It is important to question everything, including this statement

[sata-cable]

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[cerleansky]

The legacies people leave behind in you.

My handwriting is the same style as the teacher’s who I had when I was nine. I’m now twenty one and he’s been dead eight years but my i’s still curve the same way as his.

I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We haven’t spoken in four years.

I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.

I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.

I learned to love books because my father loved them first.

How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I don’t know it. How beautiful.

[speaklavenderthoughts-deactivat]

absolutely obsessed with these tags

[blumineck]

Be yourself as best you can whenever you can.

[quasi-normalcy]

So what I think is that there's this default belief in patriarchy that men are superior to women and therefore the "masculine" sphere is superior to the "feminine" sphere. And so, as feminists have fought to expand the number of allowable female activities, men (on the aggregate over generations) have retreated from those activities because they're now seen as "feminine", and so partaking in them is incommensurate with their belief in their own superiority. And, unfortunately, as this has progressed, this has resulted in a lot of men sectioning themselves off from, frankly, everything that actually makes being alive worthwhile. It's a misery spiral, and the only way out is to abandon male supremacy.

[quasi-normalcy]

#men gave up deep friendships and reading and poetry and colourful fashion#all things that used to be considered manly in the 19th century#they're currently giving up on studying law and medecine#it's so stupid and sad

(I mean, the colourful fashion was more of an eighteenth century thing, but yeah)

[quasi-normalcy]

#more women in higher education meaning fewer men is incredibly depressing to me. funny in a sad way#what happens when women will finally get into trades? will they just stop working

[sherryzade]

spectacular tags from @luesmainblog

[guessillalwaysbethisway]

The discovery of the statue of Antinous in Delphi, Greece in 1894

[fuckblast]

Really obsessed with this one like how old cameras worked making everyone blurry against the statue and just makes you realize how long the statue has been right. There.

[hagiomoto]

I don't think this is an appropriate response to an article about South Asian farmers losing their teeth because temperatures are now reaching 45 Celcius.

[hagiomoto]

The average Tumblr blogger has such poor manners that even a pig would be embarrassed to bring them home to its mother.

[bagofdrymice]

When the Heat Steals Your Smile

After I suspected a climate connection to tooth decay, I conducted systematic saliva pH testing across my patient population and documented

okay so i think i found the article op's (and me in my tags) talking about. being exposed to over 40 celsius (120 farenheit or so) for the whole day means youre sweating a LOT (the article says rashid- the farmer at the centre of the text- drinks around 17 liters a Day. humans usually only need 3, so i presume the rest is mostly used for sweat). so much so that the organizm reroutes water from other parts of itself to not die of heatstroke - salivary glands included, which means that 1. they have very little saliva in comparison to a healthy human being 2. what little their bodies DO produce is incredibly acidic, falling to ~5.5 ph from the ideal of 7ph. Teeth dissolve. Quickly. There's a mention of someone losing 8 teeth in two years

im not reading the whole article now (headache -_-), but later on the author of the article says about 30 million people (employed in agriculture) are at risk for extreme dental health problems. 30 million people at risk of not being able to eat solid food. 30 million people at risk of not being able to find work. being able to marry. being able to be part of their community. being able to speak clearly

this is. fucking horrible feels like an understatement, but it is the best i have. this exceptionally, terribly inhumane, and the pakistan goverment's lack of a plan to adress this is embarassing

[yet-another-heathen]

[oneheadtoanother]

[podcastwizard]

you don’t realize how important lunch is until you’re wandering around thinking about how unloveable and untalented and uniquely cursed you are and then it’s 4pm and you finally eat lunch and you go Oh. oh right.

[podcastwizard]

lot of people commenting on this post like "who eats lunch at 4pm that's a terrible time to eat lunch" yes. that is the point. 4pm lunch is inadvisable. 4pm lunch is not the ideal. 4pm lunch makes the mind demons real.

[crazy-brazilian]

[pangur-and-grim]

I do wonder if the spider/alien book will get too dark for some people, because I did a lot of thinking about what the biology of spider-centaurs would be, and decided that it'd be a lot like jumping spiders where the males are small and colourful and do pathetic dances, and the females are giant monsters who will eat smaller females. and you can't tell which sex a spider is until they moult into their adult colours.

THE REASON this might be too dark is that this means the spider colony is ruled over a giant matriarch who eats her own daughters once they're old enough to distinguish.

[pangur-and-grim]

I also decided that they're born as spiders, and then grow into spiders with lumpy bishop's hat looking things, and then this moults off to reveal a human torso (at which point the abdominal head becomes vestigial and fades away with each progressive moult)

[pangur-and-grim]

also the mother is a little insane, because she's OLD old and is the only arachnid left in their family who remembers being a human. so she does her best for her children, bringing in instructors, and stealing books, and teaching them history and poetry, basically giving them the education of little lordlings (because she herself was of the noble class, before the transformation curse), but there's just so many children, and so many years, and so little hope of anything changing for the better. and as her mind goes, it gets harder and harder for her not to just act like a spider. the teachers don't last long at all anymore. but at least they're tasty.

[footlongdingledong]

idk man not to sound like a cartoon hippie but if your entirrrrre blog and dash is about how the world sucks and everyones bigoted i think you are going to give yorself brain worms

[footlongdingledong]

"ah but all of this is important and true and if i dont reblog all of this important stuff waga baga THE WORMS! THATS WORMS! THE BRAIN WORMS!

[footlongdingledong]

i do not think you are doing activism chief i think what you are doing is sitting in your room flagellating yourself expecting something to happen

[barb-baudelaire]

when i say warrior cats is the anead to watership down's illad and oddessy this is what the fuck i mean

not to put down "Kill me and live with the memory. Then tell the stars that you won." but this scene is the coolest shit to ever happen in this genre

[pangur-and-grim]

I swear to GOD I’m not vagueing my situation, but I made a post recently about books I was planning to read this year, and I find it very….. interesting that multiple people came into my inbox afterward to tell me that all the queer authors in the bunch had sinned. like maybe they had, I dunno. it wouldn’t stop me reading (I love Interview with the Vampire, I have Thoughts about Anne Rice, etc). but it is interesting that none of the non-queer authors merited this whisper campaign, despite some of them honestly deserving it. not saying anything outright here, just making an observation. listening and learning. you know

[pangur-and-grim]

[pangur-and-grim]

whenever I’m fresh on meds, I’m like wow but I feel fine, I must have made up being sick. and then when the meds start to wear off it’s like [SOUND OF PIANO BEING PUSHED THROUGH GARBAGE COMPACTOR]

[pangur-and-grim]

brain stupid right now :( clicked stupid button by mistake :(

[pangur-and-grim]

I won't publish the ask (they asked me not to), but I thought I'd still answer it publicly!

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't meant to discourage anyone from seeking out writing as a career! however, there is a reason that many authors have alternate jobs with writing on the side. or, you know, rich spouses.

[pangur-and-grim]

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

if I can offer one alternative to pirating: asking your library to stock the book also helps authors, and doesn't cost anything. the only downside is the patience required.

[pangur-and-grim]

OOPS yes, @stjohnstarling makes a good point! everything I'm saying is from the perspective of traditional publishing, but it's a very different game if you're a self-published author

[gollancz]

I will also add that this is why pre-orders can make a HUGE difference to authors - because if there's enough hype, publishers can pull more levers to build that momentum and reach more readers to help authors earn out their advance faster.

[gudgercollege]

Trad publishing contracts person here to co-sign everything in this post. If you want to support an author you really like but are broke as hell, then you can buy their book when it's discounted, buy it used, borrow it from a friend, or use the library. The first step as an author is to get your book read, not to get it bought. The important thing for you as a reader is to spread the word about how good the book is so the publisher knows the audience is there even if sales aren't spectacular. Piracy of books, especially books from small/indie publishers, means the publisher will print fewer copies of their next book, and sometimes if it's an ongoing series the next books in the series will be canceled, either to be replaced by a book with a different premise or they'll cancel the contract for the next books entirely. The "hack" where you buy the ebook or audiobook and then return it for a credit also takes money directly out of the author's pocket since those payment/royalty systems are set up differently than if you were to buy a book from a bookstore and return it. In that situation the bookstore absorbs that loss, but returning the ebook means the money gets clawed back from the author's advance or royalties and they'll have to earn that back.

Pre-orders and Amazon/Goodreads reviews are used as a gauge by publishers to predict how many copies they are likely to sell and therefore how many copies they want to print. They want to sell most of what they print rather than print too many and end up with a bunch of copies no one wants that they'll have to pay to store or sell at a huge discount or recycle, which is what happens to unsold books. Most publishers have a limited amount of money and manpower to dedicate to any particular book, so if there's a book building up a lot of buzz, that'll give them reason to put their resources towards promoting that book to get a better return on their investment. If the publisher can't make money off a book or author they'll dump them.

Generally, every aspect of the publishing and book industries, including writers, agents, publishing employees, librarians, and booksellers are overworked and underpaid. Unless you're Stephen King or already famous, you don't make money off of books. We do it for sheer love of the game.

Use your library! Publishers have a whole department dedicated to selling their books to libraries and the author gets part of those sales. Increasing circulation of library resources means the libraries can make a better case to get more money from the government to buy more books that you want to read and they're a place to hang out for free. Libraries are the best gift humanity gave itself, use yours as often as possible.

[mirasmirages]

Amazon Removes Books From Kindle Unlimited After They Appear On Pirate Sites - Slashdot

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Several independent publishers have had their books removed from Kindle Unlimited bec

Sign the Petition

Stop the unfair removal of titles on Amazon — Change the KDP Select Policy!

You are absolutely hurting indie writer by pirating books. This is not the same as pirating popular movies or tv shows. Don't pirate books.

[darlingofdots]

been stewing on an analytical approach to fiction which I call "is this book afraid of me?" and in order to answer this question you determine how hard the book is trying to make sure you don't come after the writer on twitter

[darlingofdots]

the fucked-up part is that I specifically notice this in like, BIPOC or queer romances because their authors a) are more likely to be harassed online b) tend to care about writing inclusive and intersectional books more, both of which are totally valid reasons, but unfortunately a book that is scared to be misunderstood is also scared to challenge the reader or allow for too much nuance or grey areas or character flaws and I am sorry to say that it often makes for less compelling stories because it means shying away from ambiguities and complexities in an effort to reassure me, the reader, that everyone here is a Good Person engaging in Healthy Behaviours and Relationships

[stjohnstarling]

The reason most indie novels are written like the author is terrified of doing something wrong is because the overwhelming majority of indie novelists get their start by networking in the violent panopticon of the social media indie publishing community, which favours the people who are able to win at the social policing game.

[3s-are-green]

Okay so this comment got me googling because I hadn't heard of Isabel Fall

And if you also hadn't heard of her go read this because uhh... Holy Shit

[headspace-hotel]

I had heard of the whole messed up situation with this story, but I hadn't ever read the synopsis of the story before, and WOW

This story sounds like it could have been a brilliant exploration of gender and warfare and violence but instead it was attacked by people who didn't know how to confront a story that made them uncomfortable, and the author faced horrible consequences.

It's so important to be able to deal with stories that give you uncomfortable feelings in other ways than just attacking it. Being shown new perspectives sometimes has feelings of discomfort because it's an unfamiliar way of seeing the world.

[mickpin]

You can read it Here