[Image IDs: Image #1: Tweet from Conor Fitzgerald (@/ fitzFromDublin) reaidng: Christopher Nolan made the Odyssey as a way of forcing our wives and girlfriends to listen to us talk about our sea peoples theories and I say bravo
Quote from Kit, Esq. (@/ kit_sionn_witch) on 21 July 26 reading: women earn 60% of classics degrees and have earned 45-60% of classics degrees since 1990, attend university at higher rates, study the humanities even if not majoring in them at higher rates, and read more books. take that condescension back to 1930.
Image #2: Tumblr tag from twelveMonekysWere reading: while you were thinking about the roman empire i actually studied it /End ID]
This morning I showed up to work and my boss was like "congratulations :))" and I was kinda confused so asked her on what and she said "your name, I heard about it on the radio"
So far I have counted two online articles and apparently the radio is also talking about my name change so I'll keep you guys updated when I'm on national tv or something
Did you sell a Nintendo Wii to The Cave in the greater Sacramento area?
I just bought one and it's got like 400 family photos on it.
Personally, all my family photos from like 2003-2014 are locked on some inaccessible hard drive that's probably been lost or thrown away, so if anyone had my family photos from 2006, I'd like to at least see them before they're deleted. If this is your vacation to Yosemite, your dog, your 2-year-old's birthday party, your trip to the park, please contact me [you can send this blog a tumblr ask even if you don't have an account at 20dollarlolita.tumblr.com/ask or you can email me at pink @ pinkandthekeytarcat.com (I'm pink and my cat is the keytar cat)].
These pictures are all separately named so please tell me the names of people in the photos to verify that it's you. Photos from a 1gb wii SD card aren't going to take up too much space on my computer so I'm going to just hold onto these. If they're yours, or you can contact anyone in the pictures, please let me know. I'd like to reuinte them with their owner.
I don't usually ask for signal boost but if anyone wants to help me out here, feel free to boost.
Cool curves made from straight lines. This twisty wooden tunnel (2016) is installed in the Parc Mallet-Stevens, in Croix, north of Lille, France. Photos from April 2025.
Does anyone else get pissed off when you wake up just as you were making significant progress in some bullshit task you had to do in a dream? Like great now I did all that shit for nothing
Honestly I think a lot of fantasy authors could take a lesson from sci-fi and just, have their fantasy worlds explicitly *not* show The Entire World as it exists in-universe. If that makes sense. Like in space exploration stuff it's common to namedrop a bunch of shit we're not unpacking right now to signal the expansiveness of the universe without having to do extensive worldbuilding for like 100s of cultures you're only gonna see once. It's honestly weird that high fantasy rarely ever does this! This is the easiest ticket out of (gestures broadly) the whole "one (1) country for Africa and Asia each" thing. Maybe it's not relevant to the plot maybe your map is only covering a specific corner of the world where the story is happening. It can still exist in the background. You can just do that
[ID: tags from @athousandgateaux that read, "#honestly think this is a function of modern fantasy being so indebted to tolkien #like tolkien basically set the model for all modern fantasy and he was a little freak about exploring the lore of his world in-depth" /end ID]
Yeah that'll do it. Much love to lotr but we don't all have to make Middle Earth 2. Like you Can't feasibly Unpack All Of That at a certain scale but you literally don't have to ... and in making Middle Earth 2 you are also going to inherit Tolkien's Racism
For movie night we watched The Lychee Road (orig. 长安的荔枝) (2025), directed by Da Peng.
The movie was falsely advertised to me as a lighthearted comedy about a hapless government official trying to fulfill an impossible imperial decree (somehow transport fresh lychees from Lingnan to Chang'an in time for a consort's birthday). It started with us giggling and ended with my partner and one of my friends sobbing, and me getting really angry about the United States.
All the manpower. The resources. The money. The deaths. The injuries. The damage to nature. The enslavement of entire populations and for what? To get CHEAP FRUIT on our table? CHEAP FRUIT WE WON'T EVEN NECESSARILY EAT?? I'm like getting so angry and pacing in the living room, like we are so disgusting. We are a vile nation. Just a massive machine of pain and blood and anguish all in the service of shitting out treats
they don't tell you this but when an event is advertised as "for all ages" they mean kids. they mean kids. if you, a grown-up, show up expecting to do the arts'n'crafts, you're the weirdo. even though they said "all ages."
great news everynyan, the event that inspired me to make this post in anticipation had an art'n'craft that WAS in fact for all ages, including grown-ups. (in fact it was mosaic-making from recycled glass, with the tools to cut pieces down to size yourself if needed, so it was decidedly for people of a certain age.)
I understand 100% where you're coming from and I have a rant on what the organizers probably meant by "all ages". This is coming from spending too many years running public festivals for anywhere from 100 to 20,000 people at every size of venue from school cafeteria to national convention center, though of course there are exceptions.
The organizers almost certainly really did intend that anyone of any age was welcome to participate in the activities. The problem, I have found, seems to come in 2 parts: the audience's socio-cultural expectations and how they respond to peer pressure (real or imagined), and the likelihood of who shows up at certain kinds of events depending on the regional demographics and how the event is advertised.
My rambling below the cut:
Take this with a grain of salt but I find it interesting and have spent a decade in arguments about it, so. The (US) audience for many hands-on / interactive events that appeal to both kids and adults, based on all the marketing data I have personally collected or paid tens of thousands of dollars for from third-party agencies, basically says that women ages 30-45 are driving almost all the social media views. Many of those women are trying to plan educational and fun excursions for their children ages 2-13.
The problem comes when you, the adult who is actually invited to participate in said activities, comes to an event with a lot of families with children ages 2-13. People with social graces will say: "I need to let the children enjoy this; it is uncomfortable if I take a spot from a child. Also if I am a man or otherwise have some caution I might be worried that as a solo adult surrounded by kids I will be seen as suspicious." So they just watch from a distance and then usually go home. Which to me sucks because there's often nothing inherent about the activity that makes it enjoyable only to kids.
But too many events don't seem to be at the stage of understanding you need to signal in 1) the advertising and 2) the actual physical setup that both adults and kids are welcome, or need separate stations, or hours that are for certain age groups. I think this is why a lot of museums started doing adult nights, especially science museums. If you ever go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, this will be abundantly clear: the museum is genuinely designed to be fascinating to anyone from a preschooler to a postdoc but unless there's space to allow for all and curated exhibit design with big and small tables, for example, it triggers the mental block of "let the kids have this".
Anyway I spent a decade of my life arguing two things:
Built the event so that both kids and adults have separate and mixed space and train the activity leaders how to welcome and engage the whole spectrum of participants.
Recognize that sometimes you actually do need to provide a separate interaction time or space to make the adults feel welcome, especially childless adults, or at least signage to make sure everyone understands that no, it's actually the point.
I usually work on events that have "low threshold, high ceiling" activities so your mileage may vary. (Meaning: anyone can try doing the thing, even at a very basic or shallow level; the ones who want to go deep focus or discussion about what's behind the activity will find the presenters are VERY capable of talking details or having a back-and-forth about it all day.)
I had a really fun time running an event at a big public television station's festival where just as many adults without kids accompanying them did the activity as kids did, and stayed for a full hour or more as it really was pure fun, and also sensory-friendly compared to much of the other activities. I also wore myself out trying to argue with co-event organizers over the years that hands-on stuff really does appeal to everybody BUT sit-down performances and lectures usually really do have age categories, and it can be a big waste of money to try to combine the two in one mega-event if you don't have ticket revenue or reservations to judge interest by in advance.
That said, I definitely find more events run by neurodivergent people or audiences try harder to be welcoming – especially if the presenters get to engage in their special interests with all kinds of people.
I could write an essay on online or hybrid event design as well, featuring such sections as "you need to ASSIGN SOMEONE TO TELL THE ONLINE PEOPLE WTF IS HAPPENING AND MAKE SURE THEY CAN SEE/HEAR" and "people's attention spans rarely exceed one hour, and even that is a lot when online". Gretchen McCulloch did a really fabulous blog post series during the pandemic about taking LingCon online only and what they learned about event design. If you enjoy gatherings as much as I do, I also highly recommend Priya Parker's book The Art of Gathering because she basically point blank says what vibes and outcomes are you trying to achieve, does the event model you believe you need actually achieve those things (whether it's a baby shower or a happy hour or a conference), and what do the attendees actually want that would make them happy to be part of it.
One type of "Artists make making art about artists" thing I have yet to see is one about how a lot of the most famous and beloved artists for family media were weird workaholics who had no time for family. Jim Henson made the Muppets and did so by barely being around
I love when I see people creating content that my mind makes. And I don't have the time or energy to put in that level of effort, but just know the majority of my life consists of moments like this, where I research random things. And then I laugh to myself, and people wonder why I find everything so funny.
i cannot focus @indooooor-kites - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
