gotta respect a man who's willing to ask when he doesn't know something, tho

I live by the motto, “if you can’t buy what you want, make it.” And this motto came to life recently in the form of a floral mosaic dining table for my back deck.

Our deck table had been showing its age already when the wind caught the umbrella and cracked it. I wanted to replace it with a mosaic table because I’d been enjoying that art form recently. But I couldn’t get one the size I wanted so I got creative.

I spent a few weeks looking for tile and figuring out a very loose design concept. I started by picking a limited set of tile shapes and a color palette.

Once the tiles arrived I had a piece of particle board cut to size for the base and I experimented with different motifs until I settled on a selection of floral shapes that gave me plenty of variety to fill space without locking me into one repeating pattern.

And then I was off! I basically doodled my way around the table, attaching tiles with Weld Bond (I went through 4 full bottles!) and rocking out to the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack.

Once the florals were done it was time for the background…

Over 3,800 1cm glass tiles make up the not-design part of the design. It went pretty quickly though because I just had to fill the space, leaving room for grout.

Once I had the tile done, my husband assisted with disassembly and reassembly. We used the legs off the original table for this one (waste not).

One huge bucket of black grout later…

She is finished.

I enjoyed making it and just looking at it makes me so happy - I can’t wait for all the dinners we’ll have around this table 🌼❤️

This is the best idea of all time

Unless you speak whatever the language in this is (maybe Russian? It sounds at least related to Russian), you won’t understand exactly what they’re saying

You will however, understand exactly what they’re saying from the context of the video

And you will get to hear this person’s wonderful laughter

Sound definitely needs to be on

Sounds like German to me, but this is hilariously bad planning.

It’s definitly not german, but god i need to know who planned this bathroom

it is 100% Russian, and i am wheezing in the same language now

going to attempt a rough translation because this is so funny to me

it’s not going to be very literal because trying to translate every mumbled phrase and conversational word will be Very Annoying

“So here’s your–here’s our hotel room. The door to the bathroom is clear, so you enter the bathroom, and everything’s normal, you look at yourself, and everyone who’s in the hallway can see you. And over here’s the shower, it’s relatively private. You enter the shower, and like wash yourself– *breaks down laughing* Well okay okay, you decide to wash your hands, or sit down on the toilet and– *another fit of laughter* Fine, fine, it’s actually all okay because you grab this and you…uh, and you’re like ‘I want some privacy’”, and you close–you close the curtain, and then you close this curtain– *laughs* And you close that curtain too, and now you want to sit on the toilet and you’re like ‘Okay everything’s closed, you can’t see in", and so you sit down on the toilet– *intense laughter*“

Huh, apparently glass bathroom doors are an increasingly common problem in hotel rooms? To the point that someone made a website about it and is working on a database of hotels that have actual bathroom doors??

in the whole greenland conversation i feel like there's not nearly enough acknowledgement of the fact that greenland is already suffering under imperial rule. seeing wayyyyy too much tacit validation of denmark's possession of greenland on socials today. look into reproductive abuse against greenland inuit women by the danish state. US acquisition of greenland would be bad but the status quo is not good. this is not a matter of sovereignty, i only wish it were a matter of sovereignty, it's just a bunch of imperial powers playing RISK with indigenous people's lives again

“The tests cover attachment, personality traits, cognitive abilities and psychopathology, and take about 15-20 hours. It is almost impossible to pass them, says Nellemann; even he and his colleagues have failed to do so. Questions can include “What is glass made of?” and “What is the name of the big staircase in Rome?” 

[Kiera] was nervous going to the doctor, because she says she had previously been given the ultimatum either to have an abortion or face the baby being taken away after the birth. She agreed to undergo another parenting competency test in an attempt to cooperate. But in the session, the psychologist brought up her previous abortions and asked her to show her parenting skills by playing, singing and talking with a doll, checking whether she made eye contact. “The problem is, I didn’t grow up with a doll,” she says, adding that her real baby, Zammi, was busy kicking in her stomach. “They made me draw and they were criticising it, that I didn’t draw a face. I drew a mum and baby.”

On Friday morning, I walk through Keira’s open front door as rain falls in torrents outside, to find her sitting in her living room under soft fairy lights and the silently flickering television, arranging flowers. Every week she takes a different arrangement to Zammi so that she will associate them with her mother’s visits. This ceremonial act of devotion is part of how Keira survives.

While she is there, she thinks only of Zammi. Her own feelings can wait till she gets home. It is always hard. Before she gets out of the car, she puts into words the pressure she is under. “It feels like somebody holding your throat. And they decide how much you can breathe.”

we’ve gone from the yee haw agenda to the ye olde thot programme

Ah yes, those slutty slutty Landsknecht shorts:

The bare-legged / hot-pants look was fairly common, since the whole point about being a Landsknecht (or Reislaufer, their Swiss equivalent) was to look outrageous.

Most period illustrations of Landsknechts are black-and-white woodcuts…

…though in 1905 a book called „Geschichte des Kostüms“ - History of Costume - assembled a bunch of black-and-whites and added colour.

If they look excessively gaudy, they’re not, because these next prints were coloured in-period by an artist called Erhard Schön, and it’s fair to assume he was representing what he saw.

In short - or in shorts - those reenactor costumes are spot on. :->

Something mentioned nowhere in this post that I have just learned from googling: these guys were not Ye Olde Medieval Dandies. They were 15th-16th century mercenaries. Pretty hardcore, too. They were exempt from sumptuary laws (ie the rules that said you couldn’t wear certain colours or cloth or styles) and apparently their response to that was technicolour thotpants.

I was complaining earlier about costuming in both “historical” settings and in fantasy/scifi. This is exactly what I mean when I say a knowledge of actual history would enrich the conceptual creative palette for things like “hardcore mercenary outfits.”

ive always rly liked the idea of a member of a group of adventurers having what everyone assumes is very well trained hawk and then at the end of their journey its casually revealed that thats actually just his buddy whos a shapeshifter and just rly likes being a hawk

the guy also like thinks everyone knows bc he never tries to hide the fact that the hawk is a person but everyone assumes hes always just joking. like the others being like "damn its crazy how he knows exactly what you want him to do its like he knows english or something." and the guy is just like "well yeah thats his first language so ofc he's fluent??" and they all go "haha good one" and move on, leaving him confused

they just think hes a quirky guy that really loves his pet and says things like "the 9 of us" even tho there are clearly only 8 people! he just cares about the bird so much he counts it as a group member haha !

Link to the form:

they need to invent clubbing for boring sober people who don't like loud music or crowded group dancing. what's the "she should be at the club" for this hypothetical not-me demographic.

roundup of various common suggestions in the notes:

first good suggestion on this post in years, FINALLY true equality

people love to say "your cat is just being cuddly because it's cold out and he likes the warmth" like that detracts from it somehow. this weird little creature lives in my home and his paws and the tip of his nose are cold and his solution to this is to go to the big weird hairless ape who feeds him, and curl up on its stomach and fall asleep there bc it's nice and warm. that too is love!!!!

People really want expressions of love to be some 'pure' thing done for no intrinsic gain for some reason and like being a living thing with wants and needs is bad somehow.

a reminder that ursula le guin’s writing schedule was the best writing schedule.

please stop writing "viscous" when you mean "vicious", it produces the weirdest mental images ever

"a viscous murder" yeah i don't want to know what that could look like

it looks like the Boston Molassacre of 1919

#and vice versa btw#i don’t know what a vicious fluid would be like#and i don’t want to find out

it looks like the Boston Molassacre of 1919

Look, if you're having a bad day, here's a 6,000 year old pig-shaped pottery pot.

My day's been fine can I still have the pig pot?

Have a row of them

Each Benoit Blanc film takes place in a different season and classic murder mystery setting.

Knives Out: Autumn in a country house

Glass Onion: Summer on a private island

Wake up Dead Man: Spring in a small town

So the next film in the cycle needs to be set in winter on a mode of transportation.

The people yearn for Murder on the Orient Express

I keep hearing comments about how wine mom libs only dislike ICE because they’re deporting people illegally, which, obviously 1) not true that would not be enough to inspire the protests we’re seeing right now, but 2).

It’s actually a really great thing that in the United States you can refuse to open your door to a cop and say “come back with a warrant” and they have to listen and if they don’t you can sue them into the fucking ground.

That’s actually a really important thing to be able to do. That’s important for like every person here.

I don’t think we’re really giving enough credit to how knowing some magic words and phrases can give you tangible rights in this country and it’s being stripped from us in real time on camera.

The fact that due process is something that’s supposed to apply to citizens and non-citizens alike is really important and I think it’s worth defending.

Yes, actually.

I watch a British TV show and someone is being read their rights during an arrest and instead of being encouraged to stay silent and wait for an attorney, they’re being encouraged to speak even if they’re guilty.

No, I prefer my version thanks.

When I watched Anatomy of a Fall, I had fits during the French courtroom scenes because you’re telling me that the opposing attorneys are allowed to interrogate you on your feelings? And you have to answer? Ridiculous!

I will also take our version.

And, yes, due process has to apply to all of us because how do you tell who it applies to without it?

Tbh its not just because you can’t tell who it’d apply to without it applying to everyone. Due process should always apply to everyone because it should be considered a basic fucking human right. The fact that Ive seen so few people actually say that is honestly a bit infuriating.

So turns out the US are setting babies up for a lifetime of illness and increased likelihood of liver cancer in Guinea Bissau in the name of “research”

7000 newborns will be denied the neoneatal HepB vaccine until 6 weeks to ‘prove’ that the HepB vaccine is linked to neurodevelopmental disability on the directions of the Department of Health vis RFK Jr and in collaboration with researchers in Denmark, despite the fact that the vaccine’s efficacy rate and best protection is when administered to newborns, and the total lack of correlation between vaccination and neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Guinea Bissau has some of the highest rates of HepB on the continent, and infants are the group at the highest risk of contracting HepB, leading to chronic hepatitis & long term hepatic diseases like cirrhosis and liver failure as well as increased chance of liver cancer.

The study can’t be carried out in the US or Denmark because it fails almost every benchmark for medical ethics — surprising absolutely nobody, it is in fact heinously unethical to expose babies to preventable disease that causes liver failure and liver cancer, but the “study” has been green lit in Guinea.

Fuck the US imperial project in Africa, fuck RFK Jr and the US Department of Health, and fuck every single collaborative researcher in Denmark. This is some nightmare Tuskegee Study shit and every single individual involved deserves to be in The Hague.

what gets me is that if everyone woke up tomorrow and went ohhh the weight loss industry is EVIL evil like killing and disabling people for profit including children who don't have medical rights evil, and was always an evil scam, and everyone in the industry woke up tomorrow and publicly apologized for being evil and donated every cent they had to helping people recover and their companies dissolved and blew up and every medical doctor woke up tomorrow and went ohhhh shit of course that was wrong and unhealthy for everyone, i have to go apologize and fix what ive done to all my fat patients, and every weight loss supplement turned into pure clear water and every weight scam business location exploded and was instantly transformed into a green park and playground and library and shelter, and everyone was suddenly awakened to the reality like a dancing plague had suddenly passed. if all that happened the industry could disappear tomorrow and literally nothing of value would be lost. at all. there is literally nothing good or redeeming about any of this. its pure shit. its entirely evil.