I’m very tired. you probably heard that Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam to slow Ukraine’s counter offensive. here’s something I didn’t quite realize: since this February, the Russians operated the dam in juuuuust the right way so that as much water would build up as possible when the snow melted and spring showers started. and then they blew the whole thing up.

40,000 people may need to be evacuated. I don’t really have the energy to say anything else right now.

Hospitallers Medical Battalion: actual angels can confirm. they’re combat-zone medical services - you know how humanitarian groups like MFS and Red Cross have to pause operations due to the Russians fucking shooting at humanitarian zones? yeah, these guys don’t pause for bullets, they fucking walk into them and they bring out anyone they can.

Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation: you can choose from a number of various fundraiser projects here, if you’re feeling particularly picky. for those of you who balk at the idea of supporting anything military just please remember that things like vehicles and drones aren’t just for military use, they’re also for evacuation and finding the wounded and they’re fucking vital.

KSE Foundation: similar to the above, KSE has multiple projects you can choose from to donate to. looking at it right now, one of the projects with the lowest amounts of money raised thus far - despite being started in April - is Seeds for Ukraine, which will help Ukraine recover from the ecological devastation Russia has been wreaking (and with Ukraine, the countries that rely on Ukraine’s grain exports that Russia keeps trying to steal).

Come Back Alive: do these guys even need the introduction? they’re Come Back Alive. I’m kissing all of them.

United24: Zelenskyy’s brain child, and the official fundraising platform of Ukraine. Mark Hamill recommends the fundraisers for drones in particular.

UAnimals: Nova Kakhovka’s zoo got… pretty much completely swept away. all zoo residents except the birds have drowned. UAnimals has tried throughout the occupation to keep the animals safe, and they’ve been reporting on the status of the zoo. I don’t really know what to say except that I hope they’re able to save the pets and strays in the towns along the river.

You can find NGOs specific to evacuation efforts in this post; please signal boost it as well. I’ve listed them but am leaving the links for the op post.

And another good list, every name here will put your money to good use.

@copperbadge, this is the general “help for Ukraine for ppl that don’t know where to donate outside of Ukraine”.

Had a rare request to reblog outside of RFM and the issue seemed urgent enough I wanted to do so. This is post two of two; thanks for notifying me and collecting these resources!

Hungarian swords, 14th century, at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. The middle sword is 8ft long

hey. don’t cry. crush three cloves of garlic into a pot with a dollop of olive oil and stir until golden then add one can of crushed tomatoes a bit of balsamic vinegar half a tablespoon of brown sugar half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and stir for a few minutes adding a handful of fresh spinach until wilted and mix in pasta of your choice ok?

For people who don't know who the Chevalier St George was:

- he was the son of a french aristocrat and an enslaved Senegalese woman called Nanon

- he actually had a relationship with his mother, which was pretty usual for children in his situation. I haven't been able to establish whether she was later freed or not, but I think she was because she left a will, suggesting she owned property

- his father legally wasn't allowed to make him his heir because of racist laws at the time, but he acknoledged him as his son and gave him a rich person's education and opportunities

- he was one of, if not the, greatest violinists of his generation, played first violin for the Paris opera and was violin teacher to the queen before the revolution

- he was in line to be composer and director of the opera but a famous dancer who was pissed off he didn't want a relationship with her started a petition to get his appointment blocked

- he knew Haydn and commissioned the Paris Symphonies from him

- Mozart's father tried to make him go and see St George perform because he thought it would be good for his musical education but Mozart was (it is speculated) jealous of there being another young music prodigy, and refused to go

- he was ridiculously handsome . Look at this, my guy is pulling off a powdered wig, do you know how hard it is to look good in a powdered wig?!

- he was considered one of the greatest duelists and swordsmen in france

- he fought a duel with the Chevalier D'eon, who at the time was living as a woman (we have no idea if D'eon was afab or amab but they made their reputation as a man and then later switched to presenting as a woman)

- he wrote incredible concertos and unbelievably terrible operas. The longest any of his opera's ever ran before being shut down was a couple of weeks. Some one lasted 1 night. He kept writing them.

- he joined the revolutionaries to otherthrow the king because they (falsely) promised to abolish slavery and emancipate all enslaved people

- he was a fantastically successful soldier and lead the first all black regiment in europe, which came to be known as the regiment st George in his honour

He's legitimately one of the most interesting figures in french history, and certainly one of the most romantic, and I'm so glad he might finally be getting the recognition he deserves!

reblog if you are not hemophobic!!

THIS should be on everyone’s blog!

if u r a bigoted casteist then keep scrolling!

You mean homophobic? ‘Cause hemophobic means you’re afraid of blood

next time on: i didn’t know it was homestuck

Next time on: Stop comparing to homestuck.

next time on: the original post was a homestuck reference you dimwit

I found it guys. A relic from the ancient Homestuck era.

Date of origin: January 16, 2013

On a lighter note.

The main reason I ever wanted to write a Hungarian mythology-based urban fantasy is that I needed to see someone do Bread Magic in a mundane modern setting.

Bread Magic shows up in a variety in Hungarian fairytales. It works like this: when someone evil, usually the devil, sometimes a dragon, wants to come into your house and hurt you, usually by taking your children, what you do is put a loaf of bread on the windowsill. It will speak for you.

When evil demands admission, the bread will say: First, they buried me under the ground, and I survived. When I sprouted, they cruelly cut me down with sickles, and I survived. They threshed me with their flails and I survived. They ground me to flour with their millstones and I survived. They put me in a bowl and kneaded me, then they put me in a hot oven to bake me, and I survived. Have you done all these things? Until you do all these things and survive, you have no power here.

This is pretty powerful magic I think, and it makes sense in a country where wheat is the staple crop and bread is the staple food. If you have bread, you are alive, if you have no bread, you are dead, therefore bread is life. It was customary to refer to wheat as “life” well into the twentieth century, and not in high literary circles either: rural seasonal workers negotiated their wages in so and so many sacks of life.

And I totally want someone to do bread magic with a shitty store-bought muffin.

The Months, Linda Pastan / Reluctant Goodbyes, O.L. / Unknown / The Londoner / Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte / Tumblr: Honeytuesday / The Pond, Mary Oliver / Robin Bush / Tumblr: Honeytuesday / Greg Sellers / S. Heaney / Letters of Summer Past / Albert Camus / Unknown / Sara Baume / Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt / Unknown / Tumblr: Poetryatmost / Instagram: claudbakes / August, Devotions, Mary Oliver

POSTING THIS AGAIN!!!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!!

there’s this post going around that’s like ‘what if alien languages had pronouns that didn’t include gender information!’ and there’s about five different enthusiastic replies and like, i get the excitement but i’m begging you to learn about languages other than english

An incomplete list of languages that don’t have gendered pronouns (based on what people mentioned in the notes/tags:

Let’s be real here, English is highly unusual among languages in having grammatical gender align so precisely with the social concept of gender. In many other languages, not only do you get “masculine” or “feminine” inanimate objects, but you also get words that are gendered socially that don’t take the grammatical gender you expect. German Mädchen “girl” is neutral. Latin virtus “manliness” is feminine.

KiSwahili and isiXhosa arguably do have grammatical genders—more than a dozen of them. None of them have anything to do with the social concept of gender. In the Dyirbal language of Australia, there are four genders: “masculine” (which includes most animals), “feminine” (which includes fire, water, and violence), fruit, and miscellaneous.

happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.

Non-Natives reblogging this are great and wonderful

Please remember that "land back" does not mean "indigenous people are mystical elves with innate epigenetic wisdom of land stewardship and they don't belong in big cities," nor does it mean "non-indigenous people can't be farmers." What it DOES mean is that "non-indigenous farmers should be paying the equivalent of property taxes to the native governments their land was stolen from." It means, "there's a great deal of indigenous scholarship on sustainable agricultural practices that farmers should be taking into account, because indigenous agriculture was more advanced than European agriculture at the time Europe invaded the Americas and western agriculture *still* hasn't caught up in terms of figuring out how to produce equivalently high crop yields without compromising the ecosystem." It means, "non-indigenous farmers should be in an intellectual discourse with indigenous agricultural scientists and indigenous peoples that still do traditional farming, figuring how to repair the damage western farming practices have done to the ecosystem."

christina rossetti, another spring

OH MY GOD whyyyy did no one tell me you’re supposed to send thank-yous after interviews?? Why would I do that???

“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”

I HATE ETIQUETTE IT’S THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING FOR ME TO LEARN WITHOUT SOMEONE DIRECTLY TELLING ME THIS SHIT

NO ONE TOLD YOU???? WTF! I HAVE FAILED YOU. Also: Dear ______: Thank you so much for the opportunity to sit down with you (&________) to discuss the [insert job position]. I am grateful to be considered for the position. I think I will be a great fit at [company name], especially given my experience in __________. [insert possible reference to something you talked about, something that excited you.] I look forward to hearing from you [and if you are feeling super confident: and working together in the future]. Sincerely, @mellivorinae

THIS IS A LIFESAVING TEMPLATE

YOU ARE WELCOME

My brother got a really great paid internship one summer. The guy who hired him said the deciding factor was the professional thank you letter my brother sent after the interview.

should it be an email? or like a physical letter?

email, you want to send it within a few hours at max after the interview if you can so it’s fresh in their mind who you are. 

Confirmed! I interviewed for a job right after arriving in NY. The interview went incredibly well, and I went home and immediately wrote a thank you letter and put it in the mail. I had a super good feeling about this interview.

I didn’t get the job.

However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.

So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.

Either way, those letters are important.

Pro tip: If you really want HR to develop a personal interest in your application, publicly thank them on linkedin. Just make a short post telling your network about how X recruiter really went above and beyond to make you feel welcome, or about how be accommodating and professional they were, or whatever. Make sure to use the mention feature so they’ll get a notification and see it. 

Flattery will get you everywhere… and public flattery that might make its way back to their manager, doubly so.

Obligatory plug for one of FreePrintable.net’s sites: ThankYouLetter.ws. They have a whole section with interview thank you letter templates, and a page with specific tips for interview thank you letters. (There are also tons of other letter templates if you browse around a bit.)

As a former professional recruiter and recruiting manager, I confirm, especially for entry-level positions, where you are competing with oodles of people. This little thing can make a difference. Also the fact that, maybe, you took time to google the “interview etiquette”.

SIGNAL BOOST

The post-interview thank you notes can be a good way to recover in case you got asked a question whose answer you either didn’t know or felt was super weak. So if you follow the above given template, jump in with something like “upon further thought to your question, here’s my revised answer.” 

But yeah always send a thank you note after an interview. It’s a small thing but it makes a hell of a difference. And def send thank you messages to any recruiters who may have helped. And also after you get the job. Small things like that really go a long long way.

GO READ ASK A MANAGER RIGHT NOW.

AAM is an AMAZING resource for all work-related questions. This is a good starting place—basically the Big Questions people tend to have. (And some weirdness.) Job searching, negotiating for raises, performance issues, living through toxicity, recognizing toxic situations, dealing with coworkers, managing people, helpful starting-point scripts for all of the above… Do yourself a favor and check it out!

JFC no one ever told me any of this!!!!

The site is '12ft Ladder' found here:

Reblogging this on ALL my blogs because holy shit is it useful

to want and be wanted

georges bataille / emily palermo / olivia laing / @chaandajaan / georges bataille / cj hauser / @kvetchkween / @nicholasbraungf / vi khi nao / silas denver melvin

I know iPads are becoming a super popular drawing medium as of late, so I just wanted to put this out there: be wary of getting your device fixed at apple.

I had a barely 2 year old iPad that just up and quit working, I brought it to apple and they said it was a software issue with no fix. My apple insurance had JUST expired, so they told me I’d have to trade it in and spend $600 on a new one. I couldn’t afford that so I took it and left.

I ended up sending it to a mutual connection who fixes apple stuff on the DL. He figured out that the “software issue” was actually just a bad battery - a $100 fix. There was NO WAY that apple wasn’t going to pocket the $600 and then turn around and resell it for a profit.

This advice could go to all apple products: if they can’t fix it in the store for free take it somewhere else! They’ve made it impossible to fix at home but there are individuals out there with the tools and knowledge to fix it for less cost to you. Apple is corrupt. Don’t let them scam you like they almost did with me.

This guy is active in the “right to repair” movement, very often involving apple.  Has a bunch of repair videos up.

watched this for the first time when i was 14 i think? it saved me

Knew what this was before I clicked and had to watch the whole thing again.

If you haven’t seen it, now’s your chance!

The Booksellers (D.W. Young, 2019)

rawest fucking hozier lyrics in no particular order:

reblog for a soup blessing in 2022

everyone saying "please" in the tags we're gonna get through 2022 together and by god we're gonna do it with bowls of our favorite soup to keep us company and happy