what if tomorrow @camomility - Tumblr Blog

Textile art featuring a school of koi fish, by artist Lin Xia.

You know the meme where you go "the name of [noun with a diminutive] implies the existence of [a hypothetical HUGE form of same thing, but without the diminutive]" like "existence of dorito implies the existence of THE DORO" and it's a huge-ass corn chip the size of a wheel of cheese?

Well, in finnish, the word for moth is "yökkönen", from "yö" (night), the suffix "-kko/kkö" which has many purposes but one of them is to change any word into "person involved with doing something with the root word", and the dininutive "-nen". So the name of moth is "little night creature".

But coming back to the diminutive meme, the existence of yökkönen would imply the existence of yökkö, the big (or at least medium-sized, or non-small) night creature. Through a happenstance completely unrelated to moths or other insects, "yökkö" is the finnish vernacular word for a night shift nurse.

#what is a night nurse if not a large moth with medical training #i have always said this #linguistics

astroportals

NOT morally opposed to the met gala because i know what it's for and why it's important and necessary for the continued preservation of textile arts.

but you should also still support the met union because 91% of hourly Met staff in the union earn less than a living wage, and 27% of salaried Met staff earn less than a living wage.

museums cost a lot of money to run and rely on private donations as public funding is often limited. just because the met gala only raises funds for a specific collection doesn't mean it's inherently bad. it's not just a rich people's party. and anyway, rich people should be giving their money to stuff like the preservation of the arts.

anyway, i'm not even someone who avidly follows the met gala stuff or cares about seeing celeb's costumes. i do care about people being accurate about the things they say though. the met gala is not the enemy, it's a necessary fundraising event. pretty much every museum has these types of events they're just not as big or in the public spotlight. my tiny local museum has yearly fundraising galas too. it's normal museum stuff.

luulapants

If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

naamahdarling

Finally, a good fucking take.

#good post

oysters-aint-for-me

there’s a used bookstore in rural western massachusetts (the montague book mill) whose motto is “books you don’t need in a place you can’t find” and i just feel like that summarizes tumblr too

oysters-aint-for-me

posts you don’t need on a site you can’t search

#the montague book mill is delightful btw #it’s in an old mill (hence the name) overlooking a stream #and in addition to the used bookstore there’s also a cafe and a local artists’ gallery #so. kinda like tumblr in fact.#except i think the mbm probably contains less microlabel discourse

heinousmind

I feel so maternal

#my god… a bingus #sculpture

homunculus-argument

I love following people with niche Fancy interests and having no idea what they're talking about. Like they'll be like

"I finally gave in to the peer pressure and went to see the [theatre house I have never heard of] production of [play I have never heard of] and after writing my own review of it I eyed some other peoples' opinions and I don't know what the hell this New York Times writer was smoking or whose production they actually accidentally saw instead of the one that I did, but not only was this not the first or only production of [the play] to use a real live chicken on the stage, it's a fucking cliché in theatre groups and I might actually have to go fight this guy."

#it do be like that #sometimes the nyt theatre reviewers are woefully out of the live-chicken-use loop

meangirlnurse

trying something new this year called the Mosquito Bucket Challenge!

it's an initiative being pushed by Homegrown National Park as an alternative to mosquito spraying and pesticides

the key concept is intentionally attracting mosquitos to buckets with standing water, but adding mosquito dunks to prevent them from successfully reproducing

mosquito dunks are a product containing a bacteria called Bti, which prevents larvae from developing into adult mosquitos

Bti does not affect most other animals/insects, and is thus safe for wildlife and pollinators! you can find mosquito dunks easily online or at home improvement stores

so basically, you fill the bucket up with organic material like leaves, add water and a quarter of a mosquito dunk once a month....and that's about it! you also use a wire cover or a "rescue stick" to prevent other creatures from falling into the bucket and not being able to climb out

Homegrown National Park is encouraging people to decorate their buckets to help spread the word, but i am lazy so Lowe's logo and a tumblr post it is

we can talk about the important role mosquitos play in ecosystems, but the reality is that many people won't tolerate high numbers of mosquitos in their yards. this is an easy and low-cost alternative to much more harmful control methods – a bucket, mosquito dunks and some chicken wire cost me a total of about $20!

you can read more about the Mosquito Bucket Challenge here! please consider reblogging or making a bucket this year 🐝

#oh that’s super smart #signal boost

frostedmagnolias

House of Worth Gown

c. 1880

silk, metal, glass

New Canaan Museum & Historical Society

#oh wowie #that train is something #fashion

violetsbookshelf

Pointe Skirt by Darinika Atelier

elodieunderglass

Thank you so much @vicshush it’s amazing!

#yoooooo #fashion

firebatvillain

One fun thing about learning new languages is reconsidering the structure of words and language in your mother tongue. It seems with each new language I study, I get more little insights into English, either in how it's similar or how it's different.

For example, a couple years ago, while learning Spanish, I encountered the word for a store, "la tienda." I thought "huh, that's a lot like tener (tiene) - the word for store in Spanish literally corresponds to 'to have/keep'. How interesting!"

Then I stopped for a moment, and for the first time in my life, thought about seriously about the meaning of English word for the place where you buy things, "a store."

#linguistics

leolaroot

how the world opens up to you as a kid learning to hand sew when you realize you can do literally anything with the button holes and dont have to do an X or = stitches you can do anything. nad then like an image of a futuristic neon city

leolaroot

when i realized i could do this sort of shit to a button my life changed

#several of these do render the buttons nonfunctional as buttons #but they’re all super cute #sewing

madtomedgar

I think with the culture wars a lot of people don't understand anymore that humor changes over time and sometimes what was funny then just isn't funny now not because "everyone is offended" but because it just doesn't land, tastes have changed and the punchline doesn't read.

There's a whole scene that gets cut from every production of Tempest because it is clearly supposed to be funny, but the punchline is "widow Dido," and the best guess is that it was essentially a meme that we just don't get anymore. So the scene doesn't work, it isn't funny, it's barely comprehensible. Widow Dido wasn't canceled, society just moved on to different stupid jokes. One of the bits in Merry Wives of Windsor, a genuinely funny play, that is clearly supposed to bring the house down, and probably did in 1598, is that this one guy is French. That's it, that's the joke. Hon Hon Hon baguette du fromage. Get a load of this Frenchman. At best these days it comes off as silly and juvenile. But to an Elizabethan English person, some French guy fumbling a good English girl was hilarious.

And yeah there's also an element of xenophobia and nationalism there and that's not great, but mostly it's just not really funny anymore that French people exist, it's just like... ok? And??

And i think a lot of like. Bits where the punchline is that people are gay, Steven, or like. A woman is doing something, a Trans person exists, this guy wore a dress, isn't it sooooooooo funny that these two dudes are saying romantic words at each other ironically or acting like a couple like...

Yeah the idea that this would be funny is rooted in bigotry. But also,

It's just not funny? Like ok? This guy is wearing a dress? So what? Like ok this character hit on someone thinking they were one gender and was wrong, that's just a random Thursday in a South End bar, we've all been there? Nu?? Sometimes people are from Wales, yeah, that's how geography works?

So like. Is it actually being "canceled" or did tastes just change? Is this being ruined by sjws or woke or whatever, or is this just going the way of 2000s mustache humor?

#this is a very good post #but also i do think it’s funny how much of it is secretly very specifically about merry wives of windsor #sometimes people are from wales….#shakespeare #comedy

nasajpl

We know that we cannot take the current President's statements at face value. But in light of Trump's recent speech where he claimed that he's "saved" NASA and always supported them (which isn't true), I wanted to elaborate on some of this.

He's slashed the budget, forced removal of DEI history and contributions at NASA, and caused many NASA workers' unemployment. I have worked closely with people in these spheres and know that the budget cuts have deeply jeopardized the future space missions, space exploration, and space science.

My close friends and colleagues, especially those relying on DEI programs, have had such a difficult time during this administration, and we still are. This program found some success with Artemis II and beyond in spite of the current administration's lack of support and lack of funding.

You can read more details here.

cardassiangoodreads

This is all the more reason you guys have to stop circulating shit about Artemis II being “US army propaganda.” Along with that it just isn’t, all those arguments are various forms of associating this with Trump “but leftishly.” In fact I don’t think he should get credit for a program from an agency he’s done everything he can to kneecap at every turn. You don’t have to give it to him!

sr-roto

audio On 😂😂😂

theygender

For blind/visually impaired folks: The instruments being used to recreate these songs are two kazoos, a plastic shopping bag, a metal colander pot, a basting brush, an empty water jug, and a thin sheet of plastic, all being played by two people in an empty parking garage for the acoustics

For deaf/HoH folks: The songs being played here are near perfect renditions of the 20th Century Fox theme, the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, and the Mission Impossible theme