Highlights from my soon-to-be-published literary masterwork, Blatant Lies About Citrus Fruit.

I don’t do April Fool’s Day, so here are some shameless untruths that aren’t pretending to be something else.

Y'know that quote about "if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room"

Also applies to queerness and neurodivergency

idk how to compare those lol

The original quote's purpose is to say that you should always seek out people smarter than you for your own intellectual development.

If I'm the gayest and most mentally ill person in the room, I need to find a room with more gay and mentally ill people for my own gay and mentally ill development.

And thats why you are on Tumblr

You get it

May his memory be a blessing.

Willem Arondéus (22 August 1894 – 1 July 1943) was a Dutch artist and author who joined the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II. He participated in the bombing of the Amsterdam public records office to hinder the Nazi German effort to identify Dutch Jews and others wanted by the Gestapo. Arondéus was caught and executed soon after his arrest. Yad Vashem recognized Arondéus as Righteous Among the Nations.

Their attack, which took place on 27 March 1943, was partially successful, and they managed to destroy 800,000 identity cards, and retrieve 600 blank cards and 50,000 guilders. The building was blown up and no one was caught on the night of the attack. However, due to an unknown betrayer, Arondéus was arrested on 1 April 1943. Arondéus refused to give up the rest of his team.

Arondéus was openly gay before the war and defiantly asserted his sexuality before his execution. His final words were:

"Tell the people that homosexuals are not by definition weak."

From Wikipedia

He was also a pretty great artist

Reblog to include his artwork!

May his memory be a blessing

daily affirmations: you are isildur’s heir, not isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.

I was going to make a "same braincell" joke but honestly reading this over and over again was actually very moving and I might need to go lie down.....maybe the real affirmations were the friends we made along the way etc etc

me: hey man welcome in what can i get you

guy who jerks himself blind every night to the characters from a flossing based gacha game where all the girls are bits of food stuck in the teeth of the demiurge and you can like feed the demiurge different meals to change the pool of waifus you’re pulling from and their names are all like “stringy chicken” and “wet cheese crumb” and shit: just a black coffee please

so are the egg prices down yet

hi, a lot of you need a perspective reset

imma say it. “kung fu panda” did more for body positivity and saying that  you can be fat and still be healthy and liked than ANYTHING any beauty companies trying to get your money.

kfp also respects women more than any beauty company too.

also it had a positive relationship between an adopted child and his stepfather even after he found out he was adopted

Hey yknow how Viper was born without fangs, but instead of being rendered helpless as her family thought she’d be, she instead used her other skills to become the best warrior in her clan?

And how Tigress had severe, destructive anger issues when she was younger, but instead of being painted as a “problem child” she was instead taught her how to channel her emotions into something constructive?

And how Crane trained extra hard to impress a girl, and was by all rights the hero of his own story, but he still didn’t get her in the end? And how the girl isn’t shamed for it?

It’s almost as if you get more mileage out of treating your characters (and the people they resemble) with compassion than you do just shamelessly stamping them with your own misconceptions and hang ups.

[Image IDs: Image #1: Tumblr tags reading: #it also did more for proving you can have anthro girl characters without #making their character designs really horny! #tigress is a legend and i love her so much

Image #2: Tumblr tags reading: #plus tigress had no tiger boobs thank god #or viper #no sniddies /End IDs]

The whole central ethos of the franchise is that there’s no such thing as being The Best™ - there’s just being the best version of yourself you can be, and honoring/channeling your own strengths is the wise and badass thing to do.

“Rayban charity glasses event” is a scam don’t click any link in a post that says that.

Old tumblr users remember this scam back when it first went out.

Also no, this isn’t a joke. This phishing scam is 100% running its course again so watch out for your mutuals long abandoned accounts suddenly posting it. Please make everyone aware of it since most users here are newbies who have not seen it before!

“Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated—with one another; with the rainy, sleety weather; with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. “Folks,” he said, “I know you’ve had a rough day and you’re frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here’s what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight—just leave ‘em with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I’ll open the window and throw your troubles in the water. Sound good?”

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who’d been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop—just as promised—the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up—but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it’s extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you’re the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?

That’s what this bus driver taught me—that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy “influencer.” He was a bus driver—one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name. How we behave matters because within human society everything is contagious—sadness and anger, yes, but also patience and generosity. Which means we all have more influence than we realize.

No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated—one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.“

–Elizabeth Gilbert

I think it’s time this got another airing.

how i'm handling my students using AI to write papers:

-don't accuse them on using AI from the get-go and instead ask them to informally define all the huge words that they used in their essay which i know they don't know the meaning of

-ask to see their original file where they "wrote" the essay. go to version history to see if it was just copy and pasted and then just edited a bit. i keep an eye out for the shit like "certainly! here's an essay about...."

-if they own up to it, they can re-do the assignment for a higher grade even if there will be an automatic penalty. if they don't, i process it like plagiarism and get my supervisor involved.

And this is much better than the immediate accusations. Some students have a good vocabulary. Stop accusing them of faking their essays without proof, and this is a good way to check.

Fellow students please stop using AI, go back to promising not to kill the school nerd if they do all your homework or something.

everyone please give a warm welcome to NEW SET

My DM for our weekly DnD game recently moved to California. It’s been sad and we miss him. He DMs now via Zoom and we’ve got a really nice set up so he feels very present. Today while DMing he had us rolling investigation in a library. He said the books title was Is Sex Necessary? When we all seemed puzzled he prompted, “You two should know… Is Sex Necessary?”

My girlfriend and I were stumped. “We should know or our characters should know?” I asked.

“You!” He insisted.

We looked at each other in bafflement repeating “Is Sex Necessary!?” “Is Sex Necessary…?”

“It’s on your bookshelf!” He exclaimed. So we went over to investigate and sure enough, a slim volume stood on the shelf titled Is Sex Necessary? The whole group, all four of us, clustered around to inspect the book.

It honestly didn’t occur to me to investigate the book for clues, I opened the cover hoping to see a hint as to its origins, and inside found a paper note with my DMs distinct handwriting that proclaimed, “Secret! Do not open!”

It turns out he planted notes in several books over two months ago specifically for this eventuality. Each note had a hint for defeating beholders (which he knew we were gunning to fight after being extorted by one) and were sprinkled through many books. He’d say, “An earth genasi explorer wrote this account called Feet of Clay,” and I’d go pull down my Terry Pratchett book of the same title. Or “A sea faring elf wrote about their study of leviathans in Ship of Magic,” and I’d grab my tattered Robin Hobb to find another note.

It was really cute and immersive and it made him feel a lot closer finding all the little notes he left in our home.

PSA: the Ea-nasir tablet has been temporarily removed from display, so if you're planning a trip to the British Museum you might want to hold off for a bit

@mutantenfisch