There was a young man
from Peru, whose limericks
were really haiku
Only now, at the end, do I discover dollmaker avatar creators.
I. cannot. draw. But I can build. So this is my poor Bhaalspawn Ember, made on Rinmaru Games Mega Fantasy Avatar Creator:
She is rightly less than impressed with me leaving her stuck in the middle of the Shadows of Amn endgame for five years.
But I am happy I have found a way to make myself some visual representations of her that feel more accurate than a recoloured Viconia portrait.
caption by @/ashleytheebarroness on tiktok: People reach for the Gestapo comparison because it sounds extreme and foreign. It lets white Americans pretend this kind of policing came from somewhere else. But ICE looks closer to slave patrols because that's our history. Local enforcement. Racialized suspicion. Vague authority. Taking people first, justifying it later. Gestapo is a warning. Slave patrols are a mirror.
You know I hadn’t made this exact connection at first but something in my gut told me that people comparing ice to the gestapo didn’t quite feel right. This comparison does fit a lot better.
Historically, slave catchers would tear up freedom papers held by freedmen in order to destroy the facade of legal protection they had. Similarly, ICE have been repeatedly documented confiscating people’s birth certificates, passports, visas, etc, and throwing them away. This white supremacist state will always eschew the fictive legal protections it claims to have once it gets the chance, and it always has
There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?
I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!
Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.
A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.
Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...
I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.
Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar
The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come
Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.
DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.
I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It’s about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.
Also, The Rice Theory of Culture https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=orpc By Thomas Talhelm
Consider the Fork isn’t about food itself exactly but all about cooking technology and how it changed how and what we eat
many people know loons from heated rivalry, but now laser loon is the symbol of the resistance here
This one I found on Reddit is my current favorite. Get 'em, bird.
crazy how you can get used to working around problems that have very easy fixes. for like 6 months we used a hand towel to jam a kitchen cabinet closed because the hinges were broken and it turns out fixing it took me like $5 and 20 minutes. bedroom door has been squeaky for years and all it needed was a lil wd40. im sure this can apply to mental health too but i wouldnt know about all that.
I haven't had functional electricity in my house since I bought it 5 years ago. Every time I turn on the oven, it trips the circuit.
I bought an air fryer.
Australian Federal Election 2001: Pranksters follow around Prime Ministerial contender Kim Beazley in an attempt to sneak fake microphones into news footage
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