Never in my life have I related more to a comments section

Oh heck.

Boomers don't get the grandkids the feel they deserve and cry about it in the NYT.

MASSACHEESETTS

Holy fucking shit of all the possibilities I did not see that one coming.

X

X

Damn

[Image description:

Cropped image of medieval-stylized printed text, focused on a line which reads: “This wenche thikke”

/end image description]

Thank you for adding this image description! Just wanted to clarify that it’s not stylised, but actual Middle English. The text is from The Canterbury Tales.

Okay, had to track it down. It’s from the Reeve’s Tale, and it’s a description of a 20yo young woman:

In modern English (had to look up “camuse”, so that’s as good as my source, but I know the rest)

The fact that Chaucer had “big butt” and “I will not lie” within two lines of each other is causing me disproportionate amusement. Also the fact that “this wenche thikke” works equally well in Middle English and in modern slang.

I'm crying, @massachusetts-official have you seen this??

Where's that tweet about people still living long fulfilling lives even through the fall of the roman empire because I think about it constantly

You can see someone else also using the devices' second seat, and I think that's so cool. Mobility devices help everyone, here other employees also get a chance to sit while they're working. I just love mobility aids, man. It's like the cut curb effect

hope is a skill

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

favourite additions

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.

A manatee rescue that I follow responded to a call about a female manatee with two calves because one of her babies had been injured by a boat strike. The entire family was temporarily relocated from the wild into a wildlife rehab facility for the injured male calf to undergo treatment. While there, vets noted the female calf was significantly larger than the little injured male. They did genetic testing and determined that big sister calf actually wasn’t related to the other two manatees at all! She was in fact an orphan calf that the adult manatee had found and taken in to care for right alongside her own little one.

Wild to think this manatee calf was literally adopted and nobody would have ever known if it weren’t for random coincidence and human curiosity. Every animal that you cross paths with in life has a fascinating personal story that you’ll only ever catch a glimpse of (if you’re lucky).

Family photo 💕

Absolutely losing it over Vetinari sounding like this as he shoves Moist into a new job title 😂

Capital

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

Op's tags

#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op

The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.

This post feels like watching an iceberg go by in clear water. The amount of stuff going on beneath the surface of AO3 just astonishes.

(ID in alt)

Approximately one THOUSAND felonies

Can’t leave stoat’s tags to wither in the notes

remember, these are the animals that still get hunted with weapons designed to make them stop coming toward you, more than they’re designed to actually kill them in one shot. General recommendations for load out include large caliber “backup guns” in case it gets too close after the first long gun shot doesn’t kill it.

Because boars are basically berserkers, and hurting them makes them want to hurt you back so bad that they would impale themselves on the spear you stabbed them with in order to reach you and murder you before they bleed out.

I once worked with a woman who went on a boar-hunting trip for her 40th birthday. her husband, carrying a large-caliber semi-automatic rifle because he’d done this before, drove one out of the tall Kansas prairie grass, but didn’t see where it went until he reached the clearing where his wife was standing, pointing her .357 magnum pistol at the beast as it charged her

she didn’t fire until she was certain of her shot (no time for a second shot when a creature that big is charging that fast and all you’re holding is a revolver)

her hubby only had time to shout and unsling his rifle before watching her fire directly into its brainpan from just 12 feet away. by the time it skidded angrily toward her, it was deceased - but barely, still biting at her feet

he never went hunting with her again

ovaries of iron on that woman

SHE KILLED IT WITH A WHAT?

I love this picture so much! Post it whenever I come across it.

Inner Mongolian Child

The little girl’s name is Butedmaa and she was just 5 when this picture was taken in 2003 by Han Chengli.

(I used to have a printout of this at my desk at work because I just loved looking at it so much.)

If nothing else, as a historian every time I get scared at the state of the world I have to remind myself that "uninteresting times" is a myth.

The world has always been in the throes of chaos and violence and fear, just in different ways and to different degrees. The anxieties of the past are no less real than our own, and we can learn from them. Normality and peace are fleeting, but we can always strive to increase those moments. We have to keep hoping and working for a better future. It's all we have. We may not succeed, but if we don't try, what are we living for?