#you can literally find this info on wikipedia

[i-eat-mass-blog]

everytime someone says "mcr isn't emo" an angel loses its wings

[skaldish]

If I may, I must make the gentle request that people consult Wikipedia for basic information about anything.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but more and more people coming to me saying they can’t find info about [noun], when googling it yields its Wikipedia entry on the first page.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll gladly say it again: You can trust Wikipedia for general information. The reason why it’s unreliable for academic citations is because it’s a living, changing document. It’s also written by anonymous authors, and author reputation is critical for research paper integrity.

But for learning the basics of what something is? Wikipedia is your friend. I love Wikipedia. I use it all the time for literally anything and everything, and it’s a huge reason why I know so much about things and stuff.

Please try going there first, and then come to me with questions it doesn’t answer for you.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello! This is kind of a weird ask, I'm sorry to bother you, but seeing as you're a very intelligent studied historian that I deeply respect, I was hoping you could offer some advice? Or like, things i could read? Lately, i feel like my critical thinking skills are emaciated and its scaring the shit out of me. I feel very slow and like I'm constantly missing important info in relation to news/history/social activism stuff. Thats so vague, sorry, but like any tips on how i can do better?

Aha, thank you. There was recently a good critical-thinking infograph on my dash, so obviously I thought I remembered who reblogged it and checked their blog, it wasn't them, thought it was someone else, checked their blog, it also wasn't them, and now I can't find it to link to. Alas. But I will try to sum up its main points and add a few of my own. I'm glad you're taking the initiative to work on this for yourself, and I will add that while it can seem difficult and overwhelming to sort through the mass of information, especially often-false, deliberately misleading, or otherwise bad information, there are a few tips to help you make some headway, and it's a skill that like any other skill, gets easier with practice. So yes.

The first and most general rule of thumb I would advise is the same thing that IT/computer people tell you about scam emails. If something is written in a way that induces urgency, panic, the feeling that you need to do something RIGHT NOW, or other guilt-tripping or anxiety-inducing language, it is -- to say the least -- questionable. This goes double if it's from anonymous unsourced accounts on social media, is topically or thematically related to a major crisis, or anything else. The intent is to create a panic response in you that overrides your critical faculties, your desire to do some basic Googling or double-checking or independent verification of its claims, and makes you think that you have to SHARE IT WITH EVERYONE NOW or you are personally and morally a bad person. Unfortunately, the world is complicated, issues and responses are complicated, and anyone insisting that there is Only One Solution and it's conveniently the one they're peddling should not be trusted. We used to laugh at parents and grandparents for naively forwarding or responding to obviously scam emails, but now young people are doing the exact same thing by blasting people with completely sourceless social media tweets, clips, and other manipulative BS that is intended to appeal to an emotional gut rather than an intellectual response. When you panic or feel negative emotions (anger, fear, grief, etc) you're more likely to act on something or share questionable information without thinking.

Likewise, you do have basic Internet literacy tools at your disposal. You can just throw a few keywords into Google or Wikipedia and see what comes up. Is any major news organization reporting on this? Is it obviously verifiable as a fake (see the disaster pictures of sharks swimming on highways that get shared after every hurricane)? Can you right-click, perform a reverse image search, and see if this is, for example, a picture from an unrelated war ten years ago instead of an up-to-date image of the current conflict? Especially with the ongoing Israel/Palestine imbroglio, we have people sharing propaganda (particularly Hamas propaganda) BY THE BUCKETLOAD and masquerading it as legitimate news organizations (tip: Quds News Network is literally the Hamas channel). This includes other scuzzy dirtbag-left websites like Grayzone and The Intercept, which often have implicit or explicit links to Russian-funded disinformation campaigns and other demoralizing or disrupting fake news that is deliberately designed to turn young left-leaning Westerners against the Democrats and other liberal political parties, which enables the electoral victory of the fascist far-right and feeds Putin's geopolitical and military aims. Likewise, half of our problems would be solved if tankies weren't so eager to gulp down and propagate anything "anti-Western" and thus amplify the Russian disinformation machine in a way even the Russians themselves sometimes struggle to do, but yeah. That relates to both Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.

Basically: TikTok, Twitter/X, Tumblr itself, and other platforms are absolutely RIFE with misinformation, and this is due partly to ownership (the Chinese government and Elon Fucking Musk have literally no goddamn reason whatsoever to build an unbiased algorithm, and have been repeatedly proven to be boosting bullshit that supports their particular worldviews) and partly due to the way in which the young Western left has paralyzed itself into hypocritical moral absolutes and pseudo-revolutionary ideology (which is only against the West itself and doesn't think that the rest of the world has agency to act or think for itself outside the West's influence, They Are Very Smart and Anti-Colonialist!) A lot of "information" in left-leaning social media spaces is therefore tainted by this perspective and often relies on flat-out, brazen, easily disprovable lies (like the popular Twitter account insisting that Biden could literally just overturn the Supreme Court if he really wanted to). Not all misinformation is that easy to spot, but with a severe lack of political, historical, civic, or social education (since it's become so polarized and school districts generally steer away from it or teach the watered-down version for fear of being attacked by Moms for Liberty or similar), it is quickly and easily passed along by people wanting trite and simplistic solutions for complex problems or who think the extent of social justice is posting the Right Opinions on social media.

As I said above, everything in the world is complicated and has multiple factors, different influences, possible solutions, involved actors, and external and internal causes. For the most part, if you're encountering anything that insists there's only one shiningly righteous answer (which conveniently is the one All Good and Moral People support!) and the other side is utterly and even demonically in the wrong, that is something that immediately needs a closer look and healthy skepticism. How was this situation created? Who has an interest in either maintaining the status quo, discouraging any change, or insisting that there's only one way to engage with/think about this issue? Who is being harmed and who is being helped by this rhetoric, including and especially when you yourself are encouraged to immediately spread it without criticism or cross-checking? Does it rely on obvious lies, ideological misinformation, or something designed to make you feel the aforementioned negative emotions? Is it independently corroborated? Where is it sourced from? When you put the author's name into Google, what comes up?

Also, I think it's important to add that as a result, it's simply not possible to distill complicated information into a few bite-sized and easily digestible social media chunks. If something is difficult to understand, that means you probably need to spend more time reading about it and encountering diverse perspectives, and that is research and work that has to take place primarily not on social media. You can ask for help and resources (such as you're doing right now, which I think is great!), but you can't use it as your chief or only source of information. You can and should obviously be aware of the limitations and biases of traditional media, but often that has turned into the conspiracy-theory "they never report on what's REALLY GOING ON, the only information you can trust is random anonymous social media accounts managed by God knows who." Traditional media, for better or worse, does have certain evidentiary standards, photographing, sourcing, and verifying requirements, and other ways to confirm that what they're writing about actually has some correspondence with reality. Yes, you need to be skeptical, but you can also trust that some of the initial legwork of verification has been done for you, and you can then move to more nuanced review, such as wording, presentation of perspective, who they're interviewing, any journalistic assumptions, any organizational shortcomings, etc.

Once again: there is a shit-ton of stuff out there, it is hard to instinctively know or understand how to engage with it, and it's okay if you don't automatically "get" everything you read. That's where the principle of actually taking the time to be informed comes in, and why you have to firmly divorce yourself from the notion that being socially aware or informed means just instantly posting or sharing on social media about the crisis of the week, especially if you didn't know anything about it beforehand and are just relying on the Leftist Groupthink to tell you how you should be reacting. Because things are complicated and dangerous, they take more effort to unpick than just instantly sharing a meme or random Twitter video or whatever. If you do in fact want to talk about these things constructively, and not just because you feel like you're peer-pressured into doing so and performing the Correct Opinions, then you will in fact need to spend non-social-media time and effort in learning about them.

If you're at a university, there are often subject catalogues, reference librarians, and other built-in tools that are there for you to use and which you SHOULD use (that's your tuition money, after all). That can help you identify trustworthy information sources and research best practices, and as you do that more often, it will help you have more of a feel for things when you encounter them in the wild. It's not easy at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes more so, and will make you more confident in your own judgments, beliefs, and values. That way when you encounter something that you KNOW is wrong, you won't be automatically pressured to share it just to fit in, because you will be able to tell yourself what the problems are.

Good luck!

[foone]

weird thought: I think if I was a teenager now (or anytime in the last decade or so) I think I would have written (and read!) a lot more fanfic than I did in reality, where I was a teenager in the 90s.

See, I've never been hugely into fanfic. Never had anything against it exactly, but it just wasn't something I was into. But I think that has to do with an interesting combination of how my brain works and what time I was first really getting into being a fan.

I've got a "librarian" brain (I'm literally typing this from within a library, WHERE I WORK). It wants to know things like "what are all the works in this series/by this creator?" and "are they all accessible?" and "what info is available about how it was made?"

I'm the kind of person who will watch a show then go look it up on wikipedia to see how many seasons it has, who made it, if they're still making it, check tvtropes for any more info, etc. Or I hear a song I like by a band I've never heard of, so I go listen to their entire discography while researching them. I just focus on things I'm into that way, you know? I don't half-ass my interest. (this is probably related to my autism, of course)

So what does this have to do with fanfic? like, do I go read some fanfics as part of this process? No, and I think the reason for it is when I specifically first got into fandom, as a teen.

See, this sort of fandom-librarian was harder to do in 1997, you know? You couldn't just pull up the wikipedia for that new show and see how many episodes it had. You also couldn't just listen to the whole discography of that band! Forget Spotify or Google Music, even Napster didn't exist yet.

So my interest in fandom focused a lot more on very basic questions: How many episodes/albums/books/whatever are there? Where can I see/hear them all? Like, I remember getting excited because I found some fan magazine that had a list of all the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. Just a list! Not even descriptions or anything. I finally could take that list and see how many I'd seen, so I'd know when I saw them all in late-night reruns.

So I'm focusing on these very basic parts of being a fandom-librarian and I stumble across some fanfic. I'm like "oh, is this a transcript of an episode I haven't seen yet?" and I realize it's not, it's a story written by a fan, and I get a knee-jerk reaction of "that's not helpful to my quest to know and find all the episodes". It's like I am on a quest for the holy grail and I found a fake cup. It's not helpful to me, and at worst it's a distraction from my goal.

And the thing is, I think the fact I had that reaction is entirely due to the time and situation in which I first encountered fanfic. It was in that environment of "I can't even find a list of the episodes, let alone a way to watch them all!" and that anxiety that colored my response to finding fanfic.

I think if I instead was first introduced to fanfic NOW, where those fandom-librarian drives aren't so difficult to fulfill, I'd be way more positive about fanfic. If I could get a list of episodes with a quick google search, and watch them easily on netflix/prime/whatever, I'd be less "THIS DOESN'T HELP! I AM STRUGGLING WITH THE BASICS HERE!" and more "yay, more content for the fandom I'm obsessed with!"

Like I said, I'm not anti-fanfic, I never have been, I just never got into it. From the beginning I had this reaction that was "this is not useful" and I never developed any real interest in it. Which is a shame, honestly. Fanfic is great. It just never became one of my interests, and while I've written it and read it from time to time, I imagine I'd be way more into it if I didn't have the weird reaction to it due to the worries of the time in which I first encountered it.

I don't know how many other people have brains that work anything like mine, but if they exist, I'm glad they're now growing up in a world where they won't have these problems. They can get into fanfic without this weird baggage caused by a lack of information.

[wynought]

since i haven't seen it being pointed out before

all of the first stoats' names essentially mean "light"

kiran is of sanskrit origin meaning "ray of light" (and, according to wikipedia, an explicitly unisex name), uri is a hebrew name meaning "my light", hester is a variant of the name esther (of biblical/jewish origin) which comes from the same old persian root as the word "star", and, while i didn't find any particularly reliable source, various babyname websites at least seem to agree that jomei is a japanese name meaning "spread light"

additionally, their names seem to correlate with their purpose/position in last bast:

jomei is the speaker, they are in charge of propaganda - quite literally spreading the belief system and worldview of the first stoats aka the Light. it feels like this name is extremely straightforward in its meaning, but i was also unable to find much else on it, so there may be some additional hidden truth that i'm missing so far.

hester is the silence (the one with the gas mask missing their lower jaw and tongue) and their sphere of influence is secrets. now, i'm no religious scholar, and i have all of my information from quite literally the introductory paragraphs of the wikipedia article on the name esther. however, it seems that queen esther only took this name after ascending to the throne of persia to hide her true identity. this is reflected in the hebrew root of the name esther translating into "hide"/"conceal". (i am unable to provide more info on this, but anybody with a working understanding of how hebrew works and/or with more insight on the book of esther, feel free to interject/correct/add on to this)

uri is our beloved stoat pope. apparently, the name uri comes from the verb for "to shine" (to either be or to give light) and the mark of possession, resulting in the first connotation i mentioned earlier - "my light". this possessive marker, however, can also be interpreted as the name Yah which would be an abbreviation of YHWH - a marker of the divine, if you will. Therefore, Uri can also mean "Yah is my light", a very fitting name for the stoat whose department we only see called "faith".

i was unable to find a deeper meaning behind kiran's name, although to me "beam of light" feels very much like a name befitting the first stoats' leader. considering the way they commanded the wolf of theseus, it also seems to reflect the way their magic/their brand of control worked (their line of sight was part of how they controlled the wolf, indicating that was a key part of either their magic or the conditioning inflicted on the wolf - i'm partial towards the latter, considering how the wolf reacted to tula after she healed it). if anybody has anything more concrete to offer, though, i am all ears!

anyways, the first stoats' names are really cool, and we as a fandom don't talk enough about them because they died so fast. huge props to aabria for this fun bit of world building!

(disclaimer: as mentioned above, i have no background in theology or judaism, nor do i have any deeper knowledge of sanskrit, hindi, and indian mythology/folklore, nor japanese, and japanese mythology which would give me a deeper understanding of these names. my information comes from google and while i did try my best to verify the claims, i am fallible and happen to currently be very tired, so please correct me, if i made any mistakes!)

[jewishbarbies]

https://www.tumblr.com/jewishbarbies/760054305305788416?source=share

growing up, the one thing my English and history teachers always said to us was to NEVER use Wikipedia as a source for our essays and projects. In fact, all of my teachers would say that, but history and English were the ones with the most essays and large pieces of writing and we would have to source all of our information and it was literally a rule in our classes that Wikipedia was not to be used. They said it was because anyone can edit Wikipedia, but I’ve never really grasped that until now.

Before the 7th of Oct, you could find relatively unbiased information about Jewish history on there. But now after the 7th of October, I’m seeing literal historical events such as massacres being considered “acts of rebellion against Zionists” on fucking Wikipedia.

And it’s confusing for people like me, who aren’t Jewish or Israeli, but are genuinely trying to understand Jewish history and Israeli history and how modern Israel came to be in the place it is today, but we’re faced with such blatantly biased information, and if you call it out, you’re told you’re “pro genocide”.

Like I’m not looking for an Israel dick sucking page, but I’m just genuinely trying to learn about the history of this shit from a relatively unbiased perspective. Anyways, everything after 7th of October really showed me the importance of physical written media and archives because even history can be edited online to make you look like the most cartoonish villains ever lol.

Physical media like newspapers, magazines, CDs, DVDs, tapes, etc>>>>>>>

we’ve been dealing with nazis editing jewish pages and fucking with wwii pages to be nazi sympathetic for a long time now, so the concept of what they’re doing at least isn’t new, but this feels like such an escalation. wikipedia NEEDS much more heavy moderation and further limit who can edit and create pages. idk how they’ve lasted as some kind of amazing info source for this long while having almost NO protections against misinformation and deliberate tampering.

[nibwhipdragon]

god, dear fucking god, the monster hunter movie was worse than humanly possible

WHY IS THE US MILITARY HERE?! WHY IS IT AN ISEKAI PLOT? WHY DOES THE HUNTER NOT KNOW WHAT CHOCOLATE IS?

if they wanted a monster to fight the military at least use a Bazelgeuse cause it's right up their alley

I'm putting this all under a cut because I ranted much more than I anticipated. All my thoughts on this stupid film are under the cut.

Anon this sounds like you've watched the film for the first time and. Man I am So Sorry. It was worse than what I expected it to be and my expectations were already at rock bottom. They used Gore in the advertising but it was only used as sequel bait??? Nasty. And there was gonna be a scene where it and Rathalos would fight in a shopping center or smth and MAN. That would've made the film a little bit enjoyable. The tiniest bit.

The film REALLY didn't need to be an isekai. If the director wanted to make his wife the protag (again. Why does he do this all the time. Give someone else a chance will you) why couldn't she have been a hunter? Either learning the ropes a la Legends of The Guild (a much better mh film you should watch if you haven't already) OR already a top tier hunter investigating an odd phenomenon. Not. That.

And the way the guns were useless on the Diablos??? (Why were the monsters so oddly big too) Hello. Bowguns. Ballistae. Barrel bombs. Gunlance. They could at least do SOME damage.

Also the hunter not knowing what chocolate is is INSANE. They have donuts canonically. They have coke canonically*. Is chocolate really that far of a stretch??? It's sugar and cocoa beans and milk. Not that hard to make and they sure have a lot of jungles so it's not like they can't find any cocoa beans.

IN MHW THEY LITERALLY HAVE CHOCOLATE COVERED APPLES AND DONUTS. COME ON. It's like the director just treated the entire world as this sort of primitive place, rather than a place that's just different to ours. They're quite technologically advanced: They have airships, sandships, the dragonator and dragonrazer, and massive boats that can have up to 3 dragonators at a time on it. Steam trains*² too. All highly complex mechanisms. Yes they all seem to run on steam pressure but honestly? I don't think they'd plunder oil from the earth the way we do, so it makes sense. And all the knowledge on all these monsters and how they work and stuff? That's certainly not primitive. Also how did the Admiral know English. No I'm not taking that stupid timeloop paradox quest that used to be in MHW as canon. Because What Is That.

WHY DOES THE ADMIRAL LOOK LIKE THAT, ACTUALLY?

Like cmon man. I can barely even see a resemblance. $60mil budget is actually fairly small for a film but COULD YOU NOT HAVE SPENT MORE OF THAT ON THE ADMIRAL'S DESIGN??? There was barely even any monster action in the film it was just Artemis and the hunter fighting. Surely the CGI didn't cost that much.

OK I went onto Wikipedia for that info and it led me to find out the director is British. Having a moment of silence to mourn the fact this scourge came from my home country.

Moving on. The insect glaive was shown at the end of the film. No kinsect. My brother in Christ THE KINSECT IS LIKE HALF THE WEAPON. IT'S IN THE NAME.

Another nitpick but the desert is so ridiculously empty I'm convinced the director doesn't know what a desert looks like (I know he wouldn't have been a concept artist. But he both and directed and wrote so I assume he has quite a bit of control over the other parts of the film's creation).

Like cmon. Sure some parts of deserts are quite empty, like the Sahara, but I doubt a big monster like Diablos is going to be chilling in a place with no shade and no cacti. It can go underground to avoid the heat when traversing but in no way would it hang about as much as it did in the film. No reason to there are more optimal environments for it within the desert. At least make the background visually appealing on basis of it being a film. Can't the sand at LEAST be orange-yellow?

Also Bazelgeuse bombing them in the film would've been hilarious to me I wish that happened

Anyways. Go watch Legends of The Guild. Purify yourself. Great animated film that expands on pre-existing characters and also gave us the great indication that the games seem to take place in chronological order. I love you Legends of The Guild

* As one of the meal items in one of the games, I can't remember. Coke is cinnamon and vanilla flavoured so it isn't too outlandish for them to have it as a drink imo

*² The felynes in Elgado use a mini one near the dango food place thingy. Sure it's small but the fact it exist makes the concept of large ones used for transport and the like not too far-fetched

[lightlessentwine]

Rauh Civilization utilized kidney stones for magic.

This started when someone on the Smoughtown Discord had mentioned the possibility of Marika's village being a family of Dryads (Credit to Mangolovers for this observation). I went even further, claiming that they were likely inspired by the Hesperides; Greek Dryads of The Golden Evening. in Roman texts, they are noted to be the daughters of Hesperus. in other sources they are said to be the daughters of Atlas. (completely aside but possibly useful info: Atlas is claimed to have invented the "Celestial Sphere" which supported their understanding of being "fixed upon a starry sphere.")

Hesperus is the "Evening Star," or the planet Venus as seen in the evening, and the brother of Atlas. Hesperus was often confused with his brother Eosphorus, aka Phosphorus, the "Morning Star," because they were both represented by the same planet. Phosphorus translates to mean "bearer of light."

sticking with me here.

In the Ruins of Rauh, we find Spirit Calculi. well, a Calculus, in the biological sense, is a stone, like a kidney stone.

the Spirit Calculus is noted to smell bad and give off a white light. The stench is supposedly a sign of a strong spiritual presence.

Kidney stones are compound crystalline masses typically comprised of calcium-phosphate; phosphate being an ion of Phosphorus.

Phosphorus in alchemy, is the element that can harness light itself. i imagine a crystal stone of calcium-phosphate would be much more controlled and manageable as a substance than pure phosphorus, which would just burn upon contact with air.

following this line of logic, i'm also willing to throw it out that I believe the Ancient Meteoric Ore Greatsword (or the AMOGuS as i lovingly call it) is not Obsidian- or even a stone at all- but a massive chunk of Iron-Nickel meteorite that contained notable amounts of Schreibersite, which was fashioned into an arrowhead with veins of the schreibersite coursing through it. this rare material is currently understood to be the original source for life on earth, and is inherently connected to phosphorus as an element. the AMOGus was a weapon of very old gods, who probably recognized the power and usefulness of schreibersite, and eventually learned that the power came from phosphorus, which is also in bones and kidney stones.

this information and the stories revolving around Rauh civilization have been nearly completely lost to time, even if the original ideas were expanded upon and just lost their roots, or were even accidentally rediscovered through other means (there's already a warlock we meet in game, who's rediscovered death magic on his own in trying to commune with his dead family and is wielding their heads on a stick as a flail.. who's to say that harnessing magic doesn't come to the odd person serendipitously like this?)

with all of what seemed like borderline disconnected information, i was able to understand that the Shamans were likely inspired by the Hesperides, establish that the Rauh were using kidney stones for magic, and connect that back to the AMOGuS, giving it an actual reason for why it exists

but allow me to go even further, just to solidify some aspect of this idea from within the game

While doing a bit of the usual, initial perusing of wikipedia pages as one does.. i noted something deeply peculiar; a poignant phrase with its own little section: "Hesperus is Phosphorus"

this boils down the entirety of Goldmask's quest. Goldmask was trying to use "a priori" knowledge to understand a flaw in the logic of the Golden Order, but he's an outsider looking in. It is only when the Tarnished comes to him with new, empirical evidence that he begins to understand what is happening. you use the literal Law of Regression on a statue of Marika to understand that "Radagon is Marika," and this tidbit of information is something that aligns with what Goldmask was suspicious about. he points at the Erdtree, not knowing the solution to his problem, but knows what variable is throwing his solution through a loop. giving him information that confirms his views, reinforces his perspective.

[electricpurrs]

i am actually so suspicious of this god damn moth post but i cant find any concrete evidence to prove theres something wrong with it other than my gut feeling and i feel insane

like of course first of all this post is from 2013 and im not really willing to believe any given post from 2013 is true specially when the post is this amazing coincidence of this person coincidentally finding those two coincidentally aesthetically pleasing moths and managing to get them coincidentally snuggling together for a picture. yknow. it does feel too weirdly good to be true

BUT SECONDLY im so weirded out by these two moths specifically.

ok bear with me. the little one is very obviously a rosy maple moth. (which is also coincidentally one of the most famous moths specifically for being pretty)

but im willing to believe any given english speaking tumblrgirl at the time could find one considering they live seemingly accross the united states and canada. fair enough

BUT my problem is the big one. of course everybody even in the notes seems to be classifying it as a luna moth (ALSO a famous moth species for being pretty) you can also feasibly find them in north america, ok.

theres also the point of their lifespans

luna moths as adults live only for about 7-10 days, and i had a harder time finding info for adult rosy maple moths but it seems its about the same

the source of this is an old article from someone actively breeding maple moths x but i believe its the same with moths in general, since they literally dont have mouths and cant eat so they just mate and die.

SO youre gonna have a small time span to find one. both moths are also mainly nocturnal, which makes even weirder that op found both of them during the day.

theres also the point of WHEN are they adults. aka maply moths seem to show from from may through the summer

luna moths though, seem to vary in when they show up depending on place. some do include late may or early june on northern regions, ans a generation in july in central states.

which means you could, feasibly, have a span of about a week or so in may, june or july where both maple moths and luna moths are adults and alive at the same time.

BUT THE POST IN QUESTION IS FROM APRIL 16

thats NOT when adult rosy maple moths show up, much less both of them.

though maybe im just being too pedandic with specific dates and theres margin for variation, but its, again, some real big coincidences

BUT FINALLY theres the fact im suspicious about this luna moth IN THE FIRST PLACE.

i might just be going actually crazy here, but for this we've been assuming the luna moth is the species that exists in north america (otherwise these two wouldnt be in the same place at all)

and like this is what the luna moth looks like

(pictures from wikipedia)

and you see how theyre kinda weird compared to the one in the pic.

the luna moths are mostly green, with much less of this pretty pastel pink of the one on the tumblr post. you could argue they have pink markings but in most pictures i see they seem more like a dark red/brown with a remarkable very thick marking on the wings

you see how the moth in the pic just looks kinda weird. but that can also be from filters or editing to make the photo prettier making the colors different.

(i also think the tail looks weirdly long, but there seems to be variation in the tail length in various luna moth pics ive seen, so i cant speak for sure about that)

(i also cant tell you whether the sizes in comparison to each other are right cause i suck at visualizing size comparisons and its not like theres any other pic on earth of the two together so.)

CONCLUSION: i dont fucking know. i spent an hour looking moths up online and didnt get any reasonable answer to my doubts. i guess in the end THERE is, even if small, a chance of you finding both these boths alive at the same time in the same place so i can fully discredit the op. i give up im going to have breakfast

[wanderingmind867]

Well, here's the start of my series on the family tree of the Greek Gods. Most of my info will be coming from whatever I find on wikipedia or through google, although I might throw in some of my own personal opinions and interpretations too (but feel free to reblog and add things if you feel I missed something):

The first three deities to come into existence were Chaos, Gaia and Tartarus. Or as Wikipedia calls them: The Void, The Earth and The Abyss.

Chaos then had two children, Erebus and Nyx. Erebus and Nyx are also husband and wife, so that's weird. But I suppose they were some of the only people in existence at that time, so they kind of had to rely on each other. From them, Erebus and Nyx would have many children of their own.

Together with Erebus, Nyx gives birth to Aether and Hemera. I wonder how mother and daughter got along, since Nyx and Hemera were literally the personifications of Night and Day. Maybe they're the reason we have that saying, huh?

Anyway, Nyx also gave birth on her own. Without any father, Nyx gives birth to many children. According to Wikipedia, her children included Thanatos and his twin brother Hypnos, Nemesis, Eris, Momus, Moros, Philotes, Geras, Oizys, Apate, Charon and The Fates. All of these were her children, which technically means Charon is older than his boss. Strange how things work out like that, huh? I guess seniority isn't really a concept amongst the gods.

Anyways, this is getting a bit long. So stay tuned for part 2, when I can hopefully turn away from Nyx and turn towards Gaia.

[best-element-poll]

(the 2 most voted elements will continue onto round 2!)

More info about each element (and propaganda for the ones I like) under the cut. pleeeeeeeeease read some of them at least the one about francium

(disclaimer: these are based off short wikipedia reads and my crumbling high school chemistry knowledge. correct me if I'm wrong about anything.)

HYDROGEN: Hydrogen is the lightest element (consisting of only one proton and one electron). It is also the most abundant element in the universe, it's a gas (at room temperature) and it can explode. It's also quite representative of acids, having the (Arrhenius) definition of an acid straight up saying that it has to dissociate in water to form H+ ions. It's also quite an efficient fuel. Hydrogen is anywhere and Hydrogen is everywhere. If you like explosions, sour beverages, or acid in general, consider voting Hydrogen!

LITHIUM: Lithium, under standard conditions, is by far the least dense metal and the least dense solid element! You may primarily know him from your phone's Lithium-ion batteries. There are Lithium-based drugs used to treat mental illnesses. You can throw a block of lithium in water and it will make a really big explosion. The metal is soft and silvery. I'm running out of things to say about him. If you like batteries vote Lithium? (edit: just realised lithium is used for batteries, and batteries are connected to robotics and engineering. if you like robots and cool mechanical stuff vote lithium!)

SODIUM: You must know him from table salt. That's actually NaCl, his best known involvement. There are many more very important and very commonplace compounds that involve sodium, such as baking soda (NaHCO3) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) (that's probably the most famous base?). It's also very important to the human body (you shouldn't eat more than 2300mg a day). If you've ever used table salt or baking soda while cooking, consider voting Sodium!

POTASSIUM: Their name was based on the word potash, which was based on an early and easy way of obtaining potassium, from putting ash in a pot, adding water, heating, and evaporating the solution. It's used in a lot of fertilisers because it's an essential plant nutrient. It's also involved in a ton of important compounds: KOH (a strong base), KNO3 (often used as salt bridges in electrochemical cells), K2CrO7 (an oxidising agent often used in organic synthesis), and K2CrO4 (I don't know what this one does). If you have ever eaten food from fertilisers consider voting Potassium!

RUBIDIUM: Rubidium compounds are sometimes used in fireworks to give them a purple color. They've also got a cool name, based on the latin rubidius, for deep red (the color of its emission spectrum). I'll be real, I don't really know much about them beyond that, but that is one cool name. Vote for Rubidium if you like cool names.

CAESIUM: Caesium is used in the definition for a second, meaning that an entire SI unit is based on it! A second can be defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of microwave light absorbed or emitted by the hyperfine transition of caesium-133 atoms in their ground state undisturbed by external fields". It was also discovered from mineral water. Did you know that they had to use 44000 liters of water to find her? If you've ever experienced time or had a conception of it in terms of units, consider voting Caesium!!!

FRANCIUM!!!: Caesium... TWO! It's sad that no one will probably read this far but this is my favourite element in this poll. This element is characterised by instability. Her longest half-life is 22 minutes. Her entire existence was conjoint with Caesium before they discovered that she was her own element. She has never been seen. They literally never confirmed what color she is. She was born in a wet cardboard box all alone. Through the hands of different scientists, she was going to be named after Russia, Virginia, or Moldavia at different points in time. At one point the name catium was proposed (for "cation", since she was believed to be the most electropositive cation), but was rejected because it sounded like a cat element. Which is so fucking sad. We could've had cat element but we ended up with France element. That's right she's also named after France. Just tragic fascinating existence overall. Also isn't it just insane that her half-life is only 22 minutes? Dude, you don't get it, the most of her that's ever existed in one place is a mere 300000 atoms. She's here and she's gone. What the hell.

The charm of Francium can be summarised by the wise words of my good friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

[visualtaehyun]

Hey, I just wanna know from where did you start learning thai? Also, what advice do you give to those who wanna start learning it

Hiya anon ✨

I'm not sure how much help I can be, considering I'm not doing a course or following an app or anything people usually do for language learning 🥴 I've been learning mostly by immersion tbh - I've been almost exclusively watching Thai series for over a year now, plus interviews, variety shows, youtube content, songs, so many songs lol, tweets, etc.

My personal learning approach is pretty loose and chaotic lmao but here goes:

1) The biggest hurdle for me was the script. Apart from already having started to notice recurring words being said in the Thai BLs I was watching at the time, I also wanted to be able to read people's tweets! In the end, it was a combination of 1) an app I happened to find (Pocket Thai Master for Android, it's free on the Play store!) and 2) the Wikipedia article on the Thai script that both helped me to understand and start reading and writing. Coming from a non-tonal mother tongue, learning the script early on really helps to understand the tones in Thai so it's something I would for sure recommend!

2) I started keeping a lil vocabulary notebook (you know those two-column ones?) shortly before my Bangkok vacation earlier this year. It not only helped with new vocabulary but also kept me practicing writing! Anytime I encounter a new word, I look it up on either or all of the following online dictionaries: thai-language.com, thai2english, Longdo Dictionary (which I literally just now realized can be set to English in the upper right corner, I've just been using it in Thai ever since I found it djsjdh), Wiktionary in Thai, or if all else fails I google it and might find an old forum entry or maybe an article if it's a slang word or idiom. I recall having dinner in a Bonchon in Bangkok and brokenly asking the waitress for chopsticks so, while waiting, I looked up and took down the word's spelling and pronunciation and when she came back and saw me copying all the info into my little notebook liKE A NERD she laughed and complimented me for the effort haha

3) If I hear a Thai word I'm unfamiliar with that I can't look up because I don't know the spelling, there's a few approaches. If I have context for its meaning, for example subtitles, then I look up the translation instead and hope I find it. If I don't, then there's the option of using thai-language.com's Reverse Phonemic Transcription function (this site in general is my holy grail tbh, it's why I mostly stick to its romanization style for any of my #local woman harps on about linguistics posts). Another option is using the papago app's speech-to-text function. Yes, you read that right. A Korean translation app, that I previously used when I was learning Korean and thus still had on my phone, proved to be useful for me to make sense of the spelling or pronunciation of Thai words. At the beginning, I only used it to read me homonyms out loud so I could parse the difference in tones lol but then I realized it wasn't half bad at rendering an accurate transcription! Sometimes I use that feature to check my own pronunciation or remind myself of the spelling of a word.

4) I always like to recommend @lurkingteapot's comprehensive Thai language learning resources post (it's far more coherent than my post here lol). And shoutout to @recentadultburnout for posting about Thai language and culture as a native speaker (both on tumblr and on ao3)! 🙏

5) This might be minor or self-evident but ya know- install the Thai keyboard for your devices! You're gonna need it sooner or later anyway if you wanna actually use the language. And if you're a keycap and keyboard nerd like me and happen to fall in love with a keyboard in a Siam Discovery store ehem then I do recommend getting a Thai layout keyboard (or keyboard stickers!) because that has proven to help me a lot in terms of ease of learning on desktop and familiarizing myself with letters I don't often encounter. Throwback to that one time I was on the train, revising consonants and their tone classes, and indignantly texted a very confused yet amused family member a photo of my hand-written copy of the Thai consonant table, asking how I'm ever supposed to differentiate between ฎ and ฏ!! Even now, I have to lean in and squint like an old lady to see the difference on desktop. 😭

I hope at least some of this proves to be helpful in your quest to learn Thai! In any case, you're not alone on tumblr or in our little BL/GL/QL fandom bubble - I know of several users who are learning Thai, like @airenyah and @philologique and the aforementioned @lurkingteapot, just to name a few I personally follow and who I'm sure all have their own advice to give if you shoot them an ask~

สู้ ๆ นะ :) /suu suu na/

[aprillikesthings]

At work I was thinking about how in non-fantasy au’s Catra is often Latina, and I know it’s because someone on the crew (Nate?) mentioned it

But Adora is often just generic white, which is fine, but the part of me that’s a little obsessed with Iceland* was like. She's tall and blond. She should be Icelandic, duh.

But then I thought of the horror that would be trying to figure out her name ahahah

Because Iceland has a list of first names. You legally have to name your kid something off the list. You can apply to have new names added to the list, but they have to work with Icelandic spelling and grammar rules.

Yes I looked, Adora is not on the list, lol

Her last name would be even worse, it’s literally just your dad’s (or less often your mom’s) first name followed by -son, -dóttir, or (if you're non-binary) -bur.

For instance: my dad’s name was David, so I’d be Apríl Davíðsdóttir. Unless I wanted to use my mom’s name and then I’d be Kathleensdóttir, except there's not really any version of Kathleen on the name list.

(Yes this means sometimes a family of four people can all have different last names.)

(Tons of info on Wikipedia obv)

In au’s Adora’s last name is often Gray, and I did try google translating it and then looking it up on the name lists. Nope.

Anyway your choices would be: intentionally butchering Icelandic naming rules and apologizing in your author’s notes, finding someone Icelandic to see if they have any ideas, or deciding she was born in the USA or Canada or whatever and is just of Icelandic descent and ignoring all of that, which seems the likeliest option

(*I lived in Iceland as a kid for a couple of years thanks to the US military—there used to be an American military base there and my dad was in the Navy. I went back as a tourist in 2021, which is when I installed the Icelandic keyboard on my phone to make it easier to look up place names.)

[darcyolsson]

i unfortunately can’t find the post about it, but the two wolves meme is racist — it’s appropriation of native american folklore or something like that, i think. not calling you out or anything i promise, this is just smth i would’ve liked to know when i used the meme but i don’t see it widely spoken about on here even though the meme is kinda popular here. the site that provides info on how memes started has more info i think, if you’d like to know more (i am sorry — i’m aware i haven’t given a great explanation, i just can’t remember the exact context of the post i saw abt this😭)

hi! i went and googled it myself, and you're a little bit wrong, this is what wikipedia has to say:

The story of the Two Wolves is a memetic legend of unknown origin, commonly attributed to Cherokee or other indigenous American peoples in popular retelling. (...) As its origins cannot be credibly traced to authentic indigenous sources, the “Two Wolves” story is considered an example of fakelore.

the meme, in turn, is based on this fake story, and the issue with it is that fake stories like these are fabricated by white people based on false perceptions of Native folklore.

i genuinely had not made the connection to native american folklore, i literally just thought the meme was about. wolves. lol. but it's good to have this context, i can def see how it comes off a little icky regardless! i can't find any native americans talking about this particular meme online but in cases like this it's best to play things safe i think

also, i mean this genuinely and kindly: the next time you come across something like this, google it yourself. it's more important to genuinely understand why something is offensive than to completely try to avoid everything that may be problematic. especially if you're passing on knowledge to someone else, try to make sure that the information you're spreading is correct. otherwise, you might end up in a situation like this, where the problematic aspect of the meme is that this is a fake story attributed to native americans by white people, and you've accidentally contributed to that. again, i'm not trying to berate you, but try and keep that in mind next time you come across a post like that :)

[rosaacicularis]

Celebrity AU: do you think Grian, being an avid prankster, leaves the public in total confusion about his gender because he's...well, Ariana Griande?

Like they wouldn't even be able to recognize him if he was out of costume on the streets. He's a guy. He's a gal. He can rock high heels. He can make you swoon in a suit. Transphobes hate him. They especially hate his other persona, "Mother Spore." (Which unfortunately has not made an appearance for a while despite popular demand.) His wiki page is locked down because people keep changing the info. He's an icon. As he should be. His closet is the bane of Pearl's existence because there's everything from ballgowns to futuristic techwear. It would be funny

he, just for funsies, has said he’s a triplet but also has said he’s an only child… and literally just compulsively lies about his childhood and family tree just because he finds it a little bit quirky of himself. nobody knows the actual truth of whether or not ariana griande and his one halloween costume of a mushroom are actually him, his doppelgängers or his triplets <3<3 he likes the chaos of nobody ever knowing <3<3

scar had to get a second closet built in their house for all of their little outfits, it’s almost like going into a party city, they even installed disco lighting in there <3 pearl breaks into their house (not actually, they gave her a key) while they’re out being famous to organise it, pro-bono for the most part except she can eat all of their food and steal their toiletries <3

grian and scar’s wikipedia pages are both locked from the time they got into an argument and vandalised each other’s pages. they started communicating through the hyperlinks and eventually, after a good run both of them got banned from editing any wikipedia articles.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

Do we just decide based off vibes which blog to submit science fantasy books to, or should we submit to both blogs?

you’re welcome to submit to either / both as you see fit — if I’m unsure about something or don’t see something that obviously lines up with the relevant blog, I’ll ask for clarification and decide based on people’s comments. I have rarely summarily rejected something on genre grounds, and even in cases like N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth where I feel I can make a confident judgment call, I try to explain my reasoning at least briefly.

if you think something is borderline or if the relevant speculative elements aren’t going to be readily apparent from the blurb / reviews, it can also be helpful if you give me a bit of info on why you think it fits the blog you’ve submitted it to. this is not a requirement, it just speeds up the process a bit!

as a quick guide for some fringe cases that come to mind:

planetary romance like Jack Vance’s Durdane books or Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series should come to the sci-fi blog unless it has literal, explicit magic (e.g., if it were a book the 1938 Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars serial could also go to the fantasy blog on the basis of Azura’s magic)

I tend to consider steampunk to be fantasy unless it a) has no magic and b), much more vaguely, engages substantively with the scientific / technological elements (as in Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan), rather than just adopting the clockwork, retrofuturist aesthetic. I’ve accepted several steampunk books for this blog (not just Westerfeld), so don’t let this stop you; it just has been a recurring edge case where I’ve had to make judgment calls.

conversely, I tend to consider most alternate histories that don’t incorporate magic to be science fiction — Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, for example.

I have generally erred on the side of being generous with genre assignments if I can find a reason to include something; I mainly only make a clarification request if I truly can’t see anything in the blurb / reviews that indicates the relevant genre to me. not to sound like Wikipedia but I try to Assume Good Faith™ and trust that the submitter did have something specific about the book in mind that’s just not coming up in the reviews. if I’ve posted a clarification request about genre, I’m always genuinely open to including the book if you can give me a reason to justify it!

I hope that helps!