centuries-old soup traditions

FDA-certified corvid stan. Over 21. /about and /tags for more info.

[creekfiend]

someday we will think of dogs as types, loosely sorted into groupings based on purpose & broad physical traits, and nothing will be siloed in closed studbooks in a bunch of separate breed clubs and kennel clubs and the concept of purity will be utterly irrelevant 🙏 inshallah and the creek don't rise

[spicychickenfingerings-deactiva]

[fadeintoyou1993]

i love just sitting here letting time pass me by #mysittinghere

[textpostscymraeg]

dwi wrth fy modd jyst yn eistedd yma gan adael i amser fynd heibio #fyeisteddyma

[error-404-fuck-not-found]

used to think it terribly silly (and kinda funny) when fantasy or sci-fi stories would have people refer to major recent historical events as The Flood or The Incident or The Revolution, and im sure historians fucking hate that because it's not helpful or descriptive, but we sure do be calling it The Pandemic

[lostsometime]

Also the new linguistic quirk of just saying “it was 2020” as like. The full end of a story. You say “it was 2020” and everyone knows what you mean.

“I was going to get my masters degree but then it was 2020, so yeah”

“I was cast in a play and then it was 2020”

“my boyfriend proposed but then it was 2020”

[joeyclaire]

"you can't pick and choose what you like from canon" common misconception! yes you can

[pirateherokillian]

but please do not get this very true concept confused with “you cannot pick and choose what is canon”

they are two very different things.

[joeyclaire]

thank you for this addition seriously

[hoehazza]

i remember july like it was yesterday

[drbigsadbabymd-blog]

I feel like the "child soldiers" description of Astartes is a bit off.

Like yeah they're taken from their families and subjected to horrific extensive surgeries/indoctrination beginning at a very young age, this is true. But the entire process takes years, so even though it starts at 11-12 years old, they have to wait until around 15 for the surgeries to take before they begin training and then they only graduate from the neophyte stage to become true Astartes with interface ports and shit around 18. So all of the Astartes we're seeing are fully grown, we're not seeing 13 year olds who just happen to appear fully grown, as some people seem to think.

The definition of a child soldier is anyone recruited for war under the age of 18, for sure, but I do feel like the term doesn't really accurately reflect the Astartes process; real world child soldiers like in the Congo are being recruited AND thrown into war high out of their minds on amphetamines at like 9, they're not entered into an almost decade long process first.

You know what it is like, though? The K-Pop idol recruitment and training system.

It aligns perfectly: taken away from their families when they're recruited as young as 10-12, put through a grueling training and preparation process, not everyone graduates from the training process but if you do it's around 18 years old, then you "ascend" to idol status and are exploited as a sentient product until your body gives out. Plus it's widely regarded as a dream come true for aspirants, but the reality is pretty much just indentured servitude where you aren't really allowed a life or sense of personhood outside of your job.

Astartes are K-Pop idols. Or K-Pop idols are Astartes. Either one. Or maybe both, who knows.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

Martina McBride didn't win Country Music Association Song of the Year for a song about how burning your house down with your abusive husband still inside it is good, noble, and an allegory for the American Revolution for people to act like the genre belongs to bootlicking fucks

[dragon-in-a-fez]

other things people didn't do for you to act like country music belongs to bootlicking fucks:

Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia

Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff

Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh

Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time

Kacey Musgraves telling everyone to ignore the haters, smoke weed, and be a bisexual slut

[dragon-in-a-fez]

how the hell did I leave Morgan Wade off this list. wrote a song about being depressed, alcoholic, and suicidal and how mental illness stigma sucks, saw how much people connected with it, wrote a Part II of that song about how she's doing better now but you're never totally free of the risk of relapse. fucking icon.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I specifically curated this list so people couldn't be like "ah yes but you see here is my simple binary of good and bad country music which always works", I made sure to add different genders, eras, subgenres, etc and y'all are still pulling that shit in the tags!

listen. Alan Jackson, the archetypal mister big hat man sitting on a tractor singing about a pickup truck, wrote a shockingly normal song about 9/11 that was like "yeah I don't know jack shit about politics but my copy of the bible says we're supposed to love everyone" and then went on the radio and explained how he specifically wanted to write a song about that day that "wasn't vengeful". Miranda Lambert took the southern leftist slogan "y'all means all" and made it the title of a corny ass pop-country song for the Queer Eye soundtrack. Kenny Chesney stole a horse from a cop and Tim McGraw put the cop in a chokehold defending him, and I know that's not about their music but it is, and this is very important, fucking sick as hell

it's fine if you only listen to female country artists or pre-1990 country artists or whatever the fuck you want but stop acting like you've cracked the secret code to dividing a whole genre of art into good pure anti-establishment folk songs vs bad corrupted right-wing sellout pulp

[dragon-in-a-fez]

updating this post for 2025:

Luke Combs covering Fast Car and keeping the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" and doing an interview about how he couldn't change a single word because it's not his story. king shit

Morgan Wallen doing I Had Some Help, literally the first song that spoke to me as a male survivor of domestic abuse. also shoutout to the guy for getting caught saying a racial slur and responding by specifically telling his fans not to defend him and raising a bunch of money for the Black Music Action Coalition. bro had an engraved invitation to the culture war and said "nah I'd rather be normal"

Shaboozey just absolutely obliterating the drunk roadhouse anthem glass ceiling

Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne with a song that okay, released in 2019 but I didn't hear until recently, about how good friends mind their own business and let you love whoever you want and also get high with you when you're broke

Kimberley Perry! If I Die Young Part 2!! "actually I'm glad I lived, bitch" ass song that I bet is gonna mean a LOT to kids fighting depression

Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan with Cowboys Cry Too. okay it's shallow and corny but genuinely a shallow and corny song about how men shouldn't be afraid to have feelings is what a lot of men need

[dragon-in-a-fez]

bringing the full version of this post back around because people are pissing me off today

[87sukiyaki]

[tothechaos]

the thing they dont tell you about learning to "trust the process" is that you forget and relearn it every single time you make a new piece of art. unfortunately there is no cure either

[tothechaos]

a chart of what i mean for the visual learners in the audience

[veitstanz]

[byjove]

My grandma’s on and off again boyfriend that she cheated on grandpa with died today.

[byjove]

RIP to Nana’s side piece. Though they never married, Grandpa died in September and she brought his long term competition to Thanksgiving that year.

[byjove]

Grandma and Grandpa had a shotgun wedding when Grandma was 19. Grandpa went off to Vietnam which left her, a severely mentally young mother, alone. Never heard a complaint about her side piece Jeff. He seemed to make her happy and for that I salute him.

[byjove]

I’m an only child so I have to discuss sensitive family drama with my 38,000 followers instead.

[femmmie]

My grandmother broke up w my grandfather through a letter and he just pretended to have never read it. They got married and had three kids.

[lucisthings6]

My grandmother confessed on her death bed that:

Her and Grandpa were in a relationship with their best friends

The four of them have been in a relationship since they were teenagers

They flipped a bottle cap to see which girl the boys would marry

Their children could have either man as their biological father but their biological mother is the mum that raised them

The past two weeks has been chaos since her confession 😂

[polyamorousmood]

[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]

Apparently tumble ate my explanation, but the worst business guys are Australians.

[cipheramnesia]

I cannot stress how much effort I put into explaining things in ways that work for people who aren't native English speakers, because I understand how weird translation can get, and I am not good at other languages. I have so many special little quirks and tricks to make what I say become something moderately clear and apropriate in translation. I can rotate through a dozen approaches to a topic to make it click for someone unfamiliar with what I'm explaining. I know it works because it's been time tested.

Australian executives simply take any information they receive, and do not. Did you say something is going to take a month - after signing a contract and collect a fee? The Australian business executive simply accepts that you have said you have begun work and it will be finished in 48 hours. If I told an Australian executive that the earth revolves around the sun, I would expect him to let me know that I had told him a hamster named Ben carries a really bright lamp around space to make the seasons. I have to painstakingly document every single detail of any interaction with Australian business persons, because they simply imagine things that have happened and information they have been told, and ignore whatever has transpired in actuality.

I have actually warned all my friends off buying anything from Australia - not because I think there's anything specifically wrong with the general quality of Australian goods, but because after every conversation with Australian executives going exactly the same (I say one thing, they declare I have said something completely different), I am hard pressed to believe anyone at a corporate level in Australian businesses actually understands laws, regulations, logistics, safety, or just... words. Every interaction I have with an Australian business guy inevitably stuns me into a loss for words through some completely unanticipated recap of an interaction we had or email I sent which is fully disconnected from the text or actual event. I cannot understand how the people of Australia, not particularly better or worse than people anywhere else, become the worst humans I have had the misfortune to encounter the second they enter the world of business. I wouldn't trust a single Australian executive to pour water out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel.

[farewell-to-lorien]

Talking to Ghosts, by Sienna Gonzales.

[slightly-sigilant]

I have a new standard for the level of haterdom to aspire to, and it's Reddit User KismaiAesthetics, who hates doing laundry so much that he got really good at it, so that he can (I quote) do it right the first time, every time, and get back to watching cat videos on the Internet.

and by "really good at it," I mean that he does a bunch of reading on the chemistry of laundry, subscribes to academic journals about laundry, and buys a bunch of different laundry products (including from outside the US) to scrutinize their ingredients and test them for himself. he writes a bunch of incredibly detailed longposts about his findings on /r/laundry and his website, which is also about laundry. he even got interviewed about his laundryposts, in which he revealed he's writing a book about laundry. this man is like ahab and the white whale, if ahab had a reddit account and moby dick was a pile of clothes with cheeseburger stains on them

[slightly-sigilant]

anyway the reason I encountered this guy was because recently, the household washer has been leaving these gross little oily brown flakes on anything washed in it. this is kind of a big problem for me, given that I not only have (literal, diagnosed, medicated) OCD which includes a contagion phobia, I also sew a bunch of stuff with the intent of gifting or selling it, and sometimes that involves prewashing fabric. only, you know, washing is supposed to make things cleaner, not dirtier.

and my research brought me to (gross photos warning!) Kismai's post on the very topic. apparently this stuff is called "scrud," and it's basically a residue that forms over time inside the nooks and crannies of a washing machine - leftover detergent reacting with mineral traces in tapwater to form a buildup that also traps dyes, grease, and other dirt, which bacteria then feeds on, because it wasn't already gross enough. it forms faster if you have hard water, use too much detergent (which most people do), use fabric softener, wash only on cold and the list goes on and on - point is, scrud is the reason that you have to actually clean your washing machine, or be super fastidious about how you do laundry.

(I'll take "things I wish school/my parents actually taught me" for 800)

so now I am engaged in a lengthy battle against scrud, armed with a tub of oxiclean and a sack of citric acid crystals. (we're renters, so disassembling the machine is out of the question.) pour in a scoop of oxiclean, run a machine clean cycle, pour in a scoop of citric acid, run another machine clean cycle, all while wiping piles and piles of scrud out of the drum at the end of each cycle. I'm on the eighth cycle now. there's still so much scrud. the reddit record for "how many cleaning cycles were needed to get a machine entirely free of scrud" is 22 cycles. help

[slightly-sigilant]

hey so like

it turns out that laundry sucks significantly less when your clothes and sheets and etc actually come out of the machine looking, feeling, and smelling clean, rather than looking, feeling, and smelling like despair dipped in slime

like, I have this pillowsheet I call my Depression Era Pillowsheet, because during a Real Bad Time of my life when 90% of all I could do was lie in bed and cry, that was the pillowsheet I laid and cried on. this went on for weeks, and it was never changed out because, again, 90% of my waking hours were Lie In Bed And Cry Hours. it did eventually get changed out, but no matter how many washes I put it through, it remained stained and slimy. like I'd throw it in every time I washed my clothes and it would still come out feeling like someone had applied a fresh layer of Weeping Slime Laminate to it. someone with more sense probably would have thrown it out but idk, I just never did for some reason

anyway! taking some pointers from the freaks over at /r/laundry, I grabbed an enzyme-based detergent, a booster (thing of More Enzymes and oxygen bleach that you add alongside detergent to make it clean gooder), and washed everything on hot (in a machine without a scrud problem), including the Depression Era Pillowsheet. it finally came out looking and feeling like fresh clean cotton?? what?? I hadn't even done the whole "soak it for 24 hours in various unsettling substances" thing??? wack

[roycohn]

i love it when He has a health scare and the internet starts acting up like they're fully prepared to receive a "never in my 20 years of teaching have i received a note from a substitute this bad" lecture the next day. can we have another one of those nights soon pretty please

[cardassiangoodreads]

I’ll never forget that when he got COVID in October 2020 and this dropped at like 2 am Eastern time, some guy outside was just running through the streets of Baltimore yelling “Trump got it! Trump got it!” like a self-appointed town crier. And if anyone is wondering why the city benches call Baltimore “the Greatest City in America,” well,

[unheardoracle]

Your dialogue is stiff because everyone is being too honest

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

dodge questions

answer indirectly

lie (badly)

change the subject

crack jokes to avoid serious answers

lie (convincingly)

say half of what they mean

tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

Subtext is where tension lives.

[dopedyk]

more so,

people don’t always speak in full sentences,

slang can change depending on age range, demographic, etc. &

don’t be scared of vocal pauses (uhm, uh, err)

[seren-starlight]

Nobody really knows what makes a person go to bed