Of Bustles and Masks @ofbustlesandmasks - Tumblr Blog

Ok, I've seen this sentiment before, but the amount of Kindle Unlimited ads I've been seeing is forcing me to repeat it-

Kindle Unlimited is offering two free months of unlimited ebooks. As a trial. Which will then become a paid subscription.

Your local library is offering unlimited ebooks all the time. Forever. No contracts, no predatory practices, no tracking of how long you spend on each particular page in the hopes that information about your habits can be sold for a profit.

Use your library. They want so badly to give you all of the things for free.

intosnarkness

Hey, take it from someone creeping towards 40:

Ignore the fun police.

If you like it, order your steak well done. Get your bagel toasted with jam and butter. Put ice in your scotch and ketchup on your hotdog. Get red wine with fish and white with steak. Who cares?

If you want to, listen to pop music. Watch blockbuster popcorn flicks. Read dime store novels. Enjoy them.

Dye your hair or cut it off. Paint your fingernails blue. Wear whatever the fuck you want on your own time (ie, when not at a job or school or whatever where you can get penalized for breaking rules) as long as you aren’t like welding or shoveling snow.

Anyone who tries to tell you you’re wrong? Say “okay” and go back to what you were doing. You’re not hurting them by enjoying yourself or having things the way you like them.

There are no caveats or addendums to this. No “but what about x?” Nah. You’re allowed the things you like. You don’t have to justify your taste or apologize for it if it’s not hurting anyone.

And likewise, let other people live their lives. We’re all dead in the long run, so tend your own garden before you become fertilizer in it.

wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva

“Look at this snake! He’s grumpy!” Well, Steve Irwin, if a cloud giant ten hundred times the size of G-d picked me up I think I would probably be grumpy too

wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva

“I’m sorry I’m late. I was accosted by a colossal beast on my way here.”

“Oh, goodness! Are you okay?”

“Yes he was actually very polite.”

cipheramnesia

[blushing] “he said i was gorgeous”

thcrin

Happy International Women’s Day! (8th March 2021)

thegingerpowers

brucebocchi

they should invent water for men

doubleca5t

Good news OP

thehornedwitch-deactivated20211

While this is a funny joke, as far as I'm aware this company is actually pretty cool, and the purpose behind the Liquid Death (sparkling or still) water is quite wholesome.

Part of the reason for it being a tallboy is that aluminum cans are more recyclable than water bottles, potentially infinitely so, while water bottles either have a limited amount of recyclability potential or aren't actually recyclable at all.

The other reason is to literally make it more fun and appealing to drink something other than alcohol at concert venues. Part of getting over addiction or even getting away from a culture that is doing you harm is, in the US at least, heavily associated with becoming "no fun". The idea here is to make water as fun in terms of packaging as alcohol, so people who are going sober, who can't drink, or who are the Designated Driver don't have to feel like they're relegated to the "no fun zone" forever and still get to order something with a silly name. We had these at my brother's wedding as an alcohol alternative and tbh it was really neat.

From the Liquid Death website:

"Most products in the health and wellness space are all marketed with “aspirational” fitness models and airbrushed celebrities. And many of us are tired of it. Why should unhealthy products be the only brands with “permission” to be loud, fun, and weird? And let's be honest, almost all marketing and branding is just theater. So we’re going to treat our theater like a movie theater and have more fun with it."

So yeah! If you want a neat alternative to buying bottled water, this isn't a bad alternative. Also, if you feel like you miss the feeling of opening a can of beer and drinking one, especially with carbonation, this could help curb the urge without having to substitute soda.

krakenartificer

Oh. So it was a stand against single use plastic, alcoholism culture, and eating disorders disguised as fitness.

saying this, she casually threw aside a large rock

teaboot

Wait what's a buildings fire evacuation plan if you aren't supposed to use the elevator to get down

lazodiac

You go down the stairwell/fire escape. Is that weird?

teaboot

But what if you have a walker or a wheelchair??

durpacerangerrogjro

in america at least, in this situation, there isnt one. either your loved ones or the firemen can get you out using the emergency fire escapes or stairs, or you die

teaboot

That's fucking horrific, thank you

official-lucifers-child

“fun” little story:

last summer my friend who is an amazingly talented artist and i were in this super tall building, and she’s in a wheelchair and i’m pushing her around the room. it’s an art exhibit and some of her art was chosen to be showcased there and so it’s all fine and dandy until suddenly an alarm starts going off

a FIRE ALARM

everyone starts running for the stairs and my friend just looks at me with this forlorn look on her face

“i can’t go down the stairs”

but i’m a stubborn bitch “i’ll carry you”

“what about my chair? it’s too expensive for me to be able to get another one if i can’t get this one back”

“i’ll carry that too”

and i did. we went to the stairs (by then most people from our floor were gone) and i lifted her up in a fireman’s carry over my shoulder and then lifted her chair up and used the ridiculous amount of adrenaline that was coursing through my veins to make it down approximately 20 half-flights of stairs until we met some people exiting lower floors, one of which who kindly took the chair. I changed positions so i was holding my friend bridal-style which was, somehow, easier and the person who took her wheelchair (with her permission to handle it of course) accompanied me to the ground floor and then out the doors

basically there is no real protocol for people who can’t use the stairs in an emergency. it’s up to the people with them, if anyone, to help them or the person to somehow make it down the stairs alone, unassisted

thank fuck that it was just a faulty alarm system, because if i was unable to carry her down those stairs and the building was on fucking fire???? then i don’t know what would have happened to her, but i don’t think it would have been very good.

it’s fucking ridiculous and ableist to the absolute max.

girlfriendsofthegalaxy

I use a cane. When I did a day-long fire safety training at my northeast American university (UMass Amherst), I asked that exact same question: “what am I supposed to do if the fire alarm goes off and I’m in my lab on the twelfth floor?”

the fire marshal hemmed and hawed for a while and then said to take the elevator- you’re supposed to leave it free for the fire department to use and they want able-bodied people out fast not waiting for elevators. if the fire alarm has just gone off the building probably hasn’t suffered enough structural damage to make using the elevator dangerous, and modern elevator wells are heavily reinforced. many large and high-trafficked buildings on my campus have fire rated elevators that link in with the fire alarm system so they won’t let you off on a floor with a possible fire.

if the elevator isn’t working, wait in the stairwell and call the fire department to let them know where you are. modern stairwells are also heavily reinforced- it might not be pleasant but modern building code usually requires fire-resistant stairwell doors in office and big residential buildings, also to help firefighters get in and out safely. older buildings’ stairwells may or may not be retrofitted with fire-resistant doors but a stairwell is generally the safest place to wait if you can’t get out.

what happened to your friend was horrible, and i’m very glad you were there to help her out, but you can absolutely use the elevator to evacuate if it’s not shut down. those don’t-use-the-elevator rules are for abled people.

tisfan

This is GOOD TO KNOW. why do they not tell people this??

ravynfyre

Okay, firefighter here. If you are not physically able to use the stairs, and the elevator is NOT compromised, use the elevator. But you MUST be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the elevator is NOT compromised before you get into it, because there is always the chance that once you get into it, you may not exit it. Power could go out. The elevator may actually BE compromised and you just couldn’t tell from where you were until you were in there, and it suddenly shuts down on you. Something else could happen.

Understand that once you enter the elevator, you could POTENTIALLY be taking your life into your hands there.

It is NOT LIKELY, to be perfectly honest. It’s only in a pretty catastrophic scenario - think the Twin Towers, USA, on September 11th - that the elevators will be compromised and out of service. But there is a NOT ZERO PERCENT CHANCE and you need to understand that and accept it.

As for leaving the elevators free for the firefighters, okay, here’s the deal. Unless your nearest fire station is literally right next door? Your first on scene fire truck is NOT likely to be there on scene and needing that elevator before you get to the ground. It takes us TIME to find the address, gear up, and drive to the building. Then we need to hoof it into where the elevators even ARE, so YOU HAVE TIME to use the elevator to get down to the ground floor... BUT ONLY IF THERE’S NOT A RUSH ON THE ELEVATOR! And THAT is WHY we don’t tell people this shit. That’s WHY we tell people to NEVER USE THE ELEVATOR... because every self-entitled asshole will use it because they don’t feel like walking, and then put YOU in danger by delaying the elevator’s arrival to you.

IF, however, the elevator IS compromised, or you just can’t get it to come for you, or whatever, and you either don’t have anyone with you who has the adrenaline fueled BALLS to be able to toss you over their shoulder and hoof it down the stairs with you - because, let’s face it, that is RARE AS FUCK, then HERE IS WHAT YOU DO:

You call 911 and tell the call taker that you are in the building that has a fire alarm going off, and you are not able to evacuate because of a physical disability, and you tell them what floor you are on, and EXACTLY what stairwell you are waiting at. And the very FIRST thing that the firefighters are going to do once they arrive, if it is, indeed, a REAL emergency, and not a false alarm, is come get your ass and bring you down. Whether that means carrying you down the stairs, or whether that means locking out the elevators so that no one else can override them and coming to get you themselves, they WILL come get you FIRST THING if it is a real event. And if it is a false alarm? You will probably be the first person who is not involved with the building to know, because the call-taker is going to stay on the line with you until you are under someone’s care and out of danger, or until the scene has been sorted out as real or false, and you are out of danger that way.

These are pretty standard operations in the fire service throughout the United States. There may be some minor variations based on specific municipalities, but, for the most part, this is pretty typical: LIFE BEFORE PROPERTY. So, as long as SOMEONE knows where you are - hence why you call 911 - Firefighters will come get you. You are NOT alone, and you have NOT been abandoned. I PROMISE. It’s like, our whole reason for doing the shit we do: to save lives and to break shit. Sometimes, we get lucky enough to do both at the same time.

High rise fires suck ass, and I always hated them. But the very FIRST thing I asked anytime we got one was if we had “any entrapments” - which is what we call anyone who could not self-evacuate for ANY reason. We ain’t leaving you behind. And yes, your friend who doesn’t have the stamina to carry you down can stay with you, too. Because I would never ask that of someone, honestly.

Also, just a little FYI... MOST fire alarms are false alarms. Not to make anyone complacent or anything, but, yeah. Most of them are either system malfunctions, someone accidentally hit a pull station, or someone burned popcorn in a break room. So don’t let a fire alarm freak you out until you need it to - by smelling or seeing smoke or flames.

crpl-pnk

ok very funny guys. you got me. now seriously who left all these neurotypicals in charge of the mental health field

eurekapix

who left all these healthy doctors in charge of the hospital

is literally what this sounds like

agentelderofshield

God, can you imagine how awful that would be? People with amputations consulting on things like prosthesis?

People in wheelchairs designing living and working spaces for people with mobility issues?

Autistic people actually trying to help other autistic people?

OMG, just thing – wouldn’t ti be awful if people who are now in remission actually helped manage the pain and other symptoms that come with having and treating cancer?

I mean seriously, what on Earth do any of those people really have to add to the discussion? What could they possibly know that an able-bodied neurotypical wouldn’t already know? I mean, experience doesn’t teach all that much!

/end sarcasm.

noping-out-deactivated20241117

jenroses

My care for EDS got radically better when my doctor’s kid was diagnosed.

goosewithajob

Dr. Marsha M. Linehan more or less reinvented the field of behavioral therapy after spending years being treated to the worst 1950-60s psychiatry had to offer. She created the system now known as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, now considered one of the most effective treatments for suicidal and self-destructive behaviors, as well as pretty much any other form of mental illness or mood/behavior disorders. She was able to do all of this BECAUSE she’s self-diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, not in spite of it.

lanthir

The only therapist, out of the many I have seen over the past 30 years, to succesfuly treat my anxiety? The one who had anxiety herself. Not a coincidence.

star-anise

Doctors with Disabilities Are Changing the System

hexane-harpy

This^^^

marithlizard

This!

piroco

AO3 offer a comfortable, no payment, ad-free service in exchange for donations specifically to KEEP THE WEBPAGE UP AND RUNNING and people still complain?!

tehnakki

Oh is it bitch about Ao3 time again? Reminder, for every bitch post that crosses my dash I donate $100 to ao3. So bring it on.

terrible-hawkideas

God, I missed this disaster man.

nae-design

Everyone’s favourite crane master Cristian Marianciuc’s latest works are just as stunning.

spindercatscher

@followthebluebell

a-book-of-creatures

Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going “what the fuck… what the fuck…”

a-book-of-creatures

Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelers’ tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).

downinmybeastheart

So unicorns are real

a-book-of-creatures

behold… a unicorn

gallusrostromegalus

I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASED to find out this is, in fact, the case.

glamourweaver

Questing Beast

- Neck of a snake

- body of a leopard

- haunches of a lion

- feet off a hart (deer)

So is it

Or….

weaselle

don’t forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other people’s mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?

these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, y’know, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.

In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giant who’s knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?

And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangs… so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and aren’t hairy, you can’t fool us, pranksters!

Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, I’m pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or another

historyisntboring

It can’t explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if there’s a lot of interesting informations in it.

And it’s not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!

By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?

Well-

- the big nasal opening kinda looks like an eye if you have no idea what kind of animal had this kind of skull (you can read more about this theory in this old National Geographic article if you like).

Here’s a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, it’s called شیردال‌ (shirdal, “lion eagle”). Now, it’s been the subject of some debate and it’s not confirmed, but there’s a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as “a lion with an eagle’s head”:

Check the “origin” part of the wikipedia page for “griffin” if you want to find more sources for this theory and for the arguments against it! Again, it’s just a theory, but I think it’s super cool.

excessively-english-jd

This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and went “oh fuck what’s that? some big…. lizardy thing?” and then created dragons.

autisticexpression

Also many deagon legends are simply exaggerations of well-known living reptiles like snakes and crocodilians.a

injuries-in-dust

It also explains why dragons can look so different in the myths of the various regions.

In asia, Dragons tend to look very long and snake like:

One of the most common dinosaurs that used to like in the asia region, so would have been the most common fossils found by people:

The Mamenchisaurus, this thing is just all neck and tail! You find just half a fossilised skeleton of this monster, you can easily end up thinking of a long snake-like beast.

South America also has legends snake-like dragons among some of its peoples:

What fossils from pre-historic south America could be found?

The Titanoboa, which can easily grow to be 40 feet long.

In North America there is the Piasa Bird

Which wikipedia tells me comes from “ the large Mississippian culture city of Cahokia,” it’s describes as

What fossils could have been found in that region:

Pterosaur, and Triceratops. Features of both sets of skeletons could have been merged into one legendary creature.

Then we get our European style dragon:

One of the most common fossils that could have been found was a Cetiosaurus

which, despite being a herbivore, looked to have a mouth of sharp looking teeth, consistant with a dragons.

Dragons amongst the peoples of Africa are even more varied, but most revolve around some kind of giant snake-like creature. As a quick example, we’ll take Dan Ayido Hwedo commonly found in West African mythology.

Fossils in that area could have been included the Aegyptosaurus:

A quick google search tells me that most Sauropods: well known for being long necked and long tailed, are found in Africa.

If you found only a half complete skeleton of this thing; which is likely, because it’s rare to find a complete dinosaur skeleton, you could easily think of a giant snake monster.

tragedyposting

Here is my long-promised recommendation post for the Circle of Magic books by @tamorapierce. I cannot recommend these books enough!! If I’ve made any mistakes, please let me know, I haven’t read these in years and I left my books at home. Slide transcriptions under the cut! This is where I notice a few typos. For example, I accidentally put fiber arts on there twice, but I will attribute that to how much I love Sandry.

Keep reading

nympheline

addendum to the body type point: daja, the smith mage, is a large, muscled woman, and the only commentary provided on that is someone saying she can’t afford to miss any meals (with the implication that she needs to power that machine, not that she’s too skinny).

tragedyposting

^^ thank you!!

tragedyposting

EDIT: It is Rosethorn, not Lark, who is Bi and Polyamorous!

I made a mistake (I knew it was Rosethorn I just wrote the wrong name), thanks to @honeysuckle-venom for pointing it out!

yesterdaysprint

Judge magazine, 1921

princelapine-deactivated2025031

this has been a mood for nearly 100 years now

butchmachine

One more year before the 100year anniversary

kitkatsmol

it’s been 100 years now

deadeyesopened

psychoetheric

god this kid rules

cerullos

this is still….so funny

unknownknights-blog

It was

jooshthepunished-deactivated202

Great thing about this episode is they blew the whole VFX budget for the season and basically the entire music budget on Tainted Love and Toxic that it resulted in cheaper effects and a cheaper score for the rest of the season and they really didn’t have to do that.