always wool-gathering

[thebelfry]

I just learned that the Russian word for “ladybug” translates to “God’s Little Cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

It’s the same in Irish! bóín Dé!

[peniswizard69]

in hebrew it’s “our rabbi moses’s cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

Oh I love this news!!!!

[pulmonary-poultry]

Multiple cultures upon seeing a ladybug for the first time: “Who’s cow is this????”

[thejonymyster]

[thejonymyster]

[thejonymyster]

[postilionstruckbylightning]

It feels like some early humans were naming things and one of them ran out of ideas.

Human 1: (points at animal) What’s that?

Human 2: Cow.

Human 1: (points at bug) What’s that?

Human 2: … little cow.

Human 1: But it’s so much smaller. Who would have use for such a small cow?

Human 2: (panicking but in too deep to stop now) God.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The “Lady” in the name “ladybug” is the virgin Mary. People just cannot stop giving religious names to this bug.

The reason for this was that if you lived in an agrarian society then your survival was a throw of the dice every year, depending on the success of the crops. A failed crop year is a very hard year where deaths are expected. And if you grew a cereal like wheat, there were several things that could cause your crops to fail, but one of the big ones was if you happened to get a fuckton of aphids. You know what eats aphids? Ladybugs! If there are lots and lots of ladybugs around, there was a good chance that it’d be a good crop year! They were little crop protectors! When your family lives or dies on the success of that crop, of course they’d be seen as a blessing and given an appropriate name!

[magical-bear-dubin]

That is such an interesting etymology!!!!

And entomology too i guess

[asparklethatisblue]

in German they’re Marienkäfer which also pretty much means “Mary’s Beetle”

[istadris]

In French it’s “Good Lord’s Beast”

Not even a cow, it’s just a little Creature but we know for sure God loves it.

[dent-de-l1on]

In Dutch it’s “Lieveheersbeestje”, the Good Lord’s Little Beast

A liddol creeture

[thestuffedalligator]

Shout out to the clover, the dandelion and the daisy. The triumvirate of springtime childish whimsy. WHO is doing it like them

[thestuffedalligator]

This plant, we tell children, has a one in ten-thousand chance to have four leaves. You can search through a clover patch all day and never find one. But if you do, and you pluck it and keep it, it will bring you luck.

And this flower, we tell children, if you let it bud and bloom and age from sun-yellow flower to moon-white seed, you can then pluck it and blow its seeds away to make a wish.

And this flower, we tell children, can be woven into a hat

[dragon-in-a-fez]

one of the funniest conversations I ever had with my ex was when they were still getting used to Celsius and asked me "what's 20 degrees?" and instead of converting it, I said "it's the highest your dad will ever let you set the thermostat and when you say you're cold he tells you to put on another sweater, we're not made of money" and they went "oh, 68"

the fact that this reference was that fucking precise was something they went on to tell people about for years.

[achesspiece]

in chess the queens can kill each other which is toxic yuri and the kings can never get within a square of each other which is doomed yaoi

[abyssaldyke]

It's spring now which means the kids in my city have started drawing hopscotches on the sidewalk and as a rule I do every hopscotch I see because 1. Use it or lose it (ability to scotch) and 2. If a child got down on the hardscrabble streets of Boston Massachusetts to draw a scotch the least I can do is use it, but in doing the hopscotches, I've learned that about 50% of them are the typical 8-10 step scotch and the other 50% are. Somewhat avant-garde. And of course I'm not vetting the entire scotch before I start it so sometimes it's like haha 8 steps woo! Childlike whimsy! And sometimes they're 20 steps or 30 or they've got a section with three squares instead of two where you have to do a little Charleston to step on all three, or, memorably, FORTY one foot squares. A full BLOCK of jumping on one foot but I'm no quitter so once I've started Jigsaw Junior's fuckin hopscotch gauntlet I'm there til the end just a daily pot smoker in her thirties jumping kasa-obake style through an affluent suburb while some little proto-kennedy watches from his bedroom window rubbing his sadistic little third grade hands together and cackling. It's amazing. I love spring.

[stealingpotatoes]

i don't know what older adults were on about when they said being a teenager was good <3

[the-uss-premise]

Console buttons from Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-69)

[punkrocklorax]

[caspercryptid]

I feel like not enough people realize that people under enormous strain act really really fucking Weird

[caspercryptid]

If someone is doing things that don't make Sense, try to understand that it is entirely possible that their brain is probably under an enormous weight and fracturing under the pressure. People who have been stabbed will sometimes talk a circle around the fact that they've been stabbed because stress and shock prevent you from recognizing the distress you are in and what you need to do to seek help for it. PTSD will do this also. You will find yourself repeatedly jamming a bag of frozen fruit into the same spot in the freezer where it doesn't fit and keeps falling, over and over and over, focused on nothing but that bag. You will decide that a beanbag chair is 10000% necessary to your life. You will lose your entire shit because you stubbed your toe on a table and that means the whole setup of your furniture is wrong. These are largely harmless examples. People under strain will also hurt themselves and others. Cornered animals bite. And it doesn't heal the bite to go "Hey, are you okay?" But it might get you to an animal that stops biting, so you can start to heal. And before you had an animal that bit, you probably had an animal that kept doing shit you didn't understand as stress signals

[caspercryptid]

Mental illness is Off-putting. Trauma and stress make people hard to be around. There are no perfect victims. If your framework for someone under pressure are people who cry photogenically at home in the bathroom or at night when everyone else is asleep and then wake up and act like they're fine then you will fail to recognize it when your coworker who's normally really nice suddenly blows up on someone for leaving forks in the company sink.

Everyone is going through shit. And it doesn't make it okay for them to treat others badly, but it also sometimes makes it difficult for them to recognize that they're treating you badly, like the person on the phone with 9-11 who no longer realizes that he's telling the operator about his day and not answering questions. When your friend of ten years who has a new boyfriend suddenly starts being a massive bitch to you about your weight maybe she's just being a cunt, or maybe she's internalized some bullshit. You don't have to take that, but you Can go "Hey, what the fuck?" And that is often more helpful than you realize. It is easy to assume that someone who does something cruel is acting with intent, but especially in cases where someone's behavior changed in a short span of time, they aren't, any more than the person who is convinced the beanbag chair is going to fix them.

You don't have to give people endless chances. But you should give them at least one chance. Because on your worst week, it's going to be you crying at your friend's birthday party because she ran out of chili before you got to have some, and you're going to want some grace for yourself.

[acertainmoshke]

All of this and also, sometimes you just cannot control your reaction even if it’s harmful or mean. Which also doesn’t make it acceptable to treat people poorly, but it does tie into the give people a second or third chance and communicate before deciding they’re just terrible now

[nvexe]

my pronouns are she/her bc I'll never be him (anthony head playing on his pink ds in full costume on the set of merlin)

[youdontknowhowtodiequietly]

RIP King

[dipdamnderoo]

I made a thing.  Happy pride 🏳️‍🌈

[thestuffedalligator]

“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.

“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”

She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”

After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”

[tearlessrain]

having anxiety is like being given permanent unwanted custody of a halter arabian. like okay buddy is it panic time again. cool you probably need more exercise and an apple and then maybe you'll calm down.

[tearlessrain]

taking my stupid walks for my stupid mental health with my stupid hypervigilant brain horse

[tearlessrain]

thoroughly enjoying the notes on this post because it's equal parts people with anxiety going "yeah that's what it's like" and people with arabians going "yeah that's what they're like"

[werewolf-transgenderism]

rip king, truly nobody was doing it for weird sci-fi and fantasy obsessed nerds like you 💔

[gloamglozerglam-deactivated2022]

only the true king could remove the sword from the stone…. no one else could…… they didn’t have…. arthurization

[sophsun1]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer – 2.19: I Only Have Eyes for You

[triceraquake]

nooooooo, why is our watcher gone? who will watch for us now?

[qi-mera]

More of you need to learn about these ☝️

[jadenebula]

[grumpyjesterr]

on another note, watched The Mummy (1999) the other day and I couldn’t help  feel like the O’Connells and the Addams (Addams Family Values (1993) would get on really well ya know? The O’Connells are basically the pastel adventure version of the Addams, surely they would just be vibin’ over tea and crumpets in an extremely haunted mansion having a ball of a time

[grumpyjesterr]

Morticia: “So what is it you do for a living my dear?”

Evelyn: “We dig up dead people who often have monstrous curses placed on them!”

Morticia: “fascinating”

[grumpyjesterr]

Gomez: *leaping out from behind a pillar which is encrusted with ominous looking runes* en garde!

Rick: *grabs sword from equally ominous looking wall full of weapons one of which seems to be glowing* fantastic I was getting a bit rusty

Gomez: *nearly in tears* oh he’s screaming nonsensically, what spirit! what reslove!

[grumpyjesterr]

*Rick and Gomez, still frantically sword fighting*

Rick: Have I mentioned how wonderful my wife is yet, I really feel like I haven’t really expanded enough on how wonderful she is

Gomez: do go on, I would be delighted to hear about how wonderful your wife is, I strongly encourge all men to extoll the virtues of their wives with rapturous praise, however I should perhaps mention my wife is in fact better

*sword fighting intensifies as both men rapturously extoll the virtues of their wives*

[digitaldiscipline]

Jonathan and Fester and Cousin Itt watch from the bar, where Lurch and Thing are making the drinks.

[lemonsharks]

Jonathan and Thing knew one another from The War; each thought the other to be dead

Their reunion is highly emotional

[burntcopper]

Rick, whilst swordfighting:  My wife resurrected an ancient evil that brought about the plagues.

Gomez: What. A. Woman.