Clover Chameleon

~Do you ever feel like a mossy hag, see a little frog, put it in my bag~  they/them - commissions open

[saphushia]

make your title 'lurker' and your icon a fucking cheese i don't care. just look like a real person thanks 👍

[divorcedwife]

look at the republican calendar and see which animal/plant/item is associated with your birthday ok. if you're born january 14 you get the day of the cat

[divorcedwife]

solidarity for everyone who was born on the day of the cistern or the watering can or something like that

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Apparently some people still need to hear this so: using an 'ai checker' is still using ai. If you are feeding someone's fic to one of these checkers, you will still not be sure their fic is ai because they are not 100% accurate, but you can be 100% sure that you are using ai. For fic. Furthermore you are doing the work of an ai scraper for them. You are, personally, feeding the machine. There is no actual excuse for using an ai checker on fanfic as a hobby. YOU are the problem.

If you think a fic is ai, mute it and move on. That's it. That's all you do.

[trangoldin]

[itstoys]

guh

[yoshukowashere]

[thewebcomicsreview]

I wish I had more to say about Nancy than “it’s good”, but….it’s good.

[liminal-disaster]

I feel like kids would be less "loud/annoying/tantrum prone/whatever the complaint about them is this week" if they weren't forced to live in a world that doesn't treat them like human beings and constantly forced to obey the whims of other people with no consideration for their own thoughts and emotions. And if they weren't actively conscious of this. Blaming kids for occasionally breaking down over their treatment is like blaming women for yelling at their abusive husbands or crying about the sexism inherent in society. It's "the women's disease/hysteria" but directed at children instead of women.

Even if they have genuinely loving families that don't neglect them, which is rare, children are still put under constant abuse from every other aspect of their life. They're living on ultra-mega-hard-mode. Emotions are understandable.

I also completely understand people who can't be around loud children, or who hate it when a kid breaks down crying or screaming in a store or a restaurant. I hate it when a kid breaks down crying or screaming in a restaurant or store. Like, that's not an unreasonable feeling to have when someone is making an uncomfortable amount of noise. I get it. You don't want that kid to be crying or screaming any more than they want to be doing it.

These kids didn't ask to be forced to sit in a fancy restaurant in uncomfortable clothes around people they don't like eating disgusting food for hours. Those kids didn't ask to be hauled around a supermarket looking at things they're not allowed to have. That kid is crying because they're in a situation they don't want to be in, and they probably didn't have any say over how they got there. They've been forced into Situations for probably their entire lives, and sometimes they snap and have breakdowns. Breaking down after the level of constant psychological abuse inherent in modern childhood would be considered normal and understandable for any other age group, but when children do it it's considered irrational and bothersome and annoying. I get that empathy and compassion are hard, we're all suffering, but maybe for once try to have some instead of just writing the suffering of children off as too annoying to deal with.

[vitariesocks]

just received the best text message I’ve ever had. from my mom

[vitariesocks]

2 pics. no caption

[electronickingdomfox]

This gotta be the funniest Enterprise-Klingon exchange ever:

[here-comes-tribble]

Uhura you fucking queen

[finelythreadedsky]

obsessed with this detail on this item from today's anthropeum (link to object page at the met). little guy's falling out of his metope.

[ismenes]

you know those studies showing that cursing helps with pain tolerance or whatever. that’s how i feel about making my weird little noises to get through my basic daily activities. sometimes you just have to go hggblaaaah for a minute so you can find the strength within yourself to get up or wash the dishes or send an email. mmmnneh. urgh. the torments are unending but you can always make some little sounds about it.

[mothric]

thinking about the time a former housemate said to me "hey I put these box fans in the living room because it's hot" while gesturing to the fans that I was actively sitting in front of because it was hot. and I said "okay thanks." and she kept standing there like she was waiting for something else so I said "am I blocking the airflow? do you need me to move?" and she said no I'm just letting you know they're here, in the living room, for circulation. and I said well yes, I did put that together. I am enjoying them. thank you. and she looked confused. so I asked "am I meant to do something with this information or are you just informing me?" and she said no I'm letting you know they're here because It's Hot In Here. she seemed a bit aggravated, and her emphasis seemed deliberate.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

about a month later she brought up that conversation as the moment it actually clicked for her that I Am Autistic And Will Not Magically Intuit The Unspoken Request You Didn't Ask Me.

[mothric]

I have observed enough allistic communication to know that generally, if somebody points something out to you that you can already see or are already clearly interacting with, they are making an indirect request. but as I don't know what the request is, the only way forward is for me to guess (and likely get it wrong), or prompt the allistic to tell me clearly what they need.

however, allistics don't realize they do this, so asking them to say the unspoken surprises and confuses them. this is not their fault. allistics can be quite emotionally fragile and perceive directness as confrontation, so they habitually rely on indirect speech and coded language to preserve others' feelings. this is why they may find it difficult to be direct, even when asked. I have found that with enough gentle encouragement and reassurance that they are actually helping you, you too can achieve successful communication with your allistic friend or loved one. :)

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

Why is there a diarrhea parasite outbreak in America?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to disease prevention and control.

Why is measles back in America?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including RFK Jr, cut vaccine and measles prevention funding and programs.

Why is the New World Screwworm infecting cattle in Texas, when it had previously been eliminated from the area?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Elon Musk, cut USAID funding, which in part worked to monitor and prevent screwworm outbreaks.

Why was there a flu outbreak in our armed forces?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Pete Hegseth, cut vaccination requirements for our armed forces, putting all of them at risk alongside our military readiness.

What contributed to the Covid outbreak?

Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to a pandemic prevention program in his first term because Barack Obama had created it.

“America first” sends its regards. Trump voters, please learn your lesson. And if you don’t, it’ll be taught to you again with yet another diarrhea outbreak.

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

[classicslesbianopinions]

it is like. i am deliberately not posting that much about the nolan odyssey because i don't have much genuine interest and i find the whole like outrage theater people do at adaptations to be exhausting and unproductive and often misguided + i don't really care what celebrities are doing. but zendaya's 3000-year-old iranian earrings are like. such an on-the-nose fuck you. like 1. you can practically feel the stylist going "oh, it's old, it must be on-theme!" without really considering that ancient cultures are not interchangeable. but also 2. there's a very clear and important difference between ancient greece and ancient iran, in that there's a reason zendaya isn't wearing ancient greek artifacts on her ears--ancient greece has a cultural cachet that ancient iran does not, by virtue of its position as the perceived origin point of "western" (white) civilization. they are just interchangeable enough that zendaya can wear the artifacts of one civilization to a premiere of a work based on the mythos of another, but just different enough that she can get away with one but not the other.

and of course there's 3. which is that modifying and wearing a cultural artifact of dubious provenance taken from a country the us is actively bombing (and in doing so presumably destroying plenty of historic buildings/artifacts) asserts a certain lack of respect for and/or sense of ownership over that country's people and culture. and obviously this is what makes it seem like such a specifically heinous move.

[perrenlore]

Really important to note when it comes to (3) that the elite (and frankly Orientalising) appropriation of ancient Near Eastern artefacts as jewellery has a long colonial history. Cylinder seals are these little cork-shaped cylinders with pictoral or written designs engraved on them, and work the same way as a signet ring in that you could roll them over wet clay to leave an impression of the engraved relief on the clay to dry. They look like this:

(Cylinder seal of First Dynasty of Ur Queen Puabi, found in her tomb, dated circa 2600 BC, with modern impression. Inscription: 𒅤𒀜 𒎏 - Pu3-abi(AD) Nin - Queen Pu-abi. Nicked straight off Wikipedia as it's a fab comparison of seal / relief.)

In the British Museum you can find "Lady Layard's jewellery". Austin Henry Layard is a guy whose academic efforts I'm admittedly very indebted to. He was passionate about Venetian and Roman glass and did a great job re-popularising both styles in the UK, but more importantly he was the assyriologist who excavated Nineveh and the Library of Ashurbanipal—where we've found the majority of the Gilgamesh tablets. Pioneer figure in terms of Near Eastern archaeology... but check this out:

This is a necklace Layard had made for his wife. It uses real cylinder seals.

To quote the British Museum's entry on the item: One cylinder seal is Akkadian (about 2200 BC) and four belong to the second millennium BC, but eight are late Assyrian (about 1000-612 BC). Late Babylonian and Achaemenid stamp seals (about 600-350 BC) are used for the pendants and clasp.

Enid later wrote in her diary that, when they dined with Queen Victoria in 1873, it was 'much admired'.

Ancient Near Eastern artefacts, repurposed as jewellery in a set that doesn't give a single fuck about accurately dating them, let alone treating them with the sort of respect you might perhaps expect of items over four thousand years old. Instead they've become a mark of elite colonial status, an Oriental curiosity utterly separated from their historical context. They're 'old'. They're non-descriptly 'other'. Time and place dissolve into an attractive and vague exoticism.

All while the place these seals have been appropriated from is busy being exploited by the very empire this "jewellery" is being shown off to!

So to bring it back to your third point: you're absolutely right!!! And this has precedence dating right back to the start of Western study (and plundering) of the Ancient Near East. It's a carelessness, it's an ignorance of historical context, and it's explicitly colonial.

[f4ngbu2t]

Trans people of color!!! Do not let the culture around you stop you from choosing a name that speaks to your heritage. When I was settling on my name, I had white trans people around me tell me that my name would be too hard to pronounce or too long for most people. [Four syllable Latin name, go figure]

I'm glad I didn't listen and decided to stay true to myself and I chose a traditionally Afro-Brazilian that still makes me happy to this day. Don't feel pressured to assimilate or make yourself more palpable for white people, little reminder!

[halo-lll-odst]

i think more robots should be disabled actually. robots whose bodies keep falling apart and need much more consistent repairs. robots whose bodily upkeep is hard and laborious and exhausting. robots who physically cant do things without help from another individual. robots who are imperfect and dont fit the bill of a flawless machine. i want more of this waiter please bring me more disabled robots

[txttletale]

a lot of ridiculous hypocrisy could be avoided if people were more comfortable admitting that a funny retort or dunk is not necessarily morally correct. like very often someone will say something very funny that was also like, a bad thing to say and so many people make themselves look very foolish thinking they have to reconcile that