the incredible thing about 20,000 leagues under the sea is that it's the story of captain nemo, a fascinating character who turned against humanity and swore revenge after losing his family to imperialist violence, but that's just kind of going on in the background throughout the book, which in fact mostly entails the professor and his autistic sidekick identifying and listing every type of fish and sea creature known to man at the time of publication

disturbingly low amount of big reports on that cookie clicker mobile update. if everything is working as intended i may have to push it live with minimal patching. like some kind of idiot

bug reports. i just woke up. this is why updating is so scary what if i mess up bug. i mean big

cheers

okay so!

every review i've read about Lester's Fixins Ranch Dressing Soda seems to rank it in the top 5 most rancid sensory experience a human being can live through outside of a sewer system. which is why i was disappointed to find out that, to me, this tasted like sugar syrup with a very mild cheesy aftertaste, like cottage cheese whey. kind of not great beyond a few sips but overall not particularly reprehensible. maybe an odd tongue-sticking plasticness to it too. i'll admit i feel a bit robbed! as previously mentioned this bottle was expired and therefore completely flat, which perhaps made it less offensive than it could've been, but Opti had a half-glass too and practically gagged. i was sipping mine not particularly minding it while he did not like it One bit. i don't know how to explain this. am i too french to find cheesy soda offputting? have i been indulging in too much hot sauce and fried my taste buds? do i have long covid

If anyones interested in learning about the first black vampire short story, published in 1819, heres a link to the wiki, its called The Black Vampyre, and its about a former slave turned vampire who seeks revenge on his slave master. Its actually a first in many categories!

you can read the story itself here

Not only is it the first Black vampire story, it's the first comedic vampire story, the first story to include a mixed race vampire, the first vampire story by an American author, and probably the first anti-slavery short story. Some scholars believe that the text was written in response to John William Polidori's The Vampyre.

Here is the actual pdf from the site since you have to click around from the above link to actually get to it

@lxgentlefolkcomic

I have read it, in fact! I even doodled the titular character just for fun:

Rectangle wrap crop top: accomplished! I got several people offering to help me modify a rectangle wrap to fit a plus size body because all the tutorials I found relied on the fact that the designer was skinny, which was very nice of them but I didn't want to modify a rectangle wrap top to not be a rectangle. I wanted a rectangle wrap top that fit me. The problem wasn't the rectangle it was the assumption by designers that everyone making things for themselves are skinny.

The two tutorials of the eight i looked at that had any kind of math both relied on the assumption that the person making the top was skinny. I just wanted the math I would need to know how wide to make the rectangle in order to have a small overlap at the sides! So I picked a number of inches for my overlap and test sewed it, taking photos as I did so I could make a plus size friendly tutorial that has an actual formula for any size person.

I used the formula (widest measurement ÷2)+10 inches. Since it was a crop top my widest measurement was my tits, which is 48 inches. But the tutorial will have directions for if you want a longer top and have a big belly like I do. There will also be ideas for if you are very large but have narrow shoulders so the top comes too far down your arms and restricts range of motion (I have tested one of these ideas but not the other).

Idk how long it'll take me to write the tutorial. I'm tired. I actually managed to squeeze two wrap crop tops out of 2yds of fabric! The second one was two inches narrower but I still liked the fit of it. I had hardly any scraps leftover afterwards! The second top (with pieces already cut out and without me stopping to take pictures) took almost exactly 2 hours of sewing and ironing.

Thanks to the two people who offered to help me modify the basic rectangle shape. Turns out that wasn't necessary!

this may sound radical but "some addicts are violent and unlikeable" can coexist with such ideas as "it's bad to act like all addicts are violent and/or unlikeable" and "even the violent addicts deserve access to a full range of options for addiction management, including harm reduction"

people are saying things like “this is literally the bare minimum” and “this isn’t radical” and like. yeah. I agree. that being said

one of my mum’s friends works in rehabilitation for people convicted of violent crimes, but she refuses to work with addicts because “they’re different” and “impossible to rehabilitate”. someone I used to be friends with once told me that I should get on top of my addiction before it made me violent, as if that was some kind of inevitability. and people are always coming into my inbox to ask me if I expect them to treat the unlikeable addict in their life like a human being

it’s NOT radical. it IS the bare minimum. but we’re not fucking there yet! people are still unbelievably shit about this stuff and it sucks!

After all the fascist and proto-fascist assaults on American democracy over the last few years, I feel obliged to remind y'all (especially the constant Debbie Downers who have been telling us This Doesn't Mean Anything and predicted Trump would get away with everything) that a jury of 12 ordinary citizens having the power to criminally convict a former (and aspiring future) head of state is still a fucking big deal.

Yes, you have to pick one of the options I've listed, you can make your own version if you wanna

PSA: ELLA ENCHANTED IS SUCH A GOOD BOOK AND THE MOVIE DID NOT COME CLOSE TO CAPTURING IT ALL

if you love the movie, or are a horse girl but for centaurs, you gotta read the book ok love you mwah 😙

I don't know how strictly accurate this is, but one of the things I find shocking about watching historical dramas is how many people there are around all the time---according to Madame de... (1953) a well-off French household in the Belle Epoque maintains a workforce of at least 3, and the glittering opera has staff just to open doors. According to Shogun (2024) you can expect a deep bench just to mind your household, and again, people who exist to open doors.

Could people....not open doors in the past? Were doors tricky, before the standardization of hinges? Because otherwise, the wealthy used to pay a whole bunch of people to do it for them in multiple contexts, and I find myself baffled.

There is still the job of doorman/porter; their responsibilities are hospitality *and* security.

It's just in the past that more people had household staff (and more people *were* household staff), so historical media that is at all accurate is going to have background characters to do things like open doors, greet visitors, and mind their employer's small and portable valuables.

Also, technology has been able to replace having to have an employee out front of your building -- that's part of what security cameras and doorbell cameras are for. Also we have much better locks nowadays.

Two other technological advancements that have enabled private houses and apartment buildings to dispense with live porters/doormen:

1.) The telephone--your cell phone especially, but landlines too! Before that, if you needed to get in touch with someone faster than a letter would get there (which might have been pretty fast, depending on time and place--in Sherlock Holmes's day, London had three daily mail deliveries! but that still wasn't instaneous), your only other option was to knock on their door--and if they weren't in, someone needed to be there to take a message.

2.) Electric lighting and heat. The porter would sit up till (and often past) your usual hour to come home, and if you still weren't there, they would leave some kind of light burning and a taper for you to light your way to your room. In multifamily buildings, they'd often have a room right inside the door with a small window opening in it, and leave a lamp burning either just inside or outside that window, where they could reach it without getting up, so that that live flame was never left unattended.

In general, it's hard for modern people to understand how ubiquitous, and how necessary servants were in the past, in almost every social stratum. Managing a household run on fire for light, heat, and cooking simply required so much more work--making fires, tending fires, CLEANING THE GODDAMN SOOT OFF OF EVERY SURFACE EVERY DAY--that almost every family had to outsource some of it.

And even if you lived in one of the cities where most of that work could be outsourced outside your own home, the one indispensable servant you still needed was the porter.

In Paris circa 1830, visitors from abroad would often note, in wonderment, that it was possible to live with no servants but the porter. You could hire a cleaner who didn't live in; you could order dinners from the traiteur, who would send them over hot along with dishes and set the table for you--you could even order dinners on a regular schedule, basically a meal subscription; there were even companies that would deliver a bath to your home, with a portable tub and a cask of hot water, and haul away the dirty water when you were done. (If you were already paying for water delivery--which many people did; most of the city got its water from public fountains rather than private wells--economies of scale for fuel meant it was only very slightly more expensive to use one of these services than to heat water yourself.) But all of these services were made possible by having the porter there to let all these other people in and out, take messages, and keep a light burning.

In small multi-family buildings this role was sometimes played by the landlord, which obscured the service relationship, but often (and almost always in larger buildings) they would be hired by the landlord and their wage folded into the rent; they were also often the onsite handyman, just like a live-in superintendent in some apartments today. They would also often be available to take on other service work for the tenants--cleaning, shopping, errands.

It's also hard, I think, for modern people to grok how much cheaper labor was compared to the price of things--food, clothes, manufactured goods. We are used to thinking of things as basically costing their labor costs, with the price of raw materials a rounding error; before industrialization, that ratio was reversed. You've heard the line attributed to Agatha Christie, about how growing up she never expected to be so rich as to be able to afford a motorcar or so poor as to not be able to afford a servant?

Again, Paris circa 1830: In Les Misèrables, one of the privations we are told Marius endures while working his way up to merely poor from absolutely penurious is "sweeping his own landing." By the time he's living in the Gorbeau House, the filthiest tenement we see in the book, he still doesn't have heat in his room, but he is paying the portress to clean his room and buy the bread and eggs for his breakfasts. He pays her, for these services above doorkeeping, thirty-six francs a year, which is six francs more than his rent. His food costs ten times that--one franc a day, three hundred sixty-five a year, eating very frugally but adequately. (He was also spending one hundred francs a year on his outer clothes, fifty francs on underwear, and fifty on laundry, for an exceedingly inadequate wardrobe which did not really allow him to maintain a respectable appearance.)

(Note that laundry is outsourced; no one in a city at almost any income level did their own laundry. Mrs. Beeton--English and half a century later, but applicable--said that in most middle-class households sending out the laundry and hiring another servant to make it possible to do at home cost about the same, and that of the two, sending it out was by far the easiest; she only recommended trying to do laundry at home for large country estates that had less soot to deal with, more space for drying, a long distance from the nearest town, and a large enough household to make it worthwhile.)

AT ANY RATE. tl;dr:

1.) Everyone except the very poorest and people who were servants themselves had servants until very recently. (And the servants did have servants sometimes--in a very large estate, part of the job of the stillroom maid was to wait on the housekeeper, cook, and butler.)

2.) Even the very poorest of the poor still had porters and doorkeepers, if they were renters in a multi-family building, because the building itself could not function without them. The porter or doorkeeper was the single absolutely most essential piece of domestic labor, full stop.

3.) And, what, you think a good doorkeeper is going to let the rich dude open the door himself?

In case you didn’t know:

The Electoral College originally heavily favored Slave States, because the large slave populations contributed to electoral points, but obviously slaves could not vote, so voting whites in those states had more political power per vote.

And NOWADAYS, the Electoral College heavily favors states with high prison populations for exactly the same reasons. 

This is literally why the 3/5ths compromise was created. 

Well, this and seats in Congress. Yes.

I’m trying to figure out how to check the second part of this premise. I guess I gotta look at prison populations by state and then cross check to electoral seats. 

That prison is used as a way to disenfranchise people of color is a fact, but I had thought that because seats were awarded based on population, more densely populated states, tending to be more urban, tend to be more Democratic. And I had figured that prison populations tended to follow the general population numbers. Time to research.

shit, so much math…I got a list of incarceration per population and a list of electoral seats. I think where I’m getting lost is the proportion of seats per population, which is what I need to compare incarceration rates against. 

Yeah, I’m not seeing much correlation between rate of incarceration and proportion of electoral seats. But maybe I’m missing the point somewhere?

Within states of high incarceration, prisoners count as part of the population(and thus, more electoral points for that state) but CAN NOT VOTE, thus the power of all the other votes is raised.

oh, now I see what I missed in the comparison. Effectively white voters count more in high incarceration states. The proportion of electoral seats is already odd depending on population and further skewed by voter disenfranchisement compounded by disproportionately incarcerating people of color. It’s not so much an issue of how the electoral seats are awarded on the federal level (which is what I was thinking about) but how voter disenfranchisement by states affects federal level elections.

So Alabama, with its high incarceration rate, although it looks on the electoral map to be fairly balanced, is actually very imbalanced because the number of people eligible to vote doesn’t match the population number that determined the number of electoral seats. 

Exactly, yes. The point distribution by population looks…ok (smaller states do get more points proportionally) but voter disenfranchisement through incarceration and other means can skew that really badly within a state (like slavery did with the 3/5 compromise.)

I knew all these facts individually - the 3/5 compromise, electoral college votes determined by population, people convicted of felonies lose voting rights, black people are imprisoned at a higher rate than whites - but I never put all those together to realize what they meant.

That is an entire new level of horrifying.

This NPR article describes how this practice intertwines with gerrymandering

Girl behind the counter at the pet store complimented my rainbow pride eyeliner and then got excited to see I'd chosen to get a female betta rather than a male because people always get the fancy males instead. I replied, "Oh, yeah, males are too high maintenance for me!" Which she definitely took to mean in general, rather than just regarding the fish. Lmao.

Is she het or does she y'know (buy female betta fish)?

🌈 Happy Pride to girls and women who buy female betta fish! 🌈

Tags that apply to both betta fish and the monarchy.

Recently bought only female guppies and this girl was so excited about my life choices. A true ally.

Today I watched her trying to catch an escaped iguana that she was afraid of at first, so I cheered her on from the sidelines and she was so proud of herself when she caught it. 🦎

Pet store girl gave me this sick baby betta so that I can try to save her when I was there last Wednesday. After 3 days she is able to swim again. What color will she be? Who knows!

She is very tiny small.

This afternoon pet store girl curiously commented that I always buy fish related stuff, like today I got a water fern. I confessed that I had 4 aquariums, a nursery, and a hospital tank and was in the process of slowly replacing all of the silk plants with live ones because my fish seem to prefer them. She was delighted by this information.

Wait until she learns I'm creating a new strain of guppy. 🌈🐠

1. How is small betta girl?

2. Is Pet store girl (buys female betta fish)?

3. If so, are you trying to flirt?

1. Baby betta is becoming colors! Her name is Sapphire and the male corydoras want her to have their babies (she cannot).

2. I'm not sure. She certainly has an appreciation for both rainbows and female betta fish. But perhaps she's simply an ally to those of us who (buy female betta fish).

3. I would never flirt with someone at their place of employment. Also, I'm already in a relationship. Also also, I'd never want to jeopardize the dynamic we have as Pet Store Girl and Woman Who Buys Female Bettas. :)

Today she complimented my Animal Crossing purse and then we had a 5 minute conversation about Animal Crossing while I bought tiger lotus. Her favorite villager is Merengue, if you're curious.

Yesterday she saw me getting cat food and came up to me and said, "I have a guy for you, if that's okay?" Then she proceeded to guide me to the back of the store where she handed me a goldfish with only one eye.

my mom bought a cake

A reminder that your local student encampments probably need supplies like: blankets, toilet paper, power banks, face masks, canned food, medical supplies, tents, sleeping bags, old mattresses, flashlights, etc.

They may have posted lists of things they need on social media and will appreciate any contributions you could make!

There are many ways to help the cause and external support is needed with protests like these so if you have anything laying around the house that you could donate please consider doing so!

The longer an encampment near you has been up, the more likely it is that they've seen a decrease in solidarity donations from the community.

Pitching in now won't just make a material difference, it'll also definitely make an emotional difference. It shows the students: we still see you, the larger community is still behind you.

Consider dropping by with popsicles or water melon slices on a hot day.

No prejudice has existed in every society

There's a post going around that correctly states a) there was antisemitism in the Arab world before 1948 and b) the existence of antisemitic Palestinians does not justify a genocide. Both these things are obvious.

However, the OP goes on to state (paraphrasing) "there is antisemitism in Palestinian society because there is and always has been antisemitism in every society."

That is not true. It's a common prejudice and very well-known post-Holocaust, but there is nothing automatically antisemitic that gentile society is just bound to have. For just one small example, my local indigenous (north American) communities do not have an antisemitism problem. Neither did the indigenous community across the country where I grew up.

Similarly, the anti-Jewish prejudice in the Roman Empire has very little in common with the racialized antisemitism of the Nazis. The Romans wanted the Jews to worsjip their deities; the Nazis saw Jews and Romani as inferior races to be exterminated. So "antisemitism has existed throughout history" isn't true unless you redefine it in every era of history. Just like anti-Black racism has not existed in every society throughout history--hatred is not in our DNA.

OP absolutely had good intentions and was probably trying to avoid anti-Arab racism/Islamophobia by not talking about specific antisemitism in that community (OP may also not have known much about Arab history, I'm not sure.)

But saying "antisemitism is endemic in every [non Jewish] society" still plays into one of the great lies of Zionism, that a) antisemitism is everywhere, and b) antisemitism can never really be cured because it's inherent to gentiles or gentile society. This doesn't make that OP a Zionist (they were very vocally pro Palestine), but please call this mindset out when you see it.

Vintage wind-up toy bear (USSR, 1920s-30s)

[ID: a simple pencil drawing of the toy bear. End]

Captivated by his shapes and his somber gaze

“Must have reliable transportation” = “this is how we legally discriminate against poor people who take the bus”

As someone who has held several management positions with hiring responsibility, this is true. The boss at my last job informed me before I conducted my very first I interview,

“You can’t outright ask someone if they have a car or have kids. That’s technically illegal. But you need to know because sometimes they can be deal breakers. You can just say ‘Do you have reliable transportation?’ and ‘Do you have any current circumstances that could impede you from being successful at work?’

To which the last one most people fumble and would say, “Well I have kids, so sometimes they could get sick. But that’s not often.” But then your potential employer could mark it down on your interview notes nonetheless.

I thought that maybe it was just my own employer. But now I noticed that I am asked both of these almost every time I interview for a job.

Language is very sneaky. Be careful how you answer. Corporations can be snakes.

In my businesses class my professor told us that the bus counts as reliable transportation. You do not legally have to say “I take the bus” just say “yes I do have reliable transportation” and leave it at that. Do not over share. DO NOT OVER SHARE. The second question just say no. If your kids are sick call out as if you are sick. I don’t have kids but I myself can get sick and that doesn’t hinder my ability to succeed so kids getting sick shouldn’t hinder you. When I call out I give as little info as possible. No one needs to know why you call out. They can’t ask about your “illness” because it violates HIPAA if they do. So as long as you don’t offer more info than you need to you should be okay.