totally i understand narratively why project hail mary ends with grace becoming a teacher again but ever since i saw the movie i haven’t been able to stop thinking about what a crazy move it is from the eridian perspective. like imagine if we had one (1) alien on earth and we liked him so much that we just let him have a class of schoolchildren to teach all the brand new alien science to, for fun. what’s the selection process for that classroom. do the adult eridian scientists wish they were in there
we have dandelions EVERYWHERE, they are basically our State Weed, it is absolutely impossible that my mom has never interacted with a dandelion before, this requires further investigation
So after extensive interrogation I have an update:
my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.
the truth is actually weirder
she’s aware dandelions look like this
she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions
she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?
she answered, with complete confidence: Daffodils.
“buttercups” is a name applied to MANY flowers. in my part of the south it was this one:
imo there’s correct identifications of dandelions, daffodils, easter lilies and marigolds in this thread, but buttercups are simply impossible to agree on and the only solution is for everyone to post pictures of their local buttercups
Yeah but that's just the beginning. I also want Sanitation Worker Discounts at every business and blockbuster movie propaganda glorifying sanitation work. I want random people to salute garbage collectors and thank them for their service. I want drivers who get impatient with the recycling truck and honk at it and swerve around it to become social pariahs
I'm getting tired of eating chicken soup all week, but it's been great because I can just cook the chicken on the bottom of the pot, successively add vegetables based on their cook time, and I dirty just the pot, the knife, and the cutting board.
Do y'all have any low-effort, low-cost soup suggestions for the week?
In its most basic form, cook some onion + garlic in some olive oil, then add 2 cans of chickpeas (with the liquid!) into the pot + harissa paste to taste + broth/stock/bouillon + whatever vegetables you would additionally like. Finish with lemon juice if desired. I usually serve with egg (poached directly in the soup) + hearty bread but that’s not required ofc.
I like a mushroom and pearl barley soup, even though it takes a little bit of cooking time.
Fry an onion in oil, add sliced mushrooms + salt, fry until the mushrooms shrink a bit (plus more oil, if the pot goes to dry). Add garlic, pepper, thyme or other herbs, cook for another minute or so, then add broth (vegetable or meat, either works) and the pearl barley, about 50 grams per portion. Probably around a quarter cup? I measure mine with a Turkish tea glass, that looks about right in terms of size. Boil until the barley is tender - the one I have currently is coarsely milled instead of whole grains and will take around half an hour.
Curried lentil soup, where you fry up some onion, ginger, and garlic, add a generous amount of the curry seasoning of your choosing (Indian curry paste, thai curry paste, curry powder, etc), then add in some carrots, fry a little longer.
Add maybe 3-4 cups of stock (if you're using a very salty stock and a saltier curry paste, thin a little with water, if you're using curry powder, taste at the end and add salt if needed) and a cup or so of red lentils (double it if you're planning on a big pot and lots of leftovers), cook on an enthusiastic simmer until the lentils are soft, maybe 15-20 minutes.
Add some chopped green vegetables like kale, spinach, etc (I like the individually frozen cubes you can get, they're a great thing to keep in the freezer and chuck into stuff for added nutrition) in the last few minutes of cooking, if you've got them, and a generous spoonful or two of lemon or lime juice right before serving (I usually go for lemon if Indian curry seasonings, lime if Thai).
It's a very forgiving base recipe and good for using up what you have.
If you've got some yams or potatoes, that's good to add some small cubed ones in when you add the lentils and stock. If you don't have any green vegetables, it works well without. If you've got cabbage or bell peppers, add some in in the same stage when you're frying the carrots. If you want some extra protein, peanut butter is good in here as well and adds extra creaminess. If you've got some coconut milk that's a great thing to add, too. Tomatoes or tomato paste, can also be added if you like em, use a lil less citrus if you're doing that. For a slightly sweeter variant you can add some chopped apples. If you don't have lemon juice or lime juice, a dash of a nicely flavoured vinegar is good too, like apple cider or white wine vinegar.
Sausage, Goat Cheese, and Winter Squash soup. It's legit got five ingredients and is insanely good
cut 2 winter squash in half (any squash that isn't spaghetti squash, butternut, or summer squash will do) and put them in the oven for about an hour (or until the squash is soft) at 350. Fry up 1lb of breakfast sausage and a chopped white onion. Get a pot, put in 2 containers of chicken stock (64oz), the breakfast sausage/onions, and the scooped-out inside of the squash. Simmer lightly for 15min. Mash up any big chunks of the squash that are still left, then add goat cheese to taste.
Behold, the easiest turkey chili you will ever make.
In the bottom of your pot, break up a package of ground turkey, and season with salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, and garlic powder. Keep it moving until you don’t see any pink left. Next add in a diced onion, and keep that moving until soft. Turn your heat way up, add in (all undrained, low sodium preferred) a can of black beans, two cans of red kidney beans, a can of pinto beans, a can of corn, and a can of tomatoes with green chilis. For seasoning, I use one packet of taco mix, and one packet of powdered ranch dressing, and maybe a bit of salt if it needs it. Add hot sauce if you want extra spice. Set it to a low boil for about 15-20 minutes, stir often, serve hot with cornbread or crescent rolls.
It keeps really well on its own, but I usually eat the leftovers mixed with ramen noodles.
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
you don’t realize how important lunch is until you’re wandering around thinking about how unloveable and untalented and uniquely cursed you are and then it’s 4pm and you finally eat lunch and you go Oh. oh right.
lot of people commenting on this post like "who eats lunch at 4pm that's a terrible time to eat lunch" yes. that is the point. 4pm lunch is inadvisable. 4pm lunch is not the ideal. 4pm lunch makes the mind demons real.
there’s this term i coined in my friendgroup i call “the charizard effect” and it can apply to anything and everything, but it was born from me explaining my feelings about the pokemon charizard. the term is basically about how overexposure to something be it by corporate shilling or fandom prominence drives me away from really enjoying something bc i’m exposed to it so much against my will i become tired of it. it came to me bc i was ranting about how tpci does not, and cannot stop reinventing charizard, and how it is popular and obtusely included in almost every region, merch, etc in every way possible and it’s highly commodified.
i dont dislike the pokemon charizard, in fact i really like its X form, but i am exposed to so much charizard in my pokemon consumption that i cant be bothered to care for it in any more than in passing. this applies to a bunch of other stuff i’d otherwise be ok with, but i always just call this aversion phenomena “the charizard effect”
making this term has done numbers for me being able to concisely express how i feel abt something. like. its not charizard’s fault i feel this way, im sure i’d feel normal abt it if it was stripped of all this over commodification, but i cannot. hence the name
2087
germansingergirl
jbbartram-illu
titsay
janainaart
