#Learn something new

[thirdlotusprince3]

Anger: HYDRATE OR DIE-DRATE!

Anger: *aggressively throws a water jug*

Disgust: Uh... what's up with him?

Envy: He’s trying to yell mental health and wellbeing into us.

Anger: I APPRECIATE ALL OF YOU!

Joy, crying: It's working.

[roseredsnow]

Been meaning to make this for a while and finally found round to doing examples when the the power was out last week so here we go.

(Currently all text and a couple photos at the end but if someone wants a video just let me know)

Basics of hand sewing!

First things first: what to use when learning.

When starting out you're gonna want things easy to use so no fabrics that are too tough, stretchy or liable to fraying, basically cotton or denim from old clothes or sheets should be great.

Thread wise will depend a little on your dexterity, if you're going to struggle with smaller thread try something thicker possibly embriodery thread, there are also things that will help you to thread your needle but I haven't used them so I don't have much advice there.

Otherwise just give your thread a little tug to make sure it won't snap under the slightest pressure and you should be good.

Unless you're going straight onto you're project and want to hide the stitching I'd recommend using a different colour to the fabric so that it's easier to see where you've sewn.

Needle wise again if you don't have the dexterity and don't mind bigger holes embroidery needles are slightly bigger and have bigger holes so they may be a little easier.

For non embriodery needles there's some that are a little thinner than others I don't like them much but if they're all you can find they work (I've got poundland ones before and they tend to be the thickness I like.

Threading the needle and securing the thread:

Again there are devices to help you thread needles but can't provide much more on that.

The other two ways I tend to thread needles is by

1) Bend the thread in and the point made tends to go through the hole a bit easier.

2) Dampen your thumb and next finger and twist the end so that the fibers stick tother instead of fraying as it goes through the hole.

Now when securing the thread there's three options I know of.

1) Starting with the easiest: once your needle is threaded double over the thread (make sure you've got double the length you need) and tie the ends together, this method means your needle won't become unthreaded and may be a little more secure however does require more thread.

2) This is what I tend to use, have a bit of thread one side of the hole so it hopefully doesn't come undone and knot one end. This means you're using less thread than method 1 but the needle may unthread.

3) Make sure you keep the end of your thread from going through the hole while you do a couple stitches and it should secure itself.

Pictures below show method 1 on the top left, 2 bottom left and 3 on the right.

I dont want this to get too long so I'll make another post soon with different stitches, feel free to ask any questions.

[rrcraft-and-lore]

Sōham - Sanskrit.

But what is it?

Well, "I am--," used in mantra/breathwork meditation to a chant that is commonly: "I am that I am," and or, "I am one with the Universe and all of creation."

Sound familiar?

It is identifying oneself as part of the fabric of reality creation.

It can also be interpreted as, "I am the absolute," or, "I am the great truth."

Depends on context/modification.

[coinandcandle]

Learn Something New Today

Take 30, 20, or 10 minutes, maybe even 5, and learn something new. It doesn't matter what it is, learning something new is good for you!

Here are a few ideas if you need them

Youtube Channels

Kurzgesagt - In a nutshell, a team of talented folks who aim to spark curiosity about science and the world we live in.

I watched String Theory by Kurzgesagt (8 min)!

Overly Sarcastic Productions, a duo--Red and Blue--here to teach you about myths, legends, and history! All while keeping you entertained with their cute graphics.

I recommend The Great Norse Seal Fight (5:33 min).

SciShow, each video hosts Michael Aranda, Rose Bear Don't Walk, Stefan Chin, and Hank Green dive into scientific subjects that are sure to spark your curiosity!

I've recently enjoyed How Smart are Crows Actually? (7:56 min).

Podcasts

Sawbones a marital tour of Misguided Medicine (by Justin and Dr. Sydney McElroy)

I just listened to Sawbones: Ketchup (34:35 min) about the medical history of ketchup.

Spirits Podcast is a boozy dive into mythology and lore by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider.

I recommend Spirits: Baldur (44:45 min) about the Norse deity Baldur.

Ologies Podcast, Allie Ward asks smart people stupid questions and the answers might change your life.

Ologies: Bryology (MOSS) (1hr 13min) all about moss!!

Articles

Wikipedia:Special:Random (picks a random wiki article for you to read) Also see Wikipedia:Randomincategory where you can type in a category to learn about such as history, magic, science, music, etc.

Good News Network (exactly as it sounds, articles to bring you hope and faith in humanity)

One Good Fact - Fun fact of the day by Encyclopedia Britannica

Summaries - Summaries of Encyclopedia Britannica pages. I browsed the summary of Jupiter.

[tweedlestrove]

An amazing documentary on an older bit of computer technology that uses punchcards. What makes this more amazing too, is that this is a VERY old form of programming that dates back to the 1700s. Before we had these types of electric punchcard computers, Paper punchcards were used to make weaving patterns for things like dobbies when making jacquard fabric and lace patterns for big looms, automatons, and in a lot of ways works like the drum on a music box. It's a way to have mechanical programming instead of coding electronics. Electronics are smaller, load faster, and can hold much much more data, but Punch card equipment has it's own benefits as well. I'm actually old enough and fortunate enough to have handled old punch card and mag striped equipment when helping my mom in her classroom, it was a very outdated tech then. But it's not just charming, fun to use, and fairly simple to pickup, it's practical, and at least for me I can understand it better than I can with coding now due to my issues with losing my memory. Honestly it's a fascinating rabbithole to go down, because it leads you to analog technology and how simple it really is. From the fact that a speaker is just something that can vibrate a pattern like a piece of cardboard or rubber attached to a needle being cranked over a record like this:

You'd be surprised what you can do mechanically. And a solid mechanical build combined with simple electronics like an arduino if you're able to learn can make amazing things.

[your-heart-is-a-treasure]

We are Energy Beings: Build it or Lose it

Everyone has an energy and there is so many energies surrounding us, we are an energy being. We are a spiritual being.

Every communication now is through energy, that every radio wave, microwave, every type of television signal, transmission - all of these are energies. That when you deduce them and reduce them to the core, it’s energy. Most powerful energy is the human, insan, “Wa laqad karamna Bani Adam,” that Allah says, “I have honoured your creation”. One of the true honours of the creation is the amount of energy that flows from the soul, from the being, from the nafs, from everything around insan (human being).

A very simple understanding of the tariqas (spiritual paths) is to perfect the energy. Everything that they give us, every practice that is given to us, every teaching of Holy Qur’an, of Hadith an-Nabi ﷺ , of all of the amal and the actions - all reduced to energy, building our energy, perfecting our energy and building a shield of perfection and protection around us.

When doing the Zikr, awrads (a set of dua's (prayers, recitations) and good actions it brings a tranquility within the heart, meaning that the heart becomes very subtle. It begins to understand with the little bit of zikr, it feels the energy. It knows that when it goes somewhere, it’s feeling a heaviness, that this place I went, it’s very heavy. The heart is not going to lie; it’s telling you the charge that is being emitted from the people, from the place, from that location, that it is a very heavy energy. If it’s not positive and giving to you, it’s very simple: it must be negative and taking from you.

This means that if we go to enough places that take energy, your battery becomes empty, my battery becomes empty. The more this negative charge goes, the more this negative charge goes, then as the battery becomes empty, your field of protection is now dropped. And again you will see the signs within dunya and within ourselves.

[theyuniversity]

Today I learned that the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🦄

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[flying-potato2]

Plate Tectonics With Grain!

Nearly everyone knows the the earth is made of layers (like an onion, or an ogre) and that we live on the crust, the outermost layer. But very few people understand the magicly and wizardry behind the formation, destruction, and recreation of the crust.

So Let's Get Started :)

The earth's crust is composed of big funky dudes called plates. These are major slabs of rock that have well defined boundaries where they meet other slabs of rock.

These plates all like to push and shove against each other, and sometimes they gang up into cool lil creations called supercontinents.

but before we get to the cool fun epic stuff, two things must be established:

Plate types

Plate boundaries

First, plate types. There are two major types of plates:

continental

oceanic

Continental plates (more commonly called continental crust) are what make up continents and large landmasses. They are generally less dense than oceanic plates and are made mostly of the epic rocks you know as granite and andesite, with sedimentary sandy rocks on top.

Oceanic plates (or crust) are generally denser and made of darker, heavier rocks like basalt. Continental plates, because of their lower density, float higher than oceanic plates on the spicy mantle. this allows them to create landmasses where oceanic crust cannot.

Secondly, plate boundaries. There are three kinds of boundaries that can form where plates meet:

a convergent boundary

a divergent boundary

and a transform boundary

A convergent boundary is where two plates violently collide with each other, usually with one plate sliding under the other into the mantle, where it violently melts into molten magma lava rock. This causes the plate that is above to bunch up like when you ram two flatish slabs of clay into each other on a flat surface, forming mountains in the process. A great example of this type of boundary is on the American west coast, where the pacific plate subducts (goes under) the north american one. This is what drives the formation of the Rocky mountains that run north-south along the entire pacific coast, as well as what causes the increased geologic activity along that coast (earthquakes and volcanoes). Such boundaries tend to occur between continental and oceanic crust, because the oceanic crust usually goes down into the mantle because it's denser than the continental stuff. Funny enough, once it's sorta melted in the mantle it floats back up as granite and adds to the continental crust. Anyway, these also like to form big underwater trenches where the seafloor subducts and is why the Mariana Trench exists.

A diverging boundary is the exact opposite, where two plates are sliding apart under pressure from the mantle, where fresh magma pours out and cools into freshly baked igneous rock seafloor. This is (to my knowledge, feel free to fact check) what causes phenomena like the east african rift valley and mid-atlantic ridge. Generally such divergent zones will have a trench or a ridge along the fault line and can be some of the places where the crust is the thinnest on earth. The diverging plates will push other plates in turn, and cause the formation of convergent boundaries. due to the rising hot stuff (spicy rocks) from where the plates are pulling apart, new oceanic crust is usually formed because the fresh magma pours out from below.

The final type of boundary is a transform line (not related to the geometric function of taking a shape and moving it to a different space on a coordinate plane), which is responsible for most silly little majorly devastating tiny little silly earthquakes like the very recent one in Turkey. Such boundaries are places where crust is not created (like in divergent boundaries) or destroyed (in convergent boundaries). Instead, plates slide past each other in opposite directions. Structures built on top of such a boundary would slowly split down the line, as one side is dragged in one direction and the other is carried in the opposite direction. One of the most well-known examples of such a boundary is the San Andreas fault line, off the coast of California.

With the types of boundaries covered, it's now very very important to understand how oceanic and continental crusts are created. Oceanic crust is formed at divergent boundaries, where new magma can rise up and solidify into the igneous rocks that form the seafloor. these rocks are then slowly pushed towards continental plates, which subduct them back into the mantle to be melted again. This time around, they are pushed up into the continental crust and cool there, turning into granite and other metamorphic rocks. This is then weathered down back into sand and sent into the ocean or plains, where eventually it might find itself as a sedimentary rock until it can be carried all the way back to the mantle.

As for how continents move and collide, it actually relies on the same force that creates the ocean currents and jet streams. like boats on a strong current, the plates move based on the convective motion of the mantle. They rely on the coriolis effect, convection, and even the gravitational pull of the sun and moon to move as well as pressure from the new seafloor at divergent boundaries, and they essentially act as a giant jigsaw puzzle of stones and spicy rocks. The movement of magma within the mantle carries the plates around, and they can then crash into, slide past, or move away from each other. Below is a helpful diagram:

Plate tectonics are visible nearly everywhere you go, in the coastlines of continents to the mountains you might aspire to climb. A lot of geology relies on plate tectonics turning up old rock layers like they have in the massive formations of rocky mountain national park or in the east African rift valley, where much of human evolution can be found in the fossil record.

The East African Rift Valley, which is the result of diverging continental plates

The Pacific Ring Of Fire, which is the result of converging plates

The Himalaya Mountains, the result of converging plates

The Rocky Mountains, see above

The Andes Mountains, see above

The Atlas mountains, see above

The Alps, see above

The Mediterranean, same(ish) reason as the alps, just with the caveat of being formed by the drifting of the African plate closing in the Arabian peninsula through the oligocene and miocene periods.

The Japanese archipelago, again from plate subduction (pacific ring of fire)

Fun fact actually, what happened with the Himalayan Mountains is pretty unique when it comes to plate tectonics, since they weren't formed by subduction or divergence. See, they were formed by the Indian and Asian plates colliding some 40 million years ago, but both plates had more or less the same density. This means that neither could subduct into the mantle, so instead they both began to buckle and crush the stone upwards, forming what is now the Himalayas. This is unique in that both plates began to form mountains instead of only one, and that the Himalayas are now the tallest mountains on the planet because these two massive plates came together when they did.

Final note, the Hawai’ian islands as well as a few other are not formed along plate boundaries. They are formed through a different phenomenon called Hotspots. This is when a jet of ridiculously hot magma is shot up through  the seafloor and ocean to make new islands. the plate then moves while the hotspot stays in the sameish spot, so the islands are formed in a line that follows the movement of the plate. This is what happened with the hawai’ian islands and probably a few others that I dont know about.

For further reading on plate tectonics check out the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) and the US National Park Service (NPS) resources, as well as the wikipedia page if you want an in depth summary that goes into a lot more detail than me.

[kageyuuki]

The state I grew up in will invalidate a ballot if you take a picture of it/post it to social media. A lot of the southern states will. Pennsylvania and New Jersey seem to a be 'better safe than sorry' kind of situation.

Huh, I just looked it up and it’s a no go in my state too. Interesting.

[torxnn]

I just found out, Peyton List is BI and apparently came out in 2017. 

[misscarrots28]

omg thank you this is amazing

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

[roseredsnow]

Stitch 3 from the book.

Woven circle, not quite the right tension and uneven spacing but hey.

[rrcraft-and-lore]

You want to up your fantasy naming game and just come up with stuff that SLAPS, goes HARD, and chills?

Read more mythology and study the naming.

Vaikartana - Sanskrit: The Son of whose Rays Cut the Darkness (HARD!)

Sun Wukong (the monkey king): The Monkey Awakened to the Emptiness. (Slaps)

Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli - Mesoamerican: The Lord of the House of Dawn (Hard)

[your-heart-is-a-treasure]

So, Where Are You Going?

We all have vision. We all strive towards an image or a goal. But it's not that someone has vision or no vision that makes the difference, the difference lies in how far it can reach. Your vision's reach could be this weekend, and that's about as far as it could get. It can be having a stable job and a happy family. It could be going as far being an old man looking at your grandchildren from a rocking chair. Allah Almighty doesn't criticize these visions in themselves, but He criticizes not seeing past them. In fact, Allah Almighty rhetorically asks us in Surah Al-Takwir this question by the end of the Surah's discourse:

A very profound question if we were to honestly ask ourselves. Almighty Allah is calling us to look ahead and reflect whether our perceived direction is really the only direction we are actually treading towards.

The irony here is that this is Surah Al-Takwir. The Surah that begins with the image of the sun losing its light, and stars falling out of place, and oceans flaring up. These are the catastrophic images before the commencement of the Day of Judgement. The universe collapses, and another one rises for Judgement. In essence, **Allah answered the question already: You are coming to Me**.

*That’s* where we are actually going. We look at our path, and we see perhaps we weren’t looking clearly all along. *Where did I think I was going?* Allah Almighty is essentially asking, why are you going around in circles, why don't you look at what's staring at you from far away.

A job, a family, old age and retirement aren’t just what’s awaiting us. *Allah is awaiting us*. And so, the questions implies preparation. Regardless of what we choose to perceive as our direction, straight or crooked, the destination is the same for each one of us. The destination of our Judgement is straight ahead.

فَأَيْنَ تَذْهَبُونَ

So where are you going?

It's important to note that despite how scary this post might come off. We shouldn't be. Allah Almighty mentions in other places how people hope to meet Allah and the last day. If we are attempting to do the best we can, it's completely fine to hope for this event, it's not wrong. After all, this is potentially the day you meet your loved ones. The day our sadness and turmoil leave us forever. The day we finally meet Almighty Allah. So, why would we want to get distracted and think we're going elsewhere?

[emotionalsupportstrumpet]

fuckin... what

The devil works hard but the Hollywood propaganda machine and the White liberals who take part in it work harder.