the cars franchise is a cinematic masterpiece

thirty years experience in jacking off | draws @catjacket-scribbles

[despazito]

they just added sparkledogs to the kennel club registry

[despazito]

[despazito]

they carried a generation

[lycanthrology]

[attempting to flirt] if i was stuck in a timeloop id desperately explain my situation to you every single reset

[arbitraryexistence]

Ever since reading my first time loop-based book as a preteen, I’ve had a Secret Time Loop Code Word. It’s been the same word all these years. I’ve never written it down anywhere or told anyone what it is, just kept it tucked away in my brain. That way, if someone I know ever confided in me that they were stuck in a time loop, I would have a way to confirm it: I would tell them the time loop code word and instruct them to find and talk to me again on the next loop. Of course, if it’s a time loop, I wouldn’t remember telling them the code word. But they’d remember it. So if someone ever came to me and said “I’m stuck in a time loop, and the time loop code word is [X],” and it was indeed the word I’ve secretly held onto for most of my life, I would know that we had had this conversation in a previous loop and that they were telling the truth.

Will this ever be useful? Almost certainly not. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with having a completely absurd contingency plan. In case of time loops.

[jackhawksmoor]

[dogpuppy]

[mono-red-menace]

[probablybadrpgideas]

Detect evil but it becomes increasingly clear that whoever calibrated it had some really weird moral stances.

[dragoryu3000]

Yeah, his name was Gary Gygax

[oneheadtoanother]

[literallymechanical]

This is a contender for my new favorite fusion paper. How does it feel to be the realest god damn scientist on the planet Dr. Smiet

[yuriartillery]

girl who is normal voice: calling off off work is so humiliating. why wasn't i stronger

[juniepops]

if you hired a galapagos finch as a linecook it would perfectly evolve a beak to optimally smoke cigarettes behind the dumpsters

[spreadassholesdotorg]

[desidesidesi]

Big!!! Steppy!!!

[redfagdiver]

Taking her job very seriously

[neolxzr]

im not big into kpop demon hunters like i thought it was a cute and well made movie and i enjoyed it but i have to say watching golden climb its way back up through the spotify top 10 vs. the flood of taylor swift slop album songs is killing me. go girls save the honmoon

[neolxzr]

KILL HER GIRLS!!!!!!

[thedogeveryonehates]

WRONG!!! MURDER HER WITH SWORDS AND KNIVES ❤️✨

[en-theos]

What's a difference between historians people who just like to study history?

idk maybe the fulltime yearslong professional training by other professionals and constant peer review aka quality control? what's the difference between a five star chef and someone who makes homemade meals every day.

[en-theos]

like idk I don't intend to undermine amateurs' efforts and passion and they actually contribute to science/knowledge OFTEN and WELL but generally. generally I get paid for this and they don't because I put in 40+ hours a week at the office, I read thousands of pages a year on just the one topic, I write hundreds of pages on tight deadlines and with full citation, I make use of full institutional resources (scholarship databases academic network field specific technology work events etc etc), and my writing gets checked by numerous colleagues and also two guys who have been working in the field for decades and are specialized in my topic. and criticise me heavily on whatever I hand in in order to improve it. and i/we don't just study history, we are the ones producing it.

I got this job because Ive already spent 7 years in similar institutes training for this fulltime and 6 years before that acquiring the languages to be able to do those 7 years.

aka for comparison that's the same way a chef has years of training, specialisations in national or foreign cuisines, as well as many different types of cooking has then worked his way up in the business being mentored by other chefs from cook to sous chef to chef to chef of michelin restaurants while constantly checked by customers health inspection and food critics and helped by a team of cooks and staff and food suppliers and expensive equipment.

and just like tastes differ but food can be objectively good, knowledge (especially in the humanities) is actually a bunch of consensuses or even just arguments in a trenchcoat but the research has objectively higher truth value. because it's backed up by professional methods and resources and colleagues. that's how we create knowledge.

so let us cook okay

[fitzrove]

A thing that 'laypeople' often miss:

The ~5-9 years of university training that people go through to work in historical professions are maybe 80% about learning the required skills and only 20% about content (= learning sequences of events or "about" certain phenomena, i.e. what history is in school). If you "study history" for fun in your free time, you're likely reading lots of what other people have written to get to the "content", but may run into issues with stuff like:

1) reliably discerning what factors [historiographical era, school, position in debate] influenced the historian that wrote the piece and hence its usefulness as an account

2) reliably discerning who wrote it in the first place (amateur or pro?) and whether they were using good practices with their sources and methodology. This is important because there are a lot of bad faith and just otherwise poor quality historical interpretations that may be written in an authoritative tone that likely "makes sense" to you if you don't dig deeper into it!

3) if doing original research: evaluating whether something is a primary/secondary source, what circumstances it was created in, whether it's authentic, whether you're missing context, where to find context...

4) Just accessing sufficient information in general (institutional databases but also archives and libraries - for many topics you have to physically go to a specific place!) to be able to make a well-rounded argument

5) like op mentioned, accessing and processing information in multiple languages - you can't really properly study most topics without being able to read sources in the language of that area

6) making sure that what you're researching hasn't actually already been done before

7) Writing up your results in a cohesive, understandable way with solid argumentation and proper citations - so people can hold you accountable and verify your arguments from primary sources if they want to!

[boswelliana]

I'm just here to say that if you enjoy history, read history, write about history (even for fun), you can still consider yourself a historian. Perhaps not at a professional, or literary scale, but one can still be a historian if they are passionate enough about it.

Can we all please not gatekeep the love and study of history, regardless of your academic background. Obvious disclaimers should be noted, when it comes to the sharing and discussion of factual information and truth, especially regarding sources.

FYI, this is not be discounting those who have gone through rigorous training in the humanities and history fields (I myself am currently pursuing by History BA, hopefully a historical archiving MA), but I tell you the things I've studied and learned can easily be explained through Youtube and other (free) sources, such as Yale's Open Courses, edX, etc.

Of course nothing will beat an actual mentor/first-hand critique from a live professor, but, it's a start. At the very least, it also never hurts to personally reach out to educators - there's plenty of them on LinkedIn - if you'd like someone to take the time to read anything you've written. I guarantee you there are educators and intellectuals alike that will love to read someone's work, if it means encouraging intellectualism and the study of history.

Also shout-out to one of my favorite educators, Dr. Adam Walker, a professor from Harvard, who's actually gotten me interested in close readings (literature though, not poetry, lol) and the study of Rhetoric.

There's also the added fact that while someone may have the credentials to be considered a "Historian", they can still use that background for less than savory influences, or have even knowledge to cherry-pick information to support whatever narrative they want to promote/claim.

Idk where I'm getting at anymore, but w/e, if you love history and your history blorbos, you're a historian.

[en-theos]

Where in this post did we gatekeep 'the love and study of history, regardless of your academic background'? Let me reiterate again that I don't intend to undermine amateurs' efforts and passion and they actually contribute to science/knowledge OFTEN and WELL. My argument is that being a professional anything is not the same as being a hobby-anything. You do not have to fight for equal historian rights, no one is being oppressed here.

For this reason we have the term popular historian. Someone who's not directly involved in academia but practices history nonetheless. Who does not have the exact resources and quality control as academic historians but practices it nonetheless. and can contribute OFTEN and WELL.

as to resources, yes, academic resources are becoming more and more accessible for free/outside of universities, which is DOPE, and yes, academics are more and moreso able and willing to reach out to wider publics. but, as fitzrove rightfully pointed out, those historians are in the business of creating knowledge, and have the experience to do so, which we can then consume. the creation of knowledge (and thus history) is largely academic and professional because it has to go through a rigorous process of peer review/criticism/assessment. yes, this process is largely gatekept within academia, but that's because such processes cost money, labour, etc. Essentialy, history is a team sport and as a historian you need a team to play with, or there's no game (= creating history). So even if you access university resources and acquire the skills of a historian, then you need to contribute to that process to be a historian. you're not refuting my point here.

and yes, lots and lots of those historians are bad, or produce bad work! just like every other professional field. but until such a person is fired or removed from their position they are not less of a historian. just a bad one. i don't appreciate the true scotsmanning of what is essentially a profession, no more and no less.

i can't stop you from calling yourself anything (and this wasn't even about labels in the first place), but i'd like you to ask yourself why you consider differentiating between a profession and the enjoyment of that same activity as leisure (where one is also largely defined by producing and the other by consuming) offensive rather than accurate.

[zarohk]

I work in public utilities safety. Someone who has memorized the colors of spray paint markings on the ground, knows a fair bit of DigSafe law, and goes around calling in when they see companies doing things that are dangerous or harmful isn’t somebody doing my job.

[yawningjorin]

Launching my newest conspiracy theory. Not sure what it's about yet but that's not important.

[lohboh]

taylor swift: she was the piss on the carpet / I was the floor's poo / she would always be his number one / while I was the number two / little did we know / he would flush us both

white women who have lizzo blocked on twitter: I'm SOBBINHG. the METAPHORS. did she know she would define a generation with this? 😭😭😭

gayboys who own every switch pokemon game: agsshdjdkdakh no okay but why is this better than everything on the radio for the past ten years 😭 THIS ICONNNNN. EVERYBODY SHUT UP I'M IN MY FLUSHING ERA 📢📢

asian giant hornet in a japanese honeybee nest:

[lohboh]

how it feels to be proven right with each new album she drops

[memewhore]

[r4cs0]

[writterings]

it's really funny teaching rhetoric to college freshmen because i explained ad hominem to them via example by arguing with a student over something silly (i kept insisting 25 minutes was a quarter of an hour, not 15) and then "insulted" her instead of addressing her argument (i said she doesn't have a college degree whereas i have two, so of course she'd be wrong - which the whole point is that it's a stupid insult but not something that's actually mean) but she got soooooo mad so even when i stopped the exercise and explained that she was indeed correct (15 minutes is a quarter of an hour). like she was still fuming. so i validated her feelings on that, complimented her, and even reminded the class that a college degree doesn't mean that a person is smart/right. and then i went on to explain that, yeah, dirty arguing techniques like that are meant to make you so unreasonably angry that you can't respond or that you lose your cool, so your opponent looks like they win by default. the student i was arguing with then just said that it seemed like professional ragebaiting and i was like. well yeah that's correct.

and then this kid, this one kid who is always very eager to answer questions and is always kind to his classmates, raised his hand looking a little bothered. now for context, i emphasize thinking for yourself in my classroom, even if that means disagreeing with something i say and he has echoed some stuff that his parents clearly have told him before. he's not a bad kid or an asshole, he's just an 18 year old with conservative parents who otherwise knows nothing about politics. but he just looks so bothered after i explain this about dirty arguing techniques. big frown on his face. looking unsure. when i nod at him to speak, he says, in a very quiet voice, "didn't -- didn't charlie kirk used to do that?"

and i was like. well yes. yes he was famous for stuff like this.

and then the kid looked down and was just like, "oh. i thought he was just really good at debating. i never watched his videos though, only clips. why would he do that?"

and that coincidentally lined up perfectly with the rest of the lesson, which was on propaganda

[dancinbutterfly]

this? is why conservatives hate liberal arts education

[d6b-onion]

this video has been going around for a while but the English subtitles didn't match the energy of the spoken French at all. i had to fix it.

reblog to spread this version

[lazulisong]

Estininen, the guy who grew up poor in a war zone and lost his younger sib and also carrying the remnant soul of Nidhogg, the oldest possible brother, to a small child desperately trying to scam them to get money for their family: yeah bud you're doing such a good job scamming rich guys. I'm very scammed right now.