EXPECTATIONS
The Bright Sessions
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Product Placement
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Sade Olutola
Fai_Ryy
noise dept.
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
tumblr dot com
Cosmic Funnies
One Nice Bug Per Day
ellievsbear
Keni
Game of Thrones Daily
🪼
macklin celebrini has autism
d e v o n
𓃗
occasionally subtle
seen from Australia
seen from Zimbabwe
seen from Brazil
seen from South Korea
seen from Portugal
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from New Zealand
seen from Türkiye
seen from Greece
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
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@in-the-swing
I wish I knew more about this story, but this should be 100% standard procedure in every bar or club.
#to anyone wondering why react this way?#odds are they drugged more than one person#and this way no woman needs to feel singled out as a potential victim#sends the message that people who do that aren't welcome there and they're actively ruining the night for others#and gives anyone who might have been drugged a place to go to get help (via @wingedkiare)
Mute this. The music is annoying.
Follow @brattylikestoeat for more.
Penis Music Saturday
dont you dare mute this magic
It has been a LONG time since I’ve laughed this hard at a Reddit post lmao
The title scared me but trust me, it’s well worth the read
Me reading the title: Oof, ok, not sure what to make of this...
Me reading the text: Ok nvm this is objectively funny
[video: Hideo Kojima plays a nintendo switch game where he and another player (both of whom are wearing sheriff’s hats) have a standoff, controllers at their sides, waiting to draw quicker than the other. Kojima adjusts his hat, looks at the onlookers, looks at the screen, then faces back to his opponent. they stare each other down for a tense moment. before the opponent can even react, Kojima draws first, lightning quick, and shoots. his opponent is visibly upset, having clearly underestimated Kojima, who begins flipping his controller around as if it were a revolver, finishing up by blowing the (non-existent) smoke from the barrel. an ocelot’s meow echoes as the camera zooms in on his face]
You’re…pretty good
i still can’t believe he guesses the EXACT time it says fire. no human can react like that. then again..
the wretched abomination known as the minotaur has discovered some chalk
Saying this, she casually threw aside a large rock.
forbidden context
Amazon workers in Alabama are attempting to unionize
tweet
Amazon is texting workers multiple times a day.
Amazon has anti-union posters in the bathrooms.
Amazon managers are using temp workers to advertise “Vote No” on unionizing, knowing they’re leveraging economic power and vulnerability.
Amazon and the city traffic management colluded to change the traffic signals so that drivers have no time to stop and talk to union organizers.
Workers begin voting Monday (2/8/21) on whether or not to unionize. This would be the first union in Amazon.
This comes days after it was revealed Amazon was stealing drivers’ tips.
BIG BIRD IS TALKING ABOUT HIS COUSINS ON TWITTER THIS IS NOT A DRILL
i love how even in 7 year old crack videos everyone’s in agreement that homura is a huge fucking lesbian for madoka.
queen of humor
Dolly i would both kill and die for you
“Fiddle me this, Batman!”
its the cash Biden reblog in 30 seconds for money in your future
With each quarter he grows stronger
Seeing this exchange on Reddit was so sad. Men and boys need love and affection as much as women and girls.
Fuck, this reminds me of this good post I saw on I believe Twitter. Can’t find it and even so I’d rather not repost it if it can be helped but it was basically some dude crawling into bed w/ his girlfriend/wife and he was clearly upset and she offers him sex to make him feel better but he declines so instead she cuddles him and he starts crying and says thank you. Super cute and sweet.
Is it this?
Yeah! That’s the one. Thanks.
That post reminds me of this one I saw on Reddit:
Kill the idea that men don’t want physical affection 2KForever.
On the issue of the ‘q slur’...
So, yesterday, I got into a rather stupid internet argument with someone who was peddling what seemed to me to be a rather insidious narrative about slur-reclamation. Someone in the ensuing notes raised a point which I thought was interesting, and worrying, and probably needed to be addressed in it’s own post. So here we go:
The word ‘queer’ itself seems to be especially touchy for many, so let me begin to address this by way of analogy.
Instead of talking about “queer”, let’s start by talking about “Jew” - a word which I believe is very similar in its usage in some significant ways.
Now, the word “Jew” has been used as a derogatory term for literally hundreds of years. It is used both as a noun (eg. “That guy ripped me off - what a dirty Jew”) and as a verb (eg. “That guy really Jew-ed me”). These usages are deeply, fundamentally, horrifically offensive, and should be used under no circumstances, ever. And yet, I myself have heard both, even as recently as this past year, even in an urban location with plenty of Jews, in a social situation where people should have known better. In short – the word “Jew”, as it is used by certain antisemites, is – quite unambiguously – a slur. Not a dead slur, not a former slur – and active, living slur that most Jews will at some point in their life encounter in a context where the term is being used to denigrate them and their religion.
Now here’s the thing, though: I’m a Jew. I call myself a Jew. I prefer that all non-Jews call me a Jew – so do most Jews I know. “Jew” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Judaism, the same way that “Muslim” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Islam, and “Christian” is the correct term for someone who is part of the religion of Christianity.
In fact, almost all of the terms that non-Jews use to avoid saying “Jew” (eg. “a member of the Jewish persuasion”, “a follower of the Jewish faith”, “coming from a Jewish family”, “identifying as part of the Jewish religion”, etc) are deeply offensive, because these terms imply to us that the speaker sees the term “Jew” (and by extension, what that term stands for) as a dirty word.
“BUT WAIT” – I hear you say – “didn’t you just say that Jew is used as a slur?!?”
Yes. Yes, I did. And also, it is fundamentally offensive not to call us that, because it is our name and our identity.
Let me back up a little bit, and bring you into the world of one of those 2000s PSAs about not using “that’s so gay”. Think of some word that is your identity – something which you consider to be a fundamental and intrinsic part of yourself. It could be “female” or “male”, or “Black” or “white”, “tall” or “short”, “Atheist” or “Mormon” or “Evangelical” – you name it.
Now imagine that people started using that term as a slur.
“What a female thing to do!” they might say. “That teacher doesn’t know anything, he’s so female!”
Or maybe, “Yikes, look at that idiot who’s driving like an atheist. It’s so embarrassing!”
Or perhaps, “Oh gross, that music is so Black, turn it off!”
Now, what would you say if the same groups of people who had been saying those things for years turned around and avoided using those words to describe anything other than an insult?
“Oh, so I see you’re a member of the female persuasion!”
“Is he… a follower of the atheist beliefs? Like does he identify as part of the community of atheist-aligned individuals?”
“So, as a Black-ish identified person yourself – excuse me, as a person who comes from a Black-ish family…”
Here’s the fundamental problem with treating all words that are used as slurs the same, without any regard for how they are used and how they developed – not all slurs are the same.
No one, and I mean no one (except maybe for a small handful of angsty teens who are deliberately making a point of being edgy) self-identifies as a kike. In contrast, essentially all Jews self-identify as Jews. And when non-Jews get weird about that identity on the grounds that “Jew is used as a slur”, despite the fact that it is the name that the Jewish community as a whole resoundingly identifies with, what they are basically saying is that they think that the slur usage is more important than the Jewish community self-identification usage. They are saying, in essence, “we think that your name should be a slur.”
Now, at the top I said that the word “Jew” and the word “queer” had some significant similarities in terms of their usage, and I think that’s pretty apparent if you look at what people in those communities are saying about those terms. When American Jews were being actively threatened by neo-Nazis in the 70s, the slogan of choice was “For every Jew a .22!″. When the American Queer community was marching in the 90s in protest of systemic anti-queer violence, the slogan of choice was “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Clearly, these are terms that are used by the communities themselves, in reference to themselves. Clearly, these terms are more than simply slurs.
But while there are useful similarities between how the terms “Jew” and “Queer” are used by bigots and by their own communities, I’d also like to point out that there is pretty substantial and important difference:
Unlike for “queer”, there is no organized group of Jewish antisemites who are using the catchphrase “Jew is a slur!” in order to selectively silence and disenfranchise Jews who are part of minority groups within Judaism.
This is the real rub with the term queer – no one was campaigning about it being a slur until less than a decade ago. No one was saying that you needed to warn for the word queer when queer people were establishing the academic discipline of queer studies. No one was ‘think of the children”-ing the umbrella term when queer activists were literally marching for their lives. Go back to even 2010 and the term “q slur” would have been basically unparseable – if I saw someone tag something “q slur”, like most queer people I would have wracked my brains trying to figure out what slur even started with q, and if I learned that it was supposed to be “queer”, my default assumption would be that the post was made by a well-meaning but extremely clueless straight person.
I literally remember this shift – and I remember who started it. Exclusionists didn’t like the fact that queer was an umbrella term. Terfs (or radfems as they like to be called now) didn’t like that queer history included trans history; biphobes and aphobes didn’t like that the queer community was also a community to bisexuals and asexuals. And so what could they possibly say, to drive people away from the term that was protecting the sorts of queer people that they wanted to exclude?
Well, naturally, they turned to “queer is a slur.”
And here’s the thing – queer is a slur, just like Jew is a slur, and no one is denying that. And that fact makes “queer is a slur so don’t use it” a very convincing argument on the surface: 1) queer is still often used as a slur, and 2) you shouldn’t ever use slurs without carefully tagging and warning people about them (and better yet, you should never use them at all), and so therefore 3) you need to tag for “the q slur” and you need to warn people not to call the community “the queer community” or it’s members “queer people” or its study “queer studies” – because it’s a slur!
But the crucial step that’s missing here is exactly the same one above, for the word “Jew” – and that step is that not all slurs are the same. When a term is both used as a slur and used as a self-identity term, then favoring the slur meaning instead of the identity meaning is picking the side of the slur-users over the disadvantaged group!
If you say or tag “q slur” you are sending the message, whether you realize it or not, that people who use “queer” as a slur are more right about its meaning than those who use it as their identity. Tagging for “queer” is one thing. People can filter for “queer” if it triggers them, just like people can filter for anything else. Not everyone has to personally use the term queer, or like the term queer. But there is no circumstance where the term “q slur” does not indicate that you think queer is more of a slur than of an accurate description of a community.
If I, as a Jew, ever came across a post where someone had warned for innocent, positive, non-antisemitic content relating to Judaism with the tag “J slur”, I would be incensed. So would any Jew. The act of tagging a post “J slur” is in and of itself antisemitic and offensive.
Queer people are allowed to feel the same about “q slur”. It is not a neutral warning term – it is an attack on our identity.
This entire post really resonated with me. Especially the part where you say:
“When a term is both used as a slur and used as a self-identity term, then favoring the slur meaning instead of the identity meaning is picking the side of the slur-users over the disadvantaged group!”
As I’ve previously mentioned, I happen to be the proud owner of some truly stupid novelty slippers, which I couldn’t wear until very recently because they terrified the cat. This sucked, because for 10$ novelty slippers from Target, they’re warm as hell.
Fortunately, as you can see, Peanut Butter decided that they were no longer a threat a few weeks ago, so a few hours after they earned her approval I was finally free to wear them to dinner, as I have nobody to impress and it’s cold as hell. Then, of course, my niece saw them.
Now, my 18 month old niece is REALLY into bears right now. Owls are still cool, of course, but BEARS ARE WHERE IT’S AT. And my slipper paws? In her mind, those are the paws of a mighty bear. It was love at first sight. She giggles at them. She pets them like they’re kittens. She scoots onto the floor to rest her head on them during bedtime stories. She becomes immediately alarmed and indignant when I don’t have them on. Or, you know, if I do have them on, but they’re not in her immediate line of sight. “Ba?” She asks. “BA? BA? BA? BAAA? BA?!!!!!” (She is also very big on repetition.)
It has been like this for several weeks now.
Look, I’m an absolute sucker for this kid, and I will do basically anything on earth to make her happy. I’ve been wearing the bear slippers a lot recently. Like a lot a lot. The novelty of the novelty slippers has worn off over the weeks of having half of the word “bear” cooed/screamed at me on repeat.
So, being a problem-solver, I figured I’d get my niece her own pair of paw slippers, as 1. she’d love them, and incidentally 2. If she transferred her affection I could maybe have a meal without being forced by the toddler on the other side of the table to do this pose on command:
(I mean it’s not exactly that pose, but it’s actually even sexier when I do it.)
Anyway, guess what I can’t find in a toddler size? Fucking novelty paw slippers. Seriously, I have done my research, and I don’t believe they’re being manufactured. Hell, I couldn’t even find a sewing pattern for toddler slippers online that looked anywhere close to paws, which is WILD to me, considering that toddlers are basically the target market for animal dress up.
Well.
That’s not entirely true.
See, I did eventually find a pattern for really, really well designed bear paw slippers. Once I hit on the right search terms, I found a LOT of patterns, actually, and more tutorials for how to make them and modify their size than I ever dared hope for. I took the best of several designs, pieced them together, and I’m presently in the process of making them for my niece. Before I show you guys the final product, I wanted to pause for a moment to recognize the people who made this project possible:
Thank you, furries.
Your ingenuity and DIY ethos is an inspiration to us all, and you are going to make a toddler very happy.
holy SHIT GUYS
FURRIES WORK SO HARD
THIS IS SO HARD
THIS TOOK LIKE 45 hours and it’s just ONE FOOT
okay okay okay okay
so l encountered an issue, but i’m fine.
i’m gonna be fine.
so I finished the paws. I did it, it took so long, I learned so much, I felt really really great about it, and all that effort was worth it when I saw the sheer disbelief and delight that overtook my niece upon first laying eyes on them
“Ba?” she whispered. Then, “BA? BAAAAAA?!!! SSSSS! BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
(she calls me, for reasons best known to her, “Sssss.”)
Anyway, it was exactly the reaction I had been hoping for. It was, very briefly, a perfect resolution to this story.
And then I tried to put them on her feet.
so, to backtrack a little, before embarking on this project I researched a LOT, and I consulted a LOT of different patterns, but the ones I referenced the most were this pattern by Bardic Bestiary and this guide/pattern by @matrices.
I want to be perfectly clear here, not just because Matrices has a tumblr (that is unbelievably full of tutorials and helpful ideas) and therefore might somehow encounter this post, but because both Matrices and the good folks at Bardic Bestiary have honestly made this inscrutable process something that was possible for me, an idiot: What went wrong was not their fault.
So, again, the paws I was trying to make were for a toddler, and toddlers typically lack the requisite resources to purchase and/or create their own fursuits. Given their percentage of the market share, it’s totally reasonable that I wasn’t able to find a pattern specifically for toddlers. But hey, I figured, I’m resourceful, so I just plopped all the pattern pieces into the same Illustrator window, selected the group, and then scaled it all down until the insole pattern piece was 5.25 inches long. Easy.
Everyone with children and/or costuming experience can stop laughing at me right now.
To explain what went wrong, here’s a scientific diagram of a typical adult leg that I made from zooming in on clipart of a soccer player.
And here’s an equally scientific diagram of a toddler’s leg.
In case you can’t see the issue that rapidly became apparent as I tried to shove my niece’s foot into the paws that she now desperately wanted to wear, I will share one further diagram.
Help.
You could cut a line a few inches down the front or side or back, whichever is most appealing to you, open it up at the top to the width you need & then insert a triangle piece into that space. Fur or elastic would work. I’d just like put it in by hand with some back stitching & finish any edges with a whip stitch.
That would give you the room at the top you need. When I have a problem i usually find whip stitching can help. It won’t look as pro as what you already made which is amazing btw, but it would work 🤔
Alternatively you could put a cut on each side & just whip stitch the edges. Then you don’t have to add a panel
I hope the half assed diagram makes sense & helps a bit
Wow, I know I have spent this whole project being very pleasantly surprised at how many people have gone out of their way to share their knowledge and expertise, but I honestly didn’t expect so many people to offer so many genuinely useful ideas. I was incredibly stoked to see @zarnitza‘s suggestions, because I spent about an hour last night glaring at a pile of snaps, buttons, velcro, and zippers, haphazardly trying to figure out what would be the least annoying technique to add some room for toddler chonk while simultaneously being something that would not be a huge pain in the ass to fasten/unfasten from the ankle of an extremely squirmy kid yelling “BA”.
What I eventually arrived at was basically what Zarnitza first proposed, with a slight variation. I was still flying blind at this point, so I decided not to do the same procedure on both paws until I was confident it would work. Here’s the way I approached it, which you can feel free to skip if you just want the payoff at the end:
I took out the liner, then ripped the back seam most of the way down the heel on both the faux fur shell and the liners. Then I traced the openings to make a super sloppy triangle template, went through the usual mess of cutting the fur (HOLY SHIT GUYS, EVEN FOLLOWING EVERY SINGLE BIT OF USEFUL ADVICE ON HERE, FUR IS ANNOYING TO WORK WITH), the much easier task of cutting fleece for the liner, and I sewed both the shell and the liner back up. As promised, this left me with a MUCH wider ankle. Easy to put on… but also easy to fall off/trip over.
So here is where I think I might actually have been clever, I took the fur shell and I stitched in two elastic cords on either side of the triangle piece I’d just added, like this:
Okay, that’s an unintelligible diagram, but you get the point. Elastic bands, sewed in place with enough tension that the slippers would stay on her feet without cutting off her circulation, since that sort of thing is frowned upon. Finally, I put the liner back in, folded it over the shell, and stitched the cuff into place by hand. End result?
I know you guys can’t see this (because I obscured it with a bear emoji) but holy shit… if she was this happy with ONE paw, I can’t wait to see what she thinks about getting to wear TWO of them tomorrow…. which will actually happen, because I just finished the final stitches on the second paw. They’re done.
Thank you so much to everyone who helped me in any way during this long, weird journey I decided to take. I knew that this whole thing was pretty damn wholesome going in, but I honestly didn’t expect that I’d encounter the efforts of so many people who clearly put the time in learning how to make something, and put even more time in to share that knowledge with anyone who wanted to learn how to do it too. I’ve been feeling so bummed about what the past year has suggested about the average person’s willingness to sacrifice in order to help someone else out, and this was kind of a nice reminder that there are plenty of generous, thoughtful, genuinely brilliant people out there who just want to share something they love with the world… and a lot of those people, as it turns out, are furries.
In conclusion, if I encounter anyone talking even the vaguest hint of shit about furries from hereon out, I will go to that person’s house and put a house centipede in their ear while they’re sleeping.
This is officially my final update on the bear slipper saga:
Not to get too emotional here but…
BA!!!!!!
Meanwhile, in Spain:
Spring happens and it's not photoshopped!
Actually it's this: a carpet of poplar fluff burns to reveal the grass below at the Parque del Cidacos de Calahorra, Spain.
According to geographyrealm.com:The seed fluff produced by poplars is also highly flammable. The combustible seeds can quickly catch fire and burn off, leaving underlying grass and other vegetation untouched.
Magical
I love the birds singing and the spectators quietly indicating mild concern
Today I learned that whales are mammals.
The “whales aren’t fish thing” is such baloney. Baloney, I tell you. They’ve got fins and they live in the ocean and in my book that makes them fish.
It’s like this entire thing with fruit, about how “bananas are actually berries” and “apples are actually pears” and “cucumbers don’t even exist”
