Nienna Weeps

Happy fan, beta reader, and occasional writer. Mostly lurking, some posting.

[seaglassdinosaur]

So something that’s been bothering me since we first found out about it: why did Stain attack Tensei?

It was a catalyst for Tenya and effects of it still linger in the story, so it was a pretty important point, but why did it happen? We know that Stain only kills ‘bad’ heroes who are in it for the money or some other petty reason, which is why he spared Izuku but went after Tenya. But from what we’ve seen of him Tensei was a pretty good hero and an all around good guy and brother. Not really the type Stain targets. And sure he has that one-off line about popularity being part of it, but he also clearly wants to help people.

A possibility is that Stain tests heroes in some way, to see what they’re made of, and Tensei failed, or maybe he just operates under the idea that all heroes are corrupt unless they prove otherwise; guilty until proven innocent. The latter seems more likely. But chapter 203 hinted at the character of Tensei, with Tenya talking about how he’s representing Ingenium’s good name, which we all know is the hero name he inherited from his older brother.

But that just brings me back to my first point, that Tensei seems like a decent guy, not the type to hide and commit morally questionable actions, certainly not as a hero. From what we’ve seen of him, he expresses good character.

And then I remember that at this point in the manga (I haven’t read Vigilantes or seen the anime) we have only seen Tensei in two perspectives: his injured state after the fight with Stain and, for the majority of his appearances, in the memories and flashbacks of Tenya, his adoring little brother. In other words, a partial witness.

We don’t know Tensei’s character outside of how Tenya sees him (again, haven’t seen the anime or read Vigilantes), which could mean he’s a very different person outside of his appearances.

This is all purely speculation, but twists about character’s identities, actions and morals are something of a theme in this series, so my question is: What did Tensei do to attract Stain’s attention?

[swimmingblue]

So going through some old likes and saw this one, and had some Ideas.

So the Iidas have canonically been heroes for several generations. The "ingenium" name has been passed down to several people. And we know that they've done well by this. The Iida family have benefited tremendously by being heroes, in terms of fame and fortune and prestige.

So I think that Tensei got picked by Stain because of this. Stain wanted to see what sort of person Tensei was. And I think that Tensei being a decent person saved his life. If Tensei had been an asshole, or a rich kid playing around, Stain would have probably just killed him and been done with it. But we see in canon (mha and vigilantes) that Tensei is serious about heroism, and he's a pretty good guy. And imo, Stain saw enough of this to not kill Tensei, instead basically "killing" his hero career by giving him a crippling blow.

[eleilinnrallin]

This is a reminder for those who handmake Christmas presents that now is not too early to start. It may in fact be a good time to start if you have a lot to make/your craft takes a long time. You should maybe start it now, whether that's brainstorming or actually doing the crafts!

[newtsoftheworldunite]

Translating this into tumblr's preferred public service announcement format for this kind of alert:

[random-stuff-thrown-into-a-pot]

So I want to become a teacher (will start studying in October) and I just wondered: Who was your favourite teacher and why? Or what does a good teacher do in your opinion? How does a teacher motivate you?

[thebibliosphere]

My favorite teacher in high school was Mr Grey, and I was in his English class for two years. He was a tall, really imposing looking man who had served time in the army, and he could silence a room just by standing up. But he was also kind and funny and and prone to making a lot of dad jokes and even the wild child students who were always one more fuck up away from being expelled really liked him. He believed in them you see.

I always remember the one year when one of the lads from 6b, Graham, was put into our class, because his own teacher couldn’t control him anymore. Graham hated being in our class, with all the “posh kids” and he hated it even more that he had to sit on the edge of Mr Grey’s desk. After a few days of refusing to read from the book he was supposed to, Mr Grey brought him another book to read. It was a child’s book intended for ages 5 years and upwards, with lots of pictures and easy words. Where the other teacher had just surmised that Graham was a lost cause and didn’t want to learn, Mr Grey had realized that he couldn’t actually read very well, and spent the next two years helping him.

He made him a part of our advanced class, getting him to write on the board and type out our lesson plans on the one class computer in the corner. He’d sit with him in quiet moments when we were all writing, and you’d hear him quietly sounding out the words with Graham, smiling and nodding whenever he managed something complicated by himself, and smiling and nodding when he couldn’t because asking for help was better than throwing a wobbler.

By the end of the first year we had to stand up and do a presentation in front of the whole class and talk about a book we really liked. Some did it on Shakespeare, others did it on Hemingway—we were the advanced lit class and were supposed to be reading and writing at a university level, so there was a lot of books that we might not have actually liked on the list, but knew we had to study regardless. I did mine on Pratchett, surprise surprise. Graham didn’t have to do a talk, but he sat listening intently. I still remember walking past his seat and the way he turned to me and said “that was puir good like” and I said “thanks” and smiled. It was as good as getting an A, praise from the trouble maker boy who every other teacher had given up on.

The following year we all had to do another presentation, this time without the aid of notes. I did another Pratchett book, drawing parallels from Shakespeare and highlighting the need for genre fiction to be taken seriously, to which Mr Grey agreed, applauded and eventually gave me an A+. And just when we thought it was all over, Graham stood up and the whole class went silent. He had an a4 piece of paper in his hands which shook, and he was staring at it like it was his lifeline. He looked up at Mr Grey and said “I can’t…” to which Mr Grey said “You can” and there was more silence. And then Graham began to read.

“The book that I read was also by Terry, and it’s called Truckers, and it’s from the much larger Bromeliad trilogy which I haven’t finished yet but so far is dead good. It’s about these little tiny people right…”

And he stood there for about ten minutes, talking about what the book was about, why he liked it, and even going into what he had read so far in the next book, Diggers, and what he liked about that too. When Graham finally stopped and looked up, giving us all a little nod as if to say “thanks for not laughing” the whole class went wild with clapping and shouting. And Mr Grey was beaming with pride, clapping harder than anyone.

He was a kind and patient man who respected us and in turn we respected him. He didn’t try to be our friend like a lot of the other teachers did, but he did make sure we knew we could turn to him if we had to. And we did. He was the kind of teacher who you wanted to make proud, but he was also the kind of teacher who wanted to help you be proud of yourself. And that has always stuck with me.Of course he was also the teacher who used us for social experiments and told us to come to class “prepared to survive” after we’d finished reading Lord of the Flies, but that’s another story.

[swimmingblue]

Probably one of my fave teachers in high school ...let's call him Mr. F, because he has a somewhat rare name.

Mr. F taught English language arts and history. He knew that he had a bunch of kids in his classes that didn't really want to be there, but that needed to do ok in his classes to graduate. Mr. F went out of his way to make his classes interesting and fun, even for the stuff where he didn't have much control over the content. Mr. F obviously cared about his students, and helped them when they had trouble without making it a huge Deal. Mr. F didn't make people feel stupid when they didn't understand the material, or feel bad when they didn't have time to do the assignments because they were helping with the lambing every day this week and the lambs don't care about homework. Mr F didn't make a big deal of people going to the toilet as long as they weren't disruptive.

[aqueerkettleofish]

As a side note… I am really annoyed by one thing about Star Trek.

“Replicated food is not as good as real food.”

That’s ridiculous.  In Star Trek, replicator technology is part of the same tech tree as transporters.  Replicated food would be identical to the food it was based on, down to the subatomic level. 

[covington-shenanigans]

Proposal for a Watsonian explanation:

In a blind taste test, nobody, but nobody, can tell the actual difference between replicated food and “real” food. (Think back to our youth and the New Coke vs. Pepsi taste tests, only worse.) BUT, humans being What We Are, the human Starfleet members insist that “real” food is better than replicated food for reasons including, but certainly not limited to:

1. Hipsters have survived even into the 24th century. “No, you just can’t make good curry from a replicator! You gotta toast the spices yourself right before you cook it or it’s not the same, maaaaaan”

2. All military and para-military members everywhere always grouse and bitch about the food and sigh over What We Get Back Home. It could literally be the same replicator recipe you use at home when someone has to work late or just doesn’t feel like making the effort to cook, but people are people everywhere so they’re going to complain about it.

3. Humans tend to think we’re smarter than we actually are and we can totally tell when something is going on; as a result, human crew members insist they can “taste the difference” because their minds are making shit up, as our brains do.

4. One could presume that, generally speaking, a replicator recipe programmed into a starship or base replicator database would come out the same every time. This is perhaps the 24th century equivalent of mass catering. (I won’t try to account for the nuances of replicator tech that might allow for variances, and leave aside for the moment the fact that some people probably tinker with the standard “recipes” to suit their own taste.) The single thing that would be different in this case about “real” food is the variation, since of course the “real” dish will have slight variances every time due to the whims of the cook, the oven temperature fluctuation, freshness of ingredients, etc.. And since we are an easily bored species who really, really hates boredom, I bet people would jump all over that to lament the lack of “real” food when they’re out exploring strange new worlds and new civilizations and whatnot. (This is the only reason I can think of that might hold up to scrutiny.)

The Vulcans in Starfleet (and Data), of course, remain baffled by this human insistence that “replicator food isn’t as good as ‘real’ food”, as it defies all known forms of logic.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Hmm.  This is a fair point.  It occurs to me that I once met a Texan who commented that the chili in a restaurant I worked at was not as good as what they made in Texas, and when I pointed out that the cook was a Texan and the chili was his personal recipe, for which he had won awards in Texas, just said “Doesn’t matter.  Wasn’t made in Texas.”

I gotta be honest, Replicator technology is one of the things I am SUPREMELY jealous of, and I’m… okay, I’m not a great cook, but I can cook and there are several dishes I do very well.  I think if I had access to the technology I would cook a lot less, though, and I would for sure use replicated ingredients. 

[math-is-magic]

1. It is not just hipsters that act like this about food. All the grandmothers I know feel this way too, and I don’t see that ever changing.

[mermaidelephant]

The missing ingredient is love, obviously. You can’t get that from a replicator.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Right, for that you need the holodeck.

[lemonsharks]

Okay so, we’ve missed a few things that I think are relevant here: 

The replicator or replicator + holodeck combo can’t recreate the experience of cooking, nor can it recreate the experience of being cooked for. And that experience makes food taste better. 

Cooking is what makes us human. No other species on this wet rock cooks its food–only us. 

First: if you’re making lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat, you spend hours puttering around the house doing chores in a cozy sweater, periodically petting the cats and playing with the kids, waiting an anticipating the hour in which you get to eat the soup. All the while: your house smells like lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat. 

You get a tamale from the replicator: it’s pretty good. You wish it came with a green olive with the pit still in like the kind your abuela puts in her tamales. 

You get a tamale from the tamale lady on the way to work on a clear, crisp fall morning. It’s so hot from her steamer that it nearly burns your fingerprints off and it smells divine; you use all of your Spanish to tell her how good it is and how grateful you are that you pass her every day. On a whim, you buy 30 more tamales to share with the office; they’re still warm at lunch and they taste like friendship. 

You get a tamale from your abuela. It’s Christmas Eve, your entire family has spent the last seven hours making them, your tio Juan just busted out his tuba and it is definitely too hot outside for the fake snow  your baby cousins have started throwing at each other in between begging to open just one present and if you don’t hurry up you’re all going to be late for mass. 

The tamale tastes like home. 

You get a tamale from the replicator. Its neural network reviewed your order against every known tamale recipe and variety and decided that your addition of “green olive, pickled, pit in” was a mistake, and omitted it. 

Your tamale tastes like homesickness. You ball-up the corn husk and 

Second: The replicator is probably not accounting for regional variations in ingredients for its base foods. 

The ingredient library may have jalapeno, red; jalapeno, green, jalapeno, (color slider), (heat slider). It probably does not have: jalapeno, Hatch new mexico, USA, earth, sol system; or jalapeno north face Olympus Mons Mars, sol system. Replicator Parmesan is very likely a scan of a Parmesan and doesn’t duplicate regional variations between, say, a Parmesan from Mantua vs a Parmesan from Parma. 

Did your grandmother use san marzano tomatoes that were actually grown in san marzano in her red sauce (, canned, peeled, whole in juice)? Sucks to be you, the replicator scanned a hydroponically grown plum-type tomato which environment was carefully controlled for optimal nutritional value and “pretty good” taste. 

Is the replicator cilantro a kind bred or genetically engineered for maximum palatability across the broadest spectrum of individuals? Is it missing the gene that makes some people taste soap when they eat it? Is that gene the one that makes it taste good to you, so that the replicator chimichurri is always missing something, some particular specific type of freshness, a unique vegetal taste that you can’t put your finger on, and it’s not important enough to track down when you just like the chimichurri you make at home, from cilantro your grew yourself, much better? 

Third: The recipe database is probably sourced from hundreds of thousands of recipes written over centuries’ time – and then averaged using a combination of median and modal averaging to come up with something that’s Pretty OK to most people, but which is going to leave others wanting–no matter how much they tweak it. 

And then you have many, many people in a state of, “yes but I like my/mom’s/spouse’s/grandparent’s/aunt’s/uncle’s/best friends better”. And that’s OK.

I mean, really. Think about this for a minute.

Fourth:

You go to get a cup of tea from the replicator, because everything is terrible. You know in the darkest depths of your soul that everything will still be terrible with a good cuppa in your hands, but it will be terrible and you’ll have tea, which is a marked improvement. 

The replicator gives you a glass of brewed, iced sweet tea. 

It takes you three more tries to get a cup of hot earl grey. You decide you’ve finished pressing your luck with this positively infernal machine today and don’t even bother asking for a lemon wedge. 

If that doesn’t indicate that the replicators were programmed by an American, I don’t know what does. 

[msfbgraves]

The third option is how many ready made “festive” meals are made by supermarkets already. Unilever, at least, hires great chefs, and then puts the result to a test panel. They tweak the recipe - which was very high quality - until they get something that appeals to the majority of people. And that is often something that is familiar to most people, some of whom may not have access to healthy, fresh ingredients, or have been taught to cook, and even though nobody rates it a ten now, most people rate it a 7, and that’s what they sell.

And that really makes you ache for something made just the way you like it, doesn’t it?

A replicator can’t do that for you, either, and sometimes it just tastes like sadness.

[cookingwithroxy]

And finally, and most importantly?

A replicator meal is always that meal.

That one last EXACT meal.

Every day, the same meal.

You ever go to a resturant and order the same dish two times in a row, and notice the differences? That the fish in the sushi had a slightly different flavor, or the baking of the ribs was just that little bit different. Even when you’re going to a chain fast food place, there’s always a little difference between each one, the fries were cooked a bit more this time, or salted a bit more. The soda mix is slightly different.

But the Replicator always makes the EXACT. SAME. THING. Your tamale tomorrow will be the exact SAME tamale as you got today. Same seasonings. Same temperature. Same length even!

And unless you luck out into a meal you can eat every time? Sooner or later you will grow sick of ti. Because it will never be anything else but that one, identical, meal.

[swimmingblue]

replicators are handy as hell, but they'd never entirely replace real cooking.

[infectiouspiss]

kids deserve so much more respect and it turns out that saying that is a great way to locate the horrible people in any community <3

[infectiouspiss]

you'll say something as simple as "no child deserves to be hit" and people will crawl out of the woodwork to explain why they should be allowed to beat a 6 year old for spilling some water

[infectiouspiss]

you'll say "i think it's weird that adults literally have control over when children are allowed to use the bathroom" and up pops a teacher to say that when they're not shouting at the kids they teach, they're trying to stop them from hiding in the bathrooms

you'll say "i think children shouldn't be forced to eat food they hate" and here comes someone who feeds their kids plain rice and boiled chicken (while eating a nicely seasoned stirfry) claiming that it's okay actually and kids shouldn't be allowed to taste things

you'll say "i think kids should have bodily autonomy" and in comes someone who pierced their babies ears before it was even 24 hours old, frothing at the mouth because their kid wanted a haircut and thats somehow an insult

[infectiouspiss]

children are an oppressed class and everyone should be looking back at their own childhoods and making sure they don't ever make a child feel the same way they felt.

[swimmingblue]

And there's a big difference between "being responsible about the kid(s) in your care" and "giving the kid(s) in your care proper treatment."

Like, ok, parents/guardians/supervisors of kids do have to insist on stuff for the safety and well-being of minors. Kids have to eat their veggies and wear weather-appropriate clothing and so on. But that doesn't mean that you have to treat kids like shit.

[phantomrose96]

I love BNHA a lot in general but one of my highest praises is for how they handle Bakugou.

Like, the “cool, angry, top-of-his-game rival character who hates the protagonist” is dime-a-dozen in shonen series. That’s who Bakugou is. And its real common to toss a set of rose-tinted glasses on every other character so they all see Rival Guy as cool and amazing and admirable. That way the protagonist has to work extra hard to beat his rival AND prove himself to everyone else, who all just blindly adore Rival Guy.

And BNHA…doesn’t do that. BNHA lets everyone understand that Bakugou is an asshole. He’s strong. He’s talented. He’s a force of nature. The other kids know this, but theyre not blinded by it. They understand he’s unfairly cruel to Deku. They know his ego is a problem. They’re not scared of him or dazzled by him. They take notice when he’s being a problem. They call him out. They tease him.

There’s the bus scene in early season 1 where Deku’s cowering in shock because Good god, these kids have the nerve to mock Bakugou. Because the kids in Deku and Bakugou’s old school were a lot more like the typical shonen characters. They let Bakugou get away with his awfulness because he was Bakugou. The UA kids are a different cut though. They don’t care Bakugou was #1 in the exam. They don’t care that he’s Bakugou.

And heck, half of Bakugo’s character arcs involve him hopping from one angry existential crisis to another, because he’s not always the best, because he can’t win everyone over to his side with confidence, because he can’t accomplish every single thing his inflated ego says he should be accomplishing. The audience witnesses him meet resistance and hardship and consequence for being an egotistical, hot-headed bully. He faces real-world honest consequences for being that kind of terrible person.

Bakugo hasn’t had one definite character-redeeming moment–no “oh you talked sense into me and now im Good™ “. But as the manga goes on, he’s become less volatile, less cocky, less eager to harass Deku. He still is an asshole, but he’s changed. I have a lot of respect for how it’s been handled. Slowly, progressively. His ego has been chiseled down by personal failures, by witnessing how his cocky confidence does harm to himself and others. 

I love that BNHA doesn’t let the cool, powerful, rival character just have his way. I love that BNHA doesnt just whack Bakugo with a single character-redemption arc and pull him through the other side. I love that BNHA shows us what things are whittling down Bakugo, that they take a metaphorical spray bottle to him again and again, pushing him into something less cruel than he was.

And it’s really good.

[swimmingblue]

and this is handled very well in-universe, as well.

Bakugou is a big fish in a small pond in his middle school/hometown area. He is sincerely strong and talented, but he's so OP compared to all of his agemates that he doesn't have anyone to challenge his worldview.

But he gets to UA .... and the situation changes. Suddenly he's surrounded by a bunch of other talented people. He's no longer automatically top dog - several of the other students match him or are objectively better than him in other areas! We can see the wheels starting to turn in Bakugo's head about this. He gets knocked down, both in the classroom and outside of it. And his behavior does start to change, but it takes time and effort and work.

[animentality]

[nitewrighter]

@telltaletypist the “third space” refers to a space between work (or in teens’ case school) and home! Basically it’s a comfortable space that allows you to mentally transition between the mental states of work and home. One of the reason why Starbucks ended up as such a widespread coffee chain is because they heavily modeled their locations on this concept. Libraries are also increasingly trying to make themselves “third spaces” for their respective communities. But capitalism doesn’t really like people just hanging out in spots and not spending money, so third spaces that aren’t commercial are getting increasingly rare. There is also something to be said about the general pathologization and criminalization of teens literally just hanging out. Like teens will hang out in a parking lot and proprietors will put up “no loitering” signs. One more third space eliminated.

[mugasofer]

[ilovecats4ever]

[azurele]

[theslowesthnery]

[swimmingblue]

I think the easiest explanation for American imperial vs metric systems is this:

Metric is good for science. It's exact, specific, and the whole thing moves by scale of 10s. Useful for science and technology, but not always the best way for your average person on the street to understand. Like, you know in your head what 5 mm of rain is, but you don't know in your gut.

American imperial .... it's designed for everyday use. An inch is about the length of the first joint of your thumb. A foot is about the length of your forearm. It's not as good for science, but it's very useful for an average person trying to bake or sew or do carpentry with limited tools.

[homunculus-argument]

Does anyone know good ways to wash a 10 kg weighed blanket that doesn't fit into a bucket and can't go into the washer? Not because of blanket limitations but the laundry has 8 kg weight limit.

[swimmingblue]

So you have two options.

Option 1, if you have a bathtub handy - wash the weighted blanket in the tub. I'd probably recommend giving the bathtub a good cleanout before, and a rinse out after, just in case. This method does require a bathtub at home, but it's otherwise more convenient and simpler.

Option 2, go to a laundromat. Commercial laundromats are bigger. This would be more of a pain in the ass, especially since most weighted blankets can't go in the dryer and so you'd have to haul it home wet to air-dry. BUT you could also take advantage of the opportunity launder a bunch of other stuff that you can't do at home, like big comforters or whatever.

[redstonedust]

unfortunately i dont think its queerbaiting if the creator is just so terminally heterosexual that they never remotely considered the same gender relationship their show is centered around could be read as romantic. it is deeply painful however.

[melanqueerly]

Maybe accidental queer baiting? The way someone may not mean to say something rude, but it may come off rude, so it's rude. Frustrating either way.

[phinarei]

Not being a dick, just a friendly clarification.

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.

Doing it on accident sucks, but it isn't a tactic of capitalism intentionally intended to suppress queer representation while making money from queer fans.

[swimmingblue]

Yeah, queerbaiting is by definition intentional.

A creator can absolutely put in queer subtext unintentionally, in the same way that a creator can mix in a lot of stuff unintentionally. But since it's not deliberate, it's not queerbaiting.

[elf-kid2]

@thebibliosphere , I have long followed your blog, and I have the deepest respect for you as a writer, a disability advocate, and-- as is most relevant in this instance-- a homeowner.

I am a person of limited means, and aspirations of future home-owning. My sister-in-law recently showed by a Real-Estate listing for a 3-bed, 2.5-bath, 1,607-sqr ft house on a 0.26-acre lot, built in 2002, selling for $99,900.

The most obvious reason for the suspiciously low price seems to be a mold-problem, which is visible in the photos on the real estate website.

As a home-owner, as one who has frequently posted about The House That Cthulu Built, I must ask you: do you think this property would be worth the problems?

[thebibliosphere]

In all honesty, it depends on how bad the damage is, and how much it would cost to fix, and that includes finding and fixing the source of the mold.

For instance, does the house have foundational problems? That's a lot of money to fix and a lot of time. You might not be able to live in the house while that's going on, so do you have the extra money to stay somewhere else if needed?

Is it from a burst pipe and the previous owner never got around to doing full remediation? Not as expensive but less daunting than trying to fix the foundations.

Was their a freak flood and the previous owner just didn't dry the space out properly? Well, better strip the drywall down to the studs and dry the area out and put up new stuff, but that's a lot easier than fixing pipes or cracked foundations.

Personally, if I could see visible mold in a house and it was substantial enough to knock the price under 100k, I would already be looking elsewhere because once you can see mold problems, that's usually indicative of something much, much worse waiting to be found. And my health would not be able to tolerate that again, not if I didn't have somewhere else to live while the house was being gutted and repaired.

But your mileage may vary. A mold remediation company would be able to give you a better idea of what you're looking at and if it's worth trying to save, or if you should keep saving in the hopes of finding somewhere that isn't going to run the risk of ruining your finances in the long term, or your possibly your health.

I wish you luck!

[swimmingblue]

So, some extra points:

Generally, if a house is super-cheap, there's a good reason for it. It's in a shitty location, it needs a lot of work, someone died in the house. This isn't always a dealbreaker, it's a question of both "your mileage may vary" and "what are you willing to do to score a deal." So just be warned that a super-cheap house almost always has a catch, and think about whether you're willing to deal with that.

If you're seriously considering a house, hire a home inspector. Getting one of these to look at a house you want to buy is standard, so a seller shouldn't look at you funny if you say that you want one. It'll cost a few hundred bucks, but they'll usually be able to point out stuff that would be expensive to fix. You can use the report's findings to see if you're willing to deal with the issues.

Also, for a mold problem - these can be insidious, and can be a huge hassle to fix, in terms of both time and money. Plus the mold can linger even after every effort has been made to get rid of it. I'd also express concern if you or anyone you live with has health concerns related to mold or air quality, since mold can linger even after every attempt has been made to eliminate it.

[vinterkosmos-deactivated2013091]

Cleopatra John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)

[spacestationtrustfund]

#i love this picture of cleopatra   #because she’s pretty enough but she’s not gorgeous   #the art is doing nothing to emphasize her beauty   #(there’s no exposed breast   #her clothes aren’t sheer and her face is actually partially hidden   #and she’s slumped over)   #instead the focus is that expression on her face   #and it’s not a cruel expression like you see with Lucrezia Borgia or paintings of Lady Macbeth   #the emotion there doesn’t exist for the audience to witness and determine her character from   #if anything she looks lost in thought   #not the dreamy type but like when you’re trying to figure out a difficult problem   #because you’re the Pharoah of Egypt and are holding off the Romans as long as you can   #I love this picture because I think this is the real Cleopatra   #it’s like taking a telescope and looking back in time at who she was and what she was like   #a dead-smart girl famous for her political maneuvering and cleverness   #not the poster child of evil beauty  (via @dark-haired-hamlet)

[swimmingblue]

and from what we know about her ... Cleopatra probably wasn't drop-dead gorgeous. She was known to be visually striking, but not gorgeous.

She was definitely very smart. Several people went out of their way to note in their writings that she was unusually clever. She absolutely knew a bunch of languages. She successfully maneuvered through dangerous political situations for many years before her eventual failure and death. And even in death she was actually fairly successful - both personally, in getting to choose the manner of her own death instead of being killed or paraded around as a slave, and as Pharaoh - Egypt became a Roman province, but didn't get as rough treatment as other places they conquered.

[storm-of-feathers]

yeah yeah rainbow capitalism is bad and whatever but like. when I was a child, being pro gay was not the popular or lucrative choice. I'm happy that times have changed.

[storm-of-feathers]

I miss rainbow capitalism. I do. I miss when it felt like public opinion was still pro gay. I understand it was always an empty gesture, but it mattered in a sense of knowing how socially acceptable being queer is. If that makes sense.

[sistersorrow]

Is rainbow capitalism deeply cynical in nature and just a way for companies to profit off social movements? Yes, but it was also a pretty good sign when entities focused solely on profit decided it was worth it to try to cosplay as progressive, and deeply concerning how many companies started inching away from it again cause that's a sign that the wind's turning

[swimmingblue]

The corporate world only cares about money. They don't care about people, or the environment, or rights, or anything beyond how profitable they can be.

Rainbow capitalism is a sign that being pro-queer is more profitable than being anti-queer. That the market share of pro-queer people is larger than the market share of anti-queer people. So if rainbow capitalism is on the outs, it means that corporations ran the math and are deciding that it's unprofitable again. Which is a really bad sign.

[balaclava-trismegistus]

Sun Tzu is so fucking funny to me because for his time he was legitimately a brilliant tactician but a bunch of his insight is shit like "if you think you might lose, avoid doing that", "being outnumbered is bad generally", and "consider lying."

[elidyce]

My personal favourite is his lengthy lecture on the subject of Supplies Being Very Important I Cannot Stress Enough The Importance Of Protecting Your Supply Lines But Also Supply Lines Are Expensive As Shit So Steal The Enemy’s Supplies At Every Opportunity. 

[biohammer]

via- @elidyce

[crazy-pages]

One of the more important things to consider about any historical work is the audience it was published for. The Art Of War was aimed at fancy nobles high on philosophy with little practical military experience who were nonetheless leading armies.

[limpurtikles]

Sun Tzu, after desperatly trying to explain extremely basic logic to a bunch of upper-class twits, basically sat down and wrote the most elaborate "As per my last email" ever

[jeneelestrange]

Which honestly makes it EVEN FUNNIER that its one of the stereotypical CEO and Business Major readings in their off-hours books of the modern day, because like.......as far as ACTUALLY translating any of these war tactics to business, some of them are harder to translate directly than others but I don’t know how you miss YOUR GROUND TROOPS AKA WORKERS NEED CONSISTENT FOOD AND BASIC NECESSITIES. IF YOU CANNOT PROVIDE THAT, YOU HAVE FUCKED UP. Were you careless about hygiene and a plague decimated your troop population/none of your workers can afford healthcare????? THAT WILL EVENTUALLY BE A FUCKING PROBLEM BECAUSE THEN THEY CAN’T FIGHT/WORK. Human beings are not a LIMITLESS RESOURCE, you FUCKING CRETIN--ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAD TO TEACH THEM TO DO SHIT I wonder if when feckless pampered bureaucrats saw starving peasant soldiers were deserting, they grumbled, “Nobody wants to fight in wars anymore”

[swimmingblue]

We have to remember that historically, a lot of people have ended up in charge of stuff because of nepotism instead of, you know, actual talent, ability, or experience. This includes stuff like being in charge of other people in a military context. So Sun Tzu's The Art of War is basically a cliff notes version of Important Military Stuff. It's all solid advice, but put very plainly for beginners.

[bitchesgetriches]

Esteemed Bitches, a job application I was just filling out asked if I'd ever been "excluded from or otherwise made ineligible to participate in any federal program, including any health care program". ....Can they ask that?? That seems like an overreach to me

I had to look it up, but this SOUNDS like a way to ask about your criminal record without asking about your criminal record (since you can be excluded from federal programs mostly because of "criminal conviction, fraud, or misconduct.")

So just tell them NO. If they're going to ask a sneaky question, they shouldn't expect you to do extra homework to give them a detailed answer. Here's more on what employers can/can't ask you:

10 Questions You Should Never Be Asked in a Job Interview 

Beware These 5 (Perfectly Legal) Discriminatory Hiring Practices 

Did we just help you out? Join our Patreon!

[swimmingblue]

Yeah, this sounds like a question worded to be just on the safe side of what's legally allowed by employers. Because there's a list of shit they can't ask about, but it doesn't count if you volunteer the information. So a lot of employers are great at asking questions that technically skirt the limits of what's allowable to ask, but from a practical standpoint are basically asking for protected information.

[sanguinifex]

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

When we choose to avoid history because it's Problematic or Says Bad Things, we are choosing to divorce ourselves from understanding how we came from that time to this one, which makes it even more likely for the cycle to repeat, with no one but a few people with shelves of old books aware that it's happened before.

[swimmingblue]

and this shit's important. Media from the past tells us how people from the past acted and thought and behaved.

Plus, a lot of these media pieces were socially acceptable and/or progressive for their time. For example, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while it contains a lot of words and ideas that are offensive now, was very progressive for its time. The book is a statement piece for how a young man who's grown up in a racist environment, with no words to explain himself other than racist and bigoted ones, decides that the whole system is shit and he's not going to follow those rules any more. So not reading or engaging with it because it uses the n-word a lot really misses the point.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I rarely bring this up because it feels like fairly silly and low-stakes compared to all the other effects of american imperialism, but one of the funniest things when Americans deny that living in the imperial core and the center of global cultural hegemony confers them any sort of privilege over people from the imperial periphery is that like. In order for this conversation where you tell me you have no privilege over me to even be able to take place one of us had to learn the other's language, and it wasn't you.

I think the fact that by default the onus of learning the other's language to enable communication is always put on the other side is a pretty significant privilege on the cultural front.

[ilikesallydonovan]

Tags via @thriceandonce