Fading softly

[Fading softly]

[wilwheaton]

I'm 50 and still need tips and reminders on Adulting.

[tiggymalvern]

Why would I make the bed every day? It only gets rumpled again as soon as I get in it, adn I'm not standing around my bedroom admiring the elegance of it all during the day.

[Fading softly]

[cadyrocks]

I know Jowling Kowling Rowling gets a lot of shit for being the queen of TERF island, but frankly, it's not nearly enough. The dynamic is not "a children's author is quietly being vaguely shitty to trans people on twitter and surrounding herself with bigots". That'd be bad. But that's not where we are right now. The actual dynamic is "a billionaire (Rowling) is funding the legal campaign of a fascist bigot (Posie Parker) who is closely aligned with far-right and neo-nazi extremists and is founding a political party with the goal of exterminating trans people".

Shaun lays it out pretty well here. It's a long watch, but it's useful context for where we are in the present moment.

The really key takeaway here for me is this: the times where folks like Rowling were pretending to "just have some concerns" is over. Rowling is a billionaire who is funding the legal action of a violent, deranged, eliminationist transphobe - and she knows who Posie is.

That's kind of a different ballgame.

[Fading softly]

[irithnova]

Naadam - and how Mongolia celebrates it.

What is Naadam in Mongolian culture and how would Mr Mongolia celebrate it?

Naadam is a traditional sports festival in Mongolia. It includes Mongols adorning themselves in national dress, mounted soldiers in uniform, music, dancers, and of course, the "Three Manly Sports":

Horse riding, wrestling and archery!

Naadam is a 2000 year old event, however, the term "Naadam" was coined in the 13th century by Chinggis Khaan (according to the secret history of the Mongols) and has been celebrated ever since.

Keep reading

[Fading softly]

[lilcowgirl7]

I needed this drag. Let’s change guys and not look back

[radicallyaligned]

working out your brain is a must!!

• hydrate it by drinking lots of water

• eat dark chocolate and blueberries and walnuts and salmon and other foods high in antioxidants!!

• play little brain games on your phone; I like wordconenct! anything that makes you think!

• read books. It’s simple but necessary. Even better - join a book club, or read with a friend, so you can have discussions after. This will improve your reading comprehension.

• do puzzles - it doesnt have to be sudoku, I love playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Rift because it makes my brain have to match colorful patterns to physical movements very quickly!

• learn a new dance - even a tik tok trendy dance. Learning new dance moves are proven to strengthen synapses!!

• go bird watching, or foraging, or anything outdoors that requires you to explore pattern recognition and visual searching

• watch a movie with the intent of analysis - this is best done with a cinephile friend!! talk about tropes and symbolism and character growth

• cross stitch, or sew, or do anything that requires matching nimble hand movements to patterns

• play or learn an instrument!

• develop a consistent sleep schedule (or as close to consistent as you can get!)

• when eating, try to identify the ingredients and flavors you’re perceiving!

I hope this helps :)

[jozdreaming]

I like how this went from me feeling like “hm why is this attacking me 🤨” at first, but feeling grateful seeing an added guide on a genuine expansion on a “ how to” work out the brain. This genuinely helps a bunch. People find solace in doing activities that get them through life by doing said activities of phone/tv or if that’s all they’ve ever known in their life to get them through things + etc tho. However, this was very impt to point out. Slowly beginning incorporating things to work the brain in ones own time.

[Fading softly]

[sweetpeathecat]

I found some cute “Tea Pets” of Sun Wukong on Amazon and want to share them with you

Isn’t he just the cutest?! Apparently you are supposed to pour/brush tea on them.

[Fading softly]

[buried-in-stardust]

Making "immortal tofu" (神仙豆腐; shen2xian1dou4fu3).

The tree of the leaves it's made from and the "tofu" itself is called "immortal" due to a legend of one village struggling through a famine, and an immortal guiding them to use a particular tree's leaves to make this "tofu" to survive. It is a traditional folk food found throughout south China.

[eng by me]

[Fading softly]

[impishlie]

A few months ago my mom got our dog a really nice like $60 dog bed that Ellie just absolutely refuses to sleep in because she’d rather be in bed with my mom or on the couch. So my mom gave Josh and I the bed to see if Vincent would like it and it’s an immediate hit, he jumped in as soon as I put it down and won’t move

I’ve never seen this cat knead before and now he can’t stop!

[impishlie]

seeby

[Fading softly]

praetor-canis asked:

I saw your tags on my post. Why do you think the Jedi are ‘over hated’ by the SW fandom? It doesn’t seem to me like a lot of people realize just how badly the Jedi and political elites like Organa failed in the PT. If you’re a big fan of Wukong, you’d know that child of the Force (what else are you supposed to call the spiritual energy of the Sky and Earth? Lol) would’ve gone rogue and cut all ties with the Jedi by TPM. Or….the Jedi would dub Wukong a Sith and hunt him down. Tell me about these mixed feelings of yours on the Jedi.

By the way, have you read the other novels in the four great classics? Namely the ones featuring generals and martial artists. Three Kingdoms and All Men are Brothers (水浒传)?

sapphire-monkey answered:

Sorry for the late reply, i was on vacation and i wanted to give this question proper thought. I’m flattered you wanted to hear my thoughts though!

Bare with me because i’m not the best with words, but the Jedi are a mixed bag of an organization that suffers from author intent and execution. George Lucas is an orientalist white man, you’ll hear no argument from me on that score.
Like its clear he wants them to be Buddhist monks/samurai warriors not realizing that the two are kind of incompatible. And its clear that his white christian upbringing influences his idea of how the force works. like again if he wanted the force to be Buddhist/Daoist, why is there no reincarnation in star wars? why is the dark side a thing???

On the other hand though, I find some people hate the jedi because they really don’t like how star wars morality works or they like anakin. Which is fine! I get that! but still gray jedi are not a thing, you can have them be fanfic but they’re still not canon (not referring to you specifically, general you). So it feels more like a rage against the author then the jedi themselves.
Then there are the fans who its not that they hate the jedi so much as they really really like the sith. Those fans especially are the ones who seem to hate the jedi in a sort of edge lord fashion. (i hope this makes sense T-T)

Honestly i couldn’t see sun wukong being a jedi if he was in star wars. But it’d be fun seeing him just demolish everyone there if they tried anything. The thing is the star wars universe has a moral code if you are a force user. and you don’t have to like it, heaven knows i get that that’s why fanfics exists. And i love those fanfics.

Have you ever played SWTOR? I had a jedi consular and i loved her. She gave me yamato nadeshiko vibes. Her inner strength, devotion to duty, and a desire to help people gave me an appreciation for what the jedi could be with proper storytelling execution.

As for your great classics question, i want to read dream of the red chamber (or watch an adaption) I’ve been so busy though so everything is on a backlog. T-T

I hope I was able to answer well, again i’m not the best writer. ^-^

[praetor-canis]

Thanks for answer. I know that GL wanted a Monk and Samurai mix. Problem is, it’s not as incompatible as you think. You see, this is why I cited Wuxia novels in my long rant about Anakin’s interview in TPM. It works fine in Wuxia novels where you have the Taoists of Wu-Tang and the monks of Shaolin. They have a moral code different from the average swordsman but also from each other. It’s not good or bad, just different. Also, it seems more apparent to me that people don’t get the difference between Zen Buddhist, Taoist and the old Yin/Yang Bagua (derived from I’Ching). Yin/Yang being the oldest one isn’t just the basis for Taoist philosophy, but a whole suite of other philosophies.

I think it’s not about story-telling per say, but some fundamental values that creators like GL does not seem to get. He wanted so much to re-create the old myths of good vs. evil with a Orientalist twist to it. He doesn’t get that in Taoist texts, they clearly stated that morality and evil is a relative matter. That what the general at war considers good is different from the views of the statesman. The values of the people in government are different from those in the pugilist world (the jianghu). There’s nothing universal beyond wanting peace and prosperity.

I have played SWTOR, got a Jedi Knight and was even more convinced that the Jedi are corrupt a-holes. In the prologue, the protagonist were literally arguing with the Council on whether to help a group of refugees or not….refugees that they had created themselves with this centuries long war with the Sith. If you choose the Sith Inquisitor, you get to see Knight Organa of the Jedi commit regicide on Alderaan because he wanted to secure the planet’s loyalty to the Old Republic.

Dreams of the Red Chamber is a tough one to read. Between all the poems and prose, it’s better literature than the others. If you do get to read it, think about how that book described the downfall of the Jia family.

[sapphire-monkey]

See I agree completely with you here, you said it better than i ever could. T-T maybe its storytelling vs execution vs incompatible world views and values? Because it feels like a mix of those things.
Like its clear to me that GL wanted very much to copy the samurai movies he loved back in the 70s but being a white man in the 70s with a christian background he didn’t really understand it.
Its not that you can’t have samurai and monks in the same story but their usually different groups with a different way of doing things.

Seriously why did he make the darkside a thing? its such a christian concept. Like people will try to make it not and say ‘its not bad, its part of the force’, while GL is like 'no its bad! its a corrupting thing not part of the force!“ Which is i don’t think GL really understands what balance is.

I played all the class stories (sith warrior is my favorite) ^-^. Don’t get me started on my hatred for the Jedi knight story. Overrated doesn’t begin to explain it. But yeah the other class stories didn’t leave me a good opinion on the jedi.

I’m a little confused, when did Knight Organa commit regicide? Like he lies to his ex if you take the lightside path and tries to kill you but are you talking about the attempted attack on thul? Personally my opinion on him was that he was afraid of commitment and was using the jedi order as an excuse to not commit. (not an excuse for the jedi, just my thoughts on this asshole, wanted to rub his death in his face.)

Thanks! Dreams of the Red Chamber seems like a dense book but it also looks so fascinating. :) Which one would you recommend?

[Fading softly]

Anonymous asked:

I CURSE YOU WITH LOVE FOR CREATIONISM

a-dinosaur-a-day answered:

what an odd thing to say to a Jewish paleontologist

did you know

• young earth creationism was never the jewish interpretation of that text; those jews today who believe it have been influenced by xtians. classic commentary showcases vagueness as to the timing of the creation event, with one talmudic commenter suggesting the time may have been millions of years
• YEC'ism, as a result, is filled with antisemitism, as many philosophies that require jewish people to be wrong about their own books are
• not a single aspect of the Torah is meant to be taken literally. it is a multifaceted work where higher level interpretations are the bulk of the meaning of the text (Pardes method)
• many jewish scholars over the years have pointed out how living things change over time
• the amount of evidence we have that the earth is 4.6 billion years old and the universe 13 billion years old is overwhelming
• the amount of evidence we have that living things have changed over long periods of time is overwhelming
• the amount of evidence we have that populations change over short periods of time (which would then add up to those long changes) is overwhelming
• the amount of extremely accessible evidence we have that evolution via natural selection happens is greater than the evidence we have for the force of gravity
• many things we deal with today, in our anatomies, geographies, and ecologies, are only explicable with a knowledge of deep time
• understanding evolution has been linked with more tolerant attitudes and a better ability to critically evaluate new information (ie, if you’re a young earth creationist, you are more likely to be racist and stay that way)
• understanding evolution is key to actually fixing many social and ecological problems and ignoring it is, in fact, a self defeating action
• the history of the earth is not actually a debatable subject. people who believe in young earth creationism are one thing: delusional.

anyways, I know you didn’t read any of that, so have fun sticking your head in a pile of sand. Ostriches don’t do that, but you do.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Imagine reading this and thinking “this person only thinks about themself and is a clown”

Young earth creationists truly are the worst

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

#okay but why did they use the word curse?? like did they actually think that would make you believe in YEC#are they finally admitting to the fact that they believe in magic but don’t use that name and demonize anything that is called magic#also why curse with love for creationism instead of belief in or understanding of#it’s almost an implicit acknowledgment that they have no real basis for YEC other than emotion and bias

once again I have to ask why are you putting such a good analysis in the tags

[headspace-hotel]

do y'all want me to do a sort of in depth dive into how wild young earth creationism gets because almost literally everyone i knew growing up believed that shit

[Fading softly]

[rongzhi]

Translation quiz! What does this mean?:

死丫头命真好!

dead girl life is good!

a dead end can lead to a good life!

you're very lucky, you wretched girl!

your life is very good, you stubborn girl!

fuck if i know (see results)

See Results

[rongzhi]

Poll is closed! We pulled through with the correct answer over all!

Correct answer: "you're very lucky, you wretched girl!"

This expression is rather scathing, but based on context/delivery, the scorn can be read as joking.

Explanation:

死 sǐ = dead; damn/wretched; rigid (stubborn)
丫头 yā tou = [dialect] girl
命 mìng = life; fate (fortune, luck)
真好 zhēn hǎo = very good

Because 死丫头 can mean both "wretched girl" and "stubborn girl" (it's sort of like "you little bitch", basically), the key to choosing the correct answer, and choosing being option 3 and option 4, is the use of 命. In this case, 命真好 means "you're very lucky" because although 命 does have the meaning "life", too, it more so refers to the state of being alive/the life you possess.

There are three words in Chinese which mean "life"; 命，人生 rén shēng, and 生活 shēng huó. 人生 refers to life as in the entire span of one's life (a lifetime). 生活 refers to life as in livelihood (activities and lifestyle).

Therefore, "life" in the context of “Your life is very good" would not use 命, it would use 生活. That is why 你命真好 means "you're lucky", and more to the point, why the answer is not option 4.

The answer is not option 1 because that is a literal character for character machine level translation.

It is not option 2 because I made that up to fool people who only recognise a few individual characters. I will admit, I am surprised this one came in as the runner-up, but it was a trick smart-sounding type answer.

The lack of the characters 你 (you) and 女 (girl) in the 死丫头命真好 may have also made this sentence tricky for beginner language learners to read. Remember: including the subject of a sentence in Chinese is optional and done more to create emphasis, especially in informal dialogue.