(it means i love you)

When you hear the news that there is a growing life expectancy gap between republicans and democrats partially because of the right-wing anti-science conspiracies that have taken hold (especially after COVID) you’re like “Lol. They owned the libs so hard they died.” and then you remember these are the same people having 6+ kids to populate the polls with their white Christian children and medically neglecting them. Then you squint at the data and realize it is not measuring voter data and life expectancy but life expectancy in red areas vs. blue areas and you realize that voter suppression, corruption, racism and poverty is actually killing the people in these places faster than the national average, not their own reactionary views. And you’re so angry it’s being presented like it’s their fault they’re dying.

singing house of the rising sun at the pub last night and when the song ended the musicians just kept playing while people ad-libbed more verses about various pubs they knew

(with ominous hurdy-gurdy accompaniment): "there is a pub in walthamstow, it's called the fox and mole, but we don't go there (long pause) any more. Because the manager is an arsehole."

"Why would you publish an original OSR game that's just a very lightly modified version of OD&D/Mentzer Basic/etc. when those already exist?" you need to understand that nothing is more old-school than writing and publishing a whole-ass game just to "fix" one paragraph of some random version of Dungeons & Dragons.

(For clarity, I'm speaking 100% literally. The practice is genuinely old-school, in the sense that folks regularly did it when Basic was contemporary. The entire reason we have the term "fantasy heartbreaker" is that in the pre-Internet era, folks used to self-publish their BD&D fixups in hardcopy and bankrupt themselves in the process!)

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.

We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.

But believing that people who Know Things should Make Decisions makes me crazy or is unrealistic

if you pitched goncharov vs the dangerous crow boy (who destroys plastic) alongside one another to an outside person and asked them to choose which one was a tumblr fever dream and which one was a real thing published in the real world. i do not think they would choose correctly

Home just in time for A N T I Q U E S R O A D S H O W !

Look at this CAR HORN!!

Imagine driving in 1915 Paris with a fuckin gargoyle on your Peugeot lol

Cargoyle

Untitled (2025) by Sage Oswald, gouache

"craving a food means your body needs something that food can offer" now what the fuck does my body need with an ice cream

it makes your brain happy! your body could use some joy too

no everyone shut up and listen. truths were said

in all seriousness, if you're craving ice cream, it's likely that your body needs fat and carbs. If ice cream isn't an option for whatever reason, you can try to feed yourself something else with a significant amount of fat and/or carbs. You may also be dehydrated if you're craving sweets.

That said, sometimes your body and brain do genuinely just need a pick me up.

The more frequently you practice intuitive eating like this, the better you'll get at figuring out what it is that your body is asking for.

Also, a great trick is to take a look at what you're craving, note the nutritional contents (fat, carbs, protein, plant matter/fiber) and try and figure out what else sounds tasty for your particular craving. This can give you more data points to go off of. For instance, if you're craving ice cream, but a sweet roll sounds just as good, it's probably carbs your body is asking you for. That said, if you're craving ice cream and a sweet roll doesn't sound good at all BUT a bagel with strawberry cream cheese or avocado toast DOES sound good, you know it's fat you're needing.

If all you're craving is ice cream and nothing else sounds worth the effort, you may just need a low effort mood boost, which is also totally valid! This can also help you even if you can't have ice cream, because now that you know what your body actually wants, you know there are more ways to fulfill that order than the way it asked you to!

Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia), family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, Southern CA, USA

photo by Birds of Rey Wildlife Photography

it's healthy for academics to have professional feuds. enrichment activity

Holy shit. "The demese ef the Ne'enderthels: Wes lengege a fecter?" published in the Science magazine

short but sweet

Neanderthals were also human. Any member of the genus Homo can be called human, and while there's still debate (probably unresolvable) about whether Neanderthals are a subspecies of Homo sapiens or their own species, nobody is arguing that they're not Homo.

Stop speaking as if members of Homo are not human, stop speaking as if only we, modern humans, are really human.

The ‘Dance of the Wilis’ Giselle by Ran Chilipye

Unheld by Lina Poluna

Apple Cinnamon Cake