Are you trapped on tumblr right now?

Is there something you planned to do before you got trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Are you yelling at yourself to get up and do the thing, but you can’t, because you’re trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Consider this your save point.

Put tumblr down, stand up, stretch, and go do the thing you planned to do. Future you will be incredibly grateful.

Things people in the notes have been able to do thanks to this post:

I need y’all to know that you’re doing amazing, and I’m so glad that I was able to help you break out of a procrastination loop you did not want to be stuck in.

Helpful post I’ve added to my queue in case it helps someone else at the random point when it’s posted.

I love seeing this on my dash. It honestly helps me so much. I log off when I see it if I’m scrolling in bed (after queuing or scheduling it for my future self) and it’s made me not so compulsive about Seeing Everything.

“How it started vs how it’s going”

(via)

I'm already seeing advice from people in the US to purchase queer books and other banned or "controversial" books on paper as a way to combat the wave of government censorship that is coming. While this is a good idea (it is! absolutely!), it's not accessible to everyone, and truly, we're not going to be able to consumerism our way out of this one.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

The books are still available. Borrowing them from your library and returning them on time and in good condition will help keep them that way.

I think it's funny that in French the word for "unicorn" is "licorne" because:

Before any anglophones get on the French people's case on this, consider for a second what y'all did when you reanalyzed the Spanish "el lagarto" ("the lizard") as "alligator."

Reanalysis is fun.

Oh yeah, everybody does this*. Another English example is "apron", which was once "napron" until we reanalyzed the initial N as part of the indefinite article (a napron -> an apron).

A fun one in Arabic is the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Quite understandably, Arabic speakers heard the initial "Al" and thought "ah yes, the ubiquitous definite article" and Alexandria became al-’Iskandariyya.

In the opposite direction, Spanish adopted hundreds of Arabic words during the Middle Ages due to Andalusian/Islamic influence, and there are very few Spanish words that start with al- that aren't of Arabic origin (and in fact, many words that start with A without being followed by an L, as in about half of cases in Arabic the L in "al-" is elided).

Reanalysis occurs in many other places besides article-noun combos, of course, but it's an extremely common case.

*citation needed, but reanalysis is extremely common

Oh, this actually explains something I'd just attributed to a quirk of sequence constraints or something; why Alexander is realized as Iskander/Iskandar in Arabic! It makes sense to analyze it as al-Iskander in Arabic!

Same thing happened with the word alchemy! Started out as the Arab term "al-kimiya", and when it was transported to Europe, it became "alchemy". This is actually really interesting, because as the term evolved more, it became "chemistry", effectively un-reanalyzing the word!

Oh actually there's another layer of fun there: the Arabic "al-kimiya" is actually a loan of the Ancient Greek χῠμείᾱ (khumeíā), which was used to refer to the art of alloying metals. Arabic borrowed a lot of Greek terminology owing to Arabic translations of Greek classics (many of which were actually lost in Europe until they were retranslated from Arabic). So, yeah, the Greek khumeíā made a round trip through Arabic, then into medieval Latin as "alchemia," and from there we eventually do get chemistry!

Not quite the same thing, but this reminded me of one of the funniest phenomena in the German language.

So, you may or may not know that x-rays were discovered by a guy called Röntgen (or Roentgen, though the ö is the proper spelling). Because of that, they're called "Röntgen rays" in German. Now, the thing is that in the German, the infinitive of a verb is always formed with an -en at the, so, for example, "to run" is "rennen" or "to sleep" is "schlafen." And because of that, it just so happened that the verb for performing x-rays became... "röntgen."

ich röntge, du röntgst, er/sie/es röntgt, wir röntgen, ihr röntgt, sie röntgen

In the X-rayed lab, straight röntgin it

I love reanalysis, so very much.

Swahili has a series of prefixes which indicate noun class, agreement, various things. Basically, every noun gets a prefix, and there are many different sets; each class has a dedicated singular and plural form.

One of the many classes is ki-/vi-: kitanda (bed) vs. vitanda (beds), kiti (chair) vs. viti (chairs), etc.

Swahili has a number of loanwords from Arabic. One of these is the word for book - in Arabic, that's kitāb ﻛِﺘَﺎﺏ .

...which Swahili naturally looked at and said, "Oh, excellent, it's a ki/vi noun!" Thus the Swahili word kitabu (book), and its plural form, vitabu.

One interesting example I came across recently is in Kagayanen, a language spoken in the Phillipines. It has a ma- prefix that can derive an adjective from a word that wasn't one to begin with (asin "salt" -> masin "salty"), or alter the meaning of an existing adjective (lised "difficult" -> malised "sorrowful") The spanish adjective maligno "malicious" was borrowed into Kagayanen as maligna "defiled/disgusting", then the ma at the start of the word was reanalysed as being the adjectival ma- prefix, and the word ligna "filthy/evil thing" was born. Source: pg138

Noah

WHAT THE FUCK.

Even if I was high off my ass I wouldn't do that??? What the shit??

Wait but it's good raw,,,

It's like yummy 😋

I am GOING to make raw mac and cheese tomorrow and chew it because W H A T the fuck are you on about???

one time i got home from school and no one was home and i was majorly not with it

anyway, i went to the freezer and promptly bit into a frozen chicken nugget and it was Not Good™️

(uncooked pasta is pretty dang good, and that's coming from someone who's violently italian)

Following the author of The Last Unicorn on Facebook is the only thing that makes being on that site worthwhile.

(source)

lindt is being sued in a class action in the united states because they are one of MANY brands of chocolate that tested high for heavy metals. and this is despite lindt claiming their chocolate is "expertly crafted with the finest ingredients". no recall was issued after the tests came out. lead and cadmium can fuck the body over BAD.

lindt's genius defense is that they are going to stop saying the whole thing about being expertly crafted with the finest ingredients, so nobody can complain about the heavy metals in their chocolate anymore! and that makes it okay. source: trust me bro

(now please drop the lawsuit thanks)

consumer reports test results of a bunch of different chocolate brands <- original report being referenced

even more chocolate brands that were tested for heavy metals

imagine this. you advertise yourself as "the coolest dude around". your whole persona is being "cool" and "chill". and then one day, you burn someone's house down on purpose. they inevitably sue the shit out of you. and your defense is that you will stop calling yourself "cool" or "chill" so nobody can reasonably expect that you will not set things on fire, because fire is hot, which is the opposite of cool and chill. and therefore everything is fine now and nobody can be mad at you anymore.

that is lindt's defense here.

I love my job, but reblogging employment jelly for someone else I love.

what if clone armor designs are a clone language and cody's dick arrow and slutty little thigh stripe is really him saying he's dtf

No one takes the Batch seriously with their bikini armor

Yeah, like why does Crosshair have that extra patch right over the groin as if it doesn't immediately draw the eye there.

Slut.

Is maybe Cody called Cody because he uses so much of the armour paint code (trooper version of hankie code)?

Kama are super sexy anyway but does the overlap at the back vs the crack gap have a significance to fellow troopers?

Crisscross crotch frame or codazzler? I think we know much less than we think we know about what they convey in their choices 😜

The guy in the middle with the stringie thingy, that's his codazzler 😁

I must be honest I keep expecting some painfully earnest dudebro to pop onto my sillier posts to correct me about it having a normal technical term. To reprimand me for trivialising the cordwanglesprangle that's essential for preventing disastrous holster oscillation or some such. Rendering it into a sexual frippery is demeaning to all troopers blah blah blah.

To me it will always be the codazzler 😁

So in Minnesota there’s this cultural taboo about taking the last piece. If there’s a group and everyone orders pizza, typically one slice will not be eaten. At the office if someone brings donuts, the last donut will be left alone. Possibly cut in half. Then that half cut in half, but always leaving at least a little on the plate. The reason is it’s considered impolite because someone else might want it. To take the last piece is a desperate thing to do. There’s even an expression: “I wasn’t raised by wolves.” Anyway, here’s the best local facebook post going around right now. 

I saw this and thought to myself, thats so strange because thats a thing here in sweden as well, how two different places so far apart can have the same taboo.. and then I remembered something from history class

Humans are wild, huh?

Yeah this is why we talk this way. 

That explains so much about midwesterners

It is November of 1893. You have just killed a vampire. Exhausted and worn, you close your eyes and rest.

You wake up. It is May of 1893. You are on a train en route to Transylvania. Your diary says you have had queer dreams lately.

You try to believe it.

(An old woman puts a rosary in your hands. You accept it without question.)

You are a guest in a castle you have never been in before (you recognize every hallway and know without trying that every door is locked). Your host is a man you have never met before (you killed him you killed him you killed him he had turned to dust and there was blood on the snow).

One morning you cut yourself while shaving.

There is nobody behind you in the pocket mirror’s reflection.

You turn fast, and the razor is like a Kukri knife in your hand.

"neurodivergent" means disabled. it means disabled in some way involving cognition/emotion/sociability/mental abilities. it is a call to solidarity between the person with adhd, the autistic person, the depressed person, the dyslexic person, the schizophrenic person, the ocd haver, the intellectually disabled person, the person with dementia, the epileptic person, the stroke survivor, anyone who has a mental disability. it's a call to each of us to be more than ourselves, to be in solidarity against the ableism that affects all of us.

it isn't a quirky fashion statement. it has always been about disability

To the people in the OTW Tumblr Inbox asking about how the OTW is responding to the American Election.

This is a separate post (and not a response to a specific message) because we all need to see it.

Folks have been asking Support (through the form) as well as the other social media mods, and we have now been given the following to tell you.

<3 Mod Remi

but not like you do i fear

werewolf transformation sequence but it's magical girl transformation sequence. i'm not going to "is this anything" you, this is obviously everything.

this is now a masterpost thing

absolutely brilliant still image originally posted here by @sueanoi (found that i sent this to friends almost two years ago, obviously i had subliminally remembered it)

animation by @polybbius

animation by @saracastically (thanks to people in the notes)

related (if not mid-transformation) still image originally posted here by @aj-lethal

i posted this to reddit before, where, in addition to excellent discourse on the topic, commenters gave me these examples from actual anime:

the inumimi from tokyo mew mew

a similar vibe with an even more surprising species from super pig

some more people who have posted about this same basic idea:

this post from @momolady

this post from @barbaricjester

this post from @llilobnuy

this post from @crypt1dglyph5

to all of you: so true bestie

this post is now perhaps the most authoritative set of links about the idea of mashing up a werewolf transformation sequence and a magical girl transformation sequence anywhere on the internet

what they don't tell you is that a well-written fic can get you to ship anything, and i mean ANYTHING. notp? not anymore. you will stay up late thinking about and crying over them for the rest of your life. characters you don't even know from a piece of media you've never engaged with? fuck it, they belong to you now. problematic ship that you loved to hate and now just love to love, that you must never tell your friends about? don't worry, ao3 knows how to keep a secret. like. a well-written fic will have you acting UP and that's a fact baby !!