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hobbies include: close reading the Redwall series to answer my most burning questions. such as:

- can I replicate any of these delicious-sounding foodstuffs and would they in fact be delicious if I was able to

- corollary to the above: are we just supposed to read “oat cream” and “nut cheese” every time we see the words “cream” and “cheese”? I think so. bc if not, what tha hell are their livestock animals

- what is Society like? I don’t think we ever see a Mouse City or even Mouse Town though we do see castles and obviously an abbey. are we supposed to believe that most creatures are either in wandering bands or these societies based around a single structure (castle/abbey?)

- they appear to have an idea of what currency is (the bad guys always want treasure — maybe just to have, not to sell? but less ambiguous is some dialogue I just read, “acorn for your thoughts?” “you can have them for free”) but again, we never see anyone using money or making goods for the market. is this after the fall of Mouse Capitalism? are the bad guys (the idea of rat pirates gives me a headache, vis a vis the political/economic systems needed to power piracy) raiding preindustrial mouse societies for treasure/meat?

- corollary to the above: the abbey creatures have oats and wheat but we don’t see anybody farming or trading for farm goods on a large enough scale. is the abbey “orchard” really a like an indigenous forest farm of mixed foodstuffs? is that possible if you live in the same place the whole year or only if you travel each season? I have to do some googling

- both the lack of mixed-species families and the idea of mixed-species families give me a headache. has a squirrel never fallen for a handsome otter? what is the culture shock like if you marry into a subterranean mole family?

- this is the least “important” question but this read through I’ve been desperately trying to figure out What Size Everything Else Is. i’ve come to the conclusion that everything other than animals are at mouse scale, given that they can make seaworthy vessels their own size (a mouse sized vessel with real-world-sized waves seems impossible) and pick and eat apples and plums. but so far it seems like they’ve avoided mentioning how tall trees are — like a person compared to a tree or a mouse compared to a tree?

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So many people who love generative AI don't have a creative bone in their body and can't imagine anyone actually enjoying the time and effort it takes to write something or draw something.

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He loves his corn pillow

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enraptured by this Reddit sub called Somnigastronomy where people post about weird food they’ve seen in their dreams (and sometimes try to replicate for real)

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an interesting linguistics find! so I'm reading this text from 1908 and it keeps referencing "hp" in the context of "not being at full hp" "applying your full hp to a task" etc

and I'm like....... okay that is a perfectly normal way to describe energy and reads totally clear to me, but I KNOW you don't mean hit points/health points which is the first place my brain goes, so what are YOU using hp to mean

and it's not explained in-text, which means it was common enough to not warrant explanation to the 1908 audience, so gotta look elsewhere

horsepower. turns out it's horsepower.

and I'm absolutely FASCINATED that a commonly used initialism from 1908 now stands for something different AND YET the contextual meaning is still the same to a 21st-century reader

I could hand this guy my nintendo switch and he'd be like, ah yes I understand, this ''''pokemon'''' loses horsepower throughout the fight

language is amazing

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That’s not a palm tree!

That’s not a squirrel!!

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Did a school visit today and asked a group of 8th graders if they could define the term "contemporary art" for me [for context, I work at a contemporary art museum], and one of them said "Is it art that's made with contempt?"

And unfortunately that's the funniest thing a student has ever said to me in 10 years of teaching

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It's a little surprising that the "Monday's child is fair of face" nursery rhyme never caught on as an arbitrary personality-assigner in the same way astrology did. It makes the same amount of sense.

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If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

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Do you have any good sources on medieval queer history? I'm a History undergrad and I plan on researching queer history for my thesis; would love some indications of books or articles about queerness in medieval times

Hello, I have had this question in my inbox for a minute waiting until I could find a good answer, and I just did! I found this book while browsing Project Muse:

Definitely might be work checking out!

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Here we go again. Doing the feet tomorrow.

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According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.

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"The Marriage of Froggo Amphibini and Giopiggi Porculini"

The June photo from Miss Piggy's Art Masterpiece Calendar 1984: Treasures from the Kermitage Collection.