#I need to actually do proper research in order to write this properly

[kvetches]

i don't think infographics are inherently evil or useless, i think they require specific skills to create properly and most of the ones posted on the internet are completely unresearched and useless. i did help with similar things and they are EXTREMELY difficult to write and therefore usually extremely badly lazily done. in order to raise awareness within the general public in a meaningful way you actually need to do the same research you would for a proper article and not just "know a bit more than the average guy"

[tideandtale]

Mastery Journal Entry: Reflecting on Business Venture Research Class

Going into m Business Venture Research class, my main goal was to get the understanding of how to properly do research and learn the different research methods while learning and evaluating how to launch a successful business. I was using this class as a way to develop the skills I needed to be in marketing, and how to learn about the trends within my writing industry. I also wanted to learn about the structure of my own business idea with using real data from people who already did the research, and I just had to find it to see how well I would pair off in my field.

Needless to say, this course met my expectation because it equipped me with the tools on how to conduct research with valid resources on different aspects of my writing business. I looked at many different case studies, I read different articles, and the assignments I did helped me assess the market demand and how I should refine my business model to make it better, and how to make it stand out above the others.

The key takeaway from this course would be how important it is to actually do research and make sure its thorough before putting your business out there. You want to make sure you stay on top trends and that there is a demand in the market for your business. Some of the readings I found extremely useful would be:

The Five Cs of Opportunity Identification: The five Cs would be Customer needs, competition, context, and capabilities. These principles had given me a structured format to visualize when creating my business idea.

Business Research Methods by Naval Bajpai: Specifically I want to talk about chapter 1. The chapter went over the differences between basic and applied research. The purpose of these two types of research is to help you decide to develop or contribute your knowledge. It went over the importance of the techniques and procedures for doing the research.

Startup Opportunities by Brad Feld and Sean Wise: This is another noteworthy resource I found helpful. In Chapter 3 it talks about the criteria for an opportunity. An idea but be durable, timely, attractive and it has to add value to the buyer. If it doesn't meet these four criteria's then there is no opportunity, and it won't be successful.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries: This reading had given me an understanding about the methodology of the Lean Startup. It had focused on creating products and get feedback from customers so that we could better our business and products. This approach would be essential or me simply because with my content creation I want to create content people want, and in order to do that I would need to gather my reader's and clients feedback. It's essential to my success.

In my business, I would utilize the skills I learned in this class and apply al of the research methods and evaluations so that I can make my freelance business better and more appealing to my clients. More importantly, I would utilize the Five Cs of Opportunity Identification so I can better understand the market, trends, clients, and my readers. This would help strengthen my confidence in my ability to do proper research but also help me gain the knowledge for my writing. This class has helped me make better decisions and gave me the kills I needed to help me during my decision-making process and how to properly find opportunities for my business.

Mastery Journal

[dantoombs]

Estate Planning Disasters That Rip Families Apart (And How to Avoid Them)

Nobody wants to think about dying. Fair enough. But here's what really gets me – the number of families I've seen torn apart because someone couldn't be bothered sorting out their estate properly.

It's not just about the money either. These mistakes create family feuds that last generations. Brothers who stop talking. Children who feel abandoned. Spouses left scrambling to figure out what their partner actually owned.

And the worst part? Most of these disasters are completely preventable.

The "I'll Do It Tomorrow" Trap

Let's start with the obvious one – not having a will at all.

You know what's funny? People will spend hours researching the best phone plan but won't spend an afternoon getting their affairs in order. Then something happens, and suddenly their family's dealing with intestacy laws.

When you die without a will in Australia, the government basically draws up a will for you. Except it's probably nothing like what you would've wanted. Your assets get carved up according to some formula dreamed up by bureaucrats who never met you.

Think about a couple in their thirties with a two-year-old. Dad gets hit by a truck – no will. Instead of mum getting everything to help raise their kid, she might only get a portion. The rest could go to dad's parents or siblings. Now she's not just grieving – she's also fighting for her home.

Makes you sick, doesn't it?

The Super Trap Everyone Falls Into

This one catches people out constantly. Your superannuation probably won't follow your will. Yeah, I know – it sounds crazy, but that's how it works.

Super funds have their own rules. If you haven't filled out a proper death benefit nomination form, the trustee gets to decide who gets your super money. They'll look at your dependents and maybe glance at your will, but they're not bound by either.

I've seen cases where someone's super – often their biggest asset – went to an ex-spouse instead of their current partner because the paperwork wasn't updated. Imagine explaining that to a grieving widow.

The fix? Make sure you've got binding death benefit nominations for all your super accounts. And here's the kicker – most of these expire every three years. So you need to keep updating them.

When "Close Enough" Isn't Close Enough

Writing a will isn't like sending a text message. You can't just throw in some casual language and hope everyone figures out what you meant.

"I want my kids to get my stuff" sounds straightforward until you realize it could mean anything. Which kids? What stuff? All of it equally? What if one kid's already borrowed money from you?

Or how about this classic: "My jewellery goes to my daughters." Sounds simple, right? But what happens when there's one really expensive piece and three daughters? What counts as jewellery anyway – just rings and necklaces, or does it include that antique watch collection?

These little ambiguities turn into big family fights. Suddenly your kids aren't speaking to each other because they're arguing about what you "really meant."

Be specific. Name people. Describe items. If you're not sure how to word something, ask a professional.

The Set-and-Forget Mistake

Your will isn't a high school yearbook – it's not meant to be a permanent record of one moment in time.

Marriage, divorce, kids, new property, starting a business – all of these should trigger a will review. But people forget. They write a will in their twenties and never look at it again.

I know someone who got divorced but never updated his will. When he died five years later, guess who inherited everything? His ex-wife. Not his new partner, not his kids from his second relationship – his ex-wife who he hadn't spoken to in years.

Or consider this: you have kids after making your will but forget to update it. Those kids might not automatically inherit anything. The law varies by state, but it's not worth the risk.

Set a reminder to review your will every few years. Your future family will thank you.

Picking the Wrong Person for the Job

Your executor has to sort out your entire life after you're gone. Pay bills, deal with banks, handle family disputes, apply for probate – it's a massive job.

Too many people pick their executor based on feelings rather than facts. Sure, your eldest daughter loves you, but can she handle complex paperwork? Does she live in another country? Is she already struggling with her own problems?

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is pick someone else. Maybe a sibling who's good with admin, or a trusted friend who won't get emotional about family politics. Professional executors are an option too, especially for complex estates.

And always name a backup. People die, get sick, or simply can't handle the responsibility when the time comes.

The Digital Disaster

Here's something that barely existed twenty years ago – what happens to your digital life when you die?

Your emails, photos, social media, online banking, cryptocurrency, streaming accounts, business websites – it's all just floating around in cyberspace. And most of it has its own rules about what happens when you die.

Some accounts get deleted automatically. Others get locked forever. Facebook will "memorialize" your profile, but good luck getting your family photos back from cloud storage if no one knows your password.

Make a list of your important digital accounts and how to access them. Store it somewhere safe and make sure your executor knows where it is. Decide what you want preserved and what can be deleted.

The Tax Bomb

Estate planning isn't just about who gets what – it's about how much they'll actually receive after the tax office takes their cut.

Super death benefits are particularly tricky. If you leave your super to someone who's not considered a tax dependant (like an adult child who's financially independent), they might cop a hefty tax bill. We're talking potentially thousands of dollars.

A bit of smart planning can often reduce these tax hits significantly. But you need to know what you're dealing with first.

The Family Secret

Some people guard their estate plans like state secrets. They don't tell anyone what they've decided or where they've stored their will.

I get it – it's your money and your business. But keeping everything completely secret can backfire. If no one knows you have a will, how will they find it? If your executor doesn't know they've been chosen, how will they step up when needed?

You don't need to reveal every detail, but having some conversations about your general plans can prevent a lot of confusion later. And definitely make sure people know where to find your will.

The Storage Nightmare

A will that can't be found is about as useful as no will at all.

Stuffing it in a drawer might seem logical, but what if there's a fire? Keeping it in a bank safety deposit box sounds secure, but what if no one else can access it? I've seen families spend months trying to track down a will that was stored somewhere "safe."

Consider storing the original with your lawyer or in your state's will registry if they have one. Keep a copy at home, and make sure your executor knows where both are located.

When DIY Goes Wrong

Look, I'm all for doing things yourself when it makes sense. Simple will for a straightforward situation? Sure, give it a go.

But some situations need professional help. Business ownership, complex family arrangements, significant assets, blended families – these scenarios have too many moving parts for a DIY approach.

The money you save on legal fees could end up costing your family tens of thousands in disputes and court costs. Sometimes paying for proper advice upfront is the smartest investment you can make.

Getting Your Affairs Sorted

Marriage actually revokes your will in most Australian states unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage. So if you get married and don't update your will, you might as well not have one.

Digital assets need special attention because they're governed by terms of service, not just your will. Your executor might not be able to access accounts even with a death certificate.

When making super death benefit nominations, ensure they're binding and properly witnessed. Non-binding nominations are basically suggestions – the trustee can ignore them.

Common Questions About Estate Planning in Australia

Q: How often should I update my will? A: Every 3-5 years or after major life changes like marriage, divorce, having kids, or buying significant assets. Don't let it gather dust.

Q: What happens if I don't have a will? A: Your assets get distributed according to intestacy laws – a government formula that probably doesn't match your wishes. Plus, the court appoints someone to handle your estate.

Q: Can family members challenge my will? A: Absolutely. Eligible family members can make claims against your estate under succession laws, even if they're not mentioned in your will.

Q: Should I tell my family about my will? A: You don't need to share dollar amounts, but letting key people know your general thinking and where to find your will prevents confusion and fights.

Q: What's the difference between a beneficiary and an executor? A: Beneficiaries receive stuff from your estate. The executor is the poor soul who has to sort everything out according to your will.

Q: Do I need a lawyer to make a will? A: For simple situations, maybe not. But complex estates, family dynamics, or significant assets usually need professional help.

Time to Act

Estate planning ranks right up there with root canals and tax returns on most people's fun list. But the consequences of getting it wrong are brutal for the people you leave behind.

Don't let your family become another cautionary tale. If you haven't made a will, stop putting it off. If you have one but it's older than your smartphone, get it updated. If your situation is complicated, talk to a Wills & Estate Planning expert who can navigate the complexities.

Your family's already going to be dealing with losing you. Don't make them deal with a legal nightmare too.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information about estate planning and should not be considered specific legal advice. Estate planning laws vary between Australian states and territories, and individual circumstances differ significantly. Before making any decisions about your estate plan, consult with a qualified legal professional who can provide advice tailored to your specific situation and current state laws. The information in this article is current as of publication but laws and regulations may change over time.

[harfblarf]

Happy to help. Like I said, it's an interesting idea, and it definitely has merits. I'd be willing to continue offering feedback in the future, and I'm glad what I've offered so far has been helpful.

That said... To be entirely honest, I think you're going about this in the wrong order. I still think a pitch needs something concrete beneath it, but I'm not sure you're AT the pitch stage yet.

From what I can tell, from both how you designed the original OAG concept and how you phrased that bit about "cover all the bases you can think of, then consult with the community", you're an outsider to artistic and creative spaces, an observer. You consume the output and you observe the systems and you care, that much is obvious, but you're not directly involved or impacted, and you don't have the experience of being an artist, or even the secondhand experience of witnessing an artist's struggles directly in your life. What you have is public-facing knowledge. Whether that presumption is precisely true matters somewhat less than the way it comes across.

If you want to inspire collective movement, you can't be outside of the collective. You have to be part of it; the people you work with need to be your peers, in one form or another. I'm not necessarily saying you need to, personally, become an artist and experience the life firsthand-- but your approach is currently that of a Systems Guy, who sees patterns and thinks they can fix them because they had a really shining, inspiring idea about a way to reorganize what they've seen. It's the call of the muse, a little to the left. It's an understandable impulse. However, as it is you will come across as a salesman to the community you are trying to reach, and we have all learned to be suspicious of salesmen advertising panacea. Your goals are exciting-- upheaval of an unjust system, collective power for artists, support for the struggling! Your proposed method even seems like it could work.

But you're approaching from the top-down. You have all these shining goals and proposed underlying values, and you don't have the nitty-gritty details, the immediate concerns that have to be addressed before noble, lofty goals can be. Your shining system won't work if you don't get the gears aligned properly, and you won't be able to bring a community together while standing on a soapbox outside its borders.

I think this project would be better served with its details set on a backburner while you do research and become more involved. You clearly care, and that care will be better directed if you take the time to listen to the community, become involved, and learn more about the current issues and systems affecting artists on the ground level. Conversation, curiosity, and care will teach you more than a thousand rejected pitches and considerate critiques-- learn first, act second. If you invest in this research phase, you will come out of it with the connections and information you need to actually begin bringing a collective together in a way that will provide actual, concrete help, and gather true influence to back the guild. (And for the record, I don't count as a proper connection-- I've been involved in artistic spaces in the past, but I'm a lurker right now, and I've never been influential or high-investment. I'm a hobbyist; I'm not one of the people you're trying to help, at least not right now.)

I ask you to consider this carefully. It's hard to step back from bringing an idea to life right away, I know. It's hard, because you have hundreds of ideas and enough enthusiasm to confuse for certainty. (Some of those ideas will even be good-- I encourage you to keep writing them all down, even if you pause developing the pitch.) I know it's hard because it happens to me all the fucking time-- I am a chronic Systems Guy. It's much harder to sustain that enthusiasm and confidence through the slow slog of research, the disappointment and shame of realizing you were wrong about some things, the frustration of people who won't listen, won't engage, seem to focus on all the "wrong things". But if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, and that means laying a solid foundation first.

I think that's food for thought, at least.

Anyway, apologies for assigning you a new essay to read, I can't be concise to save my fucking life. Going forward, my DMs are open to you to discuss this subject further; just be aware my replies will be sporadic.

What's funny to me is that nobody cares about copyright outside the US and maybe, I dunno, Canada and Europe? For the entire third world, it's something we politely pretend is real so we don't hurt their feelings, but it's probably the fakest and less upheld concept here, absolutely nobody cares.

Some yanqui says something deranged like "um, uh, yeah, you should pay for every time you play a song otherwise you're stealing" and we just pat their head and say "claro que sí tesoro" while we download 15 GBs of movies and the local pizzeria has a mural of like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny to promote it.

[ginjones]

Last sentence game

tagged by @quillingwords

Quilling! @notallsandmen already tagged me in this a few days ago but I will happily share more of my ideas for 'The Alchemy of Sleep' because

A: I'm itching to write it and do it justice B: It's already set to be around 5k so a big achievement for me in terms of my writing prowess or lack thereof C: I'm avoiding Uni work as usual!

This excerpt is still in draft form but I will give you a little bit of smut :)

"“You may touch yourself,” Dream says, “you may hold your shaft at its base but do not stroke, that is not the purpose of this exercise.” Following the directive, Hob lifts the fabric of his boxers and curls his fingers around the base of his prick and holds there, unmoving. The warmth of his hands brings a heated pulse to the surface, but he breathes in slowly and settles. He feels calm and centred; an animal safe in the comfort of its burrow with all his soft parts protected and held. For the first time in days, he yawns widely. Dream turns to him and smiles.

And then Dream just rattling of a science lesson is a sexy way:

“There is a part of your brain that secretes a chemical called melatonin. I imagine you will be aware of it.” Hob nods slowly. “I hold… dominion over it. If I deem it necessary, I can instruct your brain to expend melatonin in large quantities at a rapid pace. That is why you feel the pull of sleep and enter my realm swiftly, but not uncomfortably"

[writingwithcolor]

I'm writing an AU of a movie that takes place in the 1880s USA, where a travelling white character and a Jewish character are waylaid by Native Americans, who they befriend. Probably because it was written by and about PoC (Jews) the scene actually avoids the stuff on your Native American Masterpost, but I'd still like to do better than a movie made in the 1980's, and I feel weird cutting them from the plot entirely. I have a Jewish woman reading it for that, but are there any things you (1/1)

2/2 1880s western movie ask--are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s? I do plan to base them on a real tribe (Ute, probably) and have proper housing/clothes and so forth, but right now I'm just trying to avoid or subvert awful cowboy movie tropes. Any ideas?

White and Jewish Men, Native American interactions in 1880s

I am vaguely concerned with how you only cite one of our posts about Native Americans, that was not written by a Native person, and do not cite any of the posts relating to this time period, or any posts relating to representation in media. 

Sidenote: if you want us to give accurate reflections of the media you’re discussing, please tell us the NAME. I cannot go look up this movie based off this description to give you an idea of what my issues are with this scene, and must instead trust that the representation is good based off your judgement. I cannot make my own judgement. This is a problem. Especially since your whole question boils down to “this scene is good but not great and I want it to be great. How can I do that?”

Your baseline for “good” could very well be my baseline for “terrible hack job”. I can’t give you the proper education required for you to be able to accurately evaluate the media you’re watching for racist stereotypes if you don’t tell me what you’re even working with.

When you’re writing fanfic where the media is directly relevant to the question, please tell us the name of the media. We will not judge your tastes. We need this information in order to properly help you.

Moving on.

I bring up my concern for you citing that one—exceptionally old—post because it is lacking in many of the tropes that don’t exist in the media critique field but exist in the real world. This is an issue I have run into countless times on WWC (hence further concern you did not cite any other posts) and have spoken about at length. 

People look at the media critique world exclusively, assume it is a complete evaluation of how Native Americans are seen in society, and as a result end up ignoring some really toxic stereotypes and then come to the inbox with “these characters aren’t abc trope, so they’re fine, but I want to rubber stamp them anyway. Anything wrong here?”. The answer is pretty much always yes. 

Issue one: “Waylaid” by Native Americans

This wording is extremely loaded for one reason: Native American people are seen as tricksters, liars, and predators. This is the #1 trope that shows up in the real world that does not show up in media critique. It’s also the trope I have talked about the most when it comes to media representation, so you not knowing the trope is a sign you haven’t read the entirety of the Native tag—which is in the FAQ as something we would really prefer you did before coming at us to answer questions. It avoids us having to re-explain ourselves.

Now, hostility is honestly to be expected for the time period the movie is set in. This is in the beginnings (or ramping up) of residential schools in America* and Canada, we have generations upon generations of stolen or killed children, reserves being allocated perhaps hundreds of miles from sacred sites, and various wars with Plains and Southwest peoples are in full force (Wounded Knee would have happened in 1890, in December, and the Dakoa’s mass execution would have been in 1862. Those are just the big-name wars. There absolutely were others). 

*America covers up its residential schools abuse extremely thoroughly, so if you try to research them in the American context you will come up empty. Please research Canada’s schools and apply the same abuse to America, as Canada has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and therefore is more (but not completely) transparent about the abuse that happened. Please note that America’s history with residential schools is longer than Canada’s history. There is an extremely large trigger warning for mass child death when you do this research.

But just because the hostility is expected does not mean that this hostility would be treated well in the movie. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of tension between any Native actors and white actors, for how Sacheen Littlefeather had just been nearly beaten up by white actors at the 1973 Academy Awards for mentioning Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act had only been passed two years prior in 1978. 

These Native actors would not have had the ability to truly consent to how they were shown, and this power dynamic has to be in your mind when you watch this scene over. I don’t care that the writers were from a discriminated-against background. This does not always result in being respectful, and I’ve also spoken about this power imbalance at length (primarily in the cowboy tag).

Documentaries and history specials made in the 2010s (with some degree of academic muster) will still fall into wording that harkens Indigenous people to wolves and settlers as frightened prey animals getting picked off by the mean animalistic Natives. This is not neutral, or good. This is perpetuating the myth that the settlers were helpless, just doing their own thing completely unobtrusively, and then the evil territorial Native Americans didn’t want to share.

To paraphrase Batman: if I had a week I couldn’t explain all the reasons that’s wrong.

How were these characters waylaid by the Native population? Because that answer—which I cannot get because you did not name the media—will determine how good the framing is. But based on the time period this movie was made alone, I do not trust it was done respectfully.

Issue 2: “Befriending”

I mentioned this was in an intense period of residential schools and land wars all in that area. The Ute themselves had just been massacred by Mormons in the Grass Valley Massacre in 1865, with ten men and an unknown number of women and children killed thanks to a case of assumed association with a war chief (Antonga Black Hawk) currently at war with Utah. The Paiute had been massacred in 1866. Over 100 Timpanogo men had been killed, with an unknown number of women and children enslaved by Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1850, with many of the enslaved people dying in captivity (those numbers were not tracked, but I would assume at least two hundred were enslaved— that’s simply assuming one woman/wife and one child for every man, and the numbers could have very well been higher if any war-widows and their children were in the group, not to mention families with multiple children). This is after an unknown group of Indigenous people had been killed by Governor Brigham Young the year prior, to “permanently stop cattle theft” from settlers. 

The number of Native Americans killed in Utah in the 1800s—just the number of dead counted (since women and children weren’t counted)—in massacres not tied to war (because there was at least one war) is over 130. The actual number of random murders is much higher; between the uncounted deaths and how the Governor had issued orders to “deal with” the problem of cattle theft permanently. I doubt you would have been tried or convicted if you murdered Indigenous peoples on “your” land. This is why it’s called state sanctioned genocide.

This is not counting the Black Hawk War in Utah (1865-1872), which the Ute were absolutely a part of (the wiki articles I read were contradictory if Antonga Black Hawk was Ute or Timpanogo, but the Ute were part of it). The first official massacre tied to the war—the Bear River Massacre, ordered by the US Military—places the death count of just that singular massacre at over five hundred Shoshone, including elders, women, and children. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the number of Indigenous people killed in Utah from 1850, onward, is over a thousand, perhaps two or three.

Pardon me for not reading beyond that point to list more massacres and simply ballparking a number; the source will be linked for you to get an accurate number of dead.

So how did they befriend the Native population? Let alone see them as fully human considering the racism of the time period? Natives were absolutely not seen as fully human so long as they were tied to their culture, and assimilation equalling some sliver of respect was already a stick being waved around as a threat. This lack of humanity continues to the present day.

I’m not saying friendship is impossible. I am saying the sheer levels of mistrust that would exist between random wandering groups of white/pale men and Indigenous communities wouldn’t exactly make that friendship easy. Having the scene end be a genuine friendship feels ignorant and hollow and flattening of ongoing genocide, because settlers lied about their intentions and then lined you up for slauther (that’s how the Timpanogo were killed and enslaved).

Utah had already done most of its mass killing by this point. The era of trusting them was over. There was an active open hunting season, and the acceptable targets were the Indigenous populations of Utah.

(sources for the numbers: 

List of Indian Massacres in North America Black Hawk War (1865-1872))

Issue 3: “Proper housing/clothes and so forth”

Do you mean Western style settlements and jeans? If yes, congratulations you have written a reservation which means the land-ripped-away wounds are going to be fresh, painful, and sore.

You do not codify what you mean by “proper”, and proper is another one of those deeply loaded colonial words that can mean “like a white man” or “appropriate for their tribe.” For the time period, it would be the former. Without specifying which direction you’re going for, I have no idea what you’re imagining. And without the name of the media, I don’t know what the basis of this is.

The reservation history of this time period seems to maybe have some wiggle room; there were two reservations allocated for the Ute at this time, one made in 1861 and another made in 1882 (they were combined into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in 1886). This is all at the surface level of a google and wikipedia search, so I have no idea how many lived in the bush and how many lived on the reserve. 

There were certainly land defenders trying to tell Utah the land did not belong to them, so holdouts that avoided getting rounded up were certainly possible. But these holdouts would be far, far more hostile to anyone non-Native.

The Ute seemed to be some degree of lucky in that the reserve is on some of their ancestral territory, but any loss of land that large is going to leave huge scars. 

It should be noted that reserves would mean the traditional clothing and housing would likely be forbidden, because assimilation logic was in full force and absolutely vicious at this time. 

It’s a large reserve, so the possibility exists they could have accidentally ended up within the borders of it. I’m not sure how hostile the state government was for rounding up all the Ute, so I don’t know if there would have been pockets of them hiding out. In present day, half of the Ute tribe lives on the reserve, but this wasn’t necessarily true historically—it could have been a much higher percentage in either direction.

It’s up to you if you want to make them be reservation-bound or not. Regardless, the above mentioned genocide would have been pretty fresh, the land theft in negotiations or already having happened, and generally, the Ute would be well on their way to every assimilation attempt made from either residential schools, missionaries, and/or the forced settlement and pre-fab homes.

To Answer Your Question

I don’t want another flattened, sanitized portrayal of genocide.

Look at the number of dead above, the amount of land lost above, the amount of executive orders above. And try to tell me that these people would be anything less than completely and totally devastated. Beyond traumatized. Beyond broken hearted. Absolutely grief stricken with almost no soul left.

Their religion would have been illegal. Their children would have been stolen. Their land was taken away. A saying about post-apocalyptic fiction is how settler-based it is, because Indigenous people have already lived through their own apocalypse.

It would have all just happened at the time period this story is set in. All of the grief you feel now at the environment changing so drastically that you aren’t sure how you’ll survive? Take that, magnify it by an exponential amount because it happened, and you have the mindset of these Native characters.

This is not a topic to tread lightly. This is not a topic to read one masterpost and treat it as a golden rule when there is too much history buried in unmarked, overfull graves of school grounds and cities and battlefields. I doubt the movie you’re using is good representation if it doesn’t even hint at the amount of trauma these Native characters would have been through in thirty years.

A single generation, and the life that they had spent millennia living was gone. Despite massive losses of life trying to fight to preserve their culture and land.

Learn some history. That’s all I can tell you. Learn it, process it, and look outside of checklists. Look outside of media. 

And let us have our grief.

~ Mod Lesya

On Question Framing

Please allow me the opportunity to comment on “are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s?” That strikes me as the same type of question as asking what color food I’d like for lunch. I don’t see how the cultural backgrounds of characters I have literally no other information about is supposed to make me want anything in particular about them. I don’t know anything about their personalities or if they have anything in common.

Compare the following questions:

“Are there things you’d like to see in a movie where two American women, one from a Nordic background and one Jewish, are interacting?” I struggle to see how our backgrounds are going to yield any further inspiration. It certainly doesn’t tell you that we’re both queer and cling to each other’s support in a scary world; it doesn’t tell you that we uplift each other through mental illness; it doesn’t go into our 30 years of endless bizarre inside jokes related to everything from mustelids to bad subtitles.

Because: “white”, “Jewish”, and “Native American” aren’t personality words. You can ask me what kind of interaction I’d like to see from a high-strung overachieving woman and a happy-go-lucky Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I’ll tell you I’d want fluffy f/f romance. Someone else might want conflict ultimately resolving in friendship. A third person might want them slowly getting on each other’s nerves more and more until one becomes a supervillain and the other must thwart her. But the same question about a cultural demographic? That told me nothing about the people involved.

Also, the first time I meet a new person from a very different culture, it might take weeks before discussion of our specific cultural differences comes up. As a consequence, my first deep conversations with a Costa Rican American gentile friend were not about Costa Rica or my Jewishness but about things we had in common: classical music and coping with breakups--which are obviously conversations I could have had if we were both Jewish, both Costa Rican gentiles, or both something else. So in other words, I’m having trouble seeing how knowing so little about these characters is supposed to give me something to want to see on the page.

Thank you for understanding.

(And yes, I agree with Lesya, what’s with this trend of people trying to explain their fandom in a roundabout way instead of mentioning it by name? It makes it harder to give meaningful help….)

--Shira

[quill-of-thoth]

Current status: procrastinating job hunting, thinking about how the specific way I got stuck writing The Fairy Tale Police Procedural (combination of too much worldbuilding, too much living in unprecedented times) is informing how I work on the current rough draft.  1) Maybe it’s time to attempt to be less influenced by current events? I started writing the Fairy Tale Police Procedural, properly, instead of in bits and pieces, some time in 2015. Took about two and a half years to get a full rough draft out because reasons. Also because I had a large cast and a variety of themes to explore and needed to narrow it down. Also at some point parts of it were also an extended eulogy for Terry Pratchett. In particular I got stuck on the bit that worked for discworld (quoted during Jingo or Snuff, I think,) about humans mostly not being horrible to each other in that setting, in favor of being horrible to other species. It wasn’t meant to be the whole truth but I latched onto it (again, in the early to mid 20teens) as something that seemed a little naïve, given the entire world.  Then I sent it to a few people to get their opinions, synthesized some opinions, started rewriting during 2019 onwards. Had a crisis of confidence because part of the point of the story is that even if this lot aren’t the best people for the job (in various ways both obvious in the plot and philosophically) they’re doing their best. I wanted them to at least *try* to be heroes in a system that, upon further research, could be skewed away from the real world all I wanted but was probably always going to be associated with its real problems. I did a lot of reworking. In the end, I got bogged down in a lot of themes instead of plot events that will probably pay off eventually, just didn’t all need to be in the book. 

So for current rough draft? I’m attempting to get a solid plot order in before I mess around in philosophy. 

2) Smaller. Cast. The cast for FTPP is like, twice the size of the current cast. On the one hand, this is necessary for the way FTPP is structured (they’re working on at least three cases at any given time, they’re colleagues in a large city, there’s SEVEN people on the team,) on the other hand, it made narrowing down whose arc I wanted to deal with most a bit of a problem, even if there wasn’t a proper deuteragonist in that book, just Eight and whoever else had shit happening at the time. This is, perhaps, not the fastest way to work on a book. (This compared to current rough draft, which contains... depending on the way this structure works out anywhere between three main characters and four. Everyone gets to board the character growth train at the same damn time here.) 3) When will the executive function come home from the war? Figuring out a writing habit that actually works is kind of key if I want to get shit done. Things that worked in 2016, 2017, etc. don’t work now. Not just because I’ve had five different jobs since then, moved across the country, and live alone, but because the brain wiring got scrambled in a new and honestly, deathly boring way by the entire pandemic situation. (Those of you who are newer: no, I’m fine, I didn’t take a covid to the brain or anything, I just had a several year long flare up of the brain weasels because the brain cannot handle prolonged stress due to prior shit.) So if, in 2016 I could come home from work and write a few thousand words without it being impossible to fulfil all my other needs in regards to socializing, actually taking in other art, and the work of living, and in 2023 that’s not possible? Time for some self-experimentation. 4) Time to make more posts like this into the void? I do think the lack of writing community around (exceptions know who you are) has made it harder to stay excited about writing, personally. So... I have a few options laid out that may or may not be worth the time investment, I’ll update if I find anything particularly exciting. Though, also: the only way to find people who will talk about writing is to talk about writing. So, while I’m still in the stage of trying to chart out where I’m going with this book, instead of getting stuck eternally to the vibe, I will probably make a few more posts about writing. Maybe even about themes and shit.

[mirai-studies-languages]

How to practice listening in a foreign language

Hi! Listening is a tough skill to improve, but I’ve found myself gradually improving as time has gone on, so I thought I would try to offer some advice to anybody who needs it. I think the key to improving your listening is increasing your vocabulary, and practice. I’m basing this mostly on my French (B2) and Spanish (A2/B1) studies.

Figure out what you should listen to! It is important to listen to something that is at your level. For complete beginners, just focus on your textbook exercises and beginners podcasts like Innovative Languages, LingQ and Coffee Break Languages (I highly recommend these by the way). For less difficult languages like French and Spanish (or whatever is close to the languages you speak), you might want to try watching a few Easy Languages videos, since they use topic specific vocabulary. I don’t really recommend this for languages that are very different from the languages you speak though, since it might just be confusing. For upper beginners, you can focus on watching short YouTube videos on topics that interest you (for example in Spanish, I watch a lot of YouTube videos about language learning). You can also try listening to learners podcasts. There are also a lot of YouTube videos out there made for learners that are only in your target language for beginners, like the Innovative Languages YouTube accounts. Just look up “[Target language] beginners listening practice” and something will probably come up. You could also watch children’s shows because of the simplistic language. For intermediate learners, it might be time to start properly dipping your toes into native material. TV shows, podcasts and films are good, but if you don’t like them, then there is a wealth of listening resources to be found on YouTube. Make sure to avoid anything that uses jargon or outdated language, like historical dramas and videos about science. The radios and comedy skits are great for learning informal language (e.g. Cyprien for French). For lower intermediate learners, I would recommend to also focus most of your attention on intermediate podcasts (e.g. For French: InnerFrench and Piece Of French are really good). You should be able to understand about half of it, and as you continue learning French this will increase. I’d say you are at an upper intermediate level once you can understand pretty much everything that is said in these podcasts and videos, and can also understand a fair amount of native material. For advanced learners, historical dramas and university lectures might be good for this. You might also want to look into content for more difficult dialects (unless you are only focusing on one). Just listen to anything and everything that challenges you, and you will start to improve over time. Across all levels, song lyrics are good too!

Read and listen at the same time! Audiobooks and subtitles are the best for this. Make sure you are actually listening instead of just reading. This improves both your listening and your reading skills!

Dictate what you are listening to! Try to write down everything that has been said word for word, and make sure you get the grammar correct too. Once you have finished, compare it to the actual transcription or subtitles and make corrections. Maybe memorise any new vocabulary, and review any grammar points you got wrong.

Shadow! This basically means repeat what is said after it is said. This improves listening AND pronunciation! 

Research how pronunciation changes! When I say this, I basically mean explore how pronunciation changes in the spoken version of a language when compared to the proper version of the language. Read articles with examples on informal and spoken language, and the way syllables will meld together or be shortened. You might want to memorise the most common slang too. Also, for languages with complex politeness levels like Japanese, research that too. Make sure you look out for these in whatever you are listening to, and make sure you listen widely in both informal and formal versions of your target language.

When you learn topic specific vocabulary, listen to content made about that topic! If you learn vocabulary related to the beach, then watch a beach movie. If you learn vocabulary about furniture, watch those DIY videos on YouTube. Learn topic specific vocabulary, and then put it into practice! You will find a wealth of vocabulary resources on this site alone. At first, learn the most important topics, then gradually expand to more niche ones when you become more advanced.

Listen without any help at first! For me, I will get a short YouTube video and listen to it without any help. Then, I will watch it again with subtitles (in my target language), and will pause to turn any unknown words into flashcards. I will go through those flashcards and memorise them. Finally, I will listen to the video again, and again, until I can catch and understand every word. This takes time, but it gets good results. 

Summarize what you just listened to! I would suggest doing this before looking at a transcription or subtitles. Try listening to audio and write a quick summary of what you were told, and then look at the transcription to see how accurate you were.

Replay the audio until you can understand everything! This is especially important for upper intermediate learners, because their goal is to understand everything. If you don’t know a word, then memorise it, and listen again! As time goes on, you will be able to understand everything better.

Adjust the speed of the audio! For beginners and lower intermediate learners, you can make it slower in order to understand it better. For upper intermediate and advanced learners, I recommend speeding it up. The faster it is, the easier you will later find normal native speed.

Just keep listening to your target language! The sounds of a language is something that takes a long time to get used to. You just need to keep on listening, and keep on practicing, and eventually you will start to improve. Listen to your target language whenever you have free time, and over time it will start to pay off. You’ll find that the speed that used to intimidate you will just sound normal, and as your vocabulary increases, so will your listening ability.

Thanks for reading this post! I hope it was useful!

[bonny-kookoo]

Lavender Love (JJK x Reader) 💐💜🔞

🦋 Pairing: Florist!Jeon Jungkook x Mute!Reader

🦋 Genre: Florist!AU, Fluff, Strangers to Lovers AU, smut

• Selective mutism : a severe anxiety disorder where a person is unable to speak in certain social situations, such as with classmates at school or to relatives they do not see very often. It usually starts during childhood and, if left untreated, can persist into adulthood.

🦋 Warnings: mentions of past trauma (no mentions of what exactly), anxiety attack, it’s not romanticized in this so it’s no ‘hero in shining armor knows what to do’ kinda thing, mentions of vomiting and overall just a very uncomfortable situation, Jungkook is actually kinda lost, mutual pining, awkward reader, very very VERY soft smut, like Jesus Christ it’s so sweet, mentions of therapy, hopeless romantic kook, he researched so much just so he can help :(, protective Kook!

🦋 Summary: words only hurt people around you, so when you meet this kind florist while picking up your friends order, you swear to yourself to never speak a word to him. He however, seems to have different plans.

(Again, I want to point out that anxiety attacks are a real thing, and hardly ever ‘just pass’. If you’re uncomfortable with these things, please skip this fic as it is a major part of the story. Everyone experiences these things differently, things depicted in this are personal experiences. If you think you have problems like this, please seek professional help. You’re not broken, you maybe just need a little hand to guide you back on track. Stay safe everyone 💕)

This is a oneshot! If you have any asks, Ideas, or drabble requests for this universe, throw them my way!

You don't remember the last word you spoke to a stranger.

It's probably hidden somewhere, and you'd find it if you really searched for it, however, you didn't really crave to be remembered about what happened afterwards. It didn't matter these days anyways.

You don't remember your school days.

Again, these memories are there, you know it. Yet you've turned them around like a picture hanging on a wall, neatly framing an incident that scarred you to the point of seemingly no return. It didn't matter these days anyways.

You pull your facemask a bit as you waited at the red light, folded paper in your hand, which was hidden in the front pocket of your sweater. People around you didn't really look at you, not caring, and you favored it greatly. You felt your fingers get clammy however, the closer you got to the corner store. Hopefully Miss Jung was there; she knew your mother, and didn't really mention your habit of silence much. Hopefully.

But the closer you got, the more you felt your skin grow cold.

That was not miss Jung.

You desperately wanted to text Yoongi, telling him that you couldn't pick up his order, but he was sick, he needed someone to do it, and you knew you could do it- you had to start somewhere. Your therapist had praised you last month so greatly, telling you how good you were getting at conversing, even if it was just through text or post it notes- it was more than you did a few years ago. But your feet slowed down, hands beginning to shake. You stood against the wall near the entrance, evening out your breathing as you tried to ground yourself again.

You could do this.

Entering the store, familiar bell ringing, you felt a bit more calm as the scent of the various flowers filled your nose. You'd often stayed under the counter when Miss Jung had been working when you were young, her presence calming to you as she didn't care about your 'issues' as others had called it. She always let you make flower crowns and tiny rings, showing you what every one of them meant, uncaring that you never answered her. She always said your smile was enough.

"Hello! How can I help you?" He asked in a friendly manner. His voice was melodic, probably nice to listen to whenever he talked away, making you slightly jealous. Your own was weak, fragile from lack of use. He smiled at you as you hesitantly walked forwards, unfolding the note Yoongi had written and placing it down in front of him, making him pick it up, reading it. "Oh? Lazy gramps can't pick them up himself?" He chuckled, and you wanted to disagree, yet you stopped the thought while it formed. "Ah, I'll get them for you, but are you sure you can carry them all yourself? There's multiple boxes, and eh-" He began, grinning before picking at his skin on his jaw. "-not to be mean but you're kinda short." He said, and your eyes widened. You shook your head, and he leaned his to the side. "No? No what?" He asked, and you began to grow uncomfortable. Your gaze shifted towards the note, pointing towards it, then at yourself, before you nodded. "I eh.." He trailed off, before he smiled encouragingly. "Ah, you're shy? Don't be, I don't bite!" He playfully said, and you could feel the tears prick at the backs of your eyes.

It was unfair really. You wished you could be more open, tell him all you wanted to say, be just as confident as he was being- yet here you were, confusing the guy to no ends just because you couldn't open your mouth. It was pathetic, really, and before you knew you felt the tears gather. You were growing frustrated, hands growing clammy as you tightened them into fists, breathing becoming uneven as you desperately tried to calm yourself. "Ah- you're okay? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" He tried, hand on your shoulder not helping one bit. He was now confused, maybe even scared, and it was your fault. Why were you being so difficult? Why couldn't you just tell him like every other normal person could? Oh yeah, because you weren't. You were absolutely fucked up, useless for society, not even able to work a proper job-

"Y/N?" The voice sounded dull, as if someone held their hands over your ears, the rushing of your own blood drowning out everything else as your hands and feet became rigid, frozen in place by the overflow of oxygen. "Jungkook dear, please give her space- Y/N sweetheart, can you hear me?" You knew she was talking, but her voice wasn't reaching you at all as the tears fell, sobs wrenching your gut to the point of feeling sick. "Oh sweetheart, come on, quick-" She hurried, unnoticed by you helping your locked body outside through the backdoor with Jungkooks help, who had a worried look on his face as he watched the scene unfold. "Jungkook dear, can you get me a bucket real quick?" He nodded, dashing off to clumsily get a small water bucket, cursing as he knocks down several others, glad that there wasn't another costumer. He got back just in time for Miss Jung to manage to hold the purple plastic container underneath your face as your body shook, bringing back up whatever you'd eaten in its absolute frenzy. "Shh, its okay.." She hummed, before addressing the boy again. "Can you cut some lavender please? A branch should be enough." She asked, as he nodded again, eyes barely leaving your figure. Was that his fault? What did he do wrong? "Jungkook." Miss Jung said to knock him back to reality, as he nodded, walking towards the several flowers as he took out the gardening scissors from his apron, cutting two small branches instead of one for good measure.

When he walked back outside the backdoor, you'd already laid on your side, Miss Jung carefully running her hand over your back as you seemed to still have issues breathing properly, sobs still present as you choked on air. He wordlessly gave his boss what she'd asked for, as he watched her rub the flowers between her hands, the scent filling your nose slowly. It helped after a moment, slowly calming your senses back down, exchanging your now returning sense of hearing and vision with a raging headache. "I'm so sorry I-" He began, but miss Jung sent him a look, shaking her head. She'd just managed to bring you back, she didn't need to throw you back into the circle again.

"Jungkook, can you go help the costumers please?" She asked as she heard the bell, and he hesitantly nodded, before returning.

Well, this ended well.

The next day, Yoongi had you by his side as he stepped inside the flower shop. "Hel- Ah! You!" Jungkook exclaimed, making you shrink in on yourself, readying yourself for whatever he had to say. Yoongi however, voice raspy from his cold, cut him off.

"Yah you idiot, can you ever just do what you're told?" He exclaimed, as Jungkook scratched the back of his neck, fluffy hair falling a bit to the side from the movement. "You got my shit?" He asked, and you gently pulled at his sleeve, a sign that he should at least stop cursing. "Sorry." He mumbled down to you as Jungkook watched the silent exchange with interest. Yoongi coughed, snapping the younger boy back to his senses as he walked to the back, coming back with two boxes. "Thanks." Yoongi simply answered, holding both boxes even though he could see the question in your eyes. You both got ready to leave, as Jungkook stopped you.

"Wait!" He said, rummaging around underneath the counter before he pulled out a tiny envelope, wrapped with a purple ribbon, holding it out to you. "As uhm.. a sorry. For yesterday. I didn't know." He offered, and you took it, nodding. So now he knew. Great. He simply waved, as Yoongi bumped you with his elbow, signaling you to go.

In the car, the older boy suddenly sniffed. "Did he pack the wrong flowers or why does it smell so much like lavender?" He asked, and you shrugged, before remembering the gift. Opening the ribbon, you found a small sheer bag, dried seeds of lavender inside, as well as a note.

'Miss Jung said, writing is easier. So if I didn't screw up yesterday, text me? :) '

"That fucker!" Yoongi laughed before coughing again, making you smile a bit. What exactly was that supposed to mean?

It meant exactly what he said. He genuinely started to reach out to you after you'd texted him your number, sending you random pictures of bouquets he did during the day, of scenery he encountered on his way to or off work, memes, or simply asking you how your day was. He slowly found out more and more about you, never really asking why you didn't speak- because the more he began to unravel your personality, the less he cared about that. He found out that you liked sports, you played in a soccer team, and worked as an online tech support from home. He thought of it as absolutely the coolest thing ever, even asking to see a game of yours if you'd let him.

Which had led to this moment.

Jungkook was sitting down, several girls side-eyeing him as they wondered why he was there. His dark attire and several piercings, as well as the ink painting his arm that he'd exposed due to the heat as he'd rolled up the sleeves of his sweater completely covering up the fact that he actually worked with delicate things such as tiny flowers, able to make the best flower crowns of all time. He denied their request to sit with them, texting you instead that he was there, and where he sat. He watched as you read his message before looking up, finding him as he grinned, waving. You meekly waved back, shy smile on your lips as he heard the whispers from his side. He gave them a look to shut them up, before leaning forward, eager to see you in action.

He was mesmerized as he saw you run, every step you took seemingly perfectly timed and placed. You were the shortest one out of your team, but that did not put you at a disadvantage at all it seemed; you ducked under another player trying to push you almost expertly, making him jump up and push his fist into the air in victory as you scored.

When you were done with your game, he'd already walked down the stairs, meeting you as you smiled at his figure, a bit taken aback by his choice of clothing. He always made sure to cover up his tattoos in the flowershop, Miss Jung not too fond of him scaring away costumers who had a more traditional view on things. He held up his hand before lowering it a bit for you to properly hit it in a high five, internally beaming at the fact that you'd slowly grown more comfortable with him. He carried your bag for you, shaking away his stray strands of hair that had fallen into his face from the slight wind. "Ah, here." He remembered, giving you your facemask back, remembering that you always liked to wear it so people thought you were maybe sick and just didn't talk because of that. But after months with him; you didn't need it anymore. So you simply took it from him, putting it into your pocket. His eyes widened a bit but he smiled afterwards, actually growing a bit shy.

And he almost tripped over his own feet as he felt your tiny hand grab his to hold.

"Oh Y/N! Jungkook is already changing. He said you're both going on a date?" Miss Jung winked at you, making you look down shyly, fingers pulling at the hem of your skirt a bit as you nodded. He'd asked you out a few days ago, immediately replying that you could also just stay at his or your place, and that you didn't have to go out. You'd thanked him for it, and you both decided to simply get a shit ton of junk food to take home to his place, planning on watching a short movie and maybe playing some video games after. "I'm happy. He's a good guy, but don't tell him I said that, his ego is too inflated already, that poor boy!" She hummed, as Jungkook whined from behind her.

"Yah, my ego isn't inflated at all, what are you saying?!" He said while pouting, making you chuckle a but under your breath. He smiled, walking up to you as he waved at miss Jung. "Thanks for closing the shop, we'll be on our way then!" He exclaimed, and she just nodded, smile genuine on her lips.

"So!" He said, stretching his arms above his head before he took your hand, walking across the street with you as he led you both to a fast food place close by. "I thought about The Cat Returns tonight?" He asked, and you nodded, happy with his choice. Against the stigma floating around him judged by his attire and collections of tattoos and piercings, Jungkook was actually a huge fan of Studio Ghibli and everything romantic. He was a bit cheesy, but you'd grown to appreciate it- maybe even love it. The more you both conversed and spend time together, the closer you felt yourself getting with him- without forcing yourself to. It just came natural with him, the hand holding not making you feel weird or as if people were staring, his jacket around your shoulders never feeling heavy. Being close to him was comforting, hearing his voice was soothing, being with him was.. like your personal stack of lavender, always ready to calm your nerves.

So when you were walking to his place, apartment still a bit foreign to you since you'd only visited him a handful of times, you didn't feel any pressure. You simply took off your shoes, immediately greeting his two pet rabbits in his living room, crouching down to pet them. "I feel like you only love me for my pets." He explained playfully scandalized, making you grin as you continued to run your hand over the soft fur.

"Alright!" He'd exclaimed as everything was set on the table, his arms on the back of his couch. "Will you stay with them or actually sit down with me? I'm getting lonely." He whined, and you rolled your eyes before you skipped to the couch, stumbling a bit as he chuckled, catching you as you almost fell onto his lap. "Easy there tiger, and here I thought you wanted to take things slow." He laughed, voice low as he turned on the movie, very aware of the blush coating your cheeks.

It started to cover his own soon as well however, as you slowly but surely started to cuddle up to him.

A kiss was what started it. One, then two, and the third deepened the feeling of want. You thought you'd feel pressured, hesitant, shy, or maybe even scared- but you didn't. This was Jungkook. And Jungkook was your safe place.

"Wait.." He hesitantly said, eyes almost shut in a way as if he was hurt, holding your shoulders as he looked at you. "I- I'm sorry, I don't know what came over myself there.." He chuckled, shifting a bit as he suddenly pulled on his sweater to hide his growing erection. He'd never been ashamed of it in the past, but now, it seemed out of place. It felt as if it made him look like he couldn't wait, as if he was impatient, or taking advantage of the situation. You simply took the receipt of the food, turning it around as you clicked the ballpoint pen on his table, writing.

'It's okay. I want to.'

His eyes widened as he got more serious. "You don't have to. I can totally wait." He said, a gentle smile on his lips as he watched you write another line.

'There's no one I'd rather go this far with.'

His heart began to beat heavier, if that made sense. It felt as if every beat was suddenly more meaningful, louder, more present than ever, as he watched you write.

'I'm yours.'

You gently laid the pen down, now looking at him as he smiled, kissing your lips again deeply as the thunderstorm outside raged on, lightning brightening the room for a second as he couldn't seem to stop kissing you. "Thank you." He hummed, before diving in again. "Thank you." He said again, before made you sit on his lap, straddling him as he chuckled in bliss. "I promise I'll take good care of you." He vowed as you'd closed your eyes, simply giving yourself to him as his hands held you safely. "Now, and forever." He whispered, before he stood up, strong arms underneath your bottom as he carried you out of the living room, into his dark bedroom that only occasionally lit up from the lightning outside. The rain hit the window harshly, yet he didn't seem to hear it at all as he let you fall on the mattress back first, chuckling as he almost fell on top of you, making you giggle.

The sound prominent in his ears as he swore he could've cried.

"You sound so beautiful." He hummed against your neck, his words never wiping the smile off of your face as he moved you to lay down properly, clothes slowly loosing purpose as every item slowly met the floor with a soft thud. He praised every curve, every flaw you saw in yourself as he closed his eyes in pure bliss, no need for visual confirmation to know that you were perfect to him. For the first time in forever you felt free, completely safe and guarded as he moved above you, silent gasps and sighs the only thing present as he stood up for a moment, having to search for a condom before he met you on the bed again, giggling like school kids caught doing mischief as he struggled to open the package, making you laugh at him.

He decided he loved that sound.

If someone was to ask him what he thought your voice sounded like, his first reply would genuinely be that he did not care. It wasn't mandatory in what you both had, he'd learned that over the months and months he'd spent with you. Words surely made communication a bit simpler, but he didn't need them to show you his love and adoration for you. It proved his worth way better than words ever could.

Wrapping the safety over his length he kissed you again, seemingly hooked on the simple gesture as he held himself with one hand, the other one guiding him into you, slowly, as to not make it hurt.

He'd never hurt you.

He didn't rush, there was no need to. This wasn't about reaching a goal, a high, or any end of some sorts. He simply relished in being close to you, in the huge amount of trust you gave him willingly, naturally. He felt honored, as cheesy as it sounded, he felt as if there was no bigger achievement in his life than knowing that you gave yourself into his arms simply because you cherished him just as much as he did you. He held you tightly against him as he slowly moved, pace slow and almost lazy as you slightly squirmed and reached around his shoulders, holding him close as well, both of you existing, nothing more.

Maybe it was the fact that it was you, maybe it was the high of his own happiness in knowing that he held your heart, but he soon felt himself grow sensitive, hand reaching between your bodies to roll your pear between his inked fingers, making you mewl underneath him.

He decided he loved that sound as well.

Your back arched as you came undone underneath him, clenching center helping his own release to happen shortly after. He gasped out, catching his breath as he rested his forehead against yours, suddenly laughing as if he was drunk. And he kind of was; drunk on the realization that this had indeed happened, that he actually was here, holding you, having you all for himself. He slipped out of you after a moment, pulling the condom off of himself as he tied it and threw it into the bin close to his bed, before slipping underneath his blankets, holding you close, sighing in gentle comfort as no words were spoken. Until you moved a bit, lips close to his ear, as you whispered.

"I love you."

And he decided, he loved that sound most of them all.

[maxismatchccworld]

Patch Notes

PC:1.69.54.1020 / Mac: 1.69.54.1220 Console: Version 1.35 Happy Holidays Simmers! It’s time to go back in to Create a Sim! Where in this update you will find 100+ new skin tones, customization sliders for skin tones and makeup, and three improved base game hairstyles! Every skin tone now has a value slider that allows you to change the light to dark value of that skin tone, unlocking a much wider variety of skin tone options for you to play with! You will also find that our skin tones are now filterable to warm, cool, and neutral tones (as well as miscellaneous that covers our occult skin tones).

The new makeup sliders add more choices and opportunities for you to customize your Sims, and express your Sim’s style! Hue, saturation, value or brightness, and opacity are now available to modify on the makeup. We have locked some of the sliders where it did not provide an optimal experience or make sense for the makeup. Expect us to continue our work on these issues into the future to provide you with more. In addition to the customization opportunities provided, you can also save custom swatches as you tweak your sliders to get the perfect look. When you click on the swatch (for skin tones and makeup) as you modify the sliders, you will have an opportunity to save your custom settings, so you can re-use it later without having to remember your perfect looks! Did we mention that we made some hair updates? We did - we updated a base game child hair (cfHair_BraidedPonyTail), and we added a second version of that hair that removes the baby hairs (cfHair_BraidedPonyTailPlain). And we updated a base game male hair that you may find difficult to recognize from the original hair (ymHair_flatTopTextured)!

We have updated the Main Menu!... Again! The idea behind this change is to create a more cohesive experience and give Packs a more proper space as we continue to grow our content lineup. As a nice bonus, we highlighted the Gallery in a more meaningful way to inspire you.

-SimGuruGnome & SimGuruRusskii

Now onto the fixes:

Sims 4

Sketching so much that the Digital Sketch Pad just quit on you? Never fear! Freelancer Sims that use the Digital Sketchpad will now be able to complete designs without being reset abruptly.

Happy Birthday to all! Sims will now properly Age Up. Adulting is hard but they will make it, don’t worry.

Fixed an issue in which Doors, Windows, and Arches had cutouts when being reflected in Mirrors. Rorrim Rorrim no eht llaw, ohw si eht tseriaf erutaef fo meht lla?

Sims that do not have the Fishing Skill, or have not been Fishing at all, will not get notifications about identifying Fish. THEY WERE FISHING WITH THEIR MINDS.

The following careers have added the “Take Vacation Day” option, yay!Editor Russkii note: I didn’t want to add each line in each pack for this fix, it would have looked weird and robotic so that is why I chose to do one bullet point for all in this section.

Child Sims will no longer forget they are in their Sleepwear when they go to school. Though in these times of Work and School from Home, I don’t blame them one bit.

The Sweet Escapes Country Toilet will no longer be Comfortable AND Uncomfortable at the same time… There can only be one!

Sims with the Best Selling Author Aspiration can now complete their task of writing 3 Best Sellers.

Fixed an issue in which resized objects would disappear when they were part of downloaded Gallery items.

We revised our Careers (Pack specific and not) and we made sure there were no Chance Cards that were repeated constantly.

We noticed we had added the option to Clean Up Toddler on kitchen and bathroom sinks for both Toddlers and Children by mistake, so we removed it for both age groups from the sink… but how would have they fit? Like… how? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Build Snowpal interaction is no longer available on non-natural ground (For Simmers that own Seasons and/or Snowy Escape). That's why it's called a Snowpal, not a Floorpal!

Gardener (Seasons)

Military (Strangerville)

Lifeguard for Teens and Conservationist (Island Living)

Law, Education, and Engineer (Discover University)

Civil Designer (Eco Lifestyle).

Get to Work

We made a clarification on the Xenophilia moodlet when interacting with Alien Sims. It should no longer say “From Discovering Aliens” but now it correctly reads “From Interacting with Aliens.”

Fixed an issue in which childbirth was not possible if Simmers changed the color swatches of the Surgery Tables. Now listen, I have heard about renting whole hospital wings for a birth in real life and other eccentricities, but this… was really something.

Get Together

Male Sims will no longer get Pregnant after receiving calls from NPC Sims.

City Living

NPC Sims will now text and call with invitations to Festivals. I personally welcomed the calm and quiet of my phone not beeping about constantly. But I can’t miss a Festival!

Sims rejoice! Yard sale customers will no longer invade their Home Lots and use Household objects. It is a Yard Sale… OUT in the yard, not an Open House.

Did you ever regret trusting some Sims enough to give them your apartment keys to constantly get visits from them for Milk and Juice? You can rest assured that they will no longer visit you for this purpose. I think some neighborly love is appreciated, but this went beyond the proverbial “May I have a cup of sugar?” type of situation.

Fixed an issue in which interactions to participate on GeekCon contests would not appear when interacting with objects.

We decided to give a bit more clarity when displaying the location of Festivals, so now it will display as “Near <insert location>” and not a distinct location that is not entirely correct. This is true for Festivals in Snowy Escape as well.

Cats and Dogs

Pets will no longer sleep in random places when told to sleep on their Pet beds. In my world they can sleep where they are most comfortable, my conspiracy… allegedly.

Seasons

Sims can now Shower in the Rain… Jury is still out on Singing and Dancing.

Sims will no longer “lose” their shovels when performing other autonomous activities while performing the interaction “Shovel Snow.”

Our friendly neighborhood Snowpal has been properly renamed to Chill from Chil. Everything I knew before was a lie… a LIE!

Ever felt like the Holiday spirit has just been too much to handle, and Father Winter starting to show up everywhere and not letting you do much of anything getting a bit… out of hand? Fear not! Father Winter will stop replicating himself* to spread holiday cheer. *Note this fix is not entirely retroactive, new saves should see this without issue. Existing saves will correct themselves over time.

Get Famous

Duck Security SCROO9E Super XL Smart Vault will no longer disappear after Sims Woohoo in it… you can say Woohoo can be romantic and magical, but maybe not to this extent?

NPCs from the Actor Career sometimes would never show on Set, making gigs impossible to complete. We've spoken with their union reps and everyone has agreed to stop this ridiculous strike. What were they striking about? Was there even a Strike? We may never know.

Island Living

Mermaids and other Occults should no longer be able to make hybrid occults. How were they making them? Oh boy, I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to give you the mermaid-birds and spellcaster-bees talk.

Randomly generated Mermaid Sims will no longer be seen without some features in affected Simmer Saves. However this fix is not retroactive, so it should be seen fixed in new saves.

Pizza delivery to Lagoon Look Lot has been fixed to arrive promptly. This is Sulani Deep Lagoon Pizza, home of the 2x1 Mermadic Kelp Pizza and the Salty Llama Combo, may I take your order? <Descriptive Simlish on the line> Uh huh… uh huh… <Indescribable Simlish on the line> Yes, we now can ACTUALLY deliver to Lagoon Look… <Interrogative Simlish on the line> Yes, we told our delivery Sims that they need to deliver it there and not keep the pizza for themselves… like give it to the actual client. <Surprised Simlish on the line>

Discover University

Has this ever happened to you? Your Sim is ready to make an offering to the Sprites only to find a crystal stuck without being able to move it? No longer a problem, Sims now can remove offerings so all their rituals can resume. Sprites rejoice.

We fixed an issue for our Console Simmers that wouldn’t allow them to close the Humanoid Robot’s Behavior Module Menus correctly.

Fixed an issue that would cause items to be repossessed when loans were fully paid. That is NOT how it worked Repo Person… NOT how it worked.

Sims with Research & Debate Skill 3 or higher will no longer be able to “Convince to” with Toddler Sims.

Masquerade Secret Society Masks are now properly unlocked in Create a Sim when joining the Secret Society.

Fixed an issue in which Heckle animation was sometimes not being performed autonomously by Sims while playing Ping Pong.

Eco Lifestyle

Fixed an issue that triggered the Off-the-Grid notifications after traveling to different Lots in Evergreen Harbor, even when they are not labeled as Off-the-Grid.

We spoke to all Eco Inspectors, and they have agreed that they should NOT be charging the Energy efficient appliances fine if your appliances are fully upgraded to be super efficient and amazing. I mean all that work and still get fined? Not in this house!

Fixed an issue in which some placeholder text was showing in notifications after Dumpster Diving.

The Americana Station Speakers will now play Music… as the prophecy foretold.

When the We Wear Bags N.A.P is active, Grim Reaper will not be partially invisible when appearing on a Lot. Grim Reaper contributes!

Living the No Appliance lifestyle? We’ve got news for you! Sims will no longer be penalized for not having “Eco-Friendly Appliances.” No appliances, no fines!

Snowy Escape

Vending Machine Canned Soups and Drinks won’t spoil anymore. Time to stock up!

Sims can no longer go on Hikes while holding their Toddlers.

Space Heaters will now be able to be placed on Lots from Inventory. Sharing the warmth everywhere!

Fixed an issue in which the Shoe Removal Sign in 5-1-2 Kiyomatsu was not working properly. We also added Shoe Removal Signs in 5-1-1 Kiyomatsu and 2-4-2 Wakabamori.

Sims will now be more visibly furious when having the appropriate furious sentiment toward other Sims. “Yes, I’m mad!... No! This IS my furious face!”

Fixed an issue with some animations that would stutter while Snowboarding or Skiing. We also made sure that Sims with a high level of those skills would not always choose the Bunny Slopes.

Izzy Fabulous’ Star Simmi Rank was just too fabulous so we had to correct it to be one star less than displayed. Don’t worry Izzy, you are a full 4 stars in my book, you are that fabulous to me.

After much debate of whether it is the Cave Shrine or the Mountain Shrine for Hiking destinations we finally decided to just call it Mountain Shrine.

We revised the Snoop-Proof Bamboo Blinds and it is now possible to drop’em like they’re hot with the Thousand Words Window.

NPC Sims will no longer “take over” the Slopes for themselves for an indefinite period of time, now they will be sharing with all Sims the joys of the Slopes.

Fixed an issue in which Sims would get highlighted in the Sentiment Panel as if receiving new Sentiments every time traveling is involved.

Sims with Rock Climbing Skill 7, or higher, are able to autonomously climb the Tall Wall (Such tall! So much wall!). There is no need to not face what makes you uncomfortable… autonomously.

Had a chat with Yamachan and asked if he was ok, he seemed to start random conversations and then randomly say goodbye without reason. We are happy to report that he is OK now and will try not to do that. Give us a hug Yamachan.

Food Stalls at Mt. Komorebi Festivals won’t be closing shop randomly during Festival hours anymore. <guitar and piano intro> Closing time, open all the Stalls and eat all the food in the world...Closing time, turn all the lights on and let Yamachan greet you heeeere…

Create a Sim asset ymHat_EP10HelmetGoggles has been fixed to no longer display clipping around the neck area as well as we made sure no facial hair is removed when wearing this asset.

Dine Out

Experimenting with photo frames will no longer use the same picture of an Experimental Meal when displayed.

Hot Pot meals are now part of Restaurant Menus! I miss the times I would go to eat Hot Pot at a restaurant. One of my favorites has a conveyor belt that carries your fixings never leaving your table for a thing. *happy sigh*

Vampires

Vampire Sims will no longer be affected by temperature, so they won't be constantly obsessed with lighting fireplaces trying to get warm.

Post edited by EA_Leeloo at 6:30PM

Source: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/984647/december-7th-2020-patch-notes

[blubberquark]

Excel, Word, Access, Outlook

Previously on computer literacy: A Test For Computer Literacy

If you’re a computer programmer, you sometimes hear other programmers complain about Excel, because it mixes data and code, or about Word, because it mixes text and formatting, and nobody ever uses Word and Excel properly.

If you’re a computer programmer, you frequently hear UX experts praise the way Excel allows non-programmers to write whole applications without help from the IT department. Excel is a great tool for normal people and power users, I often hear.

I have never seen anybody who wasn’t already versed in a real programming language write a complex application in an Excel spreadsheet. I have never seen anybody who was not a programmer or trained in Excel fill in a spreadsheet and send it back correctly.

Computer programmers complain about the inaccessibility of Excel, the lack of discoverability, the mixing of code and data in documents that makes versioning applications a proper nightmare, the influence of the cell structure on code structure, and the destructive automatic casting of cell data into datatypes.

UX experts praise Excel for giving power to non-programmers, but I never met a non-programmer who used Excel “properly”, never mind developed an application in it. I met non-programmers who used SPSS, Mathematica, or Matlab properly a handful of times, but even these people are getting rarer and rarer in the age of Julia, NumPy, SymPy, Octave, and R. Myself, I have actually had to learn how to use Excel in school, in seventh grade. I suspect that half of the “basic computer usage” curriculum was the result of a lobbying campaign by Microsoft’s German branch, because we had to learn about certain features in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Windows 95, and non-Microsoft applications were conspicuously absent.

Visual Basic and VBS seemed like a natural choice to give power to end users in the 90s. People who had already used a home computer during the 8-bit/16-bit era (or even an IBM-compatible PC) were familiar with BASIC because that was how end-users were originally supposed to interact with their computers. BASIC was for end users, and machine code/compiled languages were for “real programmers” - BASIC was documented in the manual that came with your home computer, machine code was documented in MOS data sheets. From today’s point of view, programming in BASIC is real programming. Calling Visual Basic or .Net scripting in Excel “not programming“ misrepresents what modern programmers do, and what GUI users have come to expect after the year 2000.

Excel is not very intuitive or beginner-friendly. The “basic computer usage” curriculum was scrapped shortly after I took it, so I had many opportunities to observe people who were two years younger than me try to use Excel by experimenting with the GUI alone.

The same goes fro Microsoft Word. A friend of mine insists that nobody ever uses Word properly, because Word can do ligatures and good typesetting now, as well as footnotes, chapters, outline note taking, and so on. You just need to configure it right. If people used Word properly, they wouldn’t need LaTeX or Markdown. That friend is already a programmer. All the people I know who use Word use WYSIWYG text styling, fonts, alignment, tables, that sort of thing. In order to use Word “properly“, you’d have to use footnotes, chapter marks, and style sheets. The most “power user” thing I have ever seen an end user do was when my father bought a CD in 1995 with 300 Word templates for all sorts of occasions - birthday party invitation, employee of the month certificate, marathon completion certificate, time table, cooking recipe, invoice, cover letter - to fill in and print out.

Unlike Excel, nobody even claims that non-programmer end users do great things in Word. Word is almost never the right program when you have email, calendars, wikis, to-do lists/Kanban/note taking, DTP, vector graphics, mind mapping/outline editors, programmer’s plain text editors, dedicated novelist/screenwriting software, and typesetting/document preparation systems like LaTeX. Nobody disputes that plain text, a wiki, or a virtual Kanban board is often preferable to a .doc or .docx file in a shared folder. Word is still ubiquitous, but so are browsers.

Word is not seen as a liberating tool that enables end-user computing, but as a program you need to have but rarely use, except when you write a letter you have to print out, or when you need to collaborate with people who insist on e-mailing documents back and forth.

I never met an end user who actually liked Outlook enough to use it for personal correspondence. It was always mandated by an institution or an employer, maintained by an IT department, and they either provided training or assumed you already had had training. Outlook has all these features, but neither IT departments nor end users seemed to like them. Outlook is top-down mandated legibility and uniformity.

Lastly, there is Microsoft Access. Sometimes people confused Excel and Access because both have tables, so at some point Microsoft caved in and made Excel understand SQL queries, but Excel is still not a database. Access is a database product, designed to compete with products like dBase, Cornerstone, and FileMaker. It has an integrated editor for the database schema and a GUI builder to create forms and reports. It is not a networked database, but it can be used to run SQL queries on a local database, and multiple users can open the same database file if it is on a shared SMB folder. It is not something you can pick up on one afternoon to code your company’s billing and invoicing system. You could probably use it to catalogue your Funko-Pop collection, or to keep track of the inventory, lending and book returns of a municipal library, as long as the database is only kept on one computer. As soon as you want to manage a mobile library or multiple branches, you would have to ditch Access for a real SQL RDBMS.

Microsoft Access was marketed as a tool for end-user computing, but nobody really believed it. To me, Access was SQL with training wheels in computer science class, before we graduated to MySQL and then later to Postgres and DB2. UX experts never tout Access as a big success story in end-user computing - yet they do so for Excel.

The narrative around Excel is quite different from the narrative around Yahoo Pipes, IFTTT, AppleScript, HyperCard, Processing, or LabView. The narrative goes like this: “Excel empowers users in big, bureaucratic organisations, and allows them to write limited applications to solve business problems, and share them with co-workers.”

Excel is not a good tool for finance, simulations, genetics, or psychology research, but it is most likely installed on every PC in your organisation already. You’re not allowed to share .exe files, but you are allowed to share spreadsheets. Excel is an exchange format for applications. Excel files are not centrally controlled, like Outlook servers or ERP systems, and they are not legible to management. Excel is ubiquitous. Excel is a ubiquitous runtime and development environment that allows end-users to create small applications to perform simple calculations for their jobs.

Excel is a tool for office workers to write applications to calculate things, but not without programming, but without involving the IT department. The IT department would like all forms to be running on some central platform, all data to be in the data warehouse/OLAP platform/ERP system - not because they want to make the data legible and accessible, but because they want to minimise the number of business-critical machines and points of failure, because important applications should either run on servers in a server rack, or be distributed to workstations by IT.

Management wants all knowledge to be formalised so the next guy can pick up where you left off when you quit. For this reason, wikis, slack, tickets and kanban boards are preferable to Word documents in shared folders. The IT department calls end-user computing “rogue servers“ or “shadow IT“. They want all IT to have version control, unit tests, backups, monitoring, and a handbook. Accounting/controlling thinks end-user computing is a compliance nightmare. They want all software to be documented, secured, and budgeted for. Upper management wants all IT to be run by the IT department, and all information integrated into their reporting solution that generates these colourful graphs. Middle management wants their people to get some work done.

Somebody somewhere in the C-suite is always viewing IT as a cost centre, trying to fire IT people and to scale down the server room. This looks great on paper, because the savings in servers, admins, and tech support are externalised to other departments in the form of increased paperwork, time wasted on help hotlines, and

Excel is dominating end-user computing because of social reasons and workplace politics. Excel is not dominating end-user computing because it is actually easy to pick up for end-users.

Excel is dominating end-user computing neither because it is actually easy to pick up for non-programmers nor easy to use for end-users.

This is rather obvious to all the people who teach human-computer interaction at universities, to the people who write books about usability, and the people who work in IT departments. Maybe it is not quite as obvious to people who use Excel. Excel is not easy to use. It’s not obvious when you read a book on human-computer interaction (HCI), industrial design, or user experience (UX). Excel is always used as the go-to example of end-user computing, an example of a tool that “empowers users”. If you read between the lines, you know that the experts know that Excel is not actually a good role model you should try to emulate.

Excel is often called a “no code“ tool to make “small applications“, but that is also not true. “No Code” tools usually require users to write code, but they use point-and-click, drag-and-drop, natural language programming, or connecting boxes by drawing lines to avoid the syntax of programming languages. Excel avoids complex syntax by breaking everything up into small cells. Excel avoids iteration or recursion by letting users copy-paste formulas into cells and filling formulas in adjacent cells automatically. Excel does not have a debugger, but shows you intermediate results by showing the numbers/values in the cells by default, and the code in the cells only if you click.

All this makes Excel more like GameMaker or ClickTeam Fusion than like Twine. Excel is a tool that doesn’t scare users away with text editors, but that’s not why people use it. It that were the reason, we would be writing business tools and productivity software in GameMaker.

The next time you read or hear about the amazing usability of Excel, take it with a grain of salt! It’s just barely usable enough.

[toadstoolgardens]

You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to be giving advice for herbal "cures" that don't really work. As someone who actually works in an ER, you're giving people advice that can be dangerous. Stop it.

No, I am not a doctor. I am just a plant lover.

I have a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science and I was lucky enough to take ethnobotany classes in college. I've been studying natural medicines for about 7 years now from academic, online, and local sources. I am also a burn victim. When the accident occurred that resulted in me being burned I turned to my ethnobotany professor for advice. He helped me discover plants that could help. Herbs to help with my scarring, to help with my anxiety and anxiety-induced stomach aches, but all of this was after my formal medical treatment was over. In his teaching he strove to pass on this knowledge in a safe and respectful way to protect me as I used the herbs and the Indigenous traditional knowledge of them. I strive to do the same.

Whenever I post about herbal medicines I do my best to provide safe advice. Plant medicines are dangerous! In order to use them safely you need to do a lot of things right. Properly identify the plant in the wild and safely and respectfully forage it or buy the correct plant from a safe and reliable source, fully understand the plant's uses, possible risks or side effects, safe dosages, and how the active constituents work, then you need to properly prepare it to be used internally or externally in a safe manner. I have posts about herbal safety, how to source safe herbs, and active constituents. I also don't post about dangerous plants that have medicinal properties, I try to keep my posts about plants that are safe for most with proper use.

In addition to these posts I try to keep everyone reading the information I share safe by citing my sources at the end of each post. Anything I post is fact checked and sourced from books and online resources that I believe to be reliable, I never rely solely on my personal knowledge. I provide information on possible risks, side effects, or the potential for allergic reaction. I provide safety warnings if anyone is planning to forage like "ensure you've 100% properly identified all species you intend to consume", advise bringing reliable field guides and someone knowledgeable on what you're foraging for along with you, providing links to guides on identifying the specific species I'm writing about, advising to never forage in areas you are unsure of cleanliness and pollutants, and mentioning possible dangerous look-alikes and how to tell them apart. I don't do it in every post (I may now add it as a warning on each post thanks to this ask!💕) but I often include a warning about plant medicines being excellent but no replacement for modern medicine especially when dealing with more serious issues or with babies/children/the elderly/those with chronic conditions/those with weakened immune systems. I also update posts if I ever learn new safety information regarding a species I've written about.

My only goal in posting about this topic on this blog is to share with others the incredible world of natural medicines that exists around us. I and so many others throughout history have used and benefitted from plant medicines. I hope that anyone who reads my posts will do further research on any species they're interested in to ensure they use it safely. I will continue to do my best to consider safety in all aspects of what I post. If anyone has ideas to make this blog safer or any other advice please send it my way. I love all of you dearly, I never mean to cause harm. Take care of yourselves and stay SAFE💖🌿

-Toadstool

[nat-20s]

📓?

OKAY OKAY OKAY

so this is the only one of these that I don't have actual plans to actually write because I've tried and it fought me and maybe I'll get back to it later but maybe not

ANYWAY it's this really bitchin au that can..probably? be canon compliant where essentially Jon is dying and Oliver approaches him and Martin and tells him that The Archivist has to die no doubt about it BUT

The Archivist can be separated from Jonathan Sims. Remove every trace of the eye from him, and the human leftover gets to live. The catch is that in order to do that, Jon essentially loses, both physically and mentally, everything since he recorded the first real tape as archivist, which of course means his entire relationship with Martin. Anything involving the institute from before this period (aka his time in research with tim and sasha) will be made deliberately hazy, but not necessarily completely wiped.

WORSE is that if Jon remembers, he'll be enough of The Eye again that it will kill him. ergo, if he remembers Martin, he dies, and they don't know if he has access to those memories and they're just suppressed, or if they're properly wiped, gone forever, and even if Martin told him what had happened, he wouldn't properly remember, and would be fine. If you're like "hey, nat, this is sounding an awful lot like what happened to Donna during journey's end" then you're right bc it is AND SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA WORK THROUGH A PIECE OF MEDIA BY WRITING FANFIC FOR A DIFFERENT PIECE OF MEDIA OKAY DON'T @ ME

anyway the fic itself is actually alternating perspectives between jon and martin after the wipe has already happened, with jon waking up with no memories and Doctor Antonio Blake telling him he's had a bad accident that's caused severe retrograde amnesia, while martin trying to keep his distance and being like hey oliver?? hey oliver?? this fuckin blows and oliver's like yeah :/

also martin basically begs Georgie and Melanie to help out because Jon DOES remember his ex from college consequence free, and they help fill in some lies about the past few years of what happened to him

ANYWAY this all sounds real angsty but it's fine actually because Jon may not have proper memories but he does have dreams and while most of the dream is vaguely nightmarish he also keeps dreaming of this one man who was with him for all of it?? and is kind and handsome and the only comfort in these hellscapes???

and also HOLY SHIT THAT MAN FROM HIS DREAMS IS STANDING IN THIS BOOKSHOP????

then it's like this whle thing of Jon NOT leaving Martin alone he needs ANSWERS why does he feel like he's in LOVE with a STRANGER why does he DREAM ABOUT HIM and martin is like hahahahahahahahahahaha fuck

long story short Jon doesn't die bc his memories of everything don't come back but he gets to keep his love for martin because that was always him, not the eye, not the archivist and they probably kiss and go on dates and stuff the end <3

[sorcererinthestars]

Starlight, Starbright...

It’s that time again - another Secret Springfairy writing event for the @rtwritingcommunity​  <3 

Summary:  Young Prince Gavin is cursed. He's bound to a star, a literal star, and in order to free him, the Jeremy, the Court Mage Apprentice, has to find a way to keep a star from falling. When its only you between the universe and the death of the person you love the most, drastic measures start to look appealing... AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31002023

‘Mommy, can you tell me a story?’

Fiona laughs and sits down at the edge of the bed, pulling the blanket up closer around her daughter’s chest. Every night, the girl asked for a story and every night she had to oblige. Lindsay meets her eyes from the doorway, their own dancing in mirth. There was one story that their daughter would love more than anything.... the story about the mythical King and his Mage. The story of the time they wrangled the stars and won their place in story and song. 

Closing her eyes for a moment to remember, she sits back, takes a breath, and...

The people of Achievement City never have seen the Star Prince. Born after a birth that had snatched away the beloved Queen, the Prince was too weak to be announced properly to his people. They had hidden him away at the top of the tallest tower to keep him from danger. At least, that’s what the King had said. The Prince was too weak to come out. He was alive. But only that. 

Only that.

The townspeople knew better to question their King, but there were rumors. Of course, there were always rumors. They say that the Prince was kept in the tallest tower because he was cursed. Because he shouldn’t have been born. Because the King had given everything - even the life of his Queen - to have a son. An heir. Even a sickly heir was better than nothing. Even a sickly heir meant succession, peace. For now, at least. 

There were whispers along the people that the Prince, with his curse, was given Demon powers. That he gleamed when people saw him. Servants told each other that the Prince glowed, that he shimmered with what could be sunlight but was too silver, too pale. It’s said you can’t spend more than a few minutes with him without being dazzled by his iridescence, like he had actually swallowed a star and it burned within him, dazzling all who saw him in a dangerous light that revealed your coldest secrets.

Here, Fiona can only shake her head as her daughter’s eyes grow round. Lindsay chuckles, sitting next to her and rubbing Fiona’s back as she continues her tale.

See, she explains, the Prince was cursed like people had said. On the night of his birth, the Queen was dying. Desperate, the King had turned to his Mage for help, who had summoned a demon to make a bargain. A being who dealt in tricks as much as assistance; who would not offer help freely. They saved the baby but not the mother. One life for another. She gave her life freely for her son, but there was a catch none of them expected.

Using its magicks, the demon pulled a star from the sky, feeding it to the Prince, the youngling who would soon be named Gavin. The Prince had swallowed the shining thing, a bead of glowing white light, and never again would stop shimmering. His energies would be different than the world around him. During the day, he would be listless. Lethargic. Cut off from his source. During the night, he would shine and shimmer, full of energy. Ready for dancing and singing and so much life. Or all the life he could have, hidden away from the world.

And on the night of his 30th birthday, unless a proper replacement could be manifested, the Prince would die as a meteor shower would drive his star from the sky. Terrified of the Bargain he had made, the King banishes his son to the tallest tower. Keeping him there to keep him close to the sky, the stars. His son’s ever-beating heart tied to something so unfathomable. 

Her daughter gasps. Fiona soothes her. Because this was not a scary tale or a sad story! The Prince was not alone. He had a companion in the castle: the Court Mages’ Apprentice - young Jeremy Dooley.

“Have you thought of anything yet?” Gavin asks as he moves his piece across the gaming board, frowning more at the conversation than the easy way Jeremy snatches his piece. The apprentice sighs back, scratching their chin. “No. Not unless you know a way to stop an astrological event. But we’ll figure it out, Gav, you know we will.”

Gavin’s shine flashes for a moment as he grows more agitated. “You know the curse. I’m fucking 29 years old, I’ve never seen outside during the day, never really talked to my people - I’m stuck in here I die in less than six months unless... “

“Don’t say that,” Jeremy snaps back. “I know, Gav, and we’re working on it. Demon deals are complicated. This is the boundaries of life and death - its not so easily tinkered with. If you know how to create a star to keep you from becoming one, I’d really love to hear your input.”

Gavin frowns. There’s a beat. One and then two, before he sighs. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I’m just...”

“Scared? Frustrated? Angry? Join the club.” Jeremy hefts a sigh. “I know you’re the one that’s dying, but trust me, its no walk in the park not being able to help your friend, either.” 

There’s a pause and then Gavin shoves the game board away, climbing over the table. Jeremy has to shield their eyes, despite being enchanted to be able to withstand the shimmer and shine of the skin of their Prince. But Gavin doesn’t let that stop him, brushing his lips across the other’s. “I love you,” he says quietly. “I know you’re going to think of something. You’re the smartest person I know.”

A single tear rolls down Jeremy’s face that Gavin brushes off with a silvery fingertip. “What if I...”

“Then I’ll die, knowing I have the love of one of the strongest magicians in Achievement City,” Gavin shrugs. “Now shut up about it and lets start a new game. There’s only an hour or two left before sunrise and I want to kick your *ass*.”

There it was, Fiona explains. For the Court Mages’ Apprentice was in love with the Prince and cursed in their own way with an impossible task. They were to figure out how to stop the star from falling from the sky and save Gavin’s life. 

They lay next to each other on the tower top. Here, they were as high up as any manmade point in the whole city. If Gavin raises his hand, it was as if he could brush the very stars that gave him life. Jeremy sits next to him, studying the constellations as if they could give them information. 

“Maybe we could ask the Gods,” they suggest quietly and just has to deal with Gavin’s soft chuckling. “You know that’s not going to work. If the Gods had any desire to save the life of the human Prince, wouldn’t they have done it by now?”

Jeremy just sighs, rubbing their thumb over Gavin’s knuckles. “I don’t know. I’m just thinking.”

“All you ever do is think,” Gavin sighs back, sitting up as he shimmers against the backlight of the beautiful starry sky. For a moment, Jeremy loses their words. Gavin really does look every inch of the creature of magic that he had been cursed to become. His life tied to the stars that glimmer behind him. “We need to try something. We have less than six months. You know Dad’s already given up on me..”

“That’s not true,” Jeremy shoots back, “and you know it. The King loves you. He’s the one who is funding my Master’s research to save you. He just...”

“It’s easier to lose someone you barely know,” Gavin says bitterly. “I know.” He looks down over his city, his lands, a place he owns by name only but had never even seen. “Would it be so bad if I could be among them?”

“You know the King just wants to keep you safe,” Jeremy murmurs, hand brushing down Gavin’s spine. Gavin grumbles. “It’s a demon that did this, yeah? A life for a life, it took my Mum’s. But because she was 30, I’ll die when I’m 30. Unless we keep the star up there, or someone else dies and I get their years too.”

Jeremy looks a bit stricken. “Gambling with someone elses’ life is dangerous. My Master told your dad that much. We can’t sacrifice someone to save you, we don’t know if that would even work...”

“I’m not asking someone to give their life for me!” Gavin shoots back. “But if I could talk to the demon, maybe it would have the answer, maybe...”

Jeremy wraps his arms around him. “Maybe.” They kiss his temple, thrilling at the taste of magic under their lips as Gavin sparkles with it. But they start to think...

“Aren’t demons dangerous?” her daughter interrupts. Fiona chuckles a bit. “Yes, darling. But that doesn’t stop the magic apprentice from scheming. From reading late into the day when he’s supposed to be sleeping, working, or planning. From figuring out how to summon not only a demon, but the very demon that cursed Gavin. A figure named Lucae, a mysterious demon of the stars, a being who gave and took power as They deemed fit.

The candles shimmer in the air as Jeremy stares at the summoning circle. They had said the magic words, done the incantation. If they are right, the demon would be trapped within the circle and forced to answer a few questions.

If they were wrong... Jeremy doesn’t let themselves dwell on what would happen if they were wrong.

There’s a few tense heartbeats before a flash of light and energy that almost blinds Jeremy, throwing them backwards as they raise their arm to cower from the brilliance of the light. When it fades and they are able to blink the spots from their vision, a tall humanoid figure stands there. It has a tail and black eyes and jet black hair. Not to mention a brilliant smile full of cunning and arrogance. “Hello, Mr Dooley. This was brave. Or foolhardy.”

“I’m not planning on trapping you here,” Jeremy says quietly, hands clenching by their sides. “I’m just here to ask you one question. A question you’ve been likely asked before. I don’t want any bullshit, just give it to me straight, ok?”

“I’m a demon, Dooley,” Lucae grins wickedly. “I know what you’re going to ask and I know you won’t like the answer. Are you sure you want to ask it?”

Jeremy just spits at him. “Shut up. How do I reverse your fucking spell on my Prince?”

Lucae is quiet for a long moment and sighs, sitting crosslegged and hovering above the summoning circle in a wickedly innocent display of incredible power. He makes a show of thinking for a long moment despite the fact that both know he is fucking with Jeremy. “You know the answer to this,” he says finally. “I’m giving you one more chance, child. You are a human. You have much to live for.” He sounds almost... regretful.

Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe it would get him killed. But they both know they don’t have much time left anyways. Jeremy throws a candlestick at the demon’s head and they both wince as it passes through the demon like smoke.

Lucae sighs. “Such a temper. You want to save the Prince I cursed? Climb to the top of Mount Amber on the night of the Prince’s thirtieth birthday. Then wish on a star at the stroke of midnight. You can die for him. That’s the only way to save him. My magic is foolproof, you know. I gave him the life of his mother, who only had 30 years to give.”

Jeremy knew what the answer was going to be. As soon as the demon says it, with a coy little grin, and Jeremy’s veins grow cold as ice, they knew that they always knew the answer. The only way to continue Gavin’s half-life is to give another and give him a few more years. Jeremy didn’t have many - a measly twenty-eight to Gavin’s thirty. But it was... something. It would get him to 58. That’s twenty-eight more years to solve the curse.

It would buy him time. Time to run the Kingdom. Time to be the King Jeremy always knew Gavin could be.

With their heart in their throat and ice in their veins, Jeremy waves his hand aggressively and the candles go out at once. Without their light, the spell is broken and the demon dissipates with a soft laugh.

I told you you wouldn’t like the answer...

Fiona pauses in her story to see her daughter with tears running down her face. “J-rimmy can’t die!” she whines. “That’s not a nice story, Mama.” Fiona is about to respond, but before she can, Lindsay pulls their daughter onto their lap and kisses her head. “Let Mommy finish the tale,” they say soothingly. 

Jeremy and Gavin don’t see each other much in the next few months. Jeremy pours themselves into their work and Gavin just grows increasingly more anxious. He’s visited by his Father, the King, and some other advisors. Talking into the night about plans. Action. Trying to stop a curse everyone knows is inevitable.

But the hollowness remains in the back of everyone’s minds. The answer is obvious. They all know what has to happen, no one just wants to say it out loud. Someone has to give their life for Gavin. But no one except the little Court Mage Apprentice knows how. 

It’s late in the day, a week before Jeremy knows they have to take their fateful climb up Mount Amber, that they know they have to tell Gavin. But they can’t tell Gavin the truth. No chance in hell - Gavin would balk and panic before they could even get through the sentence. And no amount of pity or shame or grief would stop Jeremy from doing what needs to be done.

He had made up his mind the night after talking to Lucae that he would do it. What was his life compared to that of a Prince? It was his duty, really, to give his life over for his Prince. And besides...

It’s what you did for the one you love the most.

Jeremy meets Gavin in his tower after a week of avoiding each other and before they could open their mouth to say something, Gavin is slamming the door shut and dragging Jeremy into a breathless kiss. Jeremy melts against his lips and for a moment they just cling to each other, Gavin’s silvery radiance cascading around them, cool like a summer’s breeze on their arms.

When they break apart, Jeremy notices Gavin is crying. He’s coming up at the end of his borrowed time, the world taking back what was Theirs. Jeremy feels whatever conviction was inside of them harden. They wouldn’t watch Gavin die. And besides - Gavin would be heartbroken, but he’d get over their death. Eventually. Better living to grieve than dying, anyways.

“What’s the book?” Gavin says hesitantly, gesturing to the tome Jeremy had in their arms. “A solution?” 

Jeremy sighs and forces themselves to affix a small smile to their face. “I - I think so. You are made of starlight, right? I was thinking if - on the night it is s-supposed to happen - if we are at the top of Mount Amber. M...maybe we can Wish on a star. They say Wishing Magic is the most powerful during a meteor event. Maybe...”

Gavin scoffs. He doesn’t want to be rude, but... “You’re hinging my life on wishing upon a fucking star?”

No, Jeremy thinks. I just need you at the top of that mountain. “It’s foolish, I know, but...” A broken sob rips from their mouth without meaning to, sinking down to sit on Gavin’s plush bed. “I’m s-sorry, I ...” They hiccup. “I’m sorry.”

“J...,” Gavin says immediately, moving over to draw them against his chest. “You have better plans than the entire rest of this castle. I love you. If you think it’ll work, I’m willing to try.”

“And if it doesn’t...?” Jeremy whispers. 

Gavin shrugs and when Jeremy looks up to meet his eyes, they can see the human green shot through with liquid silver tears. “Then I’ll die under the stars with the person I love most in the world.”

Jeremy can’t stop themselves from sobbing then. 

Their daughter is breathless now. Just watching Fiona with wide eyes, unable to say another word. Riveted in the story, her own tiny tears on her face, holding the blanket tight. She knows stories, know they always get worse before they get better, but this... this better have a happy ending! It was a bedtime story, for goodness sakes!

The day they leave, the atmosphere is ... somber. It had taken the King some convincing, but at this point, they were entirely at a loss. Gavin had spent the last two days being poked, prodded, fed potions, underwent rituals, nothing. Lucae had not come when he was summoned. Apparently such a demon did not have to answer if he didn’t want to. Frankly, the King didn’t want to see the demon that had so cursed his family.

A few hours before the supposed end, the castle was in preemptive mourning. Jeremy had given the King a brief fake idea of what they were about to do. No talk of their own death. They had spent the night before saying a brief goodbye to the few people they had a connection with. The only person that mattered in the end was Gavin, and they didn’t have to say goodbye to him. Not just yet, anyways.

They had started climbing during the day, but Gavin lagged. His energy being connected to the stars and the night, he found it hard to exert himself during the day. They don’t say anything. Jeremy doesn’t dare ask Gavin what he’s thinking about. Likely not much different than what Jeremy is thinking about. Both expect to meet the gallows at the top of this mountain. 

After a few breaks, night slowly descends around them and Gavin can walk a bit faster. They break the summit at 11pm. One hour before the meteor shower that will drive their star from the sky and kill the Prince in front of him. Gavin looks ...tired. Resigned. But he never lets go of their hand.

Never let it be said he would go into the dark without an anchor to the light.

They sit for a while. Silent, feet dangling off the edge of the highest cliff, and watch the world slowly settle into the warmth of night. Neither speak. What is there to say? When Gavin starts crying incandescent tears, Jeremy is there to kiss them away. They hold each other as the sky illuminates with the brilliance of a thousand - million - glistening points of light. They are at the highest point possible and Gavin glows brighter than all of them, a beacon of magic power that can be seen miles away.

When the first shooting star erupts across the sky, Gavin winces. As more start to fall, he shudders, but Jeremy is faster. They yank Gavin up to his feet.

“I lied,” they say sharply, staring right at Gavin. The man doesn’t have a moment to respond before Jeremy breathes “Forgive me,” and kisses him viciously.

Gavin is still reeling when Jeremy backs away and stares up to the falling brilliance of the stars above their head. “LUCAE!” he hollers. “I did everything you asked, you fucking bastard! And now I WISH TO willingly give my life for ...”

“NO!” Gavin shouts, leaping forward, tackling Jeremy bodily down to the stone, knocking the wind out of both of them. Jeremy wheezes, gasping, but it’s too late. “I wish to willingly give my life for Gavin.”

“Jeremy!” Gavin shrieks as the wind unnaturally picks up around them. The stars flash brighter, almost blinding as it feels like they’re falling and hitting the ground, shattering into bright incandescence that shimmers around them. Gavin himself is still glowing, which means he’s still *here*, still alive, and Jeremy...

Jeremy coughs a few times. Blood dribbles out of their nose, likely from the impact of Gavin tackling them down to the stone of the mountaintop. Gavin can’t bring himself to care as he watches instead a beautiful silver shimmer erupt from Jeremy’s chest that seems to elevate, lifting into the sky. As if it was about to become a star. Like he had been told his mother’s did, the star that gives him life on earth.

Wishing Magic. The very magic that is older than demons, older than the very earth under their feet. The magic that stitched the universe together, the magic of will and want, the magic of the very fabric of space and time. 

So... Gavin wishes.

Through the shrieking of the wind around him, the exhaustion that pulled on every edge of his bones, Gavin breathes in the Wishing Magic around him and makes his own wish. 

“I WISH FOR US!”

With fingers that glow like quicksilver against the tan skin of his people, Gavin grabs the white orb that glows above Jeremy’s chest and forces it back down against Jeremy’s chest. He holds it against the skin as the brilliance escapes from his fingers, begging and pleading for it to go back inside Jeremy’s rapidly cooling skin. His tears, shimmering and bright, fall on the back of his hands.

For a few breathless moments, it seems hopeless, Jeremy’s body rejecting the orb that strains against Gavin’s fingers to go into the sky. But Gavin is not a man.

In this moment, Gavin is a star himself.

“I wish for us,” he repeats firmly, leaning down to kiss Jeremy with all his might, and pushes with every ounce of magic and starlight that drip through his veins.

And it all goes brilliant white before flickering into the blackest black.

Fiona is cut off by their daughter shrieking. She climbs out from under the blankets and off of Lindsay’s lap, moving over to tug on Fiona’s shirt. “No! No~! They can’t be dead, you can’t... bad story, bad!” She tries to punch with little fists, but laughing, Fiona grabs them and kisses the pudgy little hands.

“Hush,” she scolds. “Do you really think my story will have such an unhappy ending? This is a bedtime story, after all.”

When Jeremy opens their eyes, they first see a bright blue that focuses into a sky, filled with puffy white clouds. They let out a breathless little cough, their ribcage feeling like something had been pounding on it. Like that one time they had choked on a cherry pit and needed someone to give them the Hemlich and CPR.

But this time, its ... Gavin.

Except, it doesn’t look like Gavin. His brown hair is streaked through with silver. The tips of his fingers on both hands sparkle bright silver as if he had dipped them in a vat of molten metal. But he doesn’t shimmer. He doesn’t glow. He looks... normal.

Then Jeremy realizes what day it is. And what was supposed to happen. They stagger backwards. They’re alive, which means... “Gavin!” They shake the other man frantically, desperately, tears growing in their eyes, but...

“....ughsjfh.”

“Gavin?”

On the day after his thirtieth birthday, their cursed prince opens his eyes. Not green, not silver, but a combination of both, their star-cursed prince breathes his first free breath.

His second is captured by Jeremy’s lips, holding him close as they cling to each other. Free to live and love together to the end of their days.

Fiona grins at her daughter, who releases her shirt and slumps back, pouting a bit. “I like the one about the horse princess better,” she says with a shrug and climbs under the blankets. “But this one is good too.”

Lindsay bursts into laughter as Fiona throws up her hands. “Not everyone loves a happy ending,” she smirks, kissing her head. They say goodnight to their daughter and leave the small bedroom, looking out the window to the castle on the hill - where the Star King and his Consort still reign to this day.

Happily. Ever. After.

The End.  

[ramenreptiles]

Are we heating our reptiles completely wrong?

I've been doing a lot of research on proper heating for reptiles in preparation for upgrading my ball pythons to bioactive PVC enclosures. In the process I discovered that new research seems to suggest that under tank heaters (UTH), Ceramic heat emitters (CHE), Deep heat projectors (DHP), and radiant heat panels (RHP) are all inadequate as the only heat source. As someone whose been keeping my ball pythons on heat tape (like the majority of ball python keepers) this came as quite a surprise. Below I've included the arguments I've seen for why research seems to suggest we've been doing things wrong. I'm still learning, so if you have any questions or suggestions please let me know!

As reptile keepers we strive to do our best at creating a microclimate for our pets. Since reptiles are ectothermic, they rely on the heat provided by natural sunlight and absorbed by earth for their metabolism to function properly.  We already know that reptiles need certain levels of UVB radiation to properly metabolize calcium. Some reptiles need more UVB than others, with diurnal reptiles needing more direct sun exposure than crepuscular reptiles. However, we’re coming to an understanding that UVB is beneficial to all reptiles regardless of their daytime activity. Even leopard geckos and ball pythons get at least some sun exposure during the day, even if they’re more active at night.

In order to understand how reptiles use sunlight we have to break it down to its main components. Visible light, Ultraviolet light (UVB), and infrared radiation.

Typically we’re more concerned with actual temperature of the environment rather than the components of heat. We don’t tend to think of heat as being a component of sunlight. However, heat produced by the sun is composed of three major types of Infrared radiation. Infrared-A, Infrared-B, and Infrared-C, each type is absorbed differently by reptiles.

IR-A also known as ‘near infrared’ (NIR) is the shortest infrared wavelength and is the closest to visible light. It’s high energy and creates deep penetrating heat that is more readily absorbed by reptiles. IR-B has less energy and only partially penetrates into the skin. Finally IR-C is known as ‘far infrared’ (FIR), this is more of an after effect of IR-A and IR-B, like when you press your hand against a rock that’s been warmed by the sun. It’s only really effective as background heat.

A good metaphor I saw for this was the feeling you get when you’re in a heated room. You can be in a room heated to 75F and the warmth is more superficial, just in the air. It doesn’t penetrate into your body very well and it takes longer for you to warm up completely. However, if you go outside and stand in the sun at 75F the heat will warm you up almost instantly. Actual sunlight is more effective at warming you from the outside than just ambient heat.  It’s similar for reptiles.

Traditionally we’ve just focused on the temperature of the heat rather than the type of heat when we warm our enclosures. However, this research suggests that heating elements like UTH/CHE/RHP only produce IR-C, which is the most superficial type of infrared radiation. These work well for creating ambient temperatures, but are not effective on their own for basking.

 Deep heat projectors (DHP) are a relatively new product that produces a combo of IR-B and IR-C with a minimal amount of IR-A. This is more effective than the other heating elements, but it still doesn’t produce a sufficient amount of IR-A, which makes up the majority of the IR spectrum.

 Finally, Tungsten-halogen bulbs produce primarily IR-A as well as a large portion of IR-B and a minimal amount of IR-C.

This makes halogen bulbs infrared composition most similar to that provided by the sun.  Making them the best source for basking heat according to this research.

To summarize, it seems that we need to move more toward using halogen basking bulbs for our basking temperatures with UTH/CHE/RHP/DHP being useful as a supplement to raise the ambient heat. The research I have found suggests that providing this and using top down heat primarily is more naturalistic and beneficial for reptiles. The author of the main article I used for this suggested that the reptiles he switched to this system became more energetic and were less susceptible to disease like infections. I’ll include a link to the full PDF here so you can read for yourself.  

Moving over to this system seems like it will be most important for diurnal animals. However, this article suggests that crepuscular reptiles like ball pythons and leopard geckos will also benefit tremendously. Link to the full blog post here.

Arcadia reptiles also agrees with this new research. Their deep heat projector seems to be a move in the right direction. Link to their article here.

I personally will be moving all of my reptiles to this system, because it seems to be the best at providing naturalistic heat and may encourage more natural behaviors. Let me know what you all think, I’d love some feedback. I’m by no means an expert, but I wanted to write out what I’ve learned since this all seems very new and interesting.

Thanks for reading!

[talenlee]

Henry Orenstein

I'm going to tell you a story. It jumps around a little, to future and past, and it has a big twist in it that I'm going to need you to trust me on. Because of that, the fold - and content warning - is coming later than you'd expect.

This story, started, for me, on the Transformers wiki.

This is a Rubsign. It's a small piece of plastic that's heat-reactive. When Transformers started out as a brand, there was an immediate push to make cheap knockoff toys with similar ideas. In order to 'protect' the brand and ensure kids only wanted to buy the genuine Transformers, they developed something that they could pretend was part of the play pattern: a small symbol on the robot's body that had the silhouette of either the Decepticon or Autobot faction, and you wouldn't know for sure if you didn't heat it up, usually as a child, by rubbing it with your finger.

Transformers, and their gimmick of 'transforming', is essentially, open source. You can't copyright it or even copyright the techniques of a mould. This is one of the reasons there's so many knockoffs of those toys — the actual technique of a transforming toy is pretty much uncopyriteable method.

The rubsigns, however, were made with patented technology; not only weren't other people allowed to put them on their toys, but even worse, they simply couldn't make them because the method for their creation was proprietary. What I thought as a child was a clever way to represent a disguise, for a moment of tension in the narrative, was really just a corporate control collar, a thing that meant they could draw a hard line between their version of the idea and the other, shitty ones, so I could ensure my collection of second hand transforming robot toys was properly branded.

Rubsigns are a cop is what I'm saying.

But, they had to be invented.

This is Henry Orenstein. Learning about the origin of the rubsign meant learning that to my surprise, the patent for them is not held by The company per se, but is instead partially owned by Hasbro, and partially owned by this one dude, Henry Orenstein.

When I found his name in the Transformers wiki, the wiki stated, perhaps boldly: His life is more interesting than Transformers.

Bold claim.

This is professional Poker. It's a well known game that involves players playing for extremely large sums of money, often with similarly large sums of money involved in the buy-in. It's grown in popularity over the past twenty years, in part because of improvements in presenting the game to an audience. Back in 1995, a patent was filed for a device known as a hole camera, which let the broadcasters collect the information about the players' hands without doing anything that disrupted the natural flow of the game. The hole camera was used in 1999, and that's about when poker started to pick up in public discourse.

And the patent for the earliest hole camera (which isn't used much any more) is to a guy named Henry Orenstein. So important was this - and his winnings and his achievements lifetime - that he's been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

This is a Johnny Seven OMA, which were made by Topper Toys. And that's a company Henry Orenstein founded to make his toys after being annoyed at how expensive dolls and toy guns were for poor kids. Topper Toys eventually folded into another brand, Deluxe Reading, which I understand if you are a hardcore toy collector, really into things like barbie accessories and cross compatibility, is very important to the hobby.

This background was how Henry got the attention of Hasbro, and wound up working with them on acquiring new toy properties. That meant he was in position to be in Japan, looking at Takara and Microchange toys, and come back with the idea of acquiring both toy sets, and rebranding them as Transformers in 1980.

Interesting dude, right? He should write a memoir.

Except he did already:

And now, when we jump back in the story, I have to say: Content Warning: Nazis.

Henry Orenstein was born Henryk Orenstein, one of five Jewish children to a Polish family, born in Hrubieszów, Poland, 1923. That is to say, when he was 16 years old, the Nazis invaded and occupied his country. This was obviously not ideal, and the Orensteins first hid themselves in their house through secret passages and hidden chambers between the walls. When the food and water ran out, the parents made the painful decision to surrender to arrest, in the hopes of keeping their children alive.

Henryk's parents were taken, shipped to a camp, and shot. The children were then sent to a camp, where Henryk dedicated a plan to keeping moving. If they were being moved around, transferred from thing to thing, if the person in charge of them was different from time to time, nobody would have the time to really make a protracted plan to execute them. That, hypothetically, was the idea. This meant that he and his siblings were in five different concentration camp - including the camp run by Amon Goeth, the villain of Schindler's List.

They end up in the camp in Budzyń. A few days after arrival, a report comes over the loudspeaker that 'Any Jews with math or science training must report to front office' and Henryk signs himself and his brothers up.

... they did not have math or science training

See, as things were Getting Worse towards the end of the war, the Germans were trying to maximise the resources they did have. This is part of the grouping of things you'd possibly hear as the wunderwaffe — the preposterous weapons of the later days of Hitler's aspirations. You may know these as a sequence of History Channel tv ads, like Hitler's Greatest Tanks or Superboats or The Cannon That Shoots Time Frozen Chunks Of Hitler's Future Brain or whatever. Nowadays, wunderwaffe is a German word primarily used sarcastically, in case you're curious. The Nazis were desperate, because they were a bunch of sucky losers who couldn't make anything good on their own —

And never did

— they instead tried to turn their prisoners to the task of solving their problems with the finest of Nazi Bullshit Magic. At this point, Henryk is maybe nineteen years old, and he and his brothers are signed up to the camp's equivalent of the Shed they dump the A-Team in. The scientists in charge of the lab are scared: if this fails, they're just wasting manpower, and while the Jewish subordinates may fail, if they fail, they're going to get shipped to the front and treated like meaty bullet catchers.

Henryk, recognising the situation, proceeded to run cons on the Nazis with his brothers.

They made bullshit devices that wouldn't work, but did look like they worked. They stole from the labs. They crafted things that could be faked to working but wouldn't work for real. They entertained the scientists with the finest of hokum. And then the researchers, full of relief that they wouldn't become a statistic on a Soviet soldier's bayonet, started to talk about how great their progress was of Doing Science At Shit to their command.

Command released an order to demand that these Jewish Science Wizards produce a tank paralysing gas.

Which was a problem.

Look, the Nazis were fond of demanding things that couldn't be done. Then they could shout at their subordinates who were fucking up, or they'd deliver and you looked great. Again, this is not an environment for refined science, this is a shrinking circular firing squad where everyone is trying to just not be the next person shot. But nonetheless, Tank Paralysing Gas was demanded.

Henryk and his brothers did what they could, they made something they assured the Nazis would work, and the scientists, sweating bullets, sent it off to another base to be tested.

Where it didn't work.

Obviously.

Okay, so now for a moment, consider the situation. Consider what this looks like. These scientists have sent a giant pile of reports about how great a job they were doing, and there's a big trapdoor labelled Actual Bullets on it underneath them. They just put together their wunderwaffe and sent it off to be tested, and it didn't work, so what do they do?

Blame the prisoners?

Uh, that's going to go poorly, because they were saying the prisoners were doing a great job just a few days ago.

Come clean?

Fuck off.

Okay, so what else do they have as an option? Well, they did the only thing a fascist can do. They posted through it, Nazi style.

They sent infuriated reports to the other camp. WHAT DID YOU DO TO OUR TANK-PARALYSING GAS THAT MADE IT NOT WORK!?

And... you can see how this goes.

Right now, nobody wants to be the person who admits something is wrong. Nobody wants to be the person who pulls the circle of who gets shot even closer. You don't want to tell your superiors you fucked up handling the Tank Paralysing Gas, or if you made the Tank Paralysing Gas, you don't want to tell them that the Tank Paralysing Gas didn't work.

And so back and forth they go. Testing things that won't work and demanding ever-increasing test protocols to try and make it the other person's problem. I don't have proof of it, but some accounts of the story include the two camps getting infrastructure projects like new roads to make sure the transport of the Tank Paralysing Gas works and is good and proper and anyway, the war ended before they got this resolved.

But there is paperwork, recovered during the fall of Berlin, with Heinrich Himmler's signature on it, ordering the mass production of the Tank Paralysing Gas made by Henryk and his younger brothers.

"The whole tale about the scam they pulled on the nazis is... instructive, too"