too old for this

vee: a relic of the ancient times

[othervee]

I was tagged by @nerdyfangirl76 to post 6 of my last non-face photos! Yay!

1. Corporate lunch setup at work.

2. At the Palais, waiting for Peter Hook and the Light.

3. Me and my friend being sparkle queens.

4. My cats jostling for prime position on the ducted heating vent.

5. Chinatown at night

6. Lunch tray on the day oncology ward (where I get preventative infusions)

No pressure tags @bluedalahorse @sillylittleflower @margotdanslebois and anyone else who has the urge 😀

[ellynneversweet]

Darcy’s introduction in Pride and Prejudice is really ‘what if you had just had the worst month of your life because your ex-bestie tried to lover boy scam your baby sister out of her share of your dad’s life insurance and your friend dragged you to a shitty party in a dive bar in the neighbourhood where he’d just signed a short term lease, and you decided to let your bad mood show because you were never going to see any of the assholes in this stupid shitty bar EVER again. And your friend ended up making out with a girl he’d just met there while you were stuck talking to her sister who was less cute and then her mother appeared and started trying to matchmake and started saying how if she was twenty years younger she’d clime you like a redwood and ooooh is that a black Amex, guess the next round is on you hahhahahahaha, while her other sister (how many fucking sisters does she have?!) flashed an obviously fake ID at the bar and ordered six vodka-diet red bulls and no one in her family except the less-cute sister even tried to stop her. And you went home and consoled yourself that you would never see any of these people again but then you met them over and over again because they live next door and your friend and the cute sister keep meeting up to make out but not actually date and then. You fall in love with the less-cute sister because it turns out she’s really witty and charismatic but she already knows and remembers and resents the fact that on a day when you were in a shitty mood you called her mid out loud in a dive bar.’

[raincitygirl76]

This is such a brilliant way of updating P&P to the modern era!

[harmonytheme]

Jag vill att du håller om mig.

“I want you to hold me.”

[bethanydelleman]

People on the internet: Well teenagers were considered adults in the past and therefore they matured faster. The word teenager didn't even exist!

Basic biology: Lol, that's not how any of this works

Authors from the actual past: My heroine may seem stupid and irresponsible but let us all recall that she is but seventeen. Young people will be young people.

[bethanydelleman]

Jane Austen chooses the ages of her heroines with laser precision. Catherine Morland only works if she is seventeen, Anne Elliot must be twenty-seven. Elizabeth Bennet is just old enough to be so sure of herself but also wrong.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is so much about the age of the characters! Only the teenage Helen Graham is foolish enough to believe she can change her husband. Gilbert Markham is so very twenty-four and the story hangs on that fact. You could not write him much older or younger. Old enough for arrogance, young enough to not be stuck in his ways.

Don't you tell me they didn't understand teenagers and young adults or that those ages were so different from today! Teenagers are eternal!

[bethanydelleman]

#Marianne Dashwood is perhaps the most teenage girl to ever teen

YES SHE IS!

[bethanydelleman]

Thank you someone in the tags reminding me about Emma Woodhouse. Jane Austen didn't have these words, but Emma is the perfect embodiment of someone who is both very young, very smart, and who was completely parentified at thirteen years old. Jane Austen does not think that she would be mature enough for that role. The entire book is about how she was not in fact mature enough for that role, even if she was capable intellectually of doing it.

[elljayvee]

Lydia. Bennet.

[11thfempachi]

Girls just wanna have fun

[willesredlights]

It always hits me when Simon tells Wille "It's okay" after he asked Wille if he remembered what he said the night before and he sees how anxious and nervous Wille gets because it's probably one of the only times someone has said it's okay to feel what he feels and to say what he wants to say. He constantly has to suppress his own feelings and pretend because he is the prince and later crown prince. He is constantly being told what he can feel and what he can't feel. And then there is Simon who says "it's okay" and who reassures him up until the point his nerves just disappear

[dreamyelectronicmusic]

I’ve said this before but frog scientist Wille naming a species after Simon ❤️🐸❤️🐸❤️🐸

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

i was training a young person at work, and she referred to sexual assault as "SA" out loud, and i immediately was like, "no, it's sexual assault, call it what it is," bc idgaf if the algorithm overlords have taught y'all that you should fear direct language, how tf do any of you expect to ever address real issues with any amount of seriousness if you can't even say the words? imagine an advocate looking a sexual assault survivor in the eyes and asking "did he grape you?" it's absolutely fucking absurd, but these young interns and new hires are coming into an environment where we deal with survivors of all different kinds of abuse, and they're coming with the mindset that the words are as bad as the actions, and that makes them shitty at the job and look juvenile af

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

say the fucking words, guys. just say the goddamn words before i go insane!!!

[howstrangethemusicsoundstome]

People are trying to bring back 1880s-era anti-ASL sentiment. Worst timeline.

[tuttle-did-it]

You'd be surprised how often I'm told there is no interpreter at an event, there are no captions at an event, and they act like I'm asking for something absurd.

This isn't a performative dance routine interpreting what is going on.

But hey, deafies, we're woke now because we require interpreters.

[tuttle-did-it]

This is all absolutely true. Also, to add, many deaf people receive a much worse education because the schools are unwilling/unable to invest in proper education for deaf people. So there are deaf people out there who struggle to read English because the structure of English is completely different than the structure of Sign Languages.

Also, Sign Language is NOT international. Signing in London is different that Ireland, or Paris, Toronto, Mexico, New Zealand, India-- some of the signing may be similar or even related but they are all different languages. So if you see several interpreters at an event or a news broadcast or en EU summit, and they are doing different signs, this is why.

And for the idiots who still don't comprehend that for many people English is a second language, even signers who were born in an English speaking country-- and still argue 'you get captions what's the problem' - Have you ever watched the auto-craptions on the news or a live event, or even a film on Amazon that they couldn't bother to get a human to properly provide subs? Yeah. A good percentage of the time, it's just word salad that means absolutely nothing. You're likely to just get a pile of words that may or may not have to do with anything going on in what you are trying to watch.

Some time, put on the news with no captions or sound. Put on a film or show you have never seen before, and try to lipread what is being said. Try to figure out what the plot or context is from just the actor's faces. Just try to engage when the only queues you have are facial expressions and movement on the screen-- if you can even see them talk at all, a lot of films and shows are shot over a shoulder with the back of someone's head.

Wear ear-plugs when you are out having a coffee with a friend and try to figure out what your friend is even saying. No music, no nothing-- just earplugs and trying to figure it out.

Do all of this for a week and then tell me that craptions are enough. Then tell me we don't need interpreters. After two days, you're going to be angry and frustrated because you don't know what the fuck is going on.

Interpreters do more than just tell you the exact words. They INTERPRET English language and put it into sign. They aren't just randomly throwing around their hands and looking silly. And they do it on the fly, live, as something is going. A good majority of the times, Interpreters have no idea what is going to be said. In those moments they are hearing something in English (or French, Spanish, what have you), figuring out what the best way to sign these words back to a sign-user base, and they have to do it all in seconds. It's a LOT of work.

So if you are at an event or you see two or even more signers who keep switching off after half an hour or an hour, know that the money is NOT being wasted having multiple interpreters there. They are not being lazy. They are doing a whole helluva lot, and their brains and hands and faces occasionally need a break.

So if you are hiring interpreters for an event, don't be surprised if they say you'll need to pay more to have several interpreters there. The interpreters are incredibly skilled, and they work bloody hard. If they tell you they need more than one, don't have a fit at them and try to talk them into just having one interpreter, thinking you can pay less. Understand that they work their arses off, and it's a very intense job that requires a lot of brain power and body power. So please, PLEASE be kind to interpreters.

And for chrissake, STOP DOING THIS. STOP DOING THIS. STOP FUCKING DOING THIS.

[once-a-polecat]

Seconding all of this, but also to get more specific on the first point:

ASL (American Sign Language) is not only different from BSL (British Sign Language), they're not even in the same language family. Similarly, LSM (Mexican Sign Language) is different from LSE (Spanish Sign Language), and there are other regional sign languages in Spanish speaking South America.

My (hearing) kid is studying ASL and when there was a Deaf contestant on British Bake Off he said that he really didn't recognize the BSL signing. But we traveled to Peru last summer and saw some people signing at a restaurant, and he said he recognized a few signs of LSP, even as he could tell it was a different language.

When you start to understand how much signed languages are full and complete languages with specific grammar and structure, you realize why captioning is not an equivalent to interpretation.

[leebrontide]

"Why would deaf people need interpretation in a language that's their first language? Can't they just read a fast moving faux-phonetic transcript of a speech made in their second language."

Clown-ass behavior.

[fuckthisshit-ugh]

please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

reblog. share. don't scroll past.

[roczath]

India’s youth-led Cockroach movement vows to keep demanding reforms after police crackdown

Supporters of India’s youth-led Cockroach movement demanding educational reforms and government accountability say they will continue their

AP News coverage as of July 21.

[elaienar]

Explained: How India's biggest medical entrance exam descended into crisis

An alleged paper leak, an unprecedented nationwide retest and mounting political pressure have thrust NEET, India's medical entrance examina

NEET-UG: India students resit intense medical exam after paper leak allegations

Millions of candidates face biometric checks and frisking as air force deployed to secure exam papers.

‘Come back, my son’: Indian exam leak leaves trail of death, despair, anger

More than two million aspiring doctors took India’s NEET examination. However, the test was compromised and cancelled.

Here's some reporting on the NEET.

[grapnel]

An example of why one should use the Oxford comma.

[sepdet]

LOL. I think they tried to fix it.

Nice try. Still no.

[rivendellrose]

Wake up, babe, a new example of why the Oxford comma is a really good idea just dropped...

[malinowaj]

letters (to the dead)

yet another ficlet inspired by some art i’ve seen, you ask? why yes, that’s exactly what this is. the idea for this hit me as i sat watching bouchra khalili’s (b. 1975, french-moroccan) video installation called the public scribe.

918 words, AU, magical realism (i think)

The building is much like all the buildings in the neighbourhood. The door is very unassuming too, the brown of it blending well in with the yellow of the walls. There is no sign above it – only indication of the business is a little brass plaque below the door window. Simon Eriksson, it says. Beneath the name, with a slightly smaller text, Letters.

It’s not a business advertised on the metro stations or in the newspapers. There is no loud social media presence. It does not appear in search engines.

No, it’s a business that people find out about through word of mouth. Someone whispers about the man who writes letters, another person mentions it in passing. It’s a business only the most desperate ones know exists.

Wilhelm stands across the street, late morning drizzle slowly turning his coat damp as he stares at the door.

He knows he shouldn’t be here. He knows the whole business is most likely an attempt to cash in on the grief and longing of people like him. He knows the service the man claims to offer sounds impossible, a bluff, even if the people he’s talked to are adamant it is real. He knows he should not waste his money on it.

And yet.

The clock strikes the hour and the door opens just slightly, to indicate the business is now open for the day. Wilhelm knows he should turns around and walk back home.

He crosses the street.

The door is heavy, but swing open surprisingly easily. Inside, the lights are dim save for the one brightly lit lamp on the desk sitting almost in the middle of the small room.

Wilhelm looks around and takes in the several potted plants, the burgundy armchair and small wooden table by the window and the large shelves behind the desk.

There is a man standing behind the desk, facing the shelves. He’s shorter than Wilhelm and his brown curls tickle the collar of his orange sweatshirt. It’s an oddly casual thing to wear for something like this, Wilhelm finds himself thinking.

When the man turns, Wilhelm is met with warm eyes. The man must be around his age, much younger than Wilhelm expected. If he recognises Wilhelm, he doesn’t let it show.

“Hello. I’m Simon, how can I help you?” the man asks, the timbre of his voice soothing.

Wilhelm opens his mouth but no sound comes out. He clears his throat, suddenly feeling awkward. “I’d, uhh, like to send a letter,” he stammers, as if it wasn’t somehow obvious. Wilhelm wonders if Simon asks every person entering the room the same question.

“Of course,” Simon nods, his eyes studying Wilhelm’s face, ”Have you sent a letter before?”

A hollow laugh escapes Wilhelm. He has sent more letters in his life than he can count. Official correspondence, written on thick cream coloured paper and signed with fountain pens. “Not like this,” is what he answers, scraping his thumbnail against the cuticle of his pinkie.

Simon nods again. “That’s alright. I assume you’re here because someone recommended it. How familiar are you with letters like ours?”

Wilhelm shrugs, feeling the back of his neck grow warmer. “I just know you write down what I say and then… send the letter somewhere?”

Simon’s response is a tired sigh, so quiet if Wilhelm wasn’t paying attention he’d probably miss it. “Yes, I write down what you want to tell the person you’re addressing the letter to. The recipient will receive your message once I’ve finished writing, and the letter will then cease to exist. There will be no envelope with your name waiting if you come back, that’s not how this works. If you get a response, you will know it, but it does not come in a letter form.”

This time it’s Wilhelm’s turn to nod. He was told there would be no letters to him, not as long as he was on this side. It’s the thought of being able to tell what’s on his mind, what no one else will understand, that’s driven him here.

“I understand,” Wilhelm says.

“Good. Many people don’t.”

Wilhelm wonders what kind of people Simon has had to encounter before. If people have demanded responses to their letters from him, threatened him when told it would not happen. He wonders what people have confessed in their letters, and if Simon remembers all the things he writes down.

“Do you, uhh, keep track of who comes here? What they want to say in the letters?” he asks instead, looking at the shelves behind Simon.

“I only keep track as much as I need to. Everything you say in the letter is confidential and I will not judge you for your words,” Simon says and the way he speaks reminds Wilhelm a bit of his therapist. “Do you still want me to write a letter for you?” Simon asks then.

“Yes,” Wilhelm says, after the briefest moment of hesitation. There isn’t anything for him to lose. He isn’t sure there’s anything to gain either, but it won’t hurt to try. ”How does this work?”

Simon points at the armchair as he sits down behind the desk. As Wilhelm lowers himself down the plush chair, Simon pulls forward an ordinary looking sheet of paper and picks up a pen. Then he looks at Wilhelm and holds his gaze when he asks, “Who would you like to send the letter to? Who has died?”

“It’s to my brother, Erik,” Wilhelm says.

[bethanydelleman]

Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.

From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)

[janeeyreofmanderley]

oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.

in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:

The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.

[obi-troll-kenobi]

I raise you:

First Lesson by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Un Coup De Main (The Helping Hand) by Émile Renouf (1845 – 1894)

Italian Winegrower And His Daughter by Francesco Baratta (1590-1666)

[jeza-red]

Nothing more heartbreaking than Treny, in which a poet mourns his youngest daughter.

Zygmunt Trembecki (1847-1922)

"Jan Kochanowski with his daughter Urszula" 1878, Bronze

[waitingforthecat]

Image description: Image 1: painting of a young child holding a small dog sits on a cushion on a desk, she looks toward the vieweer, a man sits in front of the desk, he looks at the child and has one hand steadying the child. 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta by Marcello Bacciarelli Image 2: painting of a man sitting at a table writing something, he looks toward the viewer, a girl pulls at his jacket and holds up a doll with fancy hair and dress. Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776, Image 3: painting of a man sitting down holding a lute, a girl holding a fan stands next to him. A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629 Image 4: painting of a man sitting down and holding a compass, a girl leans over his shoulder and looks at the papers and the circle, the man looks at the girl. A dog sits next to the girl. The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812 Image 5: painting of a man holding the hand of a young girl, a dog is on his other side. Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter Image 6: painting of a man sitting down with a young girl in his lap, he holds one of her hands in his, she holds flowers in her lap. Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

Image 7: painting of a man sitting down reading something, he holds one young child who is trying to climb on his back while a second child lays in a crib and cries. There is a toy laying on the floor. Image 8: painting of a man sitting down and painting porcelain while a child sleeps in a crib.

Image 9: painting of a man and a child working on netting together. Image 10: painting of a man and a child rowing a boat with the same oar. The man is smiling at the child. Image 11: painting of a man sitting down, he holds a glass and a wine bottle while a child leans against him, with grapes and bread in her apron.

image 12: sculpture of a man kissing a child sitting in his lap, the child holds a lute. There is an open book with flowers laying to the mans feet. end Image description

[beardedmrbean]

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.

[cookingwithroxy]

I want you to understand this. I NEED you to understand this. My mother read me the hobbit as bedtime story, and I started pushing myself to read before pre-school so I could in fact read the hobbit for myself instead of having to wait for bedtime.

I didn't do so right away but jesus wept I PUSHED myself to learn to read SPECIFICALLY so I could read The Hobbit! It is, in fact, a children's story! And children only see page count as 'there is a lot of this fun story to read!'

[have-you-been-here]

A country where the only place you've been is an airport on a layover, Earth

Have you been here?

I have been here

I have not been here

Voting ended onJul 17

[woman-respecter]

longest nonstop flight you have been on?

i have never been on a plane

less than 2 hours

2-4 hours

4-6 hours

6-8 hours

8-10 hours

10-12 hours

12-14 hours

14-16 hours

more than 16 hours (!)

Voting ended onJul 17

if you feel comfortable share the route and the time in your tags!

[quasi-normalcy]

So what I think is that there's this default belief in patriarchy that men are superior to women and therefore the "masculine" sphere is superior to the "feminine" sphere. And so, as feminists have fought to expand the number of allowable female activities, men (on the aggregate over generations) have retreated from those activities because they're now seen as "feminine", and so partaking in them is incommensurate with their belief in their own superiority. And, unfortunately, as this has progressed, this has resulted in a lot of men sectioning themselves off from, frankly, everything that actually makes being alive worthwhile. It's a misery spiral, and the only way out is to abandon male supremacy.

[quasi-normalcy]

#men gave up deep friendships and reading and poetry and colourful fashion#all things that used to be considered manly in the 19th century#they're currently giving up on studying law and medecine#it's so stupid and sad

(I mean, the colourful fashion was more of an eighteenth century thing, but yeah)

[quasi-normalcy]

#more women in higher education meaning fewer men is incredibly depressing to me. funny in a sad way#what happens when women will finally get into trades? will they just stop working

[sherryzade]

spectacular tags from @luesmainblog