ngl I find it weird and only weird in the tadc fandom to sexualize Ragatha, not because of my own queerplatonic headcanons but I had raggedy anne and andy dolls, and a jack-in-the-box and something about me is so "no thats a kids toy" about it. Sexualizing her borderline feels goofy, like making a sexy furby

Okay, but given the nature of the Internet I'm sure people have unironically made sexy furbys.

i read CS Lewis’ A Grief Observed one time years ago and i’m still not recovered from it

— A Grief Observed: part i-ii, C.S. Lewis x

I need y'all to understand that he wrote this famous passage in the middle of her brief remission -

I saw this on quora and thought it was cool and wanted to share it on here.  Its a long read but crazy.  Its from Erik Painter

They did try. And they did capture Navajo men. However, they were unsuccessful in using them to decipher the code. The reason was simple. The Navajo Code was a code that used Navajo. It was not spoken Navajo. To a Navajo speaker, who had not learned the code, a Navajo Code talker sending a message sounds like a string of unconnected Navajo words with no grammar. It was incomprehensible. So, when the Japanese captured a Navajo man named Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines, he could not really help them even though they tortured him. It was nonsense to him.

The Navajo Code had to be learned and memorized. It was designed to transmit a word by word or letter by letter exact English message. They did not just chat in Navajo. That could have been understood by a Navajo speaker, but more importantly translation is never, ever exact. It would not transmit precise messages. There were about 400 words in the Code.

The first 31 Navajo Marines created the Code with the help of one non-Navajo speaker officer who knew cryptography. The first part of the Code was made to transmit English letters. For each English letter there were three (or sometimes just two) English words that started with that letter and then they were translated into Navajo words. In this way English words could be spelled out with a substitution code. The alternate words were randomly switched around. So, for English B there were the Navajo words for Badger, Bear and Barrel. In Navajo that is: nahashchʼidí, shash, and tóshjeeh. Or the letter A was Red Ant, Axe, or Apple. In Navajo that is: wóláchííʼ, tsénił , or bilasáana. The English letter D was: bįįh=deer, and łééchąąʼí =dog, and chʼįįdii= bad spiritual substance (devil).

For the letter substitution part of the Code the word “bad” could be spelled out a number of ways. To a regular Navajo speaker it would sound like: “Bear, Apple, Dog”. Or other times it could be “ Barrel, Red Ant, Bad Spirit (devil)”. Other times it could be “Badger, Axe, Deer”. As you can see, for just this short English word, “bad” there are many possibilities and to the combination of words used. To a Navajo speaker, all versions are nonsense. It gets worse for a Navajo speaker because normal Navajo conjugates in complex ways (ways an English or Japanese speaker would never dream of). These lists of words have no indicators of how they are connected. It is utterly non-grammatical.

Then to speed it up, and make it even harder to break, they substituted Navajo words for common military words that were often used in short military messages. None were just translations. A few you could figure out. For example, a Lieutenant was “one silver bar” in Navajo. A Major was “Gold Oak Leaf” n Navajo. Other things were less obvious like a Battleship was the word for Whale in Navajo. A Mine Sweeper was the Navajo word for Beaver.

A note here as it seems hard for some people to get this. Navajo is a modern and living language. There are, and were, perfectly useful Navajo words for submarines and battleships and tanks. They did not “make up words because they had no words for modern things”. This is an incorrect story that gets around in the media. There had been Navajo in the military before WWII. The Navajo language is different and perhaps more flexible than English. It is easy to generate new words. They borrow very few words and have words for any modern thing you can imagine. The words for telephone, or train, or nuclear power are all made from Navajo stem roots.

Because the Navajo Marines had memorized the Code there was no code book to capture. There was no machine to capture either. They could transmit it over open radio waves. They could decode it in a few minutes as opposed to the 30 minutes to two hours that other code systems at the time took. And, no Navajo speaker who had not learned the Code could make any sense out of it.

The Japanese had no published texts on Navajo. There was no internationally available description of the language. The Germans had not studied it at the time. The Japanese did suspect it was Navajo. Linguists thought it was in the Athabaskan language family. That would be pretty clear to a linguist. And Navajo had the biggest group of speakers of any Athabaskan language. That is why they tortured Joe Kieyoomia. But, he could not make sense of it. It was just a list of words with no grammar and no meaning.

For Japanese, even writing the language down from the radio broadcasts would be very hard. It has lots of sounds that are not in Japanese or in English. It is hard to tell where some words end or start because the glottal stop is a common consonant. Frequency analysis would have been hard because they did not use a single word for each letter. And some words stood for words instead of for a letter. The task of breaking it was very hard.

Here is an example of a coded message:

béésh łigai naaki joogii gini dibé tsénił áchį́į́h bee ąą ńdítį́hí joogi béésh łóó’ dóó łóóʼtsoh

When translated directly from Navajo into English it is:

“SILVER TWO BLUE JAY CHICKEN HAWK SHEEP AXE NOSE KEY BLUE JAY IRON FISH AND WHALE. “

You can see why a Navajo who did not know the Code would not be able to do much with that. The message above means: “CAPTAIN, THE DIVE BOMBER SANK THE SUBMARINE AND BATTLESHIP.”

“Two silver bars” =captain. Blue jay= the. Chicken hawk= dive bomber. Iron fish = sub. Whale= battleship. “Sheep, Axe Nose Key”=sank. The only normal use of a Navajo word is the word for “and” which is “dóó ”. For the same message the word “sank” would be spelled out another way on a different day. For example, it could be: “snake, apple, needle, kettle”.

Here, below on the video, is a verbal example of how the code sounded. The code sent below sounded to a Navajo speaker who did not know the Code like this: “sheep eyes nose deer destroy tea mouse turkey onion sick horse 362 bear”. To a trained Code Talker, he would write down: “Send demolition team to hill 362 B”. The Navajo Marine Coder Talker then would give it to someone to take the message to the proper person. It only takes a minute or so to code and decode.

I love what humans can do with language.

All of these need to get on my desk IMMEDIATELY

"This is my weird son. He can't climb for shit, but he is handsome and strong."

#cats be like#is anybody adopt that#and don't wait for an answer

Everything that isn't food is a cat from the perspective of a cat. Cats can look upon the true form of eldritch monstrosities and keep their sanity. They'd just see another cat. A fucking weird-looking cat, but a cat nonetheless.

An always-reblog. 😄

Killed a spider n now I feel bad :/

Why did you say that

Okay, so it takes 9 months to make a baby human; that’s about 3 kg.

A baby spider, by contrast, weighs about 1 mg; roughly 3 million times lighter.

So...you could give birth to a healthy baby spider in about...8 seconds? Like it’s not a big inconvenience.

tumblr user saturnine-powerbomb is on the other side of the cave, churning out spiders as fast as Georg can shovel them into his mouth

"who knows what they still do on tumblr"

us:

reblog only if you’ve received less than 1000 boops! we can all get each other to “max”

going for a world record

if you see this post boop the everloving fuck out of me and also RB it

make me regret this post

AJ attempts to flirt (badly)

Ghost Trick is so funny because it's one of those games where people keep telling you to play it and after a while you start getting curious so you go "whatever" and try it

Then you're playing it and the thing happens which leads to the thing and ultimately gets you to THE thing and then you finish it and are like "I have to tell people"

So you go on social media to post about how this was a downright mindblowing experience but are like "Oh no what do I say to not reveale too much?"

You then type "Play Ghost Trick" and hit post like some sort of drone and you are 100% right to do so

Anyway play Ghost Trick

An excerpt from the trial of Elinor Crane, who was arrested in Middlesex in 1693 on suspicion of burglary. A witness claimed one of the burglars was a woman in men's clothing, and Elinor had previously been seen in the area dressed as a man.

"But the Court asking her why she went in Mans Apparel, the Prisoner replyed, She went to Wooe a Widow. Upon the whole Matter the Jury brought her in not Guilty."

(source: Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials, April 26, 1693.)

#'why were you wearing pants?' 'hot milfs in my area' 'understandable - next case'

I really think people have forgotten just how bad things were under the Trump Administration. Literally every day there was news about some service being cut or someone terrible appointed somewhere they shouldn't be or what have you. He constantly flirted with WW3 and military dictatorship. It was such a blur of badness that there aren't big standouts for people to point to to make him "the XYZ president." it was everything. all the time. Why do we not remember this.

Remember how everyone learned Zelenskyys name? he wasn't the presiden of Ukraine standing up against a longshot defense against a Russian invasion. He was that guy that Trump tried to extort in order to get blackmail against Joe Biden.

Can anyone name the current secretary of education? I can't. But I can list the shitty things Betsy DeVos did

He literally signed an executive order blocking people from six (primarily Muslim) countries from entering the United States a week after he took office. A week after he took office, we had people on airplanes back to the States getting turned away. We had people with legitimate visas getting turned away. Permanent residents were being detained at airports for days. People with dual citizenship didn't know what the fuck to do. There were lawyers camped out at airports. There were protests. We went from taking 1800 refugees a week to taking 2. 2 refugees. The entire time the executive order was in effect.

A week after he took office he did this. A fucking week.

Here is a list of what Joe Biden did on his first day in office

It's a lot of smaller, occasionally kind of policy wonk-ish stuff. He didn't save the world and create an eternal paradise in his first hundred days. But a lot of people could breathe a little easier, whether or not they knew the work that went into it.

And, you know, people weren't being held indefinitely at airports while Trump fought to revoke their visas for being the wrong kind of Muslim (aka the poor kind), so there's that.

I don’t know about you but I’m so sick of that omnipresent association of sports/fitness with weight loss as the ultimate goal.

(PS: I’m not sure how efficient punching people is for building muscle mass but I’m afraid she’s had a lot of opportunities so I guess four pounds is probably realistic?)

I wish… I WISH I could somehow reblog this HARDER and with MORE LOVE.  Sorry to put more non-art stuff in my main tumblr here, but goddamn I feel this so hard.  I’ve been hitting the gym with the goal of making a good habit, so that when winter comes around and the inevitable S.A.D. creeps back into my life, I’m more likely to get some exercise as a coping mechanism just out of habit.  I’m also weightlifting because I want to get strong (like ox, you might say). 

I do not care if I lose weight, I’m not keeping track of my pounds, and if I stay chubby but get stronger I will be just as fucking happy.  So glad I found this comic, and so glad I found your art Ephi!  New watcher ahoy!  <3

This is a Good Comic. 

PLEASE HELP TRANS WOMEN!!!!!!!!!

i love trans women so much but things are just so so bad for them right now so please god just do anything you can to be on their side!!!!!!!!

Small things you can do:

One more reblog to emphasise how serious i am:

When I first came out, I wasn't comfortable in public. Tall, muscular, thinning hair, deep voice. I remember one night I spent like 2 hours getting ready so I could go get burgers from a place that didn't do delivery but when I looked at myself in the mirror, I got so dysphoric I cried my makeup off. I went to Facebook and posted "I wanted to go for burgers at _____ but I guess Dysphoria wins today"

About 20 minutes later, i got a call from a coworker. "Hey I'm pulling up and parking now, what do you want?" And about 15 minutes later she arrived at my door with a bag of food.

She told me my outfit was cute and offered to take me places if I had errands i didn't feel safe doing alone. I took her up in that twice.

Another cis coworker took me to torrid to buy my first cute underwear. Another cis coworker went with me to the courthouse to get my name change done.

It's like, 1-2 hours out of your week and something we'll remember forever.

⭐ Fiction writers are allowed to put elements in their work that make their audience uncomfortable.

⭐ Fiction writers are allowed to put elements in their work that are tasteless or crass.

⭐ Fiction writers are allowed to put sexual elements and acts in their work for any purpose, whether to titillate, horrify, convey plot or character, or any other reason.

⭐ Fiction writers are allowed to put violent and horrific elements and acts in their work for any purpose, whether to titillate, horrify, convey plot or character, or any other reason.

⭐ A fiction writer does not have to justify the reason they included uncomfortable, tasteless, crass or sexual elements in their work to their audience.

⭐ A fiction writer is allowed to write a protagonist doing horrific, violent, sexual or crass things in the story without having to painstakingly explain to the audience that they don't approve of the character's actions.

⭐ A fiction writer does not have to clarify which elements of their work are supposed to be horrifying vs titillating, comforting vs uncomfortable etc.

⭐ A fiction writer is allowed to put any element into their work for any reason without having to painstakingly explain why they are there to their audience.