It's been fun. I'll miss sparring with you. Have a good life, Lan Zhan.
My last WangXian Gotcha prompt was for Fereael, who asked for a scene from his fic "The Palace of Bones" which was crazy because I loved that fic, pls read it, go go go
publisher: I've been looking into tumblr, have you thought of using Blaze to promote your book?
me: NO
publisher: But it seems like an efficient way to get this in front of more eyes-
me: people on tumblr hate Blaze.
publisher: There is no algorithm and you can't pay to promote a post? I don't understand how anyone advertises anything on tumblr.
me: That's the best part. They don't. They can't.
(trying to make him understand that we do not control the attention. We just have to show something shiny and gay enough and if people are interested, they'll reblog.)
(Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel, a deconstruction of the colonialist cowboy mythos dressed up as a sapphic romance.)
My fav part is that it is genuinely just a bot. All it does is take two countries, puts the 2nd country's colours on the 1st country's flag and mixes their names together.
Literally the only other thing behind it is that the bot weights picking the second country based on how close they are to the first, and basic geography + history means that's also where you're going to get the most aggressive relations. This isn't some guy trolling by making things specifically to piss people off, it's some guy who likes flags going "wouldn't it be fun to mix flags together, let's write a bot for that" and accidentally creating a whole meme culture of "days since flag mashup bot last tried to start WW3 = 0" and the like.
In every way this is set up to be a joke like any other short video, it even uses the trope of main character in a wig to represent their mom, but it isn't funny at all. It's just sweet and nice
Humans are like "let me hold the thing. Let me pick it up. It's cute and I want to hold it, I want to wrap my weird elongated front feet around it, I want to encircle it with my freakishly long, oddly flexible front toes. I HAVE to hold things I HAVE to or I'll die."
I know normal people can just pass their bill over and around an object and know most things worth knowing about it, but humans don't have electroreceptors At All. They only have mechanoreceptors. Which are most concentrated in the aforementioned 'hands'... and in their mouths.
They do also have eyes, and their vision is actually pretty acute. But their optic and mechanic sensory inputs aren't integrated together like electro-mechanic sense is. So they have these two fairly sophisticated sensory complexes that Barely talk to each other.
No wonder they try to bring the two inputs together in their environment then; picking things up and turning them around allows them to apply both their mechanical and optical senses to the object. They're just trying to make up for a deficiency of neural organisation.
And like. I mentioned the other concentration of mechanoreceptors is in their mouth... So just be glad they mostly grow out of constantly wrapping their viscera-looking tongue around everything.
Male octopus get eaten a lot while reproducing so they usually develop a survival strategy. My favorites are they're usually in a position where they can get out fast or they remove their reproductive arm and give it to the females which they can still use and honestly is more beneficial as they can use it when they find somewhere safe for eggs.
The blanket octopus has some of the most extreme size differences between males and females, with females reaching 2 meters (6.6 ft) and males maxxing out around 2.4 cm (1 inch). Males and immature females have been found carrrying stinging man-o-war tentacles to use as defensive weapons.
Division of labor in the home is one of the most important equity issues of our time. Yet at this rate it will be another 75 years before men do half the work.
The optimistic tale of the modern, involved dad has been greatly exaggerated. The amount of child care men performed rose throughout the 1980s and â90s, but then began to level off without ever reaching parity. Mothers still shoulder 65 percent of child-care work. In academic journals, family researchers caution that the âculture of fatherhoodâ has changed more than fathersâ actual behavior.
Sociologists attribute the discrepancy between mothersâ expectations and reality to âa largely successful male resistance.â This resistance is not being led by socially conservative men, whose like-minded wives often explicitly agree to take the lead in the home. It is happening, instead, with relatively progressive couples, and it takes many women â who thought their partners had made a prenatal commitment to equal parenting â by surprise. Why are their partners failing to pitch in more?
The answer lies, in part, in the different ways that men and women typically experience unfairness. Inequality makes everyone feel bad. Studies have found that people who feel theyâre getting away with something experience fear and self-reproach, while people who feel exploited are angry and resentful. And yet men are more comfortable than women with the first scenario and less tolerant than women of finding themselves with the short end of the stick. Parity is hard, and this discrepancy lays the groundwork for male resistance.
Though many men are in denial about it, their resistance communicates a feeling of entitlement to womenâs labor. Men resist because it is in their âinterest to do so,â write Scott Coltrane and Michele Adams, leaders in the field of family studies, in their book, âGender and Families.â By passively refusing to take an equal role, men are reinforcing âa separation of spheres that underpins masculine ideals and perpetuates a gender order privileging men over women.â
While interviewing working parents for a book on parenthood, I spoke with one dad in Vermont who said: âThe expectation among my male friends is still that they will have the life they had before having kids. My dad has never cooked a meal. Iâve strayed from that. But subconsciously, the thing that makes you motivationally step up and do something when youâre not being asked âŠâ he trailed off, and then said: âI have justifications. Itâs a cop-out.â
Take love out of the equation and focus on the workplace, and itâs clear how this plays out. Studies show that male employees sit back while their female co-workers perform the tasks that donât lead to promotion. In a series of lab studies, the economists Lise Vesterlund, Linda Babcock and Maria Recalde and the organizational behaviorist Laurie Weingart found that in coed groups, women are 50 percent more likely than men to volunteer to take on work that no one else wants to do. But in all-male groups, the men volunteer just as readily.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Vesterlund explained that the women do the work âbecause theyâre expected to.â The men âcome into the room, they see the women, they know how we play these games.â
We play the same games at home. I interviewed couples separately and found that the women were often angry, while many men didnât seem to realize there was a problem.
The couples offered three explanations for this labor imbalance. The first was that women take over activities like bedtime, homework and laundry because men perform these tasks inadequately. But this isnât âmaternal gatekeeping,â the theory that men want to help but women disparage their capabilities and push them out. Instead these seem to be situations that necessitate the intervention of a reasonable adult.
A mother in California said: âItâs important to me that my sons are not falling asleep in class and that theyâre not late for school. My husband does not share those priorities, so I do bedtime and school drop-off.â
The dad in Vermont explained: âI do laundry when I need it. When it comes to the kidsâ laundry, I could be more proactive, but instead I operate on my time scale. So my wife does most of their laundry. Let me do it my way and Iâm happy to do it, but if youâre going to tell me how to do it, go ahead and do it yourself.â
The second explanation involved forgetting or obliviousness. A mother in Illinois said: âMy husband is a participatory and willing partner. Heâs not traditional in terms of âI donât change diapers.â But his attention is limited.â She added, âI canât trust him to do anything, to actually remember.â
A dad in San Francisco said that many of the tasks of parenting werenât important enough to remember: âI just donât think these things are worth attending to. A certain percentage of parental involvement that my wife does, I would see as valuable but unnecessary. A lot of disparity in our participation is that.â
Finally, some men blamed their wivesâ personalities. A San Diego dad said his wife did more because she was so uptight. âShe wakes up on a Saturday morning and has a list. I donât keep lists. I think thereâs a belief that if sheâs not going to do it, then it wonât get done.â (His wife agreed that this was true, but emphasized that her belief was based on experience: âWe fell into this easy pattern where he learned to be oblivious and I learned to resent him.â)
A father in Portland, Ore., confirmed that his wife takes on more but said: âIt has to do with her personality. She always has to stay busy. No matter what day of the week it is, she has a need to be engaged, to be doing something.â
Many mothers told me they had tried to change this and had aired their grievances with their partners, only to watch as nothing changed. A mother in Queens said she spent three years trying to get her husband to do more before coming to terms with the fact that maybe it was never going to happen. âHe notices the unfairness, but he just accepts it as something we have a disagreement about,â she said. âHow much convincing of the other person can you do?â
All this comes at a cost to womenâs well-being, as mothers forgo leisure time, professional ambitions and sleep. Wives who view their household responsibilities âas unjust are more likely to suffer from depression than those who do not,â one study says. When their children are young, employed women (but not men) take a hit to their health as well as to their earnings â and the latter never recovers. Child-care imbalances also tank relationship happiness, especially in the early years of parenthood.
Division of labor in the home is one of the most important gender-equity issues of our time. Yet at the current rate of change, MenCare, a group that promotes equal involvement in caregiving, estimates that it will be about 75 more years before men worldwide assume half of the unpaid work that domesticity requires.
If anything is going to change, men have to stop resisting. Gendered parenting is kept alive by the unacknowledged power bestowed upon men in a world that values their needs, comforts and desires more than womenâs. Itâs up to fathers to cop to this, rather than to cop out.
Recently I volunteered to drive my friend's 6 year old daughter to school for the duration of her summer school program. My friend's work schedule just wouldn't allow it, and I was more than happy to help.
So every day I'd pick her up and we'd enjoy some time in the car together. She is a friendly and curious child. And also the most stereotypical girliest girl you can imagine. Her favorite color is "pink", followed closely by "rainbow". Her last birthday party was princess themed. Her favorite animal is a unicorn. She chooses her own outfits, and it's frilly tutus and sparkly tights every single day. Ironically her parents are both gnc and lament that they have no idea where she gets this from.
Anyway, in my car I listen to my music collection on shuffle. It's a large and eclectic selection, so I make sure to skip any songs that are inappropriate or I think she just won't like. No matter what we're listening to though, she doesn't really seem to care.
One day my attention drifts a bit, and then I suddenly realize we're halfway through a Korn song. I skip it, and suddenly the girl speaks up and says "Can you go back? I liked that song."
"You like Korn?" I ask.
"I love Korn" she says with emphasis. She reasserts her love even after I confirm I'm not talking about the vegetable.
Well, I decide that Eaten Up Inside is not really inappropriate even though it's pretty grim, so I allow it. I'm pretty sure she's lying about loving Korn since I'm confident she's never heard it at home. Her mom is mostly into pop and dance music and her dad almost exclusively listens to video game soundtracks. Later that day, I confirm with her parents that's she's never heard Korn as far as they can tell, and we all have a chuckle.
Over the following weeks, however, her love proves consistent. Anytime a Korn song comes on shuffle, she make a positive comment. No other songs merit any recognition. Keep in mind, I have thousands and songs, and only 5 of them are by Korn. After the 4th time, she asks directly if I have any more songs by Korn. I technically still have one she hasn't heard, so I switch over to that. After that day, I play the closest thing I have to metal playlist, because that's what the princess girly girl wants.
Other than Korn, the only songs she ever heard over the course of the month that got compliments were Rob Zombie's Dragula ("it's great!) and Carry on My Wayward Son by Kansas ("that one was ok"). I guess she craves growly lead singers and electric guitar solos.