No googling, curious about something

Things are going well

Spoiler

Okay normally I'm on the side of "words mean whatever we need them to mean".

but guys, I don’t like the suggestion that it’s what is happening here. Being unfamiliar with the term, and guessing its meaning based on vibes, doesn’t mean you have equal authority on whether it’s “correct” with the community who actively use this word in a technical sense.

please do consider that if you haven't been exposed to the word in the context it's used in, "both are correct" and "you can interpret it differently" and “there is no right or wrong answer” and “it feels like it SHOULD be X” cannot be a fully realised take. Sure, linguistics recognises there are rules in which meaning changes - but “laypeople being unfamiliar with the word, and liking vibes better” isn’t one of them.

You can do that with most words, especially slang, and shape them to the needs of the majority, but this isn't like... a fanfiction word, invented for fanfic and, like, solely used for injured hockey players where it doesn’t matter if the injured limb swaps sides 4 times in a sex scene and phases through a stomach. It is, in its context, a bit more load-bearing (ha) than that.

It's fine to be unfamiliar with the context, and it's fine for words to change, but do just take a quick second to hear it in a native sentence!

One of the most common ways of using this word is to assess four-legged animals. "Favouring" is a specific grouping of behaviour - a hesitancy in gait, stiffness, reluctance to put weight on a limb. It’s often inconsistent, as the animal tries to compensate or conceal the pain. It may not be a full limp or obvious lameness, since prey animals especially will actively try to conceal this; favouring is a subtle reluctance, and a useful word for a very specific recognisable behaviour that the animal is usually trying to lie about. (That’s probably why it’s used in romance fiction, as it’s an interestingly romantic and stoic way to react to pain, and doesn’t mean the limb is inconveniently disabled. A fictional character favouring a wounded leg can wince attractively when it’s jostled, but it doesn’t matter too much if the author forgets and has them run to the door suddenly - “favouring” isn’t incompatible with “running” in horses either.)

The sentence “Favouring the off hind” is equestrian jargon: it means “pain behaviour on the back right leg.” It does not mean “opposite-pain in the not-on deer” and is not confusing in its professional register.

If you've only vaguely heard of "myeloma", and most people in a poll are guessing it's a skin cancer, that doesn't mean that myeloma and melanoma can now readily collapse into the same word - they're under active use in their native contexts, where the people frequently using them do need to communicate the difference between skin and blood cancer.

A poll of laypeople misunderstanding “myeloma,” or non-horse-people misunderstanding “favouring,” isn’t quite enough to indicate a full semantic shift and change of meaning of the term. The community that uses the term “favouring” in the context of “limb injury” - vets, farriers, farmers, commentators, equestrians - knows what it means and uses it consistently in the same way. They’re not confused. because to them, it isn’t a vibesy, sex-scene-hand waving word. It’s a cluster of pain signals.

If you aren’t familiar with that usage, then that’s really more about your own lack of familiarity. Not all interpretations DO carry equal authority, especially when one is just confusion/unfamiliarity. You just haven’t met it before, and that’s fine.

Tl;dr: I’m all for words changing meanings, but we shouldn’t be too quick to declare that when it’s based entirely on unfamiliarity and vibes-based readings.

"[L]inguistics recognises there are rules in which meaning changes - but 'laypeople being unfamiliar with the word, and liking vibes better' isn’t one of them."

anyway. official linguistics post

Do not forget the other victims of ICE

as much as we must mourn and stand in solidarity with Renee Nicole Good, please do not forget the other victims of ice raids, who are not white. Silverio Villegas González, a cook from mexico who was dropping his son off at daycare and was murdered Jaime Alanis, a farmer from mexico who fell off a green house at the farm where he worked to send money to his wife and daughter Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who was hit by a car Josué Castro Rivera, a garden from Honduras who was struck by a car And so many others who were killed or are dying in detention centres, prisons ect racial bias is always something we must be aware of, Renee will be focused on because she was a white woman and a US citizen, but do not forget all the other victims of ICE, may they all rest in power

and Keith Porter

Lovely Lady Lunatic! Sweet girl maniac!

Found out theres another (sorta) cannon Nimmie Amee design besides the 1 picture from the book. She actually has a few outfits from the 1903 musical but I think this ones my fav… She's absolutely lost her marbles and I love her

picture i drew

SO TIRED OF BEING IN THE CLOSET AUGHHHHRGH

i am this close (pinching emoji) to creating a facebook account adding all my relatives posting "hey guys i'm gay. lol." and dipping im so serious

you need to make more self-indulgent art btw. hyper-specific self-indulgent niche shit that appeals to You Specifically and maybe nobody else will get it or even like it but that's the point.

i've been obsessed with this video so i downloaded the video file off of youtube so even if the internet goes down i can always watch frogtimelapse.mp4

glad we don't have to deal with this shit anymore

You people are normal right. If I learn how to be a person from you it would be fine right

tumblr users perfec t people for put friendship in to lea\rn! tumblr community very Normal and Informative learn safely put Shift in tumblr. put Shift In tumblr. no strangeness ever in tumblr users because good social skills and linguistic conventions for Shift brain full with big human interpersonal interactions. a tumblr yes a place for a Shift put Shift in tumblr can trust tumblr for giveing good social skills to Shift. friend tumblr users

"I wish we met sooner" is such a gentle sentiment. I love you so much I not only want you in my future, but in my past too. I want to have known you when we were small stupid kids, have held hands together as we played outside. I want to have stressed out over exams together, nudging a mug of still steaming hot chocolate against your elbow to get you to focus. I want to have told you I love you before I did anyone else. I want to have held you in my arms when all those sad memories you describe to me were still fresh wounds. I want my past to have been full of you, and full of meaningful memories with you. I want my past lives to have been spent with you, whether as two lovers, or two housecats cuddling by the fireplace on a snowy day, or two flowers that just happened to bloom on the same day, next to each other. I want to have consumed your existence and intertwined it with my own since my birth, never to be separated from you for a moment. I want to have loved you throughout it all, for all time.

if sex work was legal the workers could unionize

I am fully serious about this btw. not "pro sex work" as in "there are no issues whatsoever within the industry", but "pro sex work" as in "these are jobs and the workers should be a) allowed to work and b) protected from their customers by the law"

people responding to this with stuff like "but that would just put sex workers in the same exploited position as uber drivers, cleaners, migrant workers, etc" and yes! good point! reform all of it! keep going!

you ever realize how able bodied people just are not expected to do things that cause them excruciating physical pain? like they’re just. not

if i shouldn’t use my cane because i can sometimes technically walk without it, it would just hurt like a motherfucker then abled people should no longer be allowed to use potholders to take things out of the oven because i mean

well they could technically pick up a hot pan with their bare hands. it would just hurt like a motherfucker

*sees an abled person using potholders*

i just think it’s really sad that you’re giving up on yourself like that

So my family has a Gay Pirate Plate.

Stay with me.

We do not know how the hell the Gay Pirate Plate was first acquired. This being a point of contention is actually pretty plot-relevant; the saga of the Gay Pirate Plate began with my grandmother and her sister, who, for some ungodly reason, both BADLY wanted the Gay Pirate Plate and believed it to be rightfully theirs.

I should back up, firstly, to establish: The Gay Pirate Plate is the cheapest, tackiest, ugliest plate in existence.

It is in no way a collector’s item. It is physically impossible for it to complement anyone’s decor, because the colors in it are garish. It’s just a ceramic plate with a gay pirate painted on it, and the painting is, this cannot be emphasized enough, extremely bad.

(How do we know the pirate is gay if he’s just posing on a plate? Listen. Fully 100% to stereotype, but he is. He is gay. There’s an energy. That pirate is a flaming homosexual. That pirate has sex with men and does it frequently. That pirate is fucking gay, all right, he just is.)

Anyway. The point is that this is an extremely cheap and ugly plate with a poorly-executed painting of pirate on it who is like a nine on the Kinsey scale.

My grandmother and her sister fought a blood feud over this plate for their entire lives. It would be on the wall in my grandma’s house, and then her sister would visit, and then it would be gone. She’d visit her sister and the plate would be on the wall and her sister would pretend it had always been there. She would steal it back, hang it up, and, when her sister visited, pretend it had always been there. This continued for DECADES.

When the sister died, the Gay Pirate Plate lived triumphantly in my grandmother’s house. And then my grandmother died. And my aunt, who had lived with her and been her carer throughout her life, rightfully inherited their house.

We visit my aunt after the funeral and stay with her for a week or two.

Me, my sister, and our dad. Her brother.

The three of us look at each other. We don’t say anything. We studiously avoid making eye contact with the Gay Pirate Plate mounted proud and ugly on the wall. We notice one another studiously avoiding looking at it. We notice one another noticing. We say nothing. We come to a silent consensus. We pack up to leave. We get in the van. Our aunt comes out to say goodbye. I loudly announce I need to use the restroom before we leave. She obviously stays outside to continue talking to my dad.

I take down the Gay Pirate Plate, stuff it under my oversized sweatshirt, go outside, and get in the van. She happily waves goodbye as we drive off.

Two days later my dad gets a phone call that opens with hysterical laughter and “You FUCKING ASSHOLE did you seriously STEAL THE PLATE–”

Anyway. The gay pirate plate lives in my dad’s house currently.

But he’s trying to get me and my sister out to visit him. And plate mounts are cheap.

The rules of Gay Pirate Plate are simple by the way.

WOE

PLATE BE UPON YE

STATUS UPDATE

I texted this image to my family at around 2am their time last night and woke up to appropriately indignant messages about theft, betrayal, etc.

nothing could have prepared me for how gay the gay pirate plate was