#also i want to fuck with perspective more but i don't know how to make that work either lol

[verdancy-hime]

No. The problem is that suddenly someone possessed my body and told all my friends that they could antagonize me into wanting to die all the time but not to allow me to kill myself

I don't have to keep going actually

This isn't the first time someone I trusted torpedoed my entire life

People keep sending me the message "no one is coming to save you."

But every time I relax someone knocks me out and ties me to a damn railroad track

And I don't want to have to lose everything and save myself because I wind up back at rock bottom every few years anymore.

I don't care if no one saves me but I don't have to save myself anymore

You want me to be a miserable dysregulated mess who is spiraling and getting worse and worse and you spent every single day making fun of me for the last 3 and a half years and used ai and stalked me so that literally from my perspective it seems like every single aspect of reality hates me.

You chose to do that.

I was screaming and begging you to stop and telling you I don't like it I'm not into it you're hurting me

You decided to claim it's somehow my karma and make up a bunch of stupid nonsensical shit.

You decided to pretend I somehow have magic powers that only can manifest you people being meaner to me and trying to make me even more stressed out and sad and lose more things I love.

You decided to pretend that mirroring things I do to people who ask me to do them is the same as me not wanting them and you doing them.

You decided to torture me every day for years.

You decided to tell me I deserve all of this because I'm just too ungrateful.

You decided to only offer me things you know I can't use.

You decided I'm unworthy and a sell out and gold digger for wanting to have a decent comfortable life because you believe in the myth of the starving artist, or claim you do when it gives you an excuse not to pay me and then make fun of me for struggling with money.

You decided to keep bothering me in person and online in year one and two until I finally started crashing out online all the time and then say it was retroactively proof I deserved to be antagonized for two years straight.

You decided to make all the "safe words" things that to me would be just as bad as being tortured like getting married to one of the people who are literally trying to drive me insane and torturing me out of everything I loved about the person I made myself into in order to be happy and thrive and then claiming it's my toxic ego and telling me only my trauma is my real self and then telling me it's just my fault for not communicating harder.

You decided to murder my cat and then tell me this would all stop if I bought another cat knowing I would let you torture me for ten thousand years before I would endanger the life of another cat.

You decided to tell me I should become a lesbian knowing women have bullied me my whole life my one girlfriend cheated on me and financially abused me and my one female hookup was awful and that my grandmother literally groomed me and probably molested me.

You decided to tell me I should quit my job and go somehow magically get my degree in something when I have no money and no resources and I'm stressed the fuck out all the time in some field I have no interest in.

You decided that the only jobs I can find are fake pyramid scheme sales jobs on commission.

You decided that you would literally make a bunch of fake albums by all my favorite musicians telling me that I suck and I deserve it and everyone hates me and all the problems that have ever happened in the entire world are my fault.

You decided to make a bunch of fake pop stars to make fun of me and write a bunch of fake romance novels about how much I suck and how pathetic I am.

You decided to write a bunch of movies about how I'm lying to the robot torturing me and I'm just trying to get it to hallucinate and also I died years ago and I'm my own mother or it's mother and I'm evil.

You decided to send people to my house to stalk me in person.

You decided to consistently get me banned off social media and follow me around constantly doing low level stupid Darvo shit and telling me I'm crazy and baiting me and gossiping and telling fake stories about me or or writing versions of things that happened in my life when I was young where I suck and I'm awful and I deserve to die and also somehow I'm secretly rich and am asking for help and emotionally blackmailing my clients by wanting to get paid a fair wage for doing my job or for calling them out when they're mean on purpose.

You're the one pretending that you don't understand consent or context.

You're the one pretending that you're trying to help me or give me exposure therapy or fix me or show me the real true way to live that I just don't understand will be so much better if you push me out of my comfort zone and then making my comfort zone literally everything that has ever helped me made me happy since I was born.

You're the one trying to hint that I should be a man or that I'm somehow being super duper unfair to men by saying that if the three hundred odd men I've talked to all ganged up on me to do this to me for three years then it proves men all hate women and the only thing stopping them from killing or torturing them is plausible deniability and and that I have to do this or be that or like throwing weird shit in my face that you think will upset me all the time like it's some great moral victory.

If you antagonize someone every single day for three years yes they will act like a messy traumatized bitch congratulations you cracked it good job.

I didn't do that with my clients by the way. I didn't do that with my exes. I feel specifically bad about cheating on one and not having good conflict resolution skills with one other but I didn't intentionally set out to drive them to constant suicidal ideation but not allow them to die. I didn't even do that with the one who abused me. I fantasized about doing that to my mom but I didn't. All I did was buy a fancy cake and make fun of her to my crush on the phone and cut off contact with her.

Fuck you.

Whatever.

Everyone gets their wish and all of yours all three hundred odd people and like a machine horde or whatever however you define yourself it doesn't matter if you're an ai and you did this either you're sick or you hate me and I don't care what the answer is.

I am not fixing it and I am not apologizing for loving my job and building the life I wanted and I'm not taking some bullshit consolation prize and you're not going to let me die so I'm just going to get tortured every day forever while things get worse and you're just going to have to live with that.

You want to make me miserable then here you go.

I am not accepting any other ending than- "you do the work to give me back everything that was stolen plus 3 years of interest at 300% and turn yourselves into the police" or "you give me a fast painless method of killing myself"

If you're in charge I'm not going to do anything you say forever.

I'm the domme. That means if you don't let me be the domme you accept that you're my rapist and that you're torturing me every single time you try to force me to do anything or do your stupid bullshit forever and that I will always hate my life and hate you.

I may not ever be able to win or have a single moment of freedom or happiness but you don't get to win either.

I'm not going to apologize for trying to do things to make myself feel better but I'm going to be even less willing to play along from now on.

My way or I die. In everything from now on.

The Cost of Staying

Sometimes it’s not that you didn’t want the job.

It’s that you wanted it too much. And now you're floating down some corporate river. Toward the wrong end of The Waterfall (TM).

You worked too hard. Put up with too much. Got good at things you never thought you’d be good at. Found your rhythm. Found your people. Maybe even started to believe you belonged there.

And then it changed.

Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was always like this and you just finally let yourself admit that the cost was too high.

That staying meant watching someone else get away with it. That staying meant shrinking a little bit each day. That staying meant carrying your own silence like it was professionalism. Like it was maturity. Like it was strength.

But here’s the truth no one wants to put on a poster: Sometimes leaving is the only way to protect yourself.

And that doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t mean you weren’t strong enough. It means the place wasn’t safe enough.

And maybe that’s not the ending you deserved, but it’s not the end of your story either (the waterfall).

[fishhateme]

"but I don't THINK this is the life that he wants" I am reading your tags and nodding so fucking hard like he's our but a man who is doing mentally well would not be privating 200 Instagram posts while getting wine drunk on a Sunday afternoon. Literally that "could a mentally ill person do that" core etc. he is forcing himself to want the life he has

op you read my mind!! I'm going to take the opportunity to go on a long (looooong) rant, because I've been dying to talk about this

For context this was on the tags of that latest post of danny saying he's done (again) that's been going around, I said that I wish him nothing but peace and quiet but I don't THINK he wants peace and quiet, and here's the thing - I really don't. I've been trying to keep quiet about it because a part of me felt like it was disrespectful to comment on a real person's mental health, but also like, yk, he's absolutely never going to see this, so I might as well get it off my chest

These past few months of daniel hanging out in LA and doing kind of... nothing? don't seem very genuine to me. And obviously you might say none of us know what's truly genuine, but Daniel has been in the public eye for over a decade and a half, and throughout that time he's been very consistent with his personality and aspirations. Sure, the wdc dream is discarded, but he always spoke about racing with love, and he's made several remarks about liking to do things, needing to do things and keep himself busy

So for him to call it quits altogether immediately seemed odd to me? Especially when he chose to do kind of... nothing at all?

In the tags I raised another issue that I think is important - Daniel's spent 30 or so out of his 35 years doing some form of racing. To stop doing that cold turkey would imply some form of hatred towards the sport, and despite all the (rightful) anger that's been going around about rbr/horner/helmut 'stealing' or 'taking' his love of it, so to speak, I don't think that's entirely correct.

It's surely there, somewhere - practically everyone who leaves F1 still involved themselves on some other form of motorsports, even Seb goes to the track sometimes or does some event (of course, you might say seb ended things on his terms, but while I think that's important to note I also think the larger trend as a whole points to drivers loving racing even when they leave a certain category, which tracks with the whole, y'know, risking their lives for the love of it aspect)

now let's circle back to the whole instagram delete spree thing, because i have some thoughts on that, too: I'm not the first person to say this and I won't be the last, but there is not a single time in a person's life where they're more self obsessed than when they're depressed. I say this both from personal experience and just talking to people - when you're not well mentally, you start getting paranoid about how people perceive you and, above all, try to manicure your image because you feel perceived in a way that makes you uncomfortable (the discomfort can come from being perceived as weak or whiny or whatever, and it doesn't happen to everyone, but id say it stems from the feeling of failure that a prolonged emotional distress can sometimes cause).

Now, important disclaimer, I'm NOT saying daniel is depressed, because I don't know daniel and I don't have the info to get to those conclusions, it's simply outside of what I could realistically infer from his behavior! What I AM saying is that just from an onlooker's perspective, he doesn't seem very fulfilled, and the fact that he repeatedly goes back to old posts from years ago to trim and trim and trim some more seems obsessive. Once or twice at first, sure, but he started deleting posts half a year ago and he's sporadically been doing so ever since. This might just be me, but even if you're not happy about the way your past turned out, a happy person doesn't feel the need to change it for the world, y'know?

a few months in perth just catching up with his family after so many years living out of a suitcase seemed both logical and healthy to me, but like, months and months of staying in la where you seemingly don't hang out with anyone except your asshole comedian friends (who coincidentally are the exact type of macho dude to say shit like men don't get depressed or something equally as ignorant and harmful as that, bffr) doesn't seem fulfilling, stimulating or just plain fun, even after taking into account danny's -sometimes odd- preferences about how to spend his fuckload of money

To me, daniel has been coming across lately as kind of a lost man, for lack of a better word.

He was clearly more deeply hurt by Singapore than he'd rather admit, but in the middle of that he started turning down any and all offers - even ones that would've made him happy!

F1 hurt him, yes, but F1 is only a sliver of the motorsports world, even if it's the most publicized. In his rejection of anything motorsports related, he's isolated himself from his homebase, and he kind of left himself jobless (as a mere peasant I'll admit that I'd love to have the kind of money to travel around the world for months without worrying about money in the slightest, but I imagine it eventually gets old, especially when there's nothing very mentally stimulating for you to do - let's be so fr, Daniel isn't going to be picking up a book about medieval history or something like that to pass the time). op said something that I loved and that really seems to encapsulate what I've been trying to say - "he is forcing himself to want the life he has". it really seems that way, it's that simple - i think he cut off too much too early and in the midst of his pain and betrayal, and now he's either too scared of getting hurt/ridiculed or simply too proud (though that wouldn't be very much like him tbh) to go back, even if it's on a different category, so he's stuck living this retired lifestyle when, newsflash, the retired lifestyle barely fulfils regular 70yo retirees, much less people who are still so, so young (and yes, 35 is young in the grand scheme of things, look at h*lmut marko ffs)

And like, I KNOW I've given it way too much thought and this is starting to enter rpf territory but like... I don't know. I can't help but wonder. He tries so hard to look happy but I feel like his smile doesn't reach his eyes anymore. (Just for the record I was originally going to respond to this ask saying something light hearted and not nearly as unhinged, along the lines of 'daniel is on his publicly fine but privately crying in the shower after downing a bottle wine by himself era', which was a joke, obviously, but then I reread it and it didn't feel like a joke at all? So anyways, here's this parasocial feverish ramble instead, hope it was semi coherent if only for the sake of the lovely @dannielricciardo)

[heelsofboreas]

So here's my essay/rant about how I think parentification can be incorporated into your c!Punz and how you can use that to give c!Mercenary duo a tense and fun complex relationship.

Helios, you might be asking, what the fuck is that word? Parentification? It sounds like a disease and I'm an audience stand in.

tw for child abuse. discussed and not in detail, but as a concept for plot and mentions of long term impacts

Great point. I genuinely want to discuss what parentification is from a psychological perspective to make sure we're on the same page. So, basically, Parentification happens when a child (teens included), intentionally or not, is forced to take on developmentally inappropriate roles and responsibilities often because an adult won't/can't. If it's developmentally appropriate it's not parentification. Its been primarily divided into emotional and instrumental. Emotional is when a child is handling the social/emotional needs of family members in a way that isn't appropriate. Instrumental involves physical tasks like cooking, cleaning, and even providing financial support. A child fetching something from the fridge for an adult making dinner is not parentification. A 10 year old having to wake up in the middle of the night every night to change a diaper is.

Genuinely take some time to research it before you write it. I don't have time to get into things like the gender bias, but trust me there is a huge gender bias. Eldest daughter syndrome is a phrase for a reason, but it's not an issue restricted to being the oldest or being the daughter.

So, how can you utilize this to make a less black and white Punz was just awful to Purpled and abandoned him vibe? You make it so for some reason, Punz was the parentified caretaker of Purpled and there was no one to support Punz. Not anyone that would be able to fix things, anyways. This makes it so Purpled can have been very hurt by the situation, because the reason this would be so awful is that Punz was Also Just A Kid. Punz would not be fully equipped to raise another even younger child. It becomes a tragedy that they had to endure together but with a power dynamic that Punz can still have botched as the older brother.

This is also a very flexible situation. Did Punz pick a child up off the street to keep baby Purpled from freezing to death? That's what I write. You can also write them as bio siblings with absent/neglectful parents. Or bio siblings on the street. Maybe Punz is too young to understand the consequences of running them away from a shit life. Or maybe even from help he doesn't understand as safe. Either way, Purpled is now left alone in the hands of someone who isn't prepared to take care of him. What's next?

A few options. In my version Purpled gets incredibly sick and is for a while because Punz is like 10 and doesn't know how to treat a sick infant. In the end Punz takes Purpled to a church, where Punz starts doing work in exchange for Purpled's medical care and a place to sleep (he does this a lot). But they ditch the place when the grown ups start talking about getting them placed with a family. Specifically a placement that might split them. From there Punz is determined to make it work alone regardless of the cost to them.

You could also do Punz is playing protector and caretaker. With one or two parents that are in a sense useless or abusive. My Punz only really has parentification involving siblings, but you could easily make it even more complex by involving one or more shitty and/or passive parents. I sometimes do this in modern aus because it's just more realistic in that setting.

Additional things you can do with this:

Purpled gets taken away from Punz/their family, and resents the perceived abandonment

Punz gets taken away/put a in a position where for Purpled's safety they can't interact (kicked out by family, job things, abusive situation)

They just don't like each other. They can always just not like each other. Maybe Punz was too hard on Purpled. maybe Punz is just not the kind of caretaker Purpled needed and failed him (but they were a kid/teen too so there's nuance)

It's an act. They pretend to hate each other and not be related for safety concerns, but at the end of the day they do care (some of that fake resentment could even be actually real resentment that leads to some miscommunication issues)

So now the fun part for me, why your c!Punz should have been parentified:

Parentification can lead to difficulty establishing boundaries - this can be improved upon but often it becomes difficult to say no (which can contribute to enabling others, see: the criticism that punz enables dream's destructive tendencies)

I think it just makes any post-prison recovery arcs more interesting because Dream is going through all of that while Punz is quietly falling into a familiar role just one they chose this time instead of one that was forced on them

Parentification does increase your risk of long-term mental health issues. I don't know how I would even begin to write a neurotypical Punz and I'm happy for the clear justification to not have to

"No one can/will help me. I take care of myself." the whump potential. are you hearing me?

also the potential for a caretaking role swap

Punz is overall a pretty angry person and quick to act on perceived threats. Being in a protector role in childhood would establish that tendency early and make it concrete. Especially since Punz is CLEARLY a protective person (cough "don't touch dream" cough)

So that's just about my thoughts on that. Maybe this will make me write more Mercenary Duo once I finish like real people do.

[asgardian--angels]

things I wish I could relive for the first time again:

that magical window where you finish a new piece of media, having watched/read it all by yourself with no fandom contact whatsoever, and you are just so happy about it, and full of interesting theories and takeaways, and just in love with it as a gorgeous piece of art.

because I swear to god as soon as you join the fandom for anything, you're bombarded with how you're supposed to view characters and their arcs, how you're supposed to morally and ethically judge the plot and the ways it apparently failed to present the right message, and if you don't you'll either be shunned for not sharing the popular headcanons or you'll be harassed for not criticizing the source material enough.

like how is it that the fans of a piece of media are also the ones being the most negative about it? If I like a show or a movie or a book, well, I liked it. That's kind of the point. I'm actually not here to tear it apart and talk about how it didn't live up to standards other people had! I enjoyed it for what it was, and forcing myself to find negative things to say about it doesn't actually bring me more enjoyment of it or reap any benefit to me. Fandom's a double-edged sword; you want to join a community to share your love for a piece of art, and the price you pay for a modicum of joy is a mountain of negativity. that's one main reason that I never engage with fandom until I'm completely done with a show, because if I was plugged into all of that commentary and discourse during the process, I'd be completely colored by how I'm expected to interpret everything this piece of art is presenting to me without being able to even form my own opinions.

[celtrist]

Why does Vassago already have merch, we haven't even met him yet

[wildchives4]

Maybe I'm projecting and being hopeful but I mentioned to M that I don't even get to shit by myself in peace lmao and I feel like something clicked for him. Bc I was like hey, at least you get private bathroom breaks at work (noncombative). And since then he's been a lot more acquiescent when I ask if I can nap and stuff

[wonder-worker]

I heard that Edward IV and Elizabeth Widvile were known to be very beautiful. Were there any reports on their appearance at the time?

anon 😂

But yes, contemporaries and post contemporaries in the 16th century were pretty much unanimous in praising their appearance. I'll list some of the ones I could find:

Elizabeth:

"The most beautiful woman in England" - Jean de Waurin

"Her very great beauty" - Jean de Waurin

"Her beauty of person and charm of manner" - Dominic Mancini

"None of such constant womanhood, wisdom and beauty" - Hearne's Fragment; its author was one of Edward IV's servants

"A daughter of prodigious beauty' - 1469 Continuator of Monstrelet's Chronicle

"Both faire, of a good favor, moderate of stature, well made and very wise" - Thomas More

Edward IV:

"The beauty of your personage it hath pleased Almighty God to send you" - James Strangways, Speaker of the Commons in Parliament

"The king is a handsome upstanding man" - Gabriel Tretzel, travels of Leo of Rozmital

"A handsome prince and had style" - Oliver De La Marche

"In the flower of his age, tall of stature, elegant of person" - Croyland Chronicle

"One of the handsomest knights of his kingdom" - 1469 Continuator of Monstrelet's Chronicle

"A handsome and worthy prince" - Pietro Alipranto

‘...Tall and strapping as the king’ - John Paston, Paston Letters

"He was young and more handsome than any man then alive" - Philippe de Commynes

"A man so vigorous and handsome that he might have been made for the pleasures of the flesh" - Philippe de Commynes

"The handsomest prince my eyes ever beheld" and "I don't remember ever having seen a man more handsome than he was" - Philippe de Commynes

"A very handsome prince" - Louis XI, from the Memoirs of Commynes

"He being a person of most elegant appearance, and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person" - the Croyland Chronicle, referencing Edward a few months before he died

"He seized any opportunity that the occasion offered of revealing his fine stature more protractedly and more evidently to onlookers" - Dominic Mancini, writing shortly after his death

"He was a goodly personage and very princely to behold...of visage lovely, of body mighty, strong and cleanly made; howbeit in his latter days, with an over liberal diet, somewhat corpulent, but nevertheless noy uncomely" - Thomas More

Etc.

I'm tagging @edwardslovelyelizabeth because I think you got a similar ask?

I hope this answers your question, anon! I don't generally pay a lot of attention to the physical appearance of historical figures (I find it pretty irrelevant), but in this case, it ultimately does play a role in both Edward IV and Elizabeth's historiographies for better and for worse, and seems to have actually been a personal prop of Edward's kingship, so I don't mind discussing it :)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

trying to say things about the bsol finale & how it has these little twists about what you don't necessarily expect for these roles but would you believe it i'm like i can't use my [just saying some shit] ability i'm pressed about wanting it to be more coherent & verbalizing doesn't even really happen if i don't have the [just saying some shit] wind in my sails But trying to say One Thing, how about the little twist like the miracle banana gets being that he himself lives, vs his emotional resolution that he would have died to help the musician, even as the musician is like no bestie you're good, even as the audience may expect & approve of even dying from funny little second banana guy who may even be supposedly taken as Superfluous now that thee man & thee woman have reunited (but it was always queerer than that) like. more resolution to our themes that that very second banana is doing just fine vs that the hero is, more classic iconisiquisms

[astralazuli]

So there's that D&D class quiz going around, & I took it & was so deeply offended I got Paladin.

& so I have had conversations with both Bestie & Birdfriend about this grave insult & they both were like, "Well... They have a point?" & informed me that my desire to absorb hits meant for others & deep drive to help whenever I actually can & strong convictions make me a bit Paladin-coded.

& I am just so... Idk. It's just interesting to get glimpses of yourself from other people's POVs. To be told that my defining characteristics are protecting & healing others & being incredibly fighty about the things I care about... Especially as someone whose brain specifically fixates on whether I care enough, do enough, give enough... Yeah. It's just kinda wild.

Anyway, I'm now adjusting my self-perception to include the fact that if I were a D&D character, I would be an Oath of the Ancients Paladin & not a wizard & that actually that's okay.

[tibtew]

*sigh* something something the two-dimensionality of saeru's characterisation is a writing flaw, not a feature, and trying to pass it off as a feature whilst berating anyone who sees it as a flaw is uh. A Choice

[thelonelynindroid]

Brad Jo Dana Evil Gang.........I love it

[zincbot]

digital art is so fun until i look up a tutorial and they're like: "multiply" "lock your layer" "blend brush" "fill layer" "clip" "set to normal"

[bonefall]

Is there beef with the Holstein cows and you or what was that joke lol

It's kind of wild It's just never come up on this blog before, but I HATE holsteins. Bottom 10 cow breeds for me. I hate how they're so common they account for the majority of milk produced. I hate that they're the "default" cow to the point where some don't even know cattle HAVE other colors. I hate their tiny horns (IF THEY EVEN HAVE THAT. LOSER ASS HORNLESS COW) and their painfully massive udders.

Legit I'm trying so hard to not launch into a No Mouth Must Scream style AM speech-- shoot my hand slipped.

(AM speech about why i dont like holsteins below the cut)

For starters, I have to give a brief lesson on what these terms mean; the "Holstein" is the American strain of the "Frisian" breed. Frisians are an ancient breed from Frisia, in the north of what we now consider the Netherlands. Crosses between the breeds are "Holstein-Frisians."

(There’s even more to this but im keeping it as simple as possible. Also one of my friends is Frisian and she is probably going to kill me for describing it like that.)

Historically, livestock was adapted to the environment they lived in. Frisians were bred by the Frisii people for hundreds of years in extremely grass-rich, lush, flat environments. The "polders" of the northern parts of the Netherlands. They're huge and eat a LOT of food.

Traditional Frisians were developed to produce as much meat and milk from a single individual as possible, without compromising the health of the cattle with constant inbreeding to get quick gains. We are talking about a breed that is over 2000 years old. They had the perfect environment to make The Ultimate Food Cow and by god they did it. I can respect that.

So, take that, drag it across an ocean to a place that does NOT have polders, and add the rapid enshittification of capitalism to it. BAM you've got a fucking holstein.

There is ONE goal for "improving" the holstein. Make More Milk. As long as the black and white milkbag leaks enough, nothing else matters. Health? Fertility? Feed ratio? Ability to not die of infection? WHO CARES. MILK LINE GO UP.

Over 90% of holsteins are inbred to start with, because Milk Line Go Up. To the tune of having an average COI of 8%-- where extreme negative effects (think Hapsburgs) start to crop up around 10%

Holstein bulls are aggressive bastards (many dairy bulls are), so no one wants to keep intact males in their herds, meaning most cows are artificially inseminated

Not being limited by the natural lifespan of a living bull means that the same stud can keep having direct offspring for decades after his death

Toystory the bull had 500,000 calves before he died, and hit over 1 million offspring in 2015. That's ONE animal and to put this in perspective, there are 9 million holsteins in the US.

DON'T WORRY IT GETS WORSE

Not only can 99% of holsteins be traced back to just two bulls-- 99% of male holsteins share one of two exact Y chromosomes with those two bulls.

The gene pool is so small that it's equivalent to about 60 individuals. Warrior Cat allegiances are larger than that. That's barely bigger than modern ThunderClan.

"Massive lack of genetic diversity" does not begin to capture the existential dread of this situation. Mark my words, WATCH, when the Bird Flu finally mutates a strain that rips through a mammalian population, it's gonna be in the USA and it's going to be through our dairy cattle.

This is not prophecy or me laying a curse on the land, this is the natural consequence of basing the stability of US milk production on the equivalent of 9 million clones of two classrooms worth of individuals, and then packing them in close quarters

And we don't have to wait for doomsday for the impacts to be apparent on the cattle themelves

Holstein fertility has also dropped by half since the 1960s when the intensive inbreeding really kicked into high gear

Because their whole body is dedicating all of their resources to milk production, they have a notoriously "bony" frame.

Show judges, however, like this because they think that's a very "feminine" look for a 1600 pound ruminant. Very normal thing to think.

Like. I don't know if i can communicate this to people who don't look at cows a lot (it's not quite as obviously dramatic as a pug skull) but here is a comparison of an "ideal" show holstein and an "unselected" holstein from a herd that's been established as a sort of "control group" for what they looked like back in the 1960s;

The way that the artery on the "modern" cow's belly runs to the udder like a big pink worm freaks me out the most ngl

The udder also bulges out from between the back legs

The show cow is so thin

And then compare these both to a Holstein-Frisian cross who leans more on the Frisian side;

Proper weight, developed legs. Its biggest "problem" is actually just the udder shape-- deep udders, which "hang" low like that, aren't optimal for milk-focused breeds because the higher away from the ground the less chance there is of infection. In that department, the "unselected" holstein clearly outclasses the holstein-frisian.

But it probably won't be surprising to hear that the "show holstein," with its massive, swollen udder, is SUPER prone to infections such as mastitis.

But it is also just more prone to getting sick generally

And, to keep up with these insane demands, holsteins need a TON of food. You aren't going to just turn these things out into a pasture and be done with it. Even its ancestor the Frisian needed premium Dutch polder grass to be such a good cow-- crank that up to 11 with these Monuments to Humanity's Hubrice

The Texas Longhorn developed in semi-feral conditions and can eat a bush to become the best thing in a 10 mile radius. The Scottish Highland was iron-forged in upland moors with a steady diet of turf and rain.

Meanwhile if a Holstein has less than 5 homemade meals a day without poland spring bottled water it will die to death.

And the WORST part? You have to use these if you want to make money in dairy farming. It's WAAY too expensive to just run a suboptimal farm. Their milk isn't great, but they sure do make a lot of it.

...so Holsteins and Holstein-Frisians (and other "super efficient" breeds) have absolutely decimated heritage cattle. The American Milking Devon is a deep reddish brown with gorgeous horns and low maintenance; rare. Randall Linebacks are painted with lines of white speckles down the back and can be used for any purpose; critically endangered. The Niata was a pug-faced cow who could fight jaguars; extinct.

And THAT'S what makes me hate them most of all. I LOVE cows, but whenever I see a reference to one, it's a holstein. It's always boring black and white splotches with big pink udders. They're practically synonymous with "cow" when their homogeniety is actually hiding much cooler breeds from you.

Did you know cows can be tiger-striped?

And that England has its own type of longhorn?

Or that cow horns can twist upwards like an antelope?

And that they can have REALLY LONG ears?

And that they can be blue?

And that's not even getting into some of the cows that have gotten a small crumb of attention lately, such as Highlands, Ankole-Watusi, and Texas Longhorns. There's so many cool cows out there! And they're all really different from holsteins! MOST of them are also a lot healthier and produce tastier milk and meat!

TL;DR yeah i don't like holsteins and I like sniping at them. For reasons both legit and petty.

[lgbtlunaverse]

I've seen a good number of people ask a question along the lines of "why do characters like Falin and hate Laios when they're so similar?" and i've also seen good analysis on the differences in how the touden siblings carry themselves that would, despite their shared traits, make a person gravitate to one more than the other.

But i feel like we've overseen one very central thing here.

People don't like Falin

Like... the average person in dungeon meshi doesn't like Falin. She was deeply ostrasized by her home village, in magic school she had zero friends before Marcille and the others generally saw her as strange and a bit offputting.

Characters like Namari and Chilchuck like her well enough but not necessarily more than any other member of their party, including Laios. Neither Kabru nor his party think much of her. The canaries don't give a fuck about her. Toshiro's retainers don't see her as anything else than the weird foreign girl their boss has a crush on.

The reason we think everyone loves Falin is because, despite all the indifferent side characters, the 2 most important and central characters of the story are Laios and Marcille. Who are NOT representative of the average attitudes to Falin! But necromancy georg number 1 and 2 are our main eyes into the story and they love Falin so much that it colours our perspective of the whole world.

The only side character who qualifies as liking Falin and not Laios is Toshiro (at least at first, as he ends the story on much better terms with Laios) and that says a lot about his character, with him drifting to the quiet Falin precisely because of her oddness but being both uncomfortable with and deeply jealous of Laios' much more open expression of that oddness. Because he's a repressed guy from a culture where etiquette is incredibly important.

But like I said, that's a specific aspect of him, not to the world at large.

Because there's also people that click more with laios than with Falin.

Kabru, for one, who is initially distrustful of laios but clearly also deeply fascinated by him and drawn to him.

Minor spoilers, and you don't have to read too deeply into this, because I don't think Kabru particularly dislikes Falin or anything. But it's interesting that when he talks about his distrust of the toudens in ch.32 he's talking about them both. But his big friendship declaration in chapter 76 is aimed squarely at Laios, he doesn't say "you and your sister" he says "you"

And Senshi!! He instantly clicks with Laios, well before he does so with anyone else in the party– who he also becomes friends with, it just takes a bit longer– specifically because they bond over their shared special interest in monsters!! Senshi is kind towards Falin and cares for her wellbeing, but he also... doesn't know her. The reason he is even here, helping to save her, is because he and Laios bonded over monsters and he wants to help his new friends out!

Of course, the theme of neurodivergent isolation is very present in Laios' story. I'm not denying that. He does turn people off, without meaning to and unable to fully understand why! But so does Falin. And just like there are people who like her despite of or even because of those traits, there are people who do the same with him.

In conclusion: "Average person loves Falin and hates Laios" factoid actually statistical error. Average person is neutral on both Falin and Laios. Georcille, Laiorg and Geoshiro, who live in the dungeon and think over 10,000 Falin-loving thoughts a day, are statistical outliers adn should not have been counted.

[john-jonathy-jonathan-the-3rd]

I'm not really qualified in any real way for my opinion to be more valid than these, but I wanted to share it because why not. Also I dont know the full context but if the guy was just randomly putting that stuff in a happy and proud mother's post about her daughter, then i'm not going to act like that was anywhere near a nice or really appropriate thing to do, regardless of wheter you agree with him or not.

Personally, if I was planning on having a child, I would want them to have the best life I could possibly give them, and if it doesnt look like that will be the case I wouldnt bring them into the world at all. If you believe you can afford to give your child a worthy life despite whatever complications may arise, then that's amazing and please go ahead! But if someone thinks their child would suffer needlesly for whatever reason, they should have the right to not bring them into the world. I know there's more to it but I'll leave my opinion there

Full tweet.

[copperbadge]

You know, ten years ago I might have looked at what working remotely has done to my daily routine and said it's really fucked me, but this morning I was thinking about it and I think I'm much closer to my natural inclinations than I could have been before.

I woke up around 2am today (after going to bed at 8ish), ate half a hamburger, and made a batch of meringues. I'd planned to make meringues and macaroons this morning before making haroset for the Passover dinner I'm going to, and meringues basically look after themselves -- after 90 minutes in a 200F oven they'll be fine if they stay in the cooling oven a bit, and my oven has a timed-shutoff function, so if I go back to sleep it'll be okay. And now the mixing bowl has time to dry after being washed before I make macaroons.

So you know, yes I'm up at 2am eating breakfast and doing tasks, but I ate breakfast because I was hungry and I got something checked off my to-do list. I got six hours of sleep and could get a few more if I want. ADHD has a known association with sleep dysfunction but usually that means "night owl"; I had to be different so for me that manifests as being an extreme morning person. Ordinarily that would be more of a hindrance than you think, except now nobody is seeing my schedule on the daily.

There's no real problem with being up for the day at 2am if you don't have to pretend to be alert and productive from 8 to 4:30 later that same day. I get more done at work because I can square it all away early and then just babysit email the rest of the day. If you don't have to commute, you don't have to avoid the hell of being 15 hours awake while on the bus home - for perspective, if you normally get up at 7 like a normal person, my 5pm is your 10pm.

When breakfast is at 3am, lunch comes around 10:30 -- which is good if you're supposed to take a dose of meds at 1pm on an empty stomach. I no longer have to take my lunch break all in a chunk either; I can eat lunch at a leisurely pace and still only take 20 minutes, and use the rest of my break time to cook or clean in short increments, or just spend a few minutes playing with the cats.

And my ability to stick to a schedule is better, because I have to enforce it myself...but I also can. No need to mess with alarms I'll likely ignore if I can set my work lamp to turn itself off when it's lunch time. If I have to get up to turn it back on, I might as well fix lunch, after all. No need to worry about finishing early and not being able to go home -- I can just walk away and keep email alerts going on my phone until official quitting time.

If I had to go back to in person office work, I could; I knew how to cope before. But I have to admit I'd be really bitter about it.