Latest Posts by god-made-it - Page 2

You are tenth generation honor guard for the Immortals. As far back as pack memory goes, the Immortals have provided food, shelter, and scritches. You fully expected them to outlive you as they did your grandmother and her grandmother before her. But something's wrong. The alpha… is dying.

This screenshot from a gardening Facebook group has been on my phone for several years and I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to delete it. Apparently it comes from a British gardening book from the 80s. I know we all joke that the English are afraid of flavor, but I assure you, you are not prepared for this.

GARLIC

Until quite recently, scientists smiled at all the wonderful medicinal powers claimed for garlic, but recent research has shown that there is some truth in a few of the old wives' tales. Garlic, of course, has an important role in Continental but not in British cookery — it really isn't worth growing unless you are a fan.

Any well-drained spot will do. Buy a head of garlic from the greengrocer or supermarket and split it up into individual cloves. Plant them 2 in. deep and 6 in. apart in March. Apart from watering in dry weather there is nothing else to do until the foliage turns yellow in July or August. Lift the bulbs and allow to dry under cover, then store in a cool, frost-free place.

If you are a beginner with garlic, you must use it very sparingly or you will be put off for ever. Rub a wooden salad bowl with a clove before adding the ingredients. Rub the skin of poultry before roasting and then you can try dropping a whole unskinned clove into a casserole or stew, removing it before serving. If by then you have lost a little of your garlic fear, you can try using crushed (not chopped) garlic in meat etc. as the Continentals do.

Sherlock Holmes and Watson are walking around London when a cat jumps on Watson and pees on him

"Oh bloody hell" says an upset Watson, "my shirt is ruined"

"Well, you got to take it up with the owner", says Sherlock calmly.

"I've no clue who the owner is!" shouts Watson, still angry.

"Well, my dear Watson", says Sherlock, "You are pissed on and pissed off at the same time, it's Schrödinger's cat"

Talking to a customer about classic children’s lit and how many of them firmly believe that fresh air and sunshine will cure any number of unspecified Victorian illnesses. I mentioned The Secret Garden and how much I like that the protagonists are basically just feral gremlin children who are very unpleasant to be around until they somehow manage to socialize each other.

Then I said, out loud, “on a scale of Sarah Crewe to Mary Lennox, how well did you handle being raised by a nanny in Edwardian India,” and realized that tumblr really has ruined my speech patterns for all time.

Thanks op I never would have figured it out on my own.

On the other hand I like how Scrooge escapes his own early demise from what I think is a cold (please correct my if am wrong haven't checked in a twelvemonth) maybe by heating his house above freezing 🥶 and eating more than oatmeal (I don't think the story said that) but more likely winning the honest love and loyalty of whoever ended up nursing him.

Years ago I remember reading an article with historians trying to figure out what the heck kind of disease would put Tiny Tim in a leg brace and eventually kill him but could magically be cured with a giant bag of money.

Rickets. The answer was rickets. This kid was dying of vitamin d deficiency he literally just needed some cod liver oil shoved down his gullet and a trip to the beach it makes me so mad

I hate "it's not trying to be accurate!" arguments for historical fiction or historically-inspired fantasy clothing choices that just. don't make sense logistically

why is that girl in Br*dgerton tightlacing her stays? what is she reducing- her upper ribcage? not only can you not tightlace in those (hand-bound eyelets can't usually take that strain, in my experience), but there's no reason to because your waistline is under your boobs. and unlike most of the series, they actually commit to the empire waistline for the court presentation gowns. small waists don't matter when NOBODY IS SEEING YOUR WAIST

why no chemise, in so many productions? fantasy/lack of concern for accuracy can't make things not chafe. chafing is not a matter of accuracy; it's a physical reality. did a wizard give everybody in the kingdom Anti-Chafing Spells?

just because you don't WANT a linen underlayer beneath a medieval tunic doesn't mean sweat won't get to outer garments and damage them- or make them need laundering, which weakens the fibers -at a time when all clothing is handmade, custom-fitted, and created from hand-woven fabrics and thus a HUGE investment

you're not just throwing accuracy to the winds as a design choice; you're ignoring How Textiles And Bodies And the Realities of Your Technology Level's Fabric and Laundering Capabilities Work

I feel like this could happen in Michigan as well (tiny farms with serious farmers driving Fords [and others] from the last millennia)

Vermont farmer was fixing the fence on his half acre when a Texan rolls by and stops. He rolls down the window and says " Hey there, how much land you got here? " Farmer says " half acre" Texan says " Do you know that I can drive my truck all day on my ranch and not even make it half way across? Farmer says " yep, I had a truck just like that "

250 likes!

And now for something completely different.

This is the ADHD Teapot. I made it in a ceramics class a few years ago. I use it to explain executive dysfunction to people who haven’t come across the term before (and those who think of ADHD mostly as Hyperactive Eight Year Old Boy Syndrome).

So, most people’s brains are like a regular shaped teapot with a single spout. Let’s say that your time, energy, focus etc is the liquid you have in the teapot. Your executive function is the spout, that directs the tea into the specific cup you want to fill-aka the task that you’re meant to be doing. Spills happen occasionally, but generally most of the tea goes in the right cup.

If you have executive dysfunction, (a symptom of ADHD, trauma, autism, schizophrenia etc.) you have multiple spouts going in different directions. You can try pointing one of them at your chosen cup and you will probably get some liquid in there, perhaps you will even fill it right up (finish the task). But meanwhile, tea is also pouring out of several other places and not going where you want it. If you have another container nearby, perhaps some of it will end up in there. But quite a lot of it is going to end up on the floor and accomplish nothing.

And at the end of the day you’ll have filled one or two cups ( or sometimes not even one) compared to the five or six that somebody with the same sized teapot (but only one spout) has filled, and everyone wonders why you’re so bad at getting tea poured, and why you make such a mess in the process.

One day I’d like to spend more time learning pottery and create a really technically good fucked up little adhd teapot. But that’s a long way off since i currently live in the outback and the nearest pottery workshop is some 400km away. But I figure that for now, it might be a useful or interesting metaphor to somebody even in its rough draft form.

This post is the cup I filled instead of cleaning my house btw.

one of the little details i've noticed about the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe specifically—book AND movie both!—is the implicit implication that the white witch's spell did more than just make it always winter and never christmas. i think it froze everything there, including time. for instance, tumnus talks about narnia before things were frozen as though he lived it himself, and by his own admission, that was over a hundred years ago. (he does this in book and movie both iirc but it definitely stands out in the movie.) and you say, okay, well do fauns just live a long time? maybe, but then tumnus is referred to as now being "middle-aged" in hahb, implying he ages more normally once narnia is no longer frozen. the beavers, too, speak similarly, but more than that, in the book, think about the dam. if he built it after the river froze, it wouldn't be properly dammed, but the river there is described as being frozen very specifically after being dammed, as well as looking like it froze all at once (due to magic). and beavers, even Talking Beavers, wouldn't live a hundred years, especially considering our knowledge of how bree and hwin aged fairly normally for horses in hahb. so like. imagine everyone in narnia is just as frozen as the land. never aging. never dying. only being turned to stone. imagine your dam has been unfinished for decades. imagine there hasn't been a child born there for a hundred years. not until the sons and daughters of our world brought hope and magic and spring again.

So cool my favorite author read my other favorite author.

forget Susan and Lucy (don’t) but please don’t tell me Lewis didn’t like female characters when Polly “don’t touch the obviously cursed bell, you absolute walnut” Plummer, Jill “my litigious bestie and I are here to fight the Antichrist” Pole and Aravis “‘I did not do any of these things for the sake of pleasing you’” Tarkheena exist

the pevensies discovering the treasure room in the ruins of cair paravel must have been like stepping into their own tomb. here is the ruin of what you were. here is the remnant. here is where they took what you left them with and laid it to rest. here is your funeral shroud, daughter of eve. the skirt is too long for you now. here is the cordial, half-full. they dared not use it to save anyone without your hand to do the saving. here is your bow, still strung, and your arrows, unshot. here is the sword your hand still remembers, and here is the face you have forgotten. you did not die here, and yet still you were buried. what is a legend but another kind of ghost?

The shape of a fish's caudal tail can tell you a lot about how fast the fish moves! A rounded tail is the slowest and a lunate tail is the fastest! The lunate tail has the most optimal ratio of high thrust and low draw, making it the fastest.

Ichthyology Notes 2/?

Ok, but what if Sherlock's brother was named John Watson Holmes (probably a younger brother) and when he started playing Minecraft his username was Mycraft but when he found out much it annoyed his brother Sherlock he leaned in to it and now his hacker persona is Mycroft (hacking could be a modern job that would give him a place in the government, the ability to find clues that Sherlock can't find easily, and the attitude of "can't be bothered to step away from his desk to follow up on something)

An adaptation of Sherlock Holmes set in a world in which the fictional character/literary juggernaut Sherlock Holmes, and all the subsequent adaptations thereof, still exist.

Sherlock Holmes (pronounced Holl-mess, as he is constantly reminding people) just had the misfortune of having parents who really liked the books, and his attitude towards his fictional counterpart is pretty much the same as that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sherlock runs a Youtube Theory channel called Mysteries Unwrapped with Sherlock Holmes. He has received no less than seven cease and desist letters from the Conan Doyle estate, all of which he has so faded managed to rebuff by pointing out that that's literally his name.

(No he won't change his name. He's Sherlock Holmes the real live human person. Let Sherlock Holmes the non existent fictional character change his name.)

John is Sherlock's flatmate. Sherlock almost refused to live with him once he realised that it would mean staying with a medical student named John, and only gave in once John pointed out that: a) he's a biomedical student, which is completely different from an md, and b) his surname isn't Watson.

It's now been three years, which is long enough for them to have developed a genuine friendship, and for John to have a) started working towards his PhD in biotechnology, and b) for him to start dating somebody with the surname Watson.

Sherlock can feel the narrative closing in.

His Youtube channel is meant to be focused on lost media, fan theories and stuff like that, but he keeps accidentally stumbling upon and then solving genuine crimes.

His brother Mycroft may or may not have chosen that name after he transitions specifically to annoy him.

He doesn't even live in London, but somehow the only flat they could afford was on a street named fucking Baker Street.

Sherlock Holmes and the Unescapable Power of the Narrative.

"I'm sorry I flirted, I was trying to roast you."

- Elizabeth Bennet after Mr Darcy's first proposal

In a country were an unbeatable truth serum with a verified 0% false positive rate is routinely used on all political candidates, the revelation that one candidate is completely clean of any misdeeds is considered terrifying by everyone (voters included) instead of reassuring.

Thanks for the resource

After reading it I was wondering about Mia

I am basically monolingual (English) with Canadian core French (fairly useless) and some Korean. I lived in France for 3 months and spent the whole time hearing my name pronounced wrong because it has a "th" sound. This made me wonder, what would be a universally pronouncible name?

From what I know: can't be an L/R name because some languages don't distinguish that boundary, no J because some languages don't have that sound, no TH obviously, really avoid H in general. So I think, heavy on the vowels, what about Adam? My colleague who speaks Japanese informed me that in Japanese M must be paired with a vowel sound, so Adam was impossible but Aiden would work.

So I was thinking, Miyo, maybe Eve? I know that sometimes a word will have a different meaning in another language, but let's ignore that. What name would be easily pronouncible in the most languages? It doesn't have to follow name rules in every language, just be a normal name from a language that other people can say without distorting. Is there a chart somewhere that shows sound overlap for languages? Does every language have M? I'm so curious.

The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“

I am but @the-haiku-bot your not a people not that I mind bots like you

i don’t know about you guys but the main reason i am still on tumblr in 2024 is BECAUSE it is the most cloutless least influential social media app out there and that is the experience i am after. absolutely none of this will ever translate into significant attention or real success in my life and that is so beautiful.

Eat hot peppers

My favorite source of vitamin C :)

scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝️you eat a lemon

What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?

One side effect of my research for this novel being steeped heavily in textile history is my swelling disgust with modern fabrics.

Firstly they're so thin? Like most things you see in Old Navy or even department stores might as well be tissue paper?? Even some branded sports t-shirts I've bought in recent years (that are supposed to be 'official apparel' and allegedly decent quality) are definitely not going to hold up more than a year or two without getting little holes from wear.

This side of even two hundred years ago fabrics were made to be used for YEARS, and that's with wearing them way more often because you only owned like three sets of clothes. They were thick and well made and most importantly made to LAST. And they were gorgeous?? Some of the weaves were so fine and the drape so buttery we still don't entirely know how these people managed to make them BY HAND. Not to mention intricate patterning and details that turned even some simple garments into freaking ART.

I know this is not news, the fast fashion phenomenon is well documented. Reading so much about the amazing fabrics we used to create and how we cherished and valued them, though, is making it hard not to mourn what we lost to mass production and capitalism. Not just the quality of the clothing and fabrics themselves, but the generations of knowledge and techniques that are just gone. It makes me what to cry.

I need to get a sewing machine.

Guys I just realized something

I’m reading Return of the King, and have just reached the chapter called “The Tower of Cirith Ungol,” in which Sam makes to rescue his master.

Something notable about this is that Sam has put on the Ring not once, but twice so far - and both times, his experience has been markedly different than Frodo’s.

Firstly, his vision is impaired. Everything he sees is somewhat obscured by a dark fog. It’s unclear whether this is an effect of the Ring entering Mordor, or if that’s just what it does to him specifically; after all, the Ring acts differently for each Wearer.

It’s the second effect that’s really interesting. You see, for some reason, the Ring improves his hearing. In both instances, he can hear orc-chatter from afar, as well as tumbling rocks and the foaming of Shelob. But what’s really wild about this is that the same never happens to Frodo.

Because the Ring reflects the Will and Strengths of the User, I can only assume this means one thing.

The One Ring empowers Samwise Gamgee’s eavesdropping.

Ok, I actually kinda like it.

Once Upon A TIME,

a bunch of scientists realized that the current time system, of 60 seconds to 60 minutes to 24 hours, was a little ridiculous, and decided that like many other measurements, it needed to be given a metric system equivalent.

Unfortunately for them, they decided to keep all the same names for things, and people decided it was too confusing and the whole thing never took off.

Then a while back, I took that information, mixed it with my minecraft hyperfixation, and came up with a new time system. Hear me out, because I think that despite (or maybe due to?) its origin, it's actually a pretty solid system.

So, let's start big and work down, since that's simplest for this.

One day-night cycle. First of all, who decided a day-night cycle would be called a day? That entirely dismisses the other half of the cycle! So, the cycle will now be known as a Clock. This is not an issue, because unlike the old system, which used analog clocks which only showed numbers for half the cycle and had to go around twice per cycle (why???), the new system uses clocks which go around once per cycle (as it should be). Secondly, it's ridiculous to start the Clock in the middle of the night, so 0:00 will be at dawn.

Now, instead of 24 hours in a day, we will have 10 units to a Clock, because the point is the metric system. These units will be called Clicks (and now you're seeing where the minecraft hyperfixation affected things. Suck it up, the names are the best part honestly, wait for the ending). At ten units to what was previously 24, that means each Click is the same length of time as 2.4 hours, or 2 hours and 24 minutes.

That's a long unit, so we need to divide it further. These will be our minute equivalents for the system. These units will be called Tocks, and there will be 100 of them in each Click. This equates 100 Tocks to 144 minutes, or 1 Tock to 1.44 minutes (or 1 minute and 26.4 seconds, for those of you counting).

Clearly, we still need one more small unit for small amounts of counting - equivalent to seconds. Once again since this is metric based, there will be 100 units per Tock. These smallest units are Ticks. A Tick is worth .864 of a second - nearly the same when you're counting in your head, given that the speed at which a person pronounces "One Mississippi" already varies a person's personal perception of a second's length. I recognize that officially, seconds are based on the length of time it takes some certain type of isotope to go through a decay cycle, but let's be honest, that was just a way to standardize something completely arbitrary. They can pick a different isotope for a Tick.

So, the new system is as follows:

100 Ticks -> 1 Tock, 100 Tocks -> 1 Click, 10 Clicks -> 1 Clock

Ticks, Tocks, Clicks, Clocks.

LET'S GO.

This too shall pass.

Look at some stars for now

this place isn’t what it used to be 

somebody could literally make the funniest joke in the universe, expertly crafted and hand made like a fine artisan cheese, but it’ll never make me laugh as much as that one fucking comic where goofy steals a hat from himself in a different panel and defies all logic and starts crying

All the "Austen novels explained badly" Tabloid Covers

Most of the original text is from this post by @redwooding

Re-did the Pride & Prejudice one to look more tabloid-y and changed John Thorpe's caption to the funny version. Note: gigs during the regency period was a type of carriage.