I've been putting this off for long enough, so its probably time that I do this. Welcome to my blog, named siorshreabhadh-it was the only name I could find at the time. This blog is mainly focused on reblogging stuff that I find interesting, such as art, memes, and anything cool and fun.
(I will be adding a sideblog for writing and some art soon, but the image for it isn't ready yet.)
Natural Black Hair Tutorial!
Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because itās really not enough to tell someone simply, āBlack hair is really curly, draw it really curly.āĀ
The next part of Black Hair In Depth will feature styles and ideas for designing characters and I will release it around February. If you would like to see certain styles, please shoot me a message!
As someone that has grown up surrounded by beaches and done surf life saving, I know how the sea works. Lots of people dont. Every summer multiple tourists die here because they donāt respect the sea, if youāre going to the coast, hereās a thing I saw on Facebook.
Listen to lifeguards, swim and surf between the correct flags, respect the sea
As a person who grew up in Hawaii (since I was 4 years old), PLEASE BE CAREFUL THIS SUMMER! RIP TIDES/CURRENTS KILL! If you plan on swimming in the ocean or any very large body of water, search for the signs before getting in.
Show up at work like hi boss sorry I'm late my I was helping my mother track down one specific 90s dungeon crawler for the purposes of obtaining a muffin recipe the developer hid in the files
Tim Cain's Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins -- They're the shadow king's favorite!
1 and 2/3 cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup sugar
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup pumpkin (half of a 16 oz can)
1/2 cup (one stick) butter, melted
preheat oven to 350. grease muffin tins (one dozen regular size) or use baking cups. mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Break eggs into another bowl. add pumpkin and butter and whisk until blended. stir in chocolate chips. pour over dry ingredients and stir until just blended. do NOT overstir! scoop batter into tins and bake 20-25 minutes. after cooling, keep muffins wrapped in plastic to avoid drying.
thing I am proud of: when the doctor started going on a weird rant about long covid not being real I paused and listened to his nonsense for a bit and then very calmly said, in a polite and curious tone, "you don't believe in post-viral illness?" and he like. stammered a bunch and was like OH WELL I'M NOT SAYING -- I DON'T...I just think ..! and backpedaled awkwardly while I just sat there like :3c interesting :3c thank you so much for clarifying your stance on this :3c
an important skill for chronically ill people to develop is the ability to treat the doctor as though they are simply a person you are interviewing to find out how much they know about your condition.
Holy shit op this is LITERALLY in the book 'Never Split The Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depends On It'. Written by a guy who did hostage negotiation and then tried doing business negotiation, and mopped the floor with industry experts.
I'm fortunate enough to have a primary care doctor who knows about hEDS, but it's occurring to me that the skills in this book could be medically life changing for chronically ill folks of all kinds. Like. Literally a matter of life and death, especially for BIPOC and/or fat and/or young people who are having their issues dismissed.
I really love the old Minus comic where two people try to make a perfect wish for the reality-bending child to grant, and instead of granting the wish she gets bored with the legalese of a perfectly worded wish and does something completely different instead
I think this should absolutely be a rule for wish granters in more fictions. If you try to rules-lawyer a genie they should be able to screw you over anyways for being a nerd. āI thought of the best way to word this specific wish so I donāt get karmic recompenseā your perfectly worded wish bored her so sheās not going to even dignify it with a response. Sheās using the text of your wish to make paper doll chains
For anyone who has not read minus go read minus. It is charming and creative and some of those strips will fuck you up (positive). Also very short comics-wise, and complete.
reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you canāt not have servants in those times but many modern readers think ābut I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servantsā and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldnāt it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing youāll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc heās not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way
#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)
HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")
In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.
A good boss (liege lord) is:
Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.
Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.
Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.
Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.
Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).
Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"
Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.
Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.
Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.
Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.
Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.
Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.
The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.
TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"
(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)
I rest a forearm against the view panel, taking in the false projection of the starfield drifting past. I'm off duty, uniform unbuttoned and drink in my hand.
Hell of a day.
The door chimes.
"Come," I say.
A slight flicker in the lights as my first officer enters behind me, sensors not quite sure what to make of it.
I turn and give it my best attempt at a warm smile.
It isn't the strangest being I've ever served with, but it's definitely up there. A floating mass of shifting geometry encompassing a core that is metallic in one blink and glassy in the next. Long tendrils trail behind it, waving lazily as if in a breeze, though the air in my cabin is still. Violet eyes peer at me, the only part of it that seems to emote in any way I can comprehend.
"You wanted to see me, Captain?" it asks in a silky voice, an odd reverberation, a sort of pre-echo in its voice.
Polite, respectful, utterly competent. The very picture of the ideal first mate aboard a starship.
"Yes, come in," I say with a casual wave of my hand. "Would you like something to drink?"
I gesture to the open cabinet with my own glass, ice clinking in amber liquid.
"No, thank you, Captain," it replies. It seemsā¦ almost nervous. As if it has been expecting this conversation (and possibly dreading possible outcomesā¦ but maybe that's my imagination)
"Your performance today was exemplary," I tell it as I relax into my chair. "Your quick thinking and calm under pressure may very well have saved the ship."
Tendrils ripple.
"Captain, the crew-"
I wave a hand to cut it off.
"The crew performed up to a standard I have come to expect from them, but youā¦ spatial gradients would have sheared the ship apart without your navigational solution and technical expertise. If you hadn't been on the bridge, I'm certain the ship and the crew would now be lost. I have already written up a commendation that I will submit to the Union."
A pause.
"Thank you, Captain."
I take a drink, bitter rice whiskey burning past my lips and down my throat.
"How long have we served together?" I ask.
"Some time now," it replies.
I can't help but smile at thatā¦ as if this is some private joke.
"Indeed. And in all that time, you have proven cleverā¦ resourcefulā¦ an invaluable asset to this crew and this ship."
I pause to let out a breath.
"There is a matter I need your assistance withā¦ a matter requiring circumspection."
I lean forward and slide a datapad across the table.
"Tell me what you make of that."
Tendrils curl around the datapad and eyes narrow as it examines the metrics.
"Rates of consumption of shipboard consumables," it said, very matter of fact. "An anomalous increase appears to have occurred at 0953, approximately the time of our encounter with the spatial rift. Numbers suggest the crew has increased by one individual since the encounter. A stowaway, Captain?"
"Perhaps," I reply. "Or perhaps something else. I checked the logs and the manifest and nothing is amiss. Crew rosters and canteen access are all within normal. Whatever this isā¦ whoever this isā¦ they are clever and resourceful, apparently able to manipulate ship systems and crew memories to blend in and seamlessly integrate with the crew from what I've been able ascertain. There were a few, near insignificant discrepancies that led me to check tertiary systems, extenuating factors that it couldn't quite account for."
A beat.
The two of us regard each other warily across the room. Its eyes flick. Both of my hands are visible, unarmed, my demeanor relaxed.
"What do you intend to do, Captain?" it asks finally.
"Are you familiar with union regulation 39.5?"
A look of confusion as it searches its memory.
"Regulations regarding treatment of extra-spatial entities and manifestations. As I recall, there are provisions for intelligences seeking union association."
"Indeed," I reply. "If such an entityā¦ hypotheticallyā¦ were aboard this ship, it would be entitled to all rights and protections guaranteed by the Free Spacer Alliance."
"I see, Captain."
"You and I are the only ones who know about this," I explain. "I want you to look into it. Use whatever resources you deem necessary, but to be perfectly honest, I don't expect additional investigation will turn up anything."
"Understood, Captain."
It turns, taking the cue of dismissal.
"Oh, one more thing," I say as the door hisses open.
It turns and regards me expectantly.
"When we get in to port, remind me to rescind my request with the Union to fill the vacant position for first mate."
I started with succulents like everyone else but tbh orchids are rapidly becoming my plant blorbos. Everyone takes care of them wrong and it's not your FAULT because the care instructions that come with them are!! Incorrect!!! If you do what they say then your orchid will die!!!! If you give them the right environment they're SO easy. They're such easy plants to grow. They have been UNFAIRLY SLANDERED by a MISINFORMATION campaign. They don't deserve this.
I'm grabbing your shoulders and looking deeply and homoerotically into your eyes. Listen to me. Listen. It Is Not Your Fault. They sell orchids in these shitty little plastic pots and fill them with water and stick them in heavier ceramic pots without ANY drainage holes. And then the fucking care sheet tells you to water these TROPICAL PLANTS with ICE CUBES. Of course they're going to die.
Orchids are a special type of plant called an epiphyte. You know those little air plants that are all the rage now?
I'm talking these babies. You can do cool things with them like this:
And this:
(link to the Etsy shop btw. These look cool. Though honestly you can probably find some art miniatures and do this yourself without much effort)
They don't have roots, so you can do whatever you want with them. You can put them in a globe or put them on a statue or just leave them on a table, they don't care. They're super low maintenance and easy to keep alive. All you have to do is dunk them in water once a week.
That's an orchid. An orchid is an air plant. In the wild, they grow on trees. Their roots are designed to anchor them to trees, not to dig into the soil. They NEED air. The moment they get waterlogged, which they will in those shitty little pots that you buy them in, they're going to rot, and eventually the whole plant will die. They can't have ANY sitting water. None. They need pots with drainage holes that are elevated so air can reach them from the top and bottom. This is what I mean by elevated btw:
Put something at the bottom of the pot that creates an air gap between it and the surface. Make sure it has gaps so air can flow through. Put a plate at the bottom to catch water when you water your orchid, every 2 weeks or whenever you remember. I have solved all your orchid woes.
And don't water them with fucking ice cubes. I'm going to find whoever invented the ice cube advice and fight them with my fists. These are tropical plants. They don't know what ice is. They're not evolved to deal with below freezing temperatures. If you water them with ice cubes you're just going to give your orchid frostbite, and it will die. No ice cubes.
ALSO if your orchid is in a pot, make sure you use orchid bark, not soil, as its potting medium. Though, honestly, you don't even need a pot. Like:
Look at them, just chilling. THIS is how they grow in the wild:
I think that's a different species of orchid than the phalaenopsis orchid we grow in cultivation, but the point still stands. That ^ is their natural habitat.
You can see the roots are just hanging out in the open. This is why air is so important to them. Air is more important than water. I'm like ?? 90% sure orchids can absorb ambient water through the air, but I'm not 100% sure so don't quote me on that. I did forget to water my orchids for 2 months once and they were fine, so. š¤·āāļø As long as they have enough air flow, they're more like succulents in terms of care. You water when you remember to, and just forget about them the rest of the time.
All this is so good! Also, if you have a bathroom window, they LOVE the humidity in there. I grew a whole windowsill full for years and it was so easy!
I don't need the chatgpt random algorithm to write emails for me because I already have a custom and 100% flawless algorithm called "writing the exact same three emails with the names changed"
#1: "hi [landlord], hope you're doing well! [apartment thing] is [broken/a problem]. we need it [fixed/replaced/handled] by [date]. let us know when you'll send someone over so we can be here to let them in. thanks so much, [op]"
#2: "hi [professor], hope you're doing well! unfortunately, I'm [sick/stuck at work/dead] and won't be able to submit [assignment] by [due date]. could I please have an extension? if not, is there anything else I could do to make up this credit? thanks so much, [op]"
#3: "hi [customer service person], hope you're doing well! unfortunately, [product] [didn't arrive/is broken/wrong color/gave me a rash/poisoned my crops] and I'd like to receive a [refund/replacement]. here is the documentation of the order and photos of [broken thing/wrong thing/my rash/dead crops]. thanks so much, [op]"
Writing an email is so easy and I will tell you how it's done. This is the advice is for everyone with an email job, but you can apply it to normal human interaction.
The FIRST SENTENCE is the thing you want the recipient to do. Do not make them guess.
I want to let you know about ... (This email is to inform someone of something not to ask them to do anything)
Could you please do ... (This is a request. You want them to do something).
I'm looking into x and wondering if you can help me (this is also a request but for information instead of an action).
People do not want to read an email and even if they do read it, most people are skimming and not interested. Tell them what you want first, then provide context or other information (when you need a thing is often key). If the email is informational, you can even add "you don't need to do anything, this is just to keep you informed!" People will appreciate not having to figure out what you want from them.
If you can't articulate what you want the recipient to do with the message, you are not ready to email them. I read too many emails where I have no idea what the person wants from me.
Put the most important thing first and everyone will be impressed! AI cannot do this for you because it can't tell what's important! Only you know that, which is why you must write your own emails.
to everyone who wants help with emails: go through the notes of this post. there are ideas I've never thought of and plenty of scripts for all kinds of situations/jobs
Researchers focused on whether kids that are spanked are more likely to share or, conversely, more likely to have anxiety, years down the li
2021:
Spanking found to impact children's brain response, leading to lasting consequences.
2018:
The American Academy of Pediatrics says new evidence and research not only show that spanking affects a childās brain development and increa
2016:
Kids who are spanked tend to act out more and have more problems later on.
2012:
A study reviewed more than two decades of research on the effects of spanking and found nothing positive to report, only that physical punis
2010:
A multiyear study shows spanking kids makes them more aggressive later on
I havenāt pissed people off lately by reminding them that ALL types of physical punishment of kids has been proven beyond ANY reasonable doubt to have only negative long term outcomes.
So let me scream it from the hilltops:
Stop hitting kids. End of sentence.
If you think, ābut I was hit and I turned out just fineā let me pre-reply: NO YOU DID NOT. You think hitting a child is ok, how the fuck does that qualify as āfineā?????? From one abuse survivor to another: please start healing yourself.
The World Health Organization report I highly recommend because there are so many conclusions that are shocking and yet completely obvious.
For example, being exposed to corporal punishment as a kid makes it more likely for a person to commit domestic violence against a partner. In places where corporal punishment is normal, people are more likely to think that rape and intimate partner violence are normal. Kids who are spanked are more likely to be violent with and to bully other kids.
Spanking is literally teaching a kid that violence is okay and normal and it affects the whole society.
It also talks about how corporal punishment affects the brain in its development. It changes the structure of the brain and slows the development of mental abilities. Kids who get spanked have much stronger hormonal responses to stress.
We have Kea, KÄkÄ, KÄkÄpÅ, and KÄkÄriki (of which there are 3 species).
KÄkÄ are more olive brown than green but are really neat and beautiful birds and are growing in numbers thanks to conservation efforts.
Kea are mostly green with red underwings and b will pickpocket you, but then again so will weka. The bit about them stopping traffic is absolutely true - I have a friend who has witnessed this.
KÄkÄpÅ are, in the words of my ecology professor, āreally bad at being parrotsā. They suck, but endearingly so. They are so bad at being alive and climbing things and reproducing but you cannot help but love them. Again, they are green, but in a shambling moss pile sort of way.
KÄkÄriki are much smaller and are kept as pets internationally. The three kinds are the red crowned, the yellow crowned and the orange fronted. Of these, the latter is the rarest (currently critically endangered).
There are also several other species endemic to various outlying islands. We have, in total, nine surviving endemic parrot species and several subspecies of those.
If you see ANY of these at all, regardless of whether or not they pickpocket you, all of them are are very cool and very worthy of respect.
some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.
if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars
literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that.
Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?
there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life
this keeps getting shared around and ive seen some different tags responding differently so i just want to make some important clarifications and distillations
you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)
if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too
learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life
writers tend to put a lot of work into their stories. if you learn to read that work you'll (probably) appreciate the stories you love even more. And if not, then you'll have developed your taste. This too is worth doing
Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.
He said the exact same thing, which I did not know before that, so spreading this knowledge.
This Blooming Heart @thisbloomingheart - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
