Random Reference Blog

Listen, I started this because I just needed to keep all my references in one place because I'm terrible about tags. Main tags are currently: "Writing Reference" and "Art Reference", if something seems tagged weird / wrong let me know. My main blog is waterkat33.

[lolita-wardrobe]

The ultimate outfits vocabulary (source: FRACTALZ LAB)

[exvind]

reference

[2winpeaks]

imagine a crocodile with horse-like legs… unstoppable… i would love to ride one o’ those into battle

[chyna-r-deactivated20151227]

are you..high 

[2winpeaks]

[chyna-r-deactivated20151227]

….carry on 

[swimmingferret]

Fun fact these ‘crocodile cousins’ with ‘horse-like legs’ existed and was known as a ‘sabre-toothed cat in armour’ due to it’s speed out of water and long fangs. There was the ‘DogCroc’ ( Araripesuchus wegeneri) and ‘BoarCroc’ (Kaprosuchus). The DogCroc (featured above) was only around the size of a small dog, with its skull easily fitting into the palm of someones hand. It lived during the Lower Cretaceous-Upper Cretaceous period;

*Comparison of a DogCroc’s skull to a Sarcosuchus skull. (Sarcosuchus is the largest known crocodile species and was large enough it could even prey upon a T-Rex and could weigh up to ten tonnes and be over forty feet long.)

However the BoarCroc (Kaprosuchus) was twenty-foot long and could gallop across land and preyed upon dinosaurs.

[queen-of-putresence]

That’s a fucking dragon

[prokopetz]

Concept: you know how most media depicts Tolkien-style elves as being super jaded by immortality?

What if it was the opposite?

Like, you have stories where a sad thing happens and an elf cries for a hundred years, or where courtships last for decades, or what have you. Let’s run with that: part of the whole immortality deal is that elves’ emotional responses don’t attenuate as readily as humans’ do.

New relationship? The “heady infatuation” stage lasts for years, not months.

Heard an awesome song? Hearing it for the hundredth time is just as moving as hearing it for the very first.

Favourite food? Eat it for every meal and never get sick of it.

Basically, what I’m saying is imagine elves being really, really annoying because they respond emotionally to everything like they’re experiencing it for the very first time, even when you know they’ve seen it a thousand times before.

[onecunninglinguist]

In addition to this: what we would conceive as ‘fads’ they get really into.

Like, a fashion trend kicks off and instead of moving onto the next big thing, elves make it The Only Way to Dress. As great as this is for mortals who love retro clothing, imagine Crocs and silly bands being popular for a century. Adult elves who still sit around trying to persuade their friends to trade a giraffe band for what they swear is a phoenix but is really a regular bird.

This doesn’t just apply to clothing so have some elves who never grew out of their scene phase. Emo elves who seriously introduce themselves as Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way or some similarly overwrought name.

Humans don’t know whether to be fascinated or amused at it all.

[prokopetz]

Humans think there are different subspecies of elves, but really they’re just different factions of incredibly devoted trendsters.

[aiweirdness]

A neural network designs Halloween costumes

It’s hard to come up with ideas for Halloween costumes, especially when it seems like all the good ones are taken. And don’t you hate showing up at a party only to discover that there’s *another* pajama cardinalfish?

I train neural networks, a type of machine learning algorithm, to write humor by giving them datasets that they have to teach themselves to mimic. They can sometimes do a surprisingly good job, coming up with a metal band called Chaosrug, a craft beer called Yamquak and another called The Fine Stranger (which now exists!), and a My Little Pony called Blue Cuss.

So, I wanted to find out if a neural network could help invent Halloween costumes. I couldn’t find a big enough dataset, so I crowdsourced it by asking readers to list awesome Halloween costumes. I got over 4,500 submissions.

The most popular submitted costumes are the classics (42 witches, 32 ghosts, 30 pirates, 22 Batmans, 21 cats (30 incl sexy cats), 19 vampires, and 17 each of pumpkins and sexy nurses). There are about 300 costumes with “sexy” in their names; some of the most eyebrow-raising include sexy anglerfish, sexy Dumbledore, sexy golden pheasant, sexy eyeball, sexy Mothra, Sexy poop emoji, Sexy Darth Vader, Sexy Ben Franklin, Sexy TARDIS, Sexy Cookie Monster, and Sexy DVORAK keyboard. In the “technical challenge” department, we have costumes like Invisible Pink Unicorn, Whale-frog, Glow Cloud, Lake Michigan, Toaster Oven, and Garnet.

All this is to say that humans are very creative, and this task was going to be tricky for a neural network. The sensible approach would be to try to use a neural network that actually knows what the words mean - there are such things, trained by reading, for example, all of Google News and figuring out which words are used in similar ways. There’s a fun demo of this here. It doesn’t have an entry for “Sexy_Gandalf” but for “sexy” it suggests “saucy” and “sassy”, and for “Gandalf” it suggests “Frodo”, “Gollum”, and “Voldemort”, so you could use this approach to go from “Sexy Gandalf” to “Sassy Voldemort”. 

I wanted something a bit weirder. So, I used a neural network that learns words from scratch, letter by letter, with no knowledge of their meaning, an open-source char-rnn neural network written in Torch. I simply dumped the 4500 Halloween costumes on it, and told the neural network to figure it out.

Early in the training process, I decided to check in to see how it was doing.

Sexy sexy Dombie Sexy Cat Sexy A stare Rowan Sexy RoR A the Rog Sexy Cot Sexy Purbie Lampire Poth Rat Sexy Por Man The Wombue Pombie Con A A Cat The Ran Spean Sexy Sexy Pon Sexy Dander Sexy Cat The Gull Wot Sexy Pot Hot

In retrospect, I should have expected this. With a dataset this varied, the words the neural network learns first are the most common ones.

I checked in a little later, and things had improved somewhat. (Omitted: numerous repetitions of “sexy nurse”). Still the only thing that makes sense is the word Sexy.

Sexy The Carding Ging Farbat of the Cower Sexy The Hirler A costume Sexy Menus Sexy Sure Frankenstein’s Denter A cardian of the Pirate Ging butter Sexy the Girl Pirate

By the time I checked on the neural network again, it was not only better, but astoundingly good. I hadn’t expected this. But the neural network had found its niche: costume mashups. These are actually comprehensible, if a bit hard to explain:

Punk Tree Disco Monster Spartan Gandalf Starfleet Shark A masked box Martian Devil Panda Clam Potato man Shark Cow Space Batman The shark knight Snape Scarecrow Gandalf the Good Witch Professor Panda Strawberry shark Vampire big bird Samurai Angel lady Garbage Pirate firefighter Fairy Batman

Other costumes were still a bit more random.

Aldonald the Goddess of the Chicken Celery Blue Frankenstein Dancing Bellyfish Dragon of Liberty A shark princess Statue of Witch Cupcake pants Bird Scientist Giant Two butter The Twin Spider Mermaid The Game of Nightmare Lightbare Share Bat The Rocky Monster Mario lander Spork Sand Statue of pizza The Spiding hood A card Convention Sailor Potter Shower Witch The Little Pond Spice of pokeman Bill of Liberty A spock Count Drunk Doll of Princess Petty fairy Pumpkin picard Statue of the Spice of the underworker

It still was fond of using made-up words, though. You’d be the only one at the party dressed as whatever these are.

Sparra A masked scorby-babbersy Scormboor Magic an of the foand tood-computer A barban The Gumbkin Scorbs Monster A cat loory Duck The Barboon Flatue doctor Sparrow Plapper Grankenstein The Spongebog Minional marty clown Count Vorror Rairol Mencoon A neaving hold Sexy Avical Ster of a balana Aly Huntle starber pirate

And it ended up producing a few like this.

Sports costume Sexy scare costume General Scare construct

The reason? Apparently someone decided to help out by entering an entire costume store’s inventory. (”What are you supposed to be?” “Oh, I’m Mens Deluxe IT Costume - Size Standard.”) 

There were also some like this:

Rink Rater Ginsburg A winged boxer Ginsburg Bed ridingh in a box Buther Ginsburg Skeleton Ginsburg Zombie Fire Cith Bader Ginsburg

Because someone had entered about 50 variations on Ruth Bader Ginsberg puns (Ruth Tater Ginsberg, Sleuth Bader Ginsber, Rock Paper Ginsberg).

It invented some awesome new superheroes/supervillains.

Glow Wonder Woman The Bunnizer Ladybog Light man Bearley Quinn Glad woman robot Werewolf super Pun Super of a bog Space Pants Barfer buster pirate Skull Skywolk lady Skynation the Goddess Fred of Lizard

And oh, the sexy costumes. Hundreds of sexy costumes, yet it never quite got the hang of it.

Sexy Scare Sexy the Pumpkin Saxy Pumpkins Sexy the Pirate Sexy Pumpkin Pirate Sexy Gumb Man Sexy barber Sexy Gargles Sexy humblebee Sexy The Gate Sexy Lamp Sexy Ducty monster Sexy conchpaper Sexy the Bumble Sexy the Super bass Pretty zombie Space Suit sexy Drangers Sexy the Spock

You bet there are bonus names - and oh please go read them because they are so good and it was so hard to decide which ones to fit into the main article. Includes the poop jokes. You’re welcome.

I’ve posted the entire dataset as open-source on GitHub.

And you can contribute more costumes, for a possible future neural net upgrade (no email address necessary).

[annleckie]

“A Costume.”

[snorlaxatives]

friendly ass reminder that kit kats are the supreme candy bar and no other candy bar can ever compare and that’s tea

[gallusrostromegalus]

Yo have you ever had japanese kitkats tho?  they come is like six million bomb-ass flavors, like green tea, strawberry, BBQ, Pumpkin, Taro…  I had the Caramel Pudding ones once and I’ve never really recovered.

[yamitamiko]

fun fact kit kats are very popular with students in japan because ‘kit kat’ sounds like a phrase that means ‘to do well’ so it’s a major study for finals snack

[fuckingconversations]

Was just talking about this with friends! “kitto katsu” is basically saying to your friend “Good luck!” so handing them a kit-kat bar is the gift equivalent of the same~

[japanesetranslated]

It’s きっと勝つ meaning literally “surely win”.🍫

[avvoltoio]

THE TROUBADOUR’S SONGBOOK || [8TRACKS] [PLAYMOSS]

A collection of secular music from the High and Late Middle Ages (1000-1400). The mix features songs in vernacular from many different areas of Western Europe, as well as a few songs from the Byzantine and Islamic Empires.

De Fortune me doi Plaindre et Loer | Guillaume de Mauchaut (1300-1377) Ach Owe, daz Nach Liebe Ergat | Meister Alexander (1247-1288) Mîzân Qá'im Wa-nisf | from the Nuba Ushshaq, (13th c. Arabo-Andalusian Anon) Worldes Blis ne Last no Throwe | English Anon. (ca.1265) Bailemos Nós já Todas | Airas Nunes de Santiago (1230-1289)  Adiu, Adiu Dous Dame | Francesco Landini (1325-1397) Ey Dervişler | Yunnus Emre (1238-1320) A Chantar M'er de So Qu'eu no Volria | Beatriz de Dia (1140-1212) Ecco la Primavera | Francesco Landini (1325-1397) Bache, Bene Venies | from the Carmina Burana, (11-13th c. Anon) Cel que no Volh Auzir Chanssos | Raimon de Miraval (1165 - 1229) The Nightingales of the East (Ta Aidónia tis Anatolís) | Byzantine Anon. (14th century) Tant M’Abelis | Berenguer de Palou (1160-1209) Willekomen si der Sumer Schoene | Brunwart von Augheim (1250-1300) Esperance | Guillaume de Mauchaut (1300-1377) Laude Novella | from the Laurdario di Cortona, (13th c. Italian Anon)

Photo: Illumination of a Christian and Muslim playing ouds, from The Cantigas de Santa Maria (13th century Spain)

[eastern-bloc-party-archive]

@lagren0uille

[elodieunderglass]

I friggin love that cover image and I remember blogging about it once

[glumshoe]

The Fair Folk: “I can’t believe this. Twenty years I’ve cleaned your house and you DARE to try to REPAY me with GIFTS. This is such an insult. Fuck you, you insolent humans. I’m leaving here and never returning because you have insulted me so deeply.”

Also the Fair Folk: “Remember that one time you pulled a thorn out of a cat’s foot? That was me. To show my gratitude, here is a house made of solid gold, a life-debt, my daughter’s hand in marriage, and a promise that all your children will be gorgeous and successful at all that they do. I can also throw in a blow job if you want. I hope this is enough. I don’t want to seem ungrateful.”

[pallidprincess]

ship are you making a callout post for faeries

[goodnightmoonvale]

#now to be fair #i have always interpreted this dichotomy as #you can leave them gifts #but not as repayment #because otherwise you’re just paying them to clean your haouse #and so the insult is to imply that they are servants performing labor for compensation #when in reality they are magnanimous bros #totally cleaning your nasty house out of the goodness of their good good hearts #and if you want to also be a bro #and give them some uncurdled milk and honey #that’s cool because that’s what bros do #but if you’re like ‘here’s some food for cleaning my house’ it’s like #excuse me #are you implying that you’re only giving me this because i did something for you #what kind of friend are you #fuck off with that then i thought we were bros (via @unpretty )

[the-gif-princess]

[mythicalpiranha-moved-deactivat]

IM LAUGIHNG HARDER THAN EVER RIGHT THIS SECOND

[thischick25]

Reblogging this again because Chris just made me realize that sheep are so stupid that I can’t even think like them:

These sheep? They are actually running away from the car.

They are so stupid that they’re following each other in a circle around the thing they are running from.

[drtanner-dickery]

SHEEPNADO

[sharkbeneaththelotus]

when your group cohesion is set higher than your flee response distance.

[surfcommiesmustdie-deactivated2]

Moshpit

[nevergonnawalkpastafez]

This is actually called a sheep cyclone and it happens because sheep don’t have a hierarchy. In most herds, whichever animal is the leader will sense danger and take off running. The rest of the herd takes it’s cues from the leader and follows. Sheep, on the other hand, don’t have a leader. If the flock runs, they run, and they follow whatever fluffy tail happens to be in front of them. Usually, this works out fine for the sheep. Occasionally, however, the sheep in the front starts following the fluffy tail of the sheep in the back so the whole flock ends up running in circles, going nowhere fast.

[surfcommiesmustdie-deactivated2]

sheeps are morons lmao

[kayla-bird-deactivated20190505]

is this what the doggos are for

[0somethingcool0]

@gallusrostromegalus

[gallusrostromegalus]

This is, to my understanding, excactly WHY we have both herding and livestock guardian dogs.  Sheep are… really amazingly dumb most of the time.  

Then, once in a while, you get one sheep that’s Entirely Too Cunning and that’s when all hell breaks loose.

[inflagrante-delicatessen]

…that sounds like a horror story

[nyokoko]

I fucking love sheep lmfao

[crankautodidact-deactivated2015]

fun words to know:

Echolalia: repetition of something (vocal). It can be a movie quote or something from a book or a word. A friend of mine and I say “goat” and “egoatlalia” over and over for example. Sometimes called “verbal stimming.” Often there is variation/permutation. Echolalia is literally the same thing as a meme and memes like the “sneme” are often echolaled with. Echolalia also has become a more general term. 

Palalalia: same as echolalia but the thing repeating comes from self. So like if you said something a weird way but then you really like it so then you say it a lot in a row or something. 

Echopraxia: copying repetitious movements from someone/something. Picking up a stim from someone is echopraxia, for example.

[cancerously]

I feel like with the new ~fandom drama~ or whatever going around, I should re-introduce my favorite theory of fandom, which I call the 1% Theory.

Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.

The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.

Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.

Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.

Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.

By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.

There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.

1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.

2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.

3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.

So remember, if you’re ever feeling disheartened by your fandom’s activity- it’s just 1%, people. Do your part not to be a part of it.

[the-right-writing]

Things you should know about each of your characters

These are what I would consider to be the most basic, bare-bones questions of character creation.

What would completely break your character?

What was the best thing in your character’s life?

What was the worst thing in your character’s life?

What seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character?

Does your character work so that they can support their hobbies or use their hobbies as a way of filling up the time they aren’t working?

What is your character reluctant to tell people?

How does your character feel about sex?

How many friends does your character have?

How many friends does your character want?

What would your character make a scene in public about?

What would your character give their life for?

What are your character’s major flaws?

What does your character pretend or try to care about?

How does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project?

What is your character afraid of?

What is something most people in your setting do that your character things is dumb?

Where would your character fall on a politeness/rudeness scale?

[probablycatrpgideas]

@probablywriterrpgideas ask this to all your pcs

[probablywriterrpgideas]

Very good ideas! Thanks for the tag, Cat

[probablygoodrpgideas]

This is really great

[broccoliveins]

Don’t leave out any hard of hearing children who come to your door this Halloween, take a minute out of your day to learn a few seasonal asl signs!  These are two different variations of “Happy Halloween” Click here for my source.

[scullysgirl-deactivated20260108]

halloween is for everyone!!!!!!

[cosmopollution]

this is honestly the cutest thing ever 10/10 will do this year💗💗

[wordfather]

some sentence prompts 3

“Hey guys, I’m here and I’m ready to bitch.”

“The five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, Seinfeld reruns and acceptance.”

“When Michael sang ‘Smooth Criminal’, he was actually singing about me.”

“Stupid beats boring.”

“You lay a finger on Dr. Dino and I’ll end you.”

“That’s it, I’m ready to go solo.”

“Alright, I’m leaving without you.”

“I shouldn’t have eaten that.” “Why?” “I’m allergic.” “WHAT!?”

“That kid has like, 1000 times more class than me.”

*shouting* “I swear I won’t tell anyone her about the time I saw you *embarrassing thing*”

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost killed someone. 12.”

“Here’s a hint: I’m not telling you.”

“Look, I care about you.” “Really?!”

“You have beautiful eyes.” “Complimenting me won’t distract me from the fire, A.”

“Alright, I’m gonna go cry.”

“Kicking it doesn’t help!”

“You killed Dr. Jones!” “For the last time your Indiana Jones figurine was not alive to begin with! I bought you a new one!” “It wasn’t the same!”

“That’s not what they say!”

“Are you still looking at the moon!?”

“You poor children.“

“Don’t be fooled, I’m the epitome of a mess.“

“Success is more important than human contact and love and hugs and…“ “…is that why you’re crying?”

“If you don’t stop procrastinating I’m going to kick your ass into action.“

“We get it!“

“Hey, I just wanted to check if you’re okay, you’ve been listening to SexyBack on repeat for an hour.“

[babyzoloft-blog]

How do you (“how does one”) shop for a therapist?

Can you call up a therapist and be like “hi, I’m therapist shopping”? Can you schedule an appointment with a therapist and then be like “actually I have some questions and I want to spend part of this appointment talking about your practice and whether or not it is garbage?”? Are you expected to phone interview/screen your therapists if you are shopping around for a therapist?

If you’re seeing one therapist are you supposed to/not supposed to tell them if you start seeing another therapist? Is it possible to cheat on your therapist?

[triflesandparsnips]

I know this one! Or, at least, I know a way to do it, because I’ve done it.

1) When you call them up (or email them, which I prefer, because PHONE, EW), you ask if they’re taking new patients.

2) If they say yes, say something along the lines of “Great! I’m looking for a new therapist. Would it be possible for me to schedule an appointment so we can see whether we’d be a good fit for one another?”

IF THEY SAY NO, THEY DON’T DO ‘INTERVIEWS’: they’re a dick, you don’t want them anyway, don’t bother to make an appointment

3) Assuming everything is a go, head over to the appointment. Bring your notebook, pen, and questions. Also, if possible, have a very brief rundown prepared of what you’d like to accomplish with your therapy (or even what you think your biggest issues are).

4) Introduce yourself. Reiterate that you want to see if the two of you would be a good fit, so [a nice little social laugh or smile here, while holding up your notebook] you brought questions.

IF THEY DON’T LIKE THAT: they’re a dick, you don’t want them anyway, cut the meeting short

5) Give the rundown of what you want, what your issues are, whatever. See how they react.

IF YOU FEEL WEIRD AT ALL ABOUT THEM: they may not be a dick, but if you don’t feel comfortable with them, then it’s going to be a shit therapeutic relationship

6) Ask your questions — about their therapeutic approach, why they entered the field, whether they feel comfortable working with *your* needs (I, for instance, specifically told my awesome therapist that I needed her to tell me absolutely nothing about her personal life or experiences — as much as possible, I needed a blank wall to bounce things off of. It’s been years now, and I THINK she’s seen at least a couple of episodes of Doctor Who. I THINK. That’s all I’ve got. It’s amazing).

AGAIN, IF YOU FEEL WEIRD ABOUT THEM: go with your gut — your therapy is not the time or place to try and soldier through

7) By this point, you’ve probably hit the 45 minute mark, and you’ll know if you want to see this person again.

IF YES, say that this was a really great meeting, and you’d like to set up a regular appointment.

IF NO, say “Thanks for meeting with me.” If it wasn’t too terrible, feel free to add in whatever social niceties you want to lessen the blow (“I have appointments with a few other people, still, but thank you again!”), or you could just skedaddle as soon as possible.

IF YOU’RE NOT SURE, go a bit heavier with the social nicety: “I still have appointments with a few other people, but I really enjoyed our meeting. I’ll let you know as soon as possible if I’d like to schedule another one. Thanks again!”

Regarding current therapists: If they’re toxic, get rid of ‘em before you even start interviewing others. Nobody needs that kind of garbage. Otherwise, you could keep seeing them while you interview others, and then the second you find one you like (and you schedule your next appointment), get rid of your current one. You don’t have to say why — just say that you’d like to cancel future appointments. Do it over email, if you want. If you like them, you can tell them that you just need something different now, but that you “really appreciate all the work we’ve done together” or something. If you don’t like them, just cancel. They don’t need to know jack.

IF YOUR CURRENT THERAPIST SAYS SHIT ABOUT YOUR LEAVING — and I mean anything other than a positive hope for you in the future — then they were a dick and you were right to find someone else. Who needs passive-aggressive bullshit from a therapist? Nobody, that’s who.

So that’s my philosophy/style with regard to therapist shopping — I may be completely wrong, but it’s worked for me so far. Good luck!

[castironjackelope]

This is really good advice

[theartoftransliness]

Yes, very good advice!

[businessinsider]

How to pick locks and break padlocks

[helenabeating]

Memorize

[fycanadianpolitics]

Vancouver Dirt Now Earns Twice as Much as All of the City’s Workers Combined

It’s getting harder and harder to put Vancouver’s freakish housing market in perspective.

Not that deep down, renters in Vancouver know we’ve been given a raw deal. The city has once again been ranked third least affordable in the world—behind Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia—which means the average cost of housing is way beyond average income.

What we don’t usually get is a clear sense of the scale of this gap—especially when it comes to the massive fortunes being made in the process.

Data analyst Jens von Bergmann is at least making an effort, and the results are equal parts absurd and enraging. His latest breakdown of land values found thatdirt in Vancouver earned twice as much as all of the city’s working humans combined.

This isn’t the first time Jens has run these numbers. Last year, Jens added up the accumulated land value of all the city’s single detached homes between 2015 and 2016. This excludes the value of any buildings—so you could essentially call it the total annual earnings of about 80,000 patches of dirt.

“It came out to a huge number,” he recalled to VICE. (At the time it was $24 billion.) “I looked for a comparable one, and it turned out to be just slightly more than the entire income of the population of the city of Vancouver.” In other words, no amount of shifts at your local coffee shop would have made you as wealthy as signed papers and land.

But that was last year. In 2017, new numbers from the BC housing assessment office show something even worse. It turns out those same patches of dirt managed to earn twice as much as working humans the following year, a cool $46.7 billion all told.

“The comparison doesn’t work that well anymore, because now it’s about double,” Jens told VICE. “So single family home land values in the city of Vancouver went up twice as much as the amount of money the entire population brought home working.” […]

[sapphicscience-archive]

i’m tired of “how to help a partner with [x mental illness]” guides that assume that the other partner has no issues of any kind; i want more discussion of how to balance the differing mental health needs of multiple people in a relationship

[borderbetweencountries]

So my partner and I have been together almost two years, and we both suffer from anxiety, BPD, and a handful of other mental illnesses, and here’s some things that help us out immensely.

communication is key. Tell your partner if you’re having a bad day. Listen when your partner says they’re having a bad day. It’s easier to be careful with someone when you know they’re already having a bad day. I can’t stress this enough - communication is always important in relationships; but it’s doubly so when one or both of you has a mental illness. You have to trust your partner to be able to be honest with you about what they’re feeling and how their illness is affecting them, and you need to be honest with them, too. ask questions. If your partner is struggling, asking them questions to help you understand how to help them can be good. Remember that ‘I don’t know’ is a valid answer, and it is one that you can also give. be reminders for each other. It can be super hard to remember to do simple things for yourself; it can be easier to remember to remind your partner to do them. My partner reminds me about medication, food, etc., and I do the same for him - it helps a lot. use safewords. And I don’t mean in the kinky sense. My partner and I have a series of words that mean different things, because sometimes it can be hard to say ‘I’m swinging’ or ‘I’m having a panic attack’ or ‘this subject is upsetting me for x y z’ reason. It’s easier to say one syllable - ‘swing’ for rapidly cycling emotions, ‘count’ for panic attacks (so one of us can count breaths for the other). We have words that mean ‘drop this subject now’ and words that mean ‘please don’t touch me’. We also have hand signals for days when one or both of us are nonverbal, and we revert to texting on those days. be willing to give each other space.  But don’t necessarily go far. If you need your space, tell your partner; if your partner needs their space, make sure they can still access you.  acknowledge each other’s illness. Don’t pretend it isn’t there. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Acknowledge that they’re there, acknowledge that sometimes they may come in conflict with each other, and learn how to take a step back when it becomes a problem. call each other out. If your partner is repeatedly doing things that are detrimental to themselves/your relationship/you, call them on it. Don’t do it in an asshole way - just sit down with them and be like ‘hey, you’ve been doing this thing that is really sucky lately, and it needs to stop.’ Likewise, listen when you’re being called out. It’s really easy to get stuck in shitty loops when your brain is sick, and sometimes you don’t know what you’re doing ‘til someone points it out. This hurts! And it sucks! But it’s part of acknowledging your illnesses. It doesn’t do any good to let bad habits continue, even if there’s a reason they’re happening. learn to forgive. When you’ve both got brain issues going on, it’s inevitable that people are going to say things they don’t mean, and that is going to hurt. The important thing is being able to recognize when you’ve messed up and apologize sincerely, and accept it when your partner apologizes. These are just some things that work for us. Add to the list if you can and I hope this helps.

[timelordniko]

signal boost af!