ruin to ruin

recovering lurker since 2013 / bits of art, history, religion and anarchy / ttrpg stuff as transfemmeDM / habitual philosophy: I prefer knowing, know I can't, and rarely agree with myself / never got morals to run on my system / so 'mud-wrestling a pig' is an understatement / not an academic, but I read papers across the board / so ama, I might know something after all / or just answer with another interesting question

[softwaring]

[herpsandbirds]

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing."

Arundhati Roy

[loth-caatgirl]

[cryptotheism]

Labor theory of value stipulates that a cursed object must be worth more than the same non-cursed item.

[the-supernatural-atheist]

if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills

[the-supernatural-atheist]

where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*

[makaeru]

I hate learning about instances of "oh yeah we know how to do that, we just don't".

[marzipanandminutiae]

this is exactly why I love talking about historical passive heating and cooling techniques

oh wow the glass-tower office buildings we constructed when we thought air conditioning and central heating would never have downsides...have downsides?

and we're still building them?

while the Victorian house museum where I work, with thick walls and small windows and big wooden shutters stays ~10 degrees above (winter) or below (summer) the outside temperature for days on end with no help at all?

uh. okay then

(also public transit. the history of public transit in the US is infuriating, because we had it! and then we destroyed it!)

[en-theos]

On that note, I will not trust any modern adaptation of the Persephone myth that claims to be feminist if it does not depict the famine that occurs to be a deliberate act by Demeter. That famine is the one bargaining chip that Demeter has. It is the manifestation of her power that forces Zeus to take her seriously, that threatens his world order enough to make him question his actions regarding Persephone, as here in the earliest surviving source, the Homeric hymn to Demeter:

νότατον δ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπὶ χθόνα πουλυβότειραν

ποίησ᾽ ἀνθρώποις καὶ κύντατον: οὐδέ τι γαῖα

σπέρμ᾽ ἀνίει, κρύπτεν γὰρ ἐυστέφανος Δημήτηρ:

πολλὰ δὲ καμπύλ᾽ ἄροτρα μάτην βόες εἷλκον ἀρούραις:

πολλὸν δὲ κρῖ λευκὸν ἐτώσιον ἔμπεσε γαίῃ:

310καί νύ κε πάμπαν ὄλεσσε γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων

λιμοῦ ὑπ᾽ ἀργαλέης, γεράων τ᾽ ἐρικυδέα τιμὴν

καὶ θυσιῶν ἤμερσεν Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχοντας,

εἰ μὴ Ζεὺς ἐνόησεν ἑῷ τ᾽ ἐφράσσατο θυμῷ.

But golden-haired Demeter sat there apart from all the blessed gods and stayed, wasting with yearning for her deep-bosomed daughter. [305] Then she caused a most dreadful and cruel year for mankind over the all-nourishing earth: the ground would not make the seed sprout, for rich-crowned Demeter kept it hid. In the fields the oxen drew many a curved plough in vain, and much white barley was cast upon the land without avail. [310] So she would have destroyed the whole race of man with cruel famine and have robbed them who dwell on Olympus of their glorious right of gifts and sacrifices, had not Zeus perceived and marked this in his heart. (305-314, tr. Evelyn-White)

Demeter causes a dreadful year; she keeps the seeds hidden within the earth, setting in motion a chain of events that even rattles Olympus, as sacrifices to the gods are no longer made. Now, many subsequent adaptations, both ancient and modern, let the famine occur as a manifestation of Demeter's emotions, her grief, rather than a manifestation of her power. Indubitably, the two are connected. However, divorcing Demeter's anger from her subsequent planning, decision-making and power and giving her a passive and ignorant role in the situation that brings Zeus to his knees shifts the dynamics in the story considerably. Any adaptation that shows barrenness occurring as an indirect and incidental consequence of Demeter's grief unabashedly takes away Demeter's agency in the whole myth. Modern adaptions have shown to be focused on Persephone's agency more anyway, because of her availability as a romantic protagonist. But it is a very hard sell for me to present an adaptation as feminist when Demeter's one defining act as goddess and mother is neutralized.

[targetedknowledge]

[roycohn]

gay men brought back 70s mustaches, lesbians brought back 80s mullets, and now straight dudes are just walking around with both thinking they stumbled onto this styling choice by accident. say the line meryl (cerulean sweater monologue but specifically about how gay culture creates taste)

[untitledgoosegay]

-- The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

so what you're gonna do is you're gonna trim the top off a bulb of garlic, using the knife's edge to take off the tip of every individual clove, that's important. you're gonna place the garlic face-up in a square of tinfoil, drizzle with olive oil, wrap completely in foil, place in baking tray, repeat with a copious amount of garlic bulbs. you're gonna put that baking tray in an oven set to 375-400°F, for 30-50 minutes, until soft and browned. you're gonna toast some good bread, slather generously with butter and honey, maybe a tiny lil bit o' salt. and then. you're gonna SQUEEZE. OUT. THAT. ROASTED GARLIC. onto the butter honey toast. and you're gonna eat it. food stolen directly from the plate of the gods. that's what you're gonna do.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the garlic. it beckons you

[thesweetestsupervillains]

It occurs to me that "1920s gangster doing a cooking show while holding you at gunpoint" is an untapped market.

We've had normal cooking shows. Now we need period piece cooking shows in character.

[ruiningmymascara]

closest I got recently, and I love how happy he gets about the good food!

[0x1-deactivated20220826]

if you found out that your dad has 120k followers on tiktok what would it be for? what would your dad's tiktok niche be

[ruiningmymascara]

my dad would do numbers on yt or twitch. he's made of meandering ramble and will just keep talking, zero input required.

his staples would be ecology, gardening, nutrition, history and tech, 50/50 info and misinfo. had to filter out the facts years before I had web access, but it took 25 years before I hadn't heard of a nutrition trend.

very glad he's got 0 interest in conspiracy theories - he'd be a menace!

my step-dad could probably do old car and house repair advice, hike photos, ER stories or some history as well, but he might be too short form even for tiktok. he wouldn't find a vow of silence hard, to put it mildly

[maybe-someday-eventually]

[smuganimebitch]

To this day I still don't believe that anyone actually thought you could generate infinite chocolate via an optical illusion. That's a thing people tell themselves to feel superior

[smuganimebitch]

The defining feature of tumblr is not "the website where people actually think infinite chocolate is possible", it is defined by a group of people refusing to break kayfabe, another group being genuinely confused by an optical illusion (NOT the same thing as thinking infinite chocolate is possible) and a third group who is certain they are a lot smarter than the other two.

[cryptotheism]

If staff reformed the ban system to stop banning trans women and used the resulting good will to re-introduce pornography, this site would become a juggernaut. It would swallow Twitter whole.

[glazeliights]

[racistspiderman]

More women

[sevey6]

Thank god they decided to make more

[somesaypoetry]

Wow

Dolly Parton has really been hard at work

[cumbacon]

But In doing so…she created her biggest enemy…Jolene

[ichikun]

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[dipdamnderoo]

I made a thing.  Happy pride 🏳️‍🌈

[ozempicofficial]

[dragongirlsweetie]

it's actually so crazy how much the simpsons would fucking suck if it didn't have any of the simpsons characters. just a bunch of shots of empty houses and streets for half an hour while nothing happens. that would be so badddd lol

[auroroboros1]

yeah that tends to happen when you remove characters from media. without characters its all just background. i guess movies set in scenic locations would still land as kinda nature docs but even then

[dragongirlsweetie]

it only happens with the simpsons

[auroroboros1]

this same criticism could be applied to nearly any media ever.

[dragongirlsweetie]

it's just the simpsons. are you a troll?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Dragon's right, if you remove all the Simpsons characters from Death Note it hardly changes anything

[ruiningmymascara]

if you remove one Death Note character from the Simpsons tho, isa Simpson.

Simpsons really are that special!

[theodysseyofhomer]

i bring a certain "if you're talking about ancient literature you should CLEARLY MARK the difference between what's in the text vs headcanons/speculation/popular assumptions. actually you should practice doing this in many areas of life but let's start small" vibe to the greek mythology function that people don't really like