(possibly) five kobolds in a coat

Name's Jay, pronouns he/him. You might also know me as Meridok or Ganymeme (on AO3). Personal + fannish blog. See my pinned post for details & tagging. White Canadian trying to be anti-racist & anti-fascist & stand in solidarity w Indigenous ppl, #LandBack, the personal is political. Sidebar image art by @annaleigh

[apolladay]

Which nonessential kitchen appliance do you use most frequently?

* air fryer

* blender

* coffee maker

* grill

* juicer

* mixer

* pressure cooker/instapot

* rice cooker

* toaster/toaster oven

* vacuum sealer

* something else

* see results

“Non essential” here meaning items that aren’t heavily used for standard day to day cooking (like stoves, microwaves, refrigerators, etc.)

Which nonessential kitchen appliance do you use most frequently?

air fryer

blender

coffee maker

grill

juicer

mixer

pressure cooker/instapot

rice cooker

toaster/toaster oven

vacuum sealer

something else

see results

Voting ended onMay 24

“Non essential” here meaning items that aren’t heavily used for standard day to day cooking (like stoves, microwaves, refrigerators, etc.)

[stjohnstarling]

A burly man chained to a sacrificial altar can be a kind of decoration.

[sociallyunacceptableart4]

This was my art school’s water fountain. Drink from them wolf tiddies

[mando-lore]

Assignment misunderstood. I have now built a city.

[mando-lore]

[mando-lore]

Give it a day

[alexaloraetheris]

[mossshhh]

Painfully obvious kink of two ex-mercenaries (it’s knives)

[gothamtittysirens-deactivated20]

The need to check your mutuals bio 123456789 times before calling them by name or using pronouns for them

[fictionadventurer]

One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!

[starfieldcanvas]

the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.

[penrosesun]

I ran into a truly wild cultural misunderstanding with my father some years ago, when I had to explain to him what “hookup culture” actually was, and that the thing he assumed it was was actually what we call “cruising culture”. His response was “how is that different from dating?” and when I explained how it was different, he said, and please note that this a direct quote: “That’s ridiculous! You can’t expect a woman to stop fooling around with other guys for anything less than a marriage proposal. I mean, she’s not a prostitute, you can’t buy her.” Now obviously there’s like… a lot to unpack there, but I think it’s pretty darn illustrative of a substantive cultural shift around the assumption of monogamy!

Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she “wouldn’t put it in those terms” she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasn’t at least on the very immanent horizon was “nuts, honestly.” I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was “Of course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.”

And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how “Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week” didn’t just mean “Aunt Terri had a full dance card” but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, “well, fooling around with, I don’t know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doors”), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.

America has gotten a lot more conservative about dating, actually.

[the-knife-consumer]

Water lore‼️‼️

[thelooniemoonie]

what the fuck is going on in Kalos

[teacupthesauceror-blog]

You are like little baby. Eat my chalk hills and limestone cliffs.

[teacupthesauceror-blog]

Britain is mostly a limescale deposit on a lost bit of Norway so perhaps we are limescales Georg.

[herpsandbirds]

Alvarado's Salamander (Bolitoglossa alvaradoi), family Plethodontidae, Costa Rica

This is one of the Bolitoglossine salamanders, often called Mushroom-tongued Salamanders or Arboreal Salamanders.

photograph by Diego Ugalde

[fellshish]

i’m so glad goncharov happened pre ai slop era

[romanitas]

#weird way to describe 1973 but i guess it’s accurate

[book-historia]

Ah yes, the three genders

[heroineimages]

I love used bookstore labeling.

[tomthefanboy]

aka the Phil Foglio Section

[bunnayy]

What country is '🏳️‍⚧️' and why are all the cute boys from there

[stonelionhearts]

i think as a writer, the older you get and the more you read, the more you realize there are very few actual truly bad ideas. which is a relief. but! the other thing you learn is that stories live and die on the execution and ha ha. lemme tell you. unfortunately. there are lots and lots of bad ways to execute an otherwise fine idea

[scarlet--wiccan]

May 16 is Romani Resistance Day, which commemorates the uprising of Roma and Sinti prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In May of 1944, Roma and Sinti prisoners staged an armed resistance against the planned "liquidation" of the gypsy camps, which would have led to the mass murder of approximately 6,000 Romani. Thanks to the efforts of the Roma and Sinti interned at Auschwitz, these execution plans were staggered and delayed for several months. We hold this day to honor their bravery, mourn their deaths, and memorialize that which the Romani community endured under the Nazi regime.

You can learn some more about Romani Resistance Day, and the ongoing effort to preserve the Berlin memorial to murdered Roma and Sinti against Deutsche Bahn's railroad development, by listening to this episode of Smith's Kushti Podcast.

The ERRC's Romani Tea Room has also put out an episode collecting stories from descendants of Romani Holocaust survivors.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Tales of Roma Women’s Resistance-- FRIDA

Romani Resistance Day Is About More Than Memory-- Margareta Matache

[sandmandaddy69]

[get-thee-to-a-shrubbery]

[ferret-on-pancakes]

[its-your-mind]

[miteistic]

[nick-nonya]

[cleanedupcorporationprogress]

[boothyghost]

[all-save-challenge]

I love this post especially the rat part

going on me feed

[trolleybusaberrations]

what do you mean there are exactly zero rats i. this post

[bingle-official]

[primordialsoupvendor]

[shower-thoughts-last-responder]

[definitely-not-a-plant]

[spectroacha]

DOES IT NOT STOP

[losthavenmine]

Harold Perrineau as Mercutio Romeo + Juliet (1996)

[rachelkatwalsh]

pov: you fell out of a nautiloid

inspired by that one house md promo image

[aplpaca]

big fan of when animals creche. Love to see so many fucking babies in one place

[aplpaca]

So a creche in ecology is a group of animals that take care of their offspring as a group. Grouping together like this can help with protection against predators, finding food, enduring the weather, and gives the parents time to "rest", as sometimes the parents will alternate who's being the primary watchers while others get to hunt by themselves for a bit, like a baby animal daycare.

But ye lions do this once cubs each a certain age. A decent amount of birds do it (for example: flamingos and a lot of penguin, duck, and goose species). Gharials (a type of South Asian crocodilian) form creches with hundreds of babies from multiple nests (they lay under 100 eggs each and sometimes as few as 20). Feral hogs tend to form groups of mothers and young like this, and I saw 3 sows and like 15+ tiny babies the other day and they were so cute

But ye that's how you get pictures like these

[tumorhead]

Rattlesnakes will creche!! In some species mature adult females will hang out together (they're friends!) in shared dens and even birth their clutches together. Then one will babysit while the others go get food. Adult females have been seeing caring for their young like shooing young back into the den when a predator approaches. You can watch LIVE rattlesnake den mothers and all their babies on Project Rattlecam!!!!