Hey

I'm back, I'm not a bot, mdni

[treasuredplanet]

🫵 embarrassment is improvement's biggest enemy!!!

[snototter]

A female sandhill crane (Antigone canadensis) and her chick in Florida, USA

by Matthew Paulson

[prokopetz]

I enjoy a joke about fucked up German fairy tales as much as the next nerd, but it's genuinely striking how often the source for the really fucked up stuff turns out to be "yeah, this is only in the Brothers Grimm version and doesn't appear in any extant oral tradition, and we're like 80% sure they added it themselves". To a large extent it's not German fairy tales that are fucked up, it's two specific German dudes.

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

in retrospect we probably should have given the fairy tale writing to the Brothers Happy instead

[thekeymonster]

Orange Blossom Kitty - Botanimal Pet Portrait

.

I’m on Patreon, I have an Etsy Shop and I sell Prints!

[podcastwizard]

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

you people aren't CASTING

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

NO

[parkchanwoohoo]

People often ask me how I study multiple languages without getting mixed up and I never know how to tell them that this level of mixed up illegibility is exactly what I aspire towards

[roseworth]

i find it so embarrassing when i’m talking about comics to someone irl and accidentally call the characters their real names because why am i on a first name basis with batman

[unusual]

Japanese is an incredibly fun and rewarding language (if you’ve ever wanted to learn it for ANY reason, most importantly including the “silly” reasons) but the fearmongering and capitalist intervention involved in the language learning process have given it a reputation as an “impossible task” for English speakers, leading to confusion and dkn learners and weird pessimist attitudes about the whole thing. In this thread I will explain how to effectively learn and retain Japanese. This is a tried, tested and true method; probably 99% of all people who try to learn Japanese give up, but everyone I’ve met who has tried and stuck with this has been at or above N3-N4 after 6 months or less including me

[unusual]

You can teach yourself Japanese for free if you have a little free time every day and a computer

1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

Remember to consult yomitan and cure dolly where needed, that’s what it’s there for. As you can see I am quite normal about the Japanese language, so if you have any other questions or need help with anything else feel free to shoot me an ask and I will get back to you promptly. Japanese is not your enemy and it is not impossible. It is your friend

[extratragic]

i stole this from twitter

[im-somewhere-in-the-stratosphere]

To all my mutuals whether we talk much or not I love you all

[swagophile]

not enough love going around for Loser Girl With Glasses can we get some more love going around for all the girls with greasy unwashed hair and glasses that are all fogged up and smudgy because her skins oily and she still hasnt taken a shower yet. lets give her some love too. please

[thecollectibles]

Art by Kyoung Hwan Kim

[tvguts]

something about Toy Story toys is so strange to me. versions of animated characters based on real world toys, turned back into toys that are slightly different than the actual toys. slinky dog with a rubber spiral instead of a classic metal slinky. the porcelain bo peep and cloth woody turned into jointed plastic action figures. when toy story 4 came out and i saw a $30 talking action figure of forky, a character made out of a spork and a pipe cleaner, i stood in the walmart toy aisle staring at it like cameron from ferris bueller's day off staring at that painting in the art museum

[jerryterry]

Something I think about is my nephew's Buzz Lightyear toy. When I was a little kid, I had a Buzz of my own. It had spring-loaded pop-out wings, articulated fingers, a light-up LED wrist-laser. The buttons could be pressed, it spoke the exact same voice clips the toy himself would say in the movie. This toy, for the most part, was a near-perfect simulacrum of the movie character.

I bought my nephew a Buzz for his last birthday. Solid, permanently-open hands. 'Buttons' now a part of the mold, wrist-laser a mere printed sticker. No wings. Voice lines sound like a different person altogether.

In Toy Story 1, Buzz has to reckon with being a toy. In 2, he sees a whole store aisle lined with his identical clones. But I have to wonder, would it be worse if he could see each new generation of clones become something less and less like him? You were already an abstraction of a spaceman, and now these toys are an abstraction of a toy, a copy of a copy, speaking in a weak imitation of your own voice.

[itznarcotic]

[byjove]

Without fail, every time a woman is talking about how she does not want to have children and never wants to be pregnant and how medical professionals, romantic interests and family members keep trying to bulldoze her decision and keep expecting her to change her mind because motherhood is something that is expected of all women and it is abhorrent to think a woman could not desire it, a random mother spawns in the comments to be like “Well, actually, you never know! I didn’t want children and then I got pregnant and I realized I love being a mama and I have five little babies now! Could happen to you! 🥰”

Sister, keep that to yourself or make your own goddamn post, you are ignoring that woman’s central concern and belittling her, you don’t even think you’re doing it. Formerly childfree women who ended up having children and loving it are like detransitioners in the sense that there is nothing inherently wrong with changing your mind about having children or realizing you were mistaken about your gender identity but immediately weaponizing your indecision to tell people that the barriers to healthcare and the violations of their bodily autonomy and the way society ignores that person’s wishes is actually okay because you were wrong. Some people do know themselves.

[mikelogan]

TJ MIKELOGAN’s HALLOWEEN HORROR 2025 EVENT ↳ DAY 29: Scream queens & kings

Kate Siegel

[narcissene]

affirmations:

- it’s fun to be awake & in an upright position

- consciousness is a gift

- i CAN do this anymore

[sandersstudies]

Every time you go in a public place and something ISN’T disgusting it’s because somebody cleaned it. Every time you feel comfortable using a public bathroom or sitting at a restaurant table or setting something on a gas station counter or playing on a playground it’s because somebody cleaned it.

Thank you to everyone who cleans the world, especially those who are underpaid and under appreciated.

[my-life-is-a-sidequest]

I worked in a supermarket for 7 years and I don't think I can understate just how much cleaning you had to do for it to look clean (it very often where not in the places you aren't supposed to see)

[sandersstudies]

True for food service, retail establishments, gyms, outdoor areas, schools, religious buildings, office buildings, etc. People usually only notice when a space is NOT clean, meanwhile every time a space is clean it’s only because of the diligent work of janitors, maintenance staff, custodians, parks workers, or volunteers.