Dust in the wind

I just reblog things I find interesting, without a common theme.

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding like an effete intellectual, I do actually think you should be allowed to just take college courses indefinitely

[yourunderwaterskies]

technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses." Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.

[aloeverawrites]

@yourunderwaterskies I wanted to say thank you so much for adding these links, seriously, they've been life-changingly helpful to me-

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

Humanity in War

Learn more about the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Program to train policy professionals, government officials, academics,

Kaya

Kaya is a free humanitarian learning platform which offers hundreds of training opportunities across a range of key topics, including the hu

[mcnostril]

It is a great tragedy that donuts are bad for your health.

It is equally tragic that Stop, Drop and Roll hasn't been invented yet in this setting.

[allshipsareok]

[zykamiliah-temporal]

i think we should bring this back (with some amendments ofc) if we ever needed an "internet etiquette" for the younger generations, now is the moment to remind them. purity culture kills fandom

as well as the three laws of fandom:

Don't Like, Don't Read (DL;DR), Your Kink is not My Kink And That's OK (YKINMKATO) and Ship and Let Ship

[sorcererofsolitude]

📣 Purity culture kills fandom! 📣

[atlinmerrick]

NO ONE LIVING hasn't been squicked out by something. There's over 7 billion of us, my delights and disgusts aren't universal. So I move on. Don't like the ship? Move on. Don't like____? Move on.

I am not an exception. Neither are you. I don't like it I move on and shut my gob about it because everyone everywhere is squicked out by something and they need to put the thing down and just…motor.

[rewordthis]

This but also:

Frames this entire post and hangs it over the fireplace.

[solarpunk-century]

saving what you have: visible mending

Visible mending is a way to fix clothes with holes in a decorative way. Instead of trying to make the mend invisible as possible, it can be fun and creative to hi light the tears and holes with stitching that adds to the garment. I think this method is super cool to repair clothes you may really want to keep but also make more beautiful.

There are many techniques to mending clothes and here are some popular techniques that will help you save your clothes and also reduce your consumption of fast-fashon!

darning

The embroidery technique used to repair holes in fabric by using running stitches and thread woven in-between those stitches to repair a hole. If you’re interested in employing this stitch, check out this awesome darning tutorial by Evelyn Wood!

sashiko

This type of traditional Japanese mending practice is used to reinforce the strength of fabric as well as decorate. It is a great solution for mending holes with patches and well to reinforce thinning fabric! For learning the basics of Sashiko there is a wonderful beginners tutorial by Benzie Design.

patches

Patches are very versatile when used for repairing clothes. You can sew it over a hole in your fabric or you can also so the patch in the inside to have it peek out. There is a great tutorial for custom DIY patches by wastelesscrafts and Creating with misp has a tutorial on mending with a peek-through patch. 

happy mending!

[weiwei-uplink]

[convexcave]

ok so instead of going on my usual the earth is doomed spiral I started looking into solar punk solutions and stumbled across the practice of permaculture & found a free 50 video series from the university of oregon on it if anyone else would like to learn abt ways we can actually start restoring earths whole deal

Permaculture Design Course - Oregon State University Ecampus

Permaculture Design Course - Oregon State University Ecampus

[anarchistmemedistro]

The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies of Ecological Revolution from Below : Peter Gelderloos : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : I

Are alternative energies and Green New Deals enough to deliver environmental justice? Peter Gelderloos argues that international governmenta

The Solutions are Already Here, Chapter One, A Wide-Angle View

Podcast Episode · Audible Anarchism · 11/01/2025 · 2h 14m

Agroecology - Wikipedia

[wispthicket]

Another cool resource with information on sustainable waste management and other environmental pursuits! https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline

[simkaye]

Mom says stfu or we’re not going to Dairy Queen

[veliseraptor]

that ‘pakige?’ post but me, a couple hours after posting a fic, like ‘comints?’

[kitten-kin]

[leahazel]

F5 F5 F5

[kitten-kin]

… F5 F5 F5 F5F5F5F5F5

[backfliips]

A lot of people on twitter wanted me to explain how I draw expressions, so here you go

Unless you're drawing explicit realism, in my opinion, expressions should be exaggerated to some degree. If you aren't doing a 1:1 recreation, the point is to get the FEELING across. Try making the expression you want to draw and feeling how your face pinches and stretches.

Skin doesn't just "disappear" when your face moves it around --- that's where wrinkles come from! Pay attention to where your skin creases when you emote, and use it to your benefit. It's a fine line between overdoing it and underdoing it -- find your own balance.

Ultimately, every expression has a little bit of push and pull, unless your face is completely neutral (and even then, there are still some wrinkles...). Learning to think of expressions as actions and reactions is VERY helpful in learning to draw them without needing a reference, and in learning how to stylize and push expressions based on references as well!

I think a lot of people end up with stiff or unexpressive emotions in their art because they're just trying to recreate a picture instead of understanding WHY and HOW the face is moving --- and it's a tough thing that takes a while to really pick up and learn. Hopefully is helpful in showing a way of thinking about it that can influence your process and approach to emotions!!!

Also, bonus: even without the lines, the planes alone still show a LOT of emotion.

[anyrava]

Another tutorial I‘ve made, about digital brushwork this time!

You can find more tutorials for a few bucks on my Ko-Fi Shop if you've found this helpful and would like to support me in making more resources like this🙏 ☀️🍃

Visit Anyrava's Shop!

I've opened a shop. Come take a look!

[mogwaipoet]

This game, about listing as many animals as you can, is shockingly well-considered and polished for such an apparent shitpost of a game idea

hot new brain workout

[bogleech]

I like that this seems to run on wikipedia and/or inaturalist as a database so yes, every single thing in kingdom Animalia counts at every taxonomic level. Every genus of sea sponge, every cambrian fossil, have fun!!!

[lixomania]

[meawsupport]

this is so late renaissance early mannerism. the controversial male nudity? the lighting and value on the figurenof emphasis?? him bathed in light and placed ABOVE while the police are clad in dark and BELOW?? Uh HES HITTING THE CONTRAPPOSTO??

[barbwritesstuff]

Contrapposto! Wow. I never knew there was a word for that one-leg-sexy-slouch thing classic statues do.

[the-big-mood]

Walter White in Mario Kart Wii

https://m.youtube.com/c/TheChiptuner

[transmascmarypoppins]

why is this post completely broken in every way imaginable

[cecilsrandomeverything]

Broken notes… deactivated account… removed image….

Finally, we have them all.

[spacefinch]

In addition: OP’s name is just… gone. No “[insert username]-deactivated[insert a bunch of numbers]” as is the standard for deactivated blogs.

Just the world “deactivated.” Look upon their post, ye mighty, and despair.

[chatblancofficial]

It’ll be almost impossible to find this post unless it wanders across your dash.

[huewrite]

It wandered across mine. I shall help it travel forward.

[highimpactemotions]

As will I.

[gaystation4]

[glowingghosty]

i don't say this very often so you can trust me when i say for the love of god please unmute

[foxofninetales]

Audio description: Very loud trilling purrring.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Very important kitty noises

[teaboot]

I think your cat is probably a dove

[petermorwood]

The cat is ringing, pick up!

[naamahdarling]

....PURRGLING!!!

[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

[roach-works]

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

[beatrice-otter]

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

[whetstonefires]

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

[beatrice-otter]

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

[maryellencarter]

I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:

Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?

I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.

Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.

(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)

[sunflowergardens-world]

Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.

[mysteryteacup]

This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.

[frangipani-wanderlust]

So the creator titled this "Caveman Cooking," but I have decided that it is Grug the Orc making Peanut Butter Squares. Link to original post.

Sound on. Trust me.

[supreme-leader-stoat]