Being nice to someone you don't like is not manipulation btw it's being civil
my mom didn't believe in lying to children so when I first asked about santa claus as a small child she was like "oh santa claus is another name for a man named saint nicholas who lived a long time ago. he was a very kind and generous man and he loved giving people presents and he would do things like put presents in people's stockings when they were hung up to dry by the fire, so they would find them and be surprised. so now when we give presents at christmas it's fun to pretend saint nicholas or 'santa claus' brings them. and we hang up stockings by the fire and when we get up in the morning there are presents in them, just like if saint nicholas was still alive to bring them!"
so that thanksgiving one of my uncles said jovially "so mac, are you being good for santa claus?" and little (not quite three year old) mac looked up and raised an eyebrow and said witheringly "he's dead."
A whole bunch of adorable veggie friends for you! Don’t worry about not being able to eat healthy anymore, my Grunlings aren’t actual food!
They are gentle spirits of nature and if someone is lucky enough to see or even befriend a Grunling, they can become incredibly supportive with gardening. ;) 🌱
how do you just get up and deal with the fact that there’s a last time for everything. there was a last time you sat on your dads shoulders and there was a last time your mom tucked you into bed. there’s going to be a last time you kiss your sister on the head and there’s going to be a last time you hug your best friend. there’s going to be a last time you feel exactly as you feel right now and there’s going to be a last time that person says i love you. i need to lay down
every morning i wake up and make the worst possible time management decisions anyone has ever made
ocdnatural-deactivated20220809
not the biggest fan of how all everyday tasks have to be repeated again and again. girl why am i sisyphus i didn’t even cheat death
As a final goodbye, Blue Sky Studios came together and gave Scrat a send off on their own terms.
He finally got his nut.
balandewey
He… He did it.. That crazy… Son of a sqrat.. Did it.
We love our new book train. It’s helping to quickly transport materials from the stacks beneath the Stephen A. Schwarzman upstairs to the researchers who need them!
At first I thought this was really cool. Then I watched it with sound. Morning made.
I don’t WANT my laptop to be the Thinnest Model Yet
I want a battery that will outlast the sun, a screen big enough to blind the person behind me, more USB slots than there are apple fanboys in the bay area, a fucking disc reader/writer
i will pay extra for it to be heavy enough to bludgeon someone to death
I see a lot of people who tell young people–especially young people who are heading into college–that they should “do what they love.” And they’re right. You should do what you love.
But there’s a world of difference between doing what you love for you, and doing what you love for a paycheck.
I went to undergrad for graphic design and 3-D design–art and more art, I usually say–and I loved it. You know what I didn’t love? Trying to collect my fees from clients. Trying to meet unrealistic, over-simplified or over-specific briefs from people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Coming home, having worked creatively all day, with no creative juice left for the things I wanted to do.
You know what I would tell you instead? Do something that you can be interested in, with people you like.
You don’t have to love it. Loving your work can be a lot, and it often means you have to live in your job 24/7. Some people can do that. Not everyone can, or should. But if you can find work that’s interesting enough that it doesn’t feel tedious, and people you can enjoy spending your 9-5 with, and you can make money, that’s great! It means you can do the things you love for you.
I’m in law school now. It’s interesting work, and difficult, and I like doing it. I like how complicated it gets, and I like the stories it tells. But I don’t come home and read law journals for fun. I come home, and I sculpt, and I draw, and I paint, and I read. I do these things for me.
And I love it.
This is still circulating and it’s been a few years, so let me update. I’m officially a lawyer now, and still not a single regret about this choice. Settling into a stable job is such a gift and a privilege in ways I didn’t expect. I’m not going to repeat the advice given above, but I want to make it clear that having passed through my student years and into my career proper, I stand by this in every respect.
I chose to take a job that was not the most high-paying option available to me, because it wouldn’t require me to bill my time, I would have a better work-life balance, I found the work more engaging, and I really loved the office. It has paid off so much.
I get to walk to work, and most days I leave my laptop behind when I walk home at five. I have a little house with a little garden and a bunch of seedlings sprouting too early for spring. I have two stupid cats and two stupider doves and they make me happy. I put a little money into food and shelter for the neighborhood strays and name all my visiting opossums Harold. My art gets done when I feel inspiration striking, sometimes in the middle of the night, and I let my hobby fund itself without the pressure of deadlines. There is so much joy in making only what I want to. My sleep schedule has stabilized. For the first time in my life, I know the shape my days will take weeks and months away, because my routine is consistent, and I never knew what a peace that was. My job is predictable but never boring, interesting but not consuming, and it’s just a job.
There are people who will tell you–people who have told me–that turning my back on an artistic career or a career you have “potential” in is selling out, or settling.
Let me tell you, friends, I have never felt so settled.
shapechangersinwinter
A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic.
Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day.
Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.
Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy. Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour.
Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick. Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.
Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.
So I tried this recipe.
And it is GREAT.
It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.
Life hack: add white chocolate chips and sea salt
I made these today for the equinox with sea salt caramel chips and they are simply amazing. Let’s see how long they last with six people in the house!
Noting for later (as we need more butter for this, and probably won’t do a grocery shopping till the weekend).
The OP version of this has become my go-to cookie for basically all things and I have a whole cohort of friends and colleagues who would murder each other to get them. Haven’t tried any add ons yet, since the base recipe is SO GOOD.
Have you heard the good word about the Pembrokeshire walrus yet?
This walrus is fucken lost.
But Wales has lost its collective shit about it. They're generally keeping its location secret to keep people away, but we get updates every day if it's still here, if it's happy, if it's healthy. We think it was in Ireland about two weeks ago, which is interesting, because it is not actually native to Ireland either. Why is it here? No one knows.
It seems to like Pembrokeshire beaches.
In attempting to climb aboard a dinghy in Tenby it capsized it.
It then proceeded to Tenby harbour where it tried to climb aboard a fishing boat.
Incredibly, this is not an April Fools
Today on English People RUIN Everything, a bunch of English tourists from Essex and Leeds broke covid-19 regulations and travelled to Tenby over Easter to try and see Wally (so named after Where's Wally) and crowded him with jet skis and surfboards and stuff, so he's not been seen since Monday. We don't know yet if he's moved to a secluded spot again, or left Wales entirely.
But, you know, I doubt we were going to have Wally for much longer anyway, since they need to head back home again at some point. Godspeed, Wally. May your fish be ever plentiful.
The English went back home and Wally came back to Tenby! We stan a true Welsh icon, folks.
Some facts about Wally:
- She is named after Where’s Wally because she is hard to spot
- She was previously in Ireland, and then secluded beaches in Pembrokeshire, but has really taken a shine to Tenby, which is a delightful village
- She has a scar on one flipper but it’s long-healed and doesn’t seem to bother her
- She is the southern-most walrus ever spotted in the wild!
- The current theory as to how she got here is that she fell asleep on an ice floe that drifted south, but she’s not bothered about returning yet
- She’s believed to be two years old
- Her gender is still a bit of a mystery but we seem to be leaning female
This story on Wales Online claims she’s believed to be male, but then uses female pronouns. It also features a video of some Welsh people chatting about Wally, including a child whose first language is very clearly Welsh and by the end of his part is struggling to think of things to say about the walrus in English.
WALLY UPDATE!!
The Western Telegraph has opted for male pronouns, and is being very firm that Wally is male, although other news outlets are still all over the place. But what has Wally been up to the past few days?
- He is rapidly gaining weight, and is still giving no cause for concern to either of the organisations watching him (which are the RSPCA a bit and Welsh Marine Life Rescue a lot; this is funny though because a walrus is so far outside of the wheelhouse of either of those organisations like we’re all just guessing here, lads)
- His delinquent ways have continued - he has now attempted to climb onto multiple buoys (all unsuccessfully) and at one point nearly got a mooring rope stuck around his neck.
- Has he learned from this?
- FOLKS HE HAS NOT!
- He is now a Fashion Icon. He has surfaced multiple times wearing accessories in his moustache. Mostly this has been shells, but three days ago he upped his fashion game by wearing this starfish:
What an Icon.
The photographer of this picture, one Amy Compton who has been Wally’s official photographer since the start, has been making these delightful Wally masks (inset). They sell for £5, of which £1 goes to Welsh Marine Life Rescue. If you would like your own Wally mask, contact her here!
My mother came for a visit today and we checked and Tenby is an hour away from me, so we went for a Lovely Day Trip to Find a Walrus.
Friends, I took the shittest photo there has ever been of a Walrus. But I absolutely did get to see em.
A lifeboat wandered by to check em out at one point, and ey just... sank. Just dropped below the surface like Homer Simpson moving backwards into a hedge. After a while the boat left, and Wally surfaced again.
I can now confirm that ey really, really likes blowing water around like a whale, and also kept eyeing up that buoy next to em.
Also, I had entirely forgotten how comically beautiful Tenby is, but that's an aside
Time for a Wally Update!!!
It's only a little one, but apparently we're getting Serious about this walrus, lads - the police are now stepping in to say that anyone interfering with Wally (examples of this interference to date: throwing things at him, taking boats and paddle boards out to him, throwing fish overboard to tempt him closer, etc) is committing a criminal offence and we must send evidence of Assholes to them. So that's fun!
Meanwhile, the tense stand-off between the RNLI and Wally continues over Who Gets To Use The Lifeboat Slipway. Here is a picture of Wally in full delinquent mode.
What a public menace.
Time for the weekly Wally news!
Here is the problem with 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato using the slipway of a lifeboat station as a spa bed: sometimes, canoeists get in trouble near Stackpole and need rescuing and then some underwhelmed Welsh coast guard is going to have to try to chase said predatory sea potato off the slipway so they can launch the boat.
Here is the problem with that scenario: an underwhelmed Welsh coast guard basically views 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato as a sort of ornery gelatinous cow, and so will try to do this with, and I am not making this up, a broom. But a ton of overgrown seal has no fear of brooms, so the attempt is not entirely successful under time-sensitive conditions while canoeists are actively drowning 10 miles away.
Solution? An air horn.
Which did work long enough to get the boat out, and then Wally clambered back aboard barely minutes later and fell asleep again. So trick learned, I guess.
Anyway, since I've apparently become Tumblr's primary Wally journalist, I thought I'd go for a cheeky visit again today so I could report on their condition FIRST HAND (you're all welcome, I have incredible integrity). Today I tried using a binocular over my phone camera with was extremely stressful and moderately successful - and I have two pieces of NEWS.
Story the First
Two dinghies with divers aboard suddenly turned up and sailed right up to them. There are Welsh Marine Life Rescue volunteers everywhere, and one woman immediately yelled "YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. MOVE AWAY."
Everyone on the cliff went silent. The boats went closer.
"YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW," yelled the beachmaster. "MOVE AWAY."
Tumblrs, they did not.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" she yelled. "MOVE AWAY."
At which point, the whole fucken cliff starts joining in, because Welsh people are Like That.
"Move away!"
"Leave 'im alone, mun!"
"Move away, butt, what you doing!"
"He's the size of an 'orse, bois, can't you see 'im from here?!"
"Bloody move you fucks, you'll scare 'im away again!"
(That last one was, I swear, an eighty year old woman.)
The boats, suddenly being yelled at by a whole cliff of Welsh people, sailed away. Later, we followed the beachmaster who was now on a mission, and found her with a couple of community police officers ripping the shit out of the divers. It was very satisfying.
Story the Second
I mentioned my binocular and phone trick. It came in handy. At first it gave me some very satisfying shots for a distance picture on a phone camera:
But, you know, whatever.
But THEN I got this picture:
which I got 0.256778 seconds before that majestic Arctic beast of purest beautiful nature untamed FELL OFF THE SIDE OF THE SLIPWAY LIKE A CAT THAT GOT TOO CLOSE TO A TABLE EDGE
Wally was fine, the seagull to the right was traumatised.
This is not an update as such but my friend Chris who I took with me to get the scoop on Wally on Sunday had a real camera with him, and he has produced a WAY better photo than I did, and I want you all to see Just How Louche a Walrus is capable of looking:
Handsome boi
Normalize saying “I don’t know enough to have an opinion.”
Epistemic skeptics unite
I don't think some people understand that true joy in any relationship (romantic or whatever the fuck I have going on) is when you say or share a thing that makes your partner sigh and then stare off in the middle distance as they regret ever having met you
And I can hear some of you saying that's some heterosexual nonsense but NO
NO
This is UNIVERSAL
And it's not genuine hate or regret at like being with you. They still love you and shit it's just you said or sent them something SO CURSED that they just are filled with Regret
And then you cackle like the horrible little gremlin you are and scuttle off to find more things so you can respond to their eventual retaliation
And that is what love is
Giveaway: We’re giving away 12 vintage classics by Charlotte Bronte, J.R.R. Tolkien, Alexandre Dumas, Harper Lee, Shakespeare, and others! Won’t they look lovely on your shelf? =) Enter to win these classics by: 1) following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblogging this post. We will choose a random winner on 1 May, at which time we’ll start a new giveaway. Good luck! Follow our IG account to be eligible for our IG giveaways. For full rules to all of our giveaways, click here.