#things worth knowing

[qrowpilled]

hate when you find a character whose so infuriatingly Your Type that its embarrassing like yeahg no one is gonna be surprised when i announce this is my new Guy Of The Month

[delcat177]

Never consent, shut the fuck up!

Im learning that way too many of you have no regard for your own safety or the safety of your data and also that you would be found by bailifs in a day

[glossahistorica]

LILAC.

LILAC.—Archil, a root to be bought at the druggists. The colour, which is very powerful, is extracted in boiling.

The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, May 1855, Collected Vol. 4, p.63. [x]

Scientific American (1853) notes these are largely cribbed from other publications, including the Baltimore Sun that year, and are incorrect, thus "will assuredly do evil". They correct thus:

ARCHIL—This substance will dye a lilac on silk; but not on cotton. It is not prepared as above—it is a litchen, and is steeped in urine and lime-water for a month before it is fit to be used. A patent was granted on the 15th of June, 1852, to Leon Jarossons, of this city, for manufacturing archil. The color which it makes is beautiful, but will only stand exposure to the sun a very short time—it is one of the fugitive colors.

“Receipts for Dyeing” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 8 No. 48 (August 1853), p. 384 [x]

As a rule, I suggest you look for contemporary advice when attempting to recreate crafts from historical sources, and always utilise proper safety equipment and ventilation.

[qiinamii]

we'll do fine.

[housederiva]

The first woman I ever fell in love with should at least have a tarot card if she's not going to be in Veilguard

here's bethany

Edit!!! I’ve never been more happy to be wrong

[hinamie]

i'm exactly as normal about him as I thought I'd be

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Part 2/2

By the time Stanley had realized he wasn't as alone as he believed himself to be entrapped in this ravenous abyss; he had honestly begun to suspect that he was finally starting to properly lose his mind.

In all the ceaseless miles that Stanley had journeyed during his apparent permanent residence within the dark devouring void, not once had he encountered another conscious, walking, talking being similar to himself. Every other formerly living creature that he had crossed paths with had been so... silent. Empty. Dead, in every sense of the word. It was as though the very essence of life itself had been sucked out of their bodies with a straw, their forms slowly falling apart piece by piece under the vicious gluttony of the darkness that surrounded them. They looked like they actually were supposed to be there, unmoving and comatose, unlike him.

So, when Stanley first began to encounter the twins, all of a sudden, he wasn't the only one in the dark.

When meeting the first pair of them, he found himself standing in a lake.

He hadn't even noticed the changes at first. It felt as though he had been walking for weeks on end, his body moving purely on autopilot and his aching legs leading him towards a destination only it knew. A thick fog of forgetfulness and flickering memories had descended upon his brain like a heavy blanket of numbing static as he had traveled. In this absentminded state, he hadn't even realized that the ever-present undulating, buzzing darkness surrounding him had begun to gradually shift and morph to form a horizon line; stretching into tall looming cliffsides that almost seemed to close in on him. Once the nonexistent floor beneath his soles abruptly began to ripple and warp, like the disturbed surface of a shallow puddle; only then did he finally notice his transformed environment.

The transition was seamless, almost dream-like. One moment, he was still surrounded by that filthy, overwhelming abyss; and the next, his boots were suddenly plunged deep into the cold, dark lake water.

The silence didn't leave, however. It still choked and stuffed its way into Stanley's ears to clog up his mind with thick cotton; the eerie quiet not quite matching the calm, almost serene scenery the void seemed to have abruptly transformed itself into. Like a movie with its sound cut off; leaving only the unsettling hum of the projector to fill the empty air.

It was odd. The lake was surely incredibly deep. He could obviously tell from how thin and pathetically small the shores appeared all the way from where he now unceremoniously stood in the middle of the lake. Stan could look down and see the darkness below his feet swallow what meager light that managed to break through the murky waters. The overwhelming black almost seemed to beckon him, gaping and haunting; a bottomless underwater pit of pitch black that never seemed to end.

And yet, he didn't sink. Stanley remained perfectly level, the almost ink like waters stopping just at ankle level, as though he were held up just above the surface by some invisible force. Even the writhing waves seemed small and low, as though the waters were shy to climb up his legs further than that. It was odd, so very odd.

However, it wasn't nowhere near as odd as the sight that greeted him when he finally lifted his eyes from the waters.

Stanley had crossed paths with truly unbelievable sights in this strange somewhere; from bursting, collapsing stars; to the imploding heat death of entire universes, but none of them seemed to hold the candle to what he saw then when he lifted his eyes:

Children.

Two, to be exact. Two, nearly identical looking children stood motionless before him; completely soaked through to the bone as though they had taken a plunge into the frigid water that pooled around their ankles. It was a girl and a boy, both adorned with twin expressions utterly devoid of emotion, their wide eyed stare seeming to burn holes into his thin jacket. Their drenched clothes sagged off of their scrawny frames; thin rivulets of water dirpping off of them and disturbing the glassy surface of the water at their feet. The little girl's hair had messily stuck to her face in thin sodden strands, her cheeks still full and round with youth just like the boy's. They looked young. Too young to be in a place such as this.

Oh, but their eyes; their eyes.

They burned with such anger; such injustice, brighter than any dying star or galaxies he had ever seen. Anger towards the world, to fate, to whatever cruel deity that had deemed them fit to be sent to this wretched place so prematurely. They were too young to be here; to be entrapped like he was amongst this hungry darkness. And yet, here they were, sheer denial against their own untimely deaths being the only thing keeping them awake and conscious amongst the dead and rotting. A show of juvenile defiance to nature itself so vehement even the all-consumign darkness seemed hesitant to devour them whole just yet.

It saddened him. It saddened him to know that they belonged there, that they were supposed to be there. He could see it, he could feel it; they were dead. No amount of determination could deny that universal fact.

When they spoke, Stanley could hear anger:

Stan chuckled in a futile attempt to lighten the suddenly heavy atmosphere that threatened to crush him whole. "A lake monster? You kids and your imagination," he teased, hoping to somehow rid the poor kids of the haunted look that seemed to whirl in their glares. No child should have been burdened with such a knowing look; such eyes that looked like they had seen everything there was to see about the world, the horrid and the good.

Clearly, it had been the wrong thing to say, and Stanley's faux pas was rewarded with a scowl from the little boy. A world's worth of sour contempt etched into every contorted groove that his grimace seemed to dig into his much too young face. Stan suddenly felt guilt squeeze at his weary bones for having caused that.

"That's what they all said," the boy spat out, eyes shining with a sheen of wetness Stan wasn't sure he was prepared to deal with.

Stan left that first interaction with the twins with the feeling of guilt and sorrow still clining to him.

He couldn't have known, at the time. He couldn't have known that this wouldn't be anywhere near the last time that he would meet the pair. He hadn't realised just how many of them there were. After that first pair, his endless journeying within the Abyss was hardly be spent alone anymore. Countless more times, he came face to face with the exact same two young and impossibly worn faces; forced to meet one pair of beaten and bruised kids after another.

Not one pair had died the same death as another. Some had gotten lost, prey to whatever threat that had snatched them up out in the open; some had fallen from high up; some had been crushed under an incredible weight; some had burned; some eaten alive; some zombified. Some didn't even seem physically harmed at all, body perfectly intact, and yet that same faraway, distrubed look in their eyes remained.

He thought the worst ones were the ones he found alone. A little girl or a little boy, left all lonesome without their other half there. Twins, he remembered a pair of them telling him once.

Once, he had come across a town full of silent, stone statues. It was a rustic, shabby, almost nostalgic looking town- odd and strangely familiar. The sight of it had tugged at an aged memory that had long since wasted away in the back of his mind. It was serene, almost deceptively so. The sun shone; the air smelled crisp and fresh; numerous waterfalls continued to crash down from the tall cliffsides; and a soft nonexistent breeze whistled through the thicket of pine trees that blanketed the outskirts of the town. None of it seemed to match the gruesome scene of the hundred wailing statues that littered every inch of the town.

He had found the boy's statue on the other side of town, deep within the green forest and toppled over the gnarled roots of a towering tree. Like the rest of the townsfolk, he too, was frozen mid-shriek; his stone face twisted and contorted into a mock impression of a silent scream as his body lay paused in a writhing struggle. He made sure to be gentle when he carried the boy's statue over to place it beside the girl's, whose statue stood far deeper into the forest, sporting the same rictus grimace of terror as her brother's. It somehow felt wrong for them to have been so far apart from one another, even in death.

He had come to dread meeting of the twins. He hated every second he had to confront yet another pair of dead children that did not belong here, but fate had decided they did. He despised having to listen to their tales of woe as they wept about the injustice of the world, of having died young; he despised himself for being unable to do more than weep with them.

"We don't belong here, Grunkle Stan," he would listen to the little girl weep, calling him a title he didn't recognize. He never remembered if they had ever told him their name, but they all seem to know his, without a fail. "If we're dead, then what about you? What about Grunkle Ford? Mom? Dad? What about them? We can't be dead, we can't be," they would say, confusion and frustration written all over their faces. They didn't understand. They didn't understand why they had come to the darkness so early, so unfairly.

He never knew what to say, he'd never been good with words.

All he could do was kneel down to their levels and engulf them in his arms, hoping he could somehow squeeze the pain straight out of their bodies in his embrace. He hugged them, because what else could he do?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Burning Rotten Bridges

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[lineffability]

sometimes I see people calling Aziraphale selfish in an accusatory way, as if it's a flaw that needs to be smoothed out, as if it isn't a trait that is at once defiant and emancipating, as if his selfishness isn't mostly wielded in an empowering and kind way, as if it's categorically bad to want things for yourself, to enjoy them, to have and keep them, as if selfish isn't the most revolutionary thing an angel can be

[shopwitchvamp]

I mean this gently but I have to say somethin' here- I've been getting so much "make your skirts cheaper" "I love this but why are they soooo expensive" etc lately and like look, I know a lot of this is because times are hard.. (otherwise why would I be hearing this more & more this year when prices haven't changed compared to last year) but I just wanna say that one of the only ways I could lower prices (if I was ruthless and didn't care) would be to cut sizing options. Like idk how to word what I'm trying to say, but just know when you shout stuff like this at other brands & they decide they need to find a way to cut costs to lower prices, being size inclusive is gonna be one of the first things to go. I have no plans to do this myself, but for example, a D Size Skater costs me almost twice as much (talking about only the direct from the manu cost, there are other factors too such as that they weigh more so that adds more shipping costs as well) as an A Size Skater. Say I cut D Size altogether.. and many companies would have by now while also not even lowering the price.. I could increase my profit margins significantly right away. Now lets say I cut both C and D and become a shop that only offers the standard range of SM-XL. Wow! Suddenly profits are up so much!! Or maybe going not full corporate greed, I could handle lowering skater prices by like $10 (random number not based on real math idk what things would actually work out to because I'm not gonna do it). But now no one over a size XL can order from me. I fear none of what I'm trying to get across is getting across but I just mean to say, in order to offer what I offer, the prices need to be what they are. They aren't set arbitrarily high & lowering them would mean needing to make choices that I will not make (becoming less size inclusive or making my business unsustainable in the sense that it would not survive long).

[hollowwish]

You guys do realize a lot of watcher fans complaining about the six dollars don't just need to "cancel their disney+ or hulu subscriptions." They're the people who ALREADY can't afford streaming services. It's not that they should be supporting independent creators over big corporations, it's that they literally cannot afford to do either.

[sparrowlucero]

this is the iconic dinosaur horror jurassic park wishes it was

[glossahistorica]

YELLOW.

YELLOW.—Fustic chips, weld or dyer's weed, tumeric, or Dutch pink. GREEN may be produced by mixing the requisite portion of blue with either of the preceding.

The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, May 1855, Collected Vol. 4, p.63. [x]

Scientific American (1853) notes these dye receipts are largely cribbed from other publications, including the Baltimore Sun that year, and are incorrect, thus "will assuredly do evil". They correct thus:

GREEN.—The fustic and blue spoken of above, will dye silk and wool, the former hot, the latter by boiling, the blue must be the sulphate of indigo. Yellow on cotton is dyed with the bichromate of potash, and the acetate, or nitrate of lead; or with yellow oak bark, and the sulpho-chloride of tin.

“Receipts for Dyeing” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 8 No. 48 (August 1853), p. 384 [x]

As a rule, I suggest you look for contemporary advice when attempting to recreate natural dyes from historical sources, and always utilise proper safety equipment and ventilation.

It is quite obviously not safe to handle lead and other chemical products.

[steddieasitgoes]

Steve’s parents leaving him home alone more and more after the Fall of 1983. Half the time they don’t even tell him in advance, he just finds out from a note left on the kitchen counter and $10 to cover pizza.

Steve waking from a nightmare, friendless, alone (let’s pretend he and Nancy didn’t get back together), and hungry. The fridge is empty and Bradley’s Big Buy is closed for the night. He tries to go back to sleep but his stomach won’t relent so he reluctantly gets dressed and drives 15 minutes to the 24 hour McDonalds in the next town over.

The same McDonalds where Eddie works the drive thru headset at on the weekends. He’s not exactly fond of the job and finds dozens of ways to make it more entertaining — like coming up with terrible nicknames for the company.

Steve is taken aback the first time the static drive thru speaker welcomes him to “McCrap-lds.”

It makes him smile for the first time in weeks.

Neither Steve nor Eddie recognize each others voices as they banter back and forth. Steve ask for recommendations, Eddie makes fun of him but gives in.

When Steve pulls up to the window he expects to meet the funny drive thru employee but he’s greeted with a tired middle-aged women instead. Apparently Eddie lost window privileges after an incident. Steve doesn’t ask questions.

When he wakes up from another nightmare a week later, he returns to the McDonalds and engages Eddie in more easy banter before ordering his food.

It becomes a habit — one he keeps up for the entirety of the summer of 1984.

Steve and Eddie never meet face to face but that doesn’t stop them from venting, joking, and sharing their McDonalds recommendations through a shitty drive thru speaker.

Then on the first day of senior year, Steve is in line for the terrible cafeteria food (it makes McDonalds look like a Michelin Star meal) desperately craving chicken McNuggets and sweet and sour sauce when he hears a familiar voice. He turns quickly, eager to finally learn who the mystery guy responsible for making him laugh at 3am in a McDonalds parking lot is only to find Eddie “the Freak” Munson waltzing across lunch table going on and on about how conformity is killing kids.

Steve’s in shock. How could the sincere and hilarious guy he’s been shooting the shit with all summer be The Freak?! But then Eddie’s foot catches on a lunch tray and he topples ass first to the floor. When he pops up he takes a dramatic bow and makes a joke — one that sends Steve into uncontrollable laughter.

Yep, Eddie “the Freak” Munson is McDonalds guy.

And Steve knows exactly what he has to do.

He figures out where Eddie’s locker is and then excuses himself two minutes before the dismissal bell so he can get himself into position. When Eddie saunters over to his locker at the end of the day, Steve is waiting for him.

“Think it’s time I cash in on that free sundae you promised me a few weeks ago.”

Eddie stares at Steve dumbfounded for a moment, mind reeling as he process what Steve is getting at.

“You, Steve “the hair” Harrington are the McDonalds guy? My McDonalds guy?”

“Well I’m certainly the McDonalds guy,” Steve says taking a step closer. “Buy me that free sundae first and then we can discuss me being your McDonalds guy.”

[why-the-heck-not]

me, a responsible being, working on the coding project as I should vs. me, a dysfunctional shithead, getting distracted by reading about brains (once aGAIN damnit (it's my favorite "I need to study my field but bc I should do that it's an impossible unthinkable feat now, so I'm reading about something else to fool my brain I'm still being productive"-topic))

[shorthaltsjester]

just constantly thinking about percy telling vex that he’d like to think they’re all better than they think they are (except her brother, of course) . constantly thinking about when vex tells percy he’s a good man and he gets awkward and flustered and returns that she’s a good woman and when she gets as awkward and flustered he goes “see. it’s not very nice is it.” percy shouting to ripley that he forgives her and vex carves forgive into the wood of her bow. vex tells percy to take off his mask and percy comes across vex in tears and scrubbing at her armour. god. the campaign starts and percy is making arrows as flirting and getting kisses in return and the campaign ends and exhausted and knowing it won’t be a want that will be fulfilled percy admits he never wants to make another weapon and vex equally exhausted affirms that he’ll never Have to. and god . god . opposites attract is great or whatever but the deliciousness of dynamics where the characters hold up a mirror to one another where they get to shed the burden of self and see someone Like Them as someone good or capable of being better and Falling In Love. and that love being a pathway to them coming to grips with their own image and their own capacity to be better. and that the fact that the person they fall for being someone so Familiar means that they see through each other’s shit. that percy sees that vex has fallen into the trap of Nobility tricking people into thinking that makes them inherently better and giving her the only whitestone title someone has to earn beyond selection or marriage or birth. that vex sees percy forgive ripley and discusses the importance of that choice but reminds him that it’s just as important that he forgive himself.