#how the printing press was invented

[claypotsstuff]

Did anybody else go through bursts of random obsession and now has extensive knowledge and/or useless life skills on the most random things? Or was that just me ?

[sunlight-shunlight]

as always i was thinking about it (thedas art history) and

i think actually the whole chantry situation would be significantly influenced by the fact that they have control over all the tranquil? and the tranquil are... literate, unpaid, tireless, detail-oriented labourers, who will never get bored or cranky or want to quit. so they would actually be like the backbone of how southern thedas makes any kind of printed material, in scriptoriums attached to the circles or whatever?

which is also really convenient for the chantry. since then they have a chokehold on what gets disseminated. any independent groups that make manuscripts or print material would be less efficient, since by necessity, they would need to... pay their scribes and give them days off, and occasionally have them goof up a page and waste time.

and this raises really interesting questions about stuff like the book of shartan and the heretical chant verses being spread around - can people quietly bribe a chantry official to get them to assign a tranquil to copy it out under the table? is there part-time scribe work going on in alienages to keep these texts circulating? do mages (also literate and have access to materials) themselves manage to do this type of thing covertly, or do they have enough loyalty from the tranquil that the tranquil would be willing to lie about it and help them make some contraband?

anyway, THIS is how the popularity of varric's serialized novels, spurring the development of the printing press, and therefore more secular decentralized sources of media, could create a Chantry Reformation Chaos Era, when the chantry loses its grip on information and archives-

[self-proclaimed-mad-scientist]

Printing is hell

[creaking-skull]

i always forget waidwen wasnt here like.. yesterday.... opposite problem i usually have w video games where the big event happened like thirty years ago and the writers are like Heh thats old news the world has moved on... when it would actually still be pretty raw and in recent living memory... another pillars W

[thewingedwolf]

i keep seeing “it doesn’t matter if this post about anti semitism was made by a zionist, it’s still relevant” and i think this is a really deranged thing to say, but it’s a deranged thing that happens all the time so i guess it makes sense that people keep saying it. like, this was also a discussion when the crypto terf thing started going off, where people would say “it doesn’t matter if the op is a transmisogynist it’s a good post” but the op is specifically including trans women in their argument about male privilege which means their fundamental argument is incorrect and at odds with any and all feminist discussion!!! the same way that like, it doesn’t actually matter whether jackson hinkle is making a good point about palestine or not, he’s a far right anti semitic pos grifter and we should be blocking him any time he tries to engage because his fundamental argument is not “palestinians deserve a right to life, dignity, self determination, return, and safety” his argument is “the jews are controlling the media” a zionist will follow up their post about anti semitism with some shit like “i mean these leftists get mad when you call it the israel hamas WAR instead of a genocide, bc they’re anti semitic” while pictures of mutilated children’s corpses are being blasted all over my twitter feed. yes objectively anti semitism is on the rise, but that doesn’t mean you start platforming genocide deniers, sorry. there are plenty of people who don’t like, straight up refer to palestinians as rats that you can reference when discussing the rise in hate crimes!!

[madanach]

A thousand dollars trilogy yaoi bitches on this site but not one single person has giffed max rockatansky getting manhandled by a half-naked leather daddy in mad max (1979) come ON people

[cherrygarcia-07]

Uniform // Spencer Reid❤️

You buy Spencer a new t-shirt and he is over the moon to be so publicly yours (despite some teasing from his friends).

pairing: spencer x girlfriend! reader

genre: fluff

word count: 2.6k

notes: nothing really! cursing once. I really like this one, just a lot of lovey dovey spencer and a lot of derek and penelope being everyones favourite chaotic duo bullying their baby brother 😚

masterlist

——————————————————————————❤️——————————————————————————

“How do you feel about Star Wars tonight?” Spencer asked as he shuffled over to where you were curled up on the couch of your shared apartment, a bowl of popcorn in one hand.

“I hear you.” You began, lifting one side of the blanket up so he could slide in beside you.

“But?” Spencer raised a brow at you, suppressing the ‘I know what’s coming’ smirk pulling at his lips as you rested your weight against him.

“Hear me out.”

“I don’t think I have much of a choice.” He muttered, tossing more popcorn in his mouth.

“Pitch Perfect.” You grinned, giving him your best puppy dog eyes in plea.

Spencer hummed as he nodded as if to say I knew it, tilting his head to look at you while trying his best to hide the adoration all over his face. “Correct me if I’m wrong- and I’m not-“ you rolled your eyes, “but I believe you’ve made me watch Pitch Perfect 6 times over the past 2 months already.”

“Go for lucky 7?” you urged, putting on your best sweet voice as you rested your chin on his shoulder, gazing up at him through batting lashes. “If you don’t say yes then you’re a great big liar.” You grumbled, pointing a finger at the print on his t-shirt.

His brows furrowed in that adorable way you loved as he glanced down at his shirt. He let out an exasperated chuckle as he realised what you were referring to. In large white & red lettering read the words I ❤️ MY GIRLFRIEND , bold and clear across his chest.

You’d gotten it for him on Valentine’s day. You always joked that he wore his heart on his sleeve, and despite him usually being a relatively private person he never shied away from bragging about you any opportunity he got (in fact he invented the opportunity himself more times than not just to give your name an excuse to leave his lips). You figured why not wear his heart on his chest too? He’d blushed when he saw it, a dopey smile on his face as he read it. He’d made you laugh, loud and heartily, with the way he immediately abandoned the shirt he was wearing, fingers fumbling with his buttons as a lovesick haze clouded his brain. Before you could even blink he was donning his new attire, a goofy but proud look in his eyes and your heart soared at the sight.

“I hardly think one’s willingness to watch Pitch Perfect every week is an accurate measurement of one’s love.” He smirked, pulling your legs into his lap, rubbing your calf with a gentleness that contradicted the sarcasm dripping from his words. “Especially if we’re basing it on a t-shirt.”

With a playful huff, you tried to pull your legs back in protest, only to end up tighter in his grasp as he pulled you in closer and you found yourself unable to hold back the giggle bubbling in your throat. His free arm wrapped around you and he laughed back as his hand guided your head to his shoulder with a loving touch.

“I’m kidding. You know we can watch whatever you want to anytime, sweetheart.” He spoke with a softness that would put the clouds to shame. He turned his head slightly to press a light kiss to your forehead before adding, “even if I could recite the script to you in my sleep by now.”

“Oh, don’t give me that,” you retorted. “You could do that with literally any movie, mr eidetic memory.” Smiling to yourself, you raised a finger to his shirt and lazily traced the red heart on his chest, revelling in the warm, fuzzy feeling spreading through you over your boyfriend’s selfless eagerness to make you happy.

The bickering went on for just a little while longer before you finally began the movie, fitted against one another on the couch like pieces of a puzzle. It was about 45 minutes into the movie and you were both beginning to grow a little drowsy when there was a sudden knock at the door. With a groan, you pulled your head from where it still rested on Spencer’s shoulder and began to rise to your feet.

“No, no, I got it.” Spencer muttered beside you, gently pushing you back to the cushions and quickly tucking you back underneath the blanket before padding towards the door with a yawn. He ran a hand through his hair as he swung the door open, confused to see Derek standing on the other side, a book in one hand and his phone in the other.

“What are you doing here?” Spencer grumbled as he checked the time on his watch.

“It’s nice to see you too.” Derek retorted with a raised brow. “You left this on your desk, genius.” He held out the huge brick of a book he’d been holding, waving it in front of Spencer’s face as he waited for him to take it.

“Oh, thanks.” Spencer took the book, placing it rather haphazardly on the small table by the door. “I didn’t even realise I’d forgotten it.”

“Too eager to get home to your girl, huh?” Derek teased as he glanced across the room at you half asleep on the couch. He moved to focus back on Spencer and his gaze dropped as he took in his slightly crumpled clothes, a smirk pulling at his lips as he read the print on the t shirt. Instantly amused, Derek laughed and rubbed his hands together with a mischievous shine in his eyes. “Now, what the hell are you wearing, loverboy?”

A blush immediately crept up Spencer’s neck and to his cheeks as he remembered what the hell he was wearing, the heat of embarrassment pricking at his skin as he hastily crossed his arms in front of his chest in a too-late attempt to conceal it.

“It-“ A loud exhale left his nostrils as he dragged his hands down his face. “It’s nothing. It’s my pyjamas. Why are you still here?” He cringed at the way his voice rose an octave higher, cracking like a teenage boy’s. His arms hung rigid in the air for a moment, unsure whether to return to his face or his side before resorting to crossing in front of his shirt again.

“Nah, come on- don’t do that. Let me see, pretty boy.” Derek grinned, reaching for Spencer’s wrists before being firmly swatted away. “I heart my girlfriend, huh? Does she have a matching one?”

“Did you come all this way just to bully me in my own apartment?”

“Hey I’m not bullying.” Derek raised his hands, his voice adopted a teasing tone as he continued. “In fact I think it’s adorable. Very cute, Romeo.”

Spencer groaned, hand gripping the door in preparation to shut it in his face.

“Thank you for bringing me my book.” He began, deadpan as he slowly began closing the door. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Derek jammed his foot in the door, still beaming like the Cheshire Cat. “You didn’t answer my question, Reid.”

“What question?” He sighed for what felt like the 50th time during this whole conversation as he lightly kicked the shoe out of the door’s way. It was a miracle he even had any breath left in him.

“Does she have a matching one?”

“Yes.” Spencer surrendered, punctuating his sentence with a hard slam of the door, ignoring the laughter echoing down the hallway on the other side.

A few moments later you felt the couch dip next to you, stirring you awake after you had nodded off while Spencer was at the door. Blurry vision barely made out the movie you’d begged for still playing on the TV, though it had long since been forgotten in the hypnotic presence of your boyfriend. Your vision began to clear as you awoke a little more and you turned to see him beside you, watching the way you gazed up at him through heavy eyelids.

“Who was that?” You mumbled as he pulled you back into his lap.

“My test from God.” He replied, caressing your legs over the blanket as if to soothe himself more than you.

“Derek?” You asked and he hummed his response, nodding.

The rest of the night the two of you remained curled up against one another, blanket intertwining you as you both fell in and out of sleep on the couch, staying there long after the movie had ended- neither one of you having the energy to break out of eachother’s grasp. Eventually, under some mostly-asleep zombified state neither of you would recall in the morning, you made your way to your bed and flopped down onto the soft mattress, bodies absentmindedly finding eachother again instantly and you fell asleep for good wrapped up in his arms.

-

Spencer walked into the bullpen, sipping the sugary coffee you’d made him before he left from the thermal mug in his hand and nodding his good mornings to the team. He plopped himself down in his chair, stretching for a second before unpacking his bag onto his desk. He didn’t get far into his work before his bubble of peace was abruptly burst, a familiarly grating voice materialising behind him.

“Hey, lover.” Drawled Derek’s voice. Spencer’s eyes squeezed shut like an automatic response, a dramatic sigh leaving him as he pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed internally.

“Are we really still doing this?” He tried to keep his voice low and even as if he didn’t care but the slight squeak in his words betrayed him.

“Depends.” Derek leaned over his desk, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Do you still heart your girlfriend?”

Spencer stayed silent. Both in protest to his friend’s teasing and in silent agreement that despite his reluctance to the conversation, he very much does still heart his girlfriend.

“How come you’re not in uniform today?” Derek continued, gesturing to his usual cardigan and subtly patterned button up combo.

Sipping his coffee in a feigned display of nonchalance, he responded “that would hardly be professional workplace attire.”

“Maybe we should get you a mug. Can’t let anyone walk around here not knowing how much you love your girl, huh?”

Spencer rolled his eyes at the way Derek shook his shoulder as he laughed, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t genuinely considering it. He was somebody who lived to share his knowledge, always jumping at the chance to ramble about whatever topic presented itself, barely stopping to breathe as his words spilled into one another as his mind moved faster than his mouth could keep up. He could lecture about anything between the vastness of space and the tiny specks of dirt in the ground, an endless supply of topics floating around in that library of a brain but his favourite one to talk about was undoubtedly and unabashedly you. Something that lived on his desk as a constant invitation to talk about you? Well quite frankly, that seemed like a dream.

“Oh, leave him alone.” A new bubbly voice accompanied by the clacking of heels broke him out of his thoughts and he turned his head to see Penelope strut into the room. “It’s not embarrassing to be in love.”

“How do you-“ Spencer began, eyes darting between the two of them with an accusatory look. “You told Garcia?”

“You’re the profiler, honey.” Penelope chirped, tapping him on the nose with the fuzzy topper of her neon pink pen. “Should’ve seen that coming.”

He leaned back in his chair, utterly defeated as he let the teasing continue. He felt like a ping pong ball being batted between the two of them as they carried on for what felt like hours, only stopping when Hotch left his office to remind them that they do in fact have jobs to be getting to, although even he had the faintest glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he dispersed them.

Spencer breathed a sigh of relief, pulling his chair closer into his desk to get started as the sound of Penelope’s heels faded further away behind him- until they suddenly stopped.

“Oh- and hey, Reid!” She called. He turned to face her, brows furrowing as he watched her raise her phone in the air. “Thanks for the new lockscreen!”

Spencer’s eyes widened in what felt like slow motion as he realised what he was looking at. A slightly blurry, slightly off centre photo of him half awake in his doorway sleepily modelling the t-shirt. At a speed that risked whiplash, he spun to face Derek who was already brandishing the biggest shit-eating grin Spencer had ever seen on him- which was saying a lot. He’d been so focused on getting back to you he hadn’t even registered the phone in his friend’s hand when he answered the door.

“I’m sorry man. I’m sorry.” Derek raised his hands in surrender, though it didn’t take a profiler to see he was in fact quite proud of his work.

Spencer groaned and dragged his hands down his face again. It was going to be a long day.

-

Coming home felt like stepping through the door into dreamland, the harsh floor of the hallway outside melting into soft cotton beneath Spencer’s feet as he walked into your shared space. The weight of the day crumbled instantly as he heard your voice ring through the apartment. You were singing to yourself from the bedroom, the sound like a rope that lassoed him and pulled him to you without a second thought. He pushed open the door, body slumping in relaxation as you turned to face him with a smile.

“Spence!” You sang, wrapping your arms around his neck and letting him fall into you as he buried his face in your neck. “How was work?”

“Long.” His voice was muffled against your skin. “Missed you.”

You ran your fingers through the curls at the back of his head as you chuckled at his broken sentences. For a genius who seemingly had an inability to stop talking, he sure had a limited vocabulary when it came to your affection. Even the lightest touch from you was enough to render him speechless, IQ slashed catastrophically as his brain melted from the heat of your fingertips against his scalp.

“I missed you too.” You pressed a kiss to the top of his head and you could’ve sworn you heard him purr.

He pulled away slightly, aching to see your face and if his brain was faltering before it had stopped working all together now. He froze as he glanced down at your clothes, gentle hands finding their way to your waist. A black t-shirt with the words I ❤️ MY BOYFRIEND across your chest.

“I, um. I like your shirt.” He stammered eventually, voice thick with affection.

“Spence, you’ve seen it a thousand times.” You giggled, dropping your hands to rest on his shoulders. “You gave it to me, actually.”

It only seemed right, he’d thought, that you have a matching set.

“Have you been wearing that all day?” He asked, and his heart fluttered when you nodded. Spencer laughed lovingly as he pictured you walking around the grocery store, or the post office, or wherever you had been today with those words openly declared to the world. Suddenly, the whole day of teasing was forgotten, discarded like it never happened and he found himself itching to get changed.

You frowned slightly as he pulled away from you, though it was quickly replaced by an equally confused and thoroughly entertained smile as you watched him scramble to pull off his cardigan, fingers struggling with the buttons of his shirt in his excitement.

“What the hell are you doing?” You laughed, watching him grab his matching shirt from the closet.

“Well, as Morgan pointed out.” Spencer began, pulling it over his head and smoothing out the print so there was no doubt about what it said. “I wasn’t in my uniform.”

-

[cryptotheism]

"Alchemy is the pre-Enlightenment version of scientific inquiry, and it resembles science in many respects: an alchemist observes phenomena in the natural world, hypothesizes a causal relationship to explain them, and performs an experiment to test their hypothesis. But here is where the resemblance ends: where the scientist must publish their results for them to count as science, the alchemists kept their findings to themselves. This meant that alchemists were able to trick themselves into thinking they were right, including about things they were very wrong about, like whether drinking mercury was a good idea. The failure to publish meant that every alchemist had to discover, for themself, that mercury was a deadly poison. Alchemists never figured out how to transform lead into gold, but they did convert the base metal of superstition into the precious metal of science by putting it through the crucible of disclosure and peer-review."

-Cory Doctorow

The stuff about alchemy having a pre-enlightenment scientific process is correct.

The publishing thing is just wrong. Alchemists published their results and techniques all the time, and regularly collaborated with their peers. That's what half these damn historical documents are.

Also, the toxic effects of metal fumes were well known by the 9th century. Abu Bakr Al-Razi emphatically writes about the need for proper ventilation in alchemical laboratories in the Sirr al Asrar, and that book was used as a manual for alchemists well into the enlightenment. Additionally, Al-Razi was just the first guy to actually write that down. Distilled mercury and sulphur fumes smell awful, and are often *physically painful* to inhale. Alchemists knew they were dangerous. It was the nature of the danger, and the techniques for mitigation wasn't fully understood.

I know that might not seem like an important difference, but it is. The problem wasn't that alchemists were secretive and never shared their knowledge with their peers. (They did.) It was because aggregate, instrumental, knowledge about the dangers of heavy metal poisoning simply had not been gathered yet.

It wasn't because the alchemists didn't understand mercury, poisons were poorly understood! In fact, it was an alchemist --our boy paracelsus-- who invented the concept of "the dose makes the poison"! Did he "trick himself into thinking he was right" when he tested similar doses of deadly poisons on different animals to gauge how concentration effected a biology? No!

Like who was Paracelsus supposed to appeal to? What panel of his peers could've reviewed his work? Who knew more about mercury poisoning than he did? Everyone else at the University of Württemberg was still reading Galen! What could he have done to make his experiments "count"? He was roundly rejected by the medical authorities of his time!

You could make the argument that alchemists had no centralized scientific authority, but that's a conditional claim! The Baghdad House of Wisdom effectively acted as that centralized body for jabirian era alchemists. Many Islamicate alchemists abandoned with the effusive language and mystical secrecy, because they damn well needed to teach people. The Sirr al Asrar, the "Secret Book of Secrets" is straight up a textbook written in very plain language.

Like, I know Cory is being pithy, and he's probably making some larger point whose context I am not seeing through this excerpt, but I reject the idea that alchemists were supersitious and secretive idiots that could've been proper scientists if they just submitted to peer review.

It is hard to collect knowledge! The methods underlying science have been present for quite a while, but the damn printing press is recent! It is time consuming and expensive to collect and disseminate expert knowledge when you don't have modern communication infrastructure!

[ayeforscotland]

What is Dataflow?

This post is inspired by another post about the Crowd Strike IT disaster and a bunch of people being interested in what I mean by Dataflow. Dataflow is my absolute jam and I'm happy to answer as many questions as you like on it. I even put referential pictures in like I'm writing an article, what fun!

I'll probably split this into multiple parts because it'll be a huge post otherwise but here we go!

A Brief History

Our world is dependent on the flow of data. It exists in almost every aspect of our lives and has done so arguably for hundreds if not thousands of years.

At the end of the day, the flow of data is the flow of knowledge and information. Normally most of us refer to data in the context of computing technology (our phones, PCs, tablets etc) but, if we want to get historical about it, the invention of writing and the invention of the Printing Press were great leaps forward in how we increased the flow of information.

Modern Day IT exists for one reason - To support the flow of data.

Whether it's buying something at a shop, sitting staring at an excel sheet at work, or watching Netflix - All of the technology you interact with is to support the flow of data.

Understanding and managing the flow of data is as important to getting us to where we are right now as when we first learned to control and manage water to provide irrigation for early farming and settlement.

Engineering Rigor

When the majority of us turn on the tap to have a drink or take a shower, we expect water to come out. We trust that the water is clean, and we trust that our homes can receive a steady supply of water.

Most of us trust our central heating (insert boiler joke here) and the plugs/sockets in our homes to provide gas and electricity. The reason we trust all of these flows is because there's been rigorous engineering standards built up over decades and centuries.

For example, Scottish Water will understand every component part that makes up their water pipelines. Those pipes, valves, fitting etc will comply with a national, or in some cases international, standard. These companies have diagrams that clearly map all of this out, mostly because they have to legally but also because it also vital for disaster recovery and other compliance issues.

Modern IT

And this is where modern day IT has problems. I'm not saying that modern day tech is a pile of shit. We all have great phones, our PCs can play good games, but it's one thing to craft well-designed products and another thing entirely to think about they all work together.

Because that is what's happened over the past few decades of IT. Organisations have piled on the latest plug-and-play technology (Software or Hardware) and they've built up complex legacy systems that no one really knows how they all work together. They've lost track of how data flows across their organisation which makes the work of cybersecurity, disaster recovery, compliance and general business transformation teams a nightmare.

Some of these systems are entirely dependent on other systems to operate. But that dependency isn't documented. The vast majority of digital transformation projects fail because they get halfway through and realise they hadn't factored in a system that they thought was nothing but was vital to the organisation running.

And this isn't just for-profit organisations, this is the health services, this is national infrastructure, it's everyone.

There's not yet a single standard that says "This is how organisations should control, manage and govern their flows of data."

Why is that relevant to the companies that were affected by Crowd Strike? Would it have stopped it?

Maybe, maybe not. But considering the global impact, it doesn't look like many organisations were prepared for the possibility of a huge chunk of their IT infrastructure going down.

Understanding dataflows help with the preparation for events like this, so organisations can move to mitigate them, and also the recovery side when they do happen. Organisations need to understand which systems are a priority to get back operational and which can be left.

The problem I'm seeing from a lot of organisations at the moment is that they don't know which systems to recover first, and are losing money and reputation while they fight to get things back online. A lot of them are just winging it.

Conclusion of Part 1

Next time I can totally go into diagramming if any of you are interested in that.

How can any organisation actually map their dataflow and what things need to be considered to do so. It'll come across like common sense, but that's why an actual standard is so desperately needed!

[communistkenobi]

Why are people who are so gung-ho about media morality on here also so incredibly inconsistent about it on here? It’s like ‘hey don’t even *mention* xyz game or show or whatever but several of my main interests are things that are even more egregious’. I’m not a fan of anything with that rep in the first place but it’s always been really silly to me.

Because I don’t think it’s a position that is reached systematically or scientifically (I think this is true of a lot of positions people hold - again I’m including myself in this). It’s hard to systematically figure out what your principles are. Nevermind the fact that there are irreconcilable contradictions embedded within these principles. But that aspect is less interesting to me, because I suspect that it’s not actually about the show/movie/actor/etc at all a lot of the time, but rather that mass media provides a set of common and mutually intelligible terms and modes of understanding for people to interact with strangers on the internet. 

This is going to sound like an insane tangent but I promise it’s relevant lol: I had to read Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities for a course recently where he talks about the emergence of national consciousness and identity in Europe through the invention of the printing press. The production of texts meant to be read by many people is much easier to achieve when language is standardised (this is prior to mass standard education), and so to print something “in German” requires a social agreement about what the German language “is,” something he argues wasn’t really a thing in Europe prior to this point in history. So while many people across vast distances may speak many different local dialects that are all roughly ‘German,’ they now all read a singular, standardised “German language.” Anderson argues that this produces an experience of ‘simultaneous time’ across space, where you now feel a sudden connection to anyone who also “reads German” despite them being complete strangers and people whom you will never meet. This is part of his argument of how national consciousness gets cultivated, and allows people to articulate a common identity and set of goals with others whom they share no other bond with (Anderson’s definition of nationalism being “an imagined political community” - imagined in the sense of socially constructed and produced, not as in fake).

And I’m talking about this because I think a similar thing is happening here, but re: mass media. I use the term ‘mass’ media in the sense that it is consumed by mass amounts of people through industrialised telecommunications technology such as internet, television, and radio (and we can include celebrities as mass media here for the sake of convenience). And the internet is an interesting place because you are constantly interacting with an incomprehensibly large volume of strangers, and often these interactions are not in your control (harassment, people ‘barging into’ your mentions or replies, people lurking your blog, etc). In order for this to not be completely overwhelming, even in a relatively niche space like “fandom,” you need some shared set of terms to navigate around.

I think this is what leads to the emergence of the terminology of “pro vs anti,” a universal set of discursive terms that cuts across all of fandom space that allows you to position yourself in relation to a large amount of people you don’t know. It acts as a sorting and filtering mechanism (“proshippers DNI”), it acts as a declaration of belief that can be intelligible to many other people (“fiction affects reality” - an objectively vacuous phrase that is nonetheless freighted with a lot of social meaning to anyone within fandom), and it allows you to “engage in fandom” broadly as an online social terrain, allowing you to move from one fandom to another yet retain common terminology to communicate with others. Everyone knows that each fandom has their own set of ‘local’ community terms, which takes time and energy to learn and requires you to likewise learn the social stakes of each of those terms. Sorry to bring up Supernatural but as an example, you can read someone’s entire orientation towards the show based on whether they spell Castiel’s name as “Cas” (destiel shipper) or “Cass” (wincestie/bronly/J2er) + all the attendant opinions that come with those positions. But that takes a long time to learn, and it’s hard, and it requires you to declare a lot of your own positions re: the local context of a given show or video game, but the pro vs anti divide is universal and therefore extremely helpful in social navigation.

So, much like pro vs anti, I think when people say “DNI if you like irredeemable media” and then you go on their blog and they’re like, shipping South Park characters together, I think staking these moral positions re: mass media has less to do with any deeper principled convictions regarding the moral impact of art or how one should relate to it, but rather that you are engaging in a common discursive terrain that allows you to navigate a basically infinite sea of strangers in order to rapidly locate a common community of people. Again Harry Potter is instructive here - it was popular for a while for terfs to put Hogwarts Houses in their bio, particularly if they are crypto terfs. The ‘common terrain’ of transphobia in online spaces being used here is mass media - if I say Potterheads DNI on my Homestuck blog, I’m not really staking my position on the moral consumption of media, I’m signalling my political allegiances via the common language of mass media. This is perhaps why these stakes are so bafflingly inconsistent, because mass media is serving as a proxy for articulating political positions (which can likewise be inconsistent) as a result of the fact that they are much easier shorthands to communicate belief than outright stating your ideological commitments. Nobody knows what neoliberal means, or socialism means, or white supremacy or cissexualism or capitalism or imperialism or blah blah blah, because these are not part of the common terminology of fandom spaces, so declaring your positions using these terms will not get you very far. but people know that Harry Potter = transphobia, so potterheads dni! 

[clove-pinks]

Stop and think for a moment how calamitous it must have felt to be alive in the 1810s: political upheavals and revolutions everywhere, crazy phenomena like a comet and a world-altering volcano explosion (Mount Tambora!), it's the Napoleonic Wars and there's pretty much global conflict, there's gas lighting starting to appear in homes and streets, the steam-powered printing press is invented in 1814, AND you can possibly see a lady's bum through her transparent dress.

[breelandwalker]

Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials

Marion Gibson, Scribner, 2024.

Just found this book and read some excerpts. I am DEFINITELY recommending this as a must-have addition to witchy reference libraries. I'm also going to be checking out more from this author, as I'm already impressed.

Gibson, who is the author of several books on the history of witchcraft and paganism, traces the development of the idea of demoniacal witches and the public attitudes and prejudices creating them through the course of thirteen landmark trials from around the world and spanning seven centuries of history. More importantly, the author makes clear that although history may remember the victims of these trials as witches, they were no such thing.

From the publisher's description:

National Bestseller A New Yorker Best Book of 2024 A “thought-provoking and timely” (The Times, London) global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate a pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history. This “inventive and compelling” (The Times Literary Supplement, London) work of social history travels through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized, and then reimagined as gendered persecution, Witchcraft takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance. Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.

Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of seven academic books on witches in history and literature: Reading Witchcraft; Possession, Puritanism, and Print; Witchcraft Myths in American Culture; Imagining the Pagan Past; Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft; Witchcraft: The Basics and, with Jo Esra, Shakespeare’s Demonology. Marion has also edited five books for publishers such as Routledge and Ashgate, published around twenty chapters and articles, and she is General Editor of the series Elements in Magic for Cambridge University Press. Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials is her most recent work.

[whereserpentswalk]

You're working on an interstellar ship. You're currently monitoring a planet from orbit. As one of the six species with the ability to create faster then light ships, every nation of your species has agreed not to interfere with less advanced civilizations. It's for the best they say.

The planet you’re monitoring is dying of a plague. They don't understand germ theory down there, they've barely invented things like the printing press or gunpowder. It's not like they're less intelligent then you, they just didn't have as much time. The researchers on the ship think the plague is going to end their species. It's not certain it'll happen but it's looking like it.

The researchers on the ship talk about the people there like they're animals, they sneak into villages the plague entirely destroyed and steal corpses to experiment on. They treat the bodies as if they were never people. They talk about the actions of the people planetside like the natrual instincts of beasts and not the choices of rational creatures. "According to their primitive ideas about reality they burn bodies killed by plague." "A female is given the right to mate with her male as she pleases after their marriage ritual." "They lack the capability of understanding the proximity of our ship."

You eventually decide that you've seen enough corpses, and that you've seen too many people act as if there weren't people down there. You steal an escape pod one night and go down to the planet to tell them what's happening. You don't have a cure for their illness but mabye you can get them on the right track.

You see them alive for the first time, not just bodies in a lab but people going about their lives, talking to eachother, buying and selling goods at their markets, mourning their dead. They look different from you of course, your body is serpentine with your only limbs being the four long tentacles near your mouth, their bodies are insectoid with four wraithlike arms and four long skinny legs, their dark metal exoskeletons contrasting the white of your scales. You remind yourself that they're no lesser then you, that you have no right that they do not.

You don't pretend to be a god or anything like that, you want to be as honest with them as you can. You go to someone practicing medicine in one of their temples. She's a student, her species doesn't have a lot of knowledge of medical science but it's not just superstition, she's learning how to do surgery and make medicine out of plants as best as her culture understands. You think to yourself that she'd probably be a premed student had she been born into your species, mabye the type to go to a fancy school off planet, mabye the type to voluntarily turn herself into a cyborg. She's scared at first but she eventually calms down, you explain to her everything you know about the virus and how her species could prevent it from spreading, you treat her as an equal, and explain things in terms she understands but in as much detail as possible, without making anything up to make it easier. It's the best that you can do.

You eventually have to leave. You're found out pretty quickly, you needed your ID to unlock the escape pod. You very quickly are fired, and become internationally infamous. It's agreed that to not violate any treaties you're never allowed to leave your homeworld again, you can never so much as set foot on a starship. Years go by. You don't have a medical license anymore so you find work teaching medicine at a local college. You sometimes wonder what it would be like to have the girl you talked to on that planet so many years ago as a student. In a way she was your first student.

People sometimes want to interview you about what you did. You refuse most of them. There's a small but unpopular movement to make contact with less advanced planets who hold you up as an important figure. Saber toothed emothians, and soft fleshed earthlings, and many eyed galdians all come to you. They want you to endorse them, but it never feels right. The official narrative is that the planet you tried to saved as killed off by that virus, everyone says that the species you tried to help wouldn't have understood what you told them, and that the virus would have been their end a few years after you made contact.

Years go on. No spaceship ever had a reason to come to the planet you tried to save, so you never get any confirmation. You always look for that hope but eventually you give up, there's no reason to believe anything else. As your story gets further and further in the past you have no legacy, there are governments and corporations who make sure you're not remembered in public consciousness, and only a few online forms and academic historians really talk about your life anymore. Occasionally activists will scream your name, but the news never reports on it.

It is hundreds of years after your death. The species you saved all those years ago has finally created faster then light travel. All across their world statues of you exist, every child on their planet knows your name. The first planet they visit once they make first contact is your honeworld, and the descendents of the woman you explained germ theory to visit your descendents. They posthumously give you their highest awards, and thousands of them come to see your grave. Nobody there forgot what you did, you're credited with saving their species from existence. They wish they could tell you, everything was ok in the end, your compassion was not meaningless.

[noneorother]

The puns are never ending : Aziraphale's miraculous "visable" bullet.

Aside from this closeup diagram of how to perform the bullet catch being objectively hilarious, it's also got a pretty fascinating *spelling mistake*.

If you look closely at the part of the pamphlet in red, you'll see that the bullet should be hidden in the mouth where it won't be visable. Not "not visible". Not visable. Seems innocuous enough right? But of course, the layers are never ending.

"Visable" is actually a Middle English word, *not* a modern English one. The last time it was used was before the printing press was invented, so pretty old. Here's a little background :

What's really fascinating though, is that just like the expression "dark horse", the word has two meanings : one is "Capable of good judgement, prudent" the other is "Tractable and docile".

There are also only two examples of the word in context that I can find, and they really should be sending you into orbit :

The first one is actually from Henry Lovelich's translation of the French epic poem "The Romance of Merlin" also known as the first English treatment of the Arthurian legends. It's modernized as "He was a worthy knight, valiant and visable in every fight." Which uses the "good judgment" meaning and sounds... a lot like Aziraphale in his role of guardian and protector.

Why do we care? They are standing literally in front of Excalibur, Arthur's sword.

The other one is from "Ipomadon", another middle English epic poem about a hidden identity romance between a beautiful but proud heiress, and her dark knight in disguise. "She was... visable and virtuous, meak and mild, and marvellous." Which clearly uses the "tractable and docile" meaning, but also... kinda sounds like Aziraphale in his damsel in his distress mode, which:

Ahahahah fuck off. But wait, there's more!

I originally twigged to this error because if you, like me, also happen to speak the language of la plume de ma tante, you know there's a reason why the uses happen in epic poems that originated in France: it's a loan word from old French, and still exists today in modern French, but it doesn't mean tractable and docile...

For the non-french speaking among you, it's a derivation of the verb "viser" :

Verb 1 To aim 1.To aim, to carefully direct one's gaze or a weapon towards a goal to throw something at it.

And so, if you happen to be, oh I don't know, a demon and have been alive for thousands of years and can definitely speak all the languages on earth and happen to have participated in the Arthurian age in England, when you read that pamphlet really carefully because someone is making you do a crazy stunt and there's a miracle blocker on, you could *conceivably* have read the instructions as:

"IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT YOU LOVE, DO NOT SHOOT AZIRAPHALE IN THE FACE." ________________________________________________________ Thanks to @thebluestgreen and @embracing-the-ineffable as always.

[yesornopolls]

Was anyone else on here around in the 1600s when there was that headline about how Isaac Newton got a concussion from an apple?

[moremaybank]

jj casually whining (as he’s a needy boy) coz his girl is doing her skincare for bed rather than having a soft make out sesh

i love our pouty baby sm :((( fem!reader || jj masterlist

JJ watches you intensely from his seat on your marbled countertop. You can feel the saddened energy radiating from the permanent pout plastered on his lips. 

“Baby.” 

“I don’t wanna hear it, J. Let me get ready for bed and then we’ll do whatever you want, I promise.” 

“But I want a kiss,” he says in protest. “Please?”

You squint your eyes at him in disbelief. “It’s never just one with you, J.” 

“You’ve never complained before,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. “What’s next? You gonna tell me you don’t love me?”

Ah, yes. In a world of boys being sucked into the sassy man apocalypse, you remember that JJ is practically the one who invented it in the first place. 

“Shh.”

You continue with your nightly routine, moving on to your skincare products. You douse your cotton pad in toner and carefully swipe it across your face. From the corner of your eye, you notice JJ pick up one of the many bottles lined up before you. His eyes squint as he tries to read the small font printed on the white label. One word catches his eye, and his brows shoot up in panic.

“Acid?! Your face’ll melt off!” 

You laughed loudly, snatching the bottle out of his grasp. “It’s not that kind of acid, my love. Calm down.” You press a kiss to his cheek, hoping it’ll quiet his worries. He sighs in relief, accompanied by a phew, and he’s so sweet that you burn to kiss him again. But there’s plenty of time to do that and more after you’re finished, so you get back on track. 

You unscrew the bottle of hyaluronic acid in your grasp and squeeze a few drops onto your palm. You pat it onto your skin, watching as it makes your skin all dewy and glowy. Meanwhile, JJ plucks another bottle from your stash. 

“Nee-uh-sin—” He cuts himself off with a sigh, “I can’t even pronounce this. You sure you should be putting it on your face?” 

You close the bottle you’re holding, placing it back onto the counter and taking JJ’s from him. “Niacinamide, babe. And yes, I’m good. I use it every day. It’s a big part of how I stay so pretty.”

He frowns at that. It doesn’t matter what you look like to him. No matter if you’re wearing one of his shirts and a pair of his boxers, or one of those pretty sundresses you love. Sneakers or high heels or flip-flops. Makeup, no makeup. Hair done, hair very much undone. You look like a vision twenty-four-seven. Even when you’re passed out beside him with drool escaping your lips. 

Especially then. 

“You know you don’t need to do all this. You’re perfect. You don’t need any help,” he tells you. He jumps off the counter and makes his way behind you. His eyes lock with yours in the reflection of your bathroom mirror, and his hands rest on your hipbones. You feel the surge of warmth from him, and you lean against his front as you melt into him. “In fact, if you get any prettier, I think it’ll kill me.” 

Your heart clenches, and you feel the heat rise to your cheeks in a flash. He’s too sweet for his own good, and the worst (and best) part about it is that he says it so casually as if it’s not a big deal. 

But it is. 

You discard the glass bottle for a moment, turning around in JJ’s hold. Your hands cradle his face, thumbs swiping over the harsh line of his jaw. “Okay. You’ve earned your kiss.” 

He cracks a smile. “Only one?” 

“Two, max. You’ll get the rest when I’m finished.” 

“Deal.”