What are you in the dark?

Artist apprentice trying to survive uni. If I were a rule I would bend. 22 years old. They/them. Credits for the background image goes to: ddoodler.tumblr.com

[fitandhealthyhero]

Every body is a yogi body!

[argumate]

or to put it another way, with the benefit of hindsight we might see that the ability of a random person to publish arbitrary video, to the entire world, with no editorial oversight, for free, was an incredibly weird interlude in human history that began in 2005 and ended in 2015 and may not be repeated.

[rendakuenthusiast]

Once you know it’s possible you can make it happen again.

[argumate]

the Outer Colonies await! start your new life today!

[mistergandalf-deactivated201601]

one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math

[mistergandalf-deactivated201601]

some of my favorite tags on this post

[theelvenkingshalls]

Don’t forget that Frodo also speaks Sindarin, which makes this even worse.

Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.

Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?

Faramir: We don’t know, Frodo. We just don’t know.

[jumpingjacktrash]

to be fair, you’d assume the name means “there’s a lot of spiders here,” not, “there is one spider the size of a draft horse here.” so you go up expecting to have to shoo a lot of skeeter eaters out of your tent, and instead you have to figure out how to rope and shoe godzillarantula.

[ceescedasticity]

Hmmm…

They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They… probably know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.

On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.

Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.

In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.

Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.

(The problem with this theory is we never actually SAW anyone overusing spider references. But it’s plausible they would!)

[wordswithkittywitch]

“The average spider on Middle Earth is the size of a dinner plate” is a statistical error. The average spider on Middle Earth is smaller than a coin. Cirith Ungol (lit: Spiders Gorge), which contains a spider larger than a horse, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

[iwilltrytobereasonable]

OH MY GOD

[merhaskell]

I was waiting for the Spiders George reference

[swan2swan]

“I wonder why it’s called ‘’The Spider’s Pass’‘. I expected it to be more octagonal. Like a spider. Oh, well, I guess they misnamed it.” 

[brunhiddensmusings]

im going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they thought ‘the spiders stair’ meant ‘its a bitch to climb if you arent a goat’ and not ‘warning- ungoliants‘ their whole world is full of issues like this- every third place has a spooky ass name that you arent sure if its a euphemism, accurate, or was accurate 3000 years ago. nobody realizes ‘fangorn forest’ means ‘theres a tree named fangorn who lives here, its his forest, he likes poetry’, nobody realizes ‘the barrow downs’ should be warning you that anything is particular noteworthy about the barrows it just says they exist, im not even sure the ‘blue mountains’ are even blue

[elodieunderglass]

one-star TripAdvisor reviews of Middle Earth

[just-shower-thoughts]

An electric toothbrush and an escalator are two things that can stop working and still accomplish their original goal.

[randomslasher]

Ah, wonderful! This post can help me illustrate something I’ve been trying to articulate for awhile: the concept of benign or unintentional abelism.

Escalators and electric toothbrushes are perfect examples of things that many able-bodied people assume exist for their own convenience, and this post is a perfect example of that unconscious assumption.

An escalator that has broken down is still perfectly functional, right? 

Well, sure–if you could have used the stairs to begin with. 

But for people like me, for whom the escalator was not a convenience but a mobility device, a broken down escalator is not functional. 

An electric toothbrush might seem like something that could be just as easily used turned off as turned on, but for someone with Parkinson’s, or any other number of nerve, coordination, or grip issues, the function of the electric toothbrush is a necessary feature, and without it, the task at hand becomes far more arduous (or even impossible). 

I’m not angry or trying to point out why this post is “bad” or “wrong”–I’m simply trying to point out that people who assume every time or energy-saving invention was created as a means to help able-bodied people be lazier should consider re-examining those assumptions. It might help you become more compassionate toward your disabled friends and family, or at least more aware of the struggles we face daily. 

I’ve had plenty of folks ask for examples of abelism and I am terrible at coming up with them on the spot, so here you go. This is a great one: assuming every modern convenience is only a convenience for everyone, when for some, it is, in fact, a necessity. 

[sexhaver]

fun fact: basically every mod on r/legaladvice is a cop. if you see a bunch of comments in a row that have been deleted for “offering bad advice”, you can replace “reddit” in the url with “ceddit” to see the same page with all the deleted comments still there, and roughly half the time the “"bad advice”“ is literally anything that suggests that maybe OP shouldn’t trust the cops

[stereocyon]

take a look at this thread. Ouch

[anheliotrope-old]

This is a good reminder to stay skeptical of absolutely every single space where posts can get deleted. Your perspective can be seriously warped over time by sufficient interaction with public forums whose activity is engineered by moderators in this way.

[theauspolchronicles]

“Hello 000 what’s your emergency?”

“There are children outside! There’s quite a lot of them!”

“Are they trying to break in?”

“No. But they’re trying to strike against climate change. They’re trying to change the nation’s apathy towards coal!”

“Is this Tony Abbott? You can’t keep calling this number whenever someone mentions climate change.”

“But-but-”

“Stop calling us and deal with it.”

[fujiwaradivebar]

Just got a baffling survey from Google rewards

[gaytog]

There are a few reasons why I think we should try our best to understand what babies are communicating and to respect their boundaries. First of all, babies are people, and people deserve to have their boundaries respected.

But also I think adults have a really bad habit of talking about toddlers as if the toddlers can’t hear them. Sometimes it’s innocuous, but sometimes an adult will say really mean things about a toddler who’s standing right next to them! I think what’s happening in those situations—besides general disrespect for children—is pattern-forming behavior on the part of the parents. You aren’t accustomed to your child understanding you since, just a little while ago, they couldn’t.

But language skills don’t develop overnight, so it’s a good idea to get in the habit of talking to a baby, rather than talking about and around them. There’s a period where kids can understand you but they can’t communicate yet, and although I can’t remember that far back in my own life, I imagine it’s frustrating enough without people treating you like you don’t exist. And of course sometimes kids won’t develop all the language skills you’d expect for disability-related reasons, and you’ll still have to figure out what they’re communicating and respect their boundaries and foster their autonomy.

I think this doesn’t just apply to language, but also to lots of other “how to person” stuff, including social skills like boundary-respecting. It’s good to get in the habit of respecting children’s boundaries even when they’re just babies, because before you know it they’ll start mimicking your behavior and you’ll really (I hope) want to be modeling respectful behavior for them.

[picsthatmakeyougohmm]

hmmm

[arrdeearr]

[blairellisorwhatever-blog]

this never gets old

[therothwoman]

I met the creator of this a month ago and he said he got a lot of hate mail from dudebros who thought that he was a woman complaining about these problems.

[smitethestate]

Gold.

Bolding mine.

[commandtower-solring-go-deactiv]

Watch the real thing. Its perfectly creepy

[margbarcis]

this is also the guy who made “night in the woods” btw

[cursedcatimages]

[sabertoothwalrus]

this kitten weighs over 5 pounds already and he’s only 14 weeks old. He’s half the size of an adult cat and he hasn’t even lost his baby teeth yet

[sabertoothwalrus]

He is now 16 weeks old and over 6 pounds. Kittens are supposed to be half their adult weight at 5-6 months, and he is barely 4 months old. What the fuck.

[sabertoothwalrus]

Now at 22 weeks, 5 months old, half his adult weight, this baby is 10 pounds,,,

[sabertoothwalrus]

30 WEEKS. 7 MONTHS.

14 POUNDS.

THAT IS TWICE THE AVERAGE WEIGHT OF A CAT HIS AGE. THE GIRLS IN HIS LITTER ARE ONLY LIKE 8 POUNDS WHY IS HE SO HUGE

[sabertoothwalrus]

Hello it is Time for Another Update!!!

It is June 18th, 2018. Half-n-Half is now 10 months old. Last I weighed him (like 2 weeks ago?) he was over 15 pounds, but he’s not gaining weight as rapidly anymore. Regardless, he’s still Big

[sabertoothwalrus]

GUESS WHO’S ONE AND A HALF AND WEIGHS 17 POUNDS

THIS FUCKIN MAGNIFICENT GUY!!!!!!!!

HALF-N-HALF!!!!!!!

[wallnoises]

“homer’s enemy” is such a fascinating simpsons episode because although it was largely panned by viewers for being too dark (even by the show’s standards), it’s gone on to become the number 1-rated simpsons episode of all time [according to IMDB] and most people who were young kids at the time the episode first aired (myself included) consider it one of the most iconic and classic episodes of the series

[wallnoises]

like damn, it was always a running joke that homer is much too incompetent and lazy for his line of work and yet somehow still manages to live in a decent 2-story home in a nice neighborhood but this episode hit it on the fucking nose with how unfair and ludicrous it all is

[therealsongbirddiamondback]

The show creators wanted to make this episode unsettling.  They wanted to show what would happen if a real person ended up in Springfield. 

[big-block-of-cheese-day]

The message of “Homer’s Enemy” is far more Chesterton’s Fence than Peter Principle, and I think a lot of people miss that.

Everything Frank Grimes says is both obvious and true to the viewer.

The twist is that Frank Grimes is from our world, but Springfield isn’t. Where he ended up, nuclear power plants ooze glowing green goop and undereducated drunks pour sodas on control panels to short them out rather than investigate error messages. In our world, Springfield would be a slightly more colorful Pripiyat, the town evacuated in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. But that keeps not happening!

The fundamental logic of Springfield is that of TV: big stuff happens, but it all has a way of returning to the status quo after 22 minutes. The Simpsons constantly makes reference to all the outlandish things Homer did, as if this mid-30s man actually did all the things he supposedly did over the last three decades of TV. They still callback Poochie, for chrissakes! It’s TV given self-awareness and this license to acknowledge its built-in logic.

For all his supposed knowledge and competence, Grimes’ skills of observation failed him miserably. He was driven to madness by a world that didn’t play by his rules. The lesson of “Homer’s Enemy” is that you can’t demand that a world you barely understand follow a set of rules that you do.

[wallnoises]

goddamn every time i go thru the notes of this post i find more and more in-depth analyses and interpretations of it, i’m impressed

[jerryterry]

I saw a recent interview with Bill Oakley (one of the writers during the time) where he compared Frank Grimes to Superintendent Chalmers - one of my favorite Simpsons characters because of how he plays a similar “only sane man” sort of role, but only ever asks a few questions before dropping it and taking everything at face value. He’s learned just not to care, because he knows it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Oakley sums it up really well: “Chalmers is able to live in Springfield and succeed, because he knows not to ask too many questions. Whereas Frank just wouldn’t let it go. He wouldn’t let it go, and he died.”

[depsidase]

[randomencounters]

Encounter: Ice Cream Horror, capable of consuming additional ice cream to add to its bulk. Essentially an ooze, it relies on its crunchy cone exoskeleton to hold its humanoid shape, but it is equally capable of combat without it.

[onlyusefulphrases]

[dragon-in-a-fez]

out weak every toilet

[chuwenjie]

A compilation of stuff I know about drawing Asian faces and Asian culture! I feel like many “How-To-Draw” tutorials often default to European faces and are not really helpful when drawing people of other races. So I thought I’d put this together in case anyone is interested! Feel free to share this guide and shoot me questions if you have any! I’m by no means an expert, I just know a few things from drawing experience and from my own cultural background. 

[youlovedpink]

We need this

[thepeanutbutterwizard]

BLESS YOU OP

[the-bluespirit]

PTERODACTYL SCREECH