goopy-gan:

doofcas:

mrcleanheichou:

doofcas:

mrcleanheichou:

doofcas:

doofcas:

Me: *picks up “dead” bat in my yard so my dog doesn’t eat it*

“Dead” bat: O_O

Me: O_O

Me upon realizing I am holding a very not dead bat and not dead bat realizing it has been picked up by a large creature at the exact same second: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

He scream

You want rabies? That’s how you get rabies

1.I picked it up with a towel and gardening gloves and never once touched it with my bare hands.

2.

3.The bat was at the bottom of my porch where I have to take my dog out but I guess I should have just left it there for her to eat right?

4.It was in a position that made it clear that it was most likely hurt from hitting my house and not just sick. It’s warming up in my area and they are just coming out from the winter and it was most likely confused because I live right next to the highway and there’s a lot of noise.

5.You can only get rabies from a bat by being bitten or otherwise getting its saliva in your bloodstream. And it was two inches long and I’m a grown ass adult with a towel and gardening gloves and a thick ass sweater.

Good thing you tagged it as “stupid people” because you obviously don’t know enough about the situation

I’m sorry I tagged it that way. That was incredibly childish of me. I’ve just had it pounded into my head that you don’t mess with sick or injured wildlife because of the risk of exposure.

I’m a registered Veterinary technician and I’ve worked with a rabid cat and it was terrifying

I’m sorry I got so defensive. I’ve seen a lot of bats killed in my area because people are misinformed about the rabies situation. I used to play with them as a kid by throwing sticks in the air and watching them swoop to get them and each year they were noticably fewer until they were just gone.

That was the most adult way I’ve ever seen an argument addressed on the internet.

topsecretespeonage:

neurofancier:

khirsahle:

newtsckamander:

suaimhneas-peace:

emeraldboreas:

a-windsor:

mellivorinae:

a-windsor:

mellivorinae:

OH MY GOD whyyyy did no one tell me you’re supposed to send thank-yous after interviews?? Why would I do that???

“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”

I HATE ETIQUETTE IT’S THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING FOR ME TO LEARN WITHOUT SOMEONE DIRECTLY TELLING ME THIS SHIT

NO ONE TOLD YOU???? WTF! I HAVE FAILED YOU. Also: Dear ______: Thank you so much for the opportunity to sit down with you (&________) to discuss the [insert job position]. I am grateful to be considered for the position. I think I will be a great fit at [company name], especially given my experience in __________. [insert possible reference to something you talked about, something that excited you.] I look forward to hearing from you [and if you are feeling super confident: and working together in the future]. Sincerely, @mellivorinae

THIS IS A LIFESAVING TEMPLATE

YOU ARE WELCOME

My brother got a really great paid internship one summer. The guy who hired him said the deciding factor was the professional thank you letter my brother sent after the interview.

should it be an email? or like a physical letter?

email, you want to send it within a few hours at max after the interview if you can so it’s fresh in their mind who you are. 

Confirmed! I interviewed for a job right after arriving in NY. The interview went incredibly well, and I went home and immediately wrote a thank you letter and put it in the mail. I had a super good feeling about this interview.

I didn’t get the job.

However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.

So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.

Either way, those letters are important.

Pro tip: If you really want HR to develop a personal interest in your application, publicly thank them on linkedin. Just make a short post telling your network about how X recruiter really went above and beyond to make you feel welcome, or about how be accommodating and professional they were, or whatever. Make sure to use the mention feature so they’ll get a notification and see it. 

Flattery will get you everywhere… and public flattery that might make its way back to their manager, doubly so.

Obligatory plug for one of FreePrintable.net’s sites: ThankYouLetter.ws. They have a whole section with interview thank you letter templates, and a page with specific tips for interview thank you letters. (There are also tons of other letter templates if you browse around a bit.)

whetstonefires:

scripttorture:

In modern popular culture torture is consistently linked to interrogation: to getting information from a prisoner.

Now I’ve written several times why this trope is not only wrong but also harmful and is used in the real world to justify torture. O’Mara and Rejali also cover this in depth over several hundred pages for anyone who wants more information.

I often get asked for realistic alternatives: what does actually work? How can characters, bad or good, actually go about gaining information in a realistic way?

This isn’t going to be an exhaustive list, and I feel I should state that I have no practical experience of interrogation. Hopefully though it can serve as a starting point that will help you think about how characters come by information in your stories.

The first important point is that interrogation generally isn’t very effective.

Very little useful information comes from interrogation of suspects when compared to all the other sources of information police and intelligence agencies draw on.

There are a several reasons interrogation isn’t hugely useful including:

·         Human memory isn’t that good. Even well meaning people who want to help forget important details.

·         People are much better at lying than detecting lies. Even people who describe themselves as good at detecting when someone is lying do a very poor job.

·         Memories are easily modified in stressful situations. Even someone who isn’t trying to can plant suggestions leading to false memories, directing the interrogation in a particular direction without even realising it.

Some useful information does come from interrogation (and I’ll come back to how to handle it in a moment) but, realistically the following are more important sources of information in any investigation:

Physical forensic evidence

This doesn’t just mean things like hair samples and DNA. Computer records, credit card bills, surveillance camera footage, library records and letters can tell you an awful lot about a person. Reading a character’s emails or letters and keeping track of their bills can reveal a lot of plot relevant information such as whether two characters are in contact or why a character might be desperate for money.

Gathering this sort of information takes a lot of time and hard work. It’s not as simple as collecting evidence, such as a piece of hair or a computer hard drive, the information has to be analysed and interpreted correctly.

The hair could be DNA tested and cross referenced with a database or simply identified as human and of a particular type and colour. (Identifying it as human is important, I know at least one forensic tech who was handed cow hair and told it was definitely from a suspect)

The computer hard drive would need to be poured over file by file. It’s not quite enough to suppose character A could access character B’s emails, A has to have the time and inclination to read the damn things.

An important point to consider is how dedicated your characters are. Careful collection and examination of evidence is probably the best way of finding something out. But it requires patience, hard work and a lot of time.

There’s a reason police work is a full time job and there’s a reason a lot of people in professions like policing might think torture is easier. Gathering and analysing evidence is hard.

It’s worth considering whether your character has the resources and inclination to go down this route before you decide to use it.

Observation

This is the stake-out scene from every police movie and tv show. It’s having one character physically following and watching another character for as long as humanly possible, recording everywhere they go and everything they do.

It means finding out where a character lives, watching them at work, noting where they eat lunch and who with. Finding out where they go in their free time and how often. When they go to bed. Who they visit. How long they do it for. The minute detail of everything someone does in their day recorded for a period of weeks or months to build up a picture of the person.

If that sounds creepy that’s because it is.

This is a very time consuming strategy. It requires a lot of focus and patience and dedication or the ability to hire someone who has those qualities. It’s simpler than systematically gathering physical evidence and it’s easier to do discretely.

Informants

This is probably the simplest major method of gathering information. It can be as complicated as the Soviet Union network of paid informants or as straight-forward as people coming forward and volunteering information.

This is incredibly important to police investigations. Information from voluntary informants led to the capture of the London tube bombers in 2005. The suspects were identified by their family and neighbours who went to the police.

This sort of informal reporting doesn’t just occur in police contexts. From a writing perspective the way I tend to think about it is in terms of crossing societal lines.

Every culture and subculture has ideas about what is and what is not acceptable. Every group has an idea of what’s ‘going too far’.

You might be writing a story set around a violent, criminal subculture where theft and murder of other adults are the norm. But the same characters who wouldn’t dream of reporting an enemy for killing another adult might feel differently about the murder of a child.

A religious character might excuse their priest’s affairs, but report anything they’d see as desecration or blasphemy.

A scientist might ignore a colleague harassing their lab assistants but report data fraud.

Think about what matters to the characters and you’ll be able to tell when they’d freely volunteer information.

If you can’t think of anything emotional that would cause them to inform remember that your characters could pay informants. And then consider how many people who really need some cash might be in a position to watch or steal from other characters.

Cleaners, drivers, people who deliver supplies- anyone who would be on a low wage, have regular contact with the character but only a superficial relationship could be a very valuable informant.

Interrogation

At the time of writing there is really not enough systematic research on effective interrogation. As a result I’m going to try and concentrate on things we’re reasonably sure help rather than getting bogged down in academic discussions about what might be useful. Those discussions are interesting but not much help to writers.

1)      The first important point is that interrogation takes time.

If a character is volunteering information that probably won’t take as long but somewhere in the region of 3-6 hours would still be reasonable. A witness to a crime or victim would probably need time and reassurance in order to tell the authorities what they know to the best of their ability.

Someone who isn’t really willing to talk (for whatever reason) will need much longer. A day is actually unusually short. Weeks or even up to a month is not unreasonable. Timeframes are going to vary depending on the characters and the situation the plot has put them in but I think it’s important to remember that interrogation isn’t quick and it isn’t simple.

2)      Interrogators and characters being interrogated should speak a common language.

It sounds simple and obvious but if the characters can’t communicate effectively interrogation is almost certainly going to fail.

Using translators does not seem to be as effective as using people who speak the language but there haven’t been systematic studies of speakers vs interpreters as far as I know.

3)      Good record keeping is essential for effective interrogation.

That’s straightforward in a modern setting with recording equipment but less so in a historical one.

Having a record of everything the suspect character says when interviewed means that everything they say can be analysed by multiple people, can be cross checked against what they said previously and can be stored in a legible format in case it’s needed later.

 

Checking what a suspect character said today against what they said yesterday or even last week helps investigators to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Lies are difficult to keep consistent, especially over longer periods of time. Inconsistencies can be helpful and consistencies can help highlight areas investigators should look into in greater depth.

Having multiple people able to analyse information also helps hugely, each individual brings their own specialist knowledge to the investigation. Which can be as simple as recognising a local’s nickname (and so correctly identifying them later) or as complex as analysing how a suspect claims they made a bomb and recognising that that process wouldn’t work.

4)      Even someone who genuinely wants to help will forget details and get things wrong.

That isn’t unusual and it certainly isn’t a sign that the character is unwilling or being deliberately unhelpful. In fact a story that sounds too detailed and too precise might well be a sign of a pre-scripted and pre-rehearsed lie.

5)      Very very few people refuse to talk.

Whether they talk about anything helpful is of course another matter but the stereotype of a tough criminal sitting completely silently and staring down a cop is incredibly rare in reality.

A smart interrogator will try to get their suspect chatting in the hope that some useful information will come out.

Let’s say one of our characters is suspected of being part of a larger conspiracy of some kind. And he won’t chat about any of the ‘interesting’ material the cops have found in his house, but he’s happy to talk to the interrogator about the local football team.

The interrogator might notice that he seems to go to watch the local team regularly and that he goes with the same set of friends. Friends who might not be part of this conspiracy but might have heard something useful from the suspect.

A smart suspect will try to keep up a conversation peppered with misleading hints and misinformation.

6)      Have the interrogating character establish a friendly rapport with their interviewee.

It is easier to talk to someone who comes across as friendly, interested in what you have to say and broadly sympathetic to your position.

It is much more difficult to talk to someone who shouts, screams and acts in an aggressive and confrontational manner.

The interrogator’s job is primarily to make it easy for the suspect to talk. Everything else follows from that.

A polite, engaging, sociable character who can keep calm under pressure would be a good pick. Someone who can be ‘friends’ with anybody.

Let me stress that this can be extremely difficult. We’re talking about a character who can walk into a room with the worst possible criminals and try to make friends with them; a character who is successful at doing so. Don’t be afraid to show the kind of toll that takes on the character.

7)      Don’t let suspects talk to each other before hand.

I’ve discussed elsewhere why solitary confinement is harmful- keeping characters completely isolated might well impair their memory of events.

But allowing characters to talk to each other before their interrogated also affects memory both for characters who want to mislead interrogators and for characters who want to help.

Essentially we edit our memories all the time. Discussion of shared experiences with other people is a major trigger for natural alternation of memories.

Four witnesses of the same events who don’t talk to each other in advance will give four different but broadly similar accounts.

If the same witnesses talk to each other before they’re interviewed they might well all report the same inaccuracies.

8)      Have interviewed characters tell their story backwards.

This is a pretty simple memory aid that makes it easier for interrogators to spot inconsistencies in a story. These inconsistencies don’t necessarily indicate a lie but they highlight areas a character might be unsure of or might have inaccurate memories of.

For instance if a character witnessed a car crash they might be instructed to start their account from the moment the ambulances arrived at the scene and work backwards from there until they reach the moments just before the crash.

This technique can also help remind characters of additional details as they tell the story.

9)      There is no reliable way to tell if someone is lying by looking at them.

Even people who judge themselves as ‘good’ at detecting lies perform poorly in tests.

There are no reliable ‘tests’ for lying. There are no working lie detector tests and based on how complex an action lying is short of literally reading minds I don’t think it would be possible.

The only reliable way to tell if someone lied is to double check everything they said.

10)  Body language is not a reliable indicator of a character’s guilt or innocence.

A lot of people still believe that it is and there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with your characters believing that- but I’d advise caution.

An interrogator character might recognise that a suspect character is nervous, but to instantly ‘know’ why they’d need to be psychic.

---

The vast majority of people who conduct interrogations in real life have little to no formal training. In the USA (2013) the average was between 8-15 hours of the full training program. Consider how many hours you’d spend on a year long full time education course and you’ll get an idea of how little training that is.

We are what fills in the gap.

People with almost no training look to our portrayals of tough, aggressive interrogators who ‘always’ get results and, consciously or not, those portrayals influence them.

The truth is interrogation isn’t a great way of getting information and interrogators are only human: they don’t have a supernatural insight into the suspect or crime.

But we tend to write them as if they do. Personally I think that’s part of the problem- We focus on interrogation because of its dramatic potential. That focus warps how both the public and people involved in investigations view interrogation. It places too much focus on a comparatively poor information gathering technique and leads to assumptions that interrogators are capable of more than they realistically are.

Trust, human interaction and treating other people as human is important. Anything that undermines that undermines interrogation.

Disclaimer

[Sources: Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation. Harvard University Press, S O’Mara

Torture and Democracy, Princeton, D Rejali

The work of E Alison and L Alison, discussed in this newspaper article and listed here on their University home page papers are behind a pay wall (one specific to interviewing terrorists can be found here).

New Scientist 2015, article on evidence based policing]

Note on the record-keeping in historical circumstances: the Inquisition actually invented the basis of modern indexing, so as to be able to compare what all the people connected to a case said, or what a given individual said in two interrogations years apart.

The latter ability, to confront a guy with his exact words six years ago, was a terrifying unheard-of power in the Middle Ages. For period pieces, it could enhance your story a lot to recreate that shock.

stardustsherlock:

spacebumble:

lochnessie:

1. Can we as millennials and gen-z’s collectively agree that NObody Cares about elbows on the table like Why was that Ever A Problem for Anyone?? We can chill right?

nobody asked for this but the origin of not putting one’s elbows on the table comes from the late 18th/early 19th century when wooden ships were still used in the navy- sailors would balance their plates between their elbows while eating to keep them from sliding around. because sailors developed a reputation on-land for being uncouth and aggressive, the placing of elbows on the table became associated with such behaviour.

some cultural historians believe it also goes back further, to the middle ages, when large banquet-style meals were served on trestle tables that had no side support. if someone put their elbows on the table, they risked bringing the whole table down with them.

so basically, there is no longer any need to NOT put elbows on the table, and there hasn’t been since the advent of steamships.

I love this because now i can smartass the next person who tries to give me shit for it

jaytimweek:

PRESENTING: Themes & AU’s | November 12th - 19th

Day 1: Magic // Sugar Daddy
Day 2: Time Travel // Heist
Day 3: Viking // Bare Skin
Day 4: College // Vegas Wedding
Day 5: FREE PROMPT DAY
Day 6: Mafia // Bodyswap
Day 7: ABO // Nightmares & Hallucinations
Day 8: Urban Fantasy // Blood Oath


You may notice that, unlike previous JayTimWeeks, this one has eight days instead of seven. No one ever really wants the magic to end, and so we decided to stretch it out, keeping the top 14 prompts while using the Free Prompt Day as a mid-week breather. 

Similar to previous events, we have assigned two prompts for each day; feel free to choose one or incorporate both into your creative works. We’ll be sending out reminders leading up to JayTimWeek: Themes & AU’s and we’re looking forward to all of your amazing submissions!

Things to note:

-The official tags for posts are #jaytimweekfall2018 or #jaytimweek 
-Please be sure to check out our RULES 
-If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Thank you so much for your continued support and excitement! We’re looking forward to another wonderful week!! 

thatfeministactivistgirl:

thessalian:

beekeepercain:

tenadp:

wotseit:

s/o to aces with libido

s/o to aces with kinks

s/o to aces with fantasies

s/o to aces who experience sensual attraction

s/o to aces who like to be sensually intimate with their partners

s/o to aces who like to be sexually intimate with their partners

s/o to aces who aren’t “perfect” asexuals, you are still valid and you are all ace af

I am really not trying to be rude, I just want to understand!! If you enjoy being sexually intimate with a partner, how are you asexual? Sorry if this comes across as offensive, I’m just interested to know!

There are other reasons than specifically wanting to have sex for the sake of having sex. For example, some asexuals want to please their non-asexual partners, and it isn’t necessarily uncomfortable for them, they just don’t specifically desire that particular action. Like, asexuals can still dig the feeling of sexual stimulation, since it is meant to be pleasurable. It’s like, if there’s cake on the table, but you don’t particularly want cake at that time, or you don’t really care for cake, you can still choose to eat it because even if cake isn’t your favourite or you’re quite full already, it still tastes fine, and your best friend is eating some with you. 

Alternatively, it’s possible to sort of “trade favours”; instead of sexually pleasing their asexual partner who is disinterested in receiving sexually, the non-asexual party might cuddle, kiss and otherwise be physically affectionate with their partner while making love. This’d still count as sexual intimacy, even though only one person in the act is - hopefully - orgasming.

Some asexuals see sex as a way to bond with their partners. Again, the act isn’t specifically interesting to them, but it works as a means to an end - through it, they get to feel closer to their partner.

Asexuality is the absence of sexual attraction, the “I want to bang that” trigger that most people have in response to potential sexual partners. Not the absence of sexual activity itself, which would be celibacy - the choice to not engage in sex, the act. An asexual can have sex and not feel that specific type of attraction to their partner, as attraction is passive and not based in active choice. It doesn’t mean that that partner is disgusting to them, either; they may well be aesthetically attractive to the asexual person (the same way you can appreciate a beautiful statue or a painting without becoming sexually aroused by viewing it) and the asexual person may well desire physical intimacy with them, such as hugging, kissing, cuddling and holding hands. Since not all asexuals are inherently repulsed by sex but merely disinterested in it by default, turning that desire for general closeness into sexual activity where it provides fulfillment of some form to both parties isn’t necessarily paradoxical.

Someone once brought up a fairly good point regarding this subject; non-asexual people also sometimes hook up and have sex with people that aren’t specifically attractive to them. It can still be perfectly consensual and satisfy the needs of both parties, despite the fact that the base attraction wasn’t there. For example, a person who just wants to have sex with someone might go along with a partner they would not otherwise choose, but who simply happens to be available and ready to do the deed with them. Alternatively, a woman might seek to have a baby, and have sex with a partner solely for that purpose, and whether the partner chosen is sexually attractive to them or not isn’t a big factor in the choice. (Plenty of asexual women choose to have sex to have children.) There are multiple reasons to have sex even when you’re not sexually attracted. Specifically for asexuals, the factor of having a non-asexual partner is usually a big motivator to have sex, and other reasons like the ones I explored above may additionally pop up to support that decision.

Finally, some asexuals just really dig orgasms. Most people do. We just don’t have that special someone we wish was delivering them to us, and largely prefer to take care of our own. But when you are in a relationship and that kind of comes as a package deal, some asexuals don’t feel like it’s a bad trade, or at least aren’t violently opposed to the idea. I think most asexuals who do choose to have sex are indifferent to it - it’s not their favourite thing in the world, but it takes care of business.

Best explanation EVER.

Now THIS is the ace discourse I’m here for. Yes, yes, yes! 🙏

gallusrostromegalus:

amythe3lder:

justacookieofacumberbatch:

prokopetz:

rainewynd:

samjohnssonvt:

omniship-armada:

Supercarrier: fandom flagship.  Everybody and their dog ships it.  The fandom is glutted with artwork and fic.  You cannot escape this ship.

Dreadnought: massively popular.  Nearly everybody ships it.  You can, with dedication, in theory, reach the end of the AO3 archive for the ship’s tag, but it’ll take a long time.

Cruiser: pretty popular ship.  Not everyone ships it, but everyone knows about it.  Has a good amount of fic/art, and probably multiple ask blogs.

Frigate: just plain popular.  Feels like it could use more fanworks.  New people to the fandom might not know about it, but they’ll stumble across it sooner rather than later.

Gunboat: bit of a rarepair.  It might have an ask blog or two.  A couple big name fans ship it.  Probably only takes a few weeks to get through the entire AO3 backlog, and one new fic gets added during that time.

Tugboat: rarepair.  Almost never seen except as a side pairing to a more popular ship.  You can usually get through everything on AO3 in a matter of days.  You’ve forgotten what it is to be picky about what you read.

Rowboat: less than a dozen people ship it.  You all know each other.  You exist in an endless cycle of the same five people desperately producing art and fic and one person who constantly contributes headcanons.

Canoe: you are one of maybe three people who ship it, and there’s a not-insignificant chance you’ve never encountered those other two hypothetical shippers.  You spend your days paddling furiously in hopes of keeping the ship afloat, dreaming of the day you upgrade to a rowboat so you can finally rest.

Submarine: Quite a few people ship it, but nobody wants to admit to shipping it. Will randomly appear and throw the other ships into confusion.

Pontoon: that random crossover ship with that one black dress character/trope/fandom everyone will ship with everything else. Has the potential to turn into a massive party until someone gets sick and everyone goes home.

Pedalo: That iconic bizarre crackship whose proponents claim they’re only into it ironically, but secretly they’re all dead serious.

Paging @amythe3lder for the pool noodle definition.

Barge: Not quite seaworthy, but buoyant in both the literal and figurative senses. Someone is always merrily drunktweeting about it at 11pm on Saturday night and then wistfully sobertweeting about it 4 hours later from their kitchen floor. The kind of ship that generates more playlists than fic. Artfully covered in trash and dirty laundry.

Raft: There’s two-to-four people who Ship It Hard and a few others who grab onto the side for safety when there’s drama on their usual flagship.

Barrel: There’s orphaned fic of it. There’s unsigned art of it. There’s headcanon asks on anon. Someone must ship it, but no one knows why or who they are. Your friend got a glimpse once before they ducked back down.

Pool Noodle: It’s just you, kicking your feet. You named the ship and wrote it on your noodle with a big sharpie. You tell people about it and are met with confused blinking. Most of the fics in the tag were either written by you or for you. You are caught between wanting to shout about how lovely life is on this floating scrap of whimsy and fearing that your noodle can’t bear much weight. Or worse, that someone will come over and dunk you, take your noodle and fwhap you on the head with it. 

Scuba: Like a submarine, but it’s just you all by your lonesome, exploring the depths, possibly encountering more tentacles than anticipated.

elderly-scrolls:

the characters: under no circumstances do i want to discuss my past, my trauma, my mental state or any other personal issues

the players: Somebody Please Interrogate My Child

fatcatsarecats:

diamondorloj:

holtzyrans:

holtzyrans:

Consider: the monkey brain/human brain meme but instead it’s feminist brain/lesbian brain

Feminist brain: this character would never realistically fight in that outfit

Lesbian brain: tiddies hot

Feminist brain: gender non confirming women as villains are queercoding and teaching us that being a lesbian / wlw / gnc woman is evil and bad

Lesbian brain: step on me hot evil lady

@maskeddork

onnastik:

lochtayboatsong:

strangenewclassrooms:

exvind:

galaxystew:

down-sizing:

otherwise-called-squidpope:

unicornempire:

arcticfoxbear:

the-grand-author:

wuestenratte:

val-tashoth:

crazy-pages:

radioactivepeasant:

arafaelkestra:

arcticfoxbear:

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.

Earth being Space Australia Words cannot express how much I love these posts

Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.” 

“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”

“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”

“What, the molten rock?”

“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”

“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”

“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”

Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.

“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”

My new favorite Humans are Weird quote

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

aka The History of Alaska

Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.

“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?”
“Those worthless rocks? Yeah.”
“80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”

“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!”
“Don’t be ridiculous”
“No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.”
“Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?”
“Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”

Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.

It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.

“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.

“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”

Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.

“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”

“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”

Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”

“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”

Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable - it would be folly to try and settle there.”

Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible. 

“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft - by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-”

‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’

“What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.”

‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’

“….you….you are going to die, you know this right?”

‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’

“Listen, lad. I’ve built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was molten magma. All those aliens said I was daft to build a castle on a molten planet, but I built it all the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the magma. So, I built a second one. That sank into the magma. So I built a third one. That spontaneously combusted, turned to ash, then sank into the magma. But the fourth one stayed up. An’ that’s what your gonna get, lad – the strongest castle in this solar system.”

“I’m gonna need for you to explain ‘hurricane parties’ to me again.  You humans have the technology to track these apocalyptic storms of wind and rain and predict where on the landmass they’ll hit up to a week in advance.  And you…have social gatherings during them?”

“Well yeah, but only up to about Category 3 strength.  Then it’s time to pack the car and head inland for most people, although a few hardy souls stick around and ride them out.”

“Oh good.  Category 3 is what again?  Winds up to 75 kilometers per hour?”

“No no, Category 3 starts at 175 kilometers per hour.  You left off the one.”

I’m sure I’ve reblogged some version of this before, but I needed the STRONGEST CASTLE IN THIS SOLAR SYSTEM on my blog.

bonduelle:

Kitchen

• How to clean up kitchen (particularly the sink, burnt pots and small aplliances)
• How to take care of kitchen stuff so that it lives longer
  
• 10 commandments of a clutter-free kitchen
• Organizing kitchen mini masterpost
  
• 5 things to do in the kitchen before you go to bed
• What is soapy bowl and why it’s awesome
• How to organize your fridge (also here, here and here)
• Thins you should know about your fridge
• Adding more storage space in a tiny kitchen
  

Cleaning

• Lots of cleaning tutorials and tips. And some more
  
• How to clean up pantry
• How to make your house look cleaner than it really is
• How to wash pillows
• Cleaning the bathroom
  
• How to clean the nastiest places (and get rid of bad smells, etc.)
• Floor-to-celling guide to spring cleaning
• Recaulking your bathtub
• Cleaning grout
• How to dispose of toxic waste
• Cleaning the medicine cabinet
  
• How to make chores more fun
• You mustn’t skip these chores, but you can delay these if you’re busy
  
• Easily forgotten things that you should clean/replace
• Why you need a catch-up day
• Small cleaning tasks to do in under 15 minutes (also here)
  

Looking for a flat/moving

• First apartment checklist
• Where too look during an apartment hunt (and some more tips)
• Negotiate these things with your landlord
• What to do first in a new place
• What do clean before moving out
• How not to get crazy during moving flats
• How to downgrade to a smaller place
  

Organisation, storage

• 10 habits for better home organisation
  
• How to store off-season items
• 10 storage ideas for small spaces (more here)
  
• Storage secret weapons
  
• How to organise your closet
  
• Things to do before twice-yearly closet switchout
• How to store and maintain your sweaters
  

Decluttering

• Why it feels great
  
• How to get rid of clutter
• How to declutter (not only a flat)
• What needs to be thrown away from your flat
• How to let go of the things you no longer need
• Things you own too many of; you can throw away these too
  
• Decuttering the bathroom
• Decluterring masterpost
  

Decorating

• Projects for every room in your home/flat
• Add style to your home
• DIY decorating ideas
• How to use negative space
• 4 common decorating mistakes and how to avoid them
• Questions to ask yourself before buying something new
• How to choose furniture that’ll be easier to clean
  

Season-specific tips

• Things to do before the cold season
• Household hacks for winter
  
• Preparing for Christmas
  

Green thumb 101

• How to take care of succulents
• Never kill a plant again
  

Living alone / Sharing a flat

• How not to be lonely when living alone
  
• 12 things you can only do when home alone
• What you learn by living alone
  
• Things you learn while sharing a flat
• What to pack when leaving for a dorm
  
• How to seamlessly share a kitchen (or a flat in general)
  
• Safety issues to discuss with flatmates
• Benefits of living with strangers

And also how to turn a house into a home

byjoveimbeinghumble:

thoughshebebutlittle1:

byjoveimbeinghumble:

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

• Duquesne University has a guide on Dracula
• University of Northern Iowa: Monsters and Religion
• Fontbonne University has a particularly good one on Monsters, Ghosts, and Mysteries
• Washington University in St. Louis: a course guide on Monsters and Strangeness 
  

How about poverty? 

• Michigan State: Poverty and Inequality with great recommended terms and links to datasets 
• Notre Dame: a multimedia guide on Poverty Studies.
  

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

• UNC Chapel Hill: Food and Nutrition through the 20th Century (with a whole section on race, gender, and class)
• Brown University: Primary Sources for History of Health in the Americas
  
• Duke University: Ad*Access, a digital collection of advertisements from the early 20th century, with a section on beauty and hygiene  

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

This is…amazing.
I am angry that I didn’t know about this until now.
Now I can ~academically~ indulge my fascination with the 1918 flu pandemic?
When I have organic chem homework and a lab report due tomorrow?
I both love this and hate this.

I have terrible news. 

At a quick glance, Christopher Newport University, Goodwin College, and Harford Community College all have libguides on the 1918 flu pandemic. 

sonderingeternally:

World Building Tips:  Empires and Power Structures

World building is important in any setting. There are places, such as fantasy literature where it can become the difference between a believable world and an unbelievable one. Suspension of disbelief is often a critical part to stories. 

Many fantasy books take place during times of war, or revolution or even a fall of a corrupt empire.  I love reading these sorts of stories, as many people do.  Power structures can be complex.  They can be used to create tension and drama between characters - take for instance the hero versus the corrupt government troupe in fiction such as The Hunger Games, Harry Potter or even more traditional fantasies such as Tigana ( by Guy Gavriel Kay) or The Wheel of Time series (by Robert Jordan).   As a reader it can be compelling to follow these stories.  For writers though, it can seem daunting to go into the details of shaping a believable power structure.  Here are some basic tips for creating one.  

There are four crucial factors to any power structure.  These are as follows:

Originally posted by aivim

1. Military - this includes the size of the army, the types of technology used (guns or swords? navy or land army?), the basic structure of the army (is it highly regimented like the Romans? What are the different groups within the army? How are they divided - by technology, skills or social status?). Another important question here is why has the military developed in this way? The Roman military, for example, grew out of competition with other Italian states. The opposition is equally important here - who were/are they within your story? Apply the above questions just as much to them, because empires and other structures are influenced by the world around them. The military can be the reason an empire begins in the first place.  The military should also play a role in sustaining the power structure/empire.  It doesn’t have to be the strongest factor by any means.  It may even become the downfall of the structure in the end.

Originally posted by bonekaiser

2. Economy - How is your power structure or empire funded? Does this change over time? Does your empire take part in internal or external trade? Is trade important to the running of the empire? Resources such as crops, fertile land or people are also a part of this and influences the larger actions (such as conquest) your structure takes towards other countries. Trade can be a form of control and influence as well, even outside of the structure’s territory. In terms of story, a lot of decisions that are made involve trade or economic reasons - no one wants to get on the wrong side of someone who controls valuable resources or trade with other entities. The British Empire was based mainly on trade and this insured a global influence even as it declined in actual power.

Originally posted by crazyinyonce

3. Administration: The system of government and the way it manages itself is important to know. Is it a traditional monarchy or a democracy? How is leadership decided? How is power delegated throughout the larger administration? Hierarchy? One person can’t do or know everything. In terms of empire and conquest this is equally important. Does the empire recruit the local elites from conquered areas to administer to the general public, like the Romans? If your story is set in the outskirts of your empire, this could effect the outcome of the story - local elites might enjoy the power they have gained through an alliance with the larger empire and thus be unwilling to revolt against it. What other ways does your power structure control its territory? Does it use culture, or a set language to spread out into new territory? What kind of empire is your empire? Is it land based (only conquering territories linked by land) or maritime (navy focused with overseas territory)?

Originally posted by ashmoleanmuseum

4. Culture: How does your power structure interact with its subjects? Even in a small area, different ethnic groups exist, so what unites all of them together? Are they all united, or is there groups of people the power structure leaves out? Have they always been left out deliberately or have these groups formed over time?How does the the government and the people from inside the empire view outsiders and their culture? Does this influence your story or characters? Do negative stereotypes or different language create a barrier between your character and others? In newly conquered areas is the empire’s language, laws and social ideals endorsed to locals or is it forced upon them? Is religion important to how the empire works or interacts? For example, before war do the gods need to show approval for the empire’s commanders? What about clashes of religion with other areas? Where do cultures intersect? Is your empire influenced by an older power or a hard past? What is seen as integral to your structure’s culture - art, literature, music etc? Are allies connected with your structure through culture, a shared distant history?

Most power structures rely on all of these factors - but none are ever equal in importance. Your government will identify one or two of these areas as important and focus on them. This can impact how the structure comes together and eventually falls apart - the greatest strength becomes a weakness, or something is overlooked until it is too late.

This is a long post - so I’m going to leave it here for now. If you guys have any questions, feel free to use the Ask feature to contact me.

thegirlwiththepurpleguitar:

kedreeva:

Soulmates are not your ~other half~, that’s just nonsense. You are a whole person already, not half a person. A soulmate isn’t even inherently romantic. A soulmate is just the other sock in a matched set. You’re still a whole, complete sock on your own, you are perfectly functional paired with any other sock, it’s just that it’s even better when you match. A soulmate is literally just the person who makes your soul go “!!! Same hat!!!” and wave excitedly.

i love this

ibmiller:

#fic rec#TimSteph#thank you for the rec!!#(though I find your summary of TR super-hilarious#and wonder if this is how readers are interpreting the story#because that is…not quite right >.> )#The Tempest of Team RedBird

Now I feel like a bad reader. :( What can I change to give readers a more accurate summary? Because I do enjoy reccing it. :)

No, no! This is great, because if I corrected what’s wrong with your summary it might give away some plot stuff? Or, hm. The most accurate summary is, I guess:

Pru remembers the pre-Flashpoint universe and uses that to troll the Batfam. Along the way, she makes some friends! \o/

ibmiller:

incoherentbabblings:

TimSteph Fanfic Recs

I was thinking about making a list the other day but then anon prompted me so clearly the time is right to make one of these.  A lot of these authors have stuff which is worth checking out outside of the individual stories I’ve linked, so have fun, and add any that you love as well!  It’s quite long so see the read more for full list!  **Starred Fics are the Favourite of Favourites**

Keep reading

Really great list! I definitely agree there should be more TimSteph content. I’m very curious to see more n52/Rebirth Steph fics - because of the nature of fanfic, most of the Steph fic I can find tends to be pre-Flashpoint. But I do hope that Tynion’s run has a positive impact. I’ll have to start checking the tags again!

Those LJ fics are really nice. Mostly from just around the time Steph returned, just before she became Batgirl. Which makes sense, since Dixon clearly was setting them up to be in love again, but FabNic and then editorial decreed they must be separated.

“Sorry I Bruced You” is definitely one of the defining TimSteph fics post-Batgirl. I really wish Convergence: Batgirl had more of that flair.

That fic where Steph dreams/is dreaming after Tim’s “death” in Tec during Rebirth is just brutal. Ouch.

I hadn’t read that catchphrase fic set during her return in Eternal. That’s really excellent!

I’m a huge sucker for DamianSteph interaction.

The only fic I can really add is only a little shippy (but it’s great): Team RedBird by @themandylion: https://archiveofourown.org/series/324719

It’s basically a lovely AU n52 fic where Pru from Red Robin is transported from pre to post-Flashpoint universe, and decides to prevent Tim from becoming as dark and isolated as he was in Red Robin by finding all his friends and keeping them safe.