I can't be having with this

Adult human female - 30's, bihet, living at the Hub of the Solar System. Fandom, cats and Discourse. I keep my Pagan shit at @acer--saccharum.  

[prokopetz]

If you're lamenting the fact that you used to be able to shoot through a 500-page novel in like a day when you were in middle school and now you can't, it's worth bearing in mind that a big part of that is because when you were in middle school, your reading comprehension sucked. Yes, mental health and the stresses of adult life can definitely be factors, but it's also the case that reading is typically more effortful as an adult because you've learned to Ponder The Implications. The material isn't just skimming over the surface of your brain anymore, and some of the spoons you used to spend on maximising your daily page count are now spent on actually thinking about what you're reading!

[prokopetz]

Reading as a kid: "I can tell that this is supposed to be an emotionally moving ending, but I genuinely cannot remember who two-thirds of these characters are."

Reading as an adult: *reads a paragraph* *pauses* *reads the same paragraph again* *flips back and re-reads the preceding page to make sure you didn't misunderstand something* *stares into space for ten minutes as the Implications sink in*

[dr-graf]

     “And the new day was a great big fish”  

[coldalbion]

Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index

Campaigner has used the idea drawn from Discworld novels to register the disproportionate effect price rises have on the lower paid

""The index, Monroe said, is named in honour of Pratchett’s creation Sam Vimes, who in the Discworld novel Men at Arms lays out the “Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness”.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money,” wrote Pratchett. “Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”

The Pratchett estate has authorised the use of the name, tweeting its own Pratchett quote in support of Monroe’s campaign. “Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness,” wrote the late Discworld author in Men at Arms.

Rhianna Pratchett said: “My father used his anger about inequality, classism, xenophobia and bigotry to help power the moral core of his work. One of his most famous lightning-rods for this was Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch - a cynical, but likable, man who attempts to better himself whilst railing against the injustices around him. Some of which he’s had a hand in perpetrating in the past.

“Vimes’s musing on how expensive it is to be poor via the cost of boots was a razor-sharp evaluation of socio-economic unfairness. And one that’s all too pertinent today, where our most vulnerable so often bear the brunt of austerity measures and are cast adrift from protection and empathy. Whilst we don’t have Vimes any more, we do have Jack and Dad would be proud to see his work used in such a way.”

[officialweatherwax]

I saw you in a YouTube video by VaazkL, and I’m curious about your name!

Be honest: is this just a way of generating traffic for VaazkL or whoever?

[emeritusprofessorofnothing]

Granny weatherwax would not answer this question

[officialweatherwax]

Granny Weatherwax lacks curiosity tbh

[officialweatherwax]

I saw you in a YouTube video by VaazkL, and I’m curious about your name!

Be honest: is this just a way of generating traffic for VaazkL or whoever?

[menzoberranzan]

Absolutely not! I have no affiliation with anyone on YouTube or I promise I would have crawled out of the bucket by now.

[officialweatherwax]

Ok, it's just that I don't think I've ever been in a YouTube video. But the username (and blog title and pic/background) is a reference my favorite Discworld character and fictional idol, Esmeralda "Granny" Weatherwax.

[catchymemes]

[serial-unaliver-deactivated2024]

it's kind of crazy climate change has occurred at such a remarkable pace that I and everyone else around my age can remember a completely different climate in our childhoods. I truly watched winter gradually disappear in my life.

[room429]

"You're too young to remember this, but there used to be so many insects outside that you would have to clean them off the windshield after a long car ride" is the kind of sentence that would have been in a cheesy scifi short story earlier in my life, perhaps submitted to a literary magazine and accepted to show support for its environmentalist message - now it's something I've said in earnest.

[officialweatherwax]

Last fall my husband was telling my daughter all the best places in our neighborhood to go sledding, because he grew up around here, but it didn't end up actually snowing enough this year for us to take her sledding. We have a sled in our basement that hasn't been used in 2 years. What a difference 30 years makes 😬.

[goldentangerines]

every now and then i have to think of the roman family from two thousand years ago that buried their little daughter in a boy’s athletic-themed sarcophagus and i weep a little because that’s the softest declaration of love i can possibly imagine

[goldentangerines]

i am once again emotional and sleep deprived so let me elaborate to make myself feel better.

octavia paulina was a six year old girl whose sarcophagus was found in her family’s tomb at via triumphalis in rome, dated roughly around the third century a.d. her parents mourned her mors immatura, her premature death, by having the wall behind her sarcophagus painted with the image of a giant meadow with children and a chariot pulled by doves accompanied by hermes leading an unconscious girl into afterlife. (to my knowledge, the doves and the fact that they were led by hermes was a symbol for hope.)

the sarcophagus itself shows athletic competitions between girls and boys alike, and in the most important one on the front, octavia paulina appears as the winner (a palm branch in her hand, which is meant to symbolize her strength and honor, her virtus). her opponent is sitting on the floor, upset. what really stands out is that octavia paulina’s parents ordered a common sarcophagus that was usually used to bury boys with athletic interests or futures but then proceeded to have it remodeled — smaller heads and genitalia cut off etc — to include girls in the relief.

i just get very soft when i think about parents ordering a sarcophagus for their little daughter who think it’s perfect for her and who remodel it to make it even more accurate for her. the thought of parents more than 1.700 years ago thinking their six year old daughter deserves a sarcophagus that fits her personality (rather than what was expected of her as a young girl of the time) despite none being available and then ordering for it to be altered makes me wanna scream because it’s such a human and caring thing to do. maybe octavia paulina even had a say in this because it took weeks to months to make a sarcophagus this detailed.

disclaimer: a lot of this messy little thing was transcribed from what my professor has told us in his sarcophagus class and this article; this is just a rambling post, it isn’t detailed or well put or structured properly, and not fit for scientific research.

[onehandedly]

In 2000 a Roman tomb from the first century DC was found in Grottaferrata, near Rome.  Inside there were two sarcofagi in white marble identifying their occupants. Both people had died in summer, albeit years apart from each other, and had been preserved (an unusual detail that suggests they might have been followers of the cult of Isis).  They were mother and son, other inscriptions tell us the tomb had been commissioned by the woman’s younger daughter (the half sister of the man) Antestia Balbina. 

The young man, Carvilio Gemello, was around 18 when he died, likely as a consequence of a bone fracture in his leg. The woman, Aebutia, was around forty forty-five when she died and was buried wearing this ring (now housed in the Palestrina Archeological museum)

Behind the quartz window we can still see the face of Carvilio Gemello engraved in a golden miniature that his mother commissioned. 

In a way, Aebutia and the parents of Octavia Paulina, succeeded in defying death with their acts of love.  After thousands of years we can still see the face of Carvilio Gemello like his mother last saw him, know that Octavia Paulina was an athletic little girl beloved by her family. Life was unkind to both so those who loved them tried to make sure memory wouldn’t be. 

[bucketxyz]

“emasculating” is a euphemism for “demeaning in a way only women should have to suffer”

[weirdtranssexual]

it is literally so easy to talk about what’s happening to palestinians without being antisemitic i don’t know how so many of you are failing so badly at it

[arabellas]

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE 1.01 | Pilot

[eurasianmagpies]

people love to find progressive ways to say we should all be arranged into separate groups and try our hardest to not relate to one another

[catchymemes]

[snarkaeologist]

I follow sled dog racing because for two weeks a year you get time-delayed updates like "The front-runner had to punch a moose, no injuries reported" and then a little while later "Dallas Seavey had to kill the moose, but don't worry, we've dispatched state troopers to salvage the meat."

No other sport delivers storylines like this.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

zany to me how these um actually nihilists like to pretend that "um actually love/friendship/cooperation/kindness isn't real bc we evolved that way to benefit ourselves as a species..." um YES? that's also where tool use comes from? that's where cooking comes from? am i supposed to think social bonds & tool use & cooking aren't "real" because they evolved over time instead of appearing fully formed from the ether?

sorry u can't enjoy things. im a superior being twirling a fork in my bowl of delicious noodles whilst staring in adoration at the world

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

"love isn't real it's a chemical reaction" hon i got news for u about chemical reactions and the nature of existence. it's ALL chemicals. existence is literally all just chemicals. "we evolved social bonds to benefit ourselves" so you agree? you agree that social bonds are helpful and important enough that they literally shaped the history of human evolution? i do not think u are saying, what u think u are saying.

[bouncinghedgehog-deactivated202]

Milwaukee's War Memorial & Arts Center was designed in the early 1950s by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. The concrete, glass and steel building sits on angular, reinforced columns and offers spectacular views of Lake Michigan. (Photographer unknown) #saarinen #milwaukee #midcenturymodern

[sculpturegallery]

Eva Funderburgh