Applied Passion

Into darkness, into danger, into storms that rip the night... Are there mountains that surround us? Are there walls that block the way? Knock 'em down, strip 'em back, boys and forward and into the fray! Would-be-Hugger of Sith and lapsed Whovian Also: several flavors of Star Trek; occasionally Top Gear; Discworld; Victor Hugo; various takes on Holmes; and an additional assortment of intriguing ideas.

[rugessnome]

heptarch of just. putting Tyrious in a room and they talk treason. or trauma.

[starcatboy]

[depsidase]

[unicorncryptid]

"my life isn't a crime, I'm not one of those people -"

"you sure? new parameters for Those People just dropped. check again."

[lizardywizard]

And if you truly cannot imagine this, if you're convinced that it will never happen to you, consider this one thing.

Would you want scammers to know the state of your loved one's dementia?

[cheesenames]

if we can set aside attachment discourse for a moment (please) i think the jedi marriage prohibition makes sense in a “please don’t enter a complex legal, financial, social, and in some cases religious contract, the specifics of which vary wildly depending on planet and culture” way. the single jedi with a law degree does not have time to draft everyone’s prenups to prevent the whole order from getting sued

[the-fallen-blue]

#we could create so many interesting new problems if we ignore romance and make it about contracts generally#jedi prohibition on getting a loan. jedi prohibition on signing a waiver before bungee jumping. etc

"Qui-Gon didn't try to buy Anakin or the engine because there wasn't anyone in town who offered a credit exchange service" wrong. Qui-Gon gambled for Anakin under the table because after dealing with the Cyrkon Delinquency of 24850, Master Olobi, Esq, has personally promised to hang by the the toes from the highest tower of the Temple for one week any Jedi who generates any trackable legal transaction or obligation between the Order and the Hutts.

[roseunspindle]

A world where you have a special animal soul companion, you get them at like...age five. Your parents take you for the ceremony. Since they are super magical they can change size so...larger sized animals can shrink so no one has to figure out how to like in an apartment with like...an elephant.

Find out your companion here *jazz hands*

Do you love them? Do you hate them?

How would your parents react to your new bestie?

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

you were almost turned into a vampire, but before you could be fully turned, the vampire was staked. This left you with a vampire weakness, while still being human.

Spin the wheel to find out your weakness!

How much does this effect you?

Nothing changes

It's inconvenient but I can deal with jty

It will be hard to adjust but I'll figure it out

I don't know if I'll be able to live like this

Maybe I can find another vampire to finish the turning?

I might just kill myself

Results/other

Remaining time: 4 days 14 hours

thanks @theemmjay for submitting this poll idea!! Seriously it's such a cool concept I love it so much

[storybookprincess]

one of the best ways i’ve found to combat that inherent depressive pessimism without veering into toxic positivity territory is simply the phrase “i’m open to the possibility”

this particularly works with anything negative i’ve forecasted. “i woke up feeling like shit today, so my day is gonna suck” isn’t a particularly helpful thought, but “it’s a great day to be alive!!!!!” feels hollow and insincere when i have a pounding headache & am running on three hours of sleep

instead i’ll tell myself, “i really don’t feel good right now, but i’m open to the possibility that coffee and breakfast might perk me up a bit.” or “i’m in a lot of pain today, but i’m open to the possibility that my workday might still have fun parts despite that”

sometimes, when your impulse is to slam the door on anything good, but you’re not exactly up to going out & hunting it down yourself, leaving the door open just a crack makes all the difference

[penny-anna]

like many people have said this better than me but no it IS odd that we've come to think of potatoes as so quintessentially european that their presence in historical fantasy where they're anachronistic doesn't jar. and yes people are trying to have the trappings of post-colonial europe without engaging w the icky colonialism part and yes people are neglecting to imagine what a european cuisine without potatoes would be like.

[penny-anna]

im fully in favour of 'let people have fun w their fantasy world' but is considering how the potatoes got there in the absence of colonialism not a fun exercise? maybe every year the dragon riders go on a great transatlantic potato pilgrimage

[penny-anna]

perhaps a good way to sum up the issue here is:

if you put potatoes in your medieval european style fantasy world people will by and large not find it jarring and accept it as a normal fantasy trope

if you put, say, black people in your medieval european style fantasy world a whole demographic of people will get very angry and accuse you of breaking their immersion

this is in spite of the fact that black people were a lot more common in medieval europe than potatoes.

[sturionic]

"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.

As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.

I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!

The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.

With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.

Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!

Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.

You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).

[sturionic]

Oh my. This one seems to be in the process of breaching containment, so I'm going to add my own tags back to the post. For anything involving repetitive motions, book at least a few lessons with a teacher (or ask someone you know with expertise) to show you correct posture!! And continue to check in with someone knowledgeable IRL every few months in case your posture drifts as you are building your own practice habit. Yes, IRL - it's hard for people online to catch nuances in posture that could be harmful to you!

[kosmogrl]

[fucking-relax]

this is helpful to getting started on anything regardless of what you call it (from this post)

problem solving steps

IMPROVE distress tolerance skill

[galileosballs]

The 'ingredients you can pronounce means it's healthy' line implies a world in which the kind of nutrition a person requires scales with their biology education and grasp of phonics. Which isn't true, of course, but sure would imply some interesting worldbuilding if it were

[maykitz]

the persecution of lefthandedness is insane to think about because it was so intense for so long, in some places still is, without any clear profit motivation. sheer love of the game. as late as the 70s at least they were smacking my stepdad's hands for it with a wooden ruler at school, to this day he's in weird ambidexterity situation where he's not great with either side and notably clumsy due to poor hand-eye coordination. just wtf

[seeingteacupsindragons]

It is fascinating to me that people also think of handedness as an example of bigotry that just...went away. As you note, it...hasn't in some places. I know people who grew up in the mid-late 90s who still had this problem.

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

But the point is, bigotry isn't just a mindset shift. People can't just decide they're not bothered by that particular difference anymore and everything's fine, because society is still structured and designed to cause problems for marginalized people. And they're never even going to notice all the little ways their life is bent to convenience them that inconveniences others.

[st-just]

question for the Americans in the room; is this a real thing or just another case of '90% of op/ed writers live in the Bay Area or very specific neighborhoods in NYC/LA'?

[paradoxspaceheater]

i went to a store once that had this (i think a cvs in boston) and i spent way too long trying to figure out why some boxes of tylenol were locked up and others weren't (it didn't seem to have anything to do with either price or ingredients...)

[aromanticduck]

[yellow-cat]

pride flag for nonbinary asexual aromantic individuals that just says "not gonna do all that"

[arachnosis]

[troublepunk-ldn]

actually i am gonna give you guys a genuine answer to that. not the anon because they obviously don't actually care, but the rest of the new followers i seem to have picked up off that youth lib post.

why do i give a shit about social media restrictions? well, i went to the library three months ago with my two teenage brothers to sign them up for new library cards (they just moved) and i was told that under 18s can't have a library card, even a restricted kids-books-only card, without a parent there in person to give consent.

that's fucked for abused kids for sure but that's also fucked for kids whose single mum works two jobs and can't get to the library while its open. and there is NO good reason for it except to appease parents who want to control what their kids can read.

people coming onto my posts telling me 'kids should just do X' have not actually looked into the possibility of doing what they are suggesting. kids now cannot do what you did when you were a teenager even a decade ago. abused kids, disabled kids or kids from low income families ESPECIALLY cannot do those things. they are running out of places to go.

interviews and studies with teenagers repeatedly prove that they WANT to hang out with their friends in real life, and it is getting harder and harder to do it. the internet is one of the only places they can all spend time together, unsupervised, without spending money or getting hassled or moved on by adults.

social media bans won't fix that. they won't even keep kids off social media. they're just going to make life harder for everyone, increase the amount of tracking and monitoring EVERYONE is subject to, and force kids to lie about what they're doing to any adults that actually DO give a shit about them.

[mildmayfoxe]

1) any stretching is better than no stretching

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

3) statistically you will never be the worst person at anything, there is always someone in the world who is worse at stuff than you are