Between the stranger things finale conspiracy and people clamouring for the BBC to decanonise the 13th doctor onwards and conspiracies that Disney Is Gonna Retcon The Star Wars Sequels, people seem to have gotten it into their heads that canon has to be good

And honestly I've no idea where the fuck this comes from. Canon can and should suck absolute ass sometimes

Canon sucks. That's why there's fanfiction.

We're suffering from a lack of shows like Star Trek, where one episode would redefine what you think it means to be human and how to view empathy and compassion, and the next would be absolute dogshit. Just to reset everybody's expectations again.

Actually, Anon, fandom is significantly older than fan base or fanbase; the OED gives the first known citation of fandom meaning “the community of fans of a thing” from 1903, while their first entry for fan base isn’t until the 1970s. If you compare the frequencies of the two terms in Google Ngram Viewer, you’ll see that fandom has historically been far more frequent, with fan base running a distant second (and the closed form fanbase an even more distant third).

The OED also rejects your portmanteau hypothesis, though I suppose sportswriters from the 1900s might’ve been trying to be quirky and different when they coined fandom from the productive derivational suffix -dom, which the OED also gives copies examples of throughout the 1800s (including BA-dom, old fogey-dom, blizzard-dom and theater-dom.

Respect the fandom, guys. It’s older than Steve Rogers. 

You ever see something innocuous, minding its own business on the clearance shelf at Michael’s and before you know it, it takes over your life for a few weeks?

So it was with this desktop greenhouse.

I took it home and after taking an appropriate time to “season” my idea in my mind (read: a month or two) I set to make my vision of a mini botanical garden a reality.

I started by removing the heavy glass panels and building a raised floor above the latch. I wanted to use the base as a foundation on the building.

I wrapped the foundation in plastic stone textured flooring (meant for Christmas villages) and built a pond at one end of the same. I then gave it a more realistic paint job and designed a rough layout for my plants and displays.

I also knew I wanted to make the ironwork significantly more intricate, but I wasn’t sure how just yet…

Up next - PLANTS! I went wild making all kinds of plants. Some were specific species and some were more conceptual.

I made several trees with polymer clay and moss, cacti out of beads and flocking, cattails out of raffia, hot glue and coffee grounds, and giant monstera leaves out of paper and wire.

This part should have taken me a long time, but it really came together fast. I loved finding ways to replicate natural shapes and patterns using bits of this and that.

I did make adjustments to my plans as I went like eliminating benches in favor of a simpler overall design.

Then I needed to fill my pond with water. For this I used resin. Lily pads were added to the top layer, and I wired in simple LED fairy lights. The batteries are kept in the box under the foundation.

In a weekend frenzy I added more plants, metal (paper) steps, new (plexi)glass windows, a roof, wrought-iron vines (paper again), doors that open, and a hose reel disguising the latch. Suddenly, a project I thought would take months was finished…

I love my desktop botanical garden. Right now it sits on a simple lazy Susan in my office. But I’d love to get it a proper display box to protect from dust.

Thank you for coming on this little journey with me. This piece packs a lot of joy into a tiny space. I always love building miniatures, and I’ll be doing more in the future I’m sure.

[...]

There's a lot of stuff that counts as dystopian about modern society, but one of the smaller yet insidious things I've noticed recently is the rise of companies whose entire marketing strategy is to convince you you're a burden to your friends and families.

I'm talking about that one dog watching/walking service that has a whole commercial implying that your family members secretly hate you for asking them to watch your dog to the point it counts as a modern social faux pas.

And there's this moving service commercial that I think someone else referenced in a big tweet that says something along the line of "Real adults don't ask their friends to help them move."

Like fuck that, man. You're supposed to want to watch your friends' pets, and you're supposed to want to help your friends move, and you're supposed to cook for people when they're sick, and you're supposed to show up to check on friends you haven't heard from in awhile, and you're supposed to remember your friend needs a large frying pan when you find one cheap at the thrift store and bring it to them.

One of the reasons the younger generations are so miserable and lonely is because the rise of technology and the concurrent pushing of this rhetoric that all effort is a major inconvenience, and asking someone to put in effort for you therefore makes you an inconvenience has conditioned them not to seek community.

And because they've never experienced it, they don't know that's what's missing. It's a vicious cycle because when you're depressed from lack of community, finding the energy to put in effort for other people is a lot harder than getting quick dopamine hits from scrolling on social media or watching Netflix. Then you encounter the further issue that our media glorifies romantic love to the exclusion of all else, so most of the young people I know who are lonely jump to "Well I just need a girlfriend/boyfriend/partner," and that sets up rough relationships because one person is expected to fill the void of a dozen or more friends and neighbors.

So please believe me: If you're lonely, try volunteering somewhere in the community. Try going to events around your interests. Try talking to local shop owners. Bake something and surprise a friend with it. Search for nearby clubs or intramural sports teams. There are companies literally capitalizing on subtlely encouraging you NOT to do these things. We've reached the point where helping your friend move is an anticapitalist act.

before the joining some girl on tumblr was definitely like you know, raban from wycaro is actually sooo woman-coded and then another girl on tumblr who was probably me was like you people are fucking idiots shut uppppp

Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.

Also… art forgers like van Meegeren sometimes become a kind of folk hero. A swindler, sure, but a gentleman’s swindler.

I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.

“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.”” And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.

Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.

His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny. 

In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.

His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.

At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”

Just … the levels of con there, the fake photos and … wow. That’s incredible. 

That’s just rapscallionry.

This is what AI wants to take from us.

Let’s add Tom Keating to the mix, yeah?

- Darby Milbrath, Tom Keating on Painters

TO ANYONE WHO USES DISCORD- FOUR AI SCRAPING BOTS HAVE BEEN SECRETLY ADDED TO YOUR SERVERS WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT

Saw this going around and tested it myself, and I can confirm that this is unfortunately legit. Four hidden bots have been placed in any existing or newly created Discord server that are harvesting data, images, and most concerningly, one seems to be a face swap bot.

Due to them being invisible, banning them from your servers isn't possible without their ID's, which I've typed out for easy access.

1153984868804468756 1288638725869535283 1090660574196674713 1104973139257081909

Banning is done with the /ban command with each string pasted in one at a time. Four ban commands in total.

Image proof below and further information. This was in my PERSONAL server that has existed for +5 years. Discord is harvesting your shit without your consent, fight back.

Hey so in case you're like me and wondered: Can you ban members without them being in the server?

The answer is yes, you absolutely can! It'll look like this - the numbers you paste will be what's "banned"

However my sibling tried this in her servers and found that One of them was NOT a string of numbers, like so:

And for clarity it isn't a difference in user or device, this is what she got elsewhere:

So if you ban these numbers and the message shows the actual username? Pretty sure that means they were in there.

Very unpleasant way to check the veracity of this post but hopefully this is a helpful tip for anyone who was concerned - my sib would have No Reason to add these in herself and didn't have any clue it was in there.

Personally, I'd say even if you are still worried about misinfo/fearmongering/etc from this post, think of it this way - worst case scenario is you're banning a bot you'll never use or need. Not a person, a bot. There's no real damage done playing it safe and running the ban commands through, aside from maybe losing some time doing so.

Best of luck everyone.

Wishing I'd seen this more quickly - Had to take these things out of a lot of creative spaces just now. I'm not convinced that the username only shows up if they were in there, but I do think it's better safe than sorry, especially when peoples' art is involved.

@quidnunc-life @inkvoices @alistrawrites

@returnsnull7404 hey this is VERY much real I just took all of them off my discord

what the actual fuck

one of them was on my personal server and ALL OF THEM were on our writing server

each year congress people should be required to go on a field trip where they each get dumped in the middle of a random u.s. town & handed a phone with google maps & forced to find their way back to washington solely through the use of local public transportation systems.

to be clear i don't think this would improve our political reality in any way, but it would be fun to watch

Bonus fun, they have access to the equivalent of the average american's level of savings to accomplish this goal.

I saw this on Facebook and had to look it up. It really happened, albeit the details are different. From Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story:

This is the face of a evil genius,

“But my bones will rest easy next to your bones.” Line that changed the whole book for me. In a single moment these characters who confounded and frustrated me became holy in my heart. Two sad old gods whose greatest wish is to die in obscurity together, who know they can never be redeemed, so they dream instead of a better world without them in it. Oh my loves. Ten thousand years is a long time to carry so much grief.

joke’s on darcy, lizzie happens to be besties with mrs collins so do you know what that means? visits. do you know who mrs collins will inevitably bring WITH her???

mr collins. buckle in for some one-sided conversations on the grandeur of pemberley and how there is but one estate only marginally finer, he thinks you will no doubt agree, which can only be, of course, rosing’s park, which can be viewed by his own very humble abode

they’ll all have their dinner and the women will retreat to another room and darcy will stare very, very imploringly to his wife to please, stay. like, please. this man doesn’t shut up. surely you want to talk to him. let’s tag team. please lizzie. he will ask of nothing from you for an entire fortnight if you please actually stay in the same room so mr collins will have SOMEWHERE ELSE to direct his onslaught of ass kissing. lizzie. lizzie.

This is why the Bingleys and the Collinses are invited at the same time.

Meanwhile Lizzie, Jane, and Charlotte are in the parlor, placing bets on how long before Darcy cracks, practically CHUGS his port, and bolts, “WHO WANTS TEA?!?!?!? LET’S JOIN THE LADIES AND HAVE TEA!!!!!!”

Darcy at the table counting down the 45-ish minutes until it’s socially acceptable to retreat to the drawing room

Mr. Collins is not coming on these visits! Charlotte has ensured that he understands how absolutely indispensable he is to Lady Catherine and what a massive insult it would be to his noble patroness if he were to voluntarily spend time with her wayward nephew. Meanwhile it is nevertheless absolutely vital that she herself does accept the invitation in order to soothe away the probable offence given to Mr. and Mrs. Darcy occasioned by Mr. Collins’ refusal.

A Pair of Victorian Reverse Painted Crystal Intaglio Earrings, 1870

you guys r loving me complaining lately so can i complain about a social media thing. the obsession on many parts of tiktok, instagram, etc. with "hygiene" is actually just an obsession with performing wealth and femininity. no you cannot smell the difference between a girl who exfoliates her arms and one who doesn't. you are saying this to shame people who aren't performing femininity as hard as you. no it is not necessary to have a ten step skincare routine with three different serums. you are showcasing your wealth and encouraging consumption.

like sorry but if i scrubbed and scraped myself half as much as you insist is Necessary to be clean i would be red and breaking out everywhere. different people have different needs. and nobody Needs to use a body scrub and a dry brush and a bar soap and a body wash and a body butter and a moisturizing oil every single day. nobody is going to get sick because they wash their body with their hands instead of a washcloth or an african net sponge or whatever other implement you've decided is necessary to get clean. human bodies do not need to smell like jasmine or vanilla or whatever 24/7 in order to be considered clean. like good fucking lord you people are just jerking off cosmetics companies and falling to your knees at the foot of the patriarchy saying i love youuuu oh my goddddd you're so cool and correct and if i increase my shower routine to twenty steps instead of twelve can i please climb up a little bit and stomp on other women with you pleaseeeee

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: