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Heaven couldn't take Earth if it tried

@eater-of-hopes-and-dreams / eater-of-hopes-and-dreams.tumblr.com

'Cause baby, we're burning it down from the inside | Call me CJ, I'm an autistic coded bi! | Xe/xem/xyr | icon by @lgbtq-prideplanets

hatred for bugs has ended. we are entering the era of Bug Love

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It really seems that way. Growing up the vast majority of adults I encountered not only thought all im invertebrates were kill-on-sight repulsive (except usually butterflies and ladybugs) but the older they were the more likely they felt the same about snakes, bats, lizards and sometimes even frogs(!!!)

It's now down to mostly only wasps, spiders, cockroaches and parasites (or micropredators) that I still see people intensely divided over and even then it's a DIVISION.

The first time I ever admonished someone on the internet for killing a harmless spider I got mostly ridiculed and dogpiled by people twice my age. Now it's more likely I'll see a hundred posts of backlash about some asshole who killed a spider for no good reason and whoever they're talking about already deleted the post or locked their account.

😃

I made this post in a fit of passion thinking about bees, but you're right, even within my lifetime I've noticed a big cultural shift happening.

I feel that the scale is tipping toward Spider Love. (Or maybe it's just that I have a little sister who has absolutely loved spiders, like adoringly cooing over them, ever since she was 7-8 or so). And most of the negativity I see about them is like. people having phobias? instead of hatred. People are much more reluctant to publicly say "yeah I hate this creature kill them all" anymore because it's becoming more common for people to view you as a sicko for being spitefully hateful (and rightfully so!)

I also feel like the current overwhelming positivity toward bees is new, it seems like not too long ago at least some people were negative toward them, but now saying you hate bees is like saying you hate puppies.

And oh my god, ISOPODS. Isopods have shot up to the tier of a solidly "cute" critter on par with ladybugs.

And way more people have an appreciation for like dragonflies and praying mantises and other neat creatures like that.

I've had a harder time convincing people that flies are cool sadly (SO much diversity! Their flight is so precise and skillful! They're really important pollinators and so important for cleaning up waste!).

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The Hearthstone God

[The sequel to the God of Prophecy, and the Serpent God of Protection]

Fire is out of fashion, in this new age.

Some of my kind have found new homes, new names, in factories or forges, in the hearts of wildfires or crystals or volcanoes.

Most of us are simply forgotten.

I was a fire god, once. A god of gathering, a god of communion, a god of song and story. But there are no hearthstones now. No fires around which families gather to eat and talk and tell stories.

I am lucky. I am tied to a great flat stone near a lake. A lake that has survived all the wild exuberance of men, when they learned to change the world around them. Once, this was a place where travellers stopped to rest. At first they travelled on their feet, or on half-wild horses. Then there were carts, and a road. Much later, cars drove down the road. The road was paved.

But some things do not change. People need clean water to drink, and the spring here is good. They need to rest, when they are weary. And even now, when they come to camp in nylon tents, to fish in the lake, or to hunt the ducks, or drive camper-vans to the flat place, their ancient instincts wake, and they turn to fire once more. They light new fires atop my stone, so flat and safe, from which no log will roll to set the woods afire.

Not so many come now. Camping is less popular these days. But some still come. Some still light their fires, and settle around my stone, and talk, or listen to music, or tell stories. So I survive, just barely, on the edges of belief.

I might just be following the wrong people but it's funny (as in strange not amusing) that I don't hear about problem Fad cat breeds in quite the same way I hear about dogs (other than like Scottish folds and munchkins), am not following the right people or is it that there's just far fewer cat breeds and cat breeding being a far more recent thing

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The cat fancy is considerably smaller than the dog fancy. Something in the neighborhood of 95% of all cats are what you call "randombred," meaning they aren't a defined breed or even a defined breed mix. They're "just cats," and they breed like crazy. They breed like vermin. You can get a cat for free just about anywhere and you're pretty much gonna get what you signed up for because all of them are "just a cat."

Cats are individuals of course but the breed divides are so slight and hard to notice that for most people the pickiest they get is long hair versus short hair. You're probably not going to accidentally end up with a cat way bigger than you wanted, or thats way too loud and bothers your neighbors, or that's way too mean etc.

Where with dogs if you grab a randombred puppy from a box in a Walmart parking lot when it gets a little bigger you might realize that this is an amstaff mix and it wants to kill your other dogs, or you might realize this is a newfie mix and it's 3 times bigger than you expected.

Where even among purebred cats they tend to be similar in size and shape and still act very much like cats and it can be hard to tell even purebred breeds apart. A lot of cat breeds also have approved outcrosses too so you end up with cats that are mixed anyway.

With very few exceptions it's hard to pick out a purebred cat from a lineup unless it's a very defined breed like a hairless sphynx or a curly coated rex or a rosetted bengal or an absolutely massive main coon.

Most people then, don't see a huge point to getting an expensive purebred when they can get a cat just as good and very similar in appearance for next to nothing.

That's not to say fad cats aren't a problem! Of the popular purebred cat breeds out there, there are people mill breeding them and they're super prone to chronic respiratory infections. Sphynx especially tend to have lifelong runny nose from viruses that run hard in certain catteries.

Scottish fold cats are another big one you mentioned, but the worst I see currently is "elf" cats. That is, munchkin cats with short legs being bred to everything.

I've seen people selling "civet cats" that are munchkin bengals. I also see "dwelf" hairless munchkins and hairless munchkins with the same folded ears as a scottish fold. It's all so, so stupid and these cats aren't very functional.

Luckily it's not as big as a thing but it is still, regrettably, a thing.

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I wish munchkin cats had never been discovered

Wow I hate this

This is so awful why would you purposefully do this to an animal :(

I'm honestly still haunted by the study I read like a year ago that scanned and studied the skulls of a bunch of "Peke-Face" Persian kittens (so extremely smushed faces like pugs) and the smush-face kittens had neurological problems and some of them would just scream randomly for hours or couldn't balance because their skulls were so fucked up that their brains were getting squished into the space where the spinal cord is supposed to go

Scottish Folds are also awful. Other domestic animals can have floppy ears partly because their ears are big enough to flop. Scottish folds just have a cartilage disorder and get arthritis when they're still kittens.

My special interest used to be cats and I knew everything about all the breeds and it seems like it's gotten so much worse in the last 15 years. When I was 7 or 8 these horrible "designer" crosses of cats with multiple disabling and painful mutations were barely a thing.

I think it's important to understand that cat "breeds" are fundamentally different than dog breeds because dogs have been bred into different types of dog for millennia depending on their job. So a hound whose job is to help humans hunt small game is very different behaviorally than a livestock guard dog that protects a herd of sheep from wolves and other predators.

A cat's job is cat. No matter where they are from, cats have been kept for roughly the same reasons: keep rodent populations down and for companionship. There are regional landraces of cat (for example the original Manx cat comes from the Isle of Man) but you don't have distinct "types" of cat that do different things coexisting in the same area.

So basically cat "breeds" are mostly the result of people who made a hobby out of breeding cats.

I don't think it's bad to have breeds of cat with interesting traits that are harmless, but the cat 'breeds' that can't play and behave like normal cats without pain make me sad.

mental age isn't a thing.

i am not "mentally a child." i am mentally an adult, because i am in my early 20s. i do not care how childish i seem; that never gives anyone the right to say that i am mentally a child. i am an adult who doesn't want nor deserves to be compared to a child.

i do not care how many times i watch sesame street, i do not care that my reading level is low, i do not care that i need lots of things simplified to me, i do not care about all the things i do that make me seem childish. i still am an adult and deserve to be treated like one. i will never be "mentally a child."

this theory hurts people with intellectual disability and i am tired of seeing it.

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reading a tgirl self defense zine and wishing i’d know about this like 3 weeks ago

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i cannot stress enough how important the last one is. your friend who’s kinda tall or looks tough? your friend who’s a little clocky in an intimidating way, or the girl who passes better than you or did a bit of voice training? she’s not gonna take care of it for you. there is no weapon, no intimidating stance, no threat more effective in de-escalation than even a single other person who at least looks like they’re willing to help out someone getting harassed. fan the fuck out and show up for your friends.

When Tina Turner left her first husband - who was also her boss, captor, and brutal tormentor - she snuck out of their Dallas hotel room with a single thought in her mind: "The way out is through the door." From there she fled across the midnight freeway, semi-trucks careening past her, with 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket. As soon as she decided to walk out that door, she owned nothing else. When she filed for divorce, she made an unusual request. She didn't want anything: not the song rights, not the cars, not the houses, not the money. All she wanted was the stage name he gave her - Tina - and her married name - Turner. This was the name by which the world had come to know her, and keeping it was her only chance to salvage her career. Things could have gone a lot of ways from there. She could have labored in obscurity for decades, maybe making records on small labels to be prized by vinyl connoisseurs in Portland. She could have stayed in Vegas, where she first went to get her chops back up, and worked as a nostalgia act. And, of course, given what she had been through, she might have … not made it. What happened instead is that Tina Turner became the biggest global rock star of the 80s. I'm old enough to barely remember this, but if you aren't, it was like this: The Rolling Stones would headline a stadium one day, and the next day it would be Tina Turner. A middle-aged Black woman - she became a rock star at 42! - sitting atop the 1980s like it was her throne. She managed this because of whatever rare stuff she was made of (this is a woman whose label gave her two weeks to record her solo debut, Private Dancer, which went five times platinum); because she decided to speak publicly about her abusive marriage and forge her own identity, and in doing so give hope and courage to countless women; and also because - in a perhaps unlikely twist for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee - she had her practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism, to which she credited her survival. She remained devout until the end. Tina's second marriage - to her, her only marriage - was to Edwin Bach, a Swiss music executive 16 years her junior. Of him, she said, "Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame." In 2016, after a barrage of health problems, Tina's kidneys began to fail. A Swiss citizen by then, she had started preparing for assisted suicide when her husband stepped in. According to Tina, he said, "He didn't want another woman, or another life." He gave her one of his kidneys, buying her the remainder of her time on this earth and perhaps closing a cycle which took her from a man who inflicted injury upon her to a man willing to inflict injury upon himself to save her from harm. Born into a share-cropping family as Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, she died Tina Turner in a palatial Swiss estate: the queen of rock 'n roll; a storm of a performer with a wildcat-fierce voice; a dancer of visceral, spine-tingling potency and ability; a beauty for the ages; a survivor of terrible abuse and an advocate for others in similar situations; an author and actress; a devout Buddhist; a wife and mother; a human being of rare talent and perseverance who, through her transcendent brilliance, became a legend.

Credit: Will Stenberg

I keep thinking about that one post that was going around talking about the potential origins of cheese and everyone immediately jumps to it must've been rotten milk that they ate out of desperation. But I'd like to posit that the first cheese was probably someone adding an acid to warmed milk and realising it splits it. Like it's not that big a stretch of the imagination for someone to think "oh I like warm milk but I also like this acidic fruit, I wonder if I can mix them". From there a little experimentation on separating the new curd from the whey and you've got a simple fresh cheese.

I dunno I think the reason I wanted to make this post is just that we tend to desscribe a lot of discoveries around food as desperate acts of starvation and not genuinely thought out experimentations based on observations like every other form of human knowledge. Ancient people weren't stupid starving unwashed masses and it's important to remember that. They were people who could think and deduce and logic their way through things as good as you or I.

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there's this narrative I've encountered several times about our early ancestors figuring out that cooking food makes it good, and it goes "some meat probably fell in the fire and then when it cooled down they tried eating it and that's how they found out food could be cooked."

which, I do not accept. I have seen humans. I would like to propose an alternative explanation.

Cooking is the result of an early scientific experiment entitled "Does Meat Burn?"

(It was part of a wider research project considering such questions as Does Antler Burn? Does Hide Burn? Does Hoof Burn? and the oft-repeated Does My Hand Burn Ow Fuck Yes Actually It Does)

Feel like "Does Meat Burn" may have been a direct follow-up project to "Does My Hand Burn Ow Fuck".

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Honestly. A few shifts in any big city ER / A&E will teach you something about the recklessness with which human beings will experiment on (a) things and (b) themselves. (With possibly the #1 favorite subject being "I Wonder, Will This Go In There?")

if capitalism didn’t exist what would your dream job be. btw if you say something like ‘engineer’ i’ll kill you

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memento-mari-1402

What’s… what’s wrong with engineer. Do you honestly think people will stop needing bridges. or water filtration plants. or electricity. or assistive devices. or. or. or. post-capitalism OP.

Hundreds Killed as Building Collapses in Leftist Commune

I DO dream of labour. There is worthwhile and meaningful work in the world, and I want to do it!

In a post-capitalism world there will still be rivers to cross, sick people to nurse, crops to be harvested, computers to program, and buildings to maintain. Some of the work will be dull and unfulfilling and necessary!

But you’d better HOPE we get enough engineers and building inspectors and fire safety marshals and janitors and maintenance workers and bricklayers and auto mechanics and electricians. Otherwise you’d better be ready to drastically reduce your standard of living.

People confuse “non-capitalist” (ie organized for motives other than the acquisition of profit within a model where those who accumulate capital are necessary for large enterprises) with “magically somehow work will be unneeded” and also apparently get confused about how actually right now one of the problems we have is that lots of people who’d LIKE to be engineers and indeed would be GOOD engineers have no opportunity to do so because of the structures of power and opportunities that underlie our current system.

Guys, the jobs that are now considered “good” will still be attractive. Because they’re not just attractive for money. I’m a programmer. I’d like to be a programmer. Give me the dull coding jobs. It’s fine. That’s what I like doing.

I can imagine there are people who love stocking shelves. There are days when I’d love doing that, too.

I can imagine there will still be secretaries who love organizing others as their purpose in life. So they, think doctors, have the time to focus on their thing, which is helping people get/stay healthy.

And I can imagine someone wanting to be that doctor, willingly learn for years about how humans work, and then cope with people’s health, trying to improve it.

“But nobody would want to…” Yes they do. People love danger, dirt, repetitive tasks, responsibility, stress, talking to people all day, hiding away in a dark basement all day, working with animals (with all implications), working at a computer all day, …

For everything that needs doing, you’ll find someone who loves doing it. It’s more about finding enough people for the things that are needed, where they’re needed, when they’re needed.

My mother is a bureaucrat and a farmer and living her dream life tending to her garden in her free time just as much as when she’s at work doing what she herself drscribed as “the most dry, administrative, paperworky position you can find” and she said this to me with such excitement and joy. For every job you can imagine, it’s somebody’s dream job.

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Leverage meme quotes [5/5] → from Nathan Ford

My name is Nathan Ford. And I… am a thief
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There are moments when Nate goes completely cold and he is way scarier than any of them, or all the rest of them combined, like a reminder of what is sitting there under the surface - an incomparably brilliant mind with no heart to anchor it and nothing to believe in.

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you can tell that Nate is an ex-Jesuit, or perhaps more accurately an almost-Jesuit He has this Catholic self-hatred coupled with this deeply rooted sense he’s better than others and it’s all tied together with a large amount of ‘here, hold my beer’

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“My father would buy me an ice-cream” is just the the most terrifying thing anyone in the show says.

He says, in one line, that he was raised to be bad, knows how to be bad, chose to be good, fell, chose to be good by doing bad, but his gut reflex, the one he’s been supressing for his entire life, is just to be a walking nightmare, exactly what you’d expect if you rewarded a child for lying, cheating, swindling, and hurting for fun and profit.

Nate Ford is not a nice man. But he’s all that’s standing between us and Jimmy Ford’s Son, so let’s be thankful for that.

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Leverage meme quotes [5/5] → from Nathan Ford

My name is Nathan Ford. And I… am a thief
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There are moments when Nate goes completely cold and he is way scarier than any of them, or all the rest of them combined, like a reminder of what is sitting there under the surface - an incomparably brilliant mind with no heart to anchor it and nothing to believe in.

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you can tell that Nate is an ex-Jesuit, or perhaps more accurately an almost-Jesuit He has this Catholic self-hatred coupled with this deeply rooted sense he’s better than others and it’s all tied together with a large amount of ‘here, hold my beer’

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“My father would buy me an ice-cream” is just the the most terrifying thing anyone in the show says.

He says, in one line, that he was raised to be bad, knows how to be bad, chose to be good, fell, chose to be good by doing bad, but his gut reflex, the one he’s been supressing for his entire life, is just to be a walking nightmare, exactly what you’d expect if you rewarded a child for lying, cheating, swindling, and hurting for fun and profit.

Nate Ford is not a nice man. But he’s all that’s standing between us and Jimmy Ford’s Son, so let’s be thankful for that.

Food Fun Facts for dad types!!!

•Adding butter or cheese or salt or whatever to your veggies so that you like them doesn’t change the nutritional content you get from said veggies.

•Additional calories eaten don’t negate the healthy benefits of food. And, stay with me here, low calorie foods are not more morally pure than high calorie foods.

•If making a food more palatable by adding butter (or whatever) is the make-or-break for someone to actually eat the vegetable, then the Brussel sprouts with butter are FUCKING HEALTHIER for you than the Brussel sprouts you don’t eat. A salad with ranch dressing is healthier for you than the dry greens you don’t eat. A sandwich with cheese and mayo is more healthy than the plain sandwich you don’t eat. The strawberry with whipped cream is more healthy than the strawberry you don’t eat.

•We actually don’t have to buy the bullshit that food that makes us happy or tastes good is less healthy.

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there's something about... alyx and lewis' journey through the ever after is basically a story of 'two people enter, but only one of them leaves' even though leaving—going back home—was both of theirs goal from the moment they arrived.

when they reach their goal—the door back to remnant—and chat with the blacksmith, alyx changes her mind; she wants to go back to fix what she broke. lewis returned to remnant and became a storyteller, making their journey into a book about alyx only, with a happier ending.

when team rwby recount the story, the belief is that alyx was the only one who fell, and that she made it out. over the course of the volume, the more we learn about alyx and the ever after—mainly ascension and that alyx wasn't alone, lewis was also there—the belief shifted for us, the audience, speculation galore if alyx had ascended and was simply "hiding" in plain sight, until the big reveal that the cat killed alyx after feeling betrayed by her.

summer never finished the story.

alyx was believed to have made it back home. summer was believed to have died on her mission.

did alyx ascend, is she now unrecognizable from her old self? no, she died, the fate that summer is believed to have met as well.

has summer been turned into a grimm like the hound, unrecognizable from her old self? thinking hats on.

alyx was close to achieving her goal before she changed her mind. did summer change her mind, too, at the last second?

alyx was alone, except she wasn't. summer was alone, except she wasn't.

two people enter. only one of them leaves.

lewis told the story, changing the ending, but would he have actually known what exactly happened to alyx after she returned to fix what she broke? most likely not.

raven was there, she knows at least something in terms of what really happened to summer, but does she know the real ending? is she aware that summer is alive but told qrow that she was dead, anyway?

one story gets a happier ending compared to the truth; maybe the other gets a sadder ending.

Someone liked one of my posts from back when everyone was debating the whole "Edward says he has no friends so Izzy can't be close to him" thing, and it reminded me of an argument I've probably made before, but usually as part of a larger, Izzy-focused tangent and not like. On its own merits. So, just for the record...

Generally, if someone is defending Edward's 1x06 bathtub claim of friendlessness as literally true for whatever reason, then Calico Jack is discounted as a "real" friend of Edward's by referencing Jack's quote from 1x08:

"What kinda pirate has a friend?!? We're all just in various stages of fucking each other over!"

The reasoning goes that Edward shares this belief / mindset, and doesn't truly trust Jack (or any other pirate) not to fuck him over. He has his guard up, always, and he's aware that he doesn't trust any of his lifetime of acquaintances with meaningful vulnerability. That's why he can sob to Stede in a bathtub that he has no friends and mean it literally. He's extending real trust for the first time ever, to Stede, and it's more proof they invented acceptance etc. etc.

Now, I have better and more robust reasons that I interpret the bathtub scene differently, but setting those aside... I think there's an argument in the text of 1x08 that Edward doesn't buy into Jack's line, even just looking at his relationship with Jack. The semantics, maybe - he noticeably doesn't use the word friend, preferring "mate" - but not the philosophy behind it.

Because Edward very much does seem to believe Jack (and Izzy) would not fuck him over.

Edward falls for Jack's bullshit hook, line, and sinker because he doesn't suspect Jack of any fuckery. His guard isn't up at all! Jack even calls him out on it! Edward is hurt, betrayed, and angry because he trusted Jack, as a friend, and then Jack used that trust to help Izzy. He's hurt and pissed that Izzy would sell Stede out, despite their last interaction literally being Izzy screaming that he hates Stede and swearing to return with a vengeance. Edward has absolutely no reason to expect "better" from either of these men - especially Jack given how cavalier he is about the whole thing - unless he thinks they have a bond of friendship that would preclude a plot against his new boyfriend. It's foundational to his emotional state!

And to be fair to all characters involved... I don't think Jack is necessarily buying Jack's bullshit, either.

Jack obviously knows Edward views him as a friend - it's the only reason his plan works - but looking at how he goes about everything... Jack's plan hinges on expressing vulnerability and an associated sob story and that being taken at face value. Even being a bit of a shithead, this would be a dangerously unreliable angle if it wasn't believable as something he would do.

Like, if Jack truly never trusted Edward to be there for him when he was down, then showing up emotional and "trusting" Edward to be there for him should be a giant red flag? Do we think Edward has been Charlie Brown with the football, falling for Jack's bullshit and never learning that he only cries crocodile tears? I know Jack says he's lost his edge, but that level of faith in someone who had never (or even only rarely) been genuine before just seems idiotic. I doubt Jack has much of history of fucking Edward over, actually. Not this way. Not on big, real things that hurt.

And furthermore, the conversation where Jack derides the idea of pirate friendship is so emotionally loaded. Jack starts out calm. Casual. Yeah he's a dick - that's a personality trait - but he's genuinely surprised that Edward is mad at him. He doesn't start yelling until after Edward curses at him and dives out of the boat.

I don't think that line is serving as the closing philosophy of a betrayal speech. I think Jack's being defensive. He's thrown off by the fact Edward cares - enough to be actually pissed over it - and, in a coping method prized by shitheads everywhere, he's spinning it around so Edward is being the unreasonable one who shouldn't be reacting like this. Jack is behaving just fine, thank you, and he's not even a little bit upset about his friend dumping him over Stede because "What kind of pirate has a friend???"

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Hey everyone! Food devs here with the long awaited 2.0 update. Without further ado here are the changes.

+spicy foods are now part of the “hot” category and can no longer avoid this category by specing purely into aggressive flavor +all calzones now include the sauce inside them to avoid unnecessary dipping +bananas now have clearly defined peeling points +removed drying factor from salt water to make it a hydration drink again +buffed amount of time scrambled eggs will stay hot in open air +by popular demand we have made it so nutcrackers now also work on coconuts +we felt the gutting process was two confusing to newer players so now all fish and crustaceans rapidly expel their bones and organs upon being heated +banana skin now possess a more satisfying crunch to persuade player choice and make the banana meta more even -microwave foods now have a maximum 20% chance of failure to avoid over centralizing the meta -watermelons water content has been nerfed in order to bring it more in line with other melons -fixed a bug that allowed celery to be consumed without calorie gain -increased the ingredient requirement for cereal to bring it more in line with other soups -fixed a glitch that allowed users to eat ramen with two knives instead of chopsticks -fixed a glitch that allowed hotdogs to be eaten from the ends, users will now start in the middle as intended -fixed a glitch that made Chex Mix the only cereal that could be consumed without milk

Every one here at Food is working really hard to bring you quality mouth watering content so be on the lookout for future updates!

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HATE when you’re inserting your email somewhere and literally from the first letter the website is like “invalid email address” like yes i know. I’m typing it right now. My email address is obviously not just the letter ‘m’. Stop