Of Monstrous things

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
strangesigils
breelandwalker

Dear Budding Psychics, Mediums, Divinators, and Everyone Else Going Around Telling Non-Witches That They're Secretly Witches During Readings,

STOP.

Being a witch is not a secret superpower that has to be unearthed. It is not an inherited genetic marker that magically manifests at a certain point in a person's life.

Being a witch is a choice that a person must make for themselves. They cannot be INFORMED that they are a witch if they have not previously made this choice of their own volition. You don't get to TELL people that they're witches. That is their decision to make.

It's not something you can read in a palm. It's not something you can see in cards or tea leaves or a psychic vision. It's not something you can TEST for arbitrarily.

You don't get to tell someone they're a car mechanic if they aren't. You don't get to tell someone they're in a coven if they haven't taken vows. You don't get to decide for someone whether or not they're a witch.

(Apparently, this is a new "thing" among novices, particularly those of school age, this idea of doing a reading for someone and "determining" that the client is a witch, without the person having ever made that choice for themselves. Sure, it might spark interest and bring them to the community looking for more information, but the idea of being able to designate or "tell" other people that they're witches, independent of their own choices, needs to be squashed.)

Even if you have reason to believe that someone is secretly a witch, it is Very Poor Form to inquire directly, if they haven't chosen to share. Plenty of practitioners have Very Good Reasons for keeping their practice under wraps. If you want to make a private inquiry, that's fine. Just be prepared that you might receive a denial, no matter how sure you are. If the answer is no, that's it. Don't invade people's privacy, especially if you live in an area where being publicly labeled as a witch might be unsafe.

I know we like to say that witchcraft doesn't have universal rules, but there ARE overarching codes of conduct. And one of them is that you do NOT out someone as a witch without their permission. Ever. Because you do not know what the repercussions might be for that person and you may be placing them in danger without knowing it.

If someone decides to be a witch or to live openly as such, that is their decision to make and theirs alone. And if they choose not to be, this must likewise be respected. You don't get to make that decision for them, just as you wouldn't want anyone else making that decision for you.

Sincerely,

Someone Who Lived Through The Satanic Panic And Has Done A LOT Of Research About Witch Hunts

Source: breelandwalker
becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys
cnet.com

Mr. Trash Wheel is gobbling up millions of pounds of trash

Trash interceptors are becoming more common in large cities, helping to stop garbage as it floats down waterways. Mr. Trash Wheel is the pride of Baltimore, helping to make a cleaner, more beautiful city waterfront.
Stephen Beacham
plantyhamchuk

“ Since its installation Mr. Trash Wheel has intercepted over 3 million pounds of trash, making the harbor not only cleaner and more beautiful, but also a nicer home for local wildlife as well as waterfront businesses. Four different wheels now sit in Baltimore’s rivers, and soon more will be helping clean other cities across the globe. “

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…

“If you go to MrTrashWheel.com you can actually download a spreadsheet of every dumpster we’ve pulled out of the harbor over the past seven years, with an estimate of different types of trash that was in that dumpster,” Lindquist said. “We know that we’ve pulled out over a million styrofoam containers from the harbor, and that’s the sort of information, data and photos that we share with our elected officials to let them know just how big of a problem this is.”

…

“Mr. Trash Wheel has a few relatives in Baltimore, including Professor Trash Wheel, the first female Trash Wheel; Captain Trash Wheel, who’s nonbinary; and Gwynnda The Good Wheel of the West, who was recently the star of a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark her installation. They all have their own likes and dislikes on their public profiles online.

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They’re also hungry, with a reputation for being able to gobble up larger pieces of trash, including a guitar, a full-size beer keg and on one occasion a ball python who escaped from its owner and made a home for itself on the warm battery casing of one of the Trash Wheels. Because the Trash Wheels don’t harm animals, they’ve become a kind of refuge for creatures seeking a safe place to nest. A mother duck once laid its eggs under the conveyor belt, and fish enjoy the oxygenated water that’s created as the wheel turns in the river during the summer.”

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…

“ If you’re a city leader or official, you can adopt your own Trash Wheel at MrTrashWheel.com. “

ALRIGHT EVERYBODY TIME TO CONTACT YOUR LOCAL OFFICIALS

Source: plantyhamchuk
wilwheaton

ceasarslegion asked:

Okay this is gonna sound really weird but as a trans guy in his early 20s who was also raised by a single mother and doesnt have the best immediate family Wesley really gives me a lot of hope. I like to think that Beverly would be incredibly accepting and absolutely amazing if Wes was like me, and that thought really helps when things take a downward turn. The Crushers just seem like such a loving little family who really trust and support each other no matter what, even if it's the two of them against the universe. I'm really grateful for the character you played!

wilwheaton answered:

Beverly would love you, Wesley would love you, and I love you, because you are perfect exactly the way you are.

electricpentacle
jessielefey

Apparently I badly want to go on my “stop making fun of plague doctors, they were ahead of their time and doing the best they could with the primitive equipment they had available” rant.

jessielefey

They weren’t stupid.

They shoved herbs in their breathing hose because they knew the air was bad and hoped it would help, and *they were right* in theory. The plague itself was not an airborn virus, but they couldn’t know that and it wasn’t the only thing killing people at the time anyway, and they covered *all* their bases. If they’d had the technological knowhow to make air tanks, or even better air filters, they would’ve. They just made the best air filters they could.

What we think they wore isn’t exactly what they wore, and what they actually wore would later be repurposed into scuba suits (and thus spacesuits too) and *actual hazmat suits*, because the theory was sound, the materials were just lacking, and honestly what they did with the materials they had was hardcore.

  • they wore full face protection which avoids the most obvious mucosal transmission routes
  • INCLUDING GLASS IN THE EYEHOLES. They invented safety goggles before most of the world had nailed down corrective eye glasses yet
  • they wore additional head protection to cover seams in their mask/hoods
  • they oiled and waxed all their clothes to make it fluid-resistant
  • they wore separate but tight fitting equally if not more fluid-resistant gloves and/or armcuffs so they could keep hand contamination to a minimum even when dressing/undressing AND they only wore the suit in areas they thought was contaminated and took it off before entering uncontaminated areas
  • they may have used herbed vinegar to clean, and if the stories are true this was clever because 1) it’s available and portable 2) pretty effective as far as medieval disinfectants go versus the damage it does the the user (as opposed to what they had for bleach at the time, and the actual percentage level in alcohols at the time which was mostly insufficient for task as well as being needed for more important things); vinegar is *still* a decent disinfectant even now

It honestly took doctors well into the twentieth century to get that level of obsessive attention to hygiene and cross-contamination back. A whole lot of babies and mothers wouldn’t’ve died, for instance, if a plague doctor instead of an obstetrician supported the birth because A PLAGUE DOCTOR WOULD KNOW TO WASH THEIR GODDAMNED HANDS.

Actual plague doctor’s outfits:

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jessielefey

Who was responsible for turning plague doctors into laughingstocks instead of primative but honoured medical and scientific predecessors anyway?

Was it the Victorians? It was probably the Victorians. Those pretentious sanctimonious jerks ruined everything.

xekstrin

#i did not realize people made fun of plague doctors #ive mostly seen people freaked out by the aesthetic #they always seemed to me like a bittersweet example of humanity scared shitless #and still trying really really hard #i’d get very poetic about it #sometimes its a stare out the window and empathize with plague doctors kind of day and that’s just how it is #that’s just how growing up is #i feel like thanks victorians is a strong contender for thanks obama’s throne (tags via @cicadianrhythm)

petermorwood

Bravo!

jhscdood

The plague was also freaky because it was NEW! The medieval medical field had expertise in Aristotle, Galen, and other big names in medicine. They knew anatomy, they knew how the body could go wonky in lots of different ways, and there were even specialists in different types of medicine! But plague was completely outside their knowledge – and the medical field very quickly pivoted in response to its appearance. “Plague tracts” – basically essays on the cause, prevention, and/or treatment of plague – were written by the hundreds as the medical field tried to figure out just what the duck was going on.

All this to say, the study of medicine did NOT just burst fully formed from Louis Pasteur’s forehead. It was a long progression of knowledge transmission, loss, and rediscovery from the time of the Ancient Greeks all the way through to today. Medical theories of disease grew and evolved and informed on each other over time. You don’t get the germ theory of disease without contagion theory, and you dont get contagion theory without miasma theory.

tl;dr plague doctors were scientists and their work was absolutely crucial for the later development of germ theory and medical practice

(source: i have an MA in plague studies and an MPH in epidemiology)

Source: jessielefey
electricpentacle
apricops

The worst part about writing fantasy is being keenly aware that you’re writing fantasy, which means that you always have to straddle a thin three-way line between anachronism, cliche, and clunk.

Take money, for example. You can’t just have people in a fictional fantasy world walk around using Euros. You consider something generic, like ‘silver coins,’ but before you know it your world starts sounding like a shitty ren faire.

So you think about the world you’ve built and its needs and its history to come up with some unique and relevant terms. But if your terms are too unique and relevant you wind up writing “yarr, you’ll be ransomed for a hundred Trade League Silver Gyrblonks” and realize your worldbuilding is now getting in the way of basic readability.

shieldfoss

“They’re using golden valley coins!”

…didst thou mean dollars?

“Nevermind. They’re using some basic silver coin and then enough gold to be worth ten silver coins is called a ten-piece”

…Si, si, el Peso!

Trying over, they’re minted by the king so they’re called crown coins, or, these days, abbreviated, they’re just Crowns

Naturligvis, vi skifter Daler ud med Kroner!

—

The Lesson Of The Day is that all the names are already claimed by IRL, and all the almost-good-names that you could invent to get around that were used by some SFF author in the seventies e.g. I bet you can’t do Suns and Moons for your gold/silver coins, I bet some author did that already.

garmbreak1

My fantasy nation uses solid gold coins marked by the dental impressions of the reigning king, as a sign of their purity and authenticity.

They’re called Bitcoins.

brazenautomaton

oh you can go the fuck to jail that’s what you can do, where you’ll be shackled to a chain gang hitting the blockchain with a pickaxe

Source: apricops