if nothing sparks joy, start making sparks!

[Header ID: A screenshot of an article reading "Local Queer Socialist Teen Kicked Out Of U.S. History Honors Classroom After Turning In A 43 Page Paper on The Plan for The Future Of America To Singlehandely Dismantle The Wage System And Capitalism. End ID] [Profile picture ID: A person with pale skin, short, curly brown hair, and large circular glasses, grinning happily, one hand raised in a triumphant fist. The background is lavender, with scribbles in pink and blue on it, and doodles in colorful glowing lines of stars, hearts, and smiley faces. End ID.] sonder aka variable • major • any pronouns • white • agnostic + jewish, emphasis on the ish • my carrd

[kosmogrl]

I never got over anything. I miss everyone and everything. nostalgia and grief kill me every day. oh and I also love going on walks.

[turquoisemagpie]

The Voice in the Night

(Part 1)

The Voice in the Night

(Part 2)

The Voice in the Night

(Part 3)

The Voice in the Night

(Part 4 - end)

[apricops]

that post about “you get bandits when you cut soldiers loose without pay” reminds me of the Thirty Years War, because one could say that beneath all the religious schisms and diplomatic jockeying, the heart of the thirty years war was “what happens when you have a state with just enough capacity to raise massive armies but without enough financial capacity to actually pay those armies” and the answer is that the line between professional armies and roving gangs of bandits disappears and every time you try to raise an army it just becomes another independently acting wildfire devouring the countryside. No matter how bad things get, every day I wake up and thank my lucky stars that I do not live in 17th century Europe. Or 17th century China. Or the 17th century Americas. Or basically anywhere in the 17th century.

[probabilitydirigible]

One of my favorite little anecdotes about ancient mercenaries is that it was tradition for most of history to give your mercenaries two wages- "Bread" and "Gravy." Both were set at a daily value, but where "Bread" was intended to cover regular maintenance and life stuff and therefore paid out frequently (Here's your week's meal and gear repair budget!) the "Gravy" wage was paid out exclusively at the end of the contract as one lump sum. So like, your gravy wage and bread wage might be one silver coin per day each, so you're getting a handful of coins every week to cover food, and then at the end of an 800 day campaign, you get a wheelbarrow with 800 coins.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

Anyway across all time and history a lot of generals were ultimately beaten to death by men chanting gravy.

[zanmor]

can I get a source on the use of that term, bread and gravy wages?

I assume that's a more modern historian coming up with a clever characterization of army pay, but all I've been able to find is either sites talking about modern fast food wages or else a thousand articles about "why ancient roman soldiers were paid in salt"

if it is a historian's invention I think I wanna read what else this person has to say

[wicker-and-scrap]

Don't know what @probabilitydirigible 's source was, but Bret Devereaux was writing about this subject recently, and mentioned the Classical sources calling them σίτος (bread) and ὀψώνιον (sauce).

(I had a brief moment of recognition reading that, because "opsonins" in immunology are a category of proteins that stick to foreign objects and make them tasty to your immune cells.)

Collections: Ancient Mediterranean Mercenaries!

This week we’re going to take a look at mercenaries in the ancient Mediterranean world! This was one of the runners-up in the latest ACOUP S

[thenervebible]

CONNIE PANZARINO at a pride march in Boston circa 1990

[ID: Connie is marching along in her sip 'n' puff (SNP) wheelchair. She is wearing a patterned poncho and sporting a green felt party crown on her head. She styles a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with her slicked back hair. She is smiling. Attached to the back of her wheelchair is a large green cardboard poster that reads "Trached Dykes Eat Pussy Without Comin' Up For Air!" followed by a pink upside-down triangle with a stick figure person in a wheelchair at the centre (a symbol for disabled women)].

the cyborg & the crip by Alison Kafer

[ID: “Trached dykes eat pussy without coming up for air.” Connie Panzarino, a longtime disability activist and out lesbian, would attach this sign to her wheelchair during Pride marches in Boston in the early 1990s. Shockingly explicit, her sign refuses to cast technology as cold, distancing, or disembodied/disembodying, presenting it instead as a source and site of embodied pleasure. “Trach” is an abbreviation of tracheotomy, a medical procedure in which a breathing tube is inserted directly into the trachea, bypassing the mouth and nose. Someone with a trach, then, can, in effect, breathe through her throat, freeing her mouth for other activities (another version of this sign is “Trached dykes french kiss without coming up for air”). From a cyborgian perspective, this sign is brilliantly provocative and productive. It draws on the pervasive idea that adaptive technologies grant superior abilities,not merely replacing a lost capacity but enhancing it, yet it does so in a highly subversive way. The message here isn’t about blending in, about passing as normal or hypernormal, but about publicly announcing the viability of a queer disabled location. It’s disnormalizing, adamantly refusing compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory able bodiedness, and homonormativity. As Corbett O’Toole argues, it challenges the perceived passivity of disabled women, presenting them as actively pleasuring their partners, thereby graphically refuting stereotypes linking physical disability with nonsexuality.]

[feldfrog]

Imagine being one of the parents for the kids in the Magic School Bus class. Getting those field trip permission slips home every single night.

Like what, another one? Doesn’t she teach? This just says Inside a Dog

[asimovsideburns]

Ms Frizzle sending you one (1) permission slip at the beginning of the year to cover all the field trips and you’re like huh that’s a little unusual but I guess it’s efficient at least and then you open it and it’s written like This

[barillapasta]

i95 perfec t place for european to c\ross! cars very Soft and Slow european cross easily put european on 95. Put football fan On 95. no problems ever on i95 because good Crosswalks and Stoplights for european walk to met life stadium for european pedestrian culture. i95 yes a place for a european put european on 95 can trust new jersey for giveing good love to european. friend i95

[charl0ttan]

im glad we're in the internet backwaters i think if dove chocolate or something replied to my post i would just keep reporting them for terorism again and again and again

[parkchanwoohoo]

No I think it's really great when a friend group of approximately twenty seven individuals spread out in the sidewalk as they walk so nobody has to walk behind the group. There's nothing better than when I'm trying to get home and I see the tableau of Jesus at the Last Supper gliding towards me like Jamiroquai in the Virtual Insanity music video and I have to decide who has the narrowest frame that I can shoulder-check my way past

[orbleglorb]

it's pride month. you know what that means

ID: an excerpt from a naruto fanfiction. It says:

"I don't dance," Sasuke snapped back. "Anyway, what's Gay Pride Day? What are they proud of?"

Next chapter:

Naruto had to think before he could come up with an answer to Sasuke's question. People had told him it was Gay Pride Day, and he had watched the parade of course, where people made fun of themselves and behaved as if they were proud of being not only gay but also rather weird, but otherwise he had not given much thought to the name.

"I think they are proud that they're no longer ashamed," he finally answered. "It used to be different: They hid themselves as they do everywhere else, and only met at secret places, and later there were demonstrations that often got beaten up."

"Why did they not learn to defend themselves?" Sasuke asked.

"I don't know." It was not a question that had occurred to him, nor had he read anything about it in the newspaper -- it had just been taken for granted that it was impossible that they might have struck back. "Maybe they were outnumbered."

"It would not have happened to me." /end ID

[transfemme-shelterdog]

This pride month, and any other month, remember not to assume that all transfems are transandrophobic because of a few shitty ones.

Likewise, also don't assume that all trans men are transmisogynists just because a few are.

Don't assume that all binary trans people are exorsexist just because a few binary trans people are

And don't assume that all perisex people are intersexist because a few perisex people are.

And just don't assume that all trans people are whatever bigotry just because a few from that group are.

[leche-flandom]

There are many myths that shroud England, but one very few know is that no more than twenty-one (21) years shall pass without a remake of Pride and Prejudice, lest the kingdom should fall.

[bethanydelleman]

I heard this joke once about Canada and adaptations of Anne of Green Gables

[identitty-dickruption]

cannot stop saying “call me richard the way I’m the third”. I’m not even a third anything. can someone more appropriate take this curse from me

[theonion]

CEOs Lose Confidence In Economy

A survey of the world’s top CEOs found that a majority were losing confidence in the economy, with the ongoing war in Iran causing continued uncertainty. What do you think?

[wifehaver103947]

imagine cloth mother and wire mother in family court competing for custody of the baby monkey

[clothmotherofficial]

I Have Softness For You

[officialwiremother]

i have milk for you

[babymonkeyofficial]

Stop.

[kingsolomonofficial]

Cut the baby monkey in half

[flashcs5]

gay meth

[brucebocchi]

[greia]

KID WATCHING THE VIDEO: This guy’s not not tied to his rope… this - dude, this guy’s crazy, does he have a death wish or somethin’? Oh my gosh! Doesn’t he have like a wife and kids at home???

[parachute opens up to reveal it is rainbow]

KID, IN EXACT SAME TONE: Doesn’t he have a husband and kids at home???

[lestatfag]

STAY SAFE!! [ID: the Gilbert Baker pride flag with the words “Happy pride to all those who are unable to celebrate openly and safely. You are loved and seen!” in all-caps black text over it. /end ID]