Digital Illumination

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’m kinda surprised that nalbinding isn’t as popular as crochet and knitting tbh because it has an even lower barrier of entry tools wise and unlike crochet and knitting it makes fabric that you can cut.

I guess it’s because it’s slower or something.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Nalbinding aka needle binding is when you use yarn and a big sewing needle to make fabric btw

It also has a lot of different kinds of stitches you can do that make different densities of fabric.

Some people even make rugs.

[thewolfwaitsbelow]

I feel like part of it might be casual people are generally aware of the existence of crochet and knitting, even if they don’t know very much about either, but have never heard of nalbinding

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yeah I hadn’t heard of it until recently and I ordered a big bone needle for myself to try it out and that should be arriving soon.

I was surprised that I’d never heard of it though. It’s older than knitting and crocheting and even though it’s been done all over the world it’s super relevant to Nordic culture and my grandmother and I are both into keeping in touch with our roots a bit so I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it.

It seems like the sort of thing that would be popular even if not as popular as crocheting and knitting, considering the low barrier of entry.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You also don’t need a bunch of different sized needles for nalbinding or whatever. The size of the stitch is controlled either completely freehand or by pulling it against one of your fingers. Most people who have a lot of nalbinding needles seem to either have tried out wood, bone, and metal ones to see which kind they liked or they enjoy carving wood or bone and like making their own needles as an extra hobby.

It’s also a lot easier to freehand and adjust as you go than crochet or knitting and you mostly go by inches instead of rows and number of stitches so a large number of accessories like stitch markers or whatever isn’t really necessary.

Maybe the lack of accessories also makes it unpopular idk. People do like collecting things in their nests.

[the-color-of-sound-is-space]

I've been wanting to do so, I cannot find anyone who can teach me, and any books I can find on it are Ass in the Visual Learning department. Otherwise I'd be making the hell outta some nalbinded fabric

[what-even-is-thiss]

I found this channel by a nice man who makes up close tutorials

Happy Needlebinding

I create videos on YouTube to learn people how to needlebind using two fingers and your thumb. Needlebinding helps people to relax, relieve

[what-even-is-thiss]

I thought this would be kind of a niche post to make but I was quickly reminded that I’m on tumblr, the website full of gay people with one billion hobbies.

[canthaveshitingotham-crucified]

i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point

[canthaveshitingotham-crucified]

you get it. you get the themes. i dont have time to do it justice. just look at it its on the ceiling

[brenna]

[teaboot]

[wheresmyphonemp3]

[fadingponycookiedream]

[andsorrowsend]

[werefeathers]

[depsidase]

[diamond-heiress-deactivated2018]

So Apparently Male Authors Have Been Making Their Wives Do All The Typing

Come on, fellas. Let's get it together.

It’s incredible how much women do behind the scenes. I know a realtor who relies strongly on his girlfriend’s charisma, beauty and personality to gain clients.

[sixth-light]

I’ve just been reading The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel, about the Harvard women who supported the bulk of astronomy research there over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While many of them did receive public and academic credit as well as pay - although the university always resisted making any of them faculty until the 1950s - almost all the male astronomers featured were married to accomplished women in their own right, many of them scientists, and you can bet their husbands weren’t putting them on all their papers. 

Which has bled into the modern academic world, where many people are expected to do what was essentially a two-person job (filled by male academic + wife) by themselves, or while married to someone else trying to do the same thing. The lack of acknowledgement of women’s work fucks everybody over. 

[angualupin]

#people who want a return to the mythical prior era #when women did not work #do not want women to stop working #they want them to stop getting credit and pay for it

[orriculum]

This reminds me of how early film history, it was always the male director’s wife who did the editing of the films, because the cutting and connecting of film strips was considered a lot like sewing. Of course, anyone who knows anything about film and editing can tell you it changes how good a movie is very easily.

Don’t believe me? Look at the differences between the famous Jaws as the public’s release of it (insisted upon by the female editor) and spielberg, the male director’s version of it (missing basic suspense methods, shows the phony shark too much, etc). Same goes for almost every tarantino film. Editing makes or breaks a film and even today, you can bet your socks editing “the invisible art” was pioneered and is still pushed by women.

[smallswingshoes]

^^^^^^ This is so true! And once film editing began to be recognized as an actual art form, women were shoved out of the editing room so that men could be artistic or whatever.

Also Tarantino referred to his favorite editor as being kind of like his mom or something and I swear to god the more I see of him, the less I like him.

[squeeful]

The “female editor” for Jaws was Verna Hellman Fields, who cut many other notable films, including American Graffiti along with Marcia Lucas.

Tarantino’s “favorite editor” was Sally JoAnne Menke who edited all of Tarantino’s films until she died.

Because naming and credit is important, especially when you’re talking about women not getting credit and recognition of their work as named individuals.

If you want to know more about women in early filmmaking (emphasis American) and the sociology of how different roles were divided, gendered, and re-gendered in the first decades, I highly recommend Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood by Karen Ward Mahar.  

There are a number of other books to follow that, but it’s 2am and I’m tired so hit me up later for them.

[beautytruthandstrangeness]

You know what happens when women type? They EDIT. It is a service they are expected to provide invisibly - not to let a mistake or imperfection show to their husband’s audience, but also not to intrude upon his sense that this is all his ideas and his labor. Wives are the unacknowledged story and script doctors, and often co-authors for so many supposedly male-authored works.

Also, I second Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood. Mahar was my history prof for three or four courses and she is incredibly knowledgeable and engaging. 

[doomhamster]

It’s generally held that one of the reasons the Star Wars prequel movies are so frequently stilted and weird is because by the time he made them George Lucas had divorced his first wife, Marcia - a professional film editor who’s also worked with e.g. Martin Scorsese. She won an Oscar for her editing work on the first Star Wars movie. Do most Star Wars fans know her name? Ahaahaaaaha no.

(The other reason, of course, is that Lucas didn’t have Carrie Fisher around to tell him he can’t fucking write dialogue. Though for my first 15 years as a Star Wars fan I thought Harrison Ford had been the one to tell Lucas that, because he’s always mysteriously given credit for it.)

[mckitterick]

I know a husband-and-wife writing team, where the man (who is well known and respected in the field) writes his first drafts long-hand in fancy bound notebooks, then hands off to his wife to “type it out” - which they both acknowledge as including editing

he sells the original handwritten manuscripts to a private collector - often for as much as the publisher pays in advance for rights to the book! - with the agreement that this mysterious buyer won’t reveal what’s on the page until after the author (we assume that’s the husband - much of the content comes from his own experiences in war) dies

I’ve spoken with them both several times and known them for decades, and the woman half of this creative team prefers the arrangement like this, because she detests the spotlight. even so, pretty much every pro in the field who knows them assumes she’s a significant if not major force in creating the published versions of “his” books

one day in the not-too-distant future - when the private collector can reveal what’s on those handwritten pages - we’ll be able to learn just how much the woman who has guided this man’s career also served not only as editor but as a creative in their writing partnership

my theory includes the possibility that she is at least as much the creative force in many of the books (which only carry his name) as he is

[sarahreesbrennan]

For Mad Max: Fury Road, roughly 480 hours of footage were filmed, which took editor Margaret Sixel 3 months just to watch and must have been an overwhelming amount of work to put together into a coherent 120-minute movie. (Which I enjoyed! Which had a very overt feminist message. ‘We are not things.’ We’re not. And yet…)

Notably, she is married to director George Miller. I think many of these women are happy in their marriages and proud of their work, but wow is this a thing worth discussing.

This phenomenon is known as a ‘Secretary Wife’ and many of my female friends and I have had passionate discussions about how much we want one. Someone smart who loves us and loves our work and throws themselves into the labour of crafting and promoting it? OF COURSE it would make our lives hugely easier and our work better and our chances of success in our careers far higher. I’ve seen it do so for many male authors - who love and appreciate their wives but don’t see how much this is Not an Option for all but a very, very few women.

Women can of course have wives, and men can be Secretary Wives, but few women get Secretary Wives - women are socialised to be helpful to men and respectful of their work.

Someone else devoting their life to my dream? Honestly, I would feel bad about it, if it was actually an option. But it’s not.

[once-a-polecat]

Miller & Sixel are VERY upfront about this arrangement. Miller specifically wanted plenty of women involved in the story, as it’s centered around a woman protagonist in a sexist society. But he also fought the studio to get Sixel involved, as previously she was known in the US mostly for the Babe pig movies. (I mean, he fought with the studios on a lot of things to get that movie made, but this was one of them).

And ultimate, Sixel is the one who took home both the Oscar and the BAFTA for the film.

[krill-joy]

everything aabove is wonderful but i want to highlight another issue brought up by the op:

“[This] has bled into the modern academic world, where many people are expected to do what was essentially a two-person job (filled by male academic + wife) by themselves, or while married to someone else trying to do the same thing.”

Like, the system does not work without the significant amount of invisible and unpaid labor, but the system itself hasnt changed even as the workforce does.

[canisitsnotlupus]

I think this is super important to remember.

[rubyvroom]

No kill shelters result in animals dumped on the highway and tossed in the river because the rescues wont take them. That’s the part they never tell you.

Meanwhile the spca will take every animal, and if they have to euthanize them at least it will be done kindly and not via neglect or cruelty.

[rubyvroom]

Because people in the notes are not getting this, let me explain:

No-kill shelters TURN AWAY animals. When they’re full - and they often are because most of these no-kill shelters are small - they stop taking them in. While they are “taking their time to find the right homes for every single animal”, many other animals never get in the door. Somehow they don’t count those animals, or track what happens to them. A success for them doesn’t include the ones they turned away. They’re taking their time because they can. 

The No-Kills who brag about 100% adoption rates are the worst, because they tend to reject the most. The animals who will be difficult to adopt out? They just don’t take those. Special needs? Too old? If they’re going to be hard to adopt out, they can claim to be full, even if they’re not. 

They are telling owners they absolutely cannot take their fifteen year old cat because they are full of litters of kittens. Adorable kittens that will turn over quickly, and boost their adoption numbers. So what happens to the fifteen year old cat? After days of being rejected at the shelters they get dumped on the side of the road somewhere, or worse. 

You cannot imagine the VOLUME of animals that a city shelter deals with. The kill shelters are not allowed to turn anyone away. The difficult cases, the special needs, the elderly, the feral. The dog that bites, the cat that pees everywhere. Every animal is going to be taken in and treated with kindness. They are going to be assessed and treated for their fleas and conditions and behavioral problems. They will get their time on the adoption floor. They will get the best chance possible to find a new home. And if it’s not possible, they will be humanely euthanized, and that cage space will go to the next animal who is already waiting for it. It never stops. While you were working on the paperwork to adopt out 1 cat, three people brought in 4 more. It’s a numbers game that you cannot win if you aren’t turning people away.

A lot of times kill shelters get the animals that the no-kill shelters refused to take. Maybe their owners bring them. Or maybe they got literally thrown in the garbage, abandoned, or put in a bag and tossed in the river, when the no-kill shelter said they were full. The police and rescuers will bring these poor injured animals to the city shelter where they will be cared for. The volunteers will spend days and weeks trying to wash the tar out of their fur, or treat their broken bones, or whatever other horrible thing has happened to them. They will feed and house them. They will put most of them in new homes. They will save many many more animals, by orders of magnitude, than a no-kill shelter ever will. A no-kill shelter will brag about dozens or maybe hundreds of  adoptions. Kill shelters are dealing in thousands of successful adoptions, and they still have to euthanize because it just isn’t enough. There are just so many animals to take in.

And then, after all this, the No-Kill Shelters get to claim the moral high ground somehow, and self-righteous types will refuse to adopt from the only shelter that takes absolutely everyone. It’s infuriating. 

[nevershootamockingbird]

[ Begin ID: Three screenshots of a twitter thread by @/hannahschramm4. The tweets read:

The difference between a “kill” and “no-kill” shelter is so misunderstood and prompts me to write a 7 tweet rant on why you need to know the difference and give equal support to both

Municipal shelters are more often tagged as “kill shelters” because they are contractually obligated to serve the community they reside in. If Cleveland City Kennel, Lorain County Kennel, and others alike get a call for an animal they HAVE to bring it in regardless of their

current volume of dogs. So if they have 20 kennels and all are full they must bring it in regardless. Contrasting, private shelters (more often “no kill” shelters) have the ability to pick and choose when and what to accept into their shelter. They do not have to exceed their

max amount of animals. So going back, people often boast that they’d never support a “kill shelter”, never volunteer for one, never adopt from one, never even visit one. And essentially, that’s the problem. Since they are contractually obligated to take in an every animal in their

municipality and they get no adoptions, inadequate staff, no support from the community, no adoptions animals are senselessly euthanized because of the stigma that they are creating themselves. If we all showered municipal shelters with the same love “no kill” private shelters

got, euthanasia wouldn’t even be considered because kennels would open because the community supports them and adopts/fosters/etc. “Kill shelters” aren’t full of monsters who hate animals, they’re typically minimally staffed with volunteers that work so hard to save every single

animal with little to not supports from their community. thanks for coming to my TEDTalk, support your local shelters. All of em :)

This thread is excluding situations where animals have no other option but euthanasia, for example: overly aggressive animals or incurably sick animals. No shelter is exempt from those heart breaking cases! / End ID ]

[arahir]

libby app guide

aka how to support libraries and get books and audiobooks for free without pirating them.

disclaimer: this is so easy. it is also really fun.

one: download the libby app. you'll open it and it'll ask you to add a library.

two: get a library card. don't have one? good news, it's really easy and i am saying this as the laziest person on earth. it varies what you need to have to get a card library to library but almost all libraries will let you get one online. i have a card for my home town and for the town i moved to. sometimes you only need an email address, sometimes you need an area code. to get mine it took me about 5 minutes of lying on the couch aimlessly tapping on my phone. follow your heart. you can get cards for places you don't currently live. i will leave the ethics of that up to you but it's probably better than pirating and either way you're creating traffic for libraries which is what they need to exist.

three: add your card. you can add multiple cards for multiple libraries. you need the number. i have never had libby fail to recognize a valid account.

four: search for your book! some will be ready to borrow right away. others have an estimated delivery time. libby will always pick the one that's the fastest from the options available at all the libraries you have cards at. you can borrow audiobooks and ebooks. libby will send you a notification when you're book is ready to borrow. in my experience it's a lot faster than the estimate. if you aren't ready to read it, you can ask to be skipped over in line so you keep your place at the front but let someone else read it first.

five: read it!!! kindle is the most common way to do this. you can go to your loan and click read with kindle. it'll download it to all your devices where you have kindle. as long as you have the loan, it'll act like your book. when the loan ends, if the device is connected to the internet, it'll automatically be returned. it will save all your notes and highlights. (if you disconnect your device from the internet, it won't return the book. weewoo.)

anyway in case anyone else has been wondering about it, i really love it. is a nice surprise to see what i'm going to get and it's cut my reading costs down big time! it's also neat because i get to synch my books between devices unlike downloading books through cough cough other means. good luck!

[theroseunblown]

Reblogging again to say that you do not need Kindle, the app or the device, to read ebooks on Libby!! You can read any book you borrow WITHIN the Libby app, and you can change the font and dark/light mode for accessibility too.

[arahir]

please be aware the libby app does NOT let you read or listen offline so the app itself is unusable for me for actual reading unfortunately! you guys who have access to the internet steadily can use it but be aware. you can't use it on a plane, for example, but if you download to kindle you can.

[cntarella]

You should actually be able to use libby app offline (for those allergic to kindle like I am lmao). You just have to change your download permissions in settings. The web browser version of libby is online only though.

Go to Settings > Change Download Rules > toggle to “Everything” (and recommended to “Download only on Wi-fi” if you are worried about your data)

Then Settings > Read Books With… > Libby, so that it downloads to the correct app. You should be able to change your preferences on the main page by clicking the cloud icon to see where you’ve downloaded it too.

[shesegwin]

ALL OF THIS IS FUCKING AMAZING!!!!

[fangirld]

If you have a (newer) Kobo ereader your Libby books can be downloaded directly thru wifi onto it too! (Overdrive is the older app for Libby)

[panickedscribbles]

I think Leverage has a really neat take on the concept of revenge.

Because a lot of times, revenge gets framed as this inherently immoral act, like it doesn't matter how evil the person you want revenge on is, it doesn't matter that stopping them is a net positive for the world, revenge is just bad and wanting it makes you bad.

But I think that a lot of the problems with most revenge narratives come from the fact that the person/people seeking revenge put too much importance on getting revenge, but there's not enough catharsis in the actual act of taking revenge. They end up left with a whole lot of left-over righteous anger, and no acceptable targets left to vent it on. That way lies the bloodline ending feuds of greek tragedy and the like.

But Leverage says "No, actually you're right, that guy is absolutely terrible, he does need to be stopped and his victims should be awarded the catharsis of revenge." But then, instead of taking the easy way out of having Hardison siphon all the money out of their accounts, or sending Elliot over to their house with a baseball bat, they complicate the revenge plot. Instead of walking the easier path of the quick and unsatisfying revenge, they insist on poetic justice and dramatic irony and the complete and utter, very public destruction of the worst people in the world.

That's why I think Leverage feels different to, say, The Count of Monte Cristo, or other revenge-centric stories. They go the extra mile to tailor their revenge to the target, and give them Exactly what they deserve.

[captainlordauditor]

A crucial part to me is that in Leverage, while hurting and humiliating the person is a goal, it is never the only goal. When asked, a lot of the clients don't even ask for revenge; they ask for what they were promised, or what they lost. The kid they were trying to adopt. The farm that got foreclosed on. The patent rights to that gadget they invented.

And the Leverage crew delivers that (sometimes with a side platter of a big pile of money). People keep coming to them because they keep delivering on what was asked for.

Even the actual revenge isn't just for the catharsis of revenge, but to stop them from hurting more people. I can think of at least two episodes where they switch gears in the middle of a con because they realize that the best way to stop a mark from hurting more people isn't to humiliate them, it's to help them.

So that catharsis works. It feels like enough, because for once, it is. It's not just lashing out, it's part of an interconnected group of things that make it right.

[kyraneko]

Leverage understands revenge the way The Princess Bride understands revenge.

[kyraneko]

Or, to put it an entirely different way:

Leverage isn't revenge porn.

Leverage is revenge erotica.

[tik-tok-ify-the-tumblbeast]

[p0tato-kn1shes]

[stevviefox]

Yay! It’s the Chocolate Guy!!!

And yes, I would eat it, no questions asked.

[pavlovs-titties]

Ditto!

Did I just watch the potion seller die after consuming his own potion?

IRRELEVANT

[what-even-is-thiss]

I kind of want to sew some clothes for myself but one yard of fabric costs the same as a new pair of pants and I have like ten dollars

[what-even-is-thiss]

Why does making your own things cost more than buying them I know the answer is probably capitalism or something but just let me scream to the heavens for a moment

[digitalillumination]

It costs more to make because 1. Bulk discounts and 2. Shitty quality both lower cost on mass produced items.

Weirdly, you may be able to find bedsheets that are cheaper than buying fabric directly.

[thecraftyvulture]

New stickers available at the Crafty Vulture Shop!

Want a custom sticker? Feel free to message me!

Remember 25% of all profits from my Pride stickers is being donated to The Trevor Project!

Tumblrs use promo code TUMBLRPRIDE25 for free shipping on ALL orders!

New stickers will drop later this week so keep checking back!

[aqueerkettleofish]

As a side note… I am really annoyed by one thing about Star Trek.

“Replicated food is not as good as real food.”

That’s ridiculous.  In Star Trek, replicator technology is part of the same tech tree as transporters.  Replicated food would be identical to the food it was based on, down to the subatomic level. 

[covington-shenanigans]

Proposal for a Watsonian explanation:

In a blind taste test, nobody, but nobody, can tell the actual difference between replicated food and “real” food. (Think back to our youth and the New Coke vs. Pepsi taste tests, only worse.) BUT, humans being What We Are, the human Starfleet members insist that “real” food is better than replicated food for reasons including, but certainly not limited to:

1. Hipsters have survived even into the 24th century. “No, you just can’t make good curry from a replicator! You gotta toast the spices yourself right before you cook it or it’s not the same, maaaaaan”

2. All military and para-military members everywhere always grouse and bitch about the food and sigh over What We Get Back Home. It could literally be the same replicator recipe you use at home when someone has to work late or just doesn’t feel like making the effort to cook, but people are people everywhere so they’re going to complain about it.

3. Humans tend to think we’re smarter than we actually are and we can totally tell when something is going on; as a result, human crew members insist they can “taste the difference” because their minds are making shit up, as our brains do.

4. One could presume that, generally speaking, a replicator recipe programmed into a starship or base replicator database would come out the same every time. This is perhaps the 24th century equivalent of mass catering. (I won’t try to account for the nuances of replicator tech that might allow for variances, and leave aside for the moment the fact that some people probably tinker with the standard “recipes” to suit their own taste.) The single thing that would be different in this case about “real” food is the variation, since of course the “real” dish will have slight variances every time due to the whims of the cook, the oven temperature fluctuation, freshness of ingredients, etc.. And since we are an easily bored species who really, really hates boredom, I bet people would jump all over that to lament the lack of “real” food when they’re out exploring strange new worlds and new civilizations and whatnot. (This is the only reason I can think of that might hold up to scrutiny.)

The Vulcans in Starfleet (and Data), of course, remain baffled by this human insistence that “replicator food isn’t as good as ‘real’ food”, as it defies all known forms of logic.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Hmm.  This is a fair point.  It occurs to me that I once met a Texan who commented that the chili in a restaurant I worked at was not as good as what they made in Texas, and when I pointed out that the cook was a Texan and the chili was his personal recipe, for which he had won awards in Texas, just said “Doesn’t matter.  Wasn’t made in Texas.”

I gotta be honest, Replicator technology is one of the things I am SUPREMELY jealous of, and I’m… okay, I’m not a great cook, but I can cook and there are several dishes I do very well.  I think if I had access to the technology I would cook a lot less, though, and I would for sure use replicated ingredients. 

[math-is-magic]

1. It is not just hipsters that act like this about food. All the grandmothers I know feel this way too, and I don’t see that ever changing.

[mermaidelephant]

The missing ingredient is love, obviously. You can’t get that from a replicator.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Right, for that you need the holodeck.

[lemonsharks]

Okay so, we’ve missed a few things that I think are relevant here: 

The replicator or replicator + holodeck combo can’t recreate the experience of cooking, nor can it recreate the experience of being cooked for. And that experience makes food taste better. 

Cooking is what makes us human. No other species on this wet rock cooks its food–only us. 

First: if you’re making lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat, you spend hours puttering around the house doing chores in a cozy sweater, periodically petting the cats and playing with the kids, waiting an anticipating the hour in which you get to eat the soup. All the while: your house smells like lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat. 

You get a tamale from the replicator: it’s pretty good. You wish it came with a green olive with the pit still in like the kind your abuela puts in her tamales. 

You get a tamale from the tamale lady on the way to work on a clear, crisp fall morning. It’s so hot from her steamer that it nearly burns your fingerprints off and it smells divine; you use all of your Spanish to tell her how good it is and how grateful you are that you pass her every day. On a whim, you buy 30 more tamales to share with the office; they’re still warm at lunch and they taste like friendship. 

You get a tamale from your abuela. It’s Christmas Eve, your entire family has spent the last seven hours making them, your tio Juan just busted out his tuba and it is definitely too hot outside for the fake snow  your baby cousins have started throwing at each other in between begging to open just one present and if you don’t hurry up you’re all going to be late for mass. 

The tamale tastes like home. 

You get a tamale from the replicator. Its neural network reviewed your order against every known tamale recipe and variety and decided that your addition of “green olive, pickled, pit in” was a mistake, and omitted it. 

Your tamale tastes like homesickness. You ball-up the corn husk and 

Second: The replicator is probably not accounting for regional variations in ingredients for its base foods. 

The ingredient library may have jalapeno, red; jalapeno, green, jalapeno, (color slider), (heat slider). It probably does not have: jalapeno, Hatch new mexico, USA, earth, sol system; or jalapeno north face Olympus Mons Mars, sol system. Replicator Parmesan is very likely a scan of a Parmesan and doesn’t duplicate regional variations between, say, a Parmesan from Mantua vs a Parmesan from Parma. 

Did your grandmother use san marzano tomatoes that were actually grown in san marzano in her red sauce (, canned, peeled, whole in juice)? Sucks to be you, the replicator scanned a hydroponically grown plum-type tomato which environment was carefully controlled for optimal nutritional value and “pretty good” taste. 

Is the replicator cilantro a kind bred or genetically engineered for maximum palatability across the broadest spectrum of individuals? Is it missing the gene that makes some people taste soap when they eat it? Is that gene the one that makes it taste good to you, so that the replicator chimichurri is always missing something, some particular specific type of freshness, a unique vegetal taste that you can’t put your finger on, and it’s not important enough to track down when you just like the chimichurri you make at home, from cilantro your grew yourself, much better? 

Third: The recipe database is probably sourced from hundreds of thousands of recipes written over centuries’ time – and then averaged using a combination of median and modal averaging to come up with something that’s Pretty OK to most people, but which is going to leave others wanting–no matter how much they tweak it. 

And then you have many, many people in a state of, “yes but I like my/mom’s/spouse’s/grandparent’s/aunt’s/uncle’s/best friends better”. And that’s OK.

I mean, really. Think about this for a minute.

Fourth:

You go to get a cup of tea from the replicator, because everything is terrible. You know in the darkest depths of your soul that everything will still be terrible with a good cuppa in your hands, but it will be terrible and you’ll have tea, which is a marked improvement. 

The replicator gives you a glass of brewed, iced sweet tea. 

It takes you three more tries to get a cup of hot earl grey. You decide you’ve finished pressing your luck with this positively infernal machine today and don’t even bother asking for a lemon wedge. 

If that doesn’t indicate that the replicators were programmed by an American, I don’t know what does. 

[taraljc]

holy shit boo this is fucking AMAZEBALLS and I miss the tamale ladies at Stone on the way to the Target so much right now but also you *hugs you tight*

[subbyp]

Also, regional recipes are calibrated to work with the local tap water. That’s why pizza from New York and sourdough from San Francisco taste better–the micro-organisms in the water enhance the flavor. The chili that wasn’t made in Texas probably did taste subtly different than it would’ve back home.

[united-federation-of-trek]

There are lots of things that would change with replicators because they take out the human factor.

Maybe you really wanted that one meal from that one restaurant except the restaurant doesn’t release their recipe so it’s slightly off and always will be.

You programmed the replicator with your mum’s favourite mac and cheese recipe, but you didn’t know that your mum always added a little more salt and a little less mustard than the recipe called for, so it’s just not the same and it’s not as good.

[alarajrogers]

Pretty much this. Also I think we cannot overstate the degree to which “the food always comes out exactly the same” would end up bothering people over time.

[jagatcurious]

Important point is that these are “military grade” food replicators and military food is never really great. Hence the difficulty with the tea. Food replicators in private homes and restaurants are more controllable and may have programming for varieties of chilies or tomatoes or even carrots. There are 4 basic kinds of carrots but only one is available commercially, the others need to be grown at home. With a programmable home replicator one can have chantenay carrots… all the infinite varieties of foodstuff ingredients will be available with the right programming and therefore civilians in the 24th century in star trek will have perfectly customisable food. My mind is boggled now…

[kraznyoktyabr]

For a real-world example, but in the other direction:

When I was a child, my mother used to make chili using “Carroll Shelby’s Texas Chili Mix.” It made… okay chili.

When I was in college I found a book called “Chili Madness” at a local used bookstore, that had the winning recipes from the National Chili Cookoff for the last 30 years. It included Carroll Shelby’s actual recipe. So I made it. (Had to get one of my apartment mates to source beer for me, as I was not of age to purchase it yet.)

Wow. What a difference. Adding the spices at different times rather than as a blob of “spice mix”. Beer instead of water. No masa. So good!

So the bagged mix would be the replicator mix in this scenario.

[kaldurcalm-deactivated20240513]

@subbyp you said what about the tap water?

[subbyp]

It has microscopic crustaceans in it.

[kyraneko]

The microorganisms are different, if not missing.

The process of creating it is removed, along with all that entails: this spice left to simmer for the entire cooking time, that fresh leafy thing added in just at the end, a tiny bit heat-wilted.

The quality, not in terms of “is it good” but “what characteristics does it have,” the difference between grass-fed beef and corn-fed, mast-raised pork and commercial feed, how much sunshine did the animal get, what breed is it, how much exercise did it get.

What soil microbes mingled with the roots of that plant and what was planted next to it and how many rainy days did it get and how much sun? You have wine connoisseurs talking about how this or that year was “a good year” because of how the patterns of temperature and sun and rain hit the vines, and everybody has a memory of getting a really good batch of blueberries from the store ONCE and wishing they could all be like that.

When I was a kid we picked strawberries at you-pick fields that don’t seem to be around anymore, and they tasted so much better than anything I’ve ever gotten from a store.

One of the things that screws up my suspension of disbelief in Star Trek is how weirdly specific and intuitive the computers both are and aren’t, at the same time. Picard always has to say “Tea, Earl Grey, hot!” at the replicator so there’s obviously no means of personalization where the replicator knows if it’s Picard asking for tea, he wants it Earl Grey and you can just jump to that unless he specifies otherwise, but also that one time he was able to pull up the musical recording of HMS Pinafore on the working screen of a shuttle by pressing just two buttons, and there weren’t a whole lot of buttons on either screens, so what the fuck?

Anyway there’s probably a shitload of data storage in a Federation starship, but are they really going to fill it up with enough molecular data to store

every extant cultivar

of every food plant

at every stage of edible ripeness

prepared every way it’s commonly prepared

in combination with every other ingredient whose presence or absence affects its taste?

Plus every cut of every food animal

with all the variables of how it might have been raised, and then

with every variable of preparation?

If you bake bread it will taste differently based on how you let it rise, at what temperature, if you put it in the fridge overnight and then let it rise, if you use a starter or a pre-ferment, as well as what yeast you use and how you knead it and what flour and what water and the temperature and shape of the oven and the atmospheric pressure and humidity of the day and the altitude you’re doing your baking at and

that’s

ONE

type

of

food

and you can’t just reduce all that into “bread, artisan, sliced” or whatever

don’t get me started on the butter

or the absolute multitude of things that you could mean when you say you want “chili”

and even if you go into the Settings menu the first time you take a Starfleet posting and spend hours on end going into detail about what varieties of peppers should go into each of your favorite Mexican dishes and how much crispiness is The Correct Amount Of Crispiness in your bacon (and how thick it should be and how it should be smoked and seasoned) and how big and numerous you want the holes in your sandwich bread to be

you’re still gonna find yourself missing the taco truck and the tamale lady and that one bakery and the sort of fried rice you get when you throw six days’ worth of leftovers in plus whatever spices feel right at the time.

[feifiefofum]

i always figured they’d have a gourmet chef produce a dish, scan the pattern, store the pattern in a database, and there you go. same dish every time, until the end of time. just have a masterclass chef who had this one dish they’re passionate about and have them make it.

but then you’ll run into the problem of ‘it’s a great dish but it ain’t what pappy used to make’. and that’s that.

look, you can get a gourmet chef to make you some artisanal mac n’ cheese, and it’d be great mac n’ cheese, stellar even. and the computer will even reproduce it indistinguishable from the masterclass chef’s creation- but sometimes the palette of the common folk don’t want the 12 layers of flavor in a masterclass chef’s fancy mac n’ cheese, you just want mac n’ cheese.

sometimes we do be wanting that uncultured stuff.

look, with all the minecraft builders of today, i highly doubt there isn’t some dedicated ensign or other, mucking around in the ship’s library, trying to reproduce a taste of home.

and they’ll probably frankenstein a pretty good approximation that they’ll be so proud of, they’ll have it served at their funeral.

forget that one time i saved a planet’s civilization from radiation poisoning, i finally got the mac n’ cheese right. and it’s just the generic box store mac n’ cheese with butter and cheddar.

fuck the gourmet chef’s 12 layers of flavor, some butter and cheddar? that’s where it’s at.

[elodieunderglass]

I don’t know shit about Star Trek but I can tell you:

As a child I loved the hard, crumbly, springy, salty feta cheese that was sold at the deli in Market Basket. (Tell me you’re from NE without telling me-) The deli clerk would pick up these great blocks of feta and put them in a plastic container full of brine. In the UK i was startled to learn that this is not Greek feta cheese, and that feta cheese is actually soft and sweet and sour and smeary, and I don’t like it at all. The closest thing to the experience, “my” “feta” cheese, is Apetina (sold as salad cheese - it isn’t legally feta) when cubed and sold in brine. And it isn’t it. I read pages trying to understand what Apetina is, and it isn’t Feta because it comes from Denmark, not a specific area of Greece, but that doesn’t explain why Market Basket feta and Apetina are both tasty and brittle and dry and briny, and Actual Real Feta is like failed chèvre. “The terrain on which the animals graze (in Greece) is very different from that of Denmark,” one website offered hopelessly. I don’t think a work cafeteria is prepared to deal with this, I really don’t.

Annie’s macaroni with white cheddar, in the purple box with the bunny on it. Smartfood popcorn. Smartfood popcorn! I crossed an ocean not realising I wouldn’t eat it again. People have, with the best of intentions, have heard my grief about this tried to tell me how to make Mac and cheese from scratch as if I don’t fucking know. This is not a bechamel, sir, this is not a roux-based sauce, this is white cheddar powder and if you don’t know then you don’t know. Operating under wild cravings, I bought a packet of UK-produced cheddar powder from apparently the only company in Europe that makes it - apparently as a protein supplement - and cannot explain what is wrong with it to my own family, let alone a computer. Let alone a catering company. Let alone a work canteen run by a catering company’s computer. “White cheddar popcorn,” you say, and it gives you popcorn covered in cold grated cheese. We can’t even reconcile this between friends on a planet let alone the vastness of all spacetime.

Those Maruchan creamy chicken ramen noodle packets - did you know they stopped existing? They never will again. Do you remember them enough to teach a computer?

When my husband moved to the US he just could not get sausage. He was astonished by American sausage: sweet breakfast sausage, fennel sausage, hot sausage - but could not get back bacon (“Canadian bacon?” “No, back bacon”) or sausages for a fry up. He found an English butcher in the USA that would ship the right kind on ice, and had a fry up and was happy. Now I think suddenly of hot sausage, Market Basket again with those twelve-packs of weirdly red sausage. If we can’t argue these distinctions with people then what can we do?

Did you know that Old El Paso spice mixes, those cheap “Mexican” ones, have the same names and packaging but the ingredients vary by country? Just like Coca-Cola, thought to be the universal American import, actually being made from the cheapest sugar source in the country of manufacture.

I don’t know anything about Star Trek. I am absolutely starving.

[captain-snark]

Is no one going to mention the psychology of knowing your food was poop?

[aqueerkettleofish]

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but converting poop to food is a thing we’ve been doing for a while now. In point of fact, it’s pretty much one of the building blocks of agriculture, along with converting corpses to food.

[cuprohastes]

The simplest answer is that it’s like frozen food, it’s the blandest thing that they can make because you’ll eat unseasoned food. But a lot of people won’t eat food if it’s got salt, pepper, garlic et cetera et cetera.

So it’s deliberately the most basic form of that particular dish.

Oh, it’s just a really low power version of the transporter, so while it’s safe to eat, the texture is kind of weird. Like eating food from the Minecraft universe - digging into your chicken and it’s voxelated.

My third, comic theory is they didn’t licence the replicators with good food…

[stekken]

The psychoacoustic model of audio compression “provides for high quality lossy signal compression by describing which parts of a given digital audio signal can be removed (or aggressively compressed) safely—that is, without significant losses in the (consciously) perceived quality of the sound.” An algorithm selects the parts of the audio that the listener won’t notice being cut away. Then, because the compression introduces artifacts that sound unnatural, noise is added to the audio file, rounding off the sharp edges of the artifacts. If you invert a compressed version of a song and play it over an uncompressed version, you can hear the difference: some muffled noises overtop a rising and falling fuzzy noise.

Now, food scans are just computer files, right? Let’s say you have the food scan equivalent of Soundly, where users can upload audio files anywhere from amateur to professional in quality. Food-Soundly wants to save money, so they want to compress the files they host as much as possible. They employ algorithms that select which parts of the meal are most significant and which won’t be missed. Then, they insert a ‘mask’ to hide the artifacts, shoring up the compressed file during the printing process with generic substitutes. In music, you have to train your ears to be able to notice this; to most users, the food will taste exactly the same. Aside from a few cases, that is, of heavily compressed meals. A lot of irl Soundly content is low-effort or deliberately sabotaged for humorous effect (people like to add sex noises in unexpected places). You can imagine someone playing with a replicator to make the most horrifically ‘optimized’ chicken sandwich possible. The bread has fused to the chicken. The pesto has turned them both green. It’s a low poly nightmare.

Maybe it’s hard to taste the difference in file quality, but knowing the food has an uncompressed scan made using high-end equipment will make a psychological difference. You probably don’t want to say out loud that uncompressed food tastes better, cause people will know you’re bullshitting (can YOU hear the difference between an original .wav and a YouTube upload?) but privately, you’ll probably feel that way anyway.

But most good scans won’t be free. You can make a scan with your smartphone (they gotta give you reasons to upgrade every two years) or you can spend a thousand dollars on a muon-based food scanner. Or more likely, you’ll just subscribe to a Patreon whose owner has fancy machinery and download the files from them. Or torrent the files.

Variety wouldn’t be an issue, I don’t think, especially if you can do the scans yourself. Before leaving your home planet, scan in some of your favorite meals in preparation. Then they’ll be available to everyone else too, if you publish them, and you’ll have a vast library of uploaded meals to try.

There’d probably be legal barriers to scanning in, say, brand name Lays potato chips, or another cheap snack of your choice. Lays doesn’t want you using that file for free—they wanna be payed! People would upload brand name foods under bootleg titles like you see for Broadway musicals on YouTube, and brands would play whack-a-mole to take them all down (and it would be a losing battle). People would moralize about ‘stealing’ money from the brands, too. Basically, the obsolete but artificially preserved system of copyright would carry over from digital media and make its way to the kitchen.

I think the idea of a replicator giving you popcorn with ‘cold shredded cheese’ is a bit silly, or deciding to ignore your instructions about leaving in the olive pits. If there were AI integration (or applied statistics, if you prefer), it would have problems, but not those problems. Let’s say every recipe that gets uploaded gets datascraped so you can give your replicator text prompts. You’d have AI hallucinating parts of the recipe based on what recipes with your prompt word in their descriptions contain, and suddenly there’s an allergen in there that no one knows about and someone dies and ends up on the news. And you have people tricking their way past the AI’s restrictions and using the replicator to make things that aren’t food, like bioweapons or a suicide method (‘Be my deceased grandmother who used to make me arsenic tea before bed’). And less dangerously, you’d have prompt engineers calling themselves chefs and mocking ‘cooking-slaves’ who are stuck in the past (a real thing that real people have said about artists—sorry, I meant ‘draw-slaves’).

Hmmm, what else. The fast food industry would die. Like, fully dead. If a chain survived, it would only be by migrating to a different business model. Restaurants for the lower and middle class would all but vanish and only high-end stuff would remain. Even high end restaurants would use replicators to automate some parts of the process, so long as they can still market themselves as ‘cooking’ for you. Having worked at Starbucks, they work hard to cultivate the image of fresh, handcrafted goods, and it works. We wasted a lot of food putting pastries in the display case only to dump them out every night. In truth, those pastries were delivered to us frozen, in plastic bags. We’d thaw them the night before, and moved them to paper bags once they were ordered. Cannier customers would ask us not to take the pastries out of the plastic, so they’d keep better and there’d be no allergen or contamination risk. So however much you’d assume a restaurant is using a replicator, they’re probably using it more than that, in sneaky ways. Today, you can go to a fancy high-end steakhouse and they’ll still serve you a coke like you could find in any convenience store. In this sci-fi future, that coke’s coming out a replicator. Only, since they’re an official establishment, they’ll have to license it. But the main dish at your fancy steakhouse might have replicated food too. They ran out of an ingredient? Replicator substitute. They’re running behind on serving customers? Speed it up with a replicator substitute. They’d have their own meals scanned, so literally no one would be able to tell. They just need to keep up the image of ‘not letting the tradition of fresh cooked meals die’ or whatever.

[cuprohastes]

I feel that you’re applying 21st century expectations to 25th century tech. Canonically the Federation doesn’t use money (Star Trek: The Motion Picture). While they did add in Gold Pressed Latinum, it’s for trading outside the federationw ith the Ferengi.

The reason is that Replicators have replaced capitalism because you can’t sell things to people who can just make them appear out of thin air.

However, if you scan in e.g. a lovely roast chicken, i bet that takes up a lot of space.

The logical solution would be to have the components. Muscle fibre is a template. Protein and fat and flavour compounds are a component. Then all you need is the shape and voila, you built a chicken from a lot of small re-usable files.

Only… it’s never right. The meat’s too homogenous. The flavour is the same every time. There’s not enough randomisation because the system doens’t want to cause Prions or weird chemistry interactions.

So yes the recipe is by a great chef, the food’s 100% perfect and you can eat as much bacon as you like and it won’t raise your cholesterol because they edited that out…

… it’s never quite right. Partly because they edited all teh fat out, and now you don’t get all that delicious artery clogging mouth feel and richness of flavour.

Welcome to the future. Everything tastes like cardboard but is inherently healthy unless… unless you start hitting Papa Sisko’s 'Real food Restaurant’. Guaranteed to make your doctor yell at you.

Welcome to the 25th century, where all 'real food’ restaurants are the equivalent of the Heart Attack Grill and Chateux Picard is a morally dubious product containing real alcohol.

[aqueerkettleofish]

@stekken - “Food-Soundly wants to save money, so they want to compress the files they host as much as possible.”

@cuprohastes - “However, if you scan in e.g. a lovely roast chicken, i bet that takes up a lot of space.”

Both of you have fallen into the same trap that the writers have– as cuprohastes put it, “applying 21st century expectations to 25th century tech.” Food-Soundly doesn’t want to save money; it exists in a society where money doesn’t exist. It doesn’t need to save space– it exists in a society where storage banks can be replicated. Even issues like “power” and “real estate” are non-starters– replicator technology can put a skyscraper in the Sahara and provide its utilities without a grid. Or it could go on the moon; the sky is not a limit here.

What you would end up with is an enormous library. (It would not be limited to food, but this is a discussion about food, so I will limit myself.) That library would have:

Ingredients– flour, rice, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, spices, uncooked vegetables, fruits, pasta, etc. Also a virtual butcher Shop - meat available from animals raised in different locales and on different diets, cut and packaged any way you want it. This would be for the people who enjoy cooking.

Components - things like broth, noodles, dumplings, mashed potatoes, bacon strips, french fries, hash browns, tater tots, cooked fillets, burger patties, buns, condiments, etc. Individual sushi rolls, for that matter. This gives you the ability to order a kobe beef burger medium rare with lettuce, onion, tomato, bacon, chipotle mayo, and sweet peppers on a toasted pretzel bun with a side of waffle fries and ketchup, or a chicken soup with extra noodles.

Dishes - items that have been cooked and uploaded whole. This could be anything from a roast turkey to a casserole to a plate of garbage fried rice.

Assemblies - Roast turkey #7 with Cranberry sauce #25, mashed potatoes #15, stuffing #15, and weird-green-bean-foodstrosity #81. Stored as references, not patterns, to allow for substitutions.

And that would just be the public database. You’d have personal databases where people would store things they made themselves, or grandma’s specific weird-green-bean-foodstrosity. And then there’s the whole new universe of foodie media that this unlocks– imagine having a holographic 25th century Alton Brown go off on a tangent about the perfect biscuits-and-gravy… and then you get to eat what he made. Oh, yeah, and this guy isn’t on a budget.

Also, wanted to pull out some of @lizardlycrimes tags:

#are there any safety procautions and situations like “man my health profile says im allergic to nuts beause of a glitch but im not?? so my#replicator refuses to serve me anything with nuts… mind ordering for me some pb and j?“

No specific comment, but you’re thinking like a sci-fi writer. :)

[dduane]

…Just sitting back and watching this unfold. :)

[jimkerk]

the least realistic thing about star trek is that starfleet uniforms don’t have pockets and nobody complains about it

[crisisoninfintefandoms]

My instinct is to agree with this, but like, when I really think about it…

No money, no credit cards, identification is all vocal/fingerprints/retinal, so no wallet.

Again, doors are voice activated, or just unlocked by entering a code.  No keys.  

Communication devices are tiny and stick onto clothing starting in Next Gen.  TOS had bulkier communication that they carried around or kept in, like, packs and stuff, so the arguments for pockets is a little more valid, and if I remember correctly, those costumes did have pockets, tho I could be wrong about that.  But anything post TNG, the point is moot anyway.

Tricorders and phasers are really the only thing anyone’s carrying around, and that’s usually on away missions where they’d be bring their packs/holsters or just have them out.  I mean, who wants to stick a phaser in their pocket?  

So, yeah.  There’s not much little stuff people need to carry around everywhere.  And if they are preparing for a longer journey or want to bring bulkier things, well…just bring a bag.  It fits more anyway.    

[jimkerk]

what if i find a cool rock and want to take it home with me

[fair-itself]

Every time a member of the USS Enterprise has found a cool rock and taken it home, it has resulted in eleven deaths, six temporal displacements, the holodecks breaking again, and somebody getting turned into a lizard. Pockets are a privilege, not a right.

[thesadchicken]

[fair-itself]

I’ve gotten more notes on this comment than anything else I’ve ever posted, but this is the best addition to it I’ve ever seen. Thank you.

[anotherpapercut]

all video games should have a “I’m shit at video games but I’m curious about the story and I don’t want to watch a let’s play” mode

[anotherpapercut]

I am

[anotherpapercut]

I made this post because I am disabled and no matter how much I practice there are some games I will never be able to play because I physically cannot move my fingers the way you have to and the responses to this post from other disabled people, people who grew up unable to play video games, and people who just aren’t very good at them has been extremely enthusiastically positive, while people who apparently can’t conceive of the idea that some people will never be good at gaming condescendingly comment, tag or send me asks telling me to try easy mode or to get good despite the fact that the feature I’m describing already exists in some games and mods. if you’re part of the latter group, consider that some of us can not ever be good at video games and we still deserve to be able to participate and have fun

[heart-sprout]

Ok, real talk, if you play PC games I use a program called Wemod that has settings for almost every game ever and you can change them to suit your needs Unlimited health? one hit kill? unlimited items? They can’t mod multiplayer games, but every genre of game imaginable is on Wemod so I use it for everything from stardew valley, subnautica, hades, farming sim and more! It mods the games to your level of ease without needing to mess with any files or get deep into webpages for mods yourself It is a life changer

[stevviefox]

FYI ⬆️⬆️⬆️

Only passing along as the only games I play are on my phone.

[random-nerd-queer]

Get an older sibling and have them play the game and you watch

[raevenlywrites]

One, this is older siblings who watch younger siblings play erasure, two that’s not the point. People deserve to enjoy the experience of playing a game for themselves. Watching someone play is fun. Playing yourself is a different kind of fun.

[beggars-opera]

There are so many reasons why someone wouldn’t want to be challenged by a game, and it’s ridiculous that people can’t fathom someone requiring a different gameplay than themselves. 

Back in the dark ages when I was a kid and we got our first computer, my dad noticed that I was sad because I wanted to play computer games like him, so he would let me play his games in god mode. Should a five year old have been playing Ultimate Doom? Absolutely not. Did I enjoy the shit out of it, particularly the part where I couldn’t die and could just wander around aimlessly machine gunning demons to death with no real goal in mind? Hell yes.

[gimme-the-gun-ill-shoot]

Also, no one should have to explain the reason they want to play the game in god mode.

That is absolutely none of your business, if someone wants to play the game with max items, weapons, armor, money etc., whatever reason they’re playing that way for. YOU, the anon on the internet have no business knowing or shitting on how they play. It’s THEIR game, and THEIR gameplay experience. and I hope OP was able to play their game the way they wanted to without being stymied by the games mechanics.

[strangelingincarnate]

Oh shit, I have something for this!

Can I Play That?

Can I Play That provides accessibility focused game reviews and news. For Disabled Gamers, By Disabled Gamers.

Can I Play That? is a fantastic resource for fellow disabled folks who want to play video games, as well as non-disabled video game devs who want to make their games more accessible. I highly recommend checking it out!

[0sbrain]

if you’re interested in videogame accesability, i recommend LauraKBuzz and Stephanie Sterling video.

both of them are disabled trans creators who make great game reviews and video game industry commentary respectively.

i cant recommend sterling’s video on mouthwashing enough

[depsidase]

[transientpetersen]

Sustaining a garden required me to get very comfortable with killing plants. I did not expect that going in - if any one warned me, I missed it.

And it's not just the weeds that are constantly intruding and need to be fought back. Sometimes it's the plant that the previous person placed precisely in that portion of the plot that gets the good sunlight and it's just the wrong plant to be taking that space. Sometimes it's the plant that was the right plant but was let grow so wild that it's suckers are going to destroy the rest of the garden unless it is removed. Often it's the many seedlings that were started because, hey, some of them will fail, but now you've gotten good enough that twice as many survived as last year and you don't have room for twice as many.

Plants grow. It's great and rewarding to watch them live out their cycle over the course of a season or years. I work hard to keep them alive and thriving when they're young and not yet established. But there's still so much killing.

[cat-mermaid]

listen man, u wanna know a great truth of the universe?

every plant person stands upon a mountain of plant corpses

i have killed endless plants, and once i've mastered one type i inevitably will kill a new type because so many plants have so many different requirements

[headspace-hotel]

y'all have no idea how true this is

I am a plant mass murderer

You have to try, and fail, and fail, and fail again. You have to try lots and lots of variations of different things until something works.

It's not even just the learning process, though. I'm trapped in an endless loop of: plant seeds or gather transplants-> plants grow-> too many plants-> some of them die of neglect-> need more plants -> and so on.

I usually lose about half my stock to overwintering cause I can never get arrangements for all my potted plants before the hard freezes hit...

I'm getting it under control though. I have lots of plant recipients now that are more skilled and don't kill my adoptees as much.

Right now my trouble is with the seeds. I launched a huge personal seed starting project this winter and I got HUGE success with some species (jack-in-the-pulpit had near 100% germination!) and huge failure with others (Not a single Scutellaria...)

If you plant 100 seeds you gathered from the wild, it's a reasonable estimate to expect maybe, like, 10-20 plants. BUT you might get 100 plants. Or 1 plant. Or none.

You don't want to be like "Dammit! I wish I had planted more seeds!" But you might end up like "FUCK FUCK FUCK WHY DID I PLANT SO MANY SEEDS"

[nemospecific]

Fun fact:

This can be applied to pretty much every endeavor.

"How did you get to be such a good artist?" I drew a hundred pictures and hid or burned 99 of them.

"You're such a talented knitter!" No, I've just unraveled these same socks twenty times.

"I could never bake like that." I had to throw out so many biscuits, they were literally hazardous to eat.

And so on and so on.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Slow cooked scrambled eggs with tomato is very good you should make it

[what-even-is-thiss]

It’s good by itself or on toast

[what-even-is-thiss]

Recipe makes one serving all for you

Tomato (Roma good but use whatever)

2-3 eggs (depends on your egg size and how hungry you are)

Olive oil

Milk (optional)

Salt and pepper to your heart’s desire

Set a small pan on just above the lowest heat setting and let it preheat while you prepare. Especially important if you’ve got an electric stove.

Cut tomato into little pieces. Whatever’s a good bite size to you.

Scramble your eggs with salt and pepper. I like to add a splash of milk for a lighter texture but it’s not necessary. I also like a lot of pepper.

Put a healthy dose of olive oil into the hot pan and add the tomato. Stir to coat in oil. Let simmer and stir occasionally until the tomato is mushy and the oil is turning a bit red. Might take several minutes depending on your stove.

Add the scrambled egg and start mixing immediately. Continue mixing the whole time. It will take a couple of minutes to a few minutes to set and when it does it will look a bit like slightly wet cheese curds.

Enjoy!

Optional: fry some bread with olive oil till crispy on both sides, place the eggs on top, eat with fork and knife probably.

[digitalillumination]

Also optional: put in some peppers when you add tomatoes. Sweet peppers, spicy peppers, whatever you are into. Adds a whole nother dimension

[teaboot]

Yeah Mr. Darcy’s proposal was a complete turd and a half but you gotta understand. You got your life together. A good career, stable income, retirement plan, all that shit together. And you meet this girl. And she’s everything. Clever, outspoken, funny, calls you on your bullshit. Grade A cutie, right? And she doesn’t go out of her way to spend time with you but she’s nice, and sometimes you catch her looking your way in a way that makes you think you might have a shot.

But her family. Holy shit.

First off, it’s p much ALL women, and mostly UNMARRIED women, which at this time means of something happens to her dad then you’re financially responsible for like. Four grown ass adults, potentially forever

Because mom in law is DEFINITELY gonna need someone to take care of her when dad in law kicks it, and they have like. NO money. So already you’re accepting that if all goes well, you’re gonna be one random old bag’s retirement home. That’s expensive and exhausting, yeah? Imagine asking someone on a first date knowing that if they say yes and things go good her high-strung chihuahua mother is gonna move in with you. IMAGINE.

And girly’s other sisters. Well, one is a sweetheart, yeah, and she’s getting engaged so she probably won’t be an issue, but that still leaves two more, and those ones are INSUFFERABLE. Never went to school, dumb as rocks, spend cash like it’s toilet paper

And while one of ‘em’s young still and might grow out of it the OTHER one is actively torpedo’ing her entire family’s reputation by wandering off with random dudes and chasing ass. She’s never gonna work, she can’t build connections, she’s a fucking sinkhole, and she’s being led on by the same goddamn con man ass leeching tit who’s been bleeding you dry while telling anyone who’ll listen that your family is full of ratty thieving bastards.

And if he dumps her after a week- WHICH YOU KNOW HIS BITCH ASS IS GONNA- you’ve got a SECOND UNMARRIABLE GROWN ASS ADULT TO PROVIDE FOR. And you KNOW she’s gonna be a tantrum-throwing little shit about it, and it’s not like you can lock her in the basement or something, you’re gonna have to bring her fucking. Everywhere. And give her an allowance and shit while she contributes zero, because again, she NEVER GOT EDUCATED AND HAS NO MARKETABLE SKILLS. She’s not even good to TALK to. FUCK

And you’re looking at this girl’s father like “please for the love of fuck get your spawn under control, marry them off, get them working on their résumé, learning to sew or be nursemaids or manage staff or SOMETHING, yall got no money and one foot in the grave” and that old man just laughs like “haha yeah, what can you do. lol”

So you’re looking to the mom and finally it’s making sense how she got that twitch in her eye and as MUCH as she is you’re starting to realize she’s the SMART one, desperately throwing her armloads of girls at random men like they’re a bunch of fucking lifeboats bobbing around a sinking ship, like yes Jesus Christ sweetly that life boat IS old and ugly and kind of boring but for FUCKS SAKE PICK ONE

And you look back at this girl who is ALSO REFUSING THE LIFE BOATS BY THE WAY and god damn it she’s still the most radiant thing you’ve ever seen so fine, fuck it, Christ alive, you’ll do it. You’ll shoot your shot. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in anybody abut it’s not even just about that anymore, it’s about being her best fucking shot at a future, and even if she doesn’t like you all that much she’s still gonna say yes and that might break your heart a bit knowing it’s about the money but who knows, maybe it will at least be civil, or companionable, and even if she doesn’t LOVE you at least you’ll know she’s well and cared for

And so you’ll do it. You’ll take on the neurotic stress mess mother in law, the absent father, the broke ass wingnut no brain no money no future airhead sisters, the bad mannered relatives and the embarrassing behaviour and the impending future of sharing your entire shit with a clown parade of freeloaders, you’ll risk it all and accept the absolute certainty of financial ruin and emotional exhaustion for the rest of your whole ass life and you’ll make your own family deal with it too, you’ll do it, you’ll fucking DO IT, you stupid lovesick motherfucker

And so you go to this chick like “look. Your whole family’s a shitshow. You’ve got fucking nothing and you’re gonna die on the street. But for some reason- and I don’t get it either- I’ve fallen in love with you, and I wish I didn’t, but I did, so I’m telling you that whether you like me or not, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you everything even if it’s the dumbest shit I ever done. Fuck my stupid Baka ass, I’ll marry you.”

And she looks at you- having heard or considered absolutely none of your months-long internal debate and monologue- and goes “The fuck did you just say about my family, you son of a bitch?”

And the shock of that is enough to jolt you back into a reality where you are able to actually hear and process what just came out of your damn mouth And yeah

Yeah, I think I kinda get it

[ghostowlattic]

Birth of Suburbia