realizing cis women also struggle with “passing” a lot of times and has a lot of the same issues with dysphoria trans women have (issues with putting on/losing weight, dissatisfied with bust size, not feeling “feminine” enough, etc.) has done a lot to combat dysphoria for me, cause it’s like, wow, we really have a lot more in common than we have in difference huh

terfs are starting to find this post, and i gotta say: terfs getting mad at a post that explicitly acknowledges cis women’s struggles and with notes full of cis women agreeing and talking about their own struggles and experiences really speaks volumes about how anti-feminist, and frankly misogynistic, terfs really are, that they don’t even give a shit about cis women’s struggles and experiences

One-shot tabletop RPG where you play as a bunch of medieval English peasants trying to trick the royal tax-collectors into believing that your village has no taxable assets. It plays out exactly like a new-school heist caper RPG, except in reverse, with the players devising and carrying out the scheme which they must then prevent the NPC "party" from uncovering. Do you fake a plague? Pretend to be mad? Construct a second, much shittier village and try to keep the tax collectors so distracted they never think to ask what's behind that hill?

Also— figuring out where you're gonna hide several thousand eels.

this actually gets so much funnier if they're doing this on a manor by manor basis. lots of villages were actually split btwn multiple manors, so you could just have a bunch of villagers running across the borders with barrels of eels and their good horses/cows in a benny hill-esque sprint to avoid the tax collectors

bonus points if the manor's reeve (also usually a peasant) and the lord are also in on it because what self-respecting medieval person didn't love tax evasion?

As an unrelated tangent, though realistically taxation during the medieval period was mostly based on land and livestock, I think for game purposes is might be fun to introduce some of the goofier taxation schemes of the early modern period – for example, the infamous window tax – on a scenario-by-scenario basis in order to shake things up. Maybe have a big lookup table of increasingly absurd taxation schemes, and randomly select one or more at the start of each session to be imposed in addition to the basic land-and-livestock stuff just to see how players will contrive to get around them.

(Heck, maybe even have an element of potential misinformation whereby one of the randomly selected bonus taxes may not actually exist, but the players don't know which one – watch them waste half the session trying to weasel out of paying a nonexistent tax on pants.)

Editing next week's episode of the podcast, and I noticed we introduced our guest as having a PhD from Notre Dame.

At the time, I thought nothing of it, because usually when one says that, it's understood that you mean the university in Indiana, and that is in fact the case here -- she has a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame, the one in Indiana.

But, as we all know, Notre Dame just means "Our Lady" -- i.e., Mary -- and so lots of things are named that, especially when Catholics are doing the naming.

There are of course other educational institutions called "Notre Dame". When I was growing up, we were all aware of the nearby "College of Notre Dame of Maryland" -- not because of any particular prestige the college possessed, but because its initials spelled CoNDoM, which is a very funny thing to happen to a Catholic institution.

I double-checked this when making this post, and apparently they changed their name to "Notre Dame of Maryland University" in 2011 after over a century of being called CoNDoM.

But you could iterate this idea into absurdity.

There is of course the cathedral:

A variety of just... places:

And, naturally, the original:

...this whole post is just such nonsense. Maybe that fever hasn't really dissipated yet.

I don't think this one deserves them, no.

Of all the posts I have made, why is this the one attracting investors? Madness, surely.

Explain your reasoning plzzz

I chose the ten million because with $1,000 a day for life I can help myself and my family over a long period of time and sure, as other people have said, in about 27 years I'll get to the point where I've surpassed the ten million...

...but I can help a LOT of people with ten million now, as well as setting myself up pretty well for a few years, and to be brutally honest I'd rather have that than be thinking too hard about what 2051 but a steady income's gonna look like.

I don't know, I might not be thinking too clearly, I just got an email that strongly insinuates that I'm about to lose a second casual job in as many months, so I'm very much give me lots of money imaginary hypothetical benefactor.

Highlights from the conference room where they nominated contenders for Word of the Year 2023:

• They put Skibidi Toilet on the projector to explain what “skibidi” means.

• Baby Gronk was mentioned.

• We discussed the Rizzler.

• “Cunty” was nominated.

• “Enshittification” was suggested for EVERY category.

• “Blue Check” (like from Twitter) was briefly defined as “Someone who will not Shut The Fuck Up”

• The person writing notes briefly defined babygirl as “referencing [The Speaker]”. He is now being called babygirl in the linguist groupchats.

• MULTIPLE people raised their hand to say “I cannot stress this enough: ‘Babygirl’ refers to a GROWN MAN”

When technical issues occurred while voting on “kenaissance”, everyone had to reassure the speaker, Ben Zimmer, that he was “benough”

In a stunning upset, the last-minute nomination “(derogatory)” DEFEATS “cunty” as the most useful/most likely to succeed word of 2023.

Someone renominates “babygirl” for word of the year, saying that they have spent the past year trying to figure out if people are “little meow meows, blorbos, or babygirls”. This is in front of a room of hundreds of people.

ENSHITTIFICATION WINS WORD OF THE YEAR 2023

While verifying this was true (it is) I discovered that there is a wikipedia article on enshittification

Even though this means I'm going to end up with a poop emoji on my headstone, I'm ok with it.

UM.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T KNOW

@mostlysignssomeportents IS THE PERSON WHO COINED THE TERM "ENSHITTIFICATION"

And we are so proud of our babygirl.

My roommate pacing the floor, talking to their partner on the phone: "NEIL GAIMAN called COREY DOCTOROW a BABYGIRL on MY POST"

The radius and ulna are among my favourite bones specifically because they do this

I hate this. I hate that they do this. I think about this every time I rotate my wrist. It seems like the sort of thing that would go wrong in all sorts of horrible ways and leave a bone sticking out of my skin. and yet it keeps happening. every day of my life.

I rotate my arms regularly just because I like it when they do this.

iiiiiii dont. think thats how bones work

Here are two videos on Reddit demonstrating how the radius bone rotates around the ulna bone: link / link

Yeah i doubt someone would make these gifs for the purpose of an online joke so I have no choice but to believe it

i have a degree is bones (bioarchaeology) this is how bones work and i hate it

fun fact! dinosaurs can't do this. that's why the "bunny hands" pose is exceptionally wrong.

ouch our dinosaur wrists!

ayo i found 2 pages with head angles of humans and animals, could be useful to anyone reading this

hoomans

animals

Holy FUCK, this is an amazing tool.

Reblogging for my artist fellows.

Reblog this!

The creator of the original, the animal reference tool, made their own human reference tool which allows you to search based on different body parts and poses!

https://x6ud.github.io/pose-search/

@poplitealqueen

PFFT. Headcanon accepted.

#she has the bravery of leia#the skill of luke#and the dollar symbol eyes of Han

Finn: You’re going to scrap the remains of the Death Star for parts?

Rey: *sliding an arm over Finn and Poe’s shoulders while lifting BB-8 with the Force to also be included* No… We’re going to scrap the remains of the Death Star for parts.

Grumpy bird

Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264, f. 112r

I adore this because even if the colours are off this is so clearly a black-crowned night heron based on vibes alone. Somebody saw that hunched little guy clambering around some branches one evening and went "well that's just delightful"

This was shared as a "bad" joke but I was so charmed by it I've been thinking about it for days.

Genuinely curious.

Genuinely flummoxed by the age choices on this poll.

I can not stress enough that in Star Trek, Amanda Grayson being an incredibly loving wife AND shitty parent is a feature, not a bug. She loves Sarek with her whole heart. And as much as she loves Spock, every single time she has to choose between them, she'll back Sarek. Spock grew up knowing his mom loved him, but that she also did not understand him and would never have his back.

Before people in the mainstream even had the vocabulary to describe what they were seeing, they understood on a gut level that Spock was a neurodivergent, mixed race adult son of two incredibly charismatic and successful parents.

There are so many layers of relatability here.

A surprising lot of people in very loving and devoted marriages aren't great parents. An unsurprising lot of powerful people with prestigious careers also aren't great parents.

Folks who grew up with parents who were great at their jobs and devoted to one another but who just couldn't relate to or understand their kids could see themselves in Spock. Moreover, he demonstrated that if they took a path radically different from what their parents wanted, they could become incredibly successful and even well liked in a whole different sphere.

Most of all, for folks who could see how much their parents adored one another but never felt like that love extended to them, there is something profound in the way Kirk looks at Spock like he hangs the stars in the sky. He's a source of hope that even if you grew up as your family's ugly duckling, if you get out from under their influence you can find someone who will perceive you as a swan.

*based solely on the medication situation, not your personal ability to survive an apocalypse (because who knows what type of apocalypse it is!)

Bullies try and give me shit for using too many cremes and moisturizers but their punches slide off harmlessly and I slip-slide away down the halls like an oily little penguin 

amok time

a modern renaissance painting

Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF

Excellent resource if you're new to sewing and want to start doing some clothing repair!

Professional seamstress here, who has taught intro to sewing many times, saying: this guide is excellent!