~*~ tambler ~*~

this sure is some stuff alright some stuff I like: cats, knitting, snail mail, teaching, Pokemon Go, telling stories

[asmrgaret]

it’s weird that professional letters are supposed to start with “dear.” i don’t even call my mom that

[asmrgaret]

my darling hiring manager. my springtime rose. if hired i will bring a strong work ethic to this position

[luna-azzurra]

A non-writer asked me "but where do you get your ideas" and i genuinely did not know how to explain that it's not a place. it's not a website. it's not a folder. it's that i was on the bus and a woman was holding a paper bag very carefully and something about the way she held it made me need to know what was inside and then i needed to know why she was sad about it and then there was a whole person and then there was a whole story and the bus had already stopped and i missed my stop. that's where.

[hedgehog-moss]

I didn’t know fondue was a thing outside USA—stupid but i thought it was like, fake cheese that we would melt to dip tiny weenies in. Looked it up and found out it’s Swiss—so probably more people than I realized enjoy it! I would love to try a fondue of local cheese, but that’s not easy to come by where i live. Enjoy yours!

I'm sorry but I am so morally disoriented by the concept of 'fake cheese' that I have trouble focusing on any other aspect of your message. What is fake cheese?? You say that like it's a perfectly understandable and emotionally neutral combination of words. I feel like I've just been handed a koan.

Then you add the phrase “tiny weenies" like it's the logical next step rather than a new psychological event. From my (very French) perspective the sentence "fake cheese to dip tiny weenies in" sounds like such a unique cultural artefact in itself, like a linguistic diorama to be displayed in a vitrine. This is not meant as a negative judgment of you or your country! just my earnest ethnographic confusion as I try to grapple with the concept of "tiny weenies" from a place of "fake cheese" trauma...

I had no idea fondue was seen this way in the US—I thought we (as a species) had a collective working definition of it, a sort of global consensus like the commutative property of addition, so the idea that in some corners of the world "fondue" means “fake cheese to dip tiny weenies in” has made me remember that you can just flay language off reality like skin. There's also a non-zero chance for this phrase to have activated a sleeper agent in Lausanne and authorised targeted elimination under the Académie Française’s emergency powers.

The concept of fondue now feels violently theoretical but I wish you many delicious ones in the future though :) You have politely disintegrated a couple of foundational concepts I'd never realised I relied on, which is always enriching. I won't recover, but thank you for sending this!

[uberfluss]

first 5 faceless emojis are how your summers gonna go

[thesebonesbite]

Magnus Archives fan I see

[partywithponies]

THIS IS SO FUNNY I'M SORRY

[kitten-kokomo]

🔥✨🎶🤝🫵

I set you, personally, on fire and prance around your burning corpse singing and dancing, as part of a lucrative business deal

[blackbeariejam]

😭💀🤷🏽‍♀️🥲☺️

5 stages of grief i guess

[kitten-kokomo]

holding your hand affectionately as I point to the part where it says faceless emojis

[justanotherkathrynjanewayblog]

🎉❤️💔💜🎈

I have a love, yet broken hearted relationship with it being your birthday

[olicrosse]

[cephalopodvictorious]

fixed it

[star-thief]

[charlesoberonn]

Gritty Detective Fiction: There's been a murder 🚬🫩🏚🌧

Cozy Mystery Fiction: There's been a murder ☕️🤔🏡☀️

[ruby-white-rabbit]

Intense birdwatcher: there's been a murder 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🔭😀

[prairiedeath]

[sarcoptid]

FITTED TO WHOM

[sparkytheandroid]

MEEEEEEEEEEEE BABYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

[sarcoptid]

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[queer-cosette]

this post makes me snort every single time

[chryza]

TikTok is a fundamentally evil app however the reason i use it is because you occasionally stumble across gems like the Chinese power transformer manufacturer who posts kawaii edits of their power transformers

[briannyssey]

some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.

if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars

literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?

there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life

[briannyssey]

this keeps getting shared around and ive seen some different tags responding differently so i just want to make some important clarifications and distillations

you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)

if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too

learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life

writers tend to put a lot of work into their stories. if you learn to read that work you'll (probably) appreciate the stories you love even more. And if not, then you'll have developed your taste. This too is worth doing

[sandersstudies]

Me: haha yes i am the chillest person alive

Also Me: *will rehearse before a casual kareoke night*

[sandersstudies]

Me: yes I am so glad I left being stressed behind me

Also me: *won’t enter a restaurant until I’ve looked up the menu and planned my order*

[sandersstudies]

Me: oh I literally do not even care and am so versatile

Also me: *analyzing GPS to ensure my route to the grocery store is as effective as possible*

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[lostsometime]

ok sorry to double reblog BUT I just looked him up and he does these fantastic videos where he breaks down HOW he actually mimics the other artists’ styles. Like for ed Sheeran, he explains how he brings his voice forward in the mouth, while Adam Levine sings in the back of the mouth, stuff like that. It’s SO COOL, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually break down how to do this sort of thing, as a skill, instead of just treating it like a neat trick they just happen to be good at. https://www.tiktok.com/@justinjmooremusic

Check him out he’s so cool

[stupidestasshole]

what if it was called magic the slathering and it was about lotions and ointments

[sinni-ok-sessi]

I do think the ability to emoji-react is a net win for human communication. not only does it give you an outlet for 'I see and acknowledge this but don't have a verbal response' but it also adds a pleasing alethiometer element to things

my coworker announces that he's off to the dentist. someone reacts with a tooth emoji. is this a statement of dentist solidarity? a wish for my coworker to return with more (or fewer?) teeth than he set out with? simple word association? who can say

[avidcollectorofdust]

Really glad predictive text exists. Should i bring my own parking lot

[my-dailydreams]

[dogpuppy]

At the local hamburger shop and they said yelled out “order 167!” And three middle school age kids yelled in perfect unison “ 6 7!” Life is sometimes so beautiful

[moisterpeggingchampion]

If you reference 67 you deserve to be executed on the spot tbh

[dogpuppy]

If I was king for a day the first thing I would do would be to sentence you to a life full of love and understanding.