a random collection of collectables

demi/pan/genderfluid, she/they pronouns. naturalistic celtic wiccan. diagnosed autistic. mobile header by @black-raven200.

[reptilmastaren]

Did you know that Moomin creator Tove Jansson illustrated J.R.R Tolkiens The Hobbit for the 1962 swedish edition? These are just a few of the illustrations in the book.

[real-language-facts]

a verb just jumped out of my trash and bit me im really scared do i need to get tested for conjugation

verbs don't carry a lot of diseases actually, if it was a noun then you'd have to get a vaccine or risk getting a bad case of the cases

[official-linguistics-post]

while nouns do carry a risk of cases, PLEASE do not dismiss a verb bite. depending on species, they can carry inflection (such as conjugation, as anon mentioned) or worse: derivation.

[peregrineggsandham]

100% agree! Remember, you may not see symptoms of inflection right away, but the early stages aren't usually physical -- there are a lot of aspects to watch out for. If you experience mood swings, or start feeling tense, those can be early signs.

[sarahwestcott]

[charlesoberonn]

[clouds-of-wings]

There's also the additional aspect that if luxuries are what's expensive, you can choose to go without and then you don't have to make so much money. You can choose to work part-time, or seasonally, or one person can provide for a group, if living is cheap and you don't need luxury. But if being alive is expensive, you have no choice but to work a lot, regardless of how frugal your lifestyle is. And then you may as well buy yourself the latest gadget to cheer yourself up after another annoying week at work, because it costs barely anything anyway.

[sassinake]

Exactly this. Basic necessities are priced like luxuries.

Everything else is just sugar water.

[tmbgareok]

yes! My kids took the tmbg misheard lyric challenge!

They are singing "Kick 'em smack 'em Abu Dhabi nono!" from Roman Songs.

.

[philosoverted-deactivated202006]

Do you ever lie awake wondering how the heck Gimli knows what a nervous system is

[systlin]

Clearly dwarves have medical knowledge far more advanced than that of the other races.

[gallusrostromegalus]

His Majesty Dr. Gimli, son of Gloin, Neurosurgeon, M.D.

[filthyprotozoan]

gimli trying to explain his studies to legolas, a flat-earther

[hubris-i]

#*scroll down* #*remember that middle earth is canonically flat for elves and round for everyone else* #*scroll back up & smash that reblog button"

[fridge246]

tired: legolas took gimli to valinor with him because they were bffs/in love/etc. 

wired: legolas took gimli to valinor to prove the world was flat after arguing with him about it for decades

[jemthecrystalgem]

Sorry it’s what to elves

[dvandom]

So, in Tolkein lore, the world was originally flat, with most of the land in the middle (hence Middle Earth).  But the Numenorians (men who were rewarded with their own Atlantis-equivalent island for service in the first big war against Melkor, but eventually Power Corrupts etc) tried to invade the uttermost west which was basically Elf Heaven.  To put an end to that sort of thing, the creator of the world Bent The World and made it a sphere…but left elves able to treat it like a flat disk.  So elves can sail west and reach Elf Heaven, but a man or dwarf or hobbit who sails west will eventually wrap around to the east coast of Middle Earth.

[tmbgareok]

yes! My kids took the tmbg misheard lyric challenge!

They are singing "Kick 'em smack 'em Abu Dhabi nono!" from Roman Songs.

.

[beardedmrbean]

[caseyscraftycorner]

watching my husband get diagnosed with and treated for sleep apnea over the last year was not the thing that radicalized me re: weight and healthcare but my goodness it has solidified my stances.

sleep apnea is more common in people who are fat.

society decided for some reason that this meant that being fat causes sleep apnea. its often difficult to get referrals for sleep apnea treatment if you are fat, because some PCPs will tell you try losing weight first.

turns out!! having untreated sleep apnea causes weight gain in a not-insignificant number of people. it also makes it fucking impossible for many people to lose weight.

my husband worked out the same amount before he got a cpap as he does now. there have been no major diet changes either. yet he has been losing weight -- and gaining muscle tone -- consistently since he started using a cpap in january.

also, his blood pressure -- which was high, which docs blamed on his weight/diet -- went down significantly within one month of starting cpap treatment, before his weight changed significantly.

ANYWAYS. this is getting long. two final thoughts.

- I Want To Strangle Medical Fatphobia With My Bare Fucking Hands

- if you are exhausted constantly for "no reason", and especially if you snore, you should probably ask your doctor about getting tested for sleep apnea. it is extremely common -- estimates are around 1 in 10 people -- and is also wildly under-diagnosed. like, some estimates suggest that 80% of people with moderate-severe sleep apnea are undiagnosed.

[orteil42]

unconvinced i'll ever find "the vitamin" that makes me all better so i can get real work done but i do expect they'll elucidate whatever my deal was post-mortem, after which what i did manage to accomplish with my life will be regarded on the level of Beethoven composing despite being deaf or Gordon Ramsay cooking despite being british

[bgm05]

Has anyone else noticed that the outgroup is weird as fuck while the ingroup is normal and chill

[tmbgareok]

[makingtrouble]

It's my cat's birthday (anniversary of me getting him) so I told him the story of his life while petting him real good

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

Now you've lived with me for five years. Five is like the number of toe beans on one of your feet. When I clip your nails five is when we're halfway done. But we're hopefully not even halfway done with how long we get to be together. I'm gonna have to figure out new ways to help you count.

[makingtrouble]

Actually I've decided this is a poem

[hexjulia]

look at the cute cow angel i saw when i tried to link to the correct page of that manuscript.

(the Apocalypse of Saint-Sever, (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 8878)

[elodieunderglass]

Cute observation we’ve probably made before: European languages approaching the problem of naming a dragonfly.

French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Greek, Romanian: it has wonderful balance, so we will sensibly name it “level” - as in ⚖️, balance. It’s so rare that all of us come to such a nice consensus. Hopefully it’s not because, like, English rode in roughshod and -

English, spitting: dragonfly

French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Greek, Romanian and a whole host of others: normally you’re more with us than everyone else - did you … get that from the celts, or…?

Welsh: no. Fuckoff. snake’s servant

Irish - BIG NEEDLE

Basque, supportively - witch’s needle!

Swedish - troll’s spindle

Norwegian - eye sticker

Danish - goldsmith

Croatian - fairy’s horse

Finnish: wolf’s rod (?)

Hungarian - sieve-knitter

Turkish - little Joseph 😊

I’d like to study the rest of the world, and ask a few languages some probing questions, but there’s never enough time.

[defectivegembrain]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary however, there are some popular names among the same lines as "dragonfly", such as German drachenfliege and drachenhure, they just aren't like the standard terms! The first attestation of the English word is from 1626, but like, compounding like that is a pretty Germanic thing to do, so it makes sense.

[defectivegembrain]

Ooh according to the Historical Thesaurus of English there was a term "adderbolt" in use from 1483-1703 (can't get the tumblr link thing to show the specific page but it's category 01.04.01 if anyone wants to look it up)

[elodieunderglass]

Ahhh that’s the faint little dying sparks of the snake connection - look at the Welsh name (“gwas y neidr”) and the original English word for adder!

It looks like the “libellule” variants swept over a lot of older regional names, themes in which seemed to be snakes, magic, horses/riders, witches and devils, and needles. Normally it’s English words that do that, but in this case, English is going 🗣️ DRAGONFLY 🗣️ in a mild eddy of independence, and is clearly not guilty.

If you squint, the “spindle” and “needle” themes might go back far enough to connect to the “snake” ones!

[thriceandonce]

hang on can we get back to "Drachenhure"

[elodieunderglass]

Yeah good point guys what’s going on there

[arctic-hands]

Thank you for making me look up what hure meant in the middle of my physical therapy

[elodieunderglass]

You’re welcome

[alexseanchai]

things I was not expecting to learn when I looked up the word (PDF link):

As far as we know today, dragons featured only in German witch trials from Thuringia, Saxony, and Bavaria, i.e. from the eastern parts of today’s Germany. [...] The belief in a connection between witchcraft and dragons seems to belong to the bedrock of witch beliefs in this area. “Dragon whore” (“Drachenhure”) was a common insult in sixteenth-century Saxony. Dragons featured in the oldest eastern German trials from the early sixteenth century, and they disappeared only in the early eighteenth century when the witch hunts themselves finally petered out.

Dillinger, Johannes. "The Dragon as a Household Spirit: Witchcraft and Economics in Early Modern and Modern Sources." Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, vol. 17 no. 2, 2022, p. 212-240. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2022.0024.

(the thing I was expecting to learn is also in that paragraph but like)

[elodieunderglass]

We’ve come so far from the insults of Saxony tbh

[makereadgrow]

Periodic reminder that your library more than likely has books on quilting. Books on knitting, and sewing, and painting, and gardening whatever you're into the library probably has books about it. It probably has ebooks too, and magazines.

Your library has all kinds of resources and they absolutely want you to use them.

[natalieironside]

"'I don't know' isn't an answer" alright man then I'll just. Fuckin. Enter my philosophical mind-palace and check the fuckin akashic records. Real quick lemme just catch and cook and eat the Salmon of All Knowledge. Tell me ur question again so I can real quick climb to the highest branches of the Yggdrasil and lay it at the feet of Freda the all-wise Queen of Heaven. Dickhead.