what up gamers, i have a playlist of my favorite video essays if yall need hours and hours of (debatably) educational content
i cant trigger tag for all uh a hundred and some videos so watch at your own risk and everything
fengshui, also known as chinese geomancy, is largely known today in the west as a kind of pseudoscience, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s actually a really practical philosophy when it comes to interior design, architecture, and even urban planning, which is why it’s been put to practice for thousands of years, and is still used today, to varying degrees. this is something you can pick up on if you really break down a lot of the advice given in fengshui
some examples of good fengshui are like: 1. don’t have your bathroom facing your kitchen (because it smells bad and is unsanitary) 2. don’t have a door opening directly to a flight of stairs (because it’s easy to fall down and get injured) 3. don’t put a mirror in the doorway (you’ll get spooked) 4. if your house is located at a Y-shaped intersection, put a large rock in front of your property (so a speeding car doesn’t demolish your house)
as you probably noticed, all of them are completely practical advice for designing a house that’s just comfortable to live in. it’s entirely functional architecture, and it’s really noticeable when a house or apartment has bad fengshui because they’ll be miserable to live in, whether they’re too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, dont’ get enough natural light or air circulation, if it’s just relaly poorly soundproofed, really easy to get injured in, or if it just doesn’t work with the landscape around the property
but of course, it doesn’t just stop at the level of individual houses, it also extends to planning entire cities on a large scale. a famous example would be chang’an (now known as xi’an), which directly inspired the urban planning of kyoto in japan
as you’ll probably notice, the city is extremely grid-like, and things are positioned in very specific spots, like the markets being located along the x-axis on the east and west in order to best facilitate trade. the palace is located in the north with its back against the north so that during the winter, the large structure can break the cold northern winds. the main road goes down the middle of the city and opens up to the southern gate so that in the summer, the cool breeze from the south can easily enter the city and disperse heat. it’s for reasons like these that cardinal directions (north, south, east, west, center) play such a huge role in fengshui - they’re an essential part of working with the landscape and climate in order to best build a house or plan a city
anyways, that being said, you’re probably wondering why, despite all of this, fengshui has the reputation it has today, and unfortunately there are reasons for this: 1. fengshui is communicated by its practitioners in mystical terms, with energies and elements and good fortune and whatnot. this is a really effective way at getting people who aren’t in the know to follow practical advice if they think improving their house is gonna give them good energy and good fortune (which it will, because they’ll physically feel better from living in a better environment), but this also gives fengshui an air of pseudoscientific mysticism 2. orientalism plays a huge part in how people in the west conceive of china, and for many centuries, european and american orientalists have pushed the idea of china being this ancient, mystical wonderland of sorts, and as a result, ideas like fengshui get translated into the west along those lines as a kind of mysticism, without people realizing that fengshui is ultimately a practical philosophy 3. western countries (america esp) has really strong pseudoscientific and anti-intellectual movements of their own, with antivax and spiritual healing and whatnot, and since most people don’t understand what fengshui is to begin with, it becomes really easy to lump it in with pseudoscience
but ultimately fengshui isn’t really any of that, it’s about designing spaces that are comfortable and healthy to live in. but i hope this clears things up!
my little cousin confidently declared that mother nature had a counterpart named daddy electric and i feel like this concept needs to be explored
Daddy Electric and Mother Nature sounds like a cute 70s act
Daddy Electric is Bill Nye's cousin
I want this to be real I want it to be real so badly
Well If you just donate to my kickstarstfhsujfmsnckd hblb fnvlcb m
Poor dear... Walked right into an electric daddy
this is so cute and wholesome and I'm dead over it I'm crying
This is the exact opposite of hiding coins at the beach for your child with a metal detector
Dad enrichment activities
They are not as high-profile as the WGA, but I would like to bring everyone's attention to the imminent strike action by thousands of hotel workers in Los Angeles. They are set to go on strike tomorrow, July 1st, 2023.
More than 15,000 hotel workers are seeking higher pay, better benefits, and working conditions. This includes an across-the-board $5 an hour raise, as well as affordable healthcare and better pensions. They also are seeking a ban on the use of E-Verify, which is used to deny employment to undocumented workers and workers involved with the criminal justice system. You can follow what is happening at their Twitter.
During a hike a few years ago, I was, like, taking the proper tick precautions, tucking my pants into my socks, etc. and everyone was making fun of me for being so freaked about ticks, and later the topic of genie wishes came up and one of the girls there said, "I'd wish that ticks could fly so Newt would kill himself."
I appreciate the concern, but I laughed so hard I almost threw up.
Pls do not reblog anything with the old disability pride flag, it does cause seizure and migraines, please use the new one which was created by the same person with the feedbacks of many other disabled people.
This is the safe one:
Dont use the zigzag one, your making disabled space inaccessible for a part of the community.
[Image ID: tumblr tags reading “I appreciate the fact that it’s by the same person” and “like a quality of life softwar[e] update but for a flag”. End ID]
patch notes 1.0.1: visual contrast no longer causes strobe effect when scrolling. Zigzag design was difficult to visually process and anxiety inducing, and was removed. Colors have been lightened and desaturated. For the safety of all users, please make sure you are up to date.
Sometimes it blows my mind that there are people that don’t wear glasses/contacts. Like they can literally see with no aid. Like they wake up and just be out here seeing. What a wild concept.
And people say stuff like ‘lol don’t you hate it when you look up in the middle of the night and see a spider on your ceiling’ like bitch (!!) i could have Nicholas II last czar of Russia hangin from my ceiling fan and i would be none the wiser
i think my fav interactions with strangers are the ones that are like
"excuse me, sorry, are you a boy or a girl?"
me: "oh, either's fine"
"no i mean uh, like, are you a man or a woman?"
me: "no, yeah, either's fine."
and they just short circuit and walk away.
like, if you're asking me what i ID as. either is fine, i'm either. that's my answer and it's valid.
if you're asking what's in my pants, well, i'm just here to infuriate you.
So no affirmative action, no discrimination protections for same-sex couples, AND no debt forgiveness? This sucks
Another piece of news:
This court fucking sucks.
Not much we can do right now for college applicants of color, indebted graduates, or lgbt people facing discrimination from businesses, but we CAN donate to the Navajo water project https://www.navajowaterproject.org/
I have never felt so validated in never having given up on Tumblr.
Oh neat, Twitter is encouraging their users to put the phone down! Wish they'd have introduced that before I deleted my account
Something that I think should be an important part of solarpunk aesthetics is screws.
Look at your smartphone. No screws. You've got to have specialized tools to get inside your phone to repair something. There are certain pieces of tech that are glued in place and glue can't be undone without permanently breaking the bond.
But screws!
You can take apart a broken old radio, repair what's broken, and, if you were careful in taking it apart, you can put it back together and have a fully functioning radio and all you need is a common screwdriver!
It's hard to build screws and other mechanical fasteners because it requires more planning than clamps and glues, but isn't that what solarpunk is all about‽ It's about care and sustainability and and a radio or a computer built carefully with repair in mind is a sustainable computer that stays out of landfills and in use.
Screws are proof that God loves us and wants us to fix shit
remove the word “cabal” from your vocabulary please. signed, a very tired leftist jew.
before anyone can start making bullshit excuses:
"From French cabale, from Medieval Latin cabbala, which in turn is derived from Hebrew קַבָּלָה (kabalá, “Jewish mysticism”, literally “reception, something received”) (such as knowledge)."
"1520s, "mystical interpretation of the Old Testament," later "an intriguing society, a small group meeting privately" (1660s), from French cabal, which had both senses, from Medieval Latin cabbala ["Jewish mystic philosophy," 1520s, also quabbalah, etc., from Medieval Latin cabbala, from Mishnaic Hebrew qabbalah "reception, received lore, tradition," especially "tradition of mystical interpretation of the Old Testament," from qibbel "to receive, admit, accept."]"
This is not a case of "oh ~some~ people have misused this word," it is etymologically antisemitic.
People complaining that the checks ruining the formatting of the website have forgotten their roots! This is the shitty formatting website and always has been
In retrospect this is almost definitely the reason why putting your response in the tags is so common and popular
discussions about language from the discord call i was just in w/ friends:
- “my girlfriend can never remember the english word for ‘rubber band’, so she just calls it ‘circle rope’, and i’ve accidentally started saying it too”
- “when i was a kid i didn’t realise that when my grandmother spoke english she used to mix in italian with it, so i used to say ‘allora’ instead of ‘then’ because i just assumed it was english too and my parents didn’t realise until i wrote it in my schoolwork once and confused my teachers”
- “when i first met my girlfriend’s mum she asked me if i wanted to eat thai food and i tried to say, in thai, “sorry, thai food is too spicy for me”, but i accidentally said “sorry, thai food is too sexy for me”
- “one time my flatmate went to print off something at her friend’s office and heard her greet her boss in French, and asked her if she had been greeting him like that everyday. she realised that her friend had been saying something like “good morning, i’m horny” to her boss every day for the last six months”
- “that time i got really drunk on a boat a guy came up to me asked me where i was from in english, and i replied in swedish. every time he spoke to me i replied to him in swedish and he asked my friend if i spoke english, who had the joy of telling him that english was my first language and i was just really hammered”
- “my parents came to visit me at the end of my stay in sweden and i was so excited to show them how much swedish i had learnt, so i took them to a pub and went to the bartender to order. i ordered everything in perfect swedish, the bartender waited until i finished and then said, “i’m really sorry, but do you speak any english? i don’t speak swedish”
- “one time my friend was on a train in the netherlands that stopped because of losing electricity. the announcement was given in multiple languages, 3 of which he could understand, and all of which made sense until it got to the english one, where the conductor announced that the train had “lost its elasticity”
TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries (x)
"
In 1933 African American linguist Lorenzo Turner and musicologist Lydia Parish visited Harris Neck and recorded 53-year-old Amelia Dawley singing a song that had been taught to her by her mother. The song, in a language unknown to Mrs. Dawley, had been passed down in her family from mother to daughter as far back as anyone in Harris Neck could remember.
In 1997 Amelia’s daughter, Mary Moran, and other members of the Moran family were invited to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where they were welcomed in Freetown by Sierra Leone’s President and then flown by helicopter to the country’s interior. There, in the small village of Senehun Ngola, Mary and Bendu Jabati met and sang this song together for the first time. Years earlier, Bendu’s grandmother had told her that this song, which had been passed down in her village from mother to daughter for centuries, would one day reunite her to long-lost relatives.
Through a series of amazing and perhaps miraculous events – and lots of hard work – beginning in the late 1980s, anthropologist Joseph Opala first rediscovered this song and then, with the help of musicologist Cynthia Schmidt and others, traced the song from Senehun Ngola to Harris Neck
"
Ebay: world of clay & earth
Etsy: world of shadows and mirrors