Squidley boy(ish)

PhD geomycobioelectrochemical engineering. Languages: English (native), Spanish (A2), Romanian (A2), Esperanto (A1). Langblr. Artist /Conlanger / Worldbuilder (but bad). Currently exploring Buddhism, celtic spirituality, nontheistic witchcraft, and humanism (as seperate practices). Weirdos please interact. Pronouns: (he/she/they). Thank you

[australianpikachu]

WHAT THE FUCK TUMBLR

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

immortality as theft (you have to steal life from something else) immortality as parasitism (there is something else inside You that is keeping you alive and you become less of yourself more and more the longer it stays in you) immortality as violence (everything is trying to kill you because everything is supposed to die and the universe will always try to find a way to right the wrong that is You) you understand

[ninewheels]

#at least once a month I think about that one post about laminating a paper towel#and how that makes it immortal but also forever prevents it from fulfilling its true purpose#yes you will live. but at the cost of everything that makes you You

(courtesy of noknowshame)

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

getting lost in boston is fun because I turned around on a street corner three times and some guy yelled "hey stupid! the bus is that way!" very helpful interaction and accurate insult, 10/10 no notes

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

one time I walked around a building a couple times looking for a bathroom and this guy went "this bitch thinks she's on a merrygoround, where the fuck are you tryna go? bathroom? one floor down to the right behind the door that says bathroom."

[mentohol-blog]

My very first time in Boston. I was absolutely miserable, trying to drag my giant suitcase up a lengthy set of stairs in the pouring rain. This guy who had already reached the top looked back at me with the most pure expression of disgust I’ve ever seen in anyone’s eyes, marched back down the stairs, grabbed my suitcase, carried it to the top, left it there for me, and walked away without ever saying a word. I think about him often.

[just7frogsinapeoplesuit]

For the people in the notes going "why is Boston like this": a) the insults are a way to show you have no ulterior motives when helping someone (and don't need to be thanked or repaid), and b) Boston was settled by the Irish

[direhydroid]

also the Italians. mixing Irish and Italian sociocultural attitudes had the effect of multiplying the Sass Levels by the power of infinity, in the sense that you get all of the clever dry wit of the Irish and all of the bitchy gossipy condensation of the Italians rolled into one very stereotypically overly-friendly American package.

also worth noting that who you are to them doesn’t matter. they’ll talk to strangers like that and will also talk to their best friends like that. they’re just Like That.

[just7frogsinapeoplesuit]

More from the notes:

[freshofftheboatdaily]

[teadalek]

HAPPY LAO BAN SANTA DAY

[soapoey]

Taylor swift has fallen down into a scary hole

[himejoshikomaeda]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

[himejoshikomaeda]

I DONT CARE ABOUT TSWIFT BUT IF THE SCARY HOLE GETS A TASTE FOR HUMAN FLESH I DONT KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN!!!!!!!!

[himejoshikomaeda]

sorry. i'm catastrophizing and sensationalizing. we have to be calm and think smartly pretty about this

[soapoey]

Its ok taylor swift flesh is probably very different from human flesh :))

[himejoshikomaeda]

hey. okay. yeah you must be right. its probbaly more like plastic and oil or something. okay. relaxing. this might be good for us

[soapoey]

The scary holes have started oil fracking

[himejoshikomaeda]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

[girl-detector]

[raleighdotcom]

2026

public transit can be your friend

any city is walkable if you arent a pussy

you need to leave home

shoot your phone

get into acts of creation

[probuccalfat]

[ageae]

[weepingwidar]

Amanda Ba (Chinese-American, 1999) - Lover; She is Reading (2021)

[kivcraft]

[nocturnofshadow]

I’m shitting at these tags

[mad-hare]

yea this is Montreal, do you want to know how bad Montreal drivers are? only on the island of Montreal, is it illegal to make a right turn on a red light. because they don’t fucking look. it’s the only place I’ve ever been that has lost it’s “turning on a red light” privilege

but yea powdered snow is slippery af and the island is hilly and full of narrow streets. not designed for wheeled vehicles.

[mad-hare]

I need to reblog myself because I just found this on the gov of Quebec’s website

[evilwizard]

okay im gonna hypnotize you with my ruby amulet now DONT BE WEIRD ABOUT IT. im doing this to make you betray the king. IT IS NOT A SEX THING

[violet-hady]

I think the fact that you immediately thought about clarifying it’s not a sex thing kinda makes it sound like it is a sex thing.

[evilwizard]

FOOL. i would be using my sex amulet for that

[quark-art]

had to draw this

[saja-star]

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

[bbutterguns]

once when I was in undergrad, a professor asked me and the other women in the room, “do you know what sets you apart from 99% of women for all of human history?”

we eagerly offered up that we were statistically likely to survive childbirth, and indeed statistically much unlikelier, than our forebearers, to ever give birth. he shrugged and said in some places, in some cases. someone said we were less likely to be married, another that we were less likely to devote a lot of time and energy to cooking. again: maybe. finally, the professor said, “how much of your time is devoted to textiles?”

after a pause we admitted none; one classmate said she knit, and I said I used to sew and embroider as a child. functionally: nothing. he said, “listen. from dusk to dawn, most of women for most of what we call history have devoted most of their energy to textiles.” none of us even thought of it. this would have been quite literally unfathomable not so many generations ago - again, like a room full of undergraduates saying they spent <1% of their lives thinking about food.

Tom Stoppard once wrote that everything lost to time will crop back up again: “we die on the march, but there’s nothing outside the march, so nothing can be lost to it.” I don’t know if that’s true but I wonder.

[dreamingdormouse]

The Lendbreen Tunic was found mostly intact on a glacier in or near Norway, and is estimated to date from about 1500 years ago.

Researchers decided that copying it (using the methods people would have used at the time) would be a very useful project. So they got wool from sheep that were similar to the ones that would have been around back then, and hired a bunch of handcrafters with experience to make it.

It took 544 hours to spin the wool on drop spindles (spinning wheels weren't invented for another 500 years or so, and didn't make it to Europe for a couple hundred more; humans have used spindles exclusively for most of our history), and another 160 hours to weave the fabric on a warp-weighted loom. The entire project, including carding and sewing and everything, took 760 hours.

For

one

shirt.

The article I read goes on to say that at the hourly rates charged by those handcrafters, the tunic would have cost over $34,000 (USD, 2023), but that's a bit disingenuous - today those crafters are artisans with a rare skill set. 1500 years ago, that would have been considered on par with data entry or call center work - moderately skilled, some training, but ubiquitous and without prestige. "Over $34,000" for 760 hours means about $45/hour. That is absolutely an appropriate wage for handcrafters today, a highly skilled job. But 1500 years ago, this would have been more like a job you earn minimum wage or the equivalent of $10/hour for.

That's still a value of $7,600 for one shirt. And, yeah, if you made it yourself you don't have to pay somebody that much. But 760 hours, divided into 40-hour workweeks, is 19 weeks, or a little more than 4 months.

To reiterate:

It would take more than 4 months of full-time work to make one shirt. For one person. 71.6% of that time would just be spinning, if we go by this project (and most sources agree that spinning took a lot longer than weaving).

So, of course, people did NOT just spend 40 hours a week working on textiles. It was fitted into every spare moment and done while accomplishing other things. Even the kids did some spinning for the household. Some people did it professionally. Everyone knew how to do it, knew the required steps.

It has indeed left ghosts in the language.

[sandmandaddy69]

[genderblunt]

Diva alert ⚠️

[homunculus-argument]

When it comes to glimpses of a better world, I remember encountering some woman's anecdote about how she's muslim, and being free to wear pretty much whatever she wants at her job, she wears a veil that covers her face while at work, but not in her free time. None of her coworkers know what she looks like, so she never has to worry about being seen and recognised by someone she knows from work while she's off the clock. Imagine having so much freedom to wear whatever you want that you can just decide that you don't consent to being seen at work. Your job does not have seeing-your-face privileges.

[nixiecat]

also regular(ish) reminder that it's literally cutes as fuck

[yokowan]

recently we were out on a hilltop taking photos of the comet and suddenly some car's headlights blind us from across the bay. literally four miles away.

who the fuck is out here with these nuclear fusion powered headlights. who puts naval searchlights on their fucking toyota tacoma.

[mesetacadre]

Sodus Point, east of Rochester, NY

[apas-95]

mystery solved

[beggars-opera]

I love that Hugh Grant is an absolute maniac masquerading as an unassuming nebbishy posh kind of guy. If this was signed by anyone else I would say "that's a spoof, he didn't sponsor that" but it's Hugh Grant so I am 100% confident that it's genuine. This is the guy who talks about bdsm on the red carpet and payed a performance artist to blast yakkity sax on loudspeakers outside Westminster on the day Boris Johnson resigned. This is peak Hugh Grant.