calm down guys, it’s only the 8th

here we go again

happy valentines day

starting a collection

(inspired by this classic tumblr post)

Let’s be one of the Rolling Stone’s featured memes of 2025 with mama

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Actually what was everyone’s favorite recess activity it reveals so much about your character

Using playground equipment in dangerous (innovative) ways in order to be as high off the ground as possible.

wheres seasons greasons

its that time of year again

It doesn’t have to be

its not optional

🌾🌾🌾

Harvesting my wheat

Hehehehehe

Can I fucking help you?

Me: Fuck, the paper towels I want are on the top shelf.

The Sir David Attenborough That Lives In My Brain: Being smaller-than-average presents an added challenge to foraging … but necessity is the mother of invention. A little creativity turns a baguette into a tool, and voilà–

(paper towel roll falls on my face)

Sir David Attenborough, pleasantly: Success.

The garment is named after the guy! Here he is:

ALT

His name was Jules Léotard, born 1838, died 1870. He helped to develop the art of trapeze, as well as the leotard.

Meanwhile Charles Blondin was a tightrope walker. Here he is crossing the Niagara Gorge near Niagara Falls:

He did this in various permutations, including bringing an iron stove with him and stopping halfway through to cook an omelette.

i just think its special and fun that conrad’s insane plan worked. hes like no worries (many worries) i will just show up unannounced outside her apartment in paris (this is fine she gave me her address) and then i will walk up say hi and see if she wants to be me with me forever. and then like fourteen hours later hes got his hands up her dress. and within sixteen theyre confessing eternal love. truly the definition of matching your freak.

photo credit: me

September’s off to a good start!

Parking your bike on a rack with a ransacked bike frame still locked there is kinda funny. Like yeah sorry bud you gotta hang out with this mutilated dead guy. Hopefully whatever did this is no longer hungry.

okay i meant like art and language initially but the notes on this post are absolutely blowing me away i sure hope my airplane pilot doesnt get rusty at crosswind landing

May he plow the Lord’s fields in heaven

Dave Brandt was probably the longest running no-till farmer in the state; he’d been running his land no-till since 1971. He experimented with fertilizers, cover crops, and different irrigation techniques and he’d been doing all of that for a very long time.

The guy was an institution all on his own; look at this.

• The “A” profile in his soil is now 47 inches deep compared to less than 6 inches in 1971 and acts like a giant sponge for water infiltration and retention.
• From 1971 through 1989 David used an average of 150-250 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre to grow his corn crops. After adding peas and radishes as a cover crop mix, he cut his nitrogen needs in half and was able to get it down to 125 pounds per acre.
• When he added multiple species and became more aggressive with his cover crop mixes, he was able to achieve an additional drop in applied fertility. His starter fertilizer is now just 2 lbs of N, 4 lbs of P, and 5 lbs of K. His corn crop now only requires 20-30 lbs of N throughout the entire growing season. He requires no fertility for his soybeans, relying on fertility gained solely through his cover crops. He uses only 40 lbs of 10 N – 10 P – 10 K for his small grains.
• Ten years ago (source study published 2019) David stopped using any fungicides and insecticides. This occurred at a time when fungicide and insecticide use has increased significantly with the average commodity farmer.
• Four years ago he stopped using any seed treatment, including neonicotinoids.
• His cash crop yields have been increasing by an average of 5% annually for the past 5-6 years, with far less fertilizer and no fungicides, insecticides or seed treatment.
• What started as a basic heavy clay soils when David purchased the farm in 1971 have been officially re-classified by Ohio State University soil scientists as a highly fertile silty loam soil.

I know I’ve said it before, but–that first point, there, about the “A” profile of his soil? Every time I think of it, I am taken aback with genuine awe.

So this is a picture of the soil horizons. The O profile/O horizon is stuff like fallen leaves, sticks, and so on, which are biodegrading into the A profile. A fair amount of soils might have no O profile at all.

If you are a gardener, the A profile is what you’re concerned with most of the time; it’s what we also call “topsoil.” Your seeds germinate into it, and shallower plants might root into it alone without ever reaching the B profile. Worms and other small delvers live in it. It’s what you’re amending, what you’re testing, what you’re tilling, what you’re trying to fill up with good microorganisms to work with your plants and provide you with food or flowers or cover.

I see this quote around sometimes, attributed to radioman Paul Harvey:

Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

Without the topsoil, bluntly, we starve. And there are other problems, in places with a lack of it; without the topsoil, when the rains come, the water strikes hard soil. Hard soil doesn’t accept water easily, so instead it pools and runs downhill. That action makes flooding, makes flash floods, makes standing water that carries disease, it contaminates the water table. Cholera is a huge problem in places with a low A profile that receive too much water at once.

We are seeing topsoil depletion across the US. I can’t speak for other countries, but the heavy-tilling agricultural habits we’ve adopted here have obliterated inch after inch of our topsoil; in the 1800s the average depth was fourteen inches! Today it is six. Many suburban lawns have even less. This has knock-on effects we don’t even consider on the day-to-day (for instance, there’s some suggestion that the lower amounts of various minerals in vegetables and fruits today in comparison with earlier decades might be because of the lower amount of minerals in the soil for the plants to take up into themselves).

And this gentleman took soil that had been that abused and not only returned it to what it had been before the aggressive, destructive European agricultural policy had its way, but trebled that earlier depth.

His land protects the land around it from flooding. His land grows plants less susceptible to disease, because of all the various stressors and pressures those plants aren’t confronted with. His land almost certainly has a considerably higher concentration of microorganisms and it would follow that we’d also see greater diversity of macroorganisms thereby.

Honestly, it just takes my breath away.

it’s honest work, and by god he did a lot

calm down guys, it’s only the 8th

Why am I seeing this in July?

rolin jones wife lying deadly still on her back every night like ah yes. me. my husband. and his run-down grubby disintegrating coffee-stained annotated paperback copy of the vampire lestat

Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

I kept spinning, hiding each answer I got Except the ones with the plus at the end, and got 48 titles out of it before I ran out of options on the first wheel. Some were very generic (Prince of Dragons, Court of Bone, The Assassin’s Flame) and others didn’t make much sense (Quill of Dragons, Heart of Cities). But the rest were either cool fantasy titles I’d consider reading (but never get around to) or Onion-worthy parodies:

• Empire of Unusually Damp Crows
• Lord of Blood
• King of Fire
• Dragons and Secrets and Joe Biden
• Pride and Vampires
• Prisoner of Mist and Fire and Roses
• League of Darkness and Dragons and Thrones
• A Tale of Bones and Dragons and Shadows and Darkness
• The Assassin’s Wayward Estrogen
• Thief of Death
• In Search of Lesbians
• Brotherhood of Darkness and Homoerotic Thieves and Blowjobs with an Excess of Vladimir Putin’s Large Collection of Porn Themed Around Monsters

Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

fanfic writers what font do you write in

i know on ao3 it’s all in verdana but when you’re drafting the fic in word or docs or whatever

Nobody told me that Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management was interesting. Whenever she mentions some type of tool or area of life, she gives an account of its development from the Stone Age (not always a correct account from the perspective of modern archaeology/anthropology, but still). If I were an 1860s newlywed I would be hooked on this book.

You can learn so much outdated science. Isabella what is “osmazome”

97. AS ALL MEAT is principally composed of fibres, fat, gelatine, osmazome, and albumen, it is requisite to know that the FIBRES are inseparable, constituting almost all that remains of the meat after it has undergone a long boiling.

A question which she answers…

100. OSMAZOME is soluble even when cold, and is that part of the meat which gives flavour and perfume to the stock. The flesh of old animals contains more osmazome than that of young ones. Brown meats contain more than white, and the former make the stock more fragrant. By roasting meat, the osmazome appears to acquire higher properties; so, by putting the remains of roast meats into your stock-pot, you obtain a better flavour.

OH HUH well *googles* Dr Maillard did not discover the Maillard Reaction until 1912 so you would not know that!

(And she does not use the word “protein” but it seems that albumen, which she explains as “of the nature of the white of eggs,” might be referring to proteins–I am now reading about the history of the discovery of proteins and a lot of the early research was on egg whites apparently)

Also she wants you to make caramel to brown meats and soups with.

Mrs Beeton discovers pasta:

MACARONI.—This is the favourite food of Italy, where, especially among the Neapolitans, it may be regarded as the staff of life. “The crowd of London,” says Mr. Forsyth, “is a double line in quick motion; it is the crowd of business. The crowd of Naples consists in a general tide rolling up and down, and in the middle of this tide, a hundred eddies of men. You are stopped by a carpenter’s bench, you are lost among shoemakers’ stalls, and you dash among the pots of a macaroni stall.” This article of food is nothing more than a thick paste, made of the best wheaten flour, with a small quantity of water. When it has been well worked, it is put into a hollow cylindrical vessel, pierced with holes of the size of tobacco-pipes at the bottom. Through these holes the mass is forced by a powerful screw bearing on a piece of wood made exactly to fit the inside of the cylinder. Whilst issuing from the holes, it is partially baked by a fire placed below the cylinder, and is, at the same time, drawn away and hung over rods placed about the room, in order to dry. In a few days it is fit for use. As it is both wholesome and nutritious, it ought to be much more used by all classes in England than it is. It generally accompanies Parmesan cheese to the tables of the rich, but is also used for thickening soups and making puddings.

THE COMMON HARE.—This little animal is found throughout Europe, and, indeed, in most of the northern parts of the world; and as it is destitute of natural weapons of defence, Providence has endowed it with an extraordinary amount of the passion of fear. As if to awaken the vigilance of this passion, too, He has furnished it with long and tubular ears, in order that it may catch the remotest sounds; and with full, prominent eyes, which enable it to see, at one and the same time, both before and behind it. The hare feeds in the evenings, and sleeps, in its form, during the day; and, as it generally lies on the ground, its feet, both below and above, are protected with a thick covering of hair. Its flesh, though esteemed by the Romans, was forbidden by the Druids and by the earlier Britons. It is now, though very dark and dry, and devoid of fat, much esteemed by Europeans, on account of the peculiarity of its flavour. In purchasing this animal, it ought to be remembered that both hares and rabbits, when old, have their claws rugged and blunt, their haunches thick, and their ears dry and tough. The ears of a young hare easily tear, and it has a narrow cleft in the lip; whilst its claws are both smooth and sharp.

Isabella this does not make me want to put it in a soup

Had mankind no other knowledge of animals than of such as inhabit the land and breathe their own atmosphere, they would listen with incredulous wonder, if told that there were other kinds of beings which existed only in the waters, and which would die almost as soon as they were taken from them. However strongly these facts might be attested, they would hardly believe them, without the operation of their own senses, as they would recollect the effect produced on their own bodies when immersed in water, and the impossibility of their sustaining life in it for any lengthened period of time. Experience, however, has taught them, that the “great deep” is crowded with inhabitants of various sizes, and of vastly different constructions, with modes of life entirely distinct from those which belong to the animals of the land, and with peculiarities of design, equally wonderful with those of any other works which have come from the hand of the Creator.

“if you didn’t already know about fish, you wouldn’t believe they existed!”

I’m a Nahtzugabe füßchenbreit girl in a seam allowance ¼ of an inch world

ALT

Know your insect antennae!

I’m thinking about responses to Dracula - both adaptations and critical responses - and how the main thing that they seem to get wrong (at least from my perspective) is their approach to the romantic relationships in the novel. You know the kind of thing: Arthur is boring, Jonathan is boring, Lucy lusts after all three suitors, Mina lusts after Dracula, the suitors must all be suppressing their jealous hatred of one another.

It feels to me like it all comes from the same place, and that place is the idea that romantic relationships, particularly at the start of a story, can’t or shouldn’t be straightforward.

Instead, Dracula begins, near enough, with two women who have both met and are set to marry men who they love and who love them in return, and where it seems like there is no intrinsic reason why they shouldn’t live happily ever after.

And normally we don’t expect that. Certainly these are not the narrative rules of a romance (which Dracula isn’t, but bear with me). It’s a little bit like if Elizabeth Bennet was actually really into Mr Collins and accepted him right away, if Jane Eyre was blissfully happy with St John Rivers, or if Margaret Hale fell for Henry Lennox. Jonathan and Arthur are the safe choices for Mina and Lucy, and we don’t normally expect heroines to want the safe choices.

Mina and Lucy do. Arthur is strategically the best husband for Lucy - good family, pots of cash, no weird job, her mum likes him - but he is also the man that Lucy loves. Mina and Jonathan are utterly besotted with one another, and though Jonathan isn’t as wealthy as, say, Jack Seward, his career is also on the up. He’s a good choice.

I think this works brilliantly in Dracula, because the later threat is so much the greater for the fact that everyone starts out the novel so strong. The fact that they are so happy to begin with means they have more to lose.

So many responses to Dracula want this to be a novel in which love is complicated, but instead it’s a novel in which love is both pretty straightforward and always good. And I think it’s more interesting for it.

I’m curious to know how typical my opinions are here.

I’d love to get more views on this because the responses so far are fascinating.

Death and the Maiden (Marianne Stokes, 1908)

2.06 “Like the Light by Which God Made the World Before He Made Light”

the symbiotic relationship between tumblr and AO3 should be studied in a lab

Brief summaries of each section, for anyone who needs them:

Castle Dracula: Jonathan meets the Count and his roommates

Suitors: Everybody loves Lucy

Whitby: Mina and Lucy go on vacation

Demeter: Captain’s log, Stardate Oh Fuck

Hillingham: Van Helsing shows up and doesn’t tell us anything

Asylum: The Gang Ruins Dracula’s Life

Continent: The Amazing Race

They need to do that thing where actual professionals in certain fields have seminars for writers but with letting historical fiction writers faff about with firearms you can’t get the proper experience with through any kind of legal modern shooting. god I just can’t get into this scene does anyone have a paper cartridge I can try ripping open with my teeth

I SWEAR I read an anecdote somewhere about Bernard Cornwell trying to, I think, spit a bullet into a rifle to research how to write it for Sharpe, and getting it all wrong, and possibly proving it entirely impossible and also choking on it, or something. and then saying “fuck it! We ball! I’m writing it anyway! If people want to argue this point, they can buy a historical rifle and come to my house and do it in front of me. and I hope we both explode and die.”

But is obviously wild exaggeration, possibly untrue, and could just be a figment from the imaginary Bernard cornwell who lives in my head and removes commas from my sentences because he firmly believes it creates a rich and relatable flow of writing suitable for any masculine protagonist - BERNARD. STOP.

Well, they’re certainly still arguing the point:

But I think these three delightful Australians may have come closer than anyone to coming to his house and doing it in front of him. And they didn’t explode and die! In fact, they prove it’s possible.

I found all this here: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/2nd95thrifles/spit-loading-and-three-shots-a-minute-t1188.html