planetarywho

[planetarywho]

you can just feel the self-congratulatory glee of whoever named this paint this color, like they truly thought they were so funny and i think you're so funny paint color naming man good job paint man

[planetarywho]

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[planetarywho]

Feel free to reblog to have more people to vote. Feel free to explain why you voted the way you did. DO NOT SENT ANON HATE FOR HOW PEOPLE VOTED.

[planetarywho]

[planetarywho]

For scientific purposes, who was your FIRST romance in each DA game.

[planetarywho]

Whenever something like the recent Bluesky update/ issues happens, I want to start talking about moderation again. Because three years in that hell weren't enough, apparently...

First of all, THIS IS NOT A DEFENSE of anything they do. Quite the opposite. I quit for a reason, and even in the smaller scale I was at, the disconnect between what the company claimed to believe in and our daily experience truly took a toll on my mental health over time. But the three years working in the field gave me a lot of insight.

For starters, it's crazy how much of a mess the Trust and Safety field is. I worked in a games company (not to be named for reasons of NDA, paranoia, and the fact that they sued someone because of their reddit posts before, so I'll keep if at "pretty big name in mobile games"), and had contact with people who came from other places, from social media to other games. One common thing: having somewhat known standards in moderation? That's INCREDIBLY new.

But things are supposed to be good now, right? Nope. Every company I know subsidises their moderation to several offices (the one I worked for did - I'm in South America, and they are not from here). That's partially because of the language, and timezones - there needs to be people checking reports at all times because of high risk situations (which are another reason why this job is terrible for you) -, but also means the higher ups rarely know what truly happens on the field. But the catch is: they make the final rulings.

Every week, I kid you not, we had meetings that lasted at least one hour, talking with moderating teams from another country (who had people above us present), and discussing "trends", aka "the new ways people are being assholes this week". Those discussions often led to nothing, but usually only caused corporate to worsen things: slurs could have been reclaimed, so no harsh moderation. Some words are too common in pop culture to even be slurs! Now, what goes to one has to go to another. We tried to argue one way, the conversation was filtered through ten layers of supervisors who disagreed, sent terrible reference material as backup, and boom: people can say the n-word and only get a warning, rather than a seven-day ban (and possibly a permanent one in the future, if they keep at it long enough).

Why am I writing this? Because everyone in moderation is lost, and it's terrible, and it should be better. The people in charge do a horrible job in every company I know of. I don't recall if it was Blizzard or Riot that actually had terms of service that a lot of game studios used as a basis, but that tells you something: copying someone's homework is interesting. Each country has different laws regarding minors, privacy, data... And they mostly try to cover their asses. It's pretty much impossible checking everyone's location while moderating, and AI thankfully can't do this job (or at least not safely, due to said high-risk cases).

Bluesky changing their policy is not surprising to me. "Freedom of speech and freedom of platform" and all that. I've been inside, I know how it gets to that: someone in a room shows a post about transphobia. It's moderated. The next meeting, someone else shows another one criticising a terf. They argue, but the supervisor, who is probably a white cishet man, who isn't actively transphobic, but considers himself "detached and fair", will moderate equally, because turnaround is fair play. Snowball effect.

Trends outside influence the actual decision by the big wigs, but usually only if it's being seen a lot in the platform. And there it goes. In the case of something as big as social media, it does a lot more, and like I said, I worked in the smallest scale, and only knew some of the people above me, but didn't interact with them that often, or know the inner workings of each sector. But that's the quick and dirty overview of how a detached company deals with its content.

[planetarywho]

Mongolian horse archer; pulled from Instagram from a repost account that did not include the og source

[planetarywho]

sometimes you just see a popular post that makes you realize that you and the bulk of tumblr's userbase have very different life experiences

[planetarywho]

Satisfying

[planetarywho]

cassiopeiadice on ig

[planetarywho]

Yep. One of my closest friends, who is also queer and also a historian, and I, like to joke that if the wrong person finds our text history in the future they'll passionately defend our non-existent torrid afair, just because we started using pet names ironically and it kinda stuck.

Context, literary style, and the writer's personality even, are vital when interpreting something. There are A LOT of cases of queer erasure over the years, don't get me wrong. So many historians found texts with the exact styles of any romantic writing of the time, and ignored them, out of homophobia, or just dismissal of the possibility. But there are cases when people online truly demonise historians who are just interpreting something according to its time.

Now, the royalist... This is more than just a single example, really. It goes beyond just "royalist". We all learn that ou can't write history from a vacuum: no historian is perfectly objective. That is impossible. But there are ethical ways of presenting your biases, and insidious ones. You should, theoretically, make it clear what kind of theory you're following, so that the reader understands what they're in for. And academic works are usually reasonably good at it.

You know what isn't good at it? Biographies. Books that aren't written for historians, but for the general public, that isn't familiar with the little nuances of our research. And that's where you have not the explicit royalist (which is fine - you get the useful bits, and not the rest), but the covert one. It's the same thing with documentaries. The illusion of legitimacy.

Annoying. They give us a bad name.

people are always slandering historians for saying reasonable things like "some things that seem romantic to us were platonic in the context of the times", when there's so many evil historians you actually have to look out for. number 1 : the closet royalist

[planetarywho]

Yes, this!

I'm about to put on my Historian's hat and ramble. Ready? Cool.

So, when you think about the Modern Age, right before the telescope became accessible, it would seem like observations had to be quite inaccurate, right? Sure, astronomers had instruments to help them, but still. Beyond that, making a precise star map would be absolutely dreadful, considering that the last catalogue was done in Ancient Greece.

Well, meet the Hevelius'. At first Johann, and later his wife Elisabetha, were known for not only incredibly precise observations without the use of telescopes, but for drawing an atlas that is so meticulous that it can actually still be used for observations by sight (and binocular). Did they need to do it that way? Not really. Telescopes were available. But artistic talent was as important as maths, and the combo made for a killer work.

Now for my baby: Cellarius. This guy. This. Guy! He was a Dutch lawyer who decided to compile important cosmographic ideas (like geocentric diagrams, the Brahe model, heliocentrism, and so on), into one Atlas. But just putting them together wasn't good enough: he made them pretty! These days, his Atlas is often published as "the most beautiful book ever made", and honestly, marketing aside, it is probably top 10. But he had a reason for it: my boy wasn't just a great artist and scientist: he was a defender of Copernicus ideas. His Atlas became a luxury item, and was sold to rich people all over Europe (it is still incredibly easy to find, relatively speaking). All the while, if you know imagetic language, it is littered with heliocentric propaganda. Art and science!

Ok, I think by now you can see what my specialty is. But let’s look downwards for a moment. People talk about the "evolution" of science (don't let me get started in how terrible this concept is). So, talking about continental maps. You know those maps you see of a continent, that seem ridiculous, with the silly images inside? Well, there are reasons for different types of maps. The ones with heavy illustrations were never used for orientation: they were decorative. Science was decoration. The ones used for navigation were quite different.

“the arts and sciences are completely separate fields that should be pitted against each other” the overlap of the arts and sciences make up our entire perceivable reality they r fucking on the couch

[planetarywho]

Pareidolia

[planetarywho]

I've been dying to see Vic and Brennan mastermind comedy on opposite sides of game changer for a while now! This episode had not only them, but three other people who are fantastic not only at being funny, but at playing these games. It was such a joy!

(Though, after Becca's Blood on the Clocktower videos, and confirmed here, I truly wished Vic would go on the dome. Side quest, Aabria as a GM, Brennan there: that would be truly delightful.)

[planetarywho]

Song of the Mounds of Mundburg

You read a bunch of books about Vikings as a kid, or you're very into Beowulf, or you wish you could have attended Tolkien's lectures at Oxford. You're deeply in love with Eowyn. You might also have been a horse kid. ~ We heard of the horns in the hills ringing, the swords shining in the South-kingdom, Steeds went striding to the Stoningland as wind in the morning. War was kindled. There Théoden fell, Thengling mighty, to his golden halls and green pastures in the Northern fields never returning, high lord of the host. Harding and Guthláf, Dúnhere and Déorwine, doughty Grimbold, Herefara and Herubrand, Horn and Fastred, fought and fell there in a far country: in the Mounds of Mundburg under mould they lie with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor. Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea, nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales ever, to Arnach, to his own country returned in triumph; nor the tall bowmen, Derufin and Duilin, to their dark waters, meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows. Death in the morning and at day's ending lords took and lowly. Long now they sleep under grass in Gondor by the Great River Grey now as tears, gleaming silver, red then it rolled, roaring water: foam dyed with blood flamed at sunset; as beacons mountains burned at evening; red fell the dew in Rammas Echor.

alright folks. it’s time to find out which lotr poem you are. this quiz has 33 potential answers and only one of them is tom bombadil, so your odds are pretty good

[planetarywho]

↖ this user has drank from the infernal river Lethe, which flows through Hades and brings total oblivion, eradicating all memory and thought

[planetarywho]

THIS IS NOT A DRILL TARYON DARRINGTON AND DOTY SPOTTED IN THE LEGEND OF VOX MACHINA TEASER! I REPEAT TARYON DARRINGTON AND DOTY SPOTTED!

full teaser here!!!