dark academia is when you have to read the crustiest pdf known to man

I know I make fun of Pliny the Elder a lot, but I genuinely can’t stop thinking about this approach to taxonomy:

[There is a fish called the tursio, which bears a strong resemblance to the dolphin; it differs from it, however, in a certain air of sadness, and is wanting in its peculiar vivacity.]

Like, imagine someone describing an animal to you, but the only information they’ll provide is that it’s sort of like another animal, but much much sadder.

okay so apparently the word “Tursio” is what people in Pliny’s time called the porpoise. for reference, here is a dolphin:

and here is a porpoise:

anyways long story short Pliny was entirely correct stop bullying him

Sappho Enamel Pin by LiteraryEmporium

whenever you don’t feel motivated to work, just imagine your future self. if you do the work when you’re supposed to, your future self will be calm, collected and be able to keep working at a steady rate (and eventually finish the task at hand, stress-free). if you don’t do the work when you’re supposed to, your future self will be rushing around, trying to complete things they should have done before, and overly anxious and stressed. be kind to your future self and do the work now.

remember: discipline is just empathy with your future self.

I am an old person and tumblr is the porch

MJWATSON’S GIF TUTORIAL.

hey! i made this tutorial awhile ago but accidentally deleted it. so by request, i made it again! we are going to learn how to make GIFs in photoshop CS6, like the one below the cut.

Keep reading

Sometimes I’m like “ancient greek plays are so old, how am i going to relate to the characters?” but then 

So wild that instead of guidelines online moving towards no kind of body being considered inherently sexual and inappropriate we’ve gone onto like explicitly admitting that it’s the association of a body w womanhood that makes it inappropriate and dirty

augustus, exiling ovid: our Community Guidelines has changed and adult content will no longer be allowed in Rome.

This Richard Dawkins tweet is like. an evergreen source of humor but it also sounds 100% like something from Seneca’s Moral Letters

Seneca Lucilio suo salutem- priore nocte vidi virum humillimum, sine domo. Scripserat non “cibum mihi necesse est”, non “laborem mihi necesse est”, sed “opimam puellam mihi necesse est.” Quid factum sit? 

Vale.

@generally-nauseated YOOOOOO

SJAFNWEIUFNDSKJGN stoics confirmed for physically incapable of comprehending horny on main

also, i miss squicks.

that was such a good fandom term. let’s bring it back.

while i respect and appreciate trigger warnings i feel like often it comes with a burden. like at the very least you have to be out and open with the fact you have a panic disorder and have triggers. and too often i’ve seen this become “i’ll only respect your triggers if you disclose your mental health diagnoses”, which is bad and wrong and real damn stupid. it’s downright anti-recovery. somebody can’t recover if you want them to be able to retraumatize themselves telling you the details and then seeing if you judge them worthy or not.

squick is good. you can tell someone it’s a squick instead of a trigger, and not be forced to give up your dx. it’s very curb cutter effect. you get to normalize that request of “hey, let me know so i can avoid x”.

and it’s so nice for people who just have squicks! if you only got trigger warnings then you have people who are like, “ah jeez, i really dislike seeing this and i want to avoid it, but is it a trigger? do i have the right to ask for it as an accessibility thing? am i co-opting a struggle if i ask for people to tag it as one??” and like… shit, maybe sometimes it IS a trigger, they just aren’t at a place where they feel like hey can officially name it one. or maybe it’s just shit they don’t wanna see! and that’s FINE!

someone can give you a low-key “don’t like that” and have it respected and it’s GREAT! it’s just a thing that gets respected anyway!

bring back squick basically

When the fuck did we stop using ‘squick’? Ugh. I am such a fandom old lady.

Squick is such a good, necessary word. Choo choo, all aboard

So You’re A Gentile Who’s Realized We Have A Problem: Now What?

Tumblr likes to spin its wheels and spend time yelling at each other, so here’s a nice comprehensive guide. Five Things You Can Do Now That You Know We Were Serious About The Antisemitism:

1) Accept that if you’re in this to be an ally, you’re going to have a tough road ahead of you. We’re traditionally very wary of outsiders in our spaces because when we welcome them, well … this happens. In fact, if you want to convert to Judaism, you traditionally get rejected three times, just to make sure you’re serious and not shitting with us. Expect wariness. Expect to get your feelings hurt, because a lot of us are very raw right now. Stick with us anyway–once we know you’re not just bandwagoning us, you’re going to end up with a lot of friends who are relying on you. Nobody said allyship was easy.

2) Learn about Judaism. Note that I DO NOT MEAN LEARNING WITH INTENTION TO CONVERT. We don’t proselytize and it would be against Torah for me to even suggest it. What I mean here is, you can’t call bullshit if you don’t know what we’re about. Some good basic resources are The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred Kolatch; My Jewish Learning; and for a strict Orthodox standpoint, Chabad. You’ll find that some things in these sources contradict each other. That’s pretty par for the course in Judaism; we don’t have a single dogma or point of view.

3) Consider calling a local synagogue and asking if they have volunteer work for a gentile ally. Introduce yourself, explain (briefly) what got your attention, and offer your services–to stand outside during services, to walk folks to and from shul (this is particularly important in Orthodox communities, where driving on Shabbat is forbidden), hell, to help stuff envelopes for whatever vigil or service they may be holding in memoriam. Anything will help.

4) You may wish to make a donation to a local synagogue or Jewish charity. I strongly recommend the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which is a Jewish charity focused on combating antisemitism. Jews traditionally give monetary gifts in sums of $18, which corresponds to the numeric value of the word “chai,” or “life.” The last time this happened I made a post about this tradition and got accused of being a Nazi because of the whole 1-8 A-H thing, so let’s just nip that right in the bud: yes, we know. It’s a horrible coincidence. We’re not giving up a few-thousand-year-old tradition because of some dipshit with a bad moustache. If you can’t afford $18, consider moving the decimal over and donating in multiples of 18, like $3.60. Your meaning will still be perfectly clear, and anything helps. If you wish to make a donation in memory/in honor (which many synagogues appreciate), I suggest either choosing the name of one of the shooting victims–giving tzedakah, or charity, in their names is considered a great mitzvah and a blessing to their families–or using the phrase “am Yisrael chai.” It means “Israel lives.” Although the country in the MENA region is called Israel, this is not what the phrase refers to–the traditional patriarch of Judaism was named Jacob, and renamed as Israel following a wrestling match with a messenger of G-d. To say “am Yisrael chai” is to say his people, that is, the Jewish people, live.

And on that note …

5) In the coming days and weeks, you’re going to see a lot of people making this about Israel or Zionism. Please tell them to shut the fuck up. Israel, Zionism, and Jews are three completely different, albeit related, things. To wit: Israel is a geopolitical country situated on the site of our ancestral homeland and currently headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a safe homeland; and Jews are a group of people spread across six continents and most countries who are united by a common group of ancestors from the Levant (the part of the world now occupied by the geopolitical entity known as Israel). Saying the victims of this shooting had anything to do with the political situation in Israel would be like saying I, personally, am responsible for Vladimir Putin because I have a Russian ancestor. I speak exactly two words of Russian, have never been to Russia, have no family left living there (and haven’t for four generations), but I’m totally responsible for Russia. You see how ridiculous that sounds? The same applies to Jews and Israel. Please, please, PLEASE do not conflate this event with Israeli politics. I’m not saying Israeli politics aren’t a topic worth discussing–I’m saying this is not a discussion they belong in. Don’t let the powers that be (or the alt-right sleaze that sucks the dicks of the powers that be) distract from the topic at hand, which is “out of control guns meet out of control xenophobia and antisemitism,” by throwing OMG ISRAEL AND ZIONISM AND GLOBALISM into the mix.

And finally: yes, gentiles, this is okay for you to reblog. In fact I encourage it. And I will answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, if they’re asked in good faith. Please just follow the most basic tenet of Judaism, which is: don’t be a dick.

If you’re ready to stand and help, now is the time.

The lettuce cult… it is real…..

proposed lex porcia de comitio per brassicas: the candidates standing for the consulship assemble on the campus martius. the two who eat an entire head of cabbage fastest are then consuls for the coming year,

“The mos maiorum is built on cabbages”

I’m deceased.

i wish everything was quieter and softer and less often

“if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention” used to be such a powerful phrase but now it’s more accurate to say “if you’re not angry you’re probably exhausted by 5+ years of Panic Outrage Mode and are nearing the limit of your emotional range for reacting to this shit”

via @deadmomjokes

Universal HP Headcanons

I’ve been reading a lot of fanfiction lately and I’ve noticed (some weirdly specific) headcanons that seem to permeate the ENTIRE Harry Potter fandom. Add the ones you’ve noticed below!

- Hermione smells/tastes like cinnamon - it’s basically law

- Draco wears form-fitting clothing, full stop

- Harry cohabitates with Ron and/or Hermione post-Hogwarts for some period of time

- post-war reparations

- Therapy, lots of therapy