The Slow Dance of the Infinite Stars

I'm Lulu. 30-something white bi ace spoonie. Writer, OTW volunteer, and fandom statistician. She/her/hers. My AO3 Account Femslash Revolution #AO3 Ship Stats #AO3 Census

[o-craven-canto]

Alternate timeline in which all Greek and Latin roots are swapped:

catastrophe -> contraverse cephalopod -> capitoped chlorophyll -> viridofolia democracy -> populimpery homicide -> anthropoctony homosexual -> equigamic kilometer -> millimensure interregnum -> mesarchy magnanimous -> megapsychic manuscript -> chirography motorcycle -> ergatorote microscope -> parvovisor oxygen -> acidofex polyamory -> multierasty television -> remotoscope universe -> monostrophe

[mxjackparker]

Hate that the term "post-nut clarity" gets applied to guilt and shame people feel after watching porn or having sex. These feelings aren't any more real or reasonable that the horniness was. You don't have clarity, you're just not horny anymore and grew up in a culture that told you to be ashamed of sex and masturbation.

[anachronic-cobra]

It's also wild how often I see people talking about "post-nut clarity" when what they're describing is a drop.

It's more commonly talked about in bdsm spaces as subdrop, but you can drop as a dom or even just after vanilla sex or masturbation, especially if it was more intense than you normally experience.

A drop happens when you've been building up a lot of those feel-good chemicals in your brain during sex, then suddenly the sex is over and your brain overcompensates in trying to rebalance. You might feel depressed, anxious, regretful, ashamed. It can happen immediately after or even a few days after. This can happen even if you're normally a very sex-positive person.

It isn't post-nut clarity! You're either dealing with internalized shame towards sex in general or you're having a temporary chemical imbalance. Maybe even both! Pamper yourself after. Forgive yourself. The thoughts you're having in that moment aren't necessarily rational ones.

Be generous with yourself, do something comforting after sex - it's like a workout cooldown. Take it easy on yourself and give your brain something positive to focus on to ease into the loss of the chemical rush.

[cbk1000]

As a society, we need to go back to understanding that strangers on the internet are, you know, strangers. I feel lately that I'm seeing a rise in 'An author I love blocked me because they took my comment the wrong way' posts on the ao3 subreddit, and then the comment is them calling the author a fucking bitch or something like that.

Don't do this. Tone doesn't translate well in text, and if you don't have a rapport with that author, they are not going to interpret, 'You're a fucking bitch' as, 'Author I hate you for being so talented and making me feel so keenly.' They're going to interpret it as you being an asshole. You can shit talk with your friends because you have an established relationship with them and can distinguish between playful banter and genuine anger. You do not have this with a stranger, no matter how much you like their fics. You will have a much more pleasant time in fandom and not get cockblocked from interacting with your favorite writers if you remember this.

[uss-edsall]

Love seeing something from TikTok and going “girlie that is literally what led to the downfall of the Papal States”

[uss-edsall]

Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851

Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later

Kid survives

1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family

Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair

This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies

Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence

Bologna falls the next year, 1859

Kingdom of Italy forms 1861

By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more

(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)

(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)

[communismlives]

[sztupy]

Wikipedia confirms

Mortara case - Wikipedia

[bonyassfish]

Fun fact: the Catholic Church did not stop doing this after Edgaro Mortara. During WW2, many Jewish children were put in convents or catholic-run orphanages for their own safety. Sounds nice right? Except after the war ended, when parents or surviving relative went back to claim their children, the church went, “uhhh, actually they’re catholic now, no take backs!”

The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”

What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.

Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.

The Pope, the Jews, and the Secrets in the Archives

Documents reveal the private discussions behind both Pope Pius XII’s silence about the Nazi deportation of Rome’s Jews in 1943 and the Vatic

I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.

Idk what my point is here, just that there’s such a clean link between evangelizing, cultural/religious imperialism, and how damaging and horrifying a religion can be when it is thoroughly convinced of its own superiority. And that unless an institution is forced to change, it probably won’t change on its own.

[earhartsease]

this shit is still happening daily - "christian" families adopting kids from other countries (or white settlers adopting native kids) and force-christianising them is just normal, never mind the pope

and by "adopting" we often mean stealing

[theunmarkedtombstone]

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT E07 | 'The Failures'

[fanonical]

which doctor would you not even trust to water your plants

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

Remaining time: 13 hours 4 minutes

[love-is-a-revenant]

'Time's up,' [Palamedes] said. 'Give this to Cam for me, will you?' [...] [And when Nona] lifted up Camilla's hand to press her mouth to it, all Camilla said was, 'Thanks.' And she almost didn't flinch. — NONA THE NINTH // Ch 5

so if you don't know, there's different counting methods and the duodecimal finger counting has a base of 12 and allows you to count to 144 with your two hands.

your thumb is the pointer to count the bones in your fingers (i.e. 3 bones in 4 fingers, a total of 12) and you keep track of each full set with your other hand in the same way.

the way i remembered it as starting with the top digit of your index finger and go down and then across to the next finger — but when i did some quick research, i also saw starting from the top of the pinkie going down and across, and others starting from the index and going across the top digits,,,,,, soo. idk i suppose it depends on the orientation of your primary written language i.e. you read left to right so you count left to right and whatnot.

ANYWAY!!! the way i remembered it means that the base of the second finger is number six babyy thank you for coming to my ted talk this book didn't make me insane

🧍‍♂️ 🔴

also what if when palamedes was tied to his hand bones, camilla brought them out when she was alone, a lonely cavalier with the remnants of her necromancer, and maybe one time she holds the bones like he's there and has his hand out and she kisses the second knuckle

and then when he transfers to camilla's body and he kisses nona's second knuckle to pass on as a message, camilla bluescreens because he truly was there in the bones truly aware truly remembers,, what then??

[wheelie-sick]

link

[ayronaught]

Transcript

Everyone's talking about Artemis II, the first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years

Historic, right? BUT nobody's talking about the Deaf people who made it possible.

In the late 1950's, NASA had a problem.

They needed to understand what weightlessness did to the human body but every test subject kept getting violently motion sick

NASA needed to figure out FAST during the space race!

So, they went to Gallaudet University. They recruited 11 Deaf people.

Because a number of Deaf people had lost their hearing to spinal meningitis as children which also damaged their vestibular system.

Their inner ears couldn't be overwhelmed. They were immune to motion sickness.

NASA put them in centrifuges. Put them on zero gravity flights. A room for 12 straight days.

(All caps) It rotated the entire time.

One experiment on a ferry in choppy Nova Scotia waters, the researchers got so seasick they had to cancel it. The Gallaudet Eleven? They were playing cards.

Their bodies gave NASA the data and research it needed to send humans into space.

No Gallaudet Eleven? No Mercury. No Apollo. No Artemis II.

They stood on the shoulders of 11 Deaf people most people have never heard of.

Now you know!

[headpainmigraine]

@ayronaught is a gem in the wasteland, thank you providing transcript! 💐

[blumineck]

Be yourself as best you can whenever you can.

[should-be-sleeping]

You are 60% water and every lake, river, pond, swamp, creek, and ocean you encounter wants to reclaim it desperately. Be careful out there.

[should-be-sleeping]

[should-be-sleeping]

Good, I hope it haunts everyone about to enter a body of water so bad that they wear a life jacket. 🙌

[should-be-sleeping]

Every single person I knew (past tense) who has drowned was "a strong swimmer." Water in the wild does not care how good you are at swimming.

[should-be-sleeping]

I mean this with all due respect:

You are not going to pass a skillcheck against a rip current once it has you.

Waves will not bow to your physical prowess no matter how impressive.

Shock does not care that you used to be on your school swim team.

If you hit your head, being good at swimming isn't going to turn you face-up while you're unconscious.

You may be unable to return to shore. Rescue may be unable to find you quickly.

[joanthreatt]

Scheduling this for when weather starts warming up. Be careful swimming this summer

[cutetanuki-chan]

Nona's birthday continues 🐕🐄

Commission for @bensavagae

commission info

[ofchaosgoddess]

help I’m having ideas beyond my available free time

[nothereforthedrama]

help I'm having ideas beyond my available energy levels

[william-snekspeare]

help I’m having ideas beyond my available budget

[teethwreath]

god this tickles me

(OP's tiktok here)

[pangur-and-grim]

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

[spirkkock]

my friend just had an art show and they were communicating with the gallerist over email. They could clearly tell that the gallerist was using AI to respond to their emails, but just rolled their eyes and moved on.

and then on the day of the show, my friend asks, "where is the camera I requested?"

gallerist: "you didn't request a camera"

my friend: "I did, and you confirmed that you would have one here."

gallerist: "that isn't true."

and then she proceeded to pull up the email thread, and my friend could see that every single email they had sent had been summarized by AI, and that the gallerist had then had AI write a response to them based on the AI summary, and that the AI had detected that they needed a camera, and confirmed on behalf of the gallerist that they would bring a camera, but because the gallerist had offloaded the work of actually reading and responding, she simply hadn't actually made any note of it herself, therefore didn't bring it, nor did she even know one was needed.

so my friend had done all of this communication about their needs and expectations to be able to make the show possible, and the person whose job it was to read that information and get it done had simply.... not read the information and not done it. because AI.

[t4timekeeper]

anyway i think fans of unjustly overhated female characters and fans of unjustly overhated characters of colour should unionize

[whentherewerebicycles]

the number one lesson that toddler parenting is teaching me is the power of adjusting your attitude so you can get silly. if I am in a bad mood or at the end of my rope patience-wise my toddler senses this IMMEDIATELY and actively turns every single interaction into a protracted power struggle. but if i can take a second to gather myself and marshal juuust enough strength to do a goofy little bit or even just make a silly face he is sooo so delighted and can usually be easily persuaded to do whatever he was resisting two seconds earlier. tonight he was testing meeeeeeeeee oh my god WHY must everything be a battle and then I invented a game called BOOM where I swing him around and drop him on the nearest cushioned surface and this game was such a wild hit that we did our entire bedtime routine in five min just by trading bedtime tasks for one (1) boom. and then he was in such a silly happy mood it put me in a better mood and now I don’t feel as exhausted. idk it does take some effort to rally when you’re not feeling inclined to be silly but then it consistently saves soooo much time/energy in the rest of your interactions I think it’s worth it. plus it’s crazy how much goofing off with somebody for a few minutes resets your nervous system.

[scottxlogan]