Anyway Discord is running a survey on future AI integration. Bring the heat.

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.

I didn't think it was possible to shorten words verbally without removing syllables but sailors managed.

boatswain -> bosun main sail -> mains'l tree nail -> trunnel etc. etc. etc.

May I add a few more?

coxswain - coxsun

crossjack - crojik

forecastle - fo'c'sle - folksil

gunwale - gunnel

mast- mist

sail- sill

schooner - skunner

tackle - taykull

topgallant mast - t'garns'l mist

topgallant sail - t'garns'l sill

based on the research i've done (and lived experience) of nautical linguistics- the syllables are the most important part of the word! for every command- historically and on modern tall ships, the command must be repeated by the crew exactly is it was heard: no conjugation, no changing of word order, nothing (referred to as a "call-back"). so it makes sense that these words are shortened in this manner.

boats are big, the ocean is loud, and there's a lot of stuff that gets in the way of words traveling coherently across the deck. it's also so rare to get a command when you aren't already entrenched in something else, and so may not be able to turn your head before acknowledging that you've heard. i've linked an NPR article from 2015 about how words travel in different environments, but basically the big takeaway for this scenario is: consonants get lost easily in windy or obstructed environments. there's been many a time (even in fair weather) where i'm having a conversation, on the opposite side of the boat, or even down below when an order is given, where i just hear the cadence of a command i'm familiar with and know immediately what i'm supposed to be doing.

on particularly well-practiced crews, i notice that even the tonal pattern of the officer giving the command is repeated. even without the tonal match, it's critical for the officer to have immediate feedback AND immediate response. when you get an order, you lay into it with urgency; therefore, if you repeat just as you head to your station, redirection can be given swiftly if an incorrect order has been transmitted, BUT if you heard it right the first time there's no delay in the task.

quick example (callback italicized):

"haul away!" "haul away" clear! exactly the same! i know they heard and the sail is doing the thing!

"haul away" "hauling" sounds an awful lot like holding.. is something wrong? did we forget something? was someone not ready? oh the sail is going up they said HAULing

also explains @ltwilliammowett 's example of "topgallant sail - t'garns'l sill" ... in "gallant" and "garns'l," less than half the consonant sounds are the same but the SYLLABLES match. its just the representation of what the garbled mess that comes across the deck usually sounds like for that Specific Thing!!!

Merging these versions because they're both really interesting!

I wish kinky sex ed wasn't so stigmatized even among left-leaning "sex positive" circles. Everyone's all "uwu I'm a sub I'll do anything you ask" okay mommy wants you to read The New Bottoming Book so you learn how to sub without hurting yourself since your sex ed up to this point is porn and your ex boyfriend Jared who liked to choke you incorrectly

I’m so glad you asked! Let me list off what I’ve got for you:

Books I personally recommend:

- The New Topping Book and The New Bottoming Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy

If you’re having kinky sex at all, you need to read at least one of these two books. Point blank. They’ll teach you the very basics of negotiating properly (which is critical!), and help you identify what you are and aren’t into.

- Mindfucking Mindfully, by Sir Ezra Where this book really shines isn’t actually in helping you “mindfuck” people, it’s in taking a close look at how to do so ethically. It’s a great answer to the question “how do I get someone to consent to something and still surprise and shock them with it?”

- Real Service by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny This is a slightly niche pick but there simply isn’t a better book on the subject. It’s written from a 24/7 M/s perspective, which is not what I do, but the book itself is an indispensable guide to giving and receiving service. The phrase “if the Master doesn’t want it, it isn’t service” will be burned into my psyche for quite some time. I love this book a lot. Maybe my favorite out of all of these.

- Enough To Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation, by Princess Kali This one’s high on my reading list; I’ve heard it recommended by a number of people whose opinions on these things I trust.

- Pretty Much Anything Midori Has Ever Done Midori is a great resource for this stuff - I haven’t personally read much of her work, but she’s a well known sex educator and great at what she does. She’s known for bondage, but has a lot of range beyond that.

- This Negotiations Worksheet from Bex Talks Sex This is what I default to using a lot of the time for negotiations. Forget BDSMtest, you don’t need that, it’s no good. Just look through this worksheet’s wordbank with your partner. Big fan especially of the “how do you want to feel?” section.

Books I can kind of recommend:

- The Ultimate Guide to Kink, edited by Tristan Taormino This book is weird. There’s a lot of good info for experienced players, but some of what’s written here skeeves me out. I think if I had a top that thought the way some of the tops in here think, they would not be topping me for long. But there’s some good techniques and so on to pick up that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I liked the distinction one of the authors makes between being sadistic in the sense of inflicting pain and being sadistic in the sense of doing something your sub doesn’t “enjoy.”

- The Ritual of Dominance and Submission, by David English Man, this book fucking sucks. The writing and editing are garbage, and the fear and protocol play described need way more careful negotiation than he ever lets on, let alone recommends. This is some 50 Shades bullshit. The only time I recommend this book is to tops like me who tend to be very affirming to their partners and need a guide on how to really scare them - when their partner consents and when you negotiate it, which this book sucks at teaching you. Really good content on fear, punishment, and protocol play, really terrible presentation of the topic though. Don’t read this if you don’t already know what you’re doing.

- Paradigms of Power, by Raven Kaldera I love this book. Great book. Very focused on 24/7 M/s play though, and, being an anthology, some chapters are better than others. If you can’t read something and pick out what is and isn’t for you, don’t bother. But some really great inspiration, and generally pretty well written. Big fan of the discussion of leather throughout the book.

Hope some of these are helpful for people ^-^ for the average person reading this I recommend New Bottoming/Topping, but they’re all important parts of my library and I’ve recommended all of them to friends at some point or another.

May I also suggest Hell on Wheels and Kneeling in Spirit by Raven Kaldera, d/s companion books that address kink with a disability. They're a should read for everyone, imo. You never know when you or a partner are going to have changes in your body that affect what you can physically do. Temporary illness/injury and even just age can affect your sex life.

I'd like to suggest Better Bondage for Every Body! It goes really in depth on anatomy, pain processing, self-tying, and has chapters specifically focusing on how to do rope bondage on/for someone who is disabled or has chronic pain, which was really important to me.

reblogging specifically for these last additions bc I don't think I've ever seen resources for kink w/ disability

animorphs has been released, officially, to the public for free as pdfs

they're kids books which are like 100-odd pages each for the main books

you have no excuse. read animorphs. you will not regret it

"You will not regret it" factoid just statistical error. Average person reads 1 animorphs, goes "what the fuck now i have nightmares" and goes back to tv. Tumblr Anifan, who has had their entire life rewritten by reading the series over 40,000 times, is an outlier and

The zip file with the entire series can be found here.

I know it's not the silly stuff I usually post, but please hear me out, as it's important to me.

It all started with the Russian government making it illigal to talk about queerness amongst children, which was greatly celebrated by the homophobic majority back in the day. Later, they made it punishable for queer adults to publicly share their stories amongst other adults too, which was also celebrated.

On 30th November of 2023, the "lgbtq+ organization" was titled as "extremist", along with all the pro-Ukranian and anti-war organizations, which led to radical, aggressive censorship of all media in Russia. Then, big western social media were banned, along with monetization on them, which made activism for queer/pro-Ukrainian Russians even more difficult than it used to be, as it's required to dox yourself to the government by putting your "content creator" number (obtained from the official public services app "Госуслуги" by giving your sensitive information) in your BIO to get monetized legally. That has affected the right to privacy of not only Russian activists, but also of every Russian content creator.

12 days ago, on September 1st, 2025, they published a new law that punishes those who GOOGLE SEARCH unfavorable information about the government, "extremist" media, or anything that might suggest opposition to the Russian government and its actions. It's not just illegal to "seem" anti-war, or pro-gay, or pro-trans anymore — It's the MINDSET that's being criminalized right now. It's illegal to QUESTION, it's illegal to RESEARCH, it's illegal to INFO CHECK, it's illegal to EDUCATE YOURSELF, it's illegal to even TRY to FIND OUT THE TRUTH, even if you're doing it ON YOUR OWN.

So when I tell you,

It's NEVER about your safety and it's NEVER about "the kids",

you better fucking believe me.

I recently discovered laundry stripping and y’all, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, you’re underestimating.

[image ID: a screenshot of the notes on this post, featuring several people indicating they want to know more. End ID.]

OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself “necessary” is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?

Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.

Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (I’ve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, there’s a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. I’ve been going for 12-24.

What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.

Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.

You will notice I didn’t suggest any further pretreatment, and that’s because 1) you don’t want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.

When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatment…to deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to “well, it’s old” dinginess. I was planning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. “I need to reshape it” is nothing.

Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but we’ve been trained to believe it’s all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is “normal wear and tear” and can’t be fixed.

It’s utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from “I keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasons” to “I could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectable”! The pajama bottoms I’m wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!

I do not know how often you’re supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention it’s way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I don’t wear white, so I can’t test the “it will make whites look almost-new as well” claim, but I’ve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.

Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.

Go forth. Rejuvenate your clothing. Strip your laundry.

I saw that! My reaction to seeing that my suggestion got into the story was very exited (and very high pitched). That whole scene was great, I love how you did it!

did you know? the human body only uses 15% of it’s bones at any given time. imagine what would happen if we had access to 50%, or even 80% of our bones

is this what deku was thinking when he figured out he had legs?

deku, finding out he has leg bones: jesus fukc i can’t fuckin wait to break these bad boys

Fact: Waluigi has never actually been caught in a T-pose. Whenever you’ve seen him standing with his arms rigidly outspread, he’s doing it on purpose. That purpose is sinister.

It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol

Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s. 

So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem. 

BUT! Let’s look closer! 

“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.

See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.

Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.

So it’s not actually a song about rape - in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.

remember loves: context is everything. and personal opinion matters. If you still find this song to be a problem, that’s fine. But please don’t make it into something it’s not because it’s been stripped of cultural context.

This is actually really interesting. I’ve never known a lot of the background to this song.

my favorite student is this little excitable turkish kid who waves me over at lunch every day to holler a joke at me & then urges me to get the other teachers to come listen to his jokes. my favorite so far is Q: what do you call somebody who doesnt want you to go to the bathroom? A: a teacher (the other teachers did not find it as hilarious as i did)

this child, hollering at me in the middle of class: YOU NEED PUN. 

me: yeah i do whats ur pun

this child: what was the real name of the titanic? …the fathership. ……….because fathers are Big.

me, at recess: hey u got any jokes today

this child, stumbling off a log & dramatically yeeting his paper hat full force for no apparent reason: i have,,,,, ONE. [dramatic pause] i really have to KETCHUP on fortnite 

todays the last day i have this kids class & he was like “u need a GOOD final joke” & i want yall to know his final joke to me was: why are frogs so happy? because they eat what bugs them. he then proceeded to hug me for a solid minute while a bunch of other kids came & took turns hugging me,

Video

I love this. There’s another one where they go to a wine tasting and give people a glass from a $20 bottle and they hate it, then a glass from a $200 bottle and they love it. But then they reveal that both glasses are actually from the same $20 bottle.

Wealth and it’s trappings is a false construct meant to elevate those that

Have.

So proud of my mother for doing her own research after I sent her that meme. A sign she hung in her car window.

Stay woke

Is this true?

Not only is it true, it gets worse. The Susan G Komen For The Cure Foundation has actually successfully sued “competing” charities, because (paraphrasing) their “message or branding was infringing.”

You read that correctly: they took money that people had donated to cure cancer, and hired attorneys with it, to sue ANOTHER group of people trying to find a cure for cancer, who, in turn, had to us their donated money to hire their own legal counsel to defend themselves.

Yeah signal boost because not enough people know about this and seriously FUCK SUSAN G. KOMEN THEY ARE THE ACTUAL WORST

Some links…

http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org/

http://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/for-the-cure/

http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/132728/susan_g_komen_foundation_has

(reblogged in honor of my mother, who died of breast cancer, 11/13/97)

Reblog every time I see it. Roughly once a month.

Also please never forget the pink fracking drill bit

that’s right fracking you know, a process using chemicals known to cause cancer that leech into the water supply

http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/10/baker-hughes-fights-breast-cancer-pink-fracking-drill-bits/

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/pink-drill-bits-bring-complaints-komen-tie-fracking-n223166

It’s that time of year again, please remember Komen is the actual worst

Komen For The Cure is pretty much awful.

My mother died in 1996 from breast cancer. Most cancer charities are scams, in that people throw fancy parties and get rich off them and very little money goes into research or support for patients. Here are some vetted cancer charities that get good scores on Charity Navigator and pay medical expenses or fund research:

Breast Cancer Research Foundation

Cancer Research Institute

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

63 four star rated cancer charities on charity navigator

Signal boosting this

Reblogging from myself because it’s October now

Hi y’all, this time of year again and I’d like to remind people that I volunteer at a haunted house called Scare for a Cure and we donate our proceeds to charity.  We’ve recently branched out to support some charities for our local elementary school, but still every year we donate about $20,000-30,000 to the Breast Cancer Resource Center, which is a fantastic resource for people who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.  If you’re close to Manor, TX you could patronize Scare for a Cure or volunteer with either organization, or you could just donate money to either organization and know that your donation will count.

Happy Halloween!! Eat lots of candy and stuff!!!

I see this one like every year and I still dont know the characters involved but I love it, it’s not Halloween without the pumpkin dragons

Callout

Tumblr user @yellingcrab says they’re human, but we all know they’re a cryptid

this is a lie, im a human. i have bones

Are they your bones?

yes they are bones and are also mine

Are they inside your body?

this is going to lead into son bone voring inquisitions and i wont have it

How do you know about bone vore? Is that how you acquired your bones?

listen.

i EARNED 

these bones

hey mia quick question what the fuck

key example of how having a folder with 2000+ keyworded calligraphied shitposts is incredibly handy

same with the folder

PLEASE STOP. MY DASH IS DESTROYED AND SO ARE MY NOTES. END MY SUFFERING

: ) 

i did the thing