i say "my blog" but is it really?

Offline due to my qualms & ailments

Online due to my qualms & ailments

qualms & ailments due to my Online

Silk is a fiber.

Satin is a way to weave fibers.

Silk can be woven into satin.

Silk can be woven into many other kinds of fabric.

Many fibers can be woven into satin

(well, many shiny fibers--cotton woven in the same way creates sateen.)

Shiny fibers that aren't silk can be woven (or knit) into shiny fabrics that aren't satin.

"Silk" and "Satin" are neither synonyms nor antonyms.

One is a building block, the other is a thing that's built

#also note #flannel is a weave not a pattern

If I may be completely pedantic...

Flannel is neither--it's either a function of the yarns from which it's woven, or, more commonly, it's a finish.

The base of flannel fabric is usually a loosely-woven regular plain weave or a twill, and is most associated with yarn dyed plaid/tartan, but it can also be a single color or printed.

What makes it flannel is the fuzziness (technically known as the nap), which can come from being loosely woven from yarns made of short-staple fibers, or from literally being brushed until it's fuzzy.

In old times, the dried seed heads of a thistle-like plant called teasel were used (and the process of raising the nap was called teasing, which leads to the use of the word 'tease' in phrases like 'tease out the meaning' or 'teased hair'.) Industrial fabric production replaced the dried seed heads with metal combs. Hobby weavers often still use teasel (which is an invasive plant in North America.)

Also in old times, flannel was made from wool, but now it's most associated with cotton, and polyester can be part of it, too, although that's going to guarantee pilling, because pilling happens when naturally-shed loose fibers are too strong to break off the way they do with natural fibers.

And, to get extra pedantic, the kind of fabric sold as flannel children's wear or in places like Joann Fabric as flannel is actually usually flannelette, which is a weaker, very loosely-woven, napped cotton.

see I knew all this but my brain has now seized on the question: if it was flannel when it was manufactured, does it remain flannel when it’s six years later and all the nap has worn completely off and it’s just a nice soft but somewhat coarsely woven cotton shirt with no nap or fuzzyness to speak of anymore. 

all I know is, if it's flannelette, it probably won't last for six years 😅

I know we are all like "people in caveman times would drill holes in their head to relieve headaches" andwe go oh that's so stupid that's so dumb but like. then I get a headache and I'm like.ooooh I get it I get it. Grug prepare the drill.

I think we need to both bring back and strongly enforce the concept of a miniseries. If you’re making a TV show that’s really a serialised movie doled out in forty-minute instalments, you get five episodes, max; for anything longer, each individual episode is required to have a discernible plot with a beginning, middle and end. You can have one (1) two-parter-with-a-cliffhanger per season if you really must, but only if you’ve been a very good boy.

(Like, I understand that people like Big Plots, but there’s a vast middle ground between purely episodic television and structuring each season as a serialised ten-hour movie that’s written with the explicit assumption that it’s being watched all in one go and nothing fucking happens until like episode eight. Basically the only genre of television that still routinely does the “structurally self-contained episodes that fit together into a big overarching metaplot” thing these days is YA cartoons – which probably explains a lot about why so many adults are watching them!)

I think it should be illegal to write a good song that’s under three minutes long. What am I supposed to do? Listen to it 84 times in a row?? Well I’m gonna

Incredible take. This post was about a song from 1974.

y’know for me it straight up doesn’t even occur to me to unfollow someone when they stop posting whatever it is i followed them for. unless the thing they’re posting about now is somehow actually actively upsetting to me i just accept it as a part of my life now. i’ll just scroll past it like i’m driving a car and dodging an obstacle on the road. and that part of the road is my daily commute and the thing stays on the road forever and i swerve around it every day for months instead of ever taking the initiative to get it removed. it just adds flavor i guess

I think Americans need to understand how normal it is in other countries to have extremely limited hours of operation to ensure the sanity and health of workers are kept in tact. We are so accustomed and entitled to demanding people’s time that we forget that they’re… y’know… people

Being in Germany was really humbling because legit the GROCERY STORE would straight up close for almost 3 days because of how holidays would line up and the hours were already limited to literally be from 8-8 because people need to go home and live their own lives

It is very common for places in Spain to straight up shut down for 2-3 hours because people take siestas seriously since it gets hot and people deserve to take a nap

The world is not going to end if you’re inconvenienced by just… coming back later. We’ve been spoiled with immediacy and technology that we forget there was a point in time in human history where a person had to trek 20+ minutes down to the village bakery only to find it closed because of some family emergency and that just meant there would be no bread that day- and that’s okay!!

The discourse surrounding labor is so sad because we should not demand or expect things to be open 24/7 because we were not designed to be constantly moving machines. We need to relearn how to plan better since downtime is a wonderful opportunity to reflect and enjoy the moment. Not everything needs to be done with gusto and fervor. Sometimes it’s fine to pivot and just enjoy the moment for what it is and try again later. Touch more nature. Bask in the sun and rain. Breathe.

Shout out to Steve Harrington for apparently being the only genre-aware person in the Hawkins group, grabbing something to defend the group as soon as they hear a weird noise, poking stuff around with an oar, not letting the cursed girl spend too long on her own… and when Dustin mocks him, he snaps back, “considering the people in this room have nearly died about half a dozen times, I don’t find it funny”. He’s so right and he should say it. Steve KNOWS he’s in a horror film and he’s built to be the final girl.

(tags via @savefrog)

please tell me someone’s done a boomer comic about this because if not I think I’m going to have to 

ppl will conflate ‘children’s media’ w ‘bad/shallow media’ and then when they come across a bit of children’s media that’s good they’ll be like ‘aha this isn’t actually for kids!! loophole.’

this sentiment always reminds me of my grandfather, who would say that he hated musicals and then my grandmother would be like ‘but you love Gilbert and Sullivan’ and he’d insisted that Gilbert and Sullivan made OPERAS, thank you ):<

anyway. ‘Spirited Away’ is a children’s film. ‘The Little Prince’ is a children’s book. ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ is regarded as a classic in its genre and a children’s book. its completely fine to continue enjoying children’s fiction as an adult and also, to be blunt, children deserve fiction that is good and has important things to say about the world.

tumblr users: i hate tiktok it's the worst

every post of a tiktok video: 12,746 reblogs, 45,094 likes

yes but the experience of occassionally seeing a curated-by-my-homies tiktok vid on my dash is so violently different from the endless stream of scrolling through algorithmic video content. i crave variety. what is my social media experience without walls of text interrupted randomly by videos of ducks and pictures of weird vegan brownies.

#every tiktok that appears on my dash has gone through at minimum 2 layers of human peer review

i love you rain, i love you cold air, i love you sound of raindrops hitting the rooftops, i love you cloudy skies

Y’all “critical thinking” does not equal “criticism”.

I am very tired of saying positive things about characters and getting told I need to do some critical thinking (so that I’ll see the characters are actually bad). No. That’s not how that works. I already did some critical thinking and came to the conclusions that these characters are wonderful. Criticism or straight up character bashing is not more enlightened and is not how critical thinking works. “Critical thinking” is not “thinking about all the bad or problematic aspects of something.” It’s looking objectively at evidence, looking at context, recognizing and examining personal biases and assumptions, considering what assumptions and biases are being used in a given argument by other people, etc. Sometimes this process brings up criticisms, yes, but sometimes it also leads to the conclusion that something is actually good despite it being made out to be bad. 

kids remind me, often, of the things i've taught myself out of.

i have a big dog. he looks like a deer. he is taller than most young children. while we were on a trail the other day, a boy coming our direction saw us and froze. he took a step back and said: "i'm feeling nervous. your - your dog is kind of big."

goblin and i both stopped walking immediately. "he is kind of a big dog," i admitted. "he's called a greyhound. they are gentle but they are pretty tall, which is kind of scary, you're right. their legs are so long because they are made for running fast. i am sorry we scared you. would you like us to stand still while you move past us, or would you feel more safe in your body if we move and you stay still?'

"oh. i didn't know that about - greyhounds. i think i ... i want to stay still," he said. at this point, his adult had caught up to us. "i'm nervous about the dog," he told her, "so i'm - i'm gonna stay still." she didn't argue. she didn't make fun of him. she just smiled at him and at me and held his hand while goblin and i, with as wide of a berth as we could make, crept our way through.

behind us, i heard him exhale a deep breath and kind of laugh - "he was really big, huh? she said it's because greyhounds have to go fast."

"he was big," she said. "i understand why that could have made you a little scared."

"yeah. next time i - next time do you think i could maybe ask to touch him? when - i mean, next time, maybe, if i'm not nervous."

later, going to a work event, in the big city, i stood outside, trembling. my social anxiety as a caught bird in my chest. i took a deep breath and turned to my coworker. she's not even really my friend yet. i told her: "i feel nervous about this. i am not used to meeting new people, ever since covid."

she laughed, but not in a mean way. she said she was nervous too. she reached her hand out and held mine, and we both took another deep breath and walked in like that, interlinked. a few people asked us - together? - and i told the truth: i feel nervous, and she's helping. over and over i watched people relax too, admitting i feel really kind of shy lately actually, thank you for saying that.

the next time i go to an event, and i feel a little scared, i ask right away: wanna hold hands? this feels a little dangerous. i hesitate less. i don't hide it as much. i watch for other people who are also nervous and say - it's kinda hard, huh?

i know, logically, i'm not good at asking for help. but i am also not good at noticing when i need help. i've trained myself out of asking completely, but i've also trained myself to never accept my own fears or excuses. i have trained myself to tamp down every anxiety and just-push-through. i don't know what i'm protecting myself from - just that i never think to admit it to anyone.

but every person on earth occasionally needs comfort. every person on earth occasionally needs connection. many of us were taught independence is the same thing as never needing anything.

each of us should have had an adult who heard - i feel nervous and held our hand and asked us how we could be helped to feel safe. no judgement, and no chiding. many of us did not. many of us were punished for the ways that we seemed "weak".

but here is something: i am an adult now. and i get nervous a lot, actually. and if you are an adult and you are feeling a little nervous - come talk to me. we can hold hands and figure out what will help us feel safe in our bodies. and maybe, next time, if we're brave, we can pet the dog that's passing.

Chronic neuron misfire at work where a customer asked what my specialty was, like, what my favorite drink is ig, and I said “wasp cup” and we stared at eachother for a second and I decided to double down for some fucking reason and said “you bring the wasp I bring the cup” and she was just like “ok can I have an iced white mocha” without any emotion it was like two neural nets interacting

Before this gets out of my circle. Wasp cup is my specialty btw.