#note from decker

[cassieoctavia]

Slight fandom shift, but I love how MTG Tumblr took one look at Aurelia (a literal angel) arresting Massacre Girl (a literal mass murderer) and decided "They're definitely in lesbians"

To their credit, there is a collar involved in the actual WOTC published story, so they brought this on themselves.

[cassieoctavia]

My wife (who works in the NHS) might get a giggle out of this one

[sinistersinita]

Human Brave Police AU

But I'm a silly goober and put Duke in an actual(not really) knight armor.

Also me whenever I see Duke on screen

[egoarc4de]

ant mill wip #1536 so i can talk in the tags

[churipu]

WHAT REMINDS THEM OF YOU 𓆝 ⋆｡𖦹°‧

ִ ࣪𖤐 featuring. gojo satoru, megumi fushiguro, itadori yuuji

ִ ࣪𖤐 warnings. just pure fluff :D

note. i was going to write some hurt comfort — but then i figured that i wanted to keep myself sane for today :>

𝐆𝐎𝐉𝐎 𝐒𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐔

anything strawberry. scent, taste — anything strawberry.

gojo remembered when the first time he brought you home some honeoye strawberries after a mission since it was in season. the way your eyes just lit up at the sight of strawberries made him happy, and from then on — gojo looks at a picture of a strawberry or even smelled strawberry from god knows where.

he just thinks of you.

one time gojo saw a rabbit eating a strawberry while scrolling through his social media, and he wasted no time sending the video to you with a small message: "you <33"

or the other time gojo sees a bucket cap with strawberry motives and he just had to get it for you. the male waited in line for half an hour for that hat (and he had to "fight" a kid for it, he won in the end because the kid moved on to a duck motive hat instead).

"baby, look what i got you — strawberry scented bath bomb. it was the last one on stock, and i had to argue with a lady over it," he happily bursts through the door, boasting while raising what seemed to be a bath bomb.

gojo just knows when you change your usual brand of strawberry lip balm. it took him a peck and he asks you, "did you change your brand? this one tastes weird," he wipes his lips.

"they were out of stock, 'toru."

"why didn't you say so?" he cooed, kissing the bridge of your nose, "i'd go to the other side of the earth to get you one, y'know?"

you chuckled, "or, i could just wait for it to stock back . . ."

"nonsense!"

𝐌𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐌𝐈 𝐅𝐔𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐔𝐑𝐎

the smiths.

he finds it amusing when you start quoting that one scene from 500 days of summer, "i love the smiths . . ." and he just unexpectedly replied with, "sorry?"

but that time — he didn't know that he was "unknowingly" going along with it. confused, he had to question you about it, and when you told him it was from a movie. megumi finally understood and thought that maybe you really liked the movie.

he was wrong. it wasn't the movie, it was the smiths. so now, every time he sees anything or hears anything about the band, he finds himself thinking about you — but he'd never actually say that. megumi often listens to their songs just so he could understand when you talked to him about it.

also, quoting the movie was now a habit for you two. you just go, "i love the smiths," out of the blue and megumi will continue it (even if he says that it's pretty corny).

megumi loves it when you listen to the smiths out loud, singing softly to the tune. the male tries really hard to get you unofficial merchandise, official merchandise for the smiths are actually so hard to find today — so he just had to go and make it custom for you.

"and when the double decker bus, crashes into us . . ." he heard you sing, both of your ears jammed with earbuds from the earphones, "to die by your side."

that, was your favorite song. and megumi made it into a custom painting of you and him as if the two of you were in that one scene in 500 days of summer. i'm not kidding.

𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐑𝐈 𝐘𝐔𝐔𝐉𝐈

mochi skin. the texture, the flesh. it just reminded him of your cheeks — it's so squishy and soft. every single time he buys a mochi, he makes sure to do something that he calls a squish test.

where he squishes the mochi, and then squishes your cheeks. if they don't feel the same, yuuji gets rid of the mochi and gets another one (he eats them).

"it doesn't feel the same y/n, i don't like it," he whines out softly, tossing the mochi into his mouth — he angrily takes out another bill of cash to buy another mochi.

"yuuji, why does it have to be the same again?" you asked him, hands inside your pockets.

"because . . ." good point. why?

the male prompts to ignore you and buy another one (three others) to make sure they are the same texture as your cheeks. it's something he does — if a mochi he buys doesn't feel the same way like your cheeks does.

he eats them or lets you have them.

if it does.

he also eats them or lets you have them.

it's just something he does for fun, so he could always remember you. and when you're not there with him — yuuji makes sure to buy at least five before coming over to visit you so he could do the test.

when he's not feeling like it but he misses you, he takes a video and sends it to you with a caption: "i miss you."

© CHURIPU 2024 , DO NOT COPY OR REPOST ANYWHERE

[cassieoctavia]

Need this pose ASAP! I got the tt2 file or whatever it's called from XIV mod archive, but I don't know how they work

snowbanks can double as baby brother receptacles

[dailyrothko]

what drew you to Rothko? Do you have a favorite Rothko painting? Have you seen it in person?

I think it's an interesting question. I don't really know what draws me to anything, it usually doesn't have a linear voyage into my consciousness. I did go to museums as a young person and I am sure I saw Rothko paintings before I was aware who it was. You know how it is, something about it speaks to you and there you are.

As a young teenager, I listened to Ornette Coleman. This was in addition to other stuff I liked like Bob Dylan, the Buzzcocks, Brian Eno, Desmiond Decker, etc. I did not have a single friend that liked jazz, especially THAT kind if jazz. It may have been entirely for the fact that I went into a record store and bought this record

I bought it because it looked to me like these people were serious about this endeavor and I should take note. I brought it home and it made sense to me. And it was similar with Rothko, I know by age 14 I made Morris Louis, Rothko and Pollock Easter eggs and not many years after that, I had this poster in my room

It may have been the minimal aspect that got me. It was so different from all the other art I knew.

I don't have a favorite Rothko painting though yesterday I did link some ones I like. Now I have seen a large number of his paintings in person, but of the first I was conscious of seeing up close was this one:

and it definitely was pretty cool.

It's a puzzle to discern why people like things. You can really admire an artist's work and then find out you hate every artist they champion.

It's a little different when you're young and what your taste is. is also a way of sorting out your peers and making friends. You find connections, we all like Evil Dead, or we like the Clash and hate Phil Collins. It's a way weeding out and identifying yourself.

Later on, I think you get open to the idea that it's more individual, and, importantly, that that's allowed. In a sense you have kinship with people because they have the soul to cultivate their interests. You don't both have to like the same exact things. Every artist has good and bad work and I think we accept that more later in life when you get them off a pedestal and it doesn't diminish them, there's often things to love even in the bad work, you just wouldn't die as many deaths for it.

The best friend to have is an enthusiast. I often say the same thing, so forgive me, but the way I look at it is, it's not about one artist or one art form. We're all just trying to be amazed.

[spirk-trek]

Progressions Fanzine | Merle Decker, Gayle F (1985)

A Brief Note...

"PROGRESSIONS, from the first, was planned to be a showcase for just one theme: The exploration of the Kirk/Spock relationship. I wanted it to show, not just one side, but all the possible ways in which their friendship/love could develop. About half the material within these pages deal with the K/S theme, while the remaining portion concerns their friendship. The whole is generously sprinkled with hurt/comfort or phycological studies. I hope that you, the reader and fellow fan, enjoy the following stories as much as I have.

I also want to thank all of my friends, both the old and the new, without whose help and encouragement PROGRESSIONS would never have been possible.

PROGRESSIONS has been a lot of work, but it has also been a very rewarding experience (not to say a lot of fun), one that I would not have missed."

-Merle

[mxcottonsocks]

Reading Like A Victorian

A while ago, I discovered the website 'Reading Like a Victorian', a digital humanities project from The Ohio State University and collaborators.

Since tumblr's been going through a bit of a serial-literature revival, I thought I would share...

Here are some extracts from the website's 'About Us':

RLV is an interactive timeline of the Victorian period. It focuses on serialized novels [...] and adds volume-format publications for context. 

When we read Victorian novels today, we do not read them in the form in which they originally came out. Most Victorian novels appeared either as “triple deckers,” three volumes released at one time, or as serials published monthly or weekly in periodicals or in pamphlet form. Serialized novels’ regularly timed, intermittent appearance made for a reading experience resembling what we do when we are awaiting the next weekly episode of Game of Thrones, watching installments of other TV serials in the meantime. Whenever we pick up a Penguin or Oxford paperback of a Victorian novel today, we are engaged in the equivalent of binge-watching a series that has already reached its broadcast ending [and is] a very different experience from what Victorian audiences were doing with novels. Reading Like a Victorian reproduces the “serial moment” experienced by Victorian readers [...]

More info and screenshots and so on below the cut:

[...] if reading serial installments at their original pace is valuable, it is even more valuable to read them alongside parts of novels and of other kinds of texts that Victorian readers could have been following at the same time [...] [...] a reader who, in 1847, had been following the part issues of both Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and then picked up Jane Eyre, published in volume form in October of that year, might notice in Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp, and Jane Eyre a pattern of motherless or orphaned girls trying to negotiate a hostile world on their own. While this figure is well known to be a character type in Victorian fiction perfectly embodied by Jane Eyre and Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp does not often emerge among the heroines who fit that type; reading the novels simultaneously foregrounds parallels between Becky, Florence, and Jane that are not at all obvious if their storylines are experienced separately

I find that, for browsing, the website is easier to use on a computer or tablet than a phone, but it's ok on phone to search for something specific.

The timeline:

Here's what the timeline looks like:

It shows 12 months at a time, and using the left and right arrows will move you back or forward by a month. You can use the 'Jump To Date' function to navigate to a different twelve-month period. Or you can use the 'Author Search' function to navigate to particular works if you know the author's name.

In the above screenshot of the timeline, which shows the period January to December 1852, there are several works shown, including:

ongoing serialised works which had at least one installment published prior to 1852;

works which began serialisation during 1852;

works published in three-volume format during 1852;

other works published during 1852

Details about each work:

You can click on the bar that represents a book's publication to get a drop-down that provides information about that book, its publication, and links to help you read the relevant serial parts.

Here's what happens if you click on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford:

On the left of the drop-down, there's some general information about the work, its publication history, and how to use the links.

On the right, there's information and links to help you experience the book in its serial parts: it separates out the parts, indicates the month and the year they were published, and what chapters of the work were published in that part. It also provides notes on each part where helpful. There is a scroll-bar at the right of the drop-down, so you can scroll down to the later installments of the work.

[I chose Cranford as an example as it helps demonstrate the value of the Reading Like a Victorian website... From what I understand, Gaskell initially wrote 'Our Society at Cranford' as a standalone piece of short fiction, but was encouraged to write more, so further pieces also set in the fictional town of Cranford were published intermittently in the same magazine over the next year or so. While a particularly dedicated Gaskell fan who wanted to 'read along' with Cranford following the original publication could probably search 1.5-years-worth of a weekly magazine to find the 9 issues which included the material which would later be published as Cranford, the Reading Like a Victorian website has already done that work for them... and also for anyone else who might be interested, but not quite that interested.]

The links

You can then click on an individual chapter to get links to various places to read it online:

When available / where possible, the website tends to include links to:

a facsimile copy of either the relevant serial part in the original publication, or in an 'annual' or similar volume collecting together the content of that publication, or a volume-form edition of that work if the work was not published serially or if facsimile copies of the original serialised publication are not available. [Most of the facsimiles are hosted by either the Internet Archive or the Hathi Trust Digital Library, but some are hosted as part of smaller, more specific collections, such as - in the case of Cranford - Dickens Journals Online which provides online access to the journals/magazines edited by Charles Dickens);

the text, usually on Project Gutenberg (this is usually the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be different than originally published in serial parts; the Reading Like A Victorian website will generally explain when this is the case);

audio recordings, usually volunteer recordings from Librivox (again, the recordings are usually based on the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be slightly different than originally published in the serial parts).

So yeah, I just thought it was a cool website and worth sharing. I believe the website is already used as a resource by some University courses and for academic research, but it can also be used by book clubs and to aid personal reading, etc. I'm using it to inform a personal reading project for 2024-26 where I follow along with six or seven novels serialised in 1864-66.

To save a scroll to the top, here's the link to the RLV website again: Reading Like A Victorian (osu.edu)

[If you want to join an already-planned read-along based on the original serialisation schedule, @dickensdaily will be doing Charles Dickens's historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty from mid-February 2024 to late-November 2024, to follow along with the original weekly publication of the novel in Master Humphreys Clock from February 1841 to November 1841. I personally found Barnaby Rudge a really engaging, thought-provoking read, and I'm really looking forward to reading it again. (Anyone with particular triggers or other reasons to be wary of the content or language used in older books may find it helpful to look up content warnings for the book before making a decision to read it.)]

[city-of-ladies]

Sara de Sancto Aegidio (of St. Gilles) was a Jewish woman doctor who lived in Marseille in the 14th century.

The widow of a fellow physician named Avraham, her existence is documented through a contract dated August 28, 1326, between herself and her student, Salvetus de Burgonoro from Salon-de-Provence. According to this contract, Sara agreed to teach Salvetus medicine and to provide him with board, lodging, and clothing for seven months. In return, Salvetus was required to hand over all the fees he earned from treating patients during this period.

Likewise, another Jewish woman surgeon named Chava practiced in 15th-century Manosque. Around this time, four of the seven Jewish women doctors in Frankfurt were noted for their expertise in eye medicine. These women likely learned their skills from other practitioners or family members.

See also: Magistra Hersend, royal doctor during the 13th century.

Here is the link to my Ko-Fi. If you enjoy my content, your support would be much appreciated!

Further reading 

Decker Sarah Ifft, Jewish Women in the Medieval World 500–1500 CE

Taitz Emily, Henry Sondra, Tallan Cheryl,  The JPS Guide to Jewish Women

[cassieoctavia]

I'm not saying I've abandoned this, but I'm definitely more active over where there is greener grass and bluer skies, if you catch my drift.

[paradiseismine]

Love at first bite - Boris Pavlikovsky x reader

Pairing: Boris Pavlikovsky (The Goldfinch) x f!decker!reader

Warnings: very fluffy, just Boris (metaphorically) drooling over the reader. Sfw still ��

Summary: you’re Theo’s cousin, in Vegas for a few days to visit him and his dad. While you’re cooking at the Deckers house, Theo gets an interesting and very good looking visitor.

Love note from Nina: I know not many people like my Boris fics, but I recently finished reading The Goldfinch for the first time, so bear with me here. Hope you enjoy it 💕

You had gotten to the Deckers house earlier that morning - Theo had already left for school, but uncle Larry and Xandra picked you up at the airport before leaving for work. That meant you were alone in the house for a few hours, so you decided to do some cleaning and cooking to wait for everyone to come home.

At around 3 in the afternoon, the doorbell rang. You opened the door, but surely wasn’t hoping to see such a tall, handsome dark haired boy in front of you.

“Hi! You’re Theo’s friend, uh… Boris, right?” you asked, trying to sweeten up your voice as much as you could and fixing your hair.

Theo didn’t have any friends in Vegas besides Boris, so of course you knew about him, but his accent seemed even cuter and more distinct in person as he spoke.

“Yes, that is me” he nodded, smiling softly. “And you’re…?”

“Y/n, I’m Theo’s cousin, nice to meet you” you answered, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek, something very common in your part of the family. “I guess he should be coming home soon. Would you like some coffee? I just brewed it, it’s still pretty hot”

Boris nodded and you turned around to get back to the kitchen, not catching his silly smile as he gently touched his cheek where you had kissed him.

“Are you coming, dear?” you raised your voice slightly so he’d hear you from the door, as you were now in the kitchen.

Boris soon came along and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. You served him some of the cookies you had baked earlier, as well as a cup of coffee.

“You made these?” he asked, mouth full of cookies already. “So good”

“Yeah, just before you got here, actually” you chuckled, finding his reaction funny. “So Theo would have something to eat when he came back from school, you know… But I made way too many, so I’m glad you’re here to help us eat them”

“I’m glad too” Boris answered, happily chewing on the cookies and sipping the coffee you had made.

“I was also making him a cake, so I’ll have to finish that and put it in the oven” you said, turning around to resume your work.

“I couldn’t find the cooking spray anywhere to grease the cake pan, so we’re gonna have to do it the old fashioned way” you shrugged, opening the fridge and reaching for a stick of butter.

“Can I help?” Boris asked, sounding like a little boy wanting to help mommy in the kitchen.

“Of course” you chuckled. “Can you grease the cake pan for me?”

“Sure” he responded, his accent thickening as his body got closer to yours in front of the kitchen counter. “So I just spread the butter on the inside, everywhere?”

“Exactly, and then you put some flour on top and make sure the whole cake pan is covered with a thin layer of flour, ok?”

“I can do that” Boris nodded. He did as he was told, and soon, the cake pan was greased and the batter was nicely deposited on it.

Boris helped you open the oven, chuckling at your worries that he’d burn himself. As soon as the cake was put in the oven and you had set the timer, Theo opened the front door.

He walked around looking for Xandra - it was weird that she hadn’t been home yet. But he saw Boris and you, which was more than enough to get him concerned - he knew Boris couldn’t see a girl doing “old fashioned girly things” (like cooking) and leave her alone. That foreigner boy was a little too flirty for Theo’s liking, and he wanted none of that to happen to his cousin.

He took Boris to the living room to talk more privately, leaving you in the kitchen to prepare the icing for the cake.

“Potter, she’s so beautiful! Your cousin?” Boris asked, nearly whispering. Too bad for him that you could hear it perfectly, and a hand quickly clamped over your mouth to stifle a chuckle.

“Yeah, Boris, she’s my cousin. She’s visiting for a few days. Why do you ask?” Theo answered, seeming annoyed. You didn’t even have to be looking at him to know he rolled his eyes so hard they nearly fell off his head.

“Would you mind if I kissed her? I don’t have to do more than kiss if you don’t want” he said, seeming a bit defensive. “But she’s so beautiful, I really want to kiss her, I never met a girl like her, so, uh, so женственный”

You blushed to yourself in the kitchen, stirring up the icing of the cake in order to keep normalcy - the noise from the whisk on the pot would be enough for them to pay you no attention at all. You had no idea what that last word meant, but it sounded like a compliment.

“Well, you don’t have to ask ME that, you can go ask her if she wants to kiss you” Theo spat, coming off jealous.

“Fine, you cranky” he answered. “But you better seem happier when I marry her” he added, as he walked towards the kitchen. “A woman like that has to have a good husband, and I make sure is me”

Boris entered the kitchen again as you were setting the icing bowl aside.

“Everything ok with Theo?” You asked, trying not to bring up anything you had heard from the living room.

“Da, he’s just cranky” Boris shrugged softly. “I said you were beautiful and he got jealous”

You laughed at his sincerity. “Really? You think I’m beautiful, then?”

“Totally, very beautiful. I asked if he would be mad if I kissed you” his right arm had ended up around your waist somehow, but it’s not like you were gonna swat it away. You enjoyed his touch.

“And what did he say?” You asked, turning your body to face him, your lips now dangerously close to his.

“I don’t really care. Can I kiss you?”

You nodded, chuckling and putting your hands to his cheeks, lightly pulling him down to compensate for his height.

Boris leaned in and kissed you very gently, as if you were made of sugar and could melt at the slightest touch of his lips. His arms were around your body, fingers lightly tracing the curve of your waist, his cold hands sending shivers to the hot bare skin of your belly.

His lips intertwined perfectly with yours, his tongue timidly slipping into your mouth as his hands grabbed your waist. You couldn’t help but faintly moan into the kiss and put your hand to his nape, fingers interlocking in his hair, bringing him closer. He was clearly trying to contain himself, and seemed utterly out of breath when you bit his lower lip maliciously.

When you broke the kiss, the look on his face was quite similar to when he used drugs: pupils dilated, eyes wide open, mouth slightly open and cheeks flushed. His palms were a bit sweaty and he muttered something in Russian that you couldn’t comprehend. You had gotten him wrapped around your finger - it must have been love at first bite.

[sodamnradd]

She never imagined an adolescent flame could turn so deadly.

At fifteen they kissed one another on patrol. The first time a boy slipped his tongue between her lips and made her feel desired.

She kept Draco to herself and suspected he did, too. Hermione, his dirty little secret. After three kisses in June, school came to a close. She dreamt of peppermint lips and the drag of solid white teeth all summer long.

At sixteen, she learned how to comfort someone and expect nothing in return. Tight-lipped, subtly explosive, selfish, and uncouth, Draco pushed her away and reeled her back in. He took her virginity in Filch’s supply closet. It was harsh and unromantic and horribly cruel when, afterwards, he revealed his Dark Mark and asked if she still wanted him.

At seventeen, he saved her life.

“Where have you been?” he wanted to know. An unmasked face in a sea of secret soldiers, intent to torture and kill them. The wild jealousy in his eyes was really asking: who have you replaced me with?

“Nowhere.” No one.

He slipped her his wand, told her to stun him, save her friends, and run, promising to find her again.

Seventeen was the longest year of her life.

Draco used his wand to track her whereabouts.

She didn’t know if she could trust him. If he was the cruel sixteen-year-old who hurt her all year long, or the fifteen-year-old who’d kissed her, pulled away, stunned, as if he’d come to a shocking revelation, then kissed her again with reckless, open-hearted abandon.

By eighteen he was her confidante and closest friend.

They met in public spaces. Chiswick. Richmond. Hammersmith. She wore Muggle clothes, and he showed up in all black. Autumnal chic. Trendy Londoners didn’t blink twice. He’d sweep her onto an empty double-decker, a vacant pub, a locked greenhouse in the botanical gardens, remove his leather gloves, and touch her face, her hair, rub her cold hands between his palms and kiss her fingertips. He took note of her scars. The ones he recognised and the ones he didn’t. Demand who did it, vow to make them pay, then offer everything he knew about Voldemort’s next moves.

At eighteen, he confessed he loved her.

It was the worst of the war. She’d been beaten, tortured, scarred, and branded. Draco hardened, trained and bathed in Dark Magic. They did not belong with one another.

Keeping her safe was like clutching a bar of soap beneath the tap and praying it wouldn’t slip from his fingers. But he tried his damned well hardest, and she loved him for it.

By nineteen, freedom tasted like luxury.

War-torn homes, constant nightmares, society’s vitriol, friends who didn’t understand, a world who wished them apart.

It was caviar and champagne.

The ability to sleep in the same bed and touch one another when they felt like it (always), and say I love you without the fear of never saying it again.

(494 words, photo prompt from twitter)

[maniculum]

For anyone who's enjoyed the recent posts about Tarot-as-a-game, in a surprising bit of kismet, our newest episode covers that topic as well as other matters of playing-card history.

We all like TTRPGs, but what about integrating other games into your tabletop play? This week, we're exploring the history of playing cards, their many variations and occult practices, and how you can utilize their unique history for your worldbuilding and campaigns.

Images and list of suits here.

Join our discord community! Check out our Tumblr for even more! Support us on patreon!

Get your copy of Marginal Worlds, a deck of 50 magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts, built for any TTRPG system here!

Socials: Tumblr Website Threads Instagram Facebook

Citations & References:

Berry, John. “Chinese Money-Suited Cards.” The Playing-Card, vol. 31, no. 5, 2003, pp. 230-6.

Caldwell, Ross Sinclair. “The Devil and the Two of Hearts.” The Playing-Card, vol. 37, no. 2, 2008, pp. 126-41.

Caldwell, Ross Sinclair. “The Proto-Historiography of Playing Cards: Early Hypotheses and Beliefs about the Origins of Cards and Card Games in Europe.” The Playing-Card, vol. 38, no. 2, 2009, pp. 92-118.

Chatto, William Andrew. Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards. London, 1848.

Culin, Stewart. Korean Games; with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan. Philadelphia, 1895.

Decker, Ronald, Thierry Depaulis, & Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards: the Origins of the Occult Tarot. St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Dummett, Michael. The Game of Tarot: from Ferrara to Salt Lake City. Duckworth, 1980.

Dummett, Michael. “The History of Card Games.” European Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 1993, pp. 125-35.

Hargrave, Catherine Perry. A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming. Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

Janssen, Han. “The 14th Century and the Introduction of Playing Cards into Europe.” The Playing-Card, vol. 34, no. 3, 2006, pp. 173-80.

Lo, Andrew. “China’s Passion for Pai: Playing Cards, Dominoes, and Mahjong.” Asian Games: the Art of Contest, edited by Irving L. Finkel et al., Asia Society, 2004, 217-32.

Lo, Andrew. “The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 63, no. 3, 2000, pp. 389–406.

Lo, Andrew. “The ‘Yezi Pu' (Manual of Leaves): A Card Manual for Games of the Late Ming Period [1368-1644].” The Playing-Card, vol. 31, no. 2, 2002, pp. 86-96.

Maggio, Emilia. “Early Dragons.” The Playing-Card, vol. 45, no. 3, 2017, pp. 131-41.

Pollett, Andrea. “Tȗmȃn, or the Ten Thousand Cups of the Mamluk Cards.” The Playing-Card, vol. 31, no. 1, 2002, pp. 34-41.

Singer, Samuel Weller. Researches into the History of Playing Cards; with Illustrations of the Origin of Printing and Engraving on Wood. London, 1816.

Taylor, Edward Samuel. The History of Playing Cards, with Anecdotes of Their Use in Conjuring, Fortune-Telling, and Card-Sharping. London, 1865.

van Rensselaer, Mrs. John King. The Devil’s Picture-Books: a History of Playing Cards. New York, 1893.

Wilkinson, W. H. “Chinese Origin of Playing Cards.” The American Anthropologist, vol. 8, no. 1, 1895, pp. 61-78.

[obsessedwithwhump]

The A-Team Whumplist

Now, the A-Team gets itself into many, many, many scraps. I've only noted the times where the pain lasts for more than a second. Enjoy!

1x3 Face gets beat up

1x6 BA gets shot in the leg, Murdock gives him blood (rare AB- blood type)

1x8 Hannibal gets a punch in the gut, breaks a rib. Murdock gets hit by a car while sitting in a trash can

1x9 Face walks into a tree

1x11 Hannibal and Face crash a motorcycle

1x13 Murdock gets blinded, he guides Hannibal through landing a plane

1x14 entire team thrown from the back of a truck

2x9 B.A stepped on a rusty nail

2x14 Face punches Murdock (part of a plan)

2x18 Face's drink was spiked, he passes out

2x20 Murdock's stepped on (busted ribs), Face's thrown (broken nose), B.A's in an endless fist fight (played for laughs)

2x21 Face gets punched down, B.A and Hannibal are poisoned

2x22 Murdock and B.A are pushed down and the house they're in is set on fire

2x23 Murdock gets shot in the shoulder

3x1 Hannibal is punched in the stomach

3x5 A tree falls on Murdock's leg

3x7 Hannibal is beat up, Murdock drops a door on B.A's foot

3x9 Face gets punched in the eye, gets a cut

3x14 Murdock gets overpowered by bad guys

3x16 B.A. is drugged by the bad guys while fighting in the ring

3x19 Face is punched down

3x25 Decker is punched down. Murdock gets his head knocked

4x1 Hannibal gets beat up by.. himself..?

4x3 B.A dislocates his shoulder

4x4 Murdock falls down a building (MASSIVE plot armour Jeez this guy is invincible)

4x5 Hannibal is drugged

4x7 Hulk grabs onto Murdocks shoulder too tightly (very brief)

4x11 Murdock is drugged

4x14 Murdock crashes a kite. Later on he falls and twists his knee

4x23 Murdock gets shot in the shoulder (if only there'd be a scene directly afterwards.. but NO. NOTHING. NO AFTERCARE). Fullbright gets beat up badly and shot dead.

5x1 Hannibal gets burned while playing the Aquamaniac

5x3 Frankie and Murdock are knocked out by gas, Face is shot (just an imagining from Hannibal)

5x5 Frankie is seasick, later he's hit in the gut with a gun. Face is tortured for information

5x6 Frankie is sucker punched

5x7 Murdock gets punched in the gut

5x8 emotional whump for Face (and Murdock tbh)

5x9 Hannibal is found unconscious

5x13 Face is shot, Murdock is thrown down

If I missed anything, let me know. I really loved watching this show (especially Murdock).

[mariacallous]

TEL AVIV — Ilana Decker, who moved from Israel to New York three years ago, says she doesn’t agree often with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Arguing, as he does, that the government should not make health mandates, she said, makes her “sound like an anti-vaxxer, which I’m not.”

But there is one issue, she said, where she and Kennedy do line up: The man whom Donald Trump has picked as the next secretary of health and human services has publicly floated ending the decades-long policy of encouraging cities to inject fluoride into the American water supply.

Decker supports the change — and she’s speaking from personal experience: Her former home, Israel, stopped fluoridating its water a decade ago.

“I hate to align with RFK Jr. in any way, shape, or form, but I really do agree that it should not be in the water,” she said. Citing concerns about the risk to children, she even switched her 4-year-old to fluoride-free toothpaste, though she didn’t rule out its use fully.

“I have a deep distrust in the government taking away individual health choices ‘for our own good,’” Decker said. “I can use toothpaste with fluoride, but I can’t decide to not drink the water coming out of my faucet.”

The nomination of Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and harsh critic of government health agencies, has cast a spotlight on debates over the role the government should play in public health — and over the degree to which mounting distrust in science should guide policy-making.

Fluoridation offers a case study in those debates. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fluoridation in water has been shown to reduce cavities in children and adults by about 25% over a lifetime, with the organization dubbing it “one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Critics of fluoridation point to studies showing that very high levels of the mineral — beyond what is normally present in fluoridated water — are associated with developmental problems in children; they also cite an array of conspiracy theories, including that the government is seeking to control citizens through fluoride use.

Kennedy has called fluoride “an industrial waste” and “dangerous neurotoxin” and said that he would seek to end fluoridation on “day one” after taking office. (Water is managed locally, so the federal government can only advise and incentivize changes.) As with vaccines, he has said the use of fluoride should be up to individuals, not the government.

“I think fluoride is on its way out,” he said on NBC News shortly after Trump’s election last month. “I think the faster that it goes out, the better.”

Those same debates lay at the root of the decision in 2013 by Israel’s health minister to end water fluoridation. Now, Israel’s policy change could act as a case study for how defluoridation could affect Americans. And the discourse is ongoing, with Israeli public health experts and some parents agitating for fluoride to be reinserted in the water — citing worsening dental outcomes for children — at the very moment when the United States may move in the opposite direction.

“The success of water fluoridation serves as a beacon for public health in general, and by extension, opposition to it should serve as a warning,” said Shlomo Zusman, who served as Israel’s chief dental officer for over two decades and was a vocal critic of the 2014 policy change.

He said modern water purification methods mean that fluoridation is far from the only way the modern water supply is altered. In addition, he noted that because 75% of Israel’s potable water is desalinated, it has no natural fluoride levels at all.

“The idea that water without added fluoride is ‘natural,’ as if it comes straight from a spring, is mistaken – there’s no such thing, it’s all manipulated,” he said. Referring to a story in the Bible, he added, “The days of Rachel pumping water from the well are long gone.”

Israel began mandating fluoridation in nearly all municipalities decades ago, following the first local American fluoridation efforts. An Israeli Health Ministry webpage calls fluoridation “the most efficient, safest, simplest, cheapest, and most equal measure, by a significant margin, among all methods for preventing dental diseases in the general public.”

But in 2013, the health minister, Yael German, pledged to stop requiring fluoridation the following year, citing unnamed doctors who she said had personally told her that fluoridation presents risks to pregnant women, people with thyroid problems and the elderly. Like Kennedy and his followers, she also cited the importance of individual choice.

“All things considered, and balancing all the interests, I feel that continued massive fluoridation of 100% of the water was an incorrect act,” German wrote to an association of pediatricians that was one of several groups to publicly oppose her plan. “And many even believe it infringes on fundamental rights and freedom of choice.”

The government that succeeded German’s term in office pledged to reintroduce fluoride — prompting legal action from German — but it has not been mandated again in Israel.

Since discontinuing fluoride in tap water, Israeli dentists have observed a significant rise in children’s cavities and have urged its reinstatement, even as some parents remain firmly against the idea.

A study published in September found a significant increase in dental restorations and crowns among Israeli children ages 3 to 5, attributing the rise to fluoride’s absence. The researchers, from the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine, concluded that the results provided “further proof of the need to restore community water fluoridation in Israel.”

Another study, published in January 2022, analyzed six years of data from dental clinics affiliated with a national Israeli healthcare network, showing that children ages 3 to 12 required nearly double the number of restorative treatments compared to before fluoridation ended. Researchers emphasized that even Israel’s expansion of free dental care for all children failed to offset the worsening dental health.

With fluoridation the subject of widespread misinformation as well as ongoing research, Israel is not the only place to adjust its approach over time. Juneau, Alaska, saw pediatric dental health worsen after eliminating fluoride in 2007, according to a study that examined the cost and frequency of dental treatment for poor children. So did the Canadian city of Calgary, which recorded higher rates of cavity-related treatments under general anesthesia among children after it stopped adding fluoride to its water in 2011. Calgary has now decided to resume fluoridation. But dozens of municipalities across the United States have moved away from fluoride use in recent years, including some whose voters made the choice on Election Day last month.

Most of Europe, meanwhile, has either dropped fluoridation or never introduced it in drinking water. Many of those countries offer fluoridated salt and milk, mitigating the potential costs of not including the mineral in water.

Not everyone in Israel is convinced that reintroducing fluoride is a good idea. In one Israeli mothers’ group on Facebook, several women posited that the country’s cavity epidemic has less to do with the absence of fluoride in water and more to do with poor hygiene habits and children’s consumption of sweets and sugary snacks.

“Kids subsisting on white bread and chocolate spread isn’t helping,” wrote one, naming a popular Israeli snack.

Another, who identified herself as a teacher with 25 years of experience, agreed that there has been a significant decline in nutrition.

“I can say with 100% certainty that children’s diets have deteriorated immensely and it just so happens to coincide with the removal of fluoride,” she said.

Several cited a recent study from the National Institutes of Health’s National Toxicology Program that suggests that high levels of fluoride exposure may be linked to lower IQ in children. The report does not question the dental health benefits of fluoride.

The program reviewed more than 500 studies over nearly a decade and concluded with “moderate confidence” that fluoride exposure at concentrations above 1.5 parts per million is associated with reduced cognitive development in children. But the study, which drew criticism from the American Academy of Pediatrics, also noted that that number was far above the recommended fluoride level in U.S. drinking water of 0.7 parts per million.

Another study from May of this year found that prenatal exposure to fluoride was linked to behavioral problems, with children of mothers in areas with higher fluoride concentrations showing symptoms of autism, anxiety and other disorders by age 3, though the authors stopped short of establishing causation.

Zusman dismissed many of the concerns about health risks as a fad.

“There was a time when they claimed fluoridation caused hip fractures, then cancer, and later stunted growth in boys” caused by osteosarcoma, he said. “Now the fashion is ADHD and IQ, so they blame fluoridation on that.”

He said that just like parents who oppose fluoridation, the issue is personal to him, too.

“Believe me, if there were serious, professional studies showing harm, I’d be the first to say, stop fluoridating the water,” he said. “I have eight grandchildren to think of.”