the reason it takes me as long as it does to do my transportation homework, is at least half of the time I spend it doing shit like this instead of the actual write-up....

roma★
almost home
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
trying on a metaphor

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Today's Document
DEAR READER
Misplaced Lens Cap

Origami Around
Acquired Stardust
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year

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Keni
No title available
Xuebing Du

titsay

blake kathryn
we're not kids anymore.
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@paradife-loft
the reason it takes me as long as it does to do my transportation homework, is at least half of the time I spend it doing shit like this instead of the actual write-up....
🎶Happy Ides of March, y'all! Et tu, Brute?🎵
i beat myself up for not knowing enough about my special interests a lot but then i remember the average person off the street has no idea what the carboniferous is and i feel better
are you really bad at it or are you in "good at it" spaces
"are you really bad at it or are you in 'good at it' spaces" has derailed so much self-hate since I read it
this is a load bearing sentence in my psyche and I can't believe it's only 2 months old
subtweeting the FUCK out of a major newspaper article that pissed you off several months ago, in a paper you're writing and submitting to a class for a grade. send post. 😎
is the paper turned in on time? nope. is it the correct length? also nope (too long).
however!☝️ I made sure the powerpoint presentation was cute.
subtweeting the FUCK out of a major newspaper article that pissed you off several months ago, in a paper you're writing and submitting to a class for a grade. send post. 😎
"codify" is such a fun word. lawmakers! turn this into a fish
Overhead chargers on key bus routes in Madison, Wisconsin are enabling the zero-emissions vehicles to run despite freezing conditions.
From the article:
Metro Transit, which provides about 9.1 million rides annually, installed overhead chargers on key routes, allowing buses to quickly top off at several stops. Improved battery capacity also lets them go further between plug-ins. The real test came January 23, when the temperature dropped to -4°F, shutting down the University of Wisconsin-Madison — but the buses kept running. [...] Just a few years ago, electric buses routinely faltered in cold conditions, reinforcing doubts about whether they could replace diesel and natural gas-burning fleets in northern cities. Now, with better batteries and strategically placed chargers, Madison is at the forefront of a small but growing number of cities testing whether those doubts still hold. Making the technology work through a long Midwestern winter could reshape how others approach electrification. Some 3.6 million commuters nationwide rely upon buses to get around. With transportation accounting for roughly 28 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, transit agencies are looking for alternatives to polluting machinery that creates a particular health risk around bus stops. Madison is among more than 100 U.S. cities that have pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Electric buses are key to that goal.
in a fair and just world tyranny has at least three sequels and i get to learn everything about the spires and the history of the tiers and kyros and the bane and the oldwalls and so on. but unfortunately we instead live in a world with one new fifa game every year.
I am capable of existing and being perceived and the world isn't going to end about it. fucking.... fuck. ugh.
"accessibility" needs to stop meaning "low-engagement"
"we are making our TTRPG more accessible!"
"oh, did you make the font bigger and more legible?"
"no we're just doing the next edition in D&D5e"
"we're making our video game more accessible!"
"oh did you add an option to remap the controls?"
"no we just added an option to remove combat so the game is just a bunch of cutscenes"
"we made it accessible!"
"which part? what did you make accessible?"
"why, not playing the game at all of course! games are much better when they don't have any pesky game in them, especially for the disabled, who typically access the game parts even less."
To further elaborate (very long)
it is a very popular trend right now to add, like, features that skip the engagement with an interactive work of art, such as skipping combat or making combat impossible to lose in a combat-focused video game, or in the scene of TTRPGs making your TTRPG completely dumbed down or just hastily and mindlessly making it a D&D5e hack "because people already know how to play D&D5e and I want it to be accessible" instead of expecting people to actually read and learn and engage with a set of specific rules, and call all of that "accessibility" instead of adding "accessibility" features that would actually help disabled people access the "meat" of whatever the interactive art is.
If it's a combat-focused video game, some examples would be helping them engage with the full depth of the combat by allowing the controls to be fully remapped to something easier for their hands(or lack of hands), or the option to disable flashing lights or reduce the intensity muzzle flashes on the guns or something.
I think I have come up with a good example to illustrate this point. Let's say there is an FPS where you shoot aliens. Pretend it's, like, Halo but not specifically Halo.
And let’s say there’s a group of disabled gamers who are excited for this video game.
Missing Finger Guy, Deaf Guy, Colorblind Guy, and Poor Eyesight Guy.
Missing Finger Guy is missing at least one finger that corresponds to the Dodge button, he can’t reliably press it especially on short notice when aliens are coming at his character. So, he can’t really play the game because dodging is required to beat the levels. The game devs provide an “acccessibility” easy mode that turns off combat or makes the enemies do so little damage that he never needs to use the Dodge button. So, Missing Finger Guy can play the game now, right? Wrong. Dodging enemies *is* the game, and he still never gets to play with the Dodge button, or engage with any of the other elements of the game that are watered down by making enemy attacks not matter. To make the fun gameplay of dodging enemies accessible to this player, the answer is to allow remapping the Dodge action to a button that he can reach.
Deaf Guy
The game expects the player to rely on audio cues to know when enemies are sneaking up behind them or when a grenade lands at their feet or when an enemy is about to do a specific attack. Obviously the deaf player can’t hear these and can’t play the game because he’ll just die all the time to attacks which are literally impossible for him to predict. Again, this could be “fixed” by a mode that makes it so it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t hear a grenade land at his character’s feet by removing the consequence of death for failing to notice the grenade, or you could add the option to turn on subtitles for both story dialogue and sound effects like “[grenade beep]” and “[screatchure scream].” One of these allows the deaf gamer to play on roughly the same playing field as other players and react to threats the same way that hearing people can do that he can engage with the meat of the game, and the other doesn’t.
Colorblind Guy
The video game features enemies that are identifiable by their red and blue armor. Red aliens throw red grenades that you can catch and throw back, and blue aliens throw blue grenades that explode by proximity and you just have to fully avoid. Obviously, a colorblind player cannot reliably tell these apart, and would either have to try to throw back grenades at random and hope for the best, or just avoid all grenades to be safe. You could “fix” this by removing the consequence of death for getting exploded by a grenade, or you could fix it by adding a togglable colorblindness mode that switches the color distinction to something visible or adds some other distinctive feature besides color to one of those grenade types. One of these allows the colorblind player to engage with the intended gameplay of the game by taking informed risks by trying to throw back certain grenades, and one of them doesn’t, making it just not matter what decision he makes.
Poor Eyesight Guy
You get the formula by now. The *actually* accessible feature would be allowing him to adjust the text to be more readable instead of making it not matter if he can read the directions that tell him how to get through the minefield safety by removing the consequences for stepping on a mine.
A mode that simply removes consequences for failing to engage with and react appropriately to the threats the game presents is, at best, appealing only to people who don’t actually *like* the gameplay in the first place, while still shutting out the people who *want* to engage with the full depth of the gameplay but can’t because of some disability that prevents them from doing so as intended.
Because the gameplay isnt just seeing the cutscenes and getting a “level cleared” achievement, it is dodging the enemies, throwing back the grenades, listening for the screatchure screams, etc..
If there is an enemy who is super tough from the front and will kill you if you can’t get around behind him, you don’t make the game more “accessible” by making him so weak from the front that it doesn’t matter where you shoot him, or making his attacks so weak that you can shrug them off long enough to whittle him down from the front, youve actually removed this enemy from the game by making him just like the common enemies that can be shot from the front. You have actually made the element of the gameplay provided by this enemy inaccessible by doing this, because the quick thinking and tactical usage of the game’s features required to get behind him *is* the gameplay.
It’s much easier to explain this via video games but it goes for tabletop games as well. A TTRPG is more truly accessible for having big easy-to-read font and clear explanations so that players that want to engage with that game’s rules can do so even if they have reading difficulties, than if it just went “eh it doesn’t matter if you read the rules or not.”
there are so many times when it would be very helpful to have a single word conveying "commonplace, dull, unimaginative, undistinctive, mundane" for writing & verbal communication. unfortunately for obvious reasons, even though it's generally the first to come to mind, I categorically refuse to employ the word pedestrian for that purpose 😔
"Contrary to what certain pockets of the internet may lead you to believe, flawless execution of pure-melee-combat gameplay is not the exclusive purpose of or arbiter of skill in a Fromsoft title."
- verbatim Sekiro prologue quotation from Ashina Genichiro, yes I promise it is, what, were you not listening or something just because he cut your arm off? smh
also re: stuff in the last reblog, one of the things I was really struck (and delighted) by was Alex's explanation of how having a dead body translates to not having the physiological anxiety reaction that living Occtis normally would've in that situation
like again Occtis is still coming from a reasonable place in wanting to a) defend Vaelus and b) keep the dialogue from veering completely off-topic, and I wouldn't really even say he was being rude, but it was still unthinkingly rather unkind ("she hasn't done anything to you" re: the Shaper's follower, to an elven druid???? read the fucking room historical context my dude!). BUT. even with all that - the idea of suddenly-removed brakes that had been stifling one's capacity to be assertive, take up social space, speak with authority - in the context of being a member of a noble house that's very much not shy about being dicks and throwing their power around (and being both very intelligent and quite young) - this feels like there's an opportunity for some really interesting double-edged swords going forward for Occtis's personal growth & character interactions. I'm a fan :3
there's just so much in the "we need to talk about Occtis" portion of the episode regarding the interparty tension. like Thaisha starts the episode by defending Occtis—and though she chooses to omit the extent of the active role she played in it, her own decisions that lead to his current state—to her people. then when they meet with the party and Hannan immediately shifts his ire towards Vaelus instead, Thaisha again defends Vaelus and her decision to ally with her, despite Vaelus' religion being against what Thaisha stands for both as an orc and as a druid of the old path. she speaks to Hannan as someone who sympathizes with his anger. Thaisha herself had a similar, if considerably less extreme, reaction on the road to Riesingürtle with the follower of Trozhna. Thaisha was forcing herself not to think when she asked Occtis not to walk the path, but Thaisha likely did not make the decision to travel with Vaelus lightly. she feels that weight. (side note: there's about a couple more things I have to say about Thaisha's interactions with Hannan, so stay tuned for that, but I want to keep this post specifically about the party.)
then, Occtis cuts in to defend Vaelus and in doing so, triggers a reaction in the fragile veil between life and death on ground that is sacred to Thaisha and the druids. moreover, in his defense of Vaelus, he is not speaking from a place of sympathy for Hannan and what he's lost to the Shaper of Life, but with Vaelus. Occtis is on Thaisha's side, but because Thjazi and Thimble were nice to him and his family was not, just as Thaisha is nice to him and Vaelus is nice to him. in fact, I'd argue that, while well-intentioned and considerably less cruel, the specific way he reprimanded Hannan was eerily reminiscent of the way Primus reprimanded Murray for speaking out of turn. Occtis is still very much a Tachonis with Tachonis sensibilities, after all.
and Thaisha takes that as a moment of betrayal, small and quiet, but a betrayal still. and who can blame her? she was handling this. she is way out on a limb here, trying to balance her duty as a druid of the Old Path with her mission to protect Occtis and investigate his vision with her own personal feelings of being a Lloy and the weight that carries. she is stressed and trying to let cooler heads prevail and Occtis steps in and implicitly sides with Vaelus without a second thought. that could have gone very poorly, possibly severing ties with her fellow druids, and even though it didn't, it's still so careless towards both her personal efforts in this situation as well as everything she stands for. a part of her has to be thinking for fuck's sake, Julien is behaving himself better right now.
Thaisha is a proud woman who spent so much of those two conversations being (understandably) doubted and having to defend not just her companions but herself as well, and one must imagine that in feeling that rift between her and one of the two people in the party that she trusts, it was hard for Thaisha not to feel that doubt herself.
thaisha lloy, the woman that you are
Ragna, Husky mix, Franklin & Dupont St., Brooklyn, NY • “He’s very friendly, playful. Energetic. He’s my best friend. Very loyal. We’ll walk for like an hour, sometimes two hours, and I try to give him the best food. He likes to eat mangos and watermelons; he likes fruits.”