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I keep seeing people recommending Open Office as an alternative to Word, and uh... look, it is, technically, an open source alternative to Word. And it can do a lot of what Word can, genuinely! But it is also an abandoned project that hasn't been updated in nine years, and there's an active fork of it which is still receiving updates, and that fork is called LibreOffice, and it's fantastic.
Seriously, if you think that your choices are either "grit your teeth and pay Microsoft for a subscription" or "support free software but have a kind of subpar office suite experience", I guarantee that it's because you're working with outdated information, or outdated software. Most people I know who have used the latest version of LibreOffice prefer it to Word. I even know a handful of people who prefer it to Scrivener.
Open Office was the original project, and so it has the most name recognition, and as far as I can tell, that's really the only reason people are still recommending it. It's kind of like if people were saying "hey, the iPhone 14 isn't your only smart phone option!" but then were only ever recommending the Samsung Galaxy S5 as an alternative. LibreOffice is literally a version of the same exact program as Open Office that's just newer and better – please don't get locked into using a worse tool just because the updated version of the program has a different name!
Since the post I made last night about improving executive functioning was so popular, I figured I should pull these out of my comments and give them their own post, in case it's helpful for people.
I have worked with the publishers of all of the books linked below and can vouch for their psychology books. The publisher of most of them, New Harbinger, is an extremely credible evidence-based psychology publisher.
Obvious disclaimer that everyone's brain is different and what works for someone else may not work for you.
Is there evidence that executive functioning can be improved? Yes. This book appears to be a very thorough overview of the field, and contains both advocates and detractors of cognitive training, for a balanced perspective. From the table of contents, I would really recommend jumping straight to Part 3: Developmental Perspectives for executive functioning (EF) writ large.
Certain therapy modalities are specifically designed for skill-building in areas like impulsivity, decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility, all of which are EF skills or very dependent on EF skills. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is probably the best field to look at for these - skill-building in those areas is its core goal.
Some DBT workbooks:
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Teens
There are also a lot of workbooks for ADHD that are sometimes more broad but also can help with executive functioning:
The Adult ADHD and Anxiety Workbook: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Skills to Manage Stress, Find Focus, and Reclaim Your Life
The CBT Workbook for Adult ADHD: Evidence-Based Exercises to Improve Your Focus, Productivity, and Wellbeing
The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD
General executive functioning workbooks:
The Executive Functioning Workbook for Teens
Executive Functioning Workbook for Adults: Exercises to Help You Get Organized, Stay Focused, and Achieve Your Goals
By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
Executive functioning skills range from working memory to cognitive flexibility to inhibitory control, and beyond. They power our daily func
Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Practical Strategies for Enhancing Executive Functioning Difficulties in Adults With Autism - Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as
Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
Meditation
Martial arts
Sports in general
Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
Woodworking
Cooking
If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You might always have a disability around this (I certainly always will), but it can be easier. You do not have to be this stuck forever.
For general graphics: use GIMP
For vector graphics: use Inkscape
For drawing and illustration: use Krita
For print and web publishing and design: use Penpot
For PDF authoring: use LibreOffice
For PDF reading and form filling: use Okular
All are free, open source and cross-platform. None use AI.
Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group
It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.
Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.
In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.
Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:
Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)
Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)
How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)
Gardening
Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)
Country/Rural Living:
Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)
"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)
Sewing/Mending:
Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)
Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)
Sustainability/Land Stewardship
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)
Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)
Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"
Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.
"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)
Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)
These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!
As lunar new year approaches, I'd like to share my mom's Chinese new year cake recipe. It's probably more like a pudding, as definition, but we call it a cake. This makes the perfect "not too sweet" nian gao. And it also doesn't stick to your teeth like a lot of nian gao.
2024 blaze edit: my mom had a massive stroke last March and it left her barely able to walk. She was an incredible cook and has some of the best recipes. I just felt this year, it was more important than ever to share some of those recipes so that even though she isn't able to cook for others herself, she can be cheered by the knowledge her recipes are still making ppl happy.
Mom’s Chinese New Year Cake (Nian Gao)
Ingredients:
1 cup (250 ml/211 g) brown sugar
1 cup (250 ml) milk (cow milk can also be substituted for a plant-based milk if you prefer)
1 cup (250 ml) coconut milk
½ cup (125 ml) oil
3 eggs
1 bag (400g) glutinous rice flour
1 tsp (5 ml/4.5 g) baking powder
Full recipe text under cut. Download recipe pdf here. Recipe pdf includes photos of what coconut milk and rice flour I use.
Mom’s Chinese New Year Cake (Nian Gao)
Yield: 3 cakes in 7” aluminum pans
Ingredients:
1 cup (250 ml/211 g) brown sugar
1 cup (250 ml) milk (cow milk can also be substituted for a plant-based milk if you prefer)
1 cup (250 ml) coconut milk
½ cup (125 ml) oil
3 eggs
1 bag (400g) glutinous rice flour
1 tsp (5 ml/4.5 g) baking powder
Directions:
Grease three 7” pans and set aside. Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).
Mix together sugar, milk, coconut milk, oil, and eggs. Then stir in dry ingredients and blend until smooth. You don’t have to worry about overworking the batter as it is made with glutinous rice flour, not wheat flour.
Divide it evenly amongst three greased pans.
Bake @ 375°F (190°C) for 40-50 minutes. All three can be baked at the same time in the oven. Just rotate where they are in the oven halfway for even browning.
Notes:
Cake should have nice brown crust on top and glutinous squishy sticky core.
If you don’t want a bunch of leftover coconut milk from the can, use the entire can of coconut milk and then add enough milk to get up to a full 2 cups (500 ml) of liquid.
Tastes better the next day and once fully cool.
Can garnish the top with a little bit of dried date.
Don’t skimp on the coconut milk. The recipe is simple enough that you will taste the difference.
This recipe is gluten free. Glutinous rice flour isn’t related to gluten. And be sure to get glutinous rice flour, not sweet rice flour or another type. Or your cake will end up hard.
This is not a traditional nian gao. Most of them are steamed, this one is baked. I don't know where my mom got the idea to bake it. She thinks it might have been an old coworker. But we started doing it this way a decade ago and have been since this is hands down the best nian gao I have ever had and have had since.
If anyone uses an egg substitute that works well, please let me know and I will make a note in the recipe.
If you try it, let me know how it goes! My mom and I would like to see.
i dont like the idea that kids these days are doing their fandom rps with ai chatbots. that's how you're supposed to make lifelong friends as a weird really online teen.
it's because forums are dead. tumblrs become too janky to easily find communities and many are abandoned, twitter isn't very intuitive for it, we don't have mailing lists, facebook doesn't really let you make character accounts anymore, and all the old "omegle but for role play" type websites died out ages ago. toy house exists, sure, but can be hard to get into and in my opinion is more oriented towards displaying art and designs rather than writing.
these days there just isn't space to meet other online rpers and connect like there used to be. back in the day you could go to gaia, neopets, any number of pro boards and other custom forums, you could meet people in chat rooms, there were websites dedicated to rp matchmaking and ads, email lists and circles and "guilds", tumblr communities, just unlimited networking options.
these days if you don't have an established network your options are:
-reach out on mainstream social media (high risk of no one finding your profile, high risk of regular accounts finding your profile and being rude about it)
-join an MMORPG, LARP, or tabletop (not the same imo)
-get really into solo writing
-use the janky AI out of desperation
it sucks pretty bad but i feel like the best way to tackle the issue isn't "ugh why do people use these awful bots" so much as "hey where the fuck DID all the role play networking websites go"
it's the same energy as when people started wondering why kids don't go outside anymore after they were banned from the malls
are you or a loved one expecting to use a fountain pen for the first time this holiday season? you need this information.
fountain pens are making a comeback, with good reason. fountain pens require virtually no pressure to write, and many people used to ballpoint, gel, or rollerball pens will actually damage a fountain pen on their first use because of how much pressure they are accustomed to using. on the flip side, many people with joint pain will find that they can only write without pain when using a fountain pen.
fountain pens are customizable, reusable, ergonomic, comfortable, and utilize fantastical fountain pen inks containing shading, sheening, and shimmer.
using a fountain pen correctly for the first time just elicits that ever elusive and emphatic "oh." you will, with likelihood, understand why people use fountain pens just by using one yourself. it cannot be put into words.
but before you learn how to use a fountain pen, you need to learn how NOT to use a fountain pen.
here are my top 3 tips for how not to use a fountain pen.
first, what makes a fountain pen. a fountain pen is defined as a pen with an internal resivoir that feeds ink through a feed and to a nib. they do not require dipping.
the internals of the end of a fountain pen look like this. fountain pens are a lot of different parts. although this diagram shows a pen using a converter, most first time fountain pen users will use a cartridge, which is a pressurized pouch of ink.
the slit in the metal nib forms two tines, and the end of which is tipping. ink flows from the converter (or cartridge or other filling system) down the feed and through the slit in the nib, down to the tip.
since fountain pens are a bunch of very closely fitted different parts, they take specialized, thin, water-based ink.
which leads me to the first major thing to not do with a fountain pen.
#1: do not use anything other than 'fountain pen ink' in a fountain pen
so let me tell you a little story here. I got into dip pens before I got into fountain pens. years and years ago. I found out that a converter allows you to use bottled ink with a fountain pen, and I already had some decent ink I was using with my dip nibs. I bought a converter, a fountain pen, and then did one of the worst possible things you can do to a fountain pen: I loaded it with dip ink. if I remember right, it was some kind of india or sumi ink.
the pen no longer wrote, and I could not even replace the alleged easily replaceable parts. what happened?
ink is more than just liquid and color, it involves complicated chemical formulas. dip pens can be dipped in just about anything and then write to some degree, but fountain pens can only safely be used with ink designed specifically for fountain pens. dip ink is usually thicker and can clog the slits in the fountain pen's feed, preventing the ink from reaching the tip of the nib. but diluting dip ink is not good enough. the chemicals in dip inks can melt or rust the internals of a fountain pen. this damage is often irreparable without paying a specialist a lot of money to restore the pen, which can cost more than just buying a new fountain pen. in my case, the internals of my fountain pen melted slightly and got glued together.
unfortunately, many sellers on websites like amazon, etsy, ebay, aliexpress, and more will claim that their ink is fountain pen ink, when in reality it will destroy your fountain pen.
until you are used to which types of inks are safe for fountain pens, use a dedicated and reliable stationery website like jetpens, gouletpens, or cultpens to tell you which inks are designed for fountain pens. jetpens in particular will also tell you which cartridges and converters are compatible with the fountain pens they sell, which is essential, because many fountain pen cartridges and converters are proprietary and only fit certain pens.
when in doubt, just buy compatible cartridges.
#2 do not expect the fountain pen to flex
calligraphy videos are really popular right now. many of them involve fountain pens and dip pens using flexible lines to create gorgeous cursive. in reality, most modern fountain pens do not flex, and trying to make them flex can break them.
this is a dip nib. if you try to do this to a fountain pen nib, you will damage it. this is what NOT to do to a fountain pen nib.
there are two main materials used for making fountain pen nibs: steel and gold. steel is harder and stiffer, gold is softer and generally more bouncy or flexible. vintage gold fountain pens gained a reputation for writing like "wet noodles" and creating fantastic line variations. they are very desired for calligraphy. but vintage flex fountain pens start at hundreds of dollars each. and virtually no modern fountain pen with any degree of flex will skip on the chance to advertise themselves as flex pens. anything not blatantly advertised as a flex pen should never be flexed.
and honestly? your first fountain pen should not be a flex pen.
fountain pen nibs, as mentioned above, are metal pieces with a slit to form two tines. where the tines meet together is where the ink is dispensed. since most modern fountain pen nibs are NOT designed to flex, trying to use them like flexible dip nibs or even just using the fountain pen at the wrong angle can cause the nibs to splay and not be able to go back together without some skilled repair. there are fountain pens worth thousands of dollars with shining gold nibs that will promptly get fucked up if you try to flex them.
in my opinion, your first fountain pen nib should be steel. gold nibs are softer and way more easily damaged, while steel nibs are firmer, can be just as smooth in writing, and are a lot friendlier to beginners. not to mention, a lot more difficult to damage. the smoothness on paper is mostly determined by the grinding of the tip of the nib, not by the material the nib is made out of. there are plenty of steel nibs that write smoother than gold nibs, and they are a hell of a lot cheaper, too. a slight impact to a gold nib can cause them to bend to the point they cannot write, but a steel nib has a greater chance of surviving a drop.
fountain pens require very little pressure to write. you want to write with as little pressure as possible, without separating the tines (for the majority of pens).
flex pens are also not the only way to do calligraphy with a fountain pen. since flex pens required varied pressure, flex calligraphy is way more likely to cause joint pain and hand strain than doing italic calligraphy, which uses angle-based line variation at a steady pressure. there are a ton of fountain pens out there that come in italic nibs that are great for this type of calligraphy. a cheap way to try out italic fountain pen calligraphy is by grabbing some pilot parallel pens, which come in up to 6mm nibs, and are sold in many retail stores.
for a more practical daily use fountain pen that comes in both rounded and italic, grab a pilot metropolitan in medium (rounded) or cursive medium (italic).
and if you do still want to try out flex nibs, fountain pen revolution makes affordable steel ultra flex nibs that work better than most modern gold nibs.
#3: do not expect any paper to work / DO NOT USE MOLESKINE
with this post now apparently at over 75,000 notes, I am one of the most prolific moleskine haters in the world. and with good reason, I know a thing or two about fountain pen paper. moleskine is garbage. there is nothing it does that other paper companies do not do better and/or cheaper, aside from maybe the brands that agree to collaborate with them. they have some notebooks with hello kitty, pokemon, james bond stuff on the cover among other things.
if you roll into any fountain pen community and say you are trying to use moleskine with a fountain pen, you will get laughed at and/or pitied. yes, even though moleskine literally sells kaweco fountain pens on its website. kaweco is not exactly known for being ethical.
as I mentioned before, fountain pen ink is thin and water-based. most ball-tipped pens have thicker ink made up of completely different chemicals. ballpoint ink is made of oil and alcohol, gel ink is made of a thick water-based ink, rollerballs often use ink that is almost as thin as fountain pen ink. basically, most writing utensils use thicker ink than fountain pens. which means, paper that works well with any other writing utensil might still work very badly with fountain pen ink. most paper sold in united states stores, as an example, will probably not work well with fountain pen ink. even if it is an expensive notebook. trust me on this.
there is no way to tell whether or not a paper will work with fountain pen ink without trying it first. do not rub paper to try and guess if it will work well with your desired ink, rubbing paper just damages the paper. there are tissue thin papers that work better with fountain pen ink than heavy art papers, there are rough papers that work better than smooth papers, there are ugly papers that work better than pretty papers, there are cheap papers that work better with fountain pen ink than expensive paper.
fountain pen ink looks best when it dries slowly rather than absorbing into the fibers of the paper. and since fountain pen ink is so thin, it can often cause feathering (fuzzy spreading of lines) and bleeding (going through the page). if your lines look fuzzy or if they go through the page, it is almost definitely a problem of the paper you are using, and not the problem of the pen or the ink.
some examples of showthrough, bleedthrough, and feathering from a jetpens article on fountain pen paper. while showthrough is not necessarily a problem depending on how you want to use the paper, if you have high bleedthrough or high feathering, you are definitely going to want different paper.
fountain pen lines should look crisp. paper that can handle most fountain pen inks is considered "fountain pen friendly paper". the best way to find fountain pen friendly paper is to look up reviews of paper online. there are a lot of fountain pen enthusiasts who test out fountain pen inks on different types of paper.
one of the reasons I really like jetpens is they test fountain pen ink on all their paper, and show the results. as far as stationery stores go, jetpens has the most testing of their products that I have ever seen. the information and testing from jetpens can be used no matter where you wind up buying stationery supplies.
if you are getting a fountain pen, or if you are gifting a fountain pen, expect to need fountain pen friendly paper to go with it. ink problems are usually actually paper problems.
I recommend products like midori md, maruman mnemosyne, rhodia, clairfontaine. if you want the best possible color for fountain pen inks, check out tomoe river paper and cosmo air light/snow, but they feel very different from typical types of paper.
do not ever get moleskine.
with these 3 tips, you are way less likely to flub your fountain pen. happy inking!
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.
I feel like in the rush of “throw out etiquette who cares what fork you use or who gets introduced first” we actually lost a lot of social scripts that the younger generations are floundering without.
A lot of tough situations where we now feel like we “don’t know what to do or say” had social scripts just a couple of generations ago and they might have been canned phrases or robotic actions but they could still be meant sincerely and unfortunately we haven’t replaced them with any more sincere or easier new script.
a lot of people are giving examples in the notes of things they just find annoying like not using headphones in public, but OP is talking about actual literal scripts of things to say in awkward situations
if you have a date or two with someone and you don't see a relationship developing? most millennials / gen Zers just end up ghosting. but a social script that might have been taught and rehearsed in the past could be:
"I really appreciated getting dinner with you the other night and I enjoyed your company, but I'm afraid I didn't feel a spark. I wish you the best, and hope you find that special someone!"
like it sounds kind of trite but it was at least something to say and it can still be meant with kind sincerity. it also communicates in 2 sentences that you don't want to see them romantically again, but there aren't any hard feelings about that. that's it!!! that's all it takes!!!
Another example is that at parties a lot of people talk about how awkward it is to mingle or talk to people they dont know. But at old timey parties that was traditionally the HOST'S job, and there was a specific scripted way of doing it that eased the process! The host would bring you in, introduce you and maybe even a little bit about you like what you did for a living, and then guide you to a group you could talk to. They didn't just let you in the door and then ditch you to fend for yourself in a sea of strangers. That would be unthinkable and no one would be surprised if a get-together like that wound up being awkward.
A really good host would actually provide a topic of conversation based on things you and the person they were introducing you to had in common.
At networking events I've gone to, where there's no host who knows everybody, good networkers pick up the slack. They go around the room once making just enough small talk to learn some useful info about a good portion of of the people in the room, and then circle back around and go, "Oh hey I was just talking to X over there and he's looking for someone who does Y for his next project; you should go talk to him." You can do something similar at parties, referring people to other people you made smalltalk with you have the same hobbies or like the same kind of movies.
To take a few steps back up the thread to the part about turning down future dates, the same goes for turning down shitty job offers.
"[Thank you for your interest]/[Thank you for thinking of me for this role], however I'm afraid [I have prior commitments]/[I'm not a good fit] at this time. I wish you the best of luck [finding the right fit for your company]/[with your startup endeavor]"
Delete or substitute more relevant lines as appropriate, but it's a polite way of saying "no" without feeling like you need to overexplain.
Increasingly, people -- millennials and younger, rarely anyone older -- will not get the hint about this and get pushy, fishing for extra information to let them work around the Polite No, which in previous generations would have been incredibly rude. It's still incredibly rude, at which point the polite response is, "Thank you, but I gave you my final answer. Best of luck!" no matter how many times they come back. Become a broken record until they go away.
you hear a lot of theorizing about how 19th and 20th century formal etiquette was Meant To Enforce Class StratificationTM, and to be sure some of the more inane minutiae definitely was. but a lot of the basic rules and forms were meant for exactly this: to provide a roadmap for social situations so nobody felt awkward or uncomfortable
If people are interested in historical ways of hosting and etiquette, I recommend checking out dowagersdressmaker on IG and watch his Edwardian etiquette series. Really helps highlight on how a host/hostess is/was supposed to make sure all their guests are comfortable and having a good time. He also does a spot on Maggie Smith impression.
by the way if youre ever scared to go to a cafe and you dont know what the drinks are
a hot latte is espresso shots, steamed milk, foam top
an iced latte is shots, cold milk and ice. no foam
a cappuccino is shots, steamed milk, a lotta foam
cappuccinos usually arent iced, but they could make it iced by using cold foam in some places (not most)
americano hot is shots and hot water
americano iced is shots, ice and cold water
a mocha is just a latte with mocha syrup and usually whip cream
and a white mocha is the same, just with white mocha
for all the espresso drinks, you can usually ask them to add syrups to make it sweeter - or they will even have pre built drinks on their menu, like a vanilla latte. some places are less flexible than others - but it never hurts to ask!
if you want regular coffee with cold milk just say that
but if you want the milk steamed, its a cafe au lait
if you want something frozen and blended, most places have some version of this - they could be frappes, frozen ______, or ive even seen “chillers” - these are great if you want something like the texture of a milkshake :-)
chai and matcha are built similar to an espresso latte, its the tea with milk (can usually be done hot or iced). chai is spicy and sometimes sweet and matcha is a more refreshing herbal flavor
ummm this is so long sorryyy. i just know people can get anxious to try new things so. i can explain more drinks if anyone wants to know ^_^
As a barista at a fancy coffee shop I think this is lovely, I have to explain this same thing often to nervous or confused customers and I don't mind at all, but I imagine that most of them would have a better experience if they had this guide!
since the link about is fucking dead, i took the liberty to provide a better one. You’ll need to copy and paste the passphrase, though >> kitten-mutual-refinance
i hate that every time i look for color studies and tips to improve my art and make it more dynamic and interesting all that comes up are rudimentary explanations of the color wheel that explain it to me like im in 1st grade and just now discovering my primary colors
“red and green are opposites 🥰” cool now how do i paint a tree with pinks and blues without it looking like a child’s finger painting or incongruous blobs of rainbow vomit
ok i can’t explain it very well but im looking for tips and techniques for rendering art like
with specifically the highlights and colors being hues that compliment each other, don’t distract from the scene, and make it more interesting/visually appealing
gonna drop some sources I have saved on Pinterest! I don't know if these all link back to the original sources so apologies for that
cohesive but still contrasting
This kind of talks about color and composition
This is a bit about landscape specifically
Values & composition
Contrast in composition
Balance in colors & values
This one's more for palette building but I think it's useful and can be applied to the other ones
Cohesion within compositions/lighting
"Chromatic fringe" - I also see people using this with shading, they bring in a transition color that is a different hue than the base color or shadow, it makes it so that less vibrancy is lost and it doesn't get muddy!
This one specifically has a lot of process behind the style of painting you're looking for!
Also one of my favorite artists who makes bright and colorful art like this is Not Sorry Art on TikTok & YouTube, her website is here and it's<3 my fav. She has some videos where you can see her process
With the oranges painting you put as an example, I noticed they painted the lighter values more toward yellow - they also exaggerated the hues of the undertones of the photo, so I'm guessing they either did it in their head or bumped the saturation up to get a closer look! I really love these paintings you shared and I definitely share your desire to paint/draw like that :)
some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.
