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Luis Xertu (Mexican, b. 1985, Mexico City, Mexico, based Rotterdam, Netherlands) - Two Men on a Branch, 2024, Paintings: Plants, Acrylics on Canvas

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I need to play a really cute farm/garden sim game like Stardew Valley-esq where you grow a little garden and cook and preserve your food and then winter comes and it turns into this dark survival horror where your likelihood of survival is based on how well you did in the first half of the game.

I think that'd be neat.

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A wonderful little mood brightener created by indiarosecrawford

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Blue Jay by Alanna Hart

hand embroidery

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I don't know who needs to hear this, but if the phrase "self care" doesn't resonate with you, try calling it "system maintenance" and see if that clicks.

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"What is left when unhungry?" -Bon Iver

Figs in a 14" hoop! I used up 3 1/2 skeins of green just for the main green colour, not even counting highlights and shadows lmao, shes a monster.

Image ID in alt text

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I never saw people say stuff like this enough when I was a teenager, so I’m saying it now.

I’m in my mid-thirties and I have never had sex. I’ve thought about it and could have had one or two opportunities if I put in more effort, but I always decided against it because I just wasn’t into it at the time.

I can safely say that I do not feel I have missed out on anything. I was perfectly capable, by myself, of learning about my own body and boundaries without anyone else there to muddy the waters. The immense pressure that was there in my teens/twenties to Have Sex Just Do It is basically gone. I’m vibing. I’ve got my routine by myself in bed that I enjoy, and that’s enough for me.

And in the unlikely event that I ever decide to have sex with someone in the future, I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking some essential Knowledge or Skill that would “make it good” for someone else. I fully expect to ask my partner out loud what they like and to receive an answer clearly communicated and to relax and have fun. And if it’s a disappointing experience, I’m fine with that too. It is what it is.

Sex is just not that big of a deal. I suspected it as a teen, and I’m more sure of it now. It’s fine to have it or not have it. It’s whatever.

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Speef is real to me. I'm sorry for that.

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npc!shen yuan applies for a job opening on qiong ding for librarian smth like that, and yue qingyuan has barely looked at his resume or spoken to him before hiring him on the spot.

at first shen yuan is excited and proud cus wow he aced that job interview, can it really be this easy??? then he meets shen qingqiu and sees they could easily pass for brothers and have the same surname, so for a little while he's grumbly and annoyed that the sect leader only hired him bc of his resemblance to the scum villain, which honestly hurts a bit you know.

but then, double plot twist, the resemblance had nothing to do with it, yue qingyuan just saw an eager young man who had compiled all of his experience and skills on a single paper (yue qingyuan's overworked heart cried tears of joy), who seemed genuinely passionate about library work and treats the other workers well.

bonus thought: at first shen qingqiu has the same suspicion as well, that yue qingyuan was just hiring a lookalike for some weird reason, but then he meets shen yuan, sees the work that he does and is like "i have to have this man for my peak" and starts trying to poach him.

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Look I'm sorry to anyone who thought the Saja Boys were a real band, but it was obviously fake from the beginning.

Huntr/x has been doing this gimmick for years where they'll put on a performance and some actors dressed up like demons will "interrupt" it or get into some choreo fights on stage and stuff. If you're a fan you know, the demons usually symbolize things like industry corruption, Mira's struggle with her family, Rumi being in the closet, etc, and there's lots of hints and secret messages to the fans in what they're wearing or how they show up. Check out huntresx5evah on blsky they've got an extensive examination of the "demons" over the years and what the messages to the fans are.

In the concert before Golden was released, the demons were dressed like flight attendants. That was the indication that something new was about to take off. @/queenhuntrixdontmiss and I speculated that it was going to be a new single and low and behold, it was.

But then the live performance got cancelled. It's an open secret that Rumi was having vocal issues, so that was probably not planned. They needed to buy time for her to recover, so, enter the Saja Boys -- a fake band of guys really clearly pretending to be demons, they release ONE single, do a bunch of b-tier variety shows for a week, nearly all of their public appearances have Huntr/x right there, keeping the hype and energy up until Rumi can get her throat polyps removed and furthering the routine where Huntr/x are supposed to be secret demon hunters and the Saja Boys are supposed to be secret demons.

Then the whole thing culminates in the Golden live performance at the idol awards, the big act with Huntr/x fake "break up" and the subsequent theatrics to make it up to fans for failing the first Golden performance. Huntr/x takes their obligation to fans very seriously, I've no doubt that they all felt terrible about having to cancel, so a free show was the obvious recourse to try and make it up to people. And they pulled out all the stops!

But the Saja Boys were never real. I mean they got real guys to pretend to be a boy band and do the dancing and lip syncing obviously, but come on, most of them didn't even have names.

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In the late 1970s a glowing orb appeared in the sky. Every day at about 5:00 Greenwich standard time, the orb would go somewhere new, shoot out something similar to a laser, and kill one person. Every day, always at the same time, always exactly one person.

The person killed by the orb seemed completely random, with almost fifty years of studying it we've been able to find no rhythm or reason to who it kills. It kills the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the urban, the rural, anyone. Every human on earth seems to have an equal chance of being killed by the orb. It's a headline the few times someone of note is killed by the orb: Britain famously lost a Parliament member to the orb, Brazil to this day remains the only country where a head of state was killed by the orb while in office, there was a short lived sitcom in the 1990s called Freinds that ended halfway through its first season due to the orb killing one of the main actors on set. However, these are outliers, on any given day the person who dies via orb is very likely to be someone you never heard of. There are billions of people on earth, and only one is killed by the orb every day. In almost fifty years only a little over 18000 have died because of the orb, which is nothing in the face of the sheer amount of humans that exist.

When the orb first appeared people were horrified. Both the US and USSR thought it was a weapon from the other side. Almost every religion made some claim of it being proof of their beliefs, oftentimes claiming it was divine punishment. Atheists claimed it was proof no loving God could exist. People were so very apocalyptic and horrified by it, they thought of it as part of the end times, because when it was new that's really how it looked.

However, it's been long enough so that's changed. Most people have lived their entire lives in a world where the orb exists. The orb isn't that scary a concept. People know their odds of being killed by it are low and that it's not going to end the world or anything. The orb has become normal, and we've accepted that the orb is just something that kills people the same way cancer, or heart attacks, or natrual disasters, or car crashes kill people. In the nineteen eighties there were efforts to find a way to stop the orb, but it's since proven to be extremely difficult, and it's as distant and nebulous as finding a cure for cancer. When a community is struck by the orb you'll see that community in mourning, but it's not a global thing anymore.

So people grow up learning about the orb, as part of science, like anything else. A lot of gen z remembers learning about the orb from Magic School Bus. It's just something normal. There are a few people with an orb hyperfixation, and a few cults that give the orb importance but it's not most people's concern. The orb is how we first confirmed that interdimensional objects existed and are possible. A lot of people theorize dimensional studies wouldn't exist without it, meaning without the orb we might not have thermitizers or grand drives, we might not even have a moon base without the orb. Some have even rather tastelessly claimed that the orb has saved more lives at this point that its taken with all the knowledge it's given us.

Which is why I regret to inform you, that just last week, without warning, the orb killed two people in one day. And for the past seven days it's been killing two people instead of just one. Nobody knows why.

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The start of my geometric birds series, also my first time using Tumblr. Hi I'm new, I mean, Alexander! 🙋‍♂️

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jetpens just started stocking a product that will be an ergonomic game-changer for a lot of folks!

this is the kutsuwa punyu spiral pencil grip. unlike most pencil grips that are solid tubes and have a fixed maximum diameter they can wrap around,

the punyu is a spiral! it wraps like spaghetti.

this means that, unlike almost every other grip on the market, this grip can be added to almost every pen or pencil! and that includes fountain pens and gel pens. you can see it here being used on a pilot metropolitan fountain pen and a sakura gelly roll gel pen.

(not an affiliate link, not sponsored, you can buy from wherever you want if interested, jetpens has a lot of specs of their products that I appreciate)

a jetpens review even mentions someone using these on the lamy safari line of fountain pens. the ones with a really sharp triangle grip. these grips seem really really versatile, especially if you are about to sit down and take notes for hours on end!

if you do use this with a fountain pen, I recommend making sure the fountain pen is not prone to hard starts or drying out, has a good flow (whether that flow is from a wet nib or a wet feed or both), and/or that you use a relatively wet ink. because the goal is to have the fountain pen continue to write even if you put it down for a few minutes, so you do not have to keep removing the grip, capping the pen, uncapping the pen, or reapplying the spiral grip!

over the years some folks have asked me if I know of anything like this, and well, now we both do! if you get this let me know what kinds of pens and pencils you use it with and how well it works! this is a really exciting pencil grip!

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As someone who toasts their bread in the waffle iron (because why have two appliances on the countertop) I also guess that you are correct.

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

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I'm sorry, professor, I consider publishing your course a day late, having a mandatory live zoom meeting during business hours to stay enrolled for an asynchronous class, and requiring students to use a $60 ***pdf*** that you wrote as their textbook to be exceptionally unprofessional and since I've still got 14 days to get a refund I'm totally not paying $150 to take your class.

Also, for all the newbie professors out there: a syllabus is not just a greeting and a list of assignments. If you haven't given your students AT LEAST your office hours, your late work policy, and your preferred method of being contacted, then you have not given your students a syllabus it's just sparkling announcements.

But really. Sir. SIR. You teach Speech 100. This is one of the most basic classes with like, 20 of the most widely available accepted textbooks and you want me to pay sixty dollars for a pdf of a book that you rewrite every semester so that there are no previous editions?

Buddy this is interpersonal communication, not introductory rhetoric. Why is one of your *four* total assignments about Socrates?

Maybe it's the fact that I've taken Spch 100 interpersonal communication three times already, maybe it's the fact that I grew up with somebody who taught Spch 100 interpersonal communication from 1981 to 2018, but buddy what the fuck are you doing?

"Some of our lectures will only be available for 24 hours so it is up to you to stay on top of it."

Friend, you are teaching an asynchronous online 100-level class at a community college during a pandemic. Get off your high horse, a third of your students are probably parents. There is no reason whatsoever to limit access to course materials to 24 hours unless you are doing it to be a controlling asshole.

Also YOU published your class a day and a half late! You don't get to publish your class late with an incomplete syllabus and tell students to "stay on top of it." Especially not since that means that people have two fewer days to buy your PDF textbook and only one full day to prepare for your mandatory 1pm on a Tuesday zoom meeting!

Why do you require me to have access to a printer for an online class? Oh yeah it's because you expect me to print out and draw on sections of your $60 ebook.

SIR. No thank you.

Kids, new students: this is a level of bullshit and disorganization from a professor that you do not have to put up with. This is a neatly ordered series of red flags that say "this professor is going to be absolutely unbearable."

Also *any* humanities class where your whole grade is 4 assignments should get serious side-eye. You should be able to pass most 100 level humanities classes by just turning in weekly assignments. 4 assignments means that by the time you figure out how the professor grades you're probably close to halfway through the class. Look for classes that require weekly participation as a major chunk of the grade because that way, even if you fuck up a project in a major way, just showing up can save your ass.