Bad Bitch Does The Stabby-Stabby

short book reviews by an obsessive ya fantasy nerd

[existennialmemes]

Thinking about how when the Oceangate sub imploded, the coastguard picked it up on their radar and knew from the moment it happened that everyone on board was already gone, and yet there was still a five day manhunt.

And how like a week before that, a refugee ship sank off the coast of Greece, whose officials knew this was happening and had ships within reach, but intentionally did nothing.

And how there was like the most expansive manhunt in recent history to find a suspect in the UHC shooting. In a city known for its unsolved crimes. How Briana Boston was arrested for a vaguely perceived threat to a CEO she wasn't even speaking to nor mentioned, while internet stalkers are never addressed unless they hurt someone, and then it's a maybe

And just how there is always money to perform for the rich, even when they can't actually be helped. And there is never money to help the poor, no matter how easy they would be to save.

And for some reason it's considered "dangerous and extreme" to want a world where our lives aren't just fodder at the whims of the rich.

[i-will-endure-it]

On friendship

[linguistness]

No, actually, i want cables and not bluetooth, i don't want touchscreens, i want buttons and knobs, i want to be able to take the battery out of my phone, i want to charge my phone and plug in head phones at the same time, i want a cd drive in my laptop and not have to buy an external drive, i want a car without a display, i want to turn on the lights with a switch not with my voice, i want to have a paper cinema ticket not a QR code, i want to listen to illegally burned music on a 00s cd player, i want to watch movies that i actually own, i want to read news once a day on paper, i want to aimlessly flick through magazines and not doomscroll on social media, i want to write emails and not talk to chatbots, i want to own stuff without hundreds of digital subscriptions, i want

[officialbluebeetle-deactivated2]

ok but what if like. werewolves transform under the full moon but theres just this one and by day hes a big tough guy and then when he transforms hes a tiny dog. just fucking. just fucking turns into the tiniest, fluffiest dog

imagine that howling at the moon

[officialbluebeetle-deactivated2]

imagine

[verceri-deactivated20141109]

Truly a ferocious predator.

[verceri-deactivated20141109]

And lastly: (He’s the pack leader obviously)

[itsa-me-amelie]

the big wolves are his younger sisters

[heidmaan]

oh my fucking god it got better

[trochaic-mutant-ninja-tetrameter]

🎶Lycan with a cute form! Puppy power!🎵

[despazito]

CBC made a good documentary on adult ADHD and part of it really caught me off guard because i swear they repeated verbatim my life story for the past 3 years

full programme here:

http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/adhd-not-just-for-kids

[fuckingconversations]

My ADHD manifested in excellent in-class work. Excellent understanding in discussions. Excellent participation. 

My ADHD manifested in piles of homework left undone until the last possible minute, while I stared at them, thinking; “I want to get these done. I understand the theory. It would take 10 minutes. I want to start, why can’t I start?” 

My ADHD manifested in fantastic reading comprehension - nigh impenetrable focus on interesting topics the first time I’m reading about them. 

My ADHD manifested in a complete inability to focus on reviews or re-reads, mind skittering sideways and away whenever anything was boring or repetitive. I sat down to study, my books open, my eyes on the text, and my brain clawing its way out the back of my head to focus on something else - anything else. Focus, focus! [No.]

My ADHD manifested in Articulating wings half-finished but still beautiful, in beautiful lineart and half-hearted coloring. In stories written passionately for days until I forgot it existed and never returned. In projects started and forgotten and started and forgotten a thousand times until my bins of project supplies piled up and my bank account shriveled down. No, it will be different this time - I LOVE this new thing. This new thing is my world, my destiny, my Everything. I CREATE and CREATE and CREATE and never FINISH. 

My ADHD manifested in confusion and surprise as time slithered away, hours passing like minutes and minutes seeming endless by contrast. An inability to gauge how much time had passed, was left, a task would take. An inability to hold dates in my head, because time didn’t feel consistent or even real.

 My ADHD manifested in watching someone talk and not understanding a word they said - literally hearing sounds and translating out only nonsense. In thoughts so loud I couldn’t speak coherently. In a conversation across the room shattering an idea I was trying to hold. It’s hard to think when you’re already thinking about everything around you. 

[obsessed-with-the-bitches]

I have never (and almost certainly never will) watched enough of The Hot Doga to know, understand, or care what the clearly drug-fueled, ever-loving FUCK is happening

BUT...

Shane's creation of The Professor and Puppet History's side stories and genie bullshit seem a lot less out of left field now

[albatrossisland]

[lierdumoa]

"instead of you" isn't "for you"

[alternis]

image text:

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

"Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me?

Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters."

[fixyourwritinghabits]

There's some scoffing at the value of copywriting, but you have to remember that the ability to advertise is an extremely valuable skill. The ability to convince someone to consider a product with words alone is the same skill you need to pitch your story, make a convincing argument, or craft a compelling narrative. It's a writing skill, like any other.

[anonniemousefics]

“Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.”

Damn. Putting this on a sticky note on my mirror.

[obsessed-with-the-bitches]

After years of knitting and never touching socks (somehow)...

Behold: my first sock

[konansgirlfriend]

Was at the art museum earlier and i have a new favourite painting

[konansgirlfriend]

Is this not the cutest??? Its called ”Me and Brita” and this guy in 1895 was like ”i love this kid so much imma do a painting of us having fun so the world will always know how much i loved her and what a good time we had”

[08-plaza]

the painting in the background is looking at them like “my word what a cool pair”

[cheltenhambolditalic]

More specifically that is Carl Larsson with one of his 8 children.

He came from a extremely poor and abusive background but worked his way into fine society, where he fell in love with fellow artist Karin Bergöö, and his works shifted to painting his home life.

Painting titled "My Loved Ones"

[in reference to his career] "the most immediate and lasting part of my life's work. these pictures are of course a very genuine expression of my personality, of my deepest feelings, of all my limitless love for my wife and children."

[more-is-toto]

OMFG I used to work at Carl’s house which in now a museum in Falun, Sweden, and now his art is on my dash! 

I could tell so many stories about this family, but to sum it up they lived the definition of what we would call a cottagecore life where both Carl and Karin worked as artists in their dream house that they designed and built together. It really was an artist’s home built with pure love, and also a big contrast to what a typical Swedish home looked like at the time. The late 1800s trend was to have a dark home with gothic vibes and brown and dark red colours. The Larsson’s home though is bright and colourful with big windows and homemade textiles sewn by Karin.

I also wanted to tell a bit about Brita, the cute little girl on her father’s shoulders in the painting in the original post. She was the fifth child of seven and felt sometimes like she didn’t get enough attention from her dad as a middle child in a big family. To get more time with her dad she would ask him to paint only her as often as possible since then she could talk to him without any of her siblings annoying them. This is how she became the most painted of all the children with hundreds of portraits made with her as the model. She was 89 years old when she died in 1982 and loved to talk about her childhood and those many, many painting sessions with dad.

This is one of my favourite paintings of Carl Larsson, A Viking Raid in Dalarna. Here we have all the children in a boat during a cool summer’s eve (from left, Pontus, Brita, Lisbeth, Ulf, Kersti, Esbjörn, Suzanne).

[woodelf68]

I reblogged this post too quickly before checking the notes and seeing this fantastic addition. I love how Brita came up with a solution to her problem -- wanting some undivided attention from her father -- in a way that worked for both of them.

[bethanydelleman]

I don't know exactly how to articulate this but... if you repeatedly show historical fiction women rejecting traditionally female skills/duties and doing swords instead, because swords is obviously the Most Important Thing, you are kind of implying that all the work that has been traditionally done by female hands for millennia was useless all along and not, you know, keeping civilization going. Because it's usually rejected not as a personal preference but as This Is The Important Stuff (male work) and That is The Dumb Useless Stuff (women's work) and that kind of bothers me. The message was supposed to be Vital But Underpaid and Underappreciated, not women's work is insignificant so let's all go do swords.

[bisexualbaker]

Shoutout to Tamora Pierce, whose first protagonist is a woman who went to be a knight, but still recognized and celebrated how important traditionally feminine work is. It wasn't for her, but not because she thought it was beneath her!

[obsessed-with-the-bitches]

Second shout out to Tamora Pierce, who wrote another world later featuring a female protagonist who's power manifested through thread, one of the traditionally feminine activities, and was a guiding force of the series as well as a male character who was a gardener, another traditionally feminine activity!!!!

[depsidase]

[crabapplepectin]

ppl in the age of cell phones: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of books: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of textile art: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of picking lice: fucking up their necks

ppl in the age of cooking: fucking up their necks

[crabapplepectin]

in the age of keyboards: carpel tunnel

in the age of writing by hand: carpel tunnel

in the age of squeezing water out of wet clothes after cleaning them by hand: carpel tunnel

in the age of using hand-sized stone tools: carpel tunnel

[notyourplayground]

#besties i am starting to think the human skeletal system might just be trash (via @cicerfics)

you are not wrong bestie

[puraiuddo]

in the Pleistocene age when humankind first began to walk upright: knee problems

[if-i-was-a-wyrm]

I'm no scientist, but i believe this isnt a skeletal issue and is more of a brain issue.

the human body is very good at doing all of these things. however, if you do these things repetitively for long hours every day, the body will get worn out.

the reason why this is a brain issue is because the brain loves doing things repetitively for long hours every day, because it likes doing things the body is good at.

[biggaybunny]

Tumblr staff: ten options is enough for polls, right? No one needs more than that on a regular basis. The average tumblr user: Hey guys which element of the periodic table do you think is the most fuckable?

[lady-inkyrius]

Posting hole

[lady-inkyrius]

Lol

[metastablephysicist]

yeah yeah carbon nanotubes. but what about the copper nanotubes.

[mythopoeticlicense]

I bet you'd need some high quality copper for that huh?

[6qubed]

not again you mesopotamian son of a bitch

[eurodynamic]

[kanagenwrites]

I once wrote a 1500 word essay on something I'd forgotten to read in the 40 minutes before class. Including the time it took to read the thing I'd forgotten to read.

I got an A on that paper.

Writing is a skill. Skill is muscle. If you don't use a muscle, it atrophies. If you are a student and you are tempted to use genAI to cheese an assignment, I am begging you for your own sake to not do it.

This is not a moral stance about genAI (which is shit at what it's ostensibly for, and full of lies and evil, and fueled by art theft and burning rainforests, and there is no good reason to ever use it for anything; that's the moral reason for why you shouldn't use it), it is a purely pragmatic stance based on the fact that if you use it you will never learn the single most essential skill that is used in every single workplace.

You will never learn to bullshit.

And if you cannot bullshit, you will not understand when you are being fed bullshit by others.

For your own sake you must learn to do your own thinking, your own bullshitting, because our trashfire society runs on bullshit and for your own good you must become fluent in it, because very few people will bother to translate it for you. It was asinine in the late 90s, and it is asinine today, but it is the central truth of adult society: everything is bullshit, and you need to know what is going on beneath the bullshit, and you need to be able to bullshit back if necessary.

I know that the expectations being placed on you are ever-increasing, and I know that it does not seem rational to put effort into explaining the plot of a Charles Dickens novel to someone who has read the thing 50 times and will read 50 identical essays about it over the weekend. I know you are being handed ever-greater heaps of what is functionally mindless busywork because of an institutional obsession with metrics that don't actually measure learning in a useful way. High school was nightmarish in the 90s and I am fully aware that it has only gotten worse.

Nevertheless, you must try, if only for your own sake. Curiosity is your best hope, and dogged determination your best weapon. Learn, please, if only out of spite.

I was able to get an A on that paper because I was able to skim the reading, figure out what it was about, and bullshit for 1500 words in the space of 40 minutes.

Imagine what you can do if you learn to bullshit like I can bullshit.

[eldritchamy]

For my senior year of AP English, I was assigned reading over Easter break. We were instructed to read The Old Man And The Sea, and save the rest of the short stories in the book for the first week back.

Unfortunately, what I heard was "read everything BUT The Old Man And The Sea."

Double unfortunately: the first day back was a test, on The Old Man And The Sea. Which I had read exactly zero words of. It was, notably, a short essay test. It wasn't multiple choice or fill in the blank. It was designed to require deliberate answers from scratch, entirely out of your own head, with nothing to go on BUT what was in your head.

And in the course of about 45 minutes, I was able to use the questions of the test itself to piece together a vague enough sense of how the story went to bullshit my way through other questions. I gave wide, thematic answers that were extremely light on details, since I did not know any of them, and did not even know this test would be happening until it was in front of me. An essay test for an AP-level English class.

I had a starting point of zero information, and an essay test about the thing I was supposed to have read.

I bullshitted my way to a B+ on it.

On a test I should have gotten a ZERO on.

It's been 16 years since I took that test.

I couldn't tell you a damn thing about The Old Man And The Sea.

But you better fucking believe I still know how to bullshit, and when someone is trying to bullshit me.

The power and utility of knowing how bullshit works CANNOT be overstated. It is one of the most important skills you can ever have.

[kittydesade]

My favorite part of this is the little “Yet I’m still failing” at the bottom of the screencap. It’s not yet occurred to you to change something you’re doing? Maybe try not using ChatGPT?

[obsessed-with-the-bitches]

I am in teacher school right now and one of my assignments involves coming up with and justifying a policy on AI in the classroom.

This post is all of the reasons why my policy simply says "no".

[menlove-archive]

you ever have situations that make you want to take people by the shoulders and go "you are not 15 any longer. this behavior is no longer quirky and cute. it is exhausting for you and everyone else to act like a teenager you haven't been in a decade or longer. knock it the fuck off"

[menlove-archive]

lots of ppl making this about adults who have interests they find cringe but let me be clear this is about emotional immaturity. idgaf if you're 35 and like goku okay but can you have an adult conversation without making yourself the victim is the matter at hand here

[obsessed-with-the-bitches]

Literally leaving an abusive 10+ year friendship about this bc apparently I grew up and they didn't

It really isn't cute it's brutal

[maxkirin]

So, let me guess– you just started a new book, right? And you’re stumped. You have no idea how much an AK47 goes for nowadays. I get ya, cousin. Tough world we live in. A writer’s gotta know, but them NSA hounds are after ya 24/7. I know, cousin, I know. If there was only a way to find out all of this rather edgy information without getting yourself in trouble…

You’re in luck, cousin. I have just the thing for ya.

It’s called Havocscope. It’s got information and prices for all sorts of edgy information. Ever wondered how much cocaine costs by the gram, or how much a kidney sells for, or (worst of all) how much it costs to hire an assassin?

I got your back, cousin. Just head over to Havocscope.

((PS: In case you’re wondering, Havocscope is a database full of information regarding the criminal underworld. The information you will find there has been taken from newspapers and police reports. It’s perfectly legal, no need to worry about the NSA hounds, cousin ;p))

Want more writerly content? Follow maxkirin.tumblr.com!

[writing-prompt-s]

Assassins

“Below are selected prices that are paid to professional assassins by criminal organizations and drug cartels for a contract hit.

In Australia, the median price to hire a hit man is $13,610 (9,800 Euros), with the price going up to $83,000 (60,000 Euros) based on the task.

In Mexico, the cost for a low level assassin is $208 (150 Euros), and up to $20,832 (15,000 Euros) for a higher profile target like a police chief.

The prices paid in Argentina are between $3,749 (2,700 Euros) to $5,555 (4,000 Euros) per hit.

Government statistics in Spain state that 40 assassinations take place each year, with prices for the hit ranging between $27 (20 Euros) to $69,000 (50,000 Euros).”

So cheap! I always thought things like this would cost more than $1 million…

[writer-wannabe-needs-inspiration]

This is super useful to know!

[writing-prompt-s]

and not just for writing!!

[ladybugseatppl]

@katherine-rose

[katherine-rose]

HOLY FUCK

HOW MANY HOURS HAVE I WASTED TRYING TO FIND HEROIN PRICES ON THE INTERNET WHAT A GREAT DATABASE

[midnight-spectrum-again]

I needed this

[rheevalka]

Actually useful. Sometimes incognito isn’t enough.

[tommyparkerr]

and suddenly my life just became much easier

[galaxy-of-stories]

I’ve heard of this before but the GIFs made it better 

[hiveswap]

You're not immune to being the bully btw. You're not immune to being in the wrong

[hiveswap]

"But i'm-" there is no identity or state of being that makes you immune to hurting someone. You can be convinced that you are in the right for doing so. You can be convinced that you're defending someone by doing so. You have always got to examine if you're taking pleasure in hurting someone or if you're actually doing something good.

[nirtonic]

[Image text: there's actually no political label or identity that absolves you of doing harm.]