Eruvadhril

If you like my crochet then please visit my crochet page at clarkiescrochet.com.

[vruba]

“I don’t like this expression “First World problems.” It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”

— Teju Cole  (via feminizt)

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

imagine you had a friend who constantly made jokes at the expense of something you loved. they're never funny, but they seem to expect you to laugh even though the punchline is just, "this thing you love sucks ass". it's not even really a joke, there's nothing funny about it, you can tell that they genuinely actually believe it. but they insist it's just a joke!

no matter what the situation is, they're always bringing the social interaction to a screeching halt with these jokes. nobody ever wants to participate in this joke with them. nobody agrees with the premise. nobody ever knows what to say afterwards, it's just an awkward moment and a subject change. but they just keep doing it.

you have to stop with the self-deprecatory "humor", it's not fun for anyone including you.

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

#actual advice: switch to self-aggrandizing humor #have the biggest ego in the world even if it's fake #does wonders

as the smartest and most beautiful woman in the world, I can confirm this

[florencemachines]

Costume appreciation series: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) dir Stephan Elliott

Costume Design by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner

[finnlongman]

Finn Longman: No Platonic Explanation

It’s Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week and it’s also LGBTQ+ History Month in the UK, which seemed like a good time to talk about a topic I’v

We generally find two models of history dominating popular discourse: a heteronormative model, in which only male/female relationships may be readily accepted as romantic or sexual and so all same-gender relationships must be read as socially normative friendship, or an amatonormative model which, in being open to the possibility of same-gender romance or sex, reads all intimate friendship as actually romance in disguise. The latter is an understandable compensation for the former, which dominated much 19th-20th century scholarship, but is just as essentialising and limited.

I wrote a post for Aro Awareness Week and Queer History Month about the peculiar tension of working on queer history and literature from an aromantic perspective.

[my-deer-friend]

From Finn's excellent post above (which contains a lot more than just this, go read it):

But the more I allowed that openness to lead me to consider how relationships were actually being constructed, rather than just how I expected them to be constructed, I also found myself doing the opposite: considering the ways in which marriage was constructed to resemble these specific kinds of friendship.

This is the thing.

Common friendships can be shared. In one friend one can love beauty; in another, affability; in another, generosity; in another, a fatherly affection; in another, a brotherly one; and so on. But in this friendship love takes possession of the soul and reigns there with full sovereign sway: that cannot possibly be duplicated.

Montaigne, M. de, Screech, M. A., & Montaigne, M. de. (1993). The complete Essays. Penguin Books, p. 215.

THIS IS THE THING.

Although Montaigne distinguishes this model of loving-friendship from pederasty, he connects it to marriage

Haggerty, G. E. (2012). Gray Agonistes: Thomas Gray and Masculine Friendship. The Age of Johnson, 22, 331–XIII.

THIS!! Is the thing!!!

Throughout the late eighteenth century husbands were encouraged to be friends with their wives, to be as close to their wives as they had been to their intimate male friends. The effusive rhetoric of friendship was not modeled on that of romantic love, but rather romantic love took on the semiotics of friendship.

Tobin, R. (2000). Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe. University of Pennsylvania Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15sk9bt, p.37.

This is not the only thing, and marriage is also an imperfect analogue for these relationships.

But! Friendship can be the model for a wide spectrum of intimacies. Some people in the past looked at friendships (platonic, romantic, heroic, what have you) and said, "Huh! We should model our most intimate and important social relationships on that!" And I think that's neat.

[shadowtouchashadowhand-deactiva]

ok so READ THIS BLOG POST - it gets across something ive felt re : romantic friendships and contemporary histories VERY WELL (although i do lean a teeny tiny bit more amato about it in the end i think, perils of being most likely alloromantic). as non-aro queer people we (royal) feel this huge need to define historical romantic friendships and the like as romantic and not friendships, because they don't fit into our typical modern models of friendship and actually more closely resemble our typical modern models of romance. the amount of times i've seen hamlet and horatio presented as if shakespeare legitimately sat down to write them as lovers, for example (and i'm not knocking that interpretation of the text, i've read some amazing fanfiction and i'm not ashamed, it's just ahistorical to present it as fact that is above criticism).

and yes! the label of 'romantic friendship' (or even just 'friendship') has absolutely been used to erase the queerness of relationships that were they heterosexual scholars would be SHOUTING romantic relationship or lovers at. things like shakespeare's sonnets, to use my personal favorite example, or hamilton and laurens. and yes! it is also my personal opinion that a not insignificant amount of romantic friendships contained what we would nowadays call romantic and or sexual feelings that were expressed through the model of romantic friendship because that was the model they had (which, despite it being due to homophobia, is a fundamentally different model of relationships to ours, which is by no means the Best one Ever, etc etc), and replicated perfectly into a 2025 setting they very well might have dated.

but! ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIPS WERE REAL GUYS. this was a REAL historical social structure and it should be treated as such. and many of these relationships do not fit neatly into modern 'romantic' or 'platonic' because they are NEITHER. they are their OWN THING. they are ambiguous! they vary from 'modern-day-besties' to 'qpr' to 'qpr with benefits' to 'passionately in erotic love' to 'intimacy born out of circumstance' to 'lovers' to 'modern-day-married'. and most of the time you, the historian, cannot definitively tell the difference. just like how you cannot really definitively tell the difference between what we would nowadays call a trans man, a lesbian, and a girl who just really hated the patriarchy and decided to make her own way through the world. because all of those concepts are MODERN. deciding that the historical figure in question HAD to be one or the other erases very real nuances and very real histories, and it serves as a 'fuck you' to every single person who sees themself in that story and history but who isn't the identity you've decided on.

anyways, tl;dr : don't call every intimate historical friendship a romantic relationship, read this post it's more interesting than my yapping goes into a LOT more than this and it's from an Actual Qualified Person TM, stop devaluing intimate friendships, stop exclusively putting historical relationships into modern boxes, and oh yeah marriage was often platonic too

[ohwait-shesinspace]

As an ace, this is true allyship.

@justcakethanks original template

[pansyfemme]

maybe this is too woke but i really hate the trope of naked older women = scary or vomit inducing or gross or whatever. like you even see it used in horror on occasion like oooooo so scary theres a woman with saggy boobs and wrinkles. There is something to be said for unconsensual veiwing of nudity. sure. it’s uncomfortable and violating for someone to be nude in front of you that you don’t want to see. but rarely that’s seen as the issue and instead the real ‘horror’ or gross out joke is the very idea of a woman who does not have a body that is sexually desirable to men. The very idea of an older woman’s body is treated like it’s something that we should all know is gross, sick and wrong. It’s just something that really bothers me

[wakeupforgood]

#its been in horror a lot more recently and its like. ENOUGH

[prokopetz]

Strictly speaking, "ultimate" means "last", not "best". It's often figuratively employed in the latter sense to suggest that the thing so described is the final word on the subject, after which nothing more need be said, but if we're being real technical, describing a game or movie that was so bad it killed its entire franchise as the "ultimate" is in fact correct.

[prokopetz]

@ffoxer replied:

Now I'm thinking about the prefix "pen," which as far as I can think I may have only ever seen in "penultimate"

It's Latin for "nearly" or "almost", and it does pop up in a few other English words. "Penultimate", "penumbra" and "peninsula" are the only ones I can think of that you'd even remotely expect to encounter in everyday speech, though; the rest are all medical or mathematical jargon.

[prokopetz]

#so peninsula means what? #almost island? #lmao (via @actualanxiousswampwitch)

That is the actual etymology of the word "peninsula", yes.

[makingqueerhistory]

Instead of Leaving This Hate Comment You Could Read This Book!

People Without History Are Dust

Queerness remains one of the most stigmatized and overlooked aspects of Holocaust history, often erased due to the lingering homophobia of survivors. People Without History Are Dust challenges this silence, weaving together compelling stories of German, Dutch, Czech, and Polish Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors - including Anne Frank, Molly Applebaum, Margot Heuman, and Gad Beck - whose experiences help illuminate the hidden history of queerness in a time of genocide.

Drawing on extensive archival research, this groundbreaking book uncovers the lives of those who were doubly marginalized, not only persecuted as Jews but also as queer individuals. In doing so, it confronts the ways in which history has excluded or minimized their experiences, urging us to question normative accounts of the Holocaust.

By shedding light on these long-overlooked stories, People Without History Are Dust deepens our understanding of identity, survival, and memory, reminding us why an inclusive and complex approach to history is essential - not just for the sake of the past, but in service to the present and the future as well.

*Affiliate link above*

[danceundersparklinglights]

i’m going to be really honest with you guys i think the tendency to read the absolute worst possible intentions into every action you don’t agree with is getting too automatic and it’s eating you from the inside out

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

How dare you say we wanna eat someone from the inside. Cannibalism is wrong

[im-mender]

It's important to note that Chekhov's Gun was not originally about foreshadowing, but a piece of advice to playwrights about how every element in a play should have narrative relevance. The corollary to Chekhov's Gun is that if a gun mounted on the wall in act 1 is never used at all in the entirety of the play, then it should be omitted from the play entirely.

[nae-nae-supreme]

Moral of the story:

If you see a gun anywhere be sure to pick it up and start shooting at stuff, doubly so for sounds and noises from stuff you can't see

[im-mender]

true!

[stillnaomi]

would you be utterly shocked to learn that the US loosened the rules on allowing fascists into the military during the war on terror?

Once the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were in full swing, the United States had a huge army in Iraq and a smaller but still significant one in Afghanistan, and it could not recruit or retain enough troops to staff both. Rather than reinstate the draft as in Vietnam, they looked for another solution.

There was serious discussion in 2005 and 2006 about bringing back conscription. A “Reinstate the Draft” bill went into Congress because there was broad recognition that the military was breaking and needed more bodies. Rumsfeld dismissed that option. George W. Bush said he would have vetoed it if it passed, and in the end it didn’t. They were haunted by the memory of Vietnam and the role the draft played in turning the US public against that war and forcing withdrawal in 1973.

With the Iraq war already unpopular, they feared a draft would be the final straw. So, rather than conscription, they dismantled regulations built up since Vietnam. Some of this was public. They raised the enlistment age from thirty-five to forty-two. They loosened rules on body weight so heavier people could sign up.

What I wanted to investigate was the groups they were not advertising, the ones being quietly enfranchised by this new free-for-all that the Pentagon was embarrassed about and trying to hide. The first and most obvious were neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Over three decades, the military had put in place specific rules to keep such people out. The reasons were straightforward. Sending neo-Nazis and white supremacists into a country of mostly brown people with automatic weapons is not going to end well. Those same people then come back to the United States or serve on domestic bases. They are often highly violent, with an accelerationist, sometimes openly terroristic outlook, and they can turn US-funded training into a resource for what they call a “racial holy war” at home.

Those protective regulations were effectively switched off. When I started talking to neo-Nazis and their organizations, they all told me the same thing: “We have never had it this good in the US military. We can get in with swastikas, we can get in with SS bolts.” That was the starting point for a yearslong investigation.

I found they were not just being tolerated; some were promoted. One of the central figures in the book is Forrest Fogarty, who served in Iraq in 2004–5. He is an American History X–style neo-Nazi, completely open about his politics. When I met him, he told me that his commanders all knew he was a Nazi and liked it. They sent him on the hardest missions because they thought he was “hardcore.”

Neo-Nazis Have Never Found It Easier to Join the US Army, an Interview with Matt Kennard

[phleb0tomist]

reminder to all disabled people that you’re allowed to tell people “i can’t do that” about stuff you can ‘technically’ do but which harms you or requires a period of recovery or preparatory rest etc. you don’t have to explain the complex nuances of your condition to anybody who demands it. i’ve found it’s honestly better to give the least amount of info about your symptoms unless you trust a person a lot. you hold the power over your health information. you choose whether or not to share the details of your condition with people who might not understand.

[iamthelowercase]

Hello, tumblr! I saw something on here the other day that worried me, so I decided to Do Science about it. But I can't do it alone: I need your help to build the dataset!

Here's what I need you to do:

If you see a post with a "mature content" label, and it's 2026, DM me a link to the post.

Yes, that's really it.

I am hoping to collect several thousand such posts, so that I have a decent sized dataset. I do not care what the post is about; if it's labeled as "mature content", I want to add it to my dataset.

If I get 10,000 posts in my dataset before August 31st 2026, I will post my preliminary findings then. I won't feel comfortable calling my findings "settled" before 2027, unless I get over 50,000 posts.

[iamthelowercase]

Tumblr Science FAQ, round 1

What's your hypothesis, OP?

I am not talking about that unless I have results to share. That would bias the results.

I did write them down and I did share them with a trusted contact who can prove that I wrote them down the same day I made this post. (While I did so before I made this post, I am not sure they will be able to provide proof of that, because I did so on the same day.)

OP are you interested in...?

Do you have to click through to see the post? Does the clickthrough contain the words "mature content"? Then yes.

OP are you interested if the post is about...?

I am interested in the mature content labels, not the content of the post. Is there a clickthrough that contains the words "mature content"? Then yes.

[iamthelowercase]

Tumblr Science FAQ, round 2

Should I reblog this for reach?

Yes, please. I felt really silly when I noticed I forgot to include that in the original post.

Is it okay if I send you my own posts?

Yes, those are perfect for what I'm looking for. I actually need to do some processing on a post to make it useful for testing my hypothesis, and this makes it easy.

Are you looking for "potentially mature content" also, or just "mature content"?

I want both, please. Anything that throws up a blocking screen that you have to click through. The distinctions between them are one of the things I am hoping to study.

Does it matter when the post was made originally?

Technically no. There's no way to respond to this without introducing some bias in the results, and I don't want that. However, I do collect some data on a post as part of making it useful to me, and that data is easier to collect if the post is recent.

What if I request content label review on a post after I send it to you?

I need to see the mature content label to be able to use the post. Because the mature content label hides the content of the post, it is very hard to use a post that no longer has a mature content label. You could send me a screenshot, but people could use that to lie to me.

Basically, it's more work for you to make it usable to me.

OP are you a transphobe? It would ruin the experiment for me if you're a transphobe.

I promise I'm not a transphobe and not doing this for transphobic reasons. You should still double-check that I'm not a transphobe for yourself, though. I am not sure that this study will have the useful effects you're hoping for; I am studying something specific, and it may not be what you hope.

[yourrottingwife]

SIMPLE GUIDE:

Body Horror: Things that cannot happen in real life. EX: The Thing, stomach mouths, eyes on hands, etc

Gore: Fresh injuries, often severe. EX: Severed leg, gutspill, deep gashes, etc

NEITHER: Healed injuries and burns, congenital differences, missing appendages, etc. If I could theoretically go to the store and see that character browsing the isles- It isn't body horror or gore. That's just a person. *AND the amount of people that tag, not just fictional characters, but real human beings as body horror is staggering. Its not solely a fandom issue, ableism and bigotry against anyone that looks sufficiently "different" is prevalent in real life and has devastating consequences.

(Modified) from my comment left on this post.

[notyoujamie]

Recurring actors in Classic Who, or How Great Britain Only Has 12 Actors So That’s Why So Many of Them Have Been on Doctor Who Because There’s Only Twelve and Everyone Has to Share (part 8/8)

List of the actors

[kuttithevangu]

the new fantasy genre, popehunk, encompasses all books in which historical figures responsible for real atrocities are presented as sexy and potentially suffering from a cute lil' anxiety disorder

[hunter-rodrigez]

So I do 3D modeling and printing as a hobby, and a few weeks ago I designed wheel guards meant to prevent office chairs from running over cables and clothes... or your pet's tail.

I got the idea from cowcatchers old locomotives used to have.

Anyways, yesterday I uploaded the model to Thingiverse, and just hours after uploading it, the Community Relationship Manager of the whole website left a comment suggesting I enter the model into a competition that's currently being held on the site.

So I did... and now it's in third place not even a day later. First place is $500, but the competition still has a month to go.

Then the Community Manager contacted me again, telling me they want to feature my model in an upcoming design promotion.

Just, what is happening? I mostly made this thing for myself in, like, an hour, and now it's suddenly super popular? This is all a little bit overwhelming 😵‍💫

Other models I worked on for weeks didn't get nearly as popular. I swear, it's impossible to predict what people will like.

Anyways, if you want to print the wheel guards yourself, you can get the model here or here.

I also made a quiet version you can stick furniture felt pads on.

[queenanthai]

@raeseti Obviously we don't have a 3D printer but maybe something similar is available commercially?