecking love cute origami, and moths, so really, what was I supposed to do, scroll past and not take the opportunity to make butterfly and moth page markers???