My ability to proofread increases by 1000% after I hit “Submit”.
this is often because when you’ve submitted something (like fanfiction to ao3) it will be in a different font, size and framing than in your word processor. The text will look different in the new environment so your brain stops skipping what looks familiar (like a typo that has been there since the beginning).
So, tip: revise your work in a different font and size. I guarantee you’ll catch more typos and mistakes than otherwise.
For all my writers (ones I follow and the ones that thankfully follow me)
When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.
But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.
As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.
The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork. In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.
That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.
I’ve never actually have seen a post showing how cool pigeons truly are. So, I will do this site a favor and make a post. So here are some nice, interesting facts about these cute birds.
1. Pigeons are one of the most intelligent birds on the planet. ( sources )
Pigeons can categorize and name both natural and human-made objects—and not just a few. The birds in a new study categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories.
The pigeon has also been found to pass the ‘mirror test’ (being able to recognize its reflection in a mirror) and is one of only 6 species, and the only non-mammal, that has this ability. The pigeon can also recognize all 26 letters of the English language as well as being able to conceptualize.
A team of navy researchers, however, has found that pigeons can be trained to save human lives at sea with high success rates. Project Sea Hunt has trained a number of pigeons to identify red or yellow life jackets when floating in the water.
The pigeons were not only found to be more reliable than humans, but they were also many times quicker when it came to spotting survivors from a capsized or sinking boat. The pigeon can see colour in the same way that humans do but they can also see ultra-violet, a part of the spectrum that humans cannot see, and this is one of the reasons they are so well adapted to lifesaving.
A carrier pigeon’s job was dangerous. Nearby enemy soldiers often tried to shoot down pigeons, knowing that released birds were carrying important messages. Some of these pigeons became quite famous among the infantrymen they worked for.
3. Pigeons mate for life !! How cute is that? ( source )
4. Some pigeons are sometimes used for religious reasons. ( sources)
Many religious groups, including Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, feed pigeons for religious reasons. Many older Sikhs feed pigeons ceremoniously to honour the high priest and warrior Guru Gobind Singh who was a known friend of the pigeon. Some Sikhs feed pigeons because they believe that when they are reincarnated they will never go hungry if they have fed pigeons in their previous life.
5. Their poop – though many complain about it – actually is good fertilizer. ( sources )
When composted down, they are unsurpassed for fertilizing high feeder plants, such as tomatoes, watermelon, eggplant, roses, and other plants that like a rich soil.
Pigeon guano, for instance, has been prized in Europe as a super-manure since the Middle Ages when folks kept dovecotes and pigeon lofts atop their houses, growing the squabs for food and using the manure to fertilize gardens and fields.
I haven’t seen people talking about this website, but Lingvist has over 35000books (or so they claim) about language learning available to download. And no, it’s not only European languages: they have books for languages such as Kazakh, Khmer, Thai… And anyways, you can always search what you’re looking for. LINK
A leading idea in animal display evolution is that some bizarre display behaviors evolved to encode information about motor skill, or the ability to successfully and precisely perform a challenging motor behavior.
Here, we have the fiddler crab (Uca perplexa) waving its large claw; the Bornean rock frog (Staurois parvus) performing a foot-flag signal; and a pair of western grebes (Aechmophoris occidentalis) in the midst of a courtship display run. These illustrations were prepared for colleagues to include in a manuscript they are preparing.
I firmly believe that every pet owner should look in to getting an emergency evacuation kit. It can literally just contain an extra harness and leash for your pup with a doggy bag of food, or for reptile owners, a small crate for the beardie, a pillow case per snake, etc. That way in case of a fire, flood, or other type of emergency you can run to them, grab them out of their cages and secure them all quickly and efficiently.
Keep some heat pads as well. Extra plug in ones and even just some shipping ones. You don’t know how long you will go without power in a cold month.
“Even though many people seem to be open about homosexuality in Vietnam, it turned out to be untrue when I showed many of them photographs of homosexual couples in intimate moments. Most of them found the photos disgusting and unacceptable. This reaction was a source of inspiration to me. My goal was to make photos about homosexuals that incite feelings of romantic love that is natural and beautiful. I chose to capture casual daily activities of the couples that can be familiar to anyone. By doing so, I hope to make the audience become interested, then gradually empathize with homosexual people.
Many artworks exploring homosexuality in Vietnam tend to focus on either on deviances (especially in movies, with images of homosexuals portrayed in ridiculous clothing and make-up, mincing, shrewish or rude manners…) or symbolic images. In photography, homosexuals are not presented simply as themselves. And if they are, they’re usually photographed from behind or with masks on. These all foster weird and absurd images of homosexuals rather then present more understanding perspectives. In turn, homosexual couples become even more intimidated and isolated.
The Pink Choice has a different approach as it seeks out personal stories using direct language: documentary photography to capture real moments and real people.
Moreover, stories about homosexuality in Vietnam and also in the world usually end in tragedy, especially in movies. On one hand, this tragic style of storytelling can make audience become more sympathetic and understanding of the difficulties that homosexuals experience. On the other hand, the drama of homosexuals can also cause misunderstandings that lives of homosexuals are vulnerable and regretful, and that the choice to “come out” is an incredible effort against the community’s way of life. The point is, in real life, there are many homosexual people who live happily with their identity. There are homosexual couples who love, nurture and build a happy family life together.
The Pink Choice is a series of photographs about the love between homosexual couples, focusing on living spaces, the affectionate touches, and more importantly, the synchronized rhythm of lovers sharing life together. Viewers may not feel the personalities of the subjects in the photographs, but hopefully they can feel the warmth of their love and mutual caring. In way, I wanted to show what I see of homosexual people and not how they see themselves.”
Sometimes people like to write things about florist’s shops. Here are two things you need to know, the most egregiously wrong things.
1. It makes no fucking sense to sketch out a bouquet before you make it. Every individual flower is different in a way that cannot really be adjusted the way other building materials can be adjusted, and each individual bouquet is unique. Just put the fucking flowers together.
2. No one — in months and months of working at the flower shop — has ever cared what the flower/color of the flower means. No one’s ever asked. It’s just not something people tend to care about outside of fiction and it’s certainly not something most florists know. You know what florists know? What looks good and is thematically appropriate.
Here’s an actual list of the symbology of flowers, as professionals use it:
Yellow – for friends, hospitals Pink – girls, girlfriends, babies, bridesmaids Red – love Purple – queens White – marriage and death (DO NOT SEND TO HOSPITALS) Pink and purple – ur mum Red, orange, and yellow – ur mum if she’s stylish Red, yellow, blue – dudes and small children Blue and white – rare, probably a wedding Red and white – love for fancy bitches
Here are what the flowers actually mean to a florist:
The Fill It Out flowers:
Carnations – fuck u these are meaningless filler-flowers, not even your administrative assistant likes them, show some creativity Alstroemeria – by and large very similar to carnations but I like them better Tea roses – cute and lil and come several to a stalk, a classy filler flower Moluccella laevis – filler flower but CHOICE Delphinium – not as interesting as moluccella but purple so okay I guess Blue thistle – FUCK YEAH, some fucking textural variety at last! you’re getting this for a dude, aren’t you? Chrysanthemums – barely better than carnations but better is still better Gladiolus – ooh, risky business, someone understands the use of the Y-axis, very good
Focal points:
Long-stem roses – yeah whatever Lilies – LBD, looks good with everything, get used as often as possible Hydrangeas – thirsty fuckers, divas of the flower world and rightly so, treat them right and they make you look good Gerbera daisies – the rose’s hippie cousin, hotter but no one admits it Peonies – CHA-CHING, everybody’s absolute favorite but you need guap Orchids – if this isn’t for a wedding you’re probably trying too hard but they’re expensive so keep ordering them
You know what matters? THE CUSTOMER’S BUDGET. THAT’S TELLING.
-$20 – if you’re not under 12, fuck off, get your sugar something else $30 – good for bouquets but an arrangement will be lame $40 – getting there, there’s something that can be done with that. you can get some gerbs or roses with that and not have them look stupidly solo. $50 to $70 – tolerable $80 – FINALLY. It sounds elitist but this really is the basic amount of money you should expect to spend on an arrangement that matters. That’s your Mother’s Day arrangement. You’re probably not going to spend $80 on a bouquet. $90 to $130 – THE GOOD SHIT, you’re likely to get some orchids $130+ – Weddings and death. This amount of money gets you a memorial arrangement or a handmade bridal bouquet. Don’t spend this on a Mother’s Day or a Babe I Love You arrangement, buy whosits a massage or something.
Miscellaneous:
Everything needs greening and if you don’t think that you’re an idiot.
As a new employee, when you start making arrangements, you can’t see the mistakes you’re making because you’re brand new and you’re learning an art form from the ground up.
With a few exceptions customers don’t have a clear plan in mind. They want you to develop the bouquet for them. They want something that will delight their little sweetbread but you’re lucky if they know that person’s favorite color, let alone flower.
Flower shops don’t typically have every kind of flower in every kind of color. Customers generally aren’t assed about that. Most people don’t care about the precise shade of the rose or having daffodils in July, because they’re not boning up on flower language before they buy. That would imply that they’ve got a clear bouquet in mind and, again, they don’t.
Being a florist is essentially a lot like what I imagine being a mortician is about. You’re basically keeping dead things looking good for as long as possible. You keep the product in the fridge so it doesn’t rot and look horrible by the time the family gets a whack at it, and in the meanwhile you put it in a nice container.
Anyway that’s flowers.
this is magnificent and I love hearing about ppl job feilds
I took a class about Ancient Egypt last semester and we had a whole lecture dedicated to talking about how gay Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were. Their tomb walls were decorated with scenes of them ignoring their wives in favor of embracing each other. In one scene, the couple is seated at a banquet table that is usually reserved for a husband and wife. There’s an entire motif of Khnumhotep holding lotus flowers which in ancient Egyptian tradition symbolizes femininity. Khnumhotep offers the lotus flower to Niankhkhnum, something that only wives were ever depicted as doing for their husbands. In fact, Khnumhotep is repeatedly depicted as uniquely feminine, being shown smaller and shorter than his partner Niankhkhnum and being placed in the role of a woman. Size is a big deal in Egyptian art, husbands are almost always shown as being larger and taller than their wives. So for two men of equal status to be shown in once again, a marital fashion, is pretty telling. Not to mention they were literally buried together which is the strongest bond two people could share in ancient Egypt, as it would mean sharing the journey to the afterlife together. And yet 90% of the academic text about these two talks about these clues in vague terms and analyze the great “brotherhood” they shared, and the enigma of Khnumhotep being depicted as feminine. Apparently it’s too hard for archaeologists to accept homosexuality in the ancient world, as well as the possibility of trans individuals.
On the last note, I was walking around the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and there is a mummy on exhibit. It caught my attention because the panel that was describing it was talking about how it was a woman’s body in a male coffin and wow, the Egyptian working that day really screwed that up. My summary, not actual words, sorry I can’t remember verbatim but it basically said that someone screwed up.
They claimed that the Egyptians screwed up a burial.
The Egyptians. Screwed up. A burial.
Now I’m not an expert in Ancient Egypt but from what I know, and what the exhibit was telling me, burials and the afterlife and all that jazz DEFINED the Egyptian religion and culture. They don’t just ‘screw up’. So instead of thinking outside the box for two seconds and wonder why else a genetically female body was in a male coffin, the ‘researchers’ blatantly disregard the rest of their research and decided to call it a screw up. Instead of, you know, admitting that maybe this mummy presented as male during his life and was therefore honorably buried as he was identified. But it would be too much of a stretch to admit that a transgender person could have existed back then.
(Sorry I can’t find any sources online and it’s been like 2 years but it stuck in my mind)
There’s a lot of bigoted historian dragging on my dash these days and it makes me happy.
Once again, more proof that we queers have ALWAYS been here, and it’s a CHOSEN narrative to erase them.
You know, in all those “humans are the creepy/fucked up alien species” posts I can’t believe we haven’t touched on organ donation yet.
When they heard that the human general had fallen ill to a disease of the organ known as the liver the troops began to hope that it might turn the tide of the war. Research indicated that such diseases could be fatal after all. The organ did something similar to the flagulaxin in that it filtered out toxins so when it stopped functioning the human would slowly be poisoned to death by his own body. Or so they believed.
But then he came back.
A foot soldier was captured and answers demanded. Was it a medication? Had the sickeness been a ruse to fool them?
“Nah, man. This kid on a motorcycle wiped out on the I9 freeway so they gave the general his liver since they were a match.”
“They…what?”
“They gave him his liver. The kid was dead, and he was an organ donor. And he was a genetic match to the general.”
“They…cut the liver out of one of your young and placed it in an elder and it…worked?”
“I mean, he wasn’t that young. Mid twenties or something. But yeah, that’s essentially it.”
The interrogator and his assistant both regurgitated their most recent meal and ran from the room. Living in places like the “Australia” were one thing, but taking the organs of dead bodies and placing them in the living? What was WRONG with this species?
No wait make it better. A living person can donate a piece of their liver! It doesn’t have to be a dead person.
“You killed one of your own to replace the broken part of the higher ranking human?”
“No of course only a small piece of a one was needed to replace the general’s bad one”
“Who got the bad one?”
“No one! it was thrown away”
“Someone, gave a piece of their organ to someone else to use??? And they both lived???”
“Yeah”
But what if the aliens were like salamanders who can naturally regenerate damaged body parts? And when they find out humans lack that ability they think “We have an advantage over them” then to their shock they discover that we’ve come up with work-arounds for that lack. Also prosthetic limbs. “Wait … You’re telling me that you can’t regrow your leg … So you just BUILD one?!”
Trying to describe a human to a species that had never met one was getting increasingly difficult. To start with, they seemed to exist in every possible state – solid, liquid, gas and crystaline. A core calcium infrastructure with a porous organic compound layered over it, through which fluid and gas travelled under the regulation of a range of organic pipework, pumps and processing plants, all coated in a renewable organic surface layer. That was weird enough.
Then came the discovery that the human was semi-modular. Component fluids could be swapped out and substituted – humanity had built some form of external versions of a range of the organic pumps and processors, and had manual, automatic and remotely operated variants of their core pump processor (the heart). Internal parts could be exchanged, or replaced with suitable originals. Something about needing genuine human compatible parts, known as donor organs, and the voluntary post-life nature of these donations seemed ineffective to many observer species, and postively horrifying to those who held the sanctity of the post-life body. Considering a fallen comrade as an accessible source of component parts was just beyond the pale, and to have an proactive harvesting regime was just unbelievable. What was wrong with these creatures that death should be rejected to such an extent that they would become hybrids of dead and living creatures? Did they think death would bypass them, thinking the component part they carried was already ticked off some post-life database, thus granting them an immunity card in the eternal island vote?
Weirdly though, these quasi-modular humans could not be assembled from component parts. Even the human histories, insofar as the human documentation systems were trustworthy, indicated that efforts to construct a modular human from parts, pieces and high voltage was deemed unwise, and mostly only suitable to be remembered in October in ritual costumes. That said, a human containing sufficient of their original parts could be restored from dead state with a sufficient electric discharge, leading many to suspect that the creatures existed in an energy state alongside their gas, liquid, solid, and crystal forms.
Then of course, was that very human approach to limb loss – construction of alternate limbs from non-human parts. Suffice to say, most sentient machine species are horrified by the process, and many machine worlds are refusing to acknowledge humans are real, and are starting to campaign against the continued discussion of these creatures as organic propaganda.
They may have a very valid point. These things make no sense from a design specification standpoint.
Plume de Lynx 