cant even refute this ive been straight up doing that

what you say: “I think this is the case”

what men hear: “I have no idea whatsoever, but here’s a totally random guess”

what you say: “I’m not an expert on this subject”

what men hear: “I don’t know anything about this subject and need its bare fundamentals explained to me”

what you say: “I could be better read in this area”

what men hear: “I have never read anything in this area”

like okay fuck it nevermind I’m actually an expert in every subject I’ve ever read or heard about. in fact I know everything.

If anyone's ever wondering why I come across as such an arrogant bitch on Tumblr it's because I used to work in science with a lot of men and never readjusted my communication style afterward.

This is one of my biggest seemingly low-stakes feminist soapboxes. Women are often encouraged to take hedging, consensus-seeking, and checking-in phrases out of their speech in order to seem "more confident". And listen, of course you do not need to say "I think" when you actually know for pretty damn sure, or double-check every little thing you say, or apologize for things that are out of your control.

But there are men in my life who I respect, who I think are generally good communicators, but who have admitted to me that if they do not know the answer to something they will just state their best guess in a confident tone of voice, with no hedging or clarification to warn the listener that what they just said was pulled from their ass.

I once asked my high school boyfriend what noise a platypus makes and he confidently told me "oh they quack" and I said "really? that seems like they'd have different noise-making structures than ducks since they're not birds" and he said "oh yeah you're probably right. I was just guessing." And had no idea why I was mad! I was like, so if I ask you a question you might just bullshit me?? What if I had believed you and gone and repeated that to other people? I could have looked like an idiot. I could have spread misinformation to a ton of people! But I have told that story to other men and had them say "oh yeah I totally do that."

This is so much worse communication than just saying "I don't know but I think..." There shouldn't be campaigns training professional women to sound "more confident," there should be campaigns training professional MEN to stop doing whatever THAT is!

[ID: Chidi Anagonye from The Good Place saying “okay, but that’s worse. You do see how that’s worse, right?” End ID.]

update: daughter

#like … every time i see a post about how much easier he has it than leia i’m #he absolutely does in some ways #but also leia’s family are wealthy and powerful while luke’s are eking out water from the air

This post is nearly ten years old and I still think about this, honestly. Luke has no consciousness of the dangers and pressures in Leia’s life when he’s playing with his toy starship; she’s already had to become what he can only vaguely dream of. But she’s also never had to consider “where is tomorrow’s food and water coming from” to anything like the degree that Luke, Owen, and Beru do every day. Luke and Leia both make sure they’re armed when they leave home because their environments are so dangerous, in completely different ways.

It really is possible to talk about the ways Leia has been forced to grow up and Luke has been allowed to remain functionally a boy, without dismissing pretty much everything we ever find out about Tatooine and the Skywalkers, or the drastic differences in their opportunities and access to material luxuries. I promise, she’s a good enough character to stand on her own without misrepresenting Luke’s circumstances to prop her up.

#luke simultaneously hates the empire AND is desperate to join the imperial academy because it’s his only way out. he can’t afford to leave#not in a danger sense in a material sense. he doesn’t have the resources or the money to ever leave that world—#a world in which his caring gruff uncle is his uncle (and very much not his father) because owen’s father bought luke’s grandmother#to free/marry her—shmi’s freedom and shmi’s marriage to cliegg are inextricably tied together. she’s described just as a good wife—#luke undoubtedly sees her grave (necessary bc she got abducted and tortured to death!) every day as he does his chores so they can. survive#i’m not saying anh luke is actually mature and overtly haunted bc of this—just that fandom seems a lot more comfortable#considering the ways in which luke is sheltered from basic realities of leia’s life than the ways the reverse is also true.#i actually think sw is not completely oblivious and careless about this either. leia’s class really does inform almost everything about her#it’s not super deep about it but it’s there. think of her first kneejerk reaction to chewbacca and how her reactions to han’s misogyny#often invoke class in some way—esp earlier on (and no it’s not just banter). like… i love her and this is actually part of why.#she’s not just strong female character™; her personality is actually informed by both the horrors and luxuries of the life she’s led

reblogging with amazing op’s tags by @anghraine

There's a rat infestation and you genuinely can't tell if they're natural rats or not.

He's got some really nice magical cupboards that lead to huge extradimensional spaces but those spaces are also crammed full of random bullshit.

You find like twelve magical ancestral swords in there. You're pretty sure that your family has a magical ancestral sword but you have no idea if it's any of these ones. You'll have to ask your mum but she refused to come to the tower so you're gonna have to lug all twelve of them across the country to her idyllic little village to find out.

Please view Hokusai's gradual working towards The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, over a period of 39 years.

An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.

A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.

This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.

And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!

Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.

And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.

It's all there; Mt Fuji, the ocean, the wave. The boats are gone, but replaced with birds, flying with the wave instead of fighting against it. It's not as famous as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, but that's not what motifs are for -- each successive work does not have to surpass the previous in terms of success, especially in terms of external success. They're there for you to keep playing with, keep remixing and re-experiencing, for as long as you think you have something to say.

Update: I have done a second page of dandelion doodles and you can't see those ones either. Heeheehoohoo.

Update: 3 pages of dandelions.
Still not posting them, for the same reason theatres don't sell tickets to rehearsals and television stations don't air the first script reads! it's not what they're for!!

Page 4 now, and this dandelion is so much nicer!
So I am posting it. It's an art nouveau dandelion because I was looking at a lot of art nouveau embroideries on pinterest yesterday.

The crucial thing is that this dandelion owes its niceness entirely to the mess on the preceding 3 pages.

(Normally I keep this blog strictly for silly dinosaurs, and post all my other work on @vincentbriggs, but this time it's directly related to the use-the-sketchbook dinosaur from a couple days ago.)

Alright it's almost 1pm, goodnight!

Friend wants to embroider the dandelion onto a cushion, so I made a border to go with it!

Edit: Here's the outline layer in case anyone else wants to embroider it.