Fandom

Dress from the Art Deco era.

“Thin brows are back in” “skinny jeans are back” “wolfcuts are out” “this style of eyeshadow is soo trendy right now” “big asses are out, slim figures are in”

Hey do you guys ever make your own decisions or form your own ideas on how you would personally like to look that’s not based around what’s currently being sold to you. Is that not possible

It took Oscar Wilde like 65K words to say this exact thing.

start out with the usual “there are rats in my basement can you help” but make the entire campaign fighting rats and you discover an entire lost civilization full of rats until you finally defeat the king rat after months of rat fighting and then when you finally escape the rat hell the tavern keeper says “thanks” and gives you 15 cents

So, my DM threw out our last campaign and told us all to show up next session with just our dice, leaving our collected materials and sheets behind. When we arrived he gave us a choice of 0 level NPCs. We were now shit-tier nobodies in a shit-tier town in a shit-tier kingdom in shit-tier nowhere. Our party consisted of: Myself, the village blacksmith who can’t really make anything much better than simple or martial weapons, and even then can mostly just make horseshoes and nails and shit.  The village healer, does not into magic, does not into potions beyond herbal teas, and does not into healing beyond a vague understanding of good hygiene and drinking fresh water. A farmer. A fisherman.

We started off on a fine new morning, and found out that the local innkeeper had rats in the cellar, eating up his foodstuffs and doing your typical low-level rat shenanigans from every RPG. We were offered the chance to try and locate some sort of wandering adventurer to handle this. We chose to settle the affair ourselves. Total party kill. We rerolled. This time, we played a farmhand, a stableboy, a messenger, and a woodworker. We prepared ourselves ahead of time, after hearing of the grisly deaths of the village’s only blacksmith, the local healer, one of the fishermen, and the farmhand’s boss. We knew exactly how we’d take care of the rats, by sealing em away in that cellar and walling her up. The woodworker prepared his sturdiest boards. We went into the inn only to find the innkeeper dead, and we were beset upon by the rats from the shadows. We had, in our former lives, forgotten to close the door behind us. We attempted yet again, this time as a huntsman, the village drunk, the gatekeeper. and a tailor. We thought things would be a lot simpler, after all, we now had a huntsman, who while not necessarily a ranger or rough and tumble rogue, could at least operate a bow. Our plan, this time, was to prepare an ambush outside the door of the inn. Our huntsman was ready with his bow and arrow, and he also had a bear trap of sorts that we set just by the door’s entrance. We threw open the door. Nothing. We knew they were still inside, perhaps in the cellar, because we could hear the gnawing. The chewing. The terrible chewing. We coerced our village drunk to go inside with a torch, just to rouse the rats and flush them out. He did so, waving the torch around just inside the inn before sprinting back outside. And into the bear trap. We tried to assist him. And then the rats were upon us. Our huntsman got off two shots. We bludgeoned a wounded rat to death. but they were too much for us. There were five rats in all, four remaining after the battle. Now the rats were loose in the village. This time we were playing as a traveling merchant who had been staying at the inn, a baker. a cobbler and a librarian. A day had passed. The children of the rats grow strong on the flesh of our neighbors, and yet worse terrors such as spiders and a snake plagued our village. Windows and doors are boarded up, the streets are empty. We provided them enough food, after all. Not that it sated them. We had a new mission, now. Survival. Escape. We couldn’t convince those who remained in the village (something like 20, ourselves included) that it was wiser to flee. After all. some had lived here their whole lives. A couple were too old to run, a couple too young.

We were only able to convince one other, a minstrel (not a bard, sir, the man’s music is passable at best and certainly not magical), to make the dash to the gate with us. We waited until the dawn. thinking that with the coming light the creatures that had invaded our peaceful village might return to the shadows. The cobbler, ironically, in his well-made shoes, reached the thick, towering log gate of our village first. We could hear the rats scrambling after us. practically biting at our heels. The minstrel fell to them. we didn’t turn back. The cobbler turned. his face pale. screaming. “IT’S LOCKED!” The gatekeeper had the key. The village was now a tomb. This is, unfortunately, where our tale ends. We resumed a more traditional, and regular campaign, and several weeks went by of standard DnD. At one point, while hiking up in the hills, near a forest, we came across an old, abandoned village. The gates had been forced open from the outside, by bandits most likely, perhaps the orcish raiders we were after. There was little remarkable about the town and we found little to take with us. It seemed as though nobody had survived. A few bodies, likely dead for weeks, little but gnawed bones remaining, littered the village’s one road, and the story was more or less the same in each of the houses. Some of which were quite disturbing. The poor townsfolk had been driven mad, it seemed, from cabin fever. It quite puzzled us, and we theorized out loud what might have happened, if bandits had maybe invaded and forced the villagers to stay in their homes while making use of the village’s supplies. It wasn’t until we reached the inn, and found four corpses and a bear trap, one still caught in the jaws, outside the door that we realized where we were. We never bitched about helping out some random npc with his rat problem again.

[ID: A photo of a large rock by a body of water. On the rock, there are 3 distinctly frog shaped wet spots along the path a frog presumably hopped out of the water and across the rock. End ID]

gordan ramsey: oh fuck me. I'm in a game where the only way to learn is by playing, the only way to win is by learning, and the only way to begin is by beginning. fucking hell, he's been here the whole time. jesus christ.

Say the quiet part out loud: they believe that black people could never earn their way into college legitimately, therefore all black students are affirmative action. That’s the foundation of their actual argument, not demographics. They don’t care about statistics and ratios, they care that schools aren’t segregated.

^ This part.

Not saying that having the information doesn't help, sure it won't change shitheels' minds, but it's good to have for the people they haven't pulled over, and to help the people being harmed to know that YES the numbers DO say what you see, it's NOT subjective.

forever fascinated by the many machinations of brennan's mind. image description in alt text, below, or at this reblog, originally from @arctic-hands

[Image Description: tweet by Brennan Lee Mulligan, @ BrennanLM. It says "While the statement 'Even educated fleas can do it' may at first seem inclusive, it actually suggests an insect society sharply divided by class, where access to institutions of higher learning is seen as prerequisite to the full range of natural emotions. In this TED talk I will–". In response, Sam Reich, @ SamReich, tweets "for the love of god brennan it's valentine's day", to which Brennan responds "Not for the working class fleas it's not! #Solidarity ["solidarity" in allcaps]" End I.D.]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

why is deciding what to eat so exhausting. I JUST figured that out several hours ago and now I have to do it again?? why can’t I be like a gila monster and eat a large meal and be good for a few months

I was out with a friend tonight doing one of my fave things. Reading the backs of romance novels aloud. Found this gem.

This is honestly the most wild sounding romance novel I have ever seen and thought it might brighten someone’s day.

OK FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON’T REALIZE, SANDRA HILL IS THE WOMAN WHO WROTE “ROUGH AMD READY” ANOTHER EROTIC VIKING NOVEL. SOME OF THE MORE MEMORABLE QUOTES BEING:

“As Hilda’s buttermilk bosoms squished up against his granite abs, Torolf almost had a dick aneurysm.”

“Torolf entered her like she was a lottery. His engorged pecker pushed inside her and she felt fulfilled with sexual fulfillment.”

“Her body was like a beautiful flower that was opening and somebody was pushing their dick inside it.”

YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE I HAVE READ THIS TO AT COLLEGE. ONE GUY COMPLETELY LOST IT FOR LIKE 10 MINUTES AFTER HEARING THE PHRASE “DICK ANEURYSM.”

it’s wild that people assume the writer is just some stupid woman who doesn’t know how to do good literature instead of realizing this magnificent lady has figured out how to get paid to write the coolest and also funniest shit in the world, presumably in between justifiably cranking it

this gallon of milk is disabled because it has not been linked to a google account! to enable drinking, make sure to visit milk.google.com/activate before the expiration date and click "yes" when prompted for full device administrator permissions

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

love this egyptian figurine of a woman baking bread in the brooklyn museum. she looks exactly like me while i'm waiting for my food to be done in the microwave. truly an eternal experience

alright i have permission to derail this so im derailing it

this figure is fucking. wild. a sequence of events: me and @thatlittleegyptologist seeing this immediately: okay not the point but she is NOT egyptian. that woman eats olives. she does not drink chunky beer. she does not believe the sun is rolled around by a unit of a dung beetle. she is GUH-REEK brooklyn museum: greek greekity greek btw she's in the egyptian collection us: ok why though. look i'll grant this does look like egyptian baking scenes but SHE isnt egyptian. and 5th century BCE is far too early for greek-egyptian shenanigans. something isnt right here @ikchen: do they just not have a separate collection for classical and this where it gets. more? fucked up you, i, and every other normal person would from a museum read "egyptian, classical, ancient near east" as three separate designations applied to the same object. egyptian. classical. ANE. which can absolutely be the case! things can be more than one thing

but no. that is, in fact, all one collection. that's not three links that's one link. all of classical and near eastern civ is contained within egypt. thutmose would be thrilled.

there is a minoan tentacle vase on display in the egyptian old kingdom room. there are greek coins and wreaths in an egyptian art exhibition

egyptian is always listed first. half the shit in it never saw egypt.

there is a link to ask them questions and im tempted to ask if they're aware that greece is not located within egypt

Aside from the fact that she truly is 'waiting for my microwave mac n cheese after a long day at work' she really sticks out as 'not very Egyptian'.

500 BCE is far too early for a figure like that to be in Egypt. If you told me it was 200 BCE I'd be like 'yeah sure that seems plausible', but for what's supposed to be Late Period Egypt? nahhhhh. Wilbour, as somecunttookmyurl said, never wrote anything down so the provenance is...hand wavy at best and thus the date should be considered a little that way too.

It's not impossible for it to have come from Egypt, but when three Egyptologists sit there like 'hang on, wait what?' in the group chat we thought we better have a closer look. They really do have their Egyptology, Classical, ANE collections all as a single collection which is wild in itself from a museum perspective because it leads to confusing entries like this:

I truly want to know what this helmet was doing in that exhibition considering it's from...Greece.

I've no idea what's going on, but it's enrichment for the group chat at least.

WAIT HANG ON I THINK I SOLVED THE DATING MYSTERY

they uh. think they hellenistic period was 5th century BCE

she's dated 5th century BCE despite being probably. not that. but that's because they don't know.... when the hellenistic was? i think?

so she probably is, in fact, 2nd or 3rd century like we initially thought and labelled as 5th because someone's timelines are off by a couple centuries

ok good job everyone hit the showers

good riddance live

one of the best academic paper titles

for those who don't speak academia: "according to our MRI machine, dead fish can recognise human emotions. this suggests we probably should look at the results of our MRI machine a bit more carefully"

I hope everyone realises how incredibly important this dead fish study is. This was SO fucking important.

I still don’t understand

So basically, in the psych and social science fields, researchers would (I don't know if they still do this, I've been out of science for awhile) sling around MRIs like microbiolosts sling around metagenomic analyses. MRIs can measure a lot but people would use them to measure 'activity' in the brain which is like... it's basically the machine doing a fuckload of statistics on brain images of your blood vessels while you do or think about stuff. So you throw a dude in the machine and take a scan, then give him a piece of chocolate cake and throw him back in and the pleasure centres light up. Bam! Eating chocolate makes you happy, proven with MRI! Simple!

These tests get used for all kinds of stuff, and they get used by a lot of people who don't actually know what they're doing, how to interpret the data, or whether there's any real link between what they're measuring and what they're claiming. It's why you see shit going around like "men think of women as objects because when they look at a woman, the same part of their brain is active as when they look at a tool!" and "if you play Mozart for your baby for twenty minutes then their imagination improves, we imaged the brain to prove it!" and "we found where God is in the brain! Christians have more brain activity in this region than atheists!"

There are numerous problems with this kind of science, but the most pressing issue is the validity of the scans themselves. As I said, there's a fair bit of stats to turn an MRI image into 'brain activity', and then you do even more stats on that to get your results. Bennett et. al.'s work ran one of these sorts of experiments, with one difference -- they used a dead salmon instead of living human subjects. And they got positive results. The same sort of experiment, the same methodology, the same results that people were bandying about as positive results. According to the methodology in common use, dead salmon can distinguish human facial expressions. Meaning one of two things:

I cannot overstate just how many papers were completely fucking destroyed by this experiment. Entire careers of particularly lazy scientists were built on these sorts of experiments. A decent chunk of modern experimental neuropsychology was resting on it. Which shows that science is like everything else -- the best advances are motivated by spite.