just a mess tbh

((21+) though this doesnt apply to every post, there will be adult themes and discussions) straight up not having a good time but still here still posting anything that grabs my fancy and still failing at life in general - lets gooooo :)

[kafurscoffin]

Hello everybody.

Please share resources and don’t keep silent about Palestine. Dedicate your day for them today. Do not ignore them, do not let their voices go unheard.

Here are some resources you can share around:

daily click

esims for Gaza

call for a ceasefire

donate feminine hygiene kits

learn about Palestine

Education, sources, donations

Shut it down for Palestine

Please do not ignore this post, share as much information and resources as you can for Palestine.

[classicslesbianopinions]

Resources for the Internet Classicist

I've been meaning to make a new pinned post for this blog with a few resources etc. for a million years and now I'm procrastinating so here it is.

Link to old pinned post (articles about racism and white supremacy in classics) here. I highly recommend checking it out.

Under the cut you will find a list of resources that I have found invaluable. Please put your own in the replies and reblogs!

Dickinson College Commentaries: Latin and Greek grammars, word lists, and intermediate level commentaries on ancient texts.

Perseus Digital Library and Scaife viewer: absolute classic. Ancient texts and dictionaries. You can click a word in the text and see its potential functions and its definition in a few different dictionaries. also will let you view some texts side by side with an English translation.

philolog.us: literally just Lewis and Short, LSJ, and Slater dictionaries imported from Perseus, but with a really simple interface that makes it the easiest online dictionary to use if you just want to look up a word.

Logeion and Morpho: Logeion lets you look up a word in Latin or Greek and see it in a ton of different dictionaries at once. Morpho will tell you all the possible forms for any given word.

Diogenes Viewer: app that basically does what Perseus does except you can download it. There's a web version with open source texts but to get the full benefit you need to have both the app and the TLG and PHI Greek and Latin text databases downloaded. Send an ask off anon if you want more information about those.

Haverford Bridge: vocab lists for selected texts. There's also a page with the tools they use to generate the lists so you can make your own.

johnstoniatexts: texts that Ian Johnston has translated and put online for free. It doesn't have everything but it has kind of a mind-boggling amount considering everything on here is translated by one person. The translations tend to be a little wordier than I prefer but it's still my first stop when I'm looking for easily accessible translations to recommend to people because I know they're fairly recent and reasonably well-done.

Geoffrey Steadman: free early intermediate level commentaries in Latin and Greek. If you use them and have the means please consider giving him a couple dollars!

PHI Latin Texts: lots of Latin with word + author search functions.

theoi.com: theoi has source material in translation for a number of gods and mythical figures. They don't have everything but if you're looking for every story with x god it's usually a decent place to start.

Intermediate Ancient Greek Language: free open source Greek textbook covering Greek in more detail than your intro textbook/course.

This list is not comprehensive and I will probably keep adding to it!

Also if you're looking for anything feel free to send an ask and I'll see if I can find it and/or poll the masses (everyone following this blog). Anon is off at least until I'm done with finals but if you ask to have it answered privately I'll honor that.

[catilinas]

some that i use regularly include:

allen and greenough’s latin grammar on dickinson college commentaries (which you have already mentioned). specifically the indexes, for instances of ‘is this a specific weird verb use or am i stupid’

digital prosopography of the roman republic for quickly searching genealogical/prosopographical/dates of magistracies etc info for the roman republic. it’s like broughton’s magistrates of the roman republic but better

attalus, specifically their index of names and chronologies of sources

topostext, which maps primary sources onto. a map. of the ancient world

indexes to the works of ronald syme. you do have to download this one and it is massive and hurts my computer to search. but it is very useful if you are rummaging through syme

[ceruleanheaven]

i just wanna do nothinggggg 😭😭😭😭😭 which is like what im already doing but i wanna do it in a way that doesnt actively ruin my life 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[fidelcostco]

can't believe the only options are 30 minutes early or 10 minutes late. if only there were some other way. but what can you do

[mushroom-soup-is-my-religion]

[furryprovocateur]

when you're autistic and you learn how to smalltalk it literally feels like you started hacking real life

[furryprovocateur]

lifehack: if you exchange pleasantries with people and fake smile a lot people will think you're nice and be nicer to you usually. REBLOG FOR MORE FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

[thelawfulchaotic]

A small preprepared remark about the weather or compliment on a choice they made is perfect for this. “Nice earrings! I hate rain!” Alternatively, if you feel this is too advanced, just echo back their same sentiment (“Doing fine, how are you?”). You are allowed to lie.

[naomitess]

It was genuinely such a revelation at my first job out of college when I discovered that my boss was nicer to me if once a day I walked over to her cubicle and made small talk with her for five minutes.

I totally combined this with checking to see if she was gone for the day and I could fart around on the internet instead of working for the next hour or so.

[leebrontide]

I used to have this one coworker- I didn’t like her and she didn’t like me. The tension between us never resolved and I retain a lot of negative opinions about her.

But after we’d butt heads, within the next day or two she’d come around and start asking me about my very very cute baby who I never got tired of talking about and taking pictures of.

To be clear- I absolutely knew I was being handled. She was doing this to calm tensions between us so we could coexist. But baby was INCREDIBLY cute but also she was doing this because it was very socially acceptable small talk that reliably put me and her in a good mood.

I knew what she was doing and that in no way diminished its effectiveness. I appreciated her offering me an olive branch so very easy for me to grab hold of.

Small talk is a safety social signal for a lot of people. It offers a chance to reset interactions on positive to neutral ground and signal an absence of immediate hostilities. It offered a chance to feel on the same page, at least enough for pleasantries. Really useful social lubricant and worth learning the basics of.

[shirtsthatgohard]

[fionn-o-nassus]

Not gonna lie this makes me a bit irritated. Here's the real version of this photo:

Instead of a cutesie reference to film censorship it was an explicit statement of defiance of Maryland's criminalization gay sex, which was not repealed until 2002. This wasn't a guy saying "Oh they can't put what I do in the movies according to a completely voluntary industry code" he was saying "The State of Maryland wants to put me in jail for being gay and having gay sex."

It wasn't a guy being cheeky about sex in an ambiguous, cute way. It was a man stating, in no uncertain terms, that a whole state of the United States considered him a criminal for being homosexual.

[fangshazzard]

I bet raising your arm and summoning a weapon for you to grasp feels good as fuck

[yournonbinarypal]

[fangshazzard]

I bet raising your arm and summoning a weapon for you to grasp feels good as fuck

[lamignonette]

[yournonbinarypal]

[anxietyproblem]

[robustcornhusk]

Gröning proposed the idea for the film to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. They responded to him 16 years later to say they were willing to permit him to shoot the movie if he was still interested.

into great silence

[iamalivenow]

[anxietyproblem]

[kontrapoetik]

see when people try and nitpick me because i call my dog "my dog" when it's technically "the family dog".......well first of all i still call my brother "my brother" and not "the family boy". although maybe that should change. second of all sorry i'm still thinking about the family boy. btw i fell asleep while making this post last night and i think you can tell

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Very tenuous link to one of my favourite tweets

[escuerzoresucitado]

[coffee-khaleesi-deactivated2020]

When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:

“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”

Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either. 

[bogfox]

Op I’d like to thank you for sharing this. Ever since the first time I’ve read it I’ve held it in my mind and it really has helped me to be kinder to others and to myself.

[madlori]

There’s a pretty famous Tweet that goes around from someone’s therapist, who told her “You can’t do your best all the time. If you did, it would be your normal.”

That…yeah. Rewired me a little.

[thebibliosphere]

It never fails to amuse me when I get “hello influencer” emails wanting me to push questionable products to my followers.

Like worstie, I can barely promote my own published book without wanting to curl up and die.

The fuck makes you think I’ll shill your discount wish shit?

[thebibliosphere]

Also, it's Tumblr. If I try to tell anyone about your knock-off Wish-quality sex toy there’s going to be a horde of Autistic lesbians doing a power point presentation in the notes about safe sex toy material and correct battery storage.

Which I am 100% down for, but it will not get you any sales.

[cookieoppressor]

I was trying to figure out if you were someone important on a other platform, because there's no way in hell anyone actually thinks you can be classified as "Influencer" if you have a big Tumblr blog.

And then also think advertising to this mob would be a good idea

[thebibliosphere]

There are actually lots of people who sell stuff successfully on here, usually drop ship stuff.

They’re just not disclosing it as ads, which they are supposed to do, and instead it's marketed in a very Tumblr-esque way which can be summed up as “omg guys look how CUTE this is” followed by a different account underneath going “omg found it!!” and it links to a drop ship site with the item(s).

And the link usually has an affiliate tracker in it, which you may or may not be able to spot unless you’re familiar with them, which is also something you are legally supposed to disclose.

I used to get a lot of offers from around 2016-2020 to sell “moon lamps” on here, y’know those orb lights that look like a moon? Yeah. I was offered a higher kickback to make it look like I wasnt posting an add because these sellers know Tumblrites don’t like ads.

They wanted it to look as organic and hyped up as possible and then I’d just so happen to be like “omg you guys it's on sale” and post a link. Which is skeevy as shit and also illegal af in the US.

It’s like the insta/tiktok girlies saying “link in bio” to get around saying “here’s a product I make money on if you buy it” because they want to sound like your friend because people are more likely to impulse buy stuff if a “friend” is recommending something.

They’re also trusting that everyone knows “link in bio” means “affiliate link” which is technically not enough of a disclosure but whatever.

This is why I tag all my own book promos with “affiliate links” because depending on which storefront you buy Hunger Pangs from, I may get a kickback from the vender which I do to help mediate the fees I lose from distribution. It’s not much—literal pennies in some cases—but I’m still legally required to state it.

It’s also why when I do post products I use or like, I make a point of letting people know I’m not an affiliate and not sponsored because despite the legal ramifications these people are flirting with by not disclosing their affiliate status, I want to be fully transparent with my followers when it comes to me trying to sell them things.

Y’all keep my lights on by reading my work and through my ko-fi and patreon. I am not about to risk that trust for the sake of some shitty vibrator sales from a sketch-ass drop shipper who wants me to pretend I’m not selling you things.

So, yeah. People do successfully sell stuff on here. A lot of us small indie creators sell our own work all the time.

But there are also drop-ship sellers on here who get enough of a kick-back from affiliate links to make selling cutesy kitsch stuff worth their time on here. They’re just making sure you don’t know you’re being marketed to.

[thebibliosphere]

Throwback to when I openly talked about this and got blocked by several huge “meme” blogs that were actually drop shippers who didn’t like me lifting up the rock and exposing how they hide their ads in plain sight lol

[thebibliosphere]

Hey, I’m going to hold your hand when I say this, but if you didn’t realize these types of posts/blogs were ads… that’s okay! They are designed to trick you!

These type of undeclared sellers are relying on you believing that Tumblr is different from other social media platforms where the advertising is usually more blatant. They are also relying on your trust in your community not to put undisclosed ads onto your dash.

After all, everyone knows Tumblr is a sinkhole where profit goes to die and everyone hates ads. Why would anyone waste time doing that here… unless they can adapt what they’re doing to make you think you’re not being marketed to, because Tumblr as a user base would never allow that kind of thing. Right?

Turns out, not so much.

Some people might say, “well that’s just obvious! You’d have to be really silly not to realize it!”

And maybe it was obvious to them.

I know it was obvious to me. But I also know I have enough online experience to play “spot the affiliate link” and enough knowledge as a indie author about how those links are supposed to be disclosed by law, to know when someone is being dishonest and trying to make a post seem organic and not like an ad.

But not everyone has the same knowledge or life experiences to put the context clues together, and that’s why I wrote the above post because many, many, many people on here are unaware they are reblogging ads—usually while talking about how much they hate ads!

You’re not dumb or silly or worthless or any of the unkind things some people are calling themselves in the notes. You just needed more information. Happily I was able to provide it and now you know what to look for. Go forth and scroll with newfound knowledge 🫡