Don’call me Love.

Fandom thoughts | General despair with state of the world | Fashion | Bikes | Books | Scify Millennial - Woman in STEM - LeftyRojaGreen - Multilingual - Multinational - Adulthood sucks In a continuous pursuit of educating myself

[knifefightscene]

[blueboxfive]

Protestants are so fucking lame what do you mean the Pope threw a rave?

[cleolinda]

Watch: Pope Leo Goes Viral After Blessing the Dancefloor at Slovakian Rave

The Pope's surprise virtual sermon brought new meaning to having a "religious experience" at the rave.

[madelyn-mads74]

[teaboot]

nothing’s felt real since like 2012

[duare]

This is too good to even be fake news

[sophibug]

In a great tumblr tradition, I have decided to rank the "woman scientist" emojis by various companies.

Apple:

I am concerned by the fact that the green liquid in the ehrlenmeyer flask is clearly producing some sort of gas, but she is only wearing splash glasses. This looks like safety goggle work. Her hair is definitely long enough to be pulled back. The chemical here is "generic green" colored, which is a solid choice, if rare in real life. Please increase your degree of lab safety! 4/10

Google:

she's wearing proper goggles! Unfortunately, her hair is much longer, and definitely needs to be tied back. Also, she should not hold her weird purple liquid in such an unnatural way; she might drop it. I can't tell if her labcoat is buttoned. We see here the liquid is "generic purple," and it is in a very confusing piece of glassware. The bottom is shaped like an ehrlenmeyer flask but it has a very long neck and the ticks go all the way up the next like it's a graduated cylinder. I have never seen a piece of glassware like this. Why is it this shape why is her hand like that 2/10.

Samsung:

This woman definitely looks more like a scientist. She is older, wiser. She is not wearing any eye protection at all. Blue is an odd choice for a generic chemical color (although it does match her tshirt), but the ehrlenmeyer flask looks normal again. I think her labcoat is too big -- I suspect she is facing the structural sexism towards people with larger hips and busts in labcoat sizing. I hope she puts eye protection on soon. I hope her lab increases her salary. 6/10.

Microsoft:

This woman might have hair that is short enough and structured enough that she doesn't really need to pull it back, and she is wearing safety goggles! However, her lab coat is open. Her generic green liquid appears to be in a graduated cylinder and is over the top measurement mark, which means she doesn't know how much she has. She seems enthusiastic, but I think she is not as educated as she thinks. This woman is performing science without understanding it 3/10.

Twitter:

Her hair is short, her labcoat is buttoned, her purple chemical is giving off purple gas in a test tube, and she's wearing goggles. This is a quality assurance professional chemist, I think. She is about to put that test tube in a fume hood. I do not fear for her safety. This is a professional. 9/10.

Facebook:

the splash glasses are back! Now with purple test tube like the previous woman. This is the previous person's coworker who insists it's fine to not be as safe. Her expression shows me she is considering throwing that test tube. I fear for her. At least her lab coat is buttoned 1/10.

[wonderstruck]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[duare]

Two paper books and one audiobook (It’s Probably Nothing). Kindle is for long and adored an fics.

Also, really struggling with Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)… gosh Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I know you had your way with words but… 😮‍💨

A reminder about why I usually avoid joining book clubs!

[aropride]

ao3 is an awesome website for people who love "open in new tab"

[radfemart]

I appreciate the sentiment but I don't get all those "we made it to the longest night of the year! the light will start returning soon! it's all uphill from here & we're halfway there!" posts because like. Oct-Dec is the easier half of Winter. Jan-Apr is way harder. there's no big holidays or decorations, everyone is kind of over the whole Cozy Hygge Sweaters & Cocoa vibe so they're just tired & restless instead, and the whole thing is so drawn out & uneventful that it feels like it lasts 10x longer

[radfemart]

the cold season Oct-Dec:

the cold season Jan-Apr:

[geardrops]

to the people who start their cozy hygge vibes in august: girl, save that shit for february when you'll actually need it

[wintertheglaceon]

Vode An makes me wish i could learn Mando'a for real

[duare]

[bethanyactually]

I don't wanna @ anyone because I understand how fast things seem to move in today's landscape of streaming shows dropping entire seasons in one day, and networks pumping out new series constantly to try to attract more subscribers with no intent to actually maintain those shows over time but I just saw someone self-deprecatingly lament that they are still thinking about a show that ended almost a year ago, making fan art and playlists for it, and I want to be very clear:

you can still create fanworks when it comes to old media!! PLEASE do!! there are always going to be new fans who will appreciate it, and veteran fans who are dying for new content and new perspectives. also, less than a year is NOTHING. the original Star Trek series was on TV six decades ago and there are still people losing their minds over it, writing stories and reblogging gifsets daily, and that's only one example.

a fandom lasts as long as there are people who love a thing, even if it's only a handful of people. love what you love and write and draw and make gifs and playlists about it!

[racethewind10]

raise your hand if you still have brainrot about a show that isn't airing

[bethanyactually]

#art doesn't have a best by date YEAH @wreative-criting!

[thehardveneer]

[crystalis]

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

[teaboot]

I wish I could travel through time and transcend language to hold this woman’s hand and tell her “girl, he ain’t shit”

[duare]

Had this been created by a man rather than a woman (a young one!) it would be slightly more known.

Had that man been European, or well… a citizen of the Roman Empire I suppose as that was back in the 4th century, we ALL would all have heard of it and learn about it in school.Even memorise some of its patterns the same way you are forced to memorise other classic poetry.

[now-for-wrath-now-for-ruin]

CW: Elon Musk jump scare

I'm sorry to inflict upon you this brain poison, but I saw it and I need to talk about it (and my husband is sick of hearing even one more thing about Elon Musk).

I hate these fascist tech billionaires who claim they are Tolkien fans. Firstly, Tolkien would have hated them. Tolkien had very complicated political views and he certainly was a product of his time, so I'm not claiming he was some woke king, but these megalomaniac industrialists, like Elon Musk, represent everything Tolkien thought was wrong with the world. He was an environmentalist and an anarchist. He hated mass production, machines replacing handcrafts, the British Empire and environmental destruction by industries. His villains, Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman etc. all embodied these aspects and are basically Elon Musk and his ilk. He was an intellectual and had passion for creating things, but he was very aware of the dangers of valuing intellectualism and creation above nature and humanity. All his villains are like that as well most of his fallen heroes. Repeatedly he writes very clear cautionary tails about basically Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who look at his work like

Basically even before reading that tweet we know for sure his reading comprehension skills are non existent. It is, however, a spectacular example of that. Firstly, no the hobbits were not protected by "the hard men" of Gondor. They were in fact protected by the Dúnedain of the North. Dúnedain who were by the way a nomadic people, and were viewed with suspicion by the southern settled Men because of their cultural differences. (Like for example Roma and many North American Indigenous peoples, whose nomadism was incompatible with modern capitalism and nation states and they were forced to settle.)

Secondly, you are missing the whole central theme of the book series, you uncultured worm. This is a talking point made by Boromir and Denethor. They claim that it's only Gondor that is keeping the whole Middle-earth safe from Sauron and Gondor's only priority should be protecting itself. It's in fact noble of them to do that, since they are the ones keeping everyone safe. But crucially, they are wrong. Boromir wants to derail the mission of the Fellowship because he thinks protecting Gondor is more important than destroying the Ring. He realises he's wrong after the Ring is able to manipulate this belief of his and turn him against Frodo. This belief is beneficial to the Ring and it's master, since it divides the opposition.

In reality, Saruman has allied with Mordor and Gondor is not actually the only front line against the enemy. More than that, it's that rhetoric of "only Gondor is protecting everyone" that isolates Gondor. They believe that only they are standing between Sauron and Middle-earth, which makes them turn inward, stop caring about others and stop building alliances. It makes them dismissive and blind to the bigger picture. Sure destroying the ring isn't bringing immediate help to Gondor, but only that way they can destroy the enemy and actually protect Gondor as well as the whole Middle-earth. It's about rejecting the binary of either acting for your own self-interest or for the interest of others, the point is these two things are actually one and the same.

And this leads us to the central theme of LOTR. In the end it's not Gondor and it's "hard men" who end up protecting the Middle-earth. It's not the glory of war or warriors with sharp blades who saves the day. It's unassuming hobbits on a thankless mission. It's the regular folk, the small people, who have no great powers, no immense wisdom, no warrior spirit. And it's because they don't have those things they are so crucial. The allure of the power of the Ring can corrupt the desire for greatness, glory and knowledge, but it can't corrupt the desire for simple life or the love of growing things. The whole point is that everyone is repeatedly wrong for thinking that great men will save them. It's the great men in their greatness who time and time again in Tolkien's Legendarium make things worse. Not because they are evil, usually they are very much not, but their greatness is easily led astray.

The hobbits may be small and simple, but they are not weak or helpless. Beside ensuring Sauron's destruction, they in the end are the ones who protect Shire very directly too. After the Dúnedain leave their post to join Aragorn in the war, the Shire is conquered by Saruman, and the hobbits form a resistance and release themselves from the occupation. They are capable of defending themselves, they just don't have a need for warfare outside defensive situations. They don't value war or power, they value more important things like food, drink, dance and trees.

[duare]

Oh ffs! How can someone read the same book and take the core message so wrongly? Assuming he read the books or even watched the movies, of course…

Everything in that message is so outrageously wrong and disgusting. From his take on what hobbits represent and their need to be saved (mate, did you miss it was a hobbit who saved everyone?), to his interpolation to real events and his remarks about immigrations and the far right being Gondor (unless you mean Denethor, who was ruled by fear and hate).

I feel like commiserating with my old languages teachers ( all of them, doesn’t matter if it was in English, Spanish or Catalan) about the importance of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.

[harlequinlestat]

[duare]

Oh come on! Not saying he is not, but they all are toxic. In the Anne Rice universe every single vampire becomes toxic on their own way.

It’s like they mature with age, passed good wine and turned into vinegar.

Thing is, I LOVE vinegar. Can drink it from a spoon. So there’s that…

[sunsetbuddie]

hey so anyone else just, feel thin. sort of stretched. like butter scraped over too much bread. like you need a holiday. a very long holiday. and you don't expect you shall return? or is that just me and bilbo baggins

[duare]

Retirement in Rivendell sounds about right

[honeybeefawn]

imagine being éowyn in the lord of the rings trilogy. your uncle the king is being mind controlled by an evil wizard until said evil wizard's cooler version shows up and frees him. he is accompanied by an elf, a dwarf, and the hottest guy you've ever met. the hot guy also happens to be 87 years old and maybe still not over his immortal elf girlfriend but he respects and listens to you so you're shooting your shot. your geriatric hotguy situationship turns you down the night before the biggest battle ever then goes ghost hunting in the mountains. you decide to go to battle because you'll either help save your people or die in a really cool and honorable way. you then kill middle earth satan's number one henchman with the power of loophole and being a woman (you are also helped in doing this by a 4 foot tall stoner). then you get to marry faramir. 10/10 no notes my girl went through it all

[duare]

Best loophole ever: “But no living man am I! You are looking upon a woman” - The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien

[profeminist]

"Smile, you'll look prettier"

[duare]

It’s my face and I’ll smile if I want.

[radishnt]

which one of u was going to tell me that tea tastes different if u put it in hot water?

[mothman-misato]

y- you were putting it in cold water?????

[boimgfrog]

Radish. Answer the question radish.

[radishnt]

yeah??? i thought for like. 5 years that ppl just put it in hot water 2 speed up the tea-ification process didn’t realize there was an actual reason

[boimgfrog]

You dont have the patience to microwave water for 3 minutes???

[catsnraincoats]

[ID: Tags reading “u think i have the patience to boil water wtf ?????” /End ID]

why are you. putting it in the microwave to boil it

[boimgfrog]

Do you think I have the patience to boil water on the stove

[catsnraincoats]

Its takes less than a minute

[boimgfrog]

Bestie is ur stovetop powered by the fucking sun

[catsnraincoats]

How long does it take you to boil a cup of water on the stove

[boimgfrog]

Like seven minutes

[catsnraincoats]

Just stick the mug on top of the stove on medium heat n it boils in like two minutes… less than that is u use a saucepan…

[boimgfrog]

Crying you’re putting the whole mug on the stove ???? On medium heat???? Ur stove is enchanted

[pidoop]

Every single person in this post is a fucking lunatic

[catfishofoldin99colours]

do none of you own a fucking kettle

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[duare]

This is so much like trying to convince my mum that putting the teapot in the microwave to make tea is NOT ok.

Does she have an electrical kettle? Yes, she does, I made sure of it. But it lives in its little box unless I visit and unpack it to make tea. It’s been years and that woman still refuses to use the kettle even when she acknowledges that it is indeed more efficient and in her opinion less likely to get her radiation (let’s park that rabbit hole for another day 😩)

[duare]

This was painful to watch, but completely fair. What a form Remco had today!

Not particularly a fan of time trials so good to see some drama. Although tbh, much more looking forward to watching the road race, specially the women’s elite race (Pauline!).