I love that second step, the step directly after 'piecing between meals', is 'patent medicines and soothing syrups', aka by far the most moral-panicky thing on this list from a modern perspective (especially given the shit they were putting in otc medicines back then).
Like yeah, over-indulgent mothers, it might start off with your son innocently snacking between means and *checks notes* recreationally taking medicinal drugs, but you don't nip that shit in the bud and before you know it he'll be on the pork chops and ginger ale!
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
It's Spiders Georg! I've translated it into Angkorian Khmer, the language of Cambodia from 802-1351 AD. Because I like doing stuff like that ;)
You read the black consonants first, then the blue consonants, than the purple vowels. If there's no written vowel, use an 'a'. Magenta is punctuation - a dingbat marking the start, periods, and then a stronger period that tells you the paragraph/section is finished.
Here's what it says!
The original:
reallyreallytrying
Jan 8, 2013
“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Transliterated into Latin characters:
1935¹ śaka, ekādaśi roc mārggaśira, 'aṅgāravāra, nu rilirilitroyiṅ kathā: Neḥh ’ālakṣaṇa kathā: ’nak cya pīṅ pi pratisaṃvatsara, toy vyat vakra saṃkhyā.
’Nak cya pīṅ śūnya pratisaṃvatsara.
Nau ru Jaṃrau Pīṅ, ’nau guhā cya daśasahasra pratidina, ga te krau daṃnuk ta caṅvāt ti mān ban dāṃ ta kāñ.
More detail under the cut!
How it’s spelled:
1-9-20-10-5 ś-k e-kā-d-śi ro-c|mā-ʳgg-śi-r
ʔ-ṅgā-r-vā-r nu ri-li-ri-li-tro-yi-ṅ|k-tʰā neḥ-
h|ʔā-l-kṣ-ṇ k-tʰā ʔn-kˣ cy pi-ṅ|pi pr-ti-sṃ-
v-ts-r to-yˣ vy-t|v-kr sṃ-kʰyā . ʔn-kˣ cy
pi-ṅ|śū-ny pr-ti-sṃ-v-ts-r . nau ru jṃ-rau pi-
ṅˣ ʔnau gu-hā cy d-ś-s-h-sr pr-ti-di-
n g te krau dṃ-nu-k|t c-ṅvā-t|ti mā-n|b-n|dāṃ
t kā-ñ .
1935th Śaka year, 11 day of the waning moon of the month Mārggaśira, Tuesday. On this day, Reallyreallytrying said:
This, the instruction which says “People eat 3 spiders yearly” is really because of a calculation mistake.
People eat zero spiders every year.
Of Spiders Georg - who lives in a cave and eats 10,000 daily - he is outside the boundaries of the set and should not have been counted.
¹ The Angkorian Khmer used a different calendar than we do, called the Śaka Saṃvat, or Shaka Era. It starts in year 78 of the Christian Era, so 2013 AD lines up with 1935 Śaka.
² The Khmer has a large number of Sanskrit/Pali words, similar to how English has a lot of Latin/French. These loans are marked with a degree symbol ( ° ). I decided to use very formal language here, so there's a lot of loans.
³ ‘pīṅ’ is a Modern Khmer word (or at least a component of several modern names) for spiders. My Angkorian dictionaries didn’t have a term, and this one has cognates in several related languages, so I decided it was my best bet.
⁴ I'm not certain that zero could be used in this way at the time. They were definitely using 0 in large numbers, but actually treating it LIKE a number is usually a later development.
⁵ Translations in brackets mean that the word has no direct translation. The best I can do is say the function they serve in the sentence.
⁶ I think I'm funny.
⁷ Angkorian Khmer doesn't have a word for 'and' - you can just put things side by side. I've chosen to move the 'e' in 'ge ta' so that it reads 'ga te' to replicated the original misspelling.
And here are some (undescribed) old guides to reading Angkorian Khmer. They're written in a slightly different style - especially visible in the 'ñ' - but might still help if you're interested!
kastrakomnenes
this may be one of the most interesting posts I've ever seen. What got you into Angkorian Khmer specifically?
Thank you!
I'm interested in cultural history and I love the First Millenium AD/Early Medieval period. I got really into Heian Japanese fashion, and then was looking at other cultures that existed around the world during the same period. Sometimes it was the fashion that grabbed me. Sometimes the architecture. And sometimes it was the script or language. Angkor has all three!
I find the script (characters used to write) to be gorgeous, and the grammar is similar enough to English that I can wrap my head around it. (Very little inflection!) I am endlessly fascinated by how people take scripts that do NOT work for their language, and smash them with hammers until they do - the way the Irish use Latin to communicate consonantal sounds, how English uses it to communicate vowel sounds, how Angkorian Khmer uses Braḥmi to communicate consonant clusters, etc.
There's a large enough surviving corpus (enough things with writing on them), and enough of it's online (even if the scan quality can be unbelievably bad) that I can really sink my teeth into it. There are enough grammars from India during the same period that we've got a good understanding of how Sanskrit/Pali works, and studying the differences between Indian and Khmer Sanskrit/Pali is really, really neat! Plus, Angkorian Khmer works COMPLETELY differently, so seeing how they incorporated all the Sanskrit loanwords into non-Sanskrit texts is even MORE interesting!
But mostly, I love the curves. I love how the characters stack. I love how the 'e' diacritic comes before the main letter and I always forget to leave space for it and then want to have a tantrum. I love that the last black character on that text I wrote becomes a spiral later on in history. Becomes half as wide, loses all those weird bits that look like diacritics but aren't, and just becomes a spiral.
Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!
Transcript below the cut.
Page 1:
There are currently THREE FEDERAL BOOK BAN BILLS aiming to ban all TRANS BOOKS from U.S. public schools! HR 2616, HR 8705, HR 7661
June 2026 / Maia Kobabe (a trans author, for three years in a row the most challenged author in the U.S.)
Page 2:
HR 2616 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools if they “teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology,” as defined by an Executive Order signed by Trump in Jan 2025. It would also cut funding from schools unless they require “parental consent before changing a minor's gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form.” HR 2616 HAS ALREADY PASSED IN THE HOUSE! Please call your Senators to say NO ON HR 2616!
Page 3:
HR 8705 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which teach “discriminatory equity ideology or gender ideology,” as defined by two Executive Orders aimed at suppressing “critical race theory” and trans representation. This bill is named after the late far-right activist Charlie Kirk, “The Charlie Act.” HR 8705 has passed out of committee, but has not yet been introduced in the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 8705!
Page 4:
HR 7661 threatens to cut federal funding from public schools which offer material deemed “sexually oriented," treating any LGBTQIA+ identity as sexual content. It specifically forbids “gender dysphoria or transgenderism,” and “lascivious dancing” (drag). This bill, titled “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” has 22 co-sponsors and has passed out of committee but has not yet been introduced to the House. Please call your House Reps to say NO ON HR 7661!
Page 5:
CALL SCRIPTS
“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Senator] to vote no on HR 2616. I oppose HR 2616 because it would restrict student’s access to books and it would specifically harm trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and protect queer students!”
“My name is [name] and I’m calling from [city, state, zip code]. I’m asking [Rep] to vote no on HR 8705 and HR 7661. I oppose these bills because they would restrict student’s access to books and accurate history, and would especially harm BIPOC, trans, nonbinary, and intersex students. Please stand against book bans and support public education funding!”
Page 6:
Author Maia Kobabe: If HR 2616, HR 8705, or HR 7661 pass, it would be almost impossible for any public school in the U.S. to offer or teach my books, unless they’re willing to risk their federal funding. Students would be even less likely to learn about trans stories or accurate U.S. history.
Page 7:
Please call your representatives: VOTE NO on the FEDERAL BOOK BANNING BILLS HR 2616, HR 8705, and HR 7661!
Follow AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS on insta & bluesky for updates on these bills!
insta / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books / print store / bluesky
Maia always makes these actions clear and accessible and I so appreciate eir work.
If you don't know who your Senators or Representatives are, you can use Ballotpedia's Who Represents Me tool! (Note: there's a field for you to input your email address on their page, but it's not necessary to get your results. They just need a mailing address to confirm who your reps are.)
Once you've got names, you can look up and save your Reps' phone numbers in your phone. I find this makes it easier when I'm wavering about feeling brave enough to place a call. Just pressing a button instead of going and looking up the phone number all over again makes it just a liiiiittle easier, and sometimes that makes the difference between calling and not calling!
I appreciate that the infographics here are marked with a date! (6/10/26), because posts like these circulate for a long time, and I think it's helpful if exact dates are given so that people know what the status of the bill is at the time this was posted or reblogged, and whether it is at a point where the recommended action is still useful or not. It's also good to let folks know where they can easily check on the status of bills like this. (These links also have the full text of the bills available for reading, if that is your thing.)
For example:
HR 2616 (Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act) unfortunately passed the House on 5/20/26 (as mentioned in the infographic). It was received by the Senate on 5/21: "Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions".
8 Democrats joined the Republicans in voting to pass this bill in the House. Had they not, the bill would still have passed (D206 to R209). But it's still worth it, if you are one of their constituents, to give them hell about it and tell them how strongly you do not want to see them vote for the other bills mentioned here (info from govtrack.us):
Cleo Fields (LA-6), Laura Gillen (NY-4), Donald Davis (NC-1), Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34), Eugene Vindman (VA-7), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-3).
At this time, there is no info that I can find that says exactly when the next steps in the Senate will take place.
Here are the Members of the committee on HELP (oh my god...). If your senator is on there, you might want to concentrate on contacting them at this time. It's possible this bill could be killed in committee.
Here is the bill's page on Govtrack.us.
Here is the bill's page on BillTrack50.com.
Here is the bill's page on Policy Engage (trackbill.com).
Onward:
HR 7661 (Stop the Sexualization of Children Act) was introduced in the House on 2/24/26, and referred to the Committee on Education and Workforce.
As of 3/17/26, a committee consideration and mark-up session was held, and the bill was "ordered to be reported (amended)".
No further actions on the bill are shown on the various tracker sites at this time.
Here is a page listing the members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce. (lmao: all the Republican members get their photo listed with their name; and then the Democrats are just a list at the bottom, without photos.). There are 20 Republicans on the committee, and 16 Democrats.
Given the way the voting on HR 2616 went, it's useful to contact your Democratic reps if they are on the committee, as well as your GOP reps.
Here is the bill's page on Govtrack.us
Here is the bill's page on BillTrack50.com
Here is the bill's page on Policy Engage (trackbill.com)
Finally:
HR 8705 (CHARLIE Act) was introduced in the House on 5/07/26, and referred to the Committee on Education and Workforce.
As of 5/21/26, a committee consideration and mark-up session was held, and the bill was "ordered to be reported (amended)".
No further actions on the bill are shown on the various tracker sites at this time.
Please see above for a link to the House Committee on Education and Workforce, showing its members. They are the ones to contact about it at this time.
Here's the bill's page on GovTrack.us
Here's the bill's page on BillTrack50.com
Here's the bill's page on Policy Engage (trackbill.com)
July 2026- Senators have just introduced a SENATE VERSION OF HR 7661, also called the "Stop the Sexualization of Children Act" with nearly identical text. Please add a NO ON S 4925 to your calls to senators about these book ban bills. You can see the full text of the bill here.
A short comic about Sauron's motivation for a character ask. I guess this is more of an AU thing, though it doesn't directly contradict the canon, as far as I know.
Also, I finally emerged from the depths of burnout!
The sketch for this comic was made back in December, but for half a year I had literally no energy to finish it. I'm really glad I finally managed to!
I often think about what a goddamn feat, what an astonishing creative trial it would be to film Nona the Ninth as a live-action, purely thinking about actors. Because like,
on one hand, you've got two actors who up until now have played Harrow (and a bit of Gideon) and G1deon (with a liiittle bit of Pyrrha) now playing Pyrrha and Nona. It's wildly different characters, wildly different mannerisms and speaking styles, with a completely opposite dynamic. That in itself would be amazing to watch two good actors pull off.
But then
You've got Camilla's body now housing Camilla and Palamedes.
Can you imagine the tape recorder scene?
Nona presses play and starts listening, then the visual cuts to a shot of Camilla, sat down recorder in hand, halfway through her line before pressing pause and rewind, then she closes her eyes for a half second and when she opens them it's Palamedes, with Palamedes's body language, pressing play and hearing the line again, reacting with a whole different set of expressions.
The whole conversation, delivered through a single shot that slowly zooms in, then out, on that one actor. Camilla almost giving a small, dry half-smile as she deadpans “You thought it was your agenda? Huh”, Palamedes hearing it play back and taking a moment because his eyes are getting teary, then “I cannot bear the thought of losing you”, Camilla then bringing a hand to her own cheek because it's wet? Then “Love and freedom can't coexist, Warden” and Camilla giving herself a hug so Palamedes can wake into it.
After the conversation is done, looking strained, Camilla immediately takes a tissue to her nostril—when she takes it away, here's some blood on it.
Do you see my vision. I think a scene like that, well-executed, would take out most of us.
Ofc you'd also have that actor playing Paul, who would keep some mannerisms but integrate them into a new, confident body language, and also Palamedes being played briefly (and up to one of the most emotional scenes) by the actor for Naberius, who would mostly have been playing Ianthe, and then the actor for Ianthe shows up at the end—and, unless we're doing a double casting, she might have been playing Crown until then.
With the tape recorder scene though, while I DEFINITELY see the vision and would love that too, I think my personal ideal way to do it would be. A single unmoving unbroken shot of Nona sitting in the room. Probably from behind so we're not really getting her reactions or distracted by her face, and fairly zoomed out, so she feels Small, in a room that isn't terribly big but made bigger by its emptiness.
And just let the recording play. No movement. No zoom changes. Just the actor's voice, slightly distorted by the recorder, swapping between affects, and the only other sound the occasional clack between lines.
It would be a really moving and totally valid adaptation choice to let us be more of a part of that moment, but I think there's something so powerful too about only seeing it from outside yet having it momentarily become the whole world. I'd want to try to capture the same feeling I get from the only narration being "Clack. Pause."
All that said, while I do think animation or a video game would be overall better for adaptation mediums, the one thing I WOULD be SO excited for in a live action one would definitely be all the actors who'd have to swap between these roles. Stuff like that is always SUCH a delight...
We report: it is early evening, and the sun’s journey through the atmosphere is getting longer and longer. The heat has made us feel sleepy, and we are finding it difficult to care about anything but the movements of the clouds. We are here for hours, in this specific moment.
Yes I know you mistrust the banks, milord, and I don't blame you, but their Vault Wizards are specially trained to prevent dragons from detecting large amounts of gold. I cannot emphasize enough that it's a full-time job employing multiple specialists, I'm not trying to be humble here but it's not something that just the court magician and I can set up a couple wards for on the weekends and call it good.
It's, it's just that dragons are the primordial embodiment of avarice wrought into fire and flesh. They are truly, supernaturally good at finding large amounts of valuables, that's why the big mines hire those Dragon Scouts to go sniff out their lairs and mark them on the maps as potential mining ventures. You know, in case someone slays the relevant dragon. Which doesn't happen often because, milord, they are simply not that easily slain.
No I know you've hired many knights, blooded warriors and true. Yes, I was there when you gave the ten most impressive ones their special sashes. Very grand, very high honors, of course. Ehm. It's just, none of them have ever actually faced a dragon. Yes no I know Sir Edbert says he did but Sir Edbert is rather notoriously prone to exaggerated and tragically unverifiable tales---
Well no milord of course I would not doubt the word of a sworn knight. Perhaps his sobriety, but not his word, as such.
The point is that the grand treasury, while surely grand and a very special notion, is just... it is mayhaps not the ideal way of handling the realm's finances? Perhaps a series of smaller vaults, capped well below the dangerous wealth threshold at which gold is known to whet the appetite of colossal winged harbingers of death, in different corners of the realms or...?
No, I, yes well I do realize that will impede anyone's interests in coming into the vault to hurl around the gold coins and go "whee, I'm so rich!" I am aware of its deficiencies as a plan in that regard. No, I see I've misjudged a few things.
Actually, thinking on it, milord, I truly believe what you need is a fresh set of skilled wizards on this job. The court magician and I, we cannot keep up with your visionary thinking. We're too old-fashioned. But the wizards revolutionizing the eldritch academies seem to be more on this sort of level. I hear they've made some truly remarkable choices in terms of outsourcing all of their spellwork to the Ever-Whispering Void, such that it takes mere minutes for them to set up an entire defensive array. That's just the sort of innovative thinking you require.
Though it will grieve the court magician and I to leave your service, perhaps this is a sign that retirement is overdue. So I'll just... be moving further away from the big pile of gold... in the opulent, dome-shaped building with the crystal skylight... best wishes.
it does suck that the government defunded PBS but it's also so fucking funny that now that they don't take uncle sam's slavery dollars they're running videos like "How america's foundation was built on genocide"
PBS Origins my beloved! for the unfamiliar, channel link here. they've been pointing out how fucked up USA history is for a while, but not quite that overtly.
PBS Origins is the home of history shows from PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to dive into inclusive, intersectional history content that hel
link to the specific video from the screenshot above here:
it's part of their series "A People's History of Native America," playlist link here.
Hosted by comedian and actor Tai Leclaire, A People's History of Native America is a series that explores the current social climate in Nati
and while I'm here I'll plug some other channels because PBS does solid work. also, iirc they are (...were? I'm not actually sure what applies to them now that they've been defunded) legally required to include captions and they actually do that, so you won't run into auto-generated nonsense.
I haven't checked out PBS Documentaries yet, but they have some stuff tackling similar topics. (I am adding things to my watchlist as we speak.) channel link here.
Welcome to the PBS Documentaries channel—presented by PBS Digital Studios and Independent Television Service (ITVS), dedicated to documentin
PBS Terra doesn't pull punches on climate change. channel link here.
PBS Terra is the home of science and nature shows from PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to explore the frontiers of science and tech, our mind
PBS Eons has some super cool videos on the history of life on Earth, channel here, and Storied does awesome work on linguistics and mythology, channel here.
Join hosts Kallie Moore, Michelle Barboza-Ramirez, Gabriel Santos, and Blake de Pastino as they take you on a journey through the history of
Storied is the home for arts and humanities shows from PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to explore art, culture, mythology and much more!
The
aaand while we're talking about defunded USA public media that doesn't pull punches when critiquing our history and government, I am once again going to plug a couple NPR podcasts. Throughline does deep-dives on history, culture, laws, and so on (link here); I'm especially partial to their We the People miniseries, which covers our rights from the Amendments. Code Switch covers culture, focusing on race and minority groups, and has been doing some especially good coverage on what the Trump administration's fuckery means on a practical level (link here). (these aren't the only NPR podcasts that talk about this stuff, but they're the big ones afaik.)
Throughline is a time machine. Each episode, we travel beyond the headlines to answer the question, "How did we get here?" We use sound and
What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tac
