Yada, Yada, Yada

I'm just a 40-Something gamer, writer, editor, role-player, multi fandom nerd. This blog is a wacky mix of anything that happens to catch my fancy so hold onto your butts.

[fuckyeahchinesegarden]

The underground river boat tour in Zhijin Grand Canyon, Bijie, Guizhou, China

[wifihunters]

its pride month and im very burnt out from working in healthcare however i do love it for the ambiguity the uniform/masks offer. had a conversation with a patient after seeing him for a day or two where he was like

"Sorry, I don't mean to offend--"

Which of course, I brace for hell, since he is around 60, and i am a gangly cryptid that people usually struggle only to find the right slur to apply to. But i dutifully keep my work voice and go "nah nah, don't worry, what can I do?"

He hits me with "Are you--uh, I've been saying 'thank you ma'am' but are you... okay with that? What should I call you?"

And i live in a small conservative pocket within one of the most liberal states in the US, so my experience in public is varied. People have guessed, they've gone with she, he. they, they've awkwardly avoided it, but no stranger had ever asked me.

So i panicked and chuckled. This felt kind of like walking into a fake tumblr post. I said "Oh, you can call me whatever you want, its fine."

Any cis person would probably sound a little insulted. i knew i was confirming some kind of gender fuckery, but giving him the out that he didn't have to change anything. Fucker kindly smiles though, and like. Pounces. Asks, much more confidently, "But would you prefer sir? What are your pronouns?"

He's on script now, I'm astral projecting to a different plane where i'm a bug on a well lit microscope and my throat's a little tight all the sudden. I say, "Oh. I uh--I use they/them."

I use they or he, but 'they' is the language curveball. I know this, which is why i usually just let people use whatever. He nods, and I choke out (because its been a bad bad day, autoimmune flare pain on top of record high patient numbers) "Thanks. No one... has ever asked me. Have a good day."

He told me the same, I booked it, because the dim room was hiding watery eyes but not for much longer. Got it together in a nearby closet (ha) and moved on.

Came back later on in the evening because I had promised to visit when his wife was there earlier in the day. She's sweet, he's sweet, I do my usual spiel, he avoids any 'ma'am' studiously, but on me going to head out again, hits the dilemma of having no polite substitute for 'ma'am' or 'sir' that isnt gendered in some subtle way, and he's fucking trying, but this is not second nature obviously.

So what comes out is "Have a wonderful night, Them!"

Beaming, proud, right next to his extremely confused wife, who he seems to have not outted me to (nice) who now thinks he's probably having a stroke (funny, but not nice lmao)

Anyway, tldr, not adding to the well-meant bigot strawman theory, man wasn't a bigot, it was just. Nice, that in a sea of alt, visibly queer or vocally liberal people my age or younger who never thought to ask or just didn't want to deal with the awkwardness of stumbling through it... some lone dad guy decided 'good enough' wasn't enough and volunteered to correct himself.

[vel1m1r]

Happy pride month

[my-dailydreams]

[sephirthoughts]

i ship this

[homura]

happy pride to the trans lesbian furry who made this commercial

[interestingmistakes]

Reblogging this manually. Op doesn't want credit for fear of being terminated.

[rowanclair]

In an ancient forest, shallow pools reflect not the trees above, but a luminous city of elsewhere.

[luna-azzurra]

Most writers don't have a writing problem. they have a finishing problem. and finishing is its own completely different skill that has almost nothing to do with talent. finishing requires you to be okay with the thing being real, being done, existing in the world where people can have opinions about it.

And a lot of people would rather keep it unfinished and perfect in their head than done and flawed and out there. an unfinished draft can still be anything. once you finish it, it becomes one specific thing with specific failures that specific people can point to. so you keep tweaking. you keep saying it's not ready. you go back to the beginning again.

And the years pass and you are a person who is always working on something and never the person who made something. and those are two completely different people with two completely different relationships to this thing they claim to love.

[foxes-in-love]

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

We've all gotten just a bit too comfortable being jerks to strangers on the internet I think

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

So I've hidden this reply, both because it's obnoxious and because I don't want the person who wrote it being harassed for it, but I need you to understand: I don't know you. We are not friends. This is not fun or cute, we are not sharing a charming joke together. You are just being an asshole.

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

literally that is what the post is about, I am saying people should be less eager to jump on any chance to be snarky and rude to total strangers on the internet

[sidedere]

DID THE JOURNAL FACTORY FUCKING EXPLODE???

you said it yourself: you're looking to vent it LITERALLY ANYWHERE

so vent it somewhere private. or at least not literally aimed AT another person, a total stranger at that

Like, this reblogger sounds so insanely self centered in their reblog. notice how both options focus on how being rude would affect THEM. "B has no consequences for me so it's perfectly fine to do"

(the only reason I didn't show their username in the screenshot is because, given how self victimizing they sound in their reblog, I believe that, if I did show their username, suddenly online stuff wouldn't seem so inconsequential to them and they'd accuse me of sending harrassment their way and putting them in danger)

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

You said it better than I could. Of all the inane and ridiculous things I've seen in my notes because of this post, "I NEED to say fuck you to strangers or I will literally die" is certainly one of them

[memecucker]

Invention of bread is weird bc it’s like some Neolithic ppl were like “hey you know that tall grass thing that’s sorta edible but not really how about we take it and grind it into a very very fine powder which is extra backbreaking right now bc the wheel won’t be invented for awhile and then we mix it with water and heat it up and you know what let’s also toss some mold in there just to see what happens”

[quoms]

there are a number of distinct steps though, each of which can be observed in isolation. “grind tough seeds to make them edible” is practiced with other foods besides grains (like acorns). the natural next step after that is to add water, which gives you porridge: a common ancient roman meal was puls, very similar to modern cream of wheat. once you have that you also have a simple dough, and baking it to preserve it is a logical experiment (as is baking some you forgot about and left out for a few days, just so you don’t waste it... voila, leavened bread)

there could have been, and probably was (though i’m not an archaeologist) a substantial time between each of these innovations. it’s not too hard to imagine people being chill with “grind seeds for soup, select plants for bigger seeds” for a good while

[quasi-normalcy]

Do you ever wonder how many amazing things are fated to go forever uninvented because each step necessary to invent them is a completely unintuitive thing to do?

[noctumsolis]

Okay, that's not how bread was invented. I wrote a potted history, I could try to dig that out if anyone is interested?

[quasi-normalcy]

Please do

[panecultus]

I'm putting this on my bread blog, because of course I am. Also tagging @appendingfic who I think expressed interest.

Tens of thousands of years ago people foraged and hunted for their food and ate whatever they could. Among their forage were wild cereals, which included the ancestors of modern cultivated wheat, barley and others.

People like sweet things. Grains are starchy, but if sprouted they start converting those starches to sugars, so people would've left grains in water to sprout. These sprouts are also easier to digest, thus more nutritious, which bestowed an invisible advantage on those sprouting their grains.

If grains are left in water too long, however, they begin to ferment. Alcohol is produced. People like alcohol.

In ancient Mesopotamia the fermented grains were experimented with, resulting in an early form of beer. The process of making that beer was quite complicated and involved a combination of sprouted and mashed grains.

People wanted beer all year round, but early beers did not have long shelf lives and the grain could only be harvested at certain times. So the ancient Mesopotamians invented a way of storing the ingredients for beer.

It was made of the grain mash, honey, dates and spices that were fermented to make beer. For storage, prior to fermentation, the mixture was baked dry, cut into smaller pieces and baked again to remove all water. This produced bapir, a product very much like biscotti, which could be stored for later rehydration and fermentation. Sometimes it was eaten instead.

I've made bapir, and I've eaten it. It is brittle but delicious. It's also a form of unleavened bread.

Bread was invented as a way to store the ingredients for beer, which was most likely a development from a chance discovery. Leavened bread (that is, with bubbles) may well have been discovered when a mixture like that for bapir was accidentally allowed to ferment before baking. Yeast is responsible for both alcohol production and leavening.

There's a lot more to it, in terms of the cultivation of grains and the development of milling, than I've written here. It's been a process of millennia to go from chewing sprouts to eating soft white bread like that pictured. But every step along the way was small and simple.

[quasi-normalcy]

I never would have guessed that beer pre-existed bread. I've always just assumed that beer was an accidental discovery by breadmakers.

[jenniferrpovey]

Nope, beer came first. Mead is also very old.

[headspace-hotel]

Thanks, ancient humans!

[thirtyknives]

Australian First Nations people developed their own bread making culture independent of the beer-base route. As far as I'm aware, pre colonial Australia had little to nothing by way of fermented drinks at all, so the likelihood of beer being part of the evolution of native breads is unlikely. Their breads, made from native grasses, are both leavened and unleavened. There's also different bread making practices using different grains, dependent on location - Australia is big and Indigenous culture over here is no more a monolith than it is anywhere else. Kamilaroi bread is different to Yuin bread, for example.

The colonization of Australia actively suppressed Indigenous knowledge, and creating an image of the idle wandering tribes was required to justify taking Aboriginal lands. This means a lot of the archeology of how First Nations people developed their breads has not just been lost but deliberately suppressed. The idea that they were settled enough to have ovens, let alone a bread-making tradition, is only now really being examined. I wouldn't be surprised if the grains-porridge-bread route was true for Aussie breads, though.

[afairfight]

“… Sorry for saying BJ at the Oxfam Gala.” – Mae Martin on biphobia

[justgot1]

Protect him

[rainbowsnakesncakes]

It’s really refreshing and affirming to hear these words spoken by another human! Sometimes (often, if we’re being totally honest with ourselves), I feel insane for thinking that people should just be able to be friends with other people regardless of whether or not someone is married or they’re an opposite gender, without having to make it weird and sexual. Please can we just go back to all being friends on the playground and playing in the dirt together.

[oberonsson]

Dame Archer kicks McDougal’s Scots ass there in the rain at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire - August 11, 2018 - Photo by Douglas Herring

[anarcho-wormism-deactivated2019]

😮

[garrettauthor]

Oh NO.

[treacleaergia]

me, a sheltered noblewoman: Pray who is that brave knight? Dame Archer:*turns around* me: gasp! *instantly in love*

[dirtyriver]

Alicia Archer

[ex-sang-uination]

my bi heart………

[ohmightysmiter]

I’VE NEVER SEEN THE ADDED PICS

[hrefnatheravenqueen]

[nyx-belial]

*dies*

[garrettauthor]

Oh shit.

[notlostonanadventure]

GAY KNIGHTS

[unicornofdarknessstuff-deactiva]

Fellas I’m real gay

[thecarrott]

@0hheytherebigbadwolf HELP!!

[0hheytherebigbadwolf]

Every June this inevitably winds up back on my dash. And I appreciate that. And I will reblog it. Every time.

[rockitcat]

Hey, it’s @archerinventive, and the Pride Knights!

[aweekerfuffle]

You're a doctor. You've been taught the phrase "first, do no harm."

A patient comes in with a flesh eating bacteria that is rapidly spreading up their leg. The only way to save their life is to remove their leg.

So what do you do? To help the patient is to accept that you must also harm them.

You're a good doctor. Of course you remove the leg and save the patient's life, because trying to exercise a choice that will result in no harm is impossible where there are only two bad outcomes, but one is unquestionably worse.

This post is for for leftists in the US who still think either not voting or going with a protest vote in the next two major election cycles is an acceptable choice, when you know full well the Republican will cause more harm.

[nudityandnerdery]

This Pride Month, remember:

We're here, we're queer, we're really fucking tired so we're just gonna go straight to biting instead of feigning polite confusion if you're gonna be a bigot this time, just so you know.

Happy Pride!

[gothiccharmschool]

I support all of you biting bigots. Do that.

[stjohnstarling]

I think the battle is long since lost on what the “-coded” suffix means, but I (old movie guy specifically invested in queer coding) seem to be unable to let go of how annoying I find the fuzzy popular use of the term. This is probably a flaw in my character.

[stjohnstarling]

Coding is intentional, it’s a way of communicating indirectly with the audience through a shared language of signs. That’s why it’s called coding, because it’s communicating in code. It isn’t when a thing reminds you of another thing.