Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:

The IKEA Litmus Test for Writing Spicy Scenes

I asked one person if this actually worked and 100% of respondents agreed, so I guess I'm posting this. Sorry.

So, you've written a sex scene, but find yourself asking, "Is this really sexy?" Thanks to whatever demons love inside my brain, we now have a simple method to answer that question!

All you need to do is replace all mentions of Naughty Bits with "Tab A" and/or "Slot B" to verify the fundamental sexiness. Is it still sexy? Can you make it sexy?

Example incoming — Imma try adding a partition because, in spite of the language, this is clearly... not IKEA instructions ._.

Also for the immense Cringe Factor like seriously what is up with me?

Fantastic.

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

Can't believe no one's mentioned Consider the Fork yet, which is about how environment/resources shape our ways of eating, which shapes both our culture and our concepts of politeness. So interesting, really recommend!

"Scientific studies can be biased" Yes, and the solution is More People Doing Science, not less science!

things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.

WOAH WHAT?

That is profound. I noticed this by accident when asked about adjectives by a Japanese student. She translated something from Japanese like “Brown big cat” and I corrected her. When she asked me why, I bluescreened.

What the fuck, English isn’t even my first language and yet I picked up on that. How the fuck. What the fuck.

Reasoning: It Just Sounds Right

Oooh, don’t like that. Nope, I do not even like that a little bit.  That’s parting the veil and looking at some forbidden fucking knowledge there.

How did I even learn this language wtf

I had to read “brown big cat” like three times before my brain stopped interpreting it as “big brown cat”

I’m kinda reading “brown big cat” as “brown (big cat)”, that is, a “big cat” - like a tiger or lion or other felid of similar size - that happens to be brown. “Big brown cat”, on the other hand, sounds more like a brown cat that’s just a bit bigger than a regular housecat - like a bobcat or a maine coon cat or something like that.

yeah, a brown big cat is almost certainly a puma. a big brown cat is probably a maine coon.

yeah, if you put the adjectives out of order you wind up implying a compound noun, which is presumably why we have this rule; we stripped out so much inflection over the centuries word order now dictates a huge amount of our grammar

Just looked up why we do this and one of the first lines in this article is, “Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.” so I know it’s a good article.

Things this article has taught me:

TL;DR: No one knows why we do this adjective thing but it’s pretty hardwired in.

@deadcatwithaflamethrower Linguistics tidbit.

Since it’s never credited, this is from Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence, and just one reason why I think it’s required reading for anyone interested in prosecraft. Every page is this useful.

i think “video games aren’t really the violent child-corrupting threat some parents worry they are” and “certain circles of gamer culture are incredibly toxic and can lead people down dangerous/hateful ideological rabbit holes” are ideas that can absolutely coexist

Artificial violence is not actually a corrupting influence but hanging out with assholes sure is.

Too bad the prophet Cassandra never met Odysseus

They say if she made a prophecy Nobody would believe her

I’ve gotta say, that is exactly the kind of stupid thing that probably would circumvent a curse.

Cassandra: YOU ARE ALL GOING TO REGRET THIS SO MUCH YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW. 

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in. 

*A couple of months later* 

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit. 

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure. 

Cassandra: *in tears* I love you, new family. 

Cassandra: Penelope, I’ve had another vision.

Penelope, sighs: Go tell your father.

the original? on my dash?

'Just switch to linux', 'Just switch to firefox', 'Just switch to ellipsus', 'Just buy a VPN and pirate it' okay, or- hear me out- tech companies can stop making their products worse, because I shouldn't have to change my entire workflow and spend time and money learning new programs and tools just to have a bearable online experience

Wishing financial freedom, good sex, laughter and perfectly seasoned food for everyone reading this

Desktop is a magical Place you can visit, but cannot live at Desktop, you must leave Desktop from time to time. You cannot take Desktop with you to bed or work or school. Desktop has a Place, has a home, and Desktop knows its Place.

Tablet and smartphone are malicious, hungry ghosts that haunt your every waking moment. They have no place, no home, they wander the earth Searching, Craving your time and attention, a bottomless void hell bent on devouring your soul because they have none of their own.

huge fan of ship dynamics where person a does not know how desired they are and person b is about to pop a blood vessel about it

prometheus: hot take,

the greek gods: no give that back

I disagree with the wording of "cooking is art, baking is science". No, art has far lower stakes than cooking - if you set out to make art, it is simply not possible to fuck up so bad that the end result would not count as art if you're still willing to call it so. It might be ugly as hell and look nothing like what you meant it to be, but art is art nonetheless. However, if you start cooking with the goal of making food to eat, it is entirely possible and actually quite easy to fuck up so bad that the end result does not count as food, as it isn't something you could or should eat.

Cooking is a science: you can, should, and even must fuck around to find out, as even if you end up making something terrible, you have now learned what happens if you do that. You have gained valuable information. And sometimes, you accidentally strike gold and have invented something tasty and awesome.

Baking is religion. You have been told how things must be done, and if you stray from the righteous path that was shown you, you just go to hell. Doesn't matter what it was that you fucked up, you go to hell forever. And if the scriptures that were given to you are somehow incorrect, you go to hell for following them. Fuck you and good luck.

I thought I couldn’t bake to save my life… then we bought a house with an actual working oven and all became clear.

So scripture is not all that is needed, you need a decent place to worship.

@copperbadge this seems up your alley

If the system ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess! Accounting may not be the oldest profession, but someone had to keep the books for them.

I mean, in theory I know that Excel is based on the structure of earlier accounting technology that's been around for hundreds of years -- what do we think we did to track commerce before computers? -- but it still kind of blows my mind to, for example, look at my ancestor's journal from a whaling voyage in 1770 and see spreadsheets in the back.

fanfic writer starter pack

Sigh.

11. Writing 500-10k words daily, but NOT A SINGLE WORD of it is for any of your purported ‘main’ WIP ideas.

Duuude don't question my version of events I'm such a reliable narrator. I'm literally the protagonist and the main character. You can literally read some of my internal thoughts, that clearly means you have complete access to an objective view of my thoughts and feelings and a correct impression of my characterization and the events unfolding around me. I'm not omitting any information from the audience. Nevermind that timeskip just now

And those actions that totally contradict said internal thoughts don’t exist, either.