drinking ectoplasm is better than HRT

Seven, it/its, 26, system I started the ectoplasm craze of 2022 and I didn't even get a t shirt I do not answer donation asks

[lemon-snake]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

My ao3, I have a few fics for Danny Phantom and a few for Endeavour (the British period 60s cop show, not that asshole anime character)

[thestuffedalligator]

It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.

[andhumanslovedstories]

#i don’t think this is what pterry meant by ‘a man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’

I absolutely think it is

[seiya234]

I read Jingo for the first time when I was 13.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

Terry was a comedic genius

[stormsbreadth]

#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)

god DAMMIT

[adverbian]

When I was informed that “Vetinari” is a pun on “Medici”. That pun was so painful I couldn’t even see it.

[triflesandparsnips]

...are you FUCKING KIDDING ME.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

get out here Terry I just wanna talk

[amuseoffyre]

Twurp’s Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.

[deathsmallcaps]

OMG I FUCKING *KNEW* VETINARI WAS A JOKE ON FUCKONG SOMETHING I JUST COULDNT GRASP IT. I THOUGHT IT WAS A REFERENCE TO WIND SOMEHOW

[sarahreesbrennan]

I am not a talented punster so I was today old when I realised about Vetinari.

[fiollaigean]

guys it's fucking close to water

[aridotdash]

[jennyofmany]

Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "über/ hinüber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.

[arkytiorlecter]

The Venturi and Selachii feud is what killed me when I got it.

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

... fucking HELL Terry.

[nochd]

In Carpe Jugulum, Count Magpyr boasts of having helped write the Malleus Maleficarum, along with the Torquus Simiae Maleficarum, the Auriga Clavium Maleficarum, and in fact the entire Arca Instrumentorum.

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

Malleus = "hammer" Torquus Simiae = "monkey wrench" Auriga Clavium = "bucket of nails" Arca Instrumentorum = "box of tools"

[elfgirlcraftworks]

I was today years old...

[minkhollow42]

me, cracking open Soul Music for the first time: Okay, there will definitely be a Buddy Holly gag in here.

Soul Music, 100 pages later: It's been there the whole time! You just don't know Welsh.

me: PRATCHETT

[twinktorturer]

the best thing a man can be is gay and suicidal and miserable and utterly unlikable and unpleasant to be around and prone to addiction and abused and traumatized and not breaking the cycle and

[rocketbirdie]

guys. Guys please you're allowed to say big boy words. please we cannot keep just rolling with the sanitization of every space on the internet ok. you're allowed to say suicide. you're allowed to say porn. they're not bad words, they're just words.

also by ''censoring'' the words with silly spellings you're actually making it much harder for people to filter out. please just say Sex you don't have to call it woohoo like it's the fucking sims. i promise the Word Police aren't going to arrest you

[bebsi-cola]

we lost the plot when people started saying "afabs" or "amabs" like that's an adjective or a noun. or, especially, a discrete category of person you can make generalisations about. agab is just a single event that happens to most (but not all) newborns. it doesn't mean that person was raised as their agab. it doesn't mean that their body looks a certain way. litcherally it was someone looking at da baby and going "seems like a boy" or whatever and writing that shit down

[quietwingsinthesky]

i do think there should be more stories and shows and stuff about guys falling in love with butch women actually, i think that’d be a good thing. and not ‘this is as butch as twitter can handle’, i mean butch as can fucking be without apology, and making those boys weak in the knees about it. i think it’s great actually to have f/m romances that exist to break gender norms, too. i think it sucks that the only mainstream het romances that exist are either about women who are already feminine or with women who are just a little too scarily masculine and have to be fixed into being girlier. that’s shit.

[quietwingsinthesky]

it’s not like. taking away from queer people if you let “the straights” have some genderfuckery in their romance, too. that’s good, actually, the blurring of gender roles and performance and getting better understandings of your own sexuality is good for everyone. and it’s really fucking weird if you think that mainstream “het” romances shouldn’t feature women who are “too masculine” because that’s only allowed for queer people, somehow.

[welltharhappened]

Alright, I’m not one to micromanage a niche fandom, but this is truly egregious.

Where is violently possessive Warfstache in discodoll?!? Where are the secret knives? The threats behind Ken’s back? The revealing his true nature to anyone that slightly upsets his beach boy himbo?!?!

Why does Simon get all the terror and violence?

[klapollo]

Washington Post is paywalling the article but it looks like Taylor Farms — a consumer bagged salad brand that also supplies produce to grocers and fast food chains like Taco Bell, Walmart, McDonald's, Chipotle, Burger King, KFC, and Meijer —may be at least one of the sources of the current cyclosporiasis outbreak.

Taylor makes bagged greens, salad kits, chopped salads, the works. Keep avoiding supermarket greens, but keep an especially close eye out for this brand/supplier. The above list of grocers and fast food chains is NOT exhaustive, so please continue getting lettuce and other raw produce taken off your burgers, sandwiches, etc.

[triplehamburgerjack]

Their other brand is EARTHBOUND ORGANICS!!!

[questionableadvice]

~ Every Day Home Advice and The Practical Business of Life, Containing The Best and Most Practical Advice in Household Management, 1882

[ariaste]

See, this sounds insane at face value, until you remember that Louis Pasteur had only invented pasteurization in 1865, that Robert Koch published his postulates on the link between microorganisms and diseases in 1884 (after this book was published), and that Dr John Snow's research on the Broad Street cholera outbreak of 1854 (in which he proved that cholera was waterborne and not caused by bad smells, as the entire medical establishment believed) was not publically accepted until 1866, eight years after his death (and only 16 years before this book was published) -- and despite that, there were still people who doggedly insisted on believing in miasma theory (aka that disease is caused by "bad air" or bad smells) well beyond that.

So the writer of this book isn't actually.... wrong, per se. In an age before they had clean, sanitary, safe drinking water, you probably DID get at MINIMUM awful diarrhea pretty regularly after drinking water. This is why so many people drank small-beer (very low alcohol content, but the fermentation process (and by some preparations, boiling the water) killed the dangerous microbes and made it safe to drink). The popularization of tea actually really cut down on cholera outbreaks and other water-related digestive troubles as well! not only because you have to boil the water, but the tannins in tea also kill off (at least some) bacteria.

And in case you cannot comprehend the state of how breathtakingly "they didn't fucking know" -- If you were really poor in London in the first half of the 19th century, you were often literally dipping a bucket into the nearest gutter, letting it sit for a day for the solids to separate out, and drinking what was left. Even the well-to-do houses with fancy newfangled running water were at risk of waterborne illnesses, because a lot of those water supply companies had intake pipes stuck into the fucking Thames (you know. the famously polluted river that all the sewers dumped into) and were so negligent about filtering it that people sometimes got live eels coming out of their faucets.

So yeah, drinking many glasses of water IS a potentially injurious one and DOES weaken digestive power -- IF you are unfortunate enough to live in the 19th century before public health became a government concern.

(I just read a book on the Broad Street cholera outbreak yesterday, The Ghost Map, and it was riveting, highly recommend -- the Broad Street pump's well, which provided water to thousands of people in a neighborhood of London, was situated two and a half feet away from a cesspit where residents of a house were dumping their sewage. According to reports by the inspectors after the fact, the bricks lining the cesspit were so degraded that they could be removed with hands, and upon excavation, the earth between the cesspit and the well was muddy and saturated with human waste. The well's water level was eight feet below that of the cesspit.)

[validblogname]

one fight at a time

[lizardlicks]

Black Hills drilling project canceled after backlash from tribes

A South Dakota mining company has canceled a drilling project in the Black Hills after opposition from Native American tribes and local grou

[wizxrdpendrxgon]

The backlash was a major lawsuit from 9 tribes alongside other lawsuits from advocacy groups like NDN Collective. You can support NDN Collective by donating to them here.

[mcelfan]

Let's be clear, Barry Bluejeans isn't bi because he's in love with Lup. She's a woman, full stop, so normally I'd be fine with reading him as straight.

Barry is bi because his only reaction to waking up naked to two guys (and a walking talking mannequin) in his home was "WOW must've had a wild night lol better get dressed". No panicking over what this means for his sexuality, just calm acceptance and a request for the clothes Merle is holding.

Barry found it entirely possible he partied nude with some dudes, and you'll never convince me he wasn't wondering which of them, if not all of them, he fucked.

[renthony]

It's wild to watch the phrase "tumblr sexyman" morph into "man that tumblr thinks is sexy," because when I first saw the phrase come into use, I always saw it used in reference to the phenomenon of "when presented with a wide array of fictional characters, tumblr will always pick the skinny white man to obsess over, and if the fan-favorite character has no canonical human appearance, the fandom will inevitably create a popular fanon of the character as as a skinny white man."

When I hear "tumblr sexyman," I think of Cecil Night Vale being constantly depicted as a skinny white man instead of literally anything else. I think of the background character white men who get elevated over protagonists that are women, people of color, or otherwise not the white man power fantasy.

"Tumblr sexyman" is, like. An insult. I DON'T want any of my blorbos to win a "tumblr sexyman" poll. "Tumblr sexyman" is the exact opposite of what I want my own OCs to be. If any of my characters ever get called "tumblr sexyman," I will have to immediately re-evaluate myself and the art I'm making.

[renthony]

Things I think of when I hear "tumblr sexyman":

Cecil Night Vale, as previously mentioned.

Oncelercest, because if there aren't two skinny white men to ship, tumblr fandom will start shipping the skinny white man with himself.

Bill Cipher inexplicably being fanon'd as a white twink despite being a fucking triangle.

Everyone fawning over Marvel Loki while shoving every woman and Black person in the MCU aside.

The way nearly every single character in Hazbin Hotel has the same "tall and skinny" body type, along with all the criticisms Black audience members have made about the issues with Alastor's design.

The way tumblr got obsessed with the white man villain in Sinners.

[liquidstar]

"only 90s kids remember-" wrong, if you're poor and/or rural enough, old tech and fashion doesn't just disappear when it stops being trendy. We had dial-up until 2012

[hell-on-sticks]

the sheer amount of fandom, fanfic, and fictional character content in the d/Deaf and hard of hearing tags is staggering. You have to scroll for ages before you even start getting to the deaf cat, let alone actual d/Deaf and hard of hearing users and issues.

this isn't specific to d/Deaf or HoH spaces either, you can barely poke your head into any tag without hitting a wall of fiction. is it that hard to understand that if you believe the internet is a source of connection and sharing knowledge that it's bad to deliberately obstruct that?

Have some basic decency and keep fictional characters in their own tags. It's hard enough for disabled people to have any opportunity to talk about disability or connect with each other without the streams of information constantly contaminated with your favourite blorbos. Let us communicate and share things, for fuck's sakes, without finding ways to make it about fiction. Without finding ways to make it about what you like instead of what others in that space like and need. Sometimes disabled people... actually exist. And are more important than fiction.

[differentlylimbed]

the tag for my limb difference is like 99% posts by abled people about this one character and then people sharing (largely incorrect) "educational posts" and info in light of the character becoming popular. just fucking kill me

[purple--starrrs]

By the way it's like. Really fucked how society's thoughts on epilepsy is just "get over it." Seizures can cause permanent brain damage. Seizures can kill people. Seizures hurt like hell. Allow me to reiterate that seizures can kill people. And you're just gonna casually put flashing lights, a common trigger for seizures in your advertisement, in your animation meme, in your edit, on your billboards, without even thinking about putting a simple disclaimer? That's unbelievable. Your little anime edit could deadass cost a life and you're not gonna put a warning because it's "inconvenient" or "people like that shouldn't be on the internet" (ableist) (the problem exists outside the internet also). Or you'll give insufficient ones like putting it in the captions or only giving like one second before the flashing lights appear, meaning that the trigger's already in motion before anyone who needs the warning can read it and save themselves from literal physical danger.

We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.

Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.

Anyways this Disability Pride, and for every month that comes after, think about epileptic people and others who are triggered by flashing lights/eyestrain. Happy pride to those who experience seizures too frequently due to the unaccommodating and ableist societies we live in!

[bitchesgetriches]

Everything Is Becoming a Bank

Most major corporations — from airlines to social media platforms — now aspire to become unregulated banks. Bankification today accounts for

[apatosaurus]

This is a long read, but worth it. Some takeaways:

-Don’t use “buy now pay later.” The fine print isn’t what it seems.

-The fine print on medical financing, store credit cards, and contactless payment is also not what it seems.

-Payday loans are still predatory, even when offered by your employer

-Rewards programs are an income stream for the companies that run them. The points systems are manipulated so that the house always wins. They depend on people leaving money in rewards accounts and not in interest-bearing traditional bank accounts.

-Electronic payment apps like VenMo are not banks. You don’t earn interest. Your money is not protected.

-Your financial information is not private if your money is not kept in a regulated bank.

-None of this is regulated by the FDIC. Your money is not protected if it is held by a non-bank doing banking business. Our economy is not protected from the collapse of financial institutions that are not banks.

-The Biden administration was making progress in increasing accountability for non-banks operating as predatory financial services providers. The current administration is reversing those protections to favor corporations.

[mierac]

Oh boy.

 A third of younger Americans hold their savings on nonbank tech platforms like Venmo

PEOPLE! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MONEY IN VENMO OR APPLE PAY OR ANY OF THIS SHIT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GO FIND A REAL BANK OR A CREDIT UNION.

If Venmo were to close tomorrow all your money would vanish. There's no insurance or guarantee on any of these things. I know banks aren't great but legit banks will have the "FDIC insured" logo on their doors and websites, which means if my bank goes under tomorrow I still get my money back. Also I guarantee you there is a credit union somewhere in your town, go find it.

You can leave some money in Venmo or Apple pay or whatever, but NOT ALL OF IT for the love of God.

[jenniferdub]

FYI this is what the logo looks like and Apple Cash is FDIC insured.

[idroolinmysleep]

No, it's misleading. Go to Green Dot's T&Cs, search for "FDIC," and you'll come across this:

your funds are insured up to $250,000 by the FDIC in the event Green Dot Bank fails

In the event Green Dot Bank fails. Meaning the only time your money is protected is if Green Dot goes under. Not if Apple goes under (unlikely, granted). Or if Apple changes its terms (entirely possible). Or if you got scammed. Or if Apple freezes your account because they think you're the one scamming. Or any of the other countless mishaps your money could suffer. Green Dot is insured, but Apple Cash is not.

This is the disclaimer (highlighted) you see before you set up Apple Cash:

[heywriters]

I really need my followers, especially younger ones, to read this.

And DO NOT get store credit cards, they are money sucks and difficult to cancel.

[julevanwilde]

As someone who's worked in the industry for a decade now, here's a quick rundown (US specific,) of what your schools and parents didn't teach you:

For the love of god get an account at a federally insured institution. Look for FDIC (banks) or NCUA (credit unions) insured and regulated financial institution. They are legally required to have this status publicly available and accessible so it's not hard to find.

The FDIC and/or NCUA will insure your accounts up to $250,000 PER AUTHORIZED SIGNER and per account type. These are factors to max your coverage to even higher than $250k but the key point is that if something happens to your bank or accounts there, that first $250k of your money is secured anyway.

Banks are for profit. Credit Unions are exactly what it sounds like: unions. They are not for profit and member owned.

Bigger institutions have more money and resources at their disposal; they have the fancier apps, 24/7 phone banking and more locations. But watch out! They are no different than any other large corporation you've heard of when it comes to ethics. Smaller institutions have more limitations, and lesser size is not an indicator of morality, but it's something to consider when choosing where to keep your money.

These institutions, regardless of what kind you choose, will offer interest bearing accounts. Money Market Savings and Time Accounts (also called Certificates of Deposit,) are popular choices to put the money you already have to work for you. You can earn money just for having your money in an interest bearing account type.

All financial institutions charge fees of one sort or another. They are offering products and services, after all. Nothing is free! They will also disclose options to avoid paying those fees, usually based around meeting specific criteria such as minimum balances or direct deposits.

Take this information and do your own research so that you can make an informed decision. Now you know what to look for! Don't be taken advantage of!

[necromycologist]

if there was any justice at all in the world “every helen has her troy” would be an idiom (“every beautiful woman leaves a disaster in her wake”) and misogynistic renaissance authors would use it to describe hot women they didn’t like but, of course, inadvertently making her sound insanely awesome in the process. and then in modern times instead of talking about things being their hill to die on women could say “this is my troy to burn” and people on tumblr would be kind of horny about the whole thing and it would get incorporated into the whole “can yuo put that out on me” genre of posts. anyway just a glimpse into my beautiful mind tonight