i was talking to my mom about cardassians and said something along the lines of ‘what must it be like to be a cardassian civilian. like abstractly knowing the rest of the galaxy thinks of your species as ‘the evil ones’ and kinda sorta knowing your government runs labor camps and torture prisons and is a military empire, and it’s a huge deal for everyone else in the galaxy, but you just like run a restaurant so it’s not a big part of your daily life, so you just like, go about your day and make soup and don’t think about it’ and then halfway through my sentence i actually heard myself and then had to go sit down for like ten minutes. like sat down in a chair and stared at the floor for ten minutes
In 1400s a dog dueled who he suspected to be the murderer of his owner
and won
love that this starts with “the Chevalier Maquer killed Aubrey de Montdidier”. Not only did medieval French people convict the guy on testimony (of a sort) from a dog and a confession extracted under duress, but apparently whoever wrote this is also taking the dog’s word for it.
All you fuckers are like “pop tarts are ravioli!” “Uncrustables are ravioli!”
I will hit you in the face with the concepts of convergent evolution and analogous structures
I politely request that you do this.
You asked for it. This will get long and I’ve honestly put too much work into this but here goes.
So first thing first, to understand this concept you need to know how a phylogenetic tree works. A phylogenetic tree is a diagram of what species are related to what, and uses branches and nodes to show this. Real trees can get very large and complex, but let’s start with this example with 4 species.
Is species B more closely related to species A or to species D? Looking at the edge you’d assume A, because it’s closer. But in reality A and B are the least related of the group- they have the farthest common ancestor. The common ancestor is the node at which the branches split. Trace backwards to the split that contains A and B and you’ll find it’s all the way back at node 1, while the split that contains B and D is the closer node 2. The closer the common ancestor, the more you’re related. B and C are the most closely related of the group, because they share a very recent common ancestor. A, being the furthest related from B/C/D, is the outgroup.
Another concept that people find hard to grasp is that just because two animals look similar, that does not mean they are related. Relatedness is determined by evolutionary history, shown by shared structures. Shared structures that are also seen in the most recent common ancestor are called homologous, and they can show an evolutionary relationship. An example could be the tooth structure of a lion and a cat. However, sometimes two unrelated animals come up with the same idea on their own. Birds, bats, and butterflies all have wings, but they all arose independently- the most recent common ancestor of all those was VERY far back and definitely did not have wings. Those non-related but similar structures are called analogous. You cannot compare them as if they are proof of being related.
Mammal natural history is especially tricky with this. These two tiny mousy things: (A vole and a shrew)
Are MUCH more distantly related than these two: (A deer and a dolphin), who some argue are even in the same order.
(Images from Wikipedia commons)
Okay, so that’s the science lesson for the day. But what does this have to do with ravioli? Well, you can track the history of food somewhat similarly to the evolutionary history of animals. It’s a little less exact due to the changeable nature of making food, but history and relationships can be seen. I claim that the filled shape with sealed edges that is shared by ravioli, pop tarts, and Uncrustables sandwiches is an analogous structure, and grouping all three into one genus is not supported by their evolutionary history. (How is this a stronger thesis than most of what I wrote in college?)
Before we get bogged down in the details, let’s start with an overview of the big picture. Do we organize food by the culture that created it, or by its components, or by its style? If we were comparing something like sushi to something like ceviche, cultural differences would definitely come into play. However all three of the food families in question (pocket pies, sandwiches, and Italian pasta) are Western European or American in origin with heavy naturalization in white American culinary culture. Thus, we can mostly ignore cultural differences and focus on the structure.
There’s not a single common ancestor to ALL food like there is in animals, but with some grouping we can get to plant-based at the kingdom level, grain-based at the phylum level, flour-based at the class level, and divide that into the subclasses of Savory and Sweet.
Each of these two subclasses branches off into many, many infraclasses and orders. The three we are most interested in I postulate are as follows:
Putting the pie in an entirely sweet subclass, I realize, is not entirely in keeping with history as meat pies were and are rather common. If I cared enough to edit all of my diagrams at this point I would go back and do so, but this is a Tumblr essay that will maybe be fully read by a dozen people so I will call it fine. Either way, pie is the common ancestor to which we trace the pop-tart.
As you can see, each of the parties in question (Pop-tarts, ravioli, and Uncrustables) have an easily tracked evolutionary line and their filled wheat-flour-based shapes are analogous structures, not shared by a common ancestor.
Finally, to conclude my point, close relatives of the species in question can also help determine if they are related. If the close relatives of both species share the same traits, then they can be more seriously studied for relatedness. Let’s look at the closest relatives of ravioli (other members of the fresh pasta family), uncrustables (other members of the Sandwich family), and pop tarts (other members of the Pie family).
Even the closest relatives often do not share the filled form, so saying that poptarts and uncrustables ARE ravioli ignores culinary history as well as common sense.
If you’ve read the Silmarillion, you know who Fëanor was. If you don’t, Fëanor was the dickhead who created the Silmarils: three indescribably beautiful and magical jewels that contained the light and essence of the world before it became flawed. They were the catalyst for basically every important thing that happened in the First Age of Middle Earth.
It is thought that the inspiration for the Silmarils came to Fëanor from the sight of Galadriel’s shining, silver-gold hair.
He begged her three times for single strand of her beautiful hair. And every time, Galadriel refused him. Even when she was young, Galadriel’s ability to see into other’s hearts was very strong, and she knew that Fëanor was filled with nothing but fire and greed.
Fast forward to the end of the Third Age.
Gimli, visiting Lorien, is also struck by Galadriel’s beauty. During the scene where she’s passing out her parting gifts to the Fellowship, Galadriel stops empty-handed in front of Gimli, because she doesn’t know what to offer a Dwarf. Gimli tells her: no gold, no treasure… just a single strand of hair to remember her beauty by.
She gives him three. Three.
And this is why Gimli gets to be an Elf Friend, people. Because Galadriel looks at him and thinks he deserves what she refused the greatest Elf who ever lived—- and then twice that. And because he has no idea of the significance of what she’s just given him, but he’s going to treasure it the rest of his life anyway.
Just look at that smile on Legolas’s face in the last panel. He gets it. He knows the backstory. And I’m pretty sure this is the moment he reconsiders whether Elves and Dwarves can’t be friends after all.
[Image: the Star Wars logo in blue on a starry black background, subtitled Episode IX: Rise of the Galaxy, by fictionalverity.]
Poe and Chewie bring the Falcon in for a gentle landing. The team—Poe, Chewie, Finn,
Zarisa, and Delya—steps off the gangplank onto grass flattened and
scorched by their arrival. “What now?” Zarisa asks Poe.
The distant whine of a speeder’s engine comes closer. Poe shades his eyes to get a better look. “We meet the welcoming party.”
The speeder barrels toward their group. Just as Finn grabs Poe’s
shoulder to pull him to safety, the speeder’s pilot yanks at the
steering handles and brakes. The pilot looks human, with a thick gray
mustache and skin a shade darker than Poe’s. He lifts his goggles to
reveal warm brown eyes, lined with age and laughter.
Chewie roars a greeting and lifts the pilot bodily from his seat. The
man grins and slaps Chewie’s back. “Good to see you too, friend.” When
Chewie sets him down, he casts an eye over their little group. His smile
fades. “What are you doing here? I got Leia’s message, but I can’t. Not
this time. There’s someone here I can’t leave.”
Death of the author: Treating the author’s stated interpretation of their own work as merely one opinion among many, rather than the authoritative Word of God.
Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.
Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.
Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.
Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.
Weekend at Bernie’s of the author: Insisting that the author would personally endorse your interpretation of the work if they happened to be present.
2) Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna form a prayer circle. Sacrifice some goats. Dedicate some earrings. And pray that the mighty rage of Riordan’s ghost keeps that level of nonsense away.
Ooh, what made me think I could beat Shae with the news …
This is a good time to remind myself of what I told myself when I found out they were adapting The Raven Cycle for television:
I once had dinner with Megan Whalen Turner (!) (!!!) (I’m not yet over that, btw) and a young man who was perhaps even a bigger fan than me. He told her that if she was ever offered a movie deal for her books, he hoped she didn’t sell out. She looked at him and said, “If I’m ever offered a movie deal, I’m going to take that check and cash it before they change their minds.” He argued that it would be too easy to ruin the books in a movie. She replied “Aren’t the books still sitting on your shelf? Does a movie take them off your shelf and burn them or something?” It’s my new favorite perspective on books-to-visual-media. We all love the author and want them to be successful. If part of that success means that they’re paid large sums of money for the right to mangle the narrative, then I’m going to support that, because they /deserve/ to get large sums of money, on account of how they made a thing that brought me joy. And the books don’t go away, no matter what the movie looks like.
I recently read an article about a therapy group for depressed people who had all attempted suicide at some point. The breakthrough question for them was, “If your goal was to be just as miserable as possible, what would you do?” Most of them listed things like not getting enough sleep, or isolating themselves from everyone… the list goes on, but the point is, they listed things they already do. But now they saw those “coping mechanisms” for what they really were: things that were actively making their condition worse.
I read that article at 2:00 AM, asked myself, am I TRYING to be miserable tomorrow? And it was easier than usual to put my phone down and fall asleep. Even my intrusive “lying down” thoughts about meaninglessness and existential dread were easier to suppress when I framed them as things I’d think about to purposefully make myself feel as awful as possible.
Fuck that is helpful
A video from that article
Everybody, I am so sorry I can’t find the article, but this video gets the main points of it across I think.
I should mention, I am not a psychologist, I am very depressed myself, and I still engage in misery-inducing behavior all the time. This revelation didn’t “cure” me. But I think (hope?) it’s a big piece of a puzzle I haven’t finished myself.
Anthony Hopkins in Thor wasn’t phoning it in I’ve seen him phone it in this was just him turning the ham up cause they told him he could be god and get paid a million dollars for it
Taika Waititi had to tell him he was too over the top could you imagine how hard he must have been going
