holy hell

I'm back from my vacation and ready to take more commissions. So if you ever want a sparkly illustration of your favorite ttrpg character I'm your guy.✨ Commission prices

bruh

OP forgot the best part, which is the last known instance of this phenomenon within the maritime sector

Been getting really into fish but specifically only the kind of weird and cute passing ocean floor fish that are fundamentally fucked up a little bit

Elaborately Constructed Shops and Homes Translate Tokyo’s Distinct Architecture into Miniature Models

The 4 approaches to “orphaned etymology” problems in fiction

1. Obviously we can’t call it French toast if there’s no France so we’re just gonna replace it with something else.

2. The word abattoir sounds too French so it wouldn’t make sense for it to be here without a France. Even though we use English without there being an England.

3. This is called a Ming vase because when you tap it it makes a “Ming!” sound.

4. I am JRR Tolkien and every single word I write has a fictional etymology attached to it that I am translating into English for your convenience.

HEY EVERYONE

Do you enjoy the idea of Sticking It To The Man, but also you’re fucking tired? Maybe you appreciate the idea of direct action of some kind but ADHD, depression, or physical disability has made it nigh-on impossible for you to actually, you know, do shit?

Well, friends, allow me to introduce you to a small but significant thing you can do to Stick It To The Man while also benefiting your own mental health:

I haven’t bought green onions in a year.

If you’re sitting here thinking “holy shit, Nina, those look like hell,” you’re not wrong—they’re recovering from some unintended abuse. They survived two weeks in triple digits (that’s upward of 35 degrees for y’all with the weird sciencey math units) while I, uh. Forgot to water them. The outer layers dried out to protect the inner layers and as soon as I watered these thirsty bitches they went

They literally looked dead three weeks ago. So yeah, they’re not too pretty right now, but you wouldn’t be either, and they’re bouncing back nicely.

So, how to do this simple thing?

1) obtain dirt and a pot. You’ll want to do this first because the next steps go surprisingly fast. My green onions live in a 6” terracotta pot and some gardening topsoil, but you can use potting mix (not Miracle Gro tho, that stuff is trash), dirt from outside if you live in a place where it’s safe to do so, any kind of soil will do provided it’s clean and doesn’t contain pests (although most pests will leave alliums alone because they hate the smell). To be clear, because we love and respect our biosphere in this house, “pests” in this context means “bugs that specifically will attack green onions while providing no benefit to either the onions or any other plants you may have.” The pot is mandatory, however—if you want to do this year-round, you need to be able to move the onions inside/outside as weather allows/demands.

2) buy some green onions. You can skip straight to step 4 from here if you want, but if you’re planning to use them first…

3) cut them only to the tops of the white bits. In other words you ONLY want to use the green part.

4) put the white bits in a ramekin, measuring cup, etc. with some water. I’ve used things as big as juice glasses for this, but that’s really on the big end. Put your container in a window with some sun.

5) 3-5 days later, you should see about half an inch of root growth on the bottoms of your onions, and possibly the beginnings of a tiny green spear at the top. (Maybe a bit more, if they’re overachievers.) Plant them in your pot with just a bit of the white sticking up overtop of the soil.

6) water just a little bit, every other day. You want the soil to always be moist to the touch, but never out and out wet.

7) watch them sprout. This is excellent for your mood, by the way. Science says having and tending green things provides visible benefits to both your physical and mental health. We also know that making tangible things is good for your mental health, and green onions grow quickly, so you get benefits fast.

8) As they grow, you can reduce watering to three times per week because they’ll be able to store more water. The leaves will feel firm and “thick” (you’ll understand what I mean when you get to feel a properly-watered green onion) when they have enough water, much like a succulent’s leaves will get thicker and firmer when it’s well-hydrated, so it’s relatively easy to tell if they need a drink.

9) trim your onions as you need them! I try to never take more than 3-4 leaves in a week—about half a bunch—so it has time to grow more, but if you live with a bunch of people you can get around this by just starting more green onions. Buy three or four bunches and plant them all. They don’t go bad because they literally just grow until you need them. I’ve actually planned meals around “I have not used enough green onions lately and the leaves are bending under their own weight, I need to trim some tops.” Although the ones you see in the grocery store have open tops, you’ll notice closed spears on your new leaves, and these are completely edible. Yes, I regret to tell you they cut off and probably waste the tapered bits just for The Aesthetic. They’re just like any other green part of the onion.

AND YOU WILL NEVER NEED TO BUY GREEN ONIONS AGAIN. Just add a little soil now and again to replenish the nutrients.

Yes, they’re cheap. Yes, this is a small thing. But many small things added together are a big thing. And when you’re confident in your green onions, if you have the desire and ability to do more, there are many other plants you can grow from grocery-store starters.

GO FORTH. ENJOY THIS KNOWLEDGE.

Mint is also good for the mental health garden. Almost killed it and that actually seems to have given it a sense of purpose.

Just make sure it’s in a pot and kept well away from all other pots.

This also more or less works for any lettuce you get with the root/ 'stem' end still attached like romaine lettuce, you cut it down until there's about a 1-2 inches of leaves left (usually at that point it's mostly the whites and ribs of the plant) and the stem end, put the root end in some shallow water for a couple days until a) roots start regrowing or b) the leaves start regrowing from the middle, than replant it in some soil and a 6" pot! it takes longer than ops green onions but a free head of lettuce is free! Especially if you have the butt end of lettuce that went bad/got slimy, save the root and plant it the way described above and at least it won't be a waste, plus fun plants !! You can also just trim the leaves as needed for eating, wash well and leave the root in the soil, it'll keep regrowing !

She gone girled irl

Spent this week on making a bunch of faux oldschool anime screencaps. Had a blast making these, I’m especially happy with the background in the third one. I’ll probably keep making these, so look forward to more of these in the future!

A fun thing about computer skills is that as you have more of them, the number of computer problems you have doesn't go down.

This is because as a beginner, you have troubles because you don't have much knowledge.

But then you learn a bunch more, and now you've got the skills to do a bunch of stuff, so you run into a lot of problems because you're doing so much stuff, and only an expert could figure them out.

But then one day you are an expert. You can reprogram everything and build new hardware! You understand all the various layers of tech!

And your problems are now legendary. You are trying things no one else has ever tried. You Google them and get zero results, or at best one forum post from 1997. You discover bugs in the silicon of obscure processors. You crash your compiler. Your software gets cited in academic papers because you accidently discovered a new mathematical proof while trying to remote control a vibrator. You can't use the wifi on your main laptop because you wrote your own uefi implementation and Intel has a bug in their firmware that they haven't fixed yet, no matter how much you email them. You post on mastodon about your technical issue and the most common replies are names of psychiatric medications. You have written your own OS but there arent many programs for it because no one else understands how they have to write apps as a small federation of coroutine-based microservices. You ask for help and get Pagliacci'd, constantly.

But this is the natural of computer skills: as you know more, your problems don't get easier, they just get weirder.

you know you've made it when you're googling problems and ending up with 0-9 results

#you don't actually have to be good to have these problems#you just have to be obsessed with a micro-issue that no one else cares about

this is a confession to the star wars fandom because I have to get this off my chest. last summer just for fun I taught myself to read aurebesh and. you fanartists have Got to Continue putting the most Hilarious stuff into the background of your art because it is literally my favorite thing

here’s a couple of excellent things I’ve read since I started keeping a list just last month:

- “I hate drawing lightsabers”

- “Idk what to put here”

- “stupid fucking sign”

- “eat paste, it’s good”

- an entire news article on a phone screen which I actually found really impressive

- a few funny misspellings but the best one so far was ahsoka somehow becoming “asock”

- wanted poster of obi wan that read “wanted for fashion crimes”. the caption translated it as “wanted for high treason”. like blatantly lying to my face. love it.

- door on a ship was labeled “cake storage”

- “shopping list: frogs, hair gel, lightsaber polish”

and my personal favorite:

- “if you’re reading this you’re a fucking nerd”

the statue in the bottom right is Le génie du mal, carved by guillame geefs to replace a different lucifer (known as either Le génie du mal or L’ange du mal) carved by his younger brother. why did joseph geefs’ lucifer get removed from the cathedral? it was too sexy. the statue was too sexy by far.

st. paul’s cathedral in liége went from one lucifer, whom they called ‘too sublime’ and removed because he was distracting ‘pretty penitent girls,’ to another lucifer, who they’ve left there for 170 years even though he’s so hot that satanists visit the cathedral to meditate in the presence of this Most Sexy Of Lucifers

here’s how i imagine that went down.

liege cathedral: hmm. you know what we need? a nice satan for our church. let’s ask joey geefs

joseph geefs: sculpts this

liege cathedral: no!! too hot!! now we all want to fuck lucifer! we need a different satan. let’s ask… the sexy lucifer sculptor’s BROTHER. yes. willy geefs is older so he definitely doesn’t want to fuck lucifer

guillaume geefs, who DOES want to fuck lucifer, and the only sign of his being older than his brother is that the lucifer he wants to fuck is somewhat older: sculpts this

liege cathedral: shit. well we don’t have any more money for lucifers so i guess we’ll keep this sexy lucifer

mlm, straight girls, and satanists in the vicinity of liege: NICE

her eyes were the sickly green of the sky before a tornado, and to his horror he discovered she could throw cows around just as easily

to his horror? weak shit. outta my way gayboy im boutta get it

all of our trobles seem so small from up here