I have something I want to check, but the answer may scare me. Alright, here it goes:
Please reblog, though I'm pretty sure it's gonna be pretty conclusive regardless of sample size.
The Creative Act of Listening to a Talking Frog
did a puppet just fucking give some of the best advice ever.
I hope you heard this in Kermit’s voice, just like I did.
[id: cats participating in pole dance practice, often by sitting on conveniently flat poses their humans have struck]./end id.
To any American reading this of voting age. Or will be of voting age for the 2024 election… VOTE! Vote vote vote. Register to vote. Ensure your friends are registered to vote. If it wasn’t clear before the SCOTUS decisions in the last two days have spelled it out clearly.
If you are not an able-bodied cis white heterosexual man, you are at risk. They will strip away your rights, they will do everything they can to make sure you are erased. That you are silenced that you are dead.
And if you think that your vote doesn’t matter. That there is no point. Then they have won. You have already let them win. You have let them control you.
They will come after you. If you are not a cis white male you are a target. You are disposable. And you will eventually lose your basic rights as a human being. Because if you are not a cus white man… to them you are not human. Simple as.
Adding on, because even you White Cis Het CHRISTIAN men are at risk, if you're below a certain income level. They love HYPING you up to hate all the OTHERS, right?
Reminder, you're the smallest monkey in the enclosure, once the OTHERS are gone. So find some empathy to actually LOOK at what's going on, and try voting to help us OTHERS.
All my disabled and queer Fam out there? PLEASE look up the vote ride-shares, mail-in eligibility, etc that you need to be able to vote SAFELY.
Ladies? If the man in your life is trying to intimidate your vote, most polling places I've been to prefer and CAN ENFORCE separate spaces for the voting. Or try and carpool with other ladies / at risk folks. Tell that man you gotta do a good deed and take 90 year old Henry to vote.
We need to vote, and vote EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME, if we're EVER going to claw this country back into the modern world.
You have to vote like your life depends on it, because it fucking does.
I was recently challenged to rec a fic that was at least 5 years old, and when I went to grab the fic I tripped over this one in my bookmarks. This fic had a stranglehold on my brain for a WHILE, and I probably should have recc'd it sooner.
It's a Transformers/The Iron Giant crossover, and if that isn't enough to sell you, then consider its rich world building, phenomenal characterizations, and darn good storytelling. It pulls you in and doesn't let up until the ride is over.
Please read "Giants of the Earth" and maybe click the series link too, and enjoy its two companion pieces, as well.
This is one of my favourites. It's so good!
Reblog to give the person you reblogged from the ability to finish their WIPs
If you're reading this...
go write three sentences on your current writing project.
# my favourite part about this post # is that nowhere does it say to reblog this # but we’re all reblogging it # because if we have to suffer # so do other writers
red–thedragon
F u c k
Oh damn–
Damn it, Puppet, why.
THE DAD BRACKET: LIGHTING ROUND #3
Dr. Alex Malto - Transformers: Earthspark / Heinz Doofenshmirtz - Phineas and Ferb
If you like what I’m doing, reblog so others can participate! And remember: Bring your favorites up, don’t bring the others down!
Transformers fans our canon dad is in danger.
Person A: “…Why are we fighting again?”
Person B: “I don’t know, you started it, I just played along because I was bored.”
There are points in some continuities where I feel like this describes the Cybertronian civil war(s).
i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out
brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad
OP this is EXCELLENT
Now THAT’S a self care resource! If you’ve gotten distracted by capitalism’s appropriation of “self-care” and watering the meaning down to nothing this is a super helpful guide to cut through the bullshit.
I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF
This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.
Reblogging because it’s a damn potato and I want to encourage people to assume potatoes are magical.
w-what if potato is actually lucky
If you like this check out @wastelesscrafts
This is a lovely example of how you can cover up a hole with embroidery!
One suggestion to make this mend last longer is to fix the hole first, for example by sewing on a small patch on the back or by darning it, and then adding the embroidery on top.
My Favourite Reasons For Why the Great War Started
1. Revolutionary Justice in an Unequal Caste-System Society.
I adore the IDW comics, it's the second Transformers media I consumed after the franchised Michael Bay films, and let me tell you – I was not expecting all these heavy explorations into bot psyche, romance, societal injustice, and redemption. Really, it seriously surprised me, I never expected to see actual canonical romance in the Transformers universe, it always struck me as the type of medium to focus on action first.
being a pepper plant has to be so weird.
Imagine evolving capsaicin specifically to stop mammals from eating your fruits, and then a mammal comes along that not only will eat your fruits, but likes them specifically because of the capsaicin, so much that it starts using its weird paws to distribute and care for your seeds, which turns into a strong selective force that literally starts evolving you into producing MORE capsaicin and makes you a WAY more successful and wider ranged species than you ever were before
simply because this mammal LOVES Pain Chemical. that evolved specifically to produce pain in mammals. It's not that the capsaicin isn't WORKING. It's just that these freaks like it.
This is the same mammal with social instincts so goddamn strong that they literally try to form social bonds with their predators, and end up evolving the predators into a new species that fits into their social communities as a form of mutualistic symbiosis, and exists in several different forms with unique morphology and behaviors based on the function they perform.
Instead of, I don't know, EVOLVING TO BE FASTER, this animal finds a faster animal and sits on it. Which shouldn't even work because the faster animal is a prey animal and this animal is a predator, but SOMEHOW they FORM A SOCIAL BOND WITH THE PREY. So they can sit on it while it runs fast. And somehow the prey animal?? is cool with this?? and benefits from this relationship???
Literally how can you hate humans. Humans are possibly the most hilarious thing evolution has ever done.
other things humans have done
- eat poison plants, decide they like getting poisoned, and evolve the plants to poison them more
- evolve to not have hair, but they find mammals with thick fluffy hair and put the hair on themselves, and evolve the mammals to produce extra hair so they can both have a warm coat of hair
- split up their parasitic lice species into two separate species because they start taking other animals' hair and putting it on themselves so much
- learn how to set things on fire on purpose. maintain body temperature by just standing beside some wood that's on fire instead of literally any normal option
- figure out that their prey tastes better and is easier to digest when they hold it over a fire after killing it. get smarter because they digest food so good after it's been held over a fire.
- find a poisonous plant and try washing it in boiling water until they don't die when they eat it anymore
- go across the ocean by making a floating nest despite not being able to breathe underwater, drink ocean water, or even swim naturally
- drink milk from other mammals even though they can't digest it and it makes them sick. Evolve those mammals to produce more milk than their babies can drink so they can drink the milk. Some members of the species evolve to be able to digest milk because they were so hellbent on drinking it.
- find flowers, bugs and minerals that are nice colors and crush them up to try to turn other things that color
- eat mushrooms that make their nervous systems malfunction because they like malfunctioning their nervous systems
humans worldwide looking up into the celestial vault of stars a million light years away, separated from Earth by the deadly cold and emptiness of space: I bet there are guys up there to form social bonds with
IT’S HALLOWEEN TIME TO GET SPOOKY
socialphobix
I T S T H E M I D D L E O F J U N E
I T I S H A L L O W E E N T I M E T O G E T S P O O K Y
httpwtnv
ok who the fuck got this on my dash it’s still june
get spooky
how does this appear every june
It’s time!
YES GOOD :D
Especially aimed at Florida, but available to anyone!
And if you want to help them out and have some extra cash, you can make a donation to help them continue their work:
Every reblog and donation is another slap to DeSantis.
If you can, it's time to warm up that pitching arm.
Anonymous asked:
So this is a weird ask but I figured an Actual Welsh Person would be the person to go to, and you've been pretty gung-ho about the language thing. So I hope I'm not bothering you with this.
Is there a cultural consensus on foreigners learning Welsh? I'm American and I don't have a single shred of Welsh ancestry. My family is historically German, and we've been here since the English Colony days, so it honestly seems really weird even to try to claim some tie to German heritage.
Anyway, my point is, I have absolutely zero legitimate claim to the Welsh language. I don't plan to travel to Wales in the foreseeable future. I have no reason to learn Welsh except that it sounds pretty and I enjoy a challenge.
Putting aside the issue of "lmao it's gonna be stupid difficult to learn an endangered language if you don't have anyone to speak it with" (I have a loose plan for dealing with that, and the experience of learning two languages to "can read most novels without needing the dictionary" level without anyone to speak them with in person already) entirely, do you reckon it's okay for me to study Welsh? I know Americans are really, really bad about just kinda assuming the whole world belongs to us, and I'm trying not to do that here. Especially because Welsh IS endangered.
I imagine your average Welsh person probably doesn't care what some random American does. But like, for people who care about the language...Would it be considered disrespectful or overstepping for me to study it? I don't expect you to speak for the entire country, of course, but I respect your opinion and I feel like you'd have a grasp on what the general feeling towards a foreigner like me might be.
Thanks for your time.
I honestly, truly, do not understand how the discussion around cultural appropriation has been twisted in the cultural zeitgeist to such an extent that people now feel anxiety about learning other languages.
This is not a personal attack on you, Anon - the gods only know that you clearly care and want to do the right thing, and that's beautiful and wonderful and also I will come back to extolling your personal virtues at the end of this post, so stay tuned. But I do want to take a moment here to talk about the broader issue at play, which I have seen echoed multiple times elsewhere, because fuck me what are we doing to ourselves.
Learn. Languages.
That is what languages are for! To be used for communication. If you don't learn languages, you are forcing everyone else to use yours. How have we somehow, as a culture, twisted that into being the less selfish option? How have we done that? I posted my favourite Welsh idiom recently, and someone reblogged it and wrote in the tags that they loved the idiom and would start using it, but they would do so in English because their "Welsh pronunciation would make their Welsh grandmother spin in her grave."
What kind of mental gymnastics is that?
How the fuck do you twist it so badly that you think taking a Welsh idiom for your own and exclusively using it in English is less offensive than saying it in Welsh but maybe a bit wrong? I've literally had people proclaim to me that they're learning Welsh on Duolingo but they never speak it because they're too self-conscious, and they tell me this not to highlight a massive flaw in themselves that they need to work on, but as though I'm supposed to pat them on the head and thank them for... still making me speak English to them.
There was that post where a Deaf blogger received an anonymous ask saying learning sign language is cultural appropriation, as though Deaf people haven't been calling for Sign to be taught in schools. As though a Deaf person being entirely isolated in everyday hearing society unless they have an interpreter with them is less offensive than a hearing person being able to use BSL.
Like, these are not sacred or religious languages. The purpose of Welsh or BSL or what have you is not to perform the Eleusinian mysteries. It's a living everyday language, same as English -
Except it's not the same as English. As Anon here so rightly points out, Welsh is endangered. That means we are desperate for people to learn it. That's how it will survive. That's how we reversed it from 'dying language' to 'living language', in fact - we managed to get lots of people to learn it. You know what is a threat, though? People not learning it because, like poor Anon here, they've been somehow convinced by Western society that you're only allowed to learn languages if you personally have a historic or cultural connection to them that you can prove via six forms of ID and a letter of recommendation from a druid. Or people never using it because they're too embarrassed to try and risk losing face by getting it wrong, or maybe sounding a bit silly, and thus forcing us to use English anyway. Those are threats.
Anon. Listen to me, feel the sincerity of my words: we adore you. We adore you. You cannot imagine how appreciated it is when someone learns Welsh. You cannot imagine how touched we are that you wanted to, that you tried, that you respected us enough and considered us valid enough that you made the effort. Our closest neighbours are the very people who are still trying to stamp out Welsh to this very day. Do you know the number 1 reaction I get, by a country mile, when I tell English people that I speak Welsh? It's some variant on a scoff, and the sentiment "Why? What's the point? Bit useless, isn't it?"
By a country mile. That's the reaction I expect, and brace for, and is overwhelmingly what I get.
So when someone who isn't Welsh actually chooses to learn Welsh?
Imagine what that feels like! To go from not-even-hidden disgust, from outright mockery and often active suppression campaigns, to a foreigner earnestly telling me that they love and respect my language so much they're trying to learn it. Imagine how that feels.
Please learn Welsh. Please learn it. We will love you for it. We will build you a statue. We will bake little Welshcakes with your face on in icing sugar. We will write you poems in complex rhyme. We'll name an Eisteddfod prize after you. We'll name at least, like, three sheep after you. Thank you, thank you so much for even wanting to learn. You're a delight and a marvel and a wonder. Your hair looks great today, as it does all days. You're a strong, independent human being of immense wisdom and compassion. If this were a Welsh myth you'd be a wise salmon the heroes came to for advice. What a fantastic human.
The welcome awaits if you choose to learn
Well I'm not sure which of you GREMLINS dug this post up and started reblogging it again
BUT!
I just want to address the message in these tags quickly:
(This is not me telling anyone off)
I am a fluent Welsh speaker, and I have met many people who learned Welsh from Duolingo, and they are 100% comprehensible. I do understand that when it doesn't quite seem to match up with what you personally know and are comfortable with you can get the impression that it's therefore Wrong, but it's not true. Duolingo Welsh is absolutely fine. Its method of teaching can be difficult in places, absolutely, but (a) it teaches primarily Cymraeg Byw, which is dialect-mixed learner Welsh anyway; and (b) real Welsh speaking humans also mix dialects. It's just not true that you aren't understood if you learn Duolingo Welsh.
I have a Belgian friend who has completed the entire Welsh course, in fact. I can literally just... speak Welsh to her now. She's not wholly fluent - she needs to go a little more slowly, and still has to translate in her head - but she's fully conversational. If you choose to use Duolingo as your method of learning, it is perfectly usable, and the Welsh you learn is completely fine.
(Pls learn)
Spoke to a gen z person the other night and apparently the young folks don't know about the very legal sites from which you can access public domain media (including Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and other Victorian gothic horror stories)?
Like this young person didn't even know about goddamn Gutenberg which is a SHAME. I linked to it and they went "aw yiss time to do a theft" and I was like "I mean yo ho ho and all that, sure, but. you know gutenberg is entirely legal, right?"
Anyway I'm gonna put this in a few Choice Tags (sorry dracula fans I DID mention it though so it's fair game) and then put some Cool Links in a reblog so this post will still show UP in said tags lmao.
Spreading the news to my followers - if you weren’t aware of this before, here’s the link to Project Gutenberg - https://www.gutenberg.org/
Project Gutenberg is a gigantic collection of books that are in the public domain. You can read the books through the site or you can download them in various formats so you can get the format you prefer for your eReader of choice.
It is free.
It is legal.
I was reviewing the list of the top 100 books downloaded yesterday and I saw a fair few that I had to read for college classes - so if you’re a college student and your professor assigns you to read Plato or any number of older works, check here before you buy a copy.
I reread the Anne series several years back - they were free through this. I need to reread Pride and Prejudice at least once a year, and my e-book version is from this. Someone recommended Jekyll and Hyde to me a few weeks back and I got a free copy from this. When I went to Haworth on my last holiday before the plague times, I brought books by the Bronte sisters with me to read or reread that I downloaded from here. It’s a great resource.
Yes yes yes! I was honestly so flabbergasted that this young person hadn't heard of the gutenberg project! It's been around for AGES, maybe longer than the kindle has? And it's such a huge project and wonderful resource! It used to be a household name (or maybe that's just my family, thanks to my dad being a cheapskate nerd [affectionate]). I was so glad to be able to share this resource and others with them though, and I wanted to make sure no one else was missing out!
If you look at the first reblog from me I also recommended a few other resources, most of which were from www.archive.org, home of the Wayback Machine! They run openlibrary.org, where you can check out ebooks of some public domain titles! They even have the Bone series by Jeff Smith!
And archive.org itself has all kinds of public domain media including music and movies! For Dracula fans, here's a radio show adaptation of the book, starring Orson Welles! And here's a 1920 movie adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring John Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore!
I'm so excited to see people falling in love with classic media through Dracula Daily! Let's keep that fire blazing!
Also, if you can't handle reading things, check out libirvox.org! it's a free audio book project taking public domain works and people doing free audiobooks! there's a lot of great stuff on there, but it takes things in the public domain and makes audio books out of them!
it's a super nice project, and you can find some really nice readers there!
^ chur sib it's librivox.org and it's fab