the peculiar silence of winter

Talvi, 30s, Canada. Jewish. Aroace, she/her. Sometimes I’ll disappear from tumblr for weeks at a time.

[timeturner-jay]

I told my friend that tumblr would love her shirt, don't let me down guys

[cipheramnesia]

Working with different business cultures all over the globe, my biggest surprise is that while the USA is bad, it's not actually the very absolute worst I've ever worked with.

[cipheramnesia]

I can imagine all the guesses, but if you haven't talked with a crap ton of people from dozens of countries, it's not obvious.

[cipheramnesia]

The key is business culture is like its own weird separate culture with rules and structures, but most places have a fairly comprehensible set of expectations. So most of the time, it's just remembering perceived differences in expectations. Some places it's polite to be what feels really overly friendly to me. Some places it's polite to be what feels obsequious and formal to me. It's like, whatever. A secondary form of language kinda. It's not even social cues, it's just mechanics of language really. Places with that stuff, those are all fine and wonderful to deal with because there's a framework to communicate and all that.

Part of why the USA shits the bed trying to talk with is because every business person here has like zero framework, it's all lies and bullshit, and everyone wants to be the smartest bestest boy. It's not business culture as much as daycare for toddlers who have millions of dollars and hate human rights. Not the worst though, not by far.

[cipheramnesia]

What's key to understand is this is all separate from things like the real people in different places. Business brain people don't have any relevance to real human behavior, it's this whole other structure of make believe which controls everyone's well being. It's important to know because I know how to email a business guy in South Korea using language that will feel appropriate enough after translation, but that's completely irrelevant to the real people living there. It's easy to talk to business guys in China or India or whatever. Germany, Nigeria, Mexico.

UK business guys are pretty bad too. Still not the worst but you have to put a lot of extra work in because business culture in the UK still thinks the Brittish empire exists. The majority of business dudes in the UK see no difference between selling something that has their company name on it, and making it themselves. It's like how all the stuff that says "made in the USA" is 99% made somewhere else, and then one staple is put into it and it's made in the USA, but if you talk to business guys here, they never confuse where things are made, just like... more basic realities like linear time and physics. UK guys go the opposite way, and always say they own everything. But that's all relatively navigable. It's like, okay, you all live in an imaginary world, but I can still get everyone to understand time and logistics and stuff enough to get everyone understanding the same information. I can translate imagination land to reality and back, they get it.

[cipheramnesia]

Australia business guys are the worst. Uncontested. I keep minutely detailed notes on every interaction I have with any business brained Australian. I don't want to do this. I have to. Working with business guys in Australia is like being stuck in a marriage with an emotionally abusice pickup artist. Their favorite way to communicate is using work appropriate language to imply you're stupid and your work is worthless. Luckily, there's also no way to explain what you do, because I think when you get a corporate executive level position in an Australian business, they surgically remove the part of your brain that takes in new information.

My average verbal or email exchange with an Australian business guy goes something like this:

"Okay, this is going to take around a month. We need so and so dollars to start. Also, the Earth orbits the Sun."

"Great, just to confirm, we're ready to deliver tomorrow, and the giant hamster rolls the sunball across the sky. Sounds good, have you started?"

It's infuriating in some ways, fascinating in others. Information simply vanishes into an Australian business person as if you hurled it into space, but something in space might theoretically end up somewhere and everything I say to Australian business guys doesn't. I've tried every way around it, and nothing works. And they become enraged when the things they imagined, which no one ever actually said, don't happen. Like you know those clips from Alex Jones in court being read his own words? Imagine that instead of blustering denial he demanded to know how the lawyer was so incompetent at lawyering because words don't exist and he was told this was a carnival cruise not lawsuit. And they have both of the worst traits of USA and UK business guys on top of all that. And I've never heard anyone even close to the same level of casual racism as business guys in Australia. I mean, business guys as a rules aren't great people, but nowhere I've ever worked with has been so consistently terrible to deal with. It would be one thing if it was an outlier, I've had one or two USA companies that were rough, sometimes companies in South Korea can be a real pain, navigating business culture in France if you're from the USA is a labyrinth. But Australia. Those business guys are on another level. Every other company with dodgy practices knows what they’re doing that's questionable. I don't know if business guys in Australia have the ability to understand... like... language. Do they understand laws, money, logistics, anything? Impossible to say! They walk and talk like people but they have discovered some means by which they never intake any information ever. It's like plausible deniability evolved into a new part of the brain specifically to make it easier to be as unethical as the manifest physical reality permits. The regular people in Australia all seem fine, just more people, but the business operators are like night and day. I can find ways to communicate with non-English speakers fairly well, knowing how to work language to adapt to translation is fun. I can't make fucking heads or tails of English speaking Australian corporate execs. If you speak any second language, any at all, know that you are doing better at it than these guys are in their first one. It's literally impossible to overstate how uniformly unpleasant it is to work with business guys from Australia. They are, without question, the worst.

[elodieunderglass]

@cipheramnesia have you ever seen these?

[ymfingsteadilyon]

@elodieunderglass Those look really interesting, do you have a link to a sharper version? (Or is there a joke about communication difficulties and you're not supposed to see what it says?)

[elodieunderglass]

Ha, yeah, I hadn’t expected Tumblr to compress it like that - “do you love the colour of business communication around the world?”

The body of work is called “Communication Patterns Around the World,” by Richard Lewis. The main book they’re from is at the bottom of the image, but they’re widely spread. Googling will lead to many articles and many images.

[mademoiseli]

The notes are broken. This is what tumblr is all about apparently.

[atonau]

THE NOTES ARE BROKEN!  This has been reblogged so many times, Tumblr just shrugged and said “infinity”

[bloodraven55]

love it when fma just says the quiet part out loud

[bloodraven55]

[insert “i know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards” here]

[nightfuryqueen]

One of my favourite bits in fma is how during the final arc they bring up why attempting human stransmutation is forbidden, as the readers we've seen what happens when an attempt fails with Ed and Al, so of course the logical explanation is that "it's too dangerous to attempt", or even "it goes against the natural way the world works, it's monstruous in nature and impossible".

But then Arakawa in her infinite wisdom as a writer goes, lol no, the goverment has been making flesh monsters with human transmutations in secret for years, they forbid it so that nobody can't even come close to attempting to create a personal army that cannot feel pain

[dynjay]

[welele]

[thecolabubble]

bite mark analysis has been repeatedly proven to be unreliable and the fact the at it is admissible in a court of law is a sham

FREE THIS INNOCENT BNUUY

[macgyvermedical]

PSA:

Acetaminophen/paracetamol has a hard stop upper dose limit, above which it becomes extremely toxic.

That limit is 4g (8 “extra strength” (500mg) tablets) in 24 hours (about 2 tablets every 6 hours).

A single dose of 22 extra strength tablets can kill you.

Taking 12 or more tablets per day for more than a week can also kill you (this is about 3 tablets every 6 hours).

Symptoms of overdose take up to 24 hours to manifest, and are fairly difficult to distinguish from other problems. They include abdominal pain (especially right upper quadrant), nausea, malaise, and confusion.

The antidote (n-acetylcystine) must be given within 8hours of ingestion in order to be useful.

After 10 hours the only thing that will work is a liver transplant.

You might think “why would I ever accidentally take so much?”

Well, acetaminophen is in almost everything in the cold/flu/pain aisle. Migraine combos like Excedrin, cold and flu combos like NyQuil, basically anything that says “non-aspirin pain relief”, and anything that’s branded as a fever reducer. It’s all probably acetaminophen/paracetamol.

So the goal of this post is to get you to read the labels on your medications. Because taking taking Tylenol and NyQuil together for a week (like you might if you had the flu) could kill you.

[fleetingruin]

Please don't forget this shit, after it happened to a family member, he died 8 years later because of the continuing health complications even though he survived the initial overdose

[cakeisnotpie]

I didn't know this for years, and I took so many pills, sometimes 4 at one go, every four hours, like 16 a day, because of endometriosis and migraines. It took a migraine specialist to explain rebound headaches and overdoses when I was in my 40s. Then I went cold turkey on all OTC drugs to get off the cycle. Please, please, if a couple tylenol aren't working for you, talk to your doctor or find one who will listen to you if you can.

[icemav86]

ALSO. Drinking alcohol exacerbates the risk of acetaminophen toxicity. Your liver can’t clear the acetaminophen as effectively if it’s also processing alcohol. Pls don’t mix alcohol and acetaminophen/paracetamol.

[danikriatura]

[snowie-skyes]

Why should I have an obligation and responsiblity for the people around me? As long as I am not making my presence a nuisance why shouldn't I be allowed to not give a fuck about strangers? Especially when the vast majority of them would take (and historically have taken) advantage of me were I to take such a stance.

[joinsideke]

He's talking about the social contract we all share. You not being a nuisance is part of that. Not yelling at a cashier or blasting your music in public is part of that. Listening to your friends or family about something affecting them and not complaining that it's "trauma dumping" or "emotional labor" is part of that. Basic common courtesy, when it really comes down to it. That's the obligation. Not acting like you're the main character and nobody else's feelings matter.

[h0lyshift]

The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.

[melyzard]

Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.

And often, they are assholes, too.

[longseasons]

[gwydionmisha]

Bonus: If I buy a book I get to keep it! The publisher can't turn up at my house at random and confiscate all the books I bought.

[thejoyfool]

5 min tutorial for trcelyne, hope it helps! 

[sushinfood]

Tried this out REALLY roughly just for fun and WOAH!?

IT WORKS WELL!!

[sushinfood]

IT STILL WORKS WELL!

[9volt-art]

Huh, that worked pretty well

[leafinsect-deactivated20201122]

v rushed but it works!!

[xedramon]

What an amazing little tutorial!!! Highly recommend!!!

[a-humble-waffle]

I’m so mad that it’s this easy and I’m a struggle boi

[king-of-fuffies]

reblog to save an artist

[shitlordofthebitches]

Fucking really??? That’s all it took?????

[cinnabuncrumbs]

wow! this works really well!!! now i can start easily plotting out how the hallways of my new children’s hospital are going to look :)

[im-a-dragon-cawcaw]

I love color theory

[chekhovs-guns]

okay but we should talk more about edward miller's artwork for the locked tomb series. like. these are so beautiful. the only style in which i would like to see tlt adaptation.

illustrations by edward miller for subterranean press edition of gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir

illustrations by edward miller for subterranean press edition of harrow the ninth by tamsyn muir

illustrations by edward miller for subterranean press edition of nona the ninth by tamsyn muir

[pangur-and-grim]

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

[spirkkock]

my friend just had an art show and they were communicating with the gallerist over email. They could clearly tell that the gallerist was using AI to respond to their emails, but just rolled their eyes and moved on.

and then on the day of the show, my friend asks, "where is the camera I requested?"

gallerist: "you didn't request a camera"

my friend: "I did, and you confirmed that you would have one here."

gallerist: "that isn't true."

and then she proceeded to pull up the email thread, and my friend could see that every single email they had sent had been summarized by AI, and that the gallerist had then had AI write a response to them based on the AI summary, and that the AI had detected that they needed a camera, and confirmed on behalf of the gallerist that they would bring a camera, but because the gallerist had offloaded the work of actually reading and responding, she simply hadn't actually made any note of it herself, therefore didn't bring it, nor did she even know one was needed.

so my friend had done all of this communication about their needs and expectations to be able to make the show possible, and the person whose job it was to read that information and get it done had simply.... not read the information and not done it. because AI.

[headofporridge]

When I Say I Forgive You, Know This

I did not bury the hatchet. I have the hatchet in my hands. I am building myself a new house.

- Brenna Twohy

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

One thing I love putting in my fantasy and scifi that so many stories I read don't have is superstitions that are just wrong. Astrology type shit. Wizards being assigned an elemental type that's supposed to determine their personality just because that's how it's been done for centuries because ages ago people believed in it and these days people are like "no of course it's a silly superstition haha" but still glance knowingly at your metal type tattoo when you're being headstrong. Societies who believe that the stars determine your destiny because see, this kid was born under the star that indicated intelligence so we pushed her in school and got her special tutors so she could live up to her potential and look, she IS more academically successful than her peers born under other stars! People talking about their religion in the far future and all the side characters are like "that sounds like fucking nonsense" and they're like "no it's TRUE" and the audience is like 'no that's nonsense'. I love inventing shit for characters to just be totally wrong about.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I also love making them wrong about the past but that's just a fun thing that most far future scifi gets to do.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This is also a useful tactic for reminding readers not to trust characters' perspective too much. Like, yeah, that person did just give a very smart-sounding detailed analysis on the current situation and predicted to the month how long it will be before war breaks out, but they also believe (incorrectly) that the ghosts of previous captains live on in the hull of the ship and think humans invented dolphins by combining human and whale DNA, so don't be too surprised if they turn out to be wrong. The narrator said it's "the biggest spaceship ever built" but she's six years old and just learned what a sheep is, so. Might have a limited perspective.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#The fun thing in The Void Behind with this is that you (OP) get to do this with stuff that happened in TTO:U.

Just because Aspen is long dead doesn't mean I can't keep distorting their reputation.

[alex51324]

I'm doing a Dragonriders of Pern* re-read at the moment, and I really wish there was more of this.

There's one bit, in the first one, where some characters find a remnant of scientific documentation and mistake it for the ramblings of an elderly person with dementia, but for the most part, the conclusions they draw from fragmentary evidence are either accurate or nonexistent.

We also hear almost nothing about any lore they possess about their origins as a people, except for characters saying, "Just like in the old tales!" after something has been revealed.

I think McCaffrey just hated the idea of her characters ever being wrong about anything, but when you think about it, the effect is more that they're bizarrely incurious.

(*For those unfamiliar, the premise is that a high-tech human society started a colony on a planet called Pern, and for Plot Reasons they genetically engineered a race of telepathic dragons, and then promptly descended into a fairly generic pseudo-Medieval fantasy world.

The main story picks up about 2000 years after the colony was founded, and over the next couple of decades they uncover the original landing site and then there's a flashback novel that goes back to the founding of the colony, followed in the main timeline by a massive deus ex machina that explains to the characters everything that was covered in the flashback book.

Obviously, the main draw of the series is the telepathic dragons--which were an original premise at the time Anne McCaffrey started the series--rather than the sociology of lost colonies, but now that bond creatures and dragonriders are such well-worn tropes, the rest of the worldbuilding comes off as a little thin.)

[eternalgirlscout]

did some math based on adventurer's bible stuff about average sizes of tallmen & half-foots & the canon heights of the characters and. chilchuck is the half-foot equivalent of 6'5

[capnportofficial]

prev tags

[chilewithcarnage]

[astronomalyy]

cannot express in words how cathartic this must have been for him

[stranglingfigs]

Noodles appreciation post

Give it up for noodles everybody

[justadreaminghufflepuff]

Da good stuff

[b-i-beast291]

[tuulikki]

[south-africa-official]

i never really got it when people made posts about light pollution and seeing all the stars for the first time and crying. i always assumed that everyone has gone on a road trip to a bortle 1.0 place and seen stars like that, and it's fantastic, but not like life changing. and then i went to europe last month and was in a mountaintop village of like 300 people and could see about 5 stars in the sky. like fewer than i can see from my home in a big metropolitan city.

my apologies to the non-africans, i did not realise how fucked your sky is

[cazort]

the thing that makes me mad about light pollution is that so much of it could be fixed by downward-facing light fixtures and doing that would also massively reduce energy usage bc all that light cast upward is wasted energy