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coolmugsifound

"Frogs in marsh" Otagiri mug (year unknown)

source

chic-a-gigot

La Mode illustrée, no. 29, 17 juillet 1864, Paris. Moitié du fond de la toque. Ville de Paris / Bibliothèque Forney

ariaste

Today is the reveal of the cover for new edition of YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION, coming out July 16th from Tor UK and October 6th from Tor Bramble!

YIELD is a cozy M/M romantasy about doing the hard, unlovely, backbreaking work of learning to love and forgive yourself so that you can accept the love of other people which has been waiting for you all along. Tags include: One-sided enemies-to-lovers, one-sided yearning and pining, grumpy/sunshine, your honor they're idiots, busybody gods, and plant magic.

SUMMARY:

Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he’s also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant. When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam’s entry into the village’s vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn’t forgiven him. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods won’t answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab. And then, the very last straw: Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good. Tam soon finds himself set on a quest for the most difficult of all possible prizes: Self care, forgiveness, a second chance... and somehow the unbelievably precious knowledge that there is at least one person who loves Tam for exactly who he is—and always has.

"Alongside the sexiness and absurdity (and the sexy absurdity) in Yield Under Great Persuasion is a tender, resonant story of second and third chances and being loved when we need it most and feel we deserve it least. Evocative, emotional, and endlessly entertaining." -Jules Arbeaux, author of Lord of the Empty Isles

"A hot cup of chocolate for the soul." --Book Riot Preorders should be available now wherever you buy your books, including Bookshop.org, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

(If your first question is "Where is the best place to get it?" check the FAQ page on my website!)

As an author, it is really hard to get the word out about books, so signal boosting would be immensely appreciated!

ariaste

Now that the kickstarter for THE WISDOM OF EMPERORS is over, I am back on promo for YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION! Comes out in July in the UK/EU and October in the US!

ariaste

This bad boy comes out TOMORROW (July 16th) in hardcover in the UK/EU, and worldwide in audiobook format! It's also available RIGHT NOW in ebook format worldwide! (Hardcover release for the US is in October!)

If you read the first edition and loved it, this one has about 13,000 words of new chapters at the end :)

ariaste

It's out today!!! And if you haven't been convinced already, here's the first page:

Tam Becket did not care for Lord Lyford. On the other hand, gods, the man had a cock on him. The former opinion was one he could trace back to the age of nine, when Lyford—Master Nicolau, as he’d been known in those days—had knocked over Tam’s table at the village fair one year, smashing the purple marrow that Tam had been nursing along for months and which would have won him the vegetable competition. The latter opinion could be traced to mid-adolescence, when Tam (against his better judgment and later deeply exasperated with himself) had jumped Lyford’s bones—or possibly consented to be jumped by him—and lost his virginity in Lyford’s father’s hayloft. On one hand, the prick: Obnoxious, entitled, smug, thoughtless, impractical, excessive, irresponsible, unreliable, and lazy. On the other hand, the prick’s prick: Long, incredibly girthy, deliciously curved, hard as a rock, ravenous, and roped with veins that made it look ferocious enough that Tam’s mouth started watering at the very thought of it and his traitorous legs somehow kept falling open on their own, despite all efforts to convince himself that he definitely did not need Lyford’s cock to live and that he certainly would not die without it.

gailynovelry

The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.

rosslynpaladin

IMHO, a huge part of executive dysfunction is often the brain trying to avoid pain,

and in the case of tasks, usually pain inflicted by Shame Culture/Puritanism.

So, odds are also good you're not afraid of the Project, you're probably afraid of

Getting In Trouble, if you were raised anywhere in the Puritan-Anglo-sphere of child rearing by terror of punishment from the hand of Angry God/Teacher/Parent/John Fucking Calvin.

Punishment one can attract by doing it wrong,

by existing, by breathing, by being too this or too that, by doing it too slowly or too fast, by not doing it so if you ignore it maybe the trouble can be put off, by doing it Not Good Enough, by doing it differently, All avoided by NOT doing it,

or doing it ONLY in a way that is totally perfect so you get the very best grades and don't go to Detention/Hell, a thing that is normal to live in abject terror of at all times. (it's not)

Thanks, John Calvin and the horses you rode in on.

ploobytumbls

I would like to share the story of a very understandable but unfortunate mistake i made at work recently

So I'm weeding our ancient and terrible collection of children's books for the first time in possibly ever, and I'm making a decision about a book about migrant workers by Sandra Weiner, called Small Hands, Big Hands. And I'm not 100% sure and I go to just see if there's anything out there about this book's being notable in any way so I do an open web search for

"small hands big hands weiner"

And then I look at my results for a moment

and then at last I somberly add to the end of my search, "BOOK"

chaostheorietblr

I have one like that:

In mathematics, you often consider the two-dimensional plane - you know, the idealised flat two-dimensional object that extends infinitely - which can be real or complex (doesn't matter what that means)

On this, you can perform a mathematical operation called a "blow-up" (resulting in a more complicated geometry)

I needed to look up a formula related to this, so I confidently typed into the search bar:

"Blow up real plane"

The results were not what I wanted and I am not sure if I'm on a terror watchlist now.

three--rings

This reminds me of my corsetmaker days when i found myself searching for "extra thick boning."

inqorporeal

I recall fondly one of Ursula Vernon's LJ posts where she was looking for references for a black rooster for one of her paintings (this one, iirc), and very nearly hit Enter on a search for "black cock"

riotsquirrrl

I gotta tell you, I searched for "saucy walker leg" for my mom in the late 90s and got some *interesting* results

bisexualbaker

Happy Moon Landing Eve! Remember to leave out milk and cookies for Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, and don’t let Michael Collins convince you to prank NASA!

bisexualbaker

If Tumblr is still here next July 19th, I fully expect this post to obliterate my activity feed.

woundliqour

aggressivewhenstartled

This is why I get meal kits. Do I need them? No. Can I easily make them myself? For way cheaper? Yes. WILL I??? No.

Other tips: if you are going to buy things that aren’t pre-taxed, you need to make a habit of always doing the prep AS SOON AS YOU GET HOME. it will NEVER HAPPEN if you don’t.

Get the bulk pack of steaks! But you are never gonna eat them before they go bad. If you freeze them in individual ziplocks as soon as you unpack you probably will?

Get the celery, but you need to cut it ALL UP and store it in the fridge in water or it will rot.

And don’t do all tgese at once, get like, one or two prep things a trip. You aren’t gonna get it started if it’s a huge task.

rogueemmy

Don’t pass by these tips because you don’t have ADHD!

These are valid points for the busy parent, the overstressed college student, and the person working the “wrong” shift.

Real story - I have thrown away SO MUCH meat and produce in my time. Frozen veggies can even be better than fresh, since they are picked when ripe and frozen rather than picked early and expected to ripen in shipping. My local grocer will sometimes pre-chop less-than-desirable veggies and sell them in the discount cooler - a chopped onion is more useful than a whole one! Meat in bulk packs is WAY cheaper, but you have to make breaking up that huge pack part of putting away the groceries. Also, having a place to put the groceries away helps make the process easier. It’s taken me more than one decade of life to figure these things out.

It’s not lazy if it is efficient. Professionals call it “time management.”

tjmystic

Not ADHD, just incredibly busy and tired all the time, and this is VERY helpful.

raynewolferune

I am ADHD and I started using these techniques myself 2 years ago. Life changing. My budget is way better now than it was before.

whatapictureisworth-press

So it’s been awhile since I’ve bound anything, but when I read the Cursed Amulet Story by @sunderwight, I was like, I gotta make an actual, physical evil amulet now. Except the evil amulet is also going to be a book. And the book is like a diary by the guy trapped in the amulet.

suzirya

Mutsu by Prospective Flow - Panatomy

ralfmaximus

"While I was trying to photograph the Northern Lights in the wee hours of the morning, my cat decided to photobomb the picture. Since I had the camera’s shutter speed maxed out, it ended up leaving a sort of ghostly image of my cat in the photo."

Photographer: Kristie Kohn

naamahdarling

Oh WOW what a lovely portrait!

brainstatic

One thing I’m still pissed at Bernie Sanders about is turning a generation against the Democratic Party. Every piece of social progress in the last 80 years, from Social Security to Medicaid to Medicare to integration to the Civil Rights Act to Title IX to Roe v. Wade to labor rights to environmental protections to public health protections to Obamacare to Obergefell, all of it directly or indirectly powered by the engine of change that is the Democratic Party. And then Sanders comes and says this whole apparatus, which he had no hand in building, is corrupt and needs to be completely replaced. Now we have countless young people who think Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the same partly because they were told that an engine of change and an anchor of stagnation and oppression are equally bad because they were fed the lie that no one in the Democratic Party does anything to improve their lives.

nyxelestia

Nothing makes me more embarrassed about my age or generation than BernieOrBust/StillJill/NeverHillary supporters who are basically doing the GOP’s work for them and refuse to acknowledge it. As much as I hate the ageist bullshit I see Baby Boomers come up with, I can see why they think so many millenials need to get their head out of the clouds or don’t know how the real world works when I see the way people my age talk about politics. Like, I know it’s bullshit and I still don’t blame baby boomers for getting mad that young people think they know everything. Because fun story: my university campus is very liberal and very politically active, and during the last quarter there most students strongly supported Bernie Sanders…except for most of us in or connected to the Political Science Department (so Poli Sci majors, International Relations majors, certain other ‘bureaucratic’ majors, etc.) We also loved Bernie, but we all pretty bluntly said we were voting for Hillary and thought she’d be the best President. Most of us were pretty blunt about how “as much as we love Bernie’s message of change, we think Hillary can actually accomplish more of it in the real world”. We were basing our decision on our studies of politics, of what kinds of change have and have not worked in history and why. This support for Hillary, even with our love of Bernie, came from a place of deep understanding of how politics work, of why certain policies or political goals fail, and what various political leaders’ real powers and challenges are. We were called “over-educated elites” because of this.

maddie-2022

It’s worth noting that much of our greatest progressive reforms came from LBJ, very much a political insider, and a guy who was kind of slimy in his personal life. He was not a soaring idealist.

And some of the other progressive greats? JFK, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt all came from long-established political dynasties

I supported Bernie in 2016 (although I did vote for Hillary in the general, and have voted Democrat every two years since), but in hindsight, I think you’re right, attacking the system is not the best move to get real reform done. H. Clinton probably would have done a good job

prismatic-bell

And let’s be real: many of them were assholes. JFK was a serial cheater. FDR–who anyone on this blog for more than five minutes can tell you I love for his social policies–was antisemitic and didn’t challenge racial prejudices that blocked many Black citizens from accessing those wonderful social policies. Teddy Roosevelt was an ardent supporter of, and participant in, American imperialism. LBJ used to talk about his dick to staffers. This is not uncommon, because in spite of the many jokes, politicians are people.

Change does not come from perfect individuals.

Bernie did so much damage.

fairvilejen

Nixon, fucking Nixon, signed the core of the ecologic protection laws.

crinkledmap

I don’t have a problem voting for “political insiders” because *they freaking know how the sausage is made.* I want a goddamned professional in the job. Wanting an “outsider” strikes me like saying, “I don’t want a surgeon that went to some hoity-toity university and is friends with the the department head! I want some guy who learned how to remove appendixes by pulling himself by his bootstraps and learning by trial and error!”

so-i-did-this-thing

sir do you listen to classical music? If yes do you have any recs?

I am, in fact, a classically trained oboist!

Classical music is an enormous genre, spanning centuries and cultures. Because of my training, I focus on the Western tradition. I enjoy the baroque and romantic periods the most, with some 20th century.

Usually when asked for recommendations (assuming you are new to classical), I lean towards music that feels like a movie soundtrack or otherwise has memorable themes non-musicians easily remember:

Ma Vlast - Moldau: Smetana

Danse Macabre: Saint-Saens

Night on Bald Mountain: Mussorgsky

New World Symphony: Dvorak

Scheherazade: Rimsky-Korsakov

The Planets: Holst

Symphony No. 4: Tchaikovsky (5 is also a banger)

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis: Vaughan Williams (Lark Ascending is also great)

My personal favorites, however, are what I enjoy playing:

Summer Music: Barber

Trio and Sextuor: Poulenc

Serenade for Winds: Dvorak

Double concerto: J.S. Bach

Sinfonische Metamorphosen: Hindemith

Concerto for Orchestra: Bartok

I do have one exception, and it's that I fucking love the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

s3mininja

The RVW piece reminded me of something and I'd love to hear your thoughts, but I have to preface by saying that what I'm about to direct your attention to may (at least at first impression) seem like the worst idea you've ever heard if you're not already aware of it. There's a guy who has a youtube channel on which - among many other pieces - he has posted an arrangement of the entirety of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, note for note (as far as I can tell), but

performed as heavy metal. Also half of the pieces on your intro list (Danse Macabre, Night on Bald Mountain, The Planets (all of them), a medley of RVW) and various others.

so-i-did-this-thing

As someone who will argue that power metal is the spiritual successor of J.S. Bach, I love me a good arrangement, and it's especially fun when it changes the genre.

I mean, in the classical music biz, we are almost *all* cover bands of one sort or another. Even when playing something "straight," there is a tremendous amount of variation, and many traditional styles (baroque ornamentation, cadenzas in concertos) outright demand personalization on the part of the performer.

trupowieszcz-moved-deactivated2

r/scrungycats is fucking amazing

fruityfinch

This one is my favourite. It’s subtle. It’s contemplative. This cat has so much to consider

messier51

my observation from 2 months of kittens

blackshvck

the idea that every summer will be as hot if not hotter than this for the rest of my life is unbearable i need to (remembers suicide jokes are bad for my mental health) murder an oil executive