ethereal business cabaret

vampirism poses the question "what if there was a fundamental, horrible, unending well of want in your soul that, if truly satisfied, would lead to great pain for all those you hold closest and, in turn, their absolute and total revilement of you?" and naturally as a person with no problems I don't relate to this in any way at all.

vampirism also poses the question "what if someone you loved, through no fault of their own, needed something from you, and giving it to them and seeing them happy provided you the greatest joy, and you were the only one who could do it, but at the same time it was slowly draining all your life out of you?" which is also a completely unrelatable idea to me because I'm a normal person with no issues.

"ugh this is not what vampires are about :/ you've been poisoned by contemporary vampire romance"

VAMPIRES WERE BEING SEXY BEFORE DRACULA WAS EVEN A GLINT IN THE MILKMAN'S EYE

NEVER LET THE HATERS TELL YOU THAT VAMPIRES SHOULDN'T BE SAD AND HOT

#SEXYVAMPIRESFOREVER

Wow.... so you’re telling me you took an action that resulted in the death of one person...... to save the lives of many people.... who would have died if you did nothing??? that sounds so familiar

from john ciardi’s translation of “the inferno” by dante alighieri

#in this metaphor sometimes if i want to listen to some piano but there is only a violin #i will opt to listen to weird and potentially shitty violin music that’s more like piano over good violin music that is clearly violin #pluck and whack those strings music man any instrument can be percussion if you’re willing to become an enemy of god

#raw line #is this talking about reading amateur translations or

THANK YOU. MOSTLY? Like there’s elements of this even in a professional translation choosing not to localize something. It’s pretty much showing the seams of your work on purpose out of respect for the text. …Pivoted metaphors there but.

[image: the first paragraph of a page labeled “Translator’s Note”. it reads, “When the violin repeats what the piano has just played, it cannot make the same sounds and it can only approximate the same chords. It can, however, make recognizably the same “music,” the same air. But it can do so only when it is as faithful to the self-logic of the violin as it is to the self-logic of the piano.“]

#traduttore traditore #translator traitor #notice how the english words have fewer sounds in common than the italian words do #notice how the italian words have the same number of syllables and the english words don’t #every translation betrays the original somehow #I wonder how Ciardi betrayed Dante #that is one beautiful metaphor Ciardi is bringing in his own defense though

It has nothing to do with amateur translations. At least, not inherently. It’s also a major issue in professional translations, especially when the languages are very different or there is a massive gap in cultural context.

Localization is tuning your translation to fit the context you are translating it into, even if that means being less literally faithful to the original. In the original metaphor, localization is making that violin part the best violin part it can be instead of a shitty imitation of a piano. Sometimes you can do that and it works really well. But what if the piano is playing a chord? You usually have to pick only one note of that chord for the violin to play. In the same way, texts often have multiple layers of meaning to them, and by focusing on one and making it intelligible to the context you’re translating for, you have to leave out the other layers of meaning. You capture that one layer really well! but you have left out the others because there isn’t any way to have all of them at the same time in the language and context you are translating it into. Even if you accurately translate that one layer of meaning, leaving out the others can radically change the meaning of the work as a whole. (Usually be eliminating nuances.)

Then there’s the potential problem of what do you do if the cultural gap is too wide, if your target audience’s way of seeing the world is so different that you’d need an essay for them to grasp the meaning of a phrase, and even then they probably would miss some things. (Or sometimes the problem is that the translator doesn’t understand the cultural context they’re translating from or to–this is most common in people translating ancient texts, but sometimes happens even with modern texts, depending on what’s being translated and who is doing the translating.) How do you help the audience hear what the author was trying to say? What if there isn’t a way to make it be something the audience will recognize as “good violin music” without doing violence to the author’s intentions?

So sometimes translators intentionally don’t localize. They try to make their translation as much like the original as possible even if it makes less sense in their target language–even if, in this metaphor, that makes it bad violin music. What the tags call “weird and potentially shitty violin music that’s more like piano … pluck and whack those strings music man any instrument can be percussion if you’re willing to become an enemy of god.”

This is where you get debates about “word by word” translation (with lots of translation notes) as opposed to “thought by thought” translation. Are you going for something that replicates the meaning of the original as closely as possible even if the poetry is lost and your target audience finds it harder to understand and enjoy? Or do you go for something they’ll appreciate that captures the poetry of the original, even if meaning is lost or obscured?

Neither option is wrong; they’re trying to do different things.

really? another album? didn't she just make one??

taylor swift is the MCU of music

do you realize what you're wishing on me

Minnesota’s Giant Rainbow and Leather Pride Flags

June 28, 1998. Both flags measured approximately 50 feet wide and 75 feet long.

Friendly reminder that the leather flag predates almost every other flag. We owe this community to leather daddies and kinksters

In the era of corporate sanitization never forget it was leather daddies and S&M folks who protected some of the earliest pride parades.

“Bamboo is antifungal”

Because it’s rayon

“Eucalyptus fabric is cooling!”

Yeah, because it’s rayon

“We make clothing called seacell out of seaweed!”

Yeah I looked on your website it’s made by the lyocell process, which means-

-wait for it-

Listen. There is a list of actual plant fibers that are directly made into fabric: cotton, linen, ramie, some hemp. I’m sure I’m missing a couple.

But if you’re wondering “huh how did they turn that plant material into fabric,” 99% of the time? It’s RAYON.

All rayon is made by putting plant material in chemical soup, dissolving out everything but the cellulose, and turning the cellulose into filaments/fibers.

The source of the cellulose has zero effect on the eventual fabric.

Rayon made from bamboo or eucalyptus or seaweed is not any better than rayon from any other sources.

Don’t let companies mislead you!

Hold on I need to DuckDuckGo something

Damn this was supposed to be a joke but turns out it’s hard to get scientifically rigorous comparisons of environmental impact across textile products from a casual search. “It’s all fucking rayon” appears mostly true but also I’m finding plenty of claims that it’s more sustainable than cotton anyway.

But that’s not what this post was actually about anyway so like

So it's worth separating out two things here:

This post is mostly about the first thing. A lot of companies are giving rayon many many different names as a way of disguising that It's Just Rayon, and claiming the fabric has special qualities.

But cellulose is cellulose. The process of extruding it into filaments and making those filaments into fibers/yarn/fabric is what gives it different qualities: some rayon is silky, some is fuzzy, etc.

It's all great at absorbing sweat, and it all takes longer to dry, and it insulates okay until it gets damp at which point it's worse than wearing nothing, which is why it's often blended into other things. The really nice tops I have from Uniqlo's Heattech line are a blend of a couple of synthetics and rayon. They're warm for being so thin and stretchy, but don't make me sweaty-feeling at all. (In a conversation among people with ADHD I found out I'm not the only one who wears them nearly daily for 3/4ths of the year lol.)

The irony of how often it's compared to polyester in the notes of this post is that polyester can also be made into a billion different textures. I have polyester that feels like wearing a plastic tarp, but I also own polyester that's light and breezy and totally comfy in boiling heat. I also have some very soft polyester fleece, as many people do. It's all a matter of how the filaments are extruded and how they're made into fabric.

But to get into the environmental stuff:

People get really into which fabrics are more "sustainable."

And rayon currently is made, 99% of the time, via one of two processes: viscose and lyocell (Tencel is a brand name for the lyocell process). Viscose is an older method and far more common, to the point that if a fabric doesn't specify that it's lyocell (or cuproammonium) you can probably assume it's viscose. Viscose is, generally speaking, far more polluting and hazardous to the humans working in the factory as well. Lyocell uses what's called a "closed-loop" method, so it puts out way fewer pollutants. It's also more expensive, generally speaking. There is such a thing as "ecoviscose" but I haven't looked into it.

(Modal just means rayon made from beech trees and afaict doesn't differentiate which process. Cupro is made using a less-common process called "cuproammonium," and I'm not sure how polluting it is, but apparently in China it's sometimes called "ammonia silk" which is wild.)

Rayon does have two definite advantages, despite everything I said up there:

BUT THAT ALL SAID: every fabric requires something shitty, quite frankly. Cotton takes a TON of water and usually pesticides. Silk requires a lot of farming of mulberry and then electricity to warm the places where the silkworms live and also you have to cook the silkworms alive so they don't cut the fibers. Linen requires its own chemical soup to be turned into usable fibers unless you're making it from flax the old fashioned way which requires a lot of time and a shit-ton of effort. (Like seriously there's rippling, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling. And THEN you can spin it into thread.) Wool requires a lot of land etc for sheep, but also any wool item you own that's machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin!

And that's not getting into dying. But if you've ever dyed fabric at home you know that it usually requires careful handling and in many cases goggles. Those chemicals are often toxic as fuck.

If you're trying to be sustainable in your clothing choices, the fact is that the absolute best thing you can do is:

"What fiber is it made of" just matters way fucking less than buying fewer items of clothing and using them until they wear out.

But most people don't want to do those things. They want to know which brand of clothes is "sustainable."

The sustainable thing is to buy and throw away less clothes. That's it.

i know that a lot of people already know this, and that this may come across as condescending to those who do, but it has become increasingly clear to me that many people, particularly younger people, don't understand this but—

purity culture is more then just thinking sex is bad and evil and gross

purity culture is the belief that you can be corrupted, that there is an level of purity that can be tarnished by thinking or doing something deemed sinful or icky and that once you lose that purity, you are lesser then those who have not been "tainted". it's the belief that seeing, thinking, or doing something inherently nonharmful to others will fundamental change you in a negative way

purity culture is watching gory horror movies and being told that you are disgusting for finding it interesting to watch

purity culture is being told that violence in books, movies, games, etcetera will make you violent

purity culture is being told that wanting to hurt someone makes you bad, darkens your heart, whatever, even if they hurt you first, even if you have no plans to ever act on that desire

purity culture is being told to forgive your abuser, rapist, or even just people who have slighted and hurt you or else you will never fully heal, or that it makes you in someway bad too, or even just as bad as them

purity culture is being told that hating someone is equally to killing them, or wanting to kill them

purity culture is when people have intrusive thoughts that scare and harm them that make you uncomfortable, possibly even triggered, and telling them that they secretly want to do, have, etcetera, those things or else they wouldn't be thinking about it

purity culture is being told not to curse because it makes your mouth filthy, makes your heart filthy, makes you mean and bad and unpleasant

purity culture is being told that jealousy, anger, rage, disgust, and other stigmatized emotions are "bad" or "unhealthy" emotions

purity culture is refusing to let youths or even teenagers read or watch potential upsetting books, shows, movies, games, comics, etcetera out of fear they will act them out, become violent, possessed, unruly, etcetera

purity culture is being told that writing, drawing, or just in general making something dark and uncomfortable makes you gross and evil

purity culture is telling you that you have to portray bad things as bad or else people won't under that it's still bad, that it will normalize this bad thing, that people can be corrupted by it because they can't think for themselves whether this bad thing you portrayed as good is not actually good

purity culture is thinking bad things done for good reasons is just as bad as bad things done for bad reasons, like a mother stealing baby formula to keep her child alive versus someone stealing your pet because they wanted it are equally wrong

purity culture is being told that drinking, smoking, being addicted to drugs, unemployed, homeless, makes you lesser and filthy and corrupts you

purity culture is believing that someone wanting to do something bad, but choosing not to do it because they know it's bad, still makes them bad because they still want to do it

purity culture is thinking people getting tattoos, dying their hair, piercing, wearing make up, getting cosmetic surgeries secretly hate themselves and are disrespecting themselves

purity culture is so much more then just sex. it expands so much further then just christian/religious people and communities

purity culture is doing something bad, and when you try to seek atonement or correct the mistake, that it is unforgivable and will alway be a blight on you, even if others can "learn to look past it"

if you think that someone thinking or do something that does not cause any inherent harm makes them lesser, makes them bad, makes them gross, corrupts them or can lead them to corrupting others, you are pushing purity culture

this is coming from a women raised in an extremely sex negative christian household who spent years hating herself and her body due to sex based purity culture being pushed onto her from the age of six due to early puberty by the way, so don't try to gate keep purity culture on this post as only a religious and or sexual thing

Gentrification creates a stifling homogeneity in urban areas that makes it less suited for the everyday lives of the lower class and more suited towards the leisure and tourism of those with expendable income.

An old, decrepit laundromat gets replaced by an upscale bakery? And people are mad? It’s not that the poor hate organic vegan cupcakes, it’s that most of us don’t have a way to do laundry in our own home.

Run-down corner stores replaced by hand-made designer clothing boutiques? We don’t hate your eco-fabric shawl, but I can’t eat that for dinner after work like I could have a can of beans I grabbed from that corner store when I don’t have time to take the bus to the real grocery store after work.

What gentrification brings in and of itself is not typically bad, it’s that gentrification brings institutions of leisure and pleasure and makes it so that the poor have to go farther out of their way for basic necessities. It turns low-income living spaces into local tourist attractions. It can even create food deserts by putting restaurants, grocery stores, etc. in that the majority of the lower class cannot afford.

Imagine if someone totally renovated your house and turned it into a mini theme park - they took away your sleeping space, where you prepare food, where you clean yourself and get ready for your day, and replaced it with things that will please people who are visiting, who have their own homes they can go back to, who are here not for their entire life but just as a distraction from their otherwise mundane existence. It’s not that you hate theme parks, it’s not like you’ve never been to a theme park and vow to never visit one again. It’s just that you need to live! To survive! And the leisure of those who have more than you should not invalidate your existence.

I am glad this has made the rounds. Some people feel a dense misunderstanding or misinterpretation concerning gentrification, and I think it helps to hear a description/explanation of what gentrification is from those who are both affected by it and educated by the culture from which it hails. I and many others enjoy some of the delights of gentrification while simultaneously having their livelihoods threatened by it. 

I unironically feel like we have to blame Tiktok, Capcut, and iPhones for making our generation believe that video production is simple and cheap, and that you don't need real equipment for it

hold on I wanna break my point AND tags down some more:

Tiktok and Capcut: Introduced the general population to things like presets for editing and automatic captions, making people believe that video editing is easy, and video captions are easy

Capcut and Tiktok's editing presets are ugly, not at all smooth, and completely unprofessional. The automatic captions are always wrong, and people never bother to correct them, because they think that's too much work. Those captions are unaccessible.

iPhones/Apple: Ran a whole campaign about how you could shoot a movie using an iPhone. Self explanatory.

either way, people seem to be completely ignorant of how expensive the PCs are that are needed to run professional editing programs. not to mention how expensive it is to buy the hard drives needed for professional editing. also, the editors are people who need to pay their bills, too, and they deserve fair wages.

so no, it really isn't a "they don't NEED those employees" kind of situation with Watcher, and also, you guys are deranged for wishing people would lose their jobs just so you can have free content (which, people will screen record the paywalled shit and repost it anyways, so WHO cares??)

The automated captions on TikTok can't always be edited either. On my Android, my captions don't show up until days later, and there's no way for me to change them.

Something to ponder

To whom it may concern.

“Please please pleas put me back in the fucking water you asshole, I’m not a fucking dog you ignorant piece of shit, you’re gonna kill me with your fucking stupidity. I’m not a fucking pet. I don’t want to be in your house!”

This is Mizore. They are the baby of Arale (aka Arare), and a whitecoat ringed seal seal who has been raised by humans at Osaka Aquarium due to complications with the birth. Mizore would have died if humans had not intervened to save their life. This baby is well loved by the trained staff and being very well taken care of at the aquarium with their mom. Were this a wild seal people were playing with, this would be an issue. Many baby seals die each year, drowned by people who force them into the water. Seals are mammals, not fish, and don’t have gills to breathe in the water. Baby seals do not have the stamina to swim for long periods of time and their water soaked fur makes this even more difficult. Pinniped pups, such as seals, will hide on land while their mothers search for food. Not only can chasing the baby into the water drown them, if they do survive that, their mother likely will not be able to find them, and if they haven’t begun eating fish yet they’ll needlessly starve to death a slow and incredibly painful death… which is exponentially worse if people keep chasing them back into the water. I know Hellebore (of SRI) almost died from that until rescue workers intervened! Many unnamed others are not so lucky. Please do some reasearch before commenting on what is best for an animal’s welfare, or you may end up spreading misinformation leading to more animal suffering and deaths. And if you find an animal in need of help? CALL THE LOCAL RESCUE! They will be able to give you the best advice on what to do or send someone to help, as quite a lot of the time when humans take action they accidentally make a situation much worse.

the weird thing is, when I view my job as some sort of background extra it becomes much more palatable. people go to a library and see me shelving a stack of books in my cardigan and glasses (now with glasses chain!) and they go "yeah, that's exactly right. that's how it's supposed to be in a library." and for some reason, that's comforting? the work is whatever, and the customers are customers, but sometimes it feels like I'm being paid just to make sure this places looks right, and I find that very fun.

stop being funnier than me on my own posts

Even if Minimum wage jobs were just for teenagers that wouldn't justify such low wages. Call me crazy but if a child can work like an adult and puts in the amount of effort and responsibility of an adult and is expected to work as intensely as an adult would. They should get paid like an adult actually. It's so weird how in this country children are expected to face the burdens of adulthood and be ok with having none of the rights of adulthood.

That's it. That's the dream. I'm almost mad that that's the dream.

That's half the dream. The other half is being fairie fucking godmother to everyone on the planet.

See, I had 100k for a hot minute. Doesn't matter why. But for nearly a calendar year, I picked up the tab every chance I got, i lavished people with gifts, I took a friend to Greece, I paid for healthcare for myself and a few other people, for lawyers to help someone get out of an abusive marriage, Christmas presents for a single mom of 3.

It felt incredible. Just to take away the worry and say, "I've got you." Instacart groceries to a grieving friend of a friend across town. Pay the unexpected car repairs. Gift a young artist a yearlong subscription to Procreate.

That's why I'll never understand billionaires. If you could fix it, if money could actually make even one life better, why would you not do it? Even just for the kick? Hell, i don't care if it feeds your ego. Be Tony Stark, be Superman, idgaf. When you'll never be able to spend all that you have, even if you some up every damn day like it was your job, if you could end world hunger six times over for the price of a social media company, why wouldn't you just DO IT?

I don't have a coherent conclusion to this, except that if I ever meet Jeff Bezos, I'll beat him to death with my bare fists.

So my sister inherited all the rizz & Game™ in our family, she's never talking to less than like 5 guys at a time, & last year she was telling me about one of the guys she was talking to & she was like "yeah I kinda feel bad bc he's Mormon & on his mission rn & they're like not even supposed to text other people much less sext strangers" & I spit out my water & she continued "but he told me he doesn't really believe in Mormonism & he's only doing his mission bc it was his dying mother's final wish, so like it's ok right?" & I'm just sitting there mouth agape

Tag yourself I’m the “Overdressed and Underappreciated”. Artist : http://www.mattadrian.com/ 

If you thought “hm those styles of art AND speech seem very familiar,” you are right because it is the same person that did these

Oh my god damn

my favorite, which I often quote

people like to hate on homestuck as if there was any other franchise that could have produced both undertale And the locked tomb. lets be real. nothing else has ever had that kind of range except maybe the bible

#im sorry whata #could you please expand on the locked tomb bit?? #pls an thnkyou

im always genuinely surprised when people dont know this. TLTs author was a notorious homestuck fic writer. GTN's dedication 'for pT' is a reference to her partner/fellow fic writer paratactician. so yeah. another among a very long list of talented creators who cut their teeth (or at the very least furthered their craft) on homestuck stuff