Ten Thousand Abundances

[aromanticduck]

Free service with ads: Well, if I'm not paying for it they have to foot the bill somehow.

Paid service with no ads: Well, if they're not funding it with ad revenue, they need to charge us something.

Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.

"We used to be a paid service without ads, but now we're putting ads in it! If you want the ad-free version you have to pay more for preeeeemium": Fuck you fuck you fuck you

[yeyinde]

Doug Ford said it "a miracle nobody died" lmao like people will praise everything and everyone else before admitting that we did what we always do and took care of our own. It wasn't a miracle. It was indigenous communities helping each other. It's the people who aren't slashing budgets and telling us it's time to stop holding our hands out despite giving us nothing and passing a bill to give us even less who are opening their doors and letting us in.

Before taking off for the Assembly of Nations, officials told Chief Paavola that there was nothing to worry about, and there was no immediate danger, insisting the smoke residents were seeing came from a smoldering fire farther away.

If it wasn't for someone else alerting the community of the danger, they never would have known. No one called. No one came. The people of Collins had 40 minutes to escape before the fire would have consumed them. This isn't a miracle. It's an utter failing of the people in charge do the bare fucking minimum of their job requirements and keep people safe and informed. We have satellite imaging of the wildfires. We have over 8 different sites currently monitoring the fires. And they were told to stay put.

This isn't a miracle. It was Lyndon Paavola, Monty Frank, Scott Frank, Mitchell Huezo, Wayne Wastaken, Mikey and Ryan Wesley, Kyle MacLaurin, and Dean Goodwin making sure their community got out. It was them risking their lives to go back and get more people because the boats they had were too small. It was Chance Paavola, a 13-year-old boy, risking his own life to save his neighbours.

They were so close to the fire that they could feel the heat from the flames. They watched their community burn, and had to flee to the water because there was no other escape. It took 3 hours for Collins to burn.

If they listened to the officials and the people in power, an entire community of indigenous people would have burned to death. If they didn't have boats, they would have burned to death.

This isn't a miracle. It's an injustice. The government did nothing. They were content to let everyone die and now want to go on press tours down playing how miserably and catastrophically they failed another indigenous community on every single level.

[pointless-letters]

One of the best letters I’ve ever seen just popped up on my Facebook memories. Still makes me laugh.

[pointless-letters]

As today is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s a great time to revisit Dinah from Devon’s memory of this historic event. And yes, still makes me laugh.

[pointless-letters]

Today is the 54th anniversary of the moon landing, but Dinah’s diary entry is still absolutely magnificent.

[pointless-letters]

57th anniversary of the moon landing and the best diary entry in the history of diary entries. Sit down Samuel Pepys, it’s over. UGH.

[iamnotlanuk]

[dahliavandare]

You’re just not ready. At no point in this video when he says the next thing are you ready.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[harrisonforded]

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) dir. Steven Spielberg

[crafty-butch]

anyone else notice how when "digital assistants" were just supposed to do specific tasks when you asked for them we had Alexa and Siri and Cortana, but now that they're being marketed as smart enough to take actions and make decisions on their own they've got names like Claude and Devin

[thatdisasterauthor]

Drone incursions are becoming more and more of an issue when it comes to wildfires, so last year I designed these graphics, but I never got around to sharing them anywhere.

If you send your drone up during a wildfire, even if you don't feel like you are that close, all planes and helicopters in the area may have to be grounded which can have a massive and detrimental effect on first responders' ability to manage that fire.

If you send your drone up and a plane or helicopter hits it, no matter how small your drone is, it could crash that aircraft injuring or killing those on board and potentially people on the ground as well. Even if the aircraft stays up, it will have damage that could ground it for an indeterminate and potentially extensive amount of time, meaning one less resource is available for that fire and other fires.

Just don't do it.

These graphics are free to use and distribute for any non-profit uses! You can check out my Payhip store to download (for free, or pay what you want) a package of files that include vertical versions of each design, print sizes, and social media sizes.

If you want to check out the other disaster and disaster education resources I have available, visit my website.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[hunter-rodrigez]

So I do 3D modeling and printing as a hobby, and a few weeks ago I designed wheel guards meant to prevent office chairs from running over cables and clothes... or your pet's tail.

I got the idea from cowcatchers old locomotives used to have.

Anyways, yesterday I uploaded the model to Thingiverse, and just hours after uploading it, the Community Relationship Manager of the whole website left a comment suggesting I enter the model into a competition that's currently being held on the site.

So I did... and now it's in third place not even a day later. First place is $500, but the competition still has a month to go.

Then the Community Manager contacted me again, telling me they want to feature my model in an upcoming design promotion.

Just, what is happening? I mostly made this thing for myself in, like, an hour, and now it's suddenly super popular? This is all a little bit overwhelming 😵‍💫

Other models I worked on for weeks didn't get nearly as popular. I swear, it's impossible to predict what people will like.

Anyways, if you want to print the wheel guards yourself, you can get the model here or here.

I also made a quiet version you can stick furniture felt pads on.

[pronouncingitwang]

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

[yokowan]

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

[le-jardin-inculte]

at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly

[shithowdy]

at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.

[whitachi]

at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.

[araceil]

At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.

[not-your-average-url]

I miss when ads were a single click and then they’re gone. Now every ad has a minimum of three phases where you watch a video, exit the still frame of fake gameplay, and then exit the app download. That doesn’t even touch on the ones that forcibly take you to another app after opening a tab in safari without you ever touching the screen.

I hate advertising. I hate that you can’t do anything without companies jumping down your throat with mostly bullshit ads. I hate that billboards exist. I hate that every company unanimously decided to make their ads longer and longer. I hate that ad blockers try to charge you money and there are in app purchases to remove ads. I hate that my attention has become commodified. I hate that there’s nothing I can do about it.

[echodoctor]

I now refuse to buy things that I've seen too many ads for, out of spite.

[thydungeongal]

I have posted before about how sometimes well-meaning attempts at running D&D without some of the more unfortunate dynamics can often backfire but in a way where most people don't even register it backfiring. Because when you take the step of "oh D&D's various 'evil humanoids' don't just exist in a vacuum and given the renfaire colonialism on display it's kind of impossible not to read them as somewhat racialized" many people will then go "okay but we still need some people who player characters should be allowed to kill guilt-free, so let's replace 'orcs' with 'bandits' because killing bad criminal people is perfectly ideologically neutral." At that point it's like "okay so your characters are no longer the racist kill squad, now they're just the Tough on Crime Vigilantes."

But I feel I should make clear that D&D the game itself is not exactly at fault here: like, okay, it is sort of at fault in the sense that it is a game of fantasy killing people with swords and magic. And it is easier for people to accept the killing with people with swords and magic part when they can imagine that their characters are at least to a degree justified. That is sort of just built into the game (and the game has built into its lore varying levels of making the fantasy of killing certain types of guy justifiable).

But D&D is not at fault for making people go "okay so it's bad when you kill orcs simply because they're orcs. It's better when you kill people who are bandits, who are a class of evil criminals where killing them is actually wholesome and sensible." Like, yeah, most people probably don't think about it that deeply, but the reason people don't think about it that deeply is ultimately ideological.

And the ideology is basically "it is bad to be racist but it's good to be a tough on crime vigilante."

[krongbly]

I don't disagree with this post but I do think there's an important element being left out here which is that 9 times out of 10 players are engaging in combat primarily as a form of self defense. Most of the time it's less of "we can kill these people because they're criminals and that makes it ideologically neutral" and more "these NPCs are trying to kill us and the most effective way to stop them right now is to reduce their hit points to 0 which, if they fail their death saves, means they will die."

I think "vigilantes tough on crime" is actually kind of a bad descriptor for how most parties operate. This definitely varies wildly from table to table but I think for the *average* table there's honestly a solid chance that either your players are friends with at least one criminal NPC or even that they themselves are criminals. There's even an entire class who's fantasy is "criminal."

[thydungeongal]

I don't think the self defense point actually holds true in a meaningful sense.

In older editions of D&D, which were much clearer on the expected gameplay being "go into the dungeon and steal the stuff," there wasn't really this layer there. The rules for combat were generally quite harsh on player characters so combat was certainly something they didn't want to get into too casually, but ultimately the player characters were just going into the dang monsters' house and stealing their stuff. The monsters were arguably the ones acting in self-defense (but they're evil so who cares).

But in the WotC editions the self-defense justification is still fraught because modern D&D especially is an action game. It's a game where characters mostly have access to various methods of visiting violence upon their environs and where the gameplay itself rewards them for violence, because combat is the main source of experience as written in all WotC editions of the game and characters primarily grow in combat effectiveness.

The self-defense angle I feel is not supported by the game's rules itself, but is more of a narrative contrivance introduced by groups to make their characters feel more heroic.

My friend @tenleaguesbeneath once described it as, and I am paraphrasing, "characters hunting things for sport but the things attack them first so they can claim self-defense." Characters want to get into fights (because that's where the rewards are), characters primarily grow in terms of being able to get into cooler fights, but because getting into fights on purpose isn't heroic there's an angle of "those goblins started it" to make the characters feel more heroic.

I don't think this is a bad thing per se. It is one way to make the power fantasy of D&D feel less like the characters are violent thugs and more like heroes. But like it is basically a group of mercenaries going into a warzone, they can't really say "well we didn't really expect to have to kill anyone on our mission, but sadly, circumstances conspired against us." Fighting is what the game wants them to do and I don't think anyone is wrong for wanting to portray the player characters as engaging in self-defense, but it's only self-defense through a very crooked lens imo.

[lumpout]

Linking this to the modern "revenge porn" action movies like John Wick and Nobody.

The self defense/revenge motivation is a fig leaf for indulging in gleeful violence. While modern DnD fictionally positions the party as the righteous castle-doctrine empowered heroes; we should at the very least be critical of why it is doing that. It's functionally identical to the fantasy of "what would I do if a bunch of terrorists/bank robbers burst into the room?" Just because there's an in-universe reason as to why you get have to murder all those people in flashy and fun ways does not mean that it isn't what you (the player) sat down at the table to do.

[millenniallust4death]

I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

[millenniallust4death]

Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️

[psycorax]

Reblog to have your dashboard be visited by the spirit of joy that death can end but not erase.

[millenniallust4death]

Thank you to everyone who commented in their tags or messaged me. Indeed, today is “Martin and Bosco Day”. I originally whimsically blazed this photo on 13 July 2022. I never expected Martin and Bosco to travel so far and make so many new friends. The experience has been such a gift for me.

[anonym-potato]

Observations of the Dol-Makjar map:

The Lloys and the Halovars are neighbors

Falcon's Rest is on the complete opposite end of the city from the Brethren Hall. Azune walks from Washington Heights to the Lower East Side every day

There's a "Mercer Guildhall" in Silverhill Brennan you sap

[higglety]

"Mercer" is an occupational surname, that occupation in this case being textile importer and merchant. Brennan is the kind of nerd who I 100% believe knows this, AND ALSO the kind of sap who would 100% put this in as a fun little Easter egg for his friend. I hope if they ever drop by that spot, it has a display of vests.

[mzannthropy]

The Blue Castle Book Club Chapter 39

I get why LMM uses the 'imp' here, but what is so imp-like about leaving a note? It seems the most sensible act to do in this case? Barney is not there, she cannot talk to him but she needs to give him a reason for why she is leaving him. How else would she communicate that--send smoke signals??? (Btw, were there that many stories featuring runaway wives?)

And so, we finally learn the secret of the Bluebeard chamber.

I suspected Barney was John Foster on my first read, as soon as the 'Bluebeard chamber' was mentioned for the first time. I bet he's John Foster and that room is where he writes his books, that was my thinking. The Redfern connection surprised me, bc I never considered the founder of those products could be a character in this novel. But John Foster I was able to guess. This means that Barney has been in her life before she ever met him or spoke to him. He was the one who showed her the right way.

However, those chemical experiments I forget with each read. Has Barney inherited some liking for chemistry from his father after all? (I presume the 'Dr' in Dr Redfern refers to a PhD in chemistry? Barney prefers writing but one can like, and be good at, more than one thing, sciences and humanities.)

However what I most want to pick on this time (I, too, have an imp at the back of my head) is: how did Valancy know what galley-proofs were and that authors were sent complimentary copies? How could she know about publishing--is this common knowledge and am I just ignorant? I write sometimes but I just post on my writing blog and that's the extent of my 'publishing' experience, lol. Anyway, it's not important. When Valancy felt she was living in a John Foster book, she was literally right (it took strength not to say it when recapping that chapter!). I wanted to say: umm, he is standing next to you.

Valancy was not excited. She had absorbed all the shocks and sensations that she could compass for one day. This affected her neither one way nor the other.

Is it Tuesday today?

She took up Barney’s pen—and a vile one it was—pulled a sheet of paper to her and began to write.

How is a pen 'vile'? A pen is a pen. It writes. That's it.

Sigh, LMM and her obsession with the 'trapped/tricked into marriage' phrase, sigh. Yet, I think Valancy should have added a line about the other patient. "My letter was meant for Jane Sterling of Port Lawrence, Dr Trent mixed them up". I want to make it clear: Barney should not need more than 'it was a mistake' to believe her, and overexplaining is symptom of trauma/not being believed (which would track for Valancy), but I feel it would add more veracity, bc Barney could check that there was a Miss Sterling in Port Lawrence who really died of heart disease. Or maybe that's the Agatha Christie fan in me.

I understand Valancy's reasoning about the pearl necklace. I would not see anything wrong with her keeping it--that 15k will not make a hole in a Redfern fortune. And even if it does, I still wouldn't see anything wrong with her keeping it. But I get her. And I like that she is sorry to give it up bc she likes it. Why would she not liked a pretty pearl necklace?

She put on her hat and mechanically fed Good Luck and Banjo. 

Good Luck and Banjo are the most unconcerned characters in this book. Atoms bombs are dropping? Give us food.

The little house under the pines looked very pathetic—a casket rifled of its jewels—a lamp with its flame blown out.

Mr Bernard Redfern can light his own lamp when he gets back from wherever he is.

“I shall never again hear the wind crying over Mistawis at night,” thought Valancy. This hurt her, too. She could have laughed to think that such a trifle could hurt her at such a time.

It's not a trifle!

[bewareofitalics]

I think it's less that leaving a note is imp-like, and more that the imp is mocking her. Like, "Oh, wow, a note? You're running away from your husband and leaving a note? Sooooo original!" (Side note, I have just discovered that Bantam has "runaway life" instead of "runaway wife." Whoopsie!)

Maud seems to have had very strong opinions about pens. From Anne of Windy Poplars:

Though this won't be a love-letter. I have a scratchy pen and I can't write love-letters with a scratchy pen...or a sharp pen...or a stub pen. So you'll only get that kind of letter from me when I have exactly the right kind of pen.

So probably Barney's was scratchy, sharp, or stub, whatever those mean exactly.

It's interesting that Maud never confirms anything about the chemical experiments, if that's what they are! Barney gets to keep at least one secret, from the audience anyway.

[myriadplethorae]

It’s been suggested that printing the proofs would produce the smells!

[unknownbinaries]

I painted this in honor of my hometown & then i got super depressed and plans for making prints fell apart. As a bonus, the original started growing mold because my apartment is a swamp, so I'm putting this up on Inprnt for everyone who enjoyed it while I work on fixing or remaking it:

The Spirit of Philadelphia, an art print by k brown

This is a gallery-quality giclée art print on 100% cotton rag archival paper, printed with archival inks.

it looks slightly different than the original because the flames around the head were a shimmering gold that scanned badly, so i committed stamp tool fraud & repainted them by grabbing from other portions of the piece