Cosmic Funnies
RMH
Xuebing Du
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
Origami Around
shark vs the universe
Mike Driver
Love Begins
Keni
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almost home
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if i look back, i am lost
KIROKAZE
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
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occasionally subtle
Monterey Bay Aquarium
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@tarnagona
A new friend appears! I've never used a needleminder before but I really like this one (also from @shitpostsampler :D), especially because it gives me a place to put my needle without warping fabric. Hit a bump last week because I set myself a deadline to finish this pattern and I didn't, so we're picking up again this week. Watching Queer Eye helps ;P
hi hello alert so that classic tumblr flowing jungle river post is now cited in a real book like an actual paper book and it’s called because internet and it’s all about the evolution of internet language and how TUMBLR DID THE THING and you can get it here
Hey @staff is there any way to blow up the font for the visually impaired? Especially on mobile. It is seriously hard to read on my tablet because of how teeny tiny the font is. An accessibility setting would be seriously helpful for me and a lot of your other users.
*Please Reblog*
Actually, though. Tumblr Mobile is pretty inaccessible, and being able to make the font bigger would definitely help with that.
Life hacks
ancient relics
[Image: tweet from Heather Lindsaychen (@oceana1009): “Reframing motivation not as an act of will, but a thing that naturally occurs when I am rested, fed, and am taking things at my own slow pace has helped me a lot“]
Hey, here is a nice insight for those beating themselves up for their low motivation.
Remember that a good, healthy motivation comes when your needs are being met. That’s not always possible in this world, but being kind to yourself for the impact of that always is!
All right, another mental health post for today! THIS THING. This thing is so important.
I’ve noticed recently that I have a mental flinch response every time I consider doing something. Even a really easy pleasant thing, like going for a short walk or getting a snack from the fridge, let alone things like washing the dishes or doing work. I feel an impulse to do the thing and then I immediately shut it down and tell myself “maybe in five minutes”. This seems really bad! And I suspect it’s partially caused by forcing myself to do things, so that now when I consider doing a thing my instinctive response is “no” because I… don’t trust myself about it, if that makes any sense?
So anyway, instead of forcing myself to do things, I’ve been trying out just relaxing and doing what I want and following the random impulses, and it turns out I can 1) have fun, and 2) get decent amounts of work/etc done that way without feeling awful about it! While beating myself up about things pretty directly led to doing even fewer things in the long term, because my brain learned to associate “doing things” with unpleasantness. Don’t make your brain do that, it sucks.
(I mean, maybe for some people it doesn’t suck or is worth it anyway, everyone is different and everyone’s situations are different and all that! But it looks like for me it’s usually not. I should talk to my therapist about it.)
This is fantastic advice and deserves its own space on the blog. That mental flinch is entirely, painfully familiar to me, and I have had the same results when I just let myself follow my inclinations.
I also want to acknowledge that we can’t always just do whatever we want willy-nilly. But noticing mental flinches (I had characterized them as a mental wall, previously)—and giving thought to what is motivating them—can lead to really useful insights.
In a similar vein is the way we build up small tasks that we’ve been putting off. I don’t know about you, maybe-a-lizard, but I get the same mental flinches with a task that’s been sitting on my to-do list for too long. I’ve realized I’m getting “nope” signals and that if I take a moment to recognize whatever is causing those (guilt, uncertainty about the first step, bad feelings etc.), I can break the current negative associations and move forward into a more constructive place.
I think connecting these things (the mechanics of motivation, mental flinches, and self-reflection) is really powerful and can help a lot when your “get up and go” is more of a “get up and no.”
Just some additional thoughts :)
❤, Editor Diane
I don’t usually soap-box, but I’m going to for a hot sec since this has been on my mind:
Cults are getting better branding, prettier leaders, hipper-sounding cosmologies, and wider reaches due to social media. They’re not all deity-focused. Thoughtful, intelligent people can get sucked into them. Just…stay safe out there, guys. Do your research, look at all your options, and trust your gut, not your guru.
I’m glad this is resonating with people.
I do want to emphasize, again, that cults (and toxic groups with cult-like attributes, I’m using this term pretty loosely) don’t usually look like what you’d expect. A lot of toxic and dangerous religious movements are tiny and you won’t find much about them via Google. Cultish non-religious movements are the same way.
Start-ups, multi-level marketing companies, activist groups, fan groups, political groups, and internet gurus who run retreats can all be cult-like and dangerous. Tune your BS detector, ask family, friends, and experts for advice.
Here are some warning signs:
Pressure – pressure to make quick decisions, to give (or pledge) considerable amounts of money, to move in with a group, to abandon family or cut off friends. Elevated Leaders – anyone claiming special insight, special powers, or that they aren’t human. Demanding special treatment (compared to other followers). Misuse of funds or money collecting at the top. physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse. Lack of accountability or oversight. Isolation – encouraging (or requiring) members to cut off family relationships, friendships with those outside of the group, leaving jobs, moving to isolated areas, taking away communication methods. Strong “us-vs-them” mentality. Vilification of ex-members. Love-bombing. Altered states of consciousness – long work hours, sleep deprivation, lack of access to adequate food or water. Otherwise unproblematic activities like meditation/prayer/chanting, but done for hours. Discouraging doubt – discouraging or punishing doubt and critical thinking.
(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3)
If these send up red flags for you or loved ones, here are some collected resources: one, two.
*rubs hands together* Okay here we go.
I am the child (now 30) of former cult members. Those warning signs up there? They are definitely great. They are not by any means the only warning signs. Those are the secondary warning signs.
The first, and you’re going to hate this addition because now you’re going to be paranoid forever, is audacious hospitality.
What do I mean? People who are tripping over themselves to be kind, caring, understanding, and validating. Maybe they’ll help you out if you’re down on your luck. They get you. They hear you. They listen really well.
So where’s the problem? The problem is that now they’re your social and emotional support. You trust them because they’ve given you a reason to trust them. NOW is that time that the other shit kicks in. Are you in a religious cult? Now is when they begin to radicalize you. Are you falling victim to an MLM scheme? Now is when you invest. Yada yada.
No one starts in with the whole “killing these people will cleanse the earth of sin” bullshit. That comes later, sometimes months or even a year or so later, once you’re beginning to see the world their way.
The same goes for financial and social control. No one starts off with “never speak to your mother again” or “you should give us all of your income in live in a house that we have assigned you.” You learn that these are natural things and you will benefit from this in some way (spiritually, emotionally, financially, socially, etc) throughout your relationship with these people.
Besides the Christian Bible, one of the required readings of my parents’ cult was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This was specifically to bring people into the fold through false love. They were taught to emotionally manipulate people into being one of them. These people are ruthless and insidious and any attempt to break away with result in social shunning, financial ruin, and emotional pain because everyone from their group will make a point of hurting you in all the ways they learned best from when you trusted them.
Basically the best thing you can do to stay safe is to seek counselling when you have trouble. Don’t let a very niche group become the place that you fall back on for all your support. I know this is hard but be your own person. Some times our mental health is shit (been there, done that); sometimes our social support network is ripped out from under our feet (done that too). We want and need someone to lean on. That is natural and normal. So by all means join groups be they religious, minority-status related, fannish, political, etc. Being around people with like interests is great for mental health, but never let those people become your whole world. Be yourself first, don’t let someone tell you who you are.
audacious hospitality is a form of love bombing—which is what abusers do to basically imprint their victims onto them
extreme amounts of affection and attention. sometimes overwhelm you with gifts. they want to build trust and dependency.
recovery is not ‘soon i will be untouched, perfect, and in a permanent state of bliss. i will be healed and all will be well, forever.’
recovery is ‘i will continue to survive despite what happens, i will find ways to cope instead of continually tearing myself down. i will recover and will see myself in a light that i never thought was possible.’
Reminded of this excerpt from Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children by Nancy J. Napier: “It also helps to remember that healing occurs in a spiral. We swing around again and again to the same old issues, but at different turns of the spiral. Each time we confront a similar feeling or reaction we have yet another opportunity to learn and to heal. Each time, we bring with us whatever new understanding we have gained since the last time we cycled through this particular difficulty.”
tl;dr Appreciation or appropriation? But pls read the whole thing through before jumping to conclusions. Any Indigenous/Native American/First Nations people who see this, I’do super appreciate your opinions.
So I’ve had this idea in my head for a couple years: There exist a whole bunch of cross stitch patterns of pretty white ladies in fancy dresses (Mirabilia, &c.), but not much showing off people and clothing from other cultures, and that’s a shame + pow-wow dance regalia is fucking amazing, and pow-wow dancers in the style of Mirabilia’s with beads, metallic thread and fancy stitches would make awesome stitch patterns.
So this year at the summer solstice pow-wow, I took all the pictures, because if no-one else is doing the thing, maybe I should try. (Also because I got this idea in my head of a jingle dress dancer stitched up with actual tiny jingle cones on her dress, and I want it...even if I have to sub some other kind of beads because I don’t think such tiny jingles actually exist.)
And this may be a fair impossible task that goes nowhere, because I’ve only ever designed one full pattern before? Also a couple small things that only half count, because they mostly involved converting someone else’s pixel art to stitches. But I want to try and design the cool thing in my head, and of course I started with the most complicated one. XD Men’s fancy dancers have SO MANY BUSTLES (but I love them).
And I’m kinda proud of my sketches because proportions are hard, but I am excited about the possibilities (there’s got to be a specialty stitch that would be perfect for all those long, thin streamers (I’m sorry, I’m sure that’s not the proper name)). So this is kind of a first, exploratory step in an idea I’ve had kicking around my head for a while.
BUT (like this post isn’t already long enough), this gets to my tl;dr question. I am not Indigenous. My ideal job is helping to document and preserve/revitalise Indigenous languages, because that shit’s IMPORTANT, but I am also an outsider white woman. The pictures I used for reference are ones I took myself during competition dances where taking pictures was allowed, as opposed to the ceremonial parts where picture-taking is not permitted. And while I can’t draw something as complex as regalia without a reference (or even a decent-looking person, honestly), I’m not trying to draw/stitch a specific pow-wow dancer (if that was the case, I’d want to get that dancer’s permission somehow).
This is mostly a personal project, but it’s something where, if I can come up with a decent pattern, there is definitely a gap in available cross-stitch patterns for beautiful non-white people. All the ones I’ve seen (which is only two or three, total) have been of the cringy Native-with-wolf-and-dreamcatcher variety. It’d be nice if there was something there that WASN’T that. I haven’t seen that, so I thought, ‘why not try and create it myself?’
But like I said, I’m an outsider to Indigenous cultures. I’ve attended a couple pow-wows (Ottawa hosts a big one at the summer solstice every year that I like to go to when I can), and I have a couple Indigenous acquaintances (but when has that ever stopped someone from being racist), but I’m still an outsider. I just think regalia are amazing works of art, and they’re so colourful that they’d make fun cross-stitches. But I don’t know much about taboos surrounding regalia. Is making art of people wearing regalia okay? Does it become less okay if I were to sell said art (pipe dream)? I know making costume pieces based on regalia is not on (chicken feather headdresses, anyone?), but I’m not sure where art of pow-wow dancers falls. I mean this as a form of appreciation (part of why I’m using actual pow-wow photos as reference; I want it to be accurate to what regalia actually is), but IS IT? Seriously, I’m in awe of how much time and skill goes in to making a set of regalia. It is beautiful, and I’d like to make some cross stitching to reflect that, and maybe share that a bit with other people.
I feel like I’m expressing myself poorly which means this is way longer than it needs to be, but yeah. Good idea, or actually racist? PLS HALP.
New week, new nails. This is Essie’s Surrounded by Studs, and Colour Club’s Platinum Record. The silver is so shiny; I love it. But what are nail polish names even? As someone who’s colour blind, I really wish they’d use actual colour names.
I am kind of in love with this purple now. The gold accent didn’t quite work out as well as I had hoped, probably because I was using tape to make a line instead of something actually made for nails, and the gold is a cheaper polish (it has good pigmentation, but dries too quickly). This purple, though (China Glaze Ex-ta-sea, I think). It’s a great colour, and it levels out, so it’s really smooth. I’m usually pretty ‘meh’ about creme polishes, because there are so many other fancier polishes to try, but I enjoy this colour enough I’d probably even wear it on its own (although it also looks really good with this holo glitter top coat, so maybe not).
Seshat nail art in three easy steps. Done over three days, it probably took me around 3 hours total to do, drawing tiny leopard spots, and then drawing and redrawing tiny hieroglyphs. But I was doing my nails for a very special occasion.
I defended my thesis, and BECAME A DOCTOR!!!
I did spend a long time on my nails, but I spent way more time preparing for my defence. That was probably the most intense three hours of my life, and two days later, it still hasn’t really sunk in that I did it.
I chose the hieroglyphs to be encouraging, ‘speech’, ‘speak’, ‘words’, ‘truth’ and ‘Seshat’, who is the Goddess of scribes, libraries, and knowledge.
Tumblr likes to throw suggested posts on to my dash (especially on mobile), based on the tags I follow. Usually this is fine, giving me snippets of what’s happening in the tags.
There’s some irony in the fact that this algorithm has recently been giving me Christianity posts*, given I haven’t been a Christian for years, and recently started identifying as atheist. If I still believed in the supernatural, I guess this could be seen as a message from God. Unfortunately for Him, even if He does exist, I still wouldn’t worship Him.
*I follow the #blindness tag because visual impairment, but there ends up being a bunch of stuff not related, like metaphorical blindness things, and I’m pretty sure that’s where all the God posts are coming from.
Addendum: Tumblr mobile also keeps trying to tell me to become an Uber driver, even though I don’t have a car, and can’t drive. XD
My 4 year old nephew loves to paint his nails. Any time he sees someone wear nail polish he asks if he can have some too. The most difficult part is getting him to decide what color, because he he wants all of them.
Nail polish is for everyone.
Update!!
The kid’s favorite football player responded with support.
Lilac base with purple, dark purple, and black polish dabbed on. Multicoloured glitter polish top coat, iridescent glitter, and clear rhinestones. White freehand dots and crosses for stars. White, freehand constellation.
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!
Whitby Abbey by Yorkshire photographer Carl Milner. @carlmilner on Twitter
If the blindness tag could not be filled with ads for hookup/cam sites that would be just fucking magical
There’s also some irony in advertising visual porn in the BLINDNESS tag, of all places.
