but on the real though, here is your guide to assyrian rice preparation from your friendly neighborhood assyrian:

i really played myself with this post huh. every time it gets a note i start wanting rice.

for anyone who wants it, here is my family’s actual recipe for assyrian baked rice:

Put the rice in a pot and cover it in cold water and salt. Let it soak overnight. (If you don’t have the time to soak it, rinse the rice with cold water until it runs clear.)

Edit: The reason you want to soak basmati and other aromatic rice before cooking is to preserve more acetylpyrroline, the compound that gives aromatic rice its characteristic scent and flavor. Soaking rice allows the grains to absorb water, which reduces the cooking time, which means less time for the acetylpyrroline to cook off. It’ll still taste pretty good if you can’t do this, but you don’t want “pretty good”, you want mind-blowing, so for that perfect flavor you’ll want to soak your rice overnight. The soaking process also washes away the layer of starch on the outside of the rice, which allows the grains to separate rather than sticking together; this is why you want to rinse your rice thoroughly if you don’t have time to soak it.

Preheat your oven to 325°.

Boil three quarts of water in a separate pot. Once it’s at a fast boil, drain the rice and add it to the water. Boil for 5-7min or until one grain tastes half-cooked, but not soft. Pour the rice into a colander and rinse with cold water.

Edit: This step also helps get rid of any remaining starch on your grains, for perfectly separated rice. If your colander or strainer has large holes, you can put a paper towel/cheesecloth/clean dishcloth on the inside in order to drain your rice. Pour carefully if you’re using a paper towel, though, and put a bowl underneath your colander; I once lost a heartbreaking amount of rice when my paper towel got oversaturated and tore open.

Liberally grease the bottom of your baking pan with some of your butter. Pour the rice on top. Melt the rest of the butter in the microwave and pour on top of the rice.

Bake for 45min. (If you like, cover the rice for part or all of the baking time, but I find it gets less crispy on top if you do this.) Shake the pan a couple times during baking to ensure that the butter distributes throughout the entire dish.

Eat.

Serves four. Can easily be scaled up if needed (or down, but why would you do that?). Best enjoyed with a nice cup of chai.

(cc @raisedbyhyenas )

reblog for the awesome recipe and to make op want rice (rice is so good. ofc you want rice)

>:(

A pretty gnarly thing is they got the jaw of St. Anthony of Padua as a relic, and the reliquary goes hard af.

So I had this idea and I drew it as fast as I could

This here is what I'm talking about...

Bro why do you keep insisting we try to disarm this genderbending trap? We literally mapped out this whole dungeon floor we can just walk around it...

Whoa watch it bud! If I hadn't caught you you would have fallen straight into that pit of tentacles! Good thing I stopped you when I did, huh?

Oh man if I was just a few minutes late that vampire baroness would have hypnotized you and made you her thrall, good thing you can always count on me, ey? Cmon let's get going, the next round's on you

Id like to propose we invent a paper document u can have where it states that youve had a prescription for so many years, that u can just have it. Walk into any pharmacy. 200 miles from home. Nobody has ever heard of you. Show paper. Get prescription. For free. A prescription diploma. You put in so many years on this prescription, you graduate from having to ask for it. Life could be so perfect.

so funny in dragon age inquisition where everyone was like "hoooly fuck. can solas shut up. can he stop talking about spirits and the fade for 5 fucking secondsss." is like if you had a coworker who texted you nonstop like "broooo I love surfing i love the sea 💦🏝⛵🌊 haha water and shit yo. man let's hit some waves let's cowabunga let's swim with the fishiessss haha hmu" and then you find out he's poseidon

A brief moment of rationality from the bird place.

"Being alive is as special an occasion as it gets."

Stick the STICKERS. TO PLACES. DAMNIT

Oh that sticker comment CAME for me.

Use the notebooks you buy, don't just stack em!

Sometimes even the villains have standards

i read the cutest reddit thread today where this 19 yo boy was “babysitting” his 15 yo little sister while his parents were away on vacation and she got this horrific period and needed to be taken to the ER.

and this sweet 19 yo boy was doing all he could to take care of her, giving her meds and water and then packing stuff up to go to the hospital once reddit was like “yeah if she’s soaking two tampons in an hour you should go” - but being only a little older than a child himself, he didn’t know what to pack, so he brought like three things, and one of them was SUNSCREEN.

lmao everyone on reddit was like “you’re a really good brother but sunscreen?? for the hospital??” lmao they are roasting him. also op’s sister changed his name in her phone to “spf” and their dad calls him “bananaboat” now. this guy is never living this down

(also his sister is ok and it turns out their family has some kind of genetic blood disorder)

link to the thread on r/BestofRedditorUpdates

the brother kind of reminds me of that post that’s been going around abt that abandoned five-week-old kitten that was taking care of a few two-week-old kittens that were somehow with him and he was just trying his best but he was so small

I decided to read the whole thing, and I want to post something from later in the thread. This is the OP talking a week later, after his sister was diagnosed with the blood disorder: "Anyway we’re all about to be real familiar with hematology and my mom is pissed she’s been told some women just bleed more her whole life lol. Guess my mom and sister weren’t just exaggerating when they would say they were bleeding out. So yeah ig if you’re a girl reading this and you bleed as much as my sister you should see a doctor. Hopefully no one gets gaslit like my mom did but yeah. Here’s a public apology for being ignorant on what yall actually go through bc I thought you could only bleed so much a month 💀 fully willing to admit how fucking stupid that was lol." And later that day:

Good luck to you and your family. And I'm glad that your mom's medical issues have finally been validated. That's huge!

I want to point out the absolute bullshit across multiple generations here. He wasn't given appropriate sex ed, and that's not even something where you can say "blame the parents" because apparently his mother was silenced for thirty fucking years!! His reaction to the initial emergency wasn't A+ material, but I'll give him a solid B+ for supporting his sister, seeking assistance (he ended up on r/AskDocs while trying to find answers online and mistook it for something like Ask-A-Nurse), and that his response when commenters were like "wow my brother would never, they'd be so grossed out" was "it's just blood." Extra credit to bump him to an A- because once they were at the hospital he advocated for his sister and he was a young man who had no experience with medical emergencies, especially not ones that would require him to swim upstream against a tide of institutional misogyny ("some women just bleed more..." OP's mom, where is your doctor, I just wanna talk). Anyway. Point being. OP, his sister, and his mother all have a genetic disorder that in severe cases can be lethal and nobody knew because for thirty fucking years his mother was told "some women just bleed more" when she begged for help. Misogyny kills, and it does not discriminate between the sinners and the saints.

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

If you have the time and flexibility, you can also try out libreoffice.

Just did this on November 14th, 2024, so this is very current!

We need to bring back the term “benevolent sexism” into widespread use for real. It’s a major mechanism in how bioessentialist Girlboss Radfems can be turned into bioessentialist conservative Tradwives.

I’m not actually interested in the bad faith radfem readings of this post where I get called an incel pervert (????). But I will be donating a lot of money to trans organizations and blocking all the radfems in the notes, because I don’t think it’s worth speaking to people whose position is that their politics are incorruptible and anyone who critiques them is wrong (and having incel fantasies???? What???)

I do want to talk about how there’s a lot of radical feminists in the notes acting like men doing small nice things for women like opening doors is what benevolent sexism is. It’s not, and I don’t want anyone who’s new to the term getting confused.

“Benevolent sexism” refers to sexism that masks itself as complimentary and beneficial to women. That might include holding open doors, but that’s a tiny and useless example. The bigger part is putting women on a pedestal as kind, innocent, safe, pure, etc, often in contrast to the roughness and violence of men. That used to be a major argument against women voting and engaging in politics, that they needed to be protected from something so rough, dirty, and corrupt. That’s where the similarities to radical feminism comes in.

Let me expand on my original thought:

Gender/sex essentialist radical feminists/TERFs and traditional sexism conservatives share many of the same basic beliefs about the world. Men are inherently rough, violent, and sexually aggressive where women are kinder, gentler, and inherently safer to be around. That’s benevolent sexism. Traditional sexists turn this into a belief that women must be protected by men from the world, so women must have husbands to shelter them from the world (ie control them). There’s also strands of outright misogyny that come with traditional sexism, but this post is long enough. Radfems turn this into a belief of separatism from men, which is interesting because many sexist and misogynistic societies do practice many kinds of separation between men and women.

Any radfem who’s insecure or unsure in her beliefs, who’s attracted to men, or who thinks she knows a good man is vulnerable to traditional sexist beliefs because she’s already accepted the same base premise. She just needs to change her mind about rejecting men entirely (which can be a struggle when you’re attracted to men or have men close to you in your life) to the idea that she can pick a Good Man(tm) to protect her. A person who jumps out of one set of radical beliefs can easily overcorrect in the other direction, as well. This is what sets up radfems who do become tradfems.

It’s a lot easier for benevolent sexism to slip into queer and feminist spaces in general, which is part of why it’s important to talk about it. The traditional sexist role for women is posed as subservient to that of men, but it’s still often posed as good, honorable, necessary, etc. If you’re willing to accept anything that paints women in a positive light into your feminist spaces, then it becomes easy to let benevolent sexism slip in.

The fundamental belief of feminism about women should be the women are human beings, people, not that women are inherently good. Any type of feminism that rejects that (as transphobic and separatist strands tend to) becomes vulnerable to benevolent sexism.

Bringing back this post in the context of 52% of white women who voted doing so for Trump. Benevolent sexism, the promises and pedestals patriarchy offers as its bait, is definitely a part of some of that.

In my area, I only heard "benevolent sexism" as "if you are a special kind of woman, you'll be able to to join the lower ranks of men, who are required to trample upon other men and women. E.g. upper-middle class women trampling on the poor men and women and the minorities.", so your part is absolutely going to be my new usage of the term! Thank you.

Good to know! I first ran into it while learning about the suffrage movement and the paternalistic framing of keeping women from voting as protecting their “goodness” by keeping them away from dirty politics, so it’s interesting to hear about other contexts.

I do think that benevolent sexism tends to come into the Madonna-Whore complex where there are good, wonderful, perfect, pure women and then tainted, fallen women, so it certainly can enable certain women to become enforcers of sexism and other -isms from their pedestal of being seen as Pure, Angelic creatures. But to get pedestal treatment, they still do have to be middle class, white, cishet, etc, and perform feminine gender roles that put them as subservient to men.

This also goes for things like 'divine femininity' and 'women are mystical creatures that need herbs based on their menstruation and not western medicine' etc etc.

Yes medicine has large gaps regarding qualitative treatment of bodily systems generally associated with women. No that doesn't make women ~mystical aliens~ that need completely different things than regular humans (men).

Sometimes the rats in my brain come together and start yelling “YEARNING” and in trying to appease them I ask “FOR WHAT” but they are too small so all they can say is “YEARNING” which is a very big word for such a tiny creature, even collectively

I loved this visual so much I had to doodle it.

ratratratratrat

how it feels to be online these days

When the American government set out to erase indigenous culture, one woman set out to save tribal music, traveling far and wide with her cylinder phonograph, trousers, and bow tie. This is her story.

How are disabled and interracial illegal???

Interracial marriage was outlawed for the longest time, and disabled people lose government benefits when they get married so they cannot have reassurance that they will continue to LIVE if they get married.

Story time: my mom is white, dad is black. They’ve been together twenty four years, married for twenty three. When my parents were dating they did it on the low TO KEEP MY DAD SAFE.

My mom’s parents said “We don’t care who you love.” At that point she’d only ever brought home white guys. She brought my dad home-her mother called her a nigger lover and damned the relationship as much as possible. Her father grew around his prejudices after I was born but never apologized, just wasn’t a blatant fuck.

The day she introduced my father to her family was the last time she spoke to her mother for over twenty years. When I was getting sick and she called and asked her mother and grandmother if anyone in the family had anything strange happen similar what I was going through they told her “it’s because you married a black man. You made your bed, you lie in it.”

Cops pulled them over all the time and asked my mom IF SHE WAS OKAY AND IF SHE NEEDED HELP BECAUSE MY FATHER-A BLACK MAN-WAS DRIVING A 100 POUND WHITE WOMAN AROUND. HE WAS HARRASSED AND THREATED WITH ARREST.

My father ended up getting into a fight in self defence because some entitled hick decided he didn’t like seeing a black man and white woman in the bar together. Thankfully other patrons helped my father but he still couldn’t go to the er for his injuries. My mom patched him up and they were terrified the cops would take him away.

THEIR BEST FRIEND GOT LICENSED TO MARRY THEM SO THEY COULD ACTUALLY TIE THE KNOT BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WOULD AND CITED JIM CROW ERA LAW AS TO WHY.

When shopping with just me my father wouldn’t hold my hand if there was a group around. Why? I’m far lighter than him and people had stopped and asked him “whose child is that?” Or “little girl where’s your parents?” and were stunned when I grinned and pointed at my dad and proudly proclaimed “my daddy’s right here.” You know where else mixed kids couldn’t hold their parents hands? Apartheid South Africa. We live in fucking FLORIDA.

So yeah. Some history for you.

This post was made in October 2018. The above poster’s parents met in 1994. We were a generation removed from the Civil Rights movement and this was happening.

I’m Disabled.

Before applying for the federal program SSDI, we married. This was to prevent losing the life-saving insurance I needed. At that point, I was still on my parents’ insurance, but would soon age out of being able to use it.

After we married, I applied for SSDI, which takes about two years. Everyone is denied by default, so I was prepared with an SSDI lawyer (they only take the case if they know they can win, and their payment is a very small portion of your backpay; my lawyer was paid just 15% of my backpay)backpack. When the rejection letter arrived, I immediately went to her for help.

I inquired about the state program SSI. She told me I didn’t qualify because I’m married. I applied anyway, because I ad nothing to lose. Here’s what the person at the SSI office told me I would have to do before I could apply:

If I was approved, I would have to continue following these rules with a few additions.

This is enforced poverty. It’s also the onky way may of those Disabled would be able to receive the medical care that keeps them alive, like Medicaid. My seizure medication used to cost nearly $2k/month. My neurologist gave me free samples of it every month and helped me apply for free medication through the manufacturer’s financial aid program (you should too if you can’t afford your medication). I was receiving medical care through the hospital’s financial aid program when I married and lost my parents’ insurance coverage.

I refused to do as SSI demanded. My SSDI lawyer was, in fact, relieved when I told her I’m married. Why? Because marrying afterwards would have caused serious and life-threatening complications. She encourages everyone who applies for SSDI to marry if it’s possible a ble for them to do so. Because of her, I was approved for other programs, things I didn’t even know existed, but for two years, it was Hell-on-Earth. I couldn’t work because it would count against me. At that time, rent was $650, but my husband was making federal minimum wage, worked full time, and his employer kept changing his schedule, which made it impossible to apply for a second job.

I know many who are on SSI and need it in order to remain alive. One of my friends nearly fell out if the program because a nosy neighbor saw her and her boyfriend cuddling in her couch watching a movie. They assumed he was secretly living with her. Said neighbor was frequently seen just outside my friend’s windows, watching her. When she met my lawyer after getting the automatic SSDI rejection, she married, got into the programs I had been in, and filed a restraining order against her neighbor because my lawyer absolutely insisted on it. The bitch violated the terms three times and was put in prison for six months. She’s now on SSDI, married, and much happier.

Marriage equality does not exist until the Disabled can marry without losing everything.