spark plug

j • they/them • adult

[akindplace]

oh. almost forgot that I am in fact wanted and loved and that I belong to this world. and maybe you have forgotten it, but you are as well

[slowlikehoney1996]

If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.

James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

[actualized-animal]

Did You Learn?

you can lie on the floor in your home and the Soft Baby who lives there will approach you. this will increase your chance of contact with Nose Wet by 75%

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

people who went to school in the United States: what do you consider the quintessential English Class Assigned Reading books? I'm thinking Huck Finn, Grapes of Wrath, Romeo and Juliet, Gatsby... I guess the Giver and Animal Farm even though I never read them because it seems like everyone else did?

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

okay gang remember we're looking for THE books that you feel represent the high school English class experience and that you feel like virtually everyone you've met had read. I don't need your entire high school reading list

[lapetitsyrene]

I should be allowed into every museum's archives actually

[ancientforgcd]

[mournfulroses]

Tove Ditlevsen, from a poem featured in There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die: Selected Poems

[mgsr]

cats will be like please i need you to watch me wiggle around on this carpet please hey look look please look at me i’m wiggling

[raylangivins]

has everyone seen the website that gives you a rothko for your local weather?

[2productive]

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

this is from "research as a leisure activity" by celine nguyen, publs. on stubstack in 2024. it's a very good read

[minecraft-tournament]

Round 1 Stats

Since a lot of people said they were interested in seeing something like this, I've thrown together a few calculations for you guys! Let me know if there's anything not included here you'd be interested in knowing about and I can probably calculate it for you :D

-

The biggest sweep:

The closest call:

(That's a difference of 1 vote on each of those)

Vote numbers:

The average number of votes per poll was 400, with the highest turnout being Prismarine vs. Dandelion which got 883! Though Redstone Wire vs. Potted Blue Orchid, Flowering Azalea vs. Lava, and Sand vs. Potted Flowering Azalea also all got 800+ votes each.

Most popular block families:

Heads/Skulls (7 wins vs. 1 loss - 87.5% win rate)

Candles (14 wins vs. 4 losses - 77.8% win rate)

Ores/Gems/Minerals (26 wins vs. 9 losses - 74.3% win rate

Least popular block families:

Glass (5 wins vs. 63 losses - 7.4% win rate)

Banners (0 wins vs. 10 losses - 0.0% win rate)

Wood type performance:

The three most popular wood types were Cherry, Warped, and Dark Oak, and the three least popular were Acacia, Jungle, and Birch.

Cherry had 15 wins and 4 losses (a 78.9% win rate), and Acacia had 3 wins and 15 losses (a 16.7% win rate).

Dye colour performance:

The three most popular dye colours were Pink, White, and Black, and the three least popular were Brown, Orange, and Magenta.

Pink-dyed blocks had 7 wins and 7 losses (a 50.0% win rate), and Brown-dyed blocks had 1 win and 13 losses (a 7.1% win rate).

Which is interesting! Pink was the best-performing dye colour, but even it only broke even. No dye colour had a winning record. Voters didn't really seem to favour dyed variants unless the specific block had a strong identity. Beds, Candles, and Shulker Boxes could survive; Banners, Stained Glass, and a lot of Terracotta/Concrete variants usually couldn't.

Overall notes:

Functional blocks were very strong. Bookshelf, Furnace, Brewing Stand, Lectern, Chest, Barrel, Crafting Table, Ender Chest, etc. all performed well.

Plant/nature blocks were also strong, especially flowers, moss, azalea, leaves, crops, mushrooms, and other natural blocks. The most popular flower was Tulips!

Ores and mineral blocks did very well, especially iconic ones like Diamond Ore, Ancient Debris, Block of Diamond, Emerald Ore, Budding Amethyst, and Amethyst Cluster.

Wood was split overall: Cherry, Warped, Oak, and Dark Oak did well, while Acacia, Birch, Jungle, and Mangrove struggled.

Plain Terracotta got destroyed, but Glazed Terracotta actually did really well. Planks were also bizarrely strong - only Mangrove Planks lost.

Stone/masonry was mixed-to-weak. Some iconic ones survived, but a lot of slabs, walls, stairs, polished variants, and stone-adjacent filler blocks lost.

Copper had a rough time, despite a few wins from oxidized variants and bulbs/grates.

Dyed decorative blocks mostly lost, especially Banners, Stained Glass, Hardened Stained Glass, and Concrete Powder.

Banners were the unluckiest category. They went 0 - 18.

Stained/hardened glass was almost as bad, going 2 - 61. The two survivors were Purple Stained Glass and Cyan Stained Glass.

[mournfulroses]

Mary Oliver, from a poem titled "Thirst," featured in Devotions: Poems

[wonderful-emoji]

Anger and violence mood board?

[indigosfindings]

how do you pronounce the honourific "Ms." in english

"miss"

"miz"

other

unsure/see results

Voting ended onMay 21

[mortalityplays]

really good "shocking number of people are confidently objectively demonstrably completely wrong" poll

[3liza]

i am losing my fucking mind

[avocado-moon]

#we dont use honorifics in my first language so whenever i have to select options (usually for flights) im always so confused#like what is actually the difference between miss and ms#i like miss bc it sounds more historical and im a historian so

"Miss" means an unmarried woman. "Mrs." means a married woman. (both of these have origins in the word "mistress" as in "mistress of the house".)

"Ms." - prounounced MIZ, btw - is a third option popularized by gloria steinem in the 70s - mainly through her feminist magazine Ms. - which is meant to be a neutral term, usable for any and all women regardless of marital status (hence the soul destroying irony of the tags above). it gained wider general acceptance when geraldine ferraro, the first woman to be nominated as VP on a national major party ticket, started using it widely to avoid confusion, since she was married but used her maiden name professionally. eventually over the years it came into common use though i do think the brits are a little more critical of it than americans (as far as i'm aware lol)

[avocado-moon]

"obscure facts only a tumblr user would know" and it's one of the most influential institutions of second wave american feminism. PLEASE open the schools

[onbearfeet]

Hi. I'm an unmarried woman in her forties. I use Ms. and pronounce it "miz", though I don't correct people who accidentally use a soft S. I use Ms. because it's no one's business but my own whether I'm married, to a man or anyone else, and that's what Ms. means. It means fuck off, my marital status is irrelevant, just as it is for every man who uses Mr.

I've had people (usually children) ask me at work if I'm a missus or a miss. I have replied that I am a miz, full stop. And when they pressed for which one I was REALLY, I have replied, "Why? Are you going to treat me differently depending on whether there's a ring somewhere?"

That's what Ms. is for. That is its linguistic function. It says, "This is an adult woman," and nothing else. Nothing else is necessary, and in my case, nothing else is desired.

I also use miz for other women unless and until they express a preference for something else because I don't magically know everyone else's marital status when I meet them. That's a courtesy—I'm declining to assume marital status and allowing them to decide whether they wish to declare it.

Also, I've taught English and worked as an editor for twenty years. I am quite literally the grammar police. This use of Ms. is a standard construction. If you didn't learn it in school, someone failed you.

[squeeful]

“Obscure facts” Boo boo I was taught it in elementary school. One with a state standardized curriculum.

Ms. is marriage-neutral and it’s pronounced Miz. It is deliberately different from Miss.

[seasonallydefective]

Some of you never encountered one of the most famous examples and my heart breaks for you

[capacity2]

It’s actually crazy how bad feeling bad feels

[sydrichie]

[minecraft-tournament]

ROUND 1 - Match 478 of 500 - Cherry Sapling vs. Rail

A sapling is a non-solid block that can be grown into a tree.

Rails are non-solid blocks that provide a path along which minecarts can travel.

Which block is better?

Cherry Sapling

Rail

Voting ended onMay 19

[linren-linduil]

Just a friendly reminder that without the rail, you can do almost nothing with mine carts. Roller coasters, collection systems, etc. They can be placed underwater now.

That is all, have a great day.