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The thing that really gets me about the Locked Tomb series is that from a worldbuilding perspective it’s YA catnip. Like any other author would have started it out from someone low ranking in the cohort, maybe falling in love with a rebel or vice versa, introducing parts of the world slowly. There are even houses to sort yourselves into! It’s perfect! That would have been a good story in and of itself! However Tasmyn Muir started in the deepest depths of the equivalent of death cult Amish territory from the POV of someone trying to escape and join the terrible death army, and it works. It’s like if you started explaining the concept of Star Wars with a clone from one of the tanks in Palpatine’s lair. Obsessed with her as an author.

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Preach I guess

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I love my people and it's amazing to see so many of us turn up today, but it's like herding very friendly cats 😂

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idk who needs to hear this but if you have been putting something off bc it doesn't need to be done until the end of the month. we are almost done with the teens we are approaching the big numbers (the twenties). that date shall dawn upon you swiftly and without mercy before you know it. psa for everyone except me i got plany off time

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this is the opening paragraph of a news article. stop scrolling here, if you would.

I want you to guess what this is about. take a second. breathe.

make a guess. make three guesses. make five guesses.

...

are you ready?

this is an article about...

potatoes.

more specifically

the united states potato cartel

apparently, mccain foods, cavendish farms, lamb weston, and j.r. simplot have been conspiring with each other to keep the prices of frozen potato-based products like frozen fries, frozen hash browns, and frozen tater tots high in the US for years.

these four companies collectively control 98% of the frozen potato product supply in the united states, so they can easily pressure the entire market. they are working together to squeeze as much money out of the frozen potato market as possible, sometimes even instructing employees to avoid making paper trails about their activities.

so now two proposed class action lawsuits have been filed against prolific potato providers for prioritizing profit and persistently producing problematic potato product price practices.

you can read the whole article here, and nightmares of capitalism aside, I do have a favorite part of this story.

there is a national potato council.

and it turns out the national potato council has a national potato expo.

here is a highlight video from potato expo 2019. it looks like it was a fun time!

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The thing that I adore about the Disco Elysium fandom is that, despite not blocking or avoiding spoilers in any way, I have never once been spoiled on a single plot point of the game. I still have no idea who committed the central murder of the game, or even if we ever solve it.

I do, however, have a vast second-hand knowledge of Kim, his interests, his hobbies, his responses to Harry's shenanigans, and what dialogue options will produce which reactions. This game is not about solving a murder it is about becoming best friends with Kim Kitsuragi and that's how it should be.

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Guess who just figured out how to climb inside the woodstove???

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One flesh, One end

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Networking/Knowing A Guy: A Guide

This is the autism website. Now, as an extension of the power of love and friendship, there are few things more useful than Knowing A Guy. Knowing A Guy means you have a support network. Knowing a plumber, or a tax accountant, or just that one dude that's really fucking good at finding the information you need when you're really overwhelmed, can be the difference between being able to pay rent and having a fun party with friends to fix your shit.

How does one end up Knowing A Guy? It's a skill you can develop called Networking and it is one of the foundations of society. Unfortunately making those connections with people is fucking hard and nobody makes a tutorial for it. So, here you go:

The golden rule is you scratch my back and I scratch yours

It is necessary for survival to seek out useful people

Great news! Everyone is useful in some form or fashion - including you! When given the opportunity to learn about someone, do it! Extroversion does not come naturally to some people and that's okay. Just take whatever falls in your lap.

Types of usefulness: trade skills, connections of their own, personality you jive with, pleasant to talk to, niche interest in shared hobby, security - the list is pretty much endless. I know a guy that lives in the metro area - no job, no major hobbies, inoffensively annoying to me personally, kinda ignorant, not attractive to me, but you know what? He knows how the fuck to get around the city by foot. My rural-raised ass APPRECIATES the guide.

Remember important information: general personality, background, skillset, likes and dislikes. You can find this information by making smalltalk about their life. There is no such thing as pointless conversation. (Yes, even the annoying smalltalk)

The more people you know, the higher the likelihood that one of them will be useful in a given situation - or will know someone who is.

It is overwhelming. In a given clique/community/workspace/whatever, there is A Guy Who Knows The Other Guys. This Guy is a shortcut. Find them. They're often elderly, extroverted, a little bit annoying, a secretary or in some otherwise forward-facing position. Look for people that are gossipy/talk about other people a lot but not in negative ways. If they constantly talk shit, they'll talk shit about you too. They're still useful but be careful with the information you share

You do not have to like someone for them to be useful.

You do not have to like someone for them to be useful.*

If you have low self esteem, you're going to feel like you're using people. You're not. That's the devil talking. People like feeling valued and the connections you are making are the threads holding community together. Recognize people for their talents. It's only a problem when you're taking advantage of people

So: don't feel scummy about it. You're an animal. You have to claw out your right to survive and people will respect you more for it.

Luckily mutualism is the name of the game in the animal kingdom. Offer something back. The foundation of a Know A Guy relationship is Mutual Benefit

Sometimes that Mutual Benefit is just spreading news of the The Guy far and wide. My plumber friend is my actual friend and I love her to death, but I'm maintaining our backscratch relationship by pimping out her plumbing business to anyone that'll listen

Food is a good Mutual Benefit. People across cultures for all of human history have bonded over food. I have good success asking people for a favor and then offering to buy them lunch in return **

General compensation is also good. Offer a service in return and always do your best to offer financial compensation as appropriate. Having your plumber friend take a look at your drain: doable with a case of beer. Having your plumber friend redo the pipes in your entire house? You need to pay for that.

Being transactional is not necessarily a bad thing. I would advise against keeping an itemized list of things owed, but fish don't seek out cleaner shrimp just because they enjoy their company. Everyone gets something

Unfortunately being extroverted and generally personable is a huge benefit here, but that's the value of the Guy That Knows A Guy. There's someone out there that has consolidated All The Guys so you don't have to be the local expert. Always remember nobody can do everything and you don't need to master every skill

* This is the foundation of a functioning community. I have many acquaintances that I find incredibly annoying. They include doctors, welders, artists, social workers, lawyers, construction crew and random fuckers at the grocery store. I do not hang out with them. I do not have to in order to maintain a civil Know A Guy relationship. I can drop them useful tidbits and fuck right off so I don't have to spend any more time than necessary with them

** People may assume romantic intent. Be prepared for that. I generally denote that it's a friendly/work lunch by calling them bro at some point if they're my age. Otherwise my general demeanor is sufficient to show that I do this with everyone

Source: personal experience, mother's teachings of crime, booth vending and poverty

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Hey, if you've ever got a significant amount of dairy milk on hand that you're not likely to consume before it goes off, a fun thing to do with it is turn it into dulce de leche:

4 cups milk 1.5 cups sugar 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large pan combine the milk and sugar and stir over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Add the baking soda. Cook over medium heat at a bare simmer, stirring occasionally, until the mixture reduces to 1 cup and is the color of dark caramel, 2-2 1/2 hours. Do not be alarmed if it foams up when you stir early on in the cooking process, that is the baking soda doing its job. Towards the end you'll probably need to stir it more often just to keep an eye on it.

Once the mixture has reduced, remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract. Keeps in the fridge for a month, but it won't last that long.

The baking soda raises the pH of the mixture and promotes browning, so you get strong Maillard reactions as the mixture cooks, resulting in a rich and complex flavor. It's not as sweet as regular caramel too.

If you have a vanilla bean you can split it and add it at the beginning. Just fish it out after an hour--if you cook vanilla beans too long they start giving off all sorts of funky and unpleasant flavors. A vanilla bean isn't necessary, extract added at the end works fine.

This stuff is great in coffee, as a topping for oatmeal or ice cream, spread on toast or biscuits, or just eaten with a spoon as a treat at 2am.

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comic book trend that honestly irks the fuck out of me is when an existing character comes out as gay and they invent a new character to be their partner. like theres nothing wrong with it per se its just that the new boyfriend/girlfriend character is always jarringly bland and uninteresting, especially when compared to the latent homosexual potential that definitely already existed in the story. like there’s something so deeply unsatisfying about introducing a new side character as a girlfriend for karma in new mutants 2019 when she’d been having dramatic hand-holding adventures with dani the whole time. it implies such a definite hesitancy to ever make characters gay For Each Other, and the result of that hesitancy is that you don’t get any of the long-term slow-burn relationships that heterosexual characters get (like between batman and catwoman or whatever). instead you get New Relatable Millennial Queer Partner that you have to fight tooth and nail to give a fuck about. nobody’s doing it like rictor and shatterstar anymore nobody’s doing coming out reveals that hit like that

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Do you like old timey country music or bluegrass? Do you wanna support Indigenous people making contemporary music in their own languages?

Well if you answered yes to both of these questions, please check out Agalisiga’s album Nasgino Inage Nidayulenvi (It Started In the Woods). He’s a Cherokee singer who recently released a whole album IN CHEROKEE. And it’s really good! Available on Bandcamp and other streaming services now!!!!

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comic book trend that honestly irks the fuck out of me is when an existing character comes out as gay and they invent a new character to be their partner. like theres nothing wrong with it per se its just that the new boyfriend/girlfriend character is always jarringly bland and uninteresting, especially when compared to the latent homosexual potential that definitely already existed in the story. like there’s something so deeply unsatisfying about introducing a new side character as a girlfriend for karma in new mutants 2019 when she’d been having dramatic hand-holding adventures with dani the whole time. it implies such a definite hesitancy to ever make characters gay For Each Other, and the result of that hesitancy is that you don’t get any of the long-term slow-burn relationships that heterosexual characters get (like between batman and catwoman or whatever). instead you get New Relatable Millennial Queer Partner that you have to fight tooth and nail to give a fuck about. nobody’s doing it like rictor and shatterstar anymore nobody’s doing coming out reveals that hit like that

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Re: the last post, the article mentions that some places use clams to test the toxicity of the water. It’s like that in Warsaw- we get our water from the river, and the main water pump has 8 clams that have triggers attached to their shells. If the water gets too toxic, they close, and the triggers shut off the city water supply automatically.  

The clams are just better at measuring the water quality than any man-made sensors.

Edit: check out this documentary trailer : https://vimeo.com/408820791

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My amazing friend and incredible poet of a person wrote these heartbreaking words, and as soon as I read it, I immediately asked if I could illustrate it. And she said yes!

Read "To the Bitter End" here on AO3. Please please go give her some love (I generally don't even like poetry that much, but she is slowly changing my mind XD)

I'm also working on a second part to this, but I've had to slow down work on that one. It's coming soon!

also, tagging @frodo-with-glasses bc meg commanded it

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The Saint of Duty

But I see her in the back of my mind/All the time

Like a fever, like I'm burning alive/Like a sign

Did I cross the line?

Do you see her in the back of your mind?

In my eyes?