#the middle is i've seen people split 50/50

[insurged]

🎙️ can u rank ur muses into the most to least likely to be called babygirls

most likely: gojo, zhongli, hawks, hanzo maybe likely: wriothesley, grimmjow, cross, knives least likely: madara, benimaru, garou, muzan, higuruma, vincent, wesker

[vincentbriggs]

Do you need a sewing machine to start making shirts and vests? Is hand sewing an option worth considering, or should I invest in a machine, in your opinion?

That's really a matter of personal preference!

Do you need a machine? Absolutely not! Every garment ever made before the 1840's was sewn by hand, and a lot of them after that too. I've sewn many garments completely by hand, including the early 18th century tiddy-out-violinist shirt, these bright orange breeches, and this green waistcoat.

Is it nice to have a machine? I think so, but again, individual opinions vary!

One of the costumers I follow sews everything 100% by hand because she finds it meditative and isn't interested in using a machine at all. Some people hate hand sewing and prefer to do everything by machine, with maybe a bit of hand finishing if they absolutely can't avoid it.

I do about a 50/50 split overall, maybe skewing a bit more towards hand sewing. I like to do pants, shirts, and nightgowns mostly by machine with some hand finishing, but for jackets and waistcoats I usually do considerably more hand sewing than machine, because I like 18th century tailoring techniques and think they give a nicer looking result. I do most of my buttonholes by hand, or I do them by machine first and then cover them in hand stitching.

Most people who sew do at least some of it by machine, but again, I don't know which way you prefer to work, so I'd suggest trying out both to see how you feel abut them.

For hand sewing, I suspect a lot of people hate it because they're using shitty needles and/or shitty thread, and perhaps haven't found good resources for hand sewing techniques.

Here's a post of hand sewing advice that I found quite helpful a decade ago. Use good needles because the eyes of the cheap ones have jagged edges and will ruin your thread! Use nice thread because the wrong kind will be twisty and tangly and will fray more!

Thimbles are good and useful, and typically they go on the middle finger of your dominant hand, and you use them to push the needle. I prefer metal thimbles and dislike using leather ones, but some people prefer the leather ones, or rubber ones.

The metal ones come in sizes, and I don't know how to find out your size aside from trying them on in person, but I know I'm a size 11.

One very important thing is that if you're hand sewing a garment, look for hand sewing specific instructions on how to do the construction techniques you're going for. A lot of the time when someone nowadays is trying to figure out how to hand sew a thing they'll just try and copy the machine sewn version, and a lot of the time that's inefficient and more difficult and the result looks worse, because machines and hands work very differently!

This is something I'm going to briefly discuss in the outro to the very long shirt video I'm working on, because it's so very common, and I've done it too! On several of my earlier hand sewn shirts I didn't know to turn the edge in on the front slit and do a little narrow hem, so I instead sewed on a facing for the front slit and cut and turned it, just like I'd seen on machine sewn shirts. This made it about 3x more time consuming, and the result was much bulkier and looked worse.

I've got so many more things to say about sewing but it's almost bedtime and I don't want to make this post too long.

For machine sewing, again there's a lot of personal choice. Some people like newer machines, some people like vintage or antique ones. I'm one of the ones who prefers solid metal vintage machines. I grew up using an old cast iron Singer, and the newer domestic machines just feel so plasticy and insubstantial to me. I'm used to ones that just do straight stitch and can also go backwards, but some people are perfectly happy with ones that can't even backstitch.

I do think that for a beginner the vintage machines are a better deal, because if you're patient and look around for a while you can snag one for really cheap at a thrift store, yard sale, facebook marketplace, etc. Also they're mostly metal and therefore harder to break.

I recently got a Pfaff (from I think the 1960's?) at an estate sale for 25 bucks. The zig zag mechanism is stuck and needs fixing, but I cleaned & oiled it up and it works just fine for regular straight stitching.

There are SO MANY online resources for how to clean, oil, and fix vintage sewing machines, especially the more popular brands, and a lot of the time cleaning & oiling is all they need. Read the manual and get an oil bottle with a nice long pointy thing so you can reach all the parts, and get some compressed air to whoosh out the fuzz. If it's old and hasn't been used in years, turn the hand wheel and observe every single place where metal rubs against metal, and Make It Greasy There.

(If you don't have the manual, you can often find those online too. I even found the service manual for my new-old Pfaff! I have the original users manual, but this one's for the people doing repairs.)

Oh this post is getting much too long! If you don't know yet if you like machine sewing, try seeing if you can use one without owning it, perhaps at a sewing class or in a makerspace. I know some libraries can loan out machines. A sewing class would probably be a good idea actually, if there are any available where you live!

Much like how you'll have a bad time hand sewing if you've got shitty supplies and no proper instructions on good techniques, you'll have a bad time machine sewing if it's not oiled well and if the tension is uneven.

There are so so very many things to learn about sewing and I hope I'm not making it sound too overwhelming, because I promise it's not if you take it one step at a time!

Also, when someone who's been sewing for a long time says "You may think you can ignore (piece of sewing advice), but actually that's bad and you will regret it", they're usually right. Oh, how I regret not learning to use a thimble years earlier than I did...

Sorry this post is so long, I hope it's helpful!

Basically, there's no one best way to sew anything, and you should try different stuff and see what works best for you, because everyone has different preferences.

[ofliterarynature]

SEPTEMBER 2024 WRAP UP

[loved liked ok nope dnf reread* (book club)]

Bryony & Roses • The Paragon Hotel • The Invisible Library • (The Magic Fish) • The Gathering • Paladin of Souls • Mislaid in Parts Half-Known • Red White & Royal Blue* • North Woods • The Empty Grave* • Barda • Lost in the Moment & Found • The Creeping Shadow* • The Spellshop • Lalani of the Distant Sea

* * * * *

Lockwood & Co - not much to say, but it was fun revisiting an old favorite! It's becoming clearer with age and rereads that there are things about this series that I don't like, but the things I like definitely outweigh them - the way it does ghosts and uses a casebook structure among them! Would highly recommend if you're looking for something a bit spooky and mysterious.

Lost in the Moment and Found - this book was very hard to get into, because as it warns you, the opening involves a child experiencing grooming and gaslighting from an adult, and it is tense. Oof. But that said, between this and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, I think Antsy's story and the Shop Where the Lost Things Go might be my favorite place and narrative arc we've seen yet.

Barda - I was obsessed with Ngozi's Check Please! for a number of years, and I think she's a very funny person in general! I read this on the strength of that alone despite no previous knowledge of the DC characters involved. I do honestly think this needed to be twice as long to get the depth of story necessary for an outsider, but dang did she pack the emotions in! I can fully see why she's obsessed with these characters, even if I don't feel like I have enough info to get into it myself.

North Woods - honest to god I'm so glad I picked up a copy of this at the library book sale, because I don't know if OR when I might have gotten to it otherwise. I don't really have the words, but it's one of those slow, literary, speculative, books that you have to work to put together that I love to listen to on audiobook and just marinate in for a few days. I would highly recommend to fans of Emily St John Mandel.

Red White & Royal Blue - I'll be honest, I somehow found myself on a FirstPrince fanfic binge and eventually hit a point where I thought to myself, you know, I've only read the book once, maybe I should go check that out again. It was fun! Remarkably similar in tone to the fanfic, so keep up the good work yall ;D

Paladin of Souls - Y'all. I'm so mad it took me this long to get to this after Curse of Chalion. I've seen this recommended so many times independent of the first book and they were so right, I loved it. Character-driven fantasy, great world building, a middle-aged female character who's on a journey of self-discovery and also so done with everyone's shit (including the gods, lol).

The Gathering - a murder investigation in Alaska with vampires *sounds* cool, but... the vampires are people, they're sentient, they have a culture, but they're also deeply hated and treated like predatory animals and are designated a protected species? It's trying to say something, but I'm not sure it works. Definitely taught me that I don't like crime novels or thrillers, but some bonus points for being unexpectedly queer.

The Magic Fish - I've see this around, but tumblr finally convinced me that I needed to read it and I got it onto the book club list. It was completely not what I was expecting, it was so much better! The description really led me to think it would be a lot more YA-ish and be about the son, but his mom is just as important to the story! It's got fairy tales, it's got complexity, the art was incredibly beautiful, ah!!! I'll be needing to get my own copy so I can read it again and think about it some more.

The Invisible Library - tumblr apparently finds this book very divisive, and both times I've asked about it there's been a 50/50 split on whether people liked or hated it lol. SO I went in with very low expectations, and I thought it was fun! It's not a great work of fantasy, I will give you that, but I do enjoy a tropey alt/historical fantasy adventure on occasion, and this filled that niche pretty well. It also didn't lean into a romance plot like I was afraid it would, and as long as it continues to do so (or at least handles it well), I think I could have fun with the rest of this series.

The Paragon Hotel - this is somehow my third Lydsay Faye, and while I don't think I've particularly loved any of them, she can really write a very solid book! A good read, with queer identities playing an unexpectedly major part in the plot!

Bryony & Roses - I have so far epically failed in my goal this year to read more of T Kingfisher's fantasy backlist, but I saw this on hoopla and thought I could fit it in. A very good time as always!

DNF

The Spellshop (16%) - I've read the author's YA in the past and (mostly) liked it at the time, and have been meaning to read her previous adult book for ages. Unfortunately, I've been having terrible luck with anything recent being marketed as cozy fantasy. I put 2 hours into this on audiobook and my initial impression of the story was earnestly quirky, charming, and anxious. Perhaps better than L&L, but I wasn't feeling much more than a vague interest and decided to cut my losses before my feelings entirely soured.

Lalani of the Distant Sea (10%) - this book sounds really cool (yes I did love Moana), the mythology and worldbuilding in the bit I read was interesting, but it is very much written for a younger reader. If I had any in my life currently I would be happy to give this to them! Just not the right pick for me right now.

[wirewitchviolet]

How a Computer Works - Part 3 (Miniaturization and Standardization)

For anyone just joining in, I'm writing a series of posts explaining perhaps haphazardly all there is to know about how a computer works, from the most basic fundamental circuitry components to whatever level of higher functionality I eventually get to. As explained in the first post on this subject, I am doing this just in pure text, so that if you are inclined you can straight up print these posts out or narrate them onto some audio tape or whatever and have full access to them should every computer in the world suddenly collapse into a pile of dust or something. Part 1 mainly covered the basic mechanical principles of circuitry and how to physically construct a logic gate. Part 2 covered logic gates in detail and how to use them to create a basic working architecture for a general purpose computer. Today we're going to be talking more about what you're looking at when you crack a machine open so you can make sense of all the important fiddly bits and have maybe a starting point on how to troubleshoot things with a multimeter or something.

Before getting into it though, I do have to shake my little donation can again and remind you that I do not know how I am going to get through the winter without becoming homeless, so if this is valuable to you, I'd appreciate some help.

Boards of Bread and Printed Circuits

With the things I've explained so far, you could totally build a computer right now, but it'd be a bit messy. You can totally buy resistors, transistors, capacitors, and diodes by the bagful for basically nothing, and cheap rolls of insulated wire, but there's all these long exposed pins to cut short and soldering things in mid-air is a messy nightmare and you'd just have this big tangle of wires in a bag or something that would almost certainly short out on you. So let's look into ways to organize stuff a little.

If you start playing around with electronics on your own, one of the first things you want to hook yourself up with besides raw components and wires is a breadboard or 12. And if you're watching people explain these things with visual aids, you'll also see a lot of them, so it's good to know exactly what they are and how they work. Your standard breadboard is a brick of plastic with a bunch of little holes in it. Incidentally, the name comes from how the first ones were literally just named after the wooden cutting boards for slicing bread people recycled to make them. Inside these holes there's some pinching bits of conductive metal which connect to each other in a particular way (pretty sure you can just see the strips that connect one if you pry the bottom off), so you can just jam a thing wire or prong into a hole, have it held in place, and make a connection to every other hole its connected to on the other side.

There is a ton of standardization to all of this. The holes should always be 0.1 inches apart () and split into two big grids. Everyone I've ever seen has 63 rows, each with 5 holes labeled A-E, a shallow channel through the middle of the board, and then another 5, F-J, and we generally have numbers printed every 5 rows. Down underneath, for any given row, the set of 5 pins on each side of the channel are connected. So, holes 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, and 1E are all connected to each other, and nothing else. Holes 1F, 1G, 1H, 1I, and 1J are also connected to each other. There's no connection though between 1E and 1F, or 1A and 2A.

Most breadboards will also have a couple of "power rails" along the sides. These are just going to be labeled with a long red line and +, and a long blue or black line and -, and have holes in 2x5 blocks staggered out. With these, all 25 or 50 or whatever holes near the red + line connect with each other, and all the ones near the black line connect with each other. The gaps every 5 holes don't serve any purpose beyond looking different enough from the big grid so you hopefully don't mix it up and forget that these ones all connect down the length, and not in in little clumps across the width like everything else. The idea, for the sake of convention, is you plug a wire connected directly to the positive side of your battery or DC adapter or whatever into any red line hole, the negative side to any blue/black hole, and then tada, you can make a circuit just by plugging a wire in from red to a normal grid line, whatever bits you want span from that grid line to another, and eventually you connect the far end back anywhere on the black/blue line.

With a nice circuit board, there's also little snap-together pegs along the sides, and the power rails are just snapped on with those. So you can just kinda cut through the backing with a knife or some scissors, snap those off, connect multiple boards together without redundant power rails in the middle, and then just have these nice spare long lines of linked sockets. In the computer I'm building on these, I'm just using spare power rails for the bus. Oh and the big grooved channel down the middle also has a purpose. Bigger electronic components, like our good good friend the integrated circuit, are generally designed to be exactly wide enough (or more, but by a multiple of 0.1 inches) to straddle that groove as you plug their legs into the wires on either side, so they nicely fit into a breadboard, and there's a handy gap to slide something under and pry them off later on.

Typically though, you don't see breadboards inside a computer, or anything else. They're super handy for tinkering around and designing stuff, but for final builds, you want something more permanent. Usually, that's a printed circuit board, or PCB. This is pretty much what everyone's going to picture when they think about the guts of a computer. A big hard (usually) green board with a bunch of intricate lines, or "traces" running all over made of (usually) copper. And maybe with some metal ringed holes punched all the way through (they call those vias). These tend to look really complicated and maybe even a little magical, but they're honestly they're just pre-placed wires with a sense of style.

Most of the material of the board is insulated. The copper traces conduct real well, and manufacturers have done the math on just how close together they can be run without connecting to each other in places you don't want. The holes that go all the way through are for either plugging other bits in that tend to come with long legs you maybe want to keep intact, or just ways to run a trace through to the other side, where we often have traces on the back too to maximize our space. Most of what makes them look all cool and magical is how the traces run as close packed as possible to conserve space, and tend to only turn at 45 degree angles, which is just an artifact of how the machinery used to etch them out sued to be iffy about anything else.

So tada, you have all your wires pre-stuck to a nice sturdy board, and maybe even have labels printed right on there for where you solder all the various components to finish the thing. Oh and when you hear people talk about like, motherboards and daughterboards? The big main board you have for everything is a motherboard. Sometimes you need more than that, so you make smaller ones, and connect them up ether with some soldering or cartridge style with end-pins sliding snugly into sockets, and those we call daughterboards.

Integrated Circuits, or as they're also known, "chips"

The last thing you're likely to find if you crack open a computer, or just about any other electronic device that isn't super old or super super simple, are integrated circuits. Generally these are think black plastic bars that look like you'd maybe try to awkardly use them to spread cheese or peanutbutter on crackers in a prepacked snack or something, with rows of tiny little legs that running along either side. Kinda makes them look like little toy bugs or something. Sometimes they're square with pins along every edge, because sometimes you need a lot of pins. These are integrated circuits, or microchips, or just chips, and wow are they handy.

Sometime back in the 60s when people were really getting their heads around just how ridiculously small they could make electronic components and still have them work, we started to quite rapidly move towards a point where the big concern was no longer "can we shrink all this stuff down to a manageable size" and more "we are shrinking everything down to such an absurdly tiny size that we need to pack it all up in some kind of basically indestructible package, while still being able to interact with it."

So, yeah, we worked out a really solid standard there. I kinda wish I could find more on how it was set or what sort of plastic was used, but you take your absurdly shrunken down complex circuit for doing whatever. You run the teensiest tiniest wires you can out from it that thicken up at the ends into standard toothy prongs you can sink into a breadboard or a PCB with that standardized pin spacing, and you coat it all in this black plastic so firmly enveloping it that nothing can move around inside or get broken, hopefully.

And honestly, in my opinion, this is all TOO standardized. The only real visible difference between any two given integrated circuits is how many legs they have, and even those tend to come to some pretty standard numbers. They're always the same size shape and color, they all have the same convention of having a little indented notch on one side so you know which end is which, and they all seem to use just the worst ink in the world to print a block of numbers on the back with their manufacturer, date of assembly, a catalog number, and some other random stuff.

For real if there's any real comprehensive standard for what's printing on these, I can't for the life of me find it. All I know is, SOMEWHERE, you've got a 2 or 3 letter code for every manufacturer, a number for the chip, and a 4 digit date code with the last 2 digits of the year, and which week of that year it was. These three things can be in any order, other things can also be on there, probably with zero spacing, and usually printed in ink that wipes away like immediately or at least is only readable under really direct light, it sucks.

Once you know what a chip is though and look up the datasheet for it, you should have all sorts of handy info on what's inside, and just need to know what every leg is for. For that, you find which end has a notch in it, that's the left side, sometimes there's also a little dot in the lower left corner, and hopefully the label is printed in alignment with that. From there, the bottom left leg is pin 1, and then you count counterclockwise around the whole chip. You're basically always going to have positive and negative power pins, past that anything goes. You can cram a whole computer into a single chip, yo can have someone just put like 4 NAND gates on a chip for convenience, whatever.

OK, but how do they make them so small?

OK, so, mostly a circuit we're going to want to shrink down and put on a chip is just gonna be a big pile of logic gates, we can make our logic gates just using transistors, and we can make transistors just by chemically treating some silicon. So we just need SUPER flat sheets of treated silicon, along with some little strands of capacitive/resistive/insulating material here and there, and a few vertically oriented bits of conductive metal to pass signals up and down as we layer these together. Then we just need to etch them out, real real small and tight.

And we can do that etching at like, basically infinite resolution it turns out. It just so happens we have access to special acids that eat through the materials we need them to eat through, but that only work when they're being directly hit with fairly intense UV light. And a thing about light is when you have say, a big cut out pattern that you hold between a light and a surface, it casts a shadow on it... and the scaling of that shadow depends entirely on the distances between the light, the pattern, and the surface. So if you're super careful calibrating everything, you can etch a pattern into something at a scale where the main limiting factors become stuff like how many molecules thick things have to be to hold their shape. Seriously, they use electron microscopes to inspect builds because that's the level of tininess we have achieved.

So yeah, you etch your layers of various materials out with shadow masks and UV acid, you stack them up, you somehow align microscopic pins to hold them together and then you coat the whole mess in plastic forever. Tada. Anything you want in a little chip.

ROMs, maybe with various letters in front

So there's a bunch of standard generally useful things people put into ICs, but also with a computer you generally want some real bespoke stored values with a lookup table where you'll keep, say, a program to be run by feeding whatever's inside out to the bus line by line. For that we use a chip we call Read Only Memory, or ROM. Nothing super special there, just... hard wire in the values you need when you manufacture it. Manufacturing these chips though is kind of a lot, with the exacting calibrations and the acid and the clean rooms and all. Can't we have some sort of Programmable ROM? Well sure, just like build it so that all the values are 1, and build a special little thing that feeds more voltage through than it can handle and physically destroy the fuse for everything you don't want to be a 1.

OK that's still kind of a serious commitment. What if I want to reuse this later? Oh, so you want some sort of Erasable PROM? OK someone came up with a funky setting where you overload and blow out the fuses but then if you expose the guts of the chip to direct UV light through this little window, everything should reform back to 1. Just like, throw a sticker on there when you don't want to erase it. Well great, but can we maybe not have me desolder it and take it out to put under a lamp? Oh la de da! You need Electronically Erasable PROMs? EEPROMs? I guess we can make THAT work, somehow. They're still gonna be slow to write to though, can't have anything. I mean, not unless we invented like, flash memory. Which somehow does all this at speeds where you can use it for long term storage without it being a pain. So that's just kinda the thing we have now. Sorry I don't quite get the principles behind it enough to summarize. Something about floating components and needing less voltage or whatever. Apparently you sacrifice some read speed next to older options but hey, usable rewritable long term storage you just plug in, no jumping through extra hoops.

So OK. I think that's everything I can explain without biting the bullet and explaining ALUs and such. Well, there's keyboards (they're just buttons connecting input lines), monitors (these days, LEDs wired up in big grids), and mice (there's spokes in wheels that click X times or cameras checking the offset values of dust on your desk or whatnot).

Maybe throw me some money before we move on ?

CONTINUED IN PART 4

[cinnamontails-ff]

Hello hello ❤️

For the ask game, I was wondering if there are tropes that would never write or that you don’t find as entertaining ?

Ooohh alright, I promised honesty, so here we go. [insert obligatory reminder that these are just my personal feelings; I am not trying to shame anyone who likes these tropes etc.]

Soulmates. I hate how it eliminates free will and the whole "We're choosing to work on this together, even if it's hard" thing that always grips me the most about a romance.

Prophecies. Similar to soulmates, I don't like how it makes things deterministic, rather than reliant on the characters' choices. Also often just a lazy plot device when an author has written themselves into a corner.

Amnesia. Soooo boring. I don't think I've ever seen this and thought "Wow, that's a cool take".

Damsel in distress. Unless it's a character purposefully posing as helpless, this is the surest way to make me roll my eyes.

Commitment issues. This one is a little personal for me, but also, I believe that on a fundamental level, romance requires two people to make it work. If one of them has to do all the labor, chances are it's not going to go well, and I have no interest in romanticizing that.

Love Triangles. Basically, if you do a good job with them, your readership ends up being split down the middle as to who they want to end up with whom. Which means that you'll inevitably piss off about 50% of your readership for no good reason at all. The only time this trope has ever worked was in "Fruit's Basket" and no, I don't think I could replicate anything this good, so I'm staying off that particular trope.

[maniculum]

Welcome to another Scorpion Sunday! We're almost through all the ones from the original post, but I've still got a couple that people have sent me sitting in my inbox. This'll get more sporadic once we're through the list though -- only one left, I believe.

This one is from the Breviari d'amor, a book by 13th-century French author Matfres Eymengau (and variant spellings). I can't tell you about this particular manuscript of the Breviari d'amor, because it's Harley MS 4940 at the British Library, and... yeah, cyberattack still ongoing, you know the drill. The text itself is a bit odd; a "breviary" is a type of prayer book, and... well, in the absence of being able to access the manuscript listing or being willing to trawl through the university library's holdings just to fill out a Tumblr post, I'm going to just tell you that Wikipedia says this book's "sole purpose is the reconciliation of love for God with the erotic amours of the troubadour lyric". I think there's a 50/50 shot of that being really interesting or incredibly tedious, so I might have to check it out later.

As for the actual illustration, it's a bit of kismet that this one was slated for today. I originally mocked this scorpion for having a head that, let's be real, looks like a butt. Ever since, I've been getting occasional notes on that post telling me this is actually a pretty realistic scorpion head in outline. And just earlier today, @bogleech reblogged that post with an actual photograph of a scorpion with this head shape:

Which really calls into question how this illustration came about. How did the illustrator nail such a weirdly specific detail but otherwise draw something that only looks like a scorpion in general silhouette? Bogleech suggested they might have seen a damaged specimen with pieces missing and filled in the blanks; I think it's also possible that someone drew a scorpion from personal experience, then someone else copied that drawing and messed up a couple details, then someone copied that drawing... &c. You know, Manuscript Telephone. Or maybe it's a bit of both and this can be traced back to a damaged manuscript. Or maybe this artist was working from a description that included "head like a butt" but not "pinchy claws" for some reason.

Anyway, moving on to the points:

Small Scuttling Beaſtie? ✓

Pincers? ✘

Exoskeleton or Shell? ... hm. I honestly think we have to consider this one. Given the context of what that head looks like on an actual scorpion, maybe this one does have a carapace of some kind over its head. And there's something going on with that spinal ridge thing. On the other hand, the rest of it is clearly furry. I think i'm going to split the difference and give it ½.

Visible Stinger? ✘

Limbs? 6

As for vibes... would I like to meet this thing more or less than I would like to meet a regular real-world scorpion? Honestly, I think it balances out. I'm a little concerned that what I'm looking at here is a furry alligator with a weird head, but i do also think it has a certain charm, and i feel like it all boils down to just how large this thing is. If it's alligator-sized, I don't want it around me; if it's scorpion-sized, I think i'm cool with it. Again I will split the difference and give it the middle-of-the-road "about the same as a real scorpion" score: 3/5.

That means the scorpion with the strange-but-accurate head gets:

5.1 / 10

i'm sorry, it really does look like a butt

[ikuzeminna]

Why is crapping on Gundam Wing by people reviewing all the Gundam series such a trend? And in the silliest manner possible, because out of the million flaws Gundam Wing has, they never pick any of those. Instead they make stuff up. "The characters are flat." Oh yeah, sure, no depth at all to the guy who starts out as a merciless killer FUBARing every important mission he's sent on (and I love what a drama queen he is), gradually regaining his humanity once he's removed from the battlefield, only to end up horrified by being forced by a machine into becoming a ruthless killer again. Or the guy who spends the entire series preaching 'carpe diem' while he himself is the living embodiment of 'memento mori'.

Or the snarky mercenary with a massive Middle Child Syndrome who sacrifices the only thing he's fought for his entire life (himself) to keep another kid from turning out like him. Or said kid who goes through 50 shades of bonkers and every human emotion in existence during the show. Don't even get me started on the ladies. "Wufei is not interesting." Of course not. Why would the sole guy who doesn't fight for the freedom of the colonies but instead wages a personal war of revenge and a promise he's trying to keep to his late wife be interesting? Which explains why he's a wild card and fights on Mariemaia's side in EW. "The Gundams are overpowered. They never get any damage." Yeah, why didn't they send five suits made of Explodium against a world army? Also begs the question why we see them get repaired in the third episode already. And why every pilot is also a trained mechanic who can fix his own suit. Since the Gundams are indestructible anyway. Seriously. The show itself spells it out. Gundanium may be near indestructible but the electronics and other parts get fried perfectly fine which, surprise surprise, renders a Gundam useless. Never mind that Noin, in episode 4 already, was willing to use a weapon that could damage Gundanium but would overheat on Earth. "Relena's pacifism should never have worked against Romefeller. The show is dumb for presenting it as the solution." .....It didn't??? The whole Cinq arc made a point out of pacifism not working with Romefeller and the Mobile Dolls around. Just- what??? "Gundam Wing isn't realistic." This is like complaining about talking animals in The Lion King. Gundam Wing is supposed to be anti-UC. Being unrealistic was intentional. Being focused on ideologies was intentional. Not focusing on character struggles (too much) was intentional. Having a mess of a plot because you have one million different factions was intentional. If reviewers watch all the UC series and don't get that Gundam Wing has the exact opposite setup then I don't know what to tell them. Complain about talking animals while you watch a Disney movie, I guess. Pick on the horrid pacing. Pick on Relena and Heero being nutjobs in the beginning. Pick on yelling from cliffs. Pick on Noin being a doormat to Zechs. Pick on Zechs being a Char clone. Pick on there being way too many characters in the beginning. Pick on the Dorothy/Quatre connection coming out of nowhere or Une giving herself split personalities because of a dude.

There is a plethora of flaws to choose from. Also, get out of my face with UC being better. That salt episode was the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life and I've watched Seed Destiny.

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

As a fandom- where do we think Izzy's story will end? [Poll at the bottom]

Now. So much of S2 is about what Stede/Ed want in the end. Sure, they're together again, but now what? For Stede, it's a pirate's life. He wants a crew, a family, connections, and adventure. Freedom from a life he hated. Even if it's short, he wants joy. For Ed, it's peace. He wants to fish, and eat good food, and spend time with the person he loves. Away from the stress of piracy. Of being hunted down and fighting to survive. To me, this is why the S2Ep7 fight happens the way it does. Stede's rising popularity shows Ed that, fuck, Stede is slowly becoming an example of the pirate life that he'd despised. Ed is dating the most popular pirate in the Republic, and fuck. That's dangerous. That's a target on Stede's back. That's more fights, future rivalries, future doublecrosses, another fight surviving against the authorities. An expanding list of people to hunt down the man he loves. Here he is, slowly watching as Stede, a man who onced loved nature and marmalade. Scared of violence and fighting. Slowly get taken over by a hardened Stede. Still Stede, yes. But scary and new. Ed's scared. So he runs. Chooses to protect his heart and go before he is forced to break up with Stede. He can't be this anymore. Leaving Stede behind, sad and confused on how things went to shit so quickly.

So....

Not to be an Izzy fan about this but... When everything settles down. When Stede and Ed are free to run and be happy, what will Izzy Hands do?

I've seen so many opinions, but honestly, I don't think even he knows the answer to this question yet. I think a large part of his S3 arc is Izzy looking at life and being like 'fuck, I'm in my 50s, but I'm still alive. So what now?'.

To be by Ed's side? Well...not anymore. He has a family. Sure, for a second it looked like they'd all split up in EP7 but we all know the upcoming bullshit in ep8 will tie everyone in tighter together. He doesn't need Ed the way he did even a few episodes ago. He's trying to form a life where he can be happy with his identity outside of Ed.

These last few episodes have shown that this life is too dangerous for Ed to feel safe starting something with Stede. There will be a compromise, and fuck. The idea of Izzy just going along with it because 'that's where Ed is' after everything is just...heartbreaking.

To go retire? I mean. I'd want that ending for him, to grow older, happy and safe, and warm and loved by his community. Maybe get him someone whose as loyal to him as he was to Ed(platonically or not).

In S1 he stated that's not a future he ever expected for himself. Sure, maybe next season we'll get some 'It's my final day before retirement' bullshit. But it will need to be set up.

To stay a first mate? Maybe! hell, Izzy loved Ed enough to 'let him' become a fisherman without talking him out of it. Clearly he enjoys the life he has on the revenge. Whose to say he won't enjoy being first mate under a different captain. Say, Olu, or Jim, or some rando they introduce next season.

To become Captain? Again, maybe? I can see it. The show ends with Stede and Ed in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Izzy and the crew run off for one more adventure (with the promise that yes, they'll visit as often as they can).

It's sad in a way. Knowing what we all know about history. How one day Captain Hands will die at sea. Either by being too slow in a fight, being caught, or their ship going down. But maybe that's what he wants?

THIS is the reason so many latched onto Izzy Hands. Stede and Ed will get a happy ending. Period. The End. But what about our crew? What about Izzy? Izzy's arc has meant so much for so many of us. I don't see him dying this season (FINGERS CROSSED) but this fucker would die for his crew.

SO. What do you think? As it stands right now.

[david-goldrock]

Hello! I'm pro palestine - in the sense that I do think that Israel is founded on colonialism (no, i don't blame the jews. just was how it was) and I hope for a two state solution where Israel genuinely leaves the West bank and Gaza alone entirely.

Israel was founded largely thanks to British aid. The Brits Lied to Al Hussein (McMahon-Hussein Correspondence) claiming that if they fought of the Ottomans, they'd help them set up Palestine. They had promised to the Jews in the Balfour declaration in 1917. But all that was a lie, they'd already arranged a split with France (Sykes-Picot agreement), and both these entities would ultimately be under foreign rule. Anyway, this got them Mesopotamia, Jordan, and the Palestine region, and they split Palestine up 20% 80% in the 1937 Peel Commission.

You know, at the time where jews made up 6% of the population in the region. This was deeply disrespectful to the Arab population at the time, and while most countries have black roots nowadays, that should be acknowledged. There's a reason Arabs kept initiating the wars - and it's not because Arabs have less moral fiber than Jews.

It's because they were there first, and Jews came because their great great great great great grandmother was there. Also, there's writings at the time to imply that the British support of Israel's creation was largely a result of not wanting to deal with living with Jewish people.

Arthur James Balfour literally wrote that he hoped that the creation of Israel would mean British people wouldn't have to deal with an "alien body" anymore.

The foundation of Israel is not only built on a lot of violence (that the jews did not directly start but was unavoidable by virtue of them seeking to take over the area, and the british lies that were deeply disrespectful), but also on British colonialism and anti-semitism. It has resulted in the displacement of Palestinians all over the middle east, because they were uprooted from their homes because of Zionism.

In other words - I don't think Zionism is a solution to anti-semitism nor do I think it has done good to the world. It wasn't peaceful, and it never could have been. Colonialism is never a peaceful endeavor.

I understand the 12 israeli tribes/Kingdom of Israel were forced into a diaspora, and I am truly sorry about how the jewish people have suffered. I understand the desire for a jewish state - even if I think it was wrong to take something where people were already living, even if that was once where your great great great great great great grandmothers and grandfathers lived.

That doesn't justify the violence the Palestinians face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xottY-7m3k

in this video, around 50:35, you can see some videos of IDF soldiers committing several heinous acts, including destroying humanitarian aid. around 52:45, you can see an IDF soldier using a civilian as a human shield.

https://twitter.com/poke_farmer/status/1790718768198361513 https://twitter.com/AnonOpsSE/status/1567233393565306880

some more videos, a residential area bombed, and a group of idf members harassing people holding up a coffin of a journalist.

I've heard claims that Hamas is forcing Israel to commit things that are like war crimes - like bombing hospitals and schools casualties - because of how it works. If Hamas really has underground tunnels in these areas and that's why Israel is bombing them, what's the proof of that being the case? If Hamas is telling Palestinians to stay home even if the IDF sends them texts before bombing them - where's the proof of that?

I will admit - I don't personally follow any IDF or Palestinian social media. You seem like you would be more connected - which is why I'm asking you.

I will admit - I only watched a bit of Memri.tv and that's all I know about palestinian tv. I've seen the Hamas leader who said you can kill a jew for 5 shekels (meaning, with a knife). I know that for sure several palestinians do hate jews.

The same is true of the israelis. A lot of them hate arabs. https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1725391062448087143 https://twitter.com/amalikabeer98/status/1782129171709210724

This is actually more of a reflection of Israelis. Hamas has been unfairly taking a 20 year term, so it's easy to say the Palestinians aren't reflected in the government. Israel is democratic. The country's government largely represents the people.

Everything I've mentioned so far and more can be found in the youtube video I linked by the way - I highly recommend you give it a watch.

People often view support of Palestine as being...entirely unresearched and misunderstood. I can't deny that several people seem to view this issue as another thing on the Leftist Checklist To Support And Also I Can Hate Jewish People Now which I won't lie - it disgusts me as much as it should disgust any sane person.

But I fundamentally cannot agree with how the country Israel operates, and I believe it has gone way too far, even given October 7th. Hamas' attack on October 7th only explains what's going on in Gaza - it explains nothing about the IDF's actions against the West Bank, which is not under Hamas. It's under Palestinian Authority.

I would not consider myself a Zionist for reasons I've stated - but it's not as though I believe the jewish people in Israel who are living there right now deserve eviction. As I said at the start - I support a two state solution where Israel and the West Bank + Gaza become separate entities.

I think that: a) since Israel had the power in this situation, it should be the one to bring about peace. If Hamas puts down its soldiers, it will not turn out well for Gaza at this point.

b) mainly British action and some Israeli action are a large part of why the Palestinians feel wronged, and that should be acknowledged

Imma be honest, I think you are deeply misunderstanding a fuck ton of history. I was prepared to correct you but I cannot find any question in this post

Why'd you send me this? Sorry for the harsh words, but did you feel a need to share your opinion? That it mattered? I don't know who you are, you're on anon, and you came into my askbox spitting half-correct history and opinions with no relevance to me, so I must ask, why?

[kobblefort]

Blackfaint: Rat World Forever

This is what happens when I click on the "PETITIONS" button, which no doubt is alerting me that the newly established farmers' guild wants a hall. I don't think your average player of the greatest simulation game of all time Dwarf Fortress is ever going to see this. It's kind of cursed, but it's kind of magical. I can't dismiss it, which will drive me crazy since it does that little "shimmering" animation. I suppose I'll just have to assume that making the guild hall nice enough will make it stop. I don't know, I'm not in a hurry to please them. Now if there was a herbalists' guild, though? Those are the guys holding it down.

Another strange mood takes another rat straight to the clothier's shop that made Eeteek go berserk and start the fight that ended in their death. I suppose Vatekeek Learnedmaligns thinks it will be fine for him which in my opinion is the proper rat world attitude.

Also, things were going too well for a minute there, so here come 9 lesser rodent people. I was telling this to someone earlier but I think that rats are pretty cool in real life. Rats are like dogs stuck in rodent bodies basically. But mice are horrible little skittering creeps that will randomly run out from the walls just to die in the middle of your fucking floor like oh do you mind if I randomly die here, if I just roll over and die in the middle of your fucking floor, well I'm going to do it if that's alright, actually me and my 100 little cousins thought it would be cool to just scamper around as fast as possible at 3 AM and then randomly suddenly die, there's no way to get us out besides doing chemical warfare on yourself, blame yourself for living in a garage even though it wasn't your idea and you didn't want to do it. So basically mice fucking suck and the rodent men, naturally, are mice, compared to us, the superior rats. And we're really gonna need to figure out a way to make sure they end up dead on the floor. Which should be totally doab

This sucks man

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. The violence is fast and extreme and really fucking bad and we don't have nearly enough graves to start burying everyone. The only people who can really fight are the miners, and the mouse people brought actual steel spears this time: that's a huge advantage in range and damage. We're down to 13 rats. Considering I was thinking that we would actually get to 50 and then maybe that would let our rats elect a mayor of some sort which would maybe let me use the Nobles & Administrator screen and its myriad functions, this is a pretty fucking shitty result. I guess worrying about the surface first was the wrong move but honestly it was a blind 50/50 anyway. It might be worth it to just say fuck it and lock off the caverns for a while. There's no way with this few rats that we could easily set up any kind of bulwark, we still have 100-something food, I don't know I'm kinda just feeling pretty gutted over how fast things went to shit like from okay to terrible in an instant, I know I just did that "rat world forever" bit like 30 seconds ago in your time and 30 minutes ago in mine but yeah I'm not feeling it.

This fucking asshole pays me back for being nice and refusing to Cask of Amontillado his ass by flipping out and dragging our population down to 10 so far, maybe more. Even with a copper pick splitting his leg open he still crawls along trying to fight anyone who gets near. He struggles on and on until finally an herbalist Ch'tk Sinscaly who's tired of this shit walks over and strangles him to death.

Wow, I wonder why. Next fortress, workshops are DEFINITELY going to be set up for easy cask-of-amontillado'ing.

This asshole is here now. I don't know. The caverns are already sealed off, so who cares. I've never seen something break through sealed doors, but now I definitely am not going to unseal them. It kills the last few mice in a matter of seconds and then sets about lazing around right by the entrance to the cavern to make sure we never go back in there again.

Yeah come on in guys don't mind the other 10 notifications. Sure we can host some fucking elf poets and shit. Whatever. Is one of you naked? Lol, cool.

Oh yeah don't mind all the bloody fucking warm corpses starting to stink on the ground. Yeah this guy failed to Express Himself so he went around killing people. You get it. Right. Sorry we don't have time to watch you fucking dance or whatever we have to feed and water the grievously injured. But yeah stay as long as you like. Actually you know what though try not to eat too much. Just gonna say it we're not gonna have this food forever.

No Thicivi I don't think it is and you might not actually be a very adequate observer.

This shit happens downstairs which sucks. RIP our first forgotten beast I guess. Gotta watch out for those steel spears man. They're bullshit.

The bodies are just sitting on the floor because we're using the empty tombs for people whose remains we can't recover. I just had an idea, because I hate the caverns now and want all mouse people to suffer. What if we just drowned them. Right? Hear me out. It's a pretty common and kind of grim trap in the real world to drown mice by making them take bait in the middle of a bucket on a thing they fall off of into the bucket. Well what if we brought the bucket to them? And by which I mean dug a bunch more aquifer taps that led straight down into the cavern layer and just flooded it to hell? I think it could be funny. If we were always doomed to never make it here then why not do something fucked up like that.

Look at this face in the cistern. It's like an omen. I didn't make it on purpose but now it's here. Telling me "this is a place of great suffering." And you know what my reaction to that information is? Yeah I hope there's more.

So here it is. An absolute mess of exposed aquifer surface area, leading to little narrow high-pressure tunnels that terminate with one little spigot into the caverns.

And it's working. It's working fast. Yes, I used DFhack to speed it along - two injured miners were not about to hustle on it and I wanted to see it start happening already.

Maybe this was just a party that got out of hand. You know? Maybe this was just a shitty idea. Leaving the warband to settle down? Fuck that. Other people make fortresses. Ratfolk take them. This was never a fortress. This was just a big bucket to drown a bunch of stupid fucking mice in.

The ten of us left can head back to Malignreasons, wherever she's camped now, apologize for our stupid little excursion, take the flogging we're given and go back to doing what ratfolk are really supposed to do. None of our original seven have even survived, besides K'keek Vicescourge, after all - with their untimely deaths they left all the shame and humiliation for us. Rat world was pretty cool for a second there, it really was, but it's time for us to get back to our real lives. Real rat lives.

You can see there in the center, the rodent men scrambling for high ground as the water comes up to their knees. Their home ruined, some of them washed away to be drowned in their cages. Of course it's inhumane, but was the way they jammed us with spears and chopped us with axes humane? Besides, humane? News flash, we're fucking rats!!

Everyone starts filing out. Some head back toward the warband, some just head whereever their feet take them. Everyone but K'keek Vicescourge, who spends a bit more time here. Carving stone coffins that will never actually be filled. The guests just stand in the sad, empty dining hall, completely dumbfounded. And K'keek starts on one last project.

With a ghost at her back, in the worst mood of her life, but still compelled to carve it and place it. The first statue ever made at Blackfaint. And the last one. The only one.

She's ready to go now.

Rat world sucks.

Rat world forever.

[bookishwenchmeltha]

Textbook are insanely expensive

I teach. I get absolutely no say in what textbooks my students need to buy in college over 98% of the time, and it bothers me tremendously that the mark up on textbooks is so high that a large portion of my students no longer get the books and instead try to learn everything without a reference. Twenty years ago, $250 would buy a semester of textbooks. Today, in most cases, that won't even buy the books for a single class. The price has about tripled, conservatively.

In the classroom, I can do absolutely jack about this. I'm not even allowed under my contract to mention that there are other options than the campus bookstore. I receive absolutely NO kickback on the textbooks, so please realize, most professors HATE what's happening to textbook prices and LOATHE feeling like we have no options.

So, the following is a list of ways to get around buying the damn hyper-inflated pricey textbooks that most of us will turn a blind eye to.

If it's a popular book, which can happen especially in lit courses, go to a library and see if they have a copy. For some reason, students totally forget that libraries might have the book they need. Even if you have to return it late at the end of the semester, the late fee is going to be a lot less than the price of the book. If your library doesn't have the book, ask a librarian to do an inter-library loan for you. In a lot of states, this means you have access to it, for free, from any library in the state or possibly any other state.

If you prefer studying off of paper because you like taking handwritten notes, get a bunch of students in the same class together and chip in to buy one book. Then go to the library or a copy place and run off the pages you need for that week. Do the same thing the following week. If the book costs $250.00 (and some of them are a LOT more), a copy is usually 10 cents. You would need to make 2,500 to equal the price of the book, and I guarantee you your textbook is not 2500 pages long. Five people splitting the cost of the original text books for $50 can photocopy 200 pages of textbook for $20 (that can actually be 400 pages if you can fit too pages on one copy). The one way this can go wrong is if you get library staff or a copy center employee who objects to you photocopying copyrighted work. This is understandable with a living author. It is far less understandable when you are photocopying someone who died 400 years ago. Unfortunately, they can get you in trouble or toss you out, which is why I strongly suggest making only ten or so photocopies at a time. If however, you mange to copy the whole dang thing, or scan it, you can now sell it back, possibly during the return window.

This one, no one can stop you. Chip in with a few people to buy a copy of the textbook. Then pull out your phone and take a picture of the pages you need. Either keep it on your phone or download and print it. The one drawback here is a lot of professors do not like students to have their phones out during class. Again, if that's the case, print it out. It's going to look a lot less suspicious printing stuff from your phone at a copy place than trying to make multiple of a textbook in the middle of a library or copy joint. Again, you can space this out and print the pages when you need them.

A few words of caution: if the book is already reasonably priced, it's better to buy it from an ethical standpoint. This lets bookstores and publishers know that this book is popular and keeps it from getting "retired." Using the Internet for some works is great, but it doesn't provide the same page number, or sometimes even the same line numbers, for citations. Online works can also have problems with censorship, removing so-called offensive sections without the reader even realizing (I've seen this happen with a website of Poe's work that purported to be full and unabridged and was most certainly not). Sometimes, footnotes or author/editor commentary will also be missing, different, or even just plain wrong. If humanly possible, use the same edition as the rest of the class.

One last thing: if the professor wrote the book, you're basically screwed. Buy the book.

One final thing that is highly unlikely by still worth knowing: keep an eye on used books for sale in unlikely places: garage sales, second-and book shops, etc., especially near colleges or universities. I've seen the latest edition of $400 textbooks for sale at a library book sale for $2. Just make sure the edition matches because it's common practice among publishers to change the exercises with each new edition. That insures the older editions can't be reused or sold for a lower rate; it's awful, and it also means if you have to turn in homework, an older edition will not help you.

[captain-kit-adventuress]

I am indisputably from the Midwest. Right smack in the middle of it, in fact.

Call Ohio, Kansas, or Missouri "Midwestern" again and there will be blood.

See, here's the thing: it used to be taught properly. There were more regions than there are now. The Plains were very much their own thing, because they had both Western qualities and Midwestern qualities. I know people from Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and know them well. They are not Midwestern, but they're not not, either. Anywhere south of Springfield, IL may as well be the South. I am making concessions on St Louis, because truly, Missouri is not the Midwest no matter how much people insist it is, but in the interest of not uselessly infighting, I will let it go. Ohio is a nether space that is neither one thing nor another. It's Ohio. One of my nearest and dearest is Ohioan, and believe me, Ohio is some sort of liminal space. Indiana is the Midwest, but it's like if a piece of the Midwest wanted to break off and join the South.

But then, people started conflating. They started to call it all "flyover country." Anything in the middle became "the Midwest." It's just not true and I'm tired of people acting like it is.

It used to be in the middle. Back before our country had 50 states or had even expanded much beyond the Mississippi River. It was the Middle West, not meaning "in the middle of the country," but "in the middle of what we consider the west; not east." It's no longer that, and you can't just expand it to include more states, because they developed in their own way with their own influences.

That first map is the closest, most accurate approximation I've ever seen (conceding, of course, St Louis). I will even allow in Ohio so long as we get the bottom half of Illinois out of there, and anything in Pennsylvania or New York.

The great secret is that the Midwest is not solely a place. It's a mindset, a people, a way of life. It's stark practicality mixed with a grimly dour outlook on life. It is making the best of things but making sure not to enjoy them along the way. It's being Catholic even if you're not Catholic at all. It's Friday fish fry and trips to the lake and bonfires the microsecond a chill crops up in the air (though that one may be more local than I think). It's the word "pop" with a wide, ear-splitting, so-up-the-nose-it's-practically-still-in-the-brain letter O you've ever heard in your entire life. It's being loud even when you're quiet and not even noticing. It's the land of supper clubs and cultural traditions that haven't been useful or cared about anywhere else since the '40s and '50s but dang it, we do not give up tradition–not because we like it, either, but because it's what we do. It's trudging through six feet of snow only to give way to 90° and humid, and insisting, with every laboured, dying breath, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity that gets ya." It's a certain dark humour that's hard to describe but I've rarely seen anywhere else. It's a lot of cool, progressive stuff hidden under the sheen of bland respectability and ugly coursed square rubble masonry in a shade that isn't beige but somehow conveys beige all the same. It's ope and puppy chow and rec rooms and basement panelling, and shag carpets and floral velour furniture "because it's still good!" and the land that time forgot because the people didn't quite move forward with it. It's in every "no, yeah," and "yeah, no" and you only take the second word because no one in America beats Midwesterners for linguistic segues.

But if you must define it as a place, you won't get much more accurate than the very first map.

Give me a map of the midwest how you imagine it, and don't just use state lines, show me how you think the cultural area of the midwest actually exists in the US

[olderthannetfic]

okay, i need the help of someone much smarter than me for something i've been grappling with for a hot minute. it's kinda hard to phrase this but i suppose i'm having trouble coming to terms with my stance on problematic things in fancontent vs the source material. like, if i'm watching an anime and there's an upskirt of a middle schooler i get skeeved out and i might drop the show, but i'd read porn of that same girl if i find a doujin i like without batting an eye. am i just a hypocrite? or does this fall into the fiction vs. reality debates?

--

It's not fiction vs. reality.

It's level of practical, real world influence + context and implied audience.

Do you get upset about upskirts in porno anime? Probably not, right? In porn, including porny doujinshi, we understand that the purpose is titillation, possibly in a tasteless way that violates social norms, and the audience is people who signed up to see that material.

Most doujinshi are also read by a few hundred people, max. A few thousand if they're porn of something popular and they make it to the internet.

But animation is expensive. Mainstream anime aren't a niche product: they're seen by huge audiences and assumed to be targeted to a wide demographic. They might be more for boys or girls, and some are aimed at more of a college-age audience instead of kids, but in any case, it's a broad group.

When an anime that's aimed at 14-year-olds shows an upskirt shot, what that's saying is that taking upskirt shots of your classmates is normal. Maybe it gets you comedically slapped, but it's all in good fun. It's edgy, at worst. It's not wildly emotionally violating in a way that's going to fuck that girl up years later. It's not criminal.

Between the implied context/audience and the wide, wide reach of that media, it is sending potentially harmful messages about social norms.

Crybabies want to claim that some amateur fanwork labeled as porn can also affect things this way, but it can't. Not only does it not get in front of enough eyeballs, but its entire positioning as non-mainstream and as erotic means that it isn't making claims about social norms.

Also, it's the insidious stuff that's a problem.

The more extreme the porn, the more likely people are to read it as fantasy. The things that reinforce dominant and terrible cultural narratives aren't extreme: they're the boyfriend subtly tearing down his girlfriend's independence and self confidence. They're sexual harassment treated as closer to banter than bullying. They're having 30% female speaking roles across most tv and movies in the US instead of a 50/50-ish split.

[newcatwords]

where is hawai'i? can you point to it on a map?

if someone asks you to point to hawai'i on a map, where would you point?

before colonization, there was (and continues to be) an island called "hawai'i". the entire chain of islands is called "hawaii" and there is a state called "hawaii" made up of a large number of those islands.

now, because there are too many things named "hawaii," the island of hawai'i is often called "the big island", because o'ahu, the island where the city of honolulu is located, is what many people think of when they think of "hawaii". it's a mess.

on top of that, we have the "main hawaiian islands" (aka "southeastern islands" aka "windward islands") vs the "outer islands" (aka "northwestern islands" aka "leeward islands").

most maps of "hawaii" show only the "main" islands. the map above (created by USGS) shows more of the hawaiian islands, but omits the names of two of the islands in the "main" chain: lana'i & kaho'olawe. these are not insignificant omissions. lana'i is 98% owned by larry ellison, founder & chairman of oracle corporation. kaho'olawe has been relentlessly used & abused by the west. it has been used for ranchland, military training, and most notably, as a munitions testing site, resulting in the continued contamination of the island. after many years of protests & lawsuits by native hawaiians, the island is now only accessible by native hawaiians for cultural, spiritual, & subsistence reasons.

meanwhile, this tourist mug with a creepy colonial-style map of hawaii includes both kaho'olawe & lana'i. good job, tourist mug!

there are actually over a hundred islands in the hawaiian archipelago. the state of hawaii includes 137 of them (source). midway atoll (made up of 3 islands) is part of the archipelago, but not part of the state. it is one of america's territories: an unorganized unincorporated territory.

additionally, some of the islands "are too small to appear on maps, and others, such as Maro Reef, only appear above the water's surface during times of low tide. Others, such as Shark and Skate islands, have completely eroded away." [source: wikipedia page "list of islands of hawaii"].

in the course of writing this post, i failed to find a map that shows & names all the hawaiian islands and failed to even find a list of all of them (plus if an island only appears sometimes or has disappeared entirely, what do you even do with that?). if you find either or both of those, let me know in comments.

so where and what "hawaii" is remains a mystery.

but this has not prevented commercial & official interests from using maps of "hawaii" in all kinds of places! here on the islands, hawaii map imagery is all around.

maps are very common on tourist items:

the hawaiian telcom logo uses dots roughly arranged in the pattern of the islands on a map:

but i guess only five islands are worth including (i understand. branding needs come above all else!).

this souvenir cloth item is interesting because it includes all the main islands (including ni'ihau, lana'i, and kaho'olawe - which are often excluded), but smooshes them into the available space without much consideration for where they are in relation to each other:

the postcard above has the main islands in their rough places, but squishes them all together so that they fit in the space. also the islands are made more similar in size to each other so that you can better see the little illustrations.

here's a more "official" map to show where the islands "should be" in relation to each other, and their sizes relative to each other (although both of those can change depending on what projection the map uses):

in my mind, though, the ultimate hawaii map fantasy lives on the ubiquitous reusable walmart cloth bag (available for 50 cents at checkout to all who have forgotten to bring the right number of bags. there's a plastic shopping bag ban in hawaii.):

in the walmart commercial universe (wcu), the only islands that exist are islands that have a walmart. the general outlines of the islands & their general orientation is preserved (along with a rough topology too!), attempting to convey a sense of adhering to a recognizable reality, but islands without a walmart have been not only omitted, but the space where they would be has been eliminated as well - as if they were never there to begin with. in the walmart version of reality, what makes something "hawaii" is whether or not it has a walmart on it.

i've had a lot of time to think about this remarkable image because i have a whole bunch of these bags. this is the bag of the people - everyone uses it for everything. the one in the above photo is in a typical state - pretty rough - because it probably came from the side of the road. you can almost always find one on the side of the road. so wherever you are, you are probably within sight of the walmart version of the islands.

so why does it matter whether or not you can point to "hawaii" on a map? well, maps are political documents, meaning that they reflect the vision of whoever has the power to put the map in front of your eyes. so if you're the one with the power to make some of the most commonly-seen maps of hawaii and you decide to remove a few islands, well that can really shape what people think "hawaii" is! we're a sea of islands - many people here have only ever been to one or two of the islands. if it wasn't on the map, you might not know that it existed at all.

hawaii is incredibly important to the united states, not just for tourism, but in terms of global strategy. it's the largest outpost of american power in the middle of the pacific. it puts america & its troops half an ocean closer to some of america's biggest competitors, most notably, china. it's a springboard to all the other island territories of the pacific (which you maybe haven't heard of because they almost never appear on maps):

once you see a map of all of america's territories in the pacific, along with the exclusive economic zones (eez) that extend out for 200 miles around each island, you start to get a better feel for the extent of america's power in the pacific.

when a place is left off the map, it can be easy to make it (including its people!) invisible. so if you're america, with bases across the islands of the pacific, with a nightmarish history of atomic weapons testing in the pacific (rendering islands uninhabitable and leaving both land and waters too contaminated for people to use), perhaps you might not want some of these places to appear on the map.

in Foreign Policy in Focus, Khury Petersen-Smith writes:

"Many of us living in North America who are concerned about climate change, for example, have a sense that Pacific Islands are facing particularly severe impacts from rising sea levels. But that knowledge tends to be vague and limited, as actual residents of these islands are rarely invited to the table to speak for themselves.

This is not accidental. Commenting during the Nixon administration on U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which share the same region of the Pacific as Guam, Henry Kissinger said “there are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?”

The U.S. has long had an interest in Marshallese and other Pacific Islanders remaining “out there” in the American mind. This marginalization helps allow the U.S. to carry out military operations in the region, along with policies that further climate change and other harms, while keeping most Americans unaware of these practices’ impacts in the Pacific." [FPIF]

often hawai'i (and alaska - which is in many ways similar to hawai'i in its relation to the contiguous US) doesn't even appear on national maps of the USA.

here's a screenshot from the new york times homepage on march 21, 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to spread:

there is no alaska and no hawai'i on those maps. so if you were looking for information on the most important issue that was happening at the time, and you live in or are concerned about hawai'i and/or alaska, there would just be nothing. and what does it say about the people who run the top newspaper in america that they decided it was fine to omit these two states? are they not states? do they not matter? do the readers in those states not matter? and this is not an unusual thing at all. it happens all the time.

i'd like to finish by sharing with you a poem by CHamoru poet Craig Santos Perez. CHamoru are the indigenous people of the mariana islands (which include guam, saipan, tinian, rota, and others).

in this poem, Craig Santos Perez writes about not appearing on the map...

“Off-Island CHamorus”

My family migrated to California when I was 15 years old. During the first day at my new high school, the homeroom teacher asked: “Where are you from?” “The Mariana Islands,” I answered. He replied: “I’ve never heard of that place. Prove it exists.” And when I stepped in front of the world map on the wall, it transformed into a mirror: the Pacific Ocean, like my body, was split in two and flayed to the margins. I found Australia, then the Philippines, then Japan. I pointed to an empty space between them and said: “I’m from this invisible archipelago.” Everyone laughed. And even though I descend from oceanic navigators, I felt so lost, shipwrecked

on the coast of a strange continent. “Are you a citizen?” he probed. “Yes. My island, Guam, is a U.S. territory.” We attend American schools, eat American food, listen to American music, watch American movies and television, play American sports, learn American history, dream American dreams, and die in American wars. “You speak English well,” he proclaimed, “with almost no accent.” And isn’t that what it means to be a diasporic CHamoru: to feel foreign in a domestic sense.

Over the last 50 years, CHamorus have migrated to escape the violent memories of war; to seek jobs, schools hospitals, adventure, and love; but most of all, we’ve migrated for military service, deployed and stationed to bases around the world. According to the 2010 census, 44,000 CHamorus live in California, 15,000 in Washington, 10,000 in Texas, 7,000 in Hawaii, and 70,000 more in every other state and even in Puerto Rico. We are the most “geographically dispersed” Pacific Islander population within the United States, and off-island CHamorus now outnumber our on-island kin, with generations having been born away from our ancestral homelands, including my daughters.

Some of us will be able to return home for holidays, weddings, and funerals; others won’t be able to afford the expensive plane ticket to the Western Pacific. Years and even decades might pass between trips, and each visit will feel too short. We’ll lose contact with family and friends, and the island will continue to change until it becomes unfamiliar to us. And isn’t that, too, what it means to be a diasporic CHamoru: to feel foreign in your own homeland.

Even after 25 years, there are still times I feel adrift, without itinerary or destination. When I wonder: What if we stayed? What if we return? When the undertow of these questions begins pulling you out to sea, remember: migration flows through our blood like the aerial roots of the banyan tree. Remember: our ancestors taught us how to carry our culture in the canoes of our bodies. Remember: our people, scattered like stars, form new constellations when we gather. Remember: home is not simply a house, village, or island; home is an archipelago of belonging.

–Craig Santos Perez

----------

thank you for reading this post! please let me know if you see any errors.

if you'd like to learn more about some important issues in the pacific, here are just a few:

july 2, 2020: "US says leaking nuclear waste dome is safe; Marshall Islands leaders don't believe it" - Los Angeles Times

may 30, 2021: "Pacific Plunder: this is who profits from the mass extraction of the region's natural resources." - The Guardian

april 5, 2021: "75 years after nuclear testing in the Pacific began, the fallout continues to wreak havoc" - The Conversation

june 4, 2021: "Guam won’t give up more land to the U.S. military without a fight" - The World (radio program)

aug. 24, 2021: "The US is building a military base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Micronesian residents have questions." - The World (radio program)

and if you'd like to learn more about how maps are political, here are a couple articles:

june 5, 2014: "The politics of making maps" by Amanda Ruggeri, for BBC

july 11, 2018: "Politics and Cartography: The Power of Deception through Distortion" by John Erskine, for the Carnegie Ethics Online Monthly Column

[onbearfeet]

I feel like the people screaming about the existence of gender-neutral bathrooms need to attend a small community theater performance and/or a large quilt show with tightly scheduled events. They must observe The Taking Of The Men's Room.

I first encountered this phenomenon at a local repertory theater, so I'll use that story as an example. The rep company was putting on a musical--In The Heights, if you must know--at a small outdoor amphitheater in a small California town. The show had a ten-minute intermission. This caused problems.

You see, the average audience at a show like that in a place like that skews old and female. Now, for a variety of reasons, people with uteruses tend to have smaller bladders than people without (an abdominal cavity is only so big, okay?), and bladder issues increase with age, so any show with a lot of middle-aged or old women in the audience will have a bathroom line around the block at intermission. And this place had maybe three or four toilets in the ladies' room. Consequently, if you didn't snag a spot in line within the first minute or two of that narrow window, you simply weren't going to be able to pee AND see the start of the second act.

Old ladies do not put up with that shit.

I was standing in that line, 30 years old and grimly resigned to missing the curtain, when a woman who was 85 if she was a day marched right past me and into the empty men's room.

A heartbeat later, five or six other older women followed her.

There was general consternation among the younger women present until the first old lady popped her head out of the gents' and asked, "What are you girls waiting for? The toilets in here work just as well."

At which point we split into two lines and got nearly everybody through the bathroom by curtain.

Every time I tell this story, I get some mix of laughter and horrified staring. But I've seen The Taking Of The Men's Room happen over and over. Any event with a 50/50 gender split will have a longer line for the ladies' than the gents', and as far as I can tell the lines don't even out until you get to something like 75/25. And if there isn't anywhere to pee other than The Forbidden Bathroom, and ESPECIALLY if there's any kind of time crunch, lots of people will decide they can't read signs today.

And the thing is, as someone who used to work a job where she was required to clean a public restroom every 15 minutes (long story), I can tell you people of the "wrong" gender don't really leave a distinctive mark on a bathroom most of the time (unless they have a Sharpie, ho ho). I've seen desperate women in the gents' (usually trying to pee) and desperate men in the ladies' (usually trying to change a child's diaper). Once they walked out, you'd never know they'd been there.

It's not just on airplanes. It's not just in homes. I'm pretty sure just about every bathroom you've ever been in, with the possible exception of those at single-sex institutions like prisons and Catholic high schools, has been used by someone who didn't match the silhouette on the door. And you'd never know it by looking.

The toilets in there work just as well.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[jace-the-writer-guy]

Dawn of Karmine Arms Manufacturing

///Set before Ebony got her special Chimera (Shotgun shells for rifles) and Blazing Chimera (Dragon's Breath Chimera rounds) ammo, and long before the Karmines got their new trucks///

Auron: *Walks out to Shyla's small workshop at night and knocks on the door, notably missing one of his revolvers at his hips, and he knocks on the door* "Hey Shy! Have you seen Smoke!?"

Shyla: *Yells from inside* "He's with Holly, remember!?

Auron: *Laughs* "I meant my revolver!"

Shyla: *Opens the door and pokes her head out* "Oh, that one. I just needed to see it for a bit to make sure something works right."

Auron: "And what would that be?"

Shyla: *Giggles and ducks back into her workshop* "Come and see!"

Auron: *Chuckles and goes into the kitchen* "Alright, what's goin' on?"

Shyla: "Just something that could really get my name out there and maybe get me promoted to president and CEO of Century Arms, or maybe something even more than that. You remember how we were working with S&S Munitions on the caseless ammunition that the Ranger's adapted for their weapons?"

Auron: *Nods* "Yeah, I do," *Notices the 16 gauge shells that Shyla had on her workbench* "What's your plan here?"

Shyla: "Load that shell into Smoke there and see. We need to be in the dark for it."

*Auron grabs his revolver and breaks it open, and he loads the shell into the large chamber in the middle and closes it shut. He and Shyla walk from the workshop into the dark of night to a good clear spot. Then, Auron aims Smoke toward the sky above the trees and pulls the right hammer back, and he presses the button on the grip to make a lower firing pin come from it for the shotgun barrel. He pulls the trigger for that hammer and a loud bang sounded and a blinding flash of white light exploded from the barrel out above the trees, illuminating everything in front of them for just a split second before the area was surrounded in darkness again*

Auron: "Damn!" *Breaks open his revolver and the empty shell flew out* "You really got somethin' there, Shy!"

Shyla: "You really think so?"

Auron: "Hell yeah I do!" *Leads Shyla back into her workshop* "I think this could really be great for Huntsmen an' Huntresses all over the world, an' anyone protectin' themselves or their businesses. People are gonna eat this up."

Shyla: *Breathes a short sigh* "It's good to hear a second opinion on it."

Auron: "It's a real great idea. Say, what'd you mean when you said you could get somethin' even more than a promotion?"

Shyla: "Well... I've been thinking that maybe if this and my other ammunition plans go well, maybe I can use the lien I make from it all to... start my own company. Karmine Arms Manufacturing, or just Karmine Arms for short. I know a lot of people that would jump at the opportunity to join it and help me out from the connections I've made over the years. It would be small and I wouldn't be able to make a lot but I would do my best to make the best weapons, parts, modifications, and ammunition I could. I just need the lien for it and if I can get it from this and my other ideas..."

Auron: "Big plans, huh?" *Grins and sets his revolver on Shyla's desk* "What's the other ammo you got planned?"

Shyla: *Grabs her blueprints and gives them to Auron* "There's fire shells for shotguns that I call Dragon's Breath, and special ammo for larger caliber rifles called Chimera rounds that'll be like shotgun shells. Think something like say... Ebony's rifle. Fully automatic fire sending an absolute storm of bullets down range."

Auron: *Whistles a bit* "That's a hell of a thought. April might really appreciate somethin' like that for Jacknife."

Shyla: "Or the Skullmasher rounds for .50 Goliath chambered guns. Multiple pellets being sent accurately at long ranges. Or 20mm flak shells."

Auron: "Yeah, because Jace needs Legacy to be more brutal up close."

Shyla: *Giggles* "That was the inspiration for those ideas. I really think these will get my name out there."

Auron: "You get all these made an' we'll be happy to help you test 'em. We'll get you that recognition a weapon designin' queen like you deserves, an' we'll get you that company started 'cause like I said, people are gonna eat this up."

Shyla: "I'm really glad you think so, Auron. I'm also thinking of different calibers of flare rounds for emergency situations."

Auron: *Nods and gives a big grin* "An' another great idea! You could definitely sell that to the academies to give their students, an' a bunch of other people too."

Shyla: *Starts shaking as she grows more and more excited* "Gods, where would I even set my company up!? In Mistral, or would I want it somewhere else..."

Auron: "Maybe that base near here? It's our property, an' it's pretty big all things considered. Plus there's always room to expand. Or hell, everything around this place is our property. We can cut out a good path an' make another clearin' for a new place an' just leave that base alone for a good hang out spot off the grid. Maybe your testin' area with a bigger range than what we got here?"

Shyla: "That sounds perfect! An abandoned military base, and the home of Karmine Arms Manufacturing's testing site... Ooooh I'm so excited!"

Auron: "An' I love seein' you so excited. Why don't we head to bed, or try to at least. It's pretty late. We can continue this stuff tomorrow, an' we can call Holly an' April an' tell 'em the plans. I think this is gonna be the start o' somethin' great."

Shyla: "So do I. I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight," *Giggles and shakes her head* "I'd hope my boss wouldn't hold it against me. He's always been a good man."

Auron: *Pulls her in for a hug* "Nah, he wouldn't. I think he's the type o' guy that would encourage it, an' let you keep the patents for the ammo. He already gives the person more of a share of o' sells if it's somethin' they came up with."

Shyla: "Right. We're going to need some more casings, and more components for-"

Auron: *Laughs* "Tomorrow, dear. I will carry you up to bed if you try to work anymore tonight."

Shyla: "You know I can't help it!"

Auron: "I know, an' I love it."