I fucking LOVE the way people act when they love a sport and watch a beginner succeed at it. It reminds me of the first time I went surfing, I’d been trying for an hour to get my balance and when I finally managed to stand up and ride a wave in literally every surfer on the beach was like
“I’d rather endure a radioactive spider bite than a mediocre writer’s diatribe.”
“I’m not a hero. I’m a high-functioning alcoholic with a typewriter.”
“Never trust a person wearing green. Green is the color of goblins, envy, and the well-manicured lawns of people who never shut up about their goddamn flowerbeds.”
“I’m your friendly neighborhood despiser.”
“It’s not about the pen. It’s what you do with the pen that defines you, a dullard with ink.”
“We all wear masks. Some are figurative, others are made of cheap cosmetics and smudge in the heat.”
“I’ve stopped reading what the newspapers have to say about me. None of it is true. Except for the parts that are.”
“Everyone also has a part of themselves they would hide if they had an ounce of dignity.”
“One thing people love more than a writer is to see a writer fail so miserably that after they compose, they decompose.”
“What’s my superpower? My body heals itself from all injuries, so long as I have a chilled martini glass and a bartender with a heavy pour.”
“A well-constructed costume must be worn whenever one’s enemies are nearby.”
In the never-ending quest to alleviate my migraines, I bought a special angled pillow that lets you sleep on your side while your arm just kind of hangs through a whole in the middle. I did this because I’m a left-sided sleeper, always have been.
Until my neck subluxated and now I can’t sleep on that side without compressing some vital nerves and blood arteries. I also can’t sleep on my back right now because the pressure compresses my occipital nerve. Basically sleeping has been a nightmare recently, but that’s not the point of this post.
The point was I brought this up in physical therapy to talk about how great this pillow is because I can now sleep on my right side without the stupid thing going numb or waking me up because it hurts. And my PT was like wow, great! How did you sleep on your left side for so long without it being an issue?
And I said, oh that’s easy. I just tuck that shoulder out of the way.
And she said, …what?
And I said, yeah, I just tuck it out the way. Not like my right shoulder. That one doesn’t move as well. It just hurts, I think there’s something wrong with it.
And my physical therapist asked me to demonstrate what I mean when I say I ‘tuck my shoulder out of the way,’ and haha, you’re never going to believe this, turns out I’ve just been casually pulling my left shoulder out of the socket for, oh, let’s see, 30 years? And then napping on it like hmmnm yess comfy.
Anyway. I looked up from my demonstration and my physical therapist was making this face:
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The funniest part for me was that I refused to believe I was dislocating it. I was like no, see, it just moves like that, and as I reached to manually manipulate my shoulder with my other hand she reached out, put her hand over mine and in the gentlest, firmest voice said, “No.”
I felt like a toddler being gentle parented by a mother doing her absolute best to use her “gentle” voice and not yell after watching their child lick a fork and attempt to stick it in an electrical outlet.
Turns out that rheumatologist who said I had zero hypermobility and just needed to exercise more was full of shit. We already knew this. But it’s good to have it reconfirmed.
Also, did you guys know it’s not normal to be able to tip your head back and touch your shoulder blades with the back of your skull with zero resistance from your neck? Wild. Anyway. I’m sure that’s not compressing anything vital or relevant to my crippling migraines…
ok so i do have adhd but i feel as though this somehow transcends it. I just made a cup of tea 10 minutes ago. Im in a very small room. It has disappeared. I didnt leave the room. It just escaped. It is gone. It never was. Wheres my tea. It couldnt have gone anywhere and yet it has. Did i drink it and eat the cup and forget? Where is my tea. I miss her. This is fucked
For 13 thousand dollars, Englishman Brendon Grimshaw bought a tiny uninhabited island in the Seychelles and moved there forever. When Grimshaw was under forty, he quit his job as a newspaper editor and started a new life. By this time, no human had set foot on the island for 50 years. As befits a real Robinson, Brendon found himself a companion from among the natives. His name was René Lafortin. Together with Rene, Brendon began to equip his new home. While René came to the island only occasionally, Brendon lived on it for decades by himself, never leaving. For 39 years, Grimshaw and Lafortin planted 16 thousand trees with their own hands and built almost 5 kilometers of paths. In 2007, Rene Lafortin died, and Brendon was left all alone on the island. He was 81 years old. He attracted 2,000 new bird species to the island and introduced more than a hundred giant tortoises, which in the rest of the world (including the Seychelles) were already on the verge of extinction. Thanks to Grimshaw’s efforts, the once deserted island now hosts two-thirds of the Seychelles’ fauna. An abandoned piece of land has turned into a real paradise. A few years ago, the prince of Saudi Arabia offered Brendon Grimshaw $50 million for the island, but he refused. “I don’t want the island to become a favorite vacation spot for the rich. Better let it be a national park that everyone can enjoy.” And he achieved just that. In 2008 the island was indeed declared a national park.
I recall a story about a victorian book about wallpaper that was extra bad because many of the wallpaper samples in it also used toxic dyes for their colors
Some of the attractive hues of brightly colored, cloth-bound books from the Victorian era come from dyes that could pose a health risk to readers, collectors or librarians. The latest research on these 'poison books' used three techniques -- including one that hasn't previously been applied to books -- to assess dangerous dyes in a university collection and found some volumes had levels that might be unsafe.
My ancestors, watching me dump an entire stick of cinnamon, two cloves, an allspice berry, and a generous grating of nutmeg into my tea, sweetened with white sugar and loaded with cream, while I sit in my clean warm house surrounded by books, 25+ outfits for different occasions, and 6 pairs of shoes, in a building heated so well I have the windows open in mid-autumn:
Our daughter prospers. We are proud of her. She has never labored in a field but knows riches we could not have imagined.
I like this so much better than the idea that our ancestors would be embarrassed or ashamed of us for being “soft” or some crap like that.
My ancestors, watching me stuff my face with fried chicken while studying: She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar. WE MADE IT
She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar
My ancestors watching me use my stand mixer while living in a small apartment and attending university: Thou hast kneadeth bread in FOUR hail marys??? FOUR??? And thou ist poor as a churchmouse, yet liveth in a fine cottage with four pounds butter and fresh berries in thy larder!! And two featherbeds! And thou attendeth the King’s college, as a lord!!
My ancestors being like:
Look at this fine young lady! She can paint she can sew and embrody, she sings and read
And without a wealthy father to pay for that, plus she is florid in the body! She doesn’t know hunger!
We did it!
Me: /wearily studying/
My Ancestors: TRULY SH— what? They? A little unorthodox, but reasonable I suppose. TRULY THEY PROSPER, FOR THEY LIVE IN A DWELLING WITH MANY ROOMS AND ONLY THEIR SPOUSE TO SHARE IT WITH! THEY HAVE DOGS WHO DO NOT PERFORM A FUNCTION! THEY HAVE MANY BOOKS AND DO NOT HAVE TO SPIN THEIR OWN YARN! THEY BATHE AT A WHIM WITH GENTLE SOAP FREE OF LYE! OUR DESCENDANT BRINGS HONOR AND PRIDE TO OUR LINEAGE!
Me: /yawns and sips my coffee/
My Ancestors: /cheer wildly/
Me: *hunched over at my desk nursing a headache.*
My Ancestors: “Truly, we prosper; see here, our infirm descendant need not even work on her poor days, but has the luxury to rest as she sees need! A doctor attends to her illnesses; her clothes are warm and free of pests; she cares for exotic and dangerous animals within her own home! We have found the height of luxury!”
Me: *treats myself to a pineapple and a bunch of bananas*
My Georgian ancestors: ZOOTH SHE HAS BOUGHT A PINEAPPLE! NOT MERELY BORROWED ONE! TRULY SHE HAS ACHIEVED FAR MORE THAN WE COULD KNOW!
me: [puts on warm socks and a blanket, is now warm regardless of the weather outside]
My impoverished Russian Jewish ancestors:
Me:[learns to knit from youtube videos]
My ancestors: Our descendant, the heir to all our hopes and fears for a far-off future… She can buy fine clothes woven and knit by automatons, with but a fraction of a day’s earnings… and she does… she has so much free time to do as she pleases… and she uses some of that time to do what we did.
One woman from rural Poland, who died from smallpox in 1717 CE, a grandmother at 35: I knit roses and peonies into my and my children’s gloves… it wasn’t much extra work to dye the red, once I had already cleaned the wool and spun the yarn, and to knit in the designs… and I wasn’t a gifted knitter but I was a good knitter, and I thought, well, it might not make a difference to how warm the glove is, but it made the children happy and it made me happy. I liked to make things beautiful when I could.
Another woman, a peasant from what’s now France, who died from getting kicked by a mammoth in 8995 BCE:[Patting her on the back] I made my family’s clothes too. Every day my sister and I wove and wove and tended our children. We went out of our way to make the cloth lovely. Not a trace of it remains anywhere on earth now… But it mattered to us. And she might not know our names, or know it was us, but evidently, it matters to her too. She has so much beauty available to her, in every direction, and she wants to make it where we once made it.
[everyone sobbing and high-fiving each other.]
A man from Britain, 1104 CE, sitting at the trans-temporal telescope, reporting on my doings: She’s stopped knitting and now she’s playing minecraft.
The other ancestors: Ah, yes, the dream of building. We know this one well. What vision doth she design now?
Telescope man: Looks like… Some kind of floating temple?
Everyone: [Goes completely apeshit]
Me: studying Marine Biology, out in the middle of the Elkhorn slough absolutely fucking covered in the most foul-smelling mud and swamp scum you can imagine, deliriously happy as I spot a tell-tale bubbling in the mud. I jump off the small dock and drive my entire arm into the mud like a Mortal Kombat Character ripping someone’s heart out of their chest, and pull out a 4lb, two-foot long Geoduck Clam and hold it aloft, triumphant.
My Homminid ancestors, who were doing exactly this with much smaller clams 900,000 years ago: *going absolutely literally apeshit over my flawless technique and the marvelous size of my quarry*CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! CLAM! WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!
I wanted to look up what kind of dogs the vikings had in order to make a historically accurate shitpost meme, but while googling “viking dog”, figuring I’d find pictures of some kind of big cool war dogs or dogs used for hunting moose and bear, but instead I found this
the noble vallhund
herder of cows and biter of ankles
This is literally a viking corgi.
The Pembroke Welsh Corgi developed starting roughly 1,000 years ago from a mix of the 3,000yo breed that was the historical Cardigan Welsh Corgi (first brought to Wales with Celtic groups emigrating from continental Europe), and Spitz type dogs that were brought in with the Viking raids 1,000 years ago.
Corgis are a mix of Viking and Celt, and that’s neat. The vallhund is literally very close family to at least the Pembroke corgi.
There are a number of Scandinavian dog breeds that might be also associated with Vikings, most of which are spitzen. The Norrbottenspetz, Karelian Bear Dog, Finnish Lapphund, Icelandic Shepherd, Finnish Spitz, etc.
Special additional shout out for the Norwegian Lundehund, which was developed to hunt puffins. (Lunde means puffin). They look like a generic medium dog at first.
Except they have secret weapons just for clambering over rocks to get puffins. They have six fully-formed and muscled toes per foot, as well as extreme range of motion in their joints.
And there’s your lesson in weird Viking dogs.
The extra-toed puffin dog I only ever heard about in an encyclopedia of dog breeds until now. They’re very rare!
He’s got specific lacing advice for skates and tall boots and there are decorative patterns and I recently relaced my skate shoes for both a wide forefoot and less friction on the laces so it’s easier to tighten and loosen them but he also has lace-locking patterns so that shoes stay exactly as tight as you laced them the first time and it is just a VERY GOOD website.
Like. I’ve been buying shoes the wrong size because it’s often hard to find wide shoes but the lacing pattern for a wide forefoot means that my big hobbit feet actually fit into the previously too-tight running shoes and sneakers I had.
“The Blind Side” is considered one of the most popular sports movies ever made. However, for Michael Oher, whose life the story is supposed to be based on, it has a darker, more emotional background.
if anyone’s wondering what this is about, a woman died from an allergic reaction at a restaurant in a Disney park after repeatedly confirming that the food was allergen-free, and Disney is claiming that because her husband signed up for a free trial of Disney+ a few years ago, he waived all rights to sue them for any reason. i wish i was joking.
From a young age, artist Kohei Omori was diagnosed with OCD and struggled in school. He has described his obsession with detail as a disadvantage that makes everyday life difficult; and while he was able to gain an equivalency diploma after dropping out of high school, he was not able to make it all the way through art school.
After dropping out, he became obsessed with a nut and a bolt, and began drawing them. Using only a pencil, this is what he produced:
This one in particular blew me away, where he nails the fonts traveling over a curved surface:
He posts process videos on his Instagram, like this one:
The online attention hasn't always been helpful; Omori recounts someone commenting "You should have just taken a photo." And as his symptoms worsened, he stopped drawing altogether and resolved to burn his drawings.
Luckily Kazuomi Kishimoto, a supporter of Omori's work and the Director of the Setouchi City Museum of Art, intervened; he convinced him to let the museum display his drawings, rather than Omori turning them into ashes. The exhibition was held earlier this year.
Omori sells prints of his work here, and you can keep up with his stuff on X or Instagram.
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