What is purple and commutes?

An Abelian grape.

[worldsandemanations]

Anna Loginova aka Vindront aka Vin the Artist (Russian) - The Sun roars into View, 2024, Paintings

[toskarin]

well-but-focusedly-learned citizen of constantinople finding out who ultimately emerged to succeed anastasius:

[maniculum]

Someone should make a tier list of Byzantine emperors (and empresses, there are a few of those) ranging from “now THAT is an Imperial Name” to “i went to school with someone named that and he was awful”. They really do cover the field — you’ve got Heraclius and Andronikos sharing space with Maurice and John.

[mysharona1987]

[stringcage]

Years of personal growth can be unraveled in 2 days at your parents house

[soymoss]

starling

[xylophonetangerine]

[neovagina-penisis-evangelion]

When people argue that food from Chinese and Mexican restaurants in the US are not 'real' representations of that culture's cuisine ignore the historical reality that these dishes were developed by diasporic communities striving to recreate the flavors of home with available resources. Such criticism frames adaptation as a loss of authenticity, rather than recognizing it as a sincere and evolving expression of culture by people separated from their homeland.

[ninhaoma-ya]

Too good to leave in the tags

[waspsinyouryard]

admittedly i know little of the subject but one would think, at 45 years of age, he would be a ryan goose by now

[letterful]

In Orwell’s essay “A Hanging,” the writer watches the condemned man, walking toward the gallows, swerve to avoid a puddle. For Orwell, this represents precisely what he calls the “mystery” of the life that is about to be taken: when there is no good reason for it, the condemned man is still thinking about keeping his shoes clean. It is an “irrelevant” act (and a marvelous bit of noticing on Orwell’s part). Now suppose this were not an essay but a piece of fiction. And indeed there has been a fair amount of speculation about the proportion of fact to fiction in such essays of Orwell’s. 

The avoidance of the puddle would be precisely the kind of superb detail that, say, Tolstoy might flourish; War and Peace has an execution scene very close in spirit to Orwell’s essay, and it may well be that Orwell basically cribbed the detail from Tolstoy. In War and Peace, Pierre witnesses a man being executed by the French, and notices that, just before death, the man adjusts the blindfold at the back of his head, because it is uncomfortably tight. The avoidance of the puddle, the fiddling with the blindfold—these are what might be called irrelevant or superfluous details. They are not explicable; in fiction, they exist to denote precisely the inexplicable. This is one of the “effects” of realism, of “realistic” style. 

But Orwell’s essay, assuming it records an actual occurrence, shows us that such fictional effects are not merely conventionally irrelevant, or formally arbitrary, but have something to tell us about the irrelevance of reality itself (…) There was no logical reason for the condemned man to avoid the puddle. It was pure remembered habit. Life, then, will always contain an inevitable surplus, a margin of the gratuitous, a realm in which there is always more than we need: more things, more impressions, more memories, more habits, more words, more happiness, more unhappiness. 

— JAMES WOOD, from How Fiction Works.

[letterful]

What exactly do these irrational standards mean? They mean the supremacy of the detail over the general, of the part that is more alive than the whole, of the little thing which a man observes and greets with a friendly nod of the spirit while the crowd around him is being driven by some common impulse to some common goal. I take my hat off to the hero who dashes into a burning house and saves his neighbor’s child; but I shake his hand if he has risked squandering a precious five seconds to find and save, together with the child, its favorite toy. I remember a cartoon depicting a chimney sweep falling from the roof of a tall building and noticing on the way that a sign-board had one word spelled wrong, and wondering in his headlong flight why nobody had thought of correcting it. In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles — no matter the imminent peril — these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from commonsense and its logic, that we know the world to be good.

— VLADIMIR NABOKOV, from Lectures on Literature.

[animentality]

[voidcenturyscholar-deactivated2]

Post canon Toph who doesn’t want to go back to her shitty parents so she just decides to stay in the Fire Nation and bum off Zuko’s hospitality.

Zuko’s like no, yeah, I totally get it, and just makes her one of his advisors. At first it’s just so she has a good excuse to stay but after the first meeting Toph storms out shouting about how EVERYONE was lying why would you even need to lie about what kind of tea you want??

Zuko: I mean they’re politicians…..but also who, and when, and in what way

They make a subtle Morse code system so Toph can warn him when someone is lying to him without tipping anyone off that she can sense lies.

Zuko gets a reputation for somehow being both extremely socially inept and yet somehow disgustingly perceptive?? You can’t get ANYTHING by him???

[romancedawning-deactivated20210]

#my lord what EXACTLY is ms Beifongs role in these meetings #a nervous nobleman asks after the third time she interrupts them with stupid commentary #zuko with perfect deadpan: she’s my scribe

You CAN’T leave that in the tags

[atlaheritageposts]

atla heritage post

[cryoverkiltmilk]

“Wait, you know the Fire Lord?”

“I’ve never seen that man in my life.”

[cpericardium]

hey everyone "I" have something to show "you"

[cpericardium]

[cpericardium]

[bibliotheksbewohnerin]

us-centrism comes out in annoying ways, i just wanted to find out why prescriptions in the us are given out in these orange bottles instead of the original packaging. but everything i found went along the lines of "the color protects from uv rays" "pharmacies buy those in bulk" . yeah ok! not the point! why is it in a clear bottle in the first place! why does it get re-packaged? where are your blister packs??

[smute]

i read an article a while ago that touched on this but i can't find it :/ iirc it comes down to money (as always lol) and the fact that the number of pills in standard manufacturer boxes rarely matches individual prescriptions.

it's probably also a "it's always been done like this" kind of situation, but basically us pharmacies have a stronger financial incentive to dispense exact pill quantities. insurance companies often have strict quantity limits for what they will cover that can vary from prescription to prescription.

in europe for example prescriptions typically also specify a certain quantity, but because reimbursement works differently (and drug prices are often more regulated) they don't mind handing out factory sealed boxes with larger quantities. if your prescription says "take this dose 1x daily for 7 days" and the smallest package size available is 20 pills, the pharmacy will often be reimbursed for the price of that 20 pack regardless of how many pills you actually take.

in the us, if you need 7 pills, your insurance will only cover those 7 pills. if the pharmacy handed you a 20 pack they'd be giving away 13 pills for free. so in order to maximize their profits, pharmacies buy meds in bulk and repackage custom quantities into those orange bottles. it's simply the most profitable way of doing things.

tl;dr: financial and regulatory pressure

[clonedroids]

Because I feel like kids of color don’t hear it enough: domestic abuse is not a part of your culture. 

A lot of us were raised with the idea that “its normal for wives/children to get hit! it helps them learn– only white folk don’t get beaten when they misbehave”. That’s not true, white people aren’t the only ones who deserve a safe and abuse free environment. Black and brown people can and do have loving families. 

If you’re in a situation where you are enduring abuse and people use your culture to justify it, I want you to know that what they’re telling you are lies.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

as someone who studies this: statistically speaking, child abuse (including “spanking”, because all forms of hitting children are abusive) is pretty much equally prevalent in households of all racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. so yeah, don’t let people use the “culture” excuse on you, but also, don’t believe others are experiencing it less just because it’s less normalized in their culture to talk about it. we all gotta work together to fix this shit.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[brightlotusmoon]

[ancientson]

I know this is meant to be funny but it actually makes such a good point about how ADHD and executive dysfunction can impact people in really major ways, including financially

[ambertea]

I did that job once.

[pepsimayo]

What are your pronouns and would you like to join my union