Why did nobody tell me there's a quote in Morgoth's Ring saying that Melkor stopped at the Ring of Doom, where he was forced to beg the Valar for forgiveness, and the memory made him so angry that he RUINED THEIR FUCKING SEATS?

AND THEN THE VALAR WERE FORCED TO SIT ON THE GROUND?

This is so funny yet so in character for Melkor. The level of pettiness I aspire to achieve.

I wish it was included in The Silmarillion.

while i still can't decide on what the funniest part of disco elysium is i think the whole bit with the alphabet book is up there. describing it doesn't even do it justice but like. it's the way harry goes "let's do this" "mmhm" "yeah!" while slowly and thoughtfully reading the alphabet in his head. how every letter is represented by some obscure fuckass discoelysiumey word like AZIMUTH or PERIHELION even though it's a kids book but X is still for xylophone because of course it is. how you can immediately go tell kim you know the alphabet now and he goes "good. i also know the alphabet." and the fucking esprit the corps check going "it is a very useful skill to have, he thinks. for all sorts of life activities. like reading, and..." and that's the end of the scene and it doesn't even give you exp or anything but at least you can sleep well tonight knowing you taught harry du bois the alphabet. congratulations

y’all hand sanitizer is GREAT but it doesn’t kill everything. not even most harsh household cleaners kill norovirus—which btw can survive on surfaces for TWO WEEKS. there’s a reason entire states experience noro outbreaks at a time. Please wash your hands with soap and water when you come home to keep yourself healthy 😭 you don’t have to be obsessive or scared or anything. Just 20 seconds with soap and warm water to have your own back

Finally finished the video I've been working on for months! It's an hour and 21 minutes and I make 3 different leaf bolero vests in it.

I'll post more pictures later but right now my eyeballs are very tired and I need to go do non-screen tasks for a while.

Fascism thrives on ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Here are some ways you can combat it:

Okay ignore how ugly this sheet is but here are my commission prices.

More examples can be found under the tag #myart on my blog

Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.

It's gonna come as a surprise to most of you, but if you don't want to do that for whatever reason you're allowed to not reblog this post. I'm not holding a gun to your head here I'm just trying to spread the word for people who do want a backup of their stuff.

Also, made this guide for backup Tumblr blogs (ft. export blog method, and python 3 script method):

Real observations since I started wearing a wizard hat daily:

- Brim is so wide that I stay BONE DRY taking walks in the rain

- Brim can be positioned to block the sun from ever getting in my eyes AND keeping it off the back of my neck

- The pointed top part creates an air pocket, keeping my head from getting hot or squishing my hair as it might in a ball cap

- Hat can easily be pulled down over the tips of my ears without looking dumb, protecting them from wind chill

- Strangers say they like my hat, giving me the chance to tell them that I am a wizard

- When you’re wearing a wizard hat, ALL OTHER FASHION CHOICES become secondary, allowing you to branch out with style

Embrace ego death. Stay protected from all elements. Wear a wizard hat.

shoutout to the brief civil war that went down on the balatro subreddit today

Reblog to give prev a fucking break holy shit y’all

[ID: an illustration of a ruddy red, black, and beige horse facing to the left, with one hoof up. It is on a green background with simple orange grasses. End.]

Przewalski’ s horse! The last remaining species of wild horse, once extinct in the wild, it has been slowly bouncing back as a result of organized conservation efforts. They’re an important fixture in a healthy Mongolian steppe ecosystem.

granted i havent read lotr since i was 13 but the way legolas joins the fellowship always cracks me up, like hes literally a prince but they sent him as a messenger to basically tell the council like "whoopsiedoodles we fucked up and gollum is gone, that's what you get for entrusting him to the party elves of mirkwood you know how we get" and he feels SO bad he joins this super deadly quest like imagine you're thranduil and you're like "hey son can you go to elrond's house and tell him we fucked up royally" and your son is like sure pops can do but then you don't hear from him for like two months so you call elrond like hey e-dog what's good have you seen my son. and elrond is like. well i dont know how to tell you this but he went on a homoerotic voyage to the most dangerous place on earth. id be so mad

[image ID: small watercolor painting on an easel of Gandalf, Gimli, Boromir, Legolas, and Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings. All of them have altered versions of their movie outfits to both fit and accentuate large breasts. The breasts are of a size nearly to each man’s head, in proportion. Most are contained within a vee neck, but Gandalf has his robes open and breasts hanging loose while Gimli’s are contained behind a strap over each breast. End ID.

Room Rescue: Basics of Roomkeeping*

*As opposed to housekeeping.

I was talking with someone I know about the basic things that make a room feel better for the least amount of know how and effort. I told them I'd do a write up of my advice so they could refer back to it. I hope it's helpful to some others as well.

Who This Is/Isn't For

This isn't for the folks who already have pretty organized and clean spaces - I am not one of you, I can only admire from afar. This isn't for the folks who don't yet have clear walkways to their bed, bathroom, food, and exit. Been there, you have my love.

This is with a bedroom in mind. This works best if you've got 10-20 minutes a day you can work on it. This works best for people who have already done some decluttering done though maybe not quite as much as they need. This works better in smaller spaces than larger spaces. This is for those people who keep piling up stuff and don't know what to do with it.

Zoning

Your room needs zones. I like try to have the zones the CPG Grey talked about in his Spaceship You video:

In very smell rooms, some of these around going to overlap and that's fine, just so long as you know where each of them is. Movement for many people is going to be an outside zone and that's fine.

Once you've established these zones, only stuff that belongs with that zone's focus can stay in that zone.

You will pretty quickly come across lots of stuff that doesn't fit neatly into your zones yet. Either you don't have the storage for it yet or you're not quite sure if you're going to keep it long term. That's fine. This is where the support zones come in handy.

It's my personal opinion that trash and laundry should be in containers with lids/bags that zip closed. If that genuinely doesn't work for you don't listen to me. The pro of this is that when it's contained like that it feels like less of a task/there's less visual clutter and it's less stressful to see them.

Staging/Take Out zone is for things you want to take out of the room when you get up. They should wither be close to the door or close to where you put that stuff down anyways.

DOOM (Didn't Organize Only Moved) zone is for all the boxes, bags, random pile of crap that do not currently have a place. The ideal place for this zone is the least visible spot from the door. I recommend this because how you enter the room determines a lot of how you feel about it. Stick anything that doesn't yet have a place here. Use boxes, pile high.

From there, you can dedicate 15-20 minutes a day to tidying first, then using the leftover time to improve the space.

Tidying

I like the Five Things Tidying method from KC Davis. Everything in your room falls into one of five categories:

Start at the top and work your way down. Don't get through the whole list in 15-20 minutes? Just get as far as you can and come back tomorrow. Things that don't have a place can go in your DOOM Pile. If all you can manage if 5 minutes, that's great. Do what you can.

If you miss a day, no big. Shoot for more days out of a week than not and your space will steadily get cleaner.

Improving

If you have time leftover after tidying each day, I recommend doing some of the following:

You will always have some sort of DOOM or Miscellaneous Pile/Box. I don't know of a single sane person in my life who doesn't. The goal is to get it to something manageable for you. Maybe it's a section of your closet, maybe it's a box under your bed - whatever ultimately strikes that balance between the stuff you want to fit there and the space you want for everything else you do in your room. Which is to say periodically going through DOOM piles is not a sign of failure, it's a normal chore. For decluttering, I highly recommend Dana K. Whites No-Mess Decluttering Method.

Clearing horizontal surfaces is s constant battle in my experience. They love to collect things. The only things that should be on surfaces are things that you have decided go there. Have a lot of items? Group them into bags and boxes so they can be moves more easily. Leave the tops furniture for decor and lighting and, in the case of desks and bedside tables, a well curated selection of favorites. These selections will need updated and rotated through when you're in different seasons of life. It's not shameful, it's a normal chore.

Decorating is a vital part of living in a space. I will die on that hill. You can add as much or as little as you like but some personalization is so key for mental health. Take a little time here and there to put up pictures of loved ones, cards or other ephemera that make you happy. Put up lamps that help you see better and works of art that inspire you. It's also a chore.

Physical cleaning. The main cleaning that needs done in a bedroom is dusting and vacuuming. Honestly if you're starting from scratch, once a month is often plenty to start with. Clean up spills as they happen. Take out trash when it's full. Do your laundry as needed. Refill tissues and such when you run out. Most of cleaning is responding to events and your own needs.

Conclusion

I hope this gives someone some ideas on how to improve their room a little so it's a more pleasant space to be in. This won't result in like a pinterest level room but it strkes that balance between neat and easy to care for in my experience.

Take what's useful and leave the rest!

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Gardening

Country/Rural Living:

Sewing/Mending:

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

Yellow specklebelly lichen - Pseudocyphellaria citrina. It looks bluer than it is in these photos - big blue sky and no direct sunlight.

It has arrived!

I was gonna scroll right past this but it suddenly resonated with me

[ID: A two-panel comic. The first panel depicts a grassy hill scattered with daisies on a bright sunny day with the caption, “It’s Springtime!” The second panel, captioned “Here it comes!” is identical to the first panel except for the addition of a small metal spring slinking its way over the hill. /end ID]