Jeffinated @jeffinated - Tumblr Blog

"There's no hope for the future." And that's how they felt during the Atomic Age, during the World Wars, during the Enlightenment Revolutions, during thr plagues, during the Viking raids, during the fall of Rome.

Yet, we persisted.

ave-immaculata

letmetakeastabatit

CS Lewis had something to say about this

angie-words

Been feeling a bit hopeless of late. Wasn't expecting to stumble across a quote that would fundamentally alter my perspective and make me cry during my lunch break but here we are

outrageousring5655

This is an excellent sentiment.

raisedbylibrarians

that-edm-life

chokkilissa-nahollos

im the dj screaming w laughter

bienergy-deactivated20180719

I think about this at least once a day.

happinessasthebaddest

⛓️‍💥

viralfrog

leebrontide

I keep seeing posts claiming that x y or z action you can do to build a better world won’t matter. That capitalism doesn’t care, and your own actions dont amount to much.

It’s so painfully individualistic. Of course me doing that thing isn’t going to save anybody or anything.

Im not trying to be a superhero who personally saves the say.

I am one leaf making oxygen in a massive forest of other trees making oxygen. I am doing my best and having faith that millions of others will do their best as well.

Because that can and has made big changes over time. Like. That is just how change happens. Thats cultural shifts. Thats political shifts. Thats how lasting changes happen.

I don’t plant milkweed because I’m personally gonna save monarch butterflies. I plant milkweed because I know thousands of us are gonna plant milkweed and send money to the people fighting horrible pesticides in court.

The standard for change isn’t “is my doing this going to change the world?” The standard is “is my doing this part of the shift I want to see my community make?” And if the answer is yes, I do my best.

ariaste

I followed you for your Pliny the Elder post, and then just realized you wrote Conspiracy of Truths, which I really enjoyed. And there are others in the series I now see... interesting...

Anyways, what do you mean we got the date of the Vesuvius eruption wrong? Is it the aedile's fault?

Ah thank you so much! Yes, there is a lot more set in this world -- You might want to read A Choir of Lies next, which is more about Ylfing. And then perhaps jump over to Running Close to the Wind, which has mentions of Xing Fe Hua! And then The Wisdom of Emperors (the new fantasy romans book) will have a lot to appeal to a Conspiracy fan as well :D Anyway about Pompeii: Nope, for GODDAMN ONCE it is not the aedile's fault. So this is a VERY NEW discovery, like literally just last summer. Like to the point where when I went to Pompeii for research last fall, I overheard a tour guide say "So Vesuvius erupted in Aug-- October" Because that's how new this discovery was, the tour guides were still adjusting their muscle memory and having to catch themselves.

IIRC, the reason we knew a date in the first place was because of a letter Pliny the Younger wrote later in his life, which said that the eruption happened in August. But we don't have the original copy of the letter, we only have translations of it some scribes made a couple hundred years later.

But then we started digging up the carbonized remnants of particular fruits which wouldn't have been in season in August, or the remains/plaster casts of people who were wearing heavier clothing a bit too warm for summer, or sealed wine jars (indicating it was post-harvest), and other types of evidence that suggested the August timing was strange, so we were a little perplexed about how this could be. And then last summer the archaeologists (STILL in the process of slowly digging up Pompeii and discovering new stuff all the time btw) found a house that was in the middle of being renovated, and on the wall was some graffiti in a place that hadn't gotten covered with plaster yet. It was written in charcoal, which does not stick very well, so it would have been RECENT when it was covered up and preserved by the ashfall, and it couldn't have stuck around for an extended period of time. The inscription, in a moment of breathtakingly MIRACULOUS coincidence you really only ever experience with archeology, was dated to the 17th of October. Which, as you may notice, comes two months after Pompeii was supposedly buried.

Since it would be a little odd for Pliny the Younger to get the date wrong about such a traumatic event in which his own uncle died, the best plausible *guess* about what happened is that the medieval scribe transcribing/translating his letter made an error. Maybe the scribe was sleepy, maybe he mixed up the words for the months, maybe he just did not understand the Roman calendar system (because the 17th of October isn't said as "the 17th of October", it's said as "16 days before the kalends of November"), something along those lines, it is impossible to know for sure. Probable Clerical Error, that's all we've got.

So yes, now we think that the eruption occurred NOT on the 24th of August, but on the 24th of October, 79 AD. Which is pretty cool. Here is a picture of the charcoal scribbles, you can see in the middle where it says "nov" (November)

For further Pompeii archaeological drama, ask me my thoughts on the plaster casts of the victims and the modern treatment of human remains in Pompeii. Cause i'm uhhhhh a LIL PISSED. (And if y'all think this is cool and you are enjoying my Hot Takes And Fun Trivia about Ancient Rome, I have a new book, The Wisdom of Emperors, launching on Kickstarter in two weeks (May 5th!!) which is 120,000 words of Hot Takes and Fun Trivia about the Fantasy Romans. :D There are already some exclusive excerpts from the book in the Updates section if you want to check it out~~ Signal boosts much appreciated as well.)

395nm

Fuck Meyer-Briggs whatever typology. This INTFP shit is only for redditors up their own asses to substitute for a personality. Use my new typology instead!

Your ideal environment is:

Hot/Cold

Wet/Dry

Bright/Dark

Loud/Quiet

bedupolker

HWBL - beach boy

HWBQ - tropical fish

HWDL - dingy club bathroom hookup

HWDQ - the swamp woman

HDBL - CoachellaBurningmanSouthbysouthwestACL attendee

HDBQ - Lizard

HDDL - Vegas babeyyyy

HDDQ - Trapped in a slot canyon

CWBL - Rowdy Lobsterman Crew

CWBQ - penguin living

CWDL - port angeles basement show

CWDQ - bruminating amphibian/hypothermic mammal

CDBL - ski resort

CDBQ - Christmas in Nebraska

CDDL - mcmurdo station rave

CDDQ - corpse

ailendolin

iaminfactagoblin

Been thinking about Ezri Dax a lot and wow, I just feel really sorry for her because she's basically living through a horror story. Like she sacrificed her whole sense of self to save Dax and now Dax is taking her over to the point she barely knows who she is sometimes… and way too many people around her seem to think it's a good thing because it lets them keep Jadzia in their lives in some way.

Only Ezri isn't Jadzia, she's her own person. Or she should be. But she's also being taken over by a ghost, sort of, and nobody seems to notice because they actually do want the ghost to stick around. Sisko wants his friend back, Worf wants his wife, Bashir and Quark want another chance with the one who got away. And presumably the symbiote also wants to reassociate with their previous life, because Jadzia died tragically young and left a lot of unfinished business. So the push to fit herself into a dead woman's life is also coming from within for Ezri, because after all these are her dear friends whom she's known for years (except in reality she's only met them a few months ago).

Man, it just gets worse the more I think about it. I just feel so bad for her.

jeffinated

I've always felt like Dax is a subtly selfish character, destroying its hosts lives out of a refusal to let go of the past. We constantly meet Dax's old friends, but never Jadzia's. Dax will gladly sacrifice both their lives without a care.

Ezri is lucky because she still gets to have a personality of her own, she wasn't trained to let it all go and subsume herself to the symbiote. She's got a harder time, but at least she has a chance to live.

#ds9

prozdvoices

if you missed it, we had a very ambitious April Fool's joke on ProZD Plays Games this year that took months to shoot, we poured our heart and soul into this, you should check it out

here's last year's April Fool's for context for those who aren't regular viewers

Item: The Wishlist Rarity: ⏶ Common

How many video games are in your backlog right now?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

36, I'm currently trying to maintain a one in, one out ratio.

sometiktoksarevalid

zerozerozio

bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

boimann

reblog to let people know it's ok to bother you with questions and statements

katbelleinthedark

Re: this post, I was totally serious.

Give me your best Garak&Kira fics, I need them. Beta canon didn't feed me well enough.

unamccormack

Liberation Day

Cardassia Prime, 2395

It is no hardship for Kira to make the journey to participate in this ceremony, and her presence here – standing beside Lang – reinforces the joint message of their governments that whatever their histories, the continuing tale of Cardassia and Bajor is one of peace and reconciliation. And, twenty years on, at the back of her mind, she wonders how much time there is left.

The man in the seat to her right shifts uneasily. He moves the bouquet of perek that he’s holding from one arm to the other and back again. He doesn’t like to make public appearances; this is the only such occasion that he attends. And why shouldn’t he, she thinks. He earned this one, that’s for sure.

She looks down at the decoration on her chest. Black and gold stripes on the ribbon. The medal part itself is bronze, in the shape of the symbol of the Union, inlaid with the same shape in black enamel. Hundreds of these were given out to those who took part in the resistance, but she is – she thinks – the only Bajoran to be honoured this way. The only Bajoran to be honoured by the Cardassian Union. Hers, too, is different from the rest. In the centre, there is a little gold trefoil. There are only two others like this. One is pinned to the coat of the man sitting next to her. The other is buried with the man in front of whose statue they now sit.

She watches as Lang – tall, straight-backed and dignified – stands and walks forward. When she reaches Damar’s statue, she bows her head for a moment, then bends to place the perek flowers at the base of the plinth. And then it’s Kira’s turn to stand and walk forwards, and place her hasva there.

Garak is next – but he doesn’t bend. He places one hand against the stone of the plinth, and he lowers himself to one knee. He places the perek on the ground, and then remains there for a while, his head bowed, his hand covering his face. When he makes to stand again, she’s momentarily gripped by terror, convinced he’s not going to make it. But he does; more slowly than he might have in the past, but, still, back on his feet, again. His face, returning, is heavy with grief. When he sits, she reaches out to clasp his hand.

---

An hour later, she is walking with him along a promenade that overlooks an orange beach. Below, there are families out for the day, doing whatever it is that families do when they go out for the day. In her hand, she holds a single hasva flower; he has matching perek. This is Cardassia, after all, where you might spend the morning honouring a hero, and the afternoon mourning the child he murdered.

They come to some stone steps, and take them slowly down onto the sand. They walk out toward the sea. The day is very still. She’s been wondering why he chose to come here, of all places, and when they reach the water’s edge, he says, “I brought her here once, you know. In the holosuite, I mean. We skimmed stones and ate fresh litik from their shells. I tried to choose ordinary things for us to do. Things she would have done, if she’d been…”

Ordinary.

“I did the same,” she tells him. Not that she had much in the way of everyday childhood memories, but she’d tried to think of things that they might do together that they would both enjoy.

“And none of it true,” he says. “Ridiculous, really.”

“I think we did our best,” she said. “I think we did what we could, with what we had.”

He throws the perek out onto the water. She sends the hasva to join it. They stand side by side and watch as the waves pick them up and carry them, wherever they may go.

“I wonder, I often wonder…” he says. “Do you think we might have done more?”

She’s thought that too, and often, over the years. Could she have prevented her coming back from Bajor? Could she have kept a closer watch when she returned? Could they – both of them – have spent less time circling each other mistrustfully, and more talking – just talking – about what it was she really needed from them? And then she tries to remember not to torment herself this way. They did their best, with what they had; before she was murdered by a man whose moral awakening came just a little too late.

She remembers him, down in the cellar, accounting for what he’d done. She remembers Garak, getting up and walking away, standing with his back to them, his hand against the wall, fingers tapping as the other man spoke. She remembers her own hot rage, and how very still she’d held herself, as she listened. Damar had never known, she thought, how close he’d come. How very, very close…

They turn to leave. She takes his arm as they walk back up the steps.

“Do you think,” he says, “that we ever stood a chance of saving her?”

And she remembers what else Damar told them – that when he’d shot her, she’d been running away. Running away from her father. Running towards freedom.

“You know,” she says, “I think we did.”

---

6th March 2026

alexandria-stone-author

I FOUND THE TWEET THAT GOT ME TO WATCH PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

ecc-poetry

Exciting times: Hugo-award-winning writer, podcaster, and (full disclosure) dear friend Rebecca Fraimow started a grassroots campaign to nominate my poem WHAT YOU NEED TO BE WARNED for a Hugo! (cw: Neil Gaiman, sexual assault)

This is a piece I first drafted hours after reading the devastating, nuclear work "There Is No Safe Word" by Lila Shapiro. I found the article so upsetting that I kept lunging out from the guest room to confront my parents with new revelations. Despite the tiny carbon footprint the poem has had so far (several kind people tried to blaze it, but Tumblr refused), I was honored to hear from a Gaiman survivor who found it, and found meaning in it.

If I had to pick one reason I write, that's why. In the hope that my attempts at witnessing and recording strike a chord in people who need to feel less alone.

If you would like to join this grass at the roots, I have no idea what you should do next! Signal boost? Tag the Hugos' social media accounts? I plan to scream into the void and see what happens.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Jeffinated