Reading is awesome!

I read, I knit, and I like rocks.

[mayday-guilt]

Dwarven bakers make dense, rock-hard travel bread and heavy crusts designed to last for months in deep mines. Bilbo, who misses the fluffy, golden, yeast-risen loaves of the Shire, views this as a personal tragedy. After weeks of complaining, Bilbo takes over a small corner of the royal bakery. He imports proper yeast and teaches the grumbling, heavily bearded royal bakers how to properly knead and proof soft Shire dough. When Thorin is served a warm, fluffy roll with melting butter for breakfast instead of his usual rock-hard ration, his eyes widen in pure delight. The bakers try to take the credit, but Thorin knows exactly whose soft hands saved his kingdom from bad bread

[arctic-hands]

When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.

So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".

So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.

[evilsoup]

[gilliagandy]

Truly thrilled to finally find this post on my dash.

[cam-orange]

quick doodle on markings and scars

[pronouncingitwang]

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

[yokowan]

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

[le-jardin-inculte]

at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly

[shithowdy]

at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.

[whitachi]

at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.

[the-big-mood]

Costco CEO Ron Vachris did the “CEO eats his own product” challenge by destroying a hot dog (and confirms the Costco hot dog combo is staying at $1.50 forever). LEGEND.

Show your unwavering support for Costco’s iconic $1.50 hot dog combo

Costco Hot Dog - T-Shirt (2 sided)

Your favorite $1.50 Kirkland Signature Costco Hot Dog, now on a T-Shirt!  American Apparel Mens Shirt Iconic AA classic tee shirt in our fin

[ruinedchildhood]

Most people know the warning from Costco founder Jim Sinegal to Costco’s previous CEO about raising the price of $1.50 hot dog combo: “I’ll f**king kill you.”

This exchange Sinegal has with the Seattle Times is better:

[oberstein]

[s0rinarl]

These blue and red pairings I swear

[ririarts]

Freak4freak or domestic bliss, I love all flavors of them.

[w0-2013-365]

140/26

watching tv ("the mandalorian", s3e8)

[mechabert]

Chad: BOB BOB THIS ONE’S FOR YOU!! *misses*

[mechabert]

First time trying grayscale colouring!! Mayhaps??

[arczism]

finished some of my old wips yay

[xiaolinseeker]

strictly no backseating

not that clay can understand shit, hes a cowboy remember

[donuts-multifandom-hellhole]

Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."

This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find

Some people get existential dread from this

Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating

[sleepymccoy]

@makaeru peer review cos this made me check when the Sumerians happened and I forget how recent history is for every other continent. 7000 - 8000 years ago just isn't that long when you're in Australia, and the amount of detailed history we have access to here is wonderful and should be recognised more internationally

Source (non Aboriginal)

And a quote I picked out from a longer interview with an Aboriginal local elder about the area where he touched on the history

Source (the rest of the interview is really interesting and all transcribed, have a look if you're curious)

[chaotic-archaeologist]

This is part of my Ancient Civilizations class that I teach, which does a whole week about Australia and the Torres Strait Islands because I was sick of never seeing them represented in USAmerican history contexts. With the help of @micewithknives and @acearchaeologist I've learned so many incredible things about Australia's past and it's been incredibly rewarding to share them with students.

[aggressivelybicaptainamerica]

My favorite fact about Aboriginal oral history is the fact that we pretty recently discovered that the Aboriginal myth of the 7 Sisters, an origin story for the Pleiades star cluster, accurately reflects a point TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO when two stars in the constellation got close enough together to no longer be distinguishable by the naked eye.

The story? 6 sisters running from something that took their 7th sister.

[jinkohhh]

as a gilgar gunditj woman, i was not expecting to see my culture on my dash.

thank you for spreading our words and treating our culture with respect.

[mayday-guilt]

In Dwarven culture, touching another’s hair or beard is deeply intimate. Bilbo learns this the hard way when he playfully reaches out to untangle a twig from Thorin’s hair during the journey. The entire company goes dead silent. Thorin freezes, his eyes wide, before gently but firmly catching Bilbo’s wrist. It takes an awkward lecture from Kíli later that night for Bilbo to understand that by doing so, he accidentally initiated a Dwarven courtship ritual

[mayday-guilt]

While Bilbo is highly literate in Common and Elvish script, Dwarven runes confuse him. Thorin takes it upon himself to teach him. He sits behind Bilbo at his grand library desk, guiding Bilbo's hand with his own to ink the sharp, geometric lines of the runes. Thorin starts by teaching him simple words like "gold," "iron," and "home." However, Bilbo notices that Thorin often makes him write a specific sequence of runes over and over. When Bilbo later asks Ori for the translation, Ori giggles and reveals it spells out: "The beloved treasurer of the King"

[elbiotipo]

More than "here in the Southern Hemisphere we have inverted seasons :)" thing, which is TECHNICALLY true, I would go a step further and encourage to think about that "much of the world does not exactly has a spring-summer-fall-winter season sequence as they show in cartoons"

[paperdragonsong]

I will scream about this to anyone who listens forever. AUSTRALIA DOES NOT HAVE "ENGLISH SEASONS BUT BACKWARDS" and the insistence that it does creates a massive layer of alienation from the natural world.

I never really realised how much difference it makes until I went to England and realised that here the change of seasons is an obvious, visible, physical change in the world. Like, everything REALLY IS orange and foggy in autumn! In spring there are flowers EVERYWHERE, so much more than any other season, and the trees really do have all blossom and no leaves. Even if it doesn't snow, in winter there's frost all the time and the trees are bare and the sky is visibly greyer all the time. You don't need to be told "this date is the first day of spring", you can SEE IT (although this is getting way messier and less precise due to climate change).

By contrast, most places in Australia the seasons we're taught feel like arbitrary categories - and is it any surprise considering they're colonial constructs? Orange-leaved autumn and blossom-covered spring is a cartoon stereotype with no relevance on a continent where ALL NATIVE TREES ARE EVERGREEN!! Snowy winters are a joke in the desert, and even sunny summers don't ring particularly true considering that much of the country is in the tropics, where summer means monsoons - not that I've ever seen the concept that WE HAVE A MONSOON SEASON taught at an Australian school.

Most Indigenous nations around Australia had six or more seasons, revolving around wet and dry times as much as hot and cold, and marked by the appearances of certain native animals and flowers. Schools need to start teaching the real seasons, and explaining that climate cycles are too complex to generalise globally, or else we will keep raising generations who view the natural world as hostile and unpredictable and climate predictions as generally irrelevent and frequently wrong - and I'm sure I don't need to spell out why that's a problem in the era of climate crisis.

[tiredtransgal]

i want to add that 40% of the world's population lives in the tropics, and the 4 season model just doesn't make much sense for a lot of places in there. usually it's just the wet season/monsoon season and the dry season. it's often hot year round.

the 4 season model as you and i know it is a european invention, though 4 season models aren't unique to europe! most notably china has the same type of season subdivision.

in general the way humans define seasons is largely subjective and varies across cultures. the one you were taught is not at all universal!

[rederiswrites]

Look, it's simple. If a person has to actively work to make money, they're not "the rich" and they're not the problem. A surgeon making $200k a year still stops making money if they stop showing up to do surgery, because they're still selling their labor. The radical discrepancies in how we value different skills are certainly a problem, but the guy who makes money when he doesn't even get out of bed is the one making money on the value of other people's labor.

[monsieurenjlolras]

Time for my favorite chart!

[your-naked-magic-oh-dear-lord]

Notice billions ain't even on there. Outliers something something.

[sugoiney-weaver]

Hey scroll back up. The second column is LIQUID ASSETS. That's essentially money that you can spend today. This isn't even talking about salary or net worth.

I thought I was Level 3. I have a savings account that does get a little interest. Not much but it's a start.

No. It turns out I'm not Level 3. I'm level 0.

[nerathul]

I've said it before; a athlete who gets millions for playing a game season is a worker, their money comes from having a highly desired skill.

But out there, there's plenty of small time landlords, who do absolutely nothing at all, they just collect enough rent to live modestly, those have far more in common with the billionaire capitalist class.

[hazel2468]

There are many, MANY reasons why I don't trust people who peddle around "Eat the Rich" stuff anymore- namely because, given the recent shift in social politics. I think I know exactly who a lot of these folks assume the rich are (Jew hate makes you stupid).

But this is the other reason. Because a lot of people don't understand who the rich even fucking ARE. Or how they get that rich. Or what STAYING that rich entails.

[mayday-guilt]

As Bilbo works on his memoirs, he often reads chapters out loud to Thorin in bed. Thorin is fascinated by how Bilbo spells words from the Shire dialect words for types of soil, specific gardening tools, and comfort foods that have no equivalent in the Dwarven tongue. Thorin starts a private notebook of his own, bound in red leather, where he meticulously copies down Bilbo’s Shire vocabulary alongside the closest runic definitions. To Thorin, mastering the language of the Shire is just as important as mastering the politics of Middle-earth, because it is the language of the world that shaped the person he loves most