#can i cite sources?

[bluberimufim]

IT'S TIME!!! IT'S FINALLY TIME FOR THE RANT ABOUT 19TH-CENTURY PORTUGUESE URBANISM!!!! (@kingkendrick7 mentioned they were interested a While ago and who am I to withhold information about my Interests)

I'll be focusing exclusively on the city of Porto in northern Portugal because it's what I studied in my Anthropology class. And also: disclaimer! I'm translating all the names of the things from Portuguese so if it sounds weird, yeah, that's why.

The Industrial Revolution in Portugal created a very weird relationship between work and personal life due to the way the cities were planned. Basically, the people who worked the factories, and even the owners, lived extremely close to their place of work - and I mean they were pretty much neighbours. The factories were also built in the city centre itself. This is much more similar to the work-life relationship of rural areas than any model existing in normal cities.

There was, at this time, a strange impasse when it came to building housing. Porto specifically is known for having extremely thin and deep plots of land in the oldest parts of the city - I'm talking 5 by 100m (approx. 16 by 328ft). No house is gonna be that deep, so there's always about 80 to 70m of backyard.

Workers were paid extremely low wages. Like, so low they couldn't afford housing anywhere. So the factory owners would ✨selflessly✨ give up their backyards and build housing for their workers.

Can we just take a moment to think about how absurd this is? Like. Imagine taking pity on your employees for being poor. My brother in Christ, WHO DO YOU THINK IS MAKING THEM POOR?

Anyway, this new type of housing is called an Island. Its name comes from the fact that it's an "island" of low-income housing in a semi-rich neighbourhood.

Basically, an Island is a long exterior corridor with tiny houses on one or two sides and communal bathrooms at the end. Here's a picture:

The way this worked is that the owners of the big, street-front house would open a passage on the ground floor that could be fully closed wuth a gate. This kept the Islands invisible and, thus, out of the city hall's jurisdiction, since they can only legislate on what is visible from street level.

Here's an irl picture of an Island today:

Btw they tried solving this problem bt building houses from scratch but they realuzed that workers' wages were so low that just adding plumbing would make a house unaffordable. Yeah...

Porto currently stands as the European city with the most recent outbreak of the Bubonic Plague, in 1899. This is because Islands had such poor hygenic conditions that it re-kindled the Black Plague epidemic. Just so you can kinda picture what level of "horrible" this whole thing is.

Here's a quote by David Moreira da Silva about the Islands that I translated from French:

"Housing, essential organ of the city, offers us in Porto obe of the most miserable and tragic displays and one of the grave causes that greatly contribute to the huge mortality that is constant. We say, justly, that Porto as a city is the vastest cemetery in Europe."

(Parallel to this there was also the "Sleep Business", which consisted of renting places to sleep. The main two were sub-renting, in which you rented a place to sleep and paid by the hour, and the Rope, in which you rented a piece of rope to lean on while sleeping. Thought it might be interesting to add.)

I'm not mentioning as we go because it'd be exhausting, but backlash was VERY strong every step of the way. Doctors were warning against living conditions in the Islands and city hall was trying to pass laws banning these types of buildings by extending their jurisdiction deeper into the city's plots of land. But they were unsuccessful.

They tried to propose a rehabilitation of the Islands in the early 20th century but their inhabitants basically responded with "Please tear our houses down and make us new ones somewhere else. The Islands are unsalvageable".

The whole factory work-life thing ended with the fascist dictatorship, which reorganized the city centre, but there's still plenty of people living in Islands today.

To this day, the Islands stand as a warning of what rampant capitalism does to people when left unchecked. But that doesn't stop tone-deaf bourgeois pricks from romanticizing them.

This has been a rant. I hope you enjoyed it <3

[saragrosie]

Who can it be now?

This is @burntbrownsugar 's villain Stone design, aka Doc Rock! I post about him a normal amount

Bonus huehuehue the guy

[homunculus-argument]

I have no sources and zero recollection of where I read this, but there is a speculation that the first written mention of finnish (or finnic) peoples' existence, and that of the traditional dog breed finnish spitz, kind of loop around to support each other. It was from some Ancient Roman history, one of those "I heard this from a drunk sailor who heard it from another drunk sailor and who am I to dispute such a reliable source" historians writing down everything that is known about the known world.

It was just one random offhand side-clause mentioning that when you go far out enough into the north, there are wild people living in there, who have red dogs. And the circular logic here is that finns live in the north, the finnish spitz is a red dog, and since it must have been finns, the dogs must have been early finnish spitz. And since finnish spitz is the dog of the finns, therefore the northmen with the red dogs must have been finnish.

[swordscleric]

I'm only halfway through the second phase of Predathos (which, to be clear is an incredible vibe for a bossfight, love a good head & hands/multitarget-same-entity boss) but I cannot shake the feeling of disappointment and just dissatisfaction I have had with this campaign that definitely started with Dusk/Yu, got followed up handily with the first Delilah/Sun Tree fight and then has been unfortunately reinforced with every discussion surrounding the Prime Deities since Hearthdell. This campaign is fascinating to pick apart, I have been really enjoying pulling apart why it isn't working compared to C1 or C2. But as much as I'm having fun dissecting where the worldbuilding has led to the current weaknesses in the gods' argument or reading other people's incisive commentary on the lack of personalities on the Ruby Vanguard's end, the "girlfailure" nonsense, etc etc, man do I wish this campaign was better than it is.

There are so many avenues of improvement -

Matt telling everyone to prep and write characters for this campaign instead of a C2-esque character-focused campaign.

Matt working religious organisations into the world properly.

The cast engaging with Marquet as a genuine location rather than set-dressing.

Otohan, Ozo and the rest of the Vanguard having more than "*insert snappy line here*" for their personalities.

No Delilah.

Bell's Hells having an iota of curiosity for anything outside of their own selves, including but not limited to: the gods, religious worship, the Elemental Titans and why they were sundered, how the people of Exandria feel about the gods, Vasselheim and its role in suppressing information about Predathos, Ludinus Da'Leth's plan and how it would still break the world if they did it in his place

I don't know why all of this fell into place in the way that it did, but it did. We can endlessly speculate why - the cast resting on their laurels after C2, not having enough time between the animated shows and Daggerheart and Candela Obscura and, and, and - but at the end of the day I really do hope that whatever form the final campaign wrap-up takes, they burn the damn questions asking the cast "what if the world was made of pudding and this character and this character kissed?" and instead pick questions that get them to introspect for a potential Campaign 4. Otherwise I don't know what will happen, but it sure as hell won't be Mighty Nein part 2: Issylra Boogaloo.

[sp00ky-sh4rk0]

Some more oc scraps…

(Second image is prolly at Chandlo and Snorpys wedding or smth)

[crow-caller]

A lot of people think autism research is solely this vague grouping of evil non autistic people guessing at things from afar, but as much as that happens, I want to inform you with insider knowledge a lot of modern autism research is done by autistic people!

And a fun fact related to this: "autism" is a common special interest! As in, a lot of autistic people have autism itself as a special interest (esp women, perhaps bc they're likely to be late or self diagnosed). People with a special interest in autism are also more likely to get involved in autism research as participants, and thus there's a known overrepresention of it as a special interest in data

[alittlegreekreader]

not exactly sure how to phrase this but there's kind of a strain of discourse about the ancient world (& specifically the characters within it who are objects of study, whether mythical/fictional/historical) that posits that, well, everyone back then basically sucked, so you shouldn't look at them through a quote-unquote "modern lens". and this gets expressed in everything from throwaway tumblr posts about just like picking your favourite war criminal (why "war criminals"? not call them e.g. rapists?) to academic books cautioning against the supposed ahistoricism of talking about ancient Athenian "misogyny". and this has always kind of bothered me. but the longer i go on working in this field the more i think this idea amounts to, fundamentally, a denial of the personhood of tbh basically everyone who was not a freeborn citizen man. the harms done to women, enslaved people, war captives etc. may have been legal or legitimate or unnoticed as such in the ancient world but they were still harms. which is one thing when those harms are fictional or mythological (tho' surely still worth acknowledging as such?) but quite another imo when you're talking about historical figures. sorry but your blorbo made commodities out of people as real & human & capable of suffering as he was or you are. and no i don't think we (in or out of the academy) talk about this enough. i don't think we'll ever be done talking about it.

[catominor]

lana del rey was actually invented in 88 bce when lucius licinius lucullus hallucinated every lyric in order while he marched on rome with sulla. admittedly the lines about his pussy tasting like pepsi cola were somewhat lost on him due to it not being invented yet but he understood the idea perfectly

[oldbutchdanielcraig]

What is your interpretation of the breakfast scene in Queer? I am still grappling with my emotions about it. Why is Eugene so violent? And why is Lee saying all of that after? I’m very curious about your insight.

it's literally one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie i love it SO much and i think it says so much about the characters because it's the one time they clash without a deescalation. normally lee backs down or gene laughs it off but this time they meet and collide and sort of hiss at each other like alleycats because neither of them are even brave enough to have a proper fight.

gene is so violent because of what i think is like. a buildup of all the parts of lee that (for lack of a better word) he can't stand? like he 100% is starting to feel a lack of the independence he craves because he and lee are spending most of their time together and becoming increasingly more affectionate with each other. #1 notable thing about this is that in the scene directly before (which i take to be the afternoon or i guess a couple of days max before that morning) there's this whole exchange where gene is visibly enjoying their sex and being plainly affectionate with lee and admitting aloud that he enjoys the sexual aspects of their relationship which is like. the one thing someone in his position shouldn't do. it's absolutely intentionally a one step forward, three steps back thing for gene because he's like. well i've let lee know that i like him. now i have to let him know i Really Don't. and i love that about him soooo much.

lee here is the MOST special to me though because he's presenting his conflicting urges in this undiluted way that's wrapped up in a sort of performance so as to obfuscate the fact that he's being himself. i think "aren't you taking unfair advantage?" could be my favorite lee line because it's just so. this line is coming from the guy who for the entire movie's runtime has been like "please let me take advantage of you please let me isolate you i want to be the only person in your life i want to control you i want to use every advantage i have over you against you" and all of the sudden he's like "aren't you taking advantage of me? the sweet and innocent baby?" and like. the modicum of truth in his routine i think is that this is Actually how he sees himself. it could be manipulative and it might be if it was someone else but it's just not because lee actually believes he's childlike in this way and there's some level of awareness in him that his performative masculinity is just a performance. bringing up the bout of junk sickness is a sensitive thing for both of them too because it's this moment of weakness from lee and moment of tenderness from gene which is like. another thing they both crave but are both really afraid of.

it's really awesome ultimately because this might be the most direct they get with each other but they're still just completely speaking past each other and just laying out their desires but not understanding each other at all and not really finding any sympathy for each other either. it's as close as they get to spitting their hearts up at the same time and leaving them beating on the floor tbh. and god i love it when they fight.

[halfbaked00q]

So I was looking at that image of Q's workshop, and you know what I realized? Every single time we see this man in his own space every possible surface is absolutely loaded with books, but other than a fic *I wrote* I have never, even once, read a fic where he references any of said books. Ever. Nobody ever acknowledges Q's giant library.

see, conversely, I feel like I've seen a goodly amount of Q x books in the fandom. like from what I've seen/remember, I have this like pre-existing/established sense of it being a whole trope of, like, "for all that at work he's The Tech Guy, he has a soft spot for the classics," or else it's shades of, like, I get enough of screens at work and there's something to be said about physical media, etc.

off the top of my head there's a fic where Bond goes to (break into?) Q's flat and sees all his books and remarks on it saying sth about like, seems rather analog (can only vaguely remember this but I feel like analog was the specific term he used, I just remember finding the specific exchange rather charming), and they have that exhange. there's one fic where Bond... maybe is injured and recovering or sth? but basically Q hands him a book he just got on preorder and is like here read this, and Bond is like, already read it. And Q is like, how. I just got this on preorder, and Bond is like, I have a friend in publishing- why did you even bother preordering? it's not like it's a bestseller. and then Q is like, fine help yourself to my library. and Bond is like. read it all already. and Q is like. .what do you mean you read it all already. and then Q realizes that Bond must have. spent rather a lot of time breaking into & hanging out in his flat before... and there's one fic where Q is into trashy spy novels which Bond steals & returns having written pithy notes in the margin(s) of (to Q's displeasure).

but yeah I do feel like it's A Thing for Q to have an extensive library. esp of the classics such as Dickens and Austen, and then like LotR and stuff, and definitely sometimes with various textbooks and things too (I def remember at least one fic where Bond is in Q's flat & his pov notes the textbooks on various subjects all over)

[elbiotipo]

I also remember when that deactivatecivilization blog told me "Wikipedia says that disease and plague started with the domestication of animals, checkmate" and I went looking for the source and it was a fanatical vegan tract that considered domestication, sorry, "domesacration" a moral evil and said that humans started to hunt only 19.000 years ago (WHAT) and that began violence, patriarchy and the oppression of women. The only mention of zoonosis on the cited page was in a throwaway phrase listing the many, many evils of having domesticated animals.

So you should be also be wary even if someone says "but it's sourced!"

[mscaseys]

feeling defensive every time someone brings up how gemma is secretly evil which may be true (keyword: may) but also would be such a weird twist for the sake of being a twist based on everything we know about her. and it is starting to feel targeted ngl clear the searches gemma is kind gemma has a pure heart she was seen with deer in the cinematic masterpiece chikhai bardo.

[presdestigatto]

sebastian vettel has this philosophy of only being confident about speaking on a driver's skills and abilities if he's been teammates with them, and it honestly makes the way he describes his former teammates very weirdly charged :p

anddd im putting the rest under dropdown because its sebchal waffle and kinda. long. so here if u wanna read my brainrot:

i'm specifically thinking about how he likes to emphasise (in interviews) that he knows charles sort of inside out as a driver because of their two (!!) years as teammates. the way he speaks about his abilities and talents and specifically, this year when he very quickly asserted that charles will be easy for lewis to get along with, even though seb was last teammates with charles four years ago!! when seb was the first driver!! and also his interview from suzuka last year when he said that he can't speak on max's skill because he hasn't been teammates with him, unlike charles, who he can totally 100% talk about, if only charles wins that championship one day (he did not say this second bit but it was heavily implied imo. he did say the first half re: max). sort of feels like he's always speaking from a "foremost expert on charles leclerc, the driver" position, and if i were to go on a limb i would say that he always speaks of charles with pride. big like. proud dad vibes.

also a minor digression but the indelible mark seb left on charles' career is undeniable and IMO the more illustrious charles' career is the better it reflects on seb (like the 2020 shame can kind of be washed off if charles becomes a wdc. a compelling reason to be a fan of both.)

my last note on this is how re: the most talented driver in 15 years note, seb clarifies in his f1 podcast episode (which is a very nice listen. he also talks about mark and kimi in that) that he would consider kimi the most naturally talented driver he's seen, but charles' ability to find laptime over a single lap is special. so seb is a charles leclerc generational qualifier truther. an og.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

okay, i finished "all things". you know how i made that joke a while ago about innocently asking a question that reignites a 30 year fan war? well, i have one for you, and i'm putting it under read more because i know some of my followers haven't got there yet.

please do not judge if you think this is silly- you have had years with this episode and i finished it not even 10 minutes ago!

okay. here we go:

so... was scully's thing with waterston fully consensual?

because at first i was gagged she was with a married man, but scully can be messy, so i thought about it and was like... hmm. maybe not THAT weird.

but then i got to thinking about it and... he was her professor, which is already a wild power dynamic. how are you supposed to turn down the advances of a guy who controls if you pass or fail med school?

and beyond that, he was obsessed with her to the point of moving out to the city where she lived, and breaking up his whole family after she left. and his comments were super nasty about her leaving. and then he said she was all he lived for, and it was like...??? holy hell. this seems... highly dubious, at best. he seemed obsessive and stalker-y.

idk. what is the consensus you have come to?

i know scully also dated one of her instructors at the FBI academy, so it seems there is a Pattern here, and maybe she did knowingly get involved in this relationship with a man who she knew was married (or maybe she didn't know he was married, but it seemed he did based on how she asked about the divorce?) and i'm not trying to make scully unproblematic or something- let her be #messy- i'm just trying to wrap my head around what exactly went down. there could also be the cultural difference of this being seen as a semi-normal thing to do when the episode aired, but now that i am of a certain age and a different generation, it comes across as Not Okay to a new viewer.

i'll ask these same questions in my episode writeup, because they are what is on my mind, but this seems like a better place to discuss just that aspect of the episode and not everything else.

[all-pacas]

my hot take is that like 99% of fandom’s takes on chase are lowkey wrong. some are more wrong than others, some are exaggerated as oppposed to “cite your sources” fake for example. but also the house tumblr fandom is so uninterested in canon generally that at this point people just believe this.

and it goes for everyone, obviously. chase isn’t special. we can talk about how fandom undermines and ignores foreman and his relationship to house, how cameron is perpetually rewritten and changed to make her cleaner or more girlboss or fit headcanons. how this absolutely also applies to house and wilson and cuddy. but i think chase is an interesting example because he’s fairly universally loved. he’s like the one person both reddit and tumblr fandom really adore. and it’s just. it’s based on headcanons. my hot take is that a lot of these opinions have little to no basis in canon actually. even if you love him.

[teh-nos]