procrastinating

one of the coolest things about smocking is the use of a print as a preexisting grid or pattern

polka dots become flowers, gingham becomes an isometric grid, stripes become whatever you want

i actually read a blog post where a lady tried smocking for the first time in forever & said “i dug out some old spotty fabric because i’m too lazy to draw all those dots”

upon reflection, most characters in Lord of the Rings seem to just… chronically overestimate how powerful Gandalf is. 

Frodo’s response to hearing someone managed to capture him is bare disbelief. Legolas thinks he can burn snow. Sam thinks there’s a real chance Gandalf could turn him into a frog with his brain.

They all think Gandalf can do basically anything. how much weird shit do you think the fellowship asked him to do. i think a lot.

upon further reflection how much weird shit has Gandalf threatened to do knowing full well that the person he’s threatening has no idea he’s bullshitting

Gandalf: Pippin if you don’t shut up im going to turn you into a grasshopper

Pippin: *whispering* can he do that

Frodo:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Gandalf: Meriadoc Brandybuck if you don’t stop that i will turn you into a frog

Merry: bring it

Gandalf: what

Merry: go on and turn me into a frog, see if I care

Gandalf: so help me i will do it

Merry: BRING IT

Gandalf: ….

Merry: tUrN mE iNtO a FrOg

Gandalf: ………

Gandalf: *walks away*

Merry: HA I KNEW IT

Banging on the walls chanting "OPEN ENROLLMENT FOR ACA THRU JAN 15" like some deranged town crier. Election results aside, you have options to access healthcare as a RIGHT through the ACA. NO one can dismantle the Affordable Care Act in less than 4 years, so SIGN UP! GET YOUR CARE! USE THE SYSTEM!

You have options RIGHT NOW that will be stable thru the next year, the one after that, and I'd be shocked to see them shrink even the year after that. That means RIGHT NOW you can get signed up for next year to gain 100% covered preventative care (your annual check ups, pap smears, dental cleaning, vision check). You have the option to get checked and screened as you need, do NOT be dissuaded from exploring ACA choices. They are SOLID, LEGISLATED, and WORK BEST WHEN PEOPLE USE THEM.

I can't change most things around me, BUT I CAN tell everyone I know that THEY CAN GET LIFE SAVING CARE. THEY CAN GET PRESCRIPTIONS. THEY CAN GET PREGNANCY CARE. THEY CAN GET CANCER CARE. AND THEY WILL GET THAT CARE!!!!!!

SIGN UP BY DECEMBER 15, 2024 FOR COVERAGE TO BEGIN ON JANUARY 1, 2025. ENROLLMENT AFTER 12/15/24 WILL HAVE COVERAGE BEGINNING FEBRUARY 1, 2025.

My fellow Americans

Take advantage of what our civil servants have built for you and spread the word.

she was dead silent on the drive home, but that was okay. sometimes, after band practice, she was just out of words. it was a short drive to her house. the only part where it actually felt weird was after i pulled up her parent’s driveway. 

after that, the silence stretched so far it smeared and left a weird residue. she kept looking at the car door like she wanted to leave, so i looked at the door too, then she looked at me, and i looked at her, and my first thought was that she was going to tell me that the door was stuck. i was used to that car always doing some damn thing. it was the car me and all my siblings had learned to drive in, and it was really beat to hell. there were dents all over the body, which we’d unsuccessfully tried fixing up with spackle. it had looked nice for maybe a week, but then the sun wrecked it - the spackle cracked up like the mud on the bottom of a dry riverbed and turned a sort of off yellow-white that made the car looked like it had been molded out of chicken shit. it also had a bullet hole it through the cabin that whistled like a toothless old man whenever the car went above 40, so loud it could drown out the radio, and a cabin that smelled so strongly of bugspray that even the arizona summer we drove everywhere we could with the windows down.

(if you have kids one day, you will maybe, possibly, begin to understand how much i loved that car.)

anyway, i was thinking about what else could possibly be wrong with the chickenshitmobile, and she just kept looking at me, and then i wondered if there was something on my face, and she just kept looking at me, and then the penny dropped and i realized she was trying to work up the nerve to break up with me. 

“google is free” actually now that you can’t turn off ai answers google is 5.6 billion gallons of water.

Not to be a bitch but the idea that AI is uniquely environmentally destructive is simply false. Honestly it's naive at best and willfully ignorant at worst. Google used billions of gallons of water before AI came along, and it'll continue to after AI has been left behind.

I'm sure AI has increased these water costs, but that's only because any new technology is going to increase water costs. AI isn't the root cause here; it's merely another component in a system that does nothing to encourage tech companies to find solutions to high resource usage.

It's good to be critical of huge companies like Google. It's good to be cognizant of the wasteful use of resources that goes into technology. But when we give in to blind hatred of a specific technology like AI and make it out to be the source behind these things, we lay a smokescreen for the corporate greed and broken systems that are really to blame.

If you're angry about the water use of AI, you should channel that anger towards learning and caring about the wider environmental issues at play.

But don't just blindly hate AI because it's the current boogeyman. There are deeper things at play.

i tried to but all the ones i asked told me they already had names

Started a new vest project this week ! Test swatch + bottom section ⛪🌿

Happy to report that the vest is vesting chaps

Helloooo

as a child I wondered why adults were so stupid (doing things out of habit/routine/heuristics rather than reasoning explicitly about what to do based on their goals) and the answer is that adults are unimaginably fucking tired all the time

tags via @gallusrostromegalus

My friend teaches high school history and allowed his students to do their chapter summaries on their chosen biographies as originally created memes. He said that he had never had kids read so carefully to find the most obscure detail from chapters to make their memes. [pro-tip, for younger middle school/elementary school students, make a folder of popular meme templates, to avoid uncomfortable internet searches}

This reminds me of my class watching the 90s film and when it got to this scene some guy in my class shouted out ‘hoe don’t do it’ and then 5 seconds later -sigh- ‘he did it’.

Shakespeare would have loved this 😔

#honestly i think having students submit one meme per scene/chapter of a reading would get them wayyy more engaged#bc you’re looking to find smth funny in the text#which means youre looking for surprise you’re looking for inconsistency youre looking for contrast#youre doing a critical reading! (via @asthedeathoflight)

I just had to collect all of these responses together in one place

Edit: And one from my friend, who doesn't have a tumblr (yet)

#i keep waiting for someone to address the '18th century looms were huge' claim#like sure some were#but the fact that textile mills had been invented doesn't mean that all home weaving ceased#indeed people still weave for fun or profit in this the 21st century#smaller looms were still being built and used in the 18th century just as smaller looms are still being built and used today#and that's without considering the existence of inkle/tape/band looms which were/are used for making narrower woven ribbons for trimming etc#small 18th century looms absolutely exist

there are thousands of notes and a few people ABSOLUTELY addressed this xD

I wanna add mine! But it still has some assembling to do before I can move on to the next step

Just want to share with you all (because I didn't know this and most people I've mentioned it to didn't know about it either) that if you're in the US and you have health insurance the back of your insurance card will usually have a phone number on it for a 24/7 nurse advice hotline. Really useful for when you can't quite tell if you're experiencing a medical emergency or not. Again maybe I was just under a rock but I'm 25 years old and I just learned about this last night so. My psa. Ok that's all love you bye

It has come to my attention that I did in fact know about this. But if you like me forgot I don't think it hurts for me to remind you. I hope this helps a fellow hypochondriac out

My father is a huge Beatles fan.

I sent this picture to him. Didn't hear from him for a bit.

My mother calls. "He's been dying of laughter for twenty minutes, what did you send him?"

the existence of Mr for men, Mrs / Ms for women and Mx for nonbinary implies the existence of at least 23 other genders: Ma, Mb, Mc, Md, Me, Mf, Mg, Mh, Mi, Mj, Mk, Ml, Mm, Mn, Mo, Mp, Mq, Mt, Mu, Mv, Mw, My, Mz

however, I think "Ma" can also be feminine (Ma Jenny is just short for Mother Jenny), and "Mq" is for a noble title (Marquess, like the Mq de Sade), and Mc is for Scots from Scotland and food from McDonald's. And My is just a possessive pronoun. So those probably aren't their own genders in the way that Mh clearly is.

So, we can conclude that roughly 22 total genders exist, but we can't be certain. For example, Mf clearly stands for Motherfucker, but that doesn't prove anything, since an estimated 16% of people would identify with and use the title Motherfucker. In addition, Mm can be a French title for Madame or Mademoiselle, but it is unclear whether this means Mm is just another female/feminine title or whether a French is a kind of gender. I will keep you all posted

So many people do not understand the relationship between climate change and cold weather.

If you see this post it is important to send it to someone else so they too can understand

People hardly ever change their minds in front of you...the conversation becomes one of a series of slow drips that builds up to a realization

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)