#descriptive not prescriptive

[shipburner]

Pounded In The Butt By A Metaphor For The Ways I Am Already Pounded In The Butt In Real Life by Ursula C. Le Guingle

[isaacsapphire]

We are unavoidably parts of things bigger than ourselves (eg. Families, towns), and those things in turn are parts of bigger things (eg. Ethnicities, States). We as individuals are component parts of the upper spheres, but inconsequential individually. As individuals, we are dependent on our protective spheres to avoid intentional and unintentional harm from competing spheres that view us as vermin or as containing atoms that can be put to better uses. Some higher spheres function by minimizing the importance of lower spheres within them. Conflicts between spheres may kill many individuals, either directly via eg. war and indirectly via eg. famine.

It's both foolish and dangerous to be an individual and act as if you have not been born embedded in spheres engaged in conflict.

Image from here, you can apparently buy these if you think it looks cool but I was unable to find an illustrative image that I liked better for this purpose.

[vardasvapors]

Studying = notes on the table with a red pen in one hand and my phone open to tumblr mobile in the other.

[snails-exe]

im sure this has been said before but theres a line between something being perveived as “cool” vs “cringe” and that line is whether the person doing it is attractive

[imustbeamermaidrango]

How can you commit but still be #nonhierarchicalpolyamory ? 💗 #polyam #polytok #queertok

I have a nested partner and non-nested partner and these are my thoughts/philosophy/practice around hierarchy exactly.

[amgamble]

A Complicated V-S Question

Which would you say?

What follows is scenes of crisis

What follow are scenes of crisis

My local linguistics professor (aka "Dad") had these thoughts. "What follow(s)" is a noun clause, and we expect the one at the front of the sentence to dictate the verb's number (singular or plural). This "what," though, refers to "scenes of crisis," which is plural; you could rewrite this sentence as

Scenes of crisis are what follow.

The desired focus is achieved via a movement transformation. There are others, and the verb agrees with the resulting predicate nominative:

Happy is the man who knows his own mind.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

Gone are the days of waiting until the reference desk was open.

The linguist's final assessment: "I would say 'What follow are,' but I sympathize with someone who wants to use 'What follows is.'"