Hello!

I like maths, linguistics, folklore, and music. she/they. Autistic.

[seracadash]

(goverment voice) we need to protect the children from pornography so our plan is to remove their eyes so they would never see something so traumatic. if you are against removing children's eyes you are basically a pedophile

[calllynx]

Op turned off reblogs but I MUST

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tumblr post from strike-another-mat... reading: "christian characters in movies are poorly written because the writers are atheist" "atheist characters in movies are poorly written because the writers are christian" stop fighting. all human experience is poorly written in movies because the writers are californian /End ID]

[everybidenjusthavegoodtime]

give a man a guitar and he’ll play for a day, teach a man guitar and today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you

I swear to God I am so tired of this meme. You guys need to leave Wonderwall alone, seriously by now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do

[hannah-the-lion-deactivated2023]

my friend asked if i was gonna stop laughing at wonderwall jokes.

i said maybe

[quasi-normalcy]

Why do so many Japanese urban legends seem to involve a dialogue tree that you need to follow very carefully?

[quasi-normalcy]

It's just the interactive element that seems characteristic. Like I hear a claim that, at some point, "everyone dreams of a village littered with blue corpses, and if they trip and fall then they will die in their sleep and become one of them" and ai just immediately know before I even check that, yes, this urban legend originated in Japan.

[lizardsfromspace]

[quasi-normalcy]

"Am I pretty?"

"I don't know, you're wearing a mask."

"How about now?"

"...I'd say you're a definite four--" (*remembers that four is bad luck in East Asia because it sounds like death*) "FIVE! I meant five! Definitely meant five!"

[sistersorrow]

According to Wikipedia, that could actually work according to some versions of the legend

"You're kinda mid, tbh" or "I don't have time for questions" are both valid responses

Maybe chuck some Werther's Originals at her for safe measure

[thefloatingstone]

[legsdemandias]

Do you think tumblr will ever learn the difference between “I’m defending this person because I agree with them wholeheartedly and I am also like this person” and “I’m defending this person because your behavior is dangerous and you need to stop”

[legsdemandias]

IMO, blurring the lines between “I’m defending them because they’re right” and “I’m defending them because you’re taking this too far” is step numero uno to cutting down the very existence of fair trial and democracy–even in places where saying that might seem a little dramatic. 

Mob mentality is extremely strong in humans and it’s also extremely dangerous. Mobs don’t think things through. Mobs kill and they destroy and they can’t be reasoned with. Someone trying to calm a mob down isn’t someone defending the ~problematic party~ It’s time we re-learn that.

[amiya-shirou]

The argument that "of course battle shonen are misogynistic and can't center women, they're targeted at young boys and will have to focus on and appeal to them!" is stupid for many reasons - not least the fact that we literally know that plenty of women read them - but it especially annoys me because even as one of the fourteen years old boys they so like to use as a shield I was already complaining about the treatment of women in the manga I liked & getting overly attached to any girl that was allowed to be even half as badass and strong as the boys like someone dying in a desert being offered a bottle of water and if some guy at the time had told me "sorry but you're going to have to deal with it because you boys aren't supposed to care about female characters" I would have become the Joker

[blair-kamo]

[enriquemzn262]

[transgenderer]

what the fuck

[argumate]

sweet, might base an agricultural civilisation on this river, hope it behaves itself

[theaudientvoid]

[argumate]

might just fuck around and find out

[andmaybegayer]

Diversity win! This river has ADHD

[crazy-pages]

Nile: You would not believe how long term you have to mismanage agriculture on my banks to start experiencing soil depletion. I will always be here for you Egypt.

Huang He: *kicks in the door* FUCK YOUR DYNASTY IT'S FAMINE TIME!!!

[theprofessional-amateur]

I took two semesters of Chinese history in college. The first thing the professor started with was “getting to know the rivers, Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers. You need to know them because they will play very important roles in the history of China. The Yangtze has been crucial to trade, movement, culture and more. The Yellow river, the Yellow River can’t be trusted as you will repeatedly see.”

[theprofessional-amateur]

If you got stuck on a question during a test or whatever you could start with “the Yellow river jumped the banks causing instability and chaos that quickly spread” and would be correct more times than you would be incorrect.

[im-adrienne-deactivated20260216]

I love geographical chats when it completely devolves into dragging a landform.

[kittiesarecuter]

[validblogname]

one fight at a time

[lizardlicks]

Black Hills drilling project canceled after backlash from tribes

A South Dakota mining company has canceled a drilling project in the Black Hills after opposition from Native American tribes and local grou

[wizxrdpendrxgon]

The backlash was a major lawsuit from 9 tribes alongside other lawsuits from advocacy groups like NDN Collective. You can support NDN Collective by donating to them here.

[unidentifiablelifeform]

Largest US renewable project begins generating electricity

SunZia has quietly begun sending enormous amounts of wind power to California, as President Donald Trump works to thwart the wind industry.

[guooey]

themessangerpigeons

[guooey]

Tears

[pekingopera]

[helenvaughans]

[hbmmaster]

just realized my phone doesn't display some braille characters correctly. the dot pattern [⠸] is supposed to be the right three dots, but on my phone it looks the same as [⠇] with the left three dots. that's a really weird problem and I don't know how they messed that up

[hbmmaster]

how am I supposed to tell the difference between ⠝⠥⠅⠑ (nuke) and ⠝⠥⠨⠑ (nuance) if [⠅] and [⠨] display the same way? pretty big oversight there

[hbmmaster]

here's what it looks like on a device that displays braille properly btw, for reference

[hbmmaster]

after looking into it, the reason this bug exists on android is that, one, when braille was added into Noto Sans they just did it wrong at first, and two, even though this issue was fixed in Noto Sans back in 2017, the android system font Droid Serif, bafflingly, hasn't been properly updated in ages despite the decade of work the Noto team have been doing improving these fonts. like different departments at google just aren't telling each other what they're up to. so that's why braille text is broken on android

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

Split-joint seals (骑缝章qifengzhang)are still widely used on important paper documents in modern China, an anti-tampering technique passed down from ancient times. They are applied across the edge of multi-page contracts, bidding documents and official archives. If any page is removed or replaced, the broken seal pattern can prove the file has been altered.

[ariaste]

OMG I got so excited about this because they used a really similar (though far less refined) version of this for contracts in the European medieval period!

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Delights me when human beings find similar ways to solve the same problem at two different ends of the world. <3

[min0uet]

the most terrifying part of wreck-it ralph was definitely the arcade owner hooking up every single machine to the same power strip

[unyieldingsilence]

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[amaraqwolf]

Good news: if you’re currently laying around and not producing anything, you are a credit to your species.

[willow-wanderings]

It’s recently been found that even hive insects rest. Bees will play with colorful toys. Ants sleep for about 1 minute but they do it so frequently it amounts to a few hours per day. Even trees take breaks.

The only things that work without rest are machines; literally everything that lives requires rest.

EVERYTHING THAT LIVES REQUIRES REST. STOP JUDGING YOURSELF FOR NOT BEING A ROBOT.

[roach-works]

robots require very frequent breaks! welding machines generally have it programmed in that they can’t run so long they melt themselves. ive overseen two different manufacturing robots now and each of them were fragile, finicky idiots that require constant maintenance and repair. they pause in between moves, in between jobs. you’re always keeping an eye on programming errors, on coolant levels, on heat. you’re always pulling bits of scrap out of joints, sweeping up debris, washing off nozzles and untangling hoses. and even then it snaps a chain and takes a whole morning’s vacation.

even robots need downtime.