insert witty blog title here

Nelson; they; 26

Why do people never want to tell you their middle name like who gives a shit its not a nuclear launch code its your damn name

[fireworksdraco]

reblog with your middle name in the tags

[chromium-phoenix]

Actually, the practice dates back to the reason we have middle names in the first place!

Some time around the dark ages, everyone believed in witchcraft and wizardry, like ya do. A big principle of magic was the idea of “true names.” If a spellcaster knew your full name, they could do whatever the hell they wanted to you. Of course, people didn’t want that, but there were enough people with the same first names that you had to give people your surname as well, to avoid confusion.

The solution? A secret name in the middle that you don’t tell anyone (unless you believe that they’re not able to do magic and/or you trust them enough that if they DID do magic, you’d be fine).

[horticulturalcephalopod]

this is some death note shit

[wenamedthedogkylo]

Is that why when a parent uses your full name (or even just first and middle name) when they’re angry with you, it feels like they just cast some serious mojo on your soul and you know you are in deep shit?

[the-argumentative-viper]

Yes. Knock on wood to avert the fae hearing.

[lesbiannancywheeleer-deactivate]

Hey I know you guys are really obsessed with that John comedian and calling him a gay icon and stuff but can I redirect you to Chris Fleming who is a queer comedian who’s funny, relatable as fuck, and talks about being queer. He’s best know for his show Gayle but he does stand up too. 

[rem-ir]

AND he’s from Massachusetts

[wienners]

Also I recommend Ian Harvie! Hes a trans guy comedian who does stand up 

[smalltall]

Please support the “We can’t let people know we SIT” guy

[marseny]

“THERE CAN BE NO SIGNS OF LIVING IN THIS HOUSE” 

[captainkirkk]

I’m kind of disappointed that so much Firelord!Zuko content seems to be about how he’s on the verge of falling apart, and how the nation doesn’t respect him and his ministers won’t cooperate with him, and he’s separated from the gaang

And that’s not untrue. Zuko has to run a government that was, a few months ago, ready and willing to burn the rest of the world to ash, and that’s a serious burden to bear, but it’s not hopeless. This is a new time of peace. A new dawn. Where are all my pieces that focus on peace and growth? About Zuko fostering friendly alliances? About Zuko leading by example?

A servant accidentally drops a serving platter of roast duck during a ball. The juice splatters a noble woman’s gown. She backhands the servant across the face and her husband is calling for punishment and people are watching as though it’s some kind of show, because this is the way it is in the palace. Until, that is, the Firelord steps forward and helps the servant to his feet. Zuko asks the shaking man if he is alright. He calls for another servant to help clean up the mess. He tells the noblewoman in a tight voice that she, nor anyone else in these walls, will not raise a violent hand to anyone under his care

Zuko is walking through a city courtyard as he speaks with the Mayor when a young child waddles up and tugs at Zuko’s golden-hemmed robes, curious at the way they catch the light. The guards rush forward and the boy’s parents fall over themselves to offer apologies and beg for forgiveness, and Zuko bends down and picks the child up under the arms, and settles him on his hip. The child reaches for his gold crown settled in his topknot and Zuko laughs and gently pushes his hands away. He gives the boy back to his parents, and says, “There’s no need to apologise. Curiosity is a valuable trait in a young boy. You should encourage his curiosity for life.” And then he sweeps away with the Mayor in tow, as though nothing is amiss, as though his gentle smile and understanding words didn’t rattle these two townspeople more than a reprimand every would

Zuko shifting the nation’s priority away from militarisation, while trying to create new jobs for displaced people, jobs that will help his nation recover. Zuko implementing a new curriculum in schools. Zuko consulting with all kinds of people, like Iroh and Aang, yes, but also other nobles, and common people, and foreign dignitaries, and historical and cultural experts. Zuko bringing culture back to the Fire Nation.

Zuko struggling with his famous temper, but working every single day to be the kind of leader his people can put their trust in. A Firelord that doesn’t strike fear into his people, the people he’s dedicated to protecting. A Firelord that’s very different to his forefathers, who decimated entire cultures, who burned the faces of their sons and cast them out for speaking out of turn.

Zuko being kind and patient. Zuko working hard but slowly, over time, earning the trust and love of his people.

[doodleladi]

[steambend]

[witchhzel]

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

writing adult emails is awful

its like

hi [name of person], 

this formatting is making me uncomfortable but I have to tell you something / ask you something that is vital to my career as a student. 

I re-read and edited that sentence for an hour, but you’ll probably just glance over it for half a second.

thanks! 

- [name]

[duskeos]

k

-professor

[ischemgeek]

I have a stock format and structure I use.

Dear Person I am Writing To:

This is an optional sentence introducing who I am and work for, included if the addressee has never corresponded with me before. The second optional sentence reminds the person where we met, if relevant. This sentence states the purpose of the email.

This optional paragraph describes in more detail what’s needed. This sentence discusses relevant information like how soon an answer is needed, what kind of an answer is needed, and any information that the other person might find useful. If there’s a lot of information, it’s a good idea to separate this paragraph into two or three paragraphs to avoid having a Wall of Text.

If a description paragraph was used, close with a restatement of the initial request, in case the addressee ignored the opening paragraph.

This sentence is just a platitude (usually thanking them for their time) because people think I’m standoffish, unreasonably demanding, or cold if it’s not included.

Closing salutation,

Signature.

People always ask me how I can fire off work emails so quickly. Nobody has figured out yet that it’s the same email with the details changed as needed.

[pengosolvent]

this one’s a few days late due to having a lot of doctors appointments sorry it’s  just 9 pages, and about some rats… it’s more symbolic than anything really

(it’s completely unrelated to any of my songs that have to do with “puzzleboy”) Patreon: www.patreon.com/PengoSolvent

[muchymozzarella]

This is… Very personal. I really relate to the lever rat.

[panapana87-deactivated20240113]

[thelastmemeera]

What does it mean to be a billionaire?

So there’s been a lot of discussion floating around regarding billionaires and society, and I’ve noticed that most people have no idea what a billion dollars is for practical purposes - people tend to think of it as a vague, nebulous concept of “a lot of money” rather than something concrete you can wrap your head around. This is understandable, considering 1) a billion of anything is really hard to visualize and 2) the average person has no real reference point for an amount of money that large. So I’m going to try to break it down for everyone:

Okay, so imagine you have a billion dollars. What can you actually buy with that?

This is a mega mansion that will have an Imax cinema, a bowling alley, and a spa when it’s fully complete. It costs around 4.6 million dollars.

Now let’s buy one of these in every country in Europe - that’s 50 mansions you now own. So how are you going to travel between all your many homes?

This is a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, the fastest street-legal car in the world. It has a maximum speed of a face-melting 254 mph and can go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. It costs around 2.5 million dollars.

Let’s buy a dozen of them - you know, in case you total a few of them racing around the highway. But maybe a sports car is still to slow for you:

This is an Embraer Lineage 1000. It’s private jet that can seat up to 19 passengers, and we’re going to buy it for 53 million dollars.

How about a boat? The Tatoosh is a 303 ft private yacht, meaning it’s longer than a football field. We’ll take it for 369 million dollars.

Do you like art? Just for fun let’s buy Monet’s most expensive painting ($90 million) Van Gogh’s most expensive painting ($151 million), and this monstrosity, which is made with 8,601 diamonds and costs 65 million dollars.

Now that we’ve gone on our ludicrous and absurdly wasteful shopping spree, how much money do we have leftover? About 12 million dollars, which is almost an order of magnitude more than the average American with a bachelors degree or higher earns in a lifetime ($1.8 million). So if you for whatever reason decided to buy the 50 houses, 12 sports cars, plane, yacht, art pieces etc. and immediately set them all on fire, you would still have enough cash leftover so you never would have to work again if you so chose. This is what it means to be a billionaire.

But we’re not done yet.

The richest person in the world is Bill Gates, with a net worth of 86 billion dollars. If he liquidated his assets, what could he buy?

Well, for starters, the Burj Khalifa - the tallest man-made structure in the world at 2,722 feet tall, costing around 1.5 billion dollars.

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most advanced particle accelerator for 9 billion dollars.

The Hubble Space Telescope for 10 billion dollars (including 20 years of operating costs).

The Three Gorges Dam, the largest power station in the world, more than a mile wide.

And to top it all off, a fleet of five Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, the largest military vessels ever built for around 8.9 billion dollars each. If you look at the picture very closely you can see the people standing on it for reference.

If Bill Gates bought all of this, he would still have around 2.3 billion dollars leftover. That’s enough to go on the billionaire shopping spree I described above twice over (so 100 mansions, 24 sports cars etc.) and still have hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank when it’s all said and done.

But we’re not done yet.

Currently, it’s estimated that there are 2,043 billionaires alive today, with a combined net worth of around 7.67 trillion dollars.

This is Russia, the largest country in the world, extending more than six and a half million square miles, with a population of more than 144 million people. The United Kingdom could fit inside Russia 70 times.

In 2016 Russia’s gross domestic product was about 1.28 trillion dollars. This means that if the two thousand and some odd richest people in the world - less than half of 0.1% of 0.1% of the Earth’s population - liquidated and pooled their assets together, they could buy every single product and service made in Russia for almost 6 years.

So yeah, make of that what you will.

[thelastmemeera]

1 YEAR UPDATE

So it’s been just a little bit over a year since I’ve made this post, and holy shit I didn’t expect it to get so many notes… anyway thought I’d make an update. First, a few responses to common criticisms I noticed:

“That house costs more than you said it costs”

I provided sources for everything, I can’t click on the links for you broski.

“The map of Russia is incorrect”

Strange, my bad… didn’t notice until after I posted that the map I used includes Belarus and a few other countries as part of Russia, no idea why they did that, I should have picked a better map.

“Net worth somehow doesn’t count as worth because not all of it is literal stacks of cash”

First of all I distinctly specified that my figures were based on if said billionaires liquidated their assets, but more importantly that’s like sitting on top of a pile of solid gold bars and claiming you’re totally broke because you can’t use them at the supermarket. Seriously, this is just asinine.

*Insert impassioned defense of capitalism here*

Now if you follow my blog it’s pretty obvious that I’m a leftist, but something I did very deliberately for my billionaire essay was try to avoid ever mentioning left politics or making any moral judgements, i.e. more or less everything I wrote in that post was just objective, inarguable facts. I very intentionally ended the essay with “make of that what you will,” without ever actually commenting on whether the situation was good or bad. If you consider yourself a capitalist and want to remain consistent with reality, you really shouldn’t be offended by this post. If your first response upon looking at a neutral series of data points is to immediately rush to defend the system that produced it, it means you instinctually realize something is terribly wrong and you’re trying to justify it. Just saying, not a good position to be arguing from.

ANYWAY

As of the time of this update, Bill Gates is no longer the richest person in the world; the title now belongs to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with with a mind-blowing $147.7 billion. Now, what could he actually do with all of that? Let’s make a list!

End Homelessness in America

There are an estimated 553,742 homeless people in America. Jeff Bezos could hand every single one of them $50,000 cash for $27,687,100,000, which should be more than enough to get a roof over your head for a decent amount of time.

Give 100,000 students a full ride to Harvard

Going to Harvard University will cost a student about 60,659 a year including tuition, room and board, and various other fees. Paying for a full 4 years for 100,000 students would cost $24,263,600,000.

Buy Iceland for a year

The gross domestic product of Iceland is currently about $23.9 billion dollars, which means for that amount Jeff Bezos could buy every single product and service produced in the country for an entire year.

Fund every US national park for 10 years

This year’s budget for the national park service will probably be about $2.7 billion, so 10 years of funding would be $27 billion.

Give every Amazon worker a $20,000 bonus

Jeff Bezos has 563,100 employees working for Amazon. He could give each and every one of them a $20,000 bonus for $ 11,262,000,000.

End world hunger

It would probably cost around $30 billion to ensure that no person in the entire world suffered starvation and malnourishment this year.

And how much does Jeff have left?

After doing all of that, Bezos would still have upwards of $3.5 billion left over, which is not only far, far more money than a single person could ever spend on themselves, it also would mean he still gets to remain substantially richer than most other billionaires.

Funny world we live in.

[vishual-deactivated20190408]

BLESSED POST

[lovecrafts-iranon]

Growing up, I was told from many sources (books, tv, parents, teachers, inspirational quotes) that you should never half ass anything. That in everything you do, you should give your all. Honestly, that’s a recipe for misery and burnout. You need to half ass most things so you have enough ass left to give your whole ass to the things you care about. Or at least I do.

[the-real-seebs]

Executive function is absolutely a thing. But there’s a lot of things that are Done Better if you do them carefully, and doing them badly ends up being a spoon drain. The trick is learning to figure out which ones…

[jumpingjacktrash]

also asking yourself occasionally, “does this deserve my whole ass?” because quite often the task deserves about 28% of the left cheek

[govthookercoulson]

Zombie apocalypses are curiously lacking a large array of common equipment that could neatly control the situation.

“But we can’t build walls to contain them!”

Moves by truck, train or boat. Ridiculously common. And see those holes on the bottom? Mobile by forklift. Also, HEAVY, even when empty they’re in the tons. If you had some warning you could string these things end to end for miles and human bodies can’t move them. Plus they’re nice and wide so you can comfortably walk on top of them for patrols.

“But we don’t have easy ways to kill them!”

Put the shotgun down you fucking idiot.

No tires to pop. Heavy and slow but inevitable. Climbing required to enter and thus, relatively zombie proof, especially if you spend like an hour to protect the glass.

A lot of large farming equipment can destroy cars.

Want to guess what it’d do to a decaying human body? It’s not pretty.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Merely flattening them with common construction equipment or farming gear isn’t enough.

How about a

tree trimmer that can mulch a tree top to bottom in nothing flat?

OM NOM NOM NOM.

“But we need ways to move a lot of people that zombies can’t stop!”

BEEP BEEP MOTHERFUCKER. Deer don’t have a chance and neither does a zombie.

“But that’s not good enough!”

NOW it’s time to call our friend the military because this ride stops for no one.

Do I need to keep going or is it clear the movies are bullshit yet? Seriously a dozen prepared people with heavy equipment licenses could clear an entire street of zombies AND powerwash it after.

[rensbogusadventure]

Country folk can survive

[re-jet-irony]

Dude stack those connexes up and you got a sweet home. Lived and worked outta one for a year.

[yetanotherobsessivereader]

@drowningbydegrees psst. zombie mulch

[eowynluna]

How to respond to anon hate.

1. Look at the anon hate.

2. Send anonymous ask to yourself using anon.

3. Make it exactly the same as the anon hate except use a homestuck troll typing quirk. It doesn’t matter which one.

4. Respond to the fake anon hate by roasting them for impersonating a homestuck troll.

5. The real anon now has a choice. The can come off anon and prove that you changed their message, or they can wallow in silence, knowing that they have failed to bother you.

You win either way

[real-faker]

I designed a bumper sticker

[real-faker]

holy SHIT I’m sitting at a drive thru and this older woman just came up and knocked on my window, so I rolled it down a crack, and she gave me a thumbs up and said, “capitalism is the Antichrist!”, I’m fucking dying hsjanxbxhxh

[bearglitch]

I am glad you are also using non-capitalistic computers, cars, video games, and art supplies…. right?

[real-faker]

Yeah no shit dude, and this all went down in the drive thru of a non-capitalistic MickeyD’s too

[antifa-hulk]

Someone post The Comic

[antifa-hulk]

[lastoneout]

sdkja;lksadjfj how can you see the statement ‘there is no ethical consumption under late-stage capitalism’ and then reply with ‘well you consume things’ like HOW could you miss the point that throughly Im fucking blown away

[lastoneout]

this just in Im gonna embrace my anti-capitalist viewpoints by moving to a cave and making all of my things out of sticks because the only way to be critical of society and not be labeled a hypocrite is to die alone naked in the woods

[lastxleviathanrefollow]

Ngl I laughed so hard. Wow.

[wtf-fun-factss]

[aura218]

Sometimes around like 95 he said he didn’t need more money. He’s given away literally millions to his town (he had a little league field(?) build so his kid’s team could play) and to other notable charities for decades. He said, and has written in his books, that there’s only so much money a person needs and the rest is just vanity. He was taught that as a child and lived it as a multi-millionare (which he never truly was – bc he gave it away). He and his family lived in the same modest suburban house in the same modest Maine town since the 70s.

[disastergeek-deactivated2018120]

And then there’s Jeff Bezos.

[egmon73]

sometimes is heart-warming to see that indeed good people still exist

[avatarsymbolism]

Zuko and Mai v Mr. Boomerang.

[lb-lee-deactivated20180415]

One of the reasons Avatar is one of the few epic fantasies I’ve actually liked is that nobody is above indignity.

This is a thing a lot of genres do, but epic fantasies seem to be impressively devoid of any sense of humor, and often cave to the temptation to make the villains or heroes so badass that nothing embarrassing or stupid ever happens to them.

In Avatar (the last airbender, anyway, haven’t seen Korra), everyone has stupid shit happen to them.  Even Fire Lord Ozai has his moments– “No, Fire Lord Ozai, YOU aren’t wearing pants!” Azula gets covered in mud.  Zuko has… well, getting conked in the head by a boomerang is only the beginning of the stupid undignified shit he experiences. (Though he still doesn’t compare to Sokka, the emperor unto perpetuity of Shameland.)

And I love that.  Because in life, sometimes you get covered in mud.  Sometimes you get conked in the head when you’re trying to be brooding and dramatic.  STUPID SHIT HAPPENS TO YOU.  And in real life, you still manage to be badass, or terrible, even in your moments of human frailty.

I wish I saw that more often.

[quentyl]

Yes! This, so much. That’s definitively something I’ve noticed too, and I love it!

Actually, in a way, I think it’s kind of addressed in the show itself:

Zuko was publicly humiliated, punished and banished for speaking out of turn at a meeting. This was considered a personal offense to the Fire Lord: they were so strict and enamored with their “dignity” that the slightest misstep by a child could turn into some sort of great insult. And if you’re insulted the proper response is to defend your honor in Agni Kai, a duel to the death (with a child if need be).

In contrast, among the Air Nomads, it was okay to throw mud pies at the head monks and laugh your ass off. It was even encouraged: creativity, fun and humility were seen as the most essential qualities. No one was above pranks - neither being pranked nor even doing the pranks. And it didn’t mean they didn’t know respect - we know Aang had enormous respect for his elders and their teachings. It’s actually a much truer form of respect than what you could find in the Fire Nation, where fear kept you silent.

So, I think there is a lesson here, that maybe we should learn not to hold our dignity in such high regard, that it’s good to know how to laugh at yourself? And when ATLA has fun with its serious characters, it’s also a way to illustrate this idea - the show is all the richer by not taking itself too seriously.

[animentality]

I love atla meta

[pizzaback-deactivated20201011]

something that really bothers me when people discuss natural selection is when people ask questions along the lines of, “why aren’t all turtles extinct if they’re so slow and dumb” and “if neanderthals are superior to gorillas, then why are neanderthals extinct?”.

Like these are such misled questions that you’d have to answer completely different, unasked questions to actually help the person understand, but it also belies a really unfortunate fact about the history of evolutionary science and how natural selection was once, and for a really long time, studied as if evolution is a battle between superiors and inferiors. and this framework was developed for the purpose of economic and sociopolitical gain, and to justify bigotry toward marginalized peoples, and this framework still permeates how people teach and learn about natural selection. it worries me a lot!

[xenosaurus]

There are three basic categories of fic writer:

type one: fan fiction is a love letter to canon, only small changes unless it’s an au!!

type two: the source material can bite me, I don’t give a fuck

type three: horny

[xenosaurus]

sorry, I forgot one

type four: canon COULD be so good if it wasn’t so straight/white/horny, so I fixed it while holding unblinking eye contact with the creator and mouthing ‘die’

[boonbucks-city-beach]

@leticheecopae

[awed-frog]

By the way, just in case this helps someone -

COOKING - creativity is okay

BAKING - stick to the recipe (you can usually adjust sugar content to taste, though)

BREAD - wait for the right weather conditions (or engineer them), be one assertive and self-confident motherfucker because dough can feel it if you aren’t, a blood sacrifice probably helps, trust the gods 

[thepioden]

PASTRY - your God is dead, the god of gluten and madness is risen, abandon all hope ye who enter here

[hannahscribbles]

well that’s fairly accurate

[gahdamnpunk]

PLUS!!:

Toxic for rabbits: Anise, Clove, Oregano, Tea Tree, Wintergreen Safe for rabbits: Lavender, lemon, orange, fennel,  eucalyptus and peppermint, all should be diluted with water!