You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).
Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.
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because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
aren't you happy yet?
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Bisan is calling for another global strike!
I saw some posts just outlining Jan 21st, and wanted to clarify that Bisan has called for a full seven days of action.
What a global strike would look like is:
calling in sick to work
purchasing bare essentials ahead of the week so you can observe the general boycott of goods / buying as little as you genuinely can
putting in a concerted effort to elevate Palestinian voices and make it clear that this strike is in support of a permanent ceasefire!
For those who will have to purchase necessary goods during this time, please observe the brands that the BDS movement is asking us to boycott!
♢♢♢
Right now is also a good time to mention some better uses for your money during this week.
Available e-sims in Gaza are running low!!
Mirna El Helbawi and her team are working round the clock to continue to connect Palestinians as Israel does its best to cut them off from the rest of the world.
You can learn how to purchase and send e-sims here, and below you’ll find a list of what is currently needed (the areas in brackets indicate what region you should select to buy e-sims in).
--
CareforGaza is an organisation that does verifiably good work, distributing supplies directly to Palestinian families.
They have a Gofundme set up at the moment, but because of Gofundme’s poor track record regarding refusing to transfer funds to Palestinians, I’d recommend continuing to donate directly to their PayPal here.
Good luck to all of you. Don't turn away from Palestine!
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Im of the full (possibly delusional) belief that Durge is not the species that they physically appear to be.
You’re telling me this being crafted from nothing but bhaal’s flesh and his blood - this demigod - is actually a dragonborn/tiefling/human/elf/etc.
No. This thing is bhaal’s flesh and it just happens to look like that. They’re an imitation of a species, they’re not truly a (full)mortal being, they have no heritage aside from bhaal.
As a result I’m sure there’s some…oddities.
For example, a demigod child, not fully mortal. I doubt they adhere to the lifespan of whatever species they look like. Looking younger than they should. (less so perhaps with long lived races like elfs and half-elves where that is par for the course).
A dragonborn durge that by all accounts looks like a blue dragonborn but their breathweapon is acid. A tiefling durge that seems to be a Mephistopheles tiefling but they cannot cast mage hand, instead smiting like a zariel bloodline tiefling.
An elf or tiefling durge that doesn’t read as fey or infernal trough identification spells. Because they aren’t either of those things. Perhaps they could read as divine but not quite.
Members of a race that durge is supposed to be looking at them and sometimes when making eye contact they read as wrong. And some kind of uncanny effect triggers in their brain.
Give me more freaky durge who isn’t really what they appear to be at all. Just a little murder demigod crafted from dead god flesh to be the shape of something else.
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ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A KNIGHT...
the visual inspiration for this was a combination of Frederic William Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs and also Bernardo Cavallino's The vision of St. Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin
this was supposed to be just a one off illustration to get the thoughts out of my system, but then I started thinking about medieval politics and warfare and plagues and a castle and home as both a place of refuge, a prison, and a tomb, so perhaps they will end up as ex voto characters as well.
you may say, hey! that rosary looks like it has too many beads! it's a fifteen decade rosary, probably. dominicans are really into marian devotions. it works out.
also. spiral style stair cases. oh boy. it was that unexpectedly more difficult than I originally thought it would be to draw. the more I think about it, the less I understand them, even though I had a million photos of the stairs in front of me while I was drawing it.
⭐ I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!
⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app
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I saw comments that the new butler from Ridekamens look like Sebek
He...kinda does
I wasn't gonna say it, but. that was kind of my first thought when he was revealed. :') maybe this is what Sebek's older brother is doing these days? he ran off to buttle for secret agents at a superhero cafe? actually wait that would be rad as heck, I'll accept this headcanon
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I think a lot about Leo standing up for his brothers in the things that really matter to them.
Like- Leo is the one who immediately pushes Mikey and Donnie into finding Raph the second it’s clear that their oldest brother is missing because he knows Raph can’t handle being separated like that.
Leo is the one who stands up for Mikey when Mikey wants to go on a solo mission, actively vouching for him and being the one to convince Raph into letting Mikey go, because being independent and proving himself just as capable of standing on his own two feet as everyone else means so much to Mikey.
And Leo defends Donnie’s honor in particular when his brothers’ intelligence is insulted because Leo is well aware of how important Donnie’s smarts are to him - and how important having those smarts valued and acknowledged is as well.
All this goes right into just how well Leo knows his brothers. For as much as he’ll tease or fight with them, he knows them, and he loves them.
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