#free affiliate articles

[pathologising]

hey y'all! if you're interested in supporting some palestinian artists, a small art publication i work with put together a list of palestinian artists and designers you can support. Purchasing from most of these artists goes towards the Palestinian Children Relief Fund (PCRF). also wanted to note the publication doesnt profit off this article through affiliate links or whatever. feel free to check it out!

[mossy-aro]

Aspec Video Essay Masterpost

This is a resource masterpost intending to compile together the video essays pertaining to asexuality and aromanticism and affiliated topics online! I'm only going to be including videos that are 15+ minutes long (to qualify as a 'video essay') - of course if anyone has suggestions please feel free to contribute! This is a community project!

Compulsory Sexuality, Comphet & Asexual Alienation by Evie Lupine - slightly less of a video essay and more chatty but she does talk about academic articles on compulsory sexuality. She also did a podcast episode with @theacecouple (here: Asexuality and Kink ft. Evie Lupine) which was very interesting!

Amatonormativity by Tara Mooknee - one I've recced on here before! Definitely a bit 101 and aimed at an allo audience but still worth a watch!

The hell of "sad singles" set ups & the need for found family by Bryony Claire - sent to me! I'm afraid I haven't seen it yet.

is love a social construct? by oliSUNvia - recommended to me by a friend! Again, I haven’t watched it yet but I know pertains to the wider discourse around romantic love + amatonormativity.

Are Aromantic and Asexual Representation Queer Enough? (Buddy Daddies) by VIKA - I haven't seen this series but it's an aspec reading / analysis on the main relationship in the show!

How Romance Paths in Games Fail Asexual Players (and How to Fix it) by DarkTeaTime - sent to me! I haven’t seen it yet but it’s about asexual players + gaming :) for some reason it won’t let me embed the url but someone has left a link in the notes down below!!

Rowan Ellis has a few here:

the chronically online state of asexual discourse - I've recced this one before on this blog and I still highly recommend it!

The Rise of Asexual Representation

They've also done an interview with Alice Oseman about aspec representation but it's more of a discussion than a video essay, so I haven't included it.

Spacey Aces (their entire channel is dedicated to discussing aspec topics so check that out if that interests you!) - most of their content is more chat/101 focused and not so much video essay-y but I've picked two which I think qualify:

A-specs vs Amatonormative Media (and the world)

Lavender Marriage | a history of purple and relationship anarchy in the queer community

David J Bradley has quite a few essays, here:

Alone. Not Alive. | A Queer Reading Of Company

Sherlock Holmes: Asexual Icon

That One Time House Cured Asexuality

Maybe You Haven't Met The Right Person Yet | An Asexual Video Essay

Asexuals and Sex - more of an explanatory 101 video but still felt like I should include it!

Meghan Sandor has some here:

Polyamory, Relationship Anarchy & Queerplatonic Partnerships: Are They Really the Same Thing?

Asexuality and Kink: Why Do So Many Aces Love It?

[official-linguistics-post]

this isn't linguistics-specific, but it is very important and deserves to be known:

you don't have to have an institutional affiliation to use @jstor.

there is a free option that lets you read up to 100 articles/month online - which is a lot!! and even the individual subscription is only $19.50/month or $199/year as of july 2024, which is leagues better than having to purchase (or in many cases, "rent") articles individually from the publishers.

the only downside to the free account is that it doesn't allow downloads, which is tragic for those of us who enjoy hoarding pdves, but not necessarily a dealbreaker.

i've seen simply too much lamenting about jstor accessibility for non-affiliates. it's there to use!! go forth and inhabit your research rabbit holes!

[alex51324]

On the other hand, Slate* also did this article about how a new PAC is taking out ads on porn sites, linking Trump to Project 2025's goal of banning pornography.

The ads are scheduled to run in the two weeks before the election, in swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The article talks about some of the logistics of this campaign, including how it took some effort to find an ad network that handles porn sites, allows political ads, and has the ability to do state-level targeting. They also designed the ad to make sure that the money shot (so to speak) comes in the 5 seconds before the "skip ad" button becomes available.

The PAC is, of course, not affiliated with any campaign.

(*Slate is an x-free-articles-a-month site, but the incognito window trick works, if it says you've hit your limit.)

[makingqueerhistory]

Do you have any recommendations of books/ studies/ articles about the representation of queer people in media? Thank you for all the work you do!

Yes absolutely, I would be happy to share. Any discussion like this needs to mention The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies by Vito Russo. Making Queer History does have a set of articles about this as well, with Queen Christina, Queer Codes, and Queer Coding and Different from the Others.

Some more modern books that I can vouch for are:

The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me about (Desiring) Men

Manuel Betancourt

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

Joe Vallese

Gays on Broadway

Ethan Mordden

Hi Honey, I'm Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture

Matt Baume

We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film

Tre'vell Anderson

(Affiliate links above)

This is just what I have read though, so other's are free to add on!

[middle-earth-press]

A breakdown of Tirion's newspapers & political affiliations btw:

The Tirion Chronicle. Oldest of them all, connected with the library and archives. Tries to be neutral, starts off mildly pro-Fëanorian, switches to mildly pro-Nolofinwëan after Fëanor begins to grow markedly more difficult. Not harsh on the Valar, but allows itself to criticise them. Information from all venues of life, most of it very day-to-day, because Valinor.

Fëanorian Quarter Courier. What it says on the tin, I guess, although it's not as bellicose as one might suspect, just has a Fëanorian slant.

The Eight-pointed Star. If the Courier is Fëanorian... then the Star is far-Fëanorian. Its most involved readers would protest at the paper being described as aggressive, but that word is a pretty mild one for it. Everyone suspects Morgoth submitted something anonymously at least once and it's a bit disconcerting that no one can agree which article of many it could be. (He might have submitted things anywhere else tbh, but the Star was always more belligerent than the others, so it's the one people suspect most. For what it's worth it was also most welcoming of people outside its editorial office writing things for it)

Tirion Review. The name doesn't give it away, but it's markedly pro-Nolofinwëan. Often engages in dramatic back-and-forths with the two above that can last for years.

Journal of the Student Association. A serious publication remarkable for being written and redacted entirely by minors. The Free Journal of Noldorin Youth splits off from it once tensions grow unbearable, and what remains acquires a Nolofinwëan bias.

Independent Monthly. Popularly (and unfairly) known as 'Independent Complaints' because it's main position seems to be "Please stop fighting. Can't we get on with eachother?". Finarfin is rumoured to be a contributor.

Not counting the dozens of scientific journals which probably have a wider readership lol.

[antiquarianfics]

Making Waves

Bucky gives you a pep talk when life’s beating down on you a little too hard.

a/n: unedited as always. this is also just a comfort fic. just bucky making you feel better. this can be read romantic or platonic. whatever floats your boat.

warnings: sexist themes, profanity

note: I do not own the character Bucky Barnes or any other Marvel affiliated characters.

You do not have permission to copy, repost, or translate my work; however, feel free to like, comment, and/or reblog.

»»———-———-———-———-———-———-———-««

“I thought I might find you out here.”

You sigh as you tilt your head up in acknowledgment of your intrusion, unsure if it’s welcome or not. In fact, you’re not sure how you feel about much at the moment. Your mind is swimming in uncertainties and insecurities that you feel a personal obligation to figure out or overcome. Nevertheless, you don’t protest the welcome/unwelcome (pick one, dammit!) company as it sits down next to you, providing a little warmth against the night’s cold to your right.

Your company had found you sitting alone on the beach, right at the shore, knees pulled to your chest, arms wrapped around your legs and holding them close, fingers anxiously fiddling with a ring on your finger, and staring at the waves as they crashed against the shore over and over again. The sea, you’d found, is calming. The repetitive nature of the ocean crashing against the shore and retreating back into itself feels honest to you. You may lie to yourself, the world may lie to you, but the sea? The sea will always find a way to reveal to you a hidden treasure you never knew you were looking for.

“That predictable?” You finally ask, responding to your newfound company.

You turn your head and make eye contact with your friend who’d come searching for you. You’re met with concerned eyes the color you’re certain the sea would be if it weren’t dark—the only light coming from the moon reflecting upon the water.

Your friend gives you a look, raising an eyebrow and pursing his lips. He’d found out the beach had become your favorite spot to run off to early on in your friendship, but he also knew you only ran for the beach when something was troubling you.

“You seemed upset,” is all he says.

“Bucky, I…” You trail off, not really sure what you meant to even say to him. What do you even want to say to him? That you’re upset by some media rumors about you? That you got your feelings hurt because a stupid clickbait article claims you’re dating a man you hate? That you feel like a failure as an Avenger, or a hero, or whatever the fuck you’re supposed to be anymore if all your worth to the public is tied up in who they think you have in your bed? You don’t finish your thought and return your gaze to the ocean.

Bucky is silent for a long while, just sitting and watching the waves with you. He is absolutely no stranger to needing to sit and sift through feelings, and he is also no stranger to unwanted media attention messing with his sanity. So, he lets you sit for a minute, but he also knows the longer that anger and frustration cook up inside you, the worse off you’ll be. You taught him that.

“Doll, you’ve gotta talk about it or it’s gonna eat you alive. You know that,” Bucky says softly. Empathetically.

“Bucky,” you whine, tired and still unwilling to talk.

“Okay, don’t talk. I will,” he says, swallowing nervously. He’s obviously out of his comfort zone, and you can’t help but look at him.

You let your eyes rest on your friend once more, and you take in his worried demeanor. His stormy blue eyes are set on the ocean, watching the waves as he gathers his thoughts. You realize, then, that he isn’t comfortable with what he’s doing—he’d much rather be listening to you talk. He’d much rather offer a small piece of advice after you talk, or maybe give you a hug and hope that fixes you. But he cares about you, and he’s trying to do the same thing you’ve done for him countless times: voice your observations about what might be upsetting your friend so that the problem is out and a solution can be found.

“You’re upset,” Bucky starts hesitantly, “because of a gossip piece that’s circulating the internet right now.”

You don’t argue with him, and Bucky takes that as confirmation.

“The gossip piece claims that you’re dating John Walker and dubs you the new “it” couple even though you hate the guy and punched him the face the last time you saw him.”

You laugh humorlessly.

“Then, that video clip from Walker’s interview started circulations where he all but confirms the rumors.”

You clench your fist in annoyance.

“That about right?”

“Yeah, that’s about it,” you say.

“I’d be angry, too,” he says.

“It’s just…” You trail off, closing your eyes tight trying to fight off tears. “It’s just that it doesn’t matter to them that I was an Avenger! It doesn’t matter that I helped defeat Loki, or Ultron, or Thanos. I’ve done so much for this city, and they don’t care. Not because they don’t care that New York was saved by the Avengers, but because the boy heroes are just better. I’m turned into an unwilling superhero eye candy, and, despite all my accomplishments, they can’t bring up my name without attaching it to a man’s. One of the articles doesn’t even mention my name! The article is really just titled ‘Mrs. Captain America?’ Like, really? I want to hit something.”

Bucky frowns, nodding as you rant and waiting patiently for you to finish. When you do, you’re breathing heavily, obviously worked up.

“You’re more than just ‘unwilling superhero eye candy,’” Bucky says, nose scrunching in disgust as he repeats your words. You can’t help it, but you laugh. The words sound so silly coming from his mouth. He smiles.

“You’re right. It’s really messed up that the public isn’t acknowledging all you’ve actually done to protect them, but you know that you’re more than that. That’s what matters. Because as long as you remember who you are, what you stand for, and what you do, then that person and her accomplishments are going to be noticed by the people who need to notice them. Do you know how many little girls probably saw you and Natasha fighting in all those fights and realized they could do that, too? When I was growing up, my sister didn’t have anyone like you to look up to. I wish she had.”

Bucky reaches up and wipes away the tears that are silently streaming down your cheeks. You reach up and haphazardly wipe away what he missed with the back of your hand. You hadn’t realized you were crying.

“Thank you, Buck,” you say. “I needed that.”

“I mean it, Doll.” He leans forward and presses a kiss to your forehead.

[jstor]

What is JSTOR??

We’re glad you asked 🤩

JSTOR is a digital library for the intellectually curious. We provide access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources across 75 disciplines to facilitate research and teaching—working with the academic community to make important content discoverable.

Students and alumni at participating institutions may be able to access our content through their school library. But don’t worry! In addition to free, Open Access materials, we provide those without institutional affiliations up to 100 free articles per month OR an individual JPASS subscription.

You can visit our about page for more about our mission and initiatives. Thanks for the ask, stay curious! 🤓

[mckitterick]

The End Is Near: "News" organizations using AI to create content, firing human writers

source: X

source: X

source: X

an example "story" now comes with this warning:

A new byline showed up Wednesday on io9: “Gizmodo Bot.” The site’s editorial staff had no input or advance notice of the new AI-generator, snuck in by parent company G/O Media.

G/O Media’s AI-generated articles are riddled with errors and outdated information, and block reader comments.

“As you may have seen today, an AI-generated article appeared on io9,” James Whitbrook, deputy editor at io9 and Gizmodo, tweeted. “I was informed approximately 10 minutes beforehand, and no one at io9 played a part in its editing or publication.”

Whitbrook sent a statement to G/O Media along with “a lengthy list of corrections.” In part, his statement said, “The article published on io9 today rejects the very standards this team holds itself to on a daily basis as critics and as reporters. It is shoddily written, it is riddled with basic errors; in closing the comments section off, it denies our readers, the lifeblood of this network, the chance to publicly hold us accountable, and to call this work exactly what it is: embarrassing, unpublishable, disrespectful of both the audience and the people who work here, and a blow to our authority and integrity.”

He continued, “It is shameful that this work has been put to our audience and to our peers in the industry as a window to G/O’s future, and it is shameful that we as a team have had to spend an egregious amount of time away from our actual work to make it clear to you the unacceptable errors made in publishing this piece.”

According to the Gizmodo Media Group Union, affiliated with WGA East, the AI effort has “been pushed by” G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller, recently hired editorial director Merrill Brown, and deputy editorial director Lea Goldman.

In 2019, Spanfeller and private-equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired Gizmodo Media Group (previously Gawker Media) and The Onion.

The Writers Guild of America issued a blistering condemnation of G/O Media’s use of artificial intelligence to generate content.

“These AI-generated posts are only the beginning. Such articles represent an existential threat to journalism. Our members are professionally harmed by G/O Media’s supposed ‘test’ of AI-generated articles.”

WGA added, “But this fight is not only about members in online media. This is the same fight happening in broadcast newsrooms throughout our union. This is the same fight our film, television, and streaming colleagues are waging against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in their strike.”

The union, in its statement, said it “demands an immediate end of AI-generated articles on G/O Media sites,” which include The A.V. Club, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, The Onion, Quartz, The Root, and The Takeout.

but wait, there's more:

Just weeks after news broke that tech site CNET was secretly using artificial intelligence to produce articles, the company is doing extensive layoffs that include several longtime employees, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. The layoffs total 10 percent of the public masthead.

*

Greedy corporate sleazeballs using artificial intelligence are replacing humans with cost-free machines to barf out garbage content.

This is what end-stage capitalism looks like: An ouroborus of machines feeding machines in a downward spiral, with no room for humans between the teeth of their hungry gears.

Anyone who cares about human life, let alone wants to be a writer, should be getting out the EMP tools and burning down capitalist infrastructure right now before it's too late.

[irregularincidents]

Many consider a contributing factor to the late Jimmy Carter's 1980 presidential election loss to Ronald Reagan was his seeming inability to resolve the Iranian Hostage Crisis, where between 1979 and 1981 Iranian students seized the US embassy and captured 53 members of staff and civilians.

However, just it turned out that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had sabotaged Lyndon B Johnson's peace talks with Vietnam some years previously for political gain, Reagan's allies decided to insert themselves into the Hostage Crisis to aid him the exact same way.

Specifically, former Republican governor of Texas John Connally, who met with leaders in the Middle East in the summer leading up to 1980 election. His goal? Convince the leaders of the various countries he visited to ask the students in the embassy to ignore Carter's attempts to free the hostages, as Reagan would get them a better deal when he won instead.

Carter would go on to loose that election, with voters citing his inability to resolve the Hostage Crisis and a stagnating economy for his loss of support, with the hostages were eventually released on 20 January 1981, the day Reagan took office.

As a Guardian article recounting the statements of Ben Barnes, an assistant to Connally during the 1980 trips, puts it:

“History needs to know that this happened,” Barnes said in one of several interviews with the Times. Barnes said he decided to come forward with his account after news last month that Carter, 98, had entered hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, after a series of hospital visits. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more,” Barnes said. “I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.” Barnes – a Democrat who served as lieutenant governor of Texas and was vice-chair of John Kerry’s 2004 election campaign – told the Times that on returning from the Middle East, Connally reported to the chairman of Reagan’s campaign, William J Casey. “Carter’s aides have long suspected that his campaign was torpedoed by Reagan affiliates who wanted to delay the release of American hostages until after the election,” Axios wrote on Monday. It added: “Ronald Reagan’s subsequent presidency ushered in a conservative era that remains a model for Republicans. If Carter had secured the release of the hostages, he might have won instead.”

[transgenderer]

good article on cat colony behavior. highlights under the cut

Cats recognize colony members vs. non-colony members. Aggression is exhibited by most or all colony members toward unfamiliar cats that are not members of the colony. Thus, as is typical with most social species, non-group members are not allowed to casually approach and enter the group. If non-colony members are persistent in attempts to join the colony, they may eventually be integrated into the group, but only by a gradual process that involves many interactions (Macdonald et al., 1987; Wolfe, 2001). Within the group, a number of affiliative behaviors are exhibited, particularly between cats that are preferred associates. Preferred associates are cats that can be found close together (e.g. less than 1 m) more frequently than they are found with other members of the colony. Preferred associates can be found together in a variety of contexts and locations: they do not simply go to preferred resources at the same time of day, but come together because of the social bond that exists between them (Wolfe, 2001).

In addition to the active social behaviors described above, cats engage in the affiliative social interaction of simply lying together in physical contact. One cat may use another as a ‘pillow’, with the ‘pillow’ readily allowing the position (Fig. 6). This behavior occurs even in conditions of extreme heat, indicating that it occurs as a consequence of social bonding, rather than for thermoregulation.

Affiliative and contact behavior between females and males is not exclusive to the breeding situation. Intact and neutered females and males may be preferred associates, engaging in a variety of affiliative behaviors (Wolfe, 2001). When a female and male are familiar with each other, mating may involve substantial courtship behavior, including allogrooming between the queen and the tom, lying side by side, and rubbing of each other occurring between copulations (Fig. 8). Mating is polygamous. Females mate with multiple males and males mate with multiple females. Yamane et al. (1996) found that, while the largest males had the greatest mating success overall, males that were members of a colony had the greatest mating success within that colony, even if they were small. Thus, social attachments between males and females affect mating success of males.

The critical role of the queen in teaching her kittens hunting techniques has long been recognized. Among free-living cats, the mother starts bringing her kittens prey when they are about 4 weeks of age (Baerends-van Roon and Baerends, 1979). At first she brings them dead prey, and later they are brought live prey. The mother will release the live prey at the nest, providing the kittens with an opportunity to develop their hunting and killing techniques. In the early stages of this learning opportunity, the queen will often demonstrate hunting techniques to the kittens. Both kittens and adult cats are excellent observational learners. They can learn arbitrary tasks that are not species typical behaviors simply by observing another cat engaging in the behavior (e.g. Chesler, 1969). This ability has likely been selected for because rapid learning of critical hunting skills is essential to survival. While the cat is socially gregarious, hunting is conducted in a solitary fashion as a consequence of the typical prey of the cat. The majority of the hunted diet of free-living cats is small rodents, and it requires several small rodents a day to sustain a single cat. Sharing the kill, such as happens with species that hunt large game, is impractical.

[yawnderu]

// OPERATOR BIO: K-9 //

MAIN INFO:

Name: Jiang Zhi (蒋 智) Alias(es): K-9 Rank: Combat Medical Technician Age: 32 (as of 2024) Sexuality: Heterosexual  Native Language(s): Cantonese Other spoken language(s): English Nationality: British Eye color: Dark brown  Hair color: Black Height: 1.73CM Weight: 65KG Body Type: Lean Blood Type: O Marks: Small beauty mark beneath her left eye, a tattoo with the quote ‘’In Arduis Fidelis’’ on her left arm that runs above her elbow, a bullet wound scar on the right side of her body, above the iliac crest.

AFFILIATIONS:

British Army 

Royal Army Medical Corps 

SAS

Task Force 141

SpecGru

BACKGROUND:

GUANGZHOU, CHINA.

Welcomed to the world in 1991 by Chunhua Jiang and Junjie Zhao, Jiang grew up with nothing but pure admiration and respect for her parents, a couple consisting of an anesthesiologist and a medical translator. Despite her parents never engraving their professions into her head, Jiang displayed a keen interest in life sciences from a young age, oftentimes stealing their medical articles and documents to read in her free time. 

Wanting better life opportunities for a freshly graduated Jiang Zhi, Chunhua and Junjie made the decision to move around the United Kingdom in early 2008 before eventually settling in Hereford, England. In awe of living fairly close to one of the SAS bases and armed with a newfound interest in the Army, a then 17-year-old Jiang spent months preparing for the selection process, passing with flying colors and officially becoming part of the British Army in 2009.

From fieldcraft to how to handle a rifle, Jiang took on the challenge, eventually using her background in medicine to start her training as a Combat Medical Technician for 22 weeks, traveling around the world with a lot more maturity and interest in saving lives, aware of how crucial timing is.  

While faced with countless injuries during her service, Jiang showed utmost determination to recover and keep serving, never being one to stay still for extended periods of time, not when the sense of responsibility over her mates has been weighing her down ever since she joined the Army. 

Once the policy changes that allowed women to become members of the SAS were announced in 2018, an eager Jiang all but begged her superiors to put in a good word for her, eventually being contacted by a recruiter after anxiously applying. Despite her 9 years of experience in the Army and plenty of determination, Jiang found herself challenged by a system set up to only allow the best of the best to pass, close to giving up mid-way, she found strength to move forward in the name of the fallen soldiers she had an oath to protect. 

Despite the extensive and exhausting selection process, Jiang made history as one of the three women who have completed the six-month course, celebrated in 2019 by her parents and the extensive group of soldiers she managed to befriend during her time serving. Interrupted by a ringing phone, Jiang heard of the name John Price for the first time, called for what would be her first mission with the SAS after a number of multiple terrorist attacks in Central London.

Working along Kyle ‘’Gaz’’ Garrick and John Price, Jiang proved herself to the war-hardened Captain by providing cover and patching up injured hostages and soldiers, eventually being hand-picked by Price himself a month later, once Task Force 141 formed. 

“Y’can’t heal others if you’re falling apart yourself.” Within the 141, Jiang found someone who could always tell how hard she was on herself, how much harder she worked to ensure no one would ever die at her hands again, oftentimes only being able to sleep after working her fingers to the bone.

Her relationship with Simon was surprising to even herself, oftentimes finding the quiet man in her office doing his own paperwork or offering to get her a cuppa whenever she seemed stressed, despite knowing her preference for coffee. 

Despite how witty she can be, her relationship with the 141 was based on mutual trust and shared understanding despite it all, knowing that every single member is needed to keep each other alive and make things work. 

In late November, Jiang’s skills and knowledge were put to test as a gravely injured John ‘’Soap’’ MacTavish was brought to her, panic quickly setting in the moment she saw the bullet wound leaking out blood from his head like a broken faucet, quickly rushing into surgery and defying the odds against them, managing to save his life as the base of his brain and spinal cord being completely untouched by Makarov’s bullet, allowing him to be part of the 10% of people who have survived a headshot after a 12-hour-long surgery. Jiang’s body collapsed the moment Johnny was stabilized, a build-up of stress and disappearing adrenaline quickly catching up to her, only being held up by Simon, who was present during surgery and helping her with minor medical assistance for his injured mate.

Her first sexual encounter with Simon happens the day after, an extremely stressed and tired Jiang asking him to lay with her when he comes to check up on her, his resolve tested the moment he accepts her offer and feels her cuddle up to him, acting like a painfully fitting piece against his body. Clothes were discarded not even minutes later, hungry lips meeting as their hands desperately grasped for anything they could touch, quickly escalating into Jiang sitting on Simon’s face while he masturbated, the first sexual contact in years for both of them, yet a memorable one at that. 

Lines were blurred after the events of that day, eventually starting a not so secret relationship with the Lieutenant.

PREFERENCES:

Clothing style: Long pencil skirts, turtlenecks, sweatpants, Simon’s shirts. Favourite song: Bauhaus - Passion of Lovers  Favourite book: The Woman in Black - Susan Hill Favourite smell: Latex Favourite drink: Black coffee

TRIVIA/FUN FACTS:

Jiang renounced her Chinese citizenship at 22 years old, as the Chinese government does not allow dual citizenship. 

The tattoo ‘’In Arduis Fidelis’’ translates to ‘’Faithful in Adversity’’ and it comes from the motto of the Royal Army Medical Corps, remaining as a permanent placeholder of a Medic armband, and being a representation of her commitment to being a Medic.

Jiang never had an interest in dating, only briefly accepting someone’s proposal in high school to see what it was like— and quickly realizing it wasn’t for her. Due to this and her close relationship with her best friend, her parents thought she was a lesbian until she brought Simon home.

Jiang smokes a lot, easily running through a pack of Marlboro Gold within a day and a half. 

She’s surprisingly good at picking up accents, usually heard speaking in a painfully thick Birmingham accent, much to the dismay of the entire 141.

She has a pet octopus named 親愛的 (chān oi dik), meaning ''darling'' in Cantonese.

Despite not being extremely religious, Jiang and her family are Catholics.

She’s usually seen with a pair of black half frame reading glasses.

[anarchywoofwoof]

north korea bad is popping off on reddit again. top post on the CIA-controlled subreddit with 43 million subscribers masquerading as a news community. i was intrigued by the source being NZ Herald but when i clicked on the article, my questions were answered.

now. for those of you unfamiliar. Radio Free Asia is basically a US propaganda organ that masks its intentions by attempting to appear objective.

although many will suggest that they no longer have direct affiliation with the CIA, and that may be true, it does not change the fact that they are funded by the US government and have been spreading blatant lies with literally no source to their extremely over the top claims for many years.

that being said, these perpetual lies happen to include misinfo regarding China's versions of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Some of the RFA articles reviewed lacked key context in describing purported issues with Chinese-made vaccines. This could enable the spread of anti-vaccine misinformation at a time when research suggests that exposure to online misinformation about vaccines can increase rates of vaccine hesitancy.  In one example, a November 10 article on RFA’s Cantonese website, headlined “Clinical trial of Chinese vaccine halted in Brazil after causing serious incident,” lacked important context from local authorities. A serious incident had indeed occurred: the death of a participant in a local trial of the Sinovac vaccine. But Reuters reported November 9 that the death had been deemed a suicide and that an official had denied any link to the vaccine, a detail not noted in RFA’s article.  The article, presented as a news story, also contained editorial comment dismissing China’s approach to vaccines. “This accident not only renews criticism of the ‘Great Leap Forward’-style of vaccine research and development, but also presents a serious setback for China, which is devoting all of its resources to this Covid-19 vaccine competition,”  the first paragraph reads. RFA continued to describe the trial’s suspension as owing to “severe adverse effects,” not mentioning the participant’s reported cause of death, in at least two subsequent articles.

there's a lot more at the source. it's a great read. but there's one more piece to this that is important to understand.

it has also been confirmed that, from spring 2020 to mid-2021, the Pentagon and by extension the US Government itself engaged in misinformation campaigns in Southeast Asia regarding Chinese vaccines.

The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law. The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

what a coincidence that Radio Free Asia just so happened to be engaging disinformation campaigns against the same exact vaccines as the State Department during the same exact timeframe. very strange.

obviously none of this information matters even a little to anyone on the shithole of a website that is reddit. xenophobia is dominating the convo as always. you could post literally anything about north korea on reddit and it will instantly shoot to the top of any decent sized community. but i had to post this somewhere or i was going to lose my mind.

[tiasha-sims]

🌳 Creating a Family Tree | TheSimsTree

Keep your family history and precious moments!

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If you're a dynasty lover who cares about your sims, you’ve probably been looking for a way to recreate your family tree in digital form.

Today, I am with the team want to share a young project called TheSimsTree, which has been a real lifesaver. We genuinely recommend it based on our own experience 💫 ㅤ

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🌿 TheSimsTree.com

This site will become your go-to helper for creating and managing your family tree. It makes it easy to save and visualize the stories of your Sims, share them with other players, and enjoy a ton of unique features and customizations that will make storytelling even more fun.

💌 And if you’ve used PlumTreeApp before, you can import your family tree with just a couple of clicks, so you won’t lose any precious progress.

We’ve shared with links to our family trees ⇣

🐇 Tosy | The story of a little green one sim

🐾 Slooo | A dynasty by chance

🥐 Cladkaya_bulka | The Lauder dynasty

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The main features of the site are available for free, which is great and doesn't feel awkward like when payment is forced on you.

If you genuinely want to support the project and enjoy some premium perks, you can sign up for a subscription. The team has offered a really sweet bonus for our subscribers as a token of appreciation :3

⭐️ The promo code TIASHA gives you a discount of 4$ on an annual subscription!

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Site features:

✍🏻 Creation and management ° A multifunctional family tree that lets you go both up and down. No limits on characters, pets, or generations. ° Displays relationships, allows you to highlight the heir’s line, and even add your partner's family for a complete picture. ° Personality traits can be entered manually, allowing for custom traits. There are also icons for occult affiliations. ° The parent function highlights only the specified parents on the card if the child has different parents. Biological parents won’t be shown in cases of adoption. ° You can keep a personal diary for your sim, adding photos, stories, and details. Uploaded avatars are saved, which helps track the character’s development throughout their life. ° Markers show the completeness of the diary and the avatars of each sim.

🎨 Customization ° A creative space for crafting and designing a unique vibe. ° Lovely wallpapers for every taste, including custom ones from your favorite simmers. ° Dark mode for the interface, along with photo and text editors. ° Options for fonts, colors, tables, lines, highlights, and other elements. ° You can share your social media links in the author’s profile and add a video widget for YouTubers.

💭 Community ° Several privacy settings and the option to share your family tree. ° A public gallery where you can read others' stories and find your audience. ° The ability to like and comment on diaries. ° A blog with articles where you can publish and share your own stories.

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It's clear that the team puts a lot of heart into their work and listens to player feedback, constantly making improvements. It's a wonderful and responsive project that truly deserves support! 💚

[my-deer-friend]

I have a stupid question. How do you find out about current history scholarship and research? I am sick of reading books I've read a hundred times and were published decades ago. Is there like a forum or something where historians share research or lectures or things?

Not stupid at all!

The key is 1) knowing which sources provide the most up-to-date information, and then 2) using the appropriate strategy to access them.

Conference and lectures

Conferences are where you find the most cutting-edge research – usually work that has not been published yet, or is still in progress. Accessing conferences can be both expensive and difficult (if they're limited to people with certain affiliations, for example), but there are also conferences that are free for the public, and ones run by groups like the Organization of American Historians that are reasonably priced for the digital attendance option. You can browse conference programmes (here is the OAH's 2024 version) to at least find the names of academics relevant to your field of interest, which will help with the kinds of searches you will want to conduct below.

Finding these is a mix of luck and effort. You can set a search alerts on various platforms, literally just do a search for "[topic] academic conference", find relevant organisations and subscribe to their newsletters for updates, or do some browsing on social media. I found History Symposium (free, current, deep-dive history lectures and a virtual conference) because of something shared here on Tumblr. Following the Instagram account of the Powder House in Charleston keeps me updated on their history lecture programming (which host virtual talks including showcasing new research on the US colonial era). Then there are institutions like the Royal Museums Greenwich who publish a range of high-quality historical content on their YouTube account (they have a good series on black history and the Transatlantic slave trade, as well as a fascinating recent lecture by a historian on the queer history of the British navy, which I also found here on Tumblr).

Academic journals

Journals are where you get the most recent published academic scholarship. A journal article generally is a fairly narrow/focused exploration of a topic that adds something new to the ongoing academic conversation (e.g., a new discovery, a new analysis of existing material, a new theoretical perspective, a challenge to a previous author's work).

Other useful kinds of journal content are book reviews, as well as "review" articles, which summarise and synthesise recent research in a field – as well as newly arising questions and research directions.

Getting your hands on articles requires two steps: 1) finding the research, and 2) accessing the research.

Finding articles

For better or worse, the best generalist search tool for journal articles is Google Scholar – it allows you to search across hundreds of databases and independent publishers for relevant content.

If you're a member of a university library (not necessarily staff or student – check if your library allows external membership), it will have its own search tool which allows you to find material in the databases and journals that the university is subscribed to. Individual databases, archives or publishers (think JSTOR) will also have their own internal search.

My advice is to start your search as narrowly as possible, and then expand out slowly if you don't find anything relevant. So, for example, I might start my search with "same-sex relationships london 1780s", and if nothing comes up, I might broaden it out to "england" or "late eighteenth century", and so on.

The other thing to do is follow citations (i.e., who referenced what?). You can travel "backwards" through the literature by looking at the reference lists of books or articles you already have (in other words, which works the author used to base their research on).

But you can also travel forwards – the "cited by x" link below a reference on Google Scholar is your friend, because it shows you who used that particular source in their (by default, more recent) work.

Accessing articles

Unfortunately, a lot of academic research is gatekept by the academic publishing industrial complex – not by academics themselves, to be clear. This results in those ludicrous charges for single papers:

(And $30 is hardly the upper limit...)

But hope is not lost! You still have some options if you're willing to do a bit of work.

1) Sometimes, if you're lucky, the article will be freely available online. In Google Scholar, for example, check for the "PDF" or "HTML" link to the right of the title:

Some entire journals are freely available (usually called "open access") – one example is the Journal of the American Revolution. You can also search on DOAJ for open-access-only articles and journals.

2) I've also occasionally found the article just by googling "[article name] pdf". Some scholars will make these available for free on their personal websites, for example.

3) You can also try contacting the scholar directly through a platform like Academia.edu. Find the article there, and check if there is a "request full-text" option on its page (or, even, if the full text version has already been posted).

4) For slightly older articles, try searching on JSTOR, which gives anyone with an account free access to 100 articles a month. (I say "older", but there's even scholarship from 2024 on there these days.)

5) If all else fails, definitely do not type "sci hub" into your search engine and check there. That would be bad and naughty and very, very sexy of you. I repeat, do not do this. 🤫

Academic books

Books are not usually a great source of super-current research, both because the format doesn't lend itself to it and the publishing cycle can be very long, but they can be an excellent source for a decently recent and detailed overview of the topic. Note that you specifically want academic books here (not the ones in the "history" section of your local chain bookstore).

If you've done some digging in journal databases, you should have a good sense of which authors are writing about the topics you're interested in. Find their websites or social media feeds and subscribe to get updates on their latest work. For example, historian and Tumblr darling Joanne Freeman has a website with links to her books, lectures and podcast, as well as other media. The Museum of the American Revolution has a "Read the Revolution" speaker series featuring newly published books on relevant topics (and they're certainly not the only museum or public institution to do this). Their newsletter will keep you updated on the upcoming sessions, and the website often has a free recording of the talk available.

The prices can be quite extortionate, so again, see if you can find a free version online using the methods above. You might also have some luck finding the book on Archive.org (which might allow you to loan it out for free for an hour at a time) or Google Books (which sometimes shows you a decently large preview). Definitely do not type "libgen" into your search engine and try to download the book form there.

In summary...

There's a lot out there. A bit of persistence and a lot of searching (on databases, social media and the internet in general) will open up a huge spectrum of intereting and relevant resources!

[serpenttailedangel]

I'm back in "reading scholarly articles by people advocating for major policy and education program change" mode and, subsequently, back in "disgusted by the amount of mask-off shit people just straight up say that you get called a conspiracy theorist for repeating to people who don't read this garbage even though these fuckers publish their insanity" mode. Presumably, these people expect that no one outside of their circles reads their stuff, so they can put it in ink. Although I guess it also helps that they use a lot of deceptive language and contradictions to try and snag people who aren't thinking too hard about what they read.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has a book available for free digital download in which they argue for some pretty insane shit (claiming to support academic freedom while also mentioning they want certain research subjects suppressed, wanting more politicized disciplines to have equal input to things like chemistry and biology in medical research, and new ranking for schools based on how well they comply with this guideline rather than the quality of their research or how good they are at teaching.) I tried telling someone about it IRL and they told me that whoever I heard about it from must have been lying. When I told them I was specifically citing UNESCO's official publication on their website, this person concluded that the only logical explanation was that the UN was hacked and someone wrote and posted a 100 page hoax paper for nebulous false flag reasons, and the UN has been unable to take the fake paper down and unwilling to release a statement saying it's fake for a year now.

But. like, in defense of the people who haven't read this stuff and also don't believe it when you talk about it, I've checked four different times to make sure that the author of Drag Pedagogy is an actual person affiliated with Drag Queen Story Hour events and not some intern Ted Cruz paid to write a false flag article. Sometimes shit gets so mask-off that I struggle to believe my own eyes.