One year ago today!

Happy two years

THREE YEARS BABY

Happy fourth anniversary

I love the dynamic in the Discworld fandom on this site, I think it's mainly because there are a lot of dormant fans, if you will, who've read and loved the books for years but haven't engaged much recently, who sort of reappear whenever a fun post is doing the rounds. It's fantastic. We get the cozy small fandom vibe without the screaming matches, but also get the popular posts from time to time, y'know?

YEP. In fact for some people it’s Emotions Day right now.

To everyone tagging and commenting with some variation of “Oh, I almost forgot that it’s tomorrow!”

That’s so very meta of you.

IT'S EMOTIONS DAY TOMORROW

I found this camera on the subway and look what was inside...

I would marry this man

guys we broke another post because this one’s not showing any notes

When I liked it, it flashed “0 notes”

It’s showing -1 notes

The Dothan Eagle, Alabama, April 30, 1923

*clock chimes*

me, removing shirt and looking at pals: it’s sex o'clock

Nearly a century later and it’s the same shenanigans.

I’ve scheduled this to reblog on April 30 2023 so it can be 100 years officially.

what is this from

the titanic

I FUCKING FORGOT I QUEUED THIS

For all who celebrate man’s hubris!

This meme population has persisted in the pre-internet ecosystem since 44 BC, but for over a millennium the meme remained at very low population levels. Introduction to the theater habitats of England in approximately 1599 by an early meme ecologist (also notable for the introduction of such memes as Damned Spot and To Be Or Not To Be) caused a population boom that has led to the continued stable population of Ides of March despite the extinction or near extinction of the Ides of other months and all known Nones and Kalends.

The Ides Of March, like many other calendar memes such as April 25th (The Perfect Date), Thursday The 20th, and It's October 3rd, has a life cycle that can confuse amateur memeologists. These memes benefit greatly from the presence of scheduled posts in the ecosystem, appearing absent until their highly specific time, when the memes all bloom simultaneously and dominate the dashes of many users.

240217 | Xiao Zhan Studio Weibo

Demeter, goddess of fertility and the harvest, taken from the temple site of Eleusis

I went down a 2-hour long rabbit hole trying to find this picture - as I've read countless theses/articles on archaeological finds at Eleusis, have been to Eleusis and its museum, and have never seen this relief before. Of course I could be mistaken, but every result for this image is either not sourced (one Italian Facebook post sourced it coming from the "web", thanks for nothing), or sourced very vaguely and contradictory. Some say it's from a museum in Rome, one mentioned le Louvre, and some mentioned Eleusis - without a source, a date of how old it is, where it's located right now, where it was found, etc.

(One said it was "above a temple door at Eleusis." Which one?? There's none standing. And most reliefs and statues left at Eleusis are broken, none intact - yet this one looks brand-new, untouched by weather, age, or violence).

I finally found the closest image - an exclusive restaurant/club in San Francisco has it over their door.

The fourth picture in this article shows it:

Edwin Boger, valet parker, waits for arrivals at the entrance to Villa Taverna in San Francisco, Calif. on Tuesday, September 8, 2009.Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

I genuinely have not been able to find it anywhere else - I've looked through museum catalogues, articles, neowebsites but this is the only result. It even has the same weathering on the sides, same coloring - everything.

The fact that peer-reviewed articles and university websites showed this image with a vague description is worrying. In an age of copyright issues and AI stealing work, sourcing your images is just as important as any other literary sources, because now this echo-chamber has sourced a modern American relief of Demeter as being ancient.

No hate at the OP whatsoever, I just couldn't let this image go. If somehow I missed something (which is very possible), please let me know if this is a copy of an original, genuine ancient relief and where that one might be.

You know the Grimm version of Snow White makes more sense than most versions if only because in that version Snow White was like 7 years old.

Like imagine you find a 7 year old in the woods and she’s like my mom is gonna kill me because I’m prettier than her and she’s not kidding. You know this queen is that sort of person. So you and your roommates adopt the kid and tell her don’t talk to strangers. And she keeps talking to strangers and getting poison combs stuck in her hair and whatnot.

Like yeah that’s kinda stupid but also she’s seven. She likes apples.

Also imagine it from the hunter’s perspective. The queen tells you this bitch is prettier than me I need you to take her out in the woods and kill her. And then you see who you’re supposed to kill and it’s a 2nd grader. Like how are you supposed to react to that sort of situation? Kill a human child? No. Because you’re not a brainless evil minion you’re just some guy dealing with a cartoonishly evil monarch. Of course you let her go.

Bad look for the Prince of course. Even if she did age while she was in that glass case. He saw a dead woman and just decided to keep her. And once she stopped being dead he was like we’re married now

He did cause the evil queen to dance to death in red hot shoes though. That was kinda cool.

With the acknowledgement that I'm grasping at straws, is it ever directly confirmed that the Prince wasn't also 7?

See, I think that still works.

You are the guardsman assigned to protect the eight-year-old Prince. You are currently in the middle of the forest because he absolutely had his heart set on "going hunting", and the royal second-grader should definitely not be traipsing around the woods on his own. You let him go a little on ahead and he comes running back talking about how there's a dead girl in the clearing and there's no-one else around and he wants to take her home because she's really pretty, Hans, and she's all alone!

You let him drag you to said clearing and okay, that is one angelic-looking dead child alright, and on the one hand the quality of her clothes and the craftsmanship on the coffin (who builds a see-through coffin?) speak to potential Consequences if you simply carry her off, but also for the amount of vines that have grown on the coffin she looks extraordinarily un-decayed, so you should probably get the court alchemist's opinion on that, and there's no way he's going to come all the way out here in his embroidered velvet curly-shoes. And also this kid is technically assigned by God as your natural superior, or something.

So fine. You hoist the coffin onto your shoulder (it's not like the Prince can do it. He's eight.) and head back toward the castle, Prince chattering blithely all the way. And then you turn your ankle on a rock and suddenly there's a thump and a cough and a lot of shouting from inside the coffin and you have now become a key player in a tense political incident with the next kingdom over.

You should probably ask for a raise.

We are in favor of just about any fairy tale ending with "you should probably ask for a raise."

sometimes I remember that there was a trend for bronies to try and make My Little Pony tulpas and lots of people got super into it, like asking for advice on mysticism forums and making meditation blogs where they recorded the process of visualizing their astral pony companion in excruciating detail

like, a startlingly large number seemed absolutely 100% serious about trying to manifest a My Little Pony tulpa

i sort of cannot believe this happened, like this is some certified Unknown Armies shit. bronies dedicate themselves to creating self-actualized, sentient MLP thoughtforms. holy shit. 

I wonder what happened to the people who were really serious about it. did anyone actually create a permanent unicorn dream-friend. how many people did it and then got over MLP and moved on and forgot about it. should we be worried about an army of resentful, abandoned pony tulpas galloping around the higher planes of reality. how many of these people tried to fuck their tulpa.

what i’m saying here is that modern fantasy literature needs to step it up because the actual real world is way, way more fucking weird than any secret-occult-underground story i have ever read in my entire life

I think about this all the time OP

ive mentioned this before but i was lurking on /mlp/ during the pony tulpa peak and i saw a thread where one nerd was like “help my rainbow dash tulpa is depressed and jealous and is telling me to kill my family! anyone else having this problem too?” it was wild

Equimancy

An Adept School for Unknown Armies Second Edition

You have built a horse in your head, and learned to feed it power.

Leningrad Region, commuter train 1993

Me every time I start a palace drama: can a bitch get a flowchart and some name tags

Look at the delicious sushi for llamas I made today:

It's courgette stuffed with deworming paste and thanks to Poldine my plan went swimmingly. Pampelune is sometimes distrustful on deworming day, but when they saw Poldine get a treat then try to steal the other treats which were obviously meant for them, the other animals hurried to claim their own medicinal courgette as well.

Except Pampe. (How many times have I written these words.) She looked at her sushi, looked at me, sniffed every side of the courgette, decided it smelled like deceit, and walked away.

I felt daft for not going the muesli route straight away. Like all great tricksters Pampérigouste is suspicious by nature but she can't resist muesli. So I un-stuffed the courgette and used the sticky deworming paste to fashion a little muesli ball.

It was gooey and not very appetising but it's muesli, right? I camouflaged the muesli ball in a dish of innocent muesli and offered it to Pampe, but unfortunately she was now very aware that I was up to something. Instead of mindlessly vacuuming the contents of the muesli dish as she usually does, she examined the strange slimy little ball, pushed it away with her nose with obvious contempt, then ate the normal muesli. I tried (with increasing insistence and frustration) to convince her to eat the damn muesli ball, but no.

New idea: I went to the kitchen to get some pumpkin rinds, and squished the muesli ball between two small pieces of pumpkin skin like a Choco BN (if you're from the US, picture an orange worm-killing Oreo). Pampe likes pumpkin skin! I tried to explain to her that she would be punishing only herself if she refused the (admittedly deceitful) offering out of principle.

Somehow she managed to eat the outside 'biscuits' and spit out the stuffing.

At this point I had to shame her. (I told her to look ashamed for this photo; not sure she understood the assignment)

I had exhausted my creativity and had nothing left but the mean method. I got Pampe in llama jail, aka the school room where I spent many hours trying to teach her to wear a halter and be a good docile llama when she was little, while she spent many hours trying to escape by any conceivable means—high jumps, bribery, tunnels, you name it.

(In the background behind Poldine you can see the bag of hay that I used to get the llamas to follow me into the corral. Pampe naively thought I had given up on trying to make her eat gross slimy things and was about to give her a normal meal)

She tried a strange kind of escape this time around, which honestly might have worked if she were a swift salmon returning to her natal river to spawn, slicing against the current in a series of graceful, forward-arching curves. But she's a llama. It's like she forgot she wasn't all neck and also had a body that needed to clear this obstacle.

I sang her a little song to soothe her, and scritched her face, and managed to get a llama kiss which is more affection than I've ever received from a currently-jailed Pampe—her daughter really is a good influence on her!

So of course I took advantage of this moment of calm and trust to stick my hidden secret syringe in the corner of her mouth and push 2cm of deworming paste onto her tongue.

She was VEXED and WROTH.

We were talking about learning poetry by heart the other day; well, if Pampérigouste did that, "I am rowing (a hex poem)" is the poem she would have invoked in that moment.

After I left, all the other animals hurried into the corral to eat the hay I had used to get Pampe in, while Pampe turned her back on the meal and walked away a strategic distance, far enough to show me that she felt betrayed and would never eat any food I bring her ever again, not so far that she couldn't go back in and fight the donkey for what was left of the hay as soon as I stopped looking.

I was dying when we first met. I mean, I looked well enough, just got out of rehab and all that. Thought that I knew everything, but I didn’t. I didn’t realize how much work I would have to put in and how much time it would take. But most of all, I didn’t realize that things could get better. And that I could actually be… Yes, I was dying. And no one could see it but you. You saved my life, Joan. We’re partners. No, we’re much better than that. We’re two people that love each other. We always have been.

Today I found out that yarners think crocheting socks is subversive and controversial and I just…on one hand, why the fuck not, I guess yarners are allowed to have their controversies, but on the other, how much time do you have in your FUCKIN DAY??

My main concern is how they would feel but Maggie u know yarn fandom gotta think about something while knitting five miles of stockingnette for a sweater

Look, you can’t just leave it at that, why is it subversive and controversial? *gets popcorn*

I mean, I’m taking this on good faith, and I’m not saying this is my own personal belief.  I believe in all crafts. 

But…the structure of the stitches and the resulting fabric is pretty different between crochet and knitting.  You get different effects between them, which lends themselves to different crafts.  And none of the effects of (most) crochet stitches lend themselves naturally to socks.  You’re (usually) going to end up with something either stiff and bulky, or full of holes that will Not Feel Good to walk on. Whereas knitted socks will just…BE elastic and comfortable.

Sure you CAN do it.  And there are people and patterns that do it well!!

But MOST crochet socks are a bit like calling this a bicycle

I mean… Okay?  But people are going to Talk.

But this is BABY controversy, this is nothing.  You haven’t even touched on the good shit like RHSS or that time the Olympic Committee dissed us.

Iiiinteresting. So one of those “just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD” things.

Also I know very little about the yarn fandom except for that bit where a woman had to fake her death and had a nervous breakdown over selling homespun/dyed yarn so like, I already have big expectations.

Was that the one that “died” of leukemia or the one that “died” of lupus, or the one that overdosed?

From what I know of the narrative as it was described to me, I want to say the one that overdosed, but I am intrigued and vaguely concerned that there are multiple distinct individuals the above situation could apply to.

hey umm, what the fuck

the fake deaths thing: indie yarn dyer gets popular, gets overwhelmed by orders, can’t refund money because of shitty bookkeeping, decides faking online death is the only way out.

i’m sure some of them are unintentional rather than premeditated scammers but they’re all still thieving assholes who shouldn’t be running businesses and need to give all the money back.

the olympics commitee: ravelry, well-known knitting (fiber arts in general) site, held a contest they called the ‘ravelympics’ to drum up olympic support then get a cease-and-desist letter for copyright infringement, and the letter said that calling it that ‘denigrates the true nature of the Olympic Games’ and was ‘disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes’

except, you know, ravelry had like 2 million users who all, by nature of ravelry being a website, have basic tech literacy. the social media backlash was so bad that the olympics board had to make 2 official apologies because the first wasn’t good enough.

RHSS: Red Heart Super Saver is cheap Walmart-level yarn. some people hate it because it used to be just really fucking awful and they haven’t bothered updating their opinions. some people hate it because they hate non-natural yarns. some people hate it because they’re yarn snobs(which, btw, comes in two flavors: the disdainful assholes and the people who just don’t see the point if you have the money and don’t indulge yourself). a lot of people defend it because it’s cheap and widely locally available and honestly not that bad after a wash and some fabric softener.

crocheted socks: exactly what kaitoukitty said. people who crochet socks tend to either be new crocheters who are not aware crochet is not the best medium for socks or experienced crocheters who are pushing the boundaries of the medium.

babies on fire: i can’t believe we’re talking about yarncraft controversies and no one mentioned babies on fire. that’s my favorite controversy.

so when deciding what material to make baby blankets out of, in addition to considerations like softness, ease of washing, and allergy concerns quite a lot of people like to consider what would happen to the baby if the blanket was set on fire. yes, really.

wool has the problem of hand-wash only blankets for a new mother (superwash wool exists but that’s a whole ‘nother paragraph), allergy concerns, and also real fucking expensive if you want quality not-itchy-on-baby-skin wool. but pro-wool-blanket people insist that because wool actually resists being set on fire pretty well and also can self-extinguish, it’s the only sensible choice.

acrylic on the other hand is cheap and you can throw it in the washing machine, and while bad quality acrylics might be stiff and plastic-y they’re not itchy, but if it gets set on fire it will melt onto the baby’s skin. pro-acrylic people insist that if your blanket is on fire, you probably have bigger problems than what the blanket is made of.

wow I didn’t expect such a detailed response. thank you!

Fiber Arts Just Be Fucking Like That.

what hte FUCK

A couple more from Ravelry:

If I ask my mother she could probably give me more. These are just what I remember off the top of my head. I don’t knit or crochet (I do cross-stitch and don’t really interact with the wider community) but my mother runs a small yarn dyeing business and has been part of the community on the Internet for a LONG time before that so I get all the juicy details on the drama.

It’s worth noting that the founders of Ravelry, Cassidy and Jessica Forbes (both women) are married to each other; and Cassidy is trans.

I had no idea this was the drama I needed on my dash today

It’s nearly Cozy Things Knitted By My Mother season!!!!

(via @scoutdoesstuff)

1) Yeah I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of the change but the timing and number of TERFs make it either the TERFs co-opted an existing complaint made by people who liked ravelry but had physical issues with the new site, or it was entirely FABRICATED by TERFs to try to make the founders problematic bc one of them is trans.

2) oooo now I want to try making a slipper in Tunisian crochet because you’re right, it makes a much flatter, knit-like fabric that might be actually quite pleasant!

3) I assume it’s a collective word for both knitters and crotcheters, since both work with yarn but their crafts are quite different. It’s the easiest most intuitive word to refer to both groups at once.

I don’t understand… I grew up in crocheted socks… I mean, they were more like house slippers because we didn’t really wear them inside shoes, but still. What’s wrong with 덧 버선?

I love that this looped back after all that to absolve the crocheted socks.

Tintype of what appears to be a light-hearted spot of stabbing between friends, circa 1880