An oblique compendium of miscellanea

Assorted things of no particular coherence. Confused curator: scientist, proto-librarian, writer, queer. (neutral pronouns preferred.)

[crazy-brazilian]

[coat]

"babe, can you let the dog out? It's presenting optical illusions again!"

[ralfmaximus]

Doggie door not needed because he clips through walls

[2urban2fantasy-deactivated20241]

I love my eldritch dog(s)

[guerrillatech]

[headspace-hotel]

I thought this was my hometown for a second

[enchantingcoffeenightmare]

[tacofriend]

So this has actually been cited by academics as part of the major draw to online spaces is the fact that just existing in public is reacted to with hostility and punishment. Gretchen McCulloch discussed this is in her book Because Internet, citing research that shows teens and young adults want to be outside! We want to spend time in social places, it’s just that there aren’t any places to exist in public without being charged for it.

[learn2anarchy]

[binch-worm]

When I was homeless as a kid my little brother and I loved to go to the library. We would keep warm in there reading good books all day long. Until residents of the town complained about us “loitering” at the library each day. The library staff then told us we were no longer allowed to stay more than an hour at a time. Imagine seeing two homeless children spending their entire days quietly reading just to keep out of the cold and having a damn problem with it.

[allthingslinguistic]

Here’s a relevant passage from Because Internet! 

Even the fact that teens use all kinds of social networks at higher rates than twenty-somethings doesn’t necessarily mean that they prefer to hang out online. Studies consistently show that most teens would rather hang out with their friends in person. The reasons are telling: teens prefer offline interaction because it’s “more fun” and you “can understand what people mean better.” But suburban isolation, the hostility of malls and other public places to groups of loitering teenagers, and schedules packed with extracurriculars make these in-person hangouts difficult, so instead teens turn to whatever social site or app contains their friends (and not their parents). As danah boyd puts it, “Most teens aren’t addicted to social media; if anything, they’re addicted to each other.”

Just like the teens who whiled away hours in mall food courts or on landline telephones became adults who spent entirely reasonable amounts of time in malls and on phone calls, the amount of time that current teens spend on social media or their phones is not necessarily a harbinger of what they or we are all going to be doing in a decade. After all, adults have much better social options. They can go out, sans curfew, to bars, pubs, concerts, restaurants, clubs, and parties, or choose to stay in with friends, roommates, or romantic partners. Why, adults can even invite people over without parental permission and keep the bedroom door closed! (page 102-103) 

The source I’d really recommend for lots more on this topic is It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd, a highly readable ethnography spanning a decade of observation of how teens use social media. Here are a couple relevant excerpts: 

I often heard parents complain that their children preferred computers to “real” people. Meanwhile, the teens I met repeatedly indicated that they would much rather get together with friends in person. A gap in perspective exists because teens and parents have different ideas of what sociality should look like. Whereas parents often highlighted the classroom, after-school activities, and prearranged in-home visits as opportunities for teens to gather with friends, teens were more interested in informal gatherings with broader groups of peers, free from adult surveillance. Many parents felt as though teens had plenty of social opportunities whereas the teens I met felt the opposite.

Today’s teenagers have less freedom to wander than any previous generation. Many middle-class teenagers once grew up with the option to “do whatever you please, but be home by dark.” While race, socioeconomic class, and urban and suburban localities shaped particular dynamics of childhood, walking or bicycling to school was ordinary, and gathering with friends in public or commercial places—parks, malls, diners, parking lots, and so on—was commonplace. Until fears about “latchkey kids” emerged in the 1980s, it was normal for children, tweens, and teenagers to be alone. It was also common for youth in their preteen and early teenage years to take care of younger siblings and to earn their own money through paper routes, babysitting, and odd jobs before they could find work in more formal settings. Sneaking out of the house at night was not sanctioned, but it wasn’t rare either. (page 85-86)

From wealthy suburbs to small towns, teenagers reported that parental fear, lack of transportation options, and heavily structured lives restricted their ability to meet and hang out with their friends face to face. Even in urban environments, where public transportation presumably affords more freedom, teens talked about how their parents often forbade them from riding subways and buses out of fear. At home, teens grappled with lurking parents. The formal activities teens described were often so highly structured that they allowed little room for casual sociality. And even when parents gave teens some freedom, they found that their friends’ mobility was stifled by their parents. While parental restrictions and pressures are often well intended, they obliterate unstructured time and unintentionally position teen sociality as abnormal. This prompts teens to desperately—and, in some cases, sneakily—seek it out. As a result, many teens turn to what they see as the least common denominator: asynchronous social media, texting, and other mediated interactions. (page 90)

Anyway, more people need to read It’s Complicated, danah boyd really takes young people and technology seriously and doesn’t patronize or sensationalize, and it was a huge influence on me in figuring out the tone for Because Internet so I want to make sure it gets credit! 

[dreamerdrop-deactivated20260528]

still pretty emotional about ds9 doing the whole “what if all the fantastical adventures are just in the characters head” bit and then going “it would still matter anyway, because it still means something to the character imagining it, and it still means something to you, the audience watching it, or reading it. the story still matters, no matter whose imagination it was. if the character made it up or if the writers in the real world did. it still matters.”

[jovishark]

some advice for people entering their 20s:

-dont go to the emergency room with dental problems. go to the dentist

-bagged greens are cheaper than pre-made salads

-taco bell is NOT worth the money anymore. 1/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup sour cream, 3 tblspoons pickled jalapenos+2tblspoons of the jar liquid, 2 tsp paprika 1 tsp cumin 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp onion powder salt+pepper. all in your blender. creamy jalapeno sauce

-dont quit your job unless you have a bunch of job interviews lined up immediately after

-use resources. food bank, unemployment, housing assistance, financial aid, etc. yes there will be paperwork. but Do It

-dont stay awake longer than 20 hours. you Will start to become impulsive and cranky. resting for 20 minutes is better than trying to stay awake

-for every 2 hours you spend looking up close at screens, spend 20 minutes looking at something far away from you. stretch your wrists a lot

-dont do that yoga stretch where you roll your head around your shoulders. youre grinding down the joints in your neck

-be nice to your friends, bullying them as a joke gets old. if you need a ride somewhere at least offer them gas money

-brush your teeth at any time of the day but especially before you sleep. dont snack in bed if you can help it. make your bed the Clean Teeth Zone. keep floss picks by your bed

-dont tell your boss youre adhd/autism/depression/suicidal. dont trust your coworkers with that. you NEVER know how people will take it and its none of their business

-train your pets to go to the front door when they hear a fire alarm

-get regular oil changes

[prokopetz]

In The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian by Theodore Mommsen (translated by William P Dickson), the imperial magistrate of the Isle of Lesbos is, at one point, off-handedly referred to as the “Lesbiarch”.

The text does not indicate whether the magistrate in question historically bore this title, or whether it’s a term of Mommsen’s original coinage; if it’s the former, this is quite possibly the best title of office I’ve ever seen.

[myrinthinks]

Okay, so I just spent almost two hours researching this (and even longer writing this down) so I hope someone will be interested in what I’ve found (although to be fair, the majority of those initial two hours was spent on finding the right editions and consolidating the millions of digital places where academic public domain works are published; the last time I did this was when I still worked on my dissertation and it’s still as cumbersome as it was then). Let me also say beforehand that I am German and most of the here-relevant authors were and wrote in German as well. Combine that with ancient and/or archaeological sources and we have a bit of a game of linguistical telephone on our hands, but I did my best to make everything as clear and understandable as possible - but please don’t hesitate to ask if something seems strange our out-of-place! All translations in this are mine. Anyway, onto the actual topic. The book @prokopetz​ is talking about is volume 8 of Theodor Mommsen’s Roemische Geschichte (”Roman History”) series which, with the exception of volumes 6 and 7, can be found in its entirety on eLibrary. The eighth book is, similar to its translation, called Laender und Leute von Caesar bis Diocletian (”Countries and People from Caesar to Diocletian”; “Länder und Leute” has this literal translation but it’s also an idiom of sorts and just means “literally everything”). The part in question can be found somewhere in the middle of the linked page - as far as I can see, it’s actually a footnote and says, among other things:

“Ihre magistratischen Praesidenten haben auch diese gehabt, wie denn kuerzlich sich ein Lesbiarch gefunden hat (Marquardt, a. a. O.) und ebenso die moesischen Hellenen unter einem Pontarchen standen.“ (“Their magistrates also had those, as recently a “lesbiarch” has been found […] and just like the Hellenes of Moesia were governed by a pontarch.”).

I would actually like to see a scan of this page since it just, well, reads weirdly and I have a feeling that a word or two are either missing or have been erroneously included. Otherwise, it’s completely unclear to me what the “diese/those” refers to; there’s talk of “Muenzen von Apameia” (”coins of Apameia”) immediately beforehand but that sentence is also weird and IDK I guess it’s best to just forget about that part (OR someone could tell me what the Dickson translation says and I could reverse-engineer it; surprisingly, I could only find the first two books online). But no matter what this sentence is supposed to mean exactly, it’s clear that “lesbiarch” and “pontarch” are equivalent titles pertaining to geographically different regions. Now if you google “pontarch”, you probably won’t get many hits (and if you do, you’ll most likely only be able to see an excerpt or one single page), but it’s always in relation to the so-called “Western Pontic Koinon”, a “provincial assembly in the Moesia Inferior province along the western coast of the Black Sea (located in modern Romania and Bulgaria)”. In fact, “pontic” means “belonging to the Black Sea”, and it stands to reason tha the “pont-” part of “pontarch” expresses exactly that. Ergo, the “lesbiarch” is to Lesbos what the “pontarch” is to Pontos. So far so good. Now, if we want to find out more about the actual historicality of this term - which, if you google it, only yields Mommsen as a result - there’s one very important reference in the original, and that’s the “Marquardt a. a. O.”. “a. a. O.” stands for “an anderem Ort” (”at another place”) and is a generally-outdated way of saying “ebenda/ebd.” (”ibidem/ib[id.]”). It’s outdated for good reason, because it’s an absolute pain in the behind to ever find what it references because it can mean basically any source by the same author that’s ever been named but fortunately, it’s pretty easy to deduce that in this case, it means the source right before this one, which is “Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, Bd. 1, S. 516”. Joachim Marquardt was a German teacher, historian, and contemporary of Mommsen’s. The book referenced here is one of his main works, the three-part Römische Staatsverwaltung (”Roman Public Administration”). What I hate about this book is that it came out in 1873 whereas Roemische Geschichte was released in 1856 and yet the latter references the former. It probably has something to do with the fact that the three volumes of Staatsverwaltung also make up volumes 4-6 of a joint project of Mommsen and Marquardt’s called Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer (“Compendium on Roman Antiquities”) but I don’t know and frankly I don’t want to know because this is ridiculous. In any case, this was actually the part that took me the longest because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what part of Marquardt’s work Mommsen could possibly be referring to. First, I found the table of contents (of the second edition, mind you, which only came out in 1881, ask me how much I hate literally everything about this) but not anything more than that. Its last part looks like this

and that looks indeed like there might be something relevant to our case on page 516. Finally, I found the aforementioned Mommsen-Marquardt joint venture on Google Books and, well, I couldn’t find a reference to Lesbos at all, even though the page’s general topic of state parliaments and their organisation fits reasonably well with the topic. So I thought I had the wrong source and looked and searched and finally, finally, after way too long, I had the glorious idea to look up the Greek writing of “Lesbos” and put that into the Google Books search bar and, lo and behold, I actually got two results, one on page 516 are you absolutely kidding me. It can be found in the main text, here:

Or rather, the first rectangle is, as I would find out shortly afterwards, the word that got transliterated as “Lesbiarch” (the second rectangle is the Moesia’s “Pontarch” which shows without a doubt that Mommsen was referring to this exact part). The IMO and for our case much more interesting part is the relevant footnote, though. It looks like this

and says that the word “λεσβάρχην“ can, according to French archaeologist Georges Perrot, be found in an inscription at the ancient city of Amastris (which today is part of Turkey and called “Amasra”). The Perrot book - published in 1875 and thereby throwing me into a release-date-related pit of despair - is called Mémoires d'archéologie, d'épigraphie et d'histoire and can be found here. Perrot says on pages 167 and 168 that the inscription must have adorned a statue’s pedestal and that “elle a été gravée en grands et beaux charactères, et qu’elle est fort bien conservé” (”it was engraved in big and beautiful letters and has been very well conserved”). And now look at this:

So we’ve finally arrived at the original source (I mean, I guess a picture of the actual inscription would be even better but this is as good as it gets). And what we can see from the above picture is that this Aulus Caecilius Proclus wasn’t only Lesbarch but also Pontarch and, if I’m understanding the “fils de Lesbos” (”son of Lesbos”) correctly, he was also a born Lesbian. Lastly, regarding the forms “Lesbarque/Lesbiarch”: According to Google Translate and the very little bit of the Greek alphabet I managed to pick up by accident during university, “λεσβἀρχην“ transliterates to “lesbarchin”. As you can tell, I don’t speak Greek, so I don’t know if “-archin” (or some part of it) is a grammatical form denoting a certain case or if this simply means that the literal title of this postion was “lesbarchin” and the “-arque/-arch” endings are just gallicised/anglicised versions of that suffix or whatnot. But for whatever it’s worth, everything points to the fact that “Lesbiarch” in whatever form was indeed a historically existent title.

[prokopetz]

I honestly didn’t expect anyone to actually have an answer to that, but I truly appreciate the trouble you went to in order to find one!

[hersurvival]

[thebraveandthebroiled]

Heyo it’s back to school time and here’s a research tip from your friendly neighborhood academic librarian.When searching for any topic on the internet just type in the word ‘libguide’ after your topic and tada like magic there will be several  beautifully curated lists of books, journals, articles, or other resources dealing with your subject. Librarians create these guides to help with folks’ informational needs, so please go find one and make a librarian happy today!!

[okayto]

this is the BEST advice, and there are so many options, both if you’re doing academic research, or just curious and looking for information!

It’s so interesting what you can find!

Dime novels, mystery & detective fiction, adulting (not academic, but still), D&D guide, citation libguides, comics, graphic novels, and manga, German language & literature, differentiating fake news, firefighting, body autonomy for kids and young adults, interfaith women advocates for social justice, cooking (nonacademic)/food culture and cuisine/food & cooking.

[thebraveandthebroiled]

Thank you for excellent additions and very much agre ewith you that cooking libguides are the best!! Have you seen all the ones from the Culinary Institute of America??

Oh! Building on your notes I figured I should mention to everyone that most academic institutions with a library are going to have a page with the research guides the librarians have made for their patrons. This will include basic topic guides on things like how to use the library or how to create citations. There will also be subject guides for areas of study like philosophy or biology. As well as specific course guides to assist classes that are being taught like FM 114: Introduction to the Fashion Industry or BME6938: Nanoparticle Nanomedicines.

If any of y’all have started university totally check out the ones your librarians have put up! There’s a ton up to help you along your research journey. And if you aren’t at university check them out too!! Some of the resources won’t be accessible but there’s loads of information you’ll still be able to use and get to.

[theblairwitchismymom]

Hello, fellow academic librarian specializing in instruction! Many libraries also include guides orientations on how to properly utilize non-subject specific databases. Watch those before diving into your first research project so you understand the tools and features available to you to make your life easier. Many universities subscribe to ProQuest or EBSCO and there are MANY tutorials that will teach you how to use them in less than 5 mins.

Believe me, you will save yourself A LOT of headache with both LibGuides and orientations. Good luck and happy hunting!

[prokopetz]

Let's consider the sampling bias of a classic polling method: the telephone survey.

In many jurisdictions, robo-calling cell phone numbers is illegal, so right off the jump, our sample is limited to people with landlines.

Second, our survey's calling centre probably doesn't operate 24/7, and you can only answer a home landline when you're at home, so we're also selecting for people who tend to be at home during our calling centre's office hours.

Third, most people who have landlines probably also have answering services and caller ID, so we're additionally selecting for people who answer unknown numbers rather than letting them go to the machine.

Fourth, our recipient needs to be able to participate in the survey, so we're also selecting for people who speak the language(s) in which the survey is being administered.

Finally, after all this, most people will just hang up once they figure out they're being polled, so in sum, we're selecting for people who:

have landlines;

are usually at home during our calling centre's office hours;

customarily answer unknown numbers;

speak the language(s) in which the survey is administered; and

are actually interested in responding to surveys.

Any one of these factors is likely to introduce very serious bias into our results; all of them taken together are going to render our data practically meaningless for most purposes.

Now, understand that this still represents less selection bias than trying to do demographic surveys by reblogging Tumblr polls.

[planeposting]

I love how most large airplanes kind of proportionally look normal. Like if you don't pay attention to the windows the A380 looks incredibly like a normal plane, and the 747 only looks weird because of the hump, otherwise it'd look very normal plane shaped

Two normal ass planes right there. Shaped much like a normal plane.

Meanwhile there's Mriya

And like obviously there are elements of her design that are intentionally different because of her specialization in large cargo vs being a generalist like her smaller Western cousins but like. It also feels like Mriya has gotten to a size where the proportions necessary for flight have just gotten ridiculous.

Look at her shoulders. Look at her centipede ass landing gear.

Imagine flying this beast of a plane when she was still around. Being one of the only human beings on earth with a type rating on this fucking eldritch horror of a plane. It would be like flying Concorde but if Concorde also had tentacles and there was only one of it. It would be the first thing I say to anybody I meet

[cralbd]

one of my favorite things abt Mriya is how antonov airlines pivoted so effectively in turning the equivalent (albeit with a waaaay broader scope) of NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft into the most ridiculously OP heavy cargo plane ever conceived.

look at her shoulders. those are vestiges of a massive logistics system that never even glimpsed its full potential...

her centipede-ass landing gear was designed with a very specific payload center-of-mass in mind (overhead cargo e.g. Buran, MAKS, Energia tanks), but turned out to be just as effective in its new life hauling heavy and awkward cargo, this time *inside* the fuselage.

i have assignments due in a few days, but something i'd really like to do is a series of posts on the Buran/Energia program and the groundbreaking, wacky, and sadly long-gone aviation equipment developed to support it.

i hope and pray that WHEN ukraine finally pushes out the invaders, someday we'll see her in the skies again🕊✈️

(pardon the emojis, but her name is literally "peace". felt wrong not to)

[blorboresidue]

it is a truth universally acknowledged that having fun isn't hard when you've got a library card

[certifiedlibraryposts]

Certified Library Post

[hotvintagepoll]

I make these posts every once in a while but I think it's worth mentioning again that if you're interested in trying out old movies, a good option is to always see if your library includes any streaming service options you can access using your library account. Using library-supported streaming services is great because 1) supporting the library's programs means the library keeps getting funded 2) it's literally as easy as any paid-for streaming service 3) old movies are fun. I have access to Kanopy and Hoopla through my library, and here's a small sampling of what's available on them right now to stream for free:

Kanopy

Seven Samurai (Toshiro Mifune)

Body and Soul (Paul Robeson)

My Man Godfrey (Carole Lombard, William Powell)

Barbarella (Jane Fonda)

Tokyo Story (Setsuko Hara)

Nosferatu (Max Schreck)

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Conrad Veidt)

Charade (Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn)

The Apartment (Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine)

Wuthering Heights (Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon)

Rashomon (Toshiro Mifune again)

Metropolis (Brigitte Helm)

Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Catherine Deneuve)

Hoopla

The Court Jester (Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone, Angela Lansbury)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes)

Sunset Boulevard (Gloria Swanson)

A Place in the Sun (Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor)

Moby Dick (Gregory Peck)

Hud (Paul Newman)

War and Peace (Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda)

Wings (Clara Bow)

I haven't seen all of these movies, so don't consider these recs, but this is a great cross section of genres, hotties, and well-known films if you're looking for a place to start. Use your library! It's fucking free!

[danskjavlarna]

Source details and larger version.

I have some rather fun vintage bear imagery collected here.

[apod]

2025 November 11

Jupiter in Ultraviolet from Hubble Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: Jupiter looks a bit different in ultraviolet light. To better interpret Jupiter’s cloud motions and to help NASA’s robotic Juno spacecraft understand the planetary context of the small fields that it sees, the Hubble Space Telescope was being directed to regularly image the entire Jovian giant. The colors of Jupiter being monitored go beyond the normal human visual range to include both ultraviolet and (not pictured) infrared light. Featured from 2017, Jupiter appears different in near ultraviolet light, partly because the amount of sunlight reflected back is distinct, giving differing cloud heights and latitudes discrepant brightnesses. In the near UV, Jupiter’s poles appear relatively dark, as does its Great Red Spot and a smaller (optically) white oval to the right. The String of Pearl storms farther to the right, however, are brightest in near ultraviolet, and so here appear (false-color) pink. Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede appears on the upper left. Juno continues on a looping 33-day orbit around Jupiter, while Earth-orbiting Hubble is aging and now relies on a single stabilizing gyroscope.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/fap/ap251111.html

[frankieeex3]

Requesting lesbian books from the library like my life depends on it

[queerliblib]

everybody do this

[oberonsson]

Dame Archer kicks McDougal’s Scots ass there in the rain at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire - August 11, 2018 - Photo by Douglas Herring

[anarcho-wormism-deactivated2019]

😮

[garrettauthor]

Oh NO.

[treacleaergia]

me, a sheltered noblewoman: Pray who is that brave knight? Dame Archer:*turns around* me: gasp! *instantly in love*

[dirtyriver]

Alicia Archer

[ex-sang-uination]

my bi heart………

[ohmightysmiter]

I’VE NEVER SEEN THE ADDED PICS

[hrefnatheravenqueen]

[nyx-belial]

*dies*

[garrettauthor]

Oh shit.

[notlostonanadventure]

GAY KNIGHTS

[unicornofdarknessstuff-deactiva]

Fellas I’m real gay

[thecarrott]

@0hheytherebigbadwolf HELP!!

[0hheytherebigbadwolf]

Every June this inevitably winds up back on my dash. And I appreciate that. And I will reblog it. Every time.

[json-derulo]

having the Aviation Accident Investigations Autism™️ has actually done wonders for the way I process and respond to my own fuck-ups

[json-derulo]

And I don't just mean "oh, my little work mistake is actually nothing compared to a fiery crash that kills people," either. The reason commercial flight is so many orders of magnitude safer than any other form of transportation is because after every accident and incident, an independent regulatory body investigated it with the express goal of figuring out exactly what happened, why, and how to prevent the same thing from ever happening again—not to root out which person deserved the blame or the liability.

It's a simple, shockingly effective idea. It's also worlds away from how most people approach their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

[json-derulo]

Because it’s never just one person’s fault. And even when it is, it still isn’t. 

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

Everyone eventually has a bad day. Every component breaks down. Every computer gets a bad a Windows update and spirals into a reboot doom loop. If it’s possible for one person’s mistake to domino into a mushroom cloud of a fuckup, then that task is too critical to be one person's sole responsibility. The accident sequence starts with the design of the system—so how do you improve the system to keep it from happening again?

[json-derulo]

oh yeah. The “modern commercial aviation is the safest form of transport” thing only applies to planes, btw. A helicopter is a beautiful metal horse that wants to break its legs and die so so so badly

[makingqueerhistory]

queer whimsy

a human-made reading list from the eleanor's feminist collective <3